After the Fire USA 2026

I just spent 1.5 days at a 2.5-day conference hosted by After The Fire USA, a nonprofit I love and support that was founded by Jennifer Gray Thompson and others after our 2017 firestorms. After the Fire USA supports communities that have faced similar devastating fires--sadly, there's no shortage of them--and lobbies local, state and federal lawmakers on behalf of fire victims. 

The conference was held in Sonoma, Calif., less than an hour from my house, and drew approximately 250 (?) attendees from across the country and internationally. There were fire victims, firefighters, fire prevention specialists, city planners, architects, healthcare providers and more. I met people from Spokane, Altadena, Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Paradise, Santa Cruz, Lahaina, Alberta Canada, and other places whose names you only saw in the news because they burned.

One of the themes of the conference was "If you've seen one fire, you've seen one fire," meaning that while big fires have similarities, each is also unique. The Hawaiians from Lahaina look to be recovering from their August 2023 wildfire better--or at least differently--than most. Rebuilding seems centered on what people most want and need, including restoring some historic waterways to their pre-colonial states. Based on what I heard from them the past couple of days, Lahaina has a lot to teach other disaster-damaged communities (building on what they learned from After the Fire USA and others who'd been down that path before them). They're doing some interesting work. 

I found the event unexpectedly emotional. Our fire is never far from my mind, of course, particularly since I still give talks on the book I wrote about it, but I haven't been surrounded by that many people who'd survived similar crises, some quite recently, for a long time. It is, as the motto of After the Fire USA says, "the worst club with the best people." I found it warm but intense. Had to take a couple of laps around the patio sometimes. 

I think it was good for me. It at least felt instructional and constructive, and I was honored to be invited.

Approaching the event space, the Hanna Center in Sonoma. The patio to the left had places for people to meet and eat, plus tables of vendors around its perimeter. Talks and panels happened in the big room to the right...

...which looked like this. I took this photo first thing in the morning, before it filled in. It's a great space, with some of the smoothest AV and tech crew I've encountered. Food and drink were swell. The conference took good care of us.

An adjoining lounge/green room offered relevant books, including mine, available for a donation to the cause. Organizers bought 25 copies of A Fire Story and by the end of the event were almost sold out. Of course I signed them all, and got a chance to personalize some for people who said it meant a lot to them. That's very gratifying.

Another author present was teenager Leela Bahador, who wrote her children's book Wildfires to Wildflowers following the Pacific Palisades blaze in 2025. We coincidentally wound up sitting at the same table and had a nice conversation about the writer's life. Turns out I'm old. (Photo by Jennifer Gray Thompson)

I spent quite a while talking with a man whose name I didn't catch from an organization called The Foothill Catalog Foundation, which serves survivors of the Altadena and Pacific Palisades fires by presenting them with dozens of pre-approved, ready-to-build house plans that retain the historical architectural aesthetic of the community and are meant to fit onto typical sized lots.

Man, we could have used something like that after our fire! Our rebuild process was absurdly haphazard, and although a few big builders came to community meetings with prospective floorplans, we didn't like any of them (and some of them ultimately turned out to be crooks who took people's money and didn't deliver). If a group like this had come to us and said, "Here are a bunch of designs that will look good in your neighborhood and fit on your lot," it would have made our lives much easier. 

A panel of folks from Lahaina who told very interesting stories about their recovery work to date (with some of us sadly and sympathetically understanding how far they have to go). I don't want to idealize or romanticize anyone, but their focus on history, family and community felt unusually strong.

250 Words on Home Design

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

Houses are like trees: their age is revealed by the layers that accumulate within them. 

You can walk into most homes and tell which decade they were built in based on their floorplans, features and fittings. Trends that were once smart and hip grow old and tired. Taste and lifestyle pendulums swing. 

Hardwood was covered by linoleum that was covered by carpet that years later was pulled up to reveal hardwood. Walls were demolished to create open floorplans, then later rebuilt to create separate living spaces. Big bathrooms, big kitchens, big closets—each had their time to shine and then fade. 

We built a house from the ground up a few years ago, and even at the time I knew every design decision we made would someday scream “2018!” Nine-foot ceilings. Six-inch baseboards. Warm gray walls. Recessed LED ceiling lights. Plastic rocker power switches. USB and HDMI ports. Floors of laminated hardwood, concrete tile, and “luxury” vinyl. 

It’s a very nice house that is inescapably of its time.

Our insight from that process is that you don’t design a home for unknowable fashions yet to come or to maximize its future resale value. You design it for the life you want to live. Now. Ideally, you build in enough flexibility to change with the times—walls can be repainted, floors can be redone—but its bones should be timeless enough to last. If its next owners find it old-fashioned, they’re welcome to reshape it to their own needs and taste. 

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250 Words on Back to the Future

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

(You may remember this as something I posted on social media last year. Afterward, I squinted hard and thought, “That looks like it’s about 250 words long!” So, with some editing, I repurposed it. If you read it before, I hope you enjoy it again!) 

After 36 years, today is the day I get something important off my chest.

There’s a scene in "Back to the Future Part III" (1990) in which time-traveling inventor Doc Brown, trapped in the year 1885, shows Marty McFly an enormous clanking machine whose purpose is a mystery until it deposits a few dirty ice cubes in a bowl. It's an ice maker! Very charming and funny.

My beef: artificial refrigeration had already been invented and was widespread by 1885. Commercial ice plants were operating in most major cities, including Los Angeles, which couldn't have been far from Doc and Marty's fictional Hill Valley, Calif. (which was also somehow within walking distance of Monument Valley, Arizona, but never mind). If Doc Brown wanted ice, he could have copied existing technology or had blocks of it shipped from L.A. on the train he later hijacked. 

I can only reconcile it by thinking of the ice-making scene as a character bit, like how in the first "Back to the Future" movie Doc built an elaborate Rube Goldberg device to feed his dog and cook breakfast. Maybe his Wild West freezer was the same sort of thing: an unnecessarily complicated creation to accomplish something that could have been done much easier but less cinematically or fun.

Otherwise, it's the one piece of the "Back to the Future" trilogy that shatters my suspension of disbelief. Or, as a disappointed Ant-Man realized in "Avengers: Endgame," "So 'Back to the Future' is a bunch of bullshit?!"

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250 Words on the AP Stylebook

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

On my first day writing for a newspaper, I used a serial comma (also known as an Oxford comma), which goes before the “and” in a series like “tea, scones, and jam.” My boss, a crusty sportswriter who’d been on the job for decades and would continue for decades more, deleted it. 

“I think that comma’s optional,” I smart-mouthed back. Without a word, he walked to a shelf, opened a blue-covered spiral-bound book to a dog-eared page, and slapped it on the desk beside me. It was the Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual, the Holy Bible of the newspaper industry, and it forbade serial commas (unless required for clarity).

I read it cover to cover the same day.

Some of my favorite newsroom memories are arguments about tiny details of journalistic style. I still use the AP’s convention of writing out the numbers zero through nine (one, two) and using figures for multi-digit numbers (10, 137), except when they begin a sentence (Two hundred rhinos rampaged…) or are part of a sequence (Act 1, Act 2…) or have a decimal (3.14159) or or or…

There are many exceptions. You might imagine how fast you can get lost in the weeds. 

When I began working with Abrams Books, I was dismayed to learn they follow the competing Chicago Manual of Style, with very different, equally arbitrary, rules. One adapts. Still, decades after I last wrote for a newspaper, AP style remains my default setting. That job hammered it into me.

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250 Words on Riding the Rails

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

I’ve taken four lengthy train trips, all aboard Amtrak in the western U.S. It’s a special way to travel, following routes laid down by wagon trains through landscapes you couldn’t see any other way. 

The romance of the rails is real but also wears thin. Amtrak rents track access from the freight lines that own them and claim priority, which means you can spend hours sitting on a siding in Utah waiting for a 200-car train to rumble through. 

It’s nice to be able to wander around a train but there aren’t many places to wander to. On three of my trips we reserved rooms in sleeper cars, whose seats fold flat into beds. Those tickets also grant access to the dining car, whose offerings have declined from midcentury banquets to marginally upscale airline food. Still, it’s terrific to sit at a table, order off a menu, and watch the landscape roll by. 

Tiny toilets and showers are down the corridor, and sometime around the end of Day Two the experience starts to feel like camping. It’s fun, but you’ll be ready for a real bed and bathroom when it’s over. 

All that said: I’ve loved every trip. The other passengers usually include a character or two, and there’s always an amateur historian in the observation car happy to tell tall tales about the country you’re crossing. 

Why take a train when an airplane will get you there faster and cheaper? It’s not about the destination, it’s the journey. Patience.

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250 Words on Accessible Style

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

When I set out to write and draw my first graphic novel, Mom’s Cancer, more than 20 (!) years ago,* I faced a decision.

My first thought was to render it in a Gothic scritchy-scratchy crosshatched art style saturated in grays and blacks. I can draw like that if I want to, and darkness seemed apt for a cancer story.

My second thought was to do the opposite. I realized that gloomy art would repel the readers I was hoping to attract. Instead, I drew it open and light, with panel layouts that were easy to follow. I wanted it to feel familiar, comfortable, like an old comic strip. I’d lure readers in and then hit them with my family’s story. 

(Incidentally, Mom’s Cancer is in landscape format because it began as a webcomic. Each page had the proportions of a computer monitor so visitors could read it without scrolling.)

If I’d ever had any doubts I made the right stylistic decision, they would have been erased at this year’s Graphic Medicine International Conference in Baltimore. More than two decades after I created Mom’s Cancer, medical schools still teach it and academic papers still cite it. When I thanked those teachers and scholars for using my work, many of them said something like:

“It’s so accessible.” “It’s a comic I hand to people who don’t read comics.” “It’s a great introduction to graphic medicine.”

To which, if I’m being honest, I can only reply, “Thanks. I did that on purpose.”

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* And I will take this opportunity to remind everyone that the 20th anniversary edition of Mom’s Cancer, featuring the entire original story plus 22 new pages, as well as new introductions and end notes, can be bought or ordered from your heroic local independent bookseller today!

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250 Words on Netiquette

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

An anonymous commenter on a recent post scolded me for not writing about a subject that’s very important to them. Anon seemed to consider my lack of interest an intellectual and moral failure, replying (with what I imagine to be a sneer), “OK, back to writing the Dave Barry stuff. Don't strain.”

For the record, I wish I could write the Dave Barry stuff. Unfortunately, Dave Barry has the market cornered. 

Occasionally, something I write gets a lot of attention. I’ve noticed that once a post catches on, unfamiliar commenters* swarm the discussion with so much nastiness that I have to restrict commenting because I can’t keep up with it. 

Different people have different reasons for being online. Mine is a mix of business and pleasure. It’s a way to keep in touch with friends and family, share my writing and cartooning, and otherwise promote my work. 

I regard my web homes—my Substack platform, Facebook page, and personal blog—as casual parties at which I hope to cultivate friendly and thoughtful interactions with interesting people. Commenters are welcome to critique or disagree with anything I post, but a crasher who poops on the rug, insults my guests, and demands that I cater to their whims will be escorted from the premises. 

I’m not infringing on your free speech. Say whatever you want on any of the hundreds of outlets available to you. Why pick a fight with me? I have no time for your nonsense. Host your own party. 

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* Yes, I know they’re probably bots, automated to attack anything vaguely political or socially relevant. Sometimes I look them up out of curiosity. It’s amazing how many pretty girls in bikinis or hulky special forces veterans have strong opinions on the issues of the day that they share with their five friends and followers. 

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Review: The Odyssey

No one has been eagerly awaiting my thoughts on The Odyssey, but I have some anyway. Reaction I've read has been polarized--some very positive, some very negative--so I kept an open mind as I went to see it with my daughters this afternoon. 

I liked it very much. It's an adult film with ideas that is about something. That in itself makes it interesting and worthwhile these days.

I am not a classics quibbler. One of the great strengths of old stories like The Odyssey, Beowulf, Shakespeare or religious myths is they carry universal themes that can be adapted for the times. If Romeo and Juliet can be molded into West Side Story, I have no problem with director Christopher Nolan playing a little fast and loose with Homer.

Odysseus has an interesting character arc. In this version, he is a soldier consumed with guilt for sins he and his army committed in their siege of Troy that broke the laws of god(s) and man. His 20-year voyage is penance for those crimes, and he only gets home when he surrenders his hubris and puts his fate in the hands of the gods. It's almost Zen. 

I loved the movie's treatment of the Greek gods. We don't see much of them except Athena, whose resemblance to Zendaya is explained late in the film. Otherwise, they're forces of nature too transcendent for humans to comprehend. A stormy sea is Poseidon's wrath; a clap of thunder punctuates Zeus's disapproval. Much better, I think, than Laurence Olivier pontificating in a toga.

I'm very glad I saw it. My classics-loving daughters liked it, too. It'll stay with me. Your mileage may vary.

250 Words on 26,000 Words

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

Today begins my third year of writing and posting one 250-word essay per week. Because each is exactly 250 words long, the math is easy: 2 years x 52 weeks/year x 250 words/week = 26,000 words.*

That adds up to a respectable novella’s-worth of whatever’s on my mind. As I wrote a year ago, when I only had half as many pieces under my belt, each may be a bite-sized appetizer but they add up to a surprisingly robust meal. 

As probably one of the few who read all three thick volumes of Mark Twain’s autobiography (honestly a bit of a slog), I appreciated that he structured it as a series of short essays he dictated to his secretary. Some were anecdotes from his life and times, others were reflections on random current affairs that caught his eye. His notion, as he explained in the introduction, was that a reader would get to know him much better that way than they would through a dry recitation of biographical dates and events.

I didn’t set out to do likewise, but it has occurred to me that my 250-word pieces cumulatively serve the same purpose. I try to space out the topics so I don’t post two pieces in a row on comics, or writing, or science, or pop culture, or memoir, or whatever. But sooner or later, everything I know and care about will make an appearance. 

It’s an exercise I’d recommend to any writer—or, really, anyone. Thanks for reading!

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* I also did one post promoting the release of my newest book, the Mom’s Cancer Anniversary Edition, but I don’t count those 164 words. Also, footnotes (like this one) don’t count. My house, my rules. 

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250 Words on Options

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

When a movie studio wants to adapt a writer’s work they “option” it, which means they pay you to NOT make a deal with another studio while the project is in development. 

Options aren’t terribly rare in the graphic novel world. Studios troll long-form comics for stories. Visuals already provided! Pre-packaged storyboards! I know cartoonists who’ve had their work optioned. Very few resulted in actual movies. 

Each of my books had a studio sniffing around it at some point, although only Mom’s Cancer was formally optioned. They flatter you with praise and bedazzle you with suggestions of which famous actors might play your characters, and promise to get back to you soon. Then they don’t. 

My favorite story: a producer with 20th Century Fox contacted me about my book Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? I, the world’s worst promoter, replied, “I don’t think it’d make a very good movie, it doesn’t really have much of a plot.” He reassured me they were enormously interested so we arranged to meet at Comic-Con International a few weeks later,  whereupon he said, “We’re going to pass. It doesn’t really have much of a plot.” 

If only someone had warned him.

While you can’t help drafting your Oscars speech when Hollywood calls, I’m jaded. Occasionally I’ll see a young cartoonist announce to the world that their story was optioned, gushing about scripts and casting, and think, “Oh, bless their heart.” Until the movie start shooting, it’s best to keep it to yourself.

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Nearly Home

I shot this from the window of my plane yesterday. In the morning I left the Atlantic and by mid-afternoon was looking at the Pacific. What a world!

For those unfamiliar with the area, that's San Francisco Bay, with the Golden Gate Bridge spanning its opening to the ocean. Extending from the left (south) tip of the bridge you can see the green swath of the Presidio and, further to its left, the long green rectangle of Golden Gate Park. Alcatraz Island is at lower left, circled by boat wakes.

You can visit great places and people but there's always something special about going home, isn't there?

Graphic Medicine 2026: Baltimore!

While many of my cartooning colleagues gathered this weekend in San Diego for Comic-Con International, I was across the country in Baltimore for the 2026 Graphic Medicine Conference. Although I love Comic-Con, I think I got the better end of the deal. 

Graphic medicine is a field of medical humanities where comics intersect healthcare. It’s a big field, from public health to journalism to narratives like my book, Mom's Cancer. It brought close to 200 doctors, nurses, academics, librarians, cartoonists and others to Baltimore to share projects, research, results, stories and ideas.

I signed up for the conference too late to join any panels or workshops, and wasn’t sure I wanted to spend the time and money to fly across the country without a real reason to. Karen convinced me I didn’t need any more reason than wanting to hang out with my friends. “Life's too short. Just go.” 

It was the right call. I did hang out with my friends and also made some new ones. I saw interesting new creative work and am taking home a load of inspiration (and books). I managed to participate in many other ways than sitting on a panel, both within sessions and the perhaps-more-important time outside of them. 

I was also gratified to see that Mom's Cancer is still very relevant and useful to people working in the field, which is nice to know as we release its 20th anniversary edition. Graphic medicine people are the best. 

Photo dump ahoy. Apologies for the high percentage of selfies.

Most of the conference happened on the Johns Hopkins University's Homewood Campus, though we also ventured across town to the famous hospital. I don't know how many campuses Johns Hopkins has in Baltimore--seems like a dozen. This town is peppered with Johns Hopkinses.

A beautiful campus of Federalist-style brick buildings and grassy quads. Because it's summer the campus was pretty dead, except for knots of touring high school students. As I remark every time I travel east, brick architecture enchants me because we have very little of it in northern California. Ours all fell down in 1906.

At the Thursday night reception/social hour with keynote speaker Dr. Nathan Gray and graphic medicine champion Dr. Brian Callendar. Can't swing a dead cat without hitting a doctor.

Also at the reception, I connected with my friend Maia Kobabe, author of the most-banned book in America GenderQueer, and Maia’s collaborator on their new book Breathe, Sarah Peitzmeier. Sarah is the Ph.D. kind of doctor. There were a lot of them, too.

Dr. Nathan Gray gave the opening keynote talk on Friday. He wrote and drew a graphic novel titled The Human Remains (it's a tricky title with multiple meanings) that will be released in November but I have had the pleasure of reading (and blurbing) it already. I think it's a terrific book and Nathan was an excellent speaker about his own experience as a comics-creating physician.

Harvard medical librarian Matthew Noe, cartoonist Ellen Forney (Marbles), and Dr. Michael Green, who's been at the heart of graphic medicine since its beginning. I'd asked them if I could take their picture and they were winding up to pose when I snapped this one, which I thought had a lot more life and personality than the stiffer portrait that followed. Hope they forgive me.

A large atrium space was dedicated to vendors, including my friend, RN, and graphic medicine co-originator MK Czerwiec. Her excellent book Taking Turns is an oral history in comics form of her tenure on an AIDS ward in the 1990s, while her new book, LB & Me, is about her creative connection to cartoonist Lynda Barry. MK also won an Eisner Award for her editorship of the book "Menopause," and did me the favor of writing a new Introduction for the 20th anniversary edition of Mom's Cancer.

Friday night ended with an opera recital inspired by Dana Walrath's graphic novel about her mother's experience with Alzheimer's Disease, Aliceheimers. Dana wrote the libretto; that's her at the music stand, narrating. Music was performed by a pianist, who's obscured by the piano, and a very talented soprano. If I had their names handy I'd give 'em. The performance was held in an auditorium in the hospital that was originally an anatomy theater, with medical students in steeply banked pews looking down at human autopsies. I think the setting enhanced the haunting themes of Dana's opera.

A selfie at one of the sessions on Saturday: Dr. (MD) Alex Thomas, Dr. (Ph.D.) Meredith Li-Vollmer, cartoonist Ellen Forney, and me. You may not know their names but trust me: this is a murderer's row of prodigious graphic medicine work and talent that, in their own ways, have made big differences in a lot of lives. Meredith, who works for Seattle and King County Public Health, gave an excellent day-two keynote. 

Saturday included this panel about the new book Keywords/Keyimages in Graphic Medicine, to which I and 40-some other people contributed essays. Left to right are editors Briana Martino and Lisa Diedrich, then contributors Anna Mukamal, Paul Flippen, A. David Lewis, Maia Kobabe, MK Czerwiec, and Ebru Ustundag. They actually invited me to join the panel before it began but I declined, both because I was unprepared and knew from experience that eight people on one panel was WAY more than enough. It went very well, and I had a chance to say a bit at the end. It's a neat academic book on how graphic medicine works formally, along the lines of Scott McCloud's analysis of comics.

Fulbright scholar Maria Jose Mompeán Mejías came from Spain to study graphic medicine in the U.S. for a year, and is heading back home right about now. Photo by Brian Callendar; Dr. (Ph.D.) A. David Lewis provided the photobomb. Maria Jose said very nice things about Mom's Cancer, which was great but didn't quite register until I sat in on her talk....

....which contained a generous portion of Mom's Cancer. In this photo, I think she's looking over at me to see how I felt about what she was saying. I felt great. She's brilliant. 

I did have a rare "Marshall MacLuhan in Annie Hall" moment on Saturday. I was watching a panel when, during Q&A, one of the speakers referenced a bit from Mom's Cancer. Because it was unplanned and off the top of his head, he didn't quite remember it right. I caught moderator MK Czerwiec's eye; she read my mind and handed me the mic.

"Coincidentally," I said, "I wrote the book you're talking about..." which got a laugh in the room. The speaker had no idea I was there, of course, and he and I had a nice exchange both then and afterward.

The conference ended Saturday night with an event at Red Emma's bookstore and coffeehouse, a Baltimore institution of heroic free expression and literature. This is the bookstore portion of the building....

...and this is the restaurant/bar/coffee house portion, which was huge. Graphic medicine folks took over more than half of it. At left in this photo is a group interview of people who have new books out, available for sale and signing at the counter.

I didn't have much time for sightseeing but did get to the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum the afternoon of my first day in town. Perhaps fittingly, it is a strange little museum. It's a tiny house with tiny rooms, and you have to reserve a timed ticket because the whole thing can hold maybe a dozen visitors at once. I enjoyed it but would only recommend it for a dedicated Poe fan.

Baltimore's harbor was lovely. In particular, it hosts several historic ships, including a submarine, the last surviving ship from the Pearl Harbor attack, and the sail-powered sloop USS Constellation. I didn't have time to explore them, but it would be a top priority on my next visit.

Thanks and farewell, Graphic Medicine 2026. We'll meet again.

250 Words on Notable Quotables

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

Sometimes a particularly memorable quotation makes its way into everyday conversation. Mine come from TV and movies rather than literary classics because I’m bourgeois. Some favorites I actually use:

“Everybody remember where we parked,” said by Captain Kirk (William Shatner) in Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home. It’s both a sensible thing for a parent to say in a parking lot and for a Starfleet captain to tell his crew when disembarking from an invisible time-traveling spaceship in 1986 San Francisco. 

“Important safety tip, thanks Egon,” said by Venkman (Bill Murray) in Ghostbusters after Egon (Harold Ramis) warns that they might disintegrate themselves. Useful for both dire and trivial hazards.

“I’ll alert the media,” said by the stuffy butler Hobson (John Gielgud) to his man-child employer Arthur (Dudley Moore) in the eponymous movie, after Arthur announces his plan to take a bath. Distilled sarcasm for any occasion. 

“Think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?” –Robert Redford, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

 “A man’s got to know his limitations.” –Clint Eastwood, Magnum Force.

“Have fun storming the castle!”—Billy Crystal, The Princess Bride.

“You sit on a throne of lies!” –Will Ferrell, Elf.

 “Hang onto your wigs and keys.” –David Letterman.

“You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.” –Super Chicken.

A good quotation can delight listeners when they get the reference and mystify them when they don’t. The challenge of working one into a conversation is that it’s hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. 

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