ART BOOK

ODD NUMBERS is the latest art book from the ever-growing empire of Michel Gagne. It's also the smallest. The thing only measures six inches by eight inches in landscaped format. Its thirty-two pages feature an increasing number of items on the increasingly grotesque creatures that Gagne is so well known for. Forget insanely twisted rabbits for once, and look at bent bees, wacky warthogs, armor-plated armadillos, and -- no. That doesn't do it justice. These aren't just obscure animals with a twist. These are new creatures created whole cloth from Gagne's imagination, using bits and pieces of zoo animals, perhaps, as inspiration. That's it.

Each page is a new creature, and each creature has a certain feature repeated for as many times as the page number of the book. It starts with a one horned creature and a two-tailed creature before moving onto a 13 tentacled slimy looking thing to a green 30 whiskered lizard-looking thing.

This is strictly an art book. No attempt has been made to hammer this into a narrative. It's nine dollars for the hardcover edition. There is no softcover edition on the schedule just yet. It's a beautiful production, with heavy glossy color pages and a sturdy square bound and hardcover wrapper.

There's also a healthy preview of ODD NUMBERS on Gagne's web site.

For those who want a trip down a strange road, this is the place to go.

Tangent: I watched the STAR WARS: CLONE WARS animated series (second season) on Cartoon Network last month and spotted a monster that had to have come from Gagne's imagination. It looked just like his style, but animated. Gagne is credited with special effects work, but I'd be shocked if he didn't put that creature together, too. Check out his web site for examples in the gallery of what his work entails on the animated series. I never thought I'd be impressed by pictures of explosions, low lying clouds, and the dust that gets kicked up by departing spaceships. I am now.

If you're a fan of Judd Winnick's JUNIPER LEE series, you should know that Gagne did some designs for the show that were ultimately rejected. Those are the coolest looking cows I've ever seen.

ODDS AND ENDS

• Have I mentioned yet that we're only a couple of weeks away from San Diego Comic Con? I'd love to do a con program review if those listings are uploaded to the site in time. Stay tuned.

• Memo to Mike Kunkel: I want a Starhopper Squirrel comic book. NOW. I can wait till San Diego, but no longer! Please?

• Intrepid Pipeline reader Joe Torcivia wrote in to correct a glitch in last week's PREVIEWS column. I referenced the solicited issue of UNCLE SCROOGE as being Carl Barks' last story, and then took a shot at the declining standard of Barks' art at that point. I much prefer the 40s and 50s art stylings to what Barks settled into during the 60s, which was much blockier and awkward looking to me.

  However, Joe is quick to point out that this is a story Barks only wrote. Tony Strobl did the original art job on the story in the late 1970s. Daan Jippes has been redrawing some of those stories, so there is a chance his name might be attached as artist, too. Stay tuned.

  Thanks, Joe.

• Speaking of Ducks, please take a moment to read Gemstone's memorial for Bruce Hamilton.

• Steve Pheley offers the most outstanding advice ever on what to wear to a comic book convention. Of particular interest to me are the club shirts he mentions at the ends. He's right -- they show up in mass numbers at comicons. I don't get 'em. I think they're about the ugliest of all the choices he offers up here. I'm lucky I don't get seizures at the sight of them.

• Slave Labor Graphics is having a 20% off sale on everything in their web store, but the deals are only good through the end of June.

  I've reviewed some of the books on sale here before. Let's do a quick rundown, in case you're inclined to partake:

  • Egg Story
  • Halo and Sprocket (issue two)
  • My Monkey's Name Is Jennifer (First two issues, Top Ten Book of 2002, issue six)
  • Sleeping Dragons (first two issues)
  • Slow News Day (first issue)
  • Sparks (First run of issues)

  (Hat tip: Johanna Draper-Carlson)

Check the Pipeline message board for updates on the Pipeline Comic Book Podcast.

You can still hear last week's podcast through the MP3 file.

Don't forget about the Various and Sundry Podcast and the VandS DVD podcast.

Various and Sundry continues its link dumps.

All political discussions have been pushed off to one neat side at VandS Politics.

You can e-mail me your comments on this column, or post them for all the world to see and respond to over on the Pipeline Message Board.

More than 500 columns are archived here at CBR and you can get to them from the Pipeline Archive page. They're sorted chronologically. The first 100 columns or so are also still available at the Original Pipeline page.