Well, if  the brain really is the House of Ideas, it’s a good thing to occasionally rearrange the furniture.

Paris was great. Very artistically stimulating and personally reassuring to anyone trying to make comix as their chosen artform (you’ll be getting a bunch posts and reviews from my Paris trip this week on the blog).

I spent a lot of the time there looking at some of the painting that drove me most to become a painter and visiting comic shops that reminded me of the long-standing, childhood love I have for this kind of story-telling. It really was a treat to step outside of the American sensibility towards the comicbook industry and see what things are like in other markets. I really suggest anyone out there making comix (or any form of art) take time to do that now and again; look beyond what you think the goal is in your own success towards how others might enjoy the work you do.
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Here’s something of an oddity where the twin interests of comix and Irish history meet. The 1916 Easter Rising that attempted to set Ireland free told as a graphic novel apparently – though only 48 pages long. The short graphic tale with the long title Blood Upon the Rose: Easter 1916: The Rebellion That Set Ireland Free covers the story from the early planning to the final executions and includes the tragic romance between Joseph Plunkett and Grace Gifford. A review is to be found here.

It’s all over now but I’ve book-marked it for study later – one womans attack on the great novel blogged for posterity in Who Says Pleasure Reading Can’t Be Masochistic? (more…)

Paris, when it drizzles…

So I’m on vacation. Sort of. A life making comix means never really not thinking about comix so even here, in Paris with my wife for our fourth anniversary, many things still revolve around the work I’m doing.

We’re staying at a hotel across from the Odeon Theatre and about a block or so from the site of Slyvia Beach’s SHAKESPEARE & COMPANY. The nearest comic shops, six of them, are in the Sorbonne area three blocks away. I’m seriously considering buying a set of TIN TIN figures from there which I can use as still life material in my watercolor paintings. I still draw the ULYSSES “SEEN” pages each early morning, I just do it in some café instead of my own studio. (more…)

Writing on the fly a bit today as my wife and I get ready for a trip to Paris tomorrow. We’ve never been and, no, neither of us speak a lick of French. So some of this past week has been spent struggling through Rosetta Stone software and iPhone apps intended to bolster up the idea that we’re at least trying to understand the language.

In looking for a subject for this week’s blog post about comix, Michael suggested something on the process I use for adapting Joyce’s novel into the comic; what do I look for when reading the text and so forth. Well, given all this French homework I’m doing just now, that’s a pretty easy thing to talk about. (more…)