KOYAMA ATTACK!! NEW INDY COMIX FROM MIKE DEFORGE!
/Michael DeForge was born in 1987 and grew up in Ottawa, Ontario. He began drawing gig posters in high school order to get into clubs for free. He attended the University of Toronto and dropped out after two years in order to focus more of his mental energy on drawing dogs wearing sunglasses, or whatever. He spent a lot of time dishwashing. After a few years of experimenting with short strips and zines, he finished Lose #1, his first full-length comic, in 2009. It was published by Koyama Press and won in the Best Emerging Talent category at the 2010 Doug Wright Awards. Issue 2 of Lose was released in 2010, and issue 3 is scheduled to debut at the 2011 Toronto Comics Art Festival. His influences include Jack Kirby, Eduardo Munoz Bachs, Mark Newgarden and Hideshi Hino. He currently lives and works in Toronto as a cartoonist, commercial illustrator, and as an effects, props, and character designer for the hit Cartoon Network program Adventure Time.
(He also make some of the most bizarre, unsettling and graphically unique comics to ever sit on the rack of a comic store.)
BODY BENEATH TP
(W/A) Michael Deforge
A Body Beneath collects issues 2-5 of Michael DeForge’s multi-award winning, anthology Lose. DeForge’s singular vision reveals the menace in the mundane, the humor in the horrific. He has crafted a phantasmagoria of stories that feature a spider-infested pet horse head, post-apocalyptic dogs dealing with existential angst, the romantic undertones of a hired hit, and more.
LOSE #4
(W/A) Michael Deforge
The fourth installment of Michael DeForge’s award-winning, one-artist anthology series Lose is another genre-defying mix of visual styles and cartooning. This issue—“The Fashion Issue”—features a post-adolescent punk’s leather-and-spike-laced metamorphosis, a look at the lives and fashions of the exquisite corpses that make up the Canadian Royalty, and a town that is haunted by its past, which happens to look a lot like its present. Along with these longer stories, Lose #4 also features shorter strips and pin-ups including Abbey Loafer whose adventures also grace the pages of Toronto’s Offerings zine. Lose #4 is a comic that blends the banal with the bizarre to create a mélange that is filled with horror and discomfort, humanity and humour.
LOSE #5
(W/A) Michael Deforge
Lose #5 is the latest issue in Michael DeForge's one-man anthology series. This issue houses three self-contained stories: “Living Outdoors” tracks two high school students as they explore a zoo and experiment with hallucinogens. “Muskoka” is the story of a cowboy on the road home to see his family. “Recent Hires” follows a young author’s descent into the criminal underworld in order to win the affections of a girl.
VERY CASUAL TP
(W/A) Michael Deforge
Culled from mini comics, online comics and anthology contributions, Very Casual collects notable short stories from DeForge’s prolific oeuvre. Included are stories about litter gangs, meat-filled snowmen, righteous cops, beagle/human hybrids, and forest-bound drag queens. Very Casual also collects Spotting Deer, which won the Pigskin Peters Award for best non-traditional, non-narrative or avant-garde work at the 2011 Doug Wright Awards.
