I happily paid my first visit to New York's MoCCA Festival earlier this year after hearing about it for years from artists and book publishers comparing it to San Francisco's APE (Alternative Press Expo). And amongst the 200 hundred or so artists, independent publishers, screen printers and eccentric literary folk, one person's art in particular stood out to me more than any other.

Halloween spirit: Jon Vermilyea lives in a joyous world covered in vomit. No, that wasn't a cheap shot at the fact that he resides in Los Angeles. Jon literally paints with vomit, draws vomit, sleeps in a bed that looks like vomit, and has eyes that are permanently vomited in so that everything he SEES looks like vomit.

A few months ago, Ricky Watts' art wowed attendees at San Francisco's Outside Lands Music Festival as one of his most iconic illustrations dangled royally from the 40 foot tall main stage, but the northern California-based illustrator has been consistently sharpening his technical art skills for years...

Five or six years ago, while I was roaming around Kinokuniya, one of my favorite book stores in San Francisco, something that looked like a disease-soaked small pamphlet-sized book caught my eye. In bold, but fancy letters, the word "EBOLA" was stamped on the front adorning a gorgeously rendered child-like bunny rabbit with no face. I had no idea what I was looking at, but I was more than intrigued.

What colors should our dreams be? If your response were based upon the paintings of Chilean-born painter Victor Castillo, the answer might be "the colors that don't exist". In reality, I know that answer is an oxymoron, but in regards to Victor's lush and haunting paintings, it makes perfect sense.

Inquiring about just HOW sculptor/production designer Stacey Ransom and portrait photographer Jason Mitchell create the imaginative "surreality" that they do is like asking David Blaine how he pulls autographed money out of his belly button. There's no answer or method that could satisfy the question.

Uno Moralez is a mystery. No, fuck that, Uno Morlalez is a magician. No, that's not right either. Uno Moralez must be an imposter! There is little public information about artist Uno Moralez. His outdated Livejournal is basically illegible, unless you can read Cyrillic or have a translating robot better than Google, his name apparently isn't even Uno Moralez, and (GASP!) he has no Facebook page.

LA based painter Steven Daily's imagination runs both deep and dark. So dark, in fact, that I have always been pretty convinced that he must have sold his soul to some dark demon from his childhood in exchange for the ability to blend his paint the way he does!

Fresh off of his "Relics of the New World" exhibition and just in time for October's festivities, Bay Area mask maker and sculptor Lucien Shapiro continues to expand his unique universe this Friday October 5th at LeQuiVive Gallery in Oakland, CA as part of a 3-person exhibit called "A Show of Heads" with fellow artists John Casey and Brian Robertson.

We had so much fun with Alex Pardee and his Halloween issue, that we just couldn't wait to hang out with him again. Just in time for New York Comic Con, held from October 11—14 at the Javits Center, Pardee is set to release some new works, and the Zerofriends team have a booth where you can get, well, Zerofriends things.