Jesse Moynihan self published 2 books in 2005, and ran a strip in the Philadelphia Weekly.  He’s been featured in Meathaus and Canicola anthologies.  This year, Bodega put out a larger volume of his work called Follow Me.  He recently collaborated with Dash Shaw on a strip that will appear in an upcoming issue of Believer Magazine.

Meanwhile Jesse has been plugging away every Thursday on his webcomic, Forming, which is a sprawling account of human origins, transgender aliens, and ripped gods.

TOYLAND by Al Columbia

Pim & Francie is already receiving advance praise from folks like Spike Jonze.  Jim Woodring’s drawing group, Friends of the Nib, is calling it “book of the year“.

Al’s always working on something new and amazing, whether it’s music, filmmaking, comics, or in this case, painting.  Al showed me a photo of this new painting he was working on and I became immersed in the labyrinth of frayed facade and haunting beauty.  We reprinted it as the centerpiece of the new issue of Diamond Comics, available now!

To commemorate the release of Al Columbia’s new book, Floating World has teamed with the artist to produce a limited edition series of archival prints of this latest painting, Toyland.  The giclee prints are on museum quality paper measuring 18″x24″; the artwork is 15″x20″.

We only made 25 copies of this incredible image, and each was signed and numbered by the artist at his recent book release party at the Fantagraphics store.  Orders will be filled in numerical order starting with number 3 of 25 (#1 and #2 already sold).  They will be shipped securely in a tube.  Head over to Floating World Comics’ website to place your order.

Boing #3 by Andy Rementer, A J Purdy, Ben Jacques, Mike Perry, Luke Ramsey, Ron Regé Jr and Jim Stoten.

SUPERFUNSEXYTIME by BANG & Jon Boam

Live Free Or Die Harder by Leif Parsons

Daught by Stephane Prigent

Luke Ramsey came down for the Portland Zine Symposium this past July to represent the Islands Fold art collective that he started in Pender Island, British Columbia.  One day after the fest he was hanging out and participated in a drawing session with local artists: Blaise Larmee, Kinoko (from Seattle), Sean Christensen & Theo Ellsworth.  Little did they know, the collaborative jam session would result in a zine of ultimate greatness, Negative Bulge!  For the month of November we are very pleased to present original art from the jam session here at Floating World Comics, as well as a selection of new zines from Islands fold.

WHO: Islands Fold, Blaise Larmee, Kinoko, Luke Ramsey, Sean Christensen & Theo Ellsworth
WHAT: Negative Bulge zine release + art exhibit
WHEN: Thursday, Nov. 5th, 6-10pm; exhibit ends Nov. 30th
WHERE: Floating World Comics, 20 NW 5th Ave #101

Islands Fold™ is an independent publisher and artist residency created and operated by Angela Conley and Luke Ramsey.  It’s about inviting artists into our home, supporting creative identity, collaborating, promoting health and well being and producing unique art.  Established on Pender Island B.C, Canada in the Spring of 2006.

We decided to move from the city to enjoy a simple lifestyle on Pender Island. It’s easy to travel to Pender by ferry from Vancouver or Victoria. Islands Fold collaborates with artists, as well as supporting solo projects. We personally invite artists to our residency. We want to remedy the term “starving artist” by feeding artists whose hunger we admire and respect. In a competitive consumer culture, being an artist is a commitment that some people don’t understand. We are inspired by the people that aren’t always motivated by money, but are motivated by the work itself. As much as Islands Fold needs money to survive, we are about people, not profits. In a world motivated by money and greed, we want to embrace a world of sharing and peace. At Islands Fold, art is a labor of love. We want to create an environment where artists don’t have to concern themselves with daily chores. We want our guests to relax, make art, and eat good food. The most important thing in our home, is to be comfortable, have fun and be creative.

For the first two years, Islands Fold has offered residencies to artists at no charge. Due to rising expenses and no grant funding, we now offer the residencies by donation to any amount an artist feels comfortable with. Our residencies are also sustained from public support by purchasing the art and publications made available online. We are also supported by generous art donations from artists who believe in our cause.

Each week we bring you a new strip from Chocolate Cheeks, the next collection of the Yikes! gang’s adventures, due from Fantagraphics in December 2009, plus maybe a few surprises!

Read it here.

Hall Hassi made a minicomic version of Kramer’s Ergot 7, which she calls her ‘ke7 zine.’ The new size is only 5.5 x 8.5 inches.

It’s 96 xeroxed pages, really pushing the limit of the saddlestich binding but still holding together, and exactly like the original with some minor (I assume) accidents in printing. The only addition is the new ‘zine friendly’ title, ke7. Some pages transitioned better than others, here are some snaps.

Featuring over 7 artists from Portland, OR including Aidan Koch (who recently relocated to England).  She created a new 2 pager for the latest issue of Diamond Comics, which she describes as a “spacey fantasy fashion comic”.  Also she’s started a new online magazine called Work For Free.

“Flowing Well” subscription info: $6 per year (four issues). Send well-concealed bills to: LG & ER, 42 Temple St., Providence, RI 02905.

It’s time to make root beer!

Jesse Moynihan self published 2 books in 2005, and ran a strip in the Philadelphia Weekly for a year and 1/2.  He’s been featured in Meathaus and Canicola anthologies.  This year, Bodega put out a larger volume of his work called Follow Me.  Vice Magazine said about it:  “Basically this comic is a vision into hell. I can’t think about it anymore, it’s given me nightmares.”

Meanwhile Jesse has been plugging away every Thursday on his webcomic, Forming, which is a sprawling account of human origins, transgender aliens, and ripped gods.

M’UAD DIB

Inspired and energized by his recent newspaper format work on Strange Adventures, Paul has been doing more big comics in the Wednesday Comics style.  Read more on Paul Pope’s blog.

From PULPHOPE:

“It is said of Muad’dib that once when he saw a weed trying to grow between two rocks, he moved one of the rocks. Later, when the weed was seen to be flourishing, he covered it with the remaining rock. ‘That was its fate,’ he explained.” –From The Commentaries Of M’Uad Dib (DUNE, Frank Herbert).

I’ve always been struck by the taciturn Nietzschean aspects of M’uad Dib’s character as a leader. One of Frank Herbert’s points in DUNE was a warning– beware of charismatic heroes. When entrusted with great power, they can do great damage to a civilization. Even a brief sweep of history can illustrate this point.

Meanwhile Jesse has been plugging away every Thursday on his webcomic, Forming, which is a sprawling account of human origins, transgender aliens, and ripped gods.

(via John Porcellino, Paul Hornschemier & Jeffrey Brown)

Inimitable Cartoonist and Fine Human Being Anders Nilsen has pulled together some great artwork for an even greater cause: health care reform. The participating artists are:

John Porcellino, Genevieve Elverum, Chris Ware, Ivan Brunetti, Dan Clowes, Phil Elverum (Mount Eerie), Jeffrey Brown, Paul Hornschemeier, Todd Baxter, Sonnenzimmer Print Studio, Adam Henry, Kevin Huizenga, Jay Ryan (The Bird Machine Print Studio), Lynda Barry, Lilli Carre, David Heatley, Kyle Obriot, Stephen Eichhorn, Buenaventura Press, Sammy Harkham and the organizer, Anders Nilsen.

And you can (and should) see all the artwork up for auction by searching for 46 Million on eBay.

The proceeds will go to Democracy for America Now, a national advocacy group running television ads to push the Public Option in democratic swing districts and offering support to congressional members who take a stand for the policy.

In light of recent events, this is a desperate attempt to do something rather than just sit idly by while a few giant corporations with something to lose goad a gullible few into scaring their elected representatives away from real change. We’re doing this because the richest country the planet has ever known has no excuse to not take care of its citizens. We rank 37th in the world in overall health care performance, according to the World Health Organization. Right now a million Americans declare bankruptcy every year because of lack of adequate insurance. Hundreds of billions of dollars are wasted on redundant and impenetrable insurance company bureaucracies. We spend vastly more money on health care and wind up with far worse outcomes than other comparable countries. For many of the artists involved in this auction, a real health care bill is exactly the kind of reason we voted for Obama and Congressional Democratic majorities last Fall. To sit by and do nothing while Obama’s first significant initiative twists in the wind is simply not an option.

Like millions of other working Americans, a lot of artists and freelancers in this country are denied affordable health insurance simply because they are self employed. Making access to health care dependant on a person’s employment status is arbitrary and unsustainable.

A FEW QUOTES FROM THE ARTISTS:
Jeffrey Brown: I’m not sure why I have health insurance now. Because I’m self employed with a pre-existing condition (even though that condition was diagnosed fifteen years ago and has been in remission since), the only health insurance I can get is the Illinois Comprehensive Health Insurance plan with a $5,200 deductible. Basically, I have it in case I’m in some horrific accident or something. I’m guessing there’s some fine print buried in my documentation that would release them from reliability to pay out on anything anyway. I’ve been burned before by that – finding out that vaccines are not considered ‘essential care’ and being told that using a midwife for birth was covered, only to be denied because there wasn’t a doctor in the room at the time of birth. Anyway, the past couple years I’ve spent something like $8,000 in health insurance, and in return, the health insurance companies have paid for me… um… nothing.

Ivan Brunetti: As someone with a lot of pre-existing conditions, I wouldn’t be able to purchase my own insurance plan, at least nothing of decent quality or anywhere close to affordable. I rely, necessarily, on my employer for my health insurance. I have a lot of preexisting conditions and have been rejected when I tried to purchase my own insurance plan in the past.
Lynda Barry: The motivation behind the health care hoo-ha is difficult to understand. I can’t get my mind around it at all, can’t understand what’s driving it. I’ve spent the last six years living in a very conservative area, and many of my good friends are hard core Republicans, but not a single one of them is having the reaction I’ve seen in the press. That screaming shouting hatred. Maybe they hide it from me because I’m such a lefty liberal, but we’ve always been able to speak frankly about everything else. So I don’t get it. I don’t know who the furious and screaming people are at all.

Anders Nilsen: My girlfriend in March of 2005 was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma and died that November. She had endured symptoms for several months before it became too much to bear and we went to the county hospital. Had she had insurance I have no doubt that her condition would have been caught earlier. That was several years ago and I have moved on and am now very happily married. My wife has insurance, supposedly very good insurance, through her present job, but the bureaucratic nonsense the insurance company puts her through every time she sees a doctor, and the amount of stuff that should be covered but isn’t, is astounding.

Genevieve Elverum: I know too many people who went through the warp of needing serious medical attention and dangerously delayed it or got themselves in deep financial turmoil because they couldn’t afford insurance. I myself gave up my right to receive free healthcare when I moved across the border from Canada. It’s kind of terrifying sometimes.

Get your very own physical copy of Pete Toms’ Pink Tombs by clicking on this link here.  Some sweet FAQ from Pete’s livejounal:

FAQ:

- What the fuck are you talking about?
Pink Tombs was a comic I did a few months ago for the Arthur Blog. If you want to read a 20 page preview of the 20 page comic you can there:
part 1 part 2 part 3

- I read it online, why would I want to buy a print version?
While I agree that print is a dying industry, I’ve tried to include some incentives that weren’t possible in the internet version: 1) There are a random number of variant covers. While some companies try to entice you with foil or hologram wrap around covers, my comic is the first to feature the ‘Thumbprint Variant’. Every few covers will probably have my soapy thumb print somewhere on it as I obsessively wash my hands 10 times an hour. I am always worried they’re sticky and/or covered in germs. I have yet to figure out if this stickiness is physical or mental, but I hear germs are real.

2) Besides the variant, there are actual covers on the print copy. There were no covers online.

3) If you have never bought a comic before, or haven’t bought one recently you are missing out on belonging to an exclusive club called ‘comic fandom’ Have you ever wanted to tell people your opinions on things even if they didn’t ask you or aren’t even talking about the same topic? Have you ever wanted to laugh at someone’s lack of knowledge about Gambit? Have you ever wanted to accuse a guy that just like, draws fucking Spider-Man, of metaphorical rape? Have you ever wanted to complain about how things were better when you were younger, and kids today don’t know what they’re doing, like you’re a 60 year old man, even though you’re in your 20s or 30s? Comic fandom is for you. But you can’t just read webcomics. Try mentioning that in a comic book store. You will be laughed away. Unless you’re a woman, then there might be leering and confused mumbling. Unless it’s one of those cool, indie stores, then they’ll be like ‘yes webcomics’, stroke their beards and make sweet love to you (man or woman) and then write nice things about you on their blog.

“Leon Sadler is part of the UK artist group Famicon, working mostly in comics and drawing.

I run Famicon Express with Bonehouse Books, which publishes comics and artist books, the most recent of those is Jonathan Chandler’s 2by2 (Jon’s first solo show just opened in sukiwa gallery in tokyo, information here:  http://mr-boobytrap.livejournal.com/  IT CLOSES THIS WEDNESDAY)

I just finished a little zine for Nieves, and drawings for the next Nazi Knife, and I’m currently working on a MEGA MACERATOR comic book with Massimiliano Bomba, about eating lumps and stomping on shit, I’m working on some stupid computer game for Boys Empire, and maybe another Bart the General…

For enquiries visit famicon.net, lmsn.eu, famiconexpress.co.uk”

Forty Four Presidents by MZA & Maria Sputnik. Pre-order now from Garrett County Press.

A brief illustrated history of the U.S. presidency told by the presidents themselves in the style favored by modern social networking web sites, Forty Four Presidents imagines 220 years of presidential succession pancaked into a single moment — documented simultaneously by each commander-in-chief in status updates designed for easy consumption by their Facebook friends. Each status update is accompanied by a jaunty, high-contrast profile picture intended to reflect something of the essential personality (and hotness) of the president.

Forty Four Presidents by MZA & Maria Sputnik. Pre-order now from Garrett County Press.

A brief illustrated history of the U.S. presidency told by the presidents themselves in the style favored by modern social networking web sites, Forty Four Presidents imagines 220 years of presidential succession pancaked into a single moment — documented simultaneously by each commander-in-chief in status updates designed for easy consumption by their Facebook friends. Each status update is accompanied by a jaunty, high-contrast profile picture intended to reflect something of the essential personality (and hotness) of the president.

Forty Four Presidents by MZA & Maria Sputnik. Pre-order now from Garrett County Press.

A brief illustrated history of the U.S. presidency told by the presidents themselves in the style favored by modern social networking web sites, Forty Four Presidents imagines 220 years of presidential succession pancaked into a single moment — documented simultaneously by each commander-in-chief in status updates designed for easy consumption by their Facebook friends. Each status update is accompanied by a jaunty, high-contrast profile picture intended to reflect something of the essential personality (and hotness) of the president.

Forty Four Presidents by MZA & Maria Sputnik.  Pre-order now from Garrett County Press.

A brief illustrated history of the U.S. presidency told by the presidents themselves in the style favored by modern social networking web sites, Forty Four Presidents imagines 220 years of presidential succession pancaked into a single moment — documented simultaneously by each commander-in-chief in status updates designed for easy consumption by their Facebook friends. Each status update is accompanied by a jaunty, high-contrast profile picture intended to reflect something of the essential personality (and hotness) of the president.

Really digging this animation sent over by Marc Ngui (music is “The Grand Elixir” by Ocote Soul Sounds).  Read more about the ideas and inspiration at Marc’s site:

Totem Pill is inspired by Robert Anton Wilson’s description of Timothy Leary’s Eight Circuit Model of Human Consciousness.

The model addresses the question of how and why the mind evolved into an organ of consciousness. Beginning with a single celled organism, each system of consciousness is created as an emergent phenomenon of the previous system in an ever more complex networking process, leading towards a godlike state existing in all time-space with the possibility of engaging with other time spaces. The model is a creation myth, a cosmic blueprint, and fertile territory for the imagination.

I am an illustrator comics and drawings and website. I enjoy blue, red, yellow and green when used correctly.  I got to:  go to Purchase College; found Wham City; show work in lots of places and publications; tour the east coast with my friends.  Please email me at dina@whamcity.com immediately.

New projects I gots on the burner include: going to SPX in Sept., a book of my Citypaper comics, illustration for the next Nuclear Power Pants album, comics in Friends With Benefits (ltd. edition handmade art book by Impose Magazine) and Fakeheads Anthology, video on Baltimore vs. The World DVD by Current Gallery, & ISBN numbers!

I asked about her process and influences and this was her reply (translated from French):

My pictures always born of a first stage of simple design, mostly in pen and ink, on very white paper.  Then I reworked my drawings in photoshop, collage, color, filters …
I rarely draw from nature. I have in my head a bank of images and forms that I transcribed so distorted and it is precisely this transcription, these deformations, which interest me. I like the asymmetry and imbalance, the monstrous, grotesque …

When you asked me about my tastes, I mention Toshio Saeki, the canvas “Mr and Mrs Andrews’ by Thomas Gainsboroug, the “Caprichos” by Goya and Lucien Freud, which have in common have nothing to do with my world vision. But my real references are made in literature, film and personal. I draw on my memories of childhood in the countryside, in my obsession for the human and animal biology, the abnormality, the world of dream, transgression …

junk spirals from hooliganship on Vimeo.

Revealing the world of a strange small man, who spends his days away from the world. While indulging in strange pleasures he is suddenly thrown into a fantastical journey.

This animation has been shown at a Pictoplasma animation festival and as part of my presentation at SweetTalk in Ireland. Thanks for all your support and please help us to create more animations by watching and blogging it.

Come out to celebrate the release of “You Shall Die by Your Own Evil Creation!” by Fletcher Hanks, edited by Paul Karasik.

Thursday, July 23, 2009
7:00pm – 9:00pm
Discussion at 7:30 with signing by Paul Karasik to follow
Desert Island
540 Metropolitan Ave btwn Union and Lorimer
Brooklyn, NY

Karasik will speak with comics historian and publisher Dan Nadel about Hanks’s legacy, and both will take questions.

Fletcher Hanks, who worked under pseudonyms such as Henry Fletcher, Barclay Flagg or Hank Christy, is one of the more mysterious comic book artists active in the late 1930s and early 1940s. His work stood out for its weirdness and themes of brutal vengence, but little is known about the artist himself. Among his comic book heroes are ‘Tabu, Wizard of the Jungle’, the lumberjack hero ‘Big Red McLane’, and the cosmic superheroes ‘Stardust, The Super Wizard’ and ‘Space Smith’. ‘Fantomah Mystery Woman of the Jungle’, is often called the First Female Superhero.

Hanks’ work appeared in Fox, Fiction House and Timely Publications for three years (1939-1941) before he abruptly stopped making comics. What little is known about the artist’s fate is outlined in two collections of his work both edited by cartoonist, Paul Karasik. ‘I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets’ won an Eisner Award and the second volume, ‘You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation!’, when combined with the first, comprises the Complete Fletcher Hanks.

also: Fletcher Hanks coloring books (with Charles Burns cover!) FREE with purchase of the new book at the event.

plus: a limited edition Hanks screenprint will be available at the event, and is now available for preorder here: http://tinyurl.com/fantomah

If you’re in Portland check out the book release party at Grass Hut (the gallery that Bwana co-runs) Saturday night!

Portland Release Party:
July 11, 6-9pm
Book Signing, Pencil Fighting, Fart Knocking!!!

Grass Hut
811 E Burnside.
Portland, Oregon

“Dr. Victor von Doom of Latveria takes a break from his hectic schedule of super-villainy to do a stand-up act at Bar Bacon IV, a comedy show held the last Friday of each month in Hampden (Baltimore, MD) at the Golden West Cafe. The Fantastic Four get their comeuppance at this imposing figure’s metal-gloved hands, as they are pierced repeatedly by his rapier wit.”

Thanks Ori Kowarsky for the tip

Story from North America from Kirsten Lepore on Vimeo.

Here’s a story from North America. A young boy is scared of a spider and asks his daddy to kill it before it hurts him. The father points out the flawed logic of preemptive strikes and explains the values of compassion and living in harmony. Music you’ll be humming by Garrett Davis, animation by Kirsten Lepore.

The 3rd annual Floating World Animation Fest features senses shattering video art and psychedelic animation from the secret world of motionography. 3+ hours of mind melting, soul loving psychedelicanimation… this summer’s ultimate videocation! Floating World Animation Fest 2009 – Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison, Portland OR – June 25th.

Please Say Something – Full Length from David OReilly on Vimeo.

David O’Reilly’s Please Say Something is one of the highlights of this year’s Floating World Animation Fest.  The deceptively archaic polygon style actually provides a very emotional and cinematic experience for the viewer.  This poignant and moving short film tells the story of a troubled relationship between a Cat and Mouse set in the distant Future.  Winner of the Golden Bear for best short film at the 2009 Berlinale.

The 3rd annual Floating World Animation Fest features senses shattering video art and psychedelic animation from the secret world of motionography. 3+ hours of mind melting, soul loving psychedelicanimation… this summer’s ultimate videocation! Floating World Animation Fest 2009 – Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison, Portland OR – June 25th.

‘Roots to Fruits‘ is a little limited edition zine made for “Story Motel”  @ Owl & Lion Gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland. An exhibition of zines and multiple publishing.

Show Dates: 14th May – 12th June, 2009

Celebrated Norwegian Cartoonist Jason Appears at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery on June 13 for Launch of LOW MOON Graphic Novel

SEATTLE, WA. Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is honored to host an exhibition and book signing by internationally acclaimed comics artist Jason on Saturday, June 13 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM. This event marks the debut of Jason’s LOW MOON collection, published by Seattle-based Fantagraphics Books.

Norwegian alternative cartoonist Jason is among the most prolific and influential cartoonists of his generation. His economical narrative approach, clever rendering technique, and singular color sensibility distinguish his sophisticated yet populist style.  LOW MOON features Jason’s recent comic strip of the same name originally serialized in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Also included are four new stories which display one of the world’s most admired graphic novelists at the absolute peak of his powers.

Fantagraphics Books has published no less than 10 volumes of Jason’s work in English. In addition to the display of his stunning original artwork, Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery will also offer several rare European editions in his native language.

The public of all ages is invited to meet this wonderful artist on Saturday, June 13 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM. DJ Russ, former proprietor of Fallout Records, will spin platters. Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is located at 1201 S. Vale St. (at Airport Way S.) only minutes south of downtown. This event coincides with the colorful Georgetown Second Saturday Art Attack featuring lively visual and performing arts presentations throughout the historic neighborhood.

JASON: LOW MOON

Artist reception and book signing Saturday, June 13, 6:00 – 9:00 PM

Exhibition continues through July 8, 2009

Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery
1201 S. Vale St.
Seattle, WA 98108
(206) 658-0110
Open daily 11:30 – 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM
www.fantagraphics.com

BIRDY NAM NAM – THE PARACHUTE ENDING from Steve Scott on Vimeo.

Check out this incredible video for ‘The Parachute Ending‘ by French DJ group Birdy Nam Nam. All the illustrations are designed by Will Sweeney and the song is produced by Justice!  We’re very proud to screen this video at our Animation Fest later this month.

The 3rd annual Floating World Animation Fest features senses shattering video art and psychedelic animation from the secret world of motionography. 3+ hours of mind melting, soul loving psychedelicanimation… this summer’s ultimate videocation!  Floating World Animation Fest 2009 – Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison, Portland OR – June 25th.

Return as an Animal from Bruno Dicolla on Vimeo.

Bruno Dicolla’s gorgeous short film about the myth of the eternal return of life after death.  Floating World Animation Fest 2009 – Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison, Portland OR – June 25th.

We’ll be screening a 1 hour preview of the animation fest tonite at Floating World Comics (20 NW 5th Ave, Portland, OR), to coincide with ‘EXPLODED DRAWINGS 2‘: art opening with E*Rock and Cody Brant.

This is awesome news.  I remember a friend of mine showed me some Paper Rodeos that a friend have brought him from the east coast.  My favorite was Multiforce, these full page densely psychedelic adventure comics that seemed like old Masters of the Universe D&D characters come to life.    I didn’t figure out who Mat Brinkman was until I saw his cover to the now legendary Kramers Ergot 4.  This morning I was very excited to see this announcement from Picturebox:

At last, all of Mat Brinkman’s 2000-2005 comic strip serial Multiforce is collected in one volume at its original printed size. 22 big pages of some of the best comic strips I’ve ever seen. PictureBox scanned and carefully retouched these pages in collaboration with Brinkman. Come with Brinkman as he creates, explores and explodes his visual universe. Deeply personal, extravagantly visual, often hilarious: Multiforce is nothing short of a masterpiece. Big claim? I guess. But then, why not? Most of all, it’s an incredibly enjoyable thing to delve into. So, please do.

The whole story is posted at goldenagecomicbookstories.blogspot

wikipedia: Basil Wolverton

hipped by The Comics Journal

Floating World Animation Fest 2009 -- Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison, Portland OR -- June 25th

Floating World Animation Fest 2009 -- Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison, Portland OR -- June 25th

Smoke Signal #1 cover by Travis Millard

From our friends at Desert Island:

Desert Island is starting a free all-comics newspaper called SMOKE SIGNAL, which will debut in June.  The paper will have a circulation of 1000 and will be available at a few choice locations in Brooklyn (and via mail-order through our website).

In an effort to raise funds for this community-based project, we are hosting a fundraising concert at Union Pool on Memorial Day, May 25th, featuring performances by Uninhabitable Mansions, Boogie Boarder, Darlings, and Ambergris.  All proceeds will go towards the printing costs for the newspaper. PLEASE COME AND HELP MAKE THIS NEWSPAPER A REALITY!

Smoke Signal fund-raising concert
Memorial Day – this Monday!
Union Pool
484 Union Ave Brooklyn, NY
8 pm – $8 admission

For more information and links to the bands, please view our blog at http://tinyurl.com/smokecomix

From Matthew Thurber:

Hi, Rebecca and I have started a gallery in our living room. It opens tomorrow with a group show of Eamon Espey, Carlos Gonzalez, Haisi Hu, Jenni Knight, and Jonny Petersen. Come by and have a beer with us tomorrow!
http://www.ambiguousmass.org/interesting/interesting.html

MUSIC YOU CAN SEE:  Eamon Espey / Carlos Gonzalez / Haisi Hu / Jenni Knight / Jonathan Petersen

Opening Reception Friday, May 15, 6-9pm

Interesting Gallery

33 Crooke Avenue #2B

Brooklyn, NY 11226

We have two amazing graphic novels scheduled for November 2009 and February 2010. They are fantastic, vital works of art and we need your help to release them.

Powr Mastrs 3 (104 pages, 5.75” x 7.75”) continues CF’s visionary narrative about the complex relationships between mysterious beings in a place called New China. If ‘n Oof is Brian Chippendale’s 650 page, 5” x 7” magnum opus, a sprawling, hilarious tale of two pals wandering through a desolate, hostile landscape.

These two books are among the best graphic novels of our time, but they need your support. Like a lot of publishers, PictureBox is looking for new ways to navigate the current terrain. To that end, we are attempting to raise the money for these books ahead of time. It’s all an experiment these days.

So we are looking to you, as a community of readers, to help make these books a reality. Everyone that orders advance copies of one or both of these books (up until August 1) will receive the book itself and a signed silkscreen print upon the books’ releases. Everyone that orders in advance by June 20, 2009 will have their names hand-lettered in the book with their corresponding level of support (see below). We need about 400 of you per book to step up and help make this a reality. Let’s come together as a community.

We’d like to get to know Aidan better; here’s some excerpts from an interview she did in March 09 with Privelidge House:

Which influential artist would you like to ask for advice?
I once wrote some fan mail to Mark Todd and Esther Pearl Watson and sent them a copy of my latest comic at the time. They were delightfully responsive to it. I think just understanding that the artists you admire are often just sweet, hard working people is enough to be an influence to me. Advice is good, but motivation seems key.

If you had to put up one piece of artwork on your wall and stare at it for a year, who would it be by and why?
Honestly, I have this dog painting from a thrift store that was done in like ‘72. It’s an amorphous husky face and I think it would have to be the one. There’s a lot of art that I love and am influenced by, but when it comes down to it, I’d rather just laugh. It’s one of the best paintings I own.

Tell us about your creative process.
Usually I start with an agenda for painting or drawing. What am I doing? What am I looking at? What is it for? If I’m just going at it, the color palette I’m using is the most important part in creating a piece I like. There are very particular shades and tones and saturations that I use. They’re usually the same no matter what medium I’m working in and generally never fail me. Or I just use pencil and am pleased. There’s a lot of different feelings though that take hold of me and make me want to produce specific work. Sometimes they are simply circumstantial (being stuck in a location for an extended amount of time for instance) or I have a particular show coming up,or sometimes I’m really angry or hopelessly depressed, or sometimes I just don’t know what else to do with myself. There is no special environment necessary for me to work. Sometimes very personal is good. Other times, I just want to sit and draw people and buildings and coffee for hours and listen to conversations. I guess I’m a very skillful adapter.

Do you ever find weird connections between life and art?
It’s the same! The biggest thing I’ve noticed with myself is that my style, and wardrobe, and objects, and everything I surround myself with mirrors my artistic maturity. Or maybe it’s the other way around. These changes can be seen in palette, patterns, line quality, media, and seriousness. I look at pictures of myself and can pinpoint what I was painting at the moment. My interests and style change a lot, so there’s a lot for me to investigate into.

Which of your own works are you most proud of/ is most meaningful to you and why?
My comics and zines actually. I love some singular pieces, but I’ve emoted the most in the works I distributed. Knowing that I’m exposed to an audience for such an extended amount of time, in a variety of locations is terrifying. I’ve done some books that were very specific to me.

Do you think there are boundaries you would never cross in your art making?
I don’t think I can make any such claims at the moment. I only know that I will never give up drawing.

Do you have any magic cures for creative blocks?
I wouldn’t say I have blocks so much. I can always make work that I’m okay with. For work that I feel amazing about though, it’s usually essential that I am feeling a bit out of place or particularly self reflective. Things that I create while basically freaking out are usually what I relate to for the longest.

Which art mediums and brands do you prefer to use?
Gouache is lovely. Rives BFK & lightweight. Sometimes stonehenge. I pretty much exclusively use moleskin notebooks because they have toned pages and just look smart.

Which direction do you see your art heading in the future?
Expanding into space and the invisible.

“Thanky is proud to present “The Cartoon Utopia”, a show of new work by Ron Regé, Jr., a cartoonist and musician from Plymouth, Massachusetts. Ron Regé, Jr. began publishing his own minicomics while attending Massachusetts College of Art in 1988 and has since been published by Kramer’s Ergot, Buenaventura Press, Drawn & Quarterly, Highwater Books, Fantagraphics, and McSweeney’s. His illustrations have appeared regularly in The New York Times and Canada’s National Post. Ron Regé, Jr. currently lives in Los Angeles where he plays drums in the band Lavender Diamond. Regé possesses a big heart and a steady hand, creating intricate lines and patterns, cute cartoon people and creatures that inhabit a fantastic universe with stories that dive into the deepest or darkest notions of our experience. His perception of human nature is always keen and precise and his work vibrates with a joyful energy. He has exhibited at The Hope Gallery in LA and at the Librarie Drawn & Quarterly in Montreal. As a performance art act, Regé performs solo as the Discombobulated Ventriloquist.”

A description of “The Cartoon Utopia” in the artist’s own words:

“At the beginning of 2008 – I started to create a series of numbered 4×6” drawings as an exercise – to start to flesh out ideas for a kind of “science fiction universe” that I’ve been slowly imagining over the last few years – the idea of a “Cartoon Utopia.” So many imagined futuristic “fantasy worlds” seem to be “dystopian” in nature –dark and pessimistic. I thought it would be nice to imagine a “futuristic” fantasy where humanity had progressed in a more positive way.”

Ron Regé, Jr, “The Cartoon Utopia”, Opening Reception
Friday, May 1, 6pm-9pm
Featuring performances by Discombobulated Ventriloquist and Dearraindrop
407 Brook Road, Richmond, Virginia 23220 (off W. Broad Street)
Complimentary cupcakes will be on hand

it’s a comic based on the idea that the fictions we experience (books/movies/songs) and the ones we create are just as ‘real’ to us as our ‘real life’ experiences, especially when dealing with memory.
it’s something i’ve thought a lot about since i watched masters of the universe on dvd a couple of years ago and realized that much of my remembered childhood was actually he-man’s life. though i did have a cat that let me ride it around my neighborhood and i was surrounded by muscular, gay men throughout my younger years, there’s not much he-man and i have in common. identity is interesting to me especially with how it’s built by memory and how much that is tied up in the things we experience in our imagination as much as the things we experience physically. and i think it’s even kind of weirder now, as opposed to my eternia years, as everyone blogs about their lives. we’re all building a sort of public internet persona as well as our ‘real’ one. i’m rambling. which is why a drew a story about it, i guess. – Pete Toms

Read part 1 here to revisit what happened before.

This comic book is the first 23 pages of Pop Gun War: Chain Letter.  Chain Letter is a sequel to a comic I did quite some time ago called Pop Gun War: Gift.

Ultimately, Chain Letter will be a 160-page book, told in four separate parts, with Emily starting the adventure.  Next will be Sinclair’s story told in full color.  The segment after that will be a Ben Able detective story done in black and white with grey washes.  The fourth segment will be set in the future and will be black and white with one spot color.

It has been several years since I started this project and I am quite anxious to finish it.  Jason Leivian from Floating World Comics in Portland, Oregon helped me put this special preview edition (limited to only 100 copies) of Pop Gun War: Chain Letter together.

I hope you enjoy it.  Thanks.

Looking for parts 1 and 2?  Read them here and here.

What are dreams? What can they be used for? How can you self-heal with dreams? Solve problems? Make artistic (or personal) breakthroughs? Visit other places in the space/time continuum? How can you have a richer dream life? Shoot, how can you even remember your dreams? All of that is discussed in plain, straightforward talk in this conversation with Rick. If that isn’t enough to draw you in, how bout this: ALAN MOORE himself, a longtime Veitch collaborator and admirer, wrote an introduction specifically for this piece, just last week. Dig it below, or skip right to the interview with Rick….

Rick Veitch: Cartographer of the American Dreamtime
Introduction by Alan Moore

The Julia Set, unique and intricately beautiful, is an exquisite fractal outgrowth from the mother Mandelbrot arrangement, a specific form dictated by the mathematical peculiarities of its precise location in the overall continuum, the jeweled continent of numbers charted and explored by Benoit Mandelbrot during the 1980s. The Julia Sets are, if you will, distinct and individual entities which nonetheless arise from the unique conditions at their point of origin. As such, they offer us a splendid metaphor; a new way to consider the relationship between ourselves as human beings and the landscapes that we grew from. We are Julia Sets, and our specific natures and distinct psychologies are an elaborate extension of the maze of streets where we were born; the valleys, hills and rivers that defined our world and the topographies that we grew up amongst.

A Julia Set.

If some supporting evidence is needed in defense of this hypothesis, then we need look no further than Rick Veitch. Born out of Vermont, he spent childhood and youth unaware of the powerful significance of his surroundings, as most of us do. In attempting to find the right path for himself, an endeavor that might lead him past the constraints of his life, he pursued both a passion for comic-book artistry and an increasing involvement with his own tumultuous dream-life. While these two preoccupations have greatly enabled and enriched each other in Rick’s subsequent career, I suggest it is the dreampath that is of the primary importance in that it is somehow closer to the center of his being, closer to the source of his artistic inspiration than the marvelously illustrated pages that grow out of it. By following the shadowy and lunar trail of his oneiric explorations, mapping his own route as he made his way further out into uncharted territories, it would seem that he’s been led back to the very point at which he started out, but with a greater understanding and appreciation of its meaning and its majesty: Vermont. The river and the bridge. The petroglyphs.

H.P. Lovecraft

This was the landscape that another vocal and prolific dreamer, H.P. Lovecraft, had described after a visit to Vermont, the flooded river and its cargo of gas-bloated cattle lending local color to his tale of ghastly and unfathomable alien abduction. Brains in copper cylinders, extraordinary rendition, bound for Yuggoth. Funnily enough, the isolated cabin where Lovecraft’s protagonist is subject to the conversation of its human-mimicking inhabitant was based upon the residence that stands a little way from the Veitch homestead, owned once and perhaps still by a neighbor with experience of alien abduction who had published books upon the subject. Or at least, something that looked like him had published books upon the subject.

As Rick started to investigate the place that he was raised in, he began to get a sense of its geography as it related to his personal history, to the history of the area and to his own ongoing archaeology of dreams. He learned about the Abenaki, whose own cultural perspectives had informed the landscape once, before the vision of the settlers had been ruthlessly imposed. They’d been the ones who’d scratched those strange horned stick-figures into the rocks down by the river, the same ones that Lovecraft mentioned, with the ancient markings partly smothered by the concrete of the bridge foundations. That would be the bridge across the river to New Hampshire that in Rick’s dreams seemed to symbolize a bridge across the centuries, jet fighters sparring with pteranodons above the central span. The Abenakis’ hilltop burial ground, with bodies customarily interred sat upright, had been razed by bulldozers… decapitations and bisections of Native American deceased… in order to erect the paper-mill where Rick’s own father would slave out his days. America, ignoring the advice of its own horror movies, is entirely built upon the site of an old Indian graveyard and must take its ghosts and hauntings as they come.

While he deepened his inquiries into the rich history of his birthplace, Veitch’s waking life and dream life seemed to synchronize with his material world, seemed to connect with narratives that were those of the streets and soil themselves. He dreamed about a native shaman with a magic bow, his features masked at first by a carved pumpkin head but then revealed as those of an unusually tall man with a goofy and distinctive overbite, a face that was entirely unforgettable. A few days later, in the waking world, he took a walk down by the riverside in search of either inspiration or some new clue to the innate puzzle of the area. Floating in the water was an orange globe that seemed from several feet away to be a pumpkin like the shaman’s headpiece in his dream. Venturing nearer he discovered that it was in fact a punctured child’s ball, thrown away somewhere upstream, upon some previous occasion. Fished out of the water, on the other side was a crude, childish drawing of the same distinctive face with the same goofy overbite. The last I heard, Rick had it perched above the doorway of his studio.

The synchronicities came thick and fast, as they will tend to do when one embarks upon investigations of this nature. At one point, researching his own genealogy he came across a tantalizing reference to a long dead ancestor, a female member of the Veitch clan who had intermarried with the local Abenaki, taking as her bridegroom an unusually tall man if the story was to be believed. Was this the reason for his serial dreams about the petroglyphs, about the Abenaki, some unlikely but convincing blood connection?

Whether the descent be biological or otherwise, it seems that Rick Veitch has been pressed into continuing the role of his shamanic Abenaki forebears, of the ones that walked the land before him, who grew out of it as he did. Through his studies, his experiences and the splendid comic pages that resulted from the same, Rick has fearlessly explored and mapped the dreamtime of his native landscape just as thoroughly as did his psilocybin-entranced predecessors. And let there be no mistake, it is that dreamtime that all our reality is founded on, the mythic bedrock upon which we build our paper-mills, the modem structures of our modem lives.

Also, in Veitch’s case, in should be noted that we are exposed to an authentic vision of the true American dreamtime rather than another dissertation on the American Dream. The latter would seem to have been of questionable use in the development of the United States, too often held up like a brightly painted backdrop to conceal a less agreeable American reality; the promise of a photogenic destiny, of realizing lifestyles that in truth only exist on celluloid, a retro-fitted continuity. The former, the American Dreamtime, is the sustaining, nourishing, neglected panorama that is still there, underneath the muddle of contemporary detritus that has piled up in the cellar-rooms of our unconscious, and Rick Veitch is its cartographer.

And in the sempiternal and unchanging Mandelbrot of spacetime, that is who and what he is forever: a unique and fascinating outgrowth of his place, his time and circumstances, an inimitable Julia Set grown from that cemetery dirt, that riverside, those petroglyphs. Or, if that’s not the case, then somewhere in another world there is a butterfly that’s having the most unbelievably strange dream.

Alan Moore
Northampton
April 2009

Continue reading – Interview Begins on Next Page

The literary journal Salt Hill, published by Syracuse University is going to have 8 pages of watercolor comix and drawings by me, and one of my prints wrapping around the cover.  Should be out mid April.  I also will have two pages in an anthology of abstract comics put out by Fantagraphics, due out by Mocca (early June)..  And I’m working on a newsprint zine published by the Dynasty zine people who operate out of Athens Greece.  I’ll make a new artist-book for SPX I think.

Just wanted to let you know I’m working out the script for the Arthur blog.  It’s essentially going to be about the relationship between two people that get fed up with popular furry culture and realize they like to dress up like Spiegelman’s maus characters and have sex with each other.  But that’s just on the surface.  Obviously it’s really about the death of corporate culture.

Not really.  Though after typing that it doesn’t seem like a bad idea.

Pete, I wanna read that comic!  Fortunately the idea he went with is just as cool and the execution is gorgeous.  PINK TOMBS OF YOUTH is about a cartoonist with memory problems that’s having trouble distinguishing between his comics and reality.  Here’s the first 6 pages:

Pim & Francie (THE GOLDEN BEAR DAYS) by Al Columbia.  Coming soon from Fantagraphics Books.

It’s only been about two months since comics “died” yet here we have a brand new issue of Cold Heat, with staples and everything. So if one era of comics just ended (the one that started with Action Comics #1), then let this be the beginning of a new Golden Age. A lack of widespread distribution to comic shops is discouraging, but it’s not gonna stop creators who are this passionate about the art form.

Cold Heat is one of my favorite comics from the past couple years. Ben Jones’ writing is just as hilarious as his Paper Rad stuff. But this story’s already over 100 pages long, so he and artist Frank Santoro have a lot more room to play. If you’re new to the world of Cold Heat you can read the first four issues online. But I recommend finding the books. The colors and artwork look great on paper and you also get the bonus short prose stories that are only printed in the issues.

The series focuses on Castle, a high school student who is really bummed out because her favorite rock star was just found dead of an apparent suicide. This subject matter seems strangely appropriate to me because I remember exactly where I was when the radio announced that Kurt Cobain was dead. I was at a comic shop in Phoenix, going through some dollar boxes on the floor. I paused for a moment to listen to the report, then went back to the long boxes of cheap Vertigo comics. The surreal satire that follows has a nice stream of consciousness flow that reminds me of other favorites like Ed the Happy Clown or Gilbert Hernandez. There’s a brilliant twist that takes the series to a whole new level in one of the later issues. I shouldn’t have even mentioned it exists.

Here’s the first six pages of issue 5/6. We thought we were gonna have to wait for the whole story to be collected as a trade, but they couldn’t wait either so issues 5 and 6 have been self-published as a limited edition zine.  It’s a beautiful book.  The 100 copy print run is almost gone, but you can still get one from the Picturebox website…

44 Presidents was made by mza and Maria Sputnik.   It was created under the influence of Lynda Barry and Wikipedia.  It was printed in Diamond Comics last winter, and will come out in hardcover this August from Garrett County Press.

We’re hosting an art exhibit tonight at Floating World with David Mack, to celebrate the release of his latest book, Kabuki : The Alchemy. In the following interview we discuss themes from his Kabuki series and his plans to adapt Philip K Dick to comics.

WHO: David Mack
WHAT: Art exhibit, slide show discussion, Q&A with the artist
WHEN: Thursday, April 2nd, 6-10pm
WHERE: Floating World Comics, 20 NW 5th Ave #101

JASON LEIVIAN:  Kabuki: The Alchemy talks about a new beginning.  Everything that came before (Volumes 1-6) was childhood.  Maybe one way of putting it, when I was younger there was a developmental stage where I immersed myself in books and ideas that I was interested in.  But then at some point there was a breakthrough and things got crazy.  It’s like it all became real and my life became some science fiction novel.  When I was younger I read things in books, but now my life is these things.  What was metaphor, now seems like platonic truth, even realer than this reality, which seems like maya by comparison.  Let’s talk about the spiritual journey of David Mack as it’s expressed through your art.  In Kabuki you see the work as a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Can you discuss that a bit?

DAVID MACK:  I think I understand what you are describing.  What you focus on has a tendency to change you, affect you. When you are passionate about something and active in working on it, it can seem like you hit a point when your real life seems to operate on dream-logic:  You think it and then it materializes.

Creating on a regular basis is a great practice for that.  It clues you in, trains you, to realize how malleable the material world is -  that you can have an immediate effect on it based on your thoughts and actions.  When you write or draw everyday, you start with a blank, and then you make something- an idea suddenly exists in the three dimensional material world.  Just by writing it down, drawing it, you take this thing that only existed in your head, and then suddenly it exists in three dimensional physical reality.  Practicing that everyday, starts to reveal to you that things work that way.  You experience that transition everyday and it becomes larger than the page or the work you are doing.  It has a ripple effect in people that experience your work and their response to it.

Suddenly you realize you have not just created one story, or one work, or a body of work, but you’ve created your own career, and your own life, as your self-portrait, and your contexts for your life, and your work has become your passport to a variety of worlds.  And there is a point when the dream you were dreaming, and then dared to enact in reality, has become completely real and you live it everyday.  And other people can even share it with you.

That is a great lesson to learn.  Because once you learn it, you can go about living it very consciously.  As consciously as you would craft your work on the page, you realize you are crafting it off the page as well.

JL:  Love is all there is… Beatles reference or scientific fact?

DM:  I listened to the Beatles a lot while writing and drawing The Alchemy.  The last chapter of it (Self-Fulfilling Prophesy), I was listening to Sgt. Pepper over and over while I made the story.  It was kind of the sound track in my head for that ninth chapter in the book.

Ultimately love is a big factor in this story.  To follow the channel of love, presented in your life.  One of the ideas presented by a character in the story is that when you love something, it is perhaps because you are wired to follow that path.

Think back to the thing you had a passion for as a child, at the age of 9 or ten.  At this age you are sophisticated enough to know what you enjoy doing and have a passion for, but it is before the age of 12 or 13 when you start to feel the expectations of the adult world which can distort your internally motivated passions.  Look back to that time, what you loved at that age.  You may have a proclivity for enjoying that because you are hardwired to perform that role in your life.  You find what you love, lead with your heart, and then figure out with your head, how to make that happen, and how to make it useful.

Heart and mind in unison.  But you have that love feeling as a guide.  Your mind will answer any question that you ask it.  It is like a super computor that will process any solution for your problem solving.  But your heart gives you the clue of what direction to go in.

JL:  I also would like to discuss world news and politics, if you don’t mind.  What was it like making art during 8 years of Bush?  As an artist did you feel a need to express your political beliefs?  What do you feel like expressing now and tomorrow?

DM:  I imagine that I can’t help but work out things that I see in the world and try to make sense of them in my stories.  That is my playground for exploring everything I experience on a personal level and social level, and trying to make a sense of it.  Internally and globally.

But I don’t so much have an interest in preaching a certain point of view- so much as taking characters that have very specific views and ideas, and having them confront each other with them.  This lets me work out some of those ideas, and I feel it asks questions of the reader for them to consider things from new points of view and angles and they can ask and answer those questions in their own minds and hearts.

Many of the characters and organizations in my story have very specific and strong points of view.  And each of them has a direction and agenda based on that POV as their life philosophy.

There is a character in my stories (and The Alchemy specifically) who is a theoretical physicist, going by the name M.C. Square.  That character lets me discuss ideas from a scientific point of view.

There is a character that represents a religious and spiritual point of view.  Another character, Akemi, often presents her agenda as that of the artist and writer as activist in the story.  Art and literature as transformation.  Art and literature as action and revolution… both on the personal and internal level and on a global scale.

And in the course of the stories, you may identify with one organization as the protagonist in a way, at one point in the story, and then question that role later.  In the earlier Kabuki stories, Kabuki worked for a government and commercial news/media organization called the Noh.  At that point, you may consider her role in the story, and perhaps even the role of the organization as that of the protagonist.  And then at a later point she questions her role in that system and leaves.

And then, the real point of the story… if you come to a point that you decide that you don’t like what your culture is selling you, or what is being sold as your culture, as the status quo… it is not enough to just say you are against it… Akemi’s point is that it is up to you, your responsibility, to offer something better, and be proactive in creating it.

JL:  This leads into another aspect of the story I’d like to discuss, the Noh representing various aspects of modern culture and power.  At the end of Chapter 6 you say “the Noh is on the wrong side of history.”  What aspects of our society or thinking are represented by ‘the Noh’ and why must they be left behind?  What do they provide, the illusion of security?  And what is our alternative?

DM:  Well you are asking a lot of questions here that The Alchemy asks, and that specific characters in the story have their own answers for and point of views on.  I’m reluctant to identify myself and my own views completely with any one specific point of view of the various characters that present their own arguments in the story, because, I want the reader to consider these points of view and ideas and chew on them and digest them for themselves and come to their own conclusions.

Akemi is the character that you are quoting about the Noh being on the wrong side of history.  Her point is that a government or institution often begins as a revolution unified against a common challenge.  But once that revolution becomes the institution, set up for its own system rather than for the people it was founded for, or who founded it, then the revolution needs to continue or the institution needs to evolve.

The revolution needs to be the action not the subject.  Once a revolution becomes a system that just worships itself, it is there only to keep the status quo of its own system in power.  Then history shows that a society on that path will crumble in on itself, unless corrections are made from the inside out.  Akemi, based on her actions, publications, communications and transformations, makes a call for action in the story that begins on a very personal level, and radiates to a global scale.

JL:  Philip K. Dick’s stories also dealt with revolutions on a personal scale.  Let’s talk about your PKD adaptations.  I would love to hear more about that.

DM:  The producer of the Scanner Darkly film, Tommy Pallotta put it in motion. Tommy also produced the film Waking Life (also directed by Richard Linklater) and he had contacted me about five years ago to work on a project with Hampton Fancher, the screenwriter for Blade Runner, and Jonathan Lethem the novelist who happens to be a Philip K. Dick scholar.

It began because Tommy picked up the Kabuki: Metamorphosis graphic novel in a bookstore in New York and then tracked me down for that project in 2003. Then a couple of years ago, when Tommy had finished the Scanner Darkly film, the latest Kabuki film option had expired at Fox and Tommy was interested in making a Kabuki film as his next film, so we began discussing that. Mostly on long bike rides on the beach at Santa Monica and Malibu.

At that time I had just finished reading a biography of Philip K. Dick while working on The Alchemy (this may even fit into that self-fulfilling prophesy idea you mentioned earlier), and Tommy and I began to discuss PKD quite a bit.  Tommy showed my work to Philip K. Dick’s daughters who run Electric Shepherd productions and he suggested the idea of adapting PKD stories into graphic novels for the first time.  They liked the idea, and Tommy and I, along with advice from Jonathan Lethem went about combing the prolific works of PKD in search for the right story to start with.

We decided on Electric Ant for specific reasons and I worked out my approach to the story.  Tommy and I met with Philip K. Dick’s daughters Laura and Isa in Santa Monica for a long lunch during which I explained ideas for the approach of the adaptation.  They liked the approach and we were all on the same page creatively.  Laura and Isa revealed that some publishers had heard that we were developing this and they already had offers from publishers.

I suggested to Isa and Laura that Marvel would be a very interesting publisher for this project.  Marvel had great success with adapting author Stephen King to comics, and I offered that it could be an epic event if Marvel were to do the first comic book adaptation of the master of Science Fiction as well.  The idea being that we could start with Electric Ant, and if well received, continue adapting more PKD stories.  Perhaps choosing a different artist for each different story.  I asked Isa and Laura if they would mind if I met with Marvel to offer the project to Marvel.  Isa and Laura were intrigued by the idea and gave me their blessing.  So after the New York Comic Con in February 2007, I met with Marvel Publisher Dan Buckley at the Marvel offices to discuss this endeavor. He liked the idea, Marvel, and the Philip K. Dick Estate were introduced to each other, and thus began many, many months of working out the business relationship between the two houses of ideas.

I’ve been pals with Paul Pope since way back, so I knew he was a PKD fan, and I thought he would be perfect to do the covers.  So I asked him if he was interested and he was into it.  And Brian Michael Bendis and I are big admirers of Blade Runner, so I asked him if he was interested in being a part of the project and he was into it.

The story has quintessential themes of humanity, and we chose this story to begin with because it has what we considered the classic quintessential Dickian themes.  The story asks the enduring existential questions: Who am I? Who created me? What was I created for? What is the meaning of my life? Do I have free will? Am I limited by my programming? Can I evolve into something beyond my original programming? What is reality? Is the way I perceive reality different than a fixed reality? Can I alter my perceptions to transcend my ego and programming limitations and see a pure reality? Does my internal reality affect the external reality? Which is more real?

Electric Ant, was a short story that Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (the novel that Blade Runner was inspired from) kind of built on later.  Philip K. Dick had a habit of working out some ideas in short story form, and then later further exploring those ideas in a longer form novel.

The adaptation is very true to the original story, but there was more room to develop things that are only hinted at in the short story.  In this case, that was one of the advantages of adapting a short story instead of a novel.  In adapting a novel to film or graphic novel, you may have to edit it down. It can be a reductive process. With this story, I was able to let it develop organically into the new format in ways that expand on ideas and scenes that are only hinted at in the short story.

We decided early on that it was going to be very true to the source material.  We did not want to change it into a different story with only minor similarities.  Everything that is in the short story is adapted into this version, but things that are suggested in the original story are given more room to flesh out.  Some ideas and details that are mentioned only once at the beginning of the short story, now have room to return with a twist.  And there is a sort of love story that developed.  It is not an action story, though there is action in it. It became a kind of mystery, and a love story, with the mystery being these existential questions that I mentioned. And the protagonist begins searching for answers.

A man wakes up in the hospital from a traffic accident only to have the doctor tell him they cannot treat him because he is a robot.  He then has a lot of questions.  Who made him? Who owns him? What is his program? Can he alter it? Has he been walking around seeing things differently than they really are?  I wrote the script into the story that I would write if I were turning the short story into a film.

Philip K. Dick’s Electric Ant is a five issue miniseries scheduled for Fall 2009.

Pop Gun War: Chain Letter © Copyright 2009 – Farel Dalrymple

We’re very proud to present the yet-to-be published sequel to Farel Dalrymple’s Pop Gun War.  Farel recently collaborated with writer, Jonathan Lethem, on one of last year’s best comics, Omega the Unknown, and was also a founder of the influential Meathaus collective.  He’s currently working on The Wrenchies, his first original graphic novel with First Second.  He’s happy to finally share this unseen work with readers.  Expect new installments at least once a week over the next couple months.  Farel will self publish the first half of Pop Gun War: Chain Letter as a handmade zine to debut at next month’s Stumptown Comics Fest (April 18-19) in Portland, OR.

There’s an art opening at Giant Robot SF (618 Shrader Street) tonite from 6:30 – 10pm.  Video game inspired artwork by APAK, Matt Furie, Jeremyville, Kaz Strzepek, Albert Reyes and dozens more.  The show runs through April 15th.  And coolest of all, in store playable video games by ARTXGAME Collective.  The following artists collaborated to make four unique video games incorporating comic style artwork:

Hellen Jo and Derek Yu (pictured above)
Saelee Oh and Anna Anthropy
Souther Salazar and Petri Purho
Deth P. Sun and Jonatan “Cactus” Soderstrom

(via Hellen Jo)

Gabrielle told me that she and Ariel used to sell their wares together on the street in the old days! Awesome. Glad they’ll be visiting together for this signing.

Gabrielle Bell + Ariel Schrag
book release party, signing, and slide show
friday, March 27th from 7 to 9 pm
at Desert Island, 540 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn NY

From Pim & Francie #6. Al Columbia has the rare gift to suggest an entire story, an entire world with just a single image. He is currently compiling and re-contextualizing hundreds of these images and story fragments from his archives to be published by Fantagraphics Books in THE LAND OF BROKEN HEARTS Volume One – Pim & France (THE GOLDEN BEAR DAYS).

((ed. note — interesting coincidence with the big numbers post earlier today. but really, isn’t everything coincident? isn’t everything happening at exactly the same time? maybe now it’s just more apparent with the scope of the internet.))

In today’s WTF news, Alan Moore scholar Pádraig Ó Méalóid unveils Xerox copies of Big Numbers #3, the unpublished issue of Alan’s abandoned comic book series begun in collaboration with Bill Sienkiewicz in 1989. Artist Al Columbia took over when Sienkiewicz dropped out after the first two issues. Pádraig says:

…everything I know leads me to believe that this is a copy of the unpublished third issue of Big Numbers, and I genuinely didn’t believe it existed, and certainly never expected to actually see a copy, led alone own one. Even Alan Moore doesn’t have a copy, to the very best of my knowledge, which in this case is considerable, as I decided to specifically ask his permission before I posted this here. He is happy for it to be made available to the world, so here it is.

See the whole thing (!) here.

Peter Relic writes:

Stan Lee, aka Staggerin’ Stan Lee, is the 86-year-old writer and co-creator (with Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby) of more classic Marvel Comics characters than you can shake a Galactus-caliber prong-horn at, including Spider-Man, the Uncanny X-Man, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and the homey Doctor Strange. Last year I had the chance to meet Staggerin’ Stan at his Beverly Hills office, where, looking like a grinning, perma-tanned carny barker covered in liver spots, he sat behind a desk covered in photographs of his offspring (his comic book creations, that is, not his actual family). Preparing for the interview, I’d run across the old photograph above, of Stan standing at his typewriter in his backyard in Long Island. Figuring it might provide some insight into his process, I asked Stan about the photo, and this is what he said.

Q: Did you feel you got more power from typing standing up?

Stan Lee: I didn’t do it for power, I did it because I knew a few writers who were terribly out of shape, had potbellies. I didn’t want to get like that. So I put a bridge table on the terrace behind my house, and stacked a stool upon that, and put my portable typewriter upon that, and that was just the right height for me to type standing up. And I loved the sun, in those days I didn’t realize how dangerous it was. So I’d keep moving the typewriter a little bit so I could keep facing the sun. I worked for hours out there in the sun. My wife would have company, she’d have her friends over and they’d frolic in the yard and I would type, and they would pay absolutely no attention to me. I’m standing there trying to write and they’re talking and singing and yelling at the kids and partying and I’m enjoying it while I’m writing. It was a very strange situation but I loved it.

I had a Remington noiseless portable. It had a small carrying case. It wasn’t really noiseless, but it didn’t make as much noise as typewriters that weren’t called noiseless. When you wanted to use it you took the lid off, then there was a little knob on the side and you pushed the knob towards the back and the keys lifted so you could type. When you were finished you pushed the knob back again and then the keys went down and you closed the set.

Because of that typewriter I came closer to getting a divorce than any other time in my life. One day my wife got angry at me, I don’t remember why, and she grabbed the typewriter and threw it down and it shattered. I said to her, “If I don’t divorce you for that, there’s nothing you could ever do that will make me divorce you.”

Tommi Mutsuri, publisher and editor of the Finnish comics/art anthology, GLOMP, has asked artists to create works that would embrace a new dimension.  The book features images like the photo above, of Jan Anderzen’s comic quilt in a larger context, as well as close ups of each panel.  This tenth and final hardcover volume is available now from BoingBeing and will also be accompanied by a series of gallery exhibitions in 2009-10.

Featuring colorful and experimental art by over a dozen artists including Aapo Rapi, Amanda Vahamaki, Jan Anderzen, Janne Tervamaki, and Anna Sailamaa.   The book is limited to 1000 copies and includes an exclusive cd soundtrack.  More beautiful artwork by Tommi Mutsuri after the jump.

Jelle Hugaerts is a Belgian immigrant in Finland who runs the Pitkamies comic store above Tommi’s silkscreen studio and “comics center” in Helsinki. Excerpts from his Glomp introduction are reprinted with his kind permission.

Nowadays the comic pamphlet is losing its grip on the market. Bigger non-mainstream comics have even almost completely ceased to exist. It is highly unlikely that an all-round alternative comic like Eightball would ever submerge again. This is problematic because the good old ”floppy” was an ideal format for debuting artists and a good playground for experimenting. New comic artists are now expected to immediately churn out full-length novels. There is no more room to nurture the kind of skill needed to write a 200-page book. Except in anthologies, of course, or minicomics. Comic anthologies therefore will become the prominent forum where young talented artists can flex their muscles and try out art
styles while sharing their work with a bigger audience. From this perspective, it seems that anthologies will play an important role in the preservation of comics as an art medium with an edge.

The future status of anthologies is ensured. However, the format is still an open question. Lately we have seen free tabloid-sized comic anthologies popping up here and there: Diamond, Kuti, Mamba. They have taken inspiration from the Paper Rodeo tabloid started by the Fort Thunder people in the late 90’s who showed that such publications could be done for free and in big size. Since the idea of these comic tabloids is higher print run and free availability, they reach a bigger audience, and hence are perfectly suitable for opening the path for new artists. As for bigger, more book-sized anthologies, their key to success lies all the more in getting cohesive content or experimenting with the format (the latest Kramer’s Ergot was of a gigantic size, for example). But either way it seems that the role of anthologies is undisputed and necessary in a healthy comics market. Whether there will be successful and groundbreaking anthologies in the next few years lies entirely in the hands of decent editors and the creative minds of comic artists. When these meet, amazing things can happen.