Anyone who walks into the Comic Shop will no doubt hear the familiar sounds of Australia's youth radio network piping through the air vents. Namely that being of triple j. Or to others, "what kind of spit is this?"

Great for listening to all kinds of artists that aren't of the bubble gum pop or middle of the road persuasion. And there does happen to be that kind of market. Kind of market that can spot an album cover from a tiny square portion of the whole?

Probably.

Anyway, so the triple j album cover quiz challenge thingo from Richard Kingsmill is to do that. Spread falls from the list of feature albums played over the course of the year, get them right, score the booty of albums therein.

Working it out proves to be a mighty test of an hour. Resources handily at hand hand over the answers. Got to hand it to the junk about the house in scoring the answers. Mess works best here it seems.

First album cover on the puzzle grid is so undeniably that of The Hives that it's almost Will Sassoish for the man who stands off right on its square. Didn't spot Young Modern right off the bat? Don't even call yourself Australian.

Everything else, sadly having not paid any attention to the album covers (as well as being away from Australian radio for a portion of the year), washes it into the higher and harder stakes.

And that's where the resources of scratching posts and cluttered desks come in handy. Not to mention another eyeball to spot and pick them off.

Copy of the mag magazine at hand to sift through and it happens to contain the albums released for the year? Like that from Queens of the Stone Age and John Butler Trio? How sweet it is.

Then there's the stuff that's not entirely easy to pick up and off of the printed page.

Rate Your Music steps in with a few lists compiled from its users. So many to flush through, and not one of them made easy to run through either. Sanity even steps in to pitch a fork or two, and it's all about looking at the entire year's releases week by stinking week. Architecture In Helsinki and LCD Soundsystem from that round of things.

Makes the eyeballs water at the faraway blinks to recover. Three resources down and handy all to leave but one and two.

Of course, with the spot varnish that is the tiny squares on the quiz, who wouldn't think of using something like Photoshop to blow them up and attempt at rendering the barely there fonts to see? Alas, not much value in that plan of attack after a long while of trying to temper the bicubic/bilinear enlargement process.

So like it's like a weird circle that the final clue to answers on the cover challenge happens to find itself on Zan Rowe's Run With the Hunted blog on the triple j website. Looking over some of her picks of the Best Albums of 2007 so far... it's a bit of creative calendar working when the kids of a nuclear never happen pop up as the real tough nut to bust.

Spend an hour or less, spend some time and peel those eyeballs. That quiz is a fun thing to carve up.

 

Sitting between a chant of some religious slant and a song from some other country base outside of Australia, there was a slither of a slot for the Comic Shop to pop up on the radio.

Blitz in and out again, covering about a whole half hour, the Comic Shop boys were on Macarthur's C91.3FM just recently. Tonight actually. Back there in 19:10 land gone past. And the talk invariably covered the look of the store and the comics whatnot from the perspective of a radio host who only believes in The Phantom.

Superman's little "It's a bird. It's a plane. It's Superman!" from the old timey TV show kicking off the segment. Chris, Jason and Tom all there to represent the store.

"Turbines to speed," from the Batman TV show audio grab breaking the half point begs a question. How do you get to an intransitory position which in actuality isn't one at all but instead just a place to get somewhere else. If even.

The show's audio intros almost looked like a skewer toward the DC hand if not for the Lone Ranger getting in a heel there.

Caller Paul didn't help on that front though. He was on about Superman, the Justice League and the Justice Society of America.

Marvel love coming from the shop itself. Nice work on Jason prefixing Stan Lee as a co-creator on the House of Ideas. Just wouldn't seem like the right thing if he'd gone with the "creator" slip. And Tom's aside to caller Paul was deftly put.

Caller Hank sure missed out on prime time to hijack the listener call in segment they had for a flash. Instead, harping on about Kabuki and automatically dismissing manga when thrown at by the host. That Hank needs some more misdirection when on the air on the phone on the radio. Next time you blue furry.

Dash off on the sign off and the plug for the shop's location (in addition to being in Liverpool) slides in before the cut off.

But where is the library people? It's right next to the Comic Shop it is. That's the way it's around, not the other.