Ivy throws me surprise parties once in a while. She’s brilliant at engineering surprises, but it’s almost wasted, because I’m pathetically easy to fool. (Imagine Ricky Jay doing card tricks for a cocker spaniel, seriously.)

Anyway, she pulled off another wonderful party Saturday, two days after my actual birthday, which was all it took to eliminate any suspicions on my part, because, well… see above. I’m dense. We had a fantastic time all the way into the wee hours.

Along with our great local pals, longtime friends Kurt Busiek, Larry Marder, and Barry Deutsch flew/drove/rode in for the occasion, and Larry and local legend Paul Smith even gave me some gorgeous original art! (Check it out!: Paul’s | Larry’s)

And then there was the cake! Yet another piece of great original art; quickly demolished, but no less appreciated.

Friends, Life, Wife: I love you.

Thanks. ^__^

Registration is now open to host an event for 24 Hour Comics Day 2010. ComicsPro has general information here and I have more background on the phenomenon here.

Incredibly, this year marks the 20th anniversary of the first 24-hour comic, and the 7th annual 24HCD. I’m old!

I’m taking a day off from blogging since it’s a holiday here in the U.S. and I really need to re-arrange the studio this morning.

I should just say “Happy Memorial Day” and be done with it, but that sounds disrespectful considering the purpose of the holiday, so you’ll have to substitute your own adjective.

See you tomorrow.

…but I have no desire whatsoever to see Comic-Con move there.

[link via Heidi]

Item #1

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Item #2

Uh-oh! Trevor Dodge is very kind, but this is the kind of thing that always gets me into trouble.

Item #3

Still haven’t gotten any word from Comic-Con regarding our hotel choices, so I assume there will be no choices. Hm. Guess we’re keeping our just-in-case reservations again this year at full price.

Item #4

Perhaps I should just link to a Kate Beaton comic every time I do a miscellaneous Friday post.

Item #5

Can anyone recommend a brand of ice tray that doesn’t suck?

Comic-Con Hotels go on sale at today (Thursday) at 9:00 am sharp.

They’ve added both rooms and an expanded list of hotels this year. If all goes well, there should be plenty of rooms available for as much as 20 minutes until every one of them is sold out.

Read up on this year’s protocol (it’s a bit different this time), give it a try, and then let me know if you succeeded. I’m genuinely curious.

For reference, here’s some video from last year’s hotel reservation rush.

Now that France’s huge annual comics festival in Angoulême is concluded, I can share with you my contribution to Cent pour Cent (or “100 for 100”), an exhibition at the city’s newly refurbished comics museum.

One hundred comics artists from around the globe were asked to choose a piece of classic comics art from the museum’s vast collection of originals and then remix or re-imagine the work any way we liked.

I chose an Ernie Bushmiller Fritzi Ritz page (original here) and, deconstructed it to death. Take a look if you dare. (NSFW)

I wasn’t able to attend Angoulême this year, but I guess I was there in spirit, both in the exhibition, and in what seems now to be an annual tradition that I’m told grew out its stateside counterpart.

It’s a testament to how completely I’m wrapped up in the graphic novel that I forgot to post about Hourly Comics Day (offspring of 24HCD) until reader T. Diaz reminded me by email just now.

Technically, It’s not over yet as I post this (Monday at 5:44pm), but… yeah… I suck.

Anyway Go! Look! Enjoy!

Belated Happy Birthday to Ivy! We went to Disneyland for her birthday on Tuesday after a very full day of work Monday, and yesterday was a lot printing and mailing, so I didn’t get much blogging, tweeting, or, um… facing… in this week.

Round One of the “rough draft” for the graphic novel is done! I’ll be working on revisions/rewrites for the next couple of months and then, starting in March, I’ll be doing finished art for two years. The book is currently at a whopping 461 pages, but I’m hoping it’ll get shorter in revisions. (Note that my “rough draft” is basically just a rough sketched-out version of what the finished book will look like, all captions and balloons in).

Fun fact: My roughs are done forty pages at a time in a single photoshop document so I can slide panels back and forth and think of the flow more organically and not let the page dictate pacing too much. They’re really big files!

The whole family is getting into the Avett Brothers this year.

Winter and I finally finished watching Deathnote on DVD. All the kids in anime club were yelling at her to finish it already so they could talk about it. That is one crazy show! (And oh, man, that opening theme and animation for Season 2…)

Still loving Mad Men.

The preview for Iron Man 2 makes me feel 14 years old again. In a good way.

Best comic of the year? For me, probably Asterios Polyp, but now that I have a bit of free time, I need to read a few more contenders.

Creatively, I thought 2009 was a great year for comics, music, and movies. Financially, though, it sucked donkey balls for a lot of people in our community. Let’s hope ’10 is better.

Happy New Year!

I’m taking this week off from everything but drawing and doing Christmas-related stuff with the family. Look for more posts next week.

We celebrate Christmas, Hannukah, and Ivy’s B-Day all in December, so life can get pretty hectic around here this time of year, but for those of you feeling a bit low on holiday cheer for whatever reason, I offer the above wonderfully insane video from many years ago (thanks to our friend Tom) as the secret to all happiness in the universe.

So Happy Holidays and, well…

Prisencolinensinainciusol!!