2016 Comic Challenge 090 Canadian Squalour 2010

TITLE-Canadian Squalour 2010
PUBLISHER-Colin Upton Comics

Another of the many mini comix I got from Colin Upton. This one talks about how Colin was suppose to be working on a comic with Harvey Pekar. And had been waiting a year and a half for all the details to be ironed out. Then one crappy day he goes to check his email and finds out Harvey has passed.

As I said in the previous review of one of Mr Upton's comix,it is obvious he was influenced by Harvey. And this comic is a nice tribute to a great talent. Done by a great talent.

This comix doesn't use the same style of shading as the last one. Instead it has a more scratchy/line intensive look. And the people are way less cartoony. That is another of Colin's great talents,he has more than one art style.

Canadian Squalour 2010 gets a BUY!

2016 Comic Challenge 086 Self-Indulgent Comics #38

TITLE-Self-Indulgent Comics #38
PUBLISHER-Colin Upton Comics

Last year,or maybe the year before, I got a package in the mail. It was full of mini comics from the Canadian artist/writer/painter Colin Upton. And to make a great package even better every issue was signed and had a quick doodle on it.

This issue has Colin walking around Vancouver Canada. And he runs into a group of guys on a scavenger hunt. They need a sketch of themselves by a major landmark. And they lucked out cause Colin just so happens to be a damn good artist. He does the best with the meager art supplies the guys have,standard paper and some crappy markers. After they leave Colin starts to let his mind wander and wonder if they won the hunt and who they worked for. Then on the last page we find out they do and get a small scan of the sketch.

I have read a decent amount of mini comix over the years. But the art in the various ones of Mr Upton's I have read is just soo damn good. The shading is perfect.The linework is perfect. I suspect that Colin is a fan of Robert Crumb. The next to last page feels like a loving tribute to various piece of Crumb artwork.

If you have an interest in Colin's work here's his website.www.colinupton.com

He has lots of his comix for sale and the price is great. One small warning,Colin lives in Canada so if you live outside Canada the postage will be a bit higher than you would suspect,but not that much higher than US postage. And it takes a bit longer for sometime to get to you. But it is at most 3 or 4 more days.  To me Colin's comix are worth the extra postage and wait.

Self-Indulgent Comics #38 gets a BUY!

Interview with Cinena Sewer creator Robin Bougie

I first started talking to Robin about 2 years ago. Had ordered the first softcover collection of the early Cinema Sewer zines and loved it. So found him on Facebook and we bullshitted about movies and stuff. Since then we have traded movies and zines a few times. And then this year for X-mas he was nice enough to send me not only a carded Dr Skull B Pez but this weird looking Japanese candy dispenser.

Now back to Cinema Sewer it is an annual magazine that covers sleazy films/comics/TV shows of all eras. But he does mostly focus on stuff from the mid 80s and before. I subscribe to it and look forward to each new issue.

Cinema Sewer online shop Warning NSFW

So about a week ago I jokingly told him I wanted to interview him for my humble blog here. "Sure Newt just email me the questions." So I sat down came up with a handful of questions and when I woke up earlier today saw he had answered them. Hope yall enjoy.


1.As a kid what cartoons were can't miss for you? And have you went
 back and rewatched them and realized they were crap?
I didn't have cable, so I did all my cartoon watching at friends places on Saturday morning after sleepovers. I loved that, man. That was the *LIFE*! Eating all their cereal and watching their tv, and just totally living it up! I loved watching KID VIDEO, WACKY RACES, SATURDAY SUPERCADE, THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN, TRANSFORMERS, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS, and I was actually really really into the old 1960s SPIDER-MAN cartoon which aired in reruns all the time in Calgary Alberta Canada, where I grew up. I think I saw every episode of that at least 4 times, it ran so often.

To be honest, not a lot of those old cartoons have held up for me all that well. In fact, if I'm gonna revisit old cartoons, I'm more likely to watch the early 1990s Japanese stuff I got into in my late teens and 20s, like RIDING BEAN, any of the Studio Ghibli movies, LEGEND OF THE OVERFIEND, ADVENTURE KID, KITE, MEZZO FORTE, and PERFECT BLUE.



 2.What one childhood toy do you wish you still had? And was there a
 toy you always wanted but never got?When I was a kid in the early 80s we were pretty poor. Single mom on welfare. I didn't get many toys, to be honest, which is probably why I started drawing in the first place -- as a way to keep myself entertained. So actually it kinda worked out good, because I love drawing. Many of my toys were hand-me-downs from my brothers and sister who had already moved out of the house by the time I was going to grade school. I got their lego and their board games, and a slinky and a bunch of other toys that were popular in the 60s. Haha it was kind of bullshit, man! All my other friends had He-Man and transformers and Gi-Joe, so I would just go play with their toys. Got me out of the house, I guess. It probably also explains why I started shoplifting hotwheels cars from the drugstore. I stole nearly a hundred of them over the span of a year before I got caught and brought home in the back of a police cruiser. My mom went fucking ballistic on me, especially after the cops told her she was a bad mom. After that any time I was gonna steal, I almost threw up I got so upset. It was like CLOCKWORK ORANGE or something.

I do remember the very first toy that I saved up and bought with my very own money, though, the LaserTag-ish electronic "tag" game with guns called PHOTON. It was fucking awesome. Loved that to bits. Bought it at radioshack for like $30 or something like that. Took me months to save up that much.

A toy I always wanted and never got? Hmmm... that would have to be pretty much all of them, dude! hahaha! I used to just pour over the department store catalogs and stare at the pictures of toys for fucking hours! Oh, man now that I'm listening to myself here, it sounds like I was fucking Charlie from Charile And the Chocolate Factory! haha I had a good childhood, I swear!





 3.Kirby or Ditko? Please explain your reasoning.As a kid I prefered Ditko over Kirby, and thought Kirby's art was ugly. As an adult, I feel exactly the opposite. The only reason I can give you is that kids don't know shit.

 4.If you became a rapper what would your rap name be?
BOUGIEMAN!
And my crew would be the Bougieclan!


5.Name 3 comics from your childhood that inspired you.
HEAVY METAL magazine: Possibly my biggest inspiration as a young teen.

TINTIN: Ok, now it sounds like i'm just naming off European comics, but I didn't even know TinTin was European when I was a kid. I just loved this comic, and read them all. All the Canadian libraries had them (and Asterix books) in every kids section of the library all through the 1980s. I wonder if they still do? I should check.

THE MINI-COMICS OF COLIN UPTON: Colin is a small press comics artist here in Vancouver, and I discovered his mini comics when I was in Junior High. I came to Vancouver on summer vacation, and they had his comics in an art gallery here that was doing a show on independent comic art. I bought a few and took them back home to Calgary, and they basically changed the way I thought about comics, and made me realize that I could make my own. Today, Colin lives downstairs from me in my apartment building and my wife and I babysit his cat when he goes away. Funny how things work out! 


6.Why do you think the gorgeous Thora Birch's career has went into the toilet?
Women generally have a very short shelf life in Hollywood. Some seem to be able to be famous on into middle age and beyond by either being Oscar-calibre performers or utter media train-wrecks, but most don't keep a career much further than their early to mid 30s. Think about all the other young actresses that were big in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. Most of them had a 10 year window, tops. Meanwhile male actors get to be sex symbols far into their fucking 60s -- and often with their love interests being WAAAAY younger women. It's pretty fucking revolting, if you ask me. Hollywood is kinda gross. People love to talk shit about how the average porn star's career is so short, but at least they know that going in. They get in, make their cash, and quickly get out to go have a "normal life". Everyone is on the same page. In Hollywood they're far more dishonest about how things operate.