The Penguin

Announcing the Die Katze signing event at Red Fox Comics! Join Joe Haines (inktographer/editor) and Rick Schlaack (pencilographer/director) for this mind-blowing experience on Wednesday, 1/20/16. Don't miss it!

Dear fools...I mean, Gentle Reader: Die Katze Numbre Uno is here! Yes, it's that Lovecraftian/Silent Movie/Iams commercial-mashup you've all been waiting for, the comic you didn't know you needed until suddenly it appears, like a cool breeze on a hot day (said cool breeze being the musty sepulchural emanations of an ancient crypt)! It's officially out on 12/22/15, but the box of comics is in my hot little hands as we speak, so feel free to knock me over on the street and run giggling away with it. Like Nike sneakers and Beanie Babies, it's sure to have some killer resale value. Niche economic bubble, anyone? No takers? Durn. Behold, your new master. Her only weakness? Mondays! She hates Mondays... Now, of course, it comes down to marketing and merchandising. I'm going to see if I can print up some buttons and such; I wouldn't go so far as to make plushies, but that might be an option someday. We're having a book signing for it - Red Fox Comics ...

Yup, so deer camp happened...I had fun. Didn't get anything, though. Saw one doe walking along, but I let her pass, thinking "There's probably a buck behind her!" There wasn't. And nothing for the next three days. Grrr. Weirdly, the probability of getting a deer drops off exponentially after the 15th of November: the lack of hunting pressure beforehand surprises the deer, and with all the hunters blasting away, they keep moving. Afterward, all except a few die-hards have gone home, and the deer remember their anti-human tactics: stick to the deep, thick stuff. Another possible factor was the niceness of the weather, which is a double-edged sword - great for sitting, bad for getting the lazy old whitetails off their asses. I mean, come on, guys! Do your job and strut out in front of those crosshairs, instead of being all, "I want to live another year"... Jerks. Anywho, I still had a good time. And now that I'm back and (relatively) refreshed, it...

Happy Novembre, compadres! Hope you all have had a lovely Limbo Month. Actually November isn't that bad, for a "why can't we just skip this and get to the good part"-month. February is the worst, in my opinion; though March can be pretty awful too, it's at least exciting with all that deadly black ice and windstorm activity. Unlike these months, November has two events I'm actually excited for: Thanksgiving, and Opening Day of deer season. (Wikipedia) Yessireebob, it's Toikey Time/Watching the Lions Lose (sorry)/Annoying Relatives Roulette Month. Drag the deep-fryer out onto the deck, stock up on peanut oil and fire extinguishers, and prepare to baptize your favorite mutant Meleagris gallopavo  in twenty gallons of boiling nut-fat. When the deep-fryer knocks over and burns the deck to a cinder, order pizza. After the impromptu faux-Italian feast, commence the making of nachos, to be consumed with brewed alcoholic beverage of your choice in front of th...

As a comic book artist, I sometimes meet people with Great Comic Book Ideas. This can be irksome; they are mostly semi-avid comic book readers of the Marvel/DC stripe, and have never written or drawn a comic before (except, maybe, a short period in 8th-grade homeroom). Generally they want me to collaborate with them in developing the script, and then have me work for free on their Awesome Idea, while they sit back on a pile of money, surrounded by models. As irritating as these people are, every now and then you find a diamond in the rough - someone with the capacity to actually create, who has within them the brick-headed, nervous drive required to be a comic book storyteller. That's why I always listen politely to the Idea Guys, praising the noteworthy elements of their concept, and then offer what I call "blackjack" advice, harsh reality padded with gentle assurances: "If you develop your idea into a script, I can take a look at it and offer technical advice...

This is your captain speaking.We are about to take a 5-year journey of 2.4x10^13 miles through a near-vacuum with limited gravity, to the probable location of an alien world wending its way through a trinary star system. Please sit back, relax, and enjoy our trip to Proxima Centauri...oh, and don't eat too much or go crazy. Or get cancer. Thank you for your cooperation. (Source) Yikes, that sounds like a horrible plane trip. You've probably heard about the spectacular hurdles we humans would have to overcome in order to actually reach the nearest non-solar star, the most basic of which is that outer space is going to kill you even inside your flimsy metal spaceship, and you'd need a planet-sized food supply for the journey. I'll run them down real quick, just in case you've forgotten all the gleeful little buzzkills awaiting us: 1. Speed/time/distance 2. Fuel 3. Food 4. Communication 5. Social/psychological problems 6. Microgravity 7. Radiation 8. Spa...

The movie: Kill Your Darlings (2013) Directed by: John Krokidas Starring: Daniel Radcliffe (Allen Ginsberg); Dane DeHaan (Lucien Carr); Michael C. Hall (David Kammerer); Jack Huston (Jack Kerouac); Ben Foster (William Burroughs); David Cross (Lou Ginsberg). Kill Your Darlings follows a young Allen Ginsberg as he enters Columbia University and takes the first tentative steps in his poetry career. There he meets the irrepressible Lucien Carr, who introduces him to William Burroughs, and later Jack Kerouac. The four form a literary circle dedicated to "The New Vision" which focuses on, in Burrough's words, the "derangement of the senses." The gay Ginsberg immediately falls in love with the attractive and volatile Carr; but Carr already has an admirer, the intense, sinister professor-cum-janitor David Kammerer. Kammerer has pursued Carr from school to school, and appears to be merely a predator out to control Carr's life. But as Ginsberg becomes more e...