Posts Tagged ‘Tom Scioli’

You got to have a J-O-B if you wanna be with me


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Friday, February 18, 2011


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Jay Oh Bee. Job. Get a job. I can hear my girlfriend say the words. When are you gonna get a job? But, honey, I have a job – I’m a cartoonist. I mean a steady job, Frank.

Yah. Sigh. Time to make the donuts. How the hell am I supposed to be a cartoonist if I’m too tired from my real job?

Has this feeling ever visited you, friend? (Use ’50s TV commercial voice.) Well, you aren’t alone. Here at Comics Comics, we feel your pain. How to manage a career in cartooning and pay the bills? (more…)

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PIX 2010 audio interviews


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Saturday, December 18, 2010


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Hello and welcome to ComicsComics weekend edition. This week I am presenting a slew of interviews I conducted with a plethora of cartoonists who exhibited at this year’s Pittsburgh Indy Comics Expo. Some of the names may be well known to you while others may be appearing on your radar for the first time. I had a lot of fun doing these interviews. It felt very old world fandom or something. Thanks to everyone who participated for putting up with my antics. And if I missed you this year, look for me next year.

The marquee interview of the show – Kevin Huizenga and Jim Rugg – is archived here at Inkstuds. All other interviews are presented after the jump. Check it out! (more…)

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Random Riff Roundup


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Thursday, June 24, 2010


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*You know who’s publishing the best art comics for the disaffected 19-year-old kids who hang out at the record store? Image Comics. I sell the shit out of King City, Orc Stain, and Bulletproof Coffin to the kids who hang out at the record store downstairs. Just sayin’.

*Night Business needs to go full color! Did you see Ben Marra’s story in the Diamond Comics #5 newspaper? Start a Kickstarter for that, Ben! Make a business plan that involves turning the book into a video game or something. Anything. Just go color!

*I was at a crazy comics warehouse out in the middle of nowhere looking for something and heard the local kids talking the usual Marvel/DC smack. Then one of them declared he loved Scott Pilgrim. His friend said, “I thought you were being sarcastic when you said that before … and now I think you’re serious.” Eventually the Scott Pilgrim fan convinced the kid in the Green Lantern shirt to buy volume one of Scott Pilgrim. Cue the doves and violins.

*Jim Rugg, Tom Scioli, and I were driving back from the crazy comics warehouse out in the middle of nowhere and talked the whole time about web comics and counting off favorite cartoonists who have let the industry crush them, crush their souls, dreams, haha, y’know, just a casual drive under gathering dark clouds. We weren’t having this discussion last summer. That was the Direct Market is over talk. And the summer before that was the Kramer’s Ergot 7-Final-Crisis-countdown. Just sayin’. And then I come home and read on CR that DC Comics just announced their digital comics initiative.

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Pittsburgh Scene Report


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Monday, June 21, 2010


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*Copacetic Comics has moved to a new location. Here’s the local Pittsburgh Post Gazette article on the new store. I’ve been working on Sundays and it’s been awesome. So much room, literally up in the clouds, third floor of a building on a hill overlooking some of the most beautiful parts of this wacky town. I just love it. Bill Boichel, the owner and my hero, seems like he’s a new man. The customers are arriving in droves. Old and new. It’s like Bill’s old store back in the ’80s where we could all just hang out and shoot the shit. The coolest thing is watching the local kids come in and buy dollar comics. I sold 10 Iron Mans and ten Thors to two little kids the other day. Now that we have the room to put out all of Bill’s back stock we can really offer bargains. Lots of locals have been bringing in their own zines and comics to sell. It’s quickly turning into an “interzone” to be proud of, what with Mind Cure Records and a coffee shop in the same building.

*Bill Boichel gave a lecture at the Carnegie Library tonight in Pittsburgh. Tom Scioli, Ed Piskor, Jim Rugg, and I were in attendance. Bill gave the usual spiel about watching comics grow from obscurity to mainstream acceptance. And then I argued with him that we’ve been having the “comics aren’t just for kids” discussion for 20 years and I’m tired of it. Bill retorted that it’s “all gravy” as far as he’s concerned. “If you were running a comics shop like I was 25 years ago, you wouldn’t care that we’re still having that discussion.”

*Tom Scioli, the local self-publishing powerhouse, recently wrote me an email saying, “I’ve left the world of print behind (not really). Check out my new ongoing web comics, American Barbarian and 8-Opus.” Yes, check ’em out, True Believers, Tom’s idea of a short story is about 100 pages, so you hang on for a long ride.

*Ed Piskor, the other local self-publishing powerhouse, recently went to Denmark with heavies, R. Crumb, C. Ware, C. Burns, and D. Clowes. That’s right, you heard it here first, now Eddie is going by “E. Piskor” to reflect his new star status.

*Jim Rugg, I’m happy to report, is “not so intense” since Afrodisiac has been released and subsequently sold-out it’s first printing. Here’s Jim’s poster for new Copacetic Comics location.

*There was a Steve Niles signing here in Pittsburgh. I’ve never read his comics but I love pointing out that he was in Gray Matter! Scroll to the bottom of this page to see his recordings. One of my favorite bands out of the DC hardcore scene.

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Kramers Tour Diary


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Sunday, December 14, 2008


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KRAMERS ERGOT #7 TOUR DIARY
PITTSBURGH PA
FRANK SANTORO

The Pittsburgh stop on the Kramers tour was pretty awesome. Well, I mean, for me, it was just a thrill to see Pittsburgh represented on this tour. Bill Boichel, Copacetic Comics owner and comics guru, put the whole thing together over at this great bar called Brillobox. We had a Storeyville signing there last year and it went pretty well. So we figured why not go two for two? Sammy was like, “Why not do it at the Copacetic store?”

“Dude, the store can only manage like five people at a time. It’s as big as your kitchen.”

So, imagine a second floor bar with a big open floor and a stage at one end and a bar at the other. Wood paneling and Christmas lights and horror movies on the screen above the stage. The main bar is downstairs, so the upstairs isn’t crowded with tables and that let us spread out and accommodate the giant Kramers books. Plus Bill set up a bunch of local guys like Jim Rugg, Tom Scioli, the Unicorn Mountain and Encyclopedia Destructica crews, the master Budai, and myself. A family affair. I brought my Cold Heat zines and my boxes of back issues carefully selected for the discerning comics fan. Anyone need a Brendan McCarthy Paradax set? I got ’em cheap!

It didn’t feel awkward, like signings or openings usually do. We all just kind of stood around, sat around. John Pham and Ron Regé went to get pizza across the street. Thurber found his way from the bus depot and made it all the way from NY. Sammy and Kevin were already signing books. My dad was there. It was easy.

Slowly friends were showing up. Folks seemed really excited actually, nice. A vague air of respectability in Pittsburgh actually goes a long way. Hard to explain. We’ve been in a recession since ’82, the rest of the country is just catching up with us. So, like when something good actually materializes here, we enjoy it as best we can. There were kids who I never see smile smile. It was pleasant.

I think Bill pre-sold like 20 copies and, I think, every person who bought one came to the signing. It was pretty steady. Not the tables tho’—Kevin scowled a few times cuz I kept reaching for french fries and shaking the thin table. Whoops, sorry Kev! There was a personal connection between maker and reader, the readers, like I said, being genuinely thrilled to be meeting the likes of Kevin, Sammy, Regé, and John Pham, all of whom hadn’t been to Pittsburgh before. Jacob Ciocci, Matthew Thurber, and I are always around it seems, ha ha. We got respect, but damn, people totally stutter in front of Kevin. It’s kind of sweet.

That was the big difference between the Pittsburgh signing and the New York one. In New York, the books were mostly pre-sold, but New York being New York not everyone showed up to have their book personalized. I’ll get to that later (there being way more to the story), but I just want to point out that this kind of excitement, this book and tour like this does a lot for places like Pittsburgh. Totally different receptions by the general fans. There were plenty of folks in New York, don’t get me wrong, who were excited by the book and the makers in attendance, but it’s so much more reserved. It’s not the only event in town that night worth going to, y’know?

Regé split to hang with Jacob at his house around the corner from the bar. The rest of us went to find some decent grub and wound up at a busy college hangout that serves Mexican food. It was fun to see my comics friends, peers, who I usually only see at the same cons and festivals now hanging out in my town, doing something new. They can now appreciate how hard it is to get a good meal in around here after midnight.

Later we nerded out at my house a little bit when I busted out the stack of old comics. Most of them had never seen that Charlton “Children of Doom” one-shot by Pat Boyette. “Did you know it was drawn only slightly larger than the final print size and had these black-and-white panels in order to save time? It was drawn in like two weeks.”

Thurber and Sammy stayed up smoking cigarettes and talking most of the night on the back porch. I could hear them complaining about art supplies. The rest of us hit the hay.

The next morning I made coffee and eggs for everyone. We went and picked up Bill Boichel and then Regé and headed over to Copacetic Comics. I really wanted everyone to see the store before we left.

We all crowded inside and Kevin starting asking about old Captain Easy reprints: did Bill have any? I think he ended up buying the Speak of the Devil collection. Bill told Sammy about the Proper Box sets of CDs from England that are super-affordable collections of great jazz. Thurber bought that Gahan Wilson Classics Illustrated edition of The Raven. That’s it, the usual comic book banter. Bill just has so much good stuff stuffed into such a small space it is pretty amazing—and fun to watch people digging the store for the first time.

I’ll spare everyone the giant tangent riff that comes to mind, but it goes something like this: Bill Boichel was in his late teens and early 20s when he started doing shows, running comic conventions. Then he set up his first store in a run-down mill town part of Pittsburgh and that store saved my life. Now, twenty years later, something like this tour comes to town literally because he created this outpost in the first place. Twenty copies pre-sold? Of a hundred dollar book that could be bought somewhere else online cheaper? That’s a loyal customer base. That’s a business. And remember, this is Pittsburgh, not L.A.

Then we got on the road and headed to New York, Friday a.m. post-rush hour. It was a perfect sunny, snowy winter morning. There’s a great diner on Route 22 outside of town. It was Regé’s birthday, and he’d missed breakfast, so we decided to stop and have a good meal before we were deep in the Pennsylvania mountains with even fewer options.

We went to this little chrome railroad car, Dean’s Diner. We all squeezed into a corner booth and I realized how “L.A.” Regé and Sammy looked, how “NY” Thurber and I looked, and how we were a bunch of knucklehead cartoonists sitting in a diner along with hunters in camouflage and the like. Two hunters in fact, only three arms between them, tho’. Next to them, an old guy who looked like a mechanic in coveralls. Then three waitresses in powder blue uniforms and us, the cartoonists. Six of us. Talking about Moebius and Mazzucchelli’s respective line weights. Did you know Moebius drew straight in ink without pencils underneath? And Mazzucchelli did his layouts for Year One slightly smaller than the printed comic so he could see how his line would reduce?
Ah, finally. I’ve found some real friends in this life, ha ha.

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