Scooped from an angelfire website with 18 drawings, I've selected for you, the BEST 10 of AP's sketchbook.
For context, Ariel Pink is a lo-fi, avant garde musician from Los Angeles, California. He's noted as being "weird" or "outsider" and these drawings neither confirm nor deny this. Personally, what I like about these sketchbook drawings is they maintain craft. He didn't play down his ability to draw which is pretty great in the context of a sketchbook. The images where he does use simple lines and shading are hilarious. His drawing ability is so consistent and well-rendered, it's borderline obsessive. I always wished, when I kept a sketchbook, that my drawings would meet both criteria seen here: 1. well drawn 2. interesting but after seeing these, I don't think I can ever doodle again.
10. This looks like some sort of contraption straight out of a Tim Burton movie but with hidden dicks?
9.
A faceless "psychedelic businessman" is similarly Tim Burton-esque but with less dicks and shards of clothing holding on to the contraption.
8.
I think a couple of these are for mixtapes? This is the first of the two. Ignore the great list of music on the side and just the gross, old man, face saying he's "fucked up and horny" clearly commuicates a possible underlying theme for the tape. Plus, I always want to hear "what was said at the dinner party" and music from MEGAMAN.
7.
More traditionally artsy? It's a haunting show of draping and stretching over stuff that I can't quite make out besides the upside-down bird at the bottom.
6.
Maybe it's a scrapped album cover or single cover, as we can see his name in the upper left corner...but continuing on the theme from number 7; it's as if items are lost in some weird mass of drape-y material.
5.
Old fart, Booty time is amazing.
4.
Whatever this is, I'd like to own it. It seems like another tape cover with his music on it, as I am noticing some familiar song titles. Notice that Peter Schilling, David Bowie, Santana and Isaac Hayes all played a part in the making of this :-)
3.
Hellloooo, Benjamin Marra!!! Testosterone eaters, johnny pump? I need an AP + Benjamin Marra comic immediately.
2.
A child hiding inside various human forms.
!!!!!#1.!!!!!! Not sure I've seen a better sketchbook impression of boredom. Are those neurons coming out of the bottom? So good.
DMZ #36 comes out this Wednesday and finishes up the mini-story "The Island" that started last month. Guest artist Kristian Donaldson brings something extra to the story of a bunch of soldiers going party crazy on Staten Island and Brian Wood's writing is really smart as usual.
The most brilliant aspect of "The Island" is the way all these soldiers partying feels--and is--exactly the same as every, a little too crazy beer party you attended in high-school or college: People puking, people not having a good time, people having too good of a time, fun fighting, not so fun fighting, everybody wanting to do it with somebody, etc. etc. It treats the soldiers no different than the rest of us beer-drinking goons, which happens less in representations of war than you'd expect. They aren't idealized and they aren't demonized.
One of the sub-highlights of the issue was Brian Wood's 'Vertigo Voices' column, wherein he admits that his experience with Staten Island, "aside from listening to old Wu-Tang cassettes, is limited to visiting twice" and quickly recounts a house party he attended, and then gives the column over to everyone that works on DMZ to drop a list of "top 5 beer drinking/house party/shout along/get fucked up/DMZ rock-out mix tape songs...". What's so awesome about everybody's list is how it's no bullshit. No one seems like they're trying to be cool or clever or snobby...everyone just picked great party songs that they liked!
Here are our lists, what's on yours?
Brandon: -"Stay Fly" by Three-Six Mafia -"I Like It" by Grand Puba -"Die By the Sword" by Slayer -"Broken Down But Not Locked Up" by Eyehategod -"Starz" by Jaylib
Samuel Rules: -"Work Out Plan" by Kanye West -"Party Til You Puke" by Andrew W.K. -"Doom Doom Doom!" by Latterman -"Dance My Pain Away" by Rod Lee -"Lose Control" by Missy Elliot
Jesse: - "Boogie Shoes" by KC and the Sunshine Band - "Testin' My Gangsta" by Three 6 Mafia - "Ain't Talkin 'Bout Love" by Van Halen - " Conversation" by Mannie Fresh - "You and I" by Rick James
Monique R.: - "Conceited" by Remy Ma - "Get It Girl" by 2 Live Crew - "Ain't Gonna Hurt Nobody" by Kid N' Play - "Tipsy" by J-Kwon - "Born Slippy" by Underworld
Karen: - "I Luv Your Girl" by The Dream - "We Laugh At Danger (And Break All the Rules)" by Against Me! - "Nu Autobahn" by Future Islands - "Five Finger Discount" by Choking Victim - "El Scorcho" by Weezer
David: - "Bad Mouth" by Fugazi - "Car Thief" by Beastie Boys - "Youth Decay" by Sleater Kinney - "I Am a Tree" by Guided By Voices - "Letter To Memphis" by Pixies
Foundation's Edge in Raleigh, North Carolina is probably maybe the best comics store in the world. The people who work there--well at least the owner and the main dude working--are really nice and helpful and know their shit, it's got any and every new issue each week, and an insane amount of back issues, dusty old graphic novels, a stellar collection of porno comics, and a ton of other great stuff, and it's all at ridiculously kind prices. It's a store that's never gotten rid of anything, obviously blossomed during the smart 80s comics boom, weathered the 90s turd-comics storm, and keeps going.
Well, over the past few weeks, plastered on lightpoles and university bulletin boards around Hilsborough Street have been flyers for a big sale, and so, after work, Monique and I headed over there with high hopes but also a boatload of cynicism because other than Baltimore's Cosmic Comix, "comic store sale" usually translates to "take these issues of Shadowhawk off my hands and oh yeah, here's a bunch of XXL T-shirts for 9.99 instead of 17.99!" We were greeted at the door--did I mention these guys are actually friendly?!--with the flyer above and raced upstairs to the back issues and manga and action figures. A bunch of stuff had been put out on tables and marked down to ridiculous sales prices, everything from kinda recent hardback collections to old-as-shit RPG books (I was this close to grabbing a Dominion: Tank Police RPG book) and tons of weird European stuff.
Anyways, here's what we ended up getting, equally around 85 bucks, which meant my check for this review and then some!
Brandon:
-Kamandi #9 by Jack Kirby: I've never ready any Kirby stuff but for whatever reason, I keep staring at these recently and was even tempted to buy that way over-priced hardback collection, so getting a random issue for three bucks and some change was awesome. The cover's got Kamandi and a typical Kirby space-ranger dude in a hot air balloon fighting giant bats dressed in leotards thingies.
-Manga Suprise! July 1996 - This has a ton of interesting stuff from American and Japanese artists, but I got it because it has a short story by Paul Pope from his "Super-Trouble" series/strip/whatever you want to call it.
-Mackenzie Queen TP by Bernie Mireault - The Madman/Jam collabo hipped me to Mireault's art and he's slowly becoming an obsession. At Baltimore Comic Con for like a quarter or something, I got this thing he did called Dr. Robot and this is similarly whimsical and fun, but also looks really heavy and philosophical...part Kirby, part stoner/European comics headtrip. Extra awesome because I've been eyeing this shit up and thinking about paying cover price ($14.95) for it and then, there it is for $4.95 stuck between like, some awesome late 70s Star Trek fanzines...
-Batman Black & White Volume Two TP: It's got this killer Mignola cover and Batman stories from Gene Colan, Kyle Baker, Paul Pope, Tim Sale and a ton of other guys. 11 bucks!
-Once Upon a Time in the Future TP by Zeljko Pahek: Was four bucks, is the big-style size that all late 80s European comics trades seemed to be, had some Bilal-ish art of two angry soldiers fixing a robot on the cover and uh, was four bucks! Can't say no to that.
-A Tribute to Gene Colan One-Shot: This is a steal at $9.99--and your money goes towards paying Gene Colan's medical bills--but I kept staring at it, leafing through it, and then putting it back for like the past 6 Wednesdays or whatever. Tonight though, I was like "Yo, my credit card bill's already fucked, so what's 10 more bucks??".
Monique:
-Grey: Perfect Collection Vol. 1 Viz Graphic Novel by Yoshihisa Tagami: A sci-fi manga about a guy who has lost his girl in a war which is happening in a world where normal people are treated like dirt and troopers in the war are "real" citizens. Like all the older Viz Graphic Novels, it's a little bigger than your standard manga volume. All of the manga volumes were 45% off, thus, I was hard-pressed to get one. I thought this one looked best out of their selection of first issues. I was secretly wishing they had Kitchen Princess...but NOPE.
-Pokemon: Pikachu Shocks Back: 4 issue Viz series by Toshihiro Ono: THIS VIDEO:
...made me really feel like I needed to read some pokemon comics (Thanks Spears). I dug these out of a "doubles" box that you aren't really supposed to go through. Dude gave them to me at cover price with the discount. TOO GOOD.
-RanXerox: Happy Birthday Lubna: Story by: Tamburini Art by: Liberatore: I'm real into Liberatore so, I felt it was necessary to pick up this one last item they had with his name on it. The only weird thing is...dude is really obsessed with really, really small boobs. I think it's sort of hilarious and awesome as much as it is creepy, but that seems to be a reoccurring thought with all Liberatore stuff I've read.
-The Most Important Thing And Other Stores: By Graham Chaffee: I'm not going to lie, I mostly picked this up because it has a bull terrier painting on the cover! I haven't read anything in it yet, but it seems to be a collection of little stories.
2 Dragonball! ISSUES: by Akira Toriyama I have been hopelessly addicted to this series. I'm about half-way through the volumes. Toriyama is a genius at expressing cuteness, facial emotion, and innocence through this drawings. It becomes very addicting...very quickly. I am reading the volumes but had to pick these up. Again, these were dug out of doubles boxes that I wasn't supposed to be looking through! Lemme shout Karen here, for if she hadn't started reading Dragonball, I wouldn't be either.
Alex by Mark Kalesniko: I decided on this on a whim... I read the first issue. It seems to be a horribly depressing comic about this dog-man who used to be a semi-successful cartoonist in LA, who moves back to his hometown. He is a drunk who hangs out with his loser friend, watching Gilligan's island and taking massive alcohol shits. In the panel, he made the painting in question during one of his blackouts and like the rest of the comic, seems to be a comment on squandered ability.
GON: Color Spectacular!: by Masashi Tanaka:
SMURFS by Peyo, issues 1 and 3: Gargamel is this dude who used really freak me out when I was little (but his cat is too good!). He's such a little creeper, popping up when you least expect it! What are smurfs besides blue? Anyway, I'm giving you this little one-page because it's hilarious when Papa Smurf scares the bejeezus outta that lazy smurf!
Scooped from an angelfire website with 18 drawings, I've selected for you, the BEST 10 of AP's sketchbook.
