Sometimes you just can get enough of a story, and then you need to stretch out a little.

• For example, take the single greatest premise ever devised for a comic: a teen who can turn into a boat. Teen Boat! has been around in one form or another for years; I remember seeing the banner at one of the first SPX iterations I attended, which must’ve been ten years ago. Since those early days, the creators of Teen Boat!¹ have gone on to create — jointly and severally — a whole mess o’ rightly–lauded comics, web- and otherwise, including a Teen Boat! graphic novel, and the previously-noted forthcoming sequel, Teen Boat! The Race For Boatlantis.

  It is the latter of these that concerns us today.

  Because Teen Boat! creators John Green and Dave Roman have decided that the best way to drum up interest in Boatlantis — indeed, the best way to get everybody aboard the Teen Boat! juggernaut — is to give the story away. Taking a page from previous the graphic novel is done let’s serialize online until it’s time to sell it projects as Lucky Penny, Friends With Boys, Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong, Sailor Twain (the list goes on and on), Boatlantis is about to launch as a free webcomic to churn up the waters of Teen Boat! interest. Per the press release:

  Teen Boat! The Race for Boatlantis launches with the first four pages on May 1st, and will update with a new page every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, up until the release of the print edition. Select chapters of the first Teen Boat! book are also readable online at TeenBoatComics.com

  In conclusion: get onboard or get out of the way. Teen Boat! rules.

• Or, if you have more hooks than you know what to do with (some of which haven’t even occurred to you), you can take a leap of faith and throw open your story’s universe for others to play in. You have to be supremely self-confident in the skills of those that you invite into the sandbox though — no matter how much you describe these as side stories in the world of or here’s what happened elsewhere while canon was going on, it’s going to cause changes in your setting, which may strengthen or weaken your main narrative.

  Which is why every time Dave Kellett drops in a stray page of world-building like this or this into Drive, it makes me wonder if I’ll live long enough to hear all the stories he’s got in his head about this future Second Spanish Empire.

  Probably not, but while I’m waiting for him to get to what the heck life was like in the 3000 year old Grasskan Empire, why ring travel is banned in Nuevo Chile, and how exactly the [presumed secret police branch that Orla apparently belongs to, we always knew something was up with her)] Jinyiwei can save Nosh², it appears that I can content myself with a metric buttload of other stories.

  That teaser doesn’t tell us if these other artists are dreaming up their own stories, or just illustrating what Kellett wrote, but in either event it’s a brave and exciting thing to invite in collaborators. Now, when does this happen and how much money do I have to pay for it? Acceptable answers include Last week and Not more than class money³.

Spam of the day:

Cardiovascular disease prospects will now be to spotlight needs that bring back attendees to state that more about themselves, their potential customers important subjects or even an individual’s situations when (their stories).

Or, you know, cut back on the saturated fats, get some aerobic exercise. That works, too.

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¹ Much like Steve Holt!, Teen Boat! must always feature an exclamation.

² Two things: 1. God dammit Dave, you better not be messing with me; losing Nosh broke my heart. 2. If you do that thing where you jump to another storyline for like five months and leave us on this cliffhanger I swear I’m coming to LA with a baseball bat for a chat with your knees. Don’t screw with me, cartoon boy.

³ Six hundo.