Comics I Admire: “Quarterly Stories”

Today, I am pleased to present Joshua Kemble and his new online graphic novel Two Stories.

I stumbled across the website Quarterly Stories whilst on my search for autobiographical/non-fiction webcomics. I’m not sure how I came across this amazing work, but I sure am glad I did.

Two Stories is an autobiographical graphic novel that deals with themes of “…life, love, loss, and depression.” As far as I can tell, the novel will consist of a series of short stories that are all autobiographical, but will be presented in various styles, tones, and genres (“serious to silly”).

Not only are Josh’s illustrations absolutely stunning, full of texture and movement, but his storytelling is powerful and compelling. For this first chapter, it is not just a story of attempted suicide, but more astonishingly a step-by-step examination of the protagonist/author’s thought process — a complex mind that makes connections (from Shakespeare to It’s A Wonderful Life and back to reality) and plays tricks on itself (“The Suicide Game” on page 4).

Josh is a Xeric Award-winning cartoonist who works as a freelance illustrator as well as an adjunct professor at Laguna College of Art and Design. With such an impressive background and body of work, I’m expecting Two Stories to be quickly snatched up by publishers.

The following images belong to Joshua Kemble.

For more Quarterly Stories and Joshua Kemble, please check out the following websites…

quarterlystories.com

joshuakemble.com

www.facebook.com/pages/Joshua-Kemble-Illustrations/130292550362837

Store: joshuakemble.com/?page_id=241

Numb: www.amazon.com/Numb-Lost-Love-Broken-Memories/dp/B002O746WA

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Copyright 2013 by G. E. Gallas

Celebrating 100 Posts!

I can’t believe it, but this is my 100th post to gegallas.wordpress.com!!

I started this blog in March of last year, not knowing where it would take me. It’s quite incredible how many amazing people are here on WordPress and that they have and continue to visit my humble blog.

For my 100th post, I’d like to share a drawing I’ve been meaning to squeeze in somewhere for a long time. This drawing is from August 2011, but really marks the point at which I discovered, after a long hiatus due to college, that I could enjoy drawing again.

For my 100th post, I’d like to ask two important but simple favors from my readers:

1. For those of you who have yet to check out my graphic novel The Poet and the Flea, it would be a great honor if you would go over to thepoetandtheflea.wordpress.com and check it out!
   
2. If you’d like to receive notifications on Facebook about my new WordPress posts, please follow/like me at www.facebook.com/gegallas!

By the way, if you’re interested in checking out my 99 previous posts, head over to the contents page by either clicking on “contents” at the top of this blog or by clicking the following link: gegallas.wordpress.com/contents.

Thank you very much and I look forward to writing the next hundred posts of this blog!!!

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Copyright 2013 by G. E. Gallas

Brief Update

★ Don’t forget to check out my graphic novel, The Poet and the Flea!

A new page every Wednesday!

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Here is a brief update on my current creative projects and endeavors…!

Wednesday, January 9th

1. E-mails, e-mails, e-mails…!
2. Worked on Elias & the City of Cats.
   
3. Worked on first zine!
4. Received my fourth nomination for The Beautiful Blogger Award!

Thursday, January 10th

1. E-mails, e-mails, e-mails…!
2. Worked on Elias & the City of Cats.
   
3. Continued work on first zine.

Friday, January 11th

1. E-mails, e-mails, e-mails…!
   
2. Worked on Elias & the City of Cats.
3. Continued work on first zine.
4. Today, set up an interview for a potential internship at a local publishing company! The interview’s Wednesday afternoon, so I have some time to prepare and de-stress beforehand.

Saturday, January 12th

1. Was going to go see Gangster Squad this weekend with Wes. But I’m definitely coming down with something. Hope I get better before the interview on Wednesday! ヽ(￣д￣;)ノ
2. I’m sure you’ve all heard about and seen the amazing giant squid footage recently captured by Japanese scientists. Well, I made a giant squid discovery of my own (see photograph below)! P. S. I love the Japanese word for giant squid – 大王烏賊 daiouika, which uses the characters for “big,” “king,” “crow/raven” (perhaps because squids have beaks), and “rebel/thief/bandit.” Yes, giant squid are awesome!!

Resident Squid at Woodhouse Fish Co.

Sunday, January 13th

1. Under the weather!
2. I just had to share something amazing with all of you. Recently, I’ve started watching a very strange show called Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy. The only way to describe it is Monty Python meets a live-action version of Yellow Submarine plus an unverified amount of crack. You might want to watch the whole episode if you’ve never seen it before to understand the humor. But I wanted to point you all in the direction of a skit about William Blake and The Ghost of a Flea (like The Poet and the Flea, but not)! Watch from 7:50 for The Flea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvx4QLHGUCs

Monday, January 14th

1. Worked on Elias & the City of Cats.
2. Continued work on first zine.
3. Prepared a bit for interview on Wednesday!

Tuesday, January 15th

1. Worked on Elias & the City of Cats.
2. Continued work on first zine.
3. Worked on preliminary design for  The Flea plush toy!!

Wednesday, January 16th

• Successful interview at Zest Books — will be starting internship at the end of the month!!!

Thursday, January 17th

1. Discovered this amazing review of The Poet and the Flea by Sarah Goode at University College Oxford on the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies’s website!
2. Correspondence with The Blake Society.

Friday, January 18th

1. Brief but great meeting with Gabe! He seemed to really love what I’ve done so far on the final illustrations for Elias & the City of Cats. He didn’t make any changes other than adding a handwritten title to the cover and adding a second page for the part we call “cat craziness.” Plus, I sent Gabe a list of children’s book publishers I’ve compiled and he’ll look over it in the coming days. It’s wonderful to think that, once I’ve finished the final illustrations, Gabe will start working on submitting Elias to publishers!!! 
2. Began reading Wes’s screenplay!!

Saturday, January 19th

• Continued reading Wes’s screenplay!!

Sunday, January 20th

1. Received some amazing news — more details to come!
2. Saw Gangster Squad with Wes! Both of us agree that it wasn’t as bad as the 33% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Monday, January 21st

1. E-mails, e-mails, e-mails…!
2. Finished reading Wes’s screenplay!! Going to meet on Wednesday to go over it with him. (^-^)
3. Nominated for The Liebster Award for a second time!

Tuesday, January 22nd

1. E-mails, e-mails, e-mails…!
2. Worked on Elias & the City of Cats.
3. Submitted The Poet and the Flea to The Belfry WebComics Index.
4. Nominated for The Versatile Blogger Award!

Wednesday, January 23rd

1. Discussed screenplay with Wes today! I think he has a really strong screenplay (especially for a first draft) and already knows which elements need to be further developed. (︶ω︶)
2. Received Amazon order — William Blake’s Divine Comedy Illustrations and Charles Burns’s Black Hole!

Thursday, January 24th

• Worked on Elias & the City of Cats.

Friday, January 25th

1. Worked on Elias & the City of Cats.
2. Worked on preliminary design for  The Flea plush toy!!

Saturday, January 26th

1. Helped my mom, the abstract artist Irene Zweig, deliver her paintings to Gallerie Citi in Burlingame where she will be featured in a show sometime this Spring. You can visit Gallerie Citi’s homepage to learn more and even visit my mom’s profile on their page.
2. Had dinner with a lovely relative from out of town.

Sunday, January 27th

1. Had brunch with our lovely cousins.
2. Date night with Wes!

Etcetera

• The Poet and the Flea: 63 pages of written script (1 page of script = 4-6 illustrated pages), and about 36 pages (1-24, 27-30 completed, and 25-26, 31-36 in progress) of illustrated work.
• The First Reich: about 1-10 pages of illustrated work in progress.
• First Zine: about 6-8 pages of illustrated work in progress.

To Do:

• Add more information to my Behance.net profile.
• Add more information to my Coroflot.com profile.
• Continue adding blog content to The First Reich.
• Continue to work on The First Reich.
• Continue to work on Elias & The City of Cats.
• Complete script for The Poet and the Flea.

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Copyright 2013 by G. E. Gallas

The Liebster Award: 2nd Nomination!

My head is spinning from all these award nominations!

Thank you so much to Eszter (felteddreams.wordpress.com) for nominating me a second time for the Liebster Award! Don’t forget to check out Eszter’s amazing felt/embroidery/quilting creations.

To view the post from my first nomination, click here.

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Rules

1. Post eleven facts about yourself.
2. Answer the questions the tagger has set for you and create eleven questions for people you’ve nominated.
3. Choose eleven people to give this award to and link them in your post.
4. Go to their page and tell them.

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Eszter’s Quetions

1. What inspired you to start blogging?

Well, I started this particular blog to keep track of my various creative projects and to organize my thoughts a bit.

2. Is there one thing you wish you could change about yourself, what would it be?

I’m never good at answering this sort of question. Even if I could magically change something about myself, I don’t think I would.

3. If you could meet someone famous who is still living who would it be?

This is a really tough question because I don’t want to jinx my chances at Cannes.

4. What was the most interesting class you ever took in school?

Another tough question since I went to New York University: Gallatin School of Individualized Study and took a number of amazing courses including “Dante’s World,” “Virtue and Villainy: Melodrama,” and “Globalization: Promises and Discontents.” The most life-changing class I ever took was “Yellow Peril: Documenting & Understanding Xenophobia” taught by the amazing Jack Tchen. For this class, I wrote a painstakingly researched 25-page paper (plus 5 pages of works cited) about Gwen Stefani’s Harajuku Girls. Jack’s new book Yellow Peril: Understanding Fears of “the East” and What We Can Do About It is coming out at the end of February, so check it out if you’re interested!

5. What did you want to be when you were little?

I think I always wanted to be a comic book artist/graphic novelist/mangaka since I was in elementary school up through high school graduation. I drifted away from comics/graphic novels/manga in college, but as you can tell from The Poet and the Flea have regained my passion.

6. If you could decorate your work-space however you wanted, what would be your feature color?

Well, when I moved to San Francisco, I really got to decorate my workspace and I wouldn’t really change a thing (other than that it sometimes gets way too hot and there’s no air-conditioning). My room is mostly made of various shades of blue with splashes of yellow, tan, and salmon. It’s pretty funky!

7. If your life were a book, what would be the title?

Radiant Pessimist™ (this will also be the name of my future production company — I have Laurence Harvey to thank for that one).

8. What one happy memory do you have always coming to mind?

I don’t really have one memory that always comes to mind. But I recently thought of a childhood memory (when I was maybe six or seven years old) that I really hadn’t thought of for a long time — me and my dad bobbing in the ocean off of Kiawah Island. I remember that my nose was really runny, ha ha ha.

9. Do you prefer to read actual books or use an E-reader?

Actual books, hands down! It’s just not the same experience with an e-reader. The tactile feeling of a book, the smell of it, the typography and placement on the page, the action of turning from page to page… I really have a hard time reading on my iPad.

10. If you could keep only one item from your wardrobe, what would it be?

I’ve only worn it once, but the skirt of the prom outfit my grandmother made me. She died September 2011, so I’m extremely reluctant to let it go.

11. If you win some millions in lottery, what would be the first thing you buy?

I wouldn’t “buy” anything per se. I’d rather fund a full-length film of either my own script or that of a close friend.

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Nominations

Can’t I just nominate all my followers? You’re all so awesome and talented!

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My Questions

I liked the questions I wrote last time, so I’ll use them again…

1. What is the strangest dream you’ve ever had?
2. What is/was your favorite subject in school?
3. When you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up?
4. Who is your role model?
5. What is your favorite holiday?
6. What is your least favorite vegetable?
7. What is your guilty pleasure?
8. Are you an optimist or pessimist?
9. What are your short-term goals/New Year’s resolutions?
10. What did you last eat?
11. Do you have any special and/or bizarre talents?

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Copyright 2013 by G. E. Gallas

Note on the Taishō Period

For many years, I have been fascinated by modern Japan — everything from the Meiji period (1868 – 1912) to current day. One of my favorite periods is a rather short one known as Taishō (1912 – 1926). What strikes me most about Taishō is the amazing blend of Japanese and Western aesthetics.

I think my interest in Taishō really began when I read Yukio Mishima’s novel Spring Snow (Haru no Yuki). This novel is actually a period piece — published in 1969, but set around 1912 – 1914. Mishima gives a detailed look at the Japanese class system of the period through a romantic tragedy (although I’m not sure Mishima saw this story as such).

My interest in Taishō developed further through a series of college courses on modern Japanese literature. I even did a project involving costume designs for a Taishō-set short story, involving research on fashion of the period from Kimonos and beyond.

I also find advertisements from this period interesting. Actually, the Shiseido ads from the 1900s through the 1930s are really remarkable! You can find out more about these ads on MIT’s Visualizing Cultures website.

Anyway, I just wanted to share a number of my favorite images:

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the following images!!

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Copyright 2012 by G. E. Gallas

Tchotchkes

I created this post a while back, but I only just now got around to completing it.

The other day, I decided to photograph a series of tchotchkes that inhabit my room. I think you can tell a lot about someone from their room/house, especially by what kind of items are just sitting around collecting dust.

For those unfamiliar with the word “tchotchkes”…

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a “tchotchke” is a knickknack, trinket, bauble, doodad, curiosity, etc. The word is Yiddish and, according to Wikipedia, “…has long been used by Jewish-Americans and in the regional speech of New York City and elsewhere.” Furthermore, according to Wikipedia, “Depending on context, the term has a connotation of worthlessness or disposability, as well as tackiness…”

I don’t really consider these things “worthless” or “disposable,” because each object comes with its own memory and nostalgia. But, as you may observe, these objects definitely err on the side of “tacky.”

(Click on images to enlarge.)

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Copyright 2012 by G. E. Gallas

A Bit More About Me

I thought that perhaps readers might want to learn a bit more about me. So I took the time to write this!

P.S. I took these questions from an internet meme… I’m not sure where they originate from, but I give full credit to whoever created them (although I edited them a little bit). Thanks!

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If you could build a second house anywhere, where would it be?

I really wouldn’t want to own or build a second house — one house is more than enough for me. But, if I could, I would love to live for a period somewhere Scandinavian. Copenhagen? Stockholm? Or maybe even in Belgium, like Antwerp. I also really need to visit England to do some William Blake research for my graphic novel The Poet and the Flea. I’ve already lived in Manhattan and Tokyo, and I hope I can return there in the future. Also, I really must visit Barcelona to see my beloved friend Elena!!

What are your favorite articles of clothing?

Umm, this is a tough question. I admire fashion as an art form, but I have a hard time finding clothes for myself. I guess a more-or-less constant staple of my wardrobe are Vans shoes. Usually quirky ones with multi-colored checkers. Right now, I have a pair with cherries, another silvery pair, and another with blue and pink hearts from St. Valentine’s Day. Also, I’ve been wearing my Vivienne Westwood orb locket for about five years now.

The Last CDs You Bought?

“The Black Belles” by The Black Belles and all of Heavenstamp‘s EPs.

What is your favorite kitchen appliance?

I practically lived off toast my final semester of college. And I’m loving all the sourdough bread in San Francisco. So I’m going to go with “toaster.”

If you could play an instrument, what would it be?

I actually used to play cello — started when I was four years old and stopped after about twelve years. I never really enjoyed playing, but the experience definitely taught me to appreciate music of all kinds. Playing the whimsical Bohemian pieces of David Popper always brought me the most joy. If I had the patience for another instrument, I might learn the piano just so that I could play Igor Stravinsky and Franz Liszt. Or, if I had been born a man, I’d like to be a bass opera singer like Samuel Ramey.

Favorite color?

Since childhood, I’ve always favored blue. But nowadays everyone would accuse me of being passionate about the color black.

Which vehicle do you prefer, sports car, motorcycle, or SUV?

Vespa. Absolutely.

Do you believe in the afterlife?

You do realize you’re asking a Jewish Atheist?

Favorite children’s book?

Not exactly children’s books per se, but I always read the works of Edward Gorey as a child. I remember being upset when he died back in 2000 (I must have been about 11 years old). Once The Poet and the Flea is up online, anyone familiar with Gorey’s work will probably be able to tell how much he has influenced my own style.

What is your favorite season?

Fall, especially October. My birthday is October 19. And there are lot’s of other awesome birthdays (Oct. 1st, Laurence Harvey’s; Oct 2nd, my mom’s; Oct 3rd, Tetsuya’s [L'Arc~en~ciel]; Oct. 4th, Jeremy Blake’s, etcetera.). Plus, I’ve always enjoyed Halloween. The only downside is what follows: winter. I love the cold, but I can’t stand the holiday season. As Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) says: “Twelve days of Christmas? One day of Christmas is loathsome enough!”

If you have a tattoo, what is it?

Not only would I be disowned if I got a tattoo, but more significantly I am 100% certain I would be allergic to not only the ink but also the needle used in tattooing (I have extremely sensitive skin and a serious metal allergy… not long ago, I tried on a metal bracelet and felt it immediately burning my skin!). But I have a lot of interest and respect for tattoos in various cultures (Maori, etc.). I mean, Eastern Promises (2007) is up there on my favorite movie list!

If you could have one superpower, what would it be?

To learn every nuance of every language, and keep them all in my head.

Can you juggle?

I used to have one of those Klutz juggling books… but no.

What is under your bed?

Currently, a gigantic blue portfolio box full of valuable fine art collected by my Opah (grandfather) when he was alive. I’m talking about Reginald Marsh, Philippe Halsman, and the likes.

Which do you prefer, sushi or hamburger?

You do realize you’re asking someone who lived in Tokyo for a year? Sushi, clearly. Especially the kaiten (conveyor belt) variety.

What is your dream job?

From a very young age, my dream has always been to become a comic book artist. For the past few years, I’ve dreamed of becoming a screenwriter. Now, I’m trying to make both come true.

What age do you plan to retire?

Never.

Something you would like to do that you have never done before?

Attend a film festival… especially one screening a film I wrote. I think this will happen sooner than I expect.

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Desert Island Movies (à la Stage32.com)

“What if you could only watch the same 10 films… forever?”

1. The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
2. In Bruges (2008)
3. Gemini/Souseiji (1999)
4. The Constant Gardener (2005)
5. The Brothers Bloom (2008)
6. The Darjeeling Limited (2007)
7. Mystery Men (1999)
8. The Fall (2006)
9. Adam’s Apples/Adams æbler (2005)
10. Topsy-Turvey (1999)

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Copyright 2012 by G. E. Gallas