This is me with the other D&Q gals! From left: Peggy Burns, Jessica Campbell, Rebecca Rosen, me, Gabrielle Bell, Jillian Tamaki, and Mimi Pond!

This is me signing. Look!!! There's my book!!

And here's my and my old buddy from NY, Gabrielle.

I'm back home now and I feel reeealll out-of-it. But also happy and lucky. In the words of Nick Lowe, "I love my label!" (But was he being sarcastic? I'm not....)

Drawn & Quarterly posted their schedule for the San Diego Comicon, which is only little more than a week away, which is insane. I'm really excited to take part in the spectacle, hang with comics people, and see Make Me a Woman in print! Crazio!

Here's the schedule of all of the events I'm taking part in (for all of the D+Q-related events, check out their blog, where I pulled this info from. Also they have images of all their new books!):

THURSDAY

5:00-7:00 PM James Sturm & Vanessa Davis Signing (yay!!)

FRIDAY
11:00–12:00 Spotlight on Vanessa Davis—One of the brightest new cartoonists of her generation, who has been featured in Tablet, Vice, Bust, and Bitch Magazines, Comic-Con special guest Vanessa Davis will be debuting her new book Make Me a Woman and discussing the book and its process with a charming and funny slide show about being young, Jewish and single. Room 4

12:00-2:00 Vanessa Davis signing

2:00–3:00 Graphic Novels: The Personal Touch—You know when you read it: that certain something that sticks out in a graphic novel. It’s the personal touch, a work that draws on the life of the creator or the people around him or her. Call the work autobiographical, call it reality—many times it results in truly personal and inspiring comics. Comics creator and journalist Shaenon Garrity (Narbonic, Skin Horse) talks to Comic-Con special guests Gabrielle Bell (Cecil & Jordan in New York), Howard Cruse (Stuck Rubber Baby), Vanessa Davis (Make Me a Woman), Larry Marder (Beanworld), Jillian Tamaki (Skim), and Carol Tyler (You’ll Never Know Book 1: A Good and Decent Man) about their very personal work. Room 4

SATURDAY

3:00-6:00 Gabrielle Bell & Vanessa Davis signing

SUNDAY

11:00-2:00 Vanessa Davis and Gabrielle Bell signing

That's it! See ya there!

Drawing all the shoes for this book was a lot of fun if slightly tortuous--though not as bad as having to wear most of these things. For me, heels have pretty much always been like Christmas or Valentine's Day: cultural institutions I've heard that people enjoy but which have just never really meshed with my lifestyle.

But I definitely was having some covetousness goin' on while image-researching the comfy shoes. I kept reminding myself, "You're working!" But it felt a lot like those manic late nights that have nothing to do with work, eyes-ablaze, clicking through page after page on Zappos.com. What can I say?

1) I got to put a page o' comics in the new issue of Smoke Signal #5, Desert Island's terrific all-comics newspaper, available for FREE at their Brooklyn spot. Not nearby? Pretty soon it'll be in their webshop, for the price of postage.

All of these folks are in it: Gabrielle Bell, Ken Brown, William Cardini, Vanessa Davis (that's me!), Michael DeForge, Inés Estrada, Tom Gauld, Nate Gelgud, Lisa Hanawalt, Leah Hayes, Sam Henderson, Michael Kupperman, Tim Lane, Ben Marra, Taylor McKimens, Jesse McManus, Jason T. Miles, Travis Millard, Kris Mukai, Puppi, Tim Sinaguglia, Joel Skavdahl, Joshua Ray Stephens, Matthew Thurber, James Turek, and Malachi Ward.

2) SECOND news item is I've got a couple of Post-Its in the fun show Post-Its V at Giant Robot New York, which is opening June 19, 6:30-10pm. I've always wanted to go to one of these openings and snap up amazingly inexpensive great artwork by really great cartoonists and illustrators. I'm happy to be in this one with a bunch of great buddies I admire (including my beau, Trevor Alixopulos) as well as really fancy people and people I don't know at all. It's a smorgasbord! Get it!