R 'n R Craft Show / New Prints!

I've got ink all over me! This weekend is the big Rock and Roll Craft Show and there will be a bunch of my stuff -- including some brand spankin' new prints hot off the squeegee -- for sale there. The show is at the Third Degree Glass Factory and from what I can tell will be awesome. Consider this blog post your holiday shopping guide. (more recommendations here.)

1) Giant Squid! Huge 22" x 30" print. Four colors (metallic silver, grey, dark grey, orange) on warm white Stonehenge paper. Based on a comic I drew for the upcoming Beasts! anthology to be published by Fantagraphics Books. Signed and numbered edition of 50.
2) James Eads! The newest addition to my series of St. Louis folk icons. 18" x 24", signed and numbered edition of 75. Three colors (metallic silver, brown & red) on chipboard. More behind the scenes on the making of this print and my research on Eads later.
3) Mike Shannon! 18" x 24". Three colors (navy blue, white & red) on chipboard. Signed and numbered edition of 75. More info here. These are almost all gone so get 'em while they're hot.

4) Lou Thesz! 18" x 24". Three colors (metallic gold, navy blue & red) on double-thickness chipboard. Signed and numbered edition of 75. More info here. These are also almost all gone so act fast.
5) Star Clipper! 22" x 30". Two colors (bright blue, fluorescent orange) on Rives BFK paper. Signed and numbered edition of 34. More info here.
I've also got copies of some comics/zines/booklets with handsome screeprinted covers for sale too. Brand New is volume 1 of the collected Amazing Facts & Beyond, The Factoids of Life: And I'll also have copies of the classic Schematic Comics and Redbird #1:
I'll be working at the show all day Sunday and I hope to see lots of you there. Happy Thanksgiving friends!

Running on Fumes

Thanks to Cherokee Street for hosting a memorable comics night. Great places visited: Firecracker Press, APOP records, Taqueria El Bronco, and the Shangri-La Diner.

Midwestern Origins of Thanksgiving

This week's Amazing Facts and Beyond details with the feast served at the first "Midwestern Thanksgiving," which took place between French Missionary settlers and members of the Illiniwek tribe 50 years following Plymouth Rock. They called it "The Roast without Equal". Have you always wondered what that spooky dragon creature painted on the bluff on the way to Raging Rivers is? Now you know its culinary origins.
Many more views of the Piasa "Monster Bird" of modern-day Alton, Illinois here.

Driving Rain

(cross-posted from the STL Drawing Club Blog. We all drew "umbrella" themed drawings last night.)

Bowling End Days

The Bowling Hall of Fame in downtown St. Louis closed its doors last week. Here's an illustration I made on the eve of apocalypse, published in the Riverfront Times. If you follow my blog (or my LIFE) you know how much I love bowling so this was a sad day. I don't know how I resisted the urge to draw a(nother) bowling hot rod based on this exhibit:but I stuck to my sketch pretty closely on this one.Bowling has a long and storied history in St. Louis. MAYBE YOU CAN HELP ME? I'm working on a comic about the legendary Budweisers, the legendary STL bowling team that shattered the five-man team record back in the '50's. I'm looking for any sort of reference or writing about that night in 1958, particularly eye-witness accounts of photographs from the inside of the long-closed Floriss Lanes in north St. Louis county.
Goodbye, Bowling Hall of Fame. We will roll on without you.

Rocking the Vote

Drawn from the hour-long line at my voting place today. Glad to have remembered my sketchbook (and blue and red colored pencils.) There were many more funny details I couldn't squeeze in. Also: my pal D.B. Dowd is doing election-themed drawings all over St. Louis today, much better than mine.

Meat & Greet

I made my students draw big one page comics on sheets of newsprint in class this morning, based on randomized characters (e.g. Scuba-Diver, Person in Hot-Dog Suit) and the classic modes of narrative conflict. I did one too, and drew "Walmart Greeter" and "Man vs. Nature".