I WANT A BOY FOR MY BIRTHDAY

I finished up volume 2 of the unnamed manga last night and sent it off. I actually completed the rewrite on Tuesday, but only got back to the proofreading last night—and had to finish it after seeing Steve Birch’s band Audio Learning Center. Munching on chips at 2:30 in the morning, trying to figure out new ways to say “breasts.” Should have just popped in Coupling, the episode where Jeff rattles off a ton of euphemisms to the Israeli woman. (I went with “casabas,” hearkening back to a melon reference early in the book.) (In actuality, this line of writing is a lie, since last night while proofreading, that didn’t come up at all, since the word "casbas" was there from the first rewrite. The reality of it is very boring, and I am very bleary eyed right now—so I fib for the sake of being remotely interesting.) (Hmmm...me bleary eyed. There is a TV show somewhere in there. Me, without enough sleep, wandering into someone's house and telling them they're shit. Bleary Eye for the Shit Guy. Ooooh.) (I'm sure the internet is rampant with similar jokes. ____ Eye for the ____ Guy. I know.)

Funny, though, to be this far along and the book isn’t even announced (though I am told hints were made at some licensing show or other). The lag time between the work and the finished project can feel insanely long, even for comics. I have done five volumes of Gravitation, and am about to start the sixth, and my editor has only just written me to laugh at a joke from volume 2.

I’m actually anxious for some kind of reaction to the first Gravitation. I know it’s in bookstores, but I am not sure it has hit comics shops. I am curious if fans of the original manga want me dead for all the Western musical references I have made. But then I’d also love to see a whole separate cult audience that is into mopey ‘80s bands. I dropped a line to the lead Morrissey website to see if they’d do a news item on it (they had a blurb on the fact that Moz was mentioned in Uptown Girls, for goodness sake).

Finally, for anyone not on the Oni board, J. Torres and Comic Book Resources have started their Comic Book Idol competition, of which I am a judge. Lovely Torres has created another opportunity for comic book fans to tell professionals how to do their jobs. Thanks, J. But if you want to watch the amusing dramas unfold, check out their message board. First round of judging is done, and the next round is coming up, and the peanut gallery is gab gab gabbing.

Current Soundtrack: Martina Topley-Bird, Quixotic

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