Sunday, April 24, 2005

The "Godfather" of Small Press

I'm not gong to attempt to tell you who first came up with small press comics. For me they date all the way back into the mid 70's with adds in the Comics Buyers Guide weekly newspaper. And the only one of those I ever ordered was a book by Tim Corrigan who could just as easily be called a "Great Uncle" of small press (more about Tim another day). For my money, the man who does the most for Small Press, is Matt Feazell.

Matt Feazell can easily be found by doing a web search (or as we like to say these days, you can Google Matt), but I'll gladly attach a link at the end of this "article" to his home page, which in turn is loaded with lots and lots of free pages of art, ordering information, and more that I can't tell you about at the moment because it's an AOL Homepage and, you guessed it, isn't working at the moment! (Hopefully it WILL work when you try it - worked just a few minutes ago!) When newspapers or radio want to do an article on small press, they go to Matt. When Disney or other publishers want some humor backup, they often go to Matt.

At first glance, Matt's work is possibly disappointing because most of it is stick figures. It's not long however that you figure out that Matt can actually draw very well, stick figures are just his "thing". Even if Matt weren't able to draw a lick, his work would still be heads and shoulders above most because it's funny. REALLY funny! Cynicalman is, well, cynical. Stupid boy is stupid, and Cute Girl is blonde (stereotypically blonde I should point out) and cute as well, in a stick figure kind of way...

Besides being a very talented guy, you're probably wondering why I give Matt the title "Godfather" of small press? It's because of his attitude. He is humble about his work. He is very generous - go to his table and offer a trade, he's more than happy to trade with other small pressers, in fact even if you don't have a trade you can draw Cynicalman on a stickynote for him, and he'll give you a free mini comic in trade. I think that he personally has done more to draw new talent into the small press pool than any other person. Many small pressers will tell you that it was Matt that got them started. They realized that small press wasn't about making a buck or that big break, it was about having fun. I suspect that's why Matt draws stick figures, to show folks how easy it can be to have fun!

Check out Matt and his work at:

http://members.aol.com/cynicalman/

and for more samples of his work:

http://www.worldfamouscomics.com/notavailable/

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I COMPLETELY agree. Matt Feazell is a amazing. When I see all these people doing mini-comics today I think of Matt Feazell and how much he has supported and promote self-publishing and small press. Plus he is a great guy!

Bob

1:24 PM  

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