Nick Gazin's Comic Love-In #31

Hi Everybody,

I usually like to tell you about how great a week it was for comics but I don't really know what happened over the past week. In New York we had this fake hurricane sham happen and my neighborhood was evacuated. I spent four days trapped in a humid and damp basement in Midwood with three sweaty people and it almost turned into a Lord of the Flies kind of situation. I started playing a game called Dunkeroo, in which I dunk my dick in someone's glass of wine while they're out of the room and when they come back I show them a photo of it while they're sipping. Dunkaroo!

I'll be roaming around DragonCon this week with some other VICE guys and the Black Lips. Feel free to say hi if you see me. I'll be cosplaying as GG Allin. We'll be looking for anything interesting to cover, so if you are going to be there and know about some good stuff happening, e-mail me at Gazin@viceland.com.

Here's some comics news:

1) Wacom made this thing called the Inkling. It digitally scans your drawings while you draw on paper with ink. I am interested but also wary. Wacom is always trying to make digital drawing more natural and the things they make are necessary. I have to try it before I can say that this is a great tool or just a novelty that will only serve to limit people's natural creative inclinations. I am hoping that this technology doesn't make you draw a fucking ugly, shitty robot like the one in the image above. That is a bad sample drawing to use for a product image. If they had put a good drawing in the ad then people would be able to imagine themselves drawing something that isn't awful.

2) Look at these awesome dolls based on the 1989 Batman movie. What amazing toys. One of the happiest days of my young life was Christmas 1989, the day I received--in addition to an NES--the crude Kenner Batman and Joker action figures, as well as the Batmobile and Batwing. I'd still be happy to be given those things. I think a lot of the people I went to high school with own homes and have spouses now. I'm so fucking fucked.

3) Some guys made Wolverine-style glove knives that you can really own and really kill people with. Let's not forget that what makes Wolverine a hero is the razors that pop out of his fists that he kills people with. For a mere 30 bucks you can murder people just like one of comics’ favorite heroes! If you buy these, your kids will inevitably be dead within days. These are definitely going to sharply increase the amount of deaths where the last thing the victim hears is “Hey, check this out!”

Gang Bang Bong #2
Edited by Ines Estrada and Ginette LaPalme
Gang Bang Bong

This week I am focusing my review on just one book, Gang Bang Bong #2. I was in Gang Bang Bong #1, which was a slender pamphlet. This second issue is a meaty perfect bound monster. Somehow I was not invited to contribute in this one even though the bitches who edit it are supposedly my friends. Goddamn you cute girls with your talent and charms and looks and likeability! I know I'm like the Grinch who wrecked comics but you should be nice to me because I'll pay you! RAHHHHHH! I'm getting worked up here. Gotta calm down.

Ines Estrada was born and lives in Mexico city, and she is one of the sweetheart geniuses of comics. Ginette Lapalme is also a sweet genius and she is from Toronto or some other similar shithole from that awful snowhell to the north we call Canada. Together they edit this bilingual comic, which features translations that run along the bottom of the pages—so you're in luck if you want to read this thing and speak either Spanish or English.

There's a smorgasbord of comics both good and bad in here. None of them are by me, though. If you wanted to buy this book because you liked my comic in the previous one and hoped for more of me then you are in for some disappointment. HOWEVER, if you hated my last comic and thought it looked like I drew the whole thing in a couple of hours then you can go fuck yourself and also you can buy this comic and also it took me an hour and a half.

I decided to interview Ines Estrada because she is so cute and talented and there's probably only a scant amount of time before her success eclipses mine and I want to try to steal her away from her boyfriend before she has a million dollars.

Why is it called Gang Bang Bong?
I don’t really know. Ginette and I were bouncing name ideas off of each other and this one stood up. I like how it sounds like kids’ blabber without meaning, and how people (and myself) usually end up mixing it up when writing or saying it out loud.

Gang Bang Bong sounds like a kid's blabbering to you, but it also combines gang bangs and bongs, which are points of interest for teenage boys.
Well then I share the interests of such teenage boys.

I was in Gang Bang Bong #1. Why was I not invited to be in #2?
I want every issue to have different people. Also, we used a quote from your previous review for the back of this issue, so you could say you are in it, at least in spirit.

I guess being quoted on the back counts as "being in it."
Yep!

VICE Mexico may be hiring you to do comics work for them. Are you trying to steal my job?
Not really, but now that you mention it, how do you think I would go about getting your job? I would love to get free comics. Not superhero ones though, those suck.

That's why you'll never have my job. You have to like all the comic genres to be a true expert.
Exactly.

As a Spanish, what do you think of Jonny Negron? As I like to repeat, that guy is a mystery to me.
I think he is the kind of guy who doesn't really care if his work gets out there or not. He draws to please himself and to release himself of inner thoughts and dreams. I don't know him much, though. That's just what I can feel through the internet. Judging from the little interaction I've had with him, he seems like a really nice guy who likes good post-punk bands.

I think his work is very tropical, and the people I've shown his work to here have loved it immensely. But that might just be because it is very good.

Also, I am not Spanish. Their language just happens to be my mother tongue.

Tell me about Michael DeForge's comic.
DeForge's comic is a funny joke that actually misled a few people into emailing me asking about submissions. The only true thing in it is that we might come from another planet. Maybe.

Tell me about your comic.
I don't have a comic in this issue. Ginette LaPalme did this sweet one-pager about two lovers dying eternally, one for the other, and I just painted on top of it. I also did the inside cover, which gives a different perspective to Ginette's cover.

Tell me about Lala's drawing.
I told Lala to do the index page because I love how her stuff is always illegible. This might be the worst reason for getting someone to do an index page, but it turned out really nice and, surprisingly, it is readable!

Tell me about Anthony Cudahy's comic.
What is interesting to me about Tony's work is that it seems to be very static. He displays these fleeting moments filled with obscure feelings…. I don't know, I like how he makes a narrative out of no narrative at all.

Tell me about Benjamin Sea's comic.
Benjamin always makes stories about weird characters who seem to be very anxious and always talk funny. I like his sense of humor and I've always been amazed by his control of the brush and ink.

Tell me about Lizz Hickey's comic.
Lizz Hickey also makes weird characters who talk funny, though hers seem to take on a more sporadic plane. I don't know if this is how she works, but when you read her comics it feels as if she makes them as they come to her, without any planning beforehand, which results in this very fresh style.

Can I be in Gang Bang Bong #3?
Maybe? I'm not sure… I want every issue to have different contributors. And by the way, I can tell you that the next issue is going to be triple better… we're still planning it out, but if everything goes as expected, it will be printed in three fluo inks…

How are you so cute?
If that's what you think then you shouldn't need an explanation.

And that's my interview with Ines. You can get Gang Bang Bong at their website.

Previously - Nick Gazin's Comic Book Love-In #30