Printing Blog

I came across a new blog the other day, Quality In Print, that has lots of info on professional printing, of course. There's a lot of stuff about the business of printing and calibrating your workflow and saving ink and stuff like that that I don't know anything about, but there's also lots of useful info that people like me and you who make comic books can learn and use to do a better job and get better looking printed books. Specifically, check out these five posts on dot gain that I found very interesting, and another five about LPI and DPI. Even if you only make mini-comics on the sly at work, this stuff is good if one day you hit the "big time" and it's also interesting if you are a production nerd like Sparkplug Comics' Dylan Williams.

Sparkplug at Olympia

Sparkplug Comics will be at the Olympia Comics Festival—TOMORROW ONLY. Also in attendance will be Chris Cilla, Champion of Comics. I'm not going to this show, in fact I didn't even know about it, but I bet it will be a wonderful antidote to the big shows like TCAF and MOCCA. Next up is COMICON INT'L 2009. I'm trying to get a comic finished this weekend for that very show called The Shortest Interval.

SICKENING PROMOTION

I don't know why I post about stuff like this when I'm not going to be there, but some of my pals and Sparkplug Bullpen Buddies are involved in big excitement this weekend at the MOCCA Fest in NYC.

There is the Future Ink Show on Friday:

"Celebrate new releases by cartoonist Minty Lewis who will be debuting her collected Ignatz Award winning PS Comics, along with fellow cartoonists Jesse Moynihan, author of the critically acclaimed Follow Me, Kazimir Strzepek, creator of the Eisner Award-nominated graphic novel The Mourning Star and, last but not least, Olga Volozova and Ignatz nominee Juliacks who will unveil their new collaborative comic book odyssey, Rock That Never Sleeps." more info

And this thing on Saturday:

"Giant Robot is proud to present the Panelists V art show and as well as a reception for three new comic books at the Giant Robot Gallery in the East Village...[the show includes] Alixopulos, Andrice Arp, Shawn Cheng, Tim Hensley, Levon Jihanian, Hellen Jo, Tom Neely, Steven 'Ribs' Weissman...and more!" (I singled out some friends of mine, there's many more people in the show -ed.) more info

Austin E. will be signing his new Windy Corner #3 at Giant Robot on Saturday, also.

Spend all your money while you still have some! Especially on buying Danny Dutch Comic Books to make me really powerfully rich and special. You might also be able to get one of the Danny Dutch/Sparkplug post cards at MOCCA if you look hard or ask.

Henry Boltinoff

Here's a few strips by Henry Boltinoff! They're dumb, but the guy can cartoon astonishingly. I get old comics now and then, I'll try to post these here and on Flickr as I come across them. Boltinoff did comics to fill space in DC magazines for 150 years.

More Boltinoff
My Previous Boltinoff Post

Free Comic Book Day: Bird Hurdler

HOTT cover by Andrice Arp

Free Comic Book Day is tomorrow! My publisher and pals have produced a a nice looking free comic for the event:

Teenage Dinosaur, Tugboat Press and Sparkplug present the release of Bird Hurdler by Andrice Arp, Theo Ellsworth, Farel Dalrymple, Zack Soto, Lisa Rosalie Eisenberg [doesn't have a website ??] & Julia Gfrörer and printed at Brown Printing.

Follow the link to see the list of participating comic shops where you can score a copy. My guess is that Bird Hurdler will also be offered at convention appearances until all the copies have been given away (with purchase ???). That's what happened with last year's now-classic Nerd Burglar, anyhow

Danny Dutch and Jin & Jam Reviewed

Rob Clough posted a nice review of Danny Dutch and fellow Sparkplug bullpenner Hellen Jo's Jin & Jam #1.

Gluyas Williams Stuff

There's been a little bit of activity regarding Gluyas Williams lately on the internet: First, a batch of dailies on Ger Apeldoorn's The Fabuleous Fifties blog; Second, on Allan Holtz's Strippers Guide, a 1949 Editor & Publisher write-up about cartoonist Francis Dahl with a quote from Gluyas Williams.

There's unfortunately not been any new activity on gluyaswilliams.com, but maybe I'll do some scanning when I'm too lazy to draw.

Also a H/T to Mike Lynch who beat me to the punch on these same links the other day.

The two drawings here are illustrations from the 1932 book Cut Off My Head by Jasper Whiting.

Links: Henry Boltinoff

I saw this post at Pappy's Golden Age and was reminded of how nice Henry Boltinoff's cartooning is. I don't have any scans of my own to show or anything, but here's a LINK ROUND UP: Gorilla Daze: some one- and half-pagers from DC Comics Dial B for Blog: A selection of Super-Turtles Stripper's Guide: Woody Forest Toonopedia: Boltinoff bio Mania Dos Quadradinhos: Info and Woody Forest(Google Translation) DC Indexes: Mother Lode of Boltinoff DC Filler Strips

I really like this smarmy "publicity man" from Alan Ladd #8.

Your Favorite Cartoonist

If you're reading this, and you're the type with a favorite cartoonist that nobody else seems to know about, and you've been hoarding stuff by your favorite cartoonist that you haven't shown anyone else, and you know HTML, then you owe it to yourself and all of us to make a website about YOUR FAVORITE CARTOONIST. A domain name costs ten bucks a year. A webhost is free (well, mostly: doteasy.com charges you a one-time $35 domain transfer fee, and after that it's free. Or you could just use a blog, which is entirely free). You probably already have a scanner. There you have it!

Check these grassroots cartoonist sites:
Alex Toth
Mort Meskin
K. Huizenga's Misc. stuff

If you have a good one send me the link, because I can't think of any more, but there's gotta be some.

I'm mentioning this because I've done it, and the product is www.gluyaswilliams.com. There's not a ton of material there at the moment, but I'll add more over time. I've got the stuff, so I might as well share it.