a) moved to Brooklyn

b) traveled around South America for three months

c) come back to Brooklyn, and found myself a job, and

d) had some thing published, along with some other things I can’t quite talk about yet.

So yes, lots of things!  So here’s a quick little rundown of some new places that you can find my work:

Shitty Good Magazine - An online art journal run by Justin Jankus, a good friend and an excellent photographer.  I have a short comic called “Home for Dinner” in the second issue!  There are a ton of amazing artists who have contributed work, and it’s well worth a look.

The Greatest of All Time Comics Anthology - An anthology published by the fine folks at Ninth Art Press.  Another short comic of mine, called “The Greatest Beer of All Time,” was accepted and published in this collection, which is handsomely printed, and quite fun.  You can buy it directly through their site for $12, or if you would like a personalized copy for $20, email me!

Arches National Park EP, Names – I contributed a short comic to the debut EP of Names, a music project by Brian Barth.  It’s an excellent set of songs, and it’s a pay-what-you-want kind of deal.  You can download the songs for however much you like here, and each download comes with a digital copy of a four-page comic by yours truly!

Additionally, I’ve revamped my store with some fancy new items.  I’m offering commissioned work through there, both big ‘uns and smaller ones, all shapes and sizes!  I’ve also included a new minicomic collecting my New Orleans Travelogues, “Seeing Sarah” and “You Promised No One Would Go In There.”

That’s it, for now!  I’ve put some new pieces that I am particularly proud of in my portfolio, and am always updating my Tumblr sketchbook with new work, if you care to look (including a big piece that the drawing above is from).  In fact, I just put some new things up there today!  Go on, take a look!

Cheers,

Danny

Another tip for the every-day restaurant goer.  Always a helpful thing to think about, when you frequent a bar, restaurant, or whatever.

If you’ve worked in food service, you’ve met this guy.  If you haven’t, please don’t be this guy!  No one likes this guy.

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I really liked Moonrise Kingdom!  Wes Anderson can be pretentious, but I love his visual aesthetic, and I really respect that he is able to make a movie where you can see his touch in every detail.  Also, this.

(Bill Murray is dead on about the costumes.)

Reading Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles for the first time was an unsettling experience.  This was back in middle school, and I must have been eleven?  Twelve?  Some time around that age.  I loved sci-fi, but to that point I had mostly read Isaac Asimov’s stuff, which is generally lighter and more optimistic, I think.  He has his own social commentaries, but in general, what I had been reading to that point was more innocent, perhaps a little naive.  Bradbury, though…he didn’t pull punches.  Where I expected rocketships and grand adventure, I found a eulogy for a dying culture and a hard look at colonization and cultural imperialism.  It had the rocketships, too, but they were grimmer and had less of the sheen that Heinlein’s had.  A few years later, I read The Illustrated Man for a class, and again I felt that disturbance.  The chill that the future might not be as shiny as I’d thought, that there might be something to be wary of in holograms and robots and people.  His writing made me uncomfortable, and it was hard to say why – it just dug in to my brain and stayed there.

A couple of weeks ago, I read Something Wicked This Way Comes.  In the afterword of that edition, Bradbury wrote about an experience he had as a child with a carnival magician named Mister Electrico who called upon the young Bradbury during a performance and commanded him to live forever.  A few days later, he begun to write, and he did so every day up until his death last Wednesday.

I guess I just wanted to pay homage to that essay, to his lyricism, and to making eleven-year-old me feel weird and uncomfortable and intrigued and apprehensive and excited all at once.

Afro Blue – from “Live at Birdland,” by the John Coltrane Quartet

Nothing like taking a lamp for a dance!  Seeing the Talking Heads’ movie Stop Making Sense for the first time in college was huge for me – I was a late bloomer in regards to music and the art of performance in general, and it really changed what I thought of as music and performance art.  Aside from being just a fantastic concert, the way the entire show is constructed from the ground up as a whole work of art is just stunning.  I absolutely recommend it.  On a related note, I’m reading David Byrne’s book, Bicycle Diaries, and it’s really great!  It’s half travelogue, and half meditation on how we get around and how that affects our lives.

Chris Rubeo is a fine gentleman and a great musician.  Go check out his first album, Ships of Sticks and Twine!  This was based off of his song, “Brave.”  It’s a really sweet, sad song, and I feel pretty happy that he asked me to contribute something for it.

I made this piece a month or so ago as an entry for Sixpoint Brewery’s annual “Beer is Culture” art and design competition, and I came away with third place!  Woohoo!  My first art win, oh it feels so nice.  They even did a nice little interview with me on their blog, which you can check out here.  Thanks again to Sixpoint, for their fantastic brewing and for just being swell folks.

I woke up today to the news that Maurice Sendak has passed on.  He was a truly brilliant artist, and I while I loved his books growing up, they’re no less powerful an influence on me today.  Thank you, sir, for your amazing work.