I have an entirely rhetorical question for you, and by “you”, I mean “you individually and in particular”, not some more abstract “you”: Do you like it when language is bent into patterns that delight and entertain? Because I have something that you will want to see: an 80,000 word book written by master languagebender Ryan North re-envisioning Hamlet as a choosable-path adventure, which has (predictably) surpassed its Kickstarter goal in about three hours.

I should pause here a moment to issue a disclaimer — Ryan asked me proofread a near-final version of To Be Or Not To Be: A Choice-Filled Adventure By Ryan North And Also William Shakespeare Too, which I gladly did, and so I’ve had the opportunity to read through the entire thing.

I also played through every single story node for both Ophelia (who kicks ass and does not resemble the inertial doormat that Shakespeare portrayed) and Hamlet’s dad, King Hamlet Sr (who dies on the first page and must play as a ghost and that is awesome). I did not play through every story node for Hamlet because I have always felt that Hamlet is a CHUMP and I do not traffic in CHUMPS but I’ve read enough of his story paths to see that North does manage to DECHUMPIFY him in some of the paths so that’s good.

True to form, Ryan North has put together an amazing Kickstarter campaign (including what may be the definitive Kickstarter video which is itself choosable-path) featuring awesome backer rewards, including visualizations of the story structure which is a thing of mathematical beauty and intricate, interwoven geometries. Speaking of interwoven geometries, should you read your way through TBONTB:ACFABRNAAWST, keep a chessboard handy; no spoilers, but let’s just say that I would have died fewer embarrassing deaths had I not been trying to keep a chess game straight in my head.

Speaking of those embarrassing deaths, 30 of them are illustrated by the finest creators in webcomics today, and further funds raised only increase the number of illustrations until all 110 deaths get pictures. The full set of illustrations happens at US$50,000 and given that Ryan is already north¹ of US$25,000 about four hours into this thing, that’s a certainty. The only question is how long it takes to get to US$70,000 and the audiobook, and to US$100,000 and the sequel, which I hope concerns Ophelia branching out from boring pre-Renaissance Denmark into other times and places and maybe wrestling dinosaurs.

Guys, I am excited for this project to come to fruition and I’ve already read it so it contains no more surprises for me, but every one of you (yes, you) that reads TBONTB:ACFABRNAAWST has delightful hours of delight in front of you, so get in on this while you can and thank Ryan North for the herculean labors of the past year, secretly and carefully bending language into its most perfect form.

Oh, and for those of you wavering, the early adopters have got your back — every US$5000 raised above the initial US$20,000 goal reveals another story page and a choice, to be decided by backer voting. Thanks to Update #1 voting, it appears that we will get to read the book’s acknowledgments, which SPOILER ALERT could lead to a page where YOU GET TO BE RYAN NORTH.

If you are awesome enough to support TBONTB:ACFABRNAAWST click here. If you are so CHUMPY to make Hamlet himself look like somebody who is NOT A CHUMP AT ALL, I don’t know, maybe go look at pictures of cats on the internet? I mean, that’s nice and all, and your CHUMPNESS doesn’t make you a bad person or anything. Just … let’s not talk about this possible choice anymore and we are still friends.

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¹ Ha, ha.

Readers of this page will recall that on more than one occasion I have noted how Diamond (until recently, the only distributor that the comics industry allowed itself to have) absolutely refused to get me books that had been on order. Sometimes, the better part of a year would go by, much to the consternation of myself and the staff of my local comics shop (who I hold blameless in this fiasco).

Thus, somewhat recently, books that have been in release for a really long damn time have come into my possession and I’d like to talk about some of them. Since they’ve been long out in the world and other people have talked about them, these will be somewhat briefer reviews than normally found here. Oh, and spoilers may abound.

• Evan Dahm’s The Harrowing Of Hell first came onto my radar in the summer of 2018, and I made a habit of asking Dahm about it at MoCCA each year. It was delayed by COVID for some months from the appropriate Lenten season last year¹, finally releasing about eleven months ago.

  Given that it’s a 2000 year old story — accounting for those days between the Crucifixion of Jesus and the Resurrection — maybe waiting not quite a year isn’t such a big deal. On the other hand, it’s such a gorgeous book, I reserve the right to be annoyed. Dahm’s taken what is often a triumphant story — various apocrypha tell of Jesus tearing things up in Hell, rebuking the fallen angels, and redeeming the souls of the righteous — and turned it into a cautionary tale.

  The mocking of demons echoes the cries of Jesus’s own followers: Blessed, Hosana, this is the Son of God. Their message is one of twisted praise, predicting how his message will be corrupted in the years to come: he will be remembered not as a teacher and storyteller, but as a conquering king, bringing punishment and retribution rather than redemption. The greatest damnation that the fallen can offer Jesus is to grant his name power and glory rather than humility.

  The book is done in stark black-and-white (with the occasional splash of red in the robes of Sanhedrin or the uniforms of Roman soldiers) in the scenes of Jesus’s ministry, and given a lurid blood-red fill during the descent; there’s not a bit of white on the Hell pages, except to depict Jesus’s figure. It’s a first-rank mood-setter, as well as drawing the eye to exactly where Dahm wants it.

  Regardless of one’s own belief system, it is not possible to move in Western society without acknowledging the influence of the Christian faith; here’s a story that even many Christians don’t know, and those that do will find a very different interpretation, one that casts a very different light on that historical and pervasive influence.

• Dahm also released Island Book 2: The Infinite Land this year, a sequel to a quiet, contemplative story that’s reminiscent of The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz. In that review, I noted that in the many sequels Dorothy would return to Oz and get her companions back together to meet the next challenge, and in Island Book 2 Sola does the same. Like Dorothy, Sola is hailed as a liberator in a way that isn’t really warranted (witch-killer in Dorothy’s case; monster slayer in Sola’s), and given power and authority (Dorothy as a Princess of Oz, Sola as a leader of her people in a new nation, one that is rapidly moving forward in technology²).

  But Dorothy didn’t find one of her peers hellbent on turning Oz into an empire, determined to sweep all unknowns away in case they became threats later. She didn’t have one of her companions fall into the dream of empire. Dorothy remained an innocent, Sola is nothing but doubts and wondering if she’s unleashed a great plague upon the world in the form of her own people.

  We’ve left Oz behind and found ourselves in a place more like the Empire of Sahta, and it’s going to take Sola a hell of a lot of work to stop what is starting to look like colonization, pogroms, and genocide. Island Book 3 is going to have a tightope to walk, and I know that Dahm’s up to the challenge.

• There might not be anybody better suited to adapting an elliptical, almost Möbius-shaped story like Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five into graphical form than Ryan North. He gets nonlinear storytelling and the sometimes counterintuitive way that something that happens here/now can be intimately linked with something that happens there/then. Billy Pilgrim is unstuck in time, and having pictures (by Albert Monteys) to navigate the branching paths is a tremendous aid.

  One of the first page spreads shows Billy Pilgrim at the various key stages of his life, and the way he looks at each age on this timeline go a long way to demystifying when Billy lands as he jumps back and forth within his life. We know where the story is heading, because Vonnegut, North, and Monteys tell us almost from the beginning (after, as it turns out, a brief few pages where North notes that much of what occurs in the book actually happened to Vonnegut), but the journey is still full of surprises and despite that.

  Slaughterhouse Five is rightly regarded as one of the most brilliant, most important novels ever written; this new version of Slaughterhouse Five for a different medium can stand next to the original with head held high.

Spam of the day:

With all due respect. If you are based in United States or Canada, I write to inform you that we need you to serve as our Spokesperson/Financial Coordinator for our company

I find your story somewhat unconvincing. Can’t quite put my finger on it. Oh well, one less opportunity for me.

_______________
¹ You got a horror book, you want that out in October. Book about what happened when Jesus threw down the gates to Hell? You want that out at Easter.

² The better analogy might be the leap from agrarianism to an industrial revolution between Avatar: The Last Airbender and Avatar: The Legend Of Korra.

One of my favorite things to do is to match up readers with folks whose work might otherwise go unnoticed. I mean, sure, I loves me some Charles Christopher out of all proportion, but not all comics worth my attention (and yours!) come from Karl Kerschl¹. Let’s take a look at a couple of them.

• Payton Francis does comics out of the Twin Cities; a big part of her work is fantasy, and the other big part of it is featuring as many adorable LGBT+ characters as possible. Help Wanted is a modern story, and Wola (Francis does art; words by EC Ibes) has plenty of modern signifiers (industrial shipping, folding aluminum chairs) but simultaneously a mythic set of trappings; they’ve both got a bunch of heart.

  Oh, and Wola is presently Kickstarting its first print collection, which has already surpassed goal and thus is a sure thing at this point. Come for the enticing art, stay for the friendshipping, as the first five chapters — more than 200 pages — get printed in full color for only US$25². And, once you read the book, you can pick up with Chapter Six, which started at the beginning of June. As of this writing the campaign runs for another 69 hours (nice), so hop on over and give it a look while you’ve got the chance.

• I’m pretty sure that’s the first time we’ve mentioned Francis on this page — an oversight, surely, especially given her very assured and very varied character designs — but we’ve mentioned Eben Burgoon a buncha times. Although the wrapping up of Eben07 forever ago robbed this page of one of its favorite running gags, Burgoon has done bunches of stuff since then. Most recently, Tiny Wizards — 10cm tall magic dudes working in a remote truck stop’s food service. It’s been around for a couple of years and Kickstarted a collection, which is now available for all.

  Tiny Wizards #1 — Lord Of The Onion Rings is going to run you US$14, consists of 64 pages of full-page painting, and is very likely the first book ever to be mentioned on this page with a suggested age rating of — quoting here — 10 and under. Indulge your inner child and give it a look.

Spam of the day:

RE: TRACKING NUMBER N° CS476903738

You think your DHL tracking number click here bullshit should featuring a bunch of my non-existent Disney+ subscription is suspended click here bullshit graphics? I think y’all might be a bit confused.

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¹ To whom I profusely apologize, as I just realized that I have missed — by more than six months — the 10th anniversary of the greatest single comic strip in history: Squirrel-Chew.

² The amount of comics and the print quality you get for an extremely reasonably price is one of my favorite things about the current Golden Age of comics we’re living in.

I think we could use a little chill these days; what with the world’s single most gleefully vindictive ignoramus in charge of our country’s response to an incipient pandemic, chill sounds like a good idea.

• Few people that I’ve met are on a more even keel, less perturbable than Scott C; very nearly all of his art conveys a feeling of just take a deep breath for a moment, no need to get all excited, even when the topic is the most spectacular of spectacles. Mr C’s been working on several projects for a while now, we haven’t seen as many Great Showdowns as in the past, and fans are hungering for another collection.

  So Gallery 1988 (which, along with Nucleus, is the place for modern takes on pop culture) is have a weeks-long celebration of Scott C:

  With the HIGHLY anticipated return of the Great Showdowns exhibit from @scottlava opening on March 6th, we’re excited to share the calendar of events for the show. It’s action-packed and unlike anything we’ve done before. Get ready for the true Showdowns experience!!!

  Events include an opening reception on the 6th from 7:00pm to 9:00pm, complete with a mystery Showdowns trivia contest, a Scott C painting for the trivia winner (livepainted on the 7th at 1:00pm), limited edition toy and print releases, a daily scavenger hunt, a drawing party with pizza, and a closing party. Whew! See the graphic up top for all the stuff going on, and keep an eye on the exhibitions page at the G1988 site for details.

• Know who else just surfs through a sometimes turbulent world on a wave of comics, sometimes from one far corner of the globe¹ to another? Eben Burgoon. He was the inspiration of one of our earliest running gags here at Fleen, he holds down the fort of comics-making and evangelism in the Sacramento Sector, and he makes a habit of not only keeping me up with his goings-on, but also those of current and former collaborators. To that end, I received an email:
  

  D.Bethel — the illustrator and co-creator of Eben07 — has been making his opus of a webcomic in Long John. It’s a western-genre comic that focuses on a revenge story about a gunslinger left to die in just his long-johns by his former gang.

  Burgoon undersells the premise a bit, but he’s absolutely right that Bethel has constructed a slow-burn story that reveals itself in a deliberate manner, much like a classic ’60s splatter Western. And Burgoon himself is collaborating with Dean Beattie on Tiny Wizards, about french-fry sized wizards doing their wizardly battles as they struggle to survive in a sea of fast food joints in a road-side truck stop in the middle of nowhere.

  Remember what I said about mundane magic in a regular world yesterday? Magic hidden in the most ridiculous way from plain sight is also a great premise, and I’ll be interested to see how it turns out. In the meantime, I’ve seen a sampler that Burgoon sent along, and Beattie is channeling Skottie Young’s work on I Hate Fairyland; your enjoyment will depend on the answer to one question², which if you opt for the affirmative, you should definitely check out the Kicker³.

Spam of the day:

Military Source Exposes Shocking TRUTH About Coronavirus And The “1 Thing” You Must Do Before It’s TOO LATE

Hey. Emergency medicine/public health source here. The “1 Thing” is wash your godsdamned hands, stay out of public if you feel sick, and vote for somebody that will implement labor law/healthcare systems that allow people to go to the doctor and stay home from work when they’re sick. Everything else is bullshit.

_______________
¹ This mixed metaphor is here only to annoy flat earthers.

² Do I feel that tiny, pink, derptacular unicorns should sport visible buttholes?

³ Which is a bit more than 50% of the way to goal, with 16 days to go.

… and I-95, aka The Devil’s Own Intestinal Tract, sits between me and home. Let’s get this done.

For those of you on the far side of the continent from I-95, there’s a few things you should be aware of. Friend Of Fleen Since Small Times Eben Burgoon has sent details of upcoming comicsy events in the Sacramento–Arden-Arcade–Yuba City, CA–NV Combined Statistical Area that are coming up, and heck if that’s not the kind of thing we look forward to on these pre-holiday/I-95 Fridays.

First up, the Crocker Art Museum will be hosting ArtMix|CrockerCon on Thursday, 12 September from 6:00pm to 9:30pm. An like-named exhibition of student & community comics work is presently running, and will stay up until 22 September. US$10 for Crocker members (with some membership levels free), US$20 for nonmembers.

And for those of you looking to learn, or at least to dump your kids somewhere for a few hours that won’t get Child Protective Services on your case, Burgoon will be teaching an after school workshop at the Verge Center For The Arts starting next Wednesday, 4 September. Tuition is US$105 for the public, US$95 for Verge members (which includes CrockerCon admission), and the class is intended for kids 10 – 15 years old. Class runs from 5:00pm to 7:30pm on 4, 18, and 25 September, and 2 October, and I’ma say that registration in advance is strongly recommended.

Check out Burgoon’s current Burgooning at @Burgooneytunes on The Grams, and I’ll see you next week if I ever get home.

Spam of the day:

You have received a messacie from Tori. All our members are looking for fun and often send sexy photos. Are you okay with seeing sexy photos?

I’m not sure what people who send messacies consider sexy. Little scared to ask, actually.

One of the things I love about the SPX exhibitor listing is that it’s geographic in nature rather than alphabetical by name. You can see who’s near who, and plan out which of the blobby pods you want to hit first (even though the floor is small enough that you can see everybody pretty easily). Here, then are the folks we at Fleen noticed on the 650+ deep exhibitor list, which was due for final update today.

Pod A
Britt Sabo (A5B), Collen AF Venable (A9), and onetime Fleen scribe Anne Thalheimer (A11B).

Pod B
Kevin Czap and the associated Czap Books folks (B4B), Ananth Hirsch and Yuko Ota along with George Rohac (B9; I wonder who they had to bribe to get that table spot).

Pod C
Lauren Davis (C3); I’m not saying Pod C is a bad place, just that I didn’t recognize names.

Pod D
D1 Ben Sears (D1), Eric Colossal and Jess Fink (D2), Megan Rose Gedris (D4A), Becky Dreistadt and Frank Gibson (D9), and Gigi DG (D12A).

Pod E
Keith Knight (also the Ignatz MC, E1), Beth Barnett (E4A), Mike Holmes (E5B), Ben Passmore (E10B), Darryl Ayo Brathwaite (E10B), Ronald Wimberly (E12A)

Pod F
MK Reed (F1), Paulina and Savanna Ganucheau (F8), and Bianca Xunise (F12A).

Pod G
NBM Graphic Novels, including Jessica Abel (G1-2).

Pod H
Sara and Tom McHenry (H12), and Evan Dahm (H14).

Pod I
Shing Yin Khor (I4A), Julia Gfröer (I5B), Sarah Horrocks (I6A), Katie Skelly (I6B), Tony Breed (I7A), Monica Gallagher (I8), Penina Gal and Radiator Comics (I9), and Carta Monir and Diskette Press (I14).

Pod J
Maia Kobabe (J4B), Emi Gennis (J5B), and Kory Bing (J10).

Pod K
Carla Speed McNeil (K1), Gemma Correll (K2), Audrey and Jamie Noguchi (K9), and Drew Weing (K10-11).

Pod L
Retrofit Comics (L2), Danielle Corsetto (L8), Eleri Harris, Matt Bors, Matt Lubchansky, and Sarah Mirk, which is to say, The Nib (L9).

Pod M
Annie Koyama and Koyama Press, including Connor Willumsen, Daniel Nishio, Ed Kanerva, and Emily Carroll (M1-2).

Pod N
Dustin Harbin but not his bike (N2), and Secret Acres (N3-4).

Left Side Wall
Drawn & Quarterly including Ebony Flowers, Eleanor Davis, Kevin Huizenga, and Sylvia Nickerson (W1-4), Jessica Trevino (W7A), ShortBox (W8), Carey Pietsch (W9A), Cathy G Johnson (W9B), and Meredith Gran (W10A).

Back Wall
Hope Nicholson (W19), Self Made Hero including Sam Humphrey (W23-24), Mari Naomi (W27A), Box Brown (W27B), Kori Michele Handwerker and Melanie Gillman (W30), TopatoCo featuring Abby Howard, Chris Yates, Elliot Jasper, Holly Rowland, KC Green, and Tom Siddell (W31-33), Out Of Step Arts featuring Rebecca Kirby, Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, and Venesa Del Ray (W38-39).

Right Side Wall
Alison Wilgus (W41), and Fantagraphics featuring Jaime Hernandez (W50-54).

Front Wall
Top Shelf including James Kochalka, Kim Dwinell, Leigh Walton, and MK Reed (W56-59), Ru Xu (W60A), Natalie Riess (W60B), a contingent of Danish comic book artists (W68-69), Steenz (W71A), Blue Delliquanti (W71B), Iron Circus including Amanda Lafrenais and C Spike Trotman (W72-73), Lucy Knisley (W75), and the CBLDF including Alex Cox, Chris Ware, and Raina Telgemeier (W80-83).

As always, I very possibly missed you or your favorite; drop us an email and we’ll update.

The Small Press Expo runs Saturday, 14 September (11:00am-7:00pm) and Sunday, 15 September (noon-6:00pm) at the Bethesda Marriott North in Bethesda, Maryland.

Spam of the day:
Your very own portable oxygen concentrator
I do not suffer from CHF or other respiratory conditions, and besides, I can get the pure stuff in the green cylinders. It’s good for hangovers.

Hey, are you gonna be in the city of Chicago this weekend? I mean, everybody in the midwest is dodging persistent rain, tornadoes, floods, and general End Times events, but if you’re in Chicago you can at least enjoy the last days of Earth with comics at the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo, Saturday and Sunday, 1 & 2 June, from 11:00am to 6:00pm at the Billie Jean King Recreation Center (the third floor of Center on Halsted¹), 3656 N Halsted Street. It’s free to the public, got a humane scale of exhibitors (one big room plus a hallway entrance, an even 100 tables if my count is right), and an emphasis on the comics part of comics.

Special Guests will include Nicholas Gurewitch, Ben Passmore, Whit Taylor, and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell. Exhibitors draw heavily from the middle of the country, and will include Ben Sears, Biance Xunise, Blue Delliquanti, Cathy G Johnson, Iron Circus², John Porcellino, Katie Schenkel, Chris Grady, Patrick Lay, Sage Coffey, Sarah Becan, Tess Eneli Reid, Tom McHenry, and Tony Breed

I didn’t include table numbers because come on — just walk around the room.

Programming is heavily tilted towards the Special Guests — I don’t think there’s a panel until Sunday that features a panelist that’s not a Special Guest. Ones that caught my eye include:

• The Occult In Comics; Saturday, 11:30am-12:30pm; with Corinne Halbert, Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, Anders Nilsen, and Isabella Rotman, moderated by Anya Davidson.
• Looks Good Enough To Eat: Drawing Food and Recipe Comics (workshop); Saturday, 11:30am-12:30pm; with Sarah Becan.
• The Idea Kitchen (workshop); Saturday, 1:00-2:00pm; with Nicholas Gurewitch and Jackie Davis.
• Graphic Medicine: Comics as Treatment; Sunday, 1:00pm-2:00pm; with Whit Taylor, Sage Coffey, Bianca Xunise, and Vreni, moderated by Kevin Budnik.
• Storytelling Flow (workshop); Sunday, 3:00pm-4:00pm; with Tom Hart.

The panel room is apparently the theater off the entrance, but no indication where the workshops are.

CAKE is accessible by the El (Red line to Addison), the #8 Halsted bus, the #22 Clark bus, #36 Broadway bus, or #152 Addison bus. Head for the corner of Halsted and Waveland, and look for the Whole Foods; Center On Halsted shares the block and is just to the north.

Spam of the day:

Live Chat with Asian Women VIEW HER SEXY PHOTOS

Dude, don’t yell. Sheesh.

_______________
¹ Oddly, Center On Halsted’s events calendar doesn’t make mention of CAKE, but it’s there.

² It doesn’t specifically say that C Spike Trotman will be there but come on … it’s right down the street for her.

Since we spoke last week, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival has announced a slew of new guests, and I’ve gone through the exhibitor’s list to see who-all is gonna be there. Strap in, there’s a lot to see.

On the Featured International Guest list, TCAF have announced Brazilian twin superstars Gabriel Bá & Fábio Moon, Daria Bogdanska, Alexandre Clerisse, Aimee de Jongh, Keiron Gillen, Stephanie Hans, Nora Krug, and Jamie McKelvie. The Featured Kids Guests are yet to be announced (apart from the previously-announced Lucy Knisley).

Exhibitors on the floors of the TRC will include Boum, Tony Cliff, Danielle Corsetto, Evan Dahm, Blue Delliquanti, Megan Rose Gedris, Maddi Gonzalez, Meredith Gran, Mike Holmes, Kat Leyh, Sam Logan, Mike Maihack, Phil McAndrew, Rosemary Mosco, Shan Murphy, Maki Naro, Ryan North, Sarah Winifred Searle, Ben Sears, Jason Viola, EK Weaver, Alison Wilgus, David Willis, Tory Woollcott, Sophie Yanow, and the terminally-named Jim Zub¹. The list is being added to, and we’ll let you know of who else we notice from time to time.

And you’ll probably find more people you like by checking out the publishers who’ll be on hand, including Cloudscape Comics, Creators For Creators², :01 Books, Iron Circus Comics, Koyama Press, The Nib, Oni Press, Retrofit Comics, and Shortbox³. As we get word of what creators will be with publishers, we’ll let you know.

As a reminder, TCAF will take place Saturday & Sunday, 11 & 12 May, from 9:00am (Saturday)/10:00am (Sunday) until 5:00pm, at the Toronto Reference Library, 789 Yonge Street. Attendance is free to all events, but some Junji Ito events will require tickets (details TBA).

Spam of the day:

12,000 “Perfect” Shed Plans only for you

While I do have a moustache that, all modesty aside, is pretty impressive, I am neither Ron Swanson nor Nick Offerman. I have no use for your shed plans.

_______________
¹ Rumo[u]rs that Chip Zdarsky will sneak into TCAF to do violence upon Mr Zub so that he may be the last-named comics artist are unconfirmed at press time.

² Not really a publisher, but they’ll be there and that’s cool.

³ Ditto.

Know who we haven’t heard from in a while? Eben Burgoon. Longtime readers may recall that through the first half of Fleen’s history, we frequently noted happenings in Burgoon’s spy spoof, Eben07, in an appropriately purple prose. Then Burgoon and his compatriots moved onto B-Squad and he even gave me beer themed to his webcomic.

Burgoon’s been doing workshops and Maker Faires from Northern California (his normal stomping grounds) to as far away as Vilnius, Lithuania (no, really), the breadth of which made me wonder if he’d really gotten all that spycraft and secret mission tendency out of his system. Apparently not; Burgoon’s partnering with Starburns Industries to bring B-Squad back:

Starburns Industries Press sets its eyes on remastering an independent series, B-Squad, from indie darling author Eben Burgoon and a rotating roster illustrators and artists that change issue to issue.

B-Squad shares the ridiculous and dangerous missions of an expendable team of misfit mercenaries ranging from pop-culture riffs to cut from whole cloth oddballs. The bargain-bin commandos tackle leftover assignments of other more respected mercenary groups. SBI Press’s run begins with a remaster of the series debut Conspiracy in Cambodia, originally independently published in 2013, written by Burgoon and illustrated by Lauren Monardo.

In the spirit of a Saturday morning cartoon block, each B-Squad book serves as home for brand new tangential comics like [B-Squad illustrator Michael] Calero’s Monster Safari” and Burgoon’s newest creation about six-inch tall wizards trapped in the fast-food culture of a remote truck stop titled Tiny Wizards.

The remastered books are rounded out with activities, puzzles, and bonus content in homage to dentist office staples like Highlights magazine and ZooBooks.

No word as to whether or not the remastered B-Squad will feature Goofus and/or Gallant. You (where you is taken to mean folks in/around the Sacramento, California area) can ask him at the next workshop he’ll be running, on three Tuesdays in February (12th, 19th, 26th), at the Crocker Art Museum.

Spam of the day:

Account Name : ANDREW FARRINGTON
Account Number : [redacted]
IMPORTANT – YOUR PAYMENT CARD IS NEARING ITS EXPIRY DATE

Weird, why would you send something for Andrew Farrington to me? Then again, this might not be spam, but the latest in a long line of Other Garies Tyrrell sending their emails my way. Usually that’s easy to clear up, but I’ve had to resort to using the British tech press to shame Ryanair over their persistent screwups. Fun!

I neglected to note that yesterday was Amuletmas, the day that Kazu Kibuishi’s many readers have been waiting for anxiously for going on two years. Yesterday was the release of the eighth Amulet book, Supernova, picking up at the biggest cliffhanger of the series, setting up the big finish in (the still in the planning stages) book 9. Fantasy becomes sci-fi! Space! The darkest hour with a protagonist fallen to the dark influences of the Big Bad! I’ll be picking up a copy as soon as humanly possible, and reporting back.

Not released this week, or even all that recently, the focus of today’s post is Delilah Dirk And The Pillars Of Hercules, third in that series, by Tony Cliff. As always, we at Fleen would like to thank :01 Books for providing a review copy.

TPOH is a slightly odd read; what I mean by that is it doesn’t follow what we expect from a third book in a series. So many books are conceived of and sold explicitly as trilogies — thanks, Tolkien — that we expect the books to perhaps work more as parts of that larger arc of story and less as standalone efforts. Sometimes the books really do stand on their own while also functioning as parts of the whole (Ben Hatke’s Zita The Spacegirl and Faith Erin Hicks’s The Nameless City are good examples), sometimes they form multitrilogies (such as Amulet, and, I suspect, Cleopatra In Space by Mike Maihack).

But Miss Dirk and her faithful companion Mr Selim have an entirely different feel. The books definitely form a sequence, but there’s no feeling of beginning, middle, end. If Cliff had released the second book first, then the first as a flashback, then the third, they would not lose anything for the jumbling. Perhaps appropriate to the time they take place in — Europe and the Mediterranean slightly post-Napolean, with England and France vying for influence and enough unexplored places that adventurers need not follow set paths — there’s a sense of loose connection.

The best analogy I can think of is Dickens wrote a bunch of stories that did not connect to each other, but which take place in the same world. There’s no doubt in my mind that young Ebenezer Scrooge lived in one of the Two Cities, but cared not a whit what was happening in the other. The connections are of sensibility, not plot. One story tells what happens to other people, in a different place, at a different time, but in the same world. Their individual stories are the point, not how they cross over.

Which is why I see TPOH less as a sequel, and more as a continuation of a story that’s not really dependent on what came before. Oh, sure, the second book (The King’s Shilling) introduced the best kind of antagonist — the bullheaded jerk who gets shown up and rather than take the L, doubles down every possible chance, abandoning all reason, assuming his nemesis is as obsessed with him as he is with them — but if he’d shown up for the first time in TPOH with a half-page aside about how he’d been a thorn in Miss Dirk’s side ever since that earlier conflict a few years ago, nothing would be lost. The first book (The Turkish Lieutenant) is wide-ranging heist and condequences, the second is a prodigal returns home story mixed with a jerk who just won’t let a minor insult go, the third is part archeology (and dealing with insufferable patrons) and part revenge story. What they have in common is the setting, the timeframe, and the two protagonists.

Then again, Miss Dirk would probably say protagonist and sidekick.

Mr Selim — less sidekick, more voice of reason when Miss Dirk is taken by flights of fancy, desire to kick and ass that desperately needs it, or is just being reckless because she can — really comes into his own in this book. He’s gone from inciting McGuffin in book one (he’s the titular Turkish Lieutenant) that kicks off the plot to almost-but-not-quite-acknowledged equal (especially after book 2, when even Delilah’s disapproving family determined that nobody can make the tea quite like he can). There’s a meeting of the minds here, and they come to a new stage in their relationship.

That word is fraught, and what they have barely recognizable by its modern connotations. They’re traveling companions, they’re becoming friends¹, the respect is deepened, and it’s possibly become an always-will-be chaste life partnership in that neither will ever really be happy without the other, but it’s not a romance. You’d have to use a language other than English, which has multiple words for different kinds of love, to truly describe them. Not quite brotherly-sisterly², more than traveling companions, definitely not getting
(as Ray Smuckles would have it) mad rutty. It’s platonic, in both the sense that there’s no erotic feelings, but also in the sense that this is an ideal for respectful partnerships. They complete each other.

And so the adventure itself almost doesn’t matter. Oh, there’s derring-do and comeuppance and you’ll boo and hiss the villainous turns, fear not. This book doesn’t feel like a wrap-up any more than it feels like a beginning or middle. It’s all happening now, there have been adventures before, there will be adventures hence, and we’ll read some of them and others we won’t as Delilah Dirk and Erdemoglu Selim spend their days at adventure, forever.

Spam of the day:

Formuláře Google

Huh. A countdown timer letting me know that my very special opportunity (in Russian) will expire in 22:15:30. Weirdly, every time I open the email, it starts over again. Odd, that.

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¹ Miss Dirk has always been a bit haughty towards Mr Selim.

² But if it were, it would definitely somewhat staid older brother being run over by a wild younger sister.