We just got word (from CBG's advertising department, no less!) that Punk Rock and Trailer Parks by Derf has won the Comics Buyer's Guide Award in the category "Favorite Story"! It beat out stories in Amazing Spider-Man, Secret Invasion, Green Lantern, and Justice Society of America. How's that for a tip of the hat for indie comics?

I hope it gives some good spirits to our pal Derf, who writes on his blog that he is recovering from "a quintuple fucking bypass" made necessary by the side effects of radiation treatment for cancer. Feel better, Derf! We're looking forward to your next graphic novel.

I really like Comics Career, a publication I've only just learned about. The interviews with creators focus on craft and career-building, and in comics, where many fans want to be creators too, this is a very welcome point of view.

They've most recently interviewed Derf about his new graphic novel Punk Rock and Trailer Parks and about his career and creative process. Here he is on how he draws a graphic novel:
I like the "old pro trick" for the inking! There's much more at the link -- the interview is long and there is a lot of interesting and useful stuff there.

The reviews for Derf's Punk Rock and Trailer Parks have been rolling in lately, and iFanboy has named it the Book of the Month! Reviewer Josh Flanagan writes about Derf's signature drawing style as it's used as a storytelling device:

The art in this book, while not at all photorealistic interprets what life often really looks like. It's got pimples and hairy legs, and most people aren't shaped perfectly. Most of real life is stained and maybe a little bit greasy. So when I'm reading a story about what real life can feel like, I learned to appreciate an art style that doesn't dress things up more than they need to be. The art tells the story, and does it perfectly, and you can't ask more of a comic book artist.

The review at Northern Express makes note of Derf's style as well: "As a stylist, few graphic artists match his ability to capture the 'no future' slouch and despair of the underclass."

Finally, (for this post, anyway) there is an interview with Derf at Comics Waiting Room, in which he asks rhetorically, "Did I even have a life before punk?" He adds, "Music speaks to you at age 20 more than any other point in your life. I don't know why that is, but it's just a fact of life."

That's something I always found fascinating -- my father-in-law says pretty much the same thing, though he puts the time frame at your senior year of high school. You might find new music that you love, but what you listened to then will always have a certain constant relevance to you. Derf includes a play list of his essentials in Punk Rock and Trailer Parks.

What would be on your play list? I'd have to go with the entirety of The Smiths' Louder Than Bombs. I was seven when it was released, but I listened to it incessantly throughout my senior year of high school

There's a review of Punk Rock and Trailer Parks in a round-up review of graphic novels in the Boston Globe. Reviewer Carlo Wolff calls the book's author, Derf, "John Backderf," which, even though I know it's his full name, caused me to pause for a second and say, "Hey... oh." On the book:

"It's grungy and often hysterically funny, revolving around the Baron, a high school misfit who wound up working at the long-defunct Bank and, briefly, as a rock singer. Derf's black-and-white art, in pages eight or nine panels dense, is wildly hormonal and hyperbolic, a nose-thumbing update of Robert Crumb. His take on underground rock and its occasional roots in trailer trash is fabulous. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland may be the area's "official" musical face, but Derf's work rings more true."

Tangentially related, SLG Prez Dan Vado is out of the office today because he chaperoned his son's high school band trip to Disneyland. (PR&TP's protagonist, Otto, as you can see from his T-shirt, is a member of the marching band.) We'll see how that went.

Aw, look -- after I was so full of despair and complaining, Brian Heater at The Daily Cross Hatch comes through with a review of Punk Rock and Trailer Parks: "The artist’s constant references to the music and characters of the period... are a virtual love letter to punk rock and new wave. The combination of these two complimentary forces makes for an incredibly likeable book."

Speaking of Punk Rock and Trailer Parks, there is a two-part interview with its author, Derf, at Comic Book Talk Radio. I'm listening to it now -- the conversation starts with Punk Rock and The City and then moves on to Trashed and My Friend Dahmer.

It's a very interesting interview, with Derf touching on the socio-economic background behind the story and setting of Punk Rock and Trailer Parks, which is set in Akron, Ohio in the early 1980s, and "the egomanical geek," and the music that goes with the book.

"It's the end, the end of seventies, it's the end, the end of the century," indeed!

We're having an amazing time here at SLG headquarters -- we had some lighting installed in the Boutiki, and somehow turning the electricity off made our network lose the will to keep working. So the images on this blog were invisible until we got it back up. I just untangled the world's longest network cable in this effort.

But that's not the news I meant to bring you. What I want to tell you is that you are not truly rock and roll until you read Punk Rock and Trailer Parks by Derf, the new graphic novel that is now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum's reference library! Meredith Rutlidge, assistant curator, gave us the word this week.

And Punk Rock and Trailer Parks got a nice review in Booklist:

"Derf, whose iconoclastic strip THE CITY, has been appearing in alternative periodicals since the early 1990's, here gives us a mordantly funny, semi-autobiographical peek at his high-school years in an Akron, Ohio suburb. When he isn't looking out for his senile, tractor-driving uncle at his humble trailer-park abode, Otto "The Baron" Pizcok is haunting Akron's concert hall, the Bank (now defunct) where the latest '80's-era punk bands are usually playing. With an aplomb beyond his years, Otto manages to shrug off his nerdy image to become the local tour guide for punk legends such as Joe Strummer and the Ramones. As Otto counts down the days to his senior prom, his big dilemma is deciding whether he is leaving Ohio for college or staying to become Akron's newest punk-rock star. Derf's deftly drawn caricatures of teens and band members are amusing enough on their own, but his madcap scenarios and witty dialogue make this one of the stand-out graphic novels of the year."

There's a review of Punk Rock and Trailer Parks by Derf on the podcast The Pull List. It starts 54 mintues in.

And check it out, there's a picture of Derf at a signing here.

You can also check out an excerpt from the book at the Cleveland Free Times.

Derf was interviewed at WKSU Public Radio in Kent, Ohio about his new graphic novel Punk Rock and Trailer Parks. You can listen here. Can I just say hurray for public radio? It's one of my favorite things.

There's a review of Punk Rock and Trailer Parks at Rack Raids by Graig Kent. He writes of Derf's protagonist Otto, "Too often in underground comics, the writer/artist hates their character (or themselves) and puts them through shame after shame in attempts to break them. With Otto, Derf doesn’t. He admires his character and has him triumph even when he fails, which seems to be another punk philosophy (where getting arrested is a good thing)."

And of the book? "It’s funny, smart, and insightful, and presents something different but not so different as to be off-putting (except that there is punk rock, sex, nudity and language, which obviously may not agree with all audiences)."

The Cleveland area is giving a big boost to native son Derf, whose SLG graphic novel Punk Rock and Trailer Parks was recently released. The story takes place in Akron, where high school dork Otto discovers punk rock at The Bank. The area is hosting two Derf signings this weekend -- one in Akron, another in Cleveland. Take your pick! (Click on the images to see them full sized.)

The signing in Akron on Friday is set just before the "Duty Now for the Future" concert that Devo is playing in their hometown to rally for Barack Obama and benefit the Summit County Democratic party.


Derf Punk Rock and Trailer Parks signings:

Friday, October 17, 6 - 8 p.m,
Square Records
824 W. Market, Akron, OH
(330) 375-9244

Saturday, October 18, 7-9 p.m.
The B-Side
Conventry & Euclid Heights Blvd., Clevelank Heights, OH
Sponsored by Mac's Books (216) 321-2665

There is an excellent interview with Derf about his new graphic novel Punk Rock and Trailer Parks at Pulse. Derf's first graphic novel work since 2002, PR&TP tells the story of Otto, a social outcast at his high school who finds a new life in an Akron punk rock club. The book is not autobiographical in the strictest sense, but Derf draws from his own formative years to write a book about transformation and escape.

Punk Rock and Trailer Parks will be in stores tomorrow, if the ship lists are to be believed. Check it out. It's Derf's strongest storytelling yet, and even if you think it's not your thing, you'll find yourself intrigued and impressed with how Derf shows late adolescence in all its messiness, questionable judgment, and restlessness.