An Appreciation of the Women of Tomorrow

Suzette Chan of Sequential Tart, a website that has been very good to me over the years, has written a really nice review that touches on the women of Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow: Officer Mooney from Cap Crater's "Space Age Adventures," and the nameless little girl at the end who's eager to carry on the next generation's adventures. I had no idea this piece was coming and it was a nice surprise to find it this morning.

Suzette launches from a 2009 interview I did with MK Czerwiec (Part One, Part Two), also for Sequential Tart, in which I said I felt a little guilty that the main characters of WHTTWOT were all male (as I recall, I also said that since almost everyone in Mom's Cancer except me was female, I didn't feel too bad about it). Suzette looks at some of my book's themes with an eye on the women of the World of Tomorrow, an angle I don't think anyone else has considered.

Rather than recap Suzette's short piece, I'll just add a few thoughts about my intentions when I created those characters. Officer Mooney is the voice of reason, as well as the voice of the reader who might wonder why the police need a guy who commutes from the Moon to help them solve every little problem. I think she's the smartest character in the book--Dr. Xandra has greater raw evil-genius brainpower, but Mooney has more street smarts and common sense than all the rest of them put together (for example, when the gang goes out to investigate Dr. Xandra's uranium mine, she's the only one who remembers to bring a gun). And, as Suzette notes, the gag is that through the years Mooney is gradually promoted until she becomes the ineffectual Chief's boss, a nod to women's progress in the real world through the same decades.

The blonde girl came about because I wanted a kid in the final chapter to suggest a new generation with a new vision of its own World of Tomorrow, building on the successes and failures of its predecessors' vision (which is to say, mine). The idea of making the kid a boy had some appeal--generations of men passing a legacy of optimistic futurism down from father to son, etc.--but pointing out that a girl could also be part of such a legacy appealed to me. But mostly the girl is my daughters, who used to look just like her and to whom I dedicated the book. Do whatever you want, be the best you can be, shape your own destiny, yadda yadda.

Dads. Sheesh. Go figure.

Thanks to Suzette and strong, smart women everywhere. I love them so much I married one.
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Tapas

Bite-sized morsels, served Herb Caen style . . .

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Karen and I saw "The King's Speech" a week ago . . . thought it was great and I recommend it. I wasn't sure how sympathetic I'd be to the plight of a spoiled royal whose worst problem during World War II was poor diction, but the story worked and the actors, particularly Geoffrey Rush, were terrific.

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Before he died in 1910, Mark Twain spent 35 years sporadically working on his autobiography, on the condition that it not be published until 100 years after his death. And so it was, and so I bought it, and have spent two days reading the Introduction. I'm not a slow reader; the thing is a 700-page monster and the Autobiography proper doesn't begin until page 201. The best part: this is Volume 1 of 3.

What intrigues me about this exhaustive scholarly tome is that I bought it off a pallet at Costco, the palace of populism. University of California Press originally planned a print run of 7500 copies, which sounds about right for an academic book about a 19th-century author. As media and public interest grew, that number jumped to 50,000, then 275,000, then 500,000, and I have no idea how many copies are in print now. Having dipped in my toe, I guarantee that The Autobiography of Mark Twain will score the largest ratio of "Copies Purchased/Copies Actually Read" since Hawking's A Brief History of Time or Bloom's Closing of the American Mind.

Both of which I actually read.

I've been looking forward to Twain's autobio for years and will give it a fair go. I peeked ahead and know I'll find some worthwhile rewards. But I'll wager that Volumes 2 and 3 will sell signifcantly fewer copies, and will not be found stacked in pyramids atop the blades of a Costco forklift.

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Speaking of 700-page monsters, the comics event I'm most looking forward to in 2011 is the release of Craig Thompson's Habibi (if indeed it is released in 2011 . . . I don't think the date has been formally announced). Thompson, whose memoir Blankets was a big success, has been working on Habibi since 2004. I'm not kidding about the 700 pages which, judging by samples posted on his blog, will showcase some of the best comics artwork I've ever seen. Amazing, breathtaking stuff.

What worries me (not that anyone asked) is its story, about which very little has been revealed. I don't know how a white American man from the devoutly Christian background so vividly described in Blankets can write authentically about the life of an ethnic Third-World Muslim woman (the titular Habibi) without being superficial, condescending, overly romantic, melodramatic, or just plain getting it wrong. I'm not being snide; I sincerely don't know how he could do it short of immersing himself in the culture for years. However, if Thompson pulls it off, Habibi could be that very rare accomplishment: a graphic novel rich and deep enough to actually be called a novel. In addition, it will win every award that exists and some that haven't been invented yet.

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A book that definitely will not be released in 2011 is my Mystery Project X*. I had very little time to work on it the last few months of 2010 (you know I don't make a living doing comics, right?) but have really had a chance to buckle down the past couple of weeks. It feels great! Where I'm at: I have a 184-page script that I call my "locked-down" draft. That doesn't mean I won't change it, but I do think I finally have all the characters, dialog, plot twists, themes and motifs sufficiently settled to start drawing.

My next task is "thumbnailing," which means roughly sketching out the whole thing to see how the words and drawings lay out and work together. I didn't do a lot of thumbnailing on WHTTWOT and even less on Mom's Cancer, but I think it'll be necessary and helpful for this project. I've just begun (so far so good!) and figure that'll take several weeks. Just a few days ago I hit on the idea of thumbnailing digitally, entirely in Photoshop using a Wacom tablet, and I like it a lot. However, final art will be ink on paper, as God intended.

Once the thumbnails and a few pages of completed samples are done, they'll comprise a book proposal. My six loyal readers may recall that I discussed an earlier proposal for this same project with Editor Charlie just about a year ago. That was script only, plus a few pages of finished artwork, and I think Charlie and I both agreed it wasn't ready. It needed more work. Although Charlie has been as encouraging and supportive as I could hope and I have a commitment to show Mystery Project X to him first, I don't have a contract with Abrams or anyone else. They may not want it. Nobody may want it. These are hurdles to be jumped later, not to fret about now. If nothing else, I can always put it online and hope for the best. It worked pretty well before.


*Mystery Project X is not its real title.

One Tiny Sign I Did Something Right

I've got this chair. It's an office desk chair: comfy, adjustable, pretty good ergonomics. But because I tend to lean on my left elbow when mousing with my right hand, I wore out the vinyl covering on the left armrest, cracking and splitting it. I unscrewed and exchanged the left and right armrests so that after a while I wore out the other one, too. The chair looked awful, and jagged vinyl jabbed my forearms everytime I sat down. I couldn't find replacements online. I despaired.

Then my girls came home for Christmas. My daughter Robin sews things--some for personal use, some to sell at anime conventions--and had brought her sewing machine to work on a few projects over the holidays. She needed some favors from me and, quid pro quo, I asked one of her: re-cover my armrests. I left it up to Robin and her sister Laura to pick out an appropriate fabric, and they came up with this:


I tell you, it almost brought tears to my Daddy eyes to have raised children who know me so well. A few days later, Robin put the pedal to the metal to produce these:

Which are absolutely the coolest armrest covers anyone has created ever. Plus, we've got about half a yard of fabric left over. I'm thinking seat pillow.

Ha ha, I win.
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Graphic Medicine 2011

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I'm helping organize a Graphic Medicine conference in Chicago as a follow-up to the 2010 London conference I enjoyed so much. For some reason, someone thought I might be useful and asked if I'd join the committee; for some reason, I said "yes." We hope the cartoonists, medical professionals, academics, writers, critics and fans who come to the "Comics & Medicine: The Sequential Art of Illness" conference at Northwestern University June 9-11, 2011 get as much out of the next event as I did the last.

In recent weeks we've lined up Scott McCloud, Phoebe Gloeckner and David Small as keynote speakers, which is a very impressive roster of comics talent. We also issued a "Call for Papers" asking people to propose ideas for papers, panels, workshops and poster sessions they'd want to present in Chicago. Now we're trying to drum up some publicity (which, honestly, this blog post is a tiny contribution to) so that potential participants will check out the Call for Papers and help us program this thing. The deadline is February 28.

The one time I met Scott McCloud, our conversation went something like this: Him: "Congratulations." Me: "Thanks." Then he handed me an Eisner Award. I'm hoping to renew our acquaintance in Chicago.

Johanna Draper Carlson (who was one of the very first pros to say nice things about my Mom's Cancer webcomic and I'll never forget it) at "Comics Worth Reading" just posted an interview with me about the conference. Rather than repeat it all, I'll suggest anyone interested in the details go read it there.

More information about the Chicago conference, including the Call for Papers, is available at the Graphic Medicine website. That site is maintained by Ian Williams, the cartoonist/physician who invited me to London and is also involved in the planning for Chicago.

In London last June with Ian Williams, whose acquaintance I also hope to renew.

It's an understatement to say I'm not much of a team player or joiner. If I hadn't had such a terrific time in London, and didn't feel that Graphic Medicine was a worthwhile idea, I wouldn't be involved. As I told Johanna, I think these conferences focus on an aspect of comics with vast untapped potential to make a lot of difference in people's lives. Mom's Cancer gave me a peek at that potential. I'd like to see it develop.

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Coolest Photo of the Year

... so far. Courtesy of Bad Astronomer Phil Plait, whose blog is a regular stop of mine, comes this gorgeous image of the most recent full Moon shot in France by astrophotographer Thierry Legault:

So that's a nice enough pic of the Moon, I guess, but what elevates it to "Coolest Photo of the Year (so far)" status? Just that little dark blotch directly above the bright crater Tycho:


That's the International Space Station, whose orbit Legault researched and then set up his camera in the right place at the right time to capture the half-second it took the station to zip across the lunar disk. The station is about 250 miles (420 km) away, the Moon about 900 times that far. For comparison, here's a recent NASA photo of the ISS from space, which I've rotated to about the same orientation:


Look what we can do!
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A Fresh Sense of Wonder

Space Times, the magazine of the American Astronautical Society (AAS), which awarded WHTTWOT the 2009 Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award (Young Adult), has published a review that I thought was so terrific I'm reprinting the entire thing here. Continued thanks to the AAS for its support, this review, and
the cool plaque hanging on the wall over my left shoulder. Earning such nice recognition from a group like this is the best.

Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? answers the
question--if it still needs to be asked--of whether a graphic novel can be as educational and entertaining as a standard book. Yes it can--perhaps it can do even more.

This is a book that can be enjoyed on a number of levels. There are some wonderfully sly and ironic asides that only a careful reader will spot. But mostly the book takes us on an enjoyable ride through the imagination of a young child from the 1930s onward. The personal tales show how America's love of space sciences and the promise of the future rose on lofty national dreams of a bright future where science cured all problems, only to be slowed by a mixture of cynicism and reality. Its examination of futures past is fascinating, especially to comapre them so closely side-by-side.

It would be a pessimistic finale, to look at how many of the dreams of prior decades did not happen, if not for the book's ending, which says something very important that few books for adults or youth ever capture--and certainly not as well as this book. In short, it shows how not reaching the dreams of the past is not always a bad thing, as long as they are replaced by newer, smarter, better dreams, based on new ideas, new experience, and a fresh sense of wonder.

We can't imagine a better time for young people to hear this inspiring message, and this book delivers it with grace and style.

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Sketching with Passion

Last September I blogged about the great time I had taking part in a Cartoonists Sketch-a-Thon at the Charles M. Schulz Museum. To help celebrate the 60th anniversary of "Peanuts," the museum gathered 18 or so cartoonists--all of whom had done previous "Cartoonist in Residence" gigs--and set us up at tables to draw for and talk to the public. It was a very nice event.

Also attending was videographer Jay Hamilton-Roth, who schlepped his camera from table to table interviewing many of us. Jay's subject is "Business with Passion," and if there's any group of people passionate about what they do it's cartoonists because there sure ain't much money in it. Anyway, Jay has now assembled his report and produced this trailer:



The full half-hour feature is posted at Jay's website (I don't see a way to embed it and I'm happy to direct traffic to him). My bit starts at about 13:20 but I think the whole thing's worth watching. Seeing it really makes me wish I'd had time to meet and talk to people like Lark Pien, Brent Anderson and Paul Madonna, but I never really had the chance. I already knew and got to at least say hello to Dan Piraro, Alexis Fajardo, Shaenon Garrity plus a couple of others who were there but weren't interviewed by Jay.

My first impression of the interview is that I brag too much, for which I have two excuses: first, Jay naturally had no idea who I was so I needed to establish my bona fides and explain what I was doing there very quickly; second, we talked for quite a while and those are the bits he went with.

I really wish I hadn't called Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow "a more personal project" than Mom's Cancer. Argh! I can't imagine anything more "personal" than the true story of how my family dealt with my mother's disease, and when I build my time machine I'll go back and stop myself from completing that sentence. What I meant--and how I've expressed it elsewhen--is that WHTTWOT is a book I could have done if Mom's Cancer had never happened. It's me. Its themes of futurism, Space Age utopianism, pop culture appreciation, and optimism are part of my personality and close to my heart. In that narrow sense it's a more personal work. But if I could only choose one book to put in the time capsule of my life, it's Mom's Cancer.

In any event, it's a nice feature and I appreciate Jay's time and effort very much.

I mentioned a while back that the cartoonists were all asked to provide a drawing commemorating the anniversary of "Peanuts" and that mine was one of a few chosen to go on display. That's now happened, and turned out much nicer than I expected! If you visit the Schulz Museum sometime in the next few weeks, you'll find my piece up the stairs directly across from the restrooms:

Mine's at the upper right (I posted a scan of it here). The other three are by Greg Knight, Lark Pien and Thien Pham. The group of four to the left are other pieces unrelated to the Sketch-a-Thon (I think one is an original of the comic strip "Pickles" by Brian Crane that mentions "Peanuts").

Seeing my work hanging on this wall in this building goes on my list of all-time personal lifetime highlights. Among the many extraordinary things that have happened to me in my cartooning semi-career, this one stands out.

Bark Us All Bow-Wows of Folly

Time for a bit of whimsy that's been a tradition on my blog every Christmas Eve since waaay back in 2005. My best wishes to you, thanks for reading my stuff.

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!

--Walt Kelly

A Visit from an Arch-Nemesis, by the Cosmic Kid

Graphic Medicine: Call for Papers

Some of you may remember that I had the honor and fun of being a keynote speaker at a conference on Graphic Medicine in London last June. I must've looked like I had too much fun, because the organizers of that event asked me to help plan the next one and I said "yes."

It's scheduled for June 9-11, 2011 at Northwestern University in Chicago, and we're looking for interesting material to fill two days (expanded from the single day in London) of talks, workshops, panels, and general fol-de-rol. Stitches author David Small is a confirmed speaker and we're negotiating with other big-name creators to appear as well.

Some excerpts from our Call for Papers:

We invite proposals for scholarly papers (15 minutes), poster presentations, and panel discussions (60 minutes), focused on medicine and comics in any form (e.g., graphic novels, comic strips, graphic pathographies, manga, and/or web comics) . . . We also welcome workshops (120 minutes) by creators of comics on the process, rationale, methods, and general theories behind the use of comics to explore medical themes. These are intended to be “hands-on” interactive workshops for participants who wish to obtain particular skills with regard to the creation or teaching about comics in the medical context.

We envision this gathering as a collaboration among humanities scholars, comics scholars, comics creators, healthcare professionals, and comics enthusiasts.

300 word proposals should be submitted by Friday, 28 February 2011 to submissions@graphicmedicine.org.

The full Call for Papers is available at http://graphicmedicine.org/#/conference-2011/4546507879. If I didn't think this was worth doing, I wouldn't be doing it.
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Bookplates Roasting on an Open Fire

I posted this on my Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow Facebook Page but also wanted to mention it here:

Planning to buy that Space Age Baby Boomer or curious kid in your life WHTTWOT for Christmas? Want it signed? Better than going to the time and expense of mailing a book back and forth, just e-mail me (brianfies[at]comcast.net) your postal address and I'll mail you a bookplate--specially designed by me--inscribed however you want. Free! Then you can stick it in the book and smugly bask in their gratitude.

Sorry for the duplication, all six of you who read my blog and are also Facebook fans, but I've got stickers to unload and books to shill. 'Tis the season! And I do think it'd make a great gift for the right person. Why, I'll bet you're thinking of someone right now....
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Plus I Can Cut Meat on It

My postal carrier briefly interrupted the stream of junk mail and Christmas catalogs that jam our mailbox this time of year to bring me something I actually wanted: a handsome plaque from the American Astronautical Society (AAS). My Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award, Young Adult Category, for Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow.

You can tell I'm happy because of my totally relaxed and natural smile in the photo above. What a goober.

I've already written a bit about how much this honor means to me and don't want to belabor it. Just thought you might want to see the plaque. Since it's made of a luxurious rich dark wood that didn't photograph well when I held it, I scanned it and lightened it up a bit:

Pretty cool, huh? Thanks again to the AAS, not to mention (nor ever overlook) all the people who read and appreciated WHTTWOT in the first place. That's better than plaques.

Which I will still take.

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It's Sentimental, I Know

We've got a local radio station that will broadcast Christmas songs non-stop between now and December 25. I guess they're angling for that lucrative "playing quietly in the background while people shop at the strip mall" market.

Since my slice of Northern California doesn't get snow or many other external reminders of the holiday (I don't count rain), it's pleasant to tune in occasionally. However, the small repertoire of songs gets awfully repetitive, which is why I'm always looking for new carols to add to the canon. I think maybe I found one:



Singer-songwriter Tim Minchin is Australian, which is why his happy Christmas memories sound like warm-weather ones. Now go shop. You're already behind everyone else!
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