Did you know we had a writeup in Chicago Magazine this month?? Neither did we! We still have to find a copy of it. But you should check it out.
Also, Shortpants will be at the MCA's Hip Lit Fair on Saturday May 17th! You should come and check us out, because we're very nice people. And bring your copy of Chicago Magazine in case we still haven't found a copy of our own.
Hey guys. The luddite in Shortpants Press is deeply, deeply disappointed that we've gone and done this, but we have a Twitter account now. Do you twitter? If so, you can look up our Twitter and perhaps we could Twitter together! Twitter twitter twitter.
Just a quick note: we're changing the shipping rates on the site to a flat fee, coz they weren't coming out terribly accurately when we were doing it by weight. The end! Good story, good story, good stooooo-REE!
At turns cheerily whimsical and creepily serious, Neil Brideau's Sock-Monster comic has been a favorite webcomic of Shortpants' for a while now. Brideau's quirkily hand-lettered panels are dark, charming and obsessively inked. His imaginative and expansive landscapes are populated with characters that run the gamut from the sweet and naive to the opportunistic and vicious. Brideau uses their otherworldly exploits to tackle a number of issues facing our present universe, from politics and the environment to holding down a job and the nature of friendship. This first print collection of Sock-Monster comics contains fifty of Brideau's favorites, punctuated by a handful of new mini illustrations.
4.25" x 7", 55 pages in a hand-serigraphed (and recycled, made from 100% post-consumer waste!) cover. Get yours now!
I don't know if this actually counts as a "hiatus"
So, the seven or eight people (hi, Mom!) who read this on a semi-regular basis have no doubt realized that Shortpants has been sort of silent lately. I promise you, we're still around. We're just sort of taking January off. And probably most of February as well. We're still very much alive, and we have many wondrous things planned for 2008, which I'll get into in a moment.
But it's a testament to the nature of comics - and, you know, underground hand-assembled independent minicomics, coz just "comics" wasn't a challenging industry enough for us - that minor hiccups IRL mean we have to put something we love as much as Shortpants on the back burner for a little bit. But Shortpants and the Shortpants Boyfriend are in the midst of defeating the level one boss and ascending to level two of adulthood and buying a condo.
(It's probably a bad sign that Shortpants is using video game terminology to describe becoming more grown-up. But anyone who's ever been through buying a place, dealing with realtors, lawyers, loan officers, every one of them with their own agendas and many of them lying right to your face, can probably relate. I felt the same way when I tried to beat Super Paper Mario's Mimi without Princess Peach and her magnificent invincible umbrella shield.)
Anyway. We're mostly through it. And once we're done Shortpants will have a (semi)permanent base of operations. We're thinking of naming it "Shortpants Manor". Or maybe "Nerdinghamwycke". Name suggestions are appreciated.
In the meantime, our plans for 2008 are delightful and nefarious. You're going to love it. There's going to be a charming little art object of a collection of Sock-Monster comics. There'll be another Shuteye, another Bone Closet, and another Army of Lovers. There might even be another Suckerpunch! And this spring, we'll also be launching issue #1 of a probably overlyambitious anthology project. It's gonna knock your socks off, if you happen to be wearing socks at the time that you see it. That's a promise.
Have you guys heard of the magazine Dig This Real? It's a wicked cool magazine out of New York that covers music, literature, television, zines, and lots of other cool stuff. The latest issue (#12!) has an interview with yours truly, about the Ouija Interviews! You should find it and read it, and then read all the other cool articles in it.
They don't have a list up yet on their site of which stores carry them, but you can order a copy online. Get to it!
