What’s that? Oh, just a story in Entertainment Weekly about Ngozi Ukazu signing representation with George Rohac, as :01 Books announces that Check, Please! will be published as a two-volume series. You know, just another Friday in Webcomicstan.

Key bits:

The first volume, which hits stores Fall 2018, will collect the first two “Years” of the comic, while the second will collect the latter two, and is set to be published in Fall 2019. Both books will feature extra content not included in the Kickstarter editions.

It’s not clear at the present time if Ukazu will run Kickstarter editions of Year Three and Year Four, or if by that time the first :01 volume will be so close that it’s not worth doing. Speaking as a reader for whom obsessive completionism is a lifestyle, I can see a demand for separate Y3 & Y4 editions that match on the bookshelf of existing readers, along with new readers jumping on the combo versions.

In any event, it’s kind of hard to imagine a combo platter of unstoppable awesomeness more inevitable than Ukazu + George + :01, and I am really interested to see what other self-published works :01 will snag up for new editions in the future. Unless I’m misremembering, this is the first case of non-French material that’s been obtained for republication rather than being commissioned as a new work. Very interesting.

Okay, enjoy the long weekend, Canadians (1 July) and Usians (4 July). Catch you next week.

Spam of the day:

CANNABIS GUMMIES Without a Prescription in All 50 States

Man, I can barely manage a handful of regular gummies without my teeth starting to ache. I ain’t going near gummies that will get me hepped up like I’m on goofballs.

It’s not that there’s nothing going on in the Wide, Wide World o’ Webcomics¹, but we are in a momentary summertime lull before SDCC² and the rest of the major con busy season. I mean, I could point you towards the updated tour dates for Meredith Gran³ and Mike Holmes — in fact, I think I will — but there’s only so much of your time I can occupy there. Or you could take five minutes to watch the second episode of animation from The Nib, that works.

Done? Okay, let’s make fun of spammers and see what crops up between now and tomorrow.

Spams of the day:

Bonus! $350 after your first 150 rides driving with Lyft!

Figuring that any ride will take the drive a minimum of 15 minutes (from notification until drop-off), US$350 for 37.5 hours labor, or less than US$10/hour. Minus gas, insurance, and the rest? I think you actually come out negative on this deal.

Some DNA testing can be done from home

I did one of those home DNA spit tests once, on account of being adopted, I was sick of telling my doctor I didn’t know if there was a family history of various diseases. Still don’t know, but I am reliably informed that there’s a 68% change that I’m obese based on my genes. I am a super-skinny dude. I’m starting to regret not doing what I seriously thought of doing at the time, which was to let my dog drool into the collection tube just to watch the lab freak out.

[New SMS] You Received a Glance from Gelya (from Kazan, Russia)

I have received roughly thirty-seven variations of this spam with different combos of name and Russian city. Apparently, Russian mail-order brides really dig me.

Confirm Your Account with us

This one’s great — a big graphic that says ACTIVATE YOUR ACCOUNT in block letters, not even bothering to make up a lie about which account or with what company. Balls nasty.

Garytyrrell 2 messages marked as unread disobeys

Oh, no, the Facebook account I don’t have is threatening me for leaving messages unread.

Vital to Your Wellness: Good Dental Health

Not to brag, but I just went to the dentist on Saturday and she told me my hygiene was excellent. I like my dentist, she is quick and painless.

Juicy Couture Tracksuits

Nnnnooope.

Knives that are too large are very impractical and tremendously difficult to control. Ecclesiastes 12:17 (The Message) Old King Solomon said it all

King Solomon used swords; I don’t think he was overly concerned with a knife being too large.

I’ll immediately snatch your rss as I can’t in finding your email subscription hyperlink or e-newsletter service. Do you’ve any? Please allow me recognise so that I could subscribe. Thanks.

I think I just got sexually harassed.

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¹ There’s not a good visual for the agony of defeat in webcomics, so please accept the original instead.

² Programming details coming soon!

³ Octopus Pie volume 5 (final!) out now!

Know what else is awesome? One of the greatest, most enabling guys in [web]comics, Christopher Butcher, is getting a new job. He’s been great at managing one of the best comics shops in North America, and he founded one of the great comics shows in the world. Now he gets to hunt out new talent in North America and Japan, and Publishers Weekly has the story:

Chris Butcher, longtime manager of The Beguiling comics bookstore and founder and artistic director of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, is leaving The Beguiling and has been named a consulting editor-at-large for Viz Media.

In this new consulting role for Viz Media, Butcher will scout acquisitions and new talent and new publishing projects, while splitting his time between North America and Japan. In addition Butcher will also scout for original non-Japanese comics projects.

It couldn’t happen to a nicer, more qualified guy. Congratulations to Butcher, and to Viz for recognizing skill when they see it.

In other news:

• New animation from The Nib.
• Matt Furie is reclaiming Pepe from fucking Nazis.
• Tickets are now available for Marian Call’s SDCC-adjacent concert.

There’s, uh, not a lot extra to say about any of those. Enjoy ’em.

Spam of the day:

Search free coupons for toilet paper discounts

How much toilet paper do you think I use?

Iverly! Oh, my yes, Iverly is back today and perhaps more before too long! Jeffrey Rowland has been keeping creators in rent money but DANG if I haven’t missed his take on comics. Read it from the beginning.

Onwards …

We mentioned XOXO co-founder Andy McMillan during the Comics Camp Roundup Extravaganza last month, and in that time he’s been busy. The Liberty Foundation has been communicating with the world via the occasional tweet, and the website is now up and running. The first big reveal on what they plan to do will be at an official launch party, tonight, in Portland, from 6:0pm, at Outlet PDX.

McMillan’s plans and intentions will be made clear this evening, but we can share the general outline:

The Foundation will begin by offering a number of fellowship awards. Under the guidance of our advisory board, we will be prioritizing awarding our fellowships to a diverse and representative group of artists working in contemporary fields such as film, music, podcasts and audio storytelling, writing, comics, tabletop and board games, and video games.

Our fellows will each receive a $60,000 cost of living grant and support for health insurance costs for one year. These grants will not be project-based, but rather aimed at giving creators a chance to step back and make decisions based on curiosity and long-term growth rather than dire and immediate need.

The second aspect of the Foundation supports this goal by providing an extensive coaching and support program to help artists maintain momentum, focus on their work, and grow it into a sustainable business. This will involve workshops and tutorials focused on business development, marketing, financial planning, and legal support.

The processes of application and selection are to be announced, but I can tell you this — I discussed things with McMillan during and after Comics Camp, and I have made a pledge of financial support to The Liberty Foundation; as such, I will be covering it lightly in future, to avoid any potential conflict of interest¹. If creating a mechanism to aid artists past the building phase of their careers to where they can self-sustain and grow is something you’re interested in, drop him a line. The more people on board with this, the more people contributing and participating, the better.

Spam of the day:

This coupon is waiting for a trip to sears.com!

Amazingly, this appears to actually come from Sears and not, say, Brandon Bird.

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¹ And any coverage that I do provide, I will add a disclaimer.

Not that less big is an indicator of inferior quality in any way! It’s just that two of the books we’re talking about are gargantuan; they are bookzillaesque.

• The less big book in question is the print collection of Mary Cagle’s Let’s Speak English, a diary account of her 2.5 years teaching English to elementary students in Japan. Loved the comic while it was running (roughly October 2013 to summer 2016), backed the Kickstarter earlier this year, and received my copy over the weekend, ahead of the promised July delivery date.

  It’s a fun book for a one-sitting read-through, watching Mary-sensei adapt and learn alongside her students (most strips seem to show her interacting with second graders, who are fearless about asking her anything). It doesn’t appear to be in her store yet, but will presumably be added after fulfillment is wrapped up; in the meantime, maybe check out her Patreon?

• The first big book is Evan Dahm’s illustrated edition of Moby-Dick, and like the eponymous white whale, this thing is a monster. As you can see from the photo up top, it’s too big to even fit in the picture. Seriously, though, it’s a serious book.

  To give you a sense of scale, I have a slipcased two-volume annotated edition of the complete Sherlock Holmes stories, and a slipcased one-volume edition of the complete Lord of the Rings; Dahm’s Moby-Dick is larger and heavier than either¹. That copy that Fone Bone carries around that’s the size of his entire torso? It’s this book. The binding is thick and substantial, the pages are heavy stock, the slipcase is the thickest I have ever encountered, and the edges of the pages are dyed black.

  The entire effect is BLACK and WHITE in stark contrast, with the page composition matching. Heavy, beautiful BLACK letterforms² against stark WHITE pages. Each illustration is BLACK ink on a WHITE background, or in the cases of the titular whale, so much BLACK on a WHITE background as to appear to be WHITE ink on a BLACK background. In each case, fine crosshatching gives an effect somewhere midway between engraving and woodcut, underscoring the time of the book and its mood perfectly: brutal and aggressive, full of contrast and anger, like Ahab and the White Whale themselves.

  Some illustrations are manic, some contemplative, some presage disaster, all are insanely detailed. Individual characters, both named (mates Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask; harpooners Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo, and Fedallah) and unnamed (many, many crew) are recognizable and distinct. I’m certain that certain background characters are, in Dahm’s mind, the same individual that is followed from post to post, job to job, about the Pequod.

  I’ve never read Moby-Dick, and travel for work necessitated I not dive into it just yet; I did spend a couple hours on Saturday afternoon when it arrived paging through to the illustrations, and reading the surrounding pages for context. This will be a book to luxuriate in, to spend weeks reading; the US$45 it cost in the Kickstart is a bargain, and if you are a fan of either literature or design, you should be grabbing this at the first opportunity when it goes into Dahm’s TopatoCo store.

• The second big book is related to TopatoCo as well; I was perusing the listings of what comes to the comics shops this week, and I was surprised to see a 25 year one-volume collection of Tom Tomorrow’s This Modern World comics. One may recall that TopatoCo subsidiary Make That Thing did such a volume via Kickstart in 2015, which looked like this.

  However, the promoted book is via IDW Comics, not TopatoCo. I inquired with TopatoCo and learned that Mr Tomorrow did a deal with IDW in the course of the campaign, and that TopatoCo’s position on the matter is Godspeed, ye who have to lift 50 pound book sets. Those of you wishing to save on gym memberships, apply at IDW, Diamond distributing, or perhaps your local comics shop.

Spam of the day:

If Your Dog’s Breath Smells Bad – Do This

Brush them? I mean, I’m just spitballing here.

______________
¹ Also, it contains 100% less Tom Bombadil.

² Dahm devotes notes to his choice of typefaces, and the intent to honor the original.

By which I mean, the map of San Diego Comic Con’s exhibitors, in handy PDF form, which I painstakingly re-capture and format every year. Well, not this time! I’m keeping the maps from last year to the extent that they match the layout this year

The North Half Layout Is The Same
It’s on the right side of the overall floor map, and apart from a logo change or two, the booth numbers and major players correspond to the same layout as last year:

The Webcomics, Small Press, and Independent Press Pavilions remain reasonably accessible from the “B” lobby. Let’s break ’em down.

The Last Stand Of Webcomics?
It’s been a long run, but more and more creators are opting to skip SDCC; of course, once you give up a booth you won’t get it back in the current decade, so expect to see a bit more holding on. Centered roughly on booth #1332, you’ll find a majority of the webcomickers who will be at the show within about a 1.5 aisle radius; some are slightly outside the orange area, but not too far. Those that return are for the most part at the same booth number as previous years, but there’s been some upheaval, as we shall see.

Notes:

• :01 Books appear to have been relocated to booth 2800, and taken Macmillan Children’s Publishing with it (2802).
• Rhode Montijo (of Happy Tree Friends fame) in 1329.
• No news yet on which TopatoCo creators will be along; we’ll update once we know.
• Hachette (1116), Harper Collins (1029), (1117), and Simon & Schuster (1128) remain in Publisher’s Row; Knopf Doubleday appears to be skipping.
• As of this writing, Booth 1332, the heart of Webcomics Central, is listed for Flex Comics which sells (quoting here) Bro Tank shirts and does occasional mash-up strips with a fitness theme. Far be it from me to criticize a webcomic for selling t-shirts, but given that the shirts are on the front page and the comic found off at a link, I’d say it inverts the normal order of things.
• But that’s still not as bad as booth 1235 going to Pulsar Entertainment LLC, which appears to have its origin in a talent contest (ugh) and is celebrating its own launch by running its own contest (double ugh) with all entries granting a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to Pulsar Entertainment (triple ugh). They’re over next to Blind Ferret; I’m sure Sohmer will have lots to say to them.
• Dumbrella this year will only be Rich Stevens and Andy Bell; they’ve invited Cards Against Humanity to share space.
• Meredith Gran will be at the show with husband Mike Holmes, but I don’t have a definitive location yet. Possible locations include Image (Gran), :01 (Holmes), and Dumbrella (both). More when I have it.

Small Press Abides
Right by the Webcomics section is Small Press. Here you should find:

From the Small Press section, you’re close by:

Notes:

• Gallery Nucleus will feature arty types when they aren’t hanging out at Mondo down in booth 835. Keep an eye out for your Scotts C, your Beckys and/or Franks, and alumni of the various Flight anthologies.
• No confirmation yet on which webcomickers will be at the BOOM! booth when, but I’d expect a pretty strong rotation.

Now head back toward the “B” Lobby into the Independent Press area and you’ll find Terry Moore at Booth 2109, which is split (in accordance with tradition)with Jeff Smith (who remains the best). You’re also not too far from the Jack Kirby Museum at Booth 5520 which, yes, is a very large number but is actually just inside the B1 entrance. Weird, right?

Going back to that larger map of the northern half of the exhibit hall. Wedged in between the Marvel and Image megabooths you’ll find Keenspot in Booth 2635.

The Far End Is Exactly The Same
There’s still some neat stuff if you keep wandering past the video games, Star Wars, Legos, and suchlike.

Give yourself half an hour or so, try not to spend all your money on Copic markers (Booth 5338), and you’ll find both Udon Entertainment (home of such worthies as Christopher Butcher and Jim Zub — although rumor is Zub is sitting this year out — at Booth 4529); and The Hero Initiative (at Booth 5003). Zub’s onetime Skullkickers artist, Edwin Huang will be in the Artists Alley at table EE-19, and Katie Cook will be at table HH-17.

Offsite
Every year for the past half-decade the amount of stuff you can see outside of the exhibit hall has grown; I’m guessing we’re only a year or so away from complete parity. If you know of anything especially good, let us know and we’ll add it here. Otherwise, just wander the city and see what you got.

Spam of the day:

Getting Christie Brinkley’??Perfect Skin Just Got a Lot Easier

This sounds suspiciously like it’s intended for serial killers.

Let’s take them each in turn, shall we?

• Pretty! The Perry Bible Followship may only update very occasionally, but it would be a mistake to ever count Nicholas Gurewitch out; he’s always got something intriguing cooking in his brainmeats, and just the other day we saw the most recent creation reach fruition.

  Notes on a Case of Melancholia, Or: A Little Death is an Edward Goreyesque book, mostly silent, about a Death working through things with his¹ shrink. Readers with long memories may recall that this book was the subject of a Kickstarter ’bout two and a half years back², which was to have been fulfilled ’bout two years ago.

  Better late than never, though, and given the detail in the art, I can see how 48 pages worth could take longer than anticipated. US$25, limit one per person, domestic orders only for the moment, please. If you missed out on the Kickstart, this is your chance to get a copy (not as fancy as the Kickstarter version, but you haven’t been waiting for years, so suck it up).

• Pretty! The Nib has gone through a lot since its launch: key player in the current iterations of This Is Fine and Pepe The Frog³, critically-acclaimed book (and calendar) publisher, a slew of awards for its contributors, and the odd hiatus or two. Latest adventure: an animated series, the first episode of which dropped today. Four comics by Jen Sorensen (Trump and various Sergeis in the Oval Office with the nuclear football), editor Matt Bors (snotty know-it-all and how not to get shot for being black), and associate editor Matt Lubchansky (where Trump’s hairpiece comes from … it ain’t pretty) round out this iteration, with more to come. I know I said Pretty! up top, but you know what? close ups of Donald Trump in cartoon form are kind of horrifying, which is probably the point. Well done, The Nib.
• Noooooo! Okay, if you are not current on Stand Still, Stay Silent, maybe go away and get caught up. Minna Sundberg has never been sentimental about her post-apocalyptic story … the characters who’ve stepped into the Silent World have succeeded so far on dumb luck as much as anything, and even the people that conceived of their mission figured it was a longshot that would end up killing everybody involved. Heck, the prologue started by killing nearly everybody except five small casts of characters, along with the majority of the world; post-apocalypse was never going to be a cheery place.

  But Tuuri is so cheerful, so calmly competent, and it’s been so many strips from her possible contamination that it looked like she’d be … not okay, probably go back home and have occasional nightmares forever, but not this. Kitty can tell she’s infected and halfway to horribly mutated. The signs are there. She can hear the voices of the horrors as they reach out to claim her.

  The best scientists left in the known world have spent 75 years trying to come up with a treatment or vaccine, to no avail. Barring a miracle from the realm of gods and spirits, we’ve reached the point in the zombie movie where the protagonists have to kill their friend. It’s terrible, and the terror we feel reading is earned honestly instead of a cheap twist. It’s great storytelling and I hate it simultaneously. Go as peacefully as you can in the face of this abomination, Tuuri. We’ll miss you.

Spam of the day:

This chic style chameleon will go from elegant to edgy with a simple outfit swap. All prices reflect additional savings. This offer is not retroactive.

Trying to figure out if there’s anything in the world I want less than knockoff handbags allegedly designed by a sarcastic human tangerine

_______________
¹ Based on the description; personally, I think that capital-d Death transcends the biological concepts of gender, but that may be one of the things a personification of a primal and eternal force needs to work out with their shrink.

² Disclaimer: I had to go look it up, it was so long ago.

³ Respectively, no, it’s not, and he’s dead, Jim.

We at Fleen continue to bring you all the news from the world of French [web]comics, courtesy of Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin. Take it away, FSFCPL!

And that will wrap up Fleen’s coverage of LyonBD 2017. With any luck, we’ll have more reports from a variety of festivals from FSFCPL in the coming years.

Spam of the day:

Xarelto Lawsuit Information

Xarelto is an anticoagulant. If there’s one things EMTs hate, it’s anticoagulants, because they make our lives more interesting on calls. Nevertheless, I think it’s a little disingenuous to sue the maker of an anticoagulant on the basis that it caused you to have difficulty stopping bleeding because that’s what the damn thing is meant to do.

_______________
¹ Fun fact: Sunday was also polling day for the French general elections, and mainland France does not have mail-in voting or early ballots, and I hope it never has online voting: so I had to appoint a proxy to vote on my behalf, there is no other way to vote while away on polling day.

We continue the reporting of Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin from the grounds of Lyon BD. If you missed Day One, it may be found here.

Fleen, as always, thanks Lebaupin for his attention and insight.

Spam of the day:

Your Car Service Reminder

I don’t own a Vauxhall, don’t live in Central England, and don’t need a service plan, thanks. While we’re on the subject, because it’s only British spammers that ever bring it up, I’m fine on double glazing, too.

______________
¹ Note the use of autrice, a feminine form of the word auteur which has recently resurfaced (because when auteur is used for both masculine and feminine forms, it tends to erase female creators), and is still not widely accepted.

² Who, by the way, is tag teaming with Boulet to cover the animation festival in nearby Annecy this week.

So Kickstarter just dropped an interesting project for the first few weeks of summer:

Now through July 31, a group of over 65 exceptional artists, designers, musicians, and makers will be back on Kickstarter, putting new spins on ideas from their past projects.

They’re calling it Kickstarter Gold, and there’s an impressive array of projects already live (43 as of this writing), including such webcomickers as Zach Weinersmith (a new Science Abridged book to match the previous Holy Bible Abridged), K. Lynn (a new edition of Plume), Ryan North (I quote: SHAKESPEARE PUNCHES A FRIGGIN’ SHARK… and/or other stories), and Scott Kurtz (previous Table Titans stuff, with a focus on a previously-missed stretch goal).

Let’s just say it’s been a future-expensive morning (which, considering that it’s commemoration of US$1 billion in pledges) and leave it at at that. Kickstarter Gold runs through 31 July, with various projects concluding funding before then.