The Journal of the Lincoln Heights Literary Society Miscellanea and Ephemeron
Ontology on the Go!
Amy Mebberson draws very pretty girls and she had some cool artwork at her table in Artists’ Alley. She’s been a comic book artist since she moved out of animation at Disney at Sydney when it closed in 2006. After the studio shut down in Sydney, she and her husband moved to Portland, Oregon, the comic artist vortex of the universe. She didn’t decide to become an artist right away, she has a degree in music, and spent one bad year in design school before she started making a living at it.
Celine Chapus has been working as an illustrator since 2007, but she’s been drawing her whole life. She decided to pursue this full time after she accidentally walked into a pirate themed store in North Hollywood (Chest of Divas, I think she said), and there was a small gallery in the back of the store. The store manager, Crystal, was curating shows on a monthly basis and Celine had her portfolio with her and got a show! And it was a hit! And that’s how she got started devoting all her time to art making.
Brett Bean was selling art prints and original commissions. This is his first Comic Con behind the booth. He’s working on a digital comic book. He makes video games, role-playing games; he started out as an environment artist.
Between now and the last time I saw him, Shannon Wheeler shaved off his beard. Then he won an Eisner. Is there a connection? Discuss.
Anthony Hon Was helping promote Wahab Algarmi’s “Society of Unordinary Young Ladies,” which is about 1980s sitcom heroines doing unordinary things, like fighting communism and stuff like that.
Mike Bocianowski writes comics about critters that have no names yet, so they are called Yets. It’s a story about an adventuring guinea pig and a chihuahua that go looking for dragons in the great magic tree world. And then it gets weird.
John L. Brooks II has been publishing books and comics at 11th Hour Books since 2008. This is his first Comic Con, he said he got in at the 11th hour, no less.
Mary Bellamy writes comic books about a girls who are not princesses. “Ah Heck” is about a girl who ends up in the underworld (y’know, Heck) and her adventures in different realms while trying to get the heck out of Heck.
I learned from Karen Knighton that to get a table in the Small Press area, the artist must have a new comic for the convention and that comic must pass CCSD’s approval. Ms. Knighton’s new comic this year is Snowsville; it is a 20 page, printed and handmade, edition of 50. Snowsville is more visual poetry than sequential art. It is a sequential story, but not a linear narrative and has no dialog or narration. The main character is injured and journeys to Snowsville, as much externally as internally. This book does for me what only certain kinds of art do for me: it stops the world for the duration I’m engaged with it. It’s an ontological pause in the chaos of being. I am very grateful to Karen Knighton for making it and Comic Con for having it where I could find it. There were only 49 remaining of the numbered edition after I left with mine. I hope 49 other lucky folks are having an experience similar to mine with Snowsville.
Matt Adrian (the Mincing Mockingbird) and Kim Bagwell (the Frantic Meerkat) were sharing a table, I think they’re married, but I never assume anything. Kim got into making comics because Matt needed a comic for one of his books and she came up with her first clip-art comic, the outlaw one. That one went over so well, she continued to make clip-art comics of serious looking animals with soap-opera relationship issues where the text is so outrageous with the art, and vice versa, the finish comic transcends it’s elements and to become a satire on romance, relationships, honor, etc. David Rees’ Get your War on did that with more serious material, but it works here as well. At least I liked it, but I like things that take a moment to sink in. Her background is in fine arts, but her bread and butter has been in graphic design. She’s been using clip-art up to now because she didn’t have time to paint. But more recently, she’s been painting.
