SURROGATES! TOMORROW!

Top Shelf's FIRST MOVIE is coming out tomorrow! Do yourself a favor and go see Bruce Willis do a bunch of cool stuff.

... or is it his SURROGATE doing a bunch of cool stuff?

You probably know that The Surrogates is based on a graphic novel penned by Top Shelf mail room guy Robert Venditti and illustrated by Brett Weldele. What you may not know is that I was roommates with these guys at this year's San Diego Comic-Con and Chicago Wizard World. They had a lot of cool things to say about the film, and about visiting the set in Boston. Little known fact: the film is co-produced by Elizabeth Banks, a WHAS alum. WHASome!

Anyway, let's give SURROGATES a successful box office run so that movie investors start knocking down Top Shelf's door looking for more graphic novels to produce.

"A Time to Thrill" on Top Shelf 2.0

Pink Hobo gallery is currently exhibiting a show of Pinewood Derby art cars. Unfortunately I missed the opening, but it looks like it was a ton of fun, as evidenced by this late night race and this eye-popping portrait. My contribution does not have moving wheels, unfortunately, so it had to sit on the shelf during the race. Or maybe Tim and Curtis threw it around like a football. I don't know. Anyway, playing off the ultra-cheesy theme that every car has a story inside of it, I decided to literally fill my derby car with a stream of consciousness mini comic, which you can read more about in the next paragraph.

"A Time to Thrill" is an automobile-themed comic strip I drew on eleven slabs of painted balsa wood. Unfortunately, when I joined all the slabs together to form a car-shaped sculpture, the world lost the ability to actually read the comic.

Until now.

Top Shelf 2.0 -- an online library of awesome mini-comics and serialized comics, updated daily -- has posted the complete comic! Go check it out! And then go check out the actual car at Pink Hobo in NE Minneapolis while the show is still running!

We R Super Heroes Video

Zander and I (plus a boatload of other folks) are in a music video! We contributed original superhero designs for a Robbert Bobbert video, which is the brainchild of Apples in Stereo frontman Robert Schneider.

Puny directed and animated, and throughout the video you can see the visual stamps of King Mini and the rest of the Puny gang.



Here's Zander's guy, "The Bunny":



... and my guy, "Prosthetic Paddy":



Click on the stills to see all the other great superheroes created by these fine cartoonists:

24 Hour Comic Day is Coming Up!

You've got a half a month to get caught up on your sleeping, because 24 Hour Comics Day hits October 3 & 4.

For full details, bookmark 24-hourcomic.blogspot.com, where you can read all about this year's event as well as scroll down and see how last year's victims (erm, participants) fared.

And finally, spread Dan Olson's poster around like it was peanut butter! Here are two delicious sizes to choose from:

download SMALL
download LARGE

We'll have more info on this blog over the coming weeks, but just think of this post as a "save the date" kinda thing.

Your One Stop Shop for Recent Far Arden Reviews

There has been a slew of very thoughtful reviews of Far Arden lately, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention them. The surreality of reading complete strangers' thoughts and criticisms of this bizarre little book has not worn off, and I hope it never does. Click on the logos to read the full review.



Review by Jillian Steinhauer


Review by Myosotis


Review by Greg Burgas


Review by Matthew Brady


Review by J. Caleb Mozzocco


Review by Nick Dutro


Review by Jared Gardner


Review by Chris Partin


Review by Kyle Lemmon


Review by John Jewitt