Jam Days
Comics folk who are older than 14, you need to step up your game. Emma is coming to steal your job! Well, not really, as there’s more than enough room for all kinds of people to make comics. However, she is 14, and gets 100 points (if I awarded points) for presentation alone. This comic came (along with another comic that I’ll get to in a week or so) in a blue folder, with a few pages of praise from critics and a long letter telling me all about the comics. There was also a greeting card, as she apparently does that on the side, and the whole package really made me take note. Not that you comics folk who just send a comic along with no note are jerks, as I do get the general idea when I get comics like that in the mail. One tip for Emma: if you want to make sure your comic gets to somebody without it getting all bent up, put a small piece of stiff cardboard in with the book. It doesn’t weigh much and the postal workers won’t have a chance to really bend it no matter how hard they try. And believe me, some of them will try. Some of them seem to take the “please do not bend” notice on packages as a challenge. So how about the comic? Well, I loved the fact that the inside front cover was a backwards version of the front cover, even though it had nothing to do with the story. She also mentions that she won the gold medal for comics in the Alliance for Young Writers and Artists, and I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that such a thing exists. Anyway, Emma finds out that there’s no jam in the house so she decides to go out and get berries to make her own. The trouble is that they’re all high up on trees, and one of the trees is near a house, so there’s significant trouble getting the berries down in one piece. It’s full color and she’s already using pretty inventive comics panels, as her breaking down her effort to get one troublesome berry into nine panels worked perfectly. Technically it’s pretty impressive, and it sure looks like the (comics) sky is the limit for her, assuming she keeps at it. Having Dan Archer as a mentor doesn’t hurt even a little bit either. $3, and looking at the website it looks like you can get this in different sizes if you’d like.
