My my, here come the fuzz!

IMG_7457,
originally uploaded by mrehfus.

Add this to my list of amazing Hamtramck cars. How many cities have a pimped-out police squad car?

The 12 Days of Zombie Christmas!

Nothing gets me into the seasonal spirit like zombies, so Tor.com is publishing a new zombie holiday comic strip by me every day from today to Jan. 2 - it's "The 12 Days of Zombie Christmas!" Take a look!

Political coverage

Two recent Metro Times covers by me with political bents, one on the elections in the suburbs of Detroit, the other on domestic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency.

Oh wow, heavy!

Oh wow, heavy!,
originally uploaded by seanbieri.

Someone left a wig behind at the Halloween Dr. Sketchy session last week. Photo by Agnes Domanska.

Better Zombies Through Physics!

It's ALIVE! Better Zombies Through Physics, the new web comic mini-series by me and writer Jim "Two-Fisted Science" Ottaviani is now online.

Cats! Zombies! SCIENCE! Through the miracle of quantum mechanics, a brilliant physicist bearing a strange resemblance to Erwin Schrödinger has produced the perfect undead feline - or has he? Go now to see the first installment this week at Tor.com.

Hulk BLOG!!

Yeah, I'm back, updating my puny little corner of the internet after nearly a year.

In comics news: I got last-minute recruited (as in, I had to do it all over a weekend) by the Detroit free weekly paper I work for, Metro Times, to do a 2 1/2 page comic strip plus a cover illustration to mark the resignation of Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. See the whole strip here. It's caught some flak, but generally reactions have been favorable. You can hear me and writer Curt Guyette interviewed on local public radio about the strip here.


And just for fun, I'm posting a few recent movie review illustrations I've done for said weekly.

And if you're one of those "word-reading" types, you can even look up some of my recent arts-related MT articles, here, here, and here (that last one being a story on cartoonist James Kochalka's recent visit to the area).

More to come, if I don't flake out for another 11 months!

Battlegourds!!

I could carve a normal old jack-o-lantern, but where's the fun in that? If only I'd thought of this concept in the mid-80s, it'd have made a great Saturday morning cartoon. Battlegourds!!

Lookit me, I'm a real arteest!

Somehow I find myself involved in not one but two real-life gallery shows right now. (This is unusual for me, most of what I do is for reproduction rather than wall-hanging.)

First is the Actual Size show, at the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit, a show in which all pieces must be the same size - 8 1/2 x 11". I entered a modified version of my Morton's Girl/Judith image under the title "She Reigns (Judith)" that seems to be getting good reactions from gallery visitors.

The other exhibit is actually a benefit auction for the exhibition program at Paint Creek Center for the Arts in Rochester, Michigan. All the participants were given blank CDs and jewel cases to do with as they pleased. Some went as far as dismantling them completely into abstract sculptures, but I decided to keep mine functional. The idea is to make a mix disc of "guilty pleasures" - your most embarrassing favorite songs - and share the disc with a friend. I put together a sort of homemade "eco-pack" to hold the disc. That's the cover image up top there.

How to milk a concept

So this is my cover illustration for this week's Metro Times. The cover story is about local authors and small presses around Michigan. Someone on the editorial staff remembered a drawing I'd done years ago (around 2000) for an MT in-house promo ad and thought it'd make a good cover. Except I'd already recycled that drawing in 2005 for an ad promoting another literary supplement, the annual fiction contest! Oh well. I redrew the image, amped it up a little and added color, and everyone on staff loved it, so there it is.

I'm fond of it, though it's really just a angst-ified version of the "duck hitting a computer with a hammer" art that every office on earth has a 100,000th-generation photocopy of, tacked up in a cubicle somewhere.

Oh, you know, keepin' busy

Some recent stuff: Above is the cover art for this week's Metro Times, an illustration for an article about the 7 "deadly sins" of children's pop culture and the pitfalls they present to parents.


Also in this issue is my review of Elvis Road, a massive, manic comic strip by two Swiss cartoonists. I hear that at least one reader was asking for it at good ol' Green Brain Comics after reading my article, so that's gratifying.

Finally, here's an article about the arts group here in Hamtown, Hatch, that explains everything we're up to (and against) better than I could. Closing reception for the Exquisite Corpse show is tomorrow night.

...and leave a pretty corpse

The arts group I'm part of here in Hamtramck, Hatch, has a show up now of exquisite corpses, collaborative figures randomly cobbled together from pieces designed by 21 different local artists. Here are my four pieces, reassembled into their original state. I started out with the idea of illustrating the 7 deadly sins, scraped the notion early on, but kept a vague "angels vs. devils" theme (without taking sides in the fight myself...). Photos of the panels by Krysti Spence.

The "chest" panel depicts a hot rod version of one of my favorite objects, the first-ever artificial heart pump, designed by General Motors and first successfully used here in Detroit. There's one in a case at Harper Hospital here, another one's in the Smithsonian. It looks like a chrome-plated lawn mower engine, with glass piston cylinder things on the sides and big analog knobs and gauges. You can almost make it out here.

My time of the month

Hm, yeah, time for my monthly blog post, huzzah.

So here's some stuff I've been doing for the Metro Times lately. First, for the Summer Guide issue, the editorial staff all went on short trips within about a two-hour drive of Detroit and wrote about what they found. I did a full-page comic strip about the town of Petrolia, Ontario, site of North America's first oil well. Sample panel above, and you can find the full strip here. (Edited with new link, since the MT one seems to be broken...)


That same issue I did an illustration for an article about how the Sgt. Pepper's album wasn't as innovative as you think. I punted on the likenesses, but you get the idea. I'm particularly proud of Paul's skull-n-crossbones boxer shorts.

What else? Lots to see on the Dr. Sketchy blog, since the last session was a big hit. Also I finally got to do the last panel of "Good Ol' Conan the Barbarian" in living color over on Serializer.net (if you've seen the strip before you'll know why that's a big deal!).


Speaking of Serializer, last week I met up with the cartoonist who got me on the site, Eric Millikin, and fellow Serializer member Matt Feazell, at Green Brain Comics to see Mikhaela Reid and Masheka Wood do slide presentations about their comics. Detroit was the first stop on their book tour - they each have a collection of their stuff out now. Mikhaela's the editorial page cartoonist for Metro Times, so the D was an obvious place to start her tour. I wrote about her work and did a brief Q&A that you can read here. More gooder photos and some cartoons of Mikhaela's on her Flicker pages.

Here's some more recent MT articles of mine:

A review of Fantagraphics' bestiary "Beasts!"

A rant of sorts about a package of stationary decorated by Detroit pop artist Glenn Barr.

A rumination on David Lynch's recent book.

See you next month?

Twist, shout, repeat

Soph and I went to NYC last weekend, where we met my brother and sister, my uncle and his wife for a concert at Madison Square Gardens. The Killers were headlining, and I can take 'em or leave 'em, but I admit they have good taste in opening acts, 'cause they brought my cousin Eric's band, the Silver Beats, all the way in from Tokyo to perform.

My uncle married a Japanese woman in the '70s and had two kids with her before they divorced, one of whom is now the top John Lennon impersonator in Japan! Apparently the Killers heard his Beatles tribute band play in Japan and invited them to open on some of their tour dates. The band's pretty damn good, actually, though I bet they'd be more fun to see in their native Cavern Club back home than dwarfed by a giant stadium. But Eric pointed out on stage that Madison Square was the last place the real John played before his death, which is sort of heavy. Anyway, good times, despite an infuriating two hours dealing with music industry egos and nonsense, waiting around after the performance to see if we'd get to talk to Eric a bit.

Ghost car!

Now I remember what I wanted to mention - I saw my old car today! Like, driving around my neighborhood. Whoever Mother Wattles fobbed it off on didn't even bother to scrape off the bumper stickers! It was kinda freaky. It's happened before, with my old Tempo years ago, where I saw a car I donated getting driven around town, but the bumper stickers... it was like seeing someone wearing my clothes! They should ship the cars to the other side of the country before selling them to avoid these sorts of traumas.

PUH-thetic...

Nothing since Thanksgiving. Sad. As if nothing's been going on or something!

Well, until I can get on here for a proper entry, here's a drawing from the latest Dr. Sketchy session. Find out more on the Dr. Sketchy Detroit blog (where you'll find me in a slightly-too-small leisure suit and hand-painted mermaid tie... swanky...).



And hey, go look at Serializer.net already! Comics! By me! (Look for "Jape" in the pull-down menu.)

Count your blessings (Show your work).

In honor of Thanksgiving, I thought I'd post the Mr. Creosote-inspired illustration I did for this year's Detroit Metro Times food issue. Makes you hungry just looking at it, don't it?

In fact, there's a food-themed cartoon from me on Serializer this week, too (go to the pulldown menu and look for "Jape"). Hm, is it lunch time yet?

One last food-related bit of wisdom from me for the holiday: Remember, in the cucumber language, the word "cucumber" means "the people."

Oh, hey, hi!!

Hi, hey, yeah, so... how the hell are ya?

Oh, you know, I'm okay. Geez, what've I been up to, let's see. Went to Greece? Greece was fun. Lots of cats there. I should put some photos online for y'all probably.

Went to Portland? Very cool, saw a bunch of people, did some stuff, y'know. (In fact, here's photographic proof that I not only attended the Stumptown comics fest but fashioned a hideous jackrabbit-o-lantern while in Portland as well...) More on that soon too, maybe.

Um, oh - ! They're running my "Jape" comics on Serializer! Yeah, I know, but they're back up now and it looks great, you should check it out.

What else... Well, as you can see, I got to draw Satan for the cover of Metro Times last week, just in time for Halloween.

Whew, there, a post! Good!

More hatchings

The Hatch web site is up and running for real now, with several galleries of memebers' artwork and a great video podcast featuring a 360-degree view of the backyard folk art instalaltion called "Hamtramck Disneyland." Give it a look!

Hatched!

I've been helping lately, along with other local artists, to start a nascent arts collective here in Hamtramck called Hatch. We plan on sponsoring arts-related events and exhibits, educational projects for the community, and studio and communal space for local artists.

Last Thursday we held our first event, the launch of a series of "life drawing with a twist" sessions inspired by Molly Crabapple's Dr. Sketchy project in New York. This was the design for the postcard I handed out at the event. Check out the results of the first Dr. Sketchy: Motor City Division session - we had a really great time!

A few thoughts...

Yeah yeah, I know, "it's the web, add some color! It's free!" I like black-n-white, okay?

Possum Dearie

Okay, enough people have chuckled at this in my sketchbook that I decided to post it. I spotted this teeny-tiny possum, small enough to fit in your palm, at the arts festival at Wayne State University last month. He was happily chomping up something in the grass (bugs?) before he spotted me and waddled away into the bushes. (There! A post!)

When she reigns, it pours

Another Judith-like image, a sketch for a future print.

Hey, this is the first piece of art I've created with the express purpose of putting it online! How about that.

Made In Detroit

It's a brand new caaaaar!!

Well, no it's not, but here's the new used car, my 2003 Ford Focus. So has it become a fetish item for me yet? Did I spend half of yesterday cleaning it and polishing it and buying accessories for it, and the other half driving it to Ann Arbor and blasting the stereo and loving it? Yes. Yes it has, and yes I did.

Compare to my old car below: doesn't the Focus look like the car they'd get the actor to drive in the Hollywood movie version of my life?

Hell is other papal

Okay, that's a lousy pun. It's just I found this jpeg I put together during the changing of the popes a while ago and thought I'd post it here. Well, I thought it was funny.

(And yeah, I know the sidebar is goofed up and the links are gone... not sure what happened, I'll fix it later. Bleah.)

Insert trite comics pun headline here

I'm finally getting back into writing about comics for the free paper I work for. Not sure why the article is in the summer guide - none of these seem like lite beach reading, but then I don't go to the beach too much so how would I know?

Apologies for the dumb headline, I didn't write it. I guess comics writing is still novel enough (or graphic novel enough, ah ha ha ha...) to call for silly punny headlines. Imagine if every article on the symphony had a headline like "Maestro orchestrates a classic," or every emotionally evocative film ever made was described as a "moving picture" (hyuk!).

Art above is from 676 Apparitions of Killoffer. I've already read one review of this book that had a very different take on it than I have. What do you think?

Adieu, Badtz Maru

For nine years nothing could stop me and my '94 Ford Escort wagon (stick shift), and plenty of things tried, from the out-of-control Oldsmobile that took out his right turn signal lens to gaping floorboard holes under the driver's feet (nothing some sheet metal couldn't fix). But a couple weeks ago, ol' Badtz Maru got the fatal estimate for front end work that just couldn't be justified for such an old car. He was now a vehicle only a mother could love - namely, Mother Wattles, a local car donation charity. I gave them my '84 Tempo back in '96 and they got it back on the road (minus my Cocteau Twins bumper sticker) and into the hands of some needy soul, so maybe Badtz Maru has some miles left in him yet. Nice thing about donating dead cars - unlike dead pets or relatives, you can actually be sure the car is going to a better place. Better than the crusher, anyway.

Sniff! So long pal! Thanks for everything!

The write stuff

And just because I haven't posted anything in forever, here's another one, an illustration I did for the Metro Times' fiction contest issue a couple years ago. The poet in the center and the slash writer are based on friends.

Cartoonists + booze = monkeys

Whenever you get three or more small-press cartoonists in a room together for very long, a comics jam is likely to break out. Alcohol makes this even more likely, and when said cartoonists haven't seen each other in months and are all suffering from Chinese buffet food buzzes and the post-convention slap-happies, it's almost inevitable. Following the Motor City Comic Con on Saturday, a bunch of us gathered in Pam Bliss' hotel room with a few bottles of wine and discussed... oh, hell, I forget. Anyway, some of the wine bottles had, oddly, pictures of monkeys playing jazz instruments on them. This one had no monkeys, so naturally we had to remedy the situation. I think I have the contributors sorted out: clockwise from top left are Jim Ottaviani, Pam Bliss, Matt Feazell, Jane Irwin, Paul Sizer, Yers Trooly, Michelangelo Cicerone and Suzanne Baumann (center). (Looking at it, I might have Jane and Michelangelo switched. Anyone who was there know if that's so?)

In other jam comics news, Stan Yan has posted the results of several jams done as part of this year's SPACE convention. I've said before that reading last night's jam comics is like listening to a recording of a drum circle, but these are still pretty funny even a week later.

More Gocco-y goodness

Uh oh, almost ten days without a post. Not good. Let's see now...


This was my contribution to Jeremy Onsmith and Ivan Brunetti's Gocco Box Set, a collection of work by 17 artists doing prints on the Print Gocco. I wonder if they didn't just find the nifty kraft paper boxes at a store somewhere first and come up with an idea for how to use them afterwards. In any case, it's a fantastic little set of prints, with a surprising variety of approaches to using the Gocco on display. If you can get a set through Jeremy or one of the contributors at a comics show like the Small Press Expo, grab it (but don't ask me, I'm fresh out of 'em).

The disassembled airplane in the picture is part of an old A-6 Intruder Navy jet, waiting to get put back together at the Yankee Air Museum at Willow Run Airport near Ann Arbor. I drew this at an air show only a few weeks before fire destroyed the museum's main hangar. Their historic airplanes were rescued but a lot of donated aviation artifacts housed in the hangar were destroyed.

Mein Fuhrer! I can WALK!!

Another movie review illustration, this time, obviously, for "Dr. Strangelove." I saw this film again a few years ago at the Detroit Art Institute's film theater with Matt Feazell, and I swear to God we were the only ones in the theater who were aware that it was a comedy! The people around me were so stone-quiet I started feeling self-conscious about laughing... almost.

The Detroit Film Theater, though, is the place to go for art films here in the 313, so if you're ever in town with nothing else to do, check 'em out.

Born Again to be Wild!

Here's a cover illustration I did for an article about Christian motorcycle gangs (or, er, clubs). Happy Easter!

Star Wars Quiz

I really only did this as an excuse to draw Aayla Secura. And saag paneer.

Gabba Gabba Hey!

Here's an illustration I did for the free paper I work for, to go with a review of the recent Ramones documentary. I sold the original after a show at Hamtramck city hall, where I, Matt Feazell and Suzanne Baumann had cartoons and other work on display. (This blog is a good repository for rarities and stuff I no longer have around. Gone-but-not-forgotten art, excellent!)

Hm, that guy on the left might actually be Zook & Max cartoonist Tim Kelly...

The Book of Judith

I first created this mini-comic version of the story of the apocryphal/Biblical heroine Judith a few years ago using the Print Gocco screenprinter. I printed 150 copies or so and hand-stitched the binding.

Judith was a favorite subject of 17th century painter Artemisia Gentileschi, whose Judiths, unlike those of her male contemporaries, actually looked capable of and predisposed to sawing a man's head off his shoulders. One of Artemisia's masterpieces is here in the Detroit Institute of Arts, a suspensful post-beheading Judith scene.

Vee Dubya

This pristine turquoise Beetle sat on the side of a busy street here in town for months before some lucky guy bought it. I kept expecting to walk by one morning and find it sideswiped or rear-ended. I can't afford to buy a car that would amount to an expensive new hobby - I'm strictly a "reliable beater" owner, unfortunately - but I can lust after them and tuck them away in my sketchbook.

I've noticed that surprisingly few comics artists are any good at drawing cars. Seems like most of the car drawings I see in comics tend to range from merely serviceable to downright awkward. They're such familiar machines, you'd think they'd be easier to draw but I think maybe the familiarity somehow actually makes them harder to get right. I think you have to approach drawing a car the way you would a human body - they need to look alive somehow. (Someday I'll put together a coherent rap on this and write a proper essay, maybe.) And as distinctive as these old VWs are, they're one of the easiest cars to get wrong! There's a lot going on in the lines of a Beetle.

Print Gocco

This is one of several prints I've made with my wonderful little Print Gocco. The Gocco is this shoebox-sized Japanese gizmo that's designed to make miniature screenprints, using a thermal process to burn the screens from photocopies. It's handy and lots of fun to use, and apparently going extinct, at least in the US, much to my chagrin. I wrote a short article about its demise for the Detroit free paper, Metro Times, and you can get more info at the Save Gocco site

I've been in love with the Gocco and have evangelized on its behalf for years now, and everyone who touches one seems to fall in love with it too, especially DIY craftsy-types and mini-comics makers. In a desert of electronic reproduction and graphic design processes, the Gocco is an oasis of old-fashioned hands-on art making. If the supplies for the thing dry up and it becomes impossible to use, it's really going to be a sad thing. I'll post more of my Gocco images in coming days.

"Hey, you're that Popeye-Jesus guy!"

Yeah, that's me. A few years back I did a six-page comic in one of my minis that channeled gospel passages via E.C. Segar's Popeye characters, and it's pretty much my Greatest Hit, the one most people who know my stuff remeber most fondly. It was one of those things where once you have the equation Popeye=Jesus in your head, all the other characters and situations kinda fell into place.

"He undermined their world with mockery!"

Welcome, y'all, to my electronic junk drawer, my online scrapbook of art, comics, beard-strokingly brilliant personal insights and/or wise-ass remarks. I have a similar pile of miscellaneous creativity here at my house, but it comes in a dull, battered cardboard box instead of a shiny, glowing plastic one like you have, so consider yourself lucky!