Colin's Comment

2006-12-05T21:32:00.001-08:00

Ah, lovely misery…

Sorry, that was the first thing to pop into my head… December, the month of holiday cheer, how I loathe it…actually, it’s not so bad. I’m just so broke right now! I’ve got $20 until the end of the month! It’s awful, people owe me money but are in no hurry to pay me! I had to forgo buying books! Ahhh! I’m going cold turkey! I’m not talking new but remaindered and used books on digital comics and about a little known conflict on the B.C. coast with the “locals” (as I call the First Nations peoples) in the 18th centaury that I am dieing to read about! I just finished a book on the Royal Navy on the Pacific Northwest but it barely touched on conflict with the locals. No, I had to go buy dental floss and milk…

I’ve just returned from my condo buildings X-mas tree raising and decoration, quite a party. People brought food and wine, told naughty jokes about Jesus on the cross being “well hung” and singing little ditty‘s about Mary getting an abortion (nobody took offence as far as I could see, we’re a pretty secular bunch but then again so is Christmas). I finally got to meet my upstairs neighbour after she’s been living here for months, turns out she’s a frustrated designer who dabbled in cartooning before giving it all up to become a nurse. We even went to art school about the same time, me in Vancouver and she in Ontario. She blushed when I told her I could hear her playing the recorder, I wasn’t complaining mind you. I helped out with the tree lights, had fun, ate munchies. The next few weeks should be busy, openings to go too, Wednesday it’s the launch at long last of the new Drippytown Comic, including a story that I illustrated for my old pal G.X. Jupitter-Larsen, at a Japanese Karaoke restaurant of all things! As long as they don’t make me sing…

Speaking of neighbours, my downstairs neighbour is at it again. About a year ago he started a campaign of harassment, hoping to give me a heart attack. I know this because that’s one of the things he screamed at me from below, along with threats, hysterical laughter, pounding on the ceiling and guttural shrieks when ever I would, amongst many other things, sweep the floor, use a stapler, sit, vacuum… he once accused me of picking a fight in my sleep… this all stop about a year ago after months of harassment for no good reason but I fear it might be starting up again. He would crank up the radio in his bathroom when I took a bath and last week I was brushing my teeth when he pounded the floor under my feet and shouted “Waaaah!” I know, he sounds a little nuts… so I decided I wasn’t going through that again so I filed a report with the police (the property managers are helpless, or should I say useless) so that if it gets worse they can do something about it. The police should know him, a few years ago the SWAT team took him out on a stretcher after he tore his place apart with a length of steel cable on a bad PCP trip…
I’ve been working on the pencils for the graphic novel, this is going to take a long time so it’s going to be very dull for you I’m afraid. Right now I’m working on the figure placement, trying to vary the camera angles as so much of the story takes place in cramped hospital rooms it’s tough to make it interesting and giving it some room to breathe. I’m adding more exterior scenes so the story isn’t too claustrophic. I’ve got a good caricature of my mother, my brother Leslie is a little harder to pin down. It’s also an exercise in memory, trying to reconstruct the horrible low-rent basement I was living in at the time and the hospital rooms that we spent so much time in. I sit in front of the TV, drawing in my sketchbooks diagrams of the places I once lived and visited, I know that sometime I will have to get a camera and get some background photo’s. I’m not if I went to the hospitals they’d let me go in for a few quick snaps but it’s amazing how much you remember when you sit down to think about it.

The opening s now of the late Walrus, the worlds best kitty, entering the house and finding me in my studio, drawing. This way we get a tour of my home and living conditions before the narrative begins. I know how the story ends, it’s the rest of it that is a work in progress…

2006-11-28T22:06:00.000-08:00

My Friday night war game was the American Revolutionary War, with myself against the rebel rabble. I isolated one wing, outflanked them in the woods with my rangers and routed a regiment of traitorous Canadians fighting on the American side, serves’em right! The American commanders conceded rather early I thought, they still had a fighting chance but their morale was shattered. The next day I slogged through a blinding blizzard (okay, it was snowing) to attend three gallery openings in one night, more out of a sense of duty to the arts than anything else. Owen and terry bought me Chinese food. I never did go to the Culture Crawl, I stayed at home shivering as the snow JUST DIDN”T STOP FALLING ALL BLOODY DAY! This is bizarre weather for B.C., sure is pretty though when you don’t have to get anywhere fast… the cold really hurt me in my back. On Monday I had to go outside to check to see if money had arrived in my bank to pay for tomorrow, fortunately it did so I went and bought oatmeal! I had my granny cart (I wonder if you can get snow tires for granny carts?) walking the streets of hard packed, icy snow… the streets are eerily quiet of people and traffic, most people choosing to stay home if they can. I’m lucky to have my power, thousands in the lower mainland lost theirs. The next day the temperature plummeted, to lows we just don’t see here. It is what I call “Tajik hat weather”.

I have a Tajik hat, you may have seen them on TV being worn by members of Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, Tajik’s mostly, the ones who fought the Taliban for the yanks. It’s like a thick woollen beret with a puffy rolled up brim. I got mine at Bumbershoot in Seattle, I collect hats. My tajik hat is black and made of rough wool and it is so hot to wear I can only wear it in the coldest weather, otherwise my head overheats and the sweat blinds me. Today I wore it comfortably, along with layers of clothing, out to UBC to be poked and prodded by sharp things in the hands of nervous dental students… the only dental care I can afford… which I can’t, really. In exchange for discounted dental care I have to commit to three hour sessions in the dental chair as the students carefully and slowly examine and clean my teeth while under supervision. Although I am generally a patient patient into the third hour one is quite exhausted and not a little fed up with the whole process, wondering if a few missing teeth might not be such a bad thing after all. The good news is that it looks like I won’t be needing any drilling or root canals or anything, the bad news is that I have to go back tomorrow to finish the cleaning… when more snow is expected with perhaps freezing rain as well. As you can imagine, with the entire student body of UBC leaving their cars at home and taking the bus instead, getting out was a bit of a challenge but I made it, even picked up some bread and bagels on the way home. The 84 used to be such a nice, genteel bus, with hardly any passengers. Now leaving UBC it’s packed to the rafters and leaving people behind at the bus stop. There’s rain in the forecast so it’s possible that by this time next week the snow will be a distant memory…

2006-11-23T21:57:00.000-08:00

First off, I’m assuming you all went out and bought your copy of “Dork” #11? Another frantic and funny comic by one of my favourite cartoonists, Evan Dorkin, with dozens of gag strips and full of satisfyingly twisted humour… it‘s not easy being funny, ya know. If you can’t find it at your local comic store bitch at the store owner!

Also new is “American Splendour #3” written by Harvey Pekar and illustrated by a group of talented cartoonists including English “Bonzo cartoonist” Hunt Emerson and another of my favourites Rick Geary! There’s a wonderful story on the medicinal use of cats.

I’ve been getting a real kick out of the comic book series “Action Philosophers”(#7, the Ancient Greek philosophers), which takes a light hearted, humorous approach to teaching complex ideas and esoteric details which it does rather well… although even in comic form French philosophy makes no sense…

It’s been over week we’ve been under a boil water order and one of the three reservoirs that serves the lower mainland has been shut down entirely. There was an E-coli scare but everyone thinks it’s a false positive. We’re adjusting to it now, I don’t think I drank this much water before the tap water became tainted. Still raining of course, although next week it’s supposed to clear up, become sunny and really cold! That means the possibility of snow! That is freakish for Vancouver, we’re not like the rest of Canada! We can go a whole winter without snow. If it does snow it snows in January, not November! I asked my mom for new boots this Christmas, the ones I have are coming apart.

Today we were supposed to interviewing Gilbert Hernandez, Beto, on the radio show but we totally forgot its American Thanksgiving! Oops… Robin went to the station to play a “cartoonists in music” show while I begged off… I wasn’t feeling up to it really, it was cold and wet. It was one of those days you just want to sleep all day. However, I was pumped on doing the Beto interview, I just finished reading (and re-reading) a whole pile of his books and it struck me that the Hernandez’s have been around so long (indeed, I consider Love and Rockets to be the first alternative comic series) and so consistently good that we forget how good they are. Next week all going well we interview Ivan Brunetti!

Work wise I’ve been “clearing the decks’, stuff that needed doing so I could move on to other things. I finished the Zeppelin/armoured car, painted those Samurai for Dave (he picked them up last night, now he’ll send them to England to hopefully be photographed and included in a rulebook and I finished painting a regiment of 15mm Napoleonic Hungarian infantry I owed Brian. I’ve been working on the pencils for a secret project and getting back to the graphic novel, adding pages… some of the anecdotes I was trying to tell in one page were just too constrictive, needed a little more room to breathe. Tonight I spent most of the evening cleaning up, tidying around the studio, trying to get ri of the clutter. You know, “clearing the decks”.

Friday night is my war game club’s monthly meeting, Saturday openings at the JEM Gallery (The Jupiter Project) and The Parking Lot (Owen Plummer) plus all weekend long is the East Side Culture Crawl when dozens of artist work spaces are opened to the public. I just hope I don’t have to tramp through the snow and sleet!

2006-11-21T20:01:00.000-08:00

You know me, normally I don’t complain about the rain, I like the rain. Me, I complain about hot weather. But right now it’s getting me down. Blame global warming (which I understand just doesn’t cause warming but more extreme weather of all kinds) for the fierce weather system that blew through southern B.C. almost a week ago now. Okay, so it wasn’t a hurricane or tornado you get in other parts of the continent but it was more powerful than we’re used to in these parts. Lashing rain and high winds, toppling trees into buildings making for spectacular television. Even here, with our building relatively sheltered by a hillside that normally doesn’t get much wind a tree snapped on the other end of the patio. Of course, it was new comics day so I had to go out. It was all rather fun but the aftermath has been less than jolly. The storm washed a lot of silt into our reservoirs, the city of Vancouver and some suburbs, about a million people, are under a boil water advisory. Usually Vancouver tap water is about the best there is, not know. You can’t drink the tap water or brush your teeth with it. Some sources say it’s safe to wash your dishes in tap water, some no. I have a pile of dirty dishes in my sink while I prevaricate. Is there any point in washing my clothes or will they just come out dirtier than they went in? So every day I fill all my pots with water, boil’em for a couple minutes, fill my juice jugs with liquid the colour of weak piss water and put them’em the fridge. Boiling may make the water safe but it still tastes of dirt and makes crappy tea. One is somewhat reluctant to cook with it. Perhaps it’s all in my mind but it’s been affecting my health drinking that turbid tap water, hurts me head.

But I continue working, pencilling the “secret” project (damn hands are hard to draw) and painting those Samurai miniatures that will hopefully go into that games Workshop Book… Samurai are tough to paint, all that lacing, but the Kingsford Miniatures look really good. Got those done. I also finished the Zeppelin/Armoured Car model, unfortunately the rotter who commissioned me to do it is in Tokyo until the end of the month! Arrgh! Need money… I am so broke right now and in a week I’m going to get my teeth looked at by a UBC dental student! I really hope there’s nothing wrong this time. I’m still waiting for my cheque from the UBC Library Rare Books section. I’m now looking for my copies of my own comics to complete their collection, I found a Skunk, still looking for Incubus #1 & #2, Big Thing #2, Big Black Thing and Buddha #1... I’ve got a lead in the U.S.A., me old publisher buddy Edd Vick, so we’ll see how it goes.

I finally broke down today and went out to buy a flat of bottled watered, it’s been long enough that the mad scramble for water at the beginning of our water crisis has abated, on the news it was sounding pretty crazy with people hoarding and scuffling over water. In many places it was impossible to find for days. Man, the bottled water does taste good! My first decent cup of tea in days! If I ration myself to two bottles a day (one for drinking, another for tea) I’ll be fine for almost a week, hopefully the tap water will be clear by then. If it doesn’t rain heavily again… never happens in Vancouver…

2006-11-09T23:01:00.000-08:00

Ah, where have I been…

Well, lets see… damn apples… I’ve glued everything I’m planning to glue onto armoured car zeppelin thingie and painted the base colour, dark green… I would’ve preferred a different colour (My other model for Jim Ramsey was also dark green) but the evidence is clear, green is the colour of Russian armoured cars (and airplanes for that matter) in the Civil War. Oh sure, I hear you say, it’s made up so you can do anything you want! Paint it lavender with pock-a-dots! That’s not how I do things my friend, I strive for realism! With the model grounded in fact it makes the weirdness stand out that much more vividly, as opposed to something which has no connection to reality. Besides, it’s more challenging, more fun and I have an excuse to read more!

I had a couple of “black days”. I have them occasionally… it’s sorta like a sick day. Sometimes when the state of denial I need just to get out of bed in the morning breaks down and I am left unprotected to face my fear, self-loathing and doubt. I should quite this pointless struggle and get a shitjob that gives me a steady pay cheque. I’m not dissing people who work, I’ve just known too many talented cartoonists who get a job “that won’t affect their art” and are never heard from again. Who the hell would hire me anyway? I’ve never had a proper job, done lots of volunteering, but nothing I get paid for. When I started out I accepted poverty as the price of doing my art and it hasn’t bothered me much. I’ll admit it’s getting harder as I grow older and the money and recognition I’d like and in my more grandiose moments think I might actually deserve to have remain elusive. But I’m not ready to quit, not just yet…

So I spent Sunday curled up on the couch trying to suppress my thoughts by watching stupid football and sleeping. Football helps me relax, an obnoxious, bizarre, militarised ritual… how can people take it so seriously? I just wanted to be alone to stare into the black abyss of my future, all very adolescent I know but I do not judge myself by my darkest, self-pitying moments (I know I’ve got it good, really) but by how quickly I can get back up on my feet. Felt much better on Monday…

I walked downtown in a rare period of dry (it’s been monsoon season in Vancouver). I passed a big mound of earth at a construction site, it’s black plastic tarp was loose at one end so the plastic undulated, roared and snapped furiously in the stiff wind. It was a beautiful sight, standing watching it felt like I was about to be swallowed by an gigantic black beast. I was going to meet my mum, Leslie (the bro) and his friend/nemesis Derren at the VCC for cooking student dinner. We were going to the theatre tonight, UBC student theatre, a play based on Douglas Coupland’s book “Life after God“. I was early, as usual, so I went into McLeod’s Books (nothing more serene to me than a bookstore) and who should I run into but Douglas Coupland! I knew Doug from high school art class, the Emily Carr and after but I hadn’t seen him in ages. To further the Dickensian theme of coincidence he told me he was just thinking about me, had a project he wanted me to contribute something too. Drawings of British and American soldiers War of 1812! Since I’d studied the conflict for my war games I can pretty much draw a British Napoleonic soldier in my sleep, the American I’d have to be at least drowsy. The play I thought was okay, the acting was quite good but I did wonder if they needed quite as much interpretive dance and full frontal nudity… I’m not a real prude but it does get distracting, never knowing when the actors might start whipping off their clothes at any moment. I had read “Life After God“, awhile ago now (it’s one of my favourite Coupland books), and there were bits I hadn’t recalled from the book. Doug’s work has so much of home for me . Not just Canada or Vancouver, but West Vancouver, where we all grew up scarcely aware of how lucky we were to be where we were in a troubled world. No matter where you come from, teen angst is going to get ya! We sat in front of my friends Gudrun and Mark from the new Vancouver Review, another coincidence! Leslie found a $10 bill on the floor on the floor of the VCC cafeteria so we were all happy!

Mum crashed at my place and kept me up most of the night with her snoring… she could snore for Canadian Olympic snoring team, she could. I was up early, making breakfast. We bussed downtown so she could pick up a theatre ticket half price, School for Scandal, even at half price it was beyond my budget. We went to see “The Last King of Scotland” which is worth seeing if only for the riveting performance of Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin Dada, awesome and frightening. Idi Amin has a special place in my memory growing up. When I was a kid I knew about Stalin and Hitler but Idi Amin, he was a mad dictator I could watch on TV… he was real, contemporary, not a piece of history but alive in my time. The “Beatles” of madman tyrants. I knew kids in high school, Asian’s, who had fled to Canada after Amin expelled them all from Uganda. My brother in laws family, Scots, were dispossessed of their tea plantation and were forced to leave Uganda. Idi Amin killed something like 300,000 Ugandans. He was ousted in 1979 but passed away in 2003 I think it was, in exile in Saudi Arabia. I just wished that the film had more of Forest Whitaker’s Amin and less of the fictional Scottish protagonist. “Hotel Rwanda” proved you don’t need a white face to sell a movie about Africa. Has anyone made a “happy” film about Africa? “The God’s Must Be Crazy” I suppose…

We went to Hon’s in Chinatown for noodles and I then saw mum off on the bus… walked home. There was a signed copy of Louis Riel in the mail from Chester Brown, a contributors copy as I had helped Chester with his uniform reference, the envelope was in shreds but the book perfectly intact. The cat had something nasty matting her fur so I gave her a good combing. I’m listening to Joe Jackson right now, “Summer in the City”, my stinging eyes tell me my lack of sleep is catching up on me…

On Wednesday I bussed out to UBC. I’d been asked to drop by the UBC Rare Books section to sell them my comics for their collection and to bring everything! So I did, including old New Reality’s and more recent Drippytown comics I’m in. They bought everything I brought, it seems I’m an invaluable source for Vancouver comics history and as Vancouver is so much a part of my work anyway they couldn’t resist! Cheque’s in the mail… sigh… but still I’m honoured they asked me and that future scholars will have a record of my work and others. My father was a professor of history at UBC, I know the academic mind and how it works. I feel sorry for scholars of small press comics, the limited print runs, non-existent records, constant reprints, the anarchic free for all which is the very essence of small press publishing! Speaking of scholars, John bell’s book on Canadian comics history is now available:

“Dundurn Press of Toronto will be publishing my history of Canadian comics this fall. Entitled Invaders from the North: How Canada Conquered the Comic-Book Universe, the book will feature a cover by Dave Cooper and a foreword by Seth. In addition to a main historical narrative, Invaders will include two in-depth studies, one on Canadian superheroes and the other on Chester Brown.”

I can’t wait to see it, apparently there’s a photo of Chester Brown and I taken by David Boswell in his studio in 1993. I’m going to try to get John Bell back on the radio for an interview on Inkstuds, the interview we did with John Bell on Onomatopoeia was a lot of fun!

Welp, gotta go, I’m painting a unit of Kingsford Miniature Samuria that will hopefully be published in a set of war game rules, very nice figures…

2006-10-27T23:44:00.000-07:00

“You say you're going to get a lot of work done. Is that COMIC work? Can you fill us in on what will be coming from Upton Studios in the future? Us googly-eyed red monsters need to know!”
"Flashfink!"

Damn, you googly-eyed red monsters sure are demanding (and there's no need to shout!)! Check out my recent blogs and you will see I’ve come out in the last month with seven friggin new mini-comics and new 2 collections! Plus all that interviewing for the radio show, small press festivals, comic jams and check out the Fall issue of the Vancouver Review for my one-page history of that Vancouver institution, the Nine O’Clock gun! Okay, I took a sicky week and it’s time to get back to work! Here’s the list:

“A Short History of the Longest Undefended Border” Revised edition
This began as an 8 page mini-comic about the times that the United States has invaded Canada that was a big hit at Word Under The Street. Since I did it I’ve been learning of more nefarious American plots so and I’ve decided to expand it to a 16 or 20 page digest sized comic to improve legibility (larger type size) and include incidents I’d never heard of before, like the Aroostock war of 1838 when Maine declared war against New Brunswick!

The Armoured Car Zeppelin thingie
I’ve been commissioned by Jim Ramsey to work on another 3D card model, this time of an armoured car airship combination that he built. I’ve decided on making it into an armoured car/airship of the Don Cossacks Grey Wolf Division of the White Russian Army during the Russian Civil War. I’ve just been staring at it for a couple weeks now, thinking about what exactly I’m going to do with it… just about ready to get to work…

“The Graphic Novel”
I’ve been procrastinating on this, the graphic novel I’ve been talking about for a long time about my sister‘s car accident and eventual death, it’s about how it effected her, me and my family . I started writing and pencilling a few months ago but put it aside, I’ve got to get back to it… don’t expect this anytime soon, I’ve got 70 pages written and roughed, should be over 100 pages when it’s all said and done.

“Apples”
I’m working on a mini-comic on the dangers of apples…

"Colin’s Comics”
I have enough stories for two more 24 page collections, one of my funny animal comics including the infamous “The Fur Flies to France” from the controversial furry fandom satirical comic, “Skunk”.

Oh yeah, there’s an outside chance I’ll be writing a documentary short film about the history of underground comics but we’ll have to see if anything comes of that…

Also trying to line up interviews for the Inkstuds Radio Show with Roberta Gregory, Diana Schutz and Dennis Eichhorn amongst others…

Gotta rebuild the web site…

Is that enough for now, googly-eyed red monsters!

2006-10-22T23:35:00.000-07:00

Chester Brown at the Writers and Readers Festival, Vancouver

Welp, I’m back… on Friday I went to the Writers and Readers Festival on Granville Island for “Worth a Thousand Words”, a talk being given by Barbara Reid and Chester Brown. The last time Chester was at the Writers and Readers Festival he was presenting a section of “Yummy Fur” where the head of Ronald Reagan appears on the head of a man’s penis, leading to a walk out by a school group from Abbotsford, B.C.‘s bible belt. I arrived, as usual, way too early, took a stroll… another lovely fall day in Vancouver. I was on the guest list (as “Cecilia Upton”) legitimately as press because I’m on the radio show, Inkstuds, but it still felt like sneaking in! I was shown to the “Reserved” section for the first time in my life, which was kind of creepy as the place filled up and I sat alone, but finally they opened up the “reserve” area for the latecomers. I’m beginning to think that reading is becoming a largely female pastime as I looked around the room and saw perhaps a half dozen men in the audience primarily populated by middle-aged women. Do boys read anymore, or has it become “totally gay”? Barbara Reid is a children’s illustrator and author, her books include “Subway Mouse” and “The Fox Walked Alone. The Illustrations are crafted in plasticine and are quite remarkable.

When Chester started his presentation on “Louis Riel” (with the use of an overhead projector) I figured I should take some notes, at least look like a proper newsman… the notes soon turned to doodles, birds mostly. Chester’s talk was illuminating, particularly how the drawing of Louis Riel changed over the series, under the influence of “Little Orphan Annie” creator Harold Grey the heads shrank and the bodies got bigger, so much so that he later went back and redrew the first third of the series to match the latter drawing style when he collected the series into a graphic novel. In Chester’s first drawings of Riel he had a big nose. He also showed some other work, a story about Huey Long that was to accompany an article in the New Yorker that was never published. He talked about the trouble he had with the art director and estate of Dylan Thomas when doing comic book covers for “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” which will be coming out from Penguin. After being interviewed (it was odd to see Chester being treated like a young readers author, if they could only see his other work I wonder what they’d say… of course Chester didn’t have an age group in mind when he wrote the book) and a question and answer session it was on to the book signing. Chester was generous with his time talking to his readers and sketching in their books. It turns out the woman sitting beside me during the presentation was “Gerbil”, a friend of Chester’s that appears in some of the autobiographical “Yummy Fur” stories! She lives in Vancouver now. We parted ways and I walked on the seawall as far as Spyglass Point but as Olympic construction has closed the seawall at Cambie I took an Aquabus to Science World and then walked home.

At war with the Turks!

I just had enough time for tea before I was picked up by Al and we drove out to Burnaby for the monthly meeting of my Trumpeter wargames club. I had a splendid time playing “Age of Reason“, 18th Centaury Austrians against Turks! The Austrian horse turned tail and withdrew when they saw the elite Turkish heavy cavalry coming at them in full armour (with barding) and lances, leaving my infantry brigade to stop them from rolling up the Austrian army’s flank. This I did rather well, when the cavalry charged I hit them with a thunderous volley from three batteries of artillery and a battalion of grenadiers inflicting over 50% casualties!

"You ain't No Dancer" #2 launch and comic jam

The next day was the book launch of “You Ain’t No Dancer” #2 at R/X Comics, which was packed as usual with the finest from the Vancouver comics scene. The monthly cartoonist jam at the Jolly Alderman afterwards was fun but not as productive as usual, never is after a signing. People just don’t seem to be in a drawing mood, or maybe it’s because they’ve already been drinking… it seemed quieter without Don King who was at a party. Don pissed is always good for a laugh. Anyway, had to get to bed at a reasonable hour (2AM) the Canzine West…

Canzine West #2 report

Ah, the second Canzine West. I didn’t make a great effort for this, only had one new mini-comic, after all those comics I released a month ago at Word Under The Street are still fairly fresh. Another nice day so I walked it carrying an impressive amount of stuff, backpack full of display units & tablecloth, pens & papers in my haversack, a portfolio stuffed with two CD cases I’ve converted to mini-comic display units with foam core and a granny cart full of over 100 comics titles! That’s TITLES, not books! They moved Canzine to the Welsh Hall so I have even further to walk, uphill! I ran into Tim the Poet outside, we went for brunch at a Vietnamese Pho place down the street. It takes me about an hour to set up. Fortunately the new venue is just as cramped and claustrophic as the time before. I was crammed between my table and a staircase in a chair that when I stood up tried to come with me. The tables were wider this time (at the first Canzine West I swear the tables were two feet wide!) and once they saw how much I’d brought they gave me a little more room… normally it 3 exhibitors to an eight foot table! I shared my table with a nice woman, a poet from Victoria, who thought I was funny… she gave me a loaf of bread. Near me was Don King, Phil, and some other cartoonists I know but it was so loud in there I couldn‘t hear them. Sometimes I couldn’t hear the customers, just wish they’d speak up! Nobody has a problem hearing me! It was busy, but for some reason not as busy as the first time and I made less money. The cramped conditions in the room meant that sometimes the customers couldn’t reach my table, I think it‘s a real problem! Now that they’re charging $5 at the door (that may have affected attendance) you’d think they could get a bigger hall. I swapped for some books, mostly with other cartoonists. By the 5th hour it was winding down, I was bored and tossing rolled up bits of green tape at Don… that maniac threw a magazine at me! Good thing he’s a bad shot! Then, all of a sudden, the crappy chair that had been punishing me all afternoon began to sink. Slowly, it buckled and I disappeared from view as I sank gently to the floor with my legs sticking out the front from underneath the tablecloth. When I could stop laughing I called out “I’m alright! Help!” The poet from Victoria pulled the table away so I could scramble to my feet, holding aloft in triumph the chair I had killed by sitting on it! I asked if I could take it home as a trophy, it was beyond repair, but they said no. This seemed to be a message to wrap things up so started slowly putting things away, the place was virtually packed up an hour early. I got a lift home from Jo Cook, I was grateful as I didn’t want to have to make the journey back… it was fun, but my back is still killing me…

2006-10-20T01:42:00.000-07:00

Canzine West this Sunday at the Cambrian hall,
215 East 17th Ave. (near Main)
Admission $5 (and you get a copy of the latest Broken Pencil)
1PM-7PM

Last years Canzine West turned out to be the surprise of the year, I went with low expectations 9i hadn’t seen much in the way of advertising) but it proved to be a packed event with tables groaning under the weight of comics, zines and art books. I urge anyone who can get there to attend, I’ll have a table along with many of Vancouver’s best small press talents!

On Saturday at 7PM (I think) at R/X Comics (Main near Broadway) will be the launch of the second “You Ain’t No Dancer” comics anthology published by Ed Brisson (Who also published Jason Turner’s graphic novel, True Loves). After the launch we’ll be going to the Jolly Alderman for the monthly cartoonists jam!

Hullo you lovely, lovely people! Once again it’s been a busy week in my otherwise aimless existence! A couples weeks ago I was incapacitated with the first serious cold I’ve had in years, hating myself for my indolence and causing me to miss thanksgiving at my mum’s place in Sechelt (for our American friends, Canadian Thanksgiving is a month or so before the American one, I can only imagine because the growing season is shorter up here in the Great White North) Thanksgiving is after all, a harvest ceremony). My brother and mother kindly agreed to postpone thanksgiving for a week so I could attend so last Friday I, still feeling the lingering affects of my cold, took the three bus rides and a ferry voyage to Sechelt just before it turned cold and wet. It was so mild I sat on the open top deck of the ferry the whole voyage, taking in the breathtaking scenery. Had a nice relaxing time, helped mum to understand her computer better, showed her how to send E-mail and I bookmarked this here blog for her to visit so I have to be careful what I say. Hi mom! Talked about the usual stuff, art, politics, family, history and crosswords… I helped her with her crosswords in my sleep. While I was napping on the couch mum was wondering aloud “Derek and the …?“ and I cried out “Dominoes”! Mum even had something nice to say about her own cooking! My brother Leslie joined us on Saturday, just in from his job at the stamp store. I had to go Sunday night, it was so cold and wet I feared I might easily relapse into a cold but duty calls!

That duty was to speak at Julian Lawrence’s cartooning class at the Emily Carr College of Art And Design, something I’ve been doing for a while now along with Robin The K, another fine local cartoonist and one of the many Robin’s in the Vancouver comics scene.
I went done early, beautiful Fall day, picked up several of the play Mobil Specials that just came in (although why the Gladiator figure was armed with a generic broadsword and not a Roman Gladuis (short stabbing sword) is beyond me). I had tea at my favourite local café, the one under the Granville Bridge that no one else seems to know about. I had quite a search to find Julian’s classroom but I got there in time.

I talk about my life in comics, tracing the development from comics I read as a kid, to the undergrounds, alternative, European and Japanese comics that have influenced me. Robin talks about developing and promoting her “Clip and Save” weekly strip. I was in particularly good ramble that night, with an (hopefully) entertaining mixture of reminisces, anecdotes and onions. It’s so hard to know sometimes if the students are really engaged with what we were talking about but we had a lively Q&A session so I think we must’ve done well. By the end of it I was feeling a little dizzy. Robin kindly gave me a lift home after a visit to Kinko’s.

Tuesday I was at a play with my mother and brother at UBC’s Student Theatre, “By The Skin of Our teeth”, not bad although I thought the play rambled in parts. My mum is terrified of being late so we met for dinner at UBC two hours before curtain! Mum than came over to my place to stay the night, always tricky because she and I are world class snorers but I managed to get a pretty good nights sleep. The next day I made breakfast and we went to Best Buy to exchange her I-Pod like thingie for a real I Pod. There was nothing wrong with it, it’s just that she and the people in Sechelt she hired couldn’t get it to work. As you can imagine this took forever but she did it. I saw her off on the bus to the ferry and went to meet radio show host Robin at R/X Comics. The jammy bastard had just returned from New York and SPX (East Coast Small Press comics convention) to promote Inkstuds the radio show, with stories of what he’d seen and who he’d talked too. I’ve only been to SPX once but I know it’s a great convention!! Robin brought back a lovely Ivan Brunetti print! I bought the latest collection of Yoshihiro Tatsumi stories, “Abandon The Old In Tokyo”. Tatsumi pioneered adult stories in Japanese comics, creating grim and moving portraits of people surviving in the harsh conditions of post-war Japan. Recommended.

Today on the radio show we interviewed Chester Brown who is in town for the Vancouver Readers and Writers Festival! Chester of course was on the top of our list of interview subject and I thought it went splendidly. I learned about some of the things that had left me puzzled about “Louis Reil”, especially about the emotional detached depiction of the characters. Afterwards Serena, Chester’s “minder” from Raincoast Books gave us a ride back to my place and Robin, Chester and I enjoyed a round of ice water (neither of my guests drink tea and making tea is about all I know how about being a host). Robin had to go and Chester and I gossiped about cartoonists we know and had a good conversation about attitudes and ethics which I won’t get into here but it was interesting and often challenging. Tomorrow (Friday) Chester will be doing a presentation on “Louis Reil” at the readers and Writers festival and Serena got me a press pass so I’ll let you know how that goes… as you can see from the header it’s going to be another looong weekend in the Vancouver comics scene!
I go sleep now…

2006-10-10T23:54:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple odd images I found on the web. The first is from the tour diary of one of the Soft Boys on thier reunion tour. The Soft Boys were a strange bunch, they were a neo pscycodelic band when England was being ravaged by punk rock. It was this band that launched Robin Hitchcock's long career and to see them back together and playing live was unimaginable until it happened! That's me, the large object on the right in a photo taken from the stage by one of the band members!

This is my "Grudge" model from the opening of Jim Ramseys show I talked about earlier. I treated my "Grudge" more as a model as opposed to an fine art piece. I made it into a Canadian Army Postal van on the Italian Front in WW2. It was fun to do but I wish I'd taken another crack at the "sten" gun clipped to the side, as it is just too big!

2006-10-10T23:42:00.000-07:00

Reformatted Mini-comics Collections!
Because of the sheer volume of self-published mini-comics I have produced over the years (over 100 self-published titles I figure, not all remain in print) I’ve divided the mini-comics collection into two parts. First is the “Colin Upton’s Mini-comic Classic Collection” the mini-comics I published in the 1980’s as a struggling cartoonist before my first comic book series, Big Thing, in 1990. Including “Socialist Turtle“, “Happy Ned” the homicidal Christian, “Self-Indulgent Comics” and many, many others! 67 mini-comics and digests only $25!

The second is “Colin Upton’s Nova New Nuevo Mini-comics Collection” which are the mini-comics I began publishing around 2000 after my other comic book series "Buddha On The Road, was cancelled and I returned to small press publishing. The package will be updated over time as new mini’s come out, presently it has 23 mini-comics including “Shitman”, “Samurai Clown”, the “9-11” series and “Motherfuckers”.

As I don't have Pay-pal I do accept cheques or money orders, send too:

Colin Upton
#223 440 East5th Ave.
Vancouver, B.C.
V5T-1N5 Canada

Please include an age statement and 20% postage!

2006-10-06T00:02:00.000-07:00

Oh, by the way, this is the cover of that Hell passport I did that I was telling you guys about earlier. Did the whole thing in Chinese brush.

2006-10-05T23:53:00.000-07:00

Colin's Comics collect stories I've done in various anthologys over the years and are magazine size (81/2 X 11) with 24 pages each! Much of this stuff is hard to find! Volume 3 collects stories from Murder By Crowquill, Sockamagee!, Loompanics, Cimena Sewer, the Trumpeter Newsletter and others! Includes previously unpublished material!

Volume 4 collects yet more storys from Drippy Comics and more including previously unpublished material!!

2006-10-05T23:39:00.000-07:00

This is the third of the con sketches collections I talked about before, I like the spontenaity of the drawings and brusqueness of the gags. never let anything go to waste!

Some whimsical wierdness with a military miluea, sometimes things appear in ones sketch book demanding to be put in a story and it's dangerous to say no. One of the comics I wrote in my "TV sketchbook", a sketchbook I draw in while waching TV, if the storys are promising I rip the pages out of the book and ink them up. A great way to tap into ones subconcious.

Police parody starring the hardboiled Swedish-Japanese-Canadian detective Olly Osaka on a case of Vancouver herbacide ripped from the headlines!

2006-10-05T19:55:00.000-07:00

"A Short History of the Longest Undefended Border was a big hit at the Word Undetr the Street, proving once again that Canadian history is NOT BORING and Canadians CARE about thier history. It briefly tells the story of every time the Americans tried to "liberate" Canada from British tyranny whether they liked it or not!

Reflecting on my obsession with books and reading despite being a late reader due to dyslexia and difficulty with school.

My fifth annual 9-11 comic, this time dealing with the wars of "liberation" and "freedom" that resulted from that tragic day.
My yearly chance to vent my political spleen.

2006-10-04T23:53:00.000-07:00

This is "Shitman", just one of the quality comics that debuted at the Word Under the Street (along with The Longest Undefended border, Self-indulgent #15, Colin's Comics #3 & #4, Colin Upton Comics #3 & #4 and the Littlest Gunne) and is now available! I'll post some others soon, I did this more or less as an experiment, I've been having trouble posting images but I think I figured it out!

Shitman is $.5o plus 20% postage, minium $1.00

Colin Upton

#223 440 East 5th Ave

Vancouver, B.C.

Canada V5T-1N5

2006-10-03T21:41:00.000-07:00

Hi, this is me again at the Word Under The Street last week, this picture was taken by Marcus Rogers, a local filmmaker who's excellent documentry on contemperary pop art is going to be on Bravo. He's taken an interest in Underground comics... we'll see what transpires...

Notice the sketches on card board backing board taped to the wall behind me, I do these during the event because I find people it easier to approach my table when I'm drawing rather than starring out at them balefully waiting for them to hand over their cash. I post signs to warn away the children, not that I don't like children, not much, it's just I don't want to be dealing with any outraged parents. Later I put 8 of the sketches together into a mini-comic, the circle of life from comic to convention to comic again. it's like the salmon swimming upriver to spawn. Kinda...

2006-10-01T23:19:00.000-07:00

Hey, I'm on the Fantagraphics blog as part of a report on Joe Sacco in Vancouver! http://www.fantagraphics.com/blog/

That's a picture from the blog of me at Word Under The Street. Notice many comics on the table. Verlag is the table next door with Joe Cook and Owen Plummer.

I do look odd... I think I'm on my way to becoming an outsider artist, one of those excentric loons that become famous after they're discovered by some antropologist/art critic ... might be a good career move...

2006-10-01T21:08:00.000-07:00

Wow, I’ve been away for awhile… sorry about that, I’ve been so busy lately and then I just had to crash, I was totally burnt out. Saturday I barely budged from the couch, watching CFL football (I find it so dull and relaxing that I fall asleep watching it… not what the broadcasters had in mind I’m sure) and wondering whatever happened to good sportsmanship… really, the way the players carry on whenever they do anything right is just unseemly. It had been an active week…

I’d been running around for weeks getting stuff ready for Word On The Street and applying for a Canada Council Grant, I had to miss that month‘s cartoonist jam. A week ago Saturday I was at the Circus Art show opening at The Lucky Red, some really nice work on display and it was a great turnout. Rot brought his completed “Gothic/punk Road Warrior from Hell” car he’s been working on, I chatted with a couple young women who swore I looked like I was 36 and not 46, awww gee, clean living I told’em! There were a couple of dominatrix s in clown make-yup and strap on dildoes… an unsettling combination. I had to turn down an invitation to go drinking with a White Russian because I had the Word on the Street to do the next day. I took a detour to pick up bus tickets at the Tinseltown 7-11, walked through hordes of girls dressed like it was the Junior Hookers of Canada Convention, I asked a waiting parent in the parking lot what it was about. Maria Carey concert… ahhh, no wonder.

At the Lucky Red I also found out someone I knew back in the days I was hanging out at the Helen Pitt Gallery in the 80’s and 90’s but I hadn’t seen in years had committed suicide about a week before. Stan Lake, or just Lake after the sex change operation. He appears in Buddha on the Road #1, the guy at the opening talking about getting a sex change. I knew Stan back in art school, probably the first openly (wide openly) gay person I’d ever met. I liked Stan, he was funny, vain and outrageous but he could also be a sweet guy. I once did a caricature of him as a Conan the barbarian type (he always had this big mane of hair) for a poster for a show he was in “Surrey Metal”, which I hear he was quite annoyed with. Like I say, I hadn’t seen mush of Stan in awhile and anything I could tell you about him in recent years would just be repeating rumours. Still, it’s a kick in the teeth, hard to understand why someone would do that. Poor Stan… what an art wank thing to do…

The next day I was up bright and early, 8:30 A.M. (which may not sound early but I’m usually asleep until 11 or noon after working into the night before). I was carrying a full backpack, haversack, pulling a “granny cart” full of comics and carrying a portfolio containing the two CD racks I scrounged from a dumpster to turn into mini-comic display racks with a little foam core and glue. Display units, art supplies, tablecloth, art stamps, comics, mini-comics, digests, etc… As usual I was carrying far too much but I hate the thought of missing out on a potential sale! Fortunately for the first time I and my travelling companion Robin Bougie were able to take bus’s from virtually in front of our door to the library, last year we hiked it! We descended into the bowels of the library, down a long flight of stairs. You see, we are part of Word Under the Street , were they put all us nasty small press cartoonists, zinesters and poets who aren’t exactly “child-friendly” into a subterranean room to wallow in our own filth. What they really do is put a sign on the door warning parents that the stuff inside is potentially damaging to their offspring’s mental health, which of course doesn’t mean the place isn’t full of kids running about trying to look at your copies of “Shitman”. You try to warn them away but you can’t swat them as much as you might like to. Almost everyone was there, even Nardwuar the Human Serviette! I did really well this year, made nearly $200, although I know people in the far corner of the room (they have to change the table layout) did less well. It was busy almost the whole day, I saw plenty of people I hadn’t seen in ages, including that looney with the tennis racket who hung out in front of my table for 20 minutes without buying anything and this old guy who started talking about all the woes of the world, from global warming to homelessness and seemed to be looking to me to provide the answers. Then was the guy whose faces lighted up with joy when he saw “Shitman”, stood there reading the whole mini, laughing all the while, puts it back, gives me the thumbs up and walks away without buying anything. Yeah, your thumbs up means more to me than the money, douche bag. The mini I did about all the times the US has invaded Canada, “The Longest Undefended Border”, pretty much sold out. And they say people don’t care about history!

The weather was good, the Ink Muffin’s (a cheering squad that performs cheers for small press comics made up of local cartoonists Robin, Step, Terry and Laura… I kid you not), signs pointing people downstairs, the fact that Joe Sacco was there signing his new book “But I like it..” and I think the fact that Word Under The Street has been down there for so many years now that people come looking for us added up to a successful day for, well, most of us! Laura gave me a hand taking the bus’s back, I was so bushed…

I got to say hello to Joe Sacco briefly at WUTS, I’d seen him around conventions for years and we once were guests at a comics convention in Porto, Portugal years ago together with Roberta Gregory and Dave McKean. I once had a signing at a comic shop in Joe’s home base of Portland, Oregano and the only ones who showed up to see me were Joe and David Chelsea, bless‘em. I always found it interesting that as far as I know he and I were the only cartoonists to release comic books about the 1990 Gulf War. I hadn’t seen him in years as I’ve been a drop out from comics but I’d always been a big fan of his work, we share a interest in military history and politics. I think what Joe does is incredibly brave and he does it so well.

Fortunately on Monday Robin and I got to interview Joe at the Shaw Towers (yet another ugly building, a retro 50’s apartment building on top of a retro-50’s office building, that spring up in Vancouver overnight like weeds) after he’d appeared on a local morning show the next day. Yes another early day. The interview went well, we got into some pretty interesting stuff about the dangers of comics reporting. Joe was surprised our focus was so “comics orientated”, like when Robin asked what kind of pen he used to ink with. I guess the broadcast media don’t ask these sort of questions, but we are INKSTUDS! He had to rush off, Eric Reynolds was worried about the border (Joe has spent much of his life in the United States but remains a Maltese citizen) and Joe had a signing in Seattle that night. I wanted to talk about our Osprey book collections. Joe did say our interview was the highlight of his trip.

Afterwards I bought a book on manga, a 2 CD collection of Bob Marley and walked home. I kicked back awhile and then caught a bus to UBC to meet my mother, brother Leslie and Leslie’s best friend Darren to go to the first play of the year at the student theatre at UBC. A family tradition. I was pretty beat, can’t even remember the name of the play. It was okay, kinda funny and inoffensive but I’m beginning to think we need moratorium on gay coming of age stories, I’ve seen so many. I thought it all seemed a bit too easy and the ending trite.
Tuesday I got up even earlier, 7 AM, to meet Robin for breakfast and heading out to UBC once more to tape an interview with another comics giant, Jaime Hernandez over the phone! I knew him from conventions as well , particularly one we were at in France years ago. The interview was slow to begin with but soon picked up. We talked about how attached readers became to his character, he told us he even got death threats when Maggie put on some pounds! Finished that, went back to the ‘hood to shop for bread, fruit ‘n’ veggies, before flopping on the bed at home. I took a nap, a shower and headed down to Strathcona for Ole’s house warming party in quite a nice basement apartment. He had antiques everywhere and fabrics hung around he had gathered from his travels in the Middle East so it looked like a oriental bazaar! Ole has interesting friends, his band the Creaking Planks played (they wanted me to play a drum but I was just not up to it). I got a lift home, ran into Robin Bougie going to meet an acquaintance and I figure, what the hell, it’s only midnight! We went to Waves, a 24 hour coffee place nearby were I must’ve had my 10th cup of tea that day (by now it’s the only thing keeping me awake) and then walked this woman to the skytrain so she could go to Celebrities, a gay bar on Robson. We resisted her pleas to come with her, I don’t like clubs. I don’t like the noise, the crappy music and the drunk people. As we were walking by a crack whore waiting for the bus threw something glass at us, shattering behind our feet, no idea why.

Wednesday…no comics that day at R/X Comics, some sort of delay at the border… Finally get to do the laundry. It dawns on me that I’m supposed to be doing something for the Inkstuds flyer that Robin will be giving out at SPX, the lucky bastard! Time is short and it looks like if I don’t put it together nobody will. It’s not just me, it’s a matter of coordination. What format, how many pages, who’s in, what information to include? Robin Bougie, whose really good at lettering, will be doing the cover. Don King’s too busy, we’ve got a strip coming from Mike Myhre but nobody can tell me when. Time is short (turns out I had more time than I knew at … the time) and I was feeling burnt out and under pressure. I feel under pressure pretty easily. I need time to decompress. So I sat down and drew a one page strip “The Inkstuds Are On The Air” starring Don King, Robin and myself… drew it from memory, no time to think about how accurate my caricatures are, never been my strong point anyway. Pencils, inks, all in one go. I also pasted up a new Colin Upton Comics #4 mini-comic while I was at it…

Thursday. Rebecca Dart from upstairs is in the Harvey Pekar edited “best comics of 2005” collection! Hooray! R/X Comics has air conditioning! We could use it, although it’s nearly October in the sunshine it feels like a summers day! Go to office Depot to reduce artwork for Inkstuds flyer. Robin and I go to Dairy Queen for lunch… I gotta stop doing this eating out thing, can’t afford it. Run into Fat Joe Satan, he gives me a CD with a spoken word piece I spontaneously performed with his band once at a Lucky Red opening about a punk rock house I used to hang out at, “The Terrible House of Sickness“. Robin had just bought a Japanese mange, Corpse Delivery Service, which ironically is what Fat Joe does for a living. Came home with fistfuls of groceries I couldn‘t afford to buy previously as I‘d sunk all my money into photocopying comics.

Friday morning I was woken up by a call from my old buddy Alex Jansen who is a programmer for a Canadian film festival in Kingston, Ontario, I think it is. He was in town for the Vancouver film fest. We went to the Sunny Spot for breakfast, talked a lot about comics. After that I had more work to do for the Inkstuds flyer, borrowed the Inkstuds guest book from Robin to photocopy some of the sketches for the back of the flyer so back to Office Depot I go! Honestly, I prefer Staples copiers but Office Depot is much closer. Took’em home, realised I hadn’t reduced them by enough so I ran them through my 3-in-1 and pasted them up. This really isn’t that much of a job, although I really do need a break. Watch wrestling… ECW… wonder what that stands for? Extreme Championship Wrestling? That’s my guess… I'm starting to drift...

Saturday I totally flaked out, refused to leave the house. Robin Bougie dropped off the cover for the flyer, looks good, other Robin calls to say the Mike Myhre piece has arrived at R/X Comics but it’s a “bit square”. That’s okay, gives us space for contact info. It’s finally taking shaping … watched first two episodes of “Deadwood”… it’s pretty good, even if some of the characters are hard to understand. Look, it’s Lovejoy! Second season of the new Doctor Who begins soon on the CBC, I can hardly wait!

Sunday, feeling a little more human got the new material photocopied, shrunk down and pasted up, just getting final approval for the additional copy and we’re good to go. Take it to the copiers tomorrow, go to Robin’s place for an old fashion foldin’ party! Yippee!

2006-09-21T21:52:00.000-07:00

So, I’m sitting at home, kicking back, congratulating myself on being ready for the Word Under The Street (hey, can I get a ride from anybody?) days earlier than expected, back from the radio show, got the kitty litter and I’m looking forward to a NICE CUPPA TEA when…

There’s a reason they call them bird brains. For some reason the chickadees have taken to playing chicken on my balcony railing with the cat. One landed on the railing in full view of Lomu who was quietly preening herself on the lawn chair, about two feet from the bird. So of course Lomu did what cats do and with a mad scramble caught the bird and ran inside. Oh no, what do I do? If the birds too badly injured I’ll have to get it away from the cat to put it out of it’s misery and of course whenever I got close to the bird Lomu picks it up and carries it to another room. It just seems cruel they way she kept it alive just to play with but perhaps that’s not what she had in mind at all. I’m told sometimes cats bring live prey to their humans because they’re trying to teach their human companions how to hunt! She’s done this sort of thing with mice before. So, we’re in the kitchen, the bird sits frozen on the floor with the cat looking on and I’m thinking “That bird looks like it’s not badly injured…” when it takes off like a rocket, zips pass my head, through the bedroom and living room and out the patio door to freedom, with the cat ineffectually chasing after it! I hope it’ll be okay. It did leave a lot of feathers strewn around the place, hard to vacuum something so light. Lomu was no doubt disappointed in me, but she got over it. To be fair, the crows were screeching at her earlier from a safe distance earlier, not something to endear her to their feathery brethren.

On the Inkstuds Show today we reviewed recent books that impressed us, we both brought along Alison Bechdel’s “Fun House”, one of the best graphic novels I’ve read in awhile. I brought in a Joe Sacco, I’m really looking forward to interviewing him later in the week for the radio show, and the new Scott McCloud book, “Making Comics“! Now a new Scott McCloud book is an event in comics publishing, Scott has done more to promote serious discussion of comics and graphic arts than anyone else in North America. “making Comics” is a graphic novel on how-to well, make comics, a genre I collect (you never know, might learn something) so it is more practical then his academic ground-breaking “Understanding Comics“, although I think you‘d do well to read them together. (I admit I wasn’t as pleased with “Reinventing Comics”, I’m not a big fan of the God Machine (although it does have it’s place) and found the tone a bit millennial. So far in Making Comics the computer is a choice, it’s about comics delivery and more about fundamental principles. I’ve read about a 100 pages so far, it’s remarkable for me to think of all the decisions I make as a cartoonist without even thinking about it. So much creativity comes from intuition and reading comics all your life. I hope that making Comics will help me think more deeply about drawing comics, even at a subconscious level. Making Comics is meant to be a textbook so all you aspiring cartoonists and even some comics veterans seeking a deeper understanding of the craft there’s much to learn from “Making Comics.” I’ve been told that Scott will be be on tour with the book to Vancouver, I’ll see about getting an interview for inkstuds!

When I got my copy of “Making Comics” home I noticed with dissappointment that one of the corners was dinged. Then I remembered when I had Scott sign my beaten-to-rat-shit copy of “Understanding Comics” to be signed at San Diego years ago he was pleased to see I had obviously been reading my copy over and over again. So, I’ll have to see how beat up I can get my copy of “Making Comics” before he comes to town…

2006-09-20T02:13:00.000-07:00

I’m not sure I should be blogging in my condition, I’m not drunk or stoned or anything, I’m just burnt out… sometime in the last week or so I entered a state of pure comics consciousness, I became one with the universal spirit of comics storytelling… see what happens when you dabble in yoga? That is to say, I’ve been working my ass off getting my shit together for Word Under The Street this coming Sunday. I figured a couple weeks ago to do what I had planned I had to work flat out solid for the whole fortnight but such is my fear of missing deadlines it’s just about done, barring accidents (knock on cat, cat sighs) I’ll be picking up copies tomorrow, cutting, collating, folding and stapling and I’m done… viola! Nine friggin’ new self-published publications for the publics pleasure for Sunday, 6 new mini-’s , one mini collection of con sketches and 2 big (8 1/2 X 11) collections of stories from anthologies I’ve contributed too over the years. Is Word Under The Street worth all the effort? Probably not, I’m hoping to recover my costs (lots of money spent on photocopying) so I can buy some food afterwards, cupboards nearly bare. But it’s one of only two chances I’ve got in a year to (the other being Canzine West in October) get out there and remind people I’m still alive, still drawing and I’ve still got a passion for comics. It’s been fun.

If that wasn’t enough I at the same time I filled out an application for a Canada Council Grant! Once I realised the deadline was October 1st I had to do it fast. I had inquired about a grant for graphic novels months ago and was assured several times that such a thing did not exist, graphic novels were not literature, no, sorry. Then I get a message there IS a grant for graphic novels, so sorry! Better late than never. The thing is, you gotta understand, I hate paperwork. It not that it’s tedious or dull, it causes me to panic and break out into a cold sweat! Reading these things makes my head swim, I can’t focus. What if I fill out something wrong? Do they rate you for spelling and punctuation? What to I say that would impress someone who is fluent in artspeak, knows French literary theory (there’s a special place in Hell for French literary theorists!) and goes ga-ga for metaphors? Do I have a chance at all? So many things could go wrong! I really wish somebody else would do this for me! But I did it, hands shaking, fighting down the panic. I just tried to be honest and clear about what I wanted to do, maybe I’ll get in as some sort of outsider artist… that’s still big, right? Today I slipped some final copies into an envelope in a Thai restaurant, although my stomach was still acting up. I went to “Hellsgate” Mall and handed it to the mail clerk at the Shoppers Drug Mart postal outlet. She filed it in a draw with a casual speed that rather hurt me considering how much effort I put into it. But I’m just glad it’s done, out of my hands. We’ll see in about 20 weeks if I’m successful. Wish me luck.
And everyone who can, come to Vancouver for The Word On The Street and buy my comics! I’m counting on you! Besides, it’s a great event anyway, lots of discounted books and don’t let the family-orientated TV ads fool you, there’s us nasty folks downstairs at Word Under The Street to fill you with delightful adult content! Why, there’s Robin Bougie with his Cinema Sewers and it’s not a sewing mag, ladies! Look, comics despondent correspondent Joe Sacco himself will be there! C’mon, all you folks in Seattle, rent a car, come up! It’ll be fun!

2006-09-12T21:11:00.000-07:00

So, Robin and I were interviewing comics creator Alex Robinson, creator of the very good comics series “Box Office Poison” and the excellent original graphic novel, “Tricked”. Now, Alex’s stories are about characters struggling to survive in the real world and the way lives collide in the city, a bit of soap opera, a bit autobiographical. In the interview we were talking about other interests Alex has, as you probably know by now I have a theory that many auto and semi-autobiographical cartoonists have a affinity for history and so we asked Alex about this. As I suspected, Alex admitted to having an interest in history. Then he said something that surprised us. He asked us if we’d heard about the American Civil War up there in Canada! Okay, it’s not fair, I’m a military history nerd, a war gamer and the previous day I’d been reading a book on the Battle of Chancellorsville! (That Stonewall Jackson, man what a nutcase!) I’m not singling out Alex, who’s a pretty smart guy and has travelled (hell, the dreaded French gave him an award for Box Office Poison, which I assume put him on Dick Cheney‘s list of subversives), but I’ve encountered this sort of thing before from my American friends. They assume, naturally, because they know nothing about Canada that we in Canada know nothing about the USA.

How to explain the force of “American cultural imperialism” to someone in the United States? That our films, television, music and hell our comics are dominated by the cultural behemoth south of the border? That most of our cultural products (not comics of course) require government quotas and funding just to survive? That we love/hate American culture? That the Europeans do too, however much they live in denial! Even the people in Iran, America’s sworn enemy, feel the allure of American pop culture! Our “American cultural imperialism” is their pop culture, its all most of them know! I’ve also noticed that American’s who take an interest in history rarely study the history of any place other than that of the United States. I blame the schools. In a Canadian school the map of Canada includes the American border states on the margins. When I was in school outside Boston for a year I noticed the map of the United States was just that, the United States. No Mexico, no Canada, it’s like there was a big blank space where Canada used to be, between the US mainland and Alaska. I’ve met Americans who have never left the United States, some of them in border cities but have no interest in the world outside. You really gotta wonder how this totally insular worldview affects the way Americans see the world, and the evident belief by many that theirs is the only free and democratic country on earth. One guy I was talking to in the states seemed to think that Canada was still ruled directly by the whim of the Queen of England! Somebody said that war was how God teaches the Americans geography… mind you, that being said Roberta Gregory, born and raised in the USA, has one of the sharpest minds for geography I know.

I'm working on stuff for Word Under the Street in late September, I have 5 mini-comics done, want to do one more and I’m working on a couple more Colin’s Comics collections of stories from various anthologies. I’ve done the cover illos, back cover copy and now it’s just a matter of copying art, pasting up, copying comics, collating, folding and stapling. Piece of cake… yeah, right…

2006-09-02T03:25:00.000-07:00

I feel virtuous today! Yes, virtuous… by that I mean I did all I was supposed to do! When you live alone, without editors breathing down your neck, it’s all too easy to say fuck it, it’s too hot, I’m tired or feeling uninspired, it can wait so lets take the day off and watch TV or go out shopping for… whatever! It takes self-discipline and great moral fibber to be so self-motivating… plus it helps to be so broke that shopping is not an option. I got up at the crack of 11 (AM mind you, in the morning!) checked my mail (Guardian) and did my yotchi. That is, a half hour of yoga and an hour of Tia-Chi I’d taped off the multi-culture channel. It was when I was doing some yogic meditation that I had this odd feeling of solidity and strength in my whole body I don’t remember feeling before. It was like those “ecstatic moments” I sometimes get. Actually, I had one yesterday. Ecstatic moments are these brief, frozen moments when I’ll be looking at something I might see everyday, a tree, debris in a gutter, a patch of grass and I’m overwhelmed by the feeling that what I’m looking at is the most arresting, beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. And like debris in a gutter it doesn’t have to be beautiful. Apparently these things happen to us arty types…

I performed the whole 24 posture Tia-Chi and only wobbled a few times, I think I’m getting the hang of it… but I’ll never be able to do those kicks! Then I did some overdue vacuum cleaning of the carpets, I’d been putting it off as my vacuums broken but the floor was getting crunchy! So I pulled out my old vacuum which I had kept in case of emergency and gave the carpet a good suck! I had to replace the bag and clear a nasty paper clog but I got it done. Then I mopped the floors of the kitchen and bathroom. By the time I finished my bath it was time for the 6 O’clock news so I watched that over a late tea. I took the tea into the studio at 7 and got to work inking the Nine O’clock gun story making great progress, listening to “The Magnetic Fields“, “Pere Ubu” and “The Violent Femmes“. When I got tired of that I worked on inks for “The Littlest Gunne” mini-comic before going back to the main project. Dinner at 10 (pork chop with boiled potatoes, apple sauce and steamed vegetables) and back at work until nearly 3 AM! Now I’m telling you.

I was asked recently if I was happy, a question I’ve always treated with great suspicion. I mean, really, happy? Who’s happy? Stupid people mostly. My family does not do happiness. It’s a skill or an instinct that is absent from my family’s DNA, like, like albino’s who are born without pigment in their skin… I the best I can hope for is an absence of misery. I’m striving for contentment. I’m not sure if I would know happiness if it came up and gave me a bear hug, but today, on my own limited terms, I think I came close to happiness… can’t be bad…

I do fear and wonder how I will suffer for this happiness, for I find happiness never goes unpunished.

2006-08-29T21:53:00.000-07:00

Well, I got the “Grudge” done on time! With deadline looming and the model only painted with the base colour I went to work on Tuesday without breakfast or bath and got to work! First I dry brushed on the lighter colours to bring out the texture and shape, glued on insignia and dials, painted on serial numbers and graffiti (the famous “Kilroy was here”). The base was already painted black, I slopped on the polyfilla, pressed aquarium pebbles into the wet polyfilla to make a road, painted the road and flocked the sides… I glued the letters and a parcel into the mailbox I made of card and glued to the side of the “grudge”… it would’ve gone a lot quicker except for the drying times, not so much of the acrylic paint but that of glue and polyfilla. To be honest, I wasn’t sure the glue would work on the pebbles when I attached the Grunge model to the base so I used too much glue really… most of this is new too me! I’m disappointed with the sten gun strapped to the side, I now realise it’s far too big and I wish I had time to redo it but the opening was coming up fast!

The Grudge Show opening was last Friday and as I suspected mine was the least “artistic” interpretation, although one Grudge titled “Meat” had very nice rust affects painted on! Heck, I ain’t no art wank, I’m a wargamer and a miniaturist! There were some nice pieces, one arrived rigged to explode with a mound of firecrackers inside but was “disarmed” before anyone could blow off a finger! A tall man in an Ikea coat rambling in mock Swedish (I swore at him in Swedish and he didn’t react at all. “Jigger“ if you must know, Swedish for “bullshit“) gave out boxes to the artists including a cheque (imagine being paid to do art!), a NY subway token , and a coupon for a t-shirt! Very generous!

While waiting for the various bits of Grudge to dry I finished the art on a new mini-comic, “Bookworm”. I’ve got a mini ready for inking, “The Littlest Gunne”, a charming children’s story about field artillery. “Self-Indulgent #15” and “Shitman” are printed, “Longest Undefended Border” ready to print, “Bookworm” ready to paste up. Along with my annual 9-11 comic it looks like 6 new mini-comics at The Word Under the Street in late September and I just registered for the Broken Pencils Canzine West ‘06 in October!

Right now I’m working on “The Nine O’Clock Gun”, the history of a Vancouver institution for the Fall issue of the Vancouver Review Magazine. Since 1898 a 12 PDR smoothbore gun made in 1816 has been firing a blank powder charge from Brockton point in Stanley park. Orginially it was to allow ships to set their timepieces, important for safety when predicting the tides. Now it’s just cool. I can hear it from my home in Mount Pleasant while I‘m working, it reminds me to listen to Ideas on CBC radio.

On Sunday I went to Arron, the proprieator of the alternative comics community centre also known as R/X Comics, birthday party at Robin Thompson’s (of Champions of Hell Fame) house, which was a lot of fun. I was pleased to unexpectedly run into a couple of my Seattle comics peeps (that’s what the kids say, right?) David Lasky and Scott there! Dave inadvertently started an impassioned debate when he asked about the “Greatest Canadian” contest, Don King was a Tommy Douglas man while I was rooting for Lester B Pearson! We all could agree Don Cherry was a bad joke.

Uhhh… The freezer section of my fridge keeps leaking water, not all the time, but when it does it gets all over the place. Anyone have any suggestions?

2006-08-20T22:06:00.000-07:00

Ooooh man… sorry I’ve been away, I’ve been busy lately! Those two mini-comics I was working on, “Self-Indulgent #15” and “Shitman” are done, printed, only awaiting to be cut, folded and stapled! I can’t do this right away, my downstairs neighbour goes berserk whenever I start stapling or using my guillotine, well, he goes berserk when I sweep the floor or do most anything, including typing on the computer! Actually, he’s been quiet for months now, I just don’t want to tempt fate! While I was copying the mini-comics at the UBC Staples I also reduced a third mini-comic, “A Short History of the Longest Undefended Border”, about all the times that Canada has been invaded from the U.S. which is more often then you might think. Interestingly, it isn’t always the U.S. government that launches these invasions but U.S. citizens attacking Canada against the wishes of their own government! Then I went home and wrote another mini-comic, “The Littlest Gunne”, which I’m still working on the pencils and I’m almost finished the inks for “Bookworm”, about my life and literacy! Waaah! I’m on fire!

I’m also working on my Grudge, a 3-D card model for Jim Ramsey. Jim builds card models for the movies when he’s not blowing glass and he made up a bunch of these “Grudges”, a fictional 3 wheeled light truck, for various artists to decorate as they see fit. I got one. It’s pretty tricky, I haven’t worked in card before but I’m having fun seeing how much stuff I can glue on it. I’m making mine up to be a WW2 Canadian Army postal van in Italy around 1943, researched the insignia and everything! It’s fun and frustrating and I wish I had more time!

I’ve just been asked to do a one pager for the next “Vancouver Review” magazine (for whom I drew “Monster Versus The Pop Culture Nihilists” ) on the Nine O’clock Gun, a Vancouver institution! Since the 1880’s or so this 12pdr muzzle loaded left over from the Napoleonic wars has fired at nine PM so fish boats can synchronize their timepieces, important when your safety depends on anticipating the tide. I’ve done some research on the web already, I should get to work on it soon…

But how can I find the time, being such a social butterfly and all! Thursday was the James Kolchalka interview, Friday I went to a sale in Richmond in the morning (I am now officially really broke!) and went to my Trumpeter’s Wargames club in the evening, Saturday was the launch for the new “Cinema Sewer” magazine at R/X Comics (I illustrated a two pager on censorship in Cincinnati) followed by our monthly cartoonists jam at the Jolly Alderman!

Now I must decompress. Being a loner most of the time I find that if I go out and get social able for a few days in a row I get quite edgy & irritable. I need to withdraw and have some quiet time, work time, recover and calm down. Cat time. Time to paint figures, time to make flags for the Royal regiments of the siege of Quebec in 1759, labels for the militia’s of New France and there’s Brian’s Hungarian line troops to paint!

I’m not sure, but sometimes I wonder if my idea of being relaxed is different than other people. At times when I think I’m being laid back I’ve been told I was “intense”… am I ever really relaxed, can I ever really relax, particularly in public? I can only say I’m better than I was, that’s why I sympathise with social misfits I meet at parties, yearning and needing, begging for acceptance! That slightly hysterical air of jolly desperation. That was me, still is in a way but I think I hide it better these days. Well, better get back to work…

Oh, my favourite Soul Coughing song, “Screenwriter's Blues” on my CD of Ruby Vroom has just come on. I love this song!

“It is 5 AM, and you are listening to Los Angeles”

2006-08-11T15:02:00.000-07:00

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.....Oh yes, Victoria, capital of British Columbia located on Vancouver Island... a nice place to visit, small, major industries government and tourism... hangs on tightly to it's Britishness. It's also had some of the best and worst con's I've ever been too...

What is it about Victoria?

When I first considered doing mini-comics there was this guy from Victoria who worked at Island Fantasy but was selling all kinds of interesting stuff from his home, I bought the "John Cleese" issue of "Help!" from him. He also sold me the first mini-comic I'd ever seen, the infamous "Penguins in Bondage"! He told me he was setting up his own small press publishing house and he'd like me to do something for it. I said sure, at the time I was broke and unsure of myself so I figured what the hell! He invited me to visit him in Victoria to do comics and I took him seriously. When I arrived at his place he seemed surprised to see me, as was his mum! I'd planned to stay for a week of heavy comics drawing but we essentially did nothing and his mom asked me to leave after a couple days. I left him the original art for my first mini-comic, "The Granville Street Gallery" with him to publish. Month's passed with no mini-comic, no word. For a couple of years Victoria's Big Brother's & Big Sisters put on these huge cons at the Empress Hotel which I attended. These were great cons with a guest list a mile long, Sim, Aragones, Chaykin, etc. I tracked down my "publisher" at the convention who gave me a long story about why he hadn't done anything yet, which being a trusting sort I accepted. I then went to Island Fantasy and was flipping through the box of underground comics when I discovered my original artwork for "The Granville Street Gallery" in a bag with a price tag of $10. I took it with me back to the con, naturally without paying, confronted my "publisher" in the middle of the dealers room and told him pretty much what I thought about him in a loud clear voice, the gist of which I would never have anything to do with him again. later he came to apologise for the "accident" but I was no longer quite so trusting...

Back in my small press mini-comics days in the mid-80's I was booked at a con in Victoria being put on by Island Fantasy, a very good comicshop there. Since if I took the ferry on the same day from Vancouver I would've missed half the convention I called the owner of Island Fantasy a week before to ask him to find me a place to crash the night before the con. He said no problem and as I'd crashed with one of his employees on a previous trip I figured we were all set. I'd been dealing with Island Fantasy for years, they even bought advertising on one of my mini-comics, they knew me there. So I arrive in Victoria fresh off the bus from the ferry, walk down to Island Fantasy and the owner looked at me like I was a bad smell and he had no idea what I was doing here. I'd been there for a comics festival outdoors, in the wind and rain! Assuming he'd simply forgotten his promise I kept waiting for him to pick up the phone and make some quick arrangements, but he didn't. He just ignored me. He kicked me out of his store at closing, but he did relieve me my backpack full of mini-comics so I wouldn't have to lug it around. Out of sheer stubbornness I decided to spend the night on the streets of Victoria in the middle of November (while Victoria is in Canada it remains relatively mild, rarely would you see snow. There was, however, a steady drizzle of rain.) and do the con the next day. So I would find a quiet spot out of the way, sit there shivering and trying to read and saw how long I could stand it before moving on. At one point out of desperation I called Ken Steacy, the only person I knew there that I could find in the phonebook, for a place to stay but he turned me down. Don't blame him, I was a stranger really, I'd only met him at cons a couple of times. So I wandered about, luckily I stumbled upon a 24 hour diner (at a time when they were rare, particularly in sleepy Victoria) and spent hours slowly eating my breakfast, drinking much hot tea and getting warmed up. When I left the diner the con was still hours away so I went to the hotel where it was being held and sat in their almost empty dining room drinking much hot tea for several hours. So, with a feeling of weary triumph and defiance I was there to greet the man who'd kicked out onto the streets to get my bag and set up my table. The con itself was rather blurry, I remember getting some odd looks as I was fairly punchy by that time. One of the people I talked too was the Island Fantasy employee with whom I'd stayed before who told me he would've been happy to put me up if he'd known I needed a place to crash. After the con I caught the first ferry home, I nearly missed my bus as I fell asleep on the ferry. I never dealt with Island Fantasy again, they went under some years later. The owner moved away and to this day I have no idea what I had done or why I was treated so shabbily...

More recently I went to a con in Victoria which was the worst I'd ever been too. It was a comic Sci-Fi con that spent money lavishly on everything except advertising! They flew in guests from the states, some famous make up artist from Dawn of the Dead or something. I had a hotel room all to myself, which is good, because anyone who's done a con with me knows I snore something terrible. They were also charging attendees over $20 A DAY to get in and then you had to pay extra to get into some of the programming... it was a fiasco, we were supposed to be at our tables all day with the occasional meal break and on Saturday we were required to be at our tables for twelve hours! But there was nobody there! The exhibitors easily outnumbered the paying attendees and you could go over an hour without speaking to anyone. Bored out of my skull I just stared at the local small press cartoonists who had the table across from me staring back, drawing jam comics, making fun of the con security dressed like Klingons and doing a cheer if I managed to sell a single comic. Looking at the program I was surprised to discover I was scheduled to give a lecture on porn comics, although I did a couple issues of Incubus I'm not really an expert. I was told they put it in there without consulting me to draw a crowd. Fortunately nobody was showing up for the lectures anyway so I skipped mine. I got a hundred dollars spending money, I toured the book stores of Victoria and feasted on the wrap up party which had an air of surrealism about it, pretending like the con we just had wasn't a total failure and making plans for next year.... which actually took place. I wasn't invited, but my contacts in Victoria who went said it was worse than last time!