The Fies Files

Deep, Elegant or Beautiful

2012-01-23T11:16:00.000-08:00

This post won't be everyone's cup of tea.

Each year, the online salon "Edge.org" asks the smartest people it can find a different Big Question. Earlier years' questions have included "What have you changed your mind about," "What are you optimistic about," and "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?" This year's question asked them to name their "favorite deep, elegant or beautiful explanation." The responses are profound, trivial, thoughtful, silly and incomprehensible. Most are worth mulling over.

One person chose the Scientific Method, calling it "an explanation for explanations." I like that. A few chose Einstein’s explanation of gravity as the curvature of spacetime. More biologically inclined respondents picked the DNA double-helix. Other answers included behavioral economics, sexual conflict theory, "Like Attracts Like," Pascal's Wager, plate tectonics, the germ theory of disease, or how the experience of time changes when one stops wearing a wristwatch.

I'm not an especially deep thinker, but I did major in Physics and try to keep up with the popular scientific literature, and in that context I've encountered a few ideas that brought me up short and made me say, "Whoa." (Told you I'm not deep.)

For example, I'm amazed how often trigonometric functions like sine and cosine appear in unexpected places. It's not surprising when they crop up in systems of a cyclic nature; for example, the motion of any spot on a rolling wheel describes a sinusoidal curve. You'd expect to see them when calculating a planet's orbit or electron's path. But they also appear in weird places that have nothing to do with circles or angles, hinting that they are deeply woven into the fabric of the universe.

In any event, why should math--an internally consistent system of analysis and calculation invented by humans--describe reality at all? Yet it does, to as fine a point as we can measure. Moreso, it sometimes seems that no result from mathematics is so wacky or abstract that some scientist can't find an unimaginably small, large, fast, dense, early or late chunk of the universe that it describes perfectly.

I'm amazed by Euler's Identity: e^iπ + 1 = 0. In this equation, "e" is Euler's Number, (1 + 1/n)^n as n approaches infinity, equal to 2.71828... ; π is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its radius equal to 3.14159... ; and both are transcendental numbers that never end. They have nothing in common. Yet if you take "e" and raise it to the power of imaginary π (that's what the "i" indicates) then add 1, you get 0. To my ear, that's like saying "if you stack crushed glass and Pop-Tarts on top of a Stephen King novel, you get fried chicken." It makes no sense but there it is, again hinting at a deeper truth I can't begin to comprehend (not least of which is the notion that imaginary numbers--multiples of the square root of -1, which makes no sense in real life--actually mean something).

I think Newton's insight that Force = Mass x Acceleration (F = ma) is THE pinnacle of human intellectual achievement, real Promethean napalm. It's not intuitive or obvious, and yet the most profound insights and results flow from it. First, it implies that objects only feel a force when they accelerate or decelerate (which includes changing direction, and was stated more colloquially by Newton as "an object in motion tends to stay in motion, an object at rest tends to stay at rest"). To put it another way, it's not jumping off the cliff that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the bottom. F = ma makes the tides rise and the planets spin. It took me a couple of years to really grasp the profundity of F = ma and I can't recapture that learning in a brief blog post. Suffice it to say that F = ma is nearly all you need to know to shoot a rocket into space and land a man on the Moon (although it wouldn't let you build a GPS satellite network, which requires the refinement of relativity). Studying that equation changed the way I regard the world.

Also deep, elegant or beautiful: the idea that a profound insight into the universe can be expressed at all, let alone economically with only four or five symbols. F = ma. E = mc^2. Maxwell's Equations, which in the late 19th Century explained the entire field of electromagnetism (and, incidentally, could be solved to prove E = mc^2 although no one realized it until Einstein achieved it a different way decades later), are four expressions that can be written with 30 or so symbols. One of the great quests in science is for a Grand Unified Theory (GUT) that would unite General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, which govern different realms (the very big/fast and very small, respectively) and are currently incompatible. No one quite knows what a GUT will look like, but I remember one researcher saying he'd know it when he saw it because it'd fit on a t-shirt.

That seems right, doesn't it? That when we eventually find the universe's owners' manual, it'll comprise one page with a single line of type (or, per Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the number "42")? There's no reason our aesthetic sense of elegance should coincide with how the universe actually operates--the universe doesn't owe us simple answers--but so far that's how it seems to work. That's deep.

However, none of these are really "explanations" in the sense the question asks. They may be helpful tools or Mysterious Mysteries of the Unknown, but they don't really explain anything. So for my favorite deep, elegant or beautiful explanation I'm going outside Physics to Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection. The reason it's my favorite is that when I first learned about Evolution it seemed so self-evidently obvious to me that I couldn't believe it hadn't always been common knowledge. No math required.

Lifeforms with characterstics that offer advantages in a particular environment live to reproduce more successfully than those without them. Different environments reward different characteristics. That's it. Repeat for a couple billion years and it explains everything from the oldest fossil strata to the latest flu vaccine (we wouldn't need a new flu shot every year if the bugs didn't keep evolving). That's just common sense! Why didn't everybody know that all along? We needed Darwin to tell us that? But of course we did.

(I had the same reaction after finishing Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, which attributed the developmental differences among cultures to their environments, including whether they happened to have handy domesticatable plants and animals (the Old World had many, the New World few) or mountain ranges that ran west-to-east (Old World) or north-to-south (New World). I understand Diamond's work has its critics and I'm not qualified to judge, but for me the broad sweep of his thesis was so obvious I couldn't believe I hadn't known it all along. Yet I hadn't even considered it until I read his book.)

Physicist Richard Feynman once posed the question, "If all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, which statement would contain the most information in the fewest words?" Feynman's answer: "All things are made of atoms." That's a pretty deep, elegant and beautiful answer.
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Review: Teller

2012-01-14T11:54:00.000-08:00

Another book review! But one with two caveats up front. Teller: A Novel may be the only murder mystery I've ever read aside from Sherlock Holmes. It's not a genre that normally appeals to me, and I'm a blank slate when it comes to its traditions and tropes.

In addition, the book's author, Frederick Weisel, is a friend and former boss of mine. We get together occasionally to share tall tales of the literary life over lunch. I watched him struggle to write this thing over many, many months. Between that and my ignorance of detective fiction, it's impossible for me to offer an informed, impartial review. Instead, consider this an appreciation of story I was thrilled to read at last.

Charlie Teller is a ghostwriter of best-selling celebrity autobiographies whose excesses destroyed his marriage and career. Now he's moved to the Wine Country of Sonoma County, California, to be near his divorced wife and daughter, accepted a job to write the vanity-project biography of a construction mogul, and made new friends, one of whom quickly turns up dead. Teller is the first on the crime scene. Feeling an obligation to the victim, he starts his own investigation. That's what an autobiographical ghostwriter does, right?--ask questions, probe acquaintances and enemies, and gradually illuminate the mysteries of a life. A tough cop, the victim's femme fatale fiancee, a special forces vet, a paranoid drugged-out rock star, and other characters have their own secrets and agendas. Some want to help Teller; others want him dead.

Teller is a reluctant hero, not particularly strong or capable, but driven by a dogged curiosity. The mystery moves along and builds to a satisfying conclusion, with a fine mix of action and dry wit. Weisel brings a lot of nice texture to Teller's world. He's done his homework on literature, classical music, winemaking. Setting the book in the county Weisel and I both call home gives it a terrific sense of place. I know these restaurants, hotels, backroads and vineyards. Again, he gets the details right (except I've never run into as many rich and famous celebrities as Teller does, but maybe I go to the wrong parties).

Interspersed throughout the book are flashbacks, set in a different typeface, that relate the rise and fall of Charlie Teller's literary career. I'm told that at least one early reader didn't like these chapters at all, arguing that they don't advance the plot or help solve the mystery. I couldn't disagree more. I appreciated learning the arc of Teller's life, from struggling young writer to rising star to the humiliated failure we meet on Page 1. We encounter some terrific characters, learn Teller's strengths and weaknesses as a writer and man, and understand how desperately he needs this job--or something in his life--to work out. For me, the threads elegantly come together. Just as Teller wrote his subjects' life stories, Weisel has written Teller's. I loved the flashbacks, and honestly thought they elevated the entire novel above what could have been a routine murder mystery (noting, as I did above, that I don't really know what's "routine" for this type of story).

Weisel's website has some great background on the book, quotes and excerpts, and links to buy it in the form of either paper or electrons. He also posted a couple of videos, including the one below in which he tells a story about research he did on murder weapons that had my howling when I heard it over lunch:

I can't sum up Teller better than Weisel himself did on his back cover. I found it "a surprising novel about the meaning of memoir and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are." It's a fun, ambitious first novel from an author who I hope will do many more, and next lunch pick up the tab.
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LitGraphics to Munson-Williams-Proctor

2012-01-11T14:28:00.000-08:00

I learned a couple days ago that the LitGraphics traveling art exhibition, of which eight of my original pages from "Mom's Cancer" are a small part, is coming to the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, N.Y. March 4 to April 29.

This is the comics art show I write about from time to time that was originally mounted by the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass. in 2007. I attended that opening, as I did its opening at the Toledo (Ohio) Museum of Art in 2009. Since then it's been to the James A. Michener Museum in Pennsylvania and the Fitchburg Art Museum in Massachusetts, where Friend O' The Blog Jim O'Kane made the Best Video Ever. Now New York.

I can't believe my drawings have been out traveling the country for more than four years. They grow up so fast. But would it kill them to call once in a while?

The Munson-Williams-Proctor people have asked me to record a one-minute audio clip discussing my work, presumably for museum-goers to hear as they browse. It's tempting to read a recipe out of a cookbook, record a cat howling, or just unleash a profanity-laced tirade. Sadly, I'll probably play it straight. That's why I'll never be a great artist.

LitGraphic is a terrific show if you can get to it. Eisner, Crumb, Spiegelman, Kurtzman, Ditko: more than 200 works of great comics art, plus eight of mine. Worth your time.
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Review: My Friend Dahmer

2012-01-08T23:05:00.000-08:00

One perk I really enjoy is that from time to time Editor Charlie sends me an Abrams book he’s particularly proud of or thinks I’ll appreciate. A few weeks ago he mailed me a review copy of My Friend Dahmer (Abrams ComicArts, 224 pages), a graphic novel by Derf Backderf, which will be released in the spring. I don’t often review books; however, for reasons I’ll explain, My Friend Dahmer stirred me to reflect and write.

My Friend Dahmer relates cartoonist Backderf’s high school relationship with serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who killed 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991, when he was caught after his intended 18th escaped and ran half-naked into the street. Dahmer was especially depraved, torturing his victims horribly and eating some of their remains. He was killed in prison in 1994. Backderf knew him in high school before the murders started (coincidentally, Dahmer claimed his first victim the same day Backderf moved to college) but long after it was clear there was something desperately wrong with Jeff.

Backderf pulls together clues whose significance was only obvious in retrospect: a preserved fetal pig stolen from the science lab, animals found butchered in the woods, weird laughter at a friend who fell and hurt himself. Backderf wonders why no one—parents, teachers, cops—connected the dots. A haunting subtext of the story is Backderf brooding over why he didn’t, either.

My Friend Dahmer is no apologetic. Backderf never asks or expects us to sympathize with a monster. But he does illuminate how Dahmer got broken, partly through common high school hurts and humiliations that Backderf recalls with aching clarity. Dahmer, Backderf and I are evidently peers—I graduated high school the same year they did—and though I didn’t grow up in Ohio, Backderf’s portrayal of the clothes, cars, classes, and most importantly the feel of the times really resonated with me. I had that haircut, I wore those glasses. I had those friends.

Does My Friend Dahmer work as a comic? Honestly, I had to give the question some thought. Backderf’s drawing style owes something to MAD Magazine’s Don Martin, one of the great big-foot, over-the-top humor cartoonists but maybe not your first choice to illustrate a serial killer bio. I initially found the contrast between form and content jarring. However, upon reflection, I thought it succeeded. Backderf’s storytelling is skillful and clear. Sometimes, his style lets a little lightness into a story that is otherwise unbearably grim. Other times, particularly through Backderf’s thoughtful spotting of black, the art effectively builds suspense and dread.

Ultimately, despite (or due to?) its cartoony grotesqueness, My Friend Dahmer is an impressive work of journalism that may well stand as the most sober and thoroughly researched biography the killer ever receives. In endnotes, Backderf discusses his sources, including FBI interviews obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Backderf tests his first-hand memories of characters and events against later evidence and timelines, points out where they agree and diverge, and clearly annotates nearly every page. It’s a nice piece of genuine scholarship.

Now: why My Friend Dahmer hit me in a way it may not hit you. As I said, I’m the same age as Backderf and Dahmer. I didn’t attend my high school class’s 25th reunion, but its organizers invited everyone to write short bios that were compiled into a booklet and, months later, mailed out to us. I sent in a paragraph. Everyone who contributed anything sent in a paragraph. Everyone except one man, who sent in three single-spaced pages chronicling a lifetime of depression, victimization and misery. He concluded by wondering what he might have done to all of us if only he’d had the example of Columbine to inspire him.

Well. That gets you thinking.

I knew him in school and considered him a friend. He was a bit “off,” not in a scary way but enough to ping the radar of the predators and bullies. No kid I knew—whether punk or stoner or nerd or gay—was lonelier or had a bigger target on his back than this boy whose raw howl of defiant rebellion was wearing a suit and tie to school. Even the teachers just rolled their eyes. I knew his high school years were hell. I’m pretty sure I didn’t do anything to make them worse, but I don’t know if I did enough to make them better.

That’s a regret I imagine Backderf shares. My friend was no Dahmer. But then, when Backderf knew Dahmer, neither was Dahmer.

My Friend Dahmer concludes with a chilling coda set in 1991, when a friend of Backderf’s called to tell him that one of their classmates had been arrested as a serial killer. The friend asked Backderf to guess who it was. Dahmer was his second guess.

That gets you thinking, too.

My Favorite Photo Ever (Top Three at Least)

2012-01-03T11:17:00.000-08:00

I could think of no better way to begin 2012 than embarrassing my children.

I was in my wife Karen's office recently when I saw one of my three favorite family photos of all time stuck on the side of her file cabinet and had to grab, scan and post it. I love everything about this photo, which makes me very happy everytime I see it.

In 1996, my 8-year-old twin daughters were in a Brownie Girl Scout troop led by Karen. The girls in the troop ended their school year and began summer vacation with a party that included an apple-bobbing tub. My daughter Robin took her turn, captured her apple, then stepped aside for her sister Laura, and . . .

What's the point of having a twin sister if she won't help keep your ponytail dry?

Is that a Norman Rockwell painting or what?

Honestly, though I'm ashamed to admit it, I wasn't sure which girl was which in this photo. I asked the girls themselves (while asking their permission to post it) and they replied, "How should we know?" Karen IDed them as above. Personally, I would've deduced that the hair-holder was Laura based on the left-handed apple-eating (Laura is left-handed, Robin right-handed). But Karen says she's 99% certain, and when in doubt you've gotta trust Mom.

These are problems most people don't have when looking through family photo albums.

In any event, my girls still have each other's backs 15 years later, which is one of the things about this picture that makes me happiest. Happy New Year, chiquitas.

And Many Happy Returns

2011-12-31T11:08:00.000-08:00

. . . as long as you kept the receipts.

I hope Christmas was great for everyone, and you all survive whatever you have planned for New Year's Eve. I'm thinking bedtime around 11 sounds pretty good.

I've spent the past three days migrating my entire life to a new computer, replacing my former magic box that was six years old and hinting that it couldn't carry on much longer. So far, it's been less frustrating and traumatic than I expected.

Since I tend to keep computers a long time and depend on them for everything, I spent some money and got some upgrades--more memory, a nice video card--that should serve me well for years. In particular, the new box should gracefully handle the art chores for whatever graphic noveling I might do. No more pushing the Photoshop "save" button and then waiting half an hour for my screen to unfreeze (I hope)! I also bought a new monitor with the new computer; right now, I've got both computers running side-by-side, but as soon as I'm convinced I don't need the old one for anything, I'll retire it and set up a dual-monitor station that'll be really cool! Twice the workspace in widescreen Cinemascope, which'll be a big help with both my writing and cartooning.

Below is one of my best Christmas gifts, which should look familiar to anyone who read WHTTWOT:

It's a genuine souvenir from the 1939 New York World's Fair, which not only stylishly reproduces the Fair's iconic Trylon and Perisphere attractions in sleek classic Bakelite, but accurately reports the temperature as well. It's small, less than 4 inches tall. My wife Karen and I saw it in an antiques shop months ago. I always keep my eyes open for New York World's Fair trinkets, which are pretty rare on the West Coast, and I thought this one was super-neat but just couldn't justify buying it for myself. So Karen circled around later and did it for me! How cool is that?

I don't want to bore or disgust anyone with a list of my loot, but have to mention that my girls very thoughtfully brought me back a bag of goodies from their summer trip to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and our friend Marion surprised me with a kitchen implement I thought was so amazing I once blogged about it. Others were thoughtful and generous as well.

Again, all my best to you, and thanks to all my family, friends and readers. Hello 2012.

They Is Too Many Bums in My Blog

2011-12-24T01:13:00.000-08:00

December 24 marks the date to revisit a dram of whimsy that's been a tradition of this blog every Christmas Eve since 2005. I hope everyone gets through the coming days and into 2012 with health and happiness, and maybe that perfect little gift you didn't even know you needed. Many thanks for reading my stuff. Sing along if you know the words, or can read them . . .

Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezin' on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower alley-garoo!

Don't we know archaic barrel,
Lullaby Lilla boy, Louisville Lou?
Trolley Molly don't love Harold,
Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Polly wolly cracker n' too-da-loo!
Hunky Dory's pop is lolly
gaggin' on the wagon,
Willy, folly go through!

Donkey Bonny brays a carol,
Antelope Cantaloup, 'lope with you!
Chollie's collie barks at Barrow,
Harum scarum five alarum bung-a-loo!

Dunk us all in bowls of barley,
Hinky dinky dink an' polly voo!
Chilly Filly's name is Chollie,
Chollie Filly's jolly chilly view halloo!

-Walt Kelly

Influences

2011-12-21T10:39:00.000-08:00

Comments left on the last post by Namowal and Jim deserved more thought and space to answer than I could deal with there. So I'm dealing with them here.

Both asked about my artistic influences. It's complicated.

I grew up reading mainstream comic books (DC as a gateway to Marvel) and comic strips. I didn't pay much attention to Underground, Japanese, or European work until well into adulthood, when I approached them more as a student than a fan. While I can appreciate Crumb and Tezuka and Herge, I came to them too late to really fall in love. Still, I try to learn what I can.

Beyond that, I divide my influences into those I happened to absorb as a kid growing up reading comics and those I sought out later as someone trying to learn about them. I remember being impressed at a very young age by the mid-century expressionism of Hank Ketcham's "Dennis" and Bud Blake's "Tiger." I still recall entire plotlines of "Dick Tracy" I read at age seven. Curt Swan's "Superman" and Carmine Infantino's and Neal Adams's "Batman" mesmerized me. When I was 11, we moved to a city whose newspaper carried "Prince Valiant," and I fell head-over-heels. Some work I could appreciate as both a young fan and maturing student of the art, starting with "Peanuts" and including Gus Arriola's "Gordo."

At about the same time, I found my new stepfather's secret stash of "Pogo." Dad became a fan in college in the late '50s, and I devoured his collections. Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years with Pogo may be one of the dozen most influential books I've read. I never saw "Pogo" printed in a newspaper in Walt Kelly's lifetime, but I'd mark my discovery of that strip as the inflection point that turned me from a fan of ephemera into a student of an art form.

In my early teens I migrated to Marvel comics, where I found John Buscema, Jack Kirby and Gene Colan. I also began reading books about comics, how to make comics, and many terrific creators from before my time including McCay, Segar, Sterrett, Raymond, Crosby, Caniff, and too many others to mention. I also found "The New Yorker."

At the same time, I was learning about traditional fine art in school and on my own. I couldn't begin to list the artists whose work I studied and tried to learn from. But I'll always remember being in a university life-drawing class when the instructor dissected a sketch of Michelangelo's, showing how he defined the contour of a hip and leg--firm and fleshy bits moving forward and backward in space, popping off the page--using nothing but a single line. It was a real thunderbolt-from-Heaven "a-ha!" moment. Whenever I sit down to ink, I aim for the "lively line" standard set by Michelangelo (no pressure).

Don't get me started on writing.

Everyone is the sum of their influences. I think the trick is to cast your net as widely as possible and drag in as many influences as you can. My most common complaint about many cartoonists, especially young ones, is they all seem to have the same tiny set of influences. Berke Breathed and Gary Larson have a lot to answer for (not really; it's not their fault that half the cartoonists following in their footsteps aped their styles, including their significant artistic limitations). These days you see a lot of what I'd call a "manga house style" appropriated from Japan, which is a straitjacket of its own.

You've got to lift your eyes. Michelangelo has something to teach a cartoonist. So do Rockwell, Picasso, Rembrandt, Dali, ancient cave paintings and Egyptian canopic jars. Likewise, it's very important to draw from life as much as possible; instead of drawing a hand like Kirby or Schulz or Tezuka draws a hand, look at the one at the end of your arm and draw what you see.

Then you take it all in, figure out how it works as best you can, and draw and draw and draw until it all filters through you and you don't even think about it anymore.

And that's your style. I think.
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Monday Tapas

2011-12-19T09:33:00.000-08:00

It's quiet in the blog. Almost too quiet.

I often compare my freelance science-writing day job to farming. I can work months with little to show for it, then suddenly all the crops ripen (or the deadlines converge) and it's harvest season. Here in the California Wine Country they call it "Crush," mostly for what happens to the grapes but also, I think, for how the vintners feel during those few weeks when the grapes have to be picked not too soon RIGHT NOW oh no too late. I'm just coming out the other side of my Crush now, and BAM there's Christmas, its jolly elven face smirking at me. Thanks a lot, Christmas.

On top of that, I'm grabbing every spare moment I can to pencil pages for Mystery Project X. Always achingly slow but it adds up.

* * *

A recent post by film critic Roger Ebert on Things He Knows About Writing: "I really only know one: If you don't start it, you'll never finish it."

Yes yes yes. I've said before that the hardest, gutsiest part of creating a graphic novel (or anything) is sitting down with a blank sheet of paper and making the first mark on Page One knowing you've got hundreds of more pages to go. What a seemingly insurmountable goal! I feel innate respect and kinship for anyone who does it, even if they do it badly. Most people excel at finding excuses not to start. There's always a reason. They don't have the time or the resources or the right equipment or every detail of their story worked out as well as they'd like.

I think that last one is semi-legit; even now, I'm still finding new ideas I want to explore in Mystery Project X. The basic plot's been set for months, but the motives and relationships of my characters--the themes and subtext--continue to change. If I'd drawn it a year ago, it wouldn't have been as good. A story needs time to ripen but not so much that it rots. Did you ever have a peach that's rock hard in the morning and brown mush in the afternoon? I don't know how you tell when that moment of perfect freshness arrives. Maybe you know it when you see it. Then start. Page One. Better too soon than too late, I think, because just the act of doing it will give you new ideas for improving it.

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Today is evidently "Agricultural Metaphor Day" at the Fies Files.

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Following the recent deaths of comics greats Jerry Robinson and Joe Simon (co-creator of Captain America in the '40s), the New York Times seemed determined to profile the oldest living Golden Age cartoonist they could. Luckily, they found a real gem in Irwin Hasen, who did quality comic-book work in the 1940s and '50s (including the original "Flash" and "Justice Society of America") and drew the popular-in-its-day comic strip "Dondi."

I've had the honor of meeting the 93-year-old Mr. Hasen a few times, not that he'd recall them. Punks like me are a dime a dozen to him. But what a smart, charming man. What the NYT piece only hints at is his saltiness: he is a short, sharp, profane, no-BS kinda guy who'll give it to you straight with a twinkle in his eye. He reminded me of my grandfather (who once greeted me by looking me up and down and exclaiming, "Jesus, you got old!"). The last time I saw Mr. Hasen was in Artists Alley at the 2006 San Diego Comic-Con. As I wrote then:

No one was at his table. In fact, I had to elbow my way through a line of fans queued up to meet the Hot Young Artist at the table next door to get to him. I reintroduced myself and we had a nice conversation, when I looked over his table and noticed only prints. No originals. "Oh, I remember you had some Dondi originals in New York," I said, disappointed. "I was really hoping to see them." Mr. Hasen gave me a conspiratorial nod, pulled a portfolio from under the table, and slid out a dozen "Dondi" strips. We continued to talk as I flipped through them, figuring out which one I wanted to buy. At last I chose my prize."You've got a good eye, you S.O.B.," said Mr. Hasen, eyes twinkling. "You picked the best one."

On my wall.

With Irwin Hasen, February 2006

The NYT piece is accompanied by a short video profile of Mr. Hasen. I don't see a way to embed it here, but I think this may be worth 3:29 of your life.

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I considered editing out one of the two references to Mr. Hasen's twinkling eyes in the above grafs but liked them both. If this blog were a paying gig, that's a redundancy I'd fix. But here, today, I'm a writing outlaw. Chicks dig bad boys.

* * *

I am heartened knowing that no matter how I live out the rest of my life, I've done more good in the world and contributed more to the universe than Kim Jong Il ever did.

Dot dot dot.

Graphic Medicine/Jerry Robinson

2011-12-08T08:03:00.000-08:00

Two bits today, one nice and the other a little heartbreaking.

"Nice" first: Although I'm hip deep in the small offshoot of science and art called "Graphic Medicine," having participated in one international conference on the topic and helped organize two, I have a hard time explaining what it is. Now I don't have to. Instead, I'll just point everyone to this article at Hektoen International, an online journal of the medical humanities, written by Ian Williams, who explains the whole thing. Ian provides some historical perspective and literary analysis in an excellent overview. And not just because it mentions me.

"The depiction of illness influences the perception of illness, which can change the illness experience for others," writes Ian. "Comics artists exercise considerable personal power through the publication of visual illness narratives."

Ian is a UK physician and cartoonist who invited me to speak at the first Comics & Medicine Conference in London in 2010. He's also on the committee that's organized the second conference in Chicago last June and the third we're planning for Toronto next July. Smart, talented and British is hard to top. Recommended reading.

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"Heartbreaking" second: Comic-book great Jerry Robinson has died. I didn't know him but I met him for ten minutes, introduced by Editor Charlie at the San Diego Comic-Con in 2006. Comic Book Resources has a nice obit.

Mr. Robinson was just about the last of the great Golden Age creators who was there at the beginning of modern comic books in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Born in 1922, he began his career as an assistant to Batman creator Bob Kane and is credited as co-creator of Robin the Boy Wonder and the Joker. His work later extended beyond mainstream superhero comics to encompass editorial cartoons, literary criticism and comics scholarship, most notably his very important book The Comics: An Illustrated History of Comic Strip Art (1974), which was an absolute lifeline to me in my teenage years.

In my brief encounter with him, he displayed qualities I've found common among old-school comics creators: humility, genuine appreciation that his work was remembered, and apparent curiosity about new work by someone he'd never heard of. Like Gene Colan before him and one or two since, Mr. Robinson immediately treated me like a peer. It's hard to describe how great that feels, even when you know you don't deserve it. He was a gentleman.

ADDED Friday: Links to Mr. Robinson's obit at the New York Times, and the one I was waiting for, this obit by writer Mark Evanier.

How Am I Gonna Unload These Pallets of Bookplates? Wait! I Know!

2011-12-07T08:26:00.000-08:00

For the past couple of Decembers, inspired by wistful dreams of WHTTWOT resting under Christmas trees beribboned in Jetsons-themed gift wrap, I've offered to send a free signed bookplate to anyone who wants one. A bookplate is just a fancy sticker meant to substitute for signing a book, saving you and me the time and trouble of actually mailing the book back and forth. I designed these and had them printed up when WHTTWOT came out and, well, I've still got some.

Of course it doesn't have to be for a gift and the offer is valid any other time of the year as well (although I'd appreciate it a lot if you did actually own a copy of the book). Just e-mail me your postal address (which I promise to never use for evil), tell me how to inscribe the bookplate, and I'll have it in the mail to you the next day. My e-mail address is in the Profile atop the column to the right.

I don't say it enough, but I'm sincerely grateful when readers like my work enough to pay money for it, and even more when they like it enough to give it to someone else. Thanks.
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Graphic Medicine: Call for Papers

2011-12-05T17:04:00.000-08:00

Here we go! Who wants to meet up in Toronto next July 22-24 for the Third International Conference on Comics & Medicine?

Oo! I do! I do!

You may recall that I attended and blogged about the first two: first in London in June 2010 as an invited keynote speaker, then in Chicago in June 2011 as part of the organizing cabal. Well . . . I did it again.

These are very nifty, intimate academic conferences (not comics conventions, it's an important distinction) where doctors, nurses, professors, students, writers, cartoonists and others explore that interesting seam where healthcare meets comics. Or, as one of our Chicago participants called it, "the Coolest Conference on Earth." It sounds weird but it works. In fact, being involved with these events is one of the most exciting rewards to emerge from my cartooning semi-career.

We just issued a Call for Papers seeking proposals for presentations, workshops and panel discussions. The quality of presentations in London and Chicago was excellent, and we expect to get more and better next year. We're sufficiently confident that big-time creators Joyce Brabner (Our Cancer Year) and Joyce Farmer (Special Exits) will come and speak that we're not afraid to announce it. Building on the experience gained in the first two successful conferences, we have even bigger, more ambitious plans for Toronto (honestly, I fear we're getting a bit cocky). Crucially, we're dedicated to keeping the registration fee (which isn't yet decided) as low as possible; all we want to do is cover costs.

Details are posted on our new Graphic Medicine blog, which we intend to be the place to go for the latest news on the conference. We've also got ourselves a Facebook page as well as the original Graphic Medicine site, which has some good information about the previous two conferences. If you're a Master's or Ph.D candidate with a comics-related thesis, or a healthcare professional interested in integrating comics into your life or practice, take a look. And if you're a comics creator who can get yourself to Toronto next summer, they'll treat you like gold.

More later, for sure!

Just Doing My Part

2011-12-02T22:17:00.000-08:00

I have a theory that if all YouTube videos of cute cats suddenly vanished, the Internet would collapse. I don't believe I've ever posted such a video before, but in these tough economic times I'd feel bad if I didn't do my part.

Catastrophe averted. You're welcome.
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I Might Be Wrong About: iPads

2011-12-01T08:20:00.000-08:00

As the colon in the title suggests, this may be the first in a series of posts on topics about which I suspect my opinion is wrong. Or it may not.

I try to be open to changing my mind when better evidence or arguments come along. I think I'm the only one in the history of the Internet who ever ended an online debate by typing, "I hadn't thought about it like that, you're right."

On some topics, my opinion lies so far outside the mainstream that I think there's a fair chance it's incorrect. When I notice, I try to make a good-faith effort to figure out what I'm missing. Sometimes I come around, sometimes I don't. I've come around on the artist Marc Chagall: I never liked his work until I went out of my way to study it; I still wouldn't necessarily want it hanging on my wall but I do genuinely appreciate it now. On the other hand, I still haven't come around on guacamole: nearly everyone I know loves it and I don't. People tell me, "Oh, you just haven't tried mine!" so I always do, hoping that this time I'll crack the code, but it's all flavorless green phlegm to me. Still, I try it every time.

Today's inaugural "I Might Be Wrong About" topic is the iPad. People I know whose opinions I respect love them. Their iPads satisfy needs they didn't even know they had and changed their lives profoundly.

I don't get it.

I considered buying an iPad shortly after they came out, went down to the Apple store, got the sales pitch and demo, and stood there staring blankly. I couldn't imagine what I would ever use it for. Nothing it did was anything I'd ever want or need to do. After my wife Karen recently got an iPad 2 for her job, I eagerly sat down to play with a fresh attitude, poised to be persuaded. Five minutes later I was bored and done (and I spent half that time taking pictures of my cats).

????

I ask people who have iPads how they use them. They say, "Web browsing," "e-mail" and "apps." I do the first two while working at my computer all day; when I'm away from the computer, I don't want to do them anymore. That's my "don't do anything remotely computery" time. E-mail can wait a few hours. As for the apps, I dunno. I realize there are hundreds of thousands and I've test-driven maybe half a dozen, but they were not compelling toys and certainly not worth the $500 it'd cost to get started. In addition, I'm not very impressed with the iPad's vaunted design. It's not as intuitive as advertised. When I have to double-click the button and swoosh my finger to make something happen (but not swoosh too hard or something else will happen!), I think it'd just be polite to explain that.

I can read your mind: I'm a cranky fossil who just doesn't get it. Trust me, I sincerely want to. It's pointless to argue with me that I'm wrong, I admitted that in the post's title. My mind is as open as I can pry it, ready to be seduced. So far, the iPad hasn't even cast me a flirty glance from across the room.

But I might be wrong.

How Some Other Guy Does It

2011-11-28T08:54:00.000-08:00

Here's something I've thought about making myself: a time-lapse "How-To" video about drawing a comic, from script to thumbnail to pencils to inks to Photoshop. Thankfully, now I don't have to, because the artist shown below, Kody Chamberlain (previously unknown to me), does it pretty much the same way I do. Three differences I see:

1. I pencil with "non-photo blue" pencil rather than regular graphite. Because light blue pencil doesn't scan well (it's practically invisible), I don't have to erase the pencil lines, which can smudge and dull the black inks. Any blue lines that survive scanning are easily deleted in Photoshop.

2. I ink mostly with a brush rather than a pen, although I do use an ink nib like his or Pigma Microns for fine details and ruled lines.

3. I don't do a coffee wash (!). In fact, I wouldn't even if I wanted to. My goal is to produce crisp black-and-white line art with sharp edges and no shades of gray (or anti-aliasing) that I can then shade or color as needed. It prints much better. If I did want to lay down a wash, I'd do it after I'd scanned the inked line art to superimpose pure blacks over the wash.

If you're interested in how comics get made, I endorse this process as ONE good way to do it.

Incidentally, in the good old days (i.e., the 20th Century), lettering would've been hand-inked directly on the page before anything else, between the penciling and inking steps shown here. That's how I did Mom's Cancer, and how a dwindling number of cartoonists still do it. What Kody does in the video, and I did in WHTTWOT, is digital lettering, performed with Photoshop after the art's been inked and scanned.

Here's the key: even though these days lettering is one of the last elements completed, it should still be the first thing you think about when laying out the page. Words pull the reader's eye through the story, and the word balloons have to flow from one to the next effortlessly. Before you start to draw, decide where the words go. Poor word placement and lettering is a fundamental error common to bad or amateur comics. It's very important.

My Old Haunts

2011-11-21T15:07:00.000-08:00

A few notes before I offer another bloggy re-run to get me through this deadline/holiday rough patch while providing regular infotainment value to you.

Karen and I really appreciate the sympathy and support that we received here, on Facebook, and in person about our stolen car. Thanks. I think the people who called it "mean" best summed it up for me. Stealing someone's car is just a mean thing to do. Human beings sharing this little rock for such a short time simply shouldn't be that mean to each other.

I realize asking a car thief to pause and consider the epochal cosmic perspective might be a bit much.

Luckily, our insurance company is handling it well and we can roll with it financially. As I said, our beloved Honda was getting old enough that we were thinking of replacing her anyway (although we never discussed it within her earshot). So we went car shopping last weekend. Car technology has improved since we bought our Accord 15 years ago. Car salesmen have not.

Today's re-run is nearly five years old. I chose to post it today because it was originally inspired by a sighting of the constellation Gemini, which I happened to notice for the first time this fall a few nights ago. As you'll read, Gemini holds a special place in my heart.

One of the commenters on the original post was "TVDadJim," aka Friend O' the Blog Jim O'Kane, who wrote, "Watching Orion, though, usually gives me something like Galactic vertigo--because I know we're facing away from the cheery fireplace of the Milky Way's core, and out into the inky black of forever." Tell you what, Jim: you head for the black hole at our galaxy's center, I'll light out into the inky blackness the other direction, and we'll see which one of us is in better shape in a couple million years. Your "cheery fireplace" looks like a radiation-drenched gravity-shredding maelstrom to me, but to each his own.

(January 2007)

The stars of Heaven, now seen in their old haunts--
White Sirius glittering o'er the southern crags,
Orion with his belt, and those fair Seven,
Acquaintances of every little child,
And Jupiter, my own beloved star!

--William Wordsworth, The Prelude

I have relationships with stars, which I think may be unusual but perhaps not as unusual as I think.

I was reminded of that (and of Wordsworth's epic poem, which I studied in college and is one of the few textbooks I've kept all these years) the night before last when I stepped outside and noticed Gemini rising in the east, over beside Orion. I can never look at the constellation of the twins Castor and Pollux without remembering another night almost 20 years ago, right after my wife and I found out she was expecting twins, when I looked up at the sky and smiled because I was looking at their constellation. Not their Zodiac sign (bleah), but the distant suns whose pattern in the sky would always remind me of the happy day I learned they existed.

I'm pretty sure that years later I showed my girls Gemini and tried to explain the significance it held for me. If I recall correctly, they were unimpressed. That's all right.

The reappearance of old friends in the sky marks the seasons for me: Antares, Lyra, Orion of course. My pals Zubenelgenubi and Zubeneschamali, about whom I once made up a nifty ditty.* The fuzzy blotch of the Pleiades that always seems to catch me by surprise. I seek out the tiny, obscure constellation Vulpecula and remember freezing nights spent in a small university observatory doing photometry of a dim nova with my physics professor mentor who found it soothing to listen to WWV time signals pinging on the shortwave. And doesn't everyone have a favorite planet? (When I was a kid mine was Mars but I'd have to say Jupiter now, although I've flirted with Venus from time to time. Saturn's nice but just too ostentatious for my taste; I don't appreciate a show-off planet that tries too hard.)

Being in the habit of looking up at night gives me an agreeable perspective. There's the notion that somewhere out there, someone you're thinking about might be looking at the very thing you are (I believe astronomers call this the Fievel Mousekewitz Conjecture). Maybe even an alien looking at it from the other side, or looking past it at you. There's also the notion I've had while peering through a telescope that at that very moment I might be the only person in the universe looking at that particular thing. And there's always the "eternal circle of life" idea that you're just a point in a continuum of people who've looked at virtually the same moon, planets, and stars for millions of years and will continue to do so for millions more.

No profound conclusion. It's just nice to see Gemini again.

* Sample lyrics: "Zubenlegenubi, Zubeneschamali, yeah yeah yeah!"

Like a Thief in the Late Afternoon

2011-11-19T08:49:00.000-08:00

The day before yesterday, somebody stole a hat of mine that I really liked. It was wide-brimmed, straw, with a soft cloth band inside that caressed my forehead. It provided the perfect balance of ventilation and shade. My girls called it my "Grissom hat," after the character Gil Grissom on the TV show "CSI," who investigated crime scenes in the desert wearing a floppy straw hat that he somehow made look cool. I kept it in the trunk of my wife's car.

Did I mention that the thieves also stole the car?

Sometimes I bury the lede.

It was a bold crime, almost admirably audacious. Sometime between 2:30 and 5:00, somebody broke into and hot-wired our car while it was parked directly in front of Karen's busy office building. Daylight, people coming and going. Very gutsy. The car was a '96 Honda with more than 200,000 miles on it--the same car I wrote about last June--and wasn't worth much. But that model's one of the top three or four most commonly stolen cars because there's a huge black market for its parts. Although there's a small chance it'll be found, most likely it was chopped up before we realized it was gone. Honestly, it was approaching the age when repairs begin to cost more than a car is worth and we were talking about replacing it. But we would have liked to have done it on our terms.

Other than my hat, not much was in the car. They got Karen's iPod, GPS and favorite sunglasses. Guess what Santa's bringing, honey! We're most unnerved knowing that some dirtbag out there now has our names and address (via the car registration). I unplugged the garage door opener until I can figure out how to reprogram it. We're a little jumpier than usual. Dealing with cops, insurance and rentals disrupts life's pleasant routines.

Mostly we're a little sad. Not deeply sad, as if something had actually died, but it ("she") was the best car we ever owned and we'll miss her. Our family took a lot of trips and lived a lot of life in that car. We never got to say goodbye.

Where's Gil Grissom when you need him?
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I'm Supposed to Be Working

2011-11-17T08:52:00.000-08:00

Hey, all new content! Not necessarily good or interesting, but new.

I awoke this morning with the word "suppose" rattling around my brain like a wing nut in a tin can. After using it all my life, I just realized what an odd word it is.

"Suppose" can mean something like presume/assume/infer: "I suppose the paint is dry."

It can carry a tinge of resigned acquiesence: "I suppose I'll do the laundry."

Linked with the word "to," it takes on a related but slightly different meaning similar to should: "I'm supposed to pluck the chickens." It's really kind of single thought, isn't it? "Supposedto."

It can also communicate doubt, like alleged: "The supposed psychic Kreskin hypnotized the audience." Sometimes a speaker emphasizes the last syllable to say "suppose-ed" instead of "supposd," but not always. It works either way.

Think about how different a sentence like "I'm supposed to have robbed the bank" is from "I was supposed to rob the bank." Or "I suppose I robbed the bank." Or "Suppose I robbed the bank."

It's a complicated word! Extremely subtle context is key to its meaning. The proper use of "suppose" must be one of the last things a non-native speaker learns. That's Super Advanced English right there, yet most of us get it as children. Language is amazing!

But the big question is this: I'm OK, right? I mean, other people wake up thinking about stuff like this. Sure they do! It's perfectly normal. It's not like I wake up visualizing abstract shapes that I'm compelled to draw over and over in the steamy condensation on the shower door until I've mastered them. That would just be weird.

Right?
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One Thing Leads to Another

2011-11-16T07:55:00.000-08:00

For reasons I over-explained yesterday, I'm re-running a few of my favorite blog posts (lightly edited) from long ago that I expect were seen by few and forgotten even by them. Like yesterday's post, today's seems to be all about Me. I don't know why. They won't all be. Maybe I'm in a mood.

A six-year update: my girls aren't in high school anymore (whew!) and in fact are both well into earning Masters degrees. As I recall, my talk to their art class went well, though who knows if anything I said stuck. And I believe my conclusion more than ever, enough to consider it one of the fundamental Things I Know Are True. I don't have a lot of those, so you should trust me on this one.

* * *

(December 2005) I've been asked to talk to my girls' high school art class next week. Some of these kids are very talented advanced-placement students already preparing portfolios for future academic and professional careers. I've spoken to high school classes before, usually on the topic of "how I lucked into a career combining two things I love best: science and writing." Now that I've got a published graphic novel in hand, I suppose I can extend that list to include "art," yet I have a nagging fear that some of these kids are already way ahead of me.

I was thinking about what I might discuss when my eyes settled on this laminated card pinned to my bulletin board, my first official press pass:

What a goober.

This was where my professional writing career began, fresh out of college at a small daily newspaper in central California. I got the job of part-time night-shift sports writer based on paltry clips of a column I wrote for my college paper plus, I suspect, my ability to type fast--a skill not as common then as it is today. I must have been the only applicant, because anyone else with respiration would've been better qualified. I nevertheless got a foot in the door and covered a season of high school basketball before a full-time (daytime!) position opened on the city beat and I was on my way.

One day the editor bellowed out into the newsroom: did anyone want to fly to Fresno for the weekend to cover the opening of a new power plant? Since no one else spoke up and I was trying to build a reputation as the go-to science guy, I took the assignment. It turned out to be a good story about a hydroelectric turbine complex dug deep inside a mountain between two lakes. The place looked like the subterranean lair of a James Bond villain. I had fun, wrote the feature, and forgot about it.

Helms Pumped Storage Hydro Plant,
deep underground. I was there once.

Twelve or thirteen years later, after a decade away from journalism, I applied for a position with a small science-writing firm whose clients were mostly in the energy industry. I passed a writing test and showed up for the interview with one relevant clip: the power plant story. I got the job. And thanks to that job, just a couple of years later I was ready to break out on my own and build a self-employed career I've enjoyed ever since.

I derive three lessons from that story for the young'uns. First, take on tasks nobody else wants because someday, somehow, in a way you can't imagine, one of them will pay off.

Second, one thing leads to another in unpredictable ways. Lives have threads and patterns that only reveal themselves in retrospect. In my case, a column in a college newspaper led to part-time sports writing, which led to full-time reporting, which led to freelance magazine writing, which led to something that actually looks like a career in both writing and comics. Pay attention. Be ready for unexpected opportunities.

Third, if you want to be a writer, write. Anything. I learned the most about writing by covering a season of high school basketball. Two or three games are easy; by the tenth or twentieth you're working mightily to keep it interesting for both your readers and yourself. Because, let's face it, every high school ballgame (or city council meeting or planning commission hearing) is pretty much like any other. I figured my job was to pay attention and figure out what made this game, meeting or hearing special, and then explain that. Even if I didn't care about an assignment, it was important to somebody and I had to understand and communicate why. That made me a pro. (My personal definition of "professional" is "doing a good job even when you don't feel like it." Or, as Charles Schulz said, "writer's block is for amateurs.") The same applies to art and comics as well. Just do it.

By the way, in my three years as a reporter and more than ten years as a freelance writer/journalist/editor, I've never once had to show a press pass to anyone. Too bad.
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Pitching to the Stars

2011-11-15T16:14:00.000-08:00

Three obstacles are coming between me and my blog:

1. My Day Job: multiple year-end deadlines are piling up, and all of my clients believe they are my sole top priority, just as I groomed them to believe. Heh heh heh. Unfortunately, now I have to act like it.

2. Mystery Project X: In any spare time I can find, I am pencilling pages. I thought I'd try something different this time. My plan is to pencil the entire book, then go back and ink it (usually I ink as I go, finishing pages in batches of three or four). I'm hoping it'll produce some stylistic continuity from start to finish, allow me to fold in any great new ideas that come up, and be a bit more efficient. We'll see; I may change my mind. It's all still being done on spec, with no contract or commitment from a publisher (although interest from more than one). I have faith.

3. Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow: With luck, we'll have one or two good things happen in 2012 that I'm working on now and can tell you about later.

Despite my busyness, I still feel a nagging obligation to give you a reason to visit once in a while. So with your indulgence (or without it, just watch me!), from time to time I'll dip into the archives and post a re-run. Since I've been blogging since July 2005, I've got a big backlog of perfectly swell essays little seen or long forgotten. I'll try to pick good ones.

Here, lightly edited, is a post I wrote in September 2006 about something I learned from failing. At the time, Mom's Cancer had been out a few months and I'd just started working on WHTTWOT.

I've written about my great affection and appreciation for the original "Star Trek" before, but in fact my relationship with the series goes a bit beyond that. This is a story I don't tell very often--mostly because it ends in abject failure--but I did talk about it during my 2006 Comic-Con Spotlight Panel and I think it gives some insight into how I approached the writing of Mom's Cancer.

The 1960s' "Star Trek" was followed by another series that began in 1987 called "Star Trek: The Next Generation." It ran for seven seasons. I enjoyed the show as a fan, though never as passionately as I did its predecessor, and around the beginning of Season Six I learned that the show would consider scripts from unagented writers. This policy was unique in all of television and the news hit me like a thunderbolt. In a few weeks I came up with a story, figured out proper TV screenplay format, and sent off a full script with the required release forms. Shortly afterward I followed with a second script, the maximum number they allowed.

I don't know how much later--surely months--I arrived home to a message on my answering machine. "Star Trek" wanted to talk to me. Neither of my scripts were good enough to actually shoot, but they showed enough promise that they were willing to hear any other ideas I might have. Would I care to pitch to them?

Yeah. I think so.

Paramount sent me a three-inch thick packet of sample scripts, writer's guides, director's guides, character profiles, episode synopses: all the background a writer would need to get up to speed (not that I needed them--I'd been up to speed since 1966). I spent several weeks coming up with dozens of ideas, distilled them to the five or six best, and made the long drive to Paramount Studios. Just getting onto the lot was a small comedy of errors: the guard at the gate didn't have my name on the list and I'd neglected to ask which building and office I was supposed to report to. Unlike anyone who's worked in Hollywood in the past 30 years, I wore a tie and sportcoat--a bad idea on a hot day when I was already inclined to sweat prodigiously. But I eventually made my way to the office of producer Rene Echevarria and threw him my first pitch. He stopped me after two sentences.

"We started filming a story just like that last week."

Crap. That was the best one.

Pitches two, three, four and five fared no better. After desperately rifling through my mental filing cabinet for any rejects with a hint of promise, I was done. In and out in less than 30 minutes, weeks of work for naught.

Still, I went home satisfied that I gave it my best shot. I wrote Rene a letter thanking him for the opportunity and expressing a completely baseless hope that he might give me another chance someday.

I got the next call a few weeks later. Rene had gotten my letter, looked over his notes, and decided that, although none of my pitches were good enough to shoot, I merited another shot.

Months later came my second try. By then I was smart enough to spare myself the drive and pitch by phone. If I remember correctly, Rene liked a couple of my stories enough to take them to his bosses, but by this time the series was into its final season and the available episode slots were filling fast. In anticipation of the end of "The Next Generation," Paramount was already producing a successor series, "Deep Space Nine." In my last conversation with Rene, when it was clear "The Next Generation" was done with me, I asked if he could arrange for me to talk to "Deep Space Nine." He was bewildered.

"Why would you want to pitch to those guys?" he asked.

Nevertheless, I soon had an appointment to pitch to those guys, got another thick packet of space station blueprints and character bios, and started writing. I parlayed that opening into several pitches over the show's seven-year run, most to the very professional, generous and kind writer/producer Robert Hewitt Wolfe. And when Paramount started production on the next "Star Trek" series, "Voyager," I tried my old trick on Robert.

"Why would you want to pitch to those guys?" he asked.

So I got more packets of cool stuff, more experience, and more rejection. Although they liked some of my ideas enough to mull them over, I never got close. It was exhausting. At last, after eight or nine years and forty or fifty stories, "Star Trek" and I mutually agreed we'd had enough of each other and parted ways.

Lessons in Writing
Here's my point (and I do usually have one, eventually): even as a complete failure, my experience pitching to "Star Trek" made me a better writer. What I realized was that the stories they quickly rejected focused on some science-fiction high-tech premise or plot twist, while the stories they liked focused on the characters. If I said something like, "Captain Picard starts the story at A, experiences B, and as a result grows to become C," I had their attention. I had to be hit over the head several times to realize that a good story isn't about spaceships or aliens or ripples in the fabric of space-time, but about people.

That sounds blindingly obvious, but I realized how unobvious it was as I talked to friends and family about the experience. As soon as someone hears you have a distant shot at actually writing a "Star Trek" episode, they can't wait to share their ideas with you (never mind how fast they'd sue if you actually used one). And literally without exception, every idea I heard from someone else was about a spaceship, alien, or ripple in the fabric of space-time. Not one that I recall even mentioned a character, how they'd react to the situation, or how they might be changed by it. Once I learned to look for it, it was striking.

These were lessons I internalized as best I could and took into the writing of Mom's Cancer. I realized early that my story couldn't be about the medical nuts and bolts of cancer treatment. First, because there are too many treatment options for anyone to cover; second, because I knew such information would be obsolete very quickly; and third and most importantly, good stories are about people. My book isn't about radiation and chemotherapy and cancer, but about what those things do to a family. If something I scripted or sketched didn't drive my mother's story--if the plot didn't serve the characters--I cut it.

Whatever success my books have had and will have, I think that's the key. With due gratitude to all the Treks.
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Morning Musing on Deadline

2011-11-09T08:10:00.000-08:00

I've got Google Alerts set up so that whenever my name or the title of one of my books pops up on the Internet, I get a little note about it. This morning brought me a newspaper article written by a reporter whose name is almost the same as mine and was misspelled in a photo credit to be exactly the same as mine, thereby tickling the strands of my Web feelers.

What struck me as odd is that this near-Brian Fies is doing nearly the same job I did when I graduated from college almost 30 years ago: writing about high school girls' sports for a small daily newspaper. His article is about volleyball while I mostly covered basketball, but close enough. In my case, I moved from part-time sports writer to full-time city-beat reporter within a few months, accumulating the writing experience and clips that served me well since. I can't help but wonder if this Bizarro-Fies is duplicating my life, just displaced a couple of decades. What if he looks like a young me? What if he just married a smart and beautiful girl named Karen? I'm tempted to warn him about the twins coming his way in a few years (run, Brian, run!).

I'm reminded of a webcomic by Scott McCloud titled "The Right Number" about a man who misdials his girlfriend's phone number by one digit and calls a woman who is almost exactly like his girlfriend in every respect, except a little better. Maybe this guy is the new, improved Brian 2.0. As long as he isn't required to hunt me down and kill me, we'll co-exist just fine.

Best of luck to you, Brian. I could tell you a few things, but you'll have more fun figuring them out for yourself.
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Wimpy Tour

2011-11-03T08:09:00.000-07:00

Not that he needs my promotional help, but my pal Jeff Kinney is about to set off on another book tour to mark the release of his sixth "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" book, Cabin Fever. The tour gets underway when the book drops on November 15 with stops in New Jersey, Washington DC, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida (the full schedule is here). Befitting this book's theme of being snowed in, I hear that Jeff is bringing along an industrial-strength snow machine to create an instant blizzard wherever he stops. Sounds like fun!

Although Jeff is a friend, I probably wouldn't have mentioned this tour if I didn't have something to say about it (this blog is all about "value added"). First, I understand that the new book will have a first printing of six million copies.

Six million copies.

I said "six million copies."

That's the largest first printing for any book being released in 2011. The first printing of the original Wimpy Kid book was 13,000, and even that is a pretty healthy number in my literary backwater. Six million isn't a number; it's an abstract mathematical construct. If you had a dollar for every book, you could build your own cyborg out of Lee Majors.

In addition, our mutual editor Charlie Kochman is accompanying the tour for the first time. I probably wouldn't have mentioned that either, except I'm hoping someone will read this, go to one of Jeff's signings, recognize Charlie, say "Hi, Editor Charlie!" and totally blow his mind. Should you accept the assignment, this is your target:

If you want to attend one of these signings/hypothermiafests, I'd advise you to check with the hosting bookstore to see what sort of procedure or ticket is required and arrive very early. Thousands of squealing kids will turn out for these things. A couple of years ago I visited Jeff at one of his appearances in my part of the country, and it was pretty surreal--as I wrote at the time, probably as close as I will ever get to being a roadie for The Beatles. Luckily, Jeff is talented and nice enough that he deserves it. I know how hard he works on these books and look forward to reading his latest.
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Best. Video. Ever.

2011-10-29T21:36:00.000-07:00

Friend O'The Blog Jim O'Kane and his Captain Girlfriend (I don't know if we're supposed to be coy about her identity, so let's just call her "Nancy") not only spent part of their day visiting the LitGraphic exhibition at the Fitchburg Art Museum (per my previous post), they shot and edited a 10-minute video about their trip. This made my month! Take a look and we'll talk on the other side . . .

So cool! With production values and music and everything! Some random reactions:

FiesFest! I want the t-shirt! Of course, every day is FiesFest around here . . . Just ask Karen. Who says "Hi" back to Nancy, BTW.

I was unexpectedly moved to see my pictures again. I hadn't really anticipated any reaction at all, but they made me happy and a bit wistful. Peeking in on old friends who are doing well.

The portion of the video in which the Fitchburg folks evidently set up part of the exhibition to look like a child's bedroom threw me a little. For a moment I didn't know if I was looking at Jim's or Nancy's bedroom or what. It's a unique approach to the material (nothing like it at the Rockwell or in Toledo) that I'm not sure I get. The art itself makes the point that comics aren't just for kids. But it looks fun.

I enjoyed Jim's interview with the intern. Good questions, interesting answers. I can just imagine the packed truck rolling up to the Fitchburg Museum's loading dock. I told the story of sending my pages to the Norman Rockwell Museum in the first place: I figured I'd FedEx them, certainly with a bit of insurance and so forth, but no big deal. Instead, the museum dispatched a specialized 18-wheel environment-controlled art-transport truck to my little residential court, and two guys sat on my living room floor and custom-built a padded portfolio out of foam-core board for each page. Sealed, wrapped, strapped, crated and chain-of-custodied. I learned a lot about the difference between Comic World and Art World that day.

Nancy and Jim wondered what was under some of my originals' pasted-on lettering. If I recall right, the answer is sloppier lettering. The larger point is that the types of corrections they noticed in my work and others'--the pencil marks, white-out, paste-overs, erasures, do-overs, slices and slashes that I cherish seeing in original comic art--are really becoming a thing of the past. Photoshop killed them. Even in my work: I still pencil and ink on paper, and don't ever expect to change, but all my lettering, editing and corrections are done digitally now. The productivity gains are large but it's good to remember they come at a cost. Comic art will not look like the pages hanging in Fitchburg for very much longer.

It looks like the Fitchburg really had the space to spread out and show all the work to good advantage. It's hard to tell from the video, but my impression is that they had more physical space than either the Rockwell or Toledo museums (I didn't attend or see any photos from the Michener Museum exhibition). That's nice. And there's definitely something about bold, saturated wall colors that sets off black-and-white line art very nicely. I'll have to remember that if/when I get around to painting my office. (Next year, it's always "next year.")

Today was 75 (24C) and sunny where I live. I just wanted to say that in case it's snowing where you live. Fitchburg.

Jim, Nancy, thanks so much for your time and effort. Karen and I enjoyed that a lot. I'm glad LitGraphic was worth the trip.
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The Artist Should Be Hung. Or Hanged. Whichever.

2011-10-27T12:10:00.000-07:00

Google Alerts says that LitGraphics, a traveling museum exhibition of comic art including mine, opened last month at the Fitchburg Art Museum in north-central Massachusetts. This is the same exhibition whose opening at the Norman Rockwell Museum I attended in November 2007, followed to Ohio's Toledo Museum of Art in October 2009, and then admired from afar at the James A. Michener Museum in Pennsylvania in September 2010. It runs through January 1.

The show is very much worth a visit, notwithstanding my contribution. There's work by Will Eisner, Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Peter Kuper, Harvey Kurtzman, Frank Miller, Steve Ditko, Jessica Abel, Terry Moore, and more. I loaned them eight pages of original art from Mom's Cancer that I figured would be more productive touring the country than sitting in a file under my desk. I haven't seen these drawings in more than four years and am jealous that they're living a more interesting life than I am.

Karen and I by my wall at the Rockwell Museum opening in Stockbridge, Mass. (where I hear you can get anything you want) . . .

. . . and my stuff at the TMA in Toledo. I got in trouble taking this photo. The security guard didn't believe I was me even after I pointed to my self-portrait on one of the pages.

Both the Rockwell and Toledo museums set up their galleries to show videos of some of the artists (there's one playing in that picture immediately above) shot by videographer Jeremy Clowe and Rockwell curator Martin Mahoney, which I'll take the excuse to show again. Martin and Jeremy actually flew across the country to interview me in my home. The bit at the end of me drawing is in my backyard. Everything looks pretty much the same; many objects have not moved since 2007. I think I'm wearing those same pants today. Apologies if you've already seen this three or four times:

LitGraphic is a very good show, worth a visit if you're in its neighborhood or it ever makes it to yours (not sure how much longer the Rockwell Museum plans to tour it; I expected them to be done by now). I'd see it even if I weren't in it.

Narcissist.
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When the Crypt Doors Creak and the Tombstones Quake

2011-10-25T08:47:00.000-07:00

My sister and I ready to trick or treat
in a year she'd probably prefer I didn't mention.

Getting ready for Halloween! I love it. My house has a few tall trees out front whose canopy makes a great stage for hanging, dangling and spinning all types of ghostly props and effects. Basically, I've ripped off everything from Disney's Haunted Mansion and put it in my yard. Every year I try to add something new, and think I've got a good one on deck for this year. Won't know for sure until I finish creating it and try it out in the dark. That's the deal with ghosts: they're all about the lighting. Things that look unimpressive in the light of day can be amazing at night, and vice versa.

Yes, in my neighborhood I am that guy. Luckily for my neighbors, I am not that guy at Christmas or any other holiday. I put everything up the day of Halloween and disassemble it all the next morning (you can tell how long ago I built something by how heavy it is). That's part of the All Hallows Eve magic: it only appears for one night before vanishing into the mists like Brigadoon. I very deliberately try to make everything as unscary as possible--nothing screams or jumps--but one of my most gratifying moments was a few years ago when a very proud little boy told us it was the first year he'd had the courage to come to the door. You just want to hug a kid like that.

Making people smile is the fun part. Feel free to drop by and help pass out candy. Look out for mischievous spooks; you may not believe in them, but they believe in you.
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Mary Blair Addendum

2011-10-22T09:12:00.001-07:00

Don't know why I didn't think to mention this when I wrote about Mary Blair yesterday, but I wanted to add that the back cover of Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow (that is, the hard cover under the paper sleeve) is totally me channeling her.

When we designed the back cover, Editor Charlie had the notion of using some of the abstract googie-style shapes characteristic of the 1950s, a few of which made their way onto the paper jacket and the interior pages of the book. This sort of thing:

That would have been great. But I wanted to filter the World of Tomorrow through a kind of mid-century Disney aesthetic (Walt Disney being an influential figure in my book), and the most distinctive stylist I immediately thought of was Mary Blair. My cover isn't really a copy of Blair's style--she would've done it completely differently, probably with cleaner geometric shapes, a broader color palette and more transparency--but the inspiration was there. It was also my first (and to date, only) 100% digital artwork, done totally in Photoshop. Designer Neil Egan and I pressed on with that notion and Editor Charlie either came to see it our way or decided it wasn't worth a fight, I'm not sure which. But we did it.

Mary Blair's work continues to influence artists and illustrators. Funny how it slipped my mind that I'm one of them.
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Mary Blair

2011-10-21T13:40:00.000-07:00

Google created a special logo for its homepage today honoring the 100th birthday of Mary Blair, an illustrator/designer/cartoonist whose work I like very much.

Ms. Blair, who died in 1978, had a distinctive style that emphasized color, light, pattern, and stylized geometric shapes in an almost cubist fashion. She did design work for Walt Disney for years, and her ourvre is probably best represented these days by the "It's a Small World" attraction she created for the 1964 World's Fair, which was later moved to Disneyland. Love or hate the tune, celebrate or scoff at its message of world peace, but you've got to acknowledge that Mary Blair designed the heck out of that boat ride.

It took me some time to warm up to the art of Mary Blair. To the extent I was aware of it when I was young, I remember finding it treacly and simple. What could be easier than slapping down some circles and triangles? She hardly even used perspective!

As I got older and wiser, and did some cartooning of my own, my appreciation grew. Paring down a character, landscape or situation to its essence while leaving enough detail for someone to not only recognize but have an emotional reaction to it is very, very hard. In my own work, I sometimes redraw a panel or page; when I do, it's always to take lines out, never to put lines in. Mary Blair's art had a graphic economy and sophistication I can only admire and envy.

She was also a gender pioneer: at a time when women were forbidden from becoming Disney animators, she created her own non-animating niche with the company through sheer talent and determination.

I've posted more examples of Ms. Blair's artwork below, along with a short documentary put together by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (the "Oscar" people) for a panel discussion held yesterday in Los Angeles. Also, my pal Shaenon Garrity wrote this very nice essay after she co-curated a Blair exhibition at San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum in 2007. Although that show is long closed, a few nice examples of Blair art are on permanent display at the Disney Family Museum, also in San Francisco. If you go at the right time, maybe you'll catch my daughter Laura volunteering there. Say Hi!

Now if only Disneyland would take down the Star Wars-themed paintings covering the walls of Tomorrowland and restore the Mary Blair tile murals still hidden beneath them, that would be a fitting tribute to the artist!

Halloween Heroes

2011-10-21T08:22:00.000-07:00

OMG (and I've never had a good reason to type "OMG" until today)! I've got a pre-Halloween treat for you, but first I have to tell you about my sisters.

That's "Kid Sis" and "Nurse Sis" from Mom's Cancer, who are real people who've been busy in the five years (!) since that book was published. I don't blog about them as a rule, figuring I already violated their privacy and betrayed their trust enough for one lifetime. But they're doing their own high-profile creative projects now, and I don't see any reason not to brag--especially with what I've got to show you today.

My sisters both continued to live in Los Angeles after Mom died. Nurse Sis Brenda is working as a supervisor at a big-time L.A. hospital. Kid Sis Elisabeth has worked on her own independent film projects, including a feature titled The Commune that has been screened and won awards at several festivals. Together, they put on the monthly "Bleedfest" film festival dedicated to raising the profile of new or overlooked women filmmakers. Their concept is really neat: every month has a different theme--horror, science fiction, fantasy, action--and for $10 the audience gets a full day of shorts and a feature, plus a chance to meet actual directors, actors and other filmmaking types. Awards are given, photos are taken, wine is consumed. (BTW, I designed their splattery logo and red-carpet backdrop.)

In recent weeks my sisters set themselves the insane challenge of producing an original five-minute movie every week, to post on their website TheFiesSisters.com. They lean toward the horror/thriller genre, and most aren't suitable for kids (though they're more twisted than gory, if for no other reason than budget). Here's this week's effort, featuring another character from Mom's Cancer that some of you who've read it may remember, and perfectly appropriate for all ages:

The star is Hero, who was given to Mom on her 65th birthday and has grown a little grayer around his muzzle. And best of all from my perspective, Hero's costume was sewn by my daughter Robin, who's developing mad skillz on the Singer.

Honestly, most of my sisters' productions look much more professionally polished than this, as you'll understand when I explain that their editing computer's hard drive just died and took with it three new films they were working on. Still determined to honor their weekly commitment, they shot and edited this one in a few hours. Like I said, they're insane. But in the best way.
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Dave and Raina and The Times

2011-10-18T17:49:00.001-07:00

My friends* Dave Roman and Raina Telgemeier were recently profiled in a New York Times feature on what it's like to live and work as a couple of married cartoonists. It's a nice piece, aside from the writer's gratuitous swipe at fat comics nerds who go to conventions dressed like superheroes, which--although surely accurate--is a pretty tired observation that has nothing to do with the type of work Dave and Raina create.

As I've recounted once or twice, I first met Dave and Raina at the Eisner Awards in 2006, when I won for Mom's Cancer and Raina was edged out for Best New Talent. She's since gone on to adapt the very popular Baby-Sitters Club series and publish the autobiographical best-seller Smile, which finally got her the Eisner Award she deserved before. Dave was the long-time comics editor of Nickelodeon Magazine until Nickelodeon stupidly decided it didn't need a magazine. His books include Agnes Quill, Astronaut Academy, and Teen Boat (about a teenager who has the power to transform into a yacht, and yeah it's about that strange). They do nice work that doesn't pander or condescend to kids, which is a rare and admirable thing.

It makes me happy to see two kind, creative people succeeding together at a very difficult thing. I don't know how they do it. The anchor that's let me have a freelance writing and cartooning career over the past 12 or 13 years is my wife Karen's steady paycheck (and loving patient support!). Otherwise, forget it. I joke that my entire health care and retirement plan consists of not pissing off my wife. So kudos to Raina and Dave, two brave people shouting into the stormy abyss together. What an adventure.

And now, just because I have the excuse, here are two Two-Minute Interviews I did with Dave and Raina at the 2010 Comic-Con International in San Diego. As I apologized when I first posted them last year, my questioning of Raina was kind of deliberately dumb but I think got to an interesting discussion about process. Dave's interview was more straightforward. Doing these things in a loud and crowded hall is hard.

* "Friends" in this context means people I've talked to a few times, think highly of, and who would probably recognize me in the street or return my e-mail. Also, I can spell "Telgemeier" without looking it up.
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Astronautical Infographics

2011-10-13T13:59:00.000-07:00

Here's something interesting: an "infographic" put together by MIT's Technology Review illustrating numbers of space launches by different countries over time. All types of space launches, not just manned flights.

The size limitation of my blog doesn't do it justice. You can find a much larger version and a link to a PDF here, although only until October 19. Even at this small scale, though, I can explain some of what it shows.

Time goes from bottom to top, starting with Sputnik in 1957 at the bottom. The USSR/Russia is the fat red column at the left, the United States is beside it, and all the other countries that have shot something into space are laid out to the right. Red represents the number of military missions in each year, gray commercial, blue government, and yellow amateur (universities and such). Most noticeable is the big glut of Soviet military missions in the 1970s and '80s (which an accompanying article explains is partly because Soviet satellites didn't survive long) and the explosion of U.S. commercial traffic in the second half of the '90s. There's also quite a drop-off in Russian activity after the dissolution of the USSR, for obvious reasons.

I find it interesting how Russia's and the U.S.'s curves are nearly inverse images of each other, as if they could fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I don't know if that has any meaning larger than, "huh, cool," but it kind of is.

Down in the "Halfway Game" comments, I alluded to the idea that looking at information in a new way can change your perspective on it. This graph does that for me. If you'd asked me to draw something like it, I probably would've shown the United States and USSR with roughly similar numbers of launches, distributed much differently over time (i.e., gradually increasing to a modern peak). For example, I would not have guessed that we rocketed more stuff into space in 1960 than we did in 2010. This one image rearranges my understanding of 54 years of history at a glance. New perspective is always worthwhile.
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The Halfway Game

2011-10-11T07:48:00.001-07:00

Long ago in a blog far away, I sometimes played The Halfway Game, guaranteed to put your life in perspective. The game works like this: think of something in the past and then count back twice that number of years to see what the event was halfway to. Ten years ago was halfway to twenty years ago. For best effect, the two events should have some connection.

For example, Michael Keaton's Batman 22 years ago (1989) is halfway to Adam West's Batman 44 years ago (1967). See how that works?

Also, Disney's The Little Mermaid (1989) is halfway to The Jungle Book (1967), which is halfway to the founding of the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio (1923).

U2's album The Joshua Tree (1987) is halfway to the Beatles' first album Please Please Me (1963).

The debuts of the comic strips Calvin & Hobbes and The Far Side (1980) are about halfway to the debut of Peanuts (1950).

The movie Star Trek: Generations (Kirk meets Picard, 1994) is halfway to Star Wars (1977), which is halfway to Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943).

The comic books Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns (1986) are halfway to the debut of The Fantastic Four (1961).

The debut of Charlie's Angels (1976) is halfway to the first commercial television broadcast (1941).

The Apollo 11 Moon landing (1969) is halfway to Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic (1927).

Barack Obama's birthday (1961) is halfway to Ronald Reagan's birthday (1911), which is almost halfway to Abraham Lincoln's birthday (1809).

Sputnik (1957) is halfway to the Wright Brothers' first flight (1903).

The explosion of the first atomic bomb (1945) is halfway to the birth of Albert Einstein (1879).

Feeling old yet? Play along!
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Two Minutes with Keith Knight

2011-10-05T07:41:00.000-07:00

I think Keith Knight is one of the funniest and most distinctive cartoonists in the business and, as you'll see in this Two-Minute Interview, also one of the busiest and most entrepreneurial. He's got a lot going on. Keith used to live in the San Francisco Bay Area, knew Mom's Cancer, and so became one of those people I bumped into for five minutes once a year. Last Sunday at APE, I did it again.

Just a couple of follow-up thoughts: while not everyone appreciates poop humor, I think Keith's "9 Types of Baby Poo" is hilarious. Although I'm thankfully long out of the baby poo business, if it were still a part of my life or the life of anyone I knew, I would buy his beautiful color print and frame it for the nursery.

As often happens, a more interesting conversation took place after I turned off the camera. I commented admiringly on how many projects Keith had going and he told me he'd been criticized for being unfocused and spreading himself too thin. Not by me. I think diversification is smart. Comics, web, books, TV: it won't all succeed but something will, and the more seeds you sow the better chance of reaping something tremendous.

Also, I am consulting a thesaurus to add adjectives other than "cool" to my rhetorical repertoire. I promise to work in "good," "great," "neat," "swell," "keen," "spiffy," and "boffo" at the earliest opportunity.

Check out Keith's work at the Official K Chronicles and (Th)ink Website.

* * *

I had a nice long conversation with Editor Charlie last night that I'm not going to say anything about right now except that it's all good. All good.

Two Minutes with Alexis Fajardo

2011-10-04T08:09:00.000-07:00

Alexis Fajardo is a very nice, smart guy and the creator of a series titled Kid Beowulf, based on the ancient epic and aimed at young readers, as he explains in this three-minute Two-Minute Interview I recorded with him at APE on Sunday. He's also got a really neat day job that I think anyone who knows or cares about comics would find fascinating. But I'll let him tell you about it . . .

Thanks to Lex for playing along! Check out his work at http://www.kidbeowulf.com/.

APE 2011 Debriefing

2011-10-03T07:41:00.000-07:00

I spent a very nice Sunday afternoon at the Alternative Press Expo (APE) in San Francisco, accompanied by half of my Digital Art Assistants' Squad (that is, my girls Laura and Robin). Although APE is organized by the same group that does the much larger, louder, slicker Comic-Con International and WonderCon events, it's got a unique funky, underground, do-it-yourself vibe that really sets it apart. Its physical space enhances its tone: rather than a modern concrete and glass convention hall, APE is held at the Concourse Exposition Center, a long wood-beamed refurbished warehouse in an industrial, slightly sketchy part of town. It suits it.

The only other time I've attended APE was in 2006, when I remember it being smaller. A few important independent comics publishers were there yesterday--Fantagraphics, IDW, Top Shelf, SLG (not Marvel or DC)--but most of the tables were claimed by people clearly in it more for love than money. The glory and horror of APE is that the talent on display ranges from extremely polished professionals to the rankest amateurs. One table was staffed by an 8-year-old girl selling felt-tip drawings of superheroes; I guess she was pretty good for an 8 year old, but honestly not a prodigy who should've been asking for people's cash.

I met people I didn't know and remet people I did. At the Fantagraphics table I happened across a book-signing by cartoonist Leslie Stein, whose Eye of the Majestic Creature comic has just been collected by the company. Both Leslie and her work were new to me but I bought her book and introduced myself, and we had a nice conversation about getting published and such--Leslie said she was excited to see her work "in a book with a spine." When I mentioned my editor, the guy quietly taking money next to Leslie perked up and said, "Charlie?" And that's how I met Fantagraphics Editor Eric Reynolds, one of the more important folks in comics, and had a nice, quick conversation with him as well.

People I knew at least a little and reconnected with at APE included cartoonist Shaenon Garrity, her husband and Cartoon Art Museum curator Andrew Farago (who organized the APE workshops), cartoonist Paige Braddock (Jane's World, The Martian Confederacy), Paige's writer on The Martian Confederacy Jason McNamara, cartoonist Lex Fajardo (Kid Beowulf), and cartoonist Keith Knight (The K Chronicles). Unfortunately, I just missed saying hello to cartoonist Rick Geary before he left for the day. My girls pointed out that for someone who doesn't know anyone in the business, I know a lot of people in the business.

Two of those people let me subject them to a "Two-Minute Interview," in which I ask them two minutes worth of bad questions on shaky hand-held video. I've done 'em before and, despite zero demand for more, I did 'em again. Who? I'll let that suspense build until tomorrow.

Between 2 and 2:55 p.m. I gave a workshop on "Designing Distinctive Characters." I think it went pretty well, despite the absence of my usual AV/PowerPoint crutches. Andrew had told me to expect about 20 people so I made 25 packets to distribute; since I ran out, I think I got about 30. Nice!

Workshopping

My talk was a little looser and more seat-of-the-pants than I usually do, which I thought fit the APE ethos. Attendees seemed to get something out of it and I don't think I wasted anyone's time. The best part was talking to people afterward. A couple were very interested in learning the Secret to Success (if I knew it, I'd apply it myself. Just do as much work as you can and get it out into the world however you can, and then get lucky). And I was very happy to meet Tony, who said he's a regular reader of this here blog, which I think is a first for me. Hi, Tony, thanks again!

Thanks to everyone who came to my workshop, and to Andrew for signing me up to do it. APE's a good event, especially for getting a sense of the enormous amount of interesting comic work bubbling beneath the established commercial successes. Some of the people at this expo are going to break out big in the coming years. I don't know who, but it'll be neat to be able to say I saw them when.

Character Design #5

2011-09-28T11:27:00.001-07:00

Sure, it's been nearly a year since I posted Character Design #1, #2, #3 and #4, but what the heck. In preparing to give a workshop on "Designing Distinctive Characters" at this weekend's Alternative Press Expo (APE) in San Francisco, I've been mulling over a topic that I think is interesting but I haven't quite wrapped my brain around, and hope writing about it might help organize my thoughts. I also figure it's unlikely anyone attending the workshop will see this post. But Spoiler Alert!: If you read #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5 in addition to my write-up of the workshop I did at the Graphic Medicine Conference in Chicago, you pretty much don't need to show up to APE at 2 p.m. Sunday.

Today's topic comes out of a life-drawing class I took waaaaay back in college (geez, 30 years ago?!) and changed the way I look at designing and drawing characters. I don't even know what to call it: maybe it's the character's Core or Energy Center. The idea is that every character expresses their personality and pulls their strength from a place that affects how you depict them.

For example, a very emotional character's Energy Center might be their heart: when frightened they clutch their chest, when overjoyed they throw their arms open wide. Everything they do pulls toward or emanates from their heart. A very cerebral character's Energy Center might be his head. Other characters' might be their hips or fists or genitals. A character's Energy Center doesn't have to be within its body. One character can be pulled outward and upward to the stars, another grounded toward the earth. One character always charging forward, another always pulling back.

It sounds arty-farty woo-woo, but I've found this idea useful in very practical ways. Imagine you've got a group of characters standing in a boring line, but each is doing something different depending on their Energy Center. One's scratching her head, another's looking off into space, another's digging her toe into the ground, another's got his arms crossed in front of his chest. That's a much more interesting drawing! And if you depict your characters' Energy Centers consistently--if there's a reason this character scratches her chin while that character crosses his arms over his chest--I think over time it helps build their personalities in ways the reader doesn't consciously notice but picks up on anyway.

At the very least, it cues you to draw something more interesting than you might've otherwise thought of.

So far I've been describing a metaphorical Energy Center, but in some situations it can also find very literal expression in how your characters physically move. For example, the superhero Iron Man flies because he's got jets in his boots, whereas Thor flies by being pulled by his magic hammer. Iron Man is propelled from behind, Thor is dragged from ahead; their postures should look very different in flight. Comic book artist John Byrne once described how, when he drew Superman, he imagined he flew thanks to an extra Kryptonian organ in his chest. Now, Byrne never had to explicitly explain that, anymore than you need to reveal in your story what each of your characters' Energy Center is, but it gave him a handle to distinguish his Superman from all the other flying superheroes crowding the skies of Metropolis.

Byrne's Superman leads with his chest.

I think the more broad and cartoony your work is, the more you can play up the Energy Center idea. In my own work, I didn't do much with it in Mom's Cancer, which was a quiet, realistic story without a lot of physical action or extreme expression. In Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow, Cap Crater's Energy Center is in the middle of his big barrel chest, the evil Dr. Xandra's is in his brain, while the Cosmic Kid's is about 12 feet in front of him, pulling him forward into action (without always thinking first).

As I said, I've found that identifying an Energy Center can be a very useful part of character design. If I can figure out how to say it right, I'll try to pass it on this Sunday.
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The Little One

2011-09-27T08:08:00.000-07:00

Just had this cute little Magnitude 2.6 earthquake shudder through my house about 12 minutes ago. Its epicenter was 6 miles north and 3 miles down. No big deal, just a little reminder from the Earth that it's still there. Message received. Life appreciated.

Linked Out

2011-09-23T08:35:00.000-07:00

I just closed my "LinkedIn" account. If you haven't heard of it, LinkedIn is a kind of Facebook for business people, ostensibly allowing them to network within their industry, refer clients to each other, assemble teams of experts, etc. I've had the account for four years and never gotten any real benefit out of it, and after receiving an e-mail from them this morning finally said, "You know what, I don't need that in my life." Apologies to the 42 Contacts I made (i.e., "Friends" in Facebook) who just lost mine.

Part of why I dropped LinkedIn is that I really have two careers that don't overlap and I like it that way. I get weirdly uncomfortable when Science Writer World and Comics World collide. I was once talking to a client about photovoltaic interconnection standards when he interrupted to ask, "Hey, did you do that comic book about cancer?" My stammering explanation would've made Porky Pig proud. I like my invisible irrational boundaries clean and high. So one problem with LinkedIn was that it lumped together contacts whom I had no desire to introduce to each other. (I wouldn't be surprised if LinkedIn had some function for sorting them into different groups but, again: more trouble than it was worth.)

Still, for something of so little value to me, it was amazingly hard to cut out of my life! I was fascinated observing myself struggling to push the button. There's some interesting psychology at play.

First, I think people--even natural loners--like to be part of a group. Any group will do. The Greeks considered exile a very harsh punishment. Voluntarily casting yourself out of the tribe is difficult.

Second, it's easier to stay in than get out. Staying in means I delete an e-mail once in a while. Takes a tenth of a second. Getting out means logging in, finding my account information, and navigating through several "Is there any way we can talk you out of quitting?" pleas. Not onerous, but it took a couple of minutes.

Third, I think there's a kind of gambler's fallacy operating: LinkedIn hasn't done anything for me the past 1400 days but maybe tomorrow will be the day it pays off. I'll get a great job offer or hear from someone really cool. One more day, what's the harm? In fact, I probably thought about closing my account two dozen times over the past several months but "one more day" always stopped me.

One of Jerry Seinfeld's oldest, best jokes is about how men use the TV remote control: click click click, blazing through 500 channels because we're not interested in what's on, we need to know what else is on. What am I missing? Maybe something great is happening on LinkedIn right now! Now I'll never know.

I wonder if these social media are more powerful and addictive than we think. I wonder if leaving Facebook would be like cutting off an arm for some people. I wonder if the people who operate and buy and sell advertising on those sites realize that. (Of course they do.) It's strange and funny and frightening how things that didn't exist a few years ago so quickly become absolutely essential.

Still, I figure that anyone with the slightest interest or reason to contact me doesn't need LinkedIn to do it. One of the benefits of having an odd surname is being extremely Googleable (I pity the poor "Steve Smiths" of the world whom nobody can ever find). If any of you 42 former Contacts want me for anything, here I am.
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Anticipating APE (AnticipAPEtion?)

2011-09-20T09:28:00.000-07:00

The program and workshop schedule for San Francisco's Alternative Press Expo (APE) is now out, and lists me giving a workshop on "Designing Distinctive Characters" on Sunday, October 2 at 2 p.m., just as I said a couple of weeks ago. I like APE. It's a smallish, affordable con infused with an independent do-it-yourself spirit but put on by the people who do the big San Diego Comic-Con, so it's very professionally run.

Workshop organizer Andrew Farago told me 20 or so people typically show up for the workshops. That's a nice size. Out of curiosity, I checked the events program to see what else is happening Sunday afternoon and discovered that my workshop overlaps two spotlight panels featuring Webcartooning Sensation (and object of my secret cartoonist's crush) Kate Beaton and "Guy Whose New Book Habibi Will Win Every Award in Comics Plus Maybe a Super Bowl Ring" Craig Thompson.

This tells me three things: 1) APE attracts great guests. 2) I won't be able to see those guests because I'll be giving my workshop. 3) Nobody's coming to my workshop.

Ah well. I'll do my best for whoever shows. It's a challenge because I'd really like to make it as unlecturelike and hands-on as possible. I don't expect to have any AV support. Just me, an easel, and two or three upturned faces daring me to justify why they passed up Beaton and Thompson for me. I'm already having anxiety nightmares about it. Stop staring at me!

Lunacy

2011-09-14T10:05:00.000-07:00

I saw surprisingly little mention in the press commemorating the anniversary of that terrible day, 12 years ago yesterday, when a nuclear waste dump exploded on the Moon and propelled it deep into interstellar space. How quickly we forget. I still miss the tides.

No word from my publisher on my Mystery Project X book proposal but that's all right; I'm knee-deep (that's more than ankle-deep and less than hip-deep) in Mystery Project Y, which I'm also very excited about. They're very different in both form and content, which lets me flex different writing and drawing muscles. I also think I could get Y done much faster than X, so it may zoom ahead in my queue. That's assuming either of them actually flies, which is quite in doubt. If Editor Charlie can't do X, others have expressed interest in publishing it. If not them, maybe I need to revisit webcomics. It worked out all right before. On the other hand, it's a lot of work.

Backing me up on that last thought is this blog post by comic book artist Stephen Bissette explaining why he will not draw your graphic novel for you (hat tip to my pal Mike Lynch for the link). A lot of people contact Bissette absolutely positive that they've got a great idea for a best-selling book if only he would do them the favor of providing the art--often for free, although he'll obviously be richly rewarded when the money truck backs up to the author's door. Bissette's answer is kind but blunt:

* Drawing a graphic novel takes a long time--much longer than scripting one. How will he buy food and pay rent during those months or years?

* You are probably not interested in giving him the share of ownership, rights and control over the project that he'd want to make it worth his while. Even in the best professional arrangements, collaborating is creatively, ethically and legally difficult.

* If he had the time to draw your graphic novel, he'd much rather spend it working on one of his own ideas that he hasn't had time to pursue.

I receive a few e-mails like this. However, I think mine have a different cast to them because they're often from people who've read Mom's Cancer, gone through something similar in their own families, and with the very best intentions want to tell their story in the same way. They mean well, they don't know cartooning or publishing, but they're just aching to get it out somehow. I understand that.

My answer has the virtue of being both sincere and true: I can't tell your story. I don't know you. I wasn't there. Anything I'd draw would be second-hand reporting at best, lies at worst. The only person who can tell your story is you, and if you can't draw then you should find some other way. Writing, photography, video, HTML, collage, macaroni sculpture. If the message is important and true, the medium is nearly irrelevant.

Beyond that, my unspoken answer is the same as Bissette's: I don't have the time. If I did have the time, I'd rather spend it on my own projects (X, Y and beyond) that aren't repeats of things I've already done. There's probably no money in it for me; if there is, it isn't enough to pay me even near minimum wage for the hours I'd spend. I'm sympathetic and charitable, but not a solid one or two years' of hard work worth.

I think the disconnect here is that a lot of people don't realize how difficult it is and how long it takes. "They're simple cartoon drawings! You can bang them out in a few hours!" I take it as a compliment that I maybe make it look easy, but it's not. Mom's Cancer was the toughest thing I've ever done creatively, for obvious reasons. But even on Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow, which didn't impose the same emotional toll, I did thousands of hours of work and gathered thousands of pages of research (literally--I have three 500-page binders stuffed with material). Both projects demanded long months of total immersion. You're asking a lot.

I'm not whining--no one's ever held a gun to my head, and it beats coal mining. Just explaining why I Will Not Draw Your Graphic Novel Either.

* * *

Please allow me to draw your attention to two new Web thingies. First, a new blog by Friend O' The Blog Jim O'Kane, whose topics have already included fiddling, trains and 19th Century rocketry, so you know he's my kind of guy.

Second, the new home of the Toon Talk forum, recently relocated to a Facebook Group. Toon Talk was begun 10 years ago by cartoonist Darrin Bell ("Rudy Park," "Candorville") and for a long time was a nice place for pros and fans to meet and talk all types of comics. As sometimes happens, people gradually fell away and the forum became a ghost town. Honestly, I stopped visiting myself. When Darrin's web host wanted $250 he didn't have, Darrin moved the whole kit 'n kaboodle to free Facebook, where it's gotten more traffic in three days than it did in the past 30 months. I know not everyone does Facebook but I think it's a big improvement. Nice people, check it out.

* * *

I'll be visiting the USS Hornet again this weekend. Anybody want me to pick them up anything?
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Earth Below Us, Drifting, Falling

2011-09-06T17:11:00.000-07:00

A lot of folks are posting new photos from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) that show the landing sites of Apollos 12, 14 and 17. I mentioned them myself on my WHTTWOT Facebook Fan Page (and the NASA link I provide there is certainly worth a look; I particularly like the slider feature that lets you compare old and new photos of the same sites). But Friend O' The Blog Mike "Sligo" Harkins was the first to send me this video that offers a neat tour of the Apollo 17 site.

The LRO, which has been circling and mapping the Moon since 2009, already photographed all of the Apollo landing sites a while ago.
I blogged about it. What's new is that the LRO recently dropped into a lower orbit that allows much sharper pictures showing a lot more detail. It is completely astounding to me that, nearly 40 years after the last human (so far!) walked on the Moon, we've got a satellite up there taking pictures of their footprints.

Nine of the 12 men who walked on the Moon are still alive. I think it would be fascinating if someone sat them down with these photos and interviewed them. Of course they've all been interviewed to death; the difference now is that we could literally trace every step they took: Why'd you stop here? What were you looking for there? Why that route? Why this detour? I'd expect it to dredge up details they haven't thought about since, providing a nice commentary on history by the men who made it.

The Moon Hoaxers--purveyors of the amazingly widespread belief that the U.S. faked the whole thing--have been pretty low-profile lately. Of course the LRO photos would be no problem for them to explain away. After all, they're from NASA. But technology is implacably demolishing the Hoaxers' case. In the short run, those sad, stupid people can make some harmful mischief; in the long run, they're irrelevant. The Truth is Out There, and will be for millions of years after they're gone.
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Kazu Kibuishi

2011-09-03T16:56:00.001-07:00

Karen and I went to the Charles M. Schulz Museum this afternoon to see Kazu Kibuishi, creator of the bestselling Amulet series for kids, the well-regarded Flight anthologies, and one of the sweetest little webcomics ever, Copper. I'd never met him but I know a lot of people who know him. It's a small world.

Here's how small: below is an accurate swear-on-a-stack-of-Bibles transcript of the first words Kazu and I exchanged:

Me: "I'm really happy to meet you. I'm Brian Fies, I did a couple of books called Mom's Cancer and Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow."

Kazu: "Oh! I know Charlie!"

Son of a . . .

"Charlie" is of course my Editor Charlie Kochman, whom I've joked before knows everybody in the business and gets treated like the Godfather at a Sinatra concert when he walks the aisles of Comic-Con. I'd forgotten that Kazu recently signed with my publisher Abrams to produce a new anthology titled Explorer, edited by oh you know who. Still, the fun of everyone I meet saying "Oh, I know Charlie!" is wearing thin.

[CORRECTION: Editor Charlie sez in the comments that Kazu's editor at Abrams is Sheila Keenan, not him. My misunderstanding. I know Sheila. In fact, that's what I should have said to Kazu: "Oh, I know Sheila!" Four days too late.]

Normally I'd hate someone so much more talented, successful and younger than me, but Kazu gave such a warm, authentic, interesting, unassuming talk that I can't bring myself to whip up more than a mild envious resentment. In addition, he and I seem to have similar philosophies about what comics can be and how they should be made (I've said some of the same things in talks I've given) that I almost feel I found a brother. A more talented, successful, younger brother.

Since I was at the head of the line waiting for autographs, we only had a minute to talk. I hope I have a chance to really sit down and spend some time with him someday.

Maybe at Charlie's.
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Going APE (groan)

2011-09-01T17:22:00.000-07:00

Sorry.

I just firmed up that I'll be doing a workshop on "Designing Distinctive Characters" at the Alternative Press Expo (APE) in San Francisco at 2 p.m. Sunday, October 2.

This'll be interesting and, I expect, fun. First of all, APE is a neat off-kilter con: intimate, small-press, undergroundish, literary. Not a lot of Wolverines roaming the aisles.

Second, it was only after I told Andrew Farago (director of SF's Cartoon Art Museum in charge of wrangling workshoppers for APE) I'd love to do it that he revealed there's no AV or projector capability. Nothing but a big pad of paper and an easel. There go all my neat examples and demonstrations. I considered backing out, but Andrew is such a powerfully intimidating figure--he's basically the Bay Area's Godfather of Comics--I didn't have the courage. Still, I like the idea of standing in front of 20 people armed with nothing but my dull wits and a sharp Sharpie; heaven forbid, I might actually have to draw.

Some semi-related disappointing news was announced today: WonderCon, a little sister to the big San Diego Comic-Con that's traditionally been held in San Francisco in the spring, is going to Anaheim for 2012. It got booted from its home at the Moscone Convention Center due to ongoing renovations. I'd just come to regard WonderCon as my comics convention--near my home, inexpensive, and more human-scale than the San Diego asylum--and I'll miss it. Man, I hope it comes back.

(Andrew's actually a nice guy.)

(I don't want to wake up to find Marmaduke's head in my bed, the sheets soaked black with ink.)
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The Continuing Adventures

2011-08-31T10:40:00.000-07:00

See? No sooner do I finish moaning that I've got nothing to write about than I come up with a couple of things to share.

First up: between the end of summer jobs and return to grad school, my girls closed their summer with a road trip through the southeastern United States. Ideally they would've taken a month, pointed their car east and toured the continent. However, since they and their former roommate Harminder only had 12 days, they flew into Kansas City and rented a car to drive to Memphis, down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, across to Orlando, then up the coast to Washington D.C. before flying home from Baltimore--99% places they'd never been. Luckily, they finished a week before Hurricane Irene arrived, and had a wonderful time.

Which is all prelude to this picture my girls took just because they knew what a thrill it'd be for me: Robin and Laura with the USS Enterprise in the Smithsonian Museum's National Air and Space Museum.

How cool is that? How cool are they?

That's the actual 11-foot model used in the original "Star Trek" series. What a beauty! In my opinion, the Enterprise is the most iconic, convincing, well-designed fictional spacecraft in film or TV history, especially for its era (second best: the Eagle ships from "Space: 1999"). The old girl was in sad shape by the time the Smithsonian got her, and the quality of her restoration is controversial in rarified Trekkie circles. She's actually been restored a few times; the first was supervised by the ship's original designer Matt Jeffries and from what I've seen was well done. I think the museum's subsequent restorations were well-intentioned but ham-handed. In particular, the modelmaker hired to repaint it in 1991 went nuts with his airbrush, adding color, texture and seams absent in the original. The Enterprise had a deliberately smooth hull (Jeffries said he figured an interstellar vessel would be built so all its critical components could be accessed from the inside), and the lumpy-plated-weathered style of spaceship modelmaking didn't come into vogue until Kubrick's "2001" and especially "Star Wars." Still, I appreciate the photo a lot and must make this pilgrimage myself someday. I hear the Smithsonian has one or two other trinkets worth a look as well.

Too much? Just remember, this is the kind of brain clutter that got my name in the acknowledgements of a "Star Trek" book, so go ahead and mock.

No, really, go ahead. I deserve it.

Second up: speaking of arrested development, a lot of people are posting the video below and I like it enough to do the same. It's an animator's re-creation of the old Jonny Quest cartoon's opening credits done in stop-motion animation. Key point: this isn't CGI, but actual models sculpted and shot against real backgrounds, all built by Roger Evans and his crew (although those photographic elements were then composed in Photoshop, making it partly CGI, I suppose). He worked on it over a couple of years. Even if you're not of a certain age that remembers Jonny Quest, I think you can appreciate the love and skill involved. And what great music!

Third up: This is for my girls. Fifteen seconds previewing the upcoming second series of the BBC's modern take on Sherlock Holmes, which we very much enjoyed together. The 21st Century Holmes is an Asperger's candidate addicted to nicotine patches instead of cocaine who taps the Internet to supplement his formidable brain while Watson records their adventures for a blog. I guess Holmes and Watson survived last season's cliffhanger with Moriarty after all. Coming up: maybe "Hound of the Baskervilles?"

Now I've got to get back to work. And, don't lie, so do you.

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Busy Busy Busy

2011-08-29T09:19:00.000-07:00

Busy writing

I see you out there.

Not literally. But I look at my blog's stats and see your repeat visits from cities whose names seem like familiar places to me. I don't have your IP addresses memorized, but give me time. So I feel bad when I know (but you don't) that there won't be any fresh content on the Fies Files today.

I'm just very busy. Mostly with my science-writing day job, but also working on Mystery Projects X and Y (mostly Y lately). Something's gotta give. I also go through periodic moods when the Internet just seems like a giant sucking black hole that devours time and creative energy to very little purpose or benefit. No offense; I love you guys. Sometimes I just don't have anything to say. I also know from experience that my mood will lift and I'll soon be inspired to post something I just can't wait to share.

Not much news. No word on Mystery Project X, but I didn't expect any yet.

There's a good chance I'll be giving a workshop at the Alternative Press Expo (APE) October 1-2 in San Francisco. Details as they develop.

I'm seeing a little uptick in sales of Mom's Cancer, due, I think, to a couple of universities requiring it in classes. There's another sentence I never would have imagined myself writing a few years ago. Note to any students out there writing papers: I am always happy to answer any questions but will not do your entire homework assignment for you.

I hope all my friends and readers on the East Coast have working utilities and dry basements. It's going to be a sunny 85 degrees (29 degrees unAmerican) here in northern California today. You really should move here. Of course we have occasional earthquakes, but now so do you! You don't have that to lord over us anymore. Plus: no snow or hurricanes.

Everybody be careful out there.

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Designer Neil Egan

2011-08-18T14:34:00.000-07:00

Editor Charlie alerted me to a good interview at The Graphic Novel Reporter with Neil Egan, the talented Abrams designer who helped make Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow a better book than I imagined it could be. Neil notes that he and I were co-nominated for an Eisner Award for Best Publication Design, which was a thrill for both of us. And he's a great guy, which is always a plus.

Although Neil and I worked closely by Internet and phone during the production of WHTTWOT, we didn't really sit down and talk in person until I made my way to New York long after the book had been published. Odd, isn't it? Creating a book can be an intense, intimate experience during which you really get to know someone you don't actually know at all. Can't argue with the results.

Congratulations to my friend Neil for some well-earned recognition. I hope we get to work together again soon.

Surfing for an interesting photo of Neil, I found this of three men who contributed to WHTTWOT and one I've seen in his underwear. From right to left are my editor Charlie Kochman, designer Neil Egan, and photographer Geoff Spear, who shot the fine professional photos of the 1939 World's Fair pennant and Futurama pin that illustrate my book. At left is celebrated designer/writer/editor Chip Kidd, who wrote the "Shazam!" book with which they all posed at the 2010 New York Comic-Con. Photo by Abrams's Chad Beckerman, stolen without permission. But we're all pals, right?.

Go Team Cul de Sac! Rah Rah Rah de Rac!

2011-08-16T08:04:00.000-07:00

Team Cul de Sac is an effort by cartoonist Richard Thompson, creator of the comic strip "Cul de Sac," and others to raise funds for researching Parkinson's Disease, which Richard has. Working with the Michael J. Fox Foundation, Team Cul de Sac had the idea of asking other cartoonists, illustrators, animators and artists to donate art for a book and auction. What kind of art? As the original announcement said:

"The theme is going to be fun. It's your take on the Cul de Sac characters. Please run with them; deconstruct them, parody them, confuse them, cubisize them, psychoanalyze them, draw them in your own strip, whatever tickles your fancy. Enjoy. Open up your heart just create something out of the ordinary, maybe not your own characters, this is for you to let your talent to shine in a wide range of ways. Please write a little text if you would. Not necessarily about PD, but inspiration, technique, influences, determination, strength, spirituality, etc."

So I did, and so did a lot of other people--maybe more than they expected. Many syndicated cartoonists such as Stephan Pastis, Mort Walker, Greg Evans, Jim Davis and Lynn Johnston donated pieces. "Calvin & Hobbes" creator Bill Watterson emerged from retirement to paint a picture for the cause. The deadline was several weeks ago, and Team Cul de Sac organizer Chris Sparks just shot a little video showing a conference room stuffed with submissions. I found mine at 1:25, right after Chris says, "and then there's more." There sure is! Maybe more than they can use; I wouldn't presume they'll all be in the book, and if mine doesn't make the cut that's fine. Maybe it'll raise a few bucks anyway.

Unfortunately, you can't see much of my piece in the video because my cover letter's clipped to the front of it. Fortunately, I scanned it before I sent it off:

Click on the image for a super-big version

If you're not familiar with "Cul de Sac," which I believe is the best newspaper comic currently in print, the girl and boy inside the house are Alice and Petey, and the chaos around them invokes episodes and recurring themes from the strip. Pangolins, those scaly armadillo things which are Alice's favorite animal, are a lot of fun to draw! In fact the whole thing was a hoot, and I appreciated the opportunity to play in Richard's sandbox for a bit.

I'll be sure to post information about the auction and book project as they come. Team Cul de Sac is good people working for a good cause and I'm proud to make a little contribution.
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A Brief Meditation

2011-08-15T08:38:00.000-07:00

Some blog posts are born when two entirely different things trigger the same part of my brain within a short span of time: a connection between ideas that don't obviously belong together.

Yesterday, Karen and I saw the movie "The Help," based on a book she read and I didn't. Good film, I recommend it. It's about a community of black maids and the largely useless (but occassionally decent) white twits they serve, set in Mississippi during the Civil Rights days. Real-world milestones noted in the film include the deaths of Medgar Evers and JFK. When the movie was over and Karen and I were walking out to our car, we looked at each other with the same thought: "I can't believe we were alive when that happened." The further time carries us forward, the more the view behind becomes an unrecognizably alien landscape.

With that thought still rattling uneasily around my brain, this morning my pal Mike Lynch posted a video that lit up the same neurons: a tutorial on How To Dial a Rotary Telephone. Granted, it was made to teach those at the beginning of the dial phone era, which was before my time, but it'd be just as helpful if someone like, oh, let's say my kids, were faced with one of the ancient contraptions.

Yeah, it's a familiar lament. I don't think my 23-year-old girls have ever used a record player either, even though we've always had one in the living room (it was the first thing Karen and I bought together, now hidden inside the cabinet of an antique hand-cranked phonograph, an irony I always appreciated).

No message besides the obvious. I try to watch the parade of time and my cyclic obsolesence with easy-going bemusement, because the alternative hurts. "Now children, gather round and I'll tell you what it was like growing up watching black-and-white TV with three channels!" Ooh! Better record my stories and put them in the Smithsonian now, while I can still remember them. "Here now, son, let me show you how to operate that Walkman before you hurt yourself." Thanks, old man!

"See this dusty thing here, with all these sheets of paper stuck in it? It's called a book."
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Space Station Ahoy!

2011-08-12T20:56:00.000-07:00

So Karen and I went out to watch the International Space Station skim our southern horizon and slide beneath the Moon Friday night (this passes for "Date Night" around our house; I'll bet there's some ladies out there right now wondering how they ever let me get away). I took a lousy movie of it:

(If you're having a hard time seeing a tiny point of light in a tiny digital window, take a look at the larger version on YouTube.)

I'm actually surprised and happy with how this turned out. First, I shot it with a simple little digital point-and-shoot in video mode, nothing sophisticated. Second, I did a dry run with a different camera (a Flip) during a very short ISS pass last night that failed utterly. Third, it wasn't long after sunset and the sky was still quite bright and hazy; I wasn't sure we'd see anything. All things considered, I'm very pleased.

The ISS didn't really look much different from an airplane, and you kind of have to think about what you're looking at for the impact to hit you. There are people on that thing. In space. People in space. 200 miles high. In space. In the five minutes it took me to walk home after shooting this, they'd already traveled halfway across North America. So: impressive!

As I mentioned before, the website Heavens Above can give you a list of all the times the ISS is visible from your house for the next 10 days. I think it's worthwhile to take 5 minutes to go outside, look up, and marvel.
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Yoe, Kids, it's 3-D Comics!

2011-08-11T15:19:00.000-07:00

Just arrived in my mailbox is the new book Amazing 3-D Comics, edited and designed by Craig Yoe with a cover and introduction by the great comic book artist Joe Kubert. What a terrific book: a joyful, energetic, thoughtful celebration of the red-blue 3-D comics of the early 1950s, with both Kubert (who helped invent them) and Yoe providing historical context and technical insights into the process, along with pages and pages of actual 3-D comics carefully remastered by Yoe.

Incidentally, that link above goes to an Amazon page with a cover image that looks nothing like the actual cover. In fact, I couldn't find a decent image of the real one online and had to scan my own, which I think had the accidental benefit of capturing some of the 3-D quality of Kubert's beautiful lenticular cover image, one of the nicest I've seen.

I know Craig Yoe through Editor Charlie (Craig has done books for Abrams, including a great one on the comic strip Krazy Kat and its creator George Herriman) and I've never met anyone with more passion and appreciation for old comics, the more obscure the better. He's a writer, designer, publisher, creative director, historian, and unique character (I don't think he'd mind me saying that) who recently gave me a ton of free advice for Mystery Project X that I appreciated very, very much. He also told me how much care went into printing Amazing 3-D Comics, including the use of two extra Pantone inks (not cheap) in addition to the usual cyan, magenta, yellow and black, to try to present these comics in their best light.

In my opinion, Craig's hard work and attention to detail paid off. I thought Amazing 3-D Comics was a beautifully designed book that perfectly balanced information and entertainment, curated by two of the most qualified people on the planet. I read it with a smile and enjoyed it a lot.

I couldn't find a photo of Craig Yoe with me, so here's one I took of him with Editor Charlie instead. Craig's the one with superior taste in shirts.

Space Patrol Alert!

2011-08-10T07:24:00.000-07:00

Attention West Coast Space Rangers! This Friday, August 12, shortly after 8:30 p.m., the International Space Station will be flying over your town!

Big whoop?

The ISS is always flying over somebody's town, and can cover a given area several times per week. In fact, this week and next offer my part of the planet several opportunities to see the ISS just before dawn or after dusk, when the sky is darkish and the station reflects the light of the Sun just over the horizon.

What makes this apparition special enough to trigger the Space Patrol Orange Alert is that the ISS will be passing very close to the Moon, which'll make it easy to find and could give someone a nice photo op. In fact, it looks to me like observers along a line running from Watsonville (Calif.) through Turlock to approximately Battle Mountain (Nevada) have a good chance to catch the station flying across the face of the Moon, which would be very cool indeed.

The website Heavens Above can provide times and sky charts for your area. The map at the top of this post is for San Francisco, and shows the ISS skimming just under the Moon. Tell the site where you live--either by entering latitude and longitude, searching for your city's name, or pinpointing it on a map (if you use the map, don't forget to also specify your Time Zone)--then pick "10 Day Predictions for: ISS," and it'll provide a list of all your viewing opportunities. This one is for 12 Aug starting around (depending on your location) 20:33.

So, Space Rangers stationed in California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and northern Mexico: go outside this Friday night around 8:30 and watch the southern skies to the right of the Moon. The ISS should look like a pretty bright star moving at a fair clip from right to left. The farther south you're located, the higher in the sky it'll appear. You don't need a telescope, although some people have seen the station's distinctive H-shape through binoculars. If you haven't spotted anything by 8:40, you missed it. Better luck next time!

Don't forget to report your findings to Cap Crater at Space Command, and ad astra per aspera!

Astrophotographer Theirry Legault took this shot of the ISS transiting the Moon last December. Think you can do better? Give it a try!

When Worlds Collide

2011-08-04T15:35:00.000-07:00

Not everyone will appreciate today's topic, but a very small number of the right people are going to lose at least an hour of their day and thank me for it.

"Forty Acres" was the nickname of a 29-acre (I know) movie studio backlot in Culver City, California active from the days of silent films into the '70s. It provided facades for western towns, small towns and downtowns. At various times it housed Tara from "Gone With the Wind," Stalag 13 from "Hogan's Heroes," King Kong's giant gate and Tarzan's jungle. The lot got its greatest sustained exposure as Mayberry over several years of "The Andy Griffith Show."

Demonstrating precisely why the Internet was created, many courageously dedicated souls--some clearly cursed with OCD--have combed through pretty much every television program and movie made during those decades to produce a meticulously cross-referenced visual catalog of Forty Acres. Want to see how the same street looked in "Superman," "The Andy Griffith Show," "Star Trek," "The Untouchables," "Land of the Giants," "Lassie" and "Batman"? These guys can help you with that.

I've seen the "Star Trek" episode "City on the Edge of Forever" a thousand times but never really tumbled to the fact Captain Kirk and Edith Keeler stroll past THE Floyd's Barber Shop from Mayberry.

Fair turnabout: in "The Andy Griffith Show" Opie rode his bicycle past the 21st Street Mission (note the sign in the window) where Kirk and Spock found a hot meal and the tools needed to build a computer during the Depression.

It's all at the Forty Acres website. If you grew up watching TV and films from this era, these streets may seem like old familiar friends to you. It took me a minute to get the hang of navigating the site; use the tabs at the top to select topics. Clicking on most photos magnifies them. It all interesting--like I said, for some tiny proportion of the population (I'm looking at you, Lynch and O'Kane)--but I thought the real gold was in the four-part "Virtual Tour."

I dunno. Maybe I'm not hooked up right.
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I, For One, Welcome Our New Robot Overlords

2011-08-03T07:50:00.001-07:00

Somebody recently paid $5.8 million at auction for a unique pair of antique pistols. I think they got a bargain:

When our girls were 16, Karen and I took them on our first (and to date only) family trip to Europe, cruising around the Mediterranean. Very near the top of my list of most delightful discoveries was the National Museum of Monaco, which we stumbled upon just wandering around the city-state after forgoing the organized tours. We figured, "It's a museum, the price is OK . . . ehh, let's take a look." It turned out to be entirely dedicated to old dolls and automatons--ingenious wind-up robots built in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.

My girls and I approaching the Museum.

We had the place almost to ourselves and had just started up a staircase when a docent came rushing down, herding us with his arms and commanding us in rapid-fire French (which none of us understand) to turn around and descend. We wondered if we'd done something wrong and were being thrown out. But it turned out we'd arrived just in time for the tour, and our guide took us from display to display, wound them up, and stood back to watch our amazement. The automatons had the most incredible life-like action. Graceful, delicate, even poignant. Some of them breathed.

The automaton in the video below wasn't in our museum, but she's pretty representative of the sort of that was:

One of the things that interests and amuses me about history in general, and the history of science and technology in particular, is the subconscious arrogance most of us carry around. We seem to think we're smarter than all the generations that came before us. We're not. To paraphrase Newton, if we see farther, it's only because we're standing on their shoulders. Never, ever underestimate the ingenuity of a person in any century trying to solve a problem or make something work. Look at what skilled craftsmen could accomplish with gears and springs (and without electricity) two centuries ago!
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Weasley Punks

2011-08-01T20:16:00.000-07:00

Except for occasional telepathy, my girls have never exploited their identical-twinness--no dressing the same, no swapping classes, no fooling their friends. The whole "twin thing" is a low-level buzz in the back of their lives that Laura and Robin tolerate when they have to.

This summer they're both on the "Special Events" staff of our County Fair. Usually that means minding the children's game area, working the Information Booth, or running whatever errands need running. This year, their boss Jane declared Sunday to be "Harry Potter Day" at the Fair, with specially themed decorations and contests, and encouraged her employees to get into the spirit.

And if it's Harry Potter Day and you're identical twins and you both happen to have ginger wigs at home, you really don't have much choice:

Meet Fred and George Weasley. Or George and Fred. I never could tell them apart.

Posted with their reluctant permission (thanks, girls!).

The highlight of my day was when a woman asked me, "Are you the Weasley twins' dad?" Yes. Yes, I am Mr. Weasley. Just here studying the muggles for the afternoon. Carry on.

Only kidding about the telepathy. I think.

Thanks to Jordan Rich and His Listeners

2011-07-29T21:30:00.000-07:00

Welcome to any listeners of the Jordan Rich Show dropping by to check out me and my work! Since I'm drafting this in advance I don't yet know if I was a good guest, but I hope I didn't embarrass myself, my profession, my publisher or my country too much. And my sincere thanks to Jordan.

Here are some links to a few of my blog posts that are more noteworthy than others:

My very first, after winning the Eisner Award for Mom's Cancer (July 2005).

Mom's passing (Oct. 2005).

The New York book launch party for Mom's Cancer, my first (and still my favorite) big-time literary event (Feb. 2006).

My first time on radio, on NPR's "All Things Considered" with cartoonist Miriam Engelberg. I only mention it because Miriam's book Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person, about her fight with the cancer that eventually killed her, is the only other book sort of like mine that I unreservedly recommend. She was terrific. (June 2006)

The Norman Rockwell Museum invited me to the opening of an exhibition of comic art, the first time I'd seen my work hanging on a museum wall instead of piled on the floor under my desk. A career highlight! (Nov. 2007)

My first post on this here Fies Files blog, announcing Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? (WHTTWOT) (July 2008).

I spent an afternoon as "Cartoonist in Residence" at the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center, which pretty much blew my mind. (Jan. 2010)

My thoughts on WHTTWOT winning the American Astronautical Society's Emme Award for Outstanding Astronautical Literature for Young Adults (Sept. 2010), plus a few follow-up thoughts (Nov. 2010). Another career highlight!

Last June I helped organize a "Comics & Medicine" conference in Chicago after being asked to speak at a similar event in London in 2010. Both were extraordinary conferences that mined the unexpectedly rich vein where storytelling meets healthcare. It sounds weird but it works. (June 2011)

Anyone interested in posts on specific topics such as how I approach cartooning can skim through the "Labels" to the right. I also put together a little PDF Press Kit that has more information about both of my books as well as reviews and more.

Finally, I'd encourage anyone interested in buying my books to check with your local heroic independent bookseller first. However, if they're unwiling, unable or already out of business, you can find my books online:

Mom's Cancer: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Chapters Indigo (Canada).

WHTTWOT: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Chapters Indigo (Canada).

To my regulars: sorry I've been too busy to blog as much as I'd like. Day job. It's gonna be like this a while. Many thanks to all.
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From Coast to Coast and All the Ships at Sea

2011-07-20T14:01:00.000-07:00

I've gotten the nod to announce that I'm scheduled to be a guest on the Jordan Rich Show on Boston radio station WBZ 1030 on Friday, July 29! Since WBZ has a mighty continent-spanning 50,000-watt transmitter in addition to being part of the CBS Radio Network, the potential audience is enormous.

Bearing in mind that I'm always at the mercy of breaking news or a better guest turning up, I'll be Jordan's guest at midnight (Eastern) Friday night/Saturday morning and spend at least half an hour talking about graphic novels in general and my graphic novels in particular. I owe the gig entirely to Friend O' The Blog Jim O'Kane, who as the World's Foremost Authority on TV Single Dads has been Jordan's guest before and convinced him I was worth a listen. If this goes well, I might have to elevate Jim's status to "Benefactor O' The Blog." Sincere thanks to Jim.

Now where did I put my Les Nessman Correspondence Course?

I expect WBZ's facilities have improved since 1921.

Friday Outgoing

2011-07-16T15:19:00.001-07:00

Electrons for Sale! Get Yer Electrons, Right Here!

2011-07-07T08:34:00.000-07:00

Big publishing news, at least to me: Mom's Cancer is now available for the Kindle, with other e-book platforms to follow very soon! Within a week or two I should be able to direct you to similar offerings for the Nook, Nook Color and Sony Reader, with Apple's iBookstore to follow later this summer.

This has been in the works for a while and I'm very excited about it. I'm interested to see how my book works in electronic format--which may prove difficult since I don't actually own any of those readers. But my artwork is clean and open enough, and my lettering large and legible enough, that I'd expect Mom's Cancer to look pretty sharp.

I'm especially gratified that my publisher Abrams went to the effort. Mom's Cancer was published almost exactly five years ago (that's so hard for me to believe that I checked the math twice) and is now a backlist book that wouldn't ordinarily get a new lease on life. It's nice to see that Editor Charlie and his bosses still have some confidence in it.

We've also had some conversations about what could come next for Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow, including softcover (not this year for sure, but maybe next) and e-book editions. The latter would be an interesting challenge, since we went to a lot of trouble to use different paper stock and such that wouldn't translate to the screen. Simply digitizing the existing layouts wouldn't work. I've already told Editor Charlie and Abrams's e-book person that when the time comes, I want to work closely with them to get that right.

Pretty cool, eh? Some days I like living in the Future.

UPDATE: As of this morning, it's available for the Nook as well!
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Independence on the Hornet

2011-07-05T14:22:00.000-07:00

I had a great Fourth of July with my daughters, who treated me to an afternoon and night aboard the USS Hornet, as apt a place as any to celebrate U.S. independence.

As I've mentioned before but wouldn't expect anyone to remember, my daughter Laura is a docent aboard the Hornet, which was decommissioned as an aircraft carrier in 1970 after recovering Apollos 11 and 12, and is now a dockside museum in Alameda, Calif. My other daughter Robin has since signed on as a museum volunteer (though not a full docent . . . yet) and they've particularly enjoyed staffing the ship for sleepovers by groups like Boy and Girl Scouts. Because they often work overnight, they've been assigned quarters--an honest-to-goodness officer's stateroom, which is where they invited me to spend the night after watching fireworks over San Francisco Bay at the end of the Hornet's big July Fourth Family Day. (My wife Karen opted out--something about peace, quiet, solitude, not sleeping on a steel floor, yada yada.)

The Hornet was really buzzing (heh) yesterday, with a couple thousand people enjoying a day of food, drink, bounce houses, bands performing on two levels (Hangar and Flight decks), plus an entire aircraft carrier to explore. I particularly appreciated meeting some of the other docents, generally older gentlemen who served on the Hornet or ships of her era and had very interesting stories to tell as well as nice compliments about my girls. As Karen and I say, it's like Laura and Robin have 50 grandpas. Then at night everyone gathered at the Flight Deck's stern to watch fireworks, which I honestly think were disappointing for some. Too low and distant. Not for me, though. Sitting in the cold bay breeze watching glowing dandelions of light puff into the sky was the perfect cap to a full day.

Flight Deck of the Hornet (facing the stern), laid out with picnic tables, a band stage, food and beverage tents, and porta-potties. The silhouette of San Francisco is visible on the horizon. If I'm not mistaken (and there's a 60-40 chance I am), I shot this photo in the very spot President Nixon stood when he welcomed Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins back from the Moon.

Looking the other direction toward the bow, where some aircraft and bouncy-houses were lashed to the deck.

My girls Robin and Laura on their way up the staff gangway. Laura did a four-hour docent shift yesterday, which is why she's in the navy and khaki uniform. Looking sharp.

Laura also took the time to give me a private tour of some parts of the ship normally closed to visitors that I hadn't seen before. Here in the Engine Room, I'm givin' her all I got, Cap'n! ("Bridge, she canna take any more!") Laura later explained that the two wheels I'm so desperately spinning controlled the "ahead" and "astern" steam valves, and by opening both simultaneously I probably would have blown up the turbine. This is why I don't service my own car.

I shot the above video walking from one end of the Hangar Deck to the other. PLEASE NOTE that at the beginning of the video I state that I'm walking from bow to stern. I'm actually doing the opposite. I knew that! Seconds before shooting this, I was standing out on the ship's fantail (i.e., the back end) and knew exactly where I was. I just misspoke. This is why I don't service my own garbage disposal or lawn mower, either.

A sorry attempt at artistry. Again, that's San Francisco in the distance, with the Sun setting behind the Bay Bridge (as well as a crane barge thing docked next to the Hornet).

While the Hornet's history of service during World War II, Korea and Vietnam make it an interesting historic artifact, it is the ship's service in the exploration of space that really gets me tingling. The video below is a quick survey of some of the ship's Space Age artifacts. I preface the narrative saying I shot it just for Friend O' The Blog Jim O'Kane, but everyone else is welcome to watch, too. I'll have a few notes on the other side.

The Sea King helicopter is the same type used to recover Apollo astronauts from the Pacific after splashdown. However, this is not the original #66, but was painted with its livery for use in the movie "Apollo 13." The Hornet acquired the chopper after filming and kept the paint job. The Apollo Command Module capsule CM-011A was used for suborbital tests in 1966. This very capsule was shot into space and recovered by the Hornet, and still has a big dent in its underside from drop-impact testing conducted after it returned. Also in the video is the Mobile Quarantine Facility, a modified Airstream trailer used to isolate astronauts returning from the Moon to protect the Earth from hypothetical space germs. This particular MQF was used for Apollo 14, which the Hornet did not recover; however, an identical trailer was used for the astronauts of Apollos 11 and 12, who were retrieved by the Hornet (their trailer is in the Smithsonian). The "Gemini Boilerplate" is a dummy Gemini capsule used for testing. It's tiny; hard to believe two men fit inside (the real ones, that is).

Me in one of the two most famous Airstream trailers in the History of Forever.

My daughter Robin took this photo of me and a random boy inspecting the interior of the Apollo capsule. He walked right up and explained everything to me. I posted this picture to my Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow Facebook page because this is exactly what my book is about.

My girls and I spent the night aboard ship and emerged around 8:30 this morning to find the Hangar Deck deserted. We took a chopper for a spin around the Bay and then went home.

Thanks to my girls for giving me an Independence Day that was more fun for me than Father's Day and Christmas put together! And again, if you're ever in the East Bay with a few hours on your hands and the remotest interest in any of this stuff, I highly recommend a visit to the Hornet. Ask for Laura.
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I Stand On Guard South of Thee

2011-07-01T07:41:00.001-07:00

Today is Canada Day, giving me a rare chance to combine two of my favorite things: Canada, and William Shatner. Happy Canada Day! I love you guys.

Don't It Always Seem to Go . . .

2011-06-27T14:14:00.001-07:00

Add to the long list of little 20th Century things that nobody will appreciate until they're gone: watching the odometer roll over. The darn things are all digital LEDs or LCDs now, and the enormous satisfaction of watching the tiny tumblers line up and push each other from 199,999 to 200,000, as my little '96 Honda's did yesterday, is going as extinct as the dial phone and casette tape.

Karen and I have been looking forward to it for months. Yesterday, with three miles to go, we found ourselves driving laps around an empty business park so we could savor the milestone. Slower . . . slower . . . nine, nine, nine, nine, nine . . . ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO! WooHOO! High fives all around!

My next goal is to get the car past 239,000 miles; then I can say I drove it to the Moon. Pay no attention to that little red "Maintenance" indicator. It just wants attention.

Gene Colan

2011-06-24T08:13:00.000-07:00

Comic book artist "Gentleman" Gene Colan has died following a few rough years of poor health and family hardship. He was 84. His wife Adrienne preceded him in 2010.

I was a great admirer of Mr. Colan's work. I can't claim to have known him but I did meet him, in a moment that was and remains very important to me. He and I won Eisner Awards the same year (2005). After the ceremony, all the winners were asked to line up for a group photo. Talk about herding cats! It took quite a while just to get everyone to stop chatting with their friends and cooperate with the photographer. Knowing no one, I obediently sat down and found myself waiting patiently next to Gene.

In the years since, I've had other opportunities to meet people whose work I loved as a comic-book-reading kid, but Colan was my first and I was nearly star-struck dumb. But he and I struck up a conversation and, although he had no idea who I was, he talked to me like a peer who deserved to be there.

I mean, Wow.

I wish I could've recorded that conversation to replay and remember now. I was pretty overwhelmed that night, my head abuzz, and I honestly don't recall its details. What I'll never forget was Gene's warmth, encouragement, humility in the face of my fannish praise, and evident interest in meeting a new cartoonist and learning about his work. Gene Colan taught me the secret handshake and welcomed me into the club.

I've got to say a word about that picture above. The whole time I was talking to Gene, I was glancing around the room trying to find my wife Karen. I needed someone to witness this "OMG I'm talking to Gene Colan" moment. At last I caught her eye, gestured her over with an urgent nod, and mimed the universal "finger clicking the shutter" gesture. She understood; I had my proof.

I first saw Gene's work in the pages of Marvel's "Avengers" series. He wasn't best known for doing that book--in that period he was much more closely associated with "Daredevil" and "Iron Man"--but I read and collected the "Avengers" so that's where I found him. He had an instantly recognizable style unlike anyone else's in the business. His compositions and figures were fluid, like they were poured onto the page with liquid mercury. Arms and eyelids and staircases and cityscapes thrust back and forth between shadow and light. His art was energetic and peerlessly graceful. It was also unique. In a business in which success is quickly imitated--where originals like Neal Adams and Frank Miller and Alex Toth have dozens of clones--no one ever copied Gene Colan. No one could.

Where I first encountered Gene.

Probably the most iconic image of Colan's career, the cover of "Iron Man" #1.

The opening "splash" page of a Doctor Strange story.

It was only years later, when I had a chance to see some of Gene's pencil work both in person and reproduced, that I really understood what he was doing. A quick explanation about how comic books are made: typically the art is produced by a penciller, who draws the action in (duh) pencil, and an inker, who goes over the pencil lines with ink to make them dark enough to reproduce. Inking is sometimes derided as "tracing" but it's not. A good inker interprets the pencils to convey light, shadow, weight, depth, motion, etc. Gene Colan was a penciller who must have been either an inker's dream or nightmare, I'm not sure which.

Comic book line art is black and white. You can mimic shades of gray with cross-hatching or dot screens, but by and large you don't find watercolor-like ink wash in conventional comics. Colan's gift/curse was that he really knew how to draw, with a full range of texture and tone very difficult to reproduce in the binary black/white medium of India ink. A good inker could approximate what Colan achieved with a pencil; a bad inker rendered it muddy and incomprehensible.

The Flash by Gene Colan. Notice not just the fantastic sense of motion he captured in the running figure, but the cinematic blurring and warping of the background.

Dr. Strange and his apprentice Clea, displaying Colan's mastery of light and dark. Imagine sitting down to ink this in black and white. How could you do it? Where would you start?

Kid Colt: gorgeous illustration.

Batman: Eerie, moody, idosyncratic, unique.

A Colan sketch of Dracula.

I don't know what this is from, but it shore is purty.

In recent months Colan's affairs were looked after by Clifford Meth, who kept Colan's fans updated on his failing health and auctioned Colan's art and books to help pay for his medical and hospice care. I bid what I thought I could afford on a couple of items I didn't need, and was happy to be outbid because that meant more money for Gene. This morning Meth wrote a nice remembrance of his friend. As I said, I didn't really know him, but I loved his work and I sure am glad I had a chance to tell him that.

Colan's self-portrait, after Norman Rockwell's famous "Triple Self-Portrait."

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He's an iPod Wizard, There Has to be a Twist

2011-06-18T09:23:00.000-07:00

Truth, lies, self-deception, confirmation bias, illusion, wisdom, and three iPods. You're just going to have to trust me that this is worth 4 minutes 22 seconds of your time.

Publisher's Weekly Says Comics & Medicine "Blend Beautifully"

2011-06-17T07:37:00.000-07:00

And another very nice report on the Comics & Medicine Conference, this one by Publishers Weekly. It sounds like writer Erich Beasley was in attendance, although I didn't meet him (I didn't meet the guy from the Times, either; my secret plan to avoid all interviews and publicity is working!). The article concludes:

"While the panels and guests at the Comics and Medicine Conference were interesting and the lectures were all well executed the conference remains one of the smallest around, with only about 100 attendees. Nevertheless, if the organizers continue securing such a talented and diverse group of speakers there is no doubt that this conference will only get bigger and better as time goes on. The juxtaposition of the seriousness of healthcare and the lightheartedness of comics blends beautifully, making for a very interesting and enjoyable comic conference experience."

Nice. Also, if you read the article, check out the photo credit. That makes me happy.
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A New Therapeutic Tool

2011-06-16T22:18:00.001-07:00

Here's that New York Times article on the Comics & Medicine Conference I mentioned, written by James Warren. I don't know if it appeared in print anywhere. I didn't meet James and amn't mentioned, but it's a good overview of the event and I'm very happy to see my co-organizers MK Czerwiec and Ian Williams, as well as my new BFF Sarah Leavitt, highlighted. It's a nice piece.

That's right, I said "amn't."
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A Few Follow-Ups

2011-06-16T08:04:00.000-07:00

I've gotten a lot of visitors and some nice notes about my last two posts, thanks for those. I still haven't heard anyone say they attended the Comics & Medicine Conference and hated it and want their money back, so that's something. Just a few follow-ups before thinking about movin' on . . .

* * *

Co-organizer Michael Green has posted his photos to a Picassa Web Album that anyone's free to visit. He took some very nice pictures plus some of me. He also uploaded scans of those photo-booth pics I showed us taking in the post before last. I won't reproduce them all here--too small, and we were just being silly anyway--but here's a close-up of I believe the only frame with all five conference co-organizers:

Clockwise from upper left, that's Susan Squier, Michael, me, MK Czerwiec, and Ian Williams. I hope Michael eventually regained circulation in his legs.

* * *

Someone asked for a closer look at the photos I used in my workshop's third exercise on asymmetry (starting at about 10:30 into the "Part 3" video). Here you go. The idea is that you can expand the universe of facial expressions available to you, and create more interesting and subtle expressions, by combining different expressions on the right and left sides of the face. "Happy" on the left plus "Frightened" on the right can add up to express something like "Anticipation." I illustrated the concept by taking a snapshot of my face and then creating mirror images of the left and right sides of my face to make two very different expressions (Warning: it ain't pretty):

See how that works? In the center photo, the left half of my face is copied and flopped over to make a new right side; in the right photo, the right half of my face is copied and flopped to make a new left side. As I said in the workshop, I don't know if this is neurologically valid, but I think it's cartooningly valid.

Also, here's a better look at the sheet of paper I used in the second and third exercises, where I asked participants to create new facial expressions just by adding different eyebrows and mouths:

* * *

I know Chico Marx's name was pronounced "Chick-o." My problem is that every other "Chico" I've ever known, including the California city and Freddie Prinze, is pronounced "Cheek-o," so that's where my brain goes when it's on the fly. I just want it on the record that I know better.

* * *

There was evidently a New York Times reporter poking around the conference. He didn't talk to me, but got hold of some of my co-conspirators. We think it'll be published in the Times' Midwestern regional edition. I'll let you know if it turns up. We've also been talking to a freelance magazine writer who's trying to place an article about Graphic Medicine with a major national publication. We'll see.

* * *

I've received a few bits of good news over the past several days, some of which I need to remain coy about. It looks like Team Cul de Sac is planning to include my artwork in their book to benefit Parkinson's disease research, which is fantastic! I haven't revealed my contribution yet because I figure that's their prerogative, but I will as soon as they do.

* * *

Over the past several months, I dropped a couple of mentions about contributing to a comics anthology that a friend of mine was trying to find a publisher for. It now looks like he has. I am very excited about this! This is the concept that I thought was so good I was amazed no one had done it yet and I leaped to sign on one sentence into the pitch. Again, it's not my project to announce, but as soon as my friend does I'll tell you all about it.

* * *

Finally, it looks like I'll be a guest on a big-time late-night radio program in late July to talk about my work and graphic novels in general. I don't think I need to keep it a secret but I'd be more comfortable waiting until everything's firm before making promises I can't keep. More as we get closer to the date.

What a week!
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See One, Do One, Teach One

2011-06-15T09:40:00.001-07:00

My most daunting responsibility at the Comics & Medicine Conference was leading a 90-minute workshop titled "Making Comics: See One, Do One, Teach One." I also moderated a couple of panels where academicians presented papers on various topics, but that was easy. If those panels stunk, it was the presenters' fault; the quality of my workshop was entirely on my shoulders.

I mentioned yesterday that Karen managed to record nearly an hour of the 90 minutes and said I'd try to fill in the beginning and end she missed. I don't expect anyone to plow through a long blog post and four YouTube videos, but if you're crazy enough to try, here they are. Long-time readers of this blog will recognize a lot of my advice and examples.

I'm very happy with how it went. I'd never done this specific sort of thing before and the audience participation piece made it hard to time. I ran long. Bear in mind that my audience comprised smart, motivated adults; I'd do things differently for a more general audience or kids. I see room to improve my presentation skills, and Karen suggested afterward that I should have done some live drawing myself, which is an excellent idea. People love chalk talks. But the important thing is that I felt relaxed and confident, everybody seemed to have fun, and a few participants afterward told me they'd really gotten something out of it. One even corralled me the next day to show me a full-page four-panel comic he'd not only pencilled but already arranged to have published by someone else at the conference (!) because I'd inspired him to give it a shot. Raney, you made my day.

A note on copyright: in addition to examples from my own work, my presentation included copyrighted work by others. I believe my use of these examples clearly falls under Fair Use provisions that allow limited reproduction for the purposes of education and criticism. I respect copyright and so should you.

The following is based on my notes and is rough, but I think gives the jist of it. My written description takes you up to the videos, then picks up again when they're done.

* * *

"Making Comics: See One, Do One, Teach One"

The purpose of the workshop is to show some ways that comics can be made—which in this context mostly but not entirely means how I make them. Then I’m hoping to do some exercises that lead into you making your own comics, which then prepares you to go out into the world and make comics yourself, teach someone else how to make comics, and—particularly in a healthcare context—maybe find new ways to communicate with patients or healthcare works, or maybe just express yourself.

My history and qualifications. Lifelong cartoonist without much success. My mother's cancer diagnosis. Mom's Cancer webcomic; recognition, including the Eisner Award; Mom's Cancer book; recognition; Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow; recognition.

All that led to an invitation to speak at last year’s London conference on Graphic Medicine, which led to me helping organize this conference, which it turns out is a nice way to get to do a workshop.

One of my goals is to get you over the biggest hurdle facing any prospective cartoonist:

"I can’t even draw a straight line." Here’s your first cartooning secret: Neither can I. Nobody can, and even if someone could, that wouldn’t make them a great cartoonist. Besides, drawing straight lines is trivial. Straight lines aren’t interesting. What’s interesting, and what makes good comics, is drawing crooked lines in your unique style that no one else could draw. In fact, the second cartooning secret I’ll share is that you don’t have to be a good artist to be an excellent cartoonist.

James Thurber. Great essayist and cartoonist. Was once trying to do some fancy shading on one of his drawings when writer E.B. White looked over his shoulder and said, “Don’t do that. If you ever became good, you would be mediocre.”

XKCD by Randall Munroe. One of the smartest, most popular webcomics in the world. Stick figures.

John Callahan. Well regarded, critically acclaimed. Pertinent to the theme of this conference, he was quadriplegic. Died in 2010.

My favorite example: Miriam Engelberg's Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person. The only book sort of like mine that I enthusiastically recommend.

Comics = Words + Images that together transcend the sum of their parts.

My favorite analogy is popular music: lyrics are usually bad poetry, melodies are usually bad music, but put them together and they can evoke emotion, perfectly capture a time and place . . . In my ideal comic, the words and pictures both carry about half the storytelling load and neither is complete without the other.

Need a common vocabulary to talk about these things: Anatomy of a Comic. Panels, borders, gutters, balloons, iconography.

Expressive figures. In general, think about silent movies or old Warner Brothers cartoons, where the pose really helps sell the action and emotion.

Can even use the language of comics to impart expressiveness to inanimate objects that normally aren't. Old animators' exercise from Walt Disney Studios: challenge is to draw a sack of flour to express emotions.

I think about these things when I draw comics, even the simplest of objects. Like a cube. A cube made of straight ruled lines is boring. But a cube made of cardboard needs to look different than a cube made of concrete. In comics, everything has a personality. Everything comes to life. The choices you make define your cartoon world, and nothing goes into that world unless you decide to put it there.

Cartoonist Al Capp ("Li'l Abner"): "No cartoonist, no matter how talentless or obscure, has ever drawn a dog without having made a comment on the state of dogs. He's never drawn an outhouse without making some incidental comment about rustic life in America."

Nuts & Bolts

Two very broad approaches: Words first or drawing first. I’ll talk about working from a written script, like a play or movie, because that’s how I usually do it and what I know. But there are cartoonists who’d just start drawing, telling a story in purely visual terms, go where it takes them, and add any words later if they were needed at all.

Panels are the foundation of the page. How they are arranged determines the pace, mood and style of your story. Panel size and placement convey meaning all on their own.

I asked my friend Mike Lynch for advice on doing a workshop like this. He told me a story about two cartoonists talking about how to draw a non-visual concept like “loneliness.” The first cartoonist draws a quick sketch of a man sitting sadly in a chair and says, "That's loneliness":

The second cartoonist takes the paper and draws a big, empty border around the man in the chair and says, "No, that's loneliness." And that's the power of panels.

You control how time passes between panels. Several examples from Mom's Cancer, with discussion:

Lettering comes first! A lot of people don't know that, and in the old days it didn't, and the words ended up squished together (ex. "Little Nemo"). The words are what the reader's eye seeks out first, and they guide the reader through the page. It's important. (Examples from WHTTWOT.) Don't cross your word balloon tails unless you've got a valid storytelling reason to (e.g., two lovers' dialog intertwined, the chaos of a riot).

How I lettered, penciled, inked, corrected and colored a page of Mom's Cancer. (Rather than reproduce it here, I'll point anyone interested to this old blog post, where I used the same examples. This isn't quite how I do it anymore, but it's close enough and still valid.)

Coloring: Examples of digital coloring from both my books, as well as coloring directly on the original art by Vanessa Davis and Carol Tyler. In the example below from the wonderful Carol Tyler's You'll Never Know, see what she’s done with her panels, treating them like cards in a photo album. Look at three different types of lettering: Lower case, for the parts that are her character’s diary; traditional all-capitals for the word balloons; and cursive for the parts that are excerpts of letters from home. Subtle but clear: you catch that these are three different narratives even if you’re not aware why.

The Digital Age. I love "analog" cartooning but things are changing. Now you're as likely to find an artist working on a computer as a drawing board. Discuss. This is a time of transition. If you want to start an argument among cartoonists, just get ‘em going on this. But for our purposes here today, and for your purposes going out into the world to spread the gospel of the power of making and reading comics, my message is that anyone can express themselves, and even still do professional quality work, using the simplest and cheapest of tools.

Do One
Exercise: Write and draw a two-, three-, or four-panel comic about something that’s happened to you in the past few days. Maybe a moment that happened at an airport or in a taxi, maybe an argument at the hotel desk. A true slice of life. It doesn’t have to be funny, but it would be nice if it had a beginning, middle and end. Don’t feel obligated to use all four panels (which I provided in my workshop packet) or even stay within the panels. Be fast and loose, and don’t sweat the details.

I’d like you to use the self-portrait you did in the first exercise, and see if you can work in some expressiveness in the face and body. Try also to work in a variety of shots: not all just close-ups of your head, unless that’s best for the story you want to tell. Studying how movies are shot and edited, with establishing shots that set the scene and two-shots and close-ups, is a very good foundation for making comics.

Suggested materials list.

Conclude with a few thoughts about what I think makes comics special and why this is worth doing, why we had this conference. Why comics work. I think the most important characteristic of comics is that they distill reality to its essence. The cartoonist polishes and strips away unnecessary detail until only this gleaming little nugget of pure humor or tragedy or truth is left. The difference between good and bad cartoonists is how good or bad they are at selecting what to put on the page and what to leave out.

My favorite quotes:

Philospher and mathematician Blaise Pascal: “I apologize that I made this letter so long. I did not have time to make it short.”

Victorian cartoonist Phil May, to an editor who thought May's drawing's weren't detailed enough: "When I can leave out half the lines I now use, I shall want six times the money."

Cartoonist Larry Gonick: “Our brains represent things in some stripped-down, abstracted way. We don’t remember things as photographs or movies. We remember them as cartoons.”

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Anybody heroic enough to stick with that to the end? No, I didn't think so. It flew by like a rocket in person, though! Thanks to everyone who attended the workshop, I hope it was worth your time. .

Comics & Medicine 2011

2011-06-14T08:09:00.000-07:00

My wife Karen and I made it home from the second international "Comics & Medicine" conference in Chicago--or, as one of our participants called it, "the Coolest Conference on Earth." I can't disagree. Assembling a detailed, coherent trip report would take days. Instead, I'll report some random impressions and annotate some photos to try to capture a feel for it. If you want to know more, you'll just have to attend the next one (whenever and wherever that'll be . . .).

First, we lucked out on weather. Every forecast we saw predicted thunderstorms all weekend. The day before we arrived was a muggy 100 degrees. But once we landed in Chicago, temperatures were moderate and I only had to pull out my umbrella once. Complaining that we would've liked it a few degrees warmer would be ungrateful. Karen and I took an extra day Sunday to play tourist, and just look at the sky in that photo above! Lucky. The city treated us very well.

I was a little worried going into the conference that last year's in London went so well we couldn't recapture its magic. That fear was unfounded. For Chicago we expanded from one day to two, added workshops, receptions, and book signings that everyone seemed to enjoy, and I think successfully caught lightning in a bottle again with a similar catalytic mix of doctors, nurses, academics, writers, cartoonists and others from as far afield as Australia and Europe. The most common complaint was that we had too many good things going on at the same time for anyone to get to them all. The last I heard, 80 people had registered: a few more than in London but still quite a small group, which allowed a lot of interaction and intimacy. Participants especially seemed to appreciate a chance to mingle with our special-guest speakers Paul Gravett, Phoebe Gloeckner, David Small and Scott McCloud, all of whom stuck around for other panels as they could and were totally accessible and friendly.

Here are some pictures and notes, in roughly chronological order. I notice that I don't have many photos of panels; I was kept very busy moderating two panels and giving my own 90-minute workshop, and just didn't have a chance. Most of these pictures were taken by Karen.

Thursday night's opening reception in the lobby of Thorne Hall, a large auditorium in which Scott McCloud spoke on Saturday. We had an art exhibit set up with 19 or 20 pages of relevant comics art and accompanying commentary, including one from Mom's Cancer. These weren't originals, but reproductions on foamcore board; although an exhibition of original art would have been fun and we briefly considered it, the responsibility, liability and hassle would have been enormous. In contrast, we could stack up and toss around these posters without worrying about them. It was a smart solution.

Karen and I dashed straight from airport to hotel to reception as fast as we could, arriving in good time. On the right is Paul Gravett, the dean of UK comics journalism and criticism, whom I met in London last year. He's an incredibly knowledgeable, charming, and kind man who gave an opening talk in London that everyone liked so much that we bought him a plane ticket to come do the same in Chicago. Paul also moderated a panel on David B.'s Epileptic. I love Paul. In the middle is acclaimed illustrator and Stitches author David Small. I'll have more to say about David and his wife Sarah later. David opened his keynote address the next day saying that he didn't really know what "graphic medicine" was or why he'd been invited to speak until he saw the artwork here at the reception. Then he got it.

My new BFF Sarah Leavitt. She's a Vancouver cartoonist whose book Tangles, about her mother's Alzheimer's disease, is getting great reviews and award nominations in Canada, and has just found publishers in the U.S. and U.K. Sarah and I began corresponding a while ago when I passed on the best advice I could about getting published and such, and I already considered her a good friend before we finally met in person about 30 seconds before this photo was taken. Sarah seemed awesomely shell-shocked all weekend.

Our conference's host, although the actual events were held at the law school next door. Co-organizer MK Czerwiec did a fantastic job working with Northwestern University to help us out with facilities, publicity and logistics. Northwestern was very, very generous to us--more than they needed to be.

One of the law school buildings where our panels were held. The campus was an interesting mix of old ivy-covered brick buildings like these side by side with modern concrete and glass, and all a block from the shores of Lake Michigan.

After the reception, the conference organizers and a few others went out for Thai. Sitting across from me were co-organizer MK Czerwiec (Chicago nurse/instructor/cartoonist), cartoonist and keynoter Phoebe Gloeckner, and co-organizer Ian Williams (U.K. physician/cartoonist). I think Phoebe has her iPhone out to show us photos of her cats.

My Friday workshop on "Making Comics: See One, Do One, Teach One." About two dozen people attended, which was a fair proportion of the conferees. Karen got video of almost an hour of the middle of the workshop. When I have a few minutes, I'll try to break it into 15-minute chunks for YouTube and fill in the missing material for a subsequent post. In brief, I was surprised and very gratified by the audience's willingness to do my little exercises and share them with the group (my mini-laptop has a built-in webcam that I used to project their drawings onto the screen). I've never done anything like it before and ran out of time before the end. Everyone nonetheless seemed to enjoy it, and I think one or two might have actually gotten inspired to make some comics. Mission accomplished. After I finished my workshop, I was able to relax.

Scott McCloud arrived Friday afternoon and hung out for that day's reception (yes, another reception!). Scott and I quickly renewed our acquaintance, which to that point consisted entirely of Scott handing me my Eisner Award and saying "Congratulations" in 2005, about which I made a little joke when I introduced his speech on Saturday. I had the treat of introducing Scott to Sarah, who gave a workshop on turning diary into narrative, with some very thoughtful exercises that I liked a lot. I believe Scott is contractually obligated to wear plaid to every appearance.

Phoebe Gloeckner at the same reception, bending low to take a photo of cartoonist John Porcellino walking down a staircase. I bet it is an awesome photo.

Now I have to talk about David Small and his wife, Sarah Stewart. David was a highly regarded children's book illustrator even before he created Stitches, the #1 bestseller and National Book Award finalist, while Sarah is a creative force in her own right whose book The Gardener (illustrated by David) was a Caldecott Honor Book. I reconnected with a lot of people this weekend, met many more for the first time, and feel like I made some friends among the many smart, friendly, talented people who attended and participated in the conference. But David and Sarah are special. First, because they both knew Mom's Cancer and said very nice things about it, and I am not immune to flattery. In fact I thrive on it. But seriously, they couldn't have been more friendly, gracious, open, or delightful. Also very appealing is how much they obviously love each other and what a strong, dynamic team that makes them. They are each others' biggest fans. After meeting them, I am an enormous fan of both.

Following Saturday's full day of panels and a great concluding public lecture by Scott, many of us took a big yellow school bus (Paul Gravett, giddy: "I'm on an American school bus!" Karen: "Don't you have school buses in England?" Paul: "Yes, but this is an American school bus!") to Quimby's Comics, a Chicago institution with an interesting mission. I don't think I saw a single superhero comic book in the place; instead, the long narrow space was packed with adult literary comics and graphic novels (in all meanings of the word "adult") with a special emphasis on supporting low-budget independent mini-comics. I was told that if you could write, draw and photocopy your comic, Quimby's would find a spot on a shelf for it. Paul Gravett was a kid in a candy store, flitting from the work of one undiscovered talent to another. Scott McCloud, John Porcellino and I sat down to sign books but mostly to talk shop and life. I also described my Mystery Project X to Scott and got his thumbs-up, which means something to me.

By the way, I mentioned on my Facebook page that Scott missed his 51st birthday party on Friday to attend our conference. So before Scott's lecture on Saturday, I huddled with Katie Watson--a Northwestern University professor, lawyer and comedian (!) slated to do the post-lecture Q&A with Scott--to inform her of that and decide whether we should lead the audience in singing "Happy Birthday" to him. We concluded she'd best handle it. Her first question to him: "What date is your birthday?" Heh. Got him.

John Porcellino (in baseball cap), Scott and I gathered around the Quimby's signing tables. The bowl holds little pretzels. In addition to hosting this signing, Quimby's staff manned tables at the conference, selling books that were either written by participants or the subject of panels. I must have bought a couple hundred dollars worth. Books make luggage heavy.

David Small and I bought copies of each other's books. Here's the kind of pro David is: he came to the signing even though Quimby's had sold out of Stitches the day before (the one I'm holding is a stray that Quimby's didn't know it had until a friend of David's found it on a shelf for me) and there was nothing for him to sign. He promised he'd show up so he did, I guess on the chance that someone might bring in their own copy hoping to meet him. Also note the photo booth behind me; its significance will be revealed later.

David and I pretended to angrily autograph each other's heads. I don't know why. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

An overview of Quimby's: me with my back turned and silver hair glowing phosphorescently, John sitting at the table, and Scott farther down. The guy on the right is a graphic artist who bought Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow just because he liked its design. Cool!

This one's going onto the "In the Wild" page of my Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow Facebook photo album. Quimby's sold out of Mom's Cancer the first day of the conference and was afraid I might be upset because they hadn't ordered enough. On the contrary, hearing the words "sold out" applied to my work is so rare that I enjoyed the novelty.

We managed to get 80% of the conference's organizing committee into the photo booth. From left are Dr. Ian Williams, Penn State English professor Susan Squier, Penn State College of Medicine Professor Dr. Michael Green, and yours truly. We worked MK in later.

There's MK! Below her is Katie Watson, and then Ian and I and Susan. Somebody took custody of these photos and promised to scan them. If they do, I'll share.

Your Second International Graphic Medicine Conference Organizing Committee: clockwise from me are Ian Williams, Susan Squier, Michael Green, Satan's Bride, and MK Czerwiec.

I've found a few mentions of the conference online. If you're interested in other perspectives, check out what Scott McCloud, John Porcellino (good photos!), and participant John Swogger said about it. More as they come up. LATER LINKS: Sarah Leavitt's blog.

I think we pulled it off.
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Panel Borders & Chicago-Bound

2011-06-04T19:48:00.000-07:00

I met radio reporter Alex Fitch when I spoke at the very first Graphic Medicine conference in London last June. Alex hosts "Panel Borders," the podcast version of the UK's only weekly radio show about comics. What perfect timing, then, for Alex to tell me he's posted a recording of my keynote speech less than a week before I head to Chicago to take part in the second Graphic Medicine conference. Not that I expect anyone to listen, but if you dip in a toe please keep in mind that I'm narrating a slide show you can't see. I really enjoyed meeting and talking to Alex, and very much appreciate him keeping in touch.

Chicago is coming, ready or not. I think I'll be ready. In addition to preparing a 90-minute workshop on "How to Make Comics," I need to do enough homework to moderate two panels plus write a smart, witty and brief (I'm aiming for two out of those three) introduction for Scott McCloud's public lecture. We'll also have receptions, a mass booksigning at Chicago comic book store Quimby's, all sorts of revelry. I expect to be happily exhausted, after which Karen and I will stay an extra vacation day for ourselves. If Chicago could oblige by not mounting non-stop 95-degree thunderstorms, we'd appreciate it.

Did I mention that conference participants will be given a cool cloth tote bag with artwork from Mom's Cancer screen-printed on it? Well, they will. I think that's pretty neat. But now I'm starting to sound like a PBS pledge drive.

Did I also mention that I've been working hard trying to send Editor Charlie a full proposal for Mystery Project X before I leave for Chicago? Well, I'm not gonna make it. But soon.

I was looking through Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow this afternoon to find some material for my workshop when I realized I hadn't actually cracked its cover in a long time. I also realized: Hey, it's pretty good! I'm not sure I was ever able to look at it with fresh eyes before. It's better than I remembered! What a relief.

I just found out tonight that a guy I know in real life reads my blog. Hi, Joe! Good seein' you. Vaya con dios.
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Return of the Coolest Picture Ever

2011-05-31T09:31:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I posted a "Coolest Picture Ever," but this one certainly qualifies. With the Space Shuttle program winding down (just one flight left), NASA seems to be taking every opportunity to capture spectacular beauty shots they never had time for before. If they'd released photos this sexy 25 years ago, we might have ourselves a real space program today.

There are a couple of interesting things happening in this picture. It's a fairly long time exposure taken while Endeavour was on the night side of the planet. The shuttle is illuminated by lights shining from within its own bay (and maybe some light from the International Space Station or backglow from the Earth itself?) while it zips over city lights a few hundred miles below. NASA astronauts don't take a lot of pictures at night for the same reason you and I don't: it's dark! But wow. What a beauty.

I've got to mention the stars. Most photos taken in space don't show any, which is one of the points of "evidence" cited by the Moon hoaxers who don't believe Apollo really went anywhere (as if NASA would've spent billions faking the Moon landings but forgotten to hang up a black curtain studded with Christmas lights). Those pictures don't show stars for, again, the same reason your nighttime snapshots don't. The camera exposure time is too short. Taking a photo of a white-suited Moonwalker or white-tiled spacecraft in direct sunlight requires about the same shutter speed and f-stop as shooting them on a sunny afternoon in the Mojave Desert would. Stars are thousands of times fainter and you've got to leave the shutter open a long time for anything to show up, meaning you have to hold very still--quite difficult on a spacecraft orbiting at 17,000 mph (in fact, if you zoom in on the high-resolution version of this shot on the NASA website, you can see the stars streaking just a little bit).

Thanks for your service, Endeavour. Maybe someday I'll get down to L.A. and visit you at the California Science Center. But it won't be the same.

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Speak Easy

2011-05-28T14:01:00.000-07:00

Friend O' The Blog Jim O'Kane e-mailed me to suggest a topic he thought would make a good post. This is an approach to blogging that had never occurred to me: you provide the ideas! I love it! That would make things much easier on me. More, please.

Jim sent me a link to this blog post by web designer Dan Cederholm on public speaking, and wrote: "Do you have any additional advice for speaking in front of large groups? I've done lots of TV shows and radio programs and lectured maybe 30 college kids at a time, but I've never handled a live presentation of, say, 100+ folks."

No I don't. But thanks for the question, Jim, and keep 'em coming!
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All right, I may have a few more thoughts. First, let me bullet-point Dan's advice (and recommend you go read it yourself):

* Say yes.
* Get paid.
* Practice.
* You'll never please everyone.
* Take your badge off (the audience knows who you are, and it'll bang on the microphone).
* Drink water, and don't worry about pausing to sip.
* Tell stories.
* Use a remote.
* Share experiences instead of dictating.
* Embed interactions.
* Spend little time on introducing yourself (they already know who you are).
* Attend the event.

Some of that matches my experience and some doesn't. I think the writer/cartoonist's lot is a bit different, for example, when it comes to getting paid. Comic conventions don't pay you to do a panel, book stores don't pay you to do a signing (unless maybe you're a really big name). The trade-off is that you get an opportunity to promote your work, which is of value. Other types of events do offer a speaking fee or honorarium, and it's good to have a number in mind if it comes up. Here is an actual phone conversation I had:

"And what is your speaking fee, Mr. Fies?"

"Uh . . . a cheeseburger?"

The only way to know what that number should be is to find out what it is for other people doing the same sort of thing you do. Ask around. Don't quote anything less than $1000 (plus transport and lodging of course), although if they choke on that you can sputter something about taking less for special causes. Generally, I'm happy if I can get in and out of a gig without losing money. Of course, there's always author Neil Gaiman's strategy of asking an appearance fee of $50,000 because he hates doing them so much that it has to be really, really worth his while. Sometimes he gets it.

Be self-sufficient. Don't trust anyone else's equipment. Many a speech has been ruined because the speaker showed up with a jump drive containing a PowerPoint presentation that didn't work on the host's machine. If you can e-mail them your presentation ahead of time to test, that's ideal. I still build in as much redundancy as I can (one copy in my luggage and one in my pocket, in case my luggage is lost or I'm mugged, respectively), and prefer to bring my own laptop. And, as a super-emergency back-up, I always take a moment to survey the room for a chalkboard, white board, or a pad of paper on an easel, because if push came to shove I could vamp and draw live.

Speaking of PowerPoint: it's pretty mandatory these days, but don't let it dominate your presentation. People came to see you, not a voice narrating slides in the dark. And please take it easy on the fonts and animations and sound effects. Show some restraint and class.

But I think I've gone off the beam. Jim asked about handling large groups. I really can't offer much nerve-calming advice like "imagine the audience naked" because, although I'm an introvert whose idea of Hell is cocktail party chit-chat, I'm not afraid of public speaking. Oh, I get an adrenaline rush waiting to go on, but it's energizing rather than anxiety-provoking. I enjoy the performance. I realize that's unusual. What do they say, that more people fear public speaking than death? I think my confidence comes from both experience (the more you do it the better you get) and my frame of mind.

Frame of Mind: I am there to speak about myself and my work. I am absolutely certain there is no one in the audience who knows more about me and my work than I do. I am the world's foremost authority on me (well, my wife probably knows me better than I do, but she's too kind to contradict me in public). No question can stump me. In broader discussions--for example, a panel on webcomics or publishing where I may have some experience but not expertise--I try to make clear I'm speaking through my narrow context and experience, with examples. People like concrete examples.

Back when I was preparing for my Special Guest Spotlight Panel at the 2006 San Diego Comic-Con, which was a very big deal for me, I was talking with cartoonist Stephan Pastis, who had an insight that stuck with me. He said that most people who attend a talk like that aren't interested in you, they're interested in becoming you--that is, learning how you got to be the kind of person who gets a Spotlight Panel at Comic-Con so they can do it, too. So give them that. That advice became the foundation upon which I built my talk.

(Curiously, I recently reminded Stephan of his great advice, describing it pretty much as above, and he had no memory of ever saying or even thinking anything like it in his life. Maybe I hallucinated it. It was helpful nevertheless.)

I'd also advise speakers not to be afraid of silence. You don't have to fill every moment with noise, and silence is powerful punctuation. (A technique I learned as a reporter for interviewing a reluctant subject: ask one question and then don't say anything. Most people are so uncomfortable with silence that they'll leap to fill it, even with stuff they don't mean to tell you.) If you need to take a moment and find your place in your notes, take it. If you mess something up, admit it gracefully, chuckle at yourself, and regroup. Audiences are usually on your side and don't mind seeing a little humanity slip through. Don't be afraid to engage the audience one-on-one--you can roll with it!--but don't let one yahoo monopolize or throw you off track.

Bear in mind, I'm pontificating without knowing whether I'm actually an adequate public speaker. My hosts have seemed satisfied, but maybe they were just being nice. When I look back on the talks I've done, there is one I wish I'd done differently--it wasn't bad, I just took the wrong angle--and one I think I utterly flubbed, although I'm not sure the audience could tell the difference. From the first, I learned to put a little more thought into what my audience expected; from the second, I learned not to get too cocky. (I thought I'd given essentially the same speech often enough that I could wing it. I thought wrong.)

Preparation is important. Like so many other things in life, it takes a lot of work to make something look easy. In two weeks, I'm going to give a 90-minute workshop at the Chicago Graphic Medicine conference that I'm helping organize. I've been thinking about it for weeks and begun pulling material together. It wouldn't surprise me if I end up putting in 30 or 40 hours of prep work. I want to know the material forward and backward, understand how the ideas link and build, and have escape routes in mind if something goes wrong.

Jim, as I mentioned privately, if you've already got experience speaking on TV, radio, and small classes of students, I think you're better equipped than 97% of the other public speakers out there. Tackling larger groups should be more a small step than a giant leap.

Finally, let me steer anyone really interested in fine-tuning their presentation skills to the book The Way to Communicate by Other Friend O' The Blog Michael Harkins, known around here by his nom de web Sligo. Mike has had a fascinating career in writing, consulting, and other creative work--near the top of his "cool jobs" list must be touring with Michael Jackson--and I thought his book was helpful and perceptive. In particular, it talks about the physical aspects of speaking or performing, the cues an audience picks up, and how, for example, being literally well-balanced (like, floating on the balls of your feet) contributes to confidence and poise. Mike has some insights into how people like Jackson and Springsteen, with whom he also worked, do what they do, which is a few megaparsecs beyond anything you and I ever will.

I look forward to an interesting discussion in the comments!
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Quotable Me

2011-05-24T10:18:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note that I'm quoted in an article on Poynter.org today about NPR radio reporter Brooke Gladstone writing her first graphic novel, the forthcoming The Influencing Machine. The art for Gladstone's book was done by Josh Neufeld, whose book A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge was very well received.

I've never heard of Gladstone, don't know Neufeld and haven't read their book, so why me? Beats me; all I know is that reporter Mallary Tenore found out about me when her editor gave her a copy of Mom's Cancer. Mallary contacted me a few days ago, e-mailed me three general questions plumbing my thoughts on graphic novels, and used my answer to one of them pretty much verbatim.

Poynter.org is the website of the Poynter Institute, a journalism school in Florida. As a one-time and still-sometimes journalist, getting mentioned in this piece was kind of a kick for me. It's also a nice little article about Gladstone and Neufeld's process, made a bit more interesting because Gladstone was new to comics and Neufeld had to guide her through it. Neufeld is braver than I; I wouldn't have taken the gig. I look forward to seeing the results of their work and hope it's a great success for them.
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Friday Dim Sum

2011-05-20T10:20:00.000-07:00

Bite-sized morsels that add up to a light meal. Like tapas. (Thanks, Sherwood!)

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In my opinion, the best newspaper comic strip being published today is "Cul De Sac" by Richard Thompson, so I'm happy to point you to this profile of him in the Washington Post by Michael Cavna. It's the finest "cartoonist's profile" I can recall reading in the mainstream press. Cavna managed to get comment from cartoonists like Pat Oliphant, Art Spiegelman, and the shy Bill Watterson, and I admired it just as a piece of journalism. The piece mentions Thompson's nomination for cartooning's big Reuben Award this year, where he'll be up against my ping-pong nemesis Stephan Pastis (who, I don't think I'm breaking any confidences to report, thinks Thompson deserves to win but maybe he just told me that to be nice). It also touches on Thompson's recent diagnosis of Parkinson's disease. Recommended reading.

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For the three people likely to read this who live in Sonoma County, Calif., a half-hour TV program that includes an interview with me will be broadcast 11 a.m. Sunday on KRCB Channel 22, the local PBS station. It's an episode of "Business with Passion" whose host, Jay Hamilton-Roth, interviewed me an a bunch of other cartoonists during last September's Sketch-a-Thon at the Charles Schulz Museum. I mentioned it when it originally aired elsewhere back in December; there's a preview below. Those of you not in the area can watch it online anytime. Thanks again to Jay. Sorry I'm such a dorky lox on camera.

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The latest issue of InPHOCUS, an online newsletter put out by the pharmaceutical marketing firm Phocus, has a nifty mention of the upcoming "Comics & Medicine" conference in Chicago that I'm helping organize. If you're in the Chicago area June 9 and 10, check it out. If you need more incentive beyond our terrific panelists and keynote speakers (Paul Gravett, Phoebe Gloeckner, David Small and Scott McCloud), I'm planning to give a 90-minute workshop on cartooning (I've already got the first two minutes down; the next 88 are a work in progress) PLUS you'll get a nifty cloth bag with my artwork on it! So . . . who could resist?!

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Memo to those of us still on Earth this Sunday: party at Harold Camping's house! BYOB (bring your own brimstone).

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Super-Obvious Secrets

2011-05-18T10:44:00.001-07:00

Before today I hadn't heard of cartoonist/illustrator Phil McAndrew, but my pal Patricia Storms linked to a blog post of his titled "Super-Obvious Secrets That I Wish They'd Teach at Art School" that I found very worthwhile. Here are the bullet points:

* Draw Every Day
* Challenge Yourself
* Be Nice to People
* Have Fun
* Goals and Deadlines Are Important
* Breaks Are Important Too
* Don't Limit Your Influences
* Don't Trash Talk Yourself
* Art Ruts Are For Chumps
* Draw Awesome Stuff and Put It On the Internet.

Phil has nice comments and examples for each. If you have any type of creative aspirations--not just cartooning but anything: writing, music, competitive hamster grooming--something in his post should strike a chord. Two points that I especially liked were "Don't Limit Your Influences" and "Don't Trash Talk Yourself."

On the first point: I think too many people find a style that they like and works for them, and they go with it--not realizing that a million other people are doing the same. We're all the product of our influences; one problem with cartooning is that a lot of people have the same small list of them. What I most object to when I see how pervasive the manga style is among a generation of young cartoonists is less (what I consider) its stylistic limitations than their stifled individuality. How much more could you offer if you knew enough art history to bring some Monet or Dali, or even some Hal Foster or Jack Kirby, to the table? As Phil writes, if your only influence is (cartoonist) James Kochalka, you'll never be anything but a bad imitation of James Kochalka . . . and who needs you when we've already got him? Cast your net widely. You'll have more interesting things to say and more interesting ways to say them.

On the second point: I'm not high-profile enough to get very many people asking my opinion of their work. But on the rare occasion I do a signing or something and a young person brings me their sketchbook or portfolio, it's amazing how often they open with an apology. "I could have done this better," "I didn't have time to color this right," "This one isn't quite finished." First, if it's not your best stuff, don't put it in your portfolio. Second, show some pride and backbone! (But not arrogance!) So many creative people are their own worst enemies, and I understand the psychology: criticizing your own work pre-empts the anticipated sting of someone else doing it, and you can both agree that you stink. Well . . . don't do that! If the first words out of your mouth indicate that you don't like and respect your work, why should anyone else?

But now I'm repeating Phil. Go read his post, maybe you'll get something out of it.

Literary Food for Thought

2011-05-15T09:53:00.000-07:00

Two data points about the brave new world of publishing that caught my eye this morning:

Data Point One. The #1 bestselling book on Amazon right now is not yet in print. Titled Go the F**k to Sleep, it's billed as a children's book for adults. From its title, I'm guessing it's a twist on kids' bedtime books like Goodnight Moon but meant for parents who just want their little monsters to shut up and lie down. Sounds clever. Wish I'd thought of it.

What got my attention is that, as explained in this article, the book topped the bestseller list and has already been optioned for a movie due entirely to a PDF preview that got away from its publisher. Critics, buyers for bookstore chains, marketing people and others need to make decisions about books before they're physically printed, so publishers send them a PDF. Usually, they're held close to the vest. This one escaped into the wild. That's piracy, but it's also grassroots marketing--way better marketing than the publisher could have ever dreamed of doing on its own.

In the article, I enjoyed editor Ibrahim Ahmad wrestling with his dilemma: you don't want a million illegal free copies of your forthcoming book floating around the Internet, but at the same time those illegal free copies actually translated into pre-sales that will make both publisher and author barge-loads more money than they ever dreamed. Ahmad says he's fighting the piracy, but I don't think his heart's really in it. Understandably.

I'm not celebrating this story. In fact, it's pretty much the antithesis of how I think business, and the author-reader relationship, ought to go. "Give it away free to get exposure" is the opposite of how I'd choose to run my creative life--and yet this time, accidentally, it worked. I don't quite know what to make of it, but it got me thinking. Like I said, it's a data point.

Data Point Two. This article (originally by the Washington Post but since they currently appear to have a glitch on their website I linked to it elsewhere) features Nyree Belleville, a "thin, pretty brunette" who wrote 12 romance novels for a traditional publisher which then dropped her. Since her books had never earned her much anyway and she had nothing to lose, she reissued her first two novels as e-books.

(BTW, the article says that "her writing career was so flat line that one of her old publishers had even given her the rights to her first two novels." I bet that's not quite right. More likely, the books had gone out of print and the rights automatically reverted to Belleville under the terms of her contract. Nobody "gave" her anything.)

Those e-books made a few bucks. Then a few more. Belleville got the rights to two more of her books, wrote a new original one, dug up a few stories she'd written earlier in her career, and offered them all as e-books. In the first quarter of 2011, she sold 58,008 copies and made $116,264. Quite a comeback for a writer who a few months earlier thought her career was over.

The article also points out that such success is rare. Belleville had a big advantage being a known name with an established reputation and fan base in the print world. Far more common are the e-books that sell six copies to family and friends. Still, the economics are compelling. Notes the article, "it is possible for writers marketing a $4.99 self-published e-book to make more per copy than authors with a $24.95 hardcover." As an author with a $24.95 hardcover, that sounded about right and got my undivided attention.

Of course the most important question to me is: How does this affect me? I dunno. These are interesting times. Writers have exponentially more strategies and outlets available than ever, but consequently a greater challenge being heard above the din than ever. If there are no gatekeepers and everybody's a writer, how do you stand out from the crowd? Tell good from bad? Can a writer still lounge moodily in his garret and scritch away with a quill pen (as I am wont to do), or does the 21st Century author have to be a promoter, accountant, and computer guru, too?

Interesting times.

I'm On The Austrian a-Radio

2011-05-07T08:30:00.000-07:00

Way back in last August, I got an e-mail from reporter Christian Cummins from Austrian radio station ORF FM4 asking for an interview about Mom's Cancer (or its German version, Mutter hat Krebs). In a powerful example of how small the world has become and how interconnected we are all, I received Chris's e-mail at 4:40 a.m. my time. I replied as soon as I got up and saw his note, at 7:03 a.m., and said, "How about now?" Chris and I connected on Skype, did the interview, and were done by 7:42 a.m., when I e-mailed him some images from the book to post online.

Think for a second about how amazing that is: a guy in Austria wants to interview another guy in California for a radio program and they get the entire thing done, soup to nuts, in less than an hour. Sometimes I enjoy living in The Future.

Anyway, I did the interview and forgot about it until yesterday, when Chris was kind enough to e-mail me a copy of the piece with apologies for forgetting to do it earlier. How rare and considerate! If I've done this right, there should be some kind of doohickey right under this paragraph that will let you listen to the edited three-minute interview (posted with Chris's permission). He also sent me a link to a separate text version of his story, which has totally different content and is, I think, an excellent write-up.

COMICS

Thanks to Christian for the interview and the web article, and for remembering to tell me about them!

I Need a New Word for "Tapas"

2011-05-05T09:06:00.000-07:00

I keep posting these collections of bite-sized morsels. Well . . . I did it again.

* * *

Friend O' The Blog Jim O'Kane made a pilgrimage to Florida last week hoping to witness the final launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. As I mentioned in the previous post, he was even nice enough to invite me along and I was sorry to decline. Sadly for Jim, Endeavour's launch was postponed (and remains uncertain), and he had to return home. Happily for me, while he was there Jim shot a picture of Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow voguing on the iconic NASA seal in the Main Hall of the Kennedy Space Center! Holy Hertzsprung!

I have a collection of photos like this, taken of my book in much cooler places than I'll ever visit myself, on WHTTWOT's Facebook page. I always imagine someone shlepping my book around all day just to capture one picture in just the right place; I'm impressed with their effort and grateful for their thoughtfulness. Thanks again, Jim!

* * *

Today is "National Cartoonist's Day," which is such a big deal that not even many cartoonists seem aware of it. But hooray for cartoonists anyway! If you see one, give him or her a big hug and kiss, and perhaps a Reuben sandwich. I hear that's their favorite. I personally will be hanging out on a street corner downtown hoping someone recognizes me. Maybe if I splash some India ink on my shirt first . . .

On a related note, Saturday is "Free Comic Book Day," when comic book shops try to lure future customers by passing out free comics, many of them produced by publishers just for the occasion. Some shops go all-out with special events, creator appearances, art exhibitions. Might want to see if anybody's doing anything fun around you.

* * *

Much more somberly, but I think appropriate for a blog that was begun nearly six years ago to talk about Mom's Cancer: a friend pointed me to this final blog post of Derek Miller, evidently a popular blogger but previously unknown to me, who died of colorectal cancer on May 3. Derek knew the end was near, faced it with dignity and courage, and composed this post to be published after he passed away. I thought it was touching and wise and said some of the things a lot of people probably wish they could have said if they'd had the chance. It will help you get your priorities straight and put your little problems of the day in perspective. That's always worthwhile.

More later.

Friday Tapas

2011-04-29T08:04:00.000-07:00

Bite-sized morsels heading into the weekend.

Blogging's still sparse while I work hard on my day job (looks like I might get an important new client!) and thumbnailing Mystery Project X. I'm into the fun pages of the latter: the exciting conclusion when all secrets are revealed amid wall-to-wall pulse-pounding action. Yeah, let's go with that. I still have a ton of work to do before my sketches become a proposal, then who knows how many months of drawing afterward to turn it into a near-200-page graphic novel.

It's at this point that I always regain huge respect for anyone attempting a big creative project like this, even if it's an enormous steaming heap. After all, nobody sets out to make an enormous steaming heap, and it takes just as much time and energy. For all I know, that's what I'm doing. I worry about that.

My friend Jim O'Kane is down in Florida right now, waiting to watch the penultimate Space Shuttle launch. At this writing, the weather looks good. Jim actually invited me along and I wish I could've taken him up on it, but North America's a big continent that I'm on the other side of and shuttles aren't famous for launching on schedule. Endeavour looks good to go today, though. Godspeed, Jim.

BTW, Jim took a great photo yesterday that I'll post to my Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow Facebook Fan Page when I get a minute. If you haven't seen my album of "In the Wild" photos showing my book in various settings--including tombstones, rocket nozzles and Disneyland (isn't that a Lesley Gore song?)--you might enjoy that. Make my WHTTWOT page one of your "Favorites" while you're there, but only if you really feel that way deep in your heart.

I don't care much about the Royal Wedding but Will and Kate seem like swell kids and I wish them well. I do appreciate the sense of tradition and century-spanning continuity that the wedding evokes. We don't have much of that in the New World and especially in California, where the oldest structures are missions from the 1770s. In Britain, they'd call that "the new stuff we're still breaking in." One aspect of the wedding coverage I've enjoyed is that, after making my first visit to London last year, I have an internal map of the geography: "Oh, I've been there!" All these places--Buckingham Palace, St. James Park, Westminster Abbey, Parliament--are like a 20-minute walk apart. That makes the grand pageantry a bit homier.

Karen and I showed up for the wedding 10 months early.

I didn't mean to make this "Britain Day," but cartoonist Dan Collins posted the video below that I decided to repost for no other reason than it made me happy. After years of mostly seeing the Beatles in scratchy black and white, it sometimes startles me that film like this (from the movie "Help") exists--essentially a music video a couple of decades before MTV was invented. But it wasn't really that long ago, was it? They (we) were so young and they, at least, were charming. I was eating paste.

Have a terrific weekend, everyone. It looks like spring around here. If you happen to look up at the stars tonight, take a second to marvel over the fact that we've got people up there.

Friday Mid-Morning UPDATE: Oh no! It looks like the Shuttle launch has been scrubbed for at least two days. I hope Jim can stick it out!
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Call and Response

2011-04-22T09:34:00.000-07:00

Two commercials with remarkable similarities. Enjoy, I did:

And have a nice Springy weekend, y'all.
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No One Told You When to Run, You Missed the Starting Gun

2011-04-21T08:36:00.000-07:00

Begrudging blogging. I'm still chipping away at "Mystery Project X"; have thumbnailed (laid out, sketched, and placed dialog for) about 80% of it and built a related model that'll prove useful later (remember how I built a spaceship once? Like that). When completed, I'll print out the thumbnails, put together a little package, and ship it off to Editor Charlie to see if he's interested in publishing it. I alternate between confidence that I'm creating the greatest work I've ever done and terror that it totally sucks and my career is over. In other words, the usual.

* * *

I had a birthday last week. It was nice. My favorite gift was from my girls. I mentioned before that my daughter Laura is a part-time docent on the USS Hornet Museum, an aircraft carrier which was the recovery vessel for the Apollo 11 and 12 missions before being decommissioned in 1970. Her sister Robin has since started working there as well, helping chaperone the groups (Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts) that sleep over on the ship most weekends.

Also docenting aboard the Hornet is a gentleman who actually served on it during the Apollo missions, and who during those recoveries slipped away to shoot his own Polaroids of the events. Which is how I ended up with a CD of 36 never-before-seen pictures of the Apollo 11 and 12 missions. To me, that's as good as finding a new photo of Lincoln at Gettysburg. The best part is knowing I raised kids thoughtful enough to come up with a gift like that.

* * *

I laughed at this news story this morning about Emma Watson, who plays Hermione Grainger in the "Harry Potter" movies, dropping out of Brown University partly because her fellow students just weren't cool enough to handle having her there. Apparently she got tired of them shouting "Three points for Gryffindor!" whenever she got an answer right.

I'd like to think I wouldn't be one of those students, but at age 18 I probably would have.

* * *

A couple of nights ago, Karen and I went to see a friend of ours give a poetry reading. You heard me right: I know a professional poet. Ooooh, impressive! Karen and she became best friends when they met at age 13 and I wormed my way into the Circle of Trust when we all went to the same university. It was a good night that reminded me my life could use more fine poetry in it. Although, as Karen pointed out later, it's not as if I haven't dabbled a bit myself.

I was delighted to find that the bookstore hosting the reading had a copy of Mom's Cancer on its shelves. I've slowly gotten over my shyness about offering to sign books I find in the wild, but it's still a weird thing to do. And I was struck again by two things I've noticed before: 1) More often than not, the clerks seem totally indifferent--I mean, I wouldn't presume anyone would be impressed that one of their authors happened by, but maybe a smile to indicate I'd penetrated the montony of their day? I usually end up apologizing for bothering them. And 2), nobody ever asks for ID. I could be a crazy man vandalizing random books for all they know. Or care, evidently.

Anyway, read some poetry. It's good for your soul.

Now back to work.

Chicago in June?

2011-04-11T16:14:00.001-07:00

I hear it's lovely. Should be a terrific setting for an academic conference on the subject of Graphic Medicine. Nice poster art, too.

I've made my flight and hotel reservations, and am scheduled to give a 90-minute "how-to" workshop titled "See One, Do One, Teach One" (some people will get that) aimed at teaching participants some cartooning skills and, more importantly, giving them the confidence to encourage others to do it in a potentially therapeutic setting.

We've got a schedule of talks and panels roughed out, three top-flight keynote speakers, and panelists coming from around the world. It also looks like we'll be able to provide CME (continuing medical education) credit to healthcare professionals for whom that would be an attractive draw. Registration, a schedule, list of panelists, maps, links to accomodations and more are available now at http://bit.ly/ComicsMedicine (clicking on the poster above will work, too).

I'm getting very excited about this event which, if it's anything like the first one in London last year, will be a wonderful, intimate mix of a hundred or so writers, artists, academics, doctors, nurses who all take the potential of comics to reflect and affect healthcare seriously. .

2011 Eisner Award Nominations

2011-04-07T18:12:00.001-07:00

No, I didn't get any, silly. I didn't put out anything last year (which is not to presume I'd have gotten nominated if I had). But I still care, and looked over the nominees announced yesterday with avid interest.

My first impression is how few of the nominated works I've read. Partly that's because I just don't read mainstream comic books anymore (that's maybe a subject for another post . . . short version: I didn't leave comics, comics left me). My second impression is how many of these works I've never even heard of. From that I draw two, not necessarily mutually exclusive, conclusions: 1) The comics industry is healthier and more diverse than ever, with a wide range of offerings to appeal to an expanding universe of readers; 2) My ignorance is vast.

Still, there are some books and creators I know and like, and am happy to see on the list:

For "Best Continuing Series" and "Best Writer/Artist" I like Echo by Terry Moore. Terry and his wife Robyn are good people making comics for all the right reasons, and Echo is gorgeous work. I like it and him.

In "Best Publication for Teens" I can recommend Raina Telgemeier's Smile and Barry Deutsch's Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword. Hereville is a great story and published by Amulet, an imprint of my publisher Abrams, but I'd really like to see Raina win this. Smile is very good, plus I first met her at the 2005 Eisner Award ceremony where she was up for "Best New Talent" and didn't get it. I think the universe owes her one.

In "Best Digital Comic" (my category!), the nominee I regularly read is "The Abominable Charles Christopher" by Karl Kerschl, whom I've never met. It is a charming strip about a mute Sasquatch lumbering through a vaguely medieval world filled with talking animals and some of the best artwork around. However, my girls wouldn't forgive me if I didn't point out that Tracy Butler's "Lackadaisy," an "anthropomorphic cats during Prohibition" favorite of some of their friends, is also nominated.

For both "Best Reality-Based Work" and "Best Painter/Multimedia Artist" I can recommend Carol Tyler's You'll Never Know Book 2: Collateral Damage, Carol's continuing tale of her father's World War II experience and the long shadow it still casts on her family. I've met Carol a couple of times and I just flat-out love her. She's one of the most joyful, creative people I know and her work shows it.

In "Best Comics-Related Book," I have to go with Shazam! The Golden Age of the World's Mightiest Mortal, by Chip Kidd and Geoff Spear. This beautiful overview of the comics and merchandising career of the original Captain Marvel was published by Abrams ComicArts and edited by Editor Charlie, but that bias aside it's a very deserving book.

I have some favorites in other categories but those are the nominees I feel strongest about. I also feel some responsibility to give all the nominees a fair shake and not just vote for my pals, and will perform my due diligence. I already know I'll turn in my ballot with several categories unmarked because I just haven't seen enough of the work. But it's neat to have a small voice in the "Oscars of Comics" and I wish all the nominees the best. If you win, just remember the coolest part: the little globe on the trophy spins!

Spurgeon at CCS

2011-04-04T08:09:00.001-07:00

My friend Mike Peterson, whose Comic Strip of the Day blog provides some of the most thoughtful non-snarky comic strip criticism around, alerted me to this longish report by Comics Reporter Tom Spurgeon about his trip to moderate a panel at the Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS) in Vermont.

It's an interesting piece about something I don't have any experience with but am honestly a bit dubious about: schools dedicated to teaching people how to make comics. In my mind, the best way to make good comics is to learn a lot of stuff and have a lot of life experience that has nothing at all to do with comics and then tell stories about that. But that's a post for another time and I don't mean to disparage the sincere, hard-working people of CCS.

Mike sent me the link because one of the people on Tom's panel was my friend and editor Charlie Kochman. I laughed out loud (really!) at Tom's one-line observation that "Charlie Kochman is a note-taker" because I could just imagine him pulling out his well-worn paper notepad and scribbling intently with the pen he keeps clipped to the third buttonhole of his shirt. It's one of the qualities I admire about him. Also, I was at the New York Comic-Con the day Jeff Kinney brought Charlie his proposal for Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and can vouch that it happened just as Charlie said.

Mike didn't know that I'm also casually familiar with another of the panelists, agent Bernadette Baker-Baughman. Bernadette and her former partner Gretchen introduced themselves in the early days of Mom's Cancer and for a while seemed to pop up everywhere. She exemplified the maxim that a big part of success is just showing up. At the time, Bernadette's small agency didn't have much reputation or a large client list, but she was there, she was interested, she was hustling--obviously looking for work, but in a friendly, low-key way that I appreciated. I remembered her and we've corresponded once or twice. I don't have an agent and haven't felt the need for one yet, but if I ever did she's one of a few people I'd call.

Anyway, Tom's CCS report is a nice read--a bit "inside baseball," as Mike told me, but worth a look if that's the kind of thing you might like to look at. Thanks, Mike and Tom.

WonderCon 2011

2011-04-03T10:15:00.001-07:00

A quick report on my trip to the WonderCon comics convention in San Francisco yesterday. As I mentioned on my Facebook page (why oh why won't you be my Friend?), I was accompanied by my staff of digital art assistants who helped color Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow--that is, my daughters Robin and Laura, and their friends Kelly and Kristen. Photoshop wizards all. For some reason, my wife Karen preferred to spend her day in downtown S.F. in places like Macy's. Yet somehow our marriage works.

WonderCon is a nicely scaled-down version of the San Diego Comic-Con International, run by the same people so you know it's done right. It takes up a lot less floor space--maybe one-fourth as much?--but, as the photos above and below suggest, can get every bit as crowded. Hollywood is a much smaller presence at WonderCon than Comic-Con, which is fine by me and a lot of other comics fans who in San Diego sometimes feel like gate-crashers at their own party. And of course WonderCon is on my home turf, about an hour away, making it a fun half-day getaway instead of an expensive multi-day odyssey. I think it has become my favorite comics-related event.

Some bullet-list highlights for me:

* I've joked in previous trip reports that no matter where or what size the convention, you can always count on seeing two people: Peter Mayhew, who played Chewbacca, and Lou Ferrigno, TV's Incredible Hulk. It was true again yesterday. Both showed up to sell photos and autographs, and for ten or twenty bucks you could have your picture taken with them--an opportunity I have never had any interest in availing myself of. However, I happened to be walking down their aisle when Mr. Ferrigno himself thrust a Polaroid camera into my hands and very politely asked if I would take a photo of him with a fan. Mr. Ferrigno is still in very good, very imposing physical condition. When Mr. Ferrigno asks you to do something, the word "No" flees your brain to enter orbit around a distant star. I still do not have a photo of Lou Ferrigno and me; however, some fan out there has a photo of Lou Ferrigno and her taken by me. Which to my mind is just as good.

"Just push the button."

* I've also said in other trip reports that I can always count on meeting at least one really cool person I had no idea I was going to. Yesterday's was Kathy Garver, who played Cissy on the old TV program "Family Affair." She was sitting at a booth (just down the aisle from Ferrigno, I think), said "Hi" as I passed, and we had a nice, genuine conversation that lasted several minutes. We talked about graphic novels--she wasn't quite sure what they were but had heard from a business consulting expert that they were the next hot thing, and I explained why I was particularly happy to hear that. It was a little strange to unexpectedly meet someone I had a small boy's crush on 40 years ago, but it was neat and she was very gracious (Jim O'Kane, you should interview her for TV Single Dads).

Back in the day: Garver as Cissy on the left. Even as a child, I had good taste.

* I went to one panel, a free-wheeling exchange by writer Mark Evanier (whose blog is a daily stop of mine) and cartoonist Sergio Aragones. Mark and Sergio have worked together for 40 years, most notably on a funny barbarian character named "Groo," and through countless convention appearances have polished their comedy act to laid-back brilliance. I've met Mark a few times but believe I am the only person remotely connected to cartooning, comic books, comic strips, or crayon eating who is not a close personal friend of Sergio's. Everybody knows him, everybody loves him. Someday, Sergio. Someday.

The blurry comedy stylings of Evanier and Aragones. Yes, that young woman had green hair. Why do you ask?

* I was happy to see some people I knew manning a booth for the Charles M. Schulz Museum & Research Center. I think they were happier to see my daughter Laura, who volunteered there a while back and evidently left a good impression.

* I said hello to Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett, whose very good and clever book Boilerplate is slated to be made into a movie by J.J. Abrams. I'd introduced myself to them at last year's San Diego Comic-Con and we have the same publisher, so had that to talk about. Nice people and I'm very excited for them.

* I almost bought a lot of things but actually walked out the door with only two purchases, both books. One was The Looney Tunes Treasury by Andrew Farago, curator at San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum (just down the street from the convention) and a friendly acquaintance. It is an absolutely gorgeous book that belongs on the shelf of anyone who can't help singing "Kill Da Wabbit!" whenever they hear Wagner. Get it even if you're not lucky enough to buy it autographed from the author himself, as I was.

* Finally, the highlight of the con for me was finding Richard and Wendy Pini, who in 1978 created the pioneering self-published series Elfquest and have continued to build that fantasy universe and create others ever since. My second purchase of the day was Wendy's Masque of the Red Death, based very loosely on the Poe story. I look forward to reading it.

I started corresponding with Richard when he read and liked WHTTWOT, met them in person at last year's WonderCon, and reconnected this year as friends. We talked books, movies, business, our future projects . . . Very nice people, very generous sharing their time and experience. I also got to watch them interact with some of their fans, and its hard to imagine any fans being more respected or appreciated. We also talked about their efforts to drum up enthusiasm to get an Elfquest movie made by Warner Brothers, which optioned the film rights. Seems like a no-brainer to me . . . .

Wendy and Richard Pini. Coolest of the cool.

Also saw a lot of other people, comics, original art, merchandise and cosplayers, but I promised quick; that's about it. Good people, good stuff, good day.

Home, and To Two Twain

2011-03-31T09:38:00.000-07:00

In keeping with my long-standing policy of not telling burglars that my home stands empty and waiting, I didn't want to blog about my latest vacation until I returned from it. Which I just did.

Karen, the girls and I are home from several days in New Mexico, mostly to visit my Dad at his former commune/spiritual retreat center (what, you thought I made up that part of Mom's Cancer?). That's family business so I probably won't say much about it, except that we all had a terrific time with him and touring the cities of Taos and Santa Fe. I may share some photos if any of them look particularly post-worthy (haven't downloaded them yet). We all look forward to rehydrating our skin and mucous membranes after returning to sea level from 7000-foot desert.

When we left northern California last weekend, it was frosty, rainy winter. We return to spring. Trees are budding, birds are chirruping, and the grass in my backyard has grown four inches. It's as if months passed in less than a week. Amazing.

* * *

I finished the Autobiography of Mark Twain last week, and had a few concluding thoughts on it. Bear in mind that this is Volume One of three, so subsequent books might address some of these points.

First, it's Twain, so it is thoroughly well-crafted and entertaining writing. I know of no one better at turning a phrase or subverting expectation, by which I mean starting a sentence one way and giving a twist that takes it somewhere else entirely. Twain easily clears my personal benchmark that defines good writers, which is that I enjoy their work no matter what the subject.

That's good, because Twain's subjects are not always inherently interesting. Reflections on then-current events long forgotten, petty dramas involving people I've never heard of, comings and goings of characters to whom I knew I'd been introduced and thought maybe I ought to go back and look up but then thought, "Oh, why bother?" However, other bits are exactly what you'd want and expect of a Twain autobiography: "you are there" reporting of fascinating people and events by a man who began his career as a journalist.

The latter part of this book, and I believe all of the next two, was written by a method Twain thought quite clever and even revolutionary. Despairing of sitting down and writing his life story as a chronicle from cradle to grave (which he had tried and failed), Twain hit on the idea of dictating to a stenographer and letting his mind wander. Sometimes it wandered back to his boyhood on the Mississippi, sometimes to a dinner guest from the night before. He often clipped articles from newspapers into his manuscript and used them to fuel that day's dictation. Twain was certain that this sort of stream-of-consciousness autobio would reveal more truth and insight about its author than any other method or structure. I think he was only partly right.

Reading the dictations certainly captures the feeling of sitting at Twain's side while he tells you stories. It brings the man to life. He is funny, charming, perceptive, biting, and everything you could want in a conversational companion. He tells great tales about the people he met, and freely shares his opinions (he worshipped Ulysses S. Grant, had a warm relationship with Grover Cleveland's family, thought Teddy Roosevelt was a dilettante distracted by shiny things, and was wowed by his young acquaintance Helen Keller). And for me, that is the book's flaw: it is pitched at the tone and level of a talk you might have with a good friend--if your friend were as interesting as Mark Twain--and not much deeper.

Twain's method promotes spontaneity at the expense of introspection. It makes it difficult to understand how Twain's philosophies and opinions developed through the years. Twain often tells us what he thinks but seldom why. Readers wanting Twain to declare his true opinions on race, religion, and so on may be disappointed. He never really tackles a big topic and says, "Here is what I think about that and why."

Did Twain believe in God? I don't know and he doesn't say. He's certainly irreverent, and writes things that a true believer might fear would keep him out of Heaven. But at other times--when writing sincerely about the deaths of his wife and daughter, for example--he sounds quite devout. I would have been interested in some reflections on his life as a writer: how his skills and style developed, how he learned what worked and what didn't, which works he considered successes and failures. That's mostly absent (though I very much appreciated his descriptions of the 19th century publishing industry and tidbits such as the fact that The Prince and the Pauper was a sales disappointment). I was interested to learn that Twain believed in precognitive dreams and telepathy, which he called "mental telegraphy," based on experiences he'd had (in fact, he speculated that Helen Keller employed mental telegraphy).

It's tempting to conclude that Twain's autobiography is like his beloved Mississippi River: a mile wide but only a few fathoms deep. On the other hand, Twain's dictations have a cumulative effect that he understood very well. He himself wrote that a person's autobiography is really two books: the book its subject writes, and the truth the reader perceives:

". . . an Autobiography is the truest of all books; for while it inevitably consists mainly of extinctions of the truth, shirkings of the truth, partial revealments of the truth, with hardly an instance of plain straight truth, the remorseless truth is there, between the lines, where the author-cat is raking dust upon it which hides from the disinterested spectator neither it nor its smell . . . the result being that the reader knows the author in spite of his wily diligences."

And I think there may be something revealed by the fact that Twain explicitly wrote his book in a way that encouraged engaging anecdotes and discouraged analytical reflection. Just maybe, that's the kind of man he was.

This authoritative edition of The Autobiography of Mark Twain further confounds by providing endnotes--about half as voluminous as the autobiography itself--that check Twain's recall against historical fact and often find him falling short. It turns out that our Autobiographer is also that most useful of literary devices, an Unreliable Narrator! Twain was an old man, dictating from memory; of course he remembered some stories wrong. But others are so wrong that they smell of invention, as if crafted to provide the lesson desired. Whether Twain actually came to believe that his fictions were fact is impossible to say, and a question he briefly wrestles with.

A couple of final thoughts: I find the fact that the book consists of lightly edited oral dictations incredibly impressive. Typically, people write much better than they speak. If I were to transcribe a conversation between you and me, we would gibber with grammatical errors, glitches, fragments, run-ons, dropped thoughts, and incoherence. Not Twain. He was a professional orator, born when people made a living going from town to town giving entertaining multi-hour speeches that crowds turned out to watch, and Twain was a lecture-circuit star. While some of Twain's dictations clearly have the polish of stories he'd told many times before, even his extemporaneous dictations show astonishing clarity and complexity. A hundred years ago, even common folk with ordinary educations could recite long literary passages and poems. Today, skillful oration is so rare that we elect people just because they can talk good. It used to be routine. We've lost something.

Second concluding thought: hooray for modern medicine! Twain's autobiography documents a vale of medical superstition, quackery, ignorance and death. Child mortality was tremendous and treatment often worse than nothing. Two of Twain's three daughters died relatively young (ages 24 and 29), and his wife Olivia wasted away for years. People took ill or died from mysterious diseases that don't seem to have any modern counterparts and may have been non-existent. Grant's physicians reassured him that his throat cancer was due to stress and had nothing at all to do with the cigars he chain-smoked, then told everyone except Grant that he was dying. In some contexts, a century doesn't really seem that long. In other contexts, it's the difference between a witch doctor's poison and a neurosurgeon's MRI. I'm happy for the latter.

I read The Autobiography of Mark Twain with a pencil by my side and left very few pages untouched. I almost never mark up a book, but this one had too much good stuff to let escape. It was very enjoyable and worthwhile.

It was also, at times, a frustrating slog. Finishing Volume 1 did nothing to change the opinion I formed when I bought it: The Autobiography of Mark Twain will have an extremely high ratio of "copies bought to copies actually read," and Volumes 2 and 3 are unlikely to be the enormous runaway top-seller that Volume 1 was (but how cool was it to see Mark Twain atop the bestseller lists?). But I will buy them. On to Twain Two!

In Which I Indulge Myself

2011-03-25T08:52:00.000-07:00

Long, LONG-time readers of my blog(s) may recall occasional mentions of my modest collection of original comic art. With the exception of two small pencil drawings by Charles Schulz I've had since I was a kid, I didn't start collecting cartoons until I got my first check from Mom's Cancer and bought the crown jewel of my collection: a "cel" from Winsor McCay's "Gertie the Dinosaur," a pioneering animated cartoon made in 1914.

Nice way to start a collection.

Of course I've always loved original comic art and could have bought it anytime, but I never thought I deserved to have it until I'd made my first buck as an actual cartoonist. Realizing that collecting could quickly get away from me if I let it, I made two rules: I could only acquire pieces done by people I'd gotten to know at least a little bit personally, or pieces by a small roster of greats who especially inspired me. I also accept gifts. My rules keep the collection small and manageable, and ensure that each piece really means something to me.

(Digression: I see collectors at the comic conventions with fat portfolios stuffed full of pages of original art, and I just don't understand that. They never look at it, never display it, and don't seem particularly interested in the art or artists. The pieces might as well be stamps or coins, and maybe to them that's exactly what they're like. I'd rather have one piece from a friend that makes me smile when I look at it than 100 pieces worth 10,000 times as much warehoused out of sight in black plastic binders. But that's just me.)

Yesterday's mail brought my latest find, a daily "Gordo" strip by Gus Arriola. I've written of my admiration of Mr. Arriola's work before. He's on my personal All-Time Top Ten List. If I could ink like any cartoonist in history, I think it would be him (although Walt Kelly would be a contender).

This one's a two-fer: it's Arriola, plus it's space-related. Finding a piece that hits two of my favorite things = too good to pass up. Here's a close-up of the last panel that shows some of what I mean about Mr. Arriola's inking: the "glow" lines that transition from white sky to black, the silhouetted tree and figures, the stylized hatching on the ground: gorgeous. Arriola began his career as an animator and it shows. I wish you could see the original: the blacks are incredibly crisp, with little evidence of under-drawing. This may be the cleanest original art I've ever seen.

Sadly, Mr. Arriola must fall under my "industry giants" rule rather than my "friends" rule. "Gordo" ran from 1941 to 1985 and Arriola passed away recently, in 2008. I only learned then that he lived relatively nearby. If I'd had my wits about me, I could have written him a letter telling him what his work meant to me, maybe even had a chance to thank him in person. Another missed opportunity to add to my Big Book O' Regrets.

While I'm on the subject, I'll share the second-most-recent addition to my collection, a wonderfully generous gift from my friend Mike Lynch. Mike is a specimen of the nearly extinct genus "people who earn a living from magazine gag cartooning." A long time ago I expressed admiration for this particular cartoon and was thrilled to find it under my tree last Christmas. See? Now that's a story and a friend I get to remember whenever I look at my wall.

If you're interested in collecting original comic art, it's not a bad or necessarily expensive hobby. As with any art, you have to know what you're looking at, and look at enough of it to know whether the price is fair. Shopping in person is best, but I realize that's seldom practical. eBay is a terrific resource (that's where I found my "Gordo") but beware! Fakes are rampant--it's funny how often Schulz forgers misspell "Schulz." Check out the seller's reputation. Know the difference between an original and the various prints, proofs and photostats that often show up on the market (in animation art, also learn the difference between a production cel (original) and a "sericel" (lithographed copy)). Your best bet may be to buy directly from the cartoonist. Not all sell their originals (I don't) but many do, and will be happy to point you in the right direction.

A Fun Art Idea

2011-03-23T09:11:00.000-07:00

Here's a neat twist on a concept that's been floating around the Web a while: "Camera and Pencil," in which artist Ben Heine appears to be holding a scrap of paper with a pencil drawing that perfectly merges with the real background, usually with some added bits of whimsy or fantasy. I like it! (Follow that link above to see more.)

I write "appears" because it's not clear to me how Heine does it. You're supposed to think that he sketched it on-site with incredible skill and held it to align perfectly for the camera. I dunno; maybe he did! But a much simpler method occurs to me: take a photo of your hand holding a blank piece of paper, then go home, do the sketch in perfect alignment and perspective, and paste it into the blank space with Photoshop. Or I suppose the entire thing could be assembled in Photoshop--the background elements, the paper, the drawing, the hand--but that would circle back around to being unnecessarily difficult.

To be clear, I'm not accusing Heine of "cheating." I don't really care how he does it--I think it's nifty and you can't spell "art" without "artifice" (wait, I have that backwards...). I just can't help speculating through the filters of "I wonder how he did that" and "If I were going to do that...." In any case, check out and enjoy the fun drawings.
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Happy Birthday to Messrs. Shatner, Kirk, Hooker, Crane, et al

2011-03-22T08:33:00.000-07:00

I didn't mean to post two "Star Trek" items in a row (sorry, non-fans) but today is the 80th birthday of The Man, The Legend, The Shat: Mr. William Shatner.

I'm going to get serious for a moment before posting some videos that simultaneously celebrate and ridicule Mr. Shatner. He's an easy target. However, I sincerely believe he's a very good if not great actor. Here's what I think defines the difference: in a good actor you can see the gears turning and technique being applied, and it looks difficult; in a great actor, the gears and technique are invisible, and it looks effortless. Not that I know anything about acting, but I always thought Mr. Shatner would be a good model for novice actors to study because they could watch him and see what he was doing and how he was doing it, in contrast to a better actor whose skills would look like incomprehensible magic. That's just a theory I have based on my analogous experience in cartooning (I understand what Walt "Pogo" Kelly did and can learn from his example, while George "Krazy Kat" Herriman was a wizard whose tricks were beyond my humble ability to grasp).

I also think that Capt. James T. Kirk is one of the great iconic fictional characters of the 20th Century. No kidding. Kirk is idealized mid-century America: bold, confident, resourceful, virile, but also (and this was often forgotten in later years when Kirk was slandered as a "shoot-first" kinda guy) a smart and compassionate leader who quoted Shakespeare and poetry. Kirk knew who he was, what he was doing, and why he was doing it. The Canadian Shatner created a hero as quintessentially American as Superman, Indiana Jones or Davy Crockett (I know Crockett was real; I mean the Disney version). He got help from a lot of producers, writers and castmates, but you can see the difference Shatner brought to the job by comparing his performance to Jeffrey Hunter's Christopher Pike, the Enterprise's captain in "Star Trek's" failed first pilot. Hunter was fine, but replacement Shatner brought a humanity to his captain--an edge, a twinkle--that made all the difference. Although viewers loved Leonard Nimoy's Spock for obvious reasons, I'd argue that without Shatner's Kirk, "Star Trek" would've died in 1970 (if not sooner) and be nearly forgotten today.

Some might consider that a merciful blessing. Not me.

I remember a time when Shatner struggled to shrug off Kirk and wasn't always gracious about it. Both his persona and career improved as he relaxed and developed a graceful sense of humor about his work and himself. The really nice thing about his later renaissance is that Mr. Shatner himself seems to be in on the William Shatner Joke. His willingness to play along--again, with a twinkle in his eye--makes all the difference. He may be an egotistical jerk in real life--reports vary--but on screen, from Kirk to Hooker to Denny Crane, I always find him interesting and fun to watch (although not even his presence is enough to draw me in to "$#*! My Dad Says"). The only time he ever disappointed me was when he didn't accept my Facebook Friend request.

Here are some reflections of The Shat, offered with sincere appreciation and respect on his 80th birthday.

All you need to know about Kirk in 1:57:

"Airplane 2," early in Mr. Shatner's evolving self-awareness:

Hooker. "Resist arrest! Resist arrest, please!" Maybe you had to be there, but I can't watch this without a big stupid grin.

A turning point in his career, 1986. The beauty of this piece is that anyone offended by it probably deserved to be:

If this doesn't make you weep until your eyes run dry, well, then I don't want to know you:

Recently, with George Lopez:

Finally, two mostly affectionate appreciations, the first marking the occasion of Mr. Shatner's birthday two years ago, and the second from last year. In the first, voice artist Maurice LaMarche refers to a couple of old recordings of Shatner behaving badly. Warning for a family-friendly blog: the second contains bad words. Hiliariously bad words.

By Alexander Courage, Lumberjack

2011-03-20T19:31:00.000-07:00

This is for Mike Lynch. Nobody else needs to bother pressing "Play," unless you want to watch a street musician play the "Star Trek" theme on a saw. Which, who wouldn't?!

I Hear Two Tongues, Shriller Than All the Music

2011-03-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

CAESAR
The ides of March are come.

SOOTHSAYER

Ay, Caesar; but not gone.

Twenty-three years ago today, my life forever split into "before" and "after."

Robin: "Nyah nyah, all your hair will turn gray starting
in five . . . four . . . three . . ." Me: "Nooooooo!"

Karen checking Laura for washing instructions or warranty.

Happy Birthday, Chiquitas! We'll be there to help you celebrate soon.

XO XO

Dad
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Mark Twain Insult of the Day #8, and more

2011-03-14T09:29:00.001-07:00

You're getting tired of these. I can tell. But I love them and it's my blog. Today's Twain target is Elisha P. Bliss Jr., who published a few of Twain's books under what Mr. Clemens later decided were unfair terms.

I never heard him tell the truth, so far as I can remember. He was a most repulsive creature. When he was after dollars he showed the intense earnestness and eagerness of a circular-saw. In a small, mean, peanut-stand fashion, he was sharp and shrewd. But above that level he was destitute of intelligence; his brain was a loblolly, and he had the gibbering laugh of an idiot . . . I have had contact with several conspicuously mean men, but they were noble compared to that bastard monkey.

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NON-SEQUITUR SEGUE ALERT:
Speaking of the Graphic Medicine conference I'm helping to plan for next June in Chicago, we've just started to look at the proposals for papers, talks, panels, workshops, etc. that people submitted. We have many excellent ideas to choose from--maybe more than we can accommodate in the time and space available, I don't know yet. Personally, I'm relieved. I mean, you just never know! What if we'd gotten none? My co-organizers had more faith and it looks like they were right. The hard part now may be having to turn down terrific proposals just because we have too many. Seeing what we have to choose from, I am confident we're going to have a wonderful event. Registration is open!

* * *

My thumbnailing for Mystery Project X proceeds apace. I'm more than halfway through a very rough draft of what I hope will be my next book, expect it'll take me a few more weeks to finish, and am happy with how it's going. I'm getting a lot out of the process. The act of committing the layout, dialog, and sketchy figures to paper (well, pixels) is helping me solve old problems, raising new ones, and sparking new ideas, just as it should. I've also resolved some technical special-effects issues to my satisfaction for now. It's interesting: as I mentioned before, I never really thumbnailed either of my first two books (I did a bit on WHTTWOT) but it's really working well for me. I just need to do it faster.

I think "process"--insights into how different people do the job--is interesting. Some cartoonists approach their work "pictures first," letting their art inspire a story, while others work "words first," essentially illustrating a script (I'm mostly the latter, although I'm always looking for opportunities for art to convey meaning and help carry the narrative load). I recently read an old interview with a cartoonist who said she never did a rough draft of anything, and had lost jobs because of it. One publisher wanted to print her work but, not unreasonably, asked for some idea of what they might be getting first. She couldn't do it; that wasn't how her process worked. She didn't know what she was going to do until she did it. I find that alien and fascinating. I wish I could spend five minutes inside a mind that works like that.
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Mark Twain Insult of the Day #7

2011-03-05T19:14:00.000-08:00

To recap, I am reading the Autobiography of Mark Twain (at a leisurely pace) and, from time to time, posting examples of Mr. Clemens's most colorful insults, at which he seemed especially adept. Today's subject: Humanity.

A myriad of men are born; they labor and sweat and struggle for bread; they squabble and scold and fight; they scramble for little mean advantages over each other; age creeps upon them; infirmities follow; shames and humiliations bring down their prides and their vanities; those they love are taken from them, and the joy of life is turned to aching grief. The burden of pain, care, misery, grows heavier year by year; at length ambition is dead; pride is dead; vanity is dead; longing for release is in their place. It comes at last--the only unpoisoned gift earth ever had for them--and they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence; where they achieved nothing; where they were a mistake and a failure and a foolishness; where they have left no sign they have existed--a world which will lament them a day and forget them forever.

Get out of my head, Dead Mark Twain.

Mr. Clemens is much kinder and gentler recalling the death of one of his daughters, Susy, at the age of 24. I'm sure the welling in my eyes and choking in my throat has nothing to do with my own daughters' 23rd birthday coming up soon. The old man knew how to break your heart (and he knew that he knew it, the scoundrel).
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Do the Batusi

2011-03-01T08:44:00.000-08:00

Blogging's still sparse 'cause I'm still working hard, especially on Mystery Project X. Thanks for your indulgence.

Cartoonist Jesse Lonergan (whom I don't know and, honestly, hadn't heard of before today and I'm sorry about that) has drawn a batch of Star Wars and superhero characters in silly dance poses. Comics Reporter Tom Spurgeon, whose link sent me there, dismissed it as "that kind of cute superhero thing (that) really does it for some people, and doesn't do a thing for others," and it certainly is that, but I got a little more out of it.

First, they're neat examples of cartooning in their own right. Each figure shows maximum expression with minimal details. Their anatomy is very stylized but solid. They reminded me of "gesture drawings" in art classes, in which you have only a few seconds to capture the essence of a figure in motion. Some of Lonergan's characters are little more than sillhouettes, yet they're full of life and movement. Even attitude and emotion! That's hard to do.

The second thing I noticed is that a full page of these figures has a sort of cumulative effect of suggesting movement that approaches animation. That's especially apparent in this bunch of Spider-Men:

Cartoonist Jules Feiffer mastered that effect with his dancers pirouetting existentially through life, and I was also reminded of one of the most enduring sequences from Bill Watterson's "Calvin and Hobbes":

It's interesting that all three examples lack the traditional comic panel borders, encouraging the eye to flow uninterrupted from one image to the next. I think that's important.

Even if Lonergan's dance drawings are too cute for your taste, there's some cartooning wisdom to be had there.
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Chicago in June

2011-02-22T11:40:00.000-08:00

That's where I'll be; how about you?

Registration is now open for “Comics & Medicine: The Sequential Art of Illness,” an international conference I'm helping organize that'll be held June 9–11, 2011 at Northwestern University. Also, just a last-minute reminder that proposals for conference lectures, panel discussions, workshops and poster presentations addressing comics in the context of healthcare are still being accepted until February 28.

Registration for the two-day event, which will be preceded by a reception the evening of Thursday, June 9, costs $80 for general admission and $30 for students with a valid student ID. Scheduled keynote speakers are Scott McCloud, Phoebe Gloeckner, and David Small, so that right there should be worth the price of admission. A full schedule of panels and workshops is planned for Friday and Saturday, along with opportunities for informal networking. It'll be quite an intimate affair (we're aiming for about 100 participants, we'll see how it goes). We should have information about hotels with decent conference rates soon.

In addition, anyone interested in presenting or speaking at the conference is encouraged to download the Call for Papers and submit an idea by February 28.

Honestly, I think the price tag is a bargain for all the activities and information we're planning. Northwestern University is very generously providing facilities and a lot of support, which keeps the cost low. No one involved is making a penny on this. I had a terrific time at the first Graphic Medicine conference in London last June, which was only a one-day event. As great as that was, I'm expecting this one to be twice as good. At least!

Visit http://www.graphicmedicine.org/ for more details.
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