While we wouldn't complain if you blew your entire art budget at our Beasts! print show, here are some other worthy things to spend your money on:
• If you would like to buy some original pages from House, or perhaps some X-rated ABBA fan art, or commission a portrait of your kittycat, Josh Simmons has your hookup (hat tip: Spurge)
The next best thing to a signed edition: with select books we'll include a signed "ex libris"-style bookplate, and best of all, it's FREE! The latest additions to our selection are Zippy: Welcome to Dingburg by Bill Griffith (above) and Jessica Farm Vol. 1 by Josh Simmons (below). We also have a restock of plates for Josh's House.
The latest issue of the 2008 Eisner, Harvey and Ignatz Award-nominee features the first chapter (of three) of an all-new graphic novel by superstar Freak Brothers creator Gilbert Shelton! Thomas Ott (The Number), Josh Simmons (House), David Greenberger (Duplex Planet) and rising minicomics star Laura Park all make their MOME debuts. Bottomless Belly Button creator Dash Shaw delivers an all-new story, "Satellite CMYK", and creates this issue's covers. Also featured: Tim Hensley, Kurt Wolfgang, Nate Neal, Sara Edward-Corbett and Derek Van Gieson.
• More French awards news: La Rivière empoisonnée, the French edition of Gilbert Hernandez's Poison River (collected by us in the new volume Beyond Palomar as well as its own oldercollection), is nominated for the Selection Patrimoine (Heritage Prize) 2009, to be awarded at the Festival International de la Bande Desinée d'Angoulême (caught by Spurge)
Los Angeles film fans not only get to watch great films at the Silent Movie Theatre, part-owned by Sammy Harkham-- they also get to take home monthly programs with cover art by great cartoonists. (Shown: Harkham, Richard Sala, Josh Simmons.)
The Comics Journal #291 Edited by Michael Dean & Kristy Valenti; Gary Groth, executive editor
This issue’s cover interview is with comics artist Tim Sale, the house artist for the television series Heroes. Sale’s artwork has also graced prestigious mainstream projects such as Batman: the Long Halloween, Spider-Man Blue and Superman Confidential. The Eisner winner chats about his stylized takes on characters such as Spider-Man, Batman, Daredevil, Catwoman and Superman, as well as his earlier work on comics such as Grendel, and elaborates on the dynamics of collaborating with writers such as Jeph Loeb and Darwyn Cooke. The Journal queries up-and-coming cartoonist Josh Simmons on his disturbing and often funny body of work — his minicomics, his series Happy; his debut graphic novel, House; and his decades-spanning series Jessica Farm. Gary Groth examines the collaborations between Ralph Steadman and Hunter S. Thompson. Also in this issue: tributes to Steve Gerber and Dan Stevens; a huge gallery of kinetic anarchy from Funny, Films, Giggle, and other Golden Age comic books by Flintstones co-creator Dan Gordon; and a sneak preview of Danica Novgorodoff's Slow Storm.
Hot on the heels of his first graphic novel, House, Josh Simmons' Jessica Farm fuses serialized adventure, fantasy and psychological horror and stamps it with his signature macabre sensibility in his atmospheric new graphic novel. Like a Lynchian take on Alice in Wonderland, Jessica Farm opens with an exterior of what could be any Midwestern farmhouse: once inside, we track our titular heroine as she bounds out of bed on Christmas and goes about her morning routine, eventually breakfasting with her grandparents. The banality of the situation is subverted by a ratcheting sense of dread, however, as we discover that Jessica's increasingly nightmarish house is filled with creatures around every corner: some whimsical, some sexual, some despairing and some malevolent. Jessica Farm is an ambitious experiment in world-building: as conceived by Simmons, this book is the first volume of a life-spanning comics project in which he drew one page every month for the past seven years, starting in January 2000 — and will continue this project for 50 years in total, making up the story as he goes and releasing 96-page increments every 8 years until he amasses a 600-page body of work.
