Johnen Vasquez Reviews Chumble Spuzz

What you are about to read is one of the highest compliments I have ever been paid, and convenietnly it is typed up and posted in a blog, so I don't have to try to recollect it for you from a brief meeting at a comic convention. Johnen Vasquez, creator of some of my favorite works, includng Squee and Invader Zim, finished reading both Chumble Spuzz books, and wrote this long review, which not only had me blushing, but laughing out loud.


The review.

Thanks, Johnen, for this. You made my day. Or week. Maybe even month.

Ethan

Interview and APE CON

I’m an APE Special Guest The APE (Alternative Press Expo) Convention will be in November, and cuddly little ol' me will be SLG's special guest this year. I feel very honored. I have never been to APE, but have always wanted to go, because I am an alternative comics-o-phile. Dan Vado, the founder of SLG is also the founder of APE, and it is one of the biggest celebrations of indy comics in the US, if not the world. So being one of the six special guests is quite a compliment.

Apparently I will get a panel. I am thinking about bringing some kind of prize to the few people who actually come to it. It will be my first panel ever, so I have to celebrate even if no one comes. Whatever happens, I think it will be fun. APE! Here's my descrption on the APE site:

Ethan Nicolle

Cartoonist Ethan Nicolle’s work features those lovable reprobates Gunther a nd Klem, whose stories are collected in Chumble Spuzz volumes one (“Kill the Devil”), and two (“Pigeon Man” and “Death Sings the Blues”). Nicolle lives in Portland, Oregon in an attic and tells us he’s one of those “little head, big body” type of guys.

Courtesy SLG Publishing





Besides all that jazz, here's an interview I did with JK Parkin at Newsarama.

FOUR NEW BOOKS at COMIC CON 2008

Woopdee hoo!

I'll have four new books available at Comic con this year. They will be in limited supply. Here they are:

First is the most obvious, which I will be selling with my brother at the SLG booth, along with volume one:


Description:
Gunther and Klem return in two new tales from the warped and endearingly disturbed world of Chumble Spuzz! In their first adventure, Pigeon Man , Klem befriends a man who was raised by pigeons, but Gunther sells the pigeon man out to a local zoo for Feral Humans to buy himself a new robot. When Klem discovers that the zoo is only a cover up for an illegal underground feral-human fighting operation, he'll do anything to rescue his new friend from the inhumane zoo's cruel death matches. Also included is the tale Death Sings the Blues , starring the Grim Reaper himself! After a conversation with Klem about his recently deceased pet sea monkey, Death realizes all of the pain and suffering he has caused the world through taking away life, and unable to bare the pain anymore - he kills himself! When Death commits suicide, everything that has ever died begins to reanimate! Can Gunther and Klem stop the massive outbreak before the world expires from zombie overpopulation?


AND the new Reverend Mofo "Word of the Lord BIOTCH" Tshirt will be for sale:



Then, at the Bad Karma Booth:
Me and Eric's new creation, which should get some interesting reactions, stars Jesus Christ on a mission to kick ass.



Description:
THE SON OF GOD IS BACK.... but this time's different

Wars. Hunger. Genocide. For Jesus Christ, this is the view of Earth from Heaven.

But when the savior of mankind decides to go back in time and repair Earth, starting with the Holocaust, things end up easier said than done.


Then... these next two books are collections of art I have built up over the years. The first is my full collection on Far Side style gag cartoons. If you liked Chumble Spuzz you wil probably like this book:



Description:
Chumble Spuzz creator, Ethan Nicolle, collects over 10 years of single-panel gag cartoons, dating back to his days on his high school's newspaper staff, and later published in the gambit weekly in new Orleans. in the random and unhinged style of the far side, but without the cleverness or massive success, sumo poop pokes fun at everything, including farm animals, bowel movements, sumo wrestlers, maternity wards, and ninjas. anyone with a sense of humor is guaranteed a laugh, and anyone with a sense of decency is bound to be offended.


And lastly, I've compiled a large collection of sketches and commissioned art into this 112 page book:



Description:
A massive dump of sketches and art from various unreleased projects decorate 112 pages in this packed little sketch book from ethan nicolle. includes pages from the never finished "code of the juggernaut" comic book, lots of strange creatures, and a number of other pieces that have never been printed elsewhere.

Of course along with these, the Weevil will be available.

The Bad Karma books will be in shorter supply, so if you want one, don't procrastinate! I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing everyone who can make it to the con. See you soon!

Ethan

Drawing a page of Chumble Spuzz

I decided to do a screen capture thingy. This is a page from "Death Sings the Blues" the short story in Chumble Spuzz book 2. This page took me 3 hours originally, it's sped up 16 times in this video. People usually put these videos to some kind of artsy electronic alternative music, I went with some old Stanley Brothers bluegrass tunes and a church song. I think it looks like I was drawing to the music.



This is all drawn in Manga Studio. This story is mainly narrated, and isn't going to have any panels- it's kind of collage style,so it's different from a normal page. As you can see, it has zombies. Here's the finished page (click to enlarge):



Let me now what you think of this. I may post more if I have time.

Another Art Dump

Here's another quick art dump... these are some sketches from the ol' sketch book for a new project I'm submitting to Cartoon Network (fingers crossed!)...I found this little guy in an OLD sketch book from high school. This is how Gunther from Chumble Spuzz used to look. A lot more ugly and scary...


Below are some concept drawings for the 2nd Chumble Spuzz book, which is about a zoo that contains people that were raised by different animals. These are just some ideas I came up with for human/animal things that are pretty ridiculous.

This was an attempt at a cover for the book, done in Walnut Ink. While I like it, it didn't work in color very well. I'd be willing to sell it if anyone wants to make an offer:

And this is a concept sketch for the short story that will be in Chumble Spuzz book 2 called "Death Sings the Blues". I kind of mixed the Grim Reaper with Robert Johnson. The story is sort of a tribute to old blues music, and zombies.

There you have it. My art blog bowels are now relieved.
-eef

Some more recent stuff

I haven't posted up any of the fun stuff I've been working on lately, so here's a few of the drawings I've been doing for the Inuit Mythology Project. The first set I did for them was colored pencil drawings. I've since done about 80 ink drawings for them. These are some of my favorites...






I love this job because it stretches me to draw things I wouldn't have otherwise tried drawing, and I also get to expolore my digital inking techniques. These are all digitally inked, except for the one pencil drawing I included, which I scanned in from a sketch book. The final is digitally inked, but i really liked the look of it in pencil.

Chumble Spuzz Was in Wizard!

So yesterday i was talking to Eric on the phone, and he said that is buddy Brett saw a little blurb about my comic in the most recent copy of Wizard magazine. I didn't truly believe it. I have a self-defense mechanism that has been reinforced by the cruelness of female-kind and my own stupidity to not react to anything until you know 100% if it's true. For you non-comic people, Wizard is the Sports Illustrated of the comics world. There is no bigger comic magazine. It would be like if Lunaractive got a small blurb in Rolling Stone.

So I eagerly drove to Fred Meyer where I usually buy Wizard magazine, if I'm in the mood. They were out of them. So then I drove to Haggen, the yuppie grocery store, and found it. I opened it and flipped through every page and found nothing. I went through it a second time.

Nothing.

Then an ad catches my eye for the next issue of Wizard which hits comic stored December 26th and news stands January 8th. So I had the wrong issue. It was about 8:30PM. I sped northbound toward southeast Portland to try to make it to Guapo comics and coffee, since the book wouldn't be available on news stands for a few more days. They used to close at 9:30PM when I lived nearby (a few months ago).

When I arrived, they were closed. They changed their hours. As it turns out, if I had just left and gone straight to Guapo I would have had it. I just missed them.

So I went to bed, and this morning I woke up and headed for the comic store in Milwaukie- Things From Another World. They had the issue and I nabbed it up, and went into my car to find it. Sure enough, there it was. In a little tiny section along the bottom of one of the pages, there's a featurette where the headline reads "INDIE WATCH '08: Check Out These Small Press Must-Reads." Mine was the first on the list. Here it is...




I know that if you have never really been into comics this isn't that big of a deal... and even then, it's not THAT big of a deal. But still- Wizard magazine hardly touches comics that aren't super mainstream. In fact, they seem to cover comic related film and television more then comics anymore. This magazine is everywhere in the country... I used to buy it at McKay's market in Lakeside. I remember getting a subscription when I was in highschool. So I'm excited that the most widely distributed and read comic news magazine there is sent a blurb about my book and tagged it as a "must read." That's cool.