Thought to be lost for years, a presentable copy of my 2004 animated short Goopy Spasms has been found by the MUFF team! See an incredibly rare screening of it at 1 PM, May 17 at The Montreal Underground Film Festival (MUFF) taking place at Groupe Intervention Vidéo (GIV) 4001, rue Berri, # 105!
Click HERE or on the image below to check out the CBC hatchet job about Goopy Spasms & other MTL artists Monique Moumblow & Victoria Stanton that came out on rabbit-ears TV in 1997 during dinnertime! My segment starts at 5:55 if your attention span’s too busted to watch the whole thing, but you should. And make sure to stick with it to the end for the hilarious call-in viewers’ outraged comments. “Pretty Slurpy” indeed!
Also: New Trembles linocut print HOME RUNNER available, pictured below (naming these for cataloging purposes). White ink on black cardstock, signed & dated. All individually hand-printed from carved blocks so each one is unique! Approx 11.1/4 X 8.1/4 inches. $20 each. I’ll be selling prints of it along with my comix May 17 from noon to 2 PM at Bistro de Paris (St-Denis, corner Mt-Royal). Then I’ll be at the Conundrum Press booth on Mary-Anne & St-Denis for FBDM from 2 PM to 3 PM & then back at the Bistro from 3 PM to 5 PM. Everything will wind down across the street at Quai des Brumes with music by Chloé Jara-Buto, Ky Brooks/Andrés Salas, & Chabanel! Outta-towners: postage not included so private-message me for deets.
Brand new 32-page Rick Trembles mini-comic “YESTERDAY’S HIGHLIGHT”! 5 bucks! If you see me around just ask me for one, I’ll have some in my backpack! Canada snail-mail, add a dollar so I can buy a stamp! Outside Canada contact me for more info! PREMISE: In February I challenged myself to create one cartoon panel a day for the whole month & had to write about at least one good thing that happened the previous day! WAY easier said than done since Feb is my least fave cabin-fever month! Hilarity/desperation ensues!
Introducing the RICK TREMBLES LINOCUT 2025 PORTFOLIO! A measly 50 bucks gets you a snappy black card-stock pouched folder filled with 5 signed/dated handmade prints (each one is unique) & a signed & printed “business card” attached inside! Thirty bucks knocked off this $80 value just for you! Wanna be a memorable holiday gifty-giving type human this year? Give the gift of “weird”! Outta-towners: postage not included so private-message me for deets.
New Trembles linocut prints PLAYTIME ONE & TWO (naming these for cataloging purposes). White & yellow ink on black cardstock, signed & dated. Variants also available with the yellow part upside down making it look more frowny than smiley! All individually hand-printed from carved blocks so each one is unique! At 11.1/4 X 8.1/4 inches, it’s larger than my previous ones so these are $20 each. Outta-towners: postage not included so private-message me for deets.
New Trembles linocut print THE MONACO! At 11.1/4 X 8.1/4 inches, it’s larger than my previous ones so these are $20 each. White ink on black card-stock, signed & dated. Outta-towners: postage not included so private-message me for deets. The image this is from was hand-drawn sitting on the sidewalk for a few hours at the busy intersection of Mason & Saint-Michel on a hot August Montreal afternoon! I’ll be selling copies of this & my other linocut prints, along with a new mini-comic, my Conundrum Press books, & some posters at this Saturday’s Expozine (Paroisse Saint-Arsène, 1025 Bélanger). Also come see me talk about my new graphic novel Gesticulating Gentrification tonight at the Drawn & Quarterly store from 7 to 9 PM (176 Rue Bernard O)!
New Trembles linocut print ALPHABET SOUP! At 11.1/4 X 8.1/4 inches, it’s larger than my previous ones so these are $20 each. Yellow ink on black card-stock, signed & dated. Some available on blue card. Outta-towners: postage not included so private-message me for deets. Stay tuned for new designs coming soon!
They’ll be available along with my previous linocuts TECHNOSTRETCH & MEAT BOWEL at Montreal’s one & only Expozine 2025 where I’ll also be launching my new 32-page mini-comic MINI BURGER hot off the griddle for 5 bucks! Come see me at my table this Saturday, November 15, from 11:30 AM to 7 PM. Free admission! (Paroisse Saint-Arsène, 1025 Bélanger).
My publisher Conundrum Press can’t make it to Expozine this year but I’ll be selling the last three books of mine they released REPRESENTED IMMOBILIZED, WEAKLY DISPATCH, & GESTICULATING GENTRIFICATION. I’ll also have oversized poster prints available (my fantasy Montreal map, & tribute to the late Henriette Valium printed by France’s Dernier Cri).
ALSO! Don’t miss the “Comics Against Gentrification” roundtable featuring Sloane Sherman & I in conversation with Nicole Marie Burton @ Drawn & Quarterly, 7 to 9 PM, Friday, November 14 (176 Rue Bernard O)! Come make a fool outta me by asking tough questions I have no idea how to answer! Free admission!
New Trembles linocut prints! Ten bucks each! White ink on 5.3/4 X 8.1/4 inch black card-stock, signed & dated. The first one’s called TECHNOSTRETCH & the second one’s called MEATBOWEL (naming them mostly for cataloging purposes). If you see me on the street or at a local show, ask me for one, I’ll be carrying some in my backpack till they sell out. Outta-towners: postage not included so private-message me for deets. Stay tuned for new designs coming soon!
My brand new 64-page Conundrum Press graphic novel/memoir Gesticulating Gentrification is having it’s official Montreal launch this weekend at MCAF (Montreal Comic Arts Festival)!
From the Conundrum Press description: A graphic memoir about housing insecurity! Cartoonist & musician Rick Trembles grew up in the suburbs of Montreal, in the house his father, Canadian Golden Age cartoonist Jack Tremblay (Crash Carson), paid for as a commercial illustrator. Encouraged by his father’s cartooning, inspired by underground comic artists like Robert Crumb, & propelled by the DIY ethos of the burgeoning punk scene, Rick gave in to his own natural drive to create & built a life full of art & music. But the comics industry had changed since Jack Tremblay found success, & Rick followed his heart into alt-comics. Mainstream cartoonists were already making less money, & alt-comic artists were making even less from their art—if anything at all. When Rick first moved out, he couch-hopped from one messy band rehearsal space to another, finally settling on a small apartment above a pool hall, where he worked on zines & wrote music—until he wasn’t able to make rent. This is just the first stop in a series of insecure housing situations made worse by gentrification. In Gesticulating Gentrification, Trembles provides a close & honest look at the challenges faced by people living in precarious housing, the constant threat of being forced out by gentrification, & the social & health problems that result from all of it. But this graphic memoir isn’t only about social issues—it also provides a rare glimpse at a bygone version of Montreal & the DIY culture that thrived there.
I’ll be signing at Conundrum Press table D31 on St-Denis street (which will be blocked off for the event) Friday, May 23 from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm, Saturday, May 24 from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm, & Sunday, May 25 from 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm. Scheduling info HERE
I’ll also be part of an MCAF panel of cartoonists called “How to Kill a City: Housing Crisis & Comics” on Saturday, May 24 from 2:30 pm to 3:30 pm at Espace La Presse C21, Section C. It’ll be moderated by Cecil Castellucci & the guests, besides myself, are Shaghayegh Moazzami (Les coquelicots de Ridgewood), & Eleanor Hannon (Citymouse). More info on this event HERE
Next stop, Toronto, for the official TCAF launch (Toronto Comic Arts Festival)! See you all everywhere!
$20.00 CAD, 11 x 8.5 inches, 64 pages, black & white, trade paper, available from Conundrum Press HERE (more sample images from the book at that link)! As of today, it’s also at the Drawn & Quarterly bookstore if you’re in Montreal.
“Entertaining & compelling! A great story! Totally brilliant! A great book! Genius! Really!” -Robert Crumb
“A harrowing read & an important cultural record” -Montreal Review of Books
From page 10: Doing the Transylvania Twist, paper trails be damned! Nothing spells questionable landlord/tenant relations like verbal-only agreements! But two can play that game; Dracula & his Creatures of the Night might only come out to play at the witching hour, but so do “midnight movers”! Buh-bye, bloodsuckers!
From page 14: The pros & cons of moving into an absentee landlord’s dilapidated 100-year-old building: If it happens to retain some of its 100-year-old furnishings you might have the pleasure of living on The Antiques Roadshow! But if it also happens to retain some of its 100-year-old wiring, you might have the DISpleasure of winding up like burnt toast!
From page 45: Dear slacklord; these are not the kinda shrooms I was hoping to microdose & alleviate my winter-long cabin fever with! Way too maxi! Cut the dose! Cut the dose! Are those stray floaters swimming around inside my eyeballs, or the creepy-crawlies from my bathroom floor! This terrarium bum-trip’s harshing my non-buzz!
From page 19: Phantom-limb-dreams about how the other half lives! Ever walk past a former habitat jam-packed with formative memories both bittersweet & bodacious? A habitat you’ve been uprooted from to make way for “progress”? The house doesn’t get haunted by you after you’re gone, it’s YOU that gets haunted by the house after the HOUSE is gone!
In all of their 45-year career, Montreal post-chunk bland THE AMERICAN DEVICES have never officially played an outdoor show, so this is gone be their Woodstock, mango! Dew Take The Brown Flaccid! Joining them on the bill are the delegates of psycho-delicate delinquency RETAIL SIMPS (with former Devices guitarist Chris Burns), & starting the evening off will be sunshine smugglegum schnappsters BON SEQUITUR (with former Sacral Nerves & Nuppeppo guitarist Johnny Deck)! NOTE: During this Summer-of-Glove, because of construction, Marché Des Possibles shows have been taking place just a few steps nearby the original site at MDP Sur De Gaspé (5705 Ave De Gaspé). Acid Brown The Take Do, Winnie-the-Peeyew!
In honour of ornate sixties psychedelic posters, I made an unreadable one for the occasion! Click on it to hexpand your horizons!
Double-launch October 26 @ Sala Rossa (4848 St Laurent Blvd) w/Crabe just in time for Halloween! First up is a limited edition American Devices vinyl release of 200 copies of “The Game We Never Win” B/W “Interlarding” from great Montreal label Celluloid Lunch Records, who also released archival recordings of the first 1979 incarnation of the band The D-Vices last year. New 45 comes in a Risograph-printed sleeve featuring a Howard Chackowicz cartoon. We even made a slick music video for Game which you can see HERE or by clicking on the Cups Von Helm “Princess of Power” cape image at bottom.
As Celluloid Lunch boasts in their promo: “These two new tunes are the Devices in top form, whittled by time to the essential 4-part unit. Both songwriters deliver in their respective lanes, & the rhythm section kicks the can along with inventive gusto. In a warped world, American Devices’ oeuvre would be life-bending fodder for international bonehead punks, b-movie fanatics & prog nerds alike, but in this reality, they are banished to a profitless deal on the world’s least respected underground record label. Lucky for us, misery loves company.”
Dedicated to our late founding drummer Cups Von Helm (RIP June 2023). Click HERE or on the cover art below to give the tunes a free listen & make an order. Also available at fine Montreal shops like Phonopolis, Sonorama Disques, Café Disquaire180g, Le Vacarme, & Sonik.
In 2021 one of our favourite Montreal bands Crabe asked us to come up with several separate riff cycles & then recorded us playing them. They also asked me to make up a French story I could narrate over the end. Then they mixed everything together & sang over it, creating a Frankenstein monster called “2020” (give the tune a free listen & make an order HERE or click on Crabe’s Marc-Olivier Cartier album cover art below). And the cherr(ies) on top? Not only are we gonna interpret this thing live at the launch of our vinyls… but so are Crabe! Three interpretations in one night! The vinyl version that never existed live (from the LP they’re launching called “Visite Du Temple Inné”), then two different live versions! DO NOT MISS!
Pictured below: Cups Von Helm’s official handmade “Princess of Power” cape that he wore at shows & that Wrob wore in our new music video.
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RICK TREMBLES is a Montreal-based illustrator, post-underground cartoonist, writer, filmmaker, & musician. Two books of his “Motion Picture Purgatory” comix have been published by the UK’s FAB Press. His “Mini Motion Picture Purgatory” illustrated film review series appeared monthly at canuxploitation.com for 10 years. His comix have been published in internationally distributed books, periodicals & anthologies such as Robert Crumb’s “Weirdo,” Russ Kick’s “The Graphic Canon,” Darius James’ “That’s Blaxploitation,” Thomas Waugh’s “Montreal Main,” Fantagraphics Books’ “Pictopia,” Kier-La Janisse’s Spectacular Optical “Satanic Panic,” & France’s “Hopital Brut” for Le Dernier Cri. His award winning animated film “Goopy Spasms” has toured the festival circuit globally & he continues to create cartoon shorts. He’s been a singer-guitarist for post-punk band “The American Devices” since 1980, which he co-founded. Two collections of his autobiographical comix “Represented Immobilized” (featuring an intro by author Heather O’Neill) & “The Rick Trembles Weakly Dispatch” (featuring an intro by Robert Crumb) are available from Conundrum Press. He frequently archives his work at his website snubdom.com. The L.A. Times has called him “A famous free thinker,” The Guardian has called him “Genius,” & Robert Crumb has called him “Even more twisted & weird than me.”
