This day in Great Outdoor Fight history: No strip; Ray is napping off all those sporkfuls (sporksful?) of Christian Brothers.

We had a bit of snow earlier today, but it’s melting off in the sun. Let’s talk about what the deals are, and head into the weekend.

• Kazu Kibuishi is no stranger to the New York Times Best Seller list, and if he spent less time at #1 for Amulet volume 6 18 months back, well, that’s probably because Scholastic made the inexplicable decision to release it on the same day as Raina Telgemeier’s Sisters¹.

  But Kibuishi’s done something that I can’t recall seeing before: he’s debuted Amulet volume 7 at #1 on both the hardcover and softcover lists; given the cliffhanger that this book ends on², expect to see it pop back up when the eighth volume releases sometime next year.

• Hey, you know who else is no stranger to the Times Best Seller list, but who hasn’t done a book for — goodness! — nearly five years? Vera Brosgol. She’s been busy as heck with Laika Studios, contributing to some of the most original and imaginative films in decades. But we’ll be seeing more of her own work soon:
  

  Today is my last day at Laika. I’m leaving to work on my own projects! I will miss these guys so so much. T_T

  Brosgol was one of the first people I met in webcomics, before I started blogging even, back when Return To Sender³ was still updating, and I’ve adored her work from the beginning. Leaving a place of tremendous creativity (the sort that’s got to rub off on you) to work on her own stories again? This is the best possible news.

• Mark your calendars for the tail end of October:
  

  What if I told you to mark October 22-23rd on your calendar, because those are the dates of TopatoCon 2016? WHAT IF

  I would say Yes, please and start scheming as to how we could make last year’s competitive drink-making session even better. I made a drink in a pineapple, people, and kept up the small talk while competitors wrangled ingredients, the kindest of which was pop-boba. What would make for a good successor? An Iron Chef type format⁴? Something more educational? More samples? Answers on a postcard, or at least in the comments below.

• Speaking of conventions, a schedule change to this weekend’s In-Store Convention Kickoff: Jim Zub and Nathan Fillion/Alan Tudyk will be swapping timeslots, with the former now at 4:40pm and the latter at 6:30pm (all times EST). Please adjust your day planners accordingly.

Spam of the day:

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¹ Which remains on said list to this day, 78 weeks later, along with Drama (135 weeks), Smile (194 weeks), and the latest Baby Sitters Club reissue (5 weeks). She’s released her 70% stranglehold on the list, but I make it even money she regains it and possible pulls off the eight-peat once Ghosts releases in the fall.

² And it’s evil, I tells ya; the story is also so full of major twists and turns that I don’t know how to review it — even with my usual warnings of spoilers — without recounting the entire damn thing in detail. Suffice it to say that Kibuishi has lost none of his chops, has kicked the story into even higher gear than it was, and guaranteed that the wait for the last two books of the series will be the longest wait in the lives of his many fans.

And when volume 9 finally hits, I’m taking a day to re-read the entire thing at once. It’ll be glorious.

³ Since shuttered, and the domain obtained by persons of low intent. Only browse via Wayback Machine, and go no further than 2006. Some day, Often and Colette will reveal the rest of their story to us; in the meantime, they live in my heart and memory.

⁴ If we can figure out some way for me to shout allez biberonner, I will die a happy man.

This day in Great Outdoor Fight history: I choose the believe that the retired band teacher is a warning of what things may be if Scrooge Ray does not mend his ways. In this case, by beating down on a bunch of long-time dudes and not embarrassing his dad.

So this is late, but I only came across it yesterday when visiting my friendly local comic shop to pick up this week’s books¹; it appears, much like the webcomics stay-at-home “convention” known as ComfyCon, the comics industry has put together a virtual con that will be broadcast to comics shops this Saturday, 5 March. It appears this is even the second time it’s happened, who knew?

The In-Store Convention Kickoff, as it is named, suffers from one stunning disadvantage, which is that the flyer they produced for handout in comics shops doesn’t mention their website. There are references to Facebook and Twitter, which eventually lead to the site, but that was a hell of an overlook.

Fortunately, it appears that the rest of the arrangements are better thought-out. The idea of having to go specifically to a store to participate is pretty clever, driving attention and potentially sales to those stores; there are even exclusive comics that only participating stores can order. There’s also a wide variety of guests that will be part of presentations and panel discussions, from (if I counted correctly) nine different publishers plus a toy company, not to mention the obligatory media guests (Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk).

Best of all, they found people that webcomics fans ought to be interested in: Hope Larson, Christopher Hastings, Ryan North, and Jim Zub will all get time in the program, although whoever thought that 10 – 15 minutes is enough time for Hastings, North, or Zub to be interesting and charming and erudite and entertaining as hell is kind of dumb. Then again, its not like they were singled out — the only sessions longer than 15 minutes are the DC Comics panel (45), the BOOM! Studios panel (30), and the Marvel panel (45). Hope Larson’s part of the BOOM! panel (what with Goldie Vance getting ready to launch), so there may actually be time to say something, given that there are four other people speaking with her.

To be honest, the scheduling and durations [PDF] are a bit concerning. The very short times (along with the disclaimer that times and schedules are subject to change) makes me wonder if some of the less well-known guests might serve the role of cushioning to allow for last-minute shifts in the big names (your Matts Fraction or Kellys Sues DeConnick, for example, who themselves are only allocated 15 minutes total what the hell people). A technical issue here or there, might they decide to cancel somebody with less industry pull than Brian Michael Bendis or Dan Didio to get back on schedule²? That would be unfortunate.

Those caveats aside, it’s an ambitious eight hours planned, and I’ll be curious to see how it turns out. If you have questions for any of the creators, you can tweet them to #ConKickoff2016.

Spam of the day:

These astronomers gathered X-ray data utilizing the orbiting Chandra X-ray
Observatory and brightness information from
one in every of TSU’s automated telescopes in southern Arizona, hoping to measure the age of
the star.

It’s really less spam and more free verse.

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¹ Book of the week: Giant Days #12, where John Allison cliffhangered me and made me sniffly for Esther DeGroot, my favorite of all his creations. Except maybe Shauna and Lottie when they’re fixing time and space.

² Also a concern: there are few breaks allocated between sessions³. Things go over? Maybe there’s a cushion before the next session, maybe not. Somebody’s in the middle of a great story? Next person doesn’t get their ten minutes. I think there may be an overestimation as to the reliability of streaming software on the various computers of 37 different people.

³ Specifically, there are 26 events scheduled, with nine irregularly-spaced breaks:

• Opening keynote speaker Jim Lee ends at 12:15, the Dynamite panel starts at 12:20
• The Dynamite panel ends at 12:35, the Valiant panel starts at 12:40
• The DC panel ends at 1:50, Skottie Young starts at 1:55
• The Top Cow panel ends 3:25, Dan Jurgens starts at 3:30
• The Dark Horse panel ends at 4:20, Ryan North starts at 4:25
• Fillion & Tudyk end at 4:55, the Marvel panel starts at 5:00
• The Marvel panel ends at 5:45, the Zenescope panel starts at 5:50
• Jim Zub ends at 6:45, Mike Deodato starts at 6:50
• The IDW panel ends at 7:45, closing keynote speaker Kevin Eastman starts at 7:55

It appears that if you are a publisher with a panel or if you are a very famous person, you can run long. Everybody else is out of luck. And yes, by this measure Jim Zub is a very famous person; glad I’m not the only one that thinks so.

This day in Great Outdoor Fight history: I remain conflicted to this very day what the most disconsolate part of this tableau is — the smallness of the snack tent? The underwhelming nature of the “feast”? The lone spork? They could have at least made some “Dinosaur” Potato Chuds.

• It was in the early morning hours of yesterday — having twins means he’s on Baby Duty until 5:00am — that David Willis launched the Kickstarter for his fifth Dumbing of Age book, which funded out before he went to sleep. Hardly surprising, as the prior four DoA books have funded like clockwork (at rates of 273% to 370% of goal), although I don’t recall one funding out in less than eight hours before.

  It also doesn’t hurt that Willis puts together his books and sends out his stuff on time; as a result, he generally increases his backer count by about 600 folks from book to book, meaning the just under 700 backers and 177% achievement on a US$22,000 goal (as of this writing) is just an ordinary outcome for him. Checking out the ol’ FFFmk2, we’re looking at US$120K to 180K, which would be in the range of double his previous best funding level.

  Then again, he’s already go more backers than his first collection, and will likely come up with 2 to 3 times as many by the time the campaign ends in 28 days; if the per-backer averages hold, he’d be looking at US$78K to US$117K, and he hasn’t yet unlocked all the stretch goals, the things that convince people to move from intangible rewards to physical rewards. It appears that the twins need not worry about starving before their first birthday.

• Something else that need not be worried about? That Fleen readers will be uninformed about the goings-on in Eurocomics, thanks to Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin, who has a choice recommendation for us:
  

  Tim from acupoftim.com draws pages about a number of matters, from his admiration of Maddox to what became of Totoro to figuring out what the deal is with these darn squirrels, but he is best known for stories on his various workplaces and coworkers, published in Quotidien Survival.

  He also had a side blog, Glauque-Land, where he publishes photos of his explorations of various urban ruins and other abandoned buildings. Which caught the interest of a Flammarion imprint, and today they are releasing a book of his photos, with accompanying text and illustrations he created for this purpose.

  Maybe more interesting than the publication by itself is the story he published (as comics on his site, of course) of the whole process from his side, especially his attempts to keep a level head and dealing with not being in control of everything. Check them out if you can read French.

  My French is rusty, but you ain’t need to read French in order to see what the squirrels are up to — no good is what. Doesn’t matter if they’re French or otherwise, squirrels are not to be trusted. And curiously, this appears to be one area where animals outside Australia are more dangerous than those inside Australia … this should indicate how incredibly evil and malicious the little brush-tailed bastards really are.

Spam of the day:

Verizon Services FREE 30-day HBO NOW® trial – Let the binging begin

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. No. Get bent, Verizon. I’ll let SquirrelCo put their lines into my house before I upgrade my service with you.

This day in Great Outdoor Fight history: Ray is getting a bit full of himself with Beef and showing depths that, if not quite hidden, reveal insight into his heritage. Also, we learn all there is to know about Bob Raffles.

• If I didn’t have a strict policy about what goes at the top of posts where there is an anniversary strip from the Great Outdoor Fight, I know for an absolute fact that today’s post would be the results of me playing around with my new favorite online toy. Which toy? I hear you ask — let’s let Kate Beaton fill you in:
  

  now you can actually play with my @TorontoComics paper doll! torontocomics.com/news/announcing-the-kate-beaton-digital-paper-doll/

  Yes! The delightful show poster that Beaton did for TCAF is now interactive, complete with music, encouraging voice-overs, and screenshot capability. And in case the pictures are just too darn small for you, creator (and TCAF staffer) Kim Hoang made a fullscreen version available at her site. Just don’t blame me if you’re playing dress-up for the rest of the day.

• It’s Will Eisner Week, an annual recognition of the innumerable contributions made to comics by Will Eisner, timed to coincide with his 6 March birthday¹. Events are going on around the world between now and next Monday, and the good folks at the Cartoon Art Museum aren’t letting a little thing like a lack of gallery space keep from recognizing the master and his works. CAM invites you out to Mission: Comics and Art (2250 Mission Street, San Francisco) on Sunday for their celebration.

  The centerpiece of the event (which runs 2:00pm to 4:00pm) will be a panel discussion between prominent Bay Area creators Steve Englehart, Al Gordon, John Heebink, Mario Hernandez, and Steve Leialoha, free and open to the public. For those that might have favorite stories and characters created by these longtime pros, there will be a signing that follows immediately after. And heck, it’s The Mission, so I imagine people will be going for drinks after.

Spam of the day:

Prevent Your Fatal Heart Attack: Watch For These Signs

Sorry, but for some reason I don’t believe that “Princeton Health” (is that supposed to make me think you’re actually University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro, or possibly Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, which is the fictional hosptial from House?) really has an email address at mkvtqh2.[redacted].xyz … call it a hunch. Try harder, spammers.

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¹ Eisner would have been 99 this year, which means you should start planning on how to celebrate his centenary next year, oh, now-ish.