Scars for life

I dunno. Sometimes I come across comics art that just leads me to wonder: man, will I ever make something this cool? I just posted such an item in my long-neglected gallery of covers.

BP Shop

Injury is now for sale at the Buenaventura Shop. The first 100 sold are signed by me and Jason Robards. There' a bunch of other cool stuff over there as well. If you're interested in Injury buttons, I'll have those up on this site soon.

Sap and Chicago

Item! Those attending the Chicago Wizard-World can grab a copy of Injury #1 before it hits stores in September. Jason Robards will have some available at the Short Pants Press table in Artist Alley.

Plus! Injury family member Jeff Wilson just released Sap #8, the latest installment of his magnum opus. Get one from his site here.

Also - thanks to all of the San Diego con-goers who bought a copy of Injury or just stopped by the table. That show is like being inside a comics-themed pachinko machine. It's bottled insanity which makes for a great weekend, but for an artist, it's also a little unsettling to see the grinding wheels of the slurry pump itself.

SDCC bulletin

I'll be bringing new, limited edition Injury fashion pins to SAN DIEGO this week. If you're going to the con, make sure to swing by the Buenaventura Press table and pick some up to wear whilst reading Injury #1.
Thankx to Joel at 1x1 Art for making the pins of my dreams possible. Pin set hand made by Mr and Mrs COMICS at Injury HQ!

previews

For those of you that do this sort of thing, you can order Injury at your local comics shop from the July issue of Previews.
I was gonna blog more but this weekend got away from me. My car is starting to fall apart and I'm replacing it one part at a time.

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.