What I got this weekend

If my blog were a school essay, this would rather be titled "What I did on my holidays", I know. But as this isn't a school essay (it would be waaaaay to late anyway, I've been out of school for 12 years now), it will only feature what the weekend brought me.

To make it short: one more "Girl Genius" comic, my You Higuri art book "Jewel", a sore throat and a common cold.

How I managed to get a sore throat, is beyond me, but the common cold definitely came from a colleague at work (which is over now, actually) who came to work even though he had one himself (very dutiful, but in essence also very stupid, risking to make everyone else sick).

I had planned on going to see the movie "300", but due to the first bouts of my sicknesses (can't I just have one at a time, please?), I didn't go. I guess I can live without seeing all those almost-naked men. (My main motivation, actually, I don't care about Sparta loosing a battle, they fought enough of them anyway - if men go to see a movie because there's a good-looking and scantily clad woman in it, then why can't I go see a fantasy-history movie just because of the good-looking, well-build, almost-naked guys, huh?) And I know what the story is about, thanks to Harald Schmidt, a man who can explain everything with a couple of children's toys and some food. (Watch for yourself, I hope you understand German, it's not half as funny otherwise.)

I'm now waiting for two more "Girl Genius" comics. One is on it's way … if you can trust the last email from amazon I got. I've gotten volume 1, 2 and 5 at the moment and will have volume 3 before the week is over (if I'm right and it's the one with the slaver wasps and the big battle on board the airship). Volume 4 will follow - some day. I can't really say when.

I'm also really, really happy about the art book. I own a couple of them by now - among them a Frank Frazetta art book (he painted covers for a lot of cheap paperback novels, but his pictures are great, most of the time better than the contents of the novels), a Brom art book (the guy is specialized on fantasy environments and monsters, works for books, role-playing games, trading card games and other stuff), an art book from both "WarCraft" and "World of WarCraft" and two Japanese ones ("Angel Cage" from my favourite manga artist Kaori Yuki and the "DragonBall" art book). With "Jewel" - a 'best of' of You Higuri's work - I have a third Japanese art book now (I used to own 6 "Sailor Moon" art books, too, but I'm selling them).

I like You Higuri's work (even though I like Kaori Yuki more) and most of the pictures in the art book are awesome. Some I know already - or can at least identify -, because they come from manga I know. There's a lot from "Cantarella" (a fantasy variety of the story of Cesare Borgia - go and google for the guy if you're interested in the historical background). Then there's almost all the coloured stuff from "Gorgeous Carat", a story set in the 1920s featuring an Arabian-French thief called "Noir" and a French aristocrat with the name "Floréan". I love the characters and the story (but would have liked a coloured picture from Solomon Sugar or Azura). Then there seems to be one "Gakuen Heaven" picture (though it's not the cover of the German version). Apart from those I can't recognize much, but I've already fallen in love with several, among them a very good picture of a vampire and some male couples (slash/yaoi - one of my great weaknesses). I would have liked some stuff from "Seimaden" (especially Titius, the angel-demon and his lover Zadei), but I guess those coloured works are in another art book, maybe "Poison" which I would still like to get.

So that's what I got this weekend. The sore throat is already passing and the cold will be over soon enough, too. The comic and the art book, on the other hand, will stay. While my nose is running and I think I'll be coughing up my lung soon enough, I'm really glad that it isn't the other way around...

UPDATE: I've gotten volume 3 of "Girl Genius" today, so I'm just waiting for volume 4 now...