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Issue #10 of the Myspace Dark Horse Presents comic went up today, and so did a new two-page Milk and Cheese strip: Milk and Cheese in "The Fur Suit of Crappiness". Please enjoy. |
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Had a nice time at the Free Comic Book Day celebration at Comic Book Jones. Signed a few things, did a few sketches, got to see an old friend of mine who I hadn't seen in a while. Picked up a few comics for Emily, she really likes Owly and enjoyed the Top Shelf book. The Tiny Titans book was lousy, script-wise, but she's only three and change so she doesn't 't know that. The art's cute, but what a dreary read, nothing there, threadbare and unfunny, with extended gags riffing on old fandom jokes like "Speedy" not being a speed character. Two pages for that gag. Sheesh. The strips make Li'L Jinx look like Little Lulu. The characters basically talk while walking down the street or sit at school desks. That might work in Peanuts, it blows dust here. And they adhere to current DC continuity so there's two Wonder Girls, which actually confused Emily, as she knows who Wonder Woman is and could handle one little version of her. When the blonde version shows up we were all confused, actually. Bad, weak comic. She wasn't crazy about the Disney book, unfortunately, Gyro Gearloose not being the most killer-endearing character, imho. Not enough Donald Duck for her tastes. Or mine, to be honest. I got a copy of the Hellboy/BPRD comic for myself, which I enjoyed. The Hellboy story is an odd choice, insofar as it would be fairly useless for new readers to geta hell of a lot out of, but folks familiar with the comic, and I guess the movie, might like it fine, like I did. It's a bit of business more than a story but nicely done, and it'll read well in a collection. The other two stories are serviceable and look good. Otherwise, we've been busy with some stuff. I've been writing something for Mad, I've found it difficult going, I feel like I'm working a bit stiff trying to mix my verbose (i.e., blabbermouth) "Dork" style with the more terse and direct Mad style, and there are some other things bugging me about my first draft. Hopefully editing and revising will make something decent of it. We turned in a couple of gag panels for Nick Mag, another for Mad Kids. We're designing a Story Time segment for Yo Gabba Gabba!, which we also wrote. I'm finishing up another charity drawing tonight or tomorrow (dunno when the Hulk piece I posted a few weeks ago will be auctioned off, I better check in on that), then I have a Bart Simpson script for Bongo to finish up. And then I start on some scripts for Dark Horse on a project I've been hoping to get going for quite some time now. Yay. Speaking of DH, the latest "issue" of Dark Horse Presents on Myspace should be uploaded sometime today, with a new 2-page Milk and Cheese strip in the mix. It's about Furries. Guess what? They make fun of them. Yay. Back to work for me. |
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This Saturday is Free Comic Book Day, blah blah blah. I'll be signing comics (if anyone asks me to) and doing free sketches (ditto) from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Comic Book Jones shop here on Staten Island. It should be pretty laid back. If nobody wants anything I'm just going to sit on a couch and read comics for a while. Sarah will be dropping by late in the day, I goofed up and made plans for the signing without remembering it was the same day as a local event we wanted to take Emily to. Duh. So, the gals will drop me off like a ruined omelette at the comic shop and head back once they're done acting like normal people enjoying themselves to watch daddy talk horseshit about drawings of superheroes and talking ducks or whatever the hell.. (Today Emily told Sarah, "Daddy likes that place", when they left the comic shop, as if she understood completely what kind of sad person I am when in my element. She also sounded a little sorry for me, I bet. I am alone even in my own home. But now my home has a copy of Willie & Joe: The World War 2 Years by the great Bill Mauldin, so I am temporarily happy in my little fanboy purgatory. And actually, Sarah digs Mauldin as well. Still...from what Sarah told me, Emily said "Daddy likes that place" as if they were helping me out of a bar I had disappeared into since late afternoon, hiding the fact that I had been fired from my job at the firm weeks ago). More information on the signing and the store here. Energetic folks can hit up both Comic Book Jones and the Jim Hanley's Universe on the South Shore and potentially load up on free stuff like there's no Free Comic Book Tomorrow. Bring the kids while you're at it. Or leave 'em at home, just make sure they have some water and something to eat handy or whatever. You could always leave the T.V. on, it's not like comics, kids love that stuff and it keeps 'em entertained for hours and hours. . |
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Here's one that freaks me out for various reasons: On Wednesday, June 4th, Dan Nadel will moderate a discussion on comics featuring Kim Deitch, Lauren R. Weinstein and myself. The event is being put together by the NY chapter of AIGA, which is apparently a professional graphic artists association whose membership is made up of professional graphic artists. Like I would know about that stuff. I had to leave the Nestle's Quik fan club because I couldn't keep up with my dues. Anyway, it will be held at Galapagos, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and costs $30 for non-members to attend. I don't think I'll be seeing many familiar faces at this one, I can't get my readers to cough up thirty beans for my artwork half the time, forget shelling it out to hear me talk about my artwork. Or whatever it is we're going to talk about. Juxtaposition or something. Formal attributes of the thought balloon. Who's stronger, Hulk or Superman? Who knows. I will wear my non-cursing mouth and try to behave myself. I'm not sure why I was asked to do this, considering how many cartoonists run amok in the NYC area, but, well, I'll show up and see what happens. Kim Deitch!? Wow. That's crazy. And then I'm on a panel with Jaime Hernandez at Heroes Con later in the month. Crazy. Details about the AIGA talk can be found here. |
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Been meaning to post this, but things have been so hectic I haven't been able to get to it until now. Last month, as some of you may recall, I was a guest on the Comic Book Club talk show thing held here in NYC, along with Chris Duffy. The CBC folks post podcasts of the shows, and if you have a care to, you can listen to Chris and I and some other folks bullshit about comics. Here's the link I was given for those who are interested in this sort of thing: http://www.popcultureshock.com Listen at your own risk. Chris was a gentleman, I was on seriously low blood sugar and in a mood to be obnoxious on purpose for some reason. Some folks found my shenanigans funny, your mileage, as they say, may vary. My thanks to the CBC hosts for inviting me and not punching me in the jaw for some of my stupider comments and for constantly stepping on their lines, etc. I'm not a professional comedian, folks, I just ramble and die like one. That;s why I spend most of my time at a drawing board and not in front of a live audience. |
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When we realized last week that we had to cancel going to NYCC, we also realized that my birthday was not only going to be spent at a friend's wedding, but at home working on the overdue Milk and Cheese strip which was currently ruining our schedule and lives. Emily was really looking forward to my birthday, more than I was myself -- for her, it was a day out, for me, a step closer to oblivion. In order to not disappoint her, we began to tell her that my birthday was this past Tuesday, rather than the actual date. We figured we'd be done with the strip on Monday, drop dead for the rest of the day, and take her out to celebrate the following day. So, my birthday was Sunday, but for Emily's sake, it was Tuesday. Unfortunately, after we got back home from the wedding on Sunday night, I ended up working for the next 23 hours, fairly straight, to finish up the strip, which I'd already put some marathons into the previous week ( I remember back in the day Bob Burden telling me to do more Milk and Cheese strips because they were "easy", and looking over the first few year's worth of strips, I see what he meant. They are awful-looking affairs whose charm escapes me at this point in time. Only a decrepit market such as the Direct One could have allowed that ugly collection of pen scratches to become semi-successful. But anyway...). I ended up staying awake for about 34 hours all told from Sunday afternoon to Monday evening, finishing the troubled strip up hours later than expected or desired, and blowing the second deadline offered up by my editor. Hurrah. Sarah then had to pull a marathon coloring session, allowing the strip to go out Tuesday afternoon. Unfortunately, this meant that going out for my birthday was a no-go. We somehow convinced Emily that my birthday was not yesterday, but today (always fun to lie to the kiddies). Okay, then, birthday number three was set, at least. I expected to sleep for many hours, but awoke, I thought, at 6 a.m or thereabouts according to the alarm clock. I couldn't fall back to sleep, so I got up and had some toast and read for while, before seeing the clock on the stove, which let me know that it was actually sometime after 1 a.m. Disoriented and stressed out by recent events, I stayed up another three hours. Exciting reading, eh, folks? Wait, it gets duller. Today, I found out that the library talk/workshop on comics that I agreed to give a few weeks ago was scheduled not for 4 pm on Thursday, as I deadline-drunkenly thought, but at 4 pm on my latest "birthday". Huzzah. This was an event put together by folks associated with NYCC, or something like that, it was spottily organized as far as I could see, with no web presence or real promotion of any kind. Basically, some cartoonists were asked to show up at local NY Public Library branches and give a talk about comics. Blah blah blah, stupidly, I agreed, because what I need to do is schedule more things in my week that cost me time and money when I'm already late on stuff and have the cash flow of an anemic dandelion. Huzzah. So, our plans were canceled once again, and Emily took the news hard. We hurriedly ran to the post office to pick up a pile of mail and send out some things that had needed to go out days ago, then bought groceries to replace our depleted stocks, then drove back home where I tossed together a batch of artwork and xeroxes and paper and drawing supplies to impress the three or four kids who would doubtless show up to hear the local schmuck nobody talk and angle for freebies. I usually get about two to five kids at these things, the result of smart parents realizing they could get an hour or two's worth of free daycare while they plopped down elsewhere and slept or chatted away on their phones. Anyhow, I show up at the Richmondtown branch a few minutes late, only to be met by a blank stare from the librarian staff. They had no idea I was coming, had not heard of the talk, had not been contacted by anyone either at NYCC, the folks organizing the events, or their main office. They had received no flyers. Huh. Zah. I called Sarah to make sure I wasn't nuts and that the NYPL website really did have a listing for the event (which is how I found out the talk was Wed and not Thursday, as my lizard brain thought). The librarians checked as well. The site mentioned the appearance, but nonetheless the branch was never notified, and there was nothing to be done. The only people who showed up was a friend of mine from my high school/D&D days, who brought his daughter to get some books while he was saying hello to the loser. I was asked if I would stay a while in case anyone showed up, the event having been mentioned in the Staten Island Advance, hidden in the body of an article on NYCC , which I was interviewed for (back when I thought Sarah and I were going to the show, and I'd be doing my Saturday signing). I sat in the rather large Community Room with my friend and his daughter, a community of three. Nobody else showed up. My friend's daughter was tired of listening to her father and his loser friend talk over old times, and they left to find some books for her. I spoke to the head librarian at the branch, and I agreed to do a workshop in the summer that we could organize properly without the help of the comic book industry. I bought a Carvel cake and went home feeling on top of the bottom of the world, wondering why I agreed to do the talk in the first place, why I agreed to do the summer workshop since these things are usually a bust for me even when folks know about them, wondering why I couldn't just belt out a simple two-page dumb-ass strip about Furries, and why I don't just get a job somewhere with benefits and spend my nights watching movies and getting drunk. We ate some cake, I was in a mood, we played Hi Ho Cherrio with Emily, and I couldn't sleep after a few hours so I typed up this jagoff kvetch report. Tomorrow we make a go of my sort-of-fourth birthday this week. I expect a hailstorm of fire ants on top of a mild earthquake that only affects our possessions followed by a hold-up and the car breaking down in New Jersey. We shall see. The Milk and Cheese strip goes live on the DHC MySpace page May 7th. Unless I'm wrong and no one told DHC I was coming. Huzzah. |
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| We won't be showing up at NYCC Friday, and I've also had to bow out of my signing at the Harper Collins booth on Saturday. We're overwhelmed with work and have a wedding to attend on Sunday. So, the con plans are shot, among other things. I'm bummed because we wanted to see a few people there, touch base and show Em the crazy stuff she gets a kick out of, like the Ugly Doll set-up. Oh, well. Shit happens. | |
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