I’ll be doing a local book talk/signing for the new expanded paperback edition of my Eisner Award-nominated Save It For Later on Wednesday, August 10th at 6:30pm— in conversation with national treasure, musician, artist, and Hopscotch Coffee co-owner Erin Tobey!
We’ll be at Morgenstern Books (849 S. Auto Mall Rd.)— bring or buy copies of any of my other books as well, and I’m happy to sign & sketch in them. Thanks— spread the word and I’ll see you there!
We’re all deeply honored for our work on Run to have received this year’s Eisner Award for Best Graphic Memoir— a lot of love and dedication went into helping take John Lewis’ final living work across the finish line. Thanks to everyone who voted for either Run or Save It For Later in the Eisners this year, who came out to a panel, who helped John-Miles Lewis feel at home in the comics community, who attended a Save It For Later, Run, or Two Dead signing, and thanks to everyone at San Diego Comic-Con who did a good job following basic health and masking rules— I was encouraged by the general sense of consideration!
I’m still testing negative as of this morning— if you attended, I urge you to continue testing daily until you hit that sweet 3-day mark.
After incredible demand from educators and library workers, I’m happy to announce that my recent comic from the Booklist Guide To Graphic Novels In Libraries is officially available as a downloadable poster, thanks to the great folks at the American Library Association!
The poster is formatted for 18”x24”, and can be printed out at any comparable ratio or size. Please spread the word for any comics-loving people in your community, school, library, bookstore, comics shop, or family!
I’ll be at San Diego Comic Con this weekend, after 3 years away! Here’s my schedule of signings and panels:
SATURDAY, JULY 23:
10am, Room 6DE: Run panel w/ Andrew Aydin, L. Fury, & John-Miles Lewis.
12:00-12:40 pm, Abrams booth 1217: Run signing w/ Andrew Aydin & L. Fury.
1:00-2:00 pm, Room 4: “Express Yourself: Activism Through the Comic Arts” panel w/ Cecil Castellucci, presented in cooperation with the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.
3:00-4:00 pm, Abrams booth 1217: Save It For Later signing— debuting the expanded paperback edition, not available in stores until August 9th!
SUNDAY, JULY 24:
11:00 am-12:00 pm, Gallery 13 booth 1128: Two Dead signing.
Also of note: Both Save It For Later and Run are Eisner Award nominees for “Best Graphic Memoir”— winners will be announced at the Eisner Awards ceremony on Friday, July 22nd!
The world lost John Lewis two years ago today, and sharing that loss, I additionally lost a friend, collaborator, and personal hero. Someone who’s guided my approach to parenthood and fellowship as much as he guided my social and political sensibilities— because they’re all intertwined.
I’m re-upping a piece Andrew Aydin and I wrote for CNN two years ago— every word burns brighter, and the warning is just as stark:
“It is no vindication that today his mandate is increasingly seen as a necessity for the very survival of our democracy. We've all lived the consequences of nationalist myth clouding our shared history, as well as the struggles endured to maintain a precarious democracy. But we're only at the beginning of those potentially catastrophic consequences. Truth matters. History — told by the people who lived it — can and will determine our ability to sustain and fight for a society holding actual equality, actual justice, actual freedom, and actual peace as ideals.
“John Lewis spent his massive lifetime marching toward that promise, and we must fulfill it. We can. But we must do it together, now, even with the possibility that nothing already lost will return.”
Read the full piece here. Then show up. Truly, everything depends on it— or it all goes away.
I’m proud to participate in this upcoming “Banned Comics & Education” panel this Friday, July 15th at noon Eastern Time alongside the great Jerry Craft, Laurie Halse Anderson, and Tim Smyth! Please register for the panel here.
If you’re interested, I’ve recently made 3 short comics covering interrelated aspects of the mainstreamed fascist right’s very serious push to enact memory laws and limit access (in schools, libraries, AND private businesses) to histories and fiction featuring the perspectives and voices of people of color and LGBTQ+ people:
Part 1— “Shelf It” via The Nib
Part 2— “Divisive Concepts” op-ed w/ Andrew Aydin via Washington Post
Part 3— “Comics and Their Strengths” info-comic via Booklist
I have a new one-page comic in the American Library Association’s Booklist Guide to Graphic Novels in Libraries, specifically outlining the many unique strengths (and one important vulnerability) of comics as a medium/language/format— it’s crucial that educators, library workers, creators, journalists, and comics-readers become familiar with how best to describe the value of comics in light of organized far-right campaigns of book challenges, bans, and intimidation of educators and library workers.
Comics are on the forefront of this push to control who has access to information, history, perspectives, and experiences outside a predominantly white, straight, fake-Christian patriarchal identity.
You can download a PDF version of the comic here! Please feel free to print out and distribute.
I’m currently in discussions with ALA about making an official poster of this comic for distribution in schools and libraries— more info as that develops.
A wonderful surprise showed up in the mail today— a lifetime achievement award from this year’s SPACE indie comics expo in Columbus, Ohio! SPACE was the very first Midwestern comics show I ever tabled, and I’ve attended most years since 2004.
Thank you so much to Bob Corby for his dedication to our creative community, and for being a great dude. I’ve got about 50 years’ more cartooning left in me, and I hope to fulfill the promise of this award— thank you for your faith & support!
The first copy of the expanded paperback edition of Save It For Later just arrived, and it looks great! These come with a new topical discussion between Derf Backderf and I, some process thumbnails, citations and a recommended reading list— it’ll be available everywhere on August 8th from Abrams ComicArts. I’ll be signing copies at the paperback debut for San Diego Comic Con, July 22-24th!
You can find out more here, or pre-order via IndieBound, Bookshop, or Amazon here.
Save It For Later is currently an Eisner Award nominee for Best Graphic Memoir— eligible voters, please consider my book and vote by June 8th! Winners will be announced at the Eisner Awards ceremony on July 22nd at SDCC.
More info on signings, etc. soon. Thanks!
I’m thrilled to announce that both Save It For Later (my solo graphic essay) and Run (written by Andrew Aydin & John Lewis, most art by L. Fury, first chapter/spot illustrations/sound effects by me, lettering by Chris Ross and me)have been nominated for Eisner Awards this year— in the same category, Best Graphic Memoir! Thanks to everyone’s faith in my work— this is a slightly weird situation to be in, so I urge you to vote as you see fit if you’re an eligible Eisner voter.
The new, expanded paperback edition of Save It For Later will be debuting at San Diego Comic Con— more info on signings & panels there soon!
The Eisner winners will be announced on Friday evening, July 22nd at Comic-Con International in sweet sweet San Diego— see you there!
I highly recommend a new book out next week: But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust (New Jewish Press/ University of Toronto Press), a graphic memoir anthology featuring cartoonists’ accounts of first-person Holocaust survivor experiences based on interviews and research.
Cartoonists featured are the amazing Barbara Yelin (Irmina), Gilad Seliktar, and my good friend & remote studio-mate Miriam Libicki (whose comics essay collection Toward A Hot Jew is a must, and keep an eye out for her upcoming book Glasnost Kids).
My blurb: “But I Live is an essential document. Libicki, Yelin, and Seliktar masterfully use the unique narrative strengths of comics to convey survivors’ experiences with sensitivity and humanity, allowing readers to experience and understand these personal accounts with appropriate empathy and urgency.”
You can order But I Live directly from the publisher, at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or please order from your local comics shop or independent bookstore. Thanks!
Andrew Aydin and I got the band back together, conjuring the voice, spirit, and concerns of our collaborator and friend John Lewis, in a Washington Post comics op-ed piece to continue highlighting the dangers of ongoing far-right legislative efforts to diminish and outlaw the inclusion of uncomfortable history (largely through the lens of Black and LGBTQ voices) in school curricula and libraries. Please do what you can where you live to speak up for the importance of including truthful first-person historical accounts in our communities!
This follows a related comic I did called “Shelf It” for The Nib in February, shedding light on the historical context for comics as targets of book bans and challenges— please read that piece as well. Thank you!
What an honor to collaborate a bit with the amazing Sarah Kendzior & Andrea Chalupa for their Gaslit Nation podcast— I made a classic-concert-style poster for their upcoming spring series, “Rising Up From The Ashes: Cassandras & Other Experts On Rebuilding Democracy”!
In addition to her journalism work, Andrea Chalupa wrote and produced the incredibly relevant film Mr. Jones, which conveys a journalist’s experience witnessing the Soviet mass starvation campaign in 1930’s Ukraine, and Sarah Kendzior is a gifted, incisive writer and expert on authoritarian states— her books The View From Flyover Country and Hiding In Plain Sight are essential, and her November 2016 essay “We’re heading into dark times. This is how to be your own light in the Age of Trump” was probably the single biggest inspiration leading to my decision to make Save It For Later.
Please take a moment to check out their reading guides and action guides, and support them on Patreon if you have the means. Thanks!
I’ll be in Vienna, Austria this weekend for Erich Fried Tage Literary Festival, discussing SAVE IT FOR LATER on Saturday, April 2nd at 6:00pm at Literaturhaus (Siedengasse 13). I look forward to seeing you there!
If you’re interested in more info on Save It For Later, it’s been published in German by the fine folks at Carlsen.
I’ll be doing two events in Hamburg, Germany this week for my book Save It For Later (German edition published by Carlsen):
Wednesday, March 23rd @ 5pm: signing (with Moritz Wienert) at Strips & Stories (Wohlwillstraße 28).
Thursday, March 24th @ 7pm: discussing Save It For Later (with Franziska Becker) at Literaturhaus (Schwanenwik 38).
Please wear a mask and use precautions to prevent spread of the virus. To old friends and acquaintances: out of caution, I will not be hanging out apart from these two events. Thank you for understanding!
Pretty blown away to see Run make a cameo on the new Bel-Air reboot!
It’s amazing to see that March made its way into a scene of the new The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder series on Disney Plus! Congressman Lewis would be beaming. Thanks to everyone who gave me a heads up!
Happy birthday and loving memories of the great John Lewis, who would’ve turned 82 today. An unfulfilled plan from early on in our collaboration was to go fishing back at a pond back on his family’s land in Alabama— so that’s what I’ve conjured here over the weekend.
Today I’ll be privately enjoying memories of our time together, and reflecting on his lifetime of commitment as we move through an absolutely terrifying time, in which the very survival of democracy is in question. Love to everybody.
I’m happy to announce that a new paperback edition of Save It For Later will be released by Abrams ComicArts on August 9th, with an extra 16 pages of material!
This edition clocks in at 176 pages and includes an in-depth, sourced conversation between fellow cartoonist Derf Backderf (Kent State, My Friend Dahmer, Trashed) and myself about our work in larger personal, social and historical contexts, as well as a recommended reading list for work that helped inform the book, and some process pages for making Save It For Later.
Save It For Later has been recognized on the American Library Association’s 2021 “Best Graphic Novels for Adults” list, on best-of-2021 lists from NPR, Forbes, Publishers Weekly Critics’ Poll, CBR, Multiversity, and Geekcast Radio, and was a Harvey Awards nominee for “Book of the Year.” Thanks for the love and support, everyone!
Destroy fascism and the fascists themselves.
My new comic is up at The Nib: some early warning signs of this wave of book bans and intimidation while making March back in 2014, with comics as an easy target to remove truthful historical accounts from the classroom.
Please read and share on whatever platforms you may use— and importantly, let the world know about the comics which have transformed and expanded your ways of thinking about the world! Thank you.
