Thanks to Jordan Rich and His Listeners

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

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

Electrons for Sale! Get Yer Electrons, Right Here!

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

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, nearly identical trailers were used for the astronauts of Apollos 11 and 12, who were retrieved by the Hornet. 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 three 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

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 . . .

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

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

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"

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

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

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 . . .

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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.

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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:


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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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.

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"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. .