“The Cigar Maker” Making Rounds on The Net

Now that The Cigar Maker has been out for a couple of weeks, it has started to make the rounds on the Internet. Here is a summary of what’s been going down…

• Possibly the coolest shout comes from Cigar City Magazine, a great magazine from Tampa, Florida that celebrates the history of the Cigar City. They published an excerpt of the book in their May/June issue and will be publishing excerpts in their next three issues. Their online version will be up soon, and I’ll link you as soon as I can!
• A little blurb on Ybor City Stogie. Looks like a political website but they gave me a shout, with a link to the book’s official site.
• CigarAdvisor.com picked up a press release and posted it to their site. They also requested a review copy, so I’ll be waiting to read their review in a few weeks.  
• Cigars in Review magazine, a brand new publication that reviews cigars, posted a link to the book’s site on their page. They’re also running an ad to promote the book to cigar shops nationwide.  
• Here’s a cool little forum called Friends of Habanos. One of their members picked up the press release and posted it to their site. They like my name, and I’ve seen some sales come in directly from this forum. Thanks, Friends of Habanos!
• There was this great review by Celia Hayes on Blogger News Network. 8-9 more reviews are pending, so I’m bracing for the feedback. Hopefully the book continues it’s favorbale critical reception.
• If you live in Minneapolis, Art a Whirl is this weekend, a great art festival featuring over 500 participants. I’m having a book signing to officially unveil Cigar and it’s listed a one of the festival’s special events.
• Finally Big Time Attic threw together a nice little blurbie-blurb, with pictures of the book’s maps drawn by cityscape extraordinaire Kevin Cannon. They also have an image of the book on Kindle, where it was recently #1 in Cigars. Check it out!!

If you haven’t picked up your copy of The Cigar Maker, now is a good time. Pick it up on Amazon or wherever books are sold. It would make a great Father’s Day gift!!

Big Funny

5 out of 5 stars

48 pages, comic

Various artists, 2009

Saturday morning as a kid at my house meant hours and hours of cartoons – powered by Betty Crocker blueberry muffins, orange juice and my father’s bad breath. I will always cherish memories of Wile E. Coyote flying over the canyon in his Acme roller skates, or watching him smack into the pavement after his Acme catapult failed to launch him into the roadrunner’s path. Seeing that innovative predator who never gave up always takes me back to the days when I could rely on Saturday morning cartoons to keep me amused for hours.

There was one other thing that was a constant staple of the childhood weekend: the Sunday comics.

Full color, filled with wacky characters and social commentary, and more often than not: funny.

Whatever happened to the glorious Sunday comics of yesteryear? When the characters were pop-culture celebrities whose adventure pages were fought over at the breakfast table? When older brothers snatched the paper from younger brothers, or fathers camped out in the bathroom to enjoy a few valued minutes of solitude while snickering at the antics of Hi and Lois or B.C.?

As our world becomes more digitized, the newspaper medium is swiftly going the way of the cassette tape…the artifacts are recycled or tossed, left to rot in some attic or basement while its owners encourage the rise of reality TV and accelerate the death of the evening news.

Like the gray wolf and the bald eagle, the Sunday comics have become endangered.

Sure, you can always find them online but it’s not the same. The Net lacks the excitement of waking up early to be the first to grab the paper off the porch, throwing the black and white pages aside to devour the color comics before your older brother yanks them from your grasp. It’s no fun for your dad to bring his laptop into the toilet while he enjoys his morning dump. Just ask Dad: there’s nothing like flipping through the newspaper and watching your fingertips turn black with ink while looking around the bathroom for a pack of matches so your children are spared of your stink.

Which brings me to Big Funny (click to see the comics!), a wonderful tribute to the original Sunday comics. The International Cartoonist Conspiracy, Big Time Attic and Altered Esthetics have collaborated to produce a modern oversized newspaper comics section reminiscent of the legendary comics of the old days. Like saving an endangered species, or resurrecting one long extinct using nothing but DNA from old, crumbling comics and colorful memories of Sunday morning, Big Funny celebrates the history and future of comics. With 48 pages of hilarious original comics drawn by local artists who all share a passion for the medium, Big Funny is packed with quirky characters and ridiculously endearing adventure whose artistic quality is as good as any comic you’ve ever seen.

Some of the highlights include:

Bud Burgy’s “Authoritative Expert J. Wiggins” a bald-headed judge of authorized fashion.

Jesse Gillespie’s “Little Emo in Slumbaland,” a colorful and visually gratifying fantasy of hip-hop dreams.

Daniel J. Olson’s vivid, eye-catching “Hey Rube!” (check out Super Maxi-Pad Girl #2 – on sale now!…same link: just click it! you can’t resist knowing more about Super Maxi-Pad Girl)

Kevin Cannon’s exciting Saturday matinee serial, join-in-the-middle-of the-action cliffhanger “Army Men.”

Bob Lipski’s “Uptown Girl” makes an appearance but it’s the minimalistic “Sulky Girl,” hilarious in her simplicity, who steals the page.

Steve Mason’s “Talewinds: Little Jimmy” is the story of a bicycle tire turned B-movie blob.

“Middle Management” by Andy Singer is perhaps the best addition to the feature with a fascinating and surprising commentary on big government and the concept of spreading the wealth. And if you’re a fan of social commentary, Big Funny has plenty of it, from banks that are too big to fail to Lupi’s* “A Breast Abreast” a visually captivating look at public breast feeding…and then there’s Steve Stwalley’s “Bongo the Monk” which introduced me to the concept of monkey sushi.

As video tapes are replaced by DVDs are replaced by Blue Ray which will be replaced by movies being beamed directly to your TV, and music went from radio to LPs to tapes to CDs to iTunes, what will be the future of the Sunday comics? As the newspaper industry slowly dies, they’ll certainly take the comics unless there remain some who love the feeling of those pages and those full color comics. As our entire world goes digital, it’s nice to sit back and kick it with a copy of Big Funny – so nostalgic you’ll end up with ink on your fingers.

These artists slave over a labor of love. I hope you’ll check out Big Funny, which is available here for only $5.

*full disclosure: Lupi is my wife! 🙂

Reviewed by Mark McGinty, October 2009

Check out Big Funny: Celebrating the Newspaper Comic Strip

The International Cartoonist Conspiracy, Big Time Attic, and Altered Esthetics gallery in Minneapolis have collaborated to produce an oversized newspaper comics section – like they used to do in the old days.

It’s really cool!!

You can check out the gallery exhibit at Altered Esthetics if you live in the Twin Cities, or you can read more about it, or buy it online here.

More, including a review, coming soon…

 

Far Arden

Kevin Cannon

Top Shelf Productions, 2009

400 pages, Graphic novel/Adventure

4 1/2 out of 5 stars

I first started reading Kevin Cannon’s graphic novel Far Arden while about halfway through another book. I’m usually pretty good at reading two books at once, alternating whimsically as my mood dictates. I could not do that with Far Arden. Ten pages in and I set it aside and finished the other book.  Far Arden was already a fascinating adventure story that I wanted to immerse myself in completely and without distraction.

The reader will benefit from knowing the story of how this book was produced: Cannon was challenged to draw one 24-hour comic (24 pages drawn and completed in 24 hours) each month for an entire year. While the process didn’t quite go exactly as planned,  the result if Far Arden, an epic adventure story set in the Canadian Arctic.

Enter the hero, Army Shanks. Imagine Indiana Jones reincarnated as a renegade Arctic pirate who looks like John Lennon but dresses like the guys from Whale Wars. It is Shanks’ mission in life to discover the tropical utopia of Far Arden but before he gets there he must navigate through a delightful gang of eccentric characters that include a Russian businessman, a burly man in chains and a circus warden, a pair of nosey journalism students and a little Short Round who wears a fox pelt while searching for his father’s killer. Sound original? You bet!

The story is great fun and it moves rather quickly. Every time I finished a chapter, I promised to read just one more and ended up pressing on because the story was just so damn interesting. Shanks doesn’t put up with any BS and watching him fight, trick and luck his way through a series of amusing obstacles makes you root for him more and more.

The artwork is minimal yet striking which works to the story’s advantage. The action scenes are highlighted with hilarious and very straightforward sounds and special effects such as “KICK OPEN!” “DRAG OUTSIDE” and “MID-AIR GROIN GRINDER!” that make you chuckle and nod with appreciation.

Kevin Cannon has created and populated a world of his own. Cannon’s imagination transcends any Arctic legends of  mystical lands and creates its own magic. Filled with humor, adventure, surprises and a villain that reminds you of Count Rugen, the mad scientist with the death machine from The Princess Bride, Far Arden has everything I love in a story.

You can read more about Far Arden here.

…Or check out a few pages here…(click the Next button at the bottom)

…or buy it from Amazon, Top Shelf, or Powell’s Books.

Reviewed by Mark McGinty, June 2009