While taking in the inspiring art of the master, Will Eisner at MoCCA NYC, I caught up will old pal Dean Haspiel this week. We drank a lot of beer and had a lot of laughs back in the late 90’s along with fellow comic creators Nick Bertozzi and Scott Cohen.
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’d hoped to have had this one ready for the 2011 MoCCA Fest in April, but we changed the name and well, you know how it is. Or do you? Inspiration comes and goes. Ideas seem great, then days later they don’t. Characters take time to develope – I found some notes for this story, and only one out of the original five names or characters survived.
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.
Yeah –we went to DC! Almost didn’t make it — sat for 6.5 hours in traffic that normally only takes 3 hours of driving from Red Bank, NJ. Spent the night before making signs, so we couldn’t possible turn back. It was all worth it — had a lot of laughs and met a lot of great people. There’s some video somewhere on Comedy Centrals site of us. Special thanks to the mighty Bryan Bruden for getting us there.
Strange but true and documented here in this promotional short film of Chicago Tribune comic artists churning out the daily strips on site and not at their home studios. Ahhhh…. simpler times.
