Superchief Gallery LA hosted a 3 person show with legendary underground cartoonists JJ Villard, Johnny Ryan, and Abraham Diaz, a rare meeting of minds!
JJ Villard is an Emmy-winning Cartoon Terrorist, perhaps best known for his hyper-violent cartoon, King Star King on Adult Swim. He has two more shows on the way, including Trap Universe which premiered this month. In addition to his rapidly escalating career in the animation industry, JJ maintains a maniacal sketchbook that is a mix of his day-to-day to-do lists and hilarious and fucked up illustrations. Villard stepped away from fine arts to focus on his animation career, and after being accepted in Cannes Film Festival in 2005, Dreamworks hired Villard to work on Shrek 3 & 4, plus many other Dreamworks animated movies. He's worked with Disney, Cartoon Network, Baker Skateboards, Stussy, and currently works at Adult Swim.
Johnny Ryan is an alt-comics creator with an absurdist and brutal style, aiming to make even the most easily offended people laugh. In the mid-90s, he was known for his self-published mini-comics series, Angry Youth Comix, eventually collected in two volumes by Fantagraphics in 2003 and 2005, who would also release his ultraviolent comic Prison Pit. Ryan has worked on Bagge's DC comic series Sweatshop, and with Dave Cooper on several comics for Nickelodeon Magazine since 2004. One of their stories served as inspiration for the Nickelodeon animation series Pig Goat Banana Cricket, for which Ryan and Cooper serve as executive producers. Johnny Ryan's work has appeared in nearly every issue of Nickelodeon Magazine, Vice for a solid 13 years, MAD magazine, LA Weekly, National Geographic Kids, Hustler Magazine and The Stranger.
Abraham Diaz is an illustrator based in Mexico City's underground punk scene, and also runs his own micro edition publishing house producing comics and outsider art under the name "Joc Doc." Abraham is known for his visceral and hard-edged illustrative interpretations of his home city. His work "Nausea" and "Suicida," dives into the chaotic and nihilistic depths of the underside of the underside of Mexico City, a place where "nonsense violence, corruption, misery and hopelessness" emanates in his eyes. His work has been shown in comic anthologies worldwide, in Kramers Ergot, Kovra, Kus! in Europe, and Spanish publishers Ediciones Valientes, and has done artwork for Pura Manía, Fracaso, Treatment, MøRbø, No Patience Records, and some flyers for Pizza Punks in California, Criaturas and Gas Rag gigs in Mexico City.
