Oh wait, is this thing ON???
In which I finally populate my Substack
Hahahah WHUT
Apparently I “started” this Substack in August of 2020, a time best encapsulated by picturing a lunatic asylum on fire. As I recall I did so so I could participate in some kind of Substack-y thing, but just what has been lost to said fire, along with some perfectly good lunatics. And I’m doing this now because I will be a guest on Jason Chatfield’s excellent Draw Me Anything tomorrow, March 24th, at noon Eastern (MARK YOUR CALENDAR), and that feels like just the kick in the pants I needed to get this going For Real after… five and a half years. At any rate, I see that I promised “Lulu Eightball, plus assorted brain detritus,” so let’s get into what the hell that even means. I may deliver LATE but let it not be said that I deliver NEVER (that has in fact been said, often, with damning accuracy).
The fuck is Lulu Eightball?
Lulu Eightball was a comic strip I did for alt-weeklies (for the Youngs: alt-weeklies were once a mainstay of urban life, free newspapers covering local entertainment, news, and culture. They also featured classifieds, Missed Connections - and I got TWO thankyouverymuch, I was cute once - and comics, and I miss them like a dead friend) from 2001 - 2016. Lulu is how I taught myself to write jokes and established my “voice,” as it were, that voice being “well-meaning mess mining pathos for humor,” if I have to give an elevator pitch. I will post them here, less as an exercise in nostalgia and more as a bid for external validation means of connecting with that voice, because Lulu is still probably the most distilled example of my comedic… essence. Sometimes it is helpful for me to remember that, as a way of keeping my comedic North Star visible.
“Brain detritus?” Okaaaay
A catch-all term that, if I’m being honest, sounds a little cringey to me now, but is meant to indicate that I will also write about whatever happens to be on my mind at any given moment. Topics are likely to include but not be limited to: Baking (especially pies), middle-age, my ongoing battle with the pigeon community (not the people who harbor them, but the birds themselves, and they know what they did), people and why, motherhood, small joys, big sads, fear of all kinds, and run-on sentences.
Who even ARE you though
My name is Emily Flake, if you haven’t figured that out already. I am a cartoonist (mostly for the New Yorker), writer (for many many pubs, books, radio, and screen), acomic (any stage that will have me and some that won’t), illustrator (everything from books to mags to Broadway), and teacher (currently at the New School). I am the author of several books, including Mama Tried, That Was Awkward: the Art and Etiquette of the Awkward Hug, and Joke in a Box: How to Write and Draw Jokes. I was a writer on Command Z, a Steven Soderbergh-directed web series, which was nominated for a WGA Award (and is the reason I am in the WGA, and if you’re looking for a writer in that capacity, HI). I co-host FDK, a monthly-ish standup show with the incredible Hollie Harper, at Young Ethel’s in South Slope. I own and operate the St. Nell’s Humor Writing Residency in Williamsport, PA, a program for women and other marginalized genders working in any comedic discipline. I was a Yaddo fellow in 2025 and I am the recipient of the 2026 Thurber Prize in Cartoon Art. I live in Brooklyn and own an absurd cat. This is my favorite thing I have ever written.
This is what I look like (they said I should tell you)
Yes, that’s a Jawbreaker shirt. Yes, that’s extremely on-brand.
And here’s a very early Lulu, just so you know part of what you’re getting into here. As you might glean from the reference to “I.M.” and “emoticons,” this is from Long Ago (I want to say 2004, around the time I did indeed start fucking a co-worker, and reader, I married him) (for real!), but “That’s the spot where I don’t love you anymore” remains one of my favorite lines I’ve ever written, so do with that information what you will.
5. Ignore our advice
Oh Substack, I love it when you play coy.
Yay, Emily's here!
Okay, now you're here! Good.