Weddings and Anniversaries
Get along home , get along home
Get along home , I'll marry you some time
- matt fraction -
Yahrzeit, among the Jews, means the anniversary of someone's death, usually a parent. Today is my father's yahrzeit. Were I a good Jewish boy, today would've started at synagogue; I'd have recited the kaddish for him; I would focus today on learning and charity and, again, going to temple.
I am not, as it turns out, a good Jewish boy. I am not religious; I am not spiritual; I am not even Jewish. The best I can figure, my family had to convert on a boat to be let in to Ellis Island along with other refugees of Dutch Jewry to the New Land. Tired, huddled, and yearning for a faith upgrade, my ancestors found out that in New York you can be a new man with a new god and everything, apparently. I don't know if they got to keep the wooden shoes.
I didn't talk much about Dad's death, or the five years preceding it, when it happened. I had started resenting the feeling that I had to qualify everything I wrote about, and reveal everything, and could keep nothing for myself. I was, and am, tired of speaking, yet I felt like I couldn't write about mental illness without confessing my own; I couldn't write about depression without admitting my own; I couldn't write about death without going through the excruciating details of that day and all the days after and cataloguing every last little thing. This entirely self-imposed prison halted both the good and the bad of the public excorisms to which I had grown accustomed. And there is good in sharing pain like this.
After he died, a friend of mine who had gone through the same thing not a year berfore, reached out to me. "You're in for a year of shitty firsts," he said. "But the good news is you're not alone."
And he was right on both counts. And now I say that to all of you while this candle burns for my father for just a few hours more.
Anyway. Dad, this is as kaddishy a thing as you're gonna get. We're shitty Jews, is what I'm saying. Or methodists? Whatever the fuck we were. I'm not that good at it.
m
- kelly sue deconnick -
THOSE OF YOU JOINING US AT ROSE CITY COMIC CON: our schedule is right here. Con exclusives include a Rose City Non-Compliant t-shirt and a Milkfed t-shirt. Check them out here. We will also have Milkfed lapel pins for each of our books--I'll ask Kit to post pics of those to Milkfed.us and our Facebook page.
We held our biannual Milkfed Retreat since the last time we checked in with y'all. Nothing fancy this year. We rented a room at a nearby community center and went around the table, reviewing project lists and 6 month, 1 year, 5 year and 10 year goals for each of us, as well as for the company.
Fraction and I have done this for years now, both personally and professionally, and I credit the practice with a good deal of our longevity. And now we force Kit, Wendy and Snake to do it with us! So, yeah. #winning
Had the great honor of officiating our friends' wedding over the weekend (the reason I couldn't do DragonCon this year) -- not just two of my favorite people, but also two of the most breathtakingly beautiful humans I've ever encountered. Check the Mrs. and Mrs. Mesa tag on instagram for a peek. (Fairytale wedding in the woods. I wore a leather dress and a chain in my hair.) (Michal, Tasha, I love you. Congratulations, again.)
My Instapaper is loaded up with the following reads--meaning, I HAVE NOT READ THESE ARTICLES YET, but I intend to. What I mean to underline is that I'm sharing some interests with you here, not endorsing. Make sense?
Making Profits on the Captive Prison Market - The New Yorker
Is Rudy Giuliani Losing His Mind? - POLITICO
Kibbles 'n Bits 8/31/16: Comics Industry Is In Its Death Throes - Comicsbeat.com
'Certain Women' Review: Reichardt's Elegant Female-Powered Triptych - Variety
This 100-Year-Old To-Do List Hack Still Works Like A Charm - Medium by Fast Company
The Decapitation Will Not Be Televised - Foreign Policy
Colton Whitehead on Writing, Slavery and the True Origins of America - The Fader
Matt Taibbi on the Summer of the Media Shill - Rolling Stone
On Writing - How to Structure A One-Hour Drama - Joel Silberman's blog
How to make a Kids Bento Box - Alphamom
I'm headed to LA tomorrow for a TV thing, wish me luck.
Intern Corner
And a fond farewell to #InternAl, our delightful summer intern Alissa Sallah who drew this wonderful sketch of our merry band before she departed.
You can find more of her most excellent work HERE!
#ICYMI
Boxes in Action has done a (pretty fantastic) Bitch Planet comic box. They're up for preorder here.
We can all stop looking for the Best Shoes, you guys, Kelly Sue found them.
Trans men explain male privilege on YouTube.
"The [male inmates] connected with it instantly, and that’s where the potential for promoting a sense of intersectionality comes in... Seeing that truth about incarceration told on paper so brashly, but also seeing the unique pressures on women at the same time, could open up a lot of space for incarcerated men to learn to relate to women and feminism." Roundtable with people who are teaching BITCH PLANET in universities, workshops, and prisons from Women Write About Comics.
Breathtaking Pretty Deadly cosplay shoot right here.
Speaking of, reviews for Pretty Deadly Vol 2 are starting to come in. Here's one from Page 45.
Clinton's speech on the "alt-right", which George W. Bush's deputy press secretary called "easily the best speech of any candidate this year." 2016 continues to be An Interesting Year.
tl;dr
Lil' Reminder: August 24 - PRETTY DEADLY V2 TP went on sale!
Sept 10-11 - Team Milkfed at Rose City Comic Con
Sept 28 - ODY-C #11 on sale (this one wound up in the October solicits, but we swear it's out September 28!)
Oct 26 - ODY-C #12 on sale
Nov 23 - (JUST IN TIME FOR THE HOLIDAZE): ODY-C: CYCLE ONE HC on sale (big, beautiful HC filled with never-before-seen art, concepts, issues #1-12, and the entire monster-sized gatefold from issue #1.)
Milkfed Logo by Rian Hughes.