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.

Karaoke Light Box!

Hey, the slide show thingy worked! How cool is that? So to keep on updating you on the Top Shelf web comics 2.0 thing, I just recently finished coloring issue #2, and that should be up on their site in another couple of weeks, with the next issue coming a month after that. So check it out, cause they've got some cool stuff going on over there, and it's free! Which is good for all you cheapskates, cause it's like free comic book day every weekday!

So, aside from coloring the issues of Burning Building Comix, I've also begun working on the print editions of Issues #3 and #4. Issue 3 is almost done, and I've started putting together the pages for Issue 4 today. The way I work on these, is to do the backgrounds and the characters separately. I started doing this because in Issue 1, I drew each background in every panel using a light box. It was tedious, boring, and time consuming. Since then, I draw the backgrounds once, draw the rest on it's own, and put them together in the computer. Since I'm such a geek about process, here are three scans of the same page. One being the backgrounds alone (the white out spots are where the halo around the characters come in), the characters alone, and them both put together.

Wow, isn't cheating great?! Not really. Although this method is much faster overall, I believe, there's usually a whole week I have to set aside to scan it all in and put it together. This can be tedious, boring, and time consuming. (sigh)

So, here's Van caught in a candid shot admiring his racetrack. The car actually goes around the track, in case you thought he was just staring at a still car... although such is his mania, I think he has just sat and stared at his cars.

And to finish it all up, the ipod three song shuffle.

Take Me Anywhere by Tegan and Sara

Don't Stop Me Now by Queen

Sweet Jane by Cowboy Junkies

Don't Stop Me Now is one of my favorite songs of all time, and you haven't lived till you've seen me karaoke this bad boy! Also, since it's Queen related and I make comics, I feel I'm required by comic blogging law to mention Mike Dawson's new book Freddie and Me. I always thought that the song Short Skirt/Long Jacket by Cake ripped off their guitar hook from Sweet Jane. Although I like the Velvet Underground original just fine, the Cowboy junkies version just sounds like you're on heroin. You know, for you cheapskates out there.

How to make a Mini-Comic!

I just finished doing a new printing of Burning Building #1, so I took a bunch of photos of the process and have it posted over on Flickr for anyone to see. So instead of the usual post, I'm just gonna give a quick update on the Top Shelf web comics, and then send you over the the Flickr set.

I've been talking to the guys at Top Shelf, and we're gonna post all the issues of Burning Building on the new section of their web comics page, Top Shelf 2.0. Right now, Issue #1 is up, and I'm working on finishing up the coloring of Issue #2. Once they're all done, you'll be able to view them all online stacked on top of each other! I'll post here when the new issues are gonna be posted, or just keep checking Top Shelf, cause they're posting new comics every weekday! Holy Crap!

Okay, so here's where you can find the pictures on Flickr, and I'm trying to figure out how to have a slide show of that set of photos run on the side of the page here on the blog, but I'm not sure if that's gonna work.

Have I done a hutch yet?

In case anybody went over to the Top Shelf Comix website looking for my comics that were to debut, and thought I was a dirty liar cause they couldn't find them - fear not. The color version of Burning Building 3 is set to be on the website, just not quite yet. Apparently, they're looking at putting Issue 1 back up first and then issue 3 some time after that. They're putting up new comix every weekday, so it shouldn't be long. Issue 1, once again in full color, is supposed to be up this Thursday.

Lately, I've been working on a bunch of in-between things, mostly the inside covers for Burning Building 3, which I delayed doing due to a convention, and for Burning Building 4. I usually like to do these right after I'm done with the guts of the book, put doing a pair of them back to back was a bit rough. The inside covers are just backgrounds, with the character's furniture and knick knacks lying around to give people a sense of what the character is like. Well, it's pretty damn boring to just draw backgrounds (don't know how Gerhard did it), and even more boring when it's a bunch of furniture that has to be different from the six other apartments I've already done. I spend way too much time thinking up ottomans and lamps! Here's a peek at one of the covers. I scanned it as a color photo so you can see the blue line pencils underneath the black ink.

Here's a picture of Van in a box. It illustrates well his obsession with cars, and anything with freakin' wheels.

And now the three song ipod shuffle.

South Side by Moby (with Gwen Stefani)
Turning Japanese by Liz Phair
Slide Away by Oasis

I love Liz Phair, a Chicago gal, and Turning Japanese is a good cover. It's true to the original, but it has enough of her own sound to be different and fresh. Moby I'm pretty luke warm on, but I do like South Side, especially being a White Sox fan. I got pretty F'd out on a lot of Oasis, cause I used to work with a guy at the Comix Revolution who would play them non-stop. I am a bit a of brit pop fanatic though, although Oasis got way too bloated and way too high on cocaine!

I'm Gonna Be Drifting Off

I'm gonna try and keep it short this week. Last time, I mentioned how I would talk more about Burning Building Comix #3 later, and that time is now. You see, I've actually had Issue 3 done for quite some time, but the fine folks at Top Shelf Comics, are going to include it in their online comics section! They've been cool enough to do this before for Issue 1, but I guess they're re-designing the online comix section, and it's going to be up and running in a week or so. You can check it out here, and it's the only place to see Burning Building Comix in FULL COLOR! The print version of Issue 3 will be available after the online edition's exclusivity has worn its welcome, and Issue 4 will be ready about the same time. Stay tuned.

So if you search for "kid falling asleep" on you tube, you get like 600 matches, and my pride and joy baby boy is among them. Here's Van during a late dinner with a White Sox game on in the background. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl2nUfqtcWg

Okay, so here's the ipod three song shuffle.

I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles), The Proclaimers
Bittersweet Me, R.E.M.
Hooligans, Rancid

Hmmm, well, "I'm Gonna Be" is one of those songs I really liked when I was 12, and thought I would still like it now, so I downloaded it, and I think I skip it every time it comes up. Somebody ought to coin a term for that. ipod remorse. And the Proclaimers were the guys who sang with those really think accents, and I usually do love to hear an accent in a singer's voice, especially a Celtic type sound.
Bittersweet Me is a great R.E.M. Monster song, that came close to being completely F'd out. You know, it's strange, cause I didn't really get into R.E.M until Monster, and then I got their older stuff later, but it was one of those albums that I listened to, to death in the crucial years of my youth when objectivity is lost. As a result, I can't critically talk about it, but I think I've heard that Monster isn't regarded very well for R.E.M. and I just can't see that. I suppose it's possible that it's just me, and I'm unable to judge it outside of the emotional place it dwells inside of me next to the memories and feelings of those years.
Hooligans by Rancid is a fun song by a fun band, and for me Rancid is at it's best when they're doing more of the Ska/Reggae influence type thing. Plus, on a personal note, Rancid was my first official concert with my wife. Lots of making out.