queer comics, straight up
I will be exhibiting at the 5th Annual Hairrison Street Festival in San Francisco this Sunday, August 31 from 11 AM - 6 PM. I will be sharing a booth in the artists area with fellow cartoonists Justin Hall and Ed Luce. I’ll be telling my new SHIRLIFTER t-shirts, copies of my books, cards and art prints. If you’re in the neighborhood and inclined to check out the festival, come on by and say hi!
The first volume of my graphic novel “Unpacking” ends its serialization at Adultwebcomics on September 12. Although the story itself is not complete - there will be two more volumes - the strip will have arrived at a natural break.
That strip will also be my final posting at Adultwebcomics.com. The following week, I will be moving online serialization of my comics to Modern Tales , one of the first webcomics sites to come along back in the early part of the decade.
Because Modern Tales is a more mainstream (read: all-ages venue) venue, the sexually explicit content that’s been present in the work will not be present online. That doesn’t mean that sex will not be present, but it won’t be anything that couldn’t be seen on cable television. This isn’t going to compromise the work - its more or less how I’e been doing the strip for the past six months, anyway. If anything, I’ve been guilty of ramping up the explicitness of the work simply because I’ve been serializing it on an adult website, where sexual content has sort of been the requirement. This way I can have people spend six months chopping vegetables without feeling too guilty that there’s nothing hot going on.
I’ll be starting over at Modern Tales with a slightly revised/colorized serialization of my story “Unmade Beds” from SHIRTLIFTER #1, which will be officially out of print by the time it starts (I have 10 copies left, and I don’t anticipate that they will last past the Hairrison Street Fair: once the 5 copies that Amazon has left run, out, that’s going to be it). That will give me enough time to finish the revisions on Book One, and get a good head start on Book Two, which will start running in the new year.
I’ve just received the test print of the first t-shirt since I started doing gay comics. I’ve always sort of wanted to do some, but never really got around to it. But I’m going to be exhibiting at the Hairrison street festival this year, and I think people will be more likely to buy shirts and carry them around with them than they will be to carry around comics and art prints, so that spurred me. It’s a 2 color design, and the image comes from the final page of SHIRTLIFTER Issue #1. I think they turned out rather well, and am definitely going to do more in the coming months.
The run is being done by Shayne from www.thebearoutpost.com who I modelled some t-shirts for a while back. I’ll probably be making them available through that site as well, but for right now it’ll be available at Hairrison and right here.
In the next month I’m working on revisions to this first volume of “Unpacking”, the graphic novel I’ve been serializing over at Adultwebcomics.com. This first chunk will comprise the bulk of SHIRTLIFTER #3. The version over at AWC was very much my first draft. In order to make things cohere better, I’m rewriting dialogue, reordering sections, cutting out some parts, and adding others.
The image above is a work in progress, taken from one of the pages I’m adding into the book. It, like most of the scenery in the book, is taken from one of my many, many trips to Vancouver to see Glenn (my ex BF), my friends, and my sister.
Hey all,
I will be exhibiting at San Diego Comicon this weekend as part of the Prism Comics Booth (location #2146-2148 on the convention floor). I’ll be there with my usual set up: copies of SHIRTLIFTER #1 and #2, the STICKY hardcover, and an assortment of cards and prints. I’ll also have a copy of the galleys for the in-progress #3. I
I will be at the Prism table at the following times:
Saturday 2:00 - 7:00 pm
Sunday 12:00 - 2:30 pm.
My friend and booth partner Dave Davenport will be in attendance on Thursday and Friday, and will be displaying my stuff when he is there, but I won’t be able to make it down until Saturday.
However, even when I am not at the booth, my books, cards and prints will be still be available for purchase.
So if you’re planning to attend, by all means drop by and say hello.
Just finished this up over the weekend. A portrait done for John in Brooklyn, NY.
I mean, I know these are hard to find in stores, but come on.
I am down to my last 20 copies of issue 1 though. But you can still order it from me for cover price, have no fear. Though I would do it soon.
Portrait completed last month for Juan, who was patient even though it took me a while to get it finished.
A panel from a page I’m working on for “Unpacking”, my graphic novel in progress at www.adultwebcomics.com/comics/macisaac.php. In the final version of this panel there’s another figure on the left, and word balloons running along the top of the panel, so it looks much more crowded. I like the sparseness of this as is, so I’m putting it up, even though the composition as it exists here doesn’t work on the final page.
One of the thing I like about working digitally is that it’s possible to “remix” work. So even if the final is going to look different, the different stages in the process can still exist separately and have integrity as images, even if they’re different in tone and effect than the final result.
Although this is a review for both SHIRTLIFTER #1 and #2 , its mostly about #2. Which is fine - I definitely agree with the reviewer that it’s the stronger of the two issues. It’s pretty much a rave, which is good timing, since I’m in one of my periodic “fuck comics” moods that I need to get over in order to get any work done. Thanks, Alan.