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.

Spam of the day:

TalkWithCustomer enables you to connect with a prospective customer at EXACTLY the Perfect Time. NOT with a form letter style email that looks like it was written by a bot.

Yeah? Why are you sending me a form letter, then?

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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.

Well, last week certainly sucked, but I’m back in the swing of things, and eager to talk about some books with you. First up: Go With The Flow by Lily Williams (words and pictures) and Karen Schneemann (also words). A review copy — that is, an advanced, not-final-version-of-the-book review copy, so your reading experience may be slightly different than mine — was sent by the fine folks at :01 Books a few weeks back, just as release day was happening. I took the unusual step of waiting to write this review until I could discuss the book with somebody else (more on that in a moment), so for once what you’ll read here is not based solely on my reading and interpretation. Oh, and spoilers ahead.

This is a book about periods; having never had one, I talked with my wife at some length about her experience with the topic, through the lens of several dozen years of having periods, to be sure that I wasn’t missing anything important. She assures me that GWTF gets it right, particularly its emphasis on the fact that no two period-havers¹ experience menstruation the same way. The framing story — high school, friends, mean girls, jerk bros, institutional sexism, screwing up and apologizing, crushes, and the rest of what it means to be a teen — provides a structure to hang the information on, without anything seeming preachy or lecturey.

Except for when it’s meant to. To the extent that there’s a single POV character in the circle of four besties, it’s Abby, the artsy, headstrong who sees something wrong and wants to do something about it. She’s joined by Brit (literary, reserved), Christine (blunt and sometimes inappropriate to hide her capital-F Feelings), and Sasha (new in school, picked on by the Mean Girls)². They’re all mad that period supplies are rarely stocked in the bathrooms (and when they are, they cost money³), but it’s Abby that cajoles (and sometimes browbeats) the others into her protests and letter-writing.

Abby’s assumptions that her friends feel about things as strongly as she does precipitates the big conflict moment in the story, and puts those friendships at risk. This part read particularly true, because we all ow that as teens, we don’t think through the consequences of our actions on those we care most about — oh, and she gets in trouble with Principal Condescending, too.

The crux of the story isn’t defeating institutional sexism — or even the localized, petty kind — but rather finding a way past that screw up. The fact that Abby’s Big Moment Of Protest resulted in positive notoriety and funding for period supplies throughout the district is less important than the fact that she grew as a person (not the mention the fact that she shouldn’t have had to go crowdfunding in the the first place).

And although Abby’s campaign for period justice forms the central plotline of the book, all four characters get their own time in the spotlight. Sasha adjusts to the new school with the help of her friends, and has the most typical social experience of sophomore year — first relationship, first experience with dating, etc. Brit deals with endometriosis and the time it keeps her from school, but is lucky enough to have supportive parents (at least one of whom is a doctor) and treatment by a specialist that hopefully knows what they’re doing⁴. Christine deals with an older dude negging the shit out of her in trying to scam his way to a physical relationship (and being too smart for his crap) while also dealing with her confusion over her own sexuality and her feelings for Abby⁵.

All of which is a lot to deal with in 330 pages or so, but Go With The Flow is more than up to the challenge of telling the story of friendships and periods, while simultaneously providing quality, truthful information about menstruation and more⁶. Oh and the art is inviting, with clear lines and distinct character silhouettes; there’s a variety of human shapes, sizes and ethnicities and nobody reading the book need feel it’s not for them.

I recommend it for anybody that’s having periods, had them in the past, can be expected to have them in the next couple years, or who knows anybody in any of the other categories; let’s say ages 10 and up. It’s available now via your local bookstore or comic shop.

Spam of the day:

The two-finger trick, called the “Death Touch”, was invented by a Chinese Kung Fu Master and it allows anyone, no matter their physical strength or condition, to bring down an attacker just by poking him in a vulnerable spot.

You’re talking about the junk, right? Just say you’re smacking somebody in the junk.

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¹ The book both acknowledges and honors the experience of gender non-conforming and trans folk with respect to periods, and notes that some trans women can develop hormonal cycles that mimic period symptoms

² You can meet adult versions of them in The Mean Magenta, the webcomic that Schneemann and Williams started to discuss periods, and which became the basis for the book.

³ The rather condescending principal who explains to Abby that no there’s no money to stock the supplies in the bathroom and it’s not like the boys get free jock itch cream refuses to acknowledge that this is a hygiene issue, and he’d never not think about stocking toilet paper. He dodges the question of why the football team got new uniforms and equipment after only two years if there’s no money in the budget.

⁴ If you follow Williams on her twitterfeed, she’s open about her own experience with endometriosis, and the shamefully poor understanding of it that doctors — even OB/GYNs! — have of the condition and its treatments. It took Williams fourteen years to get a diagnosis and it looks like Brit will be far luckier in that regard, but the story ends without a definitive solution for her. The webcomics of adult Brit indicate that she’s mitigated the worst of her symptoms, but still way the heck over at one end of the menstrual experience spectrum.

⁵ Like Brit’s endometriosis and Abby’s quest for gender equality, Christine’s story isn’t resolved by the end of the book. She pines, Abby doesn’t notice, Brit does, but they don’t come out and talk about it. Again, Williams and Schneemann really get what Teens and Feelings are like, and capture the awkwardness of trying to figure out who you are with laser clarity.

Judging by the adult versions of the characters from The Mean Magenta, Christine found a way to accept her feelings and keep her friendship with Abby. Oh, and Sasha appears to have a type — the dude she’s with in The Mean Magenta has a pretty strong resemblance to the first high school boyfriend from GWTF. I’m pretty sure it’s not the same dude, but maybe?

⁶ I came to the book prepared to learn a lot and found as I went along that my sex education back in school was pretty good. Granted, transgender and gender non-conforming people didn’t really come up but I would have been getting that information from about 1978-1985. I will say that there was some remarkably non-judgmental content back then about gay and lesbian people, and at least an acknowledgment of prominent individuals that had undergone what was termed sex reassignment (rather than gender confirmation) surgery.

I was lucky to grow up in a window of time post-sexual revolution, pre-Moral Majority culture wars, when truthful information was seen as the best way to deal with the still-new AIDS epidemic. Also, thank glob, I grew up in New Jersey. I had to explain the mechanics of human reproduction to more than one of my classmates when I got to college in Indiana, after there was a spate of sudden, unplanned marriages amongst dudes on my freshman dorm floor and their first girlfriends away from home.

Namely, the news relating to the Youth Media Awards given out at the ALA Midwinter conference, home of prestigious names like Caldecott, Newbery, and Printz. The librarians got their announcements on this morning, and the comics are represented up and down the list.

The big news, of course, is that the John Newbery Medal for the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children was given for the first time to a graphic work. New Kid by Jerry Craft takes its place among the classics of childrens literature. While books like El Deafo and This One Summer have been named as Newbery Honor books, those are the almost-won titles; New Kid will have its own court of Honor books to accompany it, but it is the actual, sole winner. Oh, and it also took the Coretta Scott King Author Award as well, just in case you were wondering if there were a better contribution by an African-American writer in the past year.

We’re just getting started.

• Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me continues its march to universal acclaim as a Printz Honor book (for the record, the big three awards in kidlit are the Newbery, the Caldecott — most distinguished picture book — and the Printz — for exemplifying literary excellence; all the others are a big deal, too).
• Both Stargazing and They Called Us Enemy were recognized with the Asian/Pacific American Award, in the Childrens and Young Adult categories, respectively; the award is for promoting Asian/Pacific American culture and heritage and is awarded based on literary and artistic merit.
• Gender Queer and In Waves received the Alex Award, given to the 10 best adult books that appeal to teen audiences.
• Hey, Kiddo¹ received the Odyssey Award for the best audiobook produced for children and/or young adults, available in English in the United States.

A full rundown is available at the School Library Journal’s website, and descriptions of the awards, their histories, and previous winners at I Love Libraries. Fleen congratulates all the winners, the honor books, and the nominees. You’re all doing amazing work.

Spam of the day:

Receiving and placing orders for IT development

Thanks, got all I need.

_______________
¹ Also a National Book Award finalist, a slightly big deal.

There’s something that I learned years ago, somewhere between my college radio days and my job teaching, and that’s as much as you fill the space around you with words, nothing you say has as much power

as silence.

Which thought came back to me last night in the venerable Bluestockings bookstore/cafe/activist space on the Lower East Side, which was hosting the first of a monthly series of comics readings. Comics don’t get anywhere enough readings, not like books do, and that’s a shame — with the right sense of timing and a clear enough image projected, there’s real power there. The events folks at Bluestockings kicked things off with a trifecta of work by and about queer people, featuring Bee Kahn, Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, and Beatrix Urkowitz; this page is famously in the tank for Ms Valero-O’Connell and I wasn’t familiar with the work of the other two, so let’s start with them.

Bee Kahn brought an introductory section of a story that was self-published and debuted at FlameCon a while back; now it’s getting a slick reissue from a publisher (they can’t say who yet) later this year. Renegade Rule is the story of four women on a pro gamer team, trying to reach the finals for VR shooter league play. It’s hard to tell where the story will go from the excerpt Kahn was able to share (enough to drop the reader into the VR experience and introduce the main characters and their personalities), but it was more than enough to say this:

Kahn’s comic book caption game is strong. You’d have to get Matt Fraction on his best day to come up with captions that land with the same impact and humor. Remember what I said up above about timing? The text in the word balloons and captions in Renegade was mostly too small to read from the audience, but having to click through to add each balloon and box to the image forced Kahn to delay just a bit and it made each bit of dialogue and especially the captions land with impact. I’m going to be keeping my eye out for this one in the fall.

Beatrix Urkowitz brought four short stories, three of which were about the same character, and which displayed a visual sensibility reminiscent of Tom Hart’s Hutch Owen (maybe a splash of Sylvan Migdal thrown in), with a KC Green-like ability to take a premise, run it as far as you possibly can, and then take it even further. The fourth story Urkowitz shared was about the annoying person we all know, and it was good. The first three were about the lover of everyone in the world.

Specifically, and introduction to TLOEITW and how she feels, followed by a story about the lovers of TLOEITW (ie: all seven point whatever billion of us) and how they (we) feel about the situation, and a third story entitled Everyone Breaks Up With The Lover Of Everyone In The World, where all of us form a gestalt entity to deliver a break-up speech to TLOEITW, who concludes that she’ll go get drunk, but literally everywhere she goes is now populated exclusively with her exes. It was a trip.

Rosemary Valero-O’Connell read one of the three stories from her just-arriving-in-the-mail-to-backers-from-Shortbox collection, Don’t Go Without Me (if you weren’t in on the Kickstart, you’ll be able to order a copy next month). The first story in the collection is the title piece, about a date to a parallel universe where telling stories robs you of your memories. It’s haunting and echoes every mythological tale of not understanding the rules of a place, from Persephone’s pomegranate to those who stay overlong in Faerie. You can read an excerpt of it here.

The second story is What Is Left, previously released as a minicomic; I got a copy at MoCCA and loved it, but reading its sci-fi take on a doomed spaceship propelled by a memory-fueled engine changed by reading in alongside Don’t Go. The former is about finding refuge — literally, in this case — in memories, and the latter about diminution from sharing, and while the stories contrast with each other, they also sharpen and strengthen each other. You can read and excerpt of What Is Left here.

The third story, the one Valero-O’Connell read last night, is Con Temor, Con Ternura, or With Fear, With Tenderness; it asks the question What would you do on the last night of the world? Valero-O’Connell, in the making of booklet that’s a Kickstarter accompaniment to the collection, describes her first comics work as dialogueless, narrated visual poetry, and Con Temor is a return to that form. As the questions posed by the story got more pointed, as the reality that a Proverbial It was building, Valero-O’Connell got steadily quieter, and the room more hushed, the audience almost holding its collective breath.

The conclusion, a cliffhanger following a countdown from three¹, slowed its pace and the silence held as everybody sought their own answers to that question, while the screen was a-whirl with swooping curves and scarcely a straight line in sight. There’s an organic life to her work, one that focuses on things that live rather than things that are built, and it lends a vitality to the visuals that’s all but unmatched. Don’t even get me started on what she does with hair; it’s so good, it makes me angry.

Silences break eventually. The applause for each of the readers was well earned.

It’s like I told Roo², we’re in an age of comics like the current age of television, where it is not possible to keep up with all the good work that’s being made³. But for one night a month, Bluestockings is going to do its best to show you some work you might have missed otherwise, and for that we can all be thankful.

Spam of the day:

As an Airbnb host, you can meet interesting new people and learn about diverse cultures without even having to leave the house.

Weird. I thought the purpose of Airbnb was to scam people and deplete stocks of housing in cities around the world, driving up rents and exacerbating the problem of homelessness.

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¹ One that looks to the reader to fill in the ending, more than any story I’ve read except maybe John Brunner’s The Shockwave Rider.

² You may recall that MxRoo named the Fleen Fight For Fungible Futures Fund, and that we seem to run into each other randomly. Okay, a comics reading might not be the weirdest place to bump into a longtime reader of Fleen, but on the day that Jon Rosenberg’s son got his life back via surgery? I was in Manhattan on a work gig and walking on the street to lunch when I head somebody call my name. It was Roo, with the news that Jon had just posted that the surgery had gone well. We got a history of being together for awesome things is what I’m saying.

³ Which makes it even more baffling that there’s a cohort of miserable assholes out there who have seemingly devoted their lives to shitting on people making comics they don’t like — comics they think shouldn’t be allowed to exist because they’re about things/people other than the precise interests of said miserable assholes — instead of just reading what they like. They are literally denying themselves the time to read all the stuff they do like in order to try to destroy stuff other people like. Petard-hoisters, the lot of ’em.

This is it. Today is the start of a new world, a better world, one where everything is a bit brighter and more hopeful. What? No, not the impeachment, that’s a shitshow.

No, today is the long-awaited launch of Random House Graphic, and we should give the floor to RHG supremo Gina Gagliano:

We’re doing this thing — starting today! It’s amazing to get to work every day with our fantastic staff and our phenomenal creators on putting more comics for kids into the world. Yay ?@RHKidsGraphic?!

We’ve spoken about the RHG launch titles previously, but to remind you:

• 21 January: The Runaway Princess by Johan Troïowski
• 11 February: Bug Boys by Laura Knetzger
• 3 March: Aster And The Accidental Magic by Thom Pico and Karensac
• 14 April: Witchlight by Jessi Zabarsky

And if that weren’t enough, we are just two weeks away from the long-overdue relaunch of Andy Runton’s Owly:

Are you ready to have a hoot? Pre-order your copy of Owly: The Way Home by @owly today! http://bit.ly/3a7cMWM

As a reminder, the five Owly books are being colored, and also made bilinguial — in addition to speaking in icons, some characters will also be able to speak English. Owly will continue to use symbols only, with others translating for him as necessary. Remastered books will release at six month intervals, with new Owly waiting for us at the end of the reissues. My only complaint? Somebody should have registered ow.ly before Hootsuite got a hold of it. Missed opportunities, people!

Spam of the day:

AutoTrack real-time GPS tracker is an easy-to-use tracking device that, thanks to its compact size and magnetic case, can be easily attached to your vehicle. The live tracking feature through Google Maps works perfectly and is highly accurate.

Your vehicle? Let’s not lie — this is to attach to another person’s vehicle, and you’re catering to the estranged husband/boyfriend with a TRO demographic. You are going to get women killed, you assholes.

Let’s be clear about something; this is not a review of Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang; a review will require me to read the book several more times, to get at the narrative structure — and the metanarrative structure — that Yang is building as he tells a story about basketball, a half-dozen high school athletes, himself, and Superman.

But this is me telling you about one particular thing that Yang does in Dragon Hoops that I think people should pay attention to, and potentially include in their own work. Yang’s got a recurring visual element, and it’s such a small thing, but also it’s tremendously effective. Each time — I actually have to go back and verify that, but if not each and every time it’s pretty damn close — a character¹ is at a decision point and determines the path they’re going to take, he draws them taking a deliberate step forward across a line.

Sometimes it’s a metaphorical line. Sometimes it’s an actual visible line or boundary. From left to right, the direction the reader’s eye is traveling, carrying the character in the direction of the story. The first time, it’s just a panel with a cute sound effect — STEP. — and doesn’t carry any weight. But as the story goes on, as it becomes something of a motif, it gains power. The STEP.s aren’t big splashy, stompy, heroic comic book hero strides, but they convey a resolution that calls to mind everything from Neil Armstrong to the proverb from the Tao Te Ching about the journey of a thousand miles.

It works because it doesn’t call attention to itself and creeps into the reader’s consciousness gradually, to the point that a casual read (or one focused on other elements of the story) might miss it altogether². And if you can find a visual element, a symbol, that brings that kind of subtle (almost subliminal) meaning to the reader? You’re doing comics right.

Reminder before we head out on the weekend: you have one week to get your emails in if you want a chance at a free copy of Junior Scientist Power Hour vol 1 by Abby Howard. Entries must be received by me by 11:59pm EST (or GMT-5, if you prefer) at the address gary, who writes at fleen, which is a dot com. Remember to include a reference to your favorite ancient critter from Howard’s Earth Before Us trilogy!

Spam of the day:

Welcome to Tiffany

The famous jeweler apparently thinks that I am aching to spend on overpriced gewgaws and tchotchkes just because they come in a robin’s egg blue box.

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¹ Person, really, since these are all real people and the things they did.

² For example, the oranges in The Godfather, which may have started as coincidence but grew into an actual thing. Yang’s too deliberate a storyteller³ for it to be a coincidence, however.

³ Especially here, where copious notes at the back of the book describe his process and decisions in making the book, as well as a half-dozen times that it comes up in the story itself. Hey, I told you there was a metanarrative here.

That’s a big book haul. The photo was going to include a lounging greyhound for scale, some somedog decided she had better things to do than get her picture took, hmph! Starting from the top:

• Don’t Go Without Me by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, in fulfillment of the recent Kickstart from ShortBox.
• Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang; I’ve spoken with him briefly about this one, where Yang’s chronicling of Chinese culture and the immigrant experience meets Raina-style memoir. Likely to be a monster hit this year.
• Go With The Flow by Lily Williams and Karen Schneemann; want to be this Kids In The Hall character? You need this book which is designed to give young uterus-havers the lowdown on what’s happening with their bodies, and everybody else an appreciation for what they go through. I actually had fairly good public-school sex education starting in 5th grade, and I still expect to learn a ton. Also, a measure of how good :01 Books is — this isn’t an advanced review copy, it’s the regular release of a book that went on sale yesterday.
• Kairos by Ulysse Malassagne; one of the great services that :01 has done for comics in the US is find great work in French and bring it over. There is such a huge pool of comics and creators that are just starting to become known over here.
• Maker Comics: Grow A Garden! by Alexis Frederick-Frost; my beans have been okay for the past coupla’ years, and I hope this helps be improve them somewhat.
• Science Comics: Crows by Kyla Vanderklugt; corvids are scary smart and you should always seek to make friends with them. Never annoy a crow, raven, jay, jackdaw, or rook.
• The Phantom Twin by Lisa Brown; girl haunted by the ghost of her conjoined twin? Sounds like the best ghost story since Anya had ghost trubs.
• Astronauts by Jim Ottaviani and Maris Wicks; the story of women that have been to space, by a team that’s done some of my favorite science–oriented comics for years now. Also, Ottaviani is a fabulous person to talk to, and this remains one of my favorite interviews ever.
• Snapdragon by Kat Leyh; ever wonder what would happen if there were a witch in town, like a real witch, and you decided to make friends? Leyh has, and we get to follow along.

To be clear, it’s a coincidence that Don’t Go Without Me arrived on the same day as the trove of books from :01, but now I get to take it with me to the reading next week. I’ll be working my way through the pile as quickly as I can while still absorbing enough to give proper reviews; it’ll probably be Astronauts and Dragon Hoops first, so watch for reviews in the coming weeks

Oh, and I saw this on the tweetmachine today; it’s from October, but it’s very possibly new to you as it was for me. Eight tight pages, an unreliable narrator who is not having any more of this street harassment shit that we get to see past, and a satisfying gut punch of a finish. Words by Julio Anta, pictures by Katherine Lobo, letters by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, and if these folks aren’t planning a collection of similar stories, that would be very unfortunate.

Spam of the day:

How a Clorox Wipe Made my Herpes Disappear

Jesus tapdancing … do not rub Clorox wipes on your junk, godsdammit.

Look, there are these sanitary wipes that we used on the ambulance for decontamination. You know what’s on the top of the can? The international do not use on babies or other sensitive things symbol, that’s what. Know what’s not even in most of these babykiller wipes? Bleach. Use bleach wipes on hard, non-porous surfaces only and keep them the hell off of your joybits, genius.

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¹ No promises for the future; prostate cancer is basically the escape clause that says individuals like me will not live forever. If nothing else gets you, that walnut-sized gland will.

Hey, running late and sorry about that. Let’s jump into the good stuff.

• Item! Alex de Campi is one of the very best comics writers out there, and she has unerring instincts with respect to who to pair up with on art duties. Don’t believe me? Check out her collaboration with Carla Speed McNeil and Jenn Manley Lee on No Mercy, which made me want to punch characters in the face through the page. So when de Campi tells me:
  

  I’m doing a creator-owned horror thing with @EricaFails this year and I just have to say that 1) she’s the best; 2) her colour roughs are better than most people’s finished pages; and 3) this book is going to knock your socks off. The MOOD and sense of place… immaculate

  I say Welp, have to add that to my pull list when it comes out. Erica Henderson has done some great work since stepping back from Squirrel Girl, with Assassin Nation particularly showing a skill for depicting charlie-foxtrot action leading to severely traumatized bodies. I also can’t wait to see her FCBD contribution to Judge Dredd.

• Item! Readers of this page will no doubt recognize the fact that I absolutely adore the work of Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, and take no small satisfaction in seeing the entire rest of comics recognize how very good she is since Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me released. Hooray for Rosemary!

  So I’m more than happy to tell you that Valero-O’Connell will be doing a reading of her work next Wednesday night, 22 January, as part of the launch of a new monthly comics series by queer and trans creators to be held at Bluestockings Bookstore in lower Manhattan. Come say hi to all the readers, Valero-O’Connell will have copies of her latest collection for sale², and enjoy some awesome comics.

  Details at the Facebook event page, and I’ll be certain to keep an eye on future events — it’s tough for me to get out to Brooklyn (where things of this nature usually occur) and back on a work night, and the LES is a lot closer.

• Item! As you may have noticed, I now have in my possession two copies of the first print collection of Junior Scientist Power Hour by Abby Howard¹, which is one more than I reasonably need. Time for a giveaway contest. So by 11:59pm EST on Friday, 24 January, email me (that would be gary) at this here website (that would be fleen, which is a dot com) with a reference to your favorite dinosaur or other extinct critter from any of Howard’s three Earth Before Us titles. I want to know which critter and why you love it so much. Random draw will determine the winner, I’ll be in touch about getting it shipped to you.

Spam of the day:

gary.tyrrell Pay off your mortgage faster and save money!…

I am on track to pay off my mortgage ten years early but sure, I’ll click on your link and give you all my financial information for the possibility of paying it off sooner. [sarcastic thumbs-up emoji]

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¹ Also the original pages to The Most Precious Substance In The Cosmos. When I leave all my original comic art to my alma mater, some of it is going to cause more giggles than others.

² With luck, I’ll have my copy in hand from the Kickstart by then.

Because a recurring theme of the manchildren that want comics that solely cater to their own preconceptions and prejudices is that anything not wholly reflecting their own identity is unnecessary politics that comics were never sullied with previously, goodness, never, a few items reminding you that politics and art — even comics — are inextricably linked.

• Word comes today that there will be a comics adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five releasing later this year, from artist Albert Monteys, colorist Ricard Zaplana, and oh that’s what he’s been working on this makes perfect sense Ryan North on words.

  A scathingly funny indictment of war, Slaughterhouse Five will anger some people just by existing, but then people like them have been angered by Slaughterhouse Five existing in all its forms for the past fifty years, and will anger other people for the next fifty and beyond. The cohort of people determined not to learn the lessons of war are as unstuck in time as Billy Pilgrim. The graphic adaptation is due in September from BOOM.

• A central part of Slaughterhouse Five is protagonist Billy Pilgrim’s unlikely survival of the the Dresden firebombing, which Vonnegut experienced firsthand. There may be nothing more terrifying than fire so widespread and hot that it alters the normal patterns of weather, physics, and reality around it, becoming a wholly unpredictable and uncontrollable entity in its own right. There’s a reason that Dresden and March 1945¹ are shorthands for destruction beyond comprehension.

  Conflagration need not come from war, but human stupidity will certainly be involved:

  As I type this (on Monday 6 January), 25 people have been confirmed killed by the fires, 7 remain missing. Well over 1500 homes have been destroyed, as well as thousands of other buildings and structures. The total area burnt so far is over 80,000 square kilometres, which is larger than Ireland, almost as large as Austria. These numbers will continue increasing for weeks, as the fires continue to burn, unstoppable in the hottest part of summer, as we suffer the worst drought in recorded history.

  Even in places not directly affected by flames, the smoke from the fires is causing hazardous air quality across much of south-eastern Australia. For over a month now, air quality in Sydney (where I live) has been marginal some days, and officially “hazardous” on many other days. Visibility has been down to 100 metres or so because of thick smoke in the air, the sun shines down with an apocalyptic orange glow even during the middle of the day, and the smell of smoke is everywhere. Ash and burnt leaves fall from the sky, even in the middle of the city. Outdoor surfaces, wiped clean, are covered in a fine gritty ash the next day. Hospital admissions are up around 10-15% because of people experiencing increased asthma and other respiratory conditions. Canberra, which is a long way from any fires, has experienced several days in a row of horrible air conditions, with many institutions and government departments shutting down because it’s too hazardous even inside the buildings for people to work.

  That from David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™ ^etc) from his vantage point in Sydney, on the ongoing fire season in Australia — which started four months earlier than usual, exacerbated by climate change-driven drought and high temperatures. The news from Down Under is heartbreaking, with serious predictions that by the end of fire season in March or April, there may be essentially no non-urban space untouched by the bushfires. Places that I’ve visited and loved may not recover in my lifetime.

  And more infuriating is the now repeatedly demonstrated utter indifference on the part of Australia’s senior governmental officials, starting with their sociopathy-demonstrating Prime Minister. Read the whole thing, get mad, and do what you can to express to your own government, wherever you are, that climate disasters aren’t abstract, they aren’t off in the future after senior officials will be safely dead and thus insulated from their effects, that we are well past prevention of worldwide tragedy, and instead playing a game of mitigation.

• And yet, even in the face of ongoing crisis, small acts of utter optimism and hope in the future take place every day. It’s a couple years late (then again, the documentation is a couple years behind the event), but let’s take a moment to welcome Elizabeth Anna Trogdor Breeden to the world, and to resolve to make her lifetime less stupidly hellish than the current trajectory seems determined to be. Vonnegut had a famous benediction for newborns that’s widely quoted, and I’d like to offer it up to young Trogdor with an addendum: God damn us, babies, we weren’t kind and now it’s all on you. I’m sorry.

Spam of the day:

Xone Phone has a smooth appeal that will turn heads due to its slick surface and pleasing texture. Hold The Vibrancy In Your Fingertips

This sounds like it should be covered by Erika ‘n’ Matt when they come back from their break.

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¹ Please, Ryan, I love your work, but do not also adapt the other great narrative work about World War II firebombings. It’s the greatest piece of art that I never want to experience again.

Things are wrapping up, folks are stepping back from their comics to spend time with families, the solstice approaches and with it the period of time between the longest night¹ and the start of society’s new year. Posting may be light and sporadic between now and everybody getting back into it around the 5th or 6th of December.

But in the meantime, please enjoy the latest update — and oh my, twenty pages worth! — of KC Green’s adaptation of Pinocchio. We’re getting near to the end, I can feel Real Boyness about to burst forth, but something finally struck me in this chapter.

For all his misbehavior, all his snotty aggression, all his self pity, Pinocchio has been nearly always honest in this story. His nose grows in this chapter, but I was astonished to realized I couldn’t remember the last time that happened. Disney and other popular adapters have conditioned me to expect the nose bit to be nearly constant instead of a rare, notable event. Carlo Collodi’s story is far more balanced than the Pinocchio most of us know (and his grillo parlante, talking cricket, an exceedingly minor character), and I really should have expected that².

Oh, and there are best-of lists being promulgated in various corners; presumably having learned their lessons since they reinstated graphic works to the best seller lists, New York Times has a nicely considered and curated list (paywalled) with Guts not only included, but in the splash image at the top.

A whole lot of lists are including The American Dream? and Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me, with Forbes providing a decent representation of the consensus (and yes, Forbes will let anybody publish anything, and have essentially zero credibility on any one-off articles you find online; this is a recurring series and has actual editorial involvement).

I used to run year-end list of Top , but I’ve pretty much moved away from that — there’s so many good books being released, there’s such a chance that I missed something good, and I don’t have time to do things like decade-long retrospectives. You found something that really spoke to you? It’s the year’s best and I may or may not agree with you, but neither of us is wrong.

Me, I found myself loving stories by or about queer women/trans allegories³, which the traditional approaches to comics not only would decide shouldn’t be published at all, but even if they were, aren’t supposed to appeal to me. They’re just really good stories is all.

Spam of the day:

There’s no turning back. Burn the boats.

This came with little burning fire emojis on either side of the text, so I guess somebody really hates boats. Don’t tell Lucy Bellwood, she’ll correct this bozo with vigor.

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¹ In the northern part of the planet, that is; for those in the southern reaches it is high summer, and for some it is a particularly hard one. It’s sobering to see how much territory is involved, overlaid on the largest population centers of the US and the UK (one of which I live in; the far corner of the box is more than twice as far from New York City than my home), but the thing is — those fires aren’t that far from Sydney. If NYC in that map were Sydney, there are fire fronts far closer to the city proper than the far box boundary. Stay safe, Oz friends.

² I could rattle off the differences between characters in the Disney versions of their stories vs the Hans Christian Andersen, Brothers Grimm, or Rudyard Kipling originals, so why should Pinocchio be any different? I’m starting to suspect that I should read the original Bambi, 101 Dalmatians, or Mary Poppins for good measure.

Fortunately, I don’t have to read Swiss Family Robinson because Ursula Vernon did that for us and boy, is it a bonkers story. Speaking of Vernon and bonkers stories, she smacked down an ignorant dude with Uncle Sven yesterday, and it was glorious.

³ But for the record, my pick for book of the year is Laura Dean, tied with Are You Listening?. I adored these stories.

Runners-up are The Midwinter Witch and Kiss Number 8, either of which could have been my personal favorite in a year that didn’t include so very much competition.