Cuckoo's Nest Press Newsletter #2
Hi again, everyone!
Firstly, you might recall in last month’s newsletter that I mentioned my minicomic Spiral Sessions was nominated for the Graphic Medicine Award for Best Shortform Comic. I’m not sure how to say this, but...I actually won????!!! Literally couldn’t believe it when my name was called during the online broadcast, haha! That’s fantastic, I’m so thrilled. Not bad for something I wasn’t even expecting to get nominated for! You can still get the comic from my Ko-Fi shop here, currently only as a PDF for now, but I may do a small print run later in the year. Congratulations to all the nominees and to Haley Gold’s Nervosa, the Best Longform Comic winner.
The Dollar Store Sketchbook is now complete, and you can get it from my Itch page here! “What’s that?,” you ask. It’s exactly what it sounds like – a sketchbook of drawings made entirely with cheap art materials from the dollar store (and a few other discount stores). I started this last April and have been working on it on and off ever since, and I think it turned out well. Here’s a few sample pages – more are available from the link!
I mentioned that I’m doing a Kickstarter for The Last Band On Earth later this year, and recently made the first two issues free to download from both my Ko-Fi and itch.io storefronts. There has been some interest, but I’ve since realized that doing it this way still creates a bit of a barrier to entry – and so, instead, here are quick & easy Google Drive links to read both issues: Issue 1, and Issue 2. I hope you enjoy them, and consider supporting the Kickstarter when it’s live. 🙂
June 24th was Make A Terrible Comic Day (conceived by cartoonist Pseudonym Jones), and this is the comic I drew. I had this observation probably almost a decade ago, and have been waiting to share it with the world ever since. As of yet, no one has really disagreed. Someone on Facebook called it “a masterclass in one-page comics,” and that’s gonna keep me going for the next six months! 😀
I found this (seemingly) functioning pay phone recently, and thought “hmmm, seems like I should take several pictures of this, from different angles” because, you know, I bet there’s no reference like that anywhere online... I’ve put higher resolution versions of these photos on Tumblr here – use them for whatever you want, tell me if you feel like it. Enjoy!
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In Life News, I recently started physiotherapy, as I’ve had a sore hip that’s made it difficult to sit at the computer for long periods to do my artwork. I’ve begun to see some progress already, which is encouraging since it’s only been about a month. I turned 39 on July 3rd, which does make me more mindful of aging and how it’s important to keep oneself in good physical health in order to make art for a living. Take note! If you’ll permit me to go into Mom Mode for a second, it’s important to exercise regularly if possible, take breaks while you’re drawing, and do a few stretches before you sit down to draw. You’ll thank me down the line, I promise! Draw Stronger by Kriota Willberg is a great resource on this topic geared specifically towards cartoonists, I suggest picking up a copy if you can find one.
To close this month’s edition, I want to do a couple quick shout-outs to some other comic Kickstarters you may want to support – The Iron Barge is a great looking book I recently backed, written by Norm Harper with art by Meaghan Carter, letters by Oceano Ransford, and edited by Allison O'Toole. The tagline is “Mouseguard meets Mad Max in a talking animal comic set in post-apocalyptic Las Vegas,” and if that didn’t immediately sell me, the campaign actually being in Canadian funds and the book costing a mere $15 CAD certainly did! The Kickstarter ended on July 5th, but as of this writing you can still do a “Late Pledge” to pre-order the book.
Prehistoria: Age of Dinosaurs – the Complete Collection by local Saskatoon creator Brayden Martens and artist Chris Simmonds is in pre-launch right now – you can sign up to be notified when the campaign goes live. I’ve been following this series for a while now and I’m excited to see it finally collected in one volume!
I think that does it for this month. Oh yeah, one more thing - it looks like I’ll be tabling at the upcoming SaskAssemble convention. That’s going to be Sunday, September 15th, 2024 from 11am-6pm at Sutherland Hall, Saskatoon. Admission is $5. There will be a bunch of other local artists and plenty of back issue vendors, so I hope to see you there!
Till next time,
~ Elaine 😀