blog: appearances

In just a few short hours I will be boarding an aeroplane for CANADA. This is a country many of you have probably heard of, and in fact some of you probably even live there! If you happen to be in Toronto, the City of Charity, I hope you will come to the biennial Toronto Comic Arts Festival, featuring many fine artists and raconteurs from nations both near and far. It will be my first time in Toronto and, depending on how lenient the local law-enforcement proves to be, perhaps my last! DO NOT MISS IT.

Should you be prohibitively far from Toronto, or restricted from entering Canada due to outstanding warrants, never fear! You can still get the “personal experience” by ordering an Artist Edition book during these LAST SEVEN DAYS that they are available.

This coming weekend I’ll be in Seattle for the Emerald City ComiCon! I’ll have books, posters, a few T-shirts and a pad of paper for sketches. This is one of my favorite shows of the year, so I really hope you’ll come out to say hello.

Later this week or early next week: I’ll be launching a pre-order for my new hardcover strip collection, Clever Tricks to Stave off Death, as well as Return to Wondermark Manor: Dispatches from Wondermark Manor Volume III.
Both books will begin shipping in about a month, but you can secure your copies ahead of time with the pre-order — that’ll ensure you get the very first copies that I receive!

This week I will also be closing the window for Unique Sketch Cards and ludicrous phone calls — if you’d like to take advantage of those offers, you have through Friday! There will probably be a slim Venn-diagram of time when both the new books and the Sketch Cards will be available simultaneously, but don’t make it hard on yourself. Just order them separately. I really don’t mind.

See you in Seattle!

There come times, in this life spent staring into computer screens, where social activity is required to recalibrate one’s relationship with the world. Too easily are we led to believe, by that harsh white light from the monitor, that life outside is hostile, fragile, and prone to failure. Too soon do we give up our warm, genial humanity for some harsh, rasping simulacra more prone to pedantry and depravity than the smiling sun allows.

Thus comes this. The first-annual New England Webcomics Weekend, a tri-day convergence of bleary-eyed but kindly folk driven to remind themselves and others of the value of human interaction. Not a “convention,” with its swag-hoarding and stomachaches; not a “signing,” with its lonely aisles and visible, swirling dust; but a “gathering,” a collection of friends, neighbors and strangers brought together for one single purpose: To put the good parts of our Internet into flesh, where real meaning is derived, and cast the bad parts away, if even for just a time.

You are part of that good bit — or at least the good bits of you are part of that valued whole. Bring those bits (and those bits only) to our coming summit in Easthampton, Massachussetts, and in the drafty corridors of a tall brick building we shall meet, smile, shake hands and fellowship. It will be a time for Art, with its oft-forgotten power to transcend clumsy words, but more importantly, it will be a time for Friends, with their oft-ignored power to make life meaningful.

The details are at WebcomicsWeekend.com. The cheery bird on the poster also has a Facebook and a Twitter for (non-binding) RSVPs and for news, respectively. This will be my only public journey to Massachusetts this year, and I will bring only those things I can pack lightly: a few dry-goods, perhaps; my sketchbook; my fond hopes and belief in community; and in my bag’s outer pocket for easy retrieval, my high spirits.

Will you join us?