Hey, I won an Uglydoll!

Jim Hanley's Universe called me last night while I was putting my daughter to bed to tell me the good news. Seeing as how I rarely if ever win these sorts of raffles, I'm kind of shocked. But in a good way.

Anyway, my report on NYCC is up and about at Tom Spurgeon's Comics Reporter site, along with some more photos. My sincere thanks to Tom for giving me the chance to do this. Honestly, I was a bit nervous about doing it -- I have a huge amount of respect for Tom and his site -- but it ended up being very fun to write and I think it turned out rather well in the end. You be the judge.

In other news, as Jog noted, I did a rather hefty look at the manga and anime boom for my employer, the Patriot-News. It's available online here, and you can read a related sidebar here. Unfortunately, the first third of the story got cut off due to technical errors. There were also a number of smaller sidebars that seem to have been neglected as well. I'll try to post the full version here either late today or early tomorrow morning (probably early tomorrow).

My sincerest thanks to all those who took their time to talk to me -- your thoughts and observations really made the piece shine. And my apologies in advance for any errors or other problems that slipped into print. Already Dirk Deppey let me know that "3,500 comics shops in the United States equals out to one comics shop per 1000 square miles, not one every 30,000 miles." That's what I get for not buying a new tape recorder and instead trying to rely on my own sloppy notetaking. Sorry Dirk.