Mickey Z

well, dear reader, i have good news and i have bad. the bad news is that Mickey Zacchilli has pulled her comic from this current Monster. but fear not! i don't know how she did it, but somehow in the last week she's produced eleven new pages to replace the old strip. she is putting us all to shame... 

now go look at her tumblr!

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. 

Pressing Issues

the Hidden Fortress Press just keeps rolling along... we should be wrapping up printing this weekend, then on to chopping, folding and binding.
 

we found a red the shade of dried blood, the blue is kinda veiny too

Jon Vermilyea's sinister crow lends some encouraging words

First pages

The first pages of this MONSTER anthology came off the press today. After much experimentation, trial and error, we've settled on two colors that look good and behave the way we want them to. The stickiest wicket has been getting these two colors to register nicely, on a press that really wasn't meant to handle that... but I think we found a sweet spot.

Andy and Leif

Here now are two of the true Monster Comics OGs: Andy Neal and Leif Goldberg

Andy had a comic in the very first issue of Monster, and now he brings us this tale of mycological horror

check out more monsters at Andy's website

he also runs the best comic book store in the Carolinas, Chapel Hill Comics

Leif Goldberg returns with this Cronenbergian creep-out entitled "They Came From WithIN"

you can find lots of sweet stuff by Leif at Picturebox, and check out his ExplodedView project!

CAKE - Chicago Alternative Comics Expo

Hidden Fortress Press, representing at the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo this past weekend.

Roby and I issued each other a challenge: to create a new comic for Chicago on the Ryobi press, as part of the learning/breaking in process. I would say we had mixed success, but success none the less. Her comic, Fantasmancer #0, came out a lot cleaner than mine, and I had to supplement my pages with some help from Mickey Z's Risograph.

CAKE was a good time, with the greatest people. let's do it again next year

Thomas Toye and Keith Jones

time for some more sneak peaks from the new MONSTER anthology from Hidden Fortress Press!

a creepy story from Thomas Toye:

 you can follow Thomas' work at his blog and on his tumblr

Keith Jones brings us a sordid precautionary tale:

look at more of Keith's work at Nobodyland

Moving Day

the Hidden Fortress is manifest! today we moved a Ryobi offset press, a Champion paper cutter and a Bostitch stitching machine into the shop. we are one step closer to becoming a fully functional, independent, comic book factory...

our entire printing shop on the back of a flat-bed truck

Al, one of our riggers, delicately maneuvering the Ryobi into the space

the Ryobi. it is glorious.

Devin and Mickey

let us begin with some MONSTER previews...

first up, Mr Devin Flynn!



and now, the amazing Mickey Z, whose work can also be seen here...