LumaCon 2026

An overview of the main room at the Petaluma Recreation Center. Other vendors and events were set up in surrounding rooms and outdoor spaces.

I had to take a quick spin through my favorite little comics convention in the world this morning, even though I couldn't commit to tabling this year. Librarians put on the LumaCon Comic Convention for Youth in Petaluma, Calif. to support kids' creativity, promote reading, and give young creators a chance to mingle and mix with professionals. It's free and has a bake sale. What's not to love?

I did a lap, said Hello to lots of friends, bought some books, and then headed out to the rest of my busy day. I'm glad I made the effort. It's a great event run by great people for all the right reasons.

Cartoonist Tom Beland greeted me as I entered the big room.

Nearby, Andrew Farago from the Cartoon Art Museum, his wife cartoonist Shaenon Garrity, and their son Robin.

Comic book artist extraordinaire Brent Anderson.

Cartoonist and Schulz Studio staffer Denis St. John, autographing a book I bought from him.

Another Schulz staffer, editor and "Kid Beowulf" cartoonist Lex Fajardo.

Maia Kobabe, author of one of the most banned books in the U.S., "GenderQueer." We had a nice conversation about graphic medicine.

I also ran into Schulz Studio head and cartoonist Paige Braddock, best known for the comic strip "Jane's World" and her new series for kids, "Peanut, Butter & Crackers."

Down a hall from the big room was space set aside for people who just wanted to sit quietly and draw. It was full. Another example of why I love this event.

Keywords/Keyimages

From the mailbag: my copy of a new book titled Keywords/Keyimages in Graphic Medicine, edited by Lisa Diedrich and Briana Martino, which Pennsylvania State University Press was kind enough to send me because I'm one of about 60 cartoonists, professors, and deep-thought-thinkers who helped write it.

This is an academic book, aimed at people teaching or working in the field of graphic medicine. I wrote three essays for it, titled "Metaphor," "Space/Time," and "Subtext," all illustrated with art from Mom's Cancer. 

The assignment, as I understood it, was to take an interesting image from the text and analyze what its intent was and how I used the unique tools and tropes of cartooning to achieve it. Some of the literary analysis dives pretty deep, and it's fascinating to hear cartoonists explain their thinking in their own words. Lisa and Briana have been working on the book for several years, and I think it's a really neat approach to understanding comics in a way that's reminiscent of Scott McCloud's work. 

I'm happy and proud to be a small part of this thing, which I think will be an interesting and useful contribution to the field for a long time.

250 Words on Pre-Electric Entertainment

[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’m fascinated by mechanical contraptions and entertainment media created before the harnessing of electricity. For example, I think a pendulum clock is just about the most wonderous device humans have ever conceived. 

I love old-timey record players: Edison cylinders, Victrolas, etc. We used to have a Pathe Freres Actuelle spring-powered phonograph from about 1920 that came down through the family, and I played 78s on it quite often. It transported me to a time when a wooden box brought all the music of the world into your home. What a revelation it would have been!

I also have a niche interest in stereoscopic images. Think of the classic Viewmaster toy, but a hundred years earlier. Almost as soon as photography was invented, clever people thought of shooting two photos side by side and placing them in a lensed viewer so that the left eye saw one image, the right eye saw the other, and an illusion of depth was achieved. 

A well-appointed turn-of-the-century parlor might have had hundreds of stereo cards, neatly filed in elegant cases, for visitors to amuse themselves with for hours. Three-dimensional tours of the Holy Land and other exotic locales were a popular subject for people who could never visit them themselves. 

These days you can buy a good-quality antique viewer for less than $100, and cards for $5 to $10 each. I particularly like to find vintage stereo views of places I’ve been. Between them and phonographs, Victorians could experience the world without leaving home. 

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Unboxing

I'm not cool enough to shoot an unboxing video, so how about an unboxing photo? "Mr. McFly! Mr. McFly! This just arrived! I think it's your new book!" said Karen when UPS dropped it off, because that's the ritual in OUR house. 

Presenting the 20th Anniversary Edition of Mom's Cancer, soon to be on bookshelves near you. In has 32 pages of new content, including 22 new pages of comics that tell what happened after the original book ended. It's the ultimate, definitive edition!

It should be in stores in early March. If you have any interest in buying a copy, it would be a big help if you'd pre-order it now, either from your local bookstore (preferred) or online retailer. Pre-orders tell bookstores and everyone up the chain to the publisher how well they can expect the book to do, and it's important to make a good first impression.

Plus, I will renew my traditional offer of mailing a free signed bookplate to anyone who wants an autographed book and sends me their mailing address. (Honestly, I haven't ordered those bookplates yet, but it's top of my to-do list!) Such a deal!

It's always a great day to hold your new book in your hands. They smell wonderful. Mom would've loved it.

250 Words on Jury Duty

[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 been called for jury duty often but selected only once, when I was in my mid-20s and working as a newspaper reporter. I thought my job would disqualify me; it didn’t. I served about a week on a rape trial. 

That trial had a “Perry Mason twist” dramatic enough for television. The defense attorney tried to shake the victim’s credibility by claiming she couldn’t even describe where the attack took place. For example, she said it was in a car about half a mile from a highway, while other evidence suggested the distance was more like 40 yards. Then the prosecutor stood and asked:

“How far apart are you and I right now?”

“A hundred feet,” she answered. 

After lunch, the prosecutor produced a tape measure, stretched it between them, and asked her to read the length: 12 feet. 

Everyone on the jury instantly got the point: the victim was an unusually bad judge of distance. That didn’t make her a liar or impeach the essence of her testimony. She just couldn’t look at something and tell you how far away it was.* 

We deliberated thoroughly, giving the defendant the benefit of every reasonable doubt. Everyone took the responsibility profoundly seriously. Then we found him guilty.

People moan when they get a jury summons, and strategize ways to get out of it, but I think everybody should serve on a jury at least once. I left satisfied and proud, with more faith in my fellow citizens and the system.

.

* I still think about what a gamble that was for the prosecutor. It seemed like a completely spontaneous and unrehearsed question on his part. What if she’d answered it correctly?

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They're Dinky

I have a bookmark folder that is simply titled "Happy." It contains about 50 links guaranteed to make me smile. It occurred to me that I could share one from time to time, and maybe it will make you smile, too.

250 Words on Professional Identity

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

We have an excellent art supply store in town that offers working artists a professional discount. Most of the time, I’m too timid to ask for it. 

Although they’ve never demanded proof, I’m afraid that someday they will. What proof can I offer? Nobody issues an art license. I imagine standing at the register Googling myself while they look at my comics and sniff, “You call that art?!”

I once took part in a discussion about what other cartoonists call themselves. If you say “cartoonist,” many people will ask, “Are you in the newspaper? Do you draw Superman?” If you say “No,” folks get confused—what other types of cartoonists are there?—or quickly lose interest. The number of people impressed that I’m a cartoonist who isn’t in the newspaper and doesn’t draw Superman is disappointingly tiny.

Some cartoonists prefer to call themselves “comics creators,” "graphic artists," or “illustrators.” I’m proud to be a cartoonist but if I’m giving a talk, or I’m somewhere that folks are likely to know what a graphic novel is, I’ll call myself a graphic novelist. It’s more specific and pinpoints my niche in the larger cartooning universe.

Otherwise, I call myself a writer. I’ve written for newspapers, magazines, and trade press before, and the process feels the same to me. Sometimes I write with words, other times I write with words and drawings. Both involve solving narrative problems and making a point as clearly and economically as possible, with whatever flair I can muster. 

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More Good Trouble

As Elvis Costello sang, "What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?"

Made a little good trouble in downtown Santa Rosa, Calif. today. Others in my family had commitments so I did my best to represent us all. Crowd size is hard to estimate when you're in it but I'd guess 2000 to 3000. 

One of the defining characteristics of these anti-Trump, anti-ICE, anti-fascism, anti-whatever-all-this-is rallies is the evident kindness and decency of the people who attend. They obey traffic signals. They deposit their trash in the bin. They say "Excuse me" and "Thanks." For a lunatic mob of Antifa agitators, they are very well-mannered. 

One guy ran up and down the street waving an "Americans Love Trump" banner, obviously hoping to provoke a reaction. Must have really stung when he was totally ignored.

Demonstrators filled Courthouse Square in the center of town, with lines of them facing traffic on opposites sides. Got a lot of supportive honks from passing cars.

Lots of folks in these vests around. Indivisible.org does a lot of the legwork and planning to pull these things off, including teams of trained monitors who look for trouble, keep people out of traffic, supply first aid, and provide a general calming presence.

I expect to get a few mocking reactions from bots and trolls, mocking the futility of it all. So what's the point? Unity: knowing you're part of a community that feels the same. You're not alone, you're not crazy, we're in this together. The value of being a pebble in an avalanche, a snowflake in a blizzard. The small courage of standing up in public for a righteous cause, then putting your name behind it on social media. 

As Vietnam War protestor A.J. Muste said, "Oh, I don't do this to change the country. I do it so the country won't change me."

A common MAGA slander is that anyone opposed to them must be a paid protestor, bussed in for the day by George Soros. I liked this response.

Simple, direct, says it all.

I liked this collision of worlds. One thing that strikes me as funny about MAGA followers is that they always think of themselves as the plucky rebels instead of the oppressive empire. There's even a joke about it in the new "Knives Out" movie. I guess everybody is the hero of their own story, but the cognitive dissonance must be unbearable.

My favorite protestor of the day.

Advice from Jim Keefe

Jim Keefe is a great cartoonist who has done a lot in his long, impressive career, including working as a staff artist for King Features Syndicate, writing and drawing the comic strip "Flash Gordon," and currently drawing the "Sally Forth" comic strip. We're virtual friends but don't really know each other, and today he posted the best advice about being a working cartoonist I've seen in a long time. I think it would also apply to anyone pursuing self-employment in any creative field. 

I won't repeat all his tips--go read them yourself!--but some, such as develop your business skills, work both hard and smart, and surround yourself with better cartoonists, are the sorts of solid wisdom you'd expect. I want to focus on two, one of which I endorse with a resounding "YES!!" and the other I don't think necessarily applies to me and may not to others.

Jim quotes Steve Martin's advice from his book "Born Standing Up," which I loved: "Be so good they can't ignore you." 

Yes yes yes. 

I remember being in my teens and twenties, and thinking what I really wanted to do was draw superhero comics (a career that holds no appeal to me today). I kept looking at artists I considered the least talented working for DC and Marvel and thinking, "I'm better than that guy, they should hire me instead of him!" 

I think that attitude is very common among aspiring creative people, but in retrospect its ignorance and arrogance is embarrassing. First, I can see now that I really wasn't better than that guy. Second, that guy had a 30-year track record producing professional-grade work on deadline, while I had none. Third, aiming for the lowest bar I thought I could clear guaranteed that I would never get over it.

Don't aim to be better than the worst. Aim to be better than the best. 

But that's so daunting! You could never be as good as Jack Kirby or Neal Adams or Bill Watterson or Charles Schulz! Impossible!

So you work hard and do your best and fall short because you're right, you'll never be better than the best. But maybe you've made yourself better than 90 percent of your competition instead of 1 percent of it. Maybe now you're so good they can't ignore you, and even if they can't hire you today, they will remember you later. 

The other point I like, but will push back a bit on, is "Don't pigeonhole yourself into one small aspect of the art form." On its face, that's great advice. Be flexible and nimble. Don't be so focused on one goal that you miss unexpected opportunities. 

I knew a guy in high school who wanted nothing more than to draw superhero comic books. He was good enough to get a little interest from the big publishers, but no work. Year after year he pounded on their doors in vain until now, decades later, he's still posting examples of his superhero submissions without facing the truth that it is never going to happen. He could have built a career in other aspects of the business but wouldn't pivot.

I saw one young artist a few years ago whose portfolio was nothing but drawings of Wolverine. "What do you want to do with your career?" "Draw Wolverine." "What would you do if you couldn't draw Wolverine?" "Keep trying harder until I get to draw Wolverine." 

Don't be like them. 

Here's my different angle on Jim's advice. He writes about how, when he couldn't get work as a comic book artist, he did lettering, coloring, teaching. Picking up what he could where he could to earn a living in the business, at least stay in the periphery.

I get it but personally wouldn't do that. I have no interest in lettering or coloring as a profession (though I have great respect for those that do). I don't want to draw greeting cards or advertisement art or coloring books. Getting paid to draw is not the "end all be all" for me. My passion for cartooning is telling stories with words and pictures. If for some reason I couldn't do that, then I guess I'd be out of the business. Shrug. I could almost as happily draw on my own time and get paid to do something else. 

I'm not even sure I'm saying anything different than Jim, but that's the thought he prompted when I read his excellent piece this morning. 

250 Words on Mathematics

[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 have little patience for adults who complain/brag they never use the math they learned in school. I use high school math—algebra, geometry, trigonometry—routinely. Calculating fractions and proportions, cutting big things into little things, figuring out where to plant for sun or shade, ordering cubic yards of soil, buying enough paint to cover a wall. 

That level of math is a fundamental part of how I interact with the world. I don’t really understand how people get through life without it.

As a physics major, I dove into the deep pool of calculus and realized that all the high school stuff was preliminary. Calculus is where math really begins. And gets profound!

The foundation of calculus is slicing up space and time into an infinite number of infinitely tiny bits. When you do that, you can describe phenomena you otherwise couldn’t, from the flow of water through a pipe to the drift of galaxies through the cosmos. 

I admit I don’t use calculus in everyday life. It goes much deeper. Beyond its usefulness as a computational tool, calculus changed how I see the world. 

The more I studied F = ma, E = mc2, Maxwell’s and Schrodinger’s equations, etc., the more I realized that math was less about plugging in numbers and disgorging answers than an abstract but robust philosophical approach to life. I’ve forgotten how to solve partial differential equations, but the truth that mathematics lies at the foundation of all reality will stay with me forever. 

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250 Words on Art as Therapy

[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 written two nonfiction graphic novels about bad things that happened in my life: Mom’s Cancer, about my mother’s experience with metastatic cancer, and A Fire Story, about losing my home and neighborhood to a disastrous firestorm. In both cases readers often ask, “Was writing about it therapeutic for you? Was it cathartic?”

Yes and no.

Writing any sort of memoir requires you to pay attention to what happened as well as how you reacted to it. That demands some self-awareness and introspection. “Why was I angry? Why did I make those choices? What do I regret?” I suppose that’s a deeper sort of analysis than a lot of people do in those situations. 

On the other hand, I still go out and talk to roomfuls of strangers about my mother’s cancer and my home’s conflagration years after they happened. I’m happy to do it—really!—but in some sense it feels like picking at scabs without ever giving them a chance to scar over. “Let me yet again relive for you folks the worst experiences of my life.” 

That doesn’t seem healthy.

I especially reject the ideas of “catharsis” and “closure.” I don't think there’s any such thing. You just keep on because you have no choice. Life is forever divided into “before” and “after,” and over time you accumulate enough days in your “after” ledger, including some good and happy ones, that the pain of losing “before” slowly fades.

Art’s got nothing to do with that. Only time. 

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Too Many Bums

Every Christmas Eve since 2005--20 years now!--I share one of my favorite bits of whimsy from possibly my favorite comic strip, Walt Kelly's "Pogo": the classic carol "Deck Us All With Boston Charlie." You know the tune, sing along!

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!

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

--Brian 

250 Words on Nostalgia

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

Author John Koenig coined the word “anemoia”: a sense of nostalgia for a past you never experienced. You might get a tingle of anemoia when you see Currier and Ives prints or Bedford Falls. “I’m homesick even though I was never there.” 

I think anemoia explains the success of Thomas Kinkade, who painted soft-focus pastel landscapes so warm and inviting you want to crawl into them. That golden glowing cottage in an alpine glade feels exactly like my cozy childhood home, except I always lived in a tract house in the suburbs.  

Even as a child I experienced deep nostalgic longing, despite not having lived long enough to feel nostalgia for anything. The song “Those Were The Days” by Mary Hopkin, in which a woman wistfully recalls happy nights singing and dancing in a tavern with her friends, invoked a haunting melancholy in me, and I’d never been inside a tavern. It’s based on a Russian folk song because of course it is. 

I’ve now lived long enough to feel authentic nostalgia that can hit hard, especially for times that are long gone. I’d give anything to be able to knock on my grandparents’ door and be invited in for Sunday dinner, sit and talk with my Mom, or relive a day with my daughters when they were toddlers. 

It keeps me mindful that someday these will be the good old days I would give anything to revisit, and makes me grateful for the people and places I have now.

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