Archive for the 'Art and Story' Category
MIX 2011: A retrospecticus
MANLY TALES OF COWARDICE–Guest Artist Spectacular–pg 12(of 14)–by Ryan Dow and Brian Bastian
BRIAN BASTIAN— Has freedom hair.
RYAN DOW— Ryan dow has won my heart–from his consistently solid art and story on his “INTROSPECTIVE COMICS” webcomic, to his introspective thoughts on comics during the ART AND STORY podcasts–my heart Ryan Dow has won. Ryan is a well-loved fixture of the Mpls/Stpl Cells of the International Cartoonist Conspiracy, taking part in all the usual hoo-hah (like BIG FUNNY and MUSCLES AND FIGHTS), and doing his own great comics along the way (like PLUNGER-MAN, WEEKENDS WITH CARL, and JACK AND ZACK MAKE A COMIC). He’s even part of the QUORUM OF TWELVE(or so) who are putting together LUTEFISK SUSHI “D”–a highlight of his contribution being the “LSD” podcast he is starting which will have interviewers with fellow QUORUMers and SUSHI “D” contributors (The first episode will be up soon and features some windbag). You have my heart, Ryan. Now hold me, you big hunky introspective cartoonist, you! Hold me and make all the bad men go away.
About the kick-ass creators of this page:
BRIAN BASTIAN writes stuff. He may have even written this. Who is to say?
EARL LUCKES is a man on a mission, and if this lover of comics and 70’s culture had a theme song, it would certainly be THIS one (thanks Mark and Jerzy)! Earl burst into comics like no sane person should–by challenging himself to do a 24 HOUR COMIC! After that Earl became a Conspiracy semi-regular and contributed some might fine work to anthologies like ALLEY CAT, SUPER FANTASTICA COMIX, BIG FUNNY, and the MUSCLES AND FIGHTSempire. Earl’s stuff is raw, and tough, and hellz fun–just like the 1970’s hero-ethic he tries to capture in his work–and I am honored he did this page. OH YEAH!!!–and Earl makes short-films that take modern cinema schlock-meisters like Michael Bay and Steven Sommers to task for their bastardization of the medium. Quite a talent. Best of all, Earl assures me his very own webcomic is in the works, and I for one cannot wait!
Also, “PHENOMENAL TANGENTS“, the Kirby-inspired comic I did with Steven Stwalley, has been added to “KIRBY-VISION“, the Kirby Museum’s Blog tracking “THE KING’s” continuing influence. Sweet!
And one last parting shot–today’s guest artist EARL LUCKES fancies himself a Fleming Hazmat type…
PHENOMENAL TANGENTS–the all new comic by Steven Stwalley and myself–cover, credits, and pg 1(of 26)
…to be continued…
So a little over a year ago I finally joined 2004 and got an ipod, and it wasn’t too long after that before I grew desperately tired of my ipod music library. BUT WHAT TO DO??? My wife suggested I get some “podcasts” to mix it up. I knew this word “podcasts”, but thought it (like the ipod only months before had resisted with every fiber of my being) was something I had no interest in.
Boy was I wrong.
I was immediatly enthralled to get weekly doses of things I already loved like THIS AMERICAN LIFE and LE SHOW. I was able to finally get in on shows I had heard great things about like DAN CARLIN’s COMMON SENSE and his HARDCORE HISTORY. And then my friend RYAN DOW turned me on to the fabulous world of podcasts about making comics. He suggested I try ART AND STORY, and friends–my life has not been the same since.
ART AND STORY is the premiere podcast about the thoughts and wonderings behind the art of making comics. Hearing ART AND STORYs hosts MARK RUDOLPH and JERZY DROZD talk out loud about things I had only previously discussed to myself in my own head was like finding the perfect amalgam between peers and therapists.
When I started listening to ART AND STORY they had been at it for about a year (episode 48, I believe), and even though each show runs about 2 hours, I burned through the back catalogue and the new stuff in about 4 weeks. It was all music to my ears….and still is! Now even more so since in addition to the regular Wednesday ART AND STORY, there is a live version on Mondays called ART AND STORY ALIVE!. There is also ART AND STORY EXTREME!!, a 20 minute (or so) show Monday-Thursday show where Mark and Jerzy just talk about whatever is on their minds (comics, movies, environmental armageddon), and its “extremely” entertaining and easily my favorite of the three shows.
Anyway…what does all this have to do with the above comic PHENOMENAL TANGENTS? Well, as I was wrapping up that first month of soaking in everything ART AND STORY had to offer, there was an episode where they interviewed KEVIN CROSS. Kevin was there to promote his brainchild–THE MINI-COMICS DUMP TRUCK! The DUMP TRUCK was to be a comic collective where creators across the globe, communicating via the power of a blog and podcast, came together and over the course of 4 months each creator was to do an original mini-comic based a few agreed-upon ideas/suggestions set forth during the first podcast. They would then communicate podcast-wise every two weeks to update status, share thoughts on the process and on making mini-comics in general.
Again, this idea (like ART AND STORY) was love at first listen–and I was in luck! Since the original broadcast of this ART AND STORY episode was a while back, the “first round” of DUMP TRUCK books was almost at an end, and “round two” was about to begin!
I contacted Kevin immediately and informed him I wanted in, and he was more than happy to have me. In fact, in a twist of fate, Kevin had posted the Cartoonist Conspiracy’s “HOW TO MAKE A MINI-COMIC” (that I had a hand in creating) on the DUMP TRUCK website when the group started!
I also contacted STEVEN STWALLEY about this, since he and I had been discussing the vauge idea of doing a book together, and we now finally had the proper impetus with which to do one…
There’s 25 more pages to post of PHENOMENAL TANGENTS, so I’ll continue the genesis of PHENOMENAL TANGENTS over the rest of the month. There’ll also hopefully have some co-commentary on the book and pages from Steve, as well as the sad tale of the demise of the MINI-COMICS DUMP TRUCK itself…stay tuned!
a BIG ILLUSTRATION pin-up break

Big Illustration Party Time auction piece
“MONKEY MOD and ATLANTIS LAD vs SNOW ZOMBIES” by Danno Klonowski
Those who know me know I love podcasts, especially ones about the art of making comics. One such beloved podcast is BIG ILLUSTRATION PARTY TIME (http://illustrationparty.blogspot.com/) with Kevin Cross and Joshua Kemble. Anyway, in addition to content BIPT has some of the best production value in the podcasting world…that is until their microphones blew-up a week or so ago.
Josh and Kevin are typical Americas in a financial crunch these days and don’t have the cash to just run out and buy new microphones, so instead they are asking for donations from listeners. In addition to asking for straight-up cash infusions, there is also going to be an art auction of original work done specifically for this cause which you should be able to bid on soon (you can learn more about the auction and see all the submitted pieces so far at: http://pcweenies.com/2009/05/27/big-illustration-party-help/).
My donation piece (above) is of Kevin’s MONKEY MOD character teaming-up with ATLANTIS LAD to fight snowmen zombies. FUN!
On an unrelated note: my friend, co-Conspirator, and once and future collaborator BUD BURGY has started his own wordpress blog where you can see all the fine work he’s done and will be working on in the future (including a project i just wrote and he’ll being doing the art on) at: http://budburgy.wordpress.com
So again, to learn more about the auction, be sure to check out these awesome podcasts and websites:
http://pcweenies.com/2009/05/27/big-illustration-party-help/ , http://illustrationparty.blogspot.com/ , and http://www.cvcomics.com/artandstory
…To Be Continued…
Wow…what a difference a several month break makes.
You may have noticed on panel 3 of page 17 yesterday that Fleming took on a marked change in his appearance–from a sloppy, choppy mutant looking thing to a streamlined cartoony looking character. And I couldn’t be happier. Yes, aside from the horrific lettering which I had sadly done before I started inking the story the first time, I’m actually having to clean up very little on these pages–Yay! Saving time!–and I think if I had done these last 7 pages in the original “Who Gives A Crap” style I did the first 17, the panels I’ve really grown to love (The DaVinci Audiobook, blasting off from England, the UN) would be as useless and ugly as most of the panels which preceded them.
There was actually a pretty healthy (and often hilarious) debate on the most recent episode (#67) of ART AND STORY: ALIVE! that I think MANLY TALES issue one is the missing link of for both sides of the argument (check it out at: http://www.cvcomics.com/artandstory/?page_id=66).
The debate was basically this: Should you keep cranking out crap (like the first 17 pages) for public consumption, or should you wait until you’ve improved your style/technique/etc enough (like the last 7 pages) before you start making comics? And if you wait to accomplish the technical side will you actually be print-ready if you haven’t been doing actual comics and getting any feedback? (That’s more or less the jist. There’s more to it–including how to make a baby jesus cry–so listen for yourself.)
Well, with issue one here I was clearly cranking out crap that was NOT fit for human eyes to gaze upon. The hours and HOURS I have spent in the last week and a half fixing my many mistakes (and there are MANY more I just got too frustrated/bored to fix) proves that. If I had finished issue one in Fall fo 2006 I don’t know that I would have ever printed it. And if I had, I probably wouldn’t have done more (and kept getting better) cause I really detested those first 17 pages. But after a took a several month break and finished the back 7 in May of 2007 I felt despite all the opening pages weaknesses, the art of those closing pages (along with the ending I had finally cooked up) had “saved” the story.
Had it saved it enough that I SHOULD have printed it? No.
Should I have completely redone the first 17 pages? Yes.
I know this now (as I knew it then). But I also knew to redo almost all of issue one would have probably also killed the momentum for issue two. And issue two is where I was going to start applying everything I has learned….but that’ll have to wait until next Monday. We still gotta wrap this one up…