Artist Signatures: Jon Macy

Jon Macy almost needs no introduction as his work is all I've been talking about for the past five years or so, well, when I'm not talking about my own stuff.  He's published his adaptation Teleny and Camille was awarded a coveted Lambda Literary award this spring for erotica.  He's now working on his four part series Fearful Hunter, a fantasy featuring Druids and Werewolves. He drew the above portrait of his two protagonists Oisin and Byron for me at the Emerald City Comicon this spring. Below is the Wolf Master, who I've been pestering Jon to depict for me for some time. Hunky, isn't he!

Artist Signatures: Sean Z

I'd heard of the Myth comic books on several of the Internet forums I regularly read and I'd visited Rated-Z Studios before. But I was very pleased to meet Sean Z, the creator of these comic books at the Emerald City ComicCon this spring. He asked me first, "elf or human? I think elf." Then he proceeded to produce this "portrait". Who knows, this character could show up in one of his stories...

Artist Signatures: Christopher Lange

Jon Macy pointed out to me Chris Lange's artwork last year. I met Chris at the Prism Comics Booth at the 2011 Emerald City Comicon. He's been posting his web comic at Capitol Hillbillies since 2007 and had a small chapbook of his strips published by Northwest Press. His eclectic and graphic style stands out for its ability to engage the reader and yet the topics of his strips are definitely not work safe. Chris's humor is adult, sarcastic and definitely campy, referencing pop music stars, porn stars and Internet sites. What you get is a contemporary pro-safe-sex observation of "twenty-something" gay culture.  In the sketch above the comic strips character's names, as best I can tell, beginning in the upper right corner with Stu pointing his finger, then John in the lower right corner, William to the lower left and finally Clark in the upper left with the cross hanging from his neck...Hey Chris, let me know if I got their names wrong!

Artist Signatures: Jeff Krell

As promised here follows a series of posts about artist signatures and better yet, original art that I collected at the 2011 Emerald City Comicon last March. I'm starting with Jeff Krell, who's work I've read ever since I came out. I first discovered his funny Jayson comic stories in Gay Comix, back in the mid-Eighties. He continued publishing in the Meatmen anthologies in the Nineties. Later Jeff collected the stories together and re-published them through Ignite! Entertainment the publishing company he started to publish his translations of German cartoonist Ralf König's works. He has continued to write new Jayson stories and publish them in their own publications.

When creating my comicbook, Loren and Sylvia, I took a lot of inspiration from Jeff's simple line work. He manages to present just enough information to allow the eye to skim over the page without too much interruption, which makes for a fun and easy read. He also is inventive with his backgrounds which are often similar for whole sequences, but manage to maintain the continuity between panels.

Here we can see Arena, Jayson and Robin, the three main characters of Jayson, enjoying an evening of television watching.  Hot in Cleveland is a new property offered on the TV Land cable network, which usually features reruns of classic television comedies. It stars Betty White, Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Levees, and Wendie Malick and Jeff is a big fan of these actresses and the show.

Artist Signatures: Roberta Gregory

I've been a fan of Roberta Gregory's since I encountered her groundbreaking, Dynamite Damsels. Roberta has written a little about the creation of her first comic book at PrismComics.org and she includes a link to the Queer Zine Archive Project where you can currently download and read yourself. This book set the tone of all my comic book reading since I entered collage, which is to say I was reading primarily underground and independent authors and works relating to sexual politic and Gay/Lesbian lives. Which is not to say there was a lot to read, but thankfully by the mid-Nineteen Eighties we did have the Gay Comix anthology which lead to other things being published by progressive and innovative independent publishers.

I met Roberta in the early Ninties in Seattle at an art show featuring cartoonists held by The Center on Contemporary Art Seattle when it was down on First Avenue. She drew this sheep in my sketchbook and signed it right after the cartoonist's panel where the Bros. Hernandez and other artists discussed their works. Later I got a job in the Fantagraphics circulation department for a couple of years when she was working in their art department. She was publishing her Naughty Bits comic through Fantagraphics which I collected and thoroughly enjoyed.

This post is something of a departure from posting my own artwork, but I've recently acquired several more pages of original artwork with artist's signatures at the 2011 Emerald City Comicon, so I will continue with those for the next few posts.