Ron Rege Jr posted some new drawings in his cartoon utopia series yesterday! It’s a really fantastic project, here’s a bit from his explanation of the ideas behind the project:
“At the beginning of 2008 – I started to create a series of numbered 4×6 inch drawings as an exercise – to start to flesh out ideas for a kind of ’science fiction universe’ that I’ve been slowly imagining over the last few years – the idea of a ‘Cartoon Utopia…’”
I love the idea and I love the drawings, Ron Reje Jr has always been a force for good in this universe, everyone should buy the Cartoon Utopia mini he just put out!
The always hilarious Sam Gaskin has a bed-time comic over at the Sundays comics blog, go check it!
Fav line:
“I’m a pajama jamma!”
I’ve submitted a half-pager to the all-comics newspaper SMOKE SIGNAL that the comic store Desert Island in Brooklyn is gonna put out. Here’s a panel from my strip, called SHAMANMAN:
If you want to see the rest, help make SMOKE SIGNAL a reality by coming out to the fundraiser, tomorrow (Memorial Day) at Union Pool! There’ll be a concert featuring
Uninhabitable Mansions
Ambergris
Boogie Boarder
Darlings
Doors open at 7, it costs $8 to get in – all proceeds go towards printing costs!!!
Union Pool is located at 484 Union Ave in Brooklyn, NY (718) 609-0484, right near the Lorimer L + Metropolitan G train stops.
TRANZ got reviewed over at Optical Sloth, here’s a quote:
“Everything looks great and William/Mark is certainly not short on imagination, I guess I’m just more old fashioned in my comics reading, what with my general preference for linear stories and all. Still, there’s a lot to be said with the ‘where the hell is this going to go from here?’ school of making comics, and I’m all kinds of intrigued to see what he does next and what he’s already done that might or might not be more accessible than this to the common folk.”
-review
Robin McConnell of Inkstuds has just posted the audio from a panel that he was on at TCAF with Frank Santoro, Dash Shaw, Robert Dayton, and Dustin Harbin. The panel’s an awesome discuss of how mainstream comics have influenced alternative comics (definitely true for me), especially work like late-seventies Jack Kirby and James Steranko.
One thing that Frank Santoro reminded me of (that I haven’t thought about since Austin Books started their renovation and hid their back issues, a problem that will soon be resolved!) is Jack Kirby’s late seventies 2001 series. The first couple issues are loosely based on concepts from the movie but then it just goes in this other wild direction of vaguely connected vignettes.
Here’s a sample page, pulled from Inkstuds:
Although I drew these pages for a show to benefit an art space, they’re a continuation of the ideas I was dealing with in TRANZ:
This next (and last) one is my favorite.
I’ve started working on a new twelve-page comic that incorporates the MULTIPLY idea into a longer narrative, I’m super stoked about it! I plan to have it ready for when I come to MoCCA Fest 09 so if you’re coming/tabling be prepared to trade me a zine for it!
