We’ve always liked cartooning and storyboarding, ever since last year’s months-long obsession with the Captain Underpants series.

At home, we’re working on a series of “Buggo” stories about a renegade Colorado potato beetle who avoids death by pesticides—and subsequent captivity in the suburbs of Ohio—to recareer as an international circus performer.

Yesterday we toured the Independent Publishing Resource Center in downtown Portland, where we saw some of the tools of the trade that zinesters use.

They offer workshops in InPress and Adobe.  We’re low tech, though…pens and paper with the occasional ruler.  But it was cool nonetheless to understand what the next steps can be.  It seems the IPRC’s programs are pretty much for older kids/adults.  Bummer.

But the zine section of Powells was a hit.  We saw examples of sizes, formats, graphics, and ratios of text to image.  The boys saw and understood that an author who writes something by hand can indeed be published—barcode, price tag and all.

What was most intriguing was the chance to look at the old-fashioned metal typeset letters in drawers.  Now we had an explanation for the words “uppercase” and lowercase.”   The capital letters are in the top drawers, and the small letters in drawers below that.

And though we’re not at all ready to typeset or ink print our stuff, we’re looking forward to the chance in the coming year to learn about it.

For now, we have to remember NOT get meat pie grease on our budding zine productions…