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Blair Thornburgh is an editor at Quirk Books. She's also an armchair medievalist, feminist virago, extremely poor banjo player, and children's book writer. Her days at Quirk are spent reading Wikipedia articles about Icelandic necromancy for "research," forgetting what she went down to the book room for, eating snacks, and making puns with Rick (oh, and editing books. She does a lot of that). Her hair color changes about every six weeks, give or take. Her first novel Who's That Girl hit bookstores on July 11.

John J. McGurk is Vice President, Digital & Print Production at Quirk Books. Since joining the company in 2007 he has supervised production of more than 450 print and e-books, including Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, William Shakespeare’s Star Wars, and many other bestsellers that would’ve done just fine without him.

It’s June—the most wonderful time of the year! Yup. You read that right. The temperature is rising. I’m grilling multiple times a week. My golf game is hitting peak performance. My weekends are spent at the beach or enjoying nature. The whole summer is ahead of me. And it’s almost Father’s Day!

As a son and a father, I know the pressure placed on finding the perfect gift. It’s a tall task some years. But, thanks to social media, I no longer need to rely on my own critical eye to select the perfect present. Nope. This year, I’m crowd-sourcing via Twitter. The beautiful thing about Twitter is you never know what you’re gonna get. So read on to find the surprising mix of responses and the personas behind them. Happy Father's Day!

Are you pumped for Book Expo and BookCon? You should be, because we'll be there at Booth #2602 from 6/1-6/4 hoping to meet you! And as always, we'll have swag. 

How do you get the swag? We're glad you asked. Drop by our booth and whisper the top secret password. (It's Quirk E. Godmother.) Can't wait to say hi and talk books!

See below for giveaways, author signings, and more:

Rick Chillot’s first job in publishing was in a corporate library, sniffing out story leads for writers and editors. He later went on to write and edit for magazines and books, worked on early Internet ventures during the heyday of AOL and Netscape, had a brief stint at a newspaper, edited a college’s alumni mag, survived as a freelancer for nearly a decade, and crept into Quirk Books four years ago as a writer/editor.

If you were stranded on Mars and could only have one book to read, what would it be?

I guess The Martian Chronicles, so that as I die from lack of oxygen or freeze to death, whichever comes first, I might delude myself into thinking that I’m on a better Mars. I like short stories as much as novels, so Ray Bradbury’s interconnected Mars stories are a perfect combo. I’m not sure I’d be in a reading mood, though, as my lungs collapse and my blood turns to ice. You do know that the average temperature on Mars is negative 80 degrees? I expect I’d use my last breath to curse whoever stranded me there. Probably Doogie.

Tell us about something cool you keep at your desk.

I have a small collection of notes and other things that people have given me over the years and I put them on display according to my mood. For example (in the picture) Kelsey gave me that doodle she did during a meeting, our managing editor left the note, a fake Buddhist monk gave me a fake prayer card, and Blair invited me to her music recital (I didn’t go).

What's your fandom?

Growing up I clung to all the things that would kill any chance I had of being popular or having friends: science fiction, monster movies, D&D, Star Wars and Star Trek, cartoons. But it all started with comics. Comic books were my first glimpse into a world where anything was possible, and where doing the right thing was the measure of a hero. Of course superheroes were a lot less murdery back then.

Check out Mini-Comics Week to take a dive into my fandom.

What's an unexpected talent or side effect you've picked up while working at Quirk?

Talent or curse? You decide. I can’t look at a book without conjuring in my head the discussions that led to the book title. And then in parallel I imagine the discussions we would’ve had about it here at Quirk. (Our decision is inevitably better.)

If you were a Quirk book, which one would you be?

I’d like to be Find Momo, exploring a beautiful world and making friends everywhere I go. But I’m more like The League of Regrettable Superheroes, trying to convince people that my dumbest flaws are the very things that make me so lovable.

We've discussed why mini-comics are so amazing and how you can find your next favorite mini-comic, but have we said everything there is to say about mini-comics? Of course not! We hope we’ve given you enough motivation to explore the mini-comic universe further, but here's one more approach to making a mini-comic of your own.

Making Multi-Sheet Mini-Comics

We’ve told you how to make a mini-comic from a single sheet of paper here and here. But if you want your minis to have more pages, and to be structured more like full-size comics or little books, here are two methods to try, using multiple sheets of paper. How many sheets? You decide!

Multi-Sheet Mini-Comic Version 1: Saddle Stitching

If you’ve ever picked up a comic book in your life, you’ll get how this works. You just print your pages—two on each side of a sheet of paper—fold them in the middle, and stack them on top of each other like so:

Then staple everything together in the middle of the sheets. Depending on the size of the paper you’re using, you may need an extra-long stapler. (Some creators use sewing or other methods to attach the pages.) One thing to keep in mind with this scheme: When you put your art onto the sheets of paper, your pages have to be ordered so they’ll fall into the right sequence. For example, a three-sheet mini-comic (two pages of art on each side of the paper=six pages total) would need this arrangement:

Make a dummy so you can see where everything goes…or get use to pages being out of order.

Multi-Sheet Mini-Comic Version 2: “Perfect” Binding

This approach mimics that of a perfect-bound paperback book—the single pages are fastened along one side, except that in this case they’re stapled instead of glued (usually…but various mini-comics creators have used adhesives and every other method under the sun at some point, so feel free to experiment.) You just print your comic as single pages, stack them up in order, and the staple the side together. The more pages you have, though, the harder it will be to staple. And remember to leave extra space along the edge so the stapling doesn’t block your images.

For a more in-depth tutorial on making mini-comics, we refer you again to Jessica Abel’s excellent guide.

Thanks for sharing your love of mini-comics with us. To inspire us all, let’s wrap things up with a final survey of outstanding mini-comics, selected by the Quirk Comics Club.

 

 

A horizontal format is put to great use in this untitled story of a sailing ship by Alexis Frederick-Frost.

 

Don't be square: An oval shape is the perfect fit for a story of sinister bunnies by Rachel Bard.

 

 

Mind-Mapping by Will Dinksi unfolds in a mind-bending way.

 

Cutouts in this cool cover by David Mack practically demand that you open the book.

 

 

The cover of Hope Larson's Put On A Brave Face ties together with yarn; the interior has even more surprises.

 

The Beast Mother by Eleanor Davis is bigger than most minis, with a suitably tense cutout cover.

_{Mini-comics displayed are from the personal collections of Quirk Books Comics Club members and are intended as a small and subjective sampling of the ever-expanding universe of mini-comics.}