Alec Longstreth's Blog, page 8

Wendy!

Hello, hello! Well, three months after my last post, our family has now grown by one member. My daughter Wendy was born on March 9th. She waited until well after Claire's due date, into the 41st week (just like her big sister Suzanne did) but then, on the night of her birth, she was ready! It was a dramatic, lightning-quick 20-minute labor. Our midwife had warned us that second births could be a bit faster, and with Suzanne's birth taking 8 hours, we were thinking like maybe 2 hours? Nope! 20 minutes from Claire's water breaking to holding the baby in her arms!

Wendy is thriving and Claire made a speedy recovery - she's already back on her bike zipping around town and this week she started to get back to work. Suzanne has been great with Wendy so far. The only way Wendy's arrival seems to be disrupting Suzanne's routine is that she hasn't been sleeping as well since Wendy was born. We're all pretty tired these days, and trying to just make it through this first rough stretch. Hopefully things will be a bit more calm in the fall.

The Spring semester at the Center for Cartoon Studies wraps up this week. I have been thesis advising two MFA-canidates, so now that they are done I am shifting gears to begin preparing for my Beginning Animation workshop which runs from July 9-13. I am really excited to teach that class again! If you have ever wanted to try your hand at traditional 2D animation, come join me in Vermont! It will be a lot of fun.

Other than that, it's just trying to put in an hour a day at the drawing table to keep up with my comics projects, get a little sleep when I can, and spending a lot of time with all my girls. Onwards!

Pre-Birth Project Roundup!

We're only about a week away from the beginning of the month-long "window" where Claire will most likely deliver our baby, so I have been frantically trying to finish off projects and attempting to get my ducks in a row. My goal is to have as few obligations as possible on my plate during the first few difficult weeks of raising a newborn.

I have been working on so many various things, and have not been doing a great job of posting updates about them, so I thought I'd group them all here, in one final post before I lay low for a while.

So without further ado, here is all the stuff I've been working on:

1) I finally finished my 2017 Blog Archive image, which you can see here. I had a whopping 12 posts last year - the fewest I've ever written since this blog's inception in 2004. We'll see if 2018 is any better!

2) The Drop Target Omnibus is now publicly available for ordering! Jon and I finished up all our Kickstarter obligations, so the book is now available for any other pinball enthusiasts who are looking for a copy.

3) All of my Phase Seven Comics eBooks are now $0+ pay what you want! If you would like to check out any of my books, you can now do so (digitally) for free. If you like what you read, consider chipping in a few bucks, or just tell your friends about it.

4) Speaking of eBooks, I finally posted an eBook of Gabby Schulz's A Process of Drastically Reducing One's Expectations which is also $0+ pay what you want. 50+ pages of the book are presented in full color, which was not possible in the print edition.

5) I created a paperback second edition of Basewood! The hardback first edition of the book is out of print, so I created this new edition which reincorporates all of the old Phase 7 covers, introductions, letters columns and 16 pages of Basewood fan art by a bunch of rad cartoonists. If you are interested in checking this out, but don't want to buy yet another version of Basewood, you can get the eBook for free (see how handy that is?).

6) I also released the latest Phase 7 collection: The Ballads and Beards of Basewood which brings together issues #020 and #021. This book is the same format (8.5" x 11") and has the same color palette as the new Basewood paperback, so they make a nice little pair together.

7) I finished up the second chapter of Isle of Elsi (a 9-page short story) and have begun unlocking one Patreon Backer Blog post per month, so that people can see what kind of content is going on in there.

8) Speaking of the Isle of Elsi Patreon, I started recording a podcast for my Patrons, which has been a lot of fun. I've been interviewing friends and family members, talking about the creative process, favorite books, and brainstorming various ideas for the webcomic.

9) I have been doing a lot of free internet video class visits in colleges around the country as part of my day job as Director of Academic Outreach for the Center for Cartoon Studies.

10) I have also been busy around the house, working on various little "nesting" projects to try and eliminate chaos and to make things brighter and safer and homier. Claire's dad has very generously been doing a ton of work for us too. I have been posting photos of these projects in my Instagram (most of which then repost into my Flickr).

11) Lastly, I joined the Santa Fe Concert Band???!? Playing my trumpet again has provided a lot of much-needed stress relief. I'm obviously going to have to take some time off when "Claire Jr." arrives, but hopefully I can stick with this moving forward! I find that I am a happier, more productive person when I am regularly making music.

There are other projects developing in the background, but I'm going to wait until they are closer to completion before I start talking about them. Everything is going to slow wayyy down when the baby arrives, and it's hard to even comprehend what my schedule is going to look like after things settle down again... IF they ever settle down again!

Anyway, wish us luck....

Star Wars: Episode VIII

Two years ago, my best friends from college all came to Santa Fe to watch Star Wars: Episode VII. We had watched all the Star Wars prequels together and wanted to keep the tradition alive. Claire was very pregnant at the time, so Santa Fe was naturally chosen as the place to meet for The Force Awakens. The plan was then to meet up in Madison, Wisconsin for the next movie.

Well, circle wipe to two years later and Claire is once again quite pregnant! My incredibly generous, dedicated friends are once again joining us in Santa Fe to see Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi. I tried to protest, but they insisted that it was so much fun last time, we had to do it again.

But here's the catch: They can't get here until the night of December 20th. (!!?!)

So even though the movie comes out tomorrow night at midnight, I AM GOING TO (somehow) WAIT UNTIL THE FOLLOWING THURSDAY TO SEE THE MOVIE.

It will be absolutely worth it, because as far as I'm concerned, it's not the movie, but the people you see it with. Also at this point, I don't have anything left to prove in the Star Wars arena.

But! This does mean that I am going to be hardcore avoiding ANY AND ALL spoilers by any means necessary! At midday tomorrow I'm going to turn off all my social media stuff for a week (honestly, that will be a relief) and I will be avoiding any magazine/radio/TV/web reviews. Friends! Please do not email/call/text me about the movie until after the 21st!!!

Thanks, and I hope everyone has fun watching the movie! May the Force Be With You.

Drop Target Omnibus Kickstarter!

For eight years now I have had a pinball side-project with my buddy Jon Chad, called Drop Target Zine.

Today we launched a Kickstarter to collect all seven issues into a book, plus over 100 pages of new content. Lots of my friends are contributors - it is a project that is near and dear to my heart. If you are into pinball, or enthusiasm about a nerdy subject in general, check it out!

We're off to a great start, and it looks like we will have no trouble hitting our modest goal, so from here on out, it's just getting the word out to as many people as possible! Thanks in advance for any help spreading the word via social media, word of mouth, etc. !

Pacific Daydream

Weezer's 11th album, Pacific Daydream, was released on Friday. Or to be more specific, the second half of it was released, as the first five tracks had a staggered release over the last few weeks and months, as singles.

The first track to be released was Feels Like Summer. My initial reaction to it was the same as many other weezer fans: it felt like a betrayal.

Raditude and Hurley (weezer's 7th and 8th albums) are widely reviled, and although I still enjoy listening to them occasionally, it's easy to agree that they represent a low point for the band. When Everything Will Be Alright In The End (weezer's 9th album) was released four years later, it not only felt like a return to form musically, it felt like a record made specifically for us, the longtime fans.

In the lead single, Back to the Shack, Rivers sings:

"Sorry guys, I didn't realize I needed you so much / I thought I'd get an audience I forgot that 'disco sucks' / I ended up with nobody and I started feelin' dumb / maybe I should play the lead guitar and Pat should play the drums."

In my favorite song on EWBAITE, I've Had It Up To Here, Rivers sings:

"Don't wanna find myself homogenized / Don't wanna become the very thing that I despised / Don't need my mommy feedin' me culture with a spoon / Don't wanna end up with as much edge as a balloon / Don't want my ideas polluted by mediocrity / Don't want my sentiments diluted / This is important to me."

And then in the next verse:

"Don't wanna be another boy next door / Don't wanna pander to the masses any more / Don't need the whole wide world to love me, Don't wanna win the human race / Don't need my music to be less well known than my face / Don't wanna compromise my art for universal appeal / Don't wanna be mass-consumed / I'm not a Happy Meal."

The sentiments conveyed in these lyrics are exactly what we old weezer fans have wanted to hear for years. EWBAITE really felt like the band saying, "We don't care that record labels have a waning interest in full-length rock albums, we're going to double down and shred the hell out of this record." And they did just that.

"The White Album" (weezer's 10th album - self-titled) continued in this direction, and in my opinion, did an even better job recapturing their original sound. This was thanks mostly to their producer Jake Sinclair who actually used to play in weezer cover bands, so he knew how to get that perfect weezer sound. Old school weezer fans were on cloud 9 and the album was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rock Album - something that had never happened to weezer before.

So then Feels Like Summer drops, with all its overblown "disco" production, and it feels like weezer going back on everything they had just declared on their last two albums. It felt like all those great lyrics were just lies, or... who knows? Both of the songs excerpted above were co-written, so maybe it was just a collaborator saying, "wouldn't it be cool if you sang this, Rivers?" and it has no real meaning.

There were warning signs of what was to come in Pacific Daydream. The track Jacked Up on The White Album went more in a "pop" direction with no real guitars to speak of until the bridge drops halfway through. And the B-Side I Love the USA, which was released afterwards went even farther in that direction.

As more and more tracks were released from Pacific Daydream, I listened to them a few times, but they just bummed me out. Instead, I listened to EWBAITE and The White Album over and over again, kind of out of spite. It was then that I realized two important things:

1) Weezer doesn't owe me anything. Or any other fan, for that matter. They have consistently put out music that I love for 20+ years. EWBAITE and The White Album are both astounding collections of music, and I will cherish them, and listen to them over and over and over again for the rest of my life. Whether the lyrics of I've Had It Up To Here were true for Rivers or not, they were true to me, and I believed them in my heart, and they have helped me better understand the goals of my own creative career. L.A. Girlz off the White Album is one of my all-time favorite weezer songs. I wasn't sure if a piece of music could ever again make me feel the way I do when I listen to that song. I was so glad to find out that it could.

And they also made Pinkerton? AND THE BLUE ALBUM??? Weezer, thank you for all the wonderful music you have created - it has enriched my life more than I can possibly express here. (I did a better job, I think, in my 120-page book Weezer Fan).

2) To me, Pacific Daydream feels like a left turn from the direction weezer was heading after EWBAITE and The White Album. But then I realized that all weezer is, is left turns. Think of the bright crunchy sound of The Blue Album.... then their next album is Pinkerton??? I went back through all of their albums and had one of deepest insights about this band that I have ever had: they have never worked with the same producer (or team of producers) twice in a row.

The Blue Album - Ric Ocasek
Pinkerton - Weezer
The Green Album - Ric Ocasek
Maladroit - Weezer
Make Believe - Rick Rubin
The Red Album - Rick Rubin, Jacknife Lee, Weezer
Raditude - Dr. Luke, Jacknife Lee, Polow da Don, Butch Walker, Rivers Cuomo
Hurley - Rivers Cuomo, Shawn Everett
EWBAITE - Ric Ocasek
The White Album - Jake Sinclair
Pacific Daydream - Butch Walker, Jonny Coffer, J.R. Rotem, Toby Gad

You can take any two consecutive albums on that list and there is a bold departure from the album before in almost every case.

Think about it. Twenty years in, your band is on this great run - back to back critically acclaimed albums - you are nominated for a Grammy for Best Rock Album! In that moment, how many of us would say, "Let's try something different." I'd wager, not many. I think most of us would instead say, "We're so close! Let's continue down this path and see if we can get a bit farther with the next one."

This is one of the things that I admire and respect about weezer, though I'm not always thrilled with the results. There are so many bands I've listened to over the years where I pick up their first two or three records, but then everything just starts to sound the same. I'd check out the fourth record and go, "Ugh, this just sounds like the first three, I'm not getting this."

It must be a very difficult position, being in a band with millions of fans that range from teenagers all the way up to old farts like me. There must be some feeling of responsibility to "sound like weezer" to keep the fans you've gained over the years, but as artists I'm sure they want to try new things and to keep finding new fans. If they just always "sounded like weezer" and stuck with the same producer over and over again, I'm sure they would start to sound stale. Damned if you do; damned if you don't... I don't envy their position.

So Pacific Daydream is out. I like some of the songs very much. I don't like how many of the songs were produced (recording techniques, instrument choices, etc.). But it's still Rivers singing, and to me with my headphones on, that feels like home. I will listen to it over and over and over again in the next few weeks, and it will become a mnemonic device that I use to always remember this time in my life.

Supposedly, weezer's already hard at work on The Black Album. I can't wait to hear what it sounds like.

The Ballads and Beards of Basewood

Both Phase 7 #020 and Phase 7 #021 have gone out of print recently, so I made them a new home in the latest Phase 7 collection, The Ballads and Beards of Basewood!

The print version is 136 pages and costs $9.99. Phase 7 #020 contains the lyrics to Songs From the Basewood, so you can stream that for free, or download it digitally for $7 on bandcamp.com

I'm trying something new with the digital version of this book. It's free! Or, well, it's "$0+" which means you can get it for free, or pay whatever you want.

As with all my comics, now that the minicomics are sold out, you can also read Phase 7 #020 and Phase 7 #021 for free in the Phase Seven Comics online archive.

While I was creating the eBook of this new book, I also set up the long-overdue eBook for Gabby Schulz's A Process of Drastically Reducing One's Expectations. It is also priced at "$0+" so go download a copy if you want to check it out. 67 of the pages are now reproduced in full color, so it might be fun to check out even if you already have a copy of the book.

In other publishing news, my buddy Jon Chad and I are putting the finishing touches on the Drop Target Omnibus, which collects all seven issues of our pinball zine, Drop Target, plus over 100 pages of new content. We're hoping to launch a Kickstarter to fund the initial printing of this book sometime next week, so I'll probably be blogging again soon to promote that!

Lots going on in these last few busy months of 2017!

CXC 2017! Blogging!

This week I will be heading out to Columbus, Ohio for Cartoon Crossroads Columbus, a four-day comics festival (September 28 - October 1). On Thursday and Friday I'll be attending some of the amazing programming and then on Saturday and Sunday I'll be exhibiting at the CXC Expo along with my dear, dear comics friends Aaron Renier and Nicole J. Georges. I'll also have a bunch of cool free stuff from The Center for Cartoon Studies. If you are in the area, come find us! It is going to be fun.

In other news, my blogging output on this, my personal website, is at an all-time low. This is my 8th post of 2017, clocking in at just under one post a month. My time is so limited these days, most of my blogging output has moved to other platforms. I'm posting photos from my life each day on Instagram (which automatically repost in my old Flickr account), I write twice-weekly posts about my comics process for my $2+ Patreon supporters, and I'm occasionally posting original thoughts on Twitter, though with the current nightmarish political climate, usually I'm just retweeting other peoples' thoughts and links to resources. I do have a list of thoughts/ideas that would make better long-form posts, but at this point I wonder if/when I'll ever have time to write them!

Who knows how long I can keep all this up, as my time seems to be getting more and more limited every day. Suzanne keeps learning and growing (she's walking! she can kind of talk a little bit!), plus we've got this old house to work on and plenty of chores to keep things moving around here. Sometimes I just want to delete everything online and live "IRL." Maybe someday....

Super Rabbit!

Did you ever wonder what would happen if Roger Rabbit was secretly a super hero? WELL NOW YOU CAN FIND OUT!!!

In 5th grade, I drew a Roger Rabbit fan-fiction comic for my 5th grade English class, when I was 12. It's called Super Rabbit and I just posted the whole thing over in the comics section of this site.

This was the project that culminated from a debate with my 5th grade teacher, Mr. Shoemaker, about whether or not comics counted towards my class's reading requirements. You can read more about this struggle and my eventual victory on pages 8 and 9 of Phase 7 #010.

This comic went on to win a blue ribbon at a local art competition. For the event, my mother had the whole comic framed - all six pages mounted under a giant piece of glass. This was great, because they have been preserved these 25 years, but this week I figured out a better use for that frame, and so decided to carefully remove them so I could scan and post them here.

I hope you enjoy checking out one of my earliest cartooning efforts, and probably my first-ever finished comic!

East Coast Adventure!

Well, last weekend I returned home after two weeks on the East Coast. Claire and Suzanne joined me for the first leg of the trip, which took us over to Portland, Maine to visit our old pal Liz Prince.

Then Claire and Suzanne drove with me over to White River Junction, Vermont so Suzanne could meet some of my friends there. I uploaded a bunch of photos from our trip into a new Flickr album.

After a few days in Vermont, Claire and Suzanne headed back to Maine to fly home to Santa Fe, while I stayed put to teach two weeks of summer workshops at The Center for Cartoon Studies.

I'm happy to report that I survived teaching my new animation course for the first time! There were a few hiccups, but I had an excellent group of students who stuck with me and they all ended up creating some amazing work during an intense week of drawing. You can see some of their projects on this Tumblr that I set up to showcase their work. I definitely learned a lot by teaching this material for the first time and I'm already excited to teach it again next year with a number of improvements.

I'm very thankful that I get to be home for the rest of the summer, spending time with Claire and Suzanne and chipping away at all my various projects.

After spending so much time amongst friends back East I was feeling kind of isolated out here in Santa Fe, so I... I set up an instagram account? My thought was that a lot of my friends are on there, and it might make me feel more connected to what is going on in their lives, but for now it's just causing me a lot of "social media stress." It's been a while since I had to join a new platform. Ugh...

Anyway, I hope everyone is having a great summer so far. Stay cool, everybody!

2017 Summer Workshops at CCS!

I recently finished up a big freelance project, the school year wrapped up and both of the MFA students I was advising this year (Sandy Bartholomew and Steve Thueson) both passed their thesis reviews!

I am now looking forward to the next few months and starting some new projects. In the mornings I am working on the illustrations for a picture book that my sister Galen wrote and the last 24 pages of the current Isle of Elsi storyline. I'm taking a break from Phase 7 until Galen's book is done, because the next issue kicks off a massive (10? 20? issue) arc that I'm going to be working on for the foreseeable future.

The rest of my work hours these days are being used to prepare for the CCS Summer Workshops that I will be teaching in Vermont this summer.

From June 19-23 my old pal Jon Chad and I will be teaching the Create Comics Workshop. This is our heavily-structuded comics course for beginners. If you've ever wanted to spend a week learning a whole ton of stuff about comics, join us!

Then from June 26-30 I will be teaching an all-new workshop, Beginning Animation. My teaching assistant Mary Shyne and I will be exploring the intersection of animation and comics all week, while drawing short experimental flip books and a few larger hand drawn 2D projects (with pencils! on paper!). It is going to be fun.

There's about a month to still sign up for these, so if you're interested, hop to it! If any CCS alumni are out there, you get 50% off!