Guest Comic: Playing Runescape With Your Grandmother Means...

Artist and gamer Cibayara Acosta recently penned a comic on what happened after she got her grandmother into Runescape and invested in the attendant lore, and the results were pretty surprising!

Cibayara Acosta is a US-based Taino comic artist. While her work spans a large spectrum, she most frequently enjoys engaging with children's media and fantasy. In her spare time she enjoys environmental activism, furiously watercoloring, and playing RuneScape. She lives with her family and Aunt Xiomara, who regularly reminds Cibby of the better things about this world.

Social Anxiety Guide To Calling Gov't Representatives

In the wake of the recent United States elections, calling your state and local representatives as a means of taking direct action and affecting change have become even more vital than ever. For those that struggle with chronic mental illness or anxiety, taking this sort of action can be even more difficult than it would be for a neurotypical person.  The artist Cordellia of echothroughthefog recently made a comic about how they pushed against anxiety, made those calls, and how you can do that, too! A transcript of the comic and more resources follow.

“How to call your reps when you have social anxiety”

There’s a LOT going on in the U.S. right now. Many people’s rights and safety are at risk. You’ve probably heard that one of the most effective ways to advocate for issues you care about, or stand up against dangerous policies and appointments, is to call your local representatives.
If you want to help but have social anxiety and find phone calls very intimidating, you may be thinking, “How do I do this?!” (An oversized telephone handset hovers ominously over the narrator with its cord spiraling around her body. She looks up at it with great concern.)
Here’s a step-by-step:

1. Block off time on your calendar. Each call only takes a minute or so, but you might want to block off more time for your first call, so you can prepare your words & nerves. Don’t rush yourself! Scheduling is super important, otherwise you will perpetually delay calling.
2. At the scheduled time, go sit somewhere quiet.
3. Find out who represents you. Some places to look: House (http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/) and Senate (http://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/).
4. Write out exactly what you plan to say. It only needs to be a few lines, and there are lots of templates online that you can use. e.g. “Hello! I am constituent from city (zip code) and I am calling to urge Some Name to publicly…” If they have already released a statement, don’t use that as an excuse to avoid calling. I know it’s hard, but call anyway. Thank them and ask them to keep pushing.
5. Take a deep breath. You can do this.
6. Do this: dial. (This is the hardest part.)
7. Read from your script. At this point, you’ll likely be sent to voicemail or to an actual person. The person will most likely be friendly and probably won’t have much time to talk, so you shouldn’t have to deviate much from your script. It’s a quick conversation.
8. That’s it! Say “Thank you” and hang up.

You did it! If you’re thinking “Hey, that wasn’t so bad…”, call more people! And follow up with them next week, or even tomorrow, to make sure they keep these issues top of mind.
It is okay if your voice shakes. It is okay if you feel awkward.They get a lot of calls, so they don’t have time to judge you by how well you delivered your message.
Is is also okay if you can’t call.
This week, my best friend told me, “Do something that is uncomfortable but not harmful to your mental health.” For me, calling was enough outside my comfort zone to be stressful & scary, but not so far away as to use up all my energy. That might not be the case for you, and that’s okay. Do not beat yourself up about it. There are lots of ways to take action without picking up a phone:

• Write to government officials
• Create art that challenges and art that inspires
• Donate, if you’re financially able, to organizations that fight injustice
• Listen to immigrants, people of color, women, trans and non-binary people, people of all faiths and orientations, and people with disabilities. Support their work. Amplify their voices.
• Keep it up.

And here are some resources:

• Emily Ellsworth explains why calling is the most effective way to reach your congressperson.
• Sharon Wong posted a great series of tweets that helped me manage my phone anxiety and make some calls.
• Kelsey is tweeting pretty much daily with advice and reminders about calling representatives. I found this tweet an especially great reminder that calls aren’t nearly as big a deal as anxiety makes them out to be.

Informational resources:
There are a lot of these, as well! These three are good places to start:

• Find your representative at house.gov
• Find your senators at senate.gov
• Use the “We’re His Problem Now” scripts when calling

Super Powers, Super Mom: Raising Dion Now Online

Description: A young black boy faces the camera, giggling. He closes his
eyes, then disappears with a puff of black smoke. He reappears on the other
side of the room, suddenly reappearing in front of his mother, who drops the
bag of groceries she was holding in surprise.

Many young children dream of having super powers. Many people compare parents to super heroes. So what do you do when you have to raise a child who has all the normal evergy and curiosity and fears of any other... but also a bevy of barely-controlled super powers? These issues and more are being tackled in xxxx xxxxx 's new comic book series, Raising Dion.

Raising Dion offers a novel way to look at so many issues and ideas: super humans in society, superpowers and how they affect relationships, the challenges of parenting, and race in American society.

In particular, Dion's mother tells him not to use not use any of his super powers in public addresses how society implicitly judges his as a black child and explicitly how he is judged as a super human in a comic book world. It also echoes "The Talk" that parents of color have to have with thier kids about encounters with the police. As Raising Dion's artist Jason Piperberg says in an interview at Fusion.net:

“Traditionally in comics and really most stories, the protagonist is the one with the powers,” said Piperberg. “You see the world through the eyes of the character with all the abilities usually because they are immediately the most exciting and/or interesting person in the story.” 

... “I think a lot of people still don’t get that The Talk is a real thing that black families have to have,” said Piperberg. He admitted that initially the parallels weren’t all that clear to him either. “I think it’s really important to step out of my bubble of privilege to see what’s really going on. To discover and look at injustices that have been swept under the rug, or worse, accepted as the norm by society.”

The first issue of Raising Dion is available online to read for free.

Guest Comic: Ghosts In Video Games

Today's guest comic is courtesy of the talented Laura Ellyn. She is an artist and author, and has a graphic novel about British Columbia labor history that will be released this fall via BTL Books. You can find her on the web at lauraellyn.com!

Cerebus Creator Will Only Talk To You If You Sign A Petition Saying He's Not a Misogynist

No, the above headline isn't some rejected headline from parody news outlet The Onion. It's true.

For the past decade or so, Dave Sim, Cerebus creator and publisher of one of the longest running independent comics in history, has been dogged by criticism of misogyny in his work. It started first after publication of an essay in Cerebus #186, "Reads" in which he attacked Oprah, the intelligence of women, feminism, gender differences, and something called the "Female Void" and the "Male Light". Two more out-of-left field essays popped up again in Cerebus #264 and #265.

Issue #264 printed a challenge to Bone creator Jeff Smith to a fist-fight, a gesture that that drove his longtime proofreader, Diana Schutz to resign. He followed thatup in #265 with an essay titled "Tangents," an essay-length "DEBUNKING" of feminism, abortion, the "feminist-homosexualist axis," and his thoughts on, er... spanking adult women. Carol West, his adminstrative assitant, and the last of his female employees, quit in disgust midway through typing up the essay. The Comics Journal has a rather extensive write-up on that part of Dave Sim's history with his employees.

CBR's Gail has a scathing parody of both of those essays in "Dave Sim's Guide To Getting Chicks".

Dave Sim recently published "Glamourpuss", a satirical take on women's fashion magazines, and in what is one of the oddest moves I've seen in years makes you agree to an odd terms of service agreement before he'll even talk to you.

Fellow nerdcore rapperDoc Popular had this to say:

" ...[he] decided the best way to handle such a situation was to send out a form letter requiring anyone who wished to correspond with him to fill out and return with a note saying “I don’t believe that Dave Sim is a misogynist.”. “If you aren’t willing to extend that minimal courtesy to me,” he states “then I would respectfully ask that you not attempt to contact me in the future.”
You can read a scan of the original letter on the fantastic Inkstuds Blog, or hear their recent (and relatively rant free) interview with Dave here.
...
In his letter Dave asks “What sort of friends and fans allow a friend or the person they are a fan of to be called the lowest, subhuman form of life in our society with impunity?”. The Dave Sim Misogyny Page is chock full of his quotes on gender and Heidi McDonald has an interesting piece on the subject in The Beat.
...
Although I am not willing to on the record and state that I feel Dave Sim is not a Misogynist, I will state that a terms of service of correspondence is a great idea! As a matter of fact, I have decided to enact my own Doctor Popular TOS on this very blog; by commenting, reading, hearing about, or in anyway thinking about Doctor Popular or DocPop.org, the user is hearby stating that they agree that “Doc Pop is the awesomest guy on the internet!”.

Yeah, this sounds like a great idea to me, Doc.

My take? For me, my whole sense of awe regarding Dave Sim is that he has an eye for the design elements and page layout of a comic book that have few equals in the comics industry, even today. Sadly, his views are repulsive and wrong. I do think it's worth reading Cerebus, but I would certainly say you aren't missing anything is you stop after the sixth "phone book" volume.

What, you don't want to take my word for it on the fact that he's a great artist? Alright, howzabout this post from metafilter user :
Here's an early page, showcasing some of his writing. Here you get a feel for his comedy writing and dialogue.

Over time, he started putting negative space to work really well, see here, here, and here

Here's three pages from a climate fight between major characters. The art is gorgeous, the panels and transitions great and there's several years of weight between this confrontation that give it an emotional impact.

The rest, I'm just gonna link to and let you decide on your own.

Cerebus as pope

Cerebus pisses off Red Sonya

Who has a husband?

Face off

Doorway

Boom!

Three more pages.
See?

I still don't think that invalidates Dave Sim being a messed up pile of hate and misogyny, though. He DID declare that all women are incapable of rational thought, that they want to be raped by doctors, and that "equal pay for equal work" = Communism. It's all just layer after icky, oozing layer of justification for his personal contempt and loathing for women.