Saturday January 28, 2005 -- 11:26 a.m.

Our good friends Johnny Ampersand and his wife Alice came to visit us on Thursday evening. It was wonderful to see them, as always, and they brought us a few gifts as well. Check out this incredible drawing of Spudd 64 that Johnny gave me for Christmas!



I will share here the same tale I shared with Johnny about the picture. Several years ago when Dark Horse announced plans to publish a Hellboy anthology title called "Hellboy: Weird Tales" that would contain all sorts of Hellboy and B.P.R.D. stories by writers and artists other than Mike Mignola, I was monstrously intrigued. What would these other creators do with a character as iconic and visually unique as Hellboy? Would they try to stay faithful and true to Mike Mignola's vision, or would they dare drastic departures, putting their own unique stamp on the character? I hoped for the latter, and that turned out to be the case. Since then, I have always wondered what other creators would do if they were given the chance to do stories with Spudd 64. I mentioned this to Johnny, and he created the drawing above which is so uniquely "Johnny" and yet still Spudd 64 that it thrilled me to no end. It is immediately recognizable as Spudd, yet Johnny did so many things differently that I am still fascinated by the image. Additionally, he managed to do what I have yet to achieve, which is to make Spudd look truly 3 dimensional and capable of twisting and turning his body. I mean, just look at that. Spudd is actually looking to his left! Fantastic!

Additionally, Johnny let us know that he is seriously considering doing a very small print run of a collection of his drawings an sketches. A little art book of sorts. I told him I would gladly buy one, and I will keep you all posted as to the progress of this endeavor. I, for one, am glad Johnny is seriously considering this, and think he seriously underestimates his abilities as an artist.

Okay, that's all for today. Still more schoolwork to catch up on, and then maybe I can do something fun and keep chipping away at the phone calls and emails.

See ya!

Matt K.

Wednesday January 25, 2005 -- 8:42 a.m.

Hello again. I apologize for the lack of updates. I have been a really ill again with some of the problems that were plaguing me in November, and it was making me ferociously and almost unmanageably depressed. I've had quite a few tests and some medications as well, so things are looking better for the first time in a while. Now I just need to overcome some of the exhaustion that has been keeping me down (it seems all I want to do is sleep all the time now) and get back in touch with the rest of the world. Anyway, I don't like going on and on about health issues and other negative stuff like that on this site, so if you want to know anything just go ahead and send me an e-mail or give me a call. I've been really awful about keeping up on those lately, but honestly I was sicker than I am comfortable writing about on the internet, and the depression was quite a dragon to slay.

I'll have more updates on the work situation at the library, my ongoing practicum and upcoming graduation, more new comic art and drawings, and perhaps a slight redesign of the site in the next few weeks or so. Mostly, though, I wanted to post this very exceedingly wonderful piece of news that I discovered online. I absolutely adore Tove Jansson's "Moomin" children's books, and recently discovered that she and her brother did a long-running comic strip based on those characters as well. These strips, and the few collections that existed, have been out of print and extremely difficult to find for decades. Wonderfully, Drawn & Quarterly will be re-issuing 5 brand new hardcover collections of the comic, entitled Moomin: the Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip, beginning in September of 2006. And even better, they will be priced at only $12.95! Feast your eyes on this fantastically perfect in every way cover for the first collection...



And here is a sample of one of the comics...



Many of you may not realize this, but Tove Jansson's "Moomin" books are among my very favorite in the world, and even though I was completely unaware of the existence of her comic strip, the entire Moomin saga was a huge influence on my own comic "Spudd 64," both visually and in terms of narrative and story. "Spudd 64" is pretty much the love child of Tove Jansson's Moomins, Jack Kirby, Larry Marder's "Beanworld," and a whole lot of music by Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Sadly, I never had any copies of the "Moomin" novels myself, I always signed them out of the library. It looks as if the novels are back in print as well right now, and as soon as I can afford it I will be picking those up as well and giving them a permanent home on my little bookshelf. Anyway, I digress. You can actually read the press release regarding the upcoming publication of Moomin: the Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip right here and I heartily encourage each and every one of you to pick up this inexpensive and delightful hardcover in September. You won't be sorry you did. And you can learn more about Tove Jansson and the Moomins at The Moomin Trove and in an entry on the Virtual Finland web site called "The Moomin World and its creator". Check them out if you have the time, there is a lot of great stuff on both sites.

One more bit of great comic related news, and then it is back to recovering and working on school stuff. Alvin Buenaventura of Buenaventura Press has posted the cover (I think) and 10 preview pages of this year's edition of the best anthology of all time Kramer's Ergot volume 6, right here. Simply click on each image to advance to the next page. No word yet on when the book will be published, but I seem to remember hearing something like October or November. So later in the year, yes, but still something to look forward to. Between this and the Moomin book it looks to be an awesome autumn for great comics.

See ya.

Matt K.

Saturday January 7, 2005 -- 1:49 p.m.

We finally got the Lyrics Born print that Tyler Stout did back from the framing place. There had been a problem with the glass and they had to recut it. Now it is home and hanging on our wall, soon to be followed by several more of Tyler's pieces as the money rolls in. Here are a few pictures of it hanging and more close-up. Nothing spectacular yet in terms of the rest of the decor, but you just wait and see...





Also, this morning I shaved but left a mustache. I tried and tried to convince Rudy to let me keep it, but she unequivocally forbade it and told me she would never kiss me again if I didn't shave it off. I think she is nuts. I mean, look how awesome I looked with a mustache!



Someday I will change her mind. This I swear.

Matt K.

Friday January 6, 2005 -- 3:14 p.m.

So I have a job now. I'm going to be a pretty busy guy it seems. One more full class in grad school, which will be held an hour away in Columbus on Tuesday nights. One workshop for grad school which will be a weekend in mid-March. One practicum experience which entails me spending at least 100 hours "working" in a public library (no pay, of course) and 50 hours writing several papers and a project about it. And finally, two jobs. One on both Tuesdays and one Saturday a month working at the Laughing Ogre comic book store, which honestly doesn't seem like a job at all because it is a lot of fun, I work with some good and hilarious friends, and I don't really get paid money. I start the other, newer job this Monday as a lowly page in a large urban public library. I am not going to name the library or use any of my coworker's real names since I am anticipating posting all kinds of interesting stories, good and bad, about my experiences there. All in all, I will have much much less free time but that may actually be good for me since it will keep me out and about, busy and thinking. We'll see how it all goes, but keep your fingers crossed for me. I start both the job and the practicum next week, and classes the week after, so I am going from 0 to 60 rather quickly.

Now, since everyone else I know seems to be doing this, I am going to share what comics I bought this Wednesday. It will probably be a great deal less traditional and spandex-laden than some of my friends' blogs are (although there is certainly nothing wrong with traditional spandex comics), but there should be some interesting things each week for you to take a look at.

From Drawn & Quarterly's "Petits Livres" series of small but beautiful art books comes the fifth in the series, Bacter-Area by Vancouver-based artist Keith Jones.



Tiny and slender, the book is lushly illustrated in full color and crammed to the margins with delightful little drawings, sketches, words, and doodles. Jones' art is slightly reminiscent of both Ron Rege, Jr.'s and Marc Bell's in terms of slender, organic linework, cartoonish depictions of people and places, and oddly skewed perspectives, but Jones moves well beyond these artists in creating a universe of his own. Borrowing heavily from the garish color scheme of the Ft. Thunder crew, Jones infuses every page with an explosion of trees, birds, cars, buildings, creatures, clouds, slag, bottles, robots, intestines, liquids, signs, and tools, that one could spend hours gazing at each page alone. Tom Spurgeon of the Comics Reporter does an excellent job interviewing Keith Jones and his questions go much more deeply into the theory behind the art. You can check it out here and see lots of samples of art from the book. The book is a very affordable $9.95 and should be available now from better comics shops near you. You can also order online from Drawn & Quarterly but this requires patience since they are based in Canada and shipping can take some time.

A few months back, Fantagraphics kicked off their Ignatz Series, comics which they describe on their web site as being "A brand new collection of internationally-produced comics designed midway between comic book 'pamphlets' and graphic novels, at a very reasonable price, the 'Ignatz' series will offer a rotating collection of exciting new series, all produced in a deluxe, oversize two-color format of jacketed saddle-stitched comics on thick, deluxe stock. The dozen contributors so far are from Great Britain (Matt Broersma), France (Epileptic's David B.), Italy (Francesca Ghermandi, the legendary Lorenzo Mattotti, and series founder Igort), RAW's Marti (Spain), and the U.S. (Anders Nilsen and Kevin Huizenga). The Ignatzes will be released in batches of three or four books every three months, with Huizenga's and Mattotti's first issues coming later in 2005." While I am not so certain I agree with "very reasonable price" since they are all priced at $7.95, the production values are indeed very very high and the oversized books are exceedingly lovely. Unfortunately, I missed the first few, but I was able to snag the most recent two which hit the stands this past Wednesday and snag an earlier book I had missed.



Gabriella Giandelli's "Interiorae" is a wonderfully unsettling snapshot of the life and dreams of an apartment building as well as the lives and dreams of some of its inhabitants. Utilizing a moody, pencil-heavy style, Giandelli allows the tale to slowly unfold in pieces that the reader must knit together themselves. An odd white rabbit immune to the effects of gravity and capable of moving through walls and floors connects each of the vignettes, always moving and checking in according to some slightly darker purpose. There is no real story here, no cohesive narrative or climax, simply a series of moments in the life of the people who fill up the empty interior of an old and decaying apartment. Here is one of the pages...



(Sorry about the scan...the book must have slipped slightly while I was scanning it). This is a really beautiful and off-putting little book that I can already sense I will be returning to.

Lorenzo Mattotti is an incredibly gifted artist and painter. I am fortunate to have "Angkor" which is a collection of inkwashes, watercolors, and paintings he did while traveling in Cambodia. That moron Stang almost permanently marred it by grabbing it and getting a big smudge on the cover (which is made of a thick, textured paper) with his grubby fingers, but I've managed to repair almost all of the damage. I was thrilled when I read that Mattotti would be included in the "Ignatz Series," and his volume is nothing short of breathtaking.



That cover still amazes me and sends chills down my spine. It is difficult to describe why. The book itself is told entirely without words, save a short introductory paragraph which reads "I heard tell of a thinker who lay beneath a tree, whence he observed the sky and, sometimes, the stones as well. Those who passed by saw the light in his eyes and they concluded that he had a secret. The thinker passed on, and people would go lie under the tree as he had, trying to discern his secret. But they would always leave disappointed. Driven by curiosity, I tried my luck as well. I saw the sky, I saw the stones, and fell asleep." What follows is an intensely visionary narrative of dream, memory, and the intoxicating might of creation. Through images of birth, childhood, sex, imagination, dreaming, and animals, Mattotti knits and sweeping and visceral epic of creation. The black and white art begins simply enough, with fine and slender linework that must have been done with a pen rather then a brush, and as the myth builds in force and momentum the art transitions to a heavier and more weighty brushwork. This is the kind of piece that will mean different things to different viewers, but I could not recommend it highly enough. Beautiful, frightening, divine, and monstrous, it is like seeing the birth and death of an entire world in a few short moments. Amazing.



See what I mean? The entire work is just visually incredible. I am buying as many as I can snag for gifts.

This last book is also part of the Ignatz Series but came out several weeks ago. I was only able to pick it up this past Wednesday, although I am very pleased I took the chance. "Baobab" is the first part of what promises to be a sprawling tale by the artist Igort, also known for his graphic novel "5 is the Perfect Number."



Since this is the first part of a longer tale, Igort takes his time setting the scene. The book begins in Japan, in 1910, with a young orphan named Hiroshi who appears to live in world made of equal parts dreaming and reality. Igort smoothly handles the midbook transition to South America, also in 1910, where we are introduced to a cartoonist Celestino Villarosa, whose childhood predilection for dreaming and drawing "hardens into a conviction." A published cartoonist, Villarosa does a strip for a small local paper entitled "Morvo, the Man Who Swallows Up the Night" which seems to pay tribute to the nocturnal adventures of Winsor McCay's "Little Nemo," the globe-spanning fantasies of de Brunhoff's "Babar," and the adventure and intrigue of Herge's "Tintin." However, Villarosa's editor balks at running more strips, claiming that his art has become "more and more eccentric" and that "the readers don't understand." Villarosa gently insists that the children love it and the editor agress to keep running the strip. The narrative shifts back to Japan again, and the story's complexity deepens. I am anxious to see where this is going and what Igort has in mind.



Finally, my geekiness shows through. Marvel Comics finally printed The Essential Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe,an exhaustive guide to every single superhero, villain, team, alien race, and piece of equipment in the Marvel Universe in the mid-80s. Heavenly. Although the original comics were in color and this collection is in black and white, Marvel did an excellent job in cleaning up the art and preventing any blurriness or muddiness from creeping in. I know it is silly, but I simply can't resist flipping through the entries and reading who is stronger than who, how these characters got their powers, and who is a member of the U-Foes. Great great stuff. And dirt cheap really, too. Over 500 pages of information for a mere $16.99.



This book is important to me for another, more personal reason as well. When I was in my early teens, my parents separated. It was completely unexpected to me at least, and while I am an adult now and understand these complex things with greater clarity, at the time it was emotionally and personally catastrophic for everyone involved. It was especially hard for my wonderful mother who did everything she could to hold the family together and give my brothers and I a loving and happy home, even if it was a broken one. When I was growing up, my parents would use every holiday as an excuse to give us a little present. Nothing extravagant or expensive, just something fun and nice to look forward to. Valentine's Day was no exception, only everything had been clouded by doubt due to my father leaving home. Neither my brothers nor I expected my mother to do anything for us for Valentine's Day. She had very little money and needed all her energy just to manage her grief and loneliness and to keep us all in clean clothes with lunches for school and dinners to eat. We would go to the local Drug Mart a lot for things, even when my dad was around, because that was a quick and convenient way to get things quickly without having to deal with the madness of a huge grocery store. Every time we went, I would park myself by the comic rack and wait to be found by my parents when they were done.

So, soon after my parents split up, my mother, brothers, and I went to Drug Mart for something. I was standing by the comic spinner and I saw "The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, H-J: From Hangman to Juggernaut." Comic books were still kind of new to me and I don't think I was truly aware of the long and rich history of so many of these characters. And here was this virtual encyclopedia with cool drawings, full origins, and even statistics. It was so cool! But it was $1.00 and if you're a kid with no money, that is a fortune. My mom came to get me and noticed what I was looking at and asked me if I wanted it. She sounded so tired and sad and I knew we probably didn't have any money so I just smiled and said no and that it was okay. A few days went by, and then on whatever evening Valentine's Day fell, my brothers and I each got a small giftwrapped box. I think they got matchbox cars or a small Lego set or something because they were both pretty young, but my mom had gotten me that issue of "The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe" and filled the rest of the box with watermelon Sparkles and some caramels. It was one of the sweetest and most wonderful things she has ever done, and I can't even look at "The Official Marvel Handbook" comics without thinking of the kind of love, selflessness, and caring that my mother showed us all on that Valentine's Day. So I guess picking up this collection is bittersweet for me as well, tied as deeply as it is to that memory, but I have always had so much fun reading these comics and I think maybe in some ways my dear old mom played a big part in that.

Okay, that is all for now. See ya!

Matt K.