Family Style on Thing-A-Day

Just so you know, founding Family members Jonas Madden-Connor and François Vigneault are posting daily drawings (and other creative artifacts) over at Thing-A-Day. It's a really fun month-long project in which hundreds of very diverse creators (including some cartoonist friends like Ryan Germick, Rina Ayuyang, Brian Kaas, Hob, Laterborn, and MariNaomi) make a commitment to do some creative project each day and post it to a communal blog... Lots of interesting and enjoyable stuff, very inspiring!

Two New Titles in the Store!

Over the weekend Family Style premired two new creations at the Indy Euphoria show in Sacramento, and they are now both available in the Family Style store:


Our good pal Nick St. John keeps cranking out top-notch stories, his latest, following close on the heels of last year's Mr. Mortiz, is a often funny but ultimately somber look at the yawning gulf that so often exists between our dreams and reality, How I Came To Work at the Wendy's. Highly reccomended!



Second, we have another great issue of François Vigneault's ongoing nature journal series, Bird Brain #3! Lots of the usual elegant black and white illustrations and journal enteries, but this issue also features a gorgeous color centerfold, too! For preview images and ongoing updates, check out the Bird Brain Journals.

Family Style will be rocking it at the first-ever Indy Euphoria show in Sacramento, an interesting mash-up of the indy comix and vinyl toy worlds... We've staked out a space along with some of our favorite creators: PS Comics, Damien Jay, Susie Cagle, Jason Martin, Josh Frankel, Andrice Arp, and Jesse Reklaw, and we'll be neighboring the great Portland publishing house Sparkplug Comics! Whew! They've also got some great special guests from these different facets of the indy/DIY art scene, including Jim Woodring, Jeffery Brown, Tom Neely... should definitely be a fun show!

Oh! And of course we are premiereing a couple of wee books for the show, too! François will have the newest instalment of Bird Brain, and Nick St. John just completed a fantastic new comic called "How I Came to Work at Wendy's", and we'll have both on sale this weekend! See you in Sacramento!

Drawing Challenge - Marvel Smackdown

While we (Jonas and François) while away our time at comics conventions, we often try and use the time to entertaining, if pointless, ends: Drawing the kind of goofy stuff that got us into comics in the first place. With that laudable goal in mind, at this year's APE, we came up with a fun game: Draw a pair of Marvel comics characters battling it out in some fashion. The rules were: One hour time limit, someone else picks the characters, no looking online or elsewhere for costume reference, etc. Here are the results:

Mr. Fantastic vs Doctor Doom, by Jonas



Galactus vs Thor, by François



MODOK ve Speedball, by Jonas (guest-suggested by the brilliant Trevor Alixopulos)



Hulk vs Havok, by François



BONUS! Green Goblin vs Doctor Octopus, by Tim Lajeunesse of Love Letter Press! Coming soon!

Bird Brain #2 available in the Store

We had a great time at APE this year, and there was a very warm reception for François' newest nature-journaling issue, Bird Brain #2. If you didn't get a chance to pick up this little gem of a zine (everything hand-done, from the Gocco-print cover to the trimming and the corner-rounding; each issue is also serially numbered, edition of 200), its now available in our new store page! And watch the Bird Brain Journals for more updates and journal entries leading up to Bird Brain #3, out in early 2010!

Family Style at APE

The Family's gonna be camped out as per usual at this week's Alternative Press Expo, table #431! Come and say hi to Jonas, françois, and our pals Nick St. John (Mr. Mortiz and the Machine) and Raquel Reyes (A Tapir Caper). In addition to the trio of new titles that came out for the recent SFZF, we've got a new treat for you: François is putting the finishing touches on Bird Brain #2! See you there!

New Titles in the Catalog! Ochre Ellipse #3, Mr. Mortiz and the Machine, and Bird Brain #1

We had a little burst of creative productivity recently, and now you can reap the benefits! We've got not one, not two, but three brand new titles for your enjoyment, and all of them are now available for purchase in our catalog:



Jonas Madden-Connor hits another one out of the park with his latest... A sci-fi story reminiscent of Louis Trondheim, Chris Ware, and Alex Raymond, this is one amazing book! Click here to see it in our catalog.



Following his appearance in this year's Best American Nonrequired Reading anthology, Nick St. John follows up with a full-length mini-novella, Mr. Mortiz and the Machine. A layered story of loss and memory, it shares some themes with Ochre Ellipse #3, the two would make a very interesting read together! Click here for more info.



François Vigneault has begun a brand new project with his series Bird Brain: Lovingly rendered sketches of birds from Great Horned Owls to Dark-eyed Juncos, and brief, auto-biographical jounal entries detailing his encounters with them. For more ongoing nature journaling, check out his Bird Brain Journals blog. Click here to buy it!