Jason Viola, Cartoonist Ordinaire

    

 Herman the Manatee is now on Facebook! OK, so Herman has been on Facebook for a while now, but only in the form of a Group. And who really joins Groups anymore? Now there is a shiny Facebook Page that is desperate for your fandom. Become a fan! On their newsfeeds, all of your friends and those people you knew in high school but don’t really talk to anymore will see you are a fan of HERMAN THE MANATEE! It will be so cool.

SUNWARD, the new minicomic I keep talking about, is now availble for sale in my store! I promise it's pretty good. I'm told it's good anyway. At least one person has read it and told me it was really good! This person can be trusted.

I think I had fun at MoCCA but the heat made me DELIRIOUS so I can't remember. People assure me I met some wonderful people and sold a lot of books and I will take their word for it. 

I do remember buying/trading everything available at Corrine Mucha's table because she draws my new favorite comics. And I remember several people throughout the weekend asking for Herman the Manatee books, not because they had seen the webcomic but because Dylan Meconis was referring them. I tried sending folks back to her table but it was difficult because I did not know exactly where it was or what she looked like. 

If you stopped by the table and took a card or took my picture, thank you! If you told me manatee stories and bought some books, thank you too! If you are Dylan Meconis, thank you as well! If you are the unfortunate smell or the suffocating heat of the Armory, I express no appreciation for you. In fact I believe you are responsible for some soggy sketches. 

Oh and while I was away, a review of Volume One was posted at Midnight Fiction! 

 I'm going to be at MoCCA this Saturday, at table 231! I'm going to a wedding in Salem tonight, so I'm taking the bus to  NYC tomorrow morning, will probably arrive a little late. Fortunately Neal will be able to set up the table and all that ahead of time. What I will be bringing with me, which he does not have, is copies of SUNWARD, the new minicomic I just finished and am printing and assembling today! I have been really busting my ass the past couple of weeks to get this thing done and my productivity has, quite honestly though not humbly, astounded me. I really did not think I could do it but I drew 24 pages in 16 days.

It is about a dude named Rhino Dave and his friends Sebastian and Felonious Monk. 40 pages long, it's drawn closer in style to Herman the Manatee than Rabbit Shadows. I think you will like it! Really! I mean I am kind of afraid that you won't but I think you will! Come to my table at MoCCA and pick it up ... and if you are not going, it will be in my store soon.

Here are the first four pages:

"Herman the Manatee" was one of 20 webcomics featured in the Estonian edition of FHM - that is kind of cool, right?


It's in Estonian but I bet they are saying simply fantastic things.

Thanks to Gurukitty for the scan!

 

Portland and Stumptown were both fantastic and I want to tell you about it but I need to draw some comics first.
 

The past two weeks I've been practicing inking with a brush! My experience with this had been limited to squiggles, circles and fills. I started doing rough and silly drawings so that I wouldn't feel bad if I messed up, like this one:

After a week I got confident and tried to do a proper Herman drawing:
 



drew this from a photo in the New Yorker:


And my brother-in-law:

I am not doing the work I am supposed to be doing but I am having fun.

Rene and I just started an incredibly nerdy book club.

Herman the Manatee Volume I is now available for $3 in the Manatee Power store! Now you can take a little collection of Herman strips with you wherever you go - put it in your pocket when you are hiking, carry it in your purse for when you are waiting on line at the bank, or leave it in your glove compartment for roadside emergencies! Never again will you be caught without an adorable reminder of life's absurd cruelties. It also makes a charming gift for your boyfriend or schoolteacher or the other folks in your life who don't read comics when they are illuminated on a screen. This is a long time coming; many of you have asked for t-shirts, some have asked for propaganda posters, others have asked for velvet paintings, and so it is without hesitation that I give you... a book! Whieh nobody asked for. But I hope you enjoy it anyway.

The tag says: Jason Viola - ACRONYM - Room 24 - Grade 5. 

 

 Here is a drawing I did of me posing as Grover in The Monster at the End of This Book.

This is a drawing for my mom whose birthday is today. She is a fan of both Aerosmith and owls. It was supposed to be colored with watercolor but it turns out the ink I used was not waterproof. Instead it is colored in cursewords. 

Oh and thank you again kinokofry for the idea. :)

I've been painting with watercolor for a few weeks and I'm just starting to get the hang of it.
 

I have been very quiet here the past couple of months, I know - I sometimes have been creating comics in my head and forget you can't see them unless I draw them. Other times I am drawing legitimite comics that you will see later, I promise. Sometimes, it seems, I have already drawn comics that are suddenly available for reading now. For example:

I Saw You... is a comics anthology edited by Julia Wertz, featuring a ton of great cartoonists like Jeffrey Brown, Laura Park, Peter Bagge, Lucy Knisley, Alec Longstreth, David Malki, Keith Knight, Liz Prince, Gabrielle Bell, Sarah Glidden, and ME. How about that? They are all comics based on those missed connection ads on Craigslist. And it's wonderful. Even if I were not a contributor I would urge you to buy it.

Candy or Medicine is a quartlery minicomics anthology edited by Josh Blair that features a good mix of international minicomic makers. Volume 6 came out about a month ago; it is sort of a humor issue and contains a 5 page story by, again, ME. You should buy that one too.

Two comics I made a while ago that you don't have to pay for are guest strips for Eegra and Anders Loves Maria. It's likely you've already seen them but they haven't been linked from my LiveJournal before. So there you are.

In April I'll be exhibiting at Stumptown in Portland, OR and should have available a new comic called Sunward. 

In March, I am still not quite sure what is happening at Webcomics Weekend except that it's in Western Mass and involves open studios with many people who have studios elsewhere. However they manage to accomplish this, the guest list is pretty rad and I'm looking forward to going.

Tuesday marks the first anniversary of Rebecca Clements' KinokoFry, which was voted the Best New Webcomic of 2008 by the Gravity's Rhino LiveJournal! There have been many comics before it that take the elements of children's cartoons and add adult humor or excessive violence, sometimes keeping the simple drawings and bright colors, other times inserting "innocent" kids' characters into an adult genre like horror. Rebecca is remarkable in that she draws a kids' comic intended for adults but maintains the sense of wonder and playfulness that made the best children's cartoons so enjoyable to begin with. You've been reading it, right? Her artwork keeps getting better, especially after she started drawing on the computer; you'd expect the opposite but it really seems to have loosened her hand. My hand right now is too shy and stiff to swoop uninhibited like hers does. There are a lot of moments in her comics and details in her drawings that I have honestly been in awe of - although I've written a lot of strange things in the past, my mind can't bend in this particular way, I could never sing these same notes. Her comics, while inspired by a lot of other things, are very much hers and I'm excited to be watching and reading the beginning of a long career. 

Here's the drawing for this year's card. Merry Christmas, kiddies! Don't fight with your families too much!