Blog Template Update for September
This is the latest monthly update to the left column of the blog, updating my favorite comics and TV for the previous month. The listings are alphabetical, not by rank of how much I liked them in comparison. My criteria for what makes the list is when I read them, not necessarily when they were published.

September was a decompression month, in a lot of ways. The 20th anniversary celebration of Dragon's Lair was over, so that was a ton of stress gone, and basically things calmed down a bit. Of course, then we started having people in to remodel the kitchens and bathrooms, and organization for STAPLE! '07 started up, we launched Comic Pants and started planning for Wizard World Texas, and... OK, it was a decompression week and a half. At any rate, though, it was a good month, plenty of good comics, lots of good TV and a good first month for the new site.

Pretty solid, if unspectacular, month for comics in September. There weren't a ton of books that got cut to make my top 20, but there were a few. There weren't a lot of new first issues, but The Goon Noir, the first issue of True Story Swear to God at Image and Union Jack #1 were all solid openers.

Television, though, is really looking up. This was the best new Fall season in years, and I've got four new shows that I really like added to my viewing habits. I'm hoping that Kidnapped's relatively low ratings don't spell doom, as it's probably my second favorite show of the new season, right behind Studio 60. Smith is right behind that, and Heroes right behind that. And The Nine hasn't even started yet, and has been getting good buzz. I also finally discovered how funny The Office is - I'm almost through watching the second season DVDs, and the third season's first two episodes were great. I'm watching five NBC shows this year, six if you count Scrubs, which hasn't officially started yet. No FOX shows, since too much TV means Family Guy and Bones get cut due to time, and no ABC shows until Lost starts up. If The Nine is good, ABC and CBS are tied for second in my viewing, with two shows each. CBS has The Unit and Smith. CW has Veronica Mars. What's kind of amazing is that there's so much else I would watch, if I had unlimited time. Bones, Shark, the two CSIs I've seen (original flavor and Miami), Without A Trace, these are all solidly-produced, well-acted procedurals. If I wasn't more interested in serials, or if I had an eighth day of the week set aside just for TV, I'd probably watch them as well.

And that's not counting cable. Weeds season two on Showtime is great, I love Professional Poker Tour on Travel channel, Doctor Who just restarted on SciFi and Battlestar Galactica restarts this Friday. I'm about two months' behind on Daily Show and Colbert Report, and those may have to get cut from my regular viewing as well, not because I love them any less but because a four-day a week hourlong is just too much time commitment to watch. Might be time to switch to Youtube "Best Of" viewing like my buddy Dave Martindale.

Throw in 24 and The Shield starting early next year, and it's just a great time to be a TV fan. Probably the best level of quality of all the entertainment mediums I follow with what some might call an obsessive style. Certainly a better average than you get in either comics or movies these days. If only Arrested Development could have lived to see it.

For those who care, I've converted my RSS links into regular site links. I've also updated them according to what's in my actual newsreader feed at the moment, and I'll add and subtract each month as I keep discovering new artists and others with webpages. By the way, I know Will Pfeifer isn't an artist, but he's the only writer I keep up with at the moment, blog-wise, so for now he goes in with that group.