Day: November 15, 2010

Monday is Wednesday, yet still Monday

I’m taking a four-day weekend starting this Thursday, so I tried to convince myself that today was actually Wednesday. The real Wednesday will be my Friday, so it’s almost, kind of true, but I just couldn’t get over the fact that it was still Monday.

Lots of work to do, which is both good and bad, but I think I’m at a spot with this current project where it’s mostly good. Just a lot of things to wrangle, while also continuing to work on unrelated projects. I spent a large part of the day consolidating reviews, weighing the necessity of sharing some of the comments with the authors — that kind of thing. I’ll probably do more of the same, only different, tomorrow.

Which I think I might have a little more luck convincing myself is Thursday, but we’ll see.

Monday various

  • J. Michael Straczynski quits writing monthly comics, declares future is in original graphic novels. Warren Ellis discusses some of the figures, the actual dollar amounts that might be driving Straczynski’s decision. Financially, it may be a smart decision. But Ellis also adds, not unkindly, the following question:

    What I’m wondering is what happens the first time Joe writes an OGN that isn’t a new iteration of the biggest heritage brand in comics [Superman] with the concomitant press coverage and bookstore push.

    It’s an interesting move on Straczynski’s part, and it will bear watching — both in reader reception of his future projects, and whether or not other monthly comics writers join him. But I think it’s too soon to call this a harbinger of things to come, no matter how troubled the monthly comic book might be as a format.

  • A Canadian Jersey Shore? Can I nominate Red Green to play the role of Snooki?
  • Attention, writers: whatever you do, do not sign a contract with this man. No, not John Scalzi, but that “prevaricating hustler” and “master of bullshit” James Frey, who Scalzi talks about further here. Seriously, there are some pretty terrible publishing contracts out there, vanity presses dressed up like real publishers or outright scams from which no book emerges, but this is still pretty egregious — and exactly the sort of thing MFA programs should be teaching their students how to avoid, not facilitating by offering those students up as Frey’s misguided recruits. [via]
  • A typographic anatomy lesson [via]
  • And finally, a haunting tour of the abandoned — and soon to be demolished — Six Flags New Orleans [via]