Dog Days of Summer

Yesterday, I had to teach myself to draw a prairie dog, and it occurred to me I was applying some principles that some of you might find interesting. If not, come back in a few days and I'll try to write something better.

Reference images are a good place to start, and one nice thing about living in the 21st Century is that several hundred prairie dog photos are just a google away. Pause for a moment and offer a quiet prayer of appreciation and pity for old-school artists who diligently clipped pictures out of newspapers and magazines to create their own enormous "morgues" of reference images on every subject imaginable and then cursed themselves for not having a prairie dog on file.

But, to paraphrase Spock on logic, reference images are the beginning of wisdom, not the end.

I don't recall ever needing to draw a prairie dog before. However, I start with the knowledge that many vertebrates--and all mammals without any exceptions I can think of--are basically built the same. We've all got the same parts; only the proportions are different. (I'm talking about quick and dirty cartooning here, not veterinary textbooks.)

Human, Horse, Bird

Human arm, Bat wing

Knowing that is a big head start and helps avoid some common mistakes, like drawing animal legs sticking out of the bottom of bodies like table legs.

Now this is a perfectly valid cartoon cow, depending on what you're going for. However, it will be a more problematic cow to show walking, running, lying down, or chatting about the weather with its fellow cows. It won't move right. Also, if you don't understand how the legs basically attach to the top of the cow instead of the bottom, you miss out on drawing the nice fiddly bits like the hips and shoulders that give your line something interesting to do and help position the cow in space. Since I don't want to spend all day learning how to draw cows, I borrowed the cartoon below to illustrate how an artist who know how cows are put together can do a lot more with them.

I've got no argument with a cartoonist who draws a "table leg" cow, but they should realize it's a choice, with pros and cons.

So with a basic understanding of bone structure and some reference photos, I can sketch out a prairie dog, always looking for how its proportions differ from a human's. I don't need to do a detailed anatomical study--after all, it's a cartoon--and I end up with a critter that might be a prairie dog, groundhog, woodchuck, nutria, or any of a hundred similar rodents. I'm not claiming it's a great prairie dog but for my purposes it's close enough; if I draw it standing in a hole, readers will get it and I've done my job.

However, I still have some decisions to make. How much do I want to anthropomorphize my prairie dogs? Do I want them to move and react like fuzzy little humans (e.g., Mickey Mouse) or retain their essential prairie doginess? In real life, an alert prairie dog looks different than an alert person. Depending on the character and story, I may want to map human poses onto their little bodies to help readers recognize movements and reactions they're used to seeing in people. There are different degrees of this:

Alert prairie dog, Alert anthropomorphized prairie dog, Alert prairie dog businessman wondering if the coyote next door is going to catch him before he gets to his commute train

If I were drawing a lot of prairie dogs or creating ongoing characters I'd have to draw the rest of my life, I'd spend a long time sketching them in every pose and activity imaginable, making sure I understood the shapes and how they moved in space, always looking to streamline and simplify. But in this case I just need a prairie dog to be a prairie dog, and I'm done.

Writing it all out, that sounds like a lot of thought and analysis just to draw some stupid prairie dogs. In fact it's a pretty quick and not entirely conscious process, and I've already made a lot of decisions before I put pencil to paper. But these principles and questions are always in the back of my mind. I ain't sayin' it's the only way or the right way; it's just one way that seems to work sometimes.

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Fledglings Update

1. Our two young scrub jays are doing just fine in our backyard, skittering around while their parents fuss over them. They're getting bigger and more aerodynamic every day, though I don't know enough about avian development to predict when they'll be flying. We're trying to leave them alone to develop on their own.

2. Our two young daughters are doing just fine in Scotland, finding their way around a small hamlet adjacent to campus and figuring out which bus takes them into the next decent-sized town. They got e-mail access today and found an Italian restaurant so I know they won't starve. We're trying to leave them alone to develop on their own.
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The Highland Fling

In theory, the point of parenthood is giving your children the confidence and skills to be independent. In practice: harder than I thought.

Around noon today, my wife and I put our 19-year-old daughters on a plane bound for Scotland, where they'll earn college credit studying medieval history and warfare for a month. This seemed like a really fine idea a few months ago. It even seemed like a fine idea as the departure date got closer and more concrete, and we had to do things like buy electricity conversion kits and contemplate our girls being completely beyond our ability to swoop in and make their boo-boos all better. It didn't even seem like a terrible idea when a couple of car bombs were found in London yesterday; London's a big city, our kids were only going to spend a few hours passing through, and the terrorists seemed pretty inept anyway.

So today we saw them off to Scotland, waving goodbye at the security checkpoint leading to their departure gate. I swear, less than a minute later and 20 steps away I stopped at a television showing footage of a flaming car crashed into an airport terminal. My wife walked up behind me.

"London?" she asked.

"Scotland," I answered.

Urk.

It took the network another five minutes to tell us that the scene we were watching was in Glasgow, not our girls' destination of Edinburgh. As terrorism goes, it seemed like a relatively minor incident (and, again, idiotically inept), but I saw that Glasgow Airport suspended flights and, at this writing--with my wee bairns still en route somewhere over the Arctic Circle--we have no idea how it'll impact their flight and the connection they need to make in London. Guess we'll find out in the morning.

Rationally, I know there are a lot of 19 year olds doing much riskier things in the world, and that mine won't be blown up. Whatever happens, they'll figure it out and be all right. But I don't think I'll rest easily tonight.
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UPDATE 1: Well, they called when they got to Edinburgh a few hours ago (6 a.m. Sunday our time). That's most of the way there. We're expecting to hear from them when they reach their final destination soon.

UPDATE 2: Took a little longer than we expected, but they made it all the way. Whew.
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Freeform Magazine, plus Trees and Jays

A few minutes ago, I e-mailed answers to a long list of questions sent to me by an editor of a Thai art and comics magazine called "Freeform." It was actually quite a detailed and exhaustive interview: my background, my family, my writing and drawing technique, what I've learned, the best and worst parts of the job, etc. I'm again boggled by the idea of people in Thailand reading about me and my work. I'll try to mention it when it appears, although I'm pretty sure it won't be published in English.
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We just got some trees in our yard professionally trimmed. We don't have a large yard but we do have some foliage too big for me to handle myself. As a result, I've learned a few new things.

First, regardless of who you hire to trim your trees--no matter how professionally certified or well recommended--they will always tell you that the last professionally certified, well-recommended guys you hired completely botched the job. You're just lucky the trees lasted long enough for these new guys to rescue them from the brink. I've heard it before but this was the first time I noticed it to be a universal constant. I think the same might be true for house painters, car mechanics and plastic surgeons, but need more data.

Second, I learned I am able to keep baby birds alive for two days. Traumatic childhood experience had convinced me otherwise. No, the arborists didn't disturb their nest. In fact, we noticed the two fuzzy fledglings on the ground under the trees a couple of days before cutting began. They're scrub jays, members of a common, aggressive, foul-tempered species with a grating squawk that I nevertheless resolved to protect. Their parents were still tending to them on the ground, feeding them and fending off predators. But what to do about the heavy-booted tree trimmers?

We considered and quickly rejected postponing; it took time to get the appointment, and the arborist already had his crew lined up. We called a veterinarian friend of ours (the same one who blessed our lives with Amber the Simple Cat) and were advised that we could capture the birds and try to raise them ourselves by hand-feeding them mealworms (not bloody likely), or corral them in a safe corner of the yard where their parents could still get to them. We tried that. The risk was that we'd disturb them so much that the parents would abandon them. The tree guys took two days, so each day before they came I laid a towel in a box too deep for the chicks to hop out of, supplied a shallow bowl of water, caught them, stashed them to the side, and left them alone.

And what do you know ... it worked! They're alive! Mom and Dad Jay made themselves scarce while the crew climbed the trees and rrrrevved their chain saws, but the moment the guys broke for lunch or left for the day, Mom and Dad swooped down for a cheepy family reunion. I let the babies out of the box at night and then recaptured them next morning, braving parental scolding and swooping and pooping.

I was struck by how fast baby birds develop, visibly different from day to day. Their wings are coming along; I wouldn't be surprised if they went from furry tennis balls to full fliers very soon. The first day, they were easy to catch, pretty much sitting indifferently while I scooped them up. A day later they were wailing and skittering like little road runners, and their capture took some effort. If I'd had to catch them a third day, I'm pretty sure I would need an anvil, a giant magnet, and a pair of rocket-powered roller skates.
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Should they survive to fly, I expect my reward to be a couple of new bossy scrub jays who hog all the bird seed and squawk outside my window at the crack of dawn. But maybe, just maybe, deep in the recesses of their bird brains, they'll think kindly of the big pink monkey who tried to keep them out of harm's way for a couple of days.

Lulu Radio & MoCCA

Two things:

I forgot to follow up on an earlier post and mention that my interview with Lulu Radio is now available online. I just listened to it and, while I always hate the sound of my own voice, it's not terrible. Some things I'd've done differently: I said toward the beginning that Mom was diagnosed with cancer in 2004; it was 2003. I began drawing the comic in 2004. I'm bad with dates.

In the interview, I referred to "Mom's Cancer" a few times as "the project." Listening back, that grabs my attention like a pointy stick jabbed in my ear. Calling it "the project" makes it sound too impersonal, like a new account you take on at work. Trust me, there was nothing impersonal about it. I wanted a word that encompassed not just the comic but the book, the correspondence, the press, the recognition, the whole "Mom's Cancer" ball o' wax, and "project" was the best I could do on the fly. Better next time.

At the end, the interviewer asked me where people can find my book. I mentioned Barnes & Noble and Borders, and added that the easiest and cheapest place would probably be Amazon--which is true, but I wish I'd mentioned Your Local Independent Bookseller. Those are the people who love books, deserve the support, and in some cases have treated my book very well. They're cultural heroes. But another reason authors always urge readers to patronize small independents is that their contracts are probably structured to give them a bigger royalty if a book is sold by a Mom 'n Pop shop rather than a giant chain that gets a big discount on the wholesale price. When a book shows up on a pallet at Costco marked down 50%, the author's getting pennies (a lot of pennies, but still...). Just being honest with you.

The interviewer, Rich Burk, did a nice job and seemed like a very good guy. When we spoke before the interview, he explained that he's a radio announcer who, among other jobs, does play-by-play for the Portland Beavers minor league baseball team. He's got one of those great radio voices that always takes me aback a bit in person: "Wait, are you talking to me? The voices in the little electric boxes never talked to me before...!" Still, it was an enjoyable few minutes.

Item Two: The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) in New York City has asked me to loan some original art from "Mom's Cancer" to an exhibition of graphic novels they're hosting in the fall. MoCCA's mission is the "collection, preservation, study, education, and display of comic and cartoon art," and it has become an important, high-profile, well-respected institution in the field. It's a great honor to be asked and I'm thrilled to contribute. More details as the date approaches, I'm sure.
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Mister Wizard

I was trying to think of something to write about the death of Don Herbert, whose "Mr. Wizard" television program was the introduction to science for millions of children--including many who went on to become real scientists and never forgot how important he was to them.

But in fact Mr. Wizard's heyday was a little before my time and I don't have vivid memories of his program, which ran from 1951 to 1965. I know I saw it, and grew up with a general awareness of Mr. Wizard's responsibility for the dry cell batteries and coils of wire that cluttered the floor under my bed. I read one blogger who called Mr. Wizard "a Mister Rogers for geeks," and that sounds about right. Herbert had the same even, direct, patient tone as Fred Rogers, and he never condescended to kids. Mr. Wizard understood that even though you might not know how a coil of wire around a nail becomes a magnet or how a needle gently placed on a cup of water can float, you weren't an idiot.

Still, not really being a rabid first-hand fan, I was probably going to let Mr. Wizard's death pass unmentioned until my newspaper editor friend Mike Peterson referred me to a nice remembrance on the Huffington Post by Marty Kaplan. He wrote anything I might have better than I could have. An excerpt:

It's a pity that scientists today, including those who owe their career starts to him, are so often snobbish about show biz. That mandarin condescension toward the masses is why Carl Sagan, one of Don Herbert's television successors, was dismissed as a vulgar popularizer by many of his peers. Entertainment, as Herbert knew, is the art of capturing attention. Scientists depend on public funding, and therefore on the theater of persuasion. Scientists, like it or not, have become hostages to culture warriors, and their ranking in the public's hierarchy of epistemologies, like it or not, depends on the sympathies of citizen audiences. Evidence and proof, conjecture and refutation, theory and argument: these may be defined by scientists with reference to a community of their peers, but if they have any hope of staving off a new Dark Age, it's their non-peers to whom they must also communicate....

That's one good reason why Mr. Wizard was important and will be missed.
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On Economy

Phil May's Self-portrait

Finally, and by complete happenstance, I've discovered the source of a quote that has been a cornerstone of my cartooning philosophy but which I could never track down. I first heard the story decades ago and long ago forgot where. Now I know.

Phil May was born in 1864 and died in 1903, only 39. He was one of the great British cartoonists of the late 19th century, contributing to Punch and other periodicals. In 1885, May went to work for the Sydney Bulletin in Australia, where he came across an editor who thought he wasn't getting his money's worth out of May. Evidently believing he was paying by the line, the editor asked if May could produce more elaborate and detailed drawings. Replied May, "When I can leave out half the lines I now use, I shall want six times the money."

That's what cartooning is all about to me: distilling a thing to its essence, so that nothing but the information needed is presented, and everything that is presented provides essential information. May's reply reminds me of my all-time favorite quote about writing by mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), who concluded a long-winded letter with, "Sorry this post was so long, I did not have time to make it short."

I work on that. In both writing and cartooning, my first inclination is to do too much. If I'm writing a 3,000-word article or 100-page report, I'm very happy if my first draft goes 10% to 20% over because I know subsequent drafts will only improve with tightening. Same with cartooning, I think. I'll draw something several times, figuring out what I can get rid of and what needs to stay, trying for fewer lines and less clutter in every iteration, working hard to make it simple. I always fall short but it's an interesting and worthwhile target to aim for, I think.

When I can leave out half the lines I now use, I shall want six times the money.
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Five Centuries of Pulchritude

This clip has been making the rounds and I found it fascinating enough to borrow myself. Five hundred years of female portraits in Western Art. I was especially struck by how similiar many of the women look--how consistent the ideals of female beauty were in several different countries over a few different centuries. And then of course how everything gets more ... interesting ... around the time photography takes over painting's role as an accurate recorder of images, and art becomes more about individual expression and exploration of technique.



It's 2 minutes 52 seconds. Even if the art doesn't excite you, everyone could use 2:52 of Bach in their lives.
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Moving Out, Moving On

At the end of Mom's Cancer I wrote that Mom, Nurse Sis and Kid Sis moved to Hollywood and bought a home together, at least partly to realize Mom's life-long dream of living there. In the book's Afterword, added to the last page as it literally went to press, I wrote: "I don't think I ever saw her happier living anywhere than she was in Hollywood. She loved her new neighborhood: the fluorescent bougainvillea spilling over her back fence, the giant avocado tree that dropped guacamole hailstones into her yard, the towering palm at her curb, new friends walking dogs and pushing baby strollers past her door. It was where she needed to be."

I spent the past few days helping my sisters leave that Hollywood house forever. After Mom died, it was simply too much work and expense for them to keep up, and not particularly suited to either of their lifestyles. It was Mom's dream that they shared with her and for her but couldn't continue without her. Kid Sis found a great apartment and moved out several weeks ago. Last weekend was Nurse Sis's turn and it meant making some overdue decisions about Mom's belongings, facing some strong memories and emotions--but mostly it just meant a ton of exhausting work. Packing and moving is hard under any circumstances.

Out of respect for my family's privacy, I never wrote much or posted any photos of that house. Now that they're gone, here are a few pictures of a place that made Mom very happy:

The front porch. Mom loved sitting in the white wicker chairs and talking to passersby like the Queen of the Neighborhood.

Bougainvillea completely covered the backyard fence. Calling it "fluorescent" hardly did it justice.

The giant avocado tree in the yard next door. I shot this a couple of days ago and the tree is considerably cut back from when Mom lived here, when branches hung over the fence and fruit dropped year-round, splatting to the ground to be happily devoured by Mom's dog Hero.

Mom's palm tree, which I suspect was a big reason she had to
have this particular house. It was part of her vision.

It was good to spend time with Mom there and, for my sisters' sake, good to let it go as well. It was necessary and overdue, but sad nonetheless.
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Harvey Awards

I've been away from home and office for the past four days (more about that later), without Internet access for most of that time. So it was only upon returning late last night that I learned Mom's Cancer has been nominated for three (!!!) Harvey Awards, which will be announced in conjunction with the Baltimore Comic-Con on September 8. Holy cow! Or, as a cartoonist friend said when he wrote me with the news, "How many awards/nominations do you NEED, man?"

The Harvey Awards are named for Harvey Kurtzman, a creator of MAD Magazine and other pioneering comics work, and sprang from the same wellhead as the Eisner Awards. Both were created after the short-lived (Jack) Kirby Awards faltered in 1987. Like the Eisners, Harveys are nominated and voted on by comics professionals. I've read articles comparing and contrasting the Eisners and Harveys, and confess that the difference is too subtle for me to detect. I'm no historian of comics awards; best I can figure is it's a Shia-Sunni kind of thing or, for "Life of Brian" fans, similar to the schism between followers of the sandal and the gourd. For my part I am genuinely surprised and honored by the recognition, and hope we can all just get along.

Harveys are given in 21 categories. I'm nominated for "Best Artist," "Best Single Issue or Story," and "Best New Talent." A complete list of all the people who are going to beat me is available here. My sincere thanks to the Harvey Awards organizers and the pros who nominated my work. That means a lot.
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Whew.

Two hours ago I finished a big, important, exhausting project that's been getting me up early and keeping me up late for a couple of weeks, not to mention cutting into my blogging time. I'll tell you about it someday. Meanwhile, I'm planning to get back to a saner work schedule that should include time to write here. That is, as soon as I return from a few days' travel starting tomorrow--

Funny. Just as I was typing that sentence (precisely between the words "return" and "from," in fact) I got a phone call from Rich Burk from Lulu.com, who interviewed me for a podcast that'll be posted at Lulu Radio (http://lulu.libsyn.com/) sometime soon. You'll recall that Lulu is the kind and generous publishing company that awarded Mom's Cancer the Lulu Blooker Prize on May 14. So if you ever want to hear a six-minute interview with me, featuring my flat nasal voice stammering "um" and "uh," there it is. Or will be.

Incidentally, before we started recording, Rich and I spent a minute debating how one should pronounce "blook." I've never thought about it much but have been rhyming it with "kook." However, Rich was surely correct that it should rhyme with "book," especially since the Blooker Prize is a pun on the more literary and high-minded Booker Prize. So we went with that. Nice guy, nice interview.

Thanks for reading. More and better later.

The Italian Job

Deadlines. You know the drill.

Editor Charlie forwarded me the cover art for the Italian edition of Mom's Cancer, which is being published next month by Double Shot-Bottero Edizioni. Looks a lot like the English edition, which is fine with me--although I also don't mind when a foreign publisher changes things up to fit their perception of the audience, as the French did. I find that very interesting. I'm surprised the Italian editors didn't translate the title.


I guess some writers demand painstaking control over how their work is presented overseas. I certainly understand that need but don't necessarily share it. My publisher Abrams has my foreign rights (which, as I've explained before, I voluntarily and happily assigned to them) and our understanding is that the pictures and words of Mom's Cancer remain as unaltered as translation allows. As long as I get that, I'm pretty flexible about format, cover art, soft or hard cover, etc. Of course I want it to look its best, but I figure the foreign publisher's job is knowing what appeals to their market. Since selling books is in our mutual interest, I don't mind investing some faith in them.

I got a very nice note from the Italian editor about a week ago, telling me that they debuted my book at a big national book fair and got a lot of positive response. They seem enthusiastic about it, which feels great. As always, I'm a bit befuddled and bedazzled that people I don't know halfway round the world are reading my story in a language I don't speak. Don't know if I'll ever get over that. Hope not.

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I Feel the Earth Move Under My Feet

I live in Earthquake Country and we had a fine little one yesterday: a nice, sharp boom-shudder that sounded and felt like a fully loaded cement truck had run into our living room. Somewhere in the house, something I still haven't found fell off of something else and hit the floor. My wife and I looked at each other, our attention quite engaged, and flinched through that fraction of a second of waiting to see if it stopped or got worse. It stopped.

Our sport is guessing whether a temblor is small and nearby or large and distant. This was certainly the loudest one I can remember but it left nothing swaying, so I guessed it was a pip-squeak magnitude 2 directly underfoot. My wife was more impressed and guessed a magnitude 4 farther away. The U.S. Geological Survey has a nice website that within 10 minutes told us it was a magnitude 3 whose epicenter was four miles beneath a high school less than a mile from our house. We called that one a tie.

Magnitude 3 is nothing, a trifle. My personal best was of course the magnitude 7 Loma Prieta quake of 1989, which knocked a section out of the Oakland Bay Bridge and interrupted the Giants vs. A's World Series. I was working as a supervisor in an environmental chemistry lab at 5:04 p.m. on October 17 when the earth broke 110 miles away. I suddenly felt dizzy and thought it was just me until I saw everyone else reeling, too. Now, the official advice is to stay indoors and ride it out under a sturdy piece of furniture; in 1906, a lot of people were killed when they ran outdoors and got clocked by falling debris. All I know is that everyone in the lab simultaneously realized they did not want to be inside a concrete slab building filled with hazardous and flammable chemicals and gases if it decided to come down. I got behind my co-worker Ken, who is about 6-foot-7 and 250 pounds, and followed him out like a running back on the heels of a blocker. Out in the parking lot I saw the most amazing sight: asphalt rippling like waves on the ocean, with parked cars bobbing up and down like boats. It was, frankly, both deeply disturbing and really cool.

(I imagine my friend Sherwood, whose home I reckon was right on top of the Loma Prieta epicenter, has a much scarier story to tell, assuming he was in the area at the time.)

There's a kind of irrational, fatalistic insouciance that goes with living in Earthquake Country. I think you either get used to the idea that the world can shake itself to bits at any second or you move away. I have a friend who grew up near my neighborhood back when it was a plum orchard and remembers how the neat ranks of trees were split and offset by the faultline that ran through them. I always laugh when I tell people that, although it's not really funny. But the fact is that, although some locations are better than others--bedrock beats alluvial plain--almost nowhere on the West Coast is safe.

I don't believe in fate but I do trust probabilities and statistics. Big quakes happen on scales of decades to centuries, while major quakes (like 1906) happen on scales of centuries to millenia. Modern building codes give me some confidence that my wood-frame home will survive anything short of total disaster. We take the prescribed precautions. All in all, I'll be here a relatively short time (geologically speaking) and like my odds better than if I resided in Tornado or Hurricane Alley. For us, living here is worth the risk. Still, it's interesting to get a little kick in the pants once in a while. Makes you think.

My Little Earthquake, all over in
about half a second (courtesy USGS)
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Nobody Tells Me Anything

A quick note to mention that Bill Reed at the Comic Book Resources blog "Comics Should Be Good!" named Mom's Cancer one of the "365 Reasons to Love Comics": specifically, Reason #133. It's a good write-up and I appreciate it. Bill made his selection on Mother's Day (last Sunday), which some might question but I think is entirely appropriate and touching. Nice comments, too. Thanks.

Recommended by the NY Public Library

Happily continuing the theme of much-appreciated recognition, I just learned that the New York Public Library recommended Mom's Cancer as one of its 2007 "Books for the Teen Age" earlier this month. The library's 78th (!) annual list of recommended books is 19 pages long and comprises probably a couple hundred titles, with a few dozen graphic novels scattered among them (available online as a huge pdf; I'm on Page 10).


As I've written a few times before, I didn't set out to create a book for teens--nor would I consider many of the library's other selections primarily teen reading--but I'm honored. I deliberately wrote Mom's Cancer to be accessible to all ages, from little kids to grandparents (I think I actually said something like that in my initial book proposal). Since that includes teens, I'll take it.
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Mom's Cancer Wins the Blooker

More than a word that sounds as if it were made up by Mel Brooks, a "blook" is a book that originated as a blog or similar online content. Such as mine. Lulu is a print-on-demand publisher that each year awards Lulu Blooker Prizes to blooks in fiction, nonfiction, and comics. Such as mine.

As announced this morning, Mom's Cancer has won the Lulu Blooker Prize for comics. Judge Paul Jones said, "Mom's Cancer takes web comics beyond science fiction parodies and fan boy remixes of superhero comics. The story telling is engaging. The story is important, as well as fun, surprising and rewarding to read. Well-drawn and a real winner." The other judges on the panel were Arianna Huffington, author Julie Powell, philosopher/writer Rohit Gupta, and journalist Nick Cohen.

The nonfiction and overall first prize winner is Colby Buzzwell's My War: Killing Time in Iraq, which began as a series of blog posts from the front. The fiction winner is Andrew Losowsky's The Doorbells of Florence, whose subject appears to be exactly as described--photos of ornate Italian doorbells accompanied by short stories about the people or events behind them. That sounds just odd enough to check out.

This is terrific recognition that I appreciate very much, and not just because it comes with $2500 (wow, that's like ten college textbooks for my kids!). Blogs are increasing in literary, cultural, and journalistic importance at the same time print-on-demand publishers such as Lulu have the potential to transform the publishing world. It feels like a vital, interesting place to be tangentially connected to, even if my book was not self-published (which was not a prerequisite for the prize).

All my thanks to the judges and others involved with the Blooker, I'm very grateful. This is nice.

San Diego e Italia

Yesterday I firmed up plans to attend the International Comic-Con in San Diego this July--meaning I finally found a place to stay, which is a genuine challenge when 100,000-plus descend on a city. As I mentioned earlier, the people who decide such things were nice enough to nominate Mom's Cancer for two Eisner Awards, and it seems polite to show up even though I don't expect to win (not being humble, just analytically realistic). It's a fun event regardless. I'll get to sign some books at my publisher's booth, see a few friends, and no doubt make one or two new ones. My wife and I also enjoy the city itself and we'll make a nice, not-all-comics-all-the-time vacation of it.

I also found out yesterday that the Italian edition of Mom's Cancer will be published in June. And that's literally all I know about that. I'm looking forward to seeing what they did with it.

Cartoon U.

I steal all of my ideas from Mike Lynch, who pointed me to an article in the Christian Science Monitor about the first graduating class of the Center for Cartoon Studies. Located in Vermont, the center offers a two-year, $30,000 degree program whose mission appears to be teaching students to produce literary graphic novels. This emphasis seems a bit different than that of the Joe Kubert School, which has been running successfully for 30 years and takes a very hard-nosed vocational approach to comic art education.

As I commented on Mike's blog, I have some mixed feelings about a program like this. Drawing an analogy with journalism, the best reporters and editors I knew never went to journalism school. They majored in history, political science, English, or even hard science, then used that background to enrich their journalism careers. Some never went to college but had decades of life under their belts. A good editor once told me he'd rather hire kids who know something about the world and teach them journalism than those who know nothing but journalism and teach them about the world. I agree with that sentiment.

Turning to cartoon school, I just wonder if they're missing the point that cartooning isn't technique, it's ideas. Art Spiegelman didn't win a Pulitzer for Maus because he's the best cartoonist ever--he's not--but because he communicated great ideas. I knew a lot of kids in high school and college who were excellent cartoon artists but quickly fizzled out because they had nothing interesting to say about the world. Good cartoonists are smart, curious and well-read--really, all the qualities required of a good writer plus the ability to draw. Surely that description fits some graduates of the Center of Cartoon Studies, but I wonder if anyone there ever emphasized that?

Still, I'm sure these students worked hard and learned some great stuff--just as journalism school students work hard and learn some great stuff--and some will surely go on to achieve tremendous things with their training. It'd be interesting to survey that graduating class in 10 years and find out how their expectations met reality. I suspect some--many?--most??--will discover they're the best unemployed cartoonists they know.

Medical Humanities

My stats tell me there's a bunch of y'all who check my blog regularly and are more loyal than I deserve. Thanks.

One of Mom's ambitions for Mom's Cancer was that it might help physicians, nurses, and other medical professionals better understand the experience from the patient's side. We saw some signs that was happening almost from the start. One of the first, best e-mails I got when Mom's Cancer was still an online webcomic was from a nursing instructor in Australia who asked permission to include pages of my comic in her course materials. I've heard of it showing up in oncology clinics and smoking cessation programs. And probably the highlight of my entire book experience was a talk I gave to a group of hospice and healthcare professionals in Tucson last July, some of whom said my story would change the way they approached their jobs.

When Mom's Cancer first came out, my publisher Abrams got a list of oncologists and sent free review copies to a whole bunch of them. I thought that was a great idea and appreciated the expense and effort very much, but it's very hard to tell if something like that pays off. If Abrams got any response they didn't mention it to me. Just one doctor who really likes it and recommends it to patients and colleagues could make the whole push worthwhile, but you'll never know. It feels like throwing pebbles into the ocean.

A while ago I was helping my daughters buy college textbooks (by "helping" I mean "handing my charge card to the cashier") and saw Art Spiegelman's Maus and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis stacked up for a literature class. Since everything's about me, I started wondering why Mom's Cancer couldn't be a textbook somewhere. But where? And with an epiphany that should have occurred to me months before--that in fact other people had explicitly told me but I hadn't quite registered--I realized that medical schools teach courses in "Medical Humanities" whose entire purpose is training new doctors to understand their patients' perspectives. Duh. Once I set my mind to it, it wasn't hard to put together a list of professors teaching Medical Humanities at medical schools across the country. Although I was perfectly willing to buy the books and pay the postage myself, when editor Charlie heard my plan ("You want how many books?") he took care of it even though I doubt it was in his budget. For which I'm grateful.

I've since heard back from a couple of profs who thanked me for the book and said they think it'd make a nice addition to their curricula. We'll see if they follow through--or more likely, we'll never know if they follow through. Pebbles in the ocean. The idea of flocks of new docs coming out of medical school having read my book is tremendously exciting. That's what it's all about. Mom had it figured out from the start.
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Wimpy Kid: I Told You So

My friend Jeff Kinney's book, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, just made the New York Times Bestseller List for Children's Chapter Books, entering at number seven. Wow. I'm struggling to come up with a simile for how cool and amazing it is for a first-time author to crack the bestseller list right out the gate: like a minor-league pitcher getting called up to the majors to throw a no-hitter in the deciding game of the World's Series? Cooler than that.

I met Jeff at Comic-Con International in 2006, when our mutual editor Charlie brought us together so Jeff could tap the deep pools of experience and wisdom I'd accumulated during my whole year in the business (that's sarcasm). We had a good talk, I liked him a lot, and we've kept in contact since. I also reviewed Wimpy Kid when it was published earlier this year, and I'm feeling a little smug that I saw this success coming a mile away. You never know what the book-buying public will go for but I had a good feeling about this one--which, by the way, is the first of a three-book Wimpy Kid series and, I strongly suspect (hint hint), much more to come.

Anyway, congratulations to Jeff, a great guy who I know truly appreciates his good fortune. My young Padawan learner has become a powerful Jedi knight with more midichlorians than I'm apparently packing. If it were anybody else, I'd be jealous; in Jeff's case, I'm just very happy for him.

Comic-Con 2006: Jeff Kinney on the left, me on the right, and our mutual editor Charlie Kochman butting in uninvited. I just noticed I'm wearing that same shirt today. I need a new shirt.
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Fly Me To The Moon

I didn't realize it'd been a week since I last blogged. Man. It's just been one of those weeks, with a deluge of bread-and-butter paying work (an essentially mindless copy editing job, which I enjoy once in a while) and more speculative maybe-it'll-pay-someday work that I hope to tell you about later. "Too busy" is a poor excuse but it's the only one I've got.

Meanwhile, here's a new video from NASA intended to get people talking about returning to the Moon:


You probably heard something about this a few months back: NASA is making plans to establish a permanent manned (peopled?) lunar base, probably at the Moon's south pole, somewhen around 2020. There's a nice summary of the plan and links to other resources here.

What impresses me most about this video is its coolness. NASA ought to be about inspiring new generations of up-and-coming taxpayers to explore the final frontier, yet all too often their public face is as dry and uninspiring as an actuarial convention (no offense to actuaries).** C'mon, people! These are real scientists, engineers, pilots and explorers seeing and doing things that no one has ever seen or done before! Making it exciting should be the easy part. This little film might be criticized for looking too much like a video game or movie trailer, but its the first sign of life I've seen out of NASA in a long time so I like it.

My personal position on building a Moon base: Hell yes, where do I volunteer? Although I hit the tail end of the Baby Boom, I consider myself a Space Age kid more than a Boomer. But I also grew up, and I think if NASA and the United States commit to returning to the Moon we need to have an honest, grown-up discussion about why we're doing it. And the fact is, there is almost no scientific justification for sending people to live on the Moon, and even less economic justification. Anything humans could study or mine from the lunar surface could be accomplished cheaper and safer in near-Earth orbit or by robots. We built a space station on the promises of the scientific breakthroughs and amazing commercial opportunities it would deliver, but it hasn't yielded a single paper in the scientific literature or an industrial process or product anyone wants to buy. We won't fall for the same argument again. As far as I'm concerned, the only real reason for returning to the Moon is to live there: colonization. Expand our one-planet species to two.

Is that reason enough? It is for me: I think humanity's growth into the galaxy is inevitable and I'd like to live to see it. In fact, give me a fast Internet uplink and I could do about 98% of my job on the Moon as well as I do it here (though I'm sure the 1.3-second time delay due to the pesky limit imposed by the speed of light would be frustrating--almost like being back on dial-up). The ultimate telecommute.

Is it reason enough for everyone else? I dunno ... but I'm pretty sure that's where the debate should be: not about advancing science or exploiting new resources, arguments the pro-returners would lose on their merits. The question is, are we ready to grow up, move out of the spacious and comfortable family home, and set ourselves up in a grungy little studio apartment across town? I say we are, but I think I'm in a small minority.
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**Speaking of interesting lines of work, a couple of weeks ago my wife and I stayed at a hotel hosting the International Canned Fruit Conference. The lobby and elevators were full of business-suited conferees wearing badges from nations around the world, all of them evidently deadly serious about their canned fruit. I could only wonder what recent amazing advances have been made in the science of fruit canning to justify the time and expense of gathering people from Peru, Greece and Russia to learn about them. You'd think that'd be something you could handle with a brief newsletter, plus maybe a phone call for the really big breakthroughs. But apparently not. Who knew?

Jim Borgman

Yesterday my wife and I attended a talk and book signing by Jim Borgman, Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and "Zits" comic strip artist. "Zits" writer Jerry Scott was also supposed to be there, but canceled because of emergency surgery he needed to treat diverticulitis.

For an hour, Mr. Borgman entertained an audience of about 200 with stories about how he and Mr. Scott created "Zits" almost accidentally during a mutual visit to Sedona, Arizona. He talked about cartooning, family, and the creative process, and was a terrific speaker. He also struck me as being more sensitive and even sentimental than I'd expected a hard-bitten award-winning editorial cartoonist to be. He choked up talking about letters he gets from readers describing how much "Zits" has helped them understand and communicate across generations, or even from parents whose children have died and who read "Zits" as a way to keep up with the lives their kids might have had. Unexpectedly moving, and a good reminder of the subtle power of this medium.

Although the audience seemed most impressed by the stories he told or the sketches he drew, what I took away from his talk was awe for his tremendous work ethic. As Mr. Borgman described it, he works on "Zits" about three days a week, does editorial cartoons three more days a week, and saves the seventh day for whatever he didn't get done the other six. In other words, he works constantly and hard to maintain a high-octane level of quality and professionalism--which made me more acutely aware than ever of my own wasted time. Hard Work = Success: who knew? I resolved to do better.

I had a chance to tell him that after waiting in a looooong line for him to sign a book for us. My wife and I were nearly literally the end of the line; the venue had sold out of his books before we could buy one, so after his talk we actually drove to a nearby bookstore, bought a "Zits" collection, and drove back to the signing. I've done a few talks and signings myself--though nothing remotely so large--and was incredibly impressed with the fortitude Mr. Borgman displayed in chatting charmingly and drawing sketches, staying more than a hour past his scheduled time to make sure everyone was served. Meanwhile, his wife worked the line with her own conversational charms and made sure everyone signed a card for Jerry Scott that Borgman had drawn. They made a good team.

We reached his table, chatted for a moment, and he asked if we had a favorite character we wanted him to draw in our book. I in turn asked if there was a character he wanted to draw--maybe one that no one ever asks for and he wasn't yet sick of. He replied that no one ever asks for Connie and Walt, the Mom and Dad in "Zits." We said that would be perfect, since we pretty much are the Mom and Dad in "Zits." So he autographed our book and drew this:

That there's Grade-A cartooning by a man who earned every success he's enjoying today. It was a pleasure to see and meet him.

2007 Eisner Award Nonimations

The official press release has been posted, so I'm free to report that Mom's Cancer has been nominated for two 2007 Will Eisner Awards in the categories "Best Reality-Based Work" and "Best Graphic Album--Reprint." The Eisners are the comic industry's Oscars, voted on by professionals and presented at Comic-Con International in San Diego in July. The other nominees in my categories are:

Best Reality-Based Work
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
I Love Led Zeppelin by Ellen Forney
Project X Challengers: Cup Noodle by Tadashi Katoh
Stagger Lee by Derek McCulloch and Shepherd Hendrix

Best Graphic Album—Reprint
Absolute DC: The New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke
Castle Waiting by Linda Medley
Shadowland by Kim Deitch
Truth Serum by Jon Adams

Surprising? Exciting? Intimidating? Yeah. I had to double-check it a few times myself, and even now I'm not sure I trust my own lying eyes. Two Eisner nominations is a tremendous honor.

Maybe after the voting ends I'll have some comments about who I think should win and who will win (hint: not necessarily me). Until then, I think it's fairest to let the works speak for themselves. However, if any Eisner voters happen to read this, I'm an amoral man with cash to spend. I'm just sayin'.

Mom's Cancer began on the Web and won the Eisner for "Best Digital Comic" in 2005. The nominations announced today are for the subsequent book, which I'll defend as its own unique thing. Although most of the words and pictures are the same, reading the story collected in print rather than serialized over several months online is a very different experience. In addition, a book is much more collaborative. While the online version was all me, the book reflects tremendous creative contributions by people at Abrams, including my book's editor, art director, designer, and production manager. They added ideas I wouldn't have conceived myself and went to unusual expense and effort to publish a quality book. This one's for the team.

And since I'm cheerleading for the team, I'll add that Abrams got two other Eisner nominations this year, which is terrific for a relatively small publishing house that wasn't even in the comics/graphic novel game a few years ago. They are Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries, 1900-1969 by Dan Nadel (nominated for "Best Archival Collection"), and Cartoon America: Comic Art in the Library of Congress edited by Harry Katz (nominated for "Best Comics-Related Book"). I have both books and think they're great.

More soon, I'm sure. And "Woohoo!"
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