Douglas Wolk

We had a tremendous flurry of activity last week here at Office 54. On Friday, I joined Douglas Wolk for breakfast at Cafe Henri on Bedford Street and got to have a terrific chat about comics, the comics industry, music, and our kids. I'd first encountered Douglas a couple years ago at the NY Comic Con where I was a panelist, with R. Kikuo Johnson, on a romantic panel he was moderating called 'Heartbreak in Comics', so what was not to love when we met?

Since then, he's been wowing me on a regular basis with his journalistic endeavors, not to mention his How to Read Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean. He bowls me over with his rock 'n' roll birthday blog Mincing Up the Morning and I am an absolute fan of his show 'Crickets'. As such, it was a lovely treat to have him come over for a bit to mix it up and DJ our regular Office 54/DANCE PARTY FRIDAY! With a Tony Clifton pie from Two Boots!

Thank you, Douglas.

Lisa Anne Gidley and Douglas David Wolk, half of a post-punk band called the Media, are to be married today at Studio 450, a photography studio in Manhattan. Rabbi David Honigsberg is to officiate.

The bride, 30, is also a freelance music writer and a copy editor in Manhattan. She graduated from the University of Missouri. She is a daughter of Carol Gidley of Kansas City, Mo., and the late Byron Gidley.

The bridegroom, 31, writes about music and comics in Long Island City, Queens, and owns a small record label, Dark Beloved Cloud. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard. He is the son of Josephine Wolk and Dr. C. Peter Wolk of East Lansing, Mich.

Ms. Gidley and Mr. Wolk met briefly at a party in October 1998.

"I thought he was cute and interesting, but I was primarily interested in picking his brain," said Ms. Gidley, who was then thinking about trying freelance music journalism.

Six months later, they found themselves roommates with two other people attending the Bowlie Weekender, a three-day music festival, which was held at an English seaside resort near Rye.

"I was already thinking about going there," Ms. Gidley said. "But when I found out he was going to be there also, it was the nudge I needed to get the ticket."

They had more time to become acquainted.

"We began talking about getting guitar tablature off the Internet," Mr. Wolk said, alluding to the musical notation for stringed instruments. "I told her I was excited because I'd gone online and seen one for an obscure punk song that I liked a lot — `Vertical Slum' by Swell Maps."

He added: "I told her I wasn't expecting to find it there. When she told me she was the one who posted that tab, I looked at her and said, `Friend!' "

-- The New York Times, Fashion & Style, August 5, 2001

Still ill

I'm battling the most horrific bout of the flu and as such, I won't be attending the NYPL reception tomorrow. I've been languishing in bed for three days with hopes of a speedy recovery, but I've now given in to this evil virus and am resigned to pots of tea, shots of whiskey, and The Smiths.

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Now playing: The Smiths - Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now
via FoxyTunes

NYPL's 79th Annual Books for the Teen Age

Breaking Up made it onto The New York Public Library's 79th Annual Exhibition of Books for the Teen Age 2008! This list, now in its 79th year of publication, selects the best of the previous year’s publishing for teenagers, ages 12 to 18. All the titles chosen have been read and reviewed by young adult librarians and recommended for this special publication.

Aimee and I will be in attendance for the reception at the Celeste Bartos Forum this Saturday, with celebratory remarks by Robert Lipsyte, the author of Yellow Flag.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

For the children, I give The Lepruchan Bros...



For you, one of my favorite poems:

Had I The Heavens' Embroidered Cloths

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

William Butler Yeats

Dave Stevens

In 1989, I think it was, that I discovered comics. Not the Sunday strips, nor the Archies at 7-11, but COMIC BOOKS. After a month in my sophomore year of high school, I'd met a gang of kids who lived on the way other side of town. A forty-minute drive on I-270, in some boyfriend's ride on Friday nights, and we'd hang out in a suburban basement for hours watching weird taped videos of obscure bands, maybe take a trip to Vintage Vinyl looking for rare records and whatnot.

In one of my new friend's room, also in the basement, we'd listen to music and talk for hours and hours. His room was unlike any other I'd seen. It was plastered in posters with illustrated figures in amazing composition and design. Words, text, splashed in color. "Who Watches the Watchmen?" one read, with an ominous smiley-button with a drop of blood over its face. "V" standing over a big brick wall with billowing cape flying over. There were short boxes and long boxes spilling comics onto his drafting table (where my friend meticulously copied muscular forms for beautiful drawings that he'd mail me)and on the dilapidated sofa I crashed on.

On the floor, a particular image caught my eye. A skeletel man kissing a floating beauty of a woman with gorgeous flowing hair and dress. The comic was titled Deadman: Love After Death #2. Probably inspired by a recent mix tape with something along the lines of of Siouxsie, Oingo Boingo, and Joy Division, I picked it up, read it, and fell madly in love with comics. All my life I was a bookworm who accelerated at drawing. In the fourth grade, I got to skip math class once a week for extra time in the art room. Here were the two passions in my young life, stories and illustration, integrated. I felt like the universe had suddenly opened up and revealed the greatest thing that would ever consume and inform me as person on this planet.

Gathering the boxes and stacks of comics into a type of fort on the sofa, I read till dawn under a Dave Stevens poster. For months after, I would study this poster. The sensuality and humor in it left me in wonder. I loved the bats gracing the moon, the hidden dead head amongst the lush orange. I later discovered The Rocketeer through one of the friends, who had become my boyfriend and perhaps not by coincidence had the largest treasure trove of comics, posters, and portfolios.

In my own basement bedroom, I started my comics collection, and Stevens' work was regularly thumbed and read over and over. His style was beautiful and fun and completely defined a cornerstone in my simple comics and art education. Thank you, Dave Stevens.

Dave Stevens
1955-2008

A Long Walk

There's much work on the wall these days. From left to right in the above photo is the semi-organization of ideas to artboard. The yellow post-its contain scribblings of all the comics I dream of doing, the late night concoctions of friends, the writer I may have met a year ago who's proposed book projects, etc. From there is a small collage of art and sketches of something I'm brewing in the pot.

Then it's a grid of projects that are in-progress. A script I am thinking on, scripts w/ attached memos from the editors, a proposal that's simultaneously on another editor's desk, artboards prepped with bounding boxes, seven-pages of layout art, and then the comic I am currently ruling borders out on that has moved from thumbtack to drafting table.

Essential to the desk: coffee, the immediate tools I need for the task, laptop which provides reference materials and notes for my project, music for the office stereo, iChat to keep in touch with my friends (what's goin' down, noricat?), Facebook, and a photo of Vosge's bacon-chocolate via Big City, Little Kitchen.

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Now playing: Jill Scott - A Long Walk
via FoxyTunes

NY Int'l Children's Film Fest

My daughter's short film pick from this weekend's NYICFF.