30 for Friday

Tom Spurgeon's Five for Friday this week featured a great assortment of 30 comics-related questions. I sent in my five best answers, but thought I'd go ahead and answer the others for fun:

Favorites
1. What is your favorite stand-alone publication of the last five years?
Ice Haven.

2. What is your favorite ongoing serial comic that's published an installment in the last three months?
The Walking Dead.

3. What is your favorite webcomic?
I enjoy all the Funny Pages comics in the NY Times and have lately been enjoying some of the comics at act-i-vate. I especially dug Kevin Colden's Fishtown. I'm also really enjoying Smith Magazine's Next Door Neighbor series.

4. What is your favorite ongoing newspaper strip?
I don't really read any newspaper strips anymore, but when I did, I loved Beetle Bailey, Dilbert, the Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes like everybody else.

5. What is your favorite comics web site that is not a link- or commentary-blog?
Hmm. I'm not a big Previews guy, so I always enjoy Read Yourself Raw when it's updated.

Comic Shops
6. What's the best experience you've ever had in a comics shop?
It's not a comics shop, but I once found a copy of Comics from Scribner's Magazine, a platinum age comic from 1890 in an antique shop in the Berkshires. It was in great shape and I bought it for only $5.

7. What's the worst experience you've ever had in a comics shop?
In fifth grade, I nearly neutered myself when I tried to steal a hardcover copy of Charles Vess' Spirits of the Earth Spider-man graphic novel by shoving it down my pants.

8. List the names of the comics shops that have been your shop in your lifetime of buying comics.
In St. Louis - Bob's Comics, Upstairs Comics (?), the Fantasy Shop, and my favorite, Star Clipper.
In Charlotte - Heroes Aren't Hard to Find
In London - Gosh Comics, Mighty Comicana and Forbidden Planet
In NYC - Midtown Comics, Roger's Time Machine, Jim Hanley's Universe, the Strand Bookstore
Online - E-Bay, NostalgiaZone, Mile High Comics

9. If a comic shop has opened within 50 miles in the last two years, what exactly makes you think it will or won't survive until a fifth anniversary?
I know a lot of bloggers like to debate the strengths and weaknesses of the direct market and the way comic shops run their business, but to me, living in NYC, I don't really care that much. I'm more interested in the products themselves than the business of how they are marketed and sold. As for new comic shops in the city, I keep meaning to get out to Rocketship and check it out, but it's a little bit of a trek from Queens.

10. What is something you've done in a comics shop you're sorry happened?
See #7.

Greats
11. Who is the Greatest Living Cartoonist?
There's a compelling argument to be made for Crumb, but I haven't read much beyond the Crumb Handbook, so, based on my limited reading experience, I'm going with Gilbert Hernandez.

12. Name the female cartoonist highest up in your personal pantheon.
Lynda Barry.

13. Name the cartoonist with a non-white South American or African heritage highest up in your personal pantheon.
I'm not sure. I like Kyle Baker but his newer stuff has been hit or miss. Eduardo Risso is awesome, but I dropped 100 Bullets a while ago.

14. Who is the world's most under-appreciated cartoonist?
Theo Ellsworth

15. Name a cartoonist you know is great but whose work you find hard to enjoy.
Gary Panter

Nostalgia
16. What was the first comic that you remember buying after the last time you stopped buying comics?
I'm not sure I ever stopped buying comics for more than a couple months over the last 20 years.

17. What comic do you plan to revisit one day?
I'd like to reread the entire run of Gaiman's Sandman. I also want to go back and re-read Watchmen for the fifth time before the movie comes out.

18. Name a comic that was even better when you tracked it down than you remember it being the first time.
Marshall Law (thanks to Jog). I would also list Skreemer by Peter Milligan, which I just re-read a few months ago. A very cleverly constructed story. I love the way it interweaves flashbacks and different perspectives.

19. What is the worst comic in your collection that you keep for reasons other than its quality?
McFarlane's Amazing Spider-man run. Kept out of pure nostalgia.

20. One word only: what is your primary non-comic association with comics?
Like Alan, I don't really understand this question.

Self-Improvement
21. What one site not your own or a friend's does CR not in your opinion cover near enough?
I know it's a little self-serving, but I think Sequart has a lot of good young writers with a range of perspectives. I love the site's diversity and open philosophy.

22. Name a comics figure this site has never interviewed you'd like to see interviewed.
James Sturm

23. Name a comics figure this site has interviewed you'd like to see interviewed again.
Sammy Harkham, post-release of Kramer's Ergot 7.

24. Name an under- or unreported news story from your perspective.
Umm, the Danish cartoons controversy? Seriously, though, maybe some coverage about non-comics projects that well-known comics artists are working on; a "where are they now" kind of feature for guys who have left the medium. One example that comes to mind is Jon J. Muth's children's books.

25. Name a resource this site could house that would be valuable to you.
I'd like to see more reviews and coverage of webcomics.

Bonus Section: Not Comics
1. What is your favorite sandwich?
I'm vegetarian, so I guess a veggie burger.

2. Name three US vice-presidents in the order that they occur to you.
Cheney, Bush, Gore.

3. Name a movie that shouldn't have been remade and a movie that should be.
Shouldn't: Psycho
Should: The Birds

4. Otto Graham, Joe Montana or Tom Brady?
I guess Joe Montana, but really, this means nothing to me.

5. If you could have any middle name in the world not "Bronislaw," what would it be?
Zeus.