First.

After a few days without internet, I could do offline stuff, reading comics, writing comic story for my own one, and...playing Peggle. Damn, awesome game it is...
Now that my internet is back, I can write down all that happened. Everything I did, and my opinions. Since this is a comic blog, I will detail the comics only. Details later, summary first.

My internet was gone for three days. In these three days of offline activities,
I've read:
-About 60 issues of Donald Duck Magazines - 2 weeks of my youth each. It was nice nostalgia.
-Gold Digger 1-4 (Color remix version), sadly, I only have it on computer.
-Vader's Quest (issue 2#) -Veeeery old and veeeery original magazine.
-Some random FNH Spiderman issue I downloaded, with events I don't know shit about.
-Some TMNT. It seems doujinshi. (fan-made) It's story is kind of WTF.
-Angyo Onshi (book 12) - It is one of the few mangas in Hungary sold in Hungarian.

I've played:
-Lots of Peggle. Those Challenge modes sure are fun.
-Lego Racers 2. Nostalgia again. When I was 9, I played that game a lot.
-Fable. Good game, but I completed it a few times, so I stopped quickly.

I've watched:
-Appleseed (anime movie)
-Groundhog Day
-Batman - The Dark Knight. -With the hungarian dub this time. Yuck.
-Drawn Together season 3.

DETAILED:
-Donald Duck magazines.
I was digging for them through the wardrobe, but I found my 2 big piles of Donald Duck magazines.
These were the only available comics (other than some Batman or Spiderman booklets) in Hungary at that time, and they were the only comics I had. They made me start this all. They are why I did draw that green notebook full of Vilfred, the bat's adventures and made me decide, I will live from making comics.
Now, onto the topic.
If you don't know this magazine, I'll tell you how it was done.
Every issue had some "gratis" little toy in it, usually to make pranks. The magazine itself always has one from the old Donald comic strips, usually 4 panel ones, there are some with/without colour, depending on the date of it. Each issue is about 46 pages in full color, with 4 longer stories, and 2-3 of the 1-page stories. Stories are divided in each issue, usually there are 2 Donald Duck, 1 Mickey, 1 Goofy, OR 1 Dagobert, 1 Donald, 1 Mickey, 1 Nick-Tick-Vick, etc etc, stories are divided equally, you get the idea. In the middle of the magazine there are 2 pages of pranks, 2 pages of jokes, and there are usually 2 pages of advertisements.
Review:
I didn't remember as a little kid that these stories were so short. I remember I spent half hour trying to read a whole magazine when I was 7, and it really took that long. Now magazines are just a few minutes to read each, kinda disappointing. The joke-pages were pathetic back then, pathetic right now, but some did make me smile. I liked reading the pranks, because I did lot of them when I was young, especially the ones with some creativity. (For example, how to make a slingshot out of a box of matches)
The stories. They are good. They are all 10-page long one-shots, but they can each make me smile and all characters can act out their personality. They are very rarely connected (Only 2-chapter story I have is the Milennium one in the New Year's Eve magazine) Too bad some jokes are a bit far-fetched, or too childish (Even when I was little) but that's how it is.
Whatever, I read them for nostalgy, and I did get lot of that.
My favorite story was when Dagobert gets total paranoia because everyone tries to rob him, and asks Donald to get him an invention from the inventor (I dunno his name in English. In hungarian, his name is Szaki Dani, which kinda means "Inventor Dannie" (Daniel)) and Dagobert promises Donald to pay him every time the machine warns him that somebody wants to rob his Safe. Greed leads Donald to turn the "Paranoia level" on the machine up so he can get more money for the more warnings, so the machine warns Dagobert that "a great army is coming for his treasure". Dagobert gets scared greatly, warns the national army, turns up all security systems, loads his gun, and waits for the army to appear. After lots of destruction, fear, explosions, it turns out the machine's high "paranoia level" was warning Dagobert about a group of ANTS attacking the pot of SUGAR next to his coffee.
I liked these comics back then, I like them right now, even though I outgrew the jokes and the story is happening too fast for me. (You don't see moment-to-moment panel changes here, and the characters comment on everything, so the story is easy and quick to follow.)
It was a very good nostalgia time.

GOLD DIGGER 1-4 COLOR REMIX

Fred Perry's magic here. Hot babes, ancient trasure, fights, jokes.
Sadly, there are no ways at all in Hungary to get these comics, so I had to download them. I'd gladly donate the author to pay for them, though.
Gold Digger is a great saga, so I won't talk about formalities. It is about sexy archeologists.
It was really good, it was exciting the whole time, the babes are hot and lovable, the guys are guys you want to be similiar to. My favorite character was the furry girl under the nickname "Cheetah". She is a BIG and muscular (and hot) girl, but mostly acts cuddly and girly.
Coloring certainly did VERY good for the series. Pictures are good, story is epic. Maybe too epic. In these issues 1-4, the main heroes found the most important things in archeology (Except the Ark, because Indiana Jones was faster, heh) so maybe Fred used up the big stuff too fast. Other thing I didn't like were the bit hard-to-follow dialogues, but you can get used to it. The Saga touches all kinds of genres, from fantasy to slice-of-life and sci-fi. Great saga, lot of characters, lot of action, lot of boobs. I can only recommend you BUYING and reading as much as you can get from them.

VADER'S QUEST

Star Wars comic, it is about Vader wanting to find Luke. The comics chronologically happen between episode 4 (New Hope) and 5 (Empire's Revenge)
These are old comics. I have issue 2 in original, from a street merchant, but I had to download the rest of them.
They are thin booklets, but lot of stuff happens in each. They are very exciting, and again, they are OLD. They are really old-skool, back from the times when Star Wars meant 3 episodes, and from the times the horrible idea of Jar-Jar Binks was only an abomination in the backrow of Lucas' subconscious. The times when Darth Vader meant THE EVIL, not the crying Hayden Christiensen.
*sigh*
So old comics mean old drawing techniques. Old painting, rustic lines, handwritten texts. Orgasmic.
The story is epic, too.
Not much else to write about it.

FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDERMAN #23
I didn't get much of the story. It did had an "In the last issue:" part, but most of it was without context for me. It did seem good, though. No Spidey-action, more of epic-talk. Compared to the original Spiderman comics, the story was kinda messed up by now. It was wonderfully coloured all through, some face-anatomical errors did appear in the drawing (mostly eyes or noses) and at some places, the panels were unnecesserily odd-shaped. Not much else to write about it.

TMNT - Raphael - BAD MOONS RISING
The drawings had great atmosphere, but the story ruined that for me. It had werewolves, magicians, vampires, plane-shifting, holy swords, and only Raphael from the turtles. I absolutely don't get why did Raphael have to be there. A story with more sense, and Raphael's place replaced with somebody else, it would've been an okay comic, but WHY did a ninja turtle have to be there.
It's like the photographers on deviantart, they make a beautiful picture of a city from the roof of a building, BUT they put a naked woman in the bottom-right corner of the picture. Naked women are good to see, but they mess up the cityscape picture and in the end, the whole picture is nonsense. But as I said, the drawings had a great atmosphere. They weren't good, but they had an atmosphere.

ANGYO ONSHI (BLADE OF THE PHANTOM MASTER) #12

It is a fantasy manga based on Korean culture and folklore.
The story was great as always, but I dislike the way the artist's drawings change. At first they were well done, manly, REAL SEINEN drawings, now it seems the artist picked up a bit more generic style. It looks good, but it kinda miss the old ones.

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I'VE PLAYED:
Peggle is a great game, like a modern tivoli.

Lego Racers 2, I play it out of nostalgia. When I was 9, I spent lot of time in front of that game.

Fable is good.

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I'VE WATCHED:
Appleseed was good, but far from great. It did make an interesting utopia-theory though, and apart from the weak intro and the slow ending, it was exciting.

Groundhog Day: Awesome movie, and I had popcorn.

Dark Knight - The movie is good, only the hungarian dubs suck. The problem is with Joker - One of the most famous (and I admit it, one of the best) voice actor acted Joker, but he just wasn't suited really for it, and Ledger is not repeatable. Our hungarian voice actor did the best anyone could expect from him, but he wasn't suited for the job.

Drawn Together - is awesome.

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And this was the first post in my blog after the introduction. Next time I will write about some comic theory or something.

Introduction

Hello. I'm Gábor Both from Hungary. I will use the nickname "Roach" here, because my real name is not really artistical and it's hard to type ("both" is a word with a meaning, lot of people can't write á on english keyboards, and in Hungary, names are swapped, so I'm called Both Gábor here...that's why the nickname) I don't have any nicknames other than fantasy names, so I will stick with that. Plus I get to use a bug as a mascot and ComicRoach nearly sounds as cockroach. Back to me.
I study stained glass art, but I want to work with comics. Since I got my first Donald Duck magazine at age 6, I wanted to make them (So I gave up my dream of becoming a fireman. Heh, childhood.) I was drawing comics in afterschool childcare (mostly using lego minifigures or Jazz Jack Rabbit as characters) and I had a full "comic book" done at age 9, drawn in a green notebook with the adventures of Vilfred, the bat. At 11, I got a prize for a coloured page of Bionicle (Lego) comic, that was an official success. (Grandmoms patting your head do not count)
Since then I was only a reader, mostly manga, but a book at age 16 made me realize my childhood dreams once again. It was Scott McCloud's book, "Making Comics". I had to walk the way for the bookstore twice because I did not have money with me, but I had to get that book in instant and that book was the best buy in my life, and I learned very much from Scott. (His website is also useful, scottmccloud.com) Since then I was learning, tried to improve both my drawing skills and my knowledge of comics, too. This one and half month of summer vacation was spent with reading and studying, (about comics) but my plan is to have my own comic started by September.
I have thoughts about comic making, and I know enough to start making guides, and I have opinions about lot of webcomics. (No kidding, I visit like 20 webcomics in 2-3 days, plus some I check daily...) Also, I want my comic started sometime soon, so I will have to write up a story, start designing characters, making the webpage...
Logical choice was starting up this blog to share everything.
Sharing my reviews about comics, my progress with my own comic, guides for other comic makers, etc.

"Comic Roach", starting up.