Sing muse

I am in the midst of reading the Iliad. These are some sketches I whipped out while reading.

We start with Athena stepping in to curb Achilles’ infamous rage at Agamemnon. And then Zeus makes a promise to Achilles’ mother, Thetis. And later Agamemnon wields his lordly scepter and addresses the Achaean hordes.





There is about to be blood shed!

Bug eyed

Whoa. It’s suddenly been a month since my last post. I have had a busy one.

Mary and I went on a baseball stadium tour of the northeast with her parents and brother, here-to-aft referred to as Broster. Philly had the best beer selection by far. We estimated over 40 craft breweries, maybe more. Yankees had the best regular hot dog, but the worst stadium. What a waste. Billions of dollars to basically rebuild their old stadium, address none of the old stadium’s most egregious problems, i.e. traffic flow, and actually diminish the best aspects of the old stadium, i.e. proximity to the field. It was impressive to look at, but basically a claustrophobic indoor mall which as an after thought was equipped with a baseball field, and to top it off they engineered a draft to lift balls that should be routine outs into homeruns. Typical New York obsession with surface and stats over substance and spirit. Fenway was the most authentic by far. A great place to watch a ball game, and my home town/state Braves won, so that was doubly enjoyable. Mets was most comfortable and felt like a real park, but the Cardinals lost so that was disappointing. And Camden was like an old beat up brick warehouse, all the best and worst that implies. They played the best music though. All in all a delightful trip with a lot of good food and fun for the whole family. But with Broster around it’s hard not to have fun.

If you haven’t been by thursdaycitywares.blogspot.com has been updated with some t-shirts and new posters. Also while on the trip I stocked several stores with copies of “the Moth or the Flame”. In Boston/Cambridge the wonderful people over at the Million Year Picnic picked up several copies. Definitely one of the best comics stores in the country. Also Comicopia grabbed a couple.

Well I have been working on lots of ideas and sketching, but the only image I am going to post is a photo I took at the Met today. Anish Kapoor shows us the way an insect with compound eyes sees. I did nothing to alter this photo. Notice the guy in the left getting his camera prepared.

The results are in

All in all MoCCA Fest 2009 was a success for Thursday City.

Day one started in a disheveled fashion as there were several hiccups on the museum’s part in getting it going. They had not gotten the inventory of several publisher’s to the venue in time, and there was also some trouble with their cash registers. This was quite frustrating, but not exactly unexpected. There seems to always be some kind of snag or snafu when people are involved. While the crowds grew outside the publishers who received their inventory late scrambled to get set up. Drawn and Quarterly were one of the publishers who waited and they were also only separated from us by one table, so that was exciting. I expected to get some spill over from their table. I don’t know if we did or not, but it was nice being near a lot of quality books.

I shared the table with Kristin “Li’l’ Bear” Lindner of Uncle Envelope fame, and we had a good time being comic peddling hucksters throughout the weekend.


In this first sequence of images you can see the set up taking place. Drawn and Quarterly waiting for their goods. And then the way our booth looked with no people in it.


In the second image you can see the Drawn and Quarterly crew rushing to set up after the books finally arrived while Li’l’ Bear mans our table with a smile.

Once the festival finally got under way the hall filled up pretty quickly. There was no air circulation and the place was pretty swampy, but it was quite an invigorating time to interact with fellow cartoonists, industry movers, and potential readers. Well, it was invigorating, but it was also exhausting. I found it much more difficult to get up on Sunday than it was on Saturday.

I sold a fair amount of merchandise, but probably the best aspect of the event for me was the interaction with people and the feedback I got about the book. I was surprised to hear how many people had read it or had it recommended to them. Tom, at Drawn and Quarterly, told me that he has had several people recommend it to him. I have no idea how the people are getting it up in Canada, but I’m heartened to know they are.

It was great to meet so many new people, and I just hope I can commit even a fraction of them to memory. All taken I would do it again.


The table from behind.


The people across the way.


Li’l’ Bear talking to the Chicago crew. The redhead is Neil Brideau of Sock Monster infamy. And manning the table with me is the always delightful Jordan Awan, a quite accomplished cartoonist himself.


And finally Superman himself, the inimitable Arlen Schumer.

Smoke Signal

Gabriel at Desert Island has started a free comics newspaper for the people. You know, the people that like free comics. The inaugural issue is to be ready for MoCCA Festival this coming weekend. This here below is the piece I created for said issue and some details so you can read the text.









Just in case you are wondering I am aware that a three eyed creature would rightly be called a triops, but it is Barnacle Clifford speaking in the comic and he is not as erudite as I am.

Open Studios 2009 Update

This weekend was a good warm up for the MoCCA festival coming up. A little over one hundred people showed up over the two day event. The majority were people I didn’t already know, so that’s good. Here are some images:

Open Studios 2009

This weekend I am participating in an Open Studios tour in my building. There are a slew of artists living in this building and for the last bunch of years they have organized an Open Studios weekend in conjunction with a similar event at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artist’s Coalition building, down by the waterfront.

I designed this poster as an easy to reproduce 11"x17" piece.



The doctors are saying to one another:
“You see Dr Pinkus?
This is why you don’t teach
a ten ton gorilla about
performance art and
then screen ‘King Kong’”

“I just wanted to open
him up to new experiences
and give him a sense of
his heritage.”

Just listen

Kierkegaard once wrote in his journals:

“…the true relation in prayer is not when God hears what is prayed for, but when the person praying continues to pray until he is the one who hears, who hears what God wills. The immediate person, therefore, uses many words and, therefore, makes demands in his prayer; the true man of prayer only attends.”

I designed this to chastise myself:

The writer who never wrote

A writer was waiting for a story. He waited and waited. While he waited he contemplated how much he despised waiting around. After a while a story walked up. The man was so excited. He began thinking about how he would tell the story. He couldn’t decide. There were so many good ways to tell it. While trying to decide he contemplated how difficult it was to have to decide. Why couldn't he just be inspired? So he waited for inspiration. While he waited he contemplated how much more infuriatingly frustrating it was to wait while indecisive and uninspired than it was to wait for a story. Waiting with something to lose is always worse than waiting with nothing to lose. After an intolerable span inspiration peeked out from behind the corner. Finally! Inspiration had arrived. The man turned around hastily to handle introductions. He was eager to get started. But the story was gone. Now he had inspiration but no story. He threw up his hands in desperation. "You see now?! This is why I never write."

Extra parts

After decades of genetic experimentation the world is unfit for traditional humanity, now referred to as Obsoletes. Earth, if it can still be called Earth, is controlled now by the successful experiments, Superlatives. Of course, as with all rampant technophilia, there are many more unsuccessful mutations, failed experiments, and dead ends than superlative outcomes. Subcultures and gangs of Runoff or Side Effects begin to form and threaten the New Order. What did you expect?

City in the sky

While the world economy collapses I am taking some time out for daydreaming.


Philbert on left, Broccoli Brothers on right


Billy Q outside the floating city

Happy holidays

April 20th, National Bad Driver Day.
The weather here in the city couldn’t have been more perfect for properly celebrating bad driver day. From people stopped at green lights with no hazards or any form of signal, to SUVs meandering back and forth across the one way street blocking all passers as they slowly and drunkenly notice better parking spaces to vie for, to cars turning left without the right of way into oncoming traffic that is then required to stop, and the litany could go on and on. All this in driving rain and horrible vision conditions made for a delightfully terrifying celebration of the holiday and too many close calls and near collisions to count. I don’t know about you, but I personally can’t wait for next year’s holiday!

A beautiful day

While beautifully skipping through the North Woods the Beautiful Skipper is oblivious to what lurks. Of course he shouldn’t be. Gangsta Monkeys are always looking for good targets to fling poo at, and what better target than a beautiful skipper?



This was drawn for my niece and nephew while they visited on their spring break this week.

Smiling Dan

As the shadows flicker across stone caverns your heart rate increases ever so slightly. Just enough to be noticeable. The masked creature dances and whirls weaving a story full of nightmarish imagery and sublime stuff. You feel yourself sinking. Sinking. Sinking. You are being awakened through sleep. And all is heavy, in a jaunty kind of way.