Excerpt of 'FALL THROUGH' up at The Beat + Multiversity's 'Best of February'

I’m happy to reveal the first exclusive excerpt from Fall Through, published today by The Beat— read here! Fall Through will be released everywhere on February 6th.

It’s also ranked at #3 on Multiversity’s Best 10 Non-Superdude Comics of February.

You have until Dec. 15th to preorder signed & sketched copies of Fall Through, which will be shipped out by my local shop Vintage Phoenix a couple of weeks ahead of publication date.

Aaaand it looks like Abrams is having a direct preorder deal on Fall Through right now— it’s 50% off with the code SKIPTHELINE, and free shipping on orders $49.95 and above.

Thanks so much for your support, everyone— please spread the word! I’m about 160 pages into pencils for Fall Through’s follow-up prequel.

This Saturday: BAMF in Bloomington!

I’ll be slangin books and prints at Bloomington Alternative Media Festival this Saturday in Bloomington, Indiana— the admission donations will benefit the Bloomington Anarchist Black Cross.

BAMF will be from 11am-5pm at the Harmony School gym (909 E. 2nd St.)— see you there!

Original art sale to benefit Doctors Without Borders

I have a ton of new pages available for sale at Athenaeum Comic Art, and from now until Xmas I’ll be donating $100 from each piece sold to Doctors Without Borders, one of several medical and humanitarian organizations facing missile strikes and military assault during the siege in Gaza, in their ongoing efforts to provide crucial medical care and basic human services to the hundreds of thousands of civilians caught in the horror of this ongoing assault.

I join hundreds of millions of people across the globe in calling for an immediate cease-fire, and in strongest opposition to both Netanyahu’s government and Hamas.

Buy a page (or two), and for each I’m happy to email you the receipt of my donation. Simple and direct. Thank you!

MARCH-- 10 year anniversary poster free for shops, schools & libraries!

It’s my pleasure to reveal this brand-new poster to celebrate 10 years of March— our publisher Top Shelf is distributing it free to comics shops, bookstores, schools & libraries! (Please see Top Shelf’s linked announcement— if this is you, get in touch with your Penguin Random House rep, and the poster’s SKU is MKT1000061855.)

You can also grab the poster from Top Shelf/IDW at their table at shows, and I’ll have some that’ll also be free for anybody who gets a March trilogy boxed set from me at shows.

Thanks to everyone who’s been moved by this work over the past decade, and who’s doing their part to defend accurate history, comics in the classroom & libraries, magnifying marginalized voices, and fortifying our right to information and ideas.

FALL THROUGH-- signed/sketched preorders up now

Preorders are open for signed & sketched copies of my new graphic novel Fall Through— I’ve teamed up again with my excellent local comic shop, Vintage Phoenix.

Orders will be open through December 15th, and copies should arrive at your door a week or two before Fall Through’s February 6th release date. Vintage Phoenix and I both thank you for your support!

You can also order signed & numbered Fall Through prints directly from me— two designs limited to 70 copies each. Get em while you can.

FALL THROUGH-- signed & numbered prints available now.

Fall Through will be released on February 6th, but here’s an early set of treats:

Two different signed & numbered Fall Through prints are now available directly from me: one featuring Jody (and Diana’s shadow), and one featuring the entire band Diamond Mine.

Prints are 16” x 20”, full-color, signed & numbered, and limited to editions of 70 each— and the full images are exclusive to these prints.

Here’s Jody:

and here’s Diamond Mine:

Next week I’ll be launching signed & sketched Fall Through preorders via my local comics shop, Vintage Phoenix— stay tuned for that! And if you haven’t read Come Again, now’s the time— it features the first comics appearance of Diamond Mine, and both books will be fully interwoven in a few years with with the follow-up prequel I’m working on.

You can order Come Again from me here, signed & sketched. Thanks!

First copy of FALL THROUGH!

The only existing copy of Fall Through arrived at my doorstep, straight from the printer! It turned out exactly the way I imagined— it’ll be out February 6th from Abrams ComicArts.

In early November I’m launching signed preorders to be shipped out by my local comics shop Vintage Phoenix. You’ll likely get these a couple of weeks early— stay tuned!

Synch & Talon

Cleansing the ol’ palate after finishing two books back-to-back by doing some X-Men fanart. Synch & Talon / Laura Kinney / Wolverine / X23, because I’m a diehard romantic and a total sucker for cosmic/quantum-level relationships.

It's all done.

Here’s the past 3 years’ worth of unpublished work: about 500 individual pages making up Fall Through (out 2/6/24) and Lies My Teacher Told Me (out 4/16/24).

I’ve mostly been drawing 2 pages a day, 6 days a week with very few breaks— I do not recommend this— and now I’m done with everything for a while.

Taking a break to breathe, and then to experiment and play with my drawing and painting, hopefully giving it space for a long-awaited evolutionary step.

I’ll be traveling all over in 2024 for the release of both books— stay tuned for dates, and I’ll see you there.

20% off all original artwork until Halloween

If you’re interested in buying any of my original artwork, now’s a great time: everything available at Athenaeum Comic Art is 20% off until the end of October! This includes the pricier March pages as well as Sweet Tooth, Black Hammer, Two Dead, Come Again, Any Empire, The Silence of Our Friends, The Year of the Beasts, and Swallow Me Whole.

After that, we’ll be restocking with some new originals, including some art from Run and Save It For Later, some X-Men pieces, Nib illustrations, and more. Stay tuned!

LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME-- cover reveal & preorders up now!

Announcing my full-length comics adaptation of James Loewen’s influential Lies My Teacher Told Me, out April 16th, 2024 from The New Press!

I like to describe this book as a history book about history textbooks: it both illuminates and corrects many misconceptions and outright falsehoods commonly accepted in American history, while outlining how these errors, myths, and lies have found themselves embedded in our historical understanding and education—and a path to fixing what our miseducation has broken, developing critical thinking skills, empathy, and room for contradiction along the way. Loewen’s book has sold over two million copies since its initial release in 1995.

“Every teacher, every student of history, every citizen should read this book.” –Howard Zinn

Preorder here from Bookshop, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Powells.

(So there’s no confusion: I also recently announced my next fiction graphic novel, Fall Through, which is out February 6, 2024 from Abrams ComicArts— you can preorder that and get more info here.)

 Lies My Teacher Told Me was an earthshaking reading experience for me in the early 2000s, and I had reread it several times when the late, great James Loewen contacted me in early 2020 about adapting his text into the comics medium. I said yes on the spot, and we worked out details and approach over the phone during his final year. Jim was a very kind, open person and it hurts knowing that we never got a chance to meet in person—and so it’s my deepest honor to bring his work across the finish line, hopefully doing justice to his ideas, knowledge, and humanity.

 I also want to clarify that my role on this book is not merely as artist. This is a full comics adaptation for which I am the sole creator, comparing and synthesizing multiple editions of his book and updating and recontextualizing parts of the text to meet with both standards of knowledge and perspective after his 2017 edition was released, and after his passing in 2021. Mr. Loewen and I overwhelmingly see eye-to-eye in our worldviews, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we agree on everything, so in my role adapting his work I let him speak for himself and allow room for a more complex understanding of our joint perspectives on this history—which is the entire point of the book.

 I look forward to new conversations and a deepened understanding of the world we share once this book hits shelves—please preorder and spread the word. Thank you for your support and faith, as always!

CXC-- and signed & numbered prints for FALL THROUGH

I’ll be an exhibitor at Cartoon Crossroads (CXC) in Columbus, Ohio on September 30th & October 1st! It’ll be at the Columbus Metropolitan Library (96 S. Grant), 11-5 Saturday and 1-5 Sunday.

On Saturday at 1:00 pm, I’ll be on the “Punk and Comics” panel in the auditorium, alongside Raeghan Buchanan, Shelly Bond, and Derf Backderf, moderated by Craig Fischer. See you there!

This will be my last show before two new books are released next year: Fall Through (out February 6 from Abrams ComicArts) and Lies My Teacher Told Me (out in June from The New Press). Swing by my table and you’re welcome to take a peek at my personal printed-out copies of those books!

The big items I’ll have are two new 16”x20” full-color artist prints for Fall Through— these are signed, numbered, and limited to editions of 70 each! (I’ll probably bring 20 of each to CXC.) $20 each or both for $35.

Here’s the art for those prints:

2024 events for new books.

Hi there! I’ll have two new books out next year (Fall Through in February from Abrams ComicArts & Lies My Teacher Told Me in the spring from The New Press), and I’d love to be a guest at your expo/con/show!

I’m happy to be on any panels/programming, and can can do some artwork for your show as well. Get in touch with me at seemybrotherdance@yahoo.com, and we’ll figure it out— thanks for your support!

Lucero tour poster

Here’s my first of two pieces for longtime friends Lucero, for their upcoming tour with Jason Boland & The Stragglers! We’ll be releasing some t-shirt artwork soon as well— thanks as always to Erin Tobey for her digital/color assistance on these pieces.

Happy 25th anniversary to Lucero, with incredibly fond memories of the new, slow, quietly crushing jams they brought to humid Belvedere shows in Little Rock back in 1998.

Remembering John Lewis, 3 years later.

Today marks 3 years since we lost the big boss, John Lewis— freedom fighter and friend, collaborator and hero. I’ve been thinking about the hundreds of times we parted ways with a hug, taking for granted that the team would reconvene the next weekend or whenever.

He was such a good sport with all the adventures March took us on— so generous, and such a true believer in what we and Andrew built together with these books, and their potential to incite an intergenerational awakening.

Let’s keep building the fire.

If you’re so inclined, here’s a piece Andrew Aydin and I wrote about the urgency of carrying on John Lewis’s legacy, published by CNN after his passing.

"Save It For Later" is NYPL's Book of the Day!

I woke up to the great news that my 2021 book Save It For Later is the New York Public Library’s “Book of the Day!”

Please request that your local library order a copy, ensuring that it’s accessible for free to all. Just go to the front desk and ask about putting in a book request. Thanks!

All right, back to work on some new books.

A2CAF event added: panel w/ Thien Pham & Raina Telgemeier!

I’ll be discussing my nonfiction, historical & memoir work on this “Comics Out Of Life: Conversations With Our Past” panel, alongside Thien Pham and moderator Raina Telgemeier— as a part of A2CAF in Ann Arbor, Michigan!

The panel will be on June 9th at 2pm, at the Koessler Room, Michigan League (911 N. University). Check here for more details, and here for more info on A2CAF, where I’ll be tabling all weekend.

MARCH added to Jersey City school curriculum!

In New Jersey news: what an honor to have March included in Kamala Khan’s hometown curriculum (alongside Nikki Giovanni, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and the Spider-Verse books!) as proof of concept that young people are not afraid to learn accurate history and how to apply its lessons today.

We’ve been saying this for years now: memory laws, “discomfort” laws, and book-ban campaigns seek to exploit the emotions and weaknesses of many white parents who don’t want to answer their kids’ questions, or nurture their curiosity. (Here’s my Washington Post op-ed comic with Andrew Aydin from 2022 about all of this in the context of March and specific cookie-cutter book-ban legislative language.)

But young people want to learn and question— so let’s continue to help them grow. This is the 10-year anniversary of the release of March: Book One— let’s continue to honor the legacies of the civil rights movement, and the late, great freedom fighter John Lewis by keeping this history alive and available.

Fellow pro-democracy, antifascist white people: don’t sit this out.

FALL THROUGH-- announcement & pre-orders up now!

At last, announcing my next original graphic novel, Fall Through— out February 6, 2024 from Abrams ComicArts!

You may recognize the band Diamond Mine from my 2018 book, Come Again, or the cover of my 2017 Omnibox— now it’s their time, every time, all the time. Fall Through is an interdimensional 1990s punk soap opera centered around the ideals and interpersonal struggles between Jody and Diana, dual creative engines of Diamond Mine, lost indefinitely on their band’s do-it-yourself tour— seeking out connection and an elusive Free Space for themselves and their community each night.

It’s emotional, it’s critical, it’s kinda sexy and funny and queer and idealistic and creepy— and it was the most fun I’ve ever had making a book. And there’s bootleg magic involved!

I also think it’s important to note that Fall Through was drawn from 2020-2022, and served a very important role as pandemic therapy for me: people are already so insistent on memory-holing the fact that all of our social and physical bonds were severed in March 2020 (some irrevocably), and one of the great joys in my life was drawing scenes of a beloved underground community built on trust, depicting throngs of people— friends and strangers both— touching, sweating, yelling, breathing, singing together in confined spaces. Fall Through is my love letter to these spaces, to the ways in which it’s shaped my life, and to the power of that interconnectedness.

You can get more info here from Abrams, and pre-order the book through all the usual routes including Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon. (I’ll be posting comics shop ordering info when the time comes!)

Please spread the word if you can— the life or death of a book largely depends on individual people like you hyping books you love, or are excited about. Thank you so much! I’ll be doing lots of book events throughout 2024 for this book (and my next, also out next year)— stay tuned.

June: Arkansas & Michigan book events, and a Trusty tribute show!

I’m coming out of my cave next month!

Back in my hometown of North Little Rock, Arkansas: It’s a major joy to announce that part of my Soophie family will be reuniting on June 3rd to cover a few Trusty songs during Mutants of the Monster Fest— a tribute show for one of the most formative bands of my life, and as a memorial for beloved Trusty drummer Bircho, who passed away in 2020.

Our unit will be covering songs from Trusty’s self-titled 1990 LP, a four-piece with members of Deadbird, Pallbearer, Universe, Tem Eyos Ki, R.I.O.T.S., and half of Soophie Nun Squad! This is my first show in 12 years, and I’m already running through songs in my sleep each night.

And Trusty themselves are playing, with Marcus Lowe on drums!

This tribute will be immediately following a book event I’m doing with fellow author Kim Kelly (Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor)— both at Refuge Church in North Little Rock; book talk at 2:30 pm, show at 4 pm. This will be my first time to ever discuss my forthcoming graphic novel, Fall Through— which is appropriate, since it revolves around the 1990s Arkansas punk underground. See you there!

CORRECTION: I’ve updated the text of this post with the correct event times— please disregard the times stated on the flyers above. Turns out the show must end by 5pm— thanks!

Then on June 10-11, I’m a guest at A2CAF at the Ann Arbor District Library— I’ll be slangin books there at my table, as well as doing a panel/interview. Athenaeum Comic Art will also be at my table during a two-hour window TBD, selling some of my original artwork if anyone’s interested. More details to be added to the events page!