As hinted to in the last post, here’s an abstract comic. I’m not sure how I feel about it, but it’s certainly different. I’m about halfway through a new Root Hog list. Thanks for voting in the poll below, if you did. Thanks also for your honesty, especially whoever voted for the first option. I’ve decided to hold off on a book club for now, but if you are interested, please contact me and you’ll be the first to know as soon as I start subscriptions.

Here’s this week’s diary comic. I tried to pay special attention to spotting my blacks. “Steve” is Steve Bissette, legendary comics artist and awesome CCS faculty member. As I realized today, Steve is definitely a John Peel-style comics historian — a rarity indeed. Thanks for pointing me to Seton, Steve! Sorry I drew you so weirdly. Coming soon: a comic that will blow your mind, in the “abstract.”

This blog is transitioning. I’m trying to ramp back up to posting frequently. I’m getting a lot of good feedback on my comics, but I’m not working quick enough to post only comics here. John Porcellino, who I blogged about recently, has a great feature in King-Cat called “Top 40″ where he just lists great things he has experienced between issues. This ranges from movies and records to feelings and car trips.

I asked him about the lists, and he said that he just wanted something positive to combat the cynicism he saw growing in zines and punk rock. He doesn’t arrange the items on his lists hierarchically, but poetically, like the rest of King-Cat. I’ve decided to start a list of my own here on the blog and I’m naming it after another King-Cat-ism: Root hog, or die.

1. Where the Wild Things Are movie

2. Chris Ware Granta cover (above), New Yorker cover, and New Yorker story

3. Listening to wind chimes outside while falling asleep on a windy night

4. Tracy Morgan on Fresh Air, being interviewed by Terry Gross (“I feel Terry!”)

5. Jonathan Ames reading his story, “Bored to Death,” on the McSweeney’s App

6. My hand-painted copy of Dash Shaw’s new book

7. Driving stick around town

8. Getting PAID for a comic for the first time

9. Mad Men Season Three

10. Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons — “The Night”

11. “Badlands Billy” by naturalist/artist Ernest Thompson Seton

12. Maple syrup coated baked pumpkin seeds

13. White River Junction halloween parade

Image is Chris Ware’s Chicago cover for Granta. Courtesy of Granta, and Drawn and Quarterly for jpeg.

This one is so brief and so silly I couldn’t resist posting it. However, it also marks my first use of two exciting new techniques. I painted (albeit poorly) the ink-wash background of this page on a separate piece of watercolor paper and scanned it in. Coloring it only took a second, Alison Bechdel style. Also, I inked the thickist lines on the page with my new favorite tool — a cut piece of bamboo I bought at an art store in Boston this weeekend. For art nerds, it has the uniform line of a marker except with live ink! It seemed to hold about as much as a Crow Quill nib does.

P.S.: Vote on the below post!

So my friend Beth here at school started an awesome book club for friends and acquaintances. They pay a reasonable figure upfront and then get all the awesome mini comics she makes throughout the semester. Buoyed by a recent comics-selling triumph, I was wondering if any of my wonderful readers here would be interested in something similar.

If you send me money it’ll allow me to pay for printing cooler books. It’ll also push me to make each book a unique art object and something worth having. I’m really not in the position to sell individual books yet, so this would be the ONLY opportunity to get any of this stuff. Finally, everybody enjoys having something cool to look forward to in the mail, and you can be sure I will make this cool. So any takers? If I do start this I may alter my recently announced online preview policy (see last post), but we’ll see. It’s anonymous so don’t worry about hurting my feelings, but please vote!

I proudly present my newest comic, based one of Aesop’s fables, “The Tortoise and the Birds.” See the back cover for most of the original text. A quick note on comics from now on: I’ve decided that anything I don’t intend to sell that’s under ten or so pages I’m going to post in its entirely here on the blog. I’ll still give sizeable previews of anything I make, and it’ll be all be organized in the “comics” tab above soon. Let’s just say I’m inspired by recent governmental declarations in favor of Net Neutrality. Click on any of the story pages for a close-up.

Every week we have to do a diary comic for our drawing teacher, Steve Bissette. The main point is just to do a page of comics with no strings attached. Experimentation and speed. Early on Steve gave us a photocopied grid of six panels drawn sloppily in thick marker so we wouldn’t worry too much about layout. Personally, I slave over my layout compositions so this has been a real boon. The comic above was drawn inside one of those grid copies, and you will most likely see more on this blog in the future. Two hours from idea to final product. As the projects start to get longer and more complex, that’s become my favorite part of doing diary comics.

This week our assignment was to do a four page comic with “odyssey” in the title completely in the style of Ed Emberley. His piece-by-piece instructional drawing books have made drawing whole worlds easy for generations of children. I presented it to my class in booklet form, but here’s my story, “A Summer’s Day Odyssey,” complete with the note on the back cover.

Our cartooning assignment last week was to do a two strip autobiographical take on a specific old newspaper comic. I was assigned Felix. After reading a whole book of the ’20s strip, I really grew to like the little guy. I decided to put myself in his world and not the other way around. I’m pleased with how it came out. See if you can find the one spot where I forgot to fill in the pattern. Apologies to Otto Messmer.

and…

I’m not exactly sure what gets me about this comic. It’s the inside back-cover page of King-Cat #69. It might be that I had Squmpkin soup yesterday and that reminds me of Skweezil, or just that this simple repetition is the perfect build-up to the last panel, but I want to burst into joyful tears every time I read this.

The author, John Porcellino, has been self-publishing the zine King-Cat: Comics and Stories for 20 years. He described the ideal King-Cat as being like an album of music — part of a larger body of work but complete on its own. Porcellino’s work is an amazing visual poetry. His simple lines are endlessly expressive and are able to evoke groundswells of emotion. It’s not for nothing that Chris Ware has a quote on the matter: “John Porcellino’s comics distill, in just a few lines and words, the feeling of simply being alive.”

Porcellino came to speak to CCS today for a visiting artist seminar. His talk was fun, interesting, and surprisingly emotional. His new book, Map of My Heart, is taken from King Cat from 1997 to 2002 during an especially difficult period in Porcellino’s life. After years battling with various medical conditions and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Porcellino is back on the road and touring with his work. This is a great thing. Though he’s already done with the East Coast, go see him speak (midway down the page) if he’s coming to your town or just try and pick up a King-Cat somewhere.