SPX was pretty excellent this year, everybody. I saw too many wonderful folks (and forgot to include some on the list while I was waiting for a burger, like Jamie Noguchi, Boum, MK Reed, Patrick Lay, Lucy Knisley, Maia Kobabe, Britt Sabo, Lauren Davis, Kori Bing, Blue Delliquanti, Kori Michele Handwerker, and Melanie Gillman, plus I hadn’t run into George, Raina Telgemeier, and Andy Runton yet), a side effect of the concentrated nature of excellence:space that the North Bethesda Marriott engenders.

But the trip took on an actual reporting task, as the common perception of Kickstarter’s actions last week skewed nearly 100% to They’re unionbusting. The near-universal consensus of everybody I spoke to hit several repeated points:

• Kickstarter’s upper management does not reflect the community-interface folks, who were spoken of with warmth and support. It was pointed out that the Kickstarter representatives as the show were, themselves, involved in the unionization efforts.
• Creators indicated that they’ll be looking to the Kickstarter Union folks for guidance and will follow their lead. Boycotting right now has not been requested, and would very likely be counterproductive.
• Several acknowledged the difficulty of finding a platform that could serve to replace Kickstarter if the Union calls for a boycott.
• There’s a willingness to lend voices of support to the unionization effort, to the extent that personal involvement with Kickstarter might hold any moral authority or ability to sway management’s decisions.

Speaking of the second and fourth points above, Taylor Moore (one of those ousted last week) is currently tweeting a call to action, asking creators to sign on to a petition to Kickstarter management. Not being a project creator myself I am not the intended signatory, but I’ve noticed more than a few webcomics folks retweeting and stating they’ve signed, so maybe take a look.

Specific responses when I asked if there were comments about the situation for the record:

I’ll just end on a couple of personal notes: I had a couple of people come up to me on Saturday to thank me for this page³, and one woman who told me that she took a photo of me at MoCCA 2018 to use as reference for a painting, which she showed me on her phone (and which she’ll be emailing to me soon, I hope; I’ll share it when I get it). Thanks very much, Susan, John, and Qu.

Congratulations to Colleen AF Venable and Ellen T Crenshaw, who found out this morning that Kiss Number 8 is longlisted for a National Book Award.

And congratulations to Rosemary Valero-O’Connell on your three (!) Ignatzen for Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me. I told her when I met her that her already-strong work was going to become world-class; I told her on Saturday to make room in her luggage for three bricks. So far I’m two-for-two. Back her Kickstarter, which I guess brings us full circle.

Spam of the day:

Every my part are getting hot when I see you

I am a sexy, sexy man, it’s true.

_______________
¹ They had a bunch of balloons and I saw similar critters on half the tables on the show floor. They were … yeah.

That’s mine in the picture up top. I call him Bob The Unsettling. He lives on the shelf above my computer, with my Stupid, Stupid Rat Creature. The Rat Creature has a quiche as an accessory!

² I noticed later that Evan Dahm similarly editorialized on the balloon at his table.

Oh, and that’s not a silver wang in the background, pervs. SPX has helium balloon letters of the alphabet floating above each table pod, and that’s Pod J, listing to the side.

³ One added it had been their homepage when I was in high school, which I took as a tremendous compliment. There’s all kinds of things you fixate on at that age, and a hack webcomics pseudojournalist wouldn’t make the top 1000 most popular online topics among highschoolers. Thanks for that, and for the mini — it’s good work.

This was decided a few hours prior to the news breaking about Kickstarter firing three people in the space of eight days, who all were involved in the unionization effort there. But since that happened, my trip will now be a dual-purpose wallow in some comics and awesome people trip mixed with commit some godsdammned journalism overtones.

For those that haven’t seen all of the brewing shitstorm: Clarissa Redwine asserts that she exceeded all her employment performance metrics for Q2, but Kickstarter told her she was fired for performance deficiencies. Taylor Moore says he was offered no explanations as to his termination. I’ve not seen a public identification of the third employee yet. Both Redwine and Moore have said their severance was contingent on signing an NDA/non-disparagement agreement which is both common and totally weaksauce¹.

Kickstarter, for its part, put out a statement that no employee has or will be fired for union organizing. It’s … not being received well, possibly because it reads like it was crafted in a sterile legal environment to stay on the right side of perjury laws rather than the right side of the community they’ve built.

Some webcomics (and webcomics-adjacent) folk have chimed in already, the two most significant of which are probably Andy Baio (one half of The Andys behind XOXO and the attempt to re-engineer Drip, not to mention pre-launch board member and onetime CTO of Kickstarter; Andy McMillan is the other) and George (who is probably more closely associated with Kickstarts than anybody else in the web/indie comics world).

I have some emails out to people closely associated with Kickstarter asking if they are willing to go on the record with their thoughts; one response indicates they will specifically not say anything until certain direct discussions take place, which is entirely fair. A bunch of people that have tied their business models to Kickstarter will be at SPX this weekend (including some Thought Leaders), and I’m going to ask as many of them as I can what they think, then I’m going to tell you what they said.

In advance, please do not impute motives to anybody that isn’t named in the quotes, or that you are certain you have figured out from an off-the-record comment. Just don’t. You may be very pissed at Kickstarter right now² and ready to burn them to the ground, but there is a mountain of difference between choosing to not contribute to Kickstarter campaigns, and having to suddenly figure out how — or if it’s even possible — to no longer use them as a creator platform while meeting rent. It will be difficult for more than a few of them to navigate a course between what they want to do ethically and what they are required to do practically.

Spam of the day:

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_______________
¹ How fucking insecure do you have to be as a corporation that you can’t tolerate people you fired complaining about it? Bitching about current/past employers is an inalienable fucking right.

² I certainly am, and this is what I’ve decided: I am prepared to suspend my support of future campaigns if the Kickstarter Union calls for that, which they are not presently doing. If that changes, I’ll make my intentions public.

Regardless of the requests of Kickstarter United, I will not be canceling any present pledges, because taking back money that creators expect, money that I pledged prior to this douchebaggery, isn’t fair to those creators.

All of this is subject to revision pending what I learn this weekend, and from further verified information (including statements from Kickstarter or KRSU) in the future.

Editor’s note: During the writing of this piece, news broke regarding Kickstarter firing two of the organizers of unionization efforts in the past eight days. We will address this more fully when we have more information.

In either a tremendous case of bad scheduling, or a tremendous case of making sure nobody gets left out for being on the wrong side of the country, both Rose City Comic Con and the Small Press Expo take place this weekend (RCCC, tomorrow-Sunday; SPX, Saturday-Sunday). We’ve gone over the SPX exhibitor list — please note that Box Brown announced this morning he will unfortunately not be able to attend — but let’s take a look at their programming, and what’s going on at RCCC.

SPX’s programming is simple and to the point: everything lasts just under an hour, workshops in the Glen Echo Room require signup (and are mostly filled already), panels happen in the White Oak Room or the White Flint Auditorium, and all of them start on either the hour or the half-hour (WO on the hour Saturday, WF on the hour Sunday). Some you might be interested in include:

• Queer SF And World Building (WO, Saturday, noon)
• Spotlight: Emily Carroll (WF, Saturday, 12:30pm)
• Blurring The Visual Lines In Fantasy Fiction (WF, Saturday, 1:30pm)
• Libraries And Comics: Past, Present, And Future Trends (WO, Saturday, 2:00pm)
• Birthing Stories (WF, Saturday, 2:30pm)
• Image, Activism, And Autobiography (WO, Saturday, 3:00pm)
• Friendships, Relationships, And Chosen Family In YA Comics (WF, Saturday, 3:30pm)
• Intersection Between Comics And Animation (WF, Saturday, 4:30pm)
• Science Fiction And Social Justice (WO, Saturday, 6:00pm)
• Racial Illiteracy (WO, Sunday, 2:30pm)
• Graphic Advocacy (WF, Sunday, 3:00pm)

Rose City’s listings mostly distinguish between Artists Alley being people and Exhibitors being companies. In some cases, the same floor assignment shows up on both lists, as Helioscope Studio on the Exhibitor pages, and the studio folks/friends who’ll be there (Aud Koch, Cat Farris, Ron Chan, Steve Lieber, and more) all showing up on the AA page.

As a result, it’s easy to miss people, but in addition to the folks already listed, one may expect to find: Barry Deutsch (AA05), Haley Boros (AA01), Kel McDonald (A01), Kerstin La Cross (X11), Lucas Elliott (DD11), Molly Muldoon (JJ04), Iron Circus Comics (918), Nucleus (1008), and Oni Press (901); those exhibitors will likely host associated creators, so swing by to check on that.

Of special note: the Oregon Health Insurance Marketplace will be at booth 1070 and the Washington County Library at booth 1098. I think that public service outreach of this nature is an excellent idea.

RCCC’s programming descriptions are brief, and range from celebrity fluffings to the suddenly relevant — anybody want to attend the Kickstarter And Games panel tomorrow to ask about how union retaliation fits in with being a Public Benefit Corporation? You’ll be in Room 3 at 1:30pm. Others to consider:

• Is Phoebe And Her Unicorn The Best Comic Strip Since Calvin And Hobbes? (Room 2, Friday, 2:00pm)
  I would very much like to hear this discussion.
• MAKE IT GAY, YA COWARDS! [EMPHASIS original] (Room 7, Friday, 4:30pm)
  I just love the title.
• Tales From The Long Con (Room 6, Sunday, noon) Note that Dylan Meconis is not listed as tabling or attending outside this panel, so this is your chance to thank her for Queen Of The Sea.

The Small Press Expo will take place at the Marriott North Bethesda in Bethesda, Maryland, from 11:00 to 7:00pm on Saturday, and noon to 6:00pm on Sunday. Admission is US$15 for Saturday, US$10 for Sunday, or US$20 for the weekend.

Rose City Comic Con will take place at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon, from 1:00pm to 8:00pm on Friday, 10:00am to 7:00pm on Saturday, and 10:00am to 5:00pm on Sunday. Admission packages range from US$15 to US$140.

Spam of the day:

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I would be fascinated to discover what you think I’m selling.

It might be easier to start this book review by talking about what it isn’t before we get to what it is. Dreamers Of The Day is not a biography, or an autobiography; it’s the story of a particularly meaningful week for one person, the story of finding a creative purpose that may require years before the itch is satisfied (but which, I’ll suspect, will never disappear). It’s the story of one cartoonist starting down a long path that will lead, fates willing, to a trilogy of biographies about one of the most compelling, important, and misuderstood figures of the Twentieth Century.

It’s also about the Sykes-Picot Agreement and its aftermath, but more about the author’s relationship across nearly a century’s remove with one of the few prominent (and one would argue, informed) people to loudly criticize the Sykes-Picot Agreement at the time.

Beth Barnett is a cartoonist I met in Juneau, Alaska this past April. She knows more than anybody I know, cares more than anybody you know, about a certain historical personage that we will refer to, as Barnett does, as TE. The world remembers him as Lawrence of Arabia, but as Barnett explains, he used a variety of names and legally changed his to TE Shaw. Despite these clear wishes, he was buried under a grave marker that read TE Lawrence, leading Barnett to observe I find it strange and uncaring that he was buried under a name he did not consider his own.

It’s hard, with our current ideas of identity, not to see this as a case of deadnaming, and equally hard not to see the parallels to TE’s sexuality … gay, celibate or ace? … from the few biographical glimpses (be patient, the graphic trilogy will be here one day); it appears that a search for identity and a way to describe himself was a key part of TE’s life. Compare to Barnett’s own search to find a way to describe herself, and it’s hard not to conclude that part of Barnett’s fascination with TE is rooted in a sense of finding a kindred spirit.

Dreamers Of The Day (the title being a quote from TE) is Barnett’s remembrance of a too-brief week spent in Oxford doing research for her forthcoming explorations of TE’s life. It’s a conversation with herself about what she’s undertaking, what TE’s life and experiences mean to her, and what she wishes to accomplish, It’s an outline of an outline of the work to come, a working-out of the personal feelings so that planned biographies can focus on their subject in all the detail they deserve.

The art is minimal in a way that drives focus and lends importance to Barnett’s thoughts. Figures and locations are conjured up from a blank background when they add context to the narrative, disappearing back into the aether when no longer needed. It’s not lack of skill or laziness that drives the presence of so much white space, but rather necessity — if there’s no need to ground her point in a particular place, Barnett (or TE, or whomever) can address us from that empty space that we may better pay attention to what they’re saying¹.

There is a certain, floppy-haired similarity between TE and Barnett which comes through in the art — as the book progresses (and she becomes more comfortable in her trip), Barnett’s hair becomes progressively less frazzled, and her resemblance to TE becomes more pronounced (particularly in one panel as an imagined, future Oxford-PhD Barnett, decked out in vest and bowtie). The difference between Barnett and teenage TE is negligible and even adult TE is differentiated mostly by a military jacket and a buzzed undercut. I do not suggest there is obsession or imitation here, but more of a parallel resonance … what feels right to Barnett oftentimes echoes choices TE made about how he presented himself to the world.

In the end, Dreamers Of The Day is the story of one cartoonist and the fascinating soldier-archeologist-scholar-artist-writer-book designer-diplomat-translator that has grabbed hold of her imagination. It’s the story of the thing you must share with the world, and what it’s like to stand on the brink of actually being able to do so. It’s enlightening, educational, a bit melancholy, and a lot hopeful, and I recommend it to anybody that’s ever wanted to grab another person and say Hey, look at this and maybe you’ll love it as much as I do.

A PDF copy of Dreamers Of The Day was provided by the author for review. It debuts on Saturday, 14 September at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland, where Barnett will be at table E4A.

Spam of the day:

Garytyrrell, FedEx International Ticket No.9648 An email containing confidential personal information was sent to you

>sigh< Look, if you’re going to try to impersonate FedEx, at least get the friggin’ logo correct. It’s only one of the most recognized on the planet, and when you screw up the kerning it’s an instant giveaway. Friggin’ amateurs, I swear.

_______________
¹ It reminds me of McCloud’s observations about the shifting presence/absence of detail in manga.

I wrote this yesterday, and a bit more besides:

There is a moment when I open a Tillie Walden book when I pause, knowing that there’s a very high chance that what I’m about to read will take up residence in my brain for an extended period of time until I am changed by the experience.

I pause not because I am reluctant, but because I’ll never again have that moment of anticipation when I have an entire new Tillie Walden story to look forward to.

For those of you who wish no spoilers, even those of the most oblique nature, take that as the review and get to a bookstore. Settle in in the place and conditions that you like to read best, and take your time. If you want a bit more, read on.

Are You Listening? is an extended two-character conversation set against an untrustworthy landscape and in that way it is like I Love This Part.

It is also about figuring out what it means to be a gay woman in Texas and in that way it is like Spinning.

It is also also about what happens when family turns toxic and has a cat and in that way it is like The End Of Summer.

It is furthermore also a story with science fiction elements that act as backdrop¹ without being an explicitly SF story and in that way it is like On A Sunbeam.

It is penultimately also an exploration of the selves we build and in that way it is like A City Inside.

It is finally also like none of those stories.

Are You Listening? is for a time ordinary, and for a time slightly odd around the edges, before becoming for a time full on hallucinatory — presaged by a pencil that refuses to continue on a map — possibly a break from reality and possibly exactly what it seems. If it were purely presented in words, it would be a classic of magical realism, probably in Spanish. If it were purely presented in visuals, it would be an endlessly transmuting Escher dream².

It is, on its own terms, the culmination of several lifetimes worth of skill at panel and story composition that have somehow been crammed into less than seven years. It is the logical endpoint of thousands of pages of masterwork level comics creation that could serve as the capstone of a half-century long career. Given how Tillie Walden threw herself into skating to the exclusion of all else for ten years or so before shifting to comics, it might well be the capstone of her comics career if she decides it’s time to shift again. It would be a tragedy to have no more comics from Walden, except for the fact that whichever next artistic endeavour she threw herself into would surely be as assured and captivating as this one. As she discovers herself, she just becomes more powerful.

It is the story of Bea and Lou, two women driving through West Texas (as in the geographic direction) searching for West, Texas (as in the specific city, which has had some hard times of late) through an endless landscape that doesn’t want to cooperate. It is the Room Of Requirement from Hogwarts³ writ large, a place becoming aware in response to the people that occupy it. It starts with reference to a diner that might not be there, or how there have been a lot of lakes coming through lately. And when you bring hurt and confusion with you, well:

West Texas is the perfect blend of giant and tiny. The land, the sky … it’s got its own mind. Its own heart.

When something horrible happens, or something amazing … really, anything big, it makes you feel like mountains could shatter, or the sky could disappear … you know what I’m talking about?

Well, most places, mountains stay put. Sky stays in one piece. Kind of cruel, really.

But here, everything is listening.

Are You Listening? is a question that Lou asks Bea in a moment of desperate grasping for safety; it’s a question that hangs over both of them and their respective hurts and losses. It’s a paraphrase of what they ask themselves, and the ghosts and memories they carry with them, and it’s implicit in the manner of the wise woman of West, Texas who Knows Things as she tells Bea some of what’s going on … and what will go on in the future. It’s the question that the book asks the reader, and the reader in turn asks of themself.

Or maybe that’s just me, but then I knew that I was going to be changed, just as I knew that the spine would naturally fall open to certain passages that I re-read and let the story’s alternate patience and frenzy wash over me. This is the book that will fall into the hands of a reader who’s not ready for it, and it will haunt them and their life will be the better for it. It pulls up emotions and banished trauma, it offers hurt and healing, and leaves us with the inescapable conclusion that all we have is we.

Your experience will be different; some of you will likely hate this book and you won’t be wrong. It’s a reflection our personal landscapes, which are no more stable than memory because we are each distinct and always changing. But if you want a book to challenge you — not just what you think about comics, or narrative, but what you think about you — then you will love it as I do, and we won’t be wrong.

Are You Listening? by Tillie Walden is available in bookstores from today. It is appropriate for readers that are willing to confront the fact that life is hell of messy, no matter how much we seem to have it together.

Spam of the day:

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_______________
¹ Although it didn’t make it into my recap, Walden talked about not setting out to do an SF story in On A Sunbeam at her spotlight session in Juneau this past April. It was much like her earlier assertion that she didn’t set out to write YA stories beyond the fact that she herself was a young adult.

Speaking of that session, there are process pages at the back that look suspiciously like thumbnails and draft pages in pencil, which is a departure from Walden’s straight-to-ink working style.

² Or possibly a vision of Inception filtered through Speed Racer. I am utterly serious.

³ Which phenomenon I believe Walden invented independently. Bear in mind that she spent every single waking moment from the age of 6 to at least 18 in perpetual crunch mode without the usual popular culture influences. She probably hasn’t read your favorite book or seen your favorite movie, but I can assure you she has excellent taste in musicals.

There’s a bunch — and I mean a metric bunch — of graphic novels in the midst of dropping, and that means it’s time to tell you what I think of them. We start out today with two from the fine folks at :01 Books, who were kind enough to send a pretty big selection of just-released and about-to-release titles over to the Fleenplex. They’re very different, but I think there’s a common thread between them that I’d like to explore, so strap in and as usual, there be spoilers in these waters.

At first glance, Stargazing (words and art by Jen Wang, colors by the incomparable Lark Pien) and Mighty Jack And Zita The Spacegirl (words and pictures by Ben Hatke, colors by Alex Campbell and Hilary Sycamore) couldn’t be more different.

Aside from the fact that they’re both written for kids 8-12 years old, Stargazing is a mostly quiet exploration of culture and friendship between elementary age girls in a Chinese-American neighborhood in California, and Jack/Zita is part rip-roaring modernist fairy tale, part space opera, with the fate of Earth in the balance. One’s a standalone inspired by real life, the other is the culmination of one trilogy and the coda to/crossover with a second trilogy.

And yet there’s this bit in both about making friends, about how your current friends react to your new friends, about realizing that you can fall short in being the friend that’s needed. There’s this bit in both about how especially girls of a certain age — from pre-teen to not-quite teen — can react to each other, a behavior that can only be described the the word meanness. There’s this bit in both about how rash decisions and thinking with your fists can make for larger problems (even if one only leads to in-school counseling and the other leads to maybe giants killing everybody you love).

Which is to say, the trappings of the story are probably less important than how they speak to their characters.

Stargazing is a welcome return to form for Jen Wang; I famously — and, given the near-universal acclaim and awards bestowed, almost singly — thought her last graphic novel suffered serious structural story problems¹. The heart and friction of how people become (and stop being, and resume being) friends was there, but the broader message failed. Stargazing, like her superlative Koko Be Good, focuses on the people at the heart of the story, and the struggles that they face are very much personal.

Christine and she’s-our-neighbor-and-your-age-you-should-be-friends-okay-Dad-fine Moon approach life in different ways — Buddhist vs Christian, vegetarian vs not, free spirited vs family expectations of excellence — to the extent that Christine wonders how much Moon actually belongs to the same tradition. Moon’s confident and funny and (in an assessment that borders on extremely sad self-awareness for a 10-12 year old like Christine) possibly not Asian.

They adapt to each other and become friends, but there’s something weird under the surface that Christine can’t put her finger on: a certainty that she’s not of this planet, and a volatility that can lead Moon to act with her fists seemingly without warning.

Which, it turns out, has a knowable, physical cause. This might have been a too-pat resolution to the story, except for the fact that it’s based on Wang’s own experiences. If the story wraps up in a happily-ever-after finish that’s a little unsatisfying, I think it’s only because the reveal and resolution take place too quickly. There’s nothing wrong with the first 160 pages of Stargazing, but the conclusion needs the space to breathe a little².

Overall, Stargazing reminds me of This One Summer (which, if you don’t know how good that book is, it is necessary reading for anybody that cares about what comics can be), and I can only think of how much more Wang could have done with the page count afforded to that book. Yeah, yeah, 8-12 year old readers vs 12-18, but I think the younger kids can handle the page count.

Mighty Jack And Zita The Spacegirl is more about the former (not to mention Lilly, occasional Goblin King, who doesn’t get title billing) than the latter, which feels appropriate. Zita’s been through her journey from untested to rookie to expert-level saver of worlds and inspirer of people. Lilly’s gotten used to being King of the goblins (maybe a little too much as her carelessness gives the giants their opening to threaten Earth from the places beyond), but Jack’s still trying to figure things out.

Sometimes he’s cautious and ends up regretting it. Sometimes he’s decisive and ends up regretting it. Sometimes he doubts he’s up to the task, but all those regrets are really stem from no more than being new to the Jack business. Recall that Jack isn’t just a name, but a title: The Jack is a protector of Earth, clever and brave. When he has the information needed to make the next decision, act on the next situation, the regrets don’t manifest. Give him as long at the Jack business as Zita’s had at the Spacegirl business and he’ll be masterful.

Heck, he’s already got the big picture thing covered. When the giants finally break through to Earth (in Jack’s backyard, no less!), he stands armed with nothing but a sword-sized key. With him are one Goblin King and a double handful of waist-high goblins, one dragon (who will only promise to take Jack’s sister to safety), a pony-sized mouse, a few assorted aliens³ and robots, a former (unarmed and somewhat hapless) Man In Black, a pair of lovable space rogues, and his Mom, all prepared to get squished⁴.

The giant king promises that his murderous band will provide the impetus for humanity united into an Age Of Heroes, just fight us. Jack’s answer is clever, and brave, and wise:

Nope. We’re not divided. We’re standing here. Now. Together. And we won’t let you bring violence and pain to this world in the hope that some good will come of it.

All we can do is what’s best in the moment before us. So we’re sending you home, here and now. You may have come to invade our planet.

But you picked the wrong backyard.

That wisdom comes at a cost — the Jack must stand on guard, and that means staying in the same small town, which will be mundane and boring unless dangers arise again. It means saying goodbye to friends who get to go on adventures in space. It means growing up.

But if there’s one thing that Hatke (juggler, acrobat firebreather, archer, I think tightrope walker, and a bunch of other things) has demonstrated in his own life, growing up doesn’t mean the end of adventures, it just means different ones most of the time. Jack’s already got clever and brave down, and he’ll continue to grow wise. The world may not have an Age Of Heroes, but it sure has one hell of a Jack.

Stargazing releases from :01 Books tomorrow, 10 September, and joins Mighty Jack And Zita The Spacegirl in being available wherever books are sold.

Spam of the day:

It’s all about Perfect Timing

Surprisingly, this spam did not turn out to be about some weird sex thing.

_______________
¹ Her previous, In Real Life, I thought was a faithful adaptation of a story that wasn’t great, but that’s on Cory Doctorow, not Wang.

² I had similar feelings about Pashmina by Nidhi Chanani, which I loved, but which also felt rushed in the back quarter. Both books deserved a higher page count.

³ The most formidable of which has already said Strong-Strong proud … fall with friends.

⁴ Until the Spacegirl shows up with more robots, one of which is the size of a small moon, in low orbit, and has a firing solution, at which time the squishing becomes unlikely. Just work with me here.

This being the occasion of Matt Bors noting that The Nib has, despite some prominent hiccups, been part of our media landscape for six years, publishing more than 4000 comics, and paying cartoonists more than US$1.5 million¹.

I’m going to quote from an email that Bors sent to me — I’ve been on the mailing list since backing the Kickstarter for the print version — because too many of you may not have seen it. Bors says the recent funding drive raised US$15,000 — presumably, only counting the initial charge against those credit cards, and a similar amount will continue each month — that means maybe a few thousand people got it, plus however many were previously signed up.

Not good enough. If you read comics anywhere you need to know what Bors and his co-conspirators are up to. You also need to give them money, but let’s start with a little basic info:

I’m re-establishing the regular lineup as much as possible. That means Tom Tomorrow, Jen Sorensen, and Matt Lubchansky in there as often as possible, along with Joey Alison Sayers, Gemma Correll, Kasia Babis and all the others who contributed short satire on a regular basis².

I’ve always wanted The Nib to build up younger political cartoonists as well as publish the top ones so the regular lineup will include work from recent Locher Award winner Chelsea Saunders, last year’s Locher award winner Charis JB, and Niccolo Pizarro.

For longer non-fiction work, I am currently publishing comics that were finished before leaving First Look and will begin commissioning more of that type of work soon. These kind of comics are more time-intensive and expensive, so there will be less of them than when we had an editing staff of four, but it’s still a crucial element of the publication to me.

The Animals issue of the magazine is in the works — Drugs is after that and I’ve even got cover art for the issue after that — but I’ve started thinking about other print projects The Nib could take on. So there’s a big book collection on the horizon: an anthology of our best queer comics. We have such a breadth of queer history, non-fiction, and satire comics that it seemed an obvious fit for a nice themed collection of some of the work we put out over the last few years. Expect to hear more about that next month.

Oh, and we’ll be launching an online bookstore soon! And doing more merch. And surely other things.

With Bors being the sole editorial and publishing decision-maker, I imagine that a number of projects that were pending or actively back-burnered by competing interests will now make progress based solely on budget. He’s not promising anything, but I’d imagine that getting Lubchansky, Eleri Harris, Andy Warner, and Sarah Mirk back on editorial staff would be a priority (if memory serves, it was about a year before Harris was added as Deputy Editor and at least another year before Lubchansky became Associate Editor, so it could be a while).

What Bors isn’t doing is standing still. In the face of losing nearly all of his funding, he is moving forward and making plans to start new projects under The Nib’s banner. He is exhibiting the tenacity of the cockroach, a phrase which was once used to describe the interview style of contributors to The AV Club, and a description which they took as a mission statement (even using it as the title of their first print collection), and which brings us back to the top. All that remains is to remind you to support The Nib and to have a good weekend.

Spam of the day:

Hello!! Surprise Your Husband With This Beautiful Wood Guitar Pick !!

I would be more surprised to have a husband, to be honest.

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¹ Some of which must have involved some serious logistics. I could name at least two dozen countries of origin for contributors to The Nib, including possibly countries with economic systems not easily accessible to a USAian like Bors. For example, would a Danish citizen who leads tours in Iran be subject to sanctions on economic relationships? I don’t know, but I’ll bet Bors has had to find out.

² Me, I’m hoping for a lot more Pia Guerra because damn she takes no prisoners.

And I assure you, it’s for entirely selfish reasons.

You see, the last regular issue of Giant Days released yesterday. The series built on the three minicomics that followed Tackleford goth queen Esther de Groot to university, and told the stories of Esther, Susan Ptolemy, and Daisy Wooten as they became the best of friends. And university in the UK lasts a typical three years instead of the four you get here in the States, so that’s potentially one more year of story time (or maybe 18 issues) of Giant Days that could have been and won’t be.

The again, if Allison were American, the delightful weirdness that was born in Tackleford more than twenty years ago across multiple series would never have been what it was. Americans can be weird, but we don’t have the sense of absurd whimsy — and I use that phrase solely in a complimentary sense — that undergirds British humo[u]r. Sure, we might have gotten Allisonian stories about Mike Bloomberg (the man has an uncanny sense about what the man meant as New York City mayor), but there would have been no McGraw, no Ed Gemmell¹, no stories about vengeful European exes or occasional visits from Shelley or Lottie or Big Lindsey.

It is worth mentioning that Giant Days was a team effort from the beginning, and that Allison’s creative partners made his delightful dialogue and benign chaos sing. Pencillers Lissa Treiman and Max Sarin understand the necessity of exaggerated motion and super-malleable faces when dealing with Allison’s characters, maybe even better than he does himself. Liz Fleming’s inks added weight and energy, Whitney Cogar’s colors made everything lively, and Jim Campbell did the most important thing a letterer can do — he made his work completely invisible, except for when it needed to grab your attention.

The tale, as they say, grew in the telling, from a planned six-issue limited series to ongoing; I’m not sure that there’s anything else I get now with a higher issue count than Giant Days². Allison could have kept it going another 54 issues or more, if he’d felt the desire to; the passage of time was fluid enough that each academic year could have been stretched almost infinitely.

But the charm of the story was knowing that it’s a prequel (Esther left for uni at the very end of Scary Go Round, and Bad Machinery started three years later³ in story time — about the time Esther was finishing school. We watched those child mystery solvers grow from about 11 years old to about 16 or 17. In real-world terms, Esther, Daisy, and Susan have been apart for a half-decade, maybe more. There were hints in Bad Machinery (and the various Bobbins resumptions) about things that must have happened to Esther, we knew where we were heading. It’s easy to get disinvested in a prequel and it’s even easier to get lazy about the story, knowing how it has to end.

But that never happened. Giant Days was a story that got stronger as it went along; literally each issue was better than the one before, each bit of life — small moments and big catastrophes, as Allison described it — thrown at the characters ringing truer, each hard-won bit of growth making us feel for them more than the one before. It’s a hell of a thing to do a comic for five years or so without a bad stretch; it’s considerably harder to continually improve as you go along.

We aren’t quite done with the ladies; around Halloween there will be a double-sized finale issue that catches up with them a year after graduation. I imagine that if Allison ever gets the itch to revisit them, he can find a story to tell in the same fashion, and I will always be there for it. I watched Susan and Daisy and Esther navigate the transition to early adulthood, and I will be thrilled if I get the chance to revisit them as they continue to change and grow, like a comics version of the Up film series.

Or maybe we’ll soon see the last we’ll ever see of them. Like any beloved friends, I’ll treasure the time I got to spend with them and always be glad of more when the stars align. In any event, there will be more stories from Allison and his collaborators, and more new characters to come to love. But nothing he does in the future will diminish the very real accomplishment that has been Giant Days, nor will I ever stop putting these issues into the hands of people that haven’t read them. Thank you, John Allison, Lissa Treiman, Max Sarin, Liz Fleming, Whitney Cogar, and Jim Campbell. You done good.

Spam of the day:
Spammers don’t get to share today with the Giant Days crew.

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¹ Who, I can’t believe I’m finally realizing after all these issues, was always referred to by Esther & Co by his full name, never just Ed. He’s like Charlie Brown, if Charlie Brown finally got with the little red-haired girl and she was also a giant Australian muscle-babe who loves and appreciates him for who he is. Well done, you two.

² That’s a bit of a dodge, as both The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl and Usagi Yojimbo restarted from issue #1 since Giant Days started.

³ And holy crap, ten years ago in the real world.

As near as I can tell, I first started wondering when Screamy Orange Grandpa¹ would take his trade war into territory that harmed webcomics back in June of last year. As luck would have it, George weighed in with his advice:

I am encouraging people to just factor in an extra 25% as a trump tax in case stuff gets fucked. This I’d recommend regardless of where you’re manufacturing. Since he’s hitting Canada the plants people use in Montreal often could be hit, and also US plants that are part of global multinationals could wind up having trickle down cost increases.

Hope you listened to him back then, because the get fucked stage of the tariffs-by-tweet tantrum is coming to webcomics:

[transcribed from screenshot] The Office of the US Trade Representative has announced that as of September 1, 2019, books printed in China or Hong Kong will be subject to a 10% tariff.

What this means:

• Book product from China (which has always been zero rated) will now carry a 10% import duty.
• The amount assessed is based on the declared value of the import plus freight.
• The stated value must be verifiable — for instance, if the shipment is coming directly from a printer then the declare value must be equal to the print cost plus transport fees.
• These shipments are likely to be highly scrutinized by customs officials, and fines will be steep for any mis-declaration.

I think we can add a bullet point to the list Donald Trump is an idiot, a petulant child, and surrounded by sycophants that tell him he’s big and strong and smart and other verifiable untruths, or he wouldn’t be pulling this shit and claiming that China is paying the US money.

For the immediate term — near as I can tell — even if you put in your order and everything was complete before Sunday, if it arrived this week or later you’ll have to pony up. If you ran a campaign figuring that this fuckery wouldn’t happen, you’re going to have to come up with a check or your books won’t clear customs impound. If you haven’t started your print order (or your print project yet), you’ll have to decide to eat that 10%, pass it along to your customers, or some combo of the two.

Those of you running projects that haven’t yet started, I’d say that George’s 25% safety cushion should now be on top of the 10% we know will be charged, because you never know when Screamy Orange Grandpa will have an unsatisfying morning on the solid-gold toilet and declare in no more than 280 characters (and including several correctly-spelled words) that all tariffs on books are now 387% just because he hates books that much.

And, just in case you didn’t see it last week, you don’t even have to be involved with current-and-future China printing to get screwed. Case in point:

If you have done work with @KrakenPrint AND have inventory at their warehouse, contact the warehouse IMMEDIATELY!
The warehouse has put a lien on all #krakenprint inventory due to nonpayment. Contact info in link:
https://m.facebook.com/stor…
#comics #indiecomics

The creditor, TWE, has put up a list of titles that are known to be in the warehouse over at Facebook; it’s not your fault, but if you don’t claim your stuff (and pay off part of Kraken’s debt), your books will be auctioned off. We should probably mention that it’s not TWE’s fault either, so please don’t yell at them.

Do your favorite creator a solid and read what’s at those two links, and if you recognize any of the titles, give them a heads-up that they need to contact TWE so as not to lose out. Also, if you know where any of the principals of Kraken are, there’s probably more than a few folks that would very much like to talk to them for reasons.

Spam of the day:

Treat your pain with COFFEE Stops Pain and Depression

This may explain why R Stevens is one of the sanest people I know.

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¹ Thanks to KB Spangler for that perfect descriptor.

That is to say, it’s Tuesday, and Randall Munroe updated xkcd today. Not only that, but it’s an interactive strip, where you click and things happen — I think of these strips as toys — all of which is not because it’s the End Times, but because Munroe’s How To releases today, and said toy is an illustration of an approximation from the book.

Namely, and approximation of how far you can throw things. The astute reader will recognize that depending on the value of you and things, the answer is going to vary widely. To deal with this uncertainty, you (actual, physical you, not throwing you) get to decide on the thrower (George Washington, a squirrel, Carly Rae Jepsen, etc) and the thrown object (a microwave oven, a car, Thor’s hammer, etc). You (actual, physical you) also have to option to include you (throwing you) in the simulation, provided you fill in some basic physical parameters.

Because Munroe is Munroe, the results are shown in both meters, and some other, more useless unit of measure (ranging from attoparsecs to furlongs, depending on the object thrown and distance involved). I agree with some of Munroe’s assessments (eg: I could not throw George Washington, or a car) and vehemently disagree with others (only Thor, God Of Thunder can throw Thor’s hammer¹). It’ll keep even the most easily bored person occupied for a good half hour-forty five minutes as they mess with all the permutations. I shudder to think how many people will create similar toys based on other points of discussion in the book. And by shudder, I of course mean look forward to with great anticipation,

Spam of the day:

Breaking: Startup shocks the TV industry with free HD TV receiver

It’s called an antenna. A conductor, on the order of 0.1x to 10x the wavelength of a given signal, will naturally receive that signal. Put an appropriately-sized plug on one end, put the rest up high with clear sightlines, and you’ve got a receiver. It helps if you put your amplifier closer to the antenna, and not on the other end of signal cable, because you don’t want to amplify the noise that the cable picks up. There, I just saved you from whatever the scammers were going to ask for.

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¹ Anybody with a lick of sense knows that while Chris Hemsworth probably cannot throw Thor’s hammer, Carly Rae Jepsen² is surely worthy. Also, if the squirrel is an associate of Squirrel Girl, the worthiness is surely self-evident. Also, why is Thor able to chuck me (actual, physical me) a full 28 meters further than a microwave oven and nearly twice the distance of a basketball? Because I assure you, when I get flung in that manner, I will be flailing and increasing air resistance like a muthascratcher.

² Carly Rae Jepsen is modeled such that her throwing ability is somewhere between Extremely High and Champion Athlete.