Got a modern Kindle with a 7" screen mainly for manga reading. (Keeping my ancient 5th gen with 5" screen for prose books). It's... workable, but damn, just make a tankōbon-sized e-reader, you cowards!

Damn... Angoulême is continuing to turn into a complete (largely self-inflicted) disaster. We usually go every year, but decided to boycott this year. Was second-guessing that call earler, but not now. (via @comicsbeat.bsky.social ) www.comicsbeat.com/angouleme-20...

Why can't it be both??

"im not owned! im not owned!!", i continue to insist as i slowly shrink and transform into a corn cob

LOLing at the Evite sample spreadsheet for uploading guests to invite.

Holy cow... this is insane. No wonder the MLB refused to say anything about these guys post-suspension--they were under federal investigation. Not in this article, but these idiots were apparently texting w bettors mid-game. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/09/n...

Revisiting this old book of mine was definitely not on my bingo card. (For a Kickstarter anthology thing that I'll send around once it's announced.)

Just finished reading this! Incredible... as usual. And I'm caught up now, which is fun—otoh I have to wait until March for the next volume 😭

A cutaway of the flying car belonging to the third Doctor - as played by Jon Pertwee - as depicted by Lee Sullivan, from 1991’s Doctor Who Magazine Winter Special. Call it “The Alien” or “The Whomobile”, it was fun idea for the early 70s Saturday teatime version of the show.

So SDCC is changing the way Hotelpocalyse is gonna work in 2026. This ought to be... interesting. sdccblog.com/2025/11/majo...

Whoa.

In class today: actual, physical screen-tone! (Kaoru Mori pages are, sadly, repros I bought at the Kyoto Manga Museum—her show was mind-blowing, needless to say.)

In today's Mary Worth: "When the Edibles Kick In."

Tangentially but this reminded me of:

Congrats to the Softbank Hawks, who just won the 2025 Japan Series! I don't have a Hawks jersey to wear in support... but I did recently acquire this cool repro Atoms jersey! They're now the Yakult Swallows, but used to be owned by a paper that advocated for nuclear power--hence Tetsuo/Astro Boy!

Interesting... bleedingcool.com/comics/fanta...

Wrote a public patreon post about Ink Master. Some thoughts I've been working to assemble www.patreon.com/posts/ink-ma...

Lololol my daughter has put together a full-on Canva slide show presentation for her Christmas list.

Some cultural touchpoints only become major long after they appear, such as "Steamed Clams". Young'ns may not understand that "Cow Tools" was not one of these. This article, for example, appeared the day after the cartoon itself saw print. Coverage increased in the days to come.

Any info on this, @glennf.com ?

Star of the Giants largely gets ignored in US-based manga historiography, but it was huge in the 1960s and is credited with helping achieve a circulation surpassing one million copies for a magazine consisting primarily of comics for the first time.

43 years ago today, readers the world over opened their newspapers and gazed upon cow tools for the first time. happy birthday cow tools. you look great.

Speaking of baseball... here's an interesting bit in the new Eike Exner book: apparently STAR OF THE GIANTS was the first manga to really establish the now-ubiquitous use of full bleeds in manga.

Unbelievable... I fell asleep at like 2am somewhere in the 17th(?) inning, but here's Yoshinobu Yamamoto--who *just pitched a complete game two days ago*--warming up to pitch in a possible 19th inning. He "volunteered" apparently.

In class today: ink wash. For an exercise, I had the students add wash to a bit of a Corto Maltese page.

In the mail today:

I dunno anything about Masanobu Asai--or whatever manga this is from--but this is a really pretty page! Just went for ~$700 on Heritage.

...and this coming week: ink wash and screentone. Some intro material for wash: (In the "stack" of wash examples: Nate Powell, Tim Sale, Gabriel Hardman, Neal Adams--and Dan DeCarlo for the value slide.)

In class last week: how to set up/rule out a page w. live area, trim, and bleed. Also: working at correct lettering size for 150% original art to repro legibly.

How is it that (a) I apparently don't own a copy of one of my own books, and (b) some dingus is trying to get $30 for a copy???

The new Kōtarō Isaka book (fourth in The Assassins series) is great, y'all. bookshop.org/p/books/hote...

On the block in today's Heritage auction are these two Tezuka pages--one Astro Boy and one Jungle Emperor Leo. Very curious to see what these wind up going for. That Leo page in particular is amazing!

perfection

Kinda weirdly, I'm working on a one-pager that's related to my book from back in the ancient times, Midnight Sun. While trying to dig up the title font, stumbled on samples I pitched to (I think?) Oni to republish it bigger/hardcover, with a single spot-color rather than the original gray.

1930s Norakuro supplement included with Shonen Kurabu, for building your very own cardboard Norakuro, featuring movable arms.

It's official... Old and busted: Labubus. New hotness: Hirono Living Wild Dolls. Sorry, y'all. I don't make the rules. kcomicsbeat.com/2025/10/24/b...

Would definitely make it up to Cleveland for games more often if the Guardians brought back the cardigan.

Was kinda curious about Shotaro Ishinomori's apparently very influential manga how-to book, but unless I'm missing something, it's never been translated--although I checked specifically just for English and French. 😥

Netflix Lands ‘Black Hole’ Drama Based On Graphic Novel With Straight To Series Order

Bud Sagendorf's hobo drawings in today's Popeye rerun: 5/5 no notes.

As Humanoids declares bankruptcy. a look at the complicated history of Métal Hurlant and Heavy Metal magazines

A Halloween-themed pinup of Katy Keene by creator Bill Woggon, in a spectacular gown designed by young fan, Nancy Estes.

Doomscrolling, as we all know, is named after Doctor Doom's habit of reading the news and getting angry whenever Reed Richards is mentioned

Estate sale score! Full set of the 1966 Peanuts pocket dolls, complete with clothes and accessories.

<shudder> I am 100% not ok with this weird hybrid/centaur thing that's Duo on top with human legs on the bottom.

In class today: the Ames guide, lettering, balloons/tails, etc. I have them make up dialog and letter strips I've removed the lettering from (and use one of the templates to demo, as here.)

This is a beautiful articulation of everything I love about Richard Sala, and how easy it is to sum up his influences and references in discrete parts but how the whole of what he did was something more

Sesame Street art by Jack Davis.