Inky

I was thinking about ink today. It's an important part of my drawing. Since a lot of my work comes out of a comic book tradition I use a pencil and ink method of working. That means that first I draw something with a pencil and then go over the pencil drawing with ink. That way of working originates with the fact that it is easier to consistently mass reproduce a black ink line as opposed to a grey pencil one. Hence a comic book or strip is usually reproduced from an ink line. I say usually because due to new technology and better printing these days comics can be made from a pencil line.

I first started learning to use ink back in my college days. I can't even remember what brand it was. It was probably whatever I could get my hands on. I remember soon after college I decided to get a nice big bottle of ink. I think it was a liter. I didn't look at the label closely enough though and ended up buying non-waterproof ink. At the time I had only ever seen waterproof ink and didn't even know to check.

The way I found out it was non-waterproof ink was because of my hand making stamps. As I inked my hand was resting on the paper. Just like as if you were writing. Except to draw in ink I have to spin the paper all around and work from different angles. This means my hand can often rest on areas I have put ink on. This doesn't matter with waterproof ink but with non-waterproof ink it does. The moisture from my hand (it must have been summer) picked up the non-waterproof ink and each time I put my hand back on the paper I made a little stamp of the ridges on the side of my hand.

Needless to say I was a bit stunned when I looked down at the paper and saw the mess I was making. The tough part was that I had to continue using that ink for a while. I spent about thirty bucks on the giant bottle and being that I was just out of school I didn't have the money to replace it. I carefully placed a scrap piece of paper under my hand as I inked so the moisture from my hand wouldn't touch the ink. Eventually I got some more waterproof ink. I still have most of that non-waterproof ink left.

Something I used to have to be concerned about was how well the ink resisted lifting up when erased over. Since the pencil then ink method leaves a lot of stray pencil marks on the page you have to run an eraser over the whole page after you are done and the ink is dry. Thus erasing the pencil marks and leaving the ink marks. Except when you do this some inks go from black to grey. It's usually not a problem but sometimes it is. So any ink I would try out would have to be given an eraser test. If it lightened too much then out it would go.

Luckily because of the advent of computers and 13"x19" home printers I haven't had to worry about the eraser test in about ten years. Now instead of inking over my pencils I scan my pencils in and then print them out on a separate piece of bristol (paper) in non-photo blue line. This way I can ink and not have to worry about erasing anything. Good show!

Higgings T-100 Drafting Film Ink was my ink choice for years. It had a nice consistency, was a matte black, came off the brush well, and did great on the eraser test. I liked it. So off course it's hard to find now. I'm not even sure if they still make it. I don't think much drafting is done on film anymore. I used to buy bottles of it every time I saw them but haven't seen them in a while. I've seen bottle of it on some obscure web sites but the main web sites that I buy art supplies from no longer carry it. And they carry tons of stuff.

So I'm always looking for new black India ink to try. I've tried all the varieties of Higgins brand ink and none thrill me. Higgins Black Magic is the best but T-100 was much better. I tried some Dick Blick Black Cat ink recently but I found it a little thin and not as dense as I'd like.

A lot of people find many varieties of ink too thin. That is fairly easy to fix. Leave the cap off of it and let some of the water evaporate out. That can take a bit of time so some people boil their ink. I haven't tried this. Usually I leave the cap off. That's what I did with the Black Cat ink to make it more to my liking. I also recently did that with some Liquidtex acrylic black ink. It needed less evaporation than the Black Cat ink so I liked it better.

I did find a new brand of ink a few weeks ago that I like. Sennelier India Ink. It's dense and flows well. No evaporation needed. Though it was a small bottle of it I bought. I notice that sometimes the small bottles need no evaporation while the larger bottle of the same ink do. Must be physics or something.

Different inks have different odors but the Sennelier ink definitely has a familiar one This ink smells like the airbrush paint that I used to use in college and not any other ink. I wonder what gives it that smell?

Those are the thoughts I've been thinking about ink lately. From density to smell. I cover it all!

Comics I Bought: March 26, 2009

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got two new comics plus a hard cover collection:

Usagi Yojimbo - 119

Mini Marvels: Secret Invasion

Jack Kirby's The Losers

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

All Star Superman Volume 2 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely

I bought the first issue of this "All Star Superman" when it came out but didn't like it very much. I bought one other issue, can't remember which, after that because a friend recommended it. I thought the second issue I bought much better than the first. So when this collection of issues six through twelve came out I thought I'd give it a try. I wish I didn't.

Mark Waid's intro to this book lavishes praise on it like its greatness is unbounded. I guess that's what an intro is supposed to do but I don't get it. First off I was disappointed with the art. Frank Quitely has been the exception to my dislike of the "No line weight" style of art but not here.

First off this is printed from his pencils and not inked. It claims to have been "Digitally inked" by the colorist but that usually just means changing a few sliders in Photoshop to darken the pencils. That's what it looks like here.

I don't always mind comic art reproduced directly from uninked pencils but it takes a different thought process on the part of the penciler. A penciler usually doesn't think about every mark he puts on the paper. That's the inker's job. So when comics are made directly from pencils the artist has to think about the marks he's making as finished art.

In this book Quitely's no line weight style is disintegrating into a spidery mess. It's tough to see what's going on sometimes because all of the lines he has drawn are thin and blend together. The dark coloring doesn't help clear things up either.

Quitely also doesn't seem to be interested in drawing backgrounds either. Because he hardly draws any. All of the scenes in the Daily Planet take place in nearly empty brown rooms. Emptiness is the main feature of every background in this book. It doesn't do a good job at defining a sense of place. Overall it was not a good job by an artist I usually like.

I have less criticism for the writing because I've never been a fan of Grant Morrison's writing. A lot of people love his stuff but I don't. I find this particular book redundant. It's just like a lot of other Superman stories I've read. When Superman was on Bizzaro World it took him way too many pages to figure out that if he told the Bizarros to do the opposite of what he wanted them to do then they would do what he wanted them to do. Isn't that revelation in every Bizarro story?

I could go on and on about what I didn't like with the writing but it would be pointless. Morrison's writing just passes me by for whatever reason. Sometimes I understand why people like a particular thing and I don't and sometimes I'm at a complete loss as to why something is popular. It's one of those mysteries to me. I don't get it. All I know is I found this volume disappointing.

But to end on a positive note the one part of the writing I did like was the return of "Mad Scientist" Lex Luthor. I never liked the "Businessman Kingpin Ripoff" Lex Luthor that has been the norm in Superman since the John Byrne relaunch days. That's my tow cents for what it's worth.

Nostalgia of What Kind?

So I finally bought a new monitor this week. I went with the Dell UltraSharp twenty seven inch one. It's big and takes some getting used to but I like it so far. It gives me a lot of room to work. But one unexpected thing came with it. A strange sense of nostalgia.

The nostalgia actually isn't directly related to the new screen. It's related in a more roundabout way. Y'see the new screen is a high resolution one. That means that all of my desktop pictures (wallpapers) are too low res to display properly on it. I like to change background pictures fairly often so because of the new monitor I need a whole new set of pictures.

Sometimes I use my own photos as backgrounds and sometimes I find things on the internet. I gave a quick look on the web but didn't see anything I liked. So I decided to look through some of my own photos.

I like to take candid shots. When I worked in NYC I would to get in to the city early on summer Fridays. Good Morning America would put on a concert in Bryant Park featuring whatever pop star was out promoting that week. I would use the opportunity to walk among the crowd and take pictures of people. The performers too but I usually found the crowd more interesting.

It was a challenging environment in which to take pictures. People were constantly milling about and angles and compositions would be gone in an instant. Plus I had to be inconspicuous as I snapped so as not to ruin the candid nature of what I was after. Luckily there was a concert going on to distract everyone.

This all took place in the summers of 2004 and 2005. I worked with the photos back then but haven't looked at them much since. There are some good ones and, due to the nature of candid photography, lots of bad ones. It was this Bryant Park set that I decided to mine for possible desktop backgrounds.

Photography is a strange medium. It captures life like images and all over detail almost effortlessly. It freezes moments in time like nothing else. As a consequence it leaves the person looking at the photo with a whole lot of things to make sense of. And it opens up the imagination to create all sorts of stories.

What does that look mean? Fleeting glances become forever trapped in a photo. Who is this stranger I am taking a picture of? Their clothes, their food, their drink, their hair, their bags, and everything else around them in a photo tells a story. A story to be filled in by the viewer.

And that is what I do as I look at these pictures. I fill in stories. I can't help it. It's how my mind works. But what was funny to me was the nostalgia I had for these stories about these people in pictures. People I don't even know. I was wondering who they were even as they now looked familiar to me because I had worked on these photos back in 2005.

Some of them showed up in a few pictures. They were most familiar. Subjects I liked so I tried a few times to get a good photo. I failed more than I succeeded but all of the photos add to the story.

Some of the people who worked the event were there every week so I have multiple picture of them in different outfits and such. They have the most expansive stories as I look through the photos. But I don't really know them at all. Not a name to be found among them. Yet they are familiar to me and I feel a sense of nostalgia as if I knew them in the past. Strange.

I have no name for this weird type of nostalgia that looking through photos of strangers I took picture of years ago has brought upon me. I don't know them or their real stories. Just the ones that came into my head then and now. I guess we did share some good times in Bryant Park listening to live music but not really. I bet the French have a name for this type of nostalgia. They're good at naming such things.

Comics I Bought: March 19, 2009

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got two new comic plus a hard cover collection:

Age of Bronze - 28

The X-Files - 5

Starman Omnibus - 2

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

Criminal Volume 3 "The Dead and the Dying" by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

I have to wonder why I even buy these "Criminal" volumes. I don't have any fascination with crime or criminals, besides the fact that crime is a natural to spin a story around, nor do I have any sympathy for the characters in "Criminal". They're generally repulsive and uninteresting. None of it sticks with me either. As soon as I've put down a volume of "Criminal" I no longer remember it.

Yet I have bought this volume. And the next one. Somehow I still like them despite the fact that I'm not interested in the subject matter. It must be the craftsmanship. Brubaker is a good writer and Phillips is a good artist. As I'm actually reading the story I enjoy how well it's told. I feel little sympathy for the characters and nothing about the world is revealed to me by the stories but still they're well done.

This volume of "Criminal" is different from the first two in that it tells three self contained but interrelated stories. Each chapter stands on its own yet each adds to the other. We get three stories.

The first is about a boxer with a criminal father. He's trying to stay straight but keeps getting drawn into underworld activities. He's not happy about it but sees no way out.

The second story is about a veteran returning home. He used to be a small time criminal but wants to go strait too. Circumstances won't let him and he embraces his criminal nature. Trouble ensues.

The third story is the tale of a woman wronged and how it messed her up. She was a love interest of the guy in the first story but then his more powerful criminal buddy stole her away. That didn't end well for her.

None of these stories are "Pick me ups" and there are no lessons to be learned here so you better like miserable people doing miserable things if you're going to read this book. It is well done but still I have to wonder why I read these. Decide for yourself.

Bike Me

Last October as I was coming around a corner on my bicycle it shimmied on me in a weird way. My seat was suddenly unstable beneath me. I stopped, got off, and inspected my bike. I thought that maybe the front derailleur had come loose but it was tight. I got back on for a test ride and it was still shaky.

When I got off the second time I was finally able to suss out what went wrong. Some welds on the frame broke. The bottom of the tube that is under the seat was no longer properly attached. That's the part right between the pedals. Since that metal tube sat in a larger joint connecting it to the other tubes it only wobbled a fraction of an inch. But the bike was still unrideable.

Being that my bike was twenty years old I decided it would be best to replace it. I can fix just about anything on a bike but I can't weld a frame. And after that many years what other welds were ready to go?

October is about the end of my biking season so I decided to wait and save up some money for a new one rather than rush out and get one on credit. That and I had no idea where to get a new bike. The couple of local bike shops I used to frequent are long gone.

I checked on the internet throughout the winter but I really wanted to buy locally. So I checked on the internet again for local bike shops. They were some shops a couple of towns away and among them the closest had a bad internet review that scared me off. A decided to try the second one.

All I have to say about that shop is, "Boy has biking changed in twenty years". I'm somewhere between a casual rider and an enthusiast. I ride for exercise and because I like it. I ride three days a week for about forty five minutes. I think my course is fourteen miles. Plenty of big hills in it. There used to be plenty of bikes for people like me. Not anymore. Now everyone is supposed to be Lance Armstrong.

I noticed a lot of high prices as I looked for bikes on the internet. I saved up six hundred dollars for my new bike and I didn't even want to spend that much. As I looked around the shop I was in sticker shock. $1500, $1800, and $2500? It's a bicycle not a motorcycle. I soon found out that their bikes started at $850.

Bicycle parts are better made and more expensive now I was told. I'm not quite sure how much better they could be than my old bike which lasted me twenty years. If a part wore out I just replaced it. It rode fine. I wasn't racing anyone but I could go fast.

Back to the internet it was. I ended up getting a an internet sale only bike for about $430. It claims to use all the same parts as the more expensive bike shop bikes but sells directly to the consumer and so passes the savings on.

One of the reasons I wanted to shop locally is that I didn't want to put the bike together and tune it myself. Any bike that I would have to have shipped to me I would also have to put together myself. That's how it goes with bike buying.

My Dad first taught me how to assemble a bike when I was about eight and I have taken bikes apart and put them together a lot of time since but I haven't wanted to do that much recently. I'm getting old I guess. But I also didn't have the money (nor would I have wanted to spend it) for the bike shop bike so that was that.

So now I have my bike and I am in the process of putting it together. It's more of a pain in the ass now because new bikes are needlessly complicated. Gear shifters are no longer mounted on the handlebar stem but have been moved to the brakes.

Instead of depressing the breaks you push sideways on the brake handle to upshift and there is a little thumb lever on the brake handle that downshifts. Sound like a recipe for disaster to me but we'll see. I'm almost tempted to strip the new bike down to the frame and put all my old parts on it.

I already put my old pedals on because the new ones have built in toe clips and straps. Once again I'm not pretending I'm in the Tour de France. I'm on a road with cars, deer, people, and whatever. Getting my feet off the pedals quickly and efficiently has been essential on more than one occasion. I've tried toe clips. They put the fear of Zeus in me.

I haven't finished my tuning of the bike because I decided to spend the rest of the money I had saved on a bike repair stand. That will make things easier on me and thats how I want them. It should arrive sometime in the next week or so.

I couldn't even ride my bike yet if I wanted to. Another thing that has changed is the tire valves. Bike tires now use some fancy new French valve. My air pump doesn't fit it. I had to order a new air pump for thirty bucks. Even with the extra expenses I'm still way under the bike shop price though. Sometime you have to do it yourself.

Comics I Bought: March 5, 2009

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got one new comic plus a hard cover collection:

The Walking Dead - 59

Eerie Archives Volume 1

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

"Mister X - The Archives" by Dean Motter and others

Though I have thirteen out of the fourteen issues of "Mister X" that are collected in this hardcover volume I haven't read them in a really long time. At least not all of them. I'm not even sure if I read the last five issues or so before now.

As I remember it "Mister X" was one of the books I really liked when it first came out. It was stylish, interesting, and different. Plus the Hernandez brothers were drawing it. But they were gone in four issues and then we got an issue drawn by Klaus Shonefeld followed by the one named cartoonist Seth taking over the art chores.

"Mister X" also came out infrequently. It took about four years to come out with the fourteen issues by which time I was done with it. I didn't even buy the final few issues of the series (minus issue 13) until a decade later when I saw them in the bargain bin at my local comic shop. I don't think I ever even read them.

I remember "Mister X" taking a serious nose dive in quality when Seth took over the art. Ironically enough he is now one of my favorite cartoonists. His books, "It's a Good Life if You Don't Weaken", "Wimbledon Green", and "Clyde Fans" are among my favorites of all time.

So how much did the book resemble my memory of it? Well, it was a little better and a little worse than I remember. I have read the Hernandez brothers issues since I first bought them and they hold up fine. Those guys are just plain talented and they tell the story of Mister X well.

Mister X is the architect of Radiant City which was built without his final approval. Mister X was pioneering something called "Psychetecture" except it was corrupted in the final build of the city and now people are being driven crazy. Mister X is back to try and fix things. Except he's a bit crazy too. There is a whole cast of characters involved in all sorts of plots as Mister X tries to go about his business.

What surprised me was that there were a few good issues after Seth took over the art. He certainly wasn't as good, at the time, as the Herandez brothers but he was trying. There was talent and imagination in the art. As a matter of fact there were five good issues that he drew. It was his sixth issue, number 11 (the only one he drew the cover of) that fell off the quality cliff. I remember now that that was the last issue I read when the series originally came out.

I don't know what happened but issues eleven through fourteen are nowhere near as good as the rest. I know how hard it is to put out a small independent comic and it looks like they could no longer give "Mister X" their full attention but they tried to finish up the story anyway.

The last issue of the collection, fourteen, even comes with an introduction by Dean Motter apologizing for disappointing us with the quality of the final issue. It had "a lackluster script and earnest but inadequate fill-in art" and I think that's an apt description. An ignoble end for an interesting series.

I was happy to see this archive volume of "Mister X". I'm glad so many comics are getting bound in hardcover collections these days. Especially ones that, ten years ago, I never would have thought would see print again. "Mister X" falls into that category.

"Mister X" was better than I remembered it in that there were ten good issues of it. I didn't remember most of the issues Seth drew being as good as they are. But they are good. The Hernandez brothers issues are still the best ones but not the only good ones.

It's a little worse than I remember because when this book fell off of the cliff it fell far. This is my first time reading the last couple of really bad issues that end this collection so that made it worse than I expected. Still it was worth it though. "Mister X" remains a book high on originality in it's visuals and concepts. Check it out for yourself.

Character Design Madness

I hate character design. That's my opening for this week. I find it tedious and annoying. But that is what I've working on in regards to my still unnamed web comic. It's a bit of a slog for me and the going is never as fast as I want it to be.

Don't get me wrong. I love drawing all sorts of new characters. Faces are one of my favorite things to draw and I got a million of them in my head. I am always drawing new faces and "characters". I've been complemented on the wide variety of interesting people that I draw and think I'm pretty good at that sort of thing.

But here is the thing. Making an interesting drawing of a character is not character design. Making an interesting drawing of a character is making a interesting drawing. In character design you have to take that "interesting drawing" and turn it into six "interesting drawings" that you will use to make a wide variety of drawings. That is not an easy task.

In character design you have to visualize and draw the character in three dimensions. You need a front view, back view, three quarters view, side view, looking up, looking down, and plenty more. You need to know, or be able to figure out, what the character will look like from any angle. It's a lot of work. I've known people (and envied them) who are good at character design and like to do it but I'm not one of them. For me it's a big pain.

To further hinder me my drawing tends to be two dimensional. I'm not usually interested in trying to render some real world object in a three dimensional way. Instead I'm using marks on paper to create a world or character that make sense in the confines of a two dimensional rectangle. A completely different type of "realism". Plus creating something in two dimensions often doesn't translate well into three dimensions. It can be apples and oranges.

My usual method of drawing works against me too. I often use a surrealist automatic drawing method. That is where I draw with no preconceived notion of what I want to draw. I see where the drawing leads me and go in that direction. That is how I can come up with the unusual drawings that I like. With normal illustrative drawing, which is character design's category, you have to visualize what you are going to draw before you draw it. It's in your head and then you get it down on paper. I'm not used to that any more.

So I've spent a lot of last week asking myself, "What does this character look like from the side?" followed by "Does this look right?". Usually I ask myself, "What the heck am I drawing?" followed by "Does this line make the drawing more interesting?". It's a totally different mind set with different problems and solutions.

I've been trying to bring the two mind sets together. I wasted a lot of my time drawing a bunch of characters in a "realistic" illustrative fashion. I referenced things and figured it all out in three dimensions and ended up being completely bored with the drawings. Now I've been trying to bring in some of my interesting two dimension drawing techniques into the three dimensional character design. It's kind of tricky. And a bit frustrating. And laborious.

But at least I now have some character designs that don't bore me to death. I have a long way to go on them and some of them may have to be abandoned but I think I'm on the right path. Man this takes a lot of work. But if the character designs bore me imagine how an audience would feel about them.

Comics I Bought: March 5, 2009

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got two new comic plus a hard cover collection:

Echo - 10

Buffy Season Eight - 22

The Incredible Hercules "Love and War"

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

"Charley's War 17 October 1916 - 21 February 1917" By Pat Mills and Joe Coloquhoun

This is the third volume in the "Charley's War" series of books collecting the series of four page comics that first appeared in the British magazine "Battle Picture Weekly " in the early Eighties. I had to look that up on the internet because I've never heard of this series before and that info wasn't printed in this volume.

This is an excellent comic. Though I never read the first two volumes the third stands on its own very well. Charley is a sixteen year old British Tommy who lied about his age to join the army. It's World War One and the battle of the Somme is going on.

I've never seen trench warfare depicted so vividly and viciously. I know that the trenches of WWI were hell but that is really brought to life here. Since this is told from an English point of view the Germans are the villains, and there are villainous Germans, but the real evil is the madness of war. Especially the madness of trench warfare. You do not want to be stuck in the trenches of WWI.

Though the writing on this book is certainly good it is the artist who is the star. I've never heard of Joe Coloquhoun before but his art shines on. His art (like many others of his generation born 1926) looks like it was influenced by the old school illustrative comic strips of the 1930's. Pages are jam packed with lots of figures and lush backgrounds. His story telling is dynamite and he brings things to life. Mud, muck, blood, death, fear, and heroism are all nicely illustrated.

In the last part of the book Charley gets to head home for a while and we get a glimpse of the dangers of life on the home front. Certainly not as intense as the parts about the trenches the story is still very interesting and well done. Munitions factory explosions and German zeppelin attacks are constant dangers in London.

I liked this book a lot. I'm going to have to track down the other volumes. I suggest you do the same.

CRT and LCD

I bought a new computer last year. An Apple Mac Pro. I make my living on that machine and it was time for a new one. But I still haven't upgraded my monitor yet. I haven't entered the world of LCD monitors and am still working on my trusty old nineteen inch CRT monitor. Since they include the part of CRT screen that you can't actually see in such measurements it's really a seventeen inch screen. It's a NEC Multisync 95.

I can't remember what brand my first monitor was. I got it in 1995 and it was a seventeen inch (fifteen really) CRT that cost me around $700. That ran nicely until 2001 when it died on me. That's when I purchased the NEC model.

The NEC model was really supposed to be a stop gap monitor. I hadn't planned on replacing my monitor before it stopped working and therefor had no money saved up for a new one. That's how I usually do things. If I plan on replacing something I save up.

Monitor prices had come down a lot from 1995 to 2001 and LCD monitors were just starting to appear at nearly affordable prices. I looked around at all sorts of different monitors and was trying to decide what to buy. There were plenty of cheap CRTs but there were also some nice specialty graphics monitors. They were also CRTs but were priced at around $700. Comparable LCD monitors were about $900 at the time.

I was in a bit of a quandary. Buy a big (twenty one inch I think) graphics monitor for $700, a newfangled LCD one for $900, or take my chances with a cheaper and smaller non-graphics CRT monitor? I ended up going for the cheapest route. I figured even at only seventeen inches that was two inches bigger than I was used to. Plus the NEC was about $250. That is considerably cheaper. I figured I could make due with it until LCDs came down in price.

Now, eight years later, I'm still using the damn thing. I never thought the color on it was quite as rich as my original monitor but that never held me back. I can't believe the thing is still running. But it is. And I'm still looking to replace it.

I've wanted a new LCD monitor for about three years now. But one of the questions I always ask myself before buying an expensive new piece of equipment is "What will this allow me to do that I can't do now?". The answer with a new monitor is "Nothing". I'll have more room to work but that's it. Other things have always gotten purchased before it.

Another factor is that the LCD monitors that I would like to buy are freaking expensive. And the cheap crappy LCD monitors of today are so much worse than the cheap crappy CRT monitors of yesterday. A $250 LCD monitor is not as good as my $250 CRT monitor from 2001. It has to do with viewing angles, color reproduction, contrast, and such things but come down to the fact that I need a graphics LCD monitor.

Apple makes some really nice ones but they are pricey. I'd love their big thirty inch monitor but not for $1800. And the new twenty four inch one is $900. Plus that one has a connector that is different for the connector on my computer that I just bought last September. Annoying.

Dell also makes some nice graphics monitors that are cheaper for the size than the Apple ones but I'm still looking at spending a large chunk of change. I'd like an Apple monitor because of the color management capabilities it has, all Apple monitors can be calibrated exactly the same so a document's color will look consistent across all of them, but I have never actually run into anyone using this capability. Clearly it's not essential for me.

So I wait some more. Apple hasn't refreshed their line of monitors in years. The twenty four inch one that came out last fall was made to run in conjunction with their laptops and not their towers. Hence the different connector. There keep being rumors of them updating the line but those rumors haven't come true.

I think this might be the year I finally get a new monitor but I'm not sure. After all my stop gap monitor is still running strong as it comes up on its eighth birthday.