Superdog Underdog

Well, between the Gallery show coming up and inking Burning Building #5, I've been working extra hard lately, so I'm just gonna remind everyone about the show. The artist's reception is this Friday, Aug 1st and the show will run through the end of the month. Come one, come all. Here's the link for all the information: http://www.dianetaniosgallery.com/ The reception is from 6 to 10pm and I've been told there will be valet parking. So, hope to see you there!

Low Brow?

Okay, it's official! Issues #3 and #4 of Burning Building are finally done and available to be ordered on the website. For those of you keeping track, that's stories 5-8! They, as always, are 19 pages in B&W, with full color covers and come with a piece of burned paper glued inside to the front of the book. Pictures of these things can be found on the website (and thanks to my bro Adam for taking care of that for me). Also, most every time a comic is ordered from me, or bought at a convention, I will happily do a little sketch inside the book. These are especially fun cause I like to do all sorts of wacky character designs that I can't afford to do in Burning Building proper.

Also, I'm going to officially announce my participation in a Gallery show here in Chicago. It's with the Diane Tanios Gallery in Lakeview. It's starting on August 1st, and will feature a giant reproduction of the entire Burning Building facade! As well as color prints from Issue #3 of Burning Building on display. There will be 19 different prints depicting the entire storyline. You can see the other artists participating and get all the details here: http://www.dianetaniosgallery.com/ I'll get pictures posted here as soon as I get them.

Been working on Burning Building 5 as well. The final issue of the building! I've been going at a pretty good clip, and am nearly done with all the pencilling, and will begin inking soon. Here's a preview of an early page in the blue pencils.

Those of you with keen eyes might recognize one of those characters from a previous Issue of Burning Building.

Saw Wall-E this weekend with my wife Emily, brother Adam, and my boy Van. It was Van's first movie outing and he did pretty well. He didn't sit the whole time, but he pretty much stayed out of trouble and we got to stay and watch the whole thing. I'm a big fan of Pixar and given how much positive buzz was coming out of Wall-E, I was pretty excited to see it. It didn't disappoint either. It may have been the most adorable Pixar movie, which is weird cause it was all robots, but they managed to cull as much damn charm out of some digital sound as possible. I could have heard those two stupid robots call each other by name for 4 hours! It was cute as hell.

A Stroll in Whales

I've recently been busy putting together some work for a gallery show. I'm still working on the details, and I'll be posting the particulars here when the time comes, but basically it will be a gallery show for comics in downtown Chicago. The plan is to display some Burning Building work, and so far it's coming together nicely.

So, this has put the delay on getting the new comics posted on the website, but I've got that all taken care of now, and I just have to wait for my brother Adam to do the magical website stuff.

Hey now, there's a nice shot of man with his dog. Unfortunately It's not my dog. I'm allergic. However, I wish I could have a dog just so there would be more pictures like this. What a lovely picture.

So, I took the boy out for a walk to the park today and I must confess that I love being a dad. There are these moments when I'm with Van, and something happens that takes me back to that age. Today, I was pushing him home in his stroller after a nice time in the park. We were going down the sidewalk and it was a quiet summer afternoon. There was a nice warm breeze and as I pushed the stroller I became aware of a steady rhythm as the wheels bumped over the segments of cement. I looked down and saw Van lulling off to sleep, and the memory of falling asleep myself after an afternoon trip to the park was a real as yesterday. And so was that feeling of calm and simple happiness. As I finished pushing the stroller home with that regular rhythmic cadence off the sidewalk I couldn't help but think that this kind of serenity, with the warm tranquil stillness, must be what it feels like when Buddhists meditate.

Somewhat related to that, I'm reading Moby Dick right now. I've read a little of Melville before, and liked it, and I try to read classic literature to help me feel smarter than I am. Anyway, it's slow and very descriptive and I have to admit there have been moments where it's lulled me off to sleep. There was this passage I just finished though that I thought was so nicely written and original a thought, I wanted to share it somehow. So here it is:

"Whales are scarce as hen's teeth whenever thou art up here." Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absentminded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly discovered, uprising fin of some indiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space; like Cranmer's sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over.

I think that passage is talking about young sailors being lousy at spotting whales. Come on, huh? That was three sentences! There's seven semi-colons! Seven! Now, that's writing!

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.