Success! Comic Talk With Bread Lee Recap
Also: Last Summer Festival This Saturday and a Sketchbook Share
The talk went great!
Will give you a recap, but first, here’s what’s in today’s blogsletter:
Alright, off we go.
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Last Festival for the Summer This Saturday
A quick reminder that this Saturday I’ll tabling at PhinneyWood Comic Book Show! This will be the last summer festival I’m vending at. Come through if you’ll be in the area! Details below.
PhinneyWood Comic Book Show
FREE Admission!
Where:
Phinney Neighborhood Center – Blue Building
6532 Phinney Ave N
Seattle, WA 98103
When:
Saturday August 9, 2025
11am-4pm
Comic Talk with Bread Lee Recap
The talk went great!
We had an audience that filled the (small) space that Mam’s Books occupies. HUGE thanks to all my friends from different spheres who came out, and Bread’s friends as well. And there were a few other folks who I think just happened to be there or enter the store during our talk and stayed for it. Thank you! It was great meeting and chatting with everyone. As I noted during the talk, infinite percent more than I thought were going to show up.
Bread and I had a great conversation about why we make comics, our inspirations and influences, and each of our latest comics.
Plus I finally learned how to pronounce “Mam’s”: it’s not “ma’am’s”, it’s not “mahm’s”—it’s “mum’s”, as the store’s owner, Sokha, pronounced it.
Some takeaways from our convo:
The Sunday Funnies had a long tail! Bread is Gen Z while I am an Elder Millenial, and the Sunday comics were influential in both of our interest in comics. Also Calvin and Hobbes, but C&H is eternal. Though, I’d guess that younger Gen Z and later kids probably no longer have the Sunday Funnies as an influence, since people stopped having physical newspaper subscriptions probably when I was in high school or certainly by my college years.
Bread has a very different approach to making comics than mine, and also makes very different comics than mine. Bread makes short diary comics, some humorous, some serious. His process can be very loose and non-linear, like with his last one, Boy Problems, where he made different segments at different times, and combined them into a somewhat stream-of-consciousness comic.
I think the jokes in Boy Problems are a great example of one of the things I love about the comics medium: it’s so flexible, you can think of any way want to try to express what your trying to convey to the reader and it’s ok, that for example you can go from a character tossing and turning in bed overthinking a romantic conundrum, to suddenly a panel of Rodin’s The Thinker to make a joke about the mental state of that character, and then back to the character struggling to sleep. This area of comics expression is one that I often think about and forego/miss in my own comics because mine aren’t mainly comedic and such visual gags would be out of place for what I’m trying to do.
You can see Bread’s work here: https://breadlee.com/
Sketchbook Share
Whenever I don’t have a book to read on my bus commutes, maybe I just finished one on the ride or am between library holds, I’ll sketch fellow passengers (or just look out the window).
You know, I think I’m starting to get actually good at this! Celebrate your wins. :)
Congrats on the successful event! That bookstore looks cool as hell.