Danger Country reviewed on The Comics Journal

I'm thrilled to receive this mostly positive review of Danger Country #1. I've started on #3 and hope it will be out in time for SPX next year. I also have some other Danger Country related things going on which I hope to announce next month.

A Princess of Mars

Just did an illustration of A Princess of Mars for the latest Art Order. Trying to get my sci-fi/fantasy skills up.

APE 2011

Hey guys! Just wanted to let you know that I'm going to be at APE, and there's a few details you should know.

1. I have a table this year! I'm sharing table #255 with my publisher Tim Goodyear/Teenage Dinosaur. He'll have a bunch of awesome books, including...

2. Danger Country #2!!!! It will debut at APE. Danger Country #1 got nominated for 2 Ignatz awards. Can #2 possibly live up to its predecessor? The answer is.... Yes. Yes, it can.

3. I'll also have a RANGER STEEL mini-comic, compiling the first 10 Ranger Steel web strips in a format deadly to trees. I'll also have some old books and zines including DANGER COUNTRY #1, FORK FRENZY #1, ORDINARY FIELDBOOK, and THE ONLY ONE THERE COULD EVER BE which is an illustrated book of extremely personal poems based on the Highlander movies.

4. I'll also have some posters!

5. And on Saturday, I'll be on the Comics Claptrap Live! Panel. That's at 2:00 PM.

A Fan

Last week I got this e-mail and attached picture from Eli Bishop of Global Hobo:

hi Levon,
Thought you'd like to know that this elderly lady walked into SF Zine Fest randomly having no idea what it was, went to the Global Hobo table and read Danger Country #1 intently from cover to cover, laughed gleefully, said "I love this kind of writing!", put it down and moved on without buying anything.
best,
Eli

I love stories like this as long as I'm not there to witness it.

Dylan Williams

That's him, second from the left. This is the only picture with both me and Dylan that I could find. ©David King.

Yesterday afternoon my friend Dylan Williams passed away after a long fight with cancer. He was the cartoonist behind Reporter and was the publisher of Sparkplug Comic Books. I really can't say much about him that hasn't been already said better elsewhere. I just wanted to share some of my Dylan observations from over the years. 

I can't remember the first time I met Dylan. I almost always saw him in the context of a comic convention. He'd share a table with Tom Neely, and Tom would let me have a spot at his table, so we'd spend most of the weekend together. Comics folks, no matter how well adjusted they are at home around their friends, become socially awkward and dysfunctional when they are in the same room together. It happens to me, still, and it's hard to not blame myself for not being congenial enough or saying the wrong thing. Dylan didn't seem to have this problem, but he was really good at spotting it. He had this particular sidle he'd do, that always made me secretly smile. If you ever saw Dylan at a convention you'd know what I'm talking about. He'd spot you having an awkward moment with another comics person, or with a customer, and he'd sidle over and interrupt, and make a recommendation or compliment one of the people or jokingly insult one of the people or just say whatever needed to be said, and everyone would be at ease.

When we visited portland years ago, Lila and I stayed with a friend who didn't have a car so we walked everywhere, and even though we didn't plan on it, we kept running into Dylan all over the city. Any time he saw us walking around, he'd make a crazy U-turn and drove us to wherever we were headed even though he didn't know me that well at that point. 

He encouraged me to make comics, and said nicer things to me than I ever felt I deserved. As a publisher his attitude seemed so insane to me at times. He built the careers of so many great cartoonists, but never strived to make a name for himself off of their efforts. He just loved the work. 

His absence at San Diego Comic-con this year was really felt hard by me. In all that insanity, he was a center of gravity. Without him, it was just too crazy. I won't be going to Comic-con next year. Goodbye Dylan, I love you.

Danger Country #2 Preview

I thought I'd post a couple of preview pages from Danger Country #2. It's at the printers and should be out in time for APE, on October 1 and 2. I'll be exhibiting there with my publisher, Teenage Dinosaur. at booth #255. More on that later.

If you're at SPX this weekend please vote for Danger Country #1 for outstanding comic or outstanding mini-comic! Tom Neely will be selling copies at the I Will Destroy You booth.

Danger Country 1 nominated for 2 Ignatz awards!

I just wanted to quickly congratulate myself on getting nominated for 2 Ignatz awards! One for Outstanding Comic and another one for Outstanding Mini-comic. I'm standing side by side with some big league names, there. Pretty impressive!

If you end up going to SPX, please please give me a little vote or two! I'm going to go ahead and be honest with you and tell you that Danger Country is the best work I've ever done. It really deserves to win and if you read it you will agree. If you haven't read it yet, give a little click on the big graphic on the right side of the screen and buy it from the Fork Frenzy shop. Anyone who knows me will be surprised by my outspken self-confidence, but I'm damn proud of myself and I'm proud of myself for being proud of myself.

In other news, I'm now selling PDF eBooks on the ForkFrenzy shop. Right now we have 3 new David King titles for sale, for super cheap. Please buy!

color study

Did I ever post this? It's a color study I did off of a film still. It's supposed to be Deborah Kerr but I think it looks more like my mom. Anyway, I was most interested in the surprisingly subtle Technicolor tones on her face. kind of a warm green?

Danger Country 1 and San Diego Comic-Con

At long last, Danger Country #1, the definitive larger version published by Teenage Dinosaur, is in my hands and ready for sale! You can buy it at the Fork Frenzy store, or you can buy it at San diego Comic Con, at the Revival House/Koyama booth in the alternative comics gulag! booth Q-12. I'm going to try to hook up a gps thingie so that you can find me at the convention at any given time, and if you're lucky, maybe you'll find out my secret comic-con restroom. Anyway, up there is the new cover with finished logo, and below is the back cover, and a sneak peak of the cover for #2!!! What????!!!! Yes!!!! It should be available at APE.

Silverlake Jubilee

I'll be doing a comics reading this Saturday at the Silverlake Jubilee next to some pretty amazing cartoonists.

more commissions

Here are a couple of more commissions I worked on recently:

This one is of Tyrion Lannister, a character from the Song of Ice and Fire books, or better known as the TV adaptation, Game of Thrones, Sundays 9/8c only on HBO.

This one here was for a "hot asian nurse holding an alien baby." This was a hard one for me.

And finally this one is of a "zombie wombat attacking a pack of dingos." People are weird.

Little Commissions

Here's some little commissions I did to raise funds for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. I still have a few more of these to do. I'll post them when they're done.

Danger Country 2 Progress #1

Working on the second cover.

For a limited time: Danger Country #1 available for free online

I've uploaded the entirety of Danger Country #1 online. It will be up until April 14th.

Thanks for checking it out. You can buy a copy of it at the Fork Frenzy shop.

That's less than a week. Meanwhile, I'm working really hard to finish Danger Country #2 by the end of May! Stay tuned for some exciting news about Danger Country released in full color.

In other news, I'll be attending the Stumptown comics fest in Portland. It will take place April 16th and 17th. And guess what... DC#1 was nominated for a Maisie Kukoc Award for Comics Inspiration!!!!!!!!! It's up against some amazing comics, among which are comics by Dan Zettwoch and Kevin Huizenga who have been among my heroes since I started drawing comics 10 years ago. Anyway, if you read mini comics, head over to the site and request a ballot by e-mailing reklaw@slowwave.com.


Update: My other host crashed, so the I moved the file to my other, cooler host and hopefully it won't be a problem anymore.

Fan Art

Ever since the holidays, I've been also obsessed with the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin. HBO is adapting it for the little screen in the upcoming Game of Thrones television series. I am pumped!!!! Many others have said it better, but this series is incredibly immersive and incredibly addictive. I am waiting with bated breath For the TV series, and am clawing my eyes out waiting for the 5th novel in the series, A Dance with Dragons which is supposed to come out this summer.

So I drew/painted a couple of little fan art pieces, both depicting scenes with trees. The first one is one of the first scenes of the first book (A Game of Thrones) where Eddard sharpend his family sword, Ice, under the Heart Tree of Winterfell's Godswood. The second one is linked below and is way too spoilerific to describe, but it includes events that occur at the end of the 4th book (A Feast for Crows).

You can see the other spoiler-ridden one here.

While I'm posting fan art, I also wanted to post this drawing I did of David King's character, Lemon Styles.

Paintings

 My main problem as an artist is that I am easily distracted and excitable by new kinds of projects. Rather than try to avoid these impulses, I've made it my philosophy to embrace them, and see where they take me. One of my latest obsessions has been painting digitally. My career roots are in oil painting, and I gave it up due to fumes and constraints on studio space. It's nice to revisit the same concepts but on the computer. I see it as a step away from traditional gallery art which feels less and less relevant to me every day and into the print/web publishing art space. I still love original art objects, but I love other things too.

Anyway, here are a couple of examples. I still feel like I'm in my baby steps, but there you are.

Game Over IV at GRSF

I have 2 pieces in the Game Over show at Giant Robot San Francisco. If you're in town, hop in and take a look! Info below:

Game Over IV at GRSF, March 4, 2011 - March 30, 2011

Reception: Friday, March 4, 6:30 pm - 10:00 pm

GRSF
618 Shrader Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
gr-sf.com
415-876-4773

Giant Robot is proud to present Game Over IV, a group show that pays homage to the continuous evolution of videogames and their massive influence on popular culture. The impact and inspiration of videogames will be represented through a wide assortment of styles and genres provided by top artists in the fields of illustration, painting, sewing, indie comics, and videogames. Contributors are scheduled to include the following:

Lala Albert
Esao Andrews
Nick Arciaga
Andrice Arp
Jesse Balmer
Sasha Barr
Niv Bavarsky
Eric Broers
Aaron Brown
Jeffrey Brown
Jude Buffum
David Chung
Farel Dalrymple
Enfu
Ines Estrada
Jesse Fillingham
Cam Floyd
Matt Furie
Nick Gazin
Mark Giglio
Peter Hamlin
Paul Hornschemeier
David Horvath
Martin Hsu
Rama Hughes
Levon Jihanian
Kinuko
Chris Kuzma
Patrick Kyle
Ginette Lapalme
Little Friends of Printmaking
Kiyoshi Nakazawa
Mare Odomo
Physical Fiction
Ferris Plock
Silvio Porretta
Jarrett Quon
Jesse Reklaw
Rob Sato
Cory Schmitz
Dave Stolte
Superbrothers
Daria Tessler
Jeremy Tinder
Chris Ward
Steven Weissman
Leslie Winchester
Calvin Wong
Jeni Yang
Lawrence Yang
Derek Yu

Giant Robot was born as a Los Angeles-based magazine about Asian, Asian-American, and new hybrid culture in 1994, but has evolved into a full-service pop culture provider with shops and galleries in Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as an online equivalent.

A reception featuring many of the artists will be held from 6:30 - 10:00 on Friday, March 4.