Mike is on assignment down at the J’ore so Alex returns to the Bantha’s Den for another round of STAR WARS chit-chat, this time with Josh Flanagan. Why do the prequels make people so angry? Is George
Lucas really more machine, now, than man? Speaking of which, what’s the deal with Lobot anyway? If you aren’t sick of STAR WARS yet you will be by the end of this one.

Comments welcome!

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No, it’s NOT more readings of the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy, it’s plain-old Alex and Mike yakking it up alone in the Lair, just like old times. We address the fact that Tony’s tour-de-force is gonna be a tough one to follow up on, and it’s almost like we don’t even try. Hear about our recent con experiences (TCAF, The Wild Pig Show in NJ), seeing Marvel’s The Avengers, getting cable installed in the house, adopting children and changing their names to something more suited to their social standing, and murdering buckets full of frogs.

Comments welcome!

This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by Josh Bayer! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com

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I was at TCAF this past weekend, and it was a swell time. However, I am burrrned out, I think probably like 80% because of all this moving house/being unsettled/etc rigmarole, and maybe 20% just worn out on conventions for a while. I did a ton of them since SPX last year: APE, MiX, BCGF, Angouleme, and now TCAF. That’s a lot for me. There was also the Game Developer’s Conference in California that I went to, which wasn’t comics, but was still a week-long event. I just want to be home, getting my head down and making comics. Thankfully, I have no plans to go to any other shows until SPX in October, by which time I should be ready to get back into it.

Also, I decided that A) since I don’t really expect to ever make a living writing my books, and B) since I have no plans to leave my publishers at Secret Acres, and C) as long as they stay in business, then I really don’t need to be as informed about the comics industry as I have been. Blissfully ignorant: that’s my new goal. I want to write what I want to write, and read comics that interest me, and that’s it. We’ll see how I do. Twitter is probably my biggest nemesis in this regard. I do like talking about the industry, and it’s pretty much a perfect place for that sort of chat, because it’s the thing that gets conversation going the easiest. And I love twitter. I can’t see quitting, but I have plans to put the drawing table and the computer in totally different rooms in the new house, so Tweetdeck’s Siren’s Call is just that little bit harder to hear. They’ll actually be about as far away from each other as possible – the drawing table in the basement by the boiler room, and the computer upstairs by the bedrooms. I’m really excited about it.

This coming weekend, May 5 & 6, I’ll be present at the Toronto Comics Art Festival, camped out at the Secret Acres table. I’ll obviously be selling Troop 142, but will be bringing copies of Freddie & Me, Ace-Face, and Gabagool! as well. I think I’m going to be offering a sweet deal of a heavily discounted copy of Ace-Face and free copies of the Gabagool! Hedonism saga with every purchase of Troop 142. I am also going to see if I can rummage up a little original artwork to put on sale too.

I will be appearing on a panel on Sunday afternoon, from 2:00 – 3:15PM, called Making Comics: The Process along with Adam Warren, Cecil Castellucci, and Kagan McLeod. It’ll take place in The Pilot Tavern location. I’m looking forward to it.

I participated in a panel this past weekend at the MoCCA festival, called Memoir, along with Jennifer Hayden, Derf, and Peter Kuper. The structure of the talk had us giving lengthy introductions and offering some of our thoughts about memoir/autobiography. There were definitely a lot of provocative points made, and I wish we’d had an extra half-hour to get a lengthier conversation going between the four of us.

A point that was raised more than once was that there are too many boring autobiographical comics about boring lives. I take a little bit of exception to this idea, though I think I understand where the sense of it comes from.

I don’t think there are too many autobio comics at all. I love reading autobio comics! I wish more cartoonists did them.

Sure, there are poorly made amateurish autobio books. But, I suggest to you, there are no more of them than there are, say, poorly made amateurish space-adventure epics, or poorly made amateurish Love & Rockets rip-offs. There’s poorly made comics of all stripes and genres.

In my opinion, the sense that there’s too much of this sort of work, glutting the market, comes from the reader’s raised expectations when presented with memoir. The immediate question the reader asks is Why is your life worth reading about? Why are your experiences worth my time?

And it’s a fair question.

But, I don’t think it’s the same thing as there being this overwhelming sea of sad-boy autobio, threatening to drown us in it’s navel-gazing. I just don’t think that exists. No more than any other kind of comic.

On one hand, this movie looks totally unpleasant. I thought Batman II was grim, but this looks worse. To me it feels like all the bleak nihilism of the last movie, but without a charismatic villain. Does this even look like it would be a nice way to spend 2 hours in the Summer? This looks more like a visual endurance test than a summertime diversion.

On the other hand, how awesome is it to take something everyone perceives as a lightweight action Summer tent-pole type thing, and pack it full of all this awful horrible heavy stuff? Because it’s Batman, the movie is going to make a pile of money, which means a ton of people sitting in seats watching this thing. This unpleasant awful-looking thing.

It’s funny, sitting here on May Day, typing this. Helicopters hovering above the city, sirens blaring, as Occupy Protesters go back to the streets. I think history will be kind to Batman II and III. They are probably better capsules of the mood of this time-period than The Avengers will be. But, right now, if given the choice to go and see one of these movies, I think I’d lean towards Captain America and the Hulk…

The Desert Panther, Tony Consiglio, creeps once again into The Lair, this week to perform a dramatic reading of the erotic smash-hit Twilight fan-fiction book, 50 Shades of Grey. If any Books On Tape producers are out there listening, please hire Tony to narrate your recordings. Especially sexxxxy ones.

Comments welcome!

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A couple upcoming appearances and events:

This weekend is the MoCCA Arts Festival in New York City, held at the decidedly not-sunny, but undeniably spacious Lexington Ave Armory at 26th street. I won’t be present at the show on Saturday (see above paragraph), but will be there on Sunday for a panel at 2:15 and then signing and sketching at the Secret Acres table afterwards.

The panel I’m on is called “Memoir”, and it will be with Peter Kuper, Jennifer Hayden, and Derf Backderf. I’m looking forward to it. Speaking of Derf, I picked up his book My Friend Dahmer at The Strand last night, and read it all in one sitting. Totally absorbing comic.

I was interested in how part of the narrative had to do with the culture of parents in the 1970′s, and them being somewhat more absent than the parenting culture we have now. This is an interesting phenomenon, and from other things I’ve read, it’s totally true: parents were much more hands-off, (or I guess the better word again is absent) in the 1970′s for better or worse. Divorce rates were higher, and I believe the birth-rate hit it’s lowest point ever sometime around the middle of the decade. I was reminded of the movie The Ice Storm while reading the book – a similar sort of unsettling suburban environment, where the kids are essentially left to their own devices while the parents focus on their own dramas, completely oblivious to what’s going on with their children.

It makes me wonder, I feel like there’s a ton of criticism about today’s “helicopter parents”, and often people defend the parenting style of the 1970′s, suggesting a hands-off approach is ultimately better for the kids. I dunno. I don’t especially buy the idea that absentee parents led to Jeffrey Dahmer becoming a serial killer, because it’s not like he was the only one who had them. I was born in the 70′s, so didn’t exactly “grow up” in them, but I was close, and I feel like myself and most people I know seemed to turn out okay… but, how do we know that helicopter parenting is so bad for the kids? They haven’t grown yet…

But, as I type this, I think about American Idol, and the like, and every kid thinking they’re The Best and The Most Talented, and it’s their God-Given Right to have a career in the music industry (even though there is no music industry anymore… just kids on American Idol doing imitations of performance styles which came out of the 1970′s…) Maybe it’s better for a kid to get a healthy dose of 1970′s-style “the world doesn’t revolve around you” medicine every once in a while. I dunno, I dunno…

Anyway, sorry for the tangent! Following MoCCA weekend is TCAF in Toronto, and this convention I will be there the whole time! More about that next week, hopefully along with a new drawing or two.

It’s The Ink Banthas Show! Mike is wrapped up in house buying and moving mayhem, so it’s a Very Special All Star Wars Episode this week with Alex and guest host: Pete the Retailer. Hopefully this will become a recurring feature, as I (Mike) really enjoyed listening to the two of them talk about everybody’s favorite trilogy (and, I guess, uh, the prequels too). They make some very sound points, especially in picking apart Luke’s “plan” to save Han from Jabba’s clutches. Have a listen!

Comments welcome!

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Recent drawing, done using those new Deleter Manga pens that the kids are all raving about.

A busy week: Cartoonist Julia Wertz joins us on The Ink Panthers Show!, to talk about a bunch of stuff, including “Vajazzling” and “Brozillians”. I am disappointed in us for never making the connection between the two, and coining the term “Bro-jazzling”, which is for when a man shaves of all his pubes and glues diamonds there instead, in the shape of a heart, or a 4-leaved clover, or Mets logo, or whatever it is a man might want to stick down there. Maybe that popular automobile decal of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes taking a leak?

Also, the final episode of TCJ Talkies up at The Comics Journal – a conversation with Tim Kreider. I offer a ramble-y explanation of why I ended the podcast in the show intro, and everything I said there is true. Having had a few days to dwell upon it however, I’m realizing there were other things about the podcast that I could never get working quite right – the main one being my inability to produce shows on a more-frequent and consistent schedule.

I think a podcast needs to come out regularly and frequently, in order to build up a proper fan-base. In a perfect world, one where I could pay my rent on podcasting money alone, I’d put out episodes at least once a week, if not more. I think you have to, to build up momentum, and build up a listener-ship.

One thing I do mention in the show intro is an increase in non-comics and podcast demands in my personal life, and that’s certainly true. I think if things ever settle down, and I get the creator-interview itch again, it makes more sense to scratch it in the context of The Ink Panthers Show!, as part of the occasionally put-together PRO-T.I.P.S! series.

Have a good weekend!

Listen to me chat with Tim Kreider over at The Comics Journal!

Friend of the Show, Julia Wertz returns triumphantly to The Lair to discuss a variety of topics. One, a story Mike has about his bike commute which Julia rates a B-. Two, a discussion about Hollywood adaptations of our comics, which Julia rates a B+. And three, a lengthy discussion of Brozillians, Food-Tubes, Porky-Pigging, and Vajazzlin’, which gets straight A++++’s from all of us. Seriously, what have The Youngs got to deal with in this day and age, where the pressure’s on to have perfectly bleached, waxed, and diamond-encrusted nether-regions? We should all feel lucky to be so old!

Comments welcome!

This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by John Britton! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com

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Lots of things happening at the moment. I wasn’t able to post a new episode of TCJ Talkies this week, unfortunately. I have a new conversation recorded, it’s just waiting to be edited, and for me to tape the little bit at the beginning when I tell you who I am and how to follow me on twitter. It’ll be up next week, along with an announcement about the future of the podcast.

One thing that is going well is drawing. It’s going more than well! I feel like I’ve been pretty good about getting a certain amount of work completed per week, but I usually rely on at least one full day chained to the drawing table to get most of my pages done. The wonderful thing about the stuff I’ve been drawing lately, is that I’ve been able to motivate to work on it in the late evening on a school night. Usually, come 10 or 11 on a Tuesday, I just wanna sit on the couch and watch TV. To me it’s a super-positive sign that I can get over to the drawing table for a few hours instead. I think it might mean I’m… gasp… enjoying myself?

An experiment this week: what kind of podcast can the fellas record when one of them (me) has just awoken from an impromptu nap? The answer: a pretty OK one, I think! We give sort of a half-answer to a listener question about popular webcomics, claiming we don’t spend much time on the show discussing comics, and then proceed to spend an entire hour talking about comics. In addition to webcomics, there’s the upcoming MoCCA show, and Alex’s Special Guest Status. We get quite in-depth discussing some recent Rob Liefeld news, breaking down both the definition of the word “Hipster”, but also asking why Liefeld gets such a bad rap. But, it’s not all comics, fear not! Alex tells us about the days when he used to be a morbid reader of books about serial killers, and Mike introduces us to a new term he just learned: Porky Pigging. What does it mean when you say “Oh, I was porky-pigging the other day”? Listen, and find out!

Comments welcome!

This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by Evin Weston! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com

Alex returns from Sunny Spain and Watery Amsterdam with a report of all his adventures. It’s a short but sweet episode as we welcome Alex back to America, the land of Proper Extra-Large Clothing.

Comments welcome!

This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by Jeremiah Conway! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com

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I was really happy with this page. Trouble is, it looks totally different from everything else I’ve been drawing over the past six months. And, even worse, this page looks much better than the stuff I’ve been doing. I foresee a massive re-draw on the horizon…

An interesting week for podcasts I think. I didn’t participate in this week’s Ink Panthers Show, instead Alex grilled Honorary Third Host, Tony Consiglio about his comics and career. We rarely mention Tony’s comics on the podcast, so this was a nice opportunity to shine a light on his work. I cannot recommend his book “ONE HUNDRED AND TEN PERCENT” highly enough. If you don’t yet own it, you can get it for cheap via that link.

I might be projecting here, but I think there’s an element of the Alex/Tony chat that acknowledges a point in a comics career where you might not be the most successful, but you might be having the most fun. Tony talks about his prolific minicomics period in the late 90′s, when it was all about making new comics and hitting as many conventions as you could.

I have a similar period of my own career which I look back on with as much wistful fondness. I may never have sold a lot of comics, and I didn’t know anybody in the room, but I was having a blast – setting up tables with my friends, and thinking about how we could do things differently and better next time. It’s a curious thing, if you stick around a comics career long enough, there’s going to be different periods and phases that you move along into, some better and more exciting than others.

It’s possible I’m experiencing my own waves of nostalgia. I’ve been packing up the apartment in preparation for our upcoming move, and have spent some time combing old bookshelves and boxes of old sketchbooks and artwork. Amusingly, I did have one thought in mind, which was to make sure I have no random stashes of vintage skin-mags in some forgotten box somewhere that I don’t want my daughter accidentally discovering one day, but I’m now wondering if I should burn some of my old sketchbooks and early minicomics. There’s stuff in some of those which is far more embarrassing to me than some old dogeared copy of Playboy. I don’t know, we’ll see…

I also posted a new episode of TCJ Talkies this week, a conversation with Craig Thompson, he of Blankets and Habibi fame. We cover some of the expected ground, (and interviewing someone who has been interviewed so much recently was a little intimidating) but I think also get into some more interesting and provocative topics. I refer somewhat to the recent critical discussion of Orientalism in Habibi, parts of which troubled me.

Admittedly, it’s one of those arguments where I certainly may not have the tools to properly engage in. It’s not an area that I’m especially well versed in, and I completely concede away all authority on the subject. But, there was one criticique that jumped out at me, which was the suggestion that the character of the evil Sultan was one of many lazy Arab stereotypes. He’s villainous, ruthless, childish, irredeemable, and lives a damnable life of luxury safe within his castle walls while the population outside lives in filth and squalor.

Craig talked about former US President George W. Bush actually being the inspiration for this character. We talk about it a bit. I get a little more hawkish in my suggestion that hey, you know what, despicable characters like this do actually seem to exist in the Middle East. Craig agrees, that maybe Gaddaffi is an excellent example. I agree too, but then keep pressing the issue, I worry to the point Craig gets slightly uncomfortable, then there’s a pause, and then it’s time to switch topics.

I don’t know though, I don’t think the concept of a fattened and well-off ruling class surrounded by the pitiable squalid masses is an especially American concept. Seems to me, it’s a global sickness… But, I also do think it’s maybe socially easier to (rightfully) critique the catastrophic ineptitude of George Bush than to start ranting about what the Syrian government is doing to it’s people. Maybe?

Don’t worry though, the whole conversation isn’t heavy like this. We talk about our different religious backgrounds, discuss certain concepts of Heaven, and then talk frankly about what’s happening to our once-hunky man-chests now that we’re entering middle-age.

Listen to me chat with Craig Thompson over at The Comics Journal

By popular demand, Tony “The Desert Panther” Consiglio is finally brought into the Ink Panthers pro-T.I.P.S! professional lounge for a freewheeling discussion about his comics and career. Hear how he and Alex met, hear about Tony’s experiences in art school, and learn about the time a man’s leg came crashing through the ceiling at the deli Tony once worked at. A must listen! Comments welcome!

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Hey, a recent-drawing going up earlier than 5:30PM on a Friday. That’s a nice change. I did this one over the course of the week, so that’s why it’s ready this morning.

If you didn’t listen to this week’s Ink Panthers Show, I was particularly happy with it. There’s nothing too special about it, but it just felt like a good solid laugh-filled conversation, covering a wide-range of topics. My favorite sort of episode. Also, we had an awesome title card submitted by Joe Decie, which I hope inspires all of you to try your hand at drawing Inky the Domesticated Panther.

For those who don’t want to sit through the whole hour, here’s a handy T.I.P.S. clip, featuring ten-minutes where we chat about the man who invented Icarus wings and flew (which turned out to be a hoax, sadly).

Have a good weekend!

Alex is about to embark on a trip to Europe to attend a Spanish convention, so we discuss all the things he has planned on his journey, and how it’s good he gets to impress his wife every now and then by taking her to foreign comics shows. The topics this week run the gamut: Amsterdam, Yanni, Our Insignificance In This Vast and Cold Universe. They Might Be Giants, Phish, Dexters, and psychopaths. Flying men, Icaruses, Jet-Packs, and more!

Comments welcome!

This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by Joe Decie! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com

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This was a good week podcast-wise. I felt really good about the Renee French TCJ Talkies conversation. “Mentally Nourished”, even – which, is really the whole point of podcasting in general. My publisher, Secret Acres, debated with me a little bit about some of the half-baked theories I came up with in the chat, and you can read that exchange here. You really should “like” their Facebook page anyway, since it’s the main place they post news these days, while we are waiting for them to build a brand-new website (what? Are they first building a brand-new Internet too, before they post the new site? Come on guys, pick up the pace!)

It was also a significant Ink Panthers, as it was the episode where I publicly announced my intention to finally move out of Brooklyn and relocate to the suburbs of New Jersey. I don’t have a lot to add about it, but I imagine it means some hectic weeks ahead, as once we finish buying this house, we’ve got to move into it and get settled and all that. I wish it was the Summer already…

Have a good weekend!

New TCJ Talkies podcast, hoooray!!! I really enjoyed this chat with Renée French, now listenable to over at The Comics Journal!

“The Famous Panther”, iFanboy’s Josh Flanagan joins us once again in The Lair to hear all about Mike’s recent trip to San Francisco (expect plenty of griping about crazy San Francisco street people, naturally) and the Game Developers Conference he attended. Plus, hear Mike’s big announcment: after 13 years, he’s saying goodbye to New York City and relocation to The Jersey Shore (or, The J’hore, as he hopes to re-brand it). Will this big move change the tried and true dynamic of The Ink Panthers Show? Only time will tell. Also: a recent trip to the Empire State Building, and concerns about King Kong attacks.

Comments welcome!

This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by John Boren! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com

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A recent drawing for Friday afternoon.

Not a lot of stuff posted online this week – me being in San Francisco all week at the Game Developers Conference meant that Alex and I weren’t able to record an Ink Panthers podcast, and there was no TCJ Talkies this past Wednesday. I have next week’s chat with Renee French all recorded and awaiting editing, though. It was a really good one, if I do say so myself. Look for it next Wednesday.

GDC was a pretty amazing experience. As I mentioned last week, I feel really lucky to have a day-job that sends me to interesting things like this. I really do love thinking and talking about games.

A couple GDC takeaways:

- Indie Game: The Movie is something you really want to make an effort to try and see. I had no idea what it was going to be about when I went to the screening, but it turns out to be an extremely engaging and emotionally affecting story. Like The King of Kong, the story ends up being way more dramatic and intense than you initially expect. Also, Indie Comics people will see so much of themselves in the Indie Game Designers.

- Except of course that it seems like Indie Games people probably have a much larger and more rabid potential fan-base than comics people. I think even mainstream comics are sharing their audience with the video games set. I mean, what is a show like New York Comic Con anyway, if not a place where fans can immerse themselves in movies, costumes, video games and nerd culture, with the odd comic-book here and there. (I italicized the word “potential”, because I have no doubt that just because the audience is larger, it’s probably no easier for a game designer to make a hit game than it is a cartoonist to write a popular book).

- The digital revolution seems like it’s been nothing but good for Indie Games makers. Now game designers can go straight to consumers, completely skipping the part where they have to worry about getting their boxed game up on a shelf at Wal-Mart.

- I went to a panel about Funding Your Indie Game. Thousands of people showed up, and it looked like only one of them was interested in getting their game packaged in a box and sold on retail shelves. Everyone else seemed to want to go straight-to-consumer.

- Unscientifically Backed-up Observation: the Games Industry seems like a Boy’s Club, worse than comics. I saw plenty of women in attendance, and went to some talks given by ladies, but they were more about children’s games, or learning games, or the speaker had a background as a producer/project manager. I didn’t come across many high-profile women game designers or lead artists or creatives.

- Except one quite nice talk about Making Games For Your Teenage Daughter, where the game designer co-presented with his actual teenage daughter, and showed how she was becoming more and more involved in his development process. Maybe it’s one of those things where in ten years from now, there’ll be way more women designing games just as a given, like what has happened with Alternative Comics.

- In fact, maybe like what’s happened in comics, future generations of female game designers may start making work that’s fresher and more interesting, partially because they aren’t coming at things from the same shared video-games-of-the-80′s background and sensibility that all the men are.

- Again, I have to stress, I’m basing these judgments of the games industry on almost nothing. I really don’t know that much about it, and the stuff I’m the most familiar with is the learning/serious games space, which seems to have a different gender breakdown than the “AAA” commercial games nook.

- Weird thing: I love talking about games, and I love listening to people deliver interesting lectures about making games, but I don’t actually play any video games myself, apart from apps on my iPhone.

- Upon reflection, that’s not such a bad thing I decided. I prefer playing offline games. “Get Together Games” if you will. Like, Settlers of Catan, Heroclix, and Magic: The Gathering. So, perhaps I just prefer the social element.

- There was an earthquake in San Francisco that woke me up at 5:30AM on the first day of the conference. Counting the one that happened on the East Coast a few months back, that makes it two quakes that I’ve survived in the same year.

- There was way more, but I am totally wrecked today, so can’t think of any others. I took the red-eye back last night, so am on about 3-4 hours of fitful sitting-on-a-plane sleep.

A new recently drawn drawing. Happy Friday!

I thought I was done traveling for a while, but I was wrong. This Sunday I am leaving for a week to attend the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco for my day-job. Something I love, love, love is sitting in seminars and workshops having to do with game design. They’re always super stimulating and full of interesting ideas. I’m very lucky to get to attend this conference.

It’s funny, I’ve been to so many comic conventions over the years, I walk into them with a generally good idea of who everyone is, which publishers publish what, and a general sense of how the industry is represented in any given room. I’m picking up on the fact that the game developing world is much like the comics one, but aside from a few people here and there, I really don’t know so much about the industry as a whole. I don’t know the personalities and the history. Kind of like how most normal people probably feel if they wander in off the street into the NYC MoCCA festival or something. Taking it all in as a total outsider. It’ll be interesting, that’s for sure.

Brand new TCJ Talkies podcast with cartoonist and publisher, Box Brown, posted at The Comics Journal!

There’s lots and lots of business to discuss in this episode! Should we start offering sponsorships? Would random paid-advertisments in the middle of a Tony Consiglio yarn add or detract from the show? Does the podcast qualify in the Journalism category for the Harvey Awards? Should you vote for it? How many Harveys has Alex won, and where does he keep them? What do we think about the demise of Pizza Island? Will Alex interview Tony for a Pro-T.I.P.S? And many, many, more questions. Plus! Our first ever Movie Club Corner, where we break-down and dissect the film that defined Generation X, Reality Bites. Also, the first and probably last, “Kids Say The Darndest Things” segment.

Comments welcome!

This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by Jeff Manley! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com

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It cuts off abruptly, because that was the moment I lost confidence in what I was doing, and decided to scrap everything to start over. I think a lot of the drawings in these pages are nice, but it was the right decision to toss it all in the trash and go back to the drawing board.

Some of the scenes worked well, I thought, such as Mr. DeMaria chewing out the two Davids in front of Alan, and I recreated those pretty close to the same in the final book. Other parts, like the heavy discussion about religion and free-will, felt clunky to me, and I axed them from the story (instead, now the boys have a very frank discussion about which way is the right way to wipe your butt).

I have even older versions of the story than this, including a very NSFW early-early draft from about the year 2000, which I will dig out and scan at some point.

Studygroup Comics head honcho, Zack Soto, creeps into the Lair this week for a wide-ranging discussion: Friday Night Lights, Friday Night Lights, and Friday Night Lights. Plus: some mean-spirited jabs at the aging Baby-Boomer population, coupled with the question of When Will Generation X Wise Up and Start To Respect Their Elders (also coupled with the question of How Much Will The Millennial Generation End Up Hating Generation X?) Also, writing reviews on Goodreads, and one of the toughest pop-culture quizzes we’ve ever featured on the show.

Comments welcome!

This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by Kathleen Gros! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com

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It’s frustrating, because while I still draw all the time, I never have anything to post up here on the site, except for the occasional teaser image (see above). But, rest assured, things are moving forward, I’m working hard on something new, and am feeling really great about how it’s going.

Speaking of feeling good, I realized I never put together a big post-Angouleme festival report. I had big plans to put one up, but the extra week in Paris followed by week of lousy sickness kept me from assembling it, and now so much time has gone by, it feels a little less immediate. Not to mention, I already talked about the trip on The Ink Panthers Show!

I bet you can basically guess what the show was like, though: pretty amazing. Everyone knows what the deal is with Angouleme: a city of comics, where the mannequins in the department stores are propped up holding graphic novels and a giant sculpture of Herge’s head sits prominently in one of the town squares. Like a veritable real-life Hicksville. (Well, kinda. In Hicksville all the townsfolks love comics too – I dunno if that’s the case at Angouleme, since I can’t speak the language. Perhaps all the people working in the stores and restaurants are muttering “nerds…” under their breath at all the people who have descended upon their normally sleepy town, like Point-Pleasant locals dealing with the “Bennies” in the Summertime.)

So, I’m basically going to do an image dump. Here’s a bunch of photos I took, starting with the Art Spiegelman career retrospective:

The Garbage Pail Kids/Wacky Packages wall

Maus pages

A European festival goer absorbs this comic about Osama Bin Laden and George W. Bush terrorizing Spiegelman equally (yeah… I gotta admit, I couldn’t quite decide how I felt about this one…)

This wasn’t in the Art Spiegelman exhibit. It’s a Pascal Girard page I saw up in the Maison des Auteurs show.

This department store mannequin is into comics.

Jimi Merman?

Map of Angouleme

A placemat at a restaurant.

Teenage vandals.

This guy sitting in front of the nudie pictures gives me a stare down.

From what I could tell, this guy was selling drawings of himself.

This guys looks like he’s yelling “Sacre Bleu!!”

AdHouse!

Is this series going to get translated into English?

The Panthers welcome The Desert Panther, Tony Consiglio, back into The Lair for an episode packed with controversy, disagreements, and fireworks. Should Weird “Al” Yankovich perform at halftime in next year’s Superbowl, as a blatant pander to all the football-hating Nerds who don’t deserve it? Are any of the Panthers OK with their wives slinging their arms around our necks, like we’re not the men in the marriages, but instead some kind of subdued house-cat? Doesn’t it make more sense to choose being partially paralyzed over having your face mutilated like Jigsaw from the Punisher, assuming you’re single? And what’s up with this new craze the kids are into called “Falling Over in Public”? And can you guess which one of the Panthers wrote this episode summary?

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This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by our very Tony Consiglio! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com

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Dylan Horrocks is my guest inside The Comics Journal TCJ Talkies Hutt this week. I was really excited to have him on for a chat. I looooooovvvve Dylan’s comics. I think his work has been quite influential on me. I was so happy last year when he agreed to write the blurb on the back of Troop 142.

Book blurbing is probably the least pleasant aspect of comics-writing I can think of, for all parties involved. There’s the part where I have to send out a sheepish request, there’s the part where the person feels pressured to consent to reading your book, then the part where I have to needle them to hurry things along. Ugh, it’s terrible. The only good part is when a blurb comes back and it’s so nice and complimentary and you feel great because one of your cartooning heroes has actually taken the time to sit down and read your story and then thought of a nice thing to say about it. That’s the good part, but all the rest, not so much.

I had an experience with Freddie & Me actually, where I approached another personal cartooning hero of mine, who (probably begrudgingly) agreed to read and blurb my book, and that one didn’t turn out quite as well. I couldn’t tell you for sure if the person ever actually read the story, based on the three word blurb they sent back. I couldn’t use it in the end. Ah well, like I said, it’s not a pleasant process for anyone, and I can’t fault someone for not really wanting to do some job for a stranger, but also not wanting to seem like a bad-guy by telling me no. I’m sure it happens all the time.

Anyway, this is all off-topic. Go listen to the Dylan Horrocks interview!

Mike returns from his recent trip to the Angouleme Comics Festival in France, and gives Alex a lengthy run-down of all the goings-ons. As is his custom, Mike takes a “vacation from vegetarianism” when traveling abroad, though unfortunately for the animals, it’s possible that this most recent journey could have been a game-changer. Also, Mike has to come to terms with the fact that he really enjoys visiting foreign countries, but learning a second language is quite simply beyond him at this advanced stage in life. Struggling with the language barrier has simply an unavoidable fact of life.

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This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by Mike Schwartz! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com

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Bonus!! Some vacation photos from Angouleme!

Traveling companions, Josh Cotter and Brendan Leach

Drew Weing and Eleanor Davis

Brendan and Mike’s beds

Socializing at the bars

Josh and his wife, Momoko, standing near part of the French Chateau

An early morning start, to get to the festival, feat. Nick Bertozzi

Eddie Campbell

Jack & Max doodle, drawn at the festival

La Pagode movie theater, on a freezing cold day

The Panthers are back in The Lair, with a lengthy discussion about drawing political satire cartoons. Plus, we run down the list of 2012′s upcoming Nerd Movie Releases, and talk about what looks exciting and what doesn’t. The Hunger Games? Seriously, it’s a movie about kids fighting each other to the death, and people can’t wait for it to arrive? And what about that Hobbit. Plus: Mike went to see Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, and got into an altercation with a livery cab driver. And lots more!!

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This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by Andy Finkle! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com

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Another recent drawing I drew.

Also: I posted a new TCJ Talkies podcast over at The Comics Journal, featuring La Mano’s Zak Sally. I really enjoyed chatting with Zak – check it out.

I like drawing maps. Here’s one of central and northern New Jersey, which accompanies the comic I’ve been working on. Note: Pinewood Forest (setting for Troop 142) is technically over the border in New York state.

The Holidays are behind us, so Alex and Mike creep groggily back into The Lair to catch up and discuss the things that happened over Hannukah, Christmas and New Years. Warning: the first ten minutes or so are particularly rusty, as the Panthers shake off all the egg-nog and candy-canes and struggle to get their heads back into the game. Hear about Alex’s Ukelele, Mike’s Cello and Superior Singing Voice, and an account of a visit to the Metropolitan Opera. Also: a listener call is answered, and Alex poses an ethical conundrum for us to ponder. Happy 2012 everyone!

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This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by Aaron F. Gonzalez! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com

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Troop 142 got a nice shout-out on an NPR Best of 2011 blog yesterday, which did actually translate into some book sales, I believe. I don’t know what amazon sales rankings really mean, but I know that I jumped into the top 100 for Graphic Novels for the first time ever. Again, I don’t know what these numbers really mean, but it was all very exciting nonetheless.

(I actually suspect a lot of sales came from friends who’d forgotten that I’d recently published a book until I posted about the NPR list on Facebook. A couple folks responded that “ah, yes, they really oughta finally buy that thing off of amazon…”)

In other news, I’m not sure that I’m going to be posting anything new on this blog for the remainder of 2011, as there’ll be no The Ink Panthers Show! episode next week, and then before you know it, it’ll be 2012 already.

Also, I am not sure yet when I’m going to resume posting actual comics up on this blog again. I have to admit, keeping the work offline for the past couple months has probably been creatively beneficial. I’m happy to report that I’m knee-deep in a new story and I’m feeling generally very positive about it. A couple days “staycation” this past week, where I just holed myself away and just drew and drew, really did wonders for my feelings of momentum and progress. I’m excited about the work, and am thinking maybe I’ll have something I feel good about showing sometime soon.

Here’s a video of me lettering a word-balloon, to tide everyone over.

Next year, I don’t have a ton planned. I’m going to be attending the big Angouleme Festival in France at the end of January, and will be doing some signings in Paris following that. My wife will come join me out there after all the comics business is done, and we’ll have a little mini-vacation to celebrate ten-years of being together.

In terms of other conventions, I am not sure what I’m attending or not. I imagine I’ll still make it down to SPX in the Fall, and am hoping that TCAF in Toronto is a possibility.

Nothing is changing with The Ink Panthers Show! I think this past year was really great for the show. We had some wonderful guests, and I think really had some strong episodes with just The Panthers (Tony “The Desert Panther” Consiglio is included in that. We should change his name to The Honorary Panther). TIPS is continually a work-in-progress, and Alex and I are always trying to figure out what is the best balance of solo-Panthers shows vs. Special Guest episodes. I think it’s probably best we keep aiming for that pleasant mix of both.

TCJ Talkies will return in January. It’s probable that those are going to be coming out at a slightly slower pace. The biweekly schedule really began to catch up to me at the end of this year, and listeners may have noticed a bit of a slowdown. My plan is to roll them out at a more relaxed rate, but we’ll see. I’ve found that I feel worn out before I record an episode, but once it’s done I get all excited and motivated again. I think I just really like talking about comics!

Happy New Year everyone!!

It’s the final Ink Panthers of the year, and iFanboy’s Josh Flanagan joins us in The Lair to give us the rundown on the best movie, tv show, book, comic, music, and Death of a Major Evil Foe of America, of the year! It’s quite a list, so have a pen ready – lots of recommendations coming your way. Plus: some followup on the recent discussion about The World’s Most Famous Little Person Actor, The Falkland Islands War, Stephen King’s On Writing, and lots and lots of Holiday Cheer.

Comments welcome!

This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by Nathan Bulmer! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com

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Back by popular demand, The Desert Panther, Tony Consiglio invades The Lair to tell us all about his recent studies of animal behavior. We talk about How to Escape a Pit-Bull Attack, What Kinds of Animals at the Zoo are the Best, Which Immense Creatures trigger our Lizard Brain Fight or Flight Mechanisms, and a lengthy discussion about Cattle Breeding, which also explores the differences between a Cow, a Bull, and a Steer. Also in this episode, Second Life, and Christmas Card round-robins that spark outrage.

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This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by Shawn Brook Williams! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com

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An explosive episode! The Ticking and H Day creator, cartoonist Renee French creeps into the Lair for a very mature conversation about some important things. Such as, how everything would be better if instead of twitter, we had I Am Legend zombies swarming the planet. Yes, the zombies are unpleasant, but at least they aren’t barraging you with minutiae about mundane things all day and night. They are nice and quiet, and don’t feel the need to overshare. Then some grown-up discussion about bodily fluids, and then some even more grown-up discussion about man-nipples, and then probably some even more conversation about bodily fluids again. We can’t get enough of it!

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This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by Peter D’Retalia! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com

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Sarah Glidden joins me in the Talkie Hutt for a chat. Sarah is perhaps best known for her 2010 debut memoir, How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less, which was published by Vertigo. Since writing that book, Sarah has become more interested in comics journalism, and roughly a year ago successfully Kickstarted the funds to travel to Syria and northern Iraq tailing a group of journalists to write about the work they were doing.

Despite it currently being her most well known work, we don’t discuss How to Understand… too much in this interview. I really liked the book, and would have been happy to talk about it, but my sense is that it’s become one of those things where the author is starting to feel like The Israel Cartoonist (much in the same way I was once personally terrified about being known at The Queen Guy). I saw a particularly amusing interaction on a social network a while back where Sarah was soliciting ideas for superheroes she could paint pictures and sell prints of at conventions, and a ton of people suggested Sabra, as well as The Thing, and Shadowcat, and so on and so on. Y’know, because they’re Jewish.

Anyway, Sarah probably would have been happy to talk more about How to Understand…, but we just ended up getting onto other topics, which I found quite enlightening. Sarah’s process is incredibly different from what I do, and what I think a lot of other cartoonists do, so it was very interesting to hear her talk about how she’s making comics at the moment.

The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival happened this past weekend, and with it, my little Troop 142 mini-tour also came to an end. Sad. Oh well, it was a good show to end on. A ton of great stuff there, and even better, it’s just a subway ride away.

Here’s a photo I took on the subway of someone reading RAW.

My assumption was that they were headed to the con, but in fact, they were not. They got off the train well before we made it to Williamsburg. It still feels strange to see people reading art comics in public. I see people on the subway reading X-Men all the time. It’s much more rare to see a comic like this.

I’m very much looking forward to being at the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival in Williamsburg, this weekend. This is the third year of the show, and the first time I’ve been sitting behind a table, which is nice. I’ll be at the Secret Acres Corral, between The Koyama Press Pavillion and the Drawn & Quarterly MegaDome. Lots of other Secret Acres artists are going to be at the show too, including, I believe, John Brodowski, who is debuting a new book. I loved his first graphic novel, Curio Cabinet, so am really interested to see his new work.

This episode is either super-fun or super-irritating, depending on your familiarity with all of the worst songs of the 1980′s and 1990′s and your patience for Mike and Alex’s poor recall of pop-culture facts. First up a discussion about the recent passing of one of the last surviving Munchkins from The Wizard of Oz, and some questions about how casually famous people have extended stays at one another’s houses. Then, we make our way through the Worst Songs list, and decide which picks are fair (The Macarena), and which are not (“What’s Going On” by 4 Non-Blondes. C’mon! Leave 4 Non-Blondes alone!!!). Also, buried at the back of the episode is a small item where Mike mentions telling his daughter that the full name of Ariel from The Little Mermaid is “Ariel Brownwater”, and her Dad is called “Triton Brownwater”. It would be appreciated if all parents of pre-schoolers who listen to the show could help propagate this piece of misinformation.

Comments welcome!

This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by Ian Anderson! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com

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Mike and Alex are alone in The Lair and they have a number of important things to discuss. First up, a revisit to Mike’s failed and now-it-turns-out backfiring raw food diet. He should just stick to his regular diet of locally produced cheeses and salted breads. Then, does anyone want to be told that they are a bad driver? Is it just one of those things that everyone just assumes that they are good at? After that, Alex has a spirited defense of our nation’s 39th President, Jimmy Carter. This one’s got it all!

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This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by Rio Aubry Taylor! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com

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This is something fun. I was a guest on The Inkstuds Comic Book and Cartoon Power Hour this past week. Thanks to podcast rival Robin McConnell for inviting me on his show. I really enjoyed the conversation.

It actually was pretty great to talk to another comics-podcaster. I am hesitant to listen back to the audio, because I am pretty sure I am guilty of hijacking some of the interview and turning it around on Robin. I am not sure it’s something I can help at this point – I’m finding that hosting my own podcasts week in and week out is making me a compulsive interrogator.

But, in a way, I think that the fact that we’re putting each other in the hot-seat, probably makes for a pretty interesting discussion. We talk a lot about the reasons why we’re making podcasts, and how doing all the research and thinking about comics in terms of discussing them publicly is having an effect on our abilities to continue to enjoy reading them personally. This is something I wonder about a lot. At the moment I’ve really focused on guests for TCJ Talkies whose work I was already very familiar with and a fan of. I have not yet tried bringing someone on whose work I hadn’t already read. I am not sure how that would change my enjoyment of their work – if I needed to cram and read the material to prepare to talk to them. Robin on the other hand (who has interviewed a ton of people) is in a completely different boat – reading comics to get ready for shows. He even talks about reading Troop 142 the day before our conversation, while sitting on a bus going to work.

Also, if you want to hear the audio of my first appearance on Inkstuds, back in 2009, I’ve got the link here.

Reliable cartoonist, David King, (Lemon Styles, Danny Dutch) calls into the Lair from his home in San Diego to talk “stud tails” and Ugg Boots. Mike tells everyone about his visit to the Occupy Wall Street protests, and smugly points out that he is a cyclist, thus putting himself in a higher category of human being than Alex and David. Alex discusses provocative in-your-face Fine Art, and then it’s time for a Public Service Announcement from the Ink Panthers about the dangers of sitting on one piece of furniture for too long.

Comments welcome!

This week’s illustration of Inky the Domesticated Panther supplied by Sam Henderson! Submit your own illustration of Inky to inkpanthers@gmail.com

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