If you happen to find yourself in LA over the next few weeks, be sure to check out this amazing show at Gallery 1988, opening May 20. The show, aptly titled, Another Dimension, showcases 50 artists’ works based on the original Rod Serling TV masterpiece, The Twilight Zone. My piece, Like A Tiny Doll Cut From A Shell And Brought To Life, is based on the episode, Stopover In A Quiet Town, where a married couple wakes up in a dollhouse after a long night of partying, only to find they are captives, and new toys, for a giant alien little girl.

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Hitting supermarket shelves everywhere soon, I just wrapped up a logo design and four illustrations for Hansen’s Beverage Co (parent company of Monster Energy) and their new line of all-natural iced teas. Flavors include Razzleberry, Sweet Lemon, Imorted Ceylon, and Green. You can collect all four for 99 cents each. [See more of John Malloy's work]

After hearing a year’s worth of speculation that this film might not see the light of day, the new Dave Eggers [McSweeney's] and Spike Jonze adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s vividly imaginative story Where The Wild Things Are is finally hitting the big screen. And I can’t wait! The subtle use of CGI on the faces makes the creatures even more eerily believable.

I was kindly invited by one of my longtime favorite radio stations, Dublab to create a piece for their upcoming open-source exhibition, Into Infinity and Beyond. During the online exhibition, other artists will be able to manipulate, remix, and re-submit the work. The exhibition will also feature music that will be available for remixing, as well.

I recently had the honour of doing the cover for the comic’s section in the upcoming Lemon Magazine David Bowie issue, in addition to translating interviews with Battles and These New Puritans into comics for the same issue, each based on one of Bowie’s songs and periods in his career.

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The Apartment is a New York-based design group whose work is outstanding. They do everything from architecture to product branding, web and interior design for clients as varied as a reflexology center, restaurants, and a house built from a church in London.

The Grind 2.0, a charity auction show to fund construction of the Swift-Cantrell Skatepark in Atlanta, opens on Friday, October 10 at Atlanta’s The Rabbit Hole Gallery. The show features more than 60 hand-painted skate decks painted by some of today’s top underground artists from across America and Europe, and I couldn’t be more excited to be part of it! Other artists include Amy Sol, Dave Kinsey, Chris Stain, Jason Limon, Tara McPherson, Tessar Lo, and many more. The gallery is even offering an online bidding through their website.

I’ve been a longtime fan of Jill Greenberg’s stunning and subtly manipulated photography for some time. Her incredible talent for accentuating her subject’s true personality, whether they be celebrities or animals, is uncanny. Unfortunately her latest work might find her in the midst of a lawsuit, but for now we can still enjoy these while photos they last. Hired by Atlantic Monthly to do a photoshoot of John McCain, she put her own spin on some of the unused portraits and posted them on her site.

Whether you’re a sequential artist, fine artist, illustrator, or a fan, the Swedish anthology C’est Bon will definitely light a fire in any creative spirit in need of some inspiration. The latest issue, Vol. 5, exhibits amazing talents from around the world, talents that I am humbly honored to be rubbing elbows with. They include Andrea Bruno, Emeilie Ostergren, and Marko Turunen, to name a few.

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With all of the reality shows cropping up on the set these days, I rarely get sucked into anything. But when I saw the first season of David Simon’s The Wire, I realized there may be hope for TV yet — mostly because I forgot I was even watching a show. Tackling every urban institution, from schools to police to news media and cops, there are truly no ‘good guys’, and after having lived in Baltimore myself on and off for ten years, it broadened my perspective on this city’s and other cities’ issues that lie beyond the newsfeed. In my opinion, it is hands-down the best-scripted and acted show I have ever seen. And now all seasons are available on DVD.

Before my friends at Biggs & Featherbelle urged me to try their Muscle Soak, I’d never been a fan of baths. Their inventive mix of Ginger, Alfalfa, and woodsy essential oils took me somewhere else. The no-synthetics and body care company’s packaging is equally inventive.

You might not know their work yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Becca Stadtlander [above] and Sam Bosma [bottom two] became household names in the near future. Both have been students of mine at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Becca’s attention to meaningful detail and color is nothing short of exquisite, and Sam’s gestures, layering, and dynamic layouts are astounding. I’m psyched to see what else they’ve got up their sleeves.

I love the work of the Montreal-based silkscreening group Seripop. Their choices of color and gritty, imperfect lines give the impression of ‘test-prints’ at first, but with further inspection reveal a definite conscious approach. [see also Lorin Brown]

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Dave Mazzucchelli has been one of the boldest, medium-bending sequential artists of our time. Known best for his work on Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One, his groundbreaking adaptation of Paul Auster’s City of Glass, and the anthology, Rubber Blanket, he’s returning after a near fourteen-year hiatus with a new book for Pantheon in December titled Asterios Polyp. [see also the comics of Brooklyn artist, Tom Hart]

I’m a big fan of Leila Bell’s work, especially her concert posters. I love the simplicity of her design as well as her signature expressive lines. [see also the poster art of Jesse LeDoux]

Finally someone has found a use for those stacks of colored paper that sit in every office and never see the light of day. I could stare at Jen Stark’s mindblowing paper sculptures for hours and still never be totally sure where she started. Jen is also a graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art, where I’m currently teaching. [see more of Jen Stark's work]

When I first heard about The Eight Principles of Fun, I thought it sounded frighteningly close to being a self-help service ad. But after closer inspection I realized it’s actually really well-thought out and has a lot of great suggestions to live and work by. It’s set to some calming music with some sweet flash animation too.

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I’ve been a big fan of Los Angeles-based Tim Hawkinson’s work for some time now. The vast array of his sculpture, collage, and installation art ranges from the minute — a baby bird skeleton made entirely of fingernail clippings — to the massive — life-sized robotic versions of himself made of hollowed-out cardboard that beat out religious hymns. His insane attention to detail is best experienced in person. [see also the somewhat creepy artwork of Travis Louie]

A new kind of monster movie for our times, Cloverfield delivered a solid 75 minutes of cinema that I couldn’t take my eyes off of. Touted as ‘Blair Witch meets Godzilla’, it’s shot entirely with a handheld digital camera, and though the characters seemed a little artificial and almost tongue-in-cheek, the monster seemed more real than anything I’d seen before. It’s the latest project of J.J. Abrams, creator of Lost, the TV series. [see also the Ian Curtis biopic, Control]

If you’re as big a fan of personal stories and short fiction/non-fiction as I am, you won’t regret checking out the incredible show This American Life, hosted by Ira Glass. It began as — and still is — an hour-long radio program in Chicago, combining found sound footage, field recordings, and narrative, pushing the boundaries of the medium of radio journalism. It recently spawned a TV version on Showtime. Each episode of the radio show is available as a free podcast via the website, and revolves around a theme.