New Art : Split Fountain Man

This is the eleventh in my series of "The 111 Robot Masters," inspired by the Nintendo Mega Man games of my youth. It's titled THE 111 ROBOT MASTERS, #011: SPLIT FOUNTAIN MAN. It measures 8" by 11" and is pen, ink and acrylic on found paper (vintage television repair guides). I was really going for something simple and almost minimal in this one, and it sat unfinished for a long time. Finally I decided I needed to leave well enough alone and wrap it up. I have really mixed feelings about this one, but it was still an interesting experiment. Kind of a palate cleanser between more detailed pieces.

I got interviewed again, this time with audio

I would like to share with you an interview that my good friend Kyle Wallace did with me. In it, we talk about a number of things from life to art to embarrassing moments, but since the interview was so wide ranging it functions very well as a sort of "How do you do?" from me to you.

You can find, and download, the entire thing right here at Kyle's art and design blog Color Crusader. Kyle also has helped me a great deal with various art and design projects over the years, and he is a great friend.

Eaten By Ducks...hell yeah AGAIN!

So, something really great has happened. Yesterday, Uland, one of the founders of the Eaten By Ducks artist blog extended to me an invitation to join the blog. Amazing! It really made my year. Like I said, I've spent a long long time on many occasions staring at the art on that blog and just marveling at what I saw. So to get the opportunity to join that blog and share my own art for some honest critique and feedback from artists I admire and respect that much...well, it's incredible, humbling, a little terrifying, and energizing all at once.

I'm working on a drawing right now and I'll post it over there when it's complete, sort of as a proper introduction to the blog. I'll post something here as well once it's up, but you'll have to go there to see it first. You really should anyway because the art is phenomenal.

(The above Eaten By Ducks header belongs to them and to whoever drew it first)

If it's out of print, is it really piracy?

On his now sadly defunct awesome videogame blog Good Game Get! Kyle Wallace has an interesting post about out of print games. You can, and should, read the whole thing here. He makes some rather provocative statements about piracy, and one of the reasons that I will miss enjoy Kyle’s blog so much is that he often makes me think about challenging issues in different ways.

Kyle’s post concerns the PlayStation 2 game Ico, developed by Team Ico and released by Sony Computer Entertainment in 2001. Like many PS2 games, Ico has been out of print for years and is now only available as used secondhand copies. Kyle did some research and found that copies of Ico, which originally retailed for $49.99, are available for around $25.00 on average. That doesn’t seem like a whole lot to me, but I don’t buy many used games so I will trust Kyle’s assertion that this price is a little steep for a secondhand copy of an 8 year old videogame from a last generation console.

Kyle’s post really gets interesting when he writes “I sometimes wonder whether or not it’s okay to find an ISO file of Ico and burn it to a DVD-R and play it on the PS2 using some sort of ByPass disk and device. I mean, Sony isn’t selling Ico anymore, so what would be the point of buying it from the dickfaces at GameStop when the creators aren’t seeing any of the money?”

He follows that with the statement “Sony hasn’t manufactured the game for more than five years, and I think that could probably warrant some piracy if you really didn’t want to pay…premium price.” And that’s what got me thinking. Is piracy ever “warranted?” If something is out of print or otherwise unavailable, is it really piracy?

All of us realize that pirating any content, whether it is a videogame, a song, a movie or even a manga or comic book is illegal because it involves taking material that you didn’t pay for. Stealing, in essence, although stealing which seems harder to define because what was stolen is not tangible. If you illegally download a pirated copy of a videogame or movie or CD or a manga, it only exists as files on your computer and not as something you can hold or carry. That small distinction is enough to start many people down the path of thinking that piracy is okay, or “not that bad,” because the perception arises that since nothing physical exists, nothing was physically stolen.

But that brings us back to my earlier question. If something is no longer available, whether it is out of print or no longer in production, is it really piracy? Is it really theft? This leads to even more questions, and it’s easier investigate them more thoroughly by using specific examples.

A year or two ago, Not Not Fun Records put out an LP of gorgeous sun-drenched drone music by Sun Araw entitled “Beach Head.” Only 420 copies were pressed and Not Not Fun, like most tiny labels, has no plans to repress this LP. In other words, if you don’t know one of the 420 people who have a copy and can’t find a copy to buy secondhand in a used record shop, you will probably never ever hear this music. Let that sink in for a minute.

Now if I, as one of the 420 owners of this LP, decide to rip it to mp3 and put it on this blog for anyone to download, have I committed a crime? Have I become guilty of piracy? Have I commercially or financially damaged Not Not Fun Records or Cameron Stallone (he is Sun Araw)? I’m not sure I know the answer. I wish I did but I don’t. I’m tempted to say “not really” but I can’t with any certainty.

Take Kyle’s Ico example. The game has been out of print for 5 years and used copies are fetching inflated prices. Is pirating the game, which deprives secondhand sellers of the ability to profit from sales of the game, any more criminal than secondhand sellers depriving Sony and Team Ico of the ability to profit from sales of the game? As Kyle said, sales of the game through secondhand retailers don’t put a penny in the pockets of either the game’s developers Team Ico or the game’s distributor Sony Computer Entertainment. So who is really commercially and financially damaging Team Ico and Sony, the piraters or the secondhand retailers like GameStop?

I discussed this with my wife and she brought up the important concept of Fair Use and how it probably doesn’t apply in these cases. Briefly, Fair Use is a doctrine of U.S. copyright law that allows for the legal, limited use of copyrighted material. Fair Use is why college professors can xerox chapters from a book, distribute these chapters to their students to read, and then discuss the chapters in class. Fair Use is what allows high school art teachers to create slideshow presentations of copyrighted paintings or photographs to use for in-class presentations. Fair Use is what allows a reviewer to reproduce passages of poetry or panels from a comic book in their printed or online reviews. That description is very brief, and Fair Use is a complex topic, but I think you get the idea.

How does Fair Use relate to pirating out of print music or videogames? Surprisingly, there is some overlap. In order for something to be legally protected under the doctrine of Fair Use, it must pass a four point balancing test. The first point assesses the purpose of the use, including whether it is of commercial nature (are you making money from it, or from its use?) or educational use. The second point assesses the nature of the copyrighted work. The third point, and this one is important, involves the amount of the work you are using in relation to the whole of the work. In other words, if you’re reviewing a 22 page comic book, is it fair to scan 14 of those pages, or almost 65% of the work, and post them with your review? Well, it wouldn’t pass the Fair Use test, that’s for sure. Finally, and most importantly, the fourth point assesses the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the work. And here is where Kyle might actually have a leg to stand on when defending piracy.

If Sony has no plans to put the game Ico back into print, can piracy of the game impact its value or the potential commercial market for the game? At first, the answer seems to be an obvious “no.” But looking closer, cracks begin to appear. While rare, videogames do occasionally go back into print especially if there is high fan demand. The game REZ is a good example of this. Inflated prices on secondhand sales plus high fan demand led to an official reprinting and reissue of the game at a bargain price. In most cases these are games which initially had low print runs and sold out fairly quickly, but there is still a precedent. So one could argue that a common practice of pirating games such as Ico prematurely and illegally satisfies fan demand, gives Sony no chance to adequately assess fan demand for a game, and therefore does indeed deprive Sony and Team Ico of future profits from the sale of new editions of the game Ico.

However, some good can come of studying these things. Issues of piracy ultimately revolve around profitability. Even with all that blather about intellectual property, it’s really just about money, pure and simple. Videogames for the major consoles are usually developed by big teams of programmers. Thousands and thousands of hours and millions of dollars are spent on these games. I don’t know the full details of payment, copyright, trade marking, and ownership of these games, but I do know that both parties, the developers and the distributors, need the other. Sony needs talented creative studios like Team Ico to provide them with games for their platform, and Team Ico needs powerful media giants like Sony to market, distribute and sell their games. As tempting as it is to cry foul in these things, no one is really pulling the wool over anyone’s eyes and no one got suckered or used in the deal.

But the problem of Ico, out of print games, and to a degree piracy is that there is a rapidly fossilizing distribution system in place that needs to die. Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails cut out record labels entirely by creating, distributing, and profiting from their own music without the assistance or interference of any other record labels. They created albums, hosted them on their web sites, and charged customers for the download. We are living in a time when the rapid advance of technology may very soon make it possible for studios and teams of programmers to create their own complex content, sell it themselves without any assistance, and keep their creations in print and available for all time. When and if that becomes the case, piracy is absolutely inexcusable and is nothing more than the lowest form of wrongheaded entitlement and theft. We’re not there yet, but with the amazing variety of complex and entertaining content already available for download online and through the PlayStation Network and the Xbox Live Arcade, we are getting there bit by bit. Thankfully.

Eaten By Ducks...hell yeah!

I visit the Eaten By Ducks blog pretty much daily. As their description says, Eaten By Ducks is "A dangerous gang of half-insane artists, hell-bent on world domination through art/occult ritual & numbers rackets" and their art is really fucking phenomenal. And they've got all the bases covered to, from traditional pen and ink drawings to incredible collages to great digital art.

You can probably imagine my amazement when I saw this entry on the blog, sharing a bit of my art work and telling people to check my stuff out. That blew me away.

Even better was some of the feedback in the comments section, so check those out. Reading stuff like this, from artists I respect and admire as deeply as the Eaten By Ducks crew is...well, it's pretty damn inspirational.

So you should first go look at what they wrote about me, and then you should add Eaten By Ducks to your daily reading list because it's just that awesome.

RKYV Online issue #24 interview

I was recently interviewed for issue #24 of the online magazine RKYV.





















It was a very interesting experience. At SPACE I met Randy Pare who, among other things, is the editor of RKYV online. He liked my art and comics and asked if I'd be interested in doing an interview and sharing some of my art for online magazine, and I agreed right away. The questions were pretty in-depth and they gave me a chance to talk about my art, my influences, my childhood, and many more things in ways I had never before been able to.

You can read the entire interview for free online in several places I'll link to below...

RKYV FaceBook direct link to issue #24: You don't need to have a FaceBook log-in to read this.

RKYV Xanga direct link to issue #24

RKYV Blog direct link to issue #24

And finally, if none of those work, I do have a PDF of the entire issue I can easily email you. So please check out the magazine and my interview and let me know what you think. I tried to answer everything very openly, honestly, and directly, so I'm curious to know if the answers seemed like the real me.

MoCCA 2009

My wife and I went to the MoCCA Festival this past weekend. This was my third MoCCA Festival in four years, so I am starting to get used to it. I really like this show since there is always an incredible variety of material on display there, from small fully silkscreened gems to beautiful books from the big guns like Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly.

A lot has already been written about this year's show on plenty of blogs and news sites, so I won't go into a whole lot of detail or analysis. Others have already done that, and done a better job than I could. I did want to share a few of my experiences as well as some of the photos I took just in case you were curious about the show but not able to make it.

This year was the first time MoCCA has been held in the historic Lexington Armory, a massive brick building that really is an armory and a base for the National Guard. The old location, New York's Puck Building, was apparently too small and too expensive, hence the move.

My wife and I took the train into Grand Central Station and walked the 14 blocks down to the Armory. It was a beautiful June morning and the walk was very pleasant. The doors were supposed to open at 11 A.M. and while we expected a line, nothing could have prepared us for this...





















Yes, that's the line at 11:15. It took up half a block, rounded a corner, and stretched out for most of a second block. My wife had been warning me that the line would be longer than I expected, and this was her look of withering reproach as soon as she was proven to be right...





















What a woman! We didn't feel like waiting, so we actually headed back to midtown to hit a couple of bookstores and headed back after noon. Even then there was a line! Apparently there were all sorts of problems getting the handstamps and the tickets to the right people, and later I read that some of the bigger publishers had their books delivered quite a bit later than the 11 A.M. open so the doors weren't opened until around noon and the entire show as bumped back an hour. What a nightmare for the exhibitors!

Anyway, as we were slowly trudging through the line, we saw a tiny little origami crane wedged into one of the barred windows of the Armory. It was sadly beautiful and lightened our minds a bit as we walked past...



Once inside, the differences between the Lexington Armory and the old Puck Building couldn't have been more extreme. The Puck Building had beautiful wooden floors, gorgeous floor length windows with billowing white drapes, and was a crazy quilt of multiple floors and multiple show rooms with exhibitors all over the place. The Lexington Armory, on the other hand, is a lot like the gym of an old public high school. Battered wooden floors, concrete walls, and an absolutely cavernous arched iron ceiling that disappeared into the dimness above. This year, all of the exhibitors were plopped down in the same room, in a rigid grid that sort of made everything feel like a flea market or a swap meet. I'm not complaining or engaging in some kind of faux-nostalgia, it's just strange how different the show felt this time around, especially compared to shows like SPX which is housed in a rather fancy hotel conference room.

A lot of people complained about the heat too, but that seems to be a common problem at MoCCA. I guess the Armory had no air conditioning at all, but since we were there in the early afternoon and I actually like it when it's 95 degrees and humid, I didn't notice any problems with heat at all. I guess that's just me.



My biggest reason for going to MoCCA this year was to see John Mejias of Paping and Shawn Cheng and Matt Wiegle of Partyka so I made a beeline for their table right away. John had chatted with me at SPACE in Columbus and mentioned he was working diligently at finishing a second, handmade, wood-covered art object / Paping zine called “We All Scream For Silkscreen, Volume II.” I knew that he and Shawn were busting their asses and that it would be down to the wire, but as soon as I got to their table I could see that they had indeed finished the project and it was simply magnificent. I’ll write much more on this in a later post because it really deserves a lot of attention, but here (the yellow and blue books at the front) is how they looked on John's table. Keep in mind these things are like 2 feet wide and 1 foot tall. And the covers are real wood…



A hilarious photo of the charming Shawn Cheng (on the left) and the take no prisoners John Mejias (on the right)…



Now, the exhibitor room was fairly dim because of the lack of windows, and I didn’t want my flash to go off in everyone’s face so a lot of these pictures are a little underexposed and blurry because of the poor light.

Here is Tara McPherson. I still just can’t get into her stuff…



Matt Kindt chatting with someone…



Ron Rege Jr. at the Drawn & Quarterly table signing copies of Against Pain. I didn’t know he looked like this. It’s weird, it’s not what I imagined, although I don’t know what I really imagined him to look like…





















Tom Devlin of Drawn & Quarterly. I picked up the new Melvin Monster book by John Stanley from them.



This is my wife’s nemesis, the hated David Mack. If you want to know why, email. I was surprised to see Mack there. "Kabuki" doesn’t seem like a book that would have a lot of appeal at a show like MoCCA. But whatevs.



Chris Pitzer at the AdHouse Books table…





















There were one or two empty tables, and for seem reason they all had “CSI-NY” burned into the wood. Why?



David Mazzuchelli was there signing copies of his new book Asterios Polyp. I flipped through it and oh man, this book looks INCREDIBLE. If I hadn’t already ordered it from my local comics shop I would have snatched this up in a heartbeat. This might have been one of the “buzz books” of the show.



Craig Yoe pimping something or other. And probably bitching up a storm about how no one at the show can draw at all...





















Bwana Spoons and his beard were there with quite an impressive spread. He was selling copies of his new art book Welcome to Forest Island which is coming out this month from Top Shelf. It’s a small but delightful full color hardcover book that again, had I not already ordered it from my local comics shop, I would have snatched up in a heartbeat. It was beautiful. And so was Bwana’s beard.





















Chris Staros at the Top Shelf table…





















Molly Crabapple was there. She did the poster for the show this year. I realize this makes me seem like some kind of misogynist (and I swear I am not) but I really can’t get into Molly’s art either. I don’t know what the deal is.





















Dean Haspiel who was sharing a table with Molly. I think they are both part of some project or collective or something.





















Dan Nadel of PictureBox. And that’s all I’m gonna say.





















Alvin Buenaventura of Buenaventura Press makin' money…



Jerry Moriarty signing copies of his new The Complete Jack Survives at the Buenaventura Press table…





















This cat is Jason! You know, the one-name Norwegian cartoonist Jason who did books like Low Moon and Why Are You Doing This? He was at the Fantagraphics table.





















MoCCA is thankfully pretty lean in the costumed attendees area, although I guess it would be pretty easy to call the ubiquitous chunky black plastic glasses, beards, scarfs, and skinny jeans a kind of hipster costume. Still, there was this girl who I was never able to get a good photo of running around the show in a tiny tanktop, rainbow leggings, and rainbow panties over the leggings. It was oddly innocent, disturbing, tacky and cheesy all at once.





















In spite of driving 1300 miles (round trip) and paying for two nights in a hotel, I spent remarkably little at the show. This is what I picked up, from left to right. First, the MoCCA program then Matt Wiegle’s “Why Did I Put This Town On My Face,” Shawn Cheng’s “Whiskey Jack & Kid Coyote Meet The King Of Stink,” Matt Wiegle’s “Monster’s & Condiments,” and Kazimir Strzepek’s The Mourning Star volumes 1 and 2. Volume 2 debuted at the show and was one of the best surprises I had all day. Matt’s and Shawn’s books are available from Partyka online while Kazimir’s should be available from Bodega Distribution. All are highly recommended.



The John Stanley Library: Melvin Monster, Volume 1 from Drawn & Quarterly. A really beautifully designed collection of fantastic kids monster comics. Available from all sorts of bookstores and comic shops.





















A better shot of “Paping: We All Scream For Silkscreen, Volume II” with the MoCCA program beside it for comparison. The MoCCA program is actually the size of a standard comic book, so that should give you an indication of how massive this thing was. Like I said, much more, and more detail, in a later post…



Finally, the other highlight of the show for me, Mat Brinkman’s complete “Multi-Force” strip from Paper Rodeo collected in one massive tabloid sized 22 page monster. This thing is huge, around the size of the Gary Panter Jimbo in Purgatory book (the red one) or the size Jeff Smith wanted to do "RASL." Really well done, with thick creamy paper and deep black inks. Available from PictureBox online.



And that was MoCCA 2009. I’m not sure if I’ll be back in 2010. It depends on a lot of things. Next year is our 10 year wedding anniversary so we’ll probably want to take a special vacation for that plus I might…MIGHT…try and get a table at SPX in 2010 so even visiting two shows might be expensive. But I’m really glad we decided to go this year, we had a great time, and it was awesome to catch up with some old friends.