we're all gonna die

Above are a couple panels from the minicomic I'm working on.  I'm expecting it'll be about the same length as Spitting Pennies.  I'm about half-way through the thumbnails for the first of five issues.  I really want to have it done by SPX this year (which is about 100 days away), but I'm not going to sacrifice the comic's quality to have it done in time.  I do plan on having new stuff at SPX, though.  New free comics, a brand new Sock-Monster comic on a button, hopefully a split minicomic with a good friend we've been working on for months and months...

  In other news, we've been digging a rain garden at my house, and today we finished the digging!  Now we just gotta lay some compost and seeds, and hope it rains.  If the weather keeps going the way it's been going the past couple months, that last part should not be a problem.

Jacked on caffeine,
neil.

small press expo recap

Here's the Rubenstein/Brideau table spread for this past weekend's SPX.  I had a grand old time.  Let us pretend to remember, shall we?

I took a 17-hour Amtrak ride down to DC, and met Kenan at the Bethesda Marriott Hotel, where SPX took place, and checked into our hotel room.  We immediately jumped back on the DC Metro, down to Union Station and caught the MARC train up to Baltimore, which was a smooth and fun ride. The MARC train looks like a space ship in the inside, unlike the Metro trains, which look like space ships from the outside.  My best friend from college, Doghed, who now lives in Baltimore met us at Penn Station, and we drove over to the neighborhood that houses Atomic Books, for a comics reading.  We stopped into Golden West Cafe to have dinner with another friend from college, Joe Mulhollen.  It was all quite exciting.

  Atomic Books held -for the third year in a row- SPXplosion, an unofficial pre-show party which featured readings by folks like Sarah Glidden, Corinne Mucha (who I thought stole the show), Julia Wertz, and R. Sikoryak, as well as an awkward presentation of the Nerdlinger Awards (not hosted by founders, Liz, MK or Robin).

  After the event, Doghed, Kenan and I headed back to Bethesda and stayed up until 3:30 am binding comics.  I can't really blame procrastination, because I'd been working hard on preparing for SPX for the past three weeks.

  The Small Press Expo takes place in a large hotel ballroom, with a couple hundred tables filled to the edge with comics, prints, t-shirts and hand-made toys.  The show attracts comics artists both established and unknowns to set up shop, and sell, trade or give away their comics.  This was the third year attending the show, the last two years I volunteered for the show, and brought comics to trade with folks.  This year I ended up behind a table with my good friend, Kenan Rubenstein.

  Saturday was a very busy day!  The sea of humanity that flooded the aisles never let up, and instead of waiting for a lull, I just ended up running away from my table near the end of the day to say hello to some acquaintances, who happened to have comics I new I wanted to grab.

  Sunday was less busy, but not slow by any means.  I did step away from my table more, though I was nervous the entire time I was away.  I met some really cool folks, and picked up some really exciting comics, that in future posts I hope to mention.  All in all, I sold out of three titles (including both of my debuting titles), and sold, traded and gave away a lot of all of my comics.  I was really happy with the reception my comics got by folks.

  On Sunday, my friend Becky stopped by and delivered 10 sticky buns from Sticky Fingers, a vegan bakery in DC, which I shared with my table mates, and a few friends who were sitting in other parts of the show.  Later in the day, a third college friend, Patience surprised me by showing up at my table.  I hadn't seen she visited me in Providence, the summer of 2003, right before I moved to Chicago.  Besides giving me the amazing gift of her presence, she gave me an amazing hand-drawn flip book she had made called "Herculean Snail," which brought a smile to everyone I showed it to.  Seeing Patience amplified the awesomeness of the weekend exponentially.

  Saturday night, Kenan, Sam Sharpe, and Reid Psaltis went out to dinner to Yuan Fu, a vegan/vegetarian restaurant a couple miles away from the hotel, and got back to the hotel in time for the Ignatz awards.  No one I voted for won, but I still thought everyone who did was well deserving of their bricks.

  I had a lot of fun hanging out with Kenan and Sam (who shared our room Saturday night).   After SPX was over on Sunday, the three of us packed up our tables, and trekked into DC, and met up with Becky, and had dinner at Busboys and Poets on 14th.  We then unloaded our hauls and read comics in our pajamas until late into the night.

  The next morning Becky went to work, Kenan jumped on a megabus, Sam headed out to Dulles airport and I made my way to Union Station to get back onto the Amtrak.

  My first year exhibiting at SPX was a great experience, and I owe it to good friends, and the great interactions I had from behind my table and in front of others'.

  Now I need to regroup, and get myself in order for the Madison Zine Fest (10/2), Alternative Press Expo (10/16-17) in San Francisco, and the Milwaukee Zine Fest (11/12-13)!  See you there?

happy bethesday!

Here's a quick update for this upcoming weekend, which if you don't know by now is the 16th annual

SMALL PRESS EXPO in Bethesda, Maryland (which is a block away from the White Flint stop on the Washington DC Metro's red line).

I've been working pretty hard to get everything ready for the show.  I'll have old stand-by's like the Trugglemat, Spitting Pennies, What is This?, and both Alpha City Comics.  I will also have these exciting new titles:

  oh boy, Comics! #1, which debuted at MIX three weeks ago, is a 106-page collection of previously printed comics that have appeared as free comics, online comics and anthology pieces that have not been readily available.

  write now!, debuting at SPX is my newest contribution to the paper-surprise-in-the-mail service, Uncle Envelope.  It's a love letter/tutorial on self publishing for kids, and comes with a zine written by the main character of the comic.

  Also debuting at SPX will be a comic I'll only have available at shows, Secret Formula.  It's an adventure comic printed as a scroll and packaged in a glass tube.  The secret formula is revealed at the end of the strip, and is one you can use.

  I'm excited to be sharing a table with Kenan Rubenstein, a good friend and a great comics artist.  Sharing our room will also be Sam Sharpe.  He'll have a new gag comic and t-shirts?! We'll also labeling our hotel room the "nerd room," a space folks can visit on Saturday night.  While other rooms will have raucous parties and have management called on them, our goal is to be a space for those not interested in getting drunk (though it wont be a dry room, neccessarily) or being loud, but those who'd like to read comics, draw, trade comics, a pretty much nerd out on comics.  It's kinda like the quiet car on the commuter train.

  Speaking of commuter trains, Kenan and I will be taking a mass transit adventure, traveling by commuter train to Baltimore on Friday evening for Atomic Book's SPX-Plosion!  It should be tons of fun.  Especially because one of my best friends from college, Mischlepity (aka Schlep, aka Doghed) now lives in Baltimore will be hanging out with us!

If you're in the general area of North Bethesda, get thee to SPX this weekend!

mix and spx

That's me at the end of MiX, the Minneapolis Indie Xpo, holding my comic that debuted there, Oh Boy, Comics! #1.  MiX was tons of fun! You can check out photos from me and other folks who went on the MiX flickr pool.

I had the great fortune to have Sam Sharpe (above) join me as a traveling buddy and table-neighbor.  He's a real stand up guy, and I had a lot of fun with him.  We left Chicago on a megabus at 10:30 Friday night, getting into the City of Lakes at 5:30 am.  We spent the entire weekend together, and I did not for one minute get tired of his company.  Conversation revolved almost entirely around comics, both singing their praises as well as venting frustrations, and gossiping, it was lots of fun.  On Sunday Sam and I explored a small chunk of the city, walking from the Seward Cafe to the Minneapolis Institute of Art to Big Brain Comics.

I also got to hang out with some really great folks, like Dylan Williams, Aaron Renier (who traveled back to Chicago with me and Sam on the bus), Noah Van Sciver, John Procellino, Amanda Elliott, Justin Madson, Lale Westvind & Ian McDuffie and Jeremy Tinder!  But the kids that took the cake this weekend were my and Sam's (and Dylan's, and John's,  and Noah's!) hosts, Raighne and Meghan Hogan, known to the comics world as 2D Cloud, producers of the Good Minnesotan.  Look, here they are now:

 
They were super friendly, welcoming and accommodating, and hilarious and fun to be around.   They're exhibiting at the Madison Zine Fest in October.  I will be too, so I'm excited to see them again!

The show itself was really well put together by Sarah Morean and Andy Krueger.  They clearly cared about the exhibitors, providing us with pizza (regular, vegan, or gluten free depending on your dietary wants and needs), and fans to keep us cool.  It was hot and muggy that day, but the room I was in stayed nice and cool all day.  The venue was fun, and the attendees seemed really interested in comics, even if they were not regular consumers.  Hats off to Sarah and Andy, they did a bang up job, and deserve a round of applause.  I'm looking forward to MiX 2011!

No sleep for the comics maker, though.  In just two weeks I'll be jumping on a train to our nation's capitol to exhibit for the first time at the Small Press Expo (SPX) in North Bethesda.  I've volunteered at this show -which is commonly known as the premier independent comics show in the country- for the past two years, but now I'll be sharing a table with my comics kindred spirit Kenan Rubenstein, and zinester extraordinaire Caitlin M!  I'll be debuting my Uncle Envelope comic write now! which is both a love letter and tutorial to self-publishing.  I'll also be debuting Secret Formula, an adventure comic, which I probably will only sell at shows due to its secret odd packaging.  I'm still drawing it, but here's a preview of the comic:

Sock-Monster production will (already has) suffer from preparation for SPX, but I'll try my hardest to eek some comics.  That's all for now!

what a day what a day

I'm going to try to write this blog post, the explosions in my neighborhood at 1:30 am will help keep me up.

I woke up at 6 this morning and jumped on my bicycle, I proceeded to ride it 26 miles, moving my brand new dining room table (thanks EK) from ravenswood to Logan Square.  First I had to fetch my friend Dan's bike trailer in uptown, so there was a lot of back and forth.

  Then I went to work.

Then I got home and I...FINISHED MY MINICOMIC!

I'm really excited about it.  But unless you subscribe to Uncle Envelope by the end of July, you'll  have to wait until mid September before it's available through me (it will debut at SPX, and be available on etsy the following week).

  Then I uploaded a new Sock-Monster comic

THEN!  I uploaded my new fromthewell.info website!

WHAT?!  That's it, I'm going to bed.

ed luce nominated for ignatz award

I was very excited a couple days ago, looking at the nominees for this year's Ignatz Awards, hoping there'd be a fun surprise, a friend or artist whose work I really like being nominated.  Or maybe Achewood wouldn't get nominated for best online comic, and someone else could win for a change.  Well, I wasn't disappointed (besides the fact that Achewood in fact was NOT nominated), as in the Promising New Talent category, tucked in the middle was the name Ed Luce.

I personally have never met Ed Luce, but his work was an influence on mine early on, as he and I share in the history of the Untouchable Leader Lampoon.  The Leader Lampoon is the comics & humor section of SUNY Fredonia's school newspaper.  While a student at Fredonia, I was a regular contributor to the Lampoon, and in my Junior Year became the editor, a title I held until I graduated from Fredonia in 2001.  When I first got to Fredonia, the Editor was a Senior, Chris Bishop.  He took me under his wing as a cartoonist, and made me fall in love with large areas of black from the tips of sharpies.  Following Chris' editorial tenure, Rich Fancher took over for a year, and then I got to take up the mantel. 

The Lampoon (which earned its "Untouchable" status my Freshman year, after Chris "dodged" a lawsuit for one of his comics), is one of the only papers from a SUNY school that had an active comics section.  Other SUNY papers that would come in to our office often had syndicated strips the papers would buy to print in their pages.  Usually they could only afford one strip.  The Leader Lampoon sometimes had FOUR whole pages of comics, by tons of students from a variety of majors, and points of view.

As an editor, I actually had a desk -the one right by the door, what were they thinking?!- and access to the filing cabinets full of old issues of the Leader from years past.  I used to spend hours, when I should have been drawing mine and Kevin Sciretta's first comics collaboration, SUPERFANTASTIQUE, reading through the old Lampoons from long before I arrived on campus.

That was where I first found the comics of Ed Luce.  I definitely remember the name, and that I really liked his stuff, though I can't now be sure what his work was.  I do remember a strip I'd like to think was his, a very surreal comic that involved photocopied characters, such as a photograph of a fish, and maybe a distiller?  Now I think I'm making things up.  

Ed's newer project, Wuvable Oaf comics is in its infancy, issues zero and one have been self published, and it's pretty awesome.  It follows the comedic hijinks of members of a gay bear community, the title character truly being a wuvable oaf, who runs a home for wayward cats.  The art is fantastic, and the humor is top notch.  Ed is certainly deserving of the Ignatz nomination.

I'm really excited a fellow Leader Lampooner has been nominated for an Ignatz. Go Blue Devils!

KAPOW!

I spent the day yesterday drawing at my friend Ryan's temporary digs. I say temporary, because he got into town late June, and he's leaving Chicago for New York City tonight. Bon voyage, sir! Drawing with Ryan a couple times while he was in town made me remember how much I love being social while drawing. In college, I constantly had folks I could bounce off ideas with, or at least pass the hours of creating with. Alone in my room, I get antsy quickly, which often makes it difficult to get anything done. Alpha City #2's original release was supposed to be just after Stumptown in APRIL, the delay has primarily been my inability to sit still -or say no to other projects.

Speaking of other projects! I'm planning on entering Oni Press' Talent Search competition (by mail), and I've started formulating a script full of safe cracking and corsages for an anthology Jeff Zwirek is putting together for SPX.