International breastfeeding symbol, designed by cartoonist Matt Daigle. Photo taken at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Yeah, yeah, nobody reads site blogs anymore, but I have a lot to talk about—more than can fit in a tweet—and this seemed as good a place as any to put it all into words…

I’m still working feverishly on my massive book about visual communication. The second draft of my (neurotically-tight) layouts ran 571 pages, and I’m determined, as I plow through my third—and hopefully final—draft, to make it substantially shorter and less rambling. Wish me luck!

The book has taken me years so far, but I sincerely believe it’ll be worth it. It’s a preposterously ambitious full color project covering the evolution and biology of vision; principles of visual perception; demonstrations of how visual elements behave in the mind’s eye; best practices for clarity, explanation, and effective rhetoric; and some personal reflections on our family’s experiences with blindness.

Oh, and I’m also working on a big secret project we hope to announce in the coming months!

I still haven’t gotten Covid as of this writing—fingers crossed!—but the pandemic at large did keep us home for big stretches of 2020-2022. Nevertheless, I’ve continued to do my lectures and workshops, albeit virtually in some cases. Swing by the presentations page for more info.

New for this month: We’re happy to announce a gorgeous new edition of my 2015 graphic novel The Sculptor (speaking of five hundred page books that took years). 

As of this writing, there’s still a chance that it will be a movie, by the way. We’ll see! Not counting any eggs before they’re hatched, but you never know…

We passed some milestones in the last couple of years. I’m now officially OLD, having received the Eisner Awards’ Hall of Fame award last year. The globe design was based on a page from my 1993 book Understanding Comics so it was kinda nice to finally get my hands on one.

But we also passed a kind of milestone no one can ever be prepared for… 

On April 28 of this year, Ivy died in a car accident on her way to bring our youngest, Winter, home from the University of Michigan where she had just gotten her masters degree. Ivy was 61 years old. We had been married for 34 years.

I’ve written about Ivy’s death only sparsely so far, because such a bottomless loss can’t be summed up in words, but I’ll do my best to at least relay the essentials here.

I met Ivy during my first weeks of college in 1978. I fell in love with her the following year, but I carried that love for the next seven years secretly as she had been otherwise engaged in one way or another throughout that time. 

But when the stars finally aligned in my favor, I seized my chance, and on December 23, 1986, I told Ivy that I loved her, and one year, one month, and one day later, we were married.

Ivy was funny, kind, creative, endlessly talkative, sexy, and smarter than me in oh so many ways—but she was also prey to fits of depression. The highs and the lows of living with her were exhilarating and exhausting. 

She was my “muse” in the old, romantic sense; a force of life and love, an inspiration. She inspired characters in my work (especially and explicitly Meg in The Sculptor), and she was also a muse for the hundreds of young actors she taught and directed over the years in local children’s theatre productions.

Ivy and I battled infertility for four years before having our first child, Sky; a pregnacy that began with in vitro fertilization (IVF) and ended with a cesarean. But when Sky’s little sister, Winter, was conceived the old-fashioned way two years later, Ivy battled just as hard to have as little intervention as possible and succeeded there too. 

Ivy was the most dedicated and loving mother I’ve ever known. Our life together as a family was filled with laughter, rapid-fire conversations, arguments, creativity, and so, so many long road trips, including a year-long 50 state tour from 2006 to 2007. And dogs. Always dogs. And moving, we were always moving from place to place; always renting, never owning… Always waiting on the next check.

Ivy was my best friend. We never ran out of things to talk about. We never ran out of ways to say “I love you.” 

I told our grief counselor how my time with Ivy always felt like I was getting away with something; how life with her always felt new; how I always got the same rush of endorphins or whatever that lovers get when they’re young; a feeling that’s supposed to wear off in time; how it always felt as if we had just eloped, as if we had just met. 

And the counselor laughed and told me we were “freaks”; that what we had was not remotely normal. And I believe it. 

I loved her then, I love her now, I will love her for the rest of my life.

And I will never stop giving thanks for the time we had.

For a while now, I’ve been working on my not-so-secret project: a big nonfiction comic about visual communication across disciplines.

This blog will continue to be pretty quiet while I toil away at the book, but bits and pieces have been showing up in my visual lecture as well. If you manage to catch me on the road anytime in the next year or two, you’re bound to see evidence of this particular obsession.

Visual communication and education have been a long-standing fascination of mine. Nonfiction comics artists, data journalists, educational animators, visual facilitators, signage & wayfinding experts, visual presenters, even those who study facial expressions and body language; they’re all engaged in the struggle to better understand how we learn through seeing. But they’re too often knocking on the same door; trying to reinvent the wheel; unknowingly stumbling upon the same principles as their distant colleagues.

I’m hoping that I can articulate some of those common principles and help stitch together those disparate fields in a useful way. I don’t have a title yet, but I often describe it as “an Elements of Style for visual communication.” [Update: possibly a mistake, according to Neil Cohn who directed my attention to this.]

I’m hoping it won’t run quite as long as the last book. Right now, I’m doing research enough for a very long book, but I’m hoping to apply it toward writing a short one. We’ll see!

Anyway, don’t expect a lot of blog updates for a while. Follow me on Twitter for more frequent chatter on various topics (including politics—sorry!), but when the book is finally ready, I’ll certainly post about it in both places.

When I finished the script and layouts for The Sculptor a few years back, there were parts of the story that meant one thing at the time, but would change meaning by the time it was published; and keep changing meaning in one case.

One of David’s night sculptures, above, is a case in point. When I included it among his many crazy bits of urban vandalism, it was just a jab at a rich demented celebrity with just a little power. Obviously, that power multiplied considerably this year. Now, the thing looks purely political but it really wasn’t so much at the time.

Another was the scene where David and Meg are walking down 5th Avenue and see several naked women on the steps of St. Patricks Cathedral, engaged in some kind of protest. David’s explanation: “Somebody must have said something in Rome again,” which made perfect sense with the hyper-conservative Pope Benedict, but seems almost to have the reverse meaning with his successor; as if the new Pope might’ve somehow encouraged it!

Finally, there was a line late in the book about Ukraine, written before the Russian annexation of Crimea. It still makes sense, but the meaning definitely got way darker. Note the spelling error in panel 5; caught before it went to press, I’m happy to say.

Any book is bound to change meaning over time, usually after they’re published. But I guess a little in-process change is inevitable when you’re as slow as I am!

On Saturday, May 21, I’ll be joining Ryan Germick onstage at the music and technology festival Moogfest for a conversation. It’s a just a quick stop on the way home from Atlanta’s HOW Design Live, but it sounded like fun and I always enjoy speaking with Ryan. No big deal, except for one thing: Moogfest is in Durham, North Carolina.

North Carolina recently passed House Bill 2, widely and rightly condemned for its treatment of transgender people. An encouragingly long list of corporations, performers, and other public figures have called out North Carolina for what they felt was a hateful and ignorant law—’cause it is—and a number of boycotts followed.

The musicians and other creative types involved with Moogfest, though, have decided to stay and protest. So barring any change of plans by that community, it looks like I’ll be there with them. I don’t know if my voice will make much difference (I’m not a headliner or anything, just a small fish in that extremely cool pond) but I’ll add my voice to theirs as best I can.

One of my most important early musical experiences, when I was still in elementary school, was listening to the electronic music of the artist then known as “Walter” Carlos. I used to sit in my father’s big easy chair, between the speakers, and slow down Carlos’ Baroque albums to half speed and listen to each and every note as if transcribing a conversation. I was fascinated by that musical landscape, and by later original compositions on A Clockwork Orange and other recordings.

Moogfest is named for Robert Moog, late father of the Moog synthesizer, which was used on those recordings. He was a good friend of Walter so far as I know, and a good friend still when Walter became Wendy; one of the first public figures to undergo gender reassignment surgery.

Wendy Carlos is a Trans icon today; a musical pioneer but also a social one. She helped usher in the future on two fronts. In that spirit, I’m glad to see Moogfest doing what they can to oppose those who want to drag society back into the past.

Here’s the MoogFest official statement opposing HB2.

It’s only February 2016, but Tom Hart’s incandescent memoir about the loss of his (and wife Leela Corman‘s) two year-old daughter will be talked about all year, and I’m confident it will come up again in year-end book of the year round-ups.

I know Tom and Leela, and briefly met Rosalie as a baby. But even strangers to their family will know them intimately when the story’s done. I hope anyone who stumbles on this page will give the book a try.

It’s that time again!

In February, I’ll be bringing the Two-Day Making Comics Workshop back to The Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art for a fifth year.

14 hours of everything I can teach you through lectures and hands-on exercises. An intense look at the art of telling stories visually.

The workshops welcome everyone from experienced artists to stick figure beginners. We have a great time every year, and everybody learns a lot, including me.

Here’s the link to SIGN UP. As always, availability is limited. See you in February!

Comic-Con 2015 is around the corner!

I’m a special guest this year so the whole family is coming down to sunny San Diego once again.

Winter was born immediately following Con in 1995. She pointed out the other day that she’d been to every single day of Con held during her lifetime. So Wednesday’s Preview Night is a must, to say the least…

SIGNINGS AND PANELS:

Thursday, July 9 • 1:30pm – 2:30pm
First Second: What’s in a Page?
Led by First Second editorial director Mark Siegel, four cartoonists take a close look at their own work and each other’s, looking in depth at the text and art in a single page of comics, and what’s hidden under the surface: panel structure, emotional complexity, and creative influences. With Scott McCloud (The Sculptor), Rafael Rosado (Dragons Beware!), Aron Steinke (The Zoo Box), and Gene Luen Yang ( Secret Coders).
Room 4

Thursday, July 9 • 2:30pm – 3:30pm
Comics Arts Conference #4: Eisner vs. Eisner: The Spirit at 75
Panelists Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics), Michael Uslan (Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice), Trina Robbins ( Pretty in Ink: American Women Cartoonists 1896-2013), Karen Green (Columbia University), Jared Gardner (Ohio State University), and moderator Danny Fingeroth (Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics and the Creation of the Superhero) discuss the two major phases of Will Eisner’s career. Beginning with the 1940 creation of his iconic character the Spirit, used by Eisner to tell stories of sophistication and depth, the discussion will then shift to his 1970s reinvention of comics, catalyzing the literary comics movement with A Contract with God, the first of many graphic novels he’d create.
Room 26AB

———————-

Friday, July 10 • 10:00am – 11:00am
Spotlight on Scott McCloud
Text and images-the combination of these two is what makes a comic. But how do you move beyond that simple fusion to create a true story, with characters, plot, and narrative depth? Renowned, best-selling authors Scott McCloud (The Sculptor) and Gene Luen Yang (Secret Coders) discuss what goes on behind the scenes when telling stories in graphic novel form, as well as the creative development of McCloud’s bestselling graphic novel The Sculptor.
Room 9

Friday, July 10 • 11:30pm – 1:30pm
Signing at the First Second Booth
Booth 1323

———————-

Saturday, July 11 • 12:30pm – 2:00pm
Signing at the First Second Booth
Booth 1323

Saturday, July 11 • 4:00pm – 5:15pm
Signing at the CBLDF Booth
Booth 1918

———————-

Sunday, July 12 • 12:00pm – 1:00pm
Signing at the HarperCollins Booth
Booth 1029

Stop by and say Hi if you can make it! Larry Marder always said it’s the “gathering of the tribes” and so it is. And the gathering is bigger than ever.

Okay, next up!

I’ve updated the sidebar at right with details about our national and international travel in the next couple of months.

Some of the mini-tours overseas are still waiting on specifics, but I’ll add details to the sidebar as they come in. Meanwhile, here’s a summary in plain English.

First it’s The U.K. and Germany (details soon). Then I fly home for the visual lecture at Wittenberg University on March 16, while Ivy heads back to the U.K. to cool her heels.

Next, we rendezvous in Paris for the Book Fair, as well as stops in Lyon and in Brussels.

From there we head back to the States, and drive to three schools to perform the visual lecture: Mississippi State University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Rutgers University Camden (details TBA).

Then, I’ll be a special guest at the MoCCA Festival in New York before we fly to the Netherlands, Spain, and Italy. THAT is all in March and April.

But then, with May comes the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF), and in July, Comic-Con International in San Diego—special guests at both. Hope you can make at least one, they’re great shows!

That’s our crazy 2015 so far. Let’s see how much crazier it will be by the time it’s done. And remember to contact me if you’d like the big visual lecture to come to your school or organization.

[Enlarge]

The Sculptor drops February 3 and we’re hitting the ground running with the official First Second U.S. Tour of 14 cities in 16 days, followed by six additional European tours in support of our foreign editions, plus presentations in at least four additional American cities; all in just three months (February, March, and April).

So if you can get to New York City, Portland ME, Boston, Washington DC, Houston, Austin, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland OR, Seattle, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Lansing MI, Huntington Beach CA (details at right), Burlington VT, Mississippi, Richmond VA, Springfield OH (details soon), or one of our multiple locations in England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands (details soon), I hope I’ll have the pleasure of meeting you in the next 100 days.

Meanwhile, plans are heating up fast for summer, fall, and winter, with major convention announcements in the offing and even more appearances springing up around the world.

Most of our official publisher-sponsored tour stops (see above and at right) will be conversational, improvised events with some visuals included, focused on my graphic novel.

Meanwhile I’m also scheduling the big visual lecture throughout the year. That one is the huge fast-moving presentation on comics and visual communication which will be steadily evolving all year (I’ve developed a special interest in some of the broader issues of visual education, but more on that later). If your school or other organization would like to get info on THAT opportunity, feel free to drop me a line.

Regardless of where it happens, let’s meet soon. We have A LOT to talk about!