THE SNOWPOCALYPSE SAGA part 1

Oh man, where to start?

Perhaps at the beginning?
See, me and the family went back east for the holidays.
Some good friends let us commandeer their apartment in Brooklyn so we could hang out in our old 'hood before heading down to Philadelphia to see our families.

And it was great!
I even had some time to myself to wander the city and do some shopping.
Well, actually I spent a lot of time trying to find a book.
I've been reading Suzanne Collins GREGOR THE OVERLANDER series and was just 25 pages away from finishing the fourth book. I figured I'd polish it off before the trip so I only had to bring the 5th (and last) one with me.

But when I got on the plane, I realized I forgot to polish it off.
It was over here:


Rats.
At least I had Fables 14 and Ex Machina 9 and 10 to keep me busy. Both are REALLY sooper awesome comic series, if you're looking for something to read.
Although I gotta say I hate Ex Machina's photo-reference art-style.
Haaaaaaate it.
But Mr. Vaughn's writing MORE than makes up for it.

Anyway... I figured I'd just pop into a book store in NYC and quickly read the last 25 pages of Gregor The Overlander and the Marks of Secret before starting book 5.
But it wasn't at the Barnes and Noble flagship store.
Or the one on 5th ave.
Or The Strand.
Or Shakespeare and Co.
Or McNallys.

And finally when I had given up... there it was. At the little Barnes and Noble on 6th Ave in the West Village.
YAY!

It's a fun series although I had a hard time getting through the first book since it all felt a bit too 'done'-- ie Hapless kid falls into strange new world, meets princess character, just might be the Chosen One, etc etc etc. But as it went along I hopped on board for the ride and cheered Gregor on. Or Ripred, at least.

But it wasn't like I was wasting all my time looking for that book.
No, that was just inbetween all the other stuff like visiting Curious Pictures, eating at Dogmatic, and buying comics at Forbidden Planet.
(sorry LA... you still don't have a comic store as comprehensive as FB that I don't have to drive into Hollywood for.)

And on the way, I even got to grab some lunchables with my sooper pal Phil Yarnall, who I've known since, like, 7th grade and moved into the big city with years and years and yeeeears ago.
He's a big shot graphic designer who does a lot of stuff for the music biz and he was cool enough to slide me a copy of this:


He designs all the packaging for the Jimi Hendrix estate, as well as stuff for AC/DC, Cheap Trick, Hank Williams, and you name it.

Iffn you wanna see some more of his work... head on over to SMAY DESIGN.
You're kinda crazy if you don't.

Anyway... after a couple days in the city we made our way down to Phila for family-style Christmas action which was, of course, holly AND jolly-- but a bit rushed.
So we were pretty worn out when we drive back to NYC on Dec. 27th, the day before our flight was to leave. Sure, Phila had gotten maybe 6-8 inches of snow. But NYC?

Almost two feet.
It was, in some people's words...

A SNOWPOCALYPSE!!!

(stay tuned for part two of the snowpocalypse saga real soon!)