Slim and shorty

Slim and shorty.
That's how I think about Cyclops and Wolverine. Maybe over the year Cyclops might have gotten a little stronger, it's possible, but Wolverine should have stayed short. Adamantiun bones don't stretch.

The wild hand.

"Do you want to hold them?", asked the little girl in the floating house docked in the middle of the river.

I hesitated. That was a very big snake, and even the alligator, which was only a baby they caught earlier that day, had a big enough mouth to do some damage to my hands.

The snake skin was shiny and beautiful, but slippery. and seemed almost detached from the muscles, so I had to hold tight while the girl cautioned me "not too tight". As my hand touched the snake, she started moving, slowly at times, but steady, and I could feel just how strong she was. She could crush me, I thought as I put her around my neck and over my shoulders, and this could be it. She wouldn't hold still, which made me nervous and made it difficult for Bá to take a picture, but how could I prove to the twenty years old me, who swore he would never try to hold a giant snake, that I was in the middle of the Amazon river (called Solimões river right there before he meets the Negro), alive and well, holding that sucuri (Anaconda for the gringos) and that baby alligator and looking at trees wide as a street and tall as a building?

This was one of the highlights of our trip to Manaus,capital city of the state of Amazonas here in Brazil, which included research for a future book. This, alongside our recent trip to Machu Picchu in Peru, made us want to create stories as impressive and astonishing as the experience of travelling to incredible places.

I returned home wanting to tell about the things I did and saw to my friends, and I wrote some of them, only to discover that my friend Craig Thompson was packed and ready to leave on a trip to China, so I'm sure an equally impressive experience will inspire him the same way I was inspired by these trips. Safe journeys, Craig, and see you in a bit.

Back to work, it's good to be back.

Nominated

Yesterday, the nominees for the 2011 Eisner Awards were announced and we were nominated for best limited series with Daytripper. We're happy.

The ceremony will be in July 22nd, during SDCC. There's a lot of work ahead of us before that, but it's nice to have this to look forward to while we work.

Thanks for all the support, and congratulation to all the other nominees.

Coordinates challenged

Just as we returned from our trip to Peru, one of our computers seemed dead. It didn't turned on any longer, and it looks like it won't turn on ever again. We had almost everything in back-ups, and we can still retrieve information from the drives, but while we don't do that, I remember one email that is stuck in there about a guy who sent his picture for the Daytripper Challenge from Russia, but I don't remember his name anymore, and the city he was from. Once I retrieve the email info on my hard-drive, he shall be named. I tthink he was the only one stuck in there, but I'll only know in a little while, so let's carry on with all the other emails we received.

German Torres wrote from Barcelona, having bought his copy (the spanish copy, not the english one) of the book online.

Jack Leask bought his copy at Blue Moon Comics in Novato, near San Francisco.

Liliana Vera comes from Sonora, in México, but bought her copy at a graphic novels and boardgames convention in Monterrey, Nuevo León, México. She wasn't sure she would find a copy, and was very happy when she did.

Rebecca Hawkins is a cruise ship musician, and bought Daytripper in Brooklin just before leaving for another period overseas. She emailed us from Grenada, West Indies, and send us a picture from her travel journal.

Michael wrote from Barnaul, in South-West Siberia, Russia (or 53º17'27"N 83º38'52"E, as he described it). He got the book through Amazon and likes the idea of putting books from tropical creators through the very different climate of Siberia.