Issue #1 is out now, with issue #2 to follow in November. Here’s Calvin Reid’s announcement in Publisher’s Weekly, and here’s a very nice review indeed from Stumptown Trade Review.

Reading with Robert Berry on Bloomsday

First, the glamorous stuff:

After the June, 2010 excitement over Apple’s reaction to the Ulysses “Seen” app, my Throwaway Horse partners and I found ourselves courting and being courted by publishers, and being invited to speak at events. I participated in a very enjoyable panel discussion at the Irish Arts Center in NYC with partners Robert Berry and Mike Barsanti last October, and in June of this year, Robert Berry and I joined a host of esteemed guests in reading aloud from the Calypso episode of Ulysses at The Rosenbach Museum and Library’s outdoor Bloomsday celebration. There was also a group interview for Shelf Unbound magazine thrown in for good measure.

On the work side of things:

I feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to work on some amazing projects. I’ve balanced a wonderful full-time graphic design job at Independence Blue Cross with the design of iPad app interfaces for Throwaway Horse’s releases of Martin Rowson’s The Waste Land “Seen”, Ulysses “Seen” 1.5, and the forthcoming Age of Bronze “Seen”; illustration, production art, hand-lettering, and graphic design on the Calypso episode of Ulysses “Seen”; a pitch of our Behind the Seen Reader to a major publisher; and various freelance graphic design jobs.

Things got busy from the get-go this year, as I was given the honor of working on the Independence Blue Cross annual report. In that process I learned a tremendous amount, forged relationships with some great people, and created what turned out to be a great piece.

The first of Throwaway Horse’s iPad releases for the year, Martin Rowson’s The Waste Land “Seen”, allowed me the opportunity to work with the great and brilliant British cartoonist, Martin Rowson (who also happens to be a very nice guy), and to establish a workable template for future iPad releases with our wonderful coding guys at Bunsen Tech. If you haven’t seen Rowson’s graphic novel parody of T.S. Eliot’s epic poem, I highly recommend it. It’s chock full of modernist art and literary references, both famous and obscure, and Mike Barsanti’s equally intelligent commentary makes this app a real gem (if we don’t say so, ourselves).

Immediately upon the release of The Waste Land “Seen”, Robert Berry and I set out to create 37 of the Calypso episode’s 54 pages in three weeks. It was a test of wills, but we did it. The comic and the reader’s guide, authored by Weidener University Joyce scholar Janine Utell, came together beautifully, and despite the grueling production schedule, we were quite happy with the end product.

We are currently in the process of putting together our forthcoming release of Age of Bronze “Seen”, which has given me the honor of working with the very talented Eric Shanower (also a very nice guy). Age of Bronze, Shanower’s incredibly well-researched, Eisner Award-winning comic adaptation of the story of the Trojan War, seemed like a perfect fit for our treatment, which adds scholarly commentary and discussion to comic adaptations of difficult works of literature. We’re very excited to unveil it this fall and will continue to work diligently to make that happen.

Still to come:

I will be participating in two discussion panels in October: one at Villanova University, dealing with comics in the digital age, and one at my alma mater, The University of the Arts, concerning post-graduation experiences as an arts professional.

Through all of this, work continues on the next episodes of Ulysses “Seen”, and an outdoor advertising campaign for Independence Blue Cross, as well. But enough for now. More about that later on…

Also – look for an exciting announcement in the coming days concerning Throwaway Horse, LLC. and out project ULYSSES “SEEN”, which has recently garnered international attention. More to come!

In addition, my father’s novel, ALUMNI NOTES will be published in January, 2011 by Star Cloud Press. I will have the honor of doing the cover, and I will post that image when it has been completed and approved.

Through all of this, I have been working as a contractor with the wonderful people in the Creative Services Department at Independence Blue Cross. I could not have wished for a better environment in which to work, and I am very grateful to have been invited back for a second run with them.

More to come…

More exciting jobs are on the horizon, as is A LOT of work on the next chapter of ULYSSES “SEEN”. I’ve already spent quite a number of hours in libraries and in contact with institutions like the University of Texas and the Irish National Museum, researching various details of 1904 Dublin homes and streets.

Here’s a pic of the PYRETOWN poster. More to come when time allows.

On the topic of Ulysses “Seen”, we should be finishing Chapter I: Telemachus in a few short weeks. The storyboards for the next chapter are coming along quite well, and we’re really looking forward to presenting it.

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