1.
By the age of 22, Shady Habash already attained much acclaim having collaborated with a number of high profile musicians on photography and video projects. Two years ago however his artistic pursuits came to an halt after getting arrested for his work on a music video satirizing Egypt’s sitting dictator Abdel Fattah El Sisi.
On Friday, May 8th, Shady was pronounced dead.
He’d been in prison for close to 800 days in pre-trial “detention.” His last known letter, dated October 2019, was a clear cry for help. “I’m dying a slow death in here”, he wrote.
Ramy Essam and I are creating a tribute video based on Shady’s letter. Honoring him, and also raising awareness for all the other souls withering away in jail. Should be up in a few days, I think.
2.
A news outlet asked to reprint an abbreviated version of my oddly popular blog post on pandemic-acclimated living (definitely most visited post on Ganzeer.Today), but they wanted a couple of additional illustrations to go with it. Above is a preview of one of the ones I worked on this past week (notice the loosier ink-slinging style I seem to be developing—a facet of speed tbh).
3.
Just before sending this commission off I noticed a spelling mistake in my lettering (this is what happens when you’re overworked, kids). So I fixed the booboo on a separate piece of paper which I glued in place, and the lettering treatment in general just turned out better (and the person getting this not only gets an original commission but a piece of unintentional collage as well 🙃).
4.
Uh, fell asleep at the computer again. Was trying to get this out last night (more like 3:30AM actually), but I guess I dozed off. Busy art-making week. Only finished the video mention in Section (1) a few hours ago. Haven’t had the time to write or read anything (hardly even email), and I I may just be getting stupider as a result. Will try to change that next week, starting slow with short comix before I ease my way back into prose. Been interested in short self-contained comix lately, especially as presented in anthology-like magazines a’la early HEAVY METAL and TALES TOO TERRIBLE TO TELL, but even more so the one-person anthologyish periodicals like THE SPIRIT magazines Eisner put out through Warren Publishing and Daniel Clowes’ EIGHTBALL via Fantagraphics.
But ever more more so one-person anthologyish periodicals that are also self-published (like Mazzuchelli’s RUBBER BLANKET which is hard to come by now lest you pay a pretty penny). This is all of course partially research for my own twisted self-publishing fantasies (of course, a good excuse to read anything you want to read will always be research).
(Also looking at non-comix publications of the sort—like COMETBUS—since the kind of periodical I’m daydreaming of would include both).
Content/format of the thing aside, also researching much of the other practical things involved in sustaining such an enterprise to avoid all the pitfalls (many of which are unavoidable, I know) before embarkment. Links and book recs appreciated.
Hope you don’t mind the short one this week. Like I said, spent mostly drawing, so a newsletter of mostly drawings is what you get ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .
Stay awesome,
Ganzeer
May 10, 2020
Houston, TX