Went to my local comic book store tonight and played tons of poker with Bill Willingham. Lost horribly. He seems a touch peeved that Joss is nominated for so many Eisners, but said, "If it were any other Hollywood bigshot coming and and doing it, I'd be really pissed, but he's such a good writer, I just can't be." Really nice guy.

Wow, my impression of him from every other fan account, letters column, and interview I've ever heard or read was that he's such a raging asshole that he's lucky not to have been pushed in front of a bus by now. You must have caught him on a really good day.

Really? Huh. No, he was an absolute sweetheart. Kind of a sarcastic bastard, but then, so am I.

Wow, my impression of him from every other fan account, letters column, and interview I've ever heard or read was that he's such a raging asshole that he's lucky not to have been pushed in front of a bus by now. You must have caught him on a really good day.

Maybe the hate mail and dropping sales on Robin are chipping away the ego...

When you'd rather see Chuck Austen on a title, you know it's gone horribly wrong.

My biggest issue with Willinghamfucktard is his complete lack of respect for the genre in which he's now writing. He's just not fanboy enough for the job.

Quasi-related (at least, the thought train went RIGHT there), Matt, have you seen the picture of Anderson Gabrych shirtless with a Batlogo across his chest from the '04 Prism LGBT comics guide? If not, you want I should scan it in for you?

My biggest issue with Willinghamfucktard is his complete lack of respect

I myself would have trouble respecting any genre whose readers appended "fucktard" to my name.

Ah. Do you judge all genres by their readers?

I myself would have trouble respecting any genre whose readers appended "fucktard" to my name.

I'm sadly prone to doing that sort of thing to pretty much any author in any genre who annoys the hell out of me, at least in casual conversation and in my notes for class (oh, the joys of finding old notebooks and wincing at the content). Flaubert, in particular, has been a target. Believe he got renamed Flaubarf.

Totally unrelated to my childish dissing of creators (which I am willing to admit I should have stopped at about age 12), is it worth it to pick up the exceedingly thick Bone collection that claims to be complete rather than collecting individual volumes?

I think it was priced at about $40, so it's obviously a cheaper option. I was just wondering if that meant there were things the individual books have that it doesn't.

It looks like the pages in the thick volume are slightly smaller than the individual volumes, so the artwork is going to be a little smaller. Also, a paperback with a 2.5" spine isn't going to be very resilient. Neither of those are important enough to warrant the price difference, though.

Also note that scholastic is in the process of releasing full-color editions of the books. They've only released one volume so far.

Do you judge all genres by their readers?

Judging a book by those who like it's cover ... sounds like a plan.