Nudism in Angouleme, France - 27/01/08

I am a nudist.

I have always believed in the power and beauty of the naked human form moving guiltless and unencumbered through the contours of the world. But I still live in a world that does not question the necessity--nay the primacy--of clothing. To question is to invite ridicule and suspicion, distrust and even anger. Yet, question I do and my cause I continue to champion. Day in and day out: "Ladies and gentlemen, I ask you to think about a world without clothes," the chuckles begin, the snide remarks whispered in a friend's ear creep, "Or remember, if you will, a time when you didn't need, want or even see the necessity of clothes: your childhood. Remember that sense of freedom? That grace?"

So there I am, the voice crying in the wilderness.

Then one day, I travel to a little town, and here everyone's already naked. Yup, every man, woman and child is stark fucking naked and I am speechless. In fact, to merely point out the fact that everyone is naked to to reveal just how enslaved I have become by the clothed society in which I live and the sin it believes the naked body to be.

Okay, so maybe I'm not a nudist.

I'm a cartoonist who's just gotten back from a trip to Angouleme, France for the 35th Festival International des Bandes Desinées––the French term for comics. And nudity is, in this case, the wider acceptance of comics as anything other than a youthful amusement that one stops engaging in when one puts away childish things.

One sidewalk advertisements, one sees poster ads for comic albums; on news stands one can peruse comics-related magazines and buy the latest hard cover books (few comics are actually not sold in hard cover).

What makes the whole thing so refreshing, is the laissez-faire (pardon French to describe the French) attitude about it all. Here there aren't the furtive glances over one's shoulder at the world at large waiting to be ridiculed--something that still pervades conventions like Comic Con in San Diego. There is also a complete lack of the American thought that comics are merely the unrealized precursor to better means of making a buck (movies, figurines, video games, lunchboxes, character-themed orthopedic inserts, or whatever is the hot thing to be selling these days). The show is centered around a love of making, reading and appreciating comics.

It's lovely but hard not to feel like it's my first day on the nude beach and all the locals don't understand why that guy over there looks so nervous and hasn't gotten his kit off yet...

>

Yes, in Angouleme, the street signs are in fact speech balloons.

And yes, the girl of your dreams could just be painted on a wall waiting for you to chat her up...

New Work Hitting the Stands - 13/11/07

I just got news that a project I worked on Summer 2006 is hitting the stands in January. It's part of a series called Space Doubles published by Th3rd World Studios.

I illustrated a piece for Justin Robinson, a very cool dude I met at Comic Convention in Long Beach, California somewhere down an aisle between soft core porn stars and furries...

Anyway, if you want to check it out, please pre-order now from your local trusty purveyor of comic goodies (Diamond Order Code Nov073809).

I did interior art, but was pleased to see a very talented cover artist take a whack at painting some of my character designs.

You'll get two 50's pulpy sci-fi stories for the price of one as each issue in the Space Doubles series has 2 eleven page stories with variant "flip" covers.

And if you go into the comics gallery and click on my Sympathizers section, you can see some preliminary sketches for the work as well as preview pages.

Thanks,

Nye

Yippee! New Site - 24/08/07

Hello,

It's been a few years coming, but I finally got around to redesigning my site.... Or rather, I finally met someone talented, motivated and willing to work hard to make the site better than I could ever dream, code-challenged, neo-luddite that I am. The big changes are that Alan Sherwood (www.aspireds.com) did a bang up job of creating what I am told is called a CMS (content management system) so that I should be able to update content fairly easily. Also, the homepage--where, you've just found yourself--is blogable so that I can update that within my site instead of rerouting people to a blogger or livejournal site.

So have a look around and drop a line to let me know what you think.

And here's a picture of a man's nostrils...

--Nye

Professionalism... - 28/04/07

It was sad to hear that David Halberstam died this week. I drove him around a writers' conference in Idaho the summer of 1999 when I finsihed my first year of art school. He'd written a book most American rowers have read called "the Amateurs"--about four men, two from Yale, one from Harvard and a fourth Dark Horse out of California, competing against one another to represent America in the 1980 Olympics. Ultimately, a futile struggle for all of them because of the boycott against the Russians.

Anyway, dork that I am, when I found out he was going to be in Idaho for this conference, I put my name forward to drive him around. He was a very erudite man with a voice that rumbled like well-oiled machinery. I remember him being very kind when, idiot that I was, I actually locked us both out of the car I was driving while the engine was running.... Forgive me, life's harder when you're blond.

Anyway, in the obit they ran on him in the New York Times--for whom he reported from Vietnam in his late 20s and where he first earned his journalistic credentials--they ran a quote he loved from Dr. J. It was about professionalism; namely that: "Being a professional is doing what you want to do even when you don't want to do it."

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