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!

Shout-out: Jonathan Baylis

DIGESTATE CONTRIBUTOR:

JONATHAN BAYLIS!

Portrait by Paul Westover

Before Jonathan Baylis wrote auto-bio comics, he interned at Marvel Comics, Valiant/Acclaim Comics, and was an Associate Editor at Topps Comics.  His comics have been published locally in New York City and in literary anthologies like The Florida Review, Backwards City Review, and Wild River Review.  His first fiction story was published by Arcana Press in Dark Horrors 2.  Jonathan had a couple of two-pagers published in “I Saw You… Missed Connections” and “Side B: The Music Lovers Anthology”.  He has since collected most of his stories into the self-published, “So Buttons” series, of which there are four issues and a holiday special in print.  More stories can be found at www.sobuttons.com and sobuttons.tumblr.com

Portrait by Noah Van Sciver

Editor's note: I used to live in the same neighborhood as Jonathan (or "J. Bay", as I call him), and his street features prominently in Jonathan Lethem's "The Fortress of Solitude". My given name is also Jonathan. I'm not sure what this all adds up to, but I can tell you that he has one of the cutest bug-eyed Boston Terriers I have ever had the pleasure to lay eyes/hands on. If you meet up with him for a beer, Mocha: The International Delight (that's the dog's name) will undoubtedly be there, too. 

Portrait by Thomas Boatwright

Portrait by Gabrielle Bell

Portrait by Ed Piskor

MoCCA 2011

For some reason I've had an allergic aversion to posting anything this month, so for the three of you out there who care (talkin' to you, mom!) here's, uh, something:

The MoCCA comic fest was MoCCA-y. Losts of great comic artists and comics all crammed in a huge military armory. Usually I get up and walk around quite a bit to holler at my brethren and pick up some new comics. This year, however, I didn't. I think it was mostly due to not having money to spend (baby often needs a new pair of shoes) and possibly because my table-mate Victor is endlessly entertaining.

I did do some trading, though. I'm still working through what I got at SPX last year, believe it or not. Oh well, I can't complain about having too many comics to read.



Here are some dueling portraits Victor and I did of each other. They look crappy because we were each wearing the other's glasses while drawing them. You can see what we look like unfiltered through incorrect ocular correctors in the accompanying photo (Jonathan Baylis on the left, Victor Kerlow in the middle, and me screwing up the hand-chain format on the right). 

Oh, and thanks to everyone who bought stuff. The Snoop shirts sold really well, and I sold completely out of the new issue of Losers Weepers! 

It's on!

Okay, so international playboy Victor Kerlow and myself will once again be sharing a table at the MoCCA indie-comic fest this year. Hopefully we will NOT be sharing any communicable diseases this year (last time I accept an offer to "take a pull" from his Rockstar Pink energy drink for ladies).

Sadly, me and Sophia Wiedeman didn't get our application for SPX in in time to get a table. BUT my local neighborhood comic buddy Jonathan Baylis has been kind enough to offer to share his half-table with me. I'm not sure how I'll fit everything on 1/4 table, but I'm more than willing to go vertical.

I'm moving full-steam-ahead on the third issue of 'Losers Weepers'. Just finished inking the whole thing, and now I'm starting the tedious task of coloring and laying it out. Here's a peek at the cover (uplifting as always!!)...

King Con II

Been a while since I rapped at ya.
King Con 2010 has come and gone. Sales weren't too great for me this year (they were the first year of King Con, though), but I met some more great folks so I can't complain. The NY Art Book Fair and the NY Marathon were both on the same weekend (I played human Frogger to get to the venue, barely avoiding being crushed by throngs of runners), so I think that put a little damper on attendance. I heard that a lot of small press comic publishers had tables at the Art Book Fair, and the Marathon caused a lot of disruption in bus/subway service.

I'd be lying if I said that sales aren't a part of why I do these comic conventions. So far (knock on wood) I've always made back what I paid for the table, sometimes even making a bit of profit. That's not easy to do selling comics that average about $3 or $4 each. This year I tried adding a "high dollar" item...$20 silk-screened t-shirts. Unfortunately, only one sold at the convention (although I've almost sold out of the first run using Etsy).

That said, the most important aspect of these shows for me is meeting other cartoonists, reviewers and the people that read my comics. As always it was a pleasure to share a table with Sophia Wiedeman. I was dismayed that L. Nichols wasn't in attendance, as she's been a welcome friendly face at every con I've tabled so far. Jonathan Baylis (So Buttons) and Jamie Tanner (The Aviary) are two talented dudes I had the pleasure to meet. For me, the true highlight of the whole con was running into Danny Hellman at a pizza place across the street after the first night. I recognized him from his self-portraits and we ended up flappin' our gums for quite a while as Danny's pizza grew colder and colder. I've followed his work since I moved to New York in 2001 (although he's been active since the late '80s). You can tell how much effort he puts into every illustration he does. The man never skimps, never takes a shortcut. It's always great when an artist you admire turns out to be a nice person as well.

Anyhow, that's my take on this year's King Con. See you at the next one!