From the Archive: Let Me Out of Here, 1987/1999

This one goes back to this one job I had where, y'know, I just really wanted to get out of there.
It was published as a minicomic in 1987. In 1999 I touched it up a bit, for whatever reason. It could use another round of corrections, but I haven't the energy right now.

This Monday, July 2, 2012

This coming Monday, I'll be showing images and talking about my work at the NYC Comics & Picture-story Symposium. It's free. Come see!

Here's the specs:

The eighth meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Monday, July 2, 2012 at 7pm at  The  School of Visual Arts, Art Therapy Dept. space at 132 West 21st Street (btw. 6th & 7th Aves), 3rd floor studio at 7pm.  The scheduled presentations are by Bob Sikoryak and Tom Motley. Facilitator: Karen Green. Free and open to the public.

Deeply Funny?

Some of my comics just received a plug in this philosophy blog,
The Partially Examined Life.

From the Archive: Willie n' Twillie, 1988/2008

A distressing number of my comics begin as doodles. Here's a doodle I did in the early to mid 1980s which suggested the mannered, moralizing doggerel parody below.

(you may need to open these pages in a new browser window to be able to read them)

Willie n' Twillie first saw print in Acme Comics #9 in 1988. Two decades later, I drew it over better and typeset the copy for True Fiction #7, 2008.

For more examples of comics waiting to be born, check out my doodle blog.

The Power of Double-Negative Thinking

Cartooning Basics Starts June 7

One of the dirty little secrets about comics is that they're more fun to make than they are to read (however fun they are to read). Sure, doing them involves a lot of hard work -- hard play, really-- but the comic story is the most democratically available medium I've found for getting ideas, feelings, and opinions down on paper and packaged into a form that can entertain and touch other people. Simple drawings and simple writing extended over multiple frames can achieve a big effect.

If you know someone in the NYC area who's curious about trying their hand at cartooning, please encourage them to try my Cartooning Basics course this summer at SVA. In 10 weeks we'll undertake the journey from the blank page to the printed piece, noting along the way the basic principles that inform every major creative problem the cartoonist faces-- drawing characters that move and seem alive; making them perform in stories and settings that make sense, hold our attention, and amuse us; rendering the images in ink for inexpensive publication; printing and assembling booklets to offer for sale and to use as calling cards & gifts; and more besides. It's great fun and the rewards are many. Please spread the word.

Here's some work created in class.

And here are examples of what my students have gone on to do:

Adventures of Pyramid
The Squid
Please Listen To Me
Andrea Tsurumi
Versequential
Pregnant Butch
Bar Scrawl
How Do I Nook?

From the Archive: Fisheye, 1984

I've resolved to start posting some of my old, unread work from over the decades. This one, from 1984, was printed on a set of buttons to be worn on a jacket. I had ideas for several sequels but never got around to drawing them because, you know, buttons is a really stupid way to circulate a comic strip. This is one of a handful of sets in existence. The others are undoubtedly littering landfills somewhere.

New Spinoff Blogs

It's been kind of a long time since I posted any of my doodles here. It's not that I have too few but that there are too many. I've finally created a special blog just for my doodles, which I'm updating at least twice a day:

http://yourdailydoodle.tumblr.com/


And I just started a companion blog for my sketches:

http://yourdailysketch.tumblr.com/

Check them often. Follow them. Reblog 'em.
I find that a fun way to view the pictures is to select the archive and then choose any that grab your attention. The doodle blog already has a respectable flood of striking images:

http://yourdailydoodle.tumblr.com/archive

Anticomic

Performances, Lectures, Panel Discussions, & Literary Readings

I've fallen wa-a-a-ay behind on posting my sketches of notable creative people. Let's catch up.

First, here's my hero, the hyper literate songwriter/cartoonist Peter Blegvad, performing at The Stone, April 15, 2010. Blegvad, along with other songwriters, presents new songs monthly on the always entertaining webcast, Radio Free Song Club. Check it out.

Here's another, to me, very important and influential author, Harry Mathews, reading new poems at 192 Books, October 19, 2010.

And here's a sketch from long ago of the late Dr. Jonathan Cohen, author of Apart from Freud, presenting a paper at Denver's Auraria campus circa 2002. I miss you, my friend.

Continuing the theme of my personal influences, here's another, Al Jaffee, in conversation with another, Peter Kuper. Jaffee is here receiving an award at the 2011 MoCCA Fest.

And here's Richard McGuire speaking with Bill Kartalopoulos at Parsons in February 2011.

More sketches from MoCCA Fest 2011: a panel on non-fiction comics with Heidi MacDonald, Dean Haspiel, Nick Bertozzi, Sarah Glidden, and Nick Abadzis,...

...and a panel on book publishing with Mark Newgarden, Ben Katchor, Lauren Redniss, and Stephen DeStefano.

Returning from the comics sphere to the literary, here's Lance Olsen reading at Unnameable Books, along with Rob Stephenson, Brian Conn, and Margo Berdeshevsky.

Here's Mark Usher at UVM reading from The Golden Ass, introduced by Jeffrey Marshall,...

...and here's Mark's "author photo" from the inside flap of our book.

Reading at the Perch Cafe in June 2010 are my good friends Padma Thornlyre and Janet Glovinsky, joined by Kirpal Gordon, William Seaton, Karen Moulding (also sketched by my daughter Violet who was 4 at the time), and Liz Longo.

Back when I first arrived in Brooklyn, there was this reading of poems by the late, great Sekou Sundiata featuring Kimiko Hahn, Rashida Ismaili, and Danny Simmons, at the 2007 Brooklyn Book Festival.

And back before I left Denver, there was this reading at the Denver Zine Library on 5/24/07 which included Patrick Porter, Lee Green (reading from My Small Diary), and Aidan Aberrant.

Whew! That very nearly cleans me out. Now to go draw some new ones.

Check Out My Ass!

few reviews have appeared of the new book, The Golden Ass, which I illustrated for author Mark D. Usher.

Of my contribution, The School Library Journal says, "Motley's pen-and-ink illustrations are terrifically detailed and cartoon like and are reminiscent of John Tenniel's work in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." They also say the book is "perfect for humor-loving middle schoolers."

Vermont's Seven Days Review called my illustrations "cleverly allusive."

A starred review in Kirkus says, "Motley's elaborate illustrated initials and pen-and-ink drawings add satiric bite," and calls the book, "an entertaining romp, even without the raunchy bits."

One can find it at Barnes and Noble and Amazon and, who knows?, maybe your local bookstore.

Fiction Krishna

Someday I'll get around to lettering this better and touching up the art 'n stuff, but here's a five strip miniseries I ran in The Brooklyn Rail last year. It's crawling with little nods to forgotten cartoon characters (and some famous ones). How many can you name?