Freddy’s Dead

You can now read my story FREDDY’S DEAD in its entirety on the DOMINO site.

Check it out—this is a long story that’ll show up in print somewhere/somehow soon. But for now, here you go.

International Distro Items and Amanda Konishi

Well, we’ve just added some real gems to the DOMINO shop. Books from Sweden from Sanatorium Forlag—the best art comics publisher in Sweden—are now available to American audiences through the DOMINO shop. And books from Montreals DISTRIBOTO have also been addded—more books on the way from them so keep an eye out.

Here are the books

The Duke and His Army by Emelie Östergren

Maxim Hot 100 by Michael Deforge

The First in Line by Mattias Adolfsson

Catalogue de Boulons by Julie Doucet

We got these books up faster then we would have thanks to our amazing new intern Amanda Konishi! Amanda is a great cartoonist—she did the cover art for the new ish of Snakebomb, and you can also see her work in the Happiness anthology (which is a great collection of a lot of up and coming cartoonists) and she is realy helping us out a ton over here at DOMINO hq. Go follow her on her tumblr!

Face Man Drawings

Here are two fairly incredible photos showing us all of the now completed pages from Clara Bessijelle’s forthcoming FACE MAN. That last drawing with the pencils on top of it is the in progress back cover.

There’s still time to preorder the book—remember, each preorder gets a beautiful original drawing within the book by Bessijelle.

The book goes to the printers next week! We couldn’t be more excited. This is gonna be a really beautiful comic book.

Checklist

Gonna try something new here on the blog—a little weekly capsule review of comics I’ve been reading. Here’s goes nothing:

Taking it to The Bone Zone by Meg Powers

This was easily the coolest thing I picked up at MOCCA. This is the artists tumblr, but beyond that I don’t know how you could get copies of this comic. Anyway, it was exciting picking this up at MOCCA because in so many ways that show feels kind of dead—so this really funny, sexy and beautifully drawn comic in the midst of a kind of sedate show made me happy. It was really funny and Powers drew the hell out of the thing. the cover (which I can’t find an image for) has this crazy intense pizza-dripping-mozarella into outer space imagery—I felt bullied into accepting how good it was. There was a real loose/lewd tone to the whole thing but with a lot of powerful focus and belief in the whole enterprise.

Powers also had a zine of drawings of actress-crushes (everyone from Laura Dern to Tilda Swinton) that had these really beautifully rendered star portraits in it. If you see her books show up somewhere, go get em. I think I was lucky enough to buy the last copy of Bone Zone.

Hot Dog Beach #1 by Lale Westvind

Picked this up at Brooklyn Zine fest, along with a bunch of other great books from Westvind. Hot Dog beach was my favorite of the bunch. Westvind pushes these thick masses of characters around her page with wild movements. The page itself is a thrill to look at—Westvind doesn’t draw tiny or tell little stories: these are towering pages packed with rows of panels. I don’t know how long Westvind has been doing comics but there is a lot more pouring out into these comics then most other ‘new’ cartoonists I tend to see. I really like how the characters change in line tone—they can be blocky and stagnant on one page and then sharp and flowing on another. Peter Bagge does that too but it never felt as natural and satisfying for me as it does here. These comics are fun to read and have a lot of genre touches—but, the unique things Westvind does with the physicality of her characters makes this into something really new and exhilarating.

Batman #518 by Doug Moench and Kelly Jones. Colors by Adrienne Roy.

Sometimes I think that the Doug Moench/Kelly Jones run on batman is the only corporate-genre comic I actually really care about. I love the way Jones draws—creepy like Graham Engels but there’s so many more directions Jones can go with his art then a one-trick-pony creepy guy can go. Jones puts in great drawing bits like having visual puns thrown in with the ‘coming next issue’ box and often times characters expressions have little to do with what they’re saying—its just Jones doing beautiful drawing regardless of the dopey dialogue. There are so many letters in each issue during his run that complain about the way he draws ears. I also like that Moenchs stories are so simple—i think he understands the ‘get out of the way and let this artist do good stuff’ principle, but who knows? Maybe that’s just how he writes. Moenchs Batman run is just a series of different villan’s getting rotated in each couple of issues—no great intellectualizing over Batman which makes these comics feel perfect for kids: scary drawings of Batman every month fighting some new weirdo without any ponderous junk in the way. There’s something really elegant about the consistency of Moench and Kellys monthly output. The collaboration lasted for around 30 issues—wish mainstream comic teams today could muster something close to that.

This ish is notable because its the last one Adrienne Roy colored. Its printed on newsprint and the colors are flat. Just Batman standing against a plain orange background without any gradation. Simple. 519, they bumped the paperstock (and the price) up, and got rid of Roy. Some new colorist who uses a lot of photoshop filters stepped in. Jones is good enough to weather it but this issue looks beautiful in comparison.

Press Check

Went over to LINCO Print today to do a press check for Molly Colleen O’Connell’s new book Difficult Loves. LINCO is a real gem of a printer (they happen to be two subway stops away from where I live) that so many small publishers and artists (and restaurants in need of a slick menu) use. Here are some photos of the press and Molly’s book getting printed.

Beautiful old Long Island City buildings on the way to the LINCO offices.

Linco!

This is the press that handles newsprint jobs.

They were mixing ink for Molly’s cover when I got there.

Difficult Loves cover getting printed!

Same press, at rest.

Some other fine LINCO produced publications.

The plates for Difficult Loves.

Huge pile of paper wrapped in Suspect Device refuse.

You can pick up the final product of all this expert craftsmanship at the MOCCA fest, this Saturday and Sunday at the Armory Building in NYC. DOMINO BOOKS will be tabling with Closed Caption Comics. Molly O’Connell will be at the table with the new book (and some shirts and merch!). We’ll have all our previously published DOMINO books at the table as well—plus, Closed Caption Comics will have a ton of crazy knock out book as per usual

Difficult Loves by Molly Colleen O’Connell now available for orders!

Difficult Loves by Molly Colleen O’Connell is now available for orders in the DOMINO shop.

$6, 24 pages, 9×12. Color cover, black and white interiors. Two color poster inserts.

Core member of the art collective Closed Caption Comics (CCC), Molly Colleen O’Connell brings us her richest book to date. The reader is at first confronted with O’Connell’s signature fleshy characters, more fully realized and powerful than ever before. Lurking around them this time are snakes—real and implied. The book centers around human relationships, but like O’Connell’s drawings, the simple road is ignored. Are snakes here for their viciousness or for their intertwining personas? O’Connell brings out an endless parade of pet concerns: nail salons, pottery, and strip malls are all here, drawn to the fullest.

Each page of this comic stands alone as an aggressively elegant work for the reader to soak up. Taken together, these pages form an elaborate story and a concentrated work of art that readers will be dipping into long after their first encounter.

DOMINO will be sharing table space with CCC at the MOCCA festival on April 28th and 29th. Difficult Loves, and all are previously published books, will be available at our table.

Please Help Sparkplug

Sparkplug Boooks is in the middle of of a fundraiser for their next 3 books.

You should go to their fundraising site now and read the full story. I talk about Sparkplug every chance I get because they mean so much to me. As I’ve said on this site countless times, Sparkplug is the main inspiration for DOMINO. The reason people should support Sparkplug now is because Dylan Williams was relentlessly supportive of people he cared about, whether it be through artistic encouragement, or nuts and bolts publishing advocacy help in getting projects off the ground. Dylan believed in helping people within the comics community and when he passed away, I think everyone was amazed to see just how many people he was involved with. So many people wrote about Dylan’s encouragement for them that it was staggering, even for those of us who knew what kind of man he was.

But Dylan wasn’t one to ask for help for his own projects. Now, with his passing, the last 3 books he was working on need a little push. Emily, Virginia and Tom are working hard to finish these projects that Dylan started—I think for all the work Dylan did for so many of us, it’s a wonderful chance to do something in return. Even if Dylan might have been reluctant to ask for help for himself, he would have wanted these books to exist.

Help Sparkplug HERE.

Quick Art Sale

Hey y’all. Lots of stuff happening here at DOMINO Headquarters. We are so so so so close to the official release of FACE MAN by Clara Bessijelle and DIFFICULT LOVES by Molly Collenn O’Connell. Both these books are looking like they’re just a few weeks away—were pretty sure they’ll both be at MOCCA. Exciting stuff, huh?

To make the roll out of these books go a little more smoothly for us here at DOMINO, we’re having a quick one week art sale. Nothing too special but just enough to get excited about I think. For the next 7 days, you can buy my portfoilo of prints I USED TO LIVE ON RIDGE STREET for $150 instead of $250.

Just email me directly at austin.robertson.englsih@gmail.com instead of hitting the paypal button.

I’m also offering pages of art from my story MY FRIEND PERRY at discounted prices. Normally $250-300 a page, you could pikc up some this week for around $150, depending on the page. Read the story in full here at MEGAZINE MAGAZINE and tell me which pages you’re interested in.

Gfrörer, Sonatina, Weird and Closed Caption in the Store

Some really great new distro items up in the shop. Some of my personal favorite comics this time around. Go check ’em out:

Weird Magazine edited by Noel Freibert

Closed Caption Comics #9

Too Dark to See by Julia Gfrörer

Flesh and Bone by Julia Gfrörer

Sonatina Comics #1

Cover for Jonathan Petersen’s new book

Space Basket, by Jonathan Petersen, will be out this Summer from DOMINO. Jonathan just sent over the front and back cover and they look incredible…here they are for your enjoyment (and remember to pick up the remaining zine we have by Jonathan in the Domino shop…a couple of them have already sold out).