○ under the haystack ○

○ along comes a sunday ○

4 April 2011

you’re looking at our new coffee table, in our new digs. our new “office chair” came in the most luxurious cardboard box we have ever encountered; we weren’t about to leave it out in the snow. the table holds itself together without recourse to fasteners or adhesives of any kind, and stores place-mats and video game controllers beneath its surface. we are so impressed with ourselves as to be nearly insufferable.

○ spring, as is its habit, hovers fitfully between imminence and and actuality. which means, of course, the 2011 mocca festival is upon us. for those who have never attended, the event gathers small press and self-publishing artists from around the world to blow your mind with their diverse approaches to visual storytelling. i’ll be there with my comics and the much-heralded zinester’s guide to nyc, as well as prints of the illustrations i contributed to the book. i’ll be sharing table i8 with mr. josh shalek of falling rock fame, one of many favorite artists coming to town for the occasion. there will be many favorites more we are yet to discover. it’s almost too much awesomeness to handle.

2011 mocca festival
saturday & sunday, april 9th & 10th
11 a.m. – 6 p.m.
lexington armory (68 lexington avenue b/w 25th & 26th)
comics!

○ we have reason to be excited. for one, comics creator, scholar, and teacher matt madden informs us that he happened upon some of our oubliette comics (presumably in the best american submissions box (where, we must further presume, they were left for his discovery by neil) ) and has made an assignment out of the folded format. whispers say that a boat-load of these babies will be on display at the festival this weekend. we’re hoping to procure some for our foldy comics repository.

in the mean time, josh shalek has posted a brief and unflattering biography of a pop-philosophy icon to the site. and while we, easily-astounded radiolab devotees that we are, continue, against the current tide of popular opinion, to be quite fond of mr. gladwell, even we have to admit that this caricature is inspired.

○ some calculate the proximity of better weather by observing the domestic habits of groundhogs; we know spring is nigh when matthew and robbi crawl out of their barn. we’ve passed the time since the misleadingly branded idiots’ last appearance reading their new daily affirmations for realists, an ambitious year-long page-a-day project for those cynics among us who nonetheless long to be uplifted. with mocca nigh, they’re headed to town in a minivan full of whatever it is they’ve been up to since we saw them last. we’re not certain what that is, but we’ve never yet been disappointed.

○ rumour has it even schultz librarian caitlin mcgurk, brooklyn’s prodigal zinester, will be back in town. since she left us to catalogue comics amidst the trees and snow, we’ve been tearing through her various guest-bloggings like nicotine patches, like her four-part series on her uniquely awesome job over at the desk set. our sources tell us she’s whipping up a new anthology of sequential goodness, to be made available this weekend.

○ it’s been some time, we know. we’ve been busy with things. moving, again, and aging. and the confluence of the two inspired all manner of time-consuming revelation.

for starters, we don’t find this stuff amusing anymore. we’ve always been proud and regretless renters. we love that when the boiler breaks, or the ceiling caves in, or the oven goes, it’s someone else’s problem. getting out of bed and remembering to tie our shoes are responsibility enough, particularly when both are required on the same morning. we’re not eager to add any more things to our list. when we fuck up the paint job, or drill holes in the wrong spots, we remind ourselves that we’re only here for another year or two anyway. and when the sidewalks and bars and markets start to fill up with strollers, we take comfort in knowing we can always up and leave before things get too bleak. we’re not about to join our local tea party or anything, but we value our freedom.

the renter’s life, of course, is not without its constraints. how is it we never really noticed them? and why have we now suddenly taken note? it was the thirty-six boxes of books, perhaps, or the fourth-story walk-up, or maybe just the general we don’t feel like it. we bequeathed to our former landlord those improvements that he did not wish us to undo. and as we primed over the rest, we couldn’t help noticing all the improvements we hadn’t made, the good ideas stillborn due to the impracticality of investing in what isn’t yours. and it occurred to us, for the first time, that we’d like a home. a real home, for keeps.

○ a home, it turns out, is not the sort of thing one comes by simply by desiring it. this may be obvious to you, dear reader, but it had never occurred to us to consider the means by which homes are had. it was one of many worries we’ve been happy to leave to others.

like cheating at a maze, we’ve tried to trace this path from its end point to its logical beginning, and concluded we’ll have to have a career. in truth, we already have one of those; we’ve just been reluctant to admit to it. alas, aging is compromise.

○ so: we give you boy blue & co., a repository of the things we make for money, a shameless self-promotion, a crassly commercial endeavor, but one that we hope, despite its meager profitability, continues to serve our broader project of filling the world with stuff that doesn’t suck. the stuff, in this case, is web sites and their trappings (illustrations, logos, and such). we like to think ours don’t look like anyone else’s. they tend to work better, too.

among them you will find an online meeting place for progressive activists, a gallery of elegant and disquieting paintings, and the work of a stellar boutique video production house. because we much prefer taking on projects to taking on jobs, our involvement in many of these sites goes well beyond design and code. some feature our drawings and photographs, others, copy we’ve crafted, and we’ve been known to contribute to blogs we build. in a number of cases, we’ve built people’s web identities from the ground up. we can’t help it; we love helping people make things.

○ like all confessions, our business site is attended by a kind of relief. like a table crafted from a cardboard box, it is a container for our clutter, and a platform, fashioned from what’s available, upon which we can draw.

notebook concerning sunday update ○ 4 comments

○ rocks will fall ○

1 April 2011

three aprils ago, on an unexpectedly sunny day in portland, oregon, i first made the acquaintance of the strange and lovable creatures that inhabit falling rock national park. from behind my table at the stumptown comics festival i thumbs-uped a passing gent with a tidy ginger beard and an obama t-shirt. he approached and asked if i’d liked to trade a copy of tick for a collection of his daily comic strip, bound in a small volume bearing a striking resemblance to the iconic mass-market edition of allen ginsberg’s howl, only without the “h.”

the owl in question, of course, was carver, who quickly became my favorite libertarian (although i confess the competition for this title is not particularly fierce). josh’s comics were a shot of soul into a cold, market-tested, vector-based world. his characters didn’t make pop-culture references or say shocking things to get your attention. there was no forced “edginess” or cynical appeal to any particular readership demographic. like many of my favorite stories, these took place in some improbable limbo between childhood and adulthood (the kind of place that, as a kid, i longed to find, and have spent my adult life attempting to inhabit). the characters, not unlike the muppets, can’t take care of themselves, yet still manage to care for each other. they’re consistently funny, which is no small feat for a daily strip, but more importantly, they have heart.

if you aren’t familiar with falling rock, it is likely because of these merits. unlike many of his contemporaries, josh does not tailor his work to procure a particular audience; he just makes an honest, idiosyncratic, lovely little comic, day after day, and allows its readers to come to it. the difference, i assure you, is staying power: josh is building something that will last, a timeless and memorable menagerie that gets under your skin and never leaves. we devoted readers get to watch him craft this world in real-time. you don’t want to miss it.

○ all of which is to explain why, when i first discovered josh’s tradition of inviting guest artists to concoct an april fool’s day strip, i resolved to one day receive such an invitation. today it is my pleasure to report that “doing a falling rock guest strip” is the second major life ambition i can cross off my list (the first, of course, was convincing a foxy hipster chick to gay-marry me):

○ i dread the day, surely not far off, when josh’s fans begin compiling “which falling rock inhabitant are you” quizzes on their various social networks. despite our political differences, i’m certain i’ll come up carver every time. it is most apparent when i table with josh at festivals, as i will next weekend at mocca. if you stop by, you’ll be able to witness first hand life imitating art: josh will be tall, soft-spoken, sweet, and unpretentious, unflappable in the face of my small, curmudgeonly, gratuitously honest self.

but carver gives me hope there’s a lovable version of me, if only i can draw it out.

illustration, notebook concerning recommended reading ○ comment

○ first fest in the second city ○

31 March 2011

i just got back from my maiden voyage to the proverbially* windy city and the unexpected delights of the second annual chicago zine fest. on the floor, i had the opportunity to introduce my patient civilian hosts mad dogg and travis to the work of some favorite third-coast artists, including aaron renier, laura park, neil brideau (one of the fest’s organizers), and lilli carre, whose beautiful new double-sided mini of the essence tells the brief story of a long life, twice.

other notable finds:

○ papercutter fifteen, like the fourteen papercutters that preceded it, is a small, handsomely produced volume full of unexpected treasures from tugboat press. in this issue, jonas madden-connor grounds his sci-fi in greek mythology, melinda boyce losslessly compresses the path from childhood to adulthood into seven simple self-portraits, and man can drew weing ink.

○ tuesday bassen‘s beautiful illustrations combine a 70′s-alternative-comics-grotesqueness with an early-craig-thompson-in-nickelodeon-magazin-ish adorableness in a way i wouldn’t have thought possible. i am kicking myself for not making my way to her table to trade.

○ the second shuteye comic from sarah becan contains the enigmatic story, told in collaboration with her brother david, of a man who, like dorian gray, finds an unusual place to keep his secrets.

○ dead dynasty; a collection of thanatopses from a man-cub named mowgli.

i somehow missed the memo about the “out of this world” afterparty’s semi-formality, but it was okay; i still managed to get down. neil and i took turns.

○ in a small, ceremonial effort to bridge the divide between the high and low art worlds, i also made an ambassadorial visit to the art institute. i could write much more than anyone would care to read about their diverse and historically significant collection, but will instead merely confess that, while i had thought myself extensively familiar with whatever monets they might have hanging, i was not. i was, of course, familiar with prints of most. but monet was not a printmaker. he was a painter, in the truest sense of the word; he loved paint and light in equal measure.

[ ceci n'est pas un monet.
collection: art institute of chicago ]

those of us who endeavor to make comics are perhaps prone to overlook the distinction. our work is not finished until a machine has mimicked it; the reproduction is itself the final product. but a painting reprinted is, in even the best cases, a vague shadow of the work it describes, and a monet, no matter how exhaustively reproduced, remains a wonder to behold.

[ * although, lest anybody tell you this moniker refers solely to the corruption of the region's political machinations, allow me to assure you that lake michigan produces no small velocity of literal wind ]

notebook concerning recommended reading ○ 2 comments

○ for lost time ○

12 October 2010

yesterday i turned thirty. if there’s one thing for which three decades has not been enough time it’s anything. also, naps.

so i decided to take the day off, and spend it with my best friend [ see above ].

○ tomorrow, i leave for california. i’ll be exhibiting at san francisco’s alternative press expo on saturday and sunday, october 16-17th, alongside neil brideau, josh shalek, and reid psaltis. stop by table 558 [ see below ] and we’ll talk about how awesome comics are. also, our cats.

sketchbook ○ one comment

○ on cohabiting with a food blogger ○

17 September 2010

prints of this comic (in its original configuration; it required a bit of reformatting to be legible here in ‘blogland) are available below. they’re guaranteed to make your kitchen at least 63% more adorable.

the recipe for the chocolate chip cookies in the last panel can be found, along with those for countless other confections, over at afternoons in tablespoons. it’s guaranteed to make your life 116% more delicious. if used in conjunction with a thanksgiving gathering, it is guaranteed to make your republican uncle consider, however fleetingly, the possibility that you may not be entirely devoid of value.

happy autumn.

signed “beep” print • 11″ x 14″ cardstock • color
$10 (plus $4 shipping) • ships within a few days