Yesterday, we mentioned that fans of STRIPPED check their emails, on account of the hivemind known as Freddave Kellett–Schroeder had sent emails to Kickstarter backers of that fine movie (and it’s second Kickstart to finish production) to let them in on a secret: they apparently didn’t have enough travails in the four years or so it took to make the movie, so now they’re making a series:

Story/Line will be a love-letter to the art of cartooning, featuring in-depth, thoughtful interviews about the craft. These will be deep conversations, in the style of a PBS or BBC interview. Each will be beautifully shot in 4K, with one of the best crews in Los Angeles. Among our four Kickstarted interviews, we’ve already scheduled with Academy Award-winning Directors Chris Miller & Phil Lord (Spider-Verse, The Lego Movie, and every other great movie from the last decade), and Eisner-Award-Winning cartoonist Scott McCloud (The Sculptor, Understanding Comics, 24-Hour Comics Day).

So they’ll be channeling their inner Bill Moyers, or hopefully Graham Norton; Norton gets the absolute best out of his subjects via the simple expedient of boozing them up for the talk. Look into this, Freddave! They’ve got one interview in the can (and on their own dime) so far — Jake Parker of Inktober fame — and the campaign is to get another four interviews for general distribution to backers, with a secret additional interview mentioned.

Here’s where I think their rewards tiers are a little hecked up — to get that last, secret, interview, you have to be a backer at a high level; at present, it requires US$30 or more to get the Parker + four interview series, but US$85 to get the secret interview (or US$300 if you want a bunch of Sheldon e-books and an original comic to go along with ’em). That’s a pretty big jump from five interviews to five interviews, uncut footage, a poster, and the secret interview unless that secret interview is amazing.

Then again, they got Watterson on audio for STRIPPED and the Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett half of Freddave Schroeder-Kellett attends fancy industry parties with the likes of Lin-Manuel Miranda and Taika Waititi, so who knows? I want to make it clear that I have no idea who the secret interview is and I think I just convinced myself to up my pledge after typing that last sentence. Well played, Freddave Kellett-Schroeder! Well played.

Update to add: Third interview announced. Raina.

Spam of the day:

justin l____ district manager at Primerica Financial Services would like to connect on LinkedIn.

This is actually from LinkedIn, which means it is definitely spam. I have no damn idea who Justin L____ is, and have had no relationship with Primerica except once more than 20 years ago when the local office called me in for an interview “for an executive position” that turned out to be a room full of people being encouraged to join and push penny stocks on cold-called dupes. Ever see The Wolf Of Wall Street? That.

I gave them about 20 minutes to get to the point then got up, said I was asked to come in for a job interview and instead you’re trying to get us to join some kind of Amway cult (which tremendously offended the woman at the front of the room) and walked out.

So yeah — get lost, Justin.

We have today a follow-up from Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin, on the state of web- and indie creators in the time of lockdown. Without further adieu¹, FSFCPL:

Thanks, as always, to FSFCPL for his insights and digging. We should contrast the relatively stable crowdfunding in France with the uncertainty that killed off Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett’s interview series (at least until he judges the time is right for another shot at it), and caused more than one no-brainer sure thing to delay, seeking a bit more certainty. Americans are, for all our foundational myth of rugged self-sufficiency, a deeply fearful people, no place more than at the top of society where the fear of losing even a miniscule percent of vast wealth causes all courses of action beyond capital preservation to die on the vine. We really need to do something about that.

Spam of the day:

High Speed 3 in 1 Backup Storage for iOS and Android Devices
Large Capacity 64GB – 64,000 Photos

You’re talking about a USB drive, or possibly a Micro SD card. You can buy them in the checkout lane at the supermarket or office supply store.

_______________
¹ Err, so to speak.

² Editor’s note: I’m not sure if it’s reassuring or depressing that other countries are just as fucked up at providing for artists and freelancers as the US. Is anywhere other than Germany not screwing this particular pooch?

I’m wondering if we’re starting to hit the end of Phase One of the coronavirus response. We still don’t have full distancing in all places (thanks, Republican governors!), and those of us that have been under restrictions for a couple weeks are hitting the it’s going to be how much longer? stage. Various notable people are being reported in critical condition or deceased because of COVID-19, new evidence how just how bad it’s going to get for the areas still in denial drop daily, and a concentrated, national response still hasn’t even started because of the insecure egotist in charge.

Things are about to get explosively bad in Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Georgia — and then everywhere else, hopefully not until we pass the peaks in the early-hit places. We’ll get there. We’ll find that what seems hard and isolating becomes doable (and those of us who’ve been doing it for a while will have it incumbent on us to help those that come behind). Practice helps (says the guy that had his first positive-screened patient over the weekend, and expects to get them regularly from here on out), but not as much as patience.

So. Deep breath. There’s some stuff here to take your mind off things for a bit, and an opportunity to help make something amazing, if it’s within your ability at the present time (which is absolutely not the ideal time). And, because we live in a crapsack reality, something that’s usually pretty bad has become downright terrible. Let’s start with that one and work our way up:

• Diamond is a monopoly, and those are never a good idea. Having already decided it won’t receive/ship comics for the foreseeable future, it decided today that because it’s not got money coming in from comic stores — that would be the comic stores that Diamond’s already said won’t be getting the product they ordered — it’s not going to pay its suppliers for product they’ve already received and sold.

  It’s a neat tornado of shitty behavior: announce you’re not going to be sending stuff to your customers, which causes customers to not pay you to do nothing, which causes you to not have money coming in, so you decide to keep what money you’ve already got and not pay the vendors that supplied you in good faith. Whatever form the direct market takes when all of this is done, I sincerely hope this course of action is the death knell for the crappiest link in the comics chain and that multiple new companies arise and put Diamond in the dirt.

  Oh, yeah, they did the same to the games distribution vendors as well.

• Couple weeks back we brought you news of Fredddave Kellett-Schroeder’s new interview series Kickstart, a project which got off to a comfortable start and then just sort of stalled. Don’t get me wrong — this funding curve would be great if it were depicting, say, a count of coronavirus infections¹, but it’s not where you want to be for a project funding. The FFF mk2 isn’t looking promising: US$64K-96K, with a goal of just under US$90K would be promising, except for one thing.

  The project was promoted to past backers of Stripped and other Kellett projects for 18 hours or so before the public reveal, and a good chunk of that day one total comes from the pre-announcement period. It’s a useful technique, but it throws off the funding formula, which relies on an organic launch. A better metric in this case would be the McDonald Ratio, which states that the first three days of funding equals one third of the total raised, or in this case about US$65K, well under goal. The dramatic dropoff from day two to day three, and the almost zero funding since² make this one a longshot.

  Which is a damn shame, because this series looks super interesting. There’s still time to turn things around, weirder things have happened, but it’s going to take a lot of people deciding they want this in the next nine days (days of uncertainty and economic stress nobody was considering back in early March). More likely, this is going to have to be shelved until a later time when people have spare money again. Just … if you have discretionary funds right now, give it some thought, okay?

• Let’s end on some unalloyed good news. Aud Koch has shared her first week’s quarantine art, and it’s stunning. Go take a good long look and forget all of … this … for a while.

Spam of the day:
Got a call from “Mike” who claimed to be calling to reduce my electric bill, from a clearly audible boiler room. I told him You’re lying, you’re trying to steal from me while a plague is underway, and I hate you. Felt great.

_______________
¹ It bears a striking resemblance to the curve for South Korea, who have done everything in just about the complete opposite way that the US has. Never forget: both countries saw their first confirmed case on the same day. That being said, some of the worst-hit areas here in the US are starting to just maybe see a flattening in the curve and that’s good news. Don’t slack off now; hold the line and drive it down into the dirt.

² Including three days of negative funding. Ouch.

That would be two different fallen; the first would be Michael Payne of which more was said in the Breaking News Bulletin earlier today. The second would be the latest round of cancellations, of which there are two to mention at the moment:

• You may have noticed that Matt Inman and his compatriots in the Exploding Kittens empire have been planning a boardgame convention in Portland, known as Burning Cat, for the weekend of 16-17 May. Lots of Inmanian weirdness planned — enormous cards to play EK with, a giant vending machine shaped like a fuzzy cat, a two-story tall firebreathing cat monster — and guests including Bill Amend and Sarah Andersen.

  Yeah, PDX, which is kind of right next to one or two of the (as of this writing, based on latest information) worst-hit hotspots of COVID-19&sup2. I didn’t see any estimates of attendance, but any large gathering that involves widespread travel at this point is probably a bad idea; this afternoon, Inman, et al, called it off and the first ever/second annual Burning Cat will be next year. Kudos to them to making it all simple — everybody is fully refunded, this year’s ticket holders will be contacted for early bird purchase next year, pretty much the same deal with exhibitors. That’s how you do it.

• Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin dropped an update via comment after hours on Friday:
  

  Not sure that is worth a full correspondent dispatch, but as a complement I can report that Paris Manga, which was to take place this weekend, has simply been cancelled, among many other events in March. Indeed, I don’t know how the authorities are managing the situation on your side of the Atlantic, but on this side the French government has prohibited all events totaling more than 5000 people in a closed space. Application was swift, too: the decision was taken Saturday, February 29th, and as early as Sunday some events had to adapt (e.g. Japan Tours Festival only accepted attendees who had bought their tickets in advance, in order to ensure they would remain under the gauge), or in some cases simply not reopen on Sunday. It goes without saying many creators here are financially affected as well.

  The answer to how authorities are handling the novel coronavirus is, bluntly, not well. Cancellations are left to local discretion and I’ve not seen anything resembling a guidance as to permissible crowd size². Things are happening at the last minute, as a general rule. For example, my wife is in the final semester of her return to university and due to graduate in May; today we got a postcard talking about the time and location of the commencement ceremony, and I imagine literally nobody has any idea if it will actually happen.

• Also unknown: MoCCA Fest, 4-5 April at Metropolitan West in Manhattan. While the bulk of confirmed cases in New York have been in Westchester County and associated with a single individual, and Manhattan is (as of this writing, etc) sporting approximately 1 confirmed case per half million residents, you never know what could happen in the four weeks. Until we at Fleen hear that it’s nixed, we’re going to report on planned goings-on, including guests and exhibitors, in the coming weeks.

  Just one caveat — last year’s exhibitor list was severely underpopulated, as it turned out the exhibitors had to supply info directly and many apparently didn’t know. If you’ve got a table, be sure supply your info so we can find you.

• Helping to mitigate even in the face of events getting called off: C Spike Trotman has declared a virtual event will take place with everybody at home, where you can touch your own face (wash your hands first) or shake hands with your roomies (wash your hands first) to your heart’s content. PajamaCon:³
  

  We’re planning three days of livestreams on the Pajama Con Twitch channel March 13th–15th, 12pm–6pm CST. The livestreams will be like a talk show or live podcast where we feature creators who also had to cancel their ECCC appearances. Joining us so far will be Steve Leiber, Chris Roberson, Lin Visel, Genue Revuelta, C Spike Trotman, Kate Leth, and we’d love to invite more. We’ll also be promoting on the Iron Circus Twitter account using the #pajamacon2020 hashtag, and will update this page with more information as our plans come together.

  We plan to announce a schedule by Wednesday, March 11th, so that is the due-date to apply!

  So, get on that. And, as Spike points out, there are other convention-alternatives, including #VVSN Very Very Shopping Network and Oni Press #ECCC2020 Pop Up Store, plus I’ve seen a guerrilla PDX comics get-together distributed event planned for this weekend, with creators taking four-hour blocks at retailers around town. No fees for exhibitors or attendees to PDX Pop Up Con, but get your application in by end of day tomorrow for possible inclusion on 14-15 March.

• Finally, if you’re a friend of Freddave Kellett-Schroeder, you should be checking your email. Just sayin’.

Spam of the day:

I don’t want to scare you….
But I do want to wake you up to the fact that corona could be the most dangerous epidemic this country has seen since it started.

Fuck on off out of here with that shit. You don’t care about a godsdamned thing except separating fearful people from their money. Also, you apparently have never heard of smallpox, you fucking parasitoid.

_______________
¹ Namely, Seattle and San Francisco. Of course, it’s likely that everywhere has far more cases that have been reported due to the slow rollout and insufficient numbers of tests.

At this point we’re probably better off skipping testing for anybody that’s not symptomatic except for healthcare workers (don’t want to spread it, but don’t want to require self-quarantine and removal from duty on the basis of a casual contact that didn’t take) and so we may never know the true extent.

I’ll tell you this, though — it’s at least two orders of magnitude of diagnosable cases than the approximately 600 that have been test-confirmed in the country so far.

² And as an EMT, I’m getting guidances from both the CDC and the New Jersey state Department of Health, in addition to that of the local hospitals we deal with.

³ Originally announced as ComfyCon, but it was pointed out that’s not a generic term, but rather a specific name used by Danielle Corsetto and her convention wife Randy Milholland for their con-from-home, and has been since 2014. Spike immediately and graciously apologized for the “con” fusion and rebranded.

Even though I’ve got excellent, real-time backups, there’s still a moment of uncertainty as my finger hovers over the button that says Update Now.

• Speaking of fingers, mine is doing much better, thanks for asking; if you looked at it today you’d figure I’d had a particularly nasty papercut combined with an overly-aggressive session with the nail clippers. It’s still kinda painful if I get overly exciting while typing, but nothing too terrible. I bring this up because we are approaching open enrollment time for health insurance, and if you’re new to having insurance (thank you, ACA), you may not have had experience with renewing insurance.

  Long story short, there will be a fixed period of time that your insurer will notify you of, and that’s when you have to decide what kind of plan you want for next year. Guys, you want a plan. How much do you want a plan? Consider this — I got my insurance benefit statement for my little trip to the Emergency Department two weeks ago, and if not for that insurance my momentary bout of kitchen stupidity would have cost me nearly two thousand damn dollars.

  So consider this my semi-regular plea that you self-employed folks take the time to investigate this very carefully, because guess what? A cheapo high-deductible plan that’s meant to cover only catastrophes wouldn’t help in a situation like this; until we get this entirely bitched-up system of healthcare delivery properly fixed, you’ve got to have insurance if you don’t want something small to put you into potentially crippling debt.

• So what should I do with all the money I saved on EMERGENCY SERVICES and STERILE SUPPLIES and DRUGS/OTHER¹? How about buying a metric crap-load² of cartoonist interviews? Hivemind filmmaker Freddave Kellett-Schroeder have a limited-time sale going on for all the extras associated with STRIPPED:
  

  STRIPPED SUPER AWESOME DELUXE EDITION

  ON SALE UNTIL FRIDAY! SAVE 39%!
  Get over 26 HOURS of additional content!
  WHAAAAAAT

  Compare to other editions:

  • Basic film: US$14.99 (10 DCPWH)
  • Deluxe Edition (film plus director’s commentary, 30 minutes of various interviews, full Jim Davis interview): US$19.99 (5.7 DCPWH)
  • Bonus Material 1 (Deluxe Edition plus 14 more interviews adding up to 16 hours): US$34.99 (2 DCPWH)
  • Bonus Material 2 (seven more interviews, including a nearly three hour extravaganza with Kurtz, Straub & Guigar, almost 12 hours inall): US$16 (1.3 DCPWH)

  Those numbers in parentheses after the prices are the dollar cost per watchable hours ratios; At US$40 and equal to the content of both Bonus Material packages, the SADE features almost 29 hours of video for less than 75 cents per hour. The only reason to hold off on this is if — like me — you hold out hope for a full release of all 300 hours of footage, in an Ultra Super Awesome Deluxe 75 disc boxed set.

• Speaking of Brad Guigar (and honestly, why wouldn’t we speak of Brad Guigar?), if you’re like me you miss regular Guigar-heavy podcasts. Well, this is your lucky day, because the only thing better than a Guigar podcast is a multi-Guigar podcast:
  

  It’s official. The boys and I are podcasters. Subscribe to “Hey Comics — Kids!” on iTunes: http://ow.ly/BCMLv

  Everybody that always thought those other guys were holding Brad back during Webcomics Weekly, now’s your chance to swim in pure, uncut Guigar: Brad’s teamed up with his sons, Alex and Max, to talk about comics (or honestly, whatever pops into their heads … they are Guigars, after all) and they now have the imprimatur of Apple. Just listen carefully: science has hypothesized that if three or more Guigars end up in simultaneous laugh loops (click here, skip forward to the seven and a half minute mark, and glob have mercy), insanity may be the result.

Spam of the day:

Inspiring story there. What occurred after? Thanks!

nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd.

I’m sorry, what was the question?

________________
¹ The DRUGS/OTHER category featured a charge of one (1) dollar, and hell if I can figure out what it was for. I didn’t get any drugs. Oh, and it’s worth mentioning that the billing category that equates to you showed up in the ER and sat on a bed was the largest charge; the one that represented the PA fixed your damn-fool finger was a couple hundo less.

² Or 2.54 imperial crap-loads, if you prefer.

Sunday is always an odd day at San Diego Comic Con; the Eisner and Masquerade winners are known (and there’s been time for all the arguments about how they rock and/or suck to have been identified), vendors have started to quantify sales numbers and get an idea how things compared to last year (consensus: cautious optimism), and everybody on the floor is simultaneously looking forward to and dreading packing up and packing out. It’s when you start to blend together what do I need to do today with what do I need to do differently next year and even the casual conversations get wacky. It’s a day when you’re still 18 hours away from dropping your bag and worrying about the new laptop inside when you should have been worried about the glass bottle of orange juice in the outside bottle pocket, or maybe that’s just me¹. Here, then are things that happened on Sunday, none of which happened to me more than 50 meters away from the big WEBCOMICS banner hanging over the center of the Sexy Lagoon.

• Mark Siegel of :01 Books has some unique challenges in this life — he’s got one hell of a reputation to uphold at his tiny little imprint with a staff of four (three, once Colleen AF Venable leaves for her new art director gig, although she’ll still be a :01 author), he has the challenge of collaborating with Scott McCloud on Mcloud’s next book (although it’s based on a presentation/workshop that McCloud’s been refining for years, so a lot of the heavy lifting is done), and they kept running out of fives at the booth.

  None of these things bother him; the books will continue to be of amazingly high quality, because that is the mission that his staff are committed to, and he’ll fight the necessary fights with his bosses to get the budget to make them; he edited McCloud’s upcoming The Sculptor with an exacting eye at McCloud’s insistence, so the working relationship there is solid; and heck, I could always break some twenties for them out of the Dumbrella register. Add it all up and you’ve got no reason to be in a state of botheration, although perhaps next show they’ll get another pack of fivers. The fact that :01’s fall slate of books looks absolutely breathtaking doesn’t hurt, and if Gene Luen Yang’s Boxers & Saints didn’t take the Eisner in their category, it’s only because they lost to fellow :01 offering Battling Boy by Paul Pope². Challenges ahead, but nothing they can’t deal with.

• The odd hybrid creature known at Freddave Kellett-Schroeder wound up winning the in the documentary category of the SDCC International Film Festival. The statue for that may be less well known than the famed rotating Eisner globe, but it’s springy, and apparently delicious as well. Let’s see if maybe they can’t snag a nomination for Best Related Work next year and put the globe next to the spring.
• Ian Jones-Quartey, supervising director of Steven Universe was kind enough to drop by the Dumbrella booth and let me in on all the info from the panel that I missed; they’ve been picked up for another 52 episodes, which will bring them to a total of 104, so right now [they] just have to keep making them. It’s been a while since I saw an animated series launch as strong as Steven right out of the gate, and it’s just gotten better over the length of its first season (I’m invested in this show to the extend that I have theories and headcanon, which are not things a man pushing 50 should have). I also asked Jones-Quartey when RPG World is coming back, thus pushing it back another month, and now I owe myself a dollar. Awesome.
• Danielle Corsetto is back on the road, about 60% of the way through her summer signing trip, and having the time of her life. She’s sold more books than ever she expected (an emergency resupply shipment had to be sent to Omaha), and she assures me that she has plans — big plans — for her career and her comics in the coming year. Details on those when she’s ready to share, but in the meantime, today marks the start of the latest GWS guest week, this one by Randy Milholland of Something*Positive.
• Lars Brown was kind enough to drop by the booth with a copy of Penultimate Quest, the product of his recent Kickstarter. He was even kinder to sign it for me. I’m not sure where I’m going to draw you, Gary! fell on my internal kindness scale until I saw what he produced — Laser Moustache. Mr Brown, you are rad.

The best cosplay of the day was a tie between the very subtle and understated Sen (or was that Chihiro?) from Spirited Away and the very detailed and over the top Steampunk Buddy Christ. With Sen, it was the small details, like a fat mouse and a small fly on her shoulder; with Buddy, it was the rotating clockwork heart on his chest, with handmade escapement gears and multiple complications. Good job, cosplayers!

Spam of the day:

It’s difficult now to focus on Andrew, but also really enjoyed your prized and your particular way with words.

Yeah, Andrew’s great.

_______________
¹ Everything was okay, if variously damp and sticky and I’m writing this on the laptop in question so it still works, yay.

² A book which is simultaneously Pope at his Paul Popiest and his Jack Kirbiest. It’s a joy to read.

San Diego Comic Con programming continues its release, with Friday’s panels and things now up for your perusal. As always, the schedule may change over the next couple of weeks, so verify the schedule before sitting in line for 37 hours.

Friday Programming
Gender in Comics
10:00am — 11:00am, Room 4
Some very smart people on this panel, whose writings on the Venn diagram of gender and comics I enjoy a great deal, including Janelle Asselin, Andy Khouri, Jennifer de Guzman, and Laura Hudson.

Comics Arts Conference Session #5: Rescued by Batman: Finding Hope in Something Terrible
10:30am — 11:30am, Room 26AB
Dean Trippe talking about his experience with sexual abuse and how Batman saved him. My third must-attend of the show.

Origins of the Comic Strip: The Untold Story of Artists and Anarchy, 1895-1915
3:00pm — 4:00pm, Room 29A
Could be an interesting companion to the screening of STRIPPED later today.

Walking the Line: An Investigation into Alternative vs. Mainstream Comics and Beyond
3:00pm — 4:00pm, Room 28DE
Kazu Kibuishi and Gene Luen Yang will be part of the panel, moderated by the always-great Calvin Reid. But here’s the weird part:

Words and Pictures
3:00pm — 4:00pm, Room 9
Got that? Same time as the panel immediately above. Moderated by Lev Grossman of TIME magazine, it’s a murderer’s row of modern masters of graphic storytelling: Michael Cho, Faith Erin Hicks, Lucy Knisley, Jen Wang, and Gene Luen Yang¹.

Comic Book Entrepreneurs: The Business of Comics
6:00pm — 7:00pm, Room 9
Bunch of business types, but also Noelle Stevenson of Nimona and Lumberjanes.

STRIPPED
6:10pm — 7:40pm, offsite
Well, half offiste; STRIPPED will be screening as part of the Comic Con International Independent Film Festival, which takes place at the Marriott next door to the convention center, in Hall 2. It’s still part of SDCC so you do need to be badged, it’s just not in the convention center. With another film starting immediately after, it doesn’t look like there’ll be time for a Q&A with filmmakers Freddave Kellett-Schroeder, but they’ll be at booth 1228 all show, so drop by there to pick up a copy or ask ’em about focal length or whatever.

Okay, that’s it for now; as a quick note, I’ll be on Pacific Time next week, so look for updates to occur later than they normally do. Yep, work sends me to the Left Coast just before I have to fly there for the convention like three days after I get home. I am not going to know what damn time zone it is for weeks.

Spam of the day:

what does yolo swag mean

Let me Google that for you.

_______________
¹ Is Gene Yang able to be in two places at the same time? It might explain how he has the time to turn out so many graphic novels without seeming to rush or skimp on any of them.

Just because the movie’s all done and released and all doesn’t mean that STRIPPED is no longer making news.

For instance, I received my copy of the Watterson poster ‘tother day¹, and by my reckoning that means that hive mind Freddave Kellett-Schroeder just have to whip up the book of the film to finish out their Kickstarter obligations. Kellett’s done what? A dozen books on his own plus How To Make Webcomics, so he can almost certainly get that put together by … I dunno, next Tuesday?

Okay, I kid, but it’s impressive to see how much of a massive undertaking Kellett & Schroeder have just about finished, which will naturally mean that it’s time for the next movie project². But on the off chance that they don’t feel like jumping straight back into a project that will take years and many, many dollars, they can at least keep the film-making habit satisfied by producing and releasing more full interviews from their 300 hour collection.

Case in point: in addition to the various bonus material found on the streamable and DVD editions, and the previously-released Bonus Material 1 (fifteen full-length interviews for more than sixteen hours of additional content), one may now obtain Bonus Material 2 (seven interviews, ten creators, nearly twelve hours of content). Or heck, go for the everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink edition with literally more than a day’s worth of discussion from more than twenty interviews³. Comics creators, there’s a lot of in-depth discussion and more than a few process demos, making this a must-have for your reference library.

And that’s not all! Their roadshow screenings continue apace, with the University of Oregon hosting a screening and Q&A tomorrow night, the Schulz Museum hosting a screening and Q&A on 21 June, Webster University (St Louis) hosting screenings on 11 and 13 July, and possibly a screening at SDCC. If Freddave aren’t careful, they’ll spend more time on the road with the finished film than they spent on gathering interviews.

Spam of the day, from our filters to you:

My parents would always share their own communion bread with us, even when we were too young to go up to the rail ourselves. It made us feel welcome as part of the church family and we learned through them what communion means and just how special and important it is. I would always serve children if their parents agreed. buy soundcloud likes

That’s just … that’s beautiful, man.

_______________
¹ I haven’t found anyplace where suckas who didn’t contribute to Kickstarts can avail themselves of this poster, which I hope that Freddave will remedy shortly because damn this thing is gorgeous.

² If I am found mysteriously murdered after suggesting he should spend another half-decade making another movie, remember that he may appear to be an easygoing guy, that Dave Kellett, but those are the ones that have secret murderous tendencies for maximum irony when the neighbors all appear on TV and can’t believe that he’d do such a thing.

³ “Over 26 hours”, to be precise; given the 300 hours of original interview footage, this means that Schroeder and Kellett have released less than a tenth of the total material they have on hand, and can continue to give you more and more and more for some time to come. Given that a DVD can typically hold up to about 4 hours of video, the inevitable 75-disc box set is going to take some considerable shelf space, which you should start clearing now. Alternately, wait for terabyte-scale thumb drives to get cheaper and save on shipping.

How’s everybody doing? I’m doing good, thanks for asking.

• STRIPPED comes to iTunes Canada tomorrow, and just like it made a run at #1 in Documentaries in the US last month, filmmakers Freddave Kellett-Schroeder are going to try to repeat the feat in the Great White North. If you live north of 49 and haven’t see the film yet, tomorrow’s a good day.
• Not to be confused with the Great White North, some time back a webcomicker by the name of Lars Brown did a two-volume story via Oni called North World and it was pretty great. I mention this because Brown has continued to make some not-your-typical sword-and-sorcery comics by the name of Penultimate Quest, and it’s time to get the second volume of PQ printed. Enter the requisite Kickstarter campaign, which has just under two weeks and just under 10% to go. Brown’s the real deal, making comics with heart, and realistic relationships, and frustrations at your lot in life, and swords. If that sounds like the sort of thing you’d like, please consider backing PQ2.
• Speaking of real deals that do swords and comics with heart, Jim Zub is launching a new creator-owned story (his first since Baldy and Shorty started kicking skulls in 2010; as Zub has stated, we’re on the next-to-last story arc of their adventures) in August, to be titled Wayward; if I may be permitted a moment of pure opinion, Zub’s stuff gets an automatic blind buy from me. Some of it may not turn out to be for me, but the man’s stellar hits-to-misses ratio means it’s worth plunking down four bucks to find out even if it doesn’t sound like my cup of tea.

  Wayward, for the record, sounds like the finest of green tea, whisked by a senior geisha in a formal ceremony:

  Rori Lane is an outsider by nature, but moving to Tokyo to live with her single Mom has only exacerbated her weirdness. She’s feeling out of sorts, worried about fitting in and, as if that wasn’t enough, strange things are beginning to happen. Glowing symbols and patterns are starting to appear before her eyes… and she’s the only one who seems to notice.

  “Wayward is a coming of age story filled with mystery and emotion. It’s also an ass-kicking joy ride with teenagers beating the hell out of Japanese mythological monsters,” said Zub. “Steve and I built this series from the ground up to play to both our strengths. I can’t wait for people to see what we have planned.”

  In WAYWARD a group of teens living in Tokyo find a common bond in manifesting strange, supernatural abilities. As they begin to unravel the mystery behind their powers and their common source they’re drawn into a war with the vestiges of Japan’s monstrous mythic past.

  Buffy meets Spirited Away, anybody? You can bet that I’ll be finding Zub at SDCC in July and dragging as much info out of him as I can.

• Speaking of Zub, even if I weren’t blind-buying all his work I’d still pick up the next Schlock Mercenary collection (featuring a short story by Zub), which is now up for pre-order. The Longshoreman of the Apocalypse story arc set up much of late-period Schlock’s story development, was nominated for a Hugo Award, and is available in standard (US$20) and sketch (US$30) editions. For that you’ll get 160 pages of full-color mayhem, the bonus Zub-penned story, and a deep sense of personal peace and tranquility¹.

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¹ They say that the grave is very tranquil.

Hecka. Yeah. Now all I need is the limited-edition poster and the book of the film and I’ll be as set as you possibly can be. Freddave, thanks so much for this. Oh, and if you’d like to see STRIPPED on the big screen, there are at least three screenings coming up. Only thing is, the big screen don’t get you director’s commentary, which is on the DVD, so maybe grab that?

• Y’know, Professoressa and Professor Foglio have been doing this comics thing for a long damn time, and they must surely know by now that their fans are going to buy their books, but it’s still got to make you feel good when Girl Genius book 13 clears 100% of funding in something like 16 hours. As always, putting the Foglios on video is a treat and a half.
• Also a treat and a half — quite possibly two treats, if we’re being honest — is the news of a new comic from Steve Wolfhard. Forg the Winter Frog is short, but it’s making me smile like a maniac; here’s hoping that Wolfhard gifts us with more Forg in the future.
• Hey! Do you make comics? Are you in the New York City area? Thomas Crowell, author of a legal reference for filmmakers and a soon-to-be similar reference for comic book creators, will be the guest of the Media Law Collaborative of NYU’s law school on Monday, 14 April. He’ll be speaking on the topic of representing comics creators, from 4:00pm to 6:00pm with a cocktail reception to follow.

  Now it appears that the event is by invite only, which may possibly be garnered via this form. I’m not saying that a bunch of cartoonists can just show up and listen to the law guy and then get free booze, but none of us will know unless some of you try. More likely, you cartoonists will have to point it out to your lawyer or business guy or agent, but somebody you know should be going. If you can’t convince somebody to go, be sure to mention the free booze part.