I had a picture of the panel, but it was one of the ones that got eaten by my phone, dammit.

[Editor’s note: This will be the last of our SDCC 2019 panel recaps. Exact quotes, italics, etc, you know the drill, but since there were so many go back-and-forth elements to the answers, I’m going to do my best to identify who made each of the paraphrased points.]

I went to the panel on how magic and technology can coexist in fiction on a whim, and I’m glad I did. Moderator Lilah Sturges did the best panel-wrangling job I saw in San Diego, tossing questions, prompting useful digressions, keeping things moving, and avoiding the dreaded Now each of you answer the same question in depth, one after another at all costs. A’course, when the panel includes Ursula Vernon, Bree Paulsen, Gene Ha¹, Carey Pietsch, Maya Kern, and Katie O’Neill on the panel, there were plenty of opinions to go around.

The only Okay, everybody answer this question was the first which was Is Star Wars sci-fi? Clarke talked about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic, and if it is, what’s the difference? Nerd senses tingling, hands involuntarily clenching, takes heating to the searing point, the panel was on notice that they’d have to bring their A-game, and the audience was primed to be invested in the answers. While the panel pretty much all dodged the first part of the question, they dug into the second with their own thoughts on the differences.

Notice that back and forth? It worked great. Sturges’s later questions didn’t request that everybody answer, they were just lobbed out there and people had a conversation until they’d all made the points they wanted to. Panels that turn into an open discussion by smart, engaged people rock, and I wish every session at SDCC ran like this one did. The next question asked the panel how they use technology and magic for different kinds of stories.

The panel firing on all cylinders (technology reference!), Sturges lobbed the big one at them: What is the difference between fantasy and science fiction?

With that settled, it was time for the key question: Can technology and magic coexist in the same story?

Sturges threw open the session to audience questions, and made an observation that should be made at every panel: Questions end in a question mark, and should fit in a tweet. It worked, too! No grandstanding, no manifestos, no explanations to the panel about how they’re wrong and bad and wrong some more. Bliss!

Whew! That’s a lot of transcribing, but it was worth it. Follow all of the folks that took part, and thanks again to Lilah Sturges for a magnificent job of keeping things rolling.

Spam of the day:

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I can’t tell if international dating is meant to refer to dating across national borders, or just the run-of-the-mill mail-order bride deal. Clarity, please!

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¹ Who spent time thinking about answers by sketching folks in the front row or so of the audience, then presenting them with the portraits.

² Me and Vernon’s husband Kevin who I was sitting next to: [stiffen and subvocalize growls, as if to express the thought Fuck that guy.]

³ Because the question came up, you can find the train priests in the novelette The Tomato Thief, which won a Hugo. The story features Grandma Harken, who also featured in the Nebula-winning short story Jackalope Wives. I love Vernon’s cantankerous, wise old women that smart folks know not to cross.

⁴ Weirdly, this was the second time Bosch came up at SDCC for me, and Carey Pietsch was present for both of them.

[Editor’s note: Disclaimer time again. The purpose of these recaps is to get at the gist of what was being said and by whom; to the extent that direct quotes occur, they will be italicized. And just because you don’t see somebody’s name doesn’t mean they weren’t in the middle of the conversation; it just means that I need to learn shorthand, or go back to typing these things.]

So you want to get comics into the classroom (which was a recurring theme of the sessions being held at the San Diego Public Library, which is a magnificent facility bee-tee-dubs), so what better way than to be able to have a nearly entirely question-driven session with creators (Jimmy Gownley and James Parks, with Ben Costa in the audience because the table was full), academics (Talia Hurwich and Meryl Jaffe, authors of Worth A Thousand Words), teachers (Derek Heid and Tracy Edmunds), and publishers (Mark Siegel and Gina Gagliano, who was honored by Publishers Weekly today)?

It was rhetorical, but the answer is There is no better way.

The questions from the audience ranged from the purely physical (How do you keep graphic novels from getting shredded in circulation?, a librarian wanted to know) to the application of theory (Teachers wanted to discuss leveling, the process of determining reading level for materials, and why graphic novels are consistently rated too low), with the ever-popular How do you get buy-in from parents/colleagues/administrators? along the way. Let’s take that last one first.

Jaffe admitted that she used to be one of those parents/teachers who thought that graphic novels weren’t useful in the classroom; she credited the kids in her class who did an intervention with me. She noted that because there is so little text on a page, the vocabulary tends to be advanced, with an extremely high incidence of metaphor. Gownley supported this point, noting that the most garbage Marvel superhero comics are written to the same level as the New York Times. Parks added that comics stretch the reading skills further, in that they — uniquely — allow readers to interpret what happens on a page more broadly than other forms of reading.

We noted a couple recaps back that the Common Core standards require students to examine a work classic literature in at least two different media; Heid stressed that to read text only is not teaching to standard, and Edmunds pointed out that graphic novels are specifically listed in those standards as a media type to be used in¹ fifth grade.

Siegel was happy to note that parents are the last pockets of resistance, when they think that their kids are getting short-changed or being given half measures. Librarians (and this is a recurring theme with Siegel over the years) have been ahead of the curve, obtaining and pushing graphic novels².

When there is still resistance in the community, he recommends putting up a display of books with all the shiny awards stickers on the front — the National Book Awards don’t have a category for graphic literature, after all. But, he allowed, it gets a little tiring to keep having the same conversation about format. Gownley had the ultimate solution: These people will get old and die someday.

Heid remarked that teachers are pretty much onboard, since they saw how large the medium (not genre!) is, but is ticked that at education conferences, there’s no panel on Novels In The Classroom. Nobody even thinks to question their inclusion, but somehow the absolute equivalecy of novel:=literature persists to the detriment of other media.

Let’s jump back to the circulation question; the answer was at least partly to adjust expectations. Gagliano pointed out that the typical graphic novel binding will hold up to about 60 circulations, which is as good or better than prose. The librarian admitted that they’re seeing about 75 circulations, so there you go.

Gagliano also mentioned specialty bindings for libraries from outfits like Perma-Bound and Bound To Stay Bound to increase durability (Gownley chimed in that they aren’t as pleasing to read, but they hold up). Siegel noted there’s an increasing number of simultaneous releases of hardcover and softcover, specifically with libraries in mind.

The discussion around leveling fascinated me, because it was clearly of great interest to nearly everybody in the room, but also completely new to me. The discussion began when a teacher said she had no problems with her elementary principal, librarians, fellow teachers, or parents. Her issue was that the district wants comprehension tests after every book, and she needs both documentation that kids aren’t reading below grade level and a mechanism to evaluate how well the students are reading (NB: The teachers and teacher-adjacent in the room would refer to what I saw as two things almost interchangeably).

Edmunds jumped on the leveling issue: the grade level assigned by the most common leveling rules/services does not accurately reflect the complexity of the reading. The levels, and most tests available to teachers, are algorithmically generated and only take into account the text. Gagliano mentioned that publishers are constantly in communication with the test-generation folks to more accurately reflect the material and the leveling.

Gownley almost hopes that a solution isn’t found — when the books are outside the official curriculum, there’s no test, no proofs of proficiency, a slight hint of being forbidden, then reading becomes more fun.

But returning to why there isn’t a leveling tool that incorporates words+pictures, Edmunds explained that it’s difficult to to. Leveling is the province of computers, not humans; Jaffe added that it’s done by people who aren’t in classrooms. Siegel expressed some sympathy for the lack of accurate leveling, in that the entire idea of visual literacy is hazy right now. As noted a few days ago, we’re all just waiting for McCloud to give us the vocabulary to have the conversation that we need to have in order to come to a consensus on this complex and constantly changing landscape.

The last question of the session³ was about how to incorporate graphic novels along with nongraphic novels, rather than instead of. Heid jumped in to say it depends on what you’re teaching, but using both allows all kinds of discussion. For example, To Kill A Mockingbird presents the climactic verdict scene with a focus on Jem, but the graphic novel adaptation shifts it to Tom Robinson, with each Guilty shifting his expression from shock, to horror, to the sure knowledge it was always going to be this way. After your kids have read both, ask them, Why did Harper Lee focus on Jem and the graphic novel focus on Tom?

Jaffe says the contrast between text-only and graphic novels allows you to explore questions with students that you couldn’t otherwise. Contrasting the different formats allows investigation into concepts like How do you communicate? Gagliano focused on the fact that a lot of literature teachers may not have a background/training in art, but they can learn with their students; you can think about why a page was designed the way it way, why the choice was made to use color or B&W, what job each panel has to do. Asking the questions and seeing what answers they come up with will spur a teacher’s own education.

And that education continues: Hurwich is working on her PhD (graphic novels and other media in the classroom and their effect on student literacy) and Heid his Masters (on education standards and how graphic novels fit); Gagliano and Siegel keep seeking out the best books they can, and Parks and Costa keep figuring out how to make their series more entertaining and relevant for kids. None of them will ever stop trying to do more for their students or their readers.

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_______________
¹ Or possibly starting in fifth grade, rather than solely fifth grade. My notes got a little rushed, and any teachers familiar with the Common Core are welcome to clarify for us.

² Asked in a follow-up when the librarians started pushing graphic novels, Gownley perkily answered Thursday! to general laughter. Gagliano remarked that the annual YALSA Great Graphic Novels For Teens list started in 2005, which she described as the tipping point. American Born Chinese would be nominated for the National Book Award the next year, and once SMILE took the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for nonfiction, the momentum was pretty much irreversible. Edmunds half-lamented that it’s almost not possible to keep up with all the good graphic novels being published today.

³ Well, second to last; the last was Where will we see you after this session?, which prompted the best response from Gownley: The Crowne Plaza sushi bar.

Sometimes, panels don’t lend themselves to traditional write-ups (or, at least not write-ups as I do them; everybody’s got their own style, after all), and the preview of all-ages comics from Scholastic/Graphix is a prime example. It wasn’t so much a discussion as an opportunity to talk about what Graphix has coming up in the near future, with creators talking about their current/forthcoming projects. Thus, the disclaimer I normally start with on these panel recaps is missing, since there’s not so much the opportunity to confuse quotes with paraphrases. Okay, there’s one quote coming up, you’ll know it when you see it.

Instead, I’m going to talk about some of the work that was previewed, with little things that caught my eye. For example, Jim Benton is half graphic novelist, half IP licensing machine, and Catwad straddles that line. Benton actually first came up with Catwad years ago, but similarities to a slightly more recent cat with grumpy tendencies¹.

Tui Sutherland talked about the process of adapting her book series, Wings Of Fire (thirteen books and counting!) to graphic novels (third one coming soon). Particularly, she’d like to note that while it’s all very easy to describe an arena full of dragon-type beings as far as the eye can see, it’s quite another to expect Mike Holmes to draw that over and over (Sutherland: Sorry, Mike!). And since I don’t see her credited on the series page (or even on the covers, for goodness sake), I’ll note that the colorist is Maarta Laiho, who has her own challenges — rainforests, chameleonic dragons who change color, leading to completely different colors from panel to panel — and deserves a bit of recognition here.

Jon J Muth’s adaptation of The Seventh Voyage by Stanislaw Lem was included in the giveaway bag at the Scholastic party on Thursday night, so I can tell you that it’s smart, charming, funny, and very, very different from any other graphic novel you’ve read or are going to read this year. Lem’s ability to lambaste Poland’s political institutions and society without running afoul of governmental authorities is legendary, and you’ll see a prime example of his skill as Ijon Tichy struggles to resolve a life-or-death situation despite the interference of a bureaucracy of himself² doing its damndest to prevent anything from actually happening. And the space suit³ is hilarious.

Raina Telgemeier let her audience know that Guts is different than her previous work (her exact words were Wake up, ’cause we’re going to talk about anxiety!), but in a way that let them know that’s okay. That she had a hard time dealing with the stressors in her life at their age, and sometimes still has those feelings, but she got help. And if they feel overwhelmed and anxious, they can get help, too. She’s really our best ambassador to the middle grades, the one that remembers what that time was like and can converse with those who live their in terms of their own experiences. As I told her when I got to read an advance copy back in April, I wanted very much to travel back in time and hug Young Raina and tell her it would be okay.

The only question I noted was when a girl, about ten years old, came to the mic to ask Miss Raina, what happened to Amara’s snake? Readers of Sisters may recall that Raina’s younger sister had a snake who got loose and lost, only to be found six months later under the seats in the minivan (or at least, a snake similar enough to the one that was lost as to make no difference). In the meantime, their mom had gotten Amara another snake and when that one got loose, Raina said I left the house. It was time for college, but the snake was definitely part of the decision. Like I said, she know how to speak Middle Grader.

Release dates:

• Glitch by Sarah Graley is available now
• Guts by Raina Telgemeier releases 17 September
• Sunny Rolls The Dice by Jennifer Holm (words) and Matthew Holm (art) releases 1 October
• The Seventh Voyage by Jon J Muth and Stanislaw Lem (translation by Michael Kandel) releases 1 October
• Wings Of Fire: The Hidden Kingdom by Tui Sutherland, Mike Holmes, and Maarta Laiho releases 15 October

Spam of the day:

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Yep, this is wholly appropriate for a post discussing all-ages comics. Yeesh.

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¹ Who, it could be argued, primarily went viral because of a mash-up with a Kate Beaton punchline. Speaking of Beaton, she’s got a new diary comic up, featuring doggo Agnes with a supporting appearance by daughter Mary Lou. It’s a treat.

² Or, more precisely, himselves, as they are all time-displaced instances of Ijon Tichy thrown together and forced to try and cooperate.

³ Baggy, shapeless, five sizes too large at the very least, stubby-legged, and featuring an umbilical attached in the middle of a buttoned-up buttflap.

[Editor’s note: Yeah, pretty much forget the earlier disclaimers. This time I’m going for exact quotes.]

There’s something refreshing about giving Ursula Vernon a microphone and no set topic list for an hour. With her A/V tech/husband, Kevin Sonney¹, by her side, she projected slides of her artwork, digressing as the mood struck her on each. Oh, and for those that don’t know, Ursula Vernon is also T Kingfisher when writing for adults, the difference between them being, T Kingfisher wears a hat. I mean, I’m wearing a hat now, but it’s because my hair … yeah.

Let the quotes begin!

I had a blue period because the only ink bottle I could get the cap off of was blue.
— Explaining why the crested caracara was that color

I just like painting stone.

Sometimes you want to get back to your roots, but not enough to draw humans.
— Explaining why she painted Pen-Guin the Barbarian, decked out for war and murder.

Turnips are inherently funny.

Oh, God, they produce so many eggs.
— On the keeping of chickens

Ursula: The chicken had a tragic backstory …
Kevin: I’m not made of stone.
Ursula: … which lead to multiple adults unironically stating We just want what’s best for the chicken.
— On how they wound up with the Strong Independent Chicken. Also, Kevin is a Disney Princess, animals just flock to him.

I had the grandiose idea of doing steampunk moths.

Oh, the pear …
— On seeing the Biting Pear Of Salamanca, which came about because Vernon was drawing a lot of fruit, but was also inspired by how Rob Liefeld draws teeth but again didn’t want to draw a person. Most people only focus on the pear and not the fact that it’s clearly a tourist attraction and so the little rodent in the foreground is photographing it. Nearly everybody overlooks the giraffes in the background but come on, you can’t have too many giraffes.

Inspiration knocks on the door occasionally. Spite will bang on the door all year long.

Kevin: I HAVE INSTRUCTIONS IF YOU START AN EPIC.
— On what to do if Ursula decides to start another strip the length of Digger. They involve a shovel and an unmarked patch of land out back.

At least it’s prime!
— There are eleven volumes of Dragonbreath, not ten.

It’s all right, the fox can’t hurt you anymore.

Spinning wheels are really hard to draw … but hamster wheels are easy to draw.
— On how a desire to tell a fairy tale became Hamster Princess.

Don’t get me started on potatoes … [Kevin nods pointedly] … the Russet Burbank is an abomination.
— She’s got opinions. This came at the end of a question if her degree in anthropology helps her writings. It lead to the point that you should get the food right, that not everybody eats the same things, and that in general there should be fewer potatoes in your faux-medieval setting.

The answer is always more sauna.
— On consulting with a Finnish folklorist to see if she got details right in The Raven And The Reindeer, and being told that the folklore and food were fine, but there wasn’t enough sauna in the story.

I have much less trouble than is emotionally healthy.
and
Many children’s book authors are frustrated horror authors.
— On any difficulty she may have code-switching between the two genres. Turns out kidlit authors get told you can’t write that, it’ll scar a kid fairly frequently, leading to frustrated ambition and resentment. All of those scenes get more and more horrifying until they’re ready to explode in a brain-melting cavalcade of madness and terror.

Or, you know, you’re Ursula and just fight with your editor on Twitter. No big².

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¹ Ursula and Kevin are capital-M Married, with an innate feel for where the other is, mentally, at any given moment that omega-level psychics would envy. Of course, they mostly use that knowledge to mess with each other for extremely dry comedic effect.

² That’s what she said!

[Editor’s note: Once again, there are relatively few direct quotes in these recaps, and those that exist are italicized. As a caveat to the reminder, the latter portion of this post comes from a conversation with Jim Ottaviani, but the paraphrase/quote rule remains in effect.]

That title up there makes me think about Frank Zappa’s Project/Object concept¹, which isn’t really tied into the work being discussed at the moment, but what else are you going to call a panel on making comics with factual bases about actual things? And a fine discussion it was, with Chula Vista librarian Judy Prince-Neeb wrangling Randall Munroe, Don Brown, Rachel Ignotofsky, Jim Ottaviani, and Dylan Meconis holding forth on how they get to the real.

But Gary, I hear you cry, Dylan Meconis works in fiction! True, Grasshopper, she does. But anybody that’s spent any time with her knows that she sweats the details to get a sense of place with the greatest verisimilitude known to humanity. She may have mucked up history into a Mirror Universe version of itself in Queen Of The Sea, but by God she got the goats right! We’ll come back to the goats in a minute.

The idea that factual doesn’t have to equal the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth down to fourteen decimal places was a recurring theme. When asked by Prince-Neeb why they get excited by their work, Brown talked about the thrill of talking about Big Ideas and Moments (say, walking on the gosh-darned moon for the first time) and digging not into the BIaM itself, but the hundreds of thousands of much smaller bits and bobs that built up to it.

What Armstrong did in the roughly half-hour from start of the first lunar EVA until that one small step is exhaustively catalogued; what decisions were made between a design engineer and a lingerie seamstress to figure out how to make Armstrong’s suit? There’s room for interpretation there, a bit of impressionism that make the real moreseo².

For Ignotofsky, reality comes from the places where the hard data fears to tread. She’ll dig through a Census for fun, but when there’s little information committed to the historical record about the accomplishments of women, the indigenous, people of color, the LGTBQ+ community, focusing on those subjects for the benefit of kids means that future generations won’t have to rely as much on anecdotes when looking for people like them. The opportunity to see yourself as part of the world is what excites Ottaviani, that and the realization at a tender age that books are things that are made by people leading to the thought I could — should — make a book.

We’re living in History now is how Meconis puts it (you could hear the capital-H in her voice); the minutiae of our daily lives is future history and significant. How we lived our lives then shaped history. That minutiae lends a sense of reality to even the most fantastical world, making it all the more fascinating to the reader.

Munroe was, as may not surprise you, an outlier: I don’t know why I’m interested in anything, he said. Something catches his fancy, he works back to the science, engineering, and math, takes things to the logical extreme (he often ends up at some variation of Of course, now we’re at about 30% of the speed of light and have killed everybody on the East Coast), with the hope that it may accidentally cause a reader to learn something. Or, as Meconis put it, We’re big on tricking people!

So they all have some reason to share their work, but why pictures? Munroe’s decision is based on efficiency: you can see a big block of text and decide not to read it, but a picture on the page? You’ve already seen it; at least some part of it seeps through³. Ottaviani added that it’s pretty much impossible to stop reading in the middle of a comics page like you can in the middle of a paragraph; additionally, half of Science works from pictures already.

Sometimes, the motivation is elsewhere. Meconis notes that Writing + Drawing is like Juggling + Chainsaws; you can get attention if you’re good at either, but if you combine them, it’s a great way to get attention on the internet as a teenager! [Editor’s note: yikes.]

The bulk of the discussion was on research techniques. Munroe is relentless, digging down into the details of various commissions and committees that exist in the world, because that’s where the weird stuff (like how much water is legally required to pass over Niagara Falls, and how much of an act of war it is to alter it) lives. Ignotofsky haunts libraries and looks for the odd grace notes (like the famed painter in the early 1800s Paris how lived as an out lesbian, and was made to pay for a license to wear trousers; Munroe perked up and desperately wants to know if the office that issued that license issued others).

Meconis is fond of finding the one person that cares about a narrow subject more than anybody else, which is why she spent time on a Geocities site about heritage goat breeds maintained by dissident goat-breeders in remote Scotland. They have opinions on that newcomer Nubian goat, and arguments to back up those opinions. It might not make it to the Annals of the Royal Society, but it’s no less accurate. Plus, fiction! You can pick and choose where you want to be accurate.

Ottaviani is big on the personal interview, but has the advantage of mostly writing about people who are (or were recently) alive, and have/had friends/acquaintances who still are. He particularly noted that you can get a super accurate feel for a person without ever talking to them directly, citing the classic work of New Journalism by Gay Talese, Frank Sinatra Has A Cold (bonus: a pre-famous Harlan Ellison appears and almost gets his ass kicked). Add in a little visual reference (Ignotofsky: Get the photos! Get the clothing right! If you’re going to draw the dog, make you it’s the correct breed!) and you’re golden.

After the panel, I was lucky enough to sit down with Jim Ottaviani for a one-on-one discussion about his work, his artistic partnerships, and what’s next. His latest science bio, Hawking (art by the inimitable Leland Myrick, who also drew Feynman) released about two weeks before SDCC, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The first point of discussion was about the depiction of Jane, Hawking’s longtime wife, academic partner (when you can’t tie your own shoes, you certainly aren’t typing your own manuscripts), and primary caregiver. They divorced after Hawking became HAWKING, but remained on what I’d call unusually good terms for exes. Throughout the book, Jane is subtly, but progressively, depicted as … frustrated? annoyed? it’s tough to give a single word to the emotional heft in Myrick’s illustrations.

I read it as one part We’ve been married for more than two decades, why can’t you manage this one simple courtesy that’s annoyed me since before we were married and I’ve told you about it forever and MY GOD I hate you sometimes (everybody married more than a week has seen that look on their spouse’s face), one part You’re getting a bit full of yourself, Dr Hawking, and a few dozen parts absolute weariness at being a 24/7 caregiver, requiring ever-more challenging efforts, without so much as an afternoon off in who knows how long.

I think it’s an intimately truthful detail, to allow the great man to not be perfect, and ultimately sympathetic towards Jane, recognizing the tremendous sacrifices she made over decades. Ottaviani said the purpose was to show all of those emotional elements, with an addition of a growing distance between the couple — they had fundamentally incompatible belief systems⁴, exacerbated by his growing fame.

I read the entire later relationship between them as a classic case of being able to love somebody without liking them very much. He allowed that some of the friends of Jane Hawking were concerned about how she would be portrayed — it would be easy to cast her as a villain, abandoning her husband who is bravely clinging to life (not true, and Ottaviani and Myrick aren’t that lazy) — and concluded that he hoped his own friends would be as protective.

Ottaviani’s subjects, as our conversation hit on several times, could be complicated people. Richard Feynman is in a bit of a reappraisal, with people looking past the genius (especially for teaching) and seeing some really retrograde treatment of women for a big chunk of his life. He was also, to put it mildly, his own biggest cheerleader. His stories always make him look good, or smart, or funny, or popular, the center of attention. Hawking, by contrast, never tried to stick out (and I think even less so the more his ALS progressed), but found himself famous. Balancing that reticence with the obvious glee he exhibited while guesting on Star Trek or The Simpsons must have required a considerable effort (not to mention the fact that anybody with a measure of fame will attract cranks⁵).

My most burning question was who Ottaviani wants to cover next. He’s already hit the big name scientists and engineers that people might actually recognize (in addition to Feynman and Hawking, he’s covered Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruteé Galdikas, Turing, Bohr, Oppenheimer and Szilard, and goodly bits of Einstein all throughout), so who next? I made a pitch for Claude Shannon⁶ (because you can never have enough Shannon), and he’s got some potential candidates in mind; it’s more than deciding that a scientist or engineer needs the Ottaviani treatment, it’s finding work that lends itself to visual representation and finding the right artist for the project.

In the meantime, he’s doing a series of two-pagers for the Royal Society Of Chemistry celebrating the Year Of The Periodic Table. Myrick’s got his own projects coming up, so it would be a while before they got to work again. I remarked how Myrick’s style provided a natural transition from depicting people to depicting scientific concepts and diagrams, and that led to a side discussion of art styles ranging from Mike Mignola to the Franco-Belgian ligne claire school. He’s not just writing for comics, he has a deep and abiding love of the form and the artists who make them. Asked who he’d like to work with, he replied Everybody I’ve already worked with, which is a pretty extensive list.

We finished out by making each other extremely envious of the other’s original comic art collection. Ottaviani has several Richard Thompson originals, including one of God bouncing dice off Einstein’s head. I have several Larry Gonick original pages featuring Shannon. In the end, it was a really pleasant conversation between a couple of engineers, talkin’ about comics and fountain pens, the sort that leaves you wrapped up until you have to walk briskly to your next appointment. If you ever have the chance to do the same, I recommend it.

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¹ Key takeaway, and I quote:

In the case of the Project/Object, you may find a little poodle over here, a little blow job over there, etc., etc. I am not obsessed by poodles or blow jobs, however; these words (and others of equal insignificance), along with pictorial images and melodic themes, recur throughout the albums, interviews, films, videos (and this book) for no other reason than to unify the ‘collection.’

² Cf: Kazu Kibuishi’s abstract landscapes, which look more real to us the less detail he adds.

³ Meconis noted the downside: parents can more easily find something to be offended by in a picture than by reading things line by line. This point would be echoed in a couple of the teacher/librarian panels over the course of the Con.

⁴ Jane being rather more a Christian than Stephen, and he being frankly rude as shit in his dismissal of her beliefs.

⁵ I’ve actually met one of Hawking’s cranks and the dude struck me as somebody I should slowly back away from, making no sudden moves. I can’t imagine what dealing with him must be like in a severely limited body.

⁶ Let the record show that he recognized Figure 1 on the cover of my notebook.

[Editor’s note: As a reminder, there are relatively few direct quotes in these recaps, and those that exist are italicized. Also as a reminder, in these larger panel discussions, I don’t always catch who said what, and the absence of a panelist’s name in the recap doesn’t mean they didn’t contribute to the discussion.]

There’s an energy that you get when librarians and teachers gather together to talk about incorporating comics into the learning process. When they get together to talk about their experiences defending the use of comics and winning over the skeptical? The excitement, the fervor is contagious. Thus, John Shableski (who’s had stints at Diamond, Will Eisner Studios, and UDON Entertainment) had very little difficulty getting his panelists to hold forth about how to get the doubters — administrators, fellow teachers, school boards, and especially parents — on board with the educational value of comics.

At the table: Amy Pitotti (advanced math & science teacher), Joe Onks (6th grade history teacher), Nichole Santangelo (middle school language arts teacher), Lisa Harrison (middle school computer science teacher), and Erin Hill (high school literature teacher), from various SoCal school districts, came prepared with stories and approaches to help teachers and librarians overcome doubt.

Hill uses The Odyssey in graphic novel form side-by-side with text; on the occasion that a parent really, really objects that the pictures aren’t real reading (more on that later), they can still complete lessons using words alone. But her chief argument when a parent or administrator is convinced that comics are worthless?

Come to the room and watch the kids. The ones that are in the office with behavioral issues are nose-deep in the book, taking apart the stories and analyzing them. Add to that the fact that she isn’t teaching comics instead of literature, but as a different form of literature? It’s convincing. Every teacher of Shakespeare knows that you can’t just have kids read the plays — you have to get them to act them out, or watch a performance¹. Same thing with a comics adaptation of a classic — seeing the story instead of reading works on different parts of the brain for all students, but particularly the reluctant readers.

Pitotti noted that her enthusiasm on behalf of her students (not to mention watching kids go from about 3rd grade reading level to 7th or 8th in a year) wins over principals and doubting colleagues. Seeing kids develop a passion for learning provides credibility to the arguments. Not to mention the fact that student will develop their visual literacy skills, which are becoming increasingly important.

Shableski shared that when confronted with reluctant teachers, there’s an exercise he likes to use at school in-service days, where the front three rows are the ones that want to learn about comics in the classroom, the next three are neutral but willing to be persuaded, everybody else hates the idea — that’s who this is directed at. He has resistant teachers come up to the board to do a drawing exercise, to see how difficult it is to convey a page of text in very few words, to decide which words to keep and which to cut, and how to arrange the pictures to get across the idea of all the missing text.

It doesn’t matter if they can’t draw much more than a stick figure, they see that the pictures are carrying a lot of meaning, and that learning to decode the pictures and pick up all the context and nuance from the absent text — which may or may not agree with what the pictures are saying, because sometimes what we think or say contradicts what we do — constitutes a higher, more skilled form of reading.

And if you’re looking for resources to get started with comics in the classroom, Harrison (who works on this with Santangelo) shared a bunch on Google Drive via QR code; she teaches coding, but has her students program stories (think very simple visual novels) that themselves have to meet language arts standards. After a few months on their story projects, the kids are hooked². There’s research at that link, work that her students have done, lesson structures, you name it. She also pointed us towards the open source toolkit called Scratch that her students use. Cool stuff.

Spam of the day:

The Ultimate Lead Generation Pack works by automatically visting yellow page directories and building a database according to your search terms

So it’s the phone call-list equivalent of the spam you’re sending me now? Cool, cool.

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¹ In a later session, it would be pointed out that current Common Core standards require students to look at classic literature in two different media — only reading the text is not to standard. You can really shut down a doubtful principal by appealing to standards.

² She shared an extra story some of her students created, which dealt with how the teachers (all portrayed as dinosaurs) spend their days — too little sleep, yelling at students, and drinking disturbing amounts of coffee. The teachers in the room nodded their grim agreement.

[Editor’s note: We begin here our annual recap of various panels at SDCC. I will not be attempting to describe the conversation as it happened, or at least attempting less than in previous years. Rather than typing rapidly on a laptop and trying to capture as close a paraphrase as possible, my work process this year relied on paper note-taking (not to mention a JetPens-fueled fountain pen habit) and so there are relatively few complete quotes in my notes. Where they appear in the text, they will be in italics.]

We are half a year out from Random House Graphic releasing their first books, and the buzz is only growing. Although Gina Gagliano was unable to attend what was essentially her spotlight panel, her senior editor, Whitney Leopard (late of BOOM!) did an admirable job talking to NPR’s Petra Mayer (who also brought us that Dylan Meconis interview on Weekend Edition Sunday) about what RHG wants to accomplish and how they’re going to get there.

Which made this conversation different from any other with a publisher I can recall; RHG is building something from the ground up, and thanks to the tremendous success of imprints like Scholastic Graphix and :01 Books, there’s a bit of established ground that the money folks upstairs can see, a bit of trust earned in the market segment that leads to some room to make decisions. Random House was apparently just looking for the right person to trust, as Leopard recounts it — Gagliano was asked If you could start your own imprint, what would it look like? and had an answer, followed by a job.

But even when you have that trust — and Leopard firmly believes that they do — and have the resources to make the thing you’ve wanted to make — again, Random House is huge, RHG is only four people¹, but they don’t feel they’re lost in the shuffle — there’s still a zillion details you didn’t know you’d need to chime in on. Leopard described coming from a purely editorial role and wondering why she was being asked for input on things like the logo, but ultimately came to the conclusion that it was good to be involved. If you want to make sure that the imprint is going to reflect your vision and values, even the smallest details become crucial.

Which maybe will be reflected, more than anything, in the tagline. RHG will cover every genre², and they need something pithy that will reflect that breadth without being something they’ll be stuck with forever if it turns out bad. And since that vision is to collaborate with creators, to help each one make the best, the most them book that can be, I’m not sure they could have done better than what they chose:

A graphic novel on every bookshelf.

It doesn’t matter where that bookshelf is, or who it belongs to. They will produce something (most likely numerous somethings) that will fit right in there. What Leopard wants, more than anything else, is for somebody to think This is the book I was waiting for.

The waiting won’t be much longer; the first four books already existed (two self-published, two are English presentations of French material) and so could be turned around for release in the January-April 2020 timeframe. Lucy Knisley’s Stepping Stones drops in May, and then it’s a full slate for each season.

For those of you that think you might want to work with RHG, their website is live and they are accepting open submissions … but Leopard warns they’re getting more than 50 a month, so maybe don’t expect the Standard Rich And Famous Contract by the end of the week. Also keep in mind that for now, Young Adult is the highest age bracket that they’re going to be working in. Maybe 19 or 20, but not going to New Adult, as Leopard put it.

A lot of publishers are equating graphic novel with Middle Grade, but kids don’t stay Middle Grade forever; they get older every year. Leopard’s looking for the older version of Dogman, noting YA doesn’t all have to doom and gloom, and then they all died. There’s a desperate need in YA graphic novels — and prose! — for a broader range. She and Gagliano have a vision for the best, broadest range of graphic novels possible. In six months, we get to read them.

Spam of the day:

Experts SHOCKED: Your Old Pillow Might Be Hurting Your Health…

I’m back from the rigors of SDCC and this is the best you can do? Panicmongering about my pillow? I put my old pillow under my skull and I slept like a dead man.

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¹ For the moment, at least. They are Gagliano, Leopard, a designer, and their marketing person is wrapping up at DC and starting next month. I am reminded of how much ground :01 broke with four people (Mark Siegel, Callista Brill, Gagliano, and Colleen AF Venable) and how much they accomplished before staffing up. The right four people can move the world.

² Including some nonfiction that sounds unique and fascinating. Leopard mentioned a history of dessert, and a book on modern infrastructure — from the design of cities to the design of the internet — that I really want to get my hands on. The trick in nonfiction graphic novels is finding a way to make them more than just an illustrated textbook.

Sunday was crazy, I saw a really great panel on the differences between technology and magic in fiction with the best moderating job of the show by Lilah Sturgis; more on that when I get to it. Going to be a lot of recaps in the coming week, folks.

Pack out was the usual elegant chaos, many goodbyes were said, and we’ll see you all next time. Go safely, my friends.

Pictures:
A great Aziraphale (a very good Crowley¹ was one of the photos lost in transfer yesterday) and a very good Princess Azula and Avatar Aang were the only ones that really caught my eye. Sunday is traditionally the day I play Cosplay Or Just Dresses Like That?, and this year had a lot of ambiguity.

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¹ All the best Crowleys were women; guys just weren’t willing (or able) to commit to that hip-swaying swagger that David Tennant committed to. Angels and demons don’t have gender, so don’t walk like a dude!

If there’s one thing you’ll never run out of at SDCC, it’s the range of human experiences that go from extreme to extreme. I listened to the replay of Armstrong stepping off the lander pad last night while preparing for drinks with friends. The moon hung bright and inviting as it must have 50 years ago and I swear I could taste the Tang that I drank back then¹, a sense memory that couldn’t be further from the rather sublime single cocktail I enjoyed in a dark room with a taxidermied ostrich over the door and a wall made out of 3D-printed skulls salvaged from an old Rob Zombie video.

Tang vs fine Italian bitters. Buttoned-down serious men with pocket protectors in their own dark room half a century ago, fussing over a computer being overwhelmed by a handful of extra bytes every few seconds vs some goofball in a t-shirt and jeans holding a supercomputer in his right hand, scrolling through pictures of his even goofierball greyhound.

Or, to provide an even greater contrast:

On Friday while waiting to interview Jim Ottaviani, I had the great pleasure to make the acquaintance of Phil Plait², who couldn’t have been nicer. It was only for a few minutes, but it was a genuine honor to talk to a person that spends all their time trying to spread knowledge about how the world works.

On Saturday while walking my way through the Gaslamp towards the convention center (also while on a lunch run, several hours later), I had the great misfortune to encounter a slient parade of utter wankers in Guy Fawkes mask/hat/cape combos, some lining a section of street, some silently processing between, some silently handing out literature, all holding giant placards decrying (in the most vilely truthless manner possible) the dangers of vaccines.

One tried to hand me a flyer and I said out loud Do not touch me, you pathogen-ridden vector. You’re a very, very lazy child killer. It was suggested to me later that they may have been doing some kind of bit — although I do think it was sincere — but I don’t care. On the literal anniversary of the day we, as a species, first landed on the gosh-darned moon, which I count as the second greatest thing we, as a species, have ever accomplished, these assholes are out critiquing an achievement that contains within it the only greater achievement humanity has managed³.

So, yeah. Within a period of 24 hours I experienced the sheer joy of scientific literacy and willful ignorance with almost unlimited potential for harm. Don’t be anti-vaxxers, kids; vaccines cause adults.

I only got to one panel yesterday, but it was a humdinger — a collection of publishers, creators, and teachers had an Ask Me Anything session about using comics in the classroom. I love hearing teachers and librarians on this topic, I just can’t get enough of it. I talk about it more once the notes are pounded into shape, but one thing that stuck with me is for all the discussion about how comics are helping students develop visual literacy, there’s no real agreement on what visual literacy is or how to define its boundaries.

Fortuitous, then, that shortly before closing Scott McCloud came by to talk⁴ and I asked him how his next book — on visual literacy! — was coming along. It’s going to be a while yet, but I mentioned the discussion from the panel and told him, Hey, no pressure, but the world is kind of waiting on you to give us a point of reference to discuss this stuff so we can figure out what it all means. Good thing you’ve done that before. He laughed, but also may have muttered Oh God in there. But I made up for it by sharing the story Tillie Walden told in Alaska about how she’s making comics because he encouraged her, so he’s got that going for him.

There was also a quick talk with Gene Yang at a signing, where I was one person too late to get a galley copy of Dragon Hoops. One of the things that I really appreciate about Yang is his prodigious memory for people; he has no reason to remember me, we’ve done one interview three years ago and maybe three times since then a quick handshake and two minutes chat, but he always does. This time, we spoke about how much I’m looking forward to his Raina Telgemeier turn (This book is about me he said, sounding a little surprised himself) and he asked if I’m a basketball fan. I told him I’m not, and then the fervor he brought to challenging kids to read outside their comfort zone came into his voice: Neither was I, but it’s great!

Like pretty much everybody associated with :01 Books, he’s a treasure. Mark Siegel and the people he’s worked with have done tremendous things for comics, and with their alumni moving into other publishers, they’re an incubator for the industry (I suggested metastasizing, which did make Siegel laugh, but we decided it was maybe not quite the word you want associated with your brand).

Pictures:
I lost a couple of photos in getting them synced from phone to laptop — thanks, technology! — but that’s the way things crumble. It’s not quite cosplay, but Peter Porker made some notable appearances. I think this may be the same group as earlier in the week, but with Porker instead of a bagel. This puppet was magnificent — she made it! — and I particularly like the posing she did in the photo up top, rearranging the fingers into the proper thwip! position.

You can’t see it because one of the photos I lost was the front of this pair, but Russell is holding a stuffed Dug in the Cone Of Shame.

But the best of the day had to be a three-way tie between Gizmoduck (the wheel was cleverly done), Gwenpool (when I told her I was going to send a copy of this photo to Christopher Hastings, she squeed a little), and The Landlady from Kung Fu Hustle, who had the most genuine and pleasant smile when not in character. Kudos, all around!

Panels to watch for:
I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to the panel on introducing younger readers to comics (noon, Room 28DE), the roundtable on combining tech and magic in your stories (1:00pm, Room 25ABC), or the short form comics discussion (also 1:00pm, Room 28DE). But I will be scouring the NPR website, because my wife texted me to say that Dylan Meconis was on Weekend Edition Sunday and she sounded great. Audio will be up here later today.

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¹ There are only two things from my childhood that I’ve lost and truly regret — one being the Linotype slug that I’ve mentioned. The other is tied to what I believe is my earliest concrete memory; Tang for a period of time sold their powder in a plastic jar that, when placed on a cookie sheet in the oven at a particular temperature, would deform and reform itself into a fair simulacrum of the Apollo Lunar Module.

I remember seeing the commercial and dutifully drinking the goo every morning until the jar was empty, I remember thinking it couldn’t possibly work, I remember watching it twist itself like magic, I remember being told No, I couldn’t play with it because it was still blisteringly hot plastic, you silly child.

² Thanks to Zach Weinersmith for the assist; after telling Plait that I enjoy his work, I mentioned that we had you as a friend in common, which prompted a handshake and a pleasant conversation.

³ I speak of the eradication of smallpox. It is an unalloyed good, and something that every person alive can be glad and proud of. Third greatest achievement of humans is dogs, and I think we have to share that one with the dogs, who were and are our willing partners in a monumental act not of domestication, but cross-species friendship and mutualism.

⁴ Speaking of contrasts, I was probably standing about 3 meters from where I first met McCloud, when his very kind words about this page sent me over the moon (callback!). If you’d told me that day that not only would I meet McCloud, but achieve the kind of familiarity where I would see him and say Oh, hey Scott instead of OMG OMG OMG that’s Scott McCloud!!!, I never would have believed you.

Friday can, ironically, be both the busiest day at SDCC (any given year, it’s toss-up between Friday and Saturday), and also the one where things first start to feel slow on the floor. If there’s something big in Hall H going on, or if the retailers start to run out of exclusives, there can be periods of relative quiet. For me, Friday was ironically a day that I woke up feeling great, mentally thanking the hotel bed for a terrific night’s rest. A scant few hours later I would be mentally reciting Ow every other step because I am an old man and my spine is made of tissue paper¹.

I’m not sure if the fact that I spent a lot of time sitting in panels rather than standing at the booth was ultimately a positive thing or negative. On the one hand, discomfort was definitely tied to shifting my posture; on the other, I know that you just have to keep moving and encourage muscles to stretch themselves with motion. On the other other hand, I am a lazy, lazy man and sitting suits me just fine.

I started off watching people who make comics with a factual basis talk about their processes of developing topics, researching, and bringing essential truth while not getting bogged down in minutiae on the page. Or, in the case of Dylan Meconis, writing fiction where you get to decide that Henry VIII died before breaking with the Church, but obsessively getting the livestock correct. More on that, on Randall Munroe deep dives into the human systems and groups that deal with the odd corners of our world, and the longer interview-slash-conversation I had with Jim Ottaviani later.

Ursula Vernon had her spotlight panel in the afternoon, ably assisted by her A/V tech and partner in adventure/crime/marriage, Kevin Sonney. It was … look, if you’ve never heard Vernon talk, there’s a lot of side quests in her conversational style, a lot of I have no memory of doing thises, and a lot a lot of hilarity. I’ll be bringing you that story when I can come up with a way to describe it that doesn’t amount to Look, you had to be there, but I absolutely will find a way. Until then, you can find her at the Sofawolf table (Booth 1236) for signings; stop by the booth to verify times.

Similarly, I need to find a way to discuss the panel for all-ages readers that featured a half-dozen Scholastic/Graphix creators talking about their work, and what they’ve got coming up. I don’t want to reduce it to Here’s a list of forthcoming books because it really was much more interesting than that. However, that will be an approach I am taking for the last panel of the day, the annual best/worst manga extended lightning round. Each panelist got 60 seconds on the clock to explain or defend their pick in each category, which does not lend itself to me taking a lot of detailed notes as to rationale (even if I hadn’t volunteered to act as timekeeper, resetting and starting the countdown timer on an iPad from my seat in the front row). So there’s a list of the picks below the cut with links.

Finally, word came late that Pat Race and Aaron Suring of Alaska Robotics were not recognized at the Eisners and you know what? It’s okay. The Spirit Of Comics Retailer Award went to a couple of gents from Buenos Aires, and Pat and Aaron couldn’t have been happier for them. By the end of the night, I heard talk of visits from the near extremes of the Pacific Coast, a Comics Camp exchange program, and an acknowledgment of how comics brings people together. We’ll let Lucy Bellwood have the last word.

Pictures:
Most of the pics today were of panelists, which will run when I write up the panels. Because I spent so much time in panel rooms or moving pretty briskly to and from those rooms, I didn’t catch a lot of cosplay. I did see this rather magnificent dragon warrior, and a very impressive Taskmaster, but best cosplay has got to go to Ruby Rhod, who was absolutely perfect in the costume details, had the attitude (and the walk) down, and had amplified audio. It was green.

Panels to watch for:
Assuming I get a move on, I’ll be going to the panel spotlighting Randall Munroe’s about-to-be-released How To (10:00am, Room 4), and a session on comics in the classroom that will include Gina Gagliano (hey, she’s here, flight’s no longer delayed) and Mark Siegel, who are always smart and informed (2:00pm, at the Library). For those of you that don’t want to make the trek out past the ballpark, may I suggest the panel on women making stuff in Hollywood and the push to parity? It’s also at 2:00pm, in Room 7AB.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t note that at 1:17pm San Diego time (or 20:17:40 UTC), it will be exactly 50 years since the Eagle landed on the gosh-darned moon². And then at 7:56pm (02:56:15 UTC), it will be exactly 50 years since Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface (which, I will remind you, is on the gosh-darned moon). If possible, I recommend that you lose yourself in the replay at Apollo In Real Time; as I write this line, the crew are on lunar orbit 11/75, prepping the LM for detach and landing.

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¹ It was my own fault. I ran into somebody I haven’t seen forever and went in for a hug. Thing is, she’s on the short side, and last time I saw her she was in heels. I bent over an extra 3-4 inches to compensate and when the embrace happened, things moved in ways that were once trivial and apparently are no longer tolerable. Worse, it was probably another five hours before I was able to get some ibuprofen onboard, so I spent the day aware of things not wanting to move or get jostled to any appreciable degree. It’s much better today, but still going to be a day when I want to avoid incidental bumps or unthoughtful movement.

² And did you see that Marvel announced there will finally be a Squirrel Girl figure (just in time for the series to wrap up, grumble)? The sculpt looks amazing, and it comes with a Vespa and a basket full of squirrels.

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