For those of you that didn’t live through it, a seasonally-inappropriate storm dumped snow on a wide swath of North America from the Atlantic Ocean to the far side of the Appalachian Mountains. Wet, heavy snow. Wet, heavy snow which weighed down trees that hadn’t dropped their leaves yet, breaking limbs and trunks and taking out power lines for literally millions of people. I lost power from about 6:30pm Saturday evening until about 5:00am Sunday morning and I’m in the lucky part of my town — nearly half of the residents are still without electricity and major thoroughfares are blocked by broken century-old trees.

My portion of New Jersey was relatively lucky. Sizeable chunks of Massachusetts got 30cm, with reports of one corner getting more than 80 freaking centimeters. Not quite the epicenter of this snow-induced electrolack is the bustling exurb of Easthampton/Northampton, home to Rich Stevens, KC Green, Jeph Jacques, Andrew Hussie, Jeff Rowland, and the shipping hubs of Dumbrella and Topatoco. Those that are able to eke out power and networking are bravely trying to update, but as of this writing, QC is down at the host so even if Jacques could fire up Photoshop, he’d have no place to update¹.

As of this writing, the goal for restoring power to Northampton proper (which likely doesn’t cover all of the homes of people outside the town) is 9:00pm on Thursday. Given that there are literally millions of people without electricity, it’s hard to be mad at the various utility companies. Please try to stay calm if one of your favorite strips doesn’t update as often as you like, and if your webcomics-related merch order is slow, be understanding.

Maybe some good news might be in order?

• Emily Carroll has been mentioned on this page numerous times since she burst on the scene with her spooky, moody comics. Just in time she’s dropped another one for you: Margot’s Room. Take your time, click carefully, and maybe make sure it’s nice and bright where you are? Shivers and scares ahead.
• Calling back to last week, I mentioned in passing on Friday how much I enjoyed the annotations that David Morgan-Mar² includes in Irregular Webcomic, and also that his guest strips seemed to be coming to an end. I did not know how meaningful both of these items would become.

  Less than 24 hours later, Morgan-Mar announced the end of Irregular Webcomic as she has been known. The creativity he’s shared with us was waning, and he wanted to get away from comic-making, so weekly updates on Sundays.

  Another 24 hours brought the news that IW would focus on the annotations, making the philosophoscientific musery fans (like myself) very happy, but sad knowing that we’d never see Steve wrestle anything to death, or Adam and Jamie blow stuff up again, or any of the other seventeen (!) themes. Mixed in with that was a slow realization that the grand story arc that started 1400 strips earlier (!) had wrapped up all the loose ends back where it all started, with a Mr Bean-looking bloke in a white t-shirt discovering comics on the internet.

  And once again, 24 hours later, we go back to where it really all started, as reader suggestions have prompted Morgan-Mar to start running IW from the beginning with even more annotations on Mondays through Saturdays. Just under nine years, and 3198 strips (minus some guest contributions), Irregular Webcomic has changed, maybe for good. Well done, Mr Morgan-Mar, and though I’ll never stop missing the LEGO strips, they may drop in unexpectedly again when we least anticipate.

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¹ On the plus side, Jacques’s Tumblr is still up and before the snow hit he’d been continuing the long tradition of webcomickers that draw inspiration from the most bloated, ridiculous, overblown (and I mean those as positive things) sci-fi novel of them all. Behold: Paul Atreides, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, Chani, and Lady Jessica. Reports that Jeph’s name is a killing word could not be confirmed at press time.

² PhD, LEGO®™©^etc.

Also, as I prepare to make my way across the heartland, racing ahead of a friggin’ snowstorm (!), let me point you towards Irregular Webomic today. David Morgan-Mar¹ has been running guest strips for about two weeks, ever since the timelines got reset. It’s unusual enough a situation that I can’t recall it ever happening in IW, and as we’re at the end of the week I suspect we’re near the end of Guest Times as well.

The reason I wanted to bring all this up is because of the annotations in today’s update; usually it’s Morgan-Mar explaining about some point of math or physics, but today it’s a digression on the nature of creativity. It’s inspiring stuff and you should read it, but the short version might be fairly summarized as:

Want to create something? Stop telling me. Go do that.

Also, you should watch the wedding video linked in the post because it’s kind of awesome. Bonus points if you can figure out which ninja is Morgan-Mar.
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¹ PhD, LEGO®™©^etc.

A fake message from the IRS to my Fleen email, telling me I need to answer all your questions to settle my unpaid taxes, and you can’t be arsed to hide the fact that your email came from Brazil? Actually, this correlates neatly to other sorts of spam, junk (physical) mail, and cold calls I get; somebody, somewhere, has decided that I’m older than I actually am¹, and thus more vulnerable to transparent ruses, or receptive to certain come-ons² that in fact hold no interest for me. Want me to read your scam attempt? At least pretend you’re linking me to a spectacular new instance of Strong Female Poses by Yuko Ota.

• I was going to say, Huh, I must have missed Zach Weiner’s new book announcement when I saw a link tweeted to his store, but then it turned out it hadn’t been announced yet. The store link tweet went live approximately 34 minutes before the announcement tweet. Anyways, here’s the announcement, and here’s the store page.
• Noted at the Twitter of Scott McCloud, a link to a new social-network-exchange-dealy that treats time as money. Here’s why I hate it already: go look at the page that explains what the hell is going on here, and read. It seems to me that it’s a very clever means of harvesting contact information on a lot of people, which is fine if you want to give all of that info away. Be my guest. My hackles start to rise on slide 2 of 7 [no direct link] where there’s an emphasis about how you can trade (technically, it’s an obligation for 10 minutes of time, but really it’s contact info) on anybody:
  

  Even if they aren’t on allthis yet.

  Exact quote. They felt it was important enough to call it out. Why? Because they want to plant that idea in your head in preparation for slide 5 of 7 [no direct link]:

  Not only is it possible to buy the token of someone who isn’t on allthis already, it’s actually rewarded! [emphasis original]

  They are enticing you, setting a bounty system for all intents and purposes, to find somebody that doesn’t want to be in their metadata farm³ and rat ’em out. It’s bad enough that when I get an invite to join Facebook (I’ve never had an account) from my nearly 70 year old aunt, it somehow figures out that “other people I might know on Facebook” includes, say, Kazu Kibuishi⁴; this is equivalent to Mark Zuckerberg⁵ offering a reward to drag me kicking and screaming in whether I want to be there or not.

  Somebody at allthis (extra strike: stupid name) might come up with an explanation to convince me that this isn’t the single creepiest business model on the internet, but I doubt it. So on the off chance anybody wanted 10 minutes of my time, talk to me face to face. Tell me that I’m being traded against my will to benefit All This, All That, Inc.⁶ in their attempt to claim proprietary rights over the fact that I exist and I will punch you in the neck.

• With any luck, that neck will be nice and tender and hurty because you got visited by Bulimic Dracula (click forward). The digression today into the lyrics of the worst song of the 21st century was a moment of sublime genius by Jeff Rowland.

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¹ I started getting invites to join the AARP before I turned 35, so somebody thinks I’m approaching retirement age by now.

² Including leases on Mercedes-Benz convertibles, wealth-preservation and estate-planning services, and the Republican party.

³ Hi. How the hell are ya?

⁴ Not an exaggeration, that actually happened to me.

⁵ He’s the CEO, bitch.

⁶ Somebody was (or will be) paid to have thought up that name. Jesus Tapdancing Christ.

Another day, another … actually, today is remarkably similar to yesterday. Not much “another” anything going on. Weird.

• For those that missed the notice that Machine of Death 2¹ had a submission from Antarctica, some supporting details have been posted to the MoDblog. Not only did a story come from McMurdo Station, but the submitter had previously sent in a story from Afghanistan.

  Aside from frequenting sections of the planet that neatly demonstrate Tyson’s Antigaia Hypothesis², Erik Zimmerman is a firefighter. Apparently, going into innately hostile locales is not exciting enough for him as he then seeks to also be someplace innately hostile and on fire. I will bet you twenty dollars American cash money that Zimmerman’s own Machine of Death prediction card reads either ASLEEP AFTER A LONG AND HAPPY LIFE or EXPLODING BECAUSE THE WORLD CANNOT CONTAIN HIM, both of which beat mine⁴ hands down.

  Also at the MoDblog — news of a MoD-related 24 Hour Comic, and sample attribution text that MoD fanarters and other creative types may use to legally put their own spin on MoD stories. Go nuts.

• We at Fleen have mentioned the work of Michael Jonathan — minicomics with soundtracks; the entirely safe-for-work Eros, Inc — in the past, but he’s been running pretty low profile for a while. Today we found out why:
  

  I’ve been working as the showrunner’s assistant on this new show Good Vibes, which premieres on MTV this Thursday at 10:30pm (after new Beavis and Butthead). I even do a few voices in later episodes and I’m super proud of the show. I think it’s really great stuff, but if you don’t believe me you can watch the entire first episode online, mere days before it can be watched in real-time.

  Seems like there’s some good talent attached to Good Vibes even before you scroll down to Other Crew. Alas, the same crappy network speeds that are keeping me from catching up to the end of the latest chapter of Homestuck will keep me from this sneak preview. However, it’s possible that the hotel’s TV lineup includes MTV, which means I can catch it as it airs, following the finale of a frankly-disappointing season of Project Runway. It seems so long ago that Tim Gunn was commenting on Paul Southworth’s puking clown shirt design, doesn’t it?

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¹ Death Harder.

² In which Neil DeGrasse Tyson attempts to refute the notion that the Earth is a nurturing, life-promoting orb that we should all be in perfect harmony with, by noting that if he were to randomly drop you “bare-assed naked”³ at a random point on the globe, you would almost certainly be dead 15 minutes later because the Earth not only doesn’t care about nurturing you, most of it will actively try kill you.

³ His words.

⁴ TRUCK.

Yep, slow network. How slow? The hotel’s wifi and wired internet remind me what life was like before that newfangled “DSL” got run to my condo in 1998.

• It’s been a couple of weeks since I pointed out that Saveur magazine continues to run recipes from talented indy/webcomics creators, but no time like the present. Also, I’ve got some pretty good indications that the Recipe Comix series — once thought to be running for a dozen or so installments — can now be reliably described as “ongoing”, so we should have these for a good while yet.
• Countdown to return: Erfworld is hiatusing to allow the artist, Xin Ye, to deal with some fairly awful things in her personal life right now:
  

  That’s the bad news. The consolation prize here is that Book 0 will begin on Halloween.

  I’ve always intended to write an illustrated prequel novel for Erfworld, dealing mostly with the fall of King Banhammer’s Faq. So why not now? NaNoWriMo is coming, right? Let’s pound that sucker out.

  So I will be posting updates of the new novel, “Inner Peace Through Superior Firepower,” three times a week on a M-W-F schedule, starting Monday October 31. It will be a rough draft, meaning that what goes up on the site may be subject to revision, editing, and retconjuration even as the story unfolds. It will be like getting 60 or so text updates in a row.

  Additionally, Erfworld creator/scripter Rob Balder reports that they’re adding an inker and colorist, to allow Ye to work up pencils as she’s able, meaning:

  Once the novel has finished running, we will have a buffer and a new process worked out, so that in the future, Erfworld can run on a much smoother update schedule.

  Erfworld remains one of the long-form webcomics that really works well, so anything that allows Balder and Ye to produce it more efficiently sounds like a good idea to me. I can fill the pictures in my head on my own for a while if that’s what it takes to get past this rought patch.

• Speaking of Halloween, everybody been following the creeptacular watercolors that Randy Millholland‘s been doing? Start here and click forward; originals for sale soon.
• Speaking of for sale, you can now safely channel the thought process of Joey Comeau and/or Ryan North in the comfort and convenience of your own home, most likely in your kitchen. It is claimed that these magnets will allow one to spell out Batmanology, although it’s probably safe to say that one webcomics-related gentleman would prefer to know if you can spell Batmanlogist.
• Speaking of … oh, hell, just go check out MS Paint Adventures for the end of Act Five of Homestuck; it’s the culmination of more than a year’s worth of weirdness, and due to the sheer size of the the thing you’ll have to wait in the download queue¹ because that many people want it and when you see a line that long, you get in it.

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¹ Due to the state of the network where I am, I will likely not be able to complete the download until this weekend when I return to the land of plentiful bandwidth.

Work, customer site, unknown web access, etc. So let’s point out a few things from the recent past and one in the immediate future.

• Never one to pass up a chance to make his audience suffer just a little¹ Brad Guigar announced out his 2000th Evil, Inc strip with an indulgence of his paronomasiac tendencies:
  

  Believe it or not, today marks the 2,000th Evil Inc strip. Time flies when you’re havin’ pun!

  Bad Brad, bad, bad! Leaving aside the inflicted punishment², one must note that Evil, Inc. came directly out of Greystone Inn, meaning that the 2001 (as of today) EI strips are actually part of more than 3000 strips in a single continuity. Respect.

• Although I make it habit to check in on Colleen Doran‘s blog on a regular basis (her thoughts on independent comics creation and the business side thereof are required reading), I missed her State of the Webcomic report of two weeks ago until this morning — thanks to Jamie Noguchi for linking to it. Doran talks about the progress of her readership, her books sales, and the path she took to get there on the web, for the past two and a half years. It’s a terrific discussion of how making the nonstandard choice can pay off.
• Finally, bunnies. Jon Rosenberg designed the bunnies and the print, Chris Yates did the puzzle-cutting. On sale in about 3.5 hours, guessing they’ll be gone in about four hours.

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¹ Either that, or he’s going for the masochist yet family-friendly demographic.

² Dammit now he has me doing it.

Not the happiest day in comics.

• Depressing thought number one: a company that you work for is perfectly willing to screw you sideways not because you are bad at your job or lost money, but merely because you didn’t make enough profit for your financial overlord. Case in point: a mess of comics people cut at Marvel, via Heidi Mac.

  That “enough profit” part is after hundreds of colleagues are forced to work in a facility with only one bathroom for each gender and the decision had been made to not carry inventory of books, which means you can’t supply stores that want to give you money for the books. Nobody that ever went to business school has ever said that your employer owes you anything beyond not bouncing your current paycheck, so it’s your own damn fault if you expected things like “dignity”, “the tools to do your job”, or “loyalty earned by all your hard work”. Indy-/webcomics creators may not have the surety of that paycheck not bouncing (for as long as it lasts), but at least you can’t be fired for crap reasons when you work for yourself. Fleen wishes the recently dejobbed Marvel staffers the best of luck.

• Depressing thought number two: nor did those b-school theorists decide that a company that you pay money should actually have to give you the services that you paid for. Case in point: Jon Rosenberg, whose difficult pregnancy/severely prematurely twin sons have, against all odds, thrived and become happy, normal toddlers¹. The cost of keeping them from dying in those long, horrible months was considerable, but Jon and his family had done the responsible thing and obtained health insurance, knowing that the purpose of health insurance is to pay for circumstances beyond one’s control, thus preventing an accident of fate from bankrupting a faultless family.

  Ha, ha, ha, ha, that was a good one. Actually, the purpose of health insurance is to pay a large amount of money to a company that will employ legions of people to ensure² that they don’t actually pay for the medical expenses that they said they would pay for. The latest evidence of this starts here and continues to make me insanely angry at the entire healthcare system for an hour or so. Jon’s conclusion is as succinct and correct a thing as ever has been said, and a position that I wholeheartedly agree with. I spend a significant amount of my time (approximately 800 hours a year, unpaid) trying to make it so at least one part of the healthcare fiasco doesn’t completely destroy the residents of one small town. It’s a losing battle, and a thought that can put one deep into a depressive funk.

• As we all recall from younger, more carefree days, the one thing that will make any situation better is dinosuars. They were cool and had teeth like this and horns like that and they went rawr and grrrrr and growf and looked awesome. Also, it is highly unlikely that they invented a system of for-profit healthcare that included business methods like recission. You can remind yourself daily of the magnificence of these creatures by looking overhead for anything with feathers, but the really awesome ones are only around in artistic representations.

  Case in point: Dustin Harbin has produced an astoundingly beautiful print of 27 dinosaurs and similar critters³. Also, there’s a baleful eye glaring at us in the water that doesn’t seem to have a name, so your guess is as good as mine. Order yours here and enjoy the cheer it brings you.

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¹ Despite having a father who trades in human souls.

² So to speak.

³ Sauropterygians and ichthyopterygians ruled the ancient seas, much as pterosaurs were lords of the ancient skies. But none of them were dinosaurs.

Actually, one of these items has nothing to do with a birth, and one is as much about compound plurals as births. Let’s all agree to deal with that inconsistency as best we can.

• For those of you wondering, it will soon be possible to have Beartato, T- and Wee-Rexes, Doctor McNinja, Yelling Bird, and various-sized Worribles (cf: here, here, here, and here for the existing spherical friends) over to your house for tea. The bouncy pile o’ plush at the next NEWW is gonna be awesome.
• Speaking of NEWW, that last photo contains Erika Moen next to the Tower of Squishy Fun. Transitively speaking of Erika Moen, she contacted us to point out a factual error in yesterday’s post — despite what we at Fleen¹ wrote, Moen did not attend Pacific University. She was graduated from Pitzer College, one of the famed Claremont Colleges, which I should have remembered because I almost went to Harvey Mudd and then me ‘n’ Erika coulda been almost-college buddies which would rule. But I didn’t, and I got it wrong. Fleen² regrets the error.
• Speaking of T-Rex (up above), did you know that today is the anniversary of the birth of Ryan North³? Speaking of today being an anniversary of birth, did you know it’s also the birthday of John Allison? Fleen wishes Happy Birthdays to them both. Or would that be Happys Birthday? Happy Birthsday? Ryan, we need a ruling here before language loses all meaning.

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¹ That would be me, but “me at Fleen” doesn’t have the same ring to it.

² Me again.

³ The Toronto Man-Mountain; need proof of his enormity? Check out this photo from the Wikipedia page dedicated to him and note the caption: 20 October 1980. Like unto some Olympian of olde, North was born fully grown, complete with lustrous mane, three-day stubble, and a leather jacket.

Yes. Yes, I will. So tired.

• Hurricane Erika got to live the dream last week and go back to her alma mater as a speaker; I’ve done the go-back-to-campus-for-a-reason¹ thing and I have to tell you — it rules. Professors that you always wanted to make proud are, those that you disliked with the fury of a thousand exploding suns can’t stand that you’ve achieved success², and everybody from the administration is really nice to you.

  In Moen’s case it was as an invited speaker on gender identity and “probably some dick jokes too”, which meant talking about the sorts of things that always came up in DAR! when it ran. Since I couldn’t make the talk (and Moen’s never not a funny, engaging speaker), it’s fortunate for all of us that she posted the video online. Be sure to stick around for th Q&A at the end.

• Speaking of multiple media, have you see the Kickstarter for A Nerd of Advice? ANoA is to be a podcast on that most unusual of things in the modern internet age, etiquette. It’s the brainchild of Sara “The Girl” McHenry and TopatoCo secret weapon/Vice President of Being Mom to the Whole Damn Internet Holly Post.

  In my experience, Post and McHenry are charming people, quick with their thoughts, and sure to elevate you from a person of Bad Habits and Circumstances to somebody nearly fit to be part of a polite society. People, the dominant reward from Kickstarter donations is a set of thank you notes. Help stop the gradual slouching of our nerd culture towards complete ruination — pledge.

• Speaking of common courtesy, Marvel comics did us all a solid by engaging in some unusual behavior. One may recall that Kate Beaton made some hilarious contributions to Marvel’s Strange Tales I & II anthologies³. One may also recall that Beaton’s presently in the midst of an extensive book tour in support of her latest tome, which has left her with little time to do new comics. So Marvel gave her the okay to share some of her work for them, which is typically not something that they would do. Behold: Kraven the Hunter at the Prom, with a bonus in the form of Beaton’s contribution to Nursery Rhyme Comics from :01 Books.
• Thank you to Matthew I, who sent a correction to the URL for The Water Clock in the comments of yesterday’s post. We regret the error, and the appropriate link has been fixed.

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¹ Recruiting.

² Their tears are delicious.

³ Including some in collaboration with Nick Gurewitch.

Dumped all my good story points yesterday, and today’s a slow day. Dadnugget.

• One thing I neglected to mention from NYCC: I had discussions at the Dumbrella table about Jon Rosenberg’s entirely adorable bunnies. The discussion I had was actually with <name withheld> about a collaboration, to produce bunnies in the form of <detail withheld>, which will be an awesome announcement once it’s made. Trust me. But what I didn’t get even a hint of was the fact that Rosenberg’s got prototype in hand for a plush adorable bunny¹.

  Guys this is so cute I am ready to destroy stuffed animals my wife has owned since childhood just to have room to keep this thing in my house. Also, one cannot but hope that if the adorable bunny plushes are a hit, we could possibly see an in-scale Mother of All Bunnies? I cannot wait to put that thing in a menacing posture next to my Diablo The Satanic Chicken².

• New webcomic alert — I missed out on the early days of Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant, and Lady Sabre and the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether, but this time I’m on top of what looks like the next promising, full-page webcomic based on a recognizable setting but not quite our world: The Water Clock launched today, with a definite Dynastic Egypt design sensibility, but a wiki that indicates it’s going to be drawing inspiration from all of the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean. Thanks to Magnolia Porter for the heads-up.
• Followup-cubed: Mia Wiesner has confirmed to me that the results of her digital comics survey (announced here, initial results here, final results discussed last week) are available to anybody who wants them. There’s not a server set up for the PDF, so if you’re interested, drop me a line at the contact link up there on the right, and I’ll send you her email address. Hopefully, this will keep her from getting spammed into next month.

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¹ If nothing else, Rosenberg has certainly cemented his reputation has Greatest Dad Ever in the eyes of his daughter, who is undoubtedly playtesting the prototype as we speak.

² Mint in box, not to be confused with Mints in box.