Truant, but truthful

Tons of stuff to update, and I am totally truant. There have been a lot of people saying a lot of really nice things about Automatic, and I should write about them. But first I need to say a really nice thing about someone else: The amazing Ethan Young's first full-length graphic novel, Tails, is finally coming out! You can, and should, order it now. It's about being an artist and a vegetarian and an Asian geek with fantasies about turning into a superhero and living in New York City.

Oh, and I show up occasionally in the book.

And, totally separate, my sometimes-editor David Levithan compiles a best-of music list every year, and polls his coterie. His most recent list was just posted. Here's my entry:

Matthue R Goes Camp 

Weird thing: There's not much punk/loud stuff on here. I mean, Wild Flag, but that might be a vote for my past. I think that the most exciting stuff I'm finding is stuff that I'm just starting to give a second thought to? Also, other thing: A lot of the albums here are free mixtapes that the artists give away online. I mean, I love the hip-hop community.

most essential: Childish Gambino, Camp

and:
2. Wild Flag, Wild Flag
3. Frank Ocean, nostalgia, ultra.
4. Shondes, Searchlights
5. Regina Spektor, Live in London
6. Roots, undun
7. Nicki Minaj, Pink Friday (which I know didn't come out this year)
8. Girls in Trouble, Like You, Like Me
9. The Amy Winehouse uncollected-songs album.
10. House of Balloons, The Weeknd

Just in case you're curious, NONE of my albums made the Top Ten. Am I really cool, or just really out of touch?

Ethan Young and me fight over comics

Ethan Young, who does the fabulous online comic Tails, asked me to fill in for a while as he reaches the end of his first book. It's hard following a comic with a bunch of straight-up words, but we're talking about our comics obsession, so maybe that will help. Also, I ended up being a character in his comic, which (hopefully) lends my entries some DVD actors'-commentary credibility...

Anyway, go read it.

Maybe I’ve just been spoiled. Reading comics — especially reading someone like Neil Gaiman, or Alan Moore, who spend hours detailing the minutiae of how each panel looks. Yes, just mentioning their names is a cliché, but it’s obvious that they were both the kind of kids who read each page of a comic a hundred times as kids. They really appreciate the graphic design of a page; you can go over the panels and margins of, say, ‘League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’ and find something new each time.

That’s what I want my books to be like. The ones I write, the ones I read, the ones I buy. I know my prose-books won’t get that way until I start self-publishing, or until I get really big — Scholastic doesn’t let their mid-range authors anywhere NEAR the design computers — but a boy can dream.

And, in the meantime, I’ve still got my comics to read. And my omnibus Sandman to obsess over.

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My Comics Debut

Granted, it's not me writing Uncanny X-Men, but it's on the other side of the camera. It's from Ethan Young's excellent e-comic Tails, which you can read free here. (You can actually start on the chapter I'm in and not miss out on too much -- here's the first page -- and then go back and read from the start. Because it is amazing, and highly recommended.)



See? Even when I'm in Australia, New York finds a way to claim me. The temperatures in Melbourne are about the same as the temperatures in New York -- 35 degrees in both places -- but, believe me, it feels a lot better here.

Ethan (SPOILER WARNING) used to live downstairs from us. He designed this card for my daughter's first birthday, which I'm still ga-ga about. The Yiddish was added by his roommate. Check it out and marvel:

Ouch. Sorry for the pun.

Everybody Wants a Tail

Not to get too furry on you people, but my friend, collaborator, and ex-housemate Ethan Young's comic Tails just got written up in a big way in Comic Book Resources. Like the reviewer said: "It's a largely autobiographical comic about dating and cats. None of those things sound like something I'd be interested in....but yet in less than two dozen pages, Young charmed me with his drawing style and his jubilantly downtrodden protagonist."

It's an appropriate sentiment: people can write stories about the most esoteric things and make them universally-relatable, and people can write stories about walking down the street that no one in the universe will relate to or care about. Ethan falls squarely in the first camp.

(And Ethan and I are working on something together, too...I can't say what, yet, except that it's nothing like you expect and it's going to be awesome.)

Here, check out a page -- and then go read the rest: