doppelganger

The fantastic Pascal Girard took this picture of me in Vancouver, next to a wall mural of my hipper-moustachioed twin.
Remarkable likeness.
More remarkable? The size of my fat fucking head! Jesus. Like a watermelon!

Man-super!

By Sam. Looks like in a movie where they hire an artist to make kid drawings. This drawing blows my mind. So good.

Buzz Lightyear by Sam

Another Ollmann kid provides a post

So, we'll give young Sam a break and let one of his older siblings provide a drawing for us today. This one comes from my daughter Liz Ollmann who is working on organic farms in Europe these days.

This drawing is of some Euro-trash humans who stayed at one of her farms.

Notes on the drawing From Liz:

imagine them all laughing in austrian accents

and listening to "acid jazz" (elevator music)

"we should set up another table for the workers so we don't all have to crowd around the whole table at mealtimes, it would be supah, non?"

CBC Tapestry and me

So, the nice people at CBC Tapestry did a show on Midlife crises, etc. They must have google-searched and my last book came up (believe me, I know, I google… oi!).
So I was on there today. I sound insane and amusing. Which, I assume, is what they required to act as foil to the Jungian-philosopher guy who comes on after. I make that guys sound even smarter!

Listen here:

AND, for the gluttonous for punishment, scroll down for the entire, unedited interview.

insane juvenalia animation

Found this un-filmed weirdness in a box in my parent's attic again.
The title sequence is much longer than the film itself.
Strange.

ol cap'n haddock

from my parents' attic

On a recent trip to see old mom and dad, I got up in the attic, in the boxes of shite I have foisted on those dear old people over the years. Well, what was trash a few years ago suddenly seem treasures.

Here's a few finds:


1) This David Mazzuchelli New Yorker cover from 1993, blew my mind. I was all like, holy shit, he's predicted the 9/11 attacks years before they occurred! Jesus, how come no one ever noticed this before? Holy shit, I … Oh, yeah, there was that earlier attack on the world trade towers in '93…
Nice cover anyway.




2) This was the first thing Drawn and Quarterly published! I bought this in a convenience store in Ontario and I was all like, what the hell is this. There is a comic in there by the chief himself, which I remembered being really good and it is. The guy is not only a great publisher, he's a very talented cartoonist.




3) The third issue of a black and white comic I did in the 80's and 90's. It was a terrible comic.
Still, I miss the days of a million shitty, black and white alternative comics with black and red covers every week when you went to the comic shop.




Here's an example, from the inside back cover.
terrible.
click to enlarge.

TRANSFARMER!!

Caught my kid drawing in bed. He said, “scan this and put it on your blog.”
New content, cha-ching!

Thanks Sam!

Saveur Magazine

So, I have a recipe comic over at Saveur Magazine. Why not read it here and then twitter some shit about it. Like it, why don't you?

nice drawing by my kid

The kid's six, pretty nice drawing, huh?

I'm number 10! I'm number 10!

So, Amazon.com announced their Best of the Year So Far 2011 and my book MID-LIFE was in the top ten for Comics/Graphic Novels.
Just when I thought my google-searching of my name would turn up nothing new…



(this drawing was done late at night in a haze of tired and whiskey. the trumpet sez: TWET!
say what?)

old joe's working hard, folks…

…he just can't draw. But he keeps trying. Here's 4 versions of page one of the next book, tentatively titled: BURDEN.
In the version 2 photo, there are ten more pages like this which will be trashed. I will get it together, folks. I promise!

ALSO! I promise there will be photos, drawings and hilarious accounts of my Mid-Life book tour antics here on this weBLOG.
soon as hell folks.

regards,
as always,
your pal.
ol joe


Update:
In the bright light of day, a new version emerges. To be shredded another day…

Taddle Creek

I have a new comic in the new issue of the fine magazine, Taddle Creek. They publish a lot of great comics and art by Seth, Ethan Rilley, Zach Worton, Michael Cho and dear old Dave Lapp is a regular feature. Buy Taddle Creek! It's a great magazine!
Do it here:
Seriously, buy magazines people. It's a labour of love for the people involved and we can piss and moan about the death of print, or we can PREVENT IT!
love, old joe

A hayseed amongst the literati…

So, I did some culture diaries for my new pal, Nicole Rudick over at the Paris Review. Pretty heady stuff for a guy educated in a box factory. Don't worry, in my entries I curse, am culturally-insensitive and generally make an ass of myself.
Have a look here.

Goddamn Wizard World: R2D2 likes Mid-Life

I was taken by Andy Brown of Conundrum Press to Wizard World last weekend. Which, I realize, sounds fun at some level.
I'm not entirely convinced.
Here's Andy's report from the event, including Dave Collier, Dave Lapp, Britt Wilson, Vicki Narino and goddamn Darth Vader as well.

Conundrum'sWizard World Report

Have you ever BEEN at one of these things?

reviews

Here's some reviews of my new D&Q book,
MID-LIFE.
Thanks, nice reviewers!

The onion AV Club.

Paste Magazine.

The Georgia Straight.

(be sure to scroll down on some of these pages, otherwise you'll only read about other people.) gah.

MAN DRAWING SALON RETURNS

Like a sweaty, farting phoenix from the ashes, the noble Man Drawing Salon, Montréal's most envied drawing consortium are back making their particular brand of sweet, fecund visages.

Blah, blah, blah… Yeah! more crap about me.

Hey kids, (I say to the people who accidentally arrive at the WAG blog, looking for the Winnipeg Art Gallery, or some dog-related bizness.) But anyway, since the new book MID-LIFE is out, there are reviews and interviews showing up, I'm going to post them as they show up. Jesus, you'd think I never shut up, all these interviews.

There's a long interview over at the great Tom Spurgeon's Comics Reporter, here.

A really nice review over at the Newsarama comics blog here.

And another long interview with Chris Mautner over at the Comic Book Resources Robot 6 blog: here.

a terrible picture of Lynda Barry and I

This picture, I said I would burn it, but the great Lynda Barry said keep it, she said it was awesome that she looked like she was melting. so I show it.
Dudes, I met my hero Lynda Barry and actually hung out drinking Jack Daniels with her discussing heartbreaking break ups, etc.
She is as AMAZING as her work would lead you to suspect. And I'm the insane looking dude behind her.

NEW BOOK IN THE HOUSE!

My first ever full-length book MID-LIFE, published by the great Drawn and Quarterly has arrived and will be in stores soon!
The book is way less smug than I look in this photo. That's actually a humble kind of pride at being published by D&Q on my face.
seriously.

Bear-rotica!

So above is a few panels of a rough of I did for two-page strip a while back for Seth and the magazine Canadian Notes and Queries (issue # 79) which he's designing.
It's an adaptation, part of a proposed series of adaptations of famous Canadian books by Canadian cartoonists. The book I was given was Marian Engel's Bear, a book about a woman's love affair (mental AND physical) with a bear. I read that thing with a boner in the library as a kid and was giggling when I got it to adapt, dude, she totally does it with a bear! But on reading it as adult, I was amazed at how good it was and how realistically Engel handles a really implausible premise. Of course there's also a lot more going on beneath the narrative as well.
ANyway, it was a great honour, albeit a scary one, to be doing work for Seth.
This is a little part of the original roughs, if you want to see the strip, buy the magazine (issue 79, or get a subscription, Seth comics and other cartoonists in every issue!) , support the poor literary bastards here.