CCS Director James Sturm and IKJK original member Rich Tommaso have won the Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work for Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow. Congratulations!  You guys are neato.

This also marks an auspicious beginning for the Center for Cartoon Studies/Hyperion biography series.  Satchel Paige was the second release after the also impressive Houdini book by Jason Lutes and Nick Bertozzi.

Check out the rest of the Eisner winners here.

Two really great reviews for IKJK artists have been posted on comics-related blogs in the past week or so. Check out the reviews, read about how amazing these books are, and then buy a copy and find out for yourself. Or at least think about it. Night and day. Until you buy one.

Colleen Frakes’ beautiful new (Xeric-powered!) Tragic Relief book got a great review on Optical Sloth:
Tragic Relief on Optical Sloth

And IKJK stalwart Ken Dahl’s personal compilation “Welcome to the Dahl House,” available on publisher Microcosm’s website, was front-and-center on The Comics Reporter the other day:
Welcome to the Dahl House on The Comics Reporter

Hey y’all, I Know Joe Kimpel is now selling Cat Garza’s impressive anthology Secrets & Lies at the store. There are too many contributors to list here- about 30- but this is a cool book so check it out. You can also view an online preview here!

Mega congratulations to IKJK homey and fellow CCS grad Alex Kim, who has just received a Xeric grant for his book Wall City. If you haven’t seen this book yet, you’re really missing out, it is beautifully drawn and the story is incredibly engaging.

You can order Wall City at Alex’s Etsy shop for now, and visit Alex’s blog for updates about his plans for the Xeric edition of this project.

This is late news here, but I was asked to write about tour, and all I can say is that it was amazing.

Here I am playing in Montreal at the Drawn & Quarterly bookstore. It was a little weird because it was a provincial holiday and it had to be a “quiet” set. Photo by Matt Shane.

This is in Northampton, you can see my good pal and snappy dresser Ben Jones in the background! He showed us his pilot cartoon for Adult Swim and it was hilarious.
Overall, I’d call it a success, I’m almost out of personal copies of my book, met lots of new people, made great trades, and I even saw a moose! I didn’t really get any other photos, so if you have some, send them to me!

I’m back on the bi-monthly bandwagon!

Here’s issue #7, for July 2008. It’s only $1.

Here’s what the inside looks like. The story for this issue is called “Haircut”, which kind of gives away most of the story.

Here are the first rough draft pages for Smuttynose Issue 2. Hope to have it done before Halloween!

Issue 2 will be finished very soon!

It is going to be nuts. There will be various depictions of music, a glimpse into the past, more girls and drawing after drawing of the same plaid couch!

In the meantime, issue #1 is available here.

Other bits of creepy losery can be seen here.