So I read through the entirety of Transmetropolitan in four days. My god, that’s a good series, and I already want to read it again. I mean, granted, it’s chock full of sex, drug use, nudity, perversity, foul language, and the occasional reference to cannibalism, but it’s so good! The story arcs are skillful, the plot twists gratifying, and even much of the "bad" stuff makes sense in terms of the culture as presented. Pretty much every plot point and character—even in the offshoot* issues—become important at some point. And you gotta love a main character who hates everything—even you loving him—and will tell you so without blinking twice.

And I don’t think I mentioned this before, but I was reading Fables with almost as much zeal a few weeks ago, until I started running out of them and decided to stop, at least ’til this new story arc ends, before I read more. Bigby ftw!** The regular penciler for that series is a genius at staging panels, and the covers are sublime. I read some Hellboy, too, but got sidetracked somehow….

Additionally! The script for issue 1 of Down Eight is done; it’s about 15 pages the way I had it blocked out on paper, but I’m pretty sure that’s going to get stretched out as I thumbnail… which I started today. My cities suck, as does most of my staging, but I’ll get better with time? I’m also working on that guest strip for Chainsaw Dinosaur.

Aaaand. I was listening to an ambient station on Shoutcast the other day. Ambient’s ok under certain circumstances, especially when none of my other bookmarked stations are playing anything good. Anyway, it was playing um… I don’t remember what it was called, but it had the first writer on lucid dreaming, Celia Green, reading excerpts about lucid dreaming from her books, including accounts of such dreams. The point is, I found it interesting in a “I could totally write an Alice story involving this stuff” kind of way. It will be called “The Dream Machine” and I probably won’t think about it too much until after Eight is well underway. By then, of course, I probably won’t want to do it. But we’ll see.

Isn’t it weird that after all this time, all this being done with Alice, all this moving on to a new project, that I’m thinking about working on it? Weird indeed. I guess part of it may be that Eight seems sort of dull compared to the world and possibilities of Alice. The thing is, Eight is more about relationships than surprising and wondrous things, which is all well and good, but exciting it’s not (at least so far). I’ve pretty much dubbed the first issue as “the issue in which nothing really happens much,” and the main character’s pissing me off with her wussiness. Though I’d be that way, too, so I can’t really complain.

My printmaking class starts on Thursday, and I’m excited, having watched the videos from the first couple of weeks already. I demand it to start now! I thought I might do some sort of theme with my projects, depending on what I can get away with, within the parameters of the assignments. If I have extras (and they turn out ok), I’d like to sell or do art trades for them. Will post later down the line about that if/when it becomes viable.

* Y’know, the random ones that aren’t part of any particular story arc. I’m sure there’s a name for them, but uh… I don’t know it. Standalone? :3
** ftw = “for the win,” if you weren’t sure.