I first came across Rommel Joson's artwork in the pages of Heights, and it blew me away pretty much every time. Best of all, he seemed to change not just the style but medium he used in every issue (so did another artist, Chico Barretto). He was Neva's batchmate, but I never met him until after he graduated. And to my surprise (and utter delight) he was actually interested in making comics, being a reader himself. So I gave him two scripts I had: "Perfume" & "You Are Here." One was written for a Heights exhibit of comic art (that Chris drew beautifully, by the way. Where is it, Chris?), the other was a loose adaptation of a letter Neva sent me when she was in Chicago and I missed her terribly. He chose to do "Perfume" and promptly disappeared for 6 months. Then around New Year's of last year (or was it 2 years ago?) he emailed me out of the blue with 3 finished pages. But I lost his email address and wasn't able to reply. Then Ernan mentions in Subic that he'd seen my comic online. Of course, I'm stymied. What the hell is he talking about? Then Naz tells me the same thing at Fete. Apparently, Rommel linked to it on Friendster. So I look up Rommel on Friendster, friend him, look in the Bulletin Board archives, and there's a link, and I follow it, and find: Perfume, written by me and illustrated by John Quaresma. Who is John Quaresma? I don't know, but those are Rommel's pages. This is all interesting timing because we're about to put out an anthology of short comics works as a zine.

So: Perfume, written by me and illustrated by Rommel Joson (aka John Quaresma). Tell me what you think. I know what I find embarrassing about it (nothing to do with the art; it's splendid). Remember it's old, and was my (I think) second formal comics script. The first was for Harvey, published in MTV Ink: "The Truth About Raining Cats & Dogs."

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Here's Natalie Portman and Melchior Beslon in a Tom Tykwer-directed short, "True," for the Paris, je t'aime anthology, which also has contributions from Woody Allen, Jean-Luc Godard, and the Coen bros.

And something nice from Neil Gaiman's blog:

"...over at http://www.somethingpositive.net the following gauntlet was thrown down, following complaints that things were getting sloppy:

Help me quit my job. Seriously. Click on that donate button and give me a buck... fifty center... five bucks. Whatever. I've more than enough readers that if over half of you did that, I'd have a year's salary and could quit my day job - and that's forty hours freed up for the comics. Go ahead.

So they did. $22,000 came in. He gave up his day job. That's cool."

And something for you porn-freaks.