Roby and Paul

3 years ago, I conned Roby into helping me print a new Monster anthology. She was running the offset press at Black Cat Graphics, and printed most of that over-sized Monster book there after hours. It was kind of a hellish experience for the two of us, getting that book done in time for SPX. I think we finished stitching them around 2am the morning of the show, and I promptly jumped in the car and drove overnight to Maryland.

And apparently we learned nothing from all this, because here's a new MONSTER book, and it's another back breaker, with SPX breathing down our necks yet again...

Here's a glimpse at the comic that Roby drew for the book:

and I did this thing:

Mat Brinkman

i met Mat sometime in the fall of 1992; he was part of the SBS crew that regularly skated past my room on Angell Street in the middle of the night. the hill does not at first appear to be skateable... it's a severe incline, with crossing traffic at the bottom, but they somehow had it timed perfectly. when the light turned red, distantly visible from the top of the hill, they started down, so that by the time they reached the bottom (at terrible speeds) the light turned green again, allowing them to pass harmlessly through the intersection. oh, but they took some safety precautions, of course: metal plates screwed into their boots and gloves, so they'd leave a shower of sparks in their wake as they skated down. when they rode en masse, it looked and sounded like a comet rolling downhill.

so you can imagine i was a bit in awe of Mat at that first meeting. and honestly, that awe has not diminished in the 20 years that i've known him. his drawings are some of my favorite things ever made, i still regularly read his comics, he's played in some of the best bands this city has produced, and now he's making board games. that's pretty damn rad.

oh, and he did a comic for the new MONSTER anthology. here's a page:

Brian Ralph

To be honest, it was pretty much blind luck that Brian and I were assigned rooms right next to each other, our freshman year in the art school dorms. It also helped that his roommate went to great lengths to make their room unpleasant to be in, forcing Brian to spend most of his time hanging out with me and my crazy roommate Bob. Suffice to say, I feel pretty damn lucky to have known this dude for all of my adult life.

There's a very good reason why Brian is an international funny book superstar: he works harder than everyone else. His output of work over the years that I've known him is mind-boggling: Fire Ball, Cave-In, Climbing Out, Daybreak, Reggie-12, countless minis and short strips in anthologies and magazines, posters, prints, t-shirts, action figures (seriously, action figures?! That's living the dream...) and on, and on... Oh, and everything he does just happens to be wonderful.

Brian and I made the first MONSTER anthology in, what, '97? I can't remember exact dates... but it was a long, long time ago. I think he's contributed to every single one of them since. Here's a couple pages from his comic for the new one:

Jordan Crane

Jordan Crane is one of the best people working in comics; he's frighteningly talented,  incredibly kind and generous. in the mid 90's, he began editing and publishing (and contributing to) NON, which set the pace for all other comics anthologies of the time, and granted exposure to a number of unknown comics creators who would go on to be big-timers. the line-up for NON #5 alone reads like a Murderers' Row of funny book badassery: Jason, Brinkman, Megan Kelso, Nick Bertozzi, Chippendale, BRalph, Rege, Paul Pope, David Choe, Steven Weissman, Kurt Wolfgang, and many many others... now that's a heavy book.

and now, with a number of books under his belt, and two regular titles (Keeping Two and Uptight), and his regular production of beautiful prints and illustrations (seriously, check out all the stuff in his store), it's kind of shocking that he had time to send us this fantastic comic for the new MONSTER:

...but i sure am grateful that he did. actually, this is the second appearance Jordan has made in the pages of MONSTER, he did a story for a long lost, finished but never printed, volume of MONSTER about 15 years ago. wait, 15 years? it can't have been that long, can it?

well, if i can ever get the covers from BRalph, i'll be finally putting that lost MONSTER together and made available in the Hidden Fortress shop. i'll let you know how that goes.

STORENVY

there is now a Hidden Fortress storenvy store, which is a great place to buy all our comics, and whatever else we decide to make, like that shirt i made with this grotesque image on it:

i'll keep the Big Cartel store around for now, but truthfully, the storenvy store will be getting most of my attention.

http://hiddenfortress.storenvy.com/

CAKE 2013

the Hidden Fortress Press is thrilled to be returning to the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo on June 15-16th! Walker Mettling, of the Providence Comics Consortium, has been kind enough to provide this Providence comics family cheat-sheet for finding us all out there on the floor:

just looking at that map, and without even knowing who's at the rest of those tables, it's easy to tell that this show will be a tour de force. Leif Goldberg is one of the most talented folks i know, i'm sure he'll be bringing some wondrous wares to Chicago; i know that Cybele and Olivia will both have amazing new books; Walker has a talent for getting some of the best cartoonists alive to work on the PCC anthologies with him; Mike T and Mickey Z are two of my favorite people, and favorite artists. i'm sure they'll have new comics too, possibly a RAV8 from Mickey?; Caroline Paquita and her Pegacorn Press can work wonders with a Risograph; and Jo Dery is one of the greatest and most talented people i've ever met. oh, and she did all the promotional art for CAKE this year too.

i'm sad to say that i won't be able to make it this year; the show looks to be a great one, with so many wonderful people under one roof! in my absence, Roby Newton will be there to run the Hidden Fortress table. you should stop by and see her, she's the bee's knees

TCAF

Last weekend, the Hidden Fortress descended upon Toronto, Ontario, Canada for TCAF, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, and brought some copies of the freshly printed second volume of the three-part MONSTER comic. This volume features the work of Sam Dollenmayer, Michael DeForge, Keith Jones, Mickey Zacchilli, Marc Bell, Molly O'Connell, Seth Cooper and Devin Flynn, and once again has a beautifully printed letterpress cover by Heather Benjamin:

here's one of Marc Bell's pages, painstakingly reproduced on the Ryobi:

TCAF and Toronto were wonderful. Every chance I got to walk away from the table, I found a different nook or cranny where more tables were set up, with more people selling more comics. It was both overwhelming and awe-inspiring. 

here's a picture of Cheryl Kaminsky commandeering the table while I wandered off on one of my forays: