Hey y’all,
Been a non-stop busy year and I am loving it so much. Miss getting on this old blog, though. Haven’t even had much/any time to write for the Comix Cube. Thankfully, I’ve got some good reasons why.
Aloha my dear friends. It’s convention season again, which as far as this year is looking, basically means from now until 2013 I will be going to comics shows. I did miss the excitement in the two months I had off. One of the goals I had made for myself last year was to expand the range of shows I exhibited at, with a focus on the more indie-aimed shows. So in this spirit, the first show of the year is the Chicago Zine Fest, an amazing exhibition celebrating the aspects of this game that mean the most to me – self publishing and Doing It Yourself.
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As I slowly get myself back into the habit of doing this Cube thing, I wanna talk about kids. I really love reading, watching and hearing about the life stories of teenagers. There’s something excruciatingly sentimental (in a good way) about this particular age where human beings are caught up with negotiating their place in this bizarre animal society we’ve constructed around ourselves. I have such a strong place in my heart for the bildungsroman – the truer the better. This all springs to mind because I’ve been in the process of collecting Bill Scienkiewicz’ mid-80s run on The New Mutants. These stories combine the wildness and beauty of The Sink’s drawing, his layouts, and his punky character designs with Chris Claremont’s melodramatic method acting and eagerness to expand the palette of representation in mainstream American comics. All to show us a bunch of kids trying to figure out who they are and what they’re supposed to do.
Hey gang, just a little message letting you know that I am going to be taking two or three weeks off from updating my end of the Cube. Got a couple comics projects that I want to devote more time to in order to release ‘em soon.
Expect some really cool stuff when I come back though, which should be in time to celebrate a whole year of the Comix Cube! Take care of each other, you guys <3.
Images taken from the episode “Hiatus” of Home Movies.
While we’re talking about lists, perhaps it’s time to throw my own hat in this ring.
I had a really fabulous year in 2011, thanks in no small part to the amazing comics landscape I found myself increasingly mired in. It can be exhausting trying to keep up, to the point where it’s hard to breathe. That’s when you remind yourself that you don’t need to keep up with anything, this is your damn life and whatever happens in it is all she wrote. As I’ve said a few times before in this column, I’d like to champion the creation of one’s own personal canons, one’s own list of definitive works and so forth. So, in that spirit, here is a list of the works released in the past 12 months that made a significant impression on me.
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The bottom of the pile! Wow, that’s a lot of comics. Ok, onward.
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Hey, it’s January, BCGF was a month ago, but I still have comics to review. Here we go, the end is in sight.
Christmas is OVER, here’s the stuff you could have gotten.
Read the rest of this entry »Comics – I got quite a few of em with opinions to match. Here’s the first round of reviews based on things I picked up at this year’s Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival.
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Wrapping up this wonderful year we have the granddaddy of a show that is the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Fest. Hopefully we can get L to talk about what it was like on the other side of the table soon, but I was just some guy who flew to New York to buy comic books. Given the pedigree of BCGF’s roster, there was a lot of spectacular work to pick up, to the point where I had a hard time singling out any for on-the-floor recommendations. I’d been looking forward to checking this show out for a while and I feel like it was a fitting end to 2011.
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For the third year in a row, comics invaded the Beachland Ballroom this past Saturday for Genghis Con, Cleveland’s underground and independent festival. From where I’m sitting, the show this year was an unparalleled success on all fronts. Moods were high, attendance was up, sales were great and the work on display was really something. Since the first show in 2009, the Genghis Con has represented for me the state of Cleveland’s comics scene, and this year I’m having a hard time getting over my excitement with where we’re at. I’ll do my best to reign in my biases, but just know I’m very damn proud of this town of ours.
Read the rest of this entry »Some really amazing stuff going on this week(end) that I just need to take a break from making comics to tell you about!
First, Saturday is Genghis Con in Cleveland! I’ve been stoked about this show for a while and it’s finally here. I think it’s going to be the best show yet – Cleveland’s amazing comics scene is coming out of the wordwork for this, and we’re going to have a bunch of special guests. Not least among them are the Andromeda crew from Pittsburgh as well as the great John Porcellino. It’s a big deal to me that all these folks were able to come out, so I want to make sure Cleveland treats them right.
I’ll be debuting a new 8-page mini that I’ll give away for free! Man, so excited. See a preview of the first page below:
Ok, so then, you may or may not have heard he talking about some secret project for the better part of the past year. Well, as of yesterday, it is no longer so secret! I’ve joined up with writer and critic Michael Peterson to make Project: Ballad, a new webcomic that will debut Spring 2012. The website is up right now, though, so get your bookmarks ready! Michael was written a ton of great stuff and it’s just sitting there, waiting to be read. Go!
Finally, today is my co-Cuber Darryl Ayo Brathwaite’s 30th birthday! Damn! Go wish a good one, eh?
Ok, and now a post script. Next weekend I will be traveling to New York to visit some fams and to check out the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Fest. It feels like it’s going to be a reprise of TCAF so I am very excited. Especially since my other Cube-mate, L Nichols, will have a table! She’s got a lot a lot a lot of really exciting new stuff so you would be wise to do like me and pick it up. There’s also a bunch of other cool debuts, but I’m out of time! Be sure to check out my show report after the fact to see what I get.
Ok love you guys. See you tomorrow, yes? AWESOME.
Hey gang. Not enough time for a proper blog post today, but for those worrying, I’ll have two heavy-hitting convention reports coming up in the following weeks, so stay tuned for those.
In the meantime, I wanted to maybe get some people involved with something that’s been on my mind. The end of the year is always a big whirlwind for me, and I am basically calling it a year by mid-November. So fittingly, my minds been going back over the past year and marveling at how momentous 2011 has been so far. Part of this recollection is thinking about all the great comics that have come out. What I propose is we use the comment thread here to list the comics that came out in 2011 that got you the most excited.
Now, end-of-year lists are nothing if not a dime-a-dozen, so I hope we can make this one a little different. We all there have been those huge releases that everyone lost their marbles over (Hark, A Vagrant, The Death Ray, yadda yadda). That’s all well and good. I think it’d be cool, though, if we could hear of some titles from off the beaten path. Tell me about the hidden gems that flew under the radar but still totally turned your world upside down.
My hopes with this is that if we all share the lesser-known comics we happened upon, other folks will get hip to them and check ‘em out. This way we can all help promote these deserving works that don’t already have a lot of hype behind them. Even if it’s just one! I’d love to hear from you guys.
See you next week (or earlier [wink]).
