My mom is a saint!

I just saw my mom speak at the New School in a panel about all the new social programs passed by Obama.  She faced off against the token republican guy that used to work for the Bush administration on welfare policy.  ooooooh! Seeing my mom talk brought back many childhood moments of sitting and watching her receive awards and talk about how poor babies need clothes.  I remember when I was in high school thinking she was a saint, but when I went up to congratulate her tonight she remembered it a little differently.  She said when I was seven after some event I went up to her and said, "You're dead meat, mom."  I was such an angel.

I wonder how I will annoy my own children.

SPX Sweden Report

Howdy! I'm back from flitting around the globe again! La dee da!

Here's a sketchbook page from my trip to Sweden's Small Press Expo.  I was brought over by the awesome guys at Galago Magazine and they treated me real nice! Also Stockholm is a design-obsessed magical wonderland and the only thing I regret is not having more time to go to fabric stores, and another ikea-type cheapy store called the Lagerhaus (I think).

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I traveled there with MK Reed and Shannon O'Leary and we stayed in Johannes from Galago's teensy studio apartment.  Mostly we ate pastries and gossiped.  I loved this, because if everything goes well with my pregnancy, I will not have a three-day girl's slumber party situation for another 20 years. We also went to H and M with Mike Diana and we looked at the maternity clothes together.

Alvin Buenaventura, his fantastic assistant Melissa (who runs the girls rock camp in LA when she's not helping to publish awesome things), her pistol of a bandmate Alisia (shit. I am probably spelling it wrong) and I went to this park with a jungle gym that was a series of ropes pulled tight to be like a Buckminster Fuller style spider web.  It had mysterious dog-pig animals with light up eyes, and a circular hammock swing.  We hung out in the jungle gym watching punk kids drink and skate at the other end of the park which was a totally legal skate area.  I hope I will always love watching young people doing stupid crazy shit-though being a parent will probably change that. The boys going round and round the empty swimming pool structures and then popping up to land on a picnic table.  So perfectly zen.  I envy their coordination.

The festival was full of "book-release" parties, where the books were hard to find and the music was loud. They are into Squee there, which I had never heard of, I guess it's like Techno mixed with primitive Atari samples.

The festival was a bit disorganized, on Saturday morning we showed up right as the festival began (our fault), and there were not really any tables reserved or left (weird), so we made our own space in the front room, which was nice, because the Norwegian Dongery guys were late too and they set up across from us.  I also looked on the program and my name wasn't listed anywhere, except to be on a panel with Mike Diana about censorship, which was odd, because I've never had anything censored before.  I asked, and they politely explained that it was a mistake.  Huh.

I thought Shannon did a great job of curating a nice survey of comics, a full selection of Momes and Bottomless Bellybutton for Fantagraphics, many Papercutters and other stuff from Sparkplug, Secret Acres and Bodega presses. People really liked Robyn Chapman's "Hey 4-Eyes" and Theo Ellsworth's "Capacity".

Finns

I was thrilled to see a great selection of Finnish comics from their collective Glomp.  I got Anna Sailamaa's "Ollaan nätisti ", which won the Fumetto Prize this year.  I also met Johanna Rojola and Mari Ahokoivu from Finland who have a blog at www.narttu.net, and they were amazingly sweet and knew all about the international scene. I'm a bit obsessed right now with Finnish comics and culture.  I'm going  to read the Kalevala today.

Swedes

It was very inspiring to meet Anneli Furmark, she's got a really tenuous drawing style, and has had three(oops two) kids and still published four books.   I'm excited to read the piece of her's in the last DQ showacase.  I also met Martin Ernsten who gave me all of his stuff including a stack of english translation print outs of his newest book.

Nords

The dudes from Dongery were really nice too, and had some great work.  Bendik Kaltenborn is a comics force to be reckoned with.  He gave me a stack of english stuff. He better get a publishing deal in the states soon.

The one thing that I really regret was that I didn't bring more Picturebox stuff to sell.  People seemed hungry for substantive, psychedelic madness, and it makes me appreciate the work that Dan does all the more.  All of C. F.'s books sold, and I really thought Cold Heat would kill there. In general the Europeans seem to be much more accepting of eclecticism in comics.  They aren't burdened by having to put everything in a niche, and they don't have the spectre of superheros lurking behind them.  They also can get government grants to help them with their weird projects. It all just makes me want to grab Tim and travel round the globe making comics.

Ta ta for now!  Got to eat more and finish drawing some stuff that's really late.

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Hand Pics, Thanks to The Strand, and a Special Bonus...

Here are some weird night time pictures of the hand...

Richard O'Connor from Asterix Animation wrote up the Desert Island party here and has great pics!

On Tuesday I spoke at the Strand.  I think I was totally under-prepared for this event, which sucked, because the place was packed.  Sorry to anyone who was totally baffled by my "talk".  All my friends say it was fine, you know how this goes.  Am I fat?

One thing talks do is make you try and crystallize what you were thinking when you made something.  I still don't know what I was thinking when I made the Goddess of War.  I want to do it more.  Working on it feels like digging a hole deeper into the ground.  Is that a good thing?  Do people want to read that?

Anyways, this is probably the end of relentless hyping of events and parties for now on my blog.  I am going to get into deeper, psychological blogging now.  If all goes right I'll actually be posting a new drawing or two.

Here are some bonus pics from the San Diego Comicon--both the thrills and the chills ...

Here's my publisher Dan who was this excited throughout the entire thing, and his underlings, Will and Jon.

I geeked out at Comicon and bought $300 of original art from this man (more on my prizes later...):

Next there's Shayna Yates, who makes the coolest fashions around....

Here's a lot of people clamoring for shit....

But look at this great Jack Kirby collage comic!!

Thanks to everyone who came to Desert Island!

Hi!  Thanks to everyone who came out to Desert Island yesterday afternoon for such a fun party. Tomorrow I will go to the Strand and speak, and then I will duck down in my house and not come out for another year while I make a couple new comics.  I feel anxiety and total lack of touch with making comics.  This whole summer has been a bust for making anything, that's depressing to even write.  But August I'm going to disappear and hopefully get some good work done on Calamity, (the sequel to Girl Stories). Good closure for all of this, however, will be going to the Strand and talking about the Goddess of War tomorrow.

Making stuff with friends is fun.

Check out all the cool figures people made for my window decorating party the other night. But there will be more.... much more.

Print for Desert Island!

I just finished making my print for Desert Island. I hope the color looks good. I could see the aqua getting a little gross if it's not just right. Also, Today I'm having an art party to make all the little characters that crawl along the base of the window installation. I bought some oak tag and poster paints. I love those crappy straight from the tube colors. I wonder if anyone will come? I will document my fun evening and post it on my blog!

Goddess of War Window at Desert Island and YOU!

Okay, hear me out...On August 2nd I will be holding a Goddess of War release party at the awesome store, Desert Island. Gabriel, the owner has been gracious enough to let me design and build the window of the store. Long story short, I NEED YOU to help me decorate the window... I decided to make a three dimensional version of this image from my book: I got together some of my most talented art buddies, Jared Whitham and Stirling Krusing, and they are going to help build a gigantic foam hand and a base of detritus for all the little characters to run around in. Here's a sketch... Anyways, I need YOU to help me make all of the little characters that run away from the giant foam hand of GOD! I'll make all of my characters, but I need some of your characters too. I don't care what you create, just as long as they are running, and between 3 and 10 inches high, and they are painted on both sides of a thick sheet of cardboard and cut out nicely. If you are interested, email me at vineshtein@mindspring.com.