Autobiographies, Health Care Reform and the history of superheroes

It's a little tricky when you have to spread pages out over a few weeks, because that's just how long it takes to get updates finished, but hopefully this is a worthy payoff for the "where there's smoke" line from page 67. In any case, onward they go, avoiding the villain.

Drawing people sitting in a car, and climbing out of a car ... what a challenge! Something I'd never done before (which you can probably tell) and obviously something I didn't spend any time practicing in a sketchbook before I published.

Here's page 74!

Dr. Casey Miller, Dr. Howard Bolam and Evelyn escape from an unknown assailant in Escape from M____.

See more by following the links:

• Fundraising Faux-Pas,
  
• King Street Capers
• General comics
• Tomb of the Undead (updated Jan. 28), or the
• Mugabe comic strip (Pinocchio parody)

Graphic novel news
A couple different types of posts this time to share. In particular, we have a post articulating the transformation of graphic novels from the tales of super heroes, when the world needed heroes to route for during fascist regimes, to a different type of medium that tells all kinds of complicated tales, not just those about superheroes. And of course, graphic novels have an accessibility and acceptance that make them excellent media to translate difficult subject matter - as seen in a graphic novel on Health Care Reform (which I've probably mentioned more than once). Then there's the autobiography, which is a classic narrative form, but lending it to the graphic novel medium is a new stylistic choice, which we hear about in our final update.

Check it out!

Graphic Novels Get Bloody Good
derekberry
Word Salad

With the advent of e-readers, graphic novels are better than ever, some even interactive. Books can be cumbersome to carry and only avid comic fans buy every issue of a comic. If it’s sent straight to an e-reader, though, it is much easier to deal with. I’m certainly looking forward to buying some graphic novels for my Nook tablet to see how it might enhance the experience.

Click to read more.


Deciphering Health Care Reform With Jonathan Gruber
Rachel Solomon
http://kuow.org

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed by President Obama last year, and polls still show most Americans are against health care reform — though many don't understand how it works or what's at stake. This worried economics professor Jonathan Gruber, who consulted with both the Obama and Romney administrations on health care reform. Gruber decided to write a graphic novel to break down the massive, 900–page bill that's changing our country's health care system.

Click to read more.


This Alternate World
David Chislett
bookslive.co.za

... I am enjoying retracing my steps back into this place. This after all has been a long journey: One that was born over an idle conversation in a car on the way back from the Oppikoppi festival with journalist Therese Owen and promoter Bill Botes. Those ideas evolved around a graphic novel that fused a definite past with a fictional now to create a metaphorical city of ideals and extremes.

After pursuing those thoughts for a while I realised, graphic version or not, there still had to be a novel to illustrate! So rather than work through that process, here I am, writing up a large book about my home town, its people, my friends, and my ideas about the world.

Click to read more.