Pretentious Wizard Sox

Well, I'm off to Wizard World Chicago today. In the past, I've set up in the artist alley to sell the minis, but it's never been too successful an endeavor, as you can imagine. Wizard World is a big super hero show, so the audience isn't exactly what I'm after, however, it's so close and since there isn't a small press show here, I do it for the sake of it. Well, I decided to save my money and skip it this year, but I will attend to say hi to some people and maybe hand out some comics. So, I do finally have the new issues of Burning Building Comix #3 and #4 finally available! They aren't up on the website yet, but they are printed and ready to go.

So, even though I'm not making super hero comics, and I'm supposed to hate fan boy cons, I do enjoy taking in a big show. Mostly I like looking around at all the new stuff, the toys, and comics, and I love seeing little kids dressed up as superheroes. And speaking of which, Van has some superman PJ's and he thinks he looks pretty darn snazzy when he's all dressed up.

Back to the Ipod three song random shuffle.

Cup of Coffee by Garbage
Lakini's Juice by Live
Fire starter by The Prodigy

I don't know what happened to Live. To me, they were so good for three or four albums, but then just fell off completely. One of those weird things, I guess, but then there's the idea that it's a band from my youth, and maybe I just outgrew the music. I think they just got too pretentious. Still, I love the cool guitar sound on Lakini's Juice and even if they were pretentious by this point in their career, I can always appreciate just the right amount of pretension.

I used Firestarter as a song on one of my video pieces for Burning Building Comix. I think The Prodigy is still around and kicking, and I'll have to get around to checking it out at some point to see if they still have the sound.

And Garbage again. Anyone that's ever read this blog before knows my love for that band. Cup of Coffee is a nice slow, sad, song, and for whatever reason, sometimes those make me feel best.

By the way, the Cubs - Sox series is killing me! These games are too intense, and I'd rather go without them. Even though the Sox go for the sweep tonight, with the potential to tie up the season series.

Iron Zod Bender

So, there's still a delay on the print versions of Burning Building #3 and #4. I'm hoping they'll be all done by the end of the week, and I'll post here when they're available to order. I have been keeping busy however with a couple of other projects. Some months ago, I promised to be in a zine and I've been putting together a comic for that for a while now. It's been taking me a long time cause I'm trying a different style for the art. The story I'm doing features a bunch of portraits of famous characters, and in order to get likenesses right, I wanted to try a style that was a little more involved and precise, but still minimal and abstractly exaggerated. This ends up looking like caricature most of the time, which is fine, but something I've never been very good at. So what should have been something that would only take a week, has spawned into several as I tried dozens of sketches of the same character to try and nail the likeness and the new, more illustrative, style I was trying to capture. Here are a couple of the final sketches I made before moving into the final art.

I'll make sure to post on here with the specifics of the zine when the project's all done.

Doing this was pretty challenging for me, and fun, and I'm hoping to try and build a new illustration portfolio out of the style of these drawings, so we'll see how that goes.

As for other comics I've been reading, I just finished up the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. Wow, what a great book. I've said before that I'm not really familiar with the Duck comics, and I've never read the Barks stuff, but this collection, by Don Rosa, was so much fun, and so well done, I wish I had started reading them as a young lad. This book was a good place to start, I think, as it gave me a breakdown on the Scrooge character's life, as he exists in comics, and outside of my beloved Duck Tales universe. I do ponder on how my comics development might have differed had I been reading these when my comics tastes were developing. But alas, I was reading Youngblood instead. (sigh)

By the way, I saw the new Hulk movie with Ed Norton. It was pretty damn good, and a might better than the Ang Lee version with the terrible Nick Nolte Absorbing Man crap. The new one has solid acting, pretty good story and really nice special effects. The skin tone of the hulk was creepily real with dark green blood pumping through the veins just under the surface. I've been told it's not as good as Iron Man, which apparently is the best movie ever made.

Guitar Phreak

Hey, everyone, let me just say thanks to anybody reading this blog. I realize how obnoxious blogs can be, what with people having an over inflated sense of their own importance - so for anyone reading my own self important ramblings, thanks! Although this blog is dedicated to my comics, anyone who has been reading this knows I talk about side projects as well. Well, the bindledog guys and myself, along with the help of Zoe Triantafillou, have just finished up our latest video project. We used Zoe's fancy camera, so the quality is much better than our previous efforts. It's called Guitar Hero A-hole, and features real life GH A-hole Adam Zwirek! It's posted over on you tube, and you can check it out here.

Still been working on a lot of computer work putting the pages together for Burning Building 3 and 4. I should be done shortly and have those issues finally available in print.

After finishing the blog last week it occurred to me that I talk about music more than comics a lot of the time. As a means of rectifying that, I think I'm gonna skip the i-pod thing from time to time to talk about what comics I'm reading.

So, I've met Ed Piskor at Space and SPX I think, and he's a cool guy that does some cool comix. Ed self published and distributed his latest book Wizzywig Volume 1: Phreak.

It's about this kid who figures out how to be a hacker/con man. This volume focuses a lot on how he hacks the phone system and learns how to get things in life via "social engineering".

Ed does a great job of making the kid, Kevin, an archetype, and exploring the type of person who does this kind of thing, and why they do it. It's obvious from reading it that Ed did a lot of research and got into the mind of his character in a convincing fashion. Plus, Ed has got some mean chops! He's somehow tapped into that 60's underground comix vibe, but has a real tight and clean style that you wouldn't expect from such a young guy.

I love it when I can read about a subject matter I know virtually nothing about, and get exactly what I want out of it. Ed delivers insight into the mind of his characters with a sociologists point of view that truly understands the subject matter. Can't wait for the other volumes in the series.

You can order it straight from our man Ed, here.

In other news. Van has been completely obsessed with me lately, asking where I am all day long, and asking what I'm doing 50 times a day... it's adorable. Here's a pic that illustrates it quite well even though it's a little old. I'm quite often storing a pen or pencil behind the ear, and as you can see, Van is an observant little guy.