CowboyOrange

Michelle Ollie, co-director of CCS and this semester’s production faculty, asked us to produce a single-panel response to our time with our prestigious visitors last week. This was mine:

Also, we’ve had a visit this week from Jason Little, of Shutterbug Follies fame. More on his visit in the next day or two.

Every culture has a spring holiday celebrating rebirth, renewal and resurrection; yesterday was such a day for me, the most ancient and hallowed holiday among my people, the Geeks: Zombie Day.

To celebrate, Colleen and I set up the projector and played nine hours of zombie movies for our friends at the Center for Cartoon Studies. I don’t have a lot of the more obscure zombie movies that I love (Bio-Zombie, Zombie, etc.), but we did watch some good ones: Undead, Bride of Re-Animator, Evil Dead II, Army of Darkness, and (of course) Night of the Living Dead.

Thank you to everyone who came out to watch movies with us. And for those of you interested, I’m now taking suggestions for next year’s Zombie Day showing. Already on my list are the two I mentioned earlier; any other ideas?

Yesterday was a long, great day. My day started off with moving furniture in preparation for CCS’s event that afternoon with Chris Ware, Seth and Ivan Brunetti. Then I spent the rest of the morning with the delightful Andy Broome, the gentleman who won the auction to have breakfast with Chris, Seth and Ivan (his bid was $1250). He’s a thoughtful, knowledgeable man, a bit of a cartoonist himself, and an entertaining lunch companion.

We went straight from lunch with Andy to a watercolor demonstration with Seth. If he didn’t have better work to do, I’d say the man oughtta teach. His demo was one of the best and most useful of the year. It was a Steve Bissette-quality lesson (which is the highest compliment I can give an instructor). During the demo, he and Chris and Ivan bantered about illustration work and and the cartooning life. This was easily one of the best classes we had all year.

After this, everyone hustled upstairs for a presentation by Ivan, followed by a panel discussion with Chris, Ivan, Seth and James Sturm. The event was by invitation only, but nearly everyone who was invited attended, plus a few. Alison Bechdel was there (though sadly I had to leave for work before I could speak with her), as was Steve Bissette and an odd crowd of donors, scholars, artists and writers. Ivan’s presentation about the way comics work was fascinating (in a wonky sort of only-we-who-make-them-care kinda way). The Q&A that followed was equally enjoyable, the guests fielding questions on subjects ranging from architecture to woodcut novels.

An hour break while I dashed off to work, then back to the Main Street Museum for a party with the guests of honor. Colleen brought pasta, Michelle Ollie brought pizza, and James and Chris Ware walked to the store for booze. It was really inspiring to hang out with these three for a while, to talk with them about the cartooning life, the work and all the personal struggles we engage in to do what we do. As a cartoonist-couple Colleen and I were something of a novelty to the guests, so we answered as many questions about relationships as we asked. Seth and I had a long conversation ranging all over the place, from religion to the prospects of getting Seth to go out in public in a T-shirt (he declined out of modesty). Seth teases Chris a lot. Ivan chatted about marriage and Buddhism; Chris Ware talked about gay pornography and told a joke that ended with, “But that doesn’t cover asshole repair!” Yeah. Not what you expected, is it.

Chris, Ivan and Seth are not only great cartoonists, but they were great people to spend a couple of days with. They were smart, funny, fun and gracious, and the best possible guests. With any luck, we’ll get to do this again.

Well, it’s been a busy couple of weeks. Sorry I haven’t posted; fortunately, you’ve had Colleen’s top-notch comics to read, which are probably a damn sight better than my incoherent ramblings.

Today marked the arrival of Seth, Chris Ware and Ivan Brunetti at CCS. All have been friendly and approachable, to a degree I never expected. I met Seth once, years ago at an event at the Danger Room, and found him to be standoffish and stiff. In retrospect, this was probably more due to a grueling book tour schedule than any inherent quality of his, as today he was cheerful, friendly, outgoing and interested in our work.

Chris Ware, perhaps the preeminent cartooning genius of our era, gave a beautiful slide show about his education, his work and his creative process. Seth read/performed several short stories about cartooning, unified by a sense of magic and melancholy, which gave me a new perspective on the form. And Ivan Brunetti gave a fascinating presentation on the process and the experiences that brought him to the current stage of his work. I suspect Ivan’s presentation may have been the most useful for students working at our level.

Chris confirmed to me that it is one of his fondest wishes to destroy all existing copies of Floyd Farland: Citizen of the Future. He is an amazingly personable and humble man, and his constant search for ways to improve his work is inspiring, even if he is way too hard on himself.

I’ve got artwork to post, but I’m going to hold off a couple of days to avoid the inevitable unfavorable comparisons to the visiting cartoonists. Both Colleen and I are working on a series of “weekly challenges” for James Sturm’s class: the week before last was “24 Hours in the Life of a High School Bathroom,” last week was “Experiments in Scale” and this week has us moving our protagonist through a crowd in heavy rain turning gradually to snow. My work for these exercises has been nowhere near as interesting as Colleen’s, who’s managed to craft an engaging story each time.

I’ll post more tomorrow evening, after another day with Chris, Ivan and Seth - their presence at the school merits extra blogging. Until then.