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Monday 30 December 2013

A CHAT WITH THE SERGEANT

As the tide turns, Mutt Blue and Poopsie the Penguin find themselves at the mercy of the penguin's old adversary, Sgt. Rajesh of the Benares Police...


THE CLIFF - Book 4, "Heart of Brightness" - pgs.54-55, inked outlines only
 


THE CLIFF - Book 4, "Heart of Brightness" - pgs.54-55, fully inked
 
 
 
THE CLIFF - Book 4, "Heart of Brightness" - pgs.56-57, rough sketch outline
 
 

THE CLIFF - Book 4, "Heart of Brightness" - pgs.56-57, fully inked.

 
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014, EVERYBODY!!!
 

Tuesday 10 December 2013

ONE FALSE MOVE AND YOU WILL HAVE MORE AIRHOLES THAN A PANCAKE


"There is a fire, they put a pan on it, and then the dough is poured on it.  Finally, the pancake comes into being and is removed.  When the next one is put into the pan, when it is formed, it will generally appear like the previous one, but the number of dents and holes in the two will not be exactly the same.  You may have dozens of these pancakes, but each one is bound to be different.  That is the nature of creation itself, to have variety." 

- NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ, "The Experience of Nothingness" (Ed. Robert Powell), pg.6


From THE CLIFF: Book 4, "Heart of Brightness," pages 52 and 53...


 
Pgs. 52&53 with inked outlines only.


 
Pgs. 52&53 fully inked.
 
 


Friday 29 November 2013

HAPPY CHANNUKAH and MERRY CHRISTMAS from POOPSIE THE PENGUIN!



 
HAPPY CHANNUKAH and MERRY CHRISTMAS from POOPSIE THE PENGUIN!  And everybody at Ambient Zero Publishing.  This image will also be in the Editions TRIP Calendar for 2014! 
www.ambientzero.blogspot.ca
http://editionstrip.com/
 
 

Tuesday 12 November 2013

A VISIT TO THE FAN BELT MANSION


On the trail of Carlos Brown's killer in Varanasi, Honky the Pig drives Mutt Blue and Poopsie the Penguin to the mansion of Linux Fan Belt, Brown's former business partner and co-founder of the Wishy Washy Detergent empire.

 

 
THE CLIFF, Book 4 - "Heart of Brightness" - pages 48&49, inked outlines only.
 
 
 
THE CLIFF, Book 4 - "Heart of Brightness" - pages 48&49, fully inked.
 
 
Finally... almost halfway done Book 4!  And the pace is picking up as sinister elements swirl around the innocent (or merely naive) Mutt Blue.  Page layouts are also getting a bit more experimental, as I was reading a lot of Will Eisner while I was doing the roughs for this chapter, and trying to emulate some of the master's "break out of the panel border" tricks!
 
 

 


Wednesday 9 October 2013

Up on the Roof in Varanasi


From THE CLIFF, Book 4 - "Heart of Brightness"... overwhelmed by a crime scene investigation, Mutt Blue seeks fresh air on the roof of the Babu Guest House--with unexpected discoveries.



 
(Pgs.40-41 - inked outlines only)
 


 
 
(Pgs.40-41 - fully inked)
 
 
 

Wednesday 18 September 2013

THE PENGUIN DETECTS


In THE CLIFF, Book 4 - "Heart of Brightness", Poopsie the Penguin finally demonstrates some of his investigative prowess...



 
Fresh off the drawing table - pgs. 38-39
(inked outlines only)
 
 



Friday 30 August 2013

A DIP IN THE HOLY RIVER - THE CLIFF BK4 - Pages 32-35


Fresh off the art table!  THE CLIFF, Book 4 - "Heart of Brightness" continues...


 
Mutt Blue and Poopsie the Penguin experience some of the many charms of Maa Ganga (the River Ganges,) while Honky the Pig prefers to stay on the shore.
 
 

Tuesday 13 August 2013

Down by the River - THE CLIFF BK 4 continues!


Finally, Mutt Blue has followed Poopsie the Penguin and Honky the Pig down to their old stomping grounds... The River Ganga in Varanasi, India.



The Cliff, Book 4--"Heart of Brightness" pgs. 30-31
(pencils only)


 

 

The Cliff, Book 4--"Heart of Brightness" pgs. 30-31
(inked outlines)

 


 
 
The Cliff, Book 4--"Heart of Brightness" pgs. 30-31
(fully inked)
 
 


Tuesday 30 July 2013

THE CLIFF - Arriving at the River


Work on THE CLIFF Book 4 - "Heart of Brightness" proceeds... Mutt Blue is about to confront the river Ganga for the first time!


 
 

 
(Pages 24 and 25, fully inked... on the wall)
 

 


 
(Pages 26 and 27 on the drawing board... inked outlines only)
 
 


Krazy Kat's dharma cartoons

I am just now discovering the beauty of George Herriman's "Krazy Kat" comic strip.  I guess I saw them when I was younger, but it never hit me until now that Herriman is probably the greatest cartoonist who ever lived . (Same with the Velvet Underground in music... but that's another story!) 

Here are a few strips from 1920 (courtesy of The Kat Who Walked in Beauty--The Panoramic Dailies of 1920, Derya Ataker Ed., Fantagraphics, 2007) showing that Herriman was also a man of great spiritual wisdom!


(in which phenomena are shown to be malleable and inconstant)
 
 

 
(in which our journey in this body is shown to be temporary)
 
 
 
(in which everything is shown to be imaginary--"oh, what a world!")
 
 
 
(in which Krazy's essential nature is shown to be furthest from his own mind...!)
 
 

 
(in which compassion triumphs, vis-à-vis karma!)
 
 
 


Tuesday 16 July 2013

The Pig, The Penguin and Mutt Blue have landed in Varanasi!



Fresh off the art table from Book 4 of THE CLIFF--"Heart of Brightness" - pages 21 and 22.
The pig, the penguin and Mutt Blue have landed in Varanasi!



Inked outlines only, before the pencils have been erased



Inked outlines after the pencils have been erased


Sunday 7 July 2013

A MOMENT OF CEREBUS!

The following article is from a blog celebrating the great graphic novel written and drawn by Dave Sim (and Gerhard) of Canada... Cerebus the Aardvark. It's hard to overestimate the influence of Dave's work on my own approach to comics, and this article says it nicely in a little email "interview" with me.  Thanks, Tim!  Check out his blog, "A Moment of Cerebus," where other comics artists and writers review the influence of Cerebus on their work and lives.

Cerebus: In My Life - Matthew Brown
Matthew Brown is a self-publishing Toronto-based cartoonist. His books The Cliff Vol 1-3 are currently available from Lulu. For more information about The Cliff and Matthew's other projects please visit the Ambient Zero Blog.

A Moment Of Cerebus:
How did you discover Cerebus and how long did you read it for?

Matthew Brown:
For some reason my grandmother, a PhD in Psychology who knew absolutely nothing about comic books, decided before visiting us to consult the cashier in her local comic book store as to what an 9 year old comic fan (me) might like. She brought Cerebus, I think... #22, "The Death of Elrod" I had never seen a black-and-white comic book drawn in that style and didn't get it, but still had a look through it every now and then and tried to get the jokes. Maybe two years later, when I was in Grade 6 (11 years old,) a classmate had the first Wolveroach issue. Since I was obsessed with Frank Miller's Daredevil and the Wolverine mini-series he was just drawing at that time (written by Chris Claremont,) I got obsessed with having the other 2 Wolveroach issues, despite not quite getting why the Roach was smoking a bundle of toothpicks. My grandmother kindly brought these for me on her next visit from Washington, DC. I read Cerebus from these Wolveroach issues to about just after Cerebus re-awakes holding Jaka's doll and starts slicing up Cirinists after a long coma on a cafe terrace. I bought the next year or two intending to read them at one go, then couldn't sustain my interest in them and let it go (this must be about 10 years later.)

How has your own creativity/comics been influenced by Cerebus?

The timing, for one thing. Dave Sim had a respect and love for the natural cadences of speech, and always gave the story time to unfold around these. Maybe because I also studied Theatre (especially playwriting,) his ear (and hand) for these moments of interchange between characters became a goal for me, too. But Dave's drawings were also much more elegant than anything going on in comics at the time I started reading (1980s,) with fancy borders and lots of empty space for characters to move through. This idea, that comics could be elegant (even if still featuring characters smashing each other over the head or falling down the stairs,) fascinated me. Another feature was having a large cast of characters, all of them with distinctive mannerisms, running the gamut in representation from extremely cartoony and caricature-like (Red Sophia's mother Mrs.Henrot-Gutch, the farmer from the "Wuffa Wuffa Wuffa" issue) to nuanced and naturalistic (Jaka), and naturally co-habiting the same world.

Has Cerebus influenced your approach to working in the comics industry?

Absolutely! When I did my first photocopied, hand-stapled comic book in 1989 or 1990 (Entropy) I mailed Dave a copy. He sent me back a cheque for $10! (The cover price was much lower than that! Even with postage included!) Almost every comic I've done since then has been self-published. I am from Toronto. Along with Chester Brown's first, self-published Yummy Fur, Dave's work set an example for the kind of black and white, self-published comics I wanted to do.
Cerebus #97 (April 1987)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard
Do you have a favourite scene/sequence from Cerebus?

A few of my favourites:

a) The interchange with Astoria when she is blindfolded and still able to manipulate Cerebus, and they get married and then divorced within the sequence, as well as Cerebus indulging in his "acquired taste" with her, although in a terrible and inhuman manner. Sophisticated Theological Debate: "Tarim!" "Terim!" "TARIM!" "TERIM!" ... and when Astoria asks Cerebus why he quoted her revolutionary line "One less mouth to feed is one less mouth to feed" in one of his speeches from the rooftop as Pope, and he admits he read it on the wall of a latrine. Astoria's response, bound to the wall, but still able to roll her eyes in derision: "Immortality is mine." (Favourite moment in the entire series.)

b) The dream sequences when Cerebus was pope. Amazing Freudian excursions into Cerebus' subconscious, playing with plot foreshadowing and a seamless surreal landscape aided and abetted by Gerhard's beautiful backgrounds.

c) The 2-in-1 issue at the end of Church & State where Cerebus goes into the bar after being told on the moon that he will "die alone, unmourned and unloved," and tells the barman and the arguing patrons who complain, "I just wish that somebody would tell me how it's all going to end" that humans will destroy the world with a solar bomb.

Plus, the only letter I ever had printed was printed in that issue! Which I gave away, along with many of my other priceless comics, to a Zen Buddhist Temple garage sale.

At the time it was an experiment in emptiness, but now, just feels... empty!
Cerebus #97 (April 1987)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

Would you recommend others read Cerebus, and if so why?

I would recommend that anyone with a very flexible mind read Cerebus, because it's a tough job to follow Dave Sim through parody, satire, slapstick, political and cultural commentary, literate ambitions and emotional/psychological drama, as well as numerous references to fandom and comic books from the 1970s to the present, and a tolerance for meandering plotlines... but a LOVE FOR GENIUS!
If you create comics and would like to submit your own Cerebus: In My Life feature, please get in touch via email: MomentOfCerebus [at] gmail [dot] com

Sunday 30 June 2013

Okay! Let's Get Some Samosas and Hit the Road! - THE CLIFF Book 4 "Heart of Brightness" - pg 12-15

 
 
 
Work in progress... pages 12, 13, 14 and 15 on my wall.  As Poopsie the Penguin and Mutt Blue share a drink in Delhi with the penguin's old childhood friend, Honky the Pig begins to show some dynamic behaviour.
 
 
 

Friday 14 June 2013

THE CLIFF - Book 4 - Comin' Along!





Above are the inked pages 10 and 11, before solid blacks and shading.  Below,
pages 8, 9, 10 and 11 completely inked and up on the wall!




And below, your humble narrator in the local public park disappearing into the plinth below a bust of the rather dour Jean Sibelius (December 8, 1865 –  September 20, 1957--a Finnish composer of the late Romantic period.)




Tuesday 21 May 2013

Hijinx at TCAF




With Marc Tessier & Stanley Wany of Editions TRIP
(TCAF - May11-12, 2013)

See, it's important for people to realize that comic books... sorry, GRAPHIC NOVELS are an important fusion of art and literature, exploring serious, important things, and that, that... um...




Never mind.  A good time was had at the TCAF (Toronto Comic Arts Festival) last weekend at the Metro Reference Library, not only with Marc and Stan, but also with the entire crew of Marie-Claude, Will, Simon Bosse, Carlos Santos, Fredc, Billy Mavreas, Rupert Bottenberg and many more.  I miss the camaradery of the Montreal underground comix scene, which I was part of in 1991-1994.  Thanks to TCAF, I had a chance to taste it again after so many years. 


Wednesday 8 May 2013

THE CLIFF BOOK FOUR HAS BEGUN! + TCAF this weekend!

I FORGOT TO PUBLISH THIS POST BACK IN MAY, 2013... SINCE IT'S A NICE PHOTO AND I'M CURRENTLY REWORKING ALL THE SCANNED ORIGINAL ARTWORK OF "THE CLIFF: Book Four, Heart of Brightness," I'LL PUBLISH IT NOW.



That's right!  Pages 1-3 of the next instalment of THE CLIFF - Book 4: Heart of Brightness are on the wall, and pages 4&5 awaiting more ink!  So... the loveable adventures of Poopsie the Penguin and Mutt Blue continue in Varanasi, including the introduction of Poopsie's childhood friend, hired-gun Honky the Pig.

On another note, I will be at TCAF - the Toronto Comic Arts Festival this coming weekend, sharing some table space with my friends Marc and Stan of Editions TRIP, who are launching 3 new exciting books... hope to see you there!

And finally, check out this beautiful trailer for a movie about Yoshihiro Tatsumi, a comics genius from Japan whose work is disturbing, absurd and compassionate...





Friday 26 April 2013

Ambient Zero at TCAF!



Editions TRIP + Ambient Zero - Marc, Heather, Diego, Marie-Claude, Stanley, Matthew, Vincent & Isabelle
(photo by Will Wany)

It's official!  Ambient Zero (THE CLIFF) will be joining the Editions TRIP table for the upcoming Toronto Comic Arts Festival ... 
Editions TRIP will be launching fantastic new comix by Carlos Santos, Billy Mavreas and Frédéric Cordier, and Matthew Brown will be present to sign copies of THE CLIFF!



Saturday, May 11 (9am-5pm)
Sunday, May 12 (11am-5pm)
Toronto Reference Library
789 Yonge St. -  1 block north
of Yonge & Bloor


This is a great opporunity to view and/ or the buy comic books of many great comic book writers and artists from around the world, both famous and obscure... I hope you come by to experience the madness and say "Hi"!




Friday 19 April 2013

THE CLIFF - The Next Generation!





Finally, "The Cliff" has reached its ideal market!
Thanks to Stanley and Marie-Claude of Editions TRIP for sharing these photos of their beautiful boy, Will as he and Marie-Claude thrill to the latest high-contrast adventures of Poopsie the Penguin!









Tuesday 9 April 2013

THE CLIFF BOOK 3 LAUNCH VIDEO READY & COMIC BOOK AVAILABLE FOR SALE ONLINE!



Video of the launch!
(click inside the box to watch)


THE CLIFF BOOK 3 - "Murder in Varanasi" by Matthew Brown, comic book launch - April 6, 2013 - Izakaya Sushi Back Space, Toronto.

Hosted by Ambient Zero, featuring - Will of Peace (Spoken Word) + The Cliff Ensemble (Han Zhang on saxophone, Mikhial Gurarie on bass and stick, Paul Russton on guitar, Sage on vocals, Matthew Brown on djembe)


Also:


THE CLIFF BOOK 3:
"Murder in Varanasi"





Thursday 4 April 2013

COMIC BOOK LAUNCH THIS SATURDAY APRIL 6!

Comic Book Launch -
The Cliff Book 3: "Murder in Varanasi"



(Front cover)
 
Saturday, April 6, 2013
7pm-12am
Izakaya Sushi Back Space
294 College St, Toronto (west of Spadina)
Featuring live performances by Will of Peace (spoken word), Han Zhang (saxophone) and The Cliff Ensemble

(Back cover)
 

Artist Matthew Brown will be present to sign!
Books available on discount!
Look forward to seeing you there!

Saturday 30 March 2013

COMIC BOOK LAUNCH THIS WEEK!

Comic Book Launch -
The Cliff Book 3: "Murder in Varanasi"


 
Saturday, April 6, 2013
7pm-12am
Izakaya Sushi Back Space
294 College St, Toronto (west of Spadina)
Featuring live performances by Will of Peace (spoken word), Han Zhang (saxophone) and The Cliff Ensemble
Artist Matthew Brown will be present to sign!
Books available on discount!
Look forward to seeing you there!

 

Saturday 23 March 2013

COMIC BOOK LAUNCH APPROACHING!

Comic Book Launch -
The Cliff Book 3: "Murder in Varanasi"


 
 

Saturday, April 6, 2013
7pm-12am
Izakaya Sushi Back Space
294 College St, Toronto (west of Spadina)
Featuring live performances by Will of Peace (spoken word), Han Zhang (saxophone) and The Cliff Ensemble
Artist Matthew Brown will be present to sign!
Books available on discount!
Look forward to seeing you there!

Friday 22 March 2013

BARTY AND THE STARS




Here is the link to a book I "wrote" as my final project for the 2-Dimensional Design course at OCAD in 2002.  Each chapter title is one of the principles of graphic design we were learning, and projects from the course are dispersed amongst illustrations throughout the text. 

Barty is in agony because of the stars.  He meets a green mechanical penguin with a filthy mouth who leads him on a quest for truth and love where he must abandon everything he knows, sell plastic configurations of reality and travel on a dark river in a cardboard box.






Sunday 17 March 2013

COMIC LAUNCH COMING SOON!

 
Comic Book Launch -
The Cliff Book 3: "Murder in Varanasi" 

 
 
Saturday, April 6, 2013
7pm-12am
Izakaya Sushi Back Space
294 College St, Toronto (west of Spadina)
Featuring live performances by Will of Peace (spoken word), Han Zhang (saxophone) and The Cliff Ensemble
 
Artist Matthew Brown will be present to sign!
Books available on discount!
Look forward to seeing you there!
 
 

Sunday 24 February 2013

Mutt "Baby" Blue--Montreal, circa 1992



In the below photograph from the film set for Shawn Goldberg's "The Detective" shot in Montreal in 1992, author Matthew Brown looks a lot like character Mutt Blue from the next issue of my comic book THE CLIFF: Book 3--"Murder in Varanasi" (soon to be released) ...



 
Matthew Brown in 1992
 
 
 
 
Mutt Blue in 2013
 
 
 
...COINCIDENCE??