I’ve known for awhile that First Second’s Editorial Director Mark Siegel would come to Minneapolis this winter. Until he arrived, I didn’t understand why.

Minneapolis, I now know, was the second stop on his “goodwill tour” (my words). Siegel is meeting with booksellers, organizers, librarians and students in an effort to promote comics readership and by extension First Second Books.

He’s reaching out to the people who matter in the comics world who we rarely talk about — the connectors.  People who are positioned to take comics seriously and bring new readers to the medium.  His travels have taken him to Seattle and Minneapolis so far.

Siegel’s tour may lead to other cities, I didn’t get his full itinerary, but I know he spent nearly a week in Minneapolis:

I attended a Thursday dinner where representatives from local bookstores, reading groups, writing centers and universities were present.  I see that he’s really reaching out; hopefully making a big impression on our local literary scene and reigniting excitement and interest in the graphic novel.

On Friday his time was spent largely with the folks at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design (MCAD), talking with seniors during the day and at night giving a presentation on graphic novels to a packed house.  The talk was sponsored by Rain Taxi (a literary magazine that also reviews comics and runs the Rain Taxi Festival of Books), MCAD and Big Brain Comics.

Saturday he delivered a talk on graphic novels to the Children’s Literature Network, an event that targeted librarians and educators and discussed comic editing and publishing at the Loft Literary Center.

Monday he stopped by comic shops around town, including Dreamhaven (closed, unfortunately) and The Source Comics & Games, and ran a workshop on creating graphic novels through the Minnesota Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators.

Tuesday he met with a group of public librarians through the Metropolitan Library Service Agency (MELSA), a library group that includes the majority of the metro area’s public libraries — including Hennepin County Library, one of the top library systems in the nation.

I was able to attend his talk at MCAD and have transcribed parts of it below.

Part of what I do is travel around the country and hit up important towns, talking to librarians and educators and a lot of writers and artists.

As the years wore on…what was the underground, I think it’s fair to say, gave birth to the indie comics scene. And the indie comics scene was maturing this idea of adult comics — but adult in the best sense of the word. In the idea that there are authors working here in this medium.

Teen and children’s librarians have been on board with graphic novels for a long, long time. Before booksellers, before publishers. Sometimes adult librarians are catching up.

If you look at music, movies, novels, poetry — it’s all 90% crap. But there are the gems and the stuff that stays that’s forever. And you meet another human mind, and your life is enhanced from that meeting. Whether that is someone you connected to through their prose or their comics it doesn’t really matter terribly.

To Dance is a book my wife wrote that was ten years of her life in ballet and we did this for middle grade girls, mainly. It’s a little comic book about her being in George Balanchine’s school while he was still running it and she was a young pre-professional ballerina. I tell this when I talk to librarians because, first of all, ballet disarms them a little bit, they don’t expect comics geeks to know even what ballet means. What was interesting was Sienna, she doesn’t really warm to comics and I don’t especially warm to ballet. And we were looking at this project — we’re both excited about it — but we both had to journey towards each other’s medium.

And my journey with ballet is a lot like other people’s journey with comics. With ballet I had to get a little bit of the vocabulary — because it’s a language — just enough so that I could sit through one then enough to appreciate how you read a ballet. Because if you’re looking for plot it’s painful, so you’re supposed to be looking for something else. You’re actually looking with a different part of yourself — you’re actually looking more with your feelings.

What happened with the ballet thing is I had a moment…Sienna pops in this tape of old black and white footage of Don Quixote. It was Suzanne Farrell as Dulcinea and George Balanchine as Don Quixote — him walking almost in slow motion and she’s doing this incredible dance all around him and [knowing some of the background of the performers] — I could feel that it was real. He was reaching for her and she just kept alluding him. The feeling was electrical it just shocked through my spine and I got it. What I felt just now is what gets someone hooked on ballet. And from that point on I was actually able to read ballets and from that point on I could get something from ballets, they could nourish me in a way they couldn’t before. And the reason is it doesn’t matter — it’s never going to be my favorite medium — but what came through that moment was the universal man-woman mystery, it’s human. It’s beyond whatever medium, it just comes through this moment, in this case ballet.

Basically, First Second is aiming to get moments like that into comics. There are more and more. For some people a book like Fun Home a book like Persepolis a book like Maus — now more and more books — are doing that. And it doesn’t have to be heavy. Sometimes it’s goof and it’s fluff or you know in our first year at First Second we put out American Born Chinese which tapped into a very universal immigration experience. And it suddenly entered into this bigger conversation and it wasn’t about whether or not you were into comics, it was just an important book.

In the last five or six years, in large part because of manga, all the large publishing houses sat up and took notice that there were millions of dollars changing hands and they weren’t getting that money. I happened to be right at the right place at the right time in a weird way. My first picture book had come out and it was in a comics form so that got a good deal of attention. I was at Simon & Schuster and acquired Little Vampire by Joann Sfar — a great, great children’s comic — and that was on the New York Times best seller list for awhile. Then this article came out about me — it was an interview but it made me sound like the messiah of the coming graphic novel — which I’m not. I think I’m not. I’m pretty sure I’m not. I was a designer doing picture books and suddenly I had interviews with the heads of the biggest houses in New York and the head of Macmillan was the one who basically offered me editorial freedom. I had a vision for what First Second would become — we didn’t have a name for six months — which was something uniquely American that could do for America what happened in Japan and Western Europe, which was to actually get into the mainstream reading household and stay there forever. And it wouldn’t happen in the same way as it did in France or Japan but it had to happen in a way that’s right for here. And there was a plan for approach. And Macmillan was definitely the place to go — so I went ahead!

So the vision for First Second can be summed up in these words: care and quality. Specifically care in the editorial process and trying to learn from the best editors.

It’s not the Marvel/DC school of editing, it’s the Maxwell Perkins the Ursula Nordstroms — the great, great editors who are the champions of authors and they also ask the tough questions of authors and drive them and hold them to their own highest standard — and we’re trying to do that at First Second.

The care during is the production of the books. We really try and pamper them in every possible way. And there are a few houses like Drawn & Quarterly that produce really beautiful books. We’re producing them in a slightly different way with a different angle but we’re also trying to create really beautiful books that are not pulp and are not throw-away, that are for keeps.

Care after, of course, is championing a book and trying to not let them go out of print. We banished the word backlist — it used to be that publishing houses lived on their backlist, it’s what sustained them. And then more and more the corporate model of publishing has moved into the more Hollywood model which is the blockbuster weekend and then it’s forgotten and we’re on to the next thing. And I think that’s a terrible tragic thing and it’s not right for books, or how we want to be at First Second.

Another pillar for First Second was a worldwide talent pool. I’m very interested in experimenting with bridging with other fields and that’s sometimes fraught with trouble but I’ve had some very successful experiments and some duds with a playwright, some screenwriters a novelist some historians, I have a naturopath nutritionist — there’s going to be a medical graphic novel coming before long, a couple of culinary projects, and stuff like this is bridging to other fields. We have writers from the Daily Show and Colbert Report. Foreign partnerships we’ve pursued aggressively from the start. I think American Born Chinese is getting up to 18 or 19 languages now. These are international editors that I know that I keep in touch with and we buy from each other. That’s part of the First Second idea.

If you look back at our first season with First Second it looks like we were all over the map — and we were. There was Sardine in Outer Space for 8 year olds and Eddie Campbell’s The Fate of the Artist on the same season and I think also the book about genocide in Rwanda, Deogratias. And a few people were wondering what is the program at First Second? But those things became the start of these broad avenues that we’ve kept exploring.

We’re doing every age category so we’ve got children’s, teen and adult concurrently within the collection. We’re not trying to corner a particular niche.

If you’re a librarian, Nancy Pearl is a rock star. She’s in Seattle, she has a TV show called Booklust and a series of Booklust books. She’s one of these highly influential librarians. She was the one who started Seattle Reads and all of Seattle read Persepolis and she’s been a great champion of comics and she’s done great things for First Second.

I think one of the things that distinguishes First Second is that we make an effort to play in all three of these markets — there’s the direct market, the comics world, the book retail and the library market and there’s interesting overlaps between them.

Some of the big publishing houses are good at the library and good with the book markets but they can’t get their act together with Diamond and the comic shops. Some of the indie publishers are good with the comic shop but they can’t figure out how to get properly reviewed by the book reviewers in mainstream media.

With webcomics we have a few experiments going. There are a few different kinds of webcomics — the ones that have been the most successful are the strip comics that are short, easy to forward and kind of self-contained. But then there are more and more of these long-form comics that are like the old-fashioned serialized story, and that’s what we’re exploring more of. I’ll mention these three: Zahra’s Paradise is being done with some Iranian dissidents. It’s being written about the events in Iran that are going on right now, starting back in the June 2009 protests and is a phenomenal story. The other is Sailor Twain or The Mermaid in the Hudson and that has a 19th Century plot to it, and seems to belong in that tradition of the old serial. There’s another one which I’m especially pushing to librarians which is Americus. It’s a banned book story.

Each one is basically an experiment in building a different kind of community around a project. It’s a very interesting thing.

In America it’s kind of a vexing thing. I wonder why do we have (other than our top tier of books) print runs around 10,000-15,000 for a first printing? And that’s better than some of the indie houses, but I think in a country this size it’s crazy. So I think there’s work to be done here. And maybe you guys can join into that but we need to find a way to crack America open. It needs to be that comics are in every reading household and maybe in some cases households become reading households.

I really do think the taste I’m getting from being here and talking to a lot of people is that the Twin Cities are ripe to make something happen for the whole country. I think if it happens here it will happen everywhere else.

I’ve been to Seattle, which for a long time has been the big book town, and I’m from New York. Certainly if you can make noise in New York that’s a feat in itself, that can launch a book.

Seattle can launch a book. Nancy Pearl has been known to do that. And she was the one who told me two years ago when I was doing a workshop out there, “Go to Minneapolis, you need to go to Minneapolis. That’s where it’s going to happen.” And I don’t know if you know that about your own town. Just in terms of books, Minneapolis is one of the great book towns.

So how does that translate into comics? How can you harness some of that Minneapolis power and make it go bang? Because I think if you can make it happen here it will spread through the librarians, to the booksellers to the comics community…it will happen.

You’ll find more photos of Siegel’s visit HERE.

Congratulations to First Second Books on its fifth anniversary this year!

- Sarah Morean

I had a long conversation about interviews last weekend. At some point I suggested that, if the interviewee says something along the lines of “this is going to sound crazy” or “I shouldn’t be saying this,” you’re probably doing something right. It’s not about tripping someone up so much as witnessing the on-the-spot formation of thoughts.

Canned answers are for politicians and movie stars. Good interviews are organic, and sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can witness a person rethink an idea they’ve clearly been over a million times in their brain.

You’re lucky if you can get that out of a John Porcellino—not because he’s not thinking, of course, but rather because he’s clearly examined his own motives ad nauseam, since launching King-Cat Comics in the late-80s. But what began as a casual conversation in front of an intimate crowd at last weekend’s Minneapolis Indie Expo, ended in some fascinating revelations about everything from factory work to Zen Buddhism.

The interview began, fittingly enough, rather casually, the audience still chatting, largely unaware that we had begun—that probably doesn’t come across in this recording, since the mics are so close to Porcellino and myself, but I think it’s an important to point out.

The full audio of the interview is available as a stream or download, just click the linked title below. Special thanks to Sarah M. for recording us. More interviews from MIX will be available in the coming weeks.

–BH

John Porcellino in conversation with Brian Heater

Check out some of the great artwork and projects you can expect to see at MIX 2010!

The Minneapolis Indie Xpo has run out of exhibitor space, but you can still attend! Fun and adventure! Minneapolis, ahoy! Admission is free.

MIX will take place on Saturday, August 21, 9am-5pm. Please join us for the kickoff party and signing at Big Brain Comics on Friday, August 20, and for the after-party at Altered Esthetics on Saturday, August 21. Details to follow.

– Sarah Morean

Like Timmy Williams, I’m from South Dakota. It’s the kind of state where, if a comics event gets billed anywhere within driving distance, you’re obliged to show up because it might be the last one you’ll ever see. Right now, the biggest thing SD has going for it is Chris Browne (Hagar the Horrible). When Mr. Browne RSVPs for an event in Sioux Falls, you show up. When a high school has its own comic book convention, you go and buy every bad manga-inspired mini. When Scott McCloud makes a 50 state tour, you thank the lord.

This was my upbringing. So when I moved to the comparatively exciting metropolis of Minneapolis two years ago, I did so with the understanding that my new community of cartoonists might supply me with a wider range of slightly less pathetic comics-centric events to attend.  I was thrilled.

Yes, I knew my schedule would fill up a bit more than usual, but lately I can’t get a break from it all.  When one comics show closes (Big Funny), another one opens (Comicopolis), and while a big anthology project is taking off (Lutefisk Sushi), another one is winding down (The City Pages Comix Issue). These cartoonists are keeping me on my feet, and really, I’m tired of it. I don’t know how New York copes.  When do those people see their families?

David Lloyd sketching in the Big Time Attic studio.

Last night, when I went to my first International Cartoonist Conspiracy meeting in two years, I ran into V for Vendetta artist David Lloyd who just happened to stop by because he was in the area. This event clarified the root of my scheduling problem. Minneapolis has a thriving indie comics scene. It’s not limping, it’s not waning. It’s strong and snowballing. Could it be, it’s magnetic?

Anyway, there is no denying it now. The flat, frigid Midwest has sequestered the Twin Cities and made it one of indie comics’ best kept secrets, but now I want you in on it.

Minneapolis is home to King Mini, Zak Sally, Tom Kaczynski, JP Coovert, Kevin Cannon, Tyler Page, Tim Sievert, Sam Hiti, Will Dinski, etc., the MCAD comics program, the International Cartoonist Conspiracy, Big Brain Comics, the Source, Dreamhaven, Arise! Bookstore, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, the Twin Cities Zinefest, FallCon, MicroCon, Rain Taxi’s Twin Cities Book Festival, Wet Paint, and the list goes on.

Minneapolis cartoonists (left to right): Tim Sievert, Kevin Cannon, Danno Klonowski, Brett Von Schlosser.

Talented, friendly Twin Cities cartoonists have a lot of exhibition time, book consignment options, access to rare supplies, institutions that bring in killer guest speakers, very hospitable conventions, not to mention comics-loving press by the boatload (me, Jay Gabler, Dylan Thomas, Tom Horgen, Britt Aamodt, etc.).  There.  I said it.  Accept it.

Maybe you’re used to this kind of environment, or maybe comics where you live are simply overlooked. I’d just like to recommend that – whatever your comics community has to offer – that you not take it for granted.  If you’ve got a good thing going for you, like a well-stocked shop or a small town celebrity, I hope you’re out there supporting it.  If by surprise someday the fandom starts wearing you out, just consider yourself lucky.

- Sarah Morean

International Cartoonist Conspiracy founder Steve Stwalley and child.

Toby Jones and Madeline Queripel

Two years ago, I began coordinating the Twin Cities Zinefest.  It’s a small, two-day DIY craft, culture and self-publishing festival in Minneapolis that offers affordable table space to exhibitors and often includes an art show, concert, workshops, documentaries and an open mic zine reading.

Throughout its history, the Twin Cities Zinefest has often been run by well-intentioned, creative coordinators with busy lives.  It’s a model that is about as independent as its cause, since the coordinator has about as much free reign as any exhibitor making a zine.  There’s no board, or committee, and hardly any volunteers.  So it’s pretty common that after a couple years running the fest, whoever’s in charge just burns out or moves on to persue their own personal projects.

When I took over Zinefest in 2008, I didn’t have much guidance from the previous event coordinators.  I mostly consulted with friends, visited other conventions, and tried to pick apart the attitude and events that make a good convention.

For better or worse, you can blame dumb luck for what happens at most cons, but there’s still a lot to be said for a maintaining and executing a well-oiled plan with core values when you’re organizing any public event.  A con can change enormously depending on the strengths of its location and place on the calendar, but I’ve developed some general, useful ideas about conventions that other DIY, book and comic festival coordinators might want to hear.

As far as I know, there is no convention for convention planners, so we’re all pretty much going on old steam or starting from scratch, which is why I think “how to create a better convention” is a conversation that’s long over-due and well worth having, so I’m starting it now.

I’m sharing with you some of my ideas about what makes a good show, in hopes that other small press events consider my arguments, re-think old standards, and usher in a more exciting age of print-loving festivals.

1. CROSS-POLINATE
   If there’s room for one book event in your town, there’s room for two.  Work with other organizers to cross-promote your events to both show-goers and exhibitors.  No need to be greedy.  Literacy shouldn’t be limited to the one game in town, and people will be even more excited about the events overall once they become part of a year-long, sustainable lifestyle.
2. BE KIND, UNWIND
   Ideally, everyone with the open checkbook is there because they wish they were on the exhibitor’s side, which they could be in just a few years.  Give the exhibitors and attendees something to look forward to each year by hosting a show that puts exhibitors first, no matter their experience.  Word will get out that your exhibitors are happy, and that’s the best kind of press you can’t buy.


People reading comics by members of the International Cartoonist Conspiracy

3. TAKE IT SLOW
   When your show starts to snowball, don’t let it go to your head.  A good, small show beats a large disastrous show.  If it looks like moving the show will get in more exhibitors, at the expense of the exhibitors, my advice is to just stay put.
4. LISTEN TO YOUR EXHIBITORS
   If somebody has a good idea, or thinks something about your event sucks, you should take the criticism and advice very seriously.  Some people stoke trouble for no good reason, but mostly they are just pissed because they didn’t have a good time.  This translates to your fault, and should be avoided at all costs.
5. HEALTH AND EMERGENCY
   If you think heat stroke is a possibility, you could encourage people to dress down.  If the venue provides an EMT at the event, all the better.  It is worth while to be prepared.
6. YOUR TABLES ARE TOO EXPENSIVE
   How the hell is everyone still paying so much money for exhibition space at some of these conventions?  Why do people stand for this?  I think it’s insulting.  Cartoonists are so poor already due to debt or disability (depression counts), I just think it’s outrageous that they have to pay so much for travel, lodging, food, and then their table space.  Particularly when it’s so rare that self-publishers are able to make enough to cover table space at all, and it’s hardly ever an employer-covered expense.  Make it a goal to have table costs below projected sales for each table, given the traffic your venue can accommodate or expect.
7. PROGRAMMED TO WIN
   Maybe panel discussions between favorite creators are so popular I can’t even conceive of it, but every time I go to a panel it looks pretty bare.  It seems like convention programming is almost always geared toward fans, but I think it wouldn’t suck to have at least one self-help program per event, just for the exhibitors.  Like “How to make your hobby a business and expense this outrageously priced convention” or “Account for yourself! An overview of QuickBooks, Peachtree and Quicken” or “Grant opportunities for self-publishers and artists” or “Health insurance for the self-employed or part-time cartoonist” or “How to plan and teach a comics class at your local library.”  Conventions could be about taking ideas home and fostering outside community interest in comics, rather than huge binge festivals where all people do is consume goods and services and win awards.
8. VEGANS MAKE COMICS
   I am pissed off every time I hear about a vegan going on vacation and eating nothing but bananas.  This is idiotic.  If you want a diverse range of people at your event, look into the needs of your exhibitors and relate to them the opportunities that await them in your community.  They are guests in your city.  Don’t be stingy with the recommendations.  Newcomers like recommendations.  Tell the vegans where the freaking vegan restaurants are and how to get there.  Sheesh.
9. HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE
   Having a volunteer at the door to help you with your boxes and usher you to your table is a truly wonderful experience.  If you can make this happen for your exhibitors, then do.
10. SHOOT FOR THE STARS
    Every self-publisher is wishing after a few years that somebody else would do their self-promoting, shilling and overall dirty work.  Having a publisher or distributor at your event will make it a million times better than having an exhibitor-only event.  There’s a thrill in the air when you think someone in the room might make it big somehow with just the right connection.  Make sure your publisher/distro on hand is kindly and bemused by most circumstances, is willing to listen and respond to strangers, and won’t be a total asshole and break people’s dreams.  If this means requesting a lackey instead of the higher-ups for a small fest, there’s no shame in it.
11. FIND THE GEEKY PRESS WRITER
    Every city paper has some comic-loving nerd on staff.  Look for the tell-tale signs in the focus of their columns, track them down, and send them personally addressed invitations and press releases.  They will love the attention and if you are lucky they will write about your event.  This will be easier in New York City.  Brian Heater lives there.

If you’d like to talk more about event planning, or starting your own small scale small press show, I’d be happy to talk with you.  Email me at smorean @ gmail . com

I hope next year, if you’re ever in the Twin Cities, you’ll visit our Zinefest.  It is petite and cheap and really fun.  zinefest.org

- Sarah Morean

Lacey Prpic Hedtke dazzles the crowd at the 2009 Twin Cities Zinefest

Beautiful, Cool, and Irreplaceable
By Will Dinski
Self-Published

Among the lessons that can still be learned from the works F. Scott Fitzgerald is the fact that melodrama and literature need not be mutually exclusive forces, a concept sometimes overlooked in this age of daytime soaps and Danielle Steel paperbacks. In the proper hands, hyperbolic characters and plot points can be an effective tools in spinning a story, without edging too far into the world of self-parody.

Will Dinski has seemingly learned a lot from his fellow Minnesotan, taking a page or two out of Fitzgerald’s character playbook in the crafting of Beautiful, Cool, and Irreplaceable’s cast. They’re rich, they’re troubled, and they possess a propensity for passionate embraces. On a surface level, the character interaction that comprises the majority of the book unfolds like standard soap opera fair. In fact, early on the book, it’s difficult to gauge just how seriously Dinski expects us to take their problems. Surely the average reader of a self-published indie comic must have some difficulty conjuring up the proper empathy for the shallow relationship problems befalling successful movie stars.

Ostensibly, the story about a group of plastic surgeons and their clientele. Dinski’s attentions, however, soon turn to the cracks and flaws and imperfections of being perfect. “I’ve been perfecting you since before you were an actress,” explains Dr. Fingers, the surgeon as the center of the book, critiquing the angle of his star patient’s nose. “My masterpiece. One more surgery and you’ll be perfect.” Moments later, after two silent panels, the two embrace in the privacy of the house’s library during a cocktail party, as their respective partners—one a closeted movie star and the other vainly waging war against the wrinkles on her forehead—wait in the other room. You can practically hear the cheesy transition music swelling to a climax.

Beneath this moment, however, there’s a highly troubling message about the pursuit of perfection in the age of that ultimate status symbol, plastic surgery—one character’s manic obsessions and another’s eagerness to go along for the ride, upon discovering that, even after countless procedures, she is still flawed, or at the very least, has yet to live up to the expectations of man who considers her body little more than a slab of marble to be chiseled as a monument to himself.

Even more troubling is the question that’s truly at the heart of Beautiful, Cool, and Irreplaceable, posed indirectly by Yumiko, the surgeon’s assistant, who, despite remaining silent for a majority of the book, turns out ultimately to be the story’s true star. Yumiko quickly establishes herself as a rising wunderkind in the plastic surgery world, albeit through fairly unorthodox methods. When she pioneers a “Face Augmentor,” which turns its wearer into a near doppelganger of a well-known celebrity, it immediately deflates the value of her mentor’s services. More importantly, however, it calls into question the value of beauty in a world where seemingly timeless concepts can be easily bought and sold. What, if any, currency can we put in the beautiful people we worship, if there are armies of clones marching down the street?

Dinski tells the story with a minimal amount of lines, in many cases doing away with the confines of rectangular panels altogether, lending the book a decidedly brisk quality, which perhaps adds to impressions early on in the reading that the work is, in fact, working on a surface level. It’s effective on one level, but it also demonstrates a few spatial issues on the artist’s part, after crafting so many beautiful diminutive minis.

His characters, however, largely possess flawed symmetry, with profiles that can take on nearly cubist proportions, a subtle reminder, perhaps, of the sometimes conflicting notions of beauty and art, a concept brought directly to the forefront when a partygoer admiring a large classically-styled painting utters, “isn’t it beautiful?” The statement, while addressed at the woman behind him, is clearly rhetorical. “It’s signed by Eshelbiyer. But it’s more likely one of his assistant painted it. A true Eshelbiyer hasn’t been painted in years.” It’s a loaded assessment, to be sure, and now, in retrospect, the foreshadowing of such a statement couldn’t be clearer.

Ultimately, both Dinski’s art and storytelling beg the reader to dig below the surface. Combined they reveal a number of important questions about beauty, celebrity, sexuality, art, and superficiality. Granted, Dinksi asks far more than he could ever possibly hope to answer, but in doing so he demonstrates that sometimes shallowness is only skin deep.

–Brian Heater