Becky Cloonan's Blog, page 4

Consumption

la la la!

Dracula Dracula!

A few of you have noticed this already, through google, june previews, comixology, or amazon-- that I have a new book coming out!! How exciting. So for those of you who's search-fu isn't as strong (or who just have better things to do, I don't blame you!) here it is:

DRACULA Published by Harper Collins, a hardcover weighing in at 368 pages, with Bram Stoker's original text and over 50 full color illustrations by me! I'll post more info soon, but for now I'll just say THE BLOOD IS THE LIFE and post this picture of Dracula himself.


:D

Another trip around the sun!!

Holy shit, today has been a deluge of Birthday wishes!!! It's been a crazy week, mostly I've been working like a maniac, but I took last night off with buddies and Lauren and Mike took me to see SLEEP at Terminal 5!! \m/ YEAH THANKS GUYS! Needless to say, there was copious amounts of rocking out.

I also got news that my show at Rogue's Gallery in Chicago was named Best Gallery Exhibit from the Chicago Reader! Double holy shit!! I'm totally floored.

So yeah, after a nice lunch, it was back to work for me! I'll probably go grab a cupcake or something later, maybe set it on fire-- but I want to take a minute to say thank you to everybody for the outpouring of birthday wishes! I'm wading through the marshes of deadline hell, so it was nice to get inundated with such a show of support. Really helps as I trooper through this crunch! Seriously how can I reply to all the responses I've got? You guys!! :D I'll keep making comics, how's that?

And although I might be working (because really, what's a birthday without a little work?) I have to say this picture Mike Moses took last night sums up my birthday experience quite nicely:


We made our ancestors proud.

¡Venganza!

Pen, Brush, Ink and Revenge. Done on an A5 piece of paper.

Done for VENGANZA Comics & Collectables's gallery in Perth, Scotland- they ordered a bunch of WOLVES from me for the store as well! VENGANZA opens July 16th- if you are in the area, go out and support them! Check out their website and Facebook for more info!

And for more information about WOLVES and how to get it:
http://inkandthunder.blogspot.com/201...

Danger, Adventure, MCM!

So I wrote this up yesterday but blogger ate it, so today you get a semi-skim, watered down version!! At least it will take less time to read.

First I'd like to give a big thanks to everyone who let me stay with them: Emma Vieceli and Pud Ruddick, Jamie McKelvie and Hanna Donovan, and the lovely Rufus Dayglo, who has perhaps the most impressive taxidermy, Gundam, and original art collections I've ever seen!

Me and Jamie on the bus
I spent the first part of my trip was spent in Cambridge (what a lovely town!), then it was off to London before MCM Expo. Jamie and I made a day trip to Nottinham, where we stopped by Page 45 and signed everything in the store. Thanks to Stephen for hanging out, and supporting Wolves! :)

MCM was amazing, I had such a good time. I sat next to Paul Duffield and Kate Brown, who's respective books Signal and Fish and Chocolate are worth looking up. Behind me was Gary Erskine, a phenomenal inker who made me an amazing pen, and who's banner I might have defaced... And it was great to be across from Richard Starkings-- I was in amazing company!

Sketching!
Shout outs to Simon Gane, Rob Davis, Jane from MOMB Podcast, Josh from The Negative Zone,  Clark, Lisa, Nabil and the rest of the crew at Travelling Man, Tony Lee who gave me his whiskey because I batted my eyelashes... and a reminder to Nevs that if you get the Filthy Orphans together in November, I'll draw the flyer! And big thanks to Fred O'Rourke for the Copics- you get free books from me forever! And to Clark Burscough for the mix tape-- I owe you one! It was good to finally meet Warren Ellis as well!

And how can I forget the dapper Dan Boultwood, who, besides being a gentleman of taste and comics, is a good gun to have on your side if you ever find yourself stuck in an Elevator Action Death Parade.

Big props to everyone who organized comic village- Matt, Pud, Anna, and Dave! The show ran so smoothly! I did a panel with Emma Vieceli, Jamie McKelvie and Kieron Gillen, had a signing with the one and only Mr. Frank Quitely, and scored a victory with fellow artists Leigh Gallagher, Adam Cadwell, Joe List, and Gary Erskine against the writers in Artists vs. Writers!

Team Victory!
I know I'm leaving people out-- I'm still jetlagged, I've been getting up at 4am since I've been back. I'll try to amend this as the details of my trip start to emerge. MCM was amazing though, I drew a ton of sketches, sold a bunch of Wolves, met so many amazing people, and generally had an amazing time. You can now find Wolves stocked at Travelling Man, Page 45 and Gosh!


My only regret is I won't be around for the October MCM, but I'm definitely going to try and go again next spring! Oh, and I'll be around for Thought Bubble in November-- I'm counting the months. England, you were lovely.

Thanks for a good time- now back to work with you!

Drink the Blood of the Dragon

During the last few weeks, the inimitable Mike Moses and myself teamed up to create a limited edition silk screened print.
BEHOLD:
11"x17"
Silk screened print
Limited to 100 pieces
Signed, stamped & numbered
Prints will ship in JULY.
$30.00 + $10.00 shipping

"Drink the Blood of the Dragon / Speak the Language of Birds" depicts Sigurd and Fafnir from the Völsunga Saga. After Sigurd had slain Fafnir with the sword Gram, Odin came to him disguised as an old man and instructed him to bathe in the blood of the dragon, and eat it's heart to grant him invulnerability and the ability to communicate with birds.

Mike Moses is a phenomenal painter, illustrator and tattoo artist.
Find him online at www.thedrowntown.com & sufferme.tumblr.com
and at Thicker Than Water in NYC, tattooing Saturday-Tuesday

WOLVES: How do I get it?

WOLVES is debuting at TCAF in Toronto, May 7th and 8th. After that I'll start selling them online.

The easiest way to get a copy of WOLVES from me is to catch me at a convention- of which I will be at many!

TCAF (May, Toronto)
MCM (May, London)
HEROES CON (June, North Carolina)
SDCC (July, San Diego)
THOUGHT BUBBLE (Nov, Leeds)

I'll be updating this list as shows are added.

I WON'T BE AT ANY OF THOSE SHOWS! HOW DO I BUY THEM ONLINE?
I have to finish coding my online store, which will go live when I finish it sometime in May or June. I'm working hard on several things right now, so I will get to it when I get to it! I will be shipping worldwide, and I'll only be accepting Paypal. Honestly the online store is not a priority for me because I have so much work and travel coming up in the next few months, but I will try my best to get it live in a timely manner! And when it goes live I'll be yelling and screaming about it so you probably won't miss it unless you live in a cave. No offense to my cave-dwelling fans! :D

BUT YOU ONLY MADE ONE THOUSAND COPIES!
My first print run is 1,000 signed and numbered copies. If I go through these quickly, I'll make more, but they won't be numbered. Honestly I only made 1,000 because I wasn't sure what the interest would be. So don't worry, I'm going to try to keep WOLVES in stock.

I'M A RETAILER! I WANT TO SELL WOLVES IN MY STORE!
I'd love to wholesale WOLVES, but since I only made a limited run to start I'm going to take most of my orders for retailers after San Diego Comic Con! :) Feel free to contact me if you are interested.

That's it! I'm off to work. If you have questions feel free to post in the comments, and I'll update this post with the answers.

WOLVES: Contest Winners!

For those of you who follow my Twitter account, yesterday afternoon I did a WOLVES giveaway to the 3 people who I thought came up with the best captions for the covers--- and here are the winners!

In no particular order...

@wickedfable for the most poetic:

@heartworm for the most clairvoyant (how did you know about the nasty paper cuts I got today while stuffing envelopes?):

And @crazymonkeygirl for making me laugh the hardest!:

So you three, email me with your names and address! beckyattack at gmail dot com :3

This was a lot of fun~! (At least I enjoyed it. Was it good for you?) Thanks everyone for participating, the things everybody came up with had me giggling all night. It was actually really hard to choose! I've never ran a contest before.

I will probably do another one of these in May, after TCAF- for now I am too busy with work (April is almost over-- wait, whaaat?!). Stay tuned- who knows when the spirit will move me!

Tokyopop, Etc.

Most of you have probably heard the news about Tokyopop closing it's doors (There was a nice short article on The Beat about it yesterday!) and thought about the possible impact it might have on some of the titles stuck in limbo since they were canceled, including Dan Hipp's Gyakushu, Brandon Graham's King City, Ross Campbell's The Abandoned, and my East Coast Rising. I obviously have mixed feelings about this, because while I was working on my book I had a pretty good time, but after canceling my second book 120 pages in I obviously still have some bitter feelings- and their closing does make me excited that I might be able to one day finish the story. Of course the hard part is if that time ever comes, I'm pretty booked for work, and my style and storytelling has changed so much- it will definitely be a challenge to pick up again! But a challenge that I'd be happy to step up to, if the time comes.

Tokyopop gave me a huge opportunity to publish my first solo graphic novel, one that paid off with an Eisner nomination for Best New Series, and as a finalist in the first International Manga Award. The book might be silly and a bit juvenile, but I still look back and remember how fun it was to draw, and all the good times I had working on it. It's also nice to look back on TP's early influence, breaking into book stores and opening up a section of the market that was until then impenetrable. They took chances on new creators, and for a while they had a great team of editors, writers and artists working for them!

A lot of people blame TP's downfall on Borders closing- I think it goes beyond that, to the time when they stopped being a publisher and started being an IP hoarder. To be a successful publisher I would have thought you'd have to make publishing a priority- and by canceling so many books and concentrating harder on their media developments over the promotion and production of the comics they published, they signed their own death warrant.

That's not to say it's bad to cultivate options for a property outside of comics, but it seemed, for my book and from my perspective at least, that they put zero effort into marketing East Coast Rising. I had issues with the design of the book that went unheard. I even heard that they didn't stock my comic in Borders.

Maybe my work was so different from the manga that they produced, that they didn't know what to do with it, or how to market and sell it- but that didn't stop it from getting an Eisner nom. Obviously it had potential to get traction, but just not with the right crowd. It makes me think the book would have done better at a different publisher.

Tim Beedle, my editor on this book, was lovely. I also worked with Fawn Lau as a letterer, and she was great too! I can't just point my finger wildly around at the company and place blame on everyone, or a single person, but

Maybe they just went around things wrong. If Stu Levy wanted to make a media company, maybe he should have started it that way, instead of trying to get into movies through comics. That notion has always seemed backwards to me- if you want to make a movie, just make a movie! It might not be easy, but it makes a lot more sense than making comics to make movies. That's like making cookies and hoping they will turn into a cake in the oven!

So yeah, I guess that's all I have to say. I'm excited at the prospect of maybe finishing my book, so it's bittersweet feeling to see TP go (although everyone I know who worked there was gone already...). I feel a little selfish being excited about that, but hey. I'm allowed to be selfish sometimes. I don't have any hard feelings, but I do have some advice for Stu Levy: Next time you make a company, make sure the initials don't also stand for Toilet Paper.

Flu!

Today Flu Hartberg, Norwegian cartoonist and member of Dongery collective, stopped by the studio with champagne and strawberries (which makes him the best studio guest ever). I first saw his work years ago at SPX when I picked up a copy of his book ENGLISH CONVERSATION-- which is awesome and I highly recommend it-- and after that I'd look for his work at every show.

So Flu came by to visit the studio this afternoon, and we took a break to collab on some Trolls. (I think because I'm excited to see Troll Hunter at the end of this month!) First we penciled, then traded and inked!



Needless to say, Flu is invited back anytime... as long as he brings more champagne! Next time I'm in Oslo, I'll have to return the favor.