Portland week!

We've been super busy here at the studio. After finally finishing the last pages of BPRD-Vampire (check out the detail from the last page on the image above), we're still hard at work on our short story for the recently announced American Vampire anthology. If that's not enough, there are two covers on our plate this month, a KillJoys one and a yet secret one, and we're trying to finish as much as we can before we travel to the US for our Portland week next week.
Portland week?
Yep.

We were invited to Portland to be part of this year's edition of the International Comic Arts Forum (check out the sweet Mike Allred poster) and we gladly accepted, as we love to talk about comics and how great it is to create and read them, and as Portland has so many awesome comic related people, from authors like Craig Thompson and Joe Sacco, to great artists like Allred himself, to publishers like our beloved Dark horse, and also some amazing mainstream writers like Matt Fraction and Brian Bendis.

Last time I went to Portland, this, this, this and this happened. Who knows what can happen this time?

Some of the things that will happen we know. Here's our to-do list:

-Wednesday, May 22th - from 7pm till 10pm- TFAW signing/party - we'll be signing at the Portland Things From Another World (2916 NE Broadway Street), in a very relaxed meet and talk get together where we'll sign your comics for you. Attendees will enjoy free food and beer (those 21+ with valid I.D.) and receive raffle tickets to win an original sketch I did for the event poster (pictured below). It was supposed to be a fast sketch, but I got a little carried away.

- Friday, May 24th, from 2pm to 3:15pm- Roundtable: Beyond Auteurism - Creativity and Collaboration in Comics. With Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Matt Fraction, Charles Hatfield, Ben Saunders, Qiana Whitted. (part of ICAF, at the University of Oregon, White Stag Building 70 NW Couch Street)

- Friday, May 24th, from 7pm to 8:30pm :An Evening With Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon. Moderated by Matt Fraction. We'll talk about our love of comics, and how we choose and create our projects, and we'll show some pretty pretty pictures to help with our presentation. And Matt will keep things funny. (part of ICAF, at the University of Oregon, White Stag Building 70 NW Couch Street)

Both ICAf events are free for the public, as is the signing at the store, but for the ICAF talks they ask that you register online. All the information can be found here. I hope a lot of people come, and we'll be ready for all sorts of questions, even if we have to squeeze them out of the audience.

BLOG WAR - peaceful ending

Both Craig and I worked on this last piece together. I inked a little bit he pencilled, he inked a bit I pencilled, but for the most part we just passed the paper back and forth as we kept working on the panels. This was fun.

A did a lot of other incredibly interesting things in Portland, but there's only so much we could put on paper in the time we had. There was also a lot of things I could have done but didn't because of time constraints, but that was not my point when I decided to go. You'll never see and do everything, but you can enjoy everything you end up doing. And I certainly enjoyed my time in Portland, seeing all those Dark Horse people I only see within the crazy rules on the San Diego Comicon, meeting new artists, talking about art, life and everything inbetween.

Time to go back and start all over again. Time to go home, happy, ready for more.

BLOG WAR - part 3

We could see it from very far away, from inside the car, still some twenty minutes before we really got to the beginning of the trail. It was massive, it was strangely alien and different, and it was this one thing in my trip that would actually also be new for all people involved (except for Dan, Craig's friend and our guide for the day).

Have you ever been to a volcano? Have you even stood inside it's crumbling interior partly rocky, partly ashy surface? Have you ever seen a waterfall with hot water?

We stood there, got ready, and went for it.

To be continued on Craig's blog, which includes the full contribution from Dan Attoe (I'm only showing the detail below).