Happy New Year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Speaking of which, this is the end of first year as fully functional, book publishing Secret Acres – and there’s no else we’d rather have spent it with than you. We hope it was as good for you as it was for us.

We had an amazing adventure up at Expozine. Thanks be to the Bodegamobile for letting us hitch and to the lovely Gigi Devlin and family for letting us crash. If you were there, thank you so very much for coming by and feeding us yams (Yes, Joesph Lambert was fed a yam on the floor of Expozine. It will never get any better for him.). A very special thanks to the folks at Drawn and Quarterly for feeding us Poutine (a kind of french fry and gravy cereal, for you uninitiated), giving us a tour of the D&Q office (which is beautiful, really) and most of all for supplying us with a copy of Skitzy. If you’re an artist reading this, go read Skitzy. We’ll wait.

At year’s end, the lists start unfurling, almost as if to show Santa up. At the end of our first year, we have to say we’re rightfully humbled. We really shouldn’t say anymore, so let’s let these folks speak for themselves:

The Village Voice – 2008’s Best Comics, Clip Art, and Pedophilia:
“Theo Ellsworth treads the opposite path with the horror vacui panels of Capacity (Secret Acres, 336 pp., $15), taking the reader on a surreal journey through exquisitely cross-hatched forests, cities, and caverns, where the beasts populating dreams become skittish at the scent of the dreamers.”

Forbidden Planet International Blog Log, Wim Lockefeer:
“And finally, the book of the year: Wormdye by Eamon Espey (Secret Acres), a plunge into the subconscious of contemporary America. It’s a portrait of life in a merciless world, with every perversion you can imagine (sadism, cannibalism, drug abuse and lactating grandfathers). It is about everything and nothing; it’s an orgy of primitive imagery, an appeal to your primal senses and most basal thoughts. Espey manages to combine Mike Diana’s scandalousness with Crumb’s obsessions, and lifts it all up to incredible heights. Wormdye is nothing less than the Howl of comics. I cannot find any higher praise.”

We even got top five picks and shout outs for all three Secret Acres books, and other books from Secret artists, from the likes of Brian Heater and Arthur Shmid (The Daily Crosshatch), Austin English (Windy Corner), Laura Hudson (Comic Foundry), Damien Jay (The Natural World), Mari Naomi (Estrus Comics), Tom Neely (The Blot), Shannon O’Leary (Pet Noir), Nate Powell (Swallow Me Whole), Jesse Reklaw (Slow Wave) and Dylan Williams (Sparkplug, Reporter). You can read all about that and read the fancy quotes here.

Our deepest thanks to the above and to everyone who read the books our guys slaved over and everyone who was a part of this year of ours.

Your pals,

Leon and Barry

---