So Chris Onstad has been doing a series of drawing of a pair of cats on a motorcycle since last Tuesday. I just happened to refresh my Twitter tab at the right time and see the first one go up for sale. It’s going to look great next to my previous Onstad original, an oil pastel portrait of Ramses Luther Smuckles. When I kick it, my heirs and assigns are going to get some awesome art.

• The news coming out of Chile hasn’t gotten the same attention as that from Hong Kong, but it’s just as important; if you need a primer, The Nib has you covered. One side story that I came across today is that these latest protests against unfettered capitalism¹ are not a brand new phenomenon, but one of a recurring series. And at each of them from 2010 to 2017, there was a hero, who got his own biographical webcomic by Portland-based cartoonist Liz Yerby, which has lately made its way to the protestors in Chile.

  Good Dog. And thank you to every comics artist that is using the medium to do this kind of nonfiction reporting, no matter how narrow the subject.

• On a lighter note, Ngozi Ukazu is spending a bit of time before the last Check, Please! collection releases in April reminding us about the depth of worldbuilding she put into her gay college hockey bros story. For years, Ukazu tweeted in-character observations, in something approaching real story time — events that happened at the start of the academic year would go up in September, and so forth.

  She’d lock the account to avoid spoilers as she dove into each year’s story arc, leaving them inaccessible to fans for large chunks of time. A good hunk of the first Check, Please! collection from :01 Books was made up of tweets and other ephemera from the two years of story time covered.

  And now she’s out with a collection of tweets and other ephemera:

  Now, for the first time, I’m collecting Bitty’s best TWEETS. (!!!) And I’m doing this in a book I call THE CHIRPBOOK.

  And on top of collecting Bitty’s Tweets, The Chirpbook will contain new selfies, never-before-seen pictures from Jack Zimmermann’s camera roll, brand new comics, and secret tweets from Bitty’s senior year. (So, SPOILERS!) All of these features and more will be in The Chirpbook, the perfect catalog to round out your Check, Please! Collection.

  It’s a simple campaign: book (hardcover and soft), stickers, miniprints. It’s full of spoilers and so it won’t release until April, concurrent with the aforementioned second :01 collection and the end of the comic itself. The crowdfund is creeping up on the 50% mark of the US$26,000 goal, and while I don’t think this will hit the crazy heights of Ukazu’s previous book collections (after all, it’s not the main story and there aren’t any crazy-high dollar pledge tiers), her legion of fans will most definitely be all over this.

  Oh, and I’ll be making note of this WRT Kickstarts for the next while at least: The Chirpbook carries the logo of the Kickstarter Union. I hope to see this become the rule rather than noteworthy.

Spam of the day:

Hello, I’m 6 years old, I’m shooting and editing a video myself, please rate my new video, thanks !!!

Got to say, the English language proficiency of the alleged six year old is much better than that of the presumed adults that send most of the spam I get. Also, you’re lying.

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¹ There’s basically no regulatory constraints on what corporations can do, and the government is almost wholly beholden to business. The Heritage Foundation regards it as the freest economy in South America and number seven in the world. This is on the basis of business freedom and property rights (ie: no regulatory regime), noting that there is room for improvement in labor freedom (ie: labor has too much). This is all the legacy of the murderous (but economically free!) Pinochet regime, put into place by a CIA-backed coup in 1973.