We got a bit of coverage at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival — the guys from Vepo Studios interviewed me for their great piece on self-publishing comics and I rambled on with the guys with RGB Filter as well. (Sadly, Shannon hates being videotaped.)

More recently we drove to Detroit and did a launch at Leopold’s Books, a fantastic new bookstore with an emphasis on comic/zine/visual culture. Greg, the owner, interviewed us on stage. Probably the nicest thing was hearing that he was worried the comic was going to be another exploitive take on Detroit in the “ruin porn” genre but was pleasantly surprised to see it was not.

UPDATE: Quill & Quire gave it a starred review: “Munroe has created another stunning, thought-provoking work that will linger in the reader’s mind.” The Indypendent has an interesting contrasting review of three Detroit books, including ours. Also, Shannon’s touring the west coast in August! Drop her a line if you want her to come to your town.

Secondly — what with the urban farming theme and spring being here and all, we figured it’d be fun to make seed packets marketed for the post-Rapture world — ones that don’t need the light of God to grow. (The first twenty people to buy a copy of Sword of My Mouth at the Toronto launch get one.) So Scott made a nice design and Shannon went to take some pictures “in context” as it were at a garden centre. The photo and the altercation that followed with the manager follows below.

Manager: Do you have permission to take these?
Shannon: I sure do!
Manager: I don’t understand. Do you have permission to take these photos?
Shannon: Yes, I do.
Manager: From who?
Shannon: That guy who is in charge of everything. What’s his name again?
Manager: Can you please stop?
Shannon: Peter. That’s his name. Peter gave me permission.
Manager: If you don’t stop taking pictures, I will have to confiscate your camera.
Shannon: (laughing my head off) No, you will not.
Manager: Hmm, well…you have to stop. Please.
Shannon: Hang on, I need one more with the macro setting…

And the guerrilla photography is only this week’s promotional gambit — last week Shannon spent a ton of time redrawing people’s faces for their Facebook profiles in her signature style, in exchange for them linking to the launch or the book.

Over a hundred people have had their Faces Gerardified.

UPDATE: Check out this neat interview with Shannon at Annalemma.

The first 22 pages of the next post-Rapture story after Therefore Repent! will be appearing in comic stores in May, to be eventually collected into a graphic novel called Sword of My Mouth in 2010. Check out Shannon Gerard’s fantastic cover art and the description after the jump, and if it looks good you can preorder at your local comic store — it’s in this month’s Previews (MAR09 4308, pg. 266). Update: I just saw it’s a Staff Pick at Previews!

(What’s that, you say? You’re behind and haven’t read the critically acclaimed Therefore Repent! yet? Well, lucky thing I’m releasing the full graphic novel as a free download today, isn’t it?)

Sword of My Mouth #1
Jim Munroe (w) • Shannon Gerard (a)

If Ella didn’t have her baby, she’d go crazy from the loneliness. But she might still go crazy from the guilt, because the baby isn’t quite right. The world was simpler before the righteous floated away into the sky, and magic started working.

A stand-alone six-issue story continuing on from acclaimed graphic novel Therefore Repent! (“It’s completely nuts… It’s a book about what if the Rapture actually happened, and that’s all I’m gonna tell you.” —Junot Díaz, 2008 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction), Sword of My Mouth moves the focus from Chicago, under siege by angels with machine guns, to the urban prairie of Detroit, where a different kind of struggle is faced. Folks in the D have banded together to turn land with burned out crackhouses into farming tracts, and seem to be on a road to self-sufficiency… until Famine rides into town. This six-issue story arc will be written by creator Jim Munroe (“a pop culture provocateur” — Austin Chronicle) and drawn by Shannon Gerard.

B&W · 32 pages · $3.99
Diamond Previews code: MAR09 4308

Therefore Repent!

What if the religious right… are actually right?

Without warning, multitudes of Christians float bodily up into the sky.

For the immoral majority, life goes on pretty much as usual.

Except that after the Rapture, magic works — for those willing to risk demonic mutations.

And an angelic army appears to have been deployed to mop up the sinners.

But through it all, outsiders Raven and Mummy face the possibility of a bigger problem than the end of the world: the end of their relationship.

Praise for Therefore Repent!

“Therefore Repent! is great. Loved the conflict between the old and new religions, plus it’s got Jesus and mutants.” — Joe Meno, author of Hairstyles of the Damned

“Therefore Repent! is impressive, layered, and in places surprisingly funny. I didn’t think it would be my sort of thing, but I enjoyed it.” —Jim Ottaviani, author of FALLOUT: J. Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, and the Political Science of the Atomic Bomb

“Now, just dealing with the Rapture might be enough of a hook, but Jim and Salgood do a great job of characterization from the very beginning. The two protagonists are so interesting that I had to keep turning page after page to see what and who they were. And yes, Salgood can draw like nobody’s business… I give this book two thumbs up.” —Chris Pitzer, AdHouse Books

“The tale’s offbeat anarchy and peculiar, parodic charms will win you over. It’s like one of those church pamphlets about salvation gone terribly, terribly wrong.” —John Burns, The Georgia Straight

“Therefore Repent! is an absolutely boundless piece of fantasy that he wisely grounds in very human relationships… to say it’s an imaginative work would be an understatement: ‘unhinged’ is probably more accurate. I can’t wait for more.”— Robert J. Wierseman, Quill & Quire

“The art is extraordinarily fluid and the storyline ingenious and sharply intelligent.” —Jeff VanderMeer, Realms of Fantasy

“It’s completely nuts… It’s a book about what if the Rapture actually happened, and that’s all I’m gonna tell you.” —Junot Díaz, 2008 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction

Joe Shuster Award Nominee for Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Writer 2008

Starring Emma Goldman and Mikhail Bakunin, it’s a totally weird animal: part how-to, part polemic, part coming-of-age story, part interview, and Marc’s matched it with his whacked-out imagery and trippy colouring. I’m really excited to see what people think when we launch it next month. Check out more info and the cover after the jump.

In a timeshifted Toronto, political firebrand Emma Goldman is paying the rent as a graphic designer… just a few cubicles down from like-minded radical Mikhail Bakunin.

The tension is mounting…

We just had our first prototype set of sessions, with four of us meeting once a week for four weeks, and I kept notes. Using point-and-click game creation tools we made games and game elements for the sessions and invited feedback and discussion from the other members. It’s based on the writer’s-circle model that I’ve also used for movie making, but I wasn’t sure it’d work for games — but when the other members were playing and talking about my game Space Invader I was getting feedback as useful as I did with those other groups.

There’s going to be another iteration, so whether you’re a Toronto artist looking to get into the next group in January or an interested party who would like to get involved in some other way (Metanet and Queasy sponsorship are what made starting this possible), read more about it here.

While it’s fresh, I figure now’s a good time to compile some of the things it’s taught me.

10. Dependency can be a good thing. None of this would have happened if I’d learned how to drive. I can be indie to a fault, and if it wasn’t for having to team up with a driver I wouldn’t have discovered that it’s way more fun — and more practical — to tour with a group. It was on tour with Joe Meno and Todd Dills that the power of mutual aid and the potential for the Roadshow started to coalesce.


9. Variety is the spice of life. A mix of genders, nationalities and mediums kept the variety show feeling alive and gave everyone their little patch of territory. On first glance, it may have seemed to make sense promotionally to have a full show consisting of Vancouver political poets — but before long you’d have the lyrical Marxist screaming at the poststructuralist Libertarian at the side of the road (see: narcissism of small differences). On a more practical level, the Vancouver show would be packed, but the San Francisco show would be empty.

8. A tour is a conference on wheels. As varied as we tried to make it, the group of people more often than not had a lot in common: they were indie artists focused enough to take their show on the road by getting in a car with two relative strangers. Just by virtue of being in a car for a week solid, they shared experiences and ideas and many ended up collaborating after the tour was over.

7. Three is the magic number. Two is too few: people can easily start to grate on each other. Four is too many: the car is too crowded for such a long haul, and with that amount of people things devolve into herd mentality with everyone assuming someone else is doing the stuff that needs to be done. With three, there’s camaraderie possibilities without it being stifling. The musketeers knew what they were doing.

6. Different strokes for different folks. I found it stressful to be the local agent (the person in each city who promotes the shows and handles crashspace) for more than three months — but some people didn’t. Faith and Brad were Cincinnati and San Jose agents for the entire four years. So many coordinators got burnt out after three months that I thought I had made coordination too customized to my skill set, but then Jeff Cottrill came along and rocked it for a year. There’s a person for every job, so don’t assume they’re impacted in the same way you are.

5. There is a spectrum of flakiness. A lot of great artists and performers are severely organizationally-challenged, so it’s a case of managing this. While I was sympathetic, I also had a responsibility to other people involved — if they pulled out at the last minute it increased the cost for the other tour members… if they cancelled the tour as a result then the volunteers time had been wasted. To avoid this I…

4. Set up milestones. By breaking up the large tasks into smaller ones you are giving people a structure — and if they cannot send a 100 word bio in on time they are not going to be able to do the other things they need to do to be on tour for a week. Extending deadlines does not do anyone any favours, I discovered: when I did, something else would go wrong, and left the coordinator with less time to, say, find another person to go on tour. It helps to have a third-party “heavy” (real or imagined) who is setting the deadlines: it makes people take them more seriously.

3. Martyrdom sucks. I’ve always hated the way that guilt and pressure tactics creep into activist projects, so I resolved to never resort to them. I approached suitable people about ways they could get involved, but never sent out the typical “THE PROJECT WILL DIE WITHOUT YOUR HELP!” email. My ego would like it to continue into eternity and consume the world with sold-out stadiums, naturally, but my heart knows that it will (and already has) spawned projects and a model that will continue to inspire people.

2. Managing stress gets easier. It’s all about caring enough to get the job done, but not caring so much you lie awake nights hoping they get to Chicago in time and have a fun tour and don’t hate you for putting them with so-and-so… My stress managing muscles were considerably larger at the end of the project compared to the beginning. Heck, it’s let me be able to produce a movie with seven directors and a cast/crew of 50 without breaking a sweat.

1. Volunteer power is like solar power. We were able to run the Roadshow without any regular funding while people’s enthusiasm was shining bright, but it’s a tricky business to keep going when the sun’s set. I knew this would be the case from the beginning, hence the romantic doom of naming it after the perpetual motion machine — but I do feel it’s important to experiment with different forms of cultural energy just as it’s important to keep working on alternate forms of fuel.

In the end, some ideas worked, and some didn’t. Didn’t work: Despite each show passing out handbills for the following show, and an email list reminder, it felt like the Roadshow never had a regular audience. Whether that was because it happened too often, or the performances were too eclectic, I’m not sure. And while media was good at the beginning, it tapered off after the first year or two after the project was a known quantity.

Did work: Making the shows pay-what-you-can (rather than free, which is how they started) meant that the performers could pay for gas by passing the hat. Having the performers call in their Pay Phone Tour Diary every day meant that the coordinator had a sense of what was going right and wrong and could adjust accordingly — and had an emotional connection to the project that made it worthwhile. (And now we have a archive of past roadshow stories as well!)

Thanks to everyone who had the moxy to take part, and especially those who participated after their tours as local agents and especially especially to Sean Carswell, Liisa Ladouceur, Megan Butcher and Jeff Cottrill, who took a spin at the coordination of the Roadshow. The artists who donated their designs (Marc Ngui did 2003′s template, Matt Blackett did 2004, Kent Matheson did 2005, and Stef Lenk did 2006) made us look sharp — and made making the handbills month after month much less of a grind. Thanks also to the sole funders: The Belle Foundation sent us a $1000 cheque out of the blue, Harbourfront also gave us $1000 for putting on a show, and Coach House Books contributed $200.

Add your perspective on what worked and what didn’t with the Roadshow in the comments below, whether you were a crewmember or a audience member. If you’re considering a similar project, you might like to check out the guidebooks I wrote for the coordinator (the “Driver” guidebook) or the local promoters in each city (the “Agent” guidebook) — or ask a question in the comments below.

Case in point, a nominee in last year’s Expozine competition The Hero Book by Scott Waters.

Scott’s a pal, and the book is great, but he’s a curmudgeon. Not likely to tour, or do readings, or talk to people, he’s not exactly a media magnet. But awards like the Expozine Award give a context in which to talk about him. Or, in this case, interview him.

The Hero Book consists of short pieces of writing and paintings inspired by your three years in the army. Of the many sordid stories you tell, what ones do people find most fascinating? Are they the ones you also find fascinating?

I guess often enough the more excessive stories are so normalized for me that I forget that they have the ability to shock. For example, I know peeing on each other while drunk in the shower, singing along to The Little Mermaid soundtrack, is perhaps sordid, but I mostly think fondly of events like that.

Often I am more drawn to the simpler moments (running across snowy expanses of prairie with a bar of soap rattling in my rucksack) because they have personal resonance. But at the same time the shift back and forth between sordid and simple is important to make rattling soap resonant.

There is a book for me and a book for the reader; shock and debasement for the reader, quiet contemplation and anthropological cataloguing for me. Switching is allowed and encouraged though.

You like the word homosocial. Why? Is it because it sounds like another word?

You mean “antisocial”?

Oh, the other word. Actually, The use of the word originated because I was researching military and social theory for The Hero Book (originally part of my MFA thesis). When searching on Google, the word “homoerotic” often returned only porn info.

I explained my problem to Toronto visual artist Stephen Andrews and he suggested searching using “homosocial.” It returned a goldmine of info.

Also, though, homosocial suggests a relationship which is not based on sexuality but rather a very close fraternity.

Painter and soldier are hard to reconcile. How much of this project was about projecting an image or conception of yourself into the world that is complete?

Painter and soldier are only hard to reconcile if you are one or the other, or neither. Unfortunately, that is most people.

For myself, I have always envisioned that a (perhaps unachievable) goal of both professions is to contribute to society. Obviously the two groups often use wildly different means to do so but proponents of both professions talk of similar well-meaning possibilities.

I have always taken comfort in both group’s semi-outsider status, that they are often misunderstood and lumped as stereotypes.

The other week I found an illustrated book of a Special Forces unarmed combat techniques in a used bookstore. When the teller rang the purchase through, she asked me if I was a soldier or an artist.

She was joking but at the same time I suppose her thought was, who else would want a book like that?

Conversely, when this question is asked I recognize that one of the ideas I hope the project shows is that you can fundamentally reconstruct yourself given enough time, effort and consideration – that we are all redeemable.

It seems to me that you are less defending the military and more defending your admittedly conflicted fascination with it. True or mostly true?

Part of me is loath to defend the military because it was for me and my friends a pretty demoralizing place. The fool in me, however, still has some pretty antiquated romantic views about the potential role of the military.

That for me is the fulcrum, I hated it – and I mean really hated it – but now, after all these years I feel its pull and still want to believe, even though I know better.

You are, magically, suddenly in charge of the Canadian Armed Forces. The #1 General, or whatever. What do you change, if anything?

Back in the day, on holidays such as Christmas we would have the appropriate meals at the mess. We would go over for dinner and turkey would be on the menu. When we started chewing however, we realized that what we had been served was mock turkey.

The reason was that all of the food came through the Navy base and then was allocated to the infantry. Accordingly, the sailors would get the actual turkey (and all the best desserts) and we would get turkey substitute. That always rankled.

I would say that while there is still a long way to go – the pay is still too low and there is never enough equipment – things are getting better, at least on the Army side of things. Given the emphasis on the Afghan mission (and not on naval patrols) I suspect I know who is now getting the mock turkey.

Now that the book is published and the project has some sort of conclusion, do you worry that you have used up this defining thing you had to say?

I remember reading how Anthony Swofford, after finishing writing Jarhead, started working on military fiction, I thought how sad it was that he needed to cling to the thing that he claimed to revile so much. But that’s the big question… now what? I really worry about being that guy, the sad clinger-on.

Having said that, the current project I am working on is based on my recent participation as an official artist for the military. For the project I was attached to an infantry company as they trained to deploy to Afghanistan.

At first I planned to simply continue investigations into how fraternity is constructed in the infantry. Now, however, what I am really excited about is considering how it was being back with the military – in admittedly limited capacity – after all these years, how I was treated as a civilian but also as an ex-infantry soldier.

All the hate I had for my service years has inevitably faded but I still remember the hate. Keeping that kernel of knowledge alive, I have to admit that it is too easy for me to get wrapped up in the romantic mythologies, in the metal, the explosions and the fraternity.

What this official project allows me to do is address these same issues, this complicated fascination, but from another side.

Instead of a critique which acknowledges lingering desire, I’m considering how the military romantic in me reconciles those fundamentally negative experiences I had as a soldier.

He didn’t win the Expozine prize (Shannon Gerard did) but Scott points out another benefit of the Expozine nomination was that David Widgington from Cumulus Press read his self-published edition and consequently published it more widely. This year’s Expozine prize gala happens this Wed., Mar. 7, in Montreal. UPDATE: The excellent Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki took best English comic this year. Congrats!

In the tradition of The Book of Revelation, it’s a pretty wild dark fantasy tale filled with demons and swords and blood. I’ve always been a fan of the kookier parts of the bible, being able to understand that it’s a story rich with symbolism rather than literal truth. But kind of like the people who learn Klingon and quote Kirk in episode 22, Christian fundamentalists take the bible way too seriously and ruin it for the rest of us. The difference is, instead of gathering harmlessly at Star Trek conventions, the fundies have taken over the White House and are trying to control people’s lives.

Update: You can order it here or find out more over here!

I’ve always been involved with a number of projects, giving people feedback and suggestions, but I’ve decided to formalize it a bit and open it up to people beyond my immediate circle through something I’m calling No Media Kings Services. Hang a shingle outside my virtual door, as it were, that reads CONSULTANT. If you’re so inclined, check out what I’ve done for the clients I’ve worked with so far and the webhosting and site design services I’m also offering.

This issue of Exclaim also has a review of my Novel Amusements, where Liz Clayton describes it as an “artsy, accessible treasure trove.” I thought it was cool that the subheading for the review section identified it as a DVD zine as matter-of-factly as it identified “Book” and “Videogame”. And DVDzines are, happily, appearing here and there. Electrical Tape does offbeat and engaging interviews with Toronto indie bands–my favourite piece was a day in the life of the faux-Francais Ratsicule. Lev also sent me his DVDzine Tales of Mere Existence II, who imbues his lo-fi cartoons with deadpan humour and bittersweet personality.