It somehow slipped my mind that America has its own website, but if a nation of 300 million wanted to pick a cartoonist to profile, it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy than Gene.

[Link via Dirk]

Back from Barcelona with just a few minutes before I return to drawing, but wanted to reiterate my thanks for a great visit to my gracious hosts and all the cool artists and writers I hung out with.

Despite seven hours of signing, we never ran out of fans until the very end which was really cool (though my lines move slower in Europe for various reasons). Didn’t run out of reporters either — good news for my excellent Spanish publisher Astiberri.

Will look forward to heading back to Spain in August with Ivy this time. Watching the mesmerizing John Adams on the airplane, I really felt for John and Abigail as Mr. A went to Europe alone, then years later with Abigail. Got a bit teary-eyed, though that was probably the extra oxygen as usual.

[Photo from Sunday night’s postcard-perfect sunset]

Some odds and ends:

Monday noon is the deadline to put your name down for my Manhattan Seminar taking place May 1 and 2.

Neil linked to it, so I should also let you know that Why I’m Not Neil Gaiman (2001) is online in case you’ve never read it.

Our old friend Matt (who was totally Thor in the Secret Wars Re-Enactment Society!) has been directing the wonderfully dark and twisted There Will Be Brawl, with co-creator Zach Grafton.

One week until China. Have a great weekend.

The Canadian cable show “Prisoners of Gravity” from the late ’80s early ’90s has been showing up on YouTube lately. I’m in the third part of a Jack Kirby segment but you can find a lot of comic artists we all know as a bit worn/grizzled/bloated with age, showing up unnervingly young.

No one has had more influence over my art than my old friend, the legendary Brian Dewan. He’s a songwriter, composer, builder, music historian, and fine artist, but in my world he’s always been, first and foremost, a cartoonist, because he understands better than anybody how ideas and images can be distilled to their essence, a magic trick I’m still trying to learn.

I talk a lot about how Kurt Busiek got me into comics in junior high school, but despite a statistically-improbable cluster of geniuses my age growing up within a block of my house in Lexington, MA (including Brian’s amazing brother Ted whose photo of Brian I stole above), no one did more to unlock the mysteries of art for me than Brian.

One of Brian’s coolest inventions, his funny, touching, brilliant, insane, and unforgettable filmstrips, have been issued as a DVD collection from Bright Red Rocket. I can’t recommend them highly enough. Here’s an audio portrait of the talented Mr. Dewan, courtesy of NPR, which includes the filmstrip Innovations (from which the above screenshots were taken) if you’d like a sample.

I don’t get to see it until I’m back in the States, but trust me: I lived through the dark years and no matter how bad it is, it could have been so, so much worse if it had come out when I was in knee pants.

No consolation for Hitler, but some perspective for the rest of us.

[Links via Heidi and Mark]

Two videos. My daughter Sky showed me this last week:

And Cat Garza showed us this on his blog last week:

They’ve both been around for a while (2006 & 2002), but if you’ve never seen either I strongly recommend both.

Funny thing is, I love the first one because it’s all about pure information—spare, monochrome, one idea at a time—and I love the second one because it’s just the opposite: a cascading waterfall of mostly useless infographics. Maybe it’s just the sensation of being taught. Maybe it’s just porn for info-geeks like me. Either way I can’t take my eyes off them.

Hello again. I’m back from  hibernation with a big site redesign. Take a look around and feel free to let me know what you think of the new look (including bug reports and typo alerts, of which I’m sure there’ll be plenty). Once I’m happy with the static content, I’ll be converting this page to a proper blog with comments, archives, rss, etc.

This site first launched in mid-1998, a bit over ten years ago (a lifetime in both internet years and dog years) so it was long overdue for a face-lift. When working on the redesign, I did a lot of clicking around for ideas, even visiting randomwebsite a couple of times, where I tripped over this video:

…which, just so you know, is exactly what it felt like to be making webcomics for those first few years: two parts exhilaration, one part crazy. I enjoyed it, but that’s how my personality breaks down most days anyway.

The last few years have been a different kind of exhilaration and a different kind of crazy for me. I wrote and drew Making Comics, our family went to all 50 States, I did a ton of appearances, put out a 576-page Zot! collection, did a comic book for Google, and now I’m officially beginning work on a massive graphic novel I’ve been secretly plotting out for over 20 years. But the site’s been pretty quiet and I’d like to change that now.

While working on the graphic novel, I’m hoping to finally return to both regular blogging and to gradually finishing up The Right Number as well as one or two more Morning Improvs. I may not be making webcomics full-time for a while, just an hour or two of web work each morning, but I’d like to at least keep a toe dipped in the water on a regular basis starting next week.

Be seeing you.

–Scott