evandorkin: We Have Arrived

Evan Dorkin (

evandorkin) wrote,
@ 2007-08-22 11:30:00

We Have Arrived
We are back from TCAF and Ontario, having had a very, very nice time. Perhaps I will post about it in more detail when I have fully recovered from the event and the drive home and a Monday headache from mixing some drinks, several of which were poorly mixed (but still happily consumed).

We have quite a bit of business to catch up on, and the e-mail is backed up something fierce, so if you've written us recently, please be patient, we'll get back to you asap. If you've asked about a piece of original art, I'll try to get back to you within the next day or two, for some reason we've had a bump in art inquiries in the past two weeks. When the dust settles a bit we hope to have the list updated and added to, I have a number of pieces prepped for TCAF that will be going onto the art list as soon as we have the time to get around to it. We have some unpacking to do, some work to catch up on, and some sleep to chase.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by our table at TCAF to pick something up, get something signed, jawbone a bit, etc. Thanks to those who gave up an hour of their time to sit in on our panel. Thanks to Chip Zdarsky for moderating the panel/putting up with me (And Emily). Thanks to Sarah for same. Much thanks to Chris Butcher for inviting us and putting on a fun show. Thanks to those who drew pictures in Em's Little Golden Book sketchbook. Thanks to Jeet Heer for showing us the amazing Walt and Skeezix Sundays book.

More thanks later. Or I'll just e-mail the folks personally. We met some very nice folks, caught up with others, had a nice time, ate some swell Japanese food, some nifty Canadian junk food, drank some much-appreciated high-fructose corn syrup-free Coca Cola to stay awake.

Toronto is a seemingly lovely place we wouldn't mind being shipwrecked on. It made coming home to the swamp that is Staten Island that much harder.

I feel like a zombie, gotta go clean up and stumble around and pretend to be human until we can go back to sleep. We'd hoped to go to Coney Island today to walk the midway before it gets demolished and eat Nathan's hot dogs and see if we could hook up with the Aquabats before they played, but we are wiped out, our brains are fogged, and the weather, while to my liking, sucks for such an undertaking.

I guess we might just sit around the house and watch the episodes of Yo Gabba Gabba! stored on the DVR while we were out and about. I know Emily wouldn't mind that a bit.

(38 comments) - (Post a new comment)

	monkeyman 2007-08-22 04:03 pm UTC (link)
	I really enjoyed the panel, personally, and everyone I heard afterwards felt the same. I was walking back downstairs with a couple of guys who were saying they wished it had been much longer ... of course, for you I'm sure it felt like it was. Glad you guys came up! I'm sure there's room for a few more Americans in the city, should you decide to stay some visit. ;) (Reply to this)

	inkstuds 2007-08-22 04:21 pm UTC (link)
	What a coincidence, Jeet is going to join the Inkstuds tmrw with Chris Ware to discuss that book and Frank King and more. (Reply to this) (Thread)

evandorkin
2007-08-23 04:11 am UTC (link)

Jeet's enthusiasm for the medium is pretty incredible, and that GA Sundays book is to die for. The back flap promises a second Nemo Sundays tome, a book of early strips and a Sammy Sneeze by McCay. I need to bolster my flagging cartooning career if I ever hope to keep up with these releases.

Speaking of which, D&Q had copies of the third Walt and Skeezix dailies book, which looks terrific. The Beguiling had a copy of the German complete Rarebit Fiend, which is larger than I expected. I should have that waiting for me with a friend in NYC, we ordered copies together to cut the shipping a bit.

I need money. Maybe Emily can be persuaded to eat less and wear clothes made of leaves. I could always sell cigarettes and beer outside AA meetings. Donate a kidney. Hmmm.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

inkstuds
2007-08-23 05:51 am UTC (link)

Goddamn, of course this stuff is coming out after I do the interview. I normally get the d&q stuff in advance, but i guess that must of just arrived from some far away printer.

Jeet is super smart and super interesting. He was awesome to have on last year where we talked about Krazy Kat and he schooled an ignorant Colin. I don't have the big Nemo book, but I will probably end up getting the GA sundays book. I already have a nice big collection of Nemo stuff, so that can hold me over. So many good books, so little money. I need to finish school so I can start making my selling out my soul money.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	moroccomole 2007-08-22 04:33 pm UTC (link)
	I'm not sure if this qualifies as "junk food," but whenever I'm in Canadia, I love to stock up on Cadbury Burnt Almond chocolate bars, which are trickier to find in the States. (Reply to this)

	2sixteen 2007-08-22 05:24 pm UTC (link)
	Caught by Immonen. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	evandorkin 2007-08-22 07:44 pm UTC (link)
	Ugh. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	astuces 2007-08-22 10:38 pm UTC (link)
	nonsense. (Reply to this) (Parent)

ltmurnau
2007-08-22 05:25 pm UTC (link)

I'm also interested to know what Canadian junk food Evan found appealing.

Examples of Canada-only bars are found at http://www.bookofratings.com/canadiansnacks.html, and the most remarkable
I can think of is the Aero Bar. The chocolate inside is all crumbly bubbles, ”Big on bubbles”/”Par les bulles on s’y connait” is this candy bar’s catchphrase, and sure enough when you crack one in half it looks like a chocolatey degenerative bone disease.

Anyway, I think the Aero is a chocbar with a uniquely postmodern premise: its sales are predicated on its offer of nothing, of myriads of minute
vacancies inside - in short, you are buying a chocolate bar that promises the absence of chocolate.

Again, ”Par les bulles on s’y connait” - you’ll know it by the bubbles - heh, the slogan is even in French, Baudrillard would be proud.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

jinjur
2007-08-22 05:36 pm UTC (link)

We do love the Aero, but we can actually buy it here (or we could until about a week ago when the candy section mysteriously disappeared from our grocery store). Evan ate 2 Mr. Big bars and says the 2nd one was enough for life. I had one bite and found it so overwhelmingly sweet I was done then and there. We really liked the Cadbury fruit and nut bar, but again, something we do see around here. We bought something called a Mirage, I think, which was basically a fat Aero and didn't work for me. Evan also had a Nestle's KitKat and agreed it was much better than the US Hershey version.

We bought some Twizzlers for sugar on the drive home and they were foul, not sure why they were so different. Tossed the whole bag at the first stop. And I picked up a bag of ketchup-flavored chips, which I love and only find sporadically here.

I think that was it...although I'm sure I'm forgetting something Evan will remember!

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

ltmurnau
2007-08-22 05:51 pm UTC (link)

I agree, Mr. Big is way too sweet. So is something called a Sweet Marie. Mirage is forgettable, I used to buy them because they were larger than other bars for the same price.

Foul Twizzlers? You probably bought the red ones. The black ones are OK, but still not real licorice. Good way to get your corn syrup though.

I actually like American Hershey's chocolate better than the Canadian, because it is darker and tastes stronger.

An American grocery store with no candy section ???

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

evandorkin
2007-08-22 05:59 pm UTC (link)

No, they had a UK/Aus candy section in one aisle and dumped it. Left some of the Brit/Canadian cookies, but we lost Sarah's Violet Crumbles and Aeros and I forget what else. Expensive, so we only bought them occasionally. The eastern european/mexican candy sections, tho' small, survived. Dunno what happened, the UK stuff sold.

There's another grocery store with some UK stuff near us, but the offerings have shrunk as of late, and supposedly there's a dedicated UK grocery shop on the other end of the island. And of course, Manhattan can get you what you need in several places,if one can find the time to go.

I think Sarah covered the junk I ate pretty well. Can't remember what else I may have bought for sugar fixes to keep going when we didn't eat breakfast or lunch for three days straight.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

ltmurnau
2007-08-22 06:05 pm UTC (link)

Ah yes, cue the Disgusting English Candy Drill from Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow....

Now once again he finds himself checking out these ruddy gelatin objects, nodding, he hopes amiably, at Mrs. Quoad. They have the names of different wines written on them in bas-relief.

"Just a touch of menthol too," Mrs. Quoad popping one into her mouth. "Delicious."

Slothrop finally chooses one that says Lafitte Rothschild and stuffs it on into his kisser. "Oh yeah. Yeah. Mmm. It's great."

"If you really want something peculiar try the Bernkastler Doktor. Oh! Aren't you the one who brought me those lovely American slimy elm things, maple-tasting with a touch of sassafras---"

"Slippery elm. Jeepers I'm sorry, I ran out yesterday."

Darlene comes in with a steaming pot and three cups on a tray. "What's that?" Slothrop a little quickly, here.

"You don't really want to know, Tyrone."

"Quite right," after the first sip, wishing she'd used more lime juice or something to kill the basic taste, which is ghastly-bitter. These people are really insane. No sugar, natch. He reaches in the candy bowl, comes up with a black, ribbed licorice drop. It looks safe. But just as he's biting in, Darlene gives him, and it, a peculiar look, great timing this girl, sez, "Oh, I thought we got rid of all those---" a blithe, Gilbert & Sullivan ingenue's thewse---"years ago," at which point Slothrop is encountering this dribbling liquid center, which tastes like mayonnaise and orange peels.

"You've taken the last of my Marmalade Surprises!" cries Mrs. Quoad, having now with conjuror's speed produced an egg-shaped confection of pastel green, studded all over with lavender nonpareils. "Just for that I shan't let you have any of these marvelous rhubarb creams." Into her mouth it goes, the whole thing.

"Serves me right," Slothrop, wondering just what he means by this, sipping herb tea to remove the taste of the mayonnaise candy---oops but that's a mistake, right, here's his mouth filling once again with horrible alkaloid desolation, all the way back to the soft palate where it digs in. Darlene, pure Nightingale compassion, is handing him a hard red candy, molded like a stylized raspberry... mm, which oddly enough even tastes like a raspberry, though it can't begin to take away that bitterness. Impatiently, he bites into it, and in the act knows, fucking idiot, he's been had once more, there comes pouring out onto his tongue the most godawful crystalline concentration of Jeez it must be pure nitric acid, "Oh mercy that's really sour," hardly able to get the words out he's so puckered up, exactly the sort of thing Hop Harrigan used to pull to get Tank Tinker to quit playing his ocarina, a shabby trick then and twice as reprehensible coming from an old lady who's supposed to be one of our Allies, shit he can't even see it's up his nose and whatever it is won't dissolve, just goes on torturing his shriveling tongue and crunches like ground glass among his molars. Mrs. Quoad is meantime busy savoring, bite by dainty bite, a cherry-quinine petit four. She beams at the young people across the candy bowl. Slothrop, forgetting, reaches again for his tea. There is no graceful way out of this now. Darlene has brought a couple-three more candy jars down off of the shelf, and now he goes plunging, like a journey to the center of some small, hostile planet, into an enormous bonbon chomp through the mantle of chocolate to a strongly eucalyptus-flavored fondant, finally into a core of some very tough grape gum arabic. He fingernails a piece of this out from between his teeth and stares at it for a while. It is purple in color.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

ltmurnau
2007-08-22 06:05 pm UTC (link)

"Now you're getting the idea!" Mrs. Quoad waving at him a marbled conglomerate of ginger root, butterscotch, and aniseed, "you see, you also have to enjoy the way it looks. Why are Americans so impulsive?"

"Well," mumbling, "usually we don't get any more complicated than Hershey bars, see...."

"Oh, try this," hollers Darlene, clutching her throat and swaying against him.

"Gosh, it must really be something," doubtfully taking this nastylooking brownish novelty, an exact quarter-scale replica of a Mills-type hand grenade, lever, pin and everything, one of a series of patriotic candies put out before sugar was quite so scarce, also including, he notices, peering into the jar, a .455 Webley cartridge of green and pink striped taffy, a six-ton earthquake bomb of some silver-flecked blue gelatin, and a licorice bazooka.

"Go on then," Darlene actually taking his hand with the candy in it and trying to shove it into his mouth.

"Was just, you know, looking at it, the way Mrs. Quoad suggested."

"And no fair squeezing it, Tyrone."

Under its tamarind glaze, the Mills bomb turns out to be luscious pepsin-flavored nougat, chock-full of tangy candied cubeb berries, and a chewy camphor-gum center. It is unspeakably awful. Slothrop's head begins to reel with camphor fumes, his eyes are running, his tongue's a hopeless holocaust. Cubeb? He used to smoke that stuff. "Poisoned..." he is able to croak.

"Show a little backbone," advises Mrs. Quoad.

"Yes," Darlene through tongue-softened sheets of caramel, "don't you know there's a war on? Here now love, open your mouth."

Through the tears he can't see it too well, but he can hear Mrs. Quoad across the table going "Yum, yum, yum," and Darlene giggling. It is enormous and soft, like a marshmallow, but somehow---unless something is now going seriously wrong with his brain---it tastes like: gin. "Wha's 'is," he inquires thickly.

"A gin marshmallow," sez Mrs. Quoad.

"Awww..."

"Oh that's nothing, have one of these---" his teeth, in some perverse reflex, crunching now through a hard sour gooseberry shell into a wet spurting unpleasantness of, he hopes it's tapioca, little glutinous chunks of something all saturated with powdered cloves.

"More tea?" Darlene suggests. Slothrop is coughing violently, having inhaled some of that clove filling.

"Nasty cough," Mrs. Quoad offering a tin of that least believable of English coughdrops, the Meggezone. "Darlene, the tea is lovely, I can feel my scurvy going away, really I can."

The Meggezone is like being belted in the head with a Swiss Alp. Menthol icicles immediately begin to grow from the roof of Slothrop's mouth. Polar bears seek toenail-holds up the freezing frosty-grape alveolar clusters in his lungs. It hurts his teeth too much to breathe, even through his nose, even, necktie loosened, with his nose down inside the neck of his olive-drab T-shirt. Benzoin vapors seep into his brain. His head floats in a halo of ice.

Even an hour later, the Meggezone still lingers, a mint ghost in the air. Slothrop lies with Darlene, the Disgusting English Candy Drill a thing of the past, his groin now against her warm bottom. The one candy he did not get to taste---one Mrs. Quoad withheld---was the Fire of Paradise, that famous confection of high price and protean taste---"salted plum" to one, "artificial cherry" to another... "sugared violets"... "Worcestershire sauce"... "spiced treacle"... any number of like descriptions, positive, terse---never exceeding two words in length---resembling the descriptions of poison and debilitating gases found in training manuals, "sweet-and-sour eggplant" being perhaps the lengthiest to date. [ . . . ]

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	robyn_ma 2007-08-22 06:46 pm UTC (link)
	What the hell kind of nightmarish Pez/Lovecraftian horror is Yo Gabba Gabba and where can I get every episode immediately?? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	evandorkin 2007-08-22 07:45 pm UTC (link)
	It is what it is. Be a patient piece of audience meat. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	robyn_ma 2007-08-22 08:02 pm UTC (link)
	But...but I wanna fix up a big bowl of Cocoa Krispies and a big bowl of ahem something else and watch a marathon. Hell, just an hour of Biz doing beatbox lessons would be fine. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	craigjclark 2007-08-22 08:49 pm UTC (link)
	Oh, hey. I just realized I have cable again. That means I can watch the show! Huzzah! Now all I have to do is make sure I get my butt up at 10:30 tomorrow. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	craigjclark 2007-08-23 02:57 pm UTC (link)
	Wow, that was incredibly super-rad. Super Robot Martian Girl is tops! (Reply to this) (Parent)

	Non Sequitor Question docpalindrome 2007-08-22 10:11 pm UTC (link)
	I had a quick question that might sound kind of weird, but it is something I have to ask. If you want to know why I want to know this, just write me and I will let you know more details. Does the psychotic Predator in Bad Blood (my favorite Predator story, by the by) have a name or is he just "Psycho Predator"? Thanks, J. Donavan Edmond (Reply to this) (Thread)

Re: Non Sequitor Question

evandorkin
2007-08-23 03:59 am UTC (link)

I never named the criminal Predator. Never even thought of it, it seems sort of weird in retrospect but I didn't even have a name for him in the script. I wonder how I referred to him. From what I recall, there were no Predator names that I could remember from working on the two series for DHC, and seeing the two first films. Just, "Predator". I think I basically called the second one the "Predator Cop" or something.

Glad you liked that series, no one ever mentions it to me. I liked a bit of it, my script creaks in a lot of places and features some overwriting and stiffness, we also needed Chris Warner on inks throughout the entire series, Derek is a great guy and very talented but he was new to comics at the time and some of his storytelling choices involved ornamental flourishes that impaired the narrative a bit. Warner solidified the pages and locked down important elements, the showdown between the Predators/protagonists in issue 3 and 4 is murky, at best, downright confusing and ugly in places. Learning experience for all involves.

Anyway, there's a rather lengthy reply to a simple yes or no question.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	davemerrill 2007-08-23 12:56 am UTC (link)
	Great to see you, glad you enjoyed the show, thanks for signing my GREED! Yes, we're all old and creaky. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	evandorkin 2007-08-23 04:04 am UTC (link)
	Good meeting you, Dave. I don't sign many copies of Greed these days, always scares me to see it, like an old evil eye staring out at me, croaking, "your characters are old and dying and so are you..." (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

(Anonymous)
2007-08-24 01:42 pm UTC (link)

I didn't have anybody's newest book so I brought the oldest stuff I could find. Joe Matt seems kind of embarrassed by his early work, strangely enough.

Just so you know I'm not a crazed Milk & Cheese fanatic or anything, my favorite is the Eltingville Club, the "Marathon Men" story, I think that's an amazing work that penetrates deeply into the nerd psyche.

If you had been selling the "Fun" page with the Little Dot & Ass Raping Space Hitler, that would have meant a trip to the bank machine for me and no lunches for a few months. I predict a lifetime of bad relationship choices for Little Dot.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	davemerrill 2007-08-24 01:47 pm UTC (link)
	Duh, that was me. Internets are hard. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	evandorkin 2007-08-24 05:24 pm UTC (link)
	FYI, I'm probably selling off most of the Dork #11 pages, I just brought a few to test the waters. Will probably keep "Bad Dad" and a couple of others. The tricky part of offering them for sale is that we swapped some gags around in the book, so the printed pages don't always reflect the original art. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	puberty_rocks 2007-08-23 03:56 am UTC (link)
	It has been lovely weather like this all week long. The only downside was that it meant the mosquitoes were more desperate than usual. You probably missed the worst of it. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	evandorkin 2007-08-23 04:02 am UTC (link)
	I got bitten up rather badly while in Toronto, actually. Mosquitoes tend to like me -- they never bother Sarah, but they dine out on my pale flesh like an open buffet. We're experiencing temperatures in the 60's now, which, for me, is heaven in August. Unfortunately it's really wet and humid, and that's hell on our house. But I'll take it over normal summer heat any day. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	(Anonymous) 2007-08-24 12:00 am UTC (link)
	YOU CAN FIGHT THE NAZIS! FOR FREE! (Reply to this) (Thread)

evandorkin
2007-08-24 04:44 am UTC (link)

Did I throw your credit card off the balcony at the after-party at Central Sunday night?

Either way, as inferred above, people should do whatever they can to read the Captain Marvel Monster Society arc from the 40's in order to see Billy Batson's alter ego rally the Scots to fight the Germans based on the fact that it wouldn't cost them anything. Awesome!

Plus, you get Bat Men, Hitler, Sivana, Ibak, Mr Banjo, some Alligator Men, and of course, the amazing Mr. Mind, the minute but cute murderer of multitudes.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	jevanlee 2007-08-24 03:36 pm UTC (link)
	I'm sold. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	evandorkin 2007-08-24 05:25 pm UTC (link)
	My talent for comics has always been the ability to sell the work of other people. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	(Anonymous) 2007-08-24 07:31 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, you did. But I only because I told you to jack off on Joe Matt's sketchbook. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	(Anonymous) 2007-08-24 07:37 pm UTC (link)
	I should add that there was more money on the table than would be generated by six print runs of Dork (which, actually, means x > 0). Anyway, it stands to reason that you, Evan, were a fucking idiot then and there. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	(Anonymous) 2007-08-24 07:53 pm UTC (link)
	And I should add, in all seriousness, that Toronto was better for having you. The slipcase you were talking about isn't in print anymore, which is rough, but for those wondering Evan's talking about Captain Marvel Adventures #22-46. And you were right, the genocide count and the sentencing hearing is, perhaps, the best thing that ever happened before Ghost Dad. (Reply to this) (Parent)

evandorkin
2007-08-24 09:25 pm UTC (link)

I may be a fucking idiot but at least I'm a professional fucking idiot. So there.

The jackoff bit didn't upset me, it was funny. The credit card waved in my face after I said I wasn't a trained monkey didn't work so well for me. You were trying too hard, and I made a bad joke decision based on a minor irritation. Apologies for that, even if it did get some laughs from the table, it wasn't perhaps the coolest thing to do.

Nobody was getting your card, btw, except maybe Joe Matt when he was picking over the empty tables later that evening like a dumpster diver looking for god knows what (I am not making that up).

BTW, Dork might sell for shit in regards to the real world, but the ante wasn't even close (Otherwise I may have gone for it). Now, if you said Hectic Planet, you might have made me cry a little.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

(Anonymous)
2007-08-24 10:45 pm UTC (link)

As long as we're rapping on Joe Matt, I was more concerned for the Powerpuff Girl sitting at table two that he tried to reel in as Humbert Humbert rapebait. You could actually judge by the expression on his face the approximate volume of blood that nascent, prepubescent touch sends flooding down to his bell-end.

Joe is like the R. Kelly of comics, whereas you'd be a sort of Al Jolson-Gary Busey hybrid.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

aeerotataeue
2009-07-25 09:51 am UTC (link)

(Reply to this)

(38 comments) - (Post a new comment)

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