Excited to Love More: Moments from My Trans Pregnancy by Will Betke-Brunswick

Being pregnant is a journey—especially when you're transgender.

A Scanner Constantly by Adam Bessie and Josh Neufeld

Living with a brain tumor, sometimes I feel less like a person, and more like a scan.

Crucial’s submissions are always open, but right now we’re recruiting submissions on three particular themes: environmental justice, family and parenting, and immigrant experiences. You can submit previously published comics or pitch entirely new ideas. Check out all the details here and then go to our submissions page!

💰 Money! One of our big values at Crucial is financial transparency. So we just finished up our first-ever annual financial report! Check out the illustrated report here to see how we made and spent money in 2025. With a staff of two very part-time people, we were able to pay cartoonists over $31,000 for their work. Very cool!  

🏆 Awards! A comic Crucial edited and published last year is on the short-list for the prestigious Cartoonist Studio Prize. In Swapping Genders with My Ex, artist Cee Lavery reflects empathetically on a past relationship where both people wound up coming out as trans. Check out all the nominees here.

Picks from Memoir Comics Class 

Crucial’s spring memoir comics class just wrapped up. We asked participants to choose a favorite graphic memoir to share. Here are three graphic memoirs to dig into. 

Sunflowers by Keezy Young - Gorgeous, colorful landscapes spill out of panels and across the page in this 23-page memoir about life with bipolar disorder. Keezy’s style slips seamlessly between moments of intense joy and haunting horror. You can read the comic for free online or buy it here. 

Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home by Nora Krug - In her engaging style that mixes historical photos, comics, and hand-written text to create the feel of an intimate scrapbook, Nora examines her family’s fraught relationship to Germany identity and WWII. 

Breadcrumbs: Coming of Age in Post-Soviet Poland by Kasia Babis - The colors of Kasia’s memoir are all grays with sharp splashes of red. That matches the tone for her stories about growing up in Poland, as she and her female friends try to forge their own identities in a post-Soviet city that breathes with misogyny, Catholicism, and increasingly oppressive right-wing politics.

Artist Talks

✏️ In our Artist Talks series, cartoonists talk about craft and share their comics-making process. All talks are online and by donation.

» April: Author and artist Thi Bui will talk about her approach to making emotionally rich nonfiction comics. Thi is the author of the groundbreaking graphic memoir The Best We Could Do and is currently working on a book about anti-deportation and prisoner support work. RSVP here. Tuesday, April 28th, from 5-6pm PST/8-9pm EST

Workshops and classes

✨ All of our classes and workshops are online and sliding scale.✨

» Intermediate Digital Drawing With Procreate with Audra McNamee: If you’ve drawn in Procreate a bit, but still feel a bit confused or know you have more to learn, this two-hour project-based workshop will challenge you to use new Procreate tools and settings as you make a four-panel comic. Saturday, April 11 from 10am-12pm PST/1pm-3pm EST

» Sexy Comics for Shy People with Joaquin Golez: Our most popular class of 2025 is back, baby! This five-week class is all about writing and drawing erotic stories… even if the thought makes you blush. Celebrate Pride month by drawing steamy queer-and-trans-centric art! Saturdays May 23 – June 20th from 10am-12pm PST / 1pm-3pm EST

» Make Your Dang Comic with Kane Lynch: Whether you’re new to making comics or an experienced illustrator looking to push yourself through an artistic block, this eight-week-long beginner-friendly class will kickstart your creativity and put you on track to create a finished comic you’ll be proud of. July 7 – August 25, on Tuesdays from 4pm-6pm PST/7pm-9pm EST.

» Chronic Illness Comics Club: The next session of our free, monthly meetup for making comics about bodies, health, and disability will be facilitated by cartoonist, science journalist, and podcast host Arielle Duhaime-Ross. Come hang out! Register here. Sunday, May 3rd at 11am-12pm PST / 2pm-3pm EST

→ Check out all our upcoming classes

Crucial is tabling at a couple rad regional zine and comics fests in the spring! All of these festivals are free and are a great way to connect with artists. Catch us here: 

🦅 Lancaster, Pennsylvania: Lancaster Zine Fest on Saturday, April 18th, 12-5pm 

🌽 Madison, Wisconsin: Print and Resist Zinefest on Saturday, April 25th, 11am-4pm 

🌭 Chicago, Illinois: CAKE on Saturday/Sunday, May 2nd and 3rd, 11am-5pm 

🍁 Toronto, Canada: TCAF on Saturday/Sunday, June 6th and 7th, 10am-5pm

» A map of art book festivals! If you want to sell your work at zine and comics conventions, it’s hard to keep track of what festivals are happening and when you can apply to table. Shout out to very handy new website called Art Book Fairs, which hosts a searchable list of festivals and a map to search for upcoming events in any region of the world.

» Comics about abortion care: A graphic medicine team is working on a comics project to tell stories from frontline providers of abortion care—and they’re looking for comics artists! Cartoonists hired for the project will be paid $1000 to create a four to eight page nonfiction comic. Check out the details here. 

» Do you make zines? A cute new pop-up shop called Paper Pushers in downtown Seattle is looking for zines to sell on consignment! They take submissions from anywhere—here’s the consignment application form. 

This newsletter was written by Shay Mirk. Crucial Comix is supported in part by our backers on Patreon and by the Sequential Artists Workshop.