Brandon Graham's Blog, page 187

October 26, 2015

islandcomics:

ISLAND #4 IS OUT THIS WEDNESDAY!!! An external...



















islandcomics:



ISLAND #4 IS OUT THIS WEDNESDAY!!!

An external phone call arrives at Emma’s château from an obscure Galician asylum known as Chez Meros. The living device is a little tired but, after sipping some water, delivers its message.


Emma- Yup?


Patient R.- Hi! Emma, it’s Roque. Do you remember that time I destroyed Ares City, from your comic APB, using a mutated version of your characters infected with martian spider DNA?


Emma- I do. Those mutants built a beautiful love story from there…


Patient R.- Well, sorry… I decided - ten years later - that I owe you one, and also wanted to make a new architectural effort after destroying thousands of cities in almost every comic I made until now…


Emma- That’s so sweet! Aw…


Patient R.- I couldn’t give you back that totalitarian-Mars-colony-thing so this new one is more like an amusement park with giant robots, deadly traps and people adrift everywhere.


Emma- Well, that definitely sounds better than that horrible corporate shit I was creating back then.


Patient R.- Don’t know… I’ve been looking those old and worn copies of Miller and Darrow’s HARD BOILED


Emma- Were you doing all that while visiting your parent’s house in the mountains last week? I see… Does that ostrich farm near by still exists?


Patient R.- No, no more ostrich courtship neck dance, but they had some new goats, a horse, two ponies and some sheep. The other neighbor was slaughtering a pig last Saturday… That’s very nasty…


Emma- We have to plan something to free them all.


Patient R.- Yeah, Mirror rebellion will start on a small Galician town…


Emma- So, about that giant robot city with traps…


Patient R- It’s in line with some recent work I did, the WEIRD CITY CODA experiment - in which I did a fraction of a city each day without a previous idea for a couple or weeks - and that t-shirt design, THE TERROR, that went nowhere… But now I have a lot of lego-like pieces for constructing anything…


Emma- DUDE! I love that stuff more than I can say!! I lived there for quite a while, having it as my wallpaper, wandering like a stray dog for months to discover every corner.


For a moment I thought you definitely lost your mind after doing that one, but it was only natural. You’ve  been always obsessed with manga depicting demolitions and industrial music… It was predictable…


Patient R.- Yeah, but it wasn’t that good to build from, too much ruins and destruction and nothing really constructive… Do you remember when I had that project called STRATEGIES AGAINST ARCHITECTURE (named after Einsturzende Neubauten’s collected works)? It was about cities and buildings turning self aware and trying to kill all lifeforms they contained, with people trying to survive in a breathing and ever-changing concrete and steel labyrinth.


Emma- Jeez, that Neubauten collection drove us all crazy. I remember bringing it for an exercise during college, while studying architecture, but well, they always preferred building things to destroying others there…


But yeah, I really like that project you did back then. Somehow, it had a lot to do with LS, the last story you’ve been preparing, but changing architecture for crazy plants in space. Have you ever thought about it?


Patient R.- Well, Strategies was more like a punk approach to Schuiten & PeetersTHE OBSCURE CITIES and LS is more like Douglas Trumbull’s SILENT RUNNING


Emma- So, you changed sick architecture for sick nature, to be back to architecture again… I remember reading an interview between Koji Morimoto and Katsuhiro Otomo once, in which Morimoto, depicting himself as an obsessive urbanite, said something like he couldn’t even draw a tree..


Patient R.- Trees are really difficult. I really tried to go outside, to the forest, and draw branches and stuff but I always end up going for the Garden of Earthly Delights thing. I love alien like botany explanations, imaginary environments with its impossible lifeforms and made up languages, or even images of real plants and animals in strange representations like Ernst Haeckel works.


But yes, I think I am an urbanite, but for small cities. Big cities are kind of nightmarish to me… And yes, when I try to imagine my city images in motion I suspect  that they move and live more like plants, fungi and living things: buildings in bloom and backstreets slowly rotting, making room for new structures. There are ‘building-people’ too, and traffic is like a blood transfusion…


Emma- Sounds pretty J. G. Ballard


Patient R.- Yeah, I discovered him in my teens reading those books about residents of futuristic buildings going bananas, turning their flats into caves, stories about  homes getting smaller everyday without any logic explanation, senior citizens shut in concentration camps disguised as coastal developments, or even families communicating only via closed circuit equipment…


Emma- I always liked his ideas but could never dig his writing that much. I adore what he did to your brain, though…


Patient R.- I’m always toying with ideas like those but got a little tired. Right now I prefer creating new lifeforms and giving them specially adapted worlds.


Emma- You’re frightening me…


Patient R.- I thought about creating a city for Island readers, it is alive and needs some kind of rest, so the eyes and minds of the readers are its favorite holiday destinations.


I would love to do something à la Yuichi Yokoyama: creating an environment - or a completely new world - and guiding the reader through it. Traveling guides to places never seen before in the shape of comic books. Brandon Graham’s work was such a discovery too, specially the new MULTIPLE WARHEADS story arc.


(Emma holds Roque’s hands with sparkling-shojo eyes.)


Emma- Those ideas are so touching! Thank you!!!


(Somewhere, not so far away, a loud sound occurs while the skyline of Coruña starts to move, opening sails to each one of Island’s readers. Emma sits on the floor, drawing and writing for a future project. Meanwhile, Patient R. looks at the city window by window, trying to mentally suit each flat to new homecoming creatures…)

——
+ Emma Ríos is co-editing Island, drawing Pretty Deadly and writing Mirror. All courtesy of Image Comics. ( facebook : twiiter )
+ Roque is the author of  ‘Polaqia’s Sketchbook #2’ ( Polaqia Ed.) and lots of xeroxed self published stuff. He tries to live drawing. (web : tumblr : instragram)


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Published on October 26, 2015 12:31

October 25, 2015

simon-roy:

a scene from habitat chapter 2



simon-roy:



a scene from habitat chapter 2


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Published on October 25, 2015 19:00

what's up with you guys publishing that dude who's straight up ripping off Jonny Negron in Island?

I co-edited an anthology (Meathaus SOS) many moons ago that had Negron in it back when he was going by Jonny B and his art looked a lot more Herpich/Corey Lewis. It’s interesting to see how he drew before he did any of his thick Crumb women. His old Deviantart is up here and has some cool stuff in it

I feel like I’ve seen the evolution of his style and I don’t see a lot in common with Dilraj Mann (who is who I assume you mean) other than that they both draw thick women. (Negron on the left Mann on the right) 

I feel like they have dramaticly different storytelling styles and it seems like different motivations behind the kind of stories they’re telling. 

 I could go into it a lot more about what I get from reading each artists work– and where I think their influences might be– but in the end I just wanna impress that when me and Emma put someone in Island it’s because we have faith in them as individual creators with unique work. and yeah, I just get different things from reading Mann than Negron.

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Published on October 25, 2015 11:39

does running help get those creative juices going, brand00n?

It’s certainly been overall good for my brain. I think the main advantage is just having something that keeps me on a schedule. I like a weird mix of structure for my no structure life. 

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Published on October 25, 2015 10:57

On which comic you working on the photo you posted earlier.

The photo of me as a teenager.

I was working on a thing called October Yen that I did a million versions of until Antarctic press let me do it as a 3 issues mini series when I was 19.  

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Published on October 25, 2015 10:51

October 24, 2015

onyomugan3:

セーラー・バルキリー
超時空要塞マクロス



onyomugan3:



セーラー・バルキリー


超時空要塞マクロス


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Published on October 24, 2015 22:15

A skatchbook page with me as a beartaur and and Marian’s...



A skatchbook page with me as a beartaur and and Marian’s holloween costume as a Marian. 

Also, I’ve been running recently. 

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Published on October 24, 2015 20:18

Sketchboooook thang



Sketchboooook thang

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Published on October 24, 2015 10:17

October 23, 2015

simon-roy:

Some pages by @milonogiannis and me, colored by...







simon-roy:



Some pages by @milonogiannis and me, colored by @sayunclecomics and @chipperwhale, for Prophet: Earthwar (coming out january i have been told) - written by myself and @royalboiler


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Published on October 23, 2015 21:43

October 22, 2015

So, I want to read Finder but I'm a little confused as to where to start? There's a lot of it and I've gotten different answers from different people. I figured you'd be a good person to ask.

image

You figure correctly, Anon!

OKAY, SO:

There are a few ways to do this. You can track down the old trades–now mostly out of print–or you can get the Dark Horse library editions (or digital editions of same). As I list stories, I’ll note which Library volumes they appear in (when applicable), as well as where else you can find them.

There are basically three types of Finder stories: Jaeger stories, Grosvenor stories, and other stories. All of them overlap to some extent. You will probably develop a favorite.

It’s worth noting that Finder is incredibly visually and narratively dense, as well as heavily annotated. If you have the time and volition, I highly recommend reading everything at least twice–once for the story, once cross-referencing with the endnotes.

That said: This is my favorite comic. I edited it for years. I have the tattoos. Obviously I am deeply biased, and your mileage will inevitably vary. You do you, &c.

LET’S READ SOME FINDER:

1. You’re gonna start with Talisman. Talisman is technically vol. 4. It’s tonally a little different from the rest of Finder, but it’s a) fucking amazing, and b) a very good crash course in reading what can be a pretty involved and complex book. It’s the last story collected in Finder Library vol. 1. You can also find Talisman as a stand-alone oversized hardcover. (Grosvenor)

2. From here, we’re going back to the beginning and taking ‘em in order. That means Sin-Eater, where you’ll finally get to dig deep into the background of Jaeger, the eponymous Finder and the closest thing the series has to an ongoing protagonist; as well as the Grosvenor family, whom you met in Talisman. (Actually, you met Jaeger very briefly in Talisman, too; but really only in passing.) Sin-Eater is first two volumes of the original series; it’s also been collected in a small single-volume hardcover. Sin-Eater makes up the first half of of Finder Library vol. 1. (Jaeger)

3. King of the Cats. Vol. 3 on its own; or the second story in Finder Library vol. 1. (Jaeger)

4. Talisman. Yes, again. Now that you’ve read Sin-Eater, you have some new and very different context and backstory for the Grosvenor family. Anyway, it’s a great story.

5. Dream Sequence. Vol. 5 as a stand-alone, or the first story in Finder Library vol. 2. (Other, although Marcie cameos and Jaeger sort of does.)

6. Mystery Date. Vol. 6 on its own, or the second story in Finder Library vol. 2. (Other, with a Jaeger cameo.)

7. The Rescuers. Vol. 7 on its own, or the third story in Finder Library vol. 2. While there are very few stories to which size matters significantly, this is one of them: scaling it down always costs detail. Read it digitally or track down the original TPB. (Jaeger)

8. Five Crazy Women. Vol. 8 on its own, or the final story in Finder Library vol. 2. (Jaeger)

AND THAT’S THE END OF THE LIBRARY EDITIONS! We’re on to the more recent stuff:

9. Voice. First volume of what’s eventually going to be a connected trilogy; also a fairly good stand-alone even without the context of previous volumes. You can get Voice digitally or as a TPB. It is so fucking good. (Grosvenor)

10. Third World. HOLY SHIT IT’S FINDER IN COLOR! (Maybe hold off on this one until you’ve read the other Jaeger stories.) (Jaeger)

11. Chase the Lady. More Finder in color! Currently being serialized in Dark Horse Presents. If this is the story I think it is (the first installment is out today, and I haven’t gotten comics yet), it’s a direct sequel to Voice, so make sure you’ve read that first. (Grosvenor)

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Published on October 22, 2015 12:30

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