news

A bunch of prominent graphic novel creators and advocates, and me, were asked to give our so-called elevator pitch as to why we think skeptical parents, teachers, librarians, and other non-true-believers should at least consider encouraging people to…well, at least consider reading graphic novels.

The results are in Diamond’s “Graphic Novel Outreach: A BookShelf Roundtable”, and unlike many times I’m quoted, I don’t have many second thoughts on how I would say it better. It helps that I didn’t have to come up with it in an elevator, of course, but now that I have this thing I hope I get to use it someday. Or even better, that I don’t, and that the conversation goes more along the lines of “Oh, you make graphic novels? I loved the one I just finished. It was about…”

I’m not featured on the cover of the new issue of Danny Fingeroth’s Write Now! — they put Christian Bale’s picture on it instead. Probably because they wanted people to buy copies. But you will find something by me tucked away inside, lurking amidst articles by Denny O’Neil, Max Allan Collins, Brian Michael Bendis, and other luminaries. My piece talks about writing non-fiction comics, of course, and it includes a flowchart, because that’s how I think about writing sometimes.

(No kidding — I finally broke through a mental logjam regarding the plot of an upcoming book when I started approaching it as computer code. Jason Shiga would be proud.)

Updated, Nov. 14: Because of a production mixup, in the printed article it appears as if neither I nor the Write Now! editors did the appropriate research on how to spell “research.” The irony isn’t lost on us, we regret the error, and assure you that we do know how to use a dikshunairy. Here’s the flowchart, as we intended it to appear.

Sean Bieri and I just finished the first Better Zombies Through Physics story, and with the Blessings of Tor (sounds like something Rick Moranis might have said in Ghostbusters, but it’s much better than that) we are sending Erwin and Co. out into the wild via a Creative Commons “Attribution-Share Alike” license. You can read more about it over at Tor.com.

Here’s hoping some many of you will have some fun with the characters!

Tor.com has been running Better Zombies Through Physics for the last few weeks, and Sean Bieri and I aren’t finished yet. So please head on over — there’s a new installment up right now, and still plenty of time for you to get caught up before the end. And as you’d expect from them, Tor offers some great materials on their site in addition to comics about Schrödinger’s equation!