We’ll get the sixth one out of the way first.

• I woke up today with one of my all time favorite Something*Positive strips at the forefront of my brain, and wanted to go read it again. Here it is — Lizard-Happy. Man, what a great little moment Randy Milholland wrote there. I’ve loved this strip since I first read it what, two or three years ago?

  Nope. More than seven. How the crap did this strip run more than seven years ago and it feels so much more recent? Pretty sure this is proof that time is accelerating, a situation for which the laws of physics make no allowance¹.

  The conclusion is clear: physics — mayhap the universe itself — is broken, and all is about to come crashing down. Time, space, mass, energy all coalescing into a monobloc and everything we’ve ever known or love erased not just from existence, but probably from ever having existed in the first place.

  Not sure how that happened, but it’s probably something one of Milholland’s very performative I used to be your fan until I found out [something completely irrelevant] type followers did, just to spite him². Either that, or I’m just older than I thought.³

• Five things, then. Katie Lane⁴ dropped one hell of a resource on the creative community via twitterage earlier today:
  

  New Post!! 5 Things to Know Before You Sign Your Publishing Contract

  Which turns out to be the first of five topic-specific emails from an online training course that Lane is offering on understanding publishing contracts. The First Thing is this:

  In any publishing deal, you’re in charge. That’s because a publishing contract is you giving the publisher permission to use your work. They need permission and you’re the only one they can get it from.

  Man, I love that; no matter how a publisher may try to spin things to where you act out of fear, the lesson is that it’s not a failure to say no; it’s an inalienable right, and your ultimate protection. Key thoughts from Lane:

  Every term in the contract is a request:

  • May we have the right to make merchandise?
  • May we publish your book for a royalty that’s 10% of the cover price?
  • May we have the right to publish the next book you write?

  Just because they ask doesn’t automatically mean you have to say yes. With every request for permission in the contract, ask yourself:

  • Do I want to give them this permission?
  • Do I trust the publisher to use these rights effectively?
  • If I give the publisher my permission, and I don’t like the results, what options does the contract give me?

  [emphasis original]

  Much more, as the kids say, at the link. The Next Thing will be Only give them the permission they need, and can use, but if you want to see that, Lane requires you to do something. I’m not saying that she’s following the smack dealer model of first taste’s free, but to get Things Two through Five, you’ve got to sign up for the course. And if she is, she’s a pretty bad smack dealer, because the entire course is free. If you’ve ever signed a contract, may sign a contract in the future, or are possibly signing a contract right this very minute⁵, jump on that link and get smart.

Spam of the day:

Check out hotkate97
Kate posted naked pictures and selfies of herself so you can decide if she has the type of body that you would be willing to make love to. Her selfies and pics will be available for you to view until tomorrow morning around 10:15. Kate is allowing you to see her naked pics until tomorrow: Again, Kate is not wearing clothes in any of these pictures that she wants you to view.

Whoever is sending out emails for hotkate97 is more than a little desperate.

_______________
¹ Trust me on this, I just read all about what time is.

² They flock to him, like nobody’s business. I think he needs to hand out more beatings, as a warning to others.

³ Nah, definitely the broken universe.

⁴ Light-ning LAW-yer!

⁵ To whatever degree the concepts of past, future, and present mean anything now that Milholland pissed off that used-to-be-reader and got spacetime all broken, that is.

Things just seem to get weird on the day after a Monday off. Case in point: Penny Arcade had something going on earlier today, where if you (from my experimentation) didn’t set the URL to include both the secure https:// connection request and include the www. prefix, you got redirected to some educational company. I’ve been over their site and can’t figure out what the hell they do, but it sure isn’t comics about vidjagames.

Anyways, the P-A tech wizards seem to have done their thing; I notice that leaving off the https://www. now causes the missing URL elements to be added back in, and no more redirects. Fun!

I also had a nontechnical blow-up, in the sense that some unexpected things came together from different directions. On the one hand, The Other Gary Tyrrell informed me that we now apparently share an IMDB credit: him to being part of a particularly ridiculous sports event, me for being part of a particularly Malkidian short film¹ and apparently there’s an actual actor in there from a low-budget slasher short. So that put Malki ! on my radar today.

Then I saw today’s Wondermark and its technobabble materiel du jour, “Tyrellium”. Contrary to what you might be thinking, this is not a reference to either me or The Other Gary Tyrrell, because of Tyrrell’s First Law². It must be related to the Tyrell Corporation. Anyway, two Malki ! attention-grabs in as many days probably primed me to read Wondermark a bit more closely than typical, as I saw a terrific story about how he (that would be David Malki !) wound up contributing to a neat alternate reality game-type deal for Disney. It’s a nice discussion on how creativity can take many forms, and I recommend it to you.

Spam of the day:

Wear Glasses ? Your Eyes Are Headed For Serious TROUBLE

Oh no! Glasses secretly destroy your sight, according to this spam I got that talks about QUANTUM VISION.

I swear, scammers, please find a word that indicates your claims are utter bullshit besides quantum. It’s embarrassing.

_______________
¹ Ten years ago? Sheesh.

² Two Rs in Tyrrell, dammit.

Two tweets of interest, from Sam Logan:

15 years of Sam and Fuzzy! That’s a long time on the internet. 3 years older than YouTube, 2 older than Facebook, 4 younger than Google.

Today is Sam & Fuzzy’s 15th birthday, but I got YOU a present! It’s a free e-book copy [of] Volume 1. Spread and enjoy! http://gumroad.com/samandfuzzy

Fifteen years is forever in internet times. To give you an idea of how much Logan is giving you, each of the first five collections are normally US$9. Bonus: as part of the anniversary special you can get volumes 2-5 for US$10 or more; for US$20 or more, you also get the giant omnibuses that comprise all of the first thirteen years of the strip. If you haven’t read Sam & Fuzzy, this would be a good (and economical!) time to start.

Spam of the day:

Kära företagskund, Du har fått en ny anmälan. Klicka här för att läsa.

Jag är ledsen, jag läser inte svenska

To be fair, he’s waiting on a previously-announced thing to happen so he can tell us about it. Hopefully soon, because a day without Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin is a day without sunshine¹.

• But we shall persevere, particularly when we have wisdom (cloaked by humor) from Boulet. It’s not the latest English-language post at Bouletcorp, but rather (at the time of this writing) the third most recent. It’s about who comics creators are, and why they do what they do, and neatly encapsulates the French tendency of webcomics towards autobio², as Boulet contrasts his own work with that of colleagues Zviane and Lewis Trondheim.

  From there it becomes nothing less than a meditation on the nature of creativity (and the importance of random, dumb circumstance above technical skill, education, hard work, and pretty much every other conventional wisdom indicator of success) and concludes that comics artists (quoting here) are all freaking platypuses. As with everything from Boulet, it’s a delight.

• Book Corner time: coming next month (20 June, to be precise) from :01 Books is a delightful young-readers-plus-their-parents book from Benjamin Renner, The Big Bad Fox. Pre-order it now. The story is simple enough: a fox who can’t ever manage to snag a chicken (his friends the rabbit and the pig slip him turnips so he doesn’t starve) is convinced by a wolf to steal some eggs and raise chicks to adulthood for an easy meal. Genius!

  Until the chicks aren’t afraid of the Big, Bad Fox, because he’s mom. And the fox (who isn’t really big or bad) gets to like (love, even) his surrogate children. Hilarity ensues. The entire thing reads like a Chuck Jones cartoon (Renner, an animator, took an Academy Award as one of the three directors of Ernest & Celestine), with a style to match. The dog, charged with protecting the farmyard, looks a bit like a heavy-lidded Question Hound at his This Is Finest as he does the absolute least possible to manage the drama around him. The wolf is menacing in a slouchy way, and the fox is …

  Okay, the original French title, Le Grand Méchant Renard, is suggested by Google Translate as The Great Evil Fox. But that key word — méchant — has several meanings listed: bad meaning wicked, mischievous, nasty, evil. But also bad meaning mediocre, incompetent. Bingo. The fox is Wile E Coyote: rangy, mangy, prone to failure the more elaborate his schemes get, motivated more by hunger than malice, but ready to find a spark of empathy and take the hard way out (a pretty savage beating by the chickens, trained to ninja-like lethality) if it means sparing “his” children distress (or a noshing by the wolf).

  It’s charming, funny, and turns more than one expectation on its head³. Many thanks to Gina Gagliano at :01 for the review copy, and even more thanks to :01 for continuing to bring the best of French comics to these shores.

Spam of the day:

Beat Insomnia: The Fastest Way To FallSleep

I close my eyes and then I sleep.

_______________
¹ Which, coincidentally, it is here. Overcast, spitty rain, which is thankfully predicted to clear for the holiday weekend. Oh, yeah, Monday’s a holiday, probably no post then.

² As previously explained by FSFCPL; we just can’t quit him.

³ By the end, the fox and his kids play “Fox and Chicken”. He plays the big mean chicken, they play terrified foxes, fleeing for their lives.

In case you hadn’t seen it, NPR Books is compiling a summer reading list, with an emphasis on comics and graphic novels, and they want our¹ input! Even better, they acknowledge the existence of webcomics

What can you nominate?

Long-running series comics: Choose a distinct story arc or a well-known run by a particular writer or artist. So, rather than just nominating The X-Men, pick something like the Dark Phoenix Saga. Or if you like Matt Fraction (and who doesn’t?) you could nominate his run on Hawkeye.

Single issues: Because we know someone’s gonna be mad if we leave out Action Comics #1

Graphic novels and trade paperbacks: Persepolis, The Invisibles vol. 2, Blankets, a single volume of your favorite manga — if it’s available in a standalone form, have at it!

Newspaper comics: May be nominated as a whole. Get your Bloom County on!

Webcomics: May also be nominated as a whole. [emphasis mine]

But don’t go totally crazy; they ask that you limit yourself to five choices, which is gonna be hard. For me, I think I’m going to go with Drive by Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett, Octopus Pie by Meredith Gran, Motor Girl volume 1 by Terry Moore, Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier, and … argh. Vattu? American Born Chinese? The Last Halloween? Hark! A Vagrant? Finder: Third World? Usagi Yojimbo: Daisho? Starman Omnibus volume 6? Be a complete dick and suggest the entirety of Homestuck, but especially Sweet Bro & Hella Jeff?

I think it’s gonna have to be The Great Outdoor Fight. What do you think people should be reading this summer from the world of web/indie comics? NPR will only take the top 100 suggestions for the official list, but we can suggest any damn thing we want to amongst ourselves; drop your comments at the link below.

Spam of the day:

1 Weird Trick I Wish My Ex-Boyfriend Knew (Uncensored)

This is gonna be something with goji berries and açai, isn’t it?

______________
¹ In the sense of anybody that can fill out an online form; Fleen readers aren’t, in this case at least, special.

Let’s see what some folks are up to, yeah?

• Magnolia Porter is one of the people you really should know. Her comics are great, and she’s just the nicest, most adorable person ever. Nobody doesn’t love her and if they do, screw them. I was a bit bummed to see that Monster Pulse is on hiatus this week — but not excessively, she doesn’t work for me, I will accept her offer of free entertainment at whatever schedule she finds appropriate — but then she turned around and more than made up for it with a new comic, a whole chapter’s worth dropped all at once.

  Sensitive Soul is, not to put too fine a point on it, manga. The heroine ranges wildly between sweetness & light and white-hot fury. The mysteriously hunky stranger is instantly loathed, then she decides he his the titular sensitive soul and must be redeemed/pursued. It’s only a matter of time before Dottie (the main character) starts going gooey over the fact that Cal-sempai smiled at her.

  None of this is meant as critique. Porter is clearly having the time of her life telling her story in well-established patterns, and it’s a hoot¹. She’ll release Sensitive Soul in chunks as she’s able, which will be made easier if you care to download the chapters on a pay-what-you-want basis (minimum: one measly buck).

• The pay-what-you-want model is definitely attractive to creators whose revenues in advertising aren’t pulling in what they used to (so many ad blockers, so many reposts to Reddit or Imgur or Tumblr or other mis-spelled services), and can’t ride out the considerable wait between books and the chance to recoup some living expenses. There’s a nice explication of the whole changing model for pro webcomickers presented by Chris Hallbeck on Twitter today:
  

  Back when I first started making comics on the internet everyone came to my website to see them. Now people read my comics in many different ways. Instagram, tumblr, twitter, Facebook, mobile apps and many others I probably haven’t heard about yet. I think this is great! I want as many people as possible to read my comics the way they want. The only hitch is this is my full time job and the way I support my family. My main source of income is through the ads displayed on my websites. Now that people’s reading habits are changing, my ability to buy food and pay bills is shrinking.

  That’s the text for the first four panels, in case you’re disinclined to click the link. The last two panels introduce Hallbeck’s fans to the other mainstay of income in a world of reader casualness and ad blockage — Patreon. Hallbeck’s hardly the first webcomicker to try to get his reader base (which is incredibly variable — a widely retumbled comic could hit 40 or 50 thousand eyeballs, but few of those could be called regular readers), but he’s probably the first to have this note on his Patreon:

  Want more now? If you become a patron to Chris Hallbeck, you’ll immediately get access to as many as 714 patron-only posts.

  Seven hundred and fourteen? That’s crazy. And if even 1% of those Tumblrinos decides to kick a buck a month to Hallbeck (and that’s a pretty crappy return rate), he’ll more than replace declining ad revenue. Here’s hoping for a pretty crappy return rate instead of an extremely crappy one.

• Ryan North announced a new comics project, but I think I’ma give this one a pass; it’ll take the form of a 2-page backup story in a limited run series that I really don’t care about, but hopefully they’ll sell the completed story in some form down the line.

  It sounds really good, though, so Marvel came pretty close to getting me to spring for five issues about Inhumans, but four bucks an issue is too much to ask when I’m only there for two pages. Inhumans: Once And Future Kings starts in August, and if it’s the sort of thing you might be interested in, North’s backups featuring LOCKJAW, canine master of time and space! [emphasis original] ought to push you over the edge.

  Seriously, though — make this a one-shot with some of Hannah Blumenreich’s Spidey stories and I’ll pay cash money so fast it’ll make your head spin.

Spam of the day:

Grace Jones [incomprehensible Cyrillic text]

Yeah, don’t think that Grace Jones — the most fabulous person alive — is spamming me in Russian. Try harder.

______________
¹ Also a hoot: a hidden Achewood gag, which I hope Porter turns into a habit. That golden action is so crunchy.

Lotta signing creators going to be happening at the end of the week/start of next, mostly in conjunction with the NCS Awards weekend extravaganza, this year touching down in Stumptown, USA. I can’t recall a similar event happening at NCS gatherings in the past, but Portland is a pretty comics-intensive town so if this were going to be introduced, it makes sense to do it this time out.

Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett will be repping webcomics at the big signing event on Sunday from 1:00pm to 4:00pm at the Hilton Portland, ‘long with other independent creators like Andrew Farago of the Cartoon Art Museum, Scott Kurtz, and Shannon Wheeler. The fact that most of the signers will be syndication types shouldn’t keep you from going if you’re in town; I met a lot of them the year I went to the Reubens Weekend and they are almost exclusively really funny and cool people¹.

Along the same lines, Meredith Gran will be signing on Friday evening, at Portland’s Books With Pictures, from 7:00pm to 9:00pm. Gran, one may recall, lived and worked in Portland for a couple of years some time back, and also happens to be nominated in the Reubens for Online Comics — Long Form (along with Kathleen Jacques and Ngozi Ukazu). Speaking of which, today’s Octopus Pie appears to open the possibility that the imminent conclusion of the strip will end with the earth swallowing all the main characters. Perhaps Eve will become monarch of Brooklyn Below? I’d be cool with that.

And bringing things back around to the start, LArDK is also appearing in Portland in conjunction with his own nomination for Online Comics — Short Form (along with Sarah Andersen and Ruben Bolling²). Best of luck to all the nominees, and have fun in Portland. Tell everybody I said hi.

Spam of the day:

Discover the Lowest Rates for Burial Coverage

Pffft. I’m gettin’ shot out of a cannon and covering a wide area in my essence. REVEL IN IT, PEASANTS.

_______________
¹ Pretty sure the one guy who was a dick to Jon Rosenberg is dead now.

² Who may have an unfair advantage vis-a-vis his name.

It’s a good time for nonfiction books written by webcomickers — Kelly and Zach Weinersmith have Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything coming out, uh, soon-ish. Ryan North has something he’s working on along these lines that I can’t talk about yet. And Jorge Cham beat them all to the punch by partnering with actual particle physicist Daniel Whiteson to produce We Have No Idea: A Guide To The Unknown Universe, out now.

Cham asked me if I wanted a copy for review and it showed up at my doorstep about 47 hours later; Cham and Whiteson may claim to not know about the wider universe, but heck if they haven’t mastered negative-time shipping. I’ve been digging through WHNI since I received it and it is one hell of a sticky book¹. It’s also weirdly encouraging, as I’ve never felt so energized by accepting how little I know.

There’s a hell of a lot of mystery out there, from the smallest subatomic particles (Why are there as many as there are? Why do some appear not to be used for anything? Are there smaller particles inside them?) to the grandest cosmic scale (Dark matter: What is it? Why does it not interact with us? Why is there so much more Dark energy than dark matter, and in turn much more dark matter than ordinary matter like we’re familiar with?). Each gets explored in turn, laying out the limits of what we know and how much more we don’t².

Even better are the really weird questions that make you think Whiteson and Cham are just messing with us. For example, What is space? Hint: it’s not just the lack of stuff; best guess is that space is, itself, stuff, but not stuff as we know it. Lack of stuff doesn’t bend, or stretch, or wobble like space does; if you’re starting to get a headache³, just take a look at Cham’s cartoon that analogizes space as being sorta-kinda like Jell-O (they call it “space goo”, perhaps to avoid any unpleasant trademark issues⁴), it helps.

All of the cartoons help, in fact — key concepts can be gotten across remarkably quickly with a scribble or two in ways that pages of explanation (or mathematical formulae) just don’t get at. They’re funnier, too. It’s been a while since I read as broad a general-interest science book that I felt goat both the details (as required) and the big picture (without losing scope) as right as this one. It’s probably my favorite since A Brief History of Time, which had about 100% fewer cartoons and terrible puns.

It’s also more hopeful; no matter how much I enjoyed ABHOT, you can’t get past the point it’s by Stephen Freaking Hawking, Smartest Guy In History, and when he talks about mysteries and unknowns, the immediate reaction is Welp, we’ll never know.

Cham and Whiteson are clearly super smart (and between them, have at least two more PhDs than I ever finished), but their approach is infinitely playful, leaving the reader with an optimistic outlook of Sure, we don’t know now, but look how much we’ve figured out in basically an eyeblink of human history and if these two goofballs can explain it to me, imagine what all the really smart people in the world can determine!

Go get We Have No Idea, and catch the book tour if you possibly can. It’s the most uplifting description of ignorance ever, because now we (the humanity-wide we) realize how much is left to discover. Discovery’s the fun part; it’s like playtime for your brain.

Spam of the day:

Better than_Viagra? Tell-us-Where-to-Send your_Bottle!

Your product is called Phallyx? For real? Little on the nose there, don’t you think?

_______________
¹ I’d plowed through the first 120 or so pages when my neck began to hurt from hunching over it at a table with poor ergonomics; it took a couple hours to realize it.

² And that’s just the stuff we know we don’t know, never mind everything that we don’t even know we don’t know. Nevertheless, it’s as stirring a call to explore and discover and learn as I’ve read in a long damn time.

³ Alternately, reaching for your weed card and getting ready to gesture wildly and mutter Whoa.

⁴ An avoidance noticeably absent in their cavalier use of Lego and Legos in early chapters, thus potentially angering the international corporation most interested in ensuring that their trademarked term not ever become generic.

When the Danish assassins come, Cham and Whiteson and their copy editor will realize too late they should have referred to LEGO bricks (possibly with a few dozen ® and ™ trailing along).

So that was fast. Tapa* backpedaled with great speed, although I have to say that their rationale for the change doesn’t pass the smell test:

The purpose of the Right of First Refusal is not to take any rights away or steal your content. The purpose is to help you. We’ve witnessed multiple creators on Tapas accept unfair, uncompetitive deals and sign away their rights for far less than their work is worth. Creators who should have been paid 10x what they were offered agreeing to terrible deals because they either did not know their market value or did not have any competing offers.

We have connections in traditional publishing, merchandising, tv, and film. Our intention is to work with creators to bring additional offers to the table, and to create competition in the market so individuals get the best deal possible.

Go back and read that again, and then explain to me why a completely benevolent — caretaking, even! — change to the TOS was put through without any explanation, highlighting, or prior notice. Not buying it. So they put their TOS back to what it was before the change — we think; they’ve excluded that page from Internet Archive gathering, so there’s no independent way to confirm — but that in and of itself reveals a weakness. As always, one should listen to George

[long thread prior to this point … go read it]
They make an offer, if it doesn’t involve 6+ figures per exploitation right, decline. Then you’re in the clear. Kind of.

“Kind of” because Tapas can, at any time, change the ToS again and screw you over. You consent to that as item 2 in the ToS. [emphasis mine]

Yep, it’s right there in the TOS:

Although we will attempt to notify you when major changes are made to these Terms of Service, you should periodically review the most up to date version (found at https://tapas.io/tos). Tapas Media may, in its sole discretion, modify or revise these Terms of Service at any time. Modifications and revisions will take effect 5 days after they have been posted. Nothing in these Terms of Service shall be deemed to confer any third party rights. [emphasis mine]

Unilaterally creating a new claim on your IP seems like a major change, and to my eye Tapa* didn’t make any kind of effort to notify anybody, nor are they committing to any such notification in the future. Want to get back something like a measure of trust, Tapa*? Unilaterally change the TOS one mo’ gin to amend item 2 for the last time under the current rules.

Hold yourself to a requirement of proper notification and with a decent interval before changes take effect (30 days, minimum), and maybe you won’t get the stinkeye from the community any more. Short of that, you’re screwed as far as any creators who are serious about earning from their creations are concerned.

But, that ain’t happening, I don’t think, and Tapa* will pay the price. Nothing like finishing the week on a positive note. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m told that my copies of Wasted Talent books 4 and 5 have arrived, and I need to affix some bookplates. If you’re at VanCAF this weekend and see Angela Melick, toss her the engineer’s gang sign for me.

Spam of the day:

Record Thieves Around Your Office Wirelessly

Only thief around my office has four legs, a pointy nose and long tail, and sleeps with his eyes open until I’m sufficiently distracted that he can strike with silent quickness. Don’t think I need wireless capability to determine who stole my lunch that one time.

Before we get to said bullshit, how about a little positivity? VanCAF (one of the standoout *CAF free comics festivals that has come about in the mode of TCAF¹) is this weekend, and every expectation is that the show made great by (founding showrunner) Shannon Campbell and (incoming showrunner) Andrea Demonakos will continue its trajectory of awesomeness.

Webcomickers expected in Vancouver’s Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre include Abby Howard, Alina Pete, Becky Dreistadt & Frank Gibson, Blue Delliquanti, Ed Brisson, Evan Dahm, Angela Melick, Jakface, Jeph Jacques, Kathleen Jacques (no relation), Katie Shanahan, Kean Soo, Kel McDonald, Kelly Tindall, Kory Bing, Lucy Bellwood (adventure cartoonist!), Sam Logan, Sarah Becan, Der-Shing Helmer, Steve LeCouilliard, Tony Cliff, and Tyson Hesse, along with featured guests C Spike Trotman, Chip Zdarsky, and Faith Erin Hicks.

On to crappier things.

• Apparently, about seven days ago, Tapas (formerly Taptastic, the wecomic-hosting solution) changed its terms and services. The first person I saw that actually looked at the new T&S is webcomics superfan Michael Kinyon, who noted that there’s now a Right of First Refusal clause. This could be very, very bad or potentially not that bad.

  As the aforementioned and omnipresent Spike notes, First Refusal means you have to tell Taptastic/Tapas if you want to do anything with the stuff you host with them, and they have the first crack at making you an offer. She lays out a scenario where you could be prevented from doing stuff with your stuff, potentially forever.

  But, and this is why lawyers exist, the terminology doesn’t say that Tapa* has an absolute lock on future deals, just that you have to negotiate with them for at least 30 days. If you can’t come to an agreement “in good faith” in that time, they missed their chance.

  Of course, what constitutes “good faith”, or what constitutes you wanting to (quoting now) sell, license, exercise or otherwise dispose of, indirectly or directly, any rights or any interest in any content posted on the Platform is subject to all kinds of interpretation because (to my eye, at least) the clause is super-broad.

  But I am not a lawyer, so let’s hear from one, subject to the mandatory disclaimer:

  FYI, I do this type of legal work. Happy to give some general advice (none of you are my clients, & retain & consult a lawyer …

  me or s/o else, before relying on this (I’d do some actual research before giving official advice :), but here’s my “from top of head” take:

  Akiva Cohen’s read is that it’s really broad, but that right of first negotiation does not constitute an ongoing right to make counteroffers forever, and that the chief cost to you is time. He also notes a lack of specificity as to when you have to provide notice, and this next bit is pretty brilliant:

  Here’s where you get the benefit of someone thinking like a lawyer ;): The clause puts no parameters on WHEN you can give notice

  So, theoretically, you could provide notice, the day you sign up with them, that you “desire to sell, license, etc.” ALL content you have or

  will place on their platform, and offer them a 30 day period to negotiate for any rights to that.

  Result: either they give you a good enough offer before you post comic number 31 (if you’re a daily) that you want to take it, or

  their right of first refusal has been satisfied and you are free, 2 months, 1 year, or 5 years later, to take the work to market w/o …

  providing them any further notice or exclusive negotiating period

  Questions? Cohen put his email in the thread for anybody that wants to have a more detailed discussion, but remember — he is not your lawyer until you have a formal agreement for him to represent you. Which, he says, he’s willing to do at a preferred rate on on behalf of groups. Read the whole thing.

  My take: it’s not terrible, but I hate, hate, hate it when companies changes their T&S and force you to agree or discontinue use — if you don’t agree to Tapa*’s new rules, you have to delete your account (they don’t give a timeframe for acceptance), which definitely puts them in a position of imposing on their users. Also, Tapa* is clearly not taking the Katie Lane² approach of trying to find a mutually-beneficial solution for all, they’re trying to maximize their potential payouts in the quickest, least-defined way possible³.

  This all leads back to a few rules we would all be well served to remember:

  • If a service is helpful and free, you are being monetized somehow.
  • Nobody will care about your ability to make a living from your work as much as you.
  • Read the damn contract and then have a lawyer read it; unless an actual lawyer with experience in contracts has told you on multiple occasions that you’re good at contracts and unlikely to get screwed acting on your own, you are not good at contracts and are likely to get screwed by acting on your own.

  Tattoo ’em on the insides of your eyelids.

• It gets worse, if you can believe it. Word broke yesterday that a webcomic had been hacked and deleted for the purposes of attacking the creator, for whom it was a main source of income. The creator, Sophie Labelle, was subject to coordinated harassment, threats, and doxing in the lead up, for the crime of being trans and making a comic that dealt with trans and non-binary issues. The website of Assigned Male [no link, about to explain] is presently down, which is actually an improvement as it was previously spewing Nazi imagery.

  Way to prove your innate superiority, Nazis, you’ve completely won me over with your impeccable logic and moral argument! Engaging in your righteous and in no way assholic behavior on International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia was surely an unfortunate coincidence! Oh, and since there are such things as Tumblr and print copies, you didn’t actually manage to go back in time and erase Labelle or Assigned Male from ever existing. Way to accomplish nothing, you ineffectual, fragile, yet curiously convinced of your own genetic destiny dipshits!

  In fact, given that a lot of people hadn’t heard of Assigned Male before yesterday, I’m going to call this a pretty good example of the Streisand Effect. Patreon doesn’t show timelines of support (at least, not to random nosy-pants like me), but I’m willing to bet that you’ve driven the count of Labelle’s supporters up and raised her profile. People that didn’t have an opinion on trans issues have decided where they stand, and they’ve decided against hate.

  Assuming that anybody reading this page falls into that category⁴, do me a personal favor and take a peek at her work, maybe toss a few bucks to her Paypal to help with the sudden expense of having to move on account of Nazis are sending death threats and publicizing her address.

  Not too long ago, this sort of evil was ordinary; then things started to get better, and now the evil fuckers are trying to drag us back to when they could pull this shit and not be met with condemnation for it. Don’t let them get away with it.

Spam of the day:

Consolidate Debt — Shark Tank Star’s Recommendation

Is it that one obnoxious guy that thought he could be Prime Minister of Canada on the basis of he’s rich? I wouldn’t take advice from that guy if I was on fire and he was suggesting a dip in the pool.

_______________
¹ Indeed, it’s now produced in partnership with TCAF.

² Light-ning LAW-yer!

³ To be fair, they can’t renegotiate with all their users individually. They could, however, set a date for the new T&S to take effect, and offer tools to migrate content away from their platform for any users that don’t want to accept the new T&S. Even my credit card companies — as rapacious and evil an industry as exists with respect to one-sided contracts — gives me 30 days to accept new contract terms or to close an account.

⁴ And on the off chance that you don’t — that you think that what happened to Labelle was fine, or all in good fun, or what your deity of choice requires — kindly do me favor and fuck off. You’re not welcome in my house. The rest of you can come over and hang out.