It's just a plain salad made in haste but it was so taste for me :) And cheeseboard for white dry Rcatsitely :)

Tags: cheese, salad

Recipe and whatnot at my food blog.

Have I fully expressed how happy I am NOT to be at San Diego Comic-Con?

I am full of Grade A GLEE!

Mark at Comic Comics greeted us on the way in this week with, "Why aren't you guys in San Diego?"

And I replied, "I wanted to keep my sanity."

And not just any Batman: the ADAM WEST Batman.

And it is as hard to tell as you'd think.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CrBriefings/~3/343816612/

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Here are the books that jump out at me from this week's probably mostly accurate list of books shipping from Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. to comic book and hobby shops across North America.

I might not buy all of the works listed here -- I might not buy any -- but were I in a comic book shop I would likely pick up the following and look them over, potentially causing my retailer to engage me in a wicked gun fu battle.

*****

MAY080051 USAGI YOJIMBO #113 $2.99
There's something heroic about there being 113 issues of this book.

MAY080148 AMBUSH BUG YEAR NONE #1 (OF 6) $2.99
This might be worth a nostalgic look-see, but it's almost always a bad idea to revisit comedians you haven't seen in a while so I'm worried the same thing might be true in comics.

APR080270 ARMY @ LOVE TP VOL 02 GENERATION PWNED (MR) $12.99
You can buy it to see what will happen in the future!

MAY082178 AMERICAN FLAGG DEFINITIVE COLL HC 1 01 (RES) $49.99
I'll be interested in seeing this from a production-nerd standpoint, as one of the things I like about the comic books is how crappy they look.

DEC072092 INVINCIBLE #51 $2.99
I always imagining people dissecting Robert Kirkman's superhero series to figure out why it works when so many similar series don't and then sitting there with their scalpel surrounded by all these sliced pages and having to admit, "I have no idea."

APR083955 COMPLETE BADGER TP VOL 03 $19.99
This book kind of combines the "you may already have the comics" aspect of the American Flagg! collection and the "revisiting comedy" warning from the Ambush Bug.

MAY084180 DAN DARE #7 (OF 7) (NOTE PRICE) $5.99
It would be funny if the note was from the company rather than the distributor and it send "IGNORE PRICE."

MAY084175 FLIGHT GN VOL 05 $25.00
The dean of handsome, visually-driven, high-production anthologies, and at this point more interesting to me as a publishing story than as a book. Your mileage may vary... and probably does.

*****

The full list of this week's releases, including some titles with multiple cover variations and a long, impressive list of toys and other stuff that isn't comics, can be found here. Despite this official list there's no guarantee a comic will show up in the stores as promised, or in all of the stores as opposed to just a few. Also, stores choose what they carry and don't carry.

To find your local comic book store, check this list; and for one I can personally recommend because I've shopped there, try this.

The above titles are listed with their Diamond order code in the first field, which may assist you in finding comics at your shop or having them order something for you they don't have in-stock.

If I didn't list your new comic, too damn bad.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CrBriefings/~3/343658312/

In a story hitting international wires yesterday afternoon, Al-Qaeda commander Mustafa Abul Yazid told a Pakistani television program that the group was responsible for the June 2 bombing of the Danish embassy in Islamabad and that this was indeed because of the publication of caricatures of Muhammed in Danish newspapers. The group had already claimed responsibility, but not with a senior official commenting in the course of a television appearance. Six people were killed.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CrBriefings/~3/343658313/

The comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com offers their usual array of lists, estimates and analysis regarding the performance of comic books and graphic novels in the Direct Market of comic and hobby shops, this time for June 2008.

* Overview
* Analysis
* Top 300 Comic Books
* Top 100 Graphic Novels

Another source heard from is John Jackson Miller's Comics Chronicles:

* Comic Book Sales Estimates
* Comics Shop Sales Market Share

The first and most obvious story is a continued decline in this year's serial comic book sales, bolstered by a rise in graphic novel sales for the month. The second and almost as obvious story here is a continuation of last month's surprise in that Marvel's Secret Invasion strengthened its hold on the top event series of the summer slot, placing at #1 while DC's Final Crisis saw a pretty typical issue #1 to issue #2 drop and landed at the third position on the charts. A third story at least to my first impression eyes might be Marvel outstripping DC by placing eight comics to DC's two titles in the top 10 and 18 to six in top 25 titles. When the competition is such that I have completely different style choices for the types of numbers involved, that's probably a story. A fourth story might be that DC's new weekly title Trinity has dropped 12 thousand copies in its first four issues, and looks like it will settle in the 50K region (DC's not-all-that-liked Countdown was in the 70K region at this point last year, further along in its series progression).

There are even potential points of interest that don't have anything to do with Marvel pummeling DC Comics in serial comics sales. One might be found in the fact that there's a 13 thousand unit difference between respective comics in the 25th position and a five thousand unit difference in the 50th position comics between 2008 and 2007, which could indicate some weakness in serial comics' "middle class" of strong but not hit performers. A sixth story might be found in the general strength of multiple Dark Horse books as trades in the Direct Market, and the continuing stellar sales for Robert Kirkman's Walking Dead series in that same arena.

image taken from that month's solid-selling JSA series from DC, just because I felt bad; you know, that character design by Alex Ross is still really creepy-looking

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CrBriefings/~3/343658314/

A federal appeals court struck down the latest iteration of the Child Online Protection Act by upholding a previous finding that saw it as unconstitutional, reports the New York Times. I think this makes it three times that some version of this decade-old law has been defeated in court. The bill was worrisome to many because of its loose to non-existent definition of adult content combined with required restrictions for allowing people access to sites with such material that could have been a needless economic hardship and even a legal minefield for a lot of sites, including those with comics.