Interpretive Nature Walks

I clipped this from the newspaper about seven years ago. I find the juxtaposition between the headline and the photograph from a separate article to be really amusing.

In Comic Book Stores Today

One of the wonders of writing for anthology comics like CARTOON NETWORK BLOCK PARTY, is that a long period of time can pass between when I write a story and when it sees publication. When I say long periods of time I'm talking about a range between several months and occasionally a few years. It all comes down to balancing the story types, featured characters and available page counts of an individual title. Sometimes, the amount of time that transpires between when I write a story and it sees publication is long enough that I've even forgotten the story in question.

Such is the case with issue #55 of CARTOON NETWORK BLOCK PARTY, available today, and which I've not yet seen. The solicitation copy reads:

Written by Robbie Busch, John Rozum, Sam Agro and Scott Cunningham; Art by Robert Pope, Cindy Morrow, Scott Roberts and Andy Suriano; Cover by Robert Pope
Bloo enters a joke contest, the Powerpuff Girls play in the Professor's lab, Dexter makes breakfast the hard way and Adam and Jake join the band!

Based on the order of listed writers and the order of listed stories it appears that I'm responsible for the writing part of the Powerpuff Girls story which looks to have been drawn by Cindy Morrow. However based on the very basic description, I have absolutely no idea what story this is, or how long it is.

This, by no means, should suggest that this story is subpar. It just means that my once steel trap like mind is now more like an aluminum sieve. When a story shows up that I've forgotten about, I'm usually pleasantly surprised to be reaquainted with it. So, if the Powerpuff Girls strikes your fancy (or the fancy of your kids) drop what you're doing and run out and get a copy of this comic book now, before it's too late.

Kids and Comics

Wonderchroma.com, a webzine devoted to music and geek culture debuts today. Among the contents is the first part of an excellent article by Daniel Crown on the comic book industry built on an audience of children and now, possibly doomed because it now ignores children as potential readers. Daniel interviewed me for the article which includes much of my insight on the problem. Part one can be found here. Part two will appear in next week's issue.

My Family

This drawing labeled "My Family" was done when I was in kindergarten. I think this single image explains a lot about me. I am the one in the middle. Surrounding me are a giant bat, a ghost, some other flying figure, a green-skinned Frankenstein's monster type, and a mad woman. The back of this sheet of paper is taken up by an enormous drawing of a spider web with a fat red spider in its center, and my initials rendered with a backwards facing "J."

In Comic Book Stores Now

Scooby-Doo #142 is available in comic book stores today. It sports this nice atmospheric cover by Robert Pope and Scott McCrae and a story that I wrote as well. It's an installment of my popular "Velma's Monsters of the World." This time the monster is the Chenoo which lives in the American Northeast, just where I recently moved to. The excellent artwork is by Scott Gross and Jorge Pacheco.

1980s Saturday Morning Animated "Watchmen"

Whether you are planning to see WATCHMEN this weekend, or not, you really ought to watch this terrific opening title sequence created by Harry Partridge for the non-existent 80s cartoon series made from the graphic novel. This is pretty perfect and funny and has a catchy theme song too.

Settling In

Having been run out of Ann Arbor, I'm just resettling on the East Coast, waiting for my possessions to catch up with me. Once they do you can expect a whole bunch of exciting new posts, most likely beginning towards the end of next week.

It's That Time of Year

The ballot has now been posted for the 7th annual Rondo Awards celebrating all things classic horror. Voting ends March 21, 2009. To vote, go here.

In Comic Book Stores Today

CARTOON NETWORK ACTION PACK #34, available today, contains a story I wrote featuring "The Secret Saturdays" as they and Hibagon investigate a destructive cryptid in Japan.

Our President in Action

This is old news to most of you by this point, but I've been too busy to post this. So, in case any of you haven't seen this, my favorite series of pictures of our Commander in Chief come from Japanese toy company Gamu-Toys. The page is down on their website which may mean that this high quality unlicensed action figure has been quashed.

Fortunately O Wicked Glee has made the page available as a pdf file. If you haven't seen this, it's definitely worth scrolling through the entire thing. It only gets better as it goes.

The page can be downloaded here

In Comic Book Stores Now

I forgot to mention in my update that SCOOBY-DOO #140 is now available in comic book stores. It features three stories, all written by yours truly, with artwork by Joe Staton, Horacio Ottolini, Robert Pope and Scott McCrae.

If the cover looks familiar to anyone that's because it's a complete reprint of SCOOBY-DOO #103 from February 2006. So, if you, or your young'ns are long time readers, you might want to double check to make sure you don't already have this material before buying it again.

SCOOBY-DOO is set to resume printing all new material again next month.

Update

My apologies for all of the cobwebs around here.

Back in October I announced that this month would be full of annotations about various classic horror movie references and inspirations in issues of SCOOBY-DOO that I wrote. Where is this exciting series, you wonder?

Postponed. All of my SCOOBY-DOO comics are packed up in a shipping container which was hauled off to a storage facility today until it is shipped to my, as now, undetermined, new home in Massachusetts which I'll be moving to sometime this Spring. I still plan to post these S-D annotations at some point after my move is complete and I've settled in at the other end.

Aside from packing up most of our belongings and loading them into a shipping container during a week of subfreezing temperatures and about two feet of snowfall, I've also been extremely busy with work.

I'm working on a lot of stuff right now. Some of it is still secret. The rest of it involves most of the characters you see below.

Postings here will be sporadic, at best for the next few months, but I;ll try and update as I can.

Happy Holidays!

My gift to you is this beautiful Eyvind Earle painting.

Sinking Snowman

Over the last couple of winters we got plenty of snow but almost all of it was that crappy dry snow that you can't do anything fun with. Last year, I think, we only had one day with decent snowball and snowman making snow.


This picture is not from that day.


On this day, there was only enough wet snow for my kids to cobble together this snowman head before giving up in frustration. They abandoned him on the lawn with two spindly sticks for arms stuck in the snow on either side. This made the whole thing even better. The failed snowman was now "snowman sinking in quicksand (or quicksnow, I suppose)" which immediately made me think of all those great snowmen from "Calvin and Hobbes." I think the expression on this snowman's face is perfect for his situation.

Mystery Solved!

The past couple of months I mentioned that I'd not received copies of issues of "Scooby-Doo" that featured stories I wrote. It turns out that it's because those issues never actually shipped. "Scooby-Doo" has been on a bit of an unplanned hiatus. If you want a reason, you'll have to ask DC. It's not my place to tell.

So, for both of you who went to your local comic book store to buy those issues only to leave empty handed, I apologize for sending you on a fool's errand. Hopefully you found some other outstanding comics to read. Issues # 137 and 138 of "Scooby-Doo" will be published in the early Spring as Issues #142 and #143. Right now reprint issues are being run in place of new material. Most likely those reprint issues also contain work of mine, so it may be worth a look for you anyway.

I Obtain My Own Theme Park ---