Here's the first batch of photos from our recent trip to Japan. Cheers to Facebook for changing their programming so that those of you who haven't joined the Facebook cult yet can still look at photos that are posted there.

Short explanation of our trip: In 2007, Shaenon and I curated an exhibition for the Cartoon Art Museum called The Art and Flair of Mary Blair. It was very well-received, prompting Studio Ghibli to plan their own much, much, much larger version.

Shaenon and I were hired on as consultants, assisting Mary's nieces with the process of gathering all of the art together and making arrangements for the art to travel to Tokyo back in April.

Earlier this month, we made a return trip to pack up the artwork and bring it back to the U.S. Fortunately for us, they held over the exhibition long enough for us to get a look at it. Even cooler, we got a private look at the exhibition on its final night with staff from Studio Ghibli, the Tokyo Contemporary Art Museum, Japanese broadcaster NHK, Disney, and the core crew behind Pixar's UP, which is already one of our all-time favorite movies. It was incredibly cool to be able to trade Mary Blair stories with Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, Jonas Rivera and Ronnie Del Carmen as we walked through the galleries.

Anyway, please check out the photos. More should be on the way soon.

Just an advertisement for The Cartoon Art Museum's newest exhibition,Monsters of Webcomics as this week's William Bazillion update.

I'm stuck at home with a very nasty cold, an even nastier bottle of codeine-infused prescription cough syrup, and a stack of DVDs and comic books. I could have headed this off by taking a sick day last week, but I worked myself too hard getting "Monsters of Webcomics" up and running. I'm not sure if that's ironic or not...it probably isn't, and I'm just high on codeine, but what are you gonna do?

The Race for Santa's Nazi Gold takes a few more giant steps toward its stunning conclusion. Really.

Sorry not to post more Japan photos this week, but Shaenon and I just got back from a roadtrip to Portland, and we're trying to settle back into some semblance of a routine right now. Once it's sunk in that we're actually going to be in our apartment again for more than a few days in a row, we'll try to dive into the Japan blog reports.

And if you want to find us on Thursday night, please swing by The Cartoon Art Museum where we'll be hanging with Carlos Alazraqui of Reno-911! and Rocko's Modern Life fame at the fifth annual Comics 4 Comix stand-up comedy/art auction fundraiser.

Excelsior!

It's been a crazy few weeks here, mostly due to things at work. First up, for those of you who are interested, here's a long interview with me at the Comic Book Resources website. NBC 11, our San Francisco affiliate, covered the Cartoon Art Museum's current Watchmen exhibition, and so did Electric Playground.

I don't know if there's video footage available on the NBC website, but I'm somewhere in the last segment on the Electric Playground thing.

I'm sure that I look completely exhausted in the video clips (and the other recent ones I've posted), since I've been dealing with a really heavy workload since last summer. The Cartoon Art Museum's Executive Director, Rod Gilchrist, went on medical leave last June because of cancer, and he passed away on February 26. Kevin Fagan wrote a piece on Rod that ran in Saturday's San Francisco Chronicle.

I don't have much to add beyond that right now, but if you knew Rod, there will be a public memorial for him at the Cartoon Art Museum on Friday, March 20.

My life's officially, undeniably weird. What was the turning point? I dunno...I think it was more of a cumulative thing.

Tuesday and Friday were spent in the company of Dave Gibbons, in promotion of The Cartoon Art Museum's new Watchmen exhibition. Saturday was spent returning artwork from The Totoro Forest Project. On Sunday, we carpooled with a Mexican wrestler and his partner to an Academy Awards party that included Batman fighting Robin as bikini girls on stilts paraded around us.

But all that's par for the course. What struck me as really weird, was that while I was packing up puppets while gearing up for an exhibition about a samurai rabbit, I got a phone call from Timmy Lupus, who offered to bring some of his voice actor friends to the Cartoon Art Museum's fundraiser party this weekend.

Meeting Adam West, conducting a pair of panel discussions, and interviewing a standup comedian seem pretty normal by comparison.

Oh, yeah, I'm going to Japan next month.

And go read William Bazillion for a dose of normalcy.

I was interviewed recently by Jazma Online. Read the full interview here. The photo for the article was taken at the 2008 National Cartoonists Society Saturday morning business meeting, and I look amazingly attentive despite operating on only about four hours' sleep while recovering from a day of construction work in the Ninth Ward.

Details on the Cartoon Art Museum's next exhibition coming soon:

Over at his blog, Neil Gaiman mentioned the Cartoon Art Museum's Coraline exhibition. If you're in the Bay Area and want to see some really cool stuff, please drop by the museum sometime in the next three weeks and check out real-live puppets from the upcoming stop-motion feature, plus loads of 2-D concept art.

If you really enjoy it, and want to support what we're doing (including the our Gene Colan retrospective, our upcoming Stan Sakai retrospective, and our sure to be mind-blowingly cool Watchmen exhibition), please consider becoming a Cartoon Art Museum member, donating additional money, or otherwise lending your support to the museum. You can also join the museum's Facebook group and donate money there, if you're so inclined. If you're already a supporter, please let your friends know about us.

Funding for the museum is particularly precarious right now due to decreased attendance, fewer and less frequent individual donations, fiercer competition for grants and other effects of the current economic downturn. If you're expecting money back from the IRS this year, if you've got a guilty conscience that you want to assuage through giving to charitable organizations, if you've got a little extra cash in your pocket, or if you just plain love the art form, please consider donating to the Cartoon Art Museum--and soon.

Thanks for your consideration.

Nearly a year ago, Dice Tsutsumi, Ronnie Del Carmen and Enrico Casarosa approached me at an event at the Cartoon Art Museum to discuss a project that they were working on, which they thought would make a fun exhibition.

Earlier in 2008, the first rumblings of the Totoro Forest Project hit the Internet, and word of the charity auction, the plight of the Sayama Forest, and Hayao Miyazaki's efforts to preserve Japan's endangered woodlands started to spread.

And now, after all that, we're now two days away from the official opening of the Totoro Forest Project original art exhibition (Part One) at the Cartoon Art Museum. I tried something a little bit different with the galleries this time, and you can get a sneak preview right here (featuring *my* artistic contribution to the Totoro Forest Fund):



And if you want a sneak preview at the exhibition, I'd suggest dropping by the Cartoon Art Museum tomorrow night for our special Keith Knight Opening Reception and Book Release Party, celebrating the release of The Complete K Chronicles, published by Dark Horse. If you want to see the whole magilla, drop by on Sunday afternoon, on your way to attend Keith's three-hour intensive workshop, which is pricey, yes, but well worth it for the cartoonist who's looking to take his or her career to the next level.

Next up--Gene Colan (but more on that later. I've still got 30 soot sprites to hide in the galleries...)

I got quoted again, this time in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Shaenon and I got to spend this past Saturday at Pixar for the Totoro Forest Project Art Auction, and we had a great time--even though we didn't manage to get the winning bid on our favorite piece. a non-profit museum curator earns slightly less annual income than the other folks who were attending the fundraiser, and I couldn't justify cutting lunch, the phone bill and running water from my budget for the next two months to justify dropping $700 on a single piece of art, much as I'd have liked to.

For those of you who missed the event, though, you can look at online versions of the Totoro artwork at the aforementioned Totoro Forest Project website, and if you want to see everything in person, you can visit the Cartoon Art Museum between September 20, 2008 and February 8, 2009 and see just about all of it.

More William Bazillion here: http://www.williambazillion.com

And if you ever wanted to learn all there is to know about promoting your own cartoons and comics, *and* if you're going to be in San Francisco next month to check out the Cartoon Art Museum's new Totoro's Forest, you'll want to take Keith Knight's workshop, Cartoons Are Serious Business. Keith's a great cartoonist and a brilliant self-promoter, and I'm sure that 99% of the cartoonists I know would benefit from this class.

If I've been slow getting back to anyone over the past couple of months, it's partly because of this.

And this.

And this.

And this.

More information on these as they develop--make sure to click on the first link, though. And join the official Totoro Forest Project Facebook Group while you're at it.

Me, I'm gonna take a nap.

Chapter Six of The Chronicles of William Bazillion continues: http://www.williambazillion.com

And for those of you keeping track of my exploits in other media, here's an article on comic book collecting that ran in the Toledo Blade this past weekend.

Earlier this month, I commented on Michael Turner's passing in an article for the LA Times, and that got picked up by the Associated Press. The occasional newspaper interview is just part of my job, and I usually forget about these things right after I've done them, but this one made it into the Plain Dealer back in Cleveland and got picked up by CNN, and several family members called or wrote to let me know that I got my name in the paper.

I also contributed to an article in The Comics Reporter the other day about Golden Age comic book artist Creig Flessel, who passed away last Thursday night. You can see video footage of me interviewing Creig here, apparently.

I'm really tempted to start obsessively documenting just what I do in a typical working week, since it might be of interest to two or three people who read this blog. Last week, for example, I spoke at a youth-oriented marketing/media conference on Monday morning, sat in on the Cartoon Art Museum's Board of Directors meeting on Tuesday, met up with Raina Telgemaier, Jen Wang and (Flight artist whose name I've got to look up) on Wednesday night, visited the Contemporary Jewish Museum on Thursday for a lecture by New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff and cover artist Owen Smith on Thursday (tying in with their incredible William Steig exhibition), worked with MariNaomi on Friday night to coordinate a live comic-reading event tying in with the S.F. Zinefest, then spent Saturday at Pixar selecting artwork for an upcoming Cartoon Art Museum exhibition. That's at least one work-related (or semi-work-related) thing outside of normal business hours per day for a six-day clip. Add in my regular duties, like exhibition planning, intern training, art-packaging and setting up a few new things in the galleries, and I'm starting to figure out why I'm so tired right now.

And I forgot to mention that I interviewed Lio creator Mark Tatulli for about 90 minutes last Thursday, for an upcoming issue of The Comics Journal.

Off to bed for me...after I finish writing an intro for my next Animation World Network piece, and figure out when I'm going to get started on the piece after that...

Another installment of William Bazillion is now online for your viewing pleasure, and it wraps up the official William Bazillion Movie. Miss it at your peril!

In other news, the reason that I haven't had time to blog about my incredible trip to New Orleans for the National Cartoonists Society's annual get-together is that I'm scrambling to get caught up with work so that I can take *another* trip this weekend. Shaenon's a panelist at MoCCA's Post-Bang: Comics Ten Minutes After the Big Bang! event on Friday, and we'll be hanging out at the MoCCA festival on Saturday and Sunday. Since we rarely make it out to the east coast, we're sticking around for an extra week afterward, visiting and schmoozing. I may actually be able to make enough money to cover our expenses if I can snap a few front-page-quality pics of Spider-Man while I'm in the city.

One of the things keeping me busy is planning the Cartoon Art Museum's upcoming Harvey Comics exhibition, which opens later this month, while putting the finishing touches on our Keith Knight retrospective, which opens in a couple of weeks. Throw in planning for the Cartoon Art Museum's charity fundraiser for cartoonist Josh Medors this weekend, and things are a little bit nuts.

If you've got more free time than I do, please check out my latest batch of reviews for Animation World Network. As always, if you like what you see there, please drop my editors a line so that they keep me around.

And if you're going to be in New York next week and want to meet up, let me know. I'm combining activities pretty haphazardly at this point to fit everything in, so you might have to settle for joining me, Donald Trump and the Rockettes at a Mets game, followed by a ride on the Staten Island Ferry to the Statue of Liberty and the Guggenheim, but I think I can make it work.

I interviewed New Frontier comic creator Darwyn Cooke and super-cool voice director Andrea Romano at WonderCon a few weeks ago, and you can read those along with my mini-reviews of the New Frontier DVD and just-released tie-in comic book, too.

If you aren't into the superhero thing but you're a fan of animation in general, you can skip over Darwyn Cooke and dive right into the Andrea Romano part. She's got a great story about Huckleberry Hound voice actor Daws Butler and has some pretty cool insights into the animation process, too.

Part One of my jumbo-sized WonderCon report is up today at Animation World Network. Sidebar interviews include a behind-the-scenes look at the convention with Comic-Con International's Director of Marketing and Public Relations, David Glanzer, and a transcript of my roundtable discussion with Iron Man director Jon Favreau.

Part Two is scheduled to go up on Friday, featuring my coverage of the just-released Justice League: The New Frontier DVD, with a big interview with Darwyn Cooke plus famed voice director Andrea Romano.

I'm popping up all over the place right now. Here's an interview I did with filmmaker Steven-Charles Jaffe about his new documentary Gahan Wilson: Born Dead, Still Weird. There's a screening of the film at WonderCon tomorrow evening, and I advise everyone to check it out before swinging by the Cartoon Art Museum for our annual WonderCon Friday Fundraiser.

As 2007 winds to a close and you're trying to decide what to do with that extra money in your wallet or rattling around in your PayPal account, please consider making a donation to San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum. Admittedly, I've got my own selfish reasons for seeing the museum continue to grow and thrive (I like having a job, for instance), but I like to think that Cartoon Art Museum offers a whole lot more than just giving my wife an eight-to-ten hour break from me five or six times a week.

Reasons to support the Cartoon Art Museum:

1. The Art. Right now, the Cartoon Art Museum is exhibiting works by acclaimed Disney artist Mary Blair, indie superstar Lark Pien, beloved illustrator Edward Gorey, up-and-coming superstar Hellen Jo, comic strip legends Charles Schulz, E.C. Segar, Milton Caniff, George Herriman, Morrie Turner, Walt Kelly and Bill Watterson; famed comic book artists Will Eisner, Dan DeCarlo, John Buscema and Gil Kane; underground icons R. Crumb, Vaughn Bode and Spain Rodriguez; animation cels and drawings from classic Disney, Warner Brothers and Hanna-Barbera cartoons, plus a whole bunch more. Recent exhibitions have included such great artists as Gahan Wilson, Patrick McDonnell, Linda Medley, Pia Guerra, Gene Yang, Erik Larsen, Charles Addams, Basil Wolverton, Erik Powell and more than 20 New Yorker cartoonists. Upcoming exhibitions (that I'm working on right now) include a Will Eisner Hall of Famer, a Golden Age comic book artist, and a New Yorker exhibition featuring their top female cartoonists, including a special spotlight on Roz Chast.

No other place in the western United States (or possibly on Earth) offers this array of artwork for public viewing. If not for the Cartoon Art Museum, the works that we display would most likely be stored away in artists' studios, collectors' vaults or publishers' storage rooms. It's a great place for casual fans of cartoons to visit (and who isn't at least a casual fan of cartoons?), and if you're remotely interested in creating your own cartoon art, there's no other resource like it.

2. The Artists. In addition to the better-than-average chance that you'll run into me or Shaenon K. Garrity when you visit the Cartoon Art Museum, we're constantly hosting events that allow the public to meet and interact with real live cartoonists. On Saturday, Justin Hall is the museum's Cartoonist-In-Residence, with Shaenon K. Garrity filling that position next month. Last night, Jason Thompson gave a talk to promote his new book, Manga: The Complete Guide to a full house of manga fans (and editors). At Tuesday's reception for our Mary Blair exhibition, Mary's son Kevin was in attendance, as well as more than half-a-dozen Pixar employees (including Monsters Inc. director Pete Docter), famed caricaturist Zach Trenholm and longtime CAM supporter and great cartoonist in his own right, Jon "Bean" Hastings. And that's just this week.

In the past few years, we've played host to Lynn Johnston, Scott McCloud, Bill Amend, Gahan Wilson, John Kricfalusi, Lark Pien, Shepherd Hendrix, Patrick McDonnell, Rutu Modan, Linda Medley, Pia Guerra, Keith Knight, Eric Powell...and I could easily name another 50 great cartoonists who've been here since I started working for CAM in 2001 (even more counting back to my volunteer days, which started over a year before I was hired). In any given month, odds are good that we'll host at least two or three events that give the general public the opportunity to meet a professional cartoonist.

3. The Artistic Community. If you're a professional artist, a struggling would-be professional, or just someone who wants to get a better grasp on his or her cartooning skills, you can meet someone at the CAM who's at your level, or someone who's been at your level, or someone who wants to get to your level, or...you get the picture. Artists talk shop here all the time, and everyone's got something unique to offer. Mini-comics creators, webcartoonists, gag cartoonists, painters, comic strip creators, comic book illustrators, children's book writers...all sorts of artists congregate here, and plenty of long-lasting collaborations have gotten their start right here. I know some artists who go a year at a time without seeing any of their colleagues, but artists here in the Bay Area usually don't go a week without seeing other cartoonists.

And I can go on about other things, like the educational programs that the Museum offers to children's programs throughout the city, but I'll leave it at that for now. Details for contributing to the Cartoon Art Museum's Annual Fund follow. Please spread the word to friends and family--every little bit helps in our efforts to bring the public the best possible Cartoon Art Museum that we can. Thanks in advance to all of you who donate.


Please click here</url> to read the whole Annual Fund letter pitch that was mailed to our membership and past supporters. Please click here to donate money via PayPal. Checks may be made out to "Cartoon Art Museum" and mailed to Cartoon Art Museum; 655 Mission Street; San Francisco, CA 94105. For donations via Visa or MasterCard, please call (415) 227-8666, ext. 300. Thanks very much for your support!

After many, many months of gearing up for it, we're now about one week away from the opening of the Cartoon Art Museum's newest exhibition, The Art and Flair of Mary Blair. More than fifty pieces of one of the all-time great Disney artists will be on display, many of which have never been seen by the public.

You can buy the book of the same name here, although what you *really* need to do is book yourself a flight to San Francisco as soon as humanly possible. Our Edward Gorey exhibition runs through January, as does our Lark Pien spotlight, I Am Ten, and you can also check out the work of Hellen Jo in our Small Press Spotlight (along with our permanent collection of classic comic strips, political cartoons, animation and other stuff).

And just to whet your appetites a bit, here are some choice images from the exhibition, starting with a Baker's Chocolate ad:



And some Alice In Wonderland concept art:



More pictures after the cut:

( Read more... )

The latest installment of The Chronicles of William Bazillion, of course:

http://www.williambazillion.com

The next few updates will probably be two pages at a clip, since I'm very deep into preparations for the Cartoon Art Museum's upcoming Mary Blair exhibition (several months of much more intense work than usual building up to this one) and on top of that, the Cleveland Indians are just one win away from the World Series, which will occupy many an hour over the next two weeks.

I've got ties to each of the three teams still left in the playoffs, having lived in Boston for a year and having gone to college in Colorado for four, but the Indians will always be my home team, whether they win it all this year or not (and since it's been 59 years since their last World Series victory, and since I've seen them come within an out of winning it all ten years back, I'm pretty much braced for anything. It's a Cleveland thing).