Carnaval
Block parties, street parades, ballroom live music, dancing in the rooftop downtown, and dancing in the old garage turned theater turned nightclub.
Reading a friend’s new comic book, reading comics from Europe and from the US, putting the finishing touches on the script we have to send the letterer of one of the comics, with the placement recommendations, writing the final pages of a chapter, making a warm up drawing to mark this time of my life, to later remember that, among all the work, I was living, and I was happy.
As I try to balance working at the drawing board in the peaceful quietness of my studio with the craziness of Carnaval going on all around me for the next two or three weeks, I won’t be writing new letters in February. Life calls for you during Carnaval, and sometimes you just have to answer such calls.
Life on Mars
I watched the recent Cartoonist Kayfabe interview with my buddy Paul Pope with avid interest.
One of the stories I did that was published in our De:TALES anthology has the clear mark of me being in contact with Paul’s work for the first time, back in 2001. It was called “Other words” and it was a silent tale which focused a lot in the gestual side of drawing and storytelling, inspired specially by the work Paul was doing on THB 6abcd.
Bá and I met Paul through our mutual editor at the time, Bob Schreck. While Bob was talking to us about doing something at DC ( which eventually became Daytripper), he was editing Pope’s Batman Year 100. We went to New York in 2005 to meet Bob after our annual trip to San Diego Comic Con, and Bob contacted Paul and said “I’m seeing these Brazilians I think you should meet”. We ended up going out with Paul and experienced a side of Manhattan straight out of his stories: mysterious and sexy.
Back in 2011, Paul was a guest of the Rio Comic Con. At the last minute, he had personal problems and couldn’t make it to Brazil – he ended up coming only in 2017, to Recife, and have been in São Paulo many times since –, but he made it “in spirit” as a character of the comic strip Bá and I used to publish weekly at Folha de São Paulo, Brazil’s biggest newspaper. The strip we did, which came out on the weekend of the convention in Rio, featured Paul (and Schreck, who was also a guest and did make it).
Listening to Paul’s interview, I remembered how his curiosity towards art in general always distinguished his work from a lot of his peers, and his desire to incorporate elements from outside the traditional medium of American comics, trying to expand the medium in the process, was something I found refreshing and relatable.
A lot has changed in the landscape of comics in the last decades since Paul and I started out, and the diversity of styles and themes has only increased. Still, after I watched the entire interview, I kept thinking about the curiosity and the desire to push boundaries, experiment and dare to try new things, and I don’t see that so much in the newer generation of cartoonists.
What are you doing to improve your work, and improve your medium? What are you not sure how to do, but is doing anyway, risking failure?
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(in this other video, we get a glimpse of Paul' Pope’s studio while he talks a little about his interests and his process)
Final Season
February started with the first look of the forth and last season of The Umbrella Academy Netflix series. Netflix released a trailer of what to expect in 2024, with a bit of the scene shown in the picture above. Bá is thumbnailing a fight scene for the Umbrella comic this week.
Be safe. Be kind. Be curious.
Pa-ZOW!
Fábio Moon
Moon Base, São Paulo
February 5th, 2024