Along with novelist Barry Gifford (Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula) and poet Liz Henry (Unruly Islands, Mother Frankenstein), Greg will be taking part in the spontaneous show that mixes literary figures and the hard stuff.

There’s a $5 to $10 sliding scale cover. All proceeds benefit the Center for Sex and Culture.

The show will take place Saturday, May 12, at The Make-Out Room 3225 22nd. St., San Francisco CA, from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM, doors open at 7 PM.

He’ll be signing at booth 101 on Friday, May 4, from 6:00 to 7:00PM, Saturday from 12:30 to 2:00PM, and again from 6:30 to 8:00PM, and on Sunday from 10:30AM until noon.

You can also catch Greg, Jen Van Meter and Craig Thompson on the “My Way” panel on Thursday, May 3, from 4:30 to 5:45PM.

Greg will be speaking on the subject of writing women in fiction tonight at the University of Puget Sound. Here’s how they describe the event:

Greg Rucka, a prolific writer of novels and comics, is coming to the University of Puget Sound to present on writing women in fiction.

Greg has written a plethora of novels as well as major comic characters like Batwoman, Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman, Daredevil, Wolverine, and more. He is also the current writer on The Punisher.

In addition to mainstream work, Greg has published independent series like Whiteout, Queen & Country, and Stumptown. He also maintains an ongoing webcomic with artist Rick Burchett – Lady Sabre & The Pirates of the Ineffable Aether. All four of these series feature female lead characters.

He has been nominated and won many awards including: Eisner, Harvey, and a GLAAD award.

Please join us in welcoming this great writer to our campus and engaging in his presentation on writing women in fiction.

THE EVENT IS FREE.

You’re more than welcome and encouraged to share this event with your friends.

This event is brought to you by ASUPS, the English Department, and Communication Studies Student Association.

For more information, see the Facebook event page.

If you can’t make it out to the University of Puget Sound, you’ll have another chance to see Greg this weekend as he heads to the Vancouver Fan Expo.

The Expo takes place this Saturday and Sunday at the Vancouver Convention Centre, in, of course, Vancouver Canada. You can find Greg at table P14, and he’ll be taking part in the Rock Star Comic Creator Super Panel (with Len Wein, Kathryn and Stuart Immonen, and Yannick Paquete) on Saturday at 6PM.

On Saturday, Greg will be on the Crime Comics panel, also featuring Ed Brubaker and moderated by Dr. Ben Saunders of the University of Oregon, from noon to 1pm, room 3AB. And on Sunday, he’ll take part in Marvel: The Next Big Thing, Room 4C3-4, from 2 to 3.

Greg will have books for sale, and Lady Sabre t-shirts. There is no charge for signing books, nor any obligation to buy books to get a signature. He will be able to process credit cards as well as take cash.

We’ve recently updated our appearances page with a number of other convention appearances and book signings. Expect to hear more about those in the near future!

For the visitors to Wilsonville, the largest theme park in the world, the day begins with a smile. But, by the end, they start to wonder: will they escape with their lives? Undercover Delta Force operator, Master Sergeant Jonathan “Jad” Bell has been deployed to act as Wilsonville’s lead undercover security officer. The threat begins with the announcement of a hidden dirty bomb, but quickly becomes something far, far worse.

Trained since the age of 18 to save innocent victims from impossible hostage situations, Jad scrambles to assess the threat and protect the visitors. He will come face to face with a villain whose training matches his in every way—and presents a danger Jad may not be able to stop.

Art by Matthew Southworth

Greg was named as a Pacific Northwest College of Art Graphic Literature Award finalist today, alongside Graham Annable, Aidan Koch, Sarah Oleksyk, and Joe Sacco. Greg was honored for his work on Stumptown, the series from Oni Press with art by Matthew Southworth that focuses on Dex Parios, a private investigator who runs Portland’s Stumptown Investigations.

A ceremony will be held April 23. For more on the Oregon Book Awards, see the write-up on Oregon Live.

This week, War Rocket Ajax is proud to welcome the Eisner Award-winning writer Greg Rucka to the show! Following last week’s release of The Punisher #1, he talks to us about what makes Frank Castle work, his awesome runs on Detective Comics and Wonder Woman, his new webcomic and why he hates the Joker — and you can listen to it right here at ComicsAlliance!

Give the interview a listen at ComicsAlliance!

MTV Geek’s Charles Webb goes through the first issue page-by-page with Greg as part of their Creator’s Commentary series:

I really wanted to control what we see of Frank, what we know of him, and in doing that try to force the reader’s perspective and view of him through the eyes of those around him, the Good Guys and the Bad. Frank has been expertly explored by so many writers in recent years–Garth Ennis probably the foremost amongst them, but Jason Aaron, Rick Remender, Matt Fraction, all of them–that it seemed to me following him closely, getting into his head, that had been done, and done quite well.

There’s an odd paradox in this, too, because I really feel that Frank is one of the most isolated, lonely people in the entirety of the Marvel Universe. By separating him like this, by keeping him silent, I wanted to emphasize that isolation.

Laura Hudson at Comics Alliance has an in-depth discussion on Frank Castle and asceticism:

I think there’s a danger in humanizing Frank too much. He’s not crazy — I don’t even want to write him as crazy. He’s not inhuman, and I don’t want to write him as inhuman. But he is alien, and he needs to be alien to your experience, to my experience. This is a guy who has been through an obscene crime, just a horrible, hateful, devastatingly damaging trauma. And his response to that trauma is likewise dangerous and devastating.

And Royal Nonesuch of The Outhousers talks at length with Greg not just about Punisher, but Comic Con, Tr!ckster, novel writing, Lady Sabre, Stumptown, Queen & Country, the whole nine yards:

Frank really shouldn’t work. As a character, he really should not work. He’s inherently a revenge story, and revenge stories pretty much all end the same way. They end with the guy seeking revenge, getting it, and then dying because there’s an imposed morality there and a variety of expectations. The fact that Frank can continue, and has continued, I think, makes him really remarkable and fascinating and worthy of more examination.

I Am An Avenger #2

Word from San Diego is that Greg and artist Michael Lark’s “Post Mortem,” from I Am An Avenger #2 has won the Eisner Award for Best Short Story!

When nominated in April, Greg shared the script for the story in a blog post describing the collaborative process of comics:

In the spirit of attempting to put some utility to this blog, I’m posting the following – the complete script to the story “Post Mortem,” which appeared in I Am an Avenger, Issue #2. It’s in PDF, and I provide it mostly as a curiosity, so one can see – first of all – how I script, and – far more importantly – that in the realm of comics, I am one but cog in a much larger machine. The machine, in this instance, included not only myself and Michael Lark, but crucially Stefano Gaudiano, Matt Hollingsworth, Travis Lanham, Alejandro Arbona, and Steve Wacker, and those are just the credited names.

That’s what you can’t see in reading a script, and what is so often overlooked in reading a comic book. That is, to me, the magic of the medium; the alchemy that allows the creation of a story, of a piece of art, that can genuinely become more than the sum of its parts.

The script for “Post Mortem” is still available for download.

While in San Diego, Greg will be speaking at two Tr!ckster symposiums and also selling merchandise from his latest creative effort, Lady Sabre & The Pirates of the Ineffable Aether.

What is Tr!ckster, you might ask? From their website:

TR!CKSTER is a retail space: specializing in CREATOR-OWNED wares including small run and limited edition books, fine art prints, toys, clothing, and more.

TR!CKSTER is a fine art gallery space: featuring the CREATOR-OWNED work of some of today’s most influential artists and designers.

TR!CKSTER is a series of Symposia: focused, CREATOR-DRIVEN demonstrations and discussions of method, process, and theory concerning the act of creating new, uniquely-voiced works of art.

We at TR!CKSTER create and control our own work, our own visions, and our own destinies. We do these things to share them with the world. We’d love to make your acquaintance.

For the duration of Comic-Con International, Tr!ckster will set up shop at the San Diego Wine and Culinary Center, at 200 Harbor Drive. Greg will be speaking at two of their events:

SYMPOSIUM 5:
Saturday, 7/23/11, 1:00PM to 3:00 PM
BUILDING A CREATOR-OWNED CREATIVE TEAM
Featuring storytellers MIKE ALLRED, LARRY MARDER, GREG RUCKA, JAMIE S. RICH, and more TBA
Writing a story is hard enough, but finding the visual pairing to help express the story to its fullest can be pivotal in crafting your work. The right combination of exposition and dialogue with the perfect set of sequential images make for excellent, memorable storytelling in comics and children’s books. Join in with acclaimed writers and the artists they’ve worked with as they explore how the creative team, and the creative process, come to fruition.

SYMPOSIUM 7:
Sunday, 7/24/11, 1:00PM to 3:00 PM
WORLD-BUILDING and the IMMACULATE REALITY
Featuring film and comics storytellers GREG RUCKA, IVAN BRANDON, B. CLAY MOORE, TED MATHOT, DEREK THOMPSON, and more TBA
Fiction is a limitless landscape, ripe for painting with the varied colors of the imagination. Fiction is the realm of the impossible made possible. To do this effectively, writers, artists and storytellers present themselves with questions requiring unique answers. Not only must they know the lives and environments and politics of their central players, they must know what lurks behind the curtain, what lies beyond the horizon, and what awaits just off-screen. Even the most fantastical and surreal worlds must still be grounded in a reality that the audience can start from, can find footing on, and can then move from the familiar safety of…into the new worlds of story. This workshop will also dive into creating the worlds of character interaction: how player dynamics must be constructed effectively. In this, we’ll analyze the roles of archetypes including the “trickster” and how they effect the stories of their worlds.

Tickets for each event are available at the Tr!ckster website.

In addition, Greg will have on hand posters and t-shirts from Lady Sabre & The Pirates of the Ineffable Aether. Check out the Sabre website for product images, descriptions, and future announcements!