Finally, the fourth chapter is finished.
It took six and a half months, but it’s over a hundred pages long — begun on October 20th, after returning from tour with Menomena — and completed on May 8th, a couple of weeks after Stumptown Comics Fest. In between, there were a handful of out-of-town guests, a couple of trips (including the Grammys), 3 weeks of nagging cold, 1 week of completely paralyzing flu, and one martial arts-induced drawing hand injury (I dropped out of the class). Here’s some peeks at some panels (still hesitant to reveal full pages) and photo proof that I do work (Thaïs snapped the first one, and Lark the second).

I’ll try to attend to comment/questions soon. In the meantime, Tita and other Netherlanders should know I won’t be at Stripdagen Haarlem this year. It seems they’re showing a documentary or something that includes embarrassing footage of me. As always, thank you all for your kind words. They really keep me going!

My brother Phil and his wife Ami just visited for a week. No pee-fights this time around,
though in our last couple of hours together we did collaborate on a jam comic.

It stars characters crafted by my brother in our childhood - Sockman, Detective Skelly, Robot Egg, and Ninja Thrasher!
( ~ my character designs were always lame & milquetoast…) Apologies to you blog-readers,
but I had to post this to at least amuse our childhood buddy Evan.

These “salvation army” battle scenes were doubtless inspired by our father’s plumbing occupation
and our family exclusively shopping at thrift stores.

While this box of BLANKETS roughs is still unpacked, here’s a few more things…

1) a couple of thumbnails for a cover idea…

2) … doodled on the back of this ROBOX script - one of the gazillions of bill-paying jobs I worked on to fund BLANKETS …

3) … the final ROBOX story, written by Phil Amara, colored by Dave Stewart, published by ex-employer Dark Horse …

4) … (fourth verse same as the first) a few more obsessive variations on the cuddling couple.
I sketched that pose a dozen more times and then scrapped it altogether.

There’s plenty more were those came from. My continued thanks for the supportive blog comments!
Sean, as far as I know, I won’t be attending Stripdagen in the Netherlands this year.
No shows planned other than the upcoming Stumptown in Portland.

When I woke this morning to snowfall in Portland - fat, fluffy flakes in the midst of our flowery spring - it seemed the right time to update the blog.

Your outpouring of support concerning HABIBI process/progress has certainly buoyed my spirits. aww shucks Thank you!
So with your blessings, I plow forward with work on the book, and hopefully fit in an occasional blog update to stay in touch.

Recently excavated from the studio closet is a box full of BLANKETS roughs and production materials — including over
a hundred pages I edited out of the initial thumbnail draft. Here’s a peek:

Here’s page 250-something of HABIBI, along with photos of poppies from my backyard (lush Portland).

And here’s some of the sprawl of pages from chapter four. As alluded to in the last blog entry, working on a graphic novel can be tedious, isolating, and ridiculous. In terms of PROCESS, it’s probably not the brightest way to produce comics, because several years pass before a creator has new work on the shelves. It seems like all the “with-it youngsters” serialize their books online, sometimes in daily installments; but as a reader, I crave a self-contained reading experience, and intermissions of my own choosing. Half the pleasure of a book is reading it at your own pace. I’m resistant to serialization — and of disposable formats like the “pamphlet comic” and magazines and newspapers. There’s enough trees being sacrificed. Maybe the true issue is the length of a comic book. If only page 250 was the final page of HABIBI, instead of a little more than a third the way through. What do you think?

I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m ever grateful to all of you for your patience!

Jeff Smith invited me to participate as guest-blogger in a forum discussing the ’90s
self-publishing movement in comics and how it affected me. Here’s what I came up with:

BONE got me reading comics again. In high school, I’d rejected the nerdy obsessions
of my youth (comics, toys, rpgs) and replaced them with skateboarding and girls and
a watered-down rural version of grunge culture. A couple devoted buddies would drag
me to the comics store or lend me this or that; but in four years, BONE was the first book
to capture my attention. That lust brush line, animated timing, and playful interaction between
very real characters! (No need for me to convert readers of Jeff’s blog.) Soon after, I discovered
MADMAN — again the juicy brush line, along with the spiritual musings of an insecure Prometheus.

These books got me READING comics again, but it was a slightly different brand
of self-published comics that inspired me to MAKE my own.

The DIY ethic was infesting my 20 year old life — a scrappy blend of vegetarianism,
punk rock, dumpsterdiving, and disillusion with capitalist society. The “people’s media”
wasn’t books or magazines or the young internet, but zines and minicomics - hand-assembled
during late night Kinko’s sessions when you could bribe an employee for free copies with a six pack.
The drawing aesthetic and subject matter of these comics were most often intimate and raw,
like personal letters from the author. John Porcellino - creator of KING CAT - became our appointed
cult leader, and ran a distribution outfit for mincomics, zines, and seven-inches called SPIT & A HALF;
graciously distributing my own first attempts at comics and introducing me to an entire world of obscure creators.

This is where the Xeric foundation factors in.
I was of a generation that read NINJA TURTLES as a CHILD (even watched the ridiculous
animated version) and then was coming-of-age when Peter Laird began tithing to first-time
self publishers. (Note that the Xeric grant’s 1992 debut was nearly synchronized with Grunge.)

All my favorite mini-comic creators — David Lasky, Adrian Tomine, Megan Kelso, Jon Lewis — were
transitioning to “professional-style” Xeric-funded books. Because the Xeric was a one-time financial gift,
it lent itself to self-contained projects. For me, this is where the notion of “the graphic novel” first became
appealing - a comic book with a complete story - beginning to end - not stretched over years of soap-operatic serialization.

Foremost of these was Tom Hart’s HUTCH OWEN’S WORKING HARD. In only 53 pages, an entire energetic
epic unfurled. Something changed within you while reading it. It definitely inspired my first book CHUNKY RICE.
The grungey knit cap and snargley tooths of Solomon is a deliberate tribute (or rip-off) of dear ol’ Hutch.

The other book that I poured over & over and sought to emulate was Walt Holcombe’s KING of PERSIA.
It’s so poetic and musical and heartbreaking that it moved me to tears. This is what I sought to create
- comics to make you weep! (And I suspect the Orientalist fancies of HABIBI were awakened by Walt’s book.)

Finally, Joe Chiappetta’s SILLY DADDY. His LONG GOOD-BYE was self-published without Xeric aid, but it
did package his mincomics into a 98 page booklet. These confessional diaries and anti-capitalist diatribes
read as direct translations from his heart. The sometimes crude drawing could suddenly betray Joe’s skill
as an attentive life-drawer. This rendering of little Maria still sends shivers through me.

In the 90s, the largest pocket of Xeric cartoonists were living in Seattle, Washington — they replaced
the corporate-opted music scene with their loud & energetic comics scene. Other than heartbreak, they
were what motivated me to leave my Wisconsin home for the great Northwest. At the last moment,
a friend convinced me that Portland, Oregon was the smaller, hipper, organic version of Seattle.

Ten years later, Portland itself has claimed stakes as the young cartoonists mecca. Busloads of energetic
minicomics-churning youngsters arrive each day, and I’m the “old school” — the hermetic, folk-artist crazy uncle
burdened with my self-imposed graphic novel exile. Seems I’ve fashioned myself after Dylan Horrocks’ TISCO GEORGE…

… and I long for the days of of playfulness and community - before the pretention or presumptiousness
of the “graphic novel” — when photocopies were stolen from Kinko’s and lovingly hand-stapled by the author.

(art credits: 03 - Hutch Owen by Tom Hart, 04 - King of Persia by Walt Holcombe,
05 - Silly Daddy by Joe Chiappetta, 06 - Tisco George from Pickle #1 by Dylan Horrocks)

Thanks, as ever, to all of you for the kind words!

Tristan, I’m not making it to WonderCon (has it already happened?), nor will I be signing at Booksmith in SF, Jessalyne.
The promo dates on my website are all a couple of years old! (Brother Phil will amend that…)

I’ve been reluctant to reveal any pages from the fourth chapter of HABIBI since they all seem like spoilers.
(It’s a pretty loaded chapter.) Hopefully this half page and its corresponding pencils will suffice for now.

More soon!

pardon my lag… distracted with side projects lately, including this collaboration
with poster-king Mike King for the upcoming Stumptown Comics Fest.

Stumptown is a bit like camp reunion when many of my cartoonist friends roll into town.
Here some sketch portraits of one said reunion last year — Gabrielle Bell…

– and Trevor Alixopulos –

– and Julia Wertz, Mari Naomi

Leaving in a day for LA where the Menomena boys and I will attend the Grammy’s. Wish us luck!

Recently, Yana wrote with a few questions about the construction process for CARNET DE VOYAGE. She asks,

“…you say that it is more on-the-spot then your other carefully constructed books but just how on-the-spot was it?
How much of the imagery in the novel was actually done on site? Or was most of it developed from on site sketches
into more final ink drawings? And if a lot of the ink drawings were done straight from life, were they then pieced
together digitally on the computer to give the travelogue more of a structure and professionalism? The reason I am
asking is because our whole project has been about making drawings from life in peopled situations? And I was also
wondering how you capture a scenery that is constantly moving (all those bustling Moroccan streets for example) without
the use of photographs? Is it a matter of filling in gaps with imagination and focusing on different aspects individually?”

Good questions. And hopefully these answers are timely enough for use in her essay…

1) CARNET was my diary — documented day-by-day as dated (or at least the day after).

2) Portraits and landscapes and full-page illustrations were drawn on location. Again, no photo reference.
In the case, of bustling street scenes, I would just start drawing from a point of interest — if I saw someone
in the crowds striking the proper pose, I’d dash to that portion of the page and fill it in. There was a lot of
this dancing about the page — a donkey cart would roll past and I would struggle to get it down as quickly
as possible. Once out of view, I’d complete it from memory. And these drawings could take hours to complete
– standing in the most uncomfortable positions getting sun-burnt and harassed and nearly run over by motor bikes.
I would draw things “in real time” and leave empty space on the page for journaling text.

3) The comics narrative part of the book was constructed during a more comfortable part of the day or the next morning.
I kept a separate journal to doodle and piece out my thoughts and thumbnail page compositions. Here’s a peek at that:

(A ~ the very first narrative page of the book. On the left, notes-to-self on page layout.)

In Morocco, I separated my drawings into two sketchbooks. One was public - manhandled by butchers with bloody fingers
and crowds of children. The other was private - composed often at night in the flickering fluorescent light of the hotel
bathroom - journaling about my awkward interactions with locals.

Pages 108 - 113 of CARNET detail a “guided” tour of Fez I took with some newfound Spanish friends. The event happened
on the 5th of April — I doodled 17 pages of visual notes while walking at the same time — and I composed the printed
pages the next day, aboard the long train ride back to Marrakesh, while sandwiched between other travelers.

(B ~ Fez tour … )

4) EDITING. Any and all of it happened between the 15th and 24th of May at my friends Laëtitia & Frédéric’s home in Lyon, France.
I’d left them with my first two sketchbooks when I departed for Barcelona, and they’d scanned all the pages by the time I returned.
Then there was one last sketchbook for scanning, proof-reading (with non-native English speakers!) and minimal digital construction.
The rare occurrences where a graphic was moved about digitally was noted in my compositions as I went along (not after the fact),
because I wanted to squeeze drawings from separate sketchbooks onto the same page.

(C ~ transplanting the donkey)

Well… that’s all for today. Hope this helps, Yana. Sorry to be so text-heavy, though this barely hints at the
adventure of drawing the book while on the road. Every cartoonist should give it a try!