A lot has changed in the last week. If you need to catch up, I suggest following me on Twitter, or reading one of these various interviews and articles.

My Spot.Us piece now has full funding, thanks to all who contributed. At least now that things are a little calmer, I can return to drawing. I was originally planning to run the first part on Monday, but I need some time to restructure and rework this thing before it gets going. I appreciate your patience. And hey, you can still contribute to the fund if you’re interested in buying original art — there are art incentives at $20 (field sketch), $50 (small watercolor) and $100 (large watercolor) levels. Thanks!

I have a new long piece at Cartoon Movement about faith-based crisis pregnancy centers in the Bay Area. I visited a bunch of them over the last couple months pretending to be naive and knocked-up. A column detailing why and how I did it will be up later today is right here.

I have a new piece up at Cartoon Movement about my trip with Cartooning for Peace to Corsica in June. And this weekend is Zine Fest! Where I will be selling comics per usual with the inimitable Joey Sayers. It’s the 10th annual Zine Fest, so if you’re in the Bay Area, I recommend stopping by — after all, it’s free.

In two weeks, I will have a big new piece up at Cartoon Movement culminating a lot of research and reporting over the last couple months. I’m pretty excited about this one.

I have some illustrations in the latest Longshot Magazine that hit the internet this weekend, but this piece didn’t make it. Kind of a bummer, but I was still happy to spend the afternoon with “Uncle Ralph.” Extras to come from this — I tried to squeeze it onto one print page, which wasn’t nearly enough.

Just a brief note to let y’all know there’s free shipping in my comics store from now until my closets are a bit less full. I’m moving to a new place in Oakland this weekend, and I’d prefer not to carry this all with me!

Of particular note may be that the new Census book is now available in the store — 44 black and white pages for $5. I’ll post a picture as soon as I can find the card reader for my camera…

Another month has passed! Holy crap! Here’s the first half of my latest 7×7 piece, about gay pride events in San Francisco; part two is here.

Stay tuned for all the comics I’ve been working on that I am contractually obligated not to show you yet, sorry — two upcoming pieces for Cartoon Movement, plus three other top-secret things are in the works…

I’m on deadline (four, actually) and coming down with a cold, but I wanted to point you to this column I wrote for Cartoon Movement today about how personally and politically rewarding and economically dreadful it is to draw local cartoons. (It is all of these things, a lot.)

(Apparently some people came away from this with the perception that the SF Appeal is struggling, because somehow that is a more obvious conclusion than that I am doing awesome. So let me say again: we’re both doing great, bringing the magic every day, and no one is going too hungry in the process.)

Though my schedule prevents me from contributing to the thriving, wonderful SF Appeal on the regular these days, I am looking forward to bigger one-offs for them in the not-distant future. Eve Batey at the Appeal believed in this kind of work when no one else did; it’s stunning to me to think about how much has changed for me and for, I think, the acceptance of comics journalism in media in such a short time. I will always be thankful to Eve for the opportunity and launchpad. <3 <3 <3

Okay, back to those deadlines! I’ll have something to show for them very soon!

I went into this weekend at the National Conference for Media Reform expecting a lot of hand-shaking and back-patting — and not necessarily a whole lot else, to be honest. I am forever the cynic, especially when it comes to events where preaching to the choir seems to be the main course (e.g. comics conventions). However, while I don’t want to give away the ending of my illustrated piece for Truthout, I came away from NCMR with quite a different feeling. I think preaching to the choir works when there’s a culture of collaboration instead of straight competition; self-made abundance as opposed to scarcity, that sort of thing. I’m drawing and painting the Truthout piece today and tomorrow, and I’ll be filing as soon as it’s dry.

Not to say there wasn’t hand-shaking and back-patting too. I met a ton of amazing people over the weekend, so many of whom were excited about the possibilities of comics journalism! It was appropriate timing that my piece for Campus Progress was blowing up via Consumerist and the Huffington Post the very same day we gave our (awesome! engaging! well-reviewed!) panel on graphic reportage. Editors, take note: if you want traffic, you want comics.

So along those lines of creating spaces for this kind of work while also fostering collaboration and abundance, I launched GraphicJournos.com this weekend. GraphicJournos had been in the pipeline for a while now, and this seemed like a great time to introduce it to the world. We are a small collective of reportage illustrators of various stripes and interests who are coming together to promote the concept of fact-based graphic storytelling. If you’re reading this blog, I probably don’t need to convince you, but please keep your eye on the site, and follow us on Twitter. We’ll be posting our own recent work, as well as the work of other creators we appreciate in comics, illustration and design, writing on topics like the ethics of drawn journalism, process and multimedia experiments, plus best practices and how-tos for editors interested in this stuff (which should be all of you!).

I’m excited! Time to draw.

I am blogging from a bus! It’s the future! But we’re still stuck in traffic.

Just a quick note as I’m headed toward Boston for NCMR this weekend to point you toward this infographic I put together for Campus Progress. (I would include an image here, but I am blogging from a bus!)

I’m pretty sure I say this about 3/4 of the pieces I do lately, but damn was this a fun assignment. Thanks to Kay Steiger and the team at CP for taking a chance on illustrated reportage. This piece seems to really be resonating with people. Tweets and Facebook-likes aside, if I have convinced even one poor veteran not to go to the University of Phoenix, I will consider this a success.

I will try to post again soon, probably not from a bus, about the new book I just put together for MoCCA and Stumptown…

Man I am really terrible at writing headlines. Anyway! Today my first in a three part series on the recent travails of the San Francisco Police Department went up over at the SF Appeal. Expect parts two and three later this week and next; I’ll post the whole thing here when it’s complete. The corruption, the FBI, the revoked press passes — trust me, it only gets crazier.