Today is the day an event is going to occur

I'm going to be at the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Fest in Williamsburg this weekend! In fact, today! In about three hours! I'll be at the Partyka table, #19, right next to Sparkplug Books. Look out as well for the excellent Sally Bloodbath, who'll be at table #31 with Kate Beaton.

Also, Shawn Cheng and I drew a two-page story for the new issue of Smoke Signal. It's called "Man vs. Ants." Here's a bit of it:

...and now I am going to try to make enough breakfast to sustain me and Sally until 9pm. Come say hi to us at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church, 275, N. 8th st. Sandwiches appreciated.

Papercutter #13

The 13th issue of Papercutter, the excellent Greg Means-edited anthology comic, is now out! I did the cover for it and have a 19-page story inside, and I feel as honored as a person can feel about things. Here's what the issue looks like:
Also in the issue are stories by Tim Root and Jonas Madden-Connor, who I am super-happy to be sharing the issue with. It should be arriving at your finer comic-book stores soon, and Quimby's has it available online here: http://www.quimbys.com/product_info.php?products_id=23650

Spoiler Alert: Story contains the line "Out, of my way, horse!," which Greg does not advise using on anyone who has not yet read the issue.

Blood Meridian drawings at Locust Projects

If you're in Miami, five drawings I made in response to passages from Blood Meridian are on display at Locust Projects in Miami, as part of "How to Read a Book," a group show curated by Michael Wilson.
They'll be there until June 19. Drop by if you're in the neighborhood!

Hourly Comics Day

I did hourly comics for today/yesterday, February 1. Because it was Hourly Comics Day. Featured besides me: Liz Baillie, Sally Bloodbath, MK Reed and the broccoli juice left behind by my roommate Melissa. Liz and Sally were also doing hourlies today, so I'll link to theirs once they go up.

Is there a holiday after Hourly Comics Day, like Boxing Day? There should be. Maybe it'll work just like hourly comics day, but instead of doing a comic every hour, you just get drunk or eat a poundcake every hour or something.

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.

They Fought A Running Engagement/Midnight In The Empire

I'm in an art show at Fredericks Freiser Gallery in NYC that's opening this weekend. It has a guy's head blowing up in it:
The gallery's got two rooms: in the front will be "Midnight in the Empire," Zak Smith's solo show. Then, in the back, there'll be a show of collaborative drawing projects, which I'm in, and where you'll be able to see that guy's head explode in all its 11"x14" glory. Anyway, here's some text and images from Partyka explaining it:

" Come see what Zak Smith has been up to in the City of Angels – his solo show Midnight in the Empire opens October 10. As a bonus, two ongoing collaborative projects will be unveiled:

On the Road of Knives...
The "battle blog" wherein Zak Smith, Shawn Cheng, and Nicholas Di Genova take turns drawing monsters fighting each other.

Six Versions of Blood Meridian
The heretofore "secret project" taking the one-picture-for-each-page treatment to Cormac McCarthy's violent masterpiece. Features Zak Smith, Sean McCarthy, John Mejias, Craig Taylor, Shawn Cheng, and Matt Wiegle.

Opening Reception
Friday, October 10, 6–8pm
See you there!"

Manga Shakespeare is kicking my ass

Here's how you know it's time to stop googling yourself:

An actual, factual object

I got a copy of The No-Fear Shakespeare Graphic Novels: Romeo and Juliet in the mail today from Sparknotes. It feels odd to hold, in my hands, a book I drew without having experienced an intermediary stage of xeroxing and stapling. The trade-off for that, I guess, is that I finished the art about a year ago and the book's just coming out now. Here it is:
Some things about it:

• It's a little over 200 pages long, and measures 6 inches by 9 inches.
  
• The book was originally going to be published with Shakespeare's text on the left leaf of each two-page spread, with the right leaf occupied by the corresponding comics page, but that's been done away with and now it's 100% comics. I figured, back when I was drawing this, that there was a better-than-even chance of that happening. I'm business-stupid, but even I recognize that a 400-page book wouldn't be feasible at an education-market price of $9.95. Plus it'd be too heavy to be convenient.
• I wrote in the blurb at Partyka that the mantra of the graphic novelist is "If I have time, I should go back and try to fix that," and boy is that ever the case here. The book starts to gel somewhere in the third act, and I'm pretty happy with the look of it by the end, but I made drawings, especially in the first two acts, that I wish I'd had more time to fix, even after I spent a couple weeks in late 2006 redrawing the panels with which I was least happy.
• I'm glad I did it. I think it made me a better cartoonist, and I got to draw for a living for a year. Hopefully these will turn out to have been good things for me, or comics, or someone someday.
  

Me draw book

From the looks of this, the adaptation of Romeo and Juliet that I drew for Sparknotes will be available at the end of January. This is what the cover will look like:


Originally, Shakespeare's text was to have been on even-numbered pages, while the comics version, featuring simplified-english dialogue, was to have been on the odd-numbered ones. Judging by the page count, this may have changed. All indications are that it is still a book, though.