My first time to Europe was in 1995 for a two week community college scholarship. Note the effects of sixteen years of aging -
- vital brain matter still sprinkles out of my head.  (Stravinsky Fountain – Pompidou)

Just got home from HABIBI Eurotour yesterday. Thanks to all of you for your patience with the blog neglect. And tremendous thanks to my
EU readers that made it to the events. Frankfurt – Paris – Turin – Lucca – (rental car drive from Pisa to Brussels) – Brussels – Ghent – Leuven – Antwerp – Amsterdam.    Too  many places to sum up, though speaking at il Circolo dei Lettori in Turin was a great honor — a glorious space, joined on stage by Randa Ghazy, the author of DREAMING OF PALESTINE and translator of Italian HABIBI.

Met many amazing folks along the way, including my oft-acknowledged inspiration Edmond Baudoin.
Here we are drawing each others portraits the day before he traveled to Rio de Janeiro for a comics show.

HABIBI travel continues next week, but this time on home turf – the state where I was raised and its neighbor.
Wednesday, November 16th — 2pm at MIAD and 7pm at Boswell Books in Milwaukee, WISCONSIN!
Then on to Chicago, Illinois — Quimby’s on Thursday, November 17th (7pm) — and The Book Cellar on Friday, November 18th (7pm).

PS to Michaela who asked about my “educational background”. I attended UWMC community college part time for a year and a half, and MIAD for a half year. Then dropped out and worked as a bagel maker, telemarketer, laser light show animator, newspaper ad stylist, ad agency graphic designer, grocery packer, house painter, warehouse box-packing grunt, and graphic designer at Dark Horse Comics.

My apologies, Blog Friends, for neglecting DOOT DOOT GARDEN while on euro tour
- especially to my French Fans who are curious about events in Paris.

In fact, there’s no dedicacés scheduled in Paris where I’ve spent the past week. This came as a surprise to me, too,
but the reason is the Casterman edition of HABIBI is being released more than a month later than expected.
It debuts in stores on mecredi, 26 octobre, the day I leave Paris for Turin, Italy.

My time instead has been filled up with plenty of media interiviews – PLENTY -
so at least you may hear about the book on TV, radio, web, or print.

The good news is I’ll be back in France for Angoulême (janvier 2012) and will probably visit Paris and other French cities at that time.
ALSO NOTE: London and UK appearances will precede Angoulême in earlier January. More soon! xo

HABIBI book tour is a sandwich. One bread slice (or one month) is American (two days Canada) and the other slice is European. In between was a thin slab of Portland time, flavored with coffee and rainwater; the tastiest part being the HABIBI-inspired art show hosted by Floating World. Pictured here: Carson Ellis, whose new book WILDWOOD with hubby Colin Meloy is a MUST-HAVE — and Theo Ellsworth, who worked alongside me in the studio, drawing his book CAPACITY, occasionally indulging in afternoon cognacs while inking.

Below, from left to right: Fabio Moon, Gabriel Ba, Brandon Graham.

Not pictured: Mike Allred, Farel Darlrymple, Lark Pien, Aaron Renier, Jen Wang. My cartoonist friends are the best in the world. These scans don’t do the pieces justice. If you live in Portland, check out the actual work at FLOATING WORLD. For everyone else, the show has motivated me to put together some sort of special book so that these beautiful tributes can be adequately shared. My continual thanks to you readers for making it to the events and being so kind. Euro tour begins TOMORROW.

Dear Readers, thank you for your patience with these rare posts. Tour is still chugging along, though I’m touching down
in my home Pacific NW a few days before heading off to Europe. Here’s some quick updates:

1) My tour overlapped a few times with Anders Nilsen and Adrian Tomine both on the road promoting new books
(Big Questions / Optic Nerve #12 – both amazing). Here we are at a Brooklyn Book Festival panel.

2) In Minneapolis, I lost my favorite jacket with my passport zipped inside. This led to some frantic days in San Francisco scrambling to get an expedited replacement. Photos via Jason in Chinatown! My event at Lee’s Comics in Mountain View had to be canceled, but was revisited at the Alternative Press Expo.       2) My 36th birthday happened in Boston hosted by the Harvard Book Store. Everyone sang HAPPY BIRTHDAY to me on stage at the Brattle Theater, and gifted me a cake, three cupcakes, and a bottle of bubbly (balloons not pictured). The most special cupcake was regifted to my generous media escort Lynn.

4) You fans are beyond sweet, presenting me with beautiful pieces of original art. Here’s a Chunky tribute by Justin that needed to be shared.         5) I’m in Seattle today appearing at Seattle Public Library (a day after my friends Carson Ellis and Colin Meloy), but yesterday I touched base in Portland to sign 1,500 copies of stock at the Powell’s Books warehouse. Here’s one of the two and a half palettes. Tomorrow, I return to Portland for events at Floating World, Bridge City Comics, Wordstock, and Livewire.

Then off to Europe – with my new passport! xo

Endless thanks to all of you who’ve been supporting the book and/or making it to my HABIBI appearances. Great people, great energy. I’ve wanted to update the blog more often while touring, but discovered it’s difficult to squeeze in a moment. Hard to imagine I drew CARNET DE VOYAGE during similar circumstances. Thankfully, my hand is surviving this trip much better.

I’ve little documentation of my own of the various events, so feel free to courier some doot doot’s way. In the meantime, here’s a random selection.     1) Tattoos of my art at Midtown Comics in NYC:    2) Rare books room at the STRAND.

Dear Blog-friends. TODAY is the official release of HABIBI. For those of you in NYC, I’ll be signing at Midtown Comics’ DOWNTOWN location
(64 Fulton Street) at noon – and then at the STRAND (828 Broadway) at 7PM. But HABIBI will be on shelves in book stores
and comics shops across the nation (and in UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, and Spain).

My apologies for the lag in updating you. I got nasty sick the week before departing for book tour and then got caught up in the whirlwind. Officially departed on September 9 — and once you’ve read the book, you’ll recognize the numeric significance of those nines. Participated in a pre-release fundraiser for the CBLDF at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland — then recovered at a friend’s farm in rural New York state, before speaking at the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont — then continuing on to NYC. Word bookstore in Greenpoint hosted an amazing and intimate event moderated by Sarah Glidden. And then I appeared at the Brooklyn Book Festival.  Tomorrow is my 36th birthday (more NINES!) and I’ll be signing at the Harvard Book Store in Boston. Then Toronto, Montreal, Iowa City, Minneapolis, Portland, SF, Seattle, more Portland, and Europe. Hope to meet some of you along the way! x0

Kudos to all of you who figured out the CHUNKY RICE thank you cards (circa 1999). Grant got Jeff Smith and Eddie Campbell.
Mack guessed correctly about Alan Moore’s FROM HELL. And finally Isaac nailed Dylan Horrocks (not in that way), referencing my
favorite scene from Horrock’s important work HICKSVILLE. All the other artists mentioned are definitely influences of mine.

In other news, the mural for my brother’s brand engagement agency BOLSTER is complete, thanks to the handiwork of Andrew Young.

And there’s some great documentation of HABIBI at the printers on my German publisher Reprodukt‘s blog.

And finally thanks to my brother for updating the look of THIS blog. HABIBI book tour begins in less than two weeks.
Check the site and facebook for schedule. And some advance reviews are already pouring in. Hope to see you!

Cleaning out the drawing studio in preparation for book tour, I excavated copies of thank you cards drawn for four cartoonists who endorsed
the first edition of GOOD-BYE, CHUNKY RICE way back in 1999. Can you identify those authors and/or scenes mashed up from their own work?

Writer Elif Shafak: “In Istanbul, you understand, perhaps not intellectually but intuitively, that East and West are ultimately imaginary ideas,
ones that can be de-imagined and re-imagined.”

Meanwhile, my friend Kazim Ali is traveling through Jerusalem and Palestine and blogging at the Huffington Post. Please, check it out.
Below’s another peek at our collaboration for the CBLDF Liberty Annual (colors by Dave Stewart).

At the Shanghai Art Museum, I nerded out over the 320 meter “Scroll of Taiwan Scenery” by Taiwanese artist Hsu Wen-jung. In Wisconsin
(visiting family a month ago), I excavated from the attic a scroll I drew during Mrs. Kamenick’s fourth grade class. It puts HABIBI to shame.
It’s 77 pages taped together (70 feet!) blending text & visuals, and tackling every genre of boyhood fantasy — including race cars, fighter jets,
spaceships, monsters, and destroying the USSR! (I was ten…) Wish I could scan and share the insanity with you… instead, here’s a couple of slices.

And here’s some snippets of complex narrative from pages I don’t have room to show:
“Soon we were on our way to another universe to free the humans that were being held prisoners on the planet Slumgutso. But we cancaled [sic]
our trip because we found out that the humans were dead. We got back to earth just in time, because we had to spy on the USSR’s underwater city.”

Also this:
“We took the hottest quickest and slickest cars, to get away from the coppers faster. We were going 950,659 mph.”
My comics career could have careened off an entirely different trajectory. Speaking of which, thanks to you who said HI at San Diego Comic-con!