The Largest Collection of Scottish Comics...in New Mexico

At the Moniack Mhor National Writing Centre outside of Inverness.

I’ve just returned to my high desert home after teaching a short creative writing course in Scotland. I’m still adjusting to the heat, altitude, dryness, and time zone, and it’s good to be home, but I had a wonderful time there. I thought you might like to see my vacation pictures—don’t worry, they are mostly of all the wonderful comics I brought! Here are some of the trip highlights:

For starters, I bumped into the ever-wonderful Franky Frances Cannon when I had my students in Stirling to check out the castle. (Their writing prompt was to view the castle through one of the following lenses: a futurist, a vandal, an improv performer, or a child and write about it….) It is always such a surprise to see someone you know in another part of the world. We met up later to wander through the flowers and ferns of the Royal Botanical Garden in Edinburgh and talk collage at the Linder show there, “Linder: Danger Came Smiling.”

I was teaching at the Glasgow Zine Library (GZL) and the Scottish Storytelling Centre. The GZL is a great space that works hard to foster community through lots of creative programs and events—they were preparing for the annual zine fest while we were there. They have over 4,000 zines; you can browse some in the reading room or view the digitized ones in an online catalogue. (Some of the most recently added items appear to be from my students, which is fun to see.)

While in Glasgow, I stopped at Good Press bookstore and found these great zines published by Gaada in Shetland. In “Da Holmliwatters,” Julie Dennison uses ink, graphite, and loch water to explore her connection to place. It’s written in Scots and has this inventive fold-out map that is the shape of a house. “We Axe for What We Want” is a mix of writing, comics, and photographs about the Up Helly Aa fire festival in Lerwick—and the activism archive of Weemin’s Wark, detailing the struggle for women to have a recognized role in the festival.

At La Belle Adventure in Edinburgh, I found a wide selection of work by local creators as well, including a copy of “Intro to Charts” by Tom Humberstone and Chrissy Williams.

Onion Press is up to some interesting work—I love this series investigating the history of Inchkeith, a small island in the Firth of Forth, by Maria Stoian and Sarah Lippett.

I was also delighted to find this series by Julie Campbell, exploring her relationship with the natural world.

At the Mitchell Library, there was also a display of the “world’s first comic,” which appeared in the Glasgow Looking-Glass in 1825. Of course, it’s difficult to pinpoint a “first comic,” given that much of it depends on how you define a “comic.” Whereas some might reason that the first comic was Richard Outcault’s Yellow Kid (1895, because it had speech balloons) or Rodolphe Töpffer’s “Histoire de Mr. Vieux Bois” (1837), the scholar Laurence Grove points us to recognize the sequential story in “History of a Coat,” which begins with shearing sheep, follows the coat as a fashionable item, then torn in a fight, and eaten by swine (see excerpt below). Regardless of whether or not it is indeed the world’s first comics, the humor holds up on its 200th anniversary.

Well, I’m afraid I must get back to hydrating and drawing comics. I hope everyone else is having some fun travels this summer. Let us know if you come across any new comics by artists we should add to our summer reading!

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Also, this week, Graphic Medicine and the Sequential Artists Workshop are hosting a Graphic Medicine Summit. There’s a great line-up of readings and workshops with several of the artists we’ve interviewed before, including Glynnis Fawkes and Maureen Burdock. Looks like it will be an interesting and fun inaugural summit!