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Borrowing (i.e. stealing) from my idol James Jean has gone on long enough. I’ve uploaded a new temporary header (which I hate). Bear with me in that I will probably hate anything that is not my old James Jean header. Now that this temporary one is up and I’m not happy with it, I hope it will motivate me to get a new more permanent version up and running. Stay tuned…
There’s a great article over on the vulture blog about the amazing writer Jhumpa Lahiri. If you’re a fan, or interested in becoming one, check it out.
Matthew Reidsma, an incredibly talented comic strip artist, whose strip High Maintenance Machine is so superior to mine I can’t even explain it, in fact once you visit High Maintenance Machine you’ll probably never come back (sniff sniff), just celebrated his 600th strip last month and is having a little contest for other artists to try a hand at drawing his strip. The deadline was yesterday, and here is my entry. You can also see Paul’s (My Life Comics) entry here.
Please do check out High Maintenance Machine, it is a truly excellent strip.
The Bad Plus will be on Late Night With Conan O’Brien TONIGHT, Friday March 14th. If you want to know what I’ve been raving about over here on 1979 Semi-Finalist make sure to tune in.
I’m so excited to see them on television, and what’s better than Conan? Nothing I say. I’m also seeing them next Saturday at The Blue Note, so I’m feeling especially Bad Plus-y these days, which is a happy feeling to be having.
AND, in yet more Bad Plus news, I wrote to The Bad Plus a few months ago, asking if they minded that I’ve co-opted their song title (The 1979 Semi-Finalist, obviously) for my blog, and I got a nice note yesterday from Ethan letting me know that he had dropped by the blog, liked the comics, and was happy to let me use their song title. Whether they have some kind of actual complicated legal rights to the title I don’t even know, but I’m superfan #1 over here, so I mostly just wanted their stamp of approval.
Now that I’ve got that stamp of approval, you’ll be seeing a new blog header developing sometime soon. It won’t be anywhere near as good as the one I’ve got now, but the one I’ve got now is mostly stolen from genius James Jean and I’ve been feeling guilty about it for ages, so it’s time to move on.
Try not to be TOO disappointed when the new header premieres, okay?
Here is the long awaited (well maybe for me, more than you) Rabid Lamb Logo. I expect it will go through many drafts, but here’s the first one. Huge thanks to Adam for actually designing and drawing the actual rabid lamb…who I am thinking of calling Ham Head…
Here it is, in all its gorgeous glory, the first Rabid Lamb guest strip. Adam tends to be more about beautiful cartooning and artistry and details while I am more about the writing or the “joke”. Sadly, even if I had the skill he does, there is just no way I could measure up to the standard he has set with this strip in a daily comic, there just aren’t enough hours to set aside for it. He has promised to do another one soon though…so feel free to hassle him until he gets it done. Additionally, Adam has a great blog of his own, that is mostly about film, although a few other things slip in there on occasion, which I urge everyone to check out: www.dudehesthestallion.wordpress.com.
Also, coming on Monday, Adam has drawn a great mascot for Rabid Lamb Comics, so I’ll be assembling the new logo over the weekend…it should premiere with Monday’s strip. There are also some book reviews coming up that will post today and over the weekend I think…
Thank you Adam – I LOVE it.
Need help with a creative and unique present for the holidays? Check out my great friend and amazing artist Rebecca Hahn’s Rotobee Shop, she has some really beautiful amazing stuff.
My favorite currently are her horoscope girl prints, a perfect gift for any girl that likes to know about her horoscope, even if she won’t admit it (me!).
My personal favorite (of course) is her Cancer print (pictured above), since that’s my sign, and since the beautiful Rebecca got my very Cancer perspective when designing it. Courtesy of Rebecca I have one of these beautiful prints at my house and can’t wait to get it framed and hung.
I urge you to check out her shop before all the best stuff has been discovered and purchased!
I’ve spent a lot of time on this site talking about comic book artists and cartoonists that I admire and adore, but let us take a moment to talk about one of the (if not THE) most hated comic book artists in all of history, Rob Liefield. I am hesitant to talk about terrible artists, because I consider myself a pretty terrible artist and somehow it just seems a bit mean, however, I currently make $0 on my terrible art and comics while Liefeld has made millions, MILLIONS, which I’m sorry to say, opens him up for some serious criticism. Criticism which has finally found a brilliant and hilarious voice with this “Liefeld Expose” on Progressive Boink.
I, like legions of others, have always hated his art – and let’s not forget that on top of the digusting ridiculous art he also can’t write or plot his way out of a paper bag. Most of us still ended up with a surprising amount of his work in our comic boxes (for me it was X-Force…poor poor X-Force…*sigh*). This is eternally frustrating, especially since I continue to lack the ability to go back in time and correct past mistakes. Anyway, for those who don’t know, not only is Liefeld a complete hack, but he’s also, by all reports, an arrogant ass, and again, he made MILLIONS off us…and is somehow STILL getting work…how is this possible? Check out Progressive Boink, and have some brilliant laughs (my favorite is the bit about the “billions of teeth” on #16 – HA!) and maybe it will help you feel a little better, if you like me, EVER purchased a Liefeld book.
As I’ve mentioned before, Adam is a far superior cartoonist and artist than I am, and he’s been proving it in spades lately as he’s been sketching a lot more these days (I’m not sure who is influencing who at this point, but as long as we’re both more productive, who cares). Below is a little sketch he did of me called Kelly Bunny. It’s a great little drawing (and he was very nice to me, representationally speaking) and he agreed to let me put it up. I’ve been begging for weeks months for him to add comic strip or cartoon content to my blog…so I’ll take what I can get, which in this case, was great.
I’ve been trying to read a lot of daily (or frequently updated) journal web comics produced by some of the great comic artists out there working on the web and I’ve seen a lot of really great stuff over the last couple months – and most importantly really inspiring stuff (Everyday Comics, My Life Comics, to name two of my favorites). However, one has really impressed me, especially lately and it’s a journal comic by Matthew Reidsma called Drawerings. It is a little inconsistent in timing, e.g. it won’t go up daily and then three will go up in one day, but the content (and drawing) is so good that it’s worth checking in daily.
I highly recommend putting it on your daily comic reads.
Here’s a little taste, one of my recent favorites…mostly because it’s so true:
