The month of July has been an exciting one for the crew at SOLRAD. Our mothership, Fieldmouse Press, launched its first Kickstarter campaign to publish Clutter by Ariel Bordeaux, and with about a week left, we’re fully funded. That’s an exciting piece of news, and if you haven’t backed the campaign yet, I’d like to invite you to check it out. Since I’m the Treasurer of Fieldmouse Press (yes, I get to wear a lot of hats) I’m available for any questions you might have.
The last two weeks of July saw a flurry of activity surrounding comics “stuff”, including issues with the UK-based comics festival Thought Bubble. Celebrated minicomics publisher ShortBox pulled out of the show due to the invited attendance of Frank Miller, author of Holy Terror, the 2010s hate tract. Miller was subsequently disinvited, and while there’s an available timeline for anyone that cares to look, things have gotten ugly after the fact. ShortBox and Zainab Akhtar have been barraged by racists and bigots on social media, while Thought Bubble’s damage control efforts seem to be failing spectacularly.
This is not the first time something has happened like that in even the last five years, and I think it shows that comics, as a thing with institutional memory and a festival scene, has made many strides in claiming to be more open and inclusive, but has actually learned far little, and done far less.
In the noncomics world, things are getting weird. Just a scant two months ago, I thought we were moving in the right direction – now I’m not so sure. While the Olympic Games runs in Tokyo, a veritable heat island with > 100-degree F temperatures, parts of the USA are locking back down due to spikes in the SARS-CoV2 delta variant, which is substantially more infectious than the original version. Social services and support networks are starting to fall out of place, including the federal eviction moratorium in the United States. Now more than ever, support and love one another as best as you can.
Here’s what’s coming up at SOLRAD this month:
- We’ll finally (FINALLY) have the next episode of ENEMIES OF THE STATE published this week
- Essays and interviews from SOLRAD stalwarts, including new writing from yours truly
- New SOLRAD contributors including work by Carrie McClain, alongside returning contributors Tom Shapira, Sydney To, and Craig Fischer
- A pile of great comics, including more work from the Humdrum Collective
If you are a cartoonist or publisher who wants to get their work reviewed on SOLRAD, please shoot me an email at reviews@solrad.co.
If you have any comments, questions, or concerns about the site, I am also available @sequentialstate on Twitter and Instagram, and at hoffman@fieldmouse.press via email.
Wherever you are in the world, I hope you are safe and well.
SOLRAD is made possible by the generous donations of readers like you. Support our Patreon campaign, or make a tax-deductible donation to our publisher, Fieldmouse Press, today.