Happy Halloween, Humboldt. Last year we introduced you to the sweetly spooky work of comic artist Liz Valasco on our cover (“The Seeker,” Oct. 30, 2025). After seeing what she and the Journal’s Setlist columnist Collin Yeo cooked up together, how could we resist a second grab from the candy bucket?
“Crash Course” also appears in issue No. 2 of the Humboldt Comix Collective, in which local writers and artists work with the theme of monsters. (Pick up a copy at Omnibus in Old Town or either North Coast Co-Op location, and keep an eye out for more locations coming soon.)
The monster theme was an easy fit, says Valasco. “We’re both big horror nerds, so we were very happy about this. Collin came up with the idea one day when we were hanging out in his backyard with his cats. He mostly wrote it; I just had a couple edits. I made some sketches, and it went from there. Once it was complete, I drew it up!”
Yeo admits his part was the shorter end of the deal. “I sat under a tree and fleshed out the basics in about 10 minutes and wrote a spec script later that day, which Liz helped me punch up and edit. We had a quick turnaround — I want to say it was basically done in about 10 days. She did an awesome job coloring it for this issue.”
“This is our first published collaboration,” says Valasco. “We have a couple other projects in the works, including the next issue of my comic The Adventures of Moon Pie.” Those comics, first started when she lived in Ohio, take place in the redwoods, where the intrepid title character, a piece of the moon sent to Earth to accomplish a long-forgotten goal, roams with a little robot companion.
“We met because of my admiration for her art, which remains,” says Yeo. “I am a big fan of her Moon Pie comics, and I wrote a script for those characters as a sort of love letter after we had been in a relationship for a while.”
The two have more horror-related material on deck and readers who’d like to see more can check out Valasco’s Patreon and Yeo’s Substack @allcatsaregray. The keen-eyed might see some crossover between the drawing and writing in those two platforms as winter comes on and they move indoors, presumably with those cats.
— Jennifer Fumiko Cahill
Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her) is the managing editor at the Journal. Reach her at (707) 442-1400 ext. 106, or jennifer@northcoastjournal.com. Follow her on Bluesky @jfumikocahill.bsky.social.
This article appears in ‘Crash Course’ A Halloween Comic by Liz Valasco and Collin Yeo.
