Okay, So I Took a Little Vacation Before Getting Back to Work...

Thanks to John Brodowski, the talented Cartoonist behind Curio Cabinet, for showing us around the finer swimming holes in and around Rutland, not to mention showing us some horrible horrible things. It was a blast...


Alex kicking fireflies in their mouths at our campsite near Mill River.


John B's house-sized tent.


This dude who we didn't know, took a flying leap from a tree...


....it had to be, like, a 60 or 70 foot drop. Seriously. Insane.


We relocated to a less insane swimming venue.




I jumped a few times, too.

MoCCA Over, Back to Work

So MoCCA is over, and it was a ton of fun and went really well. Joe posted some great photos of the event over at his blog. Sundays sold really well and Only Skin #1 did pretty well, too. I'd love to hear any feedback from the, like, 5 people who read this blog or anyone who got to this site from the comic.

But now it's time to get to work on Only Skin #2. And I'm excited about working on something. I've been writing the script and just sketching some little sketches. I don't make beautiful sketches like some people, I'm always jealous of people who make their sketchbooks into works of art. I use it more as a workbook as these rudimentary scratchings show. But, hey, if I didn't post pictures this would be like a sad little diary. So....right now Issue #2 will have...


Cassie


Paul


Dead Animals


The whole Gas Station Gang

I hope to be able to draw a lot of the pencils up in Montreal next month during my D+Q internship and have the whole issue ready for SPX. We shall see, though.

First Second internship Winding Down, MoCCA Winding Up...

It's been a fun week at First Second, I've learned a lot and met some cool people. Mark, Gina, Cat and Danica have all been really cool and not made me get them coffee. Danica does cool comics. She's been nominated for an Eisner award for her latest, actually.

However, as cool as the First Second thing has been, it's all been a little overshadowed by the anticipation for MoCCA. The boys in WRJ have been hard at work binding the Sundays Anthology and doing a great job. This'll be the first time ever that I have books to sell at a con. I don't know what to expect, I could sell 1 copy or I could sell uh... no copies. But it'll be a blast. If you're in the area, stop by. I'll be at the table with this hanging off it:



also, here's the cover for the book:



here's how happy you'll be if you buy the book:



aaand, don't forget to get your copy of this.... come on, be that ONE PERSON who actually buys Only Skin #1! (actually, you can also pick it up at Hanley's and I'm about to send Quimby's in Chicago some copies and maybe, like, Atomic Books in Baltimore and a few other places, and as always, you can order from www.iknowjoekimpel.com - you can also order the Sundays Anthology from I Know Joe Kimpel...)

Sundays Anthology Stuff

Alex Kim, hard at work, running screen print 174 out of 800. JP looks on, taking a break from drawing contributor portraits.


Steve Bissette's page. YOWZA.


Chuck documenting the inside covers of Sundays.


Alex again, screenprinting number 373 of the 800 he did last night. Someday, Alex will make his screenprints available for purchase online and I will make everyone I know buy some.


Me, doing something, I swear.


The bags. Buy a Sundays Anthology, get a snappy screenprinted bag with an Alex Kim original to carry all your loot from MoCCA around in.


Whew.

So last night was a marathon Sundays Anthology session, the most recent of like three or four... or is it five straight all-nighters. We literally had no idea what day it was at 6am this morning. I can't even front, Joe Lambert, Alex Kim and Chuck "C4" Forsman were there longer than I was - far longer. I saw Alex leaving the studio at 2:30pm today as I was reporting for work to my other career (the illustrious convenience store-worker one). Alex had just run off the last of about 800 screen prints for the inside and back covers that he did over the night, in addition to drawing a seperate comics project for MoCCA. Joe was switching between rapid-fire editting in photoshop (Joe knows things about photoshop that I've only dreamed existed and he knows the keyboard shortcuts for these things) and inking Sundays contributor portraits that the talented JP Coovert of One Percent Press graciously provided, after finishing the pencils for his own new comic (JP will have a One Percent Press table right next to the Sundays table at MoCCA, he also provided a great strip for the book). Chuck was doing some inDesign magic while also lettering everything we ever needed lettered while also taking me to get coffee. I was inking stuff and hopefully not ruining Joe's pencils for the inside and back covers too much. Meanwhile, the talented Bryan Stone was off inking Joe's pencils for the cover somewhere in seclusion and running around and buying the special paper we need to print the insides of the book on in a few days.

Earlier that night, at about midnight while I was taking a breather, Steve Bissette delivered his page for the anthology. A Tyrant page. His first new Tyrant page in ten years. And it is gorgeous. I came back to find Joe scanning that page with one hand while inking with his other hand and penciling some design pages with his other hand, all while being embarassed by a scathing portrait JP drew of him that will probably never see print (ohhhh, but it should, and if Joe provides a certain photo to Barry, it probably will). It was wacky. It's been fun, but exhausting.

But seriously, and I wouldn't lie to you, this anthology is turning into something really special. I would actually buy a copy at MoCCA. I envy you, gentle reader, because you CAN buy a copy at MoCCA, and also online at I Know Joe Kimpel, soon. You can also read more about the anthology here.



Here's Tyrant, a registered trademark of Stephen R. Bissette, and a member of the Sundays cast of characters.

I'll be leaving for New York on Sunday with my copies of Only Skin #1 in hand, ready to start my week long internship at First Second books and then next weekend is MoCCA. It's going to be crazy, but fun.

Like I said - whew. The above pics are courtesy of Chuck and Joe.

Only Skin #1 Available At I Know Joe Kimpel RIGHT NOW

You can now purchase a copy of Only Skin #1 through I Know Joe Kimpel. Of course, it will also be available at MoCCA.

The book is 36 pages printed on some really nice 70lb natural white writing paper I found. It's printed pretty big, 8.5" by 11" pages. Color wrap around cover and color endpapers and... uh... some comics inside.

...aaaand... here's the cover again...

Me Talk Pretty One Day, Bissette Talk Prettier

Read it here.

Thanks, Steve!

Fancy Corrections

BEFORE:


AFTER:


So, here's an example of some of the corrections I've been doing on the Only Skin stuff. Some of it is minor, some of it is major. It's all done and I'm finally scanning stuff and tweaking stuff and should be printing this week.

Also, supposedly later today Steve Bissette is putting up an interview he did with me about Only Skin. He's been doing interviews with other fellow CCS-ers like Colleen Frakes and Emily Wieja in recent days, not to mention his epic interview with CCS Fellow/Legend/Ping-pong star Ken Dahl/Gabby Schulz (a five-parter!).

Read them all here.

Here are individual links, because the internet has made you sorta lazy and me sorta html savy:
Gabby Schulz
Colleen Frakes
Emily Wieja

Working towards MoCCA

I've been exceedingly busy with MoCCA the last few weeks, readying Only Skin and helping with the Sundays Anthology. The Sundays Anthology got a blog nod from Heidi MacDonald yesterday, too.

Anyway, here's a recent page from the third and final story that will go in the MoCCA debut of Only Skin #1. There'd be more but I'm having a battle of wills with the scanner right now. The images are coming out fuzzy since I have to correct for so many of the light areas of the scanner. Argh. This is going to be a painful week of production nachtmares.