SCREWJOB

I think maybe it's finally time to start talking about SCREWJOB, our new comics anthology devoted to those glorious combatants within the squared circle: the professional wrestler! Over the past couple of months I've leaked some previews of Box Brown's Abudllah the Butcher comic, Pat Aulisio's Goldust and Lale Westvind's Wild Wanda, and here are a few more:

Josh Bayer was the first person I asked to work on this book, within minutes of having the idea for it pop into my head last year at Comic Arts Brooklyn. Of course I had to ask him, he's a brilliant cartoonist and a connoisseur of the wrestling arts, the perfect blend for creating something as beautiful as this Classy Freddie Blassie comic:

As a wrestler and a manager, Freddie Blassie was one of the greatest heels the wrestling world has ever seen, and had been known to take a nail file to his teeth, sharpening them so that they could more easily penetrate the tough skin around his opponent's skull

About a week ago, Pat Aulisio sent me a link to some of Blake Sims' rad wrestling comics, suggesting that I contact him to work on the book. Of course I did, because his stuff is so sweet, but with the art deadline looming I felt pangs of guilt about not having asked him months ago... but somehow this dude cranked out an epic Hulk Hogan vs Kevin Sullivan and his Dungeon of Doom comic in a weekend! What a badass

I'm really excited about how this book is coming together! There are more comics coming in every day, all of which I'll be previewing soon, James Quigely (aka GUNSHO) is hard at work on the cover, and I just got some amazing Tigermask and Mr Fudo pinups from Matt Leines. This book is looking beautiful!

If all goes according to plan, SCREWJOB will be available at the Hidden Fortress table at SPX in September!

TCAF 2014

This weekend, the Hidden Fortress Press will be heading north of the border to visit our friends in Toronto! The Toronto Comic Arts Festival is a "week long celebration of comics and graphic novels and their creators" that has been ongoing for 11 years now. We will have a table set up at the vendor fair on Saturday and Sunday on the first floor of the Toronto Reference Library; come visit us at Table 128, which we'll be sharing with Walker Mettling and his PCC, Michael Deforge, and Leslie Stein, and sitting in between Tom Devlin and his Drawn and Quarterly crew and the Pigeon Press table. It's a pretty sweet gig! Here's a map if you'd like to visit:

TCAF will be hosting a ton of fantastic programming all week, but if you're in town and feeling adventurous, on Saturday night the Ted Reeve Arena in Toronto will be playing host to an epic showdown between Ring of Honor and New Japan Pro Wrestling, a "Global War", if you will. It's a stacked card, featuring some of the best in the indy/international wrestling scene. I'm psyched about the matchup between "Unbreakable" Michael Elgin and Taakaki Watanabe!

On that note, it seems appropriate to show off a couple more preview pages from SCREWJOB, the Pro Wrestling anthology we are putting together. Here's a page from Pat Aulisio's fantastic Goldust comic:

and a page from Lale Westvind's epic tale, the Return of Wild Wanda!

Lale Westvind

Providence was recently visited by the comic book dynamo known as Lale Westvind, and I'm pleased to announce that the Hidden Fortress Press was able to add her to the roster of artists working on the over-sized (it's still growing...) new issue of MONSTER! Lale is incredibly talented. Hot Dog Beach #2 won an Ignatz at last year's SPX, and she has a beautiful comic in the new issue of Arthur magazine. Check out her blog here, or better yet, buy her comics here!

Here's a preview of her 8 page MONSTER comic:

like everything she does, it is awesome.

SPX 2012

This weekend, Hidden Fortress Press manifested at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD. We brought the first volume of the Monster 2012 anthology with us, with a super limited edition SPX exclusive dust jacket. Monster 2012 is just under 200 pages long and will be collected in three volumes, each with a beautiful letterpress cover printed by Roby Newton and designed by Heather Benjamin, who is also designing the slipcase that contains the three books.

That's Roby Newton and Ignatz award nominee Mickey Zacchilli representing at the Hidden Fortress Press table. We were psyched to also have Ignatz winner Lale Westvind parked at our table; Hot Dog Beach is well deserving of it's accolades, and Lale is pure badass. 

It was an incredible weekend, we met a ton of wonderful people, saw some dear old friends, met a lot of our heroes, discovered some new heroes, and brought home suitcases full of beautiful books.