Off To San Diego

July 25

For the first time in history, all the four-day passes to the annual San Diego ComicCon--where comic book geeks rub elbows with movie stars, scenesters, political cartoonists and Storm Troopers--are sold out. Last year SDCC played host to over 150,000 attendees, and this year promises to top that record. I will be there all four days, mostly around the DC/Vertigo booths. In the meantime, Aziz, the mastermind behind City of Brass, has set up a new website that’s worth checking out: TalkIslam.info. The site aims to provide in-depth answers to commonly asked questions about the misunderstood aspects of Islam, in an effort to counter a lot of the fundamentalist (and on the flip side, islamophobic) propaganda out there. It’s in beta at the moment but promises to get interesting.

Of MoCCA, or Nine Timezones Later

June 29

Omar and I have survived our multi-continental move without losing anything--luggage, musical instruments, or sanity, though the jury is still out on the last one. We spent five eventful days in New York, where mostly by coincidence I got to attend the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art festival. It was a wonderful, very diverse show--more laid back and artsy (in the best possible sense) than a standard comics convention, but still well attended by the die-hard fans that make comicdom tick. I got to meet Brian Wood in person for the first time, along with the eloquent Douglas Wolk, who covers comics for Publisher’s Weekly, and Heidi MacDonald, who writes The Beat, and who is also intimidatingly witty. I also got to hang out with Percy Carey, aka emcee MF Grimm, who is my literary ‘roommate’--both of our books are previewed in the same Vertigo ashcan, so we co-promoted each other’s work at the show. (His graphic novel, Sentences, based on his own experiences in the hip hop industry, is the first book of its kind to be published by Vertigo, and worth a read.)

It’s good to be home.

New Project for Vertigo Comics

June 12

I can’t tell you much about it, but here’s a hint: