...to the sound of my postie, the sadistic fascist, banging a martial beat on my front door. It was an airmail package from America. I was a little bemused: I couldn't remember ordering anything. When I got downstairs and saw the packing tape marked BUD PLANT COMICS it all came back to me. I'm always pleasantly surprised when I see just how damned bulletproof American packaging is: makes me feel embarrassed about how skimpy some of the stuff I posted off during my early days as a seller on eBay probably were (though I was quickly scared straight after a near-miss with negative feedback).
Anyway, what with it recently being convention season in America, I had been looking to see if Bud was selling the most recent Bruce Timm sketchbook. I was getting annoyed at trying to get a copy for a sensible price at auction (stinkin' lousy profiteers...), and normally Bud's pretty good at this sort of thing. Anyhow, he didn't have it yet, but he did have the latest sketchbooks by Ben Caldwell, whose
work I've ben growing to admire. And I thought, while I'm here, I've been intending to pick up the Eduardo Risso sketchbook from a year or two ago, so I might as well pick up a copy now.
So, anyway, getting to the point...
As you should all know by now, Eduardo Risso rules the Earth. He's the best in the world at what he does, and if only the politicians wouldn't stop interfering, we could clone hundreds of him, and then every comic could look as good as 100 BULLETS. That said, the sketchbook was a bit skimpy, and the interview was hardly COMICS JOURNAL standard. But it was cheap, and the exchange rate is great at the minute.
Sometimes I worry a
bout poor ol' Ben Caldwell, though. He's a great natural talent, but every book of his I've ever ordered comes in on the late side. It isn't that the guy isn't prolific, so I reckon he's maybe over-committed: he's doing his DARE DETECTIVES series over at Dark Horse; his "how-to" series for Sterling Books; covers for DC's JLU comics; developing his ACTION CLASSICS adaptations of Dracula, The Odyssey, The Wizard Of Oz, and the chinese Monkey God legends (also at Sterling). That's a hell of a workload. Ben's a guy who almost certainly could do with cloning himself, too. Anyway, his sketchbooks are a lot of fun, and I hope his increasingly exuberent design work manages to integrate itself into his storytelling (as much as I loved the first DARE DETECTIVES aesthetically, it was a bit of a stilted read). Looking through his sketchbooks (and check out the gallery at his website), the projects the guy seems born to do, but ironically will almost certainly never get a chance at, would be a HARRY POTTER or LORD OF THE RINGS comicbook.
Damn you, repressive copyright laws! Damn you to hell!
Oh, and happy birthday Ellen!