New mini, y’all!

It’s called “Low Spark (1913-1938-1973-201?),” and it’s out, and it’s awesome (if I do say so myself). Plus, that picture of me holding a copy doesn’t really do it justice, as the copies I’m currently shifting around are fully hand-colored! WHOA!

Anyways, like I said, it’s awesome. Quimby’s called it “Boss.” Boss!
(I think I’m quoting, but I might be paraphrasing, they’ve since removed the listing. But it’s still boss, I swurrs.)
Case in point:

Another case in point:

Drawn during a spirited and feverish April, 2010.

I was going for a much different approach this time around. I’ve been plugging away at the melodrama of Birds & Wolves for so long, so I decided to make not only a silly comic, but one that wasn’t so planned out. So, having done four tiny little thumbnails for this “new comic,” I decided to be free and write it without a script or any idea where I was going to go. As you can see from the above, I ended up going pretty far out, indeed.

Obviously the spark (all puns intended) came from the far-out cover of Traffic’s “Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys.”

I started this comic without ever having listened to the album, though having done so now, I would imagine it’d make a pretty far-out soundtrack to the desert utopia I’ve outlined in this comic. Another slight gag in the title that I feel no one gets (and why should most of them, anyways) is a reference to David Bowie’s song “Aladdin Sane (1913-1938-197?).” (fave blog ever, btw) I took the title as a reference to the “transformation” between Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, and bracketed a new year as a hypothetical deadline for a new Bowie album. Make sense? No, didn’t think so. But neither really does the comic. :D

Anyways, this mini is OUT NOW, at Quimby’s, I imagine, unless they’ve run out, in which case, you know where to find me. (UPDATE: which, in fact, they had, but I’ve since replenished them) I will also be selling this wild escapade at the upcoming Minneapolis Indie Expo, August 21st! 9-5! Free admission! Be there, just like me, and just like Low Spark!

So, Violence, my …third? Yes, third album. Never quite got around to making a physical copy of it, so no one outside of my friends ever really got to hear it (no one outside of my friends ever hears my music, really, but instead of ‘difficult,’ it was just ‘impossible.’)

It was a real shame, too, because I’d go so far as to consider Violence my best work. It’s my most cohesive work, certainly, thanks to the masterful production and mixing done by my good friend Jacob Strick. Before he put his hands on it, it was a completely inaudibly, unlistenable mess. After him, it was a thing of beauty.

It’s also a concept album, in the most prog-rock sense. More actually in ithe most Richard-Harris-y sense. He once recorded a concept album called “My Boy” about the failure of love. Here’s a tidbit of the synopsis written on the back:

SIDE TWO:
REQUIEM
After a night of love with Beth he suspects that their marriage is over.
THIS IS WHERE I CAME IN
It is. She leaves him.

HA HA AH HA. Way to go Richard.

Actually, Violence isn’t much less overwrought than that, but I don’t think I’d go so far as to spell it out on the sleeve. Actually, if I ever make a physical release of it, I will actually consider doing that.

I would be easy, as I kind of already have. You see, I wrote Violence in a very unusual way. I planned out the beats of the ’story,’ then I assigned song titles to those beats, then I would write songs to those song titles.

Here’s the original Violence cheat-sheet:

So, to summarize, there’s a balloon salesman, who is also a gravedigger at night. One girl always buys a Blue Balloon from him, every day. Until she grows up and doesn’t any more. Later, he sees her when her father dies (he has to dig his grave). She is distraught, and clings to the only thing she recognizes: the balloon salesman. She has sex with him once, but leaves him. He doesn’t see her until more years later, when he has to dig her Mother’s grave. She is even more distraught. She won’t talk to him, so he pops all his balloons, but sees her walking down the street. So he runs out of his house (he’s a recluse, so it’s a big deal), gives her a Blue Balloon, but she just smiles and goes upstairs to her apartment, where she promptly shoots her self dead. Of course, he has to dig her grave. The album ends with him weeping in the rain as he fills her grave, then the sun coming out and him letting a Blue Balloon fly into the air.

I mean, obviously.

Some things changed over time. For instance, “The Knot Is Still There” was renamed “Circles,” since “Circles” didn’t particularly have anything to do with the ’story.’ I later decided that “Circles” was a dream the main character was having, that represented his feelings for his unattainable love. (You can laugh, it’s funny.)

Likewise, there’s a blank for song seven. It ended up being “Water III,” which certainly doesn’t really have anything to do with the ’story.’ It became another ‘dream’ song that dealt with the death of His Love’s father.

Another great thing I changed is I moved the story-perspective to some stranger reading her obituary, instead of having the Salesman describe him finding her body. Breakfast is a great song.

I’m not sure how much of that story you can get out of just listening to it. It might even ruin it for some to know it. But it’s there, no matter what. It’s totally fine if you ignore it, the songs are great by themselves.

ANYWAYS, this LOOOOOONG preamble is to announce that FINALLY, after THREE YEARS, Violence is available to the general public. Thanks to the wonderful Bandcamp, I am now selling a high-quality digital version of Violence on the internet. AND GUESS WHAT? (What.) RIGHT NOW, IT’S ONLY ONE DOLLAR. You can pay more if you’d like, but the base cost is a buck.

Fifteen songs! For a buck! Wow!
Anyways, here’s the streamer below:

Here is a link to the album’s page up there, in case you need one.

I hope, if you haven’t heard it yet, that you love it. I’m quite proud of this one.

This is great. So remember when I said I’m playing that show on friday with my friend AJ? Well, he also writes some great songs, and I am privileged to be, now, in a band, playing his great songs with him. The band is called Videotape, and I’m sure we’ll be playing some shows in the future.

Here’s a link to hear some songs of his (with the fantastic Sophie singing): Videotape.

This morning we played a Buddhist Center and got a standing ovation! So YES!

Hey everyone! Fantastic news. I’m going to be involved in a panel discussion at the upcoming Chicago Comics Symposium! Whoa! SYMPOSIUM. Anyways, here’s the scoop on that:

The stubborn work ethic of Chicago’s comic scene will be explored in the first ever Chicago Comics Symposium, hosted by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) on March 11th and 12th 2010. Through panel discussions with over fifteen local comic makers, the Symposium will investigate the city’s influence on the comic making process, tackling the sad, serious, and silly topics that reign supreme in the realm of sequential art. All events are free and open to the public.

CCS will be comprised of four separate panel discussions with multiple artists on each and will be moderated by some of Chicago’s greatest thinkers, critics and (of course) readers of comics. The questions posed to the Windy City makers will address many issues including: the tasks of self-publication, the changing cultural status of comics and the difficulty of representing identity. The queries will oscillate between common knowledge and the complexity of the nitty-gritty details, giving equal enjoyment opportunity to new readers as well as true-blue comic connoisseurs.

Comics are infiltrating movie-theaters and chain book stores, sustaining independent comic shops and edging their way into academia. Comics are made any and every where, but Chicago has a distinct community of hard working doers, makers and shakers. The event will attempt to unite and uncover the inner workings of Chicago’s comics.

Attracting artists who currently live and work in the city, as well as former Chicago residents, the Symposium will bring together the old, new, big and small. Attendees include: Sarah Becan, Jeffrey Brown, Christa Donner, Surabhi Ghosh, Beth Hetland, Nicole Hollander, Paul Hornschemeier, Joey Jacks, Lucy Knisley, Ian McDuffie, Bernie McGovern, Anders Nilsen, Laura Park, John Porcellino, and Jeremy Tinder.

The Chicago Comics Symposium
Hosted by The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Thursday-Friday, March 11-12, 4:30-7pm
SAIC Ballroom, 112 S. Michigan Ave.
Free
Email: chicagocomicssymposium@gmail.com

They’ve also a website at chicagocomicssymposium.tumblr.com

Look at that list of names! Anyways, hope to see you all thurr!

In 2006, before Violet Mice began, before I went to New Orleans, before a whole slew of life changing things went and happened and changed my life, I made an EP for my Mom’s birthday. Dubbed (naturally) The Mom EP, it had four cover songs on it. Songs that had the distinction of being songs my mom would play endlessly on repeat over and over forever. It’s her way of showing affection for the song, which I certainly inherited. The four songs on it are Modest Mouse’s “Baby Blue Sedan,” Coldplay’s “Amsterdam,” the Pumpkins’ “With Every Light,” and Bowie’s “Strangers When We Meet.”

Tonight I share with you the Bowie cover. I’ve just listened to it for the first time since I made it, pretty much, and I am very impressed with my young naive self! It’s got the build-up I strive for in my songs now, not to mention a vocal delivery I couldn’t ever compare to, and much more to recommend. It’s sparse, but not boring. It’s proof that I can go minimal if I want to. And it tells me that maybe I should!

Strangers When We Meet

Enjoy.

P.S. Happy New Year!
P.P.S. Happy Birthday to ME tomorrow!

I have forgotten to mention!

I will be participating in Challenger Comic’s 24 hour Comic Book Day extravaganza this weekend, starting Saturday at 11AM. Boy howdy! That’ll be some crazy stuff no doubt. My friend Joey Jacks is also participating, so that should make it that much more pleasant!

Since I’m forgoing the Fever Ray concert to do this, I’ve got to make my comic simply the best. Missing Fever Ray is my impetus for greatness. I won’t disappoint you or myself! Anyways, reason to get excited, yes it is.

Here’s their info about it. I don’t know if you can come hang out and egg us on, but you certainly should try! Who knows what will happen!!!!

see you there.

THAT IS A) COOL and B) TRUE?

Garfield in Chains, available at Quimby’s, yo.

Hey, everyone!

So, as you may know, I recently published (with Lulu) the first chapter of a long long story I’m working on, called Birds & Wolves. Well, luckily for you no one but me got a copy, because it was missing a page!!!!

That was my fault, but I’m here to tell you that I’ve now just updated the book so it’s ready again for your consumption! And reading. And all. It’s great, promise. Just wait for the finished deal (in like 4 years ha ha).

Click here to check it out!

Anyways, here’s the old post giving a bit of backstory to it all:

A few years ago over a summer, I started a comic that would end up being called “Youth.” It was originally going to be many chapters, detailing a group of kids going through experiences that would end up with their youth ending. I ended up finishing one chapter of it, a whopping 36 pages of decently drawn set-up, talking, and melodrama. (If you reaaally want to read it, here it is: Youth 1.)

But it was too early to really get into drawing some long, complicated, overwrought story. But a lot of the things I was using from real life as events in Youth were terribly compelling, really worthy of being used in a story somehow (one of these particular events I have used in almost every song I’ve ever written, and many many different art projects).

Two semesters ago, while finishing “Good-Bye, The Pig,” I started drafting this story about a man walking into a forest, searching for love that was symbolized by a third of the French flag. It was loosely based on my romantic experiences at the time. And while I loved the forest itself, the story was too easy, too happy. But, at some point, I ended up drawing the forest aflame (what does this say about how things were going in my life?), and was compelled.

Sketchbook examples:

I storyboarded the forest story to somewhere around 25 pages, but decided I shouldn’t draw it for the class I was in (instead I made It Won’t Be Long). So shelved again it went.

Throughout last semester, I began to try to map out a story based a lot on the experiences I’d just been through, some of which had been harrowing (for instance…). Then it came to me to have the story combine the Forest story with the real life story that inspired it. This was exciting, and I combined it with some older story ideas I’ve had (some offshoots of Youth), then, while sketching a particular poignant night from high school debauchery, realized if I combined a real-life story arc from those days, I’d have a fantastic arc of my own.

The arc deals with those zany things like “death” and “growing up.” Really it’s a man’s (a boy’s?) struggle with coming to terms with death as a reality in the face of his own independence as he nears the end of his school days and his days as an independent man. The romantic situation he’s currently in is wrought with unpleasantness, and his mind often wanders to memories of his last years at high school, where he had to go through a similar change in his life.

Sketchbook test page that mirrors directly the first page:

That’s as good a description as I could ever give. There are ten chapters:

1. Later Never Comes
2. Birds
3. Laughing
4. So Cruel
5. Hourglass
6. Say, Fear
7. Arms Are Warm
8. Blue, Blue Jeans
9. Wolves
10. Water

For my internet-publishing assignment, I have completed, to a space above rough-draft yet not finished level, chapter one, “Later Never Comes.”

One can find it here.

That’s 37 pages down. Now for the remaining 363, approx.

Now available at Quimby’s is Garfield in Chains, a first volume containing 38 strips (out of a countless and ever-growing number) spanning from two years ago until now. Wow! 38 strips! Full color cover! Garfield-book shaped!

Here’s a bit of backstory to it:

During the week of Halloween in 1989, Jim Davis’ popular comic strip Garfield underwent a dramatic change. The strip had long begun its descent into monotony and mediocrity, but this particular week gave the strip a surprising boost in interest. The art changed to a more dark and horror-like style, and the strip gained, for that week, a storyline. Garfield wakes up to find himself alone in the house. Upon further inspection, he finds out that the house is abandoned and no one has lived there for years. The strip gains a narrator, who tells us that Garfield is faced for the first time with his worst fear: being alone. Freaking out and running around the house, the narrator tells us that Garfield can fight back with the only weapon he has: denial. Screaming that he doesn’t want to be alone, Garfield is then back in his normal existence, in what seems like a happy ending.

There is a theory, however, that in fact Garfield did not escape his abandoned house, and that the rest of the strip to this day is a fantasy Garfield invents to keep himself happy as he slowly starves to death in his empty house.

For over two years, I have been using that week of Garfield strips as the basis of a mind-clearing exercise in my sketchbook. Whenever an idea doesn’t come, or I’m getting frustrated with my current situation, I draw a non-sequitur, stream-of-consciousness Garfield strip. Some of the time they end up pertaining to some obscure pop-culture reference that’s on my mind. Sometimes they betray more of my deeper emotions and insecurities, leading to a bizarre and surreal landscape for the ailing Garfield (now a mirror to myself) to inhabit. “Garfield in Chains,” as I’ve named my strips, is a reflection of my psyche, and as such, is very important to me, personally and professionally.

My impetus for undertaking this project is in part because it is something that I have always wanted to do, but is something that always is but on the back-burner in the face of schoolwork or other personal projects. Now is the perfect and possibly only time in the foreseeable future that I will have the opportunity to collect these works, which I feel have merit in their humor, their surrealism, and their sheer growing number.

yes, it’s a bit short on it,
but anyways, SHOW TONIGHT!

The Castle, Diversey and Pine Grove
506 W. Diversey Pkwy

Kevin Wilson
Violet Mice!
We Are Vessels

Starts at 8!
I love that my name has an “!” on it.

Anyways, hope to see you!

Hey everyone!

I just wanted to let you know what I’ve been up to. It seems (for the average public,) that I’ve been doing nothing. This is not the case!!! I’ve been in a class, actually, called “Self Publishing for Writers and Others“. In said class I have much work to do, and much work I’ve been doing. One of the tenets of the class is that I keep a blog of my progress.

So, you can keep up with me Here! Set your booooookmaaaaarks!

Cheers, ta!

The triangle: a perfect form. The pyramid: four triangles in unison, perched atop our fair planet.

Four perfect forms in one! In the year 4 billion, two things come to mind:

One, is there still an Earth? Are we still on it?

Two, if we are still on it, what are we still doing there? We should be to the next galaxy and beyond by then!

These are the questions that inform one to the mindset behind the writings in my new self-publication, “Ancient Egypt in the year 4 Billion“, a collection of selected writings!

The book contains three short pieces of pseudo-science fiction. The first, “The Four Infinities of June 12th, 2000 and 6,” is four tellings of the same situation, each one spreading out a little further from reality into the cosmos of the heart-and-soul. The second, “Ship of Bone,” is a longer piece detailing the daily activities of the last two people on an Earth completely swallowed in a sea of blood. The third, “An Excerpt from ‘The Dust-Dunes of Old Earth’” is a work-in-progress story detailing a mysterious explorers excavation of an ancient city with a deadly secret.

Also included in the book are assorted drawings of pyramids, and their mysterious nature:

Behold! A new avenue of creation. Just in time for the celebration of our first steps on another world…

And, here is a review of it from one of my classmates.

is here, for you to follow.

How about that!
A care package I sent (containing my mini-comics and albums) was written up by my friend Spencer Lemon, on his blog The Silver Lining. A lot of totally great stuff is put up there all the time (I am flabbergasted by their constant updates!), it is certainly worth checking out!

Hey! I just uploaded an entire show (from back in february) to my youtube, here’s the playlist:

The news is true, and now it’s news!!!

I have three new mini-comics, done, and ready for which you to see them and read them. They are now available at Quimby’s in Chicago, or from me if you ask nice (or if you ask at all, really, just don’t mug me for them, I probably haven’t got any).

Anyways, the titles are:

It Won’t Be Long
—Love & Death at first sight, as told with The Beatles!
Life in the Cyber Winter
—Responsibility and Adulthood, in the freezing cold!
Bob Dylan’s 115th Hat
—A young child’s adventure within the Moon’s magic of Space!

I’ll be posting a blog post about the individual comics soon, as well as posting higher-in-quality examples of the work inside.

OO EE!

a return! in the air!

COMING SOON LIKE ALL THEM OTHER THINGS.

PROBABLY TOMORROW!!!!!!!

Show Time: Sunday April 26, 2009 - 7:00 PM
Venue: The Orphanage
Address: 643 w 31st
City: Chicago
State: Illinois
Country: US
Zip Code: 60616
Cost:
Description: Violet Mice at the Orphanage! Also appearing: Rusty Clearwater, The Drama Scene, Andy Suffers. I am billed as “clever, very clever,” which of course you know is… true.

It’s here, and it’s ready for you, and all you have to do is press the glyph below:

Or this glyph here.

and the information,

OLYMPIAN EP:

1. Olympian
2. O, Miranda!
3. Property
4. Good Humor
5. It’s Endless!

Recorded in Chicago and Albuquerque from December ‘07 to March ‘09 by Ian McDuffie.

—very soon.

Violet Mice (or, me, Ian, anyways) will have a piece in the upcoming Undergraduate Exhibition Show. Anyone at SAIC knows where and when it is (if you don’t, you may be in a heaven that doesn’t have the portal or in a cave that doesn’t have the portal.)

If you don’t know what the portal is, i envy you, sort of, but anyways, YOU SHOULD COME!

Sullivan Galleries, 33 South State Street, 7th floor
Friday, March 20th, 7:00 PM.

I’ve got a thing on the wall and some CDs you can have free if they don’t run out. This’ll be the GIRLZ comic you’ve been a-hearing about, and there’ll be copies of Girlz for you, while they last!!!

AND HERE IS GIRLZ IF YOU DONT HAVE IT REMEMBER IT IS FREE. Ha ha, but even if you do have it, it’s pretty sweet to hold it in your hand.

Wah-wah. SEE YOU THERE!

It should be that all shows in 2009 should be designated Fun Time ‘09. Yes, it should.

And what better way to ring that in by PLAYING A SHOW? Yes yes yes yes, show coming up, better B there or B Square. Tee hee.

UPDATE: CHANGE OF VENUE, PLEASE NOTE.

Info:

Date: Saturday, February 28, 2009
Time: 7:00pm
Street: 62315 W. 19th Street (19th and Oakley)
City: Chicago, IL

Dawgs, you gotta go! Here’s who else is playing:

Jesse Carsten
Violet Mice (Ian McDuffie)
Kevin Wilson
Joe Korbee
Pool Holograph (Wyatt Grant)

SEE? You just have to go.

See you there/starside?

Whoosh!

I don’t know who really looks here, or if many do (but I hope you do, and if you do, i love you!) But if you come to the news page, you probably say “there is no news,” but there is news. It’s much more good if you check the Blog and the Visual sections of the site for your regular updates. Because in general, they will be there.

Once more, I love you. Here’s me playing the greatest song ever written: