Tag Archive | Maia Kobabe

A Cupcake Zine and Maia Kobabe at Book Soup

Jul17

Last Sunday was the July zine workshop at the West Los Angeles Regional Library. Last month I mentioned I was working on a new zine that I hoped to reveal soon, and this month I finished it! A Cupcake ATM Misadventure tells the true story of what happened when I tried to use the cupcake ATM at USC at this year’s LA Times Festival of Books.

From the zine workshop, Isabelle and I took the bus to Book Soup, a bookstore on Sunset Blvd. Maia Kobabe and Samuel Sattin were there to talk about their recent comic books. They were joined by their respective collaborators, Phoebe Kobabe and Ian McGinty. Maia and Samuel met as members of the guinea pig cohort in California College of the Arts’ comics MFA program. Isabelle and I had discovered Maia’s zines at Comic Arts LA in December, and I was interested in eir debut book, the graphic memoir Gender Queer.

The event was pretty intimate, and the authors seemed to know a lot of the attendees. Maia and Samuel kind of interviewed each other, with Ian and Phoebe contributing their thoughts. They discussed the genesis of their books, the comic making life (taking care of your body is important too!), time management, themes (identity, climate change, anti-capitalism), and trusting that the time you’re investing in creating art rather than, say, registering voters is still worthwhile. (Or is it? Sometimes I wonder… Sarah McCarry’s diamond-sharp expression of a certain kind of hopelessness hit home this week.)

Afterward, I asked both Maia and Phoebe to sign my copy of Gender Queer, and I gave Maia a copy of my just completed A Cupcake ATM Misadventure. By the way, this zine, with all the others, is available to be printed under Other Writing.

Comic Arts LA

Dec26

The other weekend Isabelle and I went to Comic Arts LA, an annual festival featuring tons of graphic novelists, zinesters, and printmakers. It was held at an Armenian American community center in Glendale. We made the rounds of all the artists’ tables, flipping through zines and admiring artwork. In the middle, we took a break at the drawing wall.

CALA 1

That cute fuschia cat is Isabelle’s doing. I’m drawing a cat’s paw.

I ended up getting two zines by Maia Kobabe. Then I circled back to Aminder Dhaliwal‘s table because I’d decided I wanted a copy of her new graphic novel Woman World, set in a future with no men. It had occurred to me to worry that she might be sold out, and as we approached, I noticed that the only book I could still see was the display copy. Indeed, it was the last one left, and I got to buy it! She seemed very happy too and took a picture of me with the last copy, which she’d signed and dedicated to me.

My CALA comics

After leaving the festival, we walked to the nearby Forest Lawn cemetery, which is immense. Through the tall wrought iron gates and past the half-timber main building, there was a fork in the road and a huge sign, like a tablet of the Ten Commandments, indicating which way to the Little Church of the Flowers, the Wee Kirk o’ the Heather, and so on. We took the path toward the Little Church of the Flowers, but then we turned toward the mausoleum, which looks a bit like a castle. After getting a good look at it from multiple sides, we left the way we’d come, and unlike last time we didn’t get locked in the cemetery after closing.

The Forest Lawn mausoleum