By the time you read this, Julie and I will be off on our longest vacation/bookscouting road trip since we got married. Eleven whole days on back roads, first southbound on the Pacific Coast Highway, then east through the Santiam River Valley, and then back up north through the eastern Oregon desert country, stopping at every used bookstore and thrift shop that catches our eye.

So I'm not going to be home to write a column. (Julie wants to take the laptop and our Clearwire modem, so conceivably I could upload something from the road, but this is supposed to be a vacation...)

However, I hate to miss a week, so I've put together this list of fun links so you will at least have some entertainment in lieu of the usual rambling. The next couple of weeks will feature columns that I'd already written in anticipation of being gone, but try as I might I couldn't find the time to get three weeks ahead. So this week: links and stuff.

*

Here is an amazing blog about some of the great illustrators.



I could spend hours in the archives there. The guy's got everything -- pulps, comics, portfolios, fanzine stuff. An amazing array of talent is represented ranging from Roy G. Krenkel to Alex Toth to Frank Frazetta, and often it's very rare cover originals or portfolio pieces.



Check it out. But budget at least an hour to spend there, and even then you'll just be scratching the surface. Thanks to my friend Stephen for the heads-up on it.

*

The Green Hornet trailer is up.



All those people speculating about the Hornet movie being 'serious' -- after all, Seth Rogen really worked to get into shape, he swears he loves the character, etc., etc.... Guys, it's Seth Rogen. Come out of the fantasy. The movie's going to be a comedy. Let it go.

That said... I admit it, I kind of liked this trailer. It looks like it might be a fun action-comedy kind of a movie, sort of in the same territory as, say, True Lies or maybe Mystery Men.

*

Speaking of trailers, you can also check out this one, for Tales of an Ancient Empire....



.... the long-promised sequel to The Sword and the Sorcerer that we've been waiting for the last eighteen years to see.

Well, some of us, anyway. It's embarrassing how excited I am to see this. I'm not real clear at this point if it's getting a theatrical release or going straight-to-DVD, but whichever it is, I am so there.

Incidentally, this is what's called a "red band" trailer, which means there are some slightly naughty and/or violent bits of it that probably make it Not Safe For Work. But nothing that should shake up any reader of current comics too terribly.

*

This one's not a link, but Adam Garcia sent along another preview image for his upcoming Green Lama book.



Haven't seen the actual novel yet but I do think that Mr. Garcia's one of the best of the regular Airship 27 contributors, and I really like Mike Fyles' artwork, so I have high hopes for this book being a lot of fun. Anyway, the illustration's too good not to share.

Speaking of the Green Lama, I should point out that he and his other B-list pulp adventure-hero brethren have many of their original prose adventures available in back issues of High Adventure, from the wonderful Adventure House... and the back-issue sale is still going on, too.







Julie actually treated me to a subscription to High Adventure a few weeks back.... because my wife is AWESOME, that's why. Happy anniversary, baby.

*

I got a couple of columns ahead before we took off, so next week there's going to be a report on our last field trip of the school year for Cartooning, to the Olympia Comics Festival, in this space; a historical survey of some of the lesser-known swashbucklers in comics the week after that... and we should be back home the following Friday, complete with a trip report. See you then.