Mike Holmes has been doing a lot of work in comics, from illustrating graphic adaptations of Tui Sutherland’s Wings Of Fire series to collaborating with Gene Luen Yang on the six-part Secret Coders graphic novel/programming primers. But he hasn’t yet done a full story of his own, until now.

Holmes has produced one of the most affecting portal fantasy stories I’ve ever read in My Own World; as is common the story type, the hero (a not terribly bad off but disaffected youth) finds a way into a fabulous world away from his problems. You’ve seen it a million times before, the Narnia series being the ur-example.

But protagonist Nathan isn’t in a world of fantasy beasts and people and great quests. In his realm there’s him and … not much else, really. Time doesn’t pass, others aren’t there, there’s a primordial goo he can shape into constructs or even facsimile life, but it’s basically all him. He’s not escaping to adventure, he’s escaping from the tedium and drudgery of not fitting in and (although he maybe doesn’t realize it) an incipient tragedy about to befall him. He has absolute mastery of everything that exists in his pocket universe — think hard-light Minecraft responding to his hands and thoughts — but there isn’t anybody there except him.

Before the actual magic, Holmes does maybe an even better job of portraying a different kind of magic — the everyday magic of a time a few decades ago when kids could roam as long as they were back when Mom said, there a trail through the woods might lead to a secret spot with gathered detritus to make it cool; Illicit fireworks or nudie mags a bonus. But secret hangouts in the woods only work if you’re there with friends and Nathan’s kind of short on those.

The tough kids and sorta-friends of his older brother, and the older brothers of his sorta-friends don’t really have time for him. His parents don’t really understand that setting him up on playdates doesn’t really work any more. And so he’s back to his own world, where everything stops except his hunger, leaving to make snack runs and return and heedless of the fact that he’s not where he’s supposed to be and returning anyway. There’s a sense of addiction to a place where reality is subject to whim that I don’t recall seeing before. Nathan’s not processing it in those terms from his POV, but it’s there.

And because Holmes is very, very good at storytelling, he’s not afraid to make Nathan a bit unpleasant, as surely almost all pre-teens are¹. He’s self-focused, worships his older brother (while ignoring Very Large Truths about him), and heedless of the feelings of others. Almost pure impulse and resentment at not getting to do what he wants to, Nathan rings true for anybody that remembers what they were like at nine or ten years old with an honest eye.

The escape has its cost once Nathan ends up back in the real world — the timeless time has to be paid for, and unpleasant truths he didn’t know (or tried to didn’t know) are still there. He can’t put them off, he can’t stop the wheeling of the world, he’s going to have to confront it and grow up.

My Own World is a deeply melancholy story, one best suited for readers that can look back on being Nathan’s age rather than actually being Nathan’s age. All of the awkwardness and discontent you remember feeling when much younger are brought to the fore and laid out for you to remember your own escapes into your own worlds, and how the things you sought to escape were still waiting for you when you returned.

My Own World is published by :01 Books, with words and pictures by Mike Holmes and color assists by Jason Fischer. It’s available wherever books and comics are found.

Spam of the day:

Are you sick of your marriage and feel stuck? It is time to do something about it. Times are very difficult admist the pandemic and sometime we need to try something different. Cryptocurrency is the biggest techological revolution since the internet. Do not miss out on this!

If you’re sick of your marriage, may I suggest either couples therapy or a divorce lawyer prior to crypto? They’ll be more useful.

_______________
¹ Teens bring their own unpleasantness to the table, but they aren’t the focus here.

Did I just accidentally use a softball term? I think I did.

• One may recall that, oh, two months back or so, NPR Books asked for input as to what comics people should be reading as part of a summer reading list. More than 7000 entries were submitted, and an expert panel¹ (revealed yesterday to include webcomics own Spike) broke that mass down to a list of 100 comics. Not the best, not the most well-known², but a wide list of comics works; having a familiarity with a good chunk of them means that you’ve got a handle on the art from (although dominantly as expressed by American/Canadian creators; there were not a huge number of manga on the list, and even fewer Eurocomics).

  And, as noted a couple months back, they gave webcomics a seat at the table — nineteen of the even 100 entries on the list are explicitly identified as webcomics, with more items listed in other categories that originated as webcomics, or are created by people that came up from webcomics, or which are web/indie in their essential nature. Here, then, are the webcomics (and webcomics-alikes) that mass agreement and expert opinion think you ought to be reading:

  John Allison’s Tackleverse comics, the editorial stylings of The Nib, Wondermark, Hark! A Vagrant, Homestuck, As The Crow Flies, Oh Joy, Sex Toy (!), Stand Still, Stay Silent, Check, Please!, Gunnerkrigg Court, Kill Six Billion Demons, O Human Star, The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ And Amal, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, Vattu. It would be hard to disagree with any of them.

  Originally (at least partly) webcomics, but tagged under different categories, you’ve got Nimona, Through The Woods, Megahex (Graphic Novels); Finder³ (Series Comics); Dykes To Watch Out For (Newspaper Strips, although it’s at least as much a webcomic); American Born Chinese (All Ages — not that age appropriateness alters the ability of a story to fall in one of the genre/topic categories). You also had once-and-future webcomickers Raina Telgemeier (Ghosts), Kazu Kibuishi (Amulet), and Ryan North (The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl). In all, better than a quarter of this stab at a canon is webcomics or webcomics-releated.

  There will be plenty to disagree with, naturally (no Achewood, Octopus Pie, or Drive?), but that’s why canons exist — to be argued over, refined, resolved, agreed upon, and rejected all over again. It’s a good start, though, and there’s almost certainly plenty for you to discover (on a fast skim, I appear to have read 53 of the 100 suggestions).

• Also not on the list, for the piddling reason that it’s not technically published yet: a print collection of 100 Demon Dialogues by Lucy Bellwood (Adventure Cartoonist!), which project wrapped up about two hours ago (as of this writing), and which Kickstarter launched shortly after.

  It’s been a terrific project to watch over the past three months or so — Bellwood has been dealing with the voice in her head (he’s a jerk) that tells her what she can’t do by forcing the little bugger into conversation. We’ve all got that demon, reminding us of our failures and telling us not to bother, and remembering that fact is a pretty good way to rob them of the power they have over us.

  The book is going to be gorgeous, the demon plushes are going to be great, and you want to get in on this. At the (again, as I write this) 1 hour 45 minute mark, Bellwood’s at just under 38% of goal, but kindly do not sleep on this. The campaign will run less than three weeks, and if you miss it your little jerk demon will certainly tell you that you screwed up.

  And if nothing else, the video is priceless. I need to know who does the demon voice because it’s perfect.

Spam of the day:

Confirmation Needed: $100 Kroger Gifts Inside

I don’t believe there is a Kroger (or as we said in my Midwestern college days, kro-zhay, ’cause it’s obviously French) grocery store within a 5-6 hour drive. Maybe next time try to bait me with a fake coupon that wouldn’t be essentially impossible for me to use?

_______________
¹ Somewhere, heads are exploding over the fact that four of the panelists are women. Sources close to the explosions were quoted as saying Girls are icky and get their cooties on my funnybooks.

² But which inevitably includes Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, Persepolis, Maus, Jimmy Corrigan, A Contract With God, and Action Comics #1

³ Finder’s been both, so this one is arguable.

Tuesday as busy day? Very odd.

• We start, as we have done with increasing frequency over the past five months or so, with TopatoCon, on account of they keep announcing stuff. Today it’s fact that ticket sales are now live and the preliminary programing schedule is now up.

  There are some unfortunate conflicts in the schedule, such as Saturday afternoon when the Let’s Drink About It guys will be talking cocktails (oooh!) at the same time that Christopher Hastings will be leading a workshop on writing sketch comedy. This is tragic, because Hastings is a creative mixer of drinks and would greatly enjoy the LDAI session, but one can’t have everything (I’ll go there on your behalf, Chris, promise).

  It’s also ironic that on Sunday afternoon, there will be discussion with Wes Citti and Tony Wilson about how to Play Nice With Others at the same time that David Malki !, Spike, Kate Leth, and Randy Milholland will be talking about how Internet People are basically dicks who’ve forgotten how to Play Nice With Others.

• Speaking of small conventions heavy with indie-type creators, SPX have announced the Ignatz Award Nominations for 2015, and there are a couple of names that stand out. Specifically, Jillian Tamaki is all over the damn thing (and deservedly so), with nominations for Outstanding Artist, Outstanding Anthology or Collection (both for SuperMutant Magic Academy), and Outstanding Story (“Sex Coven”, from Frontier #7).

  Other webcomics types include Emily Carroll for Outstanding Artist (Through the Woods), Sophie Goldstein¹ for Outstanding Graphic Novel and Outstanding Comic (both for The Oven), and Box Brown for Outstanding Anthology or Collection (An Entity Observes All Things). The category of Outstanding Online Comic itself has nominees

  • Lilli Carre, The Bloody Footprint
  • Lauren Weinstein, Carriers
  • Rebecca Roher, Mom Body
  • Blue Delliquanti, O Human Star
  • Ariel Ries, Witchy

  Best of luck to all the nominees. The Ignatz Awards will be presented at SPX, 19 September, in Bethesda, Maryland.

• Speaking of longtime webcomickers who are looking to spend more time making webcomics and less time at the day job (okay, we weren’t, but work with me), David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc) is about to join your ranks. Having spent more than a dozen years making more than a dozen comics with literally an infinite number of updates, Morgan-Mar has decided that the drudgery and unrewarding nature of the day job² is less fun that making comics and other creative things, and you can help make it possible:
  

  News: Hey folks, I have good news! I have talked with my manager and HR department at work, and confirmed that I can reduce my working hours to 9 days per fortnight. That means I could spend one full day every two weeks making more creative stuff!

  But I have a mortgage and bills to pay, and am very risk averse. So I have posted a goal of raising US$750 a month on Patreon to partly offset my resulting loss in income. If I can reach this goal, I will make this move and dedicate a day every fortnight to making more comics, books, podcasts, videos, and other cool stuff. This will include raising the number of new Irregular Webcomic! strips to 4 per week.

  And if I can get to the dream goal of $1500 a month, I can quit my day job one day per week, and Irregular Webcomic! will return to a full 7 new strips per week. Spread the word! And please consider supporting my Patreon. Thank you to all of you

  For reference, Morgan-Mar is presently at just under US$450/month, or 60% of the way to goal. And honestly, if there’s anybody that should be able to be a full-time creative, it’s Morgan-Mar. The dude’s got more ideas per cm³ than anybody else on the planet. I can’t wait to see what he can come up with when he can spend full days on his ideas instead of a stolen hour or two.

• Kickstarts? Kickstarts! Alina Pete is doing a card game based on the concept of the tarot, sitting about 18.5% of goal as she comes into the back third of the campaign time. This one needs a big bump if it’s gonna get made. On the other end of the spectrum, Ryan Sohmer is looking to make three books of Least I Could Do and is about 35% of the way to goal since launching yesterday. The Fleen Funding Formula (mk II) doesn’t apply to either project due to the low backer counts, where predicted results and actual results diverge violently.
• I have serious problems with Lenovo these days due to their terrible, terrible decisions re: privacy-invading design decisions in their consumer line of laptops, so they are very lucky that Ryan North is a likable dude with an adorable dog and he’s willing to promote their ThinkPad line⁴. I am sorry to say that I don’t trust the company you are promoting, but we are still cool, Ryan.

Spam of the day:

Do you have any tips for rookie blog writers? I’d certainly appreciate it.

Footnotes, man. Readers dig footnotes.

_______________
¹ Goldstein is also listed as a member of the Jury, but please note two things about the Ignatz rules: the Jury is anonymous, even to the other members, during the nomination process, and while Jury members may not nominate their own work, there is no prohibition from one Juror’s work being nominated for an award by his or her fellow Jurors. I trust that Ms Goldstein recused herself from any decision that would have resulted in her own nominations.

² Working on image-processing for a corporate research arm and helping to set the ISO standards for image definitions. Such boring and unappreciated scut-work! Might as well work retail.

I almost said all of that with a straight face. Next time for sure!

³ That’s a “power of three”, or cubic centimeter, not a footnote.

⁴ Which line doesn’t seem to have been affected by Lenovo’s terrible, terrible decisions — which is actually even worse, because the ThinkPads are mostly aimed at corporate customers that are best able to detect and mitigate such terrible, terrible decisions. The consumer-grade laptops that Lenovo sold pre-compromised are hitting the demographic least able to defend themselves. Never buying another Lenovo product, but man, Chompsky’s cute.

Welp, the Eisner Award nominations are out, and the thing that jumped out at me is how thoroughly web-/indy comics creators have entered the mainstream; they are competing head-to-head against some of the most revered creators of traditional publishers, and against some of the most well-known creations. Let’s go down the list.

First and foremost would be Bandette, which aside from a nod in the Best Digital/Web Comic category (about which more in a bit), was also nominated for Best Continuing Series (going head to head against the likes of Saga and Hawkeye), and artist Colleen Coover’s nomination for Best Painter/Multimedia Artist (interior art). Similarly, Emily Carroll’s as-yet online-only When the Darkness Presses is up for Best Short Story against works featuring these obscure guys named “Bat-man” and “Su-per-man”; Carroll also took a nomination for Through the Woods as Best Graphic Album — Reprint. It happens a little more each year: an online work competes directly against print comics, and it’s an encouraging trend.

The other multiple nominee I wanted to mention is Lumberjanes (newly ensconced on the New York Times bestseller list for their first collected edition, by the bye) for Best New Series and Best Publication for Teens (ages 13-17), with LJ co-writer Noelle Stevenson also nominated for Best Digital/Web Comic for Nimona. And since that’s two of the webcomics nominees listed, let’s continue and acknowledge the rest:

• Bandette
• Nimona
• Failing Sky by Dax Tran-Caffee
• The Last Mechanical Monster, by Brian Fies (winner a decade ago for Mom’s Cancer, recently returned as a serializing webcomic)
• The Private Eye by Brian Vaughan & Marcos Martin

As in past years, the category is a bit of a mish-mash, with The Private Eye and Bandette being comic-booky where Failing Sky, Last Mechanical Monster, and Nimona release page-at-time; Bandette is sold via comiXology, the others release on their own websites. There’s not much overlap between format or genre, with all five being united solely by dint of the fact they release online first. Maybe that’s good, maybe that’s bad, but it’s still restricted to whatever the judges decide counts as long form work, and that maybe should be reconsidered. Regardless, all strong work in the category this year.

That being said, it wouldn’t be the Eisners without a What the hell? moment or two, and for me that came when I noticed a complete lack of webcomics in the Best Humor Publication (where they are often represented) and a lack of both Sisters and Amulet in any of the younger readers categories. In the case of the former, it’s hard to argue when you do get nominations for Cul de Sac and Groo; in the latter, Raina Telgemeier was nominated as Best Writer/Artist, which is arguably better. There are still people out there that regard works for younger readers as somehow lesser; that’s a garbage argument, but to the extent that some perceive it as a ghetto, Telgemeier isn’t being pigeonholed. She’s competing against the best across the entire swathe of comics, including grand masters like Stan Sakai and Sergio Aragonés. Still nothing for Kazu Kibuishi, so I’ve got that to complain about.

But let us finish up on a happy note: Gene Luen Yang is up for Best Writer, both for his Avatar tie-in comic at Dark Horse, and his own The Shadow Hero, and the Tamaki cousins were recognized for This One Summer as Best Graphic Album — New; collectively they’ll be facing competition including Jules Feiffer, Brian K Vaughn, Kelly Sue DeConnick, G Willow Wilson, and Grant Morrison. Webcomics creators (and webcomics veterans) aren’t just being compared to each other, they’re being compared to the best alive. It’s a good year for the community.

The Eisner Awards will be given out Friday, 10 July, at San Diego Comic Con; best of luck to all the nominees.

Spam of the day:

1. Don’t continue putting off your lifestyle change.

Let’s see — wife, dog, house, volunteer work, and the opportunity to opinion-mong on a regular basis? My lifestyle’s jammin’, Sparky.

Apart from the garbage people coming up from out of the floorboards to tell Jon Rosenberg that he’s a blasphemer, heretic, apostate, and filthy SJW¹ for his extremely mild jab at Star Trek, is it a good day to for good news about webcomics creators? I believe that yes, yes it is.

• For starters, the invaluable Jim Zub has posted another in his series of studies of the economics of creator-owned comics; the key takeaway from this one is how much the market has changed in the couple of years that he’s been sharing data. Zub’s gracious enough to talk about the work that Image (his publisher for creator-owned work) has put into building up the market, identifying it as the second of six key factors for the relatively greater success of Wayward over Skullkickers.

  In fact, if we take the ordering of his factors as significant, he cites Image as being more important than his own efforts in three areas: his higher career profile, retailer outreach, and press outreach. I think he’s being too modest here, as even the best company — and by all indicators Zub clearly thinks of Image as being a near-ideal fit for him — will never care about your career success more than you do. Choosing to work with Image is one of many things that Zub has done right, and I am hammering on this point because I don’t want (and I suspect strong that Zub doesn’t either) anybody to read his piece and conclude The secret to success is getting in at Image.

  It’s not. The secret to success is hard work, improving skills, becoming a known quantity (not the least, becoming known for meeting deadlines and publication dates), and a hell of a lot of luck. If the secret to success was landing at Image, we’d have seen issue #2 of Nonplayer by now. The success of Zub in comics is 90% attributable to Zub; or as he puts it for those who read the entire thing:

  In the end, I think that’s what creator-owned comics are all about – charting your own destiny and growing creatively with each new project.

• Speaking of building success on past success, Spike is doing well with her plan to turn Iron Circus Comics from the company that publishes her comics and the anthologies that she leads into a publisher of other creators. Case in point: the Kickstarter for ICC’s first non-Spike project, an omnibus edition of The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal by EK Weaver, has been … well, let’s let Spike tell us in real time:
  

  the TJ & A omnibus Kickstarter project will launch in five minutes! Just putting in the media credits.

  Jesus Christ Whisper Grass [a 20-backer limited reward at the US$75 level] didn’t last FIVE MINTUES

  Jesus it’s at over 5k and I haven’t even told tumblr yet

  LET ME FINISH MY TUMBLR POST YOU ANIMALS

  Four backer levels sold out within a half-hour of a Kickstarter’s launch” is a new record for me.

  50% funded in an hour good lord

  This Kickstarter is funding faster than the original Smut Peddler KS!

  DING. 100% OF GOAL IN SIX HOURS.

  Please note: this campaign launched at midnight East Coast time, and funded entirely by 6:00am; a lot of people went to bed before funding launched and woke up to find it already over goal. As of this writing, some 13 hours after launch, the omnibus is sitting at a hair under US$29K (call it 156% of goal) and 565 backers. Yeah, it’s not going to be the next Exploding Kittens², but come back tomorrow and we’ll see what the Fleen Funding Formula (mark 2)³ has to say.

• How about a simple story, something with no math or numbers? The Bram Stoker Awards (from the Horror Writers Association) have announced their nominees for 2014, and in the comics category (or more officially, Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel) we find one web/indy creator competing against the likes of Joe Hill and Paul Tobin. I speak, naturally, of Emily Carroll, recognized for Through The Woods, described on this site as the most frightening book I’ve ever read, and for good reason, too.

  Here’s hoping that the HWA members are diligent about reading the nominated works and here’s hoping that Carroll wins, because if there’s something out there more spooktastic than Through The Woods I’m not sure I want to know about it. We’ll find out on Saturday, 9 May, when the Bram Stoker Awards are handed out in conjunction with the World Horror Convention in Atlanta. Try to remain calm until then, and remember — there are things that lurk under the bed, in the closet, and behind the walls.

Spam of the day:

This is the place where I started out also it would have been a great start for you as well.

Yes! All my efforts have come to fruition, people are starting here and then going out into the world to spread my word.

_______________
¹ Social Jew Warrior.

² That already launched today: the new version of the Pebble Watch, which is at $4.5million (or #8 most-funded of all time) and climbing a few hours in. In a month, we seem certain to have a new #1, although the relatively high price of entry means it probably won’t displace the Kittens from most-backed.

³ Which, because I just realized I never followed up on my prediction for funding: Exploding Kittens closed with US$8.782 million in funding, just inside the range of US$6 to 9 million that the FFFmk2 gave us. As a reminder, the FFFmk2 states you take the Predicted Value of a project at the 24-30 hour mark from Kicktraq and call that PV. The range at close will be PV/4 +/- PV/20, but has only shown to be valid for project with at least 200 backers at calculation time.

Yes, something like Exploding Kittens produces a fairly wide range, but US$7.5 million +/- US$1.5 million is as tight as we can make it with current Day One technology.

Holidays of all sorts — Alliday, even — are bearing down upon us with all rapidity. Let this, then, serve as your notice that until after the New Year, there may not be updates five days a week, as a dearth of news and family time occur in equal measure. So before we let you all get to all the last-minute tasks, let’s do a roundup.

• New Emily Carroll comic, for the Christmas season! And in case you were wondering if the season would perhaps prompt something jolly, or even cheerful, let me quote from a perfectly ordinary young lady right at the beginning:
  

  My grandpa says they used to tell ghost stories before Christmas. I’d much prefer a scary story than a bunch of grown-ups standing around…. One with lots of blood! Or maybe a murderer, or sounds coming up from the cellar….

  You know, SCARY.

  This being an Emily Carroll story, one should be very careful what one wishes for, particularly when one realizes that of the two young ladies in this tale (the one asking for the story, and the one telling it) is somebody we’ve met before. Go pull your copy of Through The Woods off the shelf — and if you don’t have a copy, what’s wrong wit you go get one right goddamn now — and check out the last story. The Nesting Place was, for me, the most disturbing of the five stories in TTW, for reasons given at that last link, and it’s retroactively become even spookier now that we see in All Along The Wall just how the creepy things (even in modern times) are willing to play the long game and be patient.

  Very patient. Build up that Yule fire nice and high, and hope that the scuttling things don’t like the light.

• Along with all the heartache going on in Bedford, Texas one must note that today is significant over at Something*Positive for other reasons. Thirteen years ago, Randy Milholland launched with a strip that implied the humor of cruelty would be a major motif, and very nearly immediately settled into a somewhat more restrained sarcasm.

  But within a few months (perhaps about the time that Choo-Choo Bear first showed up) the first stirrings of heart and deep character were making themselves known. The strip that ran a year on was as far removed from the first as could be imagined and that was it — Something*Positive as we knew it was in full force. Happy Strippiversary, Randy; here’s to many more.

• Not sure how I missed this until less than two days before it finalizes, but there’s a Kickstarter campaign to make action figures out of old, old, old superheroes¹, including The Green Turtle, the public-domain hero that provided the inspiration and protagonist for Gene Luen Yang and Sonny liew’s The Shadow Hero. As of this writing, they are US$150 from goal, so if this appeals to you even a little now’s your proverbial one chance.
• Speaking of Gene Luen Yang, one quick note: he’s returning to the Avatar: The Last Airbender comic-writing game for a one-shot to be released by Dark Horse on Free Comic Book Day, illustrated by the incomparable Carla Speed McNeil. That’s five wonderful things all mixed up together, so start making plans to snag a copy today.

Spam of the day:

But even in the event you don’t, the truth is, these 5 keys are essential for your survival.

Oh sure, start off like that and then don’t tell me what the keys are. Guess I won’t be surviving. Dicks.

_______________
¹ Also, as a stretch goal, Mike Allred’s Madman, who I’m pretty sure had an action figure about 15 years ago, in the same wave as Matt Wagner’s Grendel and Kevin Matchstick. Time flies.

It is the Friday before a long weekend and I have far to travel. Let’s do this.

• I read Wayward #1 by Jim Zub and Steve Cummings yesterday; my thoughts on the story were shared here last month, as Zub was kind enough to send me a preview PDF, so I’ll just add one thought. Namely, reading this story on paper makes it even better. Yeah, yeah, digital distribution is the future of comics and it would solve my bookshelf space problem, but some things you just need to have the sensation of flipping pages. I look forward to many months of traditional Japanese monsters getting their asses kicked by teen girls.
• Also mentioned last month; Emily Carroll’s Through the Woods, which it took me forever to find a copy of. It was worth every bit of the wait, however, as Carroll weaves five tales of … I know the usual word there is terror, but that’s not quite the right word. Terror jumps out at you and screams boogedy-boogedy, jumps up your heart rate and makes you scream, but relies on that suddenness, that shock to gets its scares. Carroll’s stories are instead built on a foundation of unsettlement, as things seem a little wrong, then a little more, and pretty soon you can’t tell when things weren’t wrong and just the act of trying to get back to where they are un-wrong seems impossible and futile.

  And that’s a more scarifying, a more legitimately I have to put this book down right now or I will never sleep again-inducing way of telling stories than any attempt by mere terror. Carroll starts firmly in the pre-industrial past, where the wrong things are safely in the deep dark woods, feared by the primitive and ignorant, and nobody today could fall afoul of such imaginary beasties, ha ha. But with each story, the clothes are little less simple, the homes a little less anachronistic, the language a little more modern and holy crap the last story is all the way in the 20th century and there are cars and doctors and flappers and shit, shit, shit those beasties and haunts have persisted until the present day and that means they could be

  right here

  in the room

  with

  me.

  That’s why Through The Woods is the most frightening book I’ve ever read, the delicious kind of scares that settle into your brain and take up housekeeping, the ones that make you reflect on your life and resolve to be a much better person because none of the protagonists of her five stories was horrible (okay, the guy who killed his brother in a jealous fit) and look how they ended up. If I’m good enough that won’t happen to me.

  Maybe.

• Good news that doesn’t involve existential dread! Noelle Stevenson’s Lumberjanes is described in the house ads of this week’s BOOM! Studios comics as no longer being an eight-issue limited series, but rather an ongoing series. Well done, Team Lumberjanes!
• Your semiregular reminder: Ryan North never forgets. NEVER.

Spam of the day:

Greetings from {Idaho|Carolina|Ohio|Colorado|Florida|Losangeles|California}! I’m {bored to tears|bored to death|bored} at work so I decided to {check out|browse} your {site|website|blog} on my iphone during lunch break. Just wanted to {tell you|mention|say} keep up the {fantastic|excellent|great|good} {job|work}!

This is excellent — somebody forgot to run the script that turns a Mad Libs-style template into a pseudo-unique blogspam message, and sent the entire damn thing to me. It’s 2800 words long and totally not suspicious in the least!

_______________
¹ You see the book credited everywhere as “Jim Zub’s Wayward“, but Zub is a classy guy and insists that we acknowledge artist Cummings’s contributions, to the point of calling him his co-creator.

So much good stuff coming out today (and soon), you guys.

• The Shadow Hero drops today; I’m away from home without my review copy (thoughtfully provided by :01 Books) because I am a genius, so this is from memory. It’s partly a story set in the 1930s, and partly an exploration of an actual public domain character called The Green Turtle and what he could have been.

  The Green Turtle was probably the first Asian-American superhero; he appeared for a few issues during World War II, created by comics artist Chu Hing, whose publisher was adamant that the hero was Not Asian. So despite running around in China, fighting Japanese invaders, with an Asian boy sidekick (sigh, “Burma Boy”), The Green Turtle’s skin was always printed in a bright, garish, we-told-you-he-wasn’t-Asian pink, to make it clear just how Not Asian (i.e.: white) this character was. Writer Gene Luen Yang has rescued some of The Greet Turtle’s dignity, giving him a name (never revealed in the comic, thus Not Asian), a history, and even a reason for that super-pink Not Asian skin.

  Hank Chu doesn’t want to be a superhero in his pre-WWII west coast Chinatown; he doesn’t hear the call to destiny (well, he does eventually), he isn’t granted amazing powers by a fantastic being (okay, that happens too), but rather he is propelled into the hero biz by something bigger than himself, something that cannot be ignored or avoided. Namely, his mom.

  She’s decided Hank is going to be a hero, and she makes him a costume, thinks up a codename, drives him out at night to fight criminals, and goes around shoving him into handy chemical spills hoping to provoke powers. The only thing provoked is his skin reacts to moisture by turning bright pink, which actually serves to disguise him as he moves among the native and immigrant Chinese population. When his father is murdered by criminal gangs, he inherits the sponsorship of one of the great gods of ancient China and gains one very particular power, although it doesn’t prevent him from getting the crap kicked out of him.

  Hank’s enemies are the gangs, but also the systemic racism that keeps his family and community from full participation in society. It fits in well with Yang’s earlier examinations of what it means to be Chinese and Chinese-American; the art by Sonny Liew doesn’t look like Yang’s work on American Born Chinese or last year’s masterful Boxers & Saints, but it has a loose-limbed, somewhat goofy approach to character that Yang’s work is too restrained to achieve. If Yang is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon — all clean lines and everything perfectly composed and gorgeous — Liew is Kung Fu Hustle, all frenetic energy and over the top action. Together they’ve created a marvelous story that resonates for all the right reasons.

• Today’s also the launch of Emily Carroll’s Through the Woods and Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Seconds, both of which I will be obtaining at the first opportunity.
• Not actually dropping for some weeks is Jim Zub’s Wayward, but he was kind enough to send me a review copy, and if there’s one thing you never have to ask me to do twice, it’s tear into a Zub-penned issue #1 despite the fact I know it will be frustrating as hell. Not because the story won’t be good, but because the man knows how to hook a reader, bring things to a proper level of excitement, and then stop the goddamn thing because he’s hit page count right on a point of high tension and now I’m going arrgh and counting the days until issue #2.

  For the record, Wayward #1 did all of that more efficiently than usual, because Zub not only created an initial set of characters, set up major plot points, and hinted at the major conflict of the series; he did do against a background of modern Tokyo in a way that deeply affected me. Flight to Narita followed train to city followed subway to neighborhood is trip I’ve taken, and the feeling you get when you finally reach that last kilometer of your journey, where the idea of Tokyo becomes the reality of Tokyo — Zub paces the slog of travel leading to the reveal masterfully, and he’s partnered with artists that can portray it.

  Combine that with something that often gets lots in Western comics set in Japan (in general) and Tokyo (in particular): the fact that the country and city are a place of contrasts. The highest-tech, most modern 22nd century district can suddenly turn to quiet local neighborhood of traditional shops and homes in the space of five minutes walk. The skyscrapers covered in LEDs have alcoves almost too narrow to stand in between them, where a rock draped in garlands sits. The rock is the home of a kami, it’s always been the home of a kami, people revere that kami and its rock, and the skyscrapers will just have to be built around them because the kami ain’t moving. This is the feel that Zub imbues in his Tokyo in Wayward and it’s pulled me in.

  As I write this, I’m sitting in an office building directly across the street from the Transamerica Pyramid, which I recently saw on fire after being punched by giant monsters in the new Godzilla. I require very little from such movies to be entertained — giant monsters need to punch each other and things need to get knocked down and that is deeply satisfying.

  Likewise, Zub has provided a fight scene here with one of Japan’s traditional monsters and he’s laid out the struggle in a way that’s easy to follow and perhaps more importantly, emphasizes the nonhuman nature of the monster. These are not just people with a strange shape and odd mannerisms; they carry themselves with an attitude that they are different from humans, better than humans, they saw the first humans pull themselves out of the muck and have little regard for humans. They are kappa¹ and kappa are better than humans and that characterization is as deeply satisfying as watching stompy monsters flatten a city. Also, Zub’s chosen to describe these particular kappa as distinctly ninja turtle-like, and thus it is hilarious when they get their asses handed to them by a pair of teen girls.

  What I am saying here is that Zub wrote this comic pretty much exactly for me, but it is crafted with his usual skill and flair, so you do not need to be me to find it well worth your time and money. Pre-order it today, read it next month, and share in my arrgh until we all get to read #2 together.

Spam of the day:

Nothing good today. I’ve been buried for a couple weeks, and today it’s nothing but long strings of question marks. Borrrrr-ing.

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¹ I have a soft spot in my heart for kappa, as they were the first of Japan’s traditional yokai that I learned about. They are turtle-like, they must keep water in the bowl-like indentation on their foreheads or they will die, and they will drown humans to eat the inside of their rectum. However, they can be bribed with cucumbers, and if you get one to return your bow, their forhead-water will spill out and they will be helpless. There’s menace there, but ways to deal with the menace if you’re clever or prepared.

To quote The Spurge, who tweeted last evening:

emily carroll emily carroll emily carroll

Spurge’s tweet led to a Tumblr that led to Zainab Akhtar’s blog that’s got images and info — a full preview, honestly — of Emily Carroll’s first print collection.

Due in July 2014 in a 200+ page hardcover, Through The Woods looks to be exactly what anybody that’s read Carroll’s comics will want — fairy- and folk-tale influenced, deeply unsettling stories, including a reconfigured-for-print version of her breakout story, His Face All Red. Akhtar asserts that this is one of the books that most comics fans are looking forward to and I’m gonna go out on a limb and agree; at least for me, this may be my most-anticipated book since, jeeze, I dunno? Anya’s Ghost? Boxers & Saints? Darkness? Just head over to Akhtar’s site and drink in the beauty.

Okay, one other story that matters: you’re coming up on your last chances to get in on a pair of webcomics Kickstarts.

• You’ve got 10 hours to get in on Sophie Goldstein and Jenn Jordan’s Darwin Carmichael Is Going To Hell campaign (which, sitting at about 180% of goal, is definitely going to be made, but you won’t get your copy any quicker than on the KS). DCIGTH is charming, comforting, and a complete story, so this is it — your chance to support Jordan and Goldstein for the free comics they supplied you.
• And since I last wrote about it a week ago, the Broken Telephone campaign has seen a resurgence, sitting at about 91% with three days to do. Kicktraq has the latest iteration of Ryan Estrada’s The Whole Story series finishing at 104% of goal (which is loads better than the heartbreaking 96% it was predicting last week), but nothing counts until it crosses that 100% threshold. There’s an armful of creators who stand to get paid with actual, real money, but only if a little less that US$2200 of more pledges show up. Time’s running out, don’t let this one stumble.

As we get started, a disclaimer. Shing Yin Khor is a personal friend of mine, and I’ve had at least the outline of this story rattling around my brain for years now, ever since we talked about it as a work in progress over some surprisingly delicious Tex-Mex in Juneau, Alaska. So when I picked up my copy of The Legend Of Auntie Po from my local comic shop last week, I had high hopes and even higher expectations.

Because one should never count out Shing Yin Khor when it comes to a) lumberjack culture; b) foodway stories; c) immigrant tales; and d) delicate, gorgeous watercolors. Combine all of those into nearly 300 pages of story, and throw a little adolescent queer longing in on top, and you’ve got an absolute winner. For those that don’t want the spoilers ahead, get a copy or three, read it until it falls apart and then read it some more.

Actually, the spoilers are going to be kind of light — it’s the 1880s, a logging camp in the Sierra Nevadas, at a time when Chinese workers were both valued for skills in large undertakings (building entire logging infrastructure, or running railroads through the tallest mountain range in the hemisphere) and simultaneously regarded as a plague upon the land, despoiling a nation out of its natural white purity.

Don’t look too closely at everybody that isn’t white, particularly those that the land in question was stolen from, or those whose parents and grandparents were stolen from overseas to work the land. The country has a myth of manifest destiny to construct here.

And that’s really the core of Auntie Po — that myth belongs to anybody that’s trying to make sense of their circumstances, whether it’s in the service of oppressing everybody that doesn’t look like you, or in trying to find a little hope at the end of the day that somebody powerful might be in your corner. Nearly everybody in the story is trying to find that bit of footing, and even the white folks haven’t been around long enough for some to count them as real Americans¹.

So they make up stories — Paul Bunyan was revered by the northwoods loggers? Hao Mei, 13 and full of imagination and stories, knows that Po Pan Yin and her blue water buffalo Pei Pei were even bigger and better. Auntie Po doesn’t just stay with Mei; when need strikes, the other children in the camp — none of the Chinese — call on her and see her, really see her. And if this newer Auntie Po is Black rather than Chinese? Well, myths take on their own lives, adapted by the people that need them and make them their own. And that carries on past the children; by the end of the book the loggers in the bunkhouse argue whose crew cut more lumber — Paul Bunyan or Auntie Po.

Mei’s father, Hao Ah, doesn’t need Auntie Po because he knows who he is — the only cook that can keep the loggers satisfied², and twice the man of the white guy that tries to replace him. Mei learns who she is eventually, too — a girl with dreams of university and learning, and also the best pie maker for miles around — and so she lets Auntie Po go, but others take her up and make her their own. Hels Andersen insisted that the Haos were family to him, and over time he changes that from empty platitude to reality, and so a little of the myth of white supremacy crumbles, at least within one logging camp in one corner of the Sierra Nevada.

It takes a long time for myths to completely die, though — and those that don’t have anything else to rely on (whether that’s true or just what they tell themselves) can fan a myth back to life if even a spark of it remains. There’s not so many loggers out there that might call on Auntie Po, but there are echoes of her, in every burned paper memorial to a Chinese logger that fell at his work, every sealed bottle with a name and birthday inside to give proper identity to an unmarked grave.

She still lives on in whispered stories that Mei let out into the world, and instead of stories of Auntie Po, Mei gets to tell her own story, which is another form of myth. Folk heroes and gods, they say, exist as long as they have believers, and even if nobody believes in Mei but Mei, that’s a big, bright blaze of belief and she will bestride her world like Po Pan Yin towers over the tallest pines. Giant blue water buffalo optional.

The Legend Of Auntie Po by Shing Yin Khor is a deeply researched³, beautifully illustrated story of a difficult time and place. Any reader that’s willing to learn about/acknowledge the origins and legacy of white supremacy at a tween-age-appropriate level will find a lot to love and a lot to think about here. Find your copy at your local bookstore or comic shop.

Spam of the day:

We are interested in your products. If your company can handle a bulk supply of your products to Cameroon, please contact us.

I can bulk supply opinions on webcomics wherever you like, sport.

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¹ Logging boss Hels Andersen isn’t more than a generation and a half from Scandinavia, and undoubtedly looked down on my the moneyed class that funds his operations. Hell, I guarantee you that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s saintly Ma looked down on the Andersens and other recent arrivals; if you don’t remember her snotty opinions of recent immigrants, maybe don’t give the Little House books to the kids in your life because yeesh, Laura, her Ma, and her daughter Rose were serious nativists and Pa Ingalls was the definition of a failson locust, gaming the system and displacing humans from their land and lauded for it.

² His schnitzel is legendary.

³ If admittedly incomplete; in the afterword, Khor acknowledges the lack of indigenous characters and recognizes that the story of their presence in the logging camps is a story that needs to be told, but not theirs to tell.