Sunday Morning Review of Books...

...and comics.

Well, at least an overview of some recent and upcoming publications that may be of interest to some of you.

An opening morning thought (compliments of HomeyM, thanks, Homey!):

"The creative process is a process of waiting, trusting, acting, it has a deep wisdom, if we will surrender to it. The power of the unconscious rises to the page. It can be frightening. It is difficult. But it is in the vitality of this struggle between the writer and the word that we can create transformative work. Each book I have written has transformed me in the process. I write myself to the other side of my question..."

- Terry Tempest Williams

This past Friday, Charlito and Mister Phil

of the popular podcast venue Indie Spinner Rack

visited the Center for Cartoon Studies and interviewed yours truly at great length; that'll be online soon. As CCS fellow faculty member Robyn Chapman points out, Indie Spinner Rack has been a great supporter of CCS -- "they are donating half of the profits from their upcoming anthology to CCS," Robyn says -- and they are excellent promoters. Charlito is also a fellow XQB (Kubert School graduate), and it so happens we first met and he was a student there when I visited the school and presented an early version of the ever-expanding Journeys Into Fear: A History of Horror Comics slide show lecture.

Anyhoot, among the many things Charlito and Mister Phil grilled me about was "Why isn't there any new Bissette comics?," a question touched upon ad infinitum here from time to time. Which leads me to this morning's subject:

My work appears in a number of new comics and books! Here's a quick review of those goodies, now out and/or about to hit the shelves:

* Rick Veitch's King Hell Press is just releasing Rick's new anthology Shiny Beasts; for more relevant info, memories and details, and a peek at the story and artwork I had a hand in that appears in this anthology, check out

this previous blog posting,

and this one,

and then there's this, too! All worth visiting or revisiting.

Best of all, though, is Rick's own preview section he's posted online, here!

* The latest issue of Bob McLeod's magazine Rough Stuff #4 features an illustrated overview of some of my Swamp Thing pencils, with insights by yours truly, and best of all a lengthy illustrated interview with my venerable amigo and fellow Swamp Thing vet John Totleben. Pick it up, and pronto -- it's on the shelves now, or you can order your copy immediately

at the TwoMorrows publisher website.

I wrote about this issue on the blog

here

and here, including art, links, etc. of interest and delivering some immediate gratification and eye-candy delights.

* So much for vintage Bissette -- there's new stuff, too. here's the upcoming (shipping in May!) Accent UK Zombies anthology, for which I drew a cover, some interior spot illustrations, and completed a brand-new four-page Edward-Gorey like humor piece working with my son Daniel Bissette,

which I first announced here,

discussed at some length here,

blathered more about with this post,

and provided bios for the anthology's fellow contributors here.

That Zombies also features some stories and art by Center for Cartoon Studies students is a plus in my book, too!

I'm not sure if this anthology is going to make it over to the US, so best you check out

the Accent UK site and see about ordering your copy online, just in case.

I'll be posting more info, links, and tidbits on Zombies -- and the planned US followup, featuring much all-new work (including new material by yours truly!) -- later this coming month and spring. Keep your eye on this blog!

* In stores right now is the third (and, alas, final) issue of Mark Martin's most recent anthology Runaway Comics

which prints the complete version of "Blog Opera," the amazing story featuring me, Steve Bissette, trying to rescue my friend Mike Dobbs's severed head, which I previewed here

(lifting the images from Mark Martin's marvelous blog "Jabberous," which is forever linked on the menu at your immediate right), and which places me at last in the Brain That Wouldn't Die pantheon I secretly forever longed to belong to.

Thanks, Mark! Do I give head as well as I take head? You'll have to buy Runaway Comics #3 to find out!

I also have a teeny, tiny li'l drawing that's part of Mark's eye-popping back cover painting,

and you can find out the secrets of this back cover painting here, including my part in it -- scroll down the menu at the left Mark has created, and click on the contribution by everyone Mark invited to "come draw with me!" (which is also covered -- pun intended -- in the pages of Runaway Comics #3)!

So, don't hesitate, run right out today and pick up your copy of Runaway Comics #3! While you're at it, get Runaway Comics #1 and 2, too -- all great, fun reading -- and all available

here, where you can also preview every issue as well, right now.

Check 'em out, and tell Mark I sent you.

* I've also written the introductions for two new graphic novel collections -- one a partial reprint extensively revised and expanded into a whole new graphic novel, the other reprinting for the first time a seminal body of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle work by Michael Zulli. Both, though, are well worth picking up, and pronto!

If you scroll down a bit, you'll find my writeup of Michael Zulli's excellent TMNT: Soul's Winter here,

and you can order a copy here (with Michael's exquisite & exclusive signed bookplate as a bonus)!

* The amazing new graphic novel I proudly scribed an intro for is Rob Walton's masterpiece Ragmop, which doesn't "just" collect the existing pair of Ragmop series from the mid-1990s -- don't believe those know-it-all online putzes and pundits who claim otherwise.
Ragmop, the book, is not a reprint edition -- Rob completely revised, revamped, redrew, rewrote, and expanded the whole into a complete, self-standing and mighty hilarious satiric epic that is hands-down one of my favorite graphic novels of all time!

Here's Rob's blog and site, always worth a visit (on a regular basis),

and here's where you must immediately go and purchase a copy of Ragmop with the limited edition signed color bookplate -- no, right now. No excuses.

You think I refer to something as "my favorite graphic novel of all time" lightly?

So, there. Some new Bissette, some old Bissette -- all in print now, and in comics shops and bookstores now.

Now, I personally know how many of you did (and most of all how many didn't) order my son Dan's zine Hot Chicks Take Huge Shits last year, with my first-ever all-new comic story of the Millennium. A vast yawn greeted Dan and I with that little wonder. There's a stack of 'em signed sitting here in the SpiderBaby backstock; Dan was so discouraged with the cosmic indifference to his first effort he damn near killed himself -- good thing I talked him down out of that tree. That's right -- and it would have been your fault!

You don't really care whether I draw comics again, you just like to gripe about it, and expect me to post whatever I do online so you can dig it for free. Well, I'm on to your little game. I can just glance over at the huge stack remaining of Hot Chicks Take Huge Shits and I know what's what.

So get out there, or just click your fucking mouses, and buy the books and comics above. They're all great! I'll know if you did or didn't, bunky. Quit whining about my not doing anything and go buy 'em all, or leave me alone!

_____________________

On another matter all together, which Ragmop creator Rob Walton and I talked about during his visit here, and which Clan Apis and The Sandwalk Adventure creator (and biologist) Jay Hosler had a lot to say about during his visit to CCS, check out the comments on yesterday's blog posting for a lengthy comeback from Luke Przybylski about

this Easter blog posting, which I still stand by (your writing still played to the prejudices I noted, Luke).

I've replied in kind in the same comment thread, so check that out, too, and feel free to weigh in

(and feel free to read the local article in this recent post, too -- scroll down past the Grindhouse writeup -- as followup; that goes for you, too, Luke!).

Happy to talk about it, if anyone wishes to.

______________________

And this just in, Naomi Wolf's sobering Guardian story about how we're currently perceived overseas, and justifiably so.

Thanks to Tim Lucas for the link -- and y'all have a good Sunday, now, y'here?

Back From the Grave...

You can't keep a Blog Zombie down!

Well, not for long.

Yep, thanks to the collaborative exchange of info/media/scans between my respective computer gurus Jane Wilde (of Absolute Computing Solutions in Marlboro, VT) and web cartoonist extraordinaire and early founding member of the extended & growing White River Junction/Center for Cartoon Studies cartooning community

Cayetano Garza aka 'Cat,'

thanks to whom my long-under-construction and long-overdue-for-revamping website will at last be up (gulp) this week!

Cat is now my computer guru, and you have him to thank for today's blog being up and running at last. We've got a lot planned, and will be posting info, links, and opening up the long-overdue Bissette website -- keep your eye out here, and all praise Cat! He's been making web comics since 1996, and he's a demigod in this old-timer's book.

That's a lot of back from the grave, eh?

________________

For those of you starving for Bissette comics work, there's a batch of stuff coming up and out -- but for now, suffice to note that Rick Veitch just sent me the first comp copy of his new King Hell anthology Shiny Beasts, which I previewed for ya

here

and here.

The book is gorgeous, and our collaborative Epic effort "Monkey See" never looked better (26 years out of print!), and there's also Rick and Alan Moore's long out-0f-print Epic collaboration to savor, too (including it's revelatory Bissette cosmic-VD panel) and Rick's afterword with vintage photos of his old hippy self (and Totleben and Bissette, in their younger years). A terrific package, if I may say so myself!

Rick dropped by the house last weekend to pick up the oldest Veitch & Bissette "Creative Burnouts" art in my flat files -- including our first ever collaboration, drawn up on our Kubert School drawing boards in September 1976! -- and Rick is planning an upcoming anthology featuring all our collaborative work. But that's later, folks -- Shiny Beasts is out now.

Shiny Beasts is shipping to comic shops pronto, and I'll post more on this blog once I know it's in stores and online. You might want to hold out, though, for buying the book via PaneltoPanel.net, as Rick, Alan Moore and I are currently signing signature sheets for PaneltoPanel's special promo of Shiny Beasts -- more info on that (and sales link) soon!

_________________

This-here blog has been down the entire week of the White River Indie Film festival, which is too bad -- I had scribed and was planning to post a day-by-day diary of the event, and promote the hell out of it.

Alas, bandwidth issues decided otherwise, and WRIF ends this very weekend -- today and tomorrow. My panels and such ended last night (more on that later this week, as time permits).

Still, if you're in the area, as in today and tomorrow,

WRIF's current weekend lineup boasts some of the festival's best films (scroll down to the listings and info for April 28 and 29),

including a zinger Iraq War double-feature of The War Tapes and

Iraq in Fragments (which I wrote up here),

followed by panel discussion; the gender-issue one-two punches of Freeheld and Georgie Girl, likewise followed with lively panel discussion;

Adrian Grenier's Shot in the Dark and his short film Euthanasia (which I blogged about here),

(and the lingering possibility that Grenier himself may show up, live and in person); and more.

Best of tonight's offerings, to my mind, is the African film Bamako, which I reviewed

on this very blog during our screening process (scroll down a bit to that writeup),

though I've no doubt the two most popular films of the fest may prove to be tonight's showings of Brick (reviewed in the same post as Bamako; see link, above) and The Devil and Daniel Johnston, which is one of my son Dan's favorite films.

Sunday's program offers an intense lineup of "First Person" documentaries, including a panel on the genre. There's a lot of intensive scrutiny of abuses of power in these films, too: The Forest for the Trees,

the excellent Strange Culture (which I reviewed here),

the riveting Hand of God, and the 5:15 PM show of Sacrificial Lambs, which I will be introducing, followed by a panel with filmmaker Ed Dooley, Norwich Selectwoman and farmer Suzanne Lupien, the Faillace family, and farmer Doug Flack. Now, that should be a lively session! Tomorrow's program also includes

51 Birch Street

and the evening begins with the marvelous

Absolute Wilson (Bissette review here)

and concludes with the amazing documentary Jesus Camp (my review, and some blistering fundamentalist comments, here; scroll down to the goodies).

Sorry I didn't have this venue available to promote all this past week's wonderful films and events, but c'est la vie. If you can come this weekend, see you there!

_________________________

My ol' pal Mark Martin has been posting some great vintage Mark Martin comics, art and stories on

his blog "Jabberous,"

and that's a perpetual treat.

His latest excavation has yielded a complete MM parody of Harvey Comics's venerable bowler-derbied spook Spooky,

Dooky, who's short-but-sweet adventure begins here. Then click on over to

Dooky's page the second,

Dooky's penultimate panic, and

Dooky's ass-blasting last hurrah (and more)!

Now, tell me that ain't funny. Kudos to you, Mark, and here's hoping for a complete Harvey Comics parody comic from you one day!

Everyone in comics knows about Dan Clowes's Harvey parody in Eightball, but this has been a rich vein of comics satire for ages, and it would be a corker of a book if someone would brave the legal hurdles and put them all together into one fat tome. My old XQB pal and vet Taboo contributor Tom Foxmarnick had cooked up a hilarious satire of Hot Stuff a loooong time ago, which I still fondly remember. Rick Veitch and I once roughed out a Harvey parody of our own (back in 1979) intended for Dr. Wirtham's Comix and Stories which we entitled "Li'l MicroDot," in which our version of Harvey's beloved dot-obsessed li'l girl character was tripping her brains out and finally, in desperation, grabs the phone to call for help, only to space out on -- the little holes in the receiver! As she is mesmerized by this miniature landscape of uniform holes, a clutch of tiny Art Linkletters pop out of them all, screaming "Don't jump, MicroDot! Don't jump out the window!"

Well, it was funny to us in 1979. We never drew it, though, so it remains a layout in one of my sketchbooks, which ain't funny.

____________________

What really ain't funny, and has prompted me at last to turn off the fucking news by yesterday AM, is

the utterly spineless news coverage of President Bush's latest pathological projection of blame -- it's just too infuriating for words -- isn't anyone going to call this latest GOP shell game for what it is?

Bush and Cheney and their corrupt cabal have manipulated their budgets year after year by keeping the genuine cost of the war(s) off the table, and out of their annual budget -- it's at last caught up with them. Is anyone really falling for Bush's bullshit? Cheney, per usual, is even more reprehensible in his rhetoric; I have never, ever so loathed a public figure in my life. The man is evil incarnate; typical of our times, he was keynote speaker at the Brigham Young University graduation recently. Now, there's religious values for you.

I am so aching for any coverage of this current "showdown" to confront the core issue -- the President and Vice President's false budgeting of this war, by persistently not budgeting for these war, by absolutely refusing to budget for these wars -- for what it truly is: the consequences of this President's ongoing strategic shell game.

These two bastards don't give a flying fuck for our troops -- they created this horrorshow, they have abused the military and military families every step of the way (note this week's Pentagon hearings), they created this current standoff by refusing to responsibly budget for and truly wage the war they claim our very lives depend upon, and they are the lowest slime to ever hold the highest office in our country in US history.

Have a great weekend, one and all --

So, This Arrived in the Ol' Email...

...and I held off saying anything for a few days, if only to

milk the prankster till his little tittie bled.

(BTW, nice to be back, and thanks for all the kind birthday wishes.)

What Mark Martin Wants,
Mark Martin Gets

(except for Condi)

You want an explanation for this image,

visit Mark Martin's glorious website and go exploring.

I'm just realizing what was apparently his fondest wish one morning -- January 14th, 2007, to be exact. Sorry it took so long, Mark, but I really had to get that Pan's Labyrinth review done first!

But -- What About My Head?

And, a recap (redecap?) of Mark Martin's glorious Blog Opera, which was serialized

at Mark's magnificent blog, "Jabberous," late last year.

All this sturm und drang, then -- nada.

My head, abandoned, in midair, like Tyrant's sibling on Eggsucker's tongue. Forever dangling, dangling.

I am crestfallen (pun intended).

Here's the sequence, in total, depicting my vain effort to save my dear amigo G. Michael Dobbs (aka Mike Dobbs aka Mayo Blot) -- well, his head, anyway. My greatest disappointment: no Brain That Wouldn't Die in-jokes. Read it and weep.

Panel the First

Panel the Second

Panel the Third

Panel the Fourth

...and t-t-t-that's all, folks!

PS: Note Mark's and Mike's ongoing revulsion at

my papers and collections at Henderson State University and the HUIE Library Special Collections.

It's a constant dig (in more ways than one!), but one I know that comes from profound and malingering envy. Mark's papers were to be stored at the Clinton Library in nearby Little Rock, Arkansas, but that fell through -- and with President Bush reclassifying declassified materials, it's likely Mark's highly-sensitive papers will be forever buried, perhaps with him.

Anyhoot, since I've linked to all Mark's online universe, it's only appropo

I do the same for Mike, kicking off with his venerable "Out of the Inkwell" blog,

bopping over to his "That's Thirty" journalism site,

and winding up at his ongoing Fleischer Brothers book-in-progress blog, "Made of Pen and Ink."

Mike's papers are -- well, out weekly. In Massachusetts. Five of 'em. That he edits. Weeklies. Got it?

I'm outta here -- more later!

A Revised Pan's Labyrinth review for Mark, Per His Comment...

Pan's Labyrinth:
Me like.
You wrong.

Oh, and Rush is a complete dink.