Readers of this page will likely know a few things about me: I stand second to no man in my admiration for the work of Katie Lane¹, I started in webcomics with You Damn Kid and will wait however long between hiatuses², and I had no real opinion on Pepe the Frog prior to his appropriation by the worst people in America. By extreme coincidence, these three things are all in the news today.

• Katie Lane said it best in a tweet:
  

  I’m tired of creators feeling confused and intimidated when they’re given a contract. So I made a thing. http://bit.ly/2xpFNth

  The thing in question is a free e-course for artists and freelancers on how to read contracts; don’t let the vaguely clickbait wording on the landing page deter you — this is solid information, it’s free, and Lane is undercutting her own professional practice by teaching potential clients to do something that they might have hired her to do for them. She just cares that much.

  So click the link, add your email, confirm your request, and about a minute later the first message will hit your inbox. You’ll get daily emails for the next four days, with advice on how to read a contract³, written for normal people. Why aren’t you doing this? I’m doing this because reading a contract is something I taught myself to do when signing a mortgage and I figure I can always use better info that what I figured out by my lonesome.

• Owne Dunne has been telling the stories of You Damn Kid and associated strips for as long as I’ve been reading webcomics; probably longer. The first webcomics stuff I ever obtained for money were a book, print, and t-shirt featuring the iconic Frog Rocket Wiener, and I’ve been sharing that factoid since at least 2008. He’s done many, many strips since I started reading back in Aught-Aught, or even Ninety-Nine. And while the original launch date of 12 June may have been a bit ambitious, but it’s here at last.

  While I was expecting either Classic style or New style YDK, and would have been thrilled for something related to Nippleshine Manor (RIP), the first animated short comes courtesy of Norman P Function, and concerns Stink Lines, dog adoption, and teaching canines methods of birth control that do not involve chop[ping your] nads off. It’s as exactly as uncontrolled as you suspect.

• There’s very little Matt Furie can do to reclaim Pepe the Frog; he killed Pepe off and Kickstarted to try to revive the positive aspects of the character. Terrible, terrible people, on the other hand, outnumber Furie by about a squazillion to one. One of those terrible, terrible people recently self-published (and later signed a contract with conservative-leaning Post Hill Press) a children’s book starring a frog called Pepe defending his farm from menacing Muslims.

  That shit would not stand.

  The terrible, terrible person behind this book (a vice principal in a Dallas suburb, until all of this hit) admitted to the blatant copyright violation and worked out an agreement with Furie’s lawyers in a very few days. The book has been pulled from Amazon and no longer appears in Post Hill’s Coming Soon section.

  Best of all, the terrible, terrible person behind this book has had to surrender all the money he made from it (a little over US$1500) and, at Furie’s insistence, is giving it to the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Furie is a badass, and terrible, terrible people ought not to forget that.

Current fundraising for Houston total: US$100

Spam of the day:

True Wireless Earbuds With Amazing Sound

Man, I’d lose the buds I have now if they didn’t end up dangling from my iPod. Pass.

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¹ Light-ning Law-yer!!

² Hiati?

³ But not advice on what the terms mean; for starters, those vary state to state. You still need a lawyer and oh damn now you know one that’s giving you valuable info for free who would be happy to have you as a client (as long as you’re not a jerk; jerks need not apply).