Warren Craghead and DOMINO HQ update

A short interview between myself and Warren Craghead, one of my favorite artists, is up at The Comics Journal.

Also, DOMINO is moving to New York, and that means an address change. We will still be able to receive mail at our Långholmsgatan 7 Swedish address, but…it’ll be best to send mail to us in Brooklyn. Our new address is:

Austin English

282 Broadway Apt #2

Brooklyn, NY

11211

See you in the USA in 3 days!

Svensk Sommar Semester

Summer winding down here for DOMINO as we make the big leap from Sweden to NYC. Here are some photos of the Swedish countryside where Clara and I were staying this Summer.

We planted onions, parsnips, carrots, parsley, potatoes, marigold and red beets.

Jeez, why are we leaving for NYC exactly? The reasons are looking a bit abstract.

Aw just kidding. We love ‘the gritty city.’ One thing we’ll be doing there is publishing Clara Bessijelle’s THE MAN WITH MY FACE in December. Clara has been keeping a folder of images that she uses in collages—photos below. More about this book later:

FInally, as anyone who knows me can guess, I’m pretty shaken by what’s happening with Dylan Williams. I don’t know if there’s anyone in comics or art that I’m closer to or care more about than Dylan. I have a lot to write and say about Dylan but don’t have the proper words yet—I feel like, for now, those are things I have to tell Dylan personally. Dylan is my dear, dear friend and also (as he is for so many people) one of the main reasons I stuck it out with making art when I wasn’t so sure of myself. Dylan believed in me when I wasn’t even sure if I did.

I think all the public outpour of love and affection for Dylan is really beautiful—all I can do right now is urge everyone to go to the Sparkplug store and buy as many books as possible. I went there last week and got some wonderful comics. You can also get involved in an art show put on by the best comics store in the world.

More New Pages

DOMINO is getting together two new books which will be out by December. More details about all that soon—we are really really excited to start publishing more and putting our hearts into DOMINO. Watch this space.

In the meantime, here are some more pages I’ve been working on this summer from My Friend Perry.

Top Ten Comics

The Hooded Utilitarian organized a ‘ten best comics of all time’ poll. Here’s the list I sent them (you can find more lists here)

Leben? oder Theater?: Ein Singspiel, by Charlotte Salomon. This work is usually talked about due to the tragic circumstances surrounding its creation and ultimate fate of its author. I remember seeing it before reading about Salomon’s biography and was filled with inspiration for the way Salomon drew figures and poses as I struggled to find my own way to draw characters in a picture story. This is a singular work in so many ways: a long narrative drawn in a rich way that most long comic narratives would shy away from. There is also an intensity of emotion that you can’t miss even before you know the situation the work was born into. So, for its sustained richness of images and unembarrassed emotional force, this work seems to tower above almost every other work of graphic narrative. Somehow its example has been ignored, perhaps because its too strong to grapple with.

Chimera by Lorenzo Mattotti. I enjoy looking at the neat panel borders in this comic, and then shifting my attention to the flurry of lines within those neat borders. I like to imagine the borders sketched out first, as little areas for Mattotti to pour out his heartbreaking work. I don’t know if he comes at those panels unleashing a torrent of jagged lines or if he methodically applies each stroke in a systematic way. Either way, Mattotti’s system is not just thrilling to read and digest, but enriching to anyone who attaches any value to the idea that one can express ones self through drawing.

Der Palast by Anke Feuchtenberger. Hard to narrow down one Feuchtenberger work for this list. As a reader, I prefer her W the Whore work. But this album is something of a perfect object: the long size of the book and the shape of the characters. The imagery is “personal” (who else could it have come from except for Feuchtenberger) but also communicates something that is not about unadulterated expression. As in many of my favorite works of art, the drawings are labored over not to achieve perfection, but to achieve shapes that convey a world of thought and feelings beyond the narrow scope of our brains. These drawings are for our hearts, all the parts of it.

Hero’s Life and Death Triumphant by Frédéric Coché. For the scale, the ambition, and for the heroic achievement, this work has to be on a ten best list, even if I find it somewhat lacking as a story. The overall punch of it is enough: page after page of gorgeous etched comics. Comics are always hard work, and the noble effort of this volume is always inspiring to me.

The White Boy page by Garrett Price from the Smithsonian collection. Specifically, I’m talking about the page with the large bottom portion featuring a richly drawn sky. That single page seems to be a secret influence lurking over the ambitions of many a contemporary cartoonist: the simplicity of the figures combined with the devil-may-care attitude that went into the drawing of the landscape.

The Kin-der-Kids by Lyonel Feininger. I prefer it to Little Nemo by a long shot. I find it more interesting on a technical drawing level, and the shapes to be far more pleasing aesthetically. Most of all, it has the visual bravado of Nemo, but it happens to be full of beautiful writing and stories. A pity that it was out of print for so long, only to be reprinted to mass indifference.

Krazy Kat by George Herriman. My Krazy Kat collections will never be sold when I’m short on money or left behind when I move. I’ll keep going back to them for my entire life. When I’m feeling down, they make me happy. When I want to see some imaginative drawings, I know there will always be something in them that I missed before. When I want to see everything that comics can be—a world totally with its own laws of language, design, and logic that is still more inviting than intimidating—Krazy Kat is what I always want to go to first. As a work of art that makes you feel alive as a human and as an artist, Krazy Kat is still my favorite.

The complete works of Edward Gorey. The last page in the last big Gorey collection is a heartbreak: a ruled page, awaiting detail. Gorey kept making books, and I can’t think of a clunker. Together, they are full of all kinds of stories, all kinds of shapes and figures. The scope of Gorey’s ideas and tones are so vast that I don’t understand why he isn’t talked about more in comics circles. Often, with someone of Gorey’s caliber, I have the sinking suspicion that the work is “too good” to be engaged in comics terms. It has such a distance from the rest of the pack that it becomes to seem like a strange anomaly.

The Walking Man by Jiro Taniguchi. Hard to limit myself to one work of manga, but this one always leaps to mind first. I sometimes have the guilty feeling of liking Taniguchi more than Hergé, and this is the work that usually pushes me into that thinking (Hergé would have never let himself release a book this eccentric). I admire this book as an example of “perfect” comics drawing (more perfect to me than Jamie Hernandez), but it’s the writing that gets it on the top ten list. An achingly calm story punctuated by moments of small action that feel monumental, this is a book that shows day-to-day life as not mundane but thrillingly odd.

The autobiographical comics of Luc Leplae. I look at a lot of comics, and I yearn for more like these. The figures are drawn in a unique style, and you can see Leplae’s brain trying to figure out the basics: Where should I put text? How many drawings on one page? I suspect that if he had been in contact with other cartoonists, his style would have become more refined, more readable. And that would have been fine—I like refined comics a lot. But I also like the thrilling originality of this work, and the energy that comes from it.

Astral Talk

Astral Talk is a beautiful new anthology edited by Aidan Koch and featuring work by Clara Bessijelle, Jason Overby, Blaise Larmee, Dunja Jankovic, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Ward Zwart, Austin English and Aidan herself.

The roster of artists reads like a DOMINO dream team and I think Aidan did an incredible job in selecting the work for this book. A good anthology reads as a statement, and Astral Talk makes a strong argument for a very particular aesthetic. The featured artists show great passion for telling stores with images coupled with a wild disregard for tradtional layout, tools, story structure, etc. And yet story ITSELF is not rejected. Writing, evocative langueage and situations are as equally labored over as the intense, expressive imagery. I think the generation featured in this book has something to say with experimental writing as much as with experimental drawing. More on that idea later (I have a lot to say about it)…but for now, read about it in ASTRAL TALK.

Contact Publication Studio on how to get a copy (I think they will adding it to their online store soon).

My Friend Perry

I’ve been hard at work this summer with drawing, for the most part working on a new story called My Friend Perry. Here are some scans—very poor scans at that, and not in any real order—of what I’ve been up to.

Keyhole concludes!

Jesse McManus final Keyhole installment went up today. Read part 1 first and then part 2. This is 32 pages of beautiful comics, folks. There’s something about Jesse’s work that i find so satisfying—whether its the rubbery nature of the character’s or the amount of love Jesse pours into each page to give it that special gestalt. His art, and Keyhole is a fine example, is often like finding a highly elegant childrens comic from some undefinable era that was written and executed with a fiercely modern sensibility. I’ve been thrilled to have Keyhole run here for so many weeks. Tell your friends to go read it now!

Penultimate Keyhole

Keyhole by Jesse McManus clocks in its penultimate chapter. Look at that guy, falling over like that—that is some beautiful drawing, if you ask me. If you haven’t told all your friends about this comic yet, you have one more week before the grand finale. But for now, enjoy 4 new pages, on us.

Art Sale

So Domino is making a big move to New York City, starting in September! I miss NYC a lot and I’m excited to go back—but we could use a little extra money to make the move. So, I’m offering up a few DOMINO items at special discounts.

If you’re interested in any of these items at these prices, send me an email at

austin.robertson.english@gmail.com

as the paypal buttons on the DOMINO site won’t be altered. Sale lasts through august!

Original art from Here I Am! by Austin English

Normally, original pages from this story would cost $250-300 per page. I’ll be selling pages from $150-200. All pages available. Contact me about which one you’re interested in.

I Used to Live on Ridge Street Artist’s Book by Austin English

Lithograph Portfolio containing 13 images that tell a story. Extremely limited edition of 14 portfolios. Signed and numbered by the artist.

Normally $250—now $200 plus free shipping.

Read full story here.

The Greatest Fear by Austin English

Limited edition portfolio of Dry Point Copper prints. 10 editions made, 13 images in all. Tells a short story about two men who share a secret.

Normally $80—now $50 plus free shipping.

Read full story here.

Untitled 6-stone Color Lithograph by Austin English. Edition of 16

Normally $150—Now $100 plus free shipping.

Thanks everyone!

SKVER video

Here’s a great quick video-doc from SKVER by artist Tanja M. I’m interviewed for a little bit towards the end.