Curio and Co
Cesare and Kirsty
It was great to see Curio and Co again this year and what a big year they had since last I laid eyes on them. In March they signed a deal with Mayhem Pictures to us the “Gadabout TM-1050” book, the time-machine that never existed book, as a springboard for a feature film. Mayhem produced Secretariat and The Tooth Fairy. They have deal with Disney so their films are ultimately funded by Disney. Also in March Curio and Co released a book called “Time for Frank and his Friend” which is the 1979 paperback of the “Finding Frank and his Friend” comics. The book looks like the comics collections of Peanuts I used to make my mother buy for me at the supermarket in the 70s. I’m not making this up. Curio and Co has a series of prints that are fake vintage advertisements from various fake companies such as a soft drink company or a tool company. They have a new comic Roger Believe, which is an Italian comic that never existed from the 70s and 80s. Their new feature for Comic Con was a gumball machine that had advice instead of gum for 25 cents. While I was standing there talking to Cesare and Kirsty, two separate con attendees got advice from it. Kirsty said Curio and Co would be doing a panel about the Myth of Nostalgia exploring topics such as does nostalgia really exist? Is it something that’s tangible? And if it’s not real, is it something you can invent or make up? Curio and Co hope so because that’s the whole premise of their company: manufactured nostalgia. I think all nostalgia is manufactured because the past we remember is never that same past we experienced. It’s like siblings who grew up in the same family, but have different memories of the same experiences in that family. Okay, maybe that’s PTSD, but you know what I mean. Curio and Co are also working with editors who are reprinting comics from the turn of the previous century (1900, the 21st century thing really confuses me) that have been almost completely forgotten. These comics inspire a sense of nostalgia in readers who weren’t alive when they were printed. So how real is that nostalgia? I feel this way about swing music, which sounds like it comes from happier times, but really doesn’t, and yet seems so familiar. So I have faux nostalgia syndrome, too. Cesare and Kirsty have been together for thirteen years, and doing Curio and Co for three years. Cesare does all the design and art for the company, while Kirsty does marketing, administration, talking to people like me, and all that kind of stuff. Cesare started in art school in illustration, but wasn’t getting enough drawing, so he switched to industrial design, which still wasn’t enough drawing, so he switched to fine arts, but when he graduated he started working as an industrial design in interactive exhibits at a children’s Science museum in the Bay Area, where he met Kirsty, who was in Human Resources. Prior to Curio and Co, Cesare worked at Disney for six months working on “Princess and the Frog.” When he finished up that and left Disney, he was REALLY ready to do something of his own, so he and Kirsty dreamed up a successful business plan, branding, and organization of Curio and Co and here they are today. And continued good luck to them in all their ventures!
For more SDCC 2012 coverage, here’s Comic Con all in one big post.