Tuesday
Morning
This
and
That --

Hmmm, what's this? I'll tell you tomorrow!

But for today --

A big hello to my daughter Maia Rose, and news from two other daughters of comics folks whose work you may know and love, and who are now out there making their own marks in the world -- on paper and via music -- and who both have a Northampton connection, amazingly enough, though those respective Northamptons are divided by the vast Atlantic Ocean and some acreage.

First, ladies and gentlemen, Leah Moore and her zombie-lovin' hubby John Reppion. I first met Leah back when she was a wee lass during my visits to her pop's house in Northampton, England. She and her sis giggled and bounced balloons of the heads of me and my first wife Marlene while we were sleeping. Ah, life.

This just in from Leah and John, Marge's and my friends in the UK who so brightened our trip to Denmark about this time last spring, and who brought me (and CCS) into the Accent UK stable:

Over the last couple of weeks no less than three new Moore & Reppion penned series have hit the shelves and since we wouldn't want you to miss out we thought we'd let you know a little about them.

WITCHBLADE - SHADES IF GRAY #1 arrived in stores on the 28th of March. This Top Cow/Dynamite Entertainment crossover is set back in the 1990's and features the mysterious Dorian Gray.

RAISE THE DEAD #1 came out on the 4th of April. This is our brand new kick arse zombie series for Dynamite.


SAVAGE TALES #1 featuring part one of our micro mini BATTLE FOR ATLANTIS also hit the stands on the 4th. This is our stab at doing a classic adventure/sword and sorcery strip ably assisted by the legendary Pablo
Marcos.

You can see previews of all three series

on our comicspace page

and don't forget to visit

our own site

as well as the message board to keep up with all the latest news and reviews and let others know what you think of the new stuff.

Cheers,

John & Leah

Cheers, indeed! Congrats, Leah and John, and I look forward to the fun reading.

And this just in from red-headed, high-octane Zara Bode, whose group The Sweetback Sisters have some major news for later this month. Who are The Sweetback Sisters? Well, here ya go:

The Sweetback Sisters
"Honky-tonk for the modern-day cowboy and girl!"

Zara Bode-- vocals, guitar
Emily Miller-- vocals,fiddle
Jesse Milnes-- fiddle, fingerstyle guitar
Ross Bellenoit-- electric guitar, lap steel
Joseph "joebass" Dejarnette- upright bass
Stefan Amidon-- drums

Zara I've known since her childhood, when amazing cartoonist pop Mark and amazing mom Molly moved to Northampton, MA amid the vast Tundra experiment (aka 'clusterfuck'), which had the immediate benefit of bringing lots of creative folks together who might not have known one another otherwise.

As I've mentioned before, Stefan Amidon is also a local hero. Stefan heralds from Brattleboro, VT, and is already a fave of our family after years of seeing/hearing he (and his family) perform in the area; I've particularly fond memories of 'Stef & Jef' and their amazing percussion work during Stefan's BUHS high school years.

But enough on that, here's the big news Zara is eager to share:

Hello Everyone!

A truly amazing beam of good fortune has hit upon my band The Sweetback Sisters!!! A month or so ago on a whim Emily and I entered a few of our recordings to a contest entitled "Talented Twenty-Somethings" held by NPR and the Prairie Home Companion gang. We figured it couldn't hurt to start spreading the word, but boy did we never expect to make the cut! Just this afternoon Emmy got the call, and they're flying us out and putting us up for the show/competition two weekends from now (April 20-21) They have yet to tell us what's at stake, but we're keeping our fingers crossed at something to get us rolling on a full-length album!

For those of you who do not know of Prarie Home Companion, it's an extremely well known radio program now in it's 33rd year I believe. A Prairie Home Companion is a live radio variety show created and hosted by Garrison Keillor. The show is broadcast from the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. Each show features a storytelling monologue from Keillor – a report from his fictitious hometown of Lake Wobegon – and the best in American folk music: country, bluegrass, blues, and gospel, and sometimes, and all sorts of guest performers. This is a totally outrageous surprise, and an incredible opportunity for a band as new to the scene as us.

So here's the glorious catch: we still need your help & participation! As you know in this American Idol generation everything is a competition, so we'll be running against a few other groups for the title (I don't know who yet!,) but we'll most likely need your call-in support the day of the radio broadcast April 21st.

Thank you already for taking the time to read this announcement, and for all your support. When I have any more information I will surely pass it along to all of you, and of course I'll send out another email when the BIG date approaches!

So so so much love,

Zara
and those wild-ones The Sweetback Sisters

So, there ya go. Maia Rose has heard 'em live, and she says Zara, Stefan and their band are "awesome," and I'm eager to hear them on A Prairie Home Companion myself (I've been tuning in to that show since my first Vermont drawing studio, way back in Grafton, VT in the summer of 1979). Be ready to call in your support, or at least tune in to hear Zara and her Sweetback Sisters serenade you!

But don't be reactive, be proactive, however passively you're proactive via online resources:

If you're out in Minnesota, here's the details for the live show itself:

WHAT: A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor presents this season's talent contest—for performers in their 20s

WHEN: Saturday, April 21, 2007

WHERE: The Fitzgerald Theater, 10 E. Exchange Street, Saint Paul, MN 55101. 651.290.1221

TICKETS: Go to

The Prairie Home Companion website

-- for more information, check that site or contact David O'Neill at davido@prairiehome.us

While you're at it, check out the Sweetback Sisters's own website

and their space on myspace.com, where you can hear a bunch of their tunes!

Good luck, Zara, Stefan, Jesse, Ross and 'Joebass,' hope you win it!

Damn, I still can't find Criswell!
Later, gators -- Have a Great Tuesday!

Back in the Saddle Again...

It's amazing how completely life has changed in the past week, marking 2007 as a genuine New Year from Day One. Marge and I live in a new home, and though I'll be preoccupied with the final dregs of the move for another couple of weeks (including clean-up), we do have buyers for our Marlboro home (the closing is before the end of the month) and all is well. The great financial risk paid off, and the move that made so much logical and logistical sense, personally and in terms of social responsibility (Marge has barely gone through a half-a-tank of gas in over a week, where we used to both fill up multiple times per week; we'll be consuming far less gas once the move is truly behind us), is remapping our emotional landscape in unforeseen ways.

Windsor itself is a very cool town -- though, like all towns, it has its underbelly, which is apparent, too. We've been gravitating here now since mid-October, when our house-hunting began in earnest, and the sense of this potentially being "home" has matured into this being home in a remarkably brief interim. Windsor is nestled just north of Mount Ascutney, a lone mountain strangely apart from the Green Mountain chain here on the eastern edge of the state, and that mountain now plucks a pleasant nerve whenever I see it.

Growing up in northern VT, my formative years and teen years were landmarked by Camel's Hump, that beautiful mountain in North Duxbury that's visible from interstate 89 from a variety of views. My heart still flutters when I first see the Hump en route north, and it remains one of those geographic life anchors one never outgrows and forever finds surprisingly, profoundly moving with every encounter in an uncanny, primal way. I hiked the Hump many times each year from age 12 to 22, and knew much of the mountain well. For the first third of my life, Camel's Hump was the center of my universe, such as it was.

Since 1980, Wilmington and Marlboro have been my home -- where Marlene and I lived through our married life together, where my daughter Maia and son Daniel were born (at home) and raised and grew into adulthood -- and the mountains there (Haystack and especially Hogback) became orientation landmarks with their own gravitational pull. I lived in their orbit for a little over two decades, and hiked Haystack a number of times. Though I never grew as intimate or connected to those mountains as I did to the Hump in Duxbury, they're nevertheless sights and climbs (whether via car or foot; Route 9, which I drove daily, cuts up over Hogback, embracing a positively breathtaking 100+ mile view from the roadside) which never fail to move me.

Since the decision to move from the area really took hold this past fall, that drive moves me differently than ever before, the sights of both mountains pluck different nerves: I'm saying "goodbye" to the mountains that sheltered my family, in which I realized my life goals (in comics) and then changed my life completely, where met my new soulmate (Marge), which I shared with her as we fell in love and bonded (we used to drive to the top of one of Wilmington's back roads and watch the sun set behind Haystack), which nurtured my children until they left the mountains to move to the town and begin their own adult years.

Now, Mount Ascutney is the center of a new orbit, a new life phase. As I drive every other day from Windsor to Marlboro and back again -- down with an empty car, back with a full car -- my heart lifts a bit when I first see Ascutney just north of Springfield.

"I'm almost home!" I think, and it's true.

Almost home.

___________________

A very, very good, funny, dear man I had the rare pleasure of working with at First Run Video before my departure from that employ two years ago is on his death bed in Townshend, VT. He was diagnosed with cancer this summer, and is now in his final weeks (perhaps days), discharged from the hospital and at home with his wife. In the end, they could do nothing for him.

It's heartbreaking -- why do monsters like our Vice President live so long, do so much harm (oh, excuse me, "service for their country"), while humble, productive, responsible, forever upbeat men like this fellow die? There's no reason to or for it; that's life. That's death.

This is a real heartbreaker; I shan't say more, as it's nobody's business but his and his family's, but it's too sad and shaking not to note this morning. This has colored much of the month for me, too, and is really having a devastating impact on those I once worked closely with, daily. A prayer for my friend, please.

___________________

This just in from Molly Bode, beloved wife of Mark Bode, from away off in California. A couple of years ago, Mark and Molly moved back to the West Coast from their 1990s life in Northampton, MA (drawn there, pun intended, by the allure of the Tundra publishing experiment); their now-adult daughter Zara is still in the Northampton area, and making her own kind of music:

"Just sending out a reminder for you not to miss Zara's show THE SWEETBACK SISTERS at:

The Elevens
140 Pleasant Street Northampton
Sunday, January 14
413-586-9155

About The Sweetback Sisters:

The Sweetback Sisters, a group of pie-eyed plunkers, perform an incredible array of old time honky tonk music with sweet girl-on-girl harmonies, sure to warm the hears of any of you. The lavish and lovely voices of Zara Bode and Emily Miller plus an all-star band: Stefan Amidon on drums, West Virginian, Jesse Milnes on guitar and fiddle, Joseph "Joebass" DeJarnette on upright, and last but not least our rolling thunder himself, Ross Bellenoit who highlights the night with electric guitar riffs, mandolin and lap steel guitar.

So get your ass in gear, grab a beer and swoon while we croon the country classics.

Check out

this link

for a taste of the music."

Molly concludes:

"And somebody please videotape it and send it to me!!!!!!"

BTW, there's also a Brattleboro, VT connection: Stefan Amidon is an amazing percussionist, brother of Sam (accomplished musician on many instruments and actor) and son of the Amidons, who are a fixture of the folk music scene in Southern VT. Stefan blew me away years ago while he was still in high school and performing as part of the "Stef and Jeff" percussion duo on the stage of Brattleboro Union High School; he has since performed in a number of bands, including work with his family.

If you're in the Northampton area, check 'em out!