Evan Dorkin's Blog, page 16

Milk & Cheese Pin-Up

 

Testing out new art supplies, including a light pad. 

Two Quick Reminders

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund's "Spirit of Giving" Personalized Gift Drive ends December 5th. They added a few new creators to the drive -- art Speigelman, Sergio Aragones and Alison Bechdel (among others) are now on the list of folks who will personalize books to you, your friends, your loved ones, your pets, your arch-enemies -- whoever the hell you want. The personalized books make a nice gift as well as a nice donation to the CBLDF. I will be signing copies of Beasts of Burden and Milk & Cheese (and doing small sketches, as well), but there are some very popular, harder to get-anything-signed-by creators such as Alan Moore and Neal Gaiman on the roster. So, y'know, there's that. 

This Wednesday my first solo comic in six years, House of Fun , will be out, courtesy of the fine folks at Dark Horse Comics. Yes, yes, it's a reprint of the material from Dark Horse Presents #10-12, along with some strips from the blog, a page from the Dose anthology, and some drawings and crap. But I know almost none of you bought Dark Horse Presents #10-12, so let's all pretend it's new and fantastic, okay? Okay. 

Glad that's settled.  

The Vanisher

Some of you folks might remember my posting a pencil sketch of this idiot a ways back. Sarah bought me an Artograph light pad to replace the big, heavy, clunky light box I've used for about 25 years and I pulled out that sketch to test it out. The light pad passed with flying colors, it's going to save a lot of drawing time as well as a lot of wear and tear on my arm and hand. The Vanisher is still a big super-villain fail, though, with one of the dopiest super-villain costumes in comic book history. Who wouldn't want to vanish while wearing that nightmare ensemble?

Oh, Brother...

We're still getting back up to speed after the storm. We finally managed to get a tree removal service to come and haul the drunken Ent off our roof, they were also nice enough to remove a small stack of very large bills from our wallet as well. Then we had a bit of a dust-up over a new comic coming out which I felt was remarkably similar to a story I did in Dork #8 back in 2000.

On the plus side of things, a lot of work has fallen into our laps that we can now start getting back to. And Scott Allie at Dark Horse just wrote to let us know they got advance copies of the House of Fun one-shot, which is great to hear. Even though it's reprinting work from Dark Horse Presents (along with some extras) it's the first comic book of my own stuff out in about six years (if I remember correctly). That's insane. I hope the next one doesn't take that long. 

Oh, before I forget, once again I'll be signing personalized book plates for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund Spirit of Giving drive. Folks can purchase Beasts of Burden and Milk and Cheese as gifts for friends, family or themselves, and I'll sign them to you (or whomever) along with a little sketch tossed in as a thank you (the CBLDF site says that artists will not be doing sketches, I am, but that's my own choice, just FYI). This year's participants in the drive include Alan Moore, Jeff Smith, Cliff Chang, Raina Telgemeier and Brian Wood. There's also pre-signed items from Dan Clowes, Brian Lee O'Malley, Neal Gaiman, Paul Pope and others. You can find information on who's signing, what books they're signing, and how you can order those books here.

The personalized gift books aren't cheap, to be honest, but the CBLDF is a good cause and if you never go to conventions this gives you a chance to get something signed by a creator you or the fan in your life likes. And even if you do go to conventions you likely won't be getting anything signed by Alan Moore. The offer to get personalized books ends December 5th, btw.

Okay, over and out. Have a safe, sane, swell holiday. Talk to you soon.



 

Oh, Well

I won't be going to the BCGF tomorrow after all. The gas situation is still messy, I'm not feeling very well (dizzy spells? What?) and a tree fell on our house the night of the snow storm. Everyone's okay, not a huge tree, but a big scare and something else to deal with now. The mass transit option isn't very attractive for an event I don't actually have to be at. I spoke with Alex at the CBLDF and we'll try to set a signing up for another time.

I really wanted to go and will miss being able to see some folks. Life could be worse.

Hope everyone at the event has a great time and no hassles getting there and back again.
 

Quick BCGF Update

The BCGF is this Saturday, and if all goes according to plan I'll be there, signing at the CBLDF table. Staten Island is still in a bad way, so the gas situation might affect my being able to make it. Gas is supposed to become easier to get by the weekend, but for the time being it's still semi-Mad Max out here. If Staten Island had better mass transit to Brooklyn I'd go that route, but they don't, so I won't. I'll keep all three of you who might give a toss an update by Friday.

Hey

Our power came on a few hours ago, pretty much while we were considering our evacuation plans. The cold just got to be too much, most of our neighbors went elsewhere and we were going to do the same after the house temperature dropped drastically. Hopefully  the power will be staying on, it flickered back on the other night but conked after twenty minutes. A lot of trees came down in our area and even some power lines were broken off by the storm. And this area wasn't even badly affected compared to most of the borough.

We're doing okay, thanks very much to everyone who wrote or sent us a note on Twitter. We went to a friend's house yesterday to warm up and recharge the dumb phone and send out some e-mails to let friends and family know we were okay. We saw video of the damage on Staten Island and elsewhere and it was terrible. A friend of a friend checked on us yesterday, he lost an elderly family member. It's unreal. I grew up in one of the evacuation areas that was hit hard and I knew it was going to be bad over there, that area used to get water damage in bad rains, let alone a hurricane storm surge. It was worse than I ever imagined. Ships washed ashore, cars tossed around, houses and people swept away. I've never seen anything like it in all my life here. Just awful.

I hope everyone out there is doing well and things are getting back to some kind of "normal" if you've been affected by the storm. Again, I appreciate the letters and contact from friends and readers, thanks for keeping us and others in the area in your thoughts. I'll try to get back to everyone as soon as I can, if you don't hear from me, please don't take it personally, we have a lot to do to catch up and things are a little crazy. I can only imagine how it's going for folks who had a worse time of it and are facing serious hardship and loss in the aftermath.

Take care, everyone. Be safe.

Halloween: What Are You Watching?

I'm still watching horror movies on Netflix whenever I can find some time and the little girl isn't around. Mostly finding junk when I try something from the last two decades, though. I guess with a boom in production and technology allowing anyone with a camera and a computer to make a direct-to-video you have to expect a lot of garbage. There have been one or two movies I couldn't even finish, or I forwarded through, they were so bad. That's never been the case in the past, I'm an OCD baby and I like to finish what I start. But when you're on a road that becomes increasingly covered in shit, you have to turn back at some point. Or something like that.

A lot of films people seem to like hasn't really been doing it for me (Dead Snow, Insidious, Slither, Rare Exports). I can't even remember some of the movies the next day. I watched something the other night and can't remember it (I looked it up, I watched Midnight Movie in two shifts and Land of the Dead just the other day and already forgot them. Banality or Senility?).

We're limited to Netflix and our DVD collection, and we're saving a few to watch together if we ever can both watch something together (Let the Right One In, Troll Hunter, etc). I've been enjoying 70's stuff more than I expected to, even the clunkier/stupider ones are at least straightforward and aren't winking at the audience every few minutes. And I still really love the black and white stuff, even the garbage. But anyway, it's Halloween, and we never really talk anymore, so I was wondering if anyone wants to share what they've been picking out and trying on for the holiday season. New stuff, old favorites? Searching for gold, rough gems or just junk? I watched Troll and it was even worse than I expected. Kinda dying to see the infamous Troll 2. Anyway...

In a nutshell: What have you been watching for Halloween, and what are you planning to watch?

New Printings of M&C and Beasts of Burden

The second printing of the Milk and Cheese: Dairy Products Gone Bad hardcover collection shipped last month. So, it's available again, huzzah and all that. I knew a second printing was being planned but I had no idea it was already out. Now I know.

The fourth printing of Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites ships in December. Which is crazy, because Jill and I didn't know that there was a third printing. I found out a few days ago that the book was going out of print again, that the new printing was the fourth, and that it was already being shipped from the printer. What the huh --? Where have I been all this time? Why doesn't anyone tell me these things?

I'm not complaining, it's good news and it all comes out in the wash, anyway, but jeepers -- fourth printing. Really unexpected, especially with so little new material available since the book originally came out. 

Post NYCC: New Beasts of Burden and Other Stuff

I had a great time at NYCC although it was chiefly because of the people I met, the people I saw, and the people I signed books for. The show itself is a juggernaut of impersonal salesmanship, PR bullshit and assorted bells and whistles, it does what it does, it doesn't make attempts to deny it's a money-making machine, and I have to respect it for that. The attendees seemed very happy to trudge the hall, buy stuff, and wait on lines for panels and screenings full of PR bullshit. I was happy to see more comics than I expected, jeebus cripes the Building Stories box of stuff looks wonderful, for one thing. I was unhappy to not be able to punch out a dozen or two dingbats who don't understand the meaning of personal space and how their prop swords and massive backpacks can hurt people when swung into them. But it's Chinatown, what can you do? Sarah and Emily came in with me on Friday for the DHC horror panel, I went in on my own on Saturday for the DHC signing. It was great seeing a lot of DHC folks, seeing folks like Scott Allie and Eric Powell, running into Walt Simonson, Amanda Conner and some other friends in and out of comics that I haven't seen in ages. 

Although we didn't make a formal announcement, during the Dark Horse Comics horror panel we mentioned that Jill Thompson and I are working on a second Beasts of Burden mini-series. It'll be four issues, two of which I've written (one of which I co-wrote with Sarah). When we're finally done with it all the second series will cap a second hardcover collection, along with the Hellboy crossover and the Neighborhood Watch stories from Dark Horse Presents. As far as a schedule for the new series, I guess "sometime in 2013" is about all I can cough up. Anyway, at least it's underway, finally, and I'm glad we can start talking about it. Although I guess that's all there is to say right now.

In more concrete comic book news: Sarah and I have a three page art job in the new issue of Mad Magazine, #518. I wrote a four-page story for Bart Simpson #76 which was illustrated by Eric Shanower (!). I'm the interview subject in the December issue of Creator Owned Heroes from Image. And if all goes according to plan, Sarah and I will be doing some more color gag pages and Milk and Cheese stories for Dark Horse Presents.

Also, I'm going to be at the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival next month (October 10th), signing stuff at the CBLDF table.

Between things developing out of NYCC and projects dropping in our laps unexpectedly it looks like Sarah and I are going to be super-busy in the coming months. Some of the stuff is for comics, and some is animation-related, which means folks will likely never actually see any of it. Hopefully most of it will come to pass and we'll get to tell you about it, time will tell what sees the light of day and what gets buried in the pits of development hell. Pretty crazy.

In the meantime, gotta run. Hope to see some of you in Brooklyn next month.