and Love the Way You Love.
Panel from my story with Valentino & Allred
A detail from Michel's drawing.
) and earn me a couple of pennies for each sale made through the link. :)
MARVEL HOLIDAY SPECIAL 2011
Written & Penciled by VARIOUS
Cover by TIM SEELEY
• Four new holiday adventures featuring your favorite
Marvel super heroes!
• Wolverine finally learns the Canadian art of ice hockey.
• Written and illustrated by some of Marvel’s hottest talent!
• Collecting MARVEL DIGITAL HOLIDAY SPECIAL 2011 #1-4
from Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited.
40 PGS./One-Shot/Rated T+... $3.99
. Other contributors include Jeffrey Brown, Jamie McKelvie, Bryan Lee O'Malley, and Hope Larson. Eddie Argos has more details at his blog.
DOUBLE CD RELEASE PARTY
LARA MICHELL releases PETALS
and
A SIMPLE COLONY releases WORLD BRAND NEW
...
8pm, Saturday, August 14, 2010
The Woods
6637 SE Milwaukie
Portland, OR 97202
503-890-0408
www.thewoodsportland.com
$10 cover charge
21+
Lara Michell – Petals
This is the fourth solo album from Lara Michell (also of The Stolen Sweets and Dirty Martini; formerly of Carmina Piranha). While this collection features guest performances by numerous Portland musicians, most of the tracks are very sparse and consist of only a few acoustic guitar parts and some harmonized vocals. Fans will recognize Lara’s unique intricate fingerpicking and ethereal lyrics on this album, which features nine original tracks and a surprising Duran Duran cover.
www.myspace.com/laramichell
a simple colony – world brand new
a simple colony is a new collaboration between longtime friends Lara Michell and Michael Dodson (formerly of the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus and the David York Ensemble), who met while attending Willamette University in the early 1990’s. Generally speaking, Lara composed the music, recorded it on her laptop, e-mailed it across town to Michael who then wrote all of the lyrics and vocal parts, recording demo versions of the finished songs on his laptop. They would get together occasionally during the process to refine the arrangements and swap ideas, and ultimately recorded studio versions of the songs with local producers Ezra Holbrook and Jason Roark. Michael Dodson is an art teacher at French Prairie Middle School in Woodburn, OR, and although he has performed with countless vocal ensembles and made many jazz and classical vocal recordings over the years, this is his first foray into the recording of his own original songs. He lives in Lake Oswego with his partner and their four-year-old daughter.
www.myspace.com/asimplecolony
"One thing that I didn’t mention in the first book, but which is here too: the front pages of the stories feature either the super silly and amusingly self-referential Penguin comic Polar Opposites (I enjoyed the one that jokes about the Oni Press rock band book (oh, Hopeless Savages? No. Oh, Scott Pilgrim? NO!) or wonderfully Kitten Stomp Future Dream biographies of the cast. They’re clever and funny.
Oh, and there’s a very positive gay romance in the story as well.
This was a great romantic story. And I enjoyed it from start to finish."
trade paperback over at the "I Just Read About That..." blog."I’ve always liked Jamie Rich’s stories. He’s written some full-on fiction in addition to his comics. And they’re both solid, romantic works. Ellerby’s drawing style is rather cartoony (big eyes and often outlandish hair, but it works in context). This is especially so since this story is about teens/post-teens and rock bands....
Rich makes his characters full, with a wide emotional range. The secondary characters are also quite good, especially Lance, Tristan’s younger brother, who wears a cool hat and has some of the best lines in the book."
"...the art plays a huge role, and Joëlle Jones manages to bring a look to the characters that is both its own thing--they look and feel like comic characters--and yet captures a look that evokes the appearance of the actors that played the live-action versions."
"Jones’ art is utterly fantastic. She just nails facial expressions and the comedic timing of the show. Surprisingly awesome, a definite buy."
"If you've ever read Ellerbisms, you already know that Ellerby has a knack for bringing instantly likeable, warm and real characters (OK, people in Ellerbisms) to the page. The inhabitants of Chloe Noonan: Monster Hunter are no different. I'm already pretty scared that if I ever meet Chloe's mate, Zoe Fox, her teeth will do something bewitching to me and I'll find myself listening to My Chemical Romance and crying at teatime.
The other thing I would say is that the polish Ellerby delivers is impressive. I see a lot of small press stuff that looks... I'll say 'rough around the edges' - not this, though. The printing and overall presentation of the issue - like in the one before it - are on a par with what you'd expect from one of the bigger indie publishers like Oni Press."
How is this book something only the two of you [Jamie S. Rich & Joëlle Jones] together could do?
Creative chemistry is just so important. There are just certain things that happen when two particular people get together to make art. You know, like I’m Martin Scorsese and Joëlle is Robert De Niro. Or maybe I’m Paul McCartney and she’s John Lennon--or would that be the other way around? It’s hard to say what exactly happens, but it has to do with point of view, the philosophies we share and the ways we differ, and how those things intersect to make something unique. It’s also that level of respect for and excitement about the other person’s work. I know people think I am being facetious or self-deprecating when I say these things, but it’s true. I adore Joëlle’s drawing, and I want to write to meet her level of craft. It’s not a competition, but it definitely is a mutual challenge.
Spell Checkers is what I like to call a shower idea. I get these vivid ideas when I am in the shower, I don’t know why. I think it’s some curse, like I am doomed to have my best ideas at times I can’t write them down. When I’m exercising, too. A lot of You Have Killed Me arrived as inspiration on the exercise bike. For Spell Checkers, it was like the day after we had that conversation about the sketch that I was in the shower and saw the first three pages in full detail, and those are still the first three pages of the book. Same thing happened in You Have Killed Me, there is a scene at a horse race where Mercer thinks he has seen something, and the page where that happens, I had an image appear in my brain — which is not that different to what happens to Mercer on that page, when you think about it. It’s an important moment, a turning point in the story and definitely a turning point during the writing, where the book started to really come alive. Usually I thumbnail visions of those kind, I sketch them out, as it’s the fastest way to get them out of my head and stop thinking about them. I did it with Spell Checkers, I did it with the first page of “The Jailhouse Swing,” our story in Popgun volume 3. I never show those thumbnails to Joëlle, the most I’ll do is try to type up how I see it, explain the layout, and it amazes me, but every time it’s one of those scenes, what she draws is exactly what I saw. It’s uncanny.
* I am on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace, just look if you're interested...
.
"It's all very angsty in a teenage/twenty-something sort of way: from the outside it seems like there's nothing very major going on, while from the characters' points of view the world positively rotates on its axis according to their states of mind and heart.
Marc Ellerby's illustrations accomplish something which is really quite difficult: they catch the spirit of the characters and their milieu and make both seem entirely real while at the same time leaving them non-specific enough that the story could take place in any number of locations (Ellerby works from London, while author Jamie S. Rich is located in Portland, Oregon). Maybe there's a statement about international youth culture in there, or maybe it's just a style he has perfected. Anyway, it's the perfect match for Rich's text."
1. Gene - "To See the Lights"
2. Erasure - "Blue Savannah"
3. The Rolling Stones - "In Another Land"
4. Tony Johnson - "Stage Door"
5. The Who - "Girl's Eyes"
6. Twinkle - "Golden Lights"
7. Joe Dassin - "Les Champs-Élysées"
8. The Primitives - "Lead Me Astray"
9. Fiona Apple - "Sally's Song"
10. Mareva Galanter - "Miss U"
11. Taylor Swift - "Love Story"
12. The Divine Comedy - "A Lady of a Certain Age"
13. Lara Michell - "Love the Way You Love"
