Pretty much everybody in comics is talking about the page rates survey that dropped over the weekend. Some few thoughts:

• This is a very small sample size (60), but as far as I know, the largest published data set on such things so far. It’ll get better as more people share information, but at the moment it must be considered preliminary and not yet fully accurate.
• The survey combines different kinds of pay (work-for-hire vs Image’s more creator-owned approach), which makes the small sample size even more subject to wobbles in the data.
• That being said, holy crap BOOM! does not come off well. Their rates are crap and there are lots of comments indicating the degree to which they pay slowly and randomly. Since their numbers are based on work-for-hire, they may not apply to creator-owned work, but very possibly the (apparently pervasive) late payment issues apply to both sides of the publishing game.

I’ll note that the survey lists Smut Peddler (that is to say, Iron Circus Comics) as a Misc Publisher, at a page rate of US$50 (script + finished art) plus potential for artist bonuses (but not guaranteed). For reference, the four projects that ICC has run under that not-guaranteed bonus plan have paid an additional US$450, US$300, US$1700, and US$400¹ per page, making ICC’s page rate effectively US$350 to US$1750, meaning the least paid ICC rates are comparable to DC/Marvel, and her top rate blows everybody else away [Editor’s note: see below] (the only comparable rate is that of Cards Against Humanity — US$1000/page for art and script — presumably for their comics anthologies in their Holiday Bullshit packages).

[Editor’s note resumes: Okay, I had a bad misinterpretation of ICC’s bonus structure, which was kindly pointed out by Alert Reader N in the comments, and by ICC supremo Spike via email. ICC’s bonus is per-job, not per-page, which makes the effective page rate variable. However, that does raise the ICC rates into the triple-digit range for much of what they’ve published and certainly puts them above some established comic book companies in terms of effective rates, although not on par with The Big Two, as was originally stated.

Fleen apologizes for the error and confusion.]

To date, that’s been limited to anthology work, but since ICC is in open-submission territory for book-length projects, I’ma guess that Spike is going to be writing checks with a crapload more zeros on them than any of the established publishers. Creators that have not bought into the myth that you need to suffer don’t-even-cover-rent jobs to establish your career, take note.

Oh, and those who like the work of creators that aren’t getting screwed on their rates? Iron Circus has a double-header² of Kickstarters coming³ up on 25 January. New smut!

On the off chance that you want to be one of those creators that has pride in their work and wants to be paid fairly for it, time to brush up on your skills! Danielle Corsetto is offering a light version of her illustration class via Patreon at the low, low price of US$20 per month. Folks, that is the greatest bargain in the history of illustration and I urge you to hop on that even if you’re pretty good. You can always learn a trick or two and up your own game by comparing notes and experiences.

Spam of the day:

View Photos of Senior Singles on Match

Okay, what the hell, you are identifying senior as over 45! Is this spam run by the same genius that’s decided to send me Medicare information nearly 20 years early? I’m sending all the prepaid envelopes back with YOU’RE TWO DECADES EARLY, FUCK OFF scrawled across the paperwork in Sharpie. It’s kinda fun, actually.

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¹ For Smut Peddler 2012, The Sleep of Reason, Smut Peddler 2014, and the not yet released New World, respectively.

² You’ll see what I did there.

³ And there.

Because nobody appreciated a running gag like Mr The Forg Frog. He probably also knows how Fozzie spelled jenglefenz, where I am stuck going the phonetic route.

• Well, maybe? It might be a callback, or a running gag. In any event, in his guest strip for Questionable Content today, Zach Weinersmith has taken the ball lobbed by KB Spangler yesterday and run with it. The mind boggles to think of where this ball — that is to say, ass-rocket — ends up. Could this be the end of brave buttprobe¹ 2015-TAYLER-AWESOME²? We’ll find out tomorrow. Oh, and in case you want the extra gag that Weinersmith includes in his comics — the so-called votey — it’s here.
• Some numbers for you: US$55,368 and 1521; those are, respectively, the total funding and total number of backers for the latest Spike Trotman-helmed anthology, New World. This total comports with the Fleen Funding Formula Mark II predication range of US$55K to US$83K, although just barely. Might have to adjust the formula a bit, but it’ll take more data to do so.

  If you want to add in her earlier anthologies — Smut Peddler 2012, Smut Peddler 2014, and The Sleep of Reason, we can add some more numbers, in my continuing quest to determine exactly how much more popular porn is than non-porn in comics anthologies. To wit: US$268,401 vs US$102,293 and 8000 vs 2913 (funding totals and backer totals for the porn projects and non-porn projects, respectively); these give us porn:non-porn support ratios of 2.62:1 (ponying up the dough) and 2.75:1 (asses in the seats). Oddly, non-porn takes the lead in financial outlay per backer, leading US$35.12 to US$33.96.

  Oh, one more number that needs to be considered here: US$400, which is the bonus that Spike will pay to each of her contributors on New World, per the Iron Circus Comics overfunding model. If you had contributed to each of Spike’s anthologies, she would have paid you an additional three thousand and fifty dollars above the upfront page rates, which ain’t a bad piece of extra change.

  Hey, young/up-and-coming talent! Want to get a guaranteed paycheck, show your best work next to some of the best creators in webcomics, and get more money that you were promised³? If patterns hold true, Spike will be announcing another anthology for next year, very possibly porn-related (requiring at least one woman on each creative team), which would skew to the high end on the popularity and bonus scales.

  Start brainstorming now. Read and follow the submission rules. Bring your A-game. If you don’t get chosen, be gracious in public and ask people you trust to critique your work in private so it’s better next time. It’s a golden opportunity sitting out there for those with the skills and drive to do top-notch work. Before you know it, you’ll be one of those best creators in webcomics that the next cohort of young talent looks up to.

Spam of the day:

My family members all the time say that I am wasting my time here at web, however I know I am getting know-how every day by reading thes fastidious articles.

I think I’m gonna have to go with your family, Sport. Get yourself a better hobby.

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¹ So to speak.

² It’s canon, finally answering the question that had left the public puzzled for weeks.

³ For extra level-up points, spend the bonus buying additional copies of the anthology from Spike at the creator’s rate, sell for even more profit at shows.

Hey, everybody! ‘Dja miss me? It’s going to take a day or two to get fully back into the swing of things, so today is mostly about me getting caught up on things that happened while I was gone.

• Going furthest back you may or may not have noticed that Jillian Tamaki did an interview with The AV Club about SuperMutant Magic Academy, This One Summer¹, her episodes of Adventure Time, and more. It’s a great conversation and I recommend it to you if you hadn’t seen it before.
• Howard Tayler² has been running a fairly massive Kickstart for an RPG to be set in his Schlockiverse for the past month or so; the management of expectations and stretch goal announcements have done well to make the traditional last-week bump in backers and pledges into more of a last fortnight, as well as causing that rarest of things on the Long Tail: an uptick in funding predictions.

  As I write this line, the Planet Mercenary campaign will be wrapping up in about five minutes, somewhere in the vicinity of US$350,000 (or 777% of goal)³. For reference, the Fleen Funding Formula Mark 2 would have predicted a whopping US$206K — US$309K which he’s handily exceeded. Well done, Tayler and partners, and enjoy the massive pile of creative output that you’ll be engaging in for the next year or so.

• Speaking of Kickstarts, Spike Trotman launched her latest on Friday; as mentioned in the before times, she continues to alternate anthology topics, with a Smut Peddler followed by a specific genre, followed by more porn, and then another genre. It’s Sci Fi’s turn, and New World (specifically dealing with the topic of cultures coming into contact/conflict) is off to a rousing start.

  From launch on Friday to nowish, it’s reached 102% of the US$20,000 goal, meaning we’re now into the Iron Circus Comics Overfunding Bonus Plan: every contributor (or contributor team) just earned a US$50 bonus on top of the page rate they’re already been paid with another US$50 for each additional US$5000 on the campaign. For references, the bonuses paid for Smut Peddler 2012, The Sleep of Reason, and Smut Peddler 2014 were US$650, US$300, and US$1700 (!), respectively.

  In any event, four weeks left to make Spike write as large a check as possible to her incredibly skilled list of contributors; given the FFFmk2 prediction of somewhere between US$55K and US$83K, would be on the order of US$400 to US$650 a pop (which would be in line with the bonuses pad for TSOR and further proving the point that porn is innately more popular than anything else). This is why people want to work on Spike’s books — she pays, then she pays more.

• Finally, Zubday — that regularly-occurring holiday that happens every Wednesday when there’s a new Jim Zub comic (or two, or more) on the stands — comes early this week. That’s because today is Zubday Prime, aka Zub’s birthday. Early reports are that Zub is spending the day much like any other: planning to take over the world writing and editing and merchandising and designing and generally making comics. In other words, a good day. Happy Zubday, everybody.

Spam of the day:

send 10,000 blog comments Fee just $ 100
send 100,000 blog comments Fee just $ 800
send 200,000 blog comments Fee just $ 1200

Yes, please, let me give you money to make the percentage of my life spent on crap comment pruning even greater than it already is.

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¹ Which — goodness! — is a year old now. Time sure does fly.

² My evil twin, etc.

³ Actual total: 5,312 backers for a total of US$348,641, or 775% of a US$45,000 goal.

Very cold. Right now, it’s warmer in traditionally blizzard-swept regions like the Dakotas than it is here in New Jersey. My dog has gone completely lethargic¹. The only joy in life comes across the laser-etched wires of the internet, and that will have to sustain us until Spring comes, or we are devoured by ice weasels.

• It was around the first of December of last year that the implications of the European Union tax-harmonization changes going into effect on 1 January 2015 (aka VATMOSS) first broke into the consciousness of webcomickers (as well as others selling e-goods on the internet). Uncertainty about the ability to comply with the requirements² led most creators on both sides of the Atlantic to decide that they would have no choice but to suspend sales to EU residents.

  However, I’m seeing word from more than one creator (KB Spangler, who was among the first to raise the VATMOSS alarm, as well as Jon Rosenberg) that Gumroad — a very popular mechanism for selling things like e-goods — is going to be addressing the VATMOSS headaches:

  Just got an email from @gumroad addressing changes because of #VATMOSS. Still reading over the terms but looks solid. Thanks, guys!

  Looks like @gumroad is changing their policy and they’re going to handle all the VAT bullshit on their end. Good. End of story.

  Gumroad’s announcement is here, with the critical piece being:

  We are tackling VAT in the same way. Going forward, this is what creators on Gumroad need to do to properly handle VAT for their digital products:

  Go back to making awesome stuff.

  In other words, we’re on it. Gumroad will collect VAT as required and remit it to the EU. You won’t need to fill out any forms, register for anything, or send anything out. Your (EU-based) customers, will see (and pay) the added VAT on their purchases.

  . . .

  These changes were neither easy nor cheap, but it was crucial to us to make this as smooth and invisible as possible. Handling VAT will cost us approximately 1% of each transaction. We’ve decided it is important to absorb that cost so there will be no change to our 5% + 25¢ fee.

  [emphasis original]

  I don’t use Gumroad to distribute anything so it’s likely that Spangler, Rosenberg, et. al., are getting additional details, but from the outside this looks like Gumroad has just given their clients a hell of a good reason to stay loyal to them, and once word spreads will likely be picking up new business. And as long as that’s one tax-related headache out of the way, how about you check out Brad Guigar’s guide to US sales tax over at Webcomics Dot Com; Guigar has kindly unlocked the subscription requirement for this post, so you can read the whole thing.

• Horrible weather and taxes! Can’t you come up with anything pleasant today, Gary? How about a new Perry Bible Fellowship strip, which has just been added to the main PBF site after sitting on Twitter for a couple of hours. Some things to note here:
  1. This is the sixth of the six new strips that Gurewitch announced a few weeks back
  2. Holy [fill in the blank] this thing is gorgeous; Gurewitch gets so much mileage out of his cartoony style (as in these recent examples) that I sometimes forget just how accomplished an artist he is
  3. It’s pretty much a perfect joke; there is nothing to add, nothing to trim away nothing that could make it better

  Go read it; we don’t know when we’ll get more.

• As a followup to KC Green announcing that Pinocchio would get an irregular schedule to allow him to work on other things, something really quite nice. And disturbing. Nice and disturbing. Green was a contributor to The Sleep of Reason, and he’s shared his contribution to that anthology with us. I AM SICK is based on the church Green attended as a child and is a profoundly unsettling story (not unlike his earlier The Dog’s Sins), and reinforces my belief that self-contained longform stories are where Green really shines. Go read it, but maybe be careful being around anybody with flu-like symptoms afterwards.

Spam of the day:

[incoherent string of placeholder symbols ]

Thanks, and while I’m sure that your selection of mail-order brides is excellent, you seem to be mistaking me for somebody who buys into MRA theories of gender roles and that makes you terrible. Please go be a garbage person elsewhere.

________________
¹ Although, given that he’s a greyhound, that’s not unusual.

² In that a scheme designed to get large vendors like Amazon to pay up their fair share of VAT was going to whack mostly small vendors who couldn’t possibly meet the regulatory data-gathering and retention requirements, and there was no lower threshold of sales to trigger the compliance requirement.

When I think of the spirit of raw entrepreneurship in comics — that do whatever it takes to make it scrappiness — I think of two people who take very nearly opposite approaches. Today, we’ll be talking about Spike¹; she’s the master of logistics, wrangling ever-growing numbers of creators onto her anthologies, setting deadlines, making arrangements for projects sometimes a year or more in advance, and doing it all for the absolute minimum cost and maximum return spread as widely as possible². She knows how to do things in a frugal fashion, and having sufficiently shared that advice with the world, she’s now giving it away for free, so she’s a damn philanthropist as well.

Did I mention that today is Spike’s birthday? And that in celebration, she’s giving all of us a present? Yesterday she launched her latest Kickstarter, for the sequel to Poorcraft, dedicated to the notion of traveling on the cheap. Poorcraft: Wish You Were Here, years in the making, is once again illustrated by Diana Nock, and written by perhaps the most intrepid wanderer that comics has ever known, Ryan Estrada³. He’s been everywhere, man. In other words, she’s chosen the two best people to work on this project, and it deserves your support.

As of this writing, we’re at just about 24 hours since launch, and close enough to 40% of the US$15,000 goal as makes no difference. More importantly, the nearly 400 backers are overwhelmingly pledging at the low reward levels (US$500 tier [cover cameo]: 1; US$250 tier [interior cameo]: 1; US$150 tier [special thanks]: 0; US$25 tier [retailers only, five hard copies]: 1; US$18 and under tiers [various combos of hard and soft copies, possibly including the first Poorcraft]: 369), so while this will not be a record-setting pledge total, it’s going to be a project with mass support (or it won’t be a project at all). Go wish Spike a happy birthday, and snag yourself a copy of Poorcraft: Wish You Were Here.

Spam of the day:

This will be enough time that it will take to become free of debt all you need to do is visit the online site with the money lender you happen to be thinking about looking for a loan.

NO. Want to know why I’m saying NO? Spike’s gotcha covered, Sparky … start here and read forward to learn about the lowlifes that would prey on you. Then go back to page one and read the whole thing. As a reward, you can read the first thirty pages of Wish You Were Here, which Spike is posting one page a day during the Kickstarter campaign.

Note that you’ll have to mess around in the archive to find things; on the main Poorcraft site, pages are numbered backwards from the most-recently-added, so page 1 of WYWH is at http://poorcraft.com/page/2 today, but it’ll be at http://poorcraft.com/page/3 tomorrow. You’re smart, you’ll figure it out.

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¹ For reference, the other is Rich Stevens; the guy comes up with an idea on Monday, puts it up for sale on Tuesday, takes it back down on Wednesday, and is dropping the packages in the mail on Thursday. Offhand whimsies become major sellers, sudden sales and clearances keep things fresh, and he approaches merchandise like it was guerilla warfare.

² Want to quantify it? Taking the published bonus schedules from the anthologies and multiplying by the number of contributors, you get US$17,550 for Smut Peddler 2012, US$7800 for Sleep of Reason, and US$40,000 for Smut Peddler 2014 for a total of more than US$65,000 over the past two years that she could have kept (she’d already paid her contributors) but instead spread around.

³ It is perhaps worth noting here that I first met Ryan the night before he walked out of San Diego Comic Con and across the border into Mexico, to start a commune dedicated to cartooning. That was more than seven years ago and he’s never stopped moving for very long since (although getting married seems to have rooted him to one spot for the past couple of years; then again, it’s in South Korea, a country that features a language that I don’t believe he knew how to speak before showing up).

• Welp, she teased us on Friday and now we know that yep, it’s porn, horror, porn, and then sci-fi¹:
  

  New World is a black-and-white sci-fi/fantasy comic anthology set to debut in the spring of 2015. Iron Circus Comics is currently seeking 8–10 submissions with the theme of exploration, colonization, conquest, assimilation, “going native,” appropriation, imperialism, strained relations… essentially, what happens when mutually un-contacted cultures, continents, and species collide. We want your strangest stories about situations where characters are encountering—and having to deal with—the alien.

  But please, let’s not do SF tropes we’ve seen a million times (much like Sleep of Reason banned zombies); Spike mentions the sort of creator whose work you should look to as good examples of the stuff she’s seeking, and dropped names like Evan Dahm and Carla Speed McNeil which means damn I’ma need a copy of New World in six months time or so. Oh, and did I mention the creators she’s already got lined up? In addition to McNeil and Dahm, she’s got Sophie Goldstein, Zach Weinersmith, Abbadon, Adoradora, Evan Palmer², Ezra Claytan Daniels, Matt Howarth, and Michelle Czajkowski already lined up, with an equal number of creators to be added.

  And since this is Spike we’re talking about, she’ll be duplicating the stretch-goals-equals-more-money-for-creators model that’s worked out so very well for Sleep of Reason and both Smut Peddlers. The application form is here and you’ve got until 20 November to get your submissions in.

• Speaking of the Scis and the Fis, it appears that we’re going to get a fairly longform story at Penny Arcade on Tuesdays and Thursdays, dealing with the AI rights in the film noire 1930s that is Automata³. I’ve for a while held the for a while that the P-A lads do their best work in the realm of filthy continuity, and ever since the original Automata and its followup short story, I’ve wanted to see more of this concept.
• Leaving behind the Sci, but still with the Fi: Order of the Stick book five has just been announced for pre-order. This is not a frequent occurrence — the famed OotS Kickstarter blowout of Aught-Twelve was to reprint books thta had previously been printed, not to come up with a new collection. Book five, subtitled Blood Runs in the Family contains all the comics from #673 to #946 — nearly 300 updates (call it five years worth), many of which are the equivalent of multiple pages, resulting in nearly 400 pages of thick, lush, glorious color. Order today, get it in early December for convenient year-end gifting.

[Maybe] Spam of the day:

Seems he successfully explains this away in the next strip! Clever :P

Okay, the thing is, I’m not sure this is spam. There’s no links to knockoff sunglasses and/or boner pills, and the text is reasonably coherent. It’s one of several comments that were submitted in reference to my speculations as to what the heck is going on in Drive right now and could be read as a reaction to that. Except for one thing: Dave Kellett hasn’t released the next strip yet, so the comment is either from the future, or is full of crap. Given that ambiguity, I’m pushing this one — if not fully into the spam category — away from the approved category. If you actually were commenting from the future (will have been commenting from the future? was to be commenting from the future? Man, tenses get all screwed up in discussions like this), drop me an email with the lottery numbers for the next multi-state lottery mondo jackpot and I’ll be happy to reinstate the comment.

_______________
¹ Then presumably more porn.

² Two times the Evans, two times the fun.

³ Not to be confused with the recent feature film of the same name which I understand is not very good.

We’ve got something for everybody today. Let’s dig in.

• Own a copy of Ryan North’s To Be Or Not To Be? Like me, did you think that you’d exhausted all the possible story paths last year? Au contraire, as North has been sharing some semi-walkthroughs of the story, at least one of which leads to a story point that I never encountered in my dozens of readings:
  

  It reads as a joke, but it isn’t one: if you do actually perform those calculations at the appropriate time in the book – and you’ll know it when you see it – their result will be a new page number to turn too, at which point you’ll continue your adventure as both Present Hamlet and Just Arrived From The Future Hamlet.

  That’s right: time travel. On the other hand, I did come across a story ending that involved the nature of reality itself, and a massive game of chess. Oh, and if you’re of a culinary bent, I also came across a tasty recipe, which North is also sharing with you:

  You will find yourself in a locked-room puzzle with only a few moves to dispose of the body before being discovered. Direct your choices towards making stew, and in one of the endings you will be rewarded with a really excellent recipe for stew.

• Each year, I know that Faith Erin Hicks is going to come up with a new graphic novel that’s going to knock my socks off, ranging from summer camp horror to high school intrigue, to scares mixed with a new high school to wacky hijinks involving high school and robots to the not-at-all-high-school-related Adventures of Superhero Girl, and many, many more. And today is her birthday! Everybody wish her a happy one, and encourage her to take at least one day off her breakneck pace of book-creatin’ to enjoy herself.
• New! Sweet Bro and Hell Of Jeff start a new weeklong story at Paradox Space. Be sure to double up on your sanity meds before you click.
• New! After a long series of delays while she worked on other projects (you know, little things like Sleep of Reason and Smut Peddler and running a publishing company), Spike is itchin’ to get back to the comic that she made her name on. In fact, a few weeks ago at SPX as I was giving her grief for leaving me hanging on Scip and his swirled cone (April, 2013) and the immediate aftermath (last Christmas), with a shift of scene in January and February she promised that Templar, AZ would be returning this month. With the clock counting down, we saw the news earlier today:
  

  Stream over! TAZ page status: 95% finished, from sketch to colors, in about 10 hours. It’ll go up later today. But my wrist hurts, so yeah.

  I’ve been obsessively refreshing my browser and it’s not up yet, but soon! I’d also like to remind Spike that I am in Chicago this week and would be very disappointed in person if the page did not go up as promised¹.

Spam of the day:

But why don’t you consider the narrow people with the loads of diet routine coke, Kraft meals, melted hen, furthermore cookies?

Melted … hen?

_______________
¹ In case you’ve never met me, that’s not a threat of getting physical; I’ve never met you and I’m pretty sure you could kick my ass. Rather, I would pester her relentless. In the immortal words of Kevin McDonald, I’m a whiner without dignity, I’ll make your life hell! [audio, video]

Quick logistics note: tomorrow I will be trying to wrap up work and get on a plane home on the starting afternoon of a long holiday weekend — surely there’s no way that could turn out poorly! — and as such will likely not have time to update. Carry on, think of England, and I’ll be back soon enough.

• A webcomic that I’ve been enjoying (typically in large chunks rather than smaller updates) is Brennan Lee Mulligan & Molly Ostertag’s Strong Female Protagonist, a series that knows that actual Strong Female Characters don’t adhere to traditional comic book definitions of strong. Alison’s a college student, a reluctant superhero, and doesn’t know anything with certainty other than the fact that Life has more problems than can be solved by beating them up.

  It’s a cracking good read, and if you also prefer to read it in chunks, the first four chapters (some 200+ pages) are getting the requisite print collection, via the requisite Kickstarter. Launched two days ago, it’s sitting at some 250% of its (very modest) US$8000 goal, and if the FFF holds true, we’re looking at about US$42K to US$84K as a total. That means that Ostertag and Mulligan will have to come up with some new stretch goals, as right now they top out at US$25K and at this rate they’ll hit that by the end of the weekend.

• Speaking of predicted finishes, Oh Joy, Sex Toy hit its goal in about 18 hours, and the FFF leads me to estimate a final total between US$65K and US$130K, meaning the guest artists are going to be getting a nice bump to their pagerates. Hooray for smut!

  Along the same lines, it might not be possible to pull a FFF calculation for Evil Inc volume 8 because so far the trend trace is falling outside the usual parameters: it went up from day one to day two, and unusually, the one-sixth-to-one-third ratio is (partly) falling outside the bounds of success. I think I have to declare this one an outlier, but if it weren’t, it’s projected finish would be between US$7500 and US$15,000¹.

• Welcome news to all who’ve been wondering where the next Benign Kingdom projects would lead. All of the principals have been busy with other projects, but reports of the brand’s diminishment appear to have been premature. Via B9er Evan Dahm, this notice at the Kingdom Tumblr:
  

  Benign Kingdom is getting moving on some COOL NEW STUFF, and the first item of that stuff is a pair of screen printed posters by Becky Dreistadt and myself. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be putting updates on our progress!

  Go check out the roughs and tell me that isn’t gorgeous. You can’t, you liar.

_______________
¹ Or a ratio of porn (Oh Joy, Sex Toy) to not-porn (Evil Inc volume 8) of 8.6667:1. The Smut Peddler 2014:Sleep of Reason ratio was only 2.8599:1, which also makes me think that EIv8 is skewed in this early campaign. That’s just too big a differential for how much people like porn (yes, such a statement can be made). Conclusion: I’m still at least 50 projects away from assigning a decent confidence level to the Fleen Funding Formula.

Relatively quiet weekend, relatively busy Monday. Let’s do this.

• Oh my, that blew up further than I thought it would; the last four days of Smut Peddler 2014 were in the top six days of the full campaign, and the final total just cleared US$185K, for creator bonuses of a staggering $US1700. Well done Spike, and everybody that loves the porns. Which, based upon the previous SP collection and the Sleep of Reason collection, leads us to the conclusion that porn is 2.8599 times as popular as horror.
• Speaking of Kickstarts, the latest book from Johnny Wander creators Yuko Ota and Ananth Panagariya¹ has just gone up, meaning you’ve got a chance to get a copy of Cuttings in a handsome hardcover, or an even-handsomer limited-edition hardcover. It would appear that this collection also includes perhaps my favorite Ota/Panagariya collaboration: PONY COP. Everybody jump on this so I can get PONY COP in a handsome hardcover book, please. As of this writing, Cuttings is just shy of 40% of the way to goal, which is just shy of 60% too little. Step it up, people. Do it for the children.
• TCAF, one of the best shows on the comics show calendar, runs this weekend in a now certified crack-smokin’-mayor-free Toronto. Today, the full programming slate was released, with multiple tracks of goodness packing the two days. There’s a full track for children (Kean Soo! Jeff Smith! Dave Roman! Ben Hatke! Raina Telgemeier!² Kazu Kibuishi! And many more!), a Canadian reading series (Tony Cliff! Karl Kerschl!Jillian & Mariko Tamaki! And more!), round tables and interviews and profiles (Lynn Johnston! Chip Zdarsky! Jeet Heer! Box Brown! Spike! Katie Shanahan! Rachel Duke! Mike Maihack! Noelle Stevenson! Kate Leth! Tom Spurgeon! Heidi Macdonald! Kate Beaton! Meredith Gran! KC Green! Tom McHenry! Jess Fink! Faith Erin Hicks! Becky Cloonan! Cameron Stewart! Becky Dreistadt! Ryan North!), and, of course, George.

  If you think I’m linking to anybody other than the mononymic George, you’re crazy.

• Not to do with Kickstarts, Cuttings, cats, or comics arts festivals, and possibly my even mentioning it could spiral out of control and cause the creator in question to ‘splode, but what the heck: Randy Milholland has heard the plaintive cries of his many fans and lo he has smiled upon us. There are finally — even now, unto the seventh generation we have waited — concrete plans for the first Something*Positive collection.

  It is a long way off, and will involve a lot of work on Milholland’s part, which means that everybody that’s ever wanted a copy had better be prepared to step the crap up and make a purchase³ when the time comes.

  And there was much rejoicing.

_______________
¹ Who were apparently cats all this time. Who knew?

² Speaking of Telgemeier, she’s just reached an astonishing 100 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list for Smile. Wowzers.

³ I am speaking here directly to the many, many people that have bitched to Randy over the years that because he did a donation drive to quit his day job and draw the strip a decade ago that they are entitled to as much free entertainment as they see fit to demand from him. Without fail, these people are never in Milholland’s records as actually having donated, but they have a massive sense of entitlement anyway. Time to quit the passive-aggressive games and prepare to finally drop some cash, fakers.

On Friday I was wondering if the new center aisle configuration would work at MoCCA Fest and it turns out, it sure did. You walked up the stairs and into the hall, jogged around the Society of Illustrators table (perhaps taking the time to marvel the surprisingly short line for Fiona Staples) and there you had it in front of you — an aisle designed purely for travel, with access to nearly the entire show floor. It was brilliant, as long as you didn’t get caught up in any of the mooring lines for Charlie Brown.

Speaking of, Charlie Brown was not the best thing above eye-level in the hall — it was the navigational signs that were found at each end of each rank of tables, which made getting around the show trivially simple one you realized one little thing: the booth numbers on each signpost represented both sides of a fabric divider line. I’m pretty sure that one small change to the signs (maybe a horizontal variation on the u-turn symbol) and they’ll be perfect.

One could argue that the signs weren’t even really needed in a venue as small as the 69th Regiment Armory, but you know what? Nobody’s ever done signposting this well before, in a large venue or a small one, and maybe now we’ll see more shows taking up the idea. Yeah, it’ll take some detail-oriented planning, but dang was it a nice touch.

Speaking of detail-oriented planning, I want to recognize Neil Dvorak of Easy Pieces Comic for putting together the best table design I’ve ever seen. Nothing about the look-and-feel of table C8 existed but that it provided the impression that you were in Dvorak’s world now, and everything beyond his immediate proximity was the noise of the outside world and wouldn’t you rather be here where it’s nice and civilized?

It worked on me, and I was happy to pick up a packet of his individual, brief, conceptually linked comics and associated ephemera, which have left me with the impression of a documentary work looking at an askew world of bizarre happenings, corporation/cults, and one man’s search for sense in it all. If Welcome to Night Vale was crossed with a ’50s-era social hygiene film and existed in craft paper envelopes, it would look like Easy Pieces.

So that was my big discovery of the show. Along the way I was lucky enough to talk with some terrific creators about what they’re doing; this list includes (but is not limited to):

• Noelle Stevenson had a stack of the debut issue of Lumberjanes, in advance of the official launch this week. It’s great book.
• Tom Siddell came all the way to America and had a continuous stream of people bringing his (very large, very heavy, thus he didn’t bring any himself to sell) books to be signed, and to purchase his minis and artwork. If you missed out on your chance to see him, he’s got a meet-up tomorrow night in Manhattan. You’ll know it’s him because he looks exactly like his avatar.
• Magnolia Porter’s Sugar Crash mini is funny and heartfelt, and perfectly in keeping with her work on Monster Pulse. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Porter writes early teens better than anybody else in webcomics, because they reflect the fact that growing up isn’t a matter of age, it’s a matter of practice.

  Her characters try, and they fail more than they succeed, and sometimes they’re stupid and sometimes they’re mean (and they know that they shouldn’t be and don’t want to be, and yet it still happens) and slowly they become somebody new. Siddell and John Allison and damn good, but Porter is the best. The only thing that would make Monster Pulse better at what it’s trying to do would be an easily-found link to her store on the main page.

• Evan Dahm is approaching the end of Book 2 material for Vattu, but his next project will more likely be his illustrated Wizard of Oz project. Scott C has a new book releasing in a few months, Hug Machine; it’ll be his first children’s book as both writer and artist, and it looks terrific. David McGuire is approaching the point in the story when he can give us a new Gastrophobia collection.
• Box Brown has now signed his first copy of Andre The Giant: Life and Legend, mine to be precise. He’s starting to the feel the excitement in the run-up to release in a month, and expressed his appreciation for his editor at :01 Books — It was a big help to have somebody that doesn’t know wrestling to point out what would be confusing to ordinary people.
• Speaking of :01 Books, Gina Gagliano expressed the excitement that everybody is feeling over Scott McCloud’s next book, due out sometime next year. I bumped into Colleen Venable on the floor and thanked her for being my favorite book designer¹ and she very kindly gifted me a copy of the last book in her Guinea Pig: Pet Shop Private Eye series because she is awesome.
• Darwin Carmichael is Going to Hell’s print version is in the process of being manufactured, which is the only reason I didn’t buy a copy from Sophie Goldstein; I did get the chance to talk to her about how unsettling I found her contribution to The Sleep of Reason. Seriously creepy, people.
• Ben Costa and Phil McAndrew were kind enough to sign books of theirs that I brought with me (as did Siddell; Dahm, Stevenson, and C signed their illustrations in my copy of To Be Or Not To Be — three down, a zillion to go).
• Jaya Saxena, Matt Lubchansky, and Maki Naro seemed to be having more fun than anybody else on the floor. There’s a lack of awkwardness and effort that I observed in them talking with people who both sought them out and those who casually wandered by; even those in the convention grind for a decade may not have mastered that skill, or find that it requires considerable effort. Somehow, they’ve managed to become comics creators (that most solitary of endeavours) without losing the trappings of sociability; this must be stopped before they accidentally destroy comics.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t note that I ran into Brigid Alverson and Johanna Draper Carlson — two of my favorite people on the ink-stained wretch side of things — outside the Armory and we took some pictures together. After that, I completely missed seeing them again on the floor. Oddly enough, I’ve never met up with either Brigid or Johanna by intention; we always just seem to bump into each other, which is part of how I know it’s going to be a good show. Ladies, it’s always a pleasure.

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¹ Of all the things I never thought I’d have a “favorite” of, but dang if her work for :01 Books doesn’t grab me and make me want to read inside.