God and the Devil at War in the Garden

New Book Coming Soon

This ran in the Times yesterday...

in the letters section accompanying a couple pieces about the Spanish abdication.

Todd Baxter for Spoon

Last time I was in L.A. visiting my friend Todd he was hard at work on a series of photos for the band Spoon. The work is partly inspired by a certain strain of 70's psychological thrillers... think Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Carrie. They just put up a teaser for the project here. Or click below.

Some stuff I picked up at CAKE last weekend

Sara Drake had this funny, beautiful, creepy risograph comic about something terrible happening in a museum. It's wordless and there's some wonderful off-camera action sequences and great use of panels in a way I don't think I've ever seen. It's called Tipu's Tiger. I'm hoping for a sequel.

This is a spread from a little biological dream love comic by Ines Estrada.

On my way into the show Laura Perez-Harris handed me this crazy anthology/experiment-in-book-design, which has an interview with me in it. There's some great looking stuff in it including a novel approach to the problem of making a comic bilingual. It involves printing the translation in black and white ink on a transparency to match the word balloons, which is then bound into the book. Ingenious (not pictured).below are Alicia Galer,  Jason Estrin, and Mickey Z

Anya Davidson made a crazy sci-fi pulp love story called Needle Dick:

Michael Deforge sketchbook zine:

Laura Park worked magic on a matchbook cover for me:

And I picked up the new David B book from Uncivilized. It was a good show. Lots of stuff is not pictured including the mock-up Zak Sally was showing off of the not quite finished Recidivist 4. stay tuned about that.

Ratko Ikic

On Saturday morning I had breakfast with Nick and Nadine of Sonnenzimmer. Afterward, on the way South to CAKE we were distracted by a row of huge, colorful paintings leaning up against a wrought iron fence on Ashland avenue. We immediately pulled over for a better look and ended up talking to the artist, Ratko Ikic. He didn't have much English and none of us speak... Bosnian? So very little was really communicated (he has a book of English Castles that he references... and that's about all I got). These are a few of the paintings. They are kind of stunning.

Clearly he's self taught, I'm guessing he came to painting late in life. But they really had a pretty amazing, idiosyncratic sense of mood and light and color. And the guy is ambitious. They were big. And there were a lot of them. It was pretty amazing in about six different ways at once.

That's him in the cowboy hat. He's got a gallery/studio at 4036 N Ashland. Go knock on his door if you're curious. He might actually try to give you one.

CAKE satellite show?

Cut Fold Crumple Paste is up through CAKE. And four of the artists are cartoonists. Is there really such a thing as coincidence? Come check it out because after that its gone forever. Work by Emilie Plateau, Sara Drake, Kayla Risko, Cheryl Weaver, Lilli Carre, and Marijpol (all pictured) as well as Stephen Eichhorn and Diana Guerrero-Maciá. Lula Cafe, 2537 N Kedzie Blvd, Chicago.

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I just did the cover for the first publication of student writing from the Mid-continent Oceanographic Institute – the new 826 chapter here in the twin cities (formerly the Rock Star Supply co.).

Here's a sample. Order a copy and support the MOI. They're doing great work.