I speak, of course, of New York Comic Con, who some years back said that I didn’t qualify for press credentials because I insist on covering comics. Despite the fact that they don’t want to let me in, they also don’t want to remove me from their brand-heavy press list, which is why I got this in my email yesterday:

NEW YORK COMIC CON PHYSICAL EVENT CANCELED
REEDPOP & YOUTUBE PARTNER FOR DIGITAL NEW YORK COMIC CON

With a bunch of the boilerplate that you’d expect, talking about how disappointed they are, but also how excited they are about the new opportunities this affords, etc. This was a weird bit, though:

ReedPop will also give fans the opportunity for experiences that will get them up-close and personal with meet & greets, live Q&As, personalized autographs, videos, and professional workshops.

I’m very curious about what all that means. SDCC really kind of dropped the ball on anything other than pre-recorded video for their programming, so maybe RP and NYCC, with an extra two and a half months to plan, have found a way to actually introduce interaction? If so, I’m wondering if they’re still paying all the subjects of those meets, greets, Qs, As, and autograph sessions. If so, I’m wondering if they’re going to have some kind of fee structure, on account of I’ve read this entire press release twice¹ and I don’t see the word free anywhere. SDCC really led with that in their announcement.

And while fans won’t be able to stroll the Show Floor and Artist Alley aisles at Javits this year, ReedPop is creating a virtual marketplace for fans to explore where exhibitors and creators will share their newest items. There will be more information on these exciting fan developments unveiled in the coming weeks.

Not having to do anything in the Javits is the best possible outcome of this whole pandemic thing. That entire space sucks. Again, SDCC didn’t really have any kind of mechanism for exhibitors to interact or vend wares, with creators left to work it out for themselves. Could they have built a turnkey system similar to what Jeff Smith and Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett worked out for themselves?

If so, one has to wonder if there’s money exchanging hands. For all their faults, Comic Con International are a nonprofit, and Reed Exhibitions (a division of that which was once called Reed Elsevier) decidedly is not; they’ve got a long corporate history of extracting as much money has possible from specialty markets, in many cases becoming so dominant that entire industries become inextricably dependent on them (cf: they pretty much own the entire academic journal publishing industry) and then requiring large amounts of money for everything while acting like they’re entirely devoted to the betterment of their customers².

Given that this is the company that charged higher-than-average table fees on the show floor and supplied only a table — there’s an upcharge for chairs — I don’t see them giving up the opportunity to pull money from either attendees or exhibitors. I’d love to be proved wrong, but this is a show that’s systematically eliminated small creators and players over the past half-decade, and given over significant amounts of floorspace to friggin’ Chevrolet³, so I think my skepticism is warranted. And since they don’t want me as press, I’ll just leave my thoughts here and forgo followup; if they want to reach out and correct any mistakes on my part, I’m here.

Spam of the day:

I am highly reputed seller in Fiverr, from Bangladesh.

Nope, stopping you right there. If you’re working for Fiverr, you’re being exploited from Hell to Breakfast and no way I’m buying anything you’re offering, knowing a good chunk of that cheap rate goes to those bloodsuckers. If I need [reads email] WordPress work done on this site, I’ll pay somebody a proper amount to do it, not the five bucks you’re offering.

Also, your name is Wolfgang Janssens? Of the Dhaka Janssens, I’m meant to presume?

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¹ I’m a glutton for punishment.

² The About ReedPop section of the press release is a deep, 15-line, 176-word paragraph; the About YouTube section is 4 lines and 65 words. That’s a bit egotastic.

³ In a city with a notoriously low rate of car ownership, or even driver license-having.

It’s a sad day when stereotypes raise their ugly heads in the world of webcomics. The saddest part being, they hurt those that hold those prejudices the most.

• I speak, naturally, of Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett and his campaign to print not one, but two new Sheldon collections simultaneously. That’s a message that’s worth discussing, but unfortunately LArDK gets side-tracked into a shame spiral over his choice of facial hair. Moustaches are not just for quarrantine, LArDK, they’re for life. Let go of your hate, find enlightenment, and realize that in this (as in so very, very much) your wife is correct.

  As for the rest of you, I’m certain that if the campaign goes well, it’ll help LArDK to a better place, and let him come to embrace what is objectively one fine lookin’ ‘stache that he’s rocking¹. Fortunately, success looks pretty certain; as of this writing, the funding is north of 83% and pretty likely to pile up some stretch goal improvements².

  If you’re interested in some thick books (each is more than 200 pages, which a quick glance at my bookshelf means they’re 50% larger than the previously biggest Sheldon collections) to be delivered around December (just saying, you could knock down some holiday shopping now) at an eminently reasonable price³, you’ve got until 10 September to pony up.

  Do it for the moustaches.

• In non-moustache news (we do that sometimes), have you seen that Jorge Cham has been working on a TV show? I hadn’t? I think the first he mentioned it was about a month ago, which I missed. Then about two weeks back, he mentioned that he’d talked to the Television Critics Association in advance of the premiere, which I also missed. Look, a lot happens on Twitter these days and I’m trying to moderate my doomscrolling, okay? The TCA tweet showed up in my feed today and now I’m caught up.

  A quick flip between Twitter accounts revealed the original May 2019 press release, from which we will now quote:

  Today, PBS KIDS announced the animated series ELINOR WONDERS WHY, set to premiere Labor Day 2020. ELINOR WONDERS WHY aims to encourage children to follow their curiosity, ask questions when they don’t understand and find answers using science inquiry skills. The main character Elinor, the most observant and curious bunny rabbit in Animal Town, will introduce kids ages 3-5 to science, nature and community through adventures with her friends. This new multiplatform series, created by Jorge Cham and Daniel Whiteson and produced in partnership with Pipeline Studios, will debut nationwide on PBS stations, the PBS KIDS 24/7 channel and PBS KIDS digital platforms.

  So this is what Cham and his We Have No Idea co-author Daniel Whiteson have been up to — they’ve been players in the hurly-burly world of Hollywood, power players in the production of televised entertainment, a seamy industry that has line items for cocaine and hookers in its budgets. Oh, wait, it’s PBS Kids? Never mind, that’s an entirely different seamy industry that has line items for tote bags and googly eyes in its budgets.

  In all seriousness, Cham and Whiteson have spent the past forever spreading knowledge about the universe we live in, how it works, and why we know what we know (and, crucially, what we don’t know … yet). The character designs for Elinor Wonders Why are cute, the lessons are imparted in a gentle fashion (check out a preview episode here), and if they aren’t exactly dealing with the hard science facts of their book, they are teaching basics like how senses work and how animals and plants behave, as well as mentioning prominent scientists.

  More importantly, they’re teaching logical thinking and the idea that problems have solutions that can be solved; that last idea frequently escapes people far older than Elinor‘s target audience, so the sooner we get the idea into kids, the better.
  Elinor Wonders Why debuts on PBS Kids (and maybe your local PBS station, but they don’t all run the same programming) and online on 7 September.

Spam of the day:

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Those are … disturbingly specific.

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¹ No longer subject to tricks of the light that make him look like J Jonah Jameson, the moustache in question is well on its way to Hadfieldian proportions.

² Not going to do a FFF mk2 calculation, as LArDK does early notices to his Patreon backers, with special discount tiers available to them for the first 24 hours of funding, before opening things up to everybody else. Perfectly legit technique, but it throws off the math.

³ 400+ pages of print edition for US$45 (plus S+H) means less than 12 cents per page, and with an average of two strips per page, less than six cents per laugh-chuckle. Giving up just one a’ your five buck fancy coffee drinks means you get more than 83 punchlines.

Yeah, looks like I did math after all.

There are, if my math is correct, three things to look forward to next month. The first and most important, of course, is seeing what Demi Adejuyigbe comes up with on the 21st. If you’re not familiar, check it out here, here, here, and here, and watch the Twitter thread on the day (It’s a Monday this year).

• But nearly as important is SPX, which will be going virtual this year. Along with the distancing required, there a delay in getting information on the page, with the exhibitor, guest, and programing pages still to appear. But one aspect of SPX that is inextricably linked with the festival is up to date, and it’s a doozy.

  The Ignatz Awards are, famously, voted on by the attendees of SPX. Attend on Saturday, walk the floor, talk to creators, drop your ballot in a box before you leave. Between the close of the hall and the awards ceremony, volunteers work through the dinner hour to count the votes and prepare the presenters for what’s easily the most democratic comics award out there.

  There may not be any ballot boxes, or a floor to walk on Saturday, but the Ignatzen will go on, and the most democratic comics award is opening itself up to an even wider electorate:

  Sign up to vote for the 2020 Ignatz Awards!

  In exchange for your Name and Email Address, we will send you a 2020 Ignatz Awards Ballot. We will never sell, loan or give this list to a 3rd Party. SPX keeps its emails to a minimum, so we will not Spam you either.

  [Editor’s note: the folks in charge of this year’s deeply flawed Eisner voting might want to get in contact with the Ignatz folks, see what a vote-by-mail looks like. It would be vastly preferable to what they’ve been doing.]

  I’ve requested my ballot, and hope that you will as well. There’s a plethora of great comics released all the damn time and this is your chance to recognize the best of the best.

• And have we all remembered that this September is when Ryan North’s adaptation of Slaughterhouse Five — with line artist Albert Monteys and colorist Ricard Zaplana — comes out in September? Specifically, the 9th. There’s a first look out today and while I’m not familiar with Monteys’s work, the designs in that preview look well matched to North’s sensibilities (which, it goes without saying, mesh perfectly with Vonnegut’s very serious absurdism). Order yours now, avoid the rush.

Spam of the day:

Get Paid $25 per hour to watch YouTube videos

I should note that Gmail marked this message as dangerous before they delivered it to me, meaning that they well know what an open sewer YouTube can be, and if somebody wants to pay you to watch videos, they’re probably a godsdamned Nazi. Pass.

Thursdays, fam. Thursdays. No day of the week is a draggy and uninspiring as Thursdays, not even late Sunday afternoon. Not much happening within my noticing today¹, so let’s just take a peek at a couple of items and see if we can make it to Friday, Gateway To The Weekend.

Howard Tayler² has been busy with a whole lot of nothing of late, and good on him for that. Okay, in my quick glances at sosh-meeds, I did learn more than I wanted or needed to know about him getting a colonoscopy³, but mostly he’s having some time to himself and all right thinking folks should approve of that. He’s also working on finishing up a Kickstart that was sidelined by the dual whammy of health and lockdown.

He’s also too creative a guy, with too many projects and stories inside, to stay away for overly long. If you’re like me, you’ve still got Schlock Mercenary in your daily bookmarks because a habit of 20 years doesn’t go away after a couple of weeks. Actually, if you’re like me, you’ve got the site in your RSS reader, because Google’s machinations or no, RSS is the greatest technology since polymerase chain reaction, or maybe the smallpox vaccine. But some of you have given up the paths of righteousness, yet still want to know when Tayler gets back to doing stuff of interest. He’s got you covered:

If fear of missing out[*] has you religously clicking in here every day despite the absence of daily updates, if you want to be kept in the loop on all things Schlock Mercenary, or if you want the very basic line art of the above image as a printable coloring page, you should sign up for the Schlock Mercenary Newsletter.

[Editor’s note 1: Since he’s no longer daily updating, there’s not an item-specific link to this announcement, nor can you browse to it with the Next and Previous controls.]

[Editor’s note 2: At [*], Tayler had his own footnote, which I am omitting here because it would conflict with my own footnotes. Head over to the site to read his if you’re afraid of missing out.]

Meanhile, John Allison may have finished Bobbins, Scary Go Round, and Bad Machinery, but he’s still got shorter projects that he’s running, one after another. We’re coming up on the last week of the latest Destroy History story, after which he informs us we’ll get back to Steeple.

It may not take place in Tackleford, but it deals explicitly with ideas of faith and belief, and the next story will be called Secret Sentai which is a concept so perfect that I didn’t even know I needed it in my life. And given that the current DH is ending on something almost cliffhangerish, we’ll surely get more of that down the line. I love it when creators can hop between projects as inspiration takes them, full of enthusiasm for whatever’s next. And Allison, as previously established, keeps getting better, so there’s that too.

Spam of the day:

Write only if you are grave! My name is Jess. I am 25. My new photos and raunchy videos here

Is this a stealth Shakespearean pun about how tomorrow you’ll find me a grave man?

_______________
¹ With the disclaimer that I’ve largely moderated my social media doomscrolling. I simply can’t keep up with all of it, so if there’s something I should know, my Twitter habit these days is to maybe look at what’s happened in the last 15 minutes, and then maybe refresh once when I’m caught up with that. It’s done wonders for my mental health, but I know I’m missing a lot.

² Evil twin, etc.

³ Note to self: you’re overdue. To be fair, you had an appointment lined up and then COVID hit. Got to get it lined up, and a dentist appointment to replace the one you should have had. Oh yeah, and you were in the middle of a TB booster series that you’ll have to start over. Dang it, pandemic, you are making it hard to manage the slow degradation of my bodily processes.

Turns out we had a lot more wind than rain from Isaias; personally, we got off lucky (a section of fence fell over from wind, just need a couple of angle brackets to get it fixed), but there’s a lot of trees down in town.

Over here, a full tree, with a root system more than 2 meters across, standing straight up in the air. Daycare across the street had their parking lot filled with half a tree, which also knocked down a section of chain-link and squashed some playground equipment. At least three sections of road completely blocked, two of which are on major thoroughfares. Last night was EMT duty night, and we spent some time out in the ambulance, figuring out what was accessible, and how to get from any given Point A (where somebody needs help) to Point B (any one of the six emergency departments in the area we transport to). We got lucky in that all the really big trees with insufficient root systems or structural weaknesses came down during Sandy back in Aught-Twelve.

And today, there’s chainsaws echoing constantly. These are accompanied by the occasional power fade (not all the way cut, just brownout) or internet interruption (three so far today) as a suddenly-mobile section of tree falls an unexpected direction and drags overhead cable with it. So I’m going to post quickly, hoping that I can get this up in my latest window of network access.

The very, very sexy Brad Guigar¹ has some useful analysis and recommendations over at Webcomics Dot Com, but I think the message is somewhat harmed by the choice of headline². The piece is about using a structure in comics without knowing why it’s the way that it is, but the headline is the somewhat curmudgeonly Manga-inspired word balloons (and why they need to stop)³.

It’s behind a paywall, and I don’t want to steal content, so I’ll say that Guigar’s got a reasonable explanation as to why people are designing word balloons incorrectly, but also that the headline is an over-generalization. It’s not that word balloons from manga are inherently inferior, it’s that cartoonists that haven’t thought about balloon design are taking the wrong lesson from them. Either take a test subscription to WDC to read more about it, or wait for it to eventually show up as a Free Friday repost.

Also, in case you forgot that Brad’s art tends towards the saucy, I’ll note that the ever so slightly prominent ass shot in the image he used to illustrate his point (and which is reproduced above) is definitely intentional. Brad Guigar likes cartoon butts and he cannot lie.

Spam of the day:

Hello! I really need a man for the rare pleasant dates without obligation. I have. I live nearby. You’ll like it!

Sorry, pleasant dates with me aren’t rare, they’re commonplace. Maybe try asking a guy who sucks?

_______________
¹ Dreamy, etc.

² And keep in mind that Guigar worked newspapers for pert-near two decades, and knows what a proper headline can do for — or to — a story.

³ The less said about Brad’s choice of case in this title, the better.

Irene? She flooded my basement, along with my EMS agency’s building (the water came up to knee height and we had to rip back to stud on the entire first floor to prevent mold). So the remnants of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Isaias (which are thought to bring not much rain but high winds, with gusts nearly up to hurricane speeds) are doing their best to take power from me today.

They’ve succeeded twice so far, up to a minute each time, but the ol’ backup power supply kept me working. That said, I’ma get a brief post up against the possibility that that high winds that are expected imminently may cause mischief².

So please note the following:

@geneluenyang is coming to CXC!

The author of AMERICAN BORN CHINESE, BOXERS & SAINTS, and DRAGON HOOPS will be a keynote speaker at #cxc2020. The festival will be online & feature rich interactive programs.

More guest announcements on the way!

#comics #highschoolbasketball

While you’re at it, please also note:

• CXC will take place from 1-4 October (that’s a Thursday to Sunday timeframe).
• It will, naturally, be online [PDF] only.
• The organizers are asking for input as to what would make a more successful online experience for attendees. Let ’em know here.
• That first hashtag up above, #cxc2020? As of right now, it’s mostly pointing to something called the Canadian Export Challenge, which will wrap up about 10 days before Cartoon Crossroads Columbus. I’ve dropped a line to the CXC organizers that they may want to change the tag if they don’t want to get lost in the swirl of accelerators and pitches.

Okay, that’s it. If you’re in the way of the storm, stay safe. If you’re not, stay safe anyway.

Spam of the day:

We create stunning websites & put them on 1st page of Google to drive relevant traffic at very affordable price.

Already there, thanks.

_______________
¹ To be fair, the only hurricane I don’t have issues with is Hurricane Erika, on account of she’s rad. She’s also got a dildo review up today that I can only describe as joyful.

Also, I believe this is the first time we at Fleen have ever footnoted from the title.

² We’ve already got a section of fence knocked down in the back yard. Looks like an easy fix, but won’t be able to get out there to determine for sure for a bit.

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:

Welcome to Top Doors for all your commercial and residential door needs. Serving Toronto since 2004.

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.

_______________
¹ Chain wheel optional.