MoCCa Grab Rundown and Linkage

It was all a blur. Not intentionally, or even metaphorically. Clinically, since I managed to spend some MoCCa time just at the onset of a preemptive con-cruding, clearly designed by my enemies to keep me from basking in comicdom's comforting glow.

On the upside, when I was sitting outside at one point, trying to muster enough consciousness to stay on my feet (which didn't last), I did see Bob Fingerman pass by eating some McD's, and I'll be treasuring that moment for some time to come. I made a once around pass of the place, had a few moments to talk with Brian Wood while I was hanging out with Salgood Sam, and then went on a time and pocket tightened spree.


-Kenan Rubenstein's artwork


The cream on top was:

Connor Willumsen's The Middle, which I picked up for a few skads. It's a clean, sparse surreality of a tale that doesn't waste any time explaining itself. I'll be re-reading this again and again, and looking out for more of his work.

Jon J Muth's Vanitas. I'm basically always looking for Muth work, since some of his mid-80s Marvel work I am lucky enough to call my first experiences in comics and has formed large sections of my brain. The drawings, paintings, and photographs in here are simply out of this world, and it always feels like I'm learning about how art works by looking at his stuff.

The Biographer, by Ada Price. I picked this up from the SVA student table because the cover had such a great design (she has a pic on her blog, which will hopefully continue to be updated). The story itself is lots of layers of who is telling what about who, and that works for me.

On the Beach by Kenan Rubenstein. Another skad pick-up, very nearly my last skad. I was given the choice between Hipsters in Brooklyn or naked folks. I went with the naked, and it turned out for the best (I've been among the hipsters, and while some are nice, they are still just yuppies that just happened to be born in the 80s).



Also good, for reasons I don't have the where-with-all to expound at present, were a couple more SVA products. Allison Strejlau's work, this time Kakapo, found its way into my bag once again, having earned a place there from the SVA student mini-comics show in 2008. Edwin Huang seems fast-tracking towards the big guns with his thick shadows and panel borders. This time around I picked up Yide'.

My biggest regret was not being able to now have the "Helper" statue sculptor Jesse Farrell had out there, but I enjoyed the hell out of talking with him about Venture Bros.

Since I feel I am inching ever closer to another nap, I'll have to pause here, but will come back for a rundown of the rest of the grabbage later on.

Cheers

I'm Not Saying I Attained Enlightenment at New York Comic Con but...

Well, I am the burning elation of exhaustion and excitement. I dare not actually try to make anything at this point, since I am far too overcharged, but nothing a nice day of the job won't cure (ok, that's a lie, I did write for about an hour or so last night, but it was just mind-garbage).

I used to feel like this after my residencies in the Grad School days. We'd burn through 8 or 9 days, talking about books and writing, just a pack of little Prometheus' and Promethea's in the woods of Vermont spinning in circles as we carried the light down the hill, and when it was all done, after 6 or 7 hours on the road, always glad to be home where everything was soft and warm the only thing I'd feel was that we'd burned, held over the coals and our minds flashed, cerebro-spinal fluid glowing with the luminosity of imparted wisdom and the shared passions, spent and delirious and washed in the rains of a rebirth.

NYCC was like that for me this year, for the first time really. I went in raw and tired, stressed on too many fronts, and unsure of what I was going to do. Which is perfect sometimes. It is the state you have to be in to summon angels and demons, the state Gautama reached under the tree when the wheel opened up and he saw himself at its center. In comics, it is the place Jack Frost reached when fighting the King of All Tears, stepping out, but coming back having seen it all. You empty your cup and wait for it to be filled.

I'm not saying I attained enlightenment at New York Comic Con, but I came out the other side to stand in the rain and knew it was good.

For the first time in a long time, I am happy to have been royally screwed over and out of two jobs I loved. One was simply a political game I hadn't known I had to play, one was because my bosses boss was an asshole. Both times it knocked me flat on my ass, because I still had the Kool-aid in me, and that tends to turn to poison when it sours. So I like my job now, but this job is just a job, and I am going to do it well for a while, and then I am going break free of it and I am going to write, and that is very encouraging thought. Because if I hadn't been screwed over in those two jobs that I loved, I wouldn't presently be more determined than ever cut my own path and work on the things I want to work on, not the things someone else tells me to.

Coveted Nails Comic

For some time now, I have slowly and determinedly been writing an epic pop cultural poem. Wait, no, it's a Pop-Cultural Epic. Yeah, that's the stuff. It is a sprawling affair that comprises 13 episodes, and skews determinedly across media structures and character archetypes to tell what is a simple story: two-people trying to figure it all out. I've written nearly two-thirds of the book, so there is still much more to write and certainly a good deal of editing yet to do.

I am calling the book Coveted Nails.

The book that this will become was always designed with a fluidity into and out of itself, and so I decided a couple of months ago to try and offer something from the book in another form I've been a fan and pursuer of, comics. Here is the first page of Coveted Nails: The Comic, drawn by Dominic Salerno-

Wait, Twelve Monkeys What?

Never mind. Twelve Monkeys say what. Got you again.

Ooo, hmm, beh. So the weekend skaned (because I didn't go) and writing was sporadic though it did happen. I was not several floors up in the dead of night though. That would have been preferable. Still. Still. Stillness (also didn't go due to attendance at an enviro film festival, but you should check out Tim's stuff here).

Wrote a Venture Brother's fan fiction this morning, which is odd, because I'm not a fan fiction writer for the most part. I only rarely wrote Spider-man stories growing up, and I've been working toward and holding toward any success I have as a writer I would prefer come from ideas I've worked up myself. I've always spent far more time creating my own worlds, my own characters. At most, I'd prefer to follow a trajectory like Gaiman or Moore, and work with or completely transform earlier creations into a more rich and nuanced form. Maybe I am. Maybe I can't. We shall.

My Brock Sampson fan fic more specifically was really my way of coaching an essay on the limited wonderment of an individual who can deftly and martially wield a broom. That's how I play that.

There is a spec of dust on the screen that suggests to me it is a period where I'd not want one. Specifically at Brock Sampson.fan fic

I have no use of a period there. But I am hopeful I can find a way to make sure of this essay I have written. And then find the time to finish writing this damn novel, although I do actually have many pages of the story written out in ink on paper, in ye olde fashioned way. I am troubled by the fact that in a script I am writing for a comic series, the spell check doesn't like the work Old-fashioneds, as in the drink plural. But I like me the old-fashioneds, and it shouldn't not, if there is any justice in the universe, be long before I have aforementioned cocktails. But aside and away there are pages yet to write, novels to enrich with the tears of people who've never had bodies, and the smattering of instants to craft into a series of pages with art hopefully drawn by people far prettier than me, and so I leave you. Do as thou will.

PS. If you do draw and are prettier than me, and possibly want to draw things I may write of which you would have very little idea except a vague sense based on what I have assaulted you with here on this page, please feel free to contact me.