Upon first reading, I am somewhat underwhelmed, even if the artist and author are visibly having a ball with the contrafact, pre-war period piece.
Continue reading
I’m stuffing new music onto the iPod on a daily basis, changing around allthe time. The music I play the most at the moment is old rediscoveries from the back of shelves, and some new favorites, sorted below by band, then album:
Continue reading
Mix Tape, side A
Remember when everybody pirated intellectual property? Sure you do! Who hasn’t owned a battered old tape copy of this CD or that vinyl? Or a lovingly crafted, unique mix tape of favorite songs, given to a best friend or special someone?
Working hard, connecting dots to make this happen: If all goes well I should have a concept mini-sketchbook ready by tomorrow’s SPX in Stockholm, a graphic mix tape from me to you!
Continue reading
Here’s a big hug for the fantastic Rikke Bakman who has been a good friend and ever-generous support while I’ve been at Malmö’s Comic School.
She currently works on an autobiographic comic, focusing a whole childhood’s peaks of embarassment into a single summer day.
It’s an electrifying read from what I’ve gleaned over her shoulder, and sadly one that she’s taking her time finishing 
The box in the foreground contains a year’s worth of graphite and colored pencil shavings, the skin shed from her tools while working on the piece.
Since announcing myself for SPX in Stockholm, I had a crazy idea for a mini publication.
Nothing to show yet, but it’s going to be equal parts stupid and neat. Oh, and it’s an Astoria offshoot. Sort of.
I’m going to hate myself for this!
I’ll be in Stockholm over the weekend at the SPX festival, pushing my work and waiting tables for the C’est Bon crew. There’ll be polite enquiries on behalf of the Comics Council, but that’s leisure rather than business.
The Swedish SPX (which, incidentally, is said to predate the US one a couple of years) is held annually at the Stockholm Cultural House, and has grown to become a major venue for the large, Swedish alternative press to strut their stuff and network with their peers.
I am obviously looking forward to joining the Swedes for this event, however discretely, and to peddle my smut to the unwitting masses. There will be some improvised Astoria previews on display, and maybe even some sort of sketchbook goodness!
Astoria creator Allan Haverholm will be at Stockholm’s own SPX festival this weekend, April 25th thru 26th.
He will bring some uncommiting Astoria sketches, hoping to garner some preliminary interest in the project.
Allan will have booth duties with C’est Bon Kultur both days.
The first single for the Astoria album is coming out in time for the MoCCA Art Fest on June 6th-7th.
The single outing will be Resistansen, a song by Norwegian Kaizer’s Orchestra covered for the first time in comic form!
It is a tale of death, lust and delirium in the port city of Bergen sometime in between World Wars, released by discerning Danish “small press, big effect” publisher Aben Maler.
The Resistansen single is published as part of Aben Maler’s 676 spring collection. The 676 series of standalone books are all 13×13 cm, 24 pages, black and white publications with two-color covers.
Also out in time for MoCCA is From Wonderland With Love, an anthology featuring the best new comics out of Denmark in recent years, including Astoria visual artist Allan Haverholm.
From Wonderland… is co-published by Aben Maler and Fantagraphics Books.
Eddie Campbell’s How to be an artist may be my favorite. Comic. Evah.
He mixes veiled biography and anecdote with a tongue in cheek, future tense second-person narrative mocking how-to manuals, riddled with aphorisms:
“Everybody will be full of unfulfillable promise in the cheery winesodden Friday afternoon of your life when you feel an unbearable nostalgia for events less than a day after they happen. You just see if I’m not wrong, Alex MacGarry. Just see if the Monday morning of your life don’t arrive like a broken elevator.”
(Alec MacGarry being the artist’s alter ego, to whom the instructions are directed)
If it weren’t enough that Campbell is a master of his craft, a razor-sharp critic of the comics medium, and a satyrically inspired autobiographer, his first-hand descriptions of the British comics scene of the 80′s would alone be worth twice the book’s weight in India ink.
“… guys with one eye on the coolometer and myopic guys, dilletantes, pretenders, complete wankers, sweethearts, boy geniuses. They’ll all traffic past you,” and more in-depth portrayals of the people closest to Campbell, er, MacGarry.
Also: the “Bam! Sock! Pow! Comics aren’t for kids anymore!” of the mid- to late 80′s –
“Batman. Well, of course, the whole plot has already gone to fuck as you can see right there. But it’s too late. It’s in the hands of the PR yuppies.”
- and the mess that remains the graphic novel -
“It’s a misnomer, of course, but the so is ‘comic book’ [...] The term will embody the arrival of an idea; a serious intent will be brought into the common comic and remain as a trend through the last quarter of the twentieth century, perhaps further.”
You will need to read this book, at least fifty times. In the end you may have to actually buy it.
In the meantime, Campbell is equally witty and contentious on his blog, Fate of the Artist.
You have been properly instructed, now go be an artist.