Saturday, November 20, 2010

Cat Display


Here's a little display I made to go with my books at Poliwog. Poliwog is a kid's boutique and toy store in SE Portland. I wanted to make this post just to discuss how hard it is for me to make art sometimes. Sometimes it's easy and sometimes it's hard. Just a little display like this took me several tries and in the end the simplist idea worked. Feh.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

The Dog Book


So it is official. I can give you a little bit of news. I am doing a dog book that is a companion to The Super Crazy Cat Dance. I'm going to hold off on showing you any more images until it's sent off to print. The artwork is almost finished and is just needing to be colored. It'll probably come out next fall.

Oh and also you can read a new review of The Super Crazy Cat Dance over at readaboutcomics.com. Are there any kids out there you need to get a gift for this holiday season? If so, you can help me out by buying a copy. It's easily available from buyolympia.com, amazon.com, and powells.com. Or better yet, you can check out your local bookstore.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

One More Reason How Diamond is Screwing Your Local Comic Shop

Yesterday I went over to my favorite comic book shop to see if they had the new Acme Novelty Library by Chris Ware. When I arrived, all of the new shipments from Diamond (Diamond Distribution is practically the monopoly disto.) had been neatly placed on their shelves and I was shocked to find out that the book I wanted wasn't among them. I asked the proprietor when she would expect the book to be in their stores. Once she looked up the book with Diamond's online catalog system she told me that Diamond wouldn't have it available until almost next year, December 27 or something close to that. What!? This is a book that has been available on Amazon since Nov. 9th.

Now there are only a hand full of books that I am too impatient to wait for my local comic book shop to order before I buy it. I remember last year it was Joe Sacco's new book and today it is Chris Ware's beautifully moody Acme Novelty Library #20. The proprietor agreed with my frustration and listed several other books that Diamond doesn't have available yet, which have been selling online at Amazon with deep discounts for the past two weeks. This year's Best Of American Comics, by Houghton Mifflin was among them.

In my weakened state I continued on to Powell's books whom I knew had plenty of copies of the new Acme. I bought the book and although Powell's is local and good to me they do not quite support my community in the way my local friend/owned comic book shop does. I love Powell's and it is far far better than Amazon.com but it is a siphon that often diverts my book dollars with relative ease.

Of course there are ways that comic book stores can get these books that Diamond doesn't deliver quickly, like say, ordering from one of the book-book distros that do like Baker and Taylor or Hatchett or whomever carries it... there are minimum orders to deal with and such and such but aside from all of that it all goes to show how lame Diamond Distribution really is. I have my own problems with the disto which is all subtext you can guess at, and there are a million other reasons why Diamond is bad for everyone, but I just wanted to point out one big flaw with Diamond's inability to get good books to stores on time. Just another good reason to circumvent Diamond and order for other distros... Although this brings up another subject which is too long to get into like, Drawn and Quarterly not dealing with stores directly anymore, or their no longer wanting to deal with small press comics reps. I am getting off track and out of my knowledge area. The short story is, I'm spending less money at my friend's store because Diamond sucks.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Article in the Camas Post Record


A few weeks ago I went out to my old hometown of Camas, Washington to talk to an assembly of about 230 sixth-graders. It was pretty crazy. I've never done an event so big but it was a lot of fun reading the excerpt from Neptune where the kids chant, "I hate school!" over and over.

My favorite part about doing readings like this is whenever I have panels with sound effects I choose not to make the sounds and then I can hear the kids from a distance say them to themselves. It's an incredibly satisfying experience. Especially here where the third panel implies a "lock" sound. Kids actually say it even though it's not there.

After the assembly I got interviewed by an eighth grader, Reesab Pathak, for the school's morning bulletin. He was also asked to do a write-up for the Camas Post-Record newspaper about the event. You can read it here, although there was some confusion about my education. To clarify, I got my 2-d animation certificate from The Vancouver Film School and I got my Bachelors in Arts and Letters from Portland State. Reesab I wish you all the best luck. Thanks for the interview.