i agree totally with your critique of the editing and spelling and all those stupid little things you'd think sirius might do for pe. drew was always a TERRIBLE speller and always had strange ideas about sentence syntax and grammar, more in mulehide than in sirius, but you're right, the move to a big publisher didn't necessarily mean better editing. you ask, "wouldn't *you* take this job for a nickel a page?" hell, i'd do it for free. i feel stupid saying "well, drew, the art's great, the story's great, i've recommended your book to everyone i know and some people i don't, but jesus on toast, haven't you ever heard of spellcheck?" it's such a tiny critique but it makes such a big difference. and what's up with the pages out of order? that seems to be a sirius thing, i don't think it ever happened with mulehide. (i'm probably the only person who prefers the computer font to drew's own scrawl, tho, for no reason other than it's just easier to read.)

when you put the difference between sirius plots and mulehide plots the way you did (i'm not about to quote your own rant back to you), the things that happened in 20 mulehides vs 37 (or 39) siriuses, you're right again, the mulehide issues are more inventive and more thought out and just plain more interesting. (the first issue i read was mulehide 15, the "wizards' duel to rival 'the Sword in the Stone'", and i bought it because i kept hearing "i'm a germ, mim" in my head. i knew how the race was going to end from the minute it started, tho, and that did take some fun out of it. but not much.) i find it hard to argue with your points about mulehide plots/character/etc vs sirius plots/characters/etc, just because you've written them so well. i still felt some of the mystery of the history of amrahly'nn in the sirius issues, i still felt like there was a big ol' encyclopedia of amrahly'nn that drew was drawing from (ok, that pun was TOTALLY unintentional) that we weren't getting to read except in footnotes. the plot of the sanctuary storyline isn't as imaginative as any of the mulehide issues the way you lay it out, but while luse's drug withdrawals and his odd dreams were definitely interesting to look at and fun to read, i wouldn't call the basic plots of those issues especially inspired either. (altho, like i said, they had interesting and inventive art and layouts.)

as for characters.... i didn't read the first mulehide issues until they came out in a trade, and by then i was reading sirius issues, and i had no idea who jace was supposed to be. part of that may have been just changes in drew's style--jace in mulehide 17 looks a lot different from jace in mulehide 4 (or 5, i forget which one he was in). i agree that none of the blood guard were distinct, except for vido and daniels (at least he had that moustache and vido was always referring to him by name). there was one issue, i think the one when they were all talking about the serial killer, all of a sudden there are like 7 guys and i had no idea who any of them were, it was as if drew wrote the dialogue without matching it to the characters. the same with the sanctuary guys. i originally confused cynthia and lirilith, and morachi and talon sometimes seemed to be one person with two bodies. and the way cynthia disarmed widowmaker was just too easy. (i think we discussed that in the mailing list too, i don't remember.)

about cassy--i thought it was great that luse could have a relationship with an understanding woman (who was taller than he was, too) and i didn't mind getting to read some of their pillow talk. it showed character development that drew was actually thinking about. i still don't know how i feel about sex & violence (i must be the only pe reader who didn't have a strong reaction)--the violence scenes were good and creative and all, but the sex scenes weren't so exciting, and the whole sex/death idea isn't that new. telling a story without words was, in my utterly humble opinion, done better in hepcats, i think 11 (or 10?), which completely stunned me in a way no issue of pe ever has. (probably it was the story itself as much as the way martin wagner told it.) i think drew got way too defensive and huffy about people's reactions to s&v, like he thought he'd done this great subversive artistically daring thing and everyone was just pissing all over it because they were too stupid to try and understand it, but that's a different rant. (and maybe it really was subversive and artistically daring and i was just too lazy to try and understand it. but i didn't dislike it either.)

the point of all that was just that i liked cassy (altho the beautiful-take- no-shit-fighter-chick part of her was kind of a stock character, altho it was such a relief that she wasn't a beautiful fighter chick with a scarred past), and i liked the quiet scenes with her and luse, and i liked the way their relationship developed (ie, pretty realistically).

calling drew's reintroducing of old characters "damage control" seems kind of harsh to me, but i see your point. i dunno, i'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt enough to believe he wasn't underestimating his readers and didn't just throw old characters back in just to rack up sales. then again, i could be wrong.

i agree with you on marauder overuse, but he was always kind of a parody, not just recently. the issue where he molests luse/lucy had me on the floor, i was hysterical tears-in-my-eyes laughing. (for some reason that got me more than the mr moto issue, which i thought was funny but not the same way most other people did. chalk it up to differences in taste.) i hope to hell drew never writes an "origin of the marauder" story, that might end it for me. we don't need to know anything about him. he's luse's nemesis, he's the one that gets away. he's comic relief, and that's really all he ever adds to the story, and the more we see of him the less effective he is at that.

but for parintachin, i also agree that his appearances in the mulehide issues were more surreal and weird than they are in the sirius run, but i think he's being used too much as well. everytime he pops up he teaches luse something else about himself, and frankly i'm getting annoyed. "oh look, another life lesson from the little clown in luse's head." i like par, i like what drew does with his character (altho if you want to talk damage control this is as good a place as any--"can't figure out what to do next, how about knocking luse out and giving him an issue of self-study with par"), but it seems like he's being used as an excuse for the reader to learn about luse's psyche. his scenes sometimes read like the "tell" examples in the "show, don't tell" lecture you get in creative writing class. i don't care what he is or how he got in luse's head or what he's supposed to be doing there. he's kind of like the purple marauder that way--he should remain kind of mysterious, less like luse's conscience/shrink/best friend/escape clause. he's kind of a deus ex machina and i hate those, i think they're cheating.

and because i don't have any specific issues to look at i can't give you any examples!! which i'm sorry about, and it makes me sound like i'm just talking out of my head instead of having given this some actual thought, and really i have been thinking about it.

but i still agree with you that his appearances in the mulehide pe's were more surreal and out of control. "brain matter makes lousy women." plot holes...don't get me started, i've gotten confused enough from the beginning of one issue to the end without having to think about how everyone got there in the first place. that thing with tenth's note completely threw me, i think drew probably forgot about it or he'd really planned something but by the time he got to that point in the storyline, his ideas had changed and it no longer fit. dangling plot threads annoy the hell out of me. plus there's the nagging feeling i started to get that the time frame was all out of whack and even drew didn't know what day it was supposed to be, but it was supposed to MATTER.

there was something else.... oh, right, the "luse as woman social commentary" bit. i had some kind of problem with that issue where he stomps all over the lech in the bar, where drew shows off his social commentary skills. unfortunately i can't remember what the problem was, but i do remember that even tho some of luse's repartee was pretty funny and watching him try and walk in those heels was hysterical (and realistic--i can't even walk in heels, and i've been trained to do it since puberty, so of course luse is going to fall on his ass), the whole thing just didn't hang right for me. for one thing, i don't care how badly luse wants to hide from the blood guard, i find it very had to believe he'd willingly dress in chainmail bras and stiletto boots because that's all women get to wear. sorry, don't buy it. maybe it was just, like you said, drew's social critique was kind of clumsy. i mean, luse is a bright guy, but his whole life maybe there were four women he respected (lirilith, cassy, maybe his mom, maybe hyena), and to hear him all of a sudden spouting feminist critique just because he put on a pair of high heeled boots and got leered at by some idiot in a bar is just ridiculous. like that's all it takes to understand how women feel about being objectified. (ooh, i think i touched a nerve there.... i also think i found my problem....)

was that me agreeing with you? i think so.

i think if you try and take all 37 sanctuary issues as a whole you're going to be disappointed, just because the whole is kind of less than the sum of its parts. separately some of them are really good, which apparently you know, you mention mr moto and the basil issue and 38 and 39. 39 was great, i agree there. covers, i agree again, usually really good, some of them genuinely lovely. sparkling repartee all around, i think the dialogue is always up to snuff (i recently discovered that the one thing i always love about pe was the dialogue. it sounds real. i read the new issues out loud to my roommate's cat).

the one thing you like that i don't (so much), is the art. i'm not an artist, i can't draw a straight line without a ruler and i don't think i'd know great art (as opposed to merely good art) if it sat on me, but i think the mulehide art was better. and not just in the sense of being better laid out, or more detailed, or more inventive or more varied or whatever, i mean just better. the issue where hyena meets scuzz and scum, she looks like a different person than she does even in the next issue. she's in a bar meeting tenth and her legs don't look right, they're too straight or something and her ankles are too thin and her face (in profile, anyway) is flat. i can't explain it, it's just wrong. the proportions are weird on a lot of panels of luse and some of tenth, their torsos are too long for their bodies, their legs are too short, there's just something a little off. add to that the fact that the albino twins look almost exactly alike, tenth and jace look almost exactly alike (well, sometimes they do), and EVERY SINGLE DARK-HAIRED WOMAN DREW HAS EVER DRAWN LOOKS LIKE EVERY OTHER ONE. (i said i got cynthia and lirilith confused, didn't i?) look at hyena (on a monochrome-hair day. look at beth. do you see a difference?

at first i thought it was just because drew had a month for each issue instead of two, and that's bound to have an effect on how well (and what) you draw. i think the art's gotten better. it's not as interesting or varied as it is in the mulehide issues, but it has its moments and it certainly has improved. i think going back to bimonthly would do a world of good and even tho i'd be peeved that i had to wait two months for my pe fix, i've been waiting--no lie--four years for a new hepcats, and i'd wait two months for a new pe if i knew it would be a good one. and i think if drew had two months, he'd make it a good one.