Halloween Launch

Reminder that I'll be doing a signing of my comics along with Elliot Serrano and Art Baltazar at Dreamland Comics in Schamburg this Saturday November 8th from 1-3 pm!




Happy Halloween! Belated I'm afraid, but the holiday kicked my ass this year. Been really busy in the last couple of weeks with all sorts of projects. Top of the list had to be Van's Halloween costume! Emily and I have challenged ourselves to make Van's costumes from scratch each year. This year we weren't really sure what to pick for the costume seeing as he was old enough now to understand it better. So I thought about some of his favorite things, and since he's been absolutely obsessed with airplanes lately, and since one of his favorite DVD's is Duck Tales, (I'm so very proud of this fact) it was a natural to make him a costume of every ones favorite crash prone duck billed pilot, Launch Pad McQuack!

So it's basically just a WW1 fighter pilot outfit, with some webbed feet, a shock of orange hair and a rubber duck bill that van didn't want to wear.

As you can see, Emily did a fantastic job with the sewing! The whole thing is handmade aside from the pants.

But what pilot costume would be complete without a plane? This was my end of the costume, and this was also made from scratch. Half way during the construction I realized that the damn thing was too big and too fragile for a two and a half year old. Oh well. I'm sure he'll destroy it in good time, as it's only made from foam core and duck tape, with assorted cardboard and spray paint. I did actually use reference from the cartoon to get the details of the plane right, although I obviously played with the proportions.

in other Halloween news I carved my pumpkin with the knife of my white sox love. Below is the result; a mix of the old 80's sox batsmen logo and a jack o lantern.

Also went to the windy city comic-con a week or so back. What a great show. And by all accounts, from what I heard in talking to people at the show, it was busy and successful. I saw a bunch of friends there, and meet some new people as well. It was nice to go to a show that was small and creator focused, the kind of show I've wanted here in Chicago for years, as Wizard World leaves a lot to be desired.

Got to swap books with Jeff Brown, Jeff Lemire, and Neil Brideau. Jeff Browns latest, Sulk, filled with all Big head stories is a blast and quality as always from Jeff. Jeff Lemire was also super generous and swapped me a couple of his trades in the Essex County Trilogy. A beautiful, sad, tale and Jeff is quite nice to boot. Also meet Neil Brideau who I knew from the Indie Spinner Rack Forums. Neil and I swapped as well and his books are fun and creepy in the rich tradition of Gorey, Addams, and Tim Burton.

I also stopped by the table for Short Pants Press, a local distro/publisher. I picked up their new anthology The Short Pants Observer, and meet Sarah and Kristin. The Observer is a quality package, nicely put together with some great comics that were all quite different from each other, (always nice in an anthology). You can check it, and all the other quality wares out here.

Also bumped into Elliot Serrano again, and did yet another interview with him! This time for the Red Eye. You can check that, and Elliot's other coverage of the con here. And don't forget about the signing!
One more thing! Phew, lots of crap to cover right now. The new bindledog cartoon is up! Adam, Jay and I have been working on this one for a while. It's a cartoon featuring the lovable logo character bindledog. I hope you find it sad and cute.

Publicity Stache

Burning Building Comix #5 is done! Yes, the last issue of the series is pencilled and inked, and just needs to be put together. It's very exciting for me to finally be done. Friends have already asked if I'm sad that it's done, and the answer is NO! Not that I don't like working on the series, but I'm excited to get it done and get it out there in the world, and to move on to a new project. I'm not sure what that will be as of yet, but I have a bunch of ideas in the hopper, so I probably won't wait too long before starting up something new.

Also, I wanted to point out that you can see a short comic of mine in a new 'zine. It's about mustaches, and is edited by the talented Sarah Morean. It's called Man-up and you can buy it from Sarah here. Sarah did a great job, and you can find mustache related stories from a large group of people, including Jeff Brown and Tim Sievert.

So keeping with the theme of my last entry, I thought I'd put up some of the articles that have been written on myself and the gallery in the last couple of weeks. It's been a great experience having the gallery show, and I've been very lucky to have very nice people write some very nice articles about me and the show.

Elliot Serrano wrote a great article for the Red eye that you can read below, and also posted the entire audio from our interview on his blog in the link below that. And if you want to hear something strange, Elliot hosts a web series on comics with a former co-worker of mine from my time working at the Comix Revolution. Small world huh? You can see Jose and Elliot for yourself here, and you might be able to see me join them, as I've been offered an open invitation.

http://redeye.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/red-0080508-serranocolumn,0,2135443.column

http://weblogs.redeyechicago.com/geektome/2008/08/my-talk-with-je.html#more

Then I was interviewed for the Pioneer Press by Myrna Petlicki. This was a nice full page article in all the papers last Thursday. I was very happy with it, and Myrna did her homework and even read this blog!

http://www.pioneerlocal.com/parkridge/entertainment/1103549,dc-comics-081408-s1.article

So thanks to everyone for helping me out in getting the word about my comics out there.

OH! I almost forgot another event to mention.

Next month I'll be travelling out to Missouri to participate in a panel about young comic artists. It's hosted by the library at the University of Missouri and is celebrating the 75th anniversary of the comic strip Alley Oop. You can find all the information about the events here. Apparently Alley Oop creator V.T. Hamlin held a bunch of different jobs before the success of Alley Oop, and the panel will focus on the trails of becoming a cartoonist, and the jobs you have to take in the meantime. More info on that as it approaches.

Bragadocious Uber

Finally got some pictures from the gallery show! You can see them on their flickr set here. The show opened on August 1st, and was great. Tons of people showed up! For a couple of hours, it was jam-packed and kinda hard to see the art on the walls. I had a great time and met a lot of cool people. Special thanks to everyone who turned out to the show. I'm really truly humbled when people take the time to stop and lend me their support. It really makes all the time sitting behind a table worth while.

To anyone whom I didn't get a chance to speak to or meet, I'm new to the gallery environment and didn't know exactly how to behave, so excuse me if I didn't introduce myself.

I did get to talk to a couple of different reporters, who interviewed me for various publications. I spoke with super nice guy Elliot Serrano, who writes for The Chicago Tribune's sister publication Red Eye. He wrote up a nice article on the show and you can read it for yourself here.

I also talked to the Pioneer Press and expect to see an article in print August 14th. Plus there's some rumbling about a Chicago Tribune video web thing.

Jeez, does this all sound like bragging? I guess. I'm just very excited and with only a couple pages left to ink on the 5th and final issue of Burning Building, all the hard work feels like it's starting to pay off. And hey, it's presumptuous to even do a blog about yourself, so this is the only forum to go ahead and whore your work out right? I guess.

Thanks to Mike Sims and Jenny Seay who pimped out yours truly on their Podcast cast over at Earth-2.net. You can check out Mike's one stop comic culture news, message board, and podcasting hub here. One of my very earliest comics work was with Mike, doing a Twilight-Zone-esque comic about killer bunnies.

So the gallery show with the other uber talented artists, Alex Wald, Tony Akins, Gene Ha, and Elisabeth Belliveau, will be on display at the Diane Tanios Gallery all of August. Seriously, having now seen all the other artists work up close, man are these guys good, and technical geniuses! Plus, everyone has been super nice and cool to a wet behind the ears, social retard like me.