The Guidebook

Today I want to share a very little bit about my next book. As we travel the west coast, dodging raindrops and making memories, I'm also gathering data and reference material for a young readers graphic novel, The Guidebook. Here's a snapshot from my proposal:

To survive in a world where mammals are nearly extinct, a little girl named Elvi and a brilliant naturalist, Flora, must follow and protect the monarch butterfly migration.

It’s 2260. Solar radiation, now lethal to mammals, has forced humans into underground bunkers while nature overtakes cities, roads, and landmarks. The only eight-year-old girl lucky enough to roam free on Earth’s surface is Elvira Jones. Flora, Elvi’s adoptive mother, is a brilliant naturalist who discovered a chemical in monarch butterflies that allows mammals to live in sunlight again. Against the wishes of important people, Flora escaped her bunker with a few supplies, a pigeon named Thoreau, and the only person she couldn’t leave behind - Elvi.

Now Elvi and Flora follow the western monarchs from north to south on America’s Pacific coast. Flora wants to make enough medicine so that every human can live above ground again. Along their adventure, Elvi and Flora rescue a mysterious baby boy, navigate considerable mother-daughter drama, and overcome a threat from five men who want control of the monarch’s secret. Elvi reflects on these and more important moments (like getting bit by a weird bug) in a journal she calls “The Guidebook.” Elvi’s journal pages pop up through the comics narrative to serve as a field guide. Sort of like Flora’s fancy naturalist textbooks, but much more fun.

On every page or two, in the corner of a landscape panel, there are coordinates and a compass heading. This allows readers to follow Flora and Elvi’s progress through real places and even travel their exact route themselves.

So we travel with Elvi and Flora. We're in our travel trailer rig and they're in an imaginary, heavily modified 1988 Toyota van (my dream rig - the one that never dies, even in a far fetched-future scenario). Our routes overlap as I map their fiction to our stops from Florence, OR to Big Sur, CA and beyond. These are the tools I use to merge our travels:

The big watch-like thing on my wrist allows me to get coordinates. It's early 2000s' tech, but it was cheap, it's durable, and it gets the job done. The little compass on the right gives me a rough heading towards whatever view I take in. Once I double-check these numbers, I tuck them into the corner of a Guidebook drawing and add in my fictional details... In the example below, I put Elvi and Flora's adventure van and an old driftwood stump I used to climb on as a kid in Pacific City, OR. Elvi hangs on it there in her red hammock.

Adventure calls us down the road again now, so I'll leave more details for later. We're currently in Arcata, CA, headed towards the Avenue of the Giants - a place where my dad marathoned back in his wildman running days. After that, it's further down the coast toward the monarchs' overwintering turf.

Can't wait!

Preorder The New Deal for a 1930s Crime Caper Fix

Big news! Dark Horse and I just put the finishing touches on my next original graphic novel, The New Deal, coming this October.

It's available for preorder through your local comic shop and wherever books are sold (you'll find a big list of options on the Penguin/Random House page). Shop owners, let me tell you: Dark Horse did an amazing job on making this a beautiful object for your shelf of choice. As a creator, I couldn't be happier, or feel better supported by my publisher (thanks, team!).

Here's our scoop on the book:

The Waldorf Astoria is the classiest hotel along the Manhattan skyline in 1930s New York City. When a charming woman named Nina checks in with a high-society entourage, young Frank, a bellhop, and Theresa, a maid, get caught up in a series of mysterious thefts. The stakes quickly grow perilous, and the pair must rely on each other to discover the truth while navigating delicate class politics.

Eisner Award-winning artist Jonathan Case (Green River Killer, Dear Creature) writes and draws this brilliant graphic novel of petty crime, comic predicaments, and vast heart in a story that speaks to class, race, and gender barriers.

To me, the '30s is one of the most fascinating periods in American history, with its industry and poverty, arts movements, social reforms, and on and on. In The New Deal, that history serves as a rich backdrop to what I hope is just a fast, energetic read: Unlikely friends, high jinks, danger. The stuff of comics.

Over at Publishers Weekly, I go into more detail about making the book, including many images of fancy hats, so check that out if you're curious. It was the love child of traditional and digital methods, drawn from (I hope) the best of both gene pools. Ew? Maybe not the best analogy, but what am I, a writer?

Moreso now than in recent years, which makes me happy. This is my first solo written/drawn book since 2011's Dear Creature. Too long. Like any job you do as well as you can, writing and art brings at least as many hard days as fun ones, but the fun ones have a special magic. Making books and raising kids might be the only experiences in my life where just a handful of highs can supersede the miles and miles of thankless trudging/feelings of I want to leave you in the rolling hills and just drive away.

So there you have it: Late September for comics shops, early October for bookstores, and debuting at Rose City Comic Con in my own Portland, Oregon. The cover says ages 14 plus, but for those mature middle-schoolers out there, you know who you are. Or at least, you have some idea, and your parents think they know who you are.

Preorder at will!

The New Deal Before Tomorrowland

Funny how those two titles run together and still work. I'm back from the depths. They said it couldn't be done, but here I am, writing a blog post. I put a number of things on hiatus over the last year -- public appearances, my web store, sleep. It all comes, as Christopher Robin says, of (doing) eating too much.

Being busy, for me, is not a life goal anymore. It used to be. Now it's the old aunt who won't leave unless you tell her, rudely. By way of catch up, here's a short version of what I've been up to since my last blog post, lo these nine months ago:

• May: Wife graduated from grad school (Go Sarah!) and had our second child, Otis (Go Sarah!)
• May: We moved to a new home, two weeks after having the kid. What, past-self? How did that make sense?
• May (notice a lot in May?) to August: Started and finished art + first draft of crazy, hybrid-enhanced-YA-novel Before Tomorrowland for Disney. Realized a dream of seeing my name next to Brad Bird's on a thing.
• July: Did illustrations for Aloof, the latest theo-lit book from Tony Kriz, out at better bookstores now (Just got back from Tony's reading at Powell's!)
• Somewhere in there: Completed 50% of art on my next graphic novel, The New Deal (coming soon from Dark Horse). I ramble about it here, at CBR.
• Somewhere else in there: Played stay-at-home-dad a couple days a week while Sarah got her counseling business up and running (Go Sarah!)

It doesn't look like that much to me, seeing it written in a few sentences here, but boy. I'm just now learning to walk and talk again. In the next few weeks, I'll dive into a bit more detail on these and other fun projects I have under way. For now, Happy Sunday. It was, by and large, a day of rest.

More please!