Vampire Population Ecology

A nifty piece of Almeda"’s link sausage: Vampire Population Ecology, a population-dynamics estimate of how many vampires the town of Sunnydale can support.

Foglio on Girl Genius

Here’s an interview with Girl Genius creator Phil Foglio. My favorite bit is the high-concept descriptions of the characters:

• Agatha: “A female blend of King Arthur with Harry Potter”
• Krosp: “Napoleon Bonaparte as a cat”
• Baron Wulfenbach: “Doc Savage as kindergarten teacher”
• Gil: “Tim Burton does Hamlet”
• The Jägermonsters: “A Mongol Horde staffed entirely by clones of the Katzenjammer Kids”

The Sky Road divergence point

I’ve finished rereading The Sky Road, and with it my second run through Ken MacLeod’s four-book Fall Revolution series. For folks who haven’t read it, here’s a brief chronological summary:

• The Star Fraction covers the events immediately leading up to and during the global event from which the series takes its name, the Fall Revolution, in the mid-21st century.
• The Stone Canal has two linked storylines. Odd-numbered chapters take place on a distant planet in the far future, cover several different characters, and are narrated in the third person. The even-numbered chapters are first-person accounts by one of the characters from the odd chapters; they start off in the 1970s and bring us up to the point where chapter 1 starts. Along the way they also cover the events of The Star Fraction, but some of the claims the narrator makes about the Revolution are wrong.
• The Cassini Division picks up shortly after where The Stone Canal leaves off.
• The Sky Road is the interesting one. It’s set in an alternate timeline, where the events of The Cassini Division and most of The Stone Canal never take place.

The first time I read these books it was a span of months or years between The Cassini Division and The Sky Road, so I somehow missed the point where the timeline splits off, but this time I saw it....

(  Spoilers for the Fall Revolution books  )

OK, now what do I read?

Sky Between Branches

OK, so I’ve not done a lick of artwork this past week or so. (Save doodling on the brown paper tablecovering at Burdick’s ... Mmmmmmmm, Burdick’s hot chocolate... where was I? Oh yes, what I’ve been doing:) But it’s not all been idleness. I’ve changed my shower curtains and given the tub a much-needed scrubbing (Chris will rejoice), and I’ve been bagging and boxing some of my many, many comics pamphlets. I’ve done about, um, looks like a hundred and fifty or so. About half a box. Lots more to go. No new comics that I get due out tomorrow, but I’ll at least have to buy more bags, and maybe more boxes.

It’s a slower job than it oughta be, since I occasionally find some bit of treasure that deserves a new looking at, or that I’d forgotten about. I found issue #0 of an extraordinarily pretty comic called Sky Between Branches, giving us the second of today’s sky-themed post titles. I never saw issue #1, and a look at the publisher’s website tells me why — it hasn’t come out. Not much story in the #0 preview (which I think came out in June), but goddamn that’s pretty artwork. Looks a bit like Charles Vess with an anime/manga influence and computer coloring. (In fact, the computer coloring makes the linework look more detailed than it actually is.) Anyway, the reminder was enough to get me to add the title to my watchlist, so if later issues ever do ship, I’ll see them.