Moving

I'm moving back to Brooklyn in the next two weeks. I'll be glad when it's over and I'm there; right now I'm in the middle of the Boxes and Whirlwind-of-Crap phases of the enterprise. New daily "drawings" are up on Partyka, showing conditions inside the whirlwind.


Mom, Dad: you pack the booze last, so you can power through the last hour of trashing things and stuffing things, and then pass out. How am I going to pass out now?



I got sidetracked by Welcome to the Dahl House when I was supposed to be packing clothes and books, then set it aside at some point, then this happened. Is this the comics equivalent of ass pennies? And if so, does the comics-touching-boxers power advantage me or Gabby? (I am going to guess Gabby, as he is a gentleman with many powers.)



There's a sink in the basement, the by-product of an October I'd mostly rather forget. But soon: Brooklyn! Lots of good stuff that I don't want to jinx by mentioning it and I am terrified of a U-Haul explosion between then and now! See you in the New Year! Hopefully!

MODOK vs. Luchador and Others

I'm up-to-date on daily drawings again. Here's the latest, "MODOK vs. Luchador," done as a commission for a MODOK/Luchador enthusiast:

Some other more recent ones include "Contact Tree..."

...and "Kiss Me I'm Eldritch."

Our Esteemed Guests

Hi; some more folks have been our guests at Partyka while I was asleep at the wheel. Painter/Author/Dungeon Master Zak Smith was here for the month of November; here's his "Crawler 4:"

Now it's December, and Sally Bloodbath of Always Comix and sundry minis has joined us. Here's "Katie Skelly: Catcatcher;"

Thanks, Zak and Sally, for the excellent company, and for having kept the Partyka lighthouse burning while I was in the cellar snarfing down whiskey.

Doubleplus Booklearning

I illustrated this Video Sparknote on 1984:

Update Update

New daily drawings up at Partyka. Some odds-and-ends, some grumpiness and some selections from the hourly comics I did for Oct.9 and Oct. 10, the day the Punchbuggy Tour passed through town and brought with it MK Reed, Liz Baillie, Ken Dahl, Sally Bloodbath and ukelele covers of "Last Caress" and "The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton." Anyway, here's 10:30 am on the 10th, or "The Bageling Hour:"

The rest of the day's down below. Oh, and in reference to the Oct. 10 @ 2:30 comic, here's a link to MK, Liz and Gabby's final tattoos.

Our October Guest: Roger Human Being

Should've mentioned this earlier, but our guest for October is the multitalented Roger Human Being: musician, storyteller and inventor of the "Watching-Movies-With-An-Orange-Cat" video, which deserves to be the next big internet thing after the "WHOSE RESPONSIBLE THIS?" meme.*

Here's "Brutha and Bloog:"


Thanks, HB! Glad to have you here!

*which I guess itself deserves to be the next internet thing? I dunno, is anything going on with that?

Whew

Okay, there's still folding and stapling to do, but new stuff for SPX is ready:

Print

Print

Print

Book

Hope to see you in Bethesda tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after.

PrintPrintPrintPrint

Things are starting to look like things. Good job, things.

PrintPrintPrint

Man, I gotta lot of stuff to cross off that list before Friday.

SPX: and otherwise: several things are happening at once

This upcoming weekend is packed full of events, do you hear me? Packed! Some events are nested within others like Russian stacking dolls, while others are up in a different corner like a Malevich painting or zooming in from out of nowhere like a mummy on a skateboard. Events!

(poster by Laura Park, who kills at making posters)

First: Shawn Cheng, John Mejias and I are going to be exhibiting at SPX in Bethesda, MD this weekend. It's the last of the Big Several alternative comics conventions that take place on the East Coast every year, and I am all sorts of excited to be there. We'll be at Table D15, right next to the good people at AdHouse Books and just on the edge of the Vortex of Swellness that is Dustin Harbin and Scott Campbell's table at D1. I'll have a new dollar book collecting the "Head to Head" drawings I've been making for the Partyka site, and I should also have some prints for sale.

While at SPX, you may want to attend these panels, featuring or moderated by my excellent pals:

• The New Action, moderated by friend and collaborator Sean T. Collins and featuring Shawn Cheng, as well as Frank Santoro, Brian Ralph, Benjamin Marra and Kaz Strzepek. It's about action, spectacle and genre in today's art-comics world, and man, just look at that lineup. This panel is a man in sunglasses walking in slow-motion with an explosion behind him.
• Mr. Collins is also going to be on a critics' roundtable with quite a few of the other worthwhile-to-read comics writers out there. They'll be talking about both comics criticism and notable recent books.
• Also of note: Sally Bloodbath, who as co-editor of Always Comix has published some things of mine and Shawn's, will be on a panel about comics and community: friends, drawing nights, conventions and general getting-your-stuff-out-there. Dylan Williams of Sparkplug moderates. Also features the omni-presence that is Frank Santoro, and Robyn Chapman and Benn Ray.
  

...If you're not in Maryland that weekend, but are instead in New York, Partyka's friend and frequent guest Danica Novgorodoff is having a book release party at Rocketship in Brooklyn for her second book, an adaptation of the Benjamin Percy story "Refresh, Refresh." Featuring the holy trinity of books, drinks and a store.







Also up in NYC: Team Macho, a collective of dudes from Toronto with whom we had a fine time at TCAF '05 (they had a 27-toed cat living in their studio, therefore Automatic Fun Time), have a show at Giant Robot.

...Hope to see you at SPX! I think I might actually be done with everything this year and not have to spend the show stapling things behind the table. Probably I will come off as a better, livelier person, but who knows how these things work?

Head to Head 13

New daily drawing up at Partyka: Head to Head 13.

Head to Head 11 & 12

Head to Head installments 11 and 12 are now up at Partyka.

Here's 11:

And here's 12:

New Daily Drawing: (Head to Head 10: Walk-Off)

New daily drawings up at Partyka, bringing us up to date. Here's Head-to-Head 10: Ghost-Who-Walks vs. Walkin' Dude Walk-Off:This is, of course, a battle between perpetual good and perpetual evil. One might assume that Randall Flagg has the upper hand here, existing across and exemplifying malice and corruption within multiple planes of reality. Don't forget, though, that the Phantom respresents generation upon generation of ordinary humans who, across centuries, have committed to battling evil while wearing ridiculous purple long johns with striped underoos. I think this speaks to a triumph of the human spirit that Mr. Flagg and his manifold darknesses cannot eclipse.

Sept. Guest Artist: Erin Griffin

Partyka's guest for September is Erin Griffin, maker of adorable minicomics and co-editor of the excellent anthology Always Comix, the sixth issue of which will be coming out shortly. Here's one of her gun studies:

You can see more at her guest gallery at Partyka, and at her blog. Thanks, Erin!

Doubleplusunearly

My daily drawing archive at Partyka has been backfilled with pencils and inks from the freelance project I've been working on for the past month. I'll put up another post when the finished product is available.

I tried using a red pencil for the first time on these drawings, so I wouldn't have to erase as much. It worked pretty well, although the leads are more fragile and I kept snapping little bits off by accident. One neat thing about inking was that my glasses bend red light, making it look as though the pencils were sitting about half a millimeter beneath the ink. It was mesmerizing. Thanks, optics!

YES

From The Comics Reporter:

"...Were you aware that Lewis Trondheim did a signing where he set one of his sketches on fire? I heard about this and CR reader Jeremy Stone confirmed:

I was standing in line behind a woman who got a copy of Dungeon signed and she asked for a sketch of Marvin breathing fire in it. Trondheim drew Marvin in the corner of the first page with the fire line spreading out, then lit the corner on fire, let it burn to his inkline, and threw it on the floor, closing it to put out the flames. I wish that I had my camera ready, because it was awesome, and it turned out great. I should have at least taken a picture of the finished product, but I was too awestruck.

I mean, if nothing else happened this year, Trondheim using fire as an impromptu illustrative tool happened. Isn't that cool?"

UPDATE: Now with pictures! (via the daily crosshatch)

"There's no such thing of Supercar"

Commercial for the Washington DC public transit system, from around the mid-1980's. Abandon your dreams of flying cars; we will replace them with a railway timetable. An early spirit-crusher.*

(link to Realplayer video)

(via Ocean Digital Productions.)

*Although if your fantasy life at age 8 revolves around the fastest commute, you have already lost.

RHB and OFC at the movies

Watch key moments in film history with Roger Human Being and companion:

Scarface (1983)

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=123688997597

Batman (1966)

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=113620157597

Head to Head 8

New Daily Drawing up at Partyka: Head to Head 8.

Head to Head 7/Our Guests

New Daily Drawing up at Partyka: Head to Head 7.

..in honor in Independence Day, this is a drawing of what democracy looks like just before it is eaten by a whale. For extra credit, name the type of government that would have been depicted if the whale were about to eat a group of clerics who claimed to be ruling according to the principles of a particular ideology or deity.

Also, it's now July, which means Isaac Cates and Mike Wenthe's time with us has reached its end. Big thanks again to both of them for being our guests. Let's wave goodbye with an encore of "Faculty Meeting:"

With us for the next month is Chadwick Whitehead. Here's "Speed," in which no one can stop a man-cheetah from exhaling modern transportation:

Thank-yous also to Mr. Whitehead; we're glad to have you on board. You make me wish I could breathe planes.

Head to Head 6

New daily drawing up at Partyka: Head to Head 6.

We sat at a table for a while

...So the Brooklyn Zinefest was a good thing. Thanks to everyone who came by to say hi to and buy stuff from John and me, and to the organizers, and to Six Point Crafts Ales for being a sponsor and selling cups of themselves at the front of the room, which helped a slow section of Saturday afternoon pass more quickly. Hurray!
...uh, oh, yeah, also DUB pies, another sponsor, are awesome. I used to get them all the time for lunch when I worked here and DUB was right around the corner. I regret I am unable to report on the crisp, refreshing taste of Minuteman Press or the compact meaty goodness of the Brooklyn Creative League.

(picture from BK Lyceum's flickr stream)

Head to Head 5

New daily drawing up at Partyka: Head to Head 5.

Paping and Partyka at NYC Zine Fest

This next weekend, John Mejias and I are gonna be exhibiting at the NYC Zine Fest. John spent weeks making the new issue of Paping, an all-prints extravaganza that will smack your gob eight ways from Sunday. I ran some of my comics through the copy machine again. We are like Goofus and Gallant, if they appeared in some magazine for people in their thirties instead of Highlights.

The Zine Fest runs from 12 noon to 7 pm on Saturday the 27th and Sunday the 28th at the Brooklyn Lyceum, just off the Union Street R stop. Come say hi! We're your pals.

Head to Head 4

New daily drawing up at Partyka: Head to Head 4.

Head to Head 3

New daily drawing now up at Partyka: Head to Head 3.

Head to Head 2

New daily drawing up at Partyka: Head to Head 2.

Head to Head 1

Now up at Partyka: Head to Head 1.

Guest Panel

Now up at Partyka: Guest Panel....this was drawn at a ramen restaurant in the East Village as a guest panel for Jesse Reklaw's diary strip. You can see the whole thing by clicking on this sentence.

I am the hundredth person to note that MoCCA was hot.

Thanks to Jesse for asking me to be a guest artist, to John, Sean, Shawn, Adrienne and Roger for company behind the table, and to everybody who stopped by to say hi or to say nice things or to give me a carrot cupcake. You're all too kind.

The Vulgar Almanac

Now up at Partyka: The Vulgar Almanac.

Missing Frisbees

New daily drawing at Partyka: Missing Frisbees.
...made in Schuylkill River Park while watching a less-than-ept game of Ultimate.