Book Review: See What I Mean by Kevin Cheng

The following book review was originally published in Technical Communication, Volume 60, Number 2, May 2013, the Society for Technical Communications' quarterly magazine.

See What I Mean: How to Use Comics to Communicate Ideas
Kevin Cheng. 2012. Brooklyn, NY: Rosenfeld Media. [ISBN 978-1-933820-27-9. 202 pages, including index. USD$39.00 (softcover).]

Storytelling is great for conveying information in a memorable way. Comics can make storytelling even more effective through images. See What I Mean shows you how to present business information using comics. Cheng writes, “Comics are like a Trojan horse for information” (p. 165).

See What I Mean is written for non-artists and the comics uninitiated. It starts with an overview of what comics are and how to read them, such as what a gutter is and the order to read speech bubbles. Then it details how to make comics. Cheng creates an example comic that describes the purpose of Square, a new credit card reader for smart phones. Finally, Cheng goes over how to use comics for business. Each chapter starts with an overview comic. These comics are good examples of his method.

If you give someone this book to convince them to use comics, I suggest starting them with Chapter 8, “Applying Comics.” Start with this chapter to get an idea of how you want to use comics, and then apply the ideas learned on your own work. I make comics in my spare time and wanted to get ideas about using comics in my day job. Chapters 8 and 9 were the most helpful. Also, the table of contents and the overview comics make it easy to find your information if you are not sure.

Cheng is an enthusiastic writer with an obvious passion for comics. Most of the book is spent on creating comics. Cheng is encouraging to the non-artist, but he might spend too much time convincing you that you can draw. If you are that reluctant, I do not think any amount of text will convince you. Because there are already so many great books on creating comics, I was hoping for more information on how comics can be used specifically with business.

Cheng discusses a number of benefits to using comics. Relatively speaking, creating a comic does not take much time. The skills are easy to learn. You can work with tools as simple as a pen, sticky notes, and stick figures to create a story that readers relate to. “By reducing the amount of detail in a drawing, you can encourage your reader to relate personally to what’s being presented” (p. 24). And the restrictions of the format, such as length, can help you present your idea in a concise way.

People are finding that comics are a good way to no only help them retain information, but to get them to read it in the first place. “. . .a senior user researcher at Adobe, used comics to convey her research findings...she found that more people actually spent time reading her findings” (p. 168). People will actually read our content if we format our business information to be enjoyable or entertaining.

Lenore fan art

Lenore, the cute little dead girl by ~lunavalse on deviantART

I got acrylic ink for Krismas so this is my first big practice piece. I did a bunch of ATCs, too, but I can't find them right now.
This is Roman Dirge's character and the books are just great.

Blacksad

Blacksad, written by Juan Diaz Canales and art by Juanjo Guarnido
Published October 20, 2010

At Stumptown last year, Abe picked up Blacksad from the Darkhorse booth. The lady there gave it such praise, he couldn't resist. And it was worth him having to carry another hardback in his backpack for hours.

The art is by Juanjo Guardino, who worked at Disney in Paris for a while, and you can telll. Amazing art in the great classic-style Disney illustration. I kept thinking of 101 Dalmations because of the style and the actual setting. Subtle watercolors add to the nostalgia. The characters are all animals with people bodies (essentially).  And Disney animal faces they are. Those expressive eyes! It was a little disconcerting to see my childhood-memory style used for such adult themes, but damn it looks good.


The book actually contains three stories that follow the cat John Blacksad. His life kinda sicks, bu he does help some people. The characters are all essentially caricatures of themselves, in a good way. Seems like a method that Eisner could get behind - the animal heads are like shorthand to the type of person we are dealing with.

The only negative I had is that the women were less animal than the men. I often couldn't tell you what animal they were supposed to be. I can always tell with the men. The women also had earrings where their human ears would be instead of on their animal ears. But these are minor complaints even though they really bugged me.

Anyways, by the end, all I wanted was more. Warning, though. These guys pull no punches and really use this animal shorthand to discuss some painful topics from that era (and now unfortunately), like racism and war crimes. Like Maus, the animal metaphors are a good way to soften teh blows into more easily managed chunks.

I assumed based on the date of the publication that I shouldn't expect more. That would be too much to ask, wouldn't it? NO! There is another one that came out this July. I will definitely be grabbing it when I can.

I like it enough, I drew a little bit of fan art.

I also did some practice by copying some of the faces in the book. Seriously good stuff - I am not that good.

Reading list from BBC

We Might Fall: Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed...:

Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety.

Italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read only an excerpt.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien (boring prose. Had to stop. But I have it as a book on CD so I will eventually listen to it.)3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy (so long!!!)25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy (so many characters I got lost in the first chapter)
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis (uh, why is this not part of #33?)37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov (Got too weirded out to finish)63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens72 Dracula – Bram Stoker73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert (didn't enjoy so I quit)86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare (Not part of the complete Shakespeare?)99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

I listened to some of these as book on tape while driving home. That counts I think. 14 started but not finished. 26 actually read and finished. I think I will work through the ones I like on this list that I can find on cd at the library.

Comic Review: Koko Be Good

Abe and I found Koko Be Good by Jen Wang at Stumptown Comic Fest 2011. Jen was sharing a booth with the creator of Anya's Ghost, which also looks good but she didn't have it for sale yet. We also got the most beautiful blue poster of a couple wearing deer skin and mushrooms (not wearing the mushrooms). It is a lovely picture. Jen's art is really beautiful. The cover of Koko Be Good is what pulled us in. Jen even signed it for Abe. I read it while I was on vacation with my mom a few months ago. Oddly enough, there was a review in The Bloomsbury Review that week.

Art: 4 stars

Just as the art and the poster promised, the art is beautiful. It looks like she is inspired a bit by manga. While that is not always my cup of tea, I think she made use of some of the techniques like the small star people for the scenes of extreme or powerful emotion. I think it worked but if you are not used to that style, if can be off putting. She also has a tendency to color people with lightly red noses, which I find to be one of the most endearing things you can do in art.

Story: 4 stars

The story is a slice of life style. It follows a conservative follower guy who seems a bit lost with life and a weird girl who is bursting with so much confidence and bravado she doesn't know what to do with it all. She doesn't know what each day will bring and he is following his older girlfriend as she works towards her dreams. The two randomly meet and become friends. Over the course of their friendship together, they learn a lot about how to live life and temper each other's personalities so they are not debilitating single minded; he learns that he counts and she learns other people do, too. There is a really sad secondary story, too. Their speech flows naturally. Sometimes it is a bit over the top for Koko, but it seemed appropriate for her.

Overall: 4 stars

I would definitely recommend Koko Be Good. It is such a sweet story with sad tones and that really is one of my favorite types of story. However, Abe was not such a big fan because nothing really happens. I can understand why he felt that way, but I like stories like that. That might explain my fondness for mini comics, which also seem to go nowhere.  I think it is ripe for a sequel; I am not sure if one is intended. 

Book review: Own the room

I wrote a review of Own the Room: Business presentations that persuade, engage & get results by David Booth, Deborah Shames, and Peter Desberg. The review was originally published in Technical Communication, Volume 58, Number 1, February 2011.

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We have all heard the adage “show, don’t tell.” That is the basic premise of Own the Room. Instead of repeating the stodgy, conservative style of business presentations full of bland facts and figures, the authors recommend enlivening your presentations with stories and surprise. The authors are an actor, a director, and a psychologist, all of whom bring their expertise to their modern presentation style.

The book reads as if the authors were giving a presentation, switching speakers in each chapter. Although unclear at first, this method lets them deliver personal and entertaining anecdotes. To explain your movements during a presentation, says Booth the director, for example, “if I want to shake the actors out of complacency or flat line readings, I change the blocking” (p. 169).

Own the Room offers a lot of useful information and entertaining stories, including pointers for making each stage of your presentation more interesting: Grab your audience’s attention at the start, use appropriate anecdotes to maintain surprise and intrigue, and drive your point home at the end. The authors include many specific examples of speeches using both their method and the conservative style so you can compare and contrast. They also make many interesting similes, such as how picking a team to give a presentation is like constructing a string quartet: “As in music, we are attracted to counterpoint” (p. 151).

Although most of the book can help you gain confidence, the authors devote a chapter to overcoming stage fright. Part of overcoming stage fright is being well prepared. After explaining the four stages of stage fright, they suggest cures such as breathing exercises for managing your anxiety and “changing your behavior, which is directly under your control” (p. 133).

One improvement would be a recap at the end of each chapter. For example, it would be useful to have lists of the roles a presenter can take, with related page numbers. Although the headings are easy enough to find, quick reference lists would make navigation easier.

All in all, I find the suggestions workable. For example, anecdotes are better for explaining “why” because we “tend to believe anecdotal evidence over facts and figures” (p. 52). And surprise engages your audience because (as Steven Johnson says) “researchers now believe that there is an entire neurochemical system in the brain devoted to the pursuit and recognition of new experiences” (p. 48). I plan to apply the authors’ approach to creating more engaging tutorials and e-learning.

Book review: Origins of the Specious

I wrote a review of Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language by Patricia T. O'Conner and Stewart Kellerman. The review was originally published in Technical Communication, Volume 57, Number 3, August 2010. This has been my favorite book that I reviewed for them so far.

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Who hasn’t had a vicious argument about the proper use of a word or whether English is a malleable language? Maybe that’s just me. But if language is your game, Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language is your book. It’s a blooper highlights reel of English, explaining fables from the myth about the number of Eskimo words for snow to the misconception that all double negatives are incorrect.

Origins of the Specious discusses these misuses and myths with a wry sense of humor. It even includes some lightly dirty humor, such as a bit of history on the Yiddish word putz. When discussing that newspapers were “abuzz” about two Oxford dictionaries giving the okay to willy-nilly split your infinitives, the authors comment, “It was a slow news week” (p. 17). In explanation for why the word ain’t is no longer considered acceptable language, they say, it “got too big for its britches” (p. 49). An entire chapter that had me snickering is “Lex education: Cleaning up dirty words.” If you want to bore the curse words out of unruly children (or inform it out of them, depending on their disposition), you might read them this chapter.

The authors use humor to get a basic idea across: English is a liquid language (regardless of how thick we would like that liquid to be). Throughout the book, they say that English is changed by “the people who actually use the language day in and day out” (p. 43), that is, all of us. My favorite example is the hunt for a single “all-purpose pronoun for people that can be masculine or feminine” (p. 141). We all know how frustrating it is to write around “he/she” and “he or she.” But try as we might, no word has successfully taken hold of this empty space. Thon made a valiant effort in 1858 but fell by the wayside. Regardless, it will always hold a special place in my heart.

Occasionally, their humor can get a bit harsh, but in a teasing way. With regard to the literal meaning of “beg the question,” which Aristotle originally used in 350 BC, they say, “It’s time for the purists to get a life—one in the twenty-first century” (p. 182). In another example of harsh but humorous reprimands, they say, “If you think ‘octopi’ is classier than ‘octopuses,’ go stand in the corner” (p. 184). Away I went.

At times, this book had me laughing out loud for the dorky language jokes. And if it doesn’t provide enough information for you, the bibliography in the back provides 30 other resources. I definitely recommend Origins of the Specious for language junkies with a good sense of humor.

Book review: Blogging for Fame and Fortune

I wrote a review of Blogging for Fame and Fortune by Jason R. Rich. The review was originally published in the Technical Communication magazine (for the Society for Technical Communication) Volume 57, Number 1, February 2010. I have a few more reviews already published that I will also post here.

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Blogs are a popular, inexpensive form of entertainment. Blogging for Fame and Fortune addresses starting a blog with the intention of building a large audience, which can be a means to fame or fortune. For Jason Rich, “the term blog... includes traditional text-based blogs, photo blogs, audio podcasts, vlogs (videobased blogs), and webcasts” (p. 1). As a technical communicator, you probably know most of this information. But if you’re brand-new to blogs and are just looking for a starting point, this book could be your Blogging 101 textbook.

The information in the book divides into three major sections: starting a blog, achieving fame and fortune, and lessons learned. Each chapter contains an almost overwhelming amount of tips and warnings, some of which are useful. For example, the chapter about driving traffic to your blog includes how “to add functionality that allows your blog’s visitors to submit your blog entries to Digg” (p. 168). Digg is a Web site where users submit and vote on Web content.

Over half of the book is about starting a blog. You find a review of what you need before you start blogging: the format and the appearance. Rich explains the hardware, software, and blogging services needed to start your blog, as well as creating content, for example in vlogs.

Rich’s specific lessons on gaining fame and fortune really come down to marketing. His suggestions boil down to two actions: tell people about the blog, whether through e-mail or social networks or some other means; and use search engine optimization (SEO), including key words. To use SEO, Rich suggests using the online tutorials available through each search engine.

To show lessons learned, Rich first describes mistakes to avoid, such as “not taking into account how your blog will impact your personal and professional life outside of cyberspace” (p. 204). His final chapters offer interesting interviews with people in the blogging service industry and famous bloggers. The advice from famous bloggers is to work hard, be unique, and have good luck. Perez Hilton says he became famous partly because “I was one of the very first bloggers doing what I was doing” (p. 237).

The book is not perfect. I find the writing repetitive. For example, Chapter 7 includes “Nine Tips for Utilizing SEO to Generate Blog Traffic” (p. 121), and Rich covers SEO again in a later chapter. There are also a fair amount of typos. I recommend skipping directly to the information you want instead of reading the book over to cover.

As a current blogger (http://www.the-jerks.com), I find most important such marketing ideas as make friends on social networks, update your status when you post, and use SEO.

Oh no! I fell on Half Price Books

I am sure I am not the only one who has this problem, but Abe sure isn't one of them. Whenever I go to a book store, I can easily find a dozen books to get. I don't even have time to read, so I mostly get reference books. Particularly art reference books. So when I have time to read some day, this problem will be even worse. You know what Abe came away with? Luxor 2 (an awesome video game). This weekend, Half Price Books had a 20% off sale and I fell for it hard. I thought we weren't going to go, but Abe got off work early on Sunday and we made a day of it. Including finally get me some pants. But no one wants to hear about pants. What about the books?!

Gnomes by Huygen, 1976; Giants by David Larkin, 1979
I love all these books from when I was a kid. I don't know if I have the fairies one the my mom had when I was little, but now I have the Giants and Gnomes books. The art in these is just amazing and if you have not looked through and read these books, you really need to. They are so creative and fun. I love how they are written like the creatures are all real. Definitive facts rather than myth.

A Master Class in Drawing and Painting Landscapes by Sarah Hoggett and Abigail Edgar, 2009
This book actually covers a variety of mediums: graphite, charcoal, ink, colored pencils, pastels, watercolor, gouache, oil, and acrylic. There are different landscape objects: clouds, trees and bark, grass, rocks, water, light, rain, etc. Then there are a bunch of projects to practice grouped by the natural and those invaded by people. Looks like a fun book to work through with lots of handy information.

The Printmaking Handbook by Louise Woods, 2008
This, I can tell from the images on the cover, is a small version of the Complete Printmaking book my mom has. It includes lots of different printmaking, too: relief printing (monoprint, linocuts, and wood blocks), intaglio (engraving and cutting, which I thought would include linocuts and wood blocks), lithography, screenprinting, photocomposition, and alternatives. I am particularly interested in the section on paper since that is the problem I am having with the crow comic and the reason I haven't printed it yet. I am a bit confused about the organization after a brief look, but perhaps it will make more sense after I am more thorough.

Watercolor Tips and Tricks by David Norman, 2009
I have only briefly flipped through this book, but it surely looks handy. I didn't see anything on painting grass in particular, but there is one on hair and fur. I think that could be applied to grass, which is the fur of the earth, right? :) But it has sections on different things you might like to paint and then often a demo. Like realistc skin color and then a demonstration of a woman in glasses. Painting smoke and mist includes a demo on painting the bridge at Brantome. It also includes information on techniques, like washes and painting wet-on-dry or wet-into-wet. I'll have to glance through this book closer before my next water color.

Sumi-e Kit by Shingo Syoko, 2002
Wowie-wow-wow. This is a kit that comes with a little book, that actually looks pretty good. But the best part is that it is a kit. A few pages of rice paper, three smaller brushes, an ink stone, and two ink sticks (red and black). The book includes all things in brief: history, materials, how-to, and practice strokes. Then it has lessons! Bamboo, plum blossoms, orchids, chrysanthemum. Though the lessons mostly focus on plants, there are a coupl pages on wild life in general, and the carp and lobsters in particular. The final section is about experimenting. I think this will be a great book to restart with. Once I get the hang of it from this book, I can move on to the slightly more complex and detailed Complete Sumi-e Techniques that I used with my mom on our vacation. And now I get to try the ink stone instead of teh sumi ink bottle. Which I think will make a big difference. Sounds like a lot of work. Grinding the ink takes a few minutes, but the book mentions "this quiet and repetitions actions has a calming effect, helping to clear the mind in preparation for the painting you are about to do" (19). And it looks like not a single thing has been used, even though the section with the ink and brushes has been opened. Though it has some bad reviews on Amazon, I think they expected more than a simple starter kit.

One Lemming's Loss

While on vacation, I finished printing One Lemming's Loss. Fraught with trouble, we eventually got it done thanks to hard work by Abe and my mom, Anita. I forgot to even draw a cover image or image for the bio page until I was on vacation, so Mom had to add those after Abe sent us a print-worthy PDF.

This full-color comic is about grief through an anthropomorphic lemming. Very short, the story is only 14 pages. Including the cover, the comic is 20 pages and the back has a brief explanation of lemmings. And since I learned all about binding books while I was on vacation, including the purchase of Cover to Cover, all of the comics are hand-bound. Simple saddle stitch, but I love the idea, which I got from Liz Conley at Stumptown. The finished books are 7.5 inches tall by 5.5 inches wide.

You can get them here:

• Etsy, hard copy and, later, digital copy
• soon, The Comic Stop in Lynnwood, physical copies

For your viewing pleasure, here is a brief preview:

Cover:

Page 1:

Page 2:

And with One Lemming's Loss, I have four small comics available for purchase, including Hardly Kind (physical, digital on Etsy and The Illustrated Section), Harrowing Tales at the Bus Stop (physical, digital), and Arthur Loses His Mind, or small things are hard to find (physical, digital).

Stumptown 2011 scores

As much as I loved seeing all the great art and going to the panels, I am in love with all the stuff we got. Let's take a peek.

• Both volumes of The Anthology Project. So far I am super impressed. Just flipping through it, the art is consistently magnificent. I love the wide variety of styles. Both are hard cover with a strange striped texture that I really like and the title is in gold print (probably not real gold, haha). I hope the stories are as good as the art because these will be amazing books. Plus, all three editors were there and they all signed it! Yay us!
• Koko be good by Jen Wang. We also got a beautiful blue toned poster by her that has a guy and gal with deers on their heads and some mushrooms. (I'd link to it, but I can't find it on the web.) We bought it just loose, but I am going to put it in something nicer when I go to my mom's. Again, I haven't read this yet, but the art is super. I also saw it at the library today. :) Plus she signed it for Abe and drew a little picture. She seemed nice, but maybe a bit shy. Or tired.
• Elephantmen, Vol. 2. Starkings was there to sign it. For some reason, this is the second time we have gone to a comic convention and the first thing we got was Elephantmen and one of the artists drew in it and signed it (Moritat the first time and Starkings the second). Because we bought the trade, we got a free single issue of the current story arc, too. I think somehow we ended up with 4 free single issues. I can't wait to reread the first volume and then this volume.
• The Goon, Vol. 6, by Eric Powell. I can't wait to read this. The Goon was recommended to me by a guy at The Comic Stop (where you can get my mini-comic Hardly Kind) when they didn't have volume 2 of Atomic Robo. Abe read it and the glint in his eye when he told me how good it was has me extra excited. But we forgot to stop by the Dark Horse booth later and get Eric to sign it. D'oh.
• DAR, Vol. 1 and 2 by Erika Moen. Wow. I definitely enjoyed the first volume more, but both were good. The second one is about half old comics. They aren't as funny but I think she still has some good comics. However, the first one literally made me laugh so hard I almost threw up. There is a lot of nudity and sex jokes. We were eating lunch in the back yard while I was reading it. I wonder what the neighbors thought. I was laughing really hard. My eyelashes were full of tears. I actually had to stop reading because I was so sick from laughing so hard. We also got a post card and preview of Bucko, which is a web comic that I have already been enjoying. Though I fear I will not be able to read it at work for too long. We'll see.
• DC Conspiracy's Magic Bullet. We found this free newspaper full of comics at the table where we ate lunch (I had a hot dog). I haven't read it yet, but I am intrigued.
• Free preview of Meen Comics by Trixie Biltmore. There are only two comics in it, but both made me laugh so I am definitely going to have to stop by. It is not working for me right now. But I got to read the last two comics, which were pretty funny.
• Post card of Dear Creature by Jonathan Case, which I accidentally reported as David's in my last post. This looks like a really cool comic. He had preview copies and we flipped through it real quick. He even drew on the card for us. It is awesome. I will definitely be keeping an eye out for this comic in October this year.
• Bookmark from Family Man by Dylan Meconis. I have been meaning to check out this web comic for a while. I might need to break down and by the book because it is so much easier to read. I love reading comics with breakfast and tea on my weekend mornings.
• 2 bird cards by Ashley Burke. Wow. The are is striking. The cards are textured. Abe and I couldn't decide which one to get so we each picked one. Abe picked a blue hawk or owl, I can't tell, and I picked a green owl. Etsy fans, she's there!
• Ed the emo elephant and Short Notice by Susan Tardif. The first is a cute little mini comic about an emo elephant and his pug. Very short and silly. Short Notice is about a girl getting ready for a date at the last minute. It is also quite cute. 
• 420 DRE? This was something free we got at some table at some point. There are a number of comics in it. I don't think I get it.
• Two Short Comics by Matt Sheean. I enjoyed this. Very short. Intersting construction - it is just a stip folded in fourths plus a tab. There is a comic printed on each side of the strip. Great idea. I might have to use that idea.
• Lisa Eisneberg - The monsters make a stew; Painful Vices; I cut my hair, Vols 1,2 and 3. The monsters make a stew and Painful Vices are so cute. I really enjoyed them. I cut my hair is an diary comic. Enjoyable but really just a chronicle of day to day stuff. I am enjoying it so far. 
• The Ask Dr. Eldritch Get Our of Trouble Free Card! This is a web comic - looks like photoshop or photos. I am not sure. The guy who handed us the cards seemed super nice. The card made us both laugh. :)
• The Great pretenders and other stories by Julia Wertz. How could I not buy this?! I love her work. While we were there, I got to tell her that I was the dork that sent her the Julia Beartz drawing and she explained that Domitille (who is another comic artist at Pizza Island with her) loved it so much she let her put it up at her desk ; it wasn't that she didn't like it herself. 
• Saving the best for last, Balloon by Liz Conley. It is the only mini-comic we got that is not staple bound. I might take this and run with it so we might do our comics sewn bound as well. It looks awesome. She also had really creative uses of folded pages. I am so freakin' impressed. She also had a hand colored letter press short story in a large bound book. Amazing. I can't even describe how impressed I was. She also sold uncolored letter press versions. I definitely plan to get one of those. The story starts and ends with a section of text and in the middle is an accordian graphic story, also letter press. It looks great. I think The Traveler and the Bird Maiden was the one I saw at the fest, but I also think Mirror Mirror looks really great. And she's also on Etsy.

Anyways, I haven't read most of them because I don't want to run out! I know that is silly. I have a huge pile of unread comics because of this little problem, but I am working on it. I am really looking forward to attending or showing next year. Yay Stumptown!

Wonderful comic news

As of today, I have comics for sale at The Comic Stop, a great comic store in Lynnwood. And by comics, I mean multiple copies of Hardly Kind. They are working a great indie section. Though as soon as I have copies of the lemming story, that will be there too. Hardly Kind is a black and white comic; the story is 9 pages.

They are our favorite local comic shop, even though they are too far to bike to. They have a really friendly and helpful staff and the store is bright and clean. Most of the comics stores we go to are over flowing and hard to get around in. Let alone actually find something. They also have a nice selection of comics that aren't the big two, which is great for us, since neither of us really wants to spend money on a super hero comic we will read only once. (The exception being Batwoman, since I plan to read that over and over again. :)  )

These guys, if you have a question, will hop right over and find it. If they can't find it, even if they can really, they will suggest other similar comics to you. Abe went in to look for Atomic Robo for me (I need to get vol. 2). They didn't have it, but the guy suggested The Goon, which neither of us had really heard of.

If you can't get to Lynnwood, though, you can buy a hard copy online at The Jerks Etsy store. If you are not keen on Etsy lately, just send me an email and I will see what we can do instead. I'd love to get a hard-copy of Hardly Kind in your eager hands. You can also get a PDF copy from The Jerks Etsy store, or you can hightail it to the amazing selection of digital comics at The Illustrated Section. So far I only have Hardly Kind there, but you will see more soon.