from nowherefront FLICKR

Here are some other FLICKR photostreams with pictures of the event…
wendypants
Walt Holcombe
nowherefront
(all photos were found via FLICKR search. if you’d like me to remove any of these links for some reason email me:dpaggi[at]wizardent[dot]com)

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Desert Island in Brooklyn hosted a release party for Rafael Grampá’s Mesmo Delivery. Rafael came all the way from Brazil to hang out with folks.
Desert Island has a few photos on their FLICKR.

So I’ll be in Bethesda, Maryland this weekend to take part in the comics love fest known as SPX.

Some things I’m looking forward to…

-Picking up the latest from Lilli Carré

-Picking up the latest from Robert Goodin

-The Ganzfeld 7 (with Paper Rad DVD!!) and Monster Men Bureiko Lullaby from PictureBox

-You Ain’t No Dancer Vol. 3 from New Reliable

-Mini-Comics by the barrel full

-Sketchbook madness

Enough jibber-jabber. Here are a few (and i do mean few, sorry) photos I snapped during the week.

Here’s the Eisner award winning team of 5, pre-Eisner on Wednesday. Congratulations guys! (L-R: Gabriel Ba, Fabio Moon, Vasilis “Cool Shades” Lolos, Rafael Grampa and Becky Cloonan) Gabriel, Fabio, Vasilis and Becky were at the show with Pixu, their new self published joint project. Rafael was debuting Mesmo Delivery, his brand spanking new graphic novel.

Here’s Jim Woodring, putting on his “serious face” and showing off some art.

Philip Bond was giving out money at his booth in artist alley.

Paul Pope’s Masked Karimbah toy at Kid Robot.

A big Pokeman.

Here’s what I picked up at the show…
L-R: Always Elwes by Aiyana Udesen (a mini of various portraits of Cary Elwes. It’s as awesome as it sounds.), brilliantly ham fisted, a collection of Tom Neely’s comic strip poems, Mesmo Delivery by Rafael Grampa, which is destined to be one of my favorite books of the year, World War Robot by Ashley Wood, Stay away from other people by Lisa Hanawalt, and Space Girl by Travis Charest.

L-R: Scott Pilgrim: full colour odds and ends 2008 by Bryan Lee O’Malley, Your Disease Spread Quickly by Tom Neely, a bootleg Garfield comic (Garfield without Garfield is just the beginning…), Boys Club #2 by Matt Furie (another “Best of 2008″), PIXU by Gabriel Ba, Fabio Moon, Vasilis Lolos and Becky Cloonan, Bad Asses by Mark Todd, and The Hero With a Thousand Excuses by Jim Woodring.

L-R: Essex County Vol. 3: The Country Nurse by Jeff Lemire, Stumptown Preview by Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth and Drawing IV: Worf and Wolf by Aiyana Udesen

Finally, while all you nerds were doing who knows what Saturday evening, I was in La Jolla checking out some out of control Seals!

Nice!

Check back all week for updates from the con, photos and tales of me visiting a seal beach in La Jolla!

Sizzling weather conditions didn’t keep away crowds either. A steady flow of comic lovers filled the halls of the Puck Building (at least on Saturday) from open to close. But enough chit chat. Check out some photos!

Here’s Bryan Lee O’Malley and Evan Palmer (Hope Larson had stepped out for a second).

Bryan had sadly sold out of his new Scott Pilgrim post cards by the time I made my way to his table, but Hope had brought copies of her new book Chiggers! I believe Bryan is sporting one of the fancy kerchiefs that Hope had made as a neat promo item. Evan, who if I’m not mistaken is Hope and Bryan’s intern, brought along some of his own mini comics, which were fantastic. You’ll probably be hearing more about him the near future.

Kazimir Strzepek, creator of The Mourning Star, was on hand at the Bodega Distribution booth.

Kaz is hard at work on The Mourning Star Vol. 2, which he hopes will be out in time for SPX later this year. Bodega had made up some nifty Mourning Star temporary tattoos and a mini comic preview for Vol. 2.

Dash Shaw and Jason were both signing at the Fantagraphics table.

Fantagraphics was debuting Jason’s latest collection, Pocket Full of Rain, and Dash was appearing in support of his recent release, The Bottomless Belly Button.

The fantastic Tom Neely was also in attendance at the Sparkplug table.

Tom, as you may know, is the Ignatz award winning creator of The Blot. I picked up two minis he had on hand entitled Henry & Glenn 4-Ever. He described them as a drunken comics jam between him and the rest of the art collective Igloo Tornado, that imagine Glenn Danzig and Henry Rollins living together. Brilliant.

This handsome devil is none other than Jeff Lemire, creator of the Essex County Trilogy!

Jeff had a preview copy of the third chapter in the Essex County saga, The Country Nurse and two special mini-comic mini-chapters, Eddie Elephant Ears and The Essex County Boxing Club. Jeff is also currently working on an upcoming graphic novel for Vertigo called The Nobody.

Winding down our photo parade, here’s Eisner Award nominee Becky Cloonan and Vanessa Satone (seated)!

Becky had some fancy postcards for her PIXU, an upcoming mini-comic featuring her, Vasilis Lolos, Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá. She also brought along Vasilis Lolos’ latest existential outer space masterpiece, Lunar.

For some reason I didn’t snap a photo of my buddy Sean T. Collins, who was in representing at the PARTYKA booth with his new mini, Murder, which collects his web material with Matt Wiegle, Matt Rota and Josiah Leighton. After reading it, the only thing I can say (besides Sean really knows how to creep a dude out in a good way with strips like The Real Killers Are Still Out There and Kitchen Sink) is LONG LIVE DESTRUCTOR!

First, over at Boneville, Kathleen Glosan posts some photos from Paul Pope’s guest presentation at the Wexner Center’s Bone and Beyond exhibit.

God I wish I lived in Ohio…

Second, please take a minute of your time to go check out cartoonist, Joe Quinones’ Scott Pilgrim interpretations. Joe has an awesome style that works well for the characters. So far he’s done Scott, Ramona, Envy and Kim.

Thirdly, you’d be doing yourself a diservice if you didn’t take a peek at the sketchbook comics of Ben Dale. I’m honestly not sure what Ben has done before, but I love what I see on his Live Journal.

That’s it for today!

Next week look for some Wizard World Philly coverage, Indie Jones style, and an interview with Bottomless Belly Button cartoonist, Dash Shaw!

Here’s a “class photo” that the students put together for the faculty. Click through to Lutes’ blog for a complete list of graduates and some handy links to check out their work.

Here’s a photo from Chuck Forsman’s (Snake Oil) blog of the actual ceremony.

Congratulations to all the graduates!

Hey, children!

I don’t know how many of you are spending your Wednesday afternoon’s hanging out at the Big WU, but for those of you that have other priorities in life, you should totally check out the intrepid Robert Taylor’s comprehensive coverage of Jeff Smith’s “Bone & Beyond” art exhibit at The Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the Arts. Included are:

– A newsy report from the show’s opening weekend letting you know what all the fuss is about.

– A transcript of the live interview of Smith conducted by Scott McCloud.

– A fact-filled review of the show itself.

If that ain’t quite enough, the whole shebang comes with Robert’s photos (one of which is above), and later this week, I’ll be following up by talking to Smith about the opening and what else is going on with the show later this summer.

– KP

In case you hadn’t heard, there’s a very in depth showcase of Bone creator Jeff Smith’s comics work opening up this weekend at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio on the campus of The Ohio State University. I can’t make it down for the opening, but luckily I got the chance to talk to the curators behind the exhibit Lucy Caswell & David Filipi. The pair were extremely nice and got me really excited for the show (fingers crossed I’ll make it before they close up shop in August), and you can read the interview the big WU.

For anyone in the Ohio area, I highly recommend heading down and seeing the exhibit. All the info for the show can be found here. If you can’t head there just yet, worry not. We’re having the intrepid Robert Taylor stop in to review the show, talk to all involved and snap as many photos as he can, so check back to the blog next week for all the details!

ALSO: Vaneta Rogers talks to Smith about the show over at Newsarama.

Most interesting thing to note: I’d say about 90% if not more of the kids there draw in a manga-inspired style. I know, I know…shocker, right? But it was very interesting to see what the next generation of OEL kids did when faced with predetermined subject matter from the faculty rather than just spinning off into their own fantasy lands. Let’s take a look, shall we?

[Oh, and I should note that no one should consider these reviews. More so they're just impressions, and even those should be taken with a grain of salt. If I had the guts to not only print up but actually sell my creative work as an undergrad to total strangers, there's no way it would have been half as successful as what these guys put together.]

CHARLIE CHAPLIN: A NOT-QUITE-SILENT MINI COMIC by Hanni Brosh

I’m putting Ms. Brosh’s comic first as she was the most helpful and informative student with comics out and seemed to be doing the thankless task of selling comics for three or four of her friends who weren’t around either. Brosh explained to me that as a Junior, her thesis had to be a biography-style mini fitting the theme “Kings & Queens” which didn’t have to be taken literaly. Any famous person at the top of their field was fair game for the students, and Brosh’s Chaplin comic centered in on the creation of the silent film star’s anti-Hilter pic “The Great Dictator.” There’s a lot to like about the mini including the fact that Brosh framed the story with a few scenes of older Chaplin reflecting on the film and the histeria surrounding it. Also, her cartooning reminded me a lot of Jay Hosler’s work, which considering the subject matter works quite well.

BOUDICA by David Fernandez

Fernandez (who wasn’t there but was recommended to me by Brosh) was one of the few students whose style fit more of a traditional mainstream mold (there was one other guy there with Wolverine sketches out, but I don’t think he had a mini for sale). Still, in the 16 pages of story on the life and final stand of a British tribal queen against the Roman Empire, Fernandez displays a variety of storytelling skills from visually varied talking scenes to big epic battlescapes to bloody action sequences. His stuff kind of reminds me of Sean Chen, and despite the fact that a lot of this story felt rushed through to pack in all the info, I’d like to see what the artist would do given some time to develope a longer story. Fernandez has a Deviant Art page you can check out for more.

LOVE LUCY by Greg Fenton

A really impressive effort. Fenton tells the story of Lucille Ball’s career from her early stage days through the end of her first TV show and divorce from husband Desi Arnaz. However, rather than deliver a straight narrative comic rehashing all the salient points of their history, Fenton formatted the mini as though Lucy’s life had been a gag-aday newspaper strip providing a series of dailies and Sunday pages which work both to inform the reader of the subject at hand and to tell a funny joke every three panels. Plus, his cartooning is super cute and hella expressive. I highly recommend checking out his website.

BRUCE LEE by Oscar Mei

Not sure why, but this was my favorite cover of the bunch. The telling Lee’s acting career from his early Hollywood days to the sudden success of “The Big Boss” is pretty straightforward and told in a breezy manga style. I honestly could have used a little more ass-kicking for a Bruce Lee comic, but Mei had another mini on sale featuring a female version of Iron Man he cooked up himself, and from flipping through that I could tell he had it in him.

HENRY VIII’S SECOND WIFE ANNE BOLEYN by Jung Yeon Roh

You can tell just by looking at her comic that Roh is one of the students at SVA who makes all the others jealous. Her production and packaging was at a level that some professionals don’t reach including the nice card stock cover and color interiors. Roh also had a really cool mini that was an hardcover accordian-style comic about the dental work of her ex-boyfriends that I would have bought if it were for sale. And the interiors of her Boleyn comic had some really nice collage work. Bonus points for working the phrase “Lobster-eyed whore” onto her cover.

BEWARE OF FOXES by Kate Rhodes

A sophomore rather than a junior at SVA, Rhodes wasn’t working in the “Kings & Queens” department. Instead, we get a one-woman anthology of manga styled stories about foxes. Foxes who turn into people. People who turn into foxes. People dressed like foxes. Foxes eating people. She likes foxes is what I’m trying to convey to you. And all in all, I liked them when she drew them. None of the stories in the book are long enough to do much more than build a small scene or convey a simple idea, but each one had a totally unique style to it in terms of line work and storytelling, and that was mighty impressive.

DEFFECTIVE CUPCAKES by Natalie Andros

A master saleswoman, Andros gave out some pretty non-deffective cupcakes with her mini. Smart, no? As far as the book’s contents, what we get is an unfinished manga tale (a kind of creation myth which I’m guessing serves as the launching point for some as of yet unwritten epic), a fairy tale involving a giant mutant cupcake and a parody of Fox’s “House” that made me laugh out loud at least twice in three pages. Given the opportunity, I’m guessing that most of the students at the show would like to be working on the long-form epic stuff like Andros gets to. But she was the only senior I met at the show and so most likely the only one preping a pitch for Tokyopop or whoever. Best of luck to her.