Friday, September 23, 2011

Somehow I missed the Liberty Bell


The night at Brickbat in Philadelphia was the night the Famous Canadian Cartoonist Flu of 2011 really took hold and I started feeling miserable. We stayed with the incredibly gracious Matt Leines and he outfitted me with the building's penthouse which had a private bathroom that was actually bigger than my bedroom at home. It was awesome. Below are a few pictures from the house, and in particular a bunch of Matt's art collection, which was amazing. Stuff by Chris Johanson, Barry McGee, R. Kikuo Johnson, Brian Chippendale, Marc and a bunch of others. The giant triangle is Matt's





This is another of Matt's:

The piece below was one of the coolest things on the walls. A small found object model of a telephone pole in a box frame.



A whole mess of tigers:
Lastly, here are a couple of photos from the event at Desert Island in Brooklyn. Huge thanks to Gabe for making it great.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Tonight: Montreal

Just checked in to a hotel in Montreal after a couple of nights in the place of my birth in northern New Hampshire, and a really great talk yesterday at CCS in Vermont. I had a chance to embarrass one of my favorite cartoonists ever, Jason Lutes, by discussing his great influence on me while he sat in the audience.

Below are a couple of drawings I did while sitting in the audience at one of the panels at the Brooklyn Book Festival last Sunday.



So: tonight I'm at the D&Q store in Montreal. On Saturday and Sunday I'll be in Toronto at the Beguiling and the Word on the Street Festival. And then blessed blessed home.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Dispatches from the road and air

I've been on the road on the second leg of the tour for a week and a half now, but have been too busy to post much. Here are some (pre)tour stories from my sketchbook:





So far I've been in Baltimore, Bethesda (at SPX), Pittsburgh, Philly, and, for the last four days, New York City. More about all the above to follow. Aside from a case of the famous Canadian cartoonist flu pandemic of 2011, it's been completely awesome. Being on the road with Marc Bell rules. That guy's awesome. Tonight I'll be in Providence at Ada Books. Below are a couple of photos from Pittsburgh. Bill at Copacetic put up a back issue wall for me to sign next to. It's all comics about birds. Awesome. Below that is a shot of people waiting for Marc and I to start.



Just to let people know...the Hardcover of the book has been a bit scarce and will be for another week or three. That said, both Copacetic and Brickbat managed to secure more than the usual allotment of copies (sworn to secrecy regarding their methods) so if you can't find one, you might contact them. Lastly, Gabriel at Desert Island in Brooklyn printed up this awesome little newsprint zine collecting a number of outtakes, thumbnails and other unpublished paraphernalia related to Big Questions. Along with the trading cards it's something of a tour exclusive for the moment. Below is the cover.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

CartoonInk!



On Sunday I finished a wall drawing I was asked to do for the CartoonInk show at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Sullivan Galleries. The show was curated by Surabhi Ghosh, Christa Donner and Jeremy Tinder with help from Sara Drake. There's a bunch of cool stuff to see there, including a new piece by Deb Sokolow (which happens to be right next to my wall drawing) and one of Lisa Cline's originals which is completely gorgeous – the photocopier doesn't do them justice. After a number of delays the show opens next weekend.

Here's an image of the flyer for it, with a nice little Marc Bell drawing (did I mention I'm going on a little East coast book tour with him in a few days?).

Monday, September 5, 2011

sketchbooks

The first of these sketchbook spreads feature drawings of two people with whom I shared the Megabus on my way back to Chicago from Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago. The other two feature drawings of people on the El.


The last, left hand page, below: I was drawing the person sitting in the audience in front of me at Mark Bazer's Interview Show the other night, and then she turned out to be another guest on the show. Her name is Cameron Esposito. She's a comedienne. She was completely hilarious. This is her ear.


Lastly, by virtue of the timing of my trip to Minneapolis for the reading I did there on August 18th, I was forced to miss this year's epic skateboarding/camping/beer trip to Wisconsin. You can see pictures of the festivities at the, ahem, dude life blog.


So my videographer was getting drunk around a campfire somewhere in the badger-state wilderness but I decided to document my exploits nevertheless. In a more nineteenth century kind of way. It rained that night, so it was all in a trio of covered parking garages. At one point a cop rolled through and asked me the above question, before rolling on, and when I did finally get kicked out of the last spot, the security guard helpfully suggested that it was okay to skate in the one next door. This doesn't happen anywhere outside Minnesota.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Interview Show at the Hideout Tomorrow

Friday night I'm going to be on Mark Bazer's Interview Show at the Hideout. Come drink beer and heckle me about being over-exposed in Chicago this week.