Feelin’ A Bit SPACE-Y

I’m about as ready as I’ll ever be for this year’s SPACE. I’m happy to say that I’ve got a couple new items for sale/display debuting at the show. I’m unhappy to say that I don’t have any back issues available for sale. Well, not any regular back issues that is. I was pretty bummed about that, so I decided to pull out a special limited run (50 copies) of the very first Blink book I created back in the Autumn of `03.  The art style is sooo rough around the edges, it’s a little embarrassing.  I’m still mighty proud of the writing, though.  I created this whole book “by hand” (no computer layouts or fonts or anything) especially for the Mid-Ohio-Con and it’s been out of print for about 5 years.  I reprinted the whole 20-page book, as-is… warts & all.  I’ll see what kind of response I get from people at the show.

Then there’s my new stuff.  I spent an hour or two last night signing 150 copies of the Cerebus Readers in Crisis #4, which features my metafiction Blink story, In Between Minds. The whole thing is 56 pages long; there’s work from various members of the Cerebus Yahoo Group and Mr. Dave Sim himself drew the cover (featuring main contributor,  Steve Peters) and Mr. Peters colored it.  Isn’t it pretty awesome?

Speaking of Steve Peters, he’s got a new one-shot issue of his Sparky jam comic, Tails of Sparky that has a few panels drawn by me.  This comic is such a jammy comic, the cover alone features nine different artists: myself and Mr. Peters, Daniel Sponton, EJ Barnes, Lee Thacker, Eric Wilmoth, David Mack, James Kochalka, and Dave Sim.

Speaking of jams, I’ve spent the better part of two months working on getting a Jamtastic Foray jam book organized and formatted.  The book features 11 members of the Sunday Comix cartoonist group jamming together to create an actual story (if you’ve ever seen any of our comic jams, you’ll understand why that’s a feat unto itself) based on Jack & the Beanstalk.  The cover is based on Fantastic Four issue 49, “If This Be Doomsday,” penciled and colored by yours truly and inked by the great Michael Neno.  Caleb Mozzocco wrote a nice review of the book for Newsarama (he says my work has a “Zot-era Scott McCloud-esque fine-line cartooning” style; which is not only a tad bit convoluted but I think it’s pretty accurate). 

And then, finally, I spent the better part of the last two days working on the cover to the newest collection of my monthly Blink comic strips.   Since the girls are reading the SNG in Blink’s house, I added a lot of little touches to make it truly Blink’s home (check out the reaing material on her bookshelf )… if you really want to see everything (close-up), then check this out (the image is pretty big).  The whole book feautres commentary on each strip, so you can get a lot of “behind the scenes” info by reading this book.

Huh.  So I’ve got four different books that are premiering at this year’s SPACE.  Yeah, I’m feeling a bit spacey…

Change alone, Change Together

Tomorrow’s the last show for Dirty Math, a glorious show being put on by my friends of Available Light [Theatre] and I’ve seen it twice and will see it once more. On my way home, I was thinking about all that was talked about in this “Essay Play” (or, as someone else in the Talk-Back session, “Non-Fiction Theatre”) and how broad of a scope (and history of finance) the show covered and I also thought about a question my daughter asked the week before:

“What do you think the world will be like 20 years from now?”

I told her that I didn’t think there’d be much change.  Maybe a few new pieces of technology, but overall, people will remain the same as they are (maybe a little more hectic & hassled than they are now, but basically the same).  Sure, the auto industry might finally take the plunge and build affordable über-fuel efficient cars, maybe there’ll be another war, another devastating flood or earthquake, maybe there will be some medical breakthrough(s) thanks to stem cell research, but overall… not much is gonna be different.

I believe that many, many people have a very hard time with that concept.  We’re all taught that “Nothing endures but change.”  But how much really has changed since that was originally written in thousands of years ago?  We’re still teaching much of the same lessons learned from the Ancients.  What has changed?  Instead of stone tablets, we use Netbooks.  Rather than hopping on a chariet, we climb up into an SUV.  Rather than sending smoke signals, we Tweet and Twitter (well, some do, but I don’t).  It seems that we strive to adapt and change the world that surrounds us, but we tend to fall short in making internal adaptations and changes to that which is within us.

Even if we do “change ourselves,” it doesn’t change things.  We are still ourselves.

There was a  thought that popped into my head on my ride home as all these concepts were swimming in my noggin:

Maybe the only reason we believe there is such a strong division between “then” and “now” (such as how each decade MUST be placed in its proper order & context with all its facts & figures and fashions & styles and what not indicative of that particular decade), isn’t so much that the changes have occurred but that people who lived and matured during that time want to “own” that decade as is it was theirs to possess.   How “different” that time was from now, how much “better” it was back then (or, if the person wants to “own” this time, how much better now is than then).

Yeah, so anyway, that’s what I was thinking about after the show tonight.

Out of the Hole, Into the Loop

It’s been a looooong time since I last updated, huh? Sorry about that. My computer had a stroke and I had to scramble to buy myself a new one. And I’ve been busy trying to both draw comics and get some stuff ready for the gallery opening for the Atomic Indie Comix Show at the Crimson Cup Coffee House that happened yesterday (what? you didn’t know? you say that you might’ve come if I’d let you know via a post? Well… you know now).

Thankfully, there were plenty of people who did know and came to the opening.  Since the show runs until the end of March, there’s plenty of time to see what’s there.  What is there, you say?  At present, the works of Ray Tomczak, Matt Wyatt, Rich Watson along with Sue Oclott & Jonathon Riddle are up currently.  Since there was a mix-up on the amount of space available, I’ll be hanging my work on the walls in two weeks (but a couple of my comics were on display at the opening).  I took a couple dozen photos but only a few of them actually turned out okay (damn that digital media).   Below is one of my faves~ my friends Matt & John taking in the grandeur that is Blink.

A Couple of Boo-Yahs and a Bummer

I picked up February’s Short North Gazette on my way to see my kids on Sunday and was pleasantly surprised to see my comic make it onto the first page (technically, it’s page 3). If fact, I was pleased to see so many comics in this month’s issue: 16 of them in the span of 32 pages.  So make sure you go out and get yourself a copy so you can see them all!

Also, I’m pleased to report that I’m continuing along at a pretty good pace on my Cerebus/Blink story. I’m having to re-work the last few pages, but am still going on at (nearly) completing a full page a day.

I might’ve been able to complete a new page today, but I ran out of Bristol board,so I had to take a trip to the art supply store in order to replenish my supply. You might not believe this, but the young lady who cashed me out looked startling like Blink. (Well, maybe maybe not startling so, but she did have a similar hair still, except not so poofy as Blink’s.) Of course, I had some free Blinks with me to give her so that she could see for herself. I wish I had my camera with me so that you could make your own judgment.  Ah well, every moment in life can’t be a Boo-Yah moment.

Busy with the Grey Bastard

Hey– I see my page views spiked a few days ago… that makes me feel loved. So, maybe if I post a new image from this piece I’m working on, they’ll stay up? Who knows? I’ll give it a shot.

This is the second & third panel from page 2… I’m hoping to get twelve pages done in just about two weeks. That means I’ve gotta draw (nearly) a page a day– full & complete. (I don’t think I’ve done that kind of output since I was in high school.)  Then, after this Cerebus thing, I’ve got two other short stories to complete before March, both for other people’s books. Then there’s this Gallery Show thing I’ve got coming up… and SPACE…

…back to work.