This month flew by in a flash. Wow! I finally got to swim in the ocean, that was lovely. I got out of the city for a weekend! My softball season finished up for the year and I do not want to talk about my late-season hitting slump. I of course do want to talk about how I think I really developed a pretty good glove at third base. That’s obviously the important thing. Oh, it’s weird that you mention that this month’s newsletter is a couple days early? Well, that’s probably because
SIMPLICITY IS OUT TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!
IT’S FINALLY HERE! I finished this book a while ago, and I’ve been so anxious for it to be finally out and the day is here!! I really cannot describe to you how proud I am of this book, now with some distance I can truly say that.
“Mattie,” you are saying. “I don’t believe you. I hate you!” It’s weird that you’re subscribed to my newsletter, but I like to meet people where they’re at. Would you instead listen to Patricia Lockwood who said about it: “My favorite thing I read all year.”? Or perhaps Gretchen Felker-Martin who said: “A story to put fire in your belly and strength in your arms. Lubchansky combines a thrilling dystopian story with razor-sharp satire and heartbreaking clarity of vision. The best graphic novel I’d read in years.” No? Not enough GENIUSES praising it for you? Isaac Fellman says: “Mattie Lubchansky’s work is essential—a horny, Boschian vision of paranoia and deliverance. There is more comedy and emotion in their characters’ black punctuation-mark pupils than most cartoonists can put in a whole face. In Simplicity, they tackle extremes of bravery and cowardice, of closed-mindedness and freedom, of gender liberation, that Ursula Le Guin should have lived to see. It is a book to savor and ponder and live with until you’ve finally forgotten enough to read it again.”
The other thing is that starting TONIGHT in Queens, I am on BOOK TOUR for the next couple weeks! I would love to see you out there.
JULY 29: QUEENS | Astoria Bookshop (offsite) with Tuck Woodstock | tickets
JULY 31: BROOKLYN | Books Are Magic Montague with Grace Byron | tickets
AUG 2: PROVIDENCE | Riffraff Books with Beatrix Urkowitz and Leela Corman
AUG 3: BOSTON | Brookline Booksmith with Gretchen Felker-Martin | RSVP
AUG 4: Boston Comic Arts Foundation Picture & Panel Series @ Boston Figurative Art Center with Denali Sai Nalamalapu | register
AUG 5: MINNEAPOLIS | Magers & Quinn Booksellers with Blue Delliquanti | RSVP
AUG 6: CHICAGO | Women & Children First with Bianca Xunise | RSVP
AUG 7: PHILLY | Partners & Sons with Sadie Dupuis
AUG 20: MANHATTAN | PT Knitwear with Isaac Fellman & Calvin Kasulke | tickets
Frog and Peach Report
Recommendation Corner
Here’s the thing. My good pal Rax King’s new book, Sloppy, is also out today! I’ve been reading it the last week or so and it’s so good and it’s very much worth your time and attention! Hopefully now that our books are out we can stop texting each other “lying down in the road rn waiting for a car to pop my head like a grape” and get back to the important work of developing our new character, the guy from the Gatorade commercials where he says “naturally we called out stuff Gator-ade” but he’s a gay guy living in the 1800s.
July Comics, from my Patreon
And don’t forget of course my damn PODCASTS!
No Gods No Mayors is on a roll. TWO listeners have written country songs about city hall falling down. Will the third be you?
Temporal Culture War is now into spring 2002 and American culture is becoming truly rotten.
Odds and Ends
Resumed my duties as Eric Adams Correspondent at Trashfuture Industries.
Had a nice virtual lunch with JD at Esc Key!
Was on the first-ever episode of Alex Sujong-Laughlin’s new podcast, Try Hard!