I'm actually leaving the house!

Hey everyone. It is a widely know fact that I really don't like the winter (with the exception of the snow). Winter bums me out BIGTIME. But, I will be leaving my house tomorrow to celebrate a bunch of artwork hanging at local café:

This show has been up since early November, and it features the work of me, Joe Quinones, Liz Prince, Tim Finn, Ann Smith and Evan Larson, as well as pet-photographer Kelly Allen. If you live in the Boston area, feel free to come down and say hi. The show is tomorrow (Sunday December 12th) from 5 - 7 PM at the delicious Bloc 11 Café. Joe and I will be baking cupcakes for people to eat! ANd we'll all have prints, t-shirts and comics to sell. There's also a super-cool comics shop next door, should you desire MORE comics: Hub Comics. Maybe I'll see you there!

A little more information:

So yeah, Joe and I are in Belgium and France for a bit. The main reason is because Joe was asked to be a guest at the Lille Comics Festival ! Amazing, since we haven't taken a vacation in FOREVER. So, here we are, in Belgium! Our friend, Max, was nice enough to host us for the Belgian part of the trip, and he has been wonderful. We've gotten to draw in his studio along with all his comics (B.D.) and art friends (merci beaucoup!). The trip has been totally awesome so far, and we're leaving for Lille, FR tomorrow. As part of Joe's going to the festival, he drew a shout-out illustration:

Learn more about the piece it is referencing at Mr. Joe's blog. I actually colored the illustration, except for Harley's exquisite skin (Joe's the rendering king). Okay, that's it for now. I'll try to post again before we return to the states, but if not, until then!

Hey internets!

I am on a plane...to Belgium!

More soon...

Happy Halloween!!

From the Green Lantern Corps:

Some awesome guy at SPX this year requested a sketch page of Liz, Joe and me as Green Lanterns for his Green Lantern-themed sketchbook. Fun times. Liz and I are both projecting kitties, while Joe is projecting...a bottle of Dr. Pepper?

We are staying in for Halloween; we hope that we'll get some trick-or-treaters at our new place. We sure have enough candy. And there will most definitely be some carved pumpkins later!

We're finally starting to feel settled in the new place. Almost all the walls are painted, and we've started hanging pictures up. It's amazing how much time it takes to get all nested into a new place. I've spent all my free time doing apartment-y things; I don't remember the last time I drew a auto-bio comic...oh, well. There's been plenty of non-auto-bio comics drawing going on in my life, which I am very pleased about. Sneak-peaks about that soon!

Until then...high-five some ghosts for me.

NYCC

That's right. I'll be at New York Comic Con starting today (Friday) until Sunday! I'm kind of unofficial; I'll be the tag-along at Mr. Quinones' booth. BOOTH G-8. Right next to our dear friend Mr. Rivera's booth. BOOTH G-7. Come say 'hi'!

Slightly inappropriate.

Just look at that little hotdog butt hole!!

M.I.C.E.!

Hey y'all, Liz and I will be at the Massachusetts Indie Comics Expo today! We wil be joined by a whole bunch of talented New England comics peeps. If you're in the Boston area, come down and say "hi" (plus admission is FREE!!). Oh, and we'll have a new mini...the sequel to Four Squares, drawn with Mr. Joe and Mr. Tim. See you there!

Ah, the interwebs...

Hey everyone on the interwebs! If you were at SPX last weekend, thanks for coming down and supporting us nerds. Joe, Liz and I had taken a year off, and we were glad to be back (SPX was my very first comics convention, back in 2002). If you weren't at SPX, thanks for reading this blog!

I apologize for the steady decline in blog postings; this has been a busy year (don't even try and count the number other times I've typed that phrase...). It's not that I haven't had anything to post, I just haven't made the time to post it. (shame,shame)

I know my post last weekend was brief, so here's a little bit more on what's going down in the land of Maris:

-I know I mentioned this before, but "Yes, Let's" is a super-cool kid's book that I did with Galen Longstreth for Tugboat Press. It is full color! Read it to a kid (or to yourself) in the grass! Here's a peak:

cover:



a little peak inside:



-I'm still hard at work on Primates, the graphic novel I'm illustrating for First Seconds Books (written by Jim Ottaviani!); I'll hopefully be posting some sneak peaks soon.

-I have a comic in the anthology "Make: Comics About an Intimate Act", edited by Robyn Chapman. There's a bunch of swell people in this great little collection about my favorite subject...POOP.

-Joe and I moved...1 mile down the road! We're still in Somerville, making this the longest we've lived in the same location. Also, we now live below the talented Liz Prince. OMG comics house. We drew one last night, but we can't really take credit...

-Biggs is obviously still being AWESOME:



-I pretty much cut off all my hair, so get ready for me to look like even more of a boy in my auto-bio strips...

So, yeh. I'm sure there's more. But that's it for now. Joe and I are just barely getting settled into our new place, but once we're set up, I'm planning on drawing comics just for the fun of it again (I haven't drawn a personal comic all summer long!) And the logical conclusion would be to post these comics to this blog (though I don't always do the logical thing.) Just sayin'.

SPX!11!??

Forgive me, Blogger, for it has been 3 months (?!) since I last blogged...


I am at SPX in Bethesda Maryland! With Liz and Joe and Tim!

Come say 'hi' if you are attending!

I have a new book out (written by Galen Longstreth, put out by Tugboat Press)!

I have been working and moving and working; I will blog more soon (like how Joe and I are now Liz's NEIGHBORS!!). Promise.

-m

MECAF!!!

Get ready to be MECAFfeinated!!! Liz and I (and Duddits) will be at MECAF in Portland Maine this Sunday, May 23rd hawking our comic-y wares. Mr. Joe Quinones will be unable to join us do to his being chained to the drawing table...but I'll have stuff of his for sale. Portland, ME is a GREAT town; lots of good food and good peeps. If you're in the Boston area, it's just a hop, skip and a jump up the coast (2 hours). Joe and I did this con last year, and we had blast! So come say "hi".

A comic.

This is a comic that a drew a few sketchbooks back, but it was recently in this neat zine called Little Brother (you can buy a copy here). Here's my submission:


That pretty much sums up how I feel about moving. In reality, I have all my limbs, and I've only ever lived in New England, but finding that sense of "home" takes time and effort (even if you're just moving to the next state over). As of right now, home is where the cat is...

Stumptown.

Two weekends ago, Joe, Liz and myself spent the weekend hawking our wares at the Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland, OR. I absolutely LOVE this convention, plus it's a great way to hang out with comics friends that we see just a few times a year. Here are some tidbits from our trip:

O.K. so not particularly pertaining to Portland...but as soon as we flew in, I started to experience some serious gastro-intestinal trouble. Our first full day in Portland had me searching high and low for public restrooms as we walked around downtown (you didn't expect me to stay in my hotel room and poop all day, did you?).

from top left: our table at Stumptown (courtesy of Joshin Yamada ); Star Trek pinball at the Hawthorne theater (Max is watching the trainwreck that is my pinball skills); Liz, Joe and me photobombing...ourselves?; t-rex on the floor at Denver airport

When we weren't in comics-mode, we pretty much spent our time walking around, eating (mostly donuts), and playing pinball/arcade games with awesome comics people (Alec, Claire, Greg, Max, Lucy, John, Jon Chad, Colleen...thanks! I probably forgot some people too...sorry)

Liz and I did a bunch of convention sketches; here are a few of mine:



One last doodle: the plane ride home:

I inked this with a nib and ink (supplies I haven't touched since college, luckily Joe has a fancy nib that he uses for detail work that I could borrow); I was totally inspired by Max's comics. Plus my shaky inking skills perfectly matched the turbulence of the plane ride (note: I did NOT ink on the plane).

We're home now for a while. Our last comics engagement of the spring season will be at MECAF. Yay Maine! (I'll post more about that when it's sooner.)

-m

p.s. Oh yeah, and the Superpooperman drawing can be blamed on the request of this man (look for pooping Supergirl and Spiderwoman!). heh heh. poop

So much has happened over the past three months...

...but what's really awesome is that WE NOW HAVE A CAT!!!!1!!


Intertubes, meet Biggs "Bear" Darklighter. He is a formidable 16 pounds of feline. And we love him so much. Do not worry; he is on a diet.

I have drawn him a bunch (we've had him for almost a month):
Biggs already has some "fan art" that I'll be posting soon.

I have so much to catch up on, I'm going to update every day (or every other day) for the next week or so. So this is all you get (for right now). Cattitude!!

-m

Happy New Year...

It's still January, so I'm allowed to say that, right? So far 2010 has seen a lot of drawing things I can't post quite yet...though I have been able to crank out some doodles and comics. One of my goals this year is to do more life drawing, so this past Monday I (along with drawing buddy Erica and my sis) doodled out at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. If you live in the Boston area and like seeing copious amounts of taxidermied animals, glass flowers and meteors, you should definitely check it out. I'm kind of in love with the coelacanth they have:

I brought my itty bitty watercolor set and a pencil.

Some of my other doodling endeavors have lead me to draw some pixel-y art:

Yeah, that's supposed to me. I've been loving me some graph paper.

Lastly, I was linked by the kind gentleman over at Marvel Smartass for all my interpretations of Marvel characters! Thanks! I should draw more superheroes...