Tumblrerrrerr

Hi Friends,

ALERT:  I will be using tumblr for my main blog from now on: freddy comics.

In News:

Chuck opened up 3 month subscriptions again!  (To all subscribers who were hoping for a Lou last month, sorry!!!  I will have a new issue this next time, I PROMISE.  And it will be awesome.  Other deadlines have been creepin' on me.)

And good friend Steve Bissette (he's kind of like our comics Dad, or guardian angel, I think) just wrote this amazing thing.

love,
mm

Noo Loo

Lou Number 5 is hot off the presses!

Off the presses of our new, amazing and beautiful Risograph machine that is.  Her name is Glory, and she rules so hard.

In this issue, summertime begins, some pizza is eaten, and some intrigue is introduced.  Also, T.J. inexplicably has a creepy new mustache.  I've abandoned the inkwash for now in favor of using a nib, which I haven't done in a long time, and with which I'm starting to feel comfortable again.  Also, sometimes I think that this comic is all of the 80's and 90's movies about kids that I've seen, all rolled into one.  There's just something about those movies made about kids in that era, where the kids are messy and bad and weird and hilarious, that I absolutely love.   Like the kid who swears all the time in Bad News Bears.

Also, Oily Comics, which is becoming a big and beautiful thing, now has a subscription that you can purchase!  It means you get all the comics that Chuck puts out in the span of three or six months, plus some swag, like a hand-drawn membership card, and an embroidered patch that I am making out of my Uncle Jimmy's old tie-dyed Allman Brothers t-shirt.  Go here to get the subscription!  There are some amazing artists in store for you if you do....and it's only gonna be available until July 31.

Click here to buy! 

I'M AN ADULT NOW AND I CAN DO WHAT I WANT

OH HELLO.  I didn't see you there.  Welcome to this blog.

GUESS WHAT:  I have finished Lou #4, and it is available at the Oily Boutique.  Guess what else.  The brand new issues of Chuck's TEOTFW and Max's Moose are also there!!!   GET 'EM WHILE THEY'RE HOT.

A bit about Lou:  Lou Number 4 takes place on Halloween.  As I'm writing these issues,  I've noticed how bits from movies I loved as a kid come through, like E.T., the Sandlot, Flight of the Navigator, Homeward Bound...  And I am falling in love more and more with Lou's family.  I was originally just going to be focusing on Lou and her relationship with the dog, Sammy (who is based on my own dog I had as a child, of the same name, the greatest dog in the world).  But Eddie, Lou's big brother, has taken on all of these stories I've heard from Chuck about his teenage life, and her little brother John has his own funny personality now too.  Lou's parents are based on adult couples that I've admired throughout my life, and my relationship with Chuck as well.   I feel like I'm trying to learn how to write convincing, heartfelt adult characters without taking away from the attention that I pay to the younger ones.  MAYBE I AM GROWING UP??

Some samples of from Lou #4:

AND AN ADDED BONUS!!!!

My good friend and classmate from CCS, Matt Aucoin, did a whole comic featuring Freddy and Uncle Sully!  It's so awesome.  He knows Freddy so well!  Check out Matt's work here!

Again

Doing the daily strips after a looong break.



sketchbook page



And here's a little peek at that new comic...



BABIES!

Number Two, Travels, Hog Wild, Muster

1.  Recently I've become obsessed with the phrase "Whole Hog."

2.  I finished the second issue of Lou!  In which, we have dinner, and meet the parents.  I am growing really attached to these characters, I love them very much, and I hope you will too....

Here is the cover:



and page 5:



Available for purchase at my online store,  and at the Oily Boutique, where you buy many other fine items; and soon at many fine stores across the U.S.

OR

3. You could buy it at the following comic conventions:
MoCCA in NYC(I won't have my own table, but will be around, and sometimes at the Secret Acres table
TCAF in Toronto (Where I'm doing a workshop for kids!  More on that later...)
MECAF in Portland, ME
CAKE in Chicago.  A new show, that I'm super excited about.  I've never been to the windy city...

I don't think I'm forgetting any?  COMICS!

Other News:

Charles has started what promises to be a huge, and admirable, and wonderful undertaking: The Muster List, a directory of sorts for where to buy comics, organized by artists's names.  There really isn't anything else like this anywhere right now, and he woke up one morning with the idea in his head, and did it.  And it's great.

Joe Lambert's new book is out and for sale! I don't have one yet, but can't wait to get my paws on one.

And Sean Ford's book collecting his series Only Skin will be debuting at MoCCA!

Whole Hog. Hog Wild. (what other phrases have Hog in them?)

ok.  bye.

Minty, Hamazon, Texas Forever

Hey Friends,

Look! Minty Lewis drew a Freddy strip!  Minty is the author of the HILARIOUS book P.S. Comics, and the awesome comic Salad Days.  She and her husband Damien Jay (also an amazing cartoonist) and their baby Sally are one of my favorite families ever.




She has inspired me also to start these up again.  At the moment I'm working on Lou #2.

In other news, you can now buy Freddy Stories on Amazon!

And I've decided to do a new fun project, something totally and completely for fun.  Chuck and I have been watching Friday Night Lights, and I know it's kind of old now but, it's absolutely one of my favorite shows ever in the world.  Actually, it might be my #1 favorite.  I have grown so attached to the characters, and the family dynamics in it are so complicated and well developed, and there is this overarching sense of fairness, justice and hope that I love.  Plus, Taylor Kitsch is a babe.

We aren't done watching the show yet, we're on season 4 still, so don't give me any spoilers.  BUT I've decided that I want to print a Friday Night Lights fanzine! I think I'll probably call it "Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose", but not sure yet...

The page size will be 8.5" x 11" folded in half (so 4.25 x 5.5).  I'm looking for anything that has to do with FNL; comics, art, writing, girly collages with hearts, whatever!

it will be all black and white.  Please send bitmaps or 600 grayscale tiff files to crucifictorius@gmail.com.

I haven't decided on a deadline yet.

I'll keep you posted, it's possible I'll be starting a tumblr for this!

xo
mm

NEW

New things!

It's been a long time.  Hello from the woods of Hancock.

Things:  Charles Forsman is starting to print some more one-dollar black and white comics under the imprint "Oily Comics".   This includes his series TEOTFW (of which he just finished the lastest issue!), Max de Radigués's Moose (so good), and my new series that I've just started, called "Lou".

Lou is a 9 year old tomboy (surprise surprise) who lives in a rural area with her slightly dysfunctional but loving family, including an older brother named Eddie Jr, and her little brother John.  I'm drawing a lot on my own childhood for this one, even more than for Freddy Stories.  It's going to include a lot of 90's nostalgia, if you're into that sort of thing.

Here's the cover:


And a sample page:


And the back cover:


You can buy this comic here from my store, or at the Oily Boutique!


ANOTHER NEW THING ABOUT OLD THINGS:

I made this print about some things I remember from being a kid.  We are living in the house I grew up in right now, and I'm pretty much surrounded by nostalgia all day every day.  As you can probably see from this, I was a weird kid and so was my sister.  I loved that Beetlejuice figurine so much that I slept with it under my pillow.





You can buy this print here!

And last but not least, Foreword Reviews reviewed Freddy Stories!!! So exciting.  All of the books they review are independently published, and they print an actual real life magazine with all of the reviews in it.  You can read my review here.



xoxoxo
mm

Practice

Hi,

I'm practicing drawing kids:



And here's a peek at a comic I did for an upcoming newsprint publication:





xoxo

Momomomomomoooo

GUESS WHAT

Here's a new comic strip featuring Freddy and Momo, drawn by my close friend, Mo Oh, who is a mind-blowingly talented artist.  I love Momo (and Mo) so much.  This comic hits me deep in the heart. (Click on it to read).

More Things:

I am working on a mini-comic right now that Chuck will be printing, as part of Oily Comics.  Right now Oily Comics is just The End of the Fucking World, which you should read if you haven't already.  The new one just came out.  I did a little drawing for the front.  I love these one-dollar comics.

CONVENTIONS!
We are now definitely going to CAKE, MECAF, and TCAF.  I am also going to Mocca, where I will be seen hovering around the Secret Acres table (which will have Sean Ford's collected Only Skin!!!)  and eating Barry's snacks.
I'm super excited for convention season!  Friends!  Comics!

MUSIC
I am trying to spread the word about this dude, Thomas Patrick Maguire,  because this album is amazing.

WHAT ELSE
I can't think of anything right this second.
I am addicted to tumblr, been doing that a lot lately.  And slowly trying to wean myself off of the internet a little.

xo
mm

Haaaaay

I've been taking a break from doing the daily strips, in case you haven't noticed.  For right now.  But I started to put them all on a Tumblr, where they go up twice a day, if you feel like reading them again!  I'm in that weird place with my next project where it's all in my head, and I've written about it, but it's just sort of cooking in there.  So while it's in there I've been trying to do some other projects to occupy myself.

Like, redrawing more comic pages!  I think this is a really awesome thing to do while I'm thinking about how I want to draw my next project.  I want to be a better cartoonist, and I want to work hard and spend time on each panel.  So I decided to copy Pascal Girard, whose work is deceptively simple.  It was HARD.  But fun.  It's copied from page 21 of his book Bigfoot.  I decided to do inkwash, because I wanted to practice that (the original is digitally colored...)





Here are a couple other things...

A few months ago I submitted this as a rough draft to the New Yorker.  Maybe I'll try coloring it...



And I made this painting for my friend Ramona.   She's almost 3.  She wanted a painting of a Green Kitty with Clovers.  I love this kid!




It was a trade for this awesome portrait that her dad, Ryan Spahr, who is an amazing tattoo artist in Mechanicsburg, PA, did for us.

More Kids

Some comics by my favorite little friends from last week....

Brian drew comics about a cute little ducky who electrocuted things


And he drew this one.  How amazing are those two middle panels??


Coleman knows his slapstick


Helen drew a "rocketship with babies attached to it"


Ella decided to draw Frank.  He looks great in a bow tie!


Frank does Jersey Shore


I love this one


But this one, is my all time favorite.


Chuck invented this exercise, where I draw the first and last panels of a 6 panel comic page, and then photocopy it, and the students fill in the blank panels.  The first time I did it, I didn't have that many expectations, but it's AMAZING.  Everybody usually comes up with something completely different!  And it's incredible how clear the stories come out, and how imaginative they are.  I love it.  I haven't tried it with kids younger than 8, but I'd like to someday.  I bet even 5 year olds could do it.

The Kids!

Oh, the kids.

The one on the top right is Freddy in Space, in case you were wondering.

I'm taking a break from doing my daily strip this week because I am substitute teaching! I'm an art teacher for the week at the K-8 school that my mom teaches at. It's awesome so far. And it's only been one day and I'm exhausted. I have no idea if I'd be able to do this all the time...I've kind of been trying to figure that out. But really I should just enjoy it, and not make it into a existential crisis.

Today I taught kids how to draw Freddy and Frank, and then they came up with some of their own characters. I was feeling weird about just having kids copy my work, but then I realized how essential copying is to cartooning, and that you can learn so much from it. Just seeing that I make Frank the dog from just a bunch of scribbles, and that they can do it too, is empowering to them, I think. It makes having a real book seem not so far away. One kid even made a whole scribble world after I showed him how to draw Frank.

AND speaking of copying, Chuck and I started a tumblr on Saturday night called Redrawn. In my previous post I showed that Amanda Vahamaki page that I redrew, which was inspired by Chuck's James Sturm page, which was inspired by Michael Litvin's Tatsumi page, etc. etc. Also, Tom Hart had been doing this project for a while; picking a random page from a comic and redrawing it. So we decided to collect them all on this blog, to encourage more people to do the same. Anyone can submit. DO IT. I think I'm going to do another one soon.

Copycat

Here's the page that I copied, from "La Fete des Méres" (Which means, I think, Mother's Day) by Amanda Vahamaki. I only have the French version, published by FRMK, which Chuck bought for me. I tried translating this page with Google translate, but it didn't work too well. (Max?)

This is one of the most beautiful comics I've ever seen, and I look at it all the time. It was fun to copy from someone who naturally draws humans in a very different, more realistic way, and I think I learned a lot. I definitely like her version better, which I think is in graphite and colored pencil..I used a brush and ink and watercolors. She is unbelievable with a pencil. Drawn and Quarterly also published part of this story in English, in a D&Q Showcase, and they published her book "The Bun Field".

And looking at this inspired the strip I did today: