I am tickled many shades of pink, mauve and fuchsia today as the newest installment of What Are You Reading? on Robot 6 at Comic Book Resources has me as a special guest!  Check it out and find out what Tim O’Shea, Sean T. Collins, Tom Bondurant and Yours Truly have to say about the latest and greatest in comics today!

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SF Weekly honors STORM with not only a Best of 2010 Award,

but his very own category!

Ladies and Gentlemen, we give you San Francisco’s

Best X-Men Tarot Card Reader!

We’ve always known that STORM was in a category of his own creation, and it seems like The City is starting to take note, too.

Head over to STORM’s blog for info on how you can have a tarot reading unlike any others.

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Stephenny, Storm, and their Trophies.

Boy, Portland, you sure know how to make creators feel welcome.

Ever since I was welcomed into the fold here at Writers Old Fashioned, I’ve heard about how much fun the Stumptown Comics Fest is. Its been nothing but “Well, the Portland fest is sooo cool!” and “Just wait until we get to Stumptown and you’ll see.” And after spending three days mingling with the people of Portland, I’ve got to admit that it may be the most comic-friendly city I’ve ever been to.

The convention floor was absolutely packed for most of Saturday, and even a good portion of Sunday. But for as busy as it was, creators were still easily accessible and ready to visit. In stark contrast to WonderCon earlier this month, one could look out across the room and see what was happening across the hall. I’ve heard that there were a lot more vertical displays this year than at past cons, but from our table I could see the Drawn & Quarterly table all the way at the far end of the room. The airy setup combined with windows galore made for a more pleasant, open experience than WonderCon or San Francisco’s own indie-fest, APE.

And for the second year in a row, Writers Old Fashioned has come back to San Francisco with a Trophy Award! Stephenny’s mini Panorama won the Trophy Award for Outstanding Publication Design! Her handcrafted books beat out some pretty impressive competitors, like Dark Horse’s Mesmo Delivery. If that wasn’t enough, Storm accepted this year’s Mystery Award for Portland’s Mayor Sam Adams. So the Writer’s table had an impressive amount of Trophy’s on Sunday. Next year we’ll sweep ‘em.

It was a treat to get to hang out with such amazing fellow exhibitors and bask in the creative energy of everyone in attendance. Getting back into the groove of every day life has been especially hard after this convention. All I’ve wanted to do is draw comics. Or read comics. Or write about comics. Frankly, I think my girlfriend is gettin’ a little tired of it at this point…

Jason, STORM, Greg, and Stephenny

Thank you so much Portland, and all those folks behind the scenes keeping this how running as smooth as it did. Without the coordinators and the tireless efforts of the scores of volunteers the show could’ve been a real mess. Instead the Stumptown Comics Fest remains one of the most anticipated shows for Writers Old Fashioned!

(I’ve written a little more about my own personal experiences at the fest over at my blog.)

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In this book, Wolf recounts how her father, Leonard Wolf, was an inspiration for her. She gives the reader very personal glimpses into their relationship and family history. It’s a cozy book. You can almost feel the admiration that Wolf has for her father drip off the pages. For the first three chapters, I had a hard time with the narrative voice of the book. I didn’t yet feel connected to the sage-like figure that Wolf was building up her father to be. In chapter four, entitled “Speak in Your Own Voice,” I felt a narrative shift. All the cutesy descriptions of what Leonard wore and how Wolf’s children acted started to feel more grounded, more relevant. All the threads about Wolf’s childhood, her adult responsibilities and worries about her future started to weave together. By page 90, Wolf’s literary education really shines. Check out this passage:

“In Leonard’s youth, truth had not yet been deconstructed. Since the trend of poststructuralism entered the universities in the 1980s, young writers have been taught that it is naive and even politically suspect to believe in universal values or stories that can touch anyone’s heart; nothing, they are taught, is inherently true. Humanism has been demonized as “secular humanism” by the religious right–as if faith in art and people’s creative potential rules out faith in God–and it has been derided as passe and irrelevant by the Marxist and feminist academic left, who dismiss it as playing down difference of race, class, and gender in its commitment to a human point of view that can transcend all such divisions.”

Wow. As someone who really appreciates deconstruction and humanism, I found Wolf’s writing to be thought provoking. Can we find universal truth in literature? Is it enough to say, yes, truth is subjective, but some aspects of the human experience are universal? Can literature be “a bridge between human beings” or is it “a map of oppressive power relations” in today’s current academia? (91)

The chapter titles in “The Treehouse” come from the lessons that Wolf’s father taught in his classes (and are the lessons she asks him to teach her while working on her daughter’s treehouse). They are veritable gems of sagaciousness, simple and direct, but undeniably powerful nonetheless. Give “The Treehouse” a read and let me know what you think.

Also, while perusing the internet for Naomi Wolf, I found this interesting article entitled, “The Porn Myth.” Consider this quote, taken out of context from the two page article:

“For most of human history, erotic images have been reflections of, or celebrations of, or substitutes for, real naked women. For the first time in human history, the images’ power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women. Today, real naked women are just bad porn.”

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Click on Lene’s podcast logo to hear her review:

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