Hey, just a quick message to remind you that URSA MINORS: The Collected Wait-for-the-Trade Edition, hits bookstores this Wednesday, October 15th!

if you missed it (or your store didn't order it) the URSA MINORS! TPB is available via Diamond PREVIEWS (Order No. JUL083614), and through Amazon and Barnes & Nobles (ISBN# 1593621337). The 112 page, black and white book collects all four issues, all the online strips and features a brand new story and three page introduction.

From the pop-culture soaked minds of Xeric-winning cartoonist Neil Kleid (Ninety Candles, Brownsville) Paul Cote, and Fernando Pinto (TMNT), URSA MINORS! is what Las Vegas Weekly called “an idea for a comic book that’s so awesome, it’s hard to believe nobody thought of it before." Ninth Art said it's " a comic that appears to want to both kick back and kick ass, a slacker fight comic par excellence. URSA MINORS could be the missing piece in the post-STREET ANGEL, post SHARKNIFE, post-SCOTT f--kin' PILGRIM zeitgeist" and comics sensation Warren Ellis called “a clever piece of darkly comic science fiction."

You didn't buy the single issues because you wanted the entire thing, the "ursa major" in your hands. We understand. Here it is - all in a single, ninja-filled, movie-quoting volume for the inner pop-culture fan in you. Head to your local comic book shop this Wednesday, put in your paw and JOIN THE BEAR REVOLUTION!

Check out a ten page preview:
http://www.rantcomics.com/UMTPB_Sample.pdf

Jen Contino interviewed me about the book at the Pulse:
http://www.comicon.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/ubb/get_topic/f/36/t/007457.html

I'm sort of irrationally appalled at the amount of enthusiasm being expressed at the blog Jezebel for a revival of '90s fashion. Among the reasons to be excited given: "I was a teenager in the '90s."

Yeah, look, so was I. I certainly did my share of plaid-kilt-black-stockings-with-hole-in-knee-Violater-T-shirt-and-Doc-Martens-wearing. And I was happy and having fun with it back in 1994--I was sixteen and it worked for me. But now? Good lord, why would I want to dress as I did when I was sixteen? I have moved on.

tiredfairy  was just talking fashion on her blog, and she mentioned how a lot of the time it gets denigrated as frivolous. But I've always been suspicious of people who dress like they haven't put a thought into it. It's as if they don't put a thought into themselves, and I am a big proponent of "Know thyself." Perhaps it is superficial of me, but as my response to a potential '90s revival reveal, I think of clothes as a reflection of the person I was at the time I wore them. I only have to think of a certain burgundy dress, fall-colors striped socks, black cotton tights and 10-hole Doc Martens to recall being sixteen; or black stacked-heel oxfords, black-and-white striped socks and black jeans and T-shirts to recall being twenty; pinstriped pants and tight black sweaters to recall being twenty-five (actually, I'll still wear such outfits, but with flats or heels instead of chunk Mary Janes).

Inability to move of on from past fashions, I think, is an inability to move on as a person to a certain extent. People will cling to styles from a time in their life when they felt the most happy or pretty or in control. I understand. Witness my inability to wear a lot of color. But choosing what to wear, requires a certain amount of reflection of one's aesthetic desires. For something that manifests so outwardly, it requires a lot of inward looking -- about how one sees onesef, what one likes, how to bring who is one inside to the outside.

• 11:10 Palin and kid were booed at a Flyers game. Not very smart to put her in front of Philly sport fans. They hate Santa Claus: is.gd/3VWD #

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http://www.comic-con.org/ape/

I will be signing with Camilla at the SLG booth November 1st & 2nd at APE in San Francisco.

YOU WILL ATTEND OR I WILL DESTROY YOU!




SATURDAY
November 1
11:00am-7:00pm

SUNDAY
November 2
11:00am-6:00pm

NOTE: I will be sure to post the times I plan to be at the booth once we are closer to the event.

The Concourse
620 7th Street
San Francisco



SLG will have copies of the new Nightmares & Fairy Tales collection, Dancing With the Ghosts of Whales

Come by and say hello. Hope to see some of you there.

• 17:24 hurm... its grey and smells like snow... #
• 17:32 hey... i can use this blackberry thingy to send stuff #
• 17:38 i forgot it was beerfest this weekend. Bars are mobbed. May need taser. #
• 22:08 Oh I love that dirty water! Oh Boston you're my home!" #

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My weak Google skills are failing me. Can someone tell me what the huge signs next to Mao's portrait on Tiananmen say? (To me it says "Center something People something something something Kingdom Ten Thousand [innumerable] something. Something something People something Heaven something Language Ten Thousand [innumerable]" something.) There's an image here.

Thank you!

The front of the Googleplex Multi-Theater where the Eltingville Club stands on line to see the "Alien rip-off", etc.





Notice the instantly dated graffiti. And a few shout outs to friends and whatnot.

I wish they'd cleaned up the lettering when they inked the BG. And that some of the jokes showed longer. But chicken fat doesn't fare as well on the screen as it does on the page. I learned that the hard way. I still think Beverly Hills Robocop would make a bad movie that would make good money.

Oh, and the image is tilted because it's a bit larger than my scanner and after three tries to straighten it perfectly I gave up.

Oh, my newest column was in this week's Publishers Weekly Comics Week. It's about Minx's cancellation, and I tried to look at that from a point of view I hadn't seen yet, in the context of the floundering traditional publishing industry and big box bookstores. It's not as attention-grabbing as it would have been if I had launched into a tirade about the perceived failings of the line and those who created it, but I thought, despite some, shall we say, indelicacies of courtesy in recruitment tactics, Minx was doing something good for comics.

Brian and I finished our latest contribution to that world, turning in a story past deadline for an as-yet unannounced anthology. I decided to write something with a text narration, since usually I don't like them, and I wanted to see if I could do it in a way that I did like. We'll see if other people find it successful, but I'm happy with it. The key, I think, is to have both the narration and image to be part of the narrative. If the image is an illustration of the text or the text is a description of the image (which are the same thing, perhaps), then the medium isn't being used to its full capabilities.

We've been working late nights on the story, and I'm anxious, as I'm anxious with every book I send to the printer, that there is something horribly wrong with it that I missed despite checking it over a bunch of times. I'm going to give it a day and look at the pages again just to make sure. The late nights were exhausting and culminated me getting a migraine and weeping in sheer self-pity. Well, pain and self-pity. I took a work-at-home day yesterday to get over it -- my head had that hollow, kicked around feeling. But now I get the feeling I used to get when I finished a big essay for grad school, satisfied with my work. Most of my late-night work was lettering, though, and that's not quite as exciting as discovering a thesis and developing it. That is sheer nerd glory. Or getting a story in your head and not being able to type fast enough to keep up with it. I could use one of those.

I have a whole story in my head right now, but for some reason the actual writing of it feels like drudgery, even though I really like the story. It's very realistic. Maybe that's why. But it shouldn't really be any other way. I could play with the prose style a bit, but, no, I think I'm writing it the way it should be. I'm just lazy.

So Christopher Buckely, son of famed conservative William F. Buckely, has come out in favor of Obama. I don't find his piece about why particularly compelling -- he uses the "fallen conservative saint" narrative about John McCain, which I find unconvincing, self-serving, and a little bit self-righteous. What I do find interesting is his writing style -- so full of New England patrician expressions and Latin! People don't use the language this way out here in the west, unless they're pretentious people who read too much H.P. Lovecraft. Some examples:

"my dear old mum and pup"
"the superb and very dishy Kathleen Parker"
"I don’t have the kidney"
"assuming anyone gives a fig"
"a Harvard man"
"our current adventure in Mesopotamia"
"He is that rara avis"
"my sage and epigrammatic friend"
"a balmy summer zephyr"
"airy-fairy"

That last one was used to describe some of Obama's rhetoric. The example he gave was "We are the people we have been waiting for." Now, perhaps Buckley would think me an airy-fairy airhead for it, but when Obama said that I got a thrill of understanding. Perhaps it's because I am the daughter of a car mechanic rather than of a famous intellectual, because I don't use terms like "Harvard man" familiarly and got both my undergraduate and graduate degree at a serviceable but decidedly non-elite state university. Sure, Obama's a Columbia and Harvard graduate, and I'm not, but when he said "we," there was the recognition that I could make a difference in my own life, that I was capable of being part of doing something great for our country. If you're Christopher T. Buckley, son of WIlliam F. Buckley, Skull-and-Bones Yale man, who uses "rara avis" rather than the pedestrian "rare bird," you believe this as a matter of course -- probably not even consciously -- that you are part of the true elite, and you matter.

What I got from Obama's pronouncement was the true populist spirit --not the fake, pandering "Joe Six-Pack" of the truly mediocre, but rather the inspiration to, despite a lack of prestigious parentage and education, make oneself better and to be useful to the country and to one's countrymen. It made me remember that when I was ten years old and we had to fill out a survey that asked if we wanted to be president someday, I marked "yes." My ambitions have changed, but my ten-year-old self thought that I was capable of that. Michelle Obama got a lot of flak for saying that she hadn't felt really proud of her country, but I'm not a presidential candidate's wife so I can be candid. (Interesting, those words.) I did not consider myself patriotic before this election. I was politically interested, and considered myself lucky to live in the first rather than the third world, but proud of my country? It just wasn't something I thought about. But I think about it now. And when I see what Barack Obama has accomplished in this country, this -- yes, damn you Sarah Palin, imperfect country -- I am proud of it. Because I think the country can achieve something, as long as the people who want it to do good believe they can achieve something, too.

The preview has been updated, and now dialog is present. Hoo-ray.



You can see the updated preview here.

A five page preview has been posted to Newsarama. The preview doesn't include page one of the book. Also, the preview does not seem to include the dialog. My understanding is that should be fixed today.

Brush pen sketch, homemade sketchbook,
Robin Hoods Bay.

It's been linked elsewhere but is worth
another look, Colleen Coover's lovely
Elizabeth Bennet:
http://digitalmedusa.com/sgettis/word/colleen-coover-elizabeth-bennet/

******************************************************

Coming Up:

The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories
Joan Aiken
October 14, 2008
9781931520577 · Trade cloth · 5.5 x 8.5 · 350 pp · $20
http://www.lcrw.net/aiken/index.htm
(interior illustrations)

The Mammoth Book of Best New Manga 3
November 6th 2008
9781845298272
13x19.5cm 448 pp £9.99
http://www.constablerobinson.com
(Kitsune tales with Woodrow Phoenix. In colour!)

Couch: A Novel
Benjamin Parzybok
November 10, 2008
9781931520546 · Trade paper · 5.5 x 8.5 · 320 pp · $16
http://www.lcrw.net/lcrw/preorder.htm
(cover illustration)

Chat Noir folio
La comete de Carthage
4, rue Frederic Sauton - 75005 PARIS
(coming soon-ish)

Thought I'd share a bit from my play about an old Hammer-type film.

From: THE BRIDE OF THE MUMMY.


-Her fiancé discounts the mystic’s prophecy and her silly
question by replying:


Handsome: It’s all balderdash and poppycock if you ask
me!


-He is the typical leading male of this type of film,
completely unwilling to believe in the supernatural – and
treating his fiancée like an "adorable idiot", as those old
films are like to do.


Woman: Of course you’re right my dear, you always
are.


-She of course defers to him in such an annoying manner
you want to slap her.

• 15:31 Did I mention that I just did a new interview? With the LHLS? You can check it out here: is.gd/3JIU #

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i have a confession to make. i've kinda been making up Ubu Bubu as i go along. well, technically i've always known what i wanted to happen, and rouuuughly how i wanted it to end (it ends with the apocalypse. that shouldn't spoil anything for anyone, since it's all been building up to that). and i've known i wanted Ubu Bubu to reap souls, a certain number, for a certain undisclosed reason to become clear at the end.

well, i had notions of why he's reaping souls, but nothing concrete. and the more information i threw into each issue, the more it started conflicting. dates mentioned made events tricky to bring together, motives and circumstance told different stories. in short, i've been stressing out about how to conclude this four-issue series. how to bring it all together to make a somehow coherant whole, when even i didn't really know what had been going on.

these were my notes of what i wanted to get into the last 15 pages

good preparation, jamie.

i took today off to finish writing Ubu Bubu 4, hoping it would all tie together nicely. Having a day to write comics is obviously great fun, but a bit intimidating at the start of it when you know you have to make everything make sense, at the same time as being funny and random enough, and to come up with enough strong ideas to make an interesting 24 pages. But i'm pleased to say, I really think it works. It's quite story heavy, it has to be, but i was relieved to find plenty of room to go off on tangents too. It concludes how I wanted it to, i think everyone's reasons make sense, and i even had Satan's masterplan inspired by Back To The Future 2, as planned.

So, i'm happy. and very excited to start drawing the thing up.

Got this in email and had to share.

Playing with watercolour.
On a similar note:
http://rhbfictions.blogspot.com/2008/10/mollys-sketches-from-birmingham-comics_5875.html

A sketch I did last weekend for the lovely Richard Bruton
and his daughter Molly. It's not often I get to talk about
Bridlington at a comic con.

******************************************************

Coming Up:

The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories
Joan Aiken
October 14, 2008
9781931520577 · Trade cloth · 5.5 x 8.5 · 350 pp · $20
http://www.lcrw.net/aiken/index.htm
(interior illustrations)

The Mammoth Book of Best New Manga 3
November 6th 2008
9781845298272
13x19.5cm 448 pp £9.99
http://www.constablerobinson.com
(Kitsune tales with Woodrow Phoenix. In colour!)

Couch: A Novel
Benjamin Parzybok
November 10, 2008
9781931520546 · Trade paper · 5.5 x 8.5 · 320 pp · $16
http://www.lcrw.net/lcrw/preorder.htm
(cover illustration)

Chat Noir folio
La comete de Carthage
4, rue Frederic Sauton - 75005 PARIS
(coming soon-ish)

When I went through my art files recently I was surprised to find a lot more artwork for the Welcome to Eltingville pilot than I'd remembered drawing. I must have a few hundred sketches and roughs in the envelopes; characters, props, backgrounds, various revisions...further cementing the late, terrible realization I had during pre-production that I was making a mistake taking on too much work, and that too much of the work was material I should probably have not been doing. I cringe at the character designs, for instance. The designs for the ill-fated Tyrone's Inferno pilot (which, as I always point out, I ill-fated myself) were so much nicer,  I still feel lousy that I didn't do a better job on WTE (not for lack of trying), and that I blew the chance to see the Tyrone designs animated. Would've, should've could've. Bah.

Anyway, here's one of the layouts I did that I actually like, scene 3, from the opening D&D sequence:

I know it's superficial of me, but last night I couldn't help but think, "What if someone who was actually young and COOL became the president?" I was never the type to root for the popular kid, but it's not like Obama represents your average knuckleheaded jock. He's like the guy who is on the basketball team AND the chess team, friend to nerds and jocks alike. McCain just looked grumpy, shaky and irrelevant--like his best days were behind him. Hardly the respectable person he was just eight years ago (especially now that his campaign has gone the character assignation route). Seeing Obama and McCain side by side, I wondered how other people perceived the contrast.

Obama could be the Michael Jordan of presidents!
And I don't mean that just because of the race factor (which is exciting, I will admit!). The children of America would suddenly have a new role model. One that shows them firsthand that it can be cool to get involved, work hard, and help make a difference in the world. How many disenfranchised children will suddenly get a new burst of self esteem? Just think about the possibilities! Imagine how the world's perception of what America IS would be forever changed! It might even be a lot of fun!


Now imagine how kids would perceive John McCain if he became president. Do you think they'll actually get excited? MAYBE there is a comfort factor...but would it also confirm that some things NEVER CHANGE? Is this being too idealistic? Probably. But I'm convinced more than ever that even if he can only live up to 25% of his campaign promises, the psychological effect of an Obama presidency would be a huge win for America.

I went from being a casual fan to a full-blown Obama supporter last night.

So...what do I need to do to help get this guy elected? I've made some donations and I'm in New York, which is hopefully already in Obama's bag. Since I have a full-time job I won't be able to drive to Pennsylvania or Ohio. Anyone in the NYC area doing something I can help with? How can we convince the skeptics?