Hey guys. Lots of shaking going on around this internet. Livejournal seems more and more like a sinking ship each day, the latest round of loud mumbling being set off by the departure of Brandon Graham to greener pastures. In my small circle at least, there’s been a lot of talk about consolidation and streamlining this whole web experience.

I think it’s always a good idea to trim as much fat as you can, to be able to make your life work for you. So it’s healthy to review your situation and explore whether or not you are taking the most efficient steps you can take. As for my own self, I’ve settled into a comfortable little groove with my constant twittering, my tumblr-ing for extra cool things I find lying around, and now my writer-ing that I’ve been doing at the Comix Cube. Each of these satellites serve a distinct purpose, and I enjoy doing each one. But among them all, I’m more or less able to squeeze all the interesting content out of me before I finally make it back here. I mean, since I’m exerting so much of my brain power at the Cube, I find coming up with worthwhile content for the Encyclopedia to be more of a chore than it used to be. And that kind of goes for the livejournal as well, since I just repost whatever I write here there (or there here, if you’re reading it there/here).

Anyhow, just things to think about. Speaking of the Cube, I just put up a long post about one of my biggest influences. Read it, please, and leave lots of comments.

Other than all this self-reflection, I’ve been continuing to get a lot of stuff done! Hopefully I can show you some of it soon, but in the meantime, enjoy some sketches.

GOT-TA-GOT-TA-GOT-TA

Beyond that, I’ll leave you with a short list of things I’m wild about at the moment: Homestuck, Duncan the Wonder Dog, Extras, Tyler the Creator and OFWGKTA, my buddies.

Oh yeah

I’m excited to have contributed a drawing to Conor Oberst’s new website (made by Imbeccable, y’all!!)(I drew the picture frame around the content). Bright Eyes played a big role in my early college years and was a common currency among my circle of friends. Needless to say, it is an extreme honor to have our worlds overlap in even this small of a way!

PS. The pictures of Otis Redding are for no other reason than he’s amazing. Did you know that the last show he ever performed was in Cleveland!? His plane from here to Wisconsin crashed the night after his final show.

by Kevin Czap

Above is an photo of Russian artist Ilya Kabakov’s 1984 installation, The Man Who Flew Into Space From His Apartment. The installation consists of a small apartment that you enter and explore, consisting of about three rooms. The third room, shown above, is closed off, the doorway boarded up making it possible only to peer in at the scene from the outside. This decision, by keeping the viewer from entering into the space and really exploring, makes the piece more of an image. There’s a very limited – frontal – point of view with which to see the work, and so the artist is able to control what we see and how.

Preachin’ and Teachin’

I started teaching my class, The Art of Comics, again this past Saturday and it looks like it’s going to another demon joy-ride. Above is the smattering of books I bring in on the first day to be like “THIS is comics!!!” My goal is to make this a bigger pile each time, as I get more comics. I love all the different sizes and shapes that they come in. I know some people are irritated when their comics aren’t all the same format, but I thrive on it. If I see you at a show, the weirder your format is, the more likely I am to pick it up. Call me shallow, it just makes my brain sweat.

Speaking of things I like, I wrote another post at Comix Cube, this time taking on balls-to-the-walls humor. I start with the height of Busta Rhymes’ career, then pass through Looney Toons so I can get to talking about KC Green, who’s doing great things in comics. Give it a read, why don’t you?

Other things I think are good: Little Thunder’s Kylooe, Andrew Hussie’s Homestuck, Liz Valasco‘s work in progress which is going to be so killer, Liz Suburbia’s Sacred Heart, Brandon Graham‘s King City, Dr. Seuss’s The Seven Lady Godivas (Dr. Seuss drawing naked ladies of all sizes running around in public!), Taiyo Matsumoto’s Gogo Monster, Marian Churchland’s The Crossing (a proposed online game), and KC Green’s Gunshow, which I managed to read all of over the past couple days.

But yeah, besides that, been doing a lot of other work that I can’t show you yet. Your homework is to read everything I just listed above, depending on availability.

A World Not Comics

Last night I went to an artist’s lecture with Nick Cave (not that one). The forms he creates with his suits was really inspiring, made me think a lot about cartooning. Particularly the big furry version of Kylooe from Little Thunder’s amazing book (thanks to Harvey James for… everything). It’s always interesting what obscuring the human form does to our perception. It’s like dreams walking around in day light.

by Kevin Czap

I love work where I can just feel the energy coming off of it. There are a lot of different kinds of this mental energy, though. I’ll probably talk about the various forms from time to time here, but today I wanted to talk specifically about funny energy. I’m talking the unrestrained madcap insanity that sets some funny things apart from others.

One of my favorite rappers is a good example of this kind of crazy energy, so we’ll start by talking about Busta Rhymes. At one point, towards the beginning of his career, Busta was one of the most remarkable artists in hip hop culture. His style was relentless, his flow was unbeatable and my first encounters with him were pretty indelible. I’m pretty sure this assessment of his early work is uncontroversial – he was given his rap name by Chuck D, after all. It took him a while to reach his peak intensity, and unfortunately it wasn’t too much longer after that he mellowed out and gave up on his singular delivery all together.

Hey gang,

I’m in the midst of a lot of different things, so I don’t have any really new work to share. As punishment, I’ll post some old (2004 or 2005) comic work I did in school. It’s essentially an X-Men fanfic. Hope you enjoy:

This is a little more than half of what I did for it, but I never finished. This is where I was at by the time we had to crit, so after that I didn’t see much point in carrying it on. How times have changed.

But that’s not all!

I did write a lot over at Comix Cube this week. That’s probably where I’ll be devoting a lot of my writing energy from here on out. I’ll try to keep posting art related stuff here. Do you think I should cross blog my CC articles here or just link to them like I’ve been doing? I feel like since Comix Cube is a group effort, I should keep ‘em separated. Anyway, please read and enjoy.

I got a nice surprise tonight when I saw Sean T. Collins linking to us and saying some nice things, particularly about my own writing. Can’t stop won’t stop, comics for life.

Also, I heard a rumor that there would be new pages of Sacred Heart up soon…

Ok guys, take care of each other!

Hey guys,

I mentioned last week that I had an exciting (for me) announcement to make this week. And well, I don’t want to draw it out. Check it:

We had a lot of fun making the first PUPPYTEETH last year that we’re going to do it again. This one is going to be bigger, better and in full color, baby. I know I’m super excited and hopefully some of y’all will join in that excitement. The plan is to launch this puppy at TCAF this year in May, so I hope if I see you there you’ll pick one up. When I get back from there I’ll set up a link where you can order it from the blog. If you all want, I can maybe set up a pre-order kind of thing as it gets closer to the date. We’ll see.

But yeah, the book will feature ALL of the original 10, as well as a whole host of other first rate cartoonists. We’re still waiting on the comics to come in, so I can’t tell you a guest list for certain, but just know it will be so high quality shit. Maybe we’ll run something like they did for the launch of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and I’ll release new playable characters every week or something… This project is looking like it will be the greatest and most rewarding thing I’ve ever worked on.

What about the first PUPPYTEETH?

I’m glad you asked. We still have copies available for you to purchase through the very convenient link to your immediate right. Or, for more information, you can check out the page for it. And perhaps in an effort to entice you, I’m going to show you guys the comic I put into it. See below:

And there are nine other utterly fantastic comics in this little zine, so think about getting one for yourself.

OTHER NEWS

So I’ve been busy! I had the pleasure of drawing a poster for a local Cleveland establishment, Star Pop, on Waterloo Rd (the coolest single street in the city). I thought about putting it up here last week, but I had just handed it off earlier that night and it felt weird. But I feel like, since the event it’s for is coming up, might as well do my part to advertise. Here you go:

COMIX CUBE

Aaaaaand finally, L, Darryl and I started a new comics blog! I wrote about Blaise Larmee’s new webcomic “2001.” Check that out when you’re done here, ok?

I think that’s all I got for this week.