 Little Sausalito Public Library is a gem and there's thousands of these gems like lovingly cared for and maintained and they're nurturing their communities and these people are in constant contact with their communities especially the teen librarians who are the rock stars as far as I'm concerned. So there I was I walked in and you know we're in this I don't know about San Francisco it's pretty mellow here but in where I live in New York it's loud it's noisy it's fast and a library is a haven it's a haven of quiet and peace and learning and and much more actually but we'll we'll we'll keep coming back to the librarians because you'll see it's not just because I'm doing this talk here today they really are instrumental and so of course I always check out the graphic novel section and you see I was very happy to see whoever is curating the Sausalito teen and middle grade graphic novel section my heart goes out to you whoever you are but there's a lot of for a second there was five worlds there was my book to dance that I did with my wife Sienna and those were a face out you know it's just like and so and this is just one I just happen to wander in to a little local library and it happens to be here you know thousands of miles away from home but but it happens I can be in Oklahoma I can be in in Texas I can be in Columbus Ohio and there's these marvelous places so we'll see how they played a part but first second books what have I got here so this is some of our gang it's not everybody we were just in the middle of doing a launch presentation we signed up this new web comic called check please by Ngozi Okazu some of you are nodding your heads it's a very very popular web comic and it's about it's a hockey story so we we made hockey jerseys for first second and that's some of our gang Andrew is our art director Kalista is my fellow editor Robin is a junior editor next to her is Connie Shu who's also a Roaringbrook editor and a really great editor but she works with for second as well she did like real friends and some really good stuff recently and Chiara Valdez who's our most junior editor and there's others missing here but who you know Gina was mentioned already and some people who really should be there this is where we work we're it's all McMillan publishers and for second is part of McMillan which is one of the big five they call them the big five publishing houses so it's all McMillan there's some really classy publishing goes on in that building and for us of course the fact that we publish comics this is a really cool address in New York because you might know it as the daily bugle but not everybody sometimes the flat iron just has its own cred right so okay so I get this really interesting question I'm not going to give you today the whole the history of graphic novels in America in the last 10 15 years but hopefully in the course of this presentation you'll get a sense that a an incredible transformation has happened for comics publishing in America and worldwide and B we are in a creative moment of a kind of renaissance and an explosion of quality work probably without precedent and we'll look back on this time as certainly some kind of golden age for a new kind of graphic novel and and I think for second is kind of right in there in the center stage of supporting that I hope so so the question I get is does for a second have a secret recipe and by the way this is actually from my kitchen I make a mean broth twice a year and in fact you tasted it when we were doing mocha you guys like I gave you my immune elixir broth tons of fresh vegetables sorry am I off topic again I'm Mr. Tangent I should warn you I do go off but so does for a second have a secret recipe and yes it does and I'm going to tell you what it is would you like to know the first second secret recipe first ingredient brilliant talented skilled creators and we go to great lengths to find them and keep them and sometimes when you can't find them make them I'm just kidding you don't actually make them but you can support and nurture and and sometimes you can identify someone who's a little green but you can tell there's greatness coming so there's some of that as well and that let's look at that ingredient a little closer and I'll just share a few glimpses okay there's going to be a few little portraits they're randomly selected there's many others that could be in this presentation that aren't we have a lot signed up already and we have about 120 projects in the works so they can't all be in here but this one Andrew mentioned already probably doesn't need much introduction here of all places but Jean interestingly enough Jean is a big piece of the first second history and for second becoming what it is today and what's very strange about doing this exhibit which is the first retrospective on first second doing it at the Museum of Cartoon Art or with the Museum of Cartoon Art in San Francisco is there's a weird full circle with the beginnings of first second and there was a dinner a very fateful dinner at the slanted door in the Embarcadero and I told the story to the librarians here the other day about 12 years ago and there was Chun who's sitting right there whose project you're going to be hearing a lot more about in the next couple years and so Chun was there at this dinner Jean was there Derek Kirk Kim was there Alex Puvilland and Lou and Pham were there and I think that's who that and that was the start of first second now Jean almost wasn't at that dinner because Derek had sent me a bunch of his friends projects and there was this unfinished thing called American born something and it came in and it was already an avalanche of submissions before we even had a name for the imprint I can't remember if we had a name by that point but I think we were just getting it going and Derek was pestering me about this friend Jean of his he's like have you read it I was like yeah yeah I'll get to it I'll get to it and you know I'm basically should I need to move this no you're good okay and I was planning to get to it and then I was flying out to San Francisco and we were going to have a dinner there and it was you know and that basically at the last minute he said if you don't take the thing on the plane and read it I'm not coming to dinner so he forced my hand I took the thing I read it on the plane and he didn't even have that last chapter if you've read American Born Chinese that's the key to the whole thing he didn't have that it wasn't in color and it blew my mind and we I landed and first thing I could use my cell phone I go Derek bring this guy to dinner and then a few weeks later we're signed up and and at the time these were a gang of friends and many others it was Larkin and Jason Shiga and like the whole mostly Asian crazy super talented cartoon like uber geeks you know they're the kind like who were 12 of them would pile into the Marriott for San Diego Comic-Con right like sharing you know three on a couch kind of thing the things they would put up with and Jean honestly at that time was oh this is Jean was photocopying and stapling his mini comics and losing money at every comic on like all his friends because that's that was the game and then we sign up I'm starting up this imprint you know we actually work in the author model we're not paying page rates you know we pay actual advances and we actually treat our authors like authors and 18 months later Jean and I are in our tuxes in Times Square at the National Book Awards and no graphic novel no comic had ever been nominated for a National Book Award and that was a very big deal it was a big deal for I mean a lot of people in publishing sat up and took notice anyway so that happens and we're like this is this is the typical pattern now I've learned with Jean Yang it's like wow that was a peak moment don't get used to it you know I mean that's kind of a high point you know then you back to the slog you know but no three four months later there's what's called ALA if you're not familiar with it the American Library Association and they have their awards and the winner of the prints and and the people I mean the other books that were on that list the finalists it was like Tobin MT Anderson right and the book thief I think was on that one I mean it was I think all they were I mean they're always good the ones who make it to the the finalists on the prince award but these were stellar others and bang Jean Yang wins the prince and again no comic has ever won the prince or been nominated for the prince at this point now the National Book Award super prestigious okay the New York Times the LA Times the New Yorker you know everybody's covering it NPR is covering it and it it sells decently that golden sticker that not that many people have heard of that sells a lot more because that sticker we've learned since that sticker on that book means 80 000 librarians are ordering this book every two years forever and that's just one third of our market right is the library world then there's the trade which is the bookstores and Amazon and then what's called the direct market which is the comic shops and the diamond distributor the diamond mafia oops I said that on record I'm just kidding so anyway so Jean again you know the prince award we're like okay well that's that I mean that's as high as you can get you know where do you go from here well then he starts winning other awards like the Chinese librarians award was an adult award so it's going into the adult section as well so now there's an additional copy going into these libraries around the country and this amazing thing starts spreading and then Jean the story with Jean keeps going up every time he seems to break through to some peak he seems to outdo himself so his next project was this thing that I loved from the start but it was going to be a risky project it was a it was a the box boxers and saints project and so it's these events they're told from two different perspectives and I brought this to McMillan I was like okay the next Jean Yang project and people were kind of shaking their heads going because I have a reputation to be a bit of a dreamer more than a businessman and they're like yeah Mark I mean it's Jean Yang so you kind of got to do it but you're definitely losing money on this one I mean a two-book box set I mean that's really clunky about a war that Americans have never even heard of I mean and then that becomes the second comic ever nominated for a national book award and still a huge bestseller for us and then it doesn't stop there he keeps going and I'm sure most of you know about him already but he was nominated sorry he was named the national ambassador of children's literature the first comics artist ever nominated in that capacity and he's just finishing his two-year tenure you know before him was Kate de Camillo so that's then he gets the MacArthur genius fellowship the same year then he's also writing Superman for DC he's actually writing this new Chinese Superman totally making history at every step and the Secret Coders series that he's doing for us which you'll see later it just doesn't stop he also wrote the Avatar comics for Dark Horse Avatar Last Airbender which are fantastic so this guy he also happens to be one of the most decent warm-hearted people that I know he has this ongoing research about humility I don't know how many people can say that but he does humility is one of his researches and he lives it it's very impressive so that's one guy this is another one this one summer now this I'm really fast tracking on the history of first second because there's about 10 years separating these two books but they kind of bookend this decade that we've just been through as for second so that is Jillian Tamaki and that's Mariko Tamaki their cousins and they did this one summer and this one summer is the first book ever to be a Caldecott honor and a Prince honor those are two very different categories of awards one is a teen award one is the children's picture book award and this book to some controversy by the way made it it's actually the most banned book of 2016 which is good publicity it actually sells copies in most states there's five or six states that we lose a few sales on but but it's a it's a phenomenal book it's a Jillian I think is one of those people who's just working in her own space doing things that I think nobody does if you if you look at her I wish I had some pages to show if you haven't read it I urge you to find a copy every hand every pose every posture every facial expression is pure story it's actually it's quite deep what she's able to do with her brush so those were two I'm sorry I was still oh okay this is something else June you were there these are all first second creators some of them are actually buried under there that I think were hidden I'm not very good at this google slides thing but do you notice anything in common with these people all of them and that's a phenomenal amount of women creators and there's and there's many more that are not yet in here that are already signed up and that is something I'm very very proud of we've actually we spoke about this in this history of comics on Friday the moment when manga came and invaded our shores and conquered the bookstores and libraries of America they the the appearance of manga caused two very good things to happen one it actually caused the big publishing houses to jump into the graphic novel game because they were seeing millions of dollars changing hands and not getting any of it but the more important thing was creatively comics in America went from an 85 male readership and as they say male aging male readership to 65 female readership overnight just about and out of these readers people who would grow up to become creators so it's it's an amazing thing and that you know these are faces of for second you know usually my slideshows and presentations i'm talking about the books and we're looking at the art and we're talking about the story but it's kind of nice to show you some faces and when the faces tell you this story it's an amazing thing what else okay the secret recipe so we've got brilliant talented skilled creators which that ingredient you know takes a bit of hunting and gathering then there's belief in editorial care now that the first few years of first second i was very hard pressed to do much editing because i was so consumed with just setting the thing up then at a certain point i realized like okay i need to shift gears because that's really where first second can shine is what kind of an editorial home can we be now there are times and there are cartoonists out there who shall remain nameless who love to rag on editors but you know what's interesting librarians and editors have something in common most people don't really know what we do even seasoned authors i i was amazed to see an interview with someone who'd been published for 10 years talk about editors and i realized wow you really have no idea what i do and a lot of people think editors are just you know sitting on piles of submissions going yay nay yay nay right just like some gatekeeper and it's not there's actually a there's a lot going on behind the scenes but we are supposed to be invisible because the books is what we want people to see but i believe in editorial care and sometimes some certain indie cartoonists are very loud on panels at comic cons and such about how you know they are free of editors and there it's great i'm free to do whatever i want and some of them their books are a little tedious i gotta say and some of them are their books are are good and the visuals sometimes dazzling but they could have been great and they make the mistake they they're talking about a kind of editing that i don't believe in either you know they think it's the dc marvel idea of like someone controlling you and telling you what to do and it's brand control right as opposed to editing which is a totally different thing an editor is i think an ally someone who can give you distance from your own work now if you're independently wealthy you can do like Tolstoy you know put your manuscript in a drawer and come back to it in a year or find a good editor and have an afternoon a really good session and get that distance you know mostly a lot of it is about asking questions asking the right questions and sometimes i'm just not the right editor for some people sometimes we really click and i know i'm giving them good service it's not about telling people what to do and it's certainly not you know this idea that an editor is someone who just chops stuff you know cut this cut this cut this you know so anyway there's a lot to say about this particular subject and i love for those who are interested that's another workshop but working in service to a creator means getting inside their vision and helping them driving them sometimes to push it all the way so this is how geniang scripts okay this is a page from boxers and saints and you saw this a little bit with the five worlds like i i basically took that method which is the thumbnail and the dialogue and the idea is he works both at once and it's very hard actually sometimes you have to go from a just a script to artwork but this thumbnail process is where the the graphic novel really appears and that's one of the key editorial conversations that's where i feel like i i do my best work helping authors where i i'm like wait what's happening why is this like this what are you trying to do and in the course of it this is a very good chance for reworking rethinking right i forget who said writing is rewriting it's not always true some people are very good at their prep and a lot of their work is this kind of invisible prep and then they sit down and it comes out right and that's but sometimes that prep work needs to be in the making in the writing you know reworking you'll see nitty's work nitty's beautiful book pashmina which i think is the first indian american full length graphic novel i'm very proud to say and with her she started out as an illustrator this really was her debut as a cartoonist so there was a lot these are my notes on her very first tiny thumbnail these are little postage stamp size pages and the beauty of doing a thumbnail for you young young cartoonists is you don't get bogged down in detail you just get the big broad strokes of your story you're not worried about the exact specifics so there you know this is these are my notes before i would get on a phone call or a video call with nitty so i would scribble some things and then we would get into and discuss like okay sometimes we're talking about acting you know we're like is this really like is this is this the right emotion is this really what's happening here and why so or why are we focused on the mom like isn't the isn't prionka the the focus of this scene so she'll re-approach her scene and i love this kind of work this is from cottons which is a book that'll come out next year hi d arnold and her thumbnails you know i kind of have to have her walk me through them and then here you're going to see vira brazgal on anya's ghost uh you're seeing she's going from a loose pencil to a tighter pencil and these are each of these is a different stage to the inking and then the shading the color was just one color was not cool it's magic it is actual magic it's as magical as being at hogwarts or having what ghosts or having ghosts so if we had more time uh i would tell you about this which is we're also doing a lot of research and pushing and exploring finding ways to get inside of storytelling deeper storytelling this is one experiment called the story trust there's gene yang there's sam bosma there's vira brazgal and a couple other cartoonists in the first one that i've been conducting it's a it's a way of workshopping each other's projects without the pressure of thinking about the marketplace and the business and and we're having fantastic fantastic results with this new process the process i'm going to try and replicate it with others who want to try this but now those people you're going to see vira brazgal's next project has been through the story trust twice and she it unlocked her own project for her and it's not anyway there's a lot that i could tell you about with this one but so the first second recipe we've seen brilliant talented skilled creators is that rosemary it is higher there's another first second creator very very talented one and you actually her works in the exhibit so you'll get to see that belief in editorial care hopefully you can see a little bit of that there's much more to tell with both of these of course then we have this bridging fields ages genres nations that's always been in the dna of first second and now you're going to see i'm going to give you visual indigestion before you even see the exhibit i'm going to run through a lot of stuff but you'll see that it really is so the damn keeper anybody heard of this book so that's dice tsutsumi and robert condo star artists from pixar who left and started tanko house which is going to be i think the next pixar they did the damn keeper dice tsutsumi a little secret about him is his miyazaki son-in-law so if you remember totoro you remember little may in totoro well she grew up and married dice he wouldn't let us say that in our marketing stuff and this was an oscar nominated short and they they took this out when they were shopping it their agent took them around to all the big publishing houses in new york and when they walked into my office they the first thing they said was we only want for a second we want the house of gene yang and no other the door opener so i owe him a lot and for them too but okay spill zone bridging other fields scott westerfeld is a fantastic ya novelist and the spill zone is as good as anything he's written alex poovilland originally dreamworks grad from the bay area here he's in l.a. now okay pashmina i mentioned and you'll see some of nitty's work also history making and then you're going to see bridging age categories so we have really really young stuff have you seen this have you see you have that right in the in the yeah i love these we translated these from france and a banana they're they're a fantastic picture books so we have some very very young books you see most publishers in america tend to be more specialized we do all age categories and america in america publishing is not really set up that way nobody likes a goblin little seed you're going to see some of xanthe's artwork and ian is here by the way that's the author of little seed right there and your buddy jason in the same slide and matt actually the matt illustrated pop so these are picture book age they're comics they're actual comics but they really are for the picture book set for bedtime reading for story time then we have middle grade and i'm going to go a little faster here but the middle grade book the zeta space girl series yeah hands are going up and mighty jack and mighty jack too and then the tie-in spoiler to the zeta universe and then boyah's book casma nights which you're going to see in this coming may this is uh it's just candy at every level for the eye for the senses it's totally delightful much more you're going to be hearing a lot more about that then still in the middle grade space we've got this series giants beware dragons beware monsters beware and just a quick story about these guys raff and whore who are preparing another amazing project right now they were the one time they walked up to me uh at the san diego comic on booth and there's usually in the space of a comic on there'll be like 50 people who will come with a portfolio and say can i show you a project i'm working on and i kind of have to say yes because i know it's like it takes courage to just spill your guts in front of a stranger and you know hope something will happen but it's very rare that anything ever does because typically if they're doing that they're coming up to a booth they're not ready yet now these guys came up with this project they stepped up to the booth say could we show you something we're working on like yeah sure sure and i flip it open and two pages three pages in i know i'm signing them up and it's great it's really great gg dg this is a whole another thing we could talk about is the web comics revolution like for a while web comics were going under the radar of all publishers but guess who knew about the web comics librarians and i have a few teen librarians around the country who are always recommending certain web comics to us so you see the awards by the way the awards that were the game changers for us that totally propelled for a second and made made the whole experiment work librarian awards the people who have especially especially the teen librarians they are actually plugged into their community in a hands-on way more than booksellers more than authors they are interacting with these with these teens and involving them and it's it's an extraordinary thing that's happening you know so for us you know some publishers schmooze librarians that's what ala is for for us we're kind of applying to join librarians that's what we're doing while we serve our authors you know so when we have our our dinners our meetings or stuff like that we're bringing together authors and librarians and we're telling them look friends people who have a similar mission you know working side by side and causing things like this like we signed up cucumber quest anybody here follow cucumber quests no okay okay not big web comics crown that's okay you can always read the book there's going to be a physical book four physical books they're already out in fact then we have the teen i'm going to go a little faster the teen there's a lot of great teen award-winning spinning is tilly walden's skating memoir and then we have adult that that was a little abrupt i didn't get my special effects on that one so demon is definitely definitely adults it should come with warning labels it should not be anywhere near the young reader section it's insane it's depraved but it's genius it's amazing stuff and that's jason shega who's a genius truly zara's paradise you're going to see some of the artwork that was our iranian i mean just think about it what you've seen here is like you've been seeing authors who are christians who are buddhist who are jewish who are hindu who are muslim i mean it you know we could take any line of diversity and you will find it in for a second and it's always been that way it's not like we jumped on that bandwagon last year suddenly um tin fam this amazing sumo which also there's artwork of you'll see that is tin here tin man where are you and then the hunting accident which is our great a big adult book that has just come out it's it's literally big it's a brick it's an enormous thing it could be a weapon almost but it's brilliant if we had more time i would tell you more about it it's it's very deep meaningful ambitious storytelling so you get the idea it's the full spectrum right we're we're going everywhere that the graphic novel will go a little mat artwork there so this first second secret recipe brilliant talented skilled creators belief in editorial care bridging fields ages oops sorry what was that last one oh pushing up broadening exploring the medium so raising the standard in every way we can on ourselves on our creators every season we do a little it's not a post mortem it's more an adding up a tally what did we screw up there's always a lot of stuff we screw up what can we do better and so you can see some of the things that are groundbreaking geniang managed to pull this off you know it's a it's a coding it's hogwarts for coders is what it is that's basically the pitch and he's teaching coding and i usually it's i'm very suspicious of people who try to do a good story and teach and give an actual message it's a recipe for disaster he pulls it off it actually works and there's six of them total then we have george o'connor who is a rock star he gets on the road and people squeal when he arrives in school visits and he's doing the olympians and there's like a black market of these books on my kids school and and this is the the earliest source material on greek myths he's working from and he's doing in a very american comics style right and and they're doing phenomenally well so this has become the new doleirs if you're familiar with doleir that was the reference for kids to go and learn their greek myths this is it hey hi the whole family and what have we got okay now this i'm very very proud of we're launching a number of programs we call them and one of them is science comics so imagine a series that has really strong solid high quality science and really strong high quality comics rolled into one so we have experts on each of these fields we started out with four titles we were going to just test the waters before the first one was even printed the preorders went through the roof and we and we went and set up another 18 and we had they're going to be like the new eyewitness books and these and what we do it's it's really cool the whole the whole setup is amazing so for example take dogs up there science comics dogs we take there'll be a hook like dogs everybody loves dogs what is really about is dna right the breeds and all this we're actually getting inside of dna so each book opens up a different branch of science so for example coral reefs gets you into climate change right so all this stuff and by the way we're sneaking this stuff in the reddest states we're like comics always fly under the radar they're going out baby they're out there you know they're in sarah pale in country it's pretty awesome and there's a lot more coming so the first second secret recipe librarians for real for real the librarians they are part of the secret recipe and I feel like you know what the librarians are not just working with for a second when you see those graphic novel sections they're stocked with their scholastic and now lion forge and you know all the houses are wrapped there but I feel like our mission and our mo and everything we do is inextricably wound up with bound up with librarians so you have people like wait did I put a slide in here yes kandace mac at the los angeles public library these are the these are my rock stars these are some heroes and she you know these these librarians are champions of the graphic novel here's another three awesome ones and so actually eva is here eva in the middle is sitting right over the air eva is in alameda at the alameda uh what alameda free library next on her right is is snow wild smith who's in ashville now she's back in the library thing after a little hiatus and then over there is robin brenner who's in boston in cambridge massachusetts and these are awesome if i had more time i would share a lot more of their cosplay and there were some some of the those pinup shots that were just too sexy for this presentation and this is back to our sausalito branch little local library you know and you see this right somebody somebody took the time the trouble is you know showing up every day with this mission and honestly this is not hyperbole librarians are forces for good they are they are a bulwark against the forces of darkness and ignorance and and cruelty that are now actually so rampant so more than ever the meaning and the the vital vital importance of a library it's just you know as it gets darker bright things are glowing brighter you know and libraries are suddenly standing out as the saviors for some of us so what's next and we're almost done with this okay now check this out this is a set of authors okay so we've got c-spike trotman negozi okay sushi's check please which is the crazy runaway success when she came visiting our offices it turned out half the editors in macmillan in the flat iron building were fans of check please it's like it's an amazing if you haven't seen it that's a web comic you should also check out it's it's this kind of gay hockey players and she imagines a world where it's basically a world without any toxic masculinity it's like human you know not their males and their masculine and they're not toxic males it's a very clever thing she does saw williams right there best-selling the most red black american poet after my angelu is writing martyr loser king for us that is gg dg who does cucumber quests her purple portrait because you can't even on online you cannot find a portrait of her she i don't know why she decided to be very very private up there is toby cypress who's an amazing amazing master of the brush brian mcdonald a guru of storytelling who's written two two scripts for us including one of them called land of the dead and it's about storytelling it's a non-fiction about storytelling and down there is ron wimberley so you can see for a while we you know we had a lot of asians and not a lot of african-americans and they're coming you're going to see some incredible talent in our list veera brasgull if you remember ania's ghost it really is a masterpiece leave me alone was a caldicott honor picture book that she did which is amazing and her next one is called be prepared and and be prepared it is phenomenal it is a marvelous marvelous thing about going to it's a memoir of going to a russian orthodox summer camp and then we've got oh this i'm so proud of so penelope penella bajur is her real name penelope bajur is is um french she's the number one graphic novelist in france right now her blog was the number one red blog at one point a few years ago and she's moved to brooklyn and we've published a couple of her books this is brazen rebel ladies who rock the world it's 30 portraits of amazing women from all different eras all different parts of the world each one is about four pages and i'm so i mean there's uh margaret hamilton and then there's some you've never heard of there's some african princesses there's some all kinds of stories that's going to be a big big book coming soon oh and it's being serialized in the the washington post relaunched the lily which is the earliest feminist newspaper and they relaunched it staffed and written entirely by women and they're going to serialize brazen in it so there that's almost a little over i urge you all to sign up for the first second newsletter if you want to follow what we do there's a lot of stuff in there and i think that's my last slide and that was a little run did i give you graphic indigestion all right well i hope you really enjoy this exhibit i hope you all go visit the museum of cartoon art right near fisherman's wharf it's a beauty and see you at the reception