The webcomics blog about webcomics

Weekend Coming

I was going to put up a picture of Omar Little and Robb Stark in sort of a tribute to Things That Are Coming, but there’s only so far I’m willing to stretch for a joke. We’ll just have to content ourselves with a chunk of space-time instead and look at some new things this week as it wraps up.

  • Thing! Experimental evidence of the The Big Bang has been reported here and there all week long, but Jorge Cham¹ is the first person to put it in terms that I could really grasp. Yes, yes, life spent in the study of science and all that, sometimes you only really grasp things with the addition of a good picture².
  • Thing! The very sexy R Stevens always has a half-dozen things on his plate at any given time, the result of a genetic makeup that incapable of either boredom or standing still for more than 37 seconds at a time. He took on another one starting today, and it seems such a perfect match I’m surprised it took thing long. Starting today, Stevens launches Multitouch Theater at Macworld; each week will see Stevens opining on “Macs, iOS, and everything in between”, which is sort of like getting paid to just be him.
  • Thing! Today, The AV Club launched what they’re calling an “illustrated column”, but which is clearly a webcomic³. Arriving monthly, Iconography will look at artifacts from pop culture, starting off with the golden idol from Raiders.
  • No Thing! Despite being de-bejabbered at the prospect of owing her supporters and not being able to make good, Ursula Vernon (obligatory note that I loves me some Digger) has decided to dip her toes into the Patreon pool. I tagged this item as No Thing because that’s what Vernon is promising her supporters, and as such in limiting them to only two tiers of support:

    Pledge $1.00 or more per month
    Nothing much!

    Pledge $2.00 or more per month
    Still nothing, but twice as much of it!

    The Patreon campaign is best described as a Keep Ursula Weird slush fund, noting that one and two dollars are enough to purchase (respectively) a cup of coffee and a roll of antacids4. Honestly, it’s no different than John Allison’s subscription drive experiment, or any other tip jar or donation link on any number of webcomics homepages and Vernon should feel no guilt or obligation.

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¹ With a technical assist from Jon Kaufman, a member of the BICEP2 team that found the confirming evidence. Sometimes you have to go straight to the source.

² Case in point: I mastered semiconductor physics back in college largely because Dr Art Western (who, among other things, amused himself by sitting on a bed of nails outside his office on Parents Weekend and briefly held the world record for a high-temparature superconductor, back when double digits in Kelvin was a big deal) managed to explain charge migration via a diagram involving crazed squirrels avoiding traps.

Also, shamed by his grade-school daughter for not being a good enough teacher, if you got an A on one of Dr Western’s exams, you got a gold star (two gold stars for a perfect 100!), and collecting three or more by the end of term meant you could trade them in for a Batman sticker. Two exams in the 90s and one in the high 80s meant I came just short of the sticker, but I got an A for the class.

³ Structurally, it’s a series of frameless images with captions, which makes it feel like the work of Erika Moen, or Wendy McNaughton, or Molly Crabapple.

4 Necessitated by her I’ma eat weird prepackaged foods with my husband so you don’t have to podcast, Kevin and Ursula Eat Cheap. It’s a riot.

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