May, 2020: 28 posts.
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New Bot Day! Conky 2000 was designed by Wayne White for Pee Wee’s Playhouse in 1986. Conky delivers the secret word and is made of 80s electronics! WW is an inspiration to me. Check out the documentary “Beauty is Embarassing” for more about WW. #peeweesplayhouse @waynewhiteart
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New Bot Day! KITT: “Knight Industries Two Thousand” is a tricked out 1982 Pontiac Firebird. From tv show “Knight Rider (1982-1986)” & voiced by William Daniels. Talking cars were amazing! Fighting crime, getting in adventures! David Hasselhoff! #TalkingCar #PontiacFirebird
Gary Groth on the bizarre time for comics and books
Quote of the week, er… last week:
Question: Have you put contingencies in place — as far as publishing goes — as this crisis drags on?
Absolutely. We’re assuming depressed sales. We know sales are going to go down. The problem is nobody knows how much. 10%? 20%? More? Nobody knows the answer to that at the moment. As this continues and we start getting a handle on sales during the period when so many bookstores and comic stores aren’t open, we’ll be able to make better projections. I have to tell you, everything is uncertain. Nobody knows when these stores are going to open. Nobody knows how slowly stores are going to open up. No one knows [what] restrictions are going to be on stores when they open up. There are so many variables and every single variable has unknown and unquantifiable factors involved. So it’s an almost impossible goddamn situation. And the only thing we can do is forge ahead and try to make as good as a decision as we can virtually on the fly. I’ve been doing this for forty-four years and we’ve gone through some really, you know, bizarre times, terrible times and I’ve never experienced something quite like this before. Most crises in the history of comics, in my lifetime, have been, at least, comprehensible and at least rational. You know why they occurred. You may not like why they occurred because usually they occurred due to a combination of bad players and greed and self-destructive tendencies in the comics market. This is a crisis in the book trade and the comics market. When there was a crisis in the comics market, it did not affect the book trade. This affects everyone.
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New Bot Day! I got the standing Astro Boy at the last Comic Con but never gave him a new bot day. The one with his internal robot parts exposed I acquired in 2014 but never realized he opened up! Astro Boy is awesome and was created by Osamu Tezuka in 1952!
A year of drawing and drinking with my friend
Yesterday my phone spat out at me a screenful of “On This Day” photos.
That’s the day I attended my first Long Beach Ink & Drink. I live in San Diego. Long Beach is 110 miles away. I have been attending San Diego’s Sketch Party since 2017. It’s close! And I have drawings which document my attendance and participation.
But what is a sketch party? What is an ink and drink? What is a sketch and sip? It’s people getting together, in the same space, to draw on large sheets of paper laid out on tables. Ideally there are enjoyable beverages of some kind, and music too. They are an opportunity to draw, socially. Mind you, making art can be a nerve-racking, stress-producing process when done in front of other people. Amazingly, I have never felt such a welcoming, non-judgmental feeling when making art as at these events. No matter your skill level, all are welcome. Make some marks, maybe say a hello to your seat mates, and enjoy yourself. That’s it! I have felt encouraged. I’ve been complimented (no matter how I’ve felt about the quality of what I’ve drawn).
At sketch parties, I have felt more loved than I’ve felt at most religious services I’ve attended.
Writing from 2020, it might be, aside from traveling to see family, the thing I miss the most about the time before Covid/Coronavirus.
Back on that day in May I drove the long drive north–I picked up my friend Chris at his place in Fullerton. We made the drive on the 91 West and 710 South to Long Beach. As we have been doing since we were teenagers we zipped down the highway, talking up a storm and listening to tunes.
When we arrived there was… nothing. We parked on the street in front of a large warehouse. The warehouse had a mildly funky entrance and I could see murals through the fencing. But nobody was there. No-one was going in and out. There was no signage to help solidify in my mind that WE ARE IN THE RIGHT PLACE.
The flyer information had been sparse. Some cool artwork, a date, an address, and information about the sponsor and music.
We waited.
I triple checked the Ink & Drink Long Beach Instagram to assuage my anxieties.
Eventually someone did show up and we made our way in. We passed a funky Marilyn Monroe statue and the murals. We got into a huge industrial elevator with a few other of the initial arrivals.
It was an amazing space.
Inside an enormous space filled with murals a dozen or so tables had been set up: paper laid out, chairs around. And I felt at home and started to pull art supplies from my backpack. Pencils. Pens. Chris did the same. He had many questions. Do we just start drawing? This was his first time to a sketch party and he was learning the etiquette. Chris had never been part of such an open-ended event. He’s participated in a few Middlecott Sketchbattles, which are an explicit competition, with rules and constraints. This was so different, so alien to him he took a little while to settle in. But once he did, he had fun and his Blade Runner composition got him attention and accolades..
I had no idea how long we would stay. Would we stay just a few hours? I would need to drive more than a hundred miles to get home once we were done. But we stayed the full four hours. I enjoyed every second. We drew. We chatted. We borrowed and loaned art supplies to our tablemates. The best. I bought some copies of the Long Beach Ink & Drink zine. I bought a few drinks. I circulated around and felt amazed at the number and variety of the drawings people came up with. So much was represented by the work on those tables: many skill levels, many styles, funny, intense, scary, cartoony, realistic, abstract, iconic, satirical, fan art, political.
At the end of the night I felt exhausted and exhilarated. We made our way back down in the freight elevator. My brain was buzzing with thoughts and new ideas.
My memories of that first drink and draw Chris and I attended together still inspire me.
And since then we’ve attended @radixrisingcreative‘s Spill several times. Each time is different, but each has been rewarding. The connection and creativity have fed my soul and were part of the most creative year in my life in a very long time.
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Back of my current notebook which has gotten plenty of use this past week. Finally. Featuring stickers by @sdpubliclibrary @thebettyz @steve_mannion_comics @nicholasdanger @shecantdraw @niceytime plus those are trolley tickets from 1981 @missewon gave me. I love an old artifact and I love making new artifacts.
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New Bot Day! “The Robot” worked for Superman in his Fortress of Solitude in 2007’s Superman: Doomsday. Voiced by Tom Kenny (Spongebob!). In the animated film he nurses Kal-El to health after his fight with Doomsday. Not purely medical, but he vibes with my medical bots. Hi!
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For about 6 months I’ve had a 4 panel Cube Cat comic about Cube waking up after a drunken night and drinking toxic coffee and it just doesn’t work. Much respect to those who make gag cartoons, it is NOT EASY. Oh, also all the panels were song lyrics, a weird constraint I imposed on myself that made it even harder to make the thing work considering not everyone knows as many lyrics as a music hound like me. #writingishard #butilikethisdrawing #cubecat
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Free button!
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New Bot Day! Welcome to the Sojourner rover! Landed on Mars in 1997 as part of NASA’s Pathfinder mission and named for abolitionist and activist Sojourner Truth. Expected to operate 7 days, it operated 85. A proud addition to my collection!
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Drawing! Today: untoyed robots. I’d like to have toys of these three. But they don’t really exist. Who are they? Chappie (2015) is a film about a police bot who gets a conscience, sort of. 7-Zark-7 was a character added to Gatchaman (1972) to adapt it into the tv show Battle of the Planets (1978). And Irona is from the 1950s sometime. She’s Richie Rich’s robot maid and bodyguard from the comics and tv. #chappie #battleoftheplanets #7zark7 #irona
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Reading in London. 1999.
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