Thanks for Coming to See Us at Fanime!

Hey IITS Readers,

Thanks so much to all of you for coming out to see us, you guys always make the conventions better by cheering us on, showing us your support, and making us feeling guilty for not having issue two out. Nick, Chris B, Hamasuki, Ben, Tim and Callie, James, Patrick, Dave, Emil, Dread Lord CyberSkull, AJ, and Sparky...thank you! I'm sure there are a bunch of people I missed and I'm really sorry about that...I'm still recovering a from a pretty exhausting weekend. It was a great show for us...we were able to spread the word to lots of new folks and even Reuben Langdon dropped by our table to pick up a few things!

Special thanks to Jamie (I think I spelled it right this time) and her husband Mike for the Kayli sketch, the Prinny sticker, sharing snacks with us, and just being some of the most awesome table neighbors ever! Hope to see you at another show soon, Jamie. =)

This year, we snapped only a few pictures early on but Genevieve's camera was on the fritz on Friday and my phone battery kept dying so we just decided to skip the pictures this show. I know, WEAK...but that's the way it is. A few folks did snap pictures of us on the other hand and Ben sent us the one he snapped so this year, you just get a picture of Genevieve and I. How's that?

Sorry to all the folks who came by to pick up our Kayli Boob Mouse Pad...due to a major delay with the shipment, it missed the delivery date by several days and according to the shippers site, I should receive a big box of boobs either Tuesday or Wednesday. Hmm...it says here there was a "Customs Clearance Delay". Yeah, sure...more like "Customs Guys Can't Stop Playing With Kayli's Boobs". Anyway, the Kayli Boob Mouse Pads were a definitely a hit with the crowd. Now, instead of people dragging their friends over to see Kayli naked on the big piece of meat, they drag their friends over to see the Kayli Boob Mouse Pad and Kayli naked on the big piece of meat. It definitely brought a lot of folks over to our table. =)

Thanks to all our old friends from previous show and all our new customers...we hope you'll all continue to come see and support us. See you next show!

UPDATE: Some friends at the show sent us some more pics of us at the table...shared them below.

- Joseph

Hamasuki sent us this pic of Genevieve taking a break.

Here's Hamasuki's pic of Genevieve and I together.

And I thought I was being sorta pervy with the lip puckering.
I had no idea she was doing that opposite me, folks...haha.

FCBM6 Day 31

It's day thirty-one of the Sixth Annual YACB Free Comic Book Month!

Our next selected entry is from Dan Marco. The five comics that Dan likes are:

1. Incredible Hulk
2. Love & Capes
3. Ambush Bug
4. NextWave
5. The Boys

And his other thing of interest is Shakespeare.

For Dan I have Marvel Monsters: Devil Dinosaur #1 by Eric Powell & Tom Sniegoski.

For Dan's bonus comic, I'm sending him the Popeye Halloween comic.

Dan's comics should be in the mail within a week. Enjoy!


Current FCBM Statistics:
35 entries
92 free comics sent so far
? days remaining

There are still a handful of entries I haven't gotten around to yet, so I'll be extending FCBM for a few days into June. Stay tuned...!

Robots, Statues, Music

Bizarro is brought to you today by The Big Ugly.

This was an eventful weekend in my area. The National Cartoonists Society had their annual convention and awards ceremony just across the river from NYC, someplace called Jersey City. I've never been there myself, but I hear it is gorgeous.

I am told I won their biggest award, "Cartoonist of the Year" and am grateful for the honor. (Yes, I was told I was grateful for the honor, and I actually was.) The statue, which I have come to affectionately call "The Big Ugly," was designed in the early 1900s by Rube Goldberg, and is named The Reuben after him. Pictured below the blue link above is the one with Al Jaffee's name on it, from a couple of years ago.

Instead of attending this year's convention, which I've been to almost yearly since 1995, I was at Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary in upstate NY for a benefit concert given by Chrissie Hynde and JP Jones. It was a phenomenal experience; beautiful scenery, terrific music and good friends in a very intimate setting out on the lawn.













The musicians set up on a deck overlooking a large lawn and played songs from their new album, set to be released in August. I love Hynde's voice and JP Jones' voice blends terrifically well with it. I haven't heard the album, but if it was a good as the set we heard, you'll want to pick it up. By the way, that isn't the head of a cow/giraffe hybrid in the background, that's a costume used at the recent Veggie Pride Parade in NYC a few weeks back.













From behind the musicians you can see what an intimate gathering it was. We were only allowed 250 guests because of local ordinances (any more than that and you have to hire cops and that seriously cramps my party style, dude) but we had many hundreds more inquire about the show. We could easily have sold 500 tickets. The guitarist at left is from Liverpool and an amazing player, I was jealous, wish I could remember his name. Patrick M-something. JP is in the middle. His legs aren't actually 14 inches long, it's just the way it looks in this picture. He's actually completely normal.

Thanks so much to all the people who have been leaving "congrats" messages on my Facebook page and the comments sections of my blog posts, and to all of you who've sent emails. I can't answer them all personally, but they are all read and appreciated.

My editor at King Features and good friend, Brendan Burford, accepted the award for me. He asked me for an acceptance speech to read but I'm not one to write a lot down in those situations, so I gave him this:

"Dan Piraro would have been here tonight except that he was killed this afternoon when he lit a cigar near an open bottle of scotch while having sex with Ashley on his motorcycle. At least he died doing the four things he loved most."

Brendan said it was well received.