Feb 21 2007

The Japanese Goddess of Food

I’m doing a three page story for the Wide Awake Press Free Comic Book Day comic.  The book’s going to include work by Duane Ballenger, J Chris Campbell, Andrew Davis, Justin Gammon, Josh Latta, Pat Lewis, Brad McGinty, Rich Tingley, Rob Ullman and me.

Anyway, the theme of the work is food and I was looking around for some food-related legends, folk tales and whatnot to maybe illustrate for the book and I stumbled on a pretty amazing Japanese legend.  I think it’s just way too gross to do for this book, and I’m planning instead to do a 3-pager on the origin of the hushpuppy, but you gotta dig the imagery of this goddess vomiting up fish for the sea and game for the land–and then the moon god getting so grossed out that he just straight-up kills her:

According to the legend, the moon god, Tsukiyomi, was
dispatched to earth by his sister, the sun goddess Amaterasu, to visit Ukemochi
no Kami (Goddess of fertility and food). The food goddess welcomed him by
facing the land and disgorging from her mouth boiled rice, turning toward the
sea and spewing out all kinds of fishes, and turning toward the land and
disgorging game. She presented these foods to him at a banquet, but he was
displeased at being offered the goddess’s vomit and drew his sword and killed
her. When he returned to heaven and informed his sister of what he had done,
she became angry and said, “Henceforth I shall not meet you face to face,”
which is said to explain why the Sun and Moon are never seen together.

I wouldn’t have done this second section as part of the comic, but here it is:

Another messenger
sent to the food goddess by Amaterasu found various food stuffs produced from
her dead body. From her head came the ox and the horse; from her forehead,
millet; from her eyebrows, silkworms; from her eyes, panic grass (a cereal);
from her belly, rice; and from her genitals, wheat and beans. Amaterasu had the
food grains sown for humanity’s future use and, placing the silkworms in her
mouth, reeled thread from them, thereby beginning the art of sericulture – the
production of raw silk.

Feb 21 2007

Midnight Sun #3: Much Less Crappy than “Ghost Rider”

I used to have a handy Google alert that would email me any time something showed up on the web that included the phrase “midnight sun” and the word “comic.”  It was a handy way to keep track of any reviews of the book that might be appearing online.  Unfortunately, there was apparently an anime film released recently called Midnight Sun, and I got tired of receiving alerts about this movie that I know nothing about apparently being discussed along with comics, so I canceled the alert.  I mean, who reviews issue three of anything anyway?  Thankfully, though, a well-wisher passed on this link to me of a review of issue three, which apparently appeared in comics shops the same day as that new Ghost Rider movie hit theaters.

Review here: Midnight Sun #3 – Comic of the Week.

I was planning to post some really embarrassing pencil pages of a Ghost Rider story I did for an assignment when I was in art school, but I looked at them and they’re just too terrible.  Trust me on this.

Feb 16 2007

Heroes ’07 Guest List

HeroesCon 07Guest List: It’s Forever Growing!

It looks like a preliminary guest list for Heroes Con 07 in Charlotte has been posted to the site.  I’m glad to see some Indy Island “regulars” already on the list–folks like J Chris Campbel, Chris Pitzer… and me!

Press-wise, it’s nice to see both Matt Brady of Newsarama and Heidi MacDonald of The Beat are both onboard as well. I’m not sufficiently up on the superhero scene to know who the included notables are from that arena, but Eric Powell (The Goon) is on there, and is definitely someone who seems to be an A-list artist these days.

Feb 07 2007

R. Crumb Supermarket Protest Art

I’ve been avoiding linkblogging of late, but I stumbled across this on the Robert Crumb site today and I’ve not seen any mention of it on the internets.  Click through the image below for the page on the Crumb site with the skinny:

Feb 06 2007

Midnight Sun #3: Now (for Some Reason) Feb 14th

I have no idea why, but it looks like Midnight Sun #3 has changed ship dates from this week, to next week… so it looks like it’ll be in stores on the 14th