The Longest Day Festival

Eli and Whitman rumbled down the mountain like distant thunder rolling in for a summer afternoon storm. Every year on the summer solstice, as the life giving sun sits high on its northern throne, Thursday City holds the Longest Day Festival. The highlight of the festival is the popcorn shrimp eating contest followed by the Pick-Off. The Pick-Off is a musical contest in which bands compete in any genre of instrumental music for Thursday City supremacy. There are three expert judges, honored guests and/or celebrities, and the crowd’s vote counts for 25% of the total. Every year either Eli or Whitman has won the popcorn shrimp eating contest, and they have won the Pick-Off for the past four years with their band “Cotton Gin.” There are no contenders expected to challenge the eating reign, but with Gracey Kallifracks back in town the city is buzzing with excitement in regards to the Pick-Off.

Wonder of Wonders

We must be vigorously rigorous, if we are rigorous at all. Otherwise our rigor is the death of our vigor, rigor mortis.

Thomazen is here to invigorate.

the Moth or the Flame: Release Party

The Moth or the Flame book release party on Sunday night at Desert Island was considered a success by Jehovah and Gracey Kallifracks. The doors opened at 6 and there were already people waiting outside to get in. I hadn’t even had a moment to catch my breath before people were filling up the store and I was signing books. I don’t know what I expected, but it was semi-shocking to see people lined up for an autographed copy.

Since it was Mother’s Day my mother acted as Surrogate Mom for all the people at the party, so no one had to go without a hug from momma. And after 2 hours of chatting, signing and communing we had Tall Tale Time with Jehosephat Sunrays. I emceed and told the first story, and eight others told stories while everyone relaxed on blankets and ate s’mores brownies with beer. Mmmm… delicious and delightful.

I can’t even begin to express just how grateful I felt for the love and support that was shown. There was so much warmth, love, and energy given to me that I do not know how to repay it. Thanks to all that came out, and if you missed it I hope to see you next time. Or you can make up for it by ordering a book!

Check it out:

Desert Island

Big news!!! “the Moth or the Flame” is printed and I am having a book release party on Sunday May 11th! The party will be graciously hosted by Desert Island, the hottest new comic book store in Brooklyn (in North America really), which is located at 540 Metropolitan Ave. Visit their website here: desertislandbrooklyn.com The event will be from 6pm to 9pm and there will be beer, vittles, and great company. The book is hardback, will cost a measly fifteen simoleons, and I will sign any copies one wishes to be signed. Tell your friends and bring everyone along.

The proprietor of Desert Island, Gabriel, and I screen printed posters for the event this weekend. This is what it looks like:




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Smile brazen monster

I discovered this image by stumbling over a dead rat. I was in my attic searching through old boxes of toys and books. Apparently either the cats had killed it, or it had just crawled into my domain to die a dignified death amongst stacks of great works of western literature and MUSCLES (a delightful little collection of Japanese toys from the 80s, if you didn’t know). Regardless of how it got there, in the dim lighting I didn’t see it and suddenly found myself cheek down on the floor. This was a fortuitous occurrence as I was peering through an accidental tunnel between boxes at a discarded sheet of paper. I reached in and it was embellished with the mysterious image you are now seeing before you. The words “GURGLE ANTIQUITY ANASTASIA” were inscribed on the back.

I know that I must have drawn this, as it is executed in my own hand, but I cannot remember doing it. If anyone has any interpretations please let them be known.

The Rat was given an honorable burial.

The quest continues

The Egyptians were the first to map the skies through time. It was they with the depth of vision and the clarity of perception to make universe shifting predictions millennia into the future. But they could show me nothing. My quest was one of abysmal proportions. A titan-quaking earth-shattering beast-god would be my guide. Power courses through its veins. Its veins snake through its insides like the hair of Medusa hissing and spitting and steaming bloody power. Let us dance.

The Return

After hurricane Katrina Gracey Kallifracks returned to his ancestral homeland in the Boggy Swamp of Swampy Bogginess, on the outskirts of Thursday City in the Valley of Keene—hopes, ambitions, and bank account annihilated by nature and the powers that be. Gracey can shred his git-fiddle like a rabid feral cat on the arm of a cheap second-hand couch tossed into the dumpster to be reclaimed by mother landfill. Though the critics loved him—they all said he was either way too far ahead of the times or way too far behind—he never caught on with the people of New Orleans and was already on his last dime before Katrina’s landfall. Now that he’s back in the Valley of Keene he is continuing with his family’s rice farm, his main source of subsistence, and he continues to hone his craft on his back porch and in any local dive that will have him. You can catch him for free most nights out in the boggy swamps or on the cheap at bars like Gunther’s, 3 Sisters Pub, or the Devil’s Outhouse.

Imagine the sound of a chorus of bullfrogs, tree frogs, crickets, owls, and cougars all wailing in harmonious lament to the tune of a shared nightmare of mother earth dying then twist that around a crying angel and you might come close to approximating Gracey’s sound. And don’t even get us started on the haunting performances he enacts (words can’t do it justice, but be warned you will not soon forget it). He is a one man force of nature. We here at Thursday City News just hope that one day he finds an audience outside the swamp and the critics.

A poster

Here is a poster I designed to announce the coming of my former masters to visit my current masters.

Entreaty

Abraham’s entreaty to the gods on my behalf finally worked and this week I received a batch of advanced copies of “the Moth or the Flame.” Here is a photographic teaser. The entire shipment will arrive in mid-April and will immediately be purchasable through Paypal online, directly through me, or at a very select number of comics stores. More details to come, but for now the images will have to suffice. I hope more than 3 of you are as excited as me, because I will have a thousand of these precious little objects to disseminate.

Sketchbooks and wizards

Showing off my first three hand bound sketchbooks. Bookmaking is fun, and it gives you a fleeting sense of accomplishment too. You should try it sometime on one of your lunch breaks. My friend, Uncle Big Baby Henry, tells me tin foil is the perfect material for bookmaking, but I tend to stick with good old fashioned paper.

And don't forget the paste!








Uncle Big Baby Henry is a wizard.


(photo courtesy of Darlene Earls)

Catacombs

Jameson Farthing and Conway Fripple are lost deep underneath Thursday City. They have been wandering around down there for years. They have become an urban legend in Thursday City, but they merely want to return to the Boggy Swamp of Swampy Bogginess. While playing with some friends after school one day they climbed into the catacombs on a dare. That was three years ago. Since then they have managed to live on rats, mildew, and sewer gators. Every time a sewage worker, electrical engineer, or graffiti writer comes across them their cries for help are misperceived as threatening growls sending said interloper in the opposite direction as fast as can be. Can monsters be blamed that we humans have long since neglected their culture and forgotten their complex and sublime language? Is it their fault that what is melodious to them is horrifying to us? Monsters have a rich canon of poetry that has been lost to human minds because of our reactionary xenophobia. Jameson and Conway have also been lost because of it. Well, because of that and their youthful impetuosity.

Gravitas

Cyril De Bergeron is one heavy dude, which is why everyone calls him Mr. Gravity, but don’t let his massive weight fool you he is a suave mother... hush yo’ mouth. Stare into his Flower of Enchantment for a bit and you’ll know what I mean. He is an equal opportunity lover; his all encompassing embrace holds us all together in an ever spiraling game of unrequited love. Attempt to escape his universal pull at your own risk.

Unholy Marriage

Thursday City’s patron goddess, Obergin Smythe, doesn’t seem too excited about the situation she finds herself in. In order to save her beloved city (deservedly or not) she has submitted to being wed to Paul Slimey McSlymebøllson the Wizard of the Northern Nations. Paul is the board-elected president of SAMMS Club (Scandinavian Alligator Milk Manufacturers Syndicate... uh, Club).

When the Thursday City producers began exporting so much alligator milk that the world market was flooded SAMMS Club petitioned the United Nations to have America reinforce the production quota on the Thursday City conglomerates. Upon successful petition SAMMS Club drastically lowered the already asphyxiating quotas. After years of being yoked to this production quota the Thursday City producers, except the Kremes, revolted. The revolt was put down by SAMMS Club with the help of the American National Guard. As part of the reconciliation compact the Thursday City producers were allowed to return to slightly more than the pre-conflict quotas, and the organizations’ bond was to be strengthened by marriage. Ergo: Obergin Smythe McSlymebøllson.

The wedding is presided over by Uncle Tim and Padre S.