T Campbell's Blog

One of the rare pleasures of my stay in Oxford has been an honorary membership at the QI Café-Bar. QI, for those not in the know, is a British program somewhere between quiz show and improv comedy. (It stands for quite interesting, which is a phrase you'll hear Britishers use a lot.) Frankly, it'll probably be only a matter of time before it comes to America in some form.

Among the show's regular "contestants" is Stephen Fry, who's also been a fairly regular presence at the café-bar that the TV show founded.

It's got the most well-booked café I've seen anywhere, with all kinds of volumes that clearly provide good research for the show's procducers (including The Book of Lists, one of my old favorites) and a board of Scrabble. The menu's full of hearty, filling fare, giving the lie to what everyone's told me about British food, and it's reasonably priced by Oxford standards (meaning about twice as expensive as my hometown, but hey).

Mostly, though, I've enjoyed the bragging rights. "Oh, yas, Stephen Fry? I know Stephen. We were in the same club together at AUCHS-FOURD."

Third part of my Alpha Shade interview is live.

Dirk Deppey is one of the all-time great comics journos, and this move allows him to pursue what I believe to be the future of journalism. I'm glad to see him around.

Interview.

Good times, Phil. Good times.

This has been proven with graphs.

This site tells you how.

I don't want to hear any excuses. Just do it now. NOW.

NOW.

If someone gives one of your sites a flattering link, just gracefully and gratefully accept it.

Fair warning: Penny and Aggie is going thrice-weekly for the summer. No, we aren't slowing down production, quite the opposite in fact, but we need a solid buffer in place this fall. I wouldn't say no to anyone who's interested in doing a guest strip, either.

Also: Clare Phelps is looking for copies of the colored and lettered pages for Skritch, the once-and-perhaps-future Graphic Smash cockroach star created by her husband. If anyone's got 'em... let Clare know at clarephelps85(at)yahoo.com.

I guess my appearances on Alpha-Rant kind of negate the pledge made here. Oh, well.

For this year's WCCAs, Gisele and I are putting together a quick salute to the webcomics that ended in the year of 2005...

If you haven't seen it, it's new to you...

Today is 6/6/06, so, you know, EVIL.

I'm kinda blogged out right now. A number of things need doing that I have to keep quiet about, and it's finally nice weather outside, so I think I'll be scaling back this blog for the summer.

Hands down, no argument, The Essential Guide to World Comics is the best book I have read about comics in the last five years. I'm only ashamed I didn't snap it up sooner.

Other fun reads: 1599, The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes and Phiz.

Alpha-Rant did a four-hour interview with me and just posted the first part. Among other things, I talk about some of the frustrations of the Graphic Smash delays (some of which have been alleviated since that interview was recorded), and why I work with webcomics collective businesses. More to come...

I'm set the date of September 1 to revive Search Engine Funnies, and I'm starting to prep, so I love little nuggets like this. I probably couldn't turn it into a strip, because the punchline is too obvious, but this REALLY HAPPENED.

In other news, today Tycho and Gabe are my heroes for their work with kids and their support of a sure-to-be-controversial game rating system. I don't follow video games enough to know how just the ratings are, but being on the top makes you a huge target, and the fact that they're willing to do this for a principled stand really makes me want to do similar stuff with Penny and Aggie. The trick is to do it without turning preachy...

(Money quote from Gabe: "The ESRB isn't perfect but it's all we've got and we as gamers can either bitch about it or try and help.")

Also, Kris Straub and Scott Kurtz show you How The Magic Happens. I knew they were using some templates and manipulation but didn't know how it all came together. This gives me some ideas for SEF too.

Got up to 22 pages dialogued on One Five. That's coming along, and ideas are coming from all over now. I love living in a place with a lot of books and a strong Muslim population while I write it.

And I may be doing a story like this soon.

Inspiration!