So this is weird

My friend Marianne emailed me the other day about something else entirely and mentioned that she'd seen a page from Big Questions reproduced as an artwork in a monograph of the artist William Pope L. I had no idea what she was talking about. I poked around on the internet a bit and found that a print of the page (400, in case you're interested – a nice round number) had been on display in his show, Forlesen, at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago a year and a half ago. On their site it looks like this:

I don't really know quite what to make of this. One thought I had was "I've been Roy Lichtensteined." But that's really not true. Whatever this is, it's not an aestheticization of mass consumer culture (I just liked the idea of turning Lichtenstein's name into a verb). The other main thought I had was: I wish someone had bothered to tell me about it. I'd have liked to have seen the show. From everything I can tell, he's a thoughtful, provocative artist (another piece from the show, a wall of ketchup mixed with joint compound is pictured below). I am very interested in the ways an artwork ceases to belong to the artist when it moves out into the world, how, if it's really successful, ownership transfers, in a very real way, to its audience. And how that phenomenon might conflict with copyright law or with the artist's own self-interest. Meanings in art are never fixed.  Which can be messy. So I like the idea that that page can resonate with unintended meanings in a new context. Part of me feels honored. And yet, being completely honest... well, it's weird to be on the other side of the process. I wrote Mr. L today, so now I'm waiting to hear what he thinks.

In French and German

Above: the new cover for L'association's French edition of Big Questions (apparently "Big Questions in French is "Big Questions") along with one earlier version, a little ex Libris plate for a bookstore in Paris and the new title page for the German edition (Atrium).

Bad at Sports Interview

This Interview I did with Bad at Sports last September just went live. Discussed:

•How drawing comics is like being a preacher
•The kings of Chicago's special brand of Misery Comics
•An awesome comics show at the art institute that you can't go to
•How, when it comes right down to it, I'm actually just @#$%ing with the reader

Also, Duncan calls me out for punishing moral certainty.

Bikini Kill gets things started. A little song I wrote about my troubled early thirties takes us out. My thanks to Duncan and Richard both for a really good conversation.

BOOK TOUR

Just finished printing this poster at Sonnenzimmer on Saturday, and also finalized dates for the Big Questions Book Tour Slide Show and Reading.  The first date is in L.A. at Family next Wednesday, July 20th. Holy $#%@ I still have a lot to do.

So that you needn't turn your monitor on its side (and because this won't in fact work for all you iphone and tablet users) here is a right-side-up version of the schedule:

JULY
20 Family, L.A.*
21-24 Comiccon – San Diego
26 Needles and Pens – SF
27 Pegasus – Berkeley
29 Floating World – Portland
30 Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery – Seattle
31 Lucky's – Vancouver

AUGUST
09 Cafe Lula – Chicago
13 The Beguiling – Toronto
18 Magers and Quinn – Minneapolis

SEPTEMBER
9 Atomic – Baltimore**
10-11 SPX – Bethesda, MD
13 Copacetic – Pittsburgh**
14 Brickbat – Philly**
15 192 Books – NYC**
16 Desert Island – Brooklyn**
18 Brooklyn Book Festival
19 Ada – Providence
21 CCS – White River Junction, VT
22 D&Q – Montreal
24 The Beguiling – Toronto***
25 Word on the Street Book Festival – Toronto

OCTOBER
3-9 Pierre Feuille Ciseaux – Besançon, France
15 Gosh – London UK
16 Page 45 – Nottingham, UK
17 OK, Leeds – UK
20 Travelling Man – Manchester, UK
21 Travelling Man – York, UK
22 Travelling Man – Newcastle, UK

*with the illustrious Ron Rege and the indubitable Souther Salazar
**with his excellency Marc Bell
***with the honorable Marc Bell and the magnificent Mark Connery

The book's done

Last Monday night, at something like 1am I clicked on the upload button and sent the last remaining bits of the Big Questions collection to D&Q. There will likely be a few rounds of proofs and last minute scouring for stray commas, but basically, I'm done. And it's a huge relief. Here's the cover:
In addition to catching up on the rest of my life – which has been more or less on hold since I started the revision process last October – and sleeping a lot, I'm cleaning up my house which has been strewn with scraps and stray pages from the book. And coffee cups and stray shoes, bills, pen caps, rulers, cereal bowls and grocery store receipts. Some of the book related scraps found their way into the last few posts, without giving away too much of the new material here are a few more:









I plan to do a few more posts in the coming days regarding an upcoming project I'm doing with Nick Butcher and Nadine Nakanishi at Sonnenzimmer, a book cover I did recently and another button piece. Also about the expanded reprint I'm planning of my painted strip, The Game, from Kramer's Ergot #7. And about fifteen other things that I haven't had time to think about for a while. Hello world.

Corrections

Below are a few drawings I've done in the last few weeks as corrections and/or added panels as part of the editing I'm doing of Big Questions in preparation for the collection. These three are mostly additions to sequences from #9 and #10.



I'm mostly trying to resist the impulse to redraw or add too much. The evolution the story and my approach to it is part of the package. At the same time, I started the book before I had much of an idea what I was doing. So there are some holes in the drawing and the story both, to be filled. I'll post a few more images from the process over the next few days.

The end of the line

The last issue of Big Questions is at the printer, and is supposed to be out in time for the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, December 4th. In honor of the end, here's a glimpse of the beginning. This was in the first issue.


Click here for some other images, and some nice words about the whole big mess of a story that is about to conclude.

Paper Blog Update Supplemental Postcard Set Sticker Pack

I put together this mini-comic/postcard set thing a month or two ago. It's available in various places around the country, but it's also available via the mails, at Quimby's. Oh, and word on the street is that Big Questions #13 is in stores too. You can find the cover down below somewhere, but I'm also about 20 pages in on #14. Here's a page from that.

46 Million plus 3

Three new items have been added to the auction in the last couple of days.

Tony Fitzpatrick donated an etching/aquatint titled Monument to a Standing New Yorker, 2001.


Zak Sally gave up the original art for a cover he did a few years ago for David Bazan (Pedro the Lion). If you haven't already, you should hear Zak's new record. It's really really good. He used to play bass for Low, though this is pretty different.

And lastly a listing was somehow lost when I was posting the first batch last week. And it's a good one, you should buy it. It's this giant photo book and picture disk EP by Mount Eerie (Phil Elverum). It's a beautiful beautiful book. Signed.


The recent subject matter of this blog notwithstanding, the benefit is not all I'm doing at the moment. I'll post some images from Big Questions #13 (which is almost done), and some sketchbook strips in the next few days.