Eid Mubarak, I love you all, may we witness a free Palestine within our lifetimes inshallah

i should post this here too!

fwiw "how would my characters do in taskmaster" is a very fun thing to work out, everyone should do it. here's the empty chairs to draw on. do it! draw your fools!

Couldn't resist. Here's the main cast of Across a Field of Starlight (whose 3rd book birthday was last month!)

Since folks asked, I am doing another session of my Comics Layout course - for the non-US timezones!

For 2 hours each week I'll build your thinking and creative strategy for making page designs COOL AND POPPING. Some of the details are still the same:

Sign up before April 24! (Link)

Times are listed in the sign-up page, but for reference:

btw i’ve never seen pacific rim but i had a dream last night that there was a new pacific rim movie and the kaiju and the big robots were fighting and there were all these gratuitous shots of them stepping directly on cybertrucks with the drivers still inside them and in an interview guillermo del toro said that those were his favorite shots in the entire movie

Nancified Newmann!

My SBCF 2024 comic BLEED ANY% is now available at my itch.io store!

Speedrunner Samson859 specializes in the niche augmented reality game The Final Nocturne, which immerses the player in its world using nothing but sound and touch. 

Samson’s choice of location for the latest run is a crowded subterranean mall with no shortage of physical obstacles. 

But she is also there, when Samson least expects it, ready to strike…

I want to set aside some money for a trip later this year, so if you haven't picked up this comic (or any of the others) at my itch.io store, now's a great time!

FIRE OF LOVE (2022) dir. Sara Dosa

Fresno Nightcrawler campfire mugs! Perfect for when you're out cryptid hunting and you need a sturdy mug to hold your coffee while you stay awake all night hunting little guys!

These mugs are made out of steel and painted with a sturdy coat of enamel to hold up to any drops and dings they might receive while you're running for your life away from the creatures you intentionally went out to try to find.

Buy them here!

find local theater near you. go to local theater near you. read plays. read non-fiction books. read fiction books written over one hundred years ago. go to the movie theater. watch movies with subtitles. watch slow movies. watch challenging movies. watch movies made for less than five million dollars. watch a documentary. watch television shows that have no fandoms. watch classic television shows. watch television shows starring actors that have no social media. read criticism of your favorite media frequently. think critically about your favorite media often. consume media made for adults.

I am begging everyone to specificcally watch and read more non-fiction. We are fed so much compressed edutainment slot in the form of slightly misinformed 2-minute shorts and like genuinely settling down with a well-written nonfiction book about a subject you're not familiar with is such a good experience.

I think there's this idea that nonfiction is boring, because at least in the United States our exposure to nonfiction in school is almost exclusively textbooks, which are horrifically boring.

But nonfiction isn't boring at all! There are riveting popular nonfiction books about literally any subject that interests you, and those books come in just about any length you could want. Even better, consulting popular nonfiction book lists from the last few years is a really good way to find books that will actually be in your library system. If you're like me, you live in a place where it is very apparent that libraries are for lending books, and are not archives.

I recommend any of these:

The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris -- EXTRAORDINARY, obvs a bit grisly. Actually, many of my recommendations have their moments, so be aware of that. Alternates between a bio of Lister and discussion of Victorian medicine. I thought the biography part would be boring, but it turns out Lister was a really cool dude. Like, he sounds like he was a lovely person. Something it really drove home for me was how utterly and unusually filthy Victorian cities were. It's no wonder we falsely think people in prior eras were super gross and didn't bathe or clean things. A lot of our attitudes towards history were formed during an era when that was true. We still tend to very much believe that sanitation and cleanliness has risen steadily, in an inevitable upward trend, because that's kind of how we see most history. It isn't true at all. The book doesn't go into this, this is just me airing a pet peeve.

The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I by Lindsey Fitzharris. About Dr. Harold Gillies, who pioneered reconstructive surgery techniques on WWI survivors. Very good. The audiobook is narrated beautifully by Daniel Gillies, who is Dr. Gillies's great great grand nephew. I haven't read very much about WWI, and this book convinced me that I need to, and also that it will be very difficult going. I was aware that it was bad. I didn't appreciate just how bad.

Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History by Erik Larson. WOW this was good. About the guy who established the National Weather Service, Isaac Cline, an interesting dude but also just some guy, about the HORRIFYING Galveston Hurricane of 1900, about weather science. If you live in hurricane or tornado country, this might really interest you. It sounds boring but it wasn't. It was so cool! The passage describing how hurricanes develop was so beautiful. The passages describing what the hurricane was like as it was happening were riveting and frightening. The passages about the aftermath had a lot of impact.

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America is about both serial killer H. H. Holmes and the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. I am given to understand that the Holmes parts are sensationalized and not as accurate as they ought to be, but it's still really interesting, and all the stuff about the Fair, how it came about, the crazy challenges, the architects, and just how much of it barely happened at all, wound up being the most interesting part.

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan. I genuinely did not expect to be glued to this but it was a riveting look at an oft-ignored time. The Dust Bowl was a manmade ecological disaster, preventable, and its effects were profound. But this is also about people, living through it. My grandparents were children then, and I live in dust bowl country, so this was especially interesting.

From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty. Her books are so good. This one is about unusual death traditions around the world, and what they can teach us about humans, grief, love, and notions of the afterlife. Not at all religious in nature, not voyeuristic, not judgmental, written with sensitivity.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty. Again, good. Fascinating look at the death professions from inside. This is her job, so it's really closely observed. Hugely helpful in demystifying these jobs and what really happens.

I can second From Here to Eternity! That was super fascinating!!

I also just finished A (Brief) History of Vice by Robert Evans and that may have been one of The Most entertaining nonfiction books I've read. And I've been reading quite a bit!

Absolutely curious to try out some of the above when time permits. There is some great nonfiction out there!

As a long time non-fiction reader, I’ve got some hot recs for everyone

Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story by Robyn Doolittle — The name kinda says it all. It’s a biography of Rob Ford — Toronto’s infamous crack smoking mayor — written by former Toronto Star reporter who covered his tenure as mayor. I was suckered in by the whole crack smoking mayor thing, but the Doolittle does a great job of putting his life in the context of the city and its politics. It’s a great read, one I recommend even to non-Canadians.

Fracture: Life and Culture in the West 1918-1938 by Philipp Blom — Fracture goes year by year, telling stories that reflect the events of the year. From bootleggers in the US to the fascist poets running Italian city states to Martin Heidegger’s tenure at the head of a Nazi University, Fracture weaves stories from all over Europe and the US into a compelling narrative about interbellum period.

Asia’s Orthographic Dilemma by Wm. C. Hannas — I have complicated feelings about this book but I do think it’s worth a read. Granted, it is a dense and technical book about writing and linguistics. So. It’s worth a read if that’s something you’re interested it. The “Dilemma” in question is the issue of hanzi, or Chinese characters. Hannas is a linguist and speaks and reads Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese. His experience learning and using all four languages that have historically and/or still continue to use hanzi gives him an interesting perspective on the characters. Where I find myself feeling unsure about his argument is in his answer to the dilemma: get rid of ‘em. His arguments are pretty compelling, but I’m not sure they’re compelling enough to persuade me.

Ametora by W. David Marx — This rec comes from my partner, who read it last year. Ametora is about the complex relationship between American and Japanese fashion during the decades after the Second World War. I’ve been meaning to read it myself but haven’t gotten around to it because of school stuff, but I did listen to an interview with the author and was really taken by insight into a subject I know nothing about.

Nonfiction recommendations based on what I've read the past few years:

Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay - If you're an artist or just really interested in how the making of art was influenced by the production of paints, Finlay's a great storyteller. It's also chronological from the first pigments ever used by humans, and the section on the intertwining histories of ochre and Indigenous Australian artists is one I think about often.

Hijacked: The True Story of the Heroes of Flight 705 by Dave Hirschman - Picked this up purely by a word of mouth recc. Surprisingly informative if you're curious about how freight is delivered in the modern world, and how the infrastructure of FedEx came to be. Extremely entertaining and detailed account of a botched hijacking of a FedEx plane, and also interesting to read how this was kind of thing was talked about in a pre-9/11 world which, statistically, you reading this have probably not lived in.

Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese who Built the Transcontinental Railroad by Gordon H. Chang - Do you like trains or Chinese-American history? Have you ever wondered who built all those bridges and blasted through mountains with dynamite in some of the most punishing and beautiful American landscape that there is? I read this on a train trip and was absolutely riveted.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm - lol. lmao, even. Let's just say that if you've been interested in the current phenomenon of defacing Teslas or are curious about genuinely effective climate change activism, this is a great book about the history and ethics of doing [redacted].

The second chapter of Soul of Sovereignty, my fantasy visual novel, is out now! If you owned Soulsov Prelude already, you can read the new episode at no additional cost.

And if you didn't...a free demo is now available!

Get in there!

SoulSov update!!! Please check it out, there's some excellent character writing, wonderful textured art, and the story is doing some Cool Things

BIRTH OF THE SUN update • 2 pages

this is a sci-fi story about life shaped by power, a missing father, a mysterious accident, transness, blood, and choice. for mature readers 🔞

still recovering from surgery of course. thank you for your encouragement! if you're reading the comic, i'd really love to hear what you think of it. (i might start alternating between 1-2pgs/week. that's fine, right?)

Have you heard the word of the NIB & INK FEST?!

The Cartoonist Coop’s online comic festival that’s happening this coming May ALL MONTH LONG! Join us for a month of comics, panels, interviews and even portfolio reviews.

Want more info? Check out it out HERE!!!  

Art by Mariah-Rose Marie | Letters by Becca Carey | Design by Alyssa Ragni

The Coop's series of NIF interviews, which I've been editing, kicks off today! First up, Hana Chatani shares more about her comic that will be in the NIF Marketplace this fall. Check back in at the Cartoonist Cooperative's Journal every Monday/Wednesday/Friday from now through May for a new interview with a NIF participant!

2025 Ride Guide for the Toronto Transit Commission!

I’m a huge proponent for public transit so this was a dream collaboration. The guide is full of a bunch of nods to the city’s diverse attractions, neighbourhoods, and population. Plus a few other visual puns.

I haven’t seen the mini guides out yet but if all went according to plan then there should be a few different covers that all interconnect!

And the final images are a reminder that you can’t get too precious with a project like this.

Happy Tuesday!