Here’s a glimpse of “More Comics from Mars”, my contribution to the National Poetry Month site by Angel House Press. As you may already know, April is National Poetry Month. Every day for this month, Angel House Press will post a poem or visual poem, and the calendar will stay online until February 2018. You can see “More Comics from Mars” in its entirety on day 5.
This visual poetry comic is also on a t-shirt from my fledgling shop at RedBubble.
Abstract/asemic comics for the city of Azza-Jono. Tales of Azza-Jono can be found on Tablo. The city is the center of a WIP collaboration of writers and artists (mostly writers) who meet on Ello (my Ello handle is echo-of-newt).
When I started reading my first tale of Azza-Jono, I was reminded of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. As I read further into the Tablo site, the stories felt more reminiscent of the early issues of Interzone I stole from my brother. Or like a few short stories from Omni magazine that drilled themselves into my bones, so that I carry them with me always, even though I have forgotten their titles and authors.
© 2016 Lin Tarczynski
Image 1: Collaborative effort for Geranium Lake Properties by Yost and his assistant, Ha Kim Ngoc
Image 2: Ngoc’s initial contribution
The people who admire GLP are a discerning but small group, and at various points in the last three years I have created fictional fans to swell the numbers of our tiny band of brothers and sisters. Plus I needed help writing the backstory of Geranium Lake Properties, and creating characters is an excellent first step to writing fiction. (The danger is that if you have too much fun writing characters you may lose motivation to plod onward with the relatively boring task of actually writing the story.) GLP’s foremost fictional fan is Ha Kim Ngoc, one of those amazing American hybrids, a daughter and granddaughter of Vietnamese, Korean, Polish and Welsh immigrants.
Before she became Yost’s assistant in 1991, Ha Kim Ngoc was writing and drawing “Somnifery”, a comic strip influenced by Carlos Castaneda, Goya’s Black Paintings, Lorca’s theory of duende, and Little Nemo in Slumberland. “Somnifery” appeared irregularly in different zines during the 80’s, notably Spongesucker, Ralph and Fascia. At the same time, Ngoc collaborated with Yost on a handful of GLP comics.
The ideogram in the lower right-hand corner of today’s panel is a tribute to Harriet Lariat, a pseudonym used by Ngoc’s Polish grandmother and her grandmother’s sister-in-law, the writer/artist team who created Sue Generous and Bossy Oyster, a 64-page Golden Age comic book. The comic followed the crime-fighting adventures of a glamorous American housewife and her plucky Jack Russell terrier (loosely based on the characters of Nora Charles and her dog Astor from the Thin Man movies). Each issue featured several different stories, all the captions were written in Polish, while the speech balloons were in English. The authors hoped to educate Polish immigrants who were eager to immerse themselves in American culture. The title was printed by Eastern Color Printing and enjoyed a modest success within its target audience, published from 1937 to 1941, with a total of 31 issues.
© 2016 Lin Tarczynski
I intended to post this GLP comic during the past weekend. It has a somewhat overwrought (and maybe a wee bit inappropriate) title, but I also think it’s rather fun.
© 2016 Lin Tarczynski
Sequel to this.
© 2016 Lin Tarczynski
Two versions of the same comic page, not really sketches, but I needed a title for the post, I was listening to “Flamenco Sketches (alternate take)” by Miles Davis, and I borrowed what the universe was offering.
© 2016 Lin Tarczynski
A comic page made with the above GLP panel:
And another page finished last week:
© 2016 Lin Tarczynski
This comes from the same place as Tigorn’s Green Loam.
© 2016 Lin Tarczynski
© 2016 Lin Tarczynski
Top is the misprint from Montevideo, Uruguay, from the newspaper El País, February 9, 1995. This is one of the misprints Yost preferred over his original work.
More extra comics, just for fun.
This one’s for the slime molds. If you are a certain type of Mycetozoan, this is hilarious.
(Tired of kittens? Click here for lots of really cute slime mold images.)
Asemic comics are published here two or three times a week, mostly on Tuesday and Friday. The schedule might vary by a day or two sometimes, depending on what’s going on in my life, but if you check in on Tuesday and Friday, you can be 99% sure you will see something new.
© 2016 Lin Tarczynski
Yost wrote “Mary Dow Brine” on the back of this GLP panel.
Medusa was the mother of Pegasus, the flying horse, and Chrysaor, a young man (and/or giant). They were both born in the moment when Perseus cut off Medusa’s head. Chrysaor translates as “He who has a golden sword”; apparently he emerged from his mother’s body (or blood) with sword in hand.
Asemic comics are usually published here two times a week, on Tuesday and Friday. Yes, today is Saturday. Sorry ’bout that.
© 2016 Lin Tarczynski
I will be trying out a two-day-per-week schedule for Geranium Lake Properties, on Tuesdays and Fridays. This week-end is going to be a busy one for me, so the next GLP comic will go up Tuesday, March 8.
Vraicking 