LATEST EVOLUTIONS IN DREAMTIME

All the extra sleep I have been taking the past few days in order to stay in Dreamtime longer has been beneficial. I am fighting entire wars in my sleep and having intense conversations with all the characters. Issue #1 is going to press any second and I am thrilled about that. There are a few surprising last minute additions to the page count but it will be worth the wait.
I will be appearing at the National Big Apple Con next weekend at the CAG table. The latest MINX short story 'Everything's Coming Up Halloween' is appearing in a CAG anthology in January.

I am working on something new which will feature my own collage art (as shown above). The story is called 'WOMANIZED.' This title is a re-interpretation of the word 'womanizer' and is meant to describe the perspective of a woman who is receiving unwelcome perverted male attention. Ever-horrified by the frequent murders of women in the newspapers, I am writing this story about a deranged stalker who obsessed with Minx. It gets into a lot of back story of her life, pre-coma.

With this story, Minx will surely be categorized as 'fantasy-horror' which is interesting since I cannot stand to watch scary movies and I don't really know where this is all coming from, only that I have always been repulsed by certain horrors of society and I acknowledge this in my new work. I want to have a glimmer of social consciousness now in everything I produce.

HALLOWEEN RADIO SHOW WITH DAME DARCY

My insomnia these days is pretty awesome. At least I am doing productive things with my time, like writing my goals on flash cards so I can read them while I drown out the noise of the streets with Frank Sinatra on the stereo attempting to sing me to sleep in the early daylight hours.

Anyways, I did a radio show with Joey Reynolds for Halloween. The link to listen is here: http://wor710.com/pages/46370.php.

The coolest thing was meeting Dame Darcy (in photo above) who is also a chick in comics. We clicked instantly in the waiting room, comparing storylines. Then we went to a dive bar to meet up with her bandmates and my friends. There is nothing like New York City, seriously. So much fun.

Oh, yes, this is my first post of any photos with my HAIR CUT OFF!!!! Stop crying, boys. Minx needs to evolve. What are you going to do if she turns bad for awhile and I dye it dark? Hunger strike?

SATURDAY NIGHTS AND MORNINGS ARE REALLY ALL THE SAME

My apologies to the CAG members for not being able to attend the meeting...one part due to organizing some legal matters, one part due to the most terrible but inspired insomnia in a while. I am talking pacing the apartment & writing fevered ideas till at least 6 am then wide awake by 11 am, whereupon I place the pillow over my eyes and beg the gods to let me rest another hour. I hate sleeping but I need a little rest or else I get too sensitive to every subtext.

By way of redemption, I give you a candid snapshot of Minx in disguise with The Empress in a Harlem convenience store. She visited last week from Bermuda, stopping men dead on the street with her cat eyes.

I will be at the CAG Halloween party this Saturday, however. Promise.

I have been getting a lot of letters from the Native community this week commenting on Minx and the wolf spirits. The profundity of this affects me.

PTOLEMY'S REAL IDENTITY: THE RAPPER

When I was living in Vancouver, there was this amazing hip hop group called Swollen Members who made this crazy dark rap with killer beats and interesting lyrics. Prevail struck me as the perfect archetype for Ptolemy, Minx's archnemesis. So I asked him if he would play the part and he said yes.

We did some photo shoots so I would have some good imagery, and then we lost touch for awhile when I came to NYC. I ran into him a couple of months ago when Swollen Members were playing a show downtown. Prev was still as cool and enthusiastic as ever, and I realized that even though I've had some stand-ins, it was his particular fire that suited my character.

I'm glad to see that his band is back on track with a new album, and I intend to bring him down for some upcoming Minx video projects because he wears leather pants so damn well!

Check out the new songs:

http://www.myspace.com/swollenmembers

NATIVE AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY GETS REWORKED

Minx is not a traditional superhero comic.

The characters are multi-dimensional and serve to represent archetypes. I cast everyone in real life as an artistic statement: the artist and the work are conjoined and cannot be separated. My friends inspire me. They are all brilliant, complicated, creative individuals. I think this is a relevant concept because nowadays people crave work that is of a more autobiographical nature. We are all connected.

My ultimate goal with Minx is to rework ancient myths in an attempt to preserve them in our modern consciousness, especially Native American legends, which have not been explored much in the comic book medium.

Traditionally Natives tell their stories verbally, but I am part of a younger generation that needs to write things down. I want to honor my culture because it’s so beautiful and spiritual. I want to provoke people so that they come out of this modern day apathy and open their minds to new possibilities.

Minx has a lot more layers to it than may be initially apparent, and it’s important to note that the comic book is just one aspect of my creative work. All of the pieces fit together like a puzzle and can be examined separately or together as a whole.

SPEAKING OF KNIVES

This is a panel from an 8-page Minx short I am doing for the Comic Artists Guild anthology, due out sometime in winter. This is a modern retelling of the 'white man killing all the Indians' stories in Native American culture. Minx goes on a rampage of revenge...

GENIUS GETS STABBED IN THE NECK AND DIES A FEW YEARS LATER...

I am in California right now and to drown out the sound of construction to the house next to where I am staying, I play the radio.

I woke up at 4 a.m. to the news that Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, the first writer in Arabic to win the Nobel prize for literature, died.

His health has suffered since his hospitalisation in 1994 after an Islamic fundamentalist, angered by his portrayal of God in one of his novels, stabbed him in the neck.

The knife caused nerve damage in his neck, limiting his ability to use his writing hand and causing his eyesight and hearing to deteriorate.

Is this what people do to writers who tell the truth?

Born in 1911, Mr Mahfouz is regarded as one of the best writers and premier intellectuals in the Arab world, publishing more than 50 novels, short story collections, plays, newspaper columns, essays, travelogues, memoirs and political analyses.

His works, including Palace of Desire, Adrift on the Nile and Children of Gebelawi, are often seen as depicting the social history of Egypt during upheavals of the 20th century, and have been published in 25 languages. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988.

I read in someone else's blog on his work: 'Isn't that great?The Arab world produces a good novelist after centuries and what do the Islamists do to honor him? Stab him in the neck because they don't like his protrayal of "God" (betcha they find it blasphemous to Islam!). Of course, I'm forgetting about Salman Rushdie, another good novelist from the "Arab world" who was honored with a fatwa demanding his death for "betraying Islam" with his work The Satanic Verses. Hope you get well soon, Mr. Mahfouz! You sound like a decent guy and I must make an effort to check out your books soon.'

Indeed. Rest in peace, darling.