Easy Money debuts at CAKE June 15-16

We're getting awfully close to the final showdown amongst the best of the best in North American underground comickers. I thought I'd give just a small taste of what I'll be selling on Saturday and Sunday at CAKE. Brand new, crisply and yes, perhaps pubishly, inked comics from the roiling mind who brought you...uh...others in a long line of stories about hillbillies, drunks, bar fights, devil worshiping...do I have any devil worshiping in this story? Hmm just a few hidden symbols, nothing too serious.

Energy Gown - Freedose Music Video

Here's a newly cut Energy Gown music video for Freedose. It's a found VHS relic cut by EG technicians.

Who Is Mephisto?

Just who is Mephisto? Well, you'll have to buy the comic at this year's Chicago CAKE expo to find out! Yippee skippee! Also, sorry for not posting anything on here in ages, I just sort of lost interest in internetting this spring, I guess I will get the Cologne Factory juggernaut chugging along again, boys and ghouls. Yes indeed.

my mother sent me to school in dresses...

Scorpion Boys

Easy Money

To my slathering fans, all of you are True Earth Angels, and deserve a new brilliant entry from the Cologne Factory blog franchise. I'm lurching into forward progress on a new story, it might be called easy money. I don't know why it needs to be lower case and italicized.

I've got some ideas about haunted/cursed/mystical tattoos, for this, a thing you will buy from me, so I will only give you little samples online...

What else is happening, in my efforts to revive this blog into an exciting stopoff for internet addicts and mental misfits everywhere...Otto Splotch is doing a Kickstarter for his next comic, trying to print big and in color, which his work really deserves.

At last year's CAKE expo, my table was next to Otto's, and between him and Midwestern Cuban Comics on my left, I had a very bizarre weekend.  Otto is a true Southern Weirdo, I think. He would amble in fresh from what I presume was his morning shift at a chopped up raw onion factory, around 2pm, and promptly begin selling Melted Shelter, hand over fist. Everything he makes looks good and consistent and people just seemed to love it, across the board. He's one of the best. My stuff, not so many sales that weekend...although I did manage to sell diaper pornography to Michael DeForge, and some other weird found sex manual books/sci-fi/Tom Savini/cats/70's dinosaur/kung-fu crap that all the hoarder collectors seem to be secretly after...if I can afford I kind of want to offer buying the diaper magazine back from him, I sort of regret that. That was painful.

I also did some tattoos on my own hairy, pimpled thighs.

I did some witch flash, in fact the witch was my first tattoo attempt. Wait, that's not true, my first tattoo attempt was actually a flaming star, age 15, which I realize now was really a girl's tattoo, luckily now covered by a patch of thick black hair on the top of my foot, above my big toe. Dear God.

See yuh.

New Junk

Look at this doodle for a minute. I will sell it to you if you want or trade it for other valuable things.

ONO & Energy Gown Live @ The Observatory Nov. 3

Energy Gown is staying busy folks, and now I will meet a personal goal of mine, sharing the stage with my favorite Chicago band, ONO. This will be a very special show at Chicago's Observatory, the best DIY space in the country. Come out for a special night.

Energy Gown & Holy Wave Oct 24 @ Township

On Wed Oct 24, Energy Gown will be playing a gig at Chicago's Township (2200 N. California Ave.).

Sharing the bill is our Texas pals, Holy Wave. Here's my favorite track of theirs:



This should be a fantastic time, Energy Gown is really sounding great lately and now I am playing the bass, come have a look.

Midde School Comics

Ah yes, everyone's favorite segment! Comics I made in the mid 90's, age 12/13. Here we have page 3-4 of the Gramma & Billy opus. I like the completely unnecessary cursing on almost every page of this comic. Also it appears I did NOT steal the "HA! HA! HA!" way of spelling a laugh from John Steinbeck, as I thought I had...I'd not read him yet, I guess I made it up myself in 1995 instead of learning how to divide fractions/solve complex betting scenarios.

This is really bad work, but every once in a while it seems like there would be a certain thing I'd decide I wanted to draw properly, and you can see me sort of figure it out from panel to panel. Drawing a human hand was not something I would figure out anytime soon (nor have I yet, or almost anyone making comics, it seems).

Celebrity guest appearances and tiny, Sergio Aragones-inspired margin jokes both ruin every single page of this embarrassing junk. Michael Richards & Paul Reubens were my favorite actors at this time. That's all for this installment of completely trivial and boring internet garbage.

Dragon Tears (28 Sept)

This is a new black and white feature I am working on starring Tony Renzetti, I think it will be called Dragon Tears but that may change, or just be the title of this chapter, or whatever. We shall see.

Middle School Comics

Here's some great old mid-1990's garbage I did in about 6th grade, if I remember correctly...the only comics I had been exposed to at this point were an issue of Ren & Stimpy, as well as the very first issues of The Maxx and Beavis & Butthead (which is probably worth something today). I may have also started reading the Jurassic park comics at this point. Mainly I pored over the Sunday comics in the newspaper, and saved all of them in a giant stack - early signals of the hoarding that would continue throughout my life (saving everything except money).

Gramma & Billy is the longest comic I made in this era - something like ten pages. It's a total mess but also sort of cute to look at today (although perhaps depressing as well, considering this work in conjunction with the obesity and wild mood swings occurring in my life in the mid 90's, age 12/13). Billy is a fat dork probably based on a mix of Randy Clowers and Tony Kometz (overweight, nerdy classmates), and his grandmother is a pile of goop which moves and speaks.

I made these comics in class rather than studying or participating, and consequently was receiving very poor marks in school at this time and for several more years. Luckily my craftsmanship has greatly improved, and today, comics are no longer the detriment to my existence, they are actually my bread and butter, how I make my living and livelihood...?

Santa Gets Drunk, Part 1

Dragon Tears

Here's a new page. It's been a while since I thought about Tony & Grevin...I've been doing that witch porno stuff, which has been VERY emotionally taxing, rest assured. But it was all worthwhile for the upcoming release of said material in the new comic anthology Jacob Mazer has put together, ANIMAL KINGDOM.  That is a kickstarter link, if you'd like to donate to the printing process. There's a video preview below:

Rivera Your Pastel Pal

My friend Shannon moved to China and left me a box of oil pastels, so I have been playing around with those and trying to figure out if there's ever any need to throw them into the mix, or if it just a waxy, cumbersome little shit stick. I'd like to do some drawings of knives next.

Emblems & Chains

There've been no posts in ages! The delusional artist has emerged from oblivion to present brand new material. I suspect this isn't the last you'll see of the devil in the weeks to come. Indeed, there are devils all over the TV's, it's a very bizarre time to watch the news now, and I'm afraid I am about to get sucked into the whole hologram gimmick, maybe even vote.  I believe in complete anarchy, man. Either way, in fifty years the street gangs will be running the White House. As I write this, Mitt Romney is off somewhere cutting up a teenager to ribbons and laughing, wearing a special knife finger glove. Imagine Freddy running for president: "I promise to SLICE taxes! Ahhh hahahaha!" as he swipes his knife hand.