Con Report: The Canadian Everything Geeky In The Whole Wide World In One Place National Expo 2003
by Jay Laird

July: the Prologue

It's been about 6 months since I've had to write, draw, or color anything for anyone, and the summer's whizzing by. And I haven't had to warm a single metal foldout chair with my ass for up to 8 hours... at least not for business purposes.

I'm at computer-related conference in NYC and, having been away from any sort of convention, conference or expo since last summer, I've almost forgotten just how darned stimulating these geeky get-togethers can be. Intellectually stimulating, of course. Okay, okay, so I'm suffering from geekboy lust.

So when I escape from the conference for drinks with Ed and tell him my plight, he asks me to come with him to report on the Canadian National Comic Book Expo 2003. I immediately say yes, since if there's one thing I like better than a good geekboy, it's a good Canadian geekboy.

And then I sleep on it. Or try to sleep as much as I can over the next month, since I figure I'll need to stay awake for most of the three days ahead...

August 22: Getting There is Half the Fun
So after last year's comics-and-cons frenzy, my body seems to have been conditioned to not sleep the night before one. I'm lying in bed trying to convince myself that for once there's nothing I have to do to prepare for the 'con -- I just have to show up with camera and PalmPilot in hand -- but my hands are twitching, like they want to be madly folding and stapling last minute goodies for the nonexistent table that I won't be sitting behind. I manage to doze off around 4am by reading the most boring textbook I can find (name omitted in case I happen to have done work for this publisher), but the alarm jolts me out of bed at 5am. Great, we're not even at the 'con yet and the bleariness has already begun.

The airport is its usual fun combination of hurry up and wait, which do I appreciate the need for, but it was a whole lot easier back when you could just kind of forget that Canada was another country and slip on in. I'm kidding, but you'd be surprised how many people respond to that comment with "What? Canada's another country?" I weep for our schools!

So I've got down the security drill: wear the shoes without the steel toes, listen carefully, put the belt in the bag, take the laptop out of the bag, make good eye contact but not too good... I figure there's no way I'm going to get searched this time. Then the conveyer belt jerks to a stop. "Bag check!" There's pointing and muttering among the security folks. My bag gets pulled and a woman starts carefully working her way through the contents.

"What is it?" I ask.
"Scissors," she says.

"Um, I don't own any scissors," I say. It's true -- I'm always swiping scissors from my roommates -- but it's the wrong thing to say in this case. Somehow she manages to raise an eyebrow at me while still looking down at my bag. "I mean, uh, maybe someone was cleaning, and, um. Yeah." She slows down her search, now checking each item nice and slow.

Finally she reaches my medicine bag. Aha! I think. It's the hair-trimming scissors from the bathroom! They must have fallen into my bag! I reach over excitedly to help her... and immediately two more security folks are standing next to me. "Sir, you can't touch the bag," she says, slowing down her search even further. She pulls out items one by one: a nail file (not mine, but I'm not going to say anything at this point), an old toothbrush (the one I use to clean the sink, not my travel one), and finally and most embarrassingly, a big bottle of "personal lubricant". Apparently when someone was cleaning the bathroom, my medicine bag became the catch-all for things that didn't fit back into the cabinet. The lesson here, folks? No matter how groggy you are, do your own bag check before you go to the airport!

After all that, she finds the scissors and asks me if I want to go back out and check my luggage. I'm tired, a little frustrated, and apparently well lubricated, so I tell her to just confiscate the scissors. If any of you win one of the airport confiscation lots on eBay (They're real! I'm not kidding!), feel free to send me a spare pair. You probably won't need all thousand.

August 22: 3, 3, THREE Cons in One!

The rest of the trip into Toronto is pretty uneventful, unless you like stories about balancing my caffeine addiction versus catching a bus. Either way, I narrowly miss a trip to Chip Zdarsky's studio, but I'm quite happy to find myself waiting for the rest of the press crew in a luxury hotel room with beds that cried out for many hours of comfy, comfy sleep. Yes, folks, not so many exciting late-night adventures in this 'con report. The beds won. In fact, they started winning before we even hit the Expo floor...

Despite the Canadian conspiracy to confuse us by having two "Expos" going on at once (both the Canadian National Comic Book, Science fiction, and Anime Expo and the Canadian Expo that's more like a State Fair), we manage to find the right one. How? By following gravity down to our hotel lobby, which happens to be connected to the correct Expo, rather than by being tempted away by the signs all over the city that say "Get to the Ex." I don't know, thinking back to my disastrous first relationship in college, that cute abbreviation could be taken completely the wrong way...

We head down to get our press badges and end up cooling our heels for a while in an empty conference room while the organizers find our badges. This is not a complaint, and in fact, kudos to the organizers for finding the perfect way to keep the press crew entertained: a room with an imaginary audience and three live mikes up front! Remember waiting for your teacher in a classroom with freshly cleaned chalkboards and a new box of chalk? Remember the temptation? Anyway, we're fine with that. And then we get our badges, and it's at that moment that I realize this was more than a comics expo. This is, to read straight off the program, the Canadian National Comic Book Expo, Canadian National Science Fiction Expo, and Canadian National Anime Expo, all rolled into one! My head nearly explodes with sheer geeky joy!

We get out on to the Expo floor, which is certainly big enough to lose your friends on, and somehow manage to move our press blob over Artist Alley. When we emerge from the crowds already beginning to clog the aisles of the merchandise area, the first thing I spot is Chip Zdarsky's notorious cowboy hat -- about which you can read more elsewhere -- but Chip's not underneath the hat!

Instead it's award winning Toronto based illustrator Ben Shannon. He, Chip, Kagan McLeod, Sam Hiti, Cameron Stewart, and Ray Fawkes have put together a nice collection of comics shorts called Rumble Royale, featuring a wild and diverse set of characters. Pick it up. It's fun. No explanation for the hat being passed around, but we're reassured that Chip hasn't been killed and sold to Toronto's many hot dog vendors, so that's all that's important. I strike out on my own to figure out just how the heck I'm going to sum up this whole 'con in a reasonably sized report (as you can see, I've at least failed on the reasonably sized part already!)

I don't do so well on these junkets if I don't have a mission. Last year, I spent all my time on the other side of the tables as an artist/writer/shill, and while it occasionally got boring, it at least gave me a very clear sense of purpose. Here, I'm trying to figure out just how to take it all (or any significant part) of it in. So I decide to give myself some missions, "Road Rules" style.

The first mission I assign myself is a quest for gay manga and anime -- yeah, yeah, kind of a personal mission, but at least a few of you might want to know this. Not lesbian erotic anime, which seems to be the first thing that pops into many non-anime fans' minds when they hear the term; I call that "Japornomation" myself. So I pop by a few of the manga/anime tables and rifle through the merchandise. I know the stuff's out there (Fake and Kizuna being the two titles most folks seem to know), but I don't find anything new. I do find lots of books on How to Draw the stuff, but a quick flip through most of these books reveals the usual fault: you have to know how to draw these things in order to be able to draw these things. Or so it seems to me, anyway. Even with my semi-artistic education, I still think 90% of what you learn about art, you learn through trial and error. Mostly error, in my case.

So, my first mission down, I move on to what seems to be an easier task: getting photos of some of the cute geeks and fun freaks running around (note that I mean "freak" in a good, self-identified way, not in a bad, drooling, scary way). But as soon as I take out the camera to catch them, they seem to disappear, like cockroaches. Maybe it's just the constant flow of traffic on the expo floor. I put away the camera for the moment, vowing to pick up that thread again later on.
Then it occurs to me that I'm naturally gravitating towards the same kinds of tables that I'd normally be sitting behind, so maybe I should just let inertia take its course. So now I have my mission: to do mini-interviews with as many under-represented (or just plain interesting) creators as I can over the next couple of days.

KONsequential Studios (http://www.konsequential.com/):Laurie Breitkreuz and Kandrix Foong are the first people to reel me in, both with their engaging smiles and their stylish sepia-toned artwork. Their book, an action/adventure story of three monks exploring their world in ancient China, is called A Monk's Tale. Laurie and Kandrix started work on the comic last July and have managed to pump out three issues, get distribution from Cold Cut, and exhibit themselves at multiple comics shows, including the San Diego ComiCon. Not bad for a part-part time operation out of Calgary, Alberta!

After chatting with Laurie and Kandrix for a few minutes, it's time to head off to the first panel that I want to see: Spidey Senses Tingling. Considering that the panel just before this one was called Cebulski Squeals, I have to wonder if there's some kind of kinky S/M theme here (tingling? squealing?)... but no, it's just creative panel naming. And that's OK with me: the panels are interesting enough without speculating what certain creators might look like in leather harnesses, don't you think?

Speaking of costumes, though, there's a ritual I started the year before at San Diego ComiCon that I'm reminded to continue at the Spidey panel: the annual count of Green Lantern tee shirts. The count started because of a debate between me and comics writer/artist Tim Fish about what tee shirt was most spotted at these events; at San Diego in 2002, Green Lantern certainly took home the prize. Anyway, I spot the first Green Lantern shirt in the Spidey Sense panel. It's being worn by a nice guy with a lot of good questions.


Spidey Senses Tingling:
The panel, which is supposed to be Brian Michael Bendis, Humberto Ramos, and Francisco Herrera, ends up being The Bendis Show for the first half because the other boys are trapped at a signing doing little sketches for every fan. Much as sometimes I envy the full-time artists, at least writers don't get asked to put down anything more than their signatures and maybe a couple of choice words. But Ramos and Herrera are great sports for not bolting from the signing, and Bendis can more than hold his own with an audience. Some tidbits from the Bendis portion of the panel:

On Daredevil villains: "Now that we've used the old toys we're gonna give him some new ones."

On his success as a writer: "I basically got my start as a failed comics artist... after 12 years of throwing crap at a wall, I just fell into [Daredevil], and then a month later into Ultimate Spiderman... based on a novel I did, [an editor] came to me and basically said 'Your art sucks, but your writing's great,' and I agreed and have been doing these ever since."

On the future of Alias: The new comic continuing Jessica as the main character will be called The Pulse. Part of the reason for this is to integrate her into the mainstream Marvel universe, making her one of the few strong female non bikini clad characters there. Of course, Bendis points out, once she's part of the mainstream there's no more swearing or anal... but he reassures us that the amount of swearing, anal, etc, will double in Powers to make up for it.

On Ultimate Spiderman: "It's both an honor and a challenge." The challenge is dealing with updating Spidey for today's world, since the world has changed significantly since his creation. Bendis pushes the boundaries, but he tempers his pushing with humility because he feels honored to work on the material.

On a clone storyline: "It's hard to do a good clone thing... but we love baiting the fans on the Internet threatening to do one... who knows, maybe we'll come up with one that works!"

At this point in the panel, Ramos and Herrera show up, but unfortunately, I have to scoot out of the panel, and then it's over. I pick up my mini-interviews on the expo floor.

Joe Meyer (http://photos.yahoo.com/x365joex):
A Long Island resident, Joe's an interesting guy with an interesting take on life. He does a daily strip called 365 Joe that takes whatever happens to him in a day and highlights it in a "3 panelish" format. The biggest challenge? When nothing happens in a day. The second biggest? When too much happens. Joe tries not to cheat and save up material; what you see for a day is fresh from that day, not preserved from another more interesting day. However, to spare you the less interesting days, he's only put selected ones on line so far.

As you'll soon see (if you haven't picked up the trend already), bio-strips are becoming a new mini-trend. And no, I'm not talking about those disgusting blackhead removal strips, although I'm sure someone will eventually scan those and put them on-line too. I'm talking about people writing little bits about their own lives. The nice thing about Joe is that he genuinely has stuff to talk about.

Take his tattoo: he made it himself from the letters that spell out his desire: "I Want to Draw More and More Each Day". It makes a cool little symbol on his drawing arm, and apparently it's working: for the last month he's drawn and inked a strip a day, within 24 hours of the day's events.

Joe's penchant for autobiography also spills over into his neighbor's work. His buddy Jason Marcy, for whom he frequently does inking, wrote a story about Joe's nipple piercing. I'll spare you the details so you won't squirm, but if you enjoy squirming, buy Jay's books (see below). You'll love it.

In addition to Joe's autobiographical work, he also does non autobio entertainment, including Slammin' Bunneez, about some bunnies and a frog in a band. He also has a story in the recent collection Mauled, which I'm relieved to learn isn't autobiographical since it's sort of a tasteful print version of FOX's When Wild Animals Attack!

Jason Marcy:
Sitting next to Joe is his pal Jason, who writes Jay's Days and Days with Jay. The guy's certainly got his brand identity down!

Days with Jay is the daily journal strip, inspired by James Kochalka's work. The big challenge that Jason tries to meet in his strip is to show the story of his day and not just narrate it -- quite the task when you're trying to crank out a story every night. Still, Jason says that autobio work lets him be more gritty and worry less about "what is art?" He pencils them and his buddy Joe Meter inks them.

Jay's Days are longer works, warts-and-all portrayals of his life, including everything from hemorrhoids (Volume 2) to having his first kid (Volume 3, coming soon)!

His long term goal is to be able to quit his day job and just draw full time, but of course now with a kid in the picture, he's got even more things to worry about before that time comes -- "but it's great material," he says.

Since I'm working on no sleep at this point, I decide to cut short my interviews for the day and try to catch a few winks back at the hotel before dinner. But then I realize that it's almost time for the first day of the expo to end, and before I can catch a single wink, we're all headed over to C'est What for drinks.

C'est What, in addition to having a punny name, also has an excellent beer menu, and at least one very accommodating waiter. He patiently squeezed in as many of us as he could across two tables and put up with our ever-fluctuating crowd. Two beers and one delicious lamburger later, we called it a night. In hindsight, especially as a former vegetarian who's gradually moved his way back across the meat spectrum, I felt baaaaad about the lamburger. Forgive me, my woolly friends of the field, but you were so tasty!

August 23: Stealth Peeing and Dork Rivalry

The next morning we manage to drag ourselves out of bed in time for the beginning of the Expo, day 2. Yes, we got a full night's sleep but when you're sleeping on clouds, it's hard to get up!

On the expo floor, I notice that the "junk handing out" factor is remarkably low compared to other 'cons I've been to. I'm not deluged with fliers and little bags of junk. In fact, I actually have to seek out a "bag of junk" to store the stuff I was carrying in. This is a pleasant trend.

The next trend I notice is the large number of red-coated boys with spiky blonde hair and yellow tinted glasses running around. Apparently the character to be this year is Vash from the anime and manga series Trigun. I've not actually seen the series yet, but it's doing some nice things for geek fashion, just like The Matrix has been. In fact, sometimes these fashion worlds collide, as in this moment that I witnessed (see photo).

We start our morning back at the Royal Academy of Illustration and Design crew's table, where Ben Shannon entertained us with a report on the bizarre concert he attended the evening before. He also threatened to remove his pants, but my camera ran out of batteries at that moment.

Although I'm mainly covering the comics side of this event, since I'm also a fairly recent convert to the world of manga and anime (I was surprised at the number of people whose costumes I recognized actually), and I'm a longtime sci-fi geek, I decide to spend a bit of time following around the roving costumed crowds. Immediately I discover rumblings of intra-geek rivalry.

On the expo floor, I run into two costume posses at an intersection. The following conversation is real:

Guy dressed as Wolfwood : "Who are you?"
Guy dressed as Yu Gi Oh: "Yu Gi Oh!"
Wolfwood: "Cool!"

(Yu Gi Oh and posse depart)

Wolfwood (to his posse): "Dorks!"

And then of course there's the hazards of pursuing detail in costuming, such as the wonderfully costumed (though I didn't know the character) girl who complained "I can hardly hear in these damned things!"

At this point, I run into Sally Pickles, working on her own con report, and she tips me off that there's a second Green Lantern shirt on the loose. Maybe there's hope for the Green Lantern count yet, but I never find the kid to actually add him to the tally myself.

I'm headed off to another comics panel when I realize why you're not supposed to try to run through the hotel's complimentary coffee supply in one go (especially with an attentive concierge nearby who's already to make more!). So I run off to the restroom to pee. Now, maybe I'm just too busy concentrating on my own business, as I'm washing my hands I hear someone begin peeing, meaning the person managed to walk right by me without me even noticing. As I leave the bathroom, the guy finishes peeing and heads to the sinks, and I see he's dressed as a ninja. Stealthy! And I'm glad to know that ninjas wash their hands so that when they beat the crap out of someone it's at least sanitary.

I head back to the floor to do some more interviews. On the way, I notice that Lou ("The Incredible Hulk") Ferrigno is doing an autograph signing! I'm afraid to approach him, so I take a photo from the end of the line. Just as my flash goes off, he stands up quickly. "Oh, God!" I think. "Hulk smash!" But no, he's just going to stand next to a fan to get a picture with him. I realize I have to go pee again.

Mike Gagnon, Smash Comics/Lightningstrike Publishing
Mike Gagnon has been publishing under the Smash Comics name since 2001. He writes a comic called Mason and is himself an aspiring writer/artist, but he also wants to be a good publisher. He thinks it's worth the financial risk to bring other artists into the spotlight and he enjoys doing it. It's always great to see what could be a small self-publishing operation turn into a nice collaborative effort like Smash seems to be. Gagnon publishes some of Jason Marcy's stuff (see above), as well as Paul Quinn's Suspension of Disbelief and Crew of Wanderlust.

Gagnon's a nice guy, and he genuinely seems to want to share the spotlight with everyone. He quickly points out other creators I should be talking to, so I get busy chatting with a few of them.

Andrew Foster
Andrew Foster is another autobio comics guy inspired by Kochalka and the idea of making it an exercise in drawing every day. He wants to do some full length indie work eventually, but right now he's happy to be getting his comics journals out. He's just published his eighth mini-comics-format issue of Everyday Comics, covering his life during June of 2003.

The comic is usually a four-frame square grid, with variations depending on his mood and how much happened that day. The pieces are sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, sometimes observant, and sometimes they just are what they are. But that's OK: it's his journal, and he offers us a stylish peek into his personal life that you don't find peeking at your little sister's diary entries (or maybe you do, I dunno: my sister never kept a diary... that I know of!)

Spotlight on Darick Robertson
I end up filling in for another photographer on the 2pm panel with artist Darick Robertson. He's late, but again with good, altruistic reason: he was too busy drawing for the fans. He seems a little run down, but it turns out that he's basically been running since he got to Toronto, going from one event to another. He's relieved to learn that all he has to do is sit and answer questions at this one. Some highlights from Darick's Q/A session:

Robertson, who co-created Transmetropolitan with Warren Ellis, enjoys working with Ellis because of his amazing facility for description -- not overdescription, but the description of just the right elements. They worked on Ultra Force shortly before it was absorbed by Marvel, and then he found himself faced with the choice of working on Spiderman or Transmetropolitan.

He chose Transmetropolitan because he felt it would be nice to work on something where the artistic creation came before the characters, and in the case of Transmet, they figured they had complete freedom. The attitude was almost "no one's gonna read this, so let's go all out in pushing the boundaries". It made for a very collaborative and interactive process, with Robertson and Ellis expanding on each other's contributions as the characters evolved.

One thing that is important to Robertson about the Transmet world is the idea of accommodating the old alongside the new. Robertson began work on Transmetropolitan just as he was beginning a year living in Italy. While there, he noticed how streets and buildings hundreds of years old were squeezed in with skyscrapers and how new technologies had to adapt to integrate with the older landscape. Then he thought about how, even though the United States is a relatively young in its history, the old and the new still had to live alongside one another. He realized that the shiny super-futuristic worlds we so often see in science fiction are far too sterile and give no sense of history, only of advancement. So he wanted to make sure that the world he and Ellis were creating had the rich sense of history that he experienced while living abroad.

Robertson notes that sometimes it's hard to get the grittier ideas past the publishers. Now working on Wolverine, he likes the idea of the character being underestimated: short and kind of ugly instead of the superhero norm. Of course, with the attention the character's received thanks to the X-Men movies, there has to be some compromise -- but at least the publishers are willing to compromise and aren't mandating that the artists slavishly follow actor Hugh Jackman's portrayal of the character.

Robertson's interesting to listen to, but then the other photographer shows up to cover the event, so it's time for me to move back to the Expo floor again.

Evan Munday (http://amazingchallengers.open-eyes.org):
I know from the minute I see his table that Evan will be fun to talk with. He's got signs up that say things like "I have the most highly detailed synopsis here", "Ask me stuff, I'm bored", "An affront to God!", and "Waterloo's least favourite comic book!" -- plus he wears red and black converse and a green tie, so really, how can he be anything less than entertaining?

Evan writes a book called The Amazing Challengers of Unknown Mystery, which he terms a "spectacularly low budget comic book". He's a student at the University of Waterloo who decided to grab himself an audience by posting his comic "book" across various bulletin boards on campus. Sometimes he'd put the whole book in one building, and sometimes he'd spread it out a bit further, to see if anyone was reading all of the pages. The quirky system got him some positive feedback, so he decided to compile the pages together into regular 24-page oversized comics issues (which also makes it much easier to have things like a letters page and fake advertisements).

The story revolves around an eccentric millionaire who forms adventure club of "weirdos". After being recruited, they learn that their mission is to kill the millionaire's father in order to prevent him from running amok in a giant robot suit. Sigmund Freud introduces the second issue to explain what has gone before and to offer his analysis of the situation. The third issue concludes the first story, so jump in now while there's no cliffhangers looming! You'll be as happy as this guy if you do!

September 24: Last Gasp at the Con-A-Thon

Another nice night of sleeping on clouds after an industry dinner sponsored by Diamond and a few drinks with Ed and friends, then back to the floor for the final haul. Three day 'cons get pretty tiring by the third day, trying to figure out what's still new and all.

I start the day with a third green lantern shirt sighting, but it's immediately followed by three new Vash sightings. Clearly, at least when anime folks are involved, Vash is the character to track for the moment!

I head back up to the expo to get in a few more interviews.

Andrew Nagy (http://www.ill-intent.com):
Andrew Nagy terms his comics creation method "the height of disorganization." He started working on Akui in July of 2003 and worked all night every night until the 'con. Of course, he'd planned to start on the project sooner, but surgery earlier in the year left him unable to sit down and draw (not that a tendency to procrastinate didn't contribute too, he admits). Just when he thought he was on schedule, the "Blackout of 2003" cost him 2 days, but he managed to get the comic, including a nice color cover, printed the night before the 'con. His credits his design partner, Rosanne Sutanto, with doing all of the pre-press work, coordinating the table space, and basically getting him there. They seem to make a very good team, and hopefully they can keep putting out a product. Andrew says he did about four times the sales that he expected, so for him the Expo's been a great success.

Chris Brimacombe: The Cursed Canoe, and Mysteries Unlimited
Chris turns out to not actually be at the table, but his cousin has very nicely agreed to represent him at the Expo. Chris researches old Canadian myths and legends, writes funny stories about them, and publishes them in minicomic form. Chris calls his company Canuck Comics, and according to his cousin, he's very, well, Canadian. Chris's two offerings at the Expo combine the mysteries of Canada with a certain Scooby-Doo like feeling. Mysteries Unlimited has the more obvious parody, down to the inclusion of Old Man Wilson, while Cursed Canoe actually retells an old legend in a modern setting. In his author notes, Chris says that he wanted to develop a Canadian Street Fighter game using the Mysteries Unlimited characters, but he didn't know anything about videogame programming. Hmm, Chris, maybe I can help you out... Chris's cousin also nicely stood in for Chris for his photo op, wearing a picture of Chris's face over his own.

Jeff Crowther (http://www.odditycomics.com)
Jeff Crowther is a busy guy with a number of ongoing projects. His main project is a twice-weekly comic called Sketchbook published by ModernTales.com. If you're not a member of ModernTales, he says, get yourself over there and get a membership now! Sketchbook is, in Jeff's words, "a teenage fantasy action adventure thing, righting the wrongs of another dimension and stuff like that." What he doesn't mention is that it's also nicely scripted and elegantly drawn.

Jeff's other projects include Samurai Bowling, an occasional comic about a girl who thinks she's a Samurai. Yes, thinks. She apparently got hit on the head after watching one too many Samurai movies and absorbed all of the knowldge from them as a result of the accident -- and a good thing, too, as the bowling alley where she works is under seemingly constant attack by Ninjas. Says Jeff in the intro to Issue #2, "This comic is stupid. I mean that, it's totally stupid..." But once again, it's cleanly and smartly drawn and written, and a lot of fun.

A third and final Jeff project that he's just begun is his puppethead quarterly anthology. He hopes that it will contain some autobio, some straightforward stories, some short, and some long. The first issue shows potential, so check out his stuff on line!

At this point in the Expo, it's mid-afternoon, and I'm in need of food and coffee. I look around for some sign that I should head out for the rest of the day and just come back at the end for a final look-round. At that moment, two guys in Green Lantern shirts walk by, one right after the other, and I know my work here is done.

Jay Laird is a writer, artist, and game designer. He also teaches at Northeastern University, where he tries to instill a sense of geek pride in his students. When that fails, he forces them to read comics anyway. Check out some of his work at http://www.jaylaird.com.


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