Reading With Pictures: Comics That Make Kids Smarter

Josh Elder, drawn by Jim McClain

I first met Josh Elder in 2011 at C2E2 when he was selling his first Reading With Pictures book. When I told him and Trevor Mueller that I admired what they were doing and shared what my plans were for Solution Squad, Trevor hit me with his usual, "Don't tell me about your comic; SHOW me your comic." Trevor, I want to officially thank you for making me angry. What you said lit a fire under me. If you hadn’t said that to me that day, I might never have finished the book.

On February 29, 2012 (Radical’s birthday), My niece Rose and I launched the Solution Squad web comic, releasing a new page every week (or so). Even though we were brand new at this game, Cherry CapitalCon allowed us to table at their convention with nothing more than four pages of a web comic and a poster to sell, and that summer, Kids Read Comics was the second con to let us in. By this time, we were on page 10 of the 24-page story, and we had them printed out in a portfolio with a lot of empty sleeves in it. I sat in on Josh’s presentation there, and when I saw what his vision was for RWP’s next book The Graphic Textbook, I knew it was a great fit. It was exactly what we were already working on! I invited him down to our table, and showed him that our story was exactly what he had described in his talk. Unfortunately, our story didn’t fit the mold because first, it was going to be too long at 24 pages, while the Graphic Textbook featured 8-10 pages stories; and my intent was to use it for middle school instead of elementary, because identifying prime numbers at that time was a 7th grade Indiana standard. He was enthusiastic about it, however, and wished us luck and got a “maybe next time” if the graphic textbook got a sequel for middle school. I still backed the GraphicTextbook Kickstarter, though. I was very happy to see it happening.

In early 2013, our Solution Squad comic was finally done, and off to the printer it went. It was also accepted as one of ComiXology’s first Submit applicants, and it was released online to the public the same week as C2E2 was being held, and Rose and I were to be there in Artist Alley!

The big time! Having seen a digital copy of the comic, Josh asked me to present with him and Carol Tilley at C2E2 on Comics and the Common Core. I know I’ve told this story before (many, many times) but it bears repeating: It was the day my life changed forever. But what I haven’t mentioned is that in looking up the Common Core State Standards for my presentation, I was flabbergasted to find that identifying prime and composite numbers had been placed in fourth grade!

Later that summer, as a Kickstarter backer, I received a preview of the first completed math story that would be included in the Graphic Textbook. It was called, “Probamon: Gotta Know the Odds.” It was a Pokemon parody that was to ostensibly teach probability using an actual card game that was played with a rock-paper-scissors hierarchy. It was a great sendup! But I took one look at the actual math involved and contacted Josh immediately. The writer of the story had used probability and odds interchangeably throughout the whole thing. For those of you who don’t know, probability and odds are two different things. They are calculated and expressed quite differently. I told Josh that if he published this story this way, uncorrected, that teachers would eat him alive. At that point, he asked me to send him suggestions for changes to make the math right.

It was then that I met and worked with the brilliant Tracy Edmunds as an official math consultant. If I haven’t praised her enough on Facebook and Twitter, Tracy is an amazing person. I can’t say enough great things about her. Tracy and I have become good friends thanks to that experience. After we successfully banged out the changes that would make the story better and mathematically sound, I was invited to look at the rest of the math content. It was very exciting, being involved in something this big at this level, with virtually no experience in publishing. I did find a few more corrections to make to the other math stories, and I think they are better for it. I know Probamon is; “Gotta Chance ‘em All” is a much better subtitle than “Gotta Know the Odds!”

Because I had lettered my own book, Josh asked me to letter a few stories in the book. Woohoo! My name in the credits! The first story I lettered was Mike and Janet Lee’s “Special Delivery to Shangri-La.” I didn’t know at that time, But Janet was an Eisner Award winning artist. That’s like the Academy Awards for comics! My first job is lettering the art of an Oscar winner? Too much! Then I was making color corrections. Then I was adding titles to stories that didn’t have any. Yes, I edited Katie Cook. I can officially say that and I’m not even lying. Because I had done design work for my book, Josh then really hit me. He asked me to design the teachers guide that Tracy was editing that would go along with the book. See, I worked cheap. Honestly, I had no idea how much to charge. Besides, it was supposed to be a simple drag-and-drop design job.

Tracy and I had collaborated so much, that they invited me to come along as the co-editor of the teachers guide!  As a reward for my hard work, Josh told me that since identifying prime numbers was a fourth grade standard, they could squeeze a shorter version of my Solution Squad story into the book. There wouldn’t be any pay involved. That budget had already been spent. But the opportunity to have our comic published in an anthology was a huge opportunity and I couldn’t pass it up. I used the introductory pages of the story and ended it with a gag that I really didn’t care for, but I got it down to eight pages. When a preview of the whole book went out to backers, I got personally roasted by a critic. That was not a fun day, let me tell you. When AndrewsMcMeel Publishing came along and agreed to publish the book for Reading With Pictures, because then there was no true limit to how many pages were going to go into the book. They were adding a G-Man story to the front of it as well as a new cover, and Josh gave me the happy news that my WHOLE story could be included in the book, instead of the chopped up, not-that-funny intro story. Tracy and I immediately replaced the substandard lesson plan I had for the short story and put the much more complete lesson I was proud of for the prime number sieve. That was a happy, happy day! And as a bonus, I now had a 24-page story in the center of a book filled with 8-10 page stories, and my lettering count went through the roof! I lettered Mike and Janet’s story, my story, and two of Josh’s stories, for a total of 54 pages!

Tracy and I worked tirelessly for months putting together the teachers guide. It was supposed to be a drag-and-drop design job. It wasn’t. By the time we were ready to go, I had put over 200 hours into my work. I didn’t even see my family in November 2013. I even pulled an all-nighter one night on deadline. Teaching on no sleep? Good times. Never again. The good news for me was that since AMP had actual designers, someone would take my beginner InDesign work and make it look good!

In the end, Reading With Pictures: Comics That Make Kids Smarter is a work that I’m proud to have been a part of. The first time I held a physical copy in my hands in Las Vegas at the American Library Association Annual Conference, I felt like I had died and gone to heaven. I found the AMP booth, and it was there on a book stand; one preview copy. At the end of the convention, I went home with that copy.

It was at that convention that I met some of the big leaguers in educational comics. I was on a panel with Gene Luen Yang and Nathan Hale, both of whom later agreed to provide cover blurbs for me. But it was watching Josh do a book signing that really fired me up. I was asked to stand aside and talk to teachers as they stood in line to have a copy of the preview guide signed by him. I admit, I was jealous after the hundreds of hourse I had worked on the book. But it was completely understandable. This was his baby. He raised the money, put the team together and everything. But suddenly I wanted a book that I could sign with my name on it, too. And once I saw the way that real publishers treat their talent, I knew I wanted to be part of that world!

It’s a point of personal pride now to see Reading With Pictures: Comics That Make Kids Smarter in the hands of kids and parents. It wasn’t a blockbuster hit, but it’s in its third printing, and I still sell it proudly on my convention table. When Solution Squad isn’t what a customer wants, either because they don’t care for math or they have younger children, I have my backup plan in place: A book with four subject areas with charming stories about onomatopoeia,  figurative language, and action presidents! And it doesn’t hurt that G-Man is right on the cover.

Plus, it makes for a fun story when you tell people that your very first attempt at making a comic ended up in a hardcover book published worldwide by the same company that puts out Calvin & Hobbes!