Hooray! Gods & Undergrads (my weekly webcomic about a girl at college and her Greek God relatives) resumes again today! I'll be posting a page a week, every Wednesday. Today there's a special block of pages to get the engines rolling!
Click here for the latest and here for an archive of everything so far!
Hooray! Gods & Undergrads (my weekly webcomic about a girl at college and her Greek God relatives) resumes again today! I'll be posting a page a week, every Wednesday. Today there's a special block of pages to get the engines rolling!
Click here for the latest and here for an archive of everything so far!
I'm currently reporting from a blank room full of piles of my belongings, hunkered down on two boxes of comics inventory. That's right, I'm all moved into my new home! Woo! Now, my next challenge is locating all of my stuff. And/or finding places to put them that make sense. At least my cats have come out of their litterbox, where they spent moving day smooshed together in mutual horror at the new enviornment and all the crashing around of the movers. It was the cutest truce I've ever seen in Kitty Land before.
Anyway, I wanted to take a minute to recap about my super great weekend trip to Wizard World New Orleans last week and share all the fun commissions I got to draw (if you follow me on Tumblr or Instagram, you were already inundated with these during the con!) Since I seldom do big shows I wasn't sure what to expect. Plus, being in New Orleans my table helpers/manservants were sure to be scarce at the very best (the lure of bloody mary's and the French Quarter is not something I would begrudge them succumbing to). WWNOLA was a nice, spacious con. It wasn't so choked with people that you had trouble getting around, yet there was a constant stream of attendees. Everyone I spoke to was incredibly enthusiastic and supportive about comics. Once again, as with other big shows like Baltimore Comic Con, I was pleased to see so many families there. Especially families who dressed up as teams of superheroes. I love the potential embarrassment of family superhero costumes, but honestly a lot of them were really pulling it off. Normally I don't get too jazzed about celebrity appearances either, but I have to say that walking in behind Kevin Sorbo and having Michael Madsen in my line of sight for most of the convention was pretty sweet. I wandered by the Walking Dead actors too, but sadly didn't get to glimpse any of the Star Trek folks. But hey - Patrick Stewart will be at Emerald Comic Con, so maybe I'll get another chance!
On to the drawings!
Sorry everyone, but there won't be any Bonnie updates this week, since I'm trudging through my MOVING NIGHTMARE. Rookie House-Buying Tip: Don't schedule your move into your new house the weekend you get back from a wonderful comic convention in New Orleans. Just saying. But I'm pretending that my arm muscles have grown exponentially from all the graphic novels I've been hauling. MAD GUNS on these arms. Wait, are arm guns the biceps or the forearms?
Hopefully I'll be all hooked back up by the end of the weekend, but if not I might have some delirious blog posts from my phone. Thanks for bearing with me!
P.S. I finally saw The Dark Knight Rises, and Bane's voice was as deliciously theatrical and Sean Connery-esque as I'd been promised. Loved it! I mean, you have to figure he better EMOTE with that voice since there's shit all over his face. Am I right? Also, I did like Catwoman, but I'll post more later on that. In the meantime ... at Wizard World New Orleans I did this pencil sketch of Pepper Potts for a lovely woman in an Iron Man dress who didn't get to pick it up - please email me and let me know if this is yours!
Sorry everyone, but there won't be any Bonnie updates this week, since I'm trudging through my MOVING NIGHTMARE. Rookie House-Buying Tip: Don't schedule your move into your new house the weekend you get back from a wonderful comic convention in New Orleans. Just saying. But I'm pretending that my arm muscles have grown exponentially from all the graphic novels I've been hauling. MAD GUNS on these arms. Wait, are arm guns the biceps or the forearms?
Hopefully I'll be all hooked back up by the end of the weekend, but if not I might have some delirious blog posts from my phone. Thanks for bearing with me!
P.S. I finally saw The Dark Knight Rises, and Bane's voice was as deliciously theatrical and Sean Connery-esque as I'd been promised. Loved it! I mean, you have to figure he better EMOTE with that voice since there's shit all over his face. Am I right? Also, I did like Catwoman, but I'll post more later on that. In the meantime ... at Wizard World New Orleans I did this pencil sketch of Pepper Potts for a lovely woman in an Iron Man dress who didn't get to pick it up - please email me and let me know if this is yours!
Sorry everyone, but there won't be any Bonnie updates this week, since I'm trudging through my MOVING NIGHTMARE. Rookie House-Buying Tip: Don't schedule your move into your new house the weekend you get back from a wonderful comic convention in New Orleans. Just saying. But I'm pretending that my arm muscles have grown exponentially from all the graphic novels I've been hauling. MAD GUNS on these arms. Wait, are arm guns the biceps or the forearms?
Hopefully I'll be all hooked back up by the end of the weekend, but if not I might have some delirious blog posts from my phone. Thanks for bearing with me!
P.S. I finally saw The Dark Knight Rises, and Bane's voice was as deliciously theatrical and Sean Connery-esque as I'd been promised. Loved it! I mean, you have to figure he better EMOTE with that voice since there's shit all over his face. Am I right? Also, I did like Catwoman, but I'll post more later on that. In the meantime ... at Wizard World New Orleans I did this pencil sketch of Pepper Potts for a lovely woman in an Iron Man dress who didn't get to pick it up - please email me and let me know if this is yours!
Yesterday was jam-packed with traveling back from New Orleans (more on the Wizard World New Orleans show later, I had a great time!), packing/moving more miscellaneous boxes of junk over to my new house (junk that for whatever reason I can't part with), and opening the pile of mail to find ...
Why, it's a copy of my book Glitter Kiss, written by the fabulous Adrianne Ambrose and published by the amazing Oni Press!! Hot off the presses!
I'm so excited to finally see it in print. It's a great size, and the designer did a beautiful job at putting all the pieces together. It's available for pre-order from Amazon, or it'll be out in a few weeks from your local comic store. Eeeeeee! I'm so thrilled to be part of this super cute book!
I'll stop grinning and go haul more stuff now. :)
Yesterday was jam-packed with traveling back from New Orleans (more on the Wizard World New Orleans show later, I had a great time!), packing/moving more miscellaneous boxes of junk over to my new house (junk that for whatever reason I can't part with), and opening the pile of mail to find ...
Why, it's a copy of my book Glitter Kiss, written by the fabulous Adrianne Ambrose and published by the amazing Oni Press!! Hot off the presses!
I'm so excited to finally see it in print. It's a great size, and the designer did a beautiful job at putting all the pieces together. It's available for pre-order from Amazon, or it'll be out in a few weeks from your local comic store. Eeeeeee! I'm so thrilled to be part of this super cute book!
I'll stop grinning and go haul more stuff now. :)
Since I've been spending all my time cleaning, packing, trashing/recycling, and preparing for Wizard World New Orleans this weekend, it hasn't been the funnest time. Naturally when your life is in disarray and you know there's more stuff to do before you can rest, it's hard to enjoy the process. So I'd like to take a moment to thank George R. R. Martin and his A Storm of Swords (#3 in the Game of Thrones series) for being my constant companion during this time. Painfully going through old stuff and figuring out what stays and what goes is no longer a problem once I've plugged in my earphones (are we still saying "headphones" these days, or is that like saying "tape deck"?), loaded up my Audible app, and put my iPhone in my back pocket. It perfectly drowns out the vacuum, the sink, the sounds of my boyfriend's frustrated cursing as he dismantles IKEA furniture.
Oh yeah, and thanks also to Roy Dotrice, who does the amazing job of voicing the multitude of characters (even though I don't particularly like his Tyrion voice after seeing Peter Dinklage nailing the part on HBO.)
Okay guys, get excited for Monday ... becuase it's CRAY CRAY CYBER SALES MONDAY, what! So in the spirit of discounting, if you head to my Etsy Shop, you'll find 10% off (with the code "CYBERDEAL") and free shipping (with the code "CYBERSTUFF") on anything I've got over there. This INCLUDES ...
So head on over and see if there's anything you might fancy! :)
I have to apologize in advance for the fact that most of my posts are probably going to be about moving for the next few weeks as I slog through transitioning all my piles of stuff (crap) to a new abode. It's brought up some questions, and I'd love to hear how other people treat packing/saving/donating/trashing when combing through the years of memories in their home. Here are some items that have me stumped on what to do with them:
How about you guys - what do you struggle particularly with getting rid of or figuring out where to store? I'd love to hear your thoughts! (and by that, I mean steal your expertise)
I may not have mentioned this, but in the month of October, on my birthday in fact, my boyfriend and I casually went house hunting. We've been thinking of buying a house for a while now, but enough stuff had come up that we were at an impasse. i.e. The house we were in was perfectly fine to buy, we both had issues with the house we were in, I wanted to move to Portland, we both have jobs here, we both have friends here, etc. etc. But I guess after a few months of listening to the trials and tribulations two of my friends were going through in THEIR house hunting process, something crazy started to seep in, and ... we just up and bought a house too.
I'm not very good with big life decisions (or any decisions). Buying a house seems like one of those major life decisions that I'm not qualified to think about for a loooong long time. Or at least until I start acting like more of an adult. I usually don't have much patience for methodical research or hunting for the best deal. I want things to happen if they will, and if they don't, well then . . . I'm not meant to buy a house. Perhaps that's why most of my major life decisions happened very quickly and bulldozed all those walls I normally put up as roadblocks in the way of actually making a decision.
I'll go into the ridiculously fast process we went through to buy a house a little later, but for now I'm going to freak out about packing and moving and simultaneously getting ready for Wizard World New Orleans next weekend. WHICH is a roundabout way of saying that your 2nd weekly Bonnie comic will be up in a little bit! As well as some info on upcoming sales and projects!
Sometimes it's hard for me to find good FODMAPs free snacks, so usually I'm stuck downing a handful of almonds when I get hungry. Which isn't the best thing all the time. So behold my amazement when I found a granola that wasn't only delicious and locally made BUT included ingredients I could actually eat!
Check it - the ingredients:
It has been so hard for me to find something like this without honey (which I love, but is a FODMAPs no-no). Hooray for Michele's!
(and yes, I'm going to keep consuming pumpkin spiced things until someone physically forces me to stop)
I've got a comic convention coming up reaaallllly soon (*ahem* in 2 1/2 weeks) and it's a big one. By big, I mean in a convention center, with "Wizard World" as part of the title of the show. As an indie creator, these shows can go one of two ways:
Let's hope #2 is what happens. One of my main problems with big shows is the massive amount of visual stimulation EVERYWHERE. Not just people wandering around in wigs and bikinis (or, as I witnessed at my last show, a 60-year-old man in a loin cloth - WHERE DOES HE PUT HIS KEYS) but the huge banners, stands, and massive shelves of artwork screaming at you from every angle.
How is one creator (or anyone, really) supposed to compete with that?
From my years of exhibiting at shows, I've come up with a few different tricks to try to make my work both stand out, be well represented, but also give the customer a bit of room since they're already oversaturated with visual imagery (I covered some of my history with table displays a bit in this post). For the most part, I tend to lay my books out flat and try to space them out a little to give the customer some room.
It helps, though, if you don't have quite such a busy tablecloth. Soon after this, I switched to a simpler pattern, and added some zoned areas for my work. Boxes for comics, box for prints, display box for cuffs, jewelry tree for hanging prints.
I still wasn't too thrilled with the color of the tablecloth, but I liked where this was headed. My next big show, however, was Baltimore Comic Con, so in order to step up my game in order to compete with the height of booths around me, I added a wee bit of height.
The one thing I'm still really lacking in is one of those fancy-shmancy banners that people incorporate into their show tables. You know, the ones that look like this:
I've never gotten one, but lately I'm more and more tempted. At the very least, to give my table some large imagery that can be seen from far away and (hopefully) attract people to come over and say hi. It's too late to figure one out for Wizard World New Orleans in a couple of weeks, but I'm curious to hear from other comickers and crafters and tradeshowers out there - have you gotten one of these stand up display things? Worthwhile or not worthwhile? I've seen some SUPER crazy contraptions for propping giant banners up behind the table too, but they scare me a bit with their rickity-ness and the amount of time/skill it takes to put all the PVC's together.
Also, I'd love to hear opinions from any convention goers - do you like seeing banners or would you rather encounter a giant image-free zone every now and again at shows?
I'm a bit of a James Bond fan.
For my 30th birthday party I made it a mandatory theme - everyone had to come dressed as a character from a James Bond film. Villian, Bond Girl, Henchman #7, the sky was the limit! I chose to dress as a member of the Pussy Galore Flying Squad. It was pretty awesome.
The peak of my 007 Fandom was when I was sixteen, and my best friend and I would stay up late laughing at Goldfinger, cheesing out on Live and Let Die, or slogging through the endless underwater scuba sequences of Thunderball. Even though I grew up accustomed to Roger Moore as James Bond, Sean Connery became the only Bond for me. No substitutions accepted. Timothy Dalton was fun, and George Lazenby - well, aww, that poor guy.
When Goldeneye came around I was pretty excited that Pierce Brosnan might become the new 007 Hotness (my mom, for one, had been praying for YEARS that Remington Steele would lead him to Bond). But with each passing Brosnan Bond movie I became less and less impressed. As far as I was concerned, his legacy only provided the world with two worthwhile things: Famke Janssen and Michelle Yeoh. I didn't bother watching most of them. Halle Berry trying to redo Ursula Andress's combat bikini? Oh no they don't.
Modernizing Bond just seemed to be a problem. I mean, he's a cocky a-hole who treats women like Mrs. White treats her husbands. But Brosnan just seemed to look pained and guilty about it all the time and it was kind of a downer. Even though it's not cool that Connery went through like five women in Goldfinger - one ending up being painted to death and one decapitated - I still wanted the free-wheeling, hard-hitting Connery days back again. Go away, sensitive 90's Brosnan.
So when Casino Royale came out, (and by that, I mean of course when Daniel Craig came out of the water in a mankini), amidst all the OH MY GOD CAN YOU BELIEVE JAMES BOND IS A BLONDE controversy, I think we all knew that Bond was back. And that Daniel Craig was gonna do this shit right. Casino Royale managed to peg Craig both as a brute who could crash through walls AND as a trained killer willing to throw in the towel for love. Which was exactly what we all were waiting for.
The Craig Bond Legacy has also done something else amazing - made the movies connect to one another. Bond movies used to be individual occurrences, each floating through the void. Every now and then they'd throw in a 006 or Felix the CIA agent would reappear, but they were basically all separate. Any attempts to make things sequential in Bond World resulted in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (and we all saw what happened to Lazenby). So the fact that Casino Royale can contain characters that still connect through to Quantum of Solace was amazing. You mean we don't have to wipe our memories for each Bond film? Priceless!
And after seeing Skyfall, it's clear that this generation of Bond is going to continue kicking ass and breaking boundaries (omg Javier Bardem and Judi Dench!), all while remaining true to the Bond Legacy. Really, how hard is it? You take one part suave, muscular man + women in dresses with secrets + martinis + female agents + car crashes = Bond magic.
So here's to Daniel Craig and this era of Blonde Bond. I can't wait to see what else they do before moving on to the inevitable next breakthrough ... Idris Elba Bond!!
I'm a bit of a James Bond fan.
For my 30th birthday party I made it a mandatory theme - everyone had to come dressed as a character from a James Bond film. Villian, Bond Girl, Henchman #7, the sky was the limit! I chose to dress as a member of the Pussy Galore Flying Squad. It was pretty awesome.
The peak of my 007 Fandom was when I was sixteen, and my best friend and I would stay up late laughing at Goldfinger, cheesing out on Live and Let Die, or slogging through the endless underwater scuba sequences of Thunderball. Even though I grew up accustomed to Roger Moore as James Bond, Sean Connery became the only Bond for me. No substitutions accepted. Timothy Dalton was fun, and George Lazenby - well, aww, that poor guy.
When Goldeneye came around I was pretty excited that Pierce Brosnan might become the new 007 Hotness (my mom, for one, had been praying for YEARS that Remington Steele would lead him to Bond). But with each passing Brosnan Bond movie I became less and less impressed. As far as I was concerned, his legacy only provided the world with two worthwhile things: Famke Janssen and Michelle Yeoh. I didn't bother watching most of them. Halle Berry trying to redo Ursula Andress's combat bikini? Oh no they don't.
Modernizing Bond just seemed to be a problem. I mean, he's a cocky a-hole who treats women like Mrs. White treats her husbands. But Brosnan just seemed to look pained and guilty about it all the time and it was kind of a downer. Even though it's not cool that Connery went through like five women in Goldfinger - one ending up being painted to death and one decapitated - I still wanted the free-wheeling, hard-hitting Connery days back again. Go away, sensitive 90's Brosnan.
So when Casino Royale came out, (and by that, I mean of course when Daniel Craig came out of the water in a mankini), amidst all the OH MY GOD CAN YOU BELIEVE JAMES BOND IS A BLONDE controversy, I think we all knew that Bond was back. And that Daniel Craig was gonna do this shit right. Casino Royale managed to peg Craig both as a brute who could crash through walls AND as a trained killer willing to throw in the towel for love. Which was exactly what we all were waiting for.
The Craig Bond Legacy has also done something else amazing - made the movies connect to one another. Bond movies used to be individual occurrences, each floating through the void. Every now and then they'd throw in a 006 or Felix the CIA agent would reappear, but they were basically all separate. Any attempts to make things sequential in Bond World resulted in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (and we all saw what happened to Lazenby). So the fact that Casino Royale can contain characters that still connect through to Quantum of Solace was amazing. You mean we don't have to wipe our memories for each Bond film? Priceless!
And after seeing Skyfall, it's clear that this generation of Bond is going to continue kicking ass and breaking boundaries (omg Javier Bardem and Judi Dench!), all while remaining true to the Bond Legacy. Really, how hard is it? You take one part suave, muscular man + women in dresses with secrets + martinis + female agents + car crashes = Bond magic.
So here's to Daniel Craig and this era of Blonde Bond. I can't wait to see what else they do before moving on to the inevitable next breakthrough ... Idris Elba Bond!!
Yes, I am a Baltimorean, and no, I haven't finished watching The Wire yet. I actually started watching mid-season 4, where my boyfriend was, and then backtracked to watch season 1. Kind of unorthodox, I know - way to ruin the surprises, Monica!
Anyhoo, the moment I first saw Kima Greggs I knew she was a badass. She was wearing a suit and heels, driving around the projects in her unmarked police car, and because she thought something was up, she got out of the car and entered a drug dealer's house. Through the back door, gun drawn, by herself. BADASS. I was convinced this would be the last we'd see of her character, or we'd hear something come over the radio during another scene that would alert us to the fact she'd been shot. But no. This is KIMA. Instead, she was back at her desk, casually sitting there, having gone into that drug house without back-up and single handedly arrested the suspects. Yessss.
So now I'm slowly working my way through Season 2, and after Season 1, I know that Kima also happens to be invincible. Can't wait to see what else she gets up to through the course of the show!
And Sonja Sohn, who plays Kima, is pretty impressive herself - she opened up Re-Wired for Change, a non-profit to help kids in troubled circumstances break the cycle of violence/incarceration.
Last year my boyfriend and I decided to give two fairy tale themed shows a try: Once Upon A Time and Grimm. Although we still begrudgingly tune into to Once now and again, we've long since given up comparing the two. Grimm - with its endless supply of interesting beasts, moody Portland locale, and Monroe - is the clear winner.
And Bitsie Tulloch, gorgeous ginger wife of Nick the Grimm, is the latest addition to the Small Boob Hall of Fame. Yay! You work that amnesia!
Sometimes it gets really frustrating trying to juggle what you want to do. Recently I cut my hours at my day job from 32 to 24 a week - which means 1 whole extra day I can spend at home making progress on comics, evolving my website into more of a business platform, and planning new ideas/projects. Time that would allow me to eventually (in theory) help me evolve out of my day job completely.
So how do I handle the juggling of the day job with the home studio job? I make myself schedules. Crazy Person Schedules that I'll never be able to actually follow.
My Crazy Person Schedule Categories:
I have yet to incorporate any of these schedules into my actual life, and I just designed my 4th one. For some reason, it gives me great peace of mind just to create them. Usually there are so many things floating around in my head about what I anxiously want/need to get done that I get frantically unproductive. The schedules help me visually map out what I'm expecting out of myself (and how unreasonable it normally is).
It's a constant struggle when the rest of the 9-to-5 world only understands that weeknights are for TV or going out to dinner and weekends are for going out with friends. I love my friends and I love relaxing with my boyfriend but there's the constant, neverending pressure that I NEED TO BE MAKING PROGRESS. Persistence and regular practice makes perfect. Or in my case, it will take me where I want to go with my life and my art career.
So I'm ready to start this next week planning on following SCHEDULE #4. Wish me luck! How many other fellow jugglers out there are making things work? And are you doing it with or without imaginary schedules?
Monica Gallagher is a comic book creator, illustrator and freelance designer making work for hire with a positive, feminist spin.
TCAF - Toronto, ON, Canada // June 7 - 8
Heroes Con - Charlotte, NC // June 20 - 22
Tucson Comic Con - Tucson, AZ // Aug. 29 - 31
Small Press Expo - Rockville, MD // Sep. 13 - 14
Denton Comic Art Expo - Denton, TX // Sep. 27
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