There are a couple of kinds of ATTENTION that we want to talk about today. In both cases, take the lesson of how you want to pay.

• So I got a notification that the latest Girl Genius book-kicker was going up, on account of I’ve backed all of the previous books. I went by Kickstarter and saw an implausibly low number of backers and dollars (3 and US$140, respectively) and thought there was no way that I was in quick enough that I would be backer #4. Then I saw that the campaign was canceled, and an update from Kaja Foglio:
  

  I hit the launch button and then saw that the campaign was set to end in SEPTEMBER instead of in August. There was no way to change that, and I panicked and cancelled the campaign. I then had to go make a new clone of the whole thing. SO…The proper Sparks and Monsters campaign will be going live in the next few days, just as soon as it’s approved (again) by the Kickstarter team.

  So yeah, learn something new every day — Kickstarter won’t let you make changes once the campaign goes live, which I guess makes sense. The having to re-submit and re-approve it seems like something could be automated, a kind of accounting for whoopsies to say Look, it’s exactly the same but I changed this one typo but yeah — any loophole, eventually somebody will find a way to exploit it for nefarious purposes.

  Trust me — as a guy who has to edit his own stuff and who will go back to a piece that he’s read and linked literally dozens of times and still will find a typo or missing word, there’s no substitute for getting your most anal-retentive friend to look at your Kickstarter without any foreknowledge, and then report back on what they find. In this case, pretty much no harm done, but an annoyance that Professoressa Foglio surely didn’t need, particularly after her recent bout with bacterial colonization that landed her in the hospital. Double check everything, folks, and then get somebody else to triple-check it.

• When a creator tells you to hang on, there’s gonna be an update delay because multiple pages will go up at once, you in the next update, you PAY ATTENTION. They are cooking up something rad. Oh, sure, there’s sometimes oversized updated that take your breath away that casually drop without any notice (Meredith Gran was especially good at these), but when you feel a story climax coming on and there’s a notice of delay? That’s gonna be good.

  And when they deliver early? Buckle up.

  That, naturally, is the latest four pages of Kill Six Billion Demons by Tom Parkinson-Morgan (or Abbadon as he styles himself on the pages), which is what would happen if Old Testament apocrypha, New Testament eschatology, Medieval demonology, and half a liter of grain alcohol were thrown together and the results were emblazoned on the side of a van¹ blaring the heaviest metal known to science. And I mean that in the best way possible.

  It is the latest twist in the championship round of a gods-and-demons fighting tournament that has been going on roughly as long as a season of Dragonball Z, only with loads less posturing and delay, and way more character development. It’s the moment that one of the seven gods of the universe — one who’s just as full of himself as that face in panel four indicates — is caught by surprise just when he’s certain that he knows exactly what’s going on. It’s a living embodiment of the dictum If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him, with the caveat that there’s more than one way to kill a god. If you’ve not been reading the story you’re liking clearing time in your schedule to go back and start from the beginning.

  And if you have been reading, and following the very intricate and thought-out plot development for the last few hundred pages, I’m not sure what there is to say other than Great Googly Moogly. Shit just got kicked to the next level, and it’s only going to get wilder from here on out.

Spam of the day:

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Tell you what, spammers from Russia, if I ever need a door in Toronto, I’ll hit you up. But as Toronto is some 600km away, I’m thinking it’s gonna be a while.

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¹ Chain wheel optional.