Jonathan, Author at the comic book story of beer

The road to a book’s actually arriving on the shelves is typically long and crooked. But along the way, if you’re lucky, you stand to encounter some rewarding signposts.

One of these satisfying moments is getting a look at your book cover once it’s finalized and bound for the printing press. The cover came our way today thanks to the modern miracle of email, the top-notch design sense of Chloe Rawlins and all affiliated staff at Ten Speed Press, and of course our trusty illustrator Aaron McConnell. Aaron conceived and executed all the “key art” elements like the engraved border. Those comics portraits were an eleventh-hour inspiration of his too.

Drum roll, please…

I’ve always found the task of creating covers — whether for one-off books or monthly comics “floppies” — to be a daunting challenge. There are so many things your cover is obligated to pull off: being visible and legible from a fair distance, imparting a sense of the what the project is all about, not looking too much like anything else out there, shoehorning in a lot of ancillary but required additional information… While simultaneously achieving the all-important goal of catching the eye and provoking the coordinated neural and musculoskeletal activity necessary to undertake that final step towards picking up the book.

We crunched through a whole lot of designs to get to this one. And now, looking back at those sketches, I’m glad we skipped over just about every single one of these lesser contenders.

Aaron did, however, pony up one alternative early on that I will always hold some affection for. It was a risky direction to go. The visual metaphor didn’t strictly embrace any particular logic. But I found something wonderfully surreal about it:

The effect, to me, wonderfully evokes the style of my favorite painter, Rene Magritte. See what I mean?

Come to think of it, there is more than a little Brussels, Belgium, in this book. As there very well should be, given Belgium’s unique place in beer history and appreciation.

In Brussels, The Magritte Museum is just around the corner from the amazing Musical Instrument Museum. On the top floor of that building, which used to be a department store, there is a smashing restaurant whose Art Nouveau windows inspired this panel in the book:

And Central Brussels’ Grand Place (as well as one of the city’s key fictional citizens) makes an appearance here on page 148. This main square of the city is home to the centuries-old headquarters of the Brewer’s Guild, and is well worth checking out.

Lastly, if there is one sublimely appropriate place to drink a beer and read a graphic novel (may I suggest this one), it would be at the Horta Brasserie: the in-house bistro at The Belgian Comic Book Center in Brussels. What a spot! Every lover of the genre should visit there someday. I really tried to work in an illustration of the place in this book. But facing some length constraints, the one we had planned had to be cut.

If you ever find yourself in that location with The Comic Book Story of Beer in hand, contact us and send a pic. We’ll post it! And maybe send you a little token of thanks, while supplies last.

The Comic Book Story of Beer will be on sale in stores October 6, 2015. Don’t forget that you can preorder it now.

One of the defining lessons about beer that I ever had the pleasure of learning came to me by way of a strange and generally unflattering set of circumstances.

Four years on the other side of the millennium, I found myself in Atlanta, Georgia, quite destitute of cash. I could not even boast of adequate gas money to drive back to Texas, where I was then living.

But I was given a shot at getting back on my feet. Relief came from what was, for a fairly privileged twentysomething Yankee white guy like me, an unexpected quarter: an inner-city African-American church.

No doubt every sweltering summer, throughout Atlanta, enterprising pastors face the challenge of cooking up a summer jobs program for the youth of their congregation. But if you do the math on the year this anecdote takes place, you might deduce something. At that time, and in this part of Georgia, there was one tremendous “get” out there just waiting to be reeled in by anyone in search of paid, short-lived gigs.

Temporary jobs at the 1996 Olympics.

Indeed, it was exactly that prospect that had lured me to Peachtree-land in the first place. But on my arrival, my employment opportunity had abruptly evaporated. Hundreds upon hundreds of Olympo-curious job-seekers like me had all in fact met the same fate. We had been promised a decent paycheck, dormitory accommodations, and a gratis ticket each to an elite, international sporting event. But this proved all to have been a scam perpetrated by a take-the-money-and-run con artist outfit called “Atlanta Recruiting.”

The scandal merited just a nickel’s worth of media attention. But the leaders of the aforementioned black church saw the TV reports. And in true, Christian mercy, they reached out.

The pastors had been tapped to fill a sizable number of “hospitality” positions at the Olympics. Snack bar cashiers, program vendors, parking lot attendants, and so forth. These jobs rightly went to members of the church community.

But the International Olympic Committee also needed local hires to sell beer.

And this posed complications.

The church youth group members were under age. Certainly there were adults within the community who were likewise short on work and could use a summer job. But alcohol and sin have been known to be a bit, let’s say, buddy-buddy. The verdict of the church officers was that it would look unseemly to have their flock push suds for cash. These positions would have to be assigned outside the fold.

And that’s how I became a hoarse-voiced hawker walking up and down the stands of the Centennial Olympic Stadium, selling beer to the thirsty of 197 nations. (This was a highly worthwhile vocation, it turned out. In the context of the living standards a recent college graduate with a liberal arts degree can reasonably expect, I was flush for months).

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the comic book story of beer

Author: Jonathan

Final Book Cover Unveiled!

Prelude to a Beer Book