CulturePulp.

'The Un-Inventor' minicomic. Now on sale.

A new short story written by Erik Henriksen, penciled and lettered by yrs. truly, and inked and colored by Bill Mudron.

Henriksen's script tells the story of a chaser of patents who brutally simplifies his life with his newest creation. (And maybe also with drinking.)

12 pages, full color. $3 (plus shipping). For sale online here.

Also available in Portland at these fine brick-and-mortar retailers:

• Excalibur Books & Comics
• Floating World Comics
• Reading Frenzy
• Bridge City Comics
• Books with Pictures
• Cosmic Monkey Comics

 

Tabling at Rose City.

I'm a guest at Rose City Comic Con this weekend (Sept. 19-20), in Booth 813 with my Periscope Studio-mates. (The show floor map is here.) I'll have the following merch on hand:

• Sabertooth Vampire t-shirts, in men's and women's sizes ($15).
• Brand-new editions of the first two "Sabertooth Vampire" minicomics ($4 for Vol. 1, $6 for Vol. 2).
• Sabertooth Vampire die-cut reusable fabric stickers ($3 each) -- I picked up a few prototypes of this when I bought my new booth banner last week. They're crazy-durable -- you can wad them up in your fist and unfold them with no ill effects.
• "Pete and Brucilla" and double-sided "Super Cosplay Dance Party" prints, with custom envelopes ($5 each).
• "Sabertooth Vampire vs. Barista" postcards, made in collaboration with my friends at Barista (free!).

Also, barring some sort of con wifi disaster, which never ever happens, I'm now set up to accept card payments.

Can't make the show? Most of this stuff is available now on my online store.

State of the Union

Catching up as we lurch into 2015:

• Obviously, I've taken an extended hiatus from writing/talking about movies. On a related note...

• ... I recently joined Periscope Studio, where I've been quietly working on a few comics projects for the past several months. One project is "Sabertooth Vampire" Season 3. Two of the other projects are secret.

• I wrote about my strange relationship with a single copy of Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle for the Uprise Books blog.

• On the final episode of "Welcome to that Whole Thing," I interviewed Cort and Bobby about the end of their 10-year podcasting partnership.

• I made some Lady Killer fan-art.

• I joined Joe Cortright and Adrian Wallace on KBOO's "Words & Pictures" to talk about our educational comic, Clusters and Your Economy.

• Despite my "Live Wire!"-professed ambivalence about all things "Star Wars" nowadays, Bill Mudron keeps having me on his podcast to talk about it.

That's it. More soon.

Lady Killer

Drew some fan-art for Joëlle Jones and Jamie S. Rich's upcoming comic Lady Killer. Colors by Bill Mudron (in hues I can only describe as "Mid-Century Mayhem"). Click to enlarge.

I've read a preview of the first issue and watched Joëlle draw pages at her Periscope desk for months, and I think this is going to be a really special book. Joëlle has found the perfect container for her obsessions with bloody mayhem, retro design, vintage advertising and, weirdly, "101 Dalmations"-era Disney animators. You'll see what I mean in January.

• 'Lady Killer comic book' Tumblr
• Dark Horse Comics blog post on Lady Killer
• Dark Horse info page on Lady Killer #1

 

FREE EBOOK: The Complete 'Opera, Drawn Quickly'

From 2009 to 2012, I drew “live comics adaptations” of Portland Opera productions -- speed-sketching the major story points as they unfolded onstage, then turning the drawings into little comics. “Opera, Drawn Quickly” collects them all. And now you can download it as a free 79-page ebook.

Full backstory after the jump.

Hey hey it's It Girl

Drew a pinup for the back of the upcoming "It Girl & The Atomics: Round Two" trade paperback. Click to enlarge.

Lines by me. Colors by mighty Bill Mudron.

Thanks to Jamie S. Rich for asking me to do this. Been a Mike Allred fan since college (where I once saw him at Kinko's Xeroxing early "Madman" promos), so getting a chance to play around in this universe was a pretty big deal for me personally.

Preorder the "It Girl" Vol. 2 trade: [ TFAW ] [ Amazon ] [ Cheap Graphic Novels ]

(Also posted on my Tumblr, if that's your thing, along with a post containing all the rough drafts.)

Oh, hey, in comic-book stores today

This 2004 CulturePulp comic turns up in the back of David Chelsea's new book Everybody Gets It Wrong! (And Other Stories) -- which collects his stunning 24-hour comics.

(I watched him make one of those 24-hour comics. He used perspective grids and finished three-and-a-half hours early. His discipline was jaw-dropping and sort of humiliating.)

David's book is available via your local comic shop, Amazon and TFAW.

 

Here, have a free comic book. 'Jaxxon's 11,' Volume 1.

 

Here's the free "Jaxxon's 11" Vol. 1 ebook (PDF, 10 MB). And here's the explanation.

In 2003, I had a very silly idea for a comic:

Resurrect the most ridiculous character from the 1970s Marvel "Star Wars" comic books -- a seven-foot-tall green rabbit named Jaxxon -- and have him recruit a middle-aged Han Solo for one last heist.

As a joke, my then-co-worker David Stroup and I hammered out a story while driving back from a coffee shop. (This isn't quite as out-of-the-blue as it sounds -- the coffee shop was two blocks away from the offices of Dark Horse Comics, and we'd just been chatting with one of their editors.)

A few weeks later -- also as a joke -- we pitched it as a webcomic to the world's biggest "Star Wars" fan site.

Sixty-odd pages later, "Jaxxon's 11" remains the single geekiest act of my public life, and that is saying something. I wrote the script, packing it with references to the original Marvel "Star Wars" comics (which I purchased and, between occasional bouts of wincing, read). David added his own gags and drew the pages with a lunatic attention to detail.

Both David and I went through major career changes in 2004. Even though we have a full story outline, progress is sporadic at best. In 2011, I collected everything we'd done so far as a free 72-page ashcan and gave it away at the Stumptown Comics Fest. Now you can download that ashcan as a free PDF.

If you like this sort of thing, I suspect this is the sort of thing you'll like.
_____

Jaxxon's 11, Vol. 1: Eleven Against A Casino! (PDF, 10MB)

'Cort and Fatboy' ends Dec. 7. But hey, at least the book's on sale.

Poster design by The Thomas Wilson.

So yeah,  Cort Webber and Bobby "Fatboy" Roberts have decided to end their five-day-a-week podcast, on which I've appeared most Fridays for the last six-and-a-half years.

I've definitely had some of the Emotions about the announcement. The show changed my life in lots of big and small ways. I'm really going to miss the Midnight Movies, and the show introduced me to pockets of Portland I never would have encountered otherwise.

But I also understand the boys' logic: Better to go out like "Bloom County" than "Peanuts."

Anyway. We're closing out the show on Friday, Dec. 7 with a big fat live performance at the Bagdad featuring all the regular guests. And I'm holding a going-out-of-business sale.

As a thank-you to listeners, "Cort and Fatboy in: The Secret of the Buried Unicorns" -- the world's first and maybe only podcast tie-in storybook -- is now just THREE LOUSY BUCKS at my online store. Made my money back on these a while ago, and there are fewer than 100 left, so if you ever wanted one, now's the time.

• "cortandfatboy is dead" -- Dec. 7, Bagdad Theatre [ buy tickets ]
• Cort and Fatboy in: The Secret of the Buried Unicorns (CulturePulp BigCartel store)

 

If you pick up Dark Horse Presents #15...

.... you may find it contains a single-page comic called "Ride of the Sabertooth Vampire" -- written and drawn by yours truly with colors by Bill Mudron. That is all.

• Dark Horse Presents #15 -- print edition (on sale Weds., Aug. 22)
• Digital edition