Whoa! So much excitement….

This month has been … awesome!

First off, I am thrilled and happy to have been accepted to the Roberts Street Social Centre Zine Residency in Halifax, Nova Scotia! Wooo!  (Nova Scotia – so cold… so mysterious?)

Next, I got the amazing and heart-stopping opportunity to interview one of my queer history Heros – historian Lillian Faderman, author of Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, as well as 8 other books. Seriously! I almost fell off my chair when I got this interview. (If you are wondering, the interview will be featured in a zine, more details to come soon!)

Next to lastly, I completed my 1950′s zine of Homos in Herstory! You can get one from me in person, at a zinefest, or on the ol’ Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/CaptainElvis

And lastly, the queer website Autostraddle wrote this sweetheart piece about the Brooklyn Zinefest, which is … here: http://www.autostraddle.com/i-went-to-brooklyn-zine-fest-had-feelings-and-found-three-more-zines-you-should-read-174181/

Thanks oodles and oodles, everyone! Very happy month, this one.

Wolfcycles!

I just did this comic for Chella Quint’s awesome zine, Adventures in Menstruating.

My friend Lee came up with the word “wolfcycle” – and I instantly knew it was brilliant!
The typical ads for tampons & stuff are usually pink & flowery, and though I love flowers as much as the next fellow, I liked the idea of a more manly euphemism. Fits for people of all genders…and implies that we might be tough werewolves!

Queer Cartoonists Event – tonight! on Lower E. Side

Yo!

If yr free tonight, come to a GEEKS OUT event at a pop-up queer bookstore on the Lower East Side – -

https://www.facebook.com/events/132496050242037/

It’s a panel of queer comix folk discussing gendersstuff, queers, herstory, etc – and I’m on this panel!

Come hangout – - 7pm, 27 Orchard Street…and I hear there may be some kind of refreshments. : )

Interview w/ the amazing Jude Vachon at Pittsburgh Carnegie Public Library!

Here’s an interview I just did for the Pittsburgh Carnegie Public Library Zine Collection site - http://clpzines.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/interview-with-great-folks-10-elvis-bakaitis/

Mostly I’m proud to be part of this “Interview with Great Folks” series by Jude Vachon (librarian at CPL), because Jude is seriously great folks! There are other awesome folk being profiled on that blog too, such as Daniela Capistrano from POC Zine Project, and Violet Fox from ZAPP – and many more.

As well, the Zine Collection currently being built up by Jude is quite impressive, and the library itself is an architectural knockout. There are even dinosaurs you can see from inside the library! (ahem, a glass wall where you can peer into the Natural History museum’s dinosaur area, next-door).

In the zine cave, I’ve been working away on the 1950′s zine of Homos in Herstory – here’s a drawin’ of Lorraine Hansberry, author of famous play “A Raisin in the Sun,” and possibly queer…that is, she subscribed to the lesbian magazine “The Ladder,” in the mid-1950′s, and wrote them a couple intriguing letters.

Week at Sequential Artists Workshop! Update

Just got back to NYC from the amazing Floridian hive of cartoonists – the Sequential Artists Workshop!

I’ve been following SAW since its first inception, just rumblings of a new comics school on the internet… and now I got to go down again! A true pleasure!

Here’s a little recap of our week at the Low-Residency Workshop (there’s another one coming up in April)
On Monday we did intros and shared our current projects with folks in the workshop, plus Tom and Justine.
Tuesday we got a mega-lecture by Justine about depth and clarity, and capturing these in details of a drawing. Totally inspiring and a few of us left awe-struck, after gazing at countless Hudson River School landscape paintings, and Justine’s simply stunning ink work.

Wednesday we spent the morning doing some storytelling exercises with Tom, and on Thursday the fabulous Leela Corman came in to chat with us about her recent work on Unterzakhn. Leela draws big! 19 x 22, something like that. It’s an epic size, and we got to see some originals & sketches too. Leela also touched on gender in comics, and I’m happy to hear more people talking about that always. Especially when there are binders of women floating around (why have I somehow not been the recipient of any of these sketchy binders??)

Gainesville is also a pretty rad town, home to THE LAST FEMINIST BOOKSTORE IN FLORIDA!!! Super sad I didn’t get to swing by Wild Iris on my visit, but I hope those folks keep in busuiness 4eva, ‘cos that’s really important to have a consistent feminist vibe permeating the town.

A big thank you to everyone at SAW for making it a great week, and also props to those devilish cartoonists throwing themselves in for the 24-hour comics marathon! I was lucky enough to stop by and glimpse some progress on comics about rams, serial killers, cute little bears & space aliens, and totally abstract comics in a luscious blue ink. Curious to see the finals!!