September is the last month of summer.
blogging again, tour dates, links
Last Thursday filmmaker Parinda Mai and I went on an impromptu day (night?) trip to Milwaukee where we caught Marcus of Nourished by Time playing at Vivarium* in support of his new album ‘The Passionate Ones’.
“His voice is so buttery”. Mai had been on a tear over the summer listening to him while in Bangkok. “Smooth and coherent - things are at the place that they should be” and “it’s like butter mixed with something weird - butter and a probiotic because his voice is earthy, and soil has probiotics in it”, Mai continues to elaborate.
I’ve been trying to wrap Mirror Mirror 4 and get this last title of the season to the printer. Reformatting the anthology / magazine as to what it is, in part as a response to ‘market conditions’. Tariffs have been causing overseas printing prices to increase significantly and US printers are largely unable to meet that difference for the smaller print runs that boutique publishers rely upon. This is compounded by a less robust economy. The only thing I can think to do is aim for lower price points and contend with tighter profit margins; hope for the best.
^ On 9/11 Blaise Larmee organized a pop up gallery show via apartment.gallery. The event doubled as a soft launch for Altcomics Magazine 7. It gave me an excuse to buy expensive cheese, weird meats, jams, and wine. It was very cute :)
i started apartment gallery to show my dad, who had a self-described blip of a painting career in the 80’s -- he glued giant paintings to the walls of new york city -- and since then has toiled in obscurity. in the 90’s he would come home exhausted and go right to bed. after dinner he would get high and go downstairs to paint. once, either on his way down or having just returned, he confided in me his thoughts on painting. he said it was like leaping off a cliff, flailing, desperate, grabbing at anything and hoping it holds.
he died on august 20, 2025.
this show is arranged according to a sentimental hierarchy: my mom and me here, my friends there, and my dad in between.
^ Official press copy emailed the morning of the event.
Kevin Larmee’s death hit me harder than expected. I had intended to talk with him again. To thank him, and to hear more — I don’t know, about his life? Stephen once relayed that he said something I was doing was ‘noble’ — I think in relation to me doing clinical trials to pay off my publishing debts. A warm and flattering thought.
Weeks later, Blaise tells me about Elijah Brubaker’s passing. I think about how financially unsupported people in this space are. ‘The small press comics scene is littered with corpses’, I write in my journal. People give their lives to this space and it in turn drinks them up one by one. I didn’t know Elijah but I remember picking up single issues of his Reich comics from Sparkplug at comic festivals.
Recently paging through a print copy of Altcomics Magazine 7. I’m 43. Thinking about all the above, my life, my inevitable death. Comics from Blaise about his parents, and longer excursions into memory and adulthood from Jason Overby. The nature of art, ideas of a small readership, the responsibilities pressed upon us by family. This comics feels weighty and resonant. The different comics from Katie, Clair, Matthew, Frank - each piece rhyming with each other by being placed within the same pages. Overwhelmed by feelings.
^ Outside of Mirror Mirror 4, ‘season 19’ is wrapped.
—East District by Ash H.G.
—Nuie by Nuie
—La Poderosa 1 by Powerpaola
—Egirl Magazine 1 ed Katherine Dee
—Altcomics Magazine 7 ed Blaise Larmee + Katie Lane
—Girls Gone Wild 1 by Katie Lane.
We’ll have these 6 titles and a selection of our backlist at the following shows and festivals.
Pretty Good Fest
Chicago Athletic Association
12 S Michigan Avenue Chicago, IL 60603
Oct 4, Saturday 11am-6pm
First floor, table 108
^ Join us this Saturday. Parinda Mai, myself, Katherine Dee [Egirl Magazine’s editor] will at various times be at the 2dcloud table.
Sharing a table right next to us will be Ash H.G. in support of his graphic novel East District (2dcloud), and Entropy Editions publisher Justin Skarhus, who will have copies of THEM by Jooyoung Kim on hand at the festival.
Short Run
Seattle Design Center in Georgetown
5701 6th Ave S, Seattle, WA 98108
Nov 1, Saturday 11am-6pm
^ Visit Blaise Larmee and Brianna Perry at the 2dcloud table this year. It’s a new venue for the long running festival. It has been maybe the best show we’ve done over the last few years. Excited to be back and wish I could join them.
Comic Indie Con
2025 W. 11th St., Houston, Texas 77008
Nov 1, Saturday 1pm-6pm
Nov 2, Sunday 11am-4pm
^ Concurrent to the Seattle show, Ash H.G. will be tabling at this comic convention. On Saturday from 1:30pm–2:15pm he’ll be on the panel “Balancing Worklife with Your Passion”. An evergreen subject in the alternative comics space for sure.
Grit City
Greater Tacoma Convention Center
1500 Broadway, Tacoma, WA 98402
Nov 15, Saturday 10am-5pm
^ An Old-School Style Comic Book Convention. Ash H.G. will be holding the 2dcloud table at this festival, perhaps with a cartoonist friend. Special advance thanks to Stefano Gaudiano.
LINKS
^ In the spring next year we’ll have a new comic from Wilfred Santiago in Mirror Mirror 5. We also have a forthcoming artist x artist talk between him and Ash H.G. that we’ll be posting later in the year. Wilfred is the cartoonist behind In My Darkest Hour (a personal favorite), THUNDERBOLT • An American Tale VOL.1, Michael Jordan • Bull on Parade, and 21 • The Story of Roberto Clemente. He has a new shop with shirts, hoodies, mugs, totes. I bought one of his hoodies that has an illustration from his new comic in Mirror Mirror, it looks great. If you're in the market, you know what to do.
> The Chicago Film Festival hits in October and theres a mixer tonight. Maybe I’ll see you there.
^ Speaking of mixes, here’s a lengthy and eclectic one for your perusal.
Alright. My head feels like an oversized Charles Crumb thought bubble at this point. Astounding my neck could support such weight. I’m going to go for a walk. See you guys soon.
*Vivarium the venue shares the name of a videogame developer that produced the game Seaman for the Sega Dreamcast in 1999. In it you talk to, feed, and care for a surly fish with a human face — that of game director Yoot Saito. A microphone connects to the controller and you actually speak to this Seaman, who will in turn ask you about your life while berating you for it. This was one of the odder imports to make its way stateside. For the US release, the actor Leonard Nimoy was personally selected for the games narrator by MariNaomi, who wrote and directed the translated edition for SEGA. 2dcloud did 2 books with Mari; Dragon’s Breath in 2014, and Turning Japanese in 2016 — which was later re-released via an expanded edition with Oni Press.
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