Quick programming note: both Webcomicscon and APE are this weekend, on opposite coasts (Norwalk, Connecticut and San Francisco, respectively), with plenty of webcomicky types at each. I’ll be at my niece’s wedding, and considering that for her college graduation we got her a complete set of Roast Beef’s ‘zines and a bottle of Ray’s Rad Chilies sauce, I think I’ll have somebody to talk webcomics with. Just a hunch.

Sometimes, the funniest material comes from working without a net. Grab the microphone, lay down some audio, minimal edits, just go with it. We’ve seen the results from Kris and Scott (Scott and Kris) with their Blamimation — free-associating on a premise into an audio track, then limited animations to provide a visual component are added. But what if the words and pictures could be recorded simultaneously?

Enter Wondermark Kinetic. Air Marshall Malki ! and his cohort, Zachary Sigelko (seen on the right, talkin’ ’bout bears), have bashed together some mouth-articulated puppets and static backgrounds (all looking very Victorian-engraved) and tell their funny straight to the camera. Eight puppet shows uploaded in the course of six hours — the only recorded instance of short, funny films being produced more quickly was when the Old Spice Guy was kicking out responses to tweets every 20 minutes or so.

It reminds me in a weird way of something NASA’s been doing for a number of years now. See, you could spend a couple billion dollars on a space probe, hope everything goes right for literally years while it travels to wherever it’s going, and it still might not work when it gets there due to circumstances beyond any rational measure of control. Alternately, you could bash together something quick and on the cheap (okay, $250 million isn’t “cheap” in the conventional sense, but stick with me) and even if some clown forgets to use metric and it smacks headlong into Mars, you’ve got eight or nine other devices working, some way beyond expectations. If the mission’s going to fail, let it fail quickly, and move onto something else.

I think of this because of a remark that Malki ! once made about having so many project ideas, so many things he wants to pursue, but to do any as fully as it could be done would mean not doing something else. But these animations make me think that he’s come around to the NASA model — try it, and if it turns out to not be as interesting or as fun as initially thought, ditch it and move onto something else.

Could the backdrops for these puppet shows (or for that matter, the cardboard-constructed Machine of Death he brought to MoCCA this year) look more polished? Sure, and if it warrants it in the future, I’m sure that polish will be added to the revised version. In the meantime, we get intense bursts of creativity, each of which stretches and strengthens the creativity muscle¹ of an already significantly creative individual.

Malki ! might decide after a burst of activity that Wondermark Kinetic wasn’t all he hoped it would be, but the things he learned will make the next 37 projects he drops on us all the better/funnier/more polished. Right now, the pace of building is fast, cheap, maybe even a little out of control — but now is just warmup time.

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¹ Difficult to find on most anatomical diagrams, it’s usually underdeveloped and wedges behind the spleen.

It occurs to me that it’s been a while since I had occasion to mention The Abominable Charles Christopher; after a certain point, noting that Karl Kerschl did a drop-dead gorgeous strip again this week just becomes a bit repetitive. But sometimes KK and/or CC make you pay attention, as happened with yesterday’s update.

I believe that I’ve mentioned before that one of the great things about Charles Christopher is the multiplicity of side stories that run in parallel to the main storyline of our favorite big-hearted ape-man. Considering that you’ve got the Story of Vivol and Moon Bear, the owl and the owlet and the crazy owl uncle, the bird that just wants to be a good father and husband, the cockroach therapist and/or analyst¹, and various love stories involving various smaller critters, you’ve got more intersecting storylines than anybody this side of David Morgan-Mar².

Then we have Sissi Skunk; she’s been in the background since the very beginning (within the second month of the strip, in fact), and as we’ve seen for quite a while, she’s into perhaps some very bad things³.

Every once in a while, Kerschl comes back to Sissi’s interactions (or more precisely, the interactions of her business interests) with the denizens of the forest; increasingly, those interactions have been noted by Luga. Luga’s the James Gordon of Cedar Forest, the honest cop who knows that something’s up and is going to get to the bottom of it. But he’s hampered by corruption and has reached the point of betryal by his comrades. Blood will be spilled, and if Luga comes through it, he’ll have even bigger problems.

It’s the depth of these incidental characters and their stories that make Charles Christopher’s world feel so richly realized; even with the protagonist away since the beginning of the strip, life in the Cedar goes on and the wicked and the weary continue their lives and narratives in his absence. And Luga, who just wants there to be justice in Cedar Forest, deserved to have his narrative noted now that it’s maybe come to an end.

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¹ I call him “Tobias”.

² PhD, LEGO®™©^etc.

³ Although, to be fair, she also brings you Squirrel-Chew.

Nonzero bandwidth for other purposes: restored.
Time: way late.
Conclusion: short update, regarding books.

• Book the First: Scott C launches his latest, Amazing Everything, tomorrow in conjunction with APE this weekend. He’s celebrating with a party at 111 Minna Gallery (located conveniently at 111 Minna Street) in San Francisco from 7pm to 10pm tomorrow. If you’re in the mood for more Scott (and who wouldn’t be?), he’ll also be speaking tomorrow afternoon at the Academy of Art (540 Powell Street) from 3:30 to 4:30.
• Book the Second: Production continues apace on the first print collection of everybody’s favorite online comical erotica smut, Oglaf¹. Need proof? Peep the twitternouncment of TopatoCo maximum leader Jeffrey Rowland, or the picture attached thereunto. Even on the cover of a book wherein he’s arguably the most commonly-depicted character, poor Ivan is still the buttmonkey²

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¹ Need we point out that if any link to Oglaf is safe for your work, you work someplace awesome?

² Or the rubbish tiger, as the case may be.

One may recall that I was unable to attend SPX this year due to work. What one may not know is that my fellow Goats forum refugee, occasional colleague on this page (and even more occasional drinking buddy) Jeff Lowrey offered to make some purchases on my behalf in Bethesda. And so he has, and at some point the USPS will deliver these to my home. You, on the other hand, don’t have to wait to obtain a copy of Hark! A Vagrant from your nearest bookshop, comic book store, or the fine folks at Topatoco¹.

You know how sometimes you hear a description of somebody as a “writer’s writer” or an “artist’s artist”, or you geta movie that just kills with the cinephile crowd but the broader public doesn’t like? There’s often a divide between creators that impress the general audience and creators that fellow creators recognize as doing something not obvious, something that makes them really special. You very rarely get a creator that remains accessible and stretching the bounds of the artform simultaneously.

Kate Beaton is one of those very few, as good as everybody says she is; she is a painstaking crafter of pure, distilled moments, capturing the key essence of a story scene, a moment in history, a relationship and reducing it to the absolute minimum necessary to convey exactly the emotion and message she wants it to convey. There’s no excess lines, no word or caption that gets in the way or takes away your part in the reading half of the equation. The little stories (and they are all stories, whether there’s a gag there or not) Beaton tells tickle both the smartened part of your brain — which appreciates the games she plays with pop culture, history, literature, and language — and the part that just knows very little is better than an honest, unexpected laugh².

A lot of people are writing a lot about Hark! A Vagrant today, not because we got our marching orders from the secret conspiracy that runs everything³, but because a lot of people came independently to the same conclusion: Kate Beaton is an incredible, once-in-a-century talent, the kind that makes you want to grab people by the lapels and shout Read this right now.

And because she might forget to do so to one or two people over the upcoming book tour, Kate took some time out to pre-emptively thank everybody for picking up the book. She’s polite that way.

Earlier today, Box Brown offered up his take on the book release:

Guys [Kate Beaton] is going to for real break into the mainstream. I predict a [Conan O’Brien] appearance in 2012.

I think he’s right. I think that Kate Beaton will be the next (possibly the last) cartoonist to be known in the general culture, like we haven’t seen since Schulz (or since she’s not a strip cartoonist, maybe the better comparison would be to Feiffer, Addams, or Hirschfeld).

Hyperbole? Perhaps. But can you think of anything less than the release of a Kate Beaton book (and the attention she’s been getting from the mediasphere up to and including Time freaking magazine) that would knock the news of a new Perry Bible Fellowship strip way the hell down here? I didn’t think so.

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¹ Where, I understand, due to an absence of some of the complexities of bookstore distribution, Kate Beaton will make somewhat more money per copy than other channels, and where you can also pick up her first book, Never Learn Anything From History.

² Maybe sitting around a campfire at the end of the day. Marshmallows optional.

³ The secret conspiracy is busy this week, making sure the weather-control machines keep my home at 87% humidity until doors and drawers can no longer be opened.

See that picture up there? That’s the first story page of Jim Zubkavich’s The Makeshift Miracle, which ran online in 2001 – 03, as photographed in my copy of the 2006 print collection.

This is page one of The Makeshift Miracle¹, running online from today. In case anybody was wondering what a decade’s experience and networking in the comics industry gets you, it’s the opportunity to get redone art from the likes of Shun Hong Chan. If perchance you’ve never read The Makeshift Miracle, you now officially have no excuse — two pages a week, with a new print of the book coming from Zub’s studio, UDON next year, which will sit proudly on my shelf next to the original.

• From one page (so far), let’s jump up to three: Hurricane Erika posted one of her older comics works late last week, Orienteering, which was written by Sara Ryan and originally ran in the anthology Snow Stories.

  But Gary, I hear you cry, surely you can’t call a three page comic a longform story, or even long-ishform!² To which I say, go read it, and tell me there isn’t a hell of a lot of story that just didn’t make it into those three pages. He that left her in the snow, they have a history. And she and the skier have a future set of stories all their own — you just got a little snippet in what’s clearly a very long story, so quit whining and get to reading.

• Know what’s been missing for far too long? Family Man. When last we saw the redoubtable Luther Levy (so don’t think you can ever doubt him just once — you need to doubt, then re-doubt or it doesn’t stick), things were happening, including sexytimes with naked people! Then Dylan Meconis took a summer break.

  Boooo.

  But she came back with a 23 page complete story, not involving Luther or any of his, but perfectly in character with the fairy tale that she’s telling³. Outfoxed has lessons for those that are brave (or foolish) enough to dig for them, just like all the best fairy tales.

• Can’t read it yet (at least not in the form that we’re talking about right now), but if you’re looking for a longform story that’s just sheer fun (and features the best tagline of any comic ever), you can’t go wrong with Dave Roman & John Green’s Teen Boat! For those of you that have never experienced the angst of being a teen or the thrill of being a boat, TB! will be published next year, has a newly-revealed cover, and even a few review copies up for grabs.
• Finally, for those of you that haven’t read enough yet, how about what may be the most comprehensive list of webcomickers that I’ve ever found? You may be familiar with the work of webcomics überfan Michael Kinyon; by day he is a mild-mannered professor of mathematics, by night and a goodly chunk of the next day, he reads more webcomics than me by about an order and a half of magnitude. Pert-near every Friday you can find his list of webcomickers (and webcomics characters) getting #FF’ed in his twitterstream, and now he’s engaged with a similar list on the Google Plus. Even more lucky for reference nuts (like myself), he built on the works of an earlier list. Attend:
  

  The most common complaint heard about Google+ is the difficulty some have in finding people to follow. Now it is a bit easier to find webcomickers on Google+ and thus to find new webcomics too. Your readers might be interested to know that there are two comprehensive lists of webcomics people with Google+ accounts, both hosted at Ralf Rottmann’s Google+ Counter.

  The first list is Cartoonists (Webcomics/Web Cartoonists) and is managed by Bearman, the creator of Bearman Cartoons. His is a list of “cartoonists with a webcomic or who regularly post non-freelance work on the web”.

  Since I already manage six lists of great webcomics pals and fine webcomics folks over at Twitter, I was inspired by Bearman’s example (and his gracious endorsement) to create my own list, entitled simply Webcomics. Mine is “a list of webcomic creators (current and lapsed) and other people associated with webcomics (bloggers, podcasters, etc.)”

  The two lists overlap considerably, of course, but the point is that each of us hopes that people will find them to be a useful resource. Any cartoonist who meets Bearman’s criteria and would like to be on his list can contact him at Google+ or by his website’s contact page.

  Similarly, any webcomicker who wants to be on one of my lists can contact me at either G+ or Twitter.

  Warning: extensive lists at those links. Perhaps you might try to set up an Archive Binge feed and take it in manageable chunks.

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¹ Damn, that’s pretty.

² Don’t call me Shirley.

³ Which is to say, a real-damn-fairy-tale, the kind that we used to get before successive generations of redactors and censors and happy-makers, the sort where you are not guaranteed a happy ending. A very good example of the form was recently written by Ursula Vernon (of the concluded but always-in-my-heart Digger) at her LiveJournal, starting here and concluding here. Warning: no pictures, and so good it will make you squirm.

Unrelated to anything else, this update of Gunnerkrigg Court is officially Today’s Best Thing.

First noticed via Kris Straub’s twitterfeed:

assetbar closes its doors january 1, 2012. check out their blog. s.assetbar.com/index

That link leads to a blogposting that ain’t much more verbose than Straub’s summary:

Assetbar is closing its doors January 1, 2012
We built Fanflows so creators and artists could have an easy way to pursue their craft and make a premium connection with their fans.
It didn’t work

So, as of January 1, 2012, Assetbar and all Fanflows will be gone.
How this is going to go down

1. Effectively immediately we will no longer be accepting new funds deposits.
2. Other than adding new funds, you may continue to use Assetbar for the rest of the year, but…
3. On December 30, 2011 at 11:59PM PST, we pull the plug on the servers.

Actions you can take

• Withdraw your remaining funds
• Donate the remainder of your balance to Chris Onstad
• Continue to browse your Premium Content until January 1, 2012
• Follow Achewood on Twitter

Thanks!

It has been fun. Mostly.

Peace out,
The Assetbar Team

Rewind: in April of ’07, Chris Onstad introduced a new tool to control content availability to his subscribers; he referred to the for-pay area as the Fanflow, and it was powered by a toolset called AssetBar, cooked up by friends of his. By January of ’09 Straub’s Starslip and Scott Kurtz’s PvP added the AssetBar technology, followed by Meredith Gran’s Octopus Pie, described by these adopters as essentially a testbed¹. I recall one or two other webcomics did likewise, but they all sort of drifted away over the course of a year or so.

AssetBar never really took off and achieved that magical level of Must! Have! for a large enough swath of the webcomics audience (and to my knowledge didn’t really attract users outside that community at all) to be self-sustaining. Part micropayments, part content management system, it did a couple of things pretty well, but ultimately required a compelling case on the part of creators to get enough users².

The users, on the other hand, needed to have lots of their favorite creators hooked into AssetBar to be certain of having enough places to spend their deposited funds; while a few superfans of just one site might pay a buck or two a month for sneak peeks at behind the scenes content (something that Kurtz, for example, gives away for free daily now), it seems that most wanted to spend a bit here, a bit there, and there just wasn’t a broad enough marketplace willing to accept the virtual scrip.

Not enough sites means not enough users means other sites not seeing the point in adopting means still more users not signing up — vicious circle stasis was achieved fairly early, and yesterday’s plug-pull announcement seems more an afterthought than anything (for example, the AssetBar blog seems not to have updated since December of ’09, a sure sign of a non-priority project).

Props to Israel L’Heureux and the rest of the AssetBar team for winding down with plenty of advance notice and a chance to reclaim funds; too often enterprises like this just disappear one day and any customers that have outstanding credit are outtalucko. Given that a previous project of the team got sold to Juniper Networks for a not-insignificant sum, I don’t think they’re hurting for cash, but still — it’s sadly more than you expect these days, to see startups try to go out with a modicum of class.

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¹ Kurtz in particular is pretty flexible about messing around with his business model: trying things, keeping those that work while they work, ditching those that don’t, and thinking about what to try next on an ongoing basis. That experimental, never-think-you’re-safe approach makes me think he’d be a damn good IT admin in charge of disaster preparedness — dude’s always got a backup plan. Respect.

² Onstad probably came closest.

Grey, dreary day. High humidity, just cool enough to make all the moisture hang in the air. A melancholy climate, and well-suited to some indoor entertainments. I know, let’s read some comics on the internet!

• Not that I begrudge Randall Munroe’s use of Bitches way back in comic #54, but Darryl Cunningham is attempting to be a bit more … conciliatory, perhaps? And he’s got more than 100 panels to deal with the topic of the validity of the scientific method and why science denialism is stupid, to Munroe’s one; it’s a slow build as opposed to a single knockout punch — it simply wouldn’t have worked in this context¹. Unsurprisingly, Cunningham has done as good a job as he has on his earlier comics, despite the inherent handicap of having a much broader, less sharply-defined topic (“science”) than in his previous investigative comical endeavours (examining things like the nonscientific denials of vaccine safety, evolution, or climate change).

  Speaking of, the journal comics of Tyler Page and his story of ADHD are pretty similar in tone and character to Cunningham’s Psychiatric Tales, and he’s just posted chapter two. Go get it.

• Know what’s great? Achewood². Know what’s also great? People interpreting Achewood in their own styles. Case in point: Magnolia Porter (of the entirely-wonderful, recently concluded Bobwhite, and the even more wonderful and ongoing Monster Pulse) has decided to take some inspiration from Achewood characters, and set herself the challenge of drawing one a day for fifty days.

  In case her launch (yesterday) with Teodor made you suspect she would be limiting herself to series regulars, please note that today’s winner is Todd’s friend Little Freddie, who has not been seen for lo these many years. Me, I’m waiting to see when we get Rod Huggins, Sidney Yamahata, Sound and Motion, Cartilage Head, and especially Rameses Luther.

• Stripped: funded at 188% of goal, and just barely shy of the level that Freddave Kellett-Shroeder declared would let them add Dolby sound, mucho animations (from indie animators, naturally), closed-captioning, and more interviews. I’m guessing that somehow, they’ll find a way to make those extended goals happen, maybe with “mucho animations minus one animation”. Many congrats to Dave, Fred, and the 2600 people besides myself who pitched in, and will now assuredly get the documentary they were dreaming of.

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¹ For more on using “bitches” as a bit of lexical color, consider the case of newly-minted MacArthur Genius Jad Abumrad and his mom .

² Which I suspect, but I do not have hard evidence for this suspicion, will be dropping some new content on us in or around the imminent 10th anniversary of Philippe standing on it.

Things are about today. Things and signs and portents!

• Did I mention this already? I don’t think that I have. Jamie Noguchi (with a history in webcomics that goes waaaay back) is releasing the first book from his current (and best, in my opinion) project, ¥ellow Peril. Back to the Grind runs from the strip’s launch in February 2010 to early November of that same year (no link: spoilers), including the first eight story arcs. The only downside is that duration cuts off just before the introduction of maybe my favorite YP character, the Asian-American gay action/porn moviestar.

  The good news is that since early November of last year, Noguchi has completed eight more story arcs (and is midway through a ninth, on my favorite athletic activity), so presuming brisk sales on volume 1, he can hopefully get a second volume out to his demanding fans right quick.

• You know which continent doesn’t get enough webcomics love? Well, Antarctica, actually — aside from the occasional T-Rex visit, no joy. But Australia, despite several native–grown talents, Australian visits by creators from places far distant are pretty rare. Sure, Team Foglio, Howard Tayler¹, and a number of vision-impaired mustelids descended on the sunburned country last year, but it’s a rare sort of thing. Now we’ll see a visit Down Under by Scott and Kris (Kris and Scott) to host a program of orchestrally-performed videogame music with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. And, of course, Wil Wheaton. Those wishing to see Oz in April, this is your excuse.
• Very short notice, to make up for the long notice on the Melbourne thing — Ryan North will be infiltrating the United States tomorrow, specifically to drink tea. Ryan’s announcement of the event says it’s at 4:00pm, but Yale seems to think it’s at 8:00pm? It’s probably at one of those two times, maybe! Most likely in the common room of Davenport College! That would appear to be around the corner from where Kate Beaton did the same thing earlier this year, so it appears if you want to have tea at Yale and you’re a webcomicker, it helps to be Canadian².
• Received in the mail yesterday, the pack full of joy pictured up top, courtesy of the Canadianest Viking ever, Rene Engström. There a beautiful Anders Loves Maria print, and some minis, and a lovely watercolor of Engström and her sweetie, Rasmus Gran. It’s the last that really caught my eye, because as anybody that’s read Engström’s diary comics (from which the minis are drawn) or her parallel journal comic with Gran, So Far Apart, can tell you, it’s:
  1. Rene and Rasmus are absolutely, crazily in love/lust with each other
  2. Rene and Rasmus sometimes annoy the ever-loving shit out of each other

  That’s what I love about Engström’s work — the honesty. It’s easy to gloss over the little difficulties in your day, or to make your sweetie (or yourself) look better than circumstances might actually warrant. To show the unvarnished truth, the rough patches that exist in every life and relationship but which most wouldn’t want public? That’s a rare thing. It’s not exhibitionism, it’s purely a dedication to showing things as they are, metaphorical warts and all.

  When Engström asked what topic I’d like for the watercolor (part of a fund drive some time back) I immediately requested a portrait of her and Gran, because I knew she’d put all those emotions, all the positives and negatives into it, that it would be an object not just of artistic skill, but of beauty that could only be achieved by revealing all those layers. And damn, she knocked it out of the park.

  Also, she totally draws my moustache better than anybody else.

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¹ My evil twin.
² Also, to be awesome.

Yeah, the home computer pretty much needs a rebuild. There goes my evenings and upcoming weekend. How are you?

• If there is any justice in this world I will win this — a Wondermarkish physical artifact, which has been given the Malki ! treatment (malkied? malkified?) not via Photoshop, but rather by careful use of an Xacto knife and wood joinery. It’s being given away by the good folks behind Hendrick’s Gin, which is beautifully, wonderfully tasty stuff, although it doesn’t look quite large enough to hold my bottle of Hendrick’s, I’m sure it has many uses.

  Please, whatever you do, do not go to the contest giveaway page and enter the drawing (US residents only), because doing so will only dilute my chances of winning, as is my due.

• Programming for NYCC is now posted, but it’s somewhat difficult to read — you can see lists of sessions by date (example: Thursday via text, Thursday via grid) or by track (example: comics, only available in grid form), but only the session titles and times show. In order to see descriptions or participants, you have to “drill down” (as the business meeting types say) by clicking on the title, which makes it difficult to scan for keywords of interest (like “webcomics”). As such, I was only able to find one session that is relevant to our weird little tribe:
  How the Webcomic Publishing Sausage Gets Made
  8:45 pm – 9:45 pm, Room 1A23
  Follow along on a webcomic’s long odyssey as it goes from its home on the internet to a publisher, a warehouse, and finally into the hands of its loving fans with expert tour guides Zach Weiner and representatives from Breadpig Publishing and Amplifier Fulfillment.

  There may well be others, but hell if I could find ’em.

• Received recently in the mail:
  

  Hopefully this isn’t too forward of me, but I’m sort of starting out as a web cartoonist (only about 60 pages into a story) and was wondering, since you guys know a fair bit about webcomics, if you’d mind taking a look and letting me know what you think. My goal is to put out a great comic, so any tips would be really appreciated! that is, if you want. Either way, thanks a lot for keeping up this blog, it’s a great resource for me.

  That’s from Lorena TL of LS-Zián Comics. Taking a quick glance, it’s got a loopy visual style that’s arranged into (so far) four story arcs, the most recent starting here. So far, so good. Here’s what I can give to Lorena (or anybody else asking similar questions)¹:

  1. The archive calendar shows an update history of 1 – 3 comics per week, randomly spaced. Yeah, yeah, RSS readers, everybody’s got ’em, don’t care. Pick a schedule, commit to it, readers will appreciate the regularity.
  2. If you’re going to be doing story arcs, every page has to both move the arc forward and stand on its own. Every page is likely to be somebody’s first (as this one was for me), and if I can’t get some sense of what’s going on in the overall story, I’m far less likely to dig back to a starting point and invest my time.

     If you’re a complete master, you can get away with single pages that don’t have a clear conclusion to them (cf: anything by Evan Dahm; the Overside stories simply must be read long-form, but he’s so visually interesting you’re willing to make that leap). And even complete masters will go out of their way to deliver a punchline, or story beat, or a big interesting speech.

  3. To paraphrase Brad Guigar, it should be impossible to get worse at something you’ve practiced thousands of times. But don’t just fail to get worse: get better, and better, and better.

  Here endeth the lesson.

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¹ Bearing in mind that I’m not a creator — I’m a typical (if likely more widely-read than usual) representation of your audience.

Three major challenges today, that is, which pretty much erupted in the first half-hour after waking up. Since then it’s just been a normal Monday, for certain values of normal¹.

• And that’s all before considering that it’s Talk Like A Pirate Day. I don’t hold much truck with this holiday; to me, 19 September will always instead be It’s Anniversary!² But dadnugget³ Crumbs has gone and made TLAPD actually valuable. Yarrgh.
• Ultimately, though, there are two words that will redeem any bad times, even a Monday-Squared:

  Anime.

  Club.

• In other news, Jim Zub took time out from kicking ass and skulls with the funnest comic book on the racks presently to drop me a mysterious little email:
  

  Hey Gary,
  Check this out:
  http://www.makeshiftmiracle.com/

  Keep your eyes on it… it’s gonna be a beaut.

  Those of us that remember Zub’s first comics work, The Makeshift Miracle (which launched, oh, about ten years ago) are rightfully intrigued by this turn of events and one-week countdown. Might there be a relaunch? Remastered art? Further adventures? The mind reels, and quite frankly anything that he throws at us, I’m gonna be thrilled. Hooray!

• New Recipe Comix, this time from John Allison as Mildred and Lottie explore Toads and Holes and demystify one of those terribly British dishes that I never knew what it was and was scared to look at too closely. But Lottie and Mildred wouldn’t steer me wrong, no matter how angry-eyed those smash potatoes are.
• Last thoughts for today — as teasered in the Before Times (i.e.: ten days ago), Shaenon Garrity (Radness Queen of some appropriate Geologic Feature and Nexus of all Webcomics Realities that don’t involve the Toronto Man-Mountain) has dropped some wisdom regarding Kickstartering for you today over at The Comics Journal. All who plan to use the microfinance service would do well to read it carefully.

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¹ For example, Phillip informs me that the WordPress weirdness I encountered last week may recur for a period of time this week, as different projects get migrated/consolidated on his various back-end servers. Also, the latest WordPress update has shifted my editing window to a really small, console-like typeface, which I kind of like. But it’s different, and on a Monday, so it gets brought up.

Also, what is up with Flaco’s cleavage in today’s Sheldon? That’s just … disturbing.

² Happy second anniversary, David and Maggie.

³ It’s not Estradarama, either, because Ryan Estrada is too busy trekking across South America.