Recapping the last month or two:

on July 1, 2011

• Eleanor and I are moving in about a month – we decided to buy a house, for some reason! It’s a smallish place, but nice – it’s got enough space for us each to have our own studio, so that will be a change (our current setup being somewhat like a particle accelerator – us constantly bouncing into each other, with interesting results). Also, a big joined kitchen/ living room, for our bougie foodie pretensions. New York and Portland will abide; we’re officially settled in Athens for the foreseeable future! We’re going to paint it some crazy colors, it’ll be great.

• There’s nothing like moving to make you recalculate exactly how much you want to own physical things (like CDs, for instance. I can’t wait to get CDs out of my life.) I might have a “moving funds” sale for some of our extra graphic novels and assorted bric-a-brac soon.

• Penn State and the PA Center for the Book flew me up to accept the Lynd Ward Honor and give a short talk about my personal history with comics. Here’s the video, complete with closeups of embarrassing childhood rip-off superhero drawings. My part starts about 9 minutes in.

• Set to Sea will finally be back in print in late July. The long wait has been aggravating, but as has been pointed out to me, selling out is never bad. I received a copy of the 2nd printing a few days ago, and it’s quite snazzy – it has yellow endpapers, and a couple of small printing mistakes (the kind no one has noticed but me) have been fixed. Yellow endpapers!

• The Serbian edition of Set to Sea, from Komiko, is out! I just got some comp copies in the mail.

The printing is actually slightly larger than the Fantagraphics edition, thus larger than the original art, even. It still looks good, though – and care was taken with editing in new cyrillic sound effects, which pleases me.

• And I just finished hand-lettering a French edition, which will be coming out this August, from Editions çà et là. The French-speaking comics market is large and sophisticated, so I hope the book gets a good reception!

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Mope 3obe

on April 13, 2011

• I did this interview on Inkstuds (a Canadian comics radio program), it was a fraught experience. I’m really not good at interviews, I might actually have to start prepping beforehand. I totally missed talking about all of the books I’m into now, the awesome crew of artists I hang out with in Athens, art philosophy, day-to-day life, or any of the things I like listening to when I listen to other cartoonists’ podcasts. But thanks for the opportunity, Robin, even if I whiffed it. To the listener: you have been warned. I did pick some good intro/outro songs.

• I forgot to mention the other day that while Amazon may be sold out, there are still a few copies kicking around at Fantagraphics! I don’t want them to get mad at me. And of course there might be a copy at your local comics shop. On a related note, wanna see what the logo for Set to Sea looks like in Serbian?

• From the “Knowing how to leave when you’re on top” files: A.) Eric Reynolds recently announced that the upcoming 22nd issue of the Mome anthology will be the last. Eleanor had some memorable pieces in the earlier issues, and has a full-color story set for the last, which yeah, you should be excited about. It does seem like the days of the print comics anthology (in the Raw tradition) are slowly drawing to a close. Too much work for too little reward. B.) Dustin Harbin just brought his long-running diary comic to a close, at just about the right time. I’m excited to see what’s next! Congrats to both, good run, good hustle out there guys.

• Here’s some pictures of Eleanor and David working on their mural at Honey’s:

 

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Take it 2 the streets

on April 11, 2011


Word! Unless I’m wrong, the first printing of Set to Sea is sold out! I know it’s unavailable on Amazon right now. And yeah, it’s going back for a second printing! There won’t be any big changes, though I am happy to fix a couple tiny errors (that no one sees except for me.) Even stranger: There might be French and Serbian(?!) editions of Set to Sea in the works!

Eleanor and David Mack been working on amazing big wall mural at Honey’s Salon down at the Chase St warehouse, it’s got a lot of birds and powerlines, but not in the way you’d expect. I don’t have any pictures, but very soon! I spent half of yesterday hanging out afterhours in the salon to keep her company, listening to Michael Jackson and inking Blar pages.


April 2011 Top Ten:

  • “The Wrong Place” by Brecht Evans
  • Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times”
  • This article about David Foster Wallace
  • One Piece vols. 35-37
  • Lingering coughs
  • “The Life of Samuel Johnson” by James Boswell (begun 2010)
  • Army boys
  • FLUKE!
  • Homebrewing Night with Maggie and Lacey out at Orange Twin (Mead)
  • That bird mural that David and Elo are making!

 

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Mostly ghostly

on March 30, 2011

Did you know that Set to Sea was the Lynd Ward Prize honor book for 2011? It’s true. It didn’t win the big prize (that went to Duncan the Wonder Dog), but it was the only runner-up, which isn’t too shabby.  The Lynd Ward Prize, to my knowledge, is the only award the give the grand prize winner straight-up cash, which is something I would commend to all of the other comics awards out there. I don’t get the cash, but they are flying me up to Pennsylvania for some sort of ceremony – and most excitingly, I think I end up with a set of those snazzy “Library of America” Lynd Ward novels.

I’ve already sent off the first batch of kitty postcards to all the folks who submitted a photo of their cat a few months back. Don’t miss out if you did!

Here’s a sketchbook comic about a dream I had last week:

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The spoils

on March 18, 2011

Papercutter #15 is out now, you can see ordering information over at Tugboat Press! I did that cat picture for the back cover, here’s a picture of the front:

I have a 9 page “romance comic” in this issue, written by MK Reed. Here’s the first page:

I just got some comp copies in the mail, and they look great! There was a surprise in the package as well – a stack of postcards!

I figure anybody who had their cat exploited immortalized for this illustration should probably get a record for perpetuity. So if you submitted a pic, send me your address (drew @ this website dot com) and I’ll pop a postcard in the mail for you!

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