I write comics.
Jul 27th
Master Jesus visits the astral plane - art by Steve Bialik
This week my partner, cartoonist Steve Bialik, and I launched Master Jesus, our collaborative heresy that takes the form of a webcomic. We update every Sunday (get it? Sunday?) with a new 3-to-4-ish page episode.
Here in episode 1, the Master Jesus fasts in the desert and visits the astral plane. But watch your back, MJ! Danger lurks around every hyper-dimensional corner.
The Master Jesus webcomic is hosted at the Nerd City podcast website. It was so cool of Max and Ben to lend me some bandwidth and the eyeballs of their audience for this goofy little cartoon blasphemy. But I knew when I approached them with the idea that if there were two cats crazy enough to receive and relay the strange signals I was transmitting, Max and Ben are it. They do one of the funnest, wildest, most spontaneous and entertaining comics and pop culture podcasts on old mother Interent; Nerd City broadcasts out of a local pizzeria/brewery on the North Side of Chicago. And it’s always a blast whenever they let me come on.
the mysterious biker beats some ass in Chicago: 1968 - art by Antonio Maldonado
Also this week, my other webcomic, Chicago: 1968 (HERE to read it or HERE for your mobile device) continues to be updated with new content. Our Lincoln Park biker beat down action sequence concludes.
My partner on Chicago: 1968 is cartoonist Antonio Maldonado. Tony’s really good at choreographing fight scenes. So click on over and enjoy.
But the violence in the Chicago: 1968 webcoomic isn’t there for cheap thrills and entertainment… well, not ONLY cheap thrills and entertainment. The “Festival of Life,” as it was called, held in Lincoln Park as a counter-convention to the official gathering of Democrats in the International Amphitheater on the South Side of the city – a “convention of death,” some said – was an unnerving juxtaposition of celebration and battle royal.
Here’s some footage of a Yippie concert by the proto-punk band MC5 taken by the U.S. Dept. of Defense! Were these G-men grooving to the music or gathering intelligence for some sinister conspiracy against the power of Rock n’ Roll? –
– Pretty neat, huh?
That popped into my inbox one day from my “chicago 1968″ google alert. Most of the stuff that comes in is junk, but there’s some gems to be had. Like this flickr pic of a young lady modeling at the 1968 Chicago Auto Show; I’m a sucker for groovy 60′s gals –
– Yep. Wish I was captain of a starship with a bunch just like her. “Mad Men” does its Emmy-worthy job of recreating the fashions of the early 60′s, when men were men and women were women, but when things loosened up in the late 60′s, well, that was pretty cool, too.
Chicago: 1968 – behind the scenes, yo
Jul 19th
Page 76 went up on Image/Shadowline today, but Tony and I are currently at work on the layouts for pg.78…
This just in: the Master Jesus logo!
Jul 16th
Breaking news, y’all…
I just approved Kurt’s final design. We’ve got a logo for “Master Jesus,” a forthcoming webcomic by Steve Bialik and me, to be hosted on the Nerd City podcast website.
And it looks like we’re gonna be launching Master Jesus, episode 1, out into the Internets in the next few days, so do stay tuned for that.
Do you know who I am?
Jul 15th
from Chicago: 1968, pg.75, by our current artist, the ultra sexy Antonio Maldonado
On behalf of myself and the rest of the Chicago: 1968 staff, I would like to extend heartiest congratulations to one of our own, Jenny Frison, who was artist on Part One of our little webcomic epic, and who, just this past Monday, was honored with a Harvey Award nomination for best cover artist of 2009.
Wow.
And damn does she find herself in some esteemed company, with Mike Mignola, Frank Quitely, et al.
Double wow.
Clipped from the Harvey Awards website:
BEST COVER ARTIST
____ Jenny Frison, “THE DREAMER”, IDW
____ Mike Mignola, “HELLBOY: THE BRIDE OF HELL”, Dark Horse Comics
____ Michael Avon Oeming, “MICE TEMPLAR: DESTINY, PART I”, Image Comics
____ Frank Quitely, “BATMAN AND ROBIN”, DC Comics
____ JH Williams III, “DETECTIVE COMICS”, DC Comics
The winners of this year’s round of Harvey Awards are announced Aug. 28th, 2010, at a ceremony held at the Baltimore Comic-Con. Congrats again, Jenny. Frank Quitely’s Batman and Robin covers were pretty awesome, heh, but, of course, you’ve got my vote.
Exciting as that news is, we here at the Chicago: 1968 offices are pretty well acquainted with prestige. Why, even while engaged in what seems like drudgery, we’re practically tripping over reminders of glories past and present.
Case in point: I was recently sorting through all my books and comics in preparation for last weekend’s big move into me and the wife’s new digs, and I came across a bagged and boarded copy of New Men #1, which some of you might even remember from the halcyon days of the early 90′s boom era of Image comics.
April, 1994... brings back some memories, don't it?
Guess what I saw when I checked out the credits on the inside cover?
See? I can't letter worth a damn. Which is why I need Kurt.
Kurt Hathaway has been our letterer since day numero uno, and he designed our “Chicago: 1968″ logo, too. As you can see, the man has quite a comics pedigree.
A new Chicago: 1968 installment went up this week. Click HERE to read it. Or HERE to read it on your iPhone or mobile device.
I’m invisible.
Jul 8th
Click HERE to read the Chicago:1968 webcomic, or HERE to read it on your mobile device…
From Abbie Hoffman’s autobio (one of them) Soon to be a Major Motion Picture:
As I walked past rows of police with my hair concealed under my hat, sometimes wearing a pasted-on moustache, I knew if they had recognized me they would have broken my bones on the spot. What they didn’t seem to know about was the back door, from which I escaped out into the streets of Chicago and moved through the city. After the curfew a hippie walking the streets was about as safe as a Jew in Hitler’s Berlin…
…That morning as I was getting dressed I took a lipstick and wrote the word “FUCK” on my forehead. I didn’t feel like having my picture in the media that day.
Resonating Signals in Political Discourse
Jul 8th
I’ve noticed some resonating signals in the political discourse of the last 24 hours or so. I monitor these things, you see…
Yesterday afternoon I heard Rush Limbaugh complain about media’s coverage of the heatwave in the Northeast, charging, essentially, that it was all so much ado about nothing; that, obviously, it tends to get hot in July. “Big deal.” The same essential message was repeated by the local talk radio hacks (Don and Roma on Chicago’s WLS 890 AM, if you were at all interested) this morning. “They’re a bunch of whiners over there in Pitsburg and Baltimore,” was the essential jist of the right wing ranting at sunrise.
On the other side of the political spectrum, on progressive talk radio, two shows – Stephanie Miller in the morning, and then Ed Schultz in the afternoon – were trash talking the airline industry, accusing them of having unsanitary planes and treating passengers poorly.
Seems like the PR organs of both political parties are sticking close to the bullet points these days. Probably has lots to do with the election in November.
Republicans trying to undermine climate change science. Democrats busting the chops of anti-union industries. You’d expect it, but you wouldn’t expect them to be so transpartent about it.
Wait. Nevermind. Yes you would.
I can make my chi flow into your iPhone or mobile device
Jul 4th
July 4th, Independence Day, marks the halfway point of the American Imperial Calender. Being the totally awesome party dude that I am, I am using the occasion to make a few interesting changes to my blog. COWABUNGA!
I downloaded some plug-ins and widgets and stuff that will optimize the look of “Irregular Brain Movements” when you view it through your iPhone, iPod Touch, or some knockoff thereof.
If you look at my blog with your smart phone, the blog'll automatically format itself to look something like this.
I’m pretty well convinced that the future of our Internet lies in such devices. Ever since the day I got my smart phone (a Palm Pre), my life, frankly, hasn’t been the same. Up 60% of my web viewing, I’d say, is done on my phone’s portable, convenient, indispensable little screen – even when I’m at home.
Internet always at my fingertips. The entirety of the noosphere but a few greasy thumb-presses on a touchscreen away. Like a Library of Alexandria worth of information tucked into your cargo pants pocket.
The more that websites – even dinky little blogs like this one – adjust to this mobile reality, the more ready they’ll be for the next growth spurt of techno-cultural development we’ll all be going through these first 2-3 years of the 21st century’s awkward adolescence – the 20-tweens.
Speaking from my own smart phoning experience, it’s always so much nicer to view a website that’s taken care to “broadcast” even part of its content in a mobile-friendly format. And when I’m on the move, often mobile content is all I’m really able to consume. But hey, don’t take my word for it. What the hell do I know? Twitter, Facebook, Google and Wikipedia have all found ways to cram what they do into the portable touchscreen market that Apple created by way of a concentrated burst of Steve Jobs’ own vital life force. Those tight, black turtlenecks were designed to focus his prana to his ajna chakra, you know. And wasn’t it sometime after the launch of the first or second incarnation of the iPhone when his health started flagging? The somewhat less inspired but no less revolutionary follow-up, Jobs’ iPad, might’ve cost poor, ailing Steve his last drop of Chi.
Alas…
If you’ve been paying attention in class today, you’ll know I’ve also found a way to make mobile posts to my blog while on the go go go in chi-ka-go.
If you’re thinking about getting mobile, too, I’ve found an exercise regimen of deep, diaphragmatic breathing helps –
Mobile Post One Go!
Jul 4th
Wow! I hope this shit actually works! To blog on the run like this would rule. Like an intrepid reporter punching out observations, direct to the Internet, as it all happens, practically simultaneous with the act of perception, maybe, practically part of the act of percieving itself, almost, fresh from my sensory organs and hot off the skillet of my brain…
I downloaded an app for my Palm Pre that lets me blog from phone. I’m seeing a lot of potential, here.
Before I go, though, lemme try to upload a recent photo from my phone to see how that particular feature works out:
Great Makeouts of Our Time
Jun 29th
A less-festive march up in Toronto protesting the G-2o confab has resulted in civic unrest. But it also produced this iconic shot, tailor-made for album covers, t-shirts, etc. Undoubtedly staged, but so have been many of History’s most iconic photos.
via The Secret Sun: Secret Sun Picture Parade: Post-Solstice Edition.
speak up!