Fluke!tastic

Hey internets! I will have a table at the Fluke! festival in Athens, GA on Saturday 21Apr12. If you are in the area come check it out. It takes place at the 40 Watt in downtown from 11am-6pm and it only costs a measly two smackeroos.

Fluke!, for those of you who do not know, is an independent comics festival, which the amazing Robert L Newsome and Patrick L Dean have been organizing for over a decade. This will be my first one and I am quite excited.

So come on out.

In other news here are two self-portraits so you can remember what I look like.

The first is a little auto-bio piece I did for the good people of Tokyo who apparently wanted to know who it was who did that big drawing in that little bar. We did this to put up beside it so they would KNOW. Hence the Japanese texts at the bottom.

And the second is a self-portrait after a vicious tennis melee I had with my racket. My opponent hit a deep shot. I thought it was going out. I then pulled a classic rookie tennis move. I stood there watching. When it hit the line I was out of position. I jumped back and tried to get my racket up. Instead I hit myself in the eye socket.

It was awesome.

Now I have a sutured eye socket. Soon I will have a permanent villain scar. To top it off I lost 5-7, 6-7.

Outskirts

The title of this newest piece seems quite appropriate. I feel as if I have been on the outskirts of everything for some time now.

For those of you who don’t know my beautiful wife, Mary, and I had a baby boy on 29Jan12. His name is Augustus Ray Stephens and he is something else entirely. We are, needless to say, extremely preoccupied and generally exhausted lately. Add in Augie Ray and many other ingredients and you have a recipe for a long hiatus between blog posts.

Well, I have been intending to post this one for over a week, so sorry if it is too late to grab a copy. I have a piece in last week’s New Yorker, cover date 16Apr12. The piece is for a Russian film called “Outskirts.” It is from the early sound era of the movies.

Hopefully I will post some pics of Augie soon. And I also have a back log of things to post up from the work I have been doing for Southern Comfort: Japan.

Wish me luck!