CCS is 10!

I’ve devoted most of this space to faculty, staff, and facilities, but this is the point where I have to draw attention to what really makes our beloved institution flourish. James and Michelle built the body we all inhabit, but the steady stream of cartoonists who’ve been crossing the Colodny threshold since 2005? They’re the blood pumping through the heart of this place, the oxygen breathing life into the classroom.

In the past ten years, more than 180 individuals have traveled to White River Junction from near and far in order to pursue their passion. They’ve endured the cultural isolation that comes with living in a small town, they’ve weathered Vermont winters (AKA ”Cartooning Season”), they’ve eaten at Yama more times than they’d care to remember. And they’ve found their tribe.

I’m fond of saying that, every spring, we graduate a little family. The average incoming student hails from a place where they were the only person deeply in love with comics, and CCS is the first place in their life where they are surrounded by people who share their obsession. Sure, their creative aspirations may have been nurtured by an online community or two, but the feeling of finding your kin is different when you’re learning in the classroom together, drawing and making books together, pulling all-nighters together. 

Each little family is different. There are interpersonal tensions, deep affinities, shared anxieties, disparate tastes that clash and mutate in the critical arena. I’ve had students at one end of the spectrum tell me that their time at CCS was bitterly disappointing, and at the other end that it saved their life. Regardless of individual experience, there’s an undeniable bonding, borne of high pressure and earned mutual respect, that occurs within each class. When we kick them out the door, they’re ostensibly on their own, but they’re really not, because ties formed at CCS tend to stick. They move to the same cities (Providence, Pittsburgh, Oakland!), see each other at small press shows (a new one seems to pop up every year), collaborate on anthologies via the internet (Awesome Possum, Irene, Dog City). 

Dakota McFadzean (class of 2012) broke my heart when he said, in his commencement speech, “I look forward to the day when I can tell my first child, ‘You’re the second best thing that ever happened to me.’” Well, four months ago Dakota and his wife Laura had that first child, and I found myself hoping that the realities of parenthood would encourage Dakota to rethink his plan and swap the #1 and #2 spots before little Clement was old enough to understand English.

After writing the preceding paragraph I took a break to attend the CCS 10 Year Block Party, where I unexpectedly encountered Dakota, Laura, and a stroller-full of adorable Clement, come all the way from Toronto to fête our fine institution. I voiced my concerns to Dakota right there in the crowded street, and he told me it was too late—he had kept his word and already told Clement. But of course he did it before the kid could understand anything more than wa-wuh wah wa-wah (you know, like adults in a Peanuts TV special), so win-win. 

I know that I speak for the entire faculty and staff when I say that the best thing to ever happen to CCS is the students. Yes, we do our best to foster a positive environment; yes, we share our experiences in hopes that the next generations can learn from and avoid mistakes that we made in our own careers; yes, we try to encourage them to find new ways to watch and listen and write and draw and play. But it’s the students that give this place meaning and make this job worth doing. It’s the students who inspire us, who force us to up our game and be better teachers than we were last year. It’s the students who teach us, new things, all the time. 

So to all of our little families—past, present, and future—I say thank you.  What an amazing cavalcade.

Thank you for everything!

Class of 2007

Class of 2008

Class of 2009

Class of 2010

Class of 2011

Class of 2012

Class of 2013

Class of 2014

Class of 2015

Class of 2016

First of all:

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE CCS CLASS OF 2016!

Our latest graduates walked the stage at 5pm today, crossing the threshold to whatever awaits them next. And the first thing awaiting them, on the other side of that stage, was their diploma.

Each year James reaches out into the wider cartoonist community and commissions an established professional to create a one-of-a-kind diploma. This work of art is always kept hush-hush until the big day, when it is unveiled for the first time to graduating seniors and everyone else in attendance.

With a decade behind us at this point, we’ve accrued quite a fantastic collection of fancy certificates. Herewith I present to you a gallery of CCS diplomas through the years:

2007: Ivan Brunetti

2008: Ron Regé, Jr.

2009: Jim Rugg

2010: Michael Kupperman

2011: Aaron Renier

2012: Eleanor Davis

2013: Bob Sikoryak

2014: Ed Koren

2015: Jason

2016: Liniers

Staff & Faculty Spotlight: Dave Lloyd

Dave Lloyd! Ops Manager Unparalleled! His Bearded Magnificence, the King of Coca-Cola! Is there anything he cannot do?!? I asked friends, foes, and faculty about the man. Right away the foes were all, like, “Dave Lloyd has no enemies, why are you villainizing us?”

Dave is a master juggler. Balls, knives, stick of dynamite, class schedules, logistical problems, what-have-you: regardless of quantity, sharpness, and degree of explosivity, Dave can keep them spinning in the air and remain totally at ease.

Dave is a Renaissance Man. Juggler, yes. But also! Woodworker, carpenter, cross-country skier, auto mechanic, chef, accomplished guitarist (solo and as part of the Upper Valley band Reckless Breakfast). Let’s just all be thankful he’s not a cartoonist, okay?

Drawings by Rebecca Roher (CCS 2015) from her zine “The Daves of Our Lives,” which she wrote about a different Dave, only to realize after meeting our Dave that they shared a certain Daveness.

Dave’s door is always open. Are you kidding me? It would drive me flipping bonkers if anybody could knock on the doorjamb of my office and ask me a stupid question whenever the mood struck them. But there he is, greeting everyone who interrupts his auctioning of apples on Ebay with a warm smile and the words, “I can do that.” Seriously, have you ever tried getting anything done with the door to your office open? And yet... Shit. Gets. Done.

Dave’s church is the great outdoors. Whether hiking Mt. Washington, taking his infant son skiing in the depths of a Vermont winter, or leading CCS students on expeditions into the wider world, you can tell that Dave is happy and at home with the earth underfoot (even if you have to dig through several feet of snow to reach it) and the vault of the sky overhead.

Dave likes his Coca-Cola.

Ned Stark has nothing on this thing.

Dave is a Man Scout. He famously keeps a pair of skis in his office "just in case," and seems prepared for every student emergency or problem thrown at him, whether it's as simple as wanting a clean dish brush for the Post Office kitchen or as excessive as a papasan chair for students to lounge about in the media room. Watching Dave solve these problems, you come to understand how he earned those Warm Smile and Cool Head merit badges.

Dave is ALIVE! He brings a silliness and energy to CCS that can't be ignored. Sometimes it manifests as loud bursts of horrifying giggles escaping his office. Other times you might see him dancing around the Colodny in a mad frenzy. Occasionally he’ll jump out from behind things in an attempt to give people heart attacks. You might wonder how he can sustain that degree of verve, until you catch a glimpse of him choffing a Big Mac and quaffing a can of Coke while he Ebays another 10 bushels of apples.

Dave is willing. Dave is willing to be the voice of reason. Dave is willing to be the bad guy. Dave is willing to do the dirty jobs. Dave is willing to answer a thousand emails. Dave is willing to keep CCS—this chaotic cohort of cartoonists—organized, organized, organized. And he does it all with a smile. Let's face it, most of us cartoonists would rather be pumping out pages than worrying about the leaking roof or the payroll stuff. That is why we are shockingly lucky to have Dave.

Dave is a harbinger of the seasons. Punxsutawney has Phil, and Dave’s face has Dave’s beard. Winter is only truly behind us when the Lloyd facial hair—or more accurately, the absence thereof—says so.

Aw, c’mon, what’s not to love?

Staff & Faculty Spotlight: Abe Olson

Abe has become a fixture at the school since he arrived from Seattle in the fall of 2014, arm-in-arm with his girlfriend and incoming freshman, Angela Boyle. Once his talents were made clear, CCS hired him as Administrative Coordinator. But he also has other, more alliterative titles:

Castellan of Cartoon Studies. I’m not sure exactly what “Administrative Coordination” means, but a castellan is the governor of a castle, whose job is to make sure everything is operating efficiently. And as far as I can tell, that’s exactly what Abe does. Around Colodny Keep, that means means answering the phone, answering emails, answering the front door, managing networking, maintaining and repairing the CCS computer fleet, troubleshooting A/V, wrangling the copy machines in the Lab, and helping students with file creation, page layout, printing, and bindery.   

Prince of Print. A two-year stint at a press in Seattle taught Abe how to manage multiple print projects, coordinating all of the necessary moving parts to bring everything together efficiently and on deadline. He has at times literally walked CCS students through every step of the Lab printing process, ensuring that everything from a mid-semester minicomic to someone’s final thesis gets done on time.

Emperor of Everquest. According to some sources, Abe has been playing Everquest II—the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG)—since 1922, and spent much of his free time searching for the ancient Froglok Talisman or raiding the Citadel of V’uul, until his PC broke last fall. Someone get on that! Without Abe, the land of Norrath is in dire jeopardy!

Denaso, the Dark Elf Wizard, AKA Abram Olson.

Duke of InDesign. Abe keeps special night hours to help people who are having trouble getting up to speed with this essential and complex piece of software. Students who take advantage of Abe’s InDesign expertise get a leg up when they encounter technical issues close to deadline, often getting their books in under the wire thanks to Abe’s assistance.  

Friend of Photography. In addition to documenting visiting artist talks and other events around the school, Abe takes a lot of pictures when he’s off the clock (and not playing Everquest). Seriously, check out his website. There’s some great stuff on there. Here are some of my favorites:

Angela Boyle (CCS 2016), librarian or private investigator?

Everything is ducky in Vermont.

Tillie Walden (CCS 2016) and Stephanie Zuppo (CCS 2015).

Visiting artist Box Brown stares into the abyss.

Sergeant of Stress Management. During the most trying times of thesis printing and packaging, Abe is in the Lab trenches, suturing the wounds of injured students and lobbing grenades back the enemy, all while juggling his usual administrative tasks. After one particularly trying battle, this exchange was overheard:  PVT. NARANJO: Dude, how can you deal with all of this sh#t at the same time? SGT. OLSON: Are you kidding me? I love this, I'm an adrenaline junkie!

MacGyver of South Main Steet. While he may have never plugged a sulfuric acid leak with chocolate or shorted a missile timer with a bent paper clip, Abe is the proverbial jack-knife in the office. Abe, can you research OSHA standards for pressure washer safety and create an SOP for the lab? Abe, can you put together a five-year plan for developing a more robust network for our campus? Abe, can you teach me how to make coffee?  

Angela’s Ally. Sure, maybe Abe’s position of power grants his girlfriend under-the-table considerations, like first pick of C&S Pizza slice at a school function, or a carpet of paper towels whenever she walks into the Colodny, but there are tradeoffs, right? There’ve got to be tradeoffs.

The man himself, photographed in a rare public appearance.

Staff & Faculty Spotlight: Bill Scavone

My interactions with CCS’ life drawing instructor—who’s been with the school since 2006—have been limited to faculty meetings and the occasional thesis committee, so beyond noting his unfailing amiability, intelligence, and great sense of humor, I am sadly unqualified to write a full appreciation of the man. So I asked a bunch of Bill’s former students to throw in their two cents, and edited their responses into this 10-point list.

He knows his stuff. Bill is a Board Certified Medical Illustrator, which means he’s spent many years studying and seeking to understand the human body through drawing. But it doesn’t stop there—his portfolio includes delicate wildlife paintings, botanical illustrations, National Geographic-style ecosystem maps, and interactive animations, all of which have seen publication in medical or scientific journals and websites.

He is unflinching. Examples of the aforementioned subjects can be found on Bill’s Kestrel Studio website, but browse carefully! Among his anatomical drawings you will find meticulous illustrations documenting traumatic injury and reconstructive surgery, such as this (relatively tame) one:

He surrounds himself with life. Specifically, his wife Miriam, two kids, an English Shepherd dog, three cats, honeybees, and dozens of chickens and ducks, all of whom live in or around a house somewhere out there in the Vermont woods.

He’s a man of many talents.  Students have reported occasional sightings of Bill about town in a tool belt, hammer in hand. In addition to his work for CCS and making amazing art, he occasionally takes on construction and carpentry jobs. Between teaching, raising two kids, and maintaining a full-blown illustration studio, how does he find the time?

He’s tapped into the Upper Valley’s pool of life models. Bill is committed to presenting a wide range of body types in the classroom, and from week to week makes great use of live subjects in order to help CCS students expand their understanding of human anatomy—from the broad, universal aspects down to the little details that distinguish one individual from the next.

A 2-minute gesture drawing from the master.

He is a great teacher in the moment. Bill notices subtleties in student drawings that students themselves might not, pointing out how the addition of a simple line here or there will pull a drawing together, and then explaining why it does so.

He has a tendency to overshare. But hey—it’s disarming, and class ends up being more relaxed as a result.

He goes above and beyond in the classroom. To have access to life drawing itself is great, but when the person teaching is so deeply knowledgeable and generous with their time and energy, it reminds you how lucky CCS is to have him on the faculty.

A lovely watercolor of Mt. Washington.

He pushes cartoonists out of their comfort zone. Cartooning often relies on stylized drawing or visual shorthand, which can easily become a substitute for a deeper understanding of the human form (or anything else drawn from life). Bill consistently pushes students to unlearn bad habits and pay close attention to what’s right in front of them.

Today’s post comes 3,000 miles away, courtesy of CCS alum Nomi Kane.

The Schulz Studio, in sunny Santa Rosa, California, was originally created by Charles Schulz himself to oversee licensing endeavors and steward the legacy of Peanuts. Today, the Studio continues that work, and employs three CCS alumni as full-time Staff Artists.

Though Denis St. John (CCS ’08), Donna Almendrala (CCS ’12) and myself (Nomi Kane CCS ’11) spend most of our days nestled behind a wall of shrubbery and secrecy, here is your behind-the-scenes glimpse at how those cartooning degrees are being put to work.

10 Things CCS taught us that we use every day:

1. Embrace technology. At the Studio we use the Adobe Creative Suite and a variety of digital drawing tools to restore and vector original Schulz art as well as to create new artwork.

2. But don’t forget how to do it the old-fashioned way. We also do things with traditional tools.

3. Really get to know your characters, their hopes, their dreams, their endless disappointments… The more we immerse ourselves in Schulz’s original strips, the better we are at keeping new Peanuts product and content true his work.

4. Constructive critique. Our jobs include evaluating Peanuts product from around the world and giving companies who license Peanuts artwork and characters tips and tricks on keeping items visually and thematically aligned with the strips.

5. Practice, practice, practice. We go through a lot of sketchbooks – Peanuts characters may look simple but, the tiniest line out of place will make them look off model.

6. Caffeinate liberally. Duh.

7. Teamwork makes the dream work. We do a lot of collaborating in the Studio, here’s a page in various stages from the monthly series we’ve been publishing with BOOM! and create almost entirely in-house.

8. Take creative risks. We’re extremely lucky to work in an environment where we’re encouraged to experiment creatively and come up with new ways to look at Peanuts.

9. Don’t be afraid to stand on the shoulders of giants. We do a lot of looking through art books for inspiration – if we’re influenced by everything we see, it’s good to keep our eyes on great artwork.

10. Your comics will love you back! Like at CCS, the harder we work the more satisfying it is.  Thanks Alec for always reminding us to push ourselves!

Almost everything we learned at CCS is integral to the work we do today, and getting to work with other CCS alumni is icing on the cake.  The studio environment is a very open and collaborative one, so coming to it with other cartoonists you already know and enjoy working with is truly a beautiful thing.

A few cool things we’re currently working on:

Donna did all the pencils and all the inks for the latest issue of the BOOM! Peanuts series – issue #32, on the racks RIGHT NOW!

Meanwhile, Denis is developing some new coloring styles, so keep your eyes peeled for this:

As for me, I’m creating a Peanuts Adult Coloring book (as in made for people with highly developed fine motor skills, not adult themed). Stop by the Peanuts booth at comic-con to get one!

Feel free to check in and see what’s going on at the Schulz Studio any time by visiting the Peanuts Studio blog.

Fashion plate for the 1990s: Harry Potter glasses, thrift-store corduroy jacket, home bleach job.

Staff & Faculty Spotlight: Jason Lutes

This one’s all about me. So I asked former student and forever-friend Donna Almendrala to write it, and looked the other way. TOP 10 THINGS I’VE LEARNED FROM JASON

#10: Do your homework before going to cons. The first time I met Jason Lutes was at Comic-Con 2009. I was very excited as I was recently getting back into comics as an adult, and Berlin and Jar of Fools were two of my favorites. I walked up to Jason’s table, told him how much I liked his work, and picked up both Berlin volumes. As he was signing the books, I casually commented, “So, your style has changed a lot across your work.” He looked at me, puzzled. “It has?” “When did you stop drawing animal people?” “What?” I looked around awkwardly for backup, but everyone around looked confused too. Finally I said, “You didn’t draw the stories with, like, birds and dogs walking around in clothes and talking like people?” He laughed really hard, and said, “No, totally different Jason.”

It’s not like there aren’t ANY similarities.

#9: Make comics for people who don’t read comics. Jar of Fools first appeared as a weekly strip in The Stranger back in 1993. Jason wrote it week to week, improvising as he went, each page revealing a new discovery. One of his goals was to create a comic that would be accessible to anyone who picked up the paper, whether or not they were a comics fan. Each page had to distill and communicate the beat of the moment clearly and deliberately, teaching the language of comics by example. At the first Jar of Fools book signing, Jason met two women in their fifties who had come to share how much they loved reading the story each week and how much the characters meant to them, despite the fact that neither had any prior interest in comics. Jason was grateful to meet these new fans because they gave him a glimpse of the wider audience he was trying to reach. Jason’s success as a cartoonist is not measured by his sales figures or exemplary teaching, but by his dedication to welcoming outsiders into the fold.

#8: Game purchases are tax write-offs. Jason has been playing tabletop RPGs since he first encountered Dungeons & Dragons in 1977, and to this day hosts weekly game nights at CCS. His most recent gaming obsession took off a few years ago, when he discovered the indie RPG Dungeon World. He scoured the Google+ Dungeon World community, posting questions, asking for advice, and also collecting ideas for play with his group. Jason has since launched two successful Kickstarters to fund his own Dungeon World supplements. He’s written hundreds of pages of guidelines for game-mastering, world-building, character creation and adapted many of his favorite older games for DW-style play. He has become a prominent figure in the community, often answering questions and recruiting more collaborators. But I was most impressed when I learned that Jason writes off the money that he spends on games because he has turned his love for RPGs into a profession. Not only does Jason give back to the community he loves, but he gets a tax deduction for it. Now, that’s just smart.

The wraparound cover to one of Jason’s side projects, by Keny Widjaja (CCS 2010).

#7: Make women part of the story. Jason was the Editor-in-Chief for the Classic Comic Project I worked on with fellow students in 2011. Our group was brainstorming ideas for a high-seas adventure comic, and Jason chimed in immediately: “We should make our protagonist a woman.” “Okay, but why?” we asked. “Adventure stories default to a male perspective. By choosing to make our protagonist a woman, the story becomes automatically more interesting. We won’t be recycling the same boring trope.” Jason’s commitment to making women part of the story is evident in his work in comics and games. But what resonates with me the most is how he purposefully uses female pronouns in his game writing to subvert patriarchal traditions and include us in the story.

A page from Avast!, by Donna Almendrala, Bill Bedard, Sean Knickerbocker, Amelia Onorato, Andy Warner, and Nate Wootters (all CCS 2012).

#6: Know the difference between a wizard and a magician. I was working on my thesis in 2012, and I asked Jason to go over a rough draft of my story. When we met up, he flipped to page four and pointed at a panel of a character saying, “He doesn’t look like a magician to me.” Another character replies, “He’s the cleric. I’m the magician!” Jason looked at me, dead serious, and said, “He’s a wizard, Donna, not a magician.” “He is?” I asked. “This is a fantasy adventure right? Magicians do parlor tricks, gimmicks. Wizards possess magical power. They cast spells. It should say ‘wizard.’” He was right. Know the difference.

#5: Don’t stop playing games. As you may have gathered by now, one of Jason’s passions in life is games: playing them, making them, reading and writing about them. Over the course of the countless game nights I attended while at CCS, Jason showed me that board games and RPGs were not just a fun distractions from work, but an essential part of life. Telling stories is a uniquely human ability. The making of comics springs from this drive, and so does gaming.  When you get into improvisational role-playing games with others, it puts you in the same mindset of “pretend-play” that’s so useful for making comics.

A session of Battlestar Galactica from LutesCon 2011. Left to right: Kevin McGuire, David Yoder (CCS 2012), Denis St. John (CCS 2008), Dean O’Donnell, Donna Almendrala, and Rob Palmer.

#4: Make comics a conversation. Jason can attest to the reality that comics take a long time to make. But many of us pursue this arduous endeavor because we want to share something with other people. Similarly, the narrative of a collaborative storytelling game emerges from the conversation among its players. Many moons ago, Jason was inspired by a game called Fiasco (created by another Jason). He organized a group of CCS alumni (myself included) to play it over three hours, recorded the results, and spent the next several months supervising us players as we turned the conversation into a graphic novel. Each character in the story was role-played by an individual collaborator with their own motivations and unique voice, and the resulting tensions culminated in disaster (as the game intends). The beauty of this shared experience was taking something spontaneous and ephemeral, and turning it into something none of us could have created alone. Making the comic was like transcribing our conversation so others could enjoy it.

A page spread from Bingo Baby, by Donna Almendrala, Bill Bedard, Joseph Lambert (CCS 2008), Amelia Onorato, and Denis St. John.

#3: Ask, say, or roll. “Ask, say or roll” is one of Jason’s guiding principles to the practice of game mastering for Dungeon World. Even if you don’t play DW as regularly as Jason does, I think you can apply the principle liberally to all aspects of life. When you reach a crossroads and aren’t quite sure which path to take, it can be helpful to “ask, say, or roll”. Ask your closest companions, your comrades who journey alongside you, to share their wisdom and expertise to help you collect all the facts and as you make a decision. Sometimes the only person who can make the call is you, so it becomes your responsibility to say what happens next based on your own experience and understanding of the big picture. And for the times when there are simply no obvious options left, maybe it’s best to roll the dice and leave the decision to fate. Perhaps that means pulling out a map and randomly pointing to the next place you will call home, as Jason did when he left Seattle and moved sight-unseen to Asheville, North Carolina in 2003.

#2: Be your own captain. Perhaps the most famous of Jason’s lessons if you’re a CCS student happens at the end of the very first Cartooning Studio class. He makes everyone stand and swear an oath to be the captain of their comics, to take responsibility for them and for their own lives. Jason empowers each student in that room, both new and experienced cartoonists, with a charge to create comics for themselves first and under their own authority; a lesson for us to remember for the rest of our careers.

#1: Never stop teaching and learning. Even though it’s been almost four years since I graduated, Jason still has a sense of duty to teach me things whenever the opportunity arises. I went on a hike with him, Becka and the kids, and he started explaining what stinging nettles were since I am mostly ignorant of all things nature. My immediate reaction was, “Look, dude...I didn’t want to learn anything on this hike. I just wanted to hang out with your amazing family and hug your adorable children.” But then I realized this was his calling. Jason is never going to stop teaching for as long as he lives. I’d be foolish not to keep learning from him.

Staff & Faculty Spotlight: Luke Howard

I had to write this one because everyone else can’t stand the guy.

Origin Story, Part I: Luke’s parents were thankfully not murdered in an alleyway by a small-time crook on their way home from a movie theater, but Luke’s dad did establish the Howard household tradition of watching Blood Simple and Red Rock West every Halloween. Pillowcases full of candy and bloody neo-noir. This explains a lot.

Happy Halloween!

Origin Story, Part II: When Luke was 10 years old, his parents bought him a drawing table and cartooning tools so he could pursue his dream of being Bill Watterson. When he discovered that his drawings did not look like Calvin & Hobbes, he was so upset that he decided he was never meant to be a cartoonist, gave up drawing, and refused to take any art classes for the next 15 years.

Origin Story, Part III: Luke met and married Abby, who deserves a 10-point bullet list of her own.

Abby and Luke reliving a life of “Skywalker” jokes at CCS Commencement, 2015.

Origin Story, Part IV: Circa 2010, Abby joked about doing a comic-a-day experiment, and suggested that Luke join her. He started drawing a gag comic every day, which was tolerable because he could tell himself, “it looks shitty because I only had a day to make it.” Within a month he wanted to seek out a comics education, and applied to CCS. His application comic was the first multi-page non-gag comic he had ever done. To his (but no one else’s) shock he got in. Luke graduated in 2013, and was promptly hired by CCS to co-teach several classes and run the Lab, which makes him the first person ever to be CCS alumni, staff, and faculty all at once. There’s a writer-director-producer joke in there somewhere, but Luke’s the film school graduate—I’ll let him figure it out.

Luke and Abby have two dogs, Whimbly and Bagel. These dogs are important.

Bagel is the smaller one.

One of Luke’s manifold ongoing responsibilities at CCS is Visiting Artists Wrangler, which demands deployment of the Howard charm on a weekly basis as Luke schedules, interviews, and plays host to the steady stream of professionals who come to speak at CCS.

Visiting artist Bill Griffith critiques Luke’s whiteboard copyright infringement.

Luke has been a member of my weekly tabletop RPG group for three years and counting. A lot of memorable characters have come and gone in that time, but Luke’s portrayals always stand out. Whether he’s playing Maeg, the haunted psychic peacemaker; Bilby, the albino gnome sorcerer who can send his skin hither and yon; Jilly, the conniving, homeless, kerosene-huffing hobbit; or Honey Boo-Boo, the rollerskating Atlantic City hustler, you can count on Luke to invest fully in the part, fading into the background or chewing the scenery as circumstance demands.

Top: young Luke imagining future heights of heroism (come on—SO CUTE). Bottom: the kerosene-huffing hobbit and rollerskating hustler he would become.

Luke is a great cartoonist, and that means he’s got to be a great designer. In addition to producing tons of promotional material for the school, he takes on the occasional freelance gig, like this sweet poster for The Cult of JT LeRoy:

I was walking around the Toronto Comic Arts Festival last year and stopped for a moment to chat with Chris Pitzer at the AdHouse Books table. In the course of reflecting on a recent visit he had made to CCS for Industry Day, Chris said, “I really like that Luke Howard,” and he meant the person, not the cartoonist. This confirmed two things I already knew: 1) despite my sarcastic opening to this post, everyone likes Luke; and 2) Chris Pitzer is good people. AdHouse will soon be publishing Talk Dirty to Me, so it looks like Chris digs the cartoonist as well as the person.

This year Luke has been thesis adviser to Dean Sudarsky (CCS 2016). When I asked him to share what it's been like to have Luke as his personal Mister Miyagi, Dean had this to say: Luke has met with me nearly every week to reassure me that it's not the end of the world if I don't make a million pages, barely having slept from drawing his own million pages and attending to a million students and their needs, not to mention teaching, preparing for Industry Day, graduation, and summer workshops, while still finding the time to make nice whiteboard drawings for Visiting Artist Seminar. His wisdom doesn't come down in discrete mantras. I think he tries to avoid laying down concrete advice because he's aware of the many different approaches people have to cartooning, so he encourages me to follow whatever excites me because he seems to value those watershed moments of enjoyment/clarity that put all the technical minutiae of cartooning into order. Sometimes he tells me to pay less attention to the smallest details and press forward without stressing so much, and other times he tells me to forget about making a lot of pages and let myself make slow, labored drawings if I seem to be enjoying the exploration. I really appreciate that his focus as an adviser has been to get me to a place where I can follow my interests and enjoy myself and experiment with comics rather than worry about whether or not the comics I'm making are "good."

Luke’s uniform is a baseball cap and hoodie that look like they’ve been with through several world wars. I think it’s about time someone discretely pointed out the CCS dress code. Dave? Michelle? Anyone?

Facility Notes: The Post Office Building

In 1849, on the heels of the establishment of the town’s first rail depot, the federal government opened White River Junction’s first post office. It was relocated to the Gates Block in 1890 and remained there until the height of the Great Depression, when the task of providing White River with a proper post office was taken up by the Works Progress Administration. In 1934, the WPA oversaw the construction of a Neo-Classical Revival-style brick building between the Junction House Hotel and the railroad tracks, on a piece of land which had once been a swamp.

Portrait of the beloved PO by beloved CCS alum dave w.

Post Office Legend #03: An underground tunnel once ran from the train station on the east side of the tracks to the Post Office basement on the west side of the tracks, in order to facilitate the efficient transfer of mail in volume.

And through its doors correspondence, Christmas presents, and mail-order catalogs flowed for another three decades, until its function was rendered obsolete by a new distribution center, built outside the historic district in 1964.

In the intervening years, the building would become a Vermont District Court (an actual Hall of Justice!) and a privately-owned office building before finding its true purpose as the crown jewel in the portfolio of the country’s premier comic book college.

The Post Office weathers another Vermont winter, courtesy of Mr. Freeze. Michelle and James had their eyes on the Post Office since before the school opened. Bayle Drubel—local real estate developer and founding CCS board member—had purchased the building in 2004, but it wasn’t within the school’s financial reach until 7 years later. 

“CCS received a lot of support both locally and nationally to make this purchase possible,” said Michelle after the deal was finalized, “but without the Drubel family’s generosity, this wouldn’t happen.”

Christmas of 2011: the best present a comic book college could hope for.

As soon as the building changed hands, Michelle got to work overseeing the renovation efforts. The plan was to utilize the space to provide core instruction space, faculty offices, and a new home for the Schulz Library, which was in limbo after being displaced by Hurricane Irene.

Post Office Legend #14: Some of the interior walls are unusually thick, supporting the theory that a series of secret passages once ran throughout the building, affording escape routes for postal workers in the event of a mail heist.

The central space—a cavernous room with twenty-foot ceilings and a massive skylight—would become the school’s main classroom, but it had fallen into disuse and disrepair over the years. It demanded attention along with a host of other comprehensive improvements, not least of which was the design and construction of the new library.

The sound of circular saws and loud banging echoed through downtown White River at all hours...

...but before the waiting even approached the painful stage, the major restructuring was done, the floors sanded and finished, the plaster dust vacuumed up, desks, chairs, and art supplies all put into place.

Miraculously, the classroom space was ready for action by the summer of 2012.

The inaugural Graphic Novel Workshop, led by Paul Karasik (left) assisted by Melanie Gilman (near left, CCS class of 2012).

The Center for Cartoon Studies has always had a heart. But now that heart is fortified with brick and granite, stocked with the history of sequential narrative, and brought to life by the comings, goings, and community of students, teachers, staff, and visiting artists.

Plus, it’s a fallout shelter.

Staff & Faculty Spotlight: Jon Chad

This week’s spotlight is aimed by Alec Longstreth, and reflects brilliantly off the dazzling smile of one of the most energetic, enthusiastic, and kind-hearted people to grace the halls of CCS and the greater comics community.

I first met Jon Chad in the summer of 2007 when he came up to White River Junction to be an intern for the CCS summer workshops. He was finishing up his undergraduate degree from the Savannah College of Art and Design at the time and one thing was clear right away­ this guy could DRAW! He was working on the original minicomic­ version of Leo Geo and His Miraculous Journey Through the Center of the Earth, and it knocked my socks off.

So I was delighted in 2008, when I moved to White River Junction and found that Jon had been hired as the... um... CCS... uh, well, the truth is, I don’t actually know what Jon’s official title at CCS was. All I know is that I, and all of the CCS students called Jon “THE LAB KING” and the CCS Lab was his dominion ­ from the screen­printing station and the photocopiers to the bookbinding tools and industrial German papercutter ­ he ruled it all with a golden, benevolent fist.

Early on in the 2008 school year, Jon and I were sent down to the IKEA outside of Boston in an unmarked white van to pick up 20 or so tables and a bunch of chairs, which CCS students have used to draw their comics on ever since. Jon had never been to an IKEA before and he got really excited. His excitement was infectious and we ended up having a blast on that road trip. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

During my four years in White River Junction, Jon was a coworker, a studio mate, a creative collaborator, a neighbor, a teammate, a co­teacher and above all else, a great friend.

Here are 10 things you should know about him:

Jon Chad is a native Vermonter. He grew up in Essex Junction, Vermont just outside of Burlington, where his parents live today. Family is incredibly important to Jon and he often makes the trip up to see his folks and to visit his brother and sister who also live in the region.

If you had to be shipwrecked on a desert island with only one CCS faculty member, you would want it to be Jon Chad. He is an Eagle Scout and could probably actually build you a shelter, while the rest of us would only be able to draw you one in the sand.

Jon is a master screen printer. He cut his teeth working in a tee shirt screen printing shop in Burlington, and pretty much every minicomic Jon has ever made has some screen printed element on it, if not many screen printed elements. He is not afraid to take it to the limit. I once saw Jon make a 7-­color screen print with gold ink and everything, only to scrap the whole print run because it did not meet his exacting standards.

Jon draws great inspiration for his minicomics from artists’ books. He gives a great lecture on the topic and often leads a CCS field trip up to the special collections at the University of Vermont so that students can interact with some of these amazing pieces of art, which redefine what one thinks of as a “book.” Jon’s favorite artist is the world-renowned artists’ books creator Julie Chen. I had the great pleasure of accompanying Jon on a trip to her bookmaking studio in Berkeley, California a few years ago. She is a fan of Jon’s minicomics.

Jon and I co-­taught the yearlong Publication Workshop class at CCS for two years, and I can personally attest to the fact that he has a deep understanding and love of the mechanical printing process. He knows Photoshop and InDesign front to back and is well-­versed in half a dozen bookbinding techniques. When you combine all this with his knowledge of screen printing and artists books, there is no doubt that he is the right man for the job. If you doubt his resolve, I will direct you to the CMYK tattoo on his left arm.

Jon loves to ride his trusty bike, Scamander. I have known Jon to ride 50 miles in a day over Vermont mountains and back, or to strap on snow tires and continue biking through the arctic Vermont winters. In 2009 I painted him a custom bike helmet, which has some of his favorite things on it: gold, diamonds, bread (Jon won a blue ribbon at the Champlain Valley State Fair for his beer bread) and his character Bikeman. Jon helped institute the CCS community bike, which can be checked out by students.

Jon is also a big fan of pinball, which we rediscovered together in White River Junction. This lead to: a “dollar a day” pinball habit, the creation of our pinball zine Drop Target, both of us eventually buying our own pinball machines, setting up a CCS design scholarship with half the proceeds from those machines, and finally Jon working for many different pinball leagues, associations and manufacturers as an illustrator of tee shirts, posters, awards and even physical pinball tokens! Jon’s dream job is to draw all the art for a real pinball machine. I am confident he will accomplish this goal within the next 10 years.

Many of Jon’s big comics projects thus far have revolved around science. In Leo Geo and His Miraculous Journey Through the Center of the Earth Jon explores geology and in its sequel, Leo Geo and the Cosmic Crisis he explores astronomy. Up next he has a book coming out from First Second all about Volcanoes.

Jon is currently working on a sprawling epic called Bad Mask, which involves giant robots and and a secret society of super villains. It is going to be amazing. You can see tons of in­-progress drawings over on his tumblr.

On view in the Colodny: Ten Years of Fellowship

Photos by Abe Olson

Each year for the past 10 years, the Center for Cartoon Studies has invited one or more cartoonists to join the community for a year, granting them access to classes, studio space, and the production lab. To date, 13 working artists have participated in the Fellow program:

Noah Van Sciver (2015-16) Sophie Yanow (2014-15) Nicole Georges (2013-14) Connor Willumsen (2012-13) Julie Delporte (2011-12) Blaise Larmee (2011-12) David Libens (2010-11) Max de Radigues (2009-10) Alec Longstreth (2008-09) Chris Wright (2008-09) T. Edward Bak (2007-08) Gabby Schulz (2006-07) Robyn Chapman (2005-06)

Original work by these groundbreaking cartoonists are currently on exhibit in the Colodny gallery space, in coordination with a show at the Society for Illustrators in New York. If you’re in NYC for the MoCCA Arts Festival next weekend, be sure to catch the opening at the Society on the evening of Friday, April 1st!

Robyn Chapman.

Gabby Schulz.

Alec Longstreth.

T. Edward Bak.

Illustration of the library’s original location by Kevin Huizenga.

Facility Notes: the Schulz Library

Of all the spaces, rented, leased, inhabited, repurposed, and/or owned outright by the Center for Cartoon Studies, our athenaeum of comics and related ephemera has the most storied past.

Former Schulz librarian Caitlin McGurk (left, now Associate Curator at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at OSU) and members of the class of 2012 making use of the Main Street Museum space.

Originally set up in the former garage of the restored firehouse that is the Main Street Museum, the Schulz Library underwent a hasty relocation in the wake of Hurricane Irene.

September 1, 2011: the Main Street Museum building at left, overlooking water from the White River, which had not yet receded back to its former level.

Jon Chad (left), and Jen Vaughn (right, ‘10) getting mucky during flood clean-up.

The Museum, like many homes and businesses throughout Vermont, was hard hit. The room that held the CCS collection survived, but the flooding necessitated a rapid relocation of all of the printed matter in order to avoid water damage and its book-killing sidekick, mold. The call went out, and the CCS community went to work rescuing our beloved collection.

Alexis Cornell (’13), Melanie Gillman (’12), and Amelia Onorato (’12) packing cars full of comic books.

The interim stop for the books was an undisclosed storage space, where they would need to be reorganized, checked for damage, and protected from further harm while awaiting a new home.

For a little while, there were piles of books everywhere!

And what a new home that would turn out to be. After a long negotiation and the deployment of the full repertoire of Michelle Ollie’s superpowers, CCS acquired White River Junction’s historic Post Office building, and... well, that’s a story for another blog post. Suffice it to say that a good slice of the Post Office building was earmarked as library space, and while stacks of periodicals and graphic novels longed for attention in their temporary quarters, that slice got reshaped, refitted, and polished to perfection.

The digs in 2012, still being dug.

Once all the floor-to-ceiling shelving was in, the walls painted, and the trademark black-and-yellow sign mounted above the front door, the collection was once again loaded into hatchbacks and relocated by the CCS book brigade.

Unknown ally, dave w (’12), Melanie Gillman (’12), and Juan Fernandez (’14) filling brand-new bookshelves a year after Hurricane Irene blew through.

But this time, all those beautiful bande dessinée would be guaranteed safety from disasters natural and human-made—the Post Office is a fallout shelter, after all. We like to think the biggest threat faced by Linus, Beethoven, and our stalwart librarians is a student clinging overzealously to that giant edition of Kramer’s Ergot or a volume of Little Lulu past its due date.

The Schulz Library beckons, innocently. It will steal your afternoon from you.

Several shelves of student work allow efficiency analysts to measure the output of the CCS community by the linear foot.

Ludwig watches over all.

So. Many. Comic. Books.

Each year, in cooperation with the Slate Book Review, students and faculty choose two comics to receive the Cartoonist Studio Prize. The candidates are made available for reading in the library.

The cartoonist and publisher in her natural habitat: tabling at a comics show.

Staff & Faculty Spotlight: Robyn Chapman

Robyn Chapman was our first fellow, and spent five years as program coordinator and a faculty member at CCS. She built and managed the curriculum for our Create Comics and Cartooning Studio workshops, and now lives in New York City. This week’s 10-point appreciation comes from CCS co-founder James Sturm.

Robyn is Wasilla, Alaska’s second-most-famous citizen. I’ve known her for almost 20 years. We met when she was an undergraduate at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where I was one of her teachers. Robyn was an exceptional student: hard working and totally committed to cartooning.

Back then, if you taught a class of twenty students, the best you could hope for was five decent ones. Whenever I saw Robyn’s name on my class roster I knew that I had at least one great student in the class. She had strong, thoughtful opinions, and really shined in crits. Though she was shy, she was unafraid to call people out on their bullshit. It wasn’t personal—comics mattered to her. She didn’t want to see them abused.

Delivering the minicomics gospel to summer workshop students in the Lab, circa June 2008.

After Robyn graduated from SCAD, we stayed in touch. I remember hanging out with her when I visited Madison, Wisconsin, where she lived briefly before moving to DC. She was always making comics, reviewing comics, and—upon moving to NYC—teaching comics. She drew a piece for an anthology I was putting together; I drew the back cover for her True Porn anthology.

When Robyn heard I was starting a cartoon school in Vermont she sent me an e-mail saying, “Count me in; I’ll do whatever it takes to make this happen, I’ll even clean toilets.” Eventually Robyn’s official title became “Program Coordinator” but that hardly describes the full scope of her contributions. She worked conventions, helped set up the Lab, hosted visiting artists, taught classes, and yes, cleaned toilets (we all did back then). For many years, Robyn was the first person to review student applications. Her application reviews remain the CCS gold standard.

Robyn’s excellent comics workbook, accessible to children and adults, and designed to take aspiring cartoonists from doodle to finished publication.

While living in Vermont, Robyn worked at the Upper Valley Co-Op and volunteered at local non-profits. She dog sat and babysat. She opened her apartment to cartoonists that were passing through.

Robyn was CCS’s first fellow. Given how community-minded she is, it’s easy to forget she’s also a very good cartoonist.

Robyn’s ambitious chronicle of the micro-press movement, published through her own Paper Rocket Comics.

In 2008, Robyn decided it was time to move on and gave her notice. She passed along her apartment to incoming CCS students. Then she changed her mind and stayed another two years. There was much rejoicing in White River Junction.

Robyn is an exceptional publisher and writer. First Second Books just hired her as an associate editor. That makes total sense. Smart move, First Second.

In a recent Facebook post, Robyn mentioned how much she related to Mad Men character Peggy Olson. Robyn, if you’re Peggy, could I please, please be Don? This could be the only context that this comparison is even remotely apt. I knew you when. I even live on Draper Road.

What else? Robyn is as trustworthy and conscientious as they come. She is a good listener. She blushes easily. She laughs easily. She still comes up to White River to see friends and visit classrooms. And she is always welcomed.

Facility Notes: the Senior Studio

The REDACTED building on REDACTED Street has housed studio space for second-year students for the past 8 years. This great edifice is the property of the REDACTED Corporation, and it’s by their good graces that CCS is able to make use of half a dozen rooms within.   

Speculation abounds as to the street address, and even to which township it belongs. Is it a warehouse across the railroad tracks in White River Junction, connected to the Colodny via underground tunnel ? An abandoned high school in Windsor? A former power plant on the Connecticut River, accessible only by watercraft? Whatever its actual location, I can tell you that it does actually exist. I know, because after negotiating a maze of Kafkaesque bureaucracy and about half an hour of being blindfolded in the back seat of a Lexus, I was recently granted limited access. I had 10 minutes to get in and out, if I wanted to avoid the arrival of a certain legendary custodial engineer.

For those students who have elected to make use of this space, it’s where their greatest labor at CCS—the Thesis Project—is undertaken. I felt like an anthropologist as I moved from drawing table to desk to “drinking fountain,” careful to disturb nothing, struggling to puzzle out meaning from the arrangement of objects.

Though a limited frame through which to view Thesis work, I believe these tableaux—the only ones sanctioned for reproduction by my "hosts”—worthy of examination. Evidence of great minds and hearts and hands at work, thinking and writing and drawing their way toward graduation from the Center for Cartoon Studies.

Staff & Faculty Spotlight: Alec Longstreth

This week’s 10-point appreciation comes from the unstoppable Jon Chad, on the left above, clashing sabers with Denis St. John (CCS 08).

I met Alec Longstreth when I was an intern at CCS in the summer of 2007. We both moved to WRJ in 2008, and I was immediately drawn to Alec's passion, ferocious vivacity, and love of storytelling. He's been a tremendous friend, inspiration, and co-conspirator, and I look back on my years in WRJ so fondly in no small part because I had the honor of knowing him. Although using 10 bullet points to fully describe Alec is an impossible goal, I will try my darndest. 

Let's get one thing straight, right off the bat: ALEC LONGSTRETH IS ONE OF THE HARDEST-WORKING, PASSIONATE HUMANS ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET!

Alec grew up in Seattle and attended Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. He's lived in LA, Portland, Oregon, NYC (where he attended Pratt Institute), White River Junction, Vermont, Oakland, and he now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Alec came to WRJ to be a fellow and teach in August of 2008. After his fellowship, he continued to teach and draw comics in WRJ until 2012.

When Alec arrived at CCS, he made a pledge that he wasn't going to shave his beard, or cut his hair, until he had finished drawing the last three chapters of his graphic novel Basewood. He started this long endeavor by cutting off all his hair so that he would have a clean slate. He finished Basewood in 2012.

The latest issue of Phase 7, documenting Alec’s facial hair from 2008-2012.

Alec and I went to IKEA for CCS early on and took a ton of photos of us posing in the showrooms. It was a cementing friendship moment where we put our silliness cards on the table.

There's a painting of Dumbledore by Alec hanging in J.K. Rowling's office.

The only time I've seen Alec get truly and unjustly mad is when we tried to watch the CG Star Wars cartoon online and it wouldn't buffer.

Alec's seemingly inexhaustible love of all things Star Wars, Muppets, Harry Potter, $crooge McDuck, and comics is only matched by the kindness and enthusiasm that he shows to his students. In the face of the dozens of projects that Alec is juggling at any given time, I have never heard of Alec turning down a chance to help a student out; he’s always willing to extending his advice and energy.

A promotional postcard Alec drew for the band Harry and the Potters.

Alec's an avid soccer player and spearheaded a Sunday pickup game that was so inviting that it made even the most sports-weary cartoonist (i.e., me) want to play.

When you drive with Alec to go to swim in a river, he rolls up the windows and blasts the heat so that the water will feel extra good. There's a work/reward art metaphor in there somewhere.

When Alec moved away from WRJ in 2012, he continued teaching his class (Professional Practices) over the internet; projected on the screen like a giant Wizard of Oz head. Someone that only brings 75% of their enthusiasm and energy to the classroom wouldn't have been able to do it. Only someone with 150% enthusiasm like Alec can pull it off!!

One of best pieces of advice I have EVER received was given to me by Alec while we were drawing in his apartment one afternoon. He was working on an illustration job for his favorite band of all time, Weezer. I asked him what it felt like to be working for his favorite band and being, in some small measure, part of what they do. Alec answered, "If you love something, help it stay positive, and help it grow, you can be a part of it." That advice has carried me far not only in comics, but in life.

The Classic Comic Project

At a faculty meeting eight years ago, James came up with a harebrained idea: to kick off the spring semester with a project that would employ the assembly-line production methods of mainstream comics publishers, complete with real-world deadline. The students would be broken up into “bullpens,” each comprised of 5-6 students and a faculty member acting as editor-in-chief. We would choose a specific year from comics history to use as a model for genre and visual style, and each team would be tasked with producing a 24-page, full-color comic book, from start to finish, in a two-week span. The picture above shows the fruits (and for some alumni they are bitter, bitter fruits indeed) of eight years of what was first dubbed the Golden Age Project, then the Silver Age Project, and now—as we have jumped around quite a bit between 1940 and 1970—is simply called the Classic Comic Project. Seeing them all laid out like that always makes me thing of Charlie Brown uttering this line:

It’s an amazing, inspiring, grueling, intense 14 days, and a certain kind of miracle in the end, when you hold the finished product in your hands. The in-class critique of these comics is always a little hard, because everyone has busted their butts and pulled out all the stops to reach that finish line, and they are usually far more cognizant of whatever errors made it into print than anyone else. So send good vibes to the CCS class of 2017 as they sit down for the Classic Comic crit today! This year’s entries, produced by that class, are SCIENCE TEAM O.V.E.R.A.L.L.S. and SPACE SCOUNDRELS, both of which are modeled on adventure comics circa 1957. And here are some spectacular page spreads from those fine funnybooks:

SCIENCE TEAM O.V.E.R.A.L.L.S., by Jacob Bussiere, Hedj, Emily Sillars, Robyn-Brooke Smith, and Steve Thueson, under the whip-cracking direction of Editor-in-Chief Stephen R. Bissette.

Thursday is Visiting Artist day

This afternoon the Post Office classroom will be graced by Melissa Mendes and Charles Forsman (aka Chuck McBuck), two CCS alumni who met through comics and have been living together for the last 6 years. I love Melissa and Chuck, and hey were wonderful people to have them in the classroom, so it’s incredibly gratifying to see them pursue their passion for comics long after flying the coop. I asked them both to update us on what life has been like for them since they left White River Junction. Melissa writes:

When I graduated from CCS Chuck and I moved home to my mom's house in MA for a while, to figure out what was next. We decided to move to Providence, and we were there for a year. I felt pretty lost at that time but I somehow managed to apply for and win a Xeric grant for my book Freddy Stories! The book was a collection of stuff I'd done at CCS and then I'd added some that I'd worked on while in Providence. I was also working full time doing graphic design at a coffee roasting company.

I was really unhappy in Providence. We decided to move back to my mom's house after a year in RI. We have been here ever since... I guess it's been about 4 years. It's beautiful here, in the woods, and we rent from my mom so we have the whole house. It's cheap enough that we are able to live on part time jobs, and able to spend a lot of time drawing comics, which is awesome.

I worked freelance as an editor and an illustrator for a while. I illustrated a book called Jack Strong Takes a Stand published by Roaring Brook Press. I started a series called Lou for Chuck's mini comics publishing company. I ended up doing 17 issues, and that's now being collected in a book!

There's been a lot of little projects here and there. I've also partnered up with Anne Elizabeth Moore on a lot of projects with the Ladydrawers.

I'm currently working on a project called The Weight, which I'm putting up page by page online. It's a huge project, and it's going to be really long. It's fictional but it's based on my grandfather's life growing up in rural upstate new york.

Right now I'm supporting myself by working part time at an elementary school, and with my Patreon for The Weight. I feel really lucky be where we are, and get to do what I want to do!

Chuck writes: Melissa's details about her moves and stuff pretty much go for me too. So...ditto.

Since CCS, I I've done 8 issues of Snake Oil (which began as my Thesis at CCS), The End of the Fucking World, Celebrated Summer, Hobo Mom with Max de Radigués, and now I am focusing on an action comic book called Revenger.

I also started a small press called Oily Comic which published a ton of mini comics from many cartoonists.