From Steve Zimmer's Passive-Agressive Avenger. I'd show more, but I don't wanna spoil a future video.

Drawn-Out Storytelling was a great time. Thanks are due especially to Nisse Greenberg, Paul Swartz, Lena Chandhok & Mike O’Malley [who provided music and doesn't seem to have a webby] for making it happen. The efforts of all the storytellers, musicians and fellow cartoonists involved, as well as the support of The Brick Theater and Kickstarter donors, made for some rollicking and entertaining shows.  And it wouldn’t have been nearly so enjoyable without the enthusiastic crowds night after night. Thank you too much for coming out!

For me, it was a thrill to be able to invite friends and family to an event at which they would actually have fun. I feel like I’m always inviting folks to come out and pay 15 bucks just to get into the door of some strange and out-of-the-way building so they can look at some Xeroxed comics they don’t care about, and maybe some graphic novels they could just get at the store. But not this time! This time I could boldly extend my welcome to all comers, feeling secure that they had an actual, engaging and satisfying diversion! Oh, theater, such is your allure. Thanks to all you scads of friends and family for helping the house sell out, and for being such a generous audience.

I’ve got so many things I want to show you! There are doodles in my sketchbook, comics and illustrations, and side-by-side comparisons of silkscreen-vs.-laser-vs.-offset printing! But they’ll all have to wait for another day. One fine morning in May, when the fruit trees are all in bloom, perhaps our love can once more blossom. Until then…

MOCCA FEST! MOCCA FEST! MOCCA FEST!

Friends, New Yorkers, countrymen, lend me your eyeballs! I’ll be at table M-11, along the back wall, with hot young cartoonists Beth Hetland, Ben Horak and Josh Kramer. I’ll have a new sampler of Farmy Acres strips and Oaks & Lindens numbers 1–3 (the last with it’s lovely new Pantone color cover), and I’ll be checking out fellow-CCSers’ material up and down the M and H rows. You might like to do the same.

MoCCA Fest is this Saturday & Sunday, April 9 & 10, at the Lexington Avenue Armory, 68 Lexington Ave (between 25th & 26th).

And! Guess what ELSE?!!

For those of you on the other coast, I’ll have some original art and some comics on display at Portland, OR’s Nisus Gallery. They’ll even be open for extended hours during the Stumptown Comics Fest the following weekend (April 16 & 17). The show is called Paneled, and it’ll be on exhibit through the 30th. Check it out at 328 NW Broadway #117 (at Flanders).

Those guys above are friendly demons from hell. The one in front has a name, thanks to Nick Patten’s cleverness. But that’s old news. I don’t even want to admit how old this sketch I’m serving up for your edification truly is. Okay, okay, like, six months.

Anyhow, there’s a new comic up on my portfolio page. And I do mean new. It was unleashed in print at last Saturday’s MICE, in Boston, which was a spirited, intimate affair. Thanks to all who macheted your way through to the hidden room in the corner and stopped by my table with Beth, Josh and Ben!

In more narcissistic news, I got my tooth fixed. I also shaved my summer beard and even payed for a real haircut. Before and after shots will follow, once I’m really feeling like you guys on the internets just aren’t seeing enough pictures of how great I am. <3

Well, folks, I’ve done it. I made another issue of Oak & Linden. It’ll debut tomorrow at MICE–the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo, in Boston at the Art Institute from 10:00 to 6:00. Thank Quetzalcoatl we made it through that! In other self-promotional news, you may have already noted* that a certain little comic called Nymphonomena has stormed the gates of The Comics Journal. Thanks, Rob Clough!!

I’ve screen printed this cover, with a 2-color dotscreen thang going on. I’m still not sure I’m at all pleased with it yet. I’m also making some laser prints of the cover. You, the public, shall decide how I might procede! Maybe I’ll go off on some topic you don’t really care about next week. I think I feel one of those coming on. Aren’t you so glad to have subscribed to this blog???

*Perhaps? Even? You’ve been directed to note by the very same author of this salesblog?

Guess who’s blowin up The Comics Journal Internets lately? That’s right, it’s your old pal the Toothless Wonder: me. Not that I want to toot my own horn or anything (because I’m pretty sure that would require removing a rib, and I don’t have health insurance for that). Says Rob Clough, about Tag Team, “The clear-line style of Barrett meshed well with Chapman’s heavy ink line.” In Rich Kreiner’s review of the Caboose anthology, you may even notice a fave-bomb:

Several of those faves of mine, though, use localized experiences as the springboard for legitimate, telling — and funny — elaborations on a theme… you know who you are, penguin opining why the Center shouldn’t forsake its cold-weather isolation for a sunnier clime and you “Grown-Up Babies in ‘The Land of No Women.’”

Now, I know my Legion of Imaginary DC-Area Fans is just quivering with anxiety, wondering if I’ll be at SPX, the Small Press Xpo. I’m sorry, true believers, but I won’t. I will, however, be at a new lil’ thang called MICE, for Massachusetts Independent? Comics? Ex…poooo? I think? It’s at the Art Institute of Boston on Saturday, September 25th. So, I’ll see you there, you Brigade of Hypothetical New England Devotees.

I was representing CCS along with my classmates and pals Ben, Paul, Lena, Monty and Jesse. Although there were a few kerfluffles with the existence of our name badges or our table on day one of the three-day comicsplosion, the event was still fun and productive. Heroes is a big convention, and tilts toward mainstream superhero fare. It’s really refreshing for one of those events in that it’s not at all about pushing whatever new commodity the big conglomerates are hoping nerds will get feverish over, or that the entertainment news will scoop. It’s about comic books and the people who make comic books, and it’s for the people who read comic books. There are no Star Trek actors signing autographs and no big promotional launches of video games (with one exception).

And, thanks to the force of will that is Dustin Harbin, it also includes an Indie Island overflowing with the type of literary/comedic comics that I read and make. It was great to see graphic novelly indie snobs and rippling pectoral devotee fanboys join in the middle of this convention hall-sized venn diagram. Plus I got to meet some great artists, talk to some enthusiastic comics readers, scour through longboxes for forgotten, musty comics nobody cares about, and goof around with not only my tablemates, but also Joe, Gabby and Alec, all of whom I love very dearly. No homo.

This being a mainstream convention, there was a lot of drawing famous characters going around. I couldn’t resist. It’s Goofy acting like the Tex Avery Wolf.

Well, there is plenty of news. Big news! All of it related to this first item: I’ll be at table G4 at MoCCA Fest next weekend, so if you’re in the New York area, please stop on by. It’s Saturday and Sunday at the “Fightin 69th” Regiment Armory on Lexington Ave between 25th and 26th. I’ll be debuting Oak & Linden issue #2 there, which’ll be available at the shop after I get back. And! my work will also be appearing in a few anthologies:

1. Caboose, a tabloid-size extravaganza all about White River Jct, VT, distributed for free
2. Tag Team Comics, “a round robin cartooning adventure” that blends factory-style job separation with jam comic togetherness (a full description awaits you at the other end of the link)
3. San Papel–Westerns! And perfect bound! I drew the cover, remember?

Mayhap this will pique your interest until next weekend. It’s the new Oak & Linden cover some time in its second trimester. I’ll post the finished baby juuuuust before the actual Fest, so I hope your breath is bated!