Hello, everyone! We had another small group, but that’s okay. We read a lot of horror comics, but I’m always nervous when the horror involves food since we’re usually eating dinner during our discussion. Thankfully, everything turned out fine! Lol All of us were on the same bus on our way to the meeting, and we ended up talking about favorite celebrity chefs and Bob the Drag Queen’s Paula Deen impression, which none of us could find on YouTube. At least a couple of us are going to CAKE next week, which will be a lot of fun.
In this issue: What We’re Reading - About What We’ve Read - Shameless Self-Promotion - Some Thoughts on Food Poisoning
As with most anthologies, some stories were better than others but opinions varied on favorites in this collection. “The Pirates” with art by Vanesa Del Rey was one person’s favorite story and art style. I was split between Leonardo Manco’s artwork for “Salty Horse” and Francesco Francavilla’s for “The Cow Head,” though someone else thought the former veered too far past horror and into being simply gross. Everyone liked Irene Koh’s art for “The Snow Woman.” I’ve seen that story adapted before into other comics and a short film. One person who is admittedly not a horror fan was confounded by the practical and logical leaps of some stories, such as why Japanese monsters were in European settings. I kind of liked that bit of syncretism, but we all agreed that some of the comics could have used another page or two to address some of their plot points. It was unclear if some were meant to be morality tales or not. The finale that wrapped up the framing device was universally satisfying. The recipes included at the end probably aren’t going to be attempted by any of us. One person is a vegetarian and I found them too labor intensive. Call me lazy if you want, I’m not buying cheesecloth and butcher’s twine just to make cabbage. Lol
Our next meeting will be Wednesday, May 20 to discuss The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S.
May 20 - The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S. by Jaime Hernandez
June 17 - I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together by Maurice Vellekoop
July 15 - Our Dreams at Dusk, Volume 1 by Yuhki Kamatani
August 19 - Minor Arcana, Volume 1: The Fool by Jeff Lemire
September 16 - Search and Destroy, Volume 1 by Atsushi Kaneko, based on Dororo by Osamu Tezuka
October 21 - Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? by Harold Schechter and Eric Powell
November 18 - Loving, Ohio by Matthew Erman and Sam Beck
December 16 - Hello Sunshine by Keezy Young
January 20, 2027 - Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees by Patrick Horvath
Next month’s selection is also on hoopla, along with several other Love & Rockets collections. We’re bending the rule of starting with the first volume of a series, because most people agree The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S. is when the series began to fire on all cylinders. We didn’t have enough people to decide on shuffling any of the selections, but we’ll see how the year plays out.
Anthony Bourdain spoke with Newsweek about Hungry Ghosts with his main collaborator, Joel Rose. Sadly, Bourdain died by suicide in June of the following year. Rose spoke with The Hollywood Reporter and Salon about their work together. Sony optioned Hungry Ghosts for an animated series back in 2019.
If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide, there is help available.
The latest NEWS digest is available here. The next NEWS digest will be posted in two weeks on Friday, May 8.
Good news: I was accepted to table at a convention! Bad news: I had to decline because of transportation costs and day job factors. I was sad to turn down such a great opportunity, but the organizers of the convention were very gracious and understanding. This does make me hopeful that I’m that much closer to achieving my goal of tabling by the end of the year!
The submission deadline for the ' Noice ' Anthology has been extended to May 21!
The Dreamlands Anthology from Warden Comics was a success! Surveys are out, books will be printed shortly. I’ve already submitted an updated pitch for The Passion of St. Alban of the West to a couple of publishers to include how the main character appears in this book.
On March 26, I hopped onto Comix Wellspring’s Spilled Ink livestream with several other creators. Apparently, I was the first writer to ever do so! Technical difficulties prevented me from being on camera, but I was working on a script while others were drawing.
My promotional blitz for Dreamlands concluded on March 30 with my appearance on Inspired Ink with Brandon Bloxdorf. We talked about a wide range of topics, including the just-concluded C2E2 and my audio-only appearance on Spilled Ink. It was a fun time!
Brandon also edited the video to create a couple of shorts, which don’t seem to embed as easily on Substack, but you can check those out here and here.
Rise of the Flightless, the penguins versus robots anthology for which I wrote a four-page comic, will be launching on Kickstarter soon. Be sure to follow that campaign to show your support! Luke W. Henderson, the editor of the anthology and the letterer for my contribution, shared a cover that will be new for this edition. Hopefully, it’ll be a rainbow holographic cover! Art by Mike M.
I have a storefront on comix.one! They’re selling my self-published comics digitally and via print on demand. I’ll be uploading all my future comics there!
Speaking of future comics, if you saw any of my podcast appearances promoting Dreamlands, you may have caught me mentioning a new comic in the works. “The Cleanest Room in AI City” is an eight-page gay sci-fi noir that I’ve written. I’m re-teaming with Federico Peters, one of the artists of a short Alban of the West comic. I’m excited to share more soon!
Geek Collective’s Archetypes #2 hit several unfortunate delays, but should be fulfilled soon.
The Prism anthology is available on Global Comix!
The first anthology to publish a comic I wrote, CyberSync, is available for purchase. It went into a second printing! You can also find it in my online shop.
Before leaving for Thailand for the first time, I was warned not to eat any street food. I had hoped to see my doctor before the trip to get something to fortify my immune system or prevent any adverse effects, but my husband and I had to plan the trip in a hurry and I didn’t want to delay.
The trip itself was magnificent! A life-changing vacation in several ways, it was my first time traveling outside of North America since I was a foreign exchange student as a teenager. As you’ve probably suspected, based on the title and the introductory paragraph, I did get food poisoning. It was about a week into the trip and it was the worst pain I have ever experienced in my entire life.
I’ve been poisoned before (twice). I’ve also been electrocuted twice and stabbed. I’ve had cavities filled without novocain and have gotten stitches without anesthetic. The skin on the back of my heels has been flayed (long story). But I have never, ever experienced pain like that of food poisoning. It felt like I was being wrung out like a wet towel.
I don’t want to get too graphic, but the vomiting and diarrhea were constant. Sometimes I experienced both at once and had to scoot back or grab a trash can while on the toilet. I ended up losing fifteen pounds. After three days of this, my mother-in-law took me to the hospital.
My husband did all the translating. The doctor advised me to avoid street food, which I thought I’d been doing, and prescribed several pills and a powder to mix with water to settle my stomach. It was the most inexpensive emergency room visit I’ve ever had, and that includes the airfare to Thailand.
My husband and I still debate over what meal was responsible. For lunch the day before the worst of it, we’d taken a boat out into the middle of the Gulf of Thailand to a floating seafood restaurant. He thinks I had some bad mussels or clams or something. I remember having to go to the bathroom before that, which I think was the start of it, so I blame a bowl of congee we had for breakfast. I thought it had come from a restaurant, but maybe it was from a street vendor?
Either way, that night we had dinner at a beer garden with live music and polished off several towers of Chang beer, which definitely didn’t help. Lol I did get to see one of the best performers from the best version of The Mask Singer perform, so it was one of the best nights of my life.
When I returned home, I did tell people that I’d had food poisoning but that it hadn’t ruined the trip for me by any means. Yes, I had experienced excruciating pain but I had experienced it in Thailand! I was 9,000 miles away from home! Everything was exciting and new, even something that horrible. And it didn’t even impact the trip that much; I only spent one day confined to my hotel room.
I suppose this is an extreme case of “looking on the bright side,” and of course I would have preferred not to have gotten food poisoning, but what’s done is done. The next time I went to Thailand, I visited my doctor ahead of time and made sure all the food I ate came from a restaurant or was homemade.
Thanks for reading! What are some of your favorite international foods? Have you ever had food poisoning? Feel free to share any thoughts or comments below. Please subscribe if you haven’t already. Take care of each other. Make sure to be here next month for The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S. by Jaime Hernandez!
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