Cartoonists

Gabrielle Bell is cartooning about her experiences with bedbugs in a strip called "Nocturnal Guests" and it's funny and creepy. Here in NYC, the herpes of furniture is an ever present threat hanging over the heads of even decent folks. For a packrat like us, bedbugs would be the end of life itself. It's getting so you just cross the street when you see a mattress on the sidewalk.

In light of yesterday's announcement of James Kochalka being appointed "country's first ever" Cartoonist Laureate in Vermont, it appears that one other state has previously named a cartoonist laureate, Chad Carpenter. And what state would that be? Alaska. That's right, the 50th state in terms of population density per square mile named a Cartoonist Laureate before states like Oregon, Washington, California, New York and the ever-burgeoning Vermont. These states are pregnant with cartoonists, illustrators, animators and graphic novelists. When asked about the erroneous credit The Center For Cartoon Studies co-founder, James Sturm, stated, "I should have known. Alaska is the only state in the country that has a longer cartooning season than Vermont." For those down south, cartooning season lasts as long as there is snow on the ground and whiskey in your mug.

Of late, Tumblr has become quite a hotbed of discussion over perennial issues of women in comics, and the Ladies Making Comics run by Alexa D. has been in the forefront of the talk. Now LWA has started something incredibly cool and much needed: a wiki for all the unsung women of Golden Age comics. And it's a lot more than you probably thought.

I'm home for the holidays, and spending some time digging around my parent's basement, delving into my assorted and sordid collection of ephemera. The above...

The late Joel Beck was a pioneer of the Bay Area Underground comics revolution, illustrating Lenny of Laredo, a satirical bio of Lenny Bruce, and a naughty poster of Daisy Duck among other things. The SF Chronicle reports that he's also part of a family mystery his survivors are trying to crack:

Kickstarter, the website that allows creative types to raise money by direct appeal to a community of supporters, has been helping all sorts of folks get their dream comics out there -- from reprints of obscure old comics, to webcomic collections. Most projects we've seen are fairly modest. But some are much bigger in scope. Tony Harris has just turned to Kickstarter for his new project ROUNDEYE: For Love. That would be Starman/Ex Machina, five-time Eisner nominee Tony Harris.

A series of videos interviewing Vancouver comics legend Colin Upton . His website is here.

Congrats to writer Brian Wood on the arrival of Ian McMurray Wood, born last Thursday, 9 lb., 4 oz.

The annual Halloween party thrown at the home of Anina Bennett and Paul Guinan of Boilerplate fame, seems to have been a real humdinger.

"They're big, they're sharp-edged and they contain a lot of energy." Is there anyone other than Galactus who could possibly be behind this???? Head for...

Several readers were offended by this post, in which I snarked a bit on my old friend Kyle Baker for letting his name domain lapse. Although I know Kyle well enough to know he wouldn't have been bothered, I took down the post and contacted Kyle on Facebook (since his kyle@kylebaker.com email no longer worked) and we had a brief correspondence. And then he posted Whatever Happened To Kylebaker.com? which is a total history of the portfolio website and the internet in one. Basically he felt the website was out of date and supplanted by social media, and newer ventures were more business targeted:

Sign o' the times: Josh Neufeld was being sent around the world by the US State Dept. as am ambassador of free speech: