ZINE NOT DEAD X

Oftentimes when people look at me sideways upon hearing that I live in a smallish town on the Wisconsin border, I half-jokingly explain that "I live as close to Chicago as I can afford to." Even though it drives me crazy, the City of Chicago is my hometown, where I grew up as a kid, and will always be a special place to me. So, I feel lucky that I get to live in an affordable, peaceful place, surrounded by nature and open space, yet am only a quick drive to "The City." A few weeks ago, I was invited to participate in the tenth iteration of ZINE NOT DEAD, a Chicago zine/comix reading organized by Matt Davis of Perfectly Acceptable and Brad Rohloff of Bred Press.

View from the back porch of the event space, Ballroom Projects.

Steph and I headed into the city, and Google Maps took us in on Ogden Avenue. So we got to drive through Lagrange ("They gotta lotta nice girls there"), Lyons, Brookfield, Stickney, and other mysterious suburbs that I never really go to. We arrived early and had dinner, then took seats at what we called "The Grown Ups' Table" in the kitchen area of the event space. We got to chat with a succession of the Most Awesomest™ Cartoonists in Chicago. Max Morris cuddled for a bit;  Nick Drnaso and his wife Sarah discussed house plants; Aaron Renier and Jessica Campbell went dog crazy; and Raighne Hogan, Maggie Umber, and Iona Fox all said hi. Presently the room filled with people. I was like "Where were all these folks when I was 24???"­

Genius poster from the World's Greatest Cartoonist, Anna Haifisch, hanging in the bathroom, Ballroom Projects.

Soon the show started. Brad and Matt had the crowd in stitches as they work through their usual "technical difficulties."

I spoke third (out of six) so Stephanie and I could make it back home to Beloit before midnight. (Our usual bedtime is about 9 pm.) I read from King-Cat 78, mostly comics about our cats and dogs, so it was fun. People seemed to dig it, and I felt overwhelmed by the warmth and support this community has for one another. It was very moving.

After I read I stuck around for the intermission, which featured a hilarious roast of the hosts by special guests  Gina Wynbrandt and Sarah Squirm. The crowd was howling. I felt kinda sad to have to split early, but I'm old.

Gina as Matt, Sarah as Brad, killing it.

There were, I would guess, well over 100 people in the audience. On the way home I was telling Steph how when I first started making King-Cat you could count the number of US cartoonists making artful, literary comics on two hands. WE'VE COME A LONG WAY, BABY!

FROM LONE MOUNTAIN Available Now!

Hey everyone, my latest KCat collection from D+Q is out now!

FROM LONE MOUNTAIN compiles issues 62-68 of King-Cat (2003-2007), along with a selection of previously unpublished strips and detailed commentary. It features such classic stories as “Trombones No. 1,” “Great Western Sky,” The Sound of the Birds,” “Like a Pigeon,” “Iowa City,” “Las Hojas/Football Weather,” “Freeman Kame,” and the first batch of Diogenes comics. Every page of the original zines is reproduced in order including front and back covers, letters columns, Snornose pages, and Top 40’s. Also includes the standalone zines 3 Poems About Fog and The Ones That Everybody Knows. 308 pages, 6″ x 9″, two color cover, black and white interiors.

You can purchase it from your favorite bookseller, Amazon, D+Q, or even directly from me at Spit and a Half. I'll also of course have copies with me at my upcoming festival appearances.

D+Q's Tom Devlin writes about FLM here and Charles Hatfield has an extensive review up at TCJ.

Thank you! And don't forget I'll be on the road a bit reading from the book. Full tour dates can be found here.

LOVE - John P.

2017/2018 YEAR IN P/REVIEW

2017 was a hell of a year, and we all know it. On the personal side I spent much of it dealing with family health issues, which was hard too. I was always an idealist, but never an optimist. I don't know what this new year will bring, but let's hope somehow it's better than the last one.

Comics-wise, it was busy for me. In the spring I published King-Cat 77 and Jenny Zervakis' Complete Strange Growths book in quick succession. Then in the fall I put out a new edition of Pascal Girard's sweet and funny Apartment Number Three. Additionally, the fine folks at Uncivilized Books published my South Beloit Journal. These can all be purchased online at the Spit and a Half distro site.

Speaking of the distro, it continues to grow not only in size, but in the time it requires of me. I'll turn 50 this year and at some point I will need to refocus my attention on my own comics. But the distro is also such a big part of who I am, and how I want to function in this world. It's tough to balance.

Balance may be my key word of 2018. Things are out of hand -- in the world, in my head -- and I'm looking to restore some steadiness. On my Patreon page I wrote recently about the three things that have never let me down in this life: Zines, Nature, and Zen. As the world outside rumbles off its axis, I'm finding myself in retreat towards these grounding forces in my life. I also have the feeling that I'm running out of time. Fifty is young in most terms, but not for Porcellinos. I'm hoping I have fifteen more years. Anything beyond that will be gravy. If I'm looking at the limits of life in the suddenly foreseeable future, I need to make some serious decisions about what that life is going to entail. I feel like I'm on the cusp of change again.

One of the changes I plan to make is to limit my time spent on social media. In many ways social media was made for me as an artist. I love to share, to communicate, and especially in the form of small tidbits and little asides. But the rise of anti-rationality, argumentativeness, and snark on social media is depressing to me. I'll still be online on Facebook, and Twitter, and Instagram, etc etc, but in a less interactive way. If I can swing it. Addictions are hard to kick.

Meanwhile, this blog has languished somewhat. I hope to come back to it again this year and begin posting more things here rather than on other more corporate platforms. Look for my "Fave Comics of 2016" (!) list shortly, and then my 2017 List soon after.

I have King-Cat 78 in its wrapping-up phase, and hope to publish it in February. After that, the next two issues are already conceived and I should be able to get a lot of work done on them quickly, with at least one of them also being published in 2018. And my next D+Q book, From Lone Mountain, will be published in March, collecting King-Cats no. 62-68, plus bonus material.

So, we'll see. Thanks for all your support this last year, and all these years. It means the world to me.

Talk soon,
John P.

CZF 2014

Well, it's that time of year again -- time for cartoonists and zine-publishers to start hustling around the country to attend the myriad specialty festivals and fairs that have sprung up over the last decade.  From March through November it seems like there's a zine or comix fest somewhere every weekend!

My first of 2014 was last Saturday's Chicago Zine Fest, now in it's fifth year.  After a long period with no zine-based festival in Chicago (hard to believe, considering the presence of the legendary Quimby's and the huge amount of self-publishing going on in the city) it's been great to have the CZF every spring, getting bigger and better with each passing year and showing no signs of slowing down.

Jake's pal Ratso interviews the writers from the Grooves 'N Jams blog

This year my table, which I shared with Chicago zine impresario Jake Austen, was located on the first floor, and after a slow start there was a steady stream of people coming through all day.  I'm pretty sure this was the first year in which there were so many exhibitors everyone was limited to one half-table spot.  This made for a slightly claustrophobic feel behind the tables, but I got used to it pretty quick.  Sales were the best I've ever had at this show, and it was fun to see everybody.  You do enough of these shows and it all becomes family-- not only your fellow exhibitors, but the people in the crowd stopping by.

Afternoon crowds

OG Chicago zine legend Karen Wehrle dropped by to hang out with Jake and go over their plans for the Chicago Music Zine Symposium being held next month.

Ye Olde Spit and a Half Half-Table

One minor problem was that this year's CZF was held the same day, in the same general locale, as the St. Patrick's Day Parade.  It took me 2.5 hours to travel the 90 miles from Beloit to the Loop, and ten minutes to fit into the only tiny parking spot I could find once I got there.  Afterwards was almost worse, having to traverse the city with lurching drunks stepping out in front of your vehicle every fifteen feet.  But all in all an enjoyable day.

Post-show I went up to Thai Spoon for dinner with my old pal Ray.  We stopped at Quimby's to drop off their latest Spit and a Half order in person, and then I headed back out into the darkness to make my way home.

Drove under the O'Hare Oasis on its last day in existence (sigh) and made it to Beloit in time to hear "Ace of Spades" come on the radio at midnight.

Next up, SPACE, in Columbus April 12-13.

HOME + AWAY

Hey Kids,

I got back from the Madison Print and Resist Festival last weekend, so that means only one more show of the year -- MKE Zine Fest Nov. 9.  John P. loves tabling, but he's getting old and tired, and he's chomping at the bit to find out whether he still knows how to make comics, so he's looking forward to a nice, long winter of STAYING PUT AND DRAWING.

Good ol' Spit and a Half table

Print and Resist was so good that afterwards I had that kind of shaky, is this real? kind of pure joy that makes me feel inevitably like when's it all going to come crashing down-- but I'll take what I can get.

I love the Midwest, I love zines, I love weirdos, so I loved Print and Resist.  It was held in the Helen C. White Library at UW-- I mean literally in the library -- my table faced the New Magazine Releases ( I read a great Discover article about OCD during down times).  Picked up some nice books and zines, a cool anti-Walker poster, talked to a lot of swell people and got a workout dragging my 100+ pounds of books eight blocks from the closest parking I could find (apparently, overnight, the library had become besieged by construction).  My arms and shoulders still hurt!   And I can feel muscles in my thighs I didn't know I had! But I sold lots of Kool Komix to awesome people, so that's why I was born.

Visit Art Is Dead Productions 

- - -

(Look for King-Cat 74 to go to press next week, if I can shake this depression...)

AUTOPTIC AND UPDATE

SO...  I'm heading up to Minneapolis in a few days, to participate in PIERRE FEUILLE CISEAUX 4, a France-based collaborative workshop for comics artists.  I'm so excited to be able to attend.  I was invited once before, but because of my ear problems I can't fly, so I had to say no.  Well, this time PFC is being held in good ol' Merka, so I get to join in.

The culmination of PFC is the brand new AUTOPTIC FESTIVAL on Sunday August 18.  Thank goodness Minneapolis has an art-centric comics show again!  I'll be tabling there with lots of Spit and a Half goodness AND, I HOPE, King-Cat #74 in some form or another (probably a special short run edition printed especially for Autoptic).

UPDATE:  I was stressing like crazy trying to come up with a way to get KC 74 out in time for Autoptic, and I'm getting too old for that.  So, no, it won't be available there.  But it will be out shortly thereafter -- late August/Early September!  Thanks and sorry!

Which means -- KC 74 should be out in its regular edition very soon. I'll finish inking the pages this week and put it together next week in time for the Fest.  SO, if you're a subscriber and your address has changed since last year, now would be a good time to drop me a line and let me know (johnp_kingcat AT hotmail DOT com).

When I get back from Minneapolis I'll get the files to the printer, and then the following weekend I'm off to Grand Rapids, Michigan for the first ever GRAND RAPIDS ZINE FEST (Sat. August 24), for which I drew the poster!

ALSO, I'm now on TWITTER: @The_Real_John_P.  What a dork.

More soon.
LOVE,
John P.

SPX PLUS Part Five

Friday afternoon I headed up to Minneapolis in a rainstorm, which quickly abated by the time I got to the I-90 split, and turned into a beautiful Midwestern fall day.

Stopped first at Big Brain Comics, which surely has to be one of the best comic shops in the country, even if it's run by an unrepentant Packers fan.  Owner Michael and I talked football as I browsed, and then it was time for bed.

Drove over to Zak's place where we stayed up too late talking and trying to watch Dark Star before nodding off.  I got up early the next day and headed over to the Twin Cities Zine Fest.

The Spit and a Half table, Twin Cities Zine Fest

Zine fests are the best.  And this one even had vegan gluten free muffins for the exhibitors!

Uncivilized Books Head Honcho Tom K., with Gabrielle Bell's new book The Voyeurs.

TCZF organizer Lacey Prpic Hedtke, with muffins.

Spit and a Half intern Marissa Luna, hard at work.

Kings of the Minneapolis comics scene, Robert Kirby (left) and Tom K., discuss which territories to conquer next, and how said territories shall be divided upon conquering.

These dudes were offering free silk-screening fun.  Above, the print I pulled.  Viva la Papier!

The Fly Away Zine Mobile was out in the parking lot.

Zine Mobile driver, janitor, and CEO Debbie Rasmussen.

Interior.

Why am I always the last one to leave?

I had a couple hours after Zine Fest closed before I had to be at Boneshaker Books for a signing .  So Zak and I went out for tacos, con los munchkins.

Anders Nilsen at Boneshaker.

The reading went well.  Boneshaker was a wonderful shop, well curated, and full of community energy.

That night:  Comics makes for strange bedfellows.

Flossy

Isaac, looking a lot like Papa.

I LOVE YOUSE GUYS.

Heading back home, with the first half of Bear-Rams on the radio.

(1400 pound pumpkin.)

MYSTERIOUS MILWAUKEE

So, I'm just going day by day. A few weeks back I was happy to find that the 2010 Milwaukee Zine Fest was coming up soon, so I immediately signed on. Milwaukee is only about an hour from where I sleep, and I've always had a curiosity about it. Even though I grew up in Chicago (90 miles from Milwaukee) I've only been there 3 or 4 times ever. And it remains kind of a mystery to me. So I thought, zines, Milwaukee... let's go.

The Fest was held in the Falcon's Nest club in the Riverwest neighborhood (The club is home to the fourth oldest bowling alley in America!). Walking inside I was reminded of why I love the Midwest so much. Down to earth, somewhat lost in time, wood paneling. I set up and the show began.

Falcon's Club mailbox.

World War 3 Illustrated table et al.

The Spit and a Half corner.

I thought this was amusing.

Denver homie Kelly Shortandqueer was there sporting his mind-blowing Justin Bieber tee.

On the way home I tried to take a picture of the World's Largest Can of Chili from the highway.  That yellowish blotch in the left-center is it.  Maybe next time I'll get a better pic.

Anyhow, the Fest was a blast.  Everybody was so nice.  It almost made me wanna move to Milwaukee!

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