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.

1. Maddie and Toby in 10 Years by Toby Jones // May 6, 2011
2. The Hare’s Bride by Emily Carroll // 2010
3. no. 066 – @iamnotdiddy by Twaggies // May 16, 2010
4. The Wayward Wallet by Julia Wertz // April 4, 2008
5. “_______” by Brenna Zedan and Chase Allgood // December 12, 2005

We’d love to have you guest edit Lunch Break! Check out the Contribute page for more information.

– Sarah Morean

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.

We’d love to have you guest edit Lunch Break! Check out the Contribute page for more information.

1. Crystal Cats by Dan Moynihan // November 13, 2010
2. excerpts from ” The Great Pretenders” by Julia Wertz // April 28, 2011
3. 99 Problems from “Let’s Be Friends Again” by Curt Franklin & Chris Haley // April 20, 2011
4. Gingerbread Girl by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover // 2010-2011
5. John Stanley’s Summer Fun preview by John Stanley // 2011

– Sarah Morean

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.

We’d love to have you guest edit Lunch Break! Check out the Contribute page for more information.

1. Afrodisiac by Brian Maruca and Jim Rugg // 2010
2. Prime Baby by Gene Luen Yang // 2008
3. Drinking at the Movies by Julia Wertz // 2010
4. This is What’s Up from “Little Love Monster” by Madéleine Flores // April 20, 2011
5. String Me Up, Secure Me Down by Dane Martin // March 2011

– Sarah Morean

Drinking at the Movies
by Julia Wertz
Three Rivers Press

There’s something to be said for having goals. For being responsible and readying yourself for the next big challenge and having your ducks more or less in a row. For growing up smart and successful and being in a good position to take advantage of opportunities whenever they are presented to you in life.

That sounds like nice work if you can get it. But is there any help or advice for us poor fuck ups?

Drinking at the Movies says to me, well, if you can’t put yourself together the best you can do is hang on and see what happens.  Rings true enough.

After a string of bad jobs and empty bottles of bourbon Julia Wertz finds herself, by the end of the book, in a pretty good place. After not so much learning and growing as just staying true to herself and, frankly, being lucky.

Those familiar with Wertz’s webcomic and its ups and downs will vaguely remember her past life back in San Francisco.

‘Oh, that Julia Wertz?  When she had a boyfriend and her brother and mom were like her best friends and she said awesome crazy shit all of the time?  I remember and liked her.  Sure.’

Clearly, since moving to New York in 2007 a lot has happened for her.  She’s gotten more exposure through publishing and it wouldn’t surprise me if the people coming to her books now — books like I Saw You…Missed Connections Comics which she edited and Drinking at the Movies which she wrote — were completely unaware of her early work. However, though Drinking at the Movies relies heavily on the reader knowing how good she had it to appreciate how far she fell, I do think she succeeds in bringing the newbie Wertz reader up to speed.

The book works for us obsessive fans too, answering questions like ‘WELL WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN, JULIA WHAT DOES IT MEAN?’  Because obviously her move to blogging, cessation of drinking and desire to disassociate from the fartparty.org webcomic that launched her must mean something, right?  Sure it does.  And this book lays it out for us: a lot of her memories from that period just fucking suck!  Poor Wertzie.  This book looks like a prelude to homelessness.

Without saying it straight, she’s definitely alluding to the fact that years of her life have been spent somehow, miraculously, not hitting rock bottom.  She pushes away relationships — you could read that generally as people who would look out for her — in favor of friendships that allow her to indulge in bad habits like drinking.  Constantly.  She self-destructs regularly in the workplace.  She takes no pride in herself physically.  It’s funny in the right context — this context — but her constant brushes with the homeless and crazy in the book also remind you that if she didn’t have some percentage of a good head on her shoulders she could easily slip and be one of them.

So what does it all mean?  It means she had a pretty good life for a bit, and so did those around her, until finally shit went crazy and when it all came back together it’s a miracle nobody died.  Her move to New York was hard, finding work was hard, being a good sister to her drug-addled brother was hard.  But somehow it all worked out.  And she did it all alone too.

It’s evident through this book, and kind of shocking, how much she must have relied on Oliver back in San Francisco.  Wertz is a wily bitch and me and my friends admire her a lot for that.  But I guess there was something significant about that relationship at that time in her life that made losing it really hard.  From the looks of it, she took years to recover.

It sucks.  The first time you lose something you thought you could hang on to.  The first time you free fall and try to make a life for yourself.  Some people thrive under these circumstances and some people are lucky to just stay afloat — even if on a sea of booze.  Miraculously, through it all, she managed to make friends, have new experiences, create art that is meaningful to people and have her work published.  We learn in the book that someone even wants to turn her story into a television series, one that she would get to write.  How cool is that?

So what’s weird to me as a reader and a Wertz fan is that the only time I really wanted to shake her like a baby and speak sense to her was when she decides not to commit to the TV show.  ‘WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU TV IS AWESOME WHY DON’T YOU WANT TO WRITE FOR TV?’  But, you know.  It’s not my life.  And if I’d been at the helm, probably I wouldn’t have made it half so successful.  Probably I would have stayed in San Francisco, sweeping up the remains of my brother’s life, feeling abandoned, living in an apartment I couldn’t afford, feeling sorry for myself and by all accounts miserable.

So while it may look like, geez, Drinking at the Movies is demonstrable proof of fuck-up-ery I’d say it’s definitely not.  I’d say being risky and open to change and finding ways to accept and deal with change is something a person with a really bright future would do.  As always, I look forward to Wertz’s next steps.  As a cartoon character or a blogger or (PLEASE PLEASE) as a screenwriter.

– Sarah Morean

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. Serial Typist by Kevin Cannon // ~ May 2010
2. A Walk With My Double by David King // October 2010
3. “When Janitors Die” from Toothpaste For Dinner by Drew // 02.19.2005
4. Climate Change by Darryl Cunningham // December 13, 2010
5. Sleeping Together by Julia Wertz // June 7, 2006

– Sarah Morean

[Photo by Sarah Glidden.]

Saturday November 6th 2010 will surely go down as one of the most important moments in comics history—the day we recorded the first-ever live version of the Cross Hatch Podcast. The event occurred on the third floor of the Brooklyn Lyceum, a cold and cavernous space, as part of the second annual King Con.

The hosts of the show were Alex and myself—Sarah, sadly, was too cheap to fly in from Minneapolis for a 50 minute-long panel. R. Sikoryak, Lisa Hanawalt, and Julia Wertz joined us for the discussion.

What unfolded was a hilarious trainwreck of a faux quiz show, tackling subjects from the Sunday funnies, to the smell of Subway sandwich shops, to far, far darker fare.

We’ve labeled the panel “Explicit,” because, while we’ve bleeped out most of the swears, there’s still some subject matter that might offend.

So, please enjoy arguably the single greatest moment in comics history, again and again, like so many commemorative plates.

Cross Hatch Podcast 011 [CLICK TO LISTEN]

I Saw You…Missed Connection Comics
Edited by Julia Wertz
Three Rivers Press

Missed connections ads are a mixed bag of emotions: they’re at once funny, sad, creepy, and inspiring. So perhaps it’s only natural that we should turn to them for inspiration and for the creation of great and strange stories. Still, it’s an idea I would never have thought of. Luckily, Julia Wertz did.

Wertz, the creator of the hilarious autobiographical comic The Fart Party, started to find herself obsessed with reading missed connections ads a few years ago, and was struck by the idea of creating comics based on them. She put a call out to fellow cartoonists and received an overwhelming number of submissions, which led to the creation of a mini-comic, which led to a book, appropriately (if unexcitingly) titled I Saw You…, published by Three Rivers Press. As with pages of missed connections ads in newspapers or on Craigslist, I Saw You… is eclectic in terms of the length of the pieces, their tone, and their approach to the assignment. It is also great. The diversity of the content, as well as the overall talent of the contributors, make it an extremely enjoyable read.

The book is divided into six thematic parts that mostly just seem put there to impose some semblance of structure on contents that might otherwise ramble. Reading it is like reading a book of missed connections ads (inevitably entertaining), except better, because there’s more to each piece—each has two personalities (the author of the ad and the artist/interpreter, except for a handful of first-person contributions). Some of the best pieces are the ones that play on this fact, with the cartoonists creating clever stories that add a new layer to the ads from which they are born.

A prime example is one of Laura Park’s contributions, “The Three Women of Sunday,” in which a man whose ad talks about spending Sunday “watching and eating movies with three kind women” (his words) is actually a creepy guy parked outside the window of a ground-floor apartment, voyeuristically peering in and grinning while he sips a drink. David Malki’s piece, “Same Ol’ Saturday Night…” has a similarly witty twist, as the two people who shake with “damp hands” outside a bar bathroom and then go their separate ways to different birthday parties turn out to be clowns, with a particularly great (and slightly disturbing?) end panel of the two clowns having sex against a bathroom sink, of course in costume.

Beyond the twist factor, stories in the book stand out for countless other reasons. Some contributors get points for being charmingly creative—Nate Doyle, Kazimir Strzepek, and Kenny Keil among them—some are just plain funny, including the Daily Cross Hatch’s own Sarah Morean, Wertz (both of hers are quite amusing), Aron Nels Steinke, and a personal favorite, Jeffrey Brown; and still others really show off their artistic talent: Maria Sequeira’s fluid, almost swirling style; Rama Hughes’s bold panels that read almost like sequence of photographs; Aaron Renier’s pages, buzzing and full and nearly bursting.

And then of course there are the cartoonists who found such amazing ads that you wonder whether they spent whole days looking or just got lucky. These range from someone seeking out the doctor who performed her colonscopy (“I thought we hit it off!”) to a man who laments that the cute girl he eyed in the coffee shop pulled out a Mac (“you’ve been deceived by their cheesy ads and mediocre hardware”), to an ad looking for the “gore queen at the S&M party.” It begins, like a kind of craigslist fairy tale, “You were the Asian girl with the hacksaw torturing the helpless child…”

–Jillian Steinhauer

[Above, absence in book form. Below, filling in the Dispatch void.]

• Art Spiegelman talks about the controversial New Yorker cover depicting Barack Obama in Arab garb, an American flag burning in the Oval Office’s fireplace.
• Paws Inc. and Ballantine Books are scheduled to publish a book inspired by the webcomic Garfield Minus Garfield.  It will be released in conjunction with the Garfield 30th Anniversary book, due out in October.
• We missed the signing, but it’s not too late to catch up on all the buzz behind Comic Book Tattoo. This 480-page anthology features work by Pia Guerra and David Mack, just to name a couple.
• On Friday August 1st, Rocketship Comics in Brooklyn, NY hosted an opening reception for Cliff Chiang, Dash Shaw and Julia Wertz. Beer and wine were served to the packed crowd, to fend off the humidity. The artist’s work will be on display until September.
• Worst Comic strip, ever!

–Jason Owen

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.