Best Comics of 2012

The Libertarian- Nick Maandag

I read this book on the way home from the Kazoo small press comics expo in Guelph, Dalton Sharp had picked up a copy and it had just won the award for book of the show, so I was very curious. The Libertarian is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. It is unrelenting. The simple style of Nick’s drawings had with his first book, Streakers, kept me away but upon reading a few pages of The Libertarian I became very charmed by his drawings and found them an engaging partner to the incredible writing. Very smart, sharp cutting dialogue and a scathing response to extreme politics make The Libertarian one of the very best books of 2012.

Fuckitor Jason Karns

I discovered Fuckitor like the rest of the world because of this article on the Comics Journal by comic superman Jim Rugg (who draws great comics and also hosts one of my fave podcasts). Fuckitor is the first comic that my girlfriend has told me she hates and it is easy to see why. It is all the same reasons I love it. Fuckitor is an ongoing anthology comic; each issue has two to three short stories inside. All of the stories are roided out versions of 80’s horror/fantasy/ sci-fi direct to VHS movies. They are generally about monsters, Nazi’s, zombies or whatever else that enjoys eviscerating teenagers. The language in the books is intense, they feature nudity and violence which can be sexual and is always very graphic. The presentation of Fuckitor is one thing that my lady and I both agreed on. It is awesome. Karns uses a tricked out printer to print out every issue himself in full colour. The paper he uses and the colour settings combine to make Fuckitor look like a book that was released in ’78 instead of being printed a week before you got it in your mailbox. Which is another thing that makes Fuckitor awesome, the effort required to get it. Karns is from all indications, essentially a comics recluse. A modern day Ditko. Karn’s likes Rugg’s work, with whom he shares many of the same sensibilities, but he thinks most comics are shit. He doesn’t do conventions and shows no real interest in getting his work out there to a wider audience; his stuff is only available through mail order. This added challenge of getting his work and his rock star apathy add a mystique that is very rare in comics today.

Love and Rockets- New Stories Vol.5 Jaime/ Gilbert Henandez

I have always been super curious about Love and Rockets, specifically Jaime’s work which really appeals to my sensibilities. Over the years I have read a few volumes here and there but this year with all the hype of the 30^th anniversary I went out and bought every volume of Jaime’s work right up until the most recent New Stories Vol. 5 and plowed through them all. It is an amazing body of work. It is easy to imagine how connected to Maggie and Hopey someone would be if they started reading all the way back in ’82. Even for someone who read their entire story over a month and a half let me assure you the connection is still very strong. By the time I got to the final pages of New Stories Vol. 4 climatic Love Bunglers story line there were a lot of emotions going on through my heart and mind. Vol. 5 is the volume that came out this year. In it Jaime is setting up more stories with newer characters as the main story of Maggie seems to be done. Vol. 5 is not the strongest of Jaime’s work but the great wealth of material that I read this year that makes up the Locas storyline is incredibly rich and fulfilling and makes me have to include this book on my list to make up for all the years of missing it. Especially last year’s incredible Vol. 4 which had I read it then would have likely been my book of the year for 2011. As for Gilbert’s work, while it has never appealed to me as much as Jaime’s, I am preparing to begin his Palomar stories from the beginning and am hoping to be similarly transfixed.

Dungeon Quest vol.3 Joe Daly

 

Dungeon Quest is a fantasy book but it is might be a coming of age story about early twenty somethings in Suburbia..I really loved the first two volumes of Dungeon Quest so I had high expectations when I grabbed a copy of volume 3. I was pretty stunned when I picked it up. This thing is twice the size of volumes 1 or 2! So, lots and lots of content. Dungeon Quest is about two friends who seem to live in a seemingly ordinary world who decide to go off on an adventure. The book borrows many of the conventions of role playing games, for example walking through their town they get into fights with street toughs and level up. At the point in the story where vol. 3 picks up the real world elements are far behind us in favor of full blown fantasy. Lots of fight scenes, awesome relics and also a very heavy serving of penis. The boys at one point get robbed of all they have and are forced to adventure in the buff for a good hundred pages. Daly has a lot of fun drawing the penises. Lots of character. Seriously, he is having a great time drawing all these penises. Another thing I love about the adventure in Dungeon Quest is the journey. I think in fantasy comics getting across the length of the journey is a real difficult thing when you only have so many pages. This can often make epics in comics not feel so epic. Daly is not afraid to use five pages to just show the party wandering. It really adds meat to the world building and the journey. I am not sure how many more volumes Dungeon Quest is going to have, I loved this entry and hope for many more but I don’t want it to fall into the going on for too long trap some series get into. I worry that this could end with them finishing the adventure and it is revealed that the adventurers have been around a D&D table the whole time, but I hope not.

By This Shall You Know Him Jesse Jacobs

Jesse Jacobs’ books are so strange, his design sense so unique and his stories are so evocative. This one is about three god like creatures and their arguments over their creations. Their creations allow Jacobs’ to showcase his love of isometric design and allows him to use his unique two tone colouring style to great effect. There is something I think about his imagery that gives his books this great sense of mystery. By This Shall you Know Him is Jacob’s first book with Koyama and they allowed him to do some sexy things with the paper stock. The Books features a really nice feeling carboard-ie stock that make you want to have it in your hands as long as possible. It becomes a really nice part of the reading experience. This is a great book. If you like some mind bending challenging work with a unique visual language this is the one for you.

Pope Hats #3 Ethan Rilly

Pope Hats is about a law clerk and her actress roommate. The Clerk is the responsible one, seeming to have everything figured out while the Actress is more relaxed about things. This issue seems to be an Empire Strikes Back type issue for Pope Hats. The Actress has a big job offer that will see her leave Toronto and the Clerk is in the middle of some alarming office politics which seem to be making her question her life choices. The tone overall is much darker, but Rilly’s humour and charming drawing never make it a slog to read. Pope Hats #1 was awesome but with #2 and now #3 we have seen Rilly raise his illustrative game dramatically. The strength of his line and his deceptively simple looking compositions make Pope Hats one of the easiest to look at books out there. The writing is also fantastic. Very funny and hints at depths that I am hoping will be fulfilled by the completion of the series. Adhouse is the publisher of Pope Hats and I am glad they are supporting the single issue format. I feel like a lot of publishers would of wanted to "wait for the trade", but I think here the single issue format really works nice. And it lets us get more Rilly covers which are always very strong.

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Jim V 3.0

I recently was thinking of a different much darker ending to Psychic Drama. The process of making Psychic Drama was such a long one, I had practically finished it and then decided it was going all wrong so I ended up restarting it. Looking back at the original version I kind of enjoy how blood thirsty it was where as the version that is up on my website is a much more talky version. I think the happy medium was probably somewhere in the middle. Anyhow, I ain't doing that comic a third time. The ending I was thinking about features a much bleaker future for Jim where he is no longer deemed fit to be allowed out in society and is just the focus of on-going testing, kind of like the esper-kids in Akira except with more exposed brains.

Anyhoo, here is a water colour for you all. It was kind of inspired by the print ads for the "Fall of the Mutants" X-Men storyline that can be found in all Marvel comics from that era.

Tuff Stuff

Hey everybody! I have been pretty busy around these parts working on all sorts of fun stuff. A few weeks ago I did the 24 hour comic challenge with my buddy Steve Sloan. For the last few years I have been approaching the 24 hour comic challenge differently. I like to now just work on a comic when I am there at a normal pace for as long as possible making work that I am happy with instead of rushing out a piece of poop. That was how I started Don River and Sassy Mavericks. By the time I finish end up going back and reworking entire pages but I find it productive to work on something I will be happy with rather than something I just crank out. Anyhow, at the end of the night I think we both came up with some pretty fun work.
Also I plugging away at a second Astro Jaq story for friendly Phil McClorey. This one is going to be going into our forthcoming Monster anthology that we will be releasing at next years Fan Expo. The talent we have put together for this next book is looking really good. I am very excited to see what the complete book looks like because the pedigree is very strong.
On top of that I am still slowly slogging away at the structure for my big book. I have a ton of sketches and concepts done but the writing is seriously dragging. I think at this point the plan is to have a new mini out for TCAF and then hopefully I can have the longer book ready for the following year. Anyhoo....Hope you are all doing well. I will be back prolly in a couple of weeks with my year in review blog post. I have read some good comics this year and have some opinions to share.
Oh and I hope you like this water colour. Did this last night, bought some new water colours. This character may be in my new mini..

Stadium Comics Signing

Stadium Comics hosted me and a whole bunch of other awesome artists last weekend. Met some nice people and drew some fun ol' drawings. Thought I would post some of the results here. Drew a whole bunch of superheroes! I broke out some of my ol' favs. Cyclops in the classic X-Factor costume was inspired by Cykes' recent murder of Prof X! What was that all about? Lame Marvel. Magneto! My fav villain from my childhood. This pose was a from memory homage to Jim Lees opening two page spread from X Men #1 (the best selling comic book of all time.), looking it up now, I see I did not quite get it right.. Hulk! I only had two ink colours with me, red and blue. I was so confused about what to do, then Phil told me that Hulk is red now! Perfect! The Superman was my first drawing, he is flying through space! That's cool!
Anyhow, good times. Thanks to Stadium, all the people who stopped by and all my brothers and sisters on the front lines of the funny books!

Total Victory

This is an example of a mock up I do before going to the print shop to do a new screenprint. So this one is about the victory of the Quebec Student Union over the evil Liberal Government led by Jean Charest. I will post photos of the finished print next week and we can see how close to this we get. In comics news I have a signing this Saturday at Stadium Comics in Brampton. Plenty of other super talented folks will be there like, Phil McClorey, Adam Gorham, Fred Kennedy and various others. Please come on by and check it out! I think it should be a lot of fun!

Sassy Mavericks!

New Cover to Sassy Mavericks! This is printed as a silkscreen, two layers. The interiors also have been tweaked. This is the ultimate version of this book and the one that will be kept in print from now on. I am very happy to have this version out. Space Cops featured a bunch of problems that I am really happy I was able to iron out. Also did some tweaks to Don River. I am quite pleased with how it has all turned out!

September, where did you go?

Man, almost missed my Sept. update. Sorry guys. As you can see, I am still drawing. Since I last checked in there has been Fanexpo and Word on the Street. They were both awesome shows. Thanks to all who stopped by! I sold out of the first printing of Sassy Mavericks and the umpteenth printing of Don River. There are plans for a revised cover for the next printing of Sassy Mavericks and a silk screened cover for Fight Song. Here have some drawings!

Fan Expo

Hey Dudes, FanExpo is just around the corner. In fact it starts on Thursday which is literally two sleeps away if you are on a standard sleep sched. I will be at table A167 alongside the Invincible Phil McClorey. We bot got a couple new things that will be coming out. The above image is a cover to a mini that is a sampler for an anthology that I believe will be coming out at some point. That is very confusing. What it is for sure though is awesome. The mini is called Action Adventure Comics. It contains that blistering cover above which I did, a seven page comic by myself and self friend Phil McClorey (that you can see the first page process of in the post below) and a 10 or 12 page comic by Marvin Law and the industrious Phil McClorey. So that will be available. Additionally this convention will mark the official release of Horror in the West! This excellent anthology contains a seven or eight page comic by myself and spider monkey advocate AG Pasquella along with many other awesome stories sure to chill and terrify. Other than those two awesome books I will also have my usual array of excellent minis including Sassy Mavericks, Fight Song, Don River and Lucy Legacy so be sure to swing by and pick em up!

Astro Jaq Process

This is an example of my process. The page featured here is the first from from a short story I have that will be coming out at FanExpo written by the indomitable Friendly Phil McClorey. It is not the only thing debuting as I will also have a short story in the Horror in the West anthology that is being published by Alterna Press. Anyhow, lots of new stuff this year at Fan Expo and all the older stuff as well. Swing on by!

The future is now!

Hi everybody! Well that terrible thing that I always knew would eventually happen, well, it happened. I have run out of comics to put up on my website. That is not to say I don't have more comics in the can, because I do, but I have developed a personal rule that prevents it. This personal rule states that anything I put up online I have already put into print. So with that in mind I am at loggerheads as to what to do with my website. It has been clear to me since the beginning that my website sucks. There are many design problems and it is not easily navigable. These are things I plan on fixing. While doing this I want to continue to put up new content. Seeing as the next thing I have that will be released in print is not until FanExpo, I need to come up with something to fill in that time. I have developed a new idea that I am excited to get going on. It will update once a week to start, hopefully I can build a buffer and make the updates more regular. This comic is designed for the web first so I am thinking it will be a bit different from my other books. Anyhow, I guess I shouldn't talk to much before I know exactly what it will look like. I am planning on having the first page up within two weeks. I will announce more here before then! Stick around true believers. I got more comics in me yet. Above are some sketches. One of the pages is of a character I helped create alongside Friendly Phil McClorey. The other page is just random doodles. I hope you guys like em! Talk soon!

Coupla Drawrings.

HEYO! Hope you're all still reading Sassy Mavericks over at my website! It is awesome!

GODZILLA!

Hey guys, Did up a huge Godzilla piece recently. This bad boy is a whopping 22X30! Myself and my pal AG Pasquella have a short story called Brother's Keeper in a forthcoming book called Horror in the West. We are currently doing an indiegogo campaign to raise funds for the book to be published. All contributions $15 dollars or more will get you the book and from there you can contribute even more to hook yourselves up with some really unique stuff! For example at the $60 level you can get a 9X12 inked commission of anything your heart desires by yours truly! Sounds awesome right? Guess what? IT IS! So go on over to the Horror in the West site and pitch in! Lastly my new book Sassy Mavericks: A Space Cops Story is currently going up over at brianevinou.com right now! Go check it out, it is HIGHlarious.

TCAF

Guys, for serious. TCAF was awesome. I know, this must seem like a broken record. Every early May I come on here bleeting about my favorite show. Well too bad. It is my favorite show, so you guys are just going to have to deal with that. Personally the show went great for me. I hit a new personal best for myself in sales and the new book, Sassy Mavericks: A Space Cops Story, seemed to go over really well. Creatively the show was awesome as well. As you can see above from my haul I got some awesome books. Becky Cloonan's The Mire and Jesse Jacobs' book By this shall you know him are the only two I've read so far..and let me tell you, they are both awesome. Thanks to Chris, Miles and Peter for putting on such an awesome show every year and letting me be a part of it. It really is the best show. The organization, great volunteers, curated exhibitors, free admission and awesome programming add up to make a really unique experience as far as comic shows go. The energy as well; super positive. That really stood out to me at the TCAFter party, Butcher, Miles and Peter were giving their closing speech and everyone was really dialed in and feeling the sense of community. Anyhow, every TCAF I come out super energetic about comics again. Knocking out page after page in seclusion can be pretty rough sometimes but when everyone gets together at shows like TCAF it's easier to remember why comics are so awesome. So what else, Sassy Mavericks is currently going up on my website now, check it out.

Sassy Mavericks!

Guys TCAF! It is in 8 1/2 hours! I better get to bed. COme by tomorrow and get your paws on my new comic! SASSY MAVERICKS! 29 pages of action and adventure! This is a mock up of the cover. The real one is a two color silk screen. It is B.A. TCAF is my fav show. AND. It is free!! Toronto Refrence Library! Saturday and Sunday. I am on the second floor table #250!

World Turtle

Here is a drawing I did while thinking about the world turtle. I always loved the idea and thought I would give it a spin. Hope you guys like it! So TCAF is coming up! May 5th and 6th! I will be there. I don't know my table number yet but when I do I will update you guys. I will have my new book there. It is called Space Cops! A Sassy Mavericks adventure. It is pretty awesome. I hope you guys swing by and pick up a copy. It has a very sexy two color silk screened cover. I will post a preview sometime next week. I am still posting on my website here..The complete Grawlix story I did with A.G Pasquella is going up right now..in the past few weeks the three Fight Song comics have been put up so go check em out! This here illustration down at the bottom was done by Detroit street artist Illy Mack. It is awesome.

Ides of March

Guys, it's my favorite holiday! Kill an Emperor day! So I thought I would throw together a quick litho for you..this is the image printed on Newsprint. I have quite a few of them of some nice arches paper..I am thinking about trying to sell these amoungst my other screens at TCAF and Kazoo..

Anyhow, keep reading friends. Fight SOng is powering along.

Woo Hah, gotcha all in check.

So, what is this drawing from? It is from a forthcoming book of mine..Not my new book which will hopefully be released at Kazoo, but assuredly at TCAF...another one.

This past weekend was the Toronto Comic Con! What a great time. I shared a table with Friendly Phil McClory, we came, we saw, we conquered. I had a great time hanging with lots of comic pals. Had a great dinner With Friendly Phil, Adam Gorham, Fred Kennedy and Andre Fernandez. They are putting out some fun books over at Big Sexy Comics, so check that out too. We were lucky enough to sit right across from Becky Cloonan and Andy B. Those two got some awesome work coming up. Becky showed off her pencils for a forthcoming issue of Conan. Andy had some of his work for his forthcoming Black CHurch project. Really innovative stuff! It was berserk.

Just yesterday I got to meet one of my biggest heroes. George RR Martin. He did a "Meet the author" thing at Tiff. It was awesome. I've seen him speak in interviews countless times but seeing it live is a different thing. He is a real charming man. Hilarious, insightful and thoughful. After an abbreviated Q&A, the real action happened! Winds Of Winter reading! Victarion Chapter! WHAT WHAT! Anyhow..it was awesome. I got some books signed and a photo of me hamming it up while the legend signs my book..see below! That is a thrilled Brian Evinou.

Barbarian!

Guys, I drew a Barbarian! So, check it out!

Man, comics eh, so many creators getting F'd over lately. The Alan Moore stuff was pretty bad but the Ghost Rider thing today really takes the cake. You think with all the money these assholes make with these movies they could treat the creators with a little bit of respect.

Anyways, make sure to check out Fight Song!

Hourly Comic Day, 2012

Yeah, Mother Flippers! I'm back! Hourly Comics! Rep yo self b4 I wreck yo self!

Some Drawings!

Hey guys, these here are some drawing I did for Phil McClory's upcoming horror western Anthology. I also have a 8 page story in there as well penned by AG Pasquella.

My website is still updating three times a week. The second story in Fight Song just went up, so get on that!