This weekend it was too damn hot to do much of anything except sit around, so I did just that, reading me some comics in the meantime, most of which had some kind of musical angle to them.

I finally read Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, the second volume in the Scott Pilgrim saga, and it was just as awesomely awesome as the first volume. If you haven’t yet picked up this series, you are willfully defying the wisdom of comics aficionados everywhere and will probably be punished for your insolence.

I also read volume 1 of Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad from Tokyopop, a manga about a 14 year old nobody who gets a chance to be somebody when his life intersects with a hip 16-year old who’s in a band. It was pretty good, and seemed to be a nice mixture of the music angle, his romance angle, and other elements. One of my only complaints about Hikaru No Go is that the Go aspect is front, center, and full in effect, leaving very little space for fleshing out any other aspects of Hikaru’s life, and I think Beck balances that better. Beck was a pretty solid first volume, but it won’t kill me if I don’t get any of the others.

Speaking of bands, I also got into The Stereos. I first heard of this band…er, comic, over at BeaucoupKevin’s crib, and after reading his description of these books, I decided to snag them myself. I ordered them off the website of the books’ creator, Brandon Hanvey. I got both books: Battle of the Bands, and In the Garage. And they were both just incredibly charming. Usually with “all-ages” books the label is kind of misleading…there are books that are kid-friendly but not too adult-friendly. This one is solidly in the “all-ages” category. The stories are pretty straightforward and charming, with plenty of humor for all. I particularly liked the page showing the other bands playing the talent show: I identified (I think) Nirvana, Weezer, They Might Be Giants, Sleater-Kinney, and a few others. Plus, dig this: so I pay the guy for the books, right? And he sends them to me. Plus a bookmark. Plus a bumper sticker. Plus two pins. Plus, he inscribes one of the books and does a sketch. I mean, how cool is all that?

In addition to comics, we watched the first disk of episodes of the BBC series Mi:5, which Becky got from Netflix and which was way cool. We’re stoked for more, now that there’s no more Doctor Who for a while. I noticed something interesting about those episodes that I’ll try to remember to talk about tomorrow.

Also, my eBay auctions ended with me $130 richer. Sweet! That’s going towards my new monitor and new DVD burner, which should be arriving any day now!