Prospect came today.

My contributors copy of Prospect came today, and I've got it on ice. I look through magazines very quickly at the cartoons, then at the snippets and headlines and then at the letters page and then I put it away until the evening when I will read it from cover-to-cover. I've always done this, grazed first and then put the material away until later. This applies to comics, books, novels, comic books, cartoon collections, even the ones I have cartoon in. The illustrator/writer, Eddie Campbell, has spoken of almost entering a different space and time for reading comic books but with me I think it's a case of delayed gratification. If I delay the full act of reading as long as I can, I can always look forward to reading the thing. I have to delay it this way because the moment I've turned the last page it's as if all the joy is sucked out of me. I visibly deflate and almost go into a state of depression, unless I have more things to read, that is.

I've looked at all the cartoons and I found one or two very funny. I can't laugh at mine (above), because it's mine and the joy went out of it when I finished it. I enjoyed the cartoons by my friends and colleagues Mike Lynch and Srini Bhukya and one that I'm sure is by one of our old friends whom we haven't seen a lot of recently, Ralph Hagen, it's about lawyers discovering America. Very funny gag.