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MEATHAUS Go For the Gold 4
Edited by Chris McD
Meathaus
Meathaus is the best comics collective ever and this gigantic textbook of sketchbook drawings is basically a who's who of the best current illustrators, animators, and cartoonists. It's fucking great and I should know seeing as I'm in it. James Jean, Tomer Hanuka, Mu Pan, Tom Herpich, Arik Roper, Me (Nick Gazin), Angie Wang, and so on contributed pages. This is a must for any art director out there and anyone who’s trying to figure out how to draw. The Meathaus sketchbook anthologies will make you want to draw. This thing is mammoth and good to the last drop. I asked Meathaus's Chris McD about this book. Chris McD is pretty much holding down the Meathaus fort at this point.

Chris McD: No it didn't replace the comics anthology. I put out the Go For The Golds because I can, I mean it is within my reach. It is a project I can initiate, put together, and print-on-demand all within a month or two whenever I get the urge. I mean, it all relies on the premise that neat artists are willing to send in their sketchbook work in exchange for a single crummy contributor's copy, but everyone has been really excited to be part of it. Good feelings all around. And the sales pressure is basically not bad because eventually over a few years I sell enough to make back the cost of the printing and shipping out all those copies internationally. Breaking even is success in small press.
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Outside of interaction with people via the website, I'm not sure what Meathaus really means to people out there these days. Seems like there is a general awareness amongst the comics crowd that it exists. Often that's about it. Student-types sometimes stop by at comics shows and seem to have a sort of reverence for the concept of Meathaus, which I think is funny, but good. Meathaus may have served its purpose to our oldest members and run its course in a lot of ways. But I'm keeping these certain aspects going because they are important to me.
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I don't know how happy it makes you but I believe it. What kind of major decisions? Oh wait… did I hear that is why you went to SVA? That has to have happened a few times at least. They should pay for our next issue.


Sasquatch's Big Hairy Drawing Book
Chris McDonnel
Chronicle Books

Chris McD: : First, I put together 20 pages over a week as a pitch. Then, when Chronicle said they would publish it, I spent a few months drawing it straight through and then a few weeks this past winter working on the cover designs until we got it right.Why is it called Sasquatch's book but then it seems like the ghost character is in it more?
Early on my editor, Jay Sacher, pulled the title out of one of the pages in the book. It was "Why Is Sasquatch Crying?" where you draw or write in what is making Sasquatch cry on the opposite page. We were going with that for a while until some decision makers at Chronicle asked for ideas that were more descriptive about the book's function as a drawing book. Also, the word "doodle" was blacklisted because there is a glut of doodle books.
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I self-rejected a spread where you would have had to draw lines between these inbred mutant hillbillies to indicate who you thought should marry whom. I thought that just drawing lines wasn't fun enough to justify the whole thing.I love this book but I hate the idea of drawing in it. I like it as it is.
Give it to some kid and they'll break it in for you. No problem.Are your kids old enough to enjoy this book?
My younger kid is eight months old so he's going to have to wait to try it but my older kid who is three and a half loves the book and proudly shows people "daddy" in the book (pointing to the ghost character). He made some cool drawings in the book this week and titled one of them "Pooh Dog" which I thought was hilarious. The moment I realized that other people probably think it is suited for older than three-year-olds was when he brought his copy to pre-school to share and the toddler's teacher starts thumbing through some pages that include monsters, alcohol references, and speedo-bulges and then stops on a page with a clam opened up wide with its feeding tube extended and just stares at it saying “What IS that?"Previously - Nick Gazin's Comic Book Love-In #32
