Book Tour

I will be at the Boston and Providence stops. Won't you join me?

Girls and Flowers and Horror and Whatnot

Ugh, I lose at blogging. It is in no way represented here that I have been working on comics all year. But I have! And now one of them is finished.
For all the whimsy depicted here, this turns into a horror story. Find out how! "Imaginary Friend" appears in Dark Corners, a forthcoming anthology from I Know Joe Kimpel. It's set to debut at SPX and will then be available to order from the IKJK website and comic shops that stock this sort of thing (more on that soon).

Dark Corners also features horror stories by the very talented cartoonists Denis St. John, Jeff Lok and Mario van Buren, and some pretty spectacular drawings by Steve Bissette. Holy crap yes! This is pretty cool, eh Imaginary Friend?

Oh.

spineless

Behold! The imaginary friend story is still in the works, but in the meantime I have made a creepy loser collection. This is the almost-final cover:

This collects a whole bunch of my comics - old and new, including a couple of never before seen pages from Dead Air #3! Putting them all together is actually kind of uncomfortable...there are certain ideas that show up over and over again that don't paint the rosiest picture of the cartoonist. Lonely, self-absorbed girls, lonely, self-absorbed monsters, fun poked at consumer culture and also fun poked at people who poke fun at consumer culture...people who watch while their friends are devoured by monsters...

Here's a sampling of random panels, somewhat inexpertly scanned for full effect:








In any case I had fun making this. I think if it says anything about me, it's that I'm a Creepy Loser. From the bottom of my tepid, wishy-washy heart. 

I will have these at MoCCA and afterwards they will be available through IKnowJoeKimpel. The cover has shiny parts.

trust in me

I have started on a new project and it is going to be super duper awesome.

Now, I realize that I make a lot of empty promises here (where are those other invertebrates I asked you to wait for?) and I do change my mind a lot. 

This morning, for example, I decided it was my life's ambition to become the lead singer in a Faith No More cover band. Scarcely a few hours later, I'm already beginning to have my doubts about that.

But I am really really into this project and I WILL see it through. Aside from the drawing above, I am also in the middle of some exciting roughs. Included here, even though they are ugly, illegible and riddled with cliches, because this is how all of my comics begin and it is my favorite part of the whole process.

You can't rightly call it art, and it's not really storytelling either because it doesn't make any sense. 

But it's oddly exhilarating to do - ad-libbing roughs, to me, is the part where the story feels like it's most alive.

My next task is to make it a whole lot better, and figure out how to make it come alive for you.

Man, I love cartooning.

I think I'll go draw worms

There has been altogether too much Loser and not enough Creepy around here lately. My apologies. 

Here are some Earthworm-inspired drawings, with more invertebrates (and better scans!) to come.

Happy belated Halloween.

Trashed

Dead Air got its first random review! This person totally hated it. 

But while reading the review resulted in a shitty day for yours truly, it does mean that someone bought my comics, took the time to read and think about them, composed a review and was even thoughtful enough to post cover images and a link to this here blog. I'm not sure why anyone would follow that link to pick up a comic that has been deemed pure and utter waste-of-time crap, but I kind of appreciate it anyway.

It's Done It's Done It's Done

It's...sorta done. Dead Air #2 is now in printed form and awaiting SPX fun. I made it really small this time - the sort of comic you could hide inside of another comic book and read in secret. 

It means a lot to me to have finished another issue...circumstances surrounding this particular project made working on it feel like having my face shoved repeatedly into a toilet bowl filled with all my faults and failures, only the person doing the shoving is also me.   

And hopefully it is also fun to read! It should be available soon at www.iknowjoekimpel.com or it could be yours for a smile if we cross paths and I have a copy handy. 

thanks to Lauren O'Connell for design help!

Oh yeah, also those pages from the last post ended up in the comic after all. Now you can consider them a preview?