Moon Prince page 41: Stay Where You Are!

The whole story (so far) is here.

pood 2: The first reaction is in!

Truly, Pood is the only blotter acid you will ever need, and best of all,  the hallucinations stop when you put the newspaper down (which is more than you can say of The New York Times).

Trav S. D.

Read the full post here.

Moon Prince page 40: An object appears in the gloom.

The whole story (so far) is here.

Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas and a happy New Year to all my fellow Poodsters!

Happy Holidays from the Guv!

more late night pood #2 talk

 

The king of late night talk gets deep into pood with everyone's favorite ex-Alaskan Governor!

Moon Prince page 39: The Map!

The whole story (so far) is here.

Moon Prince page 38: Kitiko does something unexpected. Also, the fire spreads.

The whole story (so far) is here.

Not Your Parents’ Basement

Deep in the heart of pood (the free city-state of Brooklyn), I ventured to the second annual Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival on Dec. 4.

Just as pood’s newsprint glory reverse-engineers the iPad, the Yeah Dude Comics collective downsampled Avatar with the giant blue-and-red-cellophane-shades 3-D print comic Math Fiction. Like some optional universe’s blacklight posters from the 1930s, the black-and-white pages of “Emonman” (I think) don’t pitch extraterrestrial spears toward you but yank you into a weird geometric valhalla; Ian Harker’s “Solipso,” while tamping down the 3-D, cracks the tenth wall of narrative experience with the simple device of text you need to rotate the page to read, making you physically move through the comic, while a narrative drone blows your mind with quantum slang like the dropped connections of some subspace radio station with only two faces of its dodecahedral hard-text visible in this plane. True to his self-centric name, Solipso travels through sheer willed shifts of perspective. After that, Josh Burggraf’s “LHC” (I guess) carves new braingrooves with its Scioli-Mucha nuclear-grail epic of whateverness. After the third time I read Math Fiction a few pages began to come out in my hands, and that was awesome, too.

The same folks and others produce one of pood’s partners in the pulp uprising, Secret Prison, and you could find all three issues at the Fest. Free and worth five times that, in the new one Steve Peters & Bianca Alu-Marr navigate not just the scale but the scope of big pages, with a spiraling Buddhist narrative; their poster-like projection is as deep as it is tall. Aidan Koch supplies a lovely cover and center-spread of gallery-like floating images, and pood’s own Jim Rugg rips out a random page of some retro-modern romance comic.

…with his own visual response-single from some mythic pending-divorce comic in the new 7th issue of Smoke Signal, produced by the Desert Island comic ’n’ art shop, co-presenters of the Fest. Always the anti-predictable anthology you find out you were waiting for, the issue is also distinguished by great post-psychedelic excess from Doug Allen & Gary Leib, eloquent abstraction from Charles Frickin’ Burns, and sprawlingly intricate two-page tabloid massifs from Dan Zettwoch and Tim Lane.

Smoke Signal is as well-selected as the Fest itself’s cast of characters was curated; diagonal from the Yeah Dude Comics table was the shrewdly named Traditional Comics, front operation for the seditious press of Ben Marra. New to the show and just in time for the Valerie Plame movie and the national Republican remake, Marra’s The Incredibly Fantastic Adventures of Maureen Dowd casts the mildly dissident columnist in everyone’s secret-agent daydream, shooting it out with Cheney’s ninja goons, seducing Scooter Libby and keeping America safe for gratuitous cheesecake and self-important crusades in the most hopeless, hilarious romp of deadly oversimplification and propaganda-spewing unintentional clowns since Harker’s The Epic and True* Life Story of Che Guevara and Rugg’s Rambo 3.5 (just to show how mystically aligned all elements of this show were).

I also liked the well-mannered melancholy of Sully’s The Hipless Boy (Conundrum Press) and the dystopian sitcoms and Darwinian funny animals of Joshua W. Cotter’s Barbara in the Sky with Neil Diamonds (AdHouse) -- both from ’09 but new-to-me -- and the fake Sunday-supplement The Enquirer Dharbin, a one-man jam comic from the many voices in Dustin Harbin’s head (just to show how foolish it is to impose narrative on so fruitfully diverse a show. Except for The Dharbin’s newsprint tie-in and Cotter’s collection being sourced from his own indie strips in the Kansas City Star. It’s still weird enough.).

They moved it to a bigger church basement this year but it will always be the right place to plot a revolution.

Moon Prince page 37: the Old Dog

The whole story (so far) is here.

look who's talking pood!

Moon Prince page 36: BOOOOM!

The whole story (so far) is here.

pood#2 arriving in November

Hey Poodsters--
 I know it's been a long time--but your patience is about to be rewarded! POOD #2 is on its way to comics shops ----as we speak!  Fret not!Your prayers are about to be answered. The long months pining in abstinence to be rewarded!  Your cravings for more Rugg, Corbett, Martinez, and the rest of our resident pood-meisters will soon be sated!  But ---
what to do in the meantime--what to carry you through the next few days in anticipation! Just to show we're always thinking of you ---we've prepared an appetizer-- a taste!-a small  sample to whet your appetite!
Our latest pood movie:
Pood2_The Son of pood!  Enjoy!

and make sure you check out our pood movie channel for a few other little treats!

Moon Prince page 35: HE decided???

The whole story (so far) is here.

Christmas Tree Hugs

Trees aren’t just the friendly forest companions that gladly give us the pulp paper for indie comics -- every winter they also grow iPods and Barbie dolls in pretty packaging at their base! If you’re good enough. But if you’re reading this, you’ve automatically made my “nice” list and should click right over to iTunes where I’ve co-written my first holiday song -- “Christmas Morning Comin’ Down,” with libretto by me and tweaks, tune and title by, who else for my tortured metaphor, the Tall Pines:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/christmas-morning-comin-down/id401956994

Experience the spirit of giving 99 cents, and leave a good review in the charity of the season!

Moon Prince page 34: Blood Money

The whole story (so far) is here.

Moon Prince page 33: Ewwww!

The whole story (so far) is here.

Moon Prince page 32: Snick!

The whole story (so far) is here.

Moon Prince page 31: Jonesing for Joy Juice!

The whole story (so far) is here.

Moon Prince page 30: Damned right it's serious!

The whole story (so far) is here.

Moon Prince page 29: the Cliffs!

The whole story (so far) is here.

Moon Prince page 28: on the lam!

The whole story (so far) is here.

Crawling Back

You've thrilled to Paolo Leandri's art in pood! You've wondered in suspense if that page is the only time I can keep it brief! Have that and many other mysteries answered on DECEMBER 22 when Paolo, I and color-magician Dom Regan make our six-page Image Comics debut with a story of the obscure Green Arrow wannabe (and frustrated sentence-fragment) Alias the Spider in the latest edition of THE NEXT ISSUE PROJECT, the anthology that explores what-would-ever-have-happened-to a pile of comics titles that went out of business and into public domain 50-60 years ago! Ours is a.k.a. CRACK COMICS #63; look for the great period-lurid Alan Weiss cover or the great period-innocent variant by Mike Allred, and ask your local dealer to order Diamond code OCT100451 (Weiss) or OCT100452 (Allred)! At 48 pages and "golden age size" it'll be the biggest, most timewarping comic not in newsprint!

The Italian Jobs

Elegiac parchments of a lost American promised-land will always have their place. But this artform and this nation also owe an incalculable debt to prostitutes and barbarian warriors! (Not to slight friendly zombies and out-of-body second-person shooters -- they’re practically holding up the whole entertainment industry on their own!)

It may take European eyes to remind us of what’s at stake, which is why I’m happy to be writing the American adaptations of the Italian (and French!) hits from Italy’s GG Studio, several in stores since summer (though Diamond shipping dates may vary, very) and many available at New York Comic Con, Oct. 8-10!

From a literal-conversion guideline by Will Eisner’s main Italian translator Andrea Plazzi, I’m re-engineering the right shades of purple poetry for the somber sword-and-sorcery saga The One and seasoning the best balance of street-snark for Route des Maisons Rouges, a farcical epic of militant legal brothels in an urban war with corrupt politicians.

I’m also bringing the gallows-whimsy for A Skeleton Story (a quaint tale of mischief and redemption in a muppet-like land of the dead), squalid sarcasm for Ethan? (question-mark included, the Matrix-y pulp-boiler about a thug who keeps dying in other people’s bodies), and sense of enchantment and intrigue to Mediterranea (an unusual thriller about a young prophet-babe in a neo-ancient Greece that anchored a very thoughtful GG review by these podcast guys here).

GG will be at booth 2165 for all three days of the Northeast’s most sprawling con; stop by, buy comics, and maybe see me if I can find it myself!

A new fandancer review

"....you should get this book and stare at it until the reds scald your eyes. ..."
Craig Fischer; ThoughtBalloonists.com
Craig Fischer has written a terrific review of "fandancer" over at "thoughtballoonists.com"-the must-read blog he shares with Charles Hatfield. "Terrific" not just because it's positive(although that helps!)--but because Craig is one of the most thoughtful, insightful critics around, and this review is no exception.  Check it out! and then head on over to lookoutmonsters.com and buy yourself a copy of FD!

Moon Prince page 27: more stuff from the box, and the cops come back.

The whole story (so far) is here.

Drawbridge Sketchblog

I'd like you all to visit a new sketchblog I'm lucky to be a part of called Drawbridge. Every day, members of Deep6 and Hypothetical Island studios in Brooklyn post warmup sketches based on a theme. Recently we've drawn sketches based on the following phrases, "The Life Aquatic", "A Farewell to Wildstorm" and "Ta-da!" . Each day is a different so visit often!

Second Childhood (in a series of 5)

A grade-school girl gets recruited into a secret global juvenile security agency while her under-tranquilized sister is inducted into the insurrectionist bad-kid school that gives “Killer High” its title. Got all that? Then you’re ready to plunge forehead-cam-first into the amped reality of playwright and friend of pood Crystal Skillman’s latest parceled play, delivered in five unmarked packages to a barren warehouse as part of Vampire Cowboys’ yearly Brooklyn-based “Saturday Night Saloon” fest of live serials in its industrial rehearsal space.

“Killer High” is Theatre of the Broken Filter, in which Skillman sends out a typically impulsive cast to navigate the wrongest way things can go at the sharpest angle. It’s also the latest best example of the Peanuts principle of precocious toddlers taken to its unstoppable extreme, with playground paranoia standing in well for the 21st century’s state of permanent alert.

Director Hope Cartelli’s precision hyperbole is the natural element for Skillman’s energy-ridden dramaturgy, and the bad sister’s hula-hoop pigtails alone are worth the price of admission, or would be -- the Saloon is free, if you can make it to Brooklyn every third Saturday between now and January.

For a mere five bucks more it’s all-you-can-drink, but either way the show will look just as good with other highlights like Temar Underwood’s drawing-room burlesque “The Ghost of Henderson Manor,” Mac Rogers’ “Control Room” (in which the rogue-Superman theme of Mark Waid’s “Irredeemable” meets the bunker-pulp of Michael Crichton), and Brent Cox’s “Jack O’Hanrahan & the One-Sided Window,” a sequel once again stolen by Kelly Rae O'Donnell as a goth Jackie O.-lookin’ sexual sorceress whose prop-less gestural innuendos will make you reconsider your position on mime. And in the best-for-last spot, “Killer High” plays you out mindful that immaturity keeps anyone young.

[www.vampirecowboys.com/events.htm]

Out of Line

Cuba: My Revolution is the first book by activist and artist Inverna Lockpez and the best yet by her lifetime family friend, pioneering neo-pop cartoonist Dean Haspiel.

My Revolution is the story of Lockpez’ novelistic stand-in, Sonya, whose creative passions lead her to become both an art student and a med student in the early days of Castro’s Cuba. Hungry for a change of power like most of her compatriots during the Batista regime, she finds her expression restricted and oaths betrayed in short order, but clings to the revolution’s mythology longer than the usual exile memoir, feeling her way to America and to the personal independence and categorical compassion of the title.

Sonya’s original mind and genuine ethics run afoul of the approved public attitude, and though her capture and torture stem from a principled act, the circumstances of her imprisonment and survival alike are essentially random, so her continued allegiance to the cause can be just as arbitrary.

Even if we didn’t know what we do about revolutionary optimism and what becomes of it, in Cuba and most places, Lockpez is a master of building a sense of foreboding amidst hope and plenty; like all survivors of trauma and only true novelists, she relates the book’s events as if they were happening for the first time, with a keen ear for utopian naiveté and eye for the gray areas beyond its limits, and we can feel the half-century chasm opening up beneath Sonya’s momentary height of ideological euphoria.

Haspiel is unsurpassed at employing comics’ capacity for a storytelling simultaneity which, while static, transcends cinema, as in one page where clubgoers are enclosed in panels surrounded by a border of Fidel’s troops advancing through the countryside, followed by one in which the club expands to the edges of the page with a solitary mambo drummer superimposed in the center; an ingenious counterpoint of contracted worlds and unstable margins.

Lockpez is also adept -- and for a medium that favors forward motion, brave -- at depicting the long grinding normalcy that follows rushes of historical crisis; the worst thing that happens to her fictional counterpart happens very early on, followed by years of numb acceptance on her part and agitated dreams of escape by some around her which are equally self-deceptive and just as emotionally necessary.

In a quintessentially physical but not often beautiful medium, Haspiel has become a leading poet of the body, as one of nature’s masterpieces and the soul’s sacred territory; sometimes glorified, sometimes abject, but never prurient or profane. It makes him the most understanding interpreter of both the illuminated everyday, each moment of heady revolution and commonplace conversation charged with
human energy, and of a story that spirals into horror and stabs back in tragic flashbacks, told unsparingly but utterly unsensationally.

Body parts play a significant role in the narrative and its psychic texture too; Sonya’s account returns to her shaking or rubbery legs at moments of trial, as a wartime doctor she imagines troops’ legs filling her mind’s eye (the view of humanity from a child’s height, or from the position of someone felled), and in a single signature image Haspiel’s frame focuses on Sonya’s combat-booted foot opposite a wealthy world-be lover’s fine leather saddle-shoe, two personalities marching at irreconcilably cross purposes. The body as battlefield of conflicted feelings and constituent of epic change for better and worse is an unspoken, anonymous protagonist, from delivery rooms to torture chambers, and Lockpez’ artist’s eye for biology’s design, from strange earth-mother dream sequences to looming anatomical charts like the visual dissent to monumental personality-cult propaganda, remains sharp and generous.

As much as Lockpez the long-time painter recalls moments and feelings with crystalline insight, Lockpez the first-time novelist threads telling details throughout the book, including the theme of bad fathers, broken families and the need to believe and cling to them which is undiminished by the authorities’ and institutions’ unfitness. The women protagonists are often moved through life by absent or marginal men (a departed flame that Sonya keeps imagining; a demanding stepfather who influences her mom’s actions), and Sonya’s birth dad shows worthy parenthood by urging her to go while Fidel, abusive father of his country, demands absolute devotion. We know that Sonya gets out since Lockpez is here so that’s no spoiler, but the fragments of family she is either left by or leaves behind at each turn carefully qualify any easy sentiment to be found in the phases of her life.

The things Lockpez lived through, and the legions ready to inflict them or look away, make it easy to believe that we are nature’s only mistake. But societies can learn; humans, alone among creation it seems, can question; and God, if there is one, is the capacity to care, without condition. The world is learning, or at least listening, to stories like Lockpez’, thinkers like her know how to question, and artists like Haspiel know how to care. Those are powers that can make anyone feel able to go on.

Moon Prince page 26: so THAT'S what was in the box...

The whole story (so far) is here.

Moon Prince page 25: some kinda wild animal!

The whole story (so far) is here.

Pood #2--son of Pood-- in November!

Hey Poodpeople! Pood #2 will be out this November--and you can order it TODAY in September's "Previews"--out now--- from Diamond. So don't delay! Rush right over to your nearest comic shop and order your pood!
"Previews" Order Code:
SEP100844!


 Do it! Do it now!

Pood Rules the Air -- Come See Us Sept. 14!

On Tuesday, September 14, the brains of the pood operation -- publishers Geoff Grogan, Kevin Much and Alex Rader -- and some other part of pood’s anatomy, contributor Adam McGovern, will be the guests on the popular Comic Book Club: Live podcast! It’s also an in-person talkshow so you can pay a mere 5 bucks and be part of the studio audience. Hosts/comedians/in-some-cases-comicbook-writers Alex Zalben, Justin Tyler and Pete LePage put the funny in funnybooks and we’ll bring the paper! Details, details:

The Peoples Improv Theater
154 West 29th Street, 2nd Fl.
(Between 6th and 7th Aves.)
New York, NY

Directions:

http://thepit-nyc.com/about.html

...the best blog (they say it’s moved, but this is the

more up-to-date site):

http://www.popcultureshock.com/cbclub/

…and the best schedule for CBC shows:

http://alexzalben.com/?page_id=55

pood Review on PopMatters

Shawn O'Rourke has kind words for pood over at PopMatters:

"The pure joy of Pood is the physical act of turning its pages, it is the perfect anti-digital device." Read the whole review here.

Moon Prince page 24: what's in the box?

The whole story (so far) is here.

Moon Prince page 23: Max gets hit in the back of his head.

The whole story (so far) is here.

fandancer video

 hye! here's a fandancer video! Enjoy! "( and hit this link if you want to see the full image)

fandancer reviews

Hey there pood people! My latest book, "fandancer" is just out ( you can get it online or at Jim Hanley's U and Forbidden P in NYC) and there's been a couple of nice reviews--including one by our very own Adam McGovern! (I think he just might be a little prejudiced, y'think?)
Sean Collins
Matt Brady
Adam McGovern

Moon Prince page 22: the old laundry chute trick.

The whole story (so far) is here.

Josh Bayer Show at ArtLexis

There's an opening this Saturday for a show of paintings by Brooklyn cartoonist Josh Bayer at the pood-affiliated ArtLexis gallery in Dumbo, Brooklyn. The opening's from 4-7pm, and directions to the gallery are here.

Moon Prince page 21: run for your lives!

The whole story (so far) is here.

Forbidden Planet Signing

Thanks to everyone who came by Forbidden Planet last night!

Moon Prince page 20: mayhem ensues!

The whole story (so far) is here.

Crackle and Pop

On the cover of Kirby Krackle’s first, self-titled CD the main duo were depicted by Jim Mahfood as two standard-mortal nerds surrounded by a maelstrom of their toys, comic heroes and audio gear. The cover of their second, E for Everyone, catches them in mid-mutation, with Kyle Stevens’ guitar seemingly remade from green-lantern energy (or maybe just empowered with dayglo spraypaint) and Jim Demonakos’ drumsticks clasped between his knuckles like Wolverine claws. Fanboys and girls can fall into fantasy lives they don’t come back from, but KK do an elegant dance-fight on the lip of the nuclear reactor, alternating between songs that are soundtracks for games and comics, and songs about how games and comics become the soundtracks of superfans’ lives.

The genre-crossover soundscape of the first disk is resolved a bit here into an urgent, tuneful metallic pop, with skillful frat-funk leanings and a great catalogue of squealing spaceship-dashboard guitar settings. Lead singer Stevens brings both a solid sense of humor and a real sense of passionate yearning to songs about nerdboys’ unrequited obsessions, both disclaiming and redeeming the crunch-ballad overemoting that owns much of what’s left of the radio dial. (And co-songwriter Demonakos is alter-egoing from two of his dayjobs as Seattle con organizer and pood-positive comic retailer -- payback is a breeze, my brutha.)

Readymade stock characters cosmically morph into well-observed types (like the office-drone double-lifer who exults, “Secret identity/No HR harassing me”), and the more readily recognizable speakers (like Wolverine in “On and On”) make slips which tell us lots more than what issue they got the brown costume in -- “I always heal/But I never stop hurting” is the kind of insight that could save somebody weeks of anger-management class fees.

“Great Lakes Avengers” overflows with in-joke namechecks for fans of offbrand superteams, while its tale of a wannabe roster-crasher has a serious laugh at the mania to “break in” to some idealized life rather than break out of the ruts in your own. On the other side of the street, “Henchman”’s farcical job-search pitch takes on topical recessionary overtones with the timing of a well-planned particle-beam theft.

“Can I Watch You?” is the grooviest guest spot for Uatu this side of Junot Díaz, and KK’s freak flag flies over a wide territory of comics’ communities and alternate-universe lifestyles: “With pretty girls/and dudes in capes/Going to cons is our escape.” My dream team-up is for Kirby Krackle and the re-formed DEVO to face off against the best karaoke skills the Big Bang Theory cast can muster in a Very Special Episode. But it’s better not to laugh too hard. This band knows that, whether you’re a tenuously-existent fictional character or a barely-noticed social misfit, there’s gotta be someone to take you seriously.

sneak preview: "fandancer"

pssst! sneak preview: fandancer --a new 36 page full color, tabloid size comic-
arriving this week and available only from www.lookoutmonsters.com

Moon Prince page 19: violence erupts!

The whole story (so far) is here.

pood Signing at Forbidden Planet in NYC

Moon Prince page 18: in which Kitiko first manifests himself.

The whole story (so far) is here.

Look Out!Monsters Sale!

It's a SALE! A big, oversize comic book basement clearing bonanza! That's right poodsters--It's time to put a new roof on the barn--and that means we need cash, cold hard cash gang! So--the first big Look Out!Monsters publishing-- blow-out the old stock- summer-steel roof and gutter sale is taking place over at www.lookoutmonsters.com- RIGHT NOW!--where you will find all kinds of groovy goodies at low,low prices! You heard it! Low LOW Prices! Prices have been slashed-SLASHED- to make room for new models and to help me buy some metal roofing! That's right-I'm practically giving this stuff away--cos I have boxes of my own AWARD-WINNING Comics--that's right-comics that have won an award--just waiting for some lucky investment conscious comics collector to abscond with! Think of it! A comic that has won an award-for your very own--all for $5. that's right-a comic book that has won an award--for five smackeroos! You don't get an award--just to make that clear--but you'll have the satisfaction of knowing you own a comic book that at one time won an award.
And then there are other NON-AWARD WINNING comic books for sale! Even better! Comics that have not won awards! So--put that in you pipe and smoke it! You can have non-award winning comics by this very artist at cheap, bargain basement prices
and they are going fast-FAST--over at www.lookoutmonsters.com! So hurry up! Don't let this momentous occasion pass you by! head on over to www.lookoutmonsters.com today! Tell em pood sent ya--and see what it gets you!

Moon Prince page 17: how much do the cops know?

The whole story (so far) is here.