The debut of the Rat Bastard SMALL DOSES issue 1 went better than I imagined. Fans of the old books as well as new fans made me very optimistic about the future of creator owned titles and self-publishing.

More to come.

Throughout the evening, I kept thinking about my own relationship to Jaffee’s work; specifically  “Snappy Answers For Stupid Questions”. When MoCCA’s Danny Fingeroth concluded the panel discusion, MoCCA president Ellen Abramowitz began the Q&A. After a few questions, I couldn’t contain myself, and rather than ask a question, I told Jaffee and the audience a story: “Mr. Jaffee, when I was about seven years old, I was reading “Snappy Answers To Stupid Questions” while in a car with my family going from North Jersey to visit my Aunt and Uncle at the Jersey Shore for the holidays. When we arrived, My Aunt came to the door to greet us and said to me, “My Cliff, how much you’ve grown!” Seeing this as an opportunity to use one of the lines in your book I replied, “Gee, and I had my heart set on being a midget!” And that’s when my father gave me a slap across the back of my head that I have remembered to this day.” The audience bursted into laughter, but more important; I got a laugh out of Al Jaffee. My life is now complete.

Click on image to enlarge

It’s the secondary and tertiary characters that can make all the difference between a good story and a mediocre one. How many times haves you read a comic or watched a cartoon and all the supporting characters appear to be spit out of from the same mold? Sometimes it’s a matter time — there is no wand that can be waved to make new characters simply appear, they need to be developed. Perhaps I spend too much time on that at times, but I’d like to believe it pays off. This is Sergeant Slag, who’s pretty much a one-dimensional character: he doesn’t like Roscoe’s kind. He’s a first class FURC-hater. And as haters tend to be, he’s rather myopic — he allows his prejudices to keep him from finding the the true criminals.

I have several pages of sketches of some sort of sergeant to accompany Detective Penski. The Penski character was already gruff, the sergeant had to be more of an ignorant clod. During this period, I experimented with all sizes, races, and even gender. This led me to think about their captain, who would eventually appear on the page as a politically savvy woman. She would have to be smart in order to become a captain — someone who was considering all the angles and ramifications.

Roscoe’s bike is a constantly evolving vehicle — perhaps like the Batmobile, with many iterations. I’m always trying to justify its design, as if it would ever actually fly. So I work with it for a while and think, jeesh, that thing would never get off the ground, or how does it really do this or that? Stay tuned.

Those geniuses over at Boing-Boing have got the story: http://boingboing.net/2011/10/11/art-show-in-nj-to-benefit-jack-kirby-museum-october-15-2011.html

Photo © 2011 Brett Unis

On April 9th 2011 I was returned to my people. It had been 9 years since I appeared at a comic convention. It was in some ways everything I’d hoped it would be: the art, the fans, the camaraderie, making new friends, the pasion for the medium, and all those wonderful comics. But the best part about MoCCA Fest, was I got to spend the weekend with my old pal Jon B. Cooke. Will Eisner documentary producer and publisher of the award winning Comic Book Artist Magazine, J.B. and his brother Andy Cooke (director of Will Eisner: A Sequential Artist) kept me in stitches with equal parts of  chop-busting and comic book references.

Cliff Galbraith, publisher Jon B. Cooke and Director Andrew Cooke

When not outright laughing, I found myself smiling, for no particular reason, other than the fact that I was incredibly happy, and forunate to be making comics once again. While at MoCCA Fest, I ran into another old friend, Alex Simmons, who invited me to his Kids Comic Con in the Bronx. While the Bronx isn’t the most convenient place to reach from Red Bank, NJ, I nonetheless drove into northern NYC to visit with old friends and make new ones. I’m not sure what artist Rick Parker asked of us as he took this shot, but Jack Morelli (master comic letter for Marvel and Archie comics), me, Torsten Adaire (Comics Beat contributor) and Jim Salscrup (editor extraordinaire) are  enjoying the con as much as any kid at Kids Comic Con. Well worth the drive.

Prints by the mighty TDT  Screen Printing of South River, NJ — a god forsaken place, where men are men, and men print shirts.  If you need T-shirts, you’d be a fool to go anywhere else. They do some amazing work, including discharge printing. Far superior to anything I did when I had my screen printing business.

TDT’s president, Geoff Dagostino learned his trade in my shop in the 90’s, but the student is now the master — I was impressed with the level of craft applied to his work. It did my heart good to see some of the procedures I implemented years ago, still being used in Geoff’s operation.

And here’s final product: Asphalt and Navy American Apparel slim-fit 100% cotton T-shirts, on their way to NYC for MoCCA Fest, and Rat Bastard’s first comic con in nine years.

Cliff, Judie, and Bruce Springsteen ©Tracey Noelle Luz

I’ll explain later.

For those unfamiliar with Dean, among his many accomplishments,he recently won an Emmy Award for his work on the intro for HBO’s “Bored To Death”. We haven’t seen each other in over 11 years, so we had a lot of stories to share.

I also ran into another old friend I hadn’t seen in years, The Beat herself, Heidi MacDonald. I wasted no time telling her that I visit her comics news site every single day, and you should too. It’s over at comicsbeat.com. While it covers all things comics, it does have a certain NYC perspective that I find to be the most informative and entertaining of its kind. You may find me weighing in on an occasional debate under the name CitizenCliff.

Be sure to get yourself over to Will Eisner’s New York: From The Spirit to the Modern Graphic Novel. March 1- June 30th 2011 at The Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art at 584 Broadway in NYC. The show is curated by comic legends Denis Kitchen and Danny Fingeroth. for more info, check out MoCCA’s site.

I’ve also got some video –More to come.

Also, I’m collaborating on this with my wife, Judie Luszcz this time. It’s based on a concept she had many years ago. It made us laugh back then and we began noticing things and phrases that would go into here story. A few years ago, I was looking for an animated project to work on, so I started conceptualizing her story ( some of it was posted here about two years ago). A lot of it is based on our days in New Brunswick , NJ where we met.

So here’s the first page – I’ll put up a site for adventuresinnowhereland.com eventually, but first I’ll need to bang out a few more pages. One thing’s for certain — this is a lot easier than those damned Rat Bastard pages. Well, not easier, just simpler. After all, none of this is actually easy.