I really do need to start updating this more frequently. 2 1/2 weeks since I updated books & I don't know how long it's been for movies. Plus I've got a new mix CD to post.

Well the site's not going to update itself.

Books

• Ultimate Spider-Man, vol. 4 by Brian Michael Bendis & Mark Bagley. Bendis really has a knack for dialogue. I enjoy his work quite a bit, and if I had a job, I'd be buying these collections. (Checked out of the library.)
  
• The Nocturnals: The Dark Forever by Dan Brereton.
  
• 24 Hour Comics Day Highlights by various. Years ago, Scott McCloud issued a challenge to another notoriously slow comics creator: Create a 24 hour comic book in a 24 hour period. Since then, many many people have taken up the challenge. This past April, there was a designated day for people to create 24 hour comics. Hundreds of people in dozens of locations participated. This book is a selection of the results.
  
• Marvels, 10th Anniversary Edition by Kurt Busiek & Alex Ross. (Library.)
  
• The Maxx, vol. 2 by Sam Kieth w/William Messner-Loebs. By far the strangest (and probably the best) thing to come out of the early days of Image Comics.
  
• War Stories, vol. 1 by Garth Ennis et al.
  
• The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. Somehow I managed to get an English degree from Stanford without having read in Faulkner. It took the board to get me to finally pick him up. (Library.)
  
• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror Fun-Filled Frightfest by various. A collection of stories from several issues of the annual Simpsons Halloween comic book.
  
• The Chrestomanci Quartet by Diana Wynne Jones. The Science Fiction Book Club put together this collection of four novels. I've said this before about Diana Wynne Jones, but she covers a lot of the same ground that J.K. Rowling does in the Harry Potter books. However she's been doing it longer & better (just not as popularly).
  
• Planet of the Capes by Larry Young & Brandon McKinney. This story was somewhat interesting but ultimately seems rather pointless. (Library.)
  
• Batman/Deathblow: After the Fire by Brian Azzarello & Lee Bermejo. (Library.)
  
• Inu Yasha, vol. 17 by Rumiko Takahashi. (Library.)
  
• Paradise Too: Drunk Ducks by Terry Moore. A collection of Moore's attempts to develop a syndicated comic strip. I see why he hasn't had any success with that. For the most part, these strips are derivative, uninteresting, and unfunny. (Library.)
  
• Yukiko's Spinach by Frederic Boilet. (Apparently Amazon doesn't have this book.) A story (that may or may not be autobiographical) about a brief affair. (Library.)
  
• Kyle Baker, Cartoonist, vol. 2 (Amazon has volume 1, so I'm guessing this is just too new to show up.) I think Baker works better with longer stories, but his shorter pieces are pretty funny too.
  
• Exiles, vol. 1: Down the Rabbit Hole by Judd Winick & Mike McKone. Having decided that I like this series enough to buy the books, I'm slowly picking them up (at least the ones written by Winick).
  
• Orion: The Gates of Apokolips by Walt Simonson. I think Simonson's one of the few creators who can do justice to Jack Kirby's creations, the New Gods.
  
• Exiles, vol. 3: Out of Time by Judd Winick, Mike McKone, & Jim Calafiore. Since there's only one Winick-written volume of this series that I haven't acquired yet, I guess I'm not going that slow in picking them up.
  
• Powers, vol. 6: The Sell Outs by Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Avon Oeming. The latest collection of Bendis's excellent cop/super-hero comic.
  
• Finder: Mystery Date by Carla Speed McNeil. I really love this series. It's science fiction, and unlike most SF comic books, it isn't simply superheroes with a few SF trappings.
  
• Dragon Ball, vol. 16 by Akira Toriyama. This is the final volume before the series changes to Dragon Ball Z.
  
• Negima!, vol. 2 by Ken Akamatsu. One of the reasons I first looked at this series is because I learned that the English adaptation is being handled by Peter David, whose work (in comics & novels) I quite like.
  
• The Woad to Wuin by Peter David. See? This is the 2nd of David's novels about an anti-hero, Sir Apropos of Nothing.
  
• Hulk: Gray by Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale. This is probably the best of the collaborations between Loeb & Sale that I've read, but I still don't understand why they're as popular as they are. But I do like them enough to check the books out of the library. (Library.)
  
• Hellblazer: Highwater by Brian Azzarello et al. (Library.)
  
• X-Statix, vol. 2: Good Guys & Bad Guys by Peter Milligan, Mike Allred, Darwyn Cooke, et al. I really like this, but I'm not sure what to say about it. This series is more about the nature of celebrity that it is about superheroes. And sometimes it's just plain weird (as in the Wolverine/Doop cross-over).
  
• PvP at Large, vol. 1 by Scott Kurtz. This is a collection of a comic that is an expansion of an online comic.
  
• Transmetropolitan, vol. 0: Tales of Human Waste by Warren Ellis et al. This is an assortment of excerpts from Spider Jerusalem's columns.
  
• Man Is Vox!: Barracudae by John Thomas & Carter Allen. An odd little comic, and the first part is nearly incomprehensible because the creators need to work on their storytelling skills. It gets better later in the book. (Library.)
  
• Thor: Vikings by Garth Ennis & Glenn Fabry. Ennis gets to exercise his penchant for over the top violence. (Library.)
  
• The Batman in Nine Lives by Dean Motter & Michael Lark. A noir story using Batman characters.