It's Comic Time!

Nothing too crazy here. Just stuff I scribble down at the end of my days to help me release and feel better about my frustrations with day jobs, clueless assholes, and the deep down driving force behind our technological advancements.

"Character and Narrative" opening August 16th

Here's my first taster piece from the upcoming group show I will be included in, along with Travis Winters, Tom Sarmo and John Van Horn at the Foothills Art Center in Golden, CO. The show will kick-off on August 16th! 

Debt Collective Comic

Last year I was approached by Laura Hanna at the Debt Collective to create a socio-political themed comic for their website that they were preparing to launch. A handful of other artists were asked to create something based on the topics the Debt Collective are trying to address and I was asked to create a comic about Neo-Feudalism, which is the idea that there is a rebirth of policies prevalent in feudal societies. But, Laura also wanted to give a hopeful message in the comic, encouraging that there is a way around the current state of affairs. I haven't done a lot of political work in the past few years, compared to how fired up I was about it right out of college, but it felt good to get back in it, and also read a bunch of infuriating news articles. Thanks to Laura at the Debt Collective for asking me to participate.

Below is the B&W version before the color was put down. The whole process of making a comic is very humbling and every time I work on one, which is not often, I always gain more respect for the people who really understand the medium and make it look easy. 

Here are a few close-up shots from some of the more detailed sections of the comic.

Process pics below.

Attempting Comics

I've been doing little comics during some free time lately. Nothing crazy but having fun with it. The first one is just the endless mental anguish I've felt for years, entitled, "Taste My Pain, Bitch!" Below we have some sort of caffeinated nonsense.

In the Beginning was.....The Spork!

A comic from a few years ago, that was recently published in an issue of Space Squid (a great nerdy read specializing in sci-fi humor). This comic dealt with bacteria that is constantly forced with the dilemma of killing itself after it asexually reproduces. I think this may be called Parthenogenesis.

When I was living in Ithaca, NY a couple years ago, I was introduced to two physics majors at Cornell University, Robert Hovden and Rob Barton, and over time our love for all things nerd-related brought us to creating a comic together that enabled us to spread our dorky jokes and drawings to a very specific crowd. We worked on it diligently for a few months until we started to produce work we felt confident enough in to mail to magazines. We have just started to get a good amount of responses from 'zines that are happy to print our comics in their pages. We are also currently working on a website where we will upload comics on a more consistent basis. Until then I've included a few samples that have had the fortune of being printed/shown on websites such The Daily Crosshatch and The Cornell Lunatic.

More to come at Spork The World

Pointless, but Hopefully Somewhat Entertaining.

Sneak peek of a project I just finished, but cannot completely reveal yet:

I recently went upstate to visit my family and while I was there I found a long lost treasure: Alien comic books. These were the ones that came with various action figures done by Kenner in '92. When they released this line they wanted to give you a wallop of a package, so not only did you get melted down plastic shapes of alien life forms, but you also got a nail-biting, thrill ride of a read.

Sweet.
The craziest thing about these comics was at the end of every issue there was some crazy cliffhanger where aliens were wreaking havoc on some planet and the gang hopped into their space jet, flew there, and blew up any creature that resembled some alien life form that mated with any kind of species from Earth. This seemed to imply that the alien hunters never slept or ate, did a piss-poor job at actually killing the aliens, and that all species on Earth also exist on other planets.


I also found my first skateboard. Saved up 140 dollars to buy this thing when I was in sixth grade.

What was once the tail.

Made a new friend.

To anyone that saw me drawing hundreds of cats in my sketchbook, or had heard me mention this, well, here it is.

Largely inspired by this big guy.

Sharpen Your Spork!

http://thedailycrosshatch.com/2010/11/05/guest-strip-rob-hovden-rob-barton-and-phil-ashworth/#more-7423

Here's a taste of a project a couple guys and I have been working on for the past year. We submitted this comic we did a little while ago to www.thedailycrosshatch.com Every week, The Daily Crosshatch puts up a chosen comic submitted by followers of the site, and ours raised enough eyebrows, and cracked enough grins, to be this weeks choosing, or maybe it was just a slow week. I will soon spill the beans on the project that we've been working on, but for now, hopefully you will enjoy this little bit.