It’s time for the SDCC planning to begin in earnest, with the release of the exhibitor list and the floor map. There’s some changes of note, some of which can be determined at a glance by clicking through the picture (the one above takes you to the magnifiable PDF, the one below merely to s more legible, larger PNG):

Did you see it? It might take you a moment. DC Comics isn’t in the center section with the other publishers. They are waaaaay down at the southern end of the hall¹ next to Warner Bros. This should alleviate some of the center-section crowding and aisle clogging, while simultaneously answering the question How many people will travel an extra 30 aisles to stand in an enormous crowd for sneak peaks at whatever “Crisis” DC has dreamed up next?

Also, What happens when that crowd can’t overflow into the areas of surrounding aisles, but is instead constrained by a structural wall right over there? Also also, How badly will the small vendors at the 4500-5000 end of the hall hate DC by the time Thursday is over? Answers on a postcard.

Except For DC, It’s Mostly The Same
The Webcomics, Small Press, and Independent Press Pavilions remain reasonably accessible from the “B” lobby. Let’s break ’em down.

As in previous years: centered roughly on booth #1332, you’ll find a majority of the webcomickers who will be at the show within about a 1.5 aisle radius; some are slightly outside the orange area, but not too far. Those that return are all in the same spots, barring any changes to the map and listings.

Notes:

• No news yet on which TopatoCo creators will be along; we’ll update once we know.
• Hachette (1116), Harper Collins (1029), and Simon & Schuster (1128) remain in Publisher’s Row; :01 Books (2800) and Macmillan Children’s Publishing (2802) continue to colonize the corner with the bend, where their lines will not obstruct main aisles.
• 1232 and 1235 remain, as last year, assigned to Flex Comics (muscle bros hang out there) and Pulsar Entertainment LLC (whose home page prominently features the words MONETIZE YOUR BRAND!), respectively. Inertia, I guess.
• Dumbrella this year will only be Andy Bell because Rich Stevens has decided it’s more important to support his wife in making modern life less stressful pffft, whatever. Another exhibitor will be sharing the space, but the name is not announced yet.
• Penguin/Random House will be taking a chunk of space (1514, 1515, 1623) close by; this is where Gina Gagliano’s new Random House Graphic enterprise will most likely be found.
• Jim Zub will be back for the first time in three years. Citizens are urged to remain vigilant, but calm.

Small Press Folks Are Awesome Folks
Right by the Webcomics section is Small Press. Here you should find:

From the Small Press section, you’re close by:

Notes:

• Gallery Nucleus is closer in than previous years, and will feature arty types when they aren’t hanging out at Mondo down in booth 435. Keep an eye out for your Scotts C, your Beckys and/or Franks, and alumni of the various Flight anthologies. Oh, and they’re listed in the guide as Nucleus.
• No confirmation yet on which webcomickers will be at the BOOM! booth when, but I’d expect a pretty strong rotation.
• For all the drama around the acquisition/merger with Oni, Lion Forge will be over at 5543, which is along the front wall, by entrance C (tucked between Diamond and the wall).

Now head back toward the “B” Lobby into the Independent Press area and you’ll find Terry Moore at Booth 2109, which is split (in accordance with tradition) with Jeff Smith (who remains the best).

Scholastic (that means the Graphix imprint, and that means Raina, Amulet, BONE and other megasuperstars) is in 2115.

Going back to that larger map of the northern half of the exhibit hall. Wedged in between the Marvel and IDW megabooths you’ll find Keenspot in Booth 2635.

The Far End Is Actually Kinda Different
There’s still some neat stuff if you keep wandering past the video games, Star Wars, Legos, and suchlike.

Give yourself time to make the trek, what with DC bringing more folks than usual to the high-numbered end, and you’ll find both Udon Entertainment (4529), and The Hero Initiative (5003). Katie Cook will be at table HH-17, but she’s one of the holdout folks in Artists Alley — it’s mostly comic book types these days. Jim Zub might be found at Udon at some point, or hanging with his Skullkickers partner, Edwin Ironpinky Huang (EE-06).

Know what’s not down this way for the first time in forever? Copic. Their longtime distributor stateside, Imagination International, reportedly lost their license this year, and Copic no longer appears on their list of marker brands. Maybe content yourself with a visit to the Moleskine booth, way back towards the Webcomics Zone (1621)?

Offsite
Every year for the past half-decade the amount of stuff you can see outside of the exhibit hall has grown; I’m guessing we’re only a year or so away from complete parity. If you know of anything especially good, let us know and we’ll add it here. Otherwise, just wander the city and see what you got.

Spam of the day:

Drop 28lb ln 15 days. Lose your belly with no gym

and

An engineering and design masterpiece, built to go wherever the adventure takes you.

Identical layout to these spams, but different products (diet; drones) and different fake unsubscribe addresses. Sneaky, but not sneaky enough.

_______________
¹ Also the end of the hall closer to Mexico and the CBP immigration station that is illegally preventing asylum-seekers from presenting themselves at a port of entry as the law and international treaties require them to do. Just saying, if anybody should happen to have a misadventure with some earth-moving equipment over some CBP/ICE vehicles, pretty sure it gets you a straight ticket to the heaven of your choice.

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?

Travel to #ComicsCamp is a relatively straightfoward thing; there’s a bus, there’s a bunch of Campfolk on it, there’s the sun in the sky and fabulous vistas to pass through, and then you’re there. First up — announcements (watch out for bears¹, keep the cabin doors closed or ravens will get in), and intros (including a live demo of the Pacheco:North ratio; cf: yesterday), which take a while when there’s nearly 80 people to get through. In short order a set of identifying photos were taken and posted, book- and game-libraries established, lost-and-found, borrow-what-you-need, and snack tables set out.

Jeste Burton, kitchen wrangler of beloved memory, introduced herself and got to work; by the time pack-in was done, a dinner of roast potatoes and sprouts, spinach salad with mixed vegetables, pickles, and flaked chicken was approaching readiness. She really is a marvel, and the job she does delivering meals with a few dozen dietary restrictions to be mindful of is nothing less than extraordinary.

But no group meeting of this size, with a mix of familiar faces and new, ever took place without a social activity, and this year’s was even more bonkers than last year’s bizarro science fair posters.

Teams were formed. Craft supplies were made available. A two-word prompt was provided, with the instruction given to make a shoebox diorama embodying that prompt. I’m going to guess that this was dreamed up by Sophie Lager, one of the local Juneau folk who work very hard for months to make Camp happen (and a dear friend of mine), who apparently revels in the insanity that this set of instructions would foreseeably cause given the very creative people in the room and the extensive booze table in easy reach.

• Ever wonder what an airplane whale looks like? I heard the first balloon pop during construction and a cry of dismay exclaim Oh, no! My baby!, but the second one held². Those pipecleaners at the bottom allowed the waves to move back and forth, too.
• I personally felt that fire meeting made the most creative use of materials, what with the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos™ being used for the combustion effect. Creative and arguably delicious!
• Most elaborate honors probably go to gryphon harpoon, what with that delicate, curling scissor work. Given the short time allowed for construction, it’s super clean and impressive.
• I only got one in-focus photo of ham geode, so you will just have to imagine how the lid folds up to show that the box represents a pig, which you can then look inside. It’s like an fMRI, only infinitely more disturbing.
• I didn’t find a caption for this one and never found one of the team to explain the prompt. Ocean cave, or cavern ship, perhaps? The stalactites and stalagmites with googly eyes were a nice touch.
• It was all the file folders full of documents that made office boat so delightful. I have to believe Lucy Bellwood was involved, since the flag up top is pointed in the correct direction.
• The pine laboratory took into account both the the noun and verb meanings of pine to talk about how desire is made, which combined with the star-headed monster on the right gave a decidedly creepy vibe.
• I think the prompt was ferry mongoose which okay, little weird. But labelling every element like it’s a bad editorial cartoon? That’s some genius right there.
• And then there’s this atrocity, for which I can only apologize for my part in bringing it into the world. Given the words family heart, my group decided that naturally that meant there was a family (Grandpa, Mommy, Sis, baby, dog, and cat) all linked by branching blood vessels via their necks to one monstrous, floating, common heart. As perversions of nature go, it’s pretty darn adorable, thanks to the enthusiastic ability of Andy Runton to put a cheerful smiley face on anything. I’m so, so sorry.

But the thing is? It worked. People got to know each other, fires (both of friendship and literal variety) were stoked, hangouts initiated, and scrounging for one the advanced copy of Guts that Raina Telgemeier was able to bring with her³ begun. Some tapped out early, some were at it until the early light of dawn started hinting over the mountains to the east.

Pictures:
A little while before departing Juneau, I noticed a pair of skydivers — they’re small and hard to see because phone cameras don’t do a great job of picking out small, light-colored things against vast swathes of uniform color, but there you are. If you draw a line from the tramline anchor station on the ridge along the 2 o’clock angle, you’ll see one of them close in, and one about a third of the way to the picture’s border.

You can see the first one better in this photo, and I’ll note about five minutes later I lost sight of them, and I’m not sure if they came down on this side of the ridge or not. The other seemed to be well over the Gastineau Channel, but I lost them also; they could have landed anywhere from the cruise ship docks to the old mining site on Douglas Island.

Now here’s the thing — when I saw the skydivers, I made an involuntary half-whistle, half whoooo sound. This prompted one of the local ravens to mimic me, repeating my vocalization for as long as he could see me. They’re not only smart and capable of holding grudges, they’ll make fun of you, too.

I’ve blurred these two photos a little for privacy. Thanks to a small Polaroid camera, everybody got their picture taken and placed on the big Who’s In Camp board. Not only could this help you identify fellow Campers, but if you were to leave (for a hike, or to head to the local beach for aurora hunting, say), you could shift your picture to the OUT column so we’d have an idea where everybody was. There was a sign-out sheet nearby with times. Nobody’s seen you for a bunch of hours? We’d see if the dogs (one lab, a pair of huskies, and a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel in an inflatable cone of shame) could sniff you out.

_______________
¹ Aaron Suring recommends making yourself look large by putting your arms up and being loud; Hey, bear! being a potentially useful turn of phrase. Within 24 hours, this led to Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett adapting his long-running Stan Lee impersonation by deciding that Stan was a) at Camp, and b) extremely afraid of bears. If you ever wanted to know what ursaphobic Stan Lee shouting Hey, bear! sounds like, feel free to ask LArDK for demo.

But be warned that about six dozen people will never, ever get that particular set of phonemes out of their brains.

² Two and a half days later during pack-out, I had to dismantle that particular diorama and the balloon simply would not pop. I stabbed it with a pen and it slowly farted out air at me.

³ It was never not being read, and at the end of Camp, one Camper⁴ was chosen randomly to present that well-thumbed copy to a kid in their life, because Raina is awesome.

⁴ It wasn’t me, so you’ll have to wait until 17 September along with the rest of the world, kids in my life. Rest assured, it’s Raina’s most personal, relatable, and ultimately reassuring work yet. It’s almost like she’s friggin’ great at making comics or something.

Saturday is a big day for #ComicsCamp; there’s the one-day convention at the Juneau Arts & Culture Center for the people of Juneau¹ that needs to be set up, conducted, and torn down. There’s hotels and accommodations to be checked out of and luggage packed. There’s the travel to the campsite itself, up by Eagle Beach, and getting settled into what for many will be their third bed in 48 hours. Hopefully, there’s time to eat² somewhere in the middle.

This year the Mini-Con featured signings from nine creators from the 10:00am opening until the 5:00pm closing, a board game room, children’s book readings at the Juneau Public Library, and sessions at three nearby venues. In no particular order:

• The Zach Gordon Youth Center saw drawing hangouts (with Kazu Kibuishi, Tony Cliff, Raina Telgemeier, and Andy Runton), a writing hangout (with Ryan North and Karla Pacheco³), and a making monsters out of Sculpey hangout (with Shing Yin Khor).
• The Alaska State Museum ran a series of workshops on making picture books, with Alaskan creators discussing self-publishing (Inari Kylanen [store manager for Alaska Robotics] and Lee Post), writing (Hannah Lindoff) and illustrating (Michaela Goade and Lucas Elliott).
• Further workshops in the Community Room of KTOO featured Scott C on character design, and Dik Pose and Nobu Koch on stop motion animation.
• Presentations in the auditorium at KTOO featured Lucy Bellwood on the full history of Jeanne Baret (which had been teasered the night before in the library variety show), a Baby-Sitters Club Super Secret Club Meeting with Raina Telgemeier and Gale Galligan (the two women chosen by BSC creator Ann M Martin to adapt her work into graphic form), and discussions of work and process by Tillie Walden, Jen Wang, and Kazu Kibuishi.

I want to talk about two of those at some length, partially because they were the only two I got to see in their entirety around my show volunteer gigs, and partially because they provide a study in contrasts. As such, they neatly illustrated a recurring theme explored at Camp (of which more later) that success looks different depending on who you are, where you are in your career path, and what your expectations are. No one interpretation is correct, and though there are similarities (particularly in the financial realm), every successful creative career is its own thing.

That being said, it would be difficult to find two [web]comics creators that work more differently than Kibuishi and Walden. Kibuishi is a planner — head down, work in service to a larger goal (often related to caring for others). He spent his college years as an award-winning editorial cartoonist⁴ and was on track to animation prize winning fame when a robbery cost him his computer and more than a year’s work. He began a stint as an architectural graphic designer and helped sell billion dollar projects around the world — interesting work, to be sure, but it wasn’t telling the stories that he had in him.

September 11th prompted him to quit and shift back to stories, which led to Copper, then a stint as a Creative Director at an animation studio and commercials, and then the big leagues: Disney hired him to direct the feature film Let’s Get Francis.

Which you’ve never seen. Nobody has, because a fair amount of studio productions are made just to keep somebody else from making them, with no intention of ever being released. It’s possibly in the Disney vaults somewhere, waiting to be released the week before a big-screen adaptation of Amulet, or maybe it was wiped to recycle drives like the early days of cel animation. Kibuishi didn’t want to get lost in the process — after all, the first work on what became Frozen started while Walt was still alive — and so he left Disney, made a pitch around Amulet, and then it’s a straight shot to today.

Well, except for that bout of meningitis that put him in a coma and gave him amnesia. The lasting effects of that were he got to read his own books and enjoy them as new things, not realizing he’d made them, and a need to be even more meticulous in his work processes than before. Oh, and the time it took him to get back to Amulet was spent painting the covers for the American editions of the Harry Potter books for their 15th anniversary.

How meticulous is his work process? He’ll draw out scenes for his stories and then rearrange them until they make sense as a book. Each scene, each page will be run through an average of 5 to 7 versions before he decides he’s got something he can commit to; tricky pages may take as many as 20 revisions. It’s a lot of planning, years to get the book finagled the way he wants it, but it has its rewards — there’s a subway station in New York City where the mosaic tile features a kid reading a copy of Amulet, which prompted a sincere Whoa when he saw it⁵.

Now let’s talk Walden. She’s 22 years old. She spent a dozen years as a competition-level figure skater, as chronicled in Spinning. Not chronicled in Spinning is the fact that art and comics were her twin brother’s thing growing up, and after the usual period of time drawing comics as a young kid, she left that area of expression⁶ to him — she still had skating, after all, and several instruments that she plays. Comics came when she was 16 when her father signed her up for a two-day comic making workshop that possibly he wanted to attend himself.

A two-day workshop with Scott McCloud, who saw something in the non-comics-making teen and told her he was looking forward to seeing what she did (knowing McCloud, he was both a) entirely sincere, and b) actually did see something of her future success by the end of those two days). So you’ve got that kind of encouragement and no real skill at comics and the rational thing is to bring it out as a funny story but never do comics — but you don’t have the work ethic imposed by skating coaches (one of them Russian) who would tell you things like Run and don’t stop until you throw up.

So you spend your days at 16, 17, 18 doing nothing but comics. You eke your way out of high school, you talk your way into the Center For Cartoon Studies MFA program despite not having a bachelor’s degree⁷. You put your work online and get contacted by a British publisher who prints your first three books. Then you do Spinning and On A Sunbeam and the forthcoming Are You Listening? (a comparatively brief 320 pages, compared to 400 for Spinning and 544 for Sunbeam).

So how do you create so many comics, which are so very good, so quickly, even with the single-minded devotion to work of a border collie on pure, uncut espresso? How do you deliver more than 1200 pages of comics by the age of 22, period, much less in the time since your graduation from comics school?

You do so by treating comics like jazz.

Walden works straight to ink, no designs or character studies, no extensive planning. The page gets drawn and the characters — What’s her haircut? Long, because my hand’s still moving! — and story reveal themselves. It’s not sloppiness or haste or inattention to detail. It takes a great deal of proficiency, a great deal of discipline, a complete mastery of the fundamentals to sit at the drawing board cold and just let it all wash over you and out, the way that Coltrane or Parker or Monk could on horn or piano.

And like Coltrane or Parker or Monk, you have to be ready to deal with the consequences and imperfections: Maybe the drawing looks a little funky. I have this attitude that nothing bad will happen if I screw up. That courage leads to a deliberateness to make the story work, and also to a reality where many Tillie Walden originals simply don’t exist — they’re discarded when their purpose has been served. The point of Tillie Walden’s comics is the process and the act of creation; the books are a product (or possibly even a byproduct) and exist for you guys.

I suspect that for both Kibuishi and Walden, Hell looks something very much like being forced into the other’s creative work habits. And yet, they both fall in love with their characters, who they are, how they change, and the things that happen to them that make them different people.

And deep down, there’s a reflection between them.

Walden talks and answers questions with long, arcing responses that are perfectly structured to anticipate followups and address points you didn’t even realize that you were asking about, all while drawing and filling her space with whatever whim takes her⁸. Her lines are crisp and perfect, each one adding the precise detail needed, iterating the page through the versions of what it has been and will be⁹.

Kibuishi paints while he talks, off the cuff, returning to previous ideas, conversing casually, but he builds his paintings up out of abstract swathes of color, stopping before he gets too detailed. Your brain, he explains, makes this look more detailed and real when it fills in what’s missing. If I kept painting this, it would look less real to you. He’ll never make another painting quite like it, given how unplanned, improvised, and jazzlike it is.

Neither is correct. Neither is wrong. Neither should be emulated. Both have found ways that work for them multiple times in multiple creative arenas. Their paths to comics success have been about as different as they could be and yet I find myself willing to drop cash on an unknown book by either solely because I know that they’ve found the tops of their respective games in service of their stories. The differences don’t matter, only the fact that they’ve found ways to perfect their skills.

And we get to read the comics.

Pictures:
Mostly, they’re in the text above. For reference, this is what the floor looked like at opening, just a few of the 972 people that made their way over. And here’s what the greater Juneau region looks like.

_______________
¹ And beyond; everybody in Alaska has a frequent flyer number, and they are used to hauling halfway across the state for something interesting. Over the years, people at the Mini-Con have identified themselves as being from Fairbanks, Homer, Anchorage, Ketchikan, and Sitka. Don’t think I’ve spoken to anybody from the Aleutians or Nome, but it also wouldn’t surprise me.

² Did I mention that there’s great food in Juneau? Pretty sure I did. That includes a couple a tasty food trucks right outside the JACC, one of which does awesome steamed pork buns.

³ The two of whom were last seen together explaining the Pacheco:North Ratio of standard cow:big cow, which they demonstrated live at Camp.

The wisdom of letting Pacheco (who had for sale at her table custom hotel door hangers that on one side read Gettin’ My Bone On and on the other side read Fuck Off; I meant to buy ten for random distribution on my next hotel trip but failed to do so) near youth is best debated another time.

⁴ Well, he kept coming in second to this one other guy, but then again that other guy just won a Pulitzer, so no shame there.

⁵ It’s also technically a copyright violation, but Kibuishi and Scholastic decided that it can slide.

⁶ Which idea calls back to a question Kibuishi fielded — when asked When did you start drawing comics? he replied When did you stop?

⁷ Walden: Suckers!

⁸ Walden: I’m going to draw a house. No, a boat.
Audience member: A houseboat!
Walden: Yes! I don’t know what houseboats look like, but I’m going to draw one anyway.

⁹ And, at the end, I’m gonna put Bart Simpson up here.

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?

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?

Spam of the day:

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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.

Heya. Let’s bring you up to speed on some things mentioned recently.

• TCAF! We mentioned the first tranche of Very Special Guests two weeks ago, and we mentioned the International Guests a bit more than one week ago, which means it’s time to talk about the latest additions to the guest roster, the Young Adult Guests¹.

  Joining others (maybe you?) at the Toronto Reference Library on Saturday and Sunday, 11 and 12 May, will be Flavia Biondi (best known for Generations, Kevin Panetta and Savanna Ganucheau (Bloom), Renee Nault (the new graphic adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale), Ryan North (you know who he is), Sarah Winifred Searle (the forthcoming graphic novel, The Greatest Thing, due out next year), Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell (Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me, my review copy of which will hopefully be here soon), Colleen AF Venable² and Ellen T Crenshaw (Kiss Number 8, which is wonderful, review to appear here soon), and Tillie Walden (On A Sunbeam).

  Oh, yes, and how about a few superstars over the Kids Guests? You got yer Raina (her guide to making comics, Share Your Smile, will be out in April), Kazu Kibuishi and Jason Caffoe (I think this is their first joint appearance since Amulet Book 8: Supernova came out). Additions to the Exhibitor ranks since last we spoke include the 5 Worlds team and Shan Murphy; there’s probably others, and I will notice them on the next read-through, or the one after that.

• CAM! A few days back, we mentioned a bunch of stuff happening at the Cartoon Art Musuem over the next month or so; among those items was an exhibition dedicate to the art of A Fire Story by Brian Fies. Fies will be on book tour when the exhibition opens, so it makes sense that he won’t be ther for the usual launch-of-exhibit reception. Or rather, it would make sense, but why give up a good reception? Fies will be there a bit later in the month:

  The Cartoon Art Museum is proud to present an evening with cartoonist Brian Fies on Saturday, March 30, 2019 from 7:00-8:30pm as he discusses his new graphic novel A Fire Story: A Graphic Memoir, depicting the artist’s firsthand account of the 2017 Northern California wildfires. A book signing will follow Fies’s discussion. Advance tickets for the Saturday, March 30 event are available through Guestlist: Fire Story Tickets

  That’s from the email that CAM sent me; the event doesn’t appear to be on their webpage yet. US$10 for the public, free for CAM members.

• Zub! Okay, not an update, but you should know. Jim Zub, his wife Stacy King, and Andrew Wheeler (all of whom will absolutely shark you in a game of We Didn’t Playtest This At All, especially in the presence of presents³) announced that they were given the opportunity of a geek’s lifetime — to create a series of books for younger players of tabletop RPGs to introduce them to the ideas of roleplaying and constructing a seat-of-your-pants story together. Specifically, books for the most hallowed of tabletop RPGs, Dungeons & Dragons. Spill it, Zub:
  

  As experienced DMs/players, it’s easy to forget how intimidating tabletop RPGs can be for people who haven’t played before. These guides lay out the major concepts (class, race, equipment, creatures) in a way anyone can understand and encourage them to create their own stories. Readers can use the material in these books to brainstorm a character and imagine their role in an adventuring party. Get them excited about the possibilities, and then bring them to the gaming table to show them how those initial ideas can really flourish with a roll of the dice.

  The two guides in the D&D Young Adventurer’s Guides, Monsters & Creatures and Warriors & Weapons, release on 16 July, which I believe is the day before Preview Night at SDCC, and just long enough before Gen Con to get out into the public and thoroughly read before heading to Indy. Congrats to King, Wheeler, and Zub for the nerd experience of a lifetime.

Spam of the day:

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¹ That would be guests of interest to YA and younger readers, not guest who are themselves young adults. I mean, some of them are pretty young for adult humans, but that’s not why they’re in the category.

² I just now realized that her two middle initials, instead of being pronounced aff as I have always done in my internal monologue, could instead be pronounced A-F, because she is in fact Colleen As Fuck.

³ On opposite coasts of North America, DanteLuke Landherr-Shepherd and Ferocious Jon Sung just shuddered and don’t know why.

I had some reservations about today’s topic because there’s tantalizingly little information public, and I couldn’t find any more that what I’m about to share with you — and believe me, I went digging for every possible public avenue. But if there’s one thing that comics are uniquely suited towards, it’s teaching — and some of you are going to want to consider attending an upcoming (but at the moment, mysterious) event. I’ve got some inquiries out there now, and I’ll be sure to update with any additional details that present themselves.

So, the University of Massachusetts Medical School is apparently doing a comics event. The sole mention of it so far is from the New England Region of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, which appears to be an endeavour of the National Institutes of Health. There’s nothing at the NNLM/NER webpage and nothing at the UMass Med School web page, but we can tell some things:

• The address given, 55 Lake Ave North Worcester, MA 01655 appears to be for the UMass Memorial Medical Center, which is the first of the entities so listed to have an upcoming events listing.
• Nothing for the date given, 10 April, though.
• Despite the graphic elements shown in the announcement, it doesn’t appear that the likes of Cece Bell, Raina Telgemeier, Brian Fies, or Roz Chast will be there — I’m assuming that they’re there because the comics in question all deal with health, death, and dying.
• But Maki Naro, science communicator via the medium of comics since small times, will be there.
• Despite the name, New England Graphic Medicine ComicCon looks like it will be more an academic event than a con, if only based on the sponsoring organizations. Look for formal talks, not tabling creators.
• So maybe don’t show up in cosplay as your favorite communicable disease; in fact, it may not be open to the public at all, what with it being daytime in the middle of the week.

But I have people that read this page that likely are the intended audience, whether they use comics in a STEM academic setting (hello, Danteluke Landherr-Shepherd), those who use comics as part of medical outreach and education specifically (hello, Cathy Leamy), not to mention librarians of alls trips (particularly academic librarians).

If this sounds like a good way to spend a Wednesday, you might want to start working your professional networks. In the meantime, I’ll let you know what responses I get. With any luck, we’ll be able to get one or more of the folks that attend to tell us what they taught and/or learned.

Spam of the day:

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Curiously, this spam came in both bad English (as seen above) and original Russian text. When Google translated, this section reads:

Simple income system developed in Japan, scientists from NASA – really helped many people to raise little money!

The differences in wording aside, I find the shift from the USA to Japan to be weird. But mostly, I take it as a reminder to watch the Super Karate Monkey Death Car episode of News Radio again. Stephen Root is a treasure.

Before we get to the Good Thing in the title, I wanted to mention an Auxiliary Good Thing. That is to say, the second issue of The Nib in print is reaching mailboxes — such as mine, today — and it looks great. If you want a copy of this issue, on the theme of Family, you can either go back in time and back the Kickstarter, or you can take out a supporting membership.

Both options give you a choice of digital or print, but let me assure you that like the Death issue from September, Family is beautifully designed, on weighty, satisfying paper and has a considerable odor from the many inks¹ used in its construction.

Okay, the main Good Thing: Word’s been going around for the past few days about how the Eric Carle Museum Of Picture Book Art in Amherst, MA, would be running an exhibition on the history of the graphic novel. Out Of The Box: The Graphic Novel Comes Of Age² opens on !0 Febrary and will run until 26 May, and will feature the work of Vera Brosgol, Catia Chien, Geoffrey Hayes, Gene Luen Yang, Jarrett J. Krosoczka, Hope Larson, Matt Phelan, David Small, Raina Telgemeier, and Sara Varon.

But wait! There’s more.

The night before (that would be 9 February), there’s an opening reception from 5:00pm-7:00pm, with guest curator Leonard S. Marcus Brosgol, Chien, Krosoczka, Phelan, Telgemeier, and Varon expected to be in attendance. There’s a talk with the same folks the next day (10th again) at 11:00am to officially open the exhibition.

If you want to attend these special events, you need to RSVP, via one of two different methods. For the reception, contact Jenny Darling Stasinos at 413-559-6310 or jennys [at] carlemuseum [dot] org; for the gallery talk, RSVP at 413-559-6336 or info [at] carlemuseum [dot] org. Reservations open today, and run through Monday, 4 February.

Now here’s the kicker — both of those events are for Carle Museum members. If you aren’t one, now’s the time to join. Please note that Amherst is in the middle of one of the greatest concentrations of web/indie comics creators on the continent³, the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts, home to Northampton, Easthampton, TopatoCo, Eastworks, the very sexy R Stevens, and at least one creator of Ninja Turtles, so if you’re going you may as well wander around and try to spot background locations from Questionable Content.

It’s not like those folks keep storefronts you can wander into, but if you bump into one on the street, they’d probably appreciate it if you told them I love your work, please accept three dollars cash from me a tip and I promise I will leave you alone and not be a creepy stalker.

Spam of the day:

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One of the great improvements in Gmail lately is that images do not automatically load in spam. As there’s no text in this email, only pictures, I literally have no idea what they’re trying to scam me with. It’s awesome.

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¹ I pity the youth of today, who never received a fresh-from-the-ditto machine quiz in junior high, the purplish ink still stinky and damp, making all your penciled answers smudge and tear. Wait, no, the opposite of that, those things were terrible.

² No direct link; at present, that’s on the upcoming exhibitions page, and will presumably shift to the current exhibitions page, and eventually the past exhibitions page.

³ Other loci include Portland, Seattle, the Bay Area, Toronto, Brooklyn, and White River Junction.