FML Issue #2 dropped YESTERDAY! Everyone on Team FML is so excited for all of you to finally get to see the next installment in this story!! So make sure you stop by your LCBS1 to pick up yours, along with anything else your Comic Book Concierge is lovingly holding for you in your pull/subscription box.
Seriously, this is your annual reminder that comic book stores are like any other retailer - they pay up front for inventory, and don’t recoup that cash until you buy the thing! (And unlike most retailers, they don’t get to return the books you never came to pick up).
If you aren’t already reading FML, maybe this page full of reviews & interviews will get you hyped! Or check out these reactions to FML 2 from yesterday:
You can get a copy from your local comic shop, our local comic shop, or a digital copy through the Dark Horse website. (You can also look for it at your library and request it if it’s not there.)
Speaking of our wonderful friends, the Comic Book Concierges - Did you know they can also function as living, breathing, gift guides? For instance, I hit up Katie and Andréa from BWP for recs for a friend whose kid is “11 going on 18, witchy, little fantasy, and underdog stories.”
These are their recs:
Witch Boy series
My Aunt is a Monster
Nimona
Witchy (two volumes)
Witchlight
Snapdragon
Mooncakes
Season of the Bruja
Nimona
Hooky
How great is that?? Still got gifts to buy? Go to your local shop and try it.
FML-ish
David López has earned the Style and Substance Award from The SKTCHD AWRDS: The Creators of 2024!, David Harper’s “absolutely real, completely not fake awards show where I celebrate the year that was in comics.”
Harper really nails it here:
FML is a great comic in all the ways it can be great, but perhaps its greatest strength is López’s art and how he perfectly meshes style and substance into something astonishing. His incorporation of different art styles into the book and even into single images at times […] isn’t about doing cool things for doing cool things sake. It’s about incorporating the personality of this cast into its world, with the stylistic choices adding to the substance of the series. It amplifies the storytelling, almost acting as meta commentary from its cast that readers can pick up on or not. But for those who recognize what López is doing, it’s impossible to not be wowed by it.
And Kelly Sue joined the most excellently-named Gianni Palumbo of the Biff! Bam! Pow! Podcast to talk about FML’s first 2 issues:
Lastly, have you joined the FML Discord yet? We’ve got a really lovely community coming together over there. Scan this to check it out:
Various Other Good Stuff
Soul Coughing is back for Round 2 too! They’ve announced their 2025 tour dates, and you can sign up to get first access to tickets and VIP packages!
Did you know about the Quilt Index ?
Kelly Sue is going to this event in January: The Immersive Experience Institute. Anybody else going to be there?
Our friend TJ opened a gym!! If you’re in the Vancouver, WA area and want to check out Saprogenic Strength in person, give them the code MILKFED and get $10 off your membership or, if you’re not local, $50 off the first month of online coaching from TJ. Reach out to him here.
She’s also been working with the Geena Davis Institute’s Gaming Advisory Council to help build The GDI Playbook, designed to help game designers make positive shifts in representation and inclusion in the gaming industry. Game industry folks check it out and let us know what you think?
Speaking of game creators, this is a pretty great resource as well: Game Accessibility Guidelines.
True Crime homies probably know about this already, but just in case: DNA Doe Project.
As we lurch ever closer to the end of another calendar year [and the start of my absolute favorite time of year — the liminal “week” between December 25 and January 1], Shay Mirk has shared their Year-end reflection zine template so we can all partake of the zinester life!
Bookshop.org
If you want to pick up our books either as presents for someone else or for yourself and you don’t have a local shop or you just prefer mail order, here’s a handy link to a curated list of our titles through Bookshop.org, an alternative to Amazon where Every purchase on the site financially supports independent bookstores.
And Finally
You read to the end, so you get a treat! Here’s a secret: our friend TJ that I mentioned up there? I named a character in Aquaman after him, and then, because he has to one-up me, he went and got the character tattooed on his leg.
See you on the other side, friends.
xo
Kelly Sue (and also Denise!)
Local Comic Book Shop. Find yours at http://www.comicshoplocator.com