Personal Day

Oh hi! I’m taking a “personal day” today, so this post will be mostly promotional in content, with only a few memorable zingers for you to carry with you for the rest of the day. But really, you’ve had two epic Jog posts this week. What more do you want, people?

Earlier this week Gabrielle Bell immortalized me in comic strip form. I feel humbled, flattered, and yet exalted.

But much of the last two weeks has been taken up dealing with PictureBox stuff, which brings me to the promotional part of this post: There is a TON of new stuff in the shop, most of which will arrive by X-Mas is you order by Monday.

I have, of late, been fishing through bins and finding a few treasures, like D.O.A. Comics, the one-man anthology by the late, great Jim Osborne. Or the anonymous and amazing Junk Comics. Of course there is always some Marshall Rogers and some sweet Moebius.

And then there were the books I loved and devoured at the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, now, naturally, for sale online:

The new anthologies False Flag and NK7 , featuring C.F., Leon Sadler, a special insert by King Terry, and a panopticon of noise imagists. I gotta say, these French image books have their detractors, but these two images really fulfilled a lot of promise. These stark, even severe publications belong to no particular genre or mode of art-making — kinda like the early days of Pascal Doury and Bruno Richard’s ESDS.

I also snagged a bunch of Charles Burns’ self-bootleged graphic novel, Johnny 23, which adds to and remixes his own X’ed Out. It’s every bit as good as you want it to be, my people. I wrote about X’ed Out over here, by the way. Adding another layer, Burns has also published a lavish silkscreen portfolio consisting of “magazine covers” from the foreign world. It’s called Xeno and is naturally also for sale. Speaking of silkscreen, Leif Goldberg managed to sneak in just under the wire with his latest handmade calendar, Full Metal Rabbit, this time in an edition of just 180; and Will Sweeney is offering a killer trip of a print.

Oh, wait, back to the festival: I am now carrying Mould Map (for retail and wholesale!), which blew many minds two weeks ago, and also 1-800 MICE 5 and Crickets 3! There are also a few lovely Le Dernier Cri offerings, including the 200 page monster, Asiatroma. Also, our own Jason T. Miles has set up shop in my shop! I absolutely love his two new zines, Pines 3 and perhaps most especially, Lets Boogie.

Cover of the year by John Mathias

Finally (not comics!), there is a new issue of The Lowbrow Reader, which not only contains some good gag strips by David (Silver Jews) Berman, but also a long and fascinating account of the making of the Adam Sandler classic, Billy Madison. I love this zine. It does exactly what a zine should do: Delight, inform, and shine a light on some underexposed corner of culture.

And lastly, I’m incredibly pleased to be distributing the new Keiichi Tanaami DVD/book combo. Tanaami was and remains a leading light in Japanese graphics and animation. He led the way in the late 1960s with his psychedelic designs and free-associative approach to drawing and image sequencing. The animations on this DVD are just killer. Here’s a preview:

Well ok, then. I now leave you to my less selfish colleagues. Have a good weekend.

Labels: 1-800-MICE, C.F., Charles Burns, Gabrielle Bell, Jason T. Miles, king terry, Le Dernier Cri, linking to stuff when you have nothing to say, Matthew Thurber, Moebius, Mort Walker, Sammy Harkham