And what do I find in my Inbox? Our very first guest strip, featuring our Masthead Guy. That’s right, it’s time for another Estradarama, which today features the following comics as of press time, in no particular order:

• Wigu, Overcompensating, Scary Go Round, Anders Loves Maria, Shortpacked!
• Wapsi Square, Girly, Dresden Codak, Sketchies, Astronaut Elementary
• Skin Horse, Aslan, 8 Bit Theatre, Joe Loves Crappy Movies, PC Weenies
• Dueling Analogs, Lifemeter, Bunny, Guest Strip Project (appropriately enough), You’ll Have That
• Templar AZ, a special bonus Wonderella, Alma Mater, Dreamland Chronicles, Bellen
• Theater Hopper, and Sam and Fuzzy (bonus strip, scroll down to read), ComixTalk (blog), Real Life, Patches
• Unshelved
  Updated to add those updating after press time, or just missed the first time around; again, no particular order: Alien Loves Predator, Angry Bee With A Gun, Silent Kimbly, Butterfly
• Cow and Buffalo, Kawaii Not, Pictures for Sad Children, Project: Rooftop, Joe and Monkey
• Ihooky, Dominic Deegan, Dorkboy, Cyanide and Happiness, Count Your Sheep
• Digital Unrest, 2P Start, VG Cats (apparently, created for last year’s Estradarama, but not run until yesterday!), Todd and Penguin, Taking Up Space
• Ninja Bunny, Horribleville, Left Handed Toons
  Updated to add: all additions past this point derived from Estrada’s hourly update (see here); everything above here discovered by Fleen and its readers
  Prometheus, Chairs For All Occasions
• Hilarity Comics, Robot Comix, We The Robots, River City Mechanical, Aki’s Comics Review (from the Lunchbox Funnies main page)
• Muffin Time, Sir Reginald (no address other than Estrada’s page), Able and Baker, extra Life’s a Bluff, extra Livin’ on Poker Road
• LOLBees

Please note that some of those may shift from their present linked addresses in the future. If last year was anything to go on, those 31 39 43 46 52 60 62 65 strips (plus two blogs, plus the empty strip, plus the comic book) are a bare fraction of what will make itself known by end of business today. But then there’s the mysterious 1/100 in the signature of all the strips. Could Estrada be attempting 100 guest strips in a single day?

And if you recall Estradarama 2007, you’ll remember that Ryan Estrada used the occasion to also launch the Cartoon Commune. This year, he announces the availability of a full comic book, written with John Baird of the Create a Comic Project, Create a Comic Project Presents: Climate Change. The 34 page book is available now through Lulu for the low, low price of $6.00 (or $0.50 for a download). Oh, and he drew a strip for the CCP, too.

Okay, you know the drill — let me know what I missed in the comments, I’ll add ’em to the bullets above in groups of five, and we’ll do it all again next year. We all know I’ve missed a zillion strips, but I can’t spend all day hunting them down.

In completely unrelated news: non-Estrada shake-it-up strip at Octopie, and a good, old-fashioned bidding war for an original strip. Neat.

Updated to add: As several people have pointed out, Ryan Estrada has called the total at 70, but discovered he only had 69, so he did an extra strip of Aki Alliance to bring it up to 70, then VG Cats ran its strip from last year, so we’re going to call it 70 + a comic book as the official total. Which means that as of this writing, we’re still about 17 sightings short — get cracking, people!

Sometimes, the stars just align and a whole bunch of stuff happens at once; today, for example, the redoubtable¹ Jim Zub sees five different comics from three publishers², including two series premieres. Zub’s an incredibly varied and skilled writer, and while I’ve generally enjoyed his original work best, you know that he’s always going to do a good job with premade IP — it’ll make perfect sense if you don’t know the characters, and have a million deep cuts for those who’re up on all the continuity. Keep him in mind as you visit the shops this week.

Also of note for your pull list today: John Allison’s latest miniseries, Steeple. While not explicitly part of the Tackleverse (it takes place in the far corner of England), there are some offhand references, and anytime Allison gets to write British characters, we’re in for a delight. By Night was terrific, but American characters don’t allow Allison to use all his powers, and with Giant Days about to wrap up for good, we can use something to fill the void. And hey, maybe this will be the latest Allison project to go from miniseries to longer miniseries to ongoing, if we’ve all been good and Father Christmas smiles on us.

• If Kickstarter thought that ditching people involved in the unionization effort³ would blow over quickly, they thought wrong. I really wanted to hear what C Spike Trotman had to say, and she’s unambiguous in her feelings over Twitter way:
  

  Kickstarter is such an inherently democratic platform. Seeing the people currently in charge of it stoop to such transparently anti-democratic measures to deny their staff basic protections is incredibly disappointing.

  And Tyler Moore (one of what we may as well be calling the Kickstarter Three) answered a question that had been going around in a reply to Spike: in addition to the creators petition, there is a second petition for creators, backers, former employees … anybody with a relationship with Kickstarter. I’ve signed this one as Gary Tyrrell, 125 project superbacker, over US$7650 paid to creators, and if you think what the Kickstarter Union is trying to do is worthwhile, I urge you to consider doing likewise.

• That being said, I want to stress one last time that the Kickstarter Union is not, at this time, asking creators to forgo or withdraw projects from the platform, or backers to withhold pledges. So you should note that Spike has a new Kickstart going for the latest Smut Peddler collection. All the usual hallmarks apply — funded quickly, a day or so in, pay raises have been secured for creators and more will surely happen, it’ll appear in your mailbox when promised — along with one surprise.

  See, the collection is themed around the idea of maturity and experience, and tell me that’s not Jeff Goldblum on the cover. It’s totally Jeff Goldblum, and if you can come up with a better way to sell the idea of gettin’ it on with hot, hot older folks, I’d like to hear it. Everybody wants sexytimes with Jeff Goldblum. That’s why the FFF mk2 is predicting a final take of US$56K to US$84K when things wrap up in just over two weeks.

• Lastly, and it was getting to be a bit of a close thing so thank glob for the end-of-campaign bump, it appears that KC Green’s print collection of He Is A Good Boy has funded with just about two days to go. It was an unusually high-goal campaign, featuring reward tiers for physical items above the US$25 most-common-pledge-level-on-Kickstarter, for a smart, sprawling work that is (to be fair) not Green’s most accessible work. I get it, people want Dickbutt and This Is Fine and the easily memeable from Green, but he has these enormous ideas that may take hundreds of pages to see the whole picture, and that’s a challenge.

  But did you notice all the cartoonists that have been supporting Green and pushing this project on the sosh-meeds? They know that if you’re going to have somebody that is untrammeled creativity personified out there doing everything from short gags to massive ruminations on identity and the nature of good/evil, it makes comics as a whole a stronger, more expansive medium.

  Plus it’s a 444 page book. In a pinch, you could defend yourself from an attacker with it, a thought which I think would amuse both Green and Crange the titular Good Boy. I’d say you want to hop in and grab his magnum opus before things close on Friday, but knowing Green, he’s got something bigger, more important, more dense with meaning on deck for next Tuesday which will be his masterwork until the one after that launches. Don’t ever think you’ve seen his best and most important comics, they’re always coming at you sometime the week after next.

Spam of the day:

After only 29 days of mental training activities, her brain scan came up clean!

This is from a spam that claims Big Pharma is suppressing news of a cheap, simple treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. Only thing is, the first paper that showed it’s even possible to see the amyloid plaques characteristic of Alzheimer’s via imaging (instead of postmortem dissection) was published on 2 April of this year.

There is no fucking way that anything resembling treatment has been developed since then. You identity-thieving assholes are playing on the emotions of people who are watching loved ones slip away before their eyes, and you can’t even be bothered come up with a plausible lie. I hope you die in either a single very large fire, or a sufficient number of smaller fires.

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¹ So don’t doubt him unless you’re also willing to redoubt him, buckaroo.

² Okay, so one title is a co-publication of two companies, don’t ruin this.

³ Although, the more I think of it, the more it seems that nearly everybody outside of senior management is in on the unionization effort.

The time when hopefully-smart people tell us what the best things of the year were; a couple of well-curated lists have hit in the last day or so, and I thought I should point out some of the recognition that webcomics (and the webcomics-adjacent) have earned.

• There are very few writers on comics (of all types) working in English that are as good as Oliver Sava at The AV Club; even better, Sava has an eye for talent and has sought out others that have interesting, smart perspectives on comics and gives them plenty of space to write. He’s joined on the 2018 list of best comics by Caitlin Rosenberg, who nearly always has something to point out that I’d missed in whatever we both read.

  Giant Days (by John Allison, Max Sarin, and Whitney Cogar) continued its run of excellence, so no surprise to see a little love for the Tackleverse. Print (or reprint) runs of On A Sunbeam (by Tillie Walden) and Rice Boy (by Evan Dahm) also get nods — they’re both still available in their entirety online, but this is the year that :01 Books and Iron Circus, respectively, pushed the stories wide. Finally, they note that the single best strip — heck, the single best panel — of 2018 can be summed up in three words: Sluggo is lit, from the revamped Nancy by pseudonymous webcomicker Olivia Jaimes, who’s made the comics page safe for weirdness again.

• NPR, meanwhile, has produced a deeply curated list of the best books of 2018, and as usual they include a healthy selection of words+pictures; close to 10% of this year’s recommendations could be called comics. Like On A Sunbeam and Rice Boy, you can find much of the comics that went into Check Please!: Book One (by Ngozi Ukazu) and Your Black Friend (by Ben Passmore) online; the print editions of both are surely spreading their reach, though.

  I’m on record as being deeply conflicted about Jen Wang’s The Prince And The Dressmaker, but I’m not going to say that the NPR reviewer’s delight is misplaced or wrong — we all get from books what we get¹. Other books from onetime or sometime webcomickers include Vera Brosgol’s delightful and cringey Be Prepared, Lisa Hanawalt’s Coyote Doggirl, and Luisa — Now And Then, adapted by the invaluable Mariko Tamaki.

  Finally, in the realm of pure literature, you get some love for the only book that will let you jumpstart an entire civilization if stranded in the past, How To Invent Everything, by Ryan North (illustrations by Lucy Bellwood). Fun fact! According to North, one of the key technologies for your civilization is non-sucky numbers², which seems a random thing for me to mention here for no reason at all, but I sure did that.

• Hey, you know what you can do with non-sucky numbers? Measure stuff and calculate ratios! And you know what the greatest ratio in the world is? North, building on the work of Karla Pacheco, gifted us with such a ratio just today:
  

  Big Cow was photographed next to Small Cows. So how does Knickers compare to REGULAR cows?? Well @THEKarlaPacheco is slightly taller than a standard Holstein, and since I am slightly taller than Big Cow, the ratio between Big Cow and a regular cow is about… THIS

  Pacheco, I should note, has made a habit of being photographed with taller people — because pretty much everybody is — including, sometimes, much taller people like the Northesque Jeph Jacques. And North, I should note, has made a habit of being photographed with shorter people — because pretty much everybody is — including, sometimes, much shorter people like the Pachecoesque Shin Ying Khor. It is now my goal to measure as many comics folk as possible against one of these Big Cow/Small Cow metersticks, for science. Moo.

Spam of the day:

Target customers directly with email marketing tactics

a) No. b) Your email domain is duderenata.com, which sounds … wrong. Like cinemarama or perhaps Estradarama, but with duders?

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¹ However, I stand by my contention that Molly Ostertag’s The Witch Boy covered much of the same topical ground with more subtlety and honesty. It was released in 2017, so it’s not on the list. The sequel is, if anything, even better, but both books suffered from releasing at the end of October, too late for inclusion in lists that must have already been under construction.

² The others being verbal language, written language, the scientific method, and a calorie surplus.

We’re kinda all over the place today.

• It is a truth universally acknowledged that Anthony “Nedroid” Clark is a better person that you, or I, or anybody else; he sees what is going on in this sinful world and he shares that vision with clarity and (at his harshest) gentle poking. So when his Tumblr comic on How To Cut A Pizza from some years back was apparently lifted wholesale by somebody working for Little Caesar’s, he asked (very politely, I thought) for an explanation:
  

  Hey @littlecaesars, what’s the deal with ripping off my comic? http://nedroidcomics.tumblr.com/post/38264802929/how-to-cut-a-pizza https://www.facebook.com/littlecaesarsMEX/videos/1808149352787638/

  (Had it been me, there would have been egregious use of swear words and a request for corporate counsel’s contact info.)

  That was close to 20 hours ago; a little later, I attempted to get a comment from Little Caesar’s through the same Twitter account¹, to no avail. I see that since then, they have spent quite a bit of time with people who have complaints about not getting their orders for upwards of half an hour, but no comment on Clark’s concerns. I sent another tweet a bit more than an hour ago, and have similarly received no response.

  You know where this is going.

  Little Caesar’s does have a feedback form for customers with general concerns; I’m not a customer (I don’t think I’ve bought a pizza from them in more than 20 years²), but I suspect some of you may be. If you’ve bought anything from them in the recent past (I leave that to your determination), maybe use the form to send a polite inquiry (include links) as to their clearly unlicensed use of Mr Clark’s cartoon, with an encouragement that they reach out to him and find a mutually satisfactory path forward. Do it for the children.

• How about something cheerier? Ryan Estrada’s Big Data (written and produced by Estrada, starring Estrada and a whole damn bunch of other people³) is the sort of guy that can’t stop giving. Comics. Guest comics. Podcasts. Video. The guy is addicted to making stuff and then giving it to you for free (sometimes a while after people who have paid for it get it, but it pretty much always shows up for free). And he’s continuing that tradition with an extra Big Data tale, Zer0 Kn1ghts Before Christmas (aka The Big Data Christmas Special).

  And if that’s not enough of a present, I noticed for the first time at the bottom of the episodes page for Big Data (in the minisodes section, or Little Data) something that wasn’t there the last time I browsed by:

  Here’s a selection of minisodes to listen to until season 2, Bigger Data premieres!

  I think that’s what they call a stealth launch; considering that Big Data concluded on The End Of The Internet As We Know It, I’m intrigued as to how he can bring everything back from the brink. I’m hoping it’s just Oh hey guys, should I throw the switch on the backup? and then everything works again. Alas, As a matter of cosmic history, it has always been easier to destroy than to create and I suspect there will be a few more twists and turns; all the better for us, but unfortunate for his characters. Keep an ear out for Bigger Data and we can all find out together.

Spam of the day:

Open Enrollment is Here! Change Your Plan Before It’s Too Late!

Wait, sealflaslight.com has open enrollment? Who’da thunk it?

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¹ For the record, their website’s Contact Us/For the media page is a series of PR stories and no actual contact info.

² Ah, heck, I’m not fooling anybody. Feedback sent.

³ Asked by me how the heck he got the likes of Jemaine Clement, Paul F Tompkins, Felicia Day, and Cecil Baldwin to be in his audio play, Estrada responded, I asked, and I paid them.

Warning: we’re talking about the seamy underbelly of creativity today — finding the money to make things while simultaneously not starving to death in the gutter.

• It looks like we’re getting Big Data after all! Well, okay, Ryan Estrada’s radioplay/podcast about the heist to steal the Keys To The Whole Internet was done, completed, finito, and when has that guy ever made a thing and not shared it? Regardless of the state of his crowdfunding campaign he was always going to release it, it was just a matter if he was going to so much as break even after a year and a half’s effort and thousands of dollars of upfront costs. That means we’re going to get stretch goals now, which … let’s just have Estrada tell us himself:
  

  Big Data is funded! I posted “stretch goals” that… let’s be honest here… are just stuff I’m doing no matter what. http://tinyurl.com/stretchability

  Free comics! More fancy voice talents! Estrada’s going to do more audio drama! The only question is are you going to toss him a couple bucks now, or after Big Data blows up into the next Serial?

• Know who else doesn’t make things contingent on crowdfunding, he just goes out there and makes stuff and then engages in commerce to invite you to buy it? Howard Tayler, that’s who. Today marks the preorder availability of Schlock Mercenary book 12, including the chance to have a dapper man sketch in your copy of the book, with delivery expected in mere weeks.

  See, the drawback — to the extent that there is one — of crowdfunding is that you don’t have the money to produce the thing until the check clears, so even if the thing is already made and you’ve got handshakes with the manufacturer, you can’t sign the contract and say Go until they get paid, then you get on their schedule, then you wait … and that’s best case. Me, I’m guessing that Tayler¹ did a bunch of math, figured out what a print run should look like for immediate orders plus reasonable stock for the future, and that the presses are already whirring.

  That’s why you’ll get your book in July, which means it’s got to get here, and get sketched in, and sent out in five to nine weeks². That’s as close to instant gratification as you’re going to get in webcomics.

• Speaking of instant gratification — sometimes how fast you get something is entirely up to the fans. Readers of this page will recall the high regard I have for Al’Rashad: City of Myths, as written by [comics commentator, Toronto politics observer, and lawyer] Christopher Bird and illustrated by Davinder Brar (illustration freelancer and teacher).

  It’s a damn good story, it’s nearly 300 pages long (serialized over about four years), and it’s just the first part of a trilogy. Thing is, lawyerin’ and teachin’ don’t leave a lot of time to make comics on the webcomics grind, particularly if it means (as it would for Brar) giving up freelance jobs to have the time to draw a comic that isn’t paying anything for years (if ever)⁴.

  Enter the Patreon to fund the production of Ra-Boka: Kingdom of the Bound (that would be the title of the second story). And, crucially, the funding goals start off modest, but as they increase they radically increase the pace of production. We’ve all seen Patreons that set goals of one extra comic a week or at least ten comics a month, but Bird & Brar³ start from a low target of $125 (I’m not sure if that’s US dollars, as Patreon is an American company, or Canadian, as Bird & Brar are strong and free), providing one page a month, to $2500 (three pages a week, 12 – 13 per month).

  It’s a hell of a range, and given that Ra-Boka is also projected to run nearly 300 pages, which means the story could take not quite 24 years to tell … or a year and a half. This is very much a case where a couple hundred people with a couple bucks each could make the difference between seeing a story on a schedule that would make even George RR Martin blanch (much less the third part of the trilogy) and seeing it unfold at warp speed before the last season of Game of Thrones hits.

  Time to dig in for that couple of bucks, kids — the first story was damn good (supra), you could see both Brar and Bird progressing in their craft during its run, so I expect the second (and third!) to be even better.

Spam of the day:

We are pleased to inform you of the released results of the Microsoft Iberica S.L Sweepstakes Promotion in conjunction with foundations for the promotion of software products organized for Software users.

This Program was held in Barcelona- Spain; Wherein your email address emerged as one of the online Winning emails in the 1st category and therefore attracted a cash award of EUR344,000.00 and a Mac laptop/iPhone.

Microsoft ran a sweepstakes and is giving out an iPhone? BALEETED.

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¹ By which I mean Howard’s wife Sandra, the logistics/business wrangler of TaylerCorp, and the one that makes sure that Art Boy gets all his stuff made and sent where it needs to go.

² Cue Dolley, Jane, and Lily. Dabney can eat it.

³ Together, they fight crime.

⁴ But Gary, I hear you cry, couldn’t Bird just pay Brar out of pocket like he must have for Al’Rashad, or like Estrada’s always doing? Yes, I suppose, but 1) Shut up, nobody is obligated to go into debt to entertain you for free; Estrada is unusually generous, but that does not create a binding precedent; 2) Bird’s got a wedding coming up and I doubt his fiancee is willing to serve guests pigs in blankets instead of a meal in order to make a comic for free reading on the internet; and 3) Seriously, if that’s the way you think, re-examine your priorities in life.

On his income taxes on the line where it says to enter your occupation, I hope that Jeffrey Rowland puts down internet merchandise mogul.

• Speaking of moguls of all sorts, you know what they need to keep their air of dapper superciliousness? A Monocle. Know where you can get a supply of monocles? From Zach Weinersmith. As I write this, the campaign to bring single-use monocles to the world is fivehours old and less than US$100 from its goal. If you think that it’s a joke, well, that’s where you’re right, but if you think it’s a scam or fake, allow me to share proof with you that these exist. Thank you to Weinersmith et. al.¹ for gifting me with this indispensible bit of dapperment; I await only an occasion when I must exhibit extreme surprise to deploy it for its intended purpose.
• Speaking of Kickstarters, I would like to mention that my very favorite webcomic for reading in book-length chunks — Gastrophobia — has launched its latest campaign for its latest book-lenth chunk (which is to say, a book). Gastrophobia volume 3: Best At Winning, Worst At Love has been fundraising over the weekend and currently sits at an inexplicably paltry 75 backers, although they have pushed creator David McGuire up to some 40% of goal. The strip is great fun, McGuire knows how to both build a damn good story and fulfill merch on a timely basis, and there’s nothing that should be keeping you from dropping the dough to pick up this book. Make with the clicky, already.
• Never bet against Ryan Estrada. Whether it’s setting out to provide guest strips for every webcomic, teach the world to read Korean and Russian in fifteen minutes, or wrangle eighteen different creators to tell one story from six different viewpoints based on an experience from his time running an Indian call center, Estrada takes on seemingly impossible tasks with aplomb.

  The aplombed tasque du jour is the one about the call center, as he’s launched Broken Telephone launched today as his newest serialized webcomic at Broken-Telephone.com, and it launched with what I believe is the largest initial buffer on record. Namely, the full year-long story is queued and ready to go on a daily basis. Estrada was kind enough to send me a review copy, which I have only just begun to read; what I have seen, however, is really good and plays to the strengths of his various artists, so be sure to check it out.

• It appears that the results of the SPX table lottery have gone out, and while there’s no list of who got in yet, there’s a lot of mention on the Twitters and such from people that didn’t. It’ll be interesting to compare the list of last year’s exhibitors (archived here) against the final list of who made it in. It looks like SPX has become a victim of its own success, with a desire to bring in new talent and meet demand for tables — but when your process is designed in such a way that it finds a way to not include such rarely seen on these shores talent as John Allison, it’s time to look at how well you’re balancing your priorities.

Spam of the day:

A friend of mine got off dialysis (stage 5 CKD) and healed his kidney.

You’re lying or fooling yourself. Go hang out with your flouride-decrying, homeopathy-loving, anti-vaxx friends, and keep your crackpottery out of here before I get some on my shoes.

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¹ Which group, regrettably, includes the nefarious James Ashby, aka History’s Greatest Monster. And he gets the girl to “accompany him to the opera” in the promotional film! Boo, hiss!

San Diego Comic Con has gotten an exhibitor’s list/map posted, which we at Fleen will be poring over to find persons and places of interest to the sort of person that reads this page. Honestly, I’m not sure if this is dropping with less lead time than in prior years (and I’m too lazy to go check), but it sure feels like it. With any luck, we’ll be able to report shortly on programming as well.

• Speaking of SDCC, being on the press list means I get all kinds of PR announcements about who is gonna be there. In case you were curious, the You Have Got To Be Kidding Me I Don’t Even Award (2012) has just been decided, on account of nothing is going to top this:
  

  E L JAMES AUTHOR OF THE BEST-SELLING “FIFTY SHADES OF GREY” TRILOGY WILL SIGN COPIES OF HER BOOKS AT COMIC-CON SAN DIEGO 2012. [SHOUTING original]

  It goes on for another couple of paragraphs after that; no word yet on whether or not the TwiHards have adopted Ms James as one of their own, but in case they have, there are new rules on lining up for days in advance.

• On the topic of actual comics, note should be made of the fact that Tyler Page is releasing a pretty sizable chunk of work (namely, pretty much the entire ten year history of this Stylish Vittles work) out there as an e-book for free:
  

  Ten years ago I published a book called Stylish Vittles: I Met a Girl. It was the beginning of my professional comics career (such that it is). Two more books followed.

  I have put together a 10th Anniversary Collection eBook which includes all three original books, as well as the conclusion that came years later: Stylish Vittles 4 – Behind the Page: The Saga of Rob Harvard. Additionally I put together a “Director’s Cut” eBook in which I eliminated all of the elements of the original books which seemed unnecessary to present a shorter, simpler narrative. Finally, included in the Deluxe Collection, are two Appendices: Appendix One is almost one thousand pages of process material – outlines, scripts, sketches, layouts, etc. Appendix Two contains all of the material I did which led up to the creation of the Stylish Vittles books.

  For reference, that’s more than 2000 pages of comics work that will cost you nothing but bandwidth (download here) and time. May I be so crass to mention (because Page is soft-pedaling this bit) that if you like what you read, you might want to toss him some money? I’m still refining a private rule of thumb for freely-distributed media that I enjoy:

  Mentally track how many pages you read, buy $1 of merch for every 10 pages.

  … on account of it falls neatly in line with buying a book collection covering a year’s worth of strips, but when creators like Page drop a few thousand pages on you, that’s the equivalent of ten or twelve books right there.

  So — sliding scale! Ten cents a page up to 250 pages, then another buck per 100 pages after that. Even if it’s not to my liking and I end up deleting it, I figure I ought to kick in a couple bucks to cover the network costs. Complicated? Maybe. But I’m trying to be an ethical consumer of media as well as a supporter of creators. Alternate models welcome in the comments.

• Speaking of potentially-bankrupting work collections, Ryan Estrada keeps hinting at “secret projects” and (in private communication) being “so very busy”. We all know what happens when Estrada gets busy in secret, right? Three dozen guest strips in one day. Until he decided to double that a year later¹.

  Until he decided he’s got bigger fish to fry, meaning that whatever is coming will most likely put the scope/scale of prior releases to shame, and thus can only be termed The Estradapocalypse. Readers are urged to stockpile canned goods, plastic sheeting, and duct tape in anticipation.

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¹ Including, it should be noted, a guest strip for this blog featuring Masthead Guy (who, contrary to an IFAQ, is not meant to be me).

Three major challenges today, that is, which pretty much erupted in the first half-hour after waking up. Since then it’s just been a normal Monday, for certain values of normal¹.

• And that’s all before considering that it’s Talk Like A Pirate Day. I don’t hold much truck with this holiday; to me, 19 September will always instead be It’s Anniversary!² But dadnugget³ Crumbs has gone and made TLAPD actually valuable. Yarrgh.
• Ultimately, though, there are two words that will redeem any bad times, even a Monday-Squared:

  Anime.

  Club.

• In other news, Jim Zub took time out from kicking ass and skulls with the funnest comic book on the racks presently to drop me a mysterious little email:
  

  Hey Gary,
  Check this out:
  http://www.makeshiftmiracle.com/

  Keep your eyes on it… it’s gonna be a beaut.

  Those of us that remember Zub’s first comics work, The Makeshift Miracle (which launched, oh, about ten years ago) are rightfully intrigued by this turn of events and one-week countdown. Might there be a relaunch? Remastered art? Further adventures? The mind reels, and quite frankly anything that he throws at us, I’m gonna be thrilled. Hooray!

• New Recipe Comix, this time from John Allison as Mildred and Lottie explore Toads and Holes and demystify one of those terribly British dishes that I never knew what it was and was scared to look at too closely. But Lottie and Mildred wouldn’t steer me wrong, no matter how angry-eyed those smash potatoes are.
• Last thoughts for today — as teasered in the Before Times (i.e.: ten days ago), Shaenon Garrity (Radness Queen of some appropriate Geologic Feature and Nexus of all Webcomics Realities that don’t involve the Toronto Man-Mountain) has dropped some wisdom regarding Kickstartering for you today over at The Comics Journal. All who plan to use the microfinance service would do well to read it carefully.

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¹ For example, Phillip informs me that the WordPress weirdness I encountered last week may recur for a period of time this week, as different projects get migrated/consolidated on his various back-end servers. Also, the latest WordPress update has shifted my editing window to a really small, console-like typeface, which I kind of like. But it’s different, and on a Monday, so it gets brought up.

Also, what is up with Flaco’s cleavage in today’s Sheldon? That’s just … disturbing.

² Happy second anniversary, David and Maggie.

³ It’s not Estradarama, either, because Ryan Estrada is too busy trekking across South America.

Some interesting bits of information have been hitting the aether since yesterday.

• Rumor has it that Paul Southworth is up to something. There are subtle hints scattered here and there, dark rumors whispered in darker places. Then there’s this:
  

  I can’t wait to show you this new strip and website , guys. Oh man oh man oh man not much longer now

  So yeah — screw subtle hints, this is Southworth shouting from atop a pile of overturned, burning cars (comparatively speaking). You Are Dead is nice and all, but the thought of Southworth returning to stripping (insert joke here) with ongoing characters and plots and all is making me happy today. Nothing’s broken today, and it would be kind of weird to launch on a Friday, so smart money says watch Southworth very carefully for the next couple of Mondays.

• In other, more clearly defined, news, it appears that this year’s Estradarama is a no-go; reports that Christmas has also cancelled are premature, and we remain cautiously optimistic. But back to Ryan Estrada, and what’s up with the nascent tradition of guest strip carpet bombing:
  

  Well, I’m very pleased to say there is no Ryan Estrada Day today. There was a lot of criticism of last years’ offerings, and all of it absolutely correct! It was fun as a stunt, but taking 2 months off work to prepare for one day, then being so swamped catching up with my paid work that I can’t draw any other personal stuff for the rest of the year is silly.

  Fair enough; I liked seeing Estrada’s take on so many different characters (both visually and from a writer’s perspective), and I enjoyed the hunt aspect of tracking ’em all down, but you know what? Ryan Estrada is not my bitch, and no desire for free entertainment on my part trumps any decision he makes on his part to engage or not engage in providing said entertainment, particularly not at the expense of paying work. And it appears that the paying work is coming to the fore:

  From now on, I am in the business of making quality work, and trying to make a living off of that work, rather than trying to squeeze it in between commissions. I have a list of projects that I’ll be doing over the next year, and when they’re ready, you’ll get the chance to see them! Here’s what’s in the works:

  • Villain (a new daily webcomic, starting 1 October with a nice fat buffer)
  • Aki Alliance (first half online, second half to be bundled as a graphic novel and submitted to publishers)
  • The Kind You Don’t Bring Home to Mother (animated feature from the comic that lost the Zudacontest by one vote)

• Can there be more than one new sci-fi comedy webcomic? Apparently so, according to Culture Pulper Mike Russell’s Twitterfeed:
  

  Getting sneak peek at Chris Baldwin‘s forthcoming comedy space-opera webcomic. It’s adorable, but w/ lasers. Prediction: hit.

  Adorable and lasers? I’m there.

In retrospect, my internet at home being nonfunctional (smokin’ hot signal, no DNS) and the prospect of sitting on the line with a first-level “support” “technician” to go through multiple reboots only to determine that the problem isn’t on my end should have been a tip-off. Almost nothing of interest going on today.

The sick and wounded from PAX continue to heal. The great drama and fights are absent. It’s still days to go until Estradarama and It’s Wedding!, and naught occurs in our scrappy little community but a few instances of quiet accomplishment due to diligent effort. BO-RING. Well, let’s at least acknowledge those bits of accomplishment, and hope that somebody has a meltdown before deadline tomorrow.

• Red String — through six years (or so), thirty-five chapters (or so), three Dark Horse books (or so), Gina Biggs has been cranking out the pages and just crossed the 1000 mark. Daunting backlog o’ comics, but oh so worth it to get caught up.
• Know what might make it easy to get caught up? Archive Binge. Since the free RSS-based catch-up service launched ’bout two weeks ago, a stack of new comics have been added to the service, including more than 2500 episodes of Goats and nearly 3400 of Schlock Mercenary. Also on the list since the last time I looked: the pure nerdery of Dinosaur Comics and xkcd, adding more than 2000 strips between ’em. Dig in.
• Speaking of xkcd, volume 0 is on sale as of today, and for the first 24 hours you can order your copy signed for an extra ten bob; unsigned copies will start shipping tomorrow. I got mine on order, do you?