Allan Haverholm » mocca 09

Out and home again

Allan Haverholm — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:42:39 +0000

It’s been a fun few weeks, MoCCA coming and going, the whole NY experience and all.

I managed to have the Black Sabbath single done for the festival, plus a similar-format outline of the entire project. The latter may be up on the site as a PDF in a few days.

Generally, immediate reactions were great to my water-colored Sabbath interpretation, which I’d managed to print, assemble and trim by myself late Wednesday night before leaving for NY.

Also, Danish publisher Aben Maler had an early start on their latest collection of 676 booklets and, as mentioned earlier, my Resistansen is one of them.

Resistansen doubles as a single off the Astoria album, but unfortunately the size is a couple inches too small to count as a single proper. Of course, the main attraction was From Wonderland With Love, the Fantagraphics anthology of Danish comics I am also part of.

A big, beautifully flexibound book, Wonderland features a lot of my personal favorites in the Danish comic field, and a few that I look up to as well. It couldn’t have pleased me more to be signing our book on Sunday at the Fanta table.

I’m posting all this in hindsight because A) there was no WIFI at the 69th Armory where the festival took place and B) the WP iPhone app that I’ve used to post here went belly-up, and I mistakenly thought it meant the hostel WIFI was b0rked, too.

All in all a great MoCCA for me, but I realize it’s been pretty lame for those who have been waiting for news from me. Don’t worry, I found a replacement for the bust blogging app

Not Mike Royer :(

Allan Haverholm — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:34:44 +0000

Here’s a few samples of today’s inking session on Engine City.

The vigil observer will notice that I’ve focused on the characters in most panels/spreads. True, I started with the fun part

Falling to pieces

Allan Haverholm — Thu, 28 May 2009 05:56:10 +0000

It’s a week before I’m leaving for MoCCA’s Art Fest, and the material for the singles isn’t done yet by a long stretch. Head is literally spinning with stress.

Don’t worry though, the book(s) will be out. Printers work fast these days

Gearing up for MoCCA

Allan Haverholm — Tue, 26 May 2009 06:08:07 +0000

Work on Astoria singles progressing at a steady pace, even though I have dropped everything else to prepare singles in time for MoCCA Art Fest June 6th-7th.

Scaling down from 12″ to 7″ square pagesize freshens up the work, as does the tight schedule. It’s both exciting and counter-productive to work against the clock like this but I often find it a great way of getting stuff out.

Besides, I have spent way too long thinking and planning the project, which doesn’t exactly characterise the 2-3-go rock’n'roll I usually favor.

Better to just bang some great comics out, even if the planned singles are played sort of safe — Black Sabbath and Engine City being riffs on other people’s work (Sabbath and Jack Kirby, respectively).

The B-side to each single will give pointers to some of the other directions I am taking Astoria. Thankyou’s to my Danish editor Torben Hansen of Fwd Pub for reminding me there should *be* B-sides to complete the concept

No sleep ’til MoCCA

Allan Haverholm — Mon, 25 May 2009 05:40:39 +0000

So starting today I have 12 days to finish three works in progress, prepare them for print, get them back from the printer, and drag them to New York for MoCCA’s Art Fest.

I do love a challenge, and the pressure of a deadline, but already the prospect of not sleeping for a week is wearing me out.

Above and below are a couple of snapshots of the track I am currently working on, Engine City. It’s a tribute to Jack Kirby, and to the industrial substandard of 1970′s floppy magazines …