One Time Around

 A video. Feel free to share it.

Circle the Earth

 Hello my friends. I’ve started a new project, which is both a book and a real-time adventure. I’ve been posting about it across social media but, as always, I seem to be neglecting my own website. No more!

In about ten days I will be setting out from my kitchen door, with just a knapsack and a sketch kit, on a quest to circumnavigate the planet Earth using (to every extent possible) only surface transportation. This means no flying! (Though I know I will have to break that rule in at least one instance). 

I will also be making and sharing art and comics all along the way. 

You can read MUCH more about this project in the Patreon post HERE:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/something-new-3-100871431

And Patreon is where I’ll be posting most of the content. You can sign up as a free member! But if you want to help me bring what I hope will be a beautiful book into the world then by all means sign up for the $3 tier. 

Here are a few photos of the pre-departure comics from the book I’ll be drawing in along the way:

See you out there in the wild,

—Ben

Pilgrimage

 

More about this over on my Patreon...

More Praise for Used Books

Tony has been reading a lot of Terry Pratchett, and so when he suggested that I would particularly enjoy Small Gods of course I picked up a copy. Because Tony knows. 

I looked at Blue Plate Books first, but their Pratchett selection was startlingly lean. So I moved on to Thriftbooks.com and only a few days later a little green package showed up in my PO box. It gave me that special PO Box thrill. I'm always thrilled when things show up in my PO box, even if they are things that I specifically ordered in a state of absolute sobriety.  

See, the thing I love about buying used books is that sometimes you get *extra stories*. Not always, but sometimes. Every so often a pre-owned book offers you such a tantalizing snippet from another person's life that you're taken off guard. It’s the wonder of a sudden intimate look into lives that will never, ever intersect with yours. The world gets a little bigger and a little smaller at the same time.

Here’s the inscription I found on the title page of my copy of Small Gods:

I will always wonder about Jason. And about Jason. And about sweet Tasha (that intelligent, zany nut). Did Jason-2 and Tasha stay together? Was Jason-Prime a previous boyfriend? Is that what it means to be elite? To have dated Tasha? Where are they now?

I'll almost certainly never know. But I like to imagine that all four of us (Jason, Jason, Tasha, and me) all share a love for Terry Pratchett. Just like Tony. 

<slaps knee repetitively>

Best of luck and lots of love,

--Ben

One Kind of Adventure

 I've been reading Patrick Leigh Fermor's Constantinople journey books, A Time of Gifts and (currently) Between the Woods and the Water. The prose is drippingly rich and evocative—best savored in small bites over morning coffee (before the house wakes). The books synthesize the heedless adventure of youth and the zest of maturity. And, in a few miraculous instances, they really give you a glimpse of the vanished world of prewar Europe. 

So now I'm stepping further in.

update: ha ha, they're everywhere: 

THE LURKER

Part of my weekly routine, now that things are opening up a bit, includes a run up to Winchester to drop off my daughters for a ballet class. This usually leaves me with one odd hour to spend in whatever way I like.

A whole hour to spend however I like! Sometimes I can hardly believe it.

Most weeks, unless the day is just too glorious to pass indoors,* I visit my favorite used book store: Blue Plate Books. It’s only about a mile from the ballet studio. They know me now. I always get a cheerful hello and a smile when I walk in.

The shop is not much to look at from the outside (it’s next-door to a barber shop and the front window looks out onto a Wendy’s drive-through), but inside you find a very beautifully curated space. It’s like the interior of a treasure chest except all the gold and gemstones have been replaced by books and comfortable chairs. It’s a hidden gem, is what I’m saying.

There’s a lot of talk about books being portals to adventure—little rectangular hatches that let you escape from the mundane world into something more exciting. But what I relish from a good bookshop is a feeling of safety. Soft music plays as you sag into an armchair in a cocoon of outward-facing spines adorned with all the familiar names: Woolfe and Wilde; Dumas and Montaigne; Byatt, Doyle, King, and Gaiman—these never-met friends whose voices are so familiar. Shelves are arranged to create hidden nooks. Spinner racks playfully display the lurid, strange, and sensual covers of vintage mysteries, tales of terror, and strange new worlds. And the atmosphere is all be-cloaked in the fragrance old old paper.

(That smell. It’s the smell of being four—toddling among the shadowy shelves in the old Wells Library in Lafayette, when quotes from J.M. Barrie could still be seen cut into the stone hearth in the children’s room, while my mom filled her old canvas bag with a new week’s reading. It’s the smell of being seven, sitting on the worn carpet of the tiny Saint Mary’s library and listening to Sister Rose Maureen read Charlottes Web. It’s the smell of being eleven and riding my bike to Blue Moon Books to hunt through the stacks of old comics for missing issues of Elfquest. It’s the smell of Story.)

It’s no surprise, given my chosen life and work, that haunting bookstores is one of my favorite things. Not all bookstores are the same, of course. Finding a good one is like finding a friend. You don’t let go.

*On those fine days I wander Winchester’s gorgeous old cemetery, dreaming up the stories of the dead, or stroll down the Old Town walking mall, catching snatches of the stories of the living.

OF MIGHTY CABBAGES AND GOBLIN KINGS

Hello friends!

As you may know, my most recent book, Mighty Jack and the Goblin King, was released earlier this month. Once again I'm going on a short journey, crisscrossing North America to meet readers and sign books. This time, at most of the events, I will be "in conversation" with another author/artist. This will almost without a doubt make these evening bookstore events much, much more lively and interesting.

I've made a graphical poster image for the tour (posted below) with most of the pertinent information. Underneath that I will post links to the various venues.

I really would love to meet as many of you as possible. Tossing stories out into the wide world is great, but meeting readers in person is a particular and powerful magic.

And so, without further preamble, I give you:

Green Bean Books

University Bookstore

Once Upon a Time

The King's English

Red Balloon

The Eric Carle Museum

Toronto Public Library

McNally Robinson

Spirit of Spring

Hello friends! Just a quick note to tell you all that, despite five months without posting, this blog has not ended. It's been hard to keep up with though, for sure, and it definitely needs an update. Most of my creative side projects and daily updates are ending up on other social media these days (Instagram mer-folk anyone?), but this is still the best place for book announcements, tour announcements and roundups of my work.

And speaking of book announcements I should remind everyone that my next book, Mighty Jack and the Goblin King, will be out on September 5th! There is a very exciting tour shaping up around this book, which looks to have me traveling far and wide in late September, so stay tuned for more on that.

In the meantime, I'll try to stop neglecting this poor little blog.

-Ben

Double Day: Mighty Jack and Missy PW

Well today kind of snuck up on me. It's the official release day for my new book, MIGHTY JACK. Here's what you need to know about MIGHTY JACK:

1. It's a graphic novel! (Or whatever we call comic books these days). It's a modern kinda-sorta retelling of the Jack and the Beanstalk story featuring a boy named Jack, his little sister Maddy, and a wild homeschooled girl from down the road named Lilly. The three kids plant a whole gardens worth of strange seeds from a local flea market, and the plants that rise up from the seeds are clearly not from this world. Adventures ensue.

2. It's only the first part of a two-book story! I feel it's very important to warn you, my readers, that this book ends on a bit of a cliffhanger. Or, at least, it ends on an unresolved dramatic moment. which is, okay, the same thing as a cliffhanger. The second book (which is almost finished!) will be out next year at this time.

3. I had colorist for this book! The beautiful colors in this book were accomplished by Alex Campbell and Hilary Sycamore. They did a beautiful job.

4. You can get this book in bookstores and all over the Internet! Here are a few links: Indigo, Barnes&Noble, Amazon.

5. I will be doing a 10-day tour for this book covering much of the South and the Midwest. I will post more about that soon.

6. Here's a short video of me flipping through the book (the song in the background is Little Boxes, performed by my sister Annie):

Untitled from Ben Hatke on Vimeo.

Is that all the news? NO THAT IS NOT ALL THE NEWS.

As it turns out there is a SECOND BOOK that I was involved in which is also releasing today. That book is Missy Piggle-Wiggle, by Ann M. Martin. It Continues the stories of the original Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series, but instead follows the exploits of Mrs. P-W's young niece, Missy. The book has illustrations by me. They were very fun to create. And Like Mighty Jack you can find it in stores and online.

Is that all the news? YES FOR TODAY THAT IS ALL THE NEWS, BUT THERE IS MORE COMING.

The Ball and the Cross (or: GKC and Me)

There is a new edition of G.K. Chesterton's crazy odd-couple fantasy novel The Ball and the Cross, illustrated by me! It looks like this:

You can find the book online here.

In a 2004 speech, Neil Gaiman gives a wonderful account of his first discoveries, when he was still quite young, of the works of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and G.K. Chesterton. Of Chesterton he says:

I was always aware, reading Chesterton, that there was someone writing this who rejoiced in words, who deployed them on the page as an artist deploys his paints upon his palette. Behind every Chesterton sentence there was someone painting with words, and it seemed to me that at the end of any particularly good sentence or any perfectly-put paradox, you could hear the author, somewhere behind the scenes, giggling with delight.

I didn't discover G.K. Chesterton, his wit and his works and his larger-than-life figure, until I was in college, but I had much the same reaction as Gaiman. Probably because, as Gaiman points out, Chesterton is an artist's writer.

I found my first Chesterton novel in the quiet basement of the college library. The book was The Man Who Was Thursday and I didn't even take it to a table; I just sat there on the floor in the aisle and read this weird nightmare story about anarchists and spies. I returned to the same spot over the course of a couple days to finish the book. I was hooked.

And so last year when my friends over at Chesterton Press approached me about drawing a set of illustrations for The Ball and the Cross, well, I wasn't too hard to convince. The book, thanks in no small part to the wonderful friendship that develops between the two main characters, remains my favorite of Chesterton's novels.

In fact, I already had character designs, dating back to 2006, for the two leads (the humorless Catholic-born Evan MacIan and the scrappy, lovable atheist Turnbull). At that time I had briefly held the opinion that this book would make a good graphic novel. I was wrong about that. But as a novel-with-pictures I think it works!

The book also features a fair number of sword fights, and a lot of fat Victorian police running around with helmets and billy clubs. Both of those things are fun to draw.

So without further preamble, here's a look at a few of my favorite interior illustrations from this edition of The Ball and the Cross:

Oh and did I mention there's a flying ship?

And as I said at the top of the post, you can find the book here:
http://www.chestertonpress.com/new-the-ball-and-the-cross-illustrated-by-ben-hatke/

Finally, here's a goofy picture of me dancing with Chesterton (it's a cover illustration for an upcoming issue of Gilbert Magazine):

Home Stretching It (or "How I Spent My Summer Vacation")

I am, right now, on the home stretch of my current graphic novel project. Today and tomorrow I will be drawing and inking the last few pages of Little Robot. After that comes scanning, some editing, and a whole lot of coloring. Not to mention the cover illustration and some watercolor decorations.

So there's still a hefty amount of work to do, but the end is in sight and that's a good feeling.

Unfortunately, all this intense work has caused me to fall behind in the ol' blogging and that's a shame because I'm building up a hefty backlog of posts. I've got book news! Journal comics! More D&D art! Green Turtle fan art! Reflections on the studio of my dreams!

So stay tuned. Little Robot will soon be Morping and Jonking his way to the publisher and I'll be posting more stuff around here.

Excelsior?

The Return of Zita the Spacegirl: Publication Day

This is it! Today is the publication day of The Return of Zita the Spacegirl!

I'm celebrating by being home from Toronto and spending a restful day with my favorite people in all the world. It's a brief pause in my hectic rambles.

The Toronto Comics Art Festival (TCAF) was fantastic. People have been encouraging me to attend the event for years and it definitely lived up to the hype. Lots of great art and friendly artists and little comics gems on every table. But the best part of all, for me, was the friends.

You see, something changed for me at TCAF.

While some of my friends have been selling mini comics at conventions since they were in high school, my journey into comics began on the internet, posting webcomics and sharing advice and critiques on the old Flight message boards. I wasn't going to many conventions. So, for a long time, my comics friends were online friends.

When Zita the Spacegirl was first published in 2010-11, all that began to change. I started going to more conventions and book festivals and library events. And bit by bit my online friends have become my in-the-flesh friends.

And so, on Sunday evening after the show, I arrived back a the hotel lobby to meet what I thought was going to be a smallish group for dinner. What I found instead was a largish group of old friends, and a few new faces, all laughing and talking (and maybe waiting for me because I was late). These were people I had shared dinners and high fives with in a dozen cities. It was like a reunion.

And I thought, hey, I'm not the new guy anymore.

---
Okay enough sap. Here are some pictures (mostly swiped from twitter):

The floor of the Toronto Public Library, crowded with comics (and people):

A live reading with the help of some fans during a joint presentation with my friend Dave Roman.

A young fan:

Poutine during and interview!

Whew! and that's all for now. Hopefully I'll be able to check in again soon.

Jolly Raffle Giveaway Contest: The Return of Zita the Spacegirl!

It is that time again, my friends!


Longtime readers of this blog will remember that in 2010 and again in 2012 I raffled off advanced copies of Zita and Legends of Zita respectively. Now we’re going to do it a third time and that makes it a TRADITION.

So here we go:

The LUCKY AND SUPER COOL FIRST PLACE WINER will receive a hardcover copy of The Return of Zita the Spacegirl, signed, and with a little original watercolor lovingly tucked into the front cover.

Our SUAVE SECOND PLACE WINNER will find in their mailbox a paperback copy of The Return of Zita the Spacegirl along with a small ink sketch or piece of concept art.

To enter, all you need to do is leave a comment in the comments section of this post. BUT BE SURE TO LEAVE YOUR NAME, or some name that I can announce. “Anonymous” can’t win. Unless your legal name is Anonymous (in which case please explain that in the comment).

HERE’S HOW YOU INCREASE YOUR CHANCES (and where I trick you into helping me spread the word about this book): Mentioning the book, linking to benhatke.com, or otherwise spreading the word via social media (twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Amazon, Google+, blogs, tumblers or any of the other myriad of options) is worth TWO EXTRA ENTRIES. (three is the maximum). Feel free to tag me on twitter (@BenHatke) but also let me know in the comments so I can keep it all straight.

The contest closes ONE WEEK FROM TODAY. The entries will go into a randomizer and soon after I will post the name of the winners!

Okay? Then...

READY... GO!!

-Ben

PS: If you still need some motivation, here is the Zita 3 trailer again:

My House and Julia's House

This weekend I slipped outside with my notebook and made a little drawing of my house. Here's a photo of the drawing, followed by a scan with a few small corrections made in photoshop (you can get larger versions of both by clicking):

Working on this little sketch reminded me how fun it can be to just go outside and draw the place where you live. It's easy to forget about outside drawing when you've been hibernating, and here on this suddenly snowy Saint Patrick's Day it's a little hard to believe that I was sitting in a sunny field with my sketchbook just the other day.

And to continue this house-themed post: I noticed recently that Julia's House for Lost Creatures is now available for pre-order on Amazon. Here's another look at the cover of the book (it showed up on Geek Dad back in January, but I don't think I've yet posted it here):

(You can compare it with my original cover sketch).

Finally, since winter seems particularly reluctant to leave us in peace this year, I have for you a little desktop wallpaper made by my friend Niall, combining my peacock-in-a-scarf with an appropriate Steinbeck quote (click for the large version):

Oh! and for those of you who like Goodreads, I've added links to my books on the sidebar. Goodreads is great for reviews and recommendations and has links to different online purchase options. Not just Amazon.

Snowy Travels, New York and Angoulême

Time to answer a reader question:

–––
Blogger Clare says...
What happened to Mr. Hatke?
–––

Well, Clare, it's been a busy couple of weeks since my last blog entry. I've finished a set of illustrations for an edition of G.K. Chesterton's The Ball and the Cross (still, I think, my favorite of his crazy novels), and I've been hard at work on my next, Not-Yet-Announced graphic novel (it's very exciting and I'll be able to talk about it soon, I promise!). I've also spent a lot of time working with my friends at Mirandum Pictures on the book trailer for Zita 3. Book trailers are a funny phenomenon... But this one came out wonderfully,thanks some very talented people, and it will be online very soon.

Last week I made a trip up to New York for an actual in-person meeting with my publishers, the good people at Macmillan. The snow storm turned a one-day trip into a magical two-day adventure. There was a moment after sundown when I was walking down the snowy, take-your-breath-away cold streets of Brooklyn toward a friends apartment when I stopped to push a car out of a snowbank. And as the car crawled away on the unplowed street, I walked on, thinking about how how weather brings people together.

Oh, and this arrived yesterday! It's a really real thing now:

And finally here I sit, surrounded by half-packed bags as I get ready to go to Angoulême. I've been studying French furiously and, I'm afraid, to very little effect. Quelle tristesse!

So if France and beautiful comics are your thing, stay tuned for my Angoulême report! There will be pictures. Oh, there will be pictures...

The Return of Zita the Spacegirl: It's a Real Thing.

Hey everybody. As promised, the cover of Zita 3, along with an 8 PAGE PREVIEW is up over at Boing Boing! Follow this link, or click on the image below to take a look.

There's no cover on the amazon page yet, but pre-orders ARE open...

Lovely French Book Design

I promise not to post about every foreign edition of Zita the Spacegirl, but I just had to share a few pictures from the French edition, to be published by Rue de Sévres, that arrived in the mail today. I have to say, with the flaps and the title art and other little touches ...it's the best edition of the book I've seen.

Here are some pictures:

Also, you may have noticed a few changes around here. I've moved the blog onto my main address at www.benhatke.com (thanks Bill!) and I've been working on the design a bit too, with links to my tumblr and other online haunts.

Finally, there's a growing gallery of Zita the Spacegirl costumes over on the ZSG Facebook page!