Monday, April 30, 2018

Perhaps I Can Make One More Before I Die

Salaam Alaikum!
Unreal City has been nominated for the 2018 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album - Reprint


The other nominees include some of my favorite artists: Boundless by Jillian Tamaki, Fantagraphics Studio Edition: Black Hole by Charles Burns, Small Favors: The Definitive Girly PornoCollection by Colleen Coover and Sticks Angelica, Folk Hero by Michael DeForge.


I always think of this scene from Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix: Karma when I think about the effort it takes to make a comic. Unreal City took me over seven years to complete, although I didn't realize I was working on a book when I started.

The book is chalk full of references. One question I get asked is if the movies on TV in Objet d'Art are real so I thought I'd share those.

The movie Elise is watching at the beginning of the story is The Unsinkable Molly Brown starring Debbie Reynolds from 1964.



The movie Elise and Leon Lyddell are watching is called The Beautiful, the Bloody and the Bare also from 1964.



The naked girl siting in a chair at the party next door is from the same film.


And of course that's Star Trek playing on TV at the bar in the end of the story. The episode in question is The Naked Time, that one where the crew gets drunk.



Live long and prosper!

2 comments:

  1. MAN! Congratulations!
    So, I did it. I voted for your book. I've never voted on any Eisner awards. I joked that you already won the Dusto Award, which I give out each year. In my mind, that Dusto is really the only award that counts. But I guess an Eisner would be icing on the cake.
    Very cool seeing what these references were to.

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  2. It is a great honor to have won the 2017 Dusto award. Although I gotta admit, although it's small potatoes next to a Dusto, I'm pretty excited to be nominated for an Eisner. I think I'm gonna look into going to San Diego this year. It's been a long, long time and this would be the perfect excuse to go.

    I didn't realize it until I made this post that all the movies the characters were watching were from the 60's. The Unsinkable Molly Brown and the Beautiful, the Bloody and the Bare are pretty far away from each other as far as movies go but they're both from 1964. Totally fits the aesthetic of the story.

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