JaMiE BaKeR: fallout

Here are some doodles of a cat… a character that will get its own mini comic some day.

I am slowly hacking my way out of the dark forest of Multilateral Hardware Malfunctions, which is where I have been wandering, frightened and alone, for the past few weeks.

My lap top is back in working order and, though not as fast as it once was, it at least runs again, and it appears that all the data has been retrieved. I still haven’t given up hope that all the EXTRA data, that only exists on my Back-up Hard-drive, can also somehow be dug out of the murk of ones and zeroes… It is on the operating table this week, so fingers crossed.

This is a sketch I did during this year’s APE show. Rafael Navarro has been keeping a CAPTAIN AMERICA sketchbook where he asks other people to draw his favourite super-hero, and this was my contribution. In retrospect, I should have drawn Captain America with Barack Obama’s face!

Due to my continuing computer troubles (the meltdown of both my G4 laptop and my backup hard-drive in the same month) I was not able to reprint some of my old mini comics, nor do the scanning and formatting for a new comic that I had planned to release at this years APE convention. Despite all those let-downs I had an enjoyable show.

I spent most of the show at my table hawking the old wares, chatting with friends and doing some sketches and though I was mainly booth-bound, I did manage to pick up a few good books during my brief breaks. ROCKET TOWN by Bob Logan, both BOOK PLATE and BELLE DU JOUR by Bill Presing, DEREKMONSTER ANNUAL 2008 by Derek Thompson and also Keith Knight’s THE COMPLETE K CHRONICLES.

The after-show socialising was especially fun this year. On the Saturday, a group of us went to HENRY’s Hunan, where we dined like Emperors, and then saw the CROM show at the nearby VARNISH gallery; an exhibition of artwork inspired by the movie CONAN. On Sunday night, we had dinner at ZANTE’s Indian Pizza in the Mission district, followed by Mitchell’s ice cream, and then walked to a nearby park where the Day of the Dead parade terminates. This event was much better attended than in previous years, and there was a LOT of creativity on display in the altars and people in skeleton costumes.. Perhaps this event has grown as the San Francisco Halloween festivities have gone sour…

Even though I heard some people grumbling about the date change (from April to October) in my view, the fact that APE 2008 took place on the same weekend as both Halloween and Day of the Dead was an extra special treat this year.