November
2000
"I'm
getting hungry. Give me something to eat. I'm getting angry. Destroy
everything."
-- Shonen
Knife
Welcome to
the latest dispatch from the House of Fun, home to the various writing and
doodling projects of Sarah Dyer and Evan Dorkin. This edition is a last-minute
sort of affair I'm slapping together to mnake sure we plug some things coming
up early in November, and to update a few changes in the release schedule
of some of our projects. I was hoping to get this installment done earlier
in October, but our own schedule has been a disaster these past two months
due to work commitments, attending the SPX in September, and both of us dealing
with various illnesses that pretty much kept on the couch for a few weeks
recently. I know, poor us, cue the violins. Anyway, this is a fairly no-frills
newsletter, so with that being said, let's get to the particulars and start
plugging away!
OUR SWIFTLY
IMPENDING APPEARANCES!
I'll be doing
a signing at JIM HANLEY'S UNIVERSE comic shop in NYC on Wednesday, November
8th, from 5 to 8 pm, to support the release of my WORLD'S FUNNEST project
from DC. Also appearing to sign copies will be WF contributers Phil Jimenez
(Wonder Woman, the Invisibles etc) and Stephen DeStefano ('Mazing Man, Hero
Hotline, Ren and Stimpy and storyboard artists for the Eltingville Club pilot)
and editor Joey Cavalieri. Jim Hanley's Universe is located in New York City
at 4 w.33rd st, and they can be reached at 1-212-268-7088 for more information
on the event. Sarah will most likely be at the signing as well in case anyone
would like to get an Action Girl or Supergirl issue signed.
Both Sarah
and I will be guests at the National Comic Book Expo the following Saturday,
November 11th, being held at the Metropolitan Pavillion in NYC, at 125 w.18th
st, between 6th and 7th ave. It's a three-day event, but we will be appearing
that Saturday only, during the show's regular hours of 10am until
7pm.
Hopefully we'll
see some of you folks at one of these events!
And speaking
of World's Funnest...
THE LAST
WORLD'S FUNNEST UPDATE YOU'LL EVER
NEED
Nearly two
years after I began work on it, SUPERMAN AND BATMAN: WORLD'S FUNNEST -- the
one-shot superhero satire and overall dope-fest I wrote for DC Comics --
finally ships to shops on Nov 1st.
As you may know by know after having me blather on about the stupid
thing for the past year or so, the book is a 64 pg prestige format (that
means, fancy-schmancy and kinda expensive) revolving around a silly feud
between beloved/despised DC "pest" characters Bat-Mite and Mr Mxyzptlk that
spills over into practically every "era" of DC's publishing history, featuring
artwork by a gathering of some of the best known and admired people in the
funnybook biz: Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons, Mike Allred, Shelly Moldoff,
Stuart Immonen and Joe Giella. Frank Cho, Jaime Hernandez, Scott Shaw, Stephen
DeStefano, Jim Woodring, David Mazzucchelli, Jay Stephens, Glen Murikami
and Bruce Timm, Frank Miller, Doug Mahnke and Norm Rapmund, Phil Jimenez,
Ty Templeton and Alex Ross. The lettering was handled by Tom Orzechowski,
and most of the coloring work was done by Chris Chuckry (Alex Ross and David
Mazzucchelli did their own coloring on their sections). I'm glad to have
had the opportunity to work with such an amazing group of cartoonists on
this goofy book, and I'm really, really happy that the damned thing is finally
coming out at long last. I hope the fans enjoy what we've done, but at this
point I don't really care -- it's done, I'm finished, it looks great, I think
most of the jokes work, and I'm very happy with the way it came out.
Of course,
I will never, EVER, work on anything like this again. From now on any mainstream
gig I write will have ONE artist. One character, too, if I can figure out
how to pull it off (Maybe a Prestige format Kamandi story where he's locked
in an old pay-toilet for 96 pages...).
Oh -- I forgot
to mention that I designed and drew two promotional buttons for DC featuring
Bat-Mite and Mr Mxyzptlk that should ship to stores along with the book,
so keep an eye out for them if you like that sort of thing.
ANOTHER
(YAWN) ELTINGVILLE CLUB ANIMATED PILOT
UPDATE
By the time
you read this Stephen Destefano will have dotted the "i's" and crossed the
"t's" on the three-act storyboard for the Eltingville pliot and it will be
in the hands of our producers at the Cartoon Network. If they like what they
see, or just ask for minimal changes, it's possible we could go into production
within a few weeks. I think the board is incredibly solid, it's a detailed
and dense piece of work that really brings out what's hopefully good about
the script. I got to do some clean-up work on the board and some of my layout
drawings were used in it so I feel real geeked out because I got to help
out on my own storyboard. The last time I worked on a board was for the Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles show and I think I was semi-drunk throughout those jobs.
The other bit of news is that even though we're not officially in production,
voice casting sessions have begun for the pilot. Hopefully we'll line up
some good voices for these bad characters, because getting good voices is
so crucial to an animated show and it's a daunting process that makes my
stomach hurt like crazy. Anyway, if all goes smoothly (and it probably won't),
we may just be able to make an announcement soon on Eltingville going into
production. Or not. Heh.
Oooh, my
stomach...
NEW COMICS
NEWS
DORK
#8
Dork #8 shipped
in mid-September, and won the Ignatz Award for "Best Debut Comic" at the
Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD. It's probably the best looking solo comic I've done to
date, and while it isn't as "heavy" as Dork #7, I'm really happy with it,
especially the new Devil Puppet strip and the crisp eight page color section
which Sarah colored and did seperations on. Unfortunately, the color section
and the nicer, heavier paper we used proved to be a killer on the book's
budget, so we'll most likely go back to the old paper for the next all-b&w
issue. But it was a good experiment and I'd like to try to work in color
again sometime down the line.
The third HECTIC
PLANET trade collection, tentatively titled "The Young and The Reckless",
is being scheduled for an April 2001 from Slave Labor Graphics. This will
collect HP #5 and 6 and the Vroom Socko one-shot "Paid in Full" ,
with about a dozen or so new
illustrations for the repackaging and a new story page to establish a concurrent
timeline for the two different storylines. The cover features a shot of the
Trombone Girls on stage and the back cover is of Fibbie. The book will also
include a batch of punk and ska album covers Sarah and I did during the time
the material was originally presented, roughly between '92-'94.
Beyond that,
the plan, as always, is to actually do a new issue of Hectic Planet, but
I learned long ago to stop making promises where HP is
concerned. At this time I don't
know what my next full-length book from SLG will be, I have fairly extensive
notes for the next issue of HP (the next five, actually), Dork and Milk and
Cheese, but I haven't decided what book I'll work on next after some dust
settles from WF. Eltingville, and a few other odds and
ends.
THOSE OTHER
ODDS AND ENDS
The ONE PUNCH
GOLDBERG adventure strip I'm working on has expanded into a 14 pager, with
almost 6 pages completed so far in my "spare time". We're backed up so badly
that Sarah and I haven't even touched our two-part SUPERMAN ADVENTURES script
since we last mentioned it. Ditto for my Sin City pin-up -- well, actually,
I did some more pencilling on it, but whoop-de-doo. The one-page strip we're
doing for the fourth issue of the upcoming SUGAR BUZZ mini-series from SLG
has been pushed back a month, I believe it's shipping in April now. Finally,
I've recently been asked to design a statue for DC Comics, which I am currently
working on for a mid-November deadline.
MILK AND
CHEESE MERCHANDISE DELAYS
Due to
circumstances beyond the control of SLG and myself, both the MILK AND CHEESE
BOWLING SHIRT and the MILK AND CHEESE BEER MUG SET scheduled for November
will be pushed back to early 2001 because of production problems. No one's
more disappointed about this than I am, but hopefully this will mean everything
will be of the highest quality and will be worth the wait. These items and
all our old (but still cool) crap are or will be available from Slave Labor's
web site (www.slavelabor.com). Forgive us for our production
sins!
WHERE ELSE
TO FIND US ON-LINE
If you're on AOL or have access to it, we check in fairly often on the comic book message boards, where someone long ago set up a place for readers of our books to hang out and chew the electronic rag (ewww) ON AOL ONLY: Evan & Sarah's House of Fun: paste "aol://5863:126/mB:191286" into the keyword/web address line and hit go (don't use the quote marks).
You can sometimes
find me (Evan) posting on the
Slave Labor message
boards, so check it out while you're there getting the latest on SLG's
releases.
Anyway, that's
the skinny this time out. As always, we here at the House of Fun thank for
your time, your attention, and your support of what we
do.
latersville,
evan, on
behalf of evan and sarah at the HOF
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