Scope and scale seem to be slightly askew today.

• This page has, for the better part of a year, been bringing you news on The Bear, the Ryan Sohmer-penned, Becky Dreistadt-illustrated children’s book-in-progress; today, The Bear launched its Kickstarter campaign which still isn’t accumulating backers and dollars to the degree I’d anticipated.

  By which I mean, it’s “only” at 10% of goal in the first five hours or so, meaning the 30 day campaign is pretty much a guaranteed success, but previous Becky-heavy projects have been hitting the US$10,000 mark in about this time. I’m particularly surprised because the backer rewards feature not one, not two, but four Dreistadt original paintings up for grabs, which are normally the sort of thing that go in about ten minutes each, and they’re all (as of this writing) still available.

  I can only attribute this to a lack of the word getting out on this, the last big travel/vacation week prior to work/school life resuming next week¹. Me, I’m stocking up on a couple of these bad boys, give ’em to friends with new sons like I give copies of Blueberry Girl by Gaiman & Vess to friends with new daughters.

• If The Bear’s response is smaller than I’d figured on, it’s nice to know that there’s a balance, and the latest webcomic-related server-wanging came not at the hands of one of the behemoths that manage such things without intention², but at the paws of the modest-sized A Girl And Her Fed. Specifically, a stray mention of The Koala Hospital in Port Macquarie, NSW was enough to make their server fall down and go boom.

  Although I know for a fact that AGAHF creator Ms K Brooke “Otter” Spangler is the sort to feel absolutely horrible about taking down a non-profit, I hope that she finds in herself a little bit of pride that she could muster enough readers that want to contribute to the furry little VD-infected³ buggers as to constitute a “horde”. Assuming you think that koala care is a good thing, give it until tomorrow maybe, and pace yourselves? As of this writing, The Koala Hospital site is up, but throwing some warnings.

• Speaking of unexpected sizing, John Allison returns to the latest case at Bad Machinëry today, and I just want to publicly recognize him for his newest character design revisions. Flip back to the beginning of BM some three years back and compare Lottie and Shauna to what they look like now. This isn’t just artistic drift over time, it’s a deliberate act on Allison’s part to reflect the passage of time as his characters age and mature.

  We haven’t seen Sonny, Linton, or Jack yet, but I’d wager that they’ve upped their gangliness factor by about 40% since the end of The Case of the Fire Inside; by contrast, the first thought I had on reading this morning’s installment was, Dang, Charlotte and Shauna are almost young women. When did they get so old? Then again, I wonder the same thing about my nieces and nephews, my next door neighbor’s kid, and nearly everybody I see, so maybe it’s just me.

  Nah, it’s totally Allison. Nice work, The Englishman.

______________
¹ Or maybe because this one is in the “Publishing” category instead of the “Comics” category, meaning people aren’t seeing it in their searches?

² Jerry Holkins one wrote that he sometimes fears linking to things he likes might be interpreted as an act of aggression.

³ It’s hard to beat captions like One Direction member Liam Payne said he fears catching koala chlamydia after cuddling a koala that peed on him.

… age repeats. Operation: Sacto Sleeper Agent is go. Details to follow on 28 August. Message ends.