A few weeks before MoCCA Fest, the fine folks at :01 Books sent me uncorrected proof of Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me (words by Mariko Tamaki, pictures by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell) and I dove in. I held my review until closer to release date (which was, uh, two weeks ago) and then got caught up reporting on this year’s #ComicsCamp, so I’m late. But you know what? I got to read it a couple more times, so that’s okay. I’ve done my best to avoid spoilers — not much here you wouldn’t find on the back cover — but take care in any event.

My first readthrough caused me to think a lot about Kiss Number 8 by Colleen AF Venable and Ellen T Crenshaw, because they’re both about finding yourself, dealing with a shitty friend (and confronting the realization you might be the shitty friend), with LGBTQ identity to the fore. But LDKBUWM is less a parallel to KN8 and more a perpendicular. This is different time, a different place, a different reality in terms of LGBTQ freedoms. It’s not about finding yourself in the realization of sexuality or exiting a closet — most characters in LDKBUWM are either LGBTQ in some sense, or at least appears heteroflexible¹ — so if you take the coming out part of the teen story away, what do you get?

You get what was requested the Queers & Comics Conference: a queer comics character who’s bad. You get a character who can be a complete antagonist who happens to be queer, rather than a villain because they’re queer, or somebody that has to be presented as an exemplar of humanity to be a worthy enough queer to be included in the story.

Or if not a villain/bad in the traditional sense, at least a total dick.

Laura Dean is popular, hot, entitled, a mistreater of whoever isn’t in her favor at this instant (particularly her nominal girlfriend Freddie, who she keeps breaking up with) and a serial gaslighter; her go-to whenever called on her shitty behavior is Don’t be mad, making the subject of her mistreatment feel like they’re the one that’s at fault for overreacting. If only they’d been a better person, Laura Dean wouldn’t have had to act that way. Look what you made her do.

If Laura Dean were Loren Dean and presented as male, the story could be one step away from a cautionary after-school special about bad boyfriends that turn into abusers. As it is, she’s a user of people rather than an abuser, but if we check in on her in ten years I bet she’s got a TRO or two.

And as crappy a person as Laura Dean is, she makes those in her orbit worse, too. Freddie is neglectful of her friends, wrapped up in trying to get back into Laura Dean’s graces, knowing that she needs to make one of these breakups stick but half convincing herself that she can change enough that everything will be good in the future with Laura Dean. This is the finding yourself part of the story — deciding not how to present yourself as an identity, but deciding on how you choose to act.

Structurally, LDKBUWM is a little bit different; it doesn’t so much start as the reader begins paying attention to these characters at a certain point in time that’s really no more or less significant than any other. It’s arguably got a conclusion that it works towards, but really it just sort of fades out. The characters existed before page 1, they continue to exist after page 289, their stories continue and ebb and flow and branch and rejoin, like a river that we put our boat in at one particular place and pulled ashore again a few weeks later; we can see the extensions of the water upstream and downstream of the section we traversed and know that there’s more there.

Characters are revealed by small choices in their dialogue, but also in posture and visual habits. Freddie and her best friend Doodle both present as needing affection and attention, but they go about it in different ways. Freddie’s all public gestures and reactions, where Doodle is made of quiet implication. I spent my first read thinking that Doodle’s somewhere on the autism spectrum but have ultimately decided that she isn’t — but she was raised by a single parent who is. Her affect is of somebody that is learning to be demonstrative, having lacked the example of it at home. None of this is stated, and all of it may be completely off base, but it’s how the characters read to me … and it’s been a long while since characters on a page have left me with such distinct impressions of who they are by subtle implication.

That’s equally down to Tamaki’s plotting and dialogue and to the visuals, which let’s discuss. I’ve been talking up Rosemary Valero-O’Connell for about three years since I first met her. I said at the time that her minis reflected an unusually strong sense of page composition and design, and that her characters reminded me of two veteran manga creators whose work I love. Both have improved in the intervening time, especially her faces. Freddie has bits of Terry Moore’s Francine Peters in her big, expressive face, and Doodle says more with a raised eyebrow than a page of dialogue could contain². Crucially, and it’s the first time I’ve ever noticed this, Valero-O’Connell’s faces retain their expressiveness in 360 degree rotation; with remarkably few lines, there’s a shifting in the shape and weight of mouth, cheeks, eyebrows, and the entire skull shifts to convey mood.

She’s not afraid to have people speaking over their shoulder, and let the listener who’s facing us have the reaction; it’s astonishingly strong work. Plus, she does this one bit where a jerk jock is all homophobic at supporting character Buddy: we never see his face but can tell from the tilt of his head, the slump of his shoulders, the refusal to look at the gym coach who’s dressing him down, exactly what expression he’s wearing. Yeah, it’s our brains filling in what we can’t see, but it’s also the case that Jerkboy has the same blonde undercut as Laura Dean, and we’ve seen enough of her shitty girlfriend entitled smarm to fill in that detail. The reader, on an instinctual level (it took me four or five readthroughs to realize it), has been promoted to full partner in the visuals of the story.

And those visuals are lush. The characters — not just the named ones that we get to know, but all the backgrounders going through their own stories that we don’t get to eavesdrop on — are all unique. Skin color, modes of dress, hairstyle, size and shape — all of them are varied, giving the sense of a public school in a place that’s truly diverse (Berkeley, California), as opposed to TV or movies³ where a “diverse, random” crowd is 70% male and 70% white and all “Hollywood average” in appearance.

It’s not just people who’ve been on the receiving end of a bad partner in a relationship that will feel seen reading LDKBUWM, it’s just about everybody — there in the background, each character drawn with the same care and respect as the starring and supporting players. Someday, Tamaki will write or Valero-O’Connell will illustrate some of those stories, and we’ll see Freddie or Doodle or Laura Dean pass by in the background.

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me is a stellar achievement in comics, and is the one to beat in my private list of best books of 2019. You can find it wherever books are sold, and carries my highest recommendation for the teen-and-up in your life.

Spam of the day:

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¹ Crowd scenes feature lots of seeming same-sex or gender ambiguous couples, which may be part of the script or may be a choice on Valero-O’Connell’s part.

² I’m reminded of longtime NPR Morning Edition host Bob Edwards, who could vocally lift an eyebrow over the radio with a single, arch syllable — Oh? — when interviewing some political powerbroker who was clearly lying.

³ Or too many comics, sad to say.

A number of things happened while we’ve been going through the 2019 #ComicsCamp recap; for example, TCAF and a book that I loved, loved, loved released (review coming). A catch-up, then, for you.

There’s not one, not two, but three comics events take place in different corners of the continent starting tomorrow.

• Out in California, you’ve got NCSFest on the pier and surrounding public areas of Huntington Beach; it’ll be a Euro-style public festival, and feature the naming of this year’s Reuben Awards on Saturday. Follow the likes of Brad Guigar and Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett for news on the ground.
• In Vancouver, you’ve got VanCAF kicking off on Saturday, with appearances expected from Abby Howard, Alina Pete, Ben Passmore, Boya Sun, Catie Donnelly, Cloudscape Comics, Emily Carroll, Evan Dahm, Faith Erin Hicks, Gigi DG, Haley Boros, Heather Gilbraith, Kazu Kibuishi, Kel McDonald, Kory Bing, Lars Brown, Mariko Tamaki, Matthew Bogart, Molly Muldoon, Msassyk, Pia Guerra, Ryan North, Sam Logan, Sarah Becan, Sloane Leong, Steve LeCouilliard, Steve Rolston, Tony Cliff, and Zac Thompson. That’s just the name I recognized on a fast pass over the guest list, and that means there’s even more creators that I (and maybe you) don’t know yet and get to discover.
• And in New York tomorrow and Saturday, the biennial Queers & Comics Conference takes place at the School of Visual Arts. If you want to go to an event that’s all sessions, it’s US$20 to register for the whole shebang. Panelists on various topics include Mariko Tamaki (who may be jetlagged, so be kind to her in Vancouver), Magdalene Visaggio, Alison Wilgus, Beth Barnett, Phil Jimenez, Rachel Pollack, Karen Green, Josh Trujillo, Paige Braddock, Kori Michele Handwerker, Blue Delliquanti, Jay Edidin, Sophie Labelle, Sam Orchard, Gina Gagliano, Tony Breed, Bill Roundy, and a whole bunch of folks whose names I don’t recognize. I’m going at least on Friday. I may or may not be writing up my experience; I suspect that I’ll be shutting up, listening and pointing you to a bunch of people’s work.

Speaking of pointing to people’s work, there were creators I met at Camp¹ whose work is new to me, and you should check it out. In no particular order, then: Anastasia Longoria, AnneMarie Rogers, Michael DiPetrillo, Leila del Duca, Jessi Jordan, Colin Andersen, Beth Barnett, Megan Baehr, Ally Colthoff, Tori Rielly, Bekka Lyn, Payton F, The Giant Rat, and Lily Williams.

And if you read this page you damn well better know who Tillie Walden is, but her UK publisher has put together a starter kit of her tricky-to-find first three books (she was only able to sell me two of them in Alaska). Okay, might not want to spring for the shipping if you’re not already in the UK/Europe (on this side of the pond, there’s a limited supply at Retrofit), but I thought I should point out that she had books before Spinning and that you should get them.

That should do for now. I’ll try to get something together for tomorrow, but the Q&C Conference is going to take up pretty much the whole day.

Spam of the day:

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Oh yes, pair of white guys, please tell me more about how you have decided that you are the official deciders of how to properly enact a traditional Hawai’ian practice. That’s totally cool of you.

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¹ You didn’t think I was really done just because I’d talked about everything that happened, did you?

For those who are new around here, there’s this thing called #ComicsCamp, run by the fine folks at Alaska Robotics (which is a comics shop¹, game shop, art supply shop, and gallery) in Juneau, and it involves bringing creative folks into schools, public events, and a one-day convention before giving them a weekend of recharging and also s’mores. I’ve been privileged to attend three times now, and you can read about my previous experiences at Camp here, here, here, here, and here. Those two series will read differently from each other, and from the one that’s starting now — Camp’s a living, breathing thing, and it changes.

It started for me a couple of days before my travel with a bit of a panic — the SSD in my laptop decided it had reached end of life and bricked itself good; there’s a hard drive in there, too, but it was a tense couple of hours getting Linux reinstalled and data salvaged. Fortunately, I keep a bootable USB drive attached to the power converter cable, so I didn’t have to go searching too far. The whole thing’s a lot slower than it used to be (or should be), but that’s an issue for later this week; it got me through what it needed to, which was ensuring that the creator presentations for one of the public events — about which more momentarily — were tested and projectable.

In addition to seeing a swathe of Campers arrive, Thursday 25 April also saw public events: storytime and a ‘zine making workshop at one of the Juneau public libraries², the Juneau Makerspace got some hands-on puzzle-cutting knowledge from the master, and a lecture by Ryan North on How To Invent Everything which he should know, on account of he wrote a book that tells you how to do exactly that. In case you’re looking for the high points, they include:

• Young Ryan first became aware of the notion of time travel when he was six and saw Back To The Future for the first time; it made an impression³ and he was particularly struck by the Chuck Berry scene and thus had an appreciation of the Bootstrap Paradox at a far younger age than most of us.
• Having decided to write what is surely The Most Dangerous Book In History, North found himself staring down literally years, plural, of research⁴ to determine not only what the key technologies of human history are, but also how to create them from first principles while simultaneously not imparting knowledge that might hurt or kill his readers. This led to what may have been the most existentially self-evident question of all when North asked himself (and I quote):
  

  Have I accidentally decided to do something impossible?

  Again??

• But he persevered, and found within all that research to find a key thought re: human inventiveness and creativity; namely We are not as smart as we think we are. He rattled off a series of key inventions in history — human flight, or the stethoscope⁵ — and found that they came about centuries or millennia after we had the basic parts and just failed to put them together⁶. In the case of arguably the greatest invention in human history⁷ — written language, which allows us to preserve knowledge across time, space, and culture — we were about 200,000 years late.
• The more basic the technology, the later we were, and the further back in time you go, the worse things get. Now-ubiquitous crops were terrible, people died because they didn’t know to wash their damn selves, and the only positive of the past is that if you do end up there, you can name things after yourself.

One thing you should know about Juneau is that it’s basically the same as Portland or Seattle, just smaller; you’ve got great food (shouts-out to The Rookery Cafe and In Bocca Al Lupo, who both fed more than their share of Campers before and after our time off-grid, and the astonishingly good Coppa Ice Cream), great cultural institutions, and great people. Give them something fun to do, and they’ll arrive in droves, as they did for the Kickoff Event at the Valley branch of the JPL. In addition to music from the Marian, Seth & Maria Rockin’ Teenage Combo, you had:

• Cat Farris reading from her graphic novel, My Boyfriend Is A Bear. Fun fact! Farris and I spent several days bonding over our greyhounds, because greyhound people are the best people.
• Molly Muldoon talking about how to solve a murder all Agatha Christie style. Fun fact! Muldoon’s rules for dealing with murderers left an impression on everybody who went to Camp, and who spent a great deal of time making sure there were extra exits from everyplace. Can’t be too careful!
• Alex Graudins explaining how improv can help you make friends and be more creative in all aspects of life. Fun fact! Graudins illustrated Science Comics: The Brain, and included dearly beloved and sadly departed pooch Reginald Barkley in three cameos, not two as I’d previously counted.
• Alison Wilgus explained Tsiolkovsky’s rocket equation, and why it’s such a jerk. Fun fact! I have one about Wilgus’s trademark red glasses, but it’s not my story to tell. Sorry!
• Gale Galligan shared her knowledge of bunnies, who are adorable but also super gross. Fun fact! I am not kidding, what rabbits do with poop is gross.
• Dik Pose spoke about baseball. Fun fact! You don’t need a presentation to talk baseball; just like on the radio, a voice and some imagination is pretty much the purest expression of following the game.
• Michael Grover shared comics about starting a band when you’re a ghost and have no hands. Fun fact! Don’t feel bad, Jake Spooky, many bass players have never played bass, or even seen a bass.
• David Malki ! talked about the social history of beards. There was other stuff in there, but it was really about beards. Fun fact! The band’s musical outro was an improvised, lyrics-ignored version of Wonderwall, chosen solely so that Wondermark could be sung in the chorus.
• Tony Cliff read his forthcoming children’s book, Let’s Get Sleepy. Fun fact! There are enough Tonys Cliff in the world that trying to search for this Tony Cliff and Let’s Get Sleepy produces a lot of results on Marxist class struggle.
• Jen Wang talked about chickens, which come in a bewildering variety of sizes, colors, and shapes. Fun fact! There are hen-to-rooster trans chickens.
• Tillie Walden read Shel Silverstein poems. Fun fact! Silverstein wrote more great poems that conventional mathematics can count; for every one of his poems you love, there are dozens that other people love just as much.
• Lucy Bellwood talked about Jeanne Baret, who defied expectations and traveled the world cataloging and categorizing botanical specimens for pre-Revolution France. Fun fact! Baret collected and described more than 6000 species, but the gentleman of society who sponsored her took all the credit and named a couple dozen species after himself. She got one plant named for her like five years ago.
• Shing Yin Khor talked about the numerous dinosaur statues — some of which bear only passing resemblance to what we know about actual dinosaurs — of Holbrook, Arizona. Fun fact: the dinostatue:human resident ratio of Holbrook (approximately 1:149) is much greater than either the whalestatue:human resident or dogstatue:human resident ratios of Juneau (both approximately 1:32,000).

Afterwards, local Camp helper-organizers Rob & Pagan volunteered their lovely home for dinner and dessert supplied by Coppa. At Pat Race’s request, they came up with a Squirrel Girl-themed ice cream called Eat Nuts And Kick Butts (peanut butter with salted caramel ribbons and a chocolate layer on top). Ryan North, naturally, was given the honor of the first scoop which turned out to be necessary, as the solid-frozen carton required a Ryan-sized man’s strength to break through. It took some doing, but he ultimately succeeded; it was a good omen for the days to come.

Pictures:
Juneau is a fabulously beautiful place, and given the landscape found all around, there is little surprise that it’s a vertical city. I once made the mistake of trying to go to a restaurant by the most direct route and wound up taking four separate sets of outdoor staircases.

Remember what I said about arriving in droves? This crowd came out at 6:00pm on a Friday night.

Remember what I said about Coppa’s ice cream? Here’s the Peeps flavor, with real decapitated Peeps throughout. And here’s the ENAKB variety being duly selfied by North, who then did his best ceremonial ribbon cutting pose for the crowd. It proved to be a hard-frozen challenge requiring mighty struggle, but in the end it was worth it.

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¹ And a damn fine one, too. So fine, in fact, that they’ve been nominated for the Eisner Spirit of Comics retailer award this year. If you’re an Eisner voter, Pat Race, Aaron Suring, and everybody at AK Robotics are stellar human beings with a real sense of service for their community.

² The one on Douglas Island, one of three in the Juneau Public Libraries system, all of which saw events.

³ To the degree that he wrote an e-book that is a page-by-page deep reading of the novelization of Back To The Future, which among other things has Opinions on the subject of Mr Strickland. What I am saying is that Ryan North has probably thought a lot more about time travel — real and fictional — than you or me.

⁴ He was maybe halfway into the process when we spoke about it at Camp 2017.

⁵ The only time something was invented, North reminds us, because somebody was too horny to otherwise do their job.

⁶ Or, in the case of the compass, neglected to put it to its practical use. Rather than navigation, the Chinese originally used compasses for fortune telling.

⁷ No, not dogs. Humanity has domesticated about 16 different species, and only dogs are workmates, guardians, helpers, and friends that know our minds and read our expressions. Given how thoroughly and completely they have tied their lives to ours, it’s reasonable to say they domesticated themselves, or at least deserve credit for the assist.

[Editor’s note: Postings this week are going to be brief (as I prepare for) or absent entirely (as I travel to and attend) on account of Alaska Robotics Mini-Con on Saturday and the adjacent events. For that matter, you probably won’t get anything out of me next week as I’ll be away from network and/or traveling and/or recuperating. We thank you in advance for your patience.]

• Evan Dahm’s latest Overside tale, Vattu, is reaching a point in the story that feels like the end game is approaching. The overall plot is at an inflection point — the emperor is dead, plots swirl around the succession, at least two communities of ex-pats are in various stages of revolt, and another of individual exiles is in upheaval — and there are arcs around the main characters to wrap up. What better time to release the 1000th page of the saga, as Dahm did yesterday?

  If you think that reading the whole damn thing to date (which is a very good use of your time, let me assure you) is too taxing via the website (I sympathize, I can’t read big story chunks online), I refer you to the two books that tell the first roughtly-half of the story (nearly six hundred pages worth!), and a third one is about to ship to Kickstarter backers. In the meantime, everybody congratulate Dahm, and I’ll see you in the depths of the Blue Age.

• Less than three weeks out seems to be not the time to announce new special guests, but you are not TCAF, who add on until the very last moment before opening their doors. The newest tranche of guests from around the world includes Seth, Bessora, Margreet de Heer, Erica Henderson, Kid Koala, Rachel Lindsay, Jonathan Ng, Richard Marazano, Alex Norris, Émilie Plateau, Jérémie Royer, David Rubin, Hiromi Takashima, Typex, Jhonen Vasquez, and Chip Zdarsky¹.

  TCAF will happen in and around the Toronto Reference Library (789 Yonge Street) on Saturday 11 May (9:00am to 5:00pm) and Sunday 12 May (10:00am to 5:00pm). Attendance is free, but some events will require tickets to control crowding.

Spam of the day:

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This Very Good Offer includes a coupon so I can advertise on Bing. I do not think you know what constitutes goodness with respect to offers.

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¹ Who for once is at the end of the alphabet instead of that bastard Jim Zub².

² Jim Zub was kind enough to send a preview copy of issue #2 of his current comiXology series, Stone Star. As you may recall from launch day last month, issue #1 impressed me, and I can safely say that issue #2 builds on that framework and ramps up the narrative.

And, uh, looks like Zub’s now the last person to be mentioned in this post. Sorry, Chipster.

NNnnnnnnokay, I think I can get through this post without reminding you about the Alaska Robotic Mini-Con, which will take place on Saturday, 27 April (plus lead-up events) in Juneau Alaska. Probably. Let’s see what’s up at our friend, the Cartoon Art Museum, instead.

• This Saturday, 20 April, CAM hosts Rob Rogers as he talks about his editorial cartoon collection, Enemy Of The People, and how he got fired for not being willing to be Ben Garrison-lite. The talk (and signing to follow) is free, and starts at 2:00pm at CAM, 781 Beach Street in San Francisco.
• The following Saturday and Sunday (that would be the 27th and 28th¹), the Queer Comics Expo will take place at the museum, from 11:00am to 5:00pm, including the announcement of the 2019 Prism Award nominees. Maia Kobabe (who has a current Artist Showcase in advance of the release of Gender Queer: A Memoir, coming this summer from Lion Forge) will be the featured guest. QCE doesn’t have a dedicated site, per se, so check them Facebook or Twitter for info on exhibitors and programming. Tickets run from free (for CAM members) to US$10/day at the door.
• The Saturday after that is, of course, Free Comic Book Day, and CAM is getting in on the fun. By spending the day visiting comics-oriented shops up and down the Bay, you can get fabulous stuff in addition to the requisite free comic books:
  

  The Comic Shop Hop is a comic book store scavenger hunt throughout the entire Bay Area. Participants will go from store to store filling up their passport as they go along, tracking their progress from store to store.

  All participants who visit two or more comic shops and submit their passport to the Comic Shop Hop Google Form will be entered into a Free Comic Book Day prize raffle.

  Anybody visiting two or more locations for passport stamps gets entered for the lowest tier prize, the mid-tier is open to those that get stamped in five ore more locations (or visit two to four and purchase in at least two of them), and the top tier is for those that get stamps in ten or more locations (or visit five to nine and purchase in at least five of them).

  Passports are available in any of the participating shops or CAM; hours vary from location to location, so click on the location names in that map to see who’s open when. More information is available by calling (415) 227-8666 or emailing either membership or education at cartoonart.org.

Spam of the day:

We have sent you a message
An email containing confidential personal information was sent to you

Yes, because the US Postal Service (who are the fake senders of this spam) are famous for providing delivery of electronic mail and not physical mail.

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¹ For those of you not going to Juneau … dammit!

That would be the show poster for Alaska Robotics Mini-Con, which has announced more of the goings-on in and around the show on Saturday the 27th. To wit:

• For those in town as early as Thursday the 25h, Chris Yates will be running a puzzle making workshop at the Juneau Makerspace, and Ryan North will be teaching you how to invent everything at the Juneau Downtown Library. Times for both TBA.
• Friday features the traditional kickoff event at the Mendenhall Valley Public Library, with snacks at 5:00pm and the variety show (music, short presentations of Mini-Con exhibitors) at 6:00pm. This will follow a full day of school visits by creators, leaving no school unvisited.
• Saturday will be the show itself, as well as a workshop on making picture books at the Alaska State Museum from 12:00pm to 3:00pm, and talks at KTOO and the Zach Gordon Youth Center; these will include drawing hangouts, a stop-motion animation rig, Sculpey monster-making with Shing Yin Khor, and talks by Kazu Kibuishi, Raina Telgemeier, Jen Wang, Gale Galligan, and Tillie Walden.

Speaking of Tillie Walden, I should note that the LA Times Festival Of Books named Walden’s On A Sunbeam the 2018 Festival Book Prize winner in the Graphic Novel category. If you haven’t read it you really should.

Speaking of awards, the Slate/Center For Cartoon Studies Cartoonist Studio Prize winners for 2019 were announced today, with the honors (and a thousand dollars cash money) going to Chlorine Gardens by Keiler Roberts (Best Print Comic) and Being An Artist And A Mother by Lauren Weinstein (Best Web Comic).

As previously noted, Nancy was nominated in the Best Web Comic category which remains a head-scratcher. It’s still the best thing on the newspaper page in the past decade or more and if you aren’t reading it you need to start reading it. That being said, congratulations to Roberts and Weinstein, and to all the nominees.

Spam of the day:

Open An Augusta© Gold IRA

No. Just … no.

A pair of comics shows had announcements about guest appearances today. One is large, one is HUGE.

• Large: The Nerd Prom in San Diego announced its second tranche of special guests, and within the group of six were two with webcomics roots.

  Carey Pietsch does the art for Mages Of Mystralia, and has worked on everything from a Meredith Gran-penned Marceline & Prubs miniseries to Lumberjanes to a series of self-published comics; seems like every SPX and MoCCA, she’d have a new story.

  But these days she’s best known, and most likely achieved Special Guest statues, for her collaboration with La Familia McElroy to adapt The Adventure Zone. The first book was a hoot and the second (which drops the day before SDCC Preivew Night) hasn’t lost a step (at least, judging by the preview excerpt that :01 Books sent me. The McElroys appear to be settling into their characters and their shared story, and the humor is sharper, the running gags have more legs, and Pietsch is throwing even more little bits into the background to satisfy the obsessive fans.

  The other is Randall Munroe, who generally keeps a low profile, but who also has a major book coming out this year. If there’s one thing that publishers who work with wildly creative webcomics types (cf: Ryan North), giving them a platform to be themselves in public pays off in interest and sales. San Diego Comic Con runs from 18-21 July, with Preview Night on the 17th.

  If you don’t have badges lined up already you probably won’t get in, but then again a lot more of the happenings around SDCC happen outside the convention center. But then again again, if you didn’t get in on the Hotel Rodeo last Thursday (and more importantly, hear from the hotel folks tomorrow that you got a room), you may not be able to say in the same metropolitan statistical area as the convention center.

• HUGE: The Alaska Robotics Mini-Con takes place next weekend in Juneau, Alaska. There will be school visits on Friday 26 April, and one day of con activity at the Juneau Arts & Culture Center, with programming in the immediate vicinity at the Alaska State Museum, KTOO, and the Zach Gordon Youth Center. There will be upwards of 60 folks exhibiting, and the show is open and free to the public. So what makes this HUGE?

  Scroll down the list of exhibitors, past graphic novel slingers like Alex Graudins, Alison Wilgus, Cat Farris, Jen Wang, Tillie Walden, Tony Cliff, and Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett. Notice that artistic goofballs Chris Yates and Scott C will both be bringing their distinct forms of whimsy to the show, but keep reading. Scroll past even such names as your Dylans Meconis, Lucies Bellwood, Kazus Kibuishi, and Ryans North, to the biggest name in comics: Raina Telgemeier.

  And then notice this detail:

  Her newest book is Share Your Smile and will debut at the Mini-Con!

  Share Your Smile has a release date of 30 April. The one day Mini-Con is on the 27th. If you’re in Juneau, you will get your hands on Raina’s book about making your own comics before anybody else on the planet and that, my friends, is HUGE. See you in Juneau.

Spam of the day:

Looking for some awesome gadgets to spice up your life?

Thanks to Gmail not displaying images for spam, I’m not sure if this is meant to target people that would be enticed by the manly tactical kinds of gadgets, the everyday carry types of gadgets, or the sexy, lube-dripping types of gadgets. Maybe be more clear in your copy text?

[Editor’s note: This has only the slightest bit to do with MoCCA, but it’s time-sensitive. Zach Weinersmith & Bryan Caplan’s graphic novel on immigration releases in October, but it’s available for pre-order starting today. As in the past, Weinersmith is angling to prevail on the Amazon algorithm and offering up rewards for those that do preorder.]

Today’s theme on the happenings at MoCCA Festival 2019 is what people are working on, on account of I ran into a lot of people working on a lot of things. This isn’t necessarily chronological, so don’t look for a consistent passage of time.

• Before I even made it inside on Saturday morning, I ran into Magnolia Porter and Tom Siddell (both of whom are killing it on their respective comics right now), and they’re working on their new, shared life as married folks. It’s a long way from the UK to Brooklyn, but they’ve got tablet, network, and each other. You will seriously not ever see anything more adorable — I am including sleepy puppies trying to keep their heads from drooping in this statement — than newlywed Porter gleefully introducing Siddell to somebody as my husband. I love those crazy kids.
• In the opening minutes, I also ran into Calista Brill, editorial supremo at :01 Books, who is working on everything — walking the aisles trying to determine who should be on her radar, keeping to the ambitious release schedule (they’ve gone from about two dozen books a year to more than twice that in less than two years), launching at least two, maybe three new lines in the space of a year¹ … they’re on the verge of world domination but too busy to slow down for the customary Mwah-ha-ha-ha!
• Just as well they haven’t declared victory, really, since Gina Gagliano is less than nine months from Random House Graphic‘s debut year, with twelve books on the slate and announcements reaching out to 2023, if I’ve paid attention. Less than a year ago, she was thrown into a new job without a staff, an office, or time to catch her breath before having to develop things like a marketing budget (for books that didn’t exist and had no deliverable date because she didn’t yet have any creators under contract yet), and now she can see things starting to happen. Preview material for sales folks, printing press time and shipping containers coming together, all the logistics that assure yes, this is real.
• Evan Dahm is going to be able to show off three, four new books over the coming year; Island Book is just over a month from release, Vattu’s third collection is approaching delivery, and he’s in the final stages of a project for Iron Circus called The Harrowing Of Hell, about what happened to Jesus for those days between crucifixion and resurrection; there’s going to be a collection of shorter works as well. Somewhat appropriately, Dahm will be finishing Harrowing just as Easter approaches; with printing lead times, I’d expect it to release (also appropriately) sometime in the Lenten season next year.

  Asked about what public domain book he’d like to adapt next, he allowed that he’d like to take a shot at The Worm Ouroboros by ER Eddison, but he may be a while before he gets to it; you can’t help but notice that nice, big 1 at the top of the spine of Island Book, so I’m guessing he might be a bit spoken for for the next while.

• Rosemary Valero-O’Connell is working on saying No for a while. Her debut longform work, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me (words by Mariko Tamaki; I’ve been reading it obsessively since I got a review copy on Friday), hits in four weeks, and making a 250-plus page book in just about a year, while working on other items at the same time, would tax anybody. After some downtime, she gets to start work on her second longform work, one that she’ll be writing as well as drawing. I’ve said ever since I met her that she would produce astonishing work and just keep getting better; so far, it looks like I’ve been right.
• Colleen AF Venable² has plenty to keep her busy, too. Kiss Number 8 is so, so good³, and her gig directing art for Odd Dot is starting to pay off. I told her that the ringbound easelback presentation for Code This Game! made me angry, because I wanted that innovation to have existed for my college years; she heaped praise on her staff member (she called him one of my inventors) that came up with that design in 30 seconds with an X-Acto) and I begged her to license it. Apparently, every imprint up and down the Flatiron Building is asking if they can use that innovation (I really hope that includes all their cookbooks) and she’s more than happy to share. She’s just happy, period. Collen AF Venable has the proportional happiness of a spider that’s really, really happy.

  And all of that is before she gets to her own books — she’ll be doing a Maker Comic and she’s got a superhero story that sounds brilliant and hilarious and brilliant again, one that will hit right in the spot that the Minx line failed to capitalize on a dozen years back.

• I’d never met Tea Fougner in person before; we wound up geeking out over how wonderful Olivia Jaimes has been on Nancy for the past year. She hopes that seeing the tremendous interest shown in a nearly century-old property will make it easier when she argues to her bosses that she needs to be able to revitalize some of King Feature’s legacy strips with bold returns to what made them great.

  The tributes to Popeye are a start, but we agreed that she needs to just hand that strip over to Randy Milholland and then let him go to town. Either that, or she needs to hop to Disney, work her way up to the appropriate place, and then hand Duckville to Milholland and likewise let him go to Duckburg.

You know what? At least four more people to talk about in this context, plus all the new creators I met for the first time, and we’re over 1000 words. More tomorrow.

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¹ 2019 saw the start of the Maker Comics line, early next year will see the civic engagement line, World Citizen Comics (of which Weinersmith & Caplan’s book is less a member, more a precursor), and I heard rumors of a history line in the works.

² She gave me her current business card which notes, Yup, That’s My Real Middle Name.

³ Despite some folk asking if it matters that they didn’t read the first 7.

Let it never be said that the folks at :01 Books (and their fellow imprints at Macmillan) don’t make their catalogs available for review. Their Spring/Summer offerings are getting ready to drop, and I find myself today in possession of advanced copies of Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me, Hawking, The Time Museum vol 2, I Will Be Fierce, and This Was Our Pact (I, uh, may have given one or two of them a first read already).

Also in the Big Box O’ Quality Reading: previews and exceprts of Island Book, Pumpkinheads, Old Souls, and The Adventure Zone: Murder On The Rockport Limited. and Code This Game!¹. Creators associated with these books who’ll be at MoCCA Fest include Evan Dahm, Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, Carey Pietsch, and Colleen AF Venable².

Look for reviews of these books closer to their respective release dates, and if you’re anywhere near NYC this weekend, to drop in to see these and many more creators.

Spam of the day:

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¹ The last from Macmillan’s new imprint, Odd Dot. It’s too narrow to describe them as an education imprint, but they are definitely geared towards ensmartening their readers.

² Venable is the Creative Director at Odd Dot, and you can bet she’s responsible for the design of the book, which will feature spiral binding and an easel back so you can prop it up next to you while you type code samples from it, and the pages aren’t constantly flying around.

As this goes live, we’re in the vicinity of 90 hours until MoCCA Fest 2019. We’ve got the programming, there are some late exhibitor addenda (see below), and some news on peripheral events that you may want to keep an eye on. There’s some other things going on, too.

• MoCCA, then: Word comes to us via the Tweets Machine that Evan Dahm will be at table G238. I mean, this was a no-brainer, guy’s got Island Book coming out six weeks from today from :01 Books, which is going to put him square in the sights of those that pay attention to kids books. And kidlit librarians/advocates are relentless in their pursuit of good books, so congrats to Dahm on his forthcoming recreation of the opening of A Hard Day’s Night.

  Also at MoCCA (although not tabling) will be Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, also no surprise, given that Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me (pictures by Ms Valero-O’Connell, words by the incomparable Mariko Tamaki) is coming out five weeks from today¹, also from :01. She’ll be signing at their table (E162) at 2:00pm on Saturday, and will likely be wandering the floor other times. Her other appearances in conjunction with Laura Dean will come between now and November, and will encompass the cities of Minneapolis/St Paul, Toronto, Chicago, and Leeds.

• Speaking of MoCCA, one of the long-running traditions is that the night before, Drink And Draw Like A Lady; since 2008, it’s gotten women together to make comics in public, have some delicious beverages, and never once have to hear the question, So what’s it like being a woman in comics?

  But the thing about traditions is, somebody has to arrange the damn things, and oftentimes it falls onto just a few. The first DADLAL was put together by a couple of ladies named Hope Larson and Raina Telgemeier², and since then a fluctuating group of volunteers have taken on tasks for events in various cities, from arranging the posters³ to lining up sponsorships (for a number of years, that would have been Katie Lane’s Work Made For Hire) to making sure the venue was ready.

  Most recently, it’s been Alisa Harris, Alison Wilgus, and Tea Fougner that have done most of the work for the NYC events; they have lives and obligations the other 364 days of the year, and also life sometimes gets in the way:

  We know it’s been a while and we’d like to apologize for the late notice that we will be taking a break from our annual pre-MoCCA Fest party this year. A number of factors have come up. Most notably, The Productive, our awesome venue for the past several years has closed its physical location.

  Alison, Tea and I have been busy with life and work and decided that it might be best to take a year to recuperate so we don’t spread ourselves too thin. We are so grateful to everyone who has attended and helped out in past years! This party is awesome because of you.

  DADLAL isn’t gone, it’s just taking a break. Here’s hoping Fougner, Harris, and Wilgus get to spend Friday night with their feet up, a preferred beverage close to hand, and whatever amiable companionship they prefer purring, wagging, or even speaking in human words that they’ve earned this break.

• And not MoCCA, but still on the festival circuit: Shelli Paroline is many things — artist, writer, half of a very successful creative duo with Braden Lamb, and co-director of MICE, the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo. It’s in that latter capacity that she would like you to know that this year’s MICE will be happening on 19 – 20 October, on the campus of Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and that exhibitor applications are now open:
  

  You can now apply to exhibit at MICE happening October 19 – 20, 2019 in Cambridge, MA! Application period open through April 23. We got guidelines here: http://www.micexpo.org/application/

  I really have to get up to that show one of these years, as it is by all accounts a great one. And, for those who are just starting out exhibiting, MICE has one of the most reasonable table pricings in all of comics: full tables for US$180, halfsies for US$90, and thirds for US$65. They like to put an emphasis on the comics part of comics expo, and also to see new faces, so give it some thought between now and the 23rd, yeah?

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¹ I am going to get home from Comics Camp and immediately have a bunch of great books to read. This truly is a new golden age of comics.

² Before they were HOPE LARSON and RAINA.

³ They been drawn by Larson, Raina, Lucy Knisley, Erika Moen, Harris, Emi Lenox, Cary Pietsch, Savannah Zambrano, Janet Sung, Kat Fajardo, Olivia Li, Megan Brennan, and more. You recognize some of those names, and you’re going to recognize the others in future.