Alec Longstreth's Blog

2012 Blogging Hiatus

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:58:06 PST

Last week I went home to Seattle for a few days, to visit my family. I'm back in Vermont now, and as far as I can tell, that trip was the calm before the storm.

This semester is going to be my busiest yet at CCS. In addition to co-teaching Publication Workshop with Jon Chad and Senior Thesis Seminar with Steve Bissette, I am also going to be standing in as Acting Director this semester while James Sturm is on sabbatical.

This position is a lot of responsibility, and it is also going to require a lot of my time. I've been trying to figure out some areas of my life where I can cut back this semester, and sadly, I feel that this blog is one of them!

So instead of breaking big news up into separate blog posts as I usually do, I thought I would just do one big MEGA-post tonight, outlining all of the stuff I am going to be working on this semester and my plans for the future, and then I can take a blogging break until this summer. Without further ado, here is just such a post:

1) Basewood! The story is done, but there is still a lot of work to be done to make it into a book. Max has finished the translation and we are currently working on all the production ins and outs for the French edition, which should be out from L'employé du Moi before the end of the year. It is going to be big and beautiful and I can't wait to hold it in my hands. "But Alec!" I hear you ask, "What about an English edition?!" Well...

2) After some serious hemming and hawing, I have decided that I'm going to toss my hat in the ring for the very last Xeric grant. If I am awarded the grant, cool! I will self-publish the book and put it in people's hands. If I am not awarded the grant, I will start exploring other options...

3) Meanwhile at my drawing table, I am going to be scripting new comics projects which will hopefully be released later in the year, or in the near future. They include: A) a two-issue run of Phase 7 all about my favorite band, Weezer B) a fantasy webcomic for kids that I'm working on called Isle of Elsi and C) a picture book I am illustrating which was written by my sister, Galen Goodwin Longstreth.

4) I will also be finishing up the colors for Aaron's second Walker Bean book this semester, though who knows when that will be released. Big publishing moves pretty slowly.

5) I'm still going to create paintings for the 100 Watercolors challenge on my illustration blog. I need to keep up with that site, because I might need to start freelancing again soon...

Aha, yes, you see, the BIGGEST news of the bunch is that Claire and I have decided to move back to the west coast at the end of this semester (!?!) We're not sure exactly where yet, but we both want to be closer to our families (in Seattle and Santa Fe respectively), so it'll be somewhere over there in the West. Claire is all set up to attend Toy Fair 2012 in February, so hopefully she'll be able to do some good research and networking, which may give us some hint of where to head next.

Annnnd, I think that's about it! As you can see, it's going to be a very busy time. If you're dying to know what I'm up to, I'll still be updating my twitter account, which also reposts on the homepage of this site. Of course, now that I've said I won't use this blog until the summer, I'm sure something really exciting will happen and I'll be tempted to post... I'll get to it if I can, but I might be too busy!

Happy Holidays!

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:55:16 PST

Wow, TWO full weeks without a post... I guess I've been taking a real winter break up here in Vermont. Here are some of the things I have been doing since the big haircut:

1) Packing up Basewood orders and mailing them out. All subscriber copies have been mailed and they have arrived safely as far away as Paris and Brussels, so if you have not received yours yet, drop me a line!

2) Claire and I went down to Boston for a weekend, to celebrate our friend Liz's 30th birthday, at an excellent '60s-themed party thrown by our friends Maris and Joe.

3) While in Boston, we went to the 7th Annual Yule Ball, which had tons of great wizard rock bands, including one of my favorite bands ever, Harry and the Potters.

4) On the same day we left for Boston, my copy of The Pinkerton Diaries and Alone III arrived in the mail, so I spent my bus rides to and from Beantown listening to new (old) Rivers Cuomo music and pouring over all 237 pages of his diary entries, photographs, sheet music, essays, articles, letters, charts and lyrics from 1994 -1997. As a Weezer fan who has always loved Pinkerton, it is an incredible glimpse into Rivers's creative process, and some of the horrible stuff he was going through during the album's conception. Also, my photo with Rivers is featured on page 184!

5) Back in Vermont, I built a new sketchbook.

6) A few days later, Claire arrived back from Boston along with her father, who had flown in all the way from Santa Fe. We have been hanging out with him ever since - eating lots of yummy food, watching movies, going for walks, drinking tea and just in general taking it easy.

With Christmas over and done, I'm now looking towards the new year... 2012 promises to be a very crazy year for me. The Spring 2012 semester is going to be my busiest yet, and there are a lot of big changes on the horizon as well. But more about that later!

For now, I hope that everyone is having a happy holidays. Let's all do our best to make 2012 a good year!

Basewood Wrap-up & Ordering Info

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 03:04:23 PST

Hey check it out, I got a haircut! Below are a plethora of links associated with this momentous occasion:

1) At the last minute, (well, a few hours before the haircut), I figured out use LiveStream to broadcast the haircut across the internet. This was so awesome because it allowed friends to tune in from faraway lands such as Indonesia and Austria, as well as all across the USA. The whole event is archived on LiveStream if you would like to watch it.

2) If you don't have an hour to watch the whole video, you can check out the haircut highlights in this great Flickr set by my pal Beth Hetland who flew out all the way from Chicago to witness the event (!?!) She also helped me with the printing of the books, adding a deluxe face trim to each copy. Thanks Beth!

3) Besides giving me the final haircut, Claire also edited together this amazing video of all my Basewood photos, which we showed before the haircut:

4) Last, but definitely not least, Phase 7 #009 is finally available to order! And now that Basewood is complete, I thought it would be cool to offer a "multipack" to simplify shipping for people that want all five chapters. I'm making it the same price as a Phase 7 Subscription, so it'll also save people a few bucks! When you order this, you will get all five chapters of Basewood in their minicomic form. This is $7.00 cheaper than ordering all of the individual chapters in the USA, $7.50 cheaper to Canada and a whopping $13.75 cheaper for international customers!

I'm going to spend all day tomorrow getting the subscriber copies ready, so keep an eye on those mailboxes. There are comics on the way!

Phase 7 #009 is done! Haircut Friday!!!

Mon, 5 Dec 2011 18:50:59 PST

After a long radio silence, I am pleased to announce that I finished drawing Basewood Chapter 5 at 3am on Friday morning. A few hours later Claire and I jumped in a car with James Sturm and both of the current CCS Fellows, Julie Delporte and Blaise Larmee, and we all headed down to New York City for the weekend.

Julie and Blaise both headed out to the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, which I sadly did not get to check out. But Claire and I ran a bunch of errands, James and I had a meeting with Al Jaffee (!!?!) and then Claire and I hung out with her extremely nice friends Amanda and Dustin.

We went and saw The Muppets which I LOVVVVVED. I pretty much cried through the entire movie. It was very cleverly written, the songs were great (I already bought the soundtrack and have been listening to it non-stop) and I think it will be very satisfying for hard core muppet fans as well as newcomers. Highly recommended!

Now that I'm back in WRJ, I'm in full-on production mode. As of this entry I have about half of the book scanned in, so I should be able to finish it up tonight and tomorrow. Wednesday I'll print, and as you can see above, on Friday I am having a book release party, which will be open to anyone who wants to attend. After a brief presentation, Claire is going to FINALLY cut off all my hair. We are going to tape it, so if you can't be there, you'll be able to watch it online.

If you are a Phase 7 subscriber and your address has changed since this summer PLEASE send me your current mailing address. Subscriber copies will be going out this week!

The Further Adventures of Marek Bennett

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:29:54 PST

One of the key concepts I try to constantly remind my students is that you need to become an interesting person. There's that old adage, "write what you know" and the more you get out into the world to interact with people and have new experiences, the more material you'll have to draw from for your stories.

I think the best role model for this advice is Carl Barks, who didn't sit down to draw his first page of comics until he was 41 years old. Before that he had worked as a farm hand, a lumberjack, a railroad car repair man, a mule driver, a cowboy, a printer, a worker in a box factory, and probably a dozen other odd jobs, before he finally landed a gig drawing cartoons for the Calgary Eye-Opener and then an animator at the Disney studio. I firmly believe that it is because of these many life experiences that Barks was able to crank out more than 500 stories in 6,000+ pages of comics over the next 25 years. And what stories!

SIDE NOTE: Volume 1 of the new Carl Barks Library arrived and it is BEAUTIFUL. All of my apprehensions have been allayed. PLEASE buy this book! You will not regret it.

One modern-day cartoonist who embodies these ideals is my pal Marek Bennett. Not only is Marek a talented cartoonist, musician and educator, he is also quite the world traveler.

Currently, Marek is in Slovakia and he has created a blog to document his experiences there. It's fascinating to get a glimpse into another culture through Marek's eyes and to follow along with him as he learns the language and talks to various people and does research about art in churches and architecture and all kinds of other interesting stuff. Marek is great at capturing the humor in small moments and his simple, direct drawing style makes you feel like you are there while everything is happening (even though people are portrayed as bunnies!)

There's a donation page on the site, where you can preorder the book that will result from Marek's travels. If this forthcoming collection is anything like his Nicaragua Comics Travel Journal, it will be a graphic novel well worth having!

As for my own life experiences, I have nothing much to blog about right now because I am currently spending about 10 hours a day in front of my drawing table, trying to finish off Basewood (currently 94.64% done!) At the rate I'm going, I should have it done in a few weeks. I'll post all haircutting and book-ordering information on here, as it becomes available!

Obsession Check-In: MUPPETS

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 10:00:11 PST

As if in answer to my last blog post, The Pinkerton Diaries became available for pre-order last night. Alone III looks to be everything I could have ever hoped for, including all of the remaining Songs From the Black Hole and demo versions of Susanne (my favorite Weezer song) and many other great Weezer tunes. I'm so thrilled that the book is hardback and 237 pages. I can't wait to sink my teeth into it. That'll be my reward for finishing Basewood... (if I can finish Basewood by the time it comes out, on December 12th!)

Anyway, the THIRD thing that I am really pumped about these days is the new Muppet Movie which is being released on November 23rd.

If you were to compare the Muppets to Star Wars, The Muppet Movie would be A New Hope, The Muppets Take Manhattan would be The Empire Strikes Back and The Great Muppet Caper would be Return of the Jedi. There have been other Muppet movies, just as there have been other Star Wars movies, but none of these sequels/prequels have ever been as satisfying as the classic trilogies.

When they announced a new Muppet movie, I was nervous. Even just looking at the poster above, I cringe a little. Listen Disney, as a Muppet fan, I could care less about Jason Segel or Amy Adams being in this movie. They are not the "star power" that's going to make me go see the movie, it's THE MUPPETS. If you look at the poster for The Muppet Movie it doesn't have a big picture of Steve Martin or Dom Delouise or any of the other humans that are in the movie, because it's not about them! It's about THE MUPPETS. I'm worried that Kermit the Frog is going to be some secondary supporting character to Jason Segel, when it should be the other way around.

All the trailers I have seen reaffirm this fear, and so I was preparing to go into this movie with very low expectations. But then this summer, I was talking to Aaron about the new Tintin movie. He was saying how excited he was about it, and I replied that I thought the trailers looked awful and that he should probably go in with low expectations. Aaron got really mad and threw that idea back in my face. "No!" he said, "It should not be that hard to make a good Tintin movie. I DESERVE to have high expectations!"

This was such a bold statement, it really made me think. And now I have adopted a similar stance for this new Muppet movie. Really, it should not be that hard to make a great Muppet movie. There are three great films to draw inspiration from - all the ingredients are there!

I watched this interview with Jason Segel where he describes bursting into tears at the first table-read of the movie, when Steve Whitmire pulled out the Kermit the Frog muppet. I'm pretty sure this is how any Muppet super-fan would react. And as Segel seems to be the one in charge of this project, it gives me hope that it might actually live up to my new, high expectations.

Obsession Check-In: WEEZER

Tue, 1 Nov 2011 23:18:56 PST

Man... when I decided to split up my "Obsession Check-In" blog post, I thought I would post all three parts in one week. Instead, today I looked up from my drawing table and somehow TWO WEEKS had elapsed. I guess Home Stretch Fever has warped my sense of time...

ANYWAY, let's talk about Weezer, shall we? Things have been pretty quiet on the Weezer front, after their 2009-2010 burst of productivity (during which they released FOUR albums). They are still touring a lot, but it sounds like it will be a little while before their tenth studio album.

In a recent interview Rivers said that the third volume of his home recordings should be coming out soon (it actually says "this year," but it seems to me that time is running out...) WHENEVER it comes out, it is going to be called "Alone III: The Pinkerton Years" (!!!) and there will also be a BOOK released at the same time called "The Pinkerton Diaries" (!!?!)

Needless to say, I am EXTREMELY excited about this album/book combo. It seems inevitable that Alone III will finally provide all of the missing tracks of Songs From the Black Hole. I can't wait to listen to the whole thing!

Rivers posted a preview of the book which looks to contain his notes, diary entries, mood charts, sheet music, drawings and all kinds of other stuff. It's going to be incredible to get a glimpse into his creative process, ESPECIALLY his creative process during the time in his life when he created one of the greatest albums of all time.

In that same recent interview Rivers also talks about how Weezer is going to be a little more deliberate with their next album. I know a lot of people weren't crazy about their most recent efforts (you can read my original posts on each here: Hurley, Pinkerton: Deluxe & Death to False Metal and Raditude). But I have been listening to this stuff a lot lately and I think that when all is said and done, 2009-2010 will prove to be a very important phase in Weezer's development. They did a lot of experimenting - some of it was a little too far out there, but some of it was really great. I have hope that they'll take that good stuff and move forward with it. As ever, I'm excited to see what they come up with next!

Next obsession check-in: THE MUPPETS

Obsession Check-In: COMICS

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 03:24:33 PST

I feel like this blog has gotten kind of "press release-y" lately, so I thought I would write a few short blog posts about the various things I'm obsessed with. Up first... COMICS!

I grew up reading Disney comics and it has been heart breaking for me to see how poorly they have been treated in this country over the last 20 years. In any other country in the world there are weekly kids magazines filled with Disney comics that sell in the millions. Kids in America have had a hard time getting their hands on Disney comics because they have changed publishers half a dozen times, and they are usually horribly produced with very little respect given to the original source material (with a few rare exceptions here and there).

Ask any of my CCS students, and they will tell you that I am completely obsessed with Carl Barks. I have been reading his comics since I was a little kid, but over the last couple of years I have been painstakingly tracking down all ten volumes of The Carl Barks Library, which collects all 6,000+ pages of Barks's Disney comics. I now have nine of the ten volumes, have read thousands of pages of his comics, and can safely say that in my professional opinion he is the greatest American cartoonist that ever lived.

I could easily write a whole post about the brilliance of Barks (and probably WILL, at some point down the road!) but for now I will just say that this December Fantagraphics is releasing the first volume of a NEW Carl Barks Library, which is going to finally, finally, FINALLY put Barks's work back into print in America, in an accessible full-color format.

I'm a little uneasy about the cover image they have chosen for the first book (I would prefer some design element that specifically states that this book will be part of a 30-volume series dedicated to Bark's life work - maybe it's on the spine?) but I will say that I have purchased both volumes of their reprints of Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse newspaper strips, which are some of the most beautifully designed books I have ever seen. I trust that Fantagraphics knows what they are doing and I am confident the book will be great.

So please, if you have a kid in your life, PLEASE, for ME, buy them this book! And if you have never read any Barks and you don't understand why I'm being so crazy about this, buy one for yourself. I can personally guarantee that you won't regret it!

In other comics news, I am slowly making my way through the piles and piles of awesome comics that I picked up at various shows this year (I'm currently reading stuff I got at MoCCA back in April). I thought I would try something new, so I'm going to be putting up links to really good minis that I read in my twitter account. Check it out for some scattered minicomic recommendations!

Next obsession check-in: WEEZER

My Hat is BACK!

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:54:16 PST

Well, I turned 32 last week. I got a bunch of super cool stuff for my birthday, but the best present BY FAR was a 2.0 version of the winged hat that I had since I was a kid (and lost in New York in 2004, as some of you might remember). Claire whipped this up based on one black and white photograph and my verbal description. It's perfect! She even improved upon the original design by making it out of wool (instead of acrylic), so it will be warmer and will age better. Now I just have to make sure I don't LOSE it!

It was this time last year that Claire moved in with me and I feel like we have been traveling through hyperspace ever since. Between teaching, working as much as possible on Basewood and spending time with Claire, the days have passed quickly. I guess time flies when you're having fun, eh? Or when your butt is glued to the drawing chair...

I hope that trend will continue! I'm currently 75% done with the last chapter of Basewood and I CAN'T WAIT to have it done so I can move on to other creative projects that are currently burning in my brain. I'm still on track to have it done by the end of the year, but that means drawing as much as possible between now and then.

31 was gone in the blink of an eye, and 32 is already shaping up to be an interesting year of life, with many changes coming down the pipeline. But more about all of that later, for now it's back to the drawing board!

ICAF and AVA Gallery Show

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 02:05:58 PST

CCS is hosting the International Comics Art Forum this week. It's free and open to the public, so if you're in the area, swing by and check it out! There are all sorts of interesting panels and lectures about comics by some very smart people who study them. We've also got visitors coming from all over the world. It should be pretty cool!

On Friday and Saturday from noon to 7pm, CCS students will be selling their comics in the "CCS Marketplace" which will be held in the main CCS building. This is a great chance to see what everyone has been working on. Also, I will be doing a signing on Saturday evening, from 5pm - 6pm if anyone wants to pick up some Phase 7 comics.

Lastly, in conjunction with ICAF, there are a few comics exhibitions going on at the nearby AVA Gallery. Above you can see the plan I sent to the gallery, along with some pages and supplementary material from chapter 3 of Basewood. This work has never before been publicly displayed, so come on by and check it out! There is also some work up from CCS alumni Alexis Frederick-Frost, Jen Vaughn and my fellow CCS faculty member, Jon Chad. The show is up until October 7th, so check it out!