Check, Please!

Yesterday I attended my first ever "con".  Aside from my trip to the "Judy Garland Festival" in Minnesota years ago, I had never dipped my toes into fan conventions, and from the moment I stepped into FLAMECON, which features art and comics by LGBTQ artists, or featuring LGBTQ content, I had a case of "perma-grin". More on the full experience of the convention later, but I wanted to quickly share a new discovery from the trip... "Check, Please".

Promotional Art from Check, Please! by Ngozi Ukazu

Check, Please! is the story of Eric "Bitty" Bittle, a hockey loving, pie baking freshman in college, new to the school's hockey team. It's an episodic comic available free online here, and while there are now printed editions, they are somewhat hard to come by as of this moment.  You can purchase them at conventions. For those of you in Austin, the author, a really charming woman by the name Ngozi Ukazu will be there selling volumes 1 and 2, as well as other merchandise at Staple! Independent Media Expo on September 9th and 10th (Tickets available at the door). Believe me, in hindsight I would have bought both volumes then and there.  As it is, I will have to make due with volume one until New York Comic-con On October 5th.  

I see a really bright future for this work, as it is beautifully produced, expertly drawn, and charming as all get-out.  It's heartwarming and poignant, and Eric "Bitty" Bittle (the hockey loving, pie baking former figure skater at the center of the story) is magnetic and lovable.  Those of you with immense amounts of patience can wait for the first two volumes to be in stores in the Fall of 2018, but I encourage everyone to head to the tumblr page and get to reading.