Last week we chatted up Henry and Glenn Forever‘s Tom Neely about his awesome new book, The Wolf! Here are the results! The book is somethin’ special, so make sure to check out those awesome illustrations at the end!

Q: For people who haven’t gotten a chance to check out the new book, tell ’em a bit about what they can expect…

A: I’m never very good at describing my art, but here goes: It’s a surrealistic story told through a narrative series of paintings that pull you through a psychedelic nightmare of werewolves and skeletons and forests and sex and… it’s also a love story.

Q: This book is vastly different from Henry and Glenn Forever, do you think the people you liked HG will be into it?

A: Some of them might. I don’t expect everyone to like everything I do. It’s about as different from Henry and Glenn as you can get, but it would be cool if some of the people who love Henry and Glenn would give The Wolf and some of my other art a chance. The art-comix fans and the metal-heads who read my stuff seem to be latching onto it. It’s more of a serious, arty, poetic piece, whereas Henry and Glenn Forever is just random and funny, but if you like werewolves and sex and scary skeletons and symbolism and surreal art, then you might be into it.

Q: You’ve been working on The Wolf for three years. How did it originally come about?

A: It started as a series of semi-pornographic werewolf paintings I did for a solo gallery show back in 2007.  From there, the ideas for the characters and story kept evolving over time. This book took longer than my others because the process was more improvisational and always in flux. Ideas were always changing and taking me in new directions.  I wanted the whole book to evolve as I went along. I didn’t know if it would ever end, but it finally finished itself. 

Q: What’s next? What sorts of projects do you have under your belt?

A: Oh, too many things… I’ve always got more ideas than time. I’m working on a few short comic stories for some anthologies. My next graphic novel is already written, but I don’t know when I’ll start drawing it.  I’m working on some paintings and other art projects… and what everyone really wants to hear—yes, we are working on more Henry and Glenn stuff.  

Order Tom Neely’s The Wolf here. http://www.iwilldestroyyou.com/store.html

Here’s a recap of 1% of what went on at Minot’s Why Not? Festival.

If you are interested in holding a benefit show to raise money for supplies for the DIY punx who are doing volunteer restoration work on homes during an extreme housing crisis, contact <a href=”billyluetzen@yahoo.com”>Billy</a>. 

The good folks behind Eberhardt Press and Just Seeds have teamed up to create an awwwwesome 2011 day planner (think Slingshot.) These lil’ puppies are beeeautiful and feature 14 Just Seeds artists, including Icky A., Shaun Slifer, Erik Ruin, Josh MacPhee, and Kristine Virsis! The design, by Charles Overbeck, is elegant and tasteful, and features curatorial help from Roger Peet. In the back is a lunar phase calendar. Strong wire binding allows it to sit flat on your desk. Thick cardstock protects it in your pocket or your messenger bag. Totally, totally solid.

Right now to celebrate all-things Eberhardt and Just Seeds (stay tuned for an interview with Charles Overbeck and Eberhardt blank notebooks available through this site!) we’re doing a big ol’ planner sale.

Go here to check ’em out and buy ’em for $5 (marked down from $6) or just opt for a between $3-$7 sliding scale option.

These organizers are a special thing. We hope you get as stoked about them as we are!

Love,

Microcosm

Hey Baltimore friends!
Smile, Hon, You’re in Baltimore editor William P. Tandy is hosting an event tomorrow (Tuesday, August 9th) in Baltimore’s downtown! The free event stars at noon. Info from the SHYIB folks below! Fun! Yow!

Here’s the official word:

Smile, Hon, You’re in Baltimore!

editor William P. Tandy will regale lunching office workers, street people and sundry ne’er-do-wells with his own strange blend of humor and misanthropy as part of the ongoing summer series “Poets in Preston,” Tuesday, August 9, in Preston Gardens, St. Paul and Pleasant Streets, in downtown Baltimore.  This free event begins at noon.  And Hell will surely follow. Poets in Preston is a presentation of the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore, Inc.  Read more about it here: http://www.godowntownbaltimore.com.

In related news,

Smile, Hon, You’re in Baltimore! No. 14

is coming soon from Eight-Stone Press.  Pre-order your copy and read samples from the new issue here: http://eightstonepress.com/hon/hon14.htm.
For more information about

Smile, Hon, You’re in Baltimore!

, contact me at wpt@eightstonepress.com.

Cheers,
William P. Tandy, Editor
Eight-Stone Press
P.O. Box 11064
Baltimore, MD 21212
wpt@eightstonepress.com
www.eightstonepress.com
eightstonepress.blogspot.com
www.facebook.com/wptandy
www.twitter.com/eightstonepress

Suuuuper awesome event goin’ down at Powell’s in Portland tonight. Rad Dad editors Tomas Moniz and Jeremy Adam Smith are “opening” for Ariel Gore, who will be reading from her killer new book All the Pretty People. Check out Ariel’s blog here, Tomas‘s here, and Smith’s Daddy Dialectics site. All the fun starts today (August 5th) at Powell’s (1005 Burnside) at 7:30pm. It is free, free, free…

ABOUT ALL THE PRETTY PEOPLE This new book by Ariel Gore brings out all of the dirt on 1970s suburban hippies. Through an authentic voice, funny stories alternate between warming and saddening your soul. It’s a queer love story. But it’s also got no shortage of shame, violence, and Barbie envy. It’s about the pretty people she used to know in California—the people she wanted to be but never quite felt she was. “How was I to know that all the pretty people got their answers from TV?”

ABOUT THE NEW RAD DAD BOOK Rad Dad: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Fatherhood combines the best from the award-winning zine Rad Dad and from Daddy Dialectic, two kindred publications that have explored parenting as political territory. Both have pushed the conversation around fathering beyond the safe, apolitical focus and have worked hard to create a diverse, multi-faceted space to grapple with the complexity of fathering. Today more than ever, fatherhood demands constant improvisation, risk, and struggle. With grace, honesty, and strength, Rad Dad’s writers tackle all the issues that other parenting guides are afraid to touch: the brutalities, beauties, and politics of the birth experience, the challenges of parenting on an equal basis with mothers, the tests faced by transgendered and gay fathers, the emotions of sperm donation, and parental confrontations with war, violence, racism, and incarceration. Rad Dad is for every father out in the real world trying to parent in ways that are loving, meaningful, authentic, and ultimately revolutionary. Contributors Include: Steve Almond, Jack Amoureux, Mike Araujo, Mark Andersen, Jeff Chang, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jeff Conant, Jason Denzin, Cory Doctorow, Craig Elliott, Chip Gagnon, Keith Hennessy, David L. Hoyt, Simon Knapus, Ian MacKaye, Tomas Moniz, Zappa Montag, Raj Patel, Jeremy Adam Smith, Jason Sperber, Burke Stansbury, Shawn Taylor, Tata, Mark Whiteley, and Jeff West.

If you haven’t heard it from us (or through ye olde grapevine) we are running a Kickstarter campaign to fund the re-publishing of John Isaacson’s book Do-It-Yourself Screenprinting. Sadly, the campaign isn’t going so well. We currently have seven days to raise nearly $4,000 of the $5,000 goal (which is one half of the printing costs; we’re shouldering the rest.) So if you can find it in your big ol’ heart to help John’s book spring back to life, here’s the Kickstarter link. Meantime, feast your eyeballs on this collection of the dude’s screenprinting work! We love ya, John!

We’re running a Kickstarter campaign right now to help fund one of thee most awesome DIY guides of all time: John Isaacson’s epic, wonderful, hilarious, helpful graphic-novel-as-silk-screening-manual Do-It-Yourself Screenprinting! Right now there are only a few days left until the Kickstartin’ is Kickstopped and it’s not lookin’ too hot. We could hella use your support on this one! If you’ve got a coin or two lying around, here’s the Kickstarter link. Now, without further adieu, meet John Isaacson. He’s a really amazing dude…

Q: Tell us how the book originally came about; where were you in your life?

A: I was discovering mini-comics for the first time in the early 2000s. I was a street vendor selling t-shirts I screenprinted. A lot of people bought shirts from me, but even more wanted to know how to print on their own shirts. They were like, “How do you do this?” So I would explain, and I tend to be a little long-winded, so their eyes would glaze over after a certain point. Then I realized, “Hey, I should just make a little mini-comic about how to silk screen and then more people will get what I am talking about. Then they won’t have to remember what I said; they could just look at it in a little book.”

Q: Do you remember your first screenprinting project?

A: I think it was a stencil of the Operation Ivy skanking punk. Either that or Kokopelli designs. Dancing people for the “Dance Weekend” event at my high school.

Q: What kinds of things are you screenprinting these days?

A: Mostly the odd poster here and there. A few comic book covers.

Q: What’s the first bit of advice you’d give a would-be screenprinter?

A: Be patient, be willing to start over from scratch, remain calm, think critically, and learn from your mistakes. Reuse materials to keep it cheap. Also, buy my book!

Q: Is there anything you wish someone would’ve told you when you were first getting started!

A: That you don’t need to wash out the emulsion with hot water after exposure. Also, that the spray from a spray bottle is not strong enough to remove emulsion.

Q: What kind of town is Portland for screenprinters?

A: Totally amazing. There are so many studios for printing in and great printers like Daria Tessler, Zack Soto, Kinoko, Keegan Meegan, Corinne Teed, Roger Peet, and E*Rock. I wish I saw more screenprinted posters on the street…

Q: What would you say you’ve learned most from screenprinting?

A: I’ve learned to solve problems creatively. I’ve learned to constantly trouble-shoot and always look for solutions, to never expect “perfection”, to experiment and try new things, and to be loose and not uptight.

Hey New York pals,
We’re going to be tabling at the Pete’s Candy Store (709 Lorimer St.) Zine Fest Saturday, May 28, 3:00pm – 7:00pm.

Check out the lineup!

Music by:

Jose Delhart
Bogs Visionary Orchestra
Reign of the Elephants
Rad Unicorn

Zine folks in attendance:
Andria Alefhi (We’ll Never Have Paris) http://neverhaveparis.blogspot.com/

Darryl Ayo (Little Garden Comics) http://darrylayo.tumblr.com/

Joseph Carlough (Lies in States, Today Terrific, Dark Nature, Modicum Issues, DSP’s Box of Horror) http://www.josephcarlough.com/

Marguerite Dabaie (He Also Has Drills For Hands, The Hookah Girl) http://www.mdabaie.com/

Dikko Faust and Esther K. Smith (Purgatory Pie Press) http://www.purgatorypiepress.com/

Jenna Freedman (of the Barnard Zine Library) http://barnard.edu/library/zines

Katie Haegele (The La-La Theory) http://www.thelalatheory.com/

Ayun Halliday (The East Village Inky, The Zinester’s Guide to NYC) http://www.ayunhalliday.com/

Alisa Harris (Urban Nomad, Counter Attack) http://www.alisaharris.com/

Gus Iversen http://www.iloanbooks.com/

Robyn Jordan http://www.robynjordan.com/

Mark Lerer (The Little General)

Sara Lindo (Carl Finds Love, Lobotomy, Wall Street Cat: Money Takes Naps) http://www.theLindo.com/

A.J. Michel (Syndicate Product) http://www.syndicateproduct.com/

Microcosm Publishing http://microcosmpublishing.com/

L. Nichols (Jumbly Junkery, Unrequited Monsters, ! [bang], A Shadow and Its Source, and An Aleatoric Basis for Understanding) http://www.dirtbetweenmytoes.com/

Morgan Pielli (Indestructible Universe Quarterly) http://www.IndestructibleUniverse.com/

Davy Rothbart (FOUND Magazine) http://www.foundmagazine.com/

Bill Roundy (The Amazing Adventures of Bill, Bar Scrawl, various gay romance comics) http://www.billroundy.com/

Kenan Rubenstein (The Oubliette) http://underthehaystack.net/

Steve Seck (Life is Good) http://secktacular.com/

Hey Portland pals,
We have an awesome event going down in the Microcosm zine store parking lot (636 SE 11th) this Tuesday-Thursday. Here’s the official write-up from the Tales of Tape folks themselves. Come on down! Would love to see ya.
-Cosm, PDX

Tales On Tape “Contemporary Narratives” Installation

In its fourth year of collecting stories from an array of people and sounds, Tales On Tape aims to contribute an ephemeral “Contemporary Narratives” section to Microcosm Publishing. This auditory section will be complete with a listening station and recording booth in hopes of capturing patron’s personal stories, tangents, and sounds.

The recording booth, located in the front lot of Microcosm Publishing, (May 24th – 26th) will be displaying excerpts from past stories, while focusing on capturing new stories from visitors of Microcosm. There will also be cassettes with self-addressed envelopes available after the departure of the project for patrons unable to record in the recording booth. This three day event hopes to record the non-linear facets of a public milieu on the ever so linear method of tape, a middle ground between participants and project facilitators.

    Such endeavors as the “Contemporary Narratives” installation seek to act as a material space in which personal trajectories are allowed to converge and be shared. Equally, Tales on Tape seeks to become a public space, byway of various projects and installations, acting as a dynamic archive of audio artifacts. Tales on Tape has been collecting stories over the last four years and will continue to do so past the expiration of this installation.

Tales On Tape

TalesonTape@gmail.com

www.TalesonTape.org