With its olive-green hardcover, gold-foil accents and gilt-edged pages, and packed with original illustrations by 90 of the hippest cartoonists and pop artistses working, Beasts! looks equally at home displayed in a museum gift shop or propped against a skull on a wizard’s workbench.

This is one of the books I’m looking forward to buying most this year. So I can prop it up next to my skull.

- Eric

He says, “CBR format has rapidly become the preferred means of digital comics delivery for people who mostly like to read comic books or graphic novels when they read comics in print … Like MP3 files, CBR’s first gained prominence in the file-sharing world. … CBR format is, far and away, the very best way I’ve discovered to read ‘longform’ comics in digital form.”

First you’ll need some Comic Book Reader software, such as CDisplay (for Windows), FFView (for Macintosh), Qcomicbook (Linux/KDE) or cbrpager (Linux/Gnome).

Once you’ve downloaded one of the software packages linked above, here are the launch CBR’s from the Modern Tales family:

From Modern Tales proper:

Headsmen (Rogues of Clwyd Rhan one-shot) by Reinder Djikhuis

Hotel Fred Vol2 #1 by Roger Langridge

Ballad of Little Monster by Herve Largeaud

Wahoo Morris (Free Comic Book Day issue) by Craig Taillefer

From GirlAMatic:

Galaxion # 1 by Tara Tallen

From serializer:

Make Love the Fetus-X Way by Eric Millikin

From Graphic Smash:

Charity Begins in Hell (Reckless Life) by Tim Demeter

For more, see Joey’s post at Talk About Comics.

Speaking of which, our TalkAboutComics forum is pretty quiet. If you post there, I will talk about comics with you.

- Eric

Sincerely,
6 a.m. Insomniac Eric

You can find our update schedule on talkaboutcomics.com

Enjoy!

1) Expect your new serializer.net by the end of this month of October.

2) Serializerists of the future and their works of art include:

• Nick Bertozzi, As Yet Untitled Experimental Comics, then “Drop Ceiling”
• Matt Bors, “Idiot Box”
• Patrick Farley, “Apocamon: The Final Judgement”
• Matt Feazell, “Amazing Cynical Man!”
• Renée French, “micrographica”
• Jenny Gonzalez, “Too Negative”
• Merlin Goodbrey & Douglas Noble, “The Rule of Death”
• Tom Hart, “Hutch Owen”
• Sam Henderson, “The Magic Whistle”
• Jonathan Larabie, “The Minibar Bill”
• Phil McAndrew, “Bean” and/or “Hug the Cactus”
• Metaphrog “Louis - Lying to Clive”
• Eric Millikin, “Fetus-X”
• Jen Sorensen, “Slowpoke”
• Casey Sorrow, “Feral Calf”
• Joda Thayer, “Few and Far Between”
• Jason Turner, “True Loves”
Approximately five other artists to be named later

3) Publisher’s Weekly refers to many of serializer’s artists as “art comics favorites” and “critical darlings.” London’s Sunday Times has called serializer “high art,” and The New York Times thought some of our comics were “Well drawn and funny.” The Comics Journal found some Serializer comics to be “daring, entertainingly perverse” while The Guardian found artwork on serializer that “threatens to seriously tamper with one’s smug equilibrium.”

4) Questions? E-mail ericmillikin-at-gmail-dot-com