Happy holidays!

Cigarette Doofus II

Cigarette Doofus

Happy birthday, Tom Waits!

Blue Hipster Doofus

Masked Hipster Doofus

Keep on...

Jason goes Russia

from Boomkniga.

Danny Wilson

Knife

by Aztec Camera

Too-Rye-Ay

ABC

Walter Matthau?

Draw a character first, then try to decide who he looks like.

Some books I've read 31

Baking with Kafka by Tom Gauld
Another winner from Gauld, even though I prefer his longer stories.

Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow by James Sturm and Rich Tommaso
An interesting book and great drawings by Tommaso. It's a shame James Sturm doesn't do more comics, by the way. His last book, Market Day was a masterpiece.

The Ambulance Drivers by James McGrath Morris
A biography about the rise and fall of the friendship between Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos and also their literary accomplishments. As was often the case with Hem, he easily turned on old friends.

L'enfant qui criait au loup av Gunnar Staalesen
His longest novel so far, I believe, but not his best. One coincidence is okay, but two...

Coeurs glacés av Gunnar Staalesen
A better book, but an ending where the killer explains why he did it while holding a gun directed at the detective works maybe less so if you try to keep a more realistic tone.

Somerset: The paintings of John Caple
Big fan of his paintings. Some of the images are reproduced annoyingly small, though.

Ernest Hemingway by Verna Kale. A pretty short biography. I thought maybe it would use some new angle, or look at his work in a new way, but... no, not really.

Unreasonable Hours by Julio Cortazar
His last short story collection. Slightly mixed bag, but a couple of strong stories.

L'astronef Pirate by Guido Crepax
I've gotten a bit hooked on Crepax lately. I especially enjoy his work in the 60s. Some of it, like this book, looks pretty modern, and also quite different from what he did in the mid 70's and onwards. 

Sketches from Barcelos

Out walking

...the Camino in Portugal.

Happy birthday, Rattlesnakes!

Lloyd Cole and The Commotions' masterpiece, 33 years old today.

New Blade Runner

The first half was pretty good, but the film is faaar too long, and I got kind of bored in the second half. It keeps the same tone of the original film, but ends up being monotonous, about 50% too serious and the music is awful. If you want to see a slow, arty film photographed by Roger Deakins I'd rather recommend The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

IT

Jason speaks!

http://downthetubes.net/?p=40052

Some books I've read 30

Literature Class by Julio Cortazar
Lectures Cortazar gave at UC Berkeley in 1980 about his books, Latin American novels and literature in general. Very interesting, and gives you a very sympathetic image of the man himself.

In the Café of Lost Youth by Patrick Modiano
 A bit too French for me. Tant pis.

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
At least 100 pages too long. Gets better in the second half, and has some good ideas but the characters are kind of annoying, constantly shrieking with laughter at their own jokes.

Ernest Hemingway: a biography by Mary V. Dearborn
The first major Hembiography written by a woman.  As always with these books, it's a bit hard to get through the last half, Hemingway after 50 when he turned into an asshole, apparently, and lost his ability to judge his own writing. The book asks the interesting question, if  Hem's many concussions and head injuries had anything to do with it.

La Boutique Obscure by Georges Perec
His dream diary. Interesting in small doses.

Fun by Paolo Bacilieri
Nice drawings, a strange mix of Chris Ware comics and Chris Ware sketchbooks, and a clever story, but I never really got into it. 

Max Fridman: No Pasaran, Rio de Sangre and Sin Ilusion by Vittorio Giardino
Despite the titles, I read these books in French. It's  his trilogy about the Spanish Civil War.  Giardino is one of the few masters left of realistic cartooning and his stories aren't bad either, as close as you can get to Graham Green in comics.

Parlez-moi de mort and Le cri du vampire drawn by Jordi Bernet
Okay, I'm a fan of Bernet, but these books are from his later period, and though I can still enjoy his masterful brush strokes, it's not really peak material. The stories are pretty weak as well.

Books given up:

Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving, on page 376
Has Irving lost it? I just couldn't care about his characters, and for the first time I actually gave up one of his novels.

Ulysses by James Joyce, on page 76
I'll get back to this book at some point, I'm sure, but I just needed a break. Page after page of what the fuck is he talking about, with some diamonds in between.

Envelope sketch

Leone

Burton

Burroughs

Ginsberg

Proust

Camino the 13th

Asimov

Cat on a hot ink roof

Bookmunch review

"Perhaps not unexpectedly it’s a tremendously warm book, full of life, the kind of life you see around you every day and quite possibly don’t take enough time to stop and gaze on. On the Camino is the kind of book that makes you want to fill your lungs with air and then exhale slowly, the kind of book to savour and appreciate. It’s also one of those lovely reads you sometimes get from an author you’ve followed and liked that hints at whole new potential vistas to come, the kind of book that will have you excited about the books Jason has yet to write."

https://bookmunch.wordpress.com/2017/06/09/youre-in-the-company-of-a-seasoned-story-teller-and-he-knows-what-he-is-doing-on-the-camino-by-jason/

It turns out, Bookmunch has reviewed lots of my books:

https://bookmunch.wordpress.com/2013/07/30/there-is-much-here-that-is-delightfully-business-as-usual-lost-cat-by-jason/
https://bookmunch.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/jumping-aboard-the-jason-train-low-moon-by-jason/
https://bookmunch.wordpress.com/2015/10/08/the-season-3-of-breaking-bad-of-comix-if-you-steal-by-jason/
https://bookmunch.wordpress.com/2010/12/08/consider-it-medicine-for-your-soul-werewolves-of-montpellier-by-jason/
https://bookmunch.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/a-wonderful-compendium-of-jasonia-athos-in-america-by-jason/

Poe

Chekhov

Tolstoj

Vonnegut

Sartre

Beckett

Arzach zketch

The Dingle Way

Walked the Dingle Way in Ireland, took a week, was great. There was more variation in the landscape than on the Wicklow Way, including beaches. My shoes not being waterproof was a bit of a problem, walking around Mount Brandon, but hey, thats life. Should have done more sketches though.

Art for sale!

At thebeguiling.com

Lost Cat, new edition

There's a new edition of Lost Cat out, but in black and white, not black and white plus red, as in the first edition. Why?, you might ask. Because I screwed up. I put the red pencil lines on the black and white original, when really it should have been on its own layer. The result being that it had to be published in full colour and making the line slightly fuzzy. If I could have done it over, I would have preferred to publish it in black and white. Which is now the case. I still like the red colour, but I like even more a sharp black line.

TCJ reviews On the Camino

http://www.tcj.com/reviews/on-the-camino/

New book

We're talking the DEFINITIVE Napoleon biography here.

Ectoplasma Doofus Femme

Ectoplasma doofus 4

Ectoplasma doofus 3

Max 88