Here's Johnny ...

Fluke 2010

Fluke 2010 was awesome.

Chew and I left Columbus at 5:30 A.M. and arrived in Athens just before nine. We grabbed some coffee and decided to scope out the new Fluke location and saw that people were already lined up to rent tables. We rushed back to the car to grab our stuff and stand in line. The doors opened just a little before 11 A.M. and the line kept growing and growing. There is no way the old location at Tasty World would have been able to hold that many artists. The hall in Cine (Athen's indy theater) was just big enough. There was a bar and the coffee and beer started flowing at noon.

Chew and I did suprisingly well. Everyone who bought a copy of Flex Fantastic last year, picked up book II, which was exciting. Chew sold a lot of Hairball and Neutrino Valley.

Several friends of ours made the trip to Athens. Orion rented a table and premiered two of his comics. Roger picked up his friend Steve from Atlanta and arrived around noon.

The day went by quickly and we met a lot of people and hopefully, made some new friends. Fluke wrapped up around 6 P.M. We hooked up with our Columbus Posse and headed out to grab some dinner. We laughed, drank - discussed the new Doctor Who, Blake's 7 and B movies - and ate Thai. It was a 20 hour day and the trip home took forever but it was one of the best days I've had ... and from talking with Chew, I know he feels the same.

I just wanted to thank everyone who came out to see us. If you're new to this blog, please check out our ealier postings (starting at April 2009) for Carnage Cream/How ah met you Muddah. Please leave a comment. We'd love to hear from you!

Thank you, Patrick Dean, for throwing such a great event. Fluke rocks.

Special thanks again to Kennis, our unnofficial third member, for printing our books. Because of him, we were able to pass our savings on to everyone who bought a book this year.

And special thanks to Roger. You've just been made Globster Press Fan Club President!

Spread the word!

--Jeff Tuffenstuff

After a three hour car trip, full of Starbucks coffee and pastries, Chew(right)and I are ready to set up and sell our books at Fluke.


A close-up of Flex Fantastic Issue 2 and Carnage Cream at the Globster Press Table

Chew at the Globster Press Table at 11:00 A.M. That smile is scary, man! You're scaring the kids...


Roger, recently appointed President of the Globster Press Fan Club, reading one of Chew's comics. He drove 150 miles to come out and support us - and brought his friend, Steve. Roger now owns every comic we've done. He also sat at our table and shouted at attendees and helped sell books. A sea biscuit goes to anyone who can spot what's wrong with this picture!


5 P.M.: selling strong, all day long

Our fellow travelers and friends from Columbus: (left to right) Julie, Dan, Hannah, Orion and Steve. Orion also had a table at Fluke. His Sci-Fi comic After the Penal Colony is worth reading. If you come across it, please give it a try. Thanks for coming out to Fluke, guys!


6:04 P.M. Fluke's over. We're done. Bring on the next con!


Chew at Dinner. Excited to order Drunken Noodles and feeling pretty good about Fluke.


Roger and Steve at Dinner. Imitation meat? Huh? What?

FLUKE!

Hey peoples. Hope all is well. Been sick, been busy, been crazy....but FLUKE is here! Now! Set for Saturday, April 17 in Athens, GA. We, here at Globster Press, between the two of us, will have FOUR NEW COMIC BOOKS FOR YOU EDIFICATION! J. and I have the new Flex Fantastic 2 (the sequel) and Carnage Cream. I will have my new/old Hairball entitled "Hillbilly Chic: Part One of the Hillbillogy" as well as Neutrino Valley. All of our books are affordable to poor people who like to wallow in mud and cheap forms of literature. Awesome! You know you wish you could be there to wish you were there wishing you could hang out with our awesomeness all day and drink beer with all of the other people milling about whilst drinking beer wishing that they were sitting at a table all day wishing that they could drink a beer too!
YEAH! We had an unbelievably great time last year. Hopefully this years show will be fun as well.
Before I go, big HUGE THANKS to Kennis for helping us print our books this time. I know my books killed that two-tone printer, but thanks for the effort. HUGE cheers also go out to J. for using his superhuman powers to tackle the cutting and stapling. You guys totally Rock! No sarcasm, either!
FLUKE!!!!!

Chew

Meanderthals

Well, I must say, things have been rather stressful. There is a trashy person living in a place very, very close to me who is slowly making my mind unravel. I have always had a low tolerance for really dirty, insensitive, ultra-tacky mofo's who like to spread their filth onto other people. Consensual trash is one thing, but when it's forcibly imposed upon a person who is then driven out of their dwelling in frustration...well, that just sucks.
So, the venom that has welled up from within me simply must be addressed in some form. Luckily, I was able to get to a point where I could write this entry without sounding like some Meanderthal craving violence, skull bashing, throwing squealing hyper-active children out of trees. You think this sounds rough? You should have heard me last week! I was practically rabid. I even started to mimic a crying child.
Which brings me to the image you see before you. This was a test page for Neutrino Valley in its early stages...back in 2000-2002. Not sure when it was, really. The characters you see are, in fact, mutated, inbred cannibals. Well, most of them. The little guy with wings is'nt. He will eat dead cats with the rest of the family (Fambly), but generally will avoid the flesh of humans.
Here, we see the brothers picking on little Grubby. I intended Grubby to become friends with Leroy (main character of N.V.) but I had problems with the way the story was turning out. Plus, it got to a point where I did'nt want to work on the thing anymore. I just did'nt want to deal with it. I spent so much time drawing on that thing that it seemed like it would never end. There are so many lines in some of the panels, that it creates an almost misty look to it. My drawing style had also changed. I also got whiplash and had to reinvent the way I drew comics. This began my slow journey towards the brush.
Well, I had all of those pages that I had finished just sitting there. Jeff and I began chatting about the book and I was telling him about some of the problems I was having with it (run on sentence). When he saw it, he was like "You ca'nt work on the book anymore because you're done." It was all right there. No more monsters. No subplots. Nothing overly complex. It just is...finished! And it is. Hopefully N.V. will be published in time for FLUKE in April. 16 pages...B&W.

Not sure if I will ever explore these monsters again or not. I might, but outside of Neutrino Valley. The Fambly did originate from a "holler" in W.VA.
No. I will not tell you their names right now.

Albaric the Mute

The Black Worm

Neutrino V.
When I was drawing this comic, I wanted to take the line work as far as I could go. Alot of this was based off of my childhood. Because of that, the memories would actually help dictate how the lines would end up looking. They ended up appearing soft or misty. I'm particularly proud of this panel. The shadows came out very well, I think.
This book also marks the entry of my series, The Black Worm, into the world.

(Big thanks to Jeff for the name suggestion!)

- Chew

Hell Awaits

Another panel out of Neutrino Valley.

- Chew

Hot wire my heart

This is another panel out of Neutrino Valley. The main character is a little boy named Leroy. Here, he is seen entering a school room that was based off of my 6th grade class in Kansas. The dude directly to Leroy's right has a t-shirt that says "Goat Roper 4 Life". We called rednecks in Kansas "goat ropers". Really, they were just farm kids who had mullety-hair (or bowl cuts...with cowboy boots). He has the hair and the 'tude.
The angry looking girl with the half-shaved head, right in front of Leroy, is my rendition of how an old friend might have looked at that age. Near her, is my friend Sean from middle school.
As you might be gathering by now, many of the scenes in this book are based off of things from my youth.

- Chew

Long time gone...

It's been awhile. I've been getting ready for a small exhibition that I am going to have in a former crack house. I also needed to get away from the comics for a spell. That means a break from Flex 2, the blog, everything.
So, I'm back, and here is a panel out of my upcoming comic called "Neutrino Valley". It looks like it will be around 14 pages. I have a couple more things to finish up on it before it's all ready to go.

- Chew

20 Foot Larva

I have always had sketchbooks. As far back as I can remember, I've always had one nearby. I still have them all. There is a stack of about fifteen of them. When I was a kid, I had the odd habit that most kids have. That's being a perfectionist. If you start drawing something, and it quickly loses its perfection, you abandon the whole thing and begin again. Even if you had only drawn one line. I recall that it used to really bother me.
This was my second college sketchbook. I probably began it around 1994 or 1995. The first one was filled up pretty quickly, but that was largely due to the fact that I also added notes from my art classes into it. The second one is still unfinished...

A couple more things of interest...
on the left side is a loose storyboard for the idea that became Mandarins. I think this was around the phase when it was intended to be turned into wood engravings.
Below that, is the One and Only Grubby Stump! Grubby is another one of my characters. I developed a comic around him that I was calling Neutrino Valley. This is yet another one of my failed comics. Future posts on this failure will be right around the corner. But remember, you saw Grubby here first!
(He is story making a comeback in the Hairballs. But Neutrino Valley, as I envisioned it, is dead).
On the right is me, surrounded by my pod people, Indred Cold, and the Mothman...

- Chew