Tuesday February 13, 2007 -- 6:14 a.m.
One of what will surely end up on my "Best Books of 2007" books finally arrived a few weeks ago, and it is truly one of the most wonderful, beautiful and exciting books I have ever seen in my entire life. The book is titled Beasts! and it is the brainchild of Jacob Covey, the lead designer at Fantagraphics. Basically, Beasts! is a good old fashioned menagerie of monsters, all of which were officially thought to exist at some point. Jacob hand-selected 90 artists "from the fields of rock posters, skate graphics, comics, children's books, and fine art" and asked them to select one beast to illustrate. The 200 page collects these illustrations, with one full page of stunning full color art facing a page of brief text, with the name of the beast and a short explanation of its nature. The range of artists is nothing short of incredible and the book is just an absolute joy to look at. Honestly, this is quite probably the perfect book, something I dreamed about ever since I knew what a book was.
Jacob Covey started blogging about the project back in October of 2006, and said blog included many gorgeous preview images from the book as well as further information about publication, design, and signings. It's quite a good read, so you should check it out here, and like the good friend I am, I will share some of my favorite images from Beasts! right here. First up is Ronald Kurniawan's "Alastor." I love the way this thing looks like it's slowly and ominously drifting through the deepest part of a raging storm in the wilderness...while wearing a cowboy hat.
Here is something called the "Wizard's Shackle" by one of my favorite cartoonists Tom Gauld.
Tom makes some of the sharpest minicomics I've ever seen, and I believe that if you're not able to snag any through his own site (he does live in the United Kingdom after all) that you can still get them through Alvin Buenaventura's Buenaventura Press which is just in California. Plus, Alvin's good people.
This last preview is from yet another of my favorite artists (amazing how Beasts! seemed to include nearly every one of my favorite artists working today) n8w, sometimes known as Nate Williams. He chose to illustrate the cyclopes, in his own inimitable style. Feast yer eyes...
I am truly happy to be to declare that Beasts! was everything I had hoped it would be and definitely far more as well. The rest of the art is fantastic, the design is clever and beautiful without being arch, and the price is a very affordable $28.95 for a 200 page hardcover. I believe Jacob mentioned that there would only be a first edition of 3000 copies printed, so if you're interested now might be a wise time to get one. Trust me, if you like art and you like monsters and you like mythology, this book will make your toes curl with delight.
But wait, the news does indeed get even better!
Tiny Showcase has been teasing this project almost as long as Jacob and Fantagraphics have been teasing Beasts!, but this past weekend they finally unveiled the "Beasts! Letterpress Collection." First, let that sink in for a moment.
"Beasts!"
And letterpress prints.
Just in case you don't know what that means, let me share a bit with you. Prints can be created through a wide variety of methods, from the modern to the antiquated. One of the newest and most durable means of printmaking is the giclee, which personally I find distasteful because even though the inks are archival and the quality is supposedly high, giclees are created by what basically amounts to a very expensive and very high quality computer printer and they are never touched by human hands. Silkscreening, or serigraphy, is also very popular and inexpensive, and with this method colors are applied by hand through a screen and lay directly on the surface of the paper. Other methods include etchings and woodcuts, both of which apply the image to the paper through the use of pressure. Letterpress printing is similar to these, and uses a metal block to press the image and the inks deep into the paper, resulting in an image that has both texture and color. Letterpress prints are beautiful to behold and time-consuming to produce, so this announcement that Tiny Showcase would be creating an entire set of Beasts! themed letterpress prints was awe-inspiring.
The gist of the project is that both Jacob Covey and the minds behind Tiny Showcase selected their 10 favorite artists from Beasts! and asked them to provide brand new, alternate illulstrations for 10 of the creatures from the book. These 10 images would be turned into fine letterpress prints and housed in a beautiful handcrafted and numbered box. The entire run is limited to an edition of 100, and the thing looks just fabulous. They've been previewing the images one at a time, and here are the first four, starting with Meg Hunt's "Ahuizotl"...
Next is Souther Salazar's "Asp Turtle"...
Here now is S. britt's delightful "Big Ears"...
And last is Jesse LeDoux's super creepy "Bunyip"...
You can tune in to Tiny Showcase's Beasts! page at around 9 a.m. for the next 6 days and see the unveiling of each new print. I believe there are still some editions left and although they are a little pricey, if you dig art as much as I do they are well worth it. I've already prepaid for mine, and I can't wait for this jam to arrive.
Think that's enough monster news for today? Well, maybe. I don't think you can ever really have enough monster news, but that's all I've got for now. Be good, and stay out of the snow!
Matt K.
Friday February 9, 2007 -- 6:56 p.m.
Valentine's Day has come early for me this year. Dan Nadel and PictureBox Inc., who are putting out some of the best and most beautiful books, artist's monographs, art comics, comic books, and other visual endeavors I have ever seen, recently collaborated with Trenton Doyle Hancock, one of my favorite contemporary artists, on an old school "Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe" style comic called "The Trenton Doyle Handbook." More of a reference manual than a comic book, this little stapled beauty has fully illustrated entries and bios for all of the bizarre and eccentric inhabitants of Trenton's elaborately constructed personal mythology. Even better, PictureBox Inc. offered a limited run silkscreen (not a giclee, a silkscreen - something actually made by a person and not a computer printer) by Trenton Doyle Hancock with the first 80 printings. The always wonderful Rudy, knowing of my love for Trenton's art and my passion for the fine work of PictureBox Inc. somehow managed to snag me one of the comics and the silkscreens, and both arrived at our doorstep yesterday. I had only seen a tiny image of the silkscreen online, so as I opened the securely wrapped and taped packaged, I trembled with anticipation wondering if the real art would look as amazing as I had hoped. In truth, the print was even more incredible than I had hoped, and I was happy indeed. Below is an image of the print, taken from the PictureBox site. It is called "Betto and the Black Brain"-
It's about the size of a piece of regular old printer paper, so when it is all framed up it will be perfect for our "Wall of Genius," alongside art from John Orth, Marc Bell, Peter Thompson, and AZStar78 I'll take some digital pictures when it's up on the wall.
So man, what an incredible gift from the always astoundingly cool Rudy! She is way too good to me, and way too good for me. What a lucky lucky dork I am.
Also, thanks to fellow Panelista Sean McGurr, I read reviews of some of the latest Panel anthologies, and amazingly the reviewer actually liked my contributions! It was quite a refreshing change of pace, so I'm sharing it all with you. The reviews are on the Optical Sloth site and they cover the anthologies "Panel: Space" (nothing from me), "Panel: Home" (I'm in this one), "Panel: Myth" (I'm in this one), "Panel: Luck" (I'm in this one) and the most recent "Panel: Travel" (I'm also in this one). Check 'em out.
Finally, March and April have turned out to be good months for live music. Rudy and I will be heading back to Columbus on 4 separate occasions to see bands that, with one exception, I never thought would venture into Central Ohio. On Friday, March 9th we'll be checking out RJD2 who will be unveiling his new non-hip-hop disc with a real live band. Busdriver will be opening for him, and his new disc has some work from both Boom Bip and Elvin Estela, better known as Nobody so it should be an interesting show. Two days later, on Sunday March 11th, we'll be seeing Under Byen with Frida Hyvonen at the Wexner Center. And as good as those two shows should be, things just keep getting better. On Tuesday April 3 we'll be seeing Clogs, who combine the guitar, bassoon, viola, and percussion for some elegantly minimalist post-rock meditations. And finally, the show I am most looking forward to, Japanese instrumental post-rock masters Mono playing at Little Brothers, of all places, on Tuesday April 17th. That will be 4 shows in 40 days. Awesome!
Matt K.
Thursday February 8, 2007 -- 9:11 p.m.
The Return of the King!
Ah yes, some very very good news came my way recently. Via Mark Evanier's blog comes this...
As many of you know, I've been working on a biography of Jack that might be described as "authorized" and/or "official." I don't think of it either way. I'm thinking of it as Mark setting down every possible thing I've learned from or about Jack. Anyway, this book in its present state is huge. It makes the Encyclopedia Americana look like one of those take-out menus they hang on your doorknob...and it's still growing. I recently came across a trove of info about employees in the Simon and Kirby studio and I haven't even been able to begin sorting through that material and incorporating it into the book.
I finally decided that the endeavor was getting too large and taking too long...so I'm turning it into two books. Jack is just too big a topic for one book.
The first will be a very nicely printed art book with a simpler but quite complete version of the Kirby biography. The volume will also be loaded with rare Kirby art, all of it in reproduced in full color, much of it shot from the original artwork. That needs a bit of explanation. Many of the pieces will consist of black-and-white artwork in pencil or ink but we’ll be printing them in color so that you can see all the pencil marks, corrections, smudges and in some cases, notes in the margins. There will also be plenty of pages that print Jack’s art in pencil form and, of course, color pieces and some things you’ve seen before but not in the way we’re going to present them.
This book will be called Kirby: King of Comics and it will be released in October of this year by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., which is one of the world’s most prestigious publishers of high quality art and illustrated books. It’ll be a hardcover volume, 9 inches by 12-1/2 inches, all in color and with a gatefold and all sorts of nifty features that we hope will make it worthy of its subject.
Later on — and don’t ask me when but it’ll be another year or two at least — I’ll publish the gargantuan, Galactus-sized bio for the hardcore Kirby fan…the kind of person who wants to read every little detail of the man’s extraordinary life. As soon as fresh data stops coming my way, I’ll wrap that one up but in the meantime, you’ll have the first book before this Christmas. I’ll tell you more about it over the next few weeks.
Hot damn! A great big art book, from a real and reputable publisher like Abrams, chronicling the visual majesty of the greatest comic creator who ever lived! This news thrills me to the core. Jack "King" Kirby has always been at the heart of why I love comics. His ideas, his creativity, and his art continue to be hugely inspirational to me, and I hope that shows in some of my own work. I'm just really very happy that his legacy is finally getting some real attention. As my good friend Johnny Ampersand said, "Finally Jack is getting the credit he deserves." Indeed, my friend.
So this will be the best year ever for Jack "King" Kirby art and reprints. In February we get the second volume of the Kamandi Archives, then in May we get the first installment of the long overdue Fourth World Omnibus, while in June we get a second volume of The Fantastic Four Omnibus (which contains, among other things, the first appearance of Galactus, the first appearance of the Silver Surfer, the first appearance of the Black Panther, the first appearance of the Inhumans, the first appearance of the Negative Zone, and the classic tale "This Man, This Monster" among many other delights), and finally in August we get the second installment of the Fourth World Omnibus. Additionally, there is the rumoured full color reprint of Devil Dinosaur later this year, and hopefully hardcovers of OMAC and The Demon somewhere down the line. Aw yeah!
Here's a picture of the King, plus a nice Kirby drawing of Metron (one of my favorite Kirby creations), to do it to you in your eyehole. Have a great night!
Matt K.
Wednesday February 7, 2007 -- 10:12 p.m.
It is the dawn of a new era, my young friends. I've done some housekeeping around here, and as I mentioned in the last (and now long gone) update, I feel quite good about this site for the first time in quite a while.
So, let me take you back in time, back to late January 2007. Things were looking grim. Projects were falling through. Winter, with its murderous cold, was creeping ever closer. My day job was threatening to overtake my life. All of these things sapped my will to live, and comics were cold comfort indeed. Then Rudy and I went to visit my good friend and boon companion Johnny Ampersand and his wife Alice. We exchanged gifts, ate a wonderful home-cooked dinner, and talked of many things. Over time, I explained to them the nature of my frustrations and sadnesses, and how I was considering simply throwing in the towel and closing this site forever. They, as always, were understanding and supportive, and listened well. Then, Johnny showed me something he himself had been working on. A handful of pages from a never-to-be-sold comic he was making simply for the fun of it. Massive Action Patrol was the name. And interestingly enough, Johnny had started with issue #14 (or maybe it was #15, but you get the idea). He had done a masterful job of simply throwing the reader right into the middle of a story, complete with all sorts of references to what had happened in the previous issues, but at no point did I feel lost or confused or angry. Why? Well, this comic was just plain fun to read. In a strange way, it made me feel like I did the very first time I read the classic Avengers tale The Kree-Skrull War by Roy Thomas and Neal Adams. The entire thing starts with Triton of the Inhumans climbing out of the water on a desperate mission to find the Avengers, and within a few pages Captain Marvel (the original!) is zipping through the pages, knee deep in action. It was obvious that I was reading a comic book that had been around for years, and that there were dozens and dozens of tales that had been told before this one, but somehow I never felt lost, I never felt shut out of the story, and my interest never waned. The story just got better and better and by the time I turned the last page I never wanted it to end. To this day, reading The Kree-Skrull War is one of my fondest comic book memories. And reading Johnny's pages for Massive Action Patrol brought that thrill back.
I thought a lot about that, and about other things, for the next few days, trying to decide what to do and how to proceed, and above all, how to make sure I kept things fun. After all, I'm certainly not making any money from this web site or my comic, and I'm certainly not getting famous either. In the balance, making comics and art and running this web site generally take more than they give, so if fun was not one of the rewards, there seemed little point in continuing.
Slowly, some ideas started coming together. I knew I liked drawing and would probably do that, or something similarly visually creative, whether I had a web site or a comic or an audience or not. I knew I loved comics, and that I would always buy them and read them if I could. And Johnny himself reminded me of a promise I made to him years ago, that no matter what happened with small press shows and web sites and things like that, I would never give up on telling the story of my favorite sprout from outer space, Spudd 64 himself. So with that promise, my love of comics, and Johnny's perfect example of how to keep comics fun, I was able to relax a whole lot and refocus on what was important. I mean, imagine that! Making comics just because you like making comics! Without worrying about going to Kinko's to shell out $50 to print out a bunch of copies, hoping you can score a table at some small press show and get people to buy it, worrying that people will hate it or that you'll lose all the money you spent on printing it, getting all bummed out because no one who bought a copy emailed you to tell you what they thought. The idea of doing comics and not caring about any of that crap was so refreshing. It's how I started, and what I want to get back to.
So there have been some big big changes to this site. First, I decided to take down the "Photography" gallery and the "Music" section. I liked them, they were fun while they lasted, but in the end I just decided that I wanted to keep my little web site focused very specifically on comics and comic art. I still love my Holga and pinhole cameras, and I'll still keep playing around with them, but comics are my first love and I haven't been working as hard on them as I would like to. I took down all of the previous "news" pages as well, mostly because there was some personal stuff on there but also because I kind of felt like some of it was a bit random. You can see most of these changes reflected in the new menu bar up at the top of the pages. Go ahead, take a look right now. I'll wait.
Back? Good. Let's keep going. Next, I'll be using a different email address. I once read somewhere that if you wanted any real credibility, you had to have an email address attached to your domain name. So I went out and got one. But you know what? The deal sucked! I was paying $9.95 every 6 months for a miniscule amount of storage. My hotmail account has way way more storage and it's totally free. So credibility be damned, I'm going to stop paying for a useless email address and just use the one that I've had for years and years and years. So check it out, add it to your address book, and get at me. You can find the new one on the contact page.
Third, I actually added a lot of stuff. You may remember that I was the Guest Artist over on the awesome Partyka web site in January. I debuted several brand new pieces of art over there, and now they've made their way back home to good old Spudd64.com. You can check out all the new art on the art page which I've also streamlined so that now there are just two galleries. The first is simply titled "art" and will be the home for all my drawings and other pieces. The second is titled "comics art" and that will be where I put all the comic pages that I do for other anthologies and zines and stuff that my friends and I collaborate on. Nothing new there yet, but in a week or so I should have my story from the most recent Panel anthology, called "Panel : Travel." It's a 5 pager called "Round Trip" and it's about a guy with a mustache who gets shot in the head, dies, goes to heaven, gets screwed over in a bureaucratic snafu, climbs through a slimy birth canal, and gets reincarnated as a baby with a mustache. It's rich! The "comics art" section should be growing quite a bit very soon since I will be contributing 5 pages to Craig Bogart's new issue of The Ineffables, a story for the new Panel anthology, and hopefully some kind of collaboration with Kyle Wallace. Plus, even better, Johnny and I will be working on something that will be phenomenal and loads of fun. To top all that off, I still need to add the mysterious "Book of Birds" and will start showing new pages from Spudd 64, issue #5 soon as well. I'll also be putting every page from Spudd 64, issue #1 online so that people can read it for free. I'm almost sold out of the most recent print run, and I won't be reprinting any more after this so if you want a copy now is the time to act.
Finally, now that I've got all that heartache and baggage behind me, I can get back to posting way more often and that's what I'm going to do. Sure, most of it will be about comics, or art, or comics and art, with maybe a personal story or two thrown in, but there will always be something new here for you so check in early and check in often.
Alright, time to upload. Be good and stay warm! See you tomorrow, punks.
Matt K.