Still some kind of work by Yours Truly will be on offer. Above is the cover for Le Beau Pourri, a fanzine set up by my pals with the Montreal Comic Jam, said zine which will be on offer at the fair. The cover is designed and executed by Rick Gagnon.

Below is my contribution to the mag (outside of panels done in various jams over the months, which might pop up here and there). You’ll have to pick up the zine to see the whole story.

Rick Gagnon did the French translation and lettered the balloons. I could post the original English here, but what fun would that be?

[UPDATE: Check my rough for the story, which includes the translation: link]

Anyhow, I’ll be at Expozine on Sunday, Nov. 27. Probably put up more stuff then. Say hi if you see me there!

The creature at middle right was a plastic animal the service left to mark where an order of nacho chips should go. Got taken away before I finished, but I drew it, in time.

Here’s Rick working on this:

And here are Sirkowski and Kurt Beaulieu, just to prove there were other people there:

I think there are more, but I can’t find them. Should have pretended I was reprinting them from some long-dead Men’s or Family magazine.

And this popped up on Twitter just as I was writing this post, and I can’t resist: http://mikelynchcartoons.blogspot.com/2011/01/saturday-evening-post-scrapbook-part-24.html

I wrote and drew a few gag cartoons, which my pal Rick Gagnon inked in his usual impeccable way. We submitted them to Reader’s Digest, who wasn’t bowled over, so they found a home in Rick’s zine, and now are here on the web.

Jeff Leblanc did the masthead. Hey, I was aiming for humour in a slightly retro vein. Well, no cannibalism or bloody sacrifice at least, like some of the other comics in Rick’s mag.

Today’s strip is called “Coffee.” I think it was inspired by this machine at the Ontario Science Centre, that said the word “coffee,” and you could alter the inflection by turning a knob so that it sounded like a question. I wonder if that machine is still around?

This was originally published in my friend Rick Gagnon’s zine, WTF??

Here’s another of those old strips of mine. Worked on at the comic jam, mainly by Rick Gagnon, over my scribbly pencils. Hence the odd faces here and there. Still funny, though.

I’m running out of these, but have a few more tricks up my sleeve before I’ll have to start drawing stuff again.

Another old comic from 1994 or so. More completely inked by Gagnon, but this was before he had completely figured out my style, I think.

I’ll do more new comics, I promise!

I’ve been taking it slow over the holidays. Not doing too much. A lot of pencil drawings on scrap paper I’m not going to bother to scan. Getting back into working on things, though.

One part of that effort was to go into my archives, and rescue some old strips which might be good, but haven’t seen the light of day. The above was something I wrote and mainly drew. My pal Rick Gagnon added some shading. Always darkening, that Rick, but always for the better!

This was done in the very old Montreal Comic Jam, orgaized by Rupert Bottenberg, and held at the now-defunct Stornaway Gallery in downtown Montreal. I’ve got a few more of these.

Here are some snaps from the Jam, including the interview:

And you can listen to the interview itself, on my other blog: [link]

My pals also dedicated my copy of Frankenstein Réassemblé (“Frankenstein Re-assembled”), edited by Éric Theriault, one of the regular jamsters.

It’s an album of stories in French about Mary Shelley’s famous Monster. (Buy it here from Amazon.ca) Twelves years in the making! (I was wondering if it would ever come out).

Here’s the dedication page my friends drew in, at the jam:

When cartoonists sign your book, you usually get some neat sketches. The suspects here are top, Rick Gagnon, right, Éric Theriault, bottom, Marr.

Finally, a sketch of my own, a quick painting of one of the inhabitants of the very bohemian L’Escalier Bar, where the jams take place: the last Thursday of every month (except December):

After missing a couple of nights, I finally made it to the monthly Montreal Comic Jam. Took pictures, but now I’m lazy, and put them into a slide show. You can actually click on photos as they pass by above to read info about who’s in them, etc.

Enthused about watercolour, I brought my set of paints, forked bamboo brushes and grubby bottle of water, and badgered people to do a watercolour jam. I left them alone, and they performed a stellar job:

Starting from the top, that’s me, Richard Gagnon, Francis Paquette, me again, Kurt Beaulieu, and Jeff LeBlanc.

I did a sketch of these guys, who are the English-speaking division of the jam (except for me):

These are, clockwise from left: Jeff LeBlanc, Michael Arsenault, Brad Doucet, Shane Simmons.

The scrawl in the upper corner is the title of a science fiction anthology from Tor Books Michael has a story in. Pretty cool, but I can’t find it on the web, so perhaps it hasn’t been released yet. More on this when I know.