34 pages left on PROJECT OLDBOOK, after which I'm sure I'll come out the other end completely transformed. Can already feel my brain getting rewired.
“It is to Cubism that the next serious innovators are bound to return.” – John Berger, THE SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF PICASSO
I feel this, in a sense, is very spot on. Not so much Cubism's aesthetic, as much as its intent.
Came across this Arabic comix magazine on my shelf and realized I have yet to post about it, and it is certainly worthy of a post, not just because I happen to be featured in it but because its format/approach isn't one I think I've come across before.
Featuring critical essays, extensive interviews and complete short comix, the inaugural issue of [+] Magazine is a hefty 154-page package, jumpstarted by editor extraordinaire Jad Khoury. Each issue has an over-arching theme (though I'm not sure if any issues have been produced since its inaugural Nov. 2022 issue), this one being “Arab Revolts and Comix Strips”. Under the umbrella of this theme are 5 critical essays and 5 complete short comix, and one graphic novel excerpt, each accompanied by an in-depth interview with its creator.
Here are a few photos from my interview:
And here's a link to my featured comix, a crop of which made the cover.
PROJECT OLDBOOK trudging along, around the midway point now. Really need to move faster though.
Very early on in the project, the idea of something AI-based was suggested. But no, I ended up going in the absolute polar opposite direction with the most tactile and labor intensive thing imaginable for some reason.
Masochistic tendencies probably.
Drew and designed this cover back in 2019, but it wasn't published until late 2022, and I only got my comp copy this year because Walter (Chaw) was so adamant about getting it signed by Walter Hill for me. I'm glad he did, it's a delightful and humbling inscription which I'm keeping private. A fluke at the publishing house seems to have resulted in the absence of my credit though. Oh well. More pix of the book here.
Still recovering from toddler germs, may need another full day to recover. Can't write or draw for shit, so I figured working on [very belatedly] populating the website with projects from the past couple years is a mindless enough task for me to muster. Also getting the new newsletter platform in order. Getting all systems up to speed for optimum operation. There will be quite a bit of that over the next month or so after which I'm hoping for smooth, seamless sailing.
Decision: Will only assign any given day to working on a single project. Shifting gears between several messes with my head too much.
Quite enjoying the degree of experimentation that Project OLDBOOK (pictured) is affording me right now, and it seems to have come at a right time as it is starting to inform how I might handle a particular scene in the next TSG I've been thinking about.
And that is the last TSG script in the bag. The chapter is coming out at 48 pages, quite a lot, but certain scenes need to breathe and as much as I'd like to be done with the thing sooner rather than later—something a smaller page-count would certainly help achieve—I just can't find it in my heart to condense it much further. It's mad and beautiful and gloriously demented and I cannot wait to draw it all.
Winds so strong I woke up to find the back door of the house blown wide open. Subzero temperatures expected next week, the annual freak weather incident apparently. Will have to bring all my plants inside, some quite large, and live like a crazy plant daddy for a while.
Scripting/thumbing what may be the most difficult 10 pages of comix I've ever had to conceive of, the last 10 in the very last chapter in THE SOLAR GRID.
I recall upon releasing the very first chapter way back when, and it was considered strange and eccentric. I think this last one will make the first one seem hella conventional (and maybe even boring?) by comparison. Shit gets weird, not because I want it to necessarily, it just kinda happened this way. Will try to wrap these up today, eager to get back to penciling pages.
A few years ago, I was so attracted to the idea of developing comix the same way one might've gone about making a French New Wave film; conceiving of the story as you're working on the actual pages. In essence, thinking of the making of the comix page itself as part and parcel of the writing process. Comix as writing, there's something quite sexy about that. But now I wonder if it might be better to actually write the whole thing out first. Not outline, but properly write the whole thing.
Not so sure about scripting it out though, that might be too boring and time-consuming of an endeavor. Perhaps write it all down in prose like one might go about any prose story. I'm sure there's an argument to be made that if it's a good prose story, it must be good in comix (with necessary adaptive measures employed). Although the opposite isn't necessarily true; can't imagine MAUS or SCOTT PILGRIM or anything by Chris Ware working strictly in prose. And that's a good thing, doing with comix what only comix can do. Which probably means that by going prose first, you're likely to come up with something that may not tap into the full potential of the comix medium.
But it would be the safer thing to do, having your entire story fully locked in before drawing anything.
