So, a high school kid with a Mohawk and a sketchbook full of gory doodles is now considered a potential state threat by enough people for this to happen…
Secret Service questions student on drawings
Time for adult judgment, please

And if you think that’s isolated, look here to abolish that misconception
this
this
this
this
this
& this

Are There no more brains left to be handed out in Bushe's America?
The end is nigh.

Links via tcj

Some mighty fine reading...
City of Glass: The Poetics of the Page
Coffee with Paul Karasik
Three Questions for David Mazzucchelli
Picturing A Glassy-eyed Private I
Françoise Mouly on Little Lit
The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island
Preview: Kramers Ergot 5

One question that I’ve got a lot at conventions when I’ve gone to them or other comics gatherings is ‘why haven’t you worked for Vertigo yet?’.

Well, it’s not for lack of trying. Certainly, I’ve always felt that on the professional side of my schizoid creative personality, particularly in my fist 5 years in the biz, that out of the commercial market in the 90's Vertigo was the publisher I’m most stylistically in line with and puts out the closest to the sort of stories I wanted to do when I started out.

I’ve come close twice, but timing and circumstances have kept me out. I’m scanning the assorted bits of test art I did between 91 & 95 for them, which gives me an excuse to tell these stories now.

To start, when I first decided to make a try for professional work, around mid 1992, I sent my stuff to a whole lot of editors at DC, 15 or so I recall, including Karen Berger, Lou Stathis and Stuart Moore who were the editors on my favourite books. I also sent ONE sample pack to Marvel. I called up a few weeks latter and talked to Karen. I got a very positive response from her about my work and was asked to do some samples. One thing really cool about this at the time was, if they ask you to do samples [vs. volunteering], they pay for them, or so I was told. Which made these samples my first paid up front comics work! Happy days indeed. I was sent was samples of scripts from Sandman and Shade the Changing Man, both from issues that were in production at the time.

I did 5 pages, around the same time I was working on Armageddon Blues [Note the use of the facade from the Rivoli in the Shade page here and in Armageddon Blues. A Queen St bar that I was spending a lot of time at then], and sent them off. Shortly after I talked to Karen on the phone about the work.

Turned out she was not 100% happy with them. She told me that they had asked me to do the wrong pages, felt they were thin on story telling, and wanted me to do some more. Something about getting a wider range of scenes. I was ok with that 'cus that meant a few more paid bits of work.

But also she seem to be lukewarm about the art, and this disturbed me because I thought they were some of my best pages at the time. In particular the hatching I had done, especially in the sandman pages, was turning her off. I really like hatching as a technique so I didn’t take this so well and moped for a few days about it. Also there was a comparison to Vince Lockes' inking. I knew Vince a bit, from Caliber, where my first book Nature of the Beast had been published, and I was quite familiar with his work. I liked his stuff at the time - more so now - but it was implied that I should look at his work for examples of how to do what she thought I was trying to, which really irked me, as it was not at all. I didn’t like that aspect of his technique at the time. Loose & organic lines rater than sharp ones [ironically now....] Grumble….

But I sucked it up and was about to take a second whirl at it when I got a call from Marvel, and was hired to fill in for an issue of Night Breed, right off the bat, no tests.

My one pack of samples sent to Marvel, mailed to Bobby Chase, made there way to Marc McLaurin, and he needed a pinch hitter tout suite. And the rest of that story is history.

Hindsight being 20/20, Should have done the DC tests pages too...

About a year latter, just as I was deciding to leave Saint Sinner I got a call one morning and was asked if I’d like to take up Animal Man! I loved that book!

Steve Pugh was just leaving I think, and they were seriously asking me if I wanted to take over the book. For the first 15 min of the conversation I remember being totally into it, talking with the editor about timetables, trying to work out when I could start. I didn’t want to leave marvel in the lurch so this was going to take some finagling to wrap up things and get started. But as I thought about it, the reality of what it would involve sank in. An big ensemble cast book, lots of scenes with multiple characters interacting, lots of interesting and challenging stuff to draw, lots of different animals, all monthly.

And I got to thinking about how burnt out Saint Sinner made me feel, and another 15min later I ended up talking my self out of it by the end of the phone call. Very bummed after that for a while. :(

It was probably for the best, I dont know if the way i was feeling, i'd have been ablt to do the job justcie or for long. But I didn’t think so at the time, i was not happy at all. Thing is, if you’re not sure your ready, then your not. Got to feel it in your gut.

My next swing at Vertigo, before I quite doing comics for a few years around 95’, would have been a dream come true.

The last monthly title I kept buying, right up until a few moths ago when I resolved to stop buying periodical comics for a while, was Hellblazer. And in around when Rake at the Gates of Hell was wrapping up I got a call from Lou Stathis, with whom I had started to foster a positive professional relationship with, and had grown to like quite a lot as well - a class act. He asked me if I’d be interested in drawing the book. “are you kidding?!” I stammered. He was very strait up about where I stood, telling me that their first choice had been Sean Phillips but he was apparently committed to Kid Eternity and couldn’t do it. Lucky day for me!



For almost exactly two weeks I walked about in a glow and renewed optimism about working in comics, finally getting the chance to work on something I was really really into and new had the stories that I felt confident I could do justice – not just a good book, My favorite! I had none of the doubts I had about Animal Man, this was a nice small cast of players, with simple mood oriented settings the name of the game. I did a few warm up drawings including the one posted here, and awaited the first script in bliss. And waited and waited....

Well if you're a Constantine aficionado you probably can guess what happened. When no script showed up as promised, I called to see what the hang up was, and was told apologetically that Kid Eternity was cancelled, Sean had become available. :(

C’est la vie.

In terms of personal interest I’ve broadened out quite a bit from the genre of adventure/horror books that Vertigo publishes, but they still can call to me. If I were to do a title of that sort I’d consider Vertigo’s titles my first choice, given the chance. And I’d jump to do a Constantine story. Something I tell Will Dennis every time I get the opportunity. As of late I’ve been trying to interest Vertigo in The rise and fall of it all, I thought it would fit in well with the Vertigo Visions line. But so far I’m still waiting to hear from Karen.

Update: been asked why I don’t pitch my own Constantine story idea. I’ve thought about it, had one that I started doing a few pages for once, but it didn’t gel well as I went on with it so I put it aside. Still think about it, but so far, I’ve not thought of something that really does the character justice. We’ll see...

I started ranting in the last post about the comics fandom press but then cut it realizing I was miss identifying the irritant and seriously deviating from topic.

I was recalling vividly being annoyed buy the superficial text/copy that I saw in books like wizard and previews for my work or anything else I ever read in them back when I did pick them up from time to time. Previews I realise is a catalogue [be nice is it at least aspired to something more but...] But the rest! To me the complicit laziness that the lack of critical thought that rags like wizard display is frustrating and depressing. I can hear the mantra 'buy me, buy me, buy me, buy me...' being chanted between the lines of copy, burrowing into the compulsive obsessive minds of young comics fans turned collectors or worse, the opportunistic non-reading collectors.

The Franklin Mint of comic books I called them, I seriously thought about buying a rubber stamp signature [I’m not kidding, I looked into it but quit going to cons instead for several years] to pound on the covers of books at cons in 94'.

Maybe it's cus I was raised to be deeply suspicious of materialistic capitalist enterprise in general. But just the same whenever I did look under the high gloss sheen of bad add copy, slapdash garish graphics and embossed foil laminated card stock I invariably found bleeding mutilated abattoir cast offs posing as comics. I saw vapours and short-sighted goals. And I never found something that surprised me or challenged me or made me care one bit. At best and at worst, sometimes I found the whimpering remains of a good idea picked over by intrusive oversight and forced to conform. In particular I saw those in some of my own contributions to the steaming pile.

And one day in 96’ I took the whole pile in my position, mailed to me twice monthly by the tenfold - often arriving in big blue vinyl customs bags bound in gaffing tape that reminded me of sacks of drugs - I took them all and dropped them in a metal coal bin and set them on fire.

It was very cathartic.

But still I need to vent once in a while.

much better, I go draw now.

Next post something nice I promise.
:)

Reading some more from Rodrigo Baeza's blog Comics commentary. He's posted an excerpt from a 1991 interview with Alberto Breccia.

Reminds me of Charlie rose earlier today, he was interviewing a rep for the Gauguin – TAHITI exhibit in Boston.

Watching that I got to thinking about - I’ve been studying the family tree of modern art that often sights Gauguin at it's root - you only need to look at so called primitive art from India and Africa and china to find the source of their ideas though, as most of the art world readily recognises. One sign of a mature medium is that it knows it’s roots well. As much of a brilliant, even genius talent that Gauguin was, he wasn't really an artistic innovator so much as he was a social one, introducing not truly new but foreign ideas to the French art scene.

Truth is you can look around and find a precursor to almost anything, no mater how far you go back, short of cave drawings. And there that's probably cus scratches in sand don't tend to last very long. Human ideas evolve, they never come out of nowhere.

It's the US industry and the fans that make the big deal out of so called innovations on the very narrow parameters of North American sequential art. Living in the bubble that is American pop culture they tend to think they've discovered new territory when something new to THEIR experiences comes up, never mind those folks living there already. Miller and Mazzucchelli didn’t invent new ways of telling stories at all, what they did was very skilfully applied foreign ideas/methods to the medium/genre and blow out a few very artificial barriers put up buy the industry and the expectations of readers.

Alberto Breccia was being a bit unfair to Miller and Mazzucchelli though, who both have always readily and frequently sighted their influences and do deserve some credit as creators. Neither of them claims to have revolutionized the medium, they just do what they like. It’s not like Lito Fernandez or Fernando Fernández invented what they were doing out of whole cloth either. They all deserve credit for what they do equally I think. And Miller and Mazzucchelli get a nod for braving a frontier of sorts, even if it’s a silly barrier put up by stupid narrow-minded people. When your rents on the line that takes some guts.

...and over shoots the provable by a bit. [via flat earth]

But it's not that far from possible. Frankly I think it gives George and Dick more credit than they deserve, especially in light of the Woodward book [slate digest version]. And I think they think they are the good guys, so they probably wouldn’t do something like that. That's what I say to a.j. anyway when she suggests pretty much the same scenario [ noting the lack of any real true smoking gun evidence for 911 ]. But hey, stranger shit has happened in this world.

I empathise with Al’s frustration, it’s baffling and frustrating how these shits think they can lie and the smooth it over with more of the same. It's a fundamentally compulsive thing it seems with this administration, not to fess up to your own behaviour. Not to just spin and try to make it sound better, or like something other than it is, which is bad enough – sadly all politicians seem addicted to this. But this lot also tends frequently to flat out deny till faced with no choice. And even then they don't stop.

Back in 1991 I was living in a 1000 foot industrial where house loft space with my girlfriend at the time Michelle. Along with her, and my former roommate and good buddy J.F.Sugerman with whom I had initially started the project, we began to publish a zine of short fiction and art.

We called it Nisrigion [Nice-ridg-on]

I provided the illustration and design work, J.F. wrote some of the contents and edited a little bit, Michelle contributed some stories, as did Manon, J.F’s girlfriend at the time [what can I say, it was a family affair]. And we gathered submissions for the first two issues from friends and friends of friends. Issue one included work from Darren Lockwood, Al Roy and Al Ray [now a host and writer for the CBC].

We got two issues done, sold about 3 or 4 hundred copies of each, maybe more, got a personal phone call from Billy Brag* and even got invited to appear on Imprint on TVO to talk about zines - but then we weren’t suitably antagonistic towards the mainstream press in the pre-interview so they passed in favour of a few more edgy guests.

In the end we failed to attract more submissions, broke up with our girlfriends, lost interest in the project and nothing more came of Nisrigion. J.F. and I have talked about reviving it on and off over the years but J.F. has sadly lost the drive to write much and i've been pretty busy doing comics and crap.

I've wanted for some time now to adapt his story from the book, ‘Drowning’, into a short Graphic Novella, and Michelle’s ‘Tony & Peter’s Restaurant’ I’ve always thought would make a good short comic story. May still take a whack at them yet. I know she made a short B&W movie based on it.

But I’ve had the old ‘plates’ for Issues one and two in storage in my studio all this time and now, in the process of reorganizing stuff and archiving my old, pre-internet days I decided it was time to scan the old buggers and put them up online for the ages before they totally fall apart. So here’s Issues one in it’s entirety as a free downloadable PDF. It's 3.2megs

I’ll upload issue two next week.

A toast to the spirit of small press publishing - cheers!

[*-I had left copies with a memeber of the touring crew after a show in Toronto for Billy Brag and Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy, with whom he was touring at the time, Apparently they all dug the zines on the tour bus and he decided to give us a call and let us know and ask for a subscription to the thing! He was very cool about being on the phone with two clearly shell shocked small pressers who were totally unsure what the hell we were doing and stunned to get this kind of feedback, made our weeks!]

I start by saying I’ve been contemplating the method by which I to best behest my self of most of the contents of 6 short longboxes. That’s the first thing I thought of after having read The Hurting today. I haven't anything quite so horrid as the tittles that Tim is talking about, but I haven't found myself going and rereading them much either.

There is resistance I think, but slowly or quickly the ‘mainstream’ comics industry in America will have to do a few things.

1) It will stop calling itself ‘mainstream’. It’s not and really it never was. The term only has relevance in contrast to an underground.

Mainstream [re: legitimate] & Underground: A par of concepts that belong to the cold war mentality of the later 20th century. Concepts that seem to be having a renaissance what with the cold war mentality being displayed by cretin American politicians. But still retarded ones.

It can claim that it was for the last god knows [and I do but I’m sick of thinking about it] how long now the dominate Active market for ‘comics’ [see: Manga, BD, Fumetti, Sequential Art] in the US of A. By proxy to some extent also here in Canada.

2) Acknowledge that it can learn to navigate the new territory. A market in which ‘hi fantasy adventure’ comics like those that ultimately spawned Millennium, Crisis on Infinite Earths and other choice lowlights of the 80’s, and frankly 90’s north American market are not that interesting to most people.

Maybe if they were more flexible about trying to meet 'genre expectations' of superhero and fantasy adventure books then they tend to be, they might attract more readers, new readers. And they'd have to abandon this silly business of obsessively enforced 'continuity' on hi fantasy. IT'S FANTASY!

I know, sounds snobby. Buy I mean this in the literal ‘hey, it a fact, get over it’ way. They ARE not that interesting to MOST people. Tuff titties.

Ok, so, you want you can keep selling to that little nice niche over there. Be my guest. I really don't mind but don't expect it to get any bigger they way they're going. The rest of the real world and I are going to go over hear and enjoy our comics, whatever they might have in them. So long as it's not boring monotonous pedantic shit.

There’s amazing things happening in what’s shaping up to be the mainstream market of today. Its a big mixed bag.

There are a few successful well written hi fantasy adventure books, even one or two ‘superheroes’. But also we got these newer ones that really go to town and the drawing’s a lot more fun, not stiff like that old stuff. People call them Manga and a lot of them have nothing to with anything too insanely overwritten with ‘crossovers’ and obsessive minutia that makes no real sense. Some of them are great nonsense mind you, just silly! But generally, the writing is a lot better and the smart ones make no crazy promises about being around FOREVER to satisfy your Jones. The smart ones know how to stop before, or at lest when, they leave the audience wanting more.

And guess what! Manga is more about story telling style & pacing than artistic style or genre. So you can do any sort of story you want. Keeps it interesting for both the creators and the readers.

Not nearly as big a slice of the pie just yet but growing fast is the broader ‘graphic novel’ market. Really this overlaps with Manga. It’s a market only defined by format, not any aspect of style alone. Just ‘Books’.

So you can sell them in ALL bookstores to all sorts of readers looking for all sorts of stories in all sorts of genre and then some. Not just specially shops with the right kind of shelves. Don’t get me wrong. Those are cool. But specialty shops a market does not make.

And hey, no reason the denizens of the old American ‘hi fantasy adventure’ comic industry can’t play; they already have been somewhat, though still pretty tentatively. Publishing a lot of Books but still sticking to pretty much the same genres and styles of story telling. One thing guys? You’ll have to do a lot better. It’s not all Shakespeare but the reader’s expectations of writing & art standards and production quality are a lot higher in the book market than those sadly MOST common to superhero books, especially books like Millennium & Crisis on Infinite Earths. Man those stunk! Oh, and don’t forget The SECRET WARS! Gahhhh! Yah you’ll have to do a lot better.

I don’t think Larry Young has too much to worry about though, so long as he knows how to leave them wanting more.

If you poke around here regularly you'll have noticed by now that I’ve been expanding my comics section to include samples of my old comics work from the 90's.One of the largest single chunks of work I have from that time is the art from the 4.5 issues of Saint Sinner from the Barkerverse/Razorline I did.

I was the first artist on the series, designed the characters and the logo and was truly hyped about the whole affair, it being my fist big gig at the time. And only my third pro-job!

Things didn't end up going so well and as well as documenting the art in the comics gallery I’ve been telling some of the stories behind it all. So without further ado....

Already up in the covers section. Now you can also see the prologue, book 1 & book 2. Enjoy, and drop me a line to let me know what you think of this old stuff.

Here are some character designs from the project as well...

Vrrooommmm.

This is one of the latter jobs I did at marvel; one I believe I was never really played for either [see here for the that story]. It features two different versions of Dr Strange, the Stranger, Blade, and Morbius the living vampire. Also it’s the first appearance of the Tempo, a tower Dr Strange lived in that I designed for the issue, and was never given any credit for as far as I know…not that it maters that much but….

A mixed bag, with some good moments but lots of things that had I the time at the time, I’d have redrawn. This book left my desk with a lot of reservations.

It represents a good example of one of the problems I ultimately had working on deadline oriented books for marvel. You hear a lot of talk in the comix world these days about how projects done collaboratively are inherently poorer than work by one creator - the contrast drawn is often between personal books that come out of small operations like Fantagraphics and the commercial monthlies that Marvel & DC pump out.

This is bunk frankly.

There are plenty examples of strong work done collaboratively out there - you only need to look to the EU & Japanese comics scenes to find books that are consistently of a high calibre - and that's not to exclude some of the finer books from this side of the globe either. If you dig around you'll even find truly strong personal works done by more than one person.

The weakness is being misidentified in American monthly comics. It's not that there is collaboration and more than one ID in the mix, it's that it's deadline driven - product pumped out to fit a package, a market profile, rather than thoughtful storytelling given the room needed to grow properly. Often NO real time is given in a monthly schedule for significant revision and refinement. Stories go through little development and art has to be pumped out as fast as the workers can generate it. It takes unbelievable talented and expedient creators to maintain even a passing semblance of quality in that environment, and nerves of steel. Makes for a lot of tightly wound folks as well.

It also in general tends to lead creators to lock into cliché ridden genre storytelling so exclusively that new ideas become scarcer than water in a desert, something frequently sighted by the Indy world as one of more notable problems with the mainstream but frequently blamed on other things. It's not for lack of potential in the characters or any other reason than simply that the time isn’t there to muse too much in depth.

Well…that’s my opinion any way.

But here’s the work, its not too shabby really, given that I had a shorter than average deadline [I don’t recall why that was the case but I do recall it was less than the usual month+ that I was given to do most books] and I was working size-as, doing two pages a day on average. The large version of the pages in the gallery here actually open up LARGER than the size I drew them on your monitor if it’s set to 1024x768. You can download a zipped set of jpegs of this issue in it's final form here.

Just been chilling out after sending off the last one, listening to Brave New Waves [Destroyer profile, Vancouver singer/songwriter Dan Bejar. A "secret" member of The New Pornographers. And now after a bit of discordant noisy stuff some really good shit…Nice to listen again, have for the last two nights and it brings back memories. I used to spend EVERY week night up listening to the show and drawing, all through from gr 6 (around 83-84) on till I was in my late twenties. Got out of the habit for a while but I think I’m going to have to get back to it, nice way to spend the night. Sitting here sorting through piles of old photocopies of my work, organizing stuff in my studio.

Thought I’d share some of them with you, here are an assortment of drawings from old sketchbooks that I copies with the intention of making a small run zine edition of RevolveR– an anthology of my own work that I’ve been planning for some time now – There will be a print version that you can order in the mail and web version [ Serializer.net style ] @ revolvercomix.com. The book will include current work not otherwise published elsewhere, a few choice jams with friends, illustrations and some writing. I’m looking forward to doing a story or two with my old buddy and cartooning partner Z with our character Dead Beat - if I’ve not signed it up to a publisher for a color version, the rise and fall of it all will start to appear there in B&W in print and in color online - Also Dream Life & Pin City and any short stories that come along the way.

Just watched the Intro for Onimusha 3.... ok, I'm impressed.

Meanwhile, in another 3D world....
Man....I've been spending the better part of the last 6 days doing some basic art restoration, cleaning up scans of the classic comic strip Gasoline Ally for D&Q. Some timely work but man, cleaning up the specs and nicks, grooming the lettering so that it's readable - has to rank amongst some of the most mindless drudge work there is....blaaaa. My brain is melting out of my ears. Mustn’t complain I suppose, good to have the rent covered for another few months : )

It’s also opened my eyes to Frank King's Work. I was never really that keen on Kings work before, Nothing wrong with it, just indifferent, it had yet to grab me – so much to look at in the world it just got put to the bottom of the stack for a while in my mind.

Having spent the last few days getting to know his lines up CLOSE and personal - not just the strips I’m working on - I spent some time studying his work in Drawn & Quarterly Volume 3 so that I would be able to better understand his line work and what were his intended lines and what was damage, just to be sure I knew what to look for. Sadly some of the ones I’m working on are in pretty rough shape, it's a good thing that they've been documented now and will have a renewed life.

For you aficionados, it’s a very conservative clean up job, no real redrawing. Just clearing out specs and doing what’s needed for the legibility of the lettering where it’s nearly gone. I have redrawn a disintegrated panel or balloon border here or there but were talking about a CM/half inch or less.

All to say, I’ve a new found respect for his craft. The overall effect is not that exciting for me but he has some wonderful details in his drawing, and the sense of form and real depth of his sets and characters is really quite impressive. I really like the expressiveness of baby Skeezix, wonderful really.

I'm a pretty lucky guy, getting to make a living working on great stuff like this...even if the task itself is such a monotonous one at times. As BEM [also working on the book ] said last week, we’re getting to be part of history here, even if it’s just in a little way. Very cool : )

On a related topic..

A not very accurate self portrait, I'm much rounder than that...

watched Godzilla vs Mothra & King Ghidorah "Giant Monsters all-out attack"
Good fun.

Bad news day

doodle doodle doodle

A 'comic-book curse' hits the yen: 'Manga' comics reflected it first - now, reports that Tokyo is reducing yen sales are being confirmed by the yen's advance

Grisly short story gets student expelled from S.F. academy -- and costs teacher her job


Scary stories seem to be out of vogue!
It sounds like paranoia ran rampant, a very reactionary response to the story. And the teacher was dealing with it, aware of whatever ‘social norm’ based standard has been perceived as broken. Trying to suggest that the kid might want to be more ‘normal’ before the thought police notice his gaff. And for this they can her? I guess they’ve given up on banging in square pegs, now we just kick them out. Grrrrreaaaaat.

more here on Neil Gaiman's blog

[<<-this pic big]
My girl a.j. , she takes a mean photo. I direct you to her photo gallery for exhibit A. And she's just getting warmed up. :)

Haven't seen it yet so it's impossible to say if the film is any good, but from the sounds of it it has it's hart and all it's fingers and toes in the right place.