Finally we have some high fashion that makes sense to me.


-Swinebread

Portland Comics Part 4

In the Part 4 we get to know three different comic artists and some of their artistic output: John C. Worsley, David Hahn, and Nicole Georges.




-Swinebread

Portland Comics Part 3

In part three we are introduced to Brett Warnock of Top Shelf Comics and we learn a thing our two about Craig Thompson's Blankets.




-Swinebread

Portland Comics Part 2

In part 2 more of Portland's Comic Culture is revealed and Dark Horse Comics is introduced.





-Swinebread

Portland Comics Part 1

This is part one of a short documentary about the comic book scene in Portland Oregon.

It was made in 2005 and shown at the 2nd annual Stumptown Comics Fest.




on Youtube you can watch it in High Quality


-Swinebread

Happy Groundhog Day!

Groundhog Files by Joe Wehrle, Jr.


-Swinebread

Non Sequitur Comic Panel

Caption from Marvel Premiere #39

Random Image Word: Solitude




-Swinebread

9-11

9-11, artists respond




-Swinebread

Manga-ized

My brother-in-law's girlfriend drew a picture of my family in honor of the birth of Swinebread Jr. and sent it to us from Japan. Isn't it great? It doesn't look like us and it looks exactly like us at the same time, amazing.


-Swinebread

Tubular Expression

Three years ago, I took a Photoshop class. I liked the teacher so much that I signed up for her next class, which was Painter. I really wanted to take Illustrator from her but it wasn’t offered that last term when I had a hole in my schedule, so Painter it was. It was a fun class with a nice group. I would have gotten more out of it though, if I’d actually had some standard artistic training under my belt, because I didn’t really have a concept of the different types of media represented by the program. Regardless Painter was still a fun program to mess around with. One assignment was to create a series of three pictures based on the theme of a common everyday item. I decided on toothpaste.

This piece is titled The Holy Order of Aquafresh. I had this image of crusader knights as tubes of toothpaste and so I ran with it. Their defeated foes are the Cavity Creeps. If you look at the mouth of a tube of Aquafresh, the paste kinda looks like a cross made of red and greenish blue. It’s funny because no one in the class knew who the Cavity Creeps were. I guess they didn’t watch Cartoons in the 1980s.


This one is your standard take off on pop art painting. It’s simply called Tubes.


The title of this image is Sir Crestor. I was going for an 1980s sorta vibe with it.


-Swinebread

Comic Books Get Some Local Cred

Last Week, the day after my son was born, I noticed a front-page article in the Oregonian about Portland comic books. I didn’t have the time to read it then but I finally got back to it this week via Oregonlive.com. This paper has done several stories about the local comics scene but finally they put it right there on the front-page, for all to see. I’ve been waiting for this kind of nod to the importance that comics play in the makeup of the city of Portland. Of course, it’s not technically about comics, the article is really about comics being adapted into films that make big bucks but it’s a step in the right direction. I guess with Comic Con coming down the pike the folks at the Oregonian wanted to highlight the local contribution.

Here’s an excerpt:

Portland's thriving community of comics creators and publishers -- including Dark Horse Comics, Oni Press and Top Shelf Productions -- is playing a major role in feeding the silver screen's voracious appetite.

"Portland," says Eric Gitter, Oni Press' L.A.-based producing partner, "is the Hollywood of comic books."

The week before Batman and the Joker commandeered the nation's cineplexes, the No. 1 movie in the country was "Hellboy II: The Golden Army," adapted from the comics series published by Milwaukie-based Dark Horse Comics. Although it fell from its perch in the "Dark Knight" onslaught, even a brief stay on top can do wonders for your visibility, Dark Horse founder Mike Richardson says.

"My phone's been ringing," Richardson says. "Lots of people have been calling and saying, 'Congratulations! Oh, and by the way, I have a project . . .' "

Although publishers won't reveal exactly how much money such Hollywood deals add to their revenue stream, Richardson says the movie connection may account for Dark Horse's sales records for three consecutive years. "We're heading for another record this year, despite the economy," Richardson says. Dark Horse Entertainment has offices at Universal Studios and Sunset Gower Studios in Los Angeles and is developing a slate of productions.

Portland's Oni Press, with several projects in development, has added staff. "We're at seven people now in Portland and two in L.A.," Oni Press co-founder Joe Nozemack says.

Local comics publishers aren't necessarily driving Jaguars and rolling in dough, Nozemack says. "You're not looking at serious amounts of money until the films are actually made. But the money that creators get for option rights gives them the freedom to do their own thing rather than working on somebody else's characters."

The whole article here

-Swinebread

Dave Stevens R.I.P.

I've been really busy but what news greats me when I get the chance to look around? Dave Stevens died two days ago (see here). Man this sucks. I love his retro style and his classy/sexy gals. At least we now know why he disappeared from the comics scene as he had been fighting leukemia.

I first encountered his work via Eclipse Comics. I’ll always remember his Airbody cover, which I picked up as a poster. It knocked my socks off but then anything he did was amazing IMO like the Rocketeer. I also have a Mr. Monster Poster by him that I love too. Dave was class act all the way and he will be missed by this fanboy. He was much too young…




-Swinebread

A Random Day

My SO and I traveled around town yesterday after the morning errands and dropped a couple of bucks here and there to keep the economy from slipping into a depression. Our first stop was to the 3d Center of Art & Photography. It’s a neat little nonprofit that promotes 3D as a fine art and showcases various stereoscopic cameras. The Center currently has an exhibit by Claudia Kunin titled 3D Holy Ghosts. The themes in Kunin’s work are taken from the bible, folklore, and classical mythology. Medusa clearly was the most impressive piece from the show and Walpurgis Nacht was a close second. The erotic nature of the pieces is enhanced by Kunin’s use of photographic rather than representational images. We also were fortunate because the 3D Center had an amazing slide show of an African Safari. I’ve seen 3d images before but the combination of National Geographic quality with eye-popping depth was fantastic. There was one up-close shot of an elephant’s eye that blew me away because that’s not something I would ever experience in daily life. Another fascinating aspect of these stereoscopic photos was how strange water appeared. It’s hard to describe but the depth made the water seem almost plastic or jelly-like and yet it still come across as H2O.

We made a stop at Haba, a Japanese cosmetic store, so the SO could pick up some of “her” all-natural skin toner. It’s funny because Haba chose Portland of all the places in the U.S. to hawk their wares. Good for my SO, bad for most other Japanese in the states. On the way to Haba, we saw the Silver Guy. He’s a performance artist that stands motionless for hours until you drop money into his pot. The cash prompts him to lean over and shake your hand, leaving it covered in glitter. He’s been doing this for over a decade I think.



After heading over to the Eastside, we stopped by a game store I know to see if a buddy of mine was working. He wasn’t but the smelly, belly boys were out in full force playing Warhammer. There was a ton of D20 stuff on sale probably because 4th edition is coming out soon. I bought a post-apocalyptic game supplement that was half off. They had a copy of Arkham Horror; that made my mouth water…


After a nice dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant we enjoy, the SO and I swung by Cosmic Monkey. It’s a comic shop I would occasionally frequent when I lived on the Eastside. They had moved to a new location last year and yesterday I finally had a chance to check it out. I gotta’ say I liked the new digs a lot. The place was very inviting and comfortable like a coffee shop or an indy bookstore. They had a large selection of trade paperbacks, much better than my regular store, and a upper level had couches for folks to hank out and read. Of all the shops in Portland, this is the one I would bring someone to if they had trepidations about comic book stores. I talked to Andy, the owner, and he told me that they will be hosting some of the events scheduled for the Stumptown Comics Fest. The Trophy Awards will be handed out at Cosmic Monkey and the latest installment of the Comic Art Battle will be fought there as well. Sounds like fun! I picked up a copy of the collected New Mutants volume 1 before we headed back home.



-Swinebread

ROMance ART, Spaceknight Love

Boy! I’m F-ing lucky. Why? because I almost missed an exhibition dedicated to one of my all time faves, ROM the Spaceknight. If I hadn’t gone out for Japanese food, if my SO hadn’t picked up a copy of the December 18th issue of the Asian Reporter, and if I hadn’t decided to skim it, I would never have read an article about Floating World Comics’ Rom Exhibition in downtown Portland. Whew! My wife and I went there today… the last day of the show. Man, I have to start paying a lot more attention to what is going on around town.

A selection of ROM art (image from Floating World Comics website)

Check out the informative Asian Reporter, article by Toni Tabora-Roberts here.

The quick rundown is that Floating World Comics’ owner, Jason Leivian, decided to put on a fundraiser for Bill Mantlo, the scribe of the ROM comic series from the 80s. A car hit Mantlo in 1992 and left him severely disabled. All proceeds from this show are going towards his care. Leivian, like so many others, loves the ROM character and felt an exhibition celebrating him was great way to honor Mantlo and give back to a creator in need.

Jason Leivian in front of many of the works on Ebay


Floating World Comics is a wonderful shop with a very diverse line of comic books, from the mainstream, to Indy, to the avant-garde. So, the venue was a perfect place for a ROM exhibition made up of artists with varied styles. Leivian did two innovative things with this show. The first was allowing artists from around the world to submit digital copies their work. This allowed Leivian to print out a limited number of high quality images for the show. Toni Tabora-Roberts dubbed this "Cyber Curating" in her article. I see a future in this. The second innovation Leivian used was a sliding scale for the digital prints. See, the first copy of any image had a low price of 5 bucks but each additional copy jumps in price by 5 dollars with the 6th print at 30 bucks. That way pieces by famous artists are balanced out with the less well-known work. The final aspect of the show was on-line auctions of ROM artwork by some of the artists featured in the show. The auctions have all closed by now and Leivian was happy to tell me that the auctions generated over $9,000.

I bought a print of Shane White's version of ROM (image from his blog here)

There were still some amazing prints available but sadly a few of the items I would have liked to get were long gone, but I’m not complaining because I might have missed the show all together and besides Leivian told me he plans on printing a limited run book that will contain all the art in show! Oh Yeah! That’s on the list.

Something that was amazing about the show for me personally was how I was drawn to the non-superhero style art. I guess there is just something universal about ROM that I never realized before. Maybe it’s his simple face that allows the viewer to add his or her own emotions character or it’s possibly ROM’s pseudo-retro, sci-fi design, I don’t know, but he seems to have a certain appeal beyond the comic book page. I was so inspired in fact that I’ve decided to whip up my own ROM artwork… and I’m not an artist. But that doesn’t matter… ROM is one of those galactic everyman characters that belong to all of us. Drawing your own ROM would make a great net meme, so why don’t you join me in creating one... …or two…

I didn't catch the name on this artist but nice work. (if you know it please leave a comment)
ROM and Starshine on Tortillas! By Mike Scheer (image from Floating World Comics site)
Guy Davis' ROM it went for big bucks on Ebay (image from Floating World Comics website)
Colleen Coover (image from Floating World Comics website)

Here’s the Link for many of the creative images from the exhibition and auction.

Make your own ROM!

-Swinebread