A while ago I got an email asking if some of my comics could be included in a curated web-exhibit of comics. I just noticed that the exhibit has “opened”! It’s pretty neat and there are some really great comics featured in it and some that look really cool that I hadn’t previously heard of (though I’m pretty out of the loop these days when it comes to comics on the internet). Here’s a little blurb that the curator, John Mitchell, wrote about me:
In “Are You Man Enough?” cartoonist Phil McAndrew gets to the point — dads don’t want your daughters to marry you because they like you, they want them to marry you so they have competition in their never-ending quest to one up everyone around them and prove something. Continually. Into infinity. At least the guy in this story does and his disdain for artists is something that plenty of other guys share. McAndrew hints that an artist not only has to play the game, but the make the game his own. Personal experience?
All this is related through McAndrew’s art style, which is both precisely primitive and often larger than life at the same time.
There’s a little Jules Feiffer in the guy, as exhibited in his strip “The Secret Thoughts of Harold Lawrence Windcrampe,” and its hilarious expression of romantic self-loathing. Cruel to the point of hilarity, his “That Darn Cane” wastes no time in some old fashioned ageist humor that echoes an an earlier sincere slapstick era in magazine cartooning.
McAndrew’s site is well-worth a dive into.
There’s a nice little interview with each of the featured artists too. Mine can be found here. I think this is one of the better interviews I’ve had! I don’t think I come off as too much of a doofus.
First, there’s a really nice review of some of my recent mini comics over at Shawn Hoke’s Size Matters blog. He reviews Are You Man Enough?, The Secret Thoughts of Harold Lawrence Windcrampe, and This & That 3. Here’s a little bit of the review that made me smile and think “this guy totally gets it”:
The art veers from sketchy and minimal pages to lovely shaded and textured panels with generous black ink. Phil frequently uses exaggerated figures to fill his stories with uneven relationships of power – kids cowering under towering adult authority figures or the trembling artist in Are You Man Enough.
I unfortunately recently sold out of copies of
Are You Man Enough?, but the others are available in
my store.
Here’s a look at some of the new mini comics I’ll have with me at SPX this weekend!
Are You Man Enough? It’s easily the most popular thing I’ve ever drawn. Yes, I have fake mustaches and will be sticking them to the covers of each copy. I’ve got a variety of shapes and colors, so there is a mustache for everyone. I’ll be sticking them on as people buy them, so you can pick what kind of mustache you want, or if you even want it on the cover at all. I’m sure some people will just want to stick the complimentary mustache on to their faces so that they can strut around the convention with confidence, knowing that they look really dang cool. Anyways, this one is twenty pages.
The Secret Thoughts of Harold Lawrence Windcrampe. This one is a beast at forty-eight pages, with a two-color screen-printed cover on fancy paper. I put a lot of time and care into printing these!
This & That 3. These aren’t exactly new - I printed the first run of them over the summer for the MoCCA Fest and I’ve had them available online since then. But I have less than ten copies left from the first printing and I have yet to bring this mini comic to SPX so I decided to go ahead with a second printing. The contents are the same, but the covers are a little different. The first printing had screen-printed covers on mint green cardstock. The second printing doesn’t have screen printed covers, but the cardstock is twice as thick and they’re printed in black on super fancy “orange fizz” colored paper. I originally wanted to print on orange stock for the first printing but wasn’t able to get my hands on any in time for MoCCA. So I do think the second printing looks a little nicer! They’re thirty-six pages and collect some of my short strips, doodles, and anthology contributions from the last couple years.
I only printed 100 copies of each of these. If I have any left after SPX (I’m sure I will), I’ll make them available online. I’ll also have This & That 2 with me this weekend, but in limited supply.
For all the info on SPX and how you can find me there, check out
my previous post! See you this weekend!
SPX is practically upon us! I’ve mentioned it before, but here it is again:
It’s in Bethesda MD this coming weekend (October 4th & 5th). I’ll be there, exhibiting at table E16 along with New Reliable Press, Kate Beaton, and Emily Horne. New Reliable Press will be debuting You Ain’t No Dancer 3 at the show, which Kate and I both contributed to. I believe a few other contributors will be stopping hanging out at the table every so often to sign books and exchange high fives.
On top of being a part of You Ain’t No Dancer 3, I will have two new mini comics with me! Tangible, printed versions of both Are You Man Enough? and The Secret Thoughts of Harold Lawrence Windcrampe. I’ll also be reprinting This & That #3 for the show, which I first put together for the MoCCA Festival back in June and have already almost sold out of. I’m also printing up new shirts and buttons! So I’ll have plenty of stuff with me.
I also want to thank everyone for all of the super nice comments and emails I’ve been getting recently! I’ve already started penciling out some new comics for you internet folk and will finish them up after SPX. right now I have to go back down to my basement and finish printing shirts and mini comic covers!
So while everyone is out doing fun Friday night stuff, here I am, sharing with you a brand new comic that I just finished working on this very evening. Click on the image below to read it, I hope it makes you smile!
I was originally planning to not put this one on the internet, making it a “print only” thing, but I like giving stuff away for free too much. Anyways, I’ll still be printing this up as an 18 page mini comic sometime in the next week or two and will have it for sale at SPX, along with the mini comic version of The Secret Thoughts of Harold Lawrence Windcrampe, and a bunch of other junk.
Yes! It’s true! I’ve redesigned my website. I’m pretty happy with it. I’ll be using this blog a lot more from now on to share news and updates. I encourage you to add it to your RSS feed reader thing!
Anyways, check out the new site. If you refresh a few times while looking at it, you might discover a neat surprise! The image on the right side of the page will change. One of three different images will be randomly selected and loaded. I plan to add a new one into the mix once every month or so.
Along with the new design, there are also SIX new illustrations up in my portfolio. Check them out! And if you haven’t already, take a peek at the comic I finished about a week ago, The Secret Thoughts of Harold Lawrence Windcrampe. It’s been getting a lot of link love. So far in the past week it’s been been viewed almost 80,000 times. I guess it’s pretty popular? I’ll have it printed up as a nice little forty-four page mini comic in time for SPX.
Speaking of SPX, I will definitely be there! And I will be sitting at a table! And I’ll have comics and shirts and stuff with me! Ed Brisson was kind enough to offer me a little space at the New Reliable Press booth, where You Ain’t No Dancer 3 will be debuting! I’ll be sharing my little corner of the table with Kate Beaton. I’m really looking forward to the weekend of October 4th & 5th!
And speaking of You Ain’t No Dancer 3, it won’t hit shelves until early October, but if you pre-order it now, your book will ship the week of September 22nd. So you can get it before the comic shops AND everyone at SPX!
