God-smiting Doug Nagy of TMB is who I must thank for introducing me to VBS.tv, Vice Magazine’s webtv site. Among all the enjoyable programs is one of Vice’s Founders Shane Smith’s trip to North Korea. I love travelling when I actually have money and seeing him there is crazy like nothing else.

Little Orphan Annie is one of my favourite comics, and is easily within my top 5 comic strips of all time. I love Annie so much that I somehow picked up two copies of Little Orphan Annie In The Great Depression, released in 1979 by public domain specialists Dover Publications. Some people collect variant covers of Lady Death comics. Not this guy.

I have a big box of stuff that I’m hoping to get rid of before I move, and the Little Orphan Annie book is resting on top. I’ve never been one of those people who was put off by Annie’s lack of pupils, but that cover has been freaking me out for a couple of days now. Sandy’s a fucking monster. After a few nights of lost sleep, I decided to crack open the collection and see if the image they used was somewhere in the book, and if so, whether they had tampered with it.

Who decided that it was a good idea to change an innocent yawn into a soulless maw from Hell?

It happened again. It seems at least once a week I have another dream with crocodiles (sometimes alligators) in them. I don’t love them, I don’t hate them, so why do they plague me?

I’ve had pop hooligans Immaculate Machine on heavy rotation for the past few weeks, but it wasn’t until I checked their Myspace page that I realized that they’ve been keeping a comic diary of their tour. So far there are comics devoted to the dangers of summer touring, their experiences in Germany, and covering one of their own songs into Mandarin. On a dare. You can hear that particular version of Dear Confessor aka Wo Xiang Tanbairight right here.

I find that how I approach John Porcellino’s King-Cat Comics as an object suits the comic itself, like riding your BMX down to the convenience store for the latest issue of Spider-Man on a dusty summer day. I don’t collect King-Cat. I forget about it for awhile, bump into it unexpectedly, hang out for a bit, then drift away once again.

My most recent exposure to King-Cat Comics was at the Toronto Comics Art Festival last year. I picked up two issues on a whim, between purchases of Walt and Skeezix Vol. 3 and some Chip Zdarsky art. A few months later I had my cousin over. He wanted to know what I had been reading recently and so I compiled a stack for him to take home, including those issues of King-Cat Comics. Over the past decade my cousin’s art has become more pared down and refined, and I thought he would appreciate the similarities. A few weeks later he came back, handed back the rest of the comics, and asked for more King-Cat.

Every time I go to Toronto I visit The Beguiling and pick up an issue. I get to keep it for a few weeks, then I hand it over to my cousin. I will never see them again. It feels right.

I was just sorting through my things in preparation for my move and I came across a sheaf of papers stuck in my copy of The Best of Pogo. Among them was the panel found above.

A few years back one of the more popular mp3blogs invited a group of cartoonists to create illustrated posts devoted to songs of their choosing. Considering my lack of history in the field, I have no idea why I was included. Still, I thought it was a great idea and I worked out a short strip devoted to “Go Go Pogo”, Walt Kelly’s 1956 campaign song for Pogo’s run at the Presidency.

I don’t know what ended up happening with the project. Maybe I’ll take a crack at polishing up the strip some day.

Derek Riggs’ artwork for the Somewhere In Time album is littered with visual references to old Iron Maiden songs, friends of the band, clubs they’ve played, favourite movies and authors, the Tardis…

…and the Goddamn Batman.

Iron Maiden’s revival of their Powerslave set-up on their Somewhere Back In Time tour brought back all sorts of odd memories for me.

I was first introduced to Iron Maiden’s mascot, Eddie, while in elementary school. I still have my denim jacket from the sixth grade with the Killers patch sewed onto the back. This version of Eddie was portrayed as a small-time hood, wandering the streets of London with a bloody axe in hand. For the longest time it was the only variation I was accustomed to.

It was my familiarity with early Eddie that made his regal appearance on the album cover for Powerslave so shocking to me. It proved that Eddie had a history which stretched back further than what I had already been exposed to. He wasn’t just tied down to one time or place. There was a kind of continuity there. A secret history.

Even more than the difference in eras, the disparity in status between these conceptions of Eddie threw me off. How did a lowly thug become a tyrant? Was that even possible? I found the notion terrifying. The idea that some petty monster, the kind I was already used to dealing with in my own neighbourhood, had the potential to rise to power and lord it over everyone was an unwelcome revelation.

Jonah Hex is coming to Canada, presumably for the free health care, courtesy of Darwyn Cooke. My Californian counterpart, Mike Sterling, has the scoop from straight out of Wizard L.A. As pleased as I am to see Cooke once again pay tribute to The Great White North, I think it’s fair to say that the idea of drunken Mounties is preposterous.

No, King! Anything but that!