Southern California writers and illustrators aspiring to create great children’s graphic novels can get a jumpstart on their dreams with the first Children’s Graphic Novel Day (Saturday Nov. 3, at CSU-Fullerton). The Southern California Tri-Regions Chapters of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators is organizing a full day of hands-on, workshop-style presentations. Participants will learn about publishers, markets, trends, and most importantly about skills to access the endless literary, visual, and narrative potentials of graphic novels for children. Register here.

Flight guys Richard Pose and Israel Sanchez will be attending. Come check it out, it’s going to be a great day!

Kazu has posted the Flight Explorer cover (drawn by Jake Parker) to his website. In his blog, Kazu says:

I’m excited to finally be able to tell booksellers that yes, we do have a book that’s completely appropriate for the youngest readers and know that there’s a considerable amount of love and care put into it. This will be in stores right around the time Amulet and Jellaby hit, so the Flight artists will be showing up with a ton of kids comics at the beginning of 2008.

Flight Explorer is scheduled to be released in March 2008, and can currently be pre-ordered through Amazon.com or other online booksellers.

So. Graham Annable has a kind-of-new comic strip updating weekly over at the Telltale Games website. I say it’s “kind-of-new” because it’s kind of complicated. From Graham’s blog:

I’ve started up a weekly comic strip on the Telltale Games website! It’s called “Dunk” and it involves a comic strip artist named Dunkin who draws a strip called “Dank.” There’s a twist here though. I’ve been doing an actual “Dank” strip on the Telltale site for nearly two years previous. It’s kind of like pulling the curtain back and seeing the creator beneath the creation.

Head over to Telltale Games and check out Dunk.

The guys at Indie Spinner Rack have put out their own anthology, AWESOME: The Indie Spinner Rack Anthology, and with an impressive lineup! It features artists such as Raina Telgemeier, Steve Hamaker, Dave Roman, alongside folks like Andy Runton, Sam Hiti, and more. Part of the profits from AWESOME will be going towards a student scholarship for the Center for Cartoon Studies. Definitely worth a look.

You can preview some of the pages from the anthology on their website.

Late last month, Kazu Kibuishi was at the Los Angeles Central Library along with Mark Waid, Christos N. Gage, Ross Richie, Tony Fleecs and Joshua Hale Fialkov for a panel discussion on “The Future of Graphic Literature.” The website New Rage Order was on hand to film the entire discussion, and they have posted the complete video online (sectioned into six parts, which can all be found at the bottom of their post).

They also have a short video interview with Kazu about Flight, Flight Explorer and all his other upcoming projects (Amulet, Copper in print, and his as-yet-unannounced movie project).

And speaking of upcoming projects, if you haven’t seen it yet, Kazu has revealed that Daisy Kutter will be returning, and it will be a complete graphic novel to be serialized in Flight, starting with the fifth volume.

This weekend, Doug Holgate will be exhibiting at Armageddon Expo Australia in Melbourne. On his blog, Doug writes:

I’ll have copies of Prehistoric Australia for sale (Kevin Patrick will be signing on the Sunday) as well as copies of Zack Proton, Amazing Joy Buzzards and maybe even some Checkmate Wordsworths. See you there if you’re going.

We forgot to mention that Prehistoric Australia (with illustrations by Doug) has been released in Australia, so we’re mentioning it now. Check it out.

Graham Annable has created a new cartoon, “The Last Duet on Earth,” featuring melodicas, banjos and zombies. Awesome.

(view all of Graham’s previous cartoons on YouTube)

This year’s Small Press Expo (SPX) is quickly approaching once again! It is being held at the Marriott Bethesda North Hotel & Conference Center in North Bethesda, MD, and runs from October 12-13. Flight artists that will be in attendance this year include:

Joel Carroll
Becky Cloonan
Steve Hamaker
Dave Roman
Jeff Smith
Raina Telgemeier
Joey Weiser

And don’t forget, Scott Campbell has been nominated for an Ignatz Award, which is also being presented at SPX.

Raina Telgemeier has completely redesigned her website, GoRaina.com! There is a lot to explore here, but be sure to check out her comics and illustration pages.

Vera Brosgol has updated her website with a new site design, new art, and a store page! ‘Nuff said.

The fine folk at Loaded Blanks have been making some pretty unique greeting cards — cards with comic art and blank word balloons that you fill in!

They have just launched their second series of greeting cards, and the artists this time around include Catia Chien, Vera Brosgol and Jen Wang, who join other artists such as Tom Herpich, Aaron Renier and Lucy Knisley.

Head over to their website and check out their cards!