Today’s a challenge, tomorrow likely moreso. Here’s what’s happening:

• Saturday at 7:00pm, Carmine Street Comics in the West Village (New York City, dontcha know) will be launching a speaking series (to run on the third Saturday of the month), and is kicking things off with Meredith Gran headlining what looks to be a fascinating evening on the theme of Identity.

  I wasn’t familiar with Carmine Street Comics, which is unsurprising as its site describes itself as the newest comic book store in the oldest part of New York City; it’s also described as being a combined shop/open comics studio, which sounds really neat. Those of you not getting the hell out of New York early for [American] Thanksgiving, I’d recommend this event highly.

• It’s been about three months since the SyFy Network/Candle Cove deal was announced, and comes today the news that SyFy has committed to a pretty decent show order:
  

  Syfy Greenlights Two Seasons of Horror Anthology Series ‘Channel Zero’ http://bit.ly/1j7Ta8S

  To be clear, Channel Zero will feature a different storyline each of those two seasons, and Candle Cove will only be the first season, but that’s still six episodes, which are slated to run in conjunction with Octoberween 2016. Start getting your Candle Cove-themed Twitter avatars ready, it’s gonna be a creepy ride.

• I know that a lot of you don’t remember where you were 30 years ago today (I was a college freshman, so getting ready for finals in Calculus I, Chemistry I, Comedy¹, and Military History²), but on that day Calvin and Hobbes debuted. Heck, a significant number of you may not remember where you were when C&H wrapped after ten years.

  Anyway, it was a magical time of comics, perhaps the high point of the form: Bloom County was still a couple of years from its decline and retirement; The Far Side was at its peak; even Peanuts was sharper and funnier than it had been for about 15 years. Much has been written of Bill Watterson and his most famous creation; it’s hard to think of a more influential example of pure strip cartooning on everybody engaged in [web]comics today.

  There are tributes everywhere you look, but the one I found most edifying is at Sketchd, by David Harper, with contributions from Kazu Kibuishi, Michael Cho, Skottie Young, and others. Read it, and maybe enjoy a nice tuna fish sandwich while you’re at it.

Spam of the day:

Nancys Desperate Fight to Cure Alzheimers disease over?

I think the Nancy they’re referring to is Nancy Reagan, in which case it appears that even paranoid nutjob Obama-disliking spammers are acknowledging that we had a symptomatic Alzheimer’s patient in the Oval Office for at least four years.

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¹ As opposed to Tragedy; we started with Aristophanes and Plautus, lots of the ruder Shakespeare, took a detour through Moliere and Shaw and Feydeau, and ended up with Bringing Up Baby and Animal House. Big props to Dr Parshall, who really cemented my love of literature.

² My college weaseled out of requiring a phys ed class by instead requiring two ROTC courses (Military History, Organizational Leadership) that were each one credit and pretty much impossible not to get an A in. It also meant that every freshman was technically enrolled as a cadet in the US Army, which means I have a DoD personnel record somewhere.