Ben Towle: Comics, Cartooning, Teaching

Jun 01 2007

SSalefish Featured in Llocal PPress

By Ben

Via the new issue of Winston-Salem Monthly (who may be sending something else to my home shortly–a cease and desist order for scanning and posting this):

Here’s the text of the article:

Bret Parks, a Walnut Cove native, says it was a childhood dream come true to open Ssalefish Comics & Toys in January 2006. ln fact, Parks, who received a master’s degree in English from UNC Greensboro, even wrote his thesis on comic books as literature. ”Comics were always a part of my life, so I just wanted to do work that would argue for the medium to be taken more seriously,” he explains. After graduation, Parks moved to South Korea, where he taught English until his dream of opening a comic-book store brought him back to the States and, soon, Winston-Salem.

Ssalefish, located in the Silas Creek Crossing shopping Center, also carries such collectibles as vintage toys and comic books from the early 1930s. “In the age of eBay, anybody can find oddball things online, but the store is a place where you can see it before you,” Parks says. “Every day a customer says to me, ‘I’ve never that before.’ “

Congrats to the recently married Brett and Juliette! I gave them the king of all cheapskate cartoonist wedding presents: an original page from Midnight Sun–like I haven’t got a bunch of those floating around here…

May 29 2007

Marvel Indie Anthology

By Ben

Apparently there’s a cool-looking new Marvel indie creator-centered anthology in the works–kind of an official Coober Skeeber by the looks of it. So far you can see some amazing looking Dr. Strange pages by Richmond, VA.’s Dash Shaw here. James Kochalka has confirmed via the Comics Journal message board that he’s done some sort of Hulk-related thing for the book as well. Other than that Aubrey Sitterson is editing the series, that’s about all that’s known about it at this time… other than that regrettably, an invitation to finally let loose upon the public my long awaited story The Triumphant Return of Razorback, was apparently lost in the mail ;-)

May 25 2007

Comics Lolcat

By Ben

Over at the SLG News Blog, they’re calling for comics-related lolcats. Seein’ as how it’s 5:30 on Friday evening–aka quittin’ time–I drummed one up. Submissions so far seem to be following the general meme of cats asking to have their work published, so I’ve followed suit.

May 25 2007

30 Years of Star Wars

By Ben

There’s tons of hoopla going around of late–NPR stories, postage stamps, etc. regarding the thirtieth anniversary of the opening of Star Wars in the U.S., which is today. While the whole Star Wars machine these days can be cynically viewed solely as an entity which produces lackluster films designed to sell cheap crap to little kids–and expensive crap to nostalgic adults, if you’re of a certain age and a certain demeanor, the original two Star Wars films likely had an immense impact on you as a child. I was born in 1970, and thus was positioned perfectly to be sucked into the whole Star Wars phenomenon when those first films, Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, were released in 1977 and then 1980 respectively.

So in honor of this auspicious occasion, I’m posting a gallery of my crude, yet often hilarious (particularly “Chewie with a tail”) childhood drawings of Star Wars stuff. I’ve thrown some more recent doodles in there as well, which one would hope are easily distinguishable from others. Regretably, there aren’t many drawings here that date from the original Star Wars film; I think that I only started drawing in pads and sketchbooks a bit later in life, so most of this early stuff is from Empire era, when I was nine or ten.

Q&A:

Q: So, you were, like totally obsessed with Star Wars, apparently?

A: Yes, that’s correct.

Q: I’ve heard you have a Star Wars tattoo. Is that true?

A: I can neither confirm nor deny that at this time.

The Drawings: