The Beginning is the End is the Beginning

SEND A HEARTBEAT to the void that cries through Sean Ford, because he is done with Only Skin, and because he is a closet Smashing Pumpkins fan. Or he was until now. You can pre-order Only Skin 7 here, or wait and grab them from Sean directly at MoCCA (which is less than two weeks away!) or you can get them right here at the Emporium (soon-ish). We can’t wait to put the whole Only Skin enchilada together!

Major props to Secret Acres ourselves for having finally gotten through our website spring cleaning. We have an actual Facebook page for you to “like” (h/t to Rina A) and one of those goddamn Twitter things, for briefer musings than the novelizations which happen here.  We’ve got the ever lovin’ Mike Dawson all set up with his own artist page, and we have an Only Skin screensaver ready to download for Gratis (yes, it’s Windows only for now). Everything is brand spanking new on Small Plates, including some stuff you have never seen before anywhere from mastermind John Brodowski. We fixed all the stupid links (thank you, newly reloaded Comics Comics Journal for rendering a whole bunch of them redundant; it’s totally worth it, but still).

Not good enough? We made a couple additions to the Emporium, too: you can now pre-order I Will Bite You! Yes, that’s right. Holy friggin’ sweet baby cats, we’ve been waiting to write that for thousands of years. In fact, one more time: you can now pre-order I Will Bite You! Really, it’s happened. Go. Click. And while you’re there, you may order Hot Topic from evil twins Samuel C. Gaskin and Matt Furie. Buy it or you will miss out on some Insane Clown Titties and that’s for serious. These things were gone in sixty seconds at BCGF; they’re not going to last much longer here.

More still? We’ll have a new comic-style over-sized comic from the aforementioned Sam for TCAF. 2012 happens then, in 2011, which is like Christmas in July. If you’re wondering, 2012, the comic, is truly the end of the world and it features Jackie Chan and vampire sexing, which all the kids are into these days. There will be a teaser of this guy in Conor Stechschulte’s sexy anthology (we’re quoting here) at the Closed Caption Comics table at MoCCA. The Mayans were right.

There have been a ton of shoutouts while we were sprucing up a bit. Edie Fake got his at Under the Radar, the Daily Crosshatch, Read About Comics, Newcity Art and threw down with none other than Eamon Espey for Mildred Pierce #4.  If you happen to be round Chicago way, Edie and underground forefather George Hansen will be conversing and watching cartoons at the Hungry Brain on April the 12th. If Chicago is not happening, you can still maybe pick up an awesome Edie print from the good folks at Cinders here.

Meanwhile, Mike, Joe Lambert and Theo Ellsworth got their Best American Notables noted here, here and here, and our man Ken Dahl was digitally molested (that’s pixels, not fingers, pervert) by Robin Bougie here. Finally, the smartest guy in the room, Dan Nadel, put Curio Cabinet in his top five for the Economist’s More Intelligent Life. If you want to know why Dan likes it so much, Rob Clough explains for you on ye olde Comics Journal here.

Phew.

But what will we do for you lately? We are hitting the road to go examine the wacky kids and their doings at the Center for Cartoon Studies’ Industry Day. We’ll be reviewing portfolios and torturing the students with horrible personal questions about their hygiene and reading habits, and, no, folks, we aren’t kidding. If you take a close look at our Gesamtkunstwerkers pages, you’ll note that we have raided that place pretty viciously, so our expectations are through the roof. Tom Spurgeon will be making the trip as well. Poor Spurge. Thought you could escape us forever?

Then there’s MoCCA. After that, we’ll be at Dan Nadel’s SVA class, where we might drop our thoughts on the Seven Habits of Highly Effective Cartoonists, or we might not (there is an Eighth Habit, but that one’s Marry a Nurse and it doesn’t count – and before we get into one of those Dilbert moments, there are male nurses, folks, and they are awesome, too, if you prefer marrying a man and are planning on practicing the Eighth Habit). More on those last two later, because that’s enough for a late night blog post. We almost don’t even feel bad for being away for so long now.

Your Pals,

Leon and Barry

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