Hi All,

Dirty Mike has been published in Desert Island’s Smoke Signal zine. Thanks, Gabe!

It’s available in-store (540 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn) and online.

OTHER NEWS!

♪ I will be at San Diego Comic-con.

♪ I will be on a panel at MoCCA.

♪ Skim will appear in my foreign translations! Edicoes SM (Brazil) will publish the book in Portugese and Uitgeverij Sherpa (Holland) will translate to Dutch. NICE!

♪ I’m attending this year’s ICON event in Los Angeles, where I will eat many, many burritos.

This lady is loosely based on an Icelandic saga we learned about in a very terrifying wax museum in Reykjavik.

Is there anything more intoxicating than the concept of a witch? (FYI: in the original saga, I believe the woman, Freydís Eiríksdóttir, was NOT a witch.) In retrospect, people who were deemed witches were probably just women who were a bit eccentric or had no interest in living with men and their rules. Which to many men, even today, is very irritating indeed.

Sooo, a lot of stuff happened while I was away? Poor MJ. We were “SHAMON!!”ing all weekend.

First off, thanks to the Illustration Academy for inviting me and Sam down to Sarasota. We always enjoy ourselves immensely.

Second, Skim has won an another award! The Canadian Booksellers “Libris” prize, for Book Design of the Year. Thanks to Michael Solomon at Groundwood, who made the design happen on the book. Readers of the North American version will have hopefully notice some of the easter eggs in the design (hint: take off the dust jacket).

Here’s Farrah for good measure:

A programming note:

I will be going away to Florida tomorrow and won’t be back for a week and a bit. The reason? A self-imposed comics seclusion (with a little break to impart some “knowledge” at the Illustration Academy).

I might type stuff from down there. We’ll see what the situation is. Hopefully I will have lots to share when I get back?

We are back from Skim Tour España 2009.

Thank-you to Ediciones La Cúpula, our Spanish publisher, for doing a great job on the production and promotion of the book. I assure you, Barcelona citizens will be quite sick of us in the next month or so when our newspaper interviews/tv/radio spots come out, such was the blitz. A super special thank-you to Montserrat Terrones, who very graciously toured us around the city. I shall miss the coffee but not the omnipresent cigarette smoke.

The Salón del Cómic de Barcelona was good but very different from North American comics festivals (at least the ones that I’ve been to). I was surprised to see alternative comics freely mixing with erotica, manga (LOTS of manga), cosplayers, and children’s fare. And videogames and fantasy stuff and knick-knacks. And drinking.

I met lots of nice people, including some fellow illustrators! I will say, however, that I was not terribly happy about some of the signing culture over there. I got the feeling there was a bit of a sense of entitlement amongst some of the fair attendees… that simply because you are sitting there with a pen you can be asked to draw pictures in sketchbooks and loose paper. Many of the people who asked for drawings didn’t even know who I was. I am more than happy to spend some time creating a nice picture in a book or for an illustration fan that comes and visits me, but a random person who wants a “free drawing”? Very irritating.

Anyhow, enough griping. Back to work!

Mariko and I are off to Barcelona to promote the Spanish edition of Skim. Spanish readers, come say hello at the following events and signings:

May 27th: Signing, Continuarà Còmics (Bookstore), 7PM

May 28th: Lecture & Signing in FNAC Diagonal Mar (Bookstore), 7.30PM

May 29th: Signing, La Cúpula Booth – Barcelona Comics Festival, 5PM
Signing in FNAC Diagonal Triangle (Bookstore), 6.45PM

May 30th: Signing, La Cúpula Booth – Barcelona Comics Festival, 12-2PM/6-8PM

Thank-you, again, to the Canada Council who made this trip possible.

Here is an amusing video that was produced for the Doug Wright ceremony last weekend. I was completely tickled to see Skim “animated”! Also, forgot to mention: congrats to both Matt Forsythe and Kate Beaton, who also won awards. Matt has always been very supportive of my work and I was thrilled to meet Kate, whose webcomics I follow.

Of the books I picked up, I am most impressed by Alan’s War, by Emmanuel Guibert. I had seen the book before and was blown away by the drawings, but the storytelling is no less fantastic. I actually spent some time talking to Emmanuel that weekend, and am kind of pissed that I hadn’t read it prior. There is so much I would like to ask him about.

Also pictured is Shary Boyle’s big book Otherworld Uprising (colour! pretty!). Meeting Shary was another highlight.

In Toronto, my aunt took me to a modern dance recital. One of the dancers was Ko Murobushi, who performs modern Butoh. To the totally uninformed observer (ie. me), it seemed almost anti-dancing in the conventional sense… more about pure movement and emotion (sorry Butoh enthusiasts, I’m likely butchering your artform’s message, but it’s the best I can do).

Here’s a video of the performance, if you’re interested.