San Diego Dreaming…

So I’m going to be at San Diego Comic Con this week. This will be my first CCI (and my first time in San Diego period).

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

James Jean’s Silk Spectre

Indieschmindie.

Go take a look at James Jean’s Silk Spectre illustration for the Watchmen movie. Jean points out that it’s in the trailer for a second when you see The Comedian’s apartment, but it plays a larger role in the actual scene. As always he provides preliminary sketch material.

Check It Out: Mesmo Delivery

Rafael Grampa is previewing a small snippet of his brand new comic, Mesmo Delivery over at his website. Anyone who knows me also knows I’ve been looking forward to to this book ever since I first saw Grampa’s work a little over a year ago. I think the last time a cartoonist got me this excited was Geof Darrow’s Hard Boiled.

So stop thinking about it and go check it out already! If you’re going to be in San Diego this week, Grampa should have some copies available. If not, look for the book this fall through AdHouse.

Stuff To Look At: Friday Edition

—First, everyone should go watch the animated trailer Dash Shaw produced for his highly acclaimed graphic novel, The Bottomless Belly Button.

It’s gorgeous, and a serious face melter.

—Then, over at the Bodega Blog, Brian Ralph posts some more “Dad” strips. Now I’m no dad, but in my opinion…these strips rule! Also, Ralph thinks he broke his toe. Get yourself to X-Ray city, man. That looks RIPE.

—Corey Lews has a new Zuda comic, called Dead In The Now. Vote or die!

—Brandon Graham did the cover for the latest issue of Hack/Slash. (Lucky #13!!)

—And finally, Bryan Lee O’Malley thinks the Scott Pilgrim Vol. 5 cover and title might be debuted at San Diego Comic Con. Fingers crossed!

Have an awesome weekend dudes and dudettes!

REVIEW: Harvest Is When I Need You The Most

REVIEW: Harvest Is When I Need You The Most
By Various
Website

There was a whole lot of buzz behind this mini at MoCCA 2008 (I heard they ran out of copies FAST) and after finally reading it I can totally see why.
For starters, the title alone of this “Star Wars Fanbook” is enough to tickle any open-minded Star Wars fan pink. Taking such a throwaway line (spoken by the small-worldish and over protective Uncle Owen in Star Wars) out of its original context and turning it to such an agnsty, emotional title was a stroke of genius—especially accompanied by what I assume is an homage to Luke gazing off into the Tatooine sunset on the cover (the glossy inset picture used is a cool aesthetic touch).
The contents of the mini range from the darkly humorous “Biggs In Space” one-pager, the uproariously funny, Tag & Bink-ish “Under 21,” to the non-narrative “Yo-Duh!”, all wonderfully illustrated. AND EWOKS! Heavens are there ever so many Ewoks!
I can’t help but remember that indispensable indie/alternative issue of Star Wars Tales when reading Harvest, and think, “Why don’t they do that again?”
I know Tales is no more, but a one-shot, anthology style issue like this would do the trick. What I’m saying here is I love these kinds of Star Wars comics and wish I could read new ones more often, in a hand held capacity.
Anyway, kudos to the Harvest team for a job well done.

LAST CALL goes to the BIG SCREEN

It looks like Universal has bought up the rights to adapt Vasilis Lolos’ Oni Press series The Last Call. Barry Josephson (Enchanted) and Eric Gitter are set to produce, and Evan Spiliotopoulos (”The Box”) will write the screen adaptation.

The Last Call is a series of graphic novels, written and drawn by Lolos, about two young metal head friends who, while on a joyride one night, get picked up by an otherworldly train that serves as a soul carrier. Lost and alone, the boys (Sam and Alec) try to dodge the train’s hulking conductor, who is looking for some tickets, and the rest of the ghoulish passengers only to discover a nefarious series of murders are taking place. The boys must navigate frightening pitfalls and dangerous monsters in order to solve the murder mystery and get home.

Now we don’t want to jinx anything, but an e-mail with Vasilis revealed that we both think one Guillermo Del Toro would be the perfect director for this movie. Like PERFECT.

Anyway, congrats to Vasilis!

RASL #2 Previewed at Boneville

Check it.

The issue drops in stores tomorrow.

Paul Pope’s Toy Chest

Continuing the Paul Pope thread from last week…

Check out the news that Pope and Kid Robot are teaming up to manufacture a THB line of vinyl toys!

The first figure will be the Masked Karimbah (actually a two piece set based on a character on a children’s TV show in the THB universe), set the debut at SDCC.

Pope notes that the dog is the size of an actual Boston Terrier.

AWESOME

[images swiped from Pope’s flickr]

Palmer’s Picks REDUX: THB

Hey Folks!

So after spending a lot of time recently going through some old issues of Wizard I’ve decided to start posting scans of old Palmer’s Picks. For those of you not in the know, Tom Palmer Jr. used to write a monthly feature for Wizard, back in the early to mid double digits, called Palmer’s Picks, where he would spotlight an indie/alternative book. This was pretty much the precursor to Wizard Edge and Secret Stash. Going through these old articles I realized we covered some pretty awesome books back in the day. Like this one on Paul Pope’s THB. This article ran the same year Pope started the book. The second issue wasn’t even out yet!

(I realize you can’t read these right off the screen, but if you click through and magnify the image you’ll be all set)

Enjoy!

MoCCA cafe latte

I actually don’t drink coffee…but MoCCA Art Festival 2008, this past weekend in NYC, was a complete blast!

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!