quarter moon

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Awards and Onwards

So… it’s a bit of a heady time here in the land of the Locusts.

Andrew went to San Diego, and came back with these things:

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Those globes are actually spinnable, and the base is made of solid wood. But beyond even their fine craftsmanship, these objects also have symbolic value. They are Eisner awards, assigned by a jury of our peers, recognizing the transcendent beauty and Herculean it-takes-a-village communal effort that is LITTLE NEMO: DREAM ANOTHER DREAM.

EISNER winnerOur collective labor of love was recognized as BEST ANTHOLOGY, and Jim Rugg’s gorgeous work on the package was singled out for BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN.

We’re humbled. So much dedication and care went into the crafting of the 118 beautiful pieces contained in this collection. And we couldn’t be prouder to be behind one of the projects spearheading this surprising and splendid Winsor McCay revival – between our anthology, IDW’s RETURN TO SLUMBERLAND mini-series, Taschen’s complete Little Nemo reprint, and Katherine Roeder’s academic work WIDE AWAKE IN SLUMBERLAND, our man was the recipient of, count ’em, eight Eisner nominations and four Eisner awards. These are some pretty voluminous coat-tails, and we’re riding ’em in good company, hanging on for dear life.

Voting open through August 31, 2015Then we turn around the next week and find that LITTLE NEMO: DREAM ANOTHER DREAM has been nominated for two Harvey Awards, (BEST ANTHOLOGY and SPECIAL AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN PRESENTATION; voting open till 8/31), and Locust Moon Press was nominated for a Philadelphia Geek Award for COMIC CREATOR OF THE YEAR. The accolades for this beautiful book are coming faster than we can tweet about them. It’s a remarkable thing, to see the spectacular work and incredible passion of so many visionary cartoonists recognized by their industry and their colleagues.

BUT – lest you think we’re resting for even a moment on our laurels – we thought we might take this opportunity to give you a glimpse of what we’re working on.

Friends, this is the calm before the storm. All spring and summer long, we have been planting seeds.

Soon – the harvest.

Here’s what’s coming from Locust Moon in the next three months. Gird yourselves, comic lovers.

LITTLE NEMO’S BIG NEW DREAMS

LittleNemo_Toon_CoverWe’re pleased and honored to announce the newest incarnation of our seemingly endless Little Nemo revival project: we’ve partnered with TOON BOOKS, Francoise Mouly’s remarkable comics-for-young-readers imprint, home of beautiful children’s books by Art Spiegelman, Jeff Smith, and Neil Gaiman, to create a miniature, abridged edition of our ginormous compendium.

Gorgeously designed by Francoise herself, edited by myself, Chris, and Andrew, and featuring an introduction in comic strip form by none other than Art Spiegelman (!!!!), this beautiful new book is our attempt to create some version of our dream-tome fit for libraries, schools, backpacks, picnics, and budgets without room for triple-digit literary line items.

Due for release on September 1st, this edition is a sparkling treasure smuggled out of Slumberland while everyone was distracted by the cacophonous pomp of the LITTLE NEMO: DREAM ANOTHER DREAM parade.

Some great early reviews of LITTLE NEMO’S BIG NEW DREAMS are already in from ICv2 and Kirkus.

SHAMAN

Shaman_Vol1_coverThis is a project that’s been bubbling away on Locust Moon’s most favored back burner for a couple years now, and it’s finally come to a boil. Ben Kahn and Bruno Hidalgo’s gleeful dismemberment of superhero tropes marks the long-form debut of two top-flight storytellers and one bitingly brilliant comics-making team. Ben and Bruno’s sharp, nimble, contagiously funny creative vision is about to be loosed on the world in the shape of a charming supernatural saga that’s sure to leave readers enraptured and hungry for more. In the never-ending battle between good and evil, the door between life and death swings both ways – and Shaman’s the asshole with the key.

SHAMAN: Volume One, featuring special appearances by the likes of Farel Dalrymple, Jim Rugg, and J.G. Jones, will be in comic shops everywhere October 15.

Make sure your store gets it! Diamond order code JUL151468.

QUARTER MOON: IMPRACTICAL CATS

Yes, this is a whole issue of Quarter Moon about cats. Mostly this cat…

inky

QM6_cover…but a lot of other cats too.

Our little quarterly-esque comics anthology is growing up, pouncing into the future with its wildest, prettiest and most ambitious iteration thus far. Featuring a cover by Lisk Feng and artwork and stories from a lineup of ringers including Paul Pope, Farel Dalrymple, Dean Haspiel, David Mack, Bill Sienkiewicz, Ronald Wimberly, and many more, this celebration of our furry friends prowls and purrs like the fine feline she is.

The sixth volume of QUARTER MOON will hit shelves by November. Our hope is that the slow boat from China gets it here in time to debut this creature at Comic Arts Brooklyn.

PROMETHEUS ETERNAL

We’ve been keeping this one a semi-secret outside of some slightly obnoxious vaguebooking, but goddamn. We’re just too excited to hold back any longer.

We’re teaming up with the Philadelphia Museum of Art (you know, from Rocky?) to produce a comic book companion to their upcoming WRATH OF THE GODS exhibition – a show featuring representations of Prometheus throughout history, including works by Rubens, Michelangelo, and Titian.

How do you answer the call to arms that comes in the form of a collaboration with one of the greatest American art museums, in a show featuring a number of old masters?

You recruit a lineup of the greatest cartoonists in the world. Our PROMETHEUS ETERNAL comic will feature illustrations and stories adapting the Prometheus myth by creators including

GRANT MORRISON
DAVE MCKEAN
LISK FENG
BILL SIENKIEWICZ
PAUL POPE
ANDREA TSURUMI
DAVID MACK
JAMES COMEY
FAREL DALRYMPLE
YUKO SHIMIZU

We’re bringing the visions of these incredible storytellers into a context in which it deserves to be seen: among other great works of art history. If our crazy plan works, this book will be the first of many, and this partnership between Locust Moon and the P.M.A. will mark the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

A little taste, courtesy of McKean…

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UPDATE: And now, Bill Sienkiewicz’s cover!

Prometheus Eternal Cover front

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Party All Weekend at Locust Moon!

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There’s no Drink & Draw tomorrow, my fine feathered friends. Save your strength for a weekend-long celebration of comics and community at Locust Moon.

It begins Friday at 7pm, when we host a signing of COLONIAL COMICS, the beautiful new collection of stories set at the dawn of our great and troublesome nation, hot off the presses from Fulcrum Books.
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Many of our Locust Moon mainstays contributed to this handsome volume, including James Comey, Mike Sgier, Charles Fetherolf, Jason Rodriguez, and yours truly, humble scribe and scrappy utility infielder Josh O’Neill.

Jason will play the fife. I’ll bang a drum. if you’ve been yearing for more fife in your life, this is the place to find it.

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Then join us the following day for our QUARTER MOON: REVENGE release party. Though there is no formal presentation, Dave Proch will be performing scenes from his unhinged love/hate story GYPSY at full voice and unexpected intervals throughout the evening.

Be there, or be the next victim of our swift and brutal vengeance.

On Sunday, we rest, and maybe eat some waffles.

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QUARTER MOON: REVENGE to Debut at MoCCA-Fest!

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Have you been wronged? Mistreated? Betrayed? Cut off in traffic? Dumped, dissed, kissed off, cussed out, ripped off or robbed?

Well, the law firm of Kitchen, Seitchik, Woods, Dougherty, Simple, Turbitt, Heimer, Comey, Proch & Krayewski is in your corner.

But it’s not justice we offer. It’s REVENGE.

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The fifth issue of our quarterly comics magazine features eleven jaw-clenchingly vindictive tales of retaliation, comeuppance and just desserts from many of the finest, angriest cartoonists working today.

It premiers at New York’s esteemed Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Festival on April 11th & 12th, from 11am to 6pm. So come find us at table 316, and we’ll seal your copy with a spiteful kiss.

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You could also order one from our web store today!

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Then come join us the following weekend on Saturday, April 18th for a ruthless evening of retribution and reprisal. A book release party to flaunt our joy and success in the faces of our many enemies and detractors.

Bring your grievances and grudges. We will drown them in blood.

An eye for an eye. A tit for a tat. A comic for you, you heartless, blood-thirsty hate machine.

BYOBile.

QM5_03_DarylSeitchik

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The Locust Moon Top 40: August 2014

40. FABLES vol. 20

Willingham & Buckingham’s seemingly-endless saga wends towards its conclusion, out of the darkness of its previous volume and back towards its heroic roots.

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39. REMAINDER by Farel Dalrymple

The tour-de-force cartooning in this WRENCHIES side story would make Moebius proud.

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38. KILL MY MOTHER

Jules Feiffer is one of the true architects of the comics medium — here, in his smoke-wreathed noir debut graphic novel, he shows that he’s still on top of his game.

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37. This D&D Audiobook

Let Ice-T and Dan Harmon (sadly, not doing his impression of Ice-T) and friends read Dungeons and Dragons to you. It’s…something special.

36. MEGAHEX

Simon Hanselmann’s weirdly sociopathic stoner gag strip MEGG, MOGG & OWL, collected here by Fantagraphics, is a stealth delivery system for some terrifyingly dark character studies.

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35. MULTIVERSITY #1

Bucking the shitty MOR trends of DC, shamanic comics mastermind Grant Morrison delivers a brain-blasting metacomic, with gorgeously detailed universes drawn by Ivan Reis. Surprising that the suits are letting the iconoclastic Morrison have this much fun with their precious continuity.

Multiversity-map_1400x1074 Continue reading →

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TCAFtermath

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The Toronto Comic Arts Festival was, as expected, a beauteous beast, a many-headed hydra of pure comics wonder. It’s the greatest North American convention, bar none — the most efficiently run, thoughtfully curated, ambitiously imagined show that we’ve ever been to. Every second at TCAF is a teachable moment for us, an object lesson in how to create an event worth of the phrase “comics festival.”

We were lucky to share a table with the incomparable Laura Lee Gulledge, who was there promoting her beautifully sincere and personal YA graphic novels WILL & WHIT and PAGE BY PAIGE. We couldn’t imagine a better tablemate or partner in misadventures throughout the weekend. Go check out Laura Lee’s stuff.

tcaf

While our sales this year didn’t quite match the insane explosion of commerce that was last year’s TCAF, we still did very brisk business, turned a lot of Torontonians on to ONCE UPON A TIME MACHINE, 36 LESSONS IN SELF DESTRUCTION, and QUARTER MOON, and had ourselves a grand old time.

Seated to our left was the cartoonist and illustrator Renee Nault, whose stunning prints and gorgeous comics we had somehow never seen or heard of before. This is the beauty of TCAF — you’re constantly tripping over geniuses, pushing your way through a horde of visionaries. Renee’s table was constantly thronged by eager comic fans, and sometimes when she would go to the bathroom Andrew & I would sell her stuff, pretending we were the authors of these exquisite watercolor mermaids and comics about witches. Over the course of crappy afterparties at The Pilot House (TCAF! You can do better!) and failed 2 a.m. quests for karaoke, we strong-armed her into doing a little something with us in the very near future.

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Over the course of four days in Toronto we were treated to a mind-blowing lesson in comic shop entrepreneurialism from Alex Hoffman of The Beguiling and a terrifying demonstration of the purposes and iconography of the Australian aboriginal killing stick from Cody Pickrodt. We ate Korean barbeque and okonomiyaki, which is some kind of Japanese pancake that appears to have live fish swimming on top of it. We talked Liefeld with Ed Piskor and watched Tom Scioli scribble endlessly more insane layouts for his face-meltingly weird and original take on G.I. JOE VS TRANSFORMERS. (Tom seemed to be drawing at literally every moment of the weekend, over dinner, at bars, at his table, comics spilling from his mind faster that they could be sketched. Tom is the only person I know who can dominate a conversation with his face buried in a sketchpad. Electricity crackles off this dude like no one I’ve ever met — he seems less a cartoonist than a conduit for comic book revelation.) We caught up with our pals R. Sikoryak and Kriota Willberg, and Maria & Peter Hoey. (When I broke a pint glass in a bar called the Spotted Dick, Maria helped me hide the evidence.) Daryl Seitchik explained the difference between pink noise and brown noise and gave us a copy of her stunning new book 477 BRIGHT CIRCLE. We discovered that there is a place where the pizza is worse than West Philly, and it is called Toronto. We shared in the rare luxury of Porter Airlines with Maritsa Patrinos and Rebecca Mock one way and our hometown Dirty Diamonds crew on the other. We tipped drinks with cartoonists we’ve long admired but never met, like Luke Pearson, Gabrielle Bell and Jesse Jacobs. We shopped at The Beguiling and lusted after their DREAMS OF THE RAREBIT FIEND McCay original. We plotted world domination — pardon me, wider distribution — with Jared Smith of Big Planet Comics. We forgot to take photos. We ate between six and ten pounds of poutine. (Pic courtesy of Laura Lee.)

tcaf poutine

Meanwhile, back at the actual show, we copped books from Taddle Creek Press and Andrea Tsurumi‘s gorgeous new HOW TO POOL mini (to be featured in QUARTER MOON 4), rediscovered Zac Gorman‘s hilarious and heartrending piece of video game-inspired cartoon poetry MAGICAL GAME TIME in physical form, met Christina Ellis (whom I wish we had known when we were putting together our erotica mag), and cracked jokes with illustrator extraordinaire and QUARTER MOON 4 cover artist Steve Mardo. We got really mad at Ben Marra for selling out of TERROR ASSAULTER before we could grab any, then realized that Ben could kick our asses and quickly apologized. We sold QUARTER MOONS and 36 LESSONS IN SELF DESTRUCTION to Peter Birkemoe from The Beguiling, because a comic that’s not in stock at The Beguiling cannot really be said, in the truest sense, to exist at all. We discovered a weird little handmade hardcover book of woodcut porn, and we’re kicking ourselves for (a) not buying it and (b) forgetting the name of it. A little help anybody?

All in all, it was what you expect from this greatest of all conventions: a weekend full of cartoon glory, alternatingly passionate and hysterical conversations, and an ever-widening sense of the constantly expanding breadth and depth of this beautiful, broken industry we call home.

Still, it feels like we were just skimming the surface. TCAF is too big, too beautiful — you’re always in the process of missing out on hundreds of remarkable things. Do we really have to wait another year?

-Josh O’Neill
(& Andrew Carl)

P.S. Whoever’s spreading rumors of the LOCUST MOON COMICS FESTIVAL’s incredible ice cream (Little Baby’s!), please don’t stop. But also, don’t forget the puppy truck.

P.P.S. This is what Andrew & I look like when we talk about farts.

tcaf afterparty

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Tuesday Tease

We’re more than ready for May to bring some summer along with it, and Andrea Tsurumi is going to help get us in the summer groove.

Our fourth issue of QUARTER MOON has been built around the theme of “underwater” comics. Andrea decided to make us a part-comic, part-instruction-manual on going under.

Here’s the first spread from “How to Pool.” Remember this advice for the months ahead:
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In our last Tease, we gave a glimpse of Mike Sgier’s story for this same issue. I think this one’s going to be good competition for Quarter Moon’s best issue yet.

– Andrew Carl

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Tuesday Tease

QUARTER MOON #4, due out next month, is our “underwater” issue. This one’s got stories ranging from melancholy to existential, hilarious to absurd, from the likes of Andrea Tsurumi, Rob Woods, Daniel Elisii, Dave Proch, and Mike Sgier.

We thought you might enjoy a peak at one of the stars of Sgier’s tale — the bright light in the darkest depths, the savior, the wondrous Maka:

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You’ll see more of Maka — among other ocean spirits — in “The Drowned Man” by Mike Sgier, in QUARTER MOON #4.

-Andrew Carl

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Tuesday Tease

We’re in the month of love. And come Valentine’s Day, QUARTER MOON’s lovely issue of loving (a.k.a. our sexy issue of sexing) will be a real thing.

To celebrate, Locust Moon is hosting our own PROM, right in our store & gallery. Did you never get to go to your own prom? Or did someone steal your date before the night was through? Or were you so cool and great that you had a wonderful time, and want any excuse to relive the wild times of your youth, Mister Cool Guy Prom King? Well, regardless of your reasons, your sense of nostalgia or need to right past wrongs and punch your own personal Biff Tannen, you’re more than welcome to come get down with us on the night of SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15.

But that night isn’t just about the dancing and romance and punch(es) – it’s about comics. And QUARTER MOON: THE END OF THE NIGHT will be there to take home with you, and perhaps even to coach you into having what may just be the sexiest night of your life.

And with covers by Toby Cypress…

QM3_TobyCypress

…and Benjamin Marra…QM3_BenjaminMarra

…as well as art & stories from JG Jones, Annie Mok, Rob Woods and more…you may be in for quite the night.

RSVP, if you’d like, to QUARTER MOON 3’s release party/prom here: https://www.facebook.com/events/402480243230651/

And stay safe, kids.

– Andrew Carl

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The LOCUST MOON TOP 40: January 2014

40. AURORA WEST

Yeah, there’s a bit of a wait. We’ll be standing in line over here.
aurora

39. DEADLY CLASS

Between BLACK SCIENCE and DEADLY CLASS, Rick Remember is on a roll, launching wild new mythologies at what looks like the speed of thought. His tantalizing story is perfectly matched by Wes Craig’s stellar art, and we can’t wait to see where this one takes us.
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38. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF AN ELDERLY SUPERHERO

These richly detailed oil paintings detailing the adventures of a hero who we have dubbed GRANDPAMAN are surreally funny and a little bit heartbreaking.
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37. SUPERZELDA

With the manic, propulsive energy of a Gatsbian lawn party, this beautiful two-color bio details the graphic life of a fascinating woman whose story too often gets folded into her husband’s.
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36. THE SAVIORS

James Robinson’s low-key sci-fi-stoner shaggy dog story is presented in J. Bone’s enviably crisp, energetic black & white.
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Continue reading →

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Tuesday Tease

We’re inching closer to the release of Quarter Moon issue 3, the “erotic” entry in our quarterly comics & illustration magazine. It’s off at the printer now, and will be gracing our shelves come Valentine’s Day.

Well, I don’t think we’ve announced this yet, but the incomparable JG Jones decided to join in on the sexy fun we’re all having, and painted this beautiful — and maybe sort of ominous — pinup for us. Here’s Bettie…

jgqm3smWe’ve also been helping JG put together an art book that we’ll publish, collecting all the most stunning pieces in his many, many, many notebooks full of pencil sketches and watercolor studies.

This is the kind of stuff we’ve been finding page after page of, often drawn at seemingly impossibly small scales. You can’t imagine how hard it is to narrow these things down to just the “best.”

jgjonesbatmansketch

– Andrew Carl