Hey, how are you? Enjoying Canadian Thanksgiving, or utterly ignoring that piece of shit Christopher Columbus? Good, good.

• Let’s start with the big round number, shall we? Take a gander at Jennie Breeden’s strip from last Friday, which doesn’t look like much out of the ordinary. But those of long memory may recall this strip from 8 October, 2001, which just so happens to be the first strip that Breeden uploaded under the Devil’s Panties moniker, and which also just so happens to have been twenty years to the day before last Friday’s redraw.

  There’s not so many folks that keep with webcomics for two decades, and even fewer that operate in the autobio sphere, so let’s give Breeden the requisite congrats for the accomplishment, and note that the next day, and the next, and the next (that would be today), updates went up as scheduled. She’s hit the ground running on Year Twenty One.

• One thing I’ve noticed about C Spike Trotman, Presidente For Life over at Iron Circus/? She sees something good, she grabs it:
  

  TFW you see something on Twitter and sign it like three weeks later because it’s so goddamn intriguing it makes you wanna scream

  It doesn’t hurt that the book in question is by Evan Dahm, who is both very good at comics and has already done books for Iron Circus (if you haven’t read the superlative The Harrowing Of Hell, maybe get on that). Mansion X is exactly the kind of uniquely brilliant weirdness that Dahm specializes in when he’s not telling more serious stories (and sometimes when he is).

  I am less familiar with Kyle Smeallie’s work, but if Spike is grabbing up The Actual Witch Society Of Derrybridge Middle School, I’m gonna say it’s worth attention, even though it’ll be a while before we get to read it. TAWSODMS is due in 2025 (thanks, global supply chain issues), and Mansion X in 2023. We’ll keep you informed of any updates.

• Speaking of Dahm, his long-running meditation on empire, subject peoples, indigenous belief, dynastic power struggles, and a whole lot else, Vattu, is going through some rapid story progress at the moment. Ideas and plots that have been laid in place for years are about to come crashing into each other, as entire peoples are about to find out exactly what a powderkeg of a society they’ve been a part of.
• Also speaking of which (Iron Circus this time), they’re having a Halloween Sale at the moment, with 33% off select titles — generally ones with at least a tangential spooky theme, although it being Iron Circus there’s some sexy stuff in there too — between now and 25 October. Go grab some good comics now, while the postal service is still operating.

Spam of the day:

YOU NEED QUALITY VISITORS FOR YOUR: fleen.com ?

Dude (you know it’s a dude), I’ve already got the best visitors for my fleen.com, ain’t nothing you can give me with your fake account fire hose.

[Editor’s note: Postings this week are going to be brief (as I prepare for) or absent entirely (as I travel to and attend) on account of Alaska Robotics Mini-Con on Saturday and the adjacent events. For that matter, you probably won’t get anything out of me next week as I’ll be away from network and/or traveling and/or recuperating. We thank you in advance for your patience.]

• Evan Dahm’s latest Overside tale, Vattu, is reaching a point in the story that feels like the end game is approaching. The overall plot is at an inflection point — the emperor is dead, plots swirl around the succession, at least two communities of ex-pats are in various stages of revolt, and another of individual exiles is in upheaval — and there are arcs around the main characters to wrap up. What better time to release the 1000th page of the saga, as Dahm did yesterday?

  If you think that reading the whole damn thing to date (which is a very good use of your time, let me assure you) is too taxing via the website (I sympathize, I can’t read big story chunks online), I refer you to the two books that tell the first roughtly-half of the story (nearly six hundred pages worth!), and a third one is about to ship to Kickstarter backers. In the meantime, everybody congratulate Dahm, and I’ll see you in the depths of the Blue Age.

• Less than three weeks out seems to be not the time to announce new special guests, but you are not TCAF, who add on until the very last moment before opening their doors. The newest tranche of guests from around the world includes Seth, Bessora, Margreet de Heer, Erica Henderson, Kid Koala, Rachel Lindsay, Jonathan Ng, Richard Marazano, Alex Norris, Émilie Plateau, Jérémie Royer, David Rubin, Hiromi Takashima, Typex, Jhonen Vasquez, and Chip Zdarsky¹.

  TCAF will happen in and around the Toronto Reference Library (789 Yonge Street) on Saturday 11 May (9:00am to 5:00pm) and Sunday 12 May (10:00am to 5:00pm). Attendance is free, but some events will require tickets to control crowding.

Spam of the day:

Stop What You Are Doing And Look At This Very Good Offer !!

This Very Good Offer includes a coupon so I can advertise on Bing. I do not think you know what constitutes goodness with respect to offers.

_______________
¹ Who for once is at the end of the alphabet instead of that bastard Jim Zub².

² Jim Zub was kind enough to send a preview copy of issue #2 of his current comiXology series, Stone Star. As you may recall from launch day last month, issue #1 impressed me, and I can safely say that issue #2 builds on that framework and ramps up the narrative.

And, uh, looks like Zub’s now the last person to be mentioned in this post. Sorry, Chipster.

Vattu #800.

That is all.

You wouldn’t think so, but it is — that’s the number of pieces in the latest Baffler! from Chris Yates, the 3000th in the series. Five layers deep, colors all but indistinguishable from layer to layer, it’s a work of art. Serious enquiries only, please.

Other Big Round Numbers to note:

• If I’ve followed the news a’right, today marks the 4000th strip at Unshelved. That’s a lot of stories from the library (what, didn’t you know that every single Unshelved strip, including the most horrifying ones, are completely true and taken directly from writer Gene Ambaum’s life?). Congrats to the webcomics power duo of Ambaum and Bill Barnes, and here’s to another 4000.
• Hey, know what’s almost the same as 4000 strips? 400. What? It’s only one digit different. Anyways, fans of the Greatest Superhero Ever will want to make a special effort to see what Wonderella’s up to on Saturday, as that will be strip #400. I bet she jumps hella high and also yells at Hitlerlla and maybe also teaches a lesson. It’s what superheroes do.

Not big round numbers:

• Boulet paints the iconic image from Augie and the Green Knight in only five and a half minutes (with a little help from YouTube).
• Huh, accidentally called it: last time I mentioned Jeph Jacques it was also in proximity to Augie and the Green Knight, where I speculated that the second strip (which his burgeoning Patreon would prompt) might deal with the concept of AI rights in his QC-verse. Looks like he’s not waiting for the as-yet unnamed second strip to tackle some of those issues, as today’s QC reveals. This is going to be good.

Spam of the day:

fleen.com, with region cricket, a well known fact their co-workers may state in order to as well as bemoan within equivalent amounts.

I spend a tidy sum to spray for region crickets, so I’ll thank you not to imply we have them.

Guhhh, this bout of the Martian Death Flu apparently wanted to cram four or five days worth of feeling crappy into about twelve hours. I’m over the worst of it, and don’t actually feel bad, but I could use about ten hours of sleep. Thankfully, the snow appears to have stopped with less accumulation than would have required shoveling, so yay. Oh, yes, also webcomics.

I don’t think that there’s a world-builder of alien¹ environments and characters² that’s more accomplished, more thorough, more in tune with the totality of what’s being dreamed up and then deposited on the page³ for you to read than Evan Dahm. We’re conditioned by years — decades — of entertainment to think of not human as human, but slightly taller/shorter with different ears/nose/forehead, possibly a vocal tic, and entirely analogous to one particular culture, but Dahm’s creatures and characters and architecture and scripts and, and, and spring from a place that isn’t merely the familiar with a smear of paint and some prosthetics.

Case in point: Overside.

I’ve lost count of how many cultures and species and languages and geographies and histories Dahm has created to populate this place that feels organically⁴ real, and for each of those that he shares with us, there are hints about many more just around the corner. Junti becomes the most curious and inventive Surin in history and takes to the skies and it is exhilarating … but around each of those corners and alleys surrounding the Chapterhouse enclave there’s a debate, a haggle, an argument, a conspiracy taking place, because the city of Sahta is more than just the scene that’s being depicted now — it’s someplace that Dahm has made breathe since the first time we glimpsed it.

By the way, we spent 200 pages building up the story of Vattu, whose world can’t conceive of such a city. And as of yesterday, he’s spent another 300 pages building up the experience of Vattu (and Junti, and other captives, exiles, citizens, and rulers, highborn and low) in that city, and bringing us along for the ride. We’ve learned bits of culture, society, religious thought, calendrical structure, climate, politics, economy, and natural philosophy⁵, never laid out explicitly, always sneaking in at the periphery of whatever’s happening on the main stage.

So there we are, 500 pages of the current Overside story, rendered in glorious color, and we might be approaching the 40% mark of the story. There’s much more ahead of us than we have behind, and there are many more eras and lands in Overside still to share their secrets⁶. Given that Dahm’s about to be able to ship the first volume of Vattu, this would be a good time to catch up on at least one of those stories (there are others), and luxuriate in all the world-building. You’ll be glad you did.

_______________
¹ In the sense of not like that which is familiar rather than the sense of outer space monsters.

² I should probably say people instead.

³ Or screen; work with me here.

⁴ Free-range, even. Locally-sourced.

⁵ I almost said science, but I think that Junti is the first Surin to approach unweight — and life, possibly — with the critical, systemic approach that demarcates the line between natural philosophers and scientists. She’s going to spark the Sahtan equivalent of the Enlightenment, that girl is.

⁶ Not to mention what he’s doing with L Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Dear glob, that’s going to be beautiful.

Back in April, Chris Yates (this blog’s favorite Tintin¹ with a scrollsaw) celebrated nine years making Baffler!s, for a total of 2222 of the handmade wooden mental torture devices, making an average of just under 250 Baffler!s per year, or about one puzzle every day and a half. You’d naturally be curious what Mr Yates was up to in the time since.

How about producing puzzles at more than twice the usual rate, despite having weeks lost to conventions and travel?

Yesterday saw the release of Baffler!s #2499 through #2511, making 289 more puzzles in less than five months. Okay, granted, some are pretty similar and pretty simple², but some of those puzzles are fiendishly clever and complex, more than making up for the simpler ones.

Best of all, Yates was so heads-down in work mode that he didn’t realize that a Big Round Number was coming up, meaning that #2500 was not one of his usual insane anniversary pieces, but rather something pretty appropriate for a guy that runs in comics circles.

That’s a lot of damn puzzles, and no sign of a slowdown in sight. Here’s hoping that Mr Yates keeps all his fingers and that his puzzlecutting imagination continues without pause for as long as he finds this mode of creative expression to be remunerative and to his liking.

_______________
¹ Tintin himself makes an appearance in #2499.

² Bonus points to Yates for titling these Baffler!s — and four others — with a reference to Warhol.

How big?

• How about 10? Real Life hit the ten year mark yesterday, and celebrated with a rare Sunday posting. Creator Greg Dean promises that the week will be following the Inside the Comic Studio with James Lipton theme in celebration.
• Okay, okay, how does 500 sound? A Softer World rolled over its 500th update over the weekend, with a particularly wacked-out triptych of existential horror (starring Meredith Gran).
• Okay, if those don’t do it for you, let’s try … 5. Blind Ferret Supremo (or humble shopkeep? only his mother knows for sure) Ryan Sohmer had a damn interesting announcement on Friday afternoon:
  

  I have always been vocal about my beliefs regarding a career in webcomics. It takes a great deal of work and dedication, a greater deal of luck and a myriad of other ingredients to make it work, but it CAN work. A career in this field is a viable option. Like anything else however, an education would provide a huge leg up.

  Because of that, and our desire to help others break through, we have decided to create The Rayne Summers Webcomic Scholarship, at The Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont.

  Beginning in the fall of ’10, we will be covering the full tuition for the selected applicant. The applicant who, I might add, is working towards a career in webcomics. Over the course of the next 5 years, we plan on adding 1 student per year, thus by 2015, the Scholarship will be putting 5 students through the program per year.

  Let’s put that in concrete terms: for the current academic year (2009 – ’10), tuition at CCS is $16,000; given the economics of higher education, the absolute best case is that next year (when the scholarship starts) it will be only slightly more. In five years, with five students? Very little chance that will come to less than $100,000 per annum that BFE are ponying up to help create the next generation of webcomickers.

  And here’s the thing: every time I talk to Sohmer — every. damn. time. — I come away with two impressions:

  1. He’s funny, personable, and I like him
  2. He is completely, but cheerfully, mercenary in his outlook to a degree that would make any self-respecting Ferengi blush

  By that second point, I mean that all all times he has a monomaniacal focus on what will continue to maintain and grow his business; he approaches that end of the creative game like nobody else this side of Robert Khoo. He has his eyes on his audience, their disposable incomes, and potential competitors for that pool of money, and doesn’t waver in giving them his full attention because he knows that Daddy’s supply of Red Bull isn’t going to pay for itself (actually, given the amount that fans bring him at conventions, it just might … but work with me here).

  And by this scholarship, what Sohmer’s doing is creating potential competitors for himself, “because he can”. Ladies and gentlemen, that is either the act of a clueless, hubristic fool, or a careful, calculating (potentially evil?) genius. My money’s on the latter.

• One last BRN for the day: 1. Doesn’t sound very big, or very round. It’s the number of strips so far in a brand-new webcomic called Max vs. Max, and normally a new-out-of-the-gate effort wouldn’t get press here. But this one is from Wes Molebash, of the now-folded You’ll Have That, so I’m pretty confident that this one will do okay. Get in on the ground floor.

Just under ten years ago, David “Damn You” Willis launched his rebooted Walkyverse¹ comic, Dumbing Of Age. In the 9 years, 11 months, 3 weeks, and 5 days since then, the story has progressed from college move-in day through about … eight weeks of story. Up to midterms or so, a rate of about 5 days of story time per real-world year.

Since Sunday, the story has wordlessly jumped forward three whole months, saving us about 15 years of daily reading. Given that Thursday is the actual tenth anniversary, I expect we’ll get one more timeskip update tomorrow, and we’ll finally reach second semester on Thursday. Which means that in four strips, Willis has shifted the rate of story time:real time up to ten years per sememster, meaning we’ll see graduation sometime in 2090 instead of 2170 at the old rate.

Given that comic strips have a long history of being passed down to third and even fourth generation creative teams, I have no doubt that Dumbing Of Age will still be running when graduation comes in, whenever that may be. In any event, congratulations to Willis on ten years of DOA and 23 years of continuous webcomicking. That’s a damn big round number.

In other news:

• We’re down to the wire on the Ignatz voting, with votes due before 9 September, which means you have until 11:59pm EDT to get yours in. The bricks will be awarded on Saturday the 12th, which is actually a very leisurely turnaround time for the Ignatzen, with the tallies normally taking between close of the exhibit hall and 9:30pm the same day.

  For reference, given the poor situation that the Ignatzes have found themselves in, I voted Michael DeForge for Outstanding Artist rather than personal fave Rosemary Valero-O’Connell. In the Outstanding Onnline Comic category, I had a dilemma because the work is all very good. But what do you do when end up with a short editorial comic like I Exist (by Breena Nuñez) up against a words+pictures poem like Like The Tide (by Isabella Rotman), an Insta account of single-panel gags (by Gabby Schulz), and a long-stretches-silent, page-a-week updater like Superpose (by Seosamh & Anka). I tossed my vote to Witchy (by Ariel Ries) because I dig the story. Good luck to all of the nominees.

• Know what else is happening this weekend, virtually? NCSFest. I lost track of it in the lockdown, but I got an email today that it’s going on this weekend, including the Reuben Awards, which will be broken up into six separate programs (the programming page doesn’t have hard start times, but the day’s programming starts at 10:00am EDT).

  I wasn’t involved in the process this year, so I couldn’t tell you anything about the webcomic awards beyond what’s been publicly shared. The Online Comics — Long Form nominees are Steven Conley for The Middle Age, Maaria Laurinen for Phantomland, and Alec Longstreth for Isle Of Elsi. The most interesting thing there is that Phantomland is on Tapas, which is about three revolutions in comicking beyond what a large part of the NCS membership is aware of.

  The nominees for Online Comics — Short Form are Jim Benton, Christopher Grady, and Emma Hunsinger. The short forms don’t have specific titles to go with the creators, but I’ll wager that Hunsinger is on the list because of How To Draw A Horse as much as anything else. That’s magnificent work, but so is Grady’s Lunarbaboon. Benton’s a one-man IP factory, but I think he’s outclassed by the other two.

  But the Reubens news that has me most curious isn’t in the Online categories, it’s the Big Award Of The Night, the Cartoonist Of The Year, the one that’s gone to folks like Schulz, Johnston, Watterson, Larson, Trudeau, Amend, Thompson, Guisewite, and other legends of cartooning. The nominees are:

  • Hilary Price
  • Lynda Barry
  • Terri Libenson
  • Mark Tatulli

  That’s three solid practitioners of the comic strip and one living legend in Lynda Barry. Also, four nominees where normally there are only three². Also, three women. And … wait, I’m being told that there’s a fifth nominee:

  • Raina Telgemier

  Okay, the NCS almost never nominates somebody whose work is outside the newsprint mode — comic strips, editorial comics, magazine work, all periodicals is my point — and the last one to win Cartoonist Of The Year from outside that world was Matt Groening back in 2002³. I don’t think they’ve ever recognized a graphic novelist, and certainly not anybody whose medium is middle grade autobio aimed at girls.

  That sound you hear is the industry coming to grips with the fact that the literal Old Boys Club is fading from existence and getting replaced by those damn Millennials. Gonna have to figure out when that broadcast is and pay some damn attention to it.

Edit to add: The NCSFest schedule page now has start times for sessions, instead of just durations.

Spam of the day:

Currency printed is NOT wealth, real wealth is what we produce (in terms and goods and services) and exchanged for currency (a measure of your productivity).

Oh crap, this is a pitch for some new blockchain fantasy, which is even more of a fiction that actual money. Go peddle your shit to somebody that’s bad at math.

_______________
¹ So named because a series of related comics — Roomies!, It’s Walky!, Joyce And Walky!, and Shortpacked! — had one David “Walky” Walkerton as a central character, to whom all of the others could trace relationships. The Walkyverse itself debuted 13 years to the day before DOA.

² I mean, since Pastis broke his Susan Lucci streak last year, may as well open it up. [shrugmoji]

³ Okay, Glen Keane, animator, won a couple of years ago, but being the son of Bil Keane of The Family Circus means he’s part of that world. The only others I can think of are Sergio Aragonés and Will Eisner, the latter of whom won in 1998 — well past his creative peak, and clearly as a lifetime achievement.

Couple of Howards to talk about today. Weird how that works out.

• I’m either one day late or two days early on this, but there’s something fairly tremendous is going on with my evil twin:
  

  Calling it: 6pm, July 21, 2020, I finished inking the last Schlock Mercenary strip of my 7,345-day run of daily-without-fail updates.

  Except I got the math wrong. 7,348. Because Friday is still three days off.

  I speak, naturally, of the fact that Howard Tayler, the indefatigable machine of webcomics, was working with only a two day buffer.

  Oh, and the 20 years, 1 month, 1 week, and 5 day streak, that’s important too.

  MET will be taking some well-earned time off and some overdue attention to his health, which has been challenging for some time now. And I want to be very clear about something as I add my congratulations to those of pert-near everybody: Howard, buddy, evil twin from a mirror dimension, you waited too long to take these three months. I think that somewhere along the line the idea of having a single, uninterrupted story became more important than it should have, and you neglected yourself to a degree you should not have.

  And while Tayler is being lauded for his achievement — and rightfully so! — we, all of us who are holding up this achievement and maybe shifting our expectations a little bit to the no skip days ever side of the spectrum need to remember that behind that beloved strip we never want to wait for an update from? There’s one or more people whose obligations is first and foremost to their own well being.

  I’m guilty of over-emphasizing the streak aspect of Tayler’s longevity in webcomics as much as anybody, and wish I could go back to every anniversary or Big Round Number when I extolled his achievement and excise however many mentions of and he did it without skipping any days, with its unspoken, not serious (but not entirely unserious) subtext of now get back to the drawing board, Comic Boy, and entertain me.

  You done good, Howard. I expect that you are going to sleep in until next Tuesday or so, and I expect everybody that is making noise about the capital-A Achievement to resolve to purchase stuff from his store, as well as to resolve that we don’t place such expectations on his next project, or any other creator, ever again. Deal? Deal.

• Speaking of misplaced emphasis, I want to point you to the most clueless, self-proclaimed Kickstarter expert of 2020. Dude (of course it’s a dude) emailed C Spike Trotman with a mealy-mouthed, faintly negging description of the latest Iron Circus Kickstart, offering to make it successful.

  Spike. This Spike, who apparently would be incapable of making a success from a horror anthology by Abby freakin’ Howard without taking the extremely important step of … paying some rando thirty five bucks.

  Don’t be this guy. And get a copy of The Crossroads At Midnight which, granted, has a pretty hefty shipping charge associated but it’s also 380 damn pages long full of Howardian goodness unsettling creepiness. Maybe don’t read it alone in the dark.

Today In SDCC@Home:
The virtual show floor is live, which allows you to click on a booth’s exhibitor and see if they have any merch specials. Panels start in a couple of hours (as I write this).

Spam of the day:

Sterilizes and cleans your room within 30-60 minutes

Ooooh, a UV gizmo with a rechargable battery! Know what’ll sterilize and clean (those are actually different things) my room in 30-60 minutes? Me, with a rag and a 10% bleach solution in a bucket.

Scared by fancy percent-type numbers? Get a bucket of water, add bleach until it smells about twice as strong as the chlorine a pool. Wipe surfaces, allow to air-dry at least four minutes. Kills everything you’re promising plus more stuff including the novel coronavirus. Used exactly this method last night to clean up all the blood that a trauma patient with a head injury thoughtfully left on our stretcher cushion.

The thing about a network outage (such as I had yesterday) is that it doesn’t just prevent me from participating in a meeting or two. As mentioned on previous occasions, I teach for a technology company, and an interruption means class isn’t happening. That material ain’t gonna teach itself, so we’re behind for the rest of the week. Add to that the fact that three of my students this week are in Mexico City and suddenly piped up this morning We’re having an earthquake, we have to go outside now just put us further behind¹.

But thankfully, we’re in a portion of class with lengthy exercises. While I haven’t had much time to look deep into [web]comics news today (or, honestly, for the past couple days), I did notice a couple of things. They’re extremely random.

• Chris Hallbeck made my physics-loving heart sing with today’s Pebble And Wren: an explanation of ice cubes, and how we don’t shove around cold in making them, we pull heat out. I sometimes pity the children of today, growing up without Beakman’s World², because where else are they going to learn There’s no such thing as cold, there’s only more heat and less heat? Apparently, from Hallbeck.

  As long as we’re mentioning Hallbeck, this is your early notice that he is about to hit a Big Round Number of Maximumble (current strip: #1985), which I notice puts him past the just over 1900 strips he did at The Book Of Biff. The point, to the extent I have one, is that 1902+ 1985 + 566 (Minimumble) + 292 (P&W) = a metric squatload³ of comics (or, to be exact, 4745) since he started back in January of Aught-Six, or about three weeks after this page launched. Given that there have been 5286 days since the launch of Biff, that’s damn near 0.9 original strips per day, and over that threshold if you count his collaborations with other creators. Dang, Chris, well done.

• Speaking of well done, I can always count on Erika & Matt to find a way to rise the challenge of [waves hands about helplessly] all of this. To quote the modern-day version of the St Crispin’s Day speech in today’s strip:
  

  We can’t take time off, but we can do the next best thing: A simpler comic. Let’s just get back to our roots and back to the title of this comic with a good ol’ fashioned sex toy review. We can’t fix the world but, by god, we can review a vibrator. [emphasis original]

  I would follow Erika Moen into battle, no shit. And since I don’t believe that we mentioned the end of the Drawn To Sex: Our Bodies And Health Kickstart. The campaign finished with US$54,027 of a US$7K goal. We didn’t bother with the FFF mk2 because it funded so quickly and those huge Day One campaigns mess with the formula. But I’ma say that any campaign that ends up at 780% of goal is a success. If you didn’t pledge, I guess you can wait until November when they go on sale.

Spam of the day:

Thank you for the quickly delivery to my home. When I saw the order. I immediately saw that something was wrong with it, and when I opened it, the product was unfortunately broken. I am a regular customer, and I regularly order from your shop.

You’re not even trying, Jesus.

I don’t mean that Jesus isn’t trying, I guess that’s his whole deal if you believe in that. I meant it as an intensifier to express the depth of my contempt for this would-be identity thief.

_______________
¹ They tell me that things got shaky in MC, but didn’t mention any damage when they returned. Something tells me that closer to the epicenter in Oaxaca, it’s gonna be not such good news.

² Or even Bill Nye The Science Guy. Nye’s an actual engineer whereas Beakman was played by an actor, but honestly, I was always more of a Beakman fan. Zaloom!

² Which, given the conversion ratio of metric squatloads of 2.54:1, means an Imperial squatload is equal to approximately 1868.11 strips.