99 Ejercicios de Estilo at Semana Negra

What's that, you say? It means "99 Exercises in Style at Black Week" and it refers to the fact that Ediciones Sins Entido's Spanish edition of my book will be back from the printer any day now and I will be officially debuting it at the Semana Negra in Gijón, Asturias, in the northwest corner of Spain. If you find yourself in Gijón the weekend of July 6, I will be doing a book launch as one of the many literary and arts event that happen amidst the food stalls, rock concerts and amusement park rides that characterize SN, which is one of the largest cultural events in Europe although no one seems to have heard of it who hasn't been there.

Here's a look at the cover (It's almost time for a gallery of 99 Ways covers from around the world--I'm waiting for the South Korean and Belgian editions):
Jessica will be there with me and will also be launching a new book, the wonderful Astiberri's edition of Mirror, Window, which will be titled Escaparate (display window) in Spanish. Read more...

Matt at the MoCCA Art Festival

This coming weekend I will be at the MoCCA Art Festival in the Puck Building in New York City. Jessica and I will be at table #B38, which is in the middle of the first room as you enter from the street. We will have a sneak preview printout of our new textbook, Drawing Words and Writing Pictures, which will be out from First Second next spring.

I will also have a new minicomic--I can hardy believe I'm writing that considering how little time I've been able to devote to my own comics these last two years. It's a short story I did for a Spanish publication on the theme of "the other" and it is thus called "The Others" (I ran a preview of one of the spreads a month ago or so):

Jessica and I will also have copies of our books, other minicomics, and some original art for sale so drop by and say hello. Read more...

Playing Lars Von Trier to Tom Hart's Jorgen Leth

My good friend Tom Hart recently watched The Five Obstructions, in which Danish enfant terrible Lars Von Trier challenges his mentor Jorgen Leth to remake his short film The Perfect Human five times, each time submitting himself to constraints--or obstructions--to be chosen by Von Trier. It's an excellent movie about the creative process and about productive collaboration.

Tom has been doing a daily strip for New York and Boston's Metro newspaper for a while now and has been looking for ways to keep it interesting and lively for himself and his readers, so the movie inspired him to ask me--we've actively shared an interest in Oubapo and experimentation in general for years--to come up with some constraints for his strip.

We have decided to make the dialogue public: my constraints, his creative process, my reaction to his results, etc. You can read his introduction here and my first constraint here. Be sure to keep checking his blog over the next week or two, it should be interesting. Read more...