The board is telling me it is the birtdhay of Eric, 's man. I hope they are doing fun things with the day. Have you read his Rutabaga comic? It is fun stuff.

After about a month solid of sunshine, it is cloudy today. This suits me fine as I am all tucked and tied for
Is it my imagination or are a lot of people wearing grey today? I know I am, in honour of the grey weather.

One benefit of not having cable and just watching tv shows on dvd or netflix, is that I was not exposed to endless 9/11 programming over the weekend. Last night we watched the first few episodes of the Big C, which is quite an entertaining and funny show for something about a woman dying of cancer.

You buying any of those new DC relaunch comics?

It's bee-yoo-teeful weather here, and everyone is telling me to enjoy it while I can! I might take the kids canoeing this weekend. That'd be fun.

I've been working on a painting the past couple days, and while it's not a catastrophe, it's certainly not a triumph either. I think I'm probably bumping against the limits of my skillset. Which is great for improving my skillset, but does NOT make for an easy time of it. Or warm fuzzy feelings for my ego.

similar feelings here. I listed to cd's instead of the radio while driving, too. Some of the stuff was interesting, thoughtful, but it just got relentless.

I'm pretty out of touch with monthly comics. if anyone says they're incredible, I usually try to hunt down a couple trades. We'll wait and see on the relaunch. I think those sorts of things are rarely remarkable, really.

It just occurred to me that in the websites and twitters and facebooks and tumblrs and so on that I follow, the chatter about the DC thing has been as inescapable as say... the 9/11 anniversaries on tv. And so that then gets me curious.

Yes, I also have been inundated with DC news, but I have no real desire to pick up any of the issues. I just can't see paying $4 or whatever for 20 pages of comics. Sometimes I pick stuff up in trade, but even that I haven't done in a while. I think there were a few things I was waiting on trades for, but I don't know if they ever come out. Then also there's things like this: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/08/25/brett-booth-is-our-hero/ http://comics.ign.com/articles/119/1193849p1.html Every once in a while I think about getting into Green Arrow because I have some interest in archery and had that as a hobby for a while, plus I love Robin Hood stories and I liked Green Arrow in Justice League cartoon, but then I see the cover and find that the artist couldn't even be bothered to put the arrow on the correct side of the bow (or the bowstring on the correct side of the arm), and it doesn't really instill any confidence in the comic.

Speaking of research, I've been spending a lot of time on horses and tack and gear, and it's got me thinking cars are probably not so bad after all.

That is funny. It is like whenever a tv show plot (like CSI or something) involves comic books you just know it is going to be painful and have all these ridiculous ideas about comics and comic people. If the plot is about something that you know nothing about, you don't have to worry about the sloppy details, but if it is something you love, all the mistakes are horrible and glaring.

It would be advantageous to have someone drawing Green Arrow who knew how a bow worked though.

Yeah whenever there is some kind of special interest in a show that is has something else as a main focus, I pretty much expect they are going to be rather mistaken about it, but usually I cut them some slack because it isn't their main focus. Although I think it mas more to do with who the target audience is. So like those crime shows have a pretty general audience and it's mostly safe for the writers to assume they won't have too many experts on any given topic watching the show (or they won't care, like my mom the biochemist who watches all those shows and just doesn't pay attention to the science parts). But then there's a show like Chuck, which appeals to a certain nerdier crowd. I think most of the time they do a good job of this, like even getting all the Call of Duty games straight and using appropriate gamer slang, but once in the last season they made A Song of Ice and Fire reference which I knew wasn't right (among other things, I sadly know all the covers for A Game of Thrones and the book Chuck was holding did not have one of those). So ever since then I've been wondering how many other times they made some nerdy joke or reference that was actually wrong but I just didn't know because it wasn't my particular nerd-dom.
But, this is all different from Green Arrow, which should be pretty obvious to anyone that it would appeal to archers and archery fans, who would generally know if you get major aspects of shooting an arrow wrong. I wonder if anyone who's ever drawn an Aquaman story has decided they don't need to know anything about how fish look. (Although I don't even know if Aquaman has his own book right now, and even so my guess is there is less crossover between oceanographers and comic fans than archers and comic fans.)

I like how in the Big Bang theory they actually have a physics consultant to get their physics straight. At some point one of the characters said he's going to recreate an experiment the Italians did, and I said - hey! that's the experiment next door! (although he actually wouldn't be able to recreate that experiment for a pretty stupid reason, which I won't explain to not scare the general public with physics talk).

I actually stopped watching at season two. I should get back to that. I don't know how to shoot a bow, though.

Okay, I am going to confess that it never even crossed my mind that Green Arrow would be of interest to archery fans!

I'm totally with you, when there's a minor character playing upright bass and the artist gets the posture and fingering wrong on the instrument that's understandable, but when it's the main character's primary characteristic, you should get it right!

BUT -- I've actually had this argument with some people before and wound up on the other side of it. Mainly it's people who did some archery in summer camp, etc., and think Euro / Olympic-style archery is THE only way to hold a bow. I used to teach Japanese short bow which has tons of variations like holding lefty or nocking on either side of the bow (depending on what side of the horse you've got to shoot from, etc. etc.) and it totally makes sense to me the Arrow would have studied all those forms to have the flexibility [/end geekiest snottiest diatribe I hope I give today]