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. Harvey Pekar Tribute by Dean Haspiel // December 2010
2. Eight Days a Week, is Not Enough by Andrew Lorenzi // November 1, 2007
3. Mom’s Eulogy by Paul Abbamondi // December 27, 2010
4. Untitled by Michael Deforge // January 2, 2011
5. Archery by Sara Edward-Corbett // date unknown

– Sarah Morean

It was standing room only on Sunday night—or kneeling, rather, as audience members contorted bodies around the projector’s beam cutting through the center of the room. The consensus, it seems, amongst nearly everyone packed into KGB Bar on Manhattan’s East 4th st. was that the bi-annual comics event had finally outgrown its old home amongst the strangely homey décor of Soviet-era Russian memorabilia lining the walls.

Over the years the event has become one of the best-loved in the New York indie comics scene, hosted by Tom Hart twice-yearly—on Easter Sunday and the Sunday following Thanksgiving, the latter of which happily boasts the tagline, ‘Come digest that tryptophan with comix!’

Despite said poultry-induced sluggishness, widespread jetlag, the stormy weather, and the innate desire to spend the bulk  of the weekend on the business end of a treadmill, the turnout seems to perpetual increase, year after year, thanks in no small part to the consistently stellar lineup of comics artists reading their work alongside panels projected large on a bedsheet pulled taut along the front wall of the bar.

This year Jonathan Ames and Dean Haspiel shared the headlining spot, the former reading from the duo’s recent Vertigo release, The Alcoholic. Also on board were fellow Act-I-Vater, Fishtown’s Kevin Colden; How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less author, Sarah Glidden; and Matthew Thurber, whose 1-800-Mice #1 debuted on Brooklyn’s Picturebox, last winter.

Colden stared the evening off with the first few pages of his recent IDW release, Fishtown. The book, which follows the based-on-real-events murder of a teenager in the Fishtown district of Philadelphia, highlighted the decided change in tone of this year’s selections, which were a touch more solemn than those of past events. All of the artists present, Colden included, however, made a point to bring a bit of levity to the otherwise serious nature of their works. Colden added sound effects to his piece, highlighting the already absurd nature of reading aloud from a comic book in front of a packed East Village bar.

Thurber was on second, with an innovative presentation that proved the surprise hit of the night. Armed with the one solidly comedic work on display, Thurber concocted a scrolling real of butcher paper to accompany the reading of 1-800-Mice. The artist directed the room’s attention to the rear window of the bar over which he had hung a large roll of paper. Panel by panel he unspooled it as he read from the work, crumpling the finished work in a large pile at the bottom, much to the audible chagrin of those empathetic audience members who could only imagine how much time the artist must have invested in the spool.

After a quick intermission Sarah Glidden read cheerfully from the opening of How to Understand Israel’s first issue. The portion focused on Glidden’s own idealistic optimism on the lead up to her Birthright Israel trip, following her journey to the airport where the narrator and her fellow travelers met with a fair amount of hassle at the hands of the security guards. At an appropriately climatic moment involving a piece of unaccompanied luggage, the slideshow app unexpectedly quit, revealing a large cartoon “Boom!” that Hart had chosen as his computer’s desktop for reasons unbeknownst to the rest of us.

Haspiel opted to stay at the bar as Ames took charge reading selections from The Alcoholic, the thinly-veiled semi-autobiographical book following the adventures of one “Jonathan A.” Having loosened up with the aid of a few vodkas, Ames launched into a few of the more comedic moments from the book, including a chance encounter with Monica Lewinsky, which, the author happily pointed out, was sufficiently meta, having taking place during a reading in the same bar in which we were all sitting.

Even Hart himself admitted begrudgingly that said bar was, perhaps, just not large enough to hold the event, should it continue to grow at the current rate. And while it would be a shame to have to leave the warm literati-friendly watering hole, the increasing popularity of the event is certainly an encouraging sign of things to come.

–Brian Heater

[Art by Frank Cammuso]

Before his reinventing himself as a children’s book author through Toon Book properties like Otto’s Orange Day with Frank Cammuso and the Dean Haspiel collaboration, Mo and Jo Fighting Together Forever, Jay Lynch was a driving force in the Chicago’s underground comics movement of the early-70s, publishing Bijou Funnies, which brought the comics world pioneering works by the likes of Gilbert Shelton, Art Spiegelman, and, of course, Lynch himself.

In the interim years, Lynch has worked on a wide range of projects, both comics and not, including the Spiegelman-created Wacky Packages series for Topps, and its successor, The Garbage Pail Kids. The artist also contributed to Mad, shortly after the return of counter-culture cartooning legend, Harvey Kurtzman.

In this final part of out interview with Lynch, we discuss working on Mad, whether today’s children’s books are a bit too safe these days, and the battle to stay afloat financially.

[Part One] [Part Two]

Do you think that children’s books have become a bit too safe?

Hypocritical? Well, it’s like a regular children’s book publisher will say that you can’t have the main character die—unless you’re Shel Silverstein.

His work was also a product of a different era. It would be interesting to see if he’d be able to get away with that now.

Well, Shel Silverstein’s books can be read by adults or kids. The Toon Books, possibly too. Actually, Art wrote some of the dialogue when they’re fighting and they say snappy things.

Do you find that you tend to work better when you’re collaborating on something?

Yeah. I think of myself as more of an editor than a cartoonist. The end product is better. Like, if I do a rough, I can put 2,000 people in one panel, and whoever draws it can draw 2,000 people. But if I were to draw it myself, I’d only put 50 people in it. So I think the end result is better. It all comes from Kurtzman’s Mad stuff. Kurtzman would do the rough, and Elder or Wood would be required to intensify it.

You’ve done some work for Mad, as well.

Relatively recently. Whenever it was that Kuyrtzman came back to Mad—I guess it was in the late-80s.

Did he play a role in bringing you on-board?

No, I just thought it would be—I never tried to work for Mad, because of the old idea that Kurtzman should have gotten a better deal. What happened was, Bob Stewart, who used to work at Topps, became Joe Orlando’s assistant, and I did a Mad stylekit. And I pointed Monty Wolverton out, because Monty draws just like Basil. They didn’t know that.

That’s his son?

Yeah. They started using him, and I wrote stuff for him. I wrote about three or four articles in the 80s, but it’s hard to do stuff for Mad, because you do it and it’s a year between the time you do it and when it’s printed, and it’s hard to predict what will be known in a year.

Especially in terms of the magazine’s pop culture satire.

Now I can do Obamalot. But what if he’s not elected?

You’ve since stopped working for Mad?

Well, it’s speculative. You write something, and maybe they’ll use it, maybe they won’t I’m in a position where I have to constantly do stuff to get money.

So what are you working on right now?

This very second, I’m drawing an old Wacky Package character for some guy who paid me $300.

So it’s a lot of commissioned personalized artwork?

Yeah, a lot. I did about 200 in the last three years. And I did a t-shirt for some kid’s Bar Mitzvah. On my Webpage, it says I’ll draw a piece of art for $300. I do that and some of the people get Mineshaft to print them, and then they’re original art, as well that’s worth more because it’s printed. Let’s talk about the new Toon Books book. I get royalties off of that.

Dean mentioned that if the book does well, he’d be happy to do a sequel. You’ve definitely left the door open for a part two. Is that something that would interest you?

Oh yeah. So it’s good that we can’t kill of the characters [laughs]. Yeah, there could be sequels now. It’s like twin superheroes. They’ve learned to get along, so next time they can learn something else.

–Brian Heater

His latest work, a collaboration with Act-I-Vater, Dean Haspiel, is hardly Jay Lynch’s first foray into the world of children’s entertainment. The book, Mo & Jo Fighting Together Forever, is Lynch’s second for Francoise Mouly’s Toon Books imprint. It’s also the latest in a long line of output aimed at children, including Garbage Pail Kids packs, My Little Pony sticker books, and lyrics for kids songs—a far cry from the latter day output of many of his late-60s underground comics contemporaries.

In this second part of our interview with the artist, we discuss the state of children’s books, X-men’s sales figures, and why his days drawing Duckman comics will also make him think of OJ.

[Part One]

Do you find that interest in your work tends to come in waves?

There’s certainly more interest in old underground comics than there was seven years ago. I don’t know, I kept all of my underground comics stuff out of print, because no one has really—I started an autobiographical comic that I wrote and Ed Piskor drew.

That appeared in Mineshaft, right?

Yes, that was serialized in Mineshaft. We don’t get paid for Mineshaft, but I like it. When we did underground comics, we made good money. When we started, Bijou was the third title, so there were only like a dozen titles. One of our titles would sell about equally with what Mad Magazine sells today. In the 60s, Mad sold 3 million a month. Our books would have printings of about 50,000. So today Mad is under 200,000. We’d sell out the reprints. Now for comic books, it’s not something you do for money. The X-men, now, is the biggest selling comic, and it has a smaller circulation than most of the underground comics.

Is that a result of the marketplace being flooded?

Yeah. And also, it’s sold in the shops. No one ever really goes to the shops, except collectors. That’s why I haven’t really done any comics. I drew a Duckman comic for Topps, about—when the OJ thing was happening.

The mid-90s.

Yeah. When OJ was on the car chase. I remember when I was drawing Duckman, OJ was on the TV, being chased. I guess that was like the early or mid-90s.

When you’re working on something like Duckman, how closely do you have to study the source material? Do they make you watch all of the episodes?

No. Stefan Petrucha wrote the thing. They sent me a style kit. Sometimes I’d write it—that’s mostly what I’d do, draw roughs, and other people draw it.

When you’re actually doing the writing, what are you using as source material?

Well, most of the sticker albums are based on movies or episodes of TV shows. Oh, that was a good job—I had to read every Goosebumps book that there was. I had a three-foot high pile of Goosebumps books to do a Goosebumps trivia book with questions about the stories.

Do you have a particular favorite non-comics job that you’ve done, over the years?

Non-comics? I wrote a comic in the 60s which was like a poem. And a band called The Boogers covered it on a album with songs for kids. Country Joe and the Fish wrote one, too. That will be out in a month, or so.

Let’s talk more about the superhero book, Mo & Jo. The first thing is to get a moral and then write the book.

It seems that, in the case of that book, the moral is pretty well stated in the title.

Yeah, that was Francoise, or maybe Art, who came up with the title. I called it something like “Major Mojo.”

Were there things that you wanted to put in, which were deemed not age appropriate?

No. Well, I think the hippo balloon was originally a Thanksgiving Day parade, so it was a turkey balloon, but that would have made the book seasonal, so they changed it to a hippo balloon.

You’ve done a bit of work for kids at this point. Would you say that you’re pretty well accustomed to what will and won’t fly for certain age levels?

Yeah. Well, there’s some stuff that you can’t have in kids books. No one can smoke, no one can die, and there can be no fire. Although a lot of the old classic things like Snow White and the original Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and Sleeping Beauty, the prince goes blind, and in Cinderella, they cut off the queens feet. Pecos Bill, they went over the whole film and took away his cigarettes.

[Concluded in Part Three]

–Brian Heater

Jay Lynch was there at the beginning. As the head of Bijou Funnies, he published some of the most significant underground pioneers of the late-60s, including folks like Robert Crumb, Skip Williamson, Art Spiegelman, and Justin Green, while gaining notoriety in his own right as an artist in his own right, thanks to titles like Nard ‘n’ Pat.

With that in mind, the context for our conversation feels a touch strange. When I call him at his home in upstate New York, the artist is eager to speak about his latest work, Mo and Jo Fighting Together Forever, a collaboration with Act-I-Vate artist, Dean Haspiel. It’s Lynch’s second book for young children under the Toon Books umbrella.

The connection between Lynch’s early career and his current children’s work is rather rather easily unpacked, however. Toon Books head (and New Yorker art director) Francoise Mouly approached Lynch to join the fold of her soon-to-be launched publishing house three years ago. The collaboration eventually resulted in Otto’s Orange Day, release by the company, earlier this year.

But Otto was hardly Lynch’s first work for children, the artist having spent a significant portion of his career working on contract for Topps—works like Wacky Packs and The Garbage Pail Kids—alongside fellow underground legend (and Mouly’s husband), Art Spiegelman.

We spoke to Lynch about Spiegelman, superheroes, and his days spent slaving away at in the My Little Pony mines.

Did Francoise approach you to do something for Toon Books?

Yeah, pretty early on. It was like three-and-a-half years ago. She called me up with the idea. And I wrote the Otto book, and it was supervised all through its writing by these people from school boards. I’m not sure exactly which ones, but I think it was Maryland and maybe Pennsylvania. So the book has things that they learn about in phonics classes. It has their vocabulary words and stuff like that, but it’s cleverly disguised.

Was that something they were attempting to do with all of the books, early on, or was it more to help you along with your first time writing for that age group?

Well, for many years, I worked for a company called Diamond Publishing (they don’t actually have anything to do with Diamond Distribution). This is a company that makes sticker albums. So I wrote a lot of licensed character sticker albums for kids about My Little Pony and Transformers and The Simpsons and Archie—anything that was a hot license. So I did do a lot of writing for kids, but not of my own characters. So she showed me Frank [Cammuso]’s book. Frank I knew of from Max Hamm. So, all the time I was writing the book, I thought that Frank would be drawing it. Frank gave his input and stuff, and I don’t know, it’s cute…

Do you think that Francoise approached you, based on this prior experience that you had had, working with kids’ books?

Um, I guess, yeah. Well, she approached Geoffrey Hayes at the same time, because he had kids books out.

So in a way, it was something that you sort of happily fell into.

It wasn’t my idea. It was fun to do, though.

But it’s not something you’re interested in centering a career around, at this point?

Well, I just wrote a song for a kids record. But I’m too old—I already had a career. Shel Silverstein wrote kids books.

Did you do any artwork for these books?

I actually drew the musical notes in the beginning of the book, when Otto sings. And I did the lettering on the note that Aunt Sally wrote him, but that’s only because Frank was out of town, and they couldn’t reach him [laughs]. I did roughs of the whole book. That’s how I submitted the book. But I don’t draw as cute as Frank, so my cats come out looking more like Fritz. So I just did that for facial expressions and positions and stuff. That was just the first draft. Frank added a more dynamic movement to it.

Are you drawing still?

Oh yeah. I draw constantly. We did the Wacky Packs and the Garabage Pail Kids for Topps, and then I revived them, a few years ago, so I’m constantly drawing pictures of Wacky Packs for fans who pay more than Topps does for the real ones. I do stuff for Mineshaft Magazine, as well.

At what point did you join Topps?

1966.

And Art was already there, at that point?

Yeah. They hired Art when he graduated—he actually worked there when he was still in high school, and then they hired him the summer that he graduated high school.

How much freedom did Topps give you?

Well, when making a new series, we had pretty much complete freedom. When it became successful, then they’d start to go over it and change things.

In terms of Diamond, working with licenses like My Little Pony and The Simpsons—

Well, with Diamond it was all licensed stuff, so it had to be approved by the license holders. The Archie comics looks exactly like an Archie comic.

Is it tough to work within such strict parameters?

Well, I don’t do it anymore, except once in a while I do it for Topps. But no, it wasn’t they paid me. It was like a 9 to 5 job. I was the editor of their sticker albums for six years.

Since they revived Garbage Pail Kids a few years back, is that still a significant chunk of your income?

Wacky Packs is. That’s doing really well, and there’s a Wacky Packs book that reprints the ones from the 70s, where Art wrote the forward, and I wrote the afterword. That sold out of the first printing. That came out in May and the Otto book came out in April.

And the book you did with Dean just came out.

You can buy it on Amazon for the last month or so, but it was just officially released over the last weekend. With Dean I didn’t do roughs. I just wrote it and he drew it. He was more familiar with the genre than I.

The superhero genre.

Yeah.

There’s a somewhat artifical divide that we draw between indie comics and superhero books. Was it a genre that interested you, as far as writing?

Well, when I was a kid, I like The Spirit and Plastic Man, because they were self-contained. And also, the way that [Jack] Cole and [Will] Eisner drew had kind of a sense of humor to them. I was never really into Superman, though. It was Francoise’s idea to do a superhero book. When I go to the library where I live, in upstate New York, they tell me that kids gravitate toward manga and superheroes, so this may be a way to reach those who would only look at a superhero book.

[Continued in Part Two.]

–Brian Heater

[Above, what's that smell? Below, oh, just another Dispatch.]

• Toon Books has a couple of cool titles on the way. Eleanor Davis introduces Stinky and Dean Haspiel and Jay Lynch present Mo and Jo: Fighting Together Forever. The releases correspond to some events taking place around NYC. First off on Sept 5th, at Desert Island (Brooklyn, NY), Davis and Haspiel will be doing a reading, signing, and launch party. The following night the tandem will appear at McNally Jackson, NYC, with special guests Francoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman. (Note: Mr. Spiegelman will not be signing. You can breath again.) Then Monday, Sept 8th at Jim Hanley’s Universe, Davis and Haspiel will do one more reading and signing if you miss the others.
• The LA Times‘ Dave Strickler  has compiled an online database of every comic strip the paper has ever run. The database lists run dates and some details for every comic from August 21, 1904 to present.
• James Kochalka redraws page 17 of Fantastic Four #9.
• Barack Obama didn’t pick Savage Dragon as his vice-presidential running mate, but no love is lost from the ol’ green fin head. Savage Dragon, a former presidential candidate himself and no stranger to bad-guys taking pot shots at him, will give the Democratic nominee his full-endorsement on Sept 3, when Savage Dragon #137 hits newsstands.
• Everything’s going digital, so it’s not a wonder that publishers are looking at a variety of models for delivering what you love most, comics, digitally.
• Robot Dreams makes Oprah’s kids’ reading list.
• Always wanted to see your favorite comics in the backdrops of your favorite TV shows? Now’s your chance!

–Jason Owen

The Alcoholic
By Jonathan Ames and Dean Haspiel
Vertigo

Admission is, of course, the first step on the road to recovery. Where penning a graphic novel on the subject falls amongst list of steps, however, is a bit tougher to say. As plenty of past autobiographical comics have shown us in the past, the process can be incredibly cathartic, a prolonged session of sequential art therapy.

With a thinly veiled protagonist named Jonathan A., novelist Jonathan Ames, makes no bones as to the autobiographical nature of his first graphic novel, in spite of the fairly tongue-in-cheek insistence on the book’s back cover that the character “bears only a coincidental resemblance to [his creator].”

Still, catharsis seems to be far from the primary purpose for the existence of The Alcoholic. Ames, for his part, appears to have decidedly less selfish reasons for having penned the book. Confronting demons takes something of a backseat to the author’s desire to creating an engaging, interesting book, a fact in part clear from the author’s almost film noir-esque framing of his story.

“My name is Jonathan A. I’m an alcoholic,” the book begins. “I have a lot of problems. Not more than the average person, really, but I have a propensity for getting into trouble, especially when I’ve been drinking. This one night, I came out of a blackout and I was with this old, exceedingly tiny lade in a station wagon.”

It’s a simple, but fairly affective device, the alcoholic graphic novelist’s rough equivalent to the pool from Sunset Boulevard. Ames effectively spends the bulk of the book effectively working back up to that moment by recounting his history with booze, making some detours along the way to lead a relatively normal existence.

His first foray into the medium Ames understandably trips up a bit, along the way. True to the noir-ish framing device, the author relies heavily on expositional narration, a method, which, in the case of The Alcoholic, often tends to pull the reader out of the story. Fortunately for Ames, artist Dean Haspiel is a seasoned professional. The artist’s clever and beautifully drawn panel layouts are largely affective in pulling the reader back when the author strays. It’s clear that Haspiel’s work on Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor allotted him the necessary tools for the task of collaborating with the novelist.

Ames meanders from the main plot device with varying success. An anecdote about meeting Monica Lewinsky (“She’s kind of the American Princess Diana”) proves one of the book’s lighter moments, when someone in their party orders a plate of kielbasa. The pages spent on Ames’s experiences during September 11th, while peripherally related, feel like a bit of an afterthought.

Toward the book’s close, Ames has a clear grasp on the true linchpin of the story: a friendship abandoned earlier in life. By the time it comes back into play, however, it’s a touch too late.

It’s not a total loss, however. The Alcoholic is still a perfectly entertaining books. While a little green in the graphic novel department, Ames presents a highly readable story, thanks in no small part to his more experienced partner in crime.

–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.