Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Unearthing Monster Island 2























Occasionally I act as editor. In 2003 I edited a small comics zine called Monster Island. I invited a few friends and my brother John to contribute artwork for it. It was a typical ledger size folded in half.

In 2004, bolstered by the excitement of the first issue, I set out on a more ambitious project for Monster Island number 2. Around 20 artists contributed comics, artwork and essays. I also included some bits from reference books on mythology and world mysteries.
The book sported two fold-outs, one silk screened, the other copied, a dime bag full of stickers stapled in, some half pages, kids drawings, essays like I said and was generally a headache to collate.
It was an edition of 150 and I pulled it off for Expozine, Montreal's zine and small press fair.

Well, languishing in storage for the last 14 years or so were 15 remaining copies, uncollated. Just this last week I delved in, finally pulling this stack of paper out of deep freeze and put it together, complete with cardstock covers and french flaps. It was an act of will, spring cleaning and desperation. This stack had been kicking around my studio for far too long in a state of limbo and if I didn't bite the bullet and just deal with it I was afraid it would eventually get tossed away out of frustration. I saved myself a bit of heartache and just did the job, So now there are 15 copies of this thing in my shop. You are welcome to buy it, I want 15 bucks each because it was a pain AND it's vintage now I guess.

Here's the contributor list:

Young Adonis (Jesse Bochner)
Marc Bell
Helene Brosseau
Andy Brown
Jake Brown
Patrick R. Burger
Howard Chackowicz
Meaghan Garner
Francis Hitchings
Shawn Jefferies
Leyla Majeri
John Mavreas
Bernie Mireault
Marc Ngui
Joe Ollmann
Owen Plummer
Salgood Sam (Max Douglas)
Carlos Santos
Zachary Silberberg
Egerton Sykes
Sara Tonin (Jen MacIntyre)