Dean Haspiel

More info here: https://imagecomics.com/comics/releases/the-red-hook-vol-2-war-cry-tp




(photo of Dean Haspiel 2019 by Whitney Matheson)


(Photo by Steve Friedman. Taken at Yaddo, Sept. 2019)


(photo of Dean Haspiel 2020 by Jen Ferguson)


(Dino selfie, 2020)


(Dino selfie, January 2021)


(Dino selfie, February 2021)

http://www.deanhaspiel.com/

Emmy & Ringo award winner, Dean Haspiel created Billy Dogma, The Red Hook, illustrated for HBO's "Bored To Death," was a Master Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, is a Yaddo fellow, a playwright, and helped pioneer personal webcomics via ACT-I-VATE. Dino has written and drawn many comix for Marvel, DC, Image, Archie, IDW, Dark Horse, Heavy Metal, and LINE Webtoon; including The Fox, The Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, X-men, Deadpool, Batman, Wonder Woman, Godzilla, Mars Attacks, Creepy, SpongeBob SquarePants, Popeye, and semi-autobio collaborations with Harvey Pekar, Jonathan Ames, Inverna Lockpez, Jonathan Lethem, Stoya, and Stan Lee.



NIGHTWORK is a multimedia collaboration project between Dean Haspiel & Whitney Matheson: https://www.nightwork.studio/

Subscribe to Dean Haspiel's free, occasional newsletter: https://deanhaspiel.us20.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=7317095478d5910eecbe63be4&id=41f5fba78c

Listen to SCENE BY SCENE WITH JOSH & DEAN, the podcast that breaks down American Splendor the movie, Josh Neufeld & Dean Haspiel's relationship with the late/great Harvey Pekar, and growing up in NYC learning to make comix: http://scenebyscenepodcast.com/

Read THE RED HOOK saga for free at LINE Webtoon:
1) THE RED HOOK: http://www.webtoons.com/en/super-hero/the-red-hook/list?title_no=643
2) WAR CRY: https://www.webtoons.com/en/super-hero/war-cry/list?title_no=1247
3) STARCROSS: https://www.webtoons.com/en/super-hero/star-cross/list?title_no=1599
4) BLACKOUT: https://www.webtoons.com/en/super-hero/the-red-hook-blackout/list?title_no=2282

THE RED HOOK vol.1 New Brooklyn is also available at ComiXology: https://www.comixology.com/The-Red-Hook/comics-series/128047

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deanhaspiel_art/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/deanhaspiel
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DeanHaspielArt
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/deanhaspiel

Artist's Statement:
No permissions. No apologies.

Honors:
-Emmy Award winner for title design work on HBO's "Bored To Death."
-Eisner Award nominee for "Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition" and "Outstanding Webcomic."
-Ringo Award winner for "Best Webcomic 2017" for THE RED HOOK
-Yaddo fellow
-Master Artist at The Atlantic Center for the Arts

( Click here for comix, interviews, news, videos, and other essential linksCollapse )

A month ago a new neighbor contacted me to let me know an older neighbor fell down the stairs and hit their head. The old man was bleeding/etc. Luckily, I was home and ran downstairs and helped the old man get back into his apartment. Had paramedics (and firemen) show up. And, after an hour of encouragement, convinced him to go to the hospital for the contusion that was turning from blue to black on his head. I have to admit, I was confused why the new neighbor called me rather than call 911. In fact, NO ONE in the building opened their doors despite the commotion. What if I wasn't home?

When I first moved into my now 24-year residence it was filled with many old Italians who loved to offer pints of "gravy" (another term for tomato sauce) and other traditional food items. It was a way to get to know each other. Check in sometimes. I've since cooked pasta for neighbors during a blackout and other, less dramatic instances. I've helped neighbors in countless ways (as is my nature -- ask anyone who knows me).

Alas, when the older folks died off and more recent, younger residents moved in, my neighborly overtures were met with indifference. From my personal experience, it seems the days of neighborly parlays in Brooklyn are dwindling (since before the pandemic) and I fear for a society navigating humanity in a digital culture. I'd rather know a good dozen people than *think* I know 5000 Facebook friends.

I'm a GREAT neighbor -- if you'll let me.

My friend/writer Amy Stein-Milford hung out with me for an afternoon in Red Hook to catch up on our lives during the pandemic, discuss art, our past, and the clothing we wear for her cool blog, ALL DRESSED, NOWHERE TO GO.

Excerpt:

"While Dean’s superhero characters are not literal stand-ins, they certainly capture aspects of his character. The brave, the ridiculous, the openhearted, the romantic all rolled in one.

Dean had warned me that he wasn’t much for dressing up. He showed up in his uniform of black T-shirt, pants, and Blundstone boots. But this is not to say he did not make an effort! The worn T-shirt he wore was a very special one, he assured me, from a Wizard World Comic Con conference, and one of the few T-shirts he has with writing on it. “When I wear it, it’s like having a dog, a conversation starter. All the people who love comics talk to you.” Also, instead of jeans or Dickies he wore black semi-stylish pants! Most special is the ring he showed me, an M with a devil tail, something he carries in his pocket at all times, a memento from his brother Mike who died sixteen years ago. He told me that he hadn’t really thought about how these kinds of objects you wear or keep with you on your body hold stories until our All Dressed date."

You can read the entire piece here: https://www.alldressednowheretogo.com/post/red-hook-adventures-with-comic-book-artist-dean-haspiel

When a kid in 2nd grade named Noah from Missouri writes you a letter about his favorite book: MO and JO, FIGHTING TOGETHER FOREVER (Toon Books), ya just gotta draw him a sketch to thank him right back!

#RIPJayLynch

"From NYC’s infamous Chinese restaurant Wo-Hop to the importance of staying creative during a pandemic, we had an epic conversation with our homie, award-winning artist and playwright DEAN HASPIEL about his creator-owned comic character The Red Hook and Jack Kirby’s own foray into creator-owned comics with Pacific’s Captain Victory and The Galactic Rangers... and so much more! Don’t miss this one, kids!"

LISTEN HERE: https://jackedkirby.libsyn.com/episode-102-creator-owned-kirby

"Cuba: My Revolution. Inverna Lockpez and Dean Haspiel w/Jose Villarrubia and Pat Brosseau. 2010. This book is for mature readers - sexual images, language, and violence. This harrowing account by Lockpez, paired with stunningly haunting illustrations by Haspiel, have me understanding a complex Cuban Revolution on an emotional and personal level. Even the coloring by Villarrubia is impactful - as the color red becomes an integral character in the story. Combined with the lettering by Brosseau and we see a powerful book that takes full advantage of the comics medium. We need to understand the micro stories of history and not just the big picture with larger than life leaders. We need to know that events, large and small, are complicated and not guaranteed to turn out in an particular way. I thank Lockpez for sharing her experiences in what can only be described as honest and brave - for giving me a window into events I have never contemplated before. The warnings of ideology and blind beliefs are strong reminders to us all to not idol worship, but to take into account many different facets of leaders and the unfurling of complex events. My soul was impacted as I read this book, often having to pause and reflect, to feel and wonder. This is a powerful story."

Link here (with images): https://www.historycomics.net/latinohispanic

Comic book writer/poet/critic, Adam McGovern wrote a beautiful review of my webcomic, BLACKOUT - The Red Hook season 4:

"Established fantasy franchises put a lot of energy into “building out” their worlds. The really memorable ones know how to let their worlds sink in.

In the fourth season of the freewheelin’ Dean Haspiel’s Webtoon comic The Red Hook, we don’t have to see the whole panorama of the fledgling hipster utopia it’s set in; we feel it in every close corner where the story plays out.

By now we’re at home in New Brooklyn, the former borough whose innate individuality caused it to supernaturally separate from its attached geography and start a second history as an island nation. At this point Haspiel can focus in on the culture, with its cosmic context a grand backdrop to which his characters can commute.

We see in more detail than ever the way of life in this pilot society where people trade creative capital for food and other essentials, and a kind of celestial ordinance from a local demigod has rendered all firearms inoperative. Befitting a daily world in which art is currency, the story’s canvas can sketch life at an intimate proximity and unfold forever; in the course of the 26-episode Blackout, the stars are literally aligned by a supernatural being after slipping off-course with climatic consequences, the living heart of the mystic island’s catacomb circulatory system is unblocked, two superheroines marry, and the titular prizefighter-turned-costumed-protector wages his biggest struggle to reconcile with his estranged mom.

The comicbook universes that Haspiel and I grew up in always had their “cosmic” heroes and their “street-level” ones, but in Blackout the planets’ orbits, the flow of underground life-force, the cycles of love and the generational seasons all spin in counterpoint; no one’s better than anyone else, and nothing isn’t grand.

Not that anything isn’t flawed; the broken suture of the island’s former bridges still arc halfway out over the water, and the Red Hook’s family’s heart has been broken in one piece for every parent and sibling. The agrarian ideal of one of New Brooklyn’s resident divinities leads to the island-wide depowering of technology alluded to in the title, so more than ever, the supreme resource all the characters have is each other. This zooms in the focus, and the blockbuster setpieces here are cultural divides crossed, old enemies accepted, kind words bestowed to strangers and wisdom come by at high emotional risk, as much as the averted cataclysms and hair’s-breadth survivals that run between and beyond them.

Haspiel understands that the momentous is made up of moments. With Blackout he’s built a monument to what we can never lose site of."

https://adammcgovern.medium.com/the-superhood-e0098d6885a3

Toe-to-Toe. A recent commission. The Hulk vs The Thing with Black Panther.

The versatile creator talks about the ending to his latest Webtoons series, how it fits into the broader New Brookyln saga, his theater work and more.

READ THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW HERE: http://smashpages.net/2021/03/24/smash-pages-qa-dean-haspiel-on-the-red-hook-blackout/

EXCERPTS

"I’ve been living in my building for 24 years. When I was the new guy, the older generation that lived there welcomed me and brought me homemade food, and as the older generation died off, the new people don’t even look up from their phone to say hello."

"I live in Carroll Gardens, which used to be part of Red Hook. In the last decade or so, it’s drawn more artists. It’s hard to get to Red Hook. There’s no train. So once you get to Sunny’s, you had to make an effort to get there. I would go to Sunny’s and every Saturday night they had bluegrass music in the back room. I don’t like bluegrass, and I’m not religious, but I got back then and it felt like God, and it put me at peace and at ease. I would go to the back room with a rocks glass of whiskey and just listen.

The weirdest people would show up there. You’d be talking to Marissa Tomei while watching bluegrass. Norah Jones would show up to try out some songs. Michael Shannon lives around the corner and I’m sitting at the bar with him talking about Zod. I just named some famous people but all kinds of people go there. It’s just where people congregate. I wrote about a version of Sunny’s in my play The Last Bar at the End of the World. That’s how I feel about Sunny’s."

"I was thinking, “What kind of a job would a superhero have?” I decided he becomes a bartender at Sunny’s. That way he can commune with people and talk to them about their problems. He can hang out with a former bad guy or current bad guy. Those are comics stories I really want to do. After I do the cosmic stories, I’m hoping I can go from a superhero comic to a something that feels like a memoir. He takes off the mask and is just a guy. It’s not like Harvey Pekar, but what if Harvey Pekar used to be Spider-Man? I think that’s an interesting space. The greatest thing Marvel Comics ever did was to put Peter Parker in Queens, the Baxter Building in Midtown, and put them in real places. That felt real. And you would look out your window and go, “Is that Spider-Man?” I know its cliche to say that, but it’s so true at the same time."

"If I’m lucky I’ll wrap up the New Brooklyn saga and then try to publish it as an omnibus. My working title is “Once Upon a Time in Brooklyn.”

I created The Dusk/The Red Hook crossover pin-up for THE DUSK Kickstarter.

Creation.Ink is proud to present THE DUSK, graphic novel, brought to you by the minds and talents of Alex Segura, Elizabeth Little and David Hahn, with Ellie Wright and Taylor Esposito.

"THE DUSK is a modern reimagining of the superhero vigilante that flips the script on the traditional “might makes right” approach while adding the grounded, socially conscious perspective that modern crime fiction has become known for.

The graphic novel blends the dark deco of BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES with a dose of moral complexity and dark humor, creating an engaging and witty look at the inner workings of a beloved genre through the eyes of a flawed, human, and heroic figure."

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dreadgods/the-dusk/description