.

1. Toby Robot Satan (Toby Robot Satan, by Corey Pandolph)
2. Swifty  (The Super Fogeys, by Brock Heasley)
3. Rip Haywire (Rip Haywire, by Dan Thompson)
4. Cory (Watch Your Head, by Cory Thomas)
5. Bill (Legend of Bill, by David Reddick)
6. Imy (Imy, by Irma Erikson)
7. Ralston Rabbit (Ink Pen, by Phil Dunlap)
8. Alice Otterloop (Cul De Sac, by Richard Thompson)
9. Leopold (Scary Gary, by Mark Buford)
10. Gill (Gill, by Norm Feuti)
11. Doug (Dog Eat Doug, by Brian Anderson)
12. Sophie (Dog Eat Doug, by Brian Anderson)
13. Buckley (Pinkerton, by Mike Witmer)
14. Steve (Pinkerton, by Mike Witmer)
15. Clovis (Imagine This, by Lucas Turnbloom)
16. Lio (Lio, by Mark Tatulli)

And in case you’re wondering what the “once again” is referring to, I ran a very similar strip (pictured below) last August.

1. Cow (Cow & Boy by Mark Leiknes)
2. Billy (Cow & Boy by Mark Leiknes)
3. Gary the Vampire (Scary Gary by Mark Buford)
4. Ed the Penguin (Arctic Circle by Alex Hallatt)
5. Tina (Tina’s Groove by Rina Piccolo)
6. Edison Lee (The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee by John Hambrock)
7. Captain Victorious (Ink Pen by Phil Dunlap)
8. Norm T. Platypus (My Cage by Melissa DeJesus and Ed Power)
9. Petey Otterloop (Cul De Sac by Richard Thompson)
10. Jill Kaplan (The Pajama Diaries by Terri Libenson)
11. Banks (Barkeater Lake by Corey Pandolph)
12. Bob (We the Robots by Chris Harding)
13. Samuel Rhodes (Pros & Cons by Kieran Meehan)

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It took longer than I originally anticipated, but the first collection of Gill books are in and the store is open!

Gill is now available for the first time in print in this limited edition comic book!

Issue #1: “I’m not Retarded, I’m Big-Boned!” is a collection of the first 107 Gill strips. It begins with the first Gill strip I ever drew and ends with the conclusion of the “Cheesy Chester’s” story line. This is a limited run of 1000. All will be signed and numbered!

Domestic shipping and handling is $2.00. International shipping is $5.00. You can order up to 2 copies without paying additional shipping. More than 2 and the rates increase.

To purchase, just visit  www.gillcomic.com. Supplies are limited, so order yours today!

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I did an interview with the web-zine Sequential Tart recently and they’ve posted it today.  Check it out HERE

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Mostly I’ve been hanging out with John Hambrock and his lovely wife Anne. John produces one of my daily must-read comics, The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee.

John and I exchanged original art. I was super psyched to trade him for one of his recent Edison strips that I found particularly funny … and was immensely jealous of because it’s an idea I should have thought of!  

On Friday night I met up with another of my favorite cartoonists, the brilliant and talented Kieran Meehan who produces the comic strip Pros & Cons through King Features as well.  I’ve blogged about Kieran’s work before and have loved his strip since day one.  He came all the way from Glasgow for the event with his brothers Tony and David, and his nephew, Michael. They’re a great bunch and I’ve had so much fun talking with them.

Here I am schmoozing with the creator of Stay Tooned! magazine, John Read.  If you haven’t checked out his magazine, you really should.  He’s a true friend to cartoonists and his magazine is chock-full of great interviews with the best in the business.  

I also had the pleasure of meeting up with fellow Tall Tale Featurers Tom Racine and Lucas Turnbloom!  Lucas produces the comic strip Imagine This, and Tom is the voice of Tall Tale Radio. It was so nice to finally meet them in person.  We had some laughs talking about comics, movies and TV shows. Above is Tom, myself and Lucas in front of the In-N-Out Burger they introduced me to. We don’t have those on the east coast. Good stuff!

The Reuben Award ceremony was great.  You can read who all the winners were over at The Daily Cartoonist.  

Mostly I just took pictures of the people I was hanging out with, but I had brief conversations with a ton of other cartoonists and people in the industry I admire greatly.  Paul Gilligan (Pooch Cafe), John Glynn (Editor at Universal Press Syndicate), Vic Lee, (Pardon My Planet), Jeff Corriveau (DeFlocked), Mark Tatulli (Lio / Heart of the City), just to name a few.  Not to mention the legends of the industry I was able to just shake hands with and say hello.  Scott Adams, Bill Amend, Jean Schulz.  The bigger they were the more gracious they were.  All splendid people.

John and Anne Hambrock.

From left to right: Michael Meehan, Kieran Meehan, Me, David Meehan.

Brendan Burford, and wife Rina Piccolo.

Well, I’m off to get some breakfast.  One more day to go before I’m on a plane back to Massachusetts.  I’ll post more on Monday.

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As many of you know I’m attending the 63rd annual Reuben Awards this weekend.  For those of you who don’t know, the “Reuben” is the cartooning world’s equivalent to the “Oscar” award presented by the National Cartoonists Society for outstanding cartoonist of the year. Each year they hold a three-day event of seminars, drinking, more seminars, awards, drinking, and drinking. This year, the awards are in Hollywood, California.  Very cool!

The nominees for the Reuben this time around are Dave Coverly (Speed Bump), Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine), and Dan Piraro (Bizarro).  There are a host of division awards handed out as well. You can check out the categories and nominees on the NCS website.

I only became an NCS member this year, and it’s my first time attending the Reuben Awards, so I thought it would be fun to blog about the experience throughout the weekend.

I got up early this morning and picked up my name badge and a very generous amount of swag the NCS gives out to attendees.  Nice!

By far, the coolest bit were Dan Piraro’s Bizarro trading cards.  A little packet of laminated cards with a Bizarro strip on each one.  I have to admit that I was disappointed to find no gum inside, though.  Come on, Dan, trading cards are supposed to come with a stale piece of gum, everybody knows that.

After bringing my swag back to the hotel room, I headed out to find some breakfast and get the lay of the land.  The picture above was taken out the window of my room.  I’ve got a nice view of the hills and the Hollywood sign.

The hotel is about half a block away from Hollywood Boulevard.  Above is the famous Grauman’s Chinese Theater, and the Ripley’s Believe it or Not museum.

While looking for a place to eat, I stumbled across the stars of Charles Schulz and Walt Disney on the Hollywood Walk of Fame totally by accident.  How apropos!

Well, the seminars will be starting soon, so that’s all for now.  More to come later!

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I’ve decided to test the waters of self-publishing with my first Gill comic book, “I’m Not Retarded, I’m Big-Boned!” It’s a collection of the first 107 strips, ending with the Cheesy Chester’s story line. This will be a limited run of 1000. The first 100 sold will be signed.  All will be numbered.

I hope to have a handful ready in time for the Maine Comics Arts Festival I’ll be attending on May 17th with Corey Pandolph (The Elderberries, Barkeater Lake, Toby Robot Satan) and Lincoln Peirce (Big Nate). I had to place a rush order to get them in time for the con – which is expensive – so I’ll literally only have about 20 on hand. After that, I’ll put up a store on the Gill website when the rest of them come in and they’ll be ready for purchase.

I’ll post pictures of the actual book when they come in.

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After much thought, I’ve decided to give Gill a go as a webcomic.  It officially launches today!

Gill will run 5 days a week online. The strips that run Monday through Thursday will be in black and white, while the Friday strips will be larger and in color.

For those of you who have seen the samples of Gill already, you will see a lot of the same material in the first few weeks. However, the large color Friday strips will all be new, so be sure to swing by and check them out.

If you like Gill, please help me out by spreading the word!

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An email interview I did with Alex Dueben over at Comic Book Resources went live on their website yesterday.  Among other things, I talked about the strip, my book, and the health insurance story line I did back in August.  

Just click on the link if you want to check it out.

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I was pleased to see one of Barkeater Lake’s residents sporting some nice Retail merch today.  Sweet!  Thanks, Chuck.  That’s two more dollars in my Zazzle account!

And speaking of general Fake Rockstarness, Toby (Robot Satan) launched his own site today. You can check it out at www.tobyrobotsatan.com.  This could be the real-life version of Skynet becoming sentient … so watch your back.

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Originally, the book was simply to be called “The Retail Employee Handbook”, so when it came time to do a cover mock-up for use in Hyperion’s fall catalog that year, I drew the artwork above.  Before the catalog was printed however, the folks at Hyperion made the suggestion that we make “The Retail Employee Handbook” the subtitle of the book and take part of one of my chapter names (Faux Empathy: Pretending You Care) for the main title instead.  It was a great idea, but the artwork no longer fit the title.  They used this art for their catalog, but we needed something different for the book when it went to print.  So I went to work on some new designs.

As you can see in the sketches above, I tried to incorporate the original layout into the “pretending you care” theme, but it didn’t work out too well.  Having Cooper, Marla and Val stand close together behind the counter worked when they were scared of the looming crowd of angry customers, but not so well in the new context.  So I switched gears and decided to simplify the design.

There were probably about half a dozen other sketches before the one above was settled upon as the winner.  It was given the green light by Jay Kennedy and the folks at Hyperion, so I went to work on the finished artwork.

Ah, but when the artwork was finished and submitted, some marketing people somewhere decided that having two women on the cover might give people the idea that the book was only meant to appeal to women.  So, it was suggested that we put Cooper behind the counter instead.  I argued that it wouldn’t make much sense in the context of the strip (save for Cooper’s short stint in the shoe department), but the powers that be were pretty adamant on the subject.  I was reminded that despite the old adage, people do indeed judge books by their covers.  

In the end I decided to defer to their experience in the matter.  I figured the fans of the strip probably wouldn’t give it much thought, and that anything I could do to maximize the odds of getting the book into the hands of people who weren’t familiar with the strip was a good thing.  So I Photoshoped Cooper into the scene and the cover was finished.

In retrospect, the change was probably a wise one … and I’ve yet to get any angry “Hey!  What the hell is Cooper doing behind the counter?!” emails.  

I think one of the hardest things to learn as a professional artist is when to make concessions for the sake of your editor/clients, and when to stand your ground.  You don’t want to cave in to every suggestion, but you also don’t want to shoot yourself in the foot just to defend the absolute purity of your ideas either.  It’s a balancing act to be sure.  It’s not always easy to make compromises without damaging the integrity of an idea, but it’s an essential skill to learn in this profession … and one that I think can ultimately make you a more successful artist.

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