drewweing.com

Fluke photo set!

2008-04-13T16:16:00.001-04:00

Hey! Here are some pictures from Fluke! Some of them were taken by me, but many were taken by Antar. I'll probably go back in and add more descriptions later.

Progress is made

2008-04-02T06:05:00.001-04:00

Eleanor made a big "thermometer" to chart our Secret Science Alliance progress, both thumbnails, pencils, and inks. Where are we now? At about 180 out of 460 filled units. But we've been making steady progress. Here, Detroit takes a sniff at the finished pages.

A paltry stack so far, but growing.

Are you guys excited for Fluke next weekend? 'Cause I'm kinda terrified! I really need to get more '07 Anthologies printed up!

lights out in the little house

2008-03-11T18:06:00.001-04:00

(X-posted from the litle house blog)

Hey guys!

Looks like we're going to have to shut the Little House site down until June.

Until then, every moment of Eleanor's (and my) time is going to be filled by turning this:

into a finished book! These are Eleanor's thumbs for her upcoming kid's book, The Secret Science Alliance. I'm going to be inking it!

And since Eleanor and I are about to enter super-deadline-crunch mode, and we're not going to have the time to fill orders, much less make new copies of all the minicomics we're low on.

Don't worry, we'll be bringing it back, revamped and with a lot more original art for sale. But if there's anything you want now, you've got till Friday!

Awful Little Men

2008-02-25T03:19:00.000-05:00

• Devlin took Eleanor and David Mack and me up to the "Silver Scream" showing of Mad Love - apparently Peter Lorre's first American movie role. What an amazing movie - it's a hodgepodge of German Expressionist sets, Grand Guignol, and broad comedy veering unexpectedly to horror -and back again. Lorre's the brilliant (but, of course, demented,) surgeon, Doctor Gogol. There's a beautiful actress he's obsessed with. There's her famous pianist husband, who has his hands crushed in a train accident. Gogol transplants the hands of a recently-guillotined murderer (who happened to be a knife-thrower for a circus,) onto the pianist, with the expected result. There's even a drunken housekeeper with a parrot.

• After the movie Eleanor said that young Lorre "looked like a beautiful baby." I had to admit it was true. There were all these long lingering closeups on him, all this velvety modeling of shadows on his bald head. One of the cinematographers apparently later worked on Citizen Kane.

• The spook show before the movie was great as well. They also showed a Three Stooges short. Lest you trust Eleanor's judgement TOO much, she also called the Three Stooges "awful little men."

• Here is a little snippet of a project I am working on:

Festive

2008-01-14T19:23:00.001-05:00

• Well, shucks. I made a New Year's Resolution to update my blog at least once a week, and I went and broke it immediately. Hope you had a good holiday type season. Eleanor and I are having our Christmas on Wednesday and mashing it up with her birthday. We found a perfectly good (well, slightly dried out) Xmas tree out on the curb by a church, so: score.

• I almost missed this! I drew a choose-your-own-adventure comic written by the mighty Jason Shiga for the current issue of Nick Magazine (the Dec/Jan issue) and there was a post about it on the Nick comics blog. Check it out! I'm actually working on another Nick piece right now.

• We found a huge dead possum lying in the grass behind our house yesterday. We ended up digging a little grave for him in the brush and putting a bunch of logs on top. This was more a matter of practicality than sentiment.

• We went to a fun re-gifting party at our friend David and Kerry's house and came back with a tiny whisk, some cinnamon-toast scented candles, and a bottle of Vermouth. So I guess we'll be whisking up some martinis around our cinnamon-scented house.

I'm going to only write in bullet points from now on.

2007-12-04T00:08:00.000-05:00

• I've almost filled up a sketchbook! Man, I've been working on this one since I was in college. Did I mention I'm really bad with sketchbooks? Anyway, I've been doing tons of life drawing recently, so it's been filling up quick. I feel pretty bad about not doing more fun, creative sketches like Eleanor, but I can barely bring myself to draw in sketchbooks at all for some reason. Here's some sketches I did at an old-timey music last weekend.

• Hey high school Drew, fuck you for not listening to country music. Back in high school, I would brag about my eclecticism by saying I'd listen to any genre of music... except country, of course. To ho ho. Well, I was an idiot back then. We've been listening to so much country radio recently. On a related note:

• Fuck anybody who dismisses "the south" as an entire entity. Whoops, you're a bigot!

• Most terrifying Christmas song I've ever heard: "Ding-a-Ling, the Christmas Bell" by Lynn Anderson.
This song is supposed to be about an anthopomorphized bell that rings off-key and is mocked by all of the other bells, with requisite Rudolph-style day-saving at the end. But there's this repeated refrain of "Ding a Ling's" chime, and it's in this weird minor key that sounds almost exactly like the theme from "Halloween." I think you can listen to it here, if you're curious.

• We saw almost every single cartoonist in North Georgia at a pretty cool art show the other day. Did we bother to get off our asses and submit something to the show? No. No we did not.

• Best two mincomics we've gotten in the mail this week: Dregs by Coleman Engle, Hey Four-Eyes #2 by Robyn Chapman et al. WOW!

Hey, does anybody who's versed in Macs and iTunes know if it's possible to throw a bunch of music onto a DVD and delete it off your computer, but somehow let iTunes know that the music is going to be on that DVD from now on? Quickly and easily?

With the closing of the month...

2007-11-30T18:37:00.000-05:00

Ten 10 for November

1. Getting to visit the Center for Cartoon Studies. We yammered at the students about comics for a couple hours. We even made a powerpoint. So much thanks to James and Robyn for bringing us up.

2. Everybody up at White River Junction. They were so freaking nice. I would name names, but I'd forget somebody.

3. Autumn finally kicking in down south. I really love me some sweater weather.

4. Getting a new hoodie. Goodbye, five-year-old gray hoodie that smells like old butter (due to a bad decision at a Denny's.) Hello new blue hoodie. Eleanor got a green one.

5. Picking at least ten pounds worth of pecans from various trees around Athens.

6. Making pecan tortellini and pecan pie from scratch for Thanksgiving. Also, making Chrismas beer (with orange, honey, ginger and cinnamon - we'll see how that turns out!)

7. Cutting our water usage in half! Will our big bins of grey water save the south-east from a dessicated, Mad-Max style future?

8. Seeing Morrissey at the Tabernacle with Robert. I got a piece of his shirt (Morrissey's.) Yes, it smells good.

9. New Scott Pilgrim.

10. Getting so close to being done with the final rough draft of Set to Sea finally. (See above image. I've got the whole thing pinned up on lines, so I can scoot around panels and add in new stuff. Then it's only a few more months of inking the wretched thing!)

SPXin'

2007-10-18T16:16:00.001-04:00

Hey, SPX was pretty great! This time around it was a lot less stress - maybe we're just getting more used to these things. I actually walked around the floor and said hello to folks! Crazy. The new Fluke Anthology sold pretty well and got a great response - I just added it to the Little House shop, so click here to check it out and/or buy it.

There were lots of intimidating young cartoonists at this year's con! Eleanor and I have to step up our game! We got some incredible minis, and we're still making our way through our big SPX box. I'll yammer more about it in a bit.

Fluke #6!

2007-10-08T11:10:00.000-04:00

I guess this'll be premiering at SPX!

The 2007 Fluke Anthology! Here's the lineup:

Fluke - Aaron Fu
The Suitor - Shawn Cheng
A Night of Georgia Haints - Patrick Dean
After School Snacks - Joseph Lambert
The Acker Brothers - Mike Laughead
Medusa's Tangled Locks - Coleman Engle
Otto - David Mack
. - Mel Stringer
Surprise! - Kelly Froh
The Whole Protools Affair - Dorothy Gambrell
Apple Turnover - David Yoder
Untitled - Antar Ellis
Everybody Knows - Joey Weiser
Traume Von Magpie - Doug Frey
Van-got Your Back - Kevin Burkhalter
Meat Cute - Eleanor Davis
Pineal L'il Frauleins - Benjamin Constantine
Invention - Michele Chidester
Doe Rae Me - Alexander Bullett
Faux-boes - Max Clotfelter
Algernon Lamb - Drew Weing
Dumb Luck - Jeremy Sorese
The Sea Demon - Chris Wright
Salt Lick - Matt Wiegle
Fluke - Missy Kulik

88 pages long! Still not sure about the cover price.

I got a tremendous amount of excellent submissions - I'm really proud of this one. So if you'll be at SPX this year, drop on by the table and check it out! I think we'll be on the right hand side of the room, toward the back.

Algernon Lamb

2007-09-28T11:26:00.000-04:00

Here's a preview of the story I did for the upcoming Fluke anthology, which is in the process of production of right now! It'll be premiering at this year's SPX.

I got tons of great submissions. Too many to fit into one book. I'll be listing the final lineup in the next couple days!

It's gonna be pretty awesome.

2007-09-24T12:48:00.000-04:00

Heyo, been a while since I posted.

Let's see... there's a new Disney Adventures "Comics Zone" on the stands with a 5-page Wulf and Merl "origin" story. Yeah, I think there's only one more issue to go, but you should still check it out. This one's told entirely in rhyme, and it was probably the most labor-intensive bit of writing I've ever had to do. Here's the entire first page:

Gah, I was just getting started!

2007-08-29T13:59:00.000-04:00

Well, there may only be a couple of Disney Adventures left, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't check 'em out. The current issue's got a one-page Wulf and Merl comic - here's the first panel:

Just for kicks, here's the first Wulf and Merl story from a few months back.

Can't knock the hustle

2007-08-26T23:53:00.000-04:00

A little behind everyone else, but here's some pictures I took at TCAF. I really meant to get quite a bit more, but considering my track record, I'm lucky I remembered to take the camera out of my bag at all. Probably lucky for everyone...

Like usual, I feel like I never managed to say hello to all the folks I wanted to, and managed to offend half of those I did. Nonetheless, we had a really excellent time! It was one of the most well-planned and stress-free cons I've ever been to. I wish we could've stuck around in Toronto for a few days and gotten more of a feel for the place. Never managed to make it to the Beguiling, unfortunately! Next time.

Disney Adventures cancelled

2007-08-24T12:26:00.000-04:00

Dang.

Man, I was totally just getting into the groove with Wulf and Merl. Best of luck to all the other comics artists and writers from DA - it was a fun ride.

I really hope to do more Wulf and Merl stuff in the future - keep an eye on the website.

I just ordered like 40 pounds of paper

2007-08-03T17:53:00.001-04:00

There's a new 1-page Wulf and Merl story in the current issue of Disney Adventures - here's the first panel:

I went ahead and bought wulfandmerl.com - it's eventually going to have a little info and comics on it, but right now it's just a placeholder.

Eleanor and I are revving up for TCAF in a couple weeks - I don't think we're going to have anything new, but hopefully we'll have at least most of our minis reprinted. I'm excited to see Canada... having never been there before. I'm a little worried about coming back, though - I hear they rough you up at the border these days.

Eleanor found a tomato with a nose.

2007-08-03T17:20:00.000-04:00

DSCF0009_15.JPG, originally uploaded by drewweing.

I got a Flickr and everything.

2007-07-15T22:56:00.000-04:00

Hi, y'all. Here's some mildly boring pictures of Eleanor and me in England!

Yeah, we got back a long time ago. I just haven't had any art I could post up recently, so I've been keeping quiet. What did we do in England? Went to about ten million pubs, and drank about a million pints of bitter! It was great. You don't even have to tip in bars in England, apparently - though everything is about twice as expensive as here so you don't really save any money. We did a few other things there too, but I'll let you look at the pictures.

I didn't crack my sketchbook the whole time there, though. I've got to start being more disciplined.

OH HEY YEAH, the FLUKE anthology deadline! That was actually up a few days ago, but if you've been working on something and still want to submit it, drop me a line ( drew "at" drewweing "dot com" ) and let me know. Unless you already did. Or I emailed you.

Busy busy

2007-06-09T02:09:00.000-04:00

Once again I've neglected The Internet for over a month!

The rundown:

I've got a new Wulf and Merl comic in the current issue of Disney Adventures! It is a three page story, here is the first panel:

Eleanor is going to have some work in an art show at Giant Robot (the one in Los Angeles.) It's called "Panelists," and has got all kinds of hip comics artists. She's going to have a bunch of original art for sale, almost all of which was either in the most recent Mome or is going to be in the next one! You should stop by and take a look, if you're in the area! Buy something, hint hint.

Speaking of, have you seen the cover of the next Mome yet? Here it is:

It's definitely shaping up to be the year of Eleanor Davis! Grr.

We're both going to be out of the country for most of June! We're going on a walking trip in southern England! London to Winchester to Salisbury to Christchurch and back to London. This'll be the first time I've ever set foot outside of the country!

Anyway, since we obviously won't be around to be filling orders in the Little House shop, I'm going to go ahead and "close the shutters" on it till we get back. Don't worry, if you had an order in already, it'll get filled!

See you soon!

News roundup!

2007-04-30T16:03:00.001-04:00

Hey! I'm not totally 100% sure that this is actually on the stands yet, but there's a new Wulf and Merl comic in the May issue of Disney Adventures! So feel free to browse through in the grocery aisle. This one's just a one-pager - here's the first panel:

Remember when I mentioned the McCloud clan rolling through Athens some weeks back? Well, a Winterview has finally surfaced - you can check it out here! Sky and Winter are so unreserved and charming that Eleanor and I pretty much felt like big lumps in comparison. Anyway, you can watch the interview see how boring we are for yourself. Our cat Momo pretty much steals the show. There are some shots of some of the nice crafty stuff Eleanor's made recently.

And one last bit of "news:" A couple of our comics (Blar, The Beast Mother, Bugbear) got reviewed in the current issue of the Comics Journal. The review was basically positive, but maybe a little condescending. Oh well!

We had a fun weekend. On Friday we caught a midnight showing of Tears of the Black Tiger at "Ciné," the arthouse theater that recently opened in downtown Athens. "Tears" is a Thai movie - a sort of post-modern cowboy/romance comedy/tragedy. It has some beautiful visuals - the whole movie is filmed in classic 60s over-saturated Technicolor, with deliberate movie artifices sprinkled throughout - painted backdrops, glued-on mustaches, etc. Highly recommended! The theater was nice too, though aesthetically problematic and a bit pretentious - big turquoise velour nightclub couch-thing in the bar area, Radiohead on the speakers, so forth. I can't really pick nits with a theater within walking distance that lets you take beer into the auditorium, though.

On Saturday we went up to Atlanta with Devlin (the Bizarro Wuxtry guy) to see The Creature from the Black Lagoon in 3-D, with a pre-movie Spook Show. Man, they really went all out! Big "Amazon Jungle" plywood standees, paper mache monsters, makeup, the whole nine yards. The house was completely packed and in a good mood; everyone gamely shrieking whenever the "Gill-Man" showed up onscreen.

Set to Sea 90

2007-04-25T22:12:00.000-04:00

The story so far...

Howdy! I have been mega-irresponsible with my internet stuff recently (updates, emails, etc.) Time to get with it!

Uh... Fluke happened! That was major fun. The night of Fluke we had a big "Prohibition/Roaring 20s" party that mostly consisted of drinking a lot of homebrewed beer and wearing construction paper bowties and mustaches. We had a bunch of friends come down and stay with us for Fluke and the week after. I'd write about that, but they've all gotten to it before me.

Though Fluke 2007 may be over and done with, the 2007 Fluke Anthology is still on the table! I've gotten some really superb entries in already - this is shaping up to be a really excellent book, and you should jump on while you've got the chance. Deadline's July 7th (7/7/07) - plenty of time to crank out a couple of pages!

Set to Sea 89

2007-04-03T04:14:00.000-04:00

The story so far...

Hey hey! Fluke this Saturday! See you there?

Set to Sea 88

2007-03-20T06:01:00.000-04:00

The story so far...

We've had some exciting adventures the last couple days. Yesterday we ventured down a ravine on the north side of town, finding all sorts of lovely glades and nooks. All sorts of debris had washed down along the sides of the little creek - plenty of bricks, pipes, and bits of old buildings. We even found a muddy backpack, with somebody's pulped-up books and personal knick-knacks. At one point, there was a very short drain tunnel big enough to fit us, so we crawled through and popped up in the middle of a field behind a school. At the end of the ravine there were a couple of railroad bridges, with some pretty excellent graffiti underneath. Some artiste-type had even executed a mosaic out of bits of broken mirror and spraypainted plywood. For dinner that night I made a sort of black bean stew, cornbread, and we tried frying up some plantain slices.

Today we took a long walk and enjoyed the hell out of some spring flowers and ended up at a Mexican restaurant called "La Estrella," where we had a pretty excellent "7 Mares" soup and a whole grilled fish.

Tomorrow's bottling day for the porter! Did I say the Kolsch came out excellent? Cause it did. I don't know how "authentic" these beers are turning out, but they are very tasty to drink.

Set to Sea 87

2007-03-16T04:55:00.001-04:00

The story so far...

Set to Sea 86

2007-03-13T06:29:00.001-04:00

The story so far...

Eleanor spent the last couple days making herself a new drawing desk out of two-by-fours and such. She's been working in an armchair for the last couple months. I helped! I sawed at least five or six boards. We've both been getting excited by the possibilities of pegboard, which you can get really cheap at any hardware-type store.

Eleanor's also been getting a lot of internet press recently. Hmm. Perhaps she must be stopped?

I've got a porter-type beer bubbling away in the bucket in the closet. I'm taking a wild stab in the dark at trying to somewhat recreate the Captain's Porter from Moon River in Savannah. Hopefully it will be ready for tasting in time for Fluke!

Wulf and Merl!

2007-03-09T06:19:00.000-05:00

Hey! You should check out this month's "Disney Adventures" magazine, cause I've got a new monthly comic making its debut this issue. It's called "Wulf and Merl." It's a classic, fantasy-type comic about these two kids who are each the youngest in a long line of famous ancestors; Wulf from a proud family of warriors, Merl from a family of great wizards. Only, neither one of them is doing a particularly great job of living up to their famous namesakes - all of Merl's spells keep backfiring, and Wulf's folks think he's so puny they won't even let him handle a sword. So of course they each decide to set out and prove themselves, in the usual manner: Slaying fearsome damsels, rescuing beautiful dragons in distress, the works.

Anyways, it should be on the shelves at a store near you - I usually see it on the magazine racks up at the checkout stands at most grocery stores, so you could even just flip through it while you're waiting for the cashier. Or maybe you could actually buy a copy, and give it to a kid you know. Tell them to write to Disney Adventures about how great "Wulf and Merl" is, while you're at it. Tell them you'll beat them up if they don't. You totally could. You're way bigger than them.

This month's installment is a two-pager - here's the first panel: