Lunch Break is a short round-up of favorite webcomics appearing here each weekday at noon. Here’s something for you to enjoy over your lunch break or whenever. The premise is simple: it’s another day on the internet. Here’s a new or forgotten comic that seems interesting. Have something to recommend? Email us: crosshatchdispatch@gmail.com.

1. Chester 5000 XYV by Jess Fink // July 16, 2009 [NSFW]
2. “A Few Weeks Later” from Bringing it All Back Home by Box Brown // August 30, 2010
3. “Dinner Date” from Nedroid Picture Diary by Anthony Clark // January 21, 2011
4. Various Valentine’s Day Comics by Nikole Beckwith // February 10, 2011
5. Mari Naomi reading from the “Kiss & Tell” issue #5 of Estrus Comics // March 1, 2008

You’re all gorgeous. Happy Valentine’s Day.

– Sarah Morean

Somewhere in the back of my hipster brain an alarm went off.  Seemed like ComicSpace.com (someone’s answer to MySpace.com back in its heyday) had been silent too long.  It was due for a comeback.  Or something.

Checked the site today and look what I found:

ComicSpace.com as it appears today

What could this mean? And do you care?

I began revisiting the site on July 15, 2010, after trying to find some information on a Guest Strip artist that would help shape his bio. (MJ, quoted below, if you must know. Look for his Guest Strip on Friday.)

ComicSpace.com/smorean as it appeared on July 15, 2010

Apparently, I hadn’t logged in for about three years. Go figure.

After joining in December 2006, it took me about seven months to realize I didn’t know what to do on that site, so I left. Not for any other thing — there wasn’t and still isn’t much competition for ComicSpace as an online social network strictly for cartoonists — but it just wasn’t fulfilling for me. And for many others, I learned, as I clicked through my freinds’ abandoned profiles.  ComicSpace had become a wasteland.  Its most recent user on that date had signed up months ago and I really wondered what that person would find to do on there.

Here are some quick responses from active and inactive ComicSpace users about their experience with the site:

Box Brown:

I am currently owed at least 4 months of ad revenue from comicspace which took over my ads on boxbrown.com a few years back.  They are giving me the runaround and want nothing more than to see them fail.

Comicspace as a whole?  I’ve never figured out any real way to use the site.

Will Dinski:

I only used ComicSpace the first month or so when it was active. I didn’t even know it was down. I don’t use it anymore, really.

I wasn’t sure if maybe other people were still using it. So I keep my comics there in case anyone is interested in reading them.

MJ:

Over all I have made quite a few contacts, as for an audience not so much. Really geared towards comic book field. So if you aren’t creating comic books the contact angle is probably not a viable resource for an audience angle I see no use for it.

I use it weekly to keep up with fellow comic book creators.

Yes they are switching over to a WordPress format. You are able to use all the features WordPress offers albeit you have to upgrade for some features. But all the normal Bells and Whistles are there. I am not sure what else will be available as they are down right now for the upgrade. I was disappointed that ComicSpace allowed so much spam, and it seemed like there was nothing really being done about it. I use it to keep in contact with a few fellow comic book artists like Erik Larsen (Savage Dragon) as well as a few others to see what they are doing, and to post bulletins for projects I’m involved with. Like I mentioned earlier this was geared towards the comic book market creators, and a great place to reach those that create comics.

The actual usefullness for making contacts is great. Especially if you are looking for artists, or writers. But as a place to grab an audience this is not the platform you would want to use. Especially comic strip artists. You will not gain an audience through this venue. We will see what happens when they change over to the new format though, which I am personally not that excited about. I already have enough work to do besides going back into ComicSpace and recoding another WordPress site. I wish they would do something about all that spam that never seems to go away. C’mon if you create comics your in, if not hit the trail. How do you do that? Approval for member requires actual artwork to posted before you are accepted.

Thanks to MJ for illuminating the situation for me.  What I hoped might be a huge overhaul seems to be just a move to a new platform.  Hopefully to shake some bugs out.

It’s too bad, in a way.  ComicSpace was never ideal, but I sort of wish there was a place where cartoonists could gather online and share trade secrets and new artwork that was buzzy and fun like Facebook, but ComicSpace has never made that leap. The best place for cartoonists to gather right now, it seems, is at conventions. Maybe it’s a little old-school, but it’ll do.

- Sarah Morean

Once my darling ex-cartoonist friend Anders made a Kickstarter page to fund his first album I had to take a second look at this Kickstarter thing.  As I write this, his request has been up for one day and already he’s half-way to his goal.  That’s $400 just out of the blue, which completely blows my mind.  Could it be that Anders is very popular and has many rich friends?  Well, not exactly.

Kickstarter is an internet infant, having only been around since April 2009.  If its existence is news to you, I suggest that you read this excellent Publisher’s Weekly article from Terri Heard that illuminates some of the service’s history.  Most interesting to me was that its origins lay in the effort to keep Arrested Development on the air.  Oh, how I wish it had succeeded!

This month’s Wired Magazine also featured Kickstarter in its award-winning Start section.  It reminded me of specific Kickstarter success stories like the Calvin & Hobbes documentary Dear Mr. Watterson which is still openly accepting donations and generating mad cash.  In fact, it’s almost doubled its goal amount through Kickstarter donations.

I’ve lived a number of impulse purchase success stories, including the time I bought an orange coat I totally didn’t need but always receive compliments for wearing.  Basically, I’ve been a big fan of this model even before it existed.  The fact that it’s here now is so remarkable and unbelievable, I hardly appreciated it was real until someone I know well got involved.

Then I remembered an old friend from far away, Box Brown, had already made the Kickstarter system work for him.  Boxy makes the webcomic Bellen! and self-published minis until he won the Xeric to print his graphic novel Love is a Peculiar Type of Thing.  He recently ran a successful Kickstarter campaign that earned him $3,279 to print issues one and two of a new comic series Everything Dies.  We talked over email regarding his experience as a Kickstarter success story.

How long was your Kickstarter page active?

39 Days.

How long after posting it did you reach your goal?

Um, I’m not sure. I think had about 10 days left when I reached $2500. Maybe less. I ended up getting close to $3300. So, people just kept on donating even after I reached my goal.

Was this the first time you used Kickstarter?

Yes, it was.

How difficult has it been/will it be to get the right rewards to the right donors?

For the most part it wasn’t difficult. I thought it would be much worse. There were a few hiccups though: just a few people never got me their addresses! I thought there would be more and luckily the three people who did not send me their addresses were family friends, so I was able to hand them their copies. At least two of the envelopes completely fell apart before they reached their destination. One poor guy just received an empty envelope! But, it’s been fairly smooth sailing otherwise.

How soon after your Kickstarter closed did you receive the funds?

It takes a few weeks. It’s a few days for Amazon to set up and verify your bank account and then it takes two more weeks to transfer the funds. They transfer the cash directly to your checking account which ruled!

Did you think the percentage Kickstarter claimed for their services was worth-while?

For me it was totally worth the cost, it really gets transferred to the donors, kinda. You just have to factor that in to your goal.

How did you learn about Kickstarter?

I think the first one I saw was Jamie Tanner’s Kickstarter. I was totally blown away! But, then I saw Spike’s and the Tiny Kitten Teeth one gaining HUGE success and I thought, I think I could do that too.  Also, the Everything Dies project was really coming together in my mind and Kickstarter seemed like a good fit for it.

Everyone at the lowest levels of donation will receive books 1 or 1+2. This means you’ve pre-sold about 110 copies of your book! That’s awesome. Still, how does this compare to your usual sales? How many copies do you usually print in one run? AND how will do you intend to reach your potential audience for books 1+2 (by which I mean, people who did not participate in the Kickstarter fundraiser)?

Well, it was interesting. Having sold pre-sold all those copies was great. But, it also meant that my “base” had already bought books! These are the people who are great true fans and will usually be super happy to fork over a couple of bucks for books when they come out. So, the first week of actual sales was super slow (or at least it felt that way). Either way though unloading over 100 copies right away felt great for me. It usually takes a month or two to reach that goal (If I’m lucky!). I printed 500 copies of each book for the first run but they seem to be moving. We’ve still got the whole con season to go pretty much! I’ve been selling a few copies here and there on my online store but have been moving more books than usual at the few comic shops that carry my work. The audience for Bellen! and Everything Dies may not generally overlap unfortunately, but it seems to do much better with the analog comics crowd. I also have an ad up at The Comics Reporter.

I had a big book release party/Art Show here in Philly at a comic shop called Brave New Worlds. and books seem to be selling well. They’ve got a great set up there where the customers have to walk through the little art gallery to get the shop and I think that’s helped sales. I’ve already had to replenish their supply.

How does this compare to winning the Xeric? Is there more or less expectation, do you think? Did you ask for enough in your Kickstarter to help cover promotion of these books?

Xeric comes with more prestige for sure. There are plenty of people who will be interested in your book just because it’s a Xeric Book. Kickstarter doesn’t have that appeal. In fact, there are certain people in the business who have made Kickstarter controversial. I don’t know why. As far as promotion goes, I’ve spent money on it, but it really seems that the best promotion is free from places like The Daily Cross Hatch, other blogs and even the local media here in Philly. One thing I have spent money on is sending out promotional copies to lots of different places.

- – -

Just one statement confused me in Boxy’s response:
In fact, there are certain people in the business who have made Kickstarter controversial.

I’ve never known cartoonists to pooh-pooh free money and a built-in audience, but if there are legitimate arguments against using Kickstarter to help fund your next creative pursuit, I’d love to hear them.  Like with any self-publishing venture, if you rely on Kickstarter or your mom or your savings account or whatever, you should be committed to (and comfortable with) self-promotion or you’ll never move a single book.  Kickstarter could be a great resource for the right person, but many other cartoonists benefit from a publisher’s promotional arm or distribution ring.  You should stage a plan of attack, maybe if no one will publish your book, go for the more prestigious Xeric, failing that try for a modest Kickstarter fund, failing that rely on ol’ number one — you!

Additionally, depending on your level of success on Kickstarter, you should prepare yourself to make good on your claim.  Say someone will be written into your book?  Make sure that’s really something you’re comfortable with.  In looking at the high-rollers, it seems that the vanity tiers pay very well, but not everyone’s work lends itself to that kind of patronage.  Just remember that these supporters are investors as well, and you’ll want to make them happy with a prompt return so far as that is possible given your proposal.  The internet’s full of love, as Kickstarter has shown, but it gets pretty spiteful against those who flake on purchase orders and commissions.

I don’t know the statistics for failed comics projects, but here are some Kickstarter success stories:

One Night Stand

Everything Dies #1-2

SketchyCon: A Worldwide Conference of Dr. Sketchy’s Directors

And here’s a few comics-related projects you can still get behind:

Superhero Web Series

Dear Mr. Watterson

Johnny Recon Vol. 1 No. 2

James Kochalka + Pixeljam = Glorkian Warrior

FIXIT magazine for comics and art

Comix Journalism: Send Ted Rall Back to Afghanistan to Get the Real Story

Reading With Pictures: Getting Comics into Schools and Getting Schools into Comics

Good luck!

- Sarah Morean

In this final part of our interview with the Love is a Peculiar Kind of Thing artist, we discuss craft-honing, dream projects, and the ups and down of Internet feedback.

[Part One] [Part Two]

Do you find that a lot of people reading you online and giving you feedback are themselves cartoonists?

Mostly, especially when I first started. It started on LiveJournal and most of the people who were reading it, I could see what they were working on at the same time. It was mostly cartoonists who were where I was also. That was helpful.  On the Internet, everyone’s going to give you feedback and everyone on earth is a critic, so I definitely appreciate it when I get some feedback from cartoonists whose work I respect—not Joe Asshole, or whoever.

Is there a lot of negative stuff going on in those circles?

Uh, nothing really between creators. Anything that’s on the Internet—if you ever go and look at YouTube comments—

That’s the worst of the worst.

Yeah, but if you look at the most innocuous YouTube video, like some kid just videotaping himself, there’s a whole host of people giving negative feedback. When you first start, it can be really painful. I remember getting negative feedback when I first started out. It was heartbreaking. “I’m just some guy doing this. Why are you judging me so harshly?” you have to kind of get over it.

But in some sense that’s why you’re putting it out there—for people to judge.

Yeah, definitely. You’re leaving yourself open for that kind of stuff.

Was working up to print something you’d been planning on doing all along?

Yeah. It’s so weird the way things have changed over the last few years, but that was always the goal. Even as a kid, I wanted to make a book. I really appreciate the actual artifact of a book. I really would enjoy reading everyone’s comic in a book, rather than online, but it’s just accessibility. It’s different now too, because you can be really successful as a Webcomic. You don’t need print.

You’re not subsisting on comic money yet, but at what point did this turn from a hobby to something else? Or do you feel like it hasn’t really crossed that line yet?

No, I think I crossed that line mentally a long time before I should have [laughs]. I thought it was the ultimate thing. Maybe last year or two years ago, I was working for a housing insurance company in New Jersey, and I was putting all of my attention into comics. I was just screwing up at work. Then there was this whole battle in my head where I wanted to take comics seriously, but what’s really important? You have to come to grips with whatever, and I guess I just chose the fantasy life, because I enjoy it more [laughs].

I think people take you as seriously as you take it. I’m not making enough money doing comics to not work. But I’m supplementing my income—I’m definitely semi-professional in that sense. And it’s still a career in that, you know, things are going to progress. You’re putting stuff out, and I’m doing better this year than I was last year. One day I hopefully won’t have a day job, but whatever.

Do you foresee a point when you break from these short, largely semi-autobiographical comics that you’ve been doing all along?

You know, I think I’d ultimately like to do a graphic novel and maybe stretch these shorter stories to the point where I can tell one long cohesive story. But that’s always been really difficult for me. When I was writing a lot in college and post-college, the idea of writing a novel seemed impossible to me. I really don’t have the attention span for it, or something. It seems really challenging, but interesting. I think that would be the ultimate goal. It would be really hard, but I think that, if I were to do it, it would be really satisfying. Something I’m interested in doing is an actual biography of someone else, like Louis Riel or something. Or the Elijah Brubaker book, Reich. I really like history and science—something along those lines would be great, but for the foreseeable future, I’ll probably stick to autobio.

Do you still feel like you’re still at a point where you’re honing your craft.

Yeah, yeah. I’d hate to look back on the stuff that I’m doing now in a year and not have changed. I don’t want to remain stagnant. I hope to get better every day.

Is it clear what areas still need work?

Drawing classes are always going to be helpful. I just try to work on everything I can. Drawing was definitely my weakest skill going into this, which is kind of absurd, because I was doing a comic.

Though there seem to be a lot of people who can make really good comics, but can’t really draw all that well.

Right—but you know, they can, but at some point it becomes style. I remember when I first read American Elf, it was like, “I could do that, come on.” It’s exceedingly simple. You look at stuff, even stuff like Ivan Brunetti’s—if you read his older stuff, he’s making photo-realistic drawings. You look at his newer stuff and it’s a lot more simple, but still incredible. It’s not worse drawing. It’s just simple. Not that I’m up there with those guys.

–Brian Heater

In this second part of our interview, we ask the Xeric Award-winning Love is a Peculiar Type of Thing artist about diving headfirst into the world of Webcomics and how he set about penning his longest piece ever for the Top Shelf 2.0 site.

[Part One]

What are the principle difficulties, as far as working on your longest piece, ever?

It was hard for me at the time, because I was like, “how am I going to start something that epic?”

So the problem was that the story was too long for the ten pages you were allotted?

No, no.

So “epic” meaning the 10 pages themselves?

Yeah. It was so huge. I was like, “how am I going to tell any story that long?” You think more about how you’re going to tell it. Is it going to be straight forward? Will it be visually storytelling? Are you going to have a narrator tell the story? You have to make various decisions, whereas, when I do a Webcomic, it’s a lot more easy to just go ahead and do it.

How do decide which story you’re going to turn into your longest piece? The first story in book seems to be more of an abstraction than a straight forward narrative.

Yeah. When I was working on the stories—they’re based in reality. They’re not fully autobiographical, but they’re based on my life. I was just trying to choose events that felt interesting. There’s one story about money. I was unemployed at the time that I was making the book. I was very low on money the whole time. And when I was making the book, my ten year high school reunion was coming up. I didn’t go, but I was looking at my high school year book at that time, and I had a story about how high school seems so important at the time, when you’re living it. and it seems so silly now. When I was in high school, I didn’t get that at all. I didn’t understand that it was bullshit.

Does doing autobiographical strips tend to have a similar effect as that, insofar as writing up events that seem earth-shattering at the time, and then look far less important when you revisit them?

Yes and no. When you’re looking back on stuff, you can pick the stuff that really was important. But yeah, definitely, you can look back on things and realize that they’re not as important as you originally thought, when you’re looking back on them from a different perspective.

When you were first beginning your career as a cartoonist, at what point did you decide that autobiography was the way you wanted to go?

Very early on. I started doing autobiographical strips because it was much more straightforward and I was a fan of American Elf. It wasn’t until I first read American Elf that I realized that you can make a comic about actual shit that happens. It blew my mind. At one point I kind of got board with writing the daily stuff that I was doing, and I wanted to do more fantastical stuff—more fictionalized things. I started doing crazy, weird strips for a while and then I settled on the current thing, which is kind of based on reality, but not necessarily based on reality.  I make things more interesting.

So that detour that you took into the fantastic still plays something of a role in the current strips.

Yeah—well, I think so. I try to make things as magical as I can without actually riding unicorns or something like that. I try to do that. I don’t know how well I actually do it.

For better and worse, there wasn’t really a time when you were honing your work and not showing it to anybody. You just started doing a strip and stuck it up on the Internet for everyone to see.

Yeah. When I look back now, it wasn’t necessarily stuff that should have gone on the Web, but when you’re working on stuff with a daily deadline, it really keeps you working. When you’re first starting out, you don’t really have an audience. Nobody really sees it except you and your friends. And you get feedback—I think it’s a way to learn. You’re just kind of documenting your progress, and it keeps things fun. In many ways, you do something and it works or it doesn’t work and you take out what you can and move on.

I think it was a lot more fun to do it on the Web, especially at the time. I didn’t really have anyone to show the work to at all or talk about the work. I was able to find a little community on the Web that was helpful. If I was at art school or something, or was surrounded by a lot of likeminded people, I wouldn’t have done it that way. But none of my friends were really into it, at the time. I was going to work every day, and this afforded me the opportunity to be a part of a community.

[Concluded in Part Three.]

–Brian Heater

Box Brown broke into the world of Webcomics with a certain sense of wreckless abandon. Launched in 2006 as a Livejournal blog, his strip Bellen was his first foray into sequential art. Inspired by Kochalka’s America Elf, the comic was a rough entrance the world of autobiographical comics—a trial by fire for the artist who had opted to hone his craft in front of an unforgiving audience.

Brown has come a long way over these past few years, both in terms of storytelling and drawing ability. The forthcoming Love is a Peculiar Type of Thing is a culmination of those lessons learned. The book was born when Top Shelf asked the artist to contribute a story to for its newly launched Website. The result was the new book’s titular strip, which, at pages, was the longest work the artist had ever created.

In honor of the upcoming book—and the fact that the both of us were stuck on the East Coast during Stumptown, we sat down with Brown for a couple of quick questions.

You’re not in Portland, this weekend?

No, I didn’t make it Stumptown. I’ve never been to any of the West Coast conventions, but hopefully I’ll make it out there, sooner or later.

You’re not heavily promoting the new book yet?

Well, I’m not selling the book now, because I want to wait until it’s out in stores. I’ll have a big thing when it comes out.

So it’s just a press push, at this point?

Yeah, yeah.

Have you been getting a decent amount of feedback, thus far?

Yeah. People are talking about it and putting it on their blogs. I feel like I’m getting the word out there, as best I can.

When’s the release date?

The release date, I think, is the first week of June. That’s when it’s shipping. I’m going to debut it at MoCCA.

Are you planning any other pushes? Will you be touring on it at all?

Well, right now it’s just MoCCA and SPX. I don’t know what’s beyond that, but we’ll see.

You’ve been having some issues with those new Diamond minimums.

Yeah, oh my god, it’s ridiculous. I understand why they did it and everything, but… Basically you have to make a $2,500 order. They take a 60-percent discount off the cover price. I was recently reading the list of the top 300 books from last month, and there were probably 150 of them that wouldn’t meet the sales minimums. It sounds like it’s not a huge number, but it is.

Why did you opt to go through Diamond this time?

Well, Diamond is how you get it out into as many stores as possible. I had 1,000 copies printed of the book. I don’t think I can move that many—or it would just take me a really long time. Using Diamond is the best way to hit that as quickly as possible.

So what’s the deal, exactly? If you don’t hit that number, they don’t ship any of your books?

Yeah, yeah, basically. I don’t know what they’re gonna do, though—I don’t know how hard and fast it is, but they’re saying that if you don’t get a certain number of orders, they’re not going to ship any of it.

So why go through Diamond on this one, as opposed to the other collections you’ve released?

Those were a lot smaller run, and I was funding them myself. I never really had a ton of money to put together for a huge run. But with the Xeric Grant, I knew that I would be able to print a lot more of them. Knowing that, I wanted to do a book of all new material, rather than a collection of the stuff that you can already read on the Web for free.

Is it a big shift from the other stuff, thematically?

No. I’d say thematically it’s very similar. It’s the same characters, Ben and Ellen. But there’s more of a story to it—ten page stories. And it’s told in a much more straightforward way than how I tell the Web stuff.

What is it that isn’t exactly straightforward in how you do the Web stuff? The fact that it’s in strip form?

I don’t know—I feel like, when I do the Webcomic, lately I’ve definitely done more of an abstract story, or a really small event. I’m much more linear in the book—the stories have a beginning, middle, and end.

So you give yourself more freedom to experiment online?

Yeah, definitely. With the Webcomic, I do whatever I feel like.  In print I try to be more traditional.

Is it due to the length of the strips? Or because you don’t have the same sort of investment in the print book?

No. It’s weird, lately, with the Webcominc, I’ve been doing a lot more things, visually. I’m willing to focus on a single, small thing. I couldn’t really do that for ten pages. It just wouldn’t work very well for me.

Are the stories in the book the longest that you’ve done, thus far?

Yeah. The first time I’ve ever done a comic that’s more than two pages, was “Love is a Peculiar Kind of Thing” for Top Shelf 2.0. all of the stories I did for the book, I did after that.

Was the length of that story born out of Top Shelf’s guidelines for the site?

Yeah, yeah. They didn’t want to run short stories. They said it won’t necessarily lead to anything in print, but maybe, down the road, it might. So I tried to hit their requirements, format-wise and everything.

[Continued in Part Two.]

–Brian Heater

Chalk it up to the sophomore jinx, but the Second Annual Astoria Comic Con isn’t going quite so well as I had hoped. Sure there will be naysayers who insist that it has something to do with the fact that once again I stubbornly insisted on holding it the same weekend as the San Diego Comic Con. And then there’s the fact that I didn’t advertise or really mention it to anybody. And, of course, nitpickers will likely point out that I held the thing in my tiny backyard in Astoria, Queens.

Honestly, though, I think the whole thing is just a matter of building proper buzz, and that sort of thing takes at least three years of unsuccessful backyard conventions to build. Maybe next year J. Scott Campbell will return my phone calls…

We’ve still got another day-and-a-half to turn this whole thing around. And believe me, once word gets out about those discount-priced hugs, attendees will be fleeing the San Diego convention center like rats from a sinking Watchmen sneak previewing ship. At least it didn’t rain this year–yet…

In the meantime, we put out the word to some of our cartoonist pals and asked them why the hell they weren’t at SDCC either, this weekend. Check out responses from Jeff Smith, Evan Dorkin, Renee French, Tony Millionaire, Tom Hart, and many, many more, after the jump.

Bonus: almost certainly the most adorable picture in the history of The Hatch.
–BH

Liz Baillie: I was too busy having the second best day of my life ever on Friday to even remember San Diego existed. Also my brother is in town this weekend.

Brian “Box” Brown: I finally got to read ACME Novelty Library #17. Plus, I figured hanging around New York I’d maybe run into Paris Hilton, oh wait..

Evan Dorkin: Visiting family, going to a pool party, working on character/prop/background designs for an animated segment Sarah and I wrote for Yo Gabba Gabba! season two, reading Cat Eyed-Boy, playing with my daughter, sleeping.

Chris Duffy (Nick Mag): I’m working–getting back to some cartoonists about Nick Mag work. That way when they return they’ll be like, “oh my God, Chris worked all weekend while I partied with Joss Whedon! I must make good!” Plus, my sister is visiting and I’ll show her my part of the Hudson Valley.

Renee French: Mostly been making drawings for my project Toaster Lodge and then at night going to the movies. We saw Werner Herzog’s movie, Encounters at the End the World, which i want to see again, and Guillaume Canet’s film, Tell No One, which was great. But mostly just drawing and putting a lot of them up on my blog.

Tom Hart: I spent Friday in a final eight-hour critiquing and sharing session with the 37 SVA pre-college cartooning teenagers. Keith Mayerson, Lauren Weinstein, and I spent three weeks teaching them comics, cartooning, drawing. They finished 10 page stories and the last day we plastered the walls with the original art and read each story out loud. It was fabulous, though Lauren had to run to SDCC and couldn’t be there. Saturday I spent in a post-class funk. I skated around the park, thinking I was seeing the faces of my students everywhere: look! There’s Kevin! Look, is that Mia? Oh! It’s Sarah! Sunday is to cleaning, getting back to drawing ,and going to the farmer’s market.

Dean Haspiel: I’ll be in Montauk, NY on a beach with my girlfriend at our friend’s clam bake party. I don’t eat clams so I’ll probably eat hot dogs and burgers. I might read a comic book or two, while scoring a tan.

Jeff Mason (Alternative Comics): I got married last weekend and we went on a short honeymoon. This weekend we went to our friend’s big birthday party. After having gone to the show every year for many many years, San Diego has really just become too overwhelming for me. For me, going to San Diego is kind of like going to the Olympics, except that it happens every year, and that I don’t get the help of the USOC.

Tony Millionaire: I was busy at the drawing table all weekend working on episode eight of The Drinky Crow Show. I figured I’d let somebody else win all the Eisners this year.

Sarah Morean: On Saturday, I will attend JP Coovert and Jacie Anderson’s wedding. They met at SCAD while he studied comics and she studied fashion design about six years ago. Now he’s got his master’s from the Center for Cartooning Studies and she designs patterns for Target. She liked him in college because they both wore Chuck Taylors. For their wedding, they’re wearing “No Sweat” Chuck Taylor look-a-likes. “All the sentiment, without the sweat.” The ceremony will take place in the Japanese Garden at the Como Park Zoo and Conservatory in St Paul, MN. I’m very excited for them. On Sunday, Leah and Cooper are making pizza for me and Will at their place. Also, I will knit.

Mari Naomi: I’m drawing comics, attending figure drawing class, and celebrating my best friend’s birthday and our 20th friendship anniversary!

Aaron Renier: Dressing up like Hurley on Lost and finding old candy bars to eat under my couch.

Eric Reynolds (Fantagraphics): A picture says it all, no?

Jeff Smith: I’m in the middle of a year-long hiatus from all comic book shows. I have some friends who live on a lake, and I’m going swimming tomorrow. Nice place with sailboats and cliffs to jump off. But I enjoy reading about the Comic Con on the blogs. Have fun, everyone. See you next year!

Jeremy Tinder: I’m (sadly) not in San Diego because I’m working on comics! I’m working on a 24-pager called Mister Misty, which should be released later this year or early next year. I’m also teaching a lot of kid’s classes in animation, digital video production and drawing this summer, so I’m pretty worn out. I might attend SPX this fall-I’ve got a 10-pager for the new issue of Papercutter, which should be out for the show. I hope to have new books out next summer, to warrant an appearance at Comic Con.

Julia Wertz: Moving, drinking Bloody Marys midday, dusting the crumbs out of my keyboard.

Skip Williamson: I’m in White River Junction VT. Almost as far away as I could be and still be in the U.S.

David Yurkovich: Moving into a house this weekend. After years of apartment life, we finally are settling into a house with an orange tree and a pool. So, wish I was there, but I’m looking forward to going for a swim tomorrow.