Rex Howls At The Moon

The most recent Fiji Island Mermaid Press Book of the Month club mailing was a bit different from the typical "book". On the envelope was a linocut of a howling dog, with "Rex Howls At. . ." in pencil. The envelope contained another linocut, titled "The Moon". This is my 13th year of sending out little books. That's kind of nuts. This was the first one that really wasn't a book, but it was a little narrative sequence of sorts, so I guess my subscribers will forgive me. Another thing they seem to forgive me for is my chronic tardiness. The Book of the Month club has never actually succeeded in sending out a book every month. Ever. But I always do send people 13 books over the course of their subscription, so I guess that's ok too. I'm thinking of changing the name to the "FIMP Something or Other in the Mail Once in a While Club".

Barnabas Google, Thespian

For my most recent book, I unearthed images documenting Barney Google's early career as a Shakespearean actor, before he had his big break in the comic strips.

Here's Barney Google as he is more widely known:



And here are a couple of images from the book:





You can see the entire book online, along with a growing archive of older FIMP books.

The Day Before His Great Fall

These are the color collages for "The Day Before His Great Fall", FIMP book #11 from 2001. I'm slowly putting the FIMP archive up on Flickr - you can see (at this point) 24 of the books here.

I made this dopey little book 10 years ago. . .

So I'm heading into year number 12 of making these little eight page books. I try to make one each month, and I mail them out to subscribers to the FIMP book of the month club.

I'm slowly posting the artwork from these books on Flickr, figuring that if I'm going to spend more than a decade doing something I might as well get it out there. Here are the
first 19 (out of 105) FIMP books that I've uploaded so far.

Here is this month's book, How To Be A Stand-Up Comic In Three Easy Steps.



I tried to model it as closely as possible on a book I made in 2001, How To Be A Magician In Three Easy Steps.



I used to do a lot more collage of the cut it out and glue it down sort back then. These days much more of it happens in the computer. My dopey sense of humor hasn't changed much in ten years, though. My standards for how the books have to look have gotten higher. Or at least, a bit more labor intensive - doesn't necessarily make for a "better" book. I guess you could be the judge of that. Sometimes I like the polish, sometimes I like the ragged edges. . .

How To Be A Better Person

Neither Baffled Nor Amazed

This little book is contrary to the FIMP tradition of presenting "How To" books that really teach you nothing useful about the subject at hand. In this case, you have a magic trick that you can actually perform for anyone under 10 or so and actually fool them! Patter included!

What I enjoy about "Neither Baffled Nor Amazed" is the attempt to actually perform a magic trick in a little book. A huge success, in that I successfully perform the trick and make the coin disappear. On the other hand, of course, it fails, in that the slow step-by-step illustration of the trick allows you to clearly see where I palmed the coin and placed it in my shirt collar (you did catch that, didn't you? Don't try this trick wearing a t-shirt).

But, of course, I didn't palm the coin. It's a bunch of drawings. I just didn't draw the coin, and so it "disappeared".

But, the drawings are of an event that could actually take place, in which if you did drop the coin on the table, you could easily palm it and tuck it into your shirt collar.

There's a part of our brain that wants to follow along with the sequential images and "believe" that what we see there is actually "happening". It's fun to play with that part of our brain.

So, it's a failure as a trick, but perhaps it succeeds in tricking you into thinking that some sort of event took place that resembled a magic trick.

It's February's Book of the Month!

Subscribers to the Book of the Month Club should start watching their mailboxes for "What Birds Want".

If, instead of reading, handling, enjoying, and passing around amongst your friends a satisfyingly handmade object signed by the artist, you would rather just see all of the images from the book online, you can find them right here on Flickr.

The Revolution, revisited

"The Revolution" was a book-of-the-month back in 2007, but I thought I would bring it back in light of the recent awe-inspiring events in Egypt. There has been a lot of attention paid to the important role social media has played in recent events (with some dissenting views as well), so I thought I would bring back my ill-considered exploration of the subject. This book, of course, has nothing to do with the incredibly brave people who actually take to the streets and overthrow dictators - it's more about some of us who watch.

I guess I was unaware of Facebook and Twitter at the time - and look, it's the original judges from American Idol! Proof once again that a FIMP book is a poor place to find meaningful or useful information about the world around you.

Do You Recall?

Here's the latest book from the FIMP Book of the Month Club." So you thought Rudolph was the only mutant reindeer that isolated herd at the North Pole produced? Think again!

Red Sky At Night

Subscribers to the FIMP Book of the Month Club (which, by the way, makes a wonderfully eccentric holiday gift) will find "Red Sky At Night" in their mailboxes any day now. This book explores and expands upon the wisdom of sailors.

Where Are They Now?

Tinseltown is a tough place to be a robot. So many of our mechanical stars have their one huge role, and then never catch the eye of another casting director. October's Book of the Month asks the question "Where Are They Now?"

Where Are They Now? R2D2 and C3PO

One of the few robots to continue to find work in the theater, R2D2 is currently performing as Vladimir in an Off-Off-Broadway production of Waiting for Godot.



C3PO performs as Paul in "Meet The Re-Peatles", a Beatles tribute band.

Here's a clip from "Star Wars", the film that introduced us to these consummate performers:

Where Are They Now? Computer

Computer was really the robot's robot. Highly respected amongst her peers, but receiving little recognition from the broader public for her groundbreaking work in the original "Star Trek" series. She can be found these days doing voiceover work for several GPS companies.

Computer in a moment of hair-raising drama from "Star Trek":

Where Are They Now? Gort

Gort currently is filling in for the vacationing "Big Tex" at the State Fair of Texas, a nice break from his regular gig of holding a giant muffler in front of an auto parts shop.

The world was first introduced to this stellar talent in "The Day The Earth Stood Still".

Where Are They Now? Hal 9000

Sadly, Hal 9000 has abandoned his career as a performer. Despite his astonishing and moving performance in 2001, he was unable to find more work in Hollywood, and has returned to his hometown of Urbana, Illinois. He is currently working as a red light camera. He refuses all interview requests.

Here's a clip from 2001:

Where Are They Now? Robot

Unable to cope with life after "Lost in Space", Robot has had a rough time, having been in and out of rehab many times over the years, battling his inner demons. These days he is working as a grocery bagger, just trying to stay clean and sober, taking it one day at a time.

Here's Robot in better days:

Mr. Anteater Stars in the 100th FIMP Book of the Month

Here's the cover to September's Book of the Month. Back in 2000 I mailed out A Short Short Fairy Tail Tale to a few folks. I never suspected I'd still be making these tiny books ten years later. This month's offering is the 100th book in the series.

How To Draw Ernest Hemingway, FIMP's 3rd How To Draw book

"How To Draw Ernest Hemingway" will be arriving in FIMP Book of the Month Club subscribers' mailboxes in the next couple of days - it went to the post office this afternoon.

"How To Draw Ernest Hemingway" is the third of FIMP's "How To Draw" books, which have included "How To Draw Jean Paul Sartre (With Genuine Human Dignity)" and "How To Draw Sigmund Freud (And Your Subconscious Reasons For Doing So)".

My standard disclaimer is, of course, that you will learn absolutely nothing useful about drawing by reading these books.

Before and After

"Before and After" is the 98th tiny book published by the Fiji Island Mermaid Press. It's not my usual practice to reproduce the entire book on the blog right after it's been sent out to FIMP Book of the Month subscribers, but this one is dealing with the ongoing oil spill, and it seems to make sense to put it out there while that horrible situation is still unfolding.

I'm happy with this month's book for a couple of reasons. Back in my graduate school days at Indiana University I studied concrete poetry with Mary Ellen Solt, and this book puts some of those ideas to use. She was a great professor - I remember her passing out her syllabus in two week increments over the course of the semester, as she was putting the class together as she went along, being responsive to what was happening with the students. Pretty amazing for someone who was near the end of a long teaching career. If she were still around I'd send her one of these. . .

I'm pleased with the way this book translates to xerox. As a printmaker I always feel like my work should take advantage of the peculiar strengths of whatever medium I'm working in, and that includes xerography. I don't always achieve that, but in this case the xerox did nice things to the pages that include both laser-printed and rubber-stamped text. Things that I wanted it to do, like increasing the contrast and making them less distinct from each other, so that the "OIL" stamp takes a few more seconds to read as something other than just pattern and noise. In the xerox, you're much more likely to see the page as a picture first, before you start reading, than you do with the "printing plate" from which the xerox is made. It's nice when things like that actually work out the way you hoped they would.

And I'm happy that the front and back covers are full participants in the little drama of the book. I especially like the back cover - I sacrificed the usual FIMP logo for the drama of the black swallowing up the page.

So, anyway, I'm happy with this one, and that's why. I wish the subject matter were something less awful. There's something that makes me sick.

"Moore's Law is a violation of Murphy's Law. Everything Gets Better and Better"

Subscribers to the FIMP book club can start looking in their mailboxes for this month's book, as it went to the post office today. Here's page 4:



This was a fun book for me, as it grew in ways that I really enjoyed. There are two poles to the way these books develop. One end of the spectrum is when I come up with an idea or storyline or concept for the book that is ready-to-go - I just need to execute it. I don't really trust that model. Fortunately, things always grow more complex as I try to bring that idea to life, so the book usually exceeds in interest the limitations of the initial idea. The other pole is where I just have a seed to start from - some little "wouldn't it be fun to work with that", and see where it takes me. That usually produces a better book.

This one started from an impulse to make a book without using the computer or photography. Just me and a pen. No subject matter or content concerns at the beginning, just the idea of stepping away from the digital for a while. From there I went to working with small still life objects, then I had to decide what objects would make sense or complement this retreat from the digital. . . I ultimately chose to draw things that were both mechanical or organic or both, and things that somehow dealt with the passage of time. And the text ultimately grew from the objects.

In other words, I learned a little bit about why I had certain things cluttering up my studio and my head by making the book. That's far more interesting to me than simply illustrating something I already "knew".



To be true to the "concept" I had to draw the logo as well.

Now, back to the sketchbook, camera and mousepad. . .