Cropped Will Cardini artwork

March 29th, 2011

Review: Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons

Filed under: SF Reviews — Tags: , , — William Cardini @ 7:10 am

Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion, by Dan Simmons, are one strange, fascinating story in two volumes. I hope that Jo Walton decides to re-read it when she comes to it in her Revisiting the Hugo Awards Nominees blog series on the Tor website (Hyperion won a Hugo and The Fall of Hyperion was nominated).

Spanish cover of Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Spanish cover of Hyperion by Dan Simmons, via Virao del Casco’s flickr.

Click here for my review.

March 25th, 2011

Please Help Fund Secret Prison for 2011

Filed under: Print Comics — Tags: , , — William Cardini @ 7:00 am

Secret Prison, a free comics newsprint anthology out of Philly, needs your help to continue in 2011. In 2010, they funded their three issues with three separate Kickstarters. For 2011, however, they’ve decided to try to raise all of the funds with one Kickstarter. They’re over halfway to their goal and they have until 11:59pm EDT on Sunday, April 3rd to raise the rest. Check it out here.

If you pledge, you can get old issues of Secret Prison (I had something in #2) or subscribe to all their publications for 2011 (I’ll be in #4 and I plan to submit to the rest). You can also get rad art, like this:

Bart by Pat Aulisio
Bart by Pat Aulisio, two-color screenprint cover variant poster.

or this:

2 Bad 2 Be Dad by Ian Harker
2 Bad 2 Be Dad by Ian Harker, two-color screenprint cover variant poster.

I’m also offering up a 9×12″ black and white drawing for anyone who wants to throw down a James Joyce.

March 22nd, 2011

2001 Nights by Yukinobu Hoshino and Tone Sheets

Filed under: Artwork,Inspiration — Tags: , — William Cardini @ 7:15 am

Man, SXSW was crazy – 25th anniversary and the biggest year yet! I only went to a couple of shows. The highlights of my South By this year were What’s Tappening, Chica Vas, and Harsh Realm II at Monofonus.

Anyway last week I mentioned how I got three volumes of 2001 Nights by Yukinobu Hoshino. Now I’m going to post the my favorite examples of tone sheet usage and show you what they inspired me to make.

I love the gas giant (is it a processed photograph?) and the circles of light from the propulsion of the ship on the right in this page:

2001 Nights by Yukinobu Hoshino
A page from the chapter “Night 6: Discovery” in 2001 Nights by Yukinobu Hoshino.

The gradient tone sheets on this spaceship blow my mind:

2001 Nights by Yukinobu Hoshino
A page from the chapter “Night 7: Lucifer Rising” in 2001 Nights by Yukinobu Hoshino.

Click here for more pages from 2001 Nights and my tone sheet experiment

March 15th, 2011

From Anarchadillo in Austin to Renaissance Books in Riverside

Filed under: Inspiration — Tags: , , — William Cardini @ 10:57 pm

My family recently made our roughly annual pilgrimage to Riverside, California to visit relatives. Whenever we’re there, we always stop by Renaissance Books, a used book store with a huge sf section (you can buy stuff from them online here). The owner used to live in Austin and ran a used book store/head shop here. This trip I found out that his shop used to be down the street from where Glade and I live. It was called Anarchadillo: Slow Burning Books and Papers. Gotta love that. I tired to find a photo but I was unable to. If anyone has one, I’d love to see it.

Here are some gems I picked up:

Paul Lehr cover of The World of Null-A by A. E. van Vogt
Paul Lehr cover of The World of Null-A by A. E. van Vogt.

Lehr also did this cover of Solaris. They had a couple other books with Paul Lehr covers and they were all dope. As far as the novel goes, I love this story and most van Vogt in general. His stuff is pure superheroics. Similar in tone to Fletcher Hanks sometimes, at its most manic and exciting. Definitely obsessed with power and authority.

Starshine by Theodore Sturgeon
Starshine by Theodore Sturgeon, cover artist unknown.

I haven’t read any Sturgeon but Aldiss made him sound like a great author in his must-read history of sf, Trillion Year Spree.

Impossible Possibilities by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier
Impossible Possibilities by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, translated from the German, cover artist unknown.

I really wish this was an sf novel. I’m not sure what it is – futurism? weird pseudoscience? I probably won’t end up reading it.

I also got some awesome comics:

  • An old Epic Moebius graphic novel, containing the story Upon a Star that he did for Citroën, serialized online here. It’s one of my favorite Moebius stories.
  • A volume of the Akira serialization that’s been colored by Steve Oliff. You owe it to yourself to click that link if you haven’t seen Oliff’s original color guides.
  • The three volumes of 2001 Nights by Yukinobu Hoshino. I really dug this series. I like near future hard sf (although the science in these isn’t that thoroughly researched). I think it’s because it seems hopeful about our future but is still grounded in what we know. I like that kind of story because I also know it’s something I would never have the discipline to do the research for. I just don’t have the patience or attention to detail. I’d really like to read something that takes into account all the recent exoplanets we’ve been discovering. Anyway, I love how Hoshino used different tone sheets to create a lot of variation in his black and white drawings. I think I’m going to try that out.

What by What-Ever

Filed under: Events — Tags: , , — William Cardini @ 1:58 am


Poster by Rand Renfrow.

March 11th, 2011

Awthum Fetht 6666

Filed under: Events — Tags: , , , , , — William Cardini @ 7:04 am

I know that I keep talking about this Glade and Mark comic, and it’s coming, I swear y’all, but other things just keep coming up that are time sensitive, like STAPLE! and now SXSW. Also, I have some other comics that I haven’t posted here that are even older, so I may post those first. We’ll see. So, please ignore my empty promises and I’ll stop making them.

Anyway, for the sixth year in a row, the Awthum Empire, producers of fringe, DIY and avant garde culture in Austin and beyond, is putting on their one-day music festival, Awthum Fetht. And, just like last year, I drew a flyer for it:

Also, if you’re a band interested in a flyer or other artwork, please feel free to contact me.

March 8th, 2011

STAPLE! Recap

Filed under: Recaps — Tags: , , , , , — William Cardini @ 7:00 am

Hey yawl, the Gold County Paper Mill and Glademade had a blast at STAPLE! last weekend, thanks to everyone who hung out and bought stuff!

Glademade and GCPM at STAPLE!
Zoom out shot of the table (I was able to get everything in the image except for the second Glademade card rack). Glade’s face is like “why are you d00dz hiding?”

We met a ton of kewl people and got to hang out with kewl people we’ve met at past STAPLE!s (that plural spelling of STAPLE! is straight from the style guide, I swear).

Glademade and GCPM at STAPLE!
Now everyone is showing their faces. From left to right: Michael Miles, David Fullen, Glade Hensel.

Some highlights:

  • The people across the aisle from us, writer Adam Smith and artist Matt Fox of Wet Black Ghost press, had driven all the way from Little Rock, Arkansas, where they say there’s not much of a scene. I dug their short sci-fi comic and I’m looking forward to the fantasy webcomic that’s on the way.
  • Speaking of driving cross country, I met several people who said they had just moved to Austin from Portland, like the cartoonists Aaron Whitaker and Melinda Boyce. Coincidence or growing trend? Let’s hope more cartoonists defect here.
  • Jake Ewing, proprietor of Awesome Comics in Dallas, shared a table with the Arkansas boys. He makes pretty kewl little folded full-color comics.
  • I’m really glad that Sparkplug Comics had a table at STAPLE!, I wish their were more out of town indy publishers there. Chris C. Cilla was in attendance, so I’m glad I’d been waiting to buy his new book The Heavy Hand from Domy so I could get a signed book straight from the author. I started reading it on the bus ride home from work yesterday and I’m really digging it.
  • It was good to talk to Paul Maybury and his also talented assistant Ricky Valenzuela. If I’d had more dough I would’ve bought some of Maybury’s sick looking original pages. At least we got to talk about coloring for a bit.
  • Man, I love how Toby Craig is still putting out watercolored comics in Houston. His earlier series Monster Engine was the first DIY comic I ever bought back at Bedrock City Comics on 1960.
  • I dug Partydog‘s VHS-style comic The Body is a System. Also he handed me a hilarious xerox mini of stick figure collaborations with his bf on this site. Loved it.
  • I was hoping that Zach Taylor would have Bear Quest 2 ready but his jam comic with Chris Sweet, 16-bit Breakfast, will tide me over for a bit.
  • I always enjoy chatting with Jen and MC of Buttersword. Their comics are like an angrier Porcellino with some sf elements thrown in every once in a while. Basically, they’re super real, honest, and independent. Also I applaud them for monetizing MC’s toy collecting.
  • Palfloat is a true Austin original. Click that link – you’ll thank me.

I hope to see you all again (and more people!) at STAPLE! 2012. Also, if you’re wondering, I’ll start posting the eight-page Glade and Mark comic on Friday. Click here for additional photos and GCPM-centric commentary

March 4th, 2011

The GCPM and Glademade at STAPLE! 2011

Filed under: Events — Tags: , , , , , — William Cardini @ 7:05 am

Hey y’all, David Fullen, Michael Miles and myself of the Gold County Paper Mill will be tabling at STAPLE! this weekend alongside Glade Hensel’s Glademade for the third year in a row.

STAPLE! banner

This year, for the first time ever, STAPLE! will be two days, March 5th and 6th! The event is at Marchesa Hall and Theater from 11am to 6pm on Saturday and noon to 6pm on Sunday. It costs ten dollars for one day and $15 for both days.

The GCPM and Glademade will be sharing Table 76, which is in the Annex. If you’re standing with your back to the entrance, the Annex is the room to the back and the left. We’ll be selling a lot of stuff, both old and new. Here’s what we’ll have in alphabetical order:

  • Screenprints and digital prints of my ATTACKS one-page comics
  • Candy or Medicine Volume 12, a minicomics anthology edited and published by Josh Blair (I drew the cover of this volume)
  • The second issue of Catch Up, a comics and poetry magazine edited and published by Jak Cardini and Robert Bozwell of the GCPM, featuring two different covers by Josh Burggraf, comics by Noel Freibert, poetry by Adam Day, and a short story by David Fullen
  • Comet a print by Glade Hensel
  • Froghead Hangover, a twelve-page xeroxed zine by me
  • Glademade greeting cards
  • Hypermorph, a digital print in original colors and the inverse
  • Lords ov thee Black Sun, a xerox zine by Michael Miles
  • Masks, a twelve-page xeroxed zine by me
  • One read-only copy of Math Fiction, a sixteen-page 11×17″ blue/red anaglyph 3D comic featuring Pat Aulisio, Ian Harker, Josh Burggraf, and myself
  • A two-color Miizzzard screenprint in purple/green or purple/orange
  • Original art by myself and Michael Miles
  • Shaman Thunder, a twelve-page xerox comic that Josh Burggraf and I made together
  • Slime Studies, a zine by Michael Miles
  • TRANZ, a twelve-page zine by me

Michael Miles process shot
A process shot from Michael Miles. He’s working to get Slime Studies finished in time for STAPLE!

Also, there are pre- and post-parties for STAPLE! The pre-party is 7-11pm tonight at Austin Books and Comics. There are an after-parties Saturday and Sunday at Club Deville from 8pm to whenever. We might be at some of these – if you see us feel free to say wuzzup.

March 1st, 2011

Quick Wedding Post

Filed under: Life — Tags: , — William Cardini @ 7:40 am

Hey y’all I know I said that I’d start posting a comic today, but I decided to postpone that until next week because there are some things I want to talk about this week, namely my wedding and STAPLE!

Our wedding/reception was a lot of fun. There are a couple of details that I was involved in so I thought I’d post those here.

We had a unity volcano instead of a unity candle. Glade and I made it and then I painted it, here’s an action shot:

Glade and Mark's ceremony
Picture by my uncle. Sorry it’s a bit blurry. Notice the froghead on my best man.

The eruption wasn’t quite as high as we were hoping but oh well. The officiant (my good buddy Will Sellari, pictured holding microphone) included some lines from King Crimson in the ceremony. Also, one of my friends told me that they felt a strong gust right before the procession and knew that the wind wizards were giving their blessing. So, all in all, it was a pretty proggy wedding.

It was also pretty froggy. All of the dudes in the wedding party and the dads had these frogheads that Glade made. Here they are all lined up in a row (without their hats):

Glademade frogheads

Also, I drew the ceremony program:

Glade and Mark's ceremony program
The front and back covers for the ceremony program.

I made the comic that I’m starting to post next week for the ceremony program. Yes, we had the idea before we heard about Adrian Tomine’s latest book.

STAPLE! is this upcoming weekend here in Austin. For the third year in a row, the Gold County Paper Mill will have a table. I’ll post about what we’re bringing in detail on Friday.