short pants press expo

This Saturday I'll be joining Sarah Becan and Robert Stevenson at Challengers Comics + Conversation for the first ever

1845 N Western Ave 2R
(near the Western stop on the Blue Line O'Hare branch)
May 22, 2010 1-4pm

We'll be hanging out, signing books, I might bake something for it.  Free Sock-Monster stickers too!

The Stumptown Comics Fest is this weekend!  Stumptown holds a special place in my heart, because it was my first comics show I ever went to (let alone exhibited at).  It's a fun show where most folks are just there to have a good time and support the strong comics community in Portland.  I'll be at table 53B, sharing the table with the Independent Publishing Resource Center (IPRC for short), a really awesome space in Portland.  So stop by if you can, tickets are reasonable, and I'll have at least a dozen vegan Voodoo Doughnuts behind my table.  If I'm goofy, give me sugar!

I realize I never posted an update about how the zine fest went (awesome), or MoCCA (lots of fun).  I'm gearing up to move into the Fun House, and need to start studying what's going on in Tokyo for my travel there in early May. 

When I get back from Japan (mid May), I'm going to refocus my efforts, focusing on drawing comics that have been screaming to get out on paper or the internet. So expect a high output in the second half of the year, though a fairly light con schedule.

Cool!  I gotta get to binding comics for this weekend.  Stop by, say hi, grab a free button with the image above (it GLOWS IN THE DARK)!

Chicago Zine Fest!

In one week we'll be smack-dab in the middle of the Chicago Zine Fest, Friday's reading & art show will have happened, and we'll be just about to open the doors to Saturday's exhibiting & workshops.  It should be tons of fun, I hope if you can you'll come.

We've had a good response from the press, there should be articles in the Columbia Chronicle and Time Out Chicago later this week.  Microcosm did a quick Q&A with us, and the Chicago Underground Library interviewed us on their blog.

In other news, as soon as the zine fest is over, I'll be preparing for the Museum of Comics and Cartooning Art (MoCCA) Arts Fest April 10 & 11 in New York City, and the Stumptown Comics Fest, April 24 & 25 in Portland, OR.

More upcoming events: In May I'm taking a trip to Tokyo to visit my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew.  August 21st I'll be exhibiting at the Minneapolis Indie Xpo!

The next few months will be a bit of a transition for me, as I'm moving down to the Fun House (home to half of the zine fest organizers) at the beginning of May and five close friends are planning on moving from Chicago.  This might be kind of rough, as I've already felt at least one of them pull away from me in expectation of moving to a new life in a new city.

the trash heap (that is my room) has spoken!

Oh sweet lord.  That's a long while since I've posted on the blog.  How embarrassing.  Whatever, that's the point of blogs right?  Just like webcomics, you're supposed to post a bunch, and then leave it to proof until doubled in size...or is that bread?  I don't know.  What I do know is I've been MIA for a while.

So the Milwaukee Zine Fest was pretty inspiring.  So much so that the four of us (Ramsey, Matt, Leslie and I) have been spending the past two months since the fest organizing a Chicago Zine Fest!  Let me tell you, it's a lot of work, but it's coming along.  Here's the info on a convenient poster:

It's totally free, and open to the public.  Registration is open for Saturday's exhibiting.

So yeah, that's what's going on.  If you're reading this, I would love for you to be involved some how, whether it's mentioning it to a stranger on a train, or devoting every second of the next month and a half to putting it together, or anywhere in between.

I've also started tweeting on Twitter.  I was signing up CZF's Twitter account, and I saw all of my friends on there, and I just couldn't resist.  Sigh.  At least I'm wasting my time on the internet for something somewhat productive.

Here's the rest of my life in brief:
• I'll be exhibiting at MoCCA and the Stumptown Comics Fest (this one's not confirmed yet, but the plane tickets are nonrefundable, so if I don't get a table, I'll volunteer) in April on opposite sides of the country.
• I got a new computer, which actually runs at a reasonable speed.  The last straw was when a website literally said "Your computer is too old to use this page."
• My bedroom is a complete and total disaster, I can not keep it clean, or devote enough time to make it clean in the first place.  It's really drafty too, and the low tomorrow is 4°!!
• I haven't been doing drawing any comics lately (not good if I want to have new stuff by April, which I do).  I've been working on character designs for my new 5-part minicomic series, Love Letters.
• Quimby's is AWESOME, today we launched a subscription service, so now you can have your favorite periodical put on hold for you for free!  I bottom-lined the project, and I'm really excited about it, hopefully folks will dig the idea and start subscribing.
• I've been training at Vocalo, to be a collaborator.  I'd direct you to my first audio piece I edited, but I compressed it incorrectly.  So you'll just have to wait until Friday evening.
• James P.B. Duffy is working on new songs!!  We're working on two songs simultaneously, a song I wrote while I was in Friendship is Terrible, and a song Josh wrote about having a crush on a barista.  Pretty awesome, with very different sounds, but some odd similarities.
• My sweetheart has been in Mexico for three weeks, and she's coming back soon (is she in for a weather shock), but I have absolutely no idea what day she's getting back.  No clue.  Does that make me a bad person?
• It's two o'clock in the morning and I'm going to bed. 

cleveland, ho!

Tomorrow at noon, the doors will open for the very first time at the Genghis Con, an Independent Comics show in Cleveland, Ohio.  One of the schmoes behind a table there, hawking his wears will be this guy.  I jump on a megabus tonight at 11:59pm (after working at Quimby's until 10pm), ride through the night, and get to Cleveland at 7:30am.  I'm gonna make a detour to a much-recommended restuarant, Tommy's, and then up to the Beachland Ballroom, where the event will be held from 12-6pm.  After that?  WHO KNOWS!  I'll have about six hours until I need to be back at the bus stop, to head back to Chicago, getting in around 5:30am.  I'll be back at work at five and a half hours later.  Whew, I'm exhausted already.

Ahem. At the show I'll have all my standards, The Trugglemat, Spitting Pennies, What is This? both Alpha City Comicbooks, plus, In Anticipation of Hugs.  As always I'll also have a bunch of free things, comics, uncle envelope propaganda, stickers, and a brand new button.  This thing is probably the most impractical object I've ever affixed a drawing to.  Busy Beaver has started to make OVAL buttons, they're 1.75 x 2.75" much to big for the hipster chic of their standard 1" buttons.  I'm excited about them.

A note about the drawing above.  I drew it on the back of my exhibitor badge at the Windy City Comicon this year, as badges tend to turn around while hanging from your neck (this way people will always know who I am).  If you're hoping I'm gonna look like that tomorrow, sorry, I don't have a haircut (in fact I'm desperately overdue for one), my shoes aren't very new anymore, and I make no promises about having brushed my teeth, or wearing pants.  You never know, I may remember to wear pants.

milwaukee zine fest/pinstriped bloodbath release party

 Yesterday I trekked past the "Cheddar Curtain" to Milwaukee, Wisconsin for the Milwaukee Zine Fest.  It was so much fun!  I went up there with Matt, Leslie and Ramsey (see previous post for links to their blogs and awesome zines).  The fest was at Falcon Bowl, a local nest for the Polish Falcons, which features a bar, bowling alley in the basement and a community ballroom space.  The space housed about 30 tables, full of folks from Milwaukee, Chicago, and Madison.  They all had really interesting zines, and I think I left with more printed matter than I showed up with.

My travel companions/table mates were lots of fun, and I had a great time with them all day.  We ate food from the Riverwest Co-Op and then ate dinner at the Palomino, and had nice conversations.  Everyone at the table had a good day selling trading and giving their publications away.  I moved 85 different books off my table, 20 of which I got money for, the rest were trades or free comics.  I feel bad saying this (as I don't want to talk down any of the comics shows at which I exhibited this year), but it was probably the most enjoyable tabling I've done this year.

As we were leaving, Nicolle, one of the show's organizers asked our table when we would be organizing a Chicago Zine fest.  The rest of our trip was peppered with planning for a zine fest here in Chicago.  So, I'll keep you informed about those plans.

NEW TOPIC:

    This Tuesday I'll be participating in the release party for Pinstriped Bloodbath,  the Chicago gangster comics anthology I'm in.  It's at good ol' Quimby's Bookstore at 7pm.  I'll be there, before hand working and setting up for the show, but my shift ends at 7, then I'll be able to hang out, draw in your copy of the comic, and talk like a gangster, see?  Yeah, see?  On hand should be the following other creators:

Bernie McGovern

Nate Beaty

Rickey Gonzales

Neil "Neil Jam" Fitzpatrick

Sam Sharpe

Jeremy Tinder 

& Editor/Organizer Jeff Zwirek

It should be ton of funs.

freewheel

    Liz Baillie's comics are awesome!  I met her, and started reading her work right when she debuted her tenth and final issue of My Brain Hurts.  The story focuses on two middle schoolers growing up in New York City, and really gives a powerfully dramatic glimpse into an age just between childhood and adulthood.  The thing My Brain Hurts does so well, is it transports you into the characters' world,  and that is true on some degree with all of Liz's work.

    I've also really been enjoying her 2009 Minicomic of the Month Club. Each month she's sent a comic out to subscribers, experimenting with different story telling techniques, and genres.  It's been a fabulous companion to my other monthly subscription, Uncle Envelope.  Tiny little paper surprises at the beginning of the month, usually a day apart from each other, almost as a cure or reward for the misery of mailing out the Rent and utility checks.  I'm really happy I jumped on the MOTMC boat when I had the chance, because Liz is not planning on doing a 2010 subscription.

  One of the prime examples of stepping into the Liz Baillie world is her super meta-comic Sing Along Forever, a comic love letter to her favorite band, the Bouncing Souls.  The comic is of her and fellow comics artist, Robin Enrico, going to a summer-time outdoor punk music festival to meet the band.  The comic's mission is to tell Liz's personal history with the band's music.  The comic version of Liz's mission is for that day's events to be the narrative of the comic book, with her reminiscence of the Soul's impact on her life as flashbacks.  Your reading a comic book of characters of comic book creators creating a comic book. What?  Ugh, that came out far more complicated than it really is, and totally dragged me off course.


    Ahem.  I remember reading Sing Along Forever on the bus heading to work one day.  We got to my stop, so I had to close the book, and get off the bus.  As I pushed the doors open, it felt not as if I was stepping off the bus, but as if I was stepping out of Liz's world, and back into the streets of Chicago.  Sing Along Forever is out-of-print, though I think the Bouncing Souls actually have a limited quantity available to sell.  Do you see a foreboding pattern emerging here?

   FREEWHEEL!  Liz's follow up serial to My Brain Hurts. One part extension of Liz's oeuvre, both visually and thematically ("at risk" youth living without a support network, losing her only true friend, and the struggle to get him back) - one part complete departure!  The protagonist, Jamie has bounced around abusive and neglectful foster homes, but has always had her older brother as an anchor of support.  One day she finds her brother is gone, on his way to Ithaca (no wonder, it's GORGES!  Am I right?  Am I right?  This bumper sticker knows what I'm talking about).  She sets out on her own to find him.  Jamie is younger than My Brain Hurts' main character, Kate, and her adventures are more light-hearted, less grounded in reality, as she becomes entwined with a secret village of forest-dwellers.
Visually, Liz is taking so many more risks with page layout, which adds to the whimsical nature of the story.

    Issue three of the minicomic came out in September, each issue has been better than the last.  Today I found out there wont be a fourth issue. See?  Foreboding pattern solidified.  When I read Liz was ceasing production of Freewheel minicomics, my little minicomic heart sank. Then I thought, "we should totally jack the prices up on Freewheel at work!"

    I've failed to mention that Freewheel was originally a short-lived webcomic on Fall of Autumn's website.  That got nixed, and restarted as a minicomic series, as My Brain Hurts was wrapping up.  Now Liz is reverting BACK to webcomics for Freewheel's publication, and launching http://www.freewheelcomics.com.  The comic will update every Tuesday and Thursday, and is starting with the first issue.  So check it out!  It's totally worth it.  A great webcomic died to make way for a great minicomic, which in turn has died for a great webcomic.

It's the ciiiiircle of liiii-eeee-iiiiife! 

Elton John, ladies and gentlemen.