Typhon Haiyan (Yolanda) relief benefit!

Rina Ayuyang of YAM Books put together a bunch of ebay auctions to help out survivors of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. There is tons of great original art & comics, including a lot of six books from us at Birdcage Bottom Books.

The auction ends soon, so please go bid now!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/281211774844?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

Shout-out: Lisa Rosalie Eisenberg

DIGESTATE CONTRIBUTOR:

LISA ROSALIE EISENBERG!

Lisa Rosalie Eisenberg is a cartoonist and educator living in Portland, Oregon.  She teaches comics workshops and classes to youth in schools throughout the Portland area.  (If you ask nicely, she will share the latest in cool teen slang with you, but she promises to sound very un-cool in the telling).  

Lisa's work has been published in the anthologies Bird Hurdler, Runner Runner, Papercutter, Bearfight!, and TheStrumpet.  She is illustrating a script by Jonathan Baylis for Digestate, and that story will also appear in Jonathan's series So...Buttons.  

Lisa self-publishes the comic series I Cut My Hair, a combination of autobiographical, fiction, and historical fiction comics stories.  A new page is published weekly at ICutMyHairComics.com, and the zine version of I Cut My Hair can be purchased through sparkplugcomicbooks.com.  

Lisa can also be found on the social media platforms Twitter: @lisa_rosalie and Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Lisa.Rosalie.Eisenberg.Comics.Illustration

Editor's note: Lisa Rosalie Eisenberg was the only artist I didn't personally choose/harass to be in the Digestate anthology (she drew the comic written by Jonathan Baylis), but I'm really glad that Jonathan selected her. There must be something in the water up there in Portland, OR. There's just so many great cartoonists coming out of that city! If I weren't a sun junkie, I'd try to convince my wife to move there. 

Anyhow, I highly recommend checking out her auto-bio and experimental comics posted every Monday on her site!

New year, new reviews!

A few new Digestate reviews:

Jason Das‘ glowing review on SuperVegan. Click here to read it!

Dan Murphy’s review on Juniperbug. Click here to read it!

Xaviar Xerexes review on Altertainment. Click here to read it!

Supervegan's stand-up fella Jason Das gives a glowing review of the Digestate anthology. He even manages to specifically mention a large portion of the 55 contributors (no small feat)! Read it here.

I should mention that if you are ever looking for a vegan/vegetarian or even just vegetarian-friendly restaurant in any of the five boroughs of NYC, SuperVegan has an invaluable searching tool. I've been using it for years, and it often turns me on to some great places I may not have found otherwise. 

Shout-out: Adam Hines

DIGESTATE CONTRIBUTOR:

ADAM HINES!

Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man

Adam Hines is the author of Duncan the Wonder Dog, a graphic novel series that is graciously published by AdHouse Books. He was born and raised in Illinois, and eats the same lunch every day.

Cover art for "Duncan The Wonder Dog"

Editor's note: Apparently Adam belongs to the James Kochalka School of Abbreviated Bio Blurb Writing as the above two sentences is all he gave me. So, allow me to expand a bit...

I remember Adam's book creating quite a buzz at the Small Press Expo a few years ago. The sheer heft of the book immediately caught my attention and looking inside I was immediately intrigued by the density and disparity of the artwork. Some pages featured lots of open space and simple clean lines while others had layer upon layer of collage, painting and drawing. Some characters were depicted with realism and others were cartoony, often on the same page. 

It wasn't until I brought the book home and started reading it that I realized that the content was right up my alley. Although the narrative veers away on tangents and subplots, the bulk of the story focuses on a world in which animals can communicate directly with humans. As could be expected, some animals react against the way they are often treated by humans by forming a terrorist group.

I won't pretend to understand much of what happens in this chapter (apparently this is the first book of a continuing narrative), but it was intriguing enough for me to finish the entire 400 pages in a couple of sittings. I liken Adam's work to William Faulkner or James Joyce in that it is often difficult to follow the story, but there are rewards in simply appreciating the beauty of the language (in Faulkner/Joyce's case) or interplay between art and language (in Hines' case). 

That said, it doesn't feel as if Hines' is attempting to be opaque or "show off", and there is plenty of humor inter dispersed throughout. I suspect he's just a naturally intelligent and prolific dude doing what he enjoys. I look forward to the next chapter of "Duncan the Wonder Dog"!

Digestate review on Bookgasm

Here's a nice review from Rod Lott on Bookgasm. Thanks, Rod!

Another great review for Digestate!

Cameron Kunzelman reviews the Digestate anthology on This Cage Is Worms. Read it here!

I've gotta say that these reviews are making me really happy. Granted, there's only been three so far, but they've all been so overwhelmingly positive. It makes the hours and hours of work and the fact that I literally cashed in my change jar to help pay for shipping worth it.

Also, on a personal level, the response to my own comic has been better than I could've hoped. I really tried to learn from the criticism I received for the animal-welfare themed stories in my first book (on sale, btw!), and it looks like my current attempt has been very well received (so far all three reviewers have picked it out as their favorite of the 60 comics included!).

The criticism of my earlier work mostly centered on it being too didactic. This was an easy trap for me to fall into when discussing something that I'm so passionate about. I can attest that making your audience feel attacked is not usually an effective tool in bringing about a change of mind. In fact, one of my friends who credits me as the catalyst for becoming vegan (happy to report that he and his wife are raising two vegan kids) told me that it wasn't anything I told him verbally that caused him to change his diet but rather my cooking. It made him realize that vegan food was anything but tasteless or boring.

On this piece ("Slaughterhouse Stories") I tried to focus more on the human toll that is a result of high demand for inexpensive meat. My dad once asked me why I focus so much on animal suffering when there are so many humans suffering, and that has always stuck in my mind. I don't have an easy answer for his question, but I can say that I feel we have a responsibility to protect animals just as much as we do our fellow humans.

I should point out that the text in my comic is verbatim (although edited down into a more manageable length) from an actual slaughterhouse worker. At one time I was hoping to adapt Gail Eisnitz's excellent book "Slaughterhouse" into a graphic novel. I abandoned that project when I couldn't get a clear answer as to whether her publisher would allow me to publish my adaptation, but her story stuck in my mind. When putting together this food & eating themed anthology, I realized that I could make a shorter comic based on some of Gail's interviews with slaughterhouse workers.

She was kind enough to send me a (huge) stack of affidavits used to write her own book. There were so many horrific and compelling stories told in these interviews, that it was extremely difficult to pick just one (in fact, I hope to someday develop more of these transcripts, thus the pluralization of "Slaughterhouse Stories" in the title of my comic). Many of the interviews dealt with the cruelty animals suffered in multiple meat processing plants, but I sought out one that focused more on how the workers in these abattoirs suffered.

As one reviewer pointed out, I did try to avoid showing gore spattered hogs whenever possible (an impossible task, but I kept it to a minimum) in favor of being less explicit. My cartoony style of drawing is not ideal for horrific imagery anyway, but I also feel that the readers' imaginations would probably do a better job. We've all seen the undercover footage taken inside slaughterhouses by now, and there's no way I could compete with that.

Anyhow, I didn't intend to ramble on like that. I was just going to post the review link.

Oh, one last thing I should mention: Gail Eisnitz is the Chief Investigator at the Humane Farming Association. They try to affect change in the slaughterhouse industry through Congress and other means. Please support them in any way that you can!

DIGESTATE reviews start rollin' in...

An incredibly thorough (considering the scope of this anthology) review by Matt Brady on Warren Peace.Click here to read it!

Poopsheet Foundation doesn't seem to have a logo, so here's a Justin Giampaoli avatar!

Not to be outdone, Justin Giampaoli gives an equally thorough review for Poopsheet Foundation. Click here to read it!

DIGESTATE is here!

Round up of all-things-Digestate...

• Aaron Long's short interview with J.T. Yost (that's me!) on Comicosity in regards to the Digestate food & eating themed anthology. 
• Alec Berry's interview with J.T. Yost on Spandexless, also about Digestate, but now with different questions & answers!
• The Beat, our favorite comics news blog, gives a shout-out to Digestate.
• Supervegan, our favorite all-things-vegan blog, also gives us a virtual thumbs up.

There's more, but I don't want to bore you.

Don't forget, the Kickstarter campaign is ending in less than three days...please, for The Love of All That Is Holy, go pledge some dough (and get great rewards).

Cover art for DIGESTATE!

Check it out, y'all...here's the front cover (by Cha) for the Digestate anthology! Man, she did a great job.

Don't forget to kick in some dollar$ to the Kickstarter campaign. There's only five days left, so get in while the gettins good. And feel free to share any of these images and/or information on the World Wide Web. Thanks!

James Turek's Kickstarter reward sample!

The esteemed Mr. James Turek has added a reward to the Digestate Kickstarter campaign. There will be three (3) of these very limited edition silk screen prints available, so get on it folks!

Jess Ruliffson's Kickstarter reward sample!

Hey, have you heard of this Kickstarter campaign I'm running to fund the Digestate food & eating themed comic anthology?? You haven't? Oh, you'd better check it out.

Anyhow, one of the rewards you can get is a custom drawing of a chicken (or cow) by contributor Jess Ruliffson. She just sent me a sample, so here it is:

Bawk! Bawk!

Updated DIGESTATE contributor list!

Click to enlarge, y'all!

Please don't forget to make this book a reality by donating to our Kickstarter campaign. In essence you're pre-ordering a copy plus options for lots of great handmade stuff from the contributing artists.

DIGESTATE Kickstarter campaign is aLIVE!

Alright, folks.
This is do or die for me. I've been working my butt off (along with over 50 contributing artists) to put together a huge collection of food & eating themed comics called "DIGESTATE". I can't afford to publish it without a little help, so I've put together a Kickstarter campaign to fund the base cost of printing.    It'll cost a lot more than what I'm asking, but I don't want to get greedy since Kickstarter is all or nothing!

Anyhow, please check out the campaign here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/birdcagebottombooks/digestate-a-food-and-eating-themed-comic-anthology

There's a video and sample pages, along with a contributor list. Actually, here's the contributor list, just to pique your interest:

• Darryl Ayo
• Josh Bayer
• Jonathan Baylis
• Marc Bell
• Marek Bennett
• Berkeley Breathed
• Neil Brideau
• Box Brown
• Jeffrey Brown
• Josh Burggraf
• C. M. Butzer
• Kevin Cannon
• William Cardini 
• Cha
• Sungyoon Choi
• J.T. Dockery
• Nate Doyle
• Renee French
• Nicole J. Georges
• Ayun Halliday
• Danny Hellman
• Sam Henderson
• Adam Hines
• Paul Hoppe
• K. Thor Jensen
• Victor Kerlow
• John Kerschbaum
• Keith Knight
• James Kochalka
• Hawk Krall
• Minty Lewis
• Jonas Madden-Connor
• Aaron Mew
• Pranas T. Naujokaitis
• Hazel Reed Newlevant
• L. Nichols
• Al Ortiz
• Tod C. Parkhill
• Dan Piraro
• Liz Prince
• Brian Ralph
• Alex Robinson
• Jungyeon Roh
• Jess Ruliffson
• Anuj Shrestha
• Ben Snakepit
• Aron Nels Steinke
• Jeremy Tinder
• James Turek
• Noah Van Sciver
• Sophia Wiedeman
• J.T. Yost
• Jeff Zwirek