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.

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.