Vixy Van Hellen and Jasper St. James, local burlesque performers promoting the city’s first-ever “Burlesque Fest.” Photo by mega-photographer Josh Huskin.

It’s summer in Texas, like, nine months out of the year. But June is traditionally “there’s-no-going-back-it’s-going-to-be-hot-for-a-while-screw-it-let’s-go-swimming” weather, and for this the Current is right there with you guys. The Summer Guide cover was shot by the indomitable Josh Huskin, and our model is Jessie Clark, with hair by Cindy Pham and a handmade vintage-inspired swimsuit by San Antonio designer Crissy Baker, whose Nerd Alert Designs is blowing up on the internet. Thanks to everybody who worked on this, see you at the beach!

Behind the scenes video by Javier Gil.

Go Spurs Go. (‘Nuff said.)

This week is the Current‘s 2012 Best of San Antonio issue — my sixth BOSA edition as Art Director. This year’s theme was “The End of the World” — in addition to more than 150 readers’ poll winners, we had photog Josh Huskin shoot post-apocalyptic scenes with model Hillary Swindell. (Also: Lawrence Mercado of Not Bot FX contributed make-up and props for the shoots.) I had envisioned a genre mash-up of pulp/grindhouse/sci-fi, inspired by apocalyptic film badasses such as Escape from New York‘s Snake Plissken and Sarah Connor from Terminator 2: Judgment Day. At 196 pages, this is the largest Current ever produced and took a lot of teamwork and long hours to put together. But the end result is totally worth it. Contrary to the cover tag, this is not really the last Best of SA issue ever — but it’ll be hard to top this one.

(And if the world does actually end, at least we’ll be going out on a high note.)

This week’s Current is devoted to local music — and SA band Pop Pistol graces the cover this year for being voted Best Indie Rock Band. For this shoot, I thought it would be fun for them to interact with the cover type, so I cut out the words by hand and photog Josh Huskin took care of the rest. I think it’s a lot of fun, and while the winners list always draws mixed emotions (sample comment: “This city sucks balls. That’s why most of the bands on this list are shitty”), I think anything that provokes any kind of reaction from our sometimes-too-apathetic city is better than no reaction at all. I personally like enjoy the music of several bands that did well on the list, and it also showed me a few that I’d never heard before but am now eager to check out. So congratulations to the winners of our little popularity contest … we’ll see you ’round the clubs.

In previous years, the Current published an ancillary mag devoted to bars and nightlife called Last Call, but this year we decided to combine that with our regular issue and give the whole thing a glossy package — stitched, trimmed, the works. The Drink Issue was a huge, huge hit, and for me it was an opportunity to experiment a little and toss our usual “look” for a week. As a bonus, my illustration of controversial District Attorney Susan Reed earned us the funniest angry voicemail all year (favorite line: “I think it encourages the city to just continue in its pit of darkness.” Pit of darkness!)

This week’s cover is devoted to local San Antonio rock band Girl in a Coma, who went from being just another SA female rock band to touring with Morrissey, signing with Joan Jett’s record label, and collaborating with director Robert Rodriguez (they’ve got a song on the Machete soundtrack). Despite the fact that their success was a direct result of touring outside of Texas as much as possible, GIAC reps San Antonio in their songs and music videos, and still hang out at the same bars and record stores whenever they aren’t on the road. On top of all that, they’re nice people, too.

Since this week coincided with our Halloween issue, I wanted the girls to dress up for the cover shoot. Some ideas that were floated around were Ziggy Stardust-style glam-rockers, Rocky Horror characters, Wizard of Oz (with singer Nina Diaz as a punk Dorothy with tattoos and braids). (Another idea that was too hilarious to take seriously: Harry, Ron, and Hermoine.) But the band didn’t bite on costumes, so our back-up concept was to go with what I kept calling “punk-rock Nancy Drew:” the band exploring a spooky setting with flashlights. The thought of Girl in a Coma riding around in a van playing shows and solving mysteries was funny without being potentially humiliating, so that’s what we shot. Photographer Josh Huskin took the band to local haunted house Nightmare on Grayson, and the results were gorgeous. Josh also deserves credit for the eerie lighting effects.

You can read Music Editor Enrique Lopetegui’s cover story here, and check out the video below, shot by Stephen Castro of Miranda Studios (and now official Current videographer).

It’s been a crazy busy couple of weeks, so I’ve been terrible at updating my blog with new work (there’s quite a bit of it at the moment). The above cover is already a week old, and I’m jut now getting around to posting it here. The irony is that this is probably one of my favorite Current covers of the year! SA photographer Josh Huskin took my concept sketch (below) and ran with it, and the finished result is equally whimsical and badass. The model is Wes Dunn, who is not a real lumberjack but rather a bassist for local band Sohns. His bandmate, Lawrence Mercado, also creates make-up and special effects as NotBotFX and provided Dunn’s wilderness-related injuries. Scroll down for a time-lapse video of Mercado working his magic, and you can see both Sohns and NotBot in action in the band’s excellent video for “Let’s Start a Cult” (from last year’s To Ward it Off and Drown it Out.)

This cover was a huge hit — big thanks to everyone who collaborated! Long live Burl von Burleson.

The Current‘s annual Best of San Antonio issue is here, and it’s pretty rad. This year sports an all ’80s theme to celebrate the paper’s 25th anniversary. (Fun fact: The Current was founded in 1986 — I was two years old.) For the cover, I wanted a Ferris Bueller-type, cool/smug ’80s kid with a hot girlfriend (think Mia Sara), and photog Josh Huskin delivered with with Jon and Sarah, replicating my original sketch almost exactly.

Ultimately, we decided that the pair didn’t look “’80s” enough — Wayfarers and skinny pants are in these days, and Jon just kind of looked like a hipster from 2011 instead of a cool dude from 1986. (Also not helping: the beard stubble.) So we re-shot with totally rad wardrobe from RG Vintage, winner of Best Vintage Store, and this time the look was perfect.

At 160 pages, this year’s Best of SA issue is the largest issue published by the Current in its 25-year history, beating last year’s by eight pages. Pretty cool. Also, I had more fun with the 1980s theme on the interior of the book … I included a few of my favorite pages below, enjoy!