Just got back from a four-way bareknuckled brawl on Chuck Dixon's message board, and boy, are my arms tired!

   Never had a post deleted before, but in this case, the moderator had to put us all in our 'time out' chairs. Reminds me of my old Crossgen message board days. I was quite the pisser then...

   Now...onto the random nonsense: I was watching Kill Bill vol 1 again this weekend when it occured to me: Doesn't Uma Thurman's face look like a Barry Windsor-Smith drawing, with that unique bird-like nose?

   Just got a nice package of reprint books from my art dealer, Tom Fleming. Vanguard Press just released an oversized hardcover reprinting Steve Ditko's Space War, originally published by Charlton in the '50's. Y'know when I was a kid, just like Frank Robbins, I didn't care for Ditko. Fred Hembeck would go on and on about him in his Dateline @!#!? strip, reprinted in Fantaco magazines, but I just didn't get it, but I've since seen the light, Fred! Having read plenty of DC and Marvel Silver Age comics through the years, I search for uncharted territory (for me) of my favorite Silver Age creators. Next month is Marvel's Ditko Visionaries hardcover, so it's a good season for Ditko fans.

   What's cool about this Space War reprint is that the cover is printed directly on the glossy cover. Am I the only one who dislikes dust covers? I'm generally past concerns of keeping my comics in mint condition. I'm a cheap reading-copy kinda guy. However, when a dust cover tears on my Archive and Masterworks editions occur, I get that weak-in-the-knees feeling I haven't had since I was a hardcore collector.

   Back to Hembeck. He's longtime pals with my fellow ex-Crossgenster, Ron Marz. One saturday, Ron and I were at the CG compound, smalltalking early in the morning, nursing our morning Starbucks, when I showed him a Hembeck commission I purchased a year earlier (Amazing Spidey #140). I told him I was a big Hembeck fan from waaaay back, and Ron said "Would you like to speak to him? I've got his number, and he should be up around now."

   Now I've been around a lot of big names in the funnybook world and got to spend quality time with my favorites from years past, but I started to freeze a little. Not like when I spoke to Ditko, but there definately an involuntary case of fanboy slackjaw. I told Ron: "Really? Gosh, I don't know what to say, he's like a bigshot to me, like Perez-big"( but doesn't do conventions, to my knowledge). Ron: "Tell him that. He'd love to hear that." So I got to chat to Fred for a couple minutes, thanking him for making me laugh all these years, I quickly ran out of things to say. I think I bailed before sounding too much like a dork.

   I have one last incident this week to share with you that occurred during my time at Crossgen. I showed up at the local elementary school for career day, and I was introduced as Drew Geraci from TRANSGEN comics! Yeouch! I wanted to run screaming from the room. But, what of the children? So I corrected the teacher in a sheepish fashion: "Uh, that's Crossgen." I've always hated that company name, even before this incident.

   If you're a big David Bowie fan from his gender-bending, or cross-gendering or transgending Ziggy Stardust days, I suggest you get the soundtrack to Hedwig and the Angry Inch. If you can get past the disturbing subject matter, involving the Berlin Wall and, uh, um, a botched sex change operation (Great, now I'll be Googled under 'sex change operation'-now you know why I edit myself so much), the songs kick serious butt. The CD's a mixture of the Bowie/Lou Reed/Iggy Pop glam/punk era, plus a little Sex Pistols and the wordiness of Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell. Stephen Trask writes the words and music and John Cameron Mitchell displays and amazing vocal range. The last song of the soundtrack, Midnight Radio's coda: "Lift up your hands" even recalls Ziggy Stardust's last song, Rock n' Roll Suicide's "Gimme your hands". But I wouldn't call this CD derivative. The best way to describe it is the best concept album Bowie never made. Seriously.

   A follow-up to a previous story: Remember I mentioned back on Feb. 1 the Negative Burn anthology story with me, Dan Jurgens, and Ron Marz? Well, that's been delayed temporarily until the three of us can clear our respective schedules. We'd had hoped to make the first issue, but it doesn't look like it'll happen. Possibly #2. Ron's busy with Dark Horse and Top Cow projects. Dan is doing the Fantastic Four Movie adaptation, and me?

   I've had the unique pleasure of inking the multi-talented Dave Gibbons on an eight-page Legion of Superheroes backup story, which should be in stores March 30!

   Also, I'm inking Brett Booth on The Burning Man for DBPro. Dave Lamphear of Artmonkeys hooked me up with the Dable Brothers. You know them, they're the ones behind the successful Hedge Knight trade paperback, and they're doing the comic book adaptations of Sci-Fi author Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. After talking to Les Dabel, I think this'll be the beginning of a beautiful relationship, as Bogart used to say. I'm using an entirely different style on Booth, the 'west coast' Top Cow/Wildstorm crunchy style, which I dabbled with on a previous Booth commission (see page 1 on my commission section), but the DBPro stuff will be much crunchier. Chomp Chomp.