Money saving tips are very useful these days, so take a word from the pros: when your beard gets too weird know how to mow it! This and other great advice is currently available in a series of 50 sc
Ran over to Mass Art Paine Gallery (how apropos!) to see the R. Crumb Underground exhibit, which was written up recently in the Phoenix and the Globe. This exhibit kicked off two years ago at the Yerba Buena Center of the Arts, and has been making the rounds from city to city, and finally seems to have drifted into Boston on a Greyhound bus, clutching an old leather bag of 78s and sinsemilla buds.
Let’s see if the traitors fleeing the pirate ship run by Bush and Cheney have as many tricks as my personal hero, Felix the Cat. Hopefully not! They deserve whatever is coming to them! Meanwhile,
Agree or disagree, it’s still a fun list of the 50 things you really must have in your comic book collection.
It crawled off to wheeze in the Art Institute of Boston annex behind Kenmore Square, under the beer-breath shadow of Fenway Park. Although I still preferred the big ratty room full of zines at MassArt, where Beantown Zinetown used to live, it’s still nice to know that zine makers have a place to gather and set up their wares. This year’s Boston Zine Fair was split up on three floors of the Institute, which also had it’s advantages since there were smaller clusters of tables where visitors could converse with zinemakers. On the other hand, the sparse attendance makes for some sort of awkard transitions when someone else walks into the room. In the MassArt space it was easier to sort of wander around aimlessly and go back to a table when a conversation came to it’s natural conclusion. Even so, there were some people who really couldn’t be overlooked at this year’s event. In particular I’m glad to have met the artist Dan Nolan, who has a new graphic novel called Business Casual Stag Devil Death Boy. Nolan is doing an all-out marketing blitz for this comic, which is printed on glossy paper in full color (looks like 5 color process). When I saw the printing job on his novel I said: “man you are plunging directly into bankruptcy… in the most flamboyant fashion possible!” Nolan replied, “You know I thought that nothing could be worse financially than being a painter, until I discovered publishing my own comics.” What really amused me was that Nolan was standing there in his own Death Boy t-shirt under a bathrobe. In front of him was a peanut butter sandwich on a plate with a single bite taken out of it. Right in next to the sandwich was a single proof copy of the novel. And right behind the artist was the original oil painting that became the basis of his Death Boy novel. His entire look was amusingly surrealistic. Worth checking out his stuff.
Only by chance did I notice that Lloyd Dangle, cartoonist and creator of Troubletown, is currently tramping across America on a 20th Anniversary Book Tour, celebrating two decades of ceaseless trouble! How can it be that most people know Dangle only because of his Airborne packages, and not for his amazing comics?
Now where have I heard a similar story before? Where was it again? Give me a minute! It’ll come to me, if I think about it. Hmmm… something to do with crime. Something to do with politics. Yes, yes…
Amusing story from Airboy Comics vol 4 # 9 (1947), by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Kirby’s aggressive and yet fluid brushwork fills the panels of this comic, which also features a series of aircraft r
While cleaning up a shelf, I discovered a folder full of freebie cards that I picked up at the Alternate Press Expo (APE) in 2006. It was a fun time that year, with Keef Knight as one of six GoH, and a fine cast of erstwhile comix artists and DIY crafters filling the concourse. There is no point in just stashing these away in a box, so let’s look at some eye candy! First up, Doug Sirois and Steamcrow :
The caption for this image is: a) Douglas Feith still defending his wretched lying treason in the year 2025 b) Beaver Cleaver (reincarnated in 2025 with the brain of Tom Cruise) is asked to hold the