Feh
Blogs are odd, because if nothing of interest happens, you don't need to post. But if you don't post for a while, people lose interest. And if your blog is based around your preofessional life, a lack of interest can be a bad thing. But if the blog isn't a strict promotional endeavor, and you have nothing to say, and you blog about useless crap like most everyone else you might bore people.

I guess what I'm saying is I'm just typing in order to have a post that isn't a week old here.

So here's some internet blah blah blah for the ages:

My cats are in the dog house.

Mr. Jinx pissed in the baby crib. Mimsy knocked over a mason jar full of water in my office while freaking out over a bird outside the window. The water cascaded down on my art table and reference bookshelf. This necessitated pulling my art table out and cleaning enough of my small studio that I just started cleaning the whole room. It killed my work day, and after taking my turn with Emily and then eating dinner and it was about 11:30 pm when I was just about done. Then Crushy waltzed in the door and sprayed the same bookshelf. Right in front of me. Right on the books I reset in the bottom shelf, which happened to be some of my most expensive reference works. A fine how do you do. So I had to pull everything out and carefully treat the books and dust jackets with anti-cat spray spray. Ugh ugh ugh. Then my crazy neighbor on the hill above me who had an hour and a half creamathon with cops a while back had another freak out, screaming about killing someone and getting his gun and f this and f you and f everything. All the while loud monotonous music played from two neighbor's steroes, including the same damned song somebody's been playing for weeks on end. I was in full hate mode last night towards many people and creatures.

Anyway, I just realized I do have some comics crap to discuss, a few things I got at MOCCA you might find interesting. Or not. Does anyone actually ever check things out because somebody typed about it online or mentioned it ina comic? I picked up cromartie because of Tom Spurgeon's review, but these days I mostly try to mentally file the book's name and author in case anyone ever asks me if I heard of them and I can "yeah" and sound like I'm on top of things. Anyway, I normally don't buy much of anything at these shows for several reasons: I have a solid discount at my shop for items that are avilable through previews, I don't have a lot of money for comics right now, and I have troub;le walking up to tables because I always feel like I must buy something. And if I do stop, I tend to talk too much and too awkwardly, so I tend to avoid getting near tables, unless there's someone I know at them. So at a show like MOCCA I tend to trudge through the rooms in the middle of the aisles, squinting to see what's on the tables, avoiding eye contact. I feel safest behind my own table, my little snow fort, behind my wall of work.

The only table I gave a good once over (the woman behind the table was eating and had stepped away so I was free to look without human interaction) had a load of foreign comics, many translated. Many looked interesting, but they weren't cheap, so I promised myself one and picked The Exlibris by Ulf K. I know nothing about him or the book, but it looked nice, solid blacks and flat colors on the cover, a nice cartoony style. It's a 28-pg small-size pamphlet, a slight story about a book thief and a mysterious book club and a hero (The "Exlibris") who wanders around before cracking the case. Nothing much, but the art adds bulk to the pulp-ish proceedings. Very, very pretty cartooning, bold, clean, with appealing character designs and backgrounds, and thick wads of spotted blacks grounding it all to the page. Great looking. I paid $8 for it. Published by Bries of Belgium in 2003. In English. ISBN # 90-76708-18-5. No website that I can find, I plan to google Bries and see what else they have. or wait until next MOCCA< most likely.

Everything else we took home was handed to us, thanks very much. I wish I had time to sit here and go over everyhting folks sent, the good and the bad, but I don't, so I won't, because I can't. The highlights of what we were given and what I've read so far (not necessarily the highlights of what was at the show):

Always In Love and other Stories of Death and/or Dismemberment by Jamie Tanner
I really like Jamie Tanner's creepy, confusing, mini-comics, always printed on colored paper with stickered titles iirc, featuring a recurring cast of odd characters and old world European settings. His art is getting more confident and clear even as his stories remain bewildering and obscure. But they always fascinate me. I don't think you've seen anything quite like this before, Jamie's influences are not readily apparent, he isn't working the usual young cartoonist's avenues, snarky punk humor, "funny" animals, superhero parody (or worse, non-parody), elf crap, autobio, navel-gazing, grand unformed epic, etc. It's hallucinatory but dream-like, I can't put my finger on how to desrivbe it other than creepy and unsettling. Dismembered limbs, blinking bird-men, robots and animals, mayhem, all without a sense of reveling or exploitation. I have no idea where Jamie's coming from, but I like where he's going. www.jamieturner.com should have info on what he's up to.

Almost as indecipherable but even crazier Barnacle Bill Saves the World by Jon Vermilyea. As with jamie, I have no clue where this shit comes from. I had some difficulty getting into this the first two times, as it's dense and has a single thin ink line on everyhting, which often puts me off. But I finally dove in, into what, I dunno. Barnacle Bill is this bulbous thing with claws in garters and heels. Leviathan tells him to save the world and kills him and he goes to heaven where God is protrayed by photographs of Louis Armstrong. Bill goes to hell and fights the devil and stuff. Crazy shit happens and there's muich religious, mythological and pop culture icon cameos. I enjoyed this a lot although like Tanner's work, I can see people not getting into it. I like the crazy art and the energy. What a weird comic. There's a website with a funny-weird-cutesy name, usually a bad sign, but maybe not in this case:www.hotdogunicorn.com

Six Things by Francis Heaney
As it says on the back, "It's about things in increments of six". A tagline or topic is supported by six gags or bits of business that sometimes add up in a gag strip format. I enjoyed this, it's slight but smart. The art is scribbly thin lines and bare bones enough to make Thurber look like Geoff Darrow, but it serves the writing well enough. A fun little mini with some cute bits of business. No cutesy domain name: www.francisheaney.com

Julie Klausner's Animal Party
This is really interesting, apparently Klaunser is a professional stand-up comic, actor and illustrator who dabbles in comics. I liked this a lot, there were some good laughs and observations and most everything was well paced and presented. She thanks Michael Kupperman in the indicia, who I would call an influence on several of her strips, such as Gay Parrot. The art styles vary a bit, from the Kupperman-esque strips to the quickly scribbled gag panels (which didn't really work for me on the whole as there were a lot of them and they largely had the same beat, but comedy is in the eye of the beholder reading it on the can). I thought this was a nifty surprise. And we have yet another non-schmucky website domain name: www.julieklausner.com/animalparty/

I was also given a copy of Senses, an anthology featuring the comics work of students from the Savannah College of Art and Design. It's almost 200 pages and from a scan of it you can see the obvious "young cartoonist" look to most of it, a lack of confidence or chops or an inability to come up with much of anything to hang one's art on story-wise. A lot of amateurish stuff, but as someone who stunk the hosue out at college-age that doesn't necessarily mean anything, anyone can overcome initial awkwardness and flailing to get their act together. There's certainly potential here, they are students, after all. However, the first story, The Island (by Eleanor Davis) is not only fully realized but incredibly accomplished in terms of story-telling, design, pacing, layouts and pure artistic chops. I loved this strip's look, simple, cartoony characters, combined with smartly placed fine-lined detail work, simple but solid placements of black, pateint, exact pacing and small details help puit the simple but satisfying story over. There's some nice-looking stuff in Senses, some folks have talent and there's certainly a lot of promise, but this story is head and shoudlers above what the rest are doing. Based on this one story, this is someone who is ready, if you know what I mean.

Beyond that, it's amazing to see so many young people maikng comics, studying comics, "understanding" comics etc. The ratio of guys and gals in this antholoigy appears to be pretty even. and there are more women than ever at these small press shows, some dragging their boyfriends around for once instead of the other way around. All good. Now if we could just get more non-cartoonists to read these things, we'd be in very nice shape indeed.

Okay, no more typing. back to work. I have my own crap to doodle up.