Author: delaine

On February 13, 2014 I got to meet my life-long idol John McEnroe in person and this time we got to hug him, talk to him and had him autograph my 1982 Interview Magazine. Dreams come true!!!

I had a great time at the LA Zine Fest with my table-mate Carrie McNinch! I was thrilled to see many NMSD contributors, some I’ve never seen in person before: MariNaomi, Liz Prince, Jason Martin, Kelly Froh, Max Clotfelter, Trevor Alixopulos, Jerry Sims, Buzz Saw, Edward Bolman and Clutch McBastard. I sold Diaries galore and had some celebrity sightings (Matt Groening and David Ury). ZINES 4-EVER!

Other California trip happeninings included a tour of Paramount Studios where we saw Glee being filmed, a visit to the Hollywod Forever Cemetery (2 Ramones are buried there), a trip to Joshua Tree (we saw the dinosaurs from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure on the way) and quality friend and family time.

I (along with Carrie McNinch) will have a Small Diary table at LA Zine Fest February 16, 2014. There will be 175+ zinesters, comics creators and DIY publishers at Helms Bakery sharing their work with each other and with the public at large. I will have NMSD 13, 14, 15, 17, the MSD collection and a brand new “Portable NMSD” collecting selected comics from all 17 past issues of Not My Small Diary! Carrie will have plenty of “You Don’t Get There From Here” comics for sale. Please come see us if you’re in the area. And, oh yeah… February 16 happens to be John McEnroe’s birthday too!

Brian Buniak (cartoonist for Mad Magazine, DC Comics and more) mailed in this unexpected review of the My Small Diary Collection:

I love Delaine’s “My Small Diary.” It is so good in so many ways. It’s fun… it’s quirky… it’s addictive. Her pages are like potato chips… you cannot stop with just one. If “My Small Diary” was a song I imagine it would be “Brand New Key” by Melanie.

Delaine’s cartoon version of herself is instantly recognizable. So much so that she made it into two of my projects for DC Comics. She was in the audience of Howard Coselle’s TV show “Saturday Night Live” cheering on the Backstreet Boys in “The Big Book of the 70s.” More recently I slipped a cheesecake shot of “our gal from AL” into the “Angel and the Ape” portion of “Joe Kubert Presents” #1. But perhaps my most successful drawing of Miss Derry/Green appears on page 106 of her small diary collection. She brought out the best in me.

My absolute favorite, no contest, drawing of Delaine by Delaine appears in the first panel of page 51. The “best bathing suit on the beach” pic. She is so utterly adorable in that panel. Everything… EVERY… THING about it works. I have it bookmarked so, whenever I’m feeling a bit blue or bleagh, I can quickly turn to it and, before you know it… bingo, bango, bongo… I’m smiling again.

Perhaps someone out there is reading this and wondering whether or not to give Delaine’s title a try. In all honesty you may not like it. There are no superheroes. No mutants. No altered DNA. No mad scientists. No mechas. No zombies. No time travel. None of that cool comic book stuff….

It is the illustrated diary of about a decade’s worth of life, love, hopes, dreams, triumphs, failures, embarrassments, tears, joy, laughter and just plain silliness presented to us in a winning way by one of the most marvelous women God ever pieced together.

No, this is not your typical cool comic book stuff. It is infinitely superior. You may not be able to handle it.

Happy Halloween 2013. Here’s my costume this year – Carol Ann from Poltergeist!

Optical Sloth has posted a review of ‘I Am My Own Stereotype – The My Small Diary Collection.’

Here is a taste: Subjects include her very early days and the imagination she had even then (we’re talking grade school here), various sights seen at concerts and bars, boyfriends and ex-boyfriends (and what they were up to with their current girlfriends), her obsessions with Pez dispensers and Emo Phillips, drinking, employment, unemployment, and everything that goes into 10+ years of a life. If this all sounds like stuff you’ve read before in other auto-bio comics, well, there’s only so much new ground to be covered there, but that doesn’t stop this from seeming completely fresh and original. It could have something to do with her general attitude of wonder (that, happily, seems to have lasted into her 40′s), or the fact that she never lets anything really get her down. For me a big part of it was that nothing here really felt mean-spirited, even when it seemed like the subjects had it coming. This was constantly smart and funny, and good luck reading this and not coming away feeling like you missed out by not somehow being Delaine’s friend (even if that meant you would have lived in Alabama).

Order your copy TODAY, only $5, HERE.

I’ve been busily preparing for Artwalk for months now! Come and see me, my art and comic books at What’s On 2nd, 2306 2nd Ave N, Birmingham, AL 35203 on September 6 & 7. I will have over 50 brand new pieces of art, big and small, including this new 12×12 mixed media piece – “Super Stars” (check out that tattoo)…

For more information on Artwalk please go HERE.

Check out this review from Laura-Marie. She says “In addition to the evocative and charming drawings, Delaine has a way with words and an eye for what’s truly interesting.  It’s real life, but what of real life she chooses to share with us tells a story. The details are sometimes amazing and almost unbelievable.”

This is a 112-page perfect bound book collecting all three out of print issues of MY SMALL DIARY zine… plus over 40 brand NEW pages and new commentary on each page! My Small Diary = true diary comics by and about my life that I started drawing in 1993. Each copy is AUTOGRAPHED and includes a fortune fish and bonus photos. I would love to share my life in comic form with you! Click on the image to go to etsy to purchase your copy NOW!! If you want to forgo etsy you can PAYPAL me directly at DELANGEL3@HOTMAIL.COM…. just send $5 plus shipping (US $2, England $5, Australia $6, Canada $3).

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Don’t just take my word for it, here’s what other people say about this book:

“The next best thing to actually being Delaine is getting to read all the entertainingly luscious minutiae of her life, shared with an economy of words and simple, effective drawings. From high points to low moments to pure silliness, she shows us it’s all good.”

• Roberta Gregory (Naughty Bits)

“MSD packs a hilarious punch because of what Delaine decides to include in the diaries: the creepy, the fortuitous, and the mundane. You get a sense of rhythm with each page, an intuitive feeling that the final frame is the bizarre punch line to a subtle joke you weren’t expecting. That is where the humor comes from: a surprising, subtle finesse.” – Razorcake

“There are good reasons why this diary comic genre exists and Delaine hits it on the nail. She manages to capture the fun and quirks and wackiness of life with every page she draws.” – Carrie McNinch (You Don’t Get There From Here)

“My Small Diary is the perfect combination of ink, paper and a marveously quirky life. Delaine is my hero.” – Brian Buniak (Mad Magazine)

“It’s 100% fun, like reading the diary of a pathologically happy bunny! I sugar love it!” – Ian Carney (Sugar Buzz, Shaun the Sheep)

“I highly recommend My Small Diary and Not My Small Diary. They’re sweet and dreamy and beautiful to look at.” – Lynn Peril (Mystery Date, Bust Magazine)

“Delaine’s comics reflect the simple things that make life fun – her comics, sense of humor and take on the world make Delaine’s world well worth living in. I know I’d like to know her.” – Zine World

“Delaine is a small-press force of nature and it’s wonderful to have a nice big collection of her comics all in one place, at last!” – John Porcellino (King-Cat Comics)

“Delaine is like the cool older sister I never had, the one that makes you Ramones tapes and lets you try your first beer. This book is a great trip down memory lane that perfectly nails what makes diary comics so compelling.” – Ben Snakepit (Snakepit Comics)

I recently received an unexpected email from a professor (Jarod Roselló) at Penn State regarding NMSD-17. It seems he likes to incorporate comics into his curriculum and was on the prowl for an appopriate anthology for his class. His students are actually future high school teachers, making NMSD-17 an even more ideal choice. NMSD-17 is now required text in a class of 25 college students and I’m just thrilled!

Says Roselló: “The course is LLED 411 – Secondary Language Arts I in the College of Education and is part of the teaching certification program for secondary education English majors. We’re using the text as a way to pedagogically investigate the medium of comics and as a way to think about what it means to be a high school student.”

Roselló is a great artist in his own right and has been invited to be a contributor to NMSD-18 once a theme has been selected.