This weekend is CAKE, the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo! This year it will be hosted in Bridgeport on Chicago’s south side, at the Zhou B Arts Center. The location isn’t immediately accessible by public transit, so CAKE is offering a free shuttle from the Red Line Sox/35th St stop straight to the venue. So thoughtful!
I’ll be exhibiting on the first floor, table 123B:
In addition to my old books, my two new minis On Fire and Pensacola, and my collected diary comics Really In It, I’ll have a handful of advanced copies of Abortion Pill Zine at the table!
I’m really excited to be back exhibiting at CAKE for the first time since 2019. It’s more than just my hometown show; my very first comic show ever was CAKE in 2012, and the next year I joined the amazing organizing team and helped wrangle the show into existence through many, many late night meetings at Quimby’s after the store closed. I was new to making comics when I volunteered for this behind-the-scenes role, and gaining the perspective of an organizer of a comics festival—reading a million comics beyond my very narrow preferred sub-genres with my jurying packet, hearing the wisdom and passion of fellow organizers, learning industry gossip and seeing how the sausage is made—made me a better and more thoughtful artist and person. It can be so easy to be intimidated or demoralized as an emerging artist. It’s helpful (and humbling! and inspiring!) to remember that all art is made by people who also have to eat lunch and pay their bills; to remember that organizations that seem monolithic or intimidating are made up of people who are usually trying their best to do Good while also eating lunch and paying their bills.
Thanks SO MUCH to the hard-working organizers for keeping CAKE baking through these rocky years. I’m so excited to return!
SPEAKING OF THANKS! Thank you to the gorgeous and hilarious hosts of Meanwhile for including me in the most recent show! Megan Kirby, Catherine Eves, and DJ Williams have made something really special and I feel like a deadbeat for not having been to one before. I closed out the show (an honor! a responsibility!) with a mixture of recent work: some funny diary comics, an inked two-pager that I’m not sure will make the cut into the next book, and the prose script of a comic I haven’t yet drawn. Thanks to the organizers & fellow readers & everyone who came out for such a fun night!
After CAKE, I have a few more upcoming events this season:
Small Press Expo (SPX): SATURDAY ONLY, Sept 14! I’ll be tabling with Radiator Comics for a few hours, and I’ll be on a panel Saturday early evening to discuss the Abortion Pill Zine, which debuts at SPX. The rest of the day I’ll be walking around and buying comics with my 8 year old!
Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC): September 28-29. If you’re anywhere in day trip-distance to Columbus Ohio, please do yourself a favor and make the trip! The line-up for this year’s tenth-anniversary show is ridiculous!!
Chicago Zine Fest: October 5. So excited to close out my 2024 festival season with beloved Zine Fest! Best vibe, best people: never miss it!
Ooh I have a new metaphor for what life feels like these days! Were all of you terrified of Return to Oz like I was as a kid? Adulthood gives new perspectives. POOR PRINCESS MOMBI, her memories are all in different heads, and sometimes she’s not wearing the right one to make the best strategic decisions as despotic leader of Oz!
I feel you, girl. Sometimes I’m wearing my mom-head when an important email comes in and it isn’t until the next Tuesday morning when I put on my freelancer-head that realize it should have been dealt with the day before! Put a note in the calendar to remember to put on your self-publisher-head to check stock after CAKE, and then quickly switch to mom-head to make sure the kids have something special in their lunch for the first day of school, and then switch to educator-head because the new semester starts on Thursday and there’s still more to do if I want to blow them out of the freakin’ water.
I’m thrilled to return to CAKE, and sad to miss the last weekend of summer break with my kids. They go back to school on Monday and I feel very tenderly about it all. Third grade! First grade! Pre-school! And also, it will be nice to have psychic space back in the house. As the summer progressed they got better at not interrupting me while I’m working, but I hear them laughing or fighting all day long. We get chatty at joke around and cuddle at lunchtime and bathroom breaks. I’m going to miss these regular touches with them, and I think it’ll be easier to not keep switching between heads while I’m trying to spend more time wearing my artist-head.
For now: off to put my mom-head back on, it’s my 8 year old’s back-to-school picnic and petting zoo, our fourth middle-of-the-work-day back-to-school event of the week!
See y’all at CAKE!
xox m
One of these years I’ll make it to cake