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Here’s a bit of self promotion!

PictureBox Inc. is proud to announce its brand new web site:

www.pictureboxinc.com

As designed by Circle and Square, the new site will function as both the PictureBox catalog and a hub for a carefully curated international selection of artists products. Every product is either chosen or commissioned according to PictureBox’s high aesthetic and production standards. Current site exclusives include plates and shirts by Gary Panter, prints by Brian Chippendale, C.F., Paper Rad (see above!), and Taylor McKimens, animation cells by Amy Lockhart, and zines by Misaki Kawai and John Broadley. Pictureboxinc.com is a culture unto itself, linking visual nodes across the globe.

PictureBox is a Grammy Award-winning art, music, photography, and comics publisher based in Brooklyn, New York. PictureBox specializes in bringing artists’ visions to print in startling and unexpected ways. All of our books are meticulously designed and printed to create as unique and immersive a reading experience as possible. PictureBox publishes its own books and also packages books and concepts for museums and galleries around the world. Previous books include The Wilco Book, Ninja, Paper Rad, B.J. and da Dogs, and Gore among others. Its most recent publications include Real Fun: Polaroids from the Independent Music Landscape (Ashod Simonian), Wipe That Clock Off Your Face (Brian Belott), and The Ganzfeld 5: Japanada.

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Yes, we’re here in San Diego. Led by the inestimable Olive Panter, myself, Frank Santoro, Matthew Thurber, Marc Bell and Jon Vermilyea have arrived and begun selling here at Comic-Con. Great back issue shopping here. I’ve discovered that Carl Burgos rules! Also, sandwiches, anxiety, construction and hotels. Here are some pictures from the first day. Also, PictureBox has a new site with tons of new stuff! Shop your hearts out. And come see us if you’re in San Diego. Booth 1316.

Thurber and Bell work their magic.

The booth looketh good.

Thurber and Panter keep it casual.

Olive is proud of her Dad.

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Well, the PictureBox site itself is currently transitioning into a new beast, so this lowly blog will have to do for our San Diego announcement. PictureBox will be set up in San Diego in a beautiful booth. It will be designed and decorated by Matthew Thurber and Frank Santoro. Both artists will be signing books all weekend long, and so will Marc Bell and Taylor McKimens.

We will have tons of new stuff there by Paper Rad, Brian Chippendale, CF and many many more.

So: signings by Marc Bell, Matthew Thurber, Taylor McKimens and Frank Santoro, and good stuff.

Come see us!

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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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Douglas Wolk profiles Dan and PictureBox in PWCW, and Dan doesn’t forget to plump for CC:

PictureBox is still publishing Comics Comics, which Nadel calls “our retarded attempt at a magazine about comics”—the third issue, due imminently, includes an interview with Guy Davis by Sammy Harkham.

Now that’s marketing genius in action. They come for the “retarded”, and they stay for the … well, I guess we have to work on the second part.

There’s a lot more in there about Dan’s other PictureBox stuff, but whatever.

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Most of you’ve probably already heard the news elsewhere, but for those of you who haven’t, the serialized version of Cold Heat has been discontinued.

See the details here.

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In the latest Comics Journal, manga critic Bill Randall asks who will publish modern master Yuichi Yokoyama in English. Well, look no further. PictureBox is releasing an English version (though still reading right to left) of Yokoyama’s first book, New Engineering, in October. Travel, his second book, will follow in 2008, which will bring us up to date just in time to release a third, as yet untitled book that, having seen chunks of it, I can safely say is next level stuff. Randall’s analogy to Fort Thunder is right on. In fact the first time my friend Mike Buckley showed me the work he said “it’s like Brinkman crossed with Chris Ware.” Pretty much. It will be released simultaneously with Chippendale’s Maggots, CF’s Powr Mastrs, Santoro’s Storeyville and Weinstein’s Goddess of War. Yes, it’s “go time” at PictureBox HQ.

So there you have it: Your Comics Journal response of the day (great issue, by the way).

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Remember when we used to sometimes post reviews and little essays on here. Well, we’re sort of too busy pulling together Comics Comics 3, our biggest and best issue yet and features a collaborative cover by Sammy Harkham and Guy Davis, as well as Kim Deitch on the meaning of life and a list by Renee French. Tim is slowly (?) losing his mind while finishing his essay on Steve Gerber and I’m having paranoid thoughts while finishing my “What Went Wrong With the Masters of American Comics Exhibition” diatribe. It’ll be out in June, debut at MoCCA, and blow your minds.

In the meantime, I’m please to write that last Wednesday’s event at the fabulous Issue Project Room was amazing. Amy Lockhart’s films wowed the crowd and then Matthew Thurber’s Ambergris blew the doors off the place. While Thurber and compatriot Rebecca Bird warbled and whistled I unrolled a spectacular scroll drawn by the Thurber himself. Those of you who haven’t bought the first issue of his 1-800 MICE should run out and get it now.

After Ambergris came Gary Panter and Devin Flynn. Now, Gary hadn’t played in public in a few decades, but as some of you may know, has released a couple of records and a handful of seven inches. Fun fact: Ian McClagen of The Faces played in Gary’s first record, Pray for Smurph (1983). It’s a stone cold classic of skronk psych-country music. Devin Flynn is half of Pixeltan and an accomplished animator whose work can be seen on big and small screens. Together, well, they laid it down, man. While Devin thumped and keyed and bass-ed Gary let loose on the guitar with some serious Texas-style chops and a dry, high plains yelp. When he sings “I fought the Lord” I kinda think he might’ve, inbetween painting, drawing, and duding. One audience member called the performance “masculine”, and I think it kinda was. Well, when his big books comes out maybe we’ll send him on tour with his gee-tar.

Anyhow, it was a fine night, and we hope to do it again real soon!

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From Dan’s press release:

It’s the rock-n-art event of the year! Or at least the month!

Yes, PictureBox, together with Issue Project Room, presents an evening of book/art related entertainment.

Musical sets by:

–Gary Panter and Devin Flynn
This is Gary’s first live show since before you were born. You know Cream? It’ll be like that.

–Matthew Thurber/Ambergris
Thurber put together a rock combo for this one. You know Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd? It’ll be like that.

And films by Amy Lockhart! Do you know goodness? It will be so.

All happening at 8 pm, April 18th.

Issue Project Room
400 Carroll Street
between Bond and Nevins
Brooklyn, NY 11231

Telephone: 718-330-0313

$10

Come rock with us. (Oh and posters by Gary will be for sale, as well as other goodies!)

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Well, I’m back from 10 days in Paris and Amsterdam, and a good time was had by all. Or at least I had fun.

It was all work all the time, but I like my work, as you’ll see below. Ostensibly I was there to hang an exhibition of work by Brian Chippendale, Julie Doucet and Paper Rad, as well as all the PictureBox books at Le Monte-En-L’Air, an excellent bookstore/gallery run by the might Guillaume. The show opened on Tuesday, March 27th, with myself and Julie D. in attendance.

Blexbolex

Julie D and Stephane Blanquet

But, being me, I squeezed in some other activities. I went to see Bruno Richard, king of the Parisian drawers and a collaborator with Pascal Doury in the groundbreaking zine ESDS, which began in the late 70s and continues to this day. To my mind, Richard and Doury are hugely important and massively overlooked–providing much of the impetus for things like Le Dernier Cri. Occasional collaborator Gary Panter sent me to Richard, who simply blew my mind with paintings, drawings, and fantastic books.

Proofs for a silkscreen book.

I also visited a number of other artists and publishers, L’Association, Cornelius, and Blexbolex among them. On my last day in Paris, I went to see Moebius (from one end of the spectrum to the other!), who greeted me warmly and we discussed a variety of projects. He was incredibly nice and very complementary, picking up immediately on what Frank is going with Cold Heat (“it’s like painting with the colors”) and enjoying Ninja, too. What a treat.

And then it was off to Amsterdam for non-comics business, interviewing master illustrator (and the designer of the Yellow Submarine film) Heinz Edelmann, as well as artist and designer Simon Posthuma.

And now I’m back. Quite a few books heavier. Phew.