Hey. Question for you. Why are women so damn good at comics? I mean, why are there literally so many more women whose work I am excited to follow than dudes? Is it because dudes held the entire industry to themselves for so long, only letting in other dudes that looked and thought and wrote like them, resulting in staleness and homogeneity? And women, long excluded, had to up their game and be so much better than dudes who could get published just for showing up?

• Case in point #1: Dylan Meconis. She has a wicked edge to her stories, one that treads the line of humor and messing with you for being a chump, whether she’s exploring the French Revolution (via vampires), the Age Of Reason (via werewolves), or comic/SF convention culture/cliche (via the apocalypse).

  And today, her latest graphic novel hits the stores:

  This book is full of:

  • cool nuns
  • 16th century infographics
  • recycled folklore
  • embroidery trash talk
  • questionable chess strategy
  • shameless pandering to the lutist community
  • identity crises
  • dubiously symbolic flora
  • mysterious pinnipeds
  • loud young redheaded women

  There is also:

  • one (1) nun who’s kind of a jerk
  • one (1) hot lad who probably knows how to do Sword Stuff
  • one (1) fake saint and her relic, which is in point of fact a dried fish head

  Not to mention your standard royal exiles the inconvenient alternate claimant to the throne that would be the lead talking point in most elevator pitches. We’ve seen that before, but embroidery trash talk? Yes, please. There is more raw creativity in that description than in most ten-year runs of dude-centric comics.

  Additionally, I can state unreservedly that it’s gorgeous, having been present to see some of the pages painted in late April 2018. Queen Of The Sea is part of Candlewick’s expansion beyond children’s books and YA prose into the graphic novel space, and they are not screwing around. Grab a copy as soon as you can and join me in reading it.

• Case in point #2: Shing Yin Khor, who wrangles watercolors, powertools, and emotions with equal facility. Their memoir of traveling the historic Route 66 releases on 6 August, retelling a road trip with their dog Bug in search of their passions in life (including, but not limited to, giant muffler man statues, roadside dinosaur statues, and what it means to be American). They’re working on her next book, a graphic novel about the Chinese contributions to the American west, particularly in and around lumberjackery. And they just got announced as one of the featured guests for SPX this year:
  

  #SPX2019 SPECIAL GUEST: Ignatz winner Shing Yin Khor @sawdustbear, a Malaysian-American cartoonist and installation artist exploring the intersections of race, gender and immigration. Their forthcoming graphic novel, “The American Dream? A Journey on Route 66” is out in August.

  #SPX2019 SPECIAL GUEST: Cartoonist Rosemary Valero-O’Connell @hirosemaryhello who’s opening eyes with her latest, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me w/ writer, @marikotamaki. Past works includes Lumberjanes. Her illustrations work has been shown in galleries internationally.

  #SPX2019 SPECIAL GUEST: @marinaomi is the award-winning cartoonist of 4 graphic memoirs and the Life on Earth YA graphic novel trilogy as well as founder and admin of the Cartoonists of Color, Queer Cartoonists, and (soon) Disabled Cartoonists databases. http://MariNaomi.com

  #SPX2019 SPECIAL GUEST: Ignatz Award winner for Promising New Talent, @biancaxunise! Her body of work focuses primarily on the daily struggles of identifying as a young black feminist weirdo in modern society and has been featured in The Washington Post, The Nib, BBC and more.

  Checking out the Special Guests page at SPX, there’s a dozen names so far, more than half of whom are women — Emily Carroll is there, Eleanor Davis, and Raina Telgemeier. The dudes there are interesting, too — Eddie Campbell and Jaime Hernandez are essential in any conversation about comics, Box Brown does astonishingly detailed documentary comics, Ed Piskor and Kevin Huizenga are amazingly accomplished — but the women are the ones whose next work I’m dying to see.

• Case in point #3: Abby Howard does comics that hit that Kate Beatonesque sweet spot. Just detailed enough to get across the story point or emotion she’s shooting for, just esoteric enough in topic that nobody else is doing the same thing, and absolutely hilarious when funny is what she’s shooting for. Her long-running autobioish Junior Scientist Power Hour may not always be true to life — I’m not convinced her cat Spoons really went on a hero’s journey that took place in a magical realm entirely contained in Howard’s ass — and it may have been fallow while Howard was working on her utterly charming Earth Before Us trilogy, but it’s always been great reading.

  And now, it is coming to an end. She’ll keep up the journal comics on her Patreon, and the previously-uncollected JSPH strips are getting the print treatment, courtesy her new Kickstarter campaign. If you didn’t pick up her first JSPH collection, you can get it along with the new one at an advantageous price!

  It’s been a while since we busted out the Fleen Funding Factor, Mark II, but the math projects that JSPH2 will finish in the range of US$39K-58.5K (on a goal of US$30,000), with stretch goals ranging up to US$65K. She’s at 41% of goal since launching yesterday and 28 days left to go, but I need anybody with an interest to pledge so that this one completes, because if it doesn’t I might not get the original art I pledged for, and that would be a tragedy.

Spam of the day:

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss! Get a FREE Backpack While Supplies Last
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Similar messages were used to steal people’s personal information. Avoid clicking links, downloading attachments, or replying with personal information.

I was going to do a Seuss-rhyme her to express my ire, but man that’s one hard style to emulate. Guess I’ll have to content myself with Fuck you, scamming scum.

It’s dark days, my friends — literally in my case as work has me in Atlanta¹, where it’s been very rainy and thunderstormy — but even in these circumstances it’s possible to find little bits of hopefulness.

In this case, news today from Noelle Stevenson (creator of one of the greatest webcomics of memory, which appears to be lost at the moment² because some health and beauty spammers appear to have appropriated Stevenson’s site at gingerhaze.com [don’t click], but thankfully the Wayback Machine is forever) that she’ll have a new book out soon:

Big news! HarperCollins is publishing 8 years worth of journal comics as a collected comics memoir! Check out this exclusive cover reveal and interview! [flame emoji]

You’ll find the interview at io9:

The Fire Never Goes Out is a collection of seven or eight years of Stevenson’s personal comics, which come together in a memoir about her life. Some of the comics were previously published on her Tumblr page, but others are stories and comics she’s never shared before. It’s an interesting and unique look into Stevenson’s life, as she was living it, making it less of a retrospective and more of a journey through someone else’s journey.

Sold. I love the retrospectives that read like the experience of somebody’s life at playback speeds (cf: Lucy Knisley graphic novels). We can expect it in early January, about a year before the scheduled release of the film version of Nimona. Stevenson’s one of our best, most emotionally honest storytellers, and to see her tell the story of herself is going to be a delight. Follow her on Twitter, hopefully her domain comes back under her control soon, and the third season of She-Ra drops in early August. Gotta space out those little bits of light, remind yourself that there’s always another one just around the corner.

Spam of the day:

This “hidden survival muscle” in your body will boost your energy levels, immune system, sexual function, strength and athletic performance when unlocked.

Muscles are not boss fights that must be overcome by grinding or microtransactions. Get up every once in a while, stretch, touch your toes a couple times, and stop making it sound like a damn ‘cheevo.

_______________
¹ But I got to have dinner with Andy Runton last night, so that’s all right.

² I mean, it wasn’t all online any longer because the book’s been out forever now, but the first three chapters were there.

I hope that everybody is girded and oiled, you gotta be careful not to hurt yourself. For those of you not familiar with WSD, it’s Jeffrey Rowland’s favorite holiday and it features sauntering, obvs, and must be observed no matter how busy you may be.

And on this World Sauntering Day (or more accurately, Sauntereve), we saw a miracle: lo, the word came from the firmaments that something joyous was upon us:

WE’RE LIVE. Back “Shattered Spear” now on Kickstarter to bring @claystorks’ incredible comic to print at ICC, for the FIRST AND LAST TIME.

And the print edition of Shattered Spear is FUNDED! Thank you, everyone! This KS will continue to run for a full 30 days, to give @claystorks’ readers as much time as possible to back. But don’t miss out! This book will NOT BE AVAILABLE after this KS!

We are LESS THAN $200 AWAY from Shattered Spear’s ONE AND ONLY stretch goal of a sweet cover enhancement!

And that’s IT. “Shattered Spear” is now not just funded, but has hit its one and only stretch goal of a cover enhancement. The book is not only happening, it’s gonna be PRETTY. You have 29 DAYS LEFT to get you hands on this book! Don’t let it get away!

What’s the big deal, Gary? An Iron Circus book funded in five and a half hours, we see that all the time. Ah, but it’s not just a fast-funding Iron Circus book, for a couple of reasons:

• This is the launch of a new imprint, Circus Maximus¹, the purpose of which is to showcase short, unique comics.
• Specifically, things that have not been in print before, and will not be in print again. These are one-shots.
• They have low price points, low goals, short duration runs, and short fulfillment windows. I’d bet you a dollar that the files have already been specced out with Spike’s printer of choice, quotes for both fancy- and non-fancy cover choices received, and as soon as the campaign closes the go order will be given.

So instead of a traditional book publisher-type deal (some years of rights to the work, options to renew, new printings in future as warranted), Circus Maximus is closer to a magazine structure (right of first publication only, unlikely to reprint, narrow timeframe to obtain fromthe publisher and afterwards only on a secondary market). Think of the entire CM project as a very particular, occasionally-updated literary magazine where every issue has a different theme/editor — a mutant child of Granta, Utne Reader, and The Nib — and you won’t be far off the mark. Otava Heikkilä may do a printing of Shattered Spear in the future (indeed, this run may be proof of concept more than anything else), but it won’t be from Iron Circus.

I’ve said it before — sleep on the things that Spike is inventing/experimenting with at your peril. And sleep on this Kickstart only if you’re comfortable maybe never having a physical copy of what’s likely a terrific story.

Spam of the day:

We have found that Your email Adress have been Subscribe on All “Adult Porn +18” Website. If you want to receive more emails
We need you to CONFIRM whether you are a Subscriber or Not! Have a nice day :)

Wow, I have been Subscribe on All porn websites? That … seems like it would take a lot of time.

_______________
¹ No word yet if Iron Circus semibenevolent dictator for life C Spike Trotman will retroactively declare the smut offerings part of an imprint called Circus Penis, but come one, it’s sitting right there!

Things are afoot, my friends. They are footy. Footlike. Gotta keep on our toes.

• It’s been just about a year since the ALA created a new round table dedicated to graphic novels, and that means that the annual conference in Washington, DC next week will likely see a larger contingent of comics folk than in the recent past.

  Taking a quick peek at the exhibitor list/floor plan, you’ve got Iron Circus (2108A), not far from Dark Horse (1915), and somewhere in the enormous mass of Penguin/Random House (the entire 1800-block) is Random House Graphic (Hi, Gina!). Finishing up over in the 1500-plus-or-minus zone you’ve got Macmillan Childrens Publishing Group (that’s :01 Books and allies, 1504 & 1505), Oni Press (1519), Drawn & Quarterly (1514), BOOM! Studios (1616, and spend a little less on your damn booth so you can pay your creators). Scholastic (1232 and 1233) is off on its own, and includes the Graphix imprint, which means Raina Telgemeier, Kazu Kibuishi, Baby Sitters Club, BONE, and I don’t know how many other mega-titles. Yen Press (1134) is ove there too, and I’ve probably missed a bunch.

  But the significant thing is, about 20 aisles west of Iron Circus, I’m noting an entire section given over to graphic novels and an Artist Alley (which I think is a new development). There you’ll find Ngozi Ukazu (3934), Yuko Ota & Ananth Hirsh (3936), Ru Xu (3938), Tess Stone (3940), Brian Clevinger (3951) — basically, the entire George Rohac lineup) — along with names such as Jim Rugg, Gene Ha, and Top Shelf/IDW.

  It’s into this new acknowledgment of the importance of comics in reading that Booklist, a publication of the ALA, will be letting everybody get back from Annual and then take a couple of weeks to sort through what they brought home before diving into a free two-part webinar on graphic novels. The first features BOOM!, Diamond distributors (ick), Image Comics, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Scholastic. It’ll be at 1:00pm CDT (GMT-05:00) on Tuesday, 9 July. Want to see where libraries are going with comics? Yeah, you do, because that’s the first step to getting yours included.

• On the far side of the continent from Washington, DC you’ll find San Francisco and the Cartoon Art Museum. They’d like to remind you that one of their current exhibitions looks at teens and their teenness via the medium of comics. Specifically they’d like you to know that the selection of modern teen comics published by BOOM! Studios from the exhibition abstract includes originals from pencils to finished work:
  

  Before and after: ‘Giant Days’ (@lbtreiman, @smashpansy, @badmachinery) and ‘Lumberjanes’ (@BrooklynAAllen, @PencilCat, @Gingerhazing, @shanito) — now featured as part of our #teenage comics retrospective. @boomstudios @Lumberjanes

  Obligatory moment to note that Giant Days will be ending in just a few issues, sniff. But dang, Max Sarin can draw pretty pictures.

Spam of the day:

Alzheimer’s!

That superfluous exclamation makes me think you’re trying to reference the title of a Broadway musical. You know, Allllllllllzheimer’s, where the wait what was I saying?

Hey, remember when the news broke, ’bout four months back, that Randall Munroe would be doing a book about how to do stuff?

For any task you might want to do, there’s a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally bad that no one would ever try it. How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems is a guide to the third kind of approach. It’s the world’s least useful self-help book.

So Zach Weinersmith’s BAH!Fest if it were run by experimenters instead of theorists¹, then. Very, very insane experimenters. How To releases on 3 September, and the same day, Munroe starts his book tour at the Harvard Science Center. The following two weeks will find him in Washington, DC, New York City, Ann Arbor, Portland (OR)², Seattle, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Kansas City, Cincinnati, Louisville (KY), and Raleigh (NC). Venues and associates include the likes of Sidwell Friends School, Politic ‘n’ Prose, Cooper Union, The Strand, Powell’s, University of Utah, NC State University, a couple of churches, a library, and a fraternity³.

There will be one more stop on the book tour, and to get Munroe to your town (United States only), you’re going to have to gather some friends, some books, and some creativity:

Arrange the titles of your favorite books into sentences that tell a story, assemble a single continuous line of people holding up the covers, and take a photo or video documenting your feat. You can make the story as long as you want, but each book needs to be held by a different human.

Creative grammar is fine, and you’ll get extra credit for including as many books and people as possible.

Now, write the best story you can within those limits, and either post it to the sosh-meeds under the hashtag #howtoxkcd or email it to howtoxkcd — which can be found at Google’s e-mail, dot-com (say that last bit in a Homestar Runner voice for bonus points from me … I’m not sure Munroe will hear you) — between 10 June and 31 July. The additional tour stop will be announced in August.

As we all know, give Munroe’s readers a challenge, and they exceed all expectations. Best be creative as all get-out, and get to work.

Spam of the day:

One thing I am tired of is high power bills. I want to share with you a way to never for power again.

I used to dream about the day I would never for power again. Alas, big power again will require me to always for, never to never.

_______________
¹ I am reminded of that time when Richard Feynman was given a tour of CERN and shown to a massive block of science (you now the ones, they’re all over CERN) that his tour guide was busy explaining when he realized Oh! This will test your hypothesis about charge change in particles, Professor Feynman.

Feynman looked up and down over the looming, cavernous pile of technology and asked how much it cost. The guide said 37 million dollars or whatever the figure was, and Feynman asked You don’t trust me? You can find it in here.

² Event info coming soon; click here to pre-order the book for the event.

³ That is, a nerd frat; my father was a member alongside Robert Lucky, a situation that I believe I have mentioned with some slight bitterness. Also, if you follow that link, bear in mind it was from before we knew Doug TenNapel was a jerk about and to transfolk.

Tuesdays often seem to be the busy day in Webcomicslandia; maybe it’s a knock-on effect of how books and magazines release on Tuesdays, or maybe it’s anticipation of comic books releasing on Wednesday. Maybe it’s a figment of my imagination. Whatever the case, it’s definitely busier than Thursdays … Thursdays are dead.

• Danielle Corsetto might have been somebody you didn’t expect to hear from, what with Boo! It’s Sex wrapping up last week and all. But she’s back with a public Patreon post about BIS finishing, about other projects on deck, and about how she’s about to hit the road and you just might be on her path:
  

  I’m leaving this Thursday [editor’s note: day after tomorrow, 6 June] (SHIT THAT IS REALLY SOON) to work on “the book” — it still doesn’t have a name — on the west coast, among other talented cartoonists, writers, and illustrators.

  I could’ve flown, but of course I decided to make it A Whole Thing and do signings and camp out along the way. So if you’re on my route between here and Portland and back, I may be stopping at a comic shop near you!

  So that’s a roadtrip from Shepherdstown, West Virginia to Portland, where she’ll be in residence at the famed Helioscope for a month working on a new book that takes place in Shepherdstown. Sometimes, you need distance and place filled with creative friends to really make progress on a project. Along the way, she’ll be making stops for comic shop signings in Madison, Wisconsin (Friday, 7 June), Portland (Saturday, 15 June, along with Lucy Bellwood and Erika Moen), and Omaha (TBD, but probably Tuesday, 9 July).

  If you want one of the big-ass Girls With Slingshots omnibuses, best to drop Corsetto a line so she takes up precious space in her car for it. Every one of those things she packs is going to decrease her car’s fuel economy by about 3.7 MPG, so if you reserve one you better show up to buy it.

  And the best part of this entire trip? She’ll get to spend a month hanging out with Sally the greyhound. I’m so envious.

• Hey, you know who publishes that big-ass Girls With Slingshots omnibus? Iron Circus. Know what’s going on with Iron Circus these days? C Spike Trotman is more than happy to share. If you missed IC at CAKE last weekend, you should still be on the lookout for:

  Delver is now up to issue #4, with the conclusion due on 26 July. I enjoyed the preview of issue #1 and if there’s any way for me to consume this story on paper¹ I will drop some cash on it. Seeing as how the final issue is due just after SDCC, I suspect we may seen an announcement during the show.

  And taking a cue from the long line of vendors of semi-disreputable merch (we’re talking porn here, people), Spike is celebrating the release of the third volume of Iris And Angel by declaring that the first one’s free. If you like the story about doing’ taxes² and dudes in lingerie, the parts 2 and 3 are five bucks a pop.

  And if you require comics on paper (see footnote 1, below), there’s new print comics including the previously-mentioned How Do You Smoke A Weed? (now shipping after its concluded Kickstart), and Minus, a YA thriller. For lo, Spike has seen the pile o’ money that is YA fiction and has decided to jump in and good for her.

Spam of the day:

The “Go Ahead” Signal That Makes Him Obsessed With Winning Your Love

I can’t tell if this is meant for a woman, or for a gay dude, but I have no need for your love secrets that will make any man desperate for me. Thanks, I guess?

_______________
¹ I resolutely avoid purchasing media that I do not get to own in a physical form. If I needed any further convincing of this, the problems that a student of mine had yesterday trying to attend class with a DRM-protected e-book that would not open would have sealed the deal.

² Not a euphemism, they’re actually doing taxes.

I’ve got about nothing left in the proverbial tank, so here’s some quick things you might want to check out:

• Abby Howard’s third Earth Before Us book, Mammal Takeover!, inches closer to release. Age Of Horns, folks — deer and rats and bunnies all with horns, and dog-sized rhinos and house-sized sloths and VW Bug-sized armadillos all over the damn place. Each of the EBU books has been released a bit later than the one before it (start of August 2017, mid-August 2018, next one in mid-September) because it takes time to fit all that awesomeness in. Hopefully Ronnie will get back from the past without bringing every cute fluffy thing home with her in Ms Lernin’s Science Magic recycle bin.
• Jim Zub has thought more about the logistics of making a career in comics than you; he just has. His primers and data-shares and constant responses to open questions on Tumblr¹ could constitute an outline of how to take a shot at a vocation in a notorious luck-driven and inconstant profession. His latest tutorial tackles that space where you’ve gotten all your shit together and made a comic … and then find yourself asking What now? as the heady rush of accomplishment starts to fade and you realize you’re still at the very beginning of the process. But if you absolutely had to condense it down to a single thought, it would be:
  

  The first few paying gigs you get will probably be extremely difficult to track down, but with each one you’ll build up your skills and contacts. It really is a creative journey. As stressful as it can be, enjoy the process and celebrate your accomplishments.

  Smart guy, that Zub.

Okay, hopefully tomorrow allows for a more leisurely approach to writing. Have fun until then.

Spam of the day:

Redeem Your Sam’s Club Reward before it expires

Sam’s Club is named for Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, and thus a place I would never do business with on account of my personal interactions with Walmart corporate has led me to believe that they are possibly the most exploitative corporation on the face of the planet. Sure, Amazon screws over a lot of people, but they do it with algorithms; Walmart engages in that in-person, face-to-face artisanally-crafted over-screwing which lacks even the veneer of distant, disconnected people not realizing the import of their actions. Screw your fake offer of accepting something from the worst people in an attempt to steal my info, scammers.

_______________
¹ Including many asked in bad faith by frothing assholes, who always receive a far more polite and meaningful answer than they deserve.

It’s axiomatic with me that for very nearly every creator whose work I enjoy, I have a single answer to the question Which of their projects is your favorite? Because creators grow in skill and the breadth of their worldview, because practice doesn’t ever drag somebody backwards, the answer is generally¹ The next one. And in the last 24 hours, we’ve gotten a couple of The next one announcements that look very good indeed.

Let’s start with the news from Shaenon Garrity (creator of too many good things to list, but presently working on Skin Horse with Jeffrey C Wells), via Twitter:

Guess @chris_j_baldwin and I can officially announce this…

That would be Christopher Baldwin, who also has done too many good works to list them all, but who is presently working on the second series of Spacetrawler. And the this in the tweet is a screencap of a publishing announcement which reads:

Karen Wojtyla at McElderry Books has acquired world rights to the YA graphic novel Willowweep Manor by Shaenon K Garrity, illustrated by Christopher J Baldwin. Teenage Haley is obsessed with all things Gothic, but never imagined she’d experience them in real life, until the day she rescues a drowning young man and wakes up in a 19th-century estate complete with brooding gentlemen, sinister servants, and an actual ghost. But all is not as it appears, as Haley learns she has not been swept into the past, but instead into a strange universe all its own. Publication is slated for fall 2020; Barry Goldblatt at Barry Goldblatt Literary handled the deal.

In no particular order:

• As much as I love Garrity’s solo comics work, her collaborations are where she really shines. Baldwin is going to design the hell out of the vaguely unsettling characters and scenery.
• To hit a release date in the fall of next year, that book is already done. It’s on final edit if not already queued for printing in China and the long journey here to hit the late Spring/early Summer festivals and cons for promotion.
• That description has me hooked. I hope it’s actually book one of a series.
• Barry Goldblatt (along with Seth Fishman and a few others) are really stepping into the space pioneered by the legendary Judy Hansen. The fact that I can name multiple graphic novel literary agents off the top of my head should tell you that comics are in a damn golden age of quality and variety.

And then earlier today, the entirely essential Oliver Sava at The AV Club brought the news that John Allison has his next series lined up, what with Giant Days wrapping in a few months, and By Night about to publish issue 12 of 12. We knew that Allison was working on something new, given the hiatus announcement in October that put on Scary Go Round/Bad Machinery on an indefinite pause, and the latter-day Bobbins strips bringing the entire Tackleverse to a quiesced state in February.

As recently as this week, Allison promised us new projects post-Giant Days, with fabulous new characters, and mayhap even the return of an old favorite. But it appears that the next Allisonian project will be Steeple, a five-issue supernatural horror series, with Allison on both writing and art duties², with colors by Sarah Stern, letters by Jim Campbell, and at least one cover by current Giant Days artist Max Sarin.

It’s a story about good and evil (and the greys between) and a trainee priest in Cornwall and just maybe a certain inescapable Tackleford regular³. Steeple #1 releases on 18 September from Dark Horse, who’ve been in rather a bit of need for new properties (having lost the Buffy and Star Wars licenses, and seen longtime mainstay Usagi Yojimbo head to IDW and the promise of monthly color), so hopefully they’re giving Allison the royal treatment.

Because after all, what he does next is going to be his best yet.

Spam of the day:

In 3 weeks he lost 27 lbs? In 3 months he lost 84 lbs?

He’s either got a tapeworm or he’s doing irreparable harm to himself. Please stop holding either up as behavior to be emulated.

_______________
¹ With the caveat that this depends on the creator in question having control over their work. I stand second to nobody in my admiration of Gene Luen Yang’s work, but when DC put him on Superman, it was apparent from my POV as a reader that editorial was jerking him every which way from month to month. He had different artists, radical shifts in story, plots suddenly dropped, and it can only be because he was doing work that was changed at the last minute to accommodate something going on in another comic.

Compare to what he was able to do with superhero story forms on The Shadow Hero, or beloved (but corporate-owned) IP on Avatar: The Last Airbender and the conclusion is either his work was severely constrained/interfered with, or he suddenly forgot how to do comics for ten issues of Superman, then went back to being a master of the form again.

² We haven’t had a comic-sized story with Allison on art since the Giant Days Christmas story, and I’ve missed his style on the page.

³ Sadly, not Desmond Fishman. Probably.

Like a lot of you, I first became aware of Tillie Walden when she started winning Ignatzen a few years back. The webcomic release of On A Sunbeam occurred in short order — nearly a year before Spinning — and I loved both (particularly the big, chapter-long chunks of story released of OAS, making the wait for updates rewarding and full of meaty story progression). But since :01 Books was kind enough to send me a copy of the print release of On A Sunbeam, and since I heard Walden talk about her relationship with her work at the Alaska Robotics Mini-Con¹, I’ve decided to revisit and share my thoughts. It’s going to be light on the spoilers, but I won’t say there are none.

On A Sunbeam is huge. It’s 500 pages (down from 700, Walden said in Juneau; she may not do much in the way of preparatory design or layout in her straight-to-ink process, but she’ll do a hell of a lot of editing later on²) worth of heavy, with a tactile paper and deeply-infused inks that retain hints of their original aroma long after being produced. To read this story in print is an undertaking, a confrontation of physical heft that lends weight to the story. She may regard the book as an afterthought to the act of creation, but when the book is this substantial before you even open it, you feel the work the story required. It demands your attention.

Walden’s not a fan of science fiction and doesn’t claim it as a source of inspiration, so naturally the book is up for a Hugo. Maybe the most radical departure from all but the most recent Hugo winners, the most speculative part of the speculative fiction is that Walden’s imagined a universe not just of life in space and far-flung communities in the firmament, but one where every character but one is female. It’s utterly unremarked-upon, there’s no backstory to say and that’s why there are no more men, it just is, a quiet fact lurking in the background until you realize there’s no dudes.

That one character that’s not female? They’re nonbinary.

Sure, much of the story takes place at a boarding school “For Girls”, or aboard a small ship where there don’t happen to be any men, but then the accumulated weight of the story kicks in. So many references to sisters and daughters, and casual reference to your or my moms. Is it a thesis statement or an aspiration? I think it’s more that there’s nothing in the story — school, bullies, love, family, loss — that requires the presence of men, so there aren’t any. It’s not a society that’s set in opposition to men, or defined by its separation from or absence of men, it just doesn’t have any and possibly never did. It sneaks up on you.

And it’s that casual display of the details of this universe that makes the story and the setting so beautiful. Little grace notes like shoes by the entrance of the spaceship and clutter everywhere tell us this isn’t sweeping space opera, it’s just life that happens to take place in space. Sure, the ships look like carp — complete with eyes and mouths and swimmy fins to keep them aloft — and homes, offices, and school campuses are their own, free-traveling craft, but it’s still just life. Live in a community in a weird part of space that may kill you getting in or out? Cool, you still need horses to get between towns. Want to set up a sports tournament between schools? They’ll need to rendezvous and dock with each other first.

The story is told initially in two threads, today and five years ago, paralleling the experience of the protagonist as she finds love and creates family. Bits of lore drop in conversation and become important, or are utterly forgotten (there’s an offhand reference to Earth, but it seems to be just another place you can live and not the cradle of humanity or anything). The plot in each time progresses on in the way that life does — often mundane, or frustrating, but rarely full of high adventure — until every hundred pages or so, Walden hits us with a showstopper. These moments come out of nowhere, and pack the emotional wallop that an entire series of comics might be built around³. There’s a character break that’s shocking and utterly earned. An act of bravery. A moment of fear and loss.

And in just about the exact middle of the book, the actual thesis statement for On A Sunbeam, and for Walden’s work as a whole:

Have you ever even considered that something that’s trivial to you could mean … so much more to someone else? You don’t get to take the easy road out and just respect the parts of people that you recognize.

That’s goddamn beautiful. More beautiful than the worldbuilding and imagination and the gorgeous illustrations. The most important thing is being willing to extend respect to somebody who’s different, whether you’re in a universe of fish-ships and schools wafting among the stars or not. You don’t get to decide what’s important for anybody other than yourself.

Take your time with On A Sunbeam; read it, exist in the story, listen to what it has to say. Set it aside for a day, or a month, and come back to it again; new little details will jump out at you, obvious now in ways they weren’t before. Read it again in a year, two, ten, and let it lead you back into that place where respect can be required, and love and family can be the foundation you build upon.

Spam of the day:

But if you’re still stuck on squats and lunges to grow your butt, you need to stop NOW.

Maybe you need to stop now, but my butt is friggin’ glorious.

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¹ And, at various points, we discussed other things, including what winning fuck-you lottery money would mean, desert island books, and Game Of Thrones. She’s really smart and utterly sincere and has become one of my favorite people.

² Which, if you recall our prior discussions of how Mark Siegel prefers to approach editing in :01 releases, is a unique way of working. Add to the fact that the story was done in about a year, including living overseas, and it’s pretty much inconceivable that the book actually exists. Only the most monstrous of work ethics could actually result in this story seeing completion.

³ Think Superman and Regan on the ledge, or Old Doreen and Old Nancy deciding to go back in time knowing it’ll reset their decades-long love, but they’ll find a way to recreate it.

More book reviews in the immediate future, friends, but I wanted to take a moment to catch up on some things that have happened in the recent weeks that I had previously missed. In no particular order, then:

• Know who’s cool? Lucy Bellwood. Like, adventuring around the world cool, has a better haircut than you cool, and teaming up with Scott McCloud to explain some tech stuff¹ cool. In this case, the tech stuff is federated learning, and the comic (story by Bellwood & McCloud, art by Bellwood) will bring you up to speed.

  In case you’re wondering about working for a giant behemoth that’s completely abandoned all pretense of having Don’t be evil as a guiding principle, may I remind you that Google has an enormous budget for things of this nature, and I sincerely hope that Bellwood and McCloud were given the equivalent of a dump truck full o’ money for their work on the comic.

• I mentioned the winners of the NCS division awards for webcomics² on Sunday but did I mention the latest Johnny Wander Kickstart? On Twitter, yeah, but not here so let’s talk about it now. Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh are Kickstarting a book of previously-uncollected (and new!) comics on the theme of travel in this, the tenth year of Johnny’s wandering. It’ll be great.

  In case you’re wondering how much you want to deal with Kickstarter given the news about the company not accepting a proposed union, may I remind you this is what’s happened when unions were proposed in all cases in the history of unionization except maybe three? Yeah, I had expectations of Kickstarter-the-public-benefit-corporation being better than this, but all this means is that the next stage of labor law gets followed: there’s a vote, and if the employees vote for a union they have to recognize it.

  Honestly, I think it’s just the reflexive distrust of anything other than rugged self-made mandom³ that is the hallmark of anybody that’s temperamentally suited to be a tech executive. The vote’ll happen, my money’s on it passes, and then the entire damn industry has a reckoning to face. And even at their worst, KS not embracing a union wholeheartedly will still damage comics creators a couple order of magnitude less than the shitshow aftermath of the Oni/Lion Forge let’s be movie producers together wankfest merger.

• Now that the Canadian {T | Van}CAFs are behind us, I’m thinking of things happening in about eight weeks in San Diego. Way too many people and way too much stuff, but I should point out that webcomicky types like Randall Munroe, Katie O’Neill, Carey Pietsch, and Ursula Vernon will be present as guests of the con.

  In case you’re wondering how I’m going to find an area of concern that balances out the news just to keep up the pattern, I’m not. These folks are great and you should read their stuff and let them know they rock.

Spam of the day:

{Well | Prince | Genoa | Lucca | arenow |justfamily | estates | Buonapartes | ButIarn | youifyou | tellme | thatthis | meanswar | ifyoustill | trytodefend | theinfamies | andhorrors | perpetrated | bythat | Antichrist | really | believe | heisAntichrist | willhave | nothing | moreto | dowith | youandyou | arenolonger | myfriend | nolongermy | faithful | slaveas | youcall | yourself | Buthow | doyoudo |

And that’s in the From: field of the email header. I leave it to your imagination how the body of the message progressed.

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¹ One may recall a day ten and a half years ago when the world was introduced to the Chrome browser by McCloud.

² Requisite disclaimer: I am part of the nominating/judging process for these awards.

³ Baaaarrrrrfff.