iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

...which means that by the transitive power of crossovers, Banned Book Club is connected to basically everything.

2240

I've read this Rosebuds book ban story, and it's FANTASTIC! Hyun Sook and I are proud to cameo in the funny papers in such a cool way! FUN FACT! It's a crossover! As Maria learns about book bans, she crosses over to the new story in the color edition of Banned Book Club to attend one of our talks!

38522

Yours is from page 83 of No Rules Tonight. Excited to hear that Banned Book Club will be taught in your class If you ever want me to Zoom in and answer student questions, just say the word!

1122

This is original, hand-inked art from our followup-book, No Rules Tonight. The guy being busted is Hoon, from Banned Book Club. The first 100 orders direct from @ironcircuscomics.bsky.social have signed art tucked in!

24210

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 26/09/2026

Ooh! You got one of my favs! This is original hand-drawn art of Yeongno, the monster who eats the rich, from our follow-up book No Rules Tonight. (He's peeking from behind Hyun Sook on the Banned Book Club cover, too.) The first 100 books from @ironcircuscomics.bsky.social have signed originals!

15312

My hope was that the new edition of Banned Book Club would help find new readers to counter the people working hard to ban it. But I was pleasantly surprised by the heartwarming thing that's happening... folks picking up the new one so their old copy can be donated to reach readers in need.

07421

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 26/09/2026

Nat got No Rules Tonight page 57 panel 2. I prefer his dialogue.

0213

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 26/09/2026

#BannedBookClubFact 10 It wasn't easy for Hyun Sook to cowrite in her second language. I was writing based on her oral history with her editing. So we printed bound copies of each draft of the script for her to annotate. My favorite bits were where she had to look up words.

060

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 25/09/2026

Yep! You got page 22, panel 4 of No Rules Tonight. Every copy you get direct from @ironcircuscomics.bsky.social has art inside!

0364

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 25/09/2026

Happy Chuseok! It's the harvest holiday season in Korea, and for the first time I've had TWO Chuseok comics to share. The old classic Seomyeon John is about hitchhiking on a Chuseok road trip And hit up your library for the last chapter of Good Old-Fashioned Korean Spirit is set at a Chuseok party

0236

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 24/09/2026

#BannedBookClubFact 9 Over the last 6 years, there've been talks of a Banned Book Club show, movie, and even Broadway musical! But with so many shutdowns, strikes, and corporate reshuffles in that time, none of them came to pass. Wild that Hyun Sook thought her story was too mundane to write about.

1619

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 23/09/2026

#BannedBookClubFact 8 The character that I love the most... and book banners hate... is Suji. They always point out Suji's love of punching cops, but never notice that every time she says it, she's more and more bruised from the police assaulting HER. She's surviving.

1506

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 23/09/2026

Twenty years ago, I was deleted from Wikipedia for being "just under the bar of notability." I was overjoyed to see that, after decades of work, I suddenly have an article again. And even more overjoyed to see that I've been upgraded from "just under the bar of notability" to "low importance."

61207

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 22/09/2026

Today's the day! If you ordered the Banned Book Club Color Edition direct @ironcircuscomics.bsky.social, it should arrive today! And I WANT PICTURES! #BannedBookClubFact 7: When the original came out, I drew Adorable Animals With Molotov Cocktails for everyone who posted a pic. Here are some favs.

1295

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 22/09/2026

Day one in Australia: "Pray, what is that majestic creature? An Ibis? How rare a chance! What luck to steal a fleeting glance of its exotic splendor." Day 2: Thirty excrement-encrusted ibis burst from trash cans to steal your bagel. Locals scream "bugger off, ya bloody bin chickens!"

4435

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 21/09/2026

Hyun Sook didn't think her story was interesting enough to make into a book. But this dramatic moment of her quick thinking to make both parties hear the same conversation differently to keep herself out of trouble was when I knew we had a heck of a story on our hands. #BannedBookClubFacts

1200

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 21/09/2026

#BannedBookClubFact 6 My favorite scene is when Hyun Sook accidentally intercepted the call from the agent looking for her parents. Many think it seems made up, but reality was even more unbelievable. She'd moved out of her parents' house and just happened to be visiting and closer to the phone.

1180

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 20/09/2026

We needn't have worried. The dean and mayor invited us to Changwon for a joint press conference to thank us for writing the book. They weren't ashamed of the past. The mayor told us he was IN a banned book club back then. The event led to me being completely Mike Wazowski'd in the newspaper.

2323

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 20/09/2026

#BannedBookClubFact 5 The story takes place at Anjeon University. It's a stand-in for Hyun Sook's teal school, Changwon University. We didn't want her hometown or alma mater mad at her for making them look bad. Anjeon University is a joke... it means "safety school."

1170

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 19/09/2026

#BannedBookClubFact 4 This bizarre true moment of clarity from a torturer shared the ending that I regret we couldn't include. The victim did meet him again, decades later, after the world changed. They bumped into one another on the street, made eye contact, and silently kept walking.

Agent Ok, a KCIA torturer, says to his victim "if the world changes, I hope you forgive me."

1190

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 18/09/2026

#BannedBookClubFact 3 The secret banned bookstore is called 태일 책방 (Tae-il Book Store) It's named after labor activist Chun Tae-Il, who set himself on fire in protest in 1970. He appears later in the book, which book banners have pointed out as a reason to ban it.

1220

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 17/09/2026

#BannedBookClubFact 2 We worked very hard to make the book accurate. But there's one lie. It's when Hyun Sook's mom finds out what she was doing and understands. In reality, she had no idea until the book came out. Why the lie? It'd be awkward to make a book where my mother-in-law's a villain.

1330

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 17/09/2026

I attended a Drink and Draw charity art event at Dice and Comics Cafe in Seoul. The theme was Batman, so I put him in a Bat Book Club.

39514

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 16/09/2026

The poem, translated to English: "No matter how harsh Winter may be, Spring always comes. Like the hope of a new sprout blooming from frozen earth." Hyun Sook improvised it in a few seconds because I asked her to simulate bad teen poetry, but it's actually beautiful. #BannedBookClubFact

1292

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 16/09/2026

#BannedBookClubFact 1: Hyun Sook actually did a single illustration in the book. In the panel where Jihoo writes bad poetry about hope, I handed Hyun Sook a piece of paper and told her to improvise something. This panel is her handwriting, and she added the flower. Translation in the ALT text!

A panel from Banned Book Club shows a hand-written Korean poem. Even I didn't know what it meant until just now, so the translation, here for the first time: "No matter how harsh winter may be, Spring always comes. Like the hope of a new sprout blooming from frozen earth."

1352

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 12/09/2026

‘We’re Coming for the Books’ There's a great article on @penamerica.bsky.social about the book banning situation in Texas, but I'm especially partial to the last paragraph. Our new edition, with a chapter about Texas book banning will be out in time for #bannedbooksweek

35529

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 05/09/2026

No one got it. 23 year old Jack Black made his film debut in Bob Roberts, based on a Tim Robbins SNL character. One of the 9 creator owned SNL movies.

2150

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 03/09/2026

I dunno what it is about the poster for The Intern (2026), a Korean remake starring Oldboy himself Choi Min-sik, but I can't see it without laughing. There have been Korean remakes before, but they're usually retitled and reinterpreted. Here, they even put their legs in the exact same positions.

2134

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 03/09/2026

A closer look at the feature length filmography of Wile Ethelbert Coyote, Super Genius.

2180

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 03/09/2026

Still waiting for Coyote vs Acme to make it to Asia, but I'm glad the man's extensive filmography of cameos and supporting roles has paid off

14510

No one got it but @notquitecool.bsky.social got closest. JB Smoove's character Julius Dell was created as a one joke character for a Homecoming tie-in Audi commercial. Jon Watts liked it enough to put him in more movies than Shang Chi.

1211

Similarly, Elie Wiesel's Night is both on the illegal-in-schools list and simultaneously required reading in many of the same schools. Maybe someone's jealous of his Nobel Peace Prize???

1233

Busy also knows Elmo, so I'm sure she could get an introduction since he knows Kermit.

170

She does know the Muppets, but has never gotten to write and produce like her costars did.

190

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 28/08/2026

I still can't get over that the same book made it onto both the Texas state-wide school library recommendation list and the Texas state-wide illegal-in-school-libraries list. Luckily, the first is real and the second is a politician abusing imagined power. Fight back w/ @txfreedomread.bsky.social!

311743

For a while, there was a life size statue of the monster from The Host in the park where the scene takes place, but before I made it there to see it the HOA-wannabe-ass neighbors complained that it didn't match the park aesthetic and had it destroyed.

46014

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 23/08/2026

I just realized that if Texas lawmakers think our book is illegal now, they're really not going to be happy that the new edition coming out next month has a brand new chapter specifically about our book being banned in Texas.

7538172

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 22/08/2026

Over on the nazi site, the anti-library demographic doesn't see destruction of schools and libraries as the danger, but rather ME, for posting about it. Ironically, while simultaneously complaining that low engagement on his hate posts must mean Elon is censoring him.

A dude who I will not giv e the attention he so desires posted on X "This Ryan Estrada guy who makes stochastic terror threats to get parents killed for challenging school books is now going after Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, because groombrarians have no limits when it comes to indoctrinating kids.' He tagged the politician in question to tell on me. Ohhhhh noooooo.

68315

No, Patience and Esther didn't make this particular list... but Sarah, Hyun Sook and I all joined together recently in Australia to talk our experiences with book banning.

080

But surely this whole list isn't just automated slop, right? If they're criminalizing kids books and librarians, a human being is sorting the data carefully, right? one banned title is "there. You can read the different book reports. Most reports score the books from 1-5" by the author "with"

318039

What's it take to make a book illegal in Texas schools? There's a handy tagging system. BRUCE means one dude in Florida doesn't like it. RB means they asked ChatGPT and did no further research They added any book on book rating sites, even if, like mine, they're rated 2, which is basically PG.

114532