I’ll leave it to the boss herself:

It turns out that sometimes if you and @ppcrotty, @WhitLeopard, @RoxieReads, and @jhautsethi work very hard, people bring you cake. Who knew?!

That from Gina Gagliano, head of Random House Graphic, at the party thrown to celebrate the first releases from the imprint, and a debut year that will see twelve graphic novels for kids released¹. She and her stalwart staff² — senior editor Whitney Leopard, designer Patrick Crotty, and publicist/marketer Nicole Valdez — talked about the books out now (and coming soon) that they really want you to know about. And since I accepted a piece of their cake, I feel like I should hold up my end of the bargain.

• Gagliano’s choice for favorite upcoming book is Witchlight by Jessi Zbarsky, which she described as a girl with swords meets a girl that does magic, they have adventures and fall in love and in the middle there’s food which is just … I’m in. Look for it on 14 April.
• Leopard wants you to read The Runaway Princess (out for the past three week) by Johan Troïowski, because it’s got an interactive element in each chapter, as the reader is asked to do or achieve something, and also Stepping Stones (due 5 May), the first kids book by Lucy Knisley, who is the best.
• Crotty, coming from a background of indie comics, particularly wants you to read Bug Boys (released three days ago) by Laura Knetzger, noting how many of the great comics we’re getting these days wouldn’t exist without the indie creators doing 8 to 12 page minis, never anticipating they’ll be collected in a print volume. The Bug Boys are for kids but have a Charlie Brownesque philosophical side, and Knetzger keeps cranking out the minis, so it won’t be long before the second collection arrives.
• Valdez allowed that there was some disagreement over who would get to talk about Bug Boys, but was enthused to talk instead about Aster And The Accidental Magic (coming in two and a half weeks) by Thom Pico and Karensac. This girl is me is the message she wanted to convey, an idea that underlies RHG’s mission — to put a graphic novel in the hands of every kid in America³.

They’re on their way. Gagliano talked about how she started in the industry fifteen years ago, how comics were regarded with suspicion but now schools and libraries are their biggest champions. There’s a lot of hands out there that still haven’t gotten comics, and lot of minds that still have to develop that higher level of reading, and she and her team are going to do their level best to fix that.

And yes, publishing is a very Manhattan-centric business, but the crowd was overflowing the aisles at Books Of Wonder, and not just because of the cake. There were younger folk there, mid-20s a lot of them, ready to answer that call and pitch their ideas and end up on some of those shelves. Here’s to finding out what makes it there in the coming years.

Spam of the day:

Your regular glasses can get lost, break or your prescription can change over time, resulting in expensive trips to the optometrist!

I’ve been wearing glasses since I was 19, and in the 30+ years since, I have lost exactly one pair (sunglasses, on my way home from Tom Spurgeon’s memorial), broken none, and yes, my prescription has changed because my eyeballs have changed. This is the definition of a straw man you’re propping up here.

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¹ Out of a total twenty four for Random House Children’s Books. No pressure, just got to make up half the output for one of the most storied publishing imprints in history in your first year, that’s all.

² Random House associate publisher Judith Haut, while not part of Gagliano’s staff, is the one that decided that there needed to be a RHG and found the right person for the job.

³ Quoting Gagliano, and echoing their tagline, A graphic novel on every bookshelf. Whoever that kid is, wherever that shelf is, Leopard told us back in July, they will have at least one title that makes that kid say This is the book I was waiting for.

What? No, not EmCity, although we will be talking about that presently.

Today I’ve got my eye on the SF Comics Fest, via the good folks at the Cartoon Art Museum. For those of you that haven’t seen it in past years, SF Comics Fest is an association of comics-related events (like Will Eisner Week) taking place in and around the Bay Area, in a sort of mutual non-aggression pact. This year’s events will run from 29 February¹ through 8 March and will include:

• 29 Feb: San Francisco Youth Justice Comic Con A free event for youth blending activism with comics, anime and pop culture. The event will feature zine-making, a drawing jam, a cosplay parade, exhibitor booths, and workshops facilitated by local artists and activists.
• 1-7 Mar: Will Eisner Week Read a graphic novel, encourage others to do so. Yeah, I know, for most of us this is better known as “every week”, but now’s your chance to get evangelical about it.
• 7 Feb: Eisner Edition Saturday Cartooning for Kids There’s monthly Saturday afternoon cartooning workshops (underwritten by the NCS Foundation) that run from 1:00pm to 2:30pm at the Cartoon Art Museum, and March’s will focus on the legacy of Eisner. You can get more information on the full Spring 2020 series here.
• 8 Mar: 35th Anniversary Spirit of Mini Comics Challenge It’s the 35th anniversary of CAM, and they’re marking the occasion by seeking to make 35 minicomics in one day. Demonstrations, creative coaching and materials provided at the event, which is free and open to the public.
• 8 Mar: 25th Anniversary of MUTTS Patrick McDonnell will be talking about his work and signing afterwards; in keeping with the theme of MUTTS, representatives of Muttville senior dog rescue will be there to talk about adopting older dogs. Muttville outreach from 5:30pm to 6:30pm, and McDonnell from 6:30pm to 8:00pm. CAM members free with RSVP, others US$10 and up, with book purchase and membership options, head over to Guestlist for all means of attendance.

There’s plenty of other events happening around the Bay Area, which you can catch up with here; if you want to host your own event, you can sign up here, which means the list of SFCF events will only grow from here on out. Anybody on the left coast in two-three weeks should keep an eye out for what’s going on while you’re there.

Spam of the day:

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Hmmm, every “button” in your email leads to the same place, and you don’t actually tell me what I’m allegedly unsubscribing from that requires my information to be sent to Brazil. Next time, just tell me it’s LinkedIn. I’d do anything to get those bastards to leave me alone.

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¹ Also the 13th birthday of my evil twin, Howard Tayler. At last, he is a man!

Hey, y’all. Got some time-sensitive info for you, and some advance-planning info for you. Let’s do this.

• Time Sensitive! Iron Circus Comics has a sale going on. In honor of Horny Werewolf Day tomorrow, there’s discounts to be had on all of their funtime sexytime offerings.

  Until the famous gettin’ it on holiday is done, you get 30% on books, softcover and hard¹ PDFs, special editions, and even the already-discounted scratch-and-dent copies of The Art of Kaneoya Sachiko, The Complete Curvy, Crossplay, Iris and Angel, TJ and Amal (including the prequel and side story), Letters for Lucardo, all the various Smut Peddlers, and Yes, Roya. Get ’em while the gettin’s good.

• Advance Planning! Ngozi Ukazu just a few updates away from the big finish of Check, Please!, and getting ready to release the second half of the story in print form through :01 Books. Check Please: Sticks And Scones drops on 7 April, and to mark the occasion, Ukazu’s going on book tour.

  Her travel kicks off on the 4th, with launch day in her hometown of Austin, before heading on to DC, Brooklyn, Long Island, suburban Boston, and Chicago over the next ten days. Now’s the time to prepare yourself to attend an event if you can, but also to say goodbye to the best bros² you could ever wish for.

Spam of the day:

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¹ Hurr, hurr.

² I have so much headcanon about what Ransom and Holster will get up to. They are basically going to have to live next door to each other for the rest of their lives or they’ll be too sad. Also, Shitty will be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court some day.

From Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin:

I have a lot of memories in relation to Claire Bretécher’s work; I first knew her through Aggripine, the teenager whose adventures she created during the 80s, 90s, and 00s. Then, I later discovered her earlier works: Cellulite, Les Frustrés, but also some lesser-known ones. Her work was so groundbreaking in every way: the style, the themes, the language, but also everything that does not appear on the page (more on that in a minute) that I still can’t believe Angoulême never awarded her the Grand Prix. It’s a disgrace.

But I’m going to leave a proper overview of her work to people more competent than I am; rather, we at Fleen will focus here on how she has preceded French webcartoonists in their quest for independence.

Bretécher had traditionally worked with publishers, many of them in fact, in the 60s; but in the 70s for Les Frustrés she was working with Le Nouvel Obs, a weekly magazine publisher. And once enough pages had run there, she sought to have them collected. While some publishers showed interest, they also offered her conditions that she was not happy with, so she said Screw it. (not an exact quote)

She went ahead and took a loan, hired a printer, sought bookshops, etc: she self-published Les Frustrés. The 70s were a time of upheaval in Euro comics, but the contemporary initiatives¹ to break free of traditional publishers aimed at creating editorial structures pooling the publication of multiple creators; Bretécher, by herself, showed that it was possible to go at it alone, and remain independent: she kept self-publishing for the remainder of her career.

She never published on the web (she did feature the sociological impact of the Internet in the later Aggripine books, lest you think she ignored it), but nevertheless she has directly or indirectly inspired the current crop of French-language webcartoonists who are self-publishing today, the same way she did so many years ago.

For those interested in furthering their knowledge of Bretécher, a large portion of her body of work has been translated in English, with Les Frustrés being easiest to find; however, in some cases you might have to hit the second-hand market.

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¹ The Hara-Kiri crew had founded Charlie Mensuel to publish Al Capp, Charles Shultz, and a few others; Moebius, Dionnet, and Druillet founded Métal Hurlant (Heavy Metal); Gotlib had founded Fluide Glacial so grown-up comics (his and other’s) could see the light of day; Bretécher herself had been part of such an initiative, with Mandryka and Gotlib, called l’Echo des Savanes, before they ran out of money, etc.

This is going to be somewhat brief, as we at Fleen (and by that I mean Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin) are working up another posting in response to the breaking news.

Until then, I hope that you saw what would have been yesterday’s most important story but for other (and much happier) breaking news — the Creators For Creators Grant applications are open:

HEYYY! The Creators for Creators grant is open for 2020! We give $30k to an unpublished creator or duo to support the creation of their debut work. It’s funded entirely by comics creators. Check out our submissions page creatorsforcreators.org/submissions-2/ and follow @Creators4C for updates!

That from Kelly Sue DeConnick, all around amazing comics writer and one of the original — let’s say signatories — that established the C4C grant back in Aught-Sixteen. Since then there have been three recipients¹; the fourth will receive:

[US]$30,000 to a single cartoonist or writer/artist duo in order to support the creation of a new and original work of a length between sixty-four and one hundred pages over the course of a single year.

In addition to the monetary support, the recipient of the grant will have access to mentorship from the experienced creators involved with Creators for Creators. Mentorship will cover almost every aspect of the comic-creating experience. The goal is to give the recipient a firm foundation in the creative, business, legal, and financial areas of the comics business.

The recipient has total control over how and where they choose to publish their work once it is completed, whether they choose to submit it to a creator-owned publisher or release it themselves in any format. Iron Circus Comics and Image Comics have both pledged to support the recipient by publishing their work, if the recipient so chooses. No matter their choice, the recipient retains all rights to their work.

Applicants (18 years and older) must not have had solo work published by a third party (anthologies and self-publishing are okay), and the work submitted for the grant (which must be 64-100 pages when complete) must not have been submitted for publication in the past year and must be original. The full guidelines, application [PDF], and release agreement [PDF] are at the C4C site; send them with your supporting materials to submissions2020 over at the creatorsforcreators site, which a dot-org. Applications must be received by 11 May 2020, and the recipient(s) will be announced in June.

Spam of the day:

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¹ Who mostly are not originally American/Canadian; there’s huge world of comics built out of experiences from outside North America, and we’re all luckier for getting to see them.

So I was going to be writing today about the official announcement, last week, that Queen Of The Sea (one of my very favorite books of last year) would be getting a sequel. Dylan Meconis had said as much, back in July when I last saw her, but the announcement made it officially official:

So some exciting news! There will be a sequel to Queen of the Sea!! There is exclusive sneak peek art and a lovely interview by @FuseEight right here.

Prince Of The City will pick up where Queen Of The Sea left off, but not for two and a half years, boo. Pages composed of watercolors take a hell of a long time to make, and Meconis has other projects in the meantime, like the History Smashers series (words by Kate Messner), which releases starting this July.

Like I said, I was going to be talking about all that today, but Meconis got upstaged a bit more than an hour ago, by an announcement of a new, ongoing project that she’ll be involved in:

I don’t want to brag or anything, but I turned my latest project in three days early.

My wife joked that I wouldn’t post about having a kid until we brought the baby home and I laughed because I’m not THAT paranoid but then it just kind of snuck up on me, and by that I mean “went into labor pre-dawn the day after turning in two huge sets of files” which is VERY me

Bringing a child into the world under the best of circumstances is an act of supreme optimism. Given the challenges we face now (and the women involved), I choose to see this birth as a declaration: the world had damn well better get its shit together and be a place worthy of this little one growing up, or it will be subjected kicking and screaming to ruthlessly logical — Vulcanesque, one might say — behavioral modification, until it does. Either way, we get a better world out of the deal.

Congratulations to Meconis, wife Katie Lane¹ (of Work Made For Hire), and to this perfect child, blessed with the two most amazing moms anybody could ever ask for. Associate Child Oversight Specialist President Teddy Roosevelt is reportedly preparing to help shepherd the new member of the family until they’re ready to apply to Starfleet Academy, or take up a career in nonsparkly vampiric piracy, whichever they choose.

Spam of the day:
Spammers don’t get to share the day with the new one. Bless.

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¹ Light-ning Law-yer!!

Editor’s note: Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin attended the Festival International de la Bande Dessinée in the midsized city of Angoulême in the southwest of France. The third largest comics event in the world (eclipsed only by Lucca Comics & Games in Tuscany, and the twice-yearly Comiket in Tokyo), Angoulême is the center of the Franco-Belgian comics style, with a healthy representation of work from around the world. He’s here to tell you all about it.

I had never been to Angoulême before, whether for the FIBD or any other purpose. The town of Angoulême has a few claims to fame, notably that it was the domain for a junior branch of the French royal family, up until the senior branch became extinct and its lord ended up becoming king under the name François Premier (the first), thus starting the Valois-Angoulême subdynasty. But regardless of its historical role, I had never needed to go there, until this week-end for the 47th edition of its world-renowned comics festival.

There are a few reasons why I decided to (finally) start covering the festival this year, but the main one is clearly the Grand Prix having been awarded to Rumiko Takahashi in 2019 as a definite proof of the FIBD sincerely correcting its course (unfortunately, neither Takahashi-san nor any showcase of her works could be seen at the festival¹ besides her poster, but as predicted the Grand Prix resulted in new releases of her classic works). Even then, the festival was the occasion for protest and other such activities, whether they were in relation to the impoverishment of creators², like creators taking to the streets or taking advantage of the awards ceremony to raise their concerns, or in relation to more general opposition, such as when president Emmanuel Macron posed along a t-shirt denouncing police violence during his visit, or the placards in town denouncing the same, using comics characters.

However, I do not feel comfortable reporting on such events since I did not get to witness them first hand. I much prefer, inspired by fellow Angoulême first-timers Spike Trotman³ and Deb Aoki to give you my impressions and advice for attending the FIBD, coming from someone more used to regular Euro comics festivals. Indeed, Angoulême from its sheer scale has to or can afford to act differently from the former, and may not be representative of them.

• It feels like Disneyland: the lines The legends did not mislead me: you must pad your schedule to account for the lines everywhere. Waiting for a signing is done in a line, of course, but as is waiting to enter a tent, waiting to enter an expo, sometimes for eating, etc. Fortunately, none of those were of the “one-off hard limit” variety: all of the spaces I waited in line for, I was able to enter, the worst being the Claveloux expo, set up in an old townhouse where I was told only about 25 people could be allowed in the ground floor at any one time, and only about 20 allowed in the first elevation. Yup, once you were done with the ground floor you had to again get in line for the first elevation …
• It feels like Disneyland: the marketing This is the main event of the year for comics publishers, and it shows, with the booths in the mainstream publishers tent seemingly trying to outdo each other. For instance, just like you can spot children coming out of Disneyland, everywhere in town you could see children holding balloons, except here the balloons were shaped like Titeuf’s hairdo.

  As for Editions Dupuis, they went as far as to feature performers wearing oversized costumes of some of their characters in their booth, Disneyland-style. At least the marketing is focused on comics, and possibly comics-related works (for instance, there were a few advance showings of the latest Ducobu movie).

• It feels like Disneyland: the scope Not only do the festival activities take over the town center with five tents, plus some buildings such as the Espace Franquin, resulting in an area that requires about 5 minutes to walk across, but an additional tent and a library were set up about a 15 minutes walk away from that, next to the train station, to which you have to add a cluster around the Musée de la Bande Dessinée, about a 20 minutes walk away from either of the other centers.

  And the center is on an elevation, so a bike might not be that helpful. Take good shoes, and one pair of socks for each day you’ll be there. Finally, they had a townwide PA system to remind of upcoming events and announce cancellations and the like.

• It feels like Disneyland: the price Okay, it still does not compare to Disneyland, but at 19€ for a regular day, 25€ for Sunday, or 45€ for all 4 days, this is 5 times as expensive as, say, Lyon BD.
• Plan in advance, or else The lodging situation is absolutely crazy, with every hotel room in the vicinity being booked months in advance; this is owed not just to the festival scale, but also to the fact Angoulême is not a big city like Lyon, and is not a beach resort like Saint Malo which finds itself with plenty of vacancies when the festival occurs, outside peak touristic season. I was able to get away with booking a B&B about 25km away a few days before and get there by train from Angoulême, but first I’ve been told I lucked out on being able to book so late, second this requires some faith in the reliability of the train service⁴, and lastly ties you to the train schedule even when everything goes well, which is an issue because:
• Expect long days Regular festival activities only end at 8:00pm; this is in contrast with other such festivals, which generally close at 6:00pm. As a result, I had to bail out of an interesting exposé on how a new wave of superhero-style comics are too using crowdfunding and other such techniques to fund themselves outside Diamond distribution, since the last train for my B&B was departing at about 7:00pm. Moreover, I can’t help but think of the ordeal this must be for creators, since the festival lasts 4 days, with the other festivals lasting at most 3 days.
• The footbridge does not give access to platform 3 This one is rather specific. There is a new footbridge over the train tracks, which is very practical to get to the side of the train tracks opposite the station, where the library and manga city cluster was, and to get directly to your platform, wherever you come from. However, you cannot go directly to platform 3 from it: it turns out you first have to get off the footbridge as if you wanted to get to the station building, walk the entire length of the building alongside it, and finally you will get to platform 3. No, I did not miss my train, but I had seriously started to worry at some point.

I also brought back a few more pictures:

• The bubble reads: I repeat my question: are you more interested in a career (a) in computing? (b) in mechanics?
• Nothing, just a projection of the Rumiko Takahashi poster illustration on the Angouléme cathedral …
• Two cosplayers, who I met in the Manga City tent.
• A few helium balloons ended up getting stuck under the tent entrance …

We at Fleen thank FSFCPL for his efforts, and look forward to his next dispatch from the world of BD.

Spam of the day:

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¹ Here is a translation of the relevant part:

On May 30th the Fauve of the Grand Prix was given to Rumiko Takahashi at the French embassy in Tokyo. Upon deliberation and exchanges over the last months, and in coordination with her publisher, she eventually declined the traditional proposals from the Festival, such as a retrospective exhibition and a public appearance, which would have entailed a workload and availability incompatible with her ongoing workload and commitments. Furthermore, she deems her work to be best discovered through her books, rather than her original plates. The Festival is naturally understanding and respectful of her decision. Sincerely moved by the honor, she wished to create a poster symbolically and concretely representing the richness of her world-appreciated body of work. The Festival will honor the creator through a program of meetups and tributes.

“I once again thank the creators who voted for me and I was particularly moved by the professional recognition I was bestowed. It is particularly moving to realize how European creators have grown in contact with my works and how much they love them. I have particularly enjoyed and put my heart into the illustration for the Festival poster. It showcases the manga I admired with a lot of respect in my childhood. I hope you will like it.”
— Rumiko Takahashi, Tokyo, 2019/09/20

² Who had reasons to be upset, for instance a newly-released report on their situation contained a few bombshells on their pensions situation.

³ All of her impressions from her time there are worthwhile, but don’t miss her considerations on French food, which are relevant since the duck-based products she procured are typical of southwestern France where Angoulême is located.

⁴ I again lucked out on train issues, but my fellow first-timers were not so lucky; and before you think “strikes”, those issues can occasionally happen outside of any strike.

We at Fleen have been very excited for goin’ on two years now about the launch of Random House Graphic, and about Gina Gagliano being named to head up the imprint. We’ve followed the announcements, watched the first book hit release, looked out the next couple of years at what’s coming down the line.

Now it’s time to celebrate, y’all:

Come meet the Random House Graphic publishing team: GINA GAGLIANO, WHITNEY LEOPARD, PATRICK CROTTY, and NICOLE VALDEZ, as they discuss the launch of this new imprint, featuring The Runaway Princess by JOHAN TRIANOWSKI and Bug Boys by LAURA KNETZGER. [emphasis original]

That from the events page of Books Of Wonder, the venerable New York children’s bookstore. They’ll be hosting the imprint launch party on Thursday, 13 February, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm at their 18th Street location, in the vicinity of Union Square Park. Both Bug Boys and The Runaway Princess will be available for purchase, and each copy sold will be matched with a donated copy to a children’s charity. Light snacks provided, but I’d grab an insurance slice beforehand if I were you.

There’s a lot of talk these days about how publishing remains overwhelmingly white, but if you kept an eye on the acquisition announcements, RHG is buying books from a lot of POC, and mostly from women. True, graphic novels take a long time and we won’t see a lot of them until next year or later, but it’s clear that Gagliano, Leopard, et al, have decided that they’re going to be part of a solution to books only reflecting a small percentage of the population, and I intend to thank them in person for it. If I see you there, say hi.

Spam of the day:

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I am, but possibly not the one you’re thinking of.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around the first and surely there will be takes elsewhere in the media, so let’s focus on the latter.

• It was a tough 2019 for Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan; they worked up two books for print, and Moen had a well-documented (and damn brave of her to do so) intensive treatment for her mental illness. So starting in late December, they turned Oh Joy, Sex Toy over to guest strips for six weeks, to give themselves a break.

  Yesterday, they returned, and with the absolute happiest strip I’ve ever seen them collaborate on, and they do a comic all about ways to bring people to orgasm. Take a look at the panel I tweeted yesterday and tell me it’s coming from a place other than pure, contented happiness¹. Welcome back, Matt and Erika, and glad to see the break² did you some good.

• Also taking a break for about the same block of time, Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh, who put Barbarous on pause to get caught up on other projects. The first three or so chapters of Barbarous were a measured introduction to the characters, always showing rather than telling³.

  Chapter four started to really build in the possible conflicts that the outside world might bring to Percy and Leeds, and chapter five got us back into the swing of things after a lengthy hiatus, dropping us into the middle of a magical attack from an thus-far unknown adversary. Things are speeding up and now is the ideal time to get caught up if you weren’t.

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Cochicine? Wasn’t that what Bones got accidentally injected with that made him go crazy and jump through the Guardian Of Forever? Tricky stuff.

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¹ In this case, from having a squeaky-clean butthole.

² Or at least a bidet attachment.

³ Not only are the pair masterful storytellers, Ota’s one of the best character and costume designers in comics; nobody pays as much attention to how clothes accent a character except Kosuke Fujishima.

Jim Ottaviani and Maris Wicks may be the most potent combination in nonfiction comics. How else to explain how they can spin such engagement and — dare I say it? — suspense from events past and in the public eye? They took the recent history of the three women who lived among Primates, and now they’re looking at the history of women in space in Astronauts, a copy of which was provided by :01 Books; pretty much everything in the book is available to anybody with access to interlibrary loan, but let’s tag this with spoilers, ahoy anyway.

Compared to Primates, Ottaviani and Wicks take a different approach this time around; last time they partnered, the book was told by an omniscient narrator, observing what Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas did in their research on chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans (respectively). In Astronauts, the bulk of the story is told as remeniscences of its central subject, Mary Cleave, with forays into the experiences of other women who came before her.

In case you don’t recognize her name, Dr Cleave (biologist, ecologist, environmental engineer, and pilot from the age of 14) was a member of the 9th NASA astronaut group — the second recruited following efforts by Nichelle Nichols to broaden the pool of applicants beyond white guy test pilots — and really only applied because being an astronaut meant you had to qualify as a jet pilot and she always wanted to fly a plane with an afterburner. She twice flew into space on Atlantis, specialized in the operation of the shuttle’s robotic arm, and was instrumental in working out the design and operation of the NASA space toilet. After retiring from flight status, she served as head of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

And in telling her story, she tells the story of Valentina Tereshkova, of the thirteen women who passed every test that Mercury Seven did but weren’t allowed to join the astronaut corps, of the designers that made the Shuttle, of the astronaut one class in front of her that had the weight and eyes of the world on her as NASA’s first woman in space.

Oh, and she tells about how it took NASA 23 missions before they figured out that zero-G crumbs from sandwiches could be avoided by using tortillas, thanks to fellow STS-61-B rookie Rodolfo Neri Vela’s meal preferences. Sometimes the obvious answers aren’t obvious until you let somebody with a different background into your club, y’know?

Mary Cleave may not be the most famous astronaut you’ve ever heard of, but Ottaviani and Wicks found maybe the most typical member of the NASA astronaut program — whip smart, widely experienced, endlessly curious, problem solvers, people who maybe didn’t set out to be astronauts but wound up there because they had the skills to get there¹.

Being born in 1947, Cleave’s lifetime parallels that of crewed spaceflight; she was solo piloting about the time that Yuri Gagarin took the first human spaceflight. She was just about the same age at the time of her astronaut selection that Neil Armstrong was at his. She helped make the Shuttle workable for extended missions, and her first flight helped work out the construction techniques that would be used to build the International Space Station. She was instrumental in diverting Eileen Collins away from a career as a Mission Specialist and towards that of Pilot and Commander. Like I said, typical.

Astronauts is bookended with the idea of what an astronaut looks like, starting with a floating figure doffing the pressurized launch suit and only revealing Cleave on page two, and ending with pages of photos: Tereshkova, Ride, and Cleave, their cartoon representations next to their pictures.

This is followed by a two page spread of people whose faces we should know — Guion Bluford, Ellison Onizuka, Mae Jemison, Sunita Williams, Leland Melvin, Chris Hadfield, and more². It’s perfectly synced with the message of the book, and if, like me, you’ve spent your life looking up at those explorers that have left the bounds of Earth, it’s likely to inspire a tear or two.

We, as a species, made it to space, to the moon, to semi-permanent residence in orbit, because of women. We’re going back to the moon, and we’re not forgetting half of humanity this time. We’ll be going further in the future and that will require astronauts, who can no longer be picked from less than 6% of the planet’s population. Ottaviani and Wicks want you to remember that, and wants everybody reading Astronauts to ask themselves one question: What do you want to be?

Astronauts, by Jim Ottaviani (words) and Maris Wicks (pictures) is available at your local bookstore or comic shop starting today. It doesn’t shy away from the fact that we’ve lost astronauts, and you may need to explain about Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia; assuming that’s not a problem, it’s an ideal read for any wannabe astronauts or space enthusiasts with the patience to get through 160 pages.

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¹ Or, as Cleave put it, I got my first job at NASA because I could fix the toilet.

² There are three photos that I didn’t recognize, and while I get the point Wicks and Ottaviani are making — astronauts can look like anybody — my only wish for the book is that might have included a key to the astronauts on those nearly-final pages.