Thursday, March 12, 2009
YOU CAN ALWAYS FIND ME HERE!
So don't be a stranger. Jump on and give us your lousy opinions to add to our large pile of lousy opinions.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
DANNY DUOSHADE RECOMMENDS
So here's the first six issues worth with brief comments and links to listen:
ISSUE 01
"Let's Dance" by David Bowie
Anyone who knows Shelly Bond, my editor, knows what a HUGE Bowie fan she is. A lot of this book was born out of conversations we had about music, and I think it's part of the reason we're so "in tune" with all the surreal shit I throw in this book. This song had to be, because of Sadie's slogan "Let's dance!!!" and because of the lyric "Let's dance for fear your grace should fall. Let's dance for fear tonight is all." which pretty much summed up the book (at that point, anyway).
"Atlas" by Battles
What do you get when you mix Don Cab & Helmet? This kickin' awesome tune, which I always thought of as Sadie's theme song.
ISSUE 02
"Frankie Teardrop" by Suicide
Scariest song ever. If Stray Bullets was a song...Also, the "song lyrics" narration I envisioned not "in the tune of" but definitely "in the vein of..."
"Another Morning Stoner" by ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead
A really good song off a really good album. An Austin band I imagined Danny being into. A lot of people don't like these guys but I think they're wonderfully chaotic.
ISSUE 03
"Strange" by Wire
Lyrically a natural. REM covered this song, but the original kills it. From one of the great punk albums.
"Mad World" by Tears For Fears
I was waiting in the car for my wife when this song came on "The dreams in which I´m dying are the best I´ve ever had." Come on! That's Danny, right. At first I was a little embarassed. Tears For Fears? Well, y'know what? I'm a child of the 80's Goddammit, and while, I'll admit pop music mostly sucked ass in the 80's, at least it wasn't D-E-A-D like it is today.
ISSUE 04
"Pieces of The People We Love" by The Rapture
The Rapture made a fine album called Echos. This is off the follow up. More of a poppy affair produced by Danger Mouse of Gorillaz fame. This song was under my skin at the time and I knew it was the type of song Sadie would love.
"Rocks Off" by The Rolling Stones
Great Stones tune picked because of all the fucking going on in issue #4 plus the lyric, "The sunshine bores the daylights out of me"...priceless.
ISSUE 05
"Bone Machine" by Pixies
More Danny music. Has the lyric, "You're so pretty when you're unfaithful to me," which is damn great. HOWEVER, I originally thought the lyric was "You're so pretty when you're THANKFUL to me." which I actually like even better and so completely fit with Danny's psychology. So I guess what I'm saying is that my selection of this song was based on a LIE!
"Shaking Hell" by Sonic Youth
In the running with Frankie Teardrop for scariest song ever. This link was the best sound I could find, but loses something being performed in '06, in daylight, on a big stage, as opposed to '83 in a dark blood and cum soaked club. "I'll shake off your flesh!" fuck yeah. Imagine the midget rape to that!
ISSUE 06
"Oleano" by The Fall
The mighty Fall. Oleano is both beautiful and sad which fit with Sadie's fight and stroke at the end of the issue. Picked this Peel session because I'm a sucker for random screams in the middle of songs.
"Cowboy Dan" by Modest Mouse
Angry, fucking song. Danny's theme here. This one still fits with Danny on issue #14 which is what I'm drawing now.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Saturday, May 24, 2008
ANATOMY OF LIES, PART 01


Because many of you are interested in such things, I'm going to start a a string of posts dealing with the creation of a comic book. Since YOUNG LIARS is my new book, let's go through the process. Back in the summer of '06 I was probably 80% done with my graphic novel SILVERFISH and wanted to plan on what would be next. Talking with my editor at DC/Vertigo, Shelly Bond, I really wanted to pitch a series. I was kind of sick of doing mini's and coming up with proposal after proposal every couple of months. I wanted a home, so I could get down to the business of creating comics as opposer to just ideas for possible comics. We talked and the first suggestion was to revamp an old DC character. Completely revamp. Along the lines of Gaiman's Sandman being based on the old gas-mask wearing Sandman.

We went through a list of names and I really like the name Bullet Girl who was an old character I never heard of. But "Bullet Girl" seemed right up my alley. So I worked out who this Bullet Girl was, what the world would be like, supporting characters, etc. Click on the pages here you can read what was the final polished version. There was a dozen versions before this, but this is what went to Karen Berger and was rejected....
Stay tuned.
(Note: Don't take all the info in the proposal too seriously a lot about the characters changed or fell away as I got to executing. However, as part of the proposal I did lay down the plots for the first six issues in detail and decided there might be too many spoilers to print here.)
Sunday, May 18, 2008
SPLENDORIFIC


One of the most fun things I've done recently is illustrating two stories for Harvey Pekar's AMERICAN SPLENDOR. Anytime you can work with a legend you should do it, especially if it's up your alley, which this was. Harvey works in a pretty unique way. As you can see, this is one of Harvey's scripts. He takes a sheet of paper divides it into a bunch of panels and writes in the words. GREAT! I loved this for a number of reasons. One is that it makes total sense. As someone who writes a lot of comics, SO much time is wasted trying to write interesting words on paper to convey something to an editor or artist. It really doesn't transfer to the page. So I'm sure this saves Harvey a ton of time, which is point number two. It takes so long to write a comic (My 22 page scripts are usually thirty or more pages of writing.) that you can lose your way. Doing it like this is much more immediate. And lastly, I suspect as a writer, Harvey gets the feel of making comics this way as opposed to feeling like a novelist or screenplay writer.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Young Liars Logo Nogo

Everyone's been asking (well, one guy) about the Young Liars logo. You saw my sketch. I drew the guitar/gun and this was my sketch for the lettering. I was thinking more of a whimsical "cut paper" feel, but the final, even though it's a bit (a very bit) more slick than my usual low-fi approach, it looked so cool to me, so there you go.
Friday, May 9, 2008
How I Wrote Elastic Man by The Fall

HOW I WROTE 'ELASTIC MAN' by The Fall
I'm eternally grateful/ To my past influences /But they will not free me /I am not diseased/ All the people ask me /How I wrote "Elastic Man"
Life should be full of strangeness /Like a rich painting /But it gets worse day by day /I'm a potential DJ /A creeping wreck/ A mental wretch /Everybody asks me/ How I wrote "Elastic Man"
His soul hurts though it's well filled up/ The praise received is mentally sent back /Or taken apart /The Observer magazine just about sums him up /E.g. self-satisfied, smug

I'm living a fake/People say, "You are entitled to and great."/But I haven't wrote for 90 days/I'll get a good deal and I'll go away/ Away from the empty brains that ask/ How I wrote "Elastic Man"
His last work was "Space Mystery" in the Daily Mail,/
An article in Leather Thighs/
The only thing real is waking and rubbing your eyes/So I'm resigned to bed
I keep bottles and comics stuffed by its head/Fuck it, let the beard grow/
I'm too tired,/I'll do it tomorrow/
The fridge is sparse/But in the town/They'll stop me in the shoppes/
Verily they'll track me down/Touch my shoulder and ignore my dumb mission/
And sick red faced smile/
And they will ask me/
And they will ask me/
How I wrote "Elastic Man"
Young Liars #3
Monday, May 5, 2008
Best Last Ever
Saturday, May 3, 2008
With Hand To Forehead I Put Pen to Paper.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008
It's YOUNG LIARS, You Fool!
Monday, April 28, 2008
The Early Life of A Boy Named Killerpup, Intro








