Last friday one of the three themes we did was Bear Beater Bunyan/Yon Kuma

And the awesome Valerio Vega was late for the #10minutesmatch but he sent some BBB goodness

Here’s the official Tumblr.

-jorge

Here’s the result:

Tebin

Saiyagina

HGSantarriaga

Bowserina

Kaori Macassi

trucaspelucas

D_Artemisatto

Dymaraway

Aisaku

Valerio Vega

And the awesome Valerio Vega was late for the #10minutesmatch but he sent some BBB goodness:

Valerio Vega

Here’s the official Tumblr.

-jorge

There it is, in the right corner!

Here is the link to the interview, written by JK Parkin, who included us on his Best of 09 list back at the beginning of the year.

!!!

-jorge.

CLICK HERE!!!

For those that don’t remember, Deconstructing Comics reviewed Yon Kuma in the past, you can listen to that episode HERE.

And this is a very early tease of our next project together, R+M:

Thanks for reading!

-jorge

Over at the Robot Comics site, a short interview with the non-award winning team of your favorite Bear Wrestling comic.

CLICK HERE!!!

-jorge

Robot Comics sent out the press release. CLICK!

This mobile releases are the ONLY way to read it, we took it down from this site in order to help the mobile versions. (unless you want to review it, i’ll be more than happy to provide you of a reading copy)

So faithful readers, download it and enjoy it!

Android

Itunes:

Search Bear Beater Bunyan or click on the sidebar on the Itunes icon!

Thanks for all your support!

-jorge

YON KUMA is now BEAR BEATER BUNYAN on iTunes and Google Android. Still published by the excellent Robot Comics, but now each issue contains the full 22 page chapters sliced up and with double the backmatter of the old YK mobile issues. The first issue remains free and we hope you’ll check out the rest.

(We changed the name because, frankly, YON KUMA is not a clever enough name to justify the hassle of having to explain it. And BEAR BEATER BUNYAN is super catchy. We think, anyway.)

Best,

- Josh

we’ll do a post later in the week regarding the future of the mobile versionS (yes, plural) and maybe some artwork.

For the past year me and Josh have been kind of hermetic regarding our personal lifes and stuff. So as a special treat for our faithful readers (and for our casual readers too ) here’s a conversation me and Josh had via Google Wave.

Enjoy!

-jorge

be aware that there’s some minor cursing involved.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————

Jorge: Hey

Josh: Heya!

Jorge: so this works like IM? never really fiddled with it

Josh: Yeah, it’s sort of like a realtime IM. My friends got me into it, but I’m basically rubbish at it.

Jorge: well you had to be rubbish about something :p

Josh: Something? ALL things. Matter of public record.

Jorge: I think I good way to start this is something I blatantly stole from Come In Alone

WHY COMICS?

Josh: When you said Come In Alone, I knew where this was heading.

Jorge: Big influence in myself, kind of a break thru point for me

Josh: Me too, actually. Depending how you look at it, I either read that at the exact right time or the exact wrong time; which is to say, right when I was forming an idea of what being “in” comics was.

Anyway: why comics. Hm.

Speed, I suppose. I can tell any story that pops into my head so, so much faster in comics than I can in movie screenplays, certainly much faster than I can if I wrote a novel.

Jorge: you would write awesome screenplays, you have a good ear for dialogue

Josh: Thanks.

Jorge: you always wanted to be a writer?

Josh: Yeah, as far back as I can remember. I was “writing” GI Joe stories when I was 5 or so, with my parents’ help. I wrote original shit when I was 12, did fanfic in high school, started comics in 8th grade on.

Insofar as I’m any good at it, I didn’t get any good at it until my first year of college. I wrote…and this is a rough estimation…something like 500 pages in a semseter.

Jorge: wow, personally i was never interested in the writing side, for me it always was about the art, that’s until I knew Frank Miller’s Daredevil

Josh: For me, it was James Robinson’s Starman that made me realize “oh, wow, someone actually writes-writes these things.” Up until then, I wanted to be…well, a pro wrestler, but writing wise, I wanted to be a screenwriter or a novellist.

Jorge: I had my Pro wrestler fase too :p

Josh: Haha, nice. For me, it was Mick Foley who I kinda looked at and said “oh, wow, he’s kinda out of shape and hairy, but he has tremendous matches. I’m a butterball, I could totally be a pro wrestler!”

Jorge: how tall are you?

Josh: Five foot eleven inches. How about you?

Jorge: 1.74 meters, I think metric, so I have to do the conversion of that. 5 foot nine, you are 1.80 meters

Josh: Every time I see someone’s height in meters, it reminds me of this old Star Wars encyclopedia I had. Nothing to do with anything, just struck me.

Weird, 2 inches to .06 meters. Meters makes so much more sense…

Jorge: it works for the rest of the world :p

back to the James Robinson bit, you read the regular series? the singles?

Josh: No, the first trade. My LCS had it, and I was trying to branch out a bit. I was real hesitant about it, because I was a big pussy about gore back then, and it looked like a really dark series.

Jorge: I bring that up because of the part you said that you realized that somebody writes the thing, a real person, James Robinson had some really cool “backmatter” about old cars and collecting stuff, I don’t know if those come in the TPB

Josh: Kinda; there was an intro by…I think Mike Allred (not that I knew who that was) that was about “stuff”, and how James was the first writer to really write about someone who collected old stuff.

Jorge: you a fan of thrift stores and flea markets?

Josh: Yeah. I actually need to hit one soon to get a suit that fits.

Jorge: I had to stop buying used stuff, toys and old magazines, I don’t have anymore space, here in Mexico you can get some stuff really cheap, and almost every vendor is open to negotiations

Question, Why you choose comedy as your main “topic” (not really a topic) or avenue for your stories?

Josh: I’m not very good at being serious. Also, I’m usually depressed as hell about something or other, and comics is a way to sort of…counter that for an audience, if not myself. GRAVE DOUG FRESHLEY, especially, is/was really about being anti-angst in fiction and in general.

Jorge: I think that’s very fresh, and it’s one of the reasons I like working with you.

When I was looking for projects before Yon Kuma, I received A TON of Hellboy-esque, Buffy-esque, Steampunk-esque, etc proposals, A TON, and I’m a fan of most of those, but Bear Wrestling sounded waay more entertaining and fun to draw.

Josh: I’d read the shit out of you doing a steampunk series, FYI.

Jorge: the bad thing about many of those proposals is that they werent very good

it’s the thing about drawing comics, you have to like the story, REALLY like it because you are going to be chained drawing the thing for many weeks/months or even years

Josh: Yeah, that’s why I generally try to make things as easy as possible on the artist…maybe not in terms of what I ask for on the page, but in terms of like…”what do you want to draw?”, y’know?

Jorge: How the concept of Yon Kuma was born, just a derivation of you being a wrestling fan?

Josh: Kinda. I mean, mostly it was just me wanting to do something very short (88 pages is short for me, I guess, haha) and fighty and garage-rock-ish. I think I’d just come off the first DOUG delay, and I was like “okay, fuck it, I want to do a comic that just gets DONE.”

Jorge: garage rock-ish is a perfect way to describe it, a lot of the art was done with the rule of a page a day. Draw what you know and if it doesn’t work you’ll do better next page

Josh: Yeah, the reason I went for the “boss fight” style to the plot was so I could just be like, “well, that issue was just okay, but we’ll just keep barrelling on regardless”.

Jorge: even with the lettering or the inking, I did so many shifts, a lot of it was inked on manga studio, from “pencils” drawn on scrap paper or on the back of the script, some pages were done old school style, blue pencils, pencils, inks with a brush and a crowquill, some were a combination of the two. Most of the balloons were done a million different ways, from Illustrator to Photoshop, to hand drawn to made with the curve tool in MS. I think in the last two pages was when I discovered that Manga Studio actually had an Ellipse Tool :p

Josh: Haha, well, now you know for your next comic. Yon Kuma: Like a Kungfu Course In Making Comics.

Jorge: It was! I think it shows in the progression of the story how the artwork changes

Josh: It really does! You start off strong, but the art just gets better with each bear.

Jorge: And it kept me drawing the whole year

that was one of the Breakthroughs with YK for me, a finished project, not a 5 page submission to Image or an 8 page submission to a company. I got to finish my first book

Josh: It’s an awesome feeling, innit? Thanks for sticking with the comic, by the way.

Jorge: No problem dude.

question, what about your artwork? you never tried to pursue that dangerous path?

Josh: Brawler Land, that’s it.

Jorge: what’s Brawler Land for the unitiated?

Josh: A horrible personal failure, let’s leave it at that. Part of the problem with it, frankly, is that I could never nail down what BL was supposed to be.

Jorge: I have a failed webcomic too!

Josh: Really? I didn’t know that. What was it?

Jorge: yeah, look on my blog for the tag “the search party” I just did like 5 pages, a scifi story about a search party that looks for a cure for their people. very Shonen now that I think about it.

Josh: Cool. Speaking of projects like that, what’s the scoop with Multimedium? Assuming you can talk about it in public.

Jorge: well, there’s not really any juicy TMZ-esque scoop, we did 16 pages and a double page spread cover, with colors and letters and everything, a finished slimline book, we pitched and the publisher was not interested. I blame myself, not because I dropped the ball or anything, but because I wasn’t ready for a project of that magnitude with a team of professionals like Kieron Gillen and Felipe Sobreiro, I was just not good enough, I haven’t seen the pages in a long time, but I will cringe with massive pain if I do. Kieron and I talked about it and we decide to wait until I got better, but now that he’s on the verge of ruling the Marvel Universe I don’t think he can commit to a project of even a smaller scale than Phonogram.

That’s the story pretty much.

Josh: Fair enough, but I hope you guys do get to do it. Also, and this is just me speaking out my ass, but his increased Marvel profile might make it easier to do a kinda fringy project like Multimedium.

Jorge: hopefully one day, I would love to work again with him, he wrote very entertaining scripts and the plans he had for the series were really cool, Issue 2 had Daisy (one of the main characters, with the red hair and freckles) versus a dinosaur. And cool stuff like that.

you can see some of the pages at my comicspace (anyone still uses it?) http://www.comicspace.com/yorko/comics.php?action=gallery&comic_id=19068

Josh: I think you showed me the first issue hosted somewhere.

Jorge: yeah, I think that has been erased, I have disc here with the pages.

Hopefully one day

the cool thing is that he gave me a shot, he was already of high profile because of Phonogram, i’m really thankfull for that. It made me avoid the artistic self-doubt and gave me confidence.

Josh:  Self-doubt is the shittiest.

Jorge: Actually for most of my life I was the opposite of self-doubt, fueled mostly because everybody (teachers, friends, etc) told me I was awesome at drawing. That set me back 10 years

then when I realized I wasn’t very good the self doubt started, and then the hard work to learn to draw properly.

Josh: I think you need to have self-confidence when you start, TO start, but I think it does kinda screw you up if everyone supports you.

That sounds weird, but I think you’re a lot more “honest” as a creator if you’ve got a little resistance from other people.

Jorge: you have to, the failing is implied in the job description, the only thing I’m sorry about is that I didn’t drew like I drew today five years ago, not better, just the way I draw today.

Josh: One of the best things for me was going on The Engine and being, frankly, a bit of a shit and, most importantly having that shittiness slapped and shamed out of me by being at the adult/cool kids table.

Jorge: to be honest I don’t remember any of that, I was mostly a lurker and didn’t knew anybody.

Josh: It wasn’t so much that I was always causing trouble or anything, more like…I’d say something dumb, and there’d be a lack of response/awkward silence, and I’d feel bad. But, y’know, that’s how you learn to talk like someone worth talking to.

Jorge: I was really scared of replying over at The Engine. SELF-DOUBT

Josh: I could’ve stood to have a little more self-doubt before I posted instead of after, haha. Still, every good thing to happen to me in comics came out of there in one way or another.

Jorge: I still have that self doubt sometimes, but mostly is about not being able to explain my point with my english, and I usually don’t respond for the sake of responding. That’s something I really like about PnP, it’s in a way more relaxed than The Engine, right now it just needs a little fire to keep things moving

Josh: I like a lot of the people at PnP, but I don’t feel like it’s really my scene. I don’t have pencils to post, and I’ve been burned/jinxed by talking about projects-in-process way too much to workblog page-by-page.

Jorge: don’t be superstitious, if something is gonna happen, it’s gonna happen.

question, why the radio silence on your blog and various forums? you have been really quiet this last year

Josh: Fair enough. To answer the radio silence thing: Twitter, mostly. I can really only be a mouthy internet jackass in one spot at a time.

Jorge: how do you think twitter has affected the way you do comics and the way you promote them?

Josh: It’s easier to talk to/nag at collaborators; promotion wise, you can, and I hate to say this, actually see whether or not people are spreading the word on projects. That sounds kinda cynical and Big Brother-y, but it’s true.

I know of people who’ve gotten gigs off Twitter, but I haven’t really seen a huge boost in business because of it…though to be fair, I spend 2/3rds of my time on Twitter cursing and being a moody git.

Jorge: I got a regular illustration job because of it. I knew my current art director there, also I got to show my work to people like David Lafuente and they respond! and he’s nice!. I think it shows a more relaxed, human side of individuals.

Josh: That’s what I like about it, but I have problems balancing that with the “public job interview” aspect to being a creator in a public forum. But yeah, everyone’s been super cool on Twitter that I’ve talked to.

Jorge: How do you feel about Yon Kuma ending? you have plans for Vol. 2?

Josh: I’m proud of you, kinda ambivilent towards my own accomplishment; with me, it’s always “what’s next, what’s next, oh god, need to find a next gig auuugh”. I dunno if I’d want to do a Volume 2 per se, but…like, YK was always kinda written with the idea that this is the 4-episode OAV of a fictional longer series…I also think it might be cool to do something about Richaud’s career.

Jorge: a spinoff 300 pgs. massive full color maxiseries? or a one shot ? :p

Josh: I think if it came to it, I’d want to homage Matsumoto, do 3-5 vols, max. B/W, since I’m increasingly leaning that way (since the industry seems to hate it, and I’m, let’s be frank, a fucking brat. )

Jorge: I don’t understand this industry, a shitty comic but full color sells gazillions copies and another from the same company in B&W sells 2000. backwards IMNSHO

Josh: Backwards is the best way to put it.

Jorge: Matsumoto is your favorite mangaka (besides ODA :p )

Josh: Pretty much. Oda’s my hands down favorite, but Matsumoto, Urasawa, and Sorachi are a fast 2-3-4.

Jorge: You do the “list” thing? about TOP WHATEVER OF 2009?

Josh: Nah, because I never have any idea what came out in a given year, and I just don’t care that much to keep track. Whatever I read/watch/listen to in a year could be from all over the timeline, y’know?

Jorge: I love reading them, LOVE. but I hate doing them, I suffer the same thing that you suffer. This year I’ve read/watched/listened a LOT of stuff to keep track

So, what’s next for you? now that this little quirky comic is over. What you have coming next year (2010)?

Josh: I have no idea, actually. I’m talking to Marv about stuff, John Bivens about continuing THAW, you about R+M, me and Lea have a standing deal to do MOON IS MINE. But I never know what I’m doing when the new year comes. How about you?

Jorge: man, writing seems like a good choice of career to do a lot of projects. I’m doing a Zuda sub with Ryan Burton and Felipe Sobreiro, we’ll see if I survive the carnage of the competition, a project with you, but that’s like a mid to long term, maybe a project with a fellow PnP member, published writer, but we are still very early on the game for that one. And pretty much getting some recognition. One of the things I saw with Yon Kuma is that nobody knew about it, NOBODY, a few bursts of interest here and there, and I don’t think it was because of the quality, but I think we are lousy salesmen (:p) I mentioned it to you in an email, I want to stop being “good” and take my work to the next step, make my work known and getting some paying jobs

Josh: You have to have a lot of projects as a writer, because every one’s kind of a crap shoot. My rule of thumb for each year is: get at least one more project out there than I did last year. So, if ’09 was YK and THAW, I’ve gotta get 3 things out there next year.

Jorge: this year proved me I can do the job. I was really close to quitting YK at one point because it seemed like an overwhelming Herculean task at the time. It reminds me of Dave sim before he did High Society (Cerebus Vol. 2) he went and tried to do a BIG story, as a mighty challenge. after that he did Church and State, 2 volumes to use as a chair because of the size. so I hope to do more this coming year, but mostly I want to do it better. Dave Sim is one of the guys I look up to

Josh: He was nice at his PnP Q&A. I had no idea you were thinking of quitting YK; it sounds kinda obvious from me, but man, I am so glad you didn’t.

Jorge: I had to finish it, I’m stubborn like nobody’s bussiness. STUBBORN.

Josh: You gotta be, in comics.

Jorge: when I was like 5 I told my mom I wanted to draw comic books. Stubborn!

You had encouragement from your folks to do this? You said before they helped you write some stories.

Josh: Yeah, my family’s been really supportive, but…I actually try really hard to keep them out of what I do. Even in school, it’s important that I didn’t have my mommy do my homework for me, y’know? With comics, it’s the one thing I’ve got that nobody ever really babied me through. I’ve gotten lucky breaks, but I had to audition for them in some way shape or form.

Jorge: (that’s cool ) Is comics your career for life ? or you want to venture in other venues?

Josh: I want it to be, but I’m trying to get a job in some kind of writing (or some kind of anything) so I can live like a proper adult until the Fat Comic Paydays come in. But as long as I need to tell stories, nine’ll get you ten that those stories are gonna be in comic form.

Jorge: I would love to work in animation and films at some point, to use the toys in another sandbox.

Josh: I’d like to be a writer on a video game or TV show; the former, I like the challenge of writing for a non-passive medium, and on the latter, I like the idea of bouncing ideas around a writers’ room.

Actually, one question for you: what’s the one thing you wish a writer would give you to draw? Genre, object, character, whatever.

Jorge: something about any of the World Wars, and I don’t mean nazi robots, historic. Iron Man written by Matt Fraction :p and maybe something similar to POWERS, not in “Homicide with superheroes” kind of way but in the way that world is build, rich, complex, with their own mythologies, secondary characters, atmosphere etc.

I’m not really difficult in the things I like to draw, I just need the script to be good, even if it’s just people talking.

Josh: That’s a relief for me, as I’m all about people talking. Why the World Wars?

Jorge: Some of my favorite works of fiction are about that, and I mean movies and tv, I read books but not that many about history. I like the period, it goes back to the love of old stuff, the way they dressed, they talked, how the world functioned back then.

I mean, you see something like Band Of Brothers and you see how cool that period can be. Simpler times.

Jorge: And almost forgot, a comic about boxing, but in that time period 1910-1940 or something.

Josh: Ooh, I’d read the shit out of you on a boxing comic.

Jorge: for all those projects I pretty much have to do them myself, most of the current writers are not interested in period pieces until later in their careers. Now is all about the nazi robots.

Josh: You should look at the Top Shelf style guys for that kind of thing, I think.

I’m actually trying to do a period piece with Marv; but as mentioned above, I’m kind of an uncommercial brat sometimes.

(Oni might be another place you could find/land a serious period project.)

Jorge: I need to get paid first, being a starving artist is not working to well for me

Josh: Amen to that.

Jorge: I know music plays a big part on your writing, what were you listening while doing THE best bear wrestling comic on the web?

Josh: Pixies and Pillows, a little bit of Los Campesinos (which I listened to MASSIVELY this year, just not usually in a writing context.) When slicing up the comic for mobile phones, I’m all about rap/hip-hop. Issue 4′s being done to Wu-Tang’s “36 Chambers” and Biggie’s “Ready To Die”. How about you, when drawing THE best bear wrestling comic on the web?

Jorge: I love music, but I use it as background sound and motivator, if I start paying too much attention to it I stop working, but I listenend to a LOT of Rodrigo Y Gabriela, specially the live in Japan cd, that made me ink FLASH FAST, I saw them live a few months ago, after a hiatus (mine, not them) from concerts of a couple of years. if you have a chance to see them they are awesome live, pure raw energy coming from two acoustic guitars. Also listened to a lot of Daft Punk, also good for inking specially Alive 07, and SFDK, my favorite rap group, they are from Spain. and a lot of podcasts and the whole collection of Harry Potter Audiobooks read by Jim Dale

Josh: I need to check out more audiobooks. In any case, I think that’s a solid stopping point. Dude, you run an awesome interview, in addition to being an awesome artist.

Jorge: thanks Josh, this is our first proper conversation ever. Thanks for being an awesome writer.

Josh: Oh shit, it is, isn’t it? Well, we’ve gotta do it more often, you’re a good dude to talk to.

Mark my words, these two are going to be comic superstars.

clickity on the image:

Also visit Josh’s Blog where he talks a little about the project and gives you a chance to be a murder victim and win a signed copy of Comic Book Tattoo (SWEET!).