Convergence Closing Party

Convergence is having a closing party on Friday December 28th!

This would be a great chance to check out the show, if you couldn't make it to, or slept on, the opening. This time we have Darren & Dave, Thumbs Up!, and Surah featuring Jeff Dixx playing. It's both BYOB, and a Pot Luck, so don't be stingy with your Aunt Florence's fruit cake.

¡Viva Dormir!

Profuse apologies for the long strange gap in posts. Not that anybody's been clamoring for posts, but now that finals are over and I'm free from any other entanglements I've got the breathing room to sit back and type out some rambling rant-y type stuff for the old ninepanelgrid... before throwing myself head first into the backlog of projects that have accumulated on my table.

The opening for Convergence went really really well. I've wanted to write about it since it happened but haven't found the time or the words just yet to express exactly how I feel about that event. I'm still working on it; it's something I'll probably write about in a future zine or something. It was really surreal and strange and extremely fun. I'm insanely grateful to every person who came or sent well wishes. The show is still up, and we're planning a closing/christmas party for the 21st, which... just over a week away? I don't really know what we're going to do, but we'll figure it out.

Anyway, in the mean time I did these flyer/posters for shows that happened and were probably great!





Last weekend I was set up at the Beachland Ballroom's Rock and Roll Flea Market. It was pretty fun and I did kind of well. Being that time I year, I spent a couple hours painting my brains out, making x-mas pieces to try and capitalize on that market. I scanned them this year, so here's 6 of the 7... I sold the biggest one:





I'll try and post again soon. I've wanted to post up some of the work I've been doing for school, but just... no time for blogging when you're scrambling to survive and not fail at everything.

CONVERGENCE

There's a show opening on Friday, November 23rd at 7pm in this big empty space at 6706 Detroit, a couple blocks west of W. 65th. It's a split show between myself and photographer Billy Delfs. I'll post more about this soon. Not online in the cave right now, so I'm doing all my internet biz on the fly.

Notable Power Gap

I haven't seen a copy of the magazine yet, but I drew the artwork for the cover of this week's Free Times. It's a piece for an article titled "The Murderer's Apprentice", or, I guess they changed the title to "The Serial Killer's Disciple". I think this piece came out pretty good. I like coloring more and more, and although I'm not a huge fan of some of the assignments that I've been working on in my Raster Based Imagery class, I've already learned a lot. It's simple simple stuff, but because I was largely self taught in Photoshop, it's aspects that escaped me for whatever reason. Maybe I'll post some of my assignments here? Not sure there's any need for that, but it might be fun.



On the other side of that coin is the fact that knowing Photoshop alone can not a good artist you make. Um, I think. I mean, sure. Anyway, here's the negro y blanco of that piece. I spent a lot of time making it right. I used layers upon layers of splatter, both black and white. I used Math and Magic to get the bricks in proper perspective, when I usually just eyeball it. Over all I'm pretty happy with this cover. I haven't even read the article yet so I have no idea how close this plays into it. I can't say I like working that way. When I do editorial illustration I'd much rather spend some time with the actual piece and find the subtleties to work from. Try and illustrate more the idea of the piece in a way, rather than just representational images of actual words from an article. Unfortunately that's not always feasible in the publishing world. That's another thing I find hard to get my head around: the fact that I'm part of the Publishing World. I won't rant on it now, but yeah... being aware of your place in the grand scheme isn't always as easy as it should be. However, it's probably one of the more important things to have a grasp of if you want to achieve any set goals, no matter what they are. Seems obvious, but I think it's easy to lose sight of in the hustle bustle games we all have to play on the daily just to make it to tomorrow.



Finally, here's a self portrait, kind of a work in progress. I'd like to color it, but so far this is where I'm at with it:



I hope to post more frequently, but school is totally kickin' my ass. I'm still watching Samurai movies, but have slowed down a lot. Post to follow. Still working on comics, post to follow extremely soon.

I've added some new links to the sidebar:

Obsolete References is a blog by a guy that works at a CD/DVD store in Seattle. It's always pretty funny, especially if you've ever worked retail, or been to a retail store. He and I used to work around the block from each other in Downtown Cleveland, and it was always awesome to visit him at his crappy job, or when he visited me at mine.

Rick Spears has a new site/blog. Rick is the publisher of Gigantic Graphic Novels and probably the foremost killer scriptist throwing down comics awesomeness for your hard earned dollar. Seriously, he's got Black Metal with Chuck BB from Oni Press, REPO with Rob G and Pirates of Coney Island with Vasilis Lolos from Image, and if you haven't read Teenagers From Mars, or Dead West (both also with Rob G) yet, it's not too late! It's never too late!

Negligent Passing Getaway

It's labor day, and I'm in labor. Giving birth to drawings and comics and bad jokes. I just drew this face as practice and then colored it up to experiment with it. I think it took maybe a half hour. I like how it turned out. I'm not sure where my style is going with some of these things, but I guess that's not really my concern. I'll worry about style when I'm dead.



I'm back to school for the first time in a long time and it's a strange thing. Nothing has really changed but it's all different. It's taking me a minute to get used to the ideas of it all, but I'm happy to be back and in the game and making some use of my time. I like having a schedule.

I traded a copy of the fifth volume of The Caveman Diaries for this drawing. It's by this dude Corey, who, coincidentally enough, I went to school with six years ago the last time I took any classes. I hadn't seen him since then. He approached me at the Normal Love/Giants of Gender/Cave Bear show a couple weeks ago and offered a trade. I think I basically robber the poor bastard. LOOK at this:



Next up is the first panel from the first story from the first issue of this thing called Shiner. More on that to come.

Nomadic Placebo Gifters

HEY! I have a couple Free Times piece out this week. Firstly, there's a edition of The Joint column in this week's issue of the magazine. I really liked this piece when I finished it on Sunday, but now looking at it from the distance of a few days I'm not sure how I feel. I wish I had made the image inside the prison's frame more symmetrical. Still, I like this more than if I had gone with a more sequential piece. I like the idea of a single image having more of an impact for something so brutal.



Also, if you're anywhere near a college, I have a piece in the Free Times College Guide. It's for an article about the author's first solo apartment. I think I'm still going to work out the colors some more. This was finished really quickly, and I wanted to experiment more... anyway, I think it works.

Shiner Monks

Who are the Shiner Monks?

Nobody Pays Generously

Hey, not back up online in full effect yet, but enough to bust out the Work in Progress of this flyer that I did with Zippy. We were chatting one night, I mentioned doing a flyer as a puzzle, like a brain teaser... he mentioned maybe ...a ....brain scrambler? The idea was hatched, dropped into a frying pan, and grilled to perfection with this one. So, yeah, guy that cut open his own skull and is scrambling his own brain (note the metal band Goat Cheese's awesome representation).



So, I drew the cover of this week's Free Times, here's a version unfettered by texts and logos and whatnot:



Also in this week's Free Times, a Joint column about peeing in a cup, here's the illustration for that:

Nihilist Probability Grenade

The hard drive in my Power Book is shot, and I lost everything I'd done for pretty much the past two years. I was able to barrow a Mac Book from my homeboy Billy Delfs to get some really good work done this weekend. Actully, the work was a huge pain in the ass, and when I get my shit together again I think I'll post about the process I went through on this shit. You can get your hands on it Wednesday. It'll be in the Free Times. By any road, I'll be out of digital commission for a couple weeks. I'm going to use this time to carve out an empire.

Hey, here's a triple dose of images that are sitting on Billy's Desktop:







These photos are ©2007 Billy Delfs, bitches.

Newtonian Political Gorillazilla

Been trying to stay nailed to my drawing table lately, but it's a lot harder that you would think. Short of actually physically NAILING myself to the table, which would create a lot of other complications and make it impossible to draw anyway, I don't know what else to do to maximize the time I have available for draw my brains out. I find that listening to Lightning Bolt is the best way to stay on task for hours at a time.

Here's the line art for this thing. Mostly inspired by my homie Brandon Graham. There was an instance in a coffee shop on Avenue A when he gave me these 11x17 photocopies on a brown card stock of pieces from his sketchbook. It was one of the highlights of my goddamned life.



The Samurai shit continues. I recently caught Kunoichi: Lady Ninja, Slaughter in The Snow, Kibakichi 2, and Samurai Resurrection.

Kunoichi: Lady Ninja is about a group of lady ninja called Kunoichi. From 1998 it's one of the newer samurai movies I've seen as part of watching all Samurai movies ever made. Honestly, this isn't exactly a Samurai movie in the strict sense, it's more of a "martial arts" "ninja" movie. Then again, Yagyu Jubei is one of the main characters and there is a lot of samurai sword fighting, so... I'm putting on the list. Anyway, this movie is basically like if when you were a teenager and on a lazy boring summer weekday you went to 7-11 and got 44 oz. Slurpies and bags of candy then hung around the parking lot of that 7-11 talking about all the crazy shit you would put in a ninja movie if you ever got the chance... yeah, it's basically this movie. There's a lot of violence and nudity and funny things that are only funny in Japanese movies. Totally ridiculous and really noticeably of the 1990s.

Slaughter in the Snow is the third, and my favorite, of the epic Mikagomi Trilogy of Samurai films (The pother films being Trail of Blood, and The Fearless Avenger). This series is also deeply a product of it's time, the early 70s, with the pop-jazzy rock score, and the fountains of opaque orange blood. These were also more action oriented "martial arts" movies, rather than the long play dramas of this genre. The fights are really cool, but seriously... it seems like aside from the heroes and maybe the main villains, every other samurai, of which there are hundreds, is a total fucking pussy. Anyway, I get the feeling this wasn't a trilogy, or wasn't planned as such. Mostly because it's a revenge quest story about this guy, Jokichi, wandering around trying to kill these two evil yakuza bosses that were the ones who ordered that his wife raped, then her and their child murdered. That's one of the unique things about this series, the authority figures are yakuza, and not government officials. Most samurai movies deal mostly in politics and shoguns and shit. This is pretty much about criminals fighting. ANYWAY, my original point is that he never actually kills the last guy he has to kill to get revenge! They just leave it with him walking off into the mountains as his theme song plays! Very much like the last Lone Wolf and Cub film.

Kibakichi 2 was WAAAYYY better than Kibakichi. Just leaps and bounds all around. Also a "martial arts" action movie, not too much drama. Actually, untrue, there is more drama in this one than in the first, but... it's better told. There's just more likable characters this time around, being as Kibakichi himself is kind of vague and abstract. Anyway, you probably don't need to see the first to get the sequel, and I recommend the sequel way more than the first. Samurai Werewolves is a really good idea though. Seriously.

Northern Popsicle Guardians

The quest to watch every Samurai movie ever is going well. I've been on a good streak the past couple weeks after a long lapse just being super busy and kinda lazy.

I finished all the Lone Wolf & Cub features, and am probably just going to opt out of the Shogun Assassin double threat being that all the source materiel is from the series. My favorite was the fourth installment, Baby Cart in Peril. It opens with a close up of a tattooed set of breasts that leads into a female samurai chopping up a bunch of retainer cogs of this one lord. There's also a samurai that somehow lights his sword on fire.

After that I caught the last two Akira Kurosawa samurai films I hadn't seen: Kagemusha and Ran. Kagemusha has one of the most beautiful and ridiculous dream sequences I can remember. I liked that movie a LOT, the colors in particular. VERY inspiring use of color. If I'm ever in a position to be using color in my storytelling career, I think I'll spend a few weeks studying Kagemusha. Ran is a retelling of King Lear. I didn't like it as much as Kuroawa's Throne of Blood, a retelling of Macbeth. Maybe I just prefer Macbeth in general, but I'm not positive. It's been so long since I read it last. I liked Ran, but it's not even in my top ten of Kurosawa's films. It's really creepy though, in a lot of ways.

I just watched The Twilight Samurai, which was surprising. It's about this low level Samurai who's wife dies of illness and he's left alone to cope with raising two young daughters and the care taking of his old senile moms. However, it's no thing, as he's a pretty passive guy, and has never really been into ladder climbing or maybe has lost the components that drive a dude to want to stick a sword into a motherfucker. He's satisfied and content to just count dried fish and do his piece work on the side. Then he has to duel to defend the honor of his best friend's sister, and it's revealed that he's actually a pretty tricky bad ass. The story unfolds and he eventually has to chose between killing some other guy and leaving his samurai status in shame. Anyway, the movie examines some of the more human aspects of the Samurai. It's not all just wandering around chopping up enemies or posturing and face saving. There are bills to pay and little girls to feed and sometimes the simple pleasures are more valuable than having a high reputation or going out drinkin' with the other samurai.

Red Lion is actually a really funny movie. It starts Toshiro Mafune as this farmer turned soldier taking on the task of going back to his home town to bring word of the impending Imperial Army's arrival, only to find that the same evil thug goons that were making the peasants lives miserable when he was literally thrown out of town ten years past,/ are still making everybody's life miserable and worse. He liberates the whores and cancels all debts and proclaims the taxes will be halved and becomes the impromptu leader of a small band of farmers and prostitutes that wrestle the political sway away from the deputy and his bumbling crew. It's all pretty comedic (no small part of which due to the giant red military wig worn by Mifune) until the end when the tragedy of being double crossed by the imperials ensues. It ends pretty badly, but in a very inspiring way. I was really into this movie, so I drew this:



Andrew mentioned in the comments a few posts back something about the difference between black and white and color art... and I sorta feel like, shit, like I never really wanted to get into color because it was just so vast and the infinite possibilities. How every decision has multitudes of consequences and it's just this huge huge thing when you think about it too much. So I stuck with black and white and the plan was to master that with some level of capability before even venturing into the realms of color. Also, printing b/w is insanely cheaper. Well, anyway, it didn't work. I haven't mastered black and white, and here I am dipping my toes into color and I feel insane, but I think I'm ADDICTED to color now. Everything I draw I think in terms of how I would color it, or what it would even look like with colors. This piece I knew I was going to color because of the RED FUCKING WIG. Still, it wouldn't look as good in b/w.

Here's a list of all the Samurai movies I've seen so far.

Sword of Doom
Samurai Rebellion
Sword of The Beast
Hari Kiri
KILL!
Samurai Saga
Three Outlaw Samurai
Bandits Vs. Samurai Squadron
Seven Samurai
Hidden Fortress
Ran
Samurai Spy
Shogun Samurai
Roshomon
Throne of Blood
Red Lion
Chushingura
Kagemusha
Samurai Assassin
Incident at Blood Pass
Yojimbo
Sanjiro
Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo
Samurai Banners
Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto
Samurai II: Duel at Ichijon Temple
Samurai III: Duel at Gamryu Island
Hanzo The Razor
Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance
Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades
Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at The River Styx
Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in Peril
Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in The Land of Demons
Lone Wolf and Cub: White Heaven in Hell
The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi (2003)
Samurai Fiction
Ronin Gai
Shingenshu: Assassins of Honor
Kibakichi
The Twilight Samurai

Some other notes of interest:

Paul Pope did a cover and wrote this piece for the third issue of the apparently amazing LVHRD, a magazine you can download the pdf of here: LVHRD MGZN #3

I'm not sure how old this is, probably pretty fucking old, but the other day while I was ordering my second set of Jordan Crane's Uptight All Night post cards over at reddingk.com, there's a pdf available for download called "Reproguide". It's a guide to reproduction. It's pretty cool, and informative and like I said it seems maybe old as fuck, it contains some good tips and tricks for making printed things. Also, the Uptight comic and those post cards are also really great great buys.

Ivan Brunetti's Misery Loves Comedy has completely blown my mind.

Speaking of Samurai movies, Eric Skillman posted the design process of the Criderion REBEL SAMURAI box set over on his blog: Cozy Lummox.

I think that's it for today. Shit, I hope that's it for today.

Necro Planetary Grassroots

There's another installment of The Joint in this week's Free Times. This week's column, about gay promiscuity in prison. I think I actually did a good job representing what the piece entailed but I didn't go too overboard with the gratuitous sex scenes. The pink and brown color scheme might have been a little much, though.

Still no internet at home, and I'm in this coffee shop right by my house. The place is usually dead as hell, but today it's mad hoppin'. There was a huge gaggle of teenagers buying $4 Mochas with all the trimmings. There's a really really weird trio of adolescent boys being lead through a bible reading thing by this creepy ass nerdy dude. Then, the rest are all old people, complaining to each other about innocuous shit. The coffee kinda sucks. Shoulda got some tea. I do appreciate the fact that this is here though, that I can just roll out my house and get online. Crazy world we live in.

Nasty Plaster Gargantuan

So, I'm lacking an internet connection in The Cave for the moment. I'll get it back up and running soon enough, but in the meantime I'm looking forward to less distractions and the frustration of having to run around taking advantage of the free wifi locations in my hood and beyond.

Hindsight being 20/20, I'm not entirely sure what's going on in the layout of the pictured above. I think the idea was mostly just to draw a burning city, then I threw in that girl to break it up a little. Not sure how much I like the cropping of it, maybe should have had her reading the magazine. It was a graduation gift for my dude LEE SCHOCH, who will be going to Fire Fighter School in the fall.







I did some artwork for the St. Clair Superior Development Corp. They're having a scavenger hunt in the neighborhood and these are part of the promotion of it all. The postcard, I'm not sure where those are going to be, but I hope around... the scans are from an insert to the recent issue of Norther Ohio Live.

Also, this has nothing to do with me, but apparently it's the year of the pig. So yeah, Happy Chinese New Year! To celebrate I guess the St. Clair Superior Development Corp. got the mythic artist Viktor Schreckengost to design a big ass PIG SCULPTURE for a bunch of other area artists to decorate and make pretty so they can leave them around for the public. Hey, It's public art.

Anyway, thanks to BECCA for hooking me up with the illustration gig.

Been having relatively awesome adventures lately. I think I'll save some of that reportage for the next post later this week, but summer has exploded into happening and it's gone full nasty buckwild. I've also got a post about the ridiculous amount of Samurai movies I've been watching. So stay tuned.

Negotiable Pneumatic Gnosticism

Hey look at the Free Times this week. There's a new episode of The Joint.



Not sure if this hit the target I was shooting at or not. I think if you even doubt yourself at all then yeah... you missed.

Nullified Pretense Gunnage

Another week, another flyer, another chance to fuck it all up again. I have only the slightest clue about Disaster Transport, which is my dude Henry James and some other dude. The other players, I'm not familiar. Disaster Transport is named after a roller coaster at Cedar Point. When I was a kid it was called Avalanch Run. Anyway, Bela Dubby has quickly become my favorite place to go and work... or, ignore working and goof off.



So I've been slowly adding a lot of links to my sidebar. I think you should all take HEED:

Biological Basement is the blog of Cleveland music Godzilla Dave Cintron. There's only one unreleased track up there now, but I'm hoping he builds an empire of madness from that beginning.

Fabio Moon and Gabreil Bá, Brazilian Masterminds, are two of the tightest gunslingers in the trenches. I love them with all my heart.

Twist Street is home to my old compadre Abhay Khosla, where you can download Left Field, his entire hysterical 218 page graphic novel about a baseball team.

Fate of The Artist is Eddie Campbell's blog. Eddie Campbell drew From Hell, and created one of the books hugely influential to me in my early days of bungling through the comics plane, How To Be An Artist.

Wander is the blog of Andrew Wilson. He's a great great talent, and teamed up with Wade Schin to put out the stellar hardback art book, So Now What Do We Do?, published by Alberto Ruiz and Brand Studio.

Haven't been watching many Samurai movies lately. Well, I watched a few but I'll save that for wnother post later this week. I got ridiculous amounts of art to post, so... stay tuned.

Named Permanently Galli-Moto

Just a sketch today. This, minus the zip-a-tone, is a sketch I did to throw in with a copy of Caveman Diaries Number Five that somebody ordered.



Took a trip to Chicago over the weekend, and it totally kicked my ass. Went there to see my three siblings, who were all in the same place at the same time for the first time in five years. Got the special treat of seeing Big Business at the Empty Bottle, Joe Matt at Quimby's, and hanging out with a few old friends that I don't see nearly enough of. I think I'm going to try and write a long form piece about it, but we'll see.

My baby niece and toddler nephew are insanely awesome little people. My nephew had a hand made toy called Galli Moto from 10000 Villages that was basically a little wire man with two wheels on the end of a long wire. When pushed along the ground, the wheels made his legs pedal. Apparently he thought my two wheels made me similar, so he called me Galli Moto.

New Perpetuated Generalities

No, I'm never going to get tired of drawing piles of dead beings and busted ass robots.



I spent an insane amount of time on this one, maybe even more than the Yukon flyer. I went the long way around drawing the text by scanning the penciled layouts, typesetting it in Photoshop using a boring font, printing out the text, then light-boxing the text onto the penciled art, giving it a hand lettered look. After that I inked the text and linear parts of the art, then masked off the text and did the splatter effects. Then I scanned it and spent a day coloring.

Anyway, I'm really stoked for this show. Parts & Labor is one of my favorite bands. This is the third time I've done a flyer for them. I'll have to check, but I think I've done more flyers for Self Destruct Button than any other band. And then there's PROLE. I really wanted to use the Gadsden Flag in something and had planned to put it on the cover of the new Caveman Diaries, but when this flyer came up I decided it would work better and be seen by more eye balls here. Color-wise I think it came out pretty good, if not nearly as cheerful as that Yukon flyer. Which, it's not really a cheerful image, so... yeah. Things of note: Skullface, grown up Hello Kitty, the bird guy from last year's Japanther flyer, and a robotic version of myself.

Still pretty thick in the Lone Wolf and Cub movies. I'll write up a longer piece about them all when I've seen all six. Other than that, nothing else yet to report.

Neolithic Phantom Goblins

Another two weeks, another Free Times, another installment of The Joint, by Lidge, another illustration.



MAN, do I love sneaking in the old Skullface mask to these when I get the chance, and I actually think to while I'm working on them. That rat mask is new, but maybe it'll become something I go back to. There's enough rats in these stories to warrant it, and I'm actually surprised it took me this long to figure that one out. I spent some time with this one, shooting to get it done early but then opting to just work on it a lot longer than usual. So, yeah, go pick up a Free Times.

My Samurai Movie watching experience is going well. I recently watched Akira Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress. I had seen it before, in the theater actually (with Big Granny and Noony!). The Cinematheque had a Kurosawa series a few years ago. It's a fairly amazing film, with what has to be the best spear fight ever. It also has a pretty happy ending. There was a special feature of George Lucas talking about how influencial the film was to Star Wars, and he even mentions how Toshiro Mifune was considered for the role of Obi Wan Kenobi. What a different world we would live in if that had actually happened.

Next was Incident at Blood Pass, which also starred Mifune, this time as the very familiar Yojimbo character. It ALSO stars one of Japan's other awesome Samurai actors, Katsu Shintaro, and a third recognizable Japanese cinematic legend Ishihara Yujiro. The movie takes place at a tea house on the pass over a mountain road where these characters all converge for an incident. It's sort of a convoluted plot that ends in buckwild disaster, but I liked just watching the characters all have at it.

The third of my recent quest to watch all Samurai films was the first of the Lone Wolf and Cub series, Sword of Vengeance. Holy Fucking Shit. I've only read a couple of the comics by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima that this is based on, but from what I can tell it's really faithful. I'm glad I opted to watch this instead of the re-edited version called Shogun Assassin, eventhough that's where the Rza got a lot of samples for Gza's Liquid Swords.

Anyway, back to the drawing board for a couple more flyers, and finally some motherfucking comics.

Natural Pragmatist Growth

Here's the flyer for the Yukon show at The Tower on June 14th. The colors came out way lighter and happier than I ever thought I was capable of. It's very SUMMER-ISH. I'm actually really happy with the whole thing for a lot of reasons.



The request for this flyer was pretty insane and awesome. I was going to paraphrase it because I thought it was gone forever, but I found it in my trash folder, so.... here it is:

Oh man, you're totally going to hate me after reading all this. I'll totally understand if you don't want to take on the job, but this is what I have in my head...

Info:

Yukon
Archaeopteryx
Clan of the Cave Bear
Self Destruct Button
Double Dagger

Thursday June 14
Tower 2012
9512 Madison Ave

Theme:

Okay, I actually have ideas for this one. It's going to be based around this series of prank calls. They are done by a dude called Longmont Potion Castle. You can easily find his stuff through googling.

The main image should be a guy on a telephone (not a cell phone) who is cracking a big ol' bull whip. He should look something like the guy in the orange shirt in this picture. http://i13.tinypic.com/4yi1qg6.jpg

If any of these things can make it into the background, it would rule.

A peacock
Simms St. / Oak St. - Intersection street signs
A giant squid
A UPS truck

Let me know if you're up for it!

There was an addendum that he had to be wearing cleats. I actually had a lot of fun trying to figure this out. The biggest issue was the five mismatched difficult band names. One really short one, a really long one, a bunch with multiple words... to make them all legible and look cool, I played with that the most. I had to draw the dude maybe six or seven times before settling on that pose, which only now I realize it's somewhat similar to the guy in the Sleepytime Gorilla Musuem flyer. Here's the link to Longmont Potion Castle.

This show is going to be great. If you haven't seen Clan of The Cave Bear play live, you're missing out. Ditto for Self Destruct Button. It's kind of old news, but they have a new split 7" out. I don't have one and haven't heard it yet, but I'm sure it slays. If you're reading this you should come to the show. Especially if you live on another continent. North East Ohio has open arms. Embrace.

Notorious Pirate Gangsters

Left The Cave today. Took off and spent time with Bradysan. Got totally ripped on iced coffee. Then we met Big Granny up at Papa Nicks for an XL Hawaiian minus the ham plus the bacon. Ham is gross yo, bacon rules. Our waitress looked like Scarlett Johansson. She was really excited to be our waitress too.

There's a new The Joint column in this week's FREE TIMES. This one is about an escape attempt. I was able to get the illustration for this one done in color, and I'm so glad I did. I picked up a copy today and it looks awesome on the page. Here it is all huge for you, the internet reader.



I really want to start hammering down doing more single illustrations for the columns. I've pulled it off a couple of times. The thing is the column just lends itself so well to using the language of comics to charge the points and get that across. I'm pretty happy with how this week's came out, but I feel like it's stuck half way between the two approaches. It's something I guess I'd really like to get better at.

You can stream Parts & Labor's new record, Mapmaker, on their VIRB page. I recommend you do so. It's insanely different from Stay Afraid, but I think I like it.

Next up is a flyer for YUKON, a flyer for Wake Up, and pages pages pages pages pages.

Never Post Gratuitously

This first thing is a Samurai Ferret that I drew for Dara Naraghi's Ferret Press. I long minute ago he sent out a mass email and asked for contributions for an artbook or FERRETS. I totally spaced on it and then didn't read the email before I just busted this out between ridiculousness adventures. Turns out the deadline was a couple days ago and the dimensions were square. Goes to show that I am a dumbass, even when I have nothing but noble intentions. Maybe even more so then? Anyway, Ferret Press is the home of Panel, a comics collective from Columbus that have put out NINE themed comics anthologies so far. They've been consistently rocking at two a year, and show no sign of slowing down. Go HERE, and buy them up. Actually, I think I'm missing a bunch so I think I'll have to place an order myself soon (Sadly, the 9th issue isn't up yet, it's got a 3-D cover and is b-movie themed, it's easily my favorite thing I got at SPACE this year).




So, I'm back on a full nasty Samurai Movies kick. THIS TIME IT'S DEEP AS HELL. There's no going back until I've seen every goddamn samurai movie ever made.

I recently grabbed Big Granny and we sat down and watched The Samurai Trilogy about Musashi Miyamoto in a marathon viewing. These movies are so goddamn good. They're long, but it was totally worth it to view them all at once. The epic scale of the features really blows my mind in a way that I don't think happened when I watched each of them autonomously. There's something about investing that amount of time and energy into watching this story that really makes it more intense.

After that I watched Hideo Gosha's Sword of The Beast, which is pretty awesome in it's own right. I've got to watch it again before I send it back to Netflix, but I really got into this one too. It wasn't as enthralling as the trilogy, but it's not really supposed to be. It's the tale of a whole lot of outsiders all going after the same score of gold on this mountain, with the hope that it will set them free from... whatever makes them outsiders. There's also a revenge plot and a subversive political plot, but that's all thrown in with the game that is afoot and turning samurai into beasts.

The last thing I watched was Samurai Spy. It's much more of a political espionage thriller than anything. It takes it's time getting there, but once the stage is set and the plot starts to thicken it gets really thick, really quick. Ninjas and samurai fights; spies vs. spies vs. corrupt cops! Mysteries and deceptions and characters all going buckwild for who knows what reason! A festival turned riot! Sword fights on a huge bridge! Anyway, I'd like to watch this again too, before I send it back. It's really good, but after the first viewing I still have no idea what happened and who was what. It's a very convoluted piece that has a lot of backstabbery and traitorous behavior. It actually takes place around the same time as The Samurai Trilogy.

One of my favorite parts on the DVD was the special feature of an interview with Masahiro Shinoda, the director of Samurai Spy. He talks about film making in Japan at the time of the movie, and his career. Then he talks about Absurdity, and I was pretty floored with what he said. Here's an excerpt from the interview (uh, I transcribed this myself so if it's inaccurate, I apologize to Criterion and Masahiro Shinoda, and y'know... you):

Absurdity.

I don't believe anyone is born merely human. I was born Japanese and I didn't have any choice in the matter. But being Japanese at the time meant Japanese militarism and emperor worship. And when we attacked Pearl Harbor, I was just a young 12-year-old boy. I was 14 when we lost the war. After we lost the war, I saw American soldiers for the first time, and wondered why I hadn't been born an American. At the time, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be proud or ashamed of being born Japanese. I found that the sense of absurdity, the absurdity of not knowing, is what was most real to me. Various people, including various historical figures, talk of their human experience differently. But one can finally see the real person in the context of political absurdity.

Here I was a Japanese man facing an American. And we, as the ones who lost the war understand the true nature of war. I thought the Americans, who won, didn't really understand the reality of war. The Americans wouldn't be able to grasp Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And also, to expect post-war Japanese to understand the suffering of those Chinese women who were raped during the war is impossible.

The political absurdity results in this miscommunication. I think this tendency throughout human history that has been the major factor in deciding our destinies. By being able to understand those things that are hard to describe, those inexplicable things that result in these absurd situations, I think that we are at last able to face what human reality is about.

And I also see poignancy in the absurdity of the countless unknown soldiers dying on the battlefield and consumed by the soil. And a sword fighting scene, the winner strikes a heroic image, but I think the ones who get struck down express a poignancy that captures the true nature of an absurd reality. The one doing the cutting will certainly be splattered in blood, so the blood splattered form of the victor looks more like the one that was killed. I see it more like that sometimes.

I see the absurdity of humanity as one of confronting violence. And I think there is a certain poignancy that comes out of this desire to confront violence. I think that I can bring out the human reality through that sense of poignancy in my films.

I thought that was really great, especially the part about how miscommunication is the major factor in deciding our destinies as humans. Oh, I added the paragraph breaks to try and present it better here. In the interview it's all Shinoda talking in Japanese and when you read the subtitles it's broken up by the text and his gestures and cuts to segments of the film. I wish I knew how make it a video to post on youtube, but I'm both too lazy and I already TYPED it out for you. Anyway, good stuff that makes me want to be a better writer, and pay more attention to what the hell is going on around me.

Here's a flyer for a show everybody should absolutely go to. Sleepytime Gorilla Museum is probably something you'll want to see in your life. I hear that Stinking Lizaveta rocks too, so... this should be great. It's in the Ballroom too, so you know it'll be loud and hopefully nuts. I am absolutely going to color this too, so... keep checking back for that.



I've got a couple more flyers on my desk at the moment and a SHITLOAD of comics to get to. So I'll hopefully be back to posting regularly.

Non Practicing Greintologist

Been a minute. A long long ridiculous lazy bummed out minute. Still, here's a flyer for The Unsane. I'm listening to their new CD right now. It's pretty heavy and harsh and on point. I don't think I've ever listened to them before. Not with any lasting comprehensive discretion. I do remember they had a video years ago that was just all footage of skate boarders eating shit. That was a pretty awesome video for it's time. Anyway, should be a good show. Especially if you're a Metal Dude. OH, and 400 Blows is playing!!



If I owe you flyers and you're reading this, I assure you they are on their way. Sorry I flaked out so hard recently. Been an interesting bunch of weeks. Anyway, I think I'm cool now and I'll get that shit to you as soon as it gets done.

Keep checking back. I'll be posting a bunch of new stuff soon, and hopefully it will actually be good!

CAVE BEAR TOUR POSTER

Clan of The Cave Bear is going on tour. Here's the poster I drew for this madness:



Detail of the art itself. I'm thinking I'll color it. Maybe I'll get somebody else to color it for me. Maybe someone will volunteer?

THE JOINT from 3/21/07

Here's the art from this week's The Joint in the FREE TIMES. This week's piece was about cons training puppies to eventually teach them to be assist dogs or seeing eye dogs. It's not a bad read. However, I was surprised to see the art that was printed in the magazine, as it's stretched, I guess, to fit the page. Kinda got to me.



Then again, it's freelance for a weekly magazine with tight deadlines so it's not like everything can be expected to go flawlessly every single time. I've been doing the art for this column for over a year now, and I'm very very happy with both the content and direction of the column itself, and my own contributions and ability to contribute. I think there have been more hits than misses with this series. I think I've grown as an artist; maybe not as a professional, but certainly as an illustrator.

Her Smoking Gun

For this piece I drew the girl but got bored with the art, so I drew a background for her to stand in later. I just drew this for the hell of it.

SCALPELS, FUTURE ISLANDS, SUNGOD, FLAT CAN CO.

Here's my latest flyer. I don't know anything about Scaplels, but Zippy from Clan of The Cave Bear set this show up, so I'm willing to bet it's gonna be awesome. SunGod kicks ass, so there's that.





Please and thank you.

The Joint, Now in Full Color!!

I have a full color piece in this week's Free Times, it's more art for The Joint. Here's a big version:



I guess I don't really have much else to say. I wish I had scanned some pages of my sketchbook to post, but I haven't yet. Been sick with a head cold that turned me into a very lazy zombie.

WINTER BEARD

This is my most recent attempt to use my Wacom Tablet in any capacity. I'm working on a huge ridiculous thing about Winter Beards and how awesome they are for the next Caveman Diaries. I'm hoping to have Caveman Diaries No. 6 done and ready for SPACE. It won't be nearly as huge as No. 5 but it'll be the next step in evolution for Cave innovations.

It Keeps On Coming And Rising

As the Frosty Hammer of the Winter Gods falls upon the Head and Chest of Mighty Ohio, Billy Delfs sent out an email with photos of Downtown Cleveland. Documentation of The Storm.