Alec Longstreth's Blog, page 28

eBooks? eBooks!

As some of you might have seen in the comments from my last post, self-publisher A.P. Fuchs asked if I had ever considered making eBook versions of my Phase 7 collections. I HAD thought about doing this for a while now, because it's pretty easy to do with Lulu.com, but I just haven't been able to find the time.

But, it's Winter Break! So I finally took an evening and set it all up. I now have eBook versions of the following books available in my Lulu.com storefront:

Phase 7 #001 - #004
Transition: Phase 7 #010 & #011
Alec's Animal Alphabet
24 x 7: A Decade of 24-Hour Comics

I'm charging HALF the cover price of the print editions for these eBooks, except for the alphabet book, which is only $5 instead of the $20 print edition, which is so expensive because it's in full color. The eBooks download as PDFs which means you should be able to read them on a Kindle or a Sony eReader or an iPad or whatever. Also there's no DRM stuff on there, so you can use it on as many devices as you like, or share the file with your friends. That seems like the only logical way to do it, since most of this content is still available (and shall remain) FREE on the comics page of this site.

I downloaded the Transition eBook and we put it on Claire's iPad, which her old work gave her. It looks pretty cool! The pages are almost the exact same size as the print edition and with the iPad it is super easy to zoom way in and get a lot of high-resolution detail. HD! :P

Anyway, if this sort of digital tomfoolery is up your alley, they're now available! You can use the links above, or I have also added eBook links to all the books over on the comics page.

In other news, Claire and I are leaving tomorrow to go to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Florida, which was our christmas present to each other this year. We are both kind of freaking out. It should be pretty magical. I'll write a post when I get back to let you all know how it went!

Out with the old, in with the new!

Well, I'm ringing in the new year with a new issue of Phase 7! Phase 7 #008 contains the fourth chapter of Basewood and this installment answers a lot of the mysteries that have plagued the plot. It's now available for ordering and as always, you can read a small excerpt (the first 7 pages) online, if you want to get a sneak peek.

This chapter took me just over a year to draw, and the LAST chapter will probably take the same, so you've all got plenty of time to enjoy this one! Let's hope I can wrap up this adventure series before we see the end of 2011.

If Phase 7 #008 is the little baby that represents 2011, then Phase 7 #014 is the old man, standing in for 2010. It has now been "retired," which means I will no longer be printing or selling any copies. It ALSO means that you can now read the entire issue online for FREE! (it will also be reprinted in a collection of P7 #012 - #016, eventually).

The last update on the comics page was the addition of two comics shows that I'll be tabling at in 2011: MoCCA and Stumptown, which are BOTH in April this year. I hope to see some of you there!

Okay, that's all I have for now. Happy New Year everyone!

End of year MEGA-wrap up

Well, it's the last day of 2010, so it looks like I only wrote 56 blog posts for this year. My "worst" year ever! (the "Archives" list on the right might lead you to believe that 2004 was worse, with only 25 posts, but those all happened in the last THREE MONTHS of that year).

Weird as it may sound, I think I probably blogged more than ever this year. It's just that all my blogging activity has been separated out into individual blogs. Currently I'm blogging in the following places:

My Illustration Blog
The Drop Target Zine pinball blog
My poetry blog
The Isle of Elsi blog (starting off VERY slowly, but will hopefully someday be a very busy site)
The Dvorak Zine blog (just an old archive at the moment, but soon to be incorporated into the rest of the site)

The idea is that by keeping things specialized, people can just follow SOME of my interests, but maybe not all of them. For instance, if you don't really want to read a 1,000 word description of every pinball machine I played on my Winter Break, or if you don't want to read my horrible haikus, those are posted on their own blogs for easy avoidance.

And if for some reason you DO want to follow all of my interests (Hi Mom!), Nate helped me set up this cool FriendFeed thing on the homepage that displays all of my posts from around the web.

In the meantime, THIS blog will remain dedicated to Phase 7 and what's going on in my life. Oh, and WEEZER.

Speaking of which, I forgot to tell you guys all about the crazy two-night Weezer concert that Claire and I went to two weeks ago! It was EPIC. Seriously, the craziest (okay, maybe the SECOND craziest) Weezer concert I have ever attended. Totally amazing.

Okay, so the hit single from Weezer's latest album is called "Memories," right? So using that as a springboard, Weezer came up with this idea to play two-night concerts in a few select cities. On the first night they would play a bunch of hits and then close by playing The Blue Album start to finish. Then on the second night, they'd play a bunch of OTHER hits and then close by playing Pinkerton start to finish.

Weezer offered these crazy $500 VIP tickets for these shows, where you'd get to meet the band before the show, sit in a special area during the show and get all this special schwag, designed just for the VIP folks. Well, after our encounter last summer, Karl asked me to design two weezer posters for these VIP packages (!!?!) (You can see them over in my illustration blog). As part of my payment, Claire and I got tickets and backstage passes for the New York Memories Tour stop! SO COOL, right?

The first night, we didn't quite understand how the backstage passes worked, so we watched the show from the floor, which was pretty intense! There were tons of drunk people trying to mosh and crowd surf in a totally packed hall. It was slightly distracting, but that's what you get at a concert, right? It was still totally amazing to hear all those deep cuts from The Blue Album, which are almost never performed live, plus Karl gave this awesome slideshow in the middle of the show, all about the start of the band. It had all these amazing flyers and posters and photos of the house where they all used to live, etc. etc. After the show, we found the "backstage" area, which was like a raised seating area to the side of the hall. We vowed to spend the next night's show up there, instead of on the floor.

We spent the entire next night up on the "backstage" area, which had an incredible view, plus when Rivers came out into the crowd during the first set, he was singing like three feet away from me! (see photo to the right here). Seeing Pinkerton performed live was so incredible. Karl linked to this great write up of the show (with videos and everything!). I think I can safely say it was the best Weezer concert I have ever seen. It was the first time I ever heard them do "Susanne" which is my all-time favorite Weezer song.

Afterwards, Karl came and took us to the "real" backstage, where we chatted for a bit and he hooked me up with one of the VIP packages (including my two posters! which I am going to get FRAMED). It was such an awesome night. Long live Weezer! I know they've got some exciting stuff planned for 2011, and you know you'll hear about it here :P

I had a very relaxing trip home to Seattle over Christmas, hanging out with my family. While there, I finished Phase 7 #008! But I'll save that for my next blog post. I need to get it up for sale in the comics section and make a few other changes in there. But the subscriber copies have all been mailed out, so check those mailboxes!

Basewood Chapter 4 = DONE!

Sorry for the second consecutive two-week blogging hiatus. Things have been INTENSE around here lately! The month-long deadline crunch finally came to a halt last night at about 11:30pm, when I finished inking the final page of Basewood Chapter 4. You can click on that image above to see the chart bigger, with its many plateaus and slow year-long climb to 100%.

Last night I got some sleep and then came back to the studio first thing in the morning to do all of my art corrections for this chapter. There were only about five panels that needed some continuity fixing, or "hatching matching" (as I like to call it). I was in the CCS lab by about 10:30am, and there I remained until 5:30pm, when I finally finished scanning in all of the pieces of this chapter. Even with the big 11" x 17" scanners, each page has a minimum of 3 scans that need to be stitched together.

So after a quick dinner, I started working with Photoshop, which I finished up around 10pm. Then I dumped everything into some InDesign files which I had set up a few weeks ago. By 11:30pm, I was back in the lab, printing up a test copy, which turned out GREAT!

Needless to say, I can't wait to get this issue into everyone's hands. There is still a lot of work that needs to be done, but I'm afraid it'll have to be done in SEATTLE. I leave tomorrow for New York (where I am catching my flight back home for Christmas) even though I was already IN New York last weekend for TWO (count them, TWO) back to back Weezer concerts. But more about that later...

For now I just wanted to say that Phase 7 #008 exists! There is one copy of it. But soon there will be MANY copies of it, and I will send them out to all of you before 2010 comes to a close, so keep an eye on those mailboxes! Happy Holidays everyone!

Basewood Chapter 4: HOME STRETCH

Oh man, I can't believe it's been two weeks since I've written a blog entry...

Actually, I CAN believe it, because I have been chained to my drawing table during pretty much every waking moment since my last blog post. I'm currently 90.63% done with the 4th chapter of Basewood, and I should be done with it within the NEXT two weeks.

My goal is to have all of the subscriber copies of Phase 7 #008 sent out before Christmas. I'm going home to Seattle for a week around then, and when I get back I'll make it available to everyone else. In the meantime, if you are a Phase 7 subscriber and you have moved, please let me know your current address!

Okay, it's back to the drawing board... literally!

HP7 Part 1!

Claire and I went down to Boston last Thursday to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 with our superfriend, Liz Prince. We were also joined by the incredibly talented Maris Wicks and Joe Quinones, who had just returned home from a comics festival in France. While in Europe, they got to stay a few nights with Max, which made me so jealous. I sure do miss Max a lot this year...

The movie was epic. I forgot how much I love going to midnight showings. The crowd screamed at the scary parts, burst into laughter at the funny parts, cheered for various characters and plot moments and I daresay a few of us cried together too, by the end of that movie. There's nothing quite like seeing a movie for the very first time with a bunch of other fans who are also seeing for the very first time.

I feel like HP7:1 was the best Harry Potter movie I have seen yet. It made me wish that Goblet of Fire, Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince had ALSO been made as two-parters, because it adhered very closely to the plot of the book. Instead of spending the whole time going "Why did they add THAT?" or "UGH, they cut out the best part!" I just got completely sucked into the story and the characters, and had a great time.

My best friend Gabe is coming up to Vermont to spend Thanksgiving with me and Claire, and we already have plans to see it again over the weekend. I can't wait for Part 2, this summer!

Claireification

Every morning after we get up, Claire makes the bed. This never ceases to amaze me, because I pretty much stopped making my bed on the morning, 25 years ago, when my Mom first told me that I should make the bed. Like shaving, making the bed always seemed like a pointless activity to me - effort that was negated only a few short hours later. But I must say, it sure is nice getting into a made bed at night! Lately I have even been helping Claire make the bed in the morning.

This is just one small example of how things have been changing around here since Claire moved in. It's great! We are really happy and it is so nice to finally spend all of our time together, instead of being 3,000 miles apart. Hopefully we'll never have to do that again.

Life seems pretty full right now. I'm logging a lot of hours at the drawing table, and I'm closing in on Basewood Chapter 4 (I just crossed the 70% done mark, and should be done by the end of the year). Teaching is going well, but keeping me very busy, and now I'm spending a lot of time with Claire too.

It's weird, but lately I've been unsubscribing from blogs left, right and center. I guess I'm so busy in my "real" life, I'm trying to cut down on the time I'm spending online. It also means that I'm blogging less - the little "archives" section on the right shows this as my 52nd post for this year, only a little more than once a week, this year. I guess that's how it goes sometimes.

So yeah, I guess this is my way of saying that I might not be doing a ton of blogging on here! Or at least to explain the slower pace. I'm still posting pinball stuff over on the Drop Target Zine blog and I've started posting some of my illustration work from this year over in my illustration blog. And of course I'll still check back in to TOTALLY FREAK OUT about HP7 and other weezer related goodness.

Of course, if you have a lot going on, and don't have time to read any of this stuff, I'll totally understand! ;)

It's WEEZER Day!!!

Oh my god you guys, it's WEEZER day! (It's also election day. Did you vote? I voted!)

Today Death to False Metal and Pinkerton Deluxe both dropped. I pre-ordered both albums a few weeks ago, so they arrived this morning and I have been listening to them ever since.

Pinkerton Deluxe has the original album, every b-side (which used to be scattered across countless soundtracks, compilations and import EPs) a bunch of live versions of the album cuts and then a bunch of unfinished songs, some of which I had heard before, and some which NO ONE has ever heard.

While listening to one such brand new track, "Tragic Girl" this afternoon for the first time, all the hair on the back of my neck raised up and the sound of it was so overwhelming and incredible that it felt like my mind was melting. In short, it felt exactly how it felt listening to Pinkerton on the day it was released back in 1996. I'm not kidding here guys, the whole two-disc set is worth it for "Tragic Girl" alone, plus there is a bunch of other awesome stuff on there too.

Death to False Metal is wall to wall FUN, which was unearthed from the weezer vaults and polished up for the light of day. I am going to be drawing to this album A LOT during the home stretch of Basewood chapter 4 (which only has 11 more pages to be penciled!)

But that's not all! Rivers did a great interview with the Oakland Press in which he lays out some of the other cool weezer stuff that's in the pipeline: The Pinkerton Diaries (A BOOK) which should be out later this month, another "ALONE" disc, and their 10th studio album, which should be out in 2011.

Anyway, I know most of you probably aren't as excited about this stuff as me. But as a weezer super fan, I'm in total heaven over here!

Back in Vermont!

Well, Claire and I finally made it back to Vermont on Saturday, along with her bunnies Patty and Selma. It was a long trip, a lot happened, and I'm super busy with stuff now that I'm back. So I'm afraid the most I can offer is a quick recap, which I'll write below. You can also check out some photos from the trip in this Flickr set.

Thursday, 10/14 - Just after midnight, while I was finishing my packing for the trip, my mom called me to let me know that my grandmother had just passed away. "Granny" died at home, in her own bed, of natural causes, with my mother and father by her side. She was my last grandparent. Needless to say, it has been a really hard year for my Mom, and I fell asleep feeling horrible that I was going to be on the road for the next week, and not with her. This was the start of one of those weeks when everything was happening all at the same time. I woke up Thursday morning and took the bus to Boston, where I caught my flight to San Francisco. That night I stayed at crappy hotel by the airport.

Friday, 10/15 - I took a shuttle back to the airport in the morning, just in time to meet Claire, who had flown in from Australia, where she had been for the last month. We spent this day talking and talking and talking, while doing laundry, eating food and going to the movies.

Saturday and Sunday, 10/16 - 10/17 - APE! I tabled with Greg, got to see a bunch of friends, and even sold a few comics. Thanks to everyone who swung by to say hi!

Monday, 10/18 - Claire had a meeting at her work downtown (she is still going to work for them a bit, in a freelance capacity, from Vermont) and then we hung out with a bunch of Claire's friends so she could say a proper good-bye.

Tuesday, 10/19 - We went to the Oakland airport to rent our minivan, which had these incredible "Stow and Go" seats which folded into the floor, which gave us just the right amount of space for all of Claire's stuff. We packed it all up and hit the road! That day we made it through California and Nevada and ended up outside of Salt Lake City, Utah where we stayed in a "Super 8."

Wednesday, 10/20 - I-80 all the way! We drove through the rest of Utah, all of Wyoming (where I got pulled over for going 83 in a 75 - she gave me a warning!) and most of Nebraska. That night we stayed in a Motel 6 outside of Omaha.

Thursday, 10/21 - We covered a lot of ground this day. We made it through Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and the bulk of Ohio. Claire got pulled over in Illinois for changing lanes without signaling (?!) and then the cop chatted her up for like 30 minutes, asking lots of questions about DRUGS. So we're pretty sure we got profiled (giant hippy beard guy, California plates, minivan) and he found some BS reason to pull us over to see if he could get us to trip up in telling him our story. UGH. For the rest of the trip we were both freaked out that cops were going to pull us over for doing nothing wrong. ANYWAY, we stayed that night in Oberlin, Ohio with my old college advisor/teacher/boss/pal Mike Grube and his wife Connie. It was my first time back to Oberlin in 5 years, and it was crazy how many new buildings there were. I got to see a bunch of the old theatre staff, which was great. Too short of a visit really. Hopefully next time I pass through I won't be so rushed.

Friday, 10/22 - Even with a late start (11am) Claire and I made it back to Vermont this night, passing through the rest of Ohio, a tiny corner of Pennsylvania and a whole bunch of New York state. We rolled in at about 10pm, unloaded the car and slept in our own bed. But the trip was not quite over!

Saturday, 10/23 - The next morning we drove down to Boston to return the car at the Logan airport. This was EASILY the most stressful part of the drive. Boston drivers are completely insane! Anyway, we got the car back in with no damage, then we ate a late lunch with Liz, Maris and Joe, and then we took a bus back to Vermont (or, well, New Hampshire), where Jen was kind enough to pick us up and take us back to White River Junction. Trip OVER!

I owe a huge thanks to Jon Chad, Katherine Roy and Steve Bissette, who covered my classes during this week, which made it possible for me to make the trip! Now that I'm back, things are a bit bonkers as Claire and I try to find places in the apartment for all of her stuff, and I try to catch up on email and teaching duties, etc. etc. etc. I'll post again when I can!

Elfworld Volume 2, Number 1

Jeesh, a whole week without a blog post? I guess things have been pretty busy around here, and they're only going to get BUSIER, so I better write now, while I can!

I'm leaving on Thursday for San Francisco, where I will be exhibiting all weekend at the Alternative Press Expo with Greg. While I will not have a new issue of Phase 7, I will have a bunch of my "back catalog" as well as a big stack of Drop Target number ones. Also, over at the Family Style table, I will have a story in the new Elfworld anthology zine (Volume 2, Number 1).

If you saw the first Elfworld anthology, you know that Family Style makes a beautiful book and this one will be no different! It's got a great list of contributors, drawing all kinds of fun fantasy stuff and the two-color Sammy Harkam letterpress cover is going to knock people's socks off. I know I can't wait to get my hands on MY contributor copy. So if you are in the San Francisco area next weekend (October 16th and 17th) please swing by and check it out!

I expect things are going to be pretty quiet around here for a while... Not only am I traveling cross country for APE, I'm also going to help Claire pack up all her stuff and drive it back to Vermont. I probably won't post during the trip. But look for a MEGA-UPDATE when I get back!