Hello, friends! The brand new issue of Amoeba Adventures is now here as a FREE PDF download just for you! Amoeba Adventures #36: ‘Evolution’ is the second part of “The Crane Flies High” three-part story that promises to change everything for Prometheus and pals.
It’s just the latest chapter in this small-press comic I’ve somehow been putting out on and off for 35 years!
You can download it completely free right here at the link below!
Want the limited print edition? They’re a mere US$7.50 to ship anywhere in the world from New Zealand by sending cash to me via PayPal at dirgas@gmail.com. Print copies of Amoeba Adventures #27 and 31-33 are available for $5 each and if you missed an issue, #34 and #35 are $5 each if you order the new issue as well!
CLIPPINGS: COLLECTED JOURNALISM 1994-2024 is a heaping compendium of the best of my essays, reporting, criticism and memoirs from my so-called career, gathering up material from Mississippi to Oregon to New York to New Zealand. It’s as close to an autobiography as I’ll probably ever write and is all yours as a thick paperback or a groovy e-book!
THE BEST OF AMOEBA ADVENTURES gathers up the best of long out-of-print 1990s Amoeba stories by me with additional art by Max Ink are collected along with bonus rarities and more, including guest pin-ups by Dave Sim, Sergio Aragones, Matt Feazell and Stan Sakai! Collecting material from Amoeba Adventures #1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11-13, 16, 17, 21, 22, 27, Prometheus The Protoplasm #4, Prometheus: Silent Storm; Prometheus Saves The Earth and Amoeba Adventures Fifth Anniversary Special, in a hefty 350-page book available in paperback or hardcover!
AMOEBA ADVENTURES: THE WARMTH OF THE SUN gathers up the first six all-new issues of Amoeba Adventures beginning in 2020! We pick up Prometheus and friends in their first new tales in years to find them dealing with detective mysteries, deadly former foes, impending parenthood and occasional nights at the disco. Oh, and coffee. There’s always coffee. Collecting Amoeba Adventures #28-33.
And if you haven’t please like the Amoeba Adventures by Nik Dirga page on Facebook where, if the algorithm permits, I’ll put updates on future comics, links to my non-comics journalism work and more!
So I’ll join the chorus – 2024 really did kind of suck, eh? For me, by far, the biggest blow was the death of my father in May, and I guess nothing has truly felt the same since. There’s been a lot of lousy things happening in the wider world as well, of course, and the general sense that everything is just careening out of control in the cosmos.
Pop culture – be it book, comics, movies or music – is one of the few saving graces we’re left with when nothing else makes sense. Thus, in a burst of optimism, here’s my 10 favourite culture moments of the year:
Now is now – Perfect Days by Wim Wenders: An awful lot of the ‘best movies of 2024’ haven’t screened in New Zealand yet, and a lot of the 2024 movies I have seen have been hit or miss. But of the new-ish films I saw this year, the beautiful tone poem Perfect Days by Wim Wenders about a humble Japanese toilet cleaner lingers the most. It’s a movie about taking the pauses, about accepting what happens and enjoying every sandwich. And it felt like the most human thing I saw on a screen this year. (Runner-up nods for movies seen in 2024: the supremely creepy Longlegs which was right in my wheelhouse, heartfelt and hilarious The Holdovers [technically a 2023 holdover itself], the utterly unclassifiable no-budget slapstickHundreds of Beavers, and Furiosa, which confirms George Miller’s Mad Max is the only extended cinematic universe which really matters.)
Absolute ultimate totally comics, dude: I’m on the record that I’m not generally a fan of the endless reinventions and multiversal takes on superheroes that are a sign of comics eating themselves. Ohhh, a dark alternate Superman? How daring! Yet… I’ve been generally rather enjoying DC’s latest “Absolute” line of comics starring the hyperbolic Absolute Batman, Absolute Superman and Absolute Wonder Woman. Yes, yes, it’s yet another reimagining but the actual comics have been pretty … good? Absolute Wonder Woman is the gem so far with stunning art and myth-inspired epic storytelling, and Absolute Batman not far behind with its mysterious ultra-jacked Bruce Wayne stripped of money and privilege. I don’t know how long I’ll stick with them – these “new universe” stories far too often end up tangled in the continuity of existing comics and giant crossovers and the like, but so far, it’s a pretty electric and novel take on some very well known heroes.
You’re never too old to make rock music: I’m old and getting older, but a lot of the guys I grew up listening to are somehow even older. Massive applause, then, for near-geezers like Nick Cave and Robert Smith staying true to themselves – The Cure’s comeback Songs From The Lost World is just as moody and epic as any classic Cure album, touched even more by the unsparing grip of mortality. At 65 (!!) Smith still sounds exactly like he always has, and that’s a wonderful thing. Meanwhile, Nick Cave’s slow turn into a kind of confessional high priest continued with the excellent Bad Seeds album Wild God. At 67, Cave has suffered unbearable loss in his life and will always seem heroic for unsparingly turning it into such cathartic art. In contrast, The White Stripes’ Jack White is a mere child at age 49, but he blew me away just a few weeks ago in Auckland and his No Name feels like the rock album of the year to me. Not bad for a bunch of old guys who are all getting older.
Just asking questions – the books of Percival Everett: Percival Everett is one of those cult authors one keeps hearing about and meaning to read, but his astonishing Huckleberry Finn reinventionJames truly broke him through into the mainstream this year. Every Everett book I’ve read this year is quite different and excellent in its own way – the existential spy satire Doctor No, the haunting Mississippi lynching black comedy of The Trees, the wry literary racial spoof Erasure (which was also turned into an excellent movie, American Fiction). Everett doesn’t fit any easy box but I’ve been so impressed by his eclectic invention that I’ll be happily catching up on his prolific bibliography well into 2025.
Sticking the landing on the small screen: I can’t keep up with all the streaming things these days, but bidding farewell to a few longtime favourites reminded me of how tricky it is to end things on the perfect note, and how good it feels when it does. These favourites of mine all said goodbye in a pretty perfect fashion – Superman and Loiswith perhaps the most bittersweet and beautiful ending to a superhero screen adventure yet, the kooky What We Do In The Shadowsmanaging to make its insane vampire spin-off parody far funnier and longer lasting than seemed possible saying goodbye after 6 seasons, Larry David at long last ending Curb Your Enthusiasm after 20+ years with a perfectly wonderful lack of remorse. (Bonus point to the much-missed Our Flag Means DeathNew Zealand-filmed gay pirate comedy, which ended its second season in ’23 but we didn’t know for sure it was gone for good until this year.)
Charles Burns still haunts us all: Charles Burns is the patron saint comics artist of Gen-X, and his stark tales of teenage alienation have been blowing me away since his Curse of the Molemen days in the 1980s. As he ages, Burns has constantly kept to the same tight themes he always has – teenage alienation, romantic yearning and spooky surreal horror – but gosh, does he do them well. This year’s Final Cut is one of his finest works, ostensibly about a group of teenagers shooting a no-budget movie, but it’s also about love, choice and regret and told with his unforgettable intense style.
The films of Samuel Fuller: Like I said, I’m behind on the newer films of 2024. But film history stretches back over a century now, and there’s always time to fill in the gaps. A big hole in my cinema knowledge was the pulpy movies of Samuel Fuller. I can’t believe I hadn’t seen fierce noir gems like Pickup On South Street, Naked Kiss, Shock Corridor and Park Row until the past year, and I keep discovering new Fuller to catch up on. His bold movies bucked convention and still feel starkly modern decades on. Bonus point: His memoir, A Third Face, is an absolutely great chronicle of Fuller’s days as a spunky young New York journalist, harrowing World War II heroics and his dive into Hollywood.
Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee: There’s precious little mystery in pop culture these days, so every little bit of it counts. Cindy Lee is a cross-dressing Canadian musician named Patrick Flegel whose drifting, sultry songs have really gotten into my brain. Not on Spotify, not on Tidal, the sprawling double album Diamond Jubilee is only available as a single file on YouTube and soon, a physical release. Anointed by the hipsters, it’s got the gorgeous low-fi wistfulness of early Guided By Voices meets Roy Orbison, like the soundtrack to the most lonesome-hearted David Lynch movie that never was. It’s two hours of mysterious bliss and while its stealth release style might be a bit of a marketing technique there’s enough talent in Diamond Jubilee to make it feel like far more than a stunt. Diamond Lee feels like 2024 in musical form to me.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show, because love is really all around: Yes, I’m the guy who’s picking a 50-year-old sitcom as one of his favourite pop culture moments of 2024. But I picked up a cheap DVD of the complete series on a trip to Reno earlier this year, and it reminded me exactly why I love this classic sitcom so much. It’s got Moore at her loveable screwball peak, Ed Asner is one of the best editors of all time, Ted Knight’s pompous doofus act which never gets old, in a seven-season run of absurdity, crack timing, sitcom pratfalls and journalistic dilemmas that still stands up with the best of ‘peak TV’. Sometimes all you want out of life is a 20-minute playlet of banter and Lou Grant and Ted Baxter, and in this weird, wicked year, bingeing The Mary Tyler MooreShow made me feel like we might just make it after all.
Selfishly, the Year of the Amoeba: Yeah, I’m putting myself on the list – not because I think I’m the best small press comics geek out there by any means but because I ended up putting out a heck of a lot of Amoeba Adventures stuff this year and it gave me a peculiar kind of inner satisfaction that nothing else really matches. I published two ‘regular’ issues of Amoeba Adventures this year, getting up to #35 of the series I somehow started way the hell back in 1990 (!!!), and I finally decided to embrace Amazon’s print on demand as a cost-effective way to bring my comics back to a wider world (yeah, I know, evil empire, etc, but this KDP stuff has been very good for my needs). A big old 350-page collection of The Best Of Amoeba Adventures that I started over the last holidays came out in February and presents my favourites of my 1990s work, while the smaller Amoeba Adventures: The Warmth Of The Sun book presents the first six of the “new” Amoeba Adventures stories I started telling in 2020. I’m not going to get rich doing this stuff, I accepted long ago, but I’m really grateful to get this stuff out in the world and out of the dusty small press past, and hey, if you like it, I’m just grateful I got the chance to tell you a story.
Next: My top pop culture disappointments of the year!
Hello and happy holidays to all! My Christmas gift to the people of Earth is the latest issue of my quixotic small press comic, Amoeba Adventures #35, available now as a FREE download to the technological addiction of your choice!
It’s the newest instalment in the story I’ve somehow been telling on and off since 1986 or so and while it may be nearly Christmas, it’s no carefree romp for Prometheusthe Protoplasm and company in this first part of a brand new multi-part story I’m calling “The Crane Flies High!”
You can download it completely free right here at the link below!
You can get a sneak preview of the first page right here – and if you’ve been following the series, you’ll want to read this issue, which starts off a story that is going to change everything for Prometheus, Dawn and the gang!
Want the limited print edition? If you’re down, order one up for a mere US$7.50 to ship anywhere in the world from groovy New Zealand by sending cash to me via PayPal at dirgas@gmail.com. They’ll be sent out after Christmas! Also, if you missed anything, print copies of Amoeba Adventures #31-34 and the special anniversary reprint of 1998’s #27 are a mere $2.50 US each!
THE AMOEBA ADVENTURES LIBRARY! OWN IT TODAY!
But wait! Didn’t I say this was the Year of the Amoeba? There’s been a lot of downs and ups in 2024 but one thing I’m really happy about is putting out not one but TWO paperback collections of my Amoeba stories this year, now available over on Amazon! They’re chock full of special features and essays and available worldwide! If you rush, they make the ideal Christmas gift for anyone who loves life itself.
If you’ve missed my incessant hustling, here’s the scoop:
THE BEST OF AMOEBA ADVENTURES gathers up the best of long out-of-print 1990s Amoeba stories by me with additional art by Max Ink are collected along with bonus rarities and more, including guest pin-ups by Dave Sim, Sergio Aragones, Matt Feazell and Stan Sakai! Dive on into the story of Prometheus the Protoplasm, Rambunny, Spif, Ninja Ant and Karate Kactus, and meet some of the strangest heroes and villains of all time as they battle toxic mushrooms, gorilla gangsters, time travel to the dinosaur age and even appear on David Letterman! Collecting material from Amoeba Adventures #1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11-13, 16, 17, 21, 22, 27, Prometheus The Protoplasm #4, Prometheus: Silent Storm; Prometheus Saves The Earth and Amoeba Adventures Fifth Anniversary Special, in a hefty 350-page book available in paperback or hardcover!
“This is one of the best things ever to come out of small press!” – Tim Corrigan, Small Press Comics Explosion.
AMOEBA ADVENTURES: THE WARMTH OF THE SUNgathers up the first six all-new issues of Amoeba Adventures beginning in 2020! We pick up Prometheus and friends in their first new tales in years to find them dealing with detective mysteries, deadly former foes, impending parenthood and occasional nights at the disco. Oh, and coffee. There’s always coffee. Collecting Amoeba Adventures #28-33.
“It’s imaginative, funny, heartfelt and smart. And it evolves, just like Prometheus, the protoplasmic protagonist himself” – Jason DeGroot, Small Press Heroes.com.
My old pal and former Amoeba Adventures creative partner Max Ink has hit some financial tough times is in need of some help to keep their house.
Without Max’s awesome artwork for about a dozen issues of Amoeba Adventures back in the 1990s, my silly little hobby would never have really gone to the next level. And even now, decades later and back to drawing my own comics again, I often look back to Max’s work as guidance for the best ways to draw my own characters – now that’s talent!
Max is a great guy and many of you out there know him, I hope some of you can lend a hand to a very worthy cause: Here’s their GoFund Me right here!
I’ll always take an excuse to show off some of Max’s great covers back in the day:
Prometheus is a possibly immortal amoeba. Rambunny is a violent, large rabbit. Spif is a genius scientist. Dawn sets things on fire. Ninja Ant is a bug with attitude. Now, we pick up the stars of 1990s small press comics hit Amoeba Adventures in their first new tales in years to find them dealing with detective mysteries, deadly former foes, impending parenthood and occasional nights at the disco. Oh, and coffee. There’s always coffee. Collecting Amoeba Adventures #28-33 as well as behind-the-scenes commentary, extra art and more!
On the fence? Here’s a few quotes from actual humans who I totally didn’t pay to say nice things:
“It’s imaginative, funny, heartfelt and smart. And it evolves, just like Prometheus, the protoplasmic protagonist himself” – Jason DeGroot, Small Press Heroes.com.
“I’ve been following Nik for many years and he just keeps putting out great stuff. He’s better than ever!” – Steve Keeter, Talking Small Press on YouTube.
And if you missed out earlier this year, why not make it a double and pick up THE BEST OF AMOEBA ADVENTURES as well, collecting my favourite of my 1990s small press comics in a huuuuuge 350-page paperback or fancy deluxe hardcover, along with piles of rare art, guest pin-ups by Dave Sim, Sergio Aragones, Matt Feazell and Stan Sakai and a huge 10-page section of notes, gossip and rambling on how these comics came to be! You can get the Best Of Amoeba Adventures over on Amazon as well!
And hey, if you want to be a totally awesome person, please feel free to leave reviews of both or either of the Amoeba Adventures books on Amazon so I can extend my plans for world domination in a very niche market of comics about amoebas!
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
The most recent issue, June’s AMOEBA ADVENTURES #34, is still available as a totally free download or ask about the limited print edition! This time, it’s three separate short stories set in the Amoeba Universe, featuring Prometheus’ most bizarre adventure yet, Rambunny battling it out with the vigilante The Period, and Ninja Ant and Dawn Star’s mellow movie date gone horribly wrong! With guest art by Tony Lorenz and Thomas Ahearn!
It’s time for not one, not two, but THREE new Amoeba Adventures stories in the brand new Amoeba Adventures #34, now released digitally FREE to all the people of the internet!
But heck, I get it, you want a physical release, too? The print editions have been scaled back a little bit starting with this issue and will be print-on-demand. If you’re down, order one up for a mere US$7.50 to ship anywhere in the world from Hobbit-plagued New Zealand by sending cash to me via PayPal at dirgas@gmail.com. They’ll be sent out in July! Also, I’m clearing out the storeroom a bit and just for the next short while, print copies of Amoeba Adventures #31, 32, 33 and the special anniversary reprint of #27 are a mere $2.00 US each if you order a print copy of the new issue!
And as always, your feedback, applause and condemnations are eagerly requested – I’m not doing this to get rich or famous, but I do always like to hear what you might think of the latest of Prometheus the Protoplasm’s never ending adventures!
Here’s a wee sample of the weirdness this issue contains:
And obligatory plug, if you’re one of the unlucky few who haven’t picked up the hefty archival tome The Best Of Amoeba Adventures over on Amazon, what are you waiting for? This 350-page book collects the best of the original 1987-1998 Amoeba comics written by me with art by me, Max Ink and many more, plus tonnes of bonus essays, rare artwork and cover gallery – it’s available in sultry paperback and decadent hardcover over on Amazon right this second – please buy a copy and save my financial future!
And as always, thanks for reading my goofy comics!
Here’s a brief look at a few other things I’ve been working on recently!
One of my favourite, somewhat underrated TV/streaming shows of the last couple years is the hilarious, bawdy and rude semi-historical comedy The Great. (It’s by the writer behind Poor Things and The Favourite and if you haven’t seen it, it’s highly recommended!) I wrote about my love for this gorgeous and filthy series looking at the corruption of power over for Radio New Zealand‘s occasional series of shows to watch in this age of peak content – read it here:
Meanwhile, while I’m slowly working away on the next issue of Amoeba Adventures – more to announce soon! – you can find an all-new one-page Prometheus the Protoplasm strip in the latest issue of Phoenix Productions’ Strange Timesanthology magazine!
This issue’s theme is “My Best Joke” and well, I’ve never been shy about telling a joke, so I’m pleased to take part in a crew of small-press all-stars that includes Teri S. Wood, Matt Feazell, Alan Groening and many more! You can order the print copy right now on Amazon or you can get a PDF version downloaded from Phoenix’s website!
…I’m a bit consumed by work and life at the moment, but let’s take this moment to remind all three of my faithful readers that my life’s work, my magnum opus, THE BEST OF AMOEBA ADVENTURES, is still available over on Amazon! If you haven’t bought this fine collection of nearly 350 pages of my long, long-running Amoeba Adventures comics, why the heck not?
“One of the best small press comics of the 1990s!” – Tony Isabella, creator of Black Lightning and writer for Ghost Rider, Hawkman, Daredevil, Iron Fist and a heck of a lot more!
“This book is awesome! I’ve been a fan and reader of AA since issue #4 and I’ve seen the growth in both story and art over the years by Nik.” – Tony Lorenz, creator of Futuro Tierra
“My all-time favourite small press book!” – Terry Flippo, creator of Marbles, Axel and Alex and much more!
The official blurb:
Nik Dirga’s Amoeba Adventures was one of the most critically praised small press comics of the 1990s. Now, for the first time, the best of long out-of-print stories by Nik with additional art by Max Ink are collected along with bonus rarities and more, including guest pin-ups by Dave Sim, Sergio Aragones, Matt Feazell and Stan Sakai. Dive on into the story of Prometheus the Protoplasm, Rambunny, Spif, Ninja Ant and Karate Kactus, and meet some of the strangest heroes and villains of all time as they battle toxic mushrooms, gorilla gangsters, time travel to the dinosaur age and even appear on David Letterman!
Collecting material from Amoeba Adventures #1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11-13, 16, 17, 21, 22, 27, Prometheus The Protoplasm #4, Prometheus: Silent Storm; Prometheus Saves The Earth and Amoeba Adventures Fifth Anniversary Special.
Thanks as always for your support and to those who’ve already grabbed a copy!
Technically, I’m on holiday! But here’s an update on a few miscellaneous projects I’ve been involved with to share so I can keep my Social Influencer TM status:
Thanks to everyone so far who has ordered the amazing, spectacular Best Of Amoeba Adventures Book which is now available on Amazon worldwide as a dirt-cheap shiny paperback or a deluxe fancy-pants hardcover! In case you missed my shilling for it before, it’s 350 pages, more than a dozen stories from my 1990s small press comics and a great introduction to the Prometheus the Protoplasm comics I’ve somehow spent almost 38 years (ugh) dabbling in. If you haven’t ordered it yet, give it a shot and help me support my expensive habits. It’s tax deductible!* (*Might not actually be tax deductible.) If you have ordered it, please leave a review or star rating on Amazon to keep the algorithm overlords happy!
Meanwhile, over at the hip website Bored Panda that all the kids are into, I was interviewed for a little piece this week on the aesthetic of one of my fave filmmakers, Wes Anderson – go read it here!
Back to comics, perpetual motion machine Jason DeGroot has been organising a massive jam comic featuring dozens of small press creators, The Sunday Jam! A lot of these projects fizzle out but this one has been barrelling along all year with a new page each week, and I was pleased to take part with a page back around Christmas. Coincidentally mine is the last page in the new Collected Sunday Jam Volume 1 gathering up the first 28 pages of this epic, oddball and sometimes totally insane adventure! You can order the collected Jam for a mere $5 right here, and enjoy a mad sampler of small press talent, or give the project so far a read if you’re jam-curious. Do it!
Here’s what I did over my Christmas vacation: I’m happy to announce the release of a new book containing nearly 350 pages of classic Prometheus the Protoplasm stories from the 1990s, THE BEST OF AMOEBA ADVENTURES!
Back in print for the first time in decades, it’s my curated pick of more than a dozen of the greatest Amoeba Adventures stories dating from comics I did in high school all the way up to the award-winning small press era!
It’s available right NOW worldwide over on Amazon in a gorgeous paperback for a mere US$19.99, and for the fancier folks there’s a hardcover variant for US$29.99. An e-book will be available soon.
Nik Dirga’s Amoeba Adventures was one of the most critically praised small press comics of the 1990s. Now, for the first time, the best of long out-of-print stories by Nik with additional art by Max Ink are collected along with bonus rarities and more, including guest pin-ups by Dave Sim, Sergio Aragones, Matt Feazell and Stan Sakai. Dive on into the story of Prometheus the Protoplasm, Rambunny, Spif, Ninja Ant and Karate Kactus, and meet some of the strangest heroes and villains of all time as they battle toxic mushrooms, gorilla gangsters, time travel to the dinosaur age and even appear on David Letterman! Collecting material from Amoeba Adventures #1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11-13, 16, 17, 21, 22, 27, Prometheus The Protoplasm #4, Prometheus: Silent Storm; Prometheus Saves The Earth and Amoeba Adventures Fifth Anniversary Special.
Buy it now, buy two and invest in the future, buy three and pay for my mortgage!
Nik Dirga 