This week’s page: best not to read in a compromised environment. (As the preview image might suggest.) Those of you who read the comic at work have just been having a rough time of it lately, haven’t you?
Relevant news: next weekend I’ll be at Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland, OR. I’ll be exhibiting at table C-24. I’ll have copies of Family Man, the last few copies of the second printing of Bite Me! (it will go out of print until summer or fall, so move fast!), tons of prints, stickers, original art (including stuff you won’t see online), t-shirts, and I’ll be taking commissions, too.
I’ll also be appearing on two panels. Come find me on Saturday at 11am in the “Making Comics” panel with my studiomates Erika Moen, Jonathan Case, and David Hahn, where we’ll talk about the tools and processes we use in our work.
Then find me on Sunday at 5pm in the “Ask a Freelancer” panel, where Erika and I will talk along with Steve Lieber about the actual nitty-gritty of being a self-employed artist. It is a lot of work, no fooling, and we would like to spare you aspiring professionals some grief by imparting our often hilariously hard-won wisdom.
Scenes of passion: a good reason to hire a janitorial service?
This week! Damaged books are 50% off cover price in the store. I have a solid box of books that have been lightly rumpled, bent, or scuffed, and it’s time to share the wealth! If you’ve been wanting to own your very own copy of Family Man or Bite Me but counting your pennies, this is a nice cheap way to go about it.
Next week! I’ll be at the Emerald City Comicon. I’ll have a new duo of prints for sale that I’ll post next week before I hit the train. Also, if you would like to commission a sketch from me to take home from the convention, I’m taking advance requests! Send me a line at dmeconis [at] gmail [dot] com (or just reply to this post!).
Hmm whoops, remember that? Well, Ariana does, at any rate.
Newsy news! I will still be at ECCC in a couple of weeks; I’m aiming to have a fancy new print by then!
More importantly – Dark Horse Comics has taken over the publishing duties for Carla Speed McNeil’s absolutely wonderful series Finder. If you haven’t read Finder, you’re missing out on possibly my most favorite ongoing comics work, ever. Friends, if I could, without fear of legal reprisal, eat the heart and subsequently steal the powers of any comics pro: Carla would be on Maryland’s organ transplant list in a skinny minute.
Now she’s being edited by my lovely friend Rachel Edidin over at DH, and goddamn it, I am not going to stop screeching at people about it until everybody involved is rich and famous.
Dark Horse has a new website online for the series, and you can pre-order the first volume of the collected Finder and Voice, the latest story from the series already, both at heart discounts. I don’t need to tell you what to do.
…all I’ll say is that some pages are more fun to draw than others.
IN OTHER NEWS:
Erika Moen has started her new webcomic with Jeff Parker, Bucko! NSFW fun for the entire family, provided that your entire family likes sweetly lewd murder mysteries that make fun of area hipsters.
And freshly hatched in print, Sarah Oleksyk‘s wonderful comic Ivy is now out from Oni Press. Ivy is a refreshingly flawed teen protagonist who makes some important but excruciating discoveries about love, art, and growing up. Absolutely recommended – stop by your favorite retailer and pick up a copy!
And lastly, I recently I had the chance to attend a dress rehearsal of Portland Opera’s production of the Puccini opera Turandot along with many of my fellow local cartoonists, on the condition that we all produce some silly drawings. You can see my contributions on Flickr.
It dawned on me as I pencilled this week’s page that it is essentially one of those Calvin & Hobbes strips where they go down the hill in the Radio Flyer. I’d like to think that, at the end of this book, it is revealed that Lucien has been a stuffed tiger the whole time.
Anyway! Onwards. A couple more pages to this scene and then we’re through. Meanwhile I have still been sending out pre-orders (we’re down to under 200 left! ahahahahhhhh). I’m beginning to develop hope that I’ll actually have them all out this month. It’s fun to hear from people when their package arrives.
Usual disclaimers about having one extremely ill grandparent apply for next week’s update, but I remain ever optimistic. See you then!