 We are very fortunate to have five very talented creators who have past and present and upcoming projects with first, second, and I could go on and on about them, but we'll talk about first, second I think throughout the presentation, so let's just go on the line and introduce ourselves. All right. My name is Jason Chiga. I've been making comics for almost 25 years now, believe it or not, and I've most recently had a book out through first, second called Demon. It's a four volume series and it was released sort of on an unusual schedule. All four volumes were released over the course of one year. It's not true. No way. How'd you do that? That's amazing. Well, it's not like I drew it in one year, but yeah, all the readers could kind of keep up with the story and wouldn't have to wait a year to continue it. Anyways, that's me. My name is Mariko Tamaki. I have been making comics for 10 years, so way less than you. My first, I mean, I'm most well known for the graphic novels that I created with my cousin Jillian Tamaki, so we did a book called Skim with Groundwood Books and then this one summer with First, Second, and I also write for DC Comics and Marvel and Anybody Who Wants Me to Write Comics really. And I have a book coming out with First, Second called Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me, which is something I'm working on with Rosemary Valero O'Connell. I have been working on Pishmina or had been working on Pishmina for four years, so paltry comparison, but I've been doing illustri- oh, I'm Nidhi Chinani. I know my name, so, you know. And it took me four years to make Pishmina. I'm now working on my second book with First, Second called Jukebox, which will be out in 2020, we hope. And that's me. My name's Lisa Brown. I am working on my first graphic novel, which I'm not sure when it's going to come out, I think 2020 as well. But I do mostly picture books for little kids, and I also do comic strips. And I have a book of comic strips coming out, I don't know when. Hi, I'm Tin Fam, and I've been drawing comics for, since 2000, which is, what, 18 years now? Unlike everyone else on the panel, I'm the one different guy. Comics is not my full-time profession, I'm also a teacher. So I draw comics kind of on the side. So I really don't know when my next book's coming, it'll just come when we finish, or I finish drawing something. And right now it's going really slow, so. But I did this amazing graphic novel called Sumo, which is probably one of the best graphic novels I've ever made, but it was from First, Second, and yeah, so, yeah. Clearly no one on the production side of things here, because we're all like, nah, I don't know, maybe. Well, I do comics and teach on the side, so, you know. There's some cross-summing. Yeah, we all have jobs, I teach as well. Yeah, we all work for Living Tin. Yeah, I'm a landlord, man. Sort of. Maybe some of us don't have to wake up in the morning, but that doesn't mean we're not working. Oh, I have to wake up in the morning. I have a tiny alarm clock called My Child. I have a bigger alarm clock called My Child. Yeah, I don't have an alarm clock. I have a phone. I see these guys work. It's just doodling and checking Facebook all day. Okay, so who wakes up the earliest out of this? I do. What time do you wake up? I wake up at six o'clock every morning. Okay. Anybody earlier? No. Not earlier, but not much later. I wake up around six. I mean, isn't that the reason we all took this job? Is that we don't have to get dressed in the morning? Yes, yes. Okay, so I heard the year 2020 mentioned. That sounds like the far distant future. Can you give people an idea about the life of a graphic novel from that first little light bulb in your head when you actually get to sit down and see it in the bookstore on the library shelf? I think I'm the only person here who writes and doesn't draw. Yes. So for me, obviously, it's a very different process because I can't do it by myself. So I have to make sure that it's something someone wants to do with me. And I am mostly focused on, obviously, the writing part of it. So for this one summer, it was just a very loose idea about kids at the cottage. And we put together an outline which was completely inaccurate. Had nothing to do with the final book. So we put together this very kind of what we thought the book would be. And Jillian did some illustrations to go with it. And for a second ended up buying the novel. And then I go off for like six months and write the script that I write when I work on graphic novels, which is a very loose like almost theatrical script. And then the editors look at it and they say that this looks nothing like the outline and we have this like ensuing conversation about whether or not that's okay. And then Jillian and I actually I mean, most of the time when I work with an illustrator, there's like an extensive process of like making sure the editing process for me for comics is making sure everybody's on the same page about what the story should be. So we ended up doing a lot of editing between the two of us. And then it ended up getting approved by for a second. And then Jillian disappears for like two years because she works relatively quickly. And then I see so I see this like I have an idea of what it's going to look like and then it just comes back as this like reality, but I know it's really hard. I know it takes a long time and it's very difficult, but I don't see any of that stuff. I'm curious. Do you have any input like with Jillian because she's your cousin, but beyond Jillian, do you have any input on choosing your artist? I generally speaking, I actually have when you work with because I do a lot of trade comic writing and there you just you get whoever they decide is the person who's going with you. But for Laura Dean, I knew what I wanted it to look like and I knew the feeling that I wanted it to have, which is weird because then you only know that feeling when you see the artwork of somebody and then that's the feeling like I didn't go to them and say I wanted to look like this. I just knew that when we saw someone's artwork, something would feel right. And as soon as I saw Rosemary's artwork, I knew that she would be an amazing fit and then you just I just prayed like that's so stressful because you're just like the book won't work if this person doesn't say it's like prom. It's like prom every day where you're like, please say yes, please say yes. So yeah, and it just ended up working out that that she was really into it as well. Really kind of opposite sides of the wall apparently like freaking out and both hoping it would work out. We didn't know we were both like really nervous and freaking out and then when we finally got to talk to each other, once the agent stuff was done, we were like, yeah, it was beautiful. With me, I wrote the graphic novel script a long time ago and then I was trying it was my favorite thing and it's the project I always wanted to do and I was trying to carve out time to do it between teaching and my picture books and my child. And so finally I went away by myself for two weeks and like cranked out 30 pages of pencils and that's how I pitched it and it's like finally finally I get to do this thing. So it feels like I've been working on it forever but it hasn't been forever because I feel like I start, when I start drawing is when I really work on it. What's the name, do you have the name, the title? It's called The Living Doll. My process is a little different because I'm not a full-time cartoonist and I don't depend on drawing comics to like pay rent and all that stuff. It's both a blessing and a curse because it's a blessing because I don't work very fast and I don't have any, these guys all have probably a thousand stories in their heads they want to do, I have none. So like my stories come very like once in a very long time I get an inspiration to do a story or something like that. So it's a blessing that I don't depend on that to eat because then I wouldn't eat very well. But it's also kind of a little bit of a curse because it makes me think I'll just do it whenever I do it. So I work a lot slower but I get an idea and then I start drawing and me and Jason actually have a little pack that we're not going to, we don't pitch our comics anymore, Jason might go out, but like I don't like to show, I don't like to be like hey publisher here's my idea can you give me a contract and then I'll finish the comic. I did that once and it was really hard working that way because then they want this change and they want this change and this because I don't depend on it to eat I'm just like I don't want to do this. So it was a lot easier when I did Sumo where I basically finished the comic and then they were like oh we like this comic we'll buy it and I'm like cool you know and then that was it was a lot harder when you pitch a story or pitch an idea and then they wanted this way nowadays they actually want you to pitch a story they don't want to finish work because they want to kind of guide you to kind of like do what they would kind of like would fit their mold a little bit more so it's a little bit of harder sell if you like do a book and you're like here it is you want to publish it you know so it's a bit more of a risk but I feel like because you know I don't need it it's something that I'd rather do because then you know if they don't want it someone doesn't want it you can always just make it yourself publish it because it's so easy to like you know we used to make minis we came from the world where we're like zero-roxing our comics and stapling them and going to cons and trying to get someone to buy for $1.50 you know and so I can always go back to that you know it's not a big deal for me it'll probably be the exact same amount of people that bought the first second book as the person that bought my little minis so it's not any different but so my process is basically coming up with the idea and I don't really write so I'll basically have an idea a loose outline of what's going to happen in my head and I just start drawing and then once I start drawing then look at the drawings and I'm like okay now these people need to say something so I'll go in and put things in and it makes for very loose things because it's like a lot of like photoshopping where I'm like oh a word bubble's gotta fit in here you know like lasso that move that down put a word balloon in there so it's a little bit of a messier process but I guess it's the only kind of process that works for me so that's how I've been doing it for whatever long I've been doing it I think I'd recommend that way of working well I know it's hard for you but if it's possible I'd recommend writing as much as you can in the thumbnails of the story because I always felt comics is a visual medium and I feel the bulk of the storytelling should be done through the visuals can you explain thumbnails real quick? thumbnails are very very loose sketches of what each page and each panel on the page is going to look like so they could just be stick figures or they could be a little more detailed than that too but they're just a very loose guideline as to what's going to be in each panel how the page layout is going to look but yeah I after I have the thumbnails and kind of a loose script of what all the characters say it's from that point it's just it's just a matter of penciling and inking I like to I know every cartoonist works a little differently but I like to pencil everything first from beginning to end before I start inking a single panel that way if I need to change something in the story later on it's you know it doesn't require that much work to go back and change a pencil as opposed to changing a complete ink page which is why I mean versus trade comics it's so bizarre because comics trade comics are like finished like they go from the beginning to the end and so by the time you're at the end of this depending on the length of the project the first part is already finished like the first graphic novel I did with DC Comics back when Minx was a thing the first 20 pages were inked and finished and I was like you know but then you get to the editing process and they're like you can't edit like it's done so you don't actually have because it's such a like concrete medium like you can't go back and like it's almost like writing a TV show versus a movie or something exactly but for me from from start to finish for Demon it was about 5 years all together from coming up with with the thumbnails to inking the very last page of the book so it's a long process and I guess it's a little disheartening to think about people you know reading the whole thing in a couple hours but that's comics it took me a couple days just I think it I think it is always poor form to tell a comic book writer how long it took you to read their book I mean it's fine if you read it in an hour but they don't need to hear that it took them 7 years or it took them 5 years so you can just keep that information in your heart and just like thank them for the work they did without like making it seem like it was a race however you read it in 15 minutes and then you read it like once a month for the rest of your life it's okay it is okay like my son knows all the continuity errors say in amulet and will tell or demon there's a lot of continuity your son should not be reading demon he's getting there I don't write a lot in my comics because one I'm not a very good writer and two because of the way I work I don't want to go back in and put more words in so there's not a lot of words in my comics it's not silent but it's I call it poetry comics because I'm lazy and I don't want to write words but like all of sumo all the words if you took all of them it'd probably be about a paragraph if you took all the words together and so people all the time they're like oh man I love your comic I was able to finish that in 5 minutes I hate you because when you read a comic a lot of people would read a novel and I think when you read a comic it's not really like that the drawings say so much they say a lot more sometimes they say even more than the words in my comic like analyzing how I compose each panel and how each panel flows into each another panel is pretty much the way that the story that's the feeling that's everything that I want and when someone just looks through them and just reads the words and then flips through and just kind of basically scans the drawing that's not really reading my comic that's like reading the back cover of a book and trying to figure out what the book's about reading my comic I mean if you really were it would take a lot longer and I think reading any comic is like that if you just read the words then of course it's going to not take very long I mean depending on who wrote them maybe they're really awesome true insight into the human condition or maybe they're just like you know no big deal it's very hard to say what it is that you're getting out of any of the elements I wrote a bunch of words and then when I started thumb nailing I was able to take a lot out yeah so as I thumb nailed I was like oh I don't need this word I don't need this whole sentence that's like my one first advice to a first time comic book artist is to make sure that the words work with the pictures and not the words shouldn't be like telling describing the picture and the pictures shouldn't be illustrating the words they should be working together to like tell a different story so if you're like do a panel where it's a red balloon and your text says oh here's a red balloon then you might want to rethink how you're writing the comic you know I have also what's your deal with red balloons why are you obsessed with them but I've had people like would come to a table when I was trying to see the book and like browse do sumo and then would be like well I just read the whole thing I hate you so much should have a tip jar now you have to pay for it that'd be a good tip jar I like the tip jar idea I think that it's interesting though cause like we're all adults in this room so tell your friends don't tell don't tell comic book writers or artists that it took you an hour to read their book but kids will do this right kids will and they're really proud of their accomplishment but those are the same kids that will go back and read that same book like multiple times and that's what I like about comics being able to finish them in an hour or you know in a day being able to complete it also I feel opens the door for you to go back and revisit it and then take your time to absorb the art and the nuance within all of the work so I mean it's balanced yeah I've had librarians tell me that my book is very successful with reluctant readers like people that don't want to read books love reading my books so I'm kind of like I don't know that's a backhanded compliment but then I thought about them like I think it's a great compliment because when I was a kid I didn't really want to read books but I love reading comic books you know so I mean if kids are getting into reading books by reading my comics or by reading anybody's comics I'm all for that. That also goes back to that statement of like comic books are books like you know graphic novels are books so let's just not differentiate them at all but that's my own. I mean it's a great thing especially for children like being a children's book writer and having a child who was a reluctant reader but he wasn't really a reluctant reader because he was a really good visual reader and comics it's a whole other skill to read a comic and to have the text and the image and being able to read them all at the same time and I think it's like a skill a lot of adults don't have. Yeah and I think too my favorite one of my favorite YouTube series is Strip Penal Naked which is a really amazing comic book this guy Hassan basically like breaks down what it is that you're reading like why is what you're reading so cool like what are the things that you're maybe not thinking about and he did this really amazing thing on color and he did a really great thing on like you know timing and stuff like that in comics and I think it's like the same way with literature that you're growing to understand how metaphors work or how a writer uses time or how a writer uses character you can learn so many things about what it is that you're enjoying like I think that if you're a really comic if you're a solid comic book fan then you will go back and see like what it is that you are really liking in the comics that you like reading hopefully or just do whatever you want I don't care Right so backing up a little bit before you before you became celebrated graphic novelists you were aspiring cartoonists so how did you get your start whether it's your first mini comic your first hand stapled folded thing that you did in grade school what's your secret origin So like Tim mentioned I think a lot of us here got to start doing mini comics which I would I would highly recommend to anyone who's thinking about getting into comics because it's it's a wonderful way to to have a finished product in your hands that you can kind of bring people and bring around to shows mail sell through the mail even though I know probably a lot of youngsters today they get their start with web comics I would recommend the mini comics route You're old school So clearly old school I would recommend wasting money The thing is that Kinko's isn't a thing as much as it used to be used to be like actually like I had an office job and we had a photocopier so that's because that's the thing you need to have access to if you want to do mini comics is you need to photocopy them There's copy stores everywhere There's not copy stores everywhere Oh my gosh There's one in Piedmont I can think of Oh yeah that's the one I go to That's a good one That is a good one The cartoonist goes to They're nice over there I do think the thing that people should consider is that I think anybody who wants to go into comics and wants to write a graphic novel is crazy You should never start with something that is like bigger than you are The great thing about mini comics is it's a short story It's like taking something that's four panels or taking something that's five pages The first comic I ever did was a mini comic version of skim and it was sponsored by this Canadian literary magazine that decided it would put out mini comics by female creators and I think the reason that I was able to talk Gillian into doing it is I was like it's 22 pages No problem How hard could that be? It would be so small but it really gave us a chance to instead of getting overwhelmed by the amount of work that comics are it gave us a chance to try something out without there being a lot of weight on it and then it ended up being really fun I always doodled around through high school and college and I met my now husband in college and we started making these funny comics together just for fun and I would get this regionally published indian magazine called India Currents and they were looking for contributors and content and I was like I'm gonna send them this really if you looked at it now compared to where I'm at it was terribly drawn anatomy was all wrong It was all muscles It was just bad but I guess the jokes made an impact so they wrote me back and they gave me money they gave me 25 bucks for once a month for these funny strips and it was my first ever paid art job so I was just over the moon about it but it was many years later that I even approached comics again and I did it by kind of trying to do something too much so I thumbnailed a 200 page memoir I will never see the light of day but it did land me my agent so can I ask you a question about this memoir yeah I might not answer how far into it did you get it was done like penciled and inked oh yeah it was thumbnails it was thumbnails but they were pretty my thumbnails are pretty like I could just ink over them you know it's not stick figures or anything like that there's a lot of emotion in body language so I think that's part of why my agent was interested in signing me because she saw potential there but then there were too many things I didn't actually because she's also Reina Telgemeier's agent so she kind of put some things in perspective for putting your work out there about yourself and I was like yeah maybe I don't want to do that so I started comics in college where I had a bi-weekly that's twice a week right no okay every other week I had a twice a week whatever that is I knew it was wrong a twice a week comic strip in the school paper where it was all about being in college in the dorms but the whole idea was that nothing happened ever so it was like it moved at a glacial pace and that was on purpose because it felt like I was a teacher and then yeah and that was it I graduated college and I thought that I was going to go and be a literature professor so but I had this advisor who when he gave me like my evaluation for the class that I was in it was all about the doodles that I had done during class on the side of the page instead of taking notes and I thought he was angry at me and he was like I think you should keep on the doodle thing that's awesome I didn't believe him he's like don't do it anyway I ended up going to art grad school for graphic design and sort of make my way to illustration he's dead geez just got dark alright so I'm going to tell the story of how I got into comics how long is this panel sit back you guys 1985 no I started drawing comics in 4th grade I love comics I was a latchkey kid my parents would always work and so I loved watching cartoons like robotech and stuff like that and all my life all I wanted to draw was comics but more like superhero comics and it wasn't until I got into college that someone showed me a copy of Goodbye Chunky Rice you guys ever see that's a Craig Thompson book and I loved that book so much and then I started reading stuff like Optic Nerve someone told me that Optic Nerve used to be a mini comic and I was like what the hell is a mini comic and then they showed me and I was like I don't have to wait I can just make my comic now I can make my crappy comics now so that's what I started doing in college I started making crappy comics and this is a story that a lot of Bay Area cartoonists are going to tell you the same story but I also discovered another group of people that also did crappy comics and it was a group that met at Jason Shiga's house every week and they called it Art Night and this crew is an amazing crew the people that came out of this group is like Jean Yang was part of it Lark Pien Derek Kirk Tim Jesse Ham, Jason Shiga, Tin Fam Andrew was there quite a bit and so we're obviously the best of the Bay Area cartoonists and somehow we found each other which was amazing, also amazing because we are Asian, I don't know why that happened but what happened was and this is my big advice is if you want to get into comics find some bros that are also into comics and do it together because the only reason that I'm even published or that you guys might even know me is because Jean Yang got published right so we're all pals and I actually went to work with Jean Jean Yang is pretty much responsible for my entire life he's the one that introduced me to my wife, now my ex-wife so I'm kind of mad at him about that but he's the one that got me my teaching job and then knowing him when he got published with American Born Chinese actually Derek got published first with first, second and then Derek was like you got to publish my friend Jean and then they published Jean and then of course Jean became successful like you got to publish my friend Tin and then I got a publishing deal obviously the line ended there because I wasn't very successful didn't pull anything up after me but I mean without knowing this crew of people that I drew comics with I would have gone nowhere in comics you know if I was just at home doing it myself there was no way that I would have been any I would be published in any way so my big suggestion is find bros and be nice to people because that person that you might be mean to might be your Jean Yang and you don't know Jean Yang is not a cool guy and I'm a pretty cool guy so normally I would not hang out with Jean Yang but because I was a nice guy this one particular time look at me I'm published that's cool because I was happy to be nice to the nerd I think the first second is kind of unique in that way because it is a place where there is this kind of sense of like a group of people especially in the early days who are sort of connected to each other and know of each other and comics is a unique medium in that way that people publicize comics is to go to this party where everybody sits at a table for hours and hours and hours and hangs out with each other and like reads each other stuff it's not like a literary event where you go you read something and then you have cheese and get to know people so that's why you have to put in the time and be nice like 10 and go and meet people and go to conventions and chat people up in a non-stalkery way and that is one of the ways to get into publishing Jason Shiga is a huge part of the Bay Area comic scene just because of this art night thing I don't like Jason very much but I do give him the credit of being like an influential Did you have snacks at your house? Of course! The Cartoon Art Museum then still is quite a hub for people that do comics a lot of us volunteered at the Cartoon Art Museum and met at the Cartoon Art Museum so the Cartoon Art Museum is a big hub for new comic people that are coming in I was like one Asian too late I could have been in the Asian Posse too I've been there like a couple years but I don't draw There's something to be said for not knowing anybody or anyone and having a hard time making friends and just kind of knocking on doors and seeing who would open which is how I went about it well I mean I dropped out of the Academy of Art and then I started drawing just pushing myself to finish a full illustration every day and somebody asked me if I could if they could buy a print that I didn't know and I was like oh I made it somebody wants to give me money for this drawing that I just did because I'm forcing myself to draw every day and then from that point forward I literally went to we were living in the city at the time and I went to shops and I was like this is my artwork will you carry it in your shop they hate that by the way like most shop owners I know now they're like I hate it when people bring their stuff they ask me on the spot to make a decision but luckily for me there was a shop in my neighborhood that when I did that she was like yes and it was the first shop I ever sold with and for me I didn't know anybody who was doing any art not growing up and then not at that point so there's a certain thing to say also about just trying just trying to get your foot in the door having no connections it's the art, it's the book that's the ultimate thing if you can't either make or finish or make a book that your publisher thinks that they can publish then even if you're in Jason's house eating snacks all day it doesn't matter if you can't make a really cool book it tends to be really modest but if he even if he didn't know Jean Yang and he submitted sumo they would have been we love this book we're gonna publish it yeah your Jean Yang story sucks man that's not even true that's my next graphic novel about how much I love Jean Yang Jean a memoir yeah Jean Yang a memoir Jean and Jean everyone's gonna be like did he die what happened I like that idea yeah Jean's great I hope he gets to watch this when it's online and when Mark Siegel who's the creative director of First Second when he was here to open this exhibition he talked about Jean and how much really couldn't say enough about how much of a game changer American born Chinese was and it's amazing to us because we saw it as a mini comic and a web comic and then it became this this driving force of graphic novels when we were teaching together every day Jean would come to me and be like why are we doing this bro we're losing money I'm gonna stop drawing it was like for a long time it was like a big money losing endeavor I had to get him to agree to keep printing American born Chinese as a mini comic I had to agree to actually do the Xeroxing and putting together of the book myself just because I love this book and I wanted him to keep doing it we all had a lot of self-doubt about why we were putting so much time into this comic and obviously it paid off but there was a time that nobody wanted these books self-doubt is an important elixir in the creative process you have to hate yourself at least one tenth of the day is like you feeling like such a fraud and like sitting in your kitchen like fear eating like whatever thing you're covered and hoping nobody knows the truth about how scary it is to make a book maybe Jean doesn't feel that way but every time someone buys one of my book I go hold another one hold another one alright and I think we'll have time for a few audience questions so if anybody audience or we can keep talking there's still plenty to talk about well I can say that that's not true I think I'm the perfect example of the fact that that's not true because we submitted a book that had something that has since become a large issue for people as to whether or not it is a young adult book we got very minimal notes for a second was incredibly supportive of what we wanted to do I mean our goal was to make a book that felt true to us and there's definitely things in the book that I think that many people have made the case are not appropriate for young adults and our goal was to make a book about young adults not for them per se so we didn't have any of that experience at all and they've been incredibly supportive throughout the whole process of people having different thoughts on the book it was the most banned book it was the most banned book in America in 2017 most challenged book which doesn't sound as sexy as banned it was the most challenged book and that's this one summer this one summer was the most challenged book of 2017 I don't know oh wait 2016 maybe I don't know if it was the most challenged last year it would be cool if it was the year's running I know I think I was like you were talking no you don't get a sticker you don't get a sticker you get infamy do you get all the angry emails no but then someone told me yes you don't get angry you don't get direct emails about that stuff you get indirect comments about that stuff but the other thing I'll say is that I think the editorial process of First Second has always been very much about kind of working with the creators to kind of create the best story that they can create and I think that that is not always true of people who are making content for young adults and children so I think that they're pretty amazing in that respect so sorry I'll just say for each person I think the process is different and depending on who you're working with as your editorial person your editor and so for me I pitched and submitted my book when it was in a script stage and then from there there were editorial notes then I did a section of thumbnails and again editorial notes and so there was a lot of editorial throughout but none of it was I want you to change this I want you to add this most of it was just questions so my editor is Mark Siegel and I'm now working with him on my second book and Pishmina because it was my first book I was learning a lot I threw out the script for G-Box because when I in my experience with Pishmina going from script to thumbnail so much changed that I felt like skipping that step would hopefully skip me forward because comics are long and hard and drawing that much is painful so I want to do anything that can fast forward that process even though I know it's totally not going to fast forward anything and so now where I'm at is I am sending him kind of like 50 to 70 pages at a time but at least that's the goal at least to get to a story point where I feel like there's enough of the story there that we can look at it as a whole and then have comments and conversation and change so that's my process but I'm not baller like Jason and where I'm just going to give them finished artwork and be like well you don't want to change this now because it's finished I like and appreciate that editorial process but it does mean there's a lot more work but it is in service to make the best story so I think that if it was different I might be like these guys just here's my finished work I don't want to change it when I pitched my book I didn't know what age level it would be for I thought maybe young adult and then we decided to skew it a little younger and it turns out that it's not that there's not that very hard and fast boundaries so all I had to do was change a little bit and then younger kids can access it and it wouldn't be too nasty for them I totally disagree with the thing about for a second being more of a young adult publisher I think the reason that it gets that reputation is because the books that are popular and the ones that you see a lot are young adult books because young adults just seem to buy more graphic novels nowadays so then it gets up but I mean if you read Demon that is not a young adult book that's not even a 20s but you have to be like you have to be a 40 comfortable 40 you have to be like a 45 year old man to read that book it is hardcore awesome there was a scene in Demon where I guess one of the characters makes a shank out of dried semen and when I was submitting it to for a second I told the editor you either you either accept the cum shank or I'm taking it or I'm walking it's all or nothing you either take the cum shank the sex fighting and the camel sex or you get nothing so many people have used that as a prostitution negotiation it was just like not again why always this cum shank we've all done it but yeah they accept they actually told me the cum shank was their favorite part of the story I gotta say when I say when I say that they have more editorial notes it's not to push it anyway I think their goal is to make it a better story and their editors they've been through this and they know what reads better and all that stuff and it's probably true it's probably will read better it's a really easy dude and I don't want to do that work and that's why I would rather than buy a book that I finished than a book that I have to work really hard with them even though it's going to be probably a better story they've never pushed when I work with them never pushed to make it more like young adult or more like any way they want they basically look at what you were trying to say and try to get you to say it better so that's what it is I really feel like actually in because I write middle grade as well now too and I feel like there really is if you're with the right publisher it really is so much more about the story and I've actually been very lucky never to have a conversation where someone has said I don't think that this is going to be I actually had what was the word we used I think there's even in the last book I did the word esoteric and then we had this whole conversation of you have to look that up if you're a middle grade reader that's going to be a moment and they were like okay then they'll look it up we're not like Judith Butler or it's like impossible but I think that there is so much more leeway now for creating content for younger readers what even is YA now I write a book and it's not geared towards anyone but just because I don't use bad words or anything like that people are like oh you're kind of a YA you're just a clean guy you're just clean I'm just a nice guy that doesn't like that kind of stuff I'm just sensitive I'm not a YA writer I'm just sensitive any other questions up there I was trying to think if I have a question who's the most sensitive person on this panel the most sensitive 10 maybe 10 it's teaching it's made me more of a now that I've been teaching high school and I have to watch my language and watch inappropriate things around kids I've taken that into my real life now I never swear I say F all the time the history of people who write for kids is a dirty language to people like Denis Lee and what's the name of the person who wrote where the wild things are Marie Sendak there's a long history of sketchy people writing YA if we're writing into that that's what we're writing into I think it's interesting though one of the biggest critiques that I've gotten of Pashmina is it doesn't fall properly into one age level so it's middle grade and YA because she's a teenager and people ask me about it in interviews and at signings and I find it really irritating because we're so focused on what age who are we buying for what group who are we putting this into school libraries for and I think that cross-culturally that's not necessarily the same I think that the US market is definitely preoccupied with age level and I think that you can read younger and you can read older growing up I didn't have a lot of friends so I read a lot of books and I always read up and so I think that there's yes gift guides and school curriculum guides but we also need to not be so stringent about those rules yeah man relax just write what you want exactly I'm shang this is the thing who's reading Harry Potter right now 40 year olds you're like an innocent guy because you're reading Rainbow Rowell and $4 take on meals we want to leave some time for book signing and checking out the exhibition so starting with Tim let's just talk about what you have coming up next comics or otherwise I do a semi regular comic strip in the East Bay Express called I Like Eating and it's I have somehow fooled them into paying for my food and then I review food through comics form even though I know nothing about food or whatever all the strips are basically like oh I think this is good and cheesy and then I'm working on another graphic novel but you know who knows when that will be finished and it's gonna be about and my relationship to it and so so hopefully that will be done before I die I just got really hungry I have to finish this graphic novel that's the first thing so if Kalista you're listening I'm gonna do that I have a collection of comic strips that I did for the Chronicle and a lot more that I did for the book where I review I sum up a classic novel in three panels really well I'm doing a hundred of those so it's taking a while because I read all the books and I have a new picture but coming out March that I illustrated so what's it called it's called the Too Much Sisters and it's coming out end of March what's the last one it's called Goldfish Ghost and it's about a dead goldfish that one's so awesome thank you I read a lot of picture books too because that's what I teach I am working on three books right now my picture book should be out next year 2019 spring I think it's called I Will Be Fierce written by somebody else I'm illustrating it by who Bea Birdsong is her pen name I only know her pen I know she has a real name it's somewhere in my brain but I can't bring it up right now and then I'm also this isn't officially announced yet but we kind of talked about it on social media but I'm working on a bilingual board book which is in Hindi and English so I'm really excited about that one because we're raising our daughter bilingual and there is like pretty much not anything out there that's like that so it's called Shibaratri which means good night and then jukebox is my next graphic novel with first second and that'll be out in 2020 so the board book will be out this year the picture book will be out next year and then jukebox 2020 so a book every year I am finishing up my She-Hulk series for Marvel so the second to last one is out tomorrow which is 163 I just announced I'm doing a graphic novel for the new DC ink which is their YA imprint with DC zoom so I'm doing a book with Steve pug who's amazing called Harley Quinn Breaking Glass which is like taking so stressful I'm writing it right now and I what else am I doing I have a novel that I'm working on about losing your virginity because I like to keep it classy obviously and then Rosemary and I have Laura Dean breaking up with me which is coming out I think spring of next year oh yes that's it thank you and I'm writing the middle grade series for the Lumberjanes for Abrams books and the second book is called the moon is up and it comes out I think this fall and then when you're done with all that you'll write something for me I know I will and the Lumberjanes is illustrated by Brooklyn Allen I'm working on a larger project right now about a young woman returning to her hometown after an attempt at a writing career and it alternates between her story and the science fiction story that she's writing and I guess it has an unusual format in that it will be interactive kind of like a choose your own adventure book it's insane looking and it's it'll be as expected from Jason no it's gonna be really cool awesome amazing there's only three spines in this book Tim's exaggerating but three spines each page will be a unique shape and the readers will basically be able to follow the story from one set of pages into the other set of pages and it's kind of complicated but the idea is when you're reading one book the pages in the other book sort of serve as the memory of the story keeping track of inventory and where you've been, the time so it's almost like a little video game but that's what I'm working on right now so cool I'm writing a Voltron history book but you read it front to back and it's all in order from the 80s all the way to present day but I should also mention the Cartoon Art Museum has some big programs coming up this week so Friday night Nate Powell the illustrator of the March graphic novel trilogy will be at the museum on Sunday we're hosting Nitty for the closing reception of her her exhibition she's the first emerging artist showcase artist featured at the Cartoon Art Museum space so I've emerged now finally that evening we're hosting Nick Park who is the creator of Wallace and Gromit so I hope you can all come and check that out and we want to thank the library very much for hosting this event and the exhibition