Coming in October, as solicited for in comics stores now: Ted Rall scripts only for the first time and is paired up with Pablo (Bluesman) Callejo and we launch an outrageous talent in Vatican Hustle

THE YEAR OF LOVING DANGEROUSLY
Ted RALL & Pablo CALLEJO
Here’s a new turn for the controversial cartoonist and commentator Ted Rall. Not only is this autobiographical but he has paired up with the acclaimed artist of Bluesman and The Castaways for fully painted art.
It’s the eighties and Ted is in college in New York City and slipping. His pranks, lack of focus and restlessness get him kicked out of school. Unable to find a job, rejected by his parents, he’s on the verge of suicide. Instead he finds comfort in the arms of many women he meets casually and puts up a front for. Hey, better than being homeless and begging, but then… is it? It may sound like an ideal grift but the toll is much higher than one may imagine.
Between acidly funny and disturbingly real, Rall, a cartoonist whose work has alienated half the world, pours out his guts on a hard turning point in his life. Callejo adopts a new fully painted color style for this work, showing his versatility.
6×9, 128pp., full color, clothbound: $18.95, ISBN 978-1-56163-565-8

WHAT ALLISON BECHDEL SAYS OF IT:

“Ted Rall is fearless. In The Year of Loving Dangerously, he turns his formidable journalistic skills on a very rich subject–himself. The memoir is not just a revealing and entertaining account of Rall’s
misspent youth, but a gritty, alternative take on Manhattan in the boom years of the eighties.”

See Rall’s blog and bio.

Also, this month, you gotta check this out, this guy’s unbelievable:

VATICAN HUSTLE
Greg Houston
NBM launches a stunning new talent whose art is a hilariously grotesque cross between Ralph Steadman, Basil Wolverton and Chester Gould’s bad guys in a resolutely lowbrow sendup of blaxpoitation films. When a crime boss’ daughter turns up missing, who’s he gonna call? Boss Karate Black Guy Jones, that’s who, chump!! The two-fisted, karate chopping, crime solving machine is kicking ass and taking names from the gutters of Baltimore all the way to the streets of Rome. No dog’s too big for this cat to take down! Mimes, clowns, drunks, pizza, donkeys, pornography, gambling! Vatican Hustle has it all!
6×9, 132pp., B&W trade pb.: $11.95, ISBN 978-1-56163-571-9

See a lot more about this on Houston’s blog including his bio.

Finally, EUROTICA presents the latest by the best-selling NOE (Convent of Hell, Piano Tuner):

ALDANA
Ignacio NOE
Aldana is the luscious curvy maid to a very horny guy and she is incessantly horny for him. Will she ever get him to do her? He does just about every other girl and she’s just going insane seeing it all.
81/2 x 11, 48pp, full color trade pb.: $11.95, ISBN 978-1-56163-575-7

See more about it. (click on the Coming in October banner on the main Eurotica page).

Lumpy Fargo!

Just who is Boss Karate Black Guy Jones? Why, he’s the baddest cat in the darkest alley! He’s the super cool private dick with an eye for the ladies and a taste for danger!! He the dude who won’t jive or be jived!! He lets his fists do the talking when his mouth gets tired!!!! He’s the star of Vatican Hustle, Fool! Now, stop asking so many stupid questions.

In an earlier blog post I wrote about Boss Karate Black Guy Jones’ initial incarnation as a character I put on a poster for a fake blaxploitaion movie. It a adorned an otherwise dull wall in my college apartment. What I neglected to tell you was who inspired his look and attitude. Imagine if you will, a touch of Richard Roundtree as Shaft, a dash of Jim Brown as Slaughter, a pinch of Fred Williamson as Hammer and just a hint of Jim Kelly as Black Belt Jones. And you can throw in some Trouble Man, too. Mix it up and you’ve got BKBGJ.  But, somehow, he’s even more two-fisted!!!! Is that even possible?!!!

I also hear Samuel L Jackson’s voice in my head when I write BKBGJ’s dialogue. He’s not telling me to steal or bounce checks or go on a rampage or anything. I just sort of hear his voice coming out of my drawing’s mouth. And I’m not trying to influence any casting directors out there… I’m just saying.

"The News: Writer Neil Kleid’s and artist Nicolas Cinquegrani’s The Big Kahn is due out at the end of the month. Why You, Non-Comics-Geek, Should Care: Smart people who’ve seen the book — about a rabbi’s family that discovers, upon his death, that he wasn’t Jewish — are talking it up like crazy."  — Glen Weldon, NPR

"Calvin Reid of PW suggested Neil Kleid’s new book as one that should come out of CCI with more buzz than it might actually be able to generate in these star-driven times."  — Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

As most of you know, I attended the big San Diego Comic-Con this past weekend in order to a) promote my new book, The Big Kahn, coming out next week from NBM Publishing, b) sign copies of Creepy Comics #1 for Dark Horse Comics, which hit stores last week, c) meet with editors, producers and would-be colleagues and d) get drunk and silly.

Every convention, I tell myself I’ll be taking it easy — a few signing times, one or two meetings and that’s it. This year, I loaded myself up with Kahn signings, one Creepy signing and only one comic book meeting… and then found myself drowning under the weight of meetings with THEM. Hollywood came calling this year, and despite my promise to keep a light schedule, within the space of a day I found every single hole during my day-to-day filled with meet and greets, pitch meetings and the like. Once again, I ran the floor from signing to panel to meeting to signing… but I still managed to see a lot of the show and have a damn good time doing it.

CHECK OUT THE REPORT BY CLICKING HERE

When I tell people my book is about the Peace Corps, they tend to think it’s a book about living in some hut with no electricity and no running water, which is pretty inaccurate. There was electricity. There were televisions. There were tons of satellite dishes. I probably drank more Coco-Cola and ate more Snickers bars there than I ever had before or since. It wasn’t the complete isolation that some people expect.

What amazed me was what came to Turkmenistan from America. There were music videos with all the bumping and grinding. There were action movies with all sorts of guns and explosions. There were horror movies with the chesty heroine in the tank top getting more and more blood covered as it went on. There was no Woody Allen. There was none of the music I like (part of this is because action, horror and sex translate really easy while metaphors and lines like, “we can walk to the curb from here,” do not). It was all the garbage that America spews out (I mean straight to video stuff)(think Shark Attack 3). Which left Turkmen with some pretty odd impressions of what America was like. Based on action movies a lot of people were under the impression that every one in America has guns. I was regularly asked how many guns I had and how many high speed chases I’d been in. When I replied that I had no guns and didn’t even own a car they looked at me strangely, as if they doubted I were really an American. Many men were also under the impression that you could go to any bar in America and have sex with any of the girls there. They were so let down when I explained that was not the case (maybe some slick pick up artist can do it)(but not the guys I was hanging out with).

Probably the best question I ever got was while I was watching Lethal Weapon 4 and during some chase scene a cop car leaped off the interstate and into the third story of a buidling and ended up driving all the way through the floor and launching out the other side and back onto the interstate. In complete earnest I was asked, “Would insurance pay for that?”

When I explained that none of the things they saw in American movies was real, people always seemed confused. I was asked why America made itself look so bad in the movies. 

They were never satisfied with, “It’s just entertainment.”

Check out Joe and Azat in September for more about Turkmenistan and what it’s like to be an American there. Check out my blog, too. Check out Run To Your Grave by the Mae Shi as well. It’s my new favorite song.

Booklist reviews our Bringing Up Father collection:

“One of the most popular and longest-running comic strips. Soon, McManus  would develop into one of the funnies’ leading stylists.”

And Publishers Weekly this week says of Geary’s new Famous Players:

“His quirky b&w ink drawings are full of expression, recalling the melodrama of silent films.”

This verbose one-pager below was created during last year’s Comic-Con International in San Diego.

Comic book artist must be the only profession in the world where people sign their works by drawing a picture. I always wanted to turn some of these disparate images into a comic strip that made some sort of sense.

So I collected drawings from funnybook legends as diverse as Xaime Hernandez, Paul Chadwick or Eddie Campbell, and tried to connect them into an involuntary jam comic about false identities and the falseness of identity.

Hope you enjoy it.

My graphic novel with Pablo G. Callejo, The Year of Loving Dangerously, is finished! The artwork is done, edits are underway, and Mikhaela Reid is working on the back cover.

“Another winning true-crime volume from Rick Geary.  No surprise there, as Geary’s made a long and successful career of this type of comics. 

In addition to presenting all the evidence in a clear and precise narrative, Geary’s art is perfectly suited to this type of factual accounting.  His representational pen-and-ink drawings couch the events in historically accurate and detailed drawings of the world and times of the murder. 

He’s a splendid visual storyteller, moving his “camera” around to capture aspects of a crime scene perfectly.  Hand-drawn diagrams enforce key points, such as the approach the murderer likely took to Taylor’s house or the angle of the bullet when it penetrated the victim’s coat and vest.”

See the complete review on Newsarama. See more information and previews.

“Sfar & Trondheim get a huge chuckle out of subverting the genre and paying tribute to it- sometimes in the same panel. This new installment fully lives up to the praise Dungeon has garnered from sources as various as Asimov’s SF magazine and The New York Times Book Review.”

Jeff Vandermeer in Realms of Fantasy Magazine about Dungeon Zenith, vol.3.

In our last bit of news before heading out to the San Diego Comic Con, we’ll be giving out a free signed plate by Luis Royo limited to 200  for every book purchased of his!

We’ll have the complete array of his available books at our booth. Starting this fall, we will be relaunching his classic best-selling collections enhanced with many new pieces and reuniting some of the volumes together into longer clothbound editions. Malefic will be the first to undergo this transformation, shipping this December.

Come see us in booth 1528!

Note: Richard Moore unfortunately had to cancel his plans to come and so did Cornnell Clarke. Sorry for the disappointment.