KURT DINSE AT C2E2 2011

I was wandering around the C2E2 floor on Friday with Leo when he said, “Check it out.” He pointed, and I saw Kurt Dinse sitting right in front of me. You know, the guy who does ONE YEAR IN INDIANA. It was crazy, because I’d been through Artists Alley already, and I’d missed him the first time through.

We stopped by, and Dinse remembered us from when we interviewed him at Wizard World. I asked him if he had a new book out, but unfortunately he didn’t. He had every intention of having one ready, but too many things got in the way of this happening.

He did, however, have an interesting thing for sale: a cup of goodies. First of all, the cup itself is awesome. It has the main character from OYII holding up a cup of his own (presumably containing an alcoholic beverage) with these words beneath him: “The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” Truer words, my friend. Truer words.

Inside the cup were a few things. The biggest of them was a OYII travelogue, a pamphlet containing “information” about Indiana’s I-65. For example, I-65 was apparently built by the second president of the Highway Authority, Xaphan Wimple, a “rumored cultist.” And do I need to mention the devil’s outhouse?


Also included was this sketch card:

But my favorites were the mini-comics. To give you an idea as to how small they are, check it out:

They’re the brainchild of Brian John Mitchell, who apparently has been doing this for quite a while, as evidenced by the sampler issue. My favorite is “Just a Man,” the tale of a gunslinger who likens killing folks to drinking. A close second is “Xo,” which “is about a sociopath with a heart of gold . . . who can’t stop killing people.” These stories are done with a variety of artists, and one of them happens to be Kurt Dinse.

In STAR #1, we meet a musician who travels from town to town, playing various venues, sleeping with various women in various motel rooms . . . and calling forth demons. As a youth, he raised the beasts up while doing tons of acid, and now he’s on the run from them, hoping that they’ll take his audience members or fuck buddies before they take him.  This is exactly the kind of thing we've come to expect from Dinse.


In case you’re interested, check them out at Silber Media (www.silbermedia.com/comics). They’re fast reads, and they’re only a buck. Not bad, eh?