I’m not sure that Ryan Estrada and Kim Hyun Sook could have written a more appropriate book for these times. We’re getting right into it, so if you don’t want (admittedly, 30 year old history) spoilers, stop reading now, buy this book, and read it instead.

When I was in college, things were happening in South Korea; my political science professor talked about how critically important it was that the first reasonably credible elections in decades were happening, and what led up to it — regular student protests, which had rules:

The students would go out demanding the authoritarian regime step down; the regime would reflexively brand them as Communists and North Korean agents and send out the riot cops with their Darth Vader helmets, truncheons, tear gas, and water cannons. They’d fight for a while, the students would retreat to campus, and that would be it for the day. Get nabbed off campus and you could be disappeared, but like a game of tag, campus was Home Free.

Then one day, the riot cops went onto campus to continue the beatings and arrests and the world started paying more attention. The Olympics were granted to Seoul, the country beyond the students started to join the protests, change happened. The first elections were still won by the members of the regime because the opposition was at a disadvantage (their leaders having only just been freed to start parties and organize), but by 1992, they had prevailed. Korea dismantled the fascist structures that had been in charge for three decades (and completely remade the police), and generally became a better place. Not perfect, but better.

Banned Book Club is the story of what happened in the years before things got better, when the tear gas and beatings, the contrived charges, show trials, and deaths were happening and a large part of the country — most everybody except for those darn students — just sort of agreed not to notice. It had been that way for 20 years, after all, since the military coup back in ’61, and the second coup in ’80 and second coup leader was still in power but he was only fighting against criminals and agitators, right?

And the books they banned, and the students and teachers in prison for reading them, they were all subversives, right?

And the factory workers being forced to work and the President’s friends getting rich, and the critical newspapers being burned to the ground for spreading “lies” about the regime, and the President not caring if anybody believed him or not, that was just how things worked, right?

Right?

Kim Hyun Sook was part of the generation who’d been shielded from what had actually happened until she made it to university, and fell in with students reading Chomsky and Betty Friedan, Locke and Sartre, Marx and Guevara, Simone de Beauvoir and unapproved Jack London (White Fang was okay, The Iron Heel decidedly wasn’t) and watching bootleg VHS tapes of foreign news reports about Korea.

She watched the cop who was assigned to kill stories in the student newspaper that the regime didn’t want published miss the stories that were being passed hand-to-hand; she watched students on government-sponsored scholarships inform on their classmates; she watched fellow protesters get swept up and subjected to state violence with the lucky ones being released days later.

And now, we’re in a place that’s pretty much exactly where Hyun Sook was, only it didn’t take decades for so many in America to become willfully blind to what’s happening. We have the opportunity to be at the point she and her compatriots were at, with maybe the most prescient lesson being: the fight is never over.

See, in 2016, the daughter of the first coup leader (who was eventually assassinated by his own security forces for being too brutal) became President and tried to go back to Dad’s way of doing things; the people of Korea went into the streets, every weekend for months, as many as 10% of the country’s population at any given time, and demanded that she be impeached for her crimes.

It wasn’t just the students, it was too many to ignore, the reformers had done too thorough a job of dismantling the fascist state¹ and they weren’t going back (and, this time, the cops were marching with the protesters). She was removed from office and then charged with bribery, coercion, leaking government secrets, and abuse of power, leading to a conviction, a 25 year prison sentence, and a fine of nearly US$17 million.

Which is what you need to do when there is a man (and later, his daughter) that regards the presidency as his birthright. Or, and Hyun Sook concludes:

The villains of the past are never really gone. Now we have another President Park blacklisting authors, journalists and filmmakers, and trying to ban textbooks that criticize her father’s regime.

But this time when the people rose up, it was not in the shadows. Not just behind closed doors, and not just a handful of them. It was everyone.

People don’t get that organized unless someone is stubborn enough to fight for what’s right, even when no one’s listening.

The lesson is clear — fight with everything you’ve got, and don’t ever think that the defeated would-be Presidents For Life won’t revive with another face. Even when you do win, keep fighting to ensure that the systems are stronger, better, fairer than they were so that the next nascent fascist doesn’t have as much of a foothold of grievance to work with, because there’s always something that needs fixing. And while we’re figuring out how to do all of that, let this coda keep you warm at night:

In March 2017, President Park Geun-hye was impeached, removed from office, and imprisoned for corruption. The final vote was struck by her own judges, many of whom she had personally placed in office. A special election was held, and the new Preisdent was Moon Jae-in.

Can’t imagine why that thought makes me so very happy. Yep, that’s a stumper.

Banned Book Club is based on the lived experiences of Kim Hyun Sook, with actual people being blended into composite characters for privacy and safety². Kim’s husband Ryan Estrada turned Kim’s stories into a story that works in comics. Ko Hyung-ju provided open, appealing art that draws you into the lives of the characters, emphasizing their ordinariness and the shocking treatment they receive for demanding truth. It is available at bookstores everywhere, and should be read and passed to as many people as you possibly can.

Spam of the day:

LETION LED Torch, UV Light 2 in 1 UV Torch Black Light Flashlight with 500LM Highlight & 4 Mode & Waterproof IPX 4 for Pet Clothing Food Fungus Detection/Night Fishing/Travel

Food Fungus? Look, never bring a UV light into your home unless you want to find out exactly how much dandruff, blood, urine, and semen is hanging around.

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¹ After the fall of the military dictatorship, leaders were charged and convicted for their crimes, with the second coup leader — Chun Doo-hwan — ultimately sentenced to death for ordering a massacre of a town¹. He was pardoned by the current President, who was advised by the President-elect, who in turn had been sentenced to death by Chun’s regime 20 years earlier.

² But they’re talking [grin].

Okay, it was actually Sunday, but that’s not when things are happening and the alternative was … less good.

• Friday is, of course, the start of CXC, the first without director Tom Spurgeon, and the first (not to mention hopefully last) that needs must be distanced. The guest list is deep and impressive (and features Fleen faves like Box Brown, Faith Erin Hicks, Shing Yin Khor, C Spike Trotman, Ben Hatke, Maris Wicks, and more).

  Exhibiting is going to be remote affair, but there’s so many good creators on the list, many of whom you’ll be able to catch during the programming. Okay, okay, the pre-keynote programming actually starts on Thursday the 1st, but the official start of the show is on Friday with a keynote speech by Gene Luen Yang (4:00pm EDT, details here) and a Jeff Smith-hosted opening reception at 5:00pm EDT (registration required)

  Other events to keep an eye on (all times EDT):

  Financial Wellness For Artists (Thursday at 10:00am; registration required)

  Jenny Robb & friends on preserving your artwork (Thursday at 2:30pm; registration required)

  A quick lesson in sketchbooking with Ben Hatke (Saturday at 11:45am)

  The Creator’s Toolkit (Saturday at 5:30pm; registration required)

  Spotlight on Spike Trotman with Jeff Smith (Saturday at 7:00pm; registration required)

  Shing Yin Khor and Carta Monir on oversharing, boundaries, and making porn (Saturday at 8:00pm; adults only, registration required)

  Goth Comics (Sunday, 7:00pm, says it requires registration but no link yet)

  All those registration links? That’s if you want to participate; you’ll get a personal (and traceable) Zoom link, which should help to keep griefers and Zoomboombers the hell away. All sessions (except for those designated adults only) will appear at the CXC stream, on Twitch, and YouTube, and I’ve barely scratched the surface on the interviews, workshops, how-tos, and Discord hangouts.

• Speaking of both Friday and Spike, and heck also porn, the Kickstart (a short-run campaign, only 12 days start to finish) for Iron Circus’s latest quality pornographique ends on Friday. Patience & Esther by SW Searle is 280 pages of Edwardian erotic as the two title characters navigate feels, shifting mores, and — given that this is an Iron Circus NSFW title, I’m confident in saying some hot, hot gettin’ it on.

  If you’re on Spike’s mailing list for something other than all-ages titles? Check your inbox, ’cause you’ve probably been sent a link for the full first chapter, full of upstairs/downstairs class divisions, scene-setting, character backstory, and body positivity.

  Oh, and for anybody grumping about how Esther isn’t lily-white despite being in England, exactly what do you think happened to all of the unintended children of colonizers and the servant classes around the world? However many of them you think made it from the far-flung corners of the Empire back to Jolly Old, I guarantee you it was more, by an order of magnitude or three.

  Patience & Esther has currently raised US$32.2K (of a US$12K goal), and given the immense inrush of funding on day one and the short duration, has already demolished both the FFF mk2 (and the McDonald Ratio won’t help, as there’s simply not time to triple the initial funding period). Top funding level is a mere US$20 (plus shipping) for the physical book, so maybe get in on that? Y’only have a few more days to decide.

Spam of the day:

Nro Code:(o8983B) – Users Say Its Better Than Implants

Unless it’s the kind of implants that let me fight criminals (a cowardly, superstitious lot), not interested.

So let’s talk newspaper comics for a minute. We’ve seen them decline over the decades into third- or fourth-generation legacy creations, desperately trying not to change from what they’ve been for the past half-century, with the occasional burst of creativity or weirdness for contrast. The vast majority of the comics page is best by what I refer to as Chris Columbus Syndrome, wherein I imagine that Chris Columbus was given the directing job for the first Harry Potter movie and told Don’t screw this up, give them exactly what they want and we can ride out this franchise for literal billions of dollars but it this first one tanks it’s all over.

That first movie was … serviceable. It’s not a coincidence that the only entry in the series that was in any way fun, visually interesting, or not a direct transliteration of page to screen was Alfonso Cuarón’s Prisoner Of Azkaban, which they never allowed to happen again. But, like Cuarón’s take on Harry Potter, there are newspaper strips that are seeing new life for the first time in who knows how long, in part due to indie- and webcomickers.

Olivia Jaimes on Nancy and Joey Allison Sayers on Alley Oop, Bianca Xunise as one of the Six Chix and Steenz Stewart on Heart Of The City, a whole bunch o’ folks contributing to Popeye’s Cartoon Club, but most notably Randy Milholland’s monthlong run¹. The odd thing is, a lot of the stodgiest of the stodgy strips come from King Features syndicate, and an awful lot of the new-life breathing is down to their editor, Tea Fougner, who has an eye for matching the right cartoonist with the right project.

And now, the stodgiest, stiffest, slowest-paced strip of them all is getting a kicking-and-screaming drag into the present day, as Mark Trail is about to get a new writer/artist. You remember Mark Trail? Alleged magazine writer, ramrod straight posture from the medium-sized sapling that must be crammed up his ass at all times? Everybody in the strip has hair and clothing styles straight out of the Sears catalog, circa 1962? Mark’s ward/son/tween hanger-on Rusty looks like a gremlin attempting a human disguise but only had a half-congealed Ted Cruz as a model?

There’s a new direction imminent for Trail, courtesy of a Bronx-born Latina with no time for shit. Jules Rivera of Love, Joolz is now Mark Trail’s dad and she’s found the inner truth about Mark Trail — dude’s jacked and should be setting off thirst alarms all over the damn place.

Hell, I’m just glad that the strip will move from a color palette of approximately 11 solid hues and a habit of posing like everything’s a Victorian photograph that required you to stay stock-still for eight minutes. Heck, just that hummingbird in the cast photo up top is showing more movement than the strip has seen in the past decade. And in case you wonder if Mark will still punch poachers, kidnappers, robbers, and general ne’er-do-wells, I’d say that Rivera might even expand his repertoire. Mark Trail’s new fighting technique will be unstoppable.

The new era of Mark Trail starts on Monday, 12 October. Update your links and prepare for your nature facts to be a zillion percent more awesome, and for all of the right people — the ones that declare nobody but a late-middle-aged (or older) white dude could possibly write or draw Mark Trail — are gonna have fits.

Spam of the day:

Get the word out about your Covid preventative measures

My crew have PPE that starts with N95 masks and goes all the way up to bunny suits, not to mention the cleaning power of babykiller wipes and access to biohazard disposal facilities. Oh, wait, were you trying to sell me some plastic partitions or shit like that? Awww, you’re adorable.

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¹ We’ll give an honorary acknowledgement to Ces Marciuliano, who was the first to make the jump on Sally Forth (Ted Forth is the most unhinged guy on the comics page) some 20 years back, and more recently Judge Parker (how many daily strips your grandparents read feature murderous exotic dancers?).

As long as I live, I will remember the haunting, off-the-cuff cold open that David Letterman opened his show with on the return from hiatus after September 11, 2001¹. It was the most heartfelt thing I ever saw on TV and there wasn’t a sound to be heard from the audience until near the end, when Dave added … and then, thank God, Regis is here so we have something to make fun of.

Regis Philbin (RIP) was Dave’s go-to guy; when everything else was falling apart on the show, get Regis on the phone, get him over to the studio, and you’ve got your airtime filled.

Round here, when things are falling apart and the posts ain’t coming for whatever reason, that’s when Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin drops a dispatch from his side of the Atlantic and lo, we’ve got screen space filled. It’s been one of those weeks, and FSFCPL has popped in with his usual excellent timing.

You know these characters who can’t seem to go in holidays somewhere without unwittingly stumbling on adventure? Well, it seems like book events are back in France, and it required your correspondent to go on holidays to figure that out.

Now, it is important to state that while I’ve had some reservations about the French government’s management of the COVID-19 pandemic, the way they manage public events is not one of them: whenever I hear about an event (one that is not cancelled, that is), it is very carefully restricted and managed, with impressive-sounding procedures regarding cleanup and crowd movement. For instance, concerts are always with a sitting audience, and a limited gauge (two or three thousands, no more) to boot; otherwise, such events are simply not allowed. So I was confident going to these events they would be competently managed and provide appropriate safety, if only from their limited scale, and I was interested in the specific setups, which other events could adopt.

• First, I was in Saint-Lary-Soulan in the French Pyrénées when I learned of a book festival that was to take place just before I was to leave. As La Dép&egraave;che reports, Lucie Plessala the local bookshop owner was dismayed when another festival had to cancel, so she set up her own mini-festival called La Montagne de Livres [Editor’s note: The Mountain Of Books] with about 20 creators.

  When I entered, I discovered as many tables under a tent (provided by the tourism office); each creator was wearing a face shield, which regardless of its prophylactic effect remained useful by virtue of doubling as a name tag. Each creator hawked their wares, but transactions had to go through the bookshop owner herself. Fortunately, some comics were to be found, specifically Rien ne se Passe Jamais Comme Prévu, telling the story of a couple attempting to have children despite infertility, and I was able to chat with the artist while she sketched on my copy.

• And on the same day, in the afternoon, I got to Pop Con near Toulouse, since my trip back from Saint-Lary had me make a multi-hour train layover at Toulouse anyway, so I only had to take my bike to get there.

  Rather than a convention hall, this con took place at a location that is more often used for weddings, business retreats, etc: a small building surrounded by parkings, gardens, and a field. And they made use of all that: most stands were outside, each under its own tent, and sporting events organized in the field. Most of the indoors area was used for cloakrooms and a very-well-distanced conference room.

  The feeling was that of a mix between Festival Harajuku) for the outdoor and small scale aspect and TGS (I in fact spotted some of the same people, including game developers). The only disappointment was a concert scene that, however small, was encouraging the attendance to sing along, and a karaoke stand, both of which I avoided like, literally, the plague. Obviously, no “free hugger” was to be found, and mask-wearing was enforced at the entrance and well-observed by con-goers.

  Finally, it was the occasion to catch Team Maliki, who we last saw at Japan Tours Festival (the very day before events started being capped at 5000 people, and most of them cancelled as a result). Besides catching up on news, obtaining my rewards for the latest Ulule campaign (even though I’d completely forgotten to warn of my coming, thank you very much for accommodating me!), and getting it sketched, it allowed me to get the newest, hippest swag. Here you can see Souillon (left) taking a break from sketching as part of Ulule rewards in order to sketch for booth customers.

  Cosplayers spotted: a Bowsette (unfortunately forgot to take a photo), a Master of Turtles, and what was probably the most appropriate cosplay for the facemask era, a Solid Snake.

I should note that it was fortunate for both events that weather was so agreeable (maybe a bit too hot, even): even if in both cases the tents would have allowed them to take place under inclement weather, attendance would have certainly suffered, as anyone who shops at an outdoors farmer’s market or at a foodtruck can attest. We will see as autumn progresses whether I can find other events to report from, keeping in mind in this day and age I am unlikely to travel specifically for such an event.

Spam of the day:

Raina Telgemeier negrophil https://google.com deflector obsesses For my money, the best deal of the bunch is this $20 car charger, which includes a 30W USB-C port, in addition to a regular USB port.

This came to the email that’s reachable through the contact us link, and picked out what’s probably the most common name to be found on these pages. Clever spammer.

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¹ If you’ve never seen it, look it up.

My tech issues are actually worse today and I have reached that point of utter calm that is past the anger and frustration. Even if nothing else blows up¹ I’m still hours behind with a rapidly dwindling amount of time left to work with. Maybe I can get one of those reviews up tomorrow³ but honestly not likely before Monday. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Fun fact: Fleen’s WordPress rendering doesn’t do the shrugmoji unless you substitute in the HTML entity for the tsu katakana (ツ). Otherwise, it shows as ¯\_(?)_/¯, which actually — yeah, same.

Spam of the day:

Hello, we need some additional information regarding your business to be registered on Amazon Alexa and Siri (iPhones) so people can find your company using Voice Search.

If I ever care about Alexa, it will only be because I code this website to loudly play an audiofile of me shouting Alexa, play It’s A Small World After All, maximum volume, repeat twenty times on loading.

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¹ And if anything does, I’m out of workarounds. We’ll have to call off class early and find a way to redo, which could be a Charlie Foxtrot of immensely chewy proportions².

² Thanks to Howard Tayler, who taught me how much Charlie loves to dance the Foxtrot.

³ I’d break my Probably no posts on Fridays until the world is less of a horrorshow pattern because it’s not like you’ve gotten any posts this week.

Hey, remember the offhand mention of work tech issues on Monday?

They’re back. They’re spreading. This is being typed in the first block of time to myself I’ve had all day, and then I have to get back to the shitshow. I’m very sorry about this, glob please let me get back to a regular post tomorrow.

Give those three books another read or rush through a review that’s not completely informed yet.

Actually, it’s a slightly more involved choice than that — give those three books another read and put together the next missive in my campaign of stringing along an art scammer that targeted a friend. I’ve sent him an image of an example of my work, The Tenderness Of Memory Is A Balm Always, after which he replied to ask for more samples. Give it a click and scroll allll the way down and to the right to get to the deep emotional core of the piece. Trust me.

And I’d feel terrible if I didn’t have some information to share with you, so how about the news that Gallery Nucleus is currently running an artist highlight on Fleen Fave Becky Dreistadt? All of her work is 15% off until 15 October with code BU87WOEU. There’s some gorgeous work there for the collector who likes awesome things.

Spam of the day:

My name is Sam, and I work with companies to help them add (or change) live chat software on their websites.

That is a horrifying idea. Yuck.

Stepping away from webcomics for a day; if you saw my tweet over the weekend, you know that I’m deep into multiple books and review are forthcoming. Also, work tech is failing today and robbing me of nearly all free time and also the will to live.

So I’ll just point out that it’s 21 September, and that means Demi Adejuyigbe has released his annual video celebrating this fact and it is a socially-distanced delight of impeccable timing.

It includes has an appeal at the end that I feel Fleen folks are amenable to¹ — to ensure there’s another video next year, Adejuyigbe is asking for US$50K to be raised for a collection of action groups serving BIPOC, trans, and the unhoused across the country. You can give at sept21st.com but maybe hold off a day or two, as the high response is, uh, throttling the funding site (as of this writing, 3 hours and five minutes after launch, he’s 95% of the way to goal).

And, as a bonus, he’ll do another video if funding hits US$69,420 because One Sexweed is a good amount.

Spam of the day:

I wanted to ask a question about your business and the credit card processing fees you pay every month. You shouldn’t be paying 1.5% to 2.5% in Credit Card Processing Fees anymore. New laws are on your side.

I pay negative a zillion percent on credit card processing fees and if you want my business, you’ll have to agree to rebates of 157% on every charge I put through. My business is valuable, and you’ll make up the costs in volume!

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¹ Also a good doggo.

Sometimes, you come across a comic and you’re convinced that this is what the creator(s) regard(s) as their defining work (at least to date). There’s previous stuff from them, and later stuff, but this is where they plant a flag and pour their heart and soul into it even if that wasn’t their original intent.

It can be fairly obvious where that labor of love is (case in point: The Abominable Charles Christopher, running in fits and starts but Karl Kerschl will always come back to it) and sometimes there’s so much work, so good, so invested, that you aren’t sure if you’ve seen it yet (case in point: I’m not sure if Box Brown would regard any of his projects that way, although I suspect either the André or Andy Kaufman bios could come closest).

But I think the key indicator is not only somebody making a great work, but finding ways to return to it, no matter what gets in the way. Which is a long way of saying that for Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh, I think Barbarous fills that role for them. They’ve done plenty of great work, together and individually, and it’s hard to get more personal than an autobio diary strip¹, but I think that the depth of character and sheer artistic skill on display in their story of a magic school dropout and her unconventional familiar pal just may be their defining work.

And lucky for you, it’s at the perfect point to get caught up — five story arcs² comprising Season 1 (with some canon side-stories drawn by pals starting next week), with infinite re-readability (every time I go back, there’s more layers that reveal themselves), and best of all — a beginning, middle, and end such that if we have to wait until never for Season 2 (because they are busy folks, and there’s paying jobs to get to), it’ll still feel complete while making us want more.

Hirsh and Ota have decades of comic-making experience between them³, all leading to this deceptively deep story; they’ll have more in the future, some that may be better known or more widely read, but I really do think this is where they will look back after a long and lauded career and say Yeah, that one could only have been told by us.

Spam of the day:

Dear Valued Candidate,
You were recently nominated as a biographical candidate for the next edition of Who’ s Who In America. We are pleased to inform you that the first phase of your candidacy was approved! Your prompt response is needed to ensure your complete professional information is considered.

I haven’t seen this particular scam since I was in high school. Respect for pulling out the deep cut.

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¹ One that, a dozen years on, makes you wonder if you want to keep sharing your life with strangers on the internet forever.

² Including one that was the NCS Division Award winner for Online Comic — Longform for 2018. The first two of which are collected into massive oversized print editions, and the third is in the fulfillment pipeline, and the fourth just completed its funding round. Me? I’m waiting for the inevitable Season 1 omnibus.

³ Also, they are cool people and have been to my house and pet my dog.

Stuff leftover from yesterday, that honestly? Better to put it today. Otherwise, the mass of information would mean something worthwhile would be lost.

• Once upon a time there was a very fun webcomic called Gastrophobia that had three books (currently sold out in physical form, available as ebooks) about an Amazon (Phobia) and her son (Gastro) running around the mythic age of Greece. It was a sitcom, complete with theme song, and it was great.

  And a bit into volume 4, it stopped. But now, in concert with the twelfth anniversary of launch, it’s back, with a story to tell below the update:

  If you’re not in touch with my social media, you’re probably wondering what I’ve been doing all this time.

  WELL, in 2017, three things happened to me:

  • I turned 40 and had a small mid-life crisis.
  • I finally admitted to myself that I’m transgender!
  • Lost most of my stuff in Hurricane Harvey (my home was under water).

  ….
  My name’s Daisy and my pronouns are she/her! Everyone’s been ridiculously supportive and I’m way happier now than I’ve ever been! ?

  Gastrophobia is getting a partial reboot.

  The first 3 volumes are still canon. The 43 story pages I drew from 2015-2016 are retconned. They still exist and can be found here.

  I’m different now and I’m taking the comic in a different direction.

  If you read Gastrophobia in the beforetimes, you know that Daisy McGuire¹ has always been a terrific cartoonist. There’s no better time to hop on the (quoting the character bio here) Barbarian MILF funtimes train than now, complete with a new RSS feed.

  As a side note, the number of folks I know who’ve undergone gender transition has increased a zillion percent over the past 15 years or so, and they’re all people I know through my association with comics. Maybe it’s just the passing of the times, or maybe there’s something about comics and storytelling, the creation of which demands your brain be open to possibilities and what-ifs, which allows one to imagine a different way of being that’s closer to what should be than what you’ve always been told. Good on you, comics, for letting people find themselves and be happy.

• Ryan Estrada is kind of on a roll these days. He’s not even done with the critical and popular acclaim from Banned Book Club (a copy of which I am still waiting on from my local comic shop, on account of Diamond is the worst²) and he’s just dropped another book on us, one that takes an experience from his own youth and turns it into what would have been way cooler:
  

  After literal decades of trying to get it off the ground and months of shipping delays, my dream project is finally out in the world. Student Ambassador: The Missing Dragon is now in bookstores everywhere!

  I’m overjoyed to give kids a multicultural hero who represents his country and does good in the world. Whose superpowers are empathy and active listening.

  And I’m proud he has an odd-couple partner who’s a selfish jerk so that doesn’t get annoying.

  I’m proud to create a world where kids can learn that world leaders aren’t always right, even if they are kinder and gentler than in ours.

  I made the US president in my story latinx as well. Because in fiction, you can do whatever you want and the cops can’t stop you.

  I’m proud that the kid who made a hand-written, leatherbound book about his student ambassador travels in 1997, and dreamed of making a book about what he WISHED the trip had been like finally got his wish.

  One of those nerds is me. Can you find me?
  [photo of actual kid student ambassadors in Sydney, Australia, 1997]

  If this book is a success, I am super excited to jump right into making the next Joseph Bazan mystery, Student Ambassador: The Silver City where they explore the mysterious caves under Zacatecas, Mexico.

  Student Ambassador: The Missing Dragon is written by Ryan Estrada, and illustrated by Axur Eneas. It’s the start of the Iron Circus kids line, and is available starting yesterday. I’ma say go get this one for the overly-enthusiastic and imaginative kid(s) in your life.

Spam of the day:

The CIA has been doing intensive research for the past fifty years researching on what we call so called life. That information has been collected and presented for you here [link] This has been the finding as of seventeen years ago as of today. Now governments and other large organizations have develop technology around these concepts for their own deceptive uses. Soon you will be contacted by other means for counter measures and the part that you play in all this.

I’ll tell you something — this is slightly more plausible than the guy with the broken English and Tagalog accent that called earlier claiming to be Social Security Agent Mike Hammer letting me know my number was being revoked for abuse and fraud. When I pressed one to talk to him, I was instead connected to Agent Katherine (same accent and command of English) who was entirely plussed when I told her my name was Harry Mourningwood.

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¹ In accordance with the Fleen Manual of Style, persons who transition will only be referred to by their current name/pronouns once that change is announced, but old posting referring to prior identity will not be altered.

Where necessary, context will be given without using deadnames, as in I had some memorable pub crawls with Daisy McGuire — who at the time used a different name — and other NYC cartoonists in the 2005-2008 timeframe. It was fun.

McGuire’s actually done something similar, comparing original author bios with current author bios from volumes 1, 2, and 3.

² At my suggestion, they’ve opened a merchant account with Ingram, the book distro giant. They may be nearly as much of a monopoly as Diamond is for the comics direct market, but damned if Ingram isn’t an efficient, competent monopoly that believes it can make money by giving stores what they friggin’ ask for instead of jerking them around with perpetual backorders (a lie) and shorted shipments (on a weekly basis). Right now Rick (who owns the store and is a nice guy) is going through all of the previous book orders placed through Diamond, re-requesting them from Ingram, and trying to figure out how to cancel them at Diamond so they don’t show up months or years from now with an invoice that says We finally decided to ship these to you, pay up.