True Swamp by Jon Lewis

This year's Mocca felt much more professional and worth it than the previous... three or so? years. The Society of Illustrators has taken it over and they did a good job. BUT the table price was yet again more expensive than the previous year, which was already ridic expensive. I heard chatter that they were already locked into the Armory for this year's show and that they will switch venues for next year. Maybe that will enable a reduction in table price, I dunno. Anyway it's never gonna be a replacement for BCGF.

On the posi side, Gabe just signed a new 5 year lease on the store, which was something that was up in the air/touch and go for months.

Is it okay that I'm disappointed that you aren't doing the graphic novel with John Lewis? Not that your style would be exactly what the civil rights legend is looking for, but the continual John/Jon mixups would have been fun.

Ha! I have a book signed by John Lewis (and I met him! He's very nice) so clearly I should be trying harder to get a signed Jon Lewis on my shelf?!

Clearly!

Now only the leader of the Modern Jazz Quartet and the British retail titan lack graphic novels!

I sense a team-up.

sorry about your CTS diagnosis Jon. would love to get you out to see a show in the park and buy you a slice of pizza, a scoopa icecream and a beer. just let me know.

Thanks forks. I may just take you up on that.

Great interview with Jon here:

http://therumpus.net/2013/09/the-new-york-comics-symposium-interview-with-jon-lewis/

I am at my publisher's table at Brooklyn Book Festival. I am here to tell you that indie book publishers and authors are every bit as horrible and depressing and bile-wringing as indie comics ppl. The table next to us is two guys, one w long ponytail, one w small fedora, who write and publish novels about Blues bands. "All of our books have their own free streaming soundtracks" (&$&-]Y)723^<>]>

The guy across the aisle puts out Shakespeare things and is juggling to attract attention to his table.

http://www.uncivilizedbooks.com/comics/true-swamp-book-02.html

Woohoo!

yeah I have to be digitally nit-picking the artwork files for the 2000-2001 stuff for this. On the bright side, those pages are much more crisp/print-ready than the 90s stuff was, so it's not like a 6 hour per page ordeal. On the less bright side, this makes the task super boring.

As for brand-new work, it's really seeming like my inking days are over because of my elbow. New stuff is likely to be taken straight from my pencils/levels fucked with and solid blacks added in digital, like I did for the Klagen minicomic. I THINK I can still pencil if I don't press too hard.

that's not so great, but this book is great! how exciting!

Just preordered as I wanted a copy of "Carl Barks Duck" from Uncivilized. Don't push back the release date!

As far as I know everything is on track! I turned in my author's afterword 2 weeks ago; it's a pretentious one even by my standards.

We didn't have anything obscure and cool like the original minicomic version of TS#1 to include in this volume, so I am doing something different for the bonus material, something which exists outside of and complements the book. More soon.

sooooo, is this still getting finalized or... ?
I will ink your work very very cheap btw.

Uncivilized is reorganizing (in a good way-- augmenting its personnel-- I don't see any announcements online so I guess I shouldn't say more) but my book is delayed a bit as a result

Forks I was just thinking of you today, I wanna ask you about some stuff

drop me a line. sorry the book is delayed.

Seattle area ilxors -- I will be in attendance for the opening of this 5-way show at my friend's gallery on cap hill which I more or less coordinated:

http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlearts/2016/03/01/in-the-story-room-5-seattle-cartoonists-opening-march-10-at-dendroica-gallery/

Thanks forks. I may just take you up on that.

― Thelema & Louise (Jon Lewis), Monday, July 22, 2013

I will! I'm trying to cut out this dumb hermit bullshit this year!

So back in 2007, when Dark Horse was publishing an anthology series of comics derived from the imaginary Escapist comics embedded in Michael Chabon’s Kavalier & Clay, I sold a 21 page script for it to Diana Schutz which was then drawn colored & lettered by Marc Hempel; by the time the story was finished though, DH had cancelled the antho series and the 21-pager went into inventory. I saw it as digital files on marc’s laptop at a show that year - it looked gorgeous. Di said she hoped she could place it somewhere or other at some point (we got paid our page rates obv despite the piece getting inventoried).

Was at a couple friends’ signing event at desert island last night and poking around and noticed a new squarebound collection of that Escapist stuff. Thought hm what if, and was a bit floored to see me and marc’s story is included.

This came out in June - “Michael Chabon’s The Escapist: Pulse-pounding Thrills”.

It was really the tail end of me trying to making a living in the industry after my two year stint scripting at DC and then four or five years of floating lots of pitches all over the place to varying degrees of almost-but-not success. The good thing was by 2007 my scripting was in a pretty good place and the piece was personal enough and pro enough and probably the best commercial script I ever sold, much more in control than my DC stuff. I rammed classical music in there - the story revolves around a performance of one of Szymanowski’s violin concertos.

So it’s weird but nice that that’s finally in print. Does not look like the TPB has garnered any attention to speak of but it exists!

The main thing that happened with new work this year was the Sunday funnies page at Popula.com - I was one of 5 cartoonists doing a page a week there (full color). (Me, Karen sneider, Tom hart, Megan kelso, Steven weissmann). I was really into this project and they were paying a legit page rate! Sadly no one was clicking the Sunday funnies page so after 8 weeks when popula started having their blockchain funding reversals and had to halve their comics budget, they killed Sunday funnies and just retained the self contained specially commissioned comics that run during the weekdays. I’m trying to divert the resulting thwarted creative momentum into getting some steam building up on new true swamp material which is probably what everyone (~20 ppl) would rather I be doing anyway, but JFC it is so goddamn nice to get paid for ones work (obviously an outmoded publishing model but it was great to have a nostalgic glimpse for a sec there!)

That’s the news. Gonna try’n draw this weekend.

ha, congrats on the escapist thing!