The Cartoon Picayune 

I edited and self-published one of the only print anthologies of nonfiction comics from 2011 through 2017. I created eight issues — five with themes —of mini comics and sold them online, in person at indie comics conventions, and through subscriptions. Here’s something I wrote on the inside cover of the first issue:

TO BE CLEAR, THIS COMIC YOU HOLD IN YOUR HANDS IS JOURNALISM. IT HAS BEEN RIGOROUSLY REPORTED AND EVERY SPEECH BUBBLE IS IN FACT A DIRECT QUOTE. EVERY CHARACTER IS AN ACTUAL SOURCE. ANY RESEMBLANCE TO REAL PERSONS, LIVING OR DEAD, IS PURELY INTENTIONAL. 

Here’s the old site. The remaining printed issues are priced according to availability, and they are for sale here. I have one complete set left to sell (reach out to me directly). Below, you can download digital versions of each issue.

Issue #1: Two stories by Editor Josh Kramer, reported and drawn in the Upper Valley of Vermont and New Hampshire. Follow a high school ski jumping team through their winter season. Then meet an apple farmer who makes old-fashioned hard apple cider. Buy here

Issue #2: More ski jumping and summer rock camp from Josh Kramer. Bill Volk talks beer with the Pittsburgh brewing company. Finally, graphic novelist James Sturm and collaborator Katherine Roy diary a day-in-the-life of a gubernatorial candidate in Vermont. Buy here

Issue #3: Darryl Holliday and E. N. Rodriguez show us a jailhouse wedding. Ethan Leners interviews an art student. Josh Kramer looks at Washington D.C.’s plastic bag law. Featured cartoonist Andy Warner seeks the truth about Lebanese billionaire Rafik Harari. Buy here

Issue #4: Distress New Yorker cartoonist Matt Diffee races with rattlesnakes. Josh Kramer explores the devastation of Washington D.C.’s derecho storm. Darryl Holliday and E. N. Rodriguez return to document the undocumented. Colin Tedford tells the story of a morris dancing miracle. Jess Ruliffson shows unseeable wounds with a veteran at Walter Reed hospital. Buy here

Issue #5: Hard Work Andy Warner returns with a story about fighting to legalize  sex work in San Francisco. Emi Gennis digs up the painful history of the Radium Girls of the 1930s. Erik Thurman and Josh Kramer have two shorter stories about South Korean coffee shops and a cookie food truck, respectively. Buy here

Issue #6: Small Worlds Adrian Pijoan looks into what is destroying the world’s coral reefs and how they might be saved. Bill Volk finds an unlikely hero...amongst Furries! JTW shows us the mysterious world of outsider artist Henry Darger and his Vivian Girls. Finally, Jackie Roche shows a historical coincidence involving a Booth and a Lincoln. Buy here

Issue #7: Chance Three stories from Josh Kramer: camouflage history, Alaskan marijuana laws, and space debris. Strong brief entries from Emma Woodbury Rand on a mysterious rum runner during prohibition, and from Craig Schaffer on an unusual building in Reading, Pennsylvania. Buy here

Issue #8: Unnoticed Two stories from Josh Kramer: one man's redemption through Housing First and the return of Dungeons & Dragons. Laura Brooke Kovac on Fabergé eggs and Ellis Rosen on numbers stations. Buy here