EXCERPT: "COLD HEAT" 5/6 by Ben Jones & Frank Santoro

Did you hear the news earlier this year? Comic books are dead. But the the first rule of comics, if there are any rules at all, is that no one stays dead in comics. So no one really expected comics to stay dead for long did they?

It’s only been about two months since comics “died” yet here we have a brand new issue of Cold Heat, with staples and everything. So if one era of comics just ended (the one that started with Action Comics #1), then let this be the beginning of a new Golden Age. A lack of widespread distribution to comic shops is discouraging, but it’s not gonna stop creators who are this passionate about the art form.

Cold Heat is one of my favorite comics from the past couple years. Ben Jones’ writing is just as hilarious as his Paper Rad stuff. But this story’s already over 100 pages long, so he and artist Frank Santoro have a lot more room to play. If you’re new to the world of Cold Heat you can read the first four issues online. But I recommend finding the books. The colors and artwork look great on paper and you also get the bonus short prose stories that are only printed in the issues.

The series focuses on Castle, a high school student who is really bummed out because her favorite rock star was just found dead of an apparent suicide. This subject matter seems strangely appropriate to me because I remember exactly where I was when the radio announced that Kurt Cobain was dead. I was at a comic shop in Phoenix, going through some dollar boxes on the floor. I paused for a moment to listen to the report, then went back to the long boxes of cheap Vertigo comics. The surreal satire that follows has a nice stream of consciousness flow that reminds me of other favorites like Ed the Happy Clown or Gilbert Hernandez. There’s a brilliant twist that takes the series to a whole new level in one of the later issues. I shouldn’t have even mentioned it exists.

Here’s the first six pages of issue 5/6. We thought we were gonna have to wait for the whole story to be collected as a trade, but they couldn’t wait either so issues 5 and 6 have been self-published as a limited edition zine.  It’s a beautiful book.  The 100 copy print run is almost gone, but you can still get one from the Picturebox website…

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Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint – CEM KARACA

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APRIL 5 — CEM KARACA
Turkish folk and protest singer, street activist.

APRIL 5 festivals:
* Christian PALM SUNDAY.
* Tibet: SUNNING OF THE BUDDHA. Lamas bring buddha statues out of temples of abstract tranquility to enjoy the sun.
* Zurich: SIX RINGINGS FESTIVAL: Boog (Old Man Winter), a giant snowman stuffed with explosives, is jeered, taunted, and then blown up.

ON THIS DATE
1624 — Pocahontas marries John Rolfe.
1800 — Luminous flying ship spotted over Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
1837 — Algernon Charles Swinburne born, London, England.
1856 — Black educator Booker T. Washington born, Hales Ford, Virginia.
1906 — Hipster, flipster musician Lord Buckley born, Stockton, California.
1926 — H. L. Mencken arrested in Boston for selling The American Mercury.
1945 — Turkish rock protest singer, activist Cem Karaca born, Istanbul.
1958 — Castro declares war on dictatorial Batista regime in Cuba.
2006 — “Happenings” event creator Allan Kaprow dies, Encitas, California.

All info courtesy The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

Trade Artwork for Health Care: Say What?

Anonymous, England, 1828.
Is it possible that artists and musicians will become the next big special interest group in American health care reform? Not by a long shot, but it’s nice to know that there are some benevolent organizations out there that a) actually give a damn about the astronomical number of uninsured artists in this country and b) can do something to take the edge off of rising medical costs. Artist Access, a New York health care initiative based out of the Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Center in North Brooklyn, offers starving artists and undernourished arts support workers access to quality care on a sliding-fee scale, with doctor’s visits ranging from $15 to $60, and prescription medication, from $2 to $22.

But it gets even curious-er. For creatives who can’t even shell out a few dollars towards their next routine check-up, Artist’s Access allows participants to pay in kind, earning “40 credits worth of healthcare services” (according to the program’s brochure) for every hour of performance or artistic activity they contribute to the life of the hospital. That’s forty dollars towards medical care, and, if you add it all up, probably a lot more cost-effective than gigging in most New York bars. Or priceless, if you dig the community service element.

Call 877.244.5600 for more information.

To find out if similar opportunities exist in your area, check out Fractured Atlas, the people behind the nationwide Artists Affordable Healthcare initiative.

April 5th – ALTERED STATES Exhibition at Transmodern Festival in Baltimore, MD

ALTERED STATES Exhibition

LOF/T Load of Fun Theatre
120 W. North Avenue
Baltimore, MD 21201

Tickets: $5 (tix can be purchased at the door)
Doors Open: 8pm, Performances: 9pm

ALTERED STATES, Curated by Jamillah James for Frontier Projects

Live Performances by Lexie Mountain Boys, Soft Circle (ex-Black Dice/Lightning Bolt), Blues Control (Siltbreeze Records, Brooklyn), Ra Khuit Noor, and New Jedi Order.

Altered States examines the history of collective action, originating in the 1960s with communalism (made families in hippie and freak subcultures), and avant-garde performance, where elements were borrowed from traditional rituals and ceremonial spectacle. This rubric for performance and artistic practice champions a freedom from creative, economic, and social constraints, and de-emphasizes the singular, commodifiable art object as the end-all of cultural production.

The exhibition considers a renewed interest in the aesthetics and performativity of mysticism. Through idiosyncratic performance, borrowed iconography, and the creation of “invested” objects and spaces, the artists in Altered States re-contextualize alterity, or “otherness”, as a psychedelic state of being, and explore the secular, the sacred, and the creative space in between.
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Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint – DOROTHEA DIX

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APRIL 4 — DOROTHEA DIX
Advocate of humane treatment for so-called “mentally ill.”

APRIL 4 festivals:
* Ancient Rome: FESTIVAL OF THE MAGNA MATER OF PHRYGIA, a reliquary embodied in a small meteorite. An ecstatic procession with the magna mater in a chariot drawn by lions, castrated priests leaping and dancing and gashing themselves to a din of flutes, cymbals and drums.

ON THIS DATE
1802 — Mental health reformer, activist Dorothea Dix born, Hampden, Maine.
1900 — Prince of Wales, in Belgium, escapes anarchist assassination attempt.
1914 — French writer Marguerite Duras born, near Saigon, French Indochina.
1915 — Blues guitarist Muddy Waters born, Issaquena County, Mississippi.

All info courtesy The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

COSMIC LOVE

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“Cosmic Love” is a collaborative art show featuring a group of artists with a similar vision: We dream of Love in all dimensions, tangible and non, and of the cosmic magic of love, and its powers in the cosmos. We are here to spread this message that Love is Cosmic and Love is Everywhere!

Cosmic Love artists include: James Weigel “owl eyes”, Nora Keyes, Kime Buzzeli, Mindy Le Brock, Tracy Conti, Miss KK, Annakim Violette, Alia Penner, Valentine, Joanna Burke, Veronica Ibarra

1930 Echo Park Ave. Los Angeles, CA 

www.showcave.org

It's Time to Party: Transmodern in B-more and FMA Benefit in B'klyn

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Two big events on the East Coast this weekend. In Baltimore, its the Transmodern Festival all weekend long with a gaggle of some of the best tweaker-performers around (Dan Deacon maybe the best-known of them). Here’s a nice chat with the festival’s organizers from the Baltimore City Paper.

In Brooklyn on Saturday night, there’s the Launch Party for WFMU’s FreeMusicArchive.org , a site that will soon be eating many of your evenings in solitude by providing you with tons of free and totally legal downloads by great musicians who you really want to listen to. Before that happens, you can get out and among other people one last time and hear live music by Sightings, Pink Skull, John Dwyer’s new band, Excepter and DJ Brian Turner. Here are deets.

We will expect to see smiling, drunken photos of you at one of these events on Flickr Monday morning.

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint – TERENCE MCKENNA

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APRIL 3 — TERENCE MCKENNA
Sacred substance psychonaut, shamanarchist.

APRIL 3 holidays and festivals:
* Ancient Egyptian FESTIVAL OF MIN.
* ETERNAL RICTUS DAY.
* Iran: SIZDAH-BEDAR: It is unlucky to stay indoors.

ON THIS DATE
1783 — Writer Washington Irving born, New York City.
1860 — Pony Express service begins.
1882 — Quintessential Western outlaw Jesse James shot by Robert Ford.
1924 — American actor, social dropout Marlon Brando born, Lincoln, Nebraska.
1950 — Radical educator, historian Carter G. Woodson born, Washington, DC.
1950 — Radical composer Kurt Weill dies, New York City.
1972 — Showboat politico Adam Clayton Powell dies, Harlem, New York City.
2000 — Entheogen psychonaut & futurist shaman Terence McKenna dies, Hawaii.

All info courtesy The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective