Tune in, Beatle Babies!

Hello Folks.  This is to let you know about this project I'm working on for the next 6 months, January 2015 - Sept 2015. 

In August 1965, I saw the Beatles in Chicago and kept a journal of the events in the week leading up to it. So now, 50 years later, I am channelling my inner 13 year-old-girl self and writing and drawing about life in the slow lane leading up to the concert. It is a blog-to-become-a-book project. 

Back then, I was living with my family in Ingleside, Illinois, going to Catholic school and living through a cultural phenomenon. You just have to tune in to my site: fab4mania.blogspot.com

It's trippy, focusing in on this narrow little window of time. I can't believe how much music the Beatles bashed out, and how terrific the whole pop music world was at that time. Prolific era! Half of the American Songbook, it seems. 

And it's weird being 13 again, but at the same time, delightful to be free of the big troubles of life, and completely blind (thankfully) to the travails of the future. Future triumphs, new people, world changes - that can all wait until after Labor Day, 2015, when the blog will be complete. Then it'll become a book.

So for now, turn your dial to fab4mania.blogspot.com. Like F4M on FB, and by all means, go listen to the Beatles!

Jim Tyler, my Man of the Year

Found this while helping my sister clean out her house.

This is in Wisconsin somewhere. My beautiful sister holding baby Joy, circa 1980. Harry her husband is next to her holding Case, her son (you can just see his arm) . Mother Teresa turned to greet them, and as the photographer snapped the picture, Joy reached up to pull at her scarf.

Lobby-ing

The #1 reason I want at least one of those Eisner noms to turn into a win - my sister Ginia. When I told her about the nominations, she was so uplifted by the news over there at the hospice place. 

You have often seen her depicted in my comics. She came with me to San Diego in 2010. I hope this video loads. She cracked me up. Remember,  she has a PhD in Inter-Religious Studies and heads the Masters Program at St. Mary-of-the-Woods College. Studied at Oxford. She’s also a former nun and currently a Sisters of Providence Associate.

The video starts out as Ginia goes out into the Comic Con lobby dressed in her nightgown & swag-bag accessories . . .     Dammit! The video will not load. So for now, this page from You'll Never Know, where she & Mom and I are having a conversation will have to suffice. She's on the upper left corner, her color is green. I'm blue, Mom's orange.

And it was all Yellow

Happy Easter in Mom's hats.

My sister is so skinny that she has to wear a baseball cap to keep a hat on. Note how her college ring just hangs there. F#ing cancer.

Despite all this, she's got a great smile and deep faith. I have to attribute my not falling completely apart to the practice of mindful awareness.

We always had a thing for Peeps.

I came across an empty parcel of land for sale out in the middle of nowhere, and when I went to check into its history on the auditor's website, this picture came up.

The Wild Bunch

Kim Thompson and me and Jerry Moriarty having a wild time at SPX a few years back. Don't remember who took the pic. Identify yourself!!!

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Good people of the world! I have taken your comments from my last posting to heart . . about quitting FB. I don't want to give you up completely - by no means. I have met so many cool new folks and reconnected with old pals and all else that's fun in between. What I realize I must do is call it hiatus or sabbatical. Quit is so final. Yeesh. I'm kind of sick of things being final. I'm going to get help with managing the out of control news feed for starters. And I've got to figure out this blog thing again. I've got an Etsy site that’s bonkers. 6 email accounts. A twitter account that I never ever use is under the name Crystal Meth. My website’s obsolete and I don't know how to fix it. OY. Eventually, it'll all be great. In the mean time, I'm working on Tomatoes for Cincinnati Magazine every month. Inside back page. Here is a link to the editor's comments. xoxo ct

http://www.cincinnatimagazine.com/editorsletter/story.aspx?ID=1841540

Readers,
I have a new little journal style mini- comic for sale on my new Etsy page:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/CarolTylerComix 

Here's the front cover and page 8 for a sampler.

Backstory: In 2009, I set up a book signing for "You'll Never Know, Book I: A Good & Decent Man" with my Dad at a place near his house - at the Historic Ernie Pyle Boyhood Home & Museum in Dana, Indiana. You know, Ernie Pyle, famous WWII correspondent. I figured we'd sell a million books at the festival, but it turned out to be a real dud. Nobody came. I felt so bad for Dad. Anyway, after he went home, I got out my little index cards and took notes on everything else going (or not going) on from our signing place on Ernie's porch.

If you purchase one of these (limited edition of 20), I will sign, add a little sketch to the back inside cover and mail it to you. Take me up on this deal, because soon enough I'll be back to a big project and won't have time for fun little gigs like this!

Months ago I posted something about how this dog that came up to my house all muddy and starving, in dark old winter, and I took it to the SPCA thinking the owner would claim her. She was ribs-showing scrawny with kennel cough and worms. At the same time, Mom was slipping off the planet and my sister was in a chemo haze. Everything was so sad -- Dad fell and was crabby and I had to tend to everyone. All hell was breaking loose! 

And then this dog came to our porch on January 2nd which is why I call her 2. Spelled Tue. She was my hope forward, toward better days. . . 

Today -- here is the ever-active Tue in full liquid motion mode, which is probably why she ended up on my porch. She's alive and healthy and I love it.

Tue is the one in front. Her pal Saranac is chasing her. They do this for hours. Thanks Peter for the photo

Need tech banana

It's a problem, my way-overdo-for-an-update website. File this under the category of no time or money to get a nerd to fix. Sorely needed, to say the least. I can barely manage this humble blog!!!

For those checking in about the upcoming Chicago thing, apologies, but don't let my lack of tech savvy keep you from reading my books.

I like this hidden little off-shoot that's hard to locate. This is for those who aren't familiar with my work yet. It's from 2005, by my late pal Bob Callahan.
http://bloomerland.com/bloomerland/comics.htm

BTW, I need to get the car painted for my next comix project. Here it is in better days. I may do a Kick starter campaign, which is about what it takes to start this baby.

SO Not Really

Miami Nice

Thinking Cap

At a loss for ideas? Here's how my Great Grandmother Sophie Tyler solved that problem back in 1910.

Great review

Thank you, Rob for the great review. http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/

40 and last

40 years ago today, July 24, 1971,  I got married in Tennessee for the first time. Alex & I were together almost 6 years. I was 19, he was 23.  Too young, I think.

The link below is the only evidence I have of his existence. In the video, someone's trying to make him out to be a bad guy, but I remember him as an environmentalist. He 'turned me on' to the natural world -- a love I have retained to this day.
one of my 'ex'es on the job

Last year on this date I sat on Odin's throne at the San Diego Comic Con, 2010.

Perfection

I realized perfection today. I saw the moment squarely and thanked Buddha for the concept.

I had made a screen door. Was putting the bead moulding around it out in my parents' back yard in flat Indiana, on a cement patio. Green everywhere else. Wide open prairie all around. Surround. OK, so there was a Cubs/Giants ballgame on the radio, coming out of the garage. And the sound of the table saw. Dad's making a rolltop desk out of his stash of old-growth walnut. (Who old growth? - He 92!) We got thirsty and so I cut open that watermelon from the refrigerator. So ripe and ready, it split completely open without much convincing.

Slurp eating cold sweetness in the grass there on the prairie with the game and the saw and the screen door in perfect evening light. That was it.

Smiling about Summer

Stalling

I just checked the weather of every zip code I ever lived in and am happy to report that every thing is just fine.

Now, back to crosshatching.

Baby draws comics

It won't let me post videos here, so I had to put this one on FB. My dog Baby has decided to quit getting into garbage and become a cartoonist:

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=mb&sk=messages#!/video/video.php?v=1683562940722&comments&notif_t=like