Zines are fun to make and to read, especially zines about comics. Although I don’t remember how I acquired LADYGUNN at MoCCA, I seem to have it now, so I was interested to see that inside there were interviews with some bigshot comics people such as personal favorite Julie Doucet. LADYGUNN is edited by Koko Ntuen and also has a slick website here. I didn’t see where you could get the printed zine version on the website, but you can probably figure it out by writing Koko. I think this is a cool idea to make a zine both online and in print in the traditional shitty photocopy style that is so dear to my heart, because besides the cheap portability of print that digital will never vanquish, some content is more pleasurable to experience in one format over the other. For example, the hand written letter from Joe Matt is much nicer to read on the page, and the fashion photos are a lot nicer on the screen. Checkitout.
April 21, 2010 – 11:18 am
At MoCCA a great pleasure for me was meeting super-cartoonists Gary Leib and Charles Burns as they were making their way around the room together and came by the Meathaus table. Gary of course created Idiotland with Doug Allen and has recently been animating shorts for the New York Times website. Charles gave me a mini zine type thing called Free Shit with preview art from an upcoming project of his. Above are the cover and two of the three spreads inside. As you can see this is the seventeenth Free Shit issue.
Mike Bertino has a blog and website and was previously mentioned here and here and here. Obviously I’m a fan of the work and Mike’s new comic book Trigger was one of the few I actually managed to pick up at MoCCA during the 15 minutes I wasn’t behind the Meathaus table. It is a super fun b/w book with a few different stories in it, some of which will be serialized in future issues. And though the cover is a psychedelic visual potpourri perhaps leading your expectations that the insides may be similar, the interiors are instead structured stories that utilize the traditional language of comics. It seems strange to point that out, but so many comics eschew panels, stories, comprehensible communication, etc. these days that it is worth noting that you can sit down and read these stories on the crapper and be entertained. It is being put out by Revival House which also put out the previously mentioned Shitbeams On The Loose anthology.
EDIT: Fixed misspelling Mike’s name, dang. Sorry!
And so we begin digging through the comics sack to see what goods were raked in, traded and purchased at the 2010 MoCCA Arts Fest last weekend. Gil Gentile stopped by the table to show off some mini comics called And The Light Comes Out of My Mouth and Teen Witch which were nice and pencil art/photocopy grungy like I like ‘em. Even more instantly accessible to you are the art stashes of Gil’s that I just found online here on his Flickr and his blog portfolio where lots of conceptual objects, synth jams, wooden sculptures and drawings go down. Gil also runs with the Taffy Hips comics crew out of New York. Thanks Gil!
Super cartoonist and cartoon historian Shane Glines recently posted a bit on the genius of Jack Cole’s weirdest, neatest comics such as the above Plastic Man panels that have been hard to find until recently. Via either Steve or Amid’s post on Facebook, I forget, but both are possible and have endless cartoons to eyeball on their websites.
Stine Belden Røed draws mutants, leaves, ships and more with a pencil on Flickr and a partially different selection on the website.
Karin Hagen has drawings and little models of thrash metal guys and so on on her Flickr and website.
Till Thomas draws illustrations and puts out Zirp comics and posts his stuff on Flickr.
Jonny Negron is in Meathaus S.O.S. and has a Flickr collection here.
Felix Diaz Colomina, or “elfelix“, draws bisected viscera with enthusiasm and pilots the ARGH! comics ship.
