Evan Dorkin

Sketch Card #1

2009-12-28T02:05:17Z

The Gamut

2009-12-24T01:36:07Z

Die...2009...die...die...die...

2009-12-23T01:06:20Z

So, the hits just keep on coming this December. During Saturday's snowstorm an NYC Sanitation Truck smacked a utility pole across the street from our house, yanking out our power line. Miraculously, our power remained on, unfortunately, this happened at 2 am and kept us up until after 6 am, with cameos from the Fire Department, Con Ed, a Sanitation Dept Supervisor, and an earth mover to clear snow so the Con Ed truck could manage the hill and get the power line repaired. One idiot in a truck managed to hit the power line, ignoring the truck guarding it (also, stuck in the ice). I found myself clearing our steps at 5 am with a gardening shovel, because, oh ha ha, we had no shovel, stupid me forgot pours broke last year and we hadn't replaced it. I didn't want the Con Ed worker falling down the steps as the firemen and I had (I hit my head on the downed power line retaining box twice, but didn't get any electrical super powers. No luck, I tell you). So, fun up the ass, there, just as Sarah's root canal pain died down and a few family-spawned nightmares developed.

Further fun -- I couldn't get out of here on Sunday because of the snow, and had to make do with the gardening shovel to clear our walk. My back is now spasming like a worm orgy on a white-hot skillet as a result of the weekend, and my arms feel like someone played Stretch Armstrong with them, forgetting they aren't rubber. You know those cartoonists who hit the wights and are in great shape? All dozen or three of them? I'm not one of them. As it pained me to realize, yet again. Fucking ouch, man. Fucking ouch.

And yesterday - some scumbag parks his car in front of our cleared garage and goes to work, leaving the car for at least ten hours. So, we couldn't get our car out of the garage. And if you're familiar with Satan Island (my sympathies), you need your car if you have plans. Called 311, no help. I did get to shovel some more with the glorified two-handed spade. Why didn't I write a note last year: "Shovel broken. You live in NYC. Might need another one. Seriously, consider buying a new shovel."?

And today -- well, we found out we're writing a good-sized check tomorrow, to an electrician, to fix the damage to the house and power lines. And we're putting in a claim for the damage with the city. But even if we get the money quickly (ha ha), this is a seriously big swift kick in the teeth, after several swift shots to the head and kidneys this year. We simply cannot catch a fucking break. I was going to say at least we have our health, but...that's kind of debatable. At least our daughter has her health. There. Good.

In other news:

I'll be on SLG Radio tomorrow, Wednesday, at 5 pm EST instead of Thursday. Dan Vado and I will yell at one another for an hour about whatever the hell crops up. Maybe I'll throw myself off a building during the podcast, that might actually get a few listeners to the archives.

Beasts of Burden #4 ships tomorrow to various comic shops. And then we're done, at least for now. My thanks to everyone out there who picked up the series, gave it a try, gave it some ink or helped spread the word online. It's all been appreciated. This really has been a pet project of mine (sorry), and the response from the readers has been incredibly gratifying. If all goes well, we hope to have some good news on further material sometime next year, fingers crossed. And we'll definitely have a collection of the first 8 stories out mid-2010. I think Jill and I made some good comics, I really do. I hope we get to make some more. Hope #4 works okay for you folks who will be picking it up, thanks again.

This decade can't end soon enough. Honestly.

Wigby

2009-12-22T00:55:41Z

The Best Comics of 2009...The Best Comics of the Decade...

2009-12-18T23:23:26Z

...are whatever you say they were.

News and Notes For Today and Tomorrow

2009-12-16T18:58:35Z

Beasts of Burden was written up in USA TODAY. Jill and I were interviewed for the article, they also ran the cover for #4 and the first three pages as a preview, in case anyone hasn't seen them yet. It's a nice piece, and it says nice things about the series, which is certainly appreciated.

(BTW, #4 isn't supposed to be out today, as the article states. It ships next week. I'm not really sure where the confusion about this came from, the previews running on several sites list the date as today, but Diamond has it listed for the 23rd, and DHC has told me it ships next week.)

Both Sarah and I are scheduled to be on SLG Radio tomorrow, airing on the internet at 5 PM EST. We'll be speaking with host Dan Vado about health insurance and other financial/career issues for cartoonists. For more info, and how to listen in live or via the archives, go here.

It's possible I'll be calling in to SLG Radio tomorrow from a comic shop, as I'll be one of the creators signing at the Comic Book Jones second anniversary event being held here on Satan Island. Signings, a sale, and an after-party for those of drinking age are in the offerings. So, come on down. Or over. Or whatever. It should be fun.

I think that's it. My thanks to those folks who chimed in on the health insurance conversation, especially professionals sharing their experiences and advice. I hope the conversation gave a few people something to think about regarding their own situation and career.

Hope to see some of you HOF faithful at the Jones event tomorrow, otherwise, type to you soon.

A Few Things About Cartooning, Insurance, and Money

2009-12-12T21:25:49Z

I'm posting this because of the recent Time video piece on insurance that featured an interview with cartoonist Julia Wertz, creator of Fart party. The interview can be seen here. Insurance is, as I'm sure you're all well aware of, a hot-button issue right now (as it has been in the past, and as it might be forever), and insurance has been a topic of much debate and consternation here in our household.

Sarah and I have spent most of our time together uninsured. Knowing we were dodging bullets and tempting fate, trusting to our then-good health, for well over a decade we did what we did and went where we went without carrying health insurance. Most other folks we knew that made comics were similarly uninsured, unless they had a day job with benefits, a spouse with benefits, or some other arrangement. Some fortunate folks come from well-to-do families and got a boost from that, there's a few trust fund cartoonists out there somewhere. You'd be surprised how many cartoonists have a good gig or a solid financial background in the household that provides benefits so they can continue to scratch out their comics and cartoons.

I'm not knocking that, don't get me wrong, bless 'em and all the best, it's what we should all have if possible. I'm just pointing something out here that a lot of young cartoonists don't think about: many NYC-area and big city area cartoonists who are not pounding out Marvel or DC material are insured and semi-stable because of factors that do not involve their cartooning. A husband or wife is teaching or has a good position in an office, and they are both covered, and said creator can continue to cartoon in the big town. They can maintain a Manhattan or Brooklyn or Hoboken apartment, a city lifestyle of some sort, and perhaps even start a family.

We had to finally bite the bullet and face facts when we decided to have a child, and we were able to swing insurance through the then-new Freelancer's Union. Last year the Freelancer's Union royally screwed everyone with a policy under them by giving them two weeks to remain with them -- with increases and policy changes -- or jump ship. Two weeks to parse the NYC insurance landscape, in a bad economy, was a god-damned nightmare, especially when other insurance companies started dumping New Yorker's home policies (and other policy shenanigans flared up, all at the same time, in our case. Eff you very much, Freelancer's Union). Fortunately, Sarah is a smart person and she got us on a new policy we can...well, grapple with and maintain. I won't get into that aspect of our current situation, that's ten posts of ten thousand angry and scared words about cost, performance, available physicians, red tape, paperwork, phone calls, anxiety, misinformation, bullshit, etc. And we know a lot of folks have it worse.

Anyway, back to the Time piece and Julia Wertz's situation. First off, it's a Time piece, so, there's been editing, and who knows what else might have been said. Going from the piece, Julia Wertz says she lives in Brooklyn, makes $1200 a month, her rent is $900, and she cannot find insurance. She has lupus, a disease that requires treatment. She has racked up at least three grand in medical bills, it seems likely that amount will increase, she also talks about fund raising efforts to help pay those bills. She discusses her predicament in her comics, and makes asides in a strip about how she she should probably move to Canada, and how she knows her decisions as a young person dealing with health issues and insurance are "so stupid yet so common".

The immediate snarky response, posted by several people on the Youtube thread, is that she should move the hell out of Brooklyn. Okay, yeah, maybe she should. I thought the same thing, to be perfectly honest, and it's not the first time I've heard about a cartoonist with a great address but a not-so-great income -- we know people and have friends who live on the financial edge, or have fallen off the edge, just so they can stay in New York City. I'm sure this occurs in San Francisco, L.A., Chicago, et al. Those places are expensive to live in, we all know that. The desire to remain in an expensive city and be a part of the arts community has drained the resources of many a cartoonist (musician, poet, writer, painter, et al), and it's hard to leave a place you love, or are at least are in like with, or see as a place of purpose. Get a roommate, there's another thought, of course. Get a day job. Be more pragmatic. You can say these things, but we all make our choices for whatever reasons. I'm still in the NYC area because I was born here, have spent 44 years here, have friends here, and bought a house here. Even so, I doubt we're staying much longer. It's an expensive town, and we're not kids, and it's not as fun or compelling a location as it used to be for a number of reasons. And insurance costs are a large part of this equation. Of course, everyone's mileage and situation varies, but you can be a semi-hermit drawing goofy pictures anywhere in the world, and it's not like NYC will disappear, the food will taste just as good on a visit back to Bloomberg's Upscale Mall of New York.

Anyway, let's forget that. If you're going to stay in NYC, or wherever, then the insurance issue needs to be grappled with more squarely.

Now, I'm no insurance expert, I'm a slug who shrivels up at the merest whiff of these sorts of things. Sarah's the brains of this outfit and has done all the Archie Goodwin-like legwork on this subject in regards to our situation, past and present. Wertz talks about making too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but she doesn't mention Family Health Plus or Healthy New York. You can make more than she does, more than you'd think, and qualify for these programs. Sarah has done the research on this, when we needed to know every possible option in front of us, as well as checking on a few things for friends of ours.

Anyway, here's some information Sarah forwarded to me from her computer that might help folks who are in NYC and are having trouble with this. Every state has similar programs, often with this three-tiered system:

- There are three levels of coverage, Medicaid; then if you make too much for that Family Health Plus; then if you make even more, Healthy NY.

- People should start here, and don't bother with the online qualification tests, you need to see an enroller (see below).
http://www.health.state.ny.us/nysdoh/fhplus/

- Here's how to find enrollers for the whole state:
http://www.health.state.ny.us/nysdoh/fhplus/where.htm

- They will check your documents against the rules and can enroll you in any of the three plans if you qualify. If you have a kid, there is also Child Health Plus which almost any kid under 19 can get into if you don't have coverage through a job.

Also, NY State has "groups of one", if you are legally self-employed you can buy into a group policy, no pre-existing conditions can be considered, that's what we're on, through Atlantis. They have to sell you a policy, it's easier to go through a broker, which is what Sarah did. This doesn't mean you can necessarily afford it, it's cheaper, but not "cheap". Some other states have this set-up, not many, though. And it can be a lot cheaper outside NY (like most everything else).

Obviously folks should check this out for themselves, and see what shakes out. I don't talk to a painter about life insurance as my prime source, why should you trust a cartoonist about an important life issue? Especially one like me? Exactly, you don't. You research a script, you reference a drawing, why not research your health and life? (easy for me to say, since my partner did all the work, but still...)

I'm not judging anyone, here I'm a Mistake King first-class and I have made a lot of dumb choices myself over the years. When I was in my 20's, I worked for Jim Hanley's Universe, I was a manager and I had coverage. I never used it. Even when I had a big piece of glass go through my hand, my drawing hand. And it repeatedly opened up and soaked my bedsheets with blood. Why? Because I was young, and I was invulnerable, and I wanted to see my girlfriend that night and not see a stupid doctor and the stupid hand will heal and I'm busy this week going out and screwing around and it only hurts a little now, what can happen. I went to the doctor a week too late, and my hand has hurt ever since. My drawing hand, So stupid, so common, as Julia Wertz wrote. Ms Wertz has lupus, however, and Sarah knows someone who died because of that malady, so, y'know...this shit's important to stay on top of and deal with. Not lecturing, honest. But what we do in our youth affects our later life, and later life is a long god-damned time, fingers crossed (I want to make stupid comics for a long time, and my hand is a disaster, and my neck went untreated for years...and my back...)

Last bit -- we don't like to discuss money, not only in comics (what's to discuss --? oh, ha ha) but in most professions. But we should be talking insurance, because comics is ass-backwards and we've never had unions or safety nets for freelancers. Those who "have" don't always seem to be the folks looking to help others, those who "haven't" are so busy trying to keep their shit together they can't find the time to help others or even help themselves. Sarah and I have discussed the need for a clearing house for information regarding health insurance options in the country for cartoonists (her idea), with contact information, and perhaps personal anecdotes and tips to help people out. A resource sort of like Tom Spurgeon's "local scene" list, only about trying to find coverage options and information specific to each area. Only, um, we can't even begin to compile something like that. It's a lot of work, and a lot of time, that we, like most folks, don't have. If I recall correctly Colleen Doran has written about insurance on her blog a number of time, I'm sure others have as well. This post is a small effort to contribute to the conversation, and perhaps some of you have some tips or concrete information you can post here in the comments section.

And all the best to Julia Wertz who is a funny cartoonist. I don't know her, I only know her work, and I feel weird mentioning her so often here, but the Time piece is what sparked this post off. Anyway, I wish her the best with her medical situation and her comics. If nothing else, folks who see the piece and like the comics should buy some. We all need some more funny comics in our lives.

Okay, that's it. I'm uncomfortable discussing "real life issues" instead of back issues, it's grown up and depressing and makes my stomach hurt. But I do hope this offers something of use to someone somewhere and I haven't goofed up any of the information anywhere.

More Me For You

2009-12-10T20:07:19Z

I'll once again be on SLG Radio later today (5 PM EST) along with Christopher Butcher, he of Comics 212/The Beguiling/TCAF, etc. Looks like Chris and Dan Vado will be discussing the recent mini-flap over children's comics and the adult children who have been whining about them. I will add to the discussion by adding nothing to the discussion. Listen live or hear the archive after the fact here.

Later tonight, I'll be doing something or other at Socko Jones' Tailgate party at Comic Book Jones here on Satan Island, NYC.

Next week, Comic Book Jones is having their 2-year anniversary celebration, and I'll be doing shaky sketches and signing flimsy funnybooks there along with Alex Robinson, Brian J.L. Glass and others. Should be fun. I'm hoping I might have an advance copy of Beasts of Burden #4 to show off. Probably not. We'll see.

While I'm here, I'll be a guest at the first-ever NESPA event which will be held in July of next year in Warwick, Rhode Island. NESPA stands for New England Small Press Assembly, btw. It's not a Cthulhu thing. I hope.

And speaking of 2010, and of TCAF, Sarah and I are working on the very distinct possibility of our attending TCAF next May. Fingers crossed. I really loved the show and we both dug Toronto (Emily liked it, too) and hope we can make it happen.

What Did You Like In 2009?

2009-12-09T02:06:17Z

I needed some sort of LJ entry to call the Absorbing Man commentary closed. It was fun, and we'll do more of that sort of thing when time allows, but I had to finally leave the bar and go home, if you know what I mean.

That being said --one interesting thing I noticed in the previous discussion (besides how many of you know a lot about Carl "Crusher" Creel, The Absorbing Man (tm)) -- in all the comments made, not one person, as far as I can recall, made any mention of the drawing I posted. I point this out not to goad anyone into giving praise or an opinion on the drawing (especially if it's along the lines of, "it stinks") but because it's a good illustration of an aspect of my career that used to bother me a lot, and doesn't so much now. Basically, my writing often merits a response of some sort, my drawing does not, or rarely does. Let me stress that I'm gratified anything I put out there gets some sort of response out of folks out there. Secondly, I'm not a creator who issues art books or sketchbooks or puts out prints, I know what I am and I know what my drawings look like, I know what my art sells for (or doesn't sell for), and I know where I stand in the scheme of things, cartooning-wise. I've also learned to deal with the fact that humor cartoonists often are perceived as either funny or not funny, and that's pretty much the extent of the feedback unless you are a super-sharp, important satirist like Feiffer (he's funny), or a super-skilled draftsman, like, well, I'd offer up Richard Thompson as a modern example (and he's funny). it's just something that really struck me on this occasion and I felt like discussing it. So, this honestly isn't a cry for attention, or for a pep talk, I'm in a good mood (except for a headache and anxiety over finances, but otherwise, yeah, I really am) and I like the drawing just fine and am glad the last post entertained a bunch of people, myself included. I wish I had time to finish my Mole Man drawing, or the damned Mad Thinker and his Awesome Android piece that I never quite nailed down some months back. Among the several others I started and had to toss in a pile. I will, though, and we'll talk.

In the meantime -- this shit year's almost over, and this shit decade's almost over. Yay. Feel free to toss out the names of some comics you enjoyed this past year. I'm so backed up my list would be somewhat dated (I'm a year or three behind on a lot of stuff: I just read Paris, by Andi Watson and Simon Gane and really liked it, ditto The War at Ellesmere by Faith Erin Hicks, both from my home publisher, SLG. I just picked up the Doug Wright book in April while doing a signing at Bergen Street Comics. I finally read The Rabbi's Cat this year, borrowed from the library --it's great, btw -- just finally catching up with Richard Thompson's great Cul De Sac strip). I loved The Toon Treasury of Children's Comics. Popeye vol 4 just dropped, essential. Hellboy Library vol 3, beautiful stuff. I liked The Simpsons #50 by Sergio Aragones. I mainly read books I get from publishers I'm working for. I admit it. Haven't read Asterios Polyp, it's on a shelf. Haven't yet read The Hunter by Darwyn Cooke. Want to read the new Sacco book. Haven't read Love and Rockets vol 2, series 3, chapter 7, or whatever they call it now. I'm behind on various and sundry Gilbert Hernandez books. Haven't picked up the Rex Morgan book. Haven't read this year's Dick Tracy or Little Orphan Annie volumes, they're on a shelf. Fell behind on the Peanuts books. Haven't read A Drifting Life, yet, it's by my bed, along with Blackjack vol 7-8 or 20 or whatever. I'm ignorant of practically every comic on the web, I admit it, I have no bias against the format or delivery mechanism, I just have no time to stay in touch with any web strips, and I also don't love reading comics off my monitor. or any monitor. I get a headache. Especially if the comic has elves.

Oh, I am enjoying the Steve Ditko pre-code collection from FBI, crazy, pulpy, great junky stuff. I read some of the wonked-out Jack Kirby Losers comics in the book DC put out this year. Can't remember anything else off the top of my head, I know I've read and enjoyed more than that. Oh, well, no big deal. This isn't my job, and I'm not a goddamned professional critic. What I remember is what I remember, so screw it. The list stops there.

Anyway, what did you read and like (and remember) in 2009? What did you not like? What did you hate? What did you avoid like the plague, what drove you crazy, what disappointed, what surprised, what are you looking forward to next year in funnybook-land?

I didn't see any 2009 movies or tv shows (other than what we worked on), or read any recent books, or watch any wrestling, or play any new video games or pinball machines (if Stern produced any). I did listen to some music from the last year, but it was all on WFMU.org or on MP3's, and I'd have to hunt around to make a list that was longer than songs by The Electric Six, The Thermals, The Ettes, The Black Hollies (was the Night Marchers CD released last year or this year? The last Ladytron CD --2008? The Knife --that's old, right --?) and that's where my memory quits as far as tunes go.

Okay, your turn:

Crusher Creel

2009-12-07T01:02:55Z

Oh, Crusher Creel, Crusher Creel. What's to be made of you? And no, that's not a joke, sort of. I find myself very fond of this perennial Marvel Comics villain-type, this bullet-headed goof known as The Absorbing Man. For those that don't know, and bless you, and why are you reading this blog, and anyway -- for those of you that don't know, this fellow is called The Absorbing Man because he can become what he touches, by absorbing (aha!) the object's properties and then transforming into said item. He likes to walk around as pictured above, sans shirt (aka, "The Haspiel", circa 1990's-2004 or so, I'd have to check on that with El Dino), prison-issue pants (or a disco slacks fail, not sure which), a pair of plain old shoes and...um...oh, yeah, a wrecking ball. Which is one of the reasons I gravitate towards this ruffian, because he carries a goddamned wrecking ball around with him. Mostly so's he can tap the wrecking ball and become a human wrecking ball, entirely made of steel. Or at least his epidermis is steel, I dunno what happens to sweetum's internals and guts and all that when he goes for the ball, or a brick, or a fluffy kitty. And I don't want to know, nobody should give a rat's ass about stuff like that, especially because if you make enough of a fanboy stink (insert joke here) some Marvel nitwit will write a story explaining it and that's a large part of what fucked superhero comics up in the first place.

Anyway.

I also like that he somehow manages to always find the same pair of pants when he breaks out of prison or recombines after yet another inglorious and idiotic defeat at the hands of (insert Marvel superhero or superhero team here). That's a real talent. That and liberating wrecking balls in whatever town you recombine your particulars in. Nice one, Crusher Creel, thumbs up. Don't know why you can't go to Sears and get a goddamned shirt, but I'm here to praise you man, not harp on you. So, yeah, Crusher Creel, aka, The Absorbing Man (I mention this again in honor of Jim Shooter's imbecilic script for the first Secret Wars series, which, iirc, contains the line, "I, Crusher Creel, The Absorbing Man --" as a means to introduce the villain to the teeming masses of fanboys and men who knew the character's goddamn height and weight because they bought the Marvel Universe Handbook issue which featured him. That would be the "A" issue, by the way, also featuring Arnim Zola, who I hope to blather about someday in my old age). Where was I?

Right about...here. So, okay, I don't actually know this guy's origin, shame on me, I hear you saying. And I hang my head in shame, shame, shame, shame on me. Sorry to let you down here. Can't tell you who he first fought (Thor --? Millie the Model--? John Verpooten --?), what issue he first appeared in, if he has a name other than "Crusher", if he buys his pants in bulk and mails them to friends and family all over the country in case he has to recombine his particulars out of state, if his head always looked like that, if he had a toy wrecking ball as a child -- I don't know. I don't even know if he's a 60's villain or a 70's villain, but he always seemed to be around when I was a kid, and he was always one of the meaner bastards in the Marvel Universe. I mean, unhappy, bitter, angry, violent, in effect, the kind of guy who would call himself Crusher Creel and have a wrecking ball for a pal.

I do recall he's been defeated in myriad gimmicky ways, tricked into touching cardboard and folded up (at least I hope he was folded up, I would have folded him up, it would have been funny if he was folded up and slid into a paper envelope and put away somewhere, the envelope marked "Contents - One (1) Absorbing Man. Warning -- Do Not Open. If Accidentally Opened, Do Not Let Him Absorb Anything! Handle With Paper Gloves Only!"), he accidentally touched glass and fell down and broke, he fell or jumped into water and was all watery and nobody knew what the hell to do and they weren't sure if he was dead or a watery Absorbing Man in the ocean and Hawkeye started wondering about whether or not The Absorbing Man's insides turned into steel when he touched his wrecking ball.

I also can't remember exactly how his powers worked, could he avoid absorbing if he gave the situation a little thought, or was he a human paper towel that had to pick up whatever he touched? Seems that way from the earlier stories ("Crap! I momentarily forgot I was fighting The Avengers and picked my nose! Alack and alas, I am shapeless snot, to be picked up by SHIELD and dumped into a super-cylinder prison they had that just happened to be able to keep me in stasis so I don't touch anything." NOTE: This did not actually occur in a Marvel Comic, I was just wishing on a star that passed my window). Seems to me a stupid power, if you can't eat anything without physically turning into your McGriddle or whatever. If you put on gloves, then you're glove stuff. Huh. I could go back and read a bunch of Absorbing Man comics, but I don't think I have any, other than the ones Dean Haspiel and I did a few years back, the ones that were released to the sound of chirping crickets. I put him in there because he's a crazy-ass character and has a neat visual. And he carries a wrecking ball. Day-am!

There's another Marvel villain guy what carries a wrecking ball, a member of The Wrecking Crew, he's called Wrecking Ball or Power Ball or Something- Ball, I don't remember. The Wrecking Crew is a gang of bad guys run by a guy who would be a great partner for Creel -- he's called The Wrecker (Get it? The Wrecker? Wrecking Crew? Hey, it gets better, The Wrecking Crew all carry construction worker tools! It's really kinda cool and awesome if you think about it and then stop thinking about it). The Wrecker is another badass with a lousy attitude, an ugly face, a weird outfit, and an iconic weapon, in this case a Magic Crowbar (I say thee YES!). Anyway, these two Heroclix figures have a lot in common and should team up, if they haven't already. I trust someone will edumicate me on this crucial point of U.S. History (meaning, please feel free tom inform me of any past exploits these two fictitious characters may have had together, in a less tender and caring manner of speaking than most would use). I like the guys that carry an iconic, cool weapon, it's kind of like those martial arts flicks where there's a tournament and everyone brings their crazy cutlery. Scimitars, light-reflecting shield with razor edge, flying guillotine (HOLY YES!). I dig that a lot.

Wrapping Up: I found this drawing while clearing up the office last night, and so here you go. The Absorbing Man. Another in a series of whatever this is a series of. I'd write more, and write more clearly, and perhaps tie everything into my opening sentence like a real writer of essays and crap does, but I'm late for dinner and this is stupid enough as it is.

Good evening, True Believers, wherever you are.

Beasts of Burden #4 Preview

2009-12-01T03:02:29Z

You can see the cover and the first three pages of BofB #4 here on the Dark Horse Comics Website.

In other "news" - I think I might be mouthing off with Dan Vado again for the entire hour on the SLG Radio Show this Thursday, I'll post about it later this week if it's definitely happening. It's been a lot of fun talking with Dan, or yelling at Dan, or whatever it is you want to call what I do (immature, misinformed outbursts --?) on the show these past few weeks. We're hoping to get some callers, even though most folks who listen in do so via the archives. Anyway, there's that.

Otherwise...weird day. Got some pages approved by Bongo. Saw friends of ours on the cover of a new DVD release. Odd stuff on Twitter. Interesting project dangled before my eyes (and the eyes of others, but can't say who, what, where or how in the hell --?). And I received a surprise gift in the mail of some DVDs I wanted and could not afford. Overall a happening bunch of hours.

Which means...

Something bad is definitely going to happen.

It must be some kind of a set-up.

I smell a rat.

Etc.

Rambling, Randomly

2009-11-28T23:38:40Z

Beasts of Burden #3 is out in shops that ordered it, and is also available through online comic shops and those crazy bit torrent sites for you download thief-types out there. Anyway, here's what one person thought of the new issue. And what another person thought. My thanks to everyone who has given us some attention on-line, it's been really cool to see some folks really enjoying the series so far. It's been so long since I've worked on a continuing narrative with a regular cast of characters, I forgot what it's like to get feedback on this sort of material. It's been fun, I'm sorry we only have one more issue to go and haven't figured out if we're taking the series any farther. I hope so, and I think it'll happen, but I'm not counting on anything until I'm actually writing another issue. Comics doesn't have a great track record when it comes to new series.

Speaking of the eventual trade, Jill Thompson just finished up a swell new painted cover for the Beasts of Burden book, which will collect the first four BofB short stories and the four-issue series. At least 147 pages of niceness. I'm assuming the series cover illustrations will be tossed in there, maybe some odds and ends as well from Jill's files. We haven't gotten that far in discussing any extras that may or may not be be included.

Speaking of collections, the one-page Plastic Man strip Stephen DeStefano and I did as a back-up for Wednesday Comics (in case anyone missed a deadline) will be included in the Wednesday Comics hardcover, shipping in May. And speaking of Stephen, he's drawing a graphic novel that will be published by Fantagraphics, which is terrific news. Not enough DeStefano art out there in funnybooks since animation (rightfully) snapped him up.

I did an interview for a Swedish website about Beasts. Give me a thousand years and I will conquer the world. By conquering the world I mean I will do at least seven or eight more interviews for foreign websites.

I might have some work for next year. Not a lot, but every little bit helps. I'm slightly optimistic about our prospects for 2010, but then again, I thought 2009 was the year things would turn around. Who knows.

If I lived in the Los Angeles area I would have tried to sell some art to take the family to see the live Pee Wee Herman show. Sarah read me a really nifty interview that Gary Panter recently did with Paul Reubens, I'd link to it but I don't feel like looking for it. It turns out Panter was involved with designing the new stage show, which is pretty cool to hear.

I will be one of a number of guests appearing at Comic Book Jones here on Staten Island during their second anniversary celebration. Other creators include Bryan Glass and Alex Robinson, please click on the link an scroll down a bit to see the flyer for the event, which takes place on December 17th. There will be a 25% off sale all day, and an after-party at a bar which serves them there alcoholic beverages.

I really enjoyed Chris Wisnia's Doris Danger: Giant Monster Adventures, which SLG just released. Funny stuff. If you like the old Atlas-era giant monster books that Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Larry Lieber, Dick Ayers, Steve Ditko et al, did, you might dig this. Apparently this was a self-published project that SLG collected. It's presented as a series of reprinted 50's comics, with letters pages and editorial pages. The "old comics" are randomly run because they "couldn't find" all the old issues. The use of "quotes" around "certain phrases" will give you an "indication" of the approach to these "comics". Very tongue-in-cheek, loving but aware of the inherent silliness and stupidity of those old comics, the "stories" are more about the insane convolutions and cliches of those old tales than an attempt to tell a thorough, ongoing story. Although there is a narrative, which I won't even try to penetrate, about a girl reporter trying to prove that giant monsters exist, while a number of covert organizations and the U.S. government fight to dissuade her and the public from that belief. Or they want to kill giant monsters, or "liberate" them, or use them in their dopey plans. The lead character hardly matters, even the various goofy giant monsters with their jerky names and "abilities" or "attributes" don't figure into things as much as you'd expect (although some of the monsters are really funny, especially the one that keeps arguing with his attackers, refusing to "be quiet" or "stay still" or whatever they say he should do). Some of the monsters aren't monsters, they're robots, or projections, some of the robots are people, some of the people are robots, some of the people are french, or "midgets", most everyone is a double or triple-agent. It's nuts, and the deadpan idiocy builds really nicely and the book really grows on you as you go along (at least it "grew" on "me"), it reminded me in places of Michael Kupperman's genre-oriented strips, or perhaps Bob Burden's Mystery Men stories if memory serves on how he approached those comics. Layer upon layer of contrived nonsense builds to a point where the repetition and stilted dramatic dialogue itself becomes funny , certain shticks become more welcome and funny the more it gets piled on ("imho"). Ditto the anachronisms ("hippies" and out of place "hip talk"), running arguments between characters on monsters, truth, secrecy, Christian fellowship, personal choice, etc, the various secret organizations MO's, and a few characters who are obsessed with specific things like their missing legs, to the point where everything they say has to be put in terms of their obsessions ("missing legs", get me?). The art is more or less perfunctory, Kirby-inspired, and actually inked by Dick Ayers for several chapters. It does the job, and the author makes fun of his own art in the "letters pages" ("You suck! Buy a ruler!"). If you're looking for more polished art offerings, look no further than the various guest pin-ups sprinkled throughout the issue, done by folks like Dave Gibbons, Jaime Hernandez, Gilbert Hernandez, Mario Hernandez, John Severin, Russ Heath, Art Adams (an insanely detailed two-page dinosaur vs Kong-like ape spread), Ramona Fradon, Mike Allred and some folks whose names I'm forgetting because I don't have the book in front of me. I'm not a professional "comics reviewer", give me a "break" here, will you? Its a weird little comic that provides a lot more laughs than the average ode to silver age madness, and it's a measly $10. And you get pin-ups of monsters by cool people. When I was done I was willing to "read more". That means I "liked it". (By the way, if anyone from SLG is reading this, I think it would be a good idea to list the contributing pin-up artists on the website listing for the book -- it strikes me as a "good selling point").

Last night I couldn't sleep so I watched Phantasm on DVD, a copy of which I borrowed from friends on Halloween. God, I still love this dopey movie, it's creepy and crazy and doesn't make much sense. Especially when you factor in the three sequels, one of which I love (#2) and two of which were incredibly disappointing, disjointed and confusing to no good end, imho (Hint - #3 and #4). If I had the sequels I'd likely fire them up tonight and tomorrow night. Despite not liking the last two, and feeling, as a fanboy, that they throw tepid water all over franchise, I'm one of those folks who becomes fascinated with franchises, even though they pretty much all go to blazes and suck the life out of your enthusiasm for the original outings. Hell, I'm strangely intrigued by film series that started off with films I don't like at all (the convoluted and stupid Jason Voorhees saga of crap), or started off with films I liked that immediately went to hell with the first sequel (Halloween, although for some reason I'm kind of fond of the fourth movie, the one with the little girl), or started off with a film I really used to like but am now very cool towards (Nightmare on Elm Street). There's something about following the confusing trail of genre crap left by too many cooks working on concepts that aren't strong enough to warrant all the fuss...I just get sucked in by the possibilities, the missed possibilities, the WTF aspects, the garbage, the fan speculation the whole mess and magilla that comes with being a fan. I'm sure it harkens back to my childhood, following the serial adventures of various comic and book characters, moving through the various pleasures and disappointments of the ever-building story where nothing really ever changes despite the endless piling on of subsequent stories and the ever-expanded, distorted and cheapened "canon" (Let me not get started on Marvel Comics here...). I wouldn't be surprised if the old Universal monster franchise didn't help kick-start the interest, those are the earliest films I can think of where I was able to follow the stories and things continued, with, of course, diminishing returns. But when you're a fan, you often feel you'd rather have "some Michael Myers" than "no Michael Myers", although I've fallen into the latter camp when it comes to The Shape (of things that never stop coming). I'm not interested in everything out there that I once liked (I was done with Star Wars --oh, once beloved Star Wars -- when the tweaked originals came out, enough, oh god, enough. And I never did see the third Matrix movie, as the second one beat all interest out of me forever). But with some things, the fan brain kicks in, and I want "to know". I'm the kind of geek who finishes even bad books and movies, as if compelled to, to start what I finished, for good or bad. I rarely fought to fast-forward through a miserable film when we all used to get together at The lawgivers for junk movies, I argued to sit through even the dullest of them (but even I gave up on shit like The Mangler, one of those "why was this made/completed/edited" deals only the truly addled can stomach).

Anyway, Phantasm. In a nutshell, what's interesting, or, depressing, about the series is that unlike most of these things, the creator of the franchise has been behind the steering wheel the entire time. And it still doesn't make sense, in fact, as it progresses it makes less sense than ever. Don Coscarelli has stated that the first film was a stand-alone, it was not designed as the first in the series. The second film, more or less, works like a better-funded remake of the first, a la Evil Dead 2. Then it gets cheap, crazy, and worst of all, dull and routine, with the third film. A few odd touches, but any film that falls back on the "thugs who die and come back as undead thugs" as a major plot point is a bit lost. It wastes a great mausoleum, iirc, and goes nowhere, lacking the solid black humor, creepiness and surreal nightmare moments of the first two. It's just not fun or inventive, and the world-building around the Tall Man and the spheres isn't enough of a hook. Except for idiots like me wondering what's going on, okay, yeah, but as a film, a slender hanger. The last film is a disaster, the main points of interest being outtakes from the first film presented as flashbacks, whether or not they make sense in the narrative. Anyway, I didn't mean to get on a Phantasm kick, but what the hell. The thing is, as lousy as I found the last two flicks, here I am, wondering and complaining about the series, because I was drawn in. I can't help but wonder about these sorts of thing,s not only, imo, what the hell happened to the storyline, but what the hell happened to the creative spark and energy in the filmmaker? Nobody should have a better handle on the franchise than Coscarelli, but he's left a legacy of head-scratching frustration for most viewers certainly for myself and my circle of friends who've seen the four films. Thinking about that sort of thing, "where did it all go wrong", always freaks me out, because in my small part of the entertainment industry, I'm juggling concepts and ideas, and I am terrified of the idea of screwing them up, losing sight of my own ideas, getting old, soft, lazy or just plain sloppy. It makes me wonder, was George Romero always super-talented, or did he just know how to do a few thrilling, crazy zombie flicks before his abilities went south? What's the deal with John Carpenter, a once-reliable maker of fun, efficient and creepy movies (some of which I don't feel hold up anymore, like The Fog, much of Escape From NY, but whatever) -- but has cranked out some of the worst, creakiest and outright stupidest known quantity genre flicks in memory? Is anyone consistent, or do we all end up sucking? Does fame and money and laziness work it's way in? I dunno. Certainly Don Coscarelli isn't rich or famous by Hollywood standards. I guess I"m just fascinated by the contortions a franchise takes, even when they disappoint (which is what -- just about always?), it's a weird organism.

Really, do any movie franchises stay strong? We all have our personal favorites, but if you can admit a lot of what you like isn't really "good" it becomes difficult to find any series of three or more films that seriously satisfy (I'm in the minority of my social group for enjoying the fourth Alien film, it doesn't do much for the franchise, but I like it as a junky ride. Despite what some folks say these days I'm not buying into Alien 3, which for all it's interesting ideas, is mainly a stalker/victim snorefest with an unsatisfying ending. And no, I will not forgive them jettisoning Newt, et al, especially the way they handled it. I tend to search an apartment I once saw a roach in better than they went over their escape vehicle, and Ripley should've known better after the first film. And the second. Sheesh! .Most folks dismiss the Night of the Living Dead remake, I think it's mostly super-solid. I like Texas Chainsaw 2, which is kind of lousy. I'm not entirely sold on Evil Dead 3 which some love. Return of he Living Dead 2 is a shitty remake and isn't a good movie, but for some reason I enjoyed it and don't have the knives out for it like die-hard fans of the superior in every way original, etc etc).

I guess what I'm saying is I'm in the mood to bullshit about horror movies and crap. I should've just said that straight out and made this a separate post. Too lazy, too tired, too jaded. Remember when this blog was fun? Now it's just degenerated into stupid crap. I shouldn't have let other people take it over. I should have just stopped after the first post, it was all downhill from there. Maybe Rob Zombie can reboot my blog, make it absolutely horrendous, and successful. yeah, that's an idea...

Work In Progress

2009-11-26T02:14:00Z

Mentioned this in an earlier post, this is the Marvel villains piece I'm working on for a charity auction.

For laughs I went ahead and penciled as many characters as I could without using any reference, just relied on the addled old fan noggin to see how it went. Funny how close but how far you get resorting to memory, the basics usually fall into place, but the details and arrangement of same are almost never on the money. I got close to the target on a few like Doc Doom , Doc Octopus, The Sandman, and The Scorpion, I'll likely find mistakes on these but between the simplistic versions and the fact that the costume details change constantly in the old comics (and that the piece measures 9" by 6"), I'm leaving well enough alone.

I screwed up Magneto several times already even though I know his outfit pretty well after doing a commission with him a few months back. I just haven't liked the way I've drawn him, he's been the big stumbling block so far for some reason. Can't recall much about a number of these goofs save some basic shapes and details, guessing heavily on Modok, The Leader, Loki, The Ringmaster, The Puppet Master and The Abomination, among others, I expect to be doing quite a bit of erasing on those when I break the old comics out. I'll need them for sure to finish up Klaw, Annihilus (barely sketched in), The Enchantress and the Executioner (ditto), etc. I'm drawing blanks on The Super Adaptoid (fitting), the Mandarin, Baron Mordo, they may not make it into the final piece. Ditto The Eel. I've failed at including The Plant Man and The Porcupine, and every time I tried to fit The Beetle in it didn't work, even though I can pretty much draw that idiot by heart. I put a HYDRA agent tin there but somehow another one slipped in and I didn't have room or time for that nonsense, so they're out. Would like to put The Destroyer in there, The Cobra, Attuma, Electro, Kraven, hell, a dozen or three other pen and ink childhood memories, but I'm almost out of space as it is.

Anyway, I started hitting the comics a few weeks back and used them to fix the Rhino and Batroc (I used the cartoony Batroc I drew for the Captain America: Red, White and Blue strip because I knew where the book was, the Rhino ref came from the 70's Spider-man Marvel Treasury edition), but I haven't had a chance to do any work on the piece since then. Anyway, once I get everyone penciled I can ink it up and send it off for the auction, which I believe is slated for early 2010.

SLG Recession Sale and SLG Radio Rant News

2009-11-18T23:14:32Z

Hey, folks. In a nutshell, SLG Publishing is having an across-the-line, no coupon necessary, 40% off everything sale for the next week or so. A tough economy and some financial curve balls have made the sale necessary in an attempt to put some coins in the coffer, wind in the sails, eggs in the basket, etc, etc, whatever the hell. SLG, as most of you know, has more or less been my publishing home for the past 20 years or so, so I'm of course hoping for the best for them during these times of hardship. And I can certainly empathize, as this has been a rotten month in a tough year for the House of Fun, which is why we've been selling off parts of our collection on e-bay and making art available that I had not ever intended on selling. Anyway, you do what you can, you do what you have to. This is a crazy business to be in even during the best of times for those of us who aren't sitting at the adults table and don't have a trust fund. Sometimes there's little you can do but keep working and hold your breath until the floodwater recedes.

The SLG site can be accessed by clicking here. The search for my comic book crap is here. You can find comics by Andi Watson, Jhonen Vasquez, Faith Erin Hicks, Gene Yang, Dave Roman, James Turner, Scott Saavedra, Phil Elliot and Glenn Dakin, Derf, Serena Valentino and many others, the various Disney books SLG did, and all sorts of merch and stuff you might have been promising to get around to or were previously unaware of and might want to give the once-over twice at 40% off. There's also stuff from other publishers which I assume is included in the sale. I do know that the ten-years too late Milk and Cheese vinyl toys make good holiday gifts, they also make for something to blow up with M-80's in the backyard.

Ah, me.

Speaking of SLG, I will be joining Dan for the full hour of this week's SLG Radio show, the rant-fest begins at Thursday at 5 pm EST. Maybe we'll end up spending the entire time talking about lousy times in funnybook land, or working as a scientific guinea pig for cash, or selling blood or hair, or whatever the hell. Please consider calling in if you have a question or a topic or anything to say. No bill collectors, please.

Thank you.

The Rundown For 11/8/09

2009-11-08T21:00:45Z

My computer's been on the blink for a while, so I've been using Sarah;s, which has led to a pile of post-it notes and scribbled-on scraps of paper gathering on my desk. A lot of these were reminders to post this or that on the blog, which, I obviously didn't do. Sarah spent many hours yesterday trying to revive my ailing machine, which is more or less now acting responsibly. We'll see how long that lasts. In the meantime, I'm gonna play catch-up with a few random mentions of this, that and the other:

- The House of Fun Art For Sale list was updated after we got home from the Baltimore Convention, I just never told anybody because I'm such a savvy business person. We got hit with some unforeseen expenses (inc. a hefty car repair bill, ouch) so I'm offering up some new pieces, a few of them relatively big ticket items, a few of them relatively affordable -- pages from Milk and Cheese pages, Bizarro Comics/Bizarro World, Hellboy: Weird Tales, as well as a few pin-ups, odds and ends and the cover to Dork #6, which was The Eltingville Club issue (a note to the reader/customer who purchased the back cover to #6 and the Eltingville t-shirt some months back - I have lost your contact info, which is why I did not write you about the front cover. If you're reading this, please get in touch with me, because I feel badly that I screwed that up. My apologies!). Also, we've lowered the prices on a number of older pieces on the list. Several pages have already sold since we added the new artwork, as a few regular customers contacted us, but the list has been updated to reflect those purchases. If time allows we'll be adding more stuff before the holidays and we'll likely put some more layouts and small pieces up on e-Bay as well.

- I am going to be appearing weekly on the SLG Radio show every Thursday, or at least every Thursday SLG head honcho Dan Vado puts a show together. My segment will be taking place in the last fifteen or twenty minutes of the show. We'll talk about comics, I guess. We'll see. So far I've mostly yammered about nothing in particular while Dan tries to get a word in edgewise. It's a live call-in show, so folks can participate if they want. Previous broadcasts are archived on the blog radio site and upcoming guests are announced on the page as well, so check it out.

- Speaking of radio, I don't remember if I posted about Jill Thompson and I having been guests on Robin McConnell's Inkstuds radio program recently. You can listen to the episode here. Inkstuds is a great comic book resource, Robin's interviewed a terrific array cartoonists over the course of its 4-yr run (Happy Anniversary, btw).

- Speaking of interviews, here's one Jill and I did with Crimespree Magazine regarding Beasts of Burden.

- Speaking of Beasts of Burden, here's a preview of the first three pages of the upcoming third issue, which is an Orphan solo adventure. While the orders for the series have been less than stellar, the response has been extremely gratifying, and it doesn't look like retailers are getting stuck with too many copies dying on their racks. We've also received some very nice comments about the series from creators like Neil Gaiman, Dave Gibbons, Len Wein, James Robinson and Eric Powell (all on Twitter), which has been cool as all hell to see, I must admit. #3 ships on the 25th, and hopefully will be a fun sort of palate cleanser after the downbeat second issue. At least that was the plan.

- Geek Alert: Universal Monster movie fans take note - I accidentally stumbled across a reference to The Universal Cult Horror Collection, a set of five lesser-known weirdies including Murders In The Zoo, The Mad Ghoul and Rondo Hatton as The Creeper in House of Horrors. The set is only being sold through TCM.com (and one other online source, but the price is the same, iirc), it's part of a deal TCM made with Universal to release some films on demand, and hopes are high that perhaps this could lead to getting Island of Lost Souls out on DVD. The films can be bought separately, as well. I haven't seen any of these, I'm sure they're nutty jerk-fests, but I love this stuff. Now, if I could only afford them...

-I've got something like seven new Fun Strips done or almost done. I've gridded up a batch of strips and pages to work on whenever the ink's drying on another job, so who knows, I may have some Dork-type comics to show you folks sooner or later. Still trying to get more done on that Milk and Cheese strip I started and posted a bit from a little while back, but it's slow going.

- I'm also working on a pin-up for a charity auction that has been fun, little cartoony versions of as many old Marvel Comics villains as I can remember the details for. It's a small piece but I'm trying to get as many figures in as possible, I think I have thirty or so right now. I'm trying to see how many characters I can draw more or less by memory, and then I'll get the reference out and see what I screwed up, and complete the details on the characters I don't know well. Some characters I can't even lay a single line down for, so they'll need reference. In my head I can see The Mandarin and Klaw, but on paper...nada (besides the sonic weapon -- weird!). But it looks like 80% of these bums are still floating around in my memory banks while I forget my social security number and my own phone numbers. Maybe I'll scan it as it stands and post an in-progress image. Or maybe not.

- If the November issue of Nickelodeon was the swan song for the magazine, I'm depressed. If December turns out to be the final issue, still depressed. We had a gag panel in the November Nick...what a bummer to see it end. And just when Emily started reading it, of course.

- I've been reading a lot of Spider pulps, my first Avenger pulp, old horror short story collections, some Fritz Leiber SF short stories, some Robert Bloch, some recent young adult fantasy series (The Magic Thief and The Last Apprentice), some David Goodis crime novels, some lesser-known (to me, at least) Black Lizard crime reprints (The Vengeance Man, You Play the Red and the Black Comes Up), some Jim Thompson, and some Blackjack manga. Nothing heavy, nothing too depressing. The Lawgiver is planning a house move, and is culling his library, so I've been hauling bags of old paperbacks over here to digest and then donate. I'm keeping the Spider paperbacks, though. It's been a lot of fun, and a lot of it is research for projects, so it's sort of work, as well. Some days I just want to stay in bed and read until I fall back asleep, like when I was a kid on a rainy day.

- I'm doing a lot of stuff for Bongo right now, and for the foreseeable future --, and it's time I got back to that.

Latersville, all.

They're Publishing More Comics I Want

2009-11-04T22:14:12Z

Apparently the first volume in the IDW King Aroo reprint project has been solicited in this months Previews eyesore -- this is a series I'm really looking forward to as I find Jack Kent's strip delightful (there's a word I rarely type) and an example of great pure cartooning chops. And my daughter might enjoy it, as well. Maybe. I'm basing this on the character designs, all the cute creatures running around in the strip, and the gentle nature and humor of the strip. And the puns, she's getting into corny old gags in the way most of us did when we were little. I never know what comics she's going to respond to, to be honest. For a long while she wouldn't read anything with people in it, Dennis the Menace was out for that reason. Now she has taken the Toon Treasury away from me and has gone through it multiple times, without missing funny animals, kids, gag pages, even the Briefer Frankenstein pages, which I thought might turn her off. Then again, she read print-outs of the first issue of Beasts of Burden #1 in black and white, while we weren't around, and startled us at the dinner table one night by quoting the "eat 'em up frog" (as she put it) demon (she also calls it the "eat everything frog"). She quoted the frog in a funny kid monster voice, and it was very funny, but Sarah gave me the "I thought we agreed not to leave those pages lying around" look. And we did agree not to let her see the pages because some of them are kind of nasty, and as it turned out, Emily was bothered by some of the events in the first issue, and told me I wrote it "wrong", because the deaths of two animals in it upset her. We have since never admitted the existence of Beasts #2, for reasons some of you might understand after reading that issue. She knows #3 exists because she's seen pages on the computer, it's the "Orphan goes looking for his girlfriend" story (as she puts it), and while there are some gory bits, it's an adventure and not a downbeat, depressing bit of work. There's no way she's seeing #4, because there's some horror stuff in there that I don't think she'd like.

She's also been "stealing" my copy of the first Cul De Sac collection lately, and she seems to like it, although she doesn't get a lot of the strips. But she keeps reading it. Kills me to watch her reading comics. You see, there's this kid in my house, right, and she's little and cute and she's ours and she's reading some of them there funnybooks. Who'd have thunk it? Not me.

Anyway, off tangent, what else is new. Didn't expect to be posting, but I'm taking a break in-between working on some strip layouts and so there you go and here I go and who knows where it goes. But speaking of the Dick Briefer Frankenstein comics, I read that Fantagraphics has announced a new slate of books, including a reprinting of this material. To which I say sweet, because along with oddballness like Herbie Popnecker and a few other projects, this is a cult series that many folks have wanted to see back in print. Hopefully enough folks out there are interested in order to make it viable for the long haul. Who knows.

And it gets better, or worse, if you consider your wallet and shelf space, because FBI's also doing collections of lesser-known 50's horror comics, an Alex Toth collection of his Standard Comics work, a pre-Plastic Man Jack Cole collection, a book on EC cartoonists' work at other companies, and a Basil Wolverton book. So, you folks who are into these sorts of things better start taking a few bills outta your mom's bag or your dad's wallet each and every week because this is gonna be an assault on the cents-less. So many good books, and I'm not half-wise to everything IDW is announcing (I did read about a Polly and Her Pals oversize Sundays collection, apparently a $75 "Champagne Edition" -- hell, I like bells and whistles and all, but give me a decent Budweiser Edition, fer chrissakes!), or Dark Horse, or whoever else is helping grow the pile. Hell, Captain Easy still hasn't debuted, supposedly Walt and Skeezix is getting back on track, the John Stanley library is up and running, more Harvey stuff, more DHC Little Lulu, I mean, holy goodnight! You can't sell a comic book outside of Marvel and DC that isn't Buffy or whatever-related (I oughta know, after seeing the numbers on beasts #1), and they're not even selling a ton of the aforementioned, but somehow scores of classic comic collections are making their way into the world. Not that I'm complaining. It's just so unprecedented and unforeseen; going back a few years, that it's hard to imagine it isn't a geekanerd fever dream.

Anyway, I just hope 2010 isn't the dam bursting on the reprint trend and we're not hitting the motherlode overload anytime soon, because at some point this has to start choking shelves and bringing consumers to their financial knees, but while the gettin's good, this is a goddamned Golden Age of great comic gatherings, guys and gals. This is history in the re-packaging, and bears attention.

Or maybe it's a sinister alliance with Ikea to sell even more Billy bookcases.

So, anybody looking forward to any of this stuff? Anything you've heard about that is of interest? How about them Yankees?

No, no Yankees, I don't really care, in fact I really don't care, anti-care, could care less. No Yankees, no NYC mayoral race, no creepy rich people sports of any kind. Just funnybooks, today. Glorious, ridiculous funnybooks. Them I understand.

Fingers Still Crossed

2009-10-30T01:40:19Z

So, basically, things have been pretty tense here recently.

And now, thankfully, they're not as tense.

Talk to you folks soon.

Any Questions--?

2009-10-26T17:04:32Z

Haven't done one of these in a long time, dunno if there's any interest out there, but...any questions?

Now's the time.

R.I.P. Soupy Sales

2009-10-23T18:45:52Z

Ahhh, this one made me sad. I wasn't old enough to have seen the glory days of the Soupbone, his legendary nerd hipster kid's show that caught on with adults back in the 60's, pre-Uncle Floyd, pre-Pee-Wee Herman, pre-Andy Kaufman's singing along with Mighty Mouse records. A good-natured comedian, he kept slapstick and kitsch and silliness alive on tv when it was disappearing from the face of the tv and movie screen, puppets, copious pies in the face, bad gags, parodies, dopey songs. Nevertheless, if you were on the east coast, or were a nerdling obsessed with pop culture and television and show business in the 70's, Soupy Sales was ever-present, and by osmosis you learned about him, his show, his single, "Do the Mouse", etc.

And eventually WPIX aired the later incarnation of his show, for a short but fun run, with White Fang, and Black Tooth and Pookie, and the pies kept coming, as did the usual goofy horsehockey that was unfunny/funny, or funny/unfunny, depending on your tastes. I loved it, and always thought Soupy Sales was aces, a man in the game to entertain whoever wanted to come along, making the kids laugh and winking at the adults. He took approximately 20,000 pies to the face, or so they say. There's a legacy, and no, I'm not being snide. I'd have been happy to have been Soupy Sales, and I'm happy there was a Soupy Sales. Mention of his name brings a smile to my face unassailed by snark, cynicism, or scandal. I just like the guy and his show and his shtick, he made me laugh and I was a fan.

R.I.P.Milton Supman, aka, Soupy Sales.

Some Youtube clips for the curious:
Soupy Sales: old school, "Do the Mouse" clip
The later Soupy Sales tv show: Alice Cooper guest star

There are also complete 60's episodes on Youtube which I wish I had time to watch, and, I can't find it right now after a quick search, maybe it isn't posted on Youtube, but a great, great clip is of a relatively unknown Soupy Sales on the old panel game show "I've Got a Secret". I think it's early '60s, possibly 1961, possibly an episode with Ronald Reagan as the special guest. Soupy's secret is the amount of pies he's had tossed at him at the time, the time being when he was a local east coast phenomenon and the panelists had not heard of him. Or the viewing audience, by and large. He's energetic and funny and willing to look foolish, giving a lesson on getting hit with a pie (with drum beat for effect). I laughed at this clip every time I saw it on the Game Show Network when they were running old episodes of black and white game shows (and we had cable). It predates Monty Python's pie-throwing seminar routine and I dunno, might even be funnier. Well, different approaches, it's not like Sales was doing a cerebral, deadpan dissecting kind of skit about showbiz nonsense. He was just being a goof.

Long Live Soupy Sales.

Inkstuds Radio Show, Jill Thompson And I -- Tomorrow

2009-10-22T02:08:42Z

Jill and I will be appearing on Robin McConnell's comic book-oriented radio talk show Inkstuds tomorrow. I've been on the show before and it was a good time.

According to Robin, the show will be live (5 pm EST) through www.citr.ca or 101.9 fm in Vancouver, and re broadcasted either through www.inkstuds.com or several stations across Canada at a later time.

Check it out, see what songs we picked get played, see if either of us says anything doofusy.

Also, FYI, the second part of my Inside Look article discussing the first issue of Beasts of Burden has been posted at Broken Frontier. It includes some script pages for folks who like to see that stuff, and how the finished pages worked off the script, what Jill changes, broke down further, etc.

Okay, over and out. Hope some of you folks hunted down a copy of Beasts #2 today, hope it provides an interesting read.

Latersville.

In Stores Tomorrow: Beasts of Burden #2

2009-10-20T23:49:47Z

Like it says, Beasts of Burden #2 ships to comic shops tomorrow. My thanks in advance to those of you who plan to pick it up. I hope you like the issue, there's some amazing work from Jill in this one, especially one particular image in the book that is, imho, pretty stunning.

Anyway, as posted earlier, CBR ran a preview of the first six pages of #2. If you are interested in reading them, click here.

Also, I did an "Inside Look" feature for Broken Frontier about Beasts of Burden #1, a sort of director's commentary breaking down a five or six page sequence from the first issue, along with an overview of the series and some background . I wrote too much -- go figure -- so the Inside Look will be running in two parts, today and tomorrow. You can read the first half here.

Okay, then, I guess that's it. #2, tomorrow. Hope you'll be there, hope it's worth it.

R.I.P. George Tuska

2009-10-16T18:10:17Z

The venerable and veteran, and I do mean veteran, cartoonist George Tuska has passed away. I was a fan of his silver age and 70's (whatever the hell that age is called, Bronze Age -? Roy Thomas Age--? Last Hurrah Age --?) Marvel work, I followed his long Iron Man run, his work on Luke Cage, Hero For Hire/Power Man/White Man's Fever Dream, and if I recall correctly, he had a run on the oddball team book The Champions, or at least did some fill-ins (inked by John Byrne, iirc, of all people). My 70's Marvel is hazy these days, especially on all the fill-ins and secondary titles someone like Tuska would have contributed to, so that's most of what I recall, other than the connective pages in a Marvel Treasury Holiday collection, where he drew most of the Marvel icons tossing snowballs at one another in-between Christmas reprints. In fact, one of the reprints just may have been a Tuska-drawn Luke Cage mess, some dopey thing about some idiot villain in a terrible costume quoting Shakespeare or Dickens or something dumb like that. Sweet Christmas!

Anyway, I liked Tuska, I know many didn't, his stuff was cartoony and old school. I didn't mind, he got the job done with enough aplomb, and characters had decent fights and there was good flow and motion in a Tuska book, especially when he was "on". I recently read his Tower contributions to the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents line and I thought they were kind of dismal, but a lot of the older pros seemed to knock the Tower stuff out quickly, I'm betting the pay was pretty lousy, and save for a few folks like Wood and Adkins, perhaps, it was hardly a labor of love.

One of Tuska's signature cartooning tics, at least during the 60's and 70's, was to draw a lot of folks with big damned teeth. Especially any character who was supposed to be a maroon, or a sharpie, or a putz. But the big teeth could spread to regular folks and heroes alike, and it was memorable (obviously). Sometimes I could just look at the teeth in a book and know it was Tuska if the inking marred the penciling. Geez, them teeth. Choppers, is more like it. If he ever drew Ironjaw the comics world would have fainted. Sometimes seemingly one big tooth represented the upper jaw, and sometimes terrifyingly buck-toothed individuals would flit around a Tuska page. It could be disconcerting. I'm going by memory here, and other stylizations I seem to recall are bodies in motion entering and slicing through the panels, which gave his pages some heft and motion, and often a tight foreshortening of hands, sometimes to the point where the hand would be thrust forward and bent down in a funny way, with little or no indication of the arm structure behind it. I always noticed this because as a kid I would trace Tuska hands, the lack of much forearm or arm behind it seemed like a wonderful way to get around drawing anatomy. Which is not to say Tuska couldn't draw arms, it was just a bit of business, like how often a cartoon character's bent knee will feature a foot dangling beneath it, with no shin or ankle to be seen. It often heightens the action, and can look dynamic. I also seem to recall Tuska's Iron Man, like Trimpe's, as having a helmet that somehow managed to emote -- the 70's saw a bunch of folks putting emotions across Ol' Shellhead's kisser, squashing and stretching the mouth and eye slits in expressive ways, a practice I never could completely reconcile as a kid. To this day I'm not sure how I feel about that approach, it was kooky as all hell, but kind of worked, I remember friends of mine hated whenever anyone drew an anguished Iron Man (he was always getting crushed in the suit back then. Ultimo crushed him, The Blood Brothers crushed him, Titanium Man crushed him, The Freak crushed him, folks really liked some fresh-squeezed Tony Stark back then. Nowadays it looks like Iron man is always getting hit with Photoshop effects. It ain't the same, baby. I say crush that bastard, Matt Fraction or whoever's writing Iron man these days. Crush him! Crush him good! Crinkle that industrialist in a can!). Anyway, I liked Tuska's Iron Man just fine. Even if the Mandarin and Happy Hogan and everybody had crazy big teeth.

For a nice write-up of Tuska's long career and strengths as a cartoonist, please see Tom Spurgeon's fine obituary at The Comics Reporter. Tuska had been around a lot longer than I was aware of as a young Marvel reader, along with folks like Lee Elias and Frank Robbins I had no clue he'd been kicking around for decades and had done successful (and arguably stronger) work in the newspaper strip field and the golden age of comics I was surprised to learn this years back, comics was such a weird place as far as letting out information on the artists, even in the 70's and 80's, only certain fans seemed aware of the length and breadth of most superhero cartoonists' careers. You just assumed they showed up one day and went to work for Marvel or DC, and switched around between the two. I thought they were all in their 20's until Marvel published photographs of their writers and artists in the calendars and pages of FOOM. Which was a stunner, for me, back in the day. Adults drawing comic books? Old people adults?

Anyway, R.I.P. George Tuska, he had a long run, drew many pages, and entertained many folks. Cool.

Exclusive Preview of Beasts of Burden #2 at CBR

2009-10-15T22:23:14Z

You can read the first 6 pages of Beasts of Burden #2 over on Comic Book Resources.

Beasts of Burden #2 ships next Wednesday, October 21st. Thanks in advance to those of you out there who are following the series and will be picking it up, it's appreciated!

Baltimore Wrap-Up - Art & Crafts For Sale - SLG Radio and More

2009-10-14T21:31:08Z

And we're back. A bunch of things to cover, so here we go:

BALTIMORE

The Baltimore Con was a nice time -- as we'd heard from others, it turned out to be a well-run and well-organized show that was all about comics. A lot like Heroes World in feel, folks and friendliness. The staffers and volunteers were super-nice, super-helpful and we met and spoke to a lot of nice folks who stopped by our booth to get books signed, chat, or pick things up. We signed a lot of books and had a lot of good conversations, and ran into a number of old friends and fellow professionals. As always, it was great catching up with Walt Simonson, as well as Matt Wagner who we always seem to get to see for about five minutes before he disappears from view for the weekend. We barely got to see Scott Allie , which was a goddam shame, as I'd been looking forward to speaking with him for months now. Scott had a hellish trip by car after his flight from Chicago to Baltimore was cancelled. Got to BS a bunch with Bob Fingerman, who I only see at comic shows these days because of my being a virtual hermit these past few years. We also got to catch up with Mark Coale, who graced us with some Lucha dvds, I got to say hello to folks like Cliff Chiang and Steve Lieber, and we did get to talk with the Fabulous Immonens several times. I mostly yammered at them about nothing in the least bit important or interesting. Because that's how I roll. Downhill. I do recall arguing with Stuart about the use of the terms "streetcar" and "trolley car", and that I prefer the latter because the former sounds like "prostitute car". And I will not have that.

We were bunked next to the great Stan Sakai, it was the first time we had met him and he is pretty friggin' awesome. He was doing Usagi Yojimbo sketches and at one point was coloring them in crayon and they were lovely. Cripes, he is good. I had forgotten to bring Emily's sketchbook, eegah. Maybe another time. I talked with him about Japanese yokai monsters and told him about the Kodansha bilingual editions of Princess Knight and Gegege No Kitaro which he was unaware of. And I watched him draw when things were slow. Cripes is he good!

We didn't knock 'em dead at the booth sales-wise, I don't blame the show for that. My own SLG books are old, even the "new" ones are old, now. We did okay with the Milk and Cheese collection, the first Dork trade, and things like Dork #11 and Biff Bam Pow, which a lot of people still haven't seen because of relatively low orders. The economy wasn't helping things any, I swear it seemed as if there were almost as many conversations cropping up at the booth about money and unemployment as there were about comics and cartoons. I've never been to a show where so many folks apologized for not buying anything, or buying more. I barely sold any art, if it wasn't for one generous reader/customer buying a few pieces, we would've had a disastrous show, business-wise. On the plus side, we had a great reaction from folks regarding Beasts of Burden, and we sold all the copies we had on hand, I could've used a bunch more. A few dealers on the floor had copies and at least one sold out, which we like to hear. Dark Horse Comics had Beasts of Burden promo posters available to give away (on the other side was a poster for Hellboy: 1947). I haven't seen a promo poster for a project of mine since...gee...1987, for Pirate Corp$!, from Eternity Comics. Oh -- wait, there was a weird Bill and Ted poster done for these special light boxes Marvel gave out or sold to shops back in 1991, I guess that counts. Anyway, that was cool. We also got a lot of questions regarding the SLG books, and when some of them might return. Also cool, I just wish I had a better answer than, "as soon as possible, I hope".

Anyway, a friendly show, great people, despite the slow sales we had a really good time and enjoyed the weekend. It was great seeing old friends, Sarah's brother Tim came to visit, we had a fantastic dinner with him and friends on Saturday and a lot of fun overall. Sarah and I found some cheap kid's comics for Emily, mostly Harveys and Chip and Dale, but Em piecked out a copy of Sugar and Spike for herself. On Monday we took her to the Maryland Zoo and we all really enjoyed it. Then a drive home, and a long, dead sleep. Our thanks to Marc Nathan and his wife and Chris and everyone at the con for having us out there and running such a cool comics show, and to all of you who stopped by the booth in support. All appreciated.

SLG RADIO

I will be a guest on Dan Vado's SLG Radio broadcast tomorrow, online at 5 pm EST. Folks are invited to listen and call in with any questions or comments. The link to listen to the show can be found at:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/slgradio

There will be a box on the top that lists the current show, you simply click on that and a new window opens with the player in it. The call-in # is (646) 378-0737.

I have no idea what we'll be bitching about but it should be...talkative. Or something.

H.O.F. ART AND CRAFTS FOR SALE

As I said, our sales at the booth were a bit slow, and all the new pin-ups I did for the show came back home with us with their tails between their legs. So, since we just had our taxes done and the car inspection is this week (we already know we need one headlight replaced, as the current offender is held in by duct tape at the moment), we're putting five of the drawings up on e-bay in hopes of drumming up some sales. The art includes the four 6" by 9" b&w pin-ups I posted in my previous journal entry (Milk and Cheese, Georgina Riley from The Murder Family, Bad Dad and Son, The Shitty Witch and the Crappy Cat) along with a 9" by 12" color Milk and Cheese piece. All at reasonable starting prices. The auctions are here.

We also brought a new batch of H.O.F. M&C and Monster moleskine covers and bookmarks that Sarah made for the show, and we're offering the remaining items for sale from our site. You can see what's available for sale here.

As always, thanks for looking (and thanks to those of you who responded to our previous set of auctions).

BEASTS OF BURDEN #2

Beasts of Burden #2 ships next week, on the 21st of October. Editor Scott Allie has let Jill and I know that Dark Horse got their copies, so unless Diamond goofs or there's a monumental national disaster, copies will be on shelves next Wednesday. Get your three bucks ready for comic book time.

And, finally...

R.I.P. CAPTAIN LOU ALBANO

What more need be said?

Baltimore Pin-Ups/Beasts of Burden #2 Preview

2009-10-07T06:08:12Z

Dark Horse has posted the cover to Beasts of Burden #2 on their website along with a preview featuring the first three pages of the issue. You can read them here.

In a fit of old-school semi-enthusiasm I drew a bunch of pin-ups to bring to the Baltimore Con this coming weekend. Here's a few of the smaller pieces that fit on my Fisher-Price scanner: