Month: February 2008

Before this week’s LLAOTW installment, I’d like to announce this upcoming event:

LUST comes to CAPITOL HILL!
Multimedia reading by Ellen Forney! Dazzling dancer Fuschia FoXXX (voted one of the Stranger’s “Sexiest Citizens”!)! Scantily-clad sirens, including Holly Chernobyl (also voted one of the Stranger’s “Sexiest Citizens”!)! Chocolate kisses! And more!! FREE!

Thursday, February 28, 7pm
Bailey/Coy Books
414 Broadway Ave. E. (across from QFC)
206-323-8842

Please come!

And now, this week’s perv:

LUST, the “Lustlab Ad of the Week” book collection, is out and on the shelves! You can order it here directly from the Fantagraphics web-catalog. “Lustlab Ad of the Week” is a comic adaptation of one of the week’s kinky personal ads in Seattle alt-weekly The Stranger, and I post them here every Wednesday.

“A fantastic voyage into your nether regions!” (Ha ha, I misquote.)

The latest “ink” on Lust: a post on BoingBoing links to an interview on The Reverse Cowgirl (thanks, Susannah!); nice posts in Electrolicious and Boinkology for Lust and the “kinky, pinky” downloadable wallpaper; a review in Fleshbot (in a list called “Valentine’s Day Presents Don’t Have to Suck Unless You Want Them To”); and a sweet review in Detroit’s Metro Times by Sean Bieri, which introduced me to the word “squick”:

Forney has a golden knack for making even the fringiest, most squick-inducing sexual practices look fun, funny, sexy and human (if not exactly “normal”), without robbing them of their edge.

In Lust, rather than poke fun at the advertisers, which would be easy, or exaggerate their kinkiness, which would be hard, she takes a wholly individual approach that celebrates the kinksters without slavishly illustrating the ad copy. …

Now this is a sexual education, and one that can’t help but bring a smile to the face of all but the most uptight readers.

AND!! I’ll be doing another Lust reading in Seattle, at Bailey Coy Books, on Thursday, February 28, at 7pm. This one is more of a sit-down affair, and there’ll be more sexiness, with dancer Fuschia FoXXX, and cute, scantily-clad persons distributing chocolates. Please come!!

Happy Valentine’s Day, movers and shakers!

LUST, the “Lustlab Ad of the Week” book collection, is out and on the shelves! You can order it here directly from the Fantagraphics web-catalog. “Lustlab Ad of the Week” is a comic adaptation of one of the week’s kinky personal ads in Seattle alt-weekly The Stranger, and I post them here every Wednesday. See it on their site here.

Where to begin? The place was buzzing all night, Fantagraphics sold tons of books, Holly Chernobyl rocked the kissing booth, the cigarette girl passed out custom LUST miniature chocolate bars, and DJ David James played sexy grooves (including some Zeppelin just for me, which further warmed my already-warm heart). Spirits were high, it was a very attractive crowd!

I signed books all night, except during my brief presentation, when I stood on a stool and read an excerpt from one of the LUST interviews (the infamous Saran Wrap scene!) and showed some “Lustlab Ad of the Week” images. That was the first time I got out from behind my little signing table, and holy moly, the place was packed.

“Joe, where’s my whiskey?”

Click the photo below for a short video of the first part of my presentation:

Yes, all the art is for sale!

More photos from Fantagraphics here, and more photos from my friend Ben here.

The exhibit will be up until March 17, so if you’re in Georgetown, check it out, here’s the address: Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery, 1201 S. Vale St. (at Airport Way S.), 206-658-0110; open 11:30am – 8pm, Sundays 11:30am – 5pm.

This is a totally belated post, but I would be remiss to let it just go by (like… a hat in the wind?).

The Seattle Public Library had comics events all over town through January, culminating in Comixtravaganza, a big event on January 26 at the Central Branch. I had the honor of being asked to be the keynote speaker, and I gave a talk in the enormous Microsoft auditorium. (That was a link to a Quicktime recording of the entire hour-long talk.) It was a blast.

German Rolling Stone reprinted my illustration of Cat Power in their current issue. When I pulled the issue they sent me out of my P.O. box, I squealed out loud. Literally! Gawd.

Here’s my page:

Here’s the cover!!:

Please note that my illustration is also right above the title of the LZ feature in the table of contents:

Sigh!

Lust and I have been getting some nice publicity recently: Seattlest just posted an interview, Seattle Magazine has a feature about me, Seattle Metropolitan included me in a feature on “15 People to Know for Spring Arts,” Modern Tonic posted a lovely review, there’s that interview at Newsarama and they also posted about my Lust downloadable wallpaper, there’s a 1/3-page review in ReadyMade magazine (though you can’t read it online), a review that I haven’t seen yet in Penthouse (!) and good grief, there are announcements for tomorrow’s book launch party all over the place, including “Stranger Suggests.”

From Seattle Magazine (photo by Richard Darbonne)

Also, a bunch of people in my yoga class bought copies as Valentine’s presents, including Denise, my beloved teacher and studio owner, and it was a kick to see everyone hand around my sample copy. (As always: “What’s pegging?”)

Years ago, Danielle introduced me to her friend, “Weber,” an expert with rope. It was a long time until it occurred to me (duh) that his name was a pun: “Webber.”

LUST, the “Lustlab Ad of the Week” book collection, is out and on the shelves! If you’re in Seattle, please come to the book release party at the Fantagraphics store on Sat., Feb. 9, 6pm – 9pm — or you can order it here directly from the Fantagraphics web-catalog.

“Lustlab Ad of the Week” is a comic adaptation of one of the week’s kinky personal ads in Seattle alt-weekly The Stranger, and I post them here every Wednesday. See it on their site here.

After some weird delays in customs, LUST is making its way into stores this week. Hooray! (For your own copy — or one for your Valentine?? — call your favorite independent bookstore to see if they have it in yet, or you can order directly from Fantagraphics).

But wait there’s more!!!

1: I made downloadable desktop wallpaper out of the book’s endpapers (my drawings from Babeland’s catalog, on a kinky pink background). Yes, iPhone users: you can now have a tidy mess of sex toys on your phone — you know you want it…!

Download the size you want below:

| 1280 x 960 | 1280 x 1024 | 1280 x 720 | 1680 x 1050 | iPhone

2: In addition to over 100 “Lustlab Ad of the Week” cartoons, LUST includes interviews with six satisfied Lustlabbers — keep reading for your WEB EXCLUSIVE excerpt! (The intern who transcribed this particular interview told me she could hear the ice clinking in our cocktails.)

Continue reading “LUST-Y WEB EXCLUSIVES! Kinky Freebies for You!”