I don’t think you should focus on any one thing, but if you could review some of what you think are the best books by or on these comic book masters, I’d be thrilled.

- Christopher

Oh, right: Popimage! Slipped my mind– my apologies. Uh: Nevermind.

Now Chris, reviews, no to the negative reviews unless it’s one of those instances where you absolutely have to take the piss out of something [but even then it's better just to rant then rant, type it up and unleash it] or if it’s more in a rational/critical vein then a rant [ i.e. "such and such was a good idea though horribly executed"]

ditto on the previews comment, speaking for myself I tend to forget about things by the time they come out [or I simply didn't even know it was coming out] and we both have the tendency to notice things eachother missed – many of which deserve to be highlighted to your readers, for instance, John Pham has a new book coming out, don’t know what it’s called or when it comes out, but i’ll definitely buy it

as for what to review, take one of our typical conversations “Chris? Have you read this?” “Yes. It’s good. Buy it” “O-Kay.” and expand on it, y’know, add in some whats and whys – whether its kids books, manga, superheroes, euro, etc. – is it really good and is it worth buying?

also, anything you can get Andrew to read is probably worth reviewing [I still haven't read Tokyo is my Garden, despite being one of the books I most looked forward to getting this year]

you could easily do theme reviews, i.e. 1st second books, doug wright nominee books, anything you brought back from SD, etc. but I would only go that route unless they’re books you really feel strongly about/want to have your say about

all that aside, sorry i didn’t get to chat more/stick around more – you were naturally very busy otherwise we would’ve stolen you away for a bite, another day we’ll get time to sit

ltr

Oh– I should clarify that: I’ve been happy with the answers and the people who’ve been nice enough to say yes to the interviews; I just haven’t felt like I’ve ever managed to ask the right set of questions, yet.

Have you thought about doing interviews? I haven’t been happy with the ones I’ve tried to do yet, but– I’ve had a lot of fun doing all of them. There’s a challenge to those. I know people like to complain about the comic reviews, but I think the state of comic interviews is way, way (way) worse. I think you’d be really good at those.

Plus: If you google-image “futuristic haircut”, your photograph is #7 on the google image. So: that caught me by surprise.

I’d also love to see you take advantage of the breadth of genre you have access to in order to review lots of “not superhero” stuff–I don’t want to say “art comix” because that’s too limiting: I want to see reviews of the new graphic novel offerings from traditional book publishers, but I also want to see NBM, D+Q, Top Shelf, etc. Hell I want to see the _really_ small publishers and indys who do good stuff.

I actually wouldn’t mind seeing a dissection of some of the trash every once in a while as well, so long as it wasn’t played for laughs, but was instead treated as a critical look at what the book says about its audience, and possibly about its creator(s).

As for what areas to focus your reviews on, as long as something is good, I don’t care too much what genre it fits into. If forced to choose, I think I’d be most interested reviews of good comics that might get missed elsewhere — art-comics, auto-bio, international (manga but also European/South American stuff), etc.

I would love to see stuff for kids, hidden gems you’ve tracked down, autobiographical stuff, emo/angsty crap, and your thoughts on Disappearance Diary–I quite liked it. :D

Woo hoo! :D

I would like to see more Euro stuff since I’ve been trying to get into it since I prefer it over manga, but that’s my bias.

I’d be interested in seeing your reviews of graphic novels and the more mature manga. I tend to read a lot of non-superhero GNs, with some quality capes thrown in (The Boys, All-Star Supes, Astonishing X-Men). It very much depends on creators for me. The latest Tatsumi hardcover is waiting on my nightstand to be devoured. I also like the nouvelle manga a great deal.

I also wanted to say I miss your Previews columns, when you expounded on certain key selections. They really pointed out some good stuff to me when you were doing those. Hope you can fit those in as well at some point, but I know it takes a lot of precious time.

Thanks.