This past weekend I finished my contribution to the food-and-eating themed comics anthology Digestate, edited by JT Yost. My comic is a four-paged story called “The Miizzzard ATTACKS the Munchies.” Here’s a preview panel:
I may have gone overboard with patterns for my comic but I think it’s a fun one. Yost has put together a truly impressive collection of cartoonists for this book, check out his blog for a full list and sample images. Digestate debuts at this year’s SPX.
Happy Friday the 13th y’all!
For my comic for the food and eating comics anthology Digestate, edited by JT Yost, I worked on a new design for my recurring frog character, check it out:
Frog has appeared as the Miizzzard’s psychopomp in my unfinished minicomic series Hyperbox, as the manifestation of a shamanic curse in Froghead Hangover, and was the star of the comic I drew in college for The Daily Texan. This is what Frog used to look like:
I also like to throw random frogheads into my drawings and paintings. Digestate debuts at SPX 2012.
Hey ya’ll, I just dropped off the Josh Burggraf-edited psychedelic sf anthology Future Shock at Domy Books here in Austin. Check out the cover:
Future Shock is 44 full-color pages of freak out sf short stories by the main man JB, Anuj Shrestha, Pat Aulisio, myself, and Victor Kerlow, drawing comics solo and collabo. I’m really excited by what Josh has done with this, but don’t take my word for it, check some words of praise from Tim Callahan in a post-MoCCA review roundup on Comic Book Resources. The anthology is $7. I also restocked Vortex #1 and #2.
In other news, comics by both me and Burggraf got reviewed by Rob Clough on High-Low in a roundup of “odd genre minis”. Clough has this to say about Vortex #2: “Working big and using so many decorative patterns gives this issue a psychedelic feel, yet one that’s grounded in rock-solid and simple layouts.”
I just sent a stack of Vortex #2 to my buddy Ryan Dirks in Portland. He took some over to Floating World Comics in Portland, so if any of y’all are there, y’all can now pick up both issues of Vortex there.
Dirks holding up a stack of V#2.
Dirks also posted some kind words about my comics: “I love how he uses space and rocks all the different tones. Everything has a melty, trippy, dreamlike quality to it, very unique.”
Back in February I announced that I was applying for the final round of the Xeric grant. A couple of weeks ago I got a letter informing me that I wasn’t selected. I’m not going to let the rejection slow me down. Putting my work out there for review, for sale, or for awards means that it might get rejected. Anyone who wants to be a creative professional needs to have a thick skin.
The Xeric website.
I applied to self-publish a comic that’s already posted on my website, Moon Queen. I wanted the funds to do a two-color offset print production of that comic. Because I was drafting a plan with potential buckets of cash, I thought about and researched a publishing, marketing, and distribution plan that’s way more ambitious than anything I’ve done with my comics so far. Formulating that plan means the Xeric helped me out before I even mailed in my application. Not getting the Xeric doesn’t mean I can’t implement some (or all) of these ideas in future self-publishing projects, I’ll just need to save my own pennies. But I’m not sure at this point if Moon Queen will exist in print. We’ll see.
The cover for Moon Queen, click to read it.
Applying to the Xeric was something I’d been wanting to do since I first started reading about self-publishing comics in high school. I’m glad I finally got my shit together and did it. It’s a bummer that there are no future rounds of Xeric funding. I think the opportunity that the Xeric gave people isn’t quite replaced by self-publishing on the web, which requires a different skill set than self-publishing in print, and Kickstarter, which is only successful if a cartoonist has an existing audience. Fortunately the Sequential Arts Workshop, a new comics school in Florida, recently announced that they’re stepping in to fill the void left by the Xeric with micro-grants for self-publishing. The first deadline is August 15th, 2012, go apply!
Thickness #3 is now for sale online!
The cover for Thickness #3, drawn by Edie Fake.
Thickness is an anthology of erotic comics edited by Ryan Sands and Michael DeForge. For #3, Sean T Collins and I collaborated on a ten-page comic called “The Cockroach.” We’re in there alongside a bunch of other fantastic artists. Here’s a photo of the title page of Sean and I’s comic:
All of the interior pages of Thickness are printed in two-color risograph.
This was my first time drawing a comic from a script. I had a lot of fun with it – it gets extremely gross and gooey!
I’ve been taking it easy since I finished my collabo with Sean T Collins for Thickness #3, just sketching and doing fun ink drawings. One idea I have is to do a series of five-eyed office-dwelling cat-demon drawings. Here’s one of them:
Would y’all be into a zine of these d00dz?
I’m contributing a short comic to the J.T. Yost-edited food-and-eating themed anthology Digestate along with a bunch of other awesome folks:
Digestate promo image by cartoonist Victor Kerlow, who also has a comic in the latest Catch Up.
Yost has already raised funds to print the anthology through Kickstarter. But if y’all want to snag a copy, throw in some bucks here in the next nine days.
I’ve also gotten two reviews of Vortex #2.
Page 18 of Vortex #2.
In Edie Fake’s review for the Quimby’s store site, he says, “Thick-like-a-brick linework barely contains another dose of filled-to-the-brim fill pattern madness.” Click here to read all of Fake’s review and order a copy from Quimby’s in Chicago if you’re so inclined.
Meanwhile, over at Optical Sloth, Kevin says, “Once again the art is amazing, as there are all kinds of creatures and objects floating around that are just begging for a more detailed description, and the story is picking up steam nicely.” Click here to read the entire review.
Here are two sketchbook pages. This first one started out with Vortex #2 drawings but then I just let my mind wander:
This second one is a sketch for Page 20 of Vortex #2 (you can see the final version in this preview):
Also, I almost forgot to mention, Thickness #3 is debuting this weekend at CAKE in Chicago. Sean T Collins and I collaborated on a ten-page story for it. Check it out!
