BLACKOUT BOOK

This is a collection of three distinctive works of cartooning by Tana Oshima, David Cardoza, and Carly McKown, plus an interview between myself and George Olsen.

Why did I do this.

The initial idea was to make an anthology with not a lot of pages and a modest cover price (<$10), in the hope that that’d lower the barrier of entry for readers who aren’t already invested in the kind of work I like. Two years ago when I was first thinking about all this that seemed significant. So I figured three stories could work, 5-8 pages each, plus a brief interview with an artist I thought was important but nobody’d had a conversation with yet. 30 pages total at maximum.

BUT

5-8 pages quickly became 13-26(??!), so I gave up on the commercial object that existed in my mind. It just started to happen that way and I let it. The upshot is a comics collection I struggle to compare to anything else – a small quantity of LONG, FOCUSED work. Each story is filling and complete and could’ve easily been its own book. But when I read them together three totally different cartooning “itches” are satisfyingly scratched in succession, which feels good.

As for the interview, I made it longer to accommodate the shape the book was taking, which resulted in a conversation that’s looser and more free-range than most profiles of cartoonists. George is a fascinating, astute, and very funny person who has a tremendous talent for piecing together big ideas about comics publishing and comics as art, which made gathering material easy.

So I made the book. Whether it’s a commercially viable product is now out of my hands and into the capable appendages of the READING PUBLIC. At the end of “It’s a Wonderful Life” there’s a note that says “NO MAN IS A FAILURE WHO HAS FRIENDS”... This book is already a success because more than anything it is held together by the talent of its contributors, all of whom I have the distinction of calling… my friends.

Tana Oshima
"THE FALLEN PRINCESS"
13 pages

David Cardoza
"JESCO'S RIDE"
18 pages

Carly McKown
"THE CURSE"
26 pages

"A Concentric Conversation with George Henao Olsen"
18 pages

80 pgs b&w riso. Shiny 80lb cardstock cover. Folded-n-stapled by me.