Friday. Friday! And one where it appears Spring may finally be here, no take-backs, at long last, and you know what that means. Mailbag roundup!

• Jim Zub, I’m of the opinion, can write any kind of comic story he sets his mind to. We’re nearing the wrap-up of the big, months-long, weekly Avengers story he co-wrote, and that means it’s time to build up excitement for his next project. Not satisfied with taking on a major IP, not satisfied with partnering with well-known, best-seller co-authors, he’s decided the appropriate challenge is to meld together two major IPs and partner up with a world-renowned author:
  

  Pat Rothfuss (New York Times Best-Selling author of The Kingkiller Chronicles), Troy Little (multiple Eisner-nominated cartoonist), and [Zub] are unleashing a love letter to gaming glory and nihilistic dimension hopping with RICK AND MORTY VS DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, a 4-issue mini-series launching in August.

  Dear glob, that’s more nerderies in one spot than I can count and they’re launching it at GenCon. Normally in these situations, you’d be able to tell which author was taking which part of the story; Zub’s the big D&D comics author, but Rothfuss is famous for sword&sorcery work as well, so they’ve both got that part covered. Then again, Zub’s hilarious, and so is Rothfuss, so there’s no clear delineation. Honestly, the only thing that surprised me is that Sam Sykes and Chuck Wendig aren’t in on this thing.

• Ryan Estrada’s gotten some traction out of his account calling out bad attempts to screw artists, For Exposure, and by traction I mean abusive emails and death threats from people who are mad about being called out, even though he never reveals their names. Of course, he’s got the love and gratitude of the creative community for calling out this crap, so that’s good. And now he’s got a wider audience than a couple days ago, because the BBC decided to send him some love:
  

  Creative industries are already cutthroat and budding artists often leap at the chance to get their work in front of as many people as possible.

  “I was very confused as a young artist,” [Estrada] says. “I had all of these people telling me that they were just small companies, so they couldn’t afford to pay me, but could offer me exposure so that big companies would want to hire me.”

  Many told him that he was lucky to be getting the opportunity at all.

  “I realized that I had to be my own advocate for my work, and figure out a way to make a living.”

  The Twitter account struck a chord with creatives around the world. Since he opened the account five years ago, it has grown to over 167,000 followers.

  Even better, Format Magazine contacted Estrada about his ongoing project (five years and counting), and they commissioned Emmie Tsumura, to do imaginary portraits of some of the most egregious time-and-art leeches. She produced a gallery collection last year. Heck if I remember seeing anything about it. But the BBC noticed it, and now we all get to enjoy. Even better, this means that an artist got paid for something that arose out of For Exposure. First time for everything.

Okay, almost the weekend. Enjoy the heck out of it.

Spam of the day:
But I have big titties and fuck the shit out of you. try me
I’m trying to figure out which missing word(s) will make that whole offer a little less creepy. Not succeeding.