Time: 4 am PST. Location: My apartment Outside Temp (weather channel): 60 degrees Apt temp (based on discomfort level): 90. Inability to sleep? Guaran-damn-teed. So, guess what? I'm awake. Pdx (Portland, OR) finally cracks 90 degrees, first time all summer. In response, my apartment is surrounded my still unmoving air, which means the apt sits with only fans to help move it around. This wouldn't be so bad, but the 2 that I have are concentrated in the middle of the dinning living room to keep the slumbering 16 year old from burning up and catching fire. (cue Beavis) Writing this week, has been minimal minus scribbling down a few notes. The reading from has been slightly more productive, but not by much. Spent a bit more time just hanging with the nephew before we send him back east on Thursday. Reading Churchill, left him in the year 1934. Hitler's Chancellor or freshly appointed. Probably pick that back up this week. Reading Salvatore's Orc King, mostly after work. Reading now after all the events in the last 2 books in Transitions and the first book in the Neverwinter arc, I realize that this is Salvatore/Drizzt's most depressig book. Not because we start to see the mortality of Drizzt and his Companions, since (and I could be wrong) at least 3 of them have been "dead" once before and Wulfgar came back from the Abyss. More interestlngly it's the fact that Drizzt's small journal entries , for lack of a better description, dwell mostly on the loss of old friends and the struggle to retain hope. Perhaps showing the aging of it's creator, or the simple fact that as time goes on and things change, even our closest friends may not be able to join you on the entire journey. What did work this week was my comic book run on Friday: The Winners: Detective Comics #881 wraps up Snyder's arc starring James Gordon (Jim) and his return to Gotham. The best endcap to the Batman titles pre DCnU. Touches on the past, but lets you nod your head to Dick Grayson's run as Batman. The other two batbooks I read: Batman & Robin 26 and Batman 773 were a bit flat, although the artist , GREG TOCCHINI, on Batman and Robin was stellar. Ultimate Fallout over takes Fear Itself. By the end of fallout six, I was really jazzed to see what the new Ultimate Spiderman and universe will look like post Peter Parker kicking it. Fear Itself feels like it's still simmering , waiting to boil. Seems like an odd perspective since their are 7 "villians" running around with giant hammers of the gods smashing shit, but I keep hearing about the events in the tie in books being more enjoyable. However, 2 more issues might up the ante enough to call it a solid impact miniseries. Transfomers #23, the Chaos story which is overtaking Transformers for the rest of 2011, could become thee Transformers event. For longtime fans, it was a series that was telling more interesting stories in the comics that have been put out by IDW, but this could truly move the characters beyond their earth , Cybertron focus and push them in a new direction. I've rambled too long. Until next time...Snarky for Prez!

Final thoughts on finished readings and a bit of Snarky

Where to begin? Maybe the fact that I've been up since 2:44 am (I think) for no damn good reason. Wanted to give you some thoughts, I only seem to ever get to posting on insomnia nights/mornings (7 am now).

On the reading front, I finished Robin Fox's Alexander the Great biography. What started off as a fairly interesting piece, but bogged down in the end. The author's goal is to impress upon the reader what is part of legend and what may be reasoned as fact, but it's done during the entire length of the book and by the end weighs down any impression of what Alexander had accomplished at the point in human history.
   The text might have been better suited to be turned into 2 parts: Alexander the Legend and Alexander the Man since we are so far removed from that time and the sources the author used have are  in dispute on some level. This book, I wouldn't recommend to someone just starting to learn about Alexander as I was, but someone who has read a different biography or two prior.

The more enjoyable text ended up being the old reliable Weiss & Hickman's Dragonlance: Chronicles omnibus since despite it's massive size as a single volume was  fast paced and full of more memorable moments than I remembered.

What am I reading now? On the Kindle, Churchill's The Gathering Storm , which already feels less of a burden than Alexander was , and more accessible since I grew up studying world war 2 , outside of school, since my grandfathers served in the war.

By the bedside, another old friend, R.A. Salvatore's The Orc King book is being reread for the first time a couple years. I may end up getting a Kindle version to replace my paperback since I realized recently how much they shrank and thinned the text size. Earlier books , the text was a bit larger and lettering a bit bolder which made it relaxing to read. This book feels like they tried to cram in more onto the page.

Lastly, "The Tao of Snarky" comic. Rattled of 3 pages, 1000+ quota for a future scene in issue 3. Outline is still hand written, but these were typed on the PC. I ended up shrinking down a jail scene from it's original 3-4 page length on an older draft, down to 2 pages, but used it to highlight what I intended it do all along. Scribbled out some notes on future events and ties that will play beyond this issue and larger story arc of the series.  Still pleased with the progress for today,all before 8 am PST.

Minor points

No earthshaking events directly related to my writing or reading. Nearly finished reading Weiss & Hickman's Annotated Chronicles. Nice to still have some scenes feel fresh since they're not as seared into my brain , the way other well read texts have been. 65% of the way through the Alexander the Great biography I'm reading and his death is finally looming on the horizon. I'm still on the fence wheather I would recommend this text to another person as a starter text on this historical icon.

DC comics relaunch and subsequent uproar over the lack of women writers, artists and lead characters among the new 52 comics line coming out in September has made me question what titles I thought I would check out. In an industry that is doing its best to stay relevant, to alienate 1/2 of the humans on planet earth isn't ideal.  Growing up with comics as  teenager, I was drawn more to characters than the writers or artists at first,  only as I grew to learn more about the industry and have dipped my foot in the waters , do some of these imbalances seem more impractical to my eyes 20 years later.

Oddly quiet Sunday morning at the house, this naturally make me restless, and since I spent my allotted 30 mins scanning over the news stories online and checking social websites to make sure half world didn't blow up. I feel my work here is done.

Reading observances

Finished Vonnegut's Man without a Country at work the other day, while things were slow. Amused me for the most part, and I found myself wanting to read more Mark Twain's works (beyond the traditional school requirements) and curious about his autobiography that was recent put on shelves.

Still working through R. Fox's Alexander the Great on my Kindle. Alexander has been away from Macedonia for 3 yars, it's year 327 BC at this point in his saga. I was struck by the thought of how his subjects back home, remained loyal for the most part to a King they never saw? My perspective is probably skewed by the traditional media and internet resources available for people to keep informed (as much as is allowed) of what our President and governing body does in D.C. (2,800 plus miles away). Is it simply because only a few people truly want to lead?

One disadvantage I find from time to time when I work on my outlines or early rough drafts is that my handwriting is still atrocious. Sometimes, it can be a puzzle to figure out what I've written, but eventually my brain recalls where I was headed. I could type everything up, but since I work 10 hour days in front of a PC to pay the bills. My eyes grow to hate the monitor screens and at times, I find typing rather robotic.

TTFN.

2:47 am

Awake at an unplanned hour.

Couple  thoughts about two books I'm reading through.

My travel text (via Kindle) is a biography on Alexander the Great. I managed to reach chapter 18 this week. It's a slower told story, possibly because of the Greek names, mythological figures, and other aspects of the ancient world. In some cases, I've found myself craving an atlas to have alongside the tale, just to better visualize some of his movements. I don't expect this text to be done quickly since I'm about 35% through the story after only 18 chapters.

Bedside reading comes in the form of an actual book, The Annotated Chronicles by Weiss & Hickman. I'm estimating it's weight at approximately 3 lbs. Having owned the 3 volumes as separate books previously, the annotated omnibus took their place. Differing from some of my other annotated collections, it's not so overstuffed with time period facts such as one of my Sherlock Holmes collections, but has the authors talking in maybe a sentence or two on average about where a certain scene, character, or line of dialogue sprang from. A nice glimpse into how the creative process works, and how random things can crop up as useful storytelling pieces.

Today (Thursday June 14th) will either being a Snarky day or Pirate Brad day, once my eyes are ready to focus on a page or at the glowing white page on my monitor. As I wrote this, I've been listening to the Clash's London Calling album.


Later.

Google Plus and the ol blog

Well, trying out Google+ since I'm awake at 3 am. Possibly hitting the coast in a couple hours. Snarky #1 of the Cutting Edge arc is coming soon. Once it's fully wrapped, info will be updated. Starting scribbling down thoughts for Issue 3.

All the latest pages can be seen at: www.j2comics.blogspot.com.

This thing still exists?

So insomnia has taken hold and I decided to see if my old blogspot page existed. Amazingly enough it still does. Snarky has been reborn as a weekly page over at www.j2comics.blogspot.com. Once issue 1 is wrapped up, I'll link to it here as well. Hopefully, I'll at least post a weekly update either with some general musings, or thoughts about the Tao of Snarky and other things that pop into my head.