An air trip that was going suspiciously well ran into some snags on the back end, which got me home Too Damn Late. Then today, the local gas company’s ongoing maintenance & upgrade cycle hit my house, necessitating a turn-off of the magical hydrocarbon that makes things like heat and hot showers possible. What I’m saying is I could use some good news today. Luckily, several excellent people have stepped up.

• Okay, Molly Ostertag actually made her announcement yesterday, but I’m still happy today so it count: there will be a third book in her The Witch Boy/The Hidden Witch¹ series:
  

  I’m very excited to announce THE MIDWINTER WITCH – the third graphic novel in the Witch Boy series² and a continuation of the adventures of Aster, Charlie, Ariel, and Sedge! Preorder link below, this will be in stores everywhere 11/5/2019 ?? www.amazon.com/Midwinter-Witc …

  A few thoughts:

  1. Ostertag is a machine; three books released at one-year intervals? That’s an enormous amount of work to sneak in around her animation day job.
  2. I want all of the Witch Boy stories she has kicking around her in head; I want to have to dedicate an entire shelf to the world that Aster, Charlie, and the others inhabit.
  3. To the extent that it doesn’t kill her because see #1.
  4. That cover is gorgeous and heavy with portents. Heavy, I tells ya!

  Start making your Halloween-season plans³ now; come the frost, there’ll be a new witch in town.

• One may recall that it’s been a long time since The Abominable Charles Christopher has updated regularly; creator Karl Kerschl has been busy on print comics that pay nowish, whereas Charles Christopher holds the promise of a gorgeous book (and the income that would attach) at some nebulous point the future. One must support oneself and family, after all.

  But there have been two updates on two adjacent weeks and that is a blessing. The impetus may come from challenges in Kerschl’s life, in which case they’re more for his benefit than ours.

  Which is entirely as it should be. As much as I want to see all these characters again, none of that matters worth a damn compared to Kerchl’s well-being. I will celebrate and love each of these strips when they come, and if there’s never another I’ll be grateful for those we’ve had so far. Be well, Karl, and thanks for sharing when you can.

• Comics can tell stories in ways that other media just can’t. Today’s proof of concept comes from The Guardian, and in a brief (but very, very heartfelt) read, lays bare challenges and failures of the medical system in Britain. Not what you normally think of — budgets, services, cutbacks — but how doctors are trained, what toxicity is perpetuated and reinforced, and how it impacts patient care not in a quantifiable rating, but as human beings.

  Read Healing Alone and realize that the systemic flaws described here are damn near universal. Argue for a better, more humane system of training physicians, and we’ll get a better more humane system of care for all of us.

Spam of the day:

#1 erection killer

Friend, I am pretty confident saying that I do not wish to purchase your product and/or service.

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¹ I’m not sure the series has a name, so until I learn otherwise I’m thinking of it as the Aster series, as Aster’s the foundational character.

² That didn’t last long. Okay, it’s the Witch Boy series.

³ Note to self: consider carving a pumpkin with some of the symbols for the magic names of things. Maybe ask Ostertag what the name of the pumpkin is.