Over the course of the last year Sammy Harkham (one of today’s featured artists) and his comics anthology Kramers Ergot (specifically the behemoth KE7) have been responsible for thrusting some of the underground comics world’s greatest talents into the public eye. He’s like the Charles Saatchi of the comics world… or something like that. He is also the man behind the wonderful comic Crickets and graciously accepted an invitation for us to grill him about various things. Keep reading to see his responses.

Do you remember the first time you read Where the Wild Things Are?
Not really. It’s one of those books that just feels like it’s always been a part of my childhood–just there. When I look at those drawings I can smell the school library and hear my kindergarden teacher’s voice pretty vividly.

If you had to live inside a monster’s stomach, which type of monster would you choose?
Charlotte Gainsbourg in Antichrist.

What’s the most disgusting thing you’ve ever eaten?
An old hamburger I found in a gutter. Or tempeh.

Kramers Ergot 7 is one of the largest books I’ve ever seen. Do you know of any instances of it being used as a weapon?
My dad used it as a shield at a renaissance fair mock battle.

How do you divide your time between cartooning and editing? Are people constantly submitting their work to you or do you mostly pick and choose the artists you want to work with?
My comics often take a long time to make, so I need to have projects that are more immediate, that come together and wrap up somewhat fast and deal with ideas separate from the stuff in my comics. So a given day is made up of drawing comics throughout the day with breaks to work on other things: writing, pasting up a horror movie zine, Kramers Ergot 8, organizing the cover to the next cinefamily cover, doing stuff for the store, whatever.

People send me comics in the mail, which I totally enjoy getting and reading. That said, most of the people I work with I find in other ways.

When can we expect KE8 and how the hell are you planning to top the last one?
Next year, maybe. It’s going to be the size of staple.

http://www.maakies.com

Tony Millionaire was born in Boston and grew up in Gloucester, Massachusetts.  He writes and draws the ongoing adventures of Sock Monkey, published by Dark Horse Comics since 1998. He is the creator of the syndicated comic strip, Maakies, which has been collected by Fantagraphics, who also published his graphic novel, Billy Hazelnuts. His comic strip Maakies has been adapted to the small screen as The Drinky Crow Show for Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim.

So the Your Wild Things Contest ended earlier today, and all told we had 158 approved entires from both extremely talented artist to crayon doodles from three-year-olds (we had a few more but they were, um, of the blue variety and since this is a family-friendly site we could not post them–sorry!). We loved most of them, and it was very tough to narrow down the winners. But we did, and without further ado we would like to announce them. Drumroll please… (this is when you’re supposed to click “…Read more”)

FIRST PLACE – KARIN RUTKIN

SECOND PLACE – MICHELLE RITCHIE

THIRD PLACE – WOTTO

20 RUNNERS-UP

Leanne Biank

Royce Hare

Yanick Blanchet

Ian Eckert

Kristall

Loki Eliot

Fish Mcgill

Eli Minava

David ‘Mchank’ Mchenry

Stephanie Lemieux

Phoebe Sullivan

Chris Jacque

Norton Walesa

Seb Mesnard

Emmanuelle Maher

Joshua Agerstand

Steven Macleod

Adam Marshall

Marcus Parcus

Peteris Brosovs

Thanks to everyone who entered, and congratulations to all of our winners. You’ll be hearing from us early next week about the prize packages. Now, go see WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE!

It’s 12 PM EST on Friday, October 16. That means the Your Wild Things contest is over. Finito. The end. Done. Thanks to the almost 200 artists who submitted their work (which you can check out here), and please understand that we cannot accept any more entries. Check back in at 2 PM EST to see who the big winners are.

http://www.familylosangeles.com/blog/2006/11/one-page-is-only-page.html

Sammy Harkham was born in Los Angeles on May 21, 1980. When he was 14 he moved with his family to Sydney, Australia. He was nominated in 2002 for an Ignatz Award for “Promising New talent,” and Kramers Ergot, his comic anthology series, has been favorably reviewed and placed on numerous best-of-the-year lists, including the LA Weekly, Time.com, Dazed And Confused, The Comics Journal, and Publishers Weekly. Harkham currently lives in Los Angeles and is working on his comic series Crickets and the next volume of Kramers Ergot.

Wow. VBS really brought home the monster bacon over the course of the last two weeks with five separate episodes of Art Talk that revolve around the crew of WTWTA. Today’s fifth and final episode is all about cinematographer Lance Acord. Watch it if you want to see how Spike and Co. made the land of the Wild Things so beautiful and otherworldly. And just in case you missed out, click here to check out the rest of the WTWTA Art Talks.

www.marktoddillustration.com

Painter, illustrator, and author Mark Todd took his first creative cues from comic books and Star Wars: worlds of inventive fantasy that still inform his art. His latest work involves intense scrutiny and alteration of classic comic cover from Fantastic Four, X-Men, Iron Man, Spiderman and other series, including the work of legendary illustrators like Jack Kirby.