Percy Gloom Preview Part 2

I was fortunate enough to get an advance copy of the book from Cathy last week and wanted to show some spreads from it. The printing job is fantastic. I look forward to reading people's reaction to it when it hits the stores in a month or so. (And in case you are wondering, those are my wife's lovely fingers, not mine. Mine are more delicate.)

A Preview of Percy Gloom

Cathy Malkasian will be having her first graphic novel, Percy Gloom, come out some time very soon through Fantagraphics. (In fact, some advance copies will be on sale at APE, but I understand that supply will be very limited.) I’ve had the good fortune of seeing this book develop over the last year, and it’s really terrific. On the surface, it’s about aspiring cautionary writer Percy Gloom moving to a new village to fulfill his dream of writing warnings on. The town is full of eccentrics, actually the whole world that Cathy creates is eccentric, and the tale is completely absurd, but again, that’s on the surface. Through all of the craziness there is something there, at the root of this world that is universal and keeps it all grounded.


Here’s the description from Amazon:

Occupying an unreal world of secret societies, benevolent families, and bureaucratic security, lazy-eyed Percy Gloom fights to overcome the loss of his wife, Lila, to a truth-pointing, lotharian cult-leader. Pursued by the muffin-throwing daughter of the city's important family and purposeless in life, Percy finds some security and meaning through a position testing various everyday items (such as hairbrushes and encyclopedias) for their danger potential. Approached by his doctor to help protect some special people and given advice by some talking goats, Percy comes to terms with his place in the gloomy world and finds himself reaching enlightenment (literally).



If you liked Pater Contrarious, then you’ve got to pick this up. It’s drawn in a similar style and I understand will be printed using the same duotone process. However, where Pater Contrarious was 16 pages, this one is 150.




Also, check out the new Percy Gloom website. You'll find a recipe for blue berry muffins and can listen to goats sing opera.

Alternative Press Expo - San Francisco

I'll be going to the Alternative Press Expo this weekend. I've been busy making some more sketchbook/journals for the show. These ones are 3 silk screened colors on either luon (small) or birch (large) plywood covers. They're very much like my birch tree ones I did a little while back.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force - Daytrotter

I just did an illustration for an Aqua Teen Hunger Force promo at Daytrotter. Back in my animation days, drawing on model was never a strength of mine. Fortunately in the illustration world, it's not so necessary.

You can buy the original drawing of this here.

Cartoonists I'd Like to See Translated 4: David Prudhomme

When I was living in Paris, I was running a little early to my weekly French class and I ducked into a stationary store to buy a pen and kill a little time. In France, comics are sold in most stores that books are sold, and books are sold in more kinds of stores than in America, including stationary stores. However, most of the comics found in stores like this are pretty mainstream genre type stuff and not terribly interesting. With this in mind, I was pretty shocked to come across Etienne Davodeau and David Prudhomme’s La Tour des Miracles de Georges Brassens, printed by mainstream publisher Delcourt.



I guess the mainstream hook is that the book is about an extremely popular French singer/songwriter from the 50’s. Prudhomme’s artwork however, is something I would expect to see out of a L’Association book (if they printed in color). It is drawn in pencil, ink, color pencil, watercolor, and whatever else may have been near Prudhomme’s drawing table. One of the things that I just love about it is that elements of the drawing are not always handled in the same way. Sometimes Prudhomme lets some scribbled pencil underdrawing show through the painting, or he will have erased out someone’s face and let the rubbed out hole remained unfinished. At other times, he will draw over more opaque paint with color pencil or ink. It’s an approach that reminds me a bit of Picasso in that elements within a page or even a panel are fluctuating between translucent and opaque, very loose and more carefully rendered, areas of intense, busy linework, and more open spaces of pure color or blank paper. It takes a lot of skill to be able to bring together all of these various elements and not have a mess. It’s especially difficult in the context of a comic page where one has many self-contained pictures co-existing on a page. It is Prudhomme’s strength however to keep the chaos just under control; he benefits from the energy that the tension creates.



As far as what the book is about, I’m not very sure. I’m guessing that since the comic credits list Etienne Davodeau and David Prudhomme as adapting La Tour des Miracles, then I would assume it was originally a song or maybe a memoir. Brassens is a character who appears to be surrounded by a bunch of lunatic friends. Half the book takes place in Paris, the other half, I’m guessing, the south of France. I would think that since it is about a French singer that most people in English speaking North America haven’t heard of, an English translation isn’t coming any time soon, but if you find yourself going on a trip to France, hunt this one down. Its really fantastic.

My Office / Closet

Where comic making magic happens almost every day...

Daytrotter

I've started doing some illustrations for Daytrotter. If you haven't heard of it, Daytrotter is an indie music website that features articles and reviews, which by itself isn't terribly unusual. The thing that separates Daytrotter from the rest, however, is that twice a week they feature 4 songs recorded in their studio by a band for free to download. It's kind of like those old Peel Sessions E.P's, but its free. The illustration above is of Patrick Cleandenim (I love that name.)

T-Shirt

I've designed a new shirt in 3 different colors for men and women. You can check it out here.

The Fish Keeper

My wife, Georgene, and I have done another book along the lines of The Suicidal Dog called The Fish Keeper. Like The Suicidal Dog, this is a short story written by Georgene and illustrated by me. It's in a zine format, meaning it was printed on our printer on 8.5" x 11" paper, folded over, and stapled. You can read more info by clicking on The Fish Keeper link here. I also have the original art of the illustrations available at the Comic Art Collective.

Cartoonists I'd Like to See Translated 3: Jacques Tardi

Unlike my previous two entries, Jacques Tardi has had some work printed in English. I first came across him in Raw (where I discovered so many artists that are now favorites). NBM printed a few books from his Adèle Blanc-Sec series, Dark Horse printed another as a stand alone comic book (The Secret of the Salamander), Fantagraphics has published him in Pictopia,and a few years ago, a publisher I had never heard of, Ibooks, printed The Bloody Streets of Paris (an adaptation of a Leo Malet WWII era mystery). These books never seem to get much attention and I seldom ever see them in any stores. I have to assume that they don’t sell particularly well and I can’t understand why. Tardi is considered a master in Europe and you’d be hard pressed to find a better cartoonist on any continent. Tardi has the perfect combination of solid storytelling, wonderful detail in backgrounds and clothes (which is important, since most of his stories take place in a Paris of the past), as well as an expressive line and way of drawing people.

It should also be noted that even with a half dozen or so books in the Adèle Blanc-Sec series, the character that Tardi seems to love more than all others and returns to in book after book, is the city of Paris. He draws it better that anyone I’ve seen, capturing the architecture, the wet cobblestones, the drizzling rain, and the bare branched winter trees. His drawings go beyond the journalistic documenting of details and move to the intangible state of capturing a feeling of a place. I have no idea how he does it. I suppose this is the magic of art that people try to learn and teach, but you either have it or don’t.


Although there has been work by Tardi available from time to time, there are two books that I think have been strangely ignored by North American publishers - well, almost ignored. C'était la Guerre des Tranchées (It was the War of the Trenches) is a series of short stories about World War I, some of which were printed in Raw, and some in the Drawn and Quarterly anthology, but never all of them in one volume. This is a book that serves Tardi’s strengths very well. His attention to detail captures the disgusting conditions of the trenches, with the rats, mud, puddles of stagnant water and barbed wire, the disemboweled horses blown up into trees, and military equipment. All of this brings the reader into the Hell that his characters have to live with. However, Tardi always maintains a balance between these details and keeping his drawings expressive. The men of the trenches can look fearful, anxious, or emotionally dead and reserved to their fate. How he can do this with just a few facial lines, I don’t know. He is up there with Jose Munoz and Jaime Hernandez in his ability to communicate so much emotional depth within a seemingly simple drawing of a character’s face. This book is a tour de force by one of the greatest living cartoonists in the world and hopefully, some publisher will translate it, and properly promote it, so it will get the recognition it deserves.



The other book that I think would be an excellent candidate for translation is Le Cri du Peuple (The Cry of the People). This book is more recent, with the first volume printed in 2001 by Casterman. This is a comic adaptation from the novel of the same name by Jean Vautrin about a tragic part of French history that, until I lived in Paris for a year, I knew nothing about, the Paris Commune of 1871. After France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian war, many people of Paris rebelled against both the Prussians and the French Government, taking over the city by force and creating a new socialist, democratic government. Within their brief existence, the Commune passed decrees of a separation of church and state (America should consider this), voting rights for women, and a pension for the unmarried partners of deceased National Guardsmen (the commune’s army). In less than 60 days the commune was defeated, slaughtered and executed by the French Government. I have only the first volume of 5 books, so the complete graphic novel must be over 400 pages. It appears to be an interesting mix of history, politics and culture (Gustave Courbet makes an appearance and was a large figure in the Commune). Needless to say, I’d love to see this series of books put out as one volume in English. I would think it would do well in schools, too, having the educational combination noted above, but the book does have some nudity and a reproduction of Courbet’s risqué L’Origine du Monde and we all know what happens when American teens see nudity. They have pre-marital sex and ruin their lives. I guess this would never fly in schools. It’s too bad, it looks like a great book. (Sorry about the sample page getting cut off, this is not an easy book to scan.)