The Russians Are Coming! To The Marine Mammal Center!

For the past month I've been digging deeper into the archives to build a comic for The Marine Mammal Center about the Russian-American poaching fiasco on the Farallones and along the Pacific Coast of North America.

What a story this is, and one with a surprisingly happy ending.

I showed the sketches for the comic last Tuesday at The Marine Mammal Center (TMMC), and the Center asked me to double the comic's length for their December 10, 2011 Open House, which starts at 10:00 a.m. and runs until 5:00 p.m. On that day, I'll be presenting the Russian-American material in a child-friendly reading at 10:15 a.m. and 2:15 p.m.

The Open House will also feature a meet and greet with the amazing Marine Mammal Center veterinarians, so please check out the details on the Marine Mammal Center's website events page.

Thanks and hope to see you there!

Three New Speaking Engagements...

1) I've been asked to present "Garibaldi and The Farallon Egg War" this Saturday, October 22, 2011, at The Guild of Natural Science Illustrators meeting in Monterey, California. Should be fun!

2) The Maritime Museum Library in San Francisco booked a separate presentation (dealing largely with Captain Scammon's life and scientific legacy) for January 10, 2012.

3) I'll be tackling the San Francisco-Garibaldi connection at the Marin City Public Library on January 23, 2012. The presentation starts at 7:00 p.m.

And possibly one more: This November at The Marine Mammal Center, I may be giving a presentation on the poaching conducted on the Farallones by the Russian-American Company. It's a helluva story - Updates to follow!

Thanks to everyone for their support,
Eva

The Egg War In the News and This Thursday's Presentation at the Randall

Juliet Grable of Bay Nature Magazine wrote a wonderful article on Garibaldi and The Farallon Egg War, in advance of this Thursday evening's lecture at The Randall Museum. (The Randall is a children's museum, but the Natural History Series is for adults and for, well, really wonkish kids.) After years of interviewing other people, I have to admit I found the prospect of someone interviewing me to be a little nervewracking, but Juliet made it fun! Here's the link to her article:

http://baynature.org/articles/web-only-articles/artist-finds-graphic-history-at-the-farallones

Sidenote: I had no idea that Bay Nature was the brainchild of someone from Heyday Books!

BTW, here's the link to the San Francisco Natural History Series:

http://www.randallmuseum.org/SanFranciscoNaturalHistorySeries.aspx

And here are the directions to the Randall:

http://www.randallmuseum.org/HoursAndDirections.aspx

A Few Egg War Trading Cards...

(Click on images to enlarge)

(Garibaldi and) The Farallon Egg War

The Farallon Egg War Goes to The Randall Museum

I've been asked to speak on "The Farallon Egg War" at The Randall Museum on August 18, 2011, as part of their monthly Natural History Lecture Series. The illustrated lecture will start at 7:30 p.m.

I attended the April lecture by Christopher Richards last week on "The Mystery of Laguna Dolores" - it was truly amazing, and the auditorium was packed to hear this remarkable aquatic biologist share several decades worth of research.

(Christopher Richards will apparently repeat that very popular presentation on June 25 at Mission Dolores as part of their 235th anniversary celebration.)

I'll post more details about both lectures later.

Welcome, WonderCon!

I'll be at WonderCon this weekend in San Francisco, flyering for The Farallon Egg War.

March was a very exciting month - there was strong interest in the book from a major West Coast publisher. In the final decision, the very nice editors, who will remain unnamed, expressed concern that the book was too "mature" for a crossover audience. 

(They obviously never saw the bookshelves that belonged to my sister and me as children -  stuffed to the gills with Edward Gorey and Philip Roth. No wonder we're so screwed up!)

The reaction of the editors essentially liberated me to take the book in a far more ambitious, adult direction.

All the research on early Risorgimento activism in San Francisco, the newspaper battles, the opera wars, the internecine fighting within the Italian community in San Francisco between Royalists and Garibaldi's supporters, the down-and-dirty details of Limantour's property scams, Copperheads (the political movement, not the snake), Mormons, minstrelsy, burlesque, banking scams, technological advances, and scientists, scientists, and more scientists...

...in short, a far more panoramic view of 19th-century San Francisco, coming to a boiling point in the 1863 Egg War. This is a far more cinematic, action-oriented comic in black ink on white paper.