Blog – Page 9 – Xaviar X. Xerexes

The Magicians Trilogy

by Xaviar XerexesOctober 11, 2014

Lev Grossman has written three Magicians books about Quentin Coldwater, Brakebills Academy and the magical land of Narnia Fillory. (By the way you can buy a print of the image above here) The first novel, The Magicians, took familiar tropes from a whole river of fantasy literature and invested in them a seriousness of emotion and consequence that was quite cathartic for me. In particular, the book plays with C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books which was an intense favorite of my childhood. I am almost the same age at Lev and the way the Narnia books fired my imagination and my …

SPX 2014

by Xaviar XerexesSeptember 14, 2014

I made it to SPX today and it was a good floor full of interesting people and a wide range of comics. I caught up with a couple of people briefly although I had a longer conversation with Clay Yount (and was happy to see he is still making comics after the end of Rob & Elliott). Walking the floor I saw a lot of faces and names I recognized but a lot more I didn’t. I have no skin in the comics game anymore though — I am not making comics, I am not really writing reviews or other stories …

Bookmark: Saga

by Xaviar XerexesSeptember 8, 2014

Read first three collected volumes of Saga. UPDATE: I posted this bookmark back in 2014 and finally picked up Volume 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 halfway through 2018. It’s gorgeous art just as I remember the first three collected volumes. I need to pick up the rest of the available volumes pretty soon – best not to wait four years between visits to Saga. October 2019: Read Volume Nine of Saga. Feels like its getting to the end of its story?

Working on ComixTALK: Old Content Disappearing

by Xaviar XerexesSeptember 7, 2014

Remember Comixtalk? Totally dormant for a couple of years (some might argue dormant for close to a decade! hey now..) as I turned to this site for the sporadic writing I still do. But after a couple of years away I started getting notions (for reasons!) about remodeling the old site and focusing on the aspects of it that right now seem like they would be interesting to me. So I have set up a test site with the current site imported and begun to work on it. First thing (and here I wish I had a bigger megaphone to …

David Rees New TeeVee Show: Going Deep

by Xaviar XerexesAugust 11, 2014

David Rees of GYWO and MNFTIU and legendary guru of sharpening pencils — now on the teevee with a new show called Going Deep with David Rees. Check a bunch of them out on Hulu.

A Few Thoughts on World Cup 2014

by Xaviar XerexesJuly 27, 2014

So last year I wrote a thought piece on the current Confederations and their qualification systems for the World Cup. About a month removed from this year’s World Cup in Brazil I am emerging from acute soccer withdrawal and wanted to note some thoughts about Brazil. First off, this was an exciting edition of the World Cup. Great games, lots of goals and drama galore. The German shellacking of Brasil will go down in history as one of the greatest shock defeats in the history of the game. The advance of Costa Rica deep into the tournament was as great …

Bookmark: Tune

by Xaviar XerexesJuly 26, 2014

I was a big fan of the webcomic Tune by Derek Kirk Kim. I just grabbed the print books – Vanishing Point (book 1) and Still Life (book 2) to re-read. The artist on book 2 was Les McClaine who does a faithful job with the template created by Derek. It’s a great premise and I enjoyed re-reading it. I searched around to see if there was any talk about further updates — I recall the webcomic went kaput because Derek was focused on the print versions but really haven’t found anything that would clarify whether book 2 was enough …

Weird Al Has a Number One Album

by Xaviar XerexesJuly 25, 2014

I leave the country for a couple of weeks and… Weird Al has a number one album?! What is the world coming to? Well genius marketing by Weird Al with his eight videos in eight days push to release it sure has a lot to do with it. I crack up at Word Crimes and may someday like Tacky (right now my brain has overheard that Happy song to the point where it’s just too much too soon). [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc?rel=0]