Evan Dorkin's Blog, page 11

Eltingville Club #2 Cover

Colors by Sarah Dyer. Coming soon eventually.

Interesting Times

So, yeah, I was finally closing in on the finish line for Eltingville #1 last week when I fell down a short flight of steps and there went that. I was already lagging behind but thought I could panic-wrangle the last batch of inks fairly quickly and close enough to avoid Horrible Publishing Consequences. So, yeah, bad timing, if you have to actually injure yourself at any time of the year.

This might be the shortest stack I ever tumbled down but the damage roll I sustained was the worst ever after my tumble down the outside cement steps where I got this lovely reminder of my Fred Astaire-like nimbleness. I'm green and purple right now in a lot of places, just like your average Silver Age Marvel Comics villain. I was holding a long winter coat in both hands when I slipped, so I couldn't get my arms out to brace the fall and landed on my right side, and my drawing hand got caught under my body, and the last two fingers got banged up pretty nicely, ow ow ow, with the ring finger swelling up and scaring us quite a bit. I wasn't able to work the night it happened and was a mess the following day and am still having trouble holding pens and pencils, but it's slowly getting better and should be okay soon so I can get back to making regular old mistakes rather than these new and exciting stiff little finger foul-ups.

I have a sad history of falling down stairs, we have five flights of stairs in and around the house, I've tumbled down them all now with this latest jaunt. And I've fallen down other steps, I don't just keep it in the family. I blame myself, in all instances. I have problems or something.

Anyway, 2014's been pretty lousy so far. I've only left the house four times this year so far other than going outside to shovel snow. Which is a pain, literally, with an injured mitt. Went to my therapist and ran errands when I was out, big goddamn super-excitement all-around. Haven't seen a movie in two months. Haven't been able to play games or spend quality time with the family. All work and no play makes jerk a dull cartoonist and an unhappy boy and an occasional blogger.

Hopefully I'll finish up this issue this week so I can start the second issue and go through this all over again for a few more months. This time without the human bobsled routine, fingers crossed.

Ouch. Stupid fingers.

Eltingville: April Solicitations

Comic Book Resources has the jump on Dark Horse's April solicitations, and that means you can soon pre-order the first of two Eltingville Club one-shots if you are so inclined.

While on the subject of orders, your local comic shop will be placing March orders soon, which means you can now pre-order a copy of Beasts of Burden: Hunters and Gatherers. If you are so inclined.

Binka-Binka

A Sort Of Reckoning

So, here's the last few weeks:

The anniversary signing at Comic Book Jones went really well, we even sold a few copies of the Beasts of Burden collection, which is always cool. I stayed a while and did a bunch of drawings for folks, didn't get to everyone, hopefully next time I can make up for that. Took home some comics with store credit from the signing, including the Sunday Peanuts book from Fantagraphics. It's a lovely book and Emily went through it before I did (as usual, these days).

My daughter's been on a real comics tear recently, in the last month or two she's gone through Peanuts from 1950-1970, all four Captain Easy volumes, Prince Valiant vol 1-7, Herbie Archives vol 1-3, Magnus, Robot Fighter vol 1-3, a batch of Batman Archives, the first 50 issues of Amazing Spider-Man (again). the Gil Kane Spider-Man Artist's Edition, Fantastic Four Omnibus vol 1-2 (again), Kamandi Omnibus vol 1-2 (again), The Challengers of the Unknown Kirby Omnibus, all the Tintin books (except Soviets and Congo), Kitaro (again), Princess Knight (again), Chi's Sweet Home vol 1-7 (or whatever it's up to, the new one was at the library today), a batch of Little Lulu volumes, a batch of Adventure Time comics, Popeye vol 1-6, the Walt and Skeezix run, The first Silver Surfer Masterworks, Unico (again, she was unhappy with it the first time because it's kinda sad, but she's okay with it now), The Demon Omnibus (again), The Newsboy Legion Omnibus, The Kirby Fourth World Omnibus volumes...cripes, I give up. I've officially ruined my kid's brain. And I'm jealous she has time to read comics like a...like a kid. How dare she.

Emily turned nine a few days ago, her godparents visited and stayed with us a few days and we had a lot of fun celebrating the holidays and Em's birthday. I got a batch of comics/comics-related presents, the aforementioned Challengers Omnibus, the first Saga and Fatale trades (my first advocacy gift comics), the first Amazing Spider-Man Omnibus (thanks to my brother-in-law, of course Emily took it away from me), the second IDW Alex Toth book (thanks to my mother-in-law, who also sent the awesome Maurice Noble book and the Criterion edition of I Married a Witch) and a nifty Tezuka t-shirt (part of my gift haul from Sarah). Emily made me two versions of Stitches from Animal Crossing out of perler beads. She made out like a bandit between Christmas and her birthday, she finally got the Skylanders Giants game she's been wanting, we've been pretty smitten with the figures for a while now so it's nice that she can finally play it. And I'm jealous she has time to play games. What is it with kids?

The breathing problem had a mild resurgence after the CBJ signing, the cold weather was giving me some irritation, but that's all calmed down for the most part. By the time I got my chest x-rays done the antibiotics did their job and there wasn't any trace of the the bronchitis or pneumonia or whatever it was. I still have some minor issues, apparently when you get this sort of thing the coughing and wheezing and breathing crap lingers a while. No big deal, I'm glad it wasn't anything super-serious, although shoveling snow tomorrow will mean hitting the inhaler a few times. The real goocher is the time lost from being sick, my already tight schedule is now a state of emergency as I try to get the Eltingville stuff done.


It's going to be a long winter, but hopefully all will go well. I'm mentally kicking myself extra hard for doing so many dense pages in the first issue, it's even more stuffed than I'd expected. Eltingville has always been a text-heavy, multiple-paneled mess -- I couldn't see changing that approach this late in the game, but, man, I could be getting two or three comics out for the work I'm doing. Which has always been a problem with my work. But when this mess is over and done I've got to sit down and rethink the way I do comics. I can't keep putting so much on a page, it's not really doing anyone any good at this point, especially when income and age and eyesight and everything is factored in. It'll be interesting to see if I can actually work this out for myself.

Sarah and I put together a t-shirt design for The Exceptions, a band we did a bunch of art for many years ago during the Third Wave ska days. They're playing the Jump Up! Records Anniversary Show in Chicago. We did work for Jump Up! as well, back in the day. Time flies when you're having back pain.

Anyway, here's where we go from here:

We'll have the Beasts of Burden: Hunters and Gatherers one-shot out, then the two Eltingville Club comics, and then eight pages of Fun Strips running in Dark Horse Presents. If all goes well we'll have a second Beasts comic out later this year, more if we're lucky. Once the Eltingville Club is dead and buried I've got one or two things to do and some other stuff I'd like to do, and of course who knows how that will work out. And while all that's going on we should find out if Reel FX wants to keep playing with the idea of a Beasts movie or not.

So, the next few months should be interesting. I've got paper and at least one new brush pen and we're stocked up on Tylenol.

Here goes.

P.S. Hope everyone had a nice holiday and hope 2014 is kind to us all.

P.P.S. Fingers crossed. All around.

This Weekend - Comic Book Jones 6th Anniversary Event

Hey, folks, I should've posted this earlier but these things happen, especially when you're sick and not sure if you'll be able to make it (I'm on antibiotics now and am doing better so I won't be contagious). Anyway, I'll be signing at Comic Book Jones this Sunday, December 15th here on Staten Island, in celebration of six years of selling the funnybooks. I plan to get their by 12 or so, and will be doing freebie sketches for kids and adults and everything in-between, as well as hawking the same two friggin' books I've been pushing for the last few years a these things (actual new books are coming in 2014, I swear).

Other creators appearing will be Jacob Chabot, Chris Giarrusso and Frank Tieri. A good card for kid's drawings, so bring the imps, you wimps. On Saturday Fred Van Lente, Ryan Dunlavey and Charles Soule are appearing. Every goddamned thing in the joint is 25% off the entire weekend. Make the trip, you drip!

BTW, CBJ's anniversary posters were drawn by the talented Talent Jones, aka Lauren Monardo.

Eltingville Club #2 Cover Pencils

It Goes

Changed the name of the blog. Big news, I know.

It's also the name of my Tumblr, which Sarah set up for me a few days ago. I'm not doing much there right now because I'm busy as hell, but eventually I'll be posting more art there, and maybe other crap, with some regularity. Who knows.

I'm trying to cover all the bases as best as I can -- except Facebook, which I just don't like -- since we don't have a living website anymore. Which kills me, I'd really love to have a decent resource for my work that people can refer to, something about my various ongoing projects and books in print, a webstore for art with images and everything like a real, grown-up cartoonist. But I'm computer-illiterate and we don't have time to devote to putting anything serious together, or money to hire someone to set up a site, and we don't want anyone working for free, so, no website for the foreseeable future. But I'm on Tumblr and maybe that will help. I really have no idea.

What made me decide to do the Tumblr thing was that someone posted a Beasts of Burden short story on there a few weeks ago and it ran up almost 60,000 notes, which even if you halve that number to account for people both liking and reblogging the post, means almost thirty thousand people read it. And it's still getting tossed around and read. A small percentage of these folks ordered the book and a lot of people commented on the material and gave the series some very positive word-of-mouth. This is the biggest burst of activity generated by the book since, well...maybe ever. It got more readers than anything we've published, and at a time when the series is in hibernation, to boot, so we can certainly use the attention. Anyway, I figured it couldn't hurt to post my stuff to Tumblr and see if anything happens. Even a few folks seeing it is better than nothing. There's only so much you can do, especially when you don't have time to do much, and every little thing helps. So, yeah, I'm on Tumblr. Big news, I know.

Otherwise, Sarah's almost done coloring the gag pages we're doing for Dark Horse Presents, and work proceeds on the first Eltingville Club one-shot. I can't wait to finish this project up for so many reasons, a big one being that I don't want to draw overly-detailed, fussy, OCD-mandated comics anymore after this. Less panels, less kibbitzing, less eyestrain, more pages, a little more sleep. Maybe. The same goes for doing Fun Strips five-per-page with a title when everyone else does one or two gags on a page and fills up a book. I can't work like this anymore, there's no point and all my work could be spread out over multiple pages and books instead of filling up every inch of white space on every piece of bristol board I tape down to my table. I think I can relax after overworking pages for twenty years, for good or bad, through no one's fault but my own. Hopefully I'll figure something out and be able to work towards simplifying my pages and panels and scripts (and posts, even), so I can get more done in a more practical manner. And still do solid work. Just spread it out a little more.

We'll see how that goes. I'm sure it'll be a long process, and I'm sure I'll never stop putting extra details and business into my comics, but it's something I really have to work on. I'm not getting any younger, or healthier, or richer (ha-ha), and I need to produce more work in a less stressful manner to offset those things to some degree. If only saying it could make it happen. Stupid brain.



Two last things -- I'll be personalizing and sketching bookplates in copies of Beasts of Burden and Milk and Cheese once again for this year's holiday fundraiser effort for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Other creators who will be signing books and stuff includes Alan Moore, Jeff Smith, Brian K. Vaughan, Paul Pope and other people you may have heard of. Details can be found here.

And our fourth Metal Men cartoon short ran earlier today on the Cartoon Network -- we haven't seen it yet, but we just saw "Identity Crisis", the third short, which has been uploaded to the DC Nation site. You can see it here, along with the first two Metal Men segments (scroll down a bit to find them).

All for now. Back to work, putting too much on a page. 

The Sleeper Awakens, Release the Krakens

Spent the last few weeks finishing up an 8-page block of Fun Strips and some Eltingville Club stuff. Beast of Burden: Hunters and Gatherers got some more lettering tweaks, but it's all set, so, hey, March, 2014 for sure. We had a very nice Halloween. Caught my daughter's cold last week while working on a piece for the CBLDF, got sicker, got a little better, finished up the page, got better, (re)watched a few episodes of Kolchak, The Night Stalker, read Inkheart, got a little less better, should be more better tomorrow, so back on Eltingville tomorrow, straight until we finish that sucker up and shoot it in the head.

I'm very excited and also very nervous about finishing up Eltingville after all this time, especially since I don't really ever properly end any of the stuff I have a say in:

Milk and Cheese - semi-retirement
Hectic Planet - limbo
Dork/House of Fun - ongoing, although published sporadically (ha ha)
Kid Blastoff/Biff-Bam-Pow! - more limbo
Beasts of Burden - ongoing, until we get it done (...)
Fight-Man - I can't end it because it's not mine, so, it doesn't count, so shut up

I quit the Murder Family, then I brought them back, and I have a final strip idea, so who knows where that's not going. The Devil Puppet's in limbo (probably a good place for him). I dropped Phil, The Disco Skinhead, but he gets a cameo in the next round...all those one-joke bits of business keep popping up again, no matter how one-joke they are (or how little business they do). Nothing really ever gets cleaned up and put away for good in the House of Fun. Except for Furious George, okay, who I dropped because so many people were also doing things named "Furious George" in the 90's, and it was lame, but again, with me, you never know. In my weaker moments I'm apparently willing to dip into any inkwell again, no matter how Higgins-ass weak the ink down there may be.

The only extended series I've been involved with that was intentionally wrapped up was Bill and Ted's Excellent Comic Book, and that's only because we knew we were getting canceled with enough time to humanely put the book to sleep. If it was my own project and my own call the project would still be sitting with a non-ending at #12 in Overstreet with a potential #13 always just teased out of reach in interviews, long-promised stories never achieved, existing somewhere in the wings of a far-off corner of the Comic Book Phantom Zone.

This is why it feels so weird to me to finally -- after 20 years or so --  be finishing up The Eltingville Club. After making comics professionally for about 27 years or so, this is the first project of my own that I'm finishing up on my own terms, something most creators do much earlier in their career, something many creators have done many times over by my age. It was never the way I worked, or the way things worked out, until now, so, this is a new experience for me, heaped on top of the mixed feelings I get finishing up any extended gig of importance (to me). I'm not trying to make more of it than it is, I'm not hating on myself but I'd be the first to say (and here I go) that this isn't the end of a big deal comic from a big deal creator, and these aren't big deal characters making big-deal money that most folks want around forever (certainly not me, brother). But they've had a run, better than most small press things, and they had a solid shot at a cartoon series, and they made some folks laugh, and some other folks angry, my little monster children. Who I'm going to put out of their miserableness. So, yeah, it's a strange feeling.

If only wish the end could be quick and painless, for my sake as well as theirs. But I'm not as fast as I was back in '93, and the eyes aren't what they used to be. On the other hand, that first Eltingville comic looks like a blind raccoon drew it with a dirty twig during a seizure. So, at least these last pages will look a lot better than those first ones.

Okay, I'm off to kick the last of this cold with a decent night's sleep (fingers crossed). Latersville, kids.

Upcoming Comics: Spring, 2014