This blog is too bloated for its own good, so I am sealing it in carbonite.
My new blog (which I’ve been using for a while) is here: stwallskull.com
The new blog features more of my work and much less comics history and other content. So, if you like my comics, you’ll want to follow it… if you were following my blog for the other content, it probably isn’t worth your time, though. Thanks for checking the blog out.
As you can probably see, my site is all messed up… it got hacked this week. I’m attempting to restore it from backups, but this is proving more challenging than I would have hoped for various reasons I won’t bore you with.
Below is a sketch I made of the wonderful Roe Family Singers setting the woods on fire at the 331 Club earlier tonight… boy, do they make some beautiful music. They play there every Monday to the most unbelievably enthusiastic Monday night crowd you are ever likely to see. Two of the members of the band, bandleader Quillan Roe and Adam Wirtzfeld on the saw, are also excellent local cartoonists. I can’t recommend checking their show out highly enough.
I also posted the image on Ken Avidor‘s fantastic group sketch blog, Urban Sketchers Twin Cities, which he was nice enough to invite me to participate in. There are lots of wonderful sketches of the region there to check out.
I have a table at the Twin Cities Book Festival this coming weekend. I will have pretty much everything I currently have in print there for perusal. I’m always delighted to draw something in copies of my Soapy the Chicken book with purchase, fyi… just ask if you’re interested.
I’ll be premiering two brand new mini-comics:
The first one is The Dead Living, a horror story I did that will also be in this month’s issue of Zander Cannon and Kevin Cannon’s incredible digital anthology Double Barrel, coming out this Wednesday from Top Shelf. If you haven’t checked out the other issues of Double Barrel, you really, really should… and I would do it before you pick up the one my comic is in, as the brothers Cannon are doing some extremely engaging serials that you will want to start at the beginning (a sequel to Kevin’s brilliant Far Arden called Crater XV, and Zander’s paranormal pulp opera, Heck among many other wonders). Double Barrel is the first digital comic I’ve purchased, and it is one hell of a deal… many of the issues have over 100 pages of some of the best comics around for a buck (the most recent two issues are $2, but back issues go down to $1. If you are like me, once you start, you won’t be able to wait for them to drop in price). Anyhow, getting back to The Dead Living… I’ve never done a horror comic before, so it seemed like an interesting challenge to attempt. Horror and humor seem like two of the hardest things to pull off well in comics. I went off of Steve Bissette’s advice/requirement to contributors to his wonderful horror anthology of the 80′s and 90′s, Taboo… I tried to draw something that I found genuinely frightening. So, if I succeeded, hopefully you will be in for an unpleasant read.
The other new mini-comic is called Freaky Tiki. It is a collection of drawings of strange and obscure minor island deities that perhaps exist. I made it for inclusion in the upcoming Lutefisk Sushi Volume E show that the Cartoonist Conspiracy is putting together with our friends at Altered Esthetics Gallery. It is our fifth Lutefisk Sushi hand-silkscreened, limited-edition box set of Minnesota mini-comics (the first was in 2004). So, if you plan to come to the opening for that on November 2nd and buy a box, you will not want to purchase this mini from me… you’ll get one included in the box.
Note that, of much greater interest than me at the Book Festival, noted genius Chris Ware will be there, and he will be giving a presentation on his incredible new box of books, Building Stories, at 12:30 in the Taxi Room.
Please note that if you have been waiting for updates to Monkey’s Paw, my ongoing webcomic collaboration with Ben Zmith… they will, unfortunately, be slowing down. They will continue, but we can no longer maintain the every Friday schedule. Ben and I were drawing them on our lunch breaks every day, and, alas, Ben got a new gig so now we can’t draw together as frequently. That said, we did every Friday for something like a year and a half… which is a pretty damn good uninterrupted run of free comics, I think. Anyhow, while you wait for updates, you can always check out the archive here. Soapy the Chicken remains in hibernation, but will be returning again one of these days.
Testing… testing… anyone out there reading this blog of mine anymore?
Well, if so, hi there. I’ve decided to start posting things on the internet regularly again… on a schedule, even.
On Mondays, I will be posting a new Soapy the Chicken strip on the Soapy the Chicken site. (you can subscribe to Soapy the Chicken here… you can read the previous Soapy strips here… or you can buy the collected Soapy in book form here). Click the image below for the first one…
On Fridays, my new collaborative comic with my good friend Ben Zmith, Monkey’s Paw, will be updated. The first four weeks have already been posted, actually. You can see them by clicking on the below images.
You can subscribe to the feed for Monkey’s Paw here.
I’ll also be posting whatever I feel like here on the Stwallskull blog, whenever I feel like it. The posts moving forward will mostly be focusing on my personal comic work, rather than stuff relating to the history of comics and animation.
I hope you enjoy the comics if you decide to follow them. Thanks for “stopping by,†regardless!
TODAY’S FEATURED ITEM:
Sherm Cohen at Cartoon SNAP brings us some examples of readers’ dreams illustrated by Jack Kirby for the 50’s comic series The Strange World of Your Dreams.
TODAY’S FEATURED ITEM: Click the above image to check out some amazing covers from the series Los Vampiros Del Aire (which ran at least 38 issues!) courtesy of Viñetas. Google translate translates the above phrase “Era Una cabeza terrible. ¿Era de hombre?” as “It was a terrible headache. He was a man?”
Update: Reader Gabriel was nice enough to correct Google’s translation for me in the comments. A better translation is “It was a terrible head. He was a man?”
TODAY’S FEATURED ITEM:
Today Drawn! points us to icecreampeople.org, a blog devoted to nothing but images of anthropomorphic ice cream people. Check the FAQ on their site to see how you can submit your own illustration of an ice cream person, something I am really going to have to get around to. Click the image to go to the site.
Here is an Everett True strip I scanned from November 6, 1924. Go here to see more Outbursts of Everett True on this site.
If you have a desire to draw your own interpretation of an Everett True strip and send it to me, I’d love to put it up for the internet for all to see with a link to your website or what have you. Send it to me at:
Click here to go to the Barnacle Press collection of Everett True strips by A.D. Condo
Click here to read about the lesser-known works of A.D. Condo at Barnacle Press.
Click here to read some samples of Mr. Skygack, From Mars by A.D. Condo at Barnacle Press.
Click here to read some samples of Diana Dillpickles by A.D. Condo at Barnacle Press.
Click here to read some samples of Duke Murphy by A.D. Condo at Barnacle Press.
Today’s featured comic comes courtesy of Pappy’s Golden Age Comics Blogzine. A Bill Everett tale from Atlas Comics’ Venus #19. Everett is better known as the creator of the Sub-Mariner.
Note that you can see two more insane Everett Venus tales at Hairy Green Eyeball by clicking here.
Another great cartoon from the Max Fleischer Color Classics series.
You can get all but one of the Color Classics on this great DVD set called Somewhere in Dreamland:
I’ve noticed a couple additional things worth noting going through the DVD set. First of all, the color on some of the cartoons, although still seemingly faded, is hugely improved over the other versions of them that I’ve seen… this is particularly obvious comparing versions of Hawaiian Birds. Also, in the version of Peeping Penguins included, the song “Curiosity Killed the Cat” is curiously missing from the soundtrack, which is a damn shame. I haven’t checked it against my other version of it, but it seemed like this version may have been shorter as well. In spite of these relatively minor flaws, this is still an incredible set of cartoons. You can click the above image to order it.
Here’s another example of Frederick Opper’s strip Happy Hooligan an unknown date in 1902. This strip was posted to the Platinum Age Comics Group by someone trying to place the date for it… if you know the date, please help out and let us know in the comments! It is apparently not one of the ones housed on Barnacle Press. Note that this example appears to be scanned from a reprint book rather than the original newspaper page. Click the image to read the strip.
Please note: This comic contains a racial slur. If that sort of thing offends you, you may not want to read it.
You can see more examples of Happy Hooligan (and many other classic comics) at Barnacle Press. Here are some other Opper strips at Barnacle Press.