Love Letters to Jane’s World

The cover of Love Letters to Jane's World

One of the first pages in Love Letters to Jane’s World, a twentieth anniversary collection of Paige Braddock’s long-running comic recently published by Lion Forge Press, is a star network topology diagram that literalizes the strip’s title with Jane at the center and her supporting cast radiating out from her. It provides the reader with a handy guide for the next couple hundred pages on how the characters are related to each other and establishes the tone in one fell swoop.

Geeks OUT Presents: POWER

The cover of Geeks OUT Presents: POWER by John Curtis Jennison, Jr.

In June 2015, the nonprofit organization Geeks OUT put out its first publication, which was partially inspired by John Jennison Jr.’s battle with a form of pancreatic cancer. The story of how this month’s selection came about is recounted in its opening pages, and is as inspiring and enervating as the comics contained therein. Geeks OUT Presents: POWER has stories and artwork from more than thirty contributors from all over the world, all centered around the theme of power. As Mr. Jennison writes in his Editor’s Note, “Life doesn’t stop because you feel powerless.” (Full disclosure: I am a frequent contributor to Geeks OUT, but I didn’t join until 2016.)

Oath: An Anthology of New (Queer) Heroes

I’ve decided that 2018 will be the year of anthologies! As I looked over my bookshelves, I realized all the great talent that I have enjoyed, but only in short bursts of one, two, or twelve pages. I’ve amassed quite a few anthologies over the years, and now is the time to give them a chance to shine. First up, I wanted to write about Oath: An Anthology of New (Queer) Heroes! Funded by Kickstarter in 2015 (full disclosure: I contributed) and edited by Audrey Redpath of Hiveworks Comics, Oath has more than thirty contributors and is more than two hundred pages long. I picked it up at FlameCon last year and read the whole thing on the trip home. I’ve read it again since then, because the stories are all wonderful examples of economical storytelling. They have deep characterization and powerful messages in the amount of space most single-issue comics reserve for their first act.