Cartoon: Afghanistan Apology Card #157

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Self-explanatory, I think.

Cartoon for Women's eNews: Relief for Haitian Women

Haiti already had the highest maternal, infant and under-five mortality in the Western Hemisphere and the earthquake (and the collapse of hospitals, including an obstetrics hospital) certainly hasn't helped. In addition to more broad-based relief groups, please also consider giving to women's relief groups such as Madre that are dealing with women and girls' unique needs in the aftermath.

Here's the cartoon at Women's eNews, and below is a permalink (the eNews link expires in a week or so):

(click here to view)

Mikhaela Reid Metro Times (Detroit) Jan 21, 2010 EditorialCartoonists.com

I will add that I received a really disturbing bit of pro-rape (seriously!?) email from a Mr. John Napolitano in response to this cartoon this morning. An excerpt (warning--this is really horrible, so please don't read if it will upset you... it certainly upset me):

But do you understand that the rapist could be another (male) earthquake victim. pushed over the edge from being denied the aid they need?

But most women's advocacy is full of this sort of narrow short sightedness, which does nothing but make another part of the people feel less than equal. I sometimes wonder if this isn't the real aim.

The end result is the furthering of the "Women's Agenda at the expense of Humanity.....

No comment. That really soured my morning.

Cartoons on Haiti from the Mikhaela Archives

I'll have a cartoon about maternal health in Haiti tomorrow for Women's eNews. I haven't drawn anything yet about the way the relief effort is going, or the political implications, or the history behind this "natural" disaster (earthquakes are natural disasters, but extreme vulnerability to earthquakes are not)... In the meantime, two from the archives:

For some reason (not sure why I didn't do any cartoons about the coup against Aristide?) I hadn't drawn any cartoons about Haiti since 2004. Here's one from 2004 and one from 2002. I was appalled to hear that the U.S. has told Haitians that even if they manage to get to the U.S. via dangerous boat journey, they will just be jailed. At least no one is being deported to Haiti at the moment.

Click image to see full-size for either.

Cartoon: Haitian Cruise

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Seriously? They seriously claim this is the BEST way to help, sunning in a fenced-in resort 60 miles from hundreds of thousands of people in desperate need of immediate aid? Meanwhile, Doctors Without Borders had difficulty getting their mobile hospital supplies into Port-Au-Prince...

Caption: Royal Caribbean cruise ships continue to dock in Haiti
Dialogue: Buying trinkets in a fenced-in resort is the LEAST we can do for those lovely unfortunate people! Absolutely! More champagne, darling?

Massachusetts Mourning

Ugh. This really brings me back to what I think might have been my first cartoon for the then Boston Phoenix, drawn in November 2002 the morning after Mitt Romney won the governor's seat:

Wish I had still been registered to vote in my home state, not that it would have made a difference. KENNEDY'S SEAT? WTF?!

Massachusetts, please vote Coakley now!

While you can! That is all.

Blue Doodle Cartoon Hoodie

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OK, ok, I know--enough with the baby stuff. But this is cartoon-related--I sewed up a little blue hooded sweatshirt this weekend with Masheka's cartoon doodles on it (fabric printed via Spoonflower).

I didn't have a baby-sized mannequin or doll to put it on, so Masheka kindly used it as a puppet here.

And, by the way, this is a gender-neutral item (baby is a Mystery Baby right now)--I don't believe in "blue is for boys", etc. I love blue, so whatever.

Jay Smooth on Haiti: "Haiti is a Nation of Heroes"

Via Racialicious. Only caveat to this otherwise excellent piece--at the end he mentions several organizations to donate to, including Doctors Without Borders and Partners in Health--but also Wyclef's Yele foundation. After recent revelations, I'd avoid the latter and stick with the former two.

Cartoon: Screw Blue

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Yes, I'm playing cartoon catchup again--this one ran over a week ago in print. I must admit I've been a bit busy preparing for the arrival of the Cartoonist SuperBaby (as in, Masheka and I are both artists and packrats, and we have to get rid of over 1/3 of our earthly posessions and furniture to make room)...

Cartoons on Haiti coming this week of course.

By the way, you may remember this nameless couple--they've appeared a few times over the last year or so, starting with the election. Maybe at some point they'll get actual names.

Hey Detroit (& Dearborn)! Check out the COVERED exhibit at Headspace Gallery!

Masheka is one of many awesome cartoonists featured in this exhibit at Green Brain Comics' Headspace gallery in Dearborn. Here's his contribution, and the details from his blog:

Check out my version of Gil Kane's cover to Sensation Comics #109. The original art and a color print are on exhibit (and for sale) at Headspace Gallery in Michigan's Green Brain Comics (see press release below) -----

Green Brain Comics is proud to announce the opening of a new exhibit entitled COVERED on Wednesday, January 13th in the recently named HEADSPACE Gallery inside Green Brain Comics.

Inspired by a similar theme at the Covered blog (www.covered.blogspot.com) HEADSPACE curator Dan Merritt has assembled several pieces by artists that have brought their own touch to famous, and infamous comic book covers from several different decades.

"The theme for this exhibit has really sparked a creative flame." says Merritt "Each of these pieces has been lovingly recreated in tribute to the original art and the original artists that created them."

Featured in the exhibit will be works from Michigan based comic creators Paul Sizer, Matt Feazell, and Sean Bieri. Joining them will be other well known local artists Eric Millikin, Jennifer Rose Evans, and Chris Houghton. The Covered exhibit also features new work by many others, including Bryan Durren, Heather Hansma, Lizz James, Jesse Hughes and a piece by Masheka Wood from New York.

The opening reception for the Covered exhibit will be on Wednesday January 13th from 7pm to 10 pm. And the art will be on view until Saturday March 6th.

HEADSPACE Gallery is inside Green Brain Comics which is located at 13210 Michigan Avenue in East Downtown Dearborn. More information is available at www.greenbrain.biz or by calling 313-582-9444

Cartoonist Baby With Attitude

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I had to share this--my mother made a newborn nightgown for my baby-to-be out of a Cartoonists With Attitude T-shirt!

Also, Happy New Year!

Cartoon: Damned Statistics

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For real.

Cartoon: Obama Does Orwell in Oslo

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I wasn't planning to do two "Obama is a Mean Old Warmonger" cartoons in a row but come on... accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo with a speech about how war IS peace? Dude was asking for it...

Cartoon: Urge to Surge 2: Afghanistan!

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This is a sequel to my Iraq Surge cartoon from 2007. Just because Obama sounds so calm and reasonable (and can pronounce nuclear) doesn't make the victims of his bloody endless war any less dead or tortured.

As I was sketching this cartoon Sunday I got a comment from a reader wondering why I hadn't expressed my irritation with Obama lately. I told him it was mostly out of disappointment/avoidance, but this surge thing most certainly required comment.

Big News

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Notice any differences between this picture and this one taken just a month ago (besides the lack of googly eyes)?

Anyway, this is why I have been under the weather so much lately. I've discovered it's quite a bit more difficult to blog/draw/whatever when you're uncontrollably nauseous all the time.

Cartoon: Roman Polanski's Get Away With Child Rape Kit

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Here's another from a few months ago, originally for Women's eNews (but that link no longer works for some reason).

Cartoon: Once upon a swine...

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I'm 100% for the vaccine and plan to get it ... if it EVER becomes available. So many of the pieces I've seen debating for or against the vaccine seem to be missing the fact that even high-risk groups (such as folks with asthma) haven't been able to get it yet. I've been calling my doctor's office and several New York h1n1 hotlines for weeks and they have no clue when they'll have it available.

Also, Bill Maher and Glenn Beck are idiots. Would have drawn them both into the last panel but there just wasn't room.

Cartoon: Monuments to Multitasking Heroes

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Cartoon: America's Soft Toilet Paper Addiction

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There is no need to wipe your butt with old-growth forests.

Women's eNews Cartoon: Sotomayor

Last week's cartoon on Sotomayor here.

Cartoon: The Recovery in Action

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Domestic Violence is a Pre-Existing Condition?!

From Feministing.

Cartoon: Leave Caster Semenya Alone!

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Seriously, screw gender testing, and screw those IAAF jerks telling this world champion runner she's not a real woman. The only reason she was tested was because she didn't match some visual standard of European femininity. I'm not sure how much to trust the media on any of this, but I read reports today that she is "shattered" by the humiliation of the gender testing and possibly on suicide watch.

More reading and background on this:

• "An Intersex Perspective on Caster Semenya"
  
• Feministe: "Caster Semenya Case Opening Old Wounds"
  
• Feministe: Essentialism, gender and Caster Semenya
  
• The Root: "Caster Semenya's Race and Sex Struggle
  
• Feministing: South African Runner's Makeover
  

(Thanks to the Transadvocate feed for many of these links).

Cartoon: So, what do YOU do?

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There are many ways to spin long-term unemployment.

Cartoon for Women's eNews: Pre-Existing Condition

Starting this month, I'll be doing biweekly cartoons for the fabulous Women's eNews (which will also be debuting a fabulous new website design sometime soon). Here's the first one, "Pre-Existing Condition." For more on this topic, see "Reformers Say Maternity Benefits Make Dollar Sense" and "Push Is On to Cover Prenatal Care in Health Plan"

Cartoon: The Health Reform Debate

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Drew this a few weeks ago after my parents encountered some unpleasant characters with Obama-Hitler signs at a town hall. If I had drawn more recently he'd be toting a bunch of machine guns.

Cartoon: HEROES of a GREEN TOMORROW!

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Staving off the Envirapocalypse, One Nanosecond at a Time!

For more on why I drew this cartoon, see this rant and this rant. And yes, of course I recycle and bring reusable bags.

Senator Kennedy, Hero of LGBT Rights!

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I did this front-cover tribute illustration for Bay Windows' special Kennedy tribute issue. The idea was Kennedy as an LGBT rights hero, so I looked to vintage superhero comic book covers for inspiration:

The editors tell me the reaction to the cover was so positive they're framing it and sending it to the Kennedy family.

And here's the final cover with logo on top:

RIP Ted Kennedy

That is all I have to say at the moment.

Raj Patel on "The Honey Trap of Ethical Consumerism"

I've been reading a lot of books about food lately—food politics, the food movement (and cookbooks, too). My front-runner favorite so far has been Raj Patel's inspiring/scathing Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System. His book is much more international than the others, gets into worker, farmer and community food struggles (and successes) around the world and doesn't have a myopic focus on what individual Americans can or should do about their own personal habits. It's about global justice, not personal food purity.

For example, in the otherwise wonderful film "Food, Inc.", after exposing the horrors of factory farms and CAFOs, Big Ag, processed foods, pesticides, GMOs, horrifying working conditions, etc., the film ends with a bizarre feel-good "don't worry, you can vote for good food three times a day" message (get it? you can buy sustainable/local/ethical food three times a day!). But that just ain't enough, any more than replacing a few lightbulbs or buying adorable green products is enough.

One of my favorite passages in Stuffed and Starved comes in the conclusion, when Patel takes a moment to skewer the fantasy of good consumerism:

The honey trap of ethical consumerism is to think that the only means of communication we have with producers is through the market, and that the only way we can take collective action is to persuade everyone else to shop like us. It alters our relationship to the possibility of social change. It makes us think we are consumers in the great halls of democracy, which we can pluck off the shelves in the shops. But we are not consumers of democracy. We are its proprietors. And democracy happens not merely when we shop, but throughout our lives.

But wait! there's more!

The connection between those who eat and those who grow food cannot be measured in terms of brand loyalty points or dollars spent. To short-cut the food system, and to know the people who grow our food, is more than to broker a relationship between buyer and seller. It is to build a human contact that goes beyond a simple transaction and that recognizes certain kinds of commonality, certain kinds of subjugation, and struggles, fights, for an end to the systemic inequalities in power which shape the way rich and poor live today. The food system, as we've seen, creates poverty at the same time as it produces an abundance of food. It fosters hunger and disease through its mechanisms of production and distribution. And it was forged in large measure because of the fear that urban workers and rural peasants would jump out of their social positions. That they would demand equality. The system was designed to siphon wealth from rural areas, with just enough redistributed to keep people quiet. But people acting, en masse, for equality, has been the only force that has changed the world. This is what makes food sovereignty far richer, and more enriching, than an ethical form of hedonism for those able to afford it.

Hells yeah. Patel has more on food sovereignty on his website along with suggestions for action (which DOES include shopping locally and sustainably, but doesn't stop there).

Also on the topic of the limits of ethical consumerism and individual action, I came across this great piece by Derrick Jensen, "Forget Shorter Showers: Why Personal Change Does Not Equal Political Change", a point he also makes in a graphic novel co-authored by my pal Stephanie McMillan, As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial.

More cartoons by me on related topics:

• "Fun Times at the Supermarket"
• "The New Green Hummer"
• "Quick Fixes for Every Crisis!"
• "Confessions of a Closet Conservationist"
• "Quick and Easy Guide to Conservation"

Cartoon: Bloggers Without Book Deals

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Even though I mock the concept, I've found myself reading and enjoying quite a few of these "one-year blog project" blogs—even the ones with book deals. Such as:

• Julie Powell's The Julie/Julia Project, which became Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen and eventually Julie & Julia: The Movie. If you haven't heard of this one you've been under a rock, and I admit to picking up the edition of Julie & Julia with Amy Adams on the cover and the edition of My Life in France with Meryl Streep on the cover (I was at a train station news stand, ok?). I have to admit the movie half about Julie Powell's blog project left out most of the fun bits—her self-deprecating humor, her friends' romantic mishaps, her rants against Republicanism, the flies and maggots. But whatever, I generally enjoyed the movie and there were no celebrations of high-heeled shoes to be found. I even made cassoulet before going to see it.
  
• Colin Beavan's No Impact Man blog, about to be launched as a book ("No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet...") and a documentary. It's about a New York family who tries to reduce their carbon footprint to as close to zero as possible, even eschewing public transportation, elevators, toilet paper and packaged goods from the farmer's market. It's educational and inspiring, but I worry that the focus is too much on individuals choosing to reduce. Still, at least he rejects green consumerism and silly half-measures and I love the anti-consumption message.
  
• Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Another inspirational tale about a family, in this case a family on a small farm in Virginia, attempting to eat as locally as possible for a year (including growing and preserving their own produce and raising chickens and turkeys for eggs and meat). Just a book and website, not so much a blog, but it's a similar type of project, and quite eye-opening. I even ordered the 30-minute mozzarella cheese-making kit she mentions. My only gripe was the random rant against vegetarianism, which seemed odd coming from someone who rejects CAFO meats. Even Michael Pollan (guilty of a similar weird treatment of vegetarianism in The Omnivore's Dilemma) has come to the conclusion that it's not enough help to the environment to just eat free-range meat—Americans need to eat WAY fewer meat and dairy products.
  

P.S. I have nothing against tripe or offal (if you're going to eat meat—which I do—might as well make use of every bit) though I doubt they would be palatable in cereal form.

P.P.S. I am quite myopic and did once (accidentally) get the wrong glasses prescription. I went around with what Kurt Vonnegut would call a "whanging headache" all day, bumping into all sorts of fun walls and whatnot. No fun! But not particularly blog-worthy.

P.P.P.S. I got so caught up I forgot to mention the other reasons I loved Kingsolver's book--my grandparents had a farm in Maine, and when I was a kid, my family had a huge vegetable garden and fruit trees and kept ducks and chickens. We had fresh duck eggs for breakfast on weekends and made homemade applesauce, peanut butter, pickles, canned stews, the works.

Cartoon: The Power of Prevention

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This was loosely inspired by a real woman who called into NPR (I think it was the Brian Lehrer show?) to rage against health care reform and a public option. At first she went on some typical rant about how the evil socialists wanted to force everyone to pay for health care for sick, lazy and old people. She followed up with a sanctimonious self-congratulatory bit about how wonderfully healthy SHE was due to her yoga and consumption of organic and local food and how she didn't need health insurance due to her pure diet.

In other words, for her, sick people were lazy and immoral, and getting cancer was their own damn fault. It's not just this random radio caller, either -- I've increasingly heard that argument elsewhere (especially in talk over the "obesity epidemic").

Sure, yoga is awesome, and local and organic food are fabulous, but they aren't marks of moral superiority or magical wards against disease and illness is not a moral failing. (And isn't the local/sustainable/organic food movement supposed to be about building community and protecting the environment and improving worker conditions for everyone... not just an individualistic way of keeping impurities out of your own special body?)

I wanted to scream through the radio. "Lady, ANYBODY can get sick or injured, no matter their age or diet or yoga skill level!" (Anybody can, say, trip inside their apartment, break their foot, have complications, and need six months of tests and treatments and therapy--lucky me I have health insurance!) Also, EVERYBODY ages.

We need affordable, comprehensive universal health care that doesn't discriminate on health conditions, in which everyone shares the risks—and reaps the rewards when they need it.

Your Yucky Body: Embrace Your Shape Edition!

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Seriously, even Vogue has an annual "Shape" issue where they patronizingly allow someone as (*GASP*) huge as Beyonce or Kate Winslet on the cover in addition to their usual sub-zero model roundup... then offer drastic dieting tips... all while mysteriously claiming to promote body acceptance: And don't miss the small print under the "LOVE YOUR BODY! headlines...

I threw in the "Lucy Loser" joke after being enraged by comments in an Entertainment Weekly piece (from the 7/31/09 issue) claiming that the proliferation of "inspiring" weight loss reality TV shows is a public good. Says the Style Network's Coleman Smith:

"Given what is going on with the country with obesity, I absolutely think weight loss is its own category. ... It's enabled us to stop thinking we live in a size 2 world by appropriately embracing real people." (emphasis mine)

Ah, I see. The only APPROPRIATE way to show non-size-2 bodies on TV is to show people trying to DIET DOWN to become a size 2! And this is about HEALTH, not HUMILIATION and RATINGS, right? That's body positivity we can all believe in! This cartoon is part of a series I've been doing for a while now. See also:

• "Your Yucky Body: A Repair Manual" (the original)
• "Summer Swimsuit Spectacular"
• "Designer Dieting"
• "Mommy Makeovers"

For more on fake body positivity, see...

• Marianne Kirby's Daily Beast piece "Really Big Love". (Kirby says of "More to Love": "It’s a one-two punch of acceptance followed by a knockout blow of shame" and that she's "tempted to make up a drinking game around how often the contestants and suitor on the show say 'voluptuous, curvy women.' It would be an easy way to get sloshed.")
• My pal Jenn Pozner, who is live-tweeting a host of reality TV horrors as she writes her book Reality Bites Back.

Update: I've been getting a lot of comments on this post I've had to reject. So FYI, if you are going to leave mean-spirited comments that refer to people as "blimps" or claiming that men only find skinny women attractive, I will reject them.

Toon: Freedom of Health Care Choice!

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NOT that I think much of the watered-down health care reform that Obama is pushing for (you know I'm a single-payer woman), but hell, it's better than what we got!

Toon: Movies for Ladies!

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Cause men! and women! are DIFFERENT! in HILARIOUS ways! More on this topic later.

Toon: Sarah Palin Quits... for Victory!

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This is from last week, of course.

Cagle video interview with me and Jen on women, cartooning, lewd humor!

Cagle has a two-part video interview with me and Jen Sorensen (of Slowpoke fame) from the AAEC convention in Seattle last week. Even Editor & Publisher took note!

Vice President Reid!

I've been nominated as the only candidate for Vice President (and very likely future President-Elect and President) of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists! This is an honor/exciting/terrifying.

P.S. Also, I may have mentioned this before, but I'm on Twitter. You could have gotten that news live from the nomination meeting!

Toon: The American Family Health Plan

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It's a classic.

Toon: Fun Times at the Supermarket

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I'm off to Seattle and the annual AAEC editorial cartooning convention. In the meantime, I leave you with this tasty morsel.

Toon: Barack Obama, Fierce Advocate of LGBT Rights!

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Disappointed, yes. Surprised? Not really.

For more angry venting, you must watch and/or read the bad-ass speech my pal Jaclyn Friedman gave at the Boston Dyke March on this topic. A sampling:

That Presidential Proclamation? It would sure sound sweeter if it were backed up by actual action to end discrimination against gay, lesbian, bi and trans Americans willing to DIE in service of our country's military whims. And it would be more than a little helpful if Obama would stop caving to the religious right and start condemning marriage discrimination, instead of defending it like he did today.

Of course, marriage rights themselves would be a lot less important if quality, competent health care was available to every person in this country regardless of marital status, income, age, race, sexual orientation or gender identity. But who needs universal health care when you've got a shiny proclamation that proves the president knows we exist? He likes us! He really likes us.

Even the HRC is getting feisty about Obama's odd—Clintonian, even!—interpretation of "fierce advocacy."

P.S. Rachel Maddow is so rocking this topic:

Barbara Ehrenreich on the real toll of the recession

Ehrenreich has a must-read Op-Ed ("Too Poor to Make the News") on the lazy journalism of the recession, and its obsessive focus on the recession's effects on the rich and middle-class. I particularly love this opening paragaph:

THE human side of the recession, in the new media genre that?s been called ?recession porn,? is the story of an incremental descent from excess to frugality, from ease to austerity. The super-rich give up their personal jets; the upper middle class cut back on private Pilates classes; the merely middle class forgo vacations and evenings at Applebee?s. In some accounts, the recession is even described as the ?great leveler,? smudging the dizzying levels of inequality that characterized the last couple of decades and squeezing everyone into a single great class, the Nouveau Poor, in which we will all drive tiny fuel-efficient cars and grow tomatoes on our porches.

Maybes: APE in San Francisco this year; new LGBT cartoon collection

Masheka and I may go to APE (Alternative Press Expo) on October 17-18 in San Francisco this year. If we do, I plan to put together a collection of my LGBT-themed political cartoons (which I've been meaning to do anyway).

"Free speech" doesn't equal "free from criticism and consequence"

Great post by Barry (which he calls "horribly earnest") about the bigoted radio DJs who called for violence against transgender kids.

My only small quibble is that I don't see why we have to support the pencil manufacturer if we don't like his/her views (why couldn't we buy pencils from someone we like better?) See my cartoon "Victims of Gay Rage" for more on this.

Reminder: At MOCCA Art Fest this weekend

Masheka and I are at this year's MOCCA Art Festival sharing a table with our Cartoonists With Attitude pal Brian McFadden and the talented Melissa J. Gibson (Made by Melissa). We have mini-comics (new), books (old) and dolls and T-shirts.

Where?
69th Regiment Armory
68 Lexington Avenue, between 25th and 26th Streets

When?
June 6th and 7th, 11am-6pm

Cost?
$10 per day
$15 per weekend
MoCCA Members: $10 per weekend

Back from Europe!

Just got back from a 2-week+ trip to the UK, France and the Netherlands (a "short holiday" by the standards of the guy at passport control, a very long holiday by my sad American standards!) Will be at MOCCA this weekend with Masheka. Was horrified to return to awful news of the assassination of Dr. George Tiller.

Toon: Indefinitive

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I was going to call this cartoon "change I don't want to believe" but Masheka wisely counseled me otherwise. Seriously though, I really wish I hadn't had to draw this (in the sense that I wish Obama hadn't made the awful decisions that led me to draw this.)

Toon: The HETEROmance Wedding Package

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A Tasteful New Tradition for Old-Fashioned Couples!

Inspired by this ridiculous photograph of a couple getting married as part of an anti-gay protest. Can you imagine this couple showing their grandkids the wedding album thirty or forty years from now? "Grandpa, how come you were against equality?"

Some questions about this photo:

• Why are these bigots so damn happy? Does it really give them that much joy to be joined together in matrimony as part of a "screw you" to same-sex couples?
• Why did the NYTimes caption this picture "A protest on Wednesday over the Washington City Council’s vote to recognize same-sex marriages from other states included a traditional wedding ceremony" (emphasis mine)? What part of any traditional wedding ceremony involves gay-bashing signage? That totally wasn't in the wedding planning manual I used...

Sugary new heights of giggle

The cartoon I'm drawing about antigay weddings is actually making me giggle out loud. Especially the line "soar to sugary new heights of one man, one woman love."

This is a refreshing change from my usual expression while drawing--the sleep-deprived squint.

Random Book Love: Aya of Yop City, James Tiptree, Jr.

I read. A lot. Mostly science fiction, but some non-SF, some fantasy, some nonfiction, some graphic novels. Generally 1-4 books per week.

Some books (comics and non) I've read (or reread) and loved lately:

Aya of Yop City (pictured above) by Marguerite Abouet and Clement Oubrerie. The second graphic novel in a light-hearted series about the adventures of three young women growing up in 1970s Ivory Coast. Abouet's writing and characters are a delight and I could stare at Oubrerie's lovely line- and colorwork in envy all day.

James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips. I read this amazing, dense, beautifully-written 400+-page biography in a several day fever-dream ending in eyestrain and tears. Publisher blurb:

James Tiptree, Jr., burst onto the science fiction scene in the late 1960s with a series of hard-edged, provocative stories. He redefined the genre with such classics as Houston, Houston, Do You Read? and The Women Men Don't See. For nearly ten years he wrote and carried on intimate correspondences with other writers--Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison, and Ursula K. Le Guin, though none of them knew his true identity. Then the cover was blown on his alter ego: "he" was actually a sixty-one-year-old woman named Alice Bradley Sheldon. A feminist, she took a male name as a joke--and found the voice to write her stories."

Thanks to journalist Beth Schwartzapfel for the tip about the biography--she's not even a science fiction fan at all and she loved this book!

By the way, Sheldon inspired the annual James Tiptree, Jr. Award for the best gender-exploring science fiction.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Wonderful young adult book about kids in a dystopian far-future who are forced to compete in a brutal battle-to-the-death reality show for the amusement of the rich. (Yes, it's similar in plot to Battle Royale and The Long Walk, but totally original in execution).

The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick. The life of a changeling girl in a brutal post-industrial have-and-have-not fairyland. I have read this book four or five times and I never get sick of it. I can't believe it's out of print!

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. Another beloved reread. Science-fiction classic about a complex planet called Winter, whose people are genderless except during their mating cycle.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie; illustrations by cartoonist extraordinaire Ellen Forney. Alexie's first YA book is the story of Junior, a wouldbe cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation.

And a few of the 170+ books on my urgent to-read list:

So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy. Anthology edited by one of my all-time favorite SF writers, Nalo Hopkinson.

The City & the City by China Miéville.

Nation by Terry Pratchett. Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree, Jr.

Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel.

Filter House Tiptree-Award-winning short story collection by Nisi Shawl.

P.S. Sadly, Masheka and I were unable to attend the always-awesome East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention this year, but I plan to check out many of the books nominated for Glyph Awards (Aya of Yop City being one).

New Hampshire! (almost)

New England's still on a winning streak for marriage equality. Rhode Island might be a while yet, though.

Re: Obama's change of heart

On the bright side, at least all those indefinite detainees won't have to worry about the release of embarrassing photos! But seriously: WTF?!

NYC event: Mikhaela & Masheka at MOCCA Art Fest June 6-7

Mark your calendars: Masheka and I will be at this year's MOCCA Art Festival sharing a table with our Cartoonists With Attitude pal Brian McFadden and the talented Melissa J. Gibson (Made by Melissa). We will have mini-comics, books and possibly dolls and T-shirts.

Where?
69th Regiment Armory
68 Lexington Avenue, between 25th and 26th Streets

When?
June 6th and 7th, 11am-6pm

Cost?
$10 per day
$15 per weekend
MoCCA Members: $10 per weekend

Doodle fabric designs!

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Masheka and I spent the evening making fabric designs out of some of his doodles. Fun, no? We're going to order the fabric through Spoonflower to make stuff for this year's MOCCA art festival (June 6 and 7 in NYC).