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Library > Old News (2005) |
Firefly is just so dang good I had to buy The Complete Series. Both the comic book and the film come out at the end of February; I look forward to both. 373(132/241)/476.
Pretty Pictures.
I like the random cover images, they are fun. I also like high-contrast Adam Warren art from Popbot Reader, that I only just got recently. If you are super-lucky, you get to see said picture below. Chances are pretty good, 1 in 361!
What is that? You don't want to keep refreshing this page forever? Come to think of it, neither do I. So, here is pretty picture for you.
Got me a copy of San Diego Comics Con Comics #3 via eBay, made the title page. That'd be the comic with the short Dirty Pair story. 372(131/241)/476.
Two new books; The Walking Dead, Volume 4: The Heart's Desire and Y: The Last Man: Girl on Girl. 371(130/241)/476. Also, re-created the version 6 animation on the About page as it wasn't working right in Internet Explorer for some reason I still do not know. It works now.
Four new comic books; The Authority: Revolution 12, Kabuki Vol. 7 No. 5, Lenore #12 and Popbot Reader. 369(128/241)/476. Also, I am nearly almost certainly returning to higher education. The course structure and subjects all look powerful good and I go visit the university itself at the beginning of December. So long as I like the place, I apply to start there in September 2006. I write more details here if I am offered a place. Hoo-hah.
A quick update to add the Livewires collection that I bought a little while ago. I've moved house to The Isle of Dogs, I've just got to sort out a proper internet connection. 365(124/241)/476.
Two new books, Ex Machina: The First Hundred Days and Ex Machina: Tag, their title page also, Ex Machina. I move house soon, which delays the scanning. Oh well. 364(122/242)/476.
Last week, I bought The Authority: Revolution 11, Iron Man: Extremis No. 4, Livewires No. 6, Metal Gear Solid #11 and Metal Gear Solid #12. Today, I went and flipped the comic book covers from being on the right side of every page over to the left side. Speaking of which, there are 362 covers scanned, 476 left to scan. However, a slight hiccup has occurred; I realise that a whole load of the covers are wonky. So, I go back and fix them all. Of the 362 scanned, I've done 43... Only 319 left... Except, straightening images by eye is a long, tedious process, not possible to automate in the same way as the scanning itself... And I need to do this for all the ones left to scan as well... So, I scan on automatic, huge margins around each cover from now on, get them all on my computer. Then, slowly work through them all, setting things straight. Yay.
Powerful huge covers for all issues of Battle Chasers, Bubblegum Crisis, C.H.I.X., Dark Horse Presents, The Dirty Pair, Divine Right, The Invisibles, Super Manga Blast!, Titans, WildStorms Player's Guide, WildStorm Universe Sourcebook, X-Men and also for Danger Girl Special 1, Gen13 Bootleg #8, Gen13 Bootleg #9, Gen13 Bootleg #10 and Kabuki Images. 357/476.
Four new comic books, The Authority: Revolution 10, Ocean 6, 100 Bullets: The Hard Way and Y: The Last Man: Ring of Truth. And huge cover images for all issues of AD Police, Akira, A Lost Stock Of Children, America's Best Comics, Angel Fire, A'OK, Appleseed, Astronauts in Trouble, Avengeblade, Babylon 5, The Bad Art Collection, The Beano, The Cowboy Wally Show, From Cloud 99, Jim Spaceborn, Judge Dredd, Metropol, Ocean, 100 Bullets, Popbot and Y: The Last Man. 288/545.
Eight Years.
Come tomorrow afternoon, this here comic book library will have existed for eight years. I can think of nothing much to write, so instead I make random cover images appear for your amusement. Yay.
Here's to another eight years. By 2013 I may even have written actual comments about all those pesky comic books...
Huge covers for all issues of The Authority, Ghost in the Shell, Livewires, Metal Gear Solid, Planetary, The Walking Dead, Wildcats and everything involved in that Fire From Heaven crossover from over nine years ago (Backlash, Deathblow, Sigma, StormWatch, Sword of Damocles and Wetworks). 202/627.
Very Slow Brain.
My brain works slowly.
I am very sorry, to lots of people, for many things.
Here are some comic books. I have read them. Some were good, some were not. You probably won't be able to tell one way or another from this website; I've yet to write anything about any of them.
Gareth, Sarah, Helen, Cass, Jenny, Zainab, Samuel, Darrell; I'm sorry.
Soon, my slow brain will catch up, and then I'll be able to forget.
I want to sleep.
Every single issue of Gen13 now has a huge cover image, as do DV8 Annual 1999 and Divine Intervention / Wildcats #1. 127 down, 702 to go...
Done gone bought and made pages for Crimson: Loyalty And Loss, Planetary #23 and Gen13 #49, #50, #51, #52, #53, #54, #55, #56, #57, #58, #59, all thanks to Adam Warren's Gen13s being so very good. I know these will not be, but they were only £4.80, so that's okay. I also made the Crimson title page and scanned in huge covers for Gen13 #60 and #70. All covers shall be huge, one day...
Finally managed to finish entering the details for a whole bunch of comics I bought within the last few weeks; The Authority: Revolution 9, Livewires No. 5, Metal Gear Solid #9 and #10, The Walking Dead, Volume 3: Safety Behind Bars and Wildcats Version 3.0 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 and 24. Honkin' huge covers all 'round and larger screenshots on the about page.
Adam Warren... again?
After talking trash about Adam Warren's Gen13 run, I figured I might as well actually read it, and so I bought the lot on the cheap. That'd be Gen13 #61, #62, #63, #64, #65, #66, #67, #68, #69, #71, #72, #73, #74, #75, #76 and #77. I already have #60 and #70 and they were pretty good, so hopefully these will be too. Still hate Ed Benes' artwork though...
On a website related note, I've done a thing I've wanted to do for a while; rename all the files so that they make sense to humans. So, instead of kbki_zzz.html, the Kabuki page is now called kabuki.html. And so on. Hoo-hah.
And, and! With those sixteen new comic books I mentioned above, I've started to use the new cover format I've also been thinking about for a while. 160x245px instead of 120x185px, but the real difference is that I now save the JPEGs in super-high-quality mode, that they don't look like pixelated-poo. That, and the little matter of 480x740px honkin'-huge-close-ups when you click the tiddly covers. Aw, yeah.
Because of this, I've had to make it impossible for people to "hot-link" to any of the images in all of my websites. I haven't bothered up until now, as the cover images were only 11KB on average and their use on forums and blogs has not hurt me at all. But the new "small" covers average 26KB, and the large ones average 160KB, so I had little choice.
All I've got to do now is find a new web hosting company. My current contract ends in July and I'll need a little more than 50MB of space to host all those powerful-huge new scans. At the moment, I decide between WebFusion and XCalibre. Hopefully, you all won't notice the switch.
Four new comic books; The Authority: Revolution 7, The Authority: Revolution 8, Kabuki Vol. 7 No. 4 and Livewires No. 4.
I add a television series to the library, Babylon 5, because it's just too dang good. Babylon 5: Signs and Portents, Babylon 5: The Coming of Shadows, Babylon 5: Point of No Return, Babylon 5: No Surrender, No Retreat and Babylon 5: The Wheel of Fire. And, hey, if I get some B5 comic books, then this will even make sense.
Yet another new graphic on the guest book signer, plus a whole bunch of comments for Preacher that an old friend wrote five years ago.
Six years after I first uploaded this website to my Freeserve webspace, and over four years since I last had one, I've finally got around to implementing a really nice search engine. You can now search for anything at all to do with the 774 comics in this here library. Hoo-hah.
Two new pages for two new comics; Livewires No. 3 and Metal Gear Solid #8.
I am so damn tired. Anyway, yesterday, I bought some new comic books. Who'd have thunk it? Dark Part Four, Flight Volume Two, Iron Man: Extremis No. 3 and Ocean 5. So. Very. Tired.
Adam Warren Writes Pretty.
I've been reading Adam Warren's work for nearly ten years now, having bought The Dirty Pair: Biohazards and Bubblegum Crisis: Grand Mal back in late 1995.
The scantily dressed ladies were a huge part of the appeal, but happily some fine stories came along with said ladies. A glorious mixture of dark humour, excessive science fiction and some mighty twisted concepts is what has kept me interested in Warren's work all of this time.
The polar opposite of Warren Ellis, who has used the internet to create a mammoth cult of personality around himself, Adam Warren has no online presence that I have ever been able to detect; the GaiaTeam Homepage is the best of what's out there. So, it is all the more exciting when I learn he has a new comic book coming out.
Like J. Scott Campbell, Warren does a lot of illustration work in many different fields. However, when it comes to comics, he has stated that he prefers to write for others to draw. Which is a shame, as he draws so damn well. This is why I've been disappointed by his work in the pages of Gen13; without his artwork, the stories have never come across as anything special.
Happily, in Livewires, Rick Mays tops even his own work on Kabuki, matching Warren's story perfectly. There is a sense of excitement in the artwork, not to mention the crazy amount of detail that is another aspect of Warren's work I've always appreciated; look at the corpse's cross-sections on the third page of Livewires No. 1. Glorious.
Livewires is a very high quality book, published by Marvel of all companies. Buy it. Buy it as individual issues and, when it comes out as a collection, buy that too. I want Adam Warren to have lots of success, that he might write and draw yet more mighty comics for me to read.
Seven new comic books; The Authority: Revolution 6, Fillerbunny #1, Fillerbunny #2, Fillerbunny #3, Livewires No. 2, Metal Gear Solid #7 and Nightmares & Fairy Tales, Issue #12. Fillerbunny title page made, a new graphic for the guest book signer and a whole bunch of old news too.
Bought X-Men Unlimited Vol. 1, No. 47 for the Adam Warren written / Rick Mays illustrated story; it's pretty good. Also, just for the hell of it, I made this whole website be in XHTML. Ooh-ooh, and all the cover images now have matching "alt" text. Hoo-hah.
Five new comic books; The Authority: Revolution 5, Metal Gear Solid #5, Metal Gear Solid #6, Ocean 4 and the shiny new book from Adam Warren, Livewires No. 1. Livewires title page made, various behind-the-scenes coding done; the comic book library is now constructed using valid HTML and CSS. Hot dog.
Lots of Comic Books.
I have a lot of comic books right now. 755 of them, to be precise.
Back in 1998, when I started making this website, one of my goals was to write about all of the comic books that I owned. This was an offshoot of the reading diary I started for my English class in secondary school, at the age of twelve, and maintained for many years thereafter.
Wyrd Sisters, The Sherlock Holmes Collection and Summer Blonde are waiting to be read. Once they are, I shall read through all of the comic books that I own and then... I shall write about them! Straight after reading them! That I might actually know what to write! Can you imagine it? Damn, that'll be pointless...
A new... thing... shall be coming soon, once I have sorted out web hosting for both myself and my lady friend. Current hosting is not reliable enough and has too little space. I need more space. A new photograph of myself shall appear soon as well; I have hair now!
Two new comics, Metropol Volume 3 and Planetary #22, plus the Metropol title page. And now all pages have actual titles in their respective title bars. I am very tired right now.
I sell comics for £s, one day.
Right, so my intital plan to sell a whole bunch of comics on 8th January 2005 was scuppered by eBay not having a free listing day, like I was expecting them to. I'll update here when I next expect to sell comics on eBay. As to why do I not just sell them now and pay the listing fee? Because I am a cheapskate.
The new splash page was suggested by a reader. If you want, write comments about it, maybe even suggest new ideas.
Bought myself a bunch of comics yesterday; The Authority: Revolution 4, Ghost in the Shell, Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface, Iron Man: Extremis No. 2, Kabuki Vol. 7 No. 3 and Metal Gear Solid #4. Made the Ghost in the Shell title page and added a link to the comics I'm selling in the navigation bar on the right.
I sell comics for £s, soon.
As was mentioned way back in July of last year, I desire to sell some of my comics, that I might buy them in collected form, or because I already have them in collected form. Here is a complete list of what I shall be selling via eBay on 8th January 2005.
I may soon do something different with this place, in the vein of what Mr Wolfie has done with his GaiaTeam Homepage, though more about the comic books. As he mentions, Adam Warren has a new book, called Livewires, coming out on 17th February here in the UK. It will be illustrated by Rick Mays, and hopefully it will not suck.
Michael's band has, um, disbanded and so his website shall disappear in a few days. I'll upload an archived version soon. Also, because it is now 2005, I get to update the copyright notice at the bottom of the page. It's too much pleasure for me to handle? Not just yet, but getting close.
A super old splash page is in use at present, until I can think of a shiny new one. Write me ideas if you want to.
