Evan Dorkin's Blog, page 15

Pro At Cons

I'll be at the MoCCA Fest this Saturday, April 6th, signing at the CBLDF table from 12 to 2 pm. Copies of the Beasts of Burden and Milk and Cheese hardcover collections will be available, all sales benefit the Defense Fund. I'll be happy to sign anything anyone might want to bring, of course. Except for copies of mad Dog, I mean, I'll gladly sign them but hate my life while looking at them.

More information on the CBLDF signings at the show can be found here. Information on this year's MoCCA Fest can be found here. I haven't been to a MoCCA show in a while, I'm hoping the new caretakers put on a good show and everyone has a blast. Maybe I'll see some of you there. Unless you're avoiding me.

You will also be able to avoid me at this year's Heroes Con, because Sarah and I are confirmed for a return visit to that very swell comic book event. Looking forward to seeing friends and fans. And I hope that guy's back with the Pokemon candy toy finger puppets, he wasn't set up last year and Emily missed getting a few. Okay, okay, I was devastated, too.

Heroes Con website is here, ever-growing guest list is here.

Before I forget -- Asbury Con was a hoot, we had a great time and even did well at the table. Big thanks to Cliff Galbraith and his partners in crime, he threw a nice event and the attendance exceeded everyone's expectations. He even made banners for the special guests and let us take them home. Cripes! Friends met us there and other friends attended and we went to the Silver Ball pinball museum and arcade the following day and proceeded to tear some tendons on the over 200 machines. Emily is now a Medieval Madness fan (Theater of Magic's still her favorite) and I rediscovered Cyclone, and played The Shadow, among others, and kind of liked it (a lot better than the movie, phewww). Still can't beat Scared Stiff, despite a lot of tries. And the vintage Canada Dry pin broke again while I was playing it. I will drop all of those targets one day, I swear. Can't wait to go back there, it's a great place. They just need a Safecracker and a Creature From the Black Lagoon and I'd be in ultimate pinball-heaven.

In other news:

The House of Fun one-shot was nominated for a divisional award by the National Cartoonist's Society. Congrats to our pal, the awesome Amanda Conner, also nominated -- although I'm betting we both lose to the legendary Bernie Wrightson (!). This really is a case of just being happy to be nominated. No, really. Sure, it would be a blast to win, but the nod itself is so unexpected because I always thought only NCS members could be nominated. And the NCS has always been a bit of a mystery to me, all the big newspaper cartooning greats of yore in tuxes at the functions, lighting cigars with money, ordering waiters to be executed. Big-time stuff, y'know? Anyway, I had a funny conversation with Tom Richmond when he called with the news, trying to explain to him that my nomination was a mistake because I wasn't a member. I'm really an alpha idiot.

We finished up our tour of duty working on some animation stuff, hopefully we can announce what that was all about before too long. Something we worked on is going into production, some things we worked on are development-type things. Who knows?

Finally, the news is going around that the great Carmine Infantino has passed away. R.I.P. to one of the funnybook heavy hitters who made a lot of people happy for a long time with his wonderful art, design and creativity. One of the one-of-a-kinds in the mainstream comics world, a Silver-Age architect, and even though the term gets tossed around too easily, a comics legend for sure.

Some Time Later...

Still busy as heck, still not updating the blog much. Finishing up the animation gig, finished up a Mad illo, still pushing the last Beasts of Burden script to wrap up the current arc.

So, quickly:

We just received our comp copies of Simpsons Comics #200, which ships on March 20th. Sarah and I did a two-page strip for the double-sized anniversary issue. Fun/Not Terribly Interesting Fact: It's the first time I lettered my own stuff for a Bongo comic. I was supposed to letter the Treehouse story I did a few years back but the deadline couldn't bear it (i.e., I was running late on the art).

The third Asbury Park Comic Con is still this March 30th and we're still going. They added Don McGregor as a guest, as well as R. Sikoryak and several others. There was a local television ad done for the event and the way my name was spoken by the announcer made me laugh and cringe and regret my surname for the eleventy-thousandth time since I was yanked out of the warm darkness. Cripes.

I was going to post a quick sketch I did of Harmony and Ecoli Weinstein from Hectic Planet but I keep screwing up the sizing on images on LJ. Sarah explained it to me the last time I screwed this up but I forgot. I'll figure it out after I screw it up again and try to have art on the site again.

Been watching the junky horror movies again on the Netflix. Actually, I saw a few decent and/or fun ones and even a good one and the junky ones were mostly watchable. I better not get into that, I'll type all night about the really junky ones (Dark House, The Hollow, Salvage...). Maybe later. Some of them I saw a while back and can't remember, the sure sign of a plain-old useless bad waste of time.

Type to you soon, I hope.

Hi, Hello, Hi!

We've been pretty busy lately, and I've been feeling pretty overwhelmed, so if anyone was wondering, that's why things have been slow around here (slower?) lately.

For one thing, we've been kind of working in the animation industry again, doing some more WFH stuff that will likely never be seen by anyone outside the company, as well as doing some stuff that is actually supposed to be seen by the general public at some point down the line. Nothing huge in the scheme of the entertainment industry, but a few pretty nifty gigs, with a small possibility of further work in the future if anything moves forward. We shall see.

Speaking of the entertainment industry, if you haven't heard, there's been a development in the Beasts of Burden film project situation. A director has been hired, according to the internet and various industry-tracking sites. The director is Shane Acker, who made an animated film called 9, which I haven't seen. On paper he seems to be a decent fit for the project. Who knows? Not me. And as far as an actual film goes, while this is a welcome step in the right direction, (and a step away from shelving the thing, at least for now), it's still a long way from production. Which is why I don't talk about it unless they go and do crazy things like announce they've hired a director. File this under, "I'll believe it when I see it" (and maybe not even then). Anyway, the announcement sold some books and was free PR for the series, which is always nice. Now we just need to make more comics.

Oh, right. Speaking of Beasts of Burden comics, the upcoming mini-series is unfortunately coming along very, very slowly. To the point where it might not make it onto DHC's schedule this year. Meaning you might see a Beasts of Burden movie before we see the next collection if the folks responsible for writing and illustrating the book don't shape up, ha ha ha. Hey, that's not funny at all. No, not at all. Fingers crossed things will pick up. Actually, they have picked up, but there's miles to go and all that crap. On the plus side, I think these will be good, strong comics when they do arrive, and I really, really hope that isn't going to be too long from now.

Between now and then: the third Asbury Comic Con is March 30th. This time it will be held at the convention center, and not at the Asbury Lanes venue. Bigger, better, etc (one hopes). We will be there, as will the great Al Jaffee, among others. Here's the website with information on guests, tickets, panels, etc. They still use the shitty picture of me from Wikipedia on the site. I hate that picture like poison, largely because I am uncomfortable having my picture taken in the best of circumstances, especially when I look the way I looked the day that shitty picture was taken (which is how I usually look, ha ha ha). Hooray for the internet and rude fan-photographers at bad conventions (not Asbury, it was taken at a Big Apple show I also hated like poison). Hooray for us all.

Speaking of conventions, I don't know if we're doing any other events this year. We're probably doing Heroes Con again. We really like that show, and we see a lot of friends there, so hopefully we will get that set up. Beyond that...sheesh...well, I'll likely be at NYCC if DHC wants me to do a signing (for the books that won't be out until...oh, hell...). Otherwise, we have no plans to do any conventions, in this convention-crazy modern wacky world. The more conventions they make, the less we attend, it seems. Huh.

I would have loved to go to TCAF, that show's terrific. Couldn't swing it. I blame society, as always. You folks should go, if you can.

(Plug the comics, my agent -- who doesn't exist -- is telling me).

We have a two-page comic in Simpsons Comics #200, out next month. We also did an illustration for the issue of Mad that's on the stands right now.

Guess that's the gist of it, or at least all the stuff I can mention. Or allude to.

Thanks to anyone and everyone out there who bid on our last round of e-bay auctions. We might do some more soon. I guess that's kind of our home-version of a comic convention these days. Huh.

First Ebay Art Auctions of 2013

Eight items on the block, including some recent Marvel and EC character pin-ups, a Milk and Cheese page from 1992, a trading card sketch, two Mad illustrations and a set of Fun Strips (on one piece of paper) from House of Fun #1 (including the Haiku of the Ancient Sub-Mariner gag).

The link to all the auctions is here, as always, please feel free to browse even if you're not in the market.

Thanks for your time and attention.

How Much Me Can You Stomach?

A longer version of the interview I did with Christopher Irving for Creator-Owned Heroes #7 has been posted on the Graphic NYC site. I sound a lot more negative than I meant to and my fall-back Brooklyn native style of speaking didn't help things much, but it's got some pictures and I called myself a jerk and there's some talk of my days in comic book retail and it's not super-long...so, as you believe, so shall you do.

Speaking of super-long conversations, here's a 2-hour interview I did with Wendi Freeman for the Double Page Spread podcast, edited down from an even longer talk (!). It was a fun interview but it went into some unexpected places (depression, anxiety, childhood, the relationship between those things and being a fan) and it got a little intense, for lack of a better way of putting it. I don't know how much of that part of the interview was used, but Wendi mentions those hot-button comic book topics (Depression! Yay!) in the episode description, so, I'm assuming it's in there somewhere.   

This listener's tweet summed the interview up interestingly: 

"So @evandorkin said some wise things that brought tears to my eyes and some not so wise things that had me laughing on @DoublePgSpread"

Well, there you go. I make you laugh, I make you cry, and in the end, you'll wonder..."why"?




Remember -- The Fly Approves! (Just not very enthusiastically...)

If You've Never Seen the Eltingville Club Pilot...

...someone put the complete 2002 "Bring Me The Head of Boba Fett" episode up, with the really swell end credits theme by the Aquabats included. You can see i here. It's got a lot of flaws, and I take full blame for nearly all of them, but I think it has it's moments. And it's an interesting footnote to...something. Maybe two somethings, even.

I'm sure it'll get pulled at some point, so, just a head's up if you have any interest in sitting through it. 

Ultron 5

Kept forgetting to post this here. 11" by 17" on bristol, Pitt brush pen, pen and ink, rapidograph, Pentel correction pen. Kids: Remember to subtract "5" from whatever model number Ultron is currently sporting to figure out how many times the Avengers has kicked his metallic ass. 

Ultron 5 created by Roy Thomas and John Buscema, who turned in a really effective design here. Ultron's skull/insectoid head is an economic marvel. Scary-looking guy, back when villains really never looked truly scary. It manages to convey a frozen-metal countenance but at the same time the gaping jaw and slanted eyes add a sense of violent motion. If that makes any sense. I didn't go to art school, so sue me.  

Fundraiser/Art Auction for California Comics Retailer/Shop

The color Milk and Cheese pin-up I posted here recently is on eBay as part of a fundraiser organized by Bongo's Bill Morrison for Bob Ficara, a California comics retailer going through a financial crisis post-stroke/health issues/family lay-off. The funds are being raised to try to save his shop (Metro Entertainment, in Santa Barbera) and get him back on his feet again. 

You can see the Milk and Cheese art auction More information on the effort, situation, those involved, etc, can be found here. 

Thanks for your time and attention, thanks for any bids any of you might make for the cause.

Chibi Crypt-Keeper

Comic Book Jones' 5th Anniversary This Weekend

Forgot to post about this, unless I did and forgot, which is just as scatterbrained. 

I'll be signing at Comic Book Jones on Saturday as part of their 5th Anniversary celebration. The event kicks off tomorrow with a signing  featuring Ben McCool, Frank Tieri and Lauren Monardo. I'm signing on Saturday with a bunch of folks. Copies of House of Fun and Beasts of Burden: Neighborhood Watch will be on hand, probably along with a bunch of other stuff I worked on that the guys at the store can't get rid of. There's a 25% off sale on both days (Sunday, as well) so you can get your stuff signed and sketched on for less than cover price. That's nice. I'm bringing some Beasts of Burden promo cards to hand out, as well. Whee!

There's also going to be a party Saturday evening at a bar here on Staten Island to celebrate the anniversary. 

Information on the events and the store can be found here. 

Perhaps we'll see some of you at the shop, at the bar, in the drunk tank the following morning.