Spanish Inquisition # 1 is up!

After having a conversation with the wife about the awesomeness of Blankets and Scott Pilgrim, she challenged me to write a comic that DID NOT involve superheroes or aliens or gods... so I took the challenge and Spanish Inquisition was born. Also I'd never written a comic strip (4 panels, self-contained stories) so I took that challenge too. I hope I can keep it up. It's a little like writing a haiku, but it's also very fun.

Watching the Watchmen (Then reading the book.)

I’ve had time to digest the new Watchmen movie and I can’t shake how much I enjoyed it. I was one of those people who thought Alan Moore’s comic was unfilmable, but you know what? I was wrong. I think this film is a great compliment to the comic. Does it lose some of the depth and nuance and detail of the comic, of course it does, but that’s not unique to this title. Most book-to-film adaptations loose something. It’s just the nature of the transition. But I think Zack Snyder did an excellent job and this movie will live on as a gateway drug for the comic.

And that’s something to consider. I was introduced to the comic when I was in (or around) high school and the film had to live up to that. It was an uphill climb, but I’ve noticed a lot of people (and not just high schoolers) who have seen the movie first, after all Hollywood movies have a vastly larger audience than comic books, and were blown away. Then they picked up the trade (sorry, I can’t bring myself to call it a graphic novel) and delved deeper into the world of Watchmen. The film acts as an appetizer to the comic’s main course and that's a good and satisfying direction to go.

Crandon "Jurassic" Park

Tree over water
Originally uploaded by alexthoth

Went to Crandon Park for the first time in my life and really liked it. There's an abandoned zoo with all sorts of feral birds and reptiles running around (and since birds are nothing but feathered dinosaurs... That's where the Jurassic comes in!) We walked around the old zoo for a while, snapped a few pictures , then went to the beach where we encountered more birds. It was a pretty cool afternoon.

Canoeing with Marge en la Manigua

Back seat driver (actually she steers.)
Originally uploaded by alexthoth

Marge and I went canoeing the other day in Everglades National Park. If you click on the link you can see more pics of gators and herons and shit.

Traveling through this freaking thick ass manigua and bumping into snakes, crocodiles, and gators at every turn... I kept wondering how the Native Americans that lived here (the Tequesta, Calusa, then the Seminoles) managed to actually live here! Still, it was very cool and very beautiful.

Atoll at Sunset

Atoll at Sunset
Originally uploaded by alexthoth

Spent Valentine's Day at Mathenson Hammock Park with the wife. We had a picnic, waded in the sea, hiked through a mangrove forest, and took pictures. It was a nice romantic day and given these tough economic times it's was also pleasantly cheap.

Spanish Inquisition

First rough look at Spanish Inquisition, a comic strip about a geeky Cuban-American kid dealing with overly religious parents. By Frank Ruiz, Chris Turner, and myself. The strips will be loosely based (and by that I mean exaggerated) on my own and Frank's childhood.

Fallen Tree

Fallen Tree
Originally uploaded by alexthoth

Tree Top Park... This tree fell and kept on growing, if that isn't insperational, I don't know what is.

I still can't get used to the idea that there's such cool places near where I live. Here's a link to more pics of Tree Top Park.