:: planetoïd ::

HARVEY AWARDS, 2003. AND VERTIGO NEXT SHIT. AND YOUR MONTHLY DOSE OF ELLIS, TOO.

nuff said. 8) the hairy Moore made some hold up. some decent and authorized hold up :

"The winners of the Harvey Awards were announced Saturday night at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in New York City.

Best Writer: Alan Moore (for Promethea).
Best Artist: Eduardo Risso (for 100 Bullets).
Best Cartoonist: Jeff Smith for Bone.
Special Award for Excellence in Presentation: Krazy and Ignatz (Fantagraphics).
Best New Series: Rubber Necker by Nick Bertozzi (Alternative Comics)
Best Continuing or Limited Series: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill ABC).
Best Single Issue or Story: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II, #1 by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill (ABC).
Best Graphic Album of Original Work: The Cartoon History of Universe, Volume III by Larry Gonick (W.W. Norton).
Best Graphic Album of Previously Published Work: 20th Century Eightball by Daniel Clowes (Fantagraphics).
Best Anthology: Comics Journal Summer Special (Fantagraphics).
Best Inker: Jaime Hernandez for Love and Rockets.
Best Letterer: Todd Klein for Promethea.
Best Colorist: Dave Stewart for Hellboy.
Best Syndicated Strip: Mutts by Patrick McDonnell.
Best Biographical, Historical, or Journalistic Presentation: B. Krigstein, Volume 1 (Fantagraphics).
Best Presentation of Foreign Material: Lone Wolf and Cub (Dark Horse).
Best Domestic Reprint Project: Krazy and Ignatz (Fantagraphics).
Best New Talent: Nick Bertozzi for Rubber Necker.
Best Cover Artist: Adam Hughes for Wonder Woman.

ladies and gentlemen, a few other news from the united states of america best comics inprint, DC's own Vertigo :

"Grant Morrison has signed a two-year exclusive deal with DC Comics, it was revealed at the Vertigo panel at Comic-Con International on Friday. Morrison, whose recent work includes The Filth at DC and New X-Men at Marvel, will end his New X-Men run with #154.
Morrison's new book, Vinanarama, is described as "an Islamic, sci-fi love story." It will launch next spring."

"Writer Andy Diggle and Enrique Breccia are teaming on Swamp Thing: Bad Seed, a six-issue mini-series. When the long-forgotten Sargon the Sorceror dupes Tefe into battling her own father, it's up to John Constantine to intervene before all of humanity is caught in the crossfire."

"Neil Gaiman will co-write a new The Books of Magic monthly series with television writer Si Spencer. With Lucifer artist Dean Ormston illustrating, The Books of Magic will relaunch early in 2004."

"Vertical is a 64-page special by written by Steven T. Seagle and illustrated by Michael Allred and Phillip Bond that's just 4 inches wide and 22 inches tall. It's the story of Brando Bale - a young man covered with cuts, stitches and bruises from his many leaps from high places in an attempt to find God - and Zilly Kane - a teenager who dreams of fame and finds Brando instead."
(shame shame shame on me, i did nothing but p'n'c from Comics Continuum above...)

ladies and gentlemen, a few other news from the united kingdom, country of the best comics writerzzz :

- flash. mob. the next 2 fuckin words that you will not be able to miss while around so-called civilized planet earth.
readers of my planetoidesque blog will not be surprised ; they know that writer Warren Ellis is somewhere before anybody else ; that's probably part of his success (check this last and recent interview he did for Technoccult.net back in January). this, and his sick ideas, too. 8)
soooooo... still from his Bad Signal mailing list....

"Xeni Jardin once described something to me as "teh suck." For no good reason, it makes me laugh whenever I see it. My friends have started to adopt it.
The London Flash Mob was teh suck.

At 6.17, the organiser appeared in the pub to distribute the script for the mob. We were to descend on a sofa shop, point at sofas and say "Oh, what a sofa!". Without using the letter O. No-one seemed to know where the shop was. By bizarre luck, I bumped into a woman called Bev who knew my name without knowing my face or who I was (someone had forwarded Bad Signal to her without explanation and with bits clipped out, by all accounts), and by even stranger luck, she lives over the road and knew where the place was. We took off, and the entire pub seemed to follow us.

Bev works in peace activism, and knows a lot about things I don't know enough about. The flash mob appealed to her, I think, because she's arranged similar things in years gone by for purposes of political activism, before we had the term "smart mob."
We arrive to find the media all over the place -- and the sofa shop closed for the night. It's nearly 6.30pm, after all. Journalists are running all around the mob -- which is bloody huge by this point -- and I count five camera crews. And a drive-by by the police.
Devices waved in the air by the dozen -- phonecams, digicams, camcorders, PDAs, you name it. All shorts and shoulderbags. (I look bloody horrible in shorts, so no. Don't even consider it. Move on.)

Someone's inside, on an upper level, trying to film the gathered mob without being noticed. Someone loudly pointed him out, and he tried to hide behind a net curtain.
Okay. *I* loudly pointed him out.

Anyway. We're here, the shop's shut. Which would seem to have fucked the flash mob, which is supposed to be about the appearance of spontaneity, right? Well, then, the shop opens. In fact, it seems to open specifically to let the flash mob in.
Media hordes. Shop opening specially for a spontaneous mob. Right.
Barely half of us get in. Bev and I just get to the first sofa past the doorway, when, bang, it's 6.40. End Of Mob time. There's a round of applause -- that seems possibly for the benefit of the camera crews -- and it's done. Bev's asking me to sit on the sofa with her, a hundred sweaty Londoners have just noticed the only thing between them and the door is me and the cameraman behind me... fuck it.
I backed out and took a few shots of the dispersal.

Entirely too many people came up to me during this to tell me they were here because they'd read about it on Die Puny Humans. That was weird.
I say goodbye to Ian King, a DPH news-finding reg, and to Mark Eris and the band Arkam Asylum, who were playing tonight and I didn't get there which pisses me off but I'll see them next time because I like them. Bev's hooked up with a friend, Michael, and they ask me round the corner for a drink. At this point, I give
up on the notion of writing a full account of the flash mob on-site.
Fuck it. I want a drink.
Michael's also involved in the democratic activism trade, and he also knows many things I don't, in addition to being a nice bloke.
However, pieces of conversation allow him to dope out my full name. And, in an extremely unusual moment, he gives it "You're Warren Ellis, aren't you?" Bev looks at him like he's gone mad. Mike's got all the bloody TRANSMET books, hasn't he? Reads DPH every day. This is extremely weird for me. The thing about working in comics is that you're really Not Famous. At All. It was strange enough when the girl at the local Chinese recognised me off the television. That kind of derailed the conversation for a few minutes, until, I think, it became clear that I really wanted to talk about the work they're into. It helped that Bev remained totally baffled by it all. The high point was Michael producing a lip-balm stick packaged for US troops in Iraq. It was branded AMERICAN STRIKE. I have a photo on the phone I'll check later. AMERICAN STRIKE LIP BALM. Glorious.

So, flash mob. Teh suck. But I got to meet some really interesting people. And after that, I met Garth and Rush Ennis and Dave Gibbons for a drink. So that was all right then."