The webcomics blog about webcomics

Cusp Achieved, Welcome to September


If there’s a word to describe today, I’d go with generosity.

  • For starters, although nearly everybody that backed the Kickstarter for Augie and the Green Knight (a book which I encourage author Zach Weinersmith to send copies of to the appropriate people for consideration of the Newbery Medal) has received their copy, and although the book is now generally available to non-backers, there’s still a group of people that might not get a copy that now have an opportunity to do so.

    Namely, readers that rely on libraries for their books:

    As promised, we have 600 books we can ship to libraries in North America! If you are interested, please contact your local library and have them fill out this request form

    https://docs.google.com/a/breadpig.com/forms/d/1ad1iMWD7rKqk0-IV-lCHM7HuFgNJQcsdfQlVZ6gXTNU/viewform

    Just to be 100% clear, the person filling out the form MUST be a librarian. No exceptions. If you are not a librarian, but think your local library could use a copy, please just ask them to fill out the form.

    Let’s put this in context: 600 copies times US$19.05 (Amazon’s list price for Augie) comes to nearly US$12,000 worth of books that Weinersmith and Breadpig are donating (plus shipping costs, at a approximately US$3.22 if they’re shipping Media Mail, or another US$1932), which is a significant act of generosity. It’s not possible to estimate the value of kids actually reading Augie and dreaming a big bigger.

  • Continuing on, the ubiquitous Jim Zub continues his nonstop crusade to teach people all aspects of the comics business¹ with an outright gift. On the one-year anniversary of his most recent creator-owned series, Wayward, he’s released the full script for Wayward #1 on his site so that aspiring comics writers can read and learn. Even better, they can compare the original script to the outcome, meaning that they’ll learn what changes occur between written page and comics page, and hopefully gain some insights into the process of working with an artist.

    Even betterer, Zub did the same thing in the before times for Skullkickers #1², so you can track his own progress as a creator. Zub’s been a hell of a generous guy, sharing his numbers, his tips and tricks, his encouragement, on his own time, to the benefit of the community at large. Sometimes it gets him incredibly entitled whiny demands for more³; more often (I like to think), it gets him the admiration he so richly deserves. Know what else he deserves? A couple of bucks from you, so be sure to check out the first issue of Figment 2 at your local comic shop tomorrow.

  • Finally, yay to the return of Jeffrey Rowland to comics, at least for a while:

    Shh don’t tell nobody but I put up the first 3 pages of the new MAiS story; will do big hollerings about it Monday. http://jjrowland.com/mais/index.php?comic=71

    That was on Saturday, and page five just went up, and apparently there will be sixteen pages in all. It’s a little sad to see what’s become of Topato and Sheriff Pony, here’s hoping they get their action-spring back.


Spam of the day:

Start earning the degree you need for your future career

Got plenty, you diploma mill hucksters.

_______________
¹ That is, to be his competitors.

² Recently finished, and much missed.

³ Here’s a hint, Anonymous asker: insisting that it’s not fair that somebody you purport to admire won’t give you something for free is not the way to inspire somebody to give a shit about you. The fact that Zub was kind enough to explain his rationale — and give you a mechanism to achieve what you’re asking for! — instead of just deleting your stupid question is a testament to his kindness and character.

And yes, as somebody who teaches professionally, I can assure you that there are such things as stupid questions.

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