I just want it noted that I resisted the temptation to indulge in any “Houston, We Have a Lecture”-style headings. I figure the fine residents of America’s fourth largest city must be pretty sick of that phrase by now.

If you’re in the Houston area, drop by and say Hi. Lecture starts at 7 pm Tuesday.

I’m in transit Monday-Wednesday, so back to posting later this week.

Now this is what previews for comics should look like!

Jen Wang’s Koko Be Good is a book I’ve been waiting for for a while.

I’ll get details soon on where and when you can do this trick at home.

[Edit to Add: Jen has more details here.]

Heidi MacDonald’s comics news site The Beat has jumped to its own domain comicsbeat.com after 3 and 1/2 years under the Publishers Weekly umbrella.

The Beat is one of three comics news sites that I’d take to a desert island with me (you know that desert island with wifi and electricity, but a strange way of limiting which IP addresses you can… okay, maybe that metaphor doesn’t work anymore).

Of those three, no one’s coverage is more comprehensive than Dirk’s and no one takes a deeper look at the scene than Tom, but somehow Heidi’s style of coverage managed to embody the tone of the last ten years as—against all odds—comics and geek culture not only joined the mainstream, but in some moments nearly became the mainstream.

Looking forward to her take on the next ten.

Now that France’s huge annual comics festival in Angoulême is concluded, I can share with you my contribution to Cent pour Cent (or “100 for 100″), an exhibition at the city’s newly refurbished comics museum.

One hundred comics artists from around the globe were asked to choose a piece of classic comics art from the museum’s vast collection of originals and then remix or re-imagine the work any way we liked.

I chose an Ernie Bushmiller Fritzi Ritz page (original here) and, deconstructed it to death. Take a look if you dare. (NSFW)

I wasn’t able to attend Angoulême this year, but I guess I was there in spirit, both in the exhibition, and in what seems now to be an annual tradition that I’m told grew out its stateside counterpart.

It’s a testament to how completely I’m wrapped up in the graphic novel that I forgot to post about Hourly Comics Day (offspring of 24HCD) until reader T. Diaz reminded me by email just now.

Technically, It’s not over yet as I post this (Monday at 5:44pm), but… yeah… I suck.

Anyway Go! Look! Enjoy!

Boy, first the Flatiron Building and now this?

Working with First Second and Mark Siegel is turning out to be a pretty cool gig.

Dan Abram’s Geekosystem pinged me this morning, telling me I’d made some Top 30 Geeky Writers list, so I’m guessing the brand new site sent out a bunch of these emails in hopes that a lot of people on the list would link back to them.

Won’t work on me, though. I’m on to them.

Oh, wait…

(Actually, they put me next to Chabon and Mignola, so I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth; that list would make one hell of a dinner party.)

I wasn’t checking Twitter much yesterday, but Ivy (my wife, not the comic book character this time) pointed out @BGFCentral’s knowing tweet:

Only men talking in the video, only male hands using the product in the video. Yup. Explains the name.

Can’t comment on the product yet—haven’t tried it—though various specs sound a bit underwhelming if it’s going to be displaying full-sized comics spreads. I guess we’ll see.

[Video via Heidi]

Just got the fifth and last installment of Sarah Oleksyk’s Ivy in the mail. Ivy sports confident storytelling and accomplished artwork that’s been getting better throughout the series. (Also gotta love the title, since it happens to be the name of the woman I love, but that’s neither here nor there).

I’ve been studying it for Oleksyk’s use of a middle tone with black and white artwork since I’ve been toying with similar approaches for my graphic novel. There’s something very warm and solid about the approach that I like. Seth does something similar in a lot of his books, though Oleksyk goes for more naturalistic contours to nice effect.

Each chapter of Ivy is available as a thick self-published “mini” (actually 8.5″ x 7″, folded-over legal sheets). You can contact the artist to buy the whole set of five books for $20 here. As a self-printed story clocking in at close to 200 pages, it’s a pretty good deal. You can also read an excerpt from the first volume here.

Oleksyk’s been at it for a while, but may be a relatively new name for many out there. Based on her continuing growth as an artist, I look forward to hearing the name with increasing frequency in the future.

Raina Telgemeier’s graphic memoir for young readers Smile is set to drop a week from today. There’s a short excerpt here and you can even watch a youtube trailer for the book here.

Smile is a classic all-ages comic of a kind we don’t see nearly enough. Honest, funny, moving, and personal. And Telgemeier’s clear, smart storytelling rocks as always.

The potential for this sort of comic shouldn’t be underestimated. I’d wager that if you put copies of Smile in any orthodontist’s office in the country, they’d be read to pieces by that (admittedly captive) audience.

There are so many subjects that could benefit from this treatment. Of all the pleasures that fiction offers, few have had such a consistent track record of building reader loyalty as a sense of personal connection. It was one of the key ingredients in Manga’s meteoric rise in the late 20th Century. There were manga series targeted at virtually any job, sport, game, social situation, or personal trauma you could name. “Hey, there’s a comic about me!” is one hell of a selling point.

When I look at a class filled with would-be comics artists, I know that most if not all of them want to break into the market we have now. But not every new comic has to fit into a shelf that’s already there. Some have the potential to create a new shelves out of thin air. And we need new shelves.