I have a good-sized assignment for Cinescape (writing their year-end episode guide to Enterprise: 4500 words. eight hours, including breaks and dawdling. I’m the MAN!) so I’m thinking I may have a few light days coming up.

Today (the 18th) is my fourth anniversary, though! Don’t know what the plan is just yet, but I’m sure it involves some gooood eatin’!

Tangentially, I saw on boingboing that Art Speigelman has a review of the recent Fanatgraphics book on certified Golden Age comics genius Bernie Krigstein up at the New Yorker site. My contact at Fantagraphics apologized that he couldn’t get me a review copy a month or two ago; it’s a big, fancy, expensive book and his review copy stock is limited. I’m pleased to report that Speigelman’s review is a hum-dinger, replete with personal anecdotes:

He basked when I pointed to a visual onomatopoeia that conjured up a subway’s rumble. It was as if messages he’d sent off in bottles decades earlier had finally been found.

At the end of the paper, I had compared his approach to that of some important contemporaries whom I also admired, including Harvey Kurtzman and Will Eisner. When I read that paragraph, Krigstein darkened. “Eisner!” he shouted. “Eisner is the enemy! When you are with me, I am the only artist!”

Hee hee! Well, I guess I’ll just have to accept that I’m not in Speigelman’s (or Krigstein’s) league. Some days, you just gots ta take yer lumps :).