Animals and Sundry Tour: Tonight, Chicago

Tonight Jay Ryan and I start the Midwest/East Coast portion of our tour at our friendly neighborhood Quimby's here in Chicago. If you'll be anywhere in the area tonight, stop by. I think I'll be reading "Beginning Paragraphs to Stories I'm Not Going to Write" and "Voice Overs for Non-existent Movie Trailers." Jay will be tall and affable as always.

The details for tonight are:
Wednesday, November 11, 7pm
Quimby's Bookstore
1854 West North Ave
Chicago, IL

Tomorrow we'll be on the radio before our Milwaukee event at 4:30 on WMSE 91.7FM. You can listen to it live online, or it listen to it once it's archived here.

The details for the Milwaukee show are:
Thursday, Nov 12th, 7pm
The Sugar Maple
441 E. Lincoln Ave
Milwaukee, WI

From there, it's on to Columbus, then the coast. I'll do my best to make posts along the way, detailing the events, our on-the-road hysterics, and the disastrous amount of rest stop fare we're sure to consume.

Strange Tales and Lip Balm

The interview I gave (conducted by Sean Collins) for the third issue of Strange Tales is up on Marvel's web site. I digress about everything from British mysteries to ALL detergent. Sort of. My apologies for the inaccuracy in the interview: when the interview was conducted I had planned on Wolverine being the recipient of the lip balm, but for reasons that escape me and hopefully everyone else, I transferred the chapped lips' ownership to Cyclops. I've also never won an Eisner award as the lead-in states, but I will accept this pretend award with hypothetical pride.

Marvel has a couple pages from my story accompanying the interview, or you can see those pages (in a bit easier to view format) along with an exclusive peak of one of Jeffrey Brown's pages for the same issue on Publisher's Weekly's comics blog, The Beat.

Happy Halloween (Shirts)

To celebrate Halloween here on the blog, I'm posting a few (thus far unused) drawings and designs for t-shirts from this year and last year. These may see the light of day at some point in the near future, as I have plans to launch a t-shirt site sometime soon. But for now, enjoy some monster graphics free of charge.

Have a great time tonight and please remember to listen to my all time favorite Halloween song, "It's Halloween" (seriously, this is amazing: go to songs>It's Halloween (last song on the list)... you won't regret it).

Your Weekend Deets

Semi-unlikely Sex Symbol and fellow Chicagoan Charlie Deets recently released this amazing video. You owe yourself a listen and watch.

Charlie's a phenomenal musician and a brilliant photographer, but I was unaware of his talent for being rubbed by portly men.

"The Spoils of The Fair" Today on CellStories

Today you can direct your smart phone's browser to cellstories.net and read "The Spoils of The Fair" from All and Sundry, for free, at your leisure. CellStories is headed by my pal Dan Sinker of Punk Planet magazine, and like anything Dan does, this is another well-conceived and well-executed undertaking.

I'll confess that reading short fiction on a cell phone is something I thought I'd find abhorrent, but after downloading Stanza, perusing manybooks.net, and reading "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" some time ago (not Fitzgerald's best, but quite short), I was an instant convert.

Novels on a phone? No thanks. But short stories have a surprisingly perfect home on your hand held device.

Animals and Sundry Tour

Poster artist, fellow Chicagoan and all around nice guy Jay Ryan and I will be hitting the road in November and December promoting the releases of our respective collections, All and Sundry and Animals and Objects In and Out of Water. Jay printed (the above) posters featuring a collaborative drawing we did and we're getting materials and presentations ready for the tour, which will kick off in Chicago on November 11th.

If you're in or around one of the cities we'll be visiting, stop by and say hello. We'll draw something in a book for you and ask where the bathroom is.

Here are the dates, times, and locations:

Wed., November 11, 7pm
Quimby's Bookstore
1854 West North Ave
CHICAGO, IL

Thurs, Nov 12th, 7pm
The Sugar Maple
441 E. Lincoln Ave
MILWAUKEE, WI

Fri., Nov. 13, 7pm
Wholly Craft
3169 N. High St.
COLUMBUS, OH

Sat, Nov 14th, 4 to 6pm
Million Year Picnic
99 Mt. Auburn Street
CAMBRIDGE, MA

Sun., Nov. 15, 7pm
Rocketship
208 Smith St.
BROOKLYN, NY

Mon., Nov. 16, 6-8pm
Giant Robot
437 East 9th St.
NEW YORK, NY

Wed., Nov. 18, 7-9pm
Atomic Books
3620 Falls Rd.
BALTIMORE, MD

Fri., Nov. 20, 7pm
Carmichael's Bookstore
2720 Frankfort Ave.
LOUISVILLE, KY

Mon., Dec. 7, 6pm
Giant Robot
2062 Sawtelle Blvd.
LOS ANGELES, CA

Tues., Dec. 8, 7pm
Foundation Editions@NOMAD
1993 Blake Ave.
LOS ANGELES, CA

Wed., Dec. 9, 6-8pm
Giant Robot
618 Shrader St.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA

Thurs., Dec. 10, 7pm
D. King Gallery
2284 Fulton St.
BERKELEY, CA

Fri., Dec. 11, 6pm
Goodfoot Gallery
2845 SE Stark
PORTLAND, OR

Sat., Dec. 12, 6-9pm
Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery
1201 South Vale St. @ Airport Way S.
SEATTLE, WA
*Fantagraphics Bookstore's 3rd Anniversary party*

Kennedy and The Magnificent Moots

There is a snippet of these drawings in All and Sundry, but on his blog author James Kennedy goes into greater detail about his novel-in-progress The Magnificent Moots, from which he recently gave a small preview reading (and for which I'll be doing more illustration/comics).

James' previous book, The Order of Odd-Fish (I drew the paperback's edition cover below), is nothing less than ingenious, so I'm expecting more of the same greatness in his sophomore effort.

Pekar Pusses

I contributed my (above) take on Harvey Pekar's noggin to Smith Magazine's Harvey Heads, collecting versions of Pekar's face from dozens of artists. It's a great exercise and amazing how varied the solutions are.

My only encounter with Harvey was sitting at a table in a break room with him and Jaime Hernandez (we were all speaking at UC Riverside) while Harvey told me about a football player whose last name resembled mine in between cramming brownies into his mouth and chasing them with Sprite. Having no idea how to incorporate that fully into a portrait, I went in another direction entirely.

ICAF on Presocratic Philosophy

This Thursday through Saturday, if you're looking for an intellectually driven fix of comics, ICAF (The International Comic Arts Forum) will be hosting a series of talks, panel discussions, and artist presentations here in Chicago at The School of The Art Institute.

One of those panel discussions will be "Presocratic Philosophy and Hornschemeier’s The Three Paradoxes" with Toph Marshall of The University of British Columbia. I won't be in attendance (for obvious reasons I'd feel awkward being in the audience), but if you're in the area and feel like attending, the panel is from 9:30 to 11:00 am on Friday, October 16 in the SAIC ballroom.

You can see the full schedule for ICAF 2009 as well as more information on the forum and organization and the guest artists on ICAF's site.

(Thanks to Diana Schutz for passing along the news.)

More Things Like This: More of Everything

I recently received my copy of More Things Like This from the good people of McSweeney's (though the book was published by Chronicle), and I was trying to figure out how to summarize it. I can't. But at the very least I'll say it's overflowing with work by people I grew up admiring, and seeing a cartoon of mine on the same spread with Shel Silverstein's art is humbling (to put it mildly).

The book is an expansion of the aforeposted gallery show and catalog Lots of Things Like This and includes works from Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Vonnegut, Edward Gorey, Henry Darger, David Mamet, David Byrne, Basquiat, Leonard Cohen, Robert Crumb, and too many others to list. Fellow Holy Consumptionites Jeffrey Brown and Anders Nilsen are in there as well, on pages 199 and 187 respectively. Pick up a copy at your earliest convenience, then buy another when you damage the first from passing out and falling on top of it, ruining the spine and dog-earing the pages.

Hello Mome 17, Goodbye Mome

In Issue 17 of Fantagraphics' anthology Mome, Life with Mr. Dangerous will conclude in a thirty-one page installment (two pages of which is below). For this issue housing the end of the story (and my tenure at Mome), I drew the cover (above) and the back cover.

A million thanks to editor Eric Reynolds for not murdering me as the installments for this book trickled in over the past few years. It's been great being a part of Mome, and I'll be looking forward to future issues.

Carré's Moving Water Man and Friends

From Lilli Carré's excellent blog, Kettle of Fish. Visit immediately to see her various animated creations and works in progress, including her recent, superb poster for the Chicago Underground Film Festival.

Toluca Talk and Weakness

A civic round table from the reliable urine-catalyst Patton Oswalt. If you haven't already, be sure to pick up/download his new album, My Weakness is Strong, which offers another installment from his always brilliant wordsmithing as well as cover artwork from Chicago's own Ivan Burnetti.

SPX-less, More Tour Dates

Just a general announcement: while All and Sundry will be at SPX, I will not. In light of the upcoming tour schedule and the fact that I'll be appearing in the Baltimore area in November, I won't be making the trek down in September.

Count me jealous of all the incredible mini-comics and silk-screened wonders you'll be finding if you attend, and hopefully I'll see you at our Baltimore event at Atomic or one of the other tour dates (which I hope to be posting soon).

Jarvis and Murakami Brand Animation

I just finished watching this (above) new video by one of my favorite artists, James Jarvis, and the video – conceived by Jarvis and sponsored by Nike – reminded me of those relatively rare examples of artists teaming up with corporations to make projects that end up being undeniably personal. Specifically Jarvis' video reminded me of this Louis Vuitton video by Takashi Murakami that I saw while walking by one of their stores in Berlin.