It’s short post today, because you’ve got some homework to do.

• On the topic of creators getting paid, thanks to Alert Reader Jacob Haller for linking to a Julia Wertz comic on that very theme.

  Homework: read it, resolve that if you ever see somebody acting like that lady in panel 3, you will punch ’em.

• On the topic of influence on modern-day creators, I can think of somebody that’s even more influential on webcomics (really, all comics cartoons, and every other creative endeavour), and that’s Chuck Jones. Tony Zhou of Every Frame A Painting released a nine-minute video about Chuck Jones’s approach to character, comedy, and story, with a particular emphasis on restraint and limitation — something that we at Fleen have had an interest in since small times¹.

  Homework: Watch it, go watch some classic cartoons by Chuck.

• On the topic of smart people being smart while all around them small minds miss the point, I’ve come to the conclusion that the comics version of Ta-nehisi Coates is David Brothers. They both write about life experiences that I — by luck of birth and genetics — have largely been insulated from, and they both do it better than anybody else. Coates has released his latest book (it’s a masterpiece) and it’s being nitpicked by the living embodiment of upper middle class white prigishness.

  Brothers wrote an absolutely brilliant piece on the latest example of the comics industry shooting itself in the dick re: racial diversity and inclusiveness, and while I haven’t seen any particular Brooksian response to him (and I’ve not gone looking; life’s too short), I notice that today Brothers has taken his Twitter account private, which usually indicates getting beset en masse by idiots and needing a little breathing room².

  Homework: Read the Brothers piece linked above and this excerpt from Coates’s new book; the former is mandatory reading for anybody even tangentially involved in comics culture, the latter needs to be read by everybody in this country over the age of ten.

Spam of the day:

this weblog contains awesome and actually good information designed for visitors.

I am but a humble guide to the actually good information.

________________
¹ Also available in our own post archive, but lots of busted links and lost images can pile up over nine years. Heck, even the Wayback Machine version is going to be missing images in that post.

² Or doing something spectacularly dumb, but Brothers is the opposite of spectacularly dumb.

We at Fleen have talked a lot about The Nib, the Matt Bors-run editorial (mostly) cartooning subsite at Medium, from its inception to its recent folding-up. Things are happening rapidly over there, and if you haven’t been paying attention, it’s time you did.

Firstly, they launched a Kickstarter to publish a 300 page book containing the best of the 2000+ comics that were published there in the 1.5+ years of operation. And quite frankly, I’d be talking about Eat More Comics even if Bors had promised that every single one of those 300 pages would be filled with comics I hated by cartoonists whose work I despised¹ for a very simple reason, which was stated by onetime associate site editor Eleri Harris, starting about 45 seconds in on the Kickstarter video:

The money we’re asking for is for two things: Firstly, we’re going to compensate all our artists fairly for republishing their work again.

The thing about The Nib that I loved most of all — the reason that you should have loved The Nib when it was still a thing — is that they paid. Cartoonists got paid for the right to publish their work (or in many cases, re-publish work that had already appeared elsewhere); Bors had a budget and he wasn’t afraid to use it. And I don’t know what the contracts for running cartoons on The Nib looked like, but Bors, Harris, and onetime assistant site editor Matt Lubchansky are paying the creators again for the right to republish them in the book. Which led to the second money (so to speak) quote of the video, from Lubchansky, starting about the 1:10 mark:

If we blow past [the funding goal], we’re just gonna make more books and give the artists more money.

We all know that not a day goes by that somebody doesn’t try to get artists to work for free, or to under-pay them by offering crappy contracts that many (especially creators at the start of their careers) feel obligated to sign out of fear of missing out. The only response that a creator should ever have to such an overture is No, pay me.

Unless, that is, the creator is approached by whoever the hell this is arguing with Rachel from What Pumpkin² that they should get to use Homestuck without paying because (variously):

• Other people aren’t asking for money!
• We’re building a BRAND!
• We’re all still young and have never done this before!
• We don’t have any money!
• But our Kickstarter!³

In which case, the appropriate response is Fuck you, pay me.

Getting back to the original point, I don’t think that Bors, Harris, and Lubchansky have ever heard Fuck you, pay me directed at them, and that is reason enough to support Eat More Comics.

The other reason will be that a good showing in the Kickstart will provide direct, measurable numbers on what the support for a site like The Nib is, and how much of those supporters are willing to part with actual money. That can only be helpful to Bors as he talks with other publishers with an eye towards reviving The Nib, seeing as how he’s left Medium. Here’s hoping we don’t have long to wait before cartoonists the web over once again have a site whose mission statement is Hey, can we run your cartoon? We pay.

Spam of the day:

Hmm it appears lile your blog aate my first comment (it was extremely long) so I guess I’ll just suum it up what I haad written and say, I’m thoroughly enjoying your blog.

No, your first comment was about gold farming in MMORPGs.

_______________
¹ Which do exist on The Nib, which is a point in Bors’s favor — if you’re running a cartooning site that’s mostly editorial and I love/agree with everything you publish, you’re doing a crappy job. Bors does not do crappy jobs.

² I have my suspicions, and there aren’t many Kickstarts going on now that would fit the pattern that the whiny person describes, but since Rachel’s anonymized it I’ll keep my speculations to myself.

³ Repeat after me: Kickstarter is not a magic money machine that you go to as rank newcomers to be discovered and made suddenly wealthy. It’s a way to measure the appeal of products to an audience that you already have. No audience going in means you’re going to receive some hard lessons coming out. Maybe you’ll be smart enough to absorb them, but I’m not overly optimistic.

My flight home got cancelled and I’m stuck at the airport with limited signal. Try to muddle through until tomorrow, yeah?

Namely, the return of Berke Breathed to strip cartooning, with the now ubiquitously shared Bloom County 2015.

I’m not concerned that Breathed has returned to stripping and quit multiple times before, or that he’s apparently going to be releasing his comics online rather than to papers (online, after all, means no deadlines other than those he imposes on himself … although the constant deadline battles of Bloom County in its heyday were probably as responsible for its manic energy as anything). I stand by my comments t’other day that I don’t know that Breathed can recapture the feel of a strip that was of its time, of his time, and of its audience’s time.

While Bloom County doesn’t age well — and I say that as a man who still owns a Flexi-disk of Deathtögue backed with Billy and the Boingers¹ — the influence of Breathed on the first two or so generations of webcomickers cannot be overstated. Bloom County spanned the high school and/or college years of a lot of people that made the first webcomics, and the lessons they learned are legion and obvious. The anarchic humor, the willingness to dedicate everything to a stupid joke and then just ride it to see how far it would go, the increasingly deranged cast surrounding one semi-sane audience-identification character, and the semi-serialized tendency of the stories are foundational to webcomics, to a degree that we’re only now getting away from those habits.

Does there have to be a creator of such outsized (if distanced in time) influence? Bloom County wrapped up more than 25 years ago, call it 8 – 10 years before the creators that loved it so began their own works. Will they (and their progeny) recognize the figure of legend as he returns, or has the world changed so much that he can’t make sense of it? This is becoming needlessly Campbellian, isn’t it?

Related: regardless of Breathed coming back, has webcomics synthetically evolved his Mexican non-union equivalent already? Will the future generations of cartoonists look to Achewood or Homestuck as their foundational myth the way that early webcomics looked to Bloom County? Or has the explosion of new voices, built from a broader base of divergent influences and experiences, mean that he was the last one to cast such a shadow?²

So I’ll guess we’ll find out together if Berke Breathed returns as an imitation of his past self, as a 25 years improved secret and ascended master, or as a dilettante. I hope he finds the joy in creation sufficient to propel him to tell the stories he wants to tell; I hope that those stories still compel me to seek them out (but I’m still not getting a Facebook account). But honestly, I’m more interested in seeing what the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Bloom County are up to — the Reagan era is long past, but there’s an awful lot of future yet to be seen through a lot of different eyes.

Spam of the day:

I always spent my half an hour to read this website’s articles daily aloong with a mug of coffee.

Please don’t blame me for your caffeine habit, or the slowness of your reading.

_______________
¹ There is also still a stuffed Opus somewhere in my house, but I’m not sure I could tell you exactly where.

² Probably, yeah — but if the future generations of cartoonists do look to anybody to such a dominant degree, it’s likely going to be Raina Telgemeier (but you can take that as a given in almost any discussion on this site).

Welp, the Eisners were given out over the weekend, and it appears that that webcomic-adjacent had a very good year. I’m a little miffed that Nimona didn’t win for Best Digital/Web Comic, but what are you going to do? Brian K Vaughn (and Marcos Martin, who won for The Private Eye) is pure, distilled name recognition in comics circles. But that’s pretty much the only place I that I was disappointed (aside from my continuing bemiffment that Kazu Kibuishi didn’t get nominated at all), as there were some very encouraging results.

Let’s start with Nimona’s Noelle Stevenson, who as part of the Lumberjanes team (along with Shannon Watters, Grace Ellis, and Brooke Allen) took both Best Publication for Teens (ages 13-17) and Best New Publication. The former would have been great on its own, but to be recognized as the standout book of the year? That’s a hell of an accomplishment for the hardcore lady types. Likewise, consider that the Best Short Story of the year came from Emily Carroll, whose When the Darkness Presses ran online and defeated the collected efforts of the entire print industry.

You think perhaps there’s a theme developing here, where the most outstanding work of the year is overwhelmingly created by women? Because when it comes to original characters, stories, concepts, and such, that appears to be the case. For instance, Mariko & Jillian Tamaki wrapped up a nonstop year of praise for This One Summer (including being named as both a Caldecott and Michael L. Printz Honor Book) with Best Graphic Album—New, and Cece Bell wrapped up a nonstop nine months of praise for El Deafo (including being named a Newbery Honor Book) with Best Publication for Kids (ages 8-12). These are all stories by women, about girls; these are all stories that are different from much of the history of American comics.

Okay, fine, we’ll throw in a token dude: Gene Luen Yang was recognized as Best Writer for Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Shadow Hero; he was competing against the likes of the previously-mentioned Mr K Vaughn, Grant Morrison, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Jason Aaron, and G Willow Wilson (who I thought was going to win). And next year will likely have some representations from the likes of Scott McCloud for The Sculptor and Ryan North/Erica Henderson for Squirrel Girl; get a few more cases like that and we’ll have enough dudes to have a panel on What It’s Like To Be A Male Creator.

But we all know who the night belonged to, and if there is one Eisner that entirely typifies the art of words + pictures, that says you are the whole creative package when it comes to comics, it’s Best Writer/Artist. Charles Burns, Sergio Aragonés, Steven Collins, Richard McGuire, and Stan Sakai were up for the award — there’s got to be close to 150 years experience in those five dudes.

They lost.

To Raina Telgemeier.

Who told an autobiographical story about growing up with her younger sister.

It’s no exaggeration to say — it’s never been an exaggeration each time I’ve said it in the past — that Telgemeier is the future of comics. She writes and draws stories that resonate with her readers in a way that any artist would give up their eyeteeth to replicate; she hooks them and brings them into a medium turning them into not just lovers of comics, but lovers of reading. And she’s just getting started — she’s got dozens of books yet to share with us. She’s still got four books on the NYTBSL (although she’s temporarily ceded the #3 slot to Fun Home, meaning she only has four of the top five books, which list is rounded out by El Deafo and Nimona, by the way), for a total of 317 weeks.

Oh, and she just announced her next book, due Fall 2016. And there will be a couple more Baby Sitters Club books released between then and now. And Smile, Drama, and Sisters aren’t likely to fall off the list anytime soon. You thought I was kidding when I said that the Times might need to qualify the softcover graphic novel list as best sellers not by Raina Telgemeier? McCloud’s famously said that he sees the industry as majority-women (creators and audience) by 2024, and I think that the clock moved up a couple years on Friday night; comics now belongs to Raina and her fabulous friends, and it’s great.

• SDCC rolls along and it appears that webcomickers have deigned to let showgoers live another day. Hooray! In the meantime, it appears that the guys behind Penny Arcade are not content to merely put together a Kickstart to make a live-action webseries out of their noir-robot tale, Automata, wherein they’ve raised more than half of their very specific goal of US$322,637.09 in less than two days. Nope, it appears that they were fooling us when they said they would not be at the show in 2015. They snuck in all sneaky like! Proof!
• Everywhere else, did you feel a bit of a chill down your spine earlier today? It’s possibly because Emily Carroll has released a new comic, a rare (for her) modern-day tale of two girls, a diorama, and unseen (perhaps unsuspected apart from an increasing sense of dread) ghosts of somebody not happy.

  The Groom is Carroll’s most subtle work to date (and that’s saying something), with the horror hinted at around the edges of the experience of the tween protagonists. Read one way, it’s just a case of thing found, got bored, slightly creepy nature gave the excuse to get rid of it. Read another way, there’s evil a’plenty in the suburbs, and the supernatural version could pale in comparison to the everyday, banal version. Like all of Carroll’s comics, this carries the highest possible recommendation.

• Confidential to Jeph in Easthampton: 3000! That’s a hell of an accomplishment, even if only 0.2333% of those strips featured #buttrocket.

Spam of the day:

Forskolean …

Nnnnoooope. Not goin’ there. Whatever you’re selling, it’s got too much possible innuendo wrapped around it.

Weirdly, not everything to do with comics and webcomickers centers on southern California; here, then, is a list of comics-related things that have nothing to do with SDCC.

• For example, those of you in New England will find that the showrunners of ConnectiCon scheduled directly against SDCC. CTCon had a reputation as a webcomic-friendly show for a while there, but their guest list doesn’t seem to reflect webcomics as a category this year — webcomickers are lumped into the Online Media category, which at least puts the creators of webcomics like Sister Claire, Dueling Analogs, The System, or Bittersweet Candy Bowl on par with, say, George Takei.

  They don’t, however, put links to sites in their guest lists. They also seem to think that Jamie Noguchi is going to be there when he appears to be opposite the Dumbrella booth. On the other hand, CTCon is hosting Super Art Fight and that’s always stupidly fun.

• For those of you a little further west and north of Connecticut — that is to say, Schenectady, New York — may find yourself at the Schenectady County Public Library-sponsored Electric City Comic Con, which is small-scale, a first effort, free to attend, and features the incomparably awesome Jess Fink and Chris Giarrusso. Libraries are great.
• Further west (a lot further west) — San Francisco this time — the California College of the Arts is hosting a series of events in association with their MFA in Comics program. Mike Mignola was there last Friday, Spike Trotman will be there tomorrow (along with an opening reception), Paul Madonna will be there next Friday … it’s a whole Friday thing. Lectures start at 6:00pm, and are free to the public at the Timken Lecture Hall, 1111 Eighth Street in the city of Saint Francis.
• Okay, fine, SDCC. Nobody from webcomics appears to have made any sacrifices to the blood god yet, setup appears to have been conducted in good order, Rich Stevens appears to have the product of the show, and Jon Rosenberg appears to be enjoying himself.

  Oh, and help me start a rumo[u]r. I say that this photo means that Jim Zub has been tapped to write a new Hello, Kitty ongoing. I have attempted to contact Mr Zub to confirm that this is what’s going on, and I have not received a denial, which I’m choosing to interpret as a confirmation. You heard it here first: Zub on Hello, Kitty, now with Japanese demons, skull-kicking, and awesome, awesome fight scenes … tell me you wouldn’t buy the crap out of that.

Spam of the day:

I do not know what you are saying

Shhh, shhh, just relax, you’ll be fine.

So the USPS has gotten its act together and finally decided that Michigan and New Jersey are not the same place and I have my Inspector Pancakes rewards! The photo today was going to be the FRIEND TO LITTLE DOGS medal with my dog, but when he saw me place the medal on the floor near his paws he freaked the fuck out, gave the panicked yelp you only hear when you trip over a dog in the dark, and snapped in the direction of the medal as if to say I’m not mad at you but get that thing away.

I see two possible explanations for this:

• Inspector Pancakes author Karla Pacheco’s legendary awfulness is so pervasive, it incorporated itself into the medal and my loyal hound detected it, like how dogs can see the invisible ghost monsters that try to steal your soul and which are only discouraged by random staring and growling at empty air¹.
• The loyal hound is a retired racing greyhound, who was distressingly good at racing and kept on the track for nearly three years (168 starts). He lacks the scars that most greys have from being in the middle of the pack where collisions with other dogs and the side rails occur, so he was out front a lot. He was almost certainly photographed with medals — shiny, shiny medals — around his neck following his wins (still wearing his loathed racing muzzle).

  If there’s one thing I’m certain is awfuller than Pacheco it’s the dog racing industry, which treats these gentle creatures as a crop to be bred, used until useless, and then disposed of² like yesterday’s garbage. Screw you, greyhound racing industry; my guy got the hell away from you and I’m mortified I inadvertently brought back such traumatic memories in him.

• Speaking of existential horror as I write this the exhibit hall at the San Diego Convention Center is forming itself into the center of All Things Nerd for the next five days; SDCC Preview Night starts in about six hours, and I encourage you to follow Rich Stevens, Jon Rosenberg, Andy Bell, Chris Yates, and Jon Sung for news on everything happening in the grinder of the showfloor.
• Let’s leave behind the terrible things and move onto information that may actually be helpful. If you’ve been keeping an eye on proposed copyright policy — as one does — for the past couple of years, a term that’s been popping up with increasing frequency is orphan works. An orphan work is basically a creative work for whom there is no clear copyright holder, and with copyrights basically extending unto the heat death of the universe, this leaves vast swathes of work untouchable — Fair Use isn’t easy to determine, nor licensing for derivative works, nor even simply bringing the damn things back into print/release. As things stand presently, it’s unknown what their status is, and that makes it risky to try to do anything with them.

  From time to time, various remedies have been proposed, and each time somebody gets their metaphorical panties in a knot over whatever is being proposed. Sometimes it’s copyright holders, sometimes it’s remix-friendly technologies, sometimes it’s trade groups, but almost every time, somebody starts screaming that the proposed solution is the worst thing ever. This results in a big stink for a week or so, then orphan works disappear for a period of time until they come back again — kind of like Brigadoon.

  The latest proposed solution to orphan works has caused the latest freakout, this time full of declarations that artists are inevitably going to get screwed — which may or may not be true based on the latest proposals, but which is also likely out of proportion to any probable outcome.

  Enter Katie Lane, lawyer to the creative community and general smart person when it comes to intellectual property issues. She thought that this latest iteration of proposal/freakout/refractory period was odd, so she went and looked at the recently-released report on orphan works from the US Copyright Office; generous soul that she is, she’s shared her interpretation of the situation, the proposal, the likely outcomes, and how much it’s all a cause for concern. You can read the whole thing here.

  It’s worth your time because orphan works are a concern for the creative community, but panicking and overreacting are not the ways to get policy that works in your favor. It’s absolutely an issue that needs a broad and vigorous discussion, but one based on what’s actually being proposed rather than the shadows of the monsters hiding behind the legislative proposals. She’s even done you the favor of pointing out where the most important sections of the report are, but I’m going to make you read her post to find that. You can cheat by reading Lane’s assessment of the report, but only reading my gloss of Lane’s assessment of the actual report is just lazy.

Spam of the day:

Nitrocellulose from Hebei Jinwei Chemical Co., Limited With the combination of durability, compatibility and unsurpassed drying speed.

I don’t think I want any nitrocellulose, especially with a fast drying speed — when that stuff’s dry, it’s an explosive.

_______________
¹ Good luck with that, invisible ghost monsters! I sold my soul to Rosenberg for a dollar!

² Thankfully, greyhound adoption is well-established, but there are still tens of thousands of dogs a year that are simply put down. If you’re looking for an awesome dog that will love the crap out of you, look into the greyhound rescue closest to you!

Everything has to do with Kickstarter today, even the fact that the US Postal Service has apparently taken a package (in fulfillment of a Kickstarter) meant for delivery from TopatoCo/Make That Thing headquarters in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts to The Fleenplex in scenic downtown New Jersey, and sent it through Western Michigan. USPS: not good at maps.

• To start, I find that I have inexplicably omitted discussion of KC Green’s Kickstart for the final print collection of Gunshow comics which is a serious oversight, me. Even more inexplicably, more than a full week in, Gunshow vol 6: Doomed To Repeat It sits at 86% funded, which means that in the 21 days remaining it will easily eclipse goal, but why so slow to meet funding? Just go check out the video — I was going to put a still from it up top of this post, but I couldn’t choose just one and don’t want to spoiler it in any event — and you will want to give Green all your money ever.
• Next up, Gordon McAlpin (onetime sporting bet nemesis) is Kicking the third collection of Multiplex and off to a good start a bit more than — I want to say a day and a half or so — into the 24 day campaign. Go, look, support.
• I have to believe that David Malki ! is somehow abusing the Kickstarter process by setting up a campaign with a goal of one dollar, perhaps trying to set a record for most overfunded in history? He’s sitting at about 95,000% of goal as I write this, but I can’t get mad because I eventually realize that Malki !’s Kickstarter campaigns are really odd performance art pieces where he has to build and do stuff. Consider:
  

  US$325 “CUSTOM DICE BOX” [4d6 + Coloring book + Postcards + PDF] – We’ll design an incredibly elaborate laser-cut wooden case, containing your own official set of 6-sided, color-coded Roll-a-Sketch dice. Just regular dice, but in a REALLY nice box.

  US$4895 “CUSTOM CHESS SET” – You and I will roll some dice on Skype, and together we’ll create a full chess set of 32 custom characters. I’ll tell my wife Nikki to sculpt all of them for you. The money then goes towards my divorce proceedings.

  It’s really almost a cry for help, but involving creating things and doing things that he wouldn’t force himself to do without money. I’m actually very okay with this, as long as he doesn’t actually make his wife construct 32 custom chess pieces. Or, if you don’t want to pledge to the Kicker and just want to get a Roll-A-Sketch without visiting a convetion, you can purchase those at his store for the duration of the campaign.

• Howard Tayler¹, thankfully, is not running a Kickstarter just now. Instead, he’s going to be at the Salt Lake City (the one in Utah, as opposed to all the other Salt Lake Cities) Public Library this Saturday talking about Kickstarter and how to run a successful crowdfunding project.

  Unlike 99% of public talks on Kickstarter and running a successful project, Tayler’s talk will not be a useless parade of crap; this is because unlike 99% of people that opine on Kickstarter and how to run a successful project, Tayler has actually run multiple successful projects on Kickstarter. Anyway, check it out if you’re in town.

Spam of the day:

I don’t see many commenters here, it means you don’t get many visitors. I know how to get laser targeted

At last! Something not to do with Kickstarter! Also, you know who gets laser targeted? Sniper victims. Noooo thank you.

_______________
¹ My evil twin, etc.

I mean, it’s SDCC week, people are already traveling to SoCal for the nerd prom, and a billion items have come up in the past couple days. Okay, these are each going to be brief because it’s like seven things.

• New SDCC offsite events In addition to all the programming mentioned last week, there are things happening outside the convention center. Singer-songwriter Marian Call (cohort of Alaska Roboticist Pat Race and famed portrayer of Top Space Man) will be part of a show called Space Time on 10 July (that’s Friday) at 7:00pm. Know who else will be there? Molly Lewis (aka Ground Control) and Bobak “We Are Go” Ferdowsi.

  Lewis will also be part of BAMF, the Bad Ass Music Festival, held 10-12 July in nearby Ruocco Park, alongside such luminaries as Kirby Krackle, Paul and Storm, and The Doubleclicks.

• Future plans for The Response Matt Bors follow up on earlier announcements of what’s going on with editorial cartooning at Medium via an announcement at The Response. Short version: It’s a finite project, through the end of July, and more conversations will occur between now and then.
• The AV Club loves webcomics Scott McCloud’s The Sculptor got cited as one of the best piece of media (not comics, all of media) for the first half of 2015, while John Allison, Noelle Stevenson, Ryan North & Erica Henderson, and Gemma Correll were cited as being part of the best of print for the same timeframe.
• Kickstarts Magnolia Porter wins the Most Adorable Kickstarter Video, Like, Ever award … oh, yeah, and it’s part of the launch for Monster Pulse’s second print collection, Phantom Limbs. It’s no secret that Monster Pulse is one of my favorite webcomics (just check out today’s update to see why — wow), so I’m urging everybody to back this one because I want my book, dammit.

  And if that weren’t enough, longtime editorial cartoonist Tom Tomorrow announced his Kickstart via Make That Thing, and it’s a doozy. Twenty five years of strips will be constructed into a 1000 page, two-volume hardcover collection, with an estimated mass of nearly 7 kg. Such a huge collection needs a huge goal, and with less than 24 hours elapsed, Mr Tomorrow has exceeded the US$87,000 needed and is closing in on US$100K. And can I say holy crap, somebody took him up on the US$10K reward tier? This one’s gonna be metaphorically and physically huge.

Spam of the day:

Dr.Oz bikini secret

Man, I can’t find even one picture of Dr Oz in a bikini. Laaaaaame.