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:

Just follow in my steps and you, too, can become a hundredaire!



Originally done for the back of a Milk and Cheese trading card, mid-90's, iirc.

I figure, between the paying gigs, if I get a panel done here and there, this strip will be done by 2016.  Maybe.

Start holding your collective breath...now.

As some of you know, we've been dealing with some house mishaps which have given our wallet a swift kick in the teeth, which has prompted us to part with some more art we are hoping to sell. This includes the cover art to Milk and Cheese #666, which I don't really want to sell, but, it's not like I don't have Milk and Cheese drawings in the house, and I still have two other covers. Three, if you count the mini-comic. And hey, four, if this one doesn't move. There's always a bright side.



You can find the auctions here. They also include the second Fun Strip page from Dork #2, the cover for the Punk Rock Holocaust 2 DVD (with an additional rough sketch), two Animal Man/Vertigo penciled tryout pages, a page of spot illos for Nickelodeon Magazine, and a small Georgina Riley Murder Family drawing. Starting bids range from $15 to a few hundred for the cover, all for the cause (hot water heater , washing machine repair, dehumidifier, Ibuprofin...).

Such is life. 

Robot 6 just posted a good-sized interview I did with the site's Tim O'Shea, more or less covering the last ten feeble years of my cartooning career. Topics include the canceled Metal Men series, the poor-selling Thing series I did with Dean Haspiel, old Marvel and DC projects I almost worked on, animation, pitch bibles, I Love You, Beth Cooper, Beasts of Burden, working with Sarah, my convention screeds, Milk and Cheese and the lack of an 8th issue, and "sequential art narrative work".

I don't sound horribly stupid for a change. Shocking.

Anyway, hope all's well out there with you folks. Enjoy SDCC, those of you attending SDCC. Check out the DHC signing schedule to find when Jill Thompson will be appearing on behalf of Beasts of Burden. Jill will also be in the Artist's Alley doing commissions, selling copies of Magic Trixie, and displaying preview pages from Beasts. The House of Fun will not be there, I appreciate the folks who have written us asking about our shcedule or wanting to interview me, but, we ain't gonna be there. But thanks for the interest.

Over and outsville!

And now yours.






A member of the Zen Boy and Karma Girl project sent the top two images to me. I tossed in the Cheese card cel for the hell of it because it brought it even closer to home. And home is where the hate is, eh wot? Although I harbor no hate for Susan Boyle in the least. I just wish that any human being that gets within firing range of Simon Cowell would unleash a few rounds in the direction of his head and clear some air in the world. Ha ha, I know, why be so hateful and say such vile things? Only kidding, just a larf, I certainly don't wish him dead by violence at my behest or anything. I guess. I really do despise him, though. Stomach-turning individual. May his money somehow blow across the seas into the hands of others who could use it and he wind up in a hell filled with angry American Idol rejects armed with paring knives, for he has committed far too many crimes against pop culture, let along 'actual" culture (whatever that is), the worst perhaps being the incredible transgression against man and god that is Paula Abdul's revived career and presence.  Just catching the man in occasional snippets, unavoidable despite not having cable and trying my best to live cleanly, is enough to land him a top spot on my Amazon shitlist.

Anyway. Decent resemblance, eh?

And there's my usleess contribution to "internet culture" for today. Ta!

We're testing the waters and have put up a few pieces of H.O.F. art on e-bay. Four pieces, a new M&C color pin-up (guess what? They're running and shouting! This one has extra fire, though), an odd page of art from the Superman/Batman strip I drew for Bizarro Comics (you'll see what I mean if you check it out), a Mad piece, and a splash layout from the Kamandi strip from Bizarro World. A range of stuff, a range of prices, to see what happens. I've seen what my stuff goes for e-bay, and it never matches up with the price I'd have set for it, especially the smaller pieces, like layouts, and freebie sketches people got at conventions and then tossed up for sale, because they are penny ante cretins.

The auctions can be found here.

Here's the M&C pin-up that's on e-bay:




We also have some new art up on the "Art For Sale" list, including two Bizarro Comics pages, and the last Dick Wad of the Mega-Vice Squad art I have, the latter going back to my halcyon days of 1993, when everyone could sell a smut book except yours truly. Maybe I should have put more sex in it and less stupid stuff (and less insulting of the smut book audience). Oh, well. We also finally got a link up to the other Milk and Cheese pin-up I did recently that's on the list (more blood this time):





All for now. Thanks for looking. 

Emily drew this a few days ago while we sat for ages in a doctor's waiting room. Those are word balloons above their heads. I think I can safely turn the strip over to her when I retire, which is next Tuesday. So, maybe you'll get issue #8 sooner than we all thought.

Actually, this style would make for a great M&C strip. 

Hell, this would make for a fine art comic from Picturebox or Bueneventura Press, if we didn't tell anybody how old she is. Ha ha, we kid, old school Philistine-stylee, because we love, and cannot afford Kramer's Ergot #7. 

Still, we could always push her on the MOCCA crowd as a mini-comics whiz. Ha ha, comics are so grown-up and hip and cool we have stage parents now, it's just wonderful. I want my kid to be a has-been at small press comics shows at 14. Yikes.

Ha ha, we kid because we're mean and cynical. I mean, I am. What's with this "we" crap? Stupid, affected "we" crap. I am done with "we" now.

I'll say this in all seriousness, she draws better than her dad scans an image. Nice black line on the left, there, stupid old man.

If you are fluent in Spanish, you can read an interview I did  with Amadeo Gandolfo for El Baile Moderno.

If, like me, you are at a loss, feel free to use the Google translation programmy thing and marvel at some of the twisted vernacular that comes a'cropping. Two of my favorite transmutated phrases:

"Could you tell us a little about the failed Federal Bureau of Metal Men?. "

"A Didius Dan"

Excuse me, but I'd work on "The Failed Federal Bureau of Metal Men" in a goddamned heartbeat. Too bad A Didius Dan would cancel it on me.

My thanks to Amadeo for the interest in my work and for the interview.

In other news, I am getting close to finishing up the first script for the DHC series. Have I mentioned the title? It's called "Beasts of Burden". We couldn't call it "That Dog and Cat Thing Evan and Jill Are Working On" anymore. Not commercial enough, I guess.

And finally, for those at home with nothing to do, we present yet another random Milk and Cheese pin-up.



Collect all 17, 271!

Front and back cover to Milk and Cheese: The Special Edition, published in 1997, and one of my dumber ideas, business-wise, if not necessarily comics-wise (there are a lot of contenders for that). Actually, the high concept wasn't mine, a friend suggested it, but my mistake was to turn the bit into a 16-page mini-comic . My second mistake was making it an SLG exclusive available only through conventions and mail order. I don't have the time to go into my thinking on that one.

Anyway, I was looking for something on my reference shelf and a copy of the mini fell out and I decided to scan the covers while taking a break from the lightbox, which is really boiling my eyes tonight for some reason. Some of you have seen this, many of you have not. It's an 8-page extension of the 3-page Darth Vader Overdrive strip from M&C #666, along with some fake behind the scenes guff and other odds and ends.It was while the Star Wars trilogy re-releases were being shoved down the world's throat and a friend said I should re-release the Darth Vader strip, ha ha. We added terrible computer effects, more scenes, blah blah.

I intend to include the material in the second M&C collection, which will be released sometime after 2026. If I live that long.

Title art for a M&C strip I was trying to get done for Negative Burn last year. I had to give up the ghost because of the schedule, so it exists as an uncleaned third of a page and a small pile of semi-decipherable notes and doodles. It'll likely end up finished in the next year or three, and should pop up in M&C #8 (look for it in 2017 or thereabouts).

Here's a hint as to what happens in the strip: violence ensues.

Actually, it's about M&C returning their beer empties.

And then violence ensues.

Sarah designed some H.O.F. fabric and used it to make these nifty Moleskine notebook covers and zippered pencil cases:



Crazy, huh? There are two designs, (as if you couldn't tell from the picture) one featuring 16 little drawings of Milk and Cheese and another featuring some of the Monsters that I post to the LJ every once in a while.

We'll have an extremely limited number of these items for sale at our table at Heroes Con if anyone's interested.  A Moleskine notebook is included with each cover, all wrapped up nice and snug and ready for you to write down whatever the hell it is you people write down. The pencil cases have a zipper that goes up and down...um, like a zipper.  Yeah. And you can put pencils in them. Or coins. Or bits of food, but that would totally screw them up. So don't do that, okay?

Read more about these neat little handcrafted items here at Sarah's Live Journal.

Over and out.

Just added a batch of new pages, pieces and pin-ups to the art for sale list. 

M&C pages and card originals, PC$!/HP, Fight-Man, Dork, an Eltingville t-shirt piece from a ways back, some more color production "cels", some Hellboy: Weird Tales pages, etc.

We'll be bringing it all to Heroes Con next week along with some likely last-minute additions, and whatever merch we have left after MOCCA. After this show we expect to be out of a number of items for good, I think we're done or about done when it comes to the M&C cards, magnets, lunchboxes and zippos, the Murder Family and Devil Puppet zippos, the Devil Puppet and Milk t-shirts, as well as a number of plain-old regular floppy comic books, both from SLG and from other publishers we've worked with. We're working on culling our file copies and stock so we can just bring books, art and current merch (like the vinyls) to shows from here on in. Streamline the table, streamline our life. We'll see how that goes.

Two HOF-related comics this month: Predator Omnibus volume 3 features the five-issue "Bad Blood" mini-series I wrote a ways back, with art by Derek Thompson and Chris Warner and another inker or two in there somewhere.

And the new issue of Hack/Slash from Devil'sDue has a one-page Milk and Cheese cameo that I wrote the dialogue for.

Otherwise, we're busy as hell gearing up for next week's Heroes Con event in North Carolina. 

Behold, the official Indie Island t-shirt.

I think you'll only be able to get this sucker at Heroes Con, so cry deep and hard at your loss, non-Heroes World attendees.

More information on the Heroes World blog.

And for MOCCA attendees, we're almost packed up, and while clearing the basement I found some old merch stock that we'll be bringing for those that may be interested. Pretty much the last gasp of the HOF Zippos, the M&C card sets and lunchboxes, some t-shirts, and some other odds and ends that I packed into some HOF Grab Bags (HOF buttons, cards, stickers, coasters, M&C dice, etc). We're holding some things back for Heroes Con, but between the two shows we expect to be completely out (unless, of course, nobody buys anything. Then we will still have everything) We'll also have some freebies for those purchasing stuff (as long as supplies last. Which could be forever, if nobody buys anything).

I've put some new art in the portfolio for folks to look at and possibly blow money on, and we'll have a few sets of the M&C vinyl figures on the table as well. No hard sell, folks, feel free to come by for a look-see and a sketch or whatever. Should be a good show as always, and we hope to see some of the HOF faithful out there this horrible, 90 degree + NYC weekend. .

I'm slowly scanning our remaining M&C card originals because I might sell some of them. I don't remember which card this was in the old set.



Tomorrow night is the AIGA event, which will involve Kim Deitch, Lauren Weinstein, Dan Nadel and your own humble servant. It's an expensive ticket, unfortunately, for non-AIGA members. And hell, for AIGA members. Hopefully some AIGA members will show up. And some students. I have no idea what to expect of the evening, previous events I've been invited to involved a direct attempt at being humorous, or a straight discussion of books comical. I found out about two weeks ago that we're supposed to do a 10-minute presentation accompanied by a selection of our artwork. It would have been nice to have been asked about that when we were invited to participate, but you can't have everything, now, can you? For instance, I can't have a pinball machine. It's true. It's been registered in court and everything.

So anyway, don't feel bad about not seeing me tomorrow in Brooklyn. I'm just going to say a bunch of things like, "This is Milk and Cheese. They are drunks.", and, "No, seriously, I do sort of make a living at this. Very sort of." You've heard it all before, you've seen it all before. But AIGA members have not. And away we go.

And, cripes, speaking of comics and comic book events, I am so not ready for MOCCA in any way, shape or form. And Heroes Con is two weeks after that. Double cripes.

The Milk and Cheese piece for Ben's Charity Auction is now up on e-bay.

Please consider tossing it a bid if you're into it, or consider bidding on one of the other pieces if you're of a mind. The money will benefit a good cause. I'll be shipping the M&C piece directly to the winner, so if they want, I will gladly personalize it for them. And maybe toss in a few extras, to boot.

Bidding starts at a measly buck for everything.

Milk and Cheese/World's Funnest pin-up for the Ben's Charity Art Auction organized by Thomas Denton through his Say it Backwards website. From what I understand, this is going up for auction tomorrow with a second wave of offerings. If I hear otherwise, I'll let folks know.

UPDATE 5/10: The M&C piece is now up for auction, you can see the listing HERE.

There's a number of drawings up for auction at the moment, this first wave goes up in about twelve hours from the time I type this. Here's a link to the auction for the Transmetropolitan page by Darick Robertson. 

Also, the Hulk piece I posted a few weeks ago will be auctioned off soon as part of Korry Smith's fundraising effort for The American Cancer Society. That benefit's been held back while Mr. Smith recovers from leg surgery, as soon as it goes ahead I'll post the information on it.