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Check out the new short video thing at the Cold Heat site.

Color separations!

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Henry Darger isn’t really a comics artist, I suppose, but his work is at least somewhat related. Close enough, anyway, to justify showing this creepy (and inappropriate?) dessert version of one of his hermaphroditic Vivian Girls.

These cakes are currently being sold at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, to commemorate a Darger exhibit there.

I’d like to see more cakes like this—Jim Woodring would work well, I think. Even better: Rory Hayes.

(Via Serious Eats.)

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In the second part of my apparently cursed essay on Steve Gerber from the new issue of Comics Comics, there is a small error that needs correcting.

Gerber and Jack Kirby’s parody of John Byrne, Booster Cogburn, appeared in Destroyer Duck, not Stewart the Rat.

I regret the error, obviously. Please mark this correction on the page when you purchase your issue, and let us never speak of this again.

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Apparently so. This is almost embarrassing, though at least we’re safe from the ghost of Fredric Wertham.

In our cred’s defense, I don’t think this blog-rating thing can read cartoons. That should have gotten us a PG at least.

(Via some stupid online dating site.)

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Tonight, at CANADA, New Mutants!

And tomorrow, at MoCCA, Comics Comics 3, 1-800 MICE, The Ganzfeld 5, and maniac artists signing galore!

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There were no mishaps at the printer. Tomorrow is CC-Day.

And tonight is New Mutants night.

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Via Alvin Buenaventura, Brian Chippendale is pictured on the cover of the new June/July issue of the Believer.

After Lauren last month, that makes two PictureBox artists immortalized by Charles Burns in a row.

And if Eric Reynolds is right about Fletcher Hanks in August (who you may remember was included in Art Out of Time), we may be looking at something like a hat trick!

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I like Matt Fox‘s drawings in this old comic from Mystery Tales (how can you not appreciate a story with an old woman digging a tiny grave with a teaspoon?), though the plot’s not exactly strong on logic.

(Via Golden Age Comic Book Stories.)

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Assuming there aren’t any disasters at the printer, the new issue of Comics Comics will finally debut this weekend at the MoCCA festival in New York, and it’s probably the best one yet.

This time around:

*Sammy Harkham interviews Guy Davis (and they collaborate on a beautiful new cover)

*The legendary Kim Deitch explains the Meaning of Life

*Dan has some bones to pick with the Masters of American Comics show

*David Heatley and Lauren R. Weinstein in conversation (they also collaborated on a brand-new oversize drawing)

*The long-awaited (by me) conclusion to my article on Steve Gerber

*The beloved Joe McCulloch on Mutt and Jeff

*An illustrated list from Renée French

*An amazing back cover by Marc Bell

*Plus a terrific new redesign from Mike Reddy, the debut of our new letters page, hilarious Matthew Thurber cartoons throughout the issue, somewhat more careful proof-reading, reviews of The Avengelist, Casanova, “Curse of the Molemen”, GØDLAND, The Immortal Iron Fist, Reading Comics, Ronin, Self-Loathing Comics, Swamp Preacher, and more!

So stop by the PictureBox table (A14-16) this weekend to pick it up (there’s plenty of other new stuff and some great signings, too), and if you won’t be able to make it, keep your eyes open. It should be out in stores in early July.

Does YOUR favorite store carry Comics Comics?

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Well now PictureBox has big plans this weekend. We’re releasing Matthew Thurber’s 1-800 MICE #2, Comics Comics #3 and The Ganzfeld 5: Japanada! at MoCCA at NYC’s Puck Building, all day Saturday and Sunday, booths A14-16. Lotsa signings all weekend:

Saturday

12-1: Lauren Weinstein and Matthew Thurber
1-2: Gary Panter and Brian Chippendale
2-3: Paper Rad
3-4: Mark Newgarden and Megan Cash
4-5: Brian Chippendale and Frank Santoro
5-6: Taylor McKimens and Dan Nadel

Sunday

12-1: Taylor McKimens and Matthew Thurber
1-2: Lauren Weinstein and Brian Chippendale
2-3: Paper Rad
3-4: Dan Nadel and Frank Santoro

AND! I’ve curated an exhibition opening Friday night!

CANADA
“New Mutants”
Curated by Dan Nadel for PictureBox
Opening Friday, June 22, 7-9 pm.
Artists in attendance.

CANADA
55 Chrystie St.
NYC 10002
Wednesday – Sunday 12-6 pm.

The artists:

Melissa Brown
Brian Chippendale
Julie Doucet
C.F.
Trenton Doyle Hancock
Ben Jones
Amy Lockhart
Sakura Maku
Frank Santoro
Patrick Smith
Michael Williams

The show:

CANADA presents an exhibition of imagist paintings by emerging North American artists. This group of artists is linked by its unabashed use of representative imagery in service to surreal and oblique narratives. These artists find their lineage in the midwestern explorations of the Hairy Who, deep dish surrealism of Gary Panter, the raw beauty of H.C. Westermann and the fantastics of Max Ernst. Like their artistic ancestors, the artists at hand use a private symbol language to assemble communicative pictures. This is not decorative psychedelia or overheated allegory, but rather deeply personal and formally constructed images marked by an absence of irony and an attention to the formal elements of a cartoon and vernacular based vocabulary.

Five of the eleven artists exhibited are based or have roots in Providence, RI’s fertile arts culture. Melissa Brown’s (now based in Brooklyn) mixed media landscapes elevate the horizon to an experiential hallucination, while Brian Chippendale’s collaged images enact his own cartoon narratives on an epic scale. C.F.’s all-over images accumulate dozens of small moments, forming an idea of a distinct visual sensibility. Ben Jones, of Paper Rad, presents flattened portraits of anonymous cartoons in search of a plot, while Michael Williams paints midlife crises of universal hippies. Exiting Providence, Vancouver’s Amy Lockhart’s paintings are meticulous visions of characters in midstream, while Texan Trenton Doyle Hancock’s tactile visions of his Mound-world capture a brief narrative moment. Julie Doucet, based in Montreal, creates painted objects that function like images–her drawn vocabulary suddenly occupying three dimensions. Pittsburgh native Frank Santoro combines a comic book sense for action with a traditional painter’s attention to detail. Two New Yorkers are engaged in painted introspection: Sakura Maku used texts to layer and subvert her jangly images; Patrick Smith’s portraits of spaces and faces made of and living through surreal forms are striking passageways into another consciousness.

All of these painters refuse to be pigeonholed, allowing themselves and their images to change and mutate through multiple media.