Books – James Hough Studio

How to Lame Duck: a presidential comic book collection, by James Hough

How to Lame Duck, by James Hough, book cover

I’m very happy to announce that my new book How to Lame Duck: a presidential comic strip collection is finished and ready to read!

I have been publishing my comic strip Trump After Trump every three days for five months now.

Comic no. 1 is set in the Oval Office on election night at 12:28 a.m., November 4, 2020, and comic no. 50 takes place on Inauguration Day outside the White House at 12:20 p.m., January 20, 2021.

These fifty comics represent the full story arc of a fictional, speculative Trump Lame Duck period, so I have collected them into a single volume for your convenience and enjoyment.

If you or someone you know likes jokes about:

elections,

social media,

executive orders,

military force,

face masks,

crass commerce,

yelling,

Bible stories,

nicknames,

abortion,

the Supreme Court,

Christianity,

stuffed animal friends,

ultrasounds,

or beards,

then this is the book for you.

How to Lame Duck is available as an ebook exclusively from the Kindle Store.

Buy for Kindle

And as always you can read all Trump After Trump comic strips for free on the Trump After Trump – The Lame Duck Comic Strip page. (For bonus content, you can click on each comic to read its accompanying microblog, which gives some context for each comic strip.)

I’d love to hear what you think about the book. Just leave a comment below or email me your thoughts at james@jimpublic.com.

Thanks!
James

Kid, Grandpa, Donut, by James Hough

Kid, Grandpa, Donut book cover by James Hough

Webcomic Kindle

I’m very happy to announce that my new book Kid, Grandpa, Donut is finished and ready to read!

Here is the official description:

One pink donut with sprinkles. Two people who want to eat it.

If Kiddo can finish his chores before Grandpa does, he gets the whole thing! With the help of his kitty, he is determined to win, but how far is Kiddo willing to go for victory? And, really, are cats good partners?

James Hough, author and illustrator of Starving Artist (Jim Public:2013), brings another story of hard work, sacrifice and the pursuit of a delicious treat, with a child-grandparent relationship and lots of drawings of a cat being a cat!

The story was always meant to be light and fun, yet it took me about 18 months to finish! I’m hoping to improve my time on the next one. I wrote so many versions of this story, some much shorter and some much longer. At one point “Grandpa” was “Dad” and the twist was that he made ice cream in the garage (???). My hope is that this finished version is less random…

Ultimately, this story became what it is because of two main inspirations:

Cats are cute and furry, yet they have infinite talent for getting in the way, and
I love watching my kids’ relationships with their grandparents, particularly with my wife’s dad.

Take those influences from real life, and throw in some Scott Pilgrim, Mo Willems, Calvin & Hobbes and lots of color, and you get Kid, Grandpa, Donut. I hope you’ll read and let me know what you think!

Kid, Grandpa, Donut is available to read any time as a webcomic. You can also purchase from the Kindle store. It’s published digitally by Jim Public, 2019.

Webcomic Kindle

Happy reading! While you’re perusing, I’ll be seeing if there is a story to be told featuring our other kitty, Tiger Feather.

Donut and Tiger Feather on the bookshelf — Donut (left) and Tiger Feather

Starving Artist, by James Hough

Starving Artist, Jim Public Presents, Volume 1, by James Hough, cover image

Webcomic Buy Starving Artist for Kindle

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NEW ART-THEMED COMIC BOOK RELEASED IN DALLAS
Jim Public, the enterprise of artist James Hough, publishes Starving Artist, a comic book about art, family, and hamburgers

DALLAS, TX — Jim Public is proud to announce the publication of the new comic book Starving Artist: Jim Public Presents, Volume 1 by Dallas-based artist James Hough. The comic tells the story of Jim, an artist and family man whose aesthetic ambitions are vitally linked to his domestic and gastric aspirations.

“Jim has a plan to sell a painting and use the cash to take his family out for burgers,” says Mr. Hough. “Starving Artist is a slice-of-life story that connects the artist’s career to the artist’s home and family. It is an Anti-Myth of the Artist.”

The reader first sees Jim floating pajama-clad through his dreams of fame, fortune, and food before he is abruptly awakened by an early alarm clock. From there he makes his kids breakfast and kisses them good-bye, setting off to exhibit his painting on the downtown Dallas streets.

The story is semi-autobiographical, much of it based on Hough’s experiences as the proprietor of his mobile gallery of contemporary art, Jim Public’s Truck.

“The gallery continues its mission ‘to present artwork in unusual, spontaneous, and neighborly ways’ with the publication of Starving Artist,” says Hough. “The comic exists digitally and in the traditional paper format, and it costs the tiniest fraction of an original painting, for example. It is an extremely accessible piece of art, a bit spontaneous and very neighborly.”

The comic also features Hough’s new painting Burger Night and a bonus educational chart entitled “All Art Is Abstract Art,” which includes the artist’s renderings of famous paintings from art history organized into a concise lesson on abstract art.

Starving Artist: Jim Public Presents, Volume 1 by James Hough is available on paper at jimpublic.com/books and digitally at eBookstores everywhere.