Jason's Blog, page 117

RIP, Kim Thompson

Kim Thompson, my publisher and translator at Fantagraphics, has passed away. I owe the man my career as a cartoonist. If he hadn't taken a chance on publishing Hey, Wait... back in 2001, I'm not sure where I would be today. The English and French editions of my books have made it possible for me to make a living drawing comics, a dream I was uncertain of ever achieving only fifteen years ago. Even the books he and Gary Groth published made a difference in my life. Love & Rockets, Eightball, Hate, Frank... I discovered these comics when I had grown tired of a lot of the French - Belgian albums I read in the eighties. They were well drawn, but there was also a distance to my own life. The Fantagraphics comics, together with the Drawn & Quarterly ones, spoke to me in a totally different way. So what do you do, when you start doing your own comics, in a small country of four million people? You hope maybe to reach a wider audience, in the rest of the world, translated into English, maybe even at... Fantagraphics?! And for some reason, it happened. I'm still not sure how. But I still remember the e-mail from Kim, saying they wanted to publish my book. And my life as a cartoonist began.

Thanks for doing a great job with the translation of my stories, for inviting me to Seattle, for meeting you and Lynn, for driving me out to Roslyn where they filmed Northern Exposure, for e-mail exchanges about Brian De Palma, and most of all for a dream come true. I will miss you, Kim. Hvil i fred...

Van Gogh

Hey, look!

by Mike Loveland,  http://coveredblog.blogspot.fr/2010_0... by Jim Rugg, http://jimrugg.tumblr.com/post/471930...

Leatherface

(Unfinsihed)

Varden

When I was in my hometown Molde I walked by foot up to the Varden viewpoint. It must be at least 35 years since the last time I was there. Molde can actually be quite the idyllic city when the weather is nice. I had forgotten.
(The photo is taken from google.)

Even dogs love Lost Cat

(from the Fantagraphics blog)

Books bought in Oslo

Herr Merz by Lars Fiske
Munch by  Steffen Kverneland

and got them signed by the artists during Oslo Comics Expo!

Stuff bought in Paris

Dvds:
The Hit and My Beautiful Laundrette by Stephen Frears
The Chase by Arthur Penn
Valmont by Milos Forman
Palm Beach Story by Preston Sturges

Books:
Last Night by James Salter
The Moving Target by Ross Macdonald

Signings, Oslo

The Norwegian edition of Lost Cat has been published. I will have signings in Oslo Thurday June 6, 7PM at Sound of Mu and then Saturday June 8 at Oslo Comics Expo.

Egon Schiele sketch