Melbourne, Jack White, Batwoman, Secret Avengers, Hellboy, Doctor Doom and Jay Gatsby

I’m in Melbourne now. We haven’t found a house yet, I haven’t found a job yet, but I’m here. I spent a couple of days in Brisbane on my way here to hang out with a few dudes (but not enough), and now I’m here and I’ve hung out with a few dudes here too. All these dudes rule.

For some reason I thought Jack White died today. Kind of weird that I should see his photo in a news post and just assume he’d died, but a lot of people have been dying lately. No public figure will ever be as big a deal to me as Jack White was when I was fifteen. So it’s as much The White Stripes, De Stijl and White Blood Cells as I can fit in before I leave the house today.

All this travelling around has left me way behind on comics. I’ve had a bunch posted to me and I’ve picked up a few singles from back issues and bargain bins but that’s about it. Some books I’ve read:

Batwoman #2: Batwoman is a very good comic that I don’t read. I don’t know why, I guess I just read too many comics, some have to get left behind. Lately I’m interested in picking up random issues in the middle of runs and seeing how much I enjoy it, and I found this one for $1 in a bargain bin here in Melbourne. Good comics should be good whether you know the back story or not. I had no back story and this comic was very good. Bit of a lacklustre ending, but incredible art (of course) and some pretty excellent story telling. Would like to read some more.

Secret Avengers #20: These done-in-one Ellis and Co. Secret Avengers comics have been excellent. None of them have quite lived up to the McKelvie opener, and as great as Alex Maleev is, his art isn’t really sexy enough for a Black Widow story. Still, time travel. Enough said. Also Beast talking about time travel the way I talk about time travel. Ugh I need the Stuart Immonen finale NOW.

Dark Horse Presents #7: I didn’t pick up this series when it first came out, but I grabbed DHP #6 for the Fabio Moon feature and in the process realised this is an excellent anthology series, then went ahead and bought every copy I could find in a back issue sale. I haven’t read all those, but I needed this month’s issue for Mignola’s Hellboy Versus The Aztec Mummy and Brandon Graham’s The Speaker. Those were some excellent 8 page comics. That Hellboy story, oh man. I love a good continuity-free Hellboy comic (PAMCAKES) because I’m like fifteen years behind on that title. The Speaker was excellent, as you’d expect. I can’t wait for that King City collection coming out in a couple of months. And I didn’t even realise there was a Usagi Yojimbo story in here until I got to that page. Also read part one of Concrete Park and really liked that one. Post-apocalyptic stories are a dime a dozen in comics lately, but that one stood out for some reason. Will read more.

FF #13: DOOM!

I’ve been reading so many books lately. I just looked at goodreads and in the last two months I’ve read The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon, One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler and Animal Farm by George Orwell.

Right now I’m reading Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby, From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Kavalier & Clay was my favourite of the bunch, but I’m loving The Great Gatsby, and the only reason I haven’t finished Fever Pitch is because I’ve enjoyed reading it so much that I won’t let myself finish it.

Well that’s my consumption of late. I’m going to see Kanye tonight, and Girls next week, so those are things that are exciting. There are a heap of other dudes playing in the coming weeks but those two up there are the priority. Oh I got a Windows Phone too, that thing is really cool. I just need to get a job and a house now.

Housekeeping

Dude, I never post on here. I guess that’s because this is supposed to be a blog about my life, and my life is boring as shit, so I’m not too good at writing about it. What I am good at is consuming things. All the things. Comics, books, games, films, TV. So maybe I’ll start writing about those things more. God knows I like talking about them (and so do most of my friends). So this blog is going to be more about that from now on, I guess. And more stream of consciousness.

I do have actual things to talk about, I’ve been all over the place in the last few months: I saw a bunch of bands, went on a cruise, spent a heap of time in Central Queensland with my family, and I sort of have things to say about all that stuff. I might tell you about it later if I get around to it. I also made some stuff that I might share, but I haven’t really written anything in months. It’s actually been a pretty shitty couple of months, but you have to keep some things private, right?

Oh, one more thing. I’m moving to Melbourne in three days. Yeah, my life. I really am a mess. But I’m looking forward to mostly just having fun with my good pal Daniel Wong, who I’m moving with, and a bunch of the other bros down there. Also looking forward to seeing a bunch of bands in the coming weeks. I might talk about all that stuff on here at some point, or maybe not, I don’t know. Get off my back.

 

Hey dude what’s up?

I’m in exams at the moment. That’s pretty shitty, obviously. I’m heading back to Queensland once they’re over though (both Brisbane and Rockhampton, not quite sure of the order yet), so that’s pretty cool. Will be hanging with all the people and spending time with all the family and also seeing some bands at Harvest Festival, although after looking at the timetable it looks like I won’t be seeing quite as many bands as I thought. Oh well.

Also it’s my 21st birthday next week, although I’m not really interested in it. People can give me stuff if they want, I won’t say no, but I just don’t really want to do anything for it, besides drinking a few beers with friends.

I haven’t really been doing much of anything in the last month. I did some art a few weeks ago that I was pretty happy with (pixelart stuff), I put it up on tumblr and meant to put it here but just kind of forgot. I’ll do it later, probably. And I haven’t really written much either, which is annoying. I just haven’t had the chance to write about comics and stuff as much as I’d like to, I couldn’t bring myself to do it when I wasn’t even writing enough about the stuff I’m studying. I’ll get back to it soon though, once exams are over and things settle down and I am able to pick up comics again on a weekly basis.

So yeah, not much is up at all, but things will hopefully be up again in about a week. I’ll let you know.

MELBOURNE

I was in Melbourne for a few days with Daniel Wong last week. We went for no real reason in particular, mostly to just get away from everything and hang out in the best city in Australia for a bit. Daniel had never been before so we explored a heap.

It was a pretty great trip, I just kind of wish we didn’t leave. But I guess the best holidays are like that, right?

HIGHLIGHTS

• Shanghai Fried Noodles and Fried Pork Dumplings: The runaway hit of the trip, eaten at two separate locations, each with their own pros and cons. The first meal was in Glen Waverley, so it was pretty (very) out of the way, but we were staying nearby so it was okay. The meal was delicious, but what really sealed the deal was the free slurpee machine in the restaurant. The second meal was in the city, and somehow cheaper than the suburbs restaurant, and our meals came in around two minutes. But Glen Waverley was just a little more delicious.
• Exploring: Dude, we walked so much. We covered more of Melbourne on foot in four days then most residents would in a year. We found so much shit in Fitzroy, St Kilda, Brunswick, Prahran and the city. Most of the days were just spent walking and finding cool shit while Daniel took photos. He’s pretty good at it.
• Geelong vs West Coast: This was kind of a last minute thing, where just a couple of weeks beforehand I made the brilliant realisation that we would be in Melbourne during the AFL finals. And it worked out perfectly that Geelong were playing the day we got in (even though Collingwood vs. Hawthorne was a better game). This was actually the first thing we did when we got to Melbourne, and the only thing we had planned for the entire trip.
• Reminiscing: Meeting Daniel’s old Company of Heroes service buddy Richard and listening to them reminisce about their glory days in the service at the Little Creatures Dining Hall. Hearing tales from the corps, where Daniel’s replays were in the Hall of Fame and they’d have to change usernames regularly because no one would play with them because they were so good. I had no idea.
• Bro times: Meeting Richard and sleeping on his couch for three nights. Checking out Jason and Brendan’s store, Up There, and sleeping on Jason and Rachel’s couch for one night. Catching up with Sasky and Rory for breakfast, Brisbane dudes that moved to Melbourne without me realising. Playing Mario Kart 64 with Richard’s housemate in the AM while Richard worked nightshift. Meeting Nat for the first time, and the second time. Meeting Tash for the first time. Meeting Nathania for the, um, I can’t remember how many times it’s been now. Meeting up with Nathania is a staple of the Melbourne trip at this point.
• Great Moments In American Cinema: We watched The Room and two-thirds of Crank for the first time, that was pretty great. Oh wait no we watched The Room twice. We did other stuff too, I swear.
• Reviewing Avatar with Margaret Pomeranz: I know I already posted it, but it was so awesome. We also ha a few takes at the Matrix timeslice video thing, those were funny. ACMI is the best.
• Being ripped on for being scared of birds every twenty minutes: The first photo.
• Having to share a bed with Daniel Wong every night: ;)

More photos on tumblr. Photos by Daniel (some by me, heh).

http://covergallery.tumblr.com

I’ve started another blog. I know, huge surprise. It’s an artist-centric collection of fantastic comic book cover art, focusing mostly on extended runs on titles. I got the idea from constantly being blown away by the work Esad Ribic is doing on Uncanny X-Force (I’ve already posted the first four covers), and feeling that it needed to be collected on tumblr so I could reblog it. But since then I’ve just been queuing more and more covers because there’s just so much great stuff out there. I’ve scoured the internet collecting covers by some of my favourite dudes like Frank Quitely, Bruce Timm and Darwyn Cooke,  and collected runs of some of my favourite books like All Star Superman, Astonishing X-Men and Ultimate Spider-Man. I’ve got about 40 posts queued already and a list twice as long of books to get it. I think I’ll stick with this one for a while.

http://covergallery.tumblr.com/

The Ninja Rope’s Guide To The DC New 52

The Ninja Rope’s Guide To The DC New 52

I wrote a pretty nifty guide to the DC relaunch a couple of weeks ago at The Ninja Rope. It was kind of an exercise in layout design for me, and I really enjoyed writing/making it. Since then I’ve been disappointed with books like Stormwatch but surprised by books like OMAC. No doubt I’ll make a similar recap post when the #1 month is over (in like two weeks).

The Comics Rope

For the last couple of months I’ve been writing a weekly comics column over on The Ninja Rope. It’s no secret that I’m a huge comics fan, so when Clive asked me to contribute to The Ninja Rope I told him I’d be writing about comics and that was that. So now it’s a gaming and pop culture blog.

I started doing The Comics Rope in the last incarnation of The Ninja Rope back in 2010, but that sort of fell through and I only ended up doing one column. I started doing the column again in July of this year, and have been posting weekly since then. Here’s an archive of all my columns so far, with my pick of the week thrown in for good measure.

The Comics Rope: 25th July 2011 (Daredevil #1)
The Comics Rope: 1st August 2011 (Detective Comics #880, Uncanny X-Force #12 and FF #7)
The Comics Rope: 8th August 2011 (Snarked #0)
The Comics Rope: 15th August 2011 (Detective Comics #881)
The Comics Rope: 22nd August 2011 (We3: Deluxe Edition)
The Comics Rope: 5th September 2011 (Secret Avengers #16)

Oh hey, what’s up?

So here’s the deal.

I’ve been internetting for years, primarily on my tumblr, but last year I decided to start keeping  a proper blog. I was moving cities and saying goodbye to a lot of people, and I wanted to set up a blog to periodically update anybody who cared, really. So I went out and I bought a domain name and set all that business up, and what I was left with was http://anthonykellaris.com. But then, after a few months, it just disappeared. I have no idea why, it just vanished from the internet. I don’t know much about domain hosting and all that noise, so I was baffled. I tried to sort it out but it proved to be pretty difficult and then I just kind of lost interest.

But lately I’ve been writing a lot. I enjoy writing and I’d love to make a career out of it. I’m primarily writing for The Ninja Rope, but there have been bits and pieces posted all over the internet in recent months. On top of that I’ve been trying to keep up a bit of a sketchbook over on http://anthonysucks.tumblr.com, and so now more than ever, I’m in need of a proper blog. A central location for everything I put on the internet. Let’s see how this one goes.