New Wood Postcards

I've got some new wood postcard designs and they are available on my website and my Etsy store. One is printed on cedar and the other on curly maple. Snazzy!

Stumptown 2008

Georgene and I began Stumptown in a bit of a hole in regards to rest. It was a long drive from Los Angeles to Portland, spread over two days, and we did not get very good sleep when the opportunity arose. Again, we stayed at the beautiful home of Top Shelf publisher Brett Warnock. One of my favorite things about visiting Brett is that one small block away is a fantastic coffee/donut/gelato shop. I started off every morning with a warm maple and chocolate donut and an espresso. I can’t imagine how fat I’d be if I lived next to that place.

Because we were constantly exhausted (and I was getting killed by the pollen in Oregon), Georgene and I didn’t socialize a whole lot. We went to the party at Cosmic Monkey Saturday night, but it was so packed and we were so tired that we split after about 15 minutes. We were in bed by 10:30.



We did have a great time at the show, however. I picked up a ton of mini-comics, many by artists that I had heard of, but not read. One of those was Fart Party. I bought the recently published book and artist Julia Wertz was kind enough to throw in some of the latest minis, so I’ve got it all now. I’ve read through some of it and it’s some funny stuff. Another comic that I’ve heard a lot about, but never read was Alec Longstreth’s Phase 7. I picked up issue 13 and it was an enjoyable lesson on the history of common people represented by art. I’ll definitely have to pick up some more issues at my next show.

Probably the best drawn mini I got over the weekend was Sarah Oleksyk’s Ivy. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but you can see by the cover that Sarah’s got some drawing chops. Getting the subtle foreshortening and perspective right aint easy, but she’s able to pull it off and keep the drawing lively. I can’t wait to read it.



Something that I have had a chance to read is Joey Sayers’s I’m Gonna Rip Yer Face Off! This is a collection of one page, crudely drawn, but very funny comics. They tend to be absurd and somewhat psychotic. If that’s your bag, check it out. Other funnies that I came home with are Cartoon Dialectics vol. 1 by Tom Kaczynski featuring some stories that have not been in Mome; MariNaomi’s Estrus Comics #5, Lauren O’Connell’s Thrillsville, and issues 7 and 8 of Liz Baillie’s My Brain Hurts. I also got some books by table neighbor’s Sabin (Ambassador Magma) Calvert and Jeff (Jimmy Trout) Chapman. Those are the lads flanking me in the photo.

The last little treasure was not purchased at Stumptown, but at my regular pilgrimage to Powell’s bookstore. It’s a children’s book from 1951 called Rosalinda. It has some fantastic modernist illustrations by Jan B. Balet. I had never heard of him before finding this book, so it was a nice discovery.



It was regrettable that Georgene and I had to miss out on many of the parties held around the show. Hopefully at our next show, MoCCA in New York, we will have better luck. I’m not optimistic however, since my flight will have 2 connections. With the way air travel is these days, I’m not even sure that I’ll get there within 24 hours.

This Weekend - Stumptown

This weekend I will be at the Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland. I've got some new postcard designs as well as some new sketchbooks / Journals on maple plywood. None of these are comics, but I've got some new comics out soon, just not for Stumptown.

Star Wars by Anthony Vukojevich

Here are some childhood Star Wars drawings drawn by Anthony Vukojevich back in the 70's. Go here to see more of his prolific prepubescent output as well as some recent stuff.

The Man Who Loved Breasts

My new comic, The Man Who Loved Breasts, is available for pre-order here. It won't be out until the fall, so by the time you get the comic in the mail, you will have forgotten about it a long time ago. However, after coming home from a miserable day of school or work, this may be the perfect surprise to brighten up your day.

The Man Who Loved Breasts is a one-shot, 32 page black and white comic from Top Shelf. In the title story, Stanley DeMcMacsonianovskivich has been working a dead-end job his whole life and is looking for a way out. He has an epiphany that the secret to happiness is to make a living doing what you love, but his passion isn't exactly golf. The back-up stories are George Olavatia: Amputee Fetishist involving a fertility clinic and a man with specialized tastes and A 21st Century Cartoonist in King Arthur's Court.

Super Market

Since I've been woken up at 5:30 by a moron and his car horn, I'll take advantage of my extra waking hours to mention that I'll be at Super Market this Sunday at Meltdown in Hollywood. Other than me, Tom Neely, Louis Del Carmen, Stuart Ng, and a bunch of other folks will be there. Fun starts at 12 and goes to 6. More info here.

Interview

I've just been interviewed at Illustration.org. You can check it out here.

Coming Soon...

I've been working on some new plywood sketchbooks to sell at the summer conventions. This is a picture of a bunch of covers as the polyurethane was drying.

Bibs by Malkasian

Cathy Malkasian (cartoonist of Percy Gloom) has opened an Etsy shop and is selling some very fine bibs. Check it out here.

Wondercon '08

For the first time, I attended Wondercon in San Francisco last weekend. I had heard that Wondercon was not a terribly friendly comics show for independent publishers, but I still went to check it out. I did this for two reasons. One is that I can stay with friends in San Francisco and it’s a 6 hour drive from L.A., so my expenses are low. The other reason is, although my main interest is in independent comics, I still like to buy old mainstream comics from time to time. The one place I usually do this is at the San Diego Comic-con. However, over the years, more and more comic dealers have gotten squeezed out of Comic-con for toys, videos, or anything else that’s not comics. With Wondercon, I hoped I could break even on selling comics and also feed that old nerd impulse with the long boxes.



I’m happy to say that after three days of Wondercon, I made plenty of money to justify the trip, met a lot of great people, and found some cool old comics. If anyone is going there for indie stuff, you are bound to be disappointed. There are no publishers like Fantagraphics, Picturebox, AdHouse, Top Shelf, or D&Q. There is a small press area, where I was at, but it was mostly genre type stuff. There were a few exceptions, but not much. I did pick up Keith Knight’s new book, which is really good and met a great artist, Joey Chou who was selling prints and an illustrated book. I also bought Dungeon: The Early Years by Lewis Trondheim, Joann Sfar, and Christophe Blain. This is a great fantasy series that doesn’t seem to get a whole lot of press. If you were going to start reading Dungeon, I’d recommend starting with this book since chronologically it is the earliest one in the series and also one of the best.



The rest of my money went to old comics. I’ve been on a little bit of a 1960’s Gold Key kick, picking up some comics with those wonderful painted covers. Last weekend, I bought a Space Family Robinson and an issue of Mighty Samson with interior art by Frank Thorne. The stories and art in them are pretty good, but not great. The real highlights are the covers and I think it is interesting to see how the future was envisioned by artists 40 years ago. In the case of Space Family Robinson, the future would be filled with very well-adjusted, square-jawed men living in a sterile, dirt free environment. It’s pretty typical of its era.

I also managed to find a 1969 Gold Key reprint of a 1959 Dell adaptation of Darby O’Gill and the Little People drawn by Alex Toth. Toth drew a bunch of movie and TV adaptations for Dell in the late 50’s / early 60’s and I’ve wanted to check some out. It was worth the hunt because Toth’s work in this is really gorgeous. The way he varies making his marks (depending on if he’s drawing a rock wall, the folds of a jacket, or indicating the blades of grass in a field) is so seductive and so well composed. The color tends to overpower the drawing a bit, but a least it isn’t filled with horrible computer gradients. He truly was a master, and sadly, over his long career, the comics he did for Dell may have been the best written, and that isn’t saying much. I would love to see these stories get reprinted with less intrusive color or just in black and white, but since the rights would be tied up with film studios, I doubt it would ever happen.




Another comic I dug up was a 1969 first issue (of 2) of Heroes, Inc. Presents Cannon by Wally Wood with one story drawn by Steve Ditko. A dealer had a box of these for $3 each. I’m not much of a Wally Wood fan. Although he could do some nice composing with blacks, I think his drawing is stiff and can be cloying. I do like Steve Ditko, however. Sadly Wood inked Ditko and the result is Ditko’s typically wacked out gestures become almost as stiff as Wood’s art. This is quite an accomplishment, just not a good one. There are three stories, two adventure and one humor and I don’t like Wood’s sense of humor either. There were a couple of interesting panels involving a white alien that left me wondering if Wood was dropping a little 1969 satire, but I’m not really sure.



Other than that, I picked up some old Kirby comics which are always great. I also bought a Bizarro 2-parter that was in All-Star Superman because it was included in the Comics Journal’s best of 2008. After reading it, I don’t see what the big fuss is over. Quietly’s art is nice when it isn’t completely obscured by muddy computer coloring. Beyond that, I think I’m going to have to disagree with the Journal on this one.

So with Wondercon behind me, I have Stumptown in Portland, MoCCA in New York, and Comic-con in San Diego over the next 5 months.

I gotta save more dough.