I'm in Denver now, where Julie and I are staying with my parents for a week before we head off to Japan. Unfortunately, Julie and I won't be on the same flight to Tokyo, which is fourteen hours total. She'll be on the same flight as all her JET co-participants, and I'll be on a flight with -- I guess just regular old people who want to go to Japan.
We just finished our final checkout of our apartment in Minneapolis, as well as my studio, which I've had with my friend Vincent Stall for six years. That was very sad to leave that place. For several years, that was more my apartment than my apartment was. There was a lot of accumulated patina on the walls of the studio, Shad Petosky and I had to do quite a bit of taking down, boxing up, and thinking, "why was this even still up?" Among the items found in the cleaning: Old comics that had fallen behind shelves and been subsequently repurchased, five year old scraps of paper with women's phone numbers on them, about a thousand dried up Sharpie Markers, and every minicomic/ashcan I've ever been handed at a convention (sadly, those had to go). Oh yeah, and one more thing: fifteen hundred copies of The Replacement God Sensational Sixth Issue. Something had to hold up those shelves. So in the process of leaving the apartment, studio, car, and so forth, I suddenly noticed that the continual symbol for this process of cutting ties with everything of the last seven years was my keyring. I first noticed it when I realized that I had an "Easy Save" card from Rainbow Groceries still on the ring. I thought to myself, "Well, I can probably get rid of this; I won't need it ever again after Friday", and then thought "hold on, I won't need any of these things after Friday!" And so as I 1) turned in my apartment keys (now I had five left), 2) realized one key was for a lock I had lost (four), 3) turned in my studio keys (one), and finally, 4) gave my car key to Shad and Anna as they dropped us off at the airport this morning I looked at the ring as a nonspecific visual metaphor for how I was feeling about the whole departure. It's sounding a little more melodramatic as I type this than I felt about it, really, but it was nice to keep the keyring sort of as a sentimental reminder of Minneapolis. I also found out a little later that it had practical value as well. Since I always have my keys in my right pants pocket, and I'm otherwise a pretty disorganized guy, whenever I reach into my pocket and my keys aren't there, I feel a pang of panic. But keeping the ring in there at least allows me to realize that all is well, it's just that I don't have any keys anymore.
So we're in Denver, our worldly possessions are in five bags and a box, and we're hanging out with my family for a week, and then we will leave next Saturday for Narita Airport and on to our little Asian adventure.
.: posted by Zander Cannon 8:19 AM Tokyo Time
Here is my studio as it looked before I left:
.: posted by Zander Cannon 3:59 AM Tokyo Time
We're getting to just under three weeks until we leave for Japan. It's put me in an interesting state of mind as far as appreciating things that are here in America. Not really specific things as much as overall feelings, like of walking down a familiar street and knowing I won't see that street again for a couple years. It's made me wonder what I'm going to miss while I'm in Japan. I guess some of my favorite foods would be on the list, like burritos from Chipotle Mexican Grill, or candy that I won't be able to find, like Necco Wafers or Lemonheads. I was travelling to Chicago on the fourth of July, so I really didn't have much of an opportunity to sit and think about how I feel about being an American (like a friend who has been to Japan advised me to do).
I guess this log isn't really very completely thought out, but I'm kind of distracted at the moment by all the things that Julie and I need to do. Hopefully future web logs will be a little more thoughtful and well-composed.
I try to imagine what preconceptions I have about Japan that will be dispelled. I can imagine what ones I'll have to clarify for the Japanese people I meet ("Yes, I can use chopsticks. No, I don't own a gun."), but I try to think about generalizations that I have about Japanese people, and try to guess whether they are valid or not. I have heard that they are polite, averse to saying no, and friendly to foreigners. I've also heard that they are likely to ask impertinent or rude questions of foreigners without really realizing it's rude (I've only heard that of children). I gather that Judo or Karate are sports in school, so I'm guessing that martial arts ability is more widespread, though maybe that's just the Japanese movies I've seen. Come to think of it, I'm also a little afraid of that big lizard that keeps attacking Tokyo, too. Um... I have also heard that Japanese people don't look you in the eye very often, as it is considered a sign that you are challenging the person you're talking to. I also have heard that a lot of Japanese speak English, which is the real test once I'm over there. I'm learning Japanese, but I'm going to be illiterate and only able to talk about a few topics once I arrive.
More later.
Z.
.: posted by Zander Cannon 4:27 AM Tokyo Time
I just got back from Wizard World Chicago, a pretty large American comic convention, which will be my last American show for a couple years. I haven't been to any conventions in about a year, due to various circumstances, some good (getting married), and some bad (9/11), and so it was a cool experience going back and shaking hands, signing comic books, meeting people, seeing friends and all of that. The reason it is my last show for a while is that my wife Julie has been accepted to the JET Program in Japan, and will be teaching English to Japanese middle school kids. I will be doing things much as I always have; drawing and writing comics, just somewhat further away than usual. I'm starting this weblog as a regularly updated account of my experiences as we prepare to move to Japan, and a record of our daily lives as culture-shocked expatriates. I hope this site will be an entertaining look at a cartoonist and an art teacher's life in Japan.
.: posted by Zander Cannon 3:36 PM Tokyo Time
I got a letter the other day from a fan who wants to see more Replacement God. For those of you who aren't familiar with The Replacement God, it was a small press adventure comic set in medieval times that I did from 1994 to 1999-ish. I did fourteen issues: eight of them were from Slave Labor Graphics, a publisher in San Jose, CA, and are collected in a trade paperback that is available from them at www.slavelabor.com, and will be available here as well when we get the store up and running. The next five issues were published by Image Comics, in a smaller, and now defunct, studio called Shadowline that was run by Jim Valentino (now the boss at Image Central). The final issue so far is Volume 2, Issue 6, sometimes called the Sensational Sixth Issue, which was self-published. Working hard to draw, print, market, sell, and resell the issue with co-publisher Shad Petosky was exhausting and not very financially rewarding, and so I went on (temporarily, I told myself) to better paying gigs. As a result, I get emails like this every couple weeks:
Dov Spinks
Australia
Firstly; Replacement God - brilliant job, man! Second, I have collected RG up to and including The Sensational Sixth Issue. Unfortunately, australian comic vendors went right up MARVEL'S arse about that time, and I've not been able to find any more of your work since. Is there any more in the saga? If so, how do I obtain said continuations?
p.s. Give my regards to Knute (I know, fanball corn, but you don't realise what the comic industry is doing to us down here!)
People also come up to me at every comic convention and ask when the next Replacement God is coming out. It makes me feel pretty guilty. I can't make any promises, I'm afraid, but I will say this: I'm very close to the material in The Replacement God, and I would love to be able to sit down for a year or so and conclude it. Right now that isn't a possibility, but it is conceivable that some publisher would want to take it on as a miniseries or two in the future and we would all be happy. But for now I have to resolve all of my other comics obligations.
.: posted by Zander Cannon 3:36 PM Tokyo Time
Welcome to zandercannon.com, the official website of cartoonist Zander Cannon. I'm Zander Cannon, and here at the site I'll be showing unpublished cartoons, providing a little commentary on work I've done, and giving advice on the art and business of comic books. Some of my past projects include The Replacement God, a fantasy-adventure comic I started in college; The Chainsaw Vigilante, a superhero parody spun off from The Tick; and Top Ten, Alan Moore and Gene Ha's award winning superhero/scifi sendup. I've also done commercial illustration, playwriting, advertising storyboards, theatre set and costume design, TV script writing, educational comic books, a classical music slideshow with the Minnesota Orchestra, online comic book art courses, and chalkboards to sell coffee.
I try to specialize in clear comic book storytelling. I feel like that is the most important aspect of a cartoonist's job: communicating the story clearly to the reader. But because clear storytelling rarely inspires the hey-cool-check-it-out emotion in readers, it's not always the most highly valued facet of a cartoonist's skills. A number of the craftmanship discussions on this site will revolve around this concept. Now, a caveat: if you read Chainsaw Vigilante or the early issues of The Replacement God, you may think that I'm full of baloney what with all this talk about clarity, but I ask you to grant a then-quite-young cartoonist a little grace in his inexperience. Over the course of nine years in the comic book business, I've learned a lot about telling stories, including learning to redirect my efforts toward clarity rather than cleverness.
This website will include tutorials on storytelling, cartooning, caring for your art materials, breaking into the business, coloring on the computer, and convention attendance. I hope you will find that there is something to help cartoonists young and old. There will also be a store in which fans will be able to buy comics, artwork, and various other items.
So welcome! Send me a note if you've stumbled onto this page and think that it has some interesting stuff on it. And we hope that this will be a source of enjoyment for a long time to come.
.: posted by Zander Cannon 3:35 PM Tokyo Time
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have a pop-up window.