Friday, August 20, 2010

I and "The Orphan Baiter" got nominated for a thing

The nominations for the Ignatz Awards came out this week, and as it turns out my story from Papercutter #13 earned me a nomination as a "Promising New Talent:"
It seems like if I were halfway responsible about my work I'd have reached the "promising talent" level while I was still in my twenties, but you know what? Let's just assume that my best years are still ahead of me and I'll redouble my efforts and try not to die. I do come from a long-lived family. Anyways, thanks to my editor, Greg Means of Tugboat Press, for believing in me and getting this thing out there.

You can vote for me or any other of the nominees you like at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD on September 11-12. Just attend, fill out a ballot and drop it in a cardboard box. The process is more similar to giving people valentines in grade school than it is to an election, but who among us fell in love with comics because they imagined that a small-press festival associated with the art would one day provide a perfect laboratory for field-testing innovative new democratic processes?

Paping rules, Paping is cool, and we've got Paping in our school

So you know who's great? This guy:
John Mejias, pal, founder of Paping, member of Partyka and swell fellow has a few things going on around NYC right now, neither of which I have pictures of because I'm in West Chester PA right now, so I'll just tell you about them:

First, there's a Paping Retrospective art show hanging on the ground floor of Cake Shop on Ludlow St. in Manhattan right now. It has most of the contents of Paping's two silkscreen issues up on the walls; they're out of print now, I think, so if you want to see them now's a great chance. You'll can't see my stories "Think With Your Fists" and "Pink Meteor" anywhere else, for example. Also, there's a ton of John's prints for shows, posters for old runnings of the Paping Soap Box Derby, and the linocuts for the Paping Puppet show, as well as stuff from a lot of Paping's contributors and friends.

Secondly, John's assembled the new window display for Desert Island, the comic book store in Williamsburg. If you want to shop for comics at an establishment with a quality window display, I can't think of a better place than that.

Oh, yeah, and thirdly, dude's got a new job or two and is gonna be back teaching art! Keep it up, man, I'm glad you'll be able to afford burritos again.

Summer Doldrums

Oh, hi, I was asleep at the wheel of most of my internet-stuff for the past couple months; sorry. Anyways, I've got a bunch of new stuff at Partyka. July's drawings consist of a bunch of discarded sketchbook ideas for the Bound and Gagged show Tom Neely is putting together for Secret Headquarters in LA. I'm down to the wire on the actual things I decided to do for the show, but hopefully I'll have them in the mail soon, and Tom will still want them. At any rate, here's "Sidekick," one of the many things which will go no further than here:...And then for August there's the usual odds and sods. Here's "Man Vs. Ant."
Thanks for reading; hope you're having an excellent summer night.