Ohkay, it’s time for some reports! No, really. I’m out of my hole, like Punxsutawney Phil. What’s that you say? Phil
came and went two months ago? Well, that’s about how long I’ve been out of the loop. For the last
several weeks, Paul and I have been running all over the place doing shows and book fairs and
school visits and chaperonings… and in the meantime we’ve also been getting engaged and been attempting
to close on a house. Which may or may not happen, after all. So. Things’ve been quite quite busy, and
I sure hope you guys haven’t thought I was dead, or worse, anti-social by this point.

So, on to Reports. Let’s do the oldest first.

April 16-18 2004: Penguicon

This one’s easy; I’ve already given it to Comicon.com’s Pulse.
It’s my long-overdue look at Penguicon, complete with pictures and Neil Gaiman’s
Glowing Eyes of Power.  
Have a look!

April 22nd 2004: Ann Arbor Book Festival

The Ann Arbor Book Festival was a whole mess of
fun. Curtis and Liz of Vault of Midnight had
the comics pavilion hoppin’, and people seemed really warm and receptive to the idea
of comics as literature — we got a whole lot of people who looked like they’d not laid eyes on a comic
for twenty years stop and take a look at what we had to offer. Matt Feazell
was there doin’ his minicomics thing like only he can, Paul and I hung out for most of the day with
Jim Ottaviani (Who has a brand new book out in
this month’s PREVIEWS magazine, and you should totally order it. It’s about Neils Bohr.) and we
got to meet Phoebe Gluckner, who’s really nice. And she’s moving to Ann Arbor, which is really cool.

I did a bit of a lecture, and recorded it on my minidisc player. Thus, you can listen to it in its
entirety here. Right now,
you pretty much have to download it, but we’re working on getting BitTorrent set up so you can stream it.

May 8-11 2004: King Middle School, Portland, Maine

So I didn’t post anything about this because a) it wasn’t really open to the public, and b) because
I didn’t want to jinx it! I kept waiting for the
Reality Fairy
to come by and hit me with her mallet, waking me from this too-good-to-be-true dream with a loud “Ha-Ha!”.

Seriously, though. Paul and I were contacted about six months ago by Kelley McDaniel, a Middle School Librarian in Portland, Maine.
She wanted us to come out and speak to her kids about comics. At first we politely declined, as we’re
still saving for a house and distant shows like SPX. But no, she wanted to fly us out and put us up in a B&B
because she thought we’d have something good to say about comics.

I only hope we lived up to her expectations, because we sure had a blast! Kelley took us around to lighthouses and beaches,
and we got to walk around Portland’s lovely downtown. I also succeeded in my goal of eating seafood for every meal.

The attendees at the school were incredibly receptive, and Paul and I were really honored to have such
a attentive and hardworking audience for both our lectures. Paul spoke on Monday, and did a Powerpoint presentation
on Manga and LIttle White Mouse, then led a 3-hour workshop on how to do cartooning.

Tuesday was my day to speak, and I first did a presentation on How Comics Work, then a three-hour workshop on
Making Your Own Minicomics. I was amazed at how fast all the students took to their pencils, and the quality of
the work they produced in such a short time. One student even arrived with a hundred-fifty page graphic novel
he’d written — and it was better than some “professional” minicomics I’ve seen. That guy has a potential future in comics, that’s for sure!

In addition to the students, we were also joined both days by educators, librarians, and our sponsors, David and Sandy Perloff, who so
generously made it possible for us to come to Maine. Some of the educators may be using comics to teach
everything from Learning Disabled students to Science classes… and that’s really the best success we could ask for.

May 14-16 2004: Motor City Comicon

Alas, I am too wiped out to do Motor City. I got off the plane from Maine (with the rain falling on it from Spain…) on Tuesday,
and I just don’t have the oomph to soldier on. Paul’s a much better trouper than I am, and he’ll have his booth there. I won’t
be there on Friday or Sunday, but on Saturday, I’ll probably
be hanging out around his table or helping Katie Merritt at the
Friends of Lulu booth. See you there!