back to life!

It feels like I've been running on hyper-drive lately, and have missed a few important posts.

Alpha City Comics Issue Two has been published!  It's big, blue, and AWESOME!  I'll be posting it for sale soon on both Etsy and from the well.  I'm really happy with how it turned out, and I hope you enjoy it too.  Kevin and I will be launching a website soon, that will publish Alpha City pages twice a week.

Windy City Comicon was this past weekend.  It was lots of fun. I got to meet a number of really neat people, both from behind my table and in front of others'.

There are a ton of amazing comics events happening in Chicago in the upcoming couple of months, take a look on the right side of the screen.  If you live in Chicago, go to these events.  If you don't live in Chicago, move here!

As you can see below this post, I've started drawing Sock-Monster comics again.  They'll be coming out fairly regularly now, as I write new print comics.  I'll try my hardest to not let print comics obstruct Sock-Monster's schedule.

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.

drawing again!

Woo hoo! I'm drawing a fair amount of stuff these days. Above are some panels from a comic I drew for the Windy City Comicon, the program for which will be a full color comic book, with each guest getting a page to show off their skillz. When you come to the show (you are coming to the show, it was awesome last year), you will get to read the whole thing.

This weekend, I also drew the first installment of Bot Bakery Comics (see above sketch). Over two years ago, I heard about this crazy new vegan, gluten-free food company starting up, that was going to sell baked goods, packaged with comics about robots that made vegan baked goods. WHAT?! Who crawled into my brain and mapped out my dream job for me? I scammed my way into the start up before they even started producing food with promises of hard work and a competent drawing hand. Heh heh heh, SUCKERS! I'm love my job, and soon you'll be able to walk into select Chicago stores and buy delicious, organic, vegan, gluten-free baked goods with a cute comic by me hiding inside (the packaging, not the baked good).

And finally (both in this post, and for the anticipation felt by me and Kevin Sciretta for too long), I'm penciling issue two of Alpha City Comics! I'm having a lot of fun, and I hope you will too.

summer reading recap

Last night was the zine reading/fair at the Fun House, and it was AWESOME! All the readings were super super sweet, and I ended up going last, which made me really nervous. I enlarged copies of pages from What is This? and read it out loud with sound effects, and a funny voice for Lucy, the alien. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. Then I traded for a bunch of zines, and a couple of folks insisted on giving me money for my comics, so I made back about half of the printing costs, which was an added bonus I wasn't planning for.

I'll add it to my "I Just Wanna Draw Comics Fund" savings account I'm gonna try to reopen today.

I've got the day off from work, so I'm running some errands, and then heading down to Hyde Park to have a drawing date with Ryan Alexander-Tanner. I'm drawing my page for the Windy City Comicon program, which is a full-sized comic book, with each creator getting a page. I'm also working on Alpha City Comics #2, I'm 10% done with penciling the book.

summer reading and zine fair

On Thursday I'll be participating in a reading of zines and comics at my friend Leslie's place. I've never read a comic out loud, so it should be an interesting experience. I tried looking into the works of the other readers, so as to provide links, but all I could find were myspace pages. Leslie is reading, and she's pretty cool. So that's reason enough to show up to her event.

There'll also be a concurrent vegan baked good swap going on! How could you NOT go?!

1743 Mozart Thursday, July 2, 2009 7pm. Be there!