Oh hell yes, full-size Jethro coming Wednesday to You Damn Kid. The strips don’t get permalinks until they hit the archives, so you’ll just have to click over promptly for that one to work.

• Got twelve minutes, a hankerin’ to laugh along with Matt Inman, and an appreciation for the job that ASL translators have to do? Check out Inman’s keynote speech from BAH! Fest West 2014, a marvelous piece of proselytizing for Jibbers Crabst and an opportunity to see what the ASL for this is an eight-legged vagina that gives you boners until you are dead looks like.
• From the storming the gates of academia division, news comes of Rosemary Mosco’s Bird and Moon getting the museum treatment:
  

  I’m so excited: the Museum of the Earth just opened a Bird and Moon exhibit! http://www.priweb.org/
  exhibitions.php?page=currentexhibitions/quirksofnature …

  Come see my comics alongside expert commentary, fossils, live critters, sweet-smelling dirt, and more at PRI’s MOE http://tmblr.co/Z8KOWv1XKSEoL

  A few photos from the exhibit. Yes- they’ve got fashion items inspired by nature. Museum of the Earth, you rule. https://www.
  facebook.com/museumoftheear…

  To decode those abbreviations a bit, that would be the Museum of the Earth at the Paleontological Research Institution which is affiliated with — but not part of — Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The show, Quirks of Nature, will feature Mosco’s cartoons paired with specimens, fossils, live animals, and other museum-type stuff. Descriptions and captions written by major science types from major science places will provide the context, while Mosco provides the pretty pictures and funny laugh-chuckles. The next time you’re in the Finger Lakes region, drop by and check it out — Quirks of Nature runs through 8 June 2015, unless they decide to extend it and honestly, why wouldn’t they?

• The Child’s Play page hasn’t updated with a story specific to last week’s annual charity auction, but I believe we can utilize some basic math to see what the impact of the night (and the weeks running up to it) were. The lifetime total raised as of 2 January 2014 (taken as our starting point for this year’s Child’s Play) was US$25,196,670. The current lifetime total raised as of this time I am writing this is US$28,417,292¹. The difference between a) and b) is US$3,220,622, a significant portion of which would have been raised last Thursday night.

  If I were a thinkin’ man I could have taken a total on Thursday afternoon and compared on Friday morning, but ehhh. Close enough. Since the start of active fundraising (taking the traditional start date of 1 November), Child’s Play has pulled in US$3.2 million, or roughly what they took in cumulatively in the first five years, and a little less than half (so far) of last year’s total. Lots of time between now and end of the year, just sayin’.

Spam of the day:

The test can also determine if you have a vitamin K deficiency. Where does my last name come from

Well, since vitamin K deficiency can cause osteoporosis and coronary disease, I’d speculate that would be the origin of “McHearthouch-Breakbones”.

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¹ With the caveat that the counter is moving every time I go back to the page.

I was going to talk about other things today, but I came across a wholly-unexpected big of praise for the exceptionally weird town of Tackleford and its chronicler that I simply have to share.

Readers of this page will perhaps recall the generally high regard I have for The AV Club; I don’t always agree with them, but I can accurately map my likes and dislikes to theirs, which makes them an exceptionally useful resource in navigating popular culture of all sorts¹, plus they have repeatedly had GWAR in to do unlikely cover songs². Today, as part of their weekly AVQ&A feature, they asked staffers which one piece of 201-4-era pop culture they would gift to the entire world, and contributor William Hughes decided on:

I want to give people the gift of consistency in 2014, and that means the collected works of John Allison. Allison has spent the last 16 years posting comics about the residents of the quaint English hamlet of Tackleford, as unlikely a hotspot for supernatural shenanigans as you could hope to find.
…
It turns out that doing something for 16 years is an exceptional way to get good at it, and watching Allison’s cartooning and dialogue mature over the years has been an absolute pleasure. (His ability to consistently end strips on punchlines that work perfectly in his characters’ distinctive voices is a special delight). Although the density of continuity and the constantly evolving relationships in Allison’s work can sometimes be overwhelming, The Case Of The Good Boy, from the recently concluded Bad Machinery, is an excellent entry point into his melding of supernatural comedy, teenage angst, and deftly executed wordplay.

Hear, hear.

Also, I note that in the first page of The Case Of The Good Boy, Eustace “The Boy” Boyce is walking in the background, a detail I never noticed before, possibly because he spent the time from heading off to uni until his named reappearance last year growing a beard and adding girth; he got rid of both, though, and is back to being the quiet put-upon young man we recall, aka twisted up with impotent rage.

I appear to have been sidetracked, which I believe was Hughes’s point — Tackleford sucks you in, and it’s powerfully difficult to break free again. Give yourself the gift and start reading.

Spam of the day:

It is learned that the defendant has now appealed.Tang Dynasty woman wearing flat shoes Ma, Po, leather and other textures.

You’re mixing messages, spammer. Use legal stories as your cover, or the history of shoes in the Tang Dynasty; don’t just mash them up willy-nilly, that’s just hell of sloppy.

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¹ They also have an exceptionally non-horrible commentariat, resulting in their being the one site other than my own where I will regularly read the comments.

² Warning: that third clip will make you miss Oderus Urungus something fierce.

BOOM! Studios, particularly via its all-ages imprint, KaBOOM!, and its creator-owned imprint, BOOM! Box, are grabbing up the best of webcomics talent for various projects — the Adventure Time ongoing, related mini-series, and spinoff graphic novels started the trend, but it’s continued with Bravest Warriors, Regular Show, Bee & Puppycat, Capture Creatures, The Amazing World of Gumball, Steven Universe, Midas Flesh, Lumberjanes, and more — I can’t keep track of all of the various webcomickers who’ve drawn checks for work on those books, and that’s before you get into the backup stories and such¹. So it’s scarcely surprising to see the news that the BOOM! group has found room for one more.

And — my heart! — it involves perhaps my favorite character in all of webcomics.

Starting in March, we’ll get a six-issue treatment of Giant Days, being the adventures of Esther de Groot at university², from the fertile mind of John Allison. Even more intriguingly, this will be the first time that Allison specifically writes for another to provide the art, having tapped Lissa Treiman. You may recall Treiman from one of Allison’s occasional fan-art events (aka Feats of Strength) from 2008, when she drew positively the finest Desmond Fish-Man known to history.

More than that, I can’t think of an artist who better captured the feeling of Allison’s characters — he treatment of Moon is a little Vera Brosgol, a little Katie Rice (especially in Skadi-mode), and a whole lot of excellent. Her interpretations of Allison’s characters don’t look like he drew them, and that’s a good thing — she’ll bring them to the page in ways that he wouldn’t; he’s likely (even if only subconsciously) writing to her strengths as an artist. It’s going to look great, read great, and give us more Esther, so who could ask for anything further?

Well, I could. Considering the length of the three Giant Days stories we’ve gotten so far, this miniseries will likely double the size of the canon. Also, if I remember correctly, the existing GD stories scarcely make up the first week of uni; we know that Eshter broke The Boy’s heart, we know that years later they are apart, but what happened in the meantime? Here’s hoping that Allison and Treiman decide after six issues that they have a hankering to tell more Giant Days stories, because I’m ready to read every single one of them.

Spam of the day:

Hi, my name is Sherry and I am the sales manager at StarSEO Marketi

Nope. Stopping you right there, Sherry. Nope, nope, nope.

________________
¹ Or consider that BOOM! owns Archaia, who’ve published Gunnerkrigg Court and The Devil’s Panties.

² Once found online, now only in printed form.

There are people that you know in life, and then there are people that are the best people that you know in life — people who you want to be around because they exude sheer joy in whatever they are undertaking. Undertakings that you want to be a part of, or at the very least consume& with gustosup1;. Several such people are up for discussion today.

• Firstly, today is the anniversary of the birth of two gents I normally only see in San Diego at the Festival du Nerds each July. MC Frontalot makes the songs that make you want to move, is arguably the inventor of an entire category of music, and travels the world like a bespectacled and headlamped Pied Piper. Jon Ferocious J Sung chronicles the lives of dogs, marshals vast armies in battle, boldly goes, and engages in unholy beveragalogical experiments. Both are worth seeking out in whatever form you find easiest, and you should engage wholly in everything they create, with the exception of the candy corn-laced vodka that Ferocious came up with that one time because ick.
• Secondly, this is the time of year that serious organizations make serious lists of the best of various things, books being no exception. Today I note that ur-serious organization NPR have come up with a listing of the best books of the year, a significant fraction of which are of the graphical variety. There one may find appropriate amounts of love heaped upon the likes of Raina Telgemeier², Gene Luen Yang, Emily Carroll, Stan Sakai³, and Chort Zubaz. Hooray for validation!
• Thirdly, the first part of a two-part interview onthe past and future of the Adventure Time comic is now up at Comics Alliance; it’s a conversation between CA’s Chris Sims and real-life pals Ryan North (outgoing AT writer) and Christopher Hastings (incoming AT writer). You can sense the Friendship right there on your screen, it practically oozes out of the internet into your lap.

  That went someplace a little more disturbing than I’d intended. As a palate-cleanse, how about the news that Ryan North will be writing a back-up story in the forthcoming officially-licensed Bill & Ted comic book? Or perhaps the two new pages of Squirrel Girl #1, available for preview sans words? Or the fact that Slate named Midas Flesh (by North, with Shelli Paroline and Braden Lamb on art) as one of the unjustly-overlooked books of 2014, which is another example of serious people recognizing webcomics and kind of drags us back to “secondly”.

• You know who I wish did a whole lot more work, like just about every hour of every day? Nicholas Gurewitch, whose The Perry Bible Fellowship exists almost like a perfectly-preserved specimen in amber. It’s unchanging, and wonderful, and everything he’s done since PBF regularly updated is likewise wonderful. And now there’s a new thing, and it’s up to you to make sure it sees the light of day: Notes on a Case of Melancholia is Gurewitch by way of Edward Gorey, and will only make its way to my hands if some number of you help put the Kickstarter over its goal; as of this writing, it’s sitting at about 80% of the requisite US$25,000 which means it’s going to succeed, barring some odd set of circumstances I can scarcely conceive of. Of particular note in the upper tiers of rewards: original Gurewitch sketches, original art from the book, and PBF originals. It’s like a macabre dream come true.

Spam of the day:

Download Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star Movie.

Under no circumstances should you do this. I get that spam only works if you assume the recipient is a little dumb, but this would require absolutely brainlessness to subject yourself to that actual movie product.

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¹ With one tragic exception, to be noted momentarily.

² About whom enough good things simply cannot be said.

³ Who essentially is a webcomicker that happens to distribute via floppy-paper comic books and who — honestly — has remained at the top of the quality game for longer than many of his readers have been alive.

Dreary days outside, but at least there’s things happening this week. Let’s take a look.

• It’s been a long time since Christian Fundin and Pontus Madsen have made daily updates of Little Gamers a priority; design shops and creative consultancies don’t run themselves, nor do jaunts to furthest Mongolia just happen on their own. But even if the archives are no longer as active as they were, they do stretch back to the halcyon days of 2000, a full fourteen years from yesterday, which is a damn long time to keep even occasional updates of a comic going. Happy Strippiversary to Christian, Mr Madsen, the couch ninjas, and all their reprobate friends.
• Looking forward a couple of days, if you were planning on exhibiting at next April’s MoCCA Festival (at its new venue in Chelsea), you’ve got until this Friday, 5 December, to get your table application in. Special guests will include the likes of Raina Telgemeier, and perhaps the only person capable of dislodging her from the top of the New York Times Best Seller List, Scott McCloud. Thing is, they’re both so nice that if McCloud did knock Telgemeier from the #1 slot, she’d just congratulate him; come see the love in person 11 & 12 April, 2015.
• This weekend, 6 & 7 December, Texas welcomes the sixth iteration of Webcomics Rampage to the Dragon’s Lair in Austin. As in past years this is an in-store show, free to attend, but some sessions are likely to be crowded and so you might want to get there early. Open time with creators runs 1:00pm to 7:00pm both days, with livedraws at 2:00pm, 4:00pm, and 6:00pm. Both nights feature the Webomics … After Dark open Q&A from 9:00pm to 11:00pm, which may feature adult themes and language, growwwwllll¹.

  Ever want to see Randy Milholland and Danielle Corsetto spill all their secrets? Or wonder about what Spike and David Willis talk about when you aren’t standing in front of their booth? I … I don’t know what shameful things the other creators would get up to, so assume they’re just as reprehensible as those four, all right?

  Okay, fine, David Malki ! is always secretly measuring you for the shallow grave he dug out behind the show, but that’s all creators, duh. Tell them all I said “hi” and tell Randy he has to do the Fluffmodeus voice at the Q&A. I know that’s not a question, just do it. Trust me.

Spam of the day:

figure of macho modeling, lots of academy academy acceptance accordant to photograph frolicking nude over a beachfront or alone clay shirtless afore to an cruel camera.

Sounds like Fluffmodeus is writing advertising copy again.

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¹ I don’t know how you’re supposed to spell that half-meow, half-growl sound that’s all sexy-sounding from the naked lady in the made-for-Cinemax movies. You know the one.

Where to start, where to start? How about with the bad news? If you sell e-books to customers in Europe, 2015 is looking really damn complicated for you; I first saw the rising concern — honestly, panic would be justified — on the twitterfeed of Ursula Vernon, and the entire nasty situation is nicely summed up by KB Spangler on her blog. If you live in Europe, maybe buy your e-books before 1 January, because it looks like it will be prohibitive for all small producers (on either side of the Atlantic) to legally sell them to you after.

If you sell e-books, or e-anything, you will want to do some careful research between now and the end of the year, although my suspicion is that Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (or the equivalent agency in other EU countries) can demand all the not-properly-collected value-added tax from a non-EU seller as loudly as they want, and unless you have money stashed in a European bank (or visit there under your own name), they may not be able to collect very effectively. Maybe? Nobody knows, which is the frustrating and scary part.

The rest of the news is better, I promise.

• For the first time, Emily Carroll is selling original comic art pages via auction, running until next Monday. Correction: this Monday, i.e.: today. Act now!
• TCAF is launching a pop-up store at the Toronto Reference Library for the holiday season, with the grand opening the day after tomorrow in conjunction with the debut of Just The Tips — the potentially hazardous sex advice from the back of each issue of Sex Criminals. Chip Zdarsky will be there to, uh, spread the love starting at 6:00pm, and regular store hours will start on Thursday at 9:00am. In the new year, the pop-up will convert to a regular retail space, presumably offering the best of comics from Toronto and elsewhere.
• Speaking of Toronto comics, Jim Zub has dropped more publishing financial data on us, detailing the entire sausage-making process that is the creation and selling of Skullkickers. Once again, ignore Zub’s extreme generosity at your peril — he’s sharing usually-proprietary information so that you need not flounder about and fail.
• Speaking of proprietary information, Chris Yates is giving away all his trade secrets; with a steady hand, some spray paint, and practice, you can make your own Baffler!s. Of course, he’s got ten years experience, so your knockoffs are gonna suck; you should just buy some of his instead.
• Speaking of buying, David Malki ! announced last night his annual perpetually uninterrupted flow of time-style calendar for 2015 is now up for sale, in the usual limited edition. Don’t delay if you want one, because only a lucky few will get the opportunity.
• There’s a really good interview with Randall Munroe in British tech journal The Register from the weekend; I’m a fan of El Reg, but if you’ve not read them before, there’s a fair amount of British nerd vernacular. A glossary of Reg-speak may be found here.

Spam of the day:

I was just looking at your site and see that your site has the potential to become very popular. I just want to tell you, In case you didn’t already know …

Wow. Very popular. Not sure how I’d deal with fame; poorly, I’d expect.