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826LA event: COMICS!
 7:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
826LA East
1714 W. Sunset Blvd.
Echo Park, CA 90026
Tickets are $25.

Join 826LA for a panel discussion featuring some of the most groundbreaking and innovative cartoonists working today. Guests will discuss ink and pixels, pigments and politics, and how the love of comics mixes with the sticky waters of the business. Panelists will also answer your thought and question bubbles.

The panelists:

Lalo Alcaraz (pictured) is a Los Angeles-based cartoonist and creator of the first nationally syndicated Latino-themed political daily comic strip, La Cucaracha. Lalo drew editorial cartoons for the LA Weekly from 1992 to 2009. Lalo illustrated Latino USA: A Cartoon History (text by Ilan Stavans), and produced the books La Cucaracha (the first collection from his daily comic strip) and Migra Mouse, a collection of his editorial cartoons on immigration. He is also a screenwriter and a popular speaker on the college circuit. His award-winning artwork has appeared across the US and the planet. Lalo also hosts the popular radio program The Pocho Hour of Power Fridays at 4:00 p.m. on KPFK 90.7 FM.

Jaime Hernandez is the co-creator of the beloved Love and Rockets series, one of the pioneering alternative comics of the 1980s. Love and Rockets, initially a self-published single comic, was picked up by Fantagraphics Books and produced 50 issues before the s eries went dormant in 1996. In 2001, the run was revived as Love and Rockets Volume 2. In the interim, Jaime’s solo projects included Whoa, Nellie!, Penny Century, and Maggie and Hopey Color Fun. Jaime has also worked for The New Yorker, Spin, and Hustler, and has done album covers for Michelle Shocked, 7 Year Bitch, The Indigo Girls, and Los Lobos. In 2006, he produced a 20-part strip in The New York Times Magazine titled La Maggie La Loca. Jaime was born in Oxnard, California, and now lives in Pasadena with his wife and daughter.

Keith Knight is a cartoonist, rapper, and media activist. His two weekly comic strips, The K Chronicles and (Th)ink, appear in various publications throughout the nation and have been collected into six books. His art has appeared in Salon.com, ESPN the Magazine, LA Weekly, MAD Magazine, The Funny Times, and World War 3 Illustrated. Keith is the recipient of the 2006 & 2007 Glyph Awards for Best Comic Strip, and three of his comix were the basis of an award-winning, live-action German short film, Jetzt Kommt Ein Karton. His comic art has appeared in museums and galleries from San Francisco (CA) to Angoulême (France).

Marv Wolfman is a forty-year veteran in the field of comic book writing. After lengthy runs working for Marvel Comics in the 1970s on such titles as Amazing Spiderman and Dr. Strange (and creating the character of Nova), Wolfman moved to competitor DC Comics where he has mostly remained since. There, with penciller George Perez, Wolfman co-created The New Teen Titans, which has seen life beyond the comics page as a Cartoon Network ser ies and whose characters have appeared in the television program Smallville. Also with Perez, Wolfman is responsible for the groundbreaking mini-series Crisis on Infinite Earths. He has won numerous awards for his writing and helped pioneer the receiving of writing credits for for-hire work.

Moderator Salvador Plascencia was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, and raised in El Monte, California. His debut novel, The People of Paper, was named a best book of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times, and has been translated into ten languages. A chapter from his novel appears in the anthology, Latinos in Lotusland. He is the recipient of the Bard Fiction Prize and the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. Salvador is a Visiting Professor at UC Davis.

◙ INTRODUCING THE PREMIER ISSUE OF THE HUMMINGBIRD REVIEW: The Hummingbird Review promotes fine writing by publishing both new writers and fully established literary figures. The review is committed to portraying the beauty and challenges of life—the full human experience—through literature and art, and promotes cross-cultural writing in all forms. The first issue is now available. As the publisher, Charlie Redner, notes: “Our name was lifted straight from the title of the 2005 book, The Hummingbird’s Daughter written by Luis Alberto Urrea, a valued contributor and the inspiration for this review’s emergence.” Check it out and submit!

◙ From the editor of LatinoLA: This week, the CNN anchor Lou Dobbs broadcast his radio show from the conference of anti-immigrant hate group FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Founded by a white nationalist, FAIR was linked earlier in 2009 to vigilantes in Arizona who brutally murdered 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father in their home. The appearance at FAIR is just the latest example of Dobbs using his status as a CNN anchor to spread fear about Latinos and immigrants. It's time we said ¡Basta! Enough is enough. Please join LatinoLA.com, Presente.org and a coalition of groups from across the country to demand that CNN drop Dobbs from its network. Add your voice at http://bastadobbs.com/action. Read more at: Latinos to CNN: Dump Dobbs Now by Roberto Lovato.

◙ In spring 2010, Denver-based Ghost Road Press will publish my first poetry collection, Crossing the Border. (Here is a sneak peek of the very cool cover photo which was taken by my son, Ben, based on my rather strange concept.) The collection brings together eight years of poems where I explore the concept of “border crossings” both literally and figuratively. The title poem was first published in Poetry Super Highway which I’d like to reprint here since it fits rather nicely with the above post regarding Lou Dobbs. Here it is:

“Crossing the Border”

It is now a sport, great fun,
a diversion from your
work-a-day grind.

Hunt the mojados – “wetbacks” just
doesn’t sound humane, now does it?
– as they run across the border from
Mexico to the great state of Texas.

Help the border patrol
(though they deny wanting help,
poor overworked bastards) by lining up
your pick-ups and jeeps (American-made,
of course) and shining your headlights bright and
revealing towards the scrub, towards
our neighbors to the south.

Share a nice little Jack Daniel’s with
your buddy and keep a lookout for a
family or two, crouching, lurking,
hoping for a better life.

Cock your rifles, but never aim at ‘em,
just blast a few warning shots
up into the star-filled,
moonlit night.

It is a beautiful evening,
redolent with desert life,
just waiting for them to
cross the border.

◙ And now, a special announcement from Lizz Huerta: I'm part of amazing show of performance artists and poets sharing their humorous and thoughtful take on sexuality, eroticism and the centrifugal force of their clítoris next week at Highways in Santa Monica, September 25 and 26 at 8:30 p.m. Here is the link.

◙ That’s all for now. So, in the meantime, enjoy the intervening posts from mis compadres y comadres here on La Bloga. And remember: ¡Lea un libro! And L’Shana Tova to all who are celebrating the new year!