the monster pile-up!

okay...

so with all of our thanking of all the great artists who helped us out with perhapanauts 3 last week, we didn't really get a chance to throw out the noise that the MONSTER PILE-UP arrived in stores last week! originally conceived to be a sorta IMAGE COMICS SAMPLER of some of images spookier books, PROOF writer alex grecian and i thought it would be cool if we put it out for halloween. boo! but when we hooked up with our pal, robert kirkman, he said, "dude! convention season!", and so we all hustled to get our respective five pages done!

for those of you who haven't seen it, The MONSTER PILE-UP features all-new, original five page stories from four of your favorite IMAGE comics; The ASTOUNDING WOLF-MAN by robert kirkman and jason howard, FIREBREATHER by phil hester and andy kuhn, PROOF by alex grecian and riley rossmo, and The PERHAPANAUTS by, well...us! ours is, of course, the best one (kidding<) and contains some clues about some of our characters that you wouldn't want to miss!



can't show you much, but here's the first page...!



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my latest obsession(s)

well, not really obsessions, as compulsions--at the beginning of the summer, i said that my two reading goals--besides finishing a novel or two--would be to chow down on the grant morrison-rich case doom patrol trades that rich was so nice to send me back in the spring! well, i'm about halfway through the eight books he sent and, i gotta tell ya, they are as freaky and bizarre as i remember them and if it's a crazy head-trip you're looking for, this is your el dorado!

and i am taking it in turns to read chunks of my pal, fred hembeck's massive tome, the essential fred hembeck! this thing is huge and i really don't want to devour it all at once--one of those things i'm going to be sad to see end. but fred's stuff is brilliant and i have a feeling that he'll be making more... ; )

my third obsession, for these past couple of weeks is grey's anatomy.
sharon had been a fan since before i met her and had the series on dvd (i actually bought her the last two, but had never seen the show.) anyway, i had always been interested and she had always been eager for me to see it, so, in these days of summer re-runs and contrived summer fill-in shows, we've been having our own steady grey's anatomy marathon each night, getting in about 8 or 9 episodes in this weekend alone! we're only at the end of season 2, so i got a lot of catching up to do on you grey's anatomy fans, but i'm loving this series and finding the writing to be so crips and original--there are lots of great moments and combinations that i didn't see coming! what a great show!
(thanks, shay!)

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wendy sent me this the other day.
we think that people would've noticed a stray elephant wandering around the lake after or prior to this photo being taken, so...





March 9, 2006—Throwing a bit of cold water onto the legend of Loch Ness, paleontologist and painter Neil Clark says the monster was perhaps a paddling pachyderm.
Clark noticed similarities in the hump-and-trunk silhouettes of swimming Indian elephants and the serpentine shapes of 1930s Nessie descriptions and photographs, such as the famous 1934 image shown as an inset above.
Why would an elephant be swimming in a chilly Scottish lake? "The reason why we see elephants in Loch Ness is that circuses used to go along the road to Inverness and have a little rest at the side of the loch and allow the animals to go and have a little swim around," Clark told CBS News.
And there's one more wrinkle in this elephantine mystery. In 1933 a circus promoter in the area—acting perhaps on inside information that the monster was really a big top beast—offered a rich reward for Nessie's capture, says Clark, a curator at the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow.
Clark's theory is published in the current edition of the journal of the Open University Geological Society.
See also: "Loch Ness Sea Monster Fossil a Hoax, Say Scientists."
—Ted Chamberlain
Painting by and courtesy Neil Clark, photograph from Getty Images

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answers to the
"five for friday"

1. what was the stage name of hungarian born, ehrich weiss?

harry houdini

2. what is soylent green made from?

people

3. what #1 hit by the police was written as a song about a stalker?

"every breath you take"

4. what is the name of the new zealand duo who rock the house with their eclectic novelty songs and hbo series?

"flight of the conchords"

5. throughout the history of rock & roll, some bands have been fortunate enough to recognized simply by their initials. here are the initials of some bands from the 70's, 80's, and 90's--see how you do...

a. BTO--bachman turner overdrive
b. CCR--creedence clearwater revival
c. OMD--orchestral maneuvers in the dark
d. ELP--emerson lake and palmer
e. ELO--electric light orchestra
f. CSNY--crosby stills nash and young
g. GnR--guns 'n roses
h. BOC--blue oyster cult

gotta run!
smell ya later!
todd