Today begins my week long residency at Warren Ellis' moderated forum, Whitechapel. I'll be answering all manner of questions, personal and professional so feel free to click over there and get your question in. Wanna discuss technique, horror movies, how scary it is to work with Alan Moore, porn midgets, whatever....bring it!
If you enjoy comics and an intelligent community of respectful, educated grown ups sharing their interests on anything from the latest technology to the best way to homebrew beer, you'll enjoy Whitechapel. At this point it is the only online community I read daily outside of my LJ flist and a few random Myspace blogs. This is also where Freakangels is hosted, Warren's free weekly webcomic series. Catch up, the future is happening over there.
I probably should have done this a while ago but my convention season begins in a few days. This year I'll be appearing at the following conventions as a guest of Avatar Press, naturally, and I'll be doing sketches, signing, answering questions, the usual.
Wizard World LA- March 14-16
Wizard World Chicago- June 26-29
Comicon International, San Diego- July 24-27
Wizard World Texas (Dallas)- November 7-9
Right now this is all I am planning to do, I have WAY too much work to do to add more dates but I might do something else in the Fall if I am ahead on pages (who am I kidding, ahead?).
I always have fun at cons but I am always apprehensive about doing more than one or two a year. Bare in mind, every time I do a con I lose about a week of productivity to preparation, exhaustion, hang overs and the difficulty of getting back into my routine after coming home and sleeping for a day and a half, not to mention the potential nasty illnesses you can get in those places. It is hard enough to keep books on schedule as it is. There are a lot of people who make the bulk of their living doing the con circuit but that will never be me.
There should be a multitude of announcements forthcoming at each show. Really neat stuff. Once announcements are made I plan to do a lot more blogging about the new project and showing new art.
It is a bit early for this discussion but it is on my mind so what the hell. We are quickly approaching 08 which means we are pretty close to finished with the first decade of the 2000's. I ask you then, what defining characteristics has this decade had so far? When someone says 80's we immediately think of New Wave/Punk fashion, the mainstreaming of hiphop for the first time, synth pop, hair metal, and a handful of others 80s-isms. With the 90's we have Grunge and the alt explosion, gangsta rap taking over along with the baggy clothes look, rave and techno, the new pop explosion, the new brit music invasion, pop-punk, fusion and nu-metal, extreme sports, computer graphics changing the film industry, etc. The same kind of thing can be extrapolated for the 70's, 60's and 50's. Every decade has had real defining characteristics in art and culture.
Then 2000 hits and....
We have had some real technological advances. Cell phones, gps, cheap home computing, web networking, and the biggest video game industry boom since the Atari 2600. But what about the arts? It sure seems to me that art culture is stagnant right now. What music movements have come along and had an impact? Emo? Obviously good stuff is being made but is it new and is it affecting more than just a small group of listeners? In film we see the boom of horror again but it is primarily just remakes and retcons of concepts and properties from the 70's and 80's and I'd argue that very few of them have had a permanent impact the way the originals did whether good or bad. Even fashion is entirely retro or amalgamations of other movements with nothing new to offer.
I have a theory that the art of marketing has become such a science in America that even the smallest blip of potential creativity can be analyzed, chopped up and repackaged for the masses overnight rendering it useless like dough taken from the oven too soon instead of being allowed to grow and develop in a pocket of obscurity like every new scene needs. Maybe things are too instantaneous now and our appetites too voracious to let things develop naturally. Where we don't stamp out the spark of the new, we steal from the past in shameless repackaging with a new glossy cover.
I'm thinking that this decade may be remembered entirely for Bush's personal crusade and the global impact it has had. What amazes me is how little good art has come from this tumultuous time considering how strongly youth has rallied against these kinds of unpopular, fascist periods in the past. The first Gulf War spawned all kinds of interest in politics and by extension politically charged expression and I don't even need to mention Viet Nam. I hate to say it because it makes me feel dirty but What the Fuck is Wrong With Kids Today? The other thing that comes to mind for me when I think of this decade is how porn went mainstream. Pop acts showing their kibbles and bits left and right, sex tapes, "pimp" and "ho" role modeling, teen girls emulating porn sites like suicide girls as role models for what they should look like and how to define themselves. Cams and homemade porn posted everywhere. We may be at the beginning of a new sexual revolution but is this healthy? Are women (girls) taking control of their own sexuality or being exploited by modern culture and striving to fit an image created by our most primal instinct run wild by an anonymous internet?
So lets here your thoughts and ideas about this decade. What has it meant to you? What did I forget or miss out on and is it really from this decade or previous ones? I just hope the two thousand tens are a lot more interesting artistically.
This month I am devoting my top spots to the fine artists of the tattoo industry. Check them out. And if I missed any of you in my friends list (probably because you didn't have a tattoo in as your main pic) just let me know so I can spread the love. I'm going to be hunting and adding to the list all month so check back to see even more amazing tattoo artists.
This coming weekend I'll be appearing at the Chicago Fangoria Weekend of Horror Friday to Sunday. Stop by and chat (and buy stuff). We'll have all the horror comics you could ever want.
http://www.creationent.com/cal/fangochi.htm
The above link has all the information you need about the show and guest list.
