The cover

I was pretty stuck with a cover idea for the first Ho12 cover. The first book has comics from four of my favorite cartoonists and I wanted to create something that had at least something to do with one of the strips. I really liked Darryl Ayo's story about folks with x-ray vision a lot, so I started mulling that one over.

Dave McKenna, Amy (my better half) and I were at Maxwell's in Hoboken seeing a show by Brian Musikoff's old band, Friends, Romans, Countrymen when I was struck like a bolt from the blue. I typed up a note on my phone, screaming out much like Spock in 'The Devil in the Dark.'

Xray eyes!

white and color on black!

chakra lines!

energy waves!

The next day I came up with this doodle.

Sort of an "Alex Grey meets Ayo" sorta thing. I thought it was kinda neat, so I moved on to the next phase: actually drawing the fucker.

A few days later I drew out each layer separately while watching Hill Street Blues on Hulu — that show holds up like a motherfucker.

I should point out that these are obviously not scans, but iPhone pictures. Y'see, I started conceptualizing the cover while I was at the office and they were the best I had. I'll scan the art for the final. They cleaned up just fine for my needs. Anyways...

So, I colored the layers and thinking about how I wanted to present them. After monkeying around with it for a while I came up with this:

"So far, so good," I thought, but a little jumbled. It was kinda hard to see what the fuck was going on, so I ran through a variety of configurations.

I'm a few hours away from a final design, and I still have to scan the art and replace these iphone pic stand-ins, and add in some 'energy lines' (time to break out the Spirograh!), but I figure by sometime tomorrow we should be good to go.

DIY Publishing: Zines and Comics

So my POE-News.com pal Stopheles (Or Bill) made this nifty little documentary on the New York DIY zines and comics and Ho12 was featured prominently. Darryl Ayo, Jenny Gonzalez and I are interviewed about why we do it, what's the jam all about and the future of the bizz. Check it out to the big dog.

Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival

http://www.comicsandgraphicsfest.com/

Come out this Saturday to the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival and stop by the Ho12 table to see some stuff from the up coming Comixology iPhone project and pick up the latest issue of House of Twelve, Touching Children's Stories for all the weird kids in your life. The show runs from 11-7 and we'll have an excellent selection of rotating guests through out the day, Miss Lasko-Gross, Sam Henderson, Jenny Gonzalez, AYO and special guest Adam Suerte will be running around being all kinds of sacrilegious and shit.

MoCCA 2009

House of Twelve did decent financially; better then last year, not as good as the year before. Kinda average, which is fine.

As you may have read by now, the 69th Regiment Armory is a 105 year old fortress with a wonderful huge open space, decent latrines and meeting rooms, three rocket launchers on display and NO FUCKING AIR CONDITIONING. The main gripe about MoCCA's Puck building past was how people would avoid going up to the 7th floor area because it was so dreadfully hot . Why they would choose a new venue that "solved" the problem by making everyone melt is beyond me. You haven't smelled the Earth until you've inhaled the funk of 1200 sweaty fat fucks, 10 tons of ink and paper and 100 years of military men with each breath.

So obviously, the lack of any AC is my biggest gripe (also maybe more then 1 garbage can for the entire hall would have been a good idea), but a close second is the announcement of next year's table prices; $400 a table. And that's the early bird price, making the regular price, what? $500?

For many of MoCCA's most ardent, core audience it's the self-published comic, or mini or zine or hand crafted silk-screened one-off that makes the show special. How are those people supposed to make the table cost back? Or even close? For much of the room 'making table' is considered a success. At $300 it's doable only if you huckster your ass off for 2 days, but $400-500? There's no way. No one is ever going to make 400 beans selling a $.50 mini. They are cutting out the very people who made the show what it is. And that's a shame.

If I'm not mistaken, MoCCA 2010 is now the most expensive 'small press' show in the country... during the greatest economic nightmare in three generations... with print comics sales losing ground to web comics day by day... with no AC... and one garbage can...

Way to go MoCCA, stay classy.

Cheese

photos by Jenny Gonzalez

Ayo is awesome: