I'm boarding a plane to France later today. I'm going mainly to support Fin, the French edition of The End. But there's a ton of other stuff going on while I'm there. I'll be in Besançon January 22-24 for the PFC5 exhibition The Goat Without a Face and a few talks. Helping run PFC5 last summer in Minneapolis was a whirlwind, so I'm looking forward to getting to relax and get a new look, with clearer eyes, at some of the weird and wonderful collaborative drawings and comics that came out of that storm.

Then, next Tuesday I'm in Paris for the Drawn & Quarterly 25th Anniversary exhibition at Galerie Martel. It's the first time Big Questions originals will be shown in France, and I'm sending a few examples I don't normally let out of my flatfiles. Other reasons to go, if you're in Paris include original art by Julie Doucet, Lynda Barry, Genevieve Castree and a bunch of other ridiculously talented people.

Wednesday and Thursday I'm signing copies of Fin at Super Heros and Page 198, respectively, and then heading to Angouleme on Friday for a public talk with Jean-Pierre Mercier.

Busy couple of weeks.

That's right, God and the Devil were paired up at random.

Mostly PFC is about process, not results. But there has historically been one exception. In 2011 Icinori put together a beautiful accordion book collaboration (scroll way down) between the artists of that year, based around depictions of the 12 Tasks of Heracles:

We didn't have the benefit of Icinori's boundless energy, subtle skill and guiding hand this year, but we really wanted to make something of the kind happen again.

So with the help of June, Zak and I came up with the following project: we made a list of characters, made each of the artists choose one, then paired them up randomly (with an emphasis on pairing English and French speakers together), and then asked them to create a page in which their characters interact in some way, with the additional constraint that something, somewhere must get broken. Zak's chose 'an alcoholic', I chose 'escaped convict'.

The result is this three-color, screenprinted accordion book, hand-assembled by the participants, printed by the inestimable Dan Ibarra at Aesthetic Apparatus (also, as it turns out, of boundless energy and subtle skill). And this all happened in less than a week. Our undying gratitude to everyone involved for their patience, indulgence and enthusiasm.

The few remaining copies are available here, $45 each. Proceeds will go to make whole the tireless volunteers of ChiFouMi, without whom none of this could have happened, and to support future incarnations of PFC. Dan generously offered up the test prints as well, which we cut down into stacks of 5" x 6 1/2" "postcards", a few of which will get thrown in with every order. For me these cards complete the collaboration, because in addition to being in many cases surprising and jewel-like, they incorporate the work of Aesthetic Apparatus with imagery from the book. Which brings everything full circle.

And in case you are curious who got paired with who, the collaborators were as follows, in order: Marc Bell and Domitille Collardey, Lilli Carre and Emilie Plateau, Tom Kaczynski and Jean-Christophe Menu, Sandrine Martin and Kevin Huizenga, Lisa Hanawalt and Pierre Ferrero, Eugene Riousse and Jim Rugg, John Porcellino and Benoit Preteseille, Eleanor Davis and Max de Radigues, Genevieve Castree and David Libens, and Zak Sally and myself.