By now you’ve seen the news that Facebook (no link) has decided that the way to get in on Patreon’s corner of the market is to not do things better, but to do them decidedly worse. Like charge you up to 30% after fees bad and give your stuff away for free at their discretion bad. Oh, yeah, and we own your stuff even if you leave the service bad. That’s bad.

Despite their pronouncement that they’re going to have a “Patreon-killer”, Facebook isn’t going to have anything of the sort; absolutely everybody that’s talked about this thing that isn’t employed by Facebook is screaming about how it’s terrible, and they’re right. All that’s going to happen is that people already on Patreon are going to have a moment of reflection that things could be much worse¹.

The real shot at a Patreon-killer will be whatever the Andys come up with for Drip 2.0 for the simple reason that their offering will be from a public benefit corporation instead of a regular ol’ VC-funded corporation (Patreon) or the most rapacious, grasping, no-value-providing bag of identity thieves in history (Facebook), and so will not have a motivation of bleeding creators for all their worth. Going to call Facebook’s plans dead in the water.

Speaking of Drip 2.0 and public benefit corporations, Drip as it is presently constructed is part of Kickstarter, which is a public benefit corporation. Let’s talk about some recent Kickstarts and get the taste of that Facebook thing out of our mouths.

• It scares me a little how long I’ve been following the work of Matt Boyd and Ian McConville — Mac Hall wrapped more than a dozen years ago, and that was after six years of updates; Three Panel Soul picked up immediately thereafter and has been plowing along ever since, through art style changes, moves, job shifts, a marriage, a kid, and one all-time bit of viral genius². There’ve even been two print collections, and now there will be a third:
  

  For our third volume, we thought it would be good to have three times the number of comics as the first two volumes, up to a total of 300. It really fits the theme. It’s going to be our biggest volume yet, covering the comics published online from late October 2011 to February 2018.

  Dog philosophy, folks. It’s going to be in there. You’ve got 28 days to get in on the campaign, including a rather sweet three-book bundle.

• Know who knows how to use Kickstarter? C Spike Trotman, what with the seven figures raised over 20-odd projects and zero failures. Of late, she’s been bringing some work to the store without waiting for Kickstarts, especially as PDFs, but sometimes you decide to pick new directions because there’s a demand. Enter: How Do You Smoke A Weed?, which will be seeing print shortly:
  

  Twenty-six states in the U.S., Washington, D.C., and the entire nation of Canada have decriminalized or legalized marijuana use, and more are joining the policy shift every year! Dispensaries are popping up everywhere, and experienced users are openly rejoicing—but where does that leave the marijuana newbie, discouraged by years of “Just Say No” disinformation, but curious about what they’ve missed?

  This being an Iron Circus joint, funding started yesterday and reached goal the same day; there’s one simple stretch goal for a better cover. Massive overfunding will just mean more copies sold and more profit to ICC and creators Lin Visel and Joseph Bergin III (collectively, Owlin, and FYI that link contains mostly smut). There’s a fast turnaround on this one, less than two weeks total funding time, but the book will be in the store forever. Some of the sweet extras likely won’t be, so if you’re interested, act now.

• But Gary, I hear you cry, I don’t want to read! If that’s true, you maybe ought to find a different website, because we’re all about the words here, Sparky. But if you’re looking for something less booklike to back on the Kickers, Matt Inman and Elan Lee have come up with their latest mayhem-adjacent tabletop game, Throw Throw Burrito.

  Look, it’s Lee & Inman, there’s gonna be cute and funny cards, weird props, and a ruleset that emphasizes fun over all else. And this time, it’s got fake burritos that you chuck at other people. At an upper tier, it’s got giant fake burritos you chuck at other people and safety goggles. And, it being Lee & Inman, they are using Kickstarter pretty much as market research, and it’s going to be delivered on time. I’d bet they already have production contracts and specs agreed upon, have placed a preliminary run for each thing getting made, and will wait for the funding campaign to finish in 29 days solely so they can with confidence Yes, 50,000 more units of Item A, 100,000 of Item B, send those in the second container load.

  Oh, and stretch goals are (as is the Lee/Inman tradition) participatory, and shipping to the US (minus Puerto Rico & overseas territories) is free; the rest of the world will run you US$8 to US$60, depending on where you live and the size of the package you order. Some of them are ridiculously huge.

Spam of the day:

Easy Trick to Reactivate Dead Batteries

Jumper cables? It’s jumper cables, isn’t it?

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¹ Tellingly, not because of anything Patreon’s done to provide that relief.

² Which itself is going on five years old, holy crap.