X in time for Justmas

I'm back from the road and beginning to regain my equilibrium. Very nice to be home (for a second – tomorrow I head up to Minneapolis to see family and to attend the Minneapolis Indy Expo). I've still got a bunch of stuff to post from the road, but I also just put a few new things up at the store:

For the signing I did in Brooklyn at Desert Island Gabe asked me to put together a small zine or print to have as a giveaway with the book. I told him he was crazy, I had no time and wasn't a six hundred page graphic novel and 30 city book tour enough? Geez. And then about a week before I left I got inspired and decided he was right, what a good idea. Wasn't he surprised when, with no time to spare I sent him a 24 page zine of outtakes, process pages and various other related material that wasn't published anywhere else. And I demanded that he print the cover in color. And he actually got it done. Bless that man. This is the result.
      Included are images of some matchbooks I made to go with issue #3 and the strip I did during a workshop at the DH Lawrence ranch in 1996 that includes the first appearance of the birds anywhere ever and the germ of the story that would eventually turn into BQ. Completely unbeknownst to me at the time. And a bunch of other stuff. 24 pages, on newsprint, 7" x 8.5".

At Pierre Feuille Ciseaux one of the first things we did was a group collaboration to make a screenprinted book on the subject of the Twelve Tasks of Hercules. The edition was only large enough for the participants to each get one (man, they were beautiful, sorry folks!). But I like Hercules (image of his Ascent to Mount Olympus with Sock and Office Chair, here) and so I couldn't shake the theme. I ended up doing this print as well. I gave most of them away to the other artists, printers and support staff, but I have 15 or so to spare. 2-colors, 12" square, edition of 55.

And lastly:

I made these Trading Cards a few months back as a sort of promotional give-away kind of thing. I sent small stacks to stores that ordered The Game, and put cards in orders from here. I sent a stack to Drawn & Quarterly to do with as they saw fit as well. I also made a few full sets to sell on the road for gas money. I'm going to make one last batch a little later this month. I'm taking orders starting now so I know how many to make (they're a little labor intensive to print, cut and wrap). There are 24 individual cards, representing a few more characters than are on the flaps of the book, and several of the vignettes are different. the paper stock is the thickest, chunkiest, acid-free art paper I can jam through my friend's high-res, six-color, archival ink printer. Action shots on the back. Sorry – no chewing gum. These won't ship until around November 25th. But that gives you all kinds of time before Christmas, kids.