I don’t usually blog about comic conventions, on account of the fact that it’d be incredibly boring because most con photos are of a bunch of cartoonists acting like ass clowns in hotel rooms or eating inordinate amounts of breakfast. My ma’s always like “what do you do during conventions? who are you with? are you eating properly?” The answers are making fart jokes, cartoonists and no. And now here is some stuff about that:
Tom Neely and Virgina Paine picked me up from the Minneapolis airport and the first exciting thing I saw was a Target. You might not think that’s newsworthy, but after a decade of living in San Francisco and New York, the idea of driving to Target to buy socks, toilet paper and pajama pants is alluring. Suburban envy is a real thing, y’all. I have to walk to three different stores just to get the right ingredients to make a PB&J.
Later, when we picked up Sarah Glidden, we drove past these unfathomable structures and I lost my mind for a minute. What are they? There were mutterings of grain mills and doomsday machines and nefarious scheming.
Zak Sally gave a bunch of us a tour of the La Mano 21 printing office/studio space which is a hoarder’s delight.
Here’s Zak pointing at something while John Porcellino and Anders Nilsen look at the thing he’s point at while standing next to an old printing press. Zak gave us a demonstration of how the machine prints comics and I think Dustin Harbin JIMPed over it. It was pretty magical though. And it made me excited about all these small press, craftily printed comics that are coming out right now. There was a lot of talk over the weekend about how now that the craze of big publishers pursuing indie cartoonists is over, it’s giving rise to more, for lack of a better word, underground small presses. These publishers (like La Mano, T0m K’s Uncivilized Books and Koyama Press to name a few) have been around for awhile, however, as many people concurred at MIX, people are getting increasingly excited about the work coming out out these places. As someone who has worked with both small and big press, I’m honestly thrilled to be working with Koyama Press on a book that’ll come out next spring. I’m grateful for the opportunity I had working with a big publisher, but I’m much more comfortable working with “my people” so to say.
Pages of Sammy the Mouse getting ready for another layer of color
oh look, John Porcellino and I time traveled from a Neil Young concert in 1972 to attend the Cloudy Collection show at Pink Hobo Gallery with Zak Sally and Noah Van Sciver.
Nic Breutzman, me, John Porcellino and Zak Sally were on a panel that was supposed to be about failure but we mostly sat around accusing each other of living in trash bags and dumpsters. I told a story about sitting in the NYC food stamps office, a rite of passage for every cartoonist at least once in his or her life.
Here’s a bunch of nerds standing around in a comic book store as nerds are wont to do! L-R: Anders Nilsen, Kevin Huizenga, Noah Van Sciver, Jim Rugg and Tom Neely.
We stayed at Zak Sally’s, which led to a late night perusal of Anal Cunt’s song titles. If you have no idea what that sentence means, as I previously did not, google it. I’m sorry and/or you’re welcome.
John Porcellino and Elzie Crisle’s Christmas card.
Karen Sneider and Jon Lewis took me to Candyland…
…where they had a candy called “Squirrel Turds” that made me laugh a lot because I’m five.
I just realized I didn’t take a single photo of the convention itself. There are more photos of the weekend but I just got tired of posting and captioning all of them and now I want to talk about…
THE MALL OF AMERICA!! Yeah, that’s right, I went to the MALL OF AMERICA.
I was afraid that an ironic trip to the MALL OF AMERICA would lead to unironic shopping.
It did not. I mean, how can anyone shop under these circumstances?
oh wait, this lego stuff is kind of awesome.
This corridor on a mostly empty level was full of ghost farts. (drafts)
All this is the stuff that nightmares are made of. And you know what else? There was an American Girl store, and Karen and I went in to see if the dolls based on the books we read as kids were in there. I used to read the Kirsten books (which were by far the most dire, all about prairies and poverty and such) and it turns out they “retired” her. As in no kids these days are interested in stories about pioneers and wood houses and farming. We left feeling old.
I’ve got a set of photos from the MALL OF AMERICA but now I have PTSD and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.
I don’t know why I added this photo at the end, I just like it is all.
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
A whole store for American Girl dolls?! I was all about Samantha and am sad to see that she, too, is not getting much face time these days. Dolls that teach us about history ought to be more popular. And cool silos!
That printing press photo got my heart aflutter.
Love that old printing press! I actually learned to use one of those, once upon a time.
Some nice shots of Americana with MALL OF AMERICA and the grain silos. Sounds like you had fun.
I am so confused. Your cartoon-you insist on saying you’re not good-looking. But everytime you post a photo of yourself, all I see is a beautiful woman. Are you messing with our minds or just messing with our minds? ‘Cause my mind is messed up already. Or, is your cartoon-you trying to persuade us you’re not beautiful out of envy? Cartoon-you is pretty too. I am so confused! :s
Love your work!
PS: those are not silos. They are doomsday machine power generators. You’ll see ‘em working full-load on 2012!
They retired Kirsten? NOOOO. Suddenly, the Kirsten doll sitting in my old room at my mom’s house seems irrelevant. She’ll probably have a bout of existentialism.
The American Girl collection retired Felicity, the colonial chick with the horse
She was my favorite.
Also just found out the collection is celebrating their 25 year anniversary. I feel ancient.
Suburban envy.
All this time, living in (not so big, but big enough) inner city Portland I was pining for a Target to be closer than FOREVER AWAY (forever if you don’t own a car) and I didn’t know there was a name for my suffering or that I wasn’t the only who was not so hip that I didn’t wish for a more conveniently placed Target.
That doll salon on flickr made my stomach turn a lil bit.
I really like the photos. May I use the first one for teaching purposes in my English class? It looks like taken directly out of a dark science fiction movie.
sure, go for it!
zak sally? his old band low, was/is a favorite of mine. i honestly had no idea he is in publishing now. as silly teens, my friends and i would browse the anal cunt records at the record store-giggling like goons at their song titles. some things don’t change, except no one goes to record stores.
I grew up in the oasis/black hole of Omaha c.1970-1990, suburban city kid, with a mega-mall a 30-minute walk away.
In the summer, I spent my time in a small town of 1200.
I always looked forward to small city visits… either the county seat, where all the drug stores were located, or the regional centers, which might have a Pamida or K-Mart or Alco or Coast-To-Coast or Ben Franklin. Those variety stores were not as slick as Target, and served a different market, which always had some unexpected pleasures. Try it sometime… pick a town of 5-10,000 people in the middle of nowhere, and spend the day on Main Street, with perhaps a side-trip to the stores along the highway leading into town. Visit any store which looks like a chain, but of which you’ve never heard of, like ShopKo.
Given all the “art” comics being produced, I’m a bit surprised no one has used movable type in a comic.
As for American Girl, there are eleven stores located across the country. New York has one near Rockefeller Center, at 49th and Fifth. The website continues to sell Kirsten books and dolls.
That grain elevator is quite dystopic. If you want to shoot a barren stretch of interstate, I-90 west of I-35 is mind-numbing. In Omaha, they wrapped their’s in artwork. http://www.emergingterrain.org/storedpotential/
There’s a lot of really funny stuff in here. You pick on yourself so well. Good work.
I think I would have freaked out about the doomsday machines, too, and hell I’m from KS.
OK, I just need to check. JIMP = Jizzed In My Pants
right?
That picture of the American Girl doll salon made me sad inside, just why does it exist?
There’s a ton of urban exploring to be done in the twin cities. Look into it if you ever come back.
If Anal Cunt floated your boat for the 10 minutes of boat-floating they had in ‘em, you might enjoy Seth Putnam’s black metal side project.
Impaled Northern Moonforest – Gazing At The Blasphemous Moon While Perched Atop A Very Very Very Very Very Very Very Forsaken Crest of The Northern Mountain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6HYyGWtMS8
Recorded in a single night with only acoustic guitars and knee-slaps-as-percussion, they managed to make what might be the least listenable basement black metal album of all time. Quite a feat when you take into consideration the fact that roughly 99.666% of black metal sounds like it was recorded in a Wendy’s drive-thru in Des Moines.
fucking A, i had samantha, and then kirsten, and then addy. i had friends who had felicity & molly too. i read all the books first and that shit was just about all i ever asked for for xmas & birthdays. i even had the paper dolls. can you imagine a kid’s face if you handed them PAPER DOLLS these days?
blerg. i turned 28 on tuesday and i feel more and more ancient all the time when it comes to shit like this. le sigh.
I literally laughed out loud when I read the phrase “ghost farts” (drafts). Love it!
This has been a strange day of synchronicity indeed. I’ve been reading “I Saw You…” in the break room at work this week and also listening to podcasts of TCJ Talkies on my iPod during work. I listened to your interview today (yeah, I know it’s an old podcast, but it’s new to me). I was surprised to recognize the name of the artist being interviewed as the same person who edited the book I was reading during breaks. I decided to look you up tonight and was astonished to discover you photograph abandonments and ruins. If you ever get back here to Minneapolis, let me know. The exploration playgrounds here include not just fabulous grain mills, but also one of the best collections of explorable tunnels and human-made caves in the country! Twin Cities urban explorers know how to party.