Not a day without a line
I’ve been thinking about getting the hell off Facebook for awhile, but something always comes up. That’s the thing with Facebook, there’s always another friend to add, or another app to block. Could we all just please poke each other every once in a while and keep it at that?
Tags: facebook, focus, social networks, twitter
I’m assuming that, if you’re new to this site, you have come here on advice from David B. Metcalfe, Eric Orchard, or Derik Badman. These three gentlemen have been more than generous in their recent statements about my work, and I am grateful to them.
Since you have been thusly misled into believing I produce any work of artistic merit, I urge you to take a peek through the categories “Comics” and “Sketch of the day” (the menu to the right of this post. That should set the record straight.
If you’re still not convinced of my hackery after that, surf on to the workblog of my current project, Astoria and judge for yourself.
I am very sorry about the inconvenience!
Tags: david metcalfe, derik badman, eric orchard, twitter
I now work at Malmö’s pittoresque Seriecenter, along with my buddies from C’est Bon Kultur, and will be posting frequently about our new anthology issues!
On a bummer note, I lost my steady paying gig with publisher Faraos Cigarer, but will continue to work with them on a freelance basis.
There will also be a few new comic projects announced here in the near future, so stay tuned!
Tags: update
I’m stuffing new music onto the iPod on a daily basis, changing around allthe time. The music I play the most at the moment is old rediscoveries from the back of shelves, and some new favorites, sorted below by band, then album:
(more…)
Tags: 80's metal, 90's metal, Alice in Chains, Anthrax, Battle of Mice, megadeth, Metallica, Pantera
Here’s a big hug for the fantastic Rikke Bakman who has been a good friend and ever-generous support while I’ve been at Malmö’s Comic School.
She currently works on an autobiographic comic, focusing a whole childhood’s peaks of embarassment into a single summer day.
It’s an electrifying read from what I’ve gleaned over her shoulder, and sadly one that she’s taking her time finishing 
The box in the foreground contains a year’s worth of graphite and colored pencil shavings, the skin shed from her tools while working on the piece.
Tags: Malmö, Rikke Bakman, Serieskolan
I honestly thought I’d seen the last media coverage on Santino the chimp when I wrote my previous post on him. Or, at least, I thought the low point had been reached.
People’s capacity for simplification and their hunger for lowbrow entertainment have no limits, though, and in today’s Swedish Metro he pops up again.
The headline to the pictured article reads “He applauded the queen”. Queen Silvia visited the Furuvik zoo where he’s kept, and the subject has changed from his paradigm-changing display of foresight onto that of her royal safety.
Reduced from a creature capable of abstract thought that may parallel our own, he is now described as a stone-throwing monkey that “didn’t get the oppurtunity” to take a swing at her highness.
Just as the press ignores that two weeks ago, Santino was cause for rethinking our view of how chimps (and possibly other animals) perceive the world, it is also forgotten that the poor guy has been neutered to counter his hostility toward guests.
I could go on about our devotion to royal bloodlines as a metaphor of how mankind see ourselves in relation to animals, but I can’t be bothered.
Nor will I draw parallels between the effects of castration on Santino’s behavior (and the loss of insight into the animal mind that that entails) and the way comfy, celebrity chit-chat disguised as reportage numbs the public mind and keeps the readers from having an opinion about anything outside primetime TV.
I’m really too sad and disillusioned, and yes, I just might go hug a tree now, thankyouverymuch.
Tags: animal rights, chimp, consciousness, media, Santino
Wednesday, like the day before, was basically a time of quiet, intense labour on the students’ part.
Free Comics ed. Torben Hansen was unfortunately late, and didn’t actually meet them, but he got to look at most of the comics-in-progress, and asked to be contacted by three of the students.
That, I think, is one of the greatest oppurtunities of working with a class like this – that I can use my network to get others published, sometimes with their first comic ever.
Thanks to a couple of students who had finished early, we had the exhibition area cleared quickly, and I was satisfied with the day’s work when I got on the train home.
Once again, Thursday was dedicated to more work, and I was glad to see that many of the class had worked through the night.
One by one, comics were finished during the first hour of today’s session, and we started getting the exhibition up. I’d had a vague idea about using fishing wire to string the sheets out between ceiling and floor, so they would appear form a distance to float in the air.
Instead we had to use the material at hand, a quite visible, fibrous, white nylon string. Although the illusion of weightlessness was gone, the string turned out to give a good sense of space, much moreso than the alternative, massive mobile walls.
The lightboxes used in session were also brought down one after another as comics were finished, to be used as displays for some pieces.
As deadline loomed closer, the hanging was still empty in some places but in the nick of time the last comics were hung, literally, to dry like laundry.
In my opinion the exhibition went brilliantly, and I overheard a lot of well-deserved praise for the artists. If nothing else, I am personally very proud of my students’ accomplishments over the course of four short weeks, and hope to hear of their progress in the future (in or outside comics)
And then it was over.
People seeped gradually out the door, and in the end I was left there with a few of my students, who appeared to feel the same anticlimax.
We lingered for a minute, but in the end, that was it. I could kick myself for not giving a speech, or at least gathering “my kids” one last time.
They will be missed, and I’m afraid some may abandon comic making now that I’m not there to bend their arms. They are a talented lot, and damn it, I would love to see some of that talent channeled into comics!
Time will tell I suppose. And an email from one of the gang, if I’m lucky
This was my view all day 
I’m a proud little teacher, all remaining students are hard at work at their final product, each by their individual aesthetic and ability.
“Remaining students”, yes. As expected, some have fallen by the wayside, a few even quite recently as the ambitions were raised according to their general accomplishments.
In a relatively short course like this (ie, not an entire term, or even an actual education) there is only time to play catch-up on the students who have the motivation to learn.
Fortunately, those who don’t generally have the courtesy of staying away instead of bothering others with their presence.
I am very excited that my publisher at Brun Blomst and Free Comics, Torben Hansen, is coming by tomorrow to see the almost-finished comics, and hopefully handpick a few for his monthly magazine! Yay!
Santino, a chimp in a Swedish zoo, has been discovered to be gathering stones and concrete fragments after opening hours, shaping them into disc-shaped projectiles in anticipation hurling them at the next morning’s crowds of gawkers.
His calm preparations for the morning’s bursts of anger and resent clearly show more foresight and conscience of his situation than a certain former US president, and has led behavioral scientists to conclude that Santino has an abstract “inner world” that animals (or Dubya) have not previously been considered capable of.
Obviously, this raises questions as to our right to keep animals imprisoned for display, and as the song goes, “if you tolerate this, your children will be next.” Extending the US comparison to a logical end, if we subject thinking creatures to that kind of treatment, the North American government might justify Gitmo by selling guided-tour passes to the public.
All jokes aside, if there is further proof of animals’ ability to think abstractly, ie. planning ahead, having an imagination, considering different scenarios depending on the outcome of events … If that is the case, we as a race will have to consider expanding the limits of civil rights gradually, as species by species may display characteristics that we in the past have thought unique to humankind.
Recently, the *current* American president was (consciously or unconsciously) likened to a chimp; an insult by the ruling paradigm, but not so much if Santino’s behavior is a common trait among chimpanzees. Quite generally, chimps are considered to possess mental abilities of a three-year old human. I happen to be the father of a boy that age, and I would contest his human rights with any means necessary.
In the very recent past, non-Caucasian families of humanity were held to be of inferior stock to the Western breed, and accordingly kept as slaves, or persecuted, or merely suffered lowercaocial standing and marginalization. There is a thin line between being sold as slave labor and being put on display for a minor fee. Either way you’re reduced to a trade good.
Now may be a good time to add that I eat meat, wear leather, and have always defended my right to do so, provided the animals whose bodily remains I have consumed were treated decently. That definition of “decency” may have to change now.
And Santino? Was of course castrated immediately to ensure the safety of the zoo’s paying visitors.
The Guardian
Tags: animal rights, behavior, consciousness
Given a rare chance to switch music on the old iPod, I gave in and reloaded Jex Thoth’s eponymous debut. It’s only a couple weeks ago that I removed it because I hadn’t heard much else for a month or so, and I was afraid I’d wear it out.
My current schedule is really cramped at the moment (6 hrs transportation a day, 4 days a week!) and I suppose I’m not exactly in an extreme metal mood, especially not with the amount of coffee coursing through my body. Ergo, the more spazzed out bands went in favor of Ms Thoth and her henchmen.
When first I heard the album I was a bit wary, but from second sitting onward I was hooked on their special (although not exactly unique) brand of back-to-the-roots downer rock.
My first association was to Black Sabbath, and I could easily imagine Jex Thoth to have come out right on the heels of that particular nexus in modern music. Like Sabbath, their music is heavy and proto-metallic, but definitely more influenced by rock and blues than by the genre that grew into metal.
Apart from the simple yet effectively sluggish riffs that invoke a time less occupied with shredding guitars, it is the unabashed use of Hammond organ that gets me thinking of late sixties (heavy) music. I’ve never been a Doors fan because I’m more than a little annoyed by Morrison’s art posturings, but I do apppreciate the creepier aspects of the organ sound.
Jex Thoth is also mining the back catalog of bands less known to me for inspiration, like Black Widow and Pagan Altar, which I’ve obviously had to investigate, too. There is no bit of plagiarism that I can detect, I hasten to add. But certain moods and general sounds are echoed on Jex Thoth (the album) and for me that spill of primitive doom has hit a dry spot.
I say “primitive”; My Brother The Musician was less kind. He noted that if they were a local upcoming band he would have urged them back to the rehearsal room.
In a sense, I like to think that the band and I share an affinity for looking back at points of divergence in the developments of our chosen media, and use them as inspirations for almost contrafact experimenting, like I try with a couple of the Astoria pieces.
Through all this, I have been sidestepping the big forte of the band’s sound — Jex Thoth the vocalist’s evocative performance. The fact that she has been compared to one Janis Joplin (which is a bit of a stretch) only emphasizes my point of their music being closely tied to 60′s and 70′s movements.
Whether she is a schooled singer or not, her expressive singing conveys a lot of emotion with a minimum of bravado. And although there is a trend for female singers in heavy music these days, I don’t recall hearing one that is so uniquely her own before, without leaning on the mannerisms of male Death Metal vocalists, or Björk, or Broadway musicals (foad, Nightwish!)
At the moment, I’m having trouble finding much enthusiasm for any music, but even so Jex Thoth – the band, the singer, and the album – are one thing that I return to in this torrent of early mornings and changing trains that is my life right now.