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.

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

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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!