I mean, it’s not as bad as the regular hangovers, right? And the Con Crud is — depending on how you look at it — either completely absent, or entirely everywhere for months now. Here’s a couple things I noticed.

• I mentioned that Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett had worked out a mechanism to interact with fans during book personalization, and by his account it was a success in a couple of ways.

  First, LArDK got to interact with folks for the first time in for-evs; ever met LArDK? Dude thrives on interaction. He is genuinely thrilled to talk to every single person that comes to his booth. Second, he noted that most of the people that dropped into StudioCon had never been to a convention before. These were not just folks that make a point of dropping by his booth each year to see what’s new, they’re people that never had the opportunity to interact with him in person (for Zoomlike values of in person).

  This, for folks that make their living by cons, reflects a significant game change. Not only in this, the Plague Year, but in any year you can reach out to people that wouldn’t have been to a show to see you, and might not have made a purchase without the added incentive of Oh, I’ll get to tell [favorite creator] how much I love their work! That drive to human connection is powerful.

  So powerful, in fact, that StudioCon II is go for sometime in November, and LArDK being the rising-tide-lifts-all-boats kind of guy he is, is going to be talking about the tech setup he used for StudioCon in the next Protips edition of Comic Lab — that’s the podcast that you only get if you’re a Patreon supporter. Undoubtedly there are things that others will do differently, some for the better, and the sooner that conversation starts, the sooner con-dependent creators can get back to making some income — without the travel, the pack in/pack out, and the Con Crud.

• It’s not to do with SDCC@Home, but it’s too good to pass up — LArDK was also on a YouTube action figure-posing game show … thing? … along with David Malki ! and Shing Yin Khor. I have so many questions about what is apparently an entire series of similar contests. I’m not sure when it was recorded, but given that LArDK is missing his recent quaranstache¹, I’m guessing it was the Before Times. It’s so very, very weird but also kind of a hoot. Take ten minutes and watch what’s essentially the best commercial for a high-end Deadpool figure ever.
• So, something happened with respect to the Eisners, and I needed to make sure you saw it. The journalism award was given to Women Write About Comics — who collectively do terrific work — and the editor in chief made a statement that she² is not accepting the award.

  We at Fleen have been focused on the tech issues of the Eisner voting fiasco and not the way the actual vote was conducted. Apparently, the initial vote was cut short when the tech issues became undeniable, but when the new site was rushed into service, only folks who had voted in the truncated original voting period were allowed to register for the revote.

  What the hell.

  A lot of the discussion around the Eisner voting fiasco centered on the idea that the revote was rushed; given the severity of the breach, the noncommunication about what the fuck went wrong, and the lack of an actual con to give the awards out at, why didn’t the Eisner folks take the time to do a proper investigation, declare a complete fresh start, and run a full voting period open to all eligible pros? Why the rush to get things done instead of delaying the vote, delaying the awarding, and making sure it was done impeccably correct and beyond question?

  Nola Pfau’s choice is the very definition of integrity, and speaks to anybody that takes pride in their work. I still think everybody that won should be proud of their accomplishment, but I’ll be forgiven if I always look at the 2020 Eisners has having an asterisk next to the winner’s list.

Spam of the day:

End Gutter Cleaning Forever

Serious question here — why do we even have gutters? Why not just let rain fall all along the roofline?

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¹ I am always in favor of moustaches, but I have to observe that due to the hair color and maybe the lighting in that StudioCon intro video, he’s halfway to looking like he’s gonna demand pictures of Spider-Man.

² The individual in question uses both she and they pronouns, but I’m using she specifically because she indicates this is a single person’s decision, and didn’t want to imply via an ambiguous they that it was collective.