Six years ago today, Banned Book Club was released. This book changed Hyun Sook and I's lives. And we have a special announcement to celebrate.
This September, @ironcircus is releasing a new full color edition, with colors by @amandalafrenais , and a brand new 20 page followup story by Hyun Sook Kim and I.
More details to come!
Intergenerational book clubs are an AMAZING idea, and I'm always overjoyed when Gaithersburg Library invites me to Zoom in to theirs.
It was especially fun this time, since they were reading Good Old-Fashioned Korean Spirit together, which is ABOUT an intergenerational book club.
Rumors of my "being A-okay now" were greatly exaggerated. But the doctor has this brave little cone dog on the way to recovery. (Just two months of daily treatment to go)
Watch your posture, pals You'll pay for it later.
I had a pretty scary couple of weeks.
I didn't say anything to anyone, but I had a series of rapidly increasing symptoms that kept pointing to terrifying, life-changing disorders. I couldn't stay awake. I couldn't see. Eventually, I lost motor control in my hands and was worried I would never be able to make comics again.
I got blood tests, urine tests, x-rays, CT scans, talked to all sorts of specialists. I got checked for diabetes, liver failure, Parkinson's Disease. No one knew what it was.
The final diagnosis: I sit weird.
My bad cartoonist shrimp-pose posture once again pinched a nerve but instead of causing back pain like last time, it caused a series of frightening side effects that made me fear every disease there is. All I needed was 5 buck worth of suction cup electromassage to loosen up the pinch and I'm fine.
Check your posture, pals!
We talked with @authorsagainstbookbans member @ryanestradadotcom about his experiences with #BannedBooks, including his most challenged (and ironically titled) Banned Book Club.
Written with his wife, Kim Hyun Sook, the graphic memoir tells of her experiences smuggling books in 1980s South Korea under dictatorship. His second most frequently banned book, Occulted, tells the story of a cult survivor who used banned books to find her way to freedom.
“I guess the book banners really don’t like to see that their tactics are the same as despots and cult leaders,” he says.
📬 Want to read Ryan’s full interview? Sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date with book bans at our LIB.
#FreedomToRead #BannedBookClub #GraphicNovel
Have you gotten parental permission to read Good Old-Fashioned Korean Spirit?
Martha Hickson did! You may have seen Martha in The Librarians, the amazing documentary she made with Sarah Jessica Parker.
Y'all listen to The Moth today on @npr ? I'm a three-time Moth story slam winner, but after so many years I thought I'd never make it onto the show. Until I got an email that today's episode would feature a prize-winning story I told in 2022!
Here's a link to the story on Apple Podcasts: /au/podcast/whats-in-a-name-the-moth-podcast/id275699983?i=1000760595354
@mothstories
America's most prolific book banner is back at it, adding Good Old-Fashioned Korean Spirit to his list of problem books for "a variety of content concerns."
It couldn't possibly be because it discusses how book banning has been a tool of fascism for generations, no, I'm sure it's the spooky ghosts.
I headed to Seoul as a special guest at @thedicelatte drink and draw for charity! The theme was famous comic covers.
Luckily, they had my @boom_studios@garfield Sketch covers in stock to draw on.
Can you tell what famous covers Garf is recreating?
Then was informed that the Seoul comic scene has very particular tastes, so I had to bust out one more Garf. (It also helped that I was sitting next to Nightwing artist Travis Moore.)
Note: will running for the last train I accidentally butt-deleted the original.
I made a joke online about some weirdos that are planning to infiltrate the No Kings protest.
The anti-library guy stalking me told on me to them, and they made a video about how it proves the leaders of the resistance are getting so so mad.
If your biggest example of "leftist leadership rage" is a cartoonist in Korea laughing at you on bluesky, you not have made the impact you hoped.
My post was not about how big mad I am about secrets being exposed, it was... what secrets? It's a public event organized in public by people who love talking about their opinions. Even if I can't attend the protests, you don't need to trick me into saying what I think.
