I have one question and one piece of advice for you, Harvey James. What the fuck is wrong with you? Advice: whatever it is, don’t fix it. A single long page full of illustrations that would make Jamie Hewlett jealous, chaotic, weird, and sometimes awesomely twisted. It’s like the greatest sketchbook I’ve ever seen. This motherfucker is my muse for the next few weeks.
I never thought that I would find a comics artist who amazed me nearly as much as Chris Ware. I guess you never think you will until you do, and now I have. Joseph Lambert’s lines, form, direction, and framing make me want to put down my pen and pencil for good. Or never put them down. It’s hard to tell. Either way, Lambert’s comics, as well as his illustrations, are fantastic. Someone out there with the resources needs to put him on a permanent paycheck. A big paycheck. Like Bill Gates big. Too much? Ok, then just Richard Branson big.
I lived in Florida for a couple of years when I was younger, down Miami way, and the only thing that I can remember about it is that drivers would swerve to try and hit pedestrians and people would pay me a lot of money to remove reptiles, amphibians, spiders and scorpions from their outdoor trashcans. Overall it’s not a bad memory, but it’s not great either. That’s fine. There are a lot of people who aren’t me that love Florida. I’m a little more fond of America’s schlong since coming across the illustration work of Mark Malazarte. Dude lives in Tampa, but is originally from the Philippines, and is part of the Calavera Comics crew. That’s a talented group of misfits and rebels if ever I’ve seen one, which I have, like all the time. Mark’s illustration work dazzles my eyes because of his tight type control and color palettes, especially when throwing down with his illustrative counterweight Alexis Ziritt. Since Mark’s website isn’t up and running, yet I’m just gonna throw you into his Flickr stream. Sink or swim, bitches.
Eleanor Davis, in her bio, says that Savannah, GA is “possibly the most pleasant city in America”. And in some ways she’s right. Some parts of it that I’ve seen are not very nice at all, and I’m pretty surprised I’ve lived to tell about them. I’ve also seen the parts that she’s talking about, and I can see how they would make her work weird and cool and full of little monsters getting into scrapes. She also runs Little House Comics with Drew Weing. Savannah is definitely a great place for that. Because of SCAD, the art and design community there is tight-knit and wildly creative. Eleanor’s comics and illustrations are magical for sure, and even though I have my doubts about Savannah, the city and its art community are better off for having her there.
*Update*: I’ve been informed that Eleanor has left Savannah for the tiny, indie bubble that is Athens, GA. I can tell you that’s probably a better place to sit under trees and make comics. It’s not as easy to score some rock, though. Life is all about trade-offs.
p.s. Every time I do an update like that I always hear Robert Stack’s voice from Unsolved Mysteries. He would come on at the end of a segment and say “Update” like he was a journalist, and not some guy who hosted a show where ghosts were regularly featured. You always knew there was a happy ending when he would say update. Helped me sleep easier.
A day came last month when I asked Rey Ortega (previously mentioned) if he wanted to do an interview. He agreed, because I flashed him the bedroom eyes, and since those are pretty close to the serial killer eyes, it’s hard to say no. The next day I noticed that he had an interview up on Fecal Face. Bummer. Most of my interviews ask pretty much the same thing, so I had to find a way to not be entirely redundant. I came up with the following interview at 2 in the AM. Lucky for all of you Rey is busy and I am lazy, which means that it took a while for the interview to actually make it this far. Even less redundancy. Just a little warning, there isn’t much about art in this interview. Honestly, it’s better because of that. All the retardedness you can handle after the jump.
Brilliant cartoonist Tom Horacek has just released a new book, All We Ever Do Is Talk About Wood, available through Drawn and Quarterly press. Horacek, whose work is like Peanuts meets Perry Bible Fellowship, brings a new book of his odd, angst and tragicomedy laden comics to burn our eyes with confused tears of laughter and desparation. Each single-panel strip is like a rabbit punch in the smile. Spit out a tooth and turn the page.
Make sure you click on the preview on the Product Page. I didn’t want to blast you with a PDF.
Without the fat, orange cat this comic strip is nothing short of amazing. I never realized how much of an existential journey it was. Who knew Garfield was just fucking up the brilliance all along?
Tom Gauld and Simone Lia are the brains behind Cabanon Press, which makes comics that are nasal-milk-explosion funny. Their work is similar in composition to Perry Bible Fellowship, but without the twistedness that makes me question whether or not I should actually laugh. That was a lie. I never question it. The style of Gauld and Lia’s work is simple, and well-presented. In short these are exactly the kinds of comics that you should all buy me for birthdays and Hanukkah. Just throwing that out there.
Drawn! has a great list up of Comics and Art Books of 2007 (that image is also theirs). Definitely try and attain all of these. Or buy them for me as gifts. I love Crimmas! Because they’re Canadian they’ve spelled the word favorite with as favourite. Spell check marks that as incorrect, Canada. And spell check is the law.
I cannot overemphasize how important Calvin and Hobbes was to my development. It gave me an introspective and curious nature, and it was the first strip that I ever drew. I used to copy strips to practice drawing in the cartoon style rather than the comic book style that I had always worked in. It was the first strip that I was ever really excited to read, and I read it over and over again. Peanuts and C&H were the two genre changing strips that will always hold the highest places in my comic pantheon. If you had similar revelations you might be interested in checking out this page of rare Bill Watterson art. It’s always nice to get a glimpse into another part of an artist’s work, because it explains a little more about the artist. It’s lame to have to piece together what someone is like from just their work, but I don’t foresee Bill inviting me over for a BBQ anytime soon. Watterson also wrote the foreword to the new Charles Schulz biography (top of my purchase list) so pick that up if you like reading things that make your life complete.
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