This Week's Read: Essex County

For a multitude of unimportant reasons (laziness), I'd put off reading Jeff Lemire's collection of tales dedicated to his hometown. I'm all about his other works, like Underwater Welder and Descender, but when I saw EC at my local library, I figured it was time to round out my Jeff Lemire knowledge.

Essex County is quite lovely. The art style is simple - black ink on white pages - but perfectly fits the stories told. The tales are snippets of life among the young and the old living in a small town. One man, a former hockey star, now works at a gas station due to a head injury that ruined his career. One boy dreams of being a superhero, while his father dreams that one day his son will want to spend time with him. A nurse does her best to care for the elderly in a home, as they are the closest relationships she has.

I'm a big fan of nostalgia. I repeat that a lot, but I do love it. Even though I didn't grow up on a farm, the book's setting feels familiar.

It's a big collection, but a quick read. I knocked it out in several hours, in between snacks. You'll want to stop and look at the artwork, and details put in and left out. I definitely recommend taking a day to fully enjoy Lemire's signature work.

Go read.

Work Like Diego, Sleep When It's Done

Video (c) Ford Motor Company, National Archives

Diego Rivera's murals in the Detroit Institute of Arts were one of the main staples of my frequent museum visits as a kid. They were massive. I could stand in front of them 3 times a week, and still not notice all the details.

Rivera is an incredible example of what it means to truly put in work. If you've ever worked on a mural, you know it takes hours on hours of sweat, sometimes teetering on high ledges, sometimes bent low to the ground, trying to keep balance while keeping your lines clean. It's tons of fun, mind you, but it's definitely work.

Rivera wouldn't be Rivera if he didn't put in the work.

I try to remember that when I'm getting out of my side job late at night and I still have illustrations to finish and emails to write.

Vive l'artiste.

Quit being such sticks in the mud about learning.

That first snail fact may not be true. Snails are fascinating. I'm gonna go look up more snail facts.

This Week's Read: Welcome Back

I picked up the first of this 4-issue series for the cover art, and the story was pleasantly surprising. It follows Mali, a 20-something woman drifting through Kansas City, Missouri after college with no real plans for her career. Meanwhile, reincarnated assassins hunt down their nemeses in every life cycle. Yep. I dig it. I also dug the main assassin's style. I am definitely putting her on my "to-cosplay" list.

It's a fun story with great artwork, and I'm curious to see how the plot plays out in the remaining 3 issues.

Writer: Christopher Sebela
Illustrator: Jonathan Brandon Sawyer
Colors: Carlos Zamudio
Letters: Shawn Aldridge

Publisher: Boom! Studios

Go read.

This Week's Read: RASL

You might remember Jeff Smith from his award-winning masterpiece, Bone. RASL is another great story, but it's geared toward an adult audience.

The tale revolves around Dr. Rob Johnson, or "RASL." A scientist in our universe and an art thief in all others, he lives on the run after stopping a government-funded energy experiment based on notes found in Nikola Tesla's stolen journals. Jumping from universe to universe, he evades capture while working to stop his old lab partner from rebuilding a machine that would destroy entire states at a time. It's pretty wild. If you're into historical science fiction, cool guys with tattoos, damsels in distress, and inter-dimensional noir shootouts, this is probably your speed.

Go read.

Week in New York

My job was on summer break, so I spent most of last week in New York. Besides eating all the food and getting swindled by a very pretty man (was bound to happen sometime), I spent my time drawing. I'd posted some of my sketches on my Tumblr and Instagram, but I just yesterday finished painting the weekly Street People:

 Sassy McSasserstein

 UFO-hair was one of my favorites.

 Almost-FKA-Twigs. Thanks to the guy on the right for letting me take a picture of his outfit. It was a big help.

 The third guy here is the one who swindled me. Eh, he had a nice smile and books for sale. I'm a sucker for books. At least he let me take a picture of him to document the occasion. Lastly, there's Rich! We worked together back in Detroit, and I hadn't seen him in a couple years. Naturally, when I did get to see what he was up to, I put him in my weekly sketches. Go check out his work; dude is a design beast.

I also found a drop-in figure drawing session in SoHo at Spring Studio:

All in all, it was a good week. New Yorkers are an interesting group. Big thanks to Peter Redmond and Manny Harris for letting me crash for the week. You guys are the best! Peter just got his site, Carry On Eats, up and running; COE aims to be the intersection between food and travel. Peter finds all the best things to eat in different cities, so you don't get stuck on Yelp in the airport terminal trying to figure out what's for dinner. The guy has a real knack for finding amazing food wherever he goes. I don't know how he does it. Many thanks as well to Laurie Berenhaus for helping me out immensely. If you ever need 3D design or printing work, she's your gal.

Next Week's Read hasn't been read yet, but it's most likely gonna be good. I'm thinking Rasl by Jeff Smith, but we'll see.

This Week's Read: Chew

Last Week's Read was put on hold, as I was running around New York like a crazy person. More on that later.

This Week's Read is a good'n: Chew!

Image (c) John Layman and Rob Guillory

Detective Tony Chu of Philadelphia is a cibopath: he can psychically "see" an object's past through taste. This leads to some darkly humorous situations in which he must take nibbles out of corpses, lick unknown fruits, and generally disgust himself and those around him in order to solve cases. His main diet consists of canned beets, because naturally, beets have no interesting past.

John Layman (writer) and Rob Guillory (artist) make a great pair. The series has been ongoing since 2009, with nonsensical adventure after nonsensical adventure. They continually find new ways to gross me out and make me laugh at the same time. Chew is probably best suited for ages 13 and up. There are some violent situations...I mean, the story is about taking bites out of things, after all.

Go read.