San Diego

Injury Comics Tour 2007: We'll be at "San Diego" this year (July 26-29). And by "we," I mean me and "Your Bloody Face" artist Jason Robards. We'll be at the Buenaventura Press booth either signing or taking people's money for hot B.P. titles like "Elvis Road" and the latest "Comic Art." Please stop by, say hello and for crying out loud, buy a copy of Injury #1!

Injury Preview

I just posted a quickie Injury preview. More to come.

update

Thanks to everyone who stopped by our table at Mocca. The weekend went so quick - I feel like there were a bunch of cool tables and people I never got to visit. For those of you that picked up Injury, let me know what you think! Or you can wait and get it when it arrives in shops in September (you can order in the July issue of Previews).
See ya

MOCCA

I'll be at MOCCA this weekend sharing a table with my wife, Mardou. I don't remember what the table number is but according to the map it's right next to the restrooms. So if you go for a whizz you'll probably see us. I'll also be over at the Buenaventura Press table sporadically.

Here it is

Click on the wolf to see the cover for the forthcoming Injury Comics. The book will debut at the MOCCA comics fest in New York later this month and will soon be available from Buenaventura Press.

News you can't use

I got bored with updating this blog so I haven't been doing it in a while. To be fair though, I've actually been really busy creatin' and haven't had much time to spare. Here's an update of what I've got going on:
My new book, Injury Comics #1 is being published by Buenaventura Press and will debut at Mocca in NYC in June. The book will be all new comics from me in collaboration with fellow StL cartoonists Jeff Wilson and Jason Robards. They both done South County proud!
This book essentially features manly stories about men's problems. One is about my cyborg character, Manleau, getting beaten up on the street, and the other is a cautionary drug tale acted out by junior high ne'er do well's.
Also, I'll have a contribution in the next issue of Kramers Ergot. I did one page. Wait, wait - it's one HUGE page. It's about the equivalent of ten of your earth pages. My comics page was so big I had to take it to a special place to scan it and those guys were barely able to handle it. Anyway - that's what I was working on the early months of this year. It took me two months but it will only count as ONE page toward my lifetime page count. Oh well. Nobody ever said this comics biz would be a walk in the park.
Watch this space for a sneak preview of the Injury cover!!

St. Louis Mag

There's a spotlight of local StL cartoonists in the June issue of St. Louis Magazine. It's got a picture of Nelly's manager on the cover. The picture above is just one quarter of a collab spread featuring Kevin Huizenga, Dan Zettwoch, Mardou and me. It's a great article with loads of insider info penned by local dean of the culture beat, Cliff Froelich. If you live in town, go grab one. I'll post a link if/when it shows up on their site.

the Thing in my Sketchbook

I saw a cover of "what if" in the comics shop a while back that I dug well enough to copy in my sketchbook. VERBATIM.

Todd H.

Here's what Comic Art magazine's Todd Hignite looks like. According to my brush. Todd asked me to do an illustration of him for a website bio. So here he is inspecting a near mint copy of Canteen Kate. Todd's a pal and a true gentleman of comics. He just put out an awesome volume called In the Studio. The only book that takes you the reader into the private sanctums of guys like Dan Clowes and Gary Panter. Mr. Panter was in town recently for an exhibition of his work at a local gallery. He also did a book signing with Todd. I told him I really liked his tribute to Kirby that ran in the New Yorker. Apparently Panter visited Kirby in the 70's. Man I would love to have been the proverbial fly-on-the-wall for THAT. He said Kirby's pool was empty of water and had craggy, Kirby-esque dirt formations in it.
Anyway...
(update: I couldn't find it earlier but here's a link to an article about Todd and his mystic ways from the St Louis Post-Dispatch. The print version ran my illo but the online version is no-frills.)

TGIFR

Students of comic art take note of this nice page. A short intro to the career of the incredible Frank Robbins complete with some scans of his gone artwork. The writeup is kinda nerdy but also enjoyable - to wit: "With Robbins there is not long dwelling upon abdominal muscles – something you can certainly find in abundance elsewhere."
I've been meaning to post some favorite Robbins pages to my "library" so this may inspire me to get my ass in gear.
Robbins was the best latter-day Batman artist, period. And by latter day I mean post Sprang, Robinson, etc. Check out the splash page I'm posting (click image above) to see what I mean.
It's a little hard to find Robbins' work since editors often didn't let him do the covers of the books he worked on. This is because his material was so fresh it literally blinded people. Certain comics editors found this blinding quality uncomfortable and relegated his work to be shuttered behind lame Neal Adams-esque covers. But that just makes the longbox crawling that much more intriguing.
Robbins was one of the great adventure strip artists before getting into comics. His stuff on Batman was probably his best comics work. He also did great turns on the Shadow and Capt. America before seemingly getting worn down by the system.

Sketchbook | Bugs

Here's some recent bugs I drew

Cover | Flip

Fellow ink-fink Jason Robards was just telling me he's getting into old Mad-style comics. This is one of the neatest covers I've seen of that stuff. Sorry I couldn't get a better scan. My covers page is mostly stuff I find online. Note: if anyone is looking to hand out any old issues of Plop, Sick or Eh! - go find Jason at itscoolsteve.com.

Junk | Monster-oriented trading cards

Here we go. TGIF.

A Kraken li'l drawring

Here's a yar illustration of a Kraken mutilating a vessel. My pal Drew Crowley IM'ed me at work about the next "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie and we all ended up drawing Krakens during a meeting. He posted our drawings over on his blog. So that's one for the sketchbook page.
PERMALINK! (I don't know what that means)

Dream | Norman Fell

Last night I had a dream I was watching Rocky 2. In this movie, they had cast Norman Fell as the coach character played by Burgess Meredith in the first one (Norman Fell played Mr. Roper in Three's Company). I thought this was really excellent casting, but I also thought that it would be absolutely perfect if they would have had him wearing a Beatles wig. And I woke up feeling very strongly that they should have done that.

Reading | Tortilla Flat

Mrs. May and I are currently reading this book, "Tortilla Flat" by Steinbeck. Well, it's an audio book so we are reading it with our ears. And it skips a lot so it's like our ears have dyslexia. Anyway, it's a really good read. I think it would make a great comic but I'm sure some transnational corporation owns it.
It's about a hobo who ends up inheriting two houses so he lives in one and rents the other one out to his hobo buddy. Then the buddy rents part of his house out to another hobo. And so on until the gang of renter-hoboes burns down the one house and the whole gang ends up living in one big Hoborarium.
I found a really great looking book jacket for the novel online so I decided to blog it.

Hugs not drugs

..added to sketchbook page. Drawn during a meeting at work about "dream team". Not the dream team in the picture though. I WISH it was about them. Lemme know if you want to see a strip featuring these characters.

On Sale | Flotation Device

Item! The latest issue of Keith Helt's comics-laden zine "Flotation Device" is on sale online. I did the front and back covers which were then silk-screened by the F-D squad and wrapped around an anthology featuring a bumper crop of small press luminaries. Check out my art: front cover and back cover. Click here immediately to buy a copy from Buenaventura Press.

Cover | Boy Comics

Dig this way out cover. I've been reading this fantastic book about the dawn of comics publishing called "Men of Tomorrow" by Gerard Jones. That got me checking out a bunch of old crime covers from Charles Biro. I came across this gem at the Heritage Comics auction site. Covers don't come much more mind-melting than this. Posted at my little covers page.
By the way - does anyone know if there are any good reprints of Charlie Biro comics floating around?

News Roundup | April 2006

Be on the lookout for the next issue of Vice Magazine. I've got a full-color one-pager in it called "Perils of Heracles". It's a new character from me and he's full of suprises. I'm thinking of making it a weekly strip on this site. Let me know if you dare me to do it. Well - bi-weekly.

Otherwise, I've been working on my bit of the second volume of the Orchid anthology on it's way from Sparkplug Comic books. We have no ETA yet on this thing, but we're getting close.

I haven't mentioned it yet on this site, but I was part of the Riverfront Times' "Best of 2005" listing under the category "Best Public Art (Temporary)". Here's a little scan of the article. The art showing was masterminded by Lisa Bulawsky and her Blindspot Galleries. Here's her photos I don't know what kind of other public art (temporary) my stuff was up against, but it's an honor to be noticed. Thanx Lisa and RFT!

AND - for all you fans of true love out there, I'm happy to announce that I just got married to the beautiful and talented Sacha Mardou. For those who don't know her, she's also a cartoonist - from the UK, no less! Check out her work at mardouville.com.