Florent Ruppert and Jerome Mulot draw comics as a team. Friends since art school, their style melds together seamlessly in their first English-language edition, Barrel of Monkeys. Lovingly designed and edited by Bill Kartalopolus of REBUS, Barrel of Monkeys is a hypnotic, innovative work that drifts along like a dreamlike rhythm. Centered on a pair of cynical and cruel photographers in a series of viscerally uncomfortable situations, the story floats away into tangents and narrative fragments marked by bitterly dark humor, sad poignancy and hilarious perversity. Sexploits at the zoo, awkward portrait sessions, and ablism at orgies give plenty of opportunities for these lovable anti-heroes to launch into shocking displays of douchebaggery underscored by an uneasy sense of schadenfreude.

The visual style of Barrel of Monkeys fluctuates between impressionistic sketchiness and intensely detailed pen work that lends an emotional ferocity to the images. Ruppert and Mulot take delight in experimenting with the comic form, playing with multiple media and provoking the reader to think about languages and visual systems. There are layers hidden within layers in Barrel of Monkeys—it reveals more to the reader on each subsequent reading.

Simon Hanselmann is a sharp-witted Tasmanian rabble-rouser and cartoonist who writes intensely hilarious (trust me, you’ll literally LOL) comics about a depressed stoner witch (Megg), her feline lover (Mogg), their long-suffering avian roommate (Owl), and their motley crew of friends, including a werewolf famous for his epic, ludicrous party antics (Werewolf Jones).

Hanselmann’s been making comics since the tender age of 8, lovingly producing full-color booklets of his work and distributing them person-to-person wherever he could. But aside form provoking the ire of his high school principal, Hanselmann had trouble connecting with anyone outside a small handful of hardcore comic fans.

Then, earlier this year, Hanselmann decided to release a boatload of his comics for free on his Tumblr, Girl Mountain. As he explained to The Comics Journal, “I figured why the hell not just put it all online? At least then people will see it and perhaps know that I exist outside of my circle of friends and perplexed people at shabby, shirtless noise-shows.”

Now Hanselmann’s work is being enjoyed and shared by leagues of readers across the globe, and big-name magazines and publishers are starting to take notice. Read on to find out the how Hanselmann got so hilarious and which one of his characters has broken out as an Internet sex symbol!

After joining Tumblr earlier this year, your work exploded in popularity. What sort of surprising or unexpected feedback have you received from fans who discovered your work on Tumblr?

It’s just really surreal getting feedback in general, I’m so used to being way off of anybody’s radar, existing in tiny, insular, local chap-booklet scenes. It’s totally awesome getting heaps of really weird, cool/creepy “fan-art” and it’s nice when people tell me my jokes are landing sometimes and my work doesn’t totally suck.

It’s also scary and totally freaks me out. I have a lot of trouble with being alive sometimes and interacting with other meat-swaddled animated skeletons. Weirdly I’ve had several emails from different people who want to “date” Werewolf Jones. Werewolf Jones is apparently becoming some kind of bad-boy teen-idol.

It’s also really bizarre how well-liked Truth Zone (my criticism strip on Comics Workbook) has become with actual “big time”, “academic” “comics-critics”.

I need to keep up my game. People are watching me now.
Fuck.

One of the things that makes “Megg and Mogg” such a joy is your impeccable comic timing. What shaped your sense of humor?

Most likely my “Augusten Burroughs style” upbringing… I’ve always been surrounded by a lot of dysfunction. My Mother’s been a full-time “intravenous enthusiast” my entire life and Tasmania is full of psychopaths and dog-fuckers and just scary, SCARY people.

To deal with it all I became a sort of “Chandler” (from the hit sitcom ‘Friends’) type character, throwing out quips in the middle of the Christmas-morning vein-openings.

Life has predominately displayed a propensity to be unbearably difficult and depressing and everybody around me is weak and frail and seemingly unable to cope with being alone.

I cleverly use “comedy”, in my daily life and in my art, to cope with my crushing fear, guilt and weakness. : )

Also I watch a FUCKLOAD of sitcoms.

What kind of magic powers does Megg have?

Megg has no powers. She used to, in high school, but now she gets way too high and is way too depressed to pull off any of that complicated shit anymore.

She used to be able to rollerblade really well too, like full ramp-skating, but she can’t do that anymore either.

She did manage to ride a broomstick in that episode where Mogg had to get to his noise-show but she was so drunk she didn’t even realize it happened.

Why does Owl put up with so much abuse from Megg and Mogg?

They’ve been friends for a long time and are pretty much a 3-person domestic-couple at this point, plus Owl is quite often very drunk and forgets certain cruelties.

Owl IS somewhat well-adjusted and capable of success, but has horrible self-worth problems.

Spoiler alert: shit is going to go down in some upcoming “official continuity” story-arcs. Owl might be moving out…

Would you consider your work “stoner comedy”? Also, Megg and Mogg enjoy watching everything from iCarly to Kenneth Anger to an automatic car wash stoned. What’s your favorite thing to watch between bong rips?

When i started doing Megg and Mogg stories in ’08 i did set out to make it a “drug comic”, just the “stonedest” thing possible. It was my version of ‘How I Met Your Mother’, but stained with resin, and REAL…

I guess it’s a “stoner dramady”… All of the upcoming plots are about getting older and reality and weakness and the human brain. It will be much closer to ‘Requiem for a Dream’ than ‘Harold and Kumar’…

IMO, the best thing on television right now is ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’.

As evidenced by that awesome and hilarious letter of reprimand from your high school principal, you have an impressive pedigree when it comes to printed matter. In your opinion, what makes a good small press, and what are some of your favorite presses operating today?

Yeah, in the past fifteen or so years I’ve done everything from standard “zines” to “hand-bound hardbacks painted with blood” to “slideshow VHS cassettes” to “origami”. But probably the one thing that matters is hot content. Good writing, good taste. AND killer style. But above all, good jokes, and good sadness… and distro, that’s important. I could never get my shit together distro-wise…

Being trapped in Australia and having only recently gotten my shit together and gotten onto the internet properly, I’m only just getting my head around the current worldwide small-press scene and slowly figuring it all out and trying to find all the buried treasure.

Currently I’m excited by Space Face Books (Mack’s got a pretty hot BCGF line-up), Oily Comics (the whole thing is just utterly fucking charming), and anything that’s coming out of the whole Deforge/Paddy Kyle “zone” (scary/inspiring workaholics).

When can we expect the first “Girl Mountain” book to come out, and what can we look forward to from that series?

I was just talking about this yesterday with a group of local cartoonist friends. I kind of don’t want to release it at all… I drew it ’06 through ’10 and it just feels like a bit of a mess to me. It needs a heavy edit. I would prefer that a 244page fully-painted colour comic not have to be put aside as a “learning experience” and “a mistake” but maybe it’ll have to be… and i’m okay with that.

If I do continue with it, readers can expect lots of awkward, teen graveyard-sex, space travel, rooms that make you want to die if you go into them, haunted space-travel and black magic. It’s 1000 pages long, it spans 7 years, it’s glacially paced, it was written by a kid.

I might just re-start the whole thing or pick its wreckage apart for other purposes… I’ll probably at least show it to some publishers at some point in the future but Megg and Mogg are now my main focus for at least the next 3 years… they’re consuming all of my time. I’m head over heels in love with them.

And I think I learnt from some of my mistakes.

What are some of your favorite comics that came out in the last year?

Deforge is still on fire and is truly frightening, I get a fair amount of shit done but HOLY HELL. I hope he gets a boyfriend or a girlfriend soon and stops freaking everybody out with his intense sleepless bachelor shtick.

I can’t get enough Dane Martin. Aidan Koch is awesome. Mickey Z is awesome. Negron is awesome. Heather Benjamin‘s drawings gross me the fuck out but in a beautiful heart-warming way…

Most of my favorite comics right now are coming out of my best friend HTML Flowers‘ bedroom, he’s getting better and better at comics and i’m super happy that i have such a cool BFF. I LOVE him (I LOVE you, buddy. CUTE BOYS ALERT).

Also in Melbourne, Michael Hawkins is doing some hot shit, we’ve been friends for 10 years and I LOVE everything he does. Marc Pearson is about to release a pretty nice looking new book, he’s getting pretty good. Lashna Tuschewski is really fucking cool and i wish she’d make a million more comics. Sam Wallman is totally cool. Michael Fikaris is printing up really great tabloid anthologies. I dig Katie Parrish too, she’s pretty cool.

Also I love Megg and Mogg. I’ll sit around for hours laughing at that shit. Oh, wait… I do that one… LOL

Dear Future Shipwreck readers,

I’m thrilled to announce a project very close to my heart: The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame.

Gengoroh Tagame is an extraordinary, prolific artist widely recognized as the master of bara manga. Tagame comes from a long line of sexual provocateurs like Jean Genet, Yukio Mishimia, and Tom of Finland. His comics and paintings are scintillating, drenched in masculinity, and rife with sadomasochistic fantasy.

Tagame’s comics are nearly impossible to find in English. I felt like that was a criminal oversight, and it turned out I wasn’t alone! After I made a video for Future Shipwreck about gay manga last year, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my friend Anne Ishii had privately translated some of Tagame’s comics for the collection of Chip Kidd. Chip is not only of the world’s greatest graphic designers, but also a connoisseur of obscure Japanese comics (see also: his awesome collection Bat-Manga: The Secret History of Batman in Japan) and a huge fan of Tagame’s work.

So the three of us got together, and now we’re working with Tagame and the fantastic art book publisher Picturebox to put out the first offical English-language collection of Tagame’s work! The volume will include 10 stories from Tagame’s prolific catalog as well as a brand new story commisioned by Chip, exclusive sketches, and an introduction by gay literary icon Edmund White.

Read the full scoop on The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame over at The Comics Reporter. I’m visiting Tagame in Japan this fall, so expect plenty of fun surprises! Stay tuned as we get closer to the book’s Spring 2013 release. I hope you’re as excited as I am! It’s time Tagame got his dues.

Wuvable Oaf: a big, burly, beefy, bodacious, bad-ass bloke who loves Morrissey, kittens and men. Oaf originated four years ago as a single drawing for a paper doll– but Oaf was destined for bigger things. Artist Ed Luce’s drawing evoked such visceral responses from his friends, he decided to expand Oaf’s presence into a comic book series. From there, an entire universe was born.

Ed could have easily allowed Oaf’s legacy to end after that first illustration, but the character was imbued with a very rare graphical immediacy. Like Hello Kitty or Emily the Strange, Wuvable Oaf is an icon whose mere image evokes instant responses from strangers. Through comics, t-shirts, scratch n’ sniff cards, international art shows and 7″ singles, Ed and Wuvable Oaf are step by step taking over the world. Read below to find out what life will be like after the Oaf regime takes power, and don’t miss Ed Luce at San Diego Comic Con July 12-15!

What are you working on these days? Is there a new issue of Wuvable Oaf in the works?

Since the release of the latest Oaf mini-comic, Kisses Kerry King/Rawk Gawdz, I’ve been working mostly on anthology stuff for other people. Family Style, a Portland-based publisher, puts out a very fun sword and sorcery comic called Elf World, with a revolving group of creators; the first “Wuvable Ogre” tale is in issue #3.

I just finished a story for Henry & Glenn Forever & Ever #1, a new series based on the original comic about punk legends Rollins and Danzig in a domestic partnership. Oaf’s wrestling alter ego Goteblud will make an appearance in Mark Rudolph’s upcoming Satan Is Alive Mercyful Fate tribute comic, celebrating the early 80′s metal band. I did the cover and a color Oaf story for Robert Kirby’s THREE #3, also featuring work by Carrie McNinch, Howard Cruse and several other prominent queer creators. And by the time people read this, we’ll have released the first DIY Oaf Doll Kit, which I had a lot of fun designing and sewing.

We’re also honored to be included in Justin Hall’s upcoming No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics anthology, published by Fantagraphics; it reprints some early Oaf stories. Oaf will be making an appearance in Bruno Gmunder’s FUR The Love of Hair, which is a color coffee table photo book celebrating all things manly and hirsute, coming out in May.

Later in the summer, I’m looking to debut two new shirt designs (I can tell you one– OAF HULK!) at San Diego Comic-Con.

It may seem like I take these long breaks between proper Oaf issues but in reality I’m working non-fucking-stop!

Oh yeah…Wuvable Oaf #4 is set to release in time for the Alternative Press Expo this fall! I hope.

What can we anticipate from Wuvable Oaf in the future? Do you already know the direction the story and characters will take, or does it evolve with each issue?

I’d like to finally get a collected trade edition of Oafs #0-4 and all the minis out in 2013. Expect more minis, including a cats only issue featuring the Oaf Hybrid Cat (from the shirt design).

I have plotted future story arcs for all the Oaf characters, as hinted at in issue #0. Once Oaf’s date saga with Eiffel wraps, we’ll be following Smusherrrr in #5, with back-up stories about Oaf stalking Eiffel on tour. My collaborator Matt is writing the Smusherrrr arc, which will have a somewhat different tone than my stuff. Darker, stranger…and quite possibly funnier. I’m really looking forward to it!

How did you learn to draw comics, and what were your earliest comic inspirations?

I dabbled with comic strips in college but once I left for grad school, I was all about painting, performance and installation. When I returned to comics with the Oaf project, there was something of a learning curve, in regard to putting together an actual sustained narrative. So I feel like my first attempts at sequential storytelling bear the marks of those growing pains. But really, I’ve bought and read comics my whole life, so working with that visual language felt fairly natural. I just applied my technical skills to a different medium and method.

Gosh…earliest inspirations?! I’ve collected Marvel and DC comics my whole life, but I wouldn’t say they particularly inspired what I do now. I have to admit, when I first discovered indie comics, I was reading a lot of Dan Clowes and Chris Ware. But honestly, I feel like the Oaf is a reaction against that stuff more than anything; the sort of sardonic, depressive vibe that’s permeated a lot of indie comics since the late 90′s. I guess you can be inspired by something in such a way that you want to make sure you’re rebelling against it…?

To more directly answer your question, early on I really admired the drawing styles and large casts of characters in the Love & Rockets books. The Hernandez brothers put a lot of love and time into creating those worlds. Gilberto has always been my favorite; I love his kooky character designs and textures.

Who are some of your favorite up and coming artists? Who’s making work that inspires you?

I had a great experience chatting with Chris Houghton at WonderCon this year. He and his brother Shane put out Reed Gunther via Image Comics… it’s just a joy to read. Playful, sweet, unpretentious. One of the few books I could recommend for all ages that doesn’t feel pinched or cloying.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I’m not sure if people are sick of me talking about Johnny Ryan yet (maybe he is) but I’m definitely inspired by his Prison Pit series. It’s as nasty, sexy and violent as any hardcore porn. I know some of my gay friends really don’t like the imagery or language but honestly, the first book reads like some radical, extreme erotica, if can make the mental shift. It’s all about penetration and regeneration, with literal and metaphorical erections throughout. And no, I don’t care if homoeroticism was never Johnny’s intention. Seriously, I could go on and on about its conceptual merits…awesome stuff.

What makes you laugh?

My partner Mark and my cat, mostly. As any cat owner knows, felines spend a lot of time trying really hard to look cool and act sophisticated. It’s this general aloofness that makes them all the more hilarious when you catch them doing something silly. After I sewed the first Oaf doll together, I had a solid hour of mirth photographing my cat Luna’s reactions to it. Ultimately, she let it ride her…and I don’t think I have to tell you how amusing that was.

I vividly remember the first time I saw one of Jiraiya’s breathtaking artworks emblazoned on the cover of Japanese gay magazine G-men. At first I was convinced it was a photograph– but there was something about it that seemed too good to be true. No, an image this deeply impactful could only arise from an artist’s figurative fantasies, facilitated by the hyperreal precision of the computer as an artmaking tool.

Following the footsteps of Bara master Gengoroh Tagame, Jiraiya served as G-men‘s resident cover artist from 2001-2006. His cover illustrations are devoid of the frills of a background, devoted fully to depicting the bulging muscles and friendly facial expressions of his fantasy men. Their eye-popping bodies are rendered in a level of detail that can only emerge from a deep affection for the physiology of men’s bodies. Style of dress and the occasional prop hint at a larger narrative, but for the most part these artworks are fully focused on the majesty of the body.

The recently released volume Jiraiya 1998 – 2012 presents an extensive overview of Jiraiya’s illustrative and painting work in the context of a beautifully printed fine art coffee table book. It’s entirely rewarding to look at these images free of magazine cover headlines and blown up to a size where the physical wonderment of Jiraiya’s men can be observed in crisp detail. Additionally, Jiraiya has included brief notes in both Japanese and English on each image, explaining the origins and inspiration behind each of the images. While it costs a pretty penny to ship the book from Japan, it’s definitely worth checking out for anyone transfixed by these incredible images!

Shalo P. is a fascinating character and an incredible artist. His drawings and cartoons are pulsing with life: frenzied, ebullient and occasionally frightening. They’re like psychic portraits, capturing a cacophony of thoughts simultaneously.

Shalo is part of a fantastic new show opening at Synchronicity Space in July, curated by Drippy Bones publisher Keenan Marshall Keller. It’s called Freak Scene and opens on July 6th. Check it out and read below for a breathtakingly epic interview with Shalo that touches on everything from the sex industry to fluorescent zebras.

Comment to win a set of two Shalo P. zines!

Do you ever think about time and your place in the history of the world?

It’s sucker business to quantify the importance of one’s deeds amid the irrational finality of dying or to measure one’s kaleidoscope of interactions on the assumption that the rest of humanity noticed some of them or not (as they naturally were enthralled by their own battles with time and death). History’s a term for what happens before and after the millisecond we exist. Time’s that everlasting absence spanning all the darkness of eternity in both directions.

I’ve always preferred the present. An environmental cataclysm looms on one side and a critical mass of expressive energy on the other – flanked by all sort of corporate scheme to sway the in-betweens into fake hippie dippy “self actualization” or Dracula.

Culture’s naked and wet in front of the mirror, clean from the digital bath that blends everything together – fucking hippies, beatniks, poets, fascists, devils, racists all sharing this same age – exposed to the same atom bomb of information and suffering the fall out radiation that’ll mutate them into something real interesting. Internet’s proven it wants to fuck and get fucked from its copious porn (erotic novels got published 150 years before the first scientific journals). But since the games is not only been sped up but broadened, the human psyche’s propensity for “whatever the fuck” will be bare when the next age looks over it’s shoulder (which is likely to happen concurrently – spiraling humankind into a self-conscience nervous breakdown that’ll have people attacking each other in the streets as the sea level rises and giant robot sharks leaping from buildings).

Old paintings revealed the ages that bore them and distinguished the few occasions when living wasn’t all that half bad – those were called renaissances. The poignancy is that everyone metaphorically participates if not by logging in and sharing some insightful facet of existence then by inaction. To me that sounds so cool.

There’s a scene in one of the final chapters of The Watchmen comic book where a character studies humanity’s hidden face through an array of television monitors – chiseling out meaning from it symbols, visual language and synesthetic swirl – revealing the tensions that would eventually break it.

Everything is possible. Everything’s always been possible.

With all this in the balance we’re only just crawling out of that horrible hole we call humanity.
(I hope history says I was a fine lover and a fabulous dancer.)

What would you be like if you were born in twenty years earlier?

I can’t go back twenty years into that pit of snakes. They’d tear me apart like last time – rake me down the street and break my heart again. I’d hate it. No way. It’s like I can’t get enough of the rampant sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, intolerance and exploitation in this age. Most people that have heard of me don’t know (but may suspect) that my skin is darker than others. This has also led me to a whole bunch of unnecessary racism, which would leap three-fold easily in that “in your face” sort of way. The false charms of the overdeveloped world come in vivid HD and polyphonic 5.1 dolby stereo, but at least it’s a transparent sham. I don’t romanticize the past. It never sounds quaint or heroic to me. It just looks like a shit storm of stone-age bullshit.
If I die today let them know I was pro-gay, sex-positive, pro-sex worker, pro-writing letters, pro-friendship, pro-dancing, pro-aware of stuff, pro-virtue over profit & pro-doing good. If I was sent back then I’d be asking God stupid questions about Scooby Doo rather than wikipedia. And where would I be able to find mind-bending video art streaming free as rainwater down a gutter?

Tell me about a friendship or relationship that ended in a way that changed you as a person.

I’ve learned everything from friendships. Friendships cured me of an awful childhood. One friend taught me that you can always be a child as long as you hate as purely as you can love.

Would you rather ride in a blimp or a submarine?

At the end of “You Only Live Twice”, James Bond turns to his sweetheart and whispers, “they’ll never find us” just as a submarine surfaces and raises their little boat onto its deck. If a blimp crossed the sky at that exact moment with the words “eat shit, baby” written on it, I could do with both while remaining with neither.

Given a private audience with all of the world’s leaders for a five minute speech (followed by a Q&A session), what would you want them to know?

part I

(I thought of this question for hours, Graham. I care about what I’d have to say if the “world leaders” were present. But who are these “world leaders”? What is there to say to the most corrupt of us? Any format of speaking to them would undoubtedly have a formulaic follow-up on their part to excuse inaction. How could I speak to them if they haven’t listened to any cries for compassion in all of history? They’re a joke and civilization’s been this long drawn out punchline giving us “the constant class war pretending to be anything else (racism, ethnic cleansing, you name it…)”. If I could keep it simple and the “world’s leaders” could hear it ring so true they’d act immediately I’d repeat the Utah Phillips quote “The earth is not dying. It is being killed, and the people killing it have names and addresses” But a human is merely an animal starving for power…)

part II

“You’ve failed us.
Poverty – a seven letter word starting with a letter P. Like piss. Like Powercastle. Not as “scary” as talk of terror training camps, or militaristic desert indoctrination, or stones smashing freedom’s windshield while it drops liberty and justice off at prom or a shark leaping over a Cadillac. But Poverty kills more than any war or other plague of mankind’s doing. Every day. Every minute. Every second. Death. Slow Starving Death. Sudden Violent Death.
It just sounds boring because it is banal – so banal no one really wants to deal with it. How are we going to stop poverty – give out nickels out to everyone we see?
The first step is in finally getting “somewhere”.

What do we have going now?
Sexism. Racism. Exploitation. Internet Spam. Death.

What are diamonds worth? What are a pair of child-labor sneakers worth? What’s an ounce of youth worth when it’s put through the wringer in order to only accelerate our present condition? What’s education when it stopped teaching us anything?

Has any government every truly represented it’s people?
Propagating the casual slavery of consumerism will not save a world from its murder. The gross national product of any country has no reciprocal environmentally. Leisure and work exist at different measures along varying degrees of class lines to equally abusive degrees. Both are killing us – if boredom doesn’t. What’s the next step? If it isn’t fucking you over and spraying “eat shit” on your walls then what is it? What is exploitation but always snatching away what you’ve been promised for so long?

Any political system is rife with asskissers and handwringers. Progress is mired when it’s just a popularity contest between assholes. Human cruelty, at a continuous peak is the only thing making strides. You want an evil dictator crushed? You want terrorism to end? It’s not safe for two men to kiss in public on 99% of the streets of “freer than thou” USA. A woman out of her place in most countries will lose some teeth for stepping out of line. Slavery and staunch castes systems – all still there.

We can see the substance behind beams of light in the nether reaches of space but can’t face what makes a human soul turn black.

We must deal with biological imperative – the sexual urge. Understand the exponential repercussions of its repression in societies – rape, spousal abuse, gay bashing, misogyny, child abuse, creepy catholic priests…

Let’s deal with the sex industry as if it has actually existed since the dawn of humankind and not as if it was a smudge of chocolate to be scrubbed away with violent force, alienation or intimidation. Your kind sons and daughters may or may not choose to participate in the sex industry – as patrons or professionals. It’s the destiny of all children to make due with where their genital will go. Unionize the sex trade. Don’t criminalize a trade you can never suffocate. It is bred by a natural impulse, it is tended to by human beings. Use your energy to combat those that profane this primal urge with child sex tours (the sport of your CEO friends), slavery (the trade of your CEO friends), and exploitation (remind you of any friends?).

Make reform in education your new priority. How about dancing classes? There are loads of talented smart insightful people at your disposal.

The consequences are real. World’s not dying – world’s being murdered. The systems of communication and group action are rearranging with the digital age – please be open to them. If they had introduced the printing press at the same time the earth was crumbling in half it would probably be the same situation.

Let’s stop treating all our women like shit.
Let’s acknowledge everyday that the wealth has been distributed so disproportionately that it’s affected our sense of humanity.
We’re a bunch of self-serving assholes and we probably all deserve to die. But we can’t die.
Who would tell all our stories? Who would sing our songs? Maybe the wind and the trees will echo them down.
Humankind cries from it’s first second of life with little variation until its demise. But there is always some form of beauty in that struggle.

We may have the technological advances imaginable (with more on the way), but we need to take account of what really fucking matters – you fucking scum!”

If you couldn’t be involved in the arts or culture in any way, what kind of career would you pursue?
I don’t know. I’d be a soccer player, maybe.
Most pleasures cannot escape the simplistic way I view art, like the interesting ways some people braid hair or the raw expression on a lover’s face that makes your stomach all weird.
A world without these things would resemble that big white room in THX 1138.

Describe the human being you would most like to meet.
I’m not as fond of human beings as of what they are capable of.
I always love a good story and I’m always ready to hear one.

You can select any non-domesticated, exotic animal to be your lifelong companion and share a telepathic bond. Which one will it be?
I’m so hard to get along with that it’d have to be one that wouldn’t gore or maul me. I’d like a fluorescent zebra.

What can I do to help the world be more like Shalo’s utopia?
I can’t fathom my own utopia. But when I see people make out I always nod and think “right on”.

Gay manga–or “bara” as it’s referred to online–is awesome. Unlike the much more well-known “BL” genre (yaoi), no one has published gay manga in English. Die hard fans of “bara” in North America must order the untranslated books overseas or hunt down bootleg scans on the Internet.

When my friend Blake Besharian invited me to make a series of prints on his letterpress, I decided to pay one of my favorite gay manga artists homage. I collaged disparate panels from Seizoh Ebisubashi‘s manga My Hometown Hospitality into disjointed visual narratives, emphasizing the transitions, exteriors, and moments of stillness that establish the subtle mood and tone in Ebusibashi’s artwork.

“Bara by Letterpress” is a limited edition series of six prints. If you’d like a set, here’s your chance! Post this video on your blog/Tumblr/Twitter and then leave a comment below with a link to your site. Next week, I’ll randomly select one commenter to receive a set of all six prints! (Note: The whole series have been given away to FS readers. Thanks everyone!)

Here are some links to help you investigate gay manga on your own:

“Bara” Resources:
Bara – Wikipedia article.
G-Men – G-Men is the foremost magazine that publishes gay manga. Site mostly in Japanese.
Japanese Gay Art – Australian fine art blog that features gay manga artists including Gengoroh Tagame and Jiraiya.
G-Project – Japanese store that allows international orders of gay manga.
Seizoh Ebisubashi – Tubmlr for the artist, including sketches of works in progress.
Gengoroh Tagame – Mixed Japanese and English site for the legendary Tagame.

In addition to his thriving career as a cartoonist, Matthew Thurber moonlights as a musician whose manic stage energy allows him to actually fly. Here he is at Family, performing a short set of bizarre and amazing vaudeville tunes about balloons, furniture and cats.

Look, I’m going to try and display some restraint here. If I’m not careful, I could easily scare you away with the ocean of magniloquent praise swelling inside me. So let me be delicate in my wording– calm, cool and collected to help you understand the unparalleled beauty of Matthew Thurber‘s 1-800-Mice.

It’s an epic mystery about the moment in our future-history when human-tree marriage is on the cusp of social acceptance. An intersex mouse named Peace Punk roams the world seeking the entrance to Valhala, evading a trio of angry assassins through an underworld of never-ending hardcore festivals and viral video production palaces. A tightly wound mouse detective goes undercover amongst a pack of nihlistic terrorists, confronting his own criminality in the process. And a cog in the machine at 1-800-Mice (the world’s fastest courier service) learns the grisly truth behind a mysterious drug made of dead trees.

If that sounds like a lot, it is! There’s a whole Universe behind this story, and it feels like something dreamed by Henry Darger and Alajandro Jodorowsky after a night of getting stoned, prank-calling Marilyn Manson, and watching Monty Python. But don’t worry about keeping up with all the details: readers of 1-800-Mice will learn to truly appreciate a sudden nosedive into the surreal. Each panel says a lot, even when the narrative speaks in tongues.

Thurber’s particular poetry is a web of jokey stand-up observations, noirish voice-over, drifting existential questions, imaginary buzzwords, playful puns and casual dick jokes. He constructs a foreign language with familiar associations and unexpectedly deep capacity for humanity (even in interspecies characters). You’ll be reading a goofy exchange between a death cultist dentist and his vampiric assistant, and suddenly you’ll tap into a quiet sense of melancholy embedded within the panel. It’s an interplay that grants Thurber’s gonzo fantasy a surprising scope of emotional depth. Plus, heads explode, reality collapses, and you have a new message on MindBook.

1-800-Mice is published by the awesome PictureBox press, and it looks beautiful. The hardcover feeels really special, and it has pretty colors on it. Plus, there’s an endorsement from Matt Groening on the cover! Check it out at one of Thurber’s upcoming readings!

San Francisco: September 30th at 7:00pm – Escapist Comics (with Leslie Stein)
San Francisco: October 1-2 – Alternative Press Expo
Los Angeles: October 4th at 7:00pm – Family
Brooklyn: October 7 at 7:00pm – Desert Island
Brooklyn: October 20th at 7:00pm – Triple Canopy (with C.F.)

What Tom Neely and his friends at Igloo Tornado started as a joke on a cocktail napkin years ago has blossomed into a mini-phenomenon. Henry & Glenn Forever is their hysterical mini-comic about the imagined tender love affair between intensely macho punk icons Glenn Danzig and Henry Rollins, with digressions into their domestic duties, lovemaking practices, and friendship with the satanic couple next door, Daryl Hall and John Oates. The resulting patchwork of approaches in aesthetic and humor somehow manages to fuse gay jokes with gay’s jokes, striking a chord with punks, comic book geeks and homos alike– though Danzig himself is less than amused.

Last Friday night saw the opening of “Henry & Glenn Gang Bang,” an art show full of new pieces inspired by the original comic from a variety of vantage points, including works by queer comic king (and creator of Wuvable Oaf) Ed Luce, rising art star Eric Yahnker, and Jar Jar Binks aficionado Levon Jihanian. Take a peek at pictures from the opening below, and go check out the show at La Luz De Jesus before it comes down this weekend!

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