Hey, you see that image up top? Go click it, if you haven’t seen it — it’s the latest episode of the irregularly-released Hell’s Kitchen Movie Club, wherein writer Alex de Campi wonders what it would be like if Frank “The Punisher” Castle and Bucky “Half Of Stucky” Barnes hung out occasionally for movie night. This is the Hanukkah Special, wherein we meet some of Buck’s family on the first night and it’s fantastic.

The story is both touching and hilarious, the art (from Ted Brandt, Ro Stein, and Dee Cunniffe, is beautiful, and de Campi includes a piece of advice that I don’t recall seeing elsewhere:

Lettering some of your own work helps a lot, so you’re better able to “see” the letters on the page. (Also doing a lettering script once the art is in.)

Because de Campi not only wrote it, she lettered it. Obviously, single-creator webcomics are lettered by the writer, but if you’re only writing? Taking this step to make sure the words really do what you mean them to do is very, very smart.

• By the way, de Campi notes that you can see a higher-resolution version on Tumblr, at least for the moment. And Tumblr, it seems, has decided that it doesn’t really want to be in business any longer. In case you didn’t click through, it appears that Tumblr is banning adult content from 17 December, which it defines as real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples, unless they decide that it’s classy enough to pass muster today (breastfeeding, works of art).

  No promises about what they decide is classy enough tomorrow; those definitions are loose enough to drive a truck — filled, no doubt, with human porn, furries gettin’ it on, and the traditional shitting dick nipples — through, and basically provide cover for whatever they want to no longer be associated with. Is it because they’re for sale, or got a new investor, or a payment processor doesn’t like teh nudez, or they just got sick of being banned from the various app stores? Who knows. They’re going to say that they only mean to get right of the child porn¹, but it seems to me they could get rid of that without discarding the rest.

  Consensus is this is going to kill fandom Tumblr, which is likely going to kill Tumblr as a whole. If your comic, or your blog, or whatever is hosted solely on Tumblr, time to find alternatives that you control, because the next TOS change doesn’t have to be about naughty bits, it could be about anything.

• If you’re outraged enough over Tumblr to want to Do Something, may I suggest another path for your ire? The Indie Comics Eleven are still deep in the lawsuit brought by Cody Pickrodt, with various responses and counter-responses to the (in my non-lawyerly opinion, bullshit) claims therein occurring in the recent past; The Comics Journal has a rundown. My reading of the situation is there’s at least three respondents that have a good chance of being dismissed from the action, but the fight will continue on as Pickrodt — raise your hand if you ever heard of him before this — continues to insist that his reputation and business prospects have been fatally damaged to the tune of US$2.5million².

  Which is to say that the need to fund the defense for Pickrodt’s targets continues, and you can contribute to their legal bills via the SPX-established Go Fund Me. There’s an estimated US$37,000 or so still needed to keep legal ruination away.

• Lastly, I was going to point out that Dustin Harbin — who, near as I can tell, is universally beloved — had put up a funding request for surgery for his dog, but a few hours ago he noted that the campaign had fully funded in half a day. Still, if you’ve ever enjoyed Harbin’s work (and I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that you have), maybe hit up his store? Paying for the surgery is one thing, having the financial cushion to take a little time off and spoil a Very Good Boy would be useful.

Spam of the day:

To stop receiving these emails from us ( adulte & dating emails ) just send us ” remove me ” for normal process or ” remove me now ” for fast process

Oh, yes, you are absolutely from Google™. For certain.

_______________
¹ Pretend I bothered to track down the Helen Lovejoy GIF here. You know the one.

² Real talk here — I’ve been a ridiculously highly-paid technical professional for transnational computing corporations for more than 20 damn years, and my total earnings in that time do not add up to two-point-five mil. Pickrodt has a very high opinion of his earning potential.