East Side Mags is happy to support our friends and family in the LGBTQIA+ community - and we do it ALL YEAR LONG!
But we know June is a special month for everyone and this day is most special out of all of them for our community in Montclair, NJ!
In cooperation with OutMontclair, we’re hosting an awesome signing featuring two folks who are VERY special to us!
Michele Abounader: Michele spent most of her early life reading, and writing poetry, while wandering around rural Upstate New York. Present Day – she’s made the move into creating comics as a way to bring her stories to life. Leaning into the editing side of comics creating, she loves to find ways to encourage other creators in telling their stories authentically, and to help them find their voice.
In 2024, When I Was Young... An LGBTQIA+ Charity Comic Anthology crowdfunded over $25k with all profits donated to the Trevor Project. Overall, she has crowdfunded over $170k to publish independent comics.
With Bad Egg Publishing, she was an editor on the creator-owned series’ Void Silver and The Somewhat Incredible Jackie-Boy Man (with Jacksepticeye), GodSlap (with MoistCr1TiKaL), and Epic NPC Man: Hero Outage (with Viva La Dirt League), as well as the upcoming Going Under (with Laurenzside).
Previous works include The Color of Always and Sharp Wit & the Company of Women comic anthologies (crowdfunded independently, then published with A Wave Blue World), Sapphic Pulp an anthology of short, erotic comics with Natasha Alterici, and the Ringo-Nominated Etheres with Anas Abdulhak and Dennis Menheere with Source Point Press.
Zoe Tunnell: Zoe Tunnell is a writer of comics and prose, and formerly an Eisner-award winning essayist.
She is the co-creator and writer of the critically acclaimed webcomic Blade Maidens (coming to print with Dark Horse Comics) as well as other comics such as the Godzilla Valentine’s Day Special with IDW.
She also appears as a cast member on the award-winning actual play podcast EIDOLON Playtest, in addition to editing the rulebook for the RPG system used on the podcast, EIDOLON: Become Your Best Self.
While she has been retired for some years, she formerly wrote criticism and essays for websites including WWAC, ComicsXF, Polygon, and The Beat. During her time writing with WWAC, the website won 2 Eisner awards for Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism.
Outside of writing, she spends her days working in creative localization in Film and Television, cooking a truly frightening amount of pasta and annoying her wonderfully patient partner.
We’ll have copies of both Michele’s and Zoe’s work on hand including Zoe’s story in the 2025 Marvel United: A Pride Special #1 and Michele’s plethora of LGBTQIA+ anthologies on hand for them to sign!
Make sure you stop by during Pride 2025 to meet these amazing humans and check out some of our stock of Pride-related graphic novels and comics - there are a LOT in case you didn’t already know!
See you all soon!