ELECTRIC ANT ZINE BLOG

I believe copies we already up on the shelves, but Electric Ant #2 is now officially available at Quimby's in Chicago (and was featured on the homepage this week).

Electric Ant #2 is now (or will shortly be) available at the following fine stores:

Missions: Comics & Art in San Francisco, CA
Star Clipper in St. Louis, MO
Cosmic Comics in New York, NY
Forbidden Planet in New York, NY
The Beguiling in Toronto, Canada
IMHO Shop in Paris, France

I will update the SHOPS CARRYING THE ZINE page tomorrow will full-er details!

Please enjoy (HELL YES).
Featuring watercolor painting by Hellen Jo!

I have now updated the zine site with Issue 2 contents . I will be emailing contributors this week, getting promo postcards made, along with a simple HTML button to put on your sites and let folks know to buy it on 10/17/09 when it goes on sale!

In the midst of the final days of zine layout for issue 2. Spot illustrations, tweaked files, and other business is flying fast & furious. I wanted to come up for air for a second, and share a tiny teaser of the front cover.

The cover of Electric Ant #2 features a stunning, creepy, and incredible original painting by our own Hellen Jo!!!

You guys are gonna flip your shit when you see the entire painting, I promise you!!  I am beyond excited about this cover. Here's hoping the insides can live up to it!  My apologies for being a tease-- I will post the full cover next week, and more previews of the issue contents after that.

   ELECTRIC ANT #2
[EXQUISITE CORPSES]
   available 10/17/09

Next Friday, 9/25/09.  um........

HOLY FUCKING SHIT

Here's an update to the growing list of stores carrying Electric Ant. As of last Wednesday, our neighborhood boats an awesome new comic shop, Mission: Comics & Art! I was alerted to the new place by Ryan Germick, who introduced to the proprietor Leef Smith over email.

Tooday, I stopped by and met Leef in person-- he's a cool dude, born and bred San Franciscan who lives in the Mission. The shop features a nice, clean layout similar to Comix Experience but with a little more space. We talked about the balance between indie comics, mainstream TPBs and catering to the Wednesday new comics crowd.

         

The store is still working out the inventory levels, but I saw a great mix of stuff I am into: new floppies from last week, DC's newsprint Wednesday Comics, Tom Gauld's THIS GIGANTIC ROBOT from Buenaventura, etc. At this time, I didn't see any manga in stock at the store, which is okay since I rely almost entirely on Kinokuniya for my English and Japanese langauge manga fixes. I bought a copy of Sweet Tooth #1, and a surreal Green Lantern tpb illustrated by the late (and great) Seth Fisher that was recommended to me.

Mission: Comics & Art also features a nice-sized gallery space in the back, with three walls for curating comics/fine art exhibits. I can think easily think of a bunch of local cartoonists (EAZ contributors, all of 'em!) who could do a great show there! Was fun talking shop with the owner, and I'm stoked to see what the next months hold. They will be open 'til 8pm Tues - Sunday, so I plan to head here after work on New Comics Day (every Wednesday) instead of Lee's in Mountain View.

On a final note, Leef is interested in stocking out a Local/minicomics/zines section there, and took on some copies of Electric Ant #1. If you are in the hood and want to recommend it to someone, they can now grab a copy there while supporting local business.

EDIT: Made some corrections from Leef

Spending some time trying to wrap my head around the burgeoning timebomb of stress/awesomeness that will become Electric Ant #2: Exquisite Corpses. The books will likely tap out at around 140 pages (give or take), with a wide spread of written, illustrated, collaged, and photographic content. Submissions are rolling in over the next weeks, and this list is subject to change! 

It's not prudent to post any sorta Table of Contents or descriptions this early, and I can't promise that every single person will end up in Electric Ant #2, but here is the tentative contributor list as of today. I honestly couldn't be more stoked and beside myself with this group-- you guys are all so radical!

RYAN SANDS
EVAN HAYDEN
ALICE SOLA KIM

AERON ALFREY
ANGIE WANG
ANNE ISHII
ANTHONY HA
ANTHONY WU
BRENDAN NINNESS
CALVIN WONG
CHRIS KUZMA
CLAIRE DONNER
DAN ABBE
DASH SHAW
DEREK BALLARD
DEREK YU
GEA*
GIANNIS MILONIGIANNIS
HARVEYJAMES
HELLEN JO
JASON THOMPSON
JENN YIN
JON VERMILYEA
JOSÉ-LUIS OLIVARES
JUSTINE LAI
KATHLEEN YOAS
KAZIMIR STRZEPEK
LISA HANAWALT
MAKKINOSO
MICHAEL DEFORGE
MICKEY ZACCHILLI
MIMI LEUNG
MONIKA UCHIYAMA
NATE SHOCKEY
NICHOLAS GAZIN
ROBERT SYRETT
ROOT BRADFORD
RYAN GERMICK
SAICOINK
SHAWN CHENG
SOPHIA FOSTER-DIMINO
TED MAY
TOM GAUBATZ
ZEHRA FAZAL
and ANDREW GREENSTONE

Exciting and crazy news, the badass indie manga publisher Editions IMHO has opened a storefront in Paris called Village/Vanguard! I probably won't have the luxury of seeing the store in person any time soon, but I seriously wish I could.

Editions IMHO is an excellent publisher of manga, European comics and punk/trash genre books. In addition to zines and domestic comics, they publish french editions of manga by Suehiro Maruo, Atsushi Kaneko (Bambi, Soil), Tori Miki (they have 4+ volumes of Anywhere but Here), Hideshi Hino, Junko Mizuno, Shigeru Sugiura, and Nekojiru. DAMN, DUDES. They also have in stock an original edition of the infamous 1988 art book by Suehiro Maruo & Kazuichi Hanawa (& Yoshitoshi), 28 Atrocities in Blood. Don't buy the bullshit Creation Books junk reprint!

The most exciting news (to me)? They are the first (and only, so far!) shop selling Electric Ant #1 in Europe!!!

           

That's right, an awesome boutique carrying the zine-- I couldn't be happier. Above are screencaps from their site, along with images from their blog.

... Page 3 is finished and has been posted. It was created by the excellent Jason Thompson. GO CHECK OUT THE SCHEDULE PAGE! Next on the list is Saicoink, tackling Page 4.

[note: the EA#2 body horror jam schedule page is currently only open to contributors, the rest of you will have to wait until Issue 2 debuts at SPX!]

Just an FYI for folks, I've started up a newly-open twitter account, where I'll be talking about Same Hat, Electric Ant Zine, and other book/comics projects. It's here: @remoteryan .

I had been using Twitter off and on since last March, but with the whole thing on protected lock-down. That worked fine, but I couldn't ever direct message or @whatever people if they weren't following me. Minor Bummer. My new twitter fu has already paid off, as Michael Kupperman had a brief back-&-forth yesterday (made my day!).

Anyway, if you happen to be on there hit me up :)