From an interview at The Pulse:
THE PULSE: How tough is it for you to relate to the Punisher? If you were in his situation – had your family ripped away from you – could you see yourself going over the edge for justice and what you viewed as retribution?
FRACTION: If I was in his situation, and had my family violently, awfully, horribly ripped away from me, I would absolutely go over the edge and above the law for my own brand of bleak, blackened revenge. Absolutely! 100%. I’d be literally out for justice. I’d go totally shithouse and kill everybody I saw. I’d be hard to kill, too, because I’m crazy-into disguises like mustaches and fake accents and things. Even though the mob would surely have me marked for death, I wouldn’t let it stop me. This is because my family is very important to me. The mob would be on deadly ground if the every ripped my family away from me. They’d totally be under siege and I wouldn’t stop because I’d be trapped in such dark territory, psychologically. Much like Frank Castle I think.
Meet Valentine. This little guy (well, not so little — a 68 pound Chow mix) wandered into our yard yesterday. He had ice matted into his fur and an icicle bonded to his collar. No tags, not neutered. We e-mailed his photo to the neighborhood association, posted his picture to KC Pet Connect, left his description with the local lost pet hotline and had him scanned for a microchip. Three people responded and identified him as belonging to a particular house. Fraction walked him down there, but they were… disinterested.
Okay.
He stayed with us last night and played pretty well with Applejack. We took him to our vet this morning and had him vaccinated, wormed and checked over. He’ll stay there tonight and have a bath with their groomer tomorrow. He’s got an appt to be neutered on Tuesday.
The “plan” at this point is, I think, to hold on to him for a little while and see if anyone claims him (I’m not convinced that’ll happen, as I suspect he’s been abandoned, but let’s do due diligence) and then try to find him a home. He’s a good boy, not trained, but very bright and responsive. Fraction and I spent about 20 minutes doing drills with him and in that time he picked up a rudimentary understanding of “sit,” “come” and “down.” We’ll keep working with him and I think he’ll pick up manners pretty quickly. He’s about a year, year and half old, so he’s hardly set in his ways.
After he’s healed up from his surgery, if no one’s claimed him, I guess we’ll go about trying to find him a good home. We’d love to keep him ourselves, but we just don’t have the room. Besides, Ham would kill us in our sleep.
Christopher Butcher, whose commentary and company I always enjoy, is reviewing one issue of CASANOVA per day this week in a lead up to the release of Cass 7, the final installment of the first album, Luxuria.
Here’s a taste:
This is a dense comic book, the ideas flying fast and furious and even seemingly discarded. I commented recently that it took me three attempts to really feel like I “got” the first issue of this book because I didn’t commit enough of my attention to reading it. A lot of that is because there are just so many ideas being communicated to the reader. Offhand comments like “…designed by X.S.M.” or “the legendary Fakebook of the cosmos!” are tossed out at a rapid pace, with nary an appearance again in the issue. As I’ve said though, it does pay off down the line. We will find out who X.S.M. is in an issue or two, and that discovery and the story that accompanies it add layers of depth and understanding to the events of this first issue. It’s… rewarding.
Review #1 is up now.
Check here for the rest as the week progresses.
(Jonesing for more? Geoff Klock has some excellent Casanova commentary up on his blog.)
I was getting hit with stupid amounts of comment spam (the most irritating for some reason the ones that said, “I hate Spam!”) so I installed two new comments plug-ins this morning: Akismet and 30Boxes Buddy Cards.
Everything seems to be functioning fine, but I don’t have the greatest faith in my webmonkey skills, so do let me know if anything goes wonky for you.
(W/R/T 30Boxes: you can still comment without choosing to customize your card; it shouldn’t make any difference. If you do customize it, people reading comments can mouseover you name to see a little calling card or click on it and it’ll lead them to an aggregated page like mine, with as much or as little info as you care to provide. If this bores or confuses you, skip it. No big deal.)
I had a crap night last night — couldn’t breathe, couldn’t sleep. I’m shooting copious amounts of blood and snot from my nose. It’s hot. Got an antibiotic Rx this morning, hoping to think more clearly soon.
Okay, that was the not-sexy. Here’s the sexy: the first CASANOVA collection is available for pre-order through Amazon.com for $10.39. Check it out.
Oh! And so is the new PUNISHER: WAR JOURNAL hardcover collection – $13.59.
Nikol has posted THREE MORE bonus patterns to her Naughty Needles Knitting site.
How cute are those girls?! Left to right: Nancy, Rita, Etta, Angie and Laurenn.
Check it out: BLACK CAT is #9 on ICv2′s Top 10 manga properties of 2006 list. Go team us!
Via blog@Newsarama.
Also! Publisher’s Weekly has a list of February’s Comics Bestsellers and Black Cat vol. 6 is number 5. (The list says volume 16, but it’s a typo.) February 7th and the bestsellers list is already out. Weird, huh? I imagine this is another reminder that in comics the reader isn’t the consumer; the consumer is the retail establishment. It’s been explained to me a dozen times, but it still strikes me as odd.
How awesome is it that there is Fabula fan art in the world?
Found here.
Fraction saw a guy named “Pockets Germany” on the news a couple days ago. The next day I watched an episode of Stunt Junkies featuring “Biker Sherlock” and “Mouse McCoy.”
I love… words.
mini-series from Marvel Comics and for co-writing 
with 
