Sometimes, things are just rational, from Point A to about Point K with no deviations or sidetracks. They just make sense.

Which is not to say that sometimes those straight tracks are good, mind you. The news of the Flame Con 2020 cancellation is unsurprising, entirely expected, and the right call. We’ll note that we are now seeing events punted to next year in the same timeframe as — or even after — the rescheduled EmCity, and I remain somewhat perplexed that Reed!Pop haven’t called it yet. Doubly so, given that Seattle was the first COVID-19 hotspot in the country, and they well know the consequences of a new wave of cases.

Likewise, it sucks that it looks like we’ll get a hiatus of Irregular Webcomic in the next couple of weeks, as David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc) had a mishap in the kitchen and wound up with ten stitches in his hand, but that’s a completely understandable outcome. Also completely understandable: requiring your society to provide for medical care, such that Morgan-Mar was able to go to the Emergency Department, get treated for the immediate condition, and return the next morning for surgery to repair the damage to his hand. Oh, wait, I meant completely understandable except to residents of the USA because Freedom.

But at least sometimes, the sense-making things are also good; very, very good. Case in point, Randy Milholland is one of the premiere scholars of both Disney Duck comics and the work of EC Segar. The former is undergoing a renewal of interest thanks to the DuckTales revival, but Uncle Randy can tell you — in detail — about the original Carl Barks comics that inspired so much of what you see in half-hour episodes. Ever want to know the full story of the intra-family dynamics of the Duck and McDuck families? Milholland has you covered.

The latter has been pretty irrelevant for a while, but something interesting happened starting last year — King Features editor Tea Fougner, whose responsibilities include Popeye (for Segar invented the character of Popeye as part of Thimble Theater), convinced the syndicate to let a bunch of today’s cartoonists take a whack at the sailor man’s exploits with Sunday strips, and they were great¹.

Because Fougner is good at their job, Milholland was among those creating strips, and he dug down deep into the Popeye lore. An Oyl family reunion? A history of Popeye and the now-forgotten kids he had in his care? Love it.

And because Fougner is very, very good at their job, Milholland is getting a run of daily-updating strips for the next three weeks at Popeye’s Cartoon Club. As I told Fougner once, Milholland on Popeye is the second biggest no-brainer in comics (Milholland on the Duck comics is the first, but I think that Disney might not go for that), and I encourage everybody to read and provide feedback on the strips.

Like ’em, add comments to ’em², give King Features every possible reason to do the logical thing and keep bringing Milholland back. Bonus points as the strips will surely enrage the small-minded by delving into such canon topics as Popeye’s documented history of cross-dressing and gender ambiguity.

Spam of the day:

As a patent inspector, he discovered something that will take the electricity world and change it forever.

Look, I don’t want to over-generalize, but patent inspectors don’t have a great track record. They are frequently tasked with examining bogus inventions outside their area of technical expertise, fail to appreciate prior art, and are required to put far too little time in. The likelihood that one of them found something that would change the electricity world is zero. Signed, an electrical engineer who really disliked the power generation part of his education but still got an A in that class.

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¹ All of them were great, but the one I keep going back to was Shaenon Garrity and Andrew Farrago having Popeye live in a garbage can and go swimmin’ with bare naked wimmin.

² We really need more places where’s it’s acceptable — nay, expected — to use Popeye words. Disgustipating is such a great word.