Monthly Archives: February 2001

I've been playing with a free software program that was written by a fan of newspaper strips.  It's called WinComics and the way it works is that you pick your favorite current strips from a list in its setup program…then you run the main program and it logs into various syndicates' sites and downloads today's installments of those strips.  This is a terrific idea and, if you can get it to run right, better than the e-mail delivery that Universal Press has arranged for their strips.  If you want to experiment with WinComics, you can download it by clicking right here.  (I have nothing to do with it, so I assume no responsibility, nor can I help you with setting it up.  You're on your own…)

Since around the time of the Louisiana Purchase, I've been collaborating with Sergio Aragonés on comic books of a very silly nature, many of them issues of Groo the Wanderer.  About 90% of these have featured superb coloring by the talented and brave Tom Luth.  Why "brave?"  Because coloring Sergio's ornate, well-populated work is like trying to sweep the beach clean of sand or count all the gardeners in L.A. named "Juan" or correct all the typos and HTML errors on this website.  I once had to fill-in for Tom for about a third of an issue, back when we did it all by hand and…well, if not for a drop-dead deadline, I'd still be at it.  Just when you think you've tinted every last figure on the page and you rinse your brush, you find eight more.  Now that it's all being done on computer, Tom isn't rinsing brushes but he's probably saving very little time since he is doing more precise, intricate coloring…and Sergio and I couldn't be happier with the results.

All of this is leading up to a link to his website, www.thomasluth.com, where you can see samples of his coloring, as well as many other artistic endeavors, such as illustration and book design.  Take a peek and see what else Tom can do besides rendering our nonsense.

I have about as little interest in football as you could have on a subject, but I sometimes like to follow ratings games.  It is only on that basis that I'm intrigued by what will happen with the new XFL venture.  Eric Boehlert wrote a piece for Salon that argued that it can't possibly succeed…and argued it so thoroughly that I found myself thinking, "Hmm…even NBC can't be that far wrong."  (You can probably read his piece by clicking here.)

It's too early to tell if he'll be proven right.  Overnights on the first broadcast were huge — as you can see by clicking here — but they went steadily down as the evening progressed…and, anyway, Mr. Boehlert forecast a strong start.  He may yet turn out to have made one of the most on-target predictions I've seen in the field of TV journalism and analysis.  Or maybe just the opposite.