I am a genius

Oh, man, I've got it all figured out.

HOW TO HAVE THE PERFECT DAY

1. Get up early and go to work, but have it be the only day you've gotten up early for work in the last two or three weeks. Feel nice and refreshed.

2. Do a pimp-ass job at work, receiving compliments from customers/guests/etc. and management and co-workers alike. Make sure to share the love right back: remember, no man is an island, especially in a social job. Shake lots of hands, tell lots of people how cool they are, and bring morale right up through the roof.

3. Leave work at 2:30. Enjoy the sunny San Francisco afternoon.

4. Buy the week's stash of comic books. Only buy stuff you're super-excited about, or, alternatively, especially curious about.

5. Hang out all afternoon with good friends at the Isotope. Meet new people. Drink a couple beers and toast a good buddy you haven't seen in a while. Laugh your ass off at stories galore.

6. Hook up with your girlfriend and go to Chevy's. [That's right, I said Chevy's - I love that place, don't care what you think.] Eat a big fat plate of whatever your favorite dish is and share a pitcher of top shelf margaritas, listening to how said girlfriend turned things around at work today to have a great day herself.

6.5. Be sure to eat nearly to toxicity. Be full, full, full, and about half drunk.

7. Pay the check, leaving a hefty tip so the guy knows how much you appreciated the service, and take a walk up the street. Burn off a little bit of the load currently swelling the edges of your stomach. Kiss your girl on the sidewalk. Stop and realize how incredibly balls-out lucky you are. Laugh about that a little.

8. Finish the walk by arriving at the movie theater. Take out the free movie passes you got the last time you donated blood (how cool was that?). Use them to get tickets to Cars, the new Pixar movie, featuring the voices of two of your very favorite actors (Paul Newman and Owen Wilson, of course).

9. Watch an awesome movie that makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes you learn, makes you just as happy as a pig in shit. Notice that Pixar is always pushing themseleves to actually do something new with every new movie.

10. Go home.

And that's about it. The rest is up to you, I suppose. But I'm telling you, as far as I've laid it out here, it's a sure thing.

I am a[n extremely lucky] genius.

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Lots of brilliant art previews around this week.

James Sime at the Isotope discovered that Hawaiian Dick: The Last Resort #4 is coming out next week and tracked down a good nine pages of preview art for us. My favorite is the title sequence:



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And Blair Marnell over at All The Rage has a few gooduns this week, including some great John Romita, Jr. pages from The Eternals, but I'm most swayed by the Phil Noto artwork he got from an upcoming issue of Jonah Hex, which may signal my return to the title. As Blair put it, "Noto is, for my money, one of the best artists not currently under an exclusive contract." Amen, Blair.



But you forgot to mention he's also doing interiors on the upcoming G.I. Joe / Scarlett: Declassified one-shot. I'm not generally one for G.I. Joe comics, but this cover may well sell itself to me come July:



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A big cheers to Tom Waltz, writer of Children of the Grave. Tom and his art collaborator Casey Maloney have been hitting the internet with a full media blitz for the upcoming IDW collection of their four-issue series. I'm not kidding - in addition to the Newsarama interview and art preview I linked a couple weeks ago, they've been on CBR, Comicon's The Pulse, The Paperback Reader, and recently hit a double feature on Silver Bullet Comic Books, with a glowing review here and an extensive interview here, in which ol' Tom says something mighty nice about one of his old-school supporters:

CJ: OK, so on the positive side then, how about naming a few of your favourite blogs?

TW: I tend to cruise a lot of them, but off the top of my head I’d have to mention my man Sean Maher’s Quality Control, The Great Curve, Comics Should be Good, Blood In The Gutters, Bags and Boards, Catch Da Craze... man, there’s so many that I like, I feel terrible not mentioning them all. The cool thing is, though, that most of the blogs have links to other blogs on their home pages, so if you go to any of the ones I mention above, odds are you’ll be able to find many of the others I frequent.

...

COTG is slated to hit comics stores in August, but can be pre-ordered from your Local Comics Seller now with Diamond ordering code JUN063212. COTG can be found in the June issue of Previews Magazine and is Certified Cool.

Cheers, Tom!

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Oh, I got a little insider gossip yesterday, and while he'd kill me if I gave away anything more, I'll just let you know that Larry's not kidding.

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Congratulations to Robert Kirkman on the birth of his son.

I mean, that's really cool.

But naming him Peter Parker?

It's better than Kal'el, I suppose. But I don't know any bartenders who named their kid Jim Beam, or actors who named their kid Hamlet, you know?

Ah, I'm sure you know what you're doing. Cheers, Kirkman, ya nutbar.