Coming up for Air
📝This archived post is originally from my old comics focused Wordpress blog from 2011-2019. That site was a space to publicly commit to learning the art and craft of cartooning and self-publishing.
These posts are full of a naive enthusiasm that though at times embarrassing, I'm proud of. I hope you find them useful in some way.❤️
I’m now in Pittsburgh, coming up for air, finally able to look back to the wacky world of comics I’ve been knee-deep in for the past couple of months.
It’s been quite a spring. For now, the dailies are on hiatus, I’m teaching kids how to hone their comics making skills, working on some large screen prints, doodling daily and trying to wrangle some longer form stories.
As you may have heard, I’ve been editing a new comics magazine called Dog City with two friends Luke Healy and Simon Reinhardt. The first issue is out!
It feels like we’re on the right track with Dog City, seeing as how some folks have even liked it enough to write about the first issue. Steve Bissette gave his detailed impressions on his blog and Jose Luis Olivares even named it his “book of convention” in his write-up of the Maine Comic Arts Festival just a few weeks ago!
Here’s a look at what you can find in this first issue.
This self-published magazine aims to curate a collection of minicomics of the highest calibre. We’re really excited by the work of all our contributors and we hope Dog City will help make their work more widely available to readers around the world.
This first issue contains the following stories:
Pigs Incorporated by Iris Yan, Landing by Ben Evans, Luke Healy, Josh Lees and Iris Yan, All Set by Simon Reinhardt, Visits by Luke Healy, Helene by Me!, Dead Bulb _by Mathew New, _Starship Booby-Prize by Eleri Mai Harris and Restricted by Ben Gowen.
Though we’re starting out small, we have high hopes for Dog City.
The first finished box.
Dog City has been a great project for honing my screen printing skills. With as many screen-printed objects as we included in the collection, it seemed inevitable that I’d become a proficient printer.
The decision to hand craft so many of these covers stems from the printing culture at the Center for Cartoon Studies. Self-publishing, both physically and digitally is a huge part of the ethos at CCS. You make a comic, you print a comic.
Instructors like Robyn Chapman and Jon Chad and graduates like Sean Knickerbocker provided invaluable support in making this potpourri of books a possibility. Countless thanks goes to them for their advice and support.
Working with Simon and Luke has been an invaluable experience given that the three of us are quite different. We think differently, we work differently, we read differently. Despite that, a shared love for quality cartooning and top-notch storytelling trumps these differences.
We provide great checks and balances to each other while trusting each other editorially. It’s very satisfying work.
If you’re interested in picking up a copy of Dog City Issue 1, hop on over to our shop!
Besides Dog City, this Spring saw me spend a lot of time crafting an 80 page full color book of 4 panel comics, but I can tell you about that another day!
