But we’re supposed to be about news and webcomics, and a giant bolus of webcomics news hit yesterday in the form of John Campbell’s presumably last Kickstarter update. It’s painful and horrifying to read.

I’ve liked Pictures for Sad Children a lot, but I don’t know John Campbell; I’m pretty sure we briefly met once¹, and we have people in common. Or perhaps we’ve had people in common; reading between the lines on Twitter yesterday, along with conducting a book-burning Campbell has apparently cut ties with just about everybody.

The rambling, makes-sense-if-you-wrote-it … I’m going to call it a manifesto … that Campbell dropped yesterday puts a lot of past behavior into stark relief: the claim to have been faking depression, the systematic removal of comics from the web, a needless shitfight on Tumblr, and a book about a hallucinogen that may or may not be autobiographical.

Like I said, I don’t know Campbell; those that do² have said online that Campbell doesn’t acknowledge inconsistent or worrying behavior, and refuses both contact and assistance. Campbell did some brilliant comics; it’s likely that will not happen any longer, and for reasons that are almost certainly outside Campbell’s control. I’m going choose to remember Campbell not for this turn of events, but for PFSC and the moments of insight and uplift it provided.

And there is nothing else that can be done in this situation but to bear witness, to recognize that this is something that happened, and to hope like hell that this story eventually has a non-tragic outcome.

_______________
¹ As near as I can recall, our interactions were limited to an email exchange around the time of the Mexico Comics Commune of Aught-Seven, and it’s possible Ryan Estrada introduced me when we talked that night before he walked across the border. Honestly, I can’t remember.

² No names; this being the internet, somebody is going to berate them simultaneously for what they did and did not do vis-à-vis Campbell, and they don’t need the grief.

Although there are multiple people in that bonfire video; I can only hope that one of them recognizes that in front of them is somebody that needs help immediately and tries to arrange it. I don’t typically hold people that would burn books for the hell of it to be capable of such rational analysis, but I’m willing to make an exception here if it means Campbell finds safety and care.

Sure, there’s awesome stuff in Bethesda, like John Campbell’s debut Pictures for Sad Children book — don’t buy all of them, because the leftovers will go on sale online next week. Oh, and I guess Latin Heartthrob Aaron Diaz will have a new Dresden Codak book available. And other attendees (missed yesterday) will include Dylan Meconis (tabling with Carol Burrell) with a new print, and Dave Shabet and Evan Dahm getting a last-minute table assignment.

And that’s not even considering Raina Telgemeier giving away two galley copies of her forthcoming graphic novel, SMILE:

I’m also holding a raffle and a contest! I have a few advance-reader galleys of SMILE available, and I’d like to give them away. There are two ways to win:

Raffle! Come fill out a raffle ticket at our table, any time before 4:30 PM on Sunday. I will draw a winner at 5 PM.

Contest! Tell me a horror story about your teeth! You have to come and tell me your story in person, also any time before 4:30 PM on Sunday. I will choose a winner at 5 PM. Most horrific dental story wins.

Man, I have a great horrific dental story, too. I won’t go into it here, because I realize that some people are squeamish; if you have a strong stomach, the short version is below the cut. Suffice it to say, nearly 20 years later I am still fully prepared to run down a respectable member of the dental profession in cold blood in front of his terrified family, then kick my car into reverse and repeat until the cops drag me away.

But I promised you good news for those not going to SPX, and that would be the First Ever Topatoco Tag Sale:

[W]e ain’t no second-rate ham-shop runnin’ T-shirts out the back of an off-label methadone distillery either — we’re the world’s largest graphical internet entertainment licensing firm, and we got literally twenty dozen different designs that we throw away on a daily basis. We are straight-up and down-low professional and the side effect of all this legitimate-businessin’ is that we got tee-shirts in every orifice and stacked up to reach the danged rafters.

Solution? TAG SALE. This Saturday, September 26, we are opening our doors and urging you, a bunch of strangers, to come paw through a giant stash of our clean cotton miscellany. That’s right — the TopatoCo offices will be open to the discount-loving public for a one-day bargain-basement housecleaning hootenanny. [emphasis original]

Note to every random entertainment company that sends me press releases — use the words “methadone distillery” in your boilerplate, and I’m far more likely to run with it.

(more…)

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!

Items of some note:

• When I think awesome, one of the first things that pops to my mind is insane webcomics experiments. And the current gravitational center of insane webcomics experimenters may be found at a commune in Mexico where Ryan Estrada and John Campbell cackle with glee each time they come up with a new mad scheme:
  

  hi gary!

  john campbell here, from the cartoon commune, pictures for sad children, etc. i’m starting my third year of hourly comics, which is this thing where i make a little journal comic every hour i’m awake for a month. they’re going up at hourlycomic.com. i’m wanting to see what journal comics look like if they are kind of preposterously detailed. because with daily journal comics i rarely feel like i get a grasp of what the author’s average day is like. the comics go up each hour i’m awake with a 24 hour lag time. which is part of this thing where i was wondering what if a website updated hourly is that something that is interesting (it is not all that interesting).

  On my first reading, I actually thought that Campbell would be trying to stay awake for a month, and a new comic in every hour would provide us with documentation of his descent into madness. Alas for my sense of schadenfreude but luckily for Campbell, a more careful reading reveals he’s actually doing a comic for every hour that he would be awake anyway. But there is an upside!

  the important thing is that you will get to see ryan estrada say and do what i am sure will be all sorts of dumb things.

  I am so there.

• Chris Hastings, abetting the beffudlement of through-drivers everywhere.
• An epic story started here (or possibly here), ended here, and now offers a jumping-on point for new readers here.
• Looks like 500 strips on January 3rd 2008 wasn’t just a Karenic Phenomenon. Behold.
• Finally, Friend O’ Webcomics Brian Warmoth has finished his escape from the Den of Satan Wizard‘s website to a different sort of diabolical situation. As of yesterday, Warmoth is now the new Marketing Manager of Devil’s Due Publishing, and will handle marketing, publicity and convention responsibilities. We at Fleen hope to see Warmoth on the convention circuit, and urge all reading to drop by the DDP booth to say “thanks” for all the great interviews he did.

Short Things:

• Howard Tayler: DEVOURER OF SOULS
• New weekly webcomics podcast, featuring guys with a lot of experience.
• See? It was webcomics! Plus, watching Tony drink directly from the concentrated Twinkie™-filling delivery pipe at the abandoned Hostess factory was awesome.

Longer Thing: John Campbell, who took The Long Walk Into Mexico with Ryan Estrada to establish a comics commune has sent us a progress report:

dear fleen: john campbell here–i’m the dude who moved to mexico with ryan estrada. i’ve started a webcomic called pictures for sad children that updates monday-friday. i figured you guys should know about the first online output of the cartoon commune. it’s somewhere between silly and sad, like most of the things i make.

i made stevie might be a bear maybe and i also make hourly journal comics every january that culminate in hourly comic day. here are some other comics i’ve made so you know the sort of things that are in store.

i doubt a comic with a week of archives is cause for CELEBRATION, but i thought i’d make you aware! thanks.

Thank you, John Campbell! And you’re wrong about one thing — this experiment you’re running makes this particular comic with one week’s worth of archives of great interest and a cause for MEMETIC CELEBRATION. Good luck keeping the Internet running (or Buena suerte que guarda el funcionamiento del Internet, if Babelfish can be relied upon), and keep us in the loop with the big adventures.

Also, keep an eye on your buddy — I heard that Ryans are genetically predisposed to gettin’ whacked out on tequila and running off into the jungle, never to be heard from again. Either that, or Estradas are predisposed to unnaturally shiny teeth, I forget. Whatever, just take care of him.

I got an email t’other day, one that I can’t say I ever expected to receive. It’s worth quoting in full:

This coming Friday, February 28th, marks fifteen years of the venerable Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge. Michael H. Payne’s Daily Grind and my own TRU-Life Adventures are still updating every weekday. Thought it might make a nice bullet point for you, maybe down in Spam of the Day.

That from Andrew Rothery, and therein, friends, lies a tale. If you’re new around here, you may not recall the Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge, a thing so old that its website has long since lapsed and been staked out by domain squatters¹. A thing so old that our first, offhand mention was in 2007, when it was assumed anybody reading this page would just know what we meant. Since that was a long damn time ago, let us recap:

In February of 2005, the denizens of a message board decided to see who could maintain a Mon-Fri daily webcomic schedule longest. There were rules: No posting of sketches, two panels minimum (but you could do a single-panel update every ten strips), your update must go up by midnight PST, and if your hosting went down you had to post somewhere by deadline and let people know where to find it. The contest would start 28 Feb 2005, it cost US$20 to buy in, and the last person standing got the pot, which amounted to US$112 (next to last would get the money raised from site ads, last thought to be about US$135).

There were names that you’d recognize in there: Natasha Allegri, Jennie Breeden, Tom McHenry, Scott Kurtz, John Campbell², Phil McAndrew. People that were prominent webcomickers and then weren’t and then were again: Steve Troop, Greg Dean, DJ Coffman. Ed Brisson, who is writing at half the comic book publishers, was one of the referees. Ali Graham does media marketing now; Dean Trippe teaches kids how to make comics.

By the time this blog started, half the field had been eliminated; heck, even Chris Crosby, who is presently on year twenty one of Superosity, was out by November of 2005. Seven remained at the five year mark; there were only three remaining at the end of 2014 (among them the very sexy Brad Guigar³) and only two on the 10th anniversary (Guigar ran three days worth of single panels close out the old year and ring in the new).

And there they have sat for the past five years: Payne and Rothery, here on the last day of Year Fifteen, ready for the first day of Year Sixteen tomorrow, continuing on out os a sense of pride and sheer cussedness. At this pint, I imagine it’ll be one of the two claiming the big purse and the estate of the other getting the small purse. Or, alternately, they both decide to celebrate having reached the milestone by getting blind drunk tonight, and both accidentally sleep through updating tomorrow, leading to a dual disqualification; after all, you can’t spell irony without Iron.

Spam of the day:

This coming Friday, February 28th, marks fifteen years of the venerable Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge. Michael H. Payne’s Daily Grind and my own TRU-Life Adventures are still updating every weekday. Thought it might make a nice bullet point for you, maybe down in Spam of the Day.

We aim to please.

______________
¹ The oldest instance of which was April of last year with an asking price of US$1888. Today’s asking price has gone up to US$94,888 which seems a tad unrealistic.

² That’s a sad story, one of bad choices and brain chemistry gone wrong.

³ At the start of the IMDGC, you’d have been hard pressed to find a stronger advocate of regularity in posting schedule than Guigar. Take a listen to him on ComicLab these days, it’s the furthest thing from a priority for him. Time changes us all.

It’s not every day that an internet goofball who’s done or partnered up to create a half-dozen webcomics, a video comedy series, a scientific conference pastiche, a pair of choosable-path adventures, adaptations of great literature and religious doctrine, an AR-enhanced popular science overview and that thing with the monocles is going to spend more than two weeks at the top of the Amazon charts on immigration policy.

But we live in Davedamned interesting times, and Zach Weinersmith isn’t just any internet goofball. Nor is Bryan Caplan, who’s responsible for the words portion of the book in question, any professor of economics. He’s part of the economics faculty at George Mason University (which, along with the law program, is regarded as hostile to the notion of government, regulation, or acknowledgement that not everybody is equally advantaged to succeed in life), and associated with the Koch-influenced/funded Mercatus Center and Cato Institute¹.

They’re an unlikely pair (who happen to be fans of each other), and they’ve produced a book that does exactly what it sets out to — make a case for a policy position, argue for it, anticipate counter-arguments, and present reasons why the counter-arguments don’t hold water. With comics².

If you don’t feel like digging through another 2000 words, take that as the tl;dr.

This is going to be an unusual review for Fleen; I’m not warning about spoilers because it’s not that kind of book. I’m also going to virtually disregard the pictures part of this comic, because in this case the message is almost entirely divorced from the medium. The comics serve to make the economic argument to a different audience, and I can absolutely see Weinersmith’s influence in how Caplan’s points are paced and rendered accessible. In that sense the pictures are indispensable. But the artistic choices are not going to either make or break the economic argument, so this is going to be almost entirely about Caplan and not about Weinersmith.

Open Borders: The Science And Ethics Of Immigration is the first of the public policy offerings from :01 Books (and anticipating their coming civic society/engagement and history lines, marking a more academic direction for them, or at least moreso than the kid-aimed Science Comics and Maker Comics), a copy of which was kindly sent to me by Weinersmith.

It’s a compelling read, one that is going to grab the attention of anybody from any part of the political spectrum (as long as they don’t have an implacable bug up their butt about comics being beneath them; they exist, in all parts of said spectrum), and challenge assumptions held by nearly everybody regardless of how they feel about immigration. It reminds me a great deal of Larry Gonick’s work, in that it synthesizes a great deal of information (the notes and references are voluminous), presents it in an easily-considered format, and throws laugh-chuckles in as a bonus.

It’s left me about 85% convinced that Caplan is completely right, 10% convinced that he’s underselling some points and/or trying to have some things both ways, and 5% thinking he’s dodged a fundamental question or two. Let’s take them in order.

Caplan’s strongest argument is that, but for a poor choice of parents, many more people would both succeed in our society, and contribute enormously to the common good. It reminds me of Stephen Jay Gould’s famous declaration I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.

As much as inequality within our society is a killer of human potential, Caplan rightly observes it applies to an even greater degree to the world at large — that a relatively small number of wealthy countries, by preventing a much larger number of people from poor countries from joining them in their societies, both perpetuates poverty and deprivation in the impoverished parts of the world, and deprives us all of the Shannons, Partons, and Curies that might have benefited all of humanity.

Along the way, he argues against the usual objections — it will cost too much, it will harm the standard of living in the rich countries, immigrants are a burden, they’re dangerous, only monoculture societies can thrive, it’s against my worldview or religion, only the most restrictive burdens can possibly moderate damaging side effects. It’s a conversational presentation, it’s convincing, it appeals on personal freedom grounds to those that prize that above all, and on ethical/humanitarian grounds to those of a parallel inclination.

The first area of concern that I have, the 10% worth, is with what Caplan calls Keyhole Solutions — tailoring immigration restrictions to be the narrowest possible interpretation instead of the broadest. For example, what if we counter the argument that immigrants will cost us too much (even though they won’t) by charging them large amounts of money to be redistributed to those already here, or preventing them from accessing benefits that they should qualify for as taxpayers. Caplan’s previously established that these fixes aren’t necessary, but he’s willing to go partway as a sop to the fearful or prejudiced, which strikes me as a bit unwilling to stand by his true convictions and beliefs.

Isn’t it better to let some people in and let them get somewhat economically exploited as opposed to not allowing them in at all? And if the alternative is zero immigration, there’s a certain logic there. But I think that allowing accommodations to those who are insisting that policies address what Caplan regards as untruths is an odd compromise to make.

And I think he’s not accounting for the degree that those who would be crafting these keyholes would invariably make them larger and more restrictive until we’ve taken what was supposed to be narrowly-tailored restrictions and made them maximally exploitative. Where on the spectrum from Nobody gets in to Everybody gets in with Some of you get in and we screw you for a while in the process in the middle do we find that the screwing is acceptable, and where it’s not?

We’ll let you in but we’ll haze you and it’s better than not letting you in at all isn’t a compelling argument if you’re talking about, say, an Ivy League secret society choosing which fourth-generation legacies to let in, and it’s positively repugnant when talking about people Caplan’s argued are systemically disadvantaged and exploited by not being able to come here freely. I also think that such a system would work to undermine the historically thorough assimilation process that he rightly observes elsewhere.

Right now, to my eye (and I’ll immediately state that I haven’t studied this in anything resembling the depth that Dr Caplan has; it’s purely based on my personal observation growing up in a part of the country that had multiple, successive and overlapping waves of immigration from different parts of the world), immigrants to the US regard the viciously ridiculous process of getting permanent residence and/or naturalizing as bureaucratic, expensive, complicated, stupid, and sometimes Kafkaesque, but not actively malicious. The Keyhole Solutions have the potential to upend that belief.

Not to mention that for somebody who lets his general distrust and disbelief in government involvement in life — taxation, spending, and regulation — occasionally come out to play in Open Borders, Caplan seems curiously willing to let that happen to immigrants under these Keyhole Solutions for the benefit of those already here. I’m just not sure how somebody whose body of work has such deep skepticism about the ability of government to act competently can muster the belief that government can find a way to responsibly haze newcomers and make them feel thankful for the trouble. There may well be a needle that can be threaded, a keyhole narrowly cut, but it still smacks of capitulation to those that Caplan’s arguing against.

The more serious concerns I have are with some assumptions Caplan makes that are fundamental to his thesis — and not directly related to immigration and so not addressed. Open immigration will be a net win for everybody, he argues. It will increase the wealth generation of the world by 50% to 150%. Trillions of dollars of economic growth otherwise missed out on! The usual arguments against these positions come down to There’s no room!, which is plain nonsense, but Caplan takes the time to counter them anyway. Full marks there.

But he comes from an economic school that assumes productivity can keep growing, and more stuff can be made more cheaply, forever. And on a planet with diminishing resources (particularly water) and accelerating climate change, that’s not true. There’s no acknowledgment of what negative outcomes may result from unrestricted growth, nor of the fact that increasing productivity has for decades now come from squeezing the labor force and not sharing the additional wealth generated. Every increase in productivity has been accompanied by a stagnation or reduction of real wages in the American workforce, a shifting of money to higher economic bands, and reductions in skilled labor.

Caplan’s argument that everybody net wins is based on the idea that somebody from a terribly poor country will come to the global north and still be poor, but in a richer place and therefore better off in absolute terms. Those in the rich countries that have already been displaced by productivity gains will, he assumes, move up into more skilled and privileged positions.

But the past four decades have shown us that hasn’t happened and isn’t likely to without extensive spending/taxation/regulatory changes, something that Caplan doesn’t favor. The corporate state absolutely will not share its wealth broadly without redistributive policies, with or without open (or open-ish) immigration. Without addressing the hollowing of the American workforce and the gigification of the economy, the rosy predictions that modern capitalism can continue to produce and grow³ out of whatever difficulties we have now or in the future are not something I want to base predictions on.

Caplan’s convinced me that there’s no rational argument for immigration policies that favor immigration rather than restrict it, open to the point that we probably let in almost anybody. I like the thought of being able to say, Hey, you murdered a bunch of people/have a history of bribery and tax avoidance/despoiled land that didn’t belong to you/stole from your fellow citizens from a position of trust, you don’t get to come here, but saying Only professional-class Norwegians can come, you’re too brown/poor to be allowed in needs to go by the wayside. I may even be convinced that it’s possible to craft keyholes that won’t immediately be gamed for the purpose of inflicting pain on the vulnerable for the benefit of the powerful.

I think there may also be arguments about the development of new technologies or solutions to the problems of infinite consumption, and I think that getting people to where they can fully act on their abilities is a good in and of itself, even if we don’t make the global economy enormously larger. Caplan doesn’t address them, and I’d like to see him do so. He’s given a distinct impression that unrestricted immigration is an intrinsic, ethical good and I believe that he believes that.

I just wish that he didn’t feel the need to tie it to a set of economic assumptions that are not sustainable as they are — much less if you kick them into higher gear — without intervention to offset their negative effects.

None of which is to say that it’s not worth reading this book. Caplan and Weinersmith set out to have a conversation, start a discussion, and shift the Overton window away from Immigrants will eat your children and towards Oh for Dave’s sake, don’t be an innumerate, racist jerk towards your fellow humans. They’ve succeeded at that, and they’re going to have me digging into the notes and resources for some time to come. Besides, any book that features a dozen babies angrily berating Nobel laureate Milton Friedman is always worth at least one read.

Open Borders is available where you get books.

Spam of the day:

My friend Alex Allman has posted a video revealing 3 simple tips that actually trigger an ADDICTION-like response in women so that her body and mind will literally become OBSESSED with YOU.

Treat her like a human being with agency and not some videogame boss battle that has a cheat code?

_______________
¹ I think I’m sufficiently on record that I think the kind of libertarianism espoused by the Koch Brothers and those they favor is premised on the core philosophy of Fuck You, I Got Mine, dressed up by people who aren’t sufficiently without shame to just admit that part out loud.

² Because comics are never the work of just one person, I’ll note that Mary Cagle is credited on the title page as colorist, and she’s done her usual bang-up job (assisted by Lindsey Little, Edriel Fimbres, and Polyna Kim). Rachel Stark and Calista Brill provided editing, and given the technical, persuasive, and potentially controversial nature of the book, I’d say they probably contributed more than the usual degree.

³ Given how much of the productivity gains requires shipping manufacturing to low-regulatory countries with cheap labor, what happens if Caplan’s global raising up happens? WalMart sells stuff for five bucks and makes three-fifty in profit because they can offload the manufacture to desperately poor countries.

Caplan’s stated goal is to erase that differential between wealthy and desperately poor, so where will the stuff be made? How do we avoid the race to the bottom that we already find with respect to everything from polluting industries to promises of job creation that leads states and municipalities to fall over themselves to offer more freebies and bigger tax exemptions?

Given that one of Caplan’s very first arguments is that the global poor are disadvantaged by not being allowed to sell their labor here (and he repeatedly acknowledges that most who come here under his model will be low-skilled), it looks like something his plans count on rather than avoid. Working for an arm’s-length contract supplier under miserable conditions in an Amazon fulfillment hellhole may be better than the conditions they left, but it’s still objectively bad and not something we should want for anybody.

For those who are new around here, there’s this thing called #ComicsCamp, run by the fine folks at Alaska Robotics (which is a comics shop¹, game shop, art supply shop, and gallery) in Juneau, and it involves bringing creative folks into schools, public events, and a one-day convention before giving them a weekend of recharging and also s’mores. I’ve been privileged to attend three times now, and you can read about my previous experiences at Camp here, here, here, here, and here. Those two series will read differently from each other, and from the one that’s starting now — Camp’s a living, breathing thing, and it changes.

It started for me a couple of days before my travel with a bit of a panic — the SSD in my laptop decided it had reached end of life and bricked itself good; there’s a hard drive in there, too, but it was a tense couple of hours getting Linux reinstalled and data salvaged. Fortunately, I keep a bootable USB drive attached to the power converter cable, so I didn’t have to go searching too far. The whole thing’s a lot slower than it used to be (or should be), but that’s an issue for later this week; it got me through what it needed to, which was ensuring that the creator presentations for one of the public events — about which more momentarily — were tested and projectable.

In addition to seeing a swathe of Campers arrive, Thursday 25 April also saw public events: storytime and a ‘zine making workshop at one of the Juneau public libraries², the Juneau Makerspace got some hands-on puzzle-cutting knowledge from the master, and a lecture by Ryan North on How To Invent Everything which he should know, on account of he wrote a book that tells you how to do exactly that. In case you’re looking for the high points, they include:

• Young Ryan first became aware of the notion of time travel when he was six and saw Back To The Future for the first time; it made an impression³ and he was particularly struck by the Chuck Berry scene and thus had an appreciation of the Bootstrap Paradox at a far younger age than most of us.
• Having decided to write what is surely The Most Dangerous Book In History, North found himself staring down literally years, plural, of research⁴ to determine not only what the key technologies of human history are, but also how to create them from first principles while simultaneously not imparting knowledge that might hurt or kill his readers. This led to what may have been the most existentially self-evident question of all when North asked himself (and I quote):
  

  Have I accidentally decided to do something impossible?

  Again??

• But he persevered, and found within all that research to find a key thought re: human inventiveness and creativity; namely We are not as smart as we think we are. He rattled off a series of key inventions in history — human flight, or the stethoscope⁵ — and found that they came about centuries or millennia after we had the basic parts and just failed to put them together⁶. In the case of arguably the greatest invention in human history⁷ — written language, which allows us to preserve knowledge across time, space, and culture — we were about 200,000 years late.
• The more basic the technology, the later we were, and the further back in time you go, the worse things get. Now-ubiquitous crops were terrible, people died because they didn’t know to wash their damn selves, and the only positive of the past is that if you do end up there, you can name things after yourself.

One thing you should know about Juneau is that it’s basically the same as Portland or Seattle, just smaller; you’ve got great food (shouts-out to The Rookery Cafe and In Bocca Al Lupo, who both fed more than their share of Campers before and after our time off-grid, and the astonishingly good Coppa Ice Cream), great cultural institutions, and great people. Give them something fun to do, and they’ll arrive in droves, as they did for the Kickoff Event at the Valley branch of the JPL. In addition to music from the Marian, Seth & Maria Rockin’ Teenage Combo, you had:

• Cat Farris reading from her graphic novel, My Boyfriend Is A Bear. Fun fact! Farris and I spent several days bonding over our greyhounds, because greyhound people are the best people.
• Molly Muldoon talking about how to solve a murder all Agatha Christie style. Fun fact! Muldoon’s rules for dealing with murderers left an impression on everybody who went to Camp, and who spent a great deal of time making sure there were extra exits from everyplace. Can’t be too careful!
• Alex Graudins explaining how improv can help you make friends and be more creative in all aspects of life. Fun fact! Graudins illustrated Science Comics: The Brain, and included dearly beloved and sadly departed pooch Reginald Barkley in three cameos, not two as I’d previously counted.
• Alison Wilgus explained Tsiolkovsky’s rocket equation, and why it’s such a jerk. Fun fact! I have one about Wilgus’s trademark red glasses, but it’s not my story to tell. Sorry!
• Gale Galligan shared her knowledge of bunnies, who are adorable but also super gross. Fun fact! I am not kidding, what rabbits do with poop is gross.
• Dik Pose spoke about baseball. Fun fact! You don’t need a presentation to talk baseball; just like on the radio, a voice and some imagination is pretty much the purest expression of following the game.
• Michael Grover shared comics about starting a band when you’re a ghost and have no hands. Fun fact! Don’t feel bad, Jake Spooky, many bass players have never played bass, or even seen a bass.
• David Malki ! talked about the social history of beards. There was other stuff in there, but it was really about beards. Fun fact! The band’s musical outro was an improvised, lyrics-ignored version of Wonderwall, chosen solely so that Wondermark could be sung in the chorus.
• Tony Cliff read his forthcoming children’s book, Let’s Get Sleepy. Fun fact! There are enough Tonys Cliff in the world that trying to search for this Tony Cliff and Let’s Get Sleepy produces a lot of results on Marxist class struggle.
• Jen Wang talked about chickens, which come in a bewildering variety of sizes, colors, and shapes. Fun fact! There are hen-to-rooster trans chickens.
• Tillie Walden read Shel Silverstein poems. Fun fact! Silverstein wrote more great poems that conventional mathematics can count; for every one of his poems you love, there are dozens that other people love just as much.
• Lucy Bellwood talked about Jeanne Baret, who defied expectations and traveled the world cataloging and categorizing botanical specimens for pre-Revolution France. Fun fact! Baret collected and described more than 6000 species, but the gentleman of society who sponsored her took all the credit and named a couple dozen species after himself. She got one plant named for her like five years ago.
• Shing Yin Khor talked about the numerous dinosaur statues — some of which bear only passing resemblance to what we know about actual dinosaurs — of Holbrook, Arizona. Fun fact: the dinostatue:human resident ratio of Holbrook (approximately 1:149) is much greater than either the whalestatue:human resident or dogstatue:human resident ratios of Juneau (both approximately 1:32,000).

Afterwards, local Camp helper-organizers Rob & Pagan volunteered their lovely home for dinner and dessert supplied by Coppa. At Pat Race’s request, they came up with a Squirrel Girl-themed ice cream called Eat Nuts And Kick Butts (peanut butter with salted caramel ribbons and a chocolate layer on top). Ryan North, naturally, was given the honor of the first scoop which turned out to be necessary, as the solid-frozen carton required a Ryan-sized man’s strength to break through. It took some doing, but he ultimately succeeded; it was a good omen for the days to come.

Pictures:
Juneau is a fabulously beautiful place, and given the landscape found all around, there is little surprise that it’s a vertical city. I once made the mistake of trying to go to a restaurant by the most direct route and wound up taking four separate sets of outdoor staircases.

Remember what I said about arriving in droves? This crowd came out at 6:00pm on a Friday night.

Remember what I said about Coppa’s ice cream? Here’s the Peeps flavor, with real decapitated Peeps throughout. And here’s the ENAKB variety being duly selfied by North, who then did his best ceremonial ribbon cutting pose for the crowd. It proved to be a hard-frozen challenge requiring mighty struggle, but in the end it was worth it.

_______________
¹ And a damn fine one, too. So fine, in fact, that they’ve been nominated for the Eisner Spirit of Comics retailer award this year. If you’re an Eisner voter, Pat Race, Aaron Suring, and everybody at AK Robotics are stellar human beings with a real sense of service for their community.

² The one on Douglas Island, one of three in the Juneau Public Libraries system, all of which saw events.

³ To the degree that he wrote an e-book that is a page-by-page deep reading of the novelization of Back To The Future, which among other things has Opinions on the subject of Mr Strickland. What I am saying is that Ryan North has probably thought a lot more about time travel — real and fictional — than you or me.

⁴ He was maybe halfway into the process when we spoke about it at Camp 2017.

⁵ The only time something was invented, North reminds us, because somebody was too horny to otherwise do their job.

⁶ Or, in the case of the compass, neglected to put it to its practical use. Rather than navigation, the Chinese originally used compasses for fortune telling.

⁷ No, not dogs. Humanity has domesticated about 16 different species, and only dogs are workmates, guardians, helpers, and friends that know our minds and read our expressions. Given how thoroughly and completely they have tied their lives to ours, it’s reasonable to say they domesticated themselves, or at least deserve credit for the assist.

There should be a picture here, but it was all blurry so, oh well.

[Editor’s note: As in the past, these panel recaps are based on notes typed during the session; all discussion is the nearest possible paraphrase, except for direct quotes which will be italicized.]

Here’s the thing about panels — lineups change. Things get in the way, or you realize that you agreed to do about three more sessions than a reasonable person could wrangle this week, and maybe you need to step back from two of them. With a good moderator, though, you’d never guess and the panel on Superstars In Children’s Graphic Novels picked up a substitute moderator who is top notch. Or maybe they just didn’t want the world to know that Raina Telgemeier would be slinging the questions, so that kids would come to see the other folks on the panel? Either way, it was a great piece of expectation-management, and a great way to ensure a smooth experience for all¹.

And a good thing, too, because kids? Kids are utterly fearless about what they love. There were two in line who their dad said were normally shy around adults, but they peppered me with questions, wanting to know what I was, why I was coming the panel for, who my favorites were, and do I know ______ ? I’m pretty sure they hit everybody on the dais for autographs and photos afterwards. Those folks (all of whom are published by Scholastic) were, in addition to Raina:

Gale Galligan (who is continuing the Baby Sitters Club graphic novels), Ian Boothby (Eisner winner and contributor to Bongo comics), Molly Ostertag (creator of my favorite book of 2017), Aron Steinke (Eisner winner and 2nd grade teacher), and Jarrett Krosoczka (author and/or illustrator of 25+ books including the Jedi Academy and Lunch Lady series). It was some star power, is what I’m saying.

Raina opened with a two-part question to the entire panel, then tended to follow up ideas with particular creators, and finished her part with a Lightning Round before moving onto Q&A. That two parter was to ask the panelists about books from their own childhoods that had an emotional impact, or made them laugh. There was a general agreement on newspaper comic strips among the panelists (IB: Peanuts, GG: Calvin & Hobbes, The Far Side; JK: I’d read the comics page and pretend to understand why some were funny. Yeah, lasagna’s awesome and I hate Mondays too.; MO: I didn’t understand all of The Far Side, but I loved the absurd way that Larson would draw a cow with a face and glasses) regarding laughter, but the emotional impact books ranged all over: Ostertag loved the His Dark Materials series and remembered listening to audiobooks and sobbing w/emotion, happy to be sad. Boothby also found emotion in Peanuts, where all the kids seems to be having a rough time, it was funny but also the kid was bummed out, talked about all his problems, quoted a bible verse, and spoiled Citizen Kane. Linus would bust out a bible verse, but he worshiped the Great Pumpkin.

Krosoczka cited The Mouse And The Motorcycle in particular, and all of Beverly Cleary’s books in general (he revisited them with his daughter last year, and was relieved they still hold up). I had a hamster, always thought he could learn to ride a motorcycle, but he never did. Galligan was a huge fan of the Animorphs series, which started out about teens that can turn into animals and ends up being a story about the horrors of war and I would just sob. Steinke loved Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories series, particularly the illustrations — so creepy, they’re challenged and banned in some places. Ostertag chimed in that she loved reading those stories, but was afraid to touch the illustrations afraid they’d come off in her hand.

The second general question was why each of the authors writes for children, and what makes the audience distinctive. Boothby challenged the validity of the question, emphatic that he doesn’t write for kids. I write a story and if I put a swear word in I take it out. He asked if stories like Ratatouille, is for kids, or just all-ages safe and kids jump into the parts that they don’t quite understand yet. As kids, part of your job is to learn and you want things you don’t get; I try to write for all ages, kids are so open, will try something new. Galligan added that Diana Wynne Jones said “I like writing for kids because they’re used to figuring thing out everyday.” For adults, I have to explain it four times for them to get it.

Krosoczka countered that his writing for kids is more driven by the art than the writing — he likes to draw pictures, and books for kids have a lot of pictures. When I was 17 my high school art teacher brought in two picture books, which were beautifully illustrated, and he takes that as the start of his inspiration. Kids are so more ready to accept the reality of this crazy world you create” like having a wacky lunch lady that fights crime with stuff in the elementary cafeteria; the adults, he said, wanted to know how the Lunch Lady’s superhero gadgets worked logically, as if fighting with utensil-based nunchucks could have a logical basis. Steinke cited his love of teaching and reading literature for that age cohort, as well as the idea that stories for that age are short and he can’t see himself working to novel length.

Raina followed up to ask if Steinke’s character Mr Wolf, a 2nd grade teacher, is the character he identifies with, or it’s more the students. Answer: Mr Wolf is 95% me. Obviously, I’m not a wolf, and I don’t wear a tie. I actually got voted at one school “Most likely to dress like a student”. In previous work, Steinke had done an autobio comic strip, but as his work becomes longer in form, the short things that he did as autobio don’t apply as much. But he allows that a lot of things that happen in his books happened to him as a child.

The next question was to Krosoczka whose latest book (Hey, Kiddo), which is pure memoir; it’s a raw story, about growing up with alcoholic grandparents because your mom’s an opioid addict. It means writing for older readers, a switch from the wacky stuff, and getting to spend time loved ones. But there were days when he didn’t want to write or draw another page, comparing it to Harry Potter writing lines that scarred his hand (Right there with you, Jarrett. I feel like we need a support group)

Ostertag was asked about revisiting her characters for a sequel, and how it felt to return to their story. She replied that it gave her the opportunity to let the characters grow, to do more with those that didn’t get enough time in the first book. Characters are seen in discrete moments, but with a sequel or series, those moments all happen at different stages of their lives. Also, I realized I never gave Aster a last name.

The next question went to Boothby, about Sparks, which is dedicated to the real Charlie and August. Do you really have two cats that fight crime in a dog suit? Boothby claims yes — Charlie is very much a dog, comes when called, plays and acts like a dog. August was always a rebel who kept to herself; she was a feral cat rescued from a house fire, very afraid, spent a lot of time under the bed. He dodged the bit about whether or not the brave cat and the scaredy cat actually have a robotic dog suit for crime fighting, but we all got the impression they do. Ostertag observed that she loves basing characterss on pets because they’ve got simpler personalities and when you say this character is based on my cat, my cat won’t get mad at me.

A general question was posed about the differences between licensed and original work, or writing characters you didn’t create. Galligan said the big challenge is that the base level of expectation and trust is different. Nobody can tell me I’ve got the wrong take on characters I invented. Boothby noted the advantages of writing Simpsons comics because everybody reads along in Homer’s voice and they know exactly what to expect from the character. The flip side is that the show is really funny, so you have to create to the same level.

Ostertag’s licensed work hasn’t released yet, but she appreciates getting the room to shape the world in her own stories that she doesn’t have when playing with somebody else’s toys. Krosoczka enjoys the freedom of the Jedi Academy series because they’re not canon; somebody decided in the made-up world of Star Wars, some things are real, and his stuff isn’t. I get to draw and write lines for Yoda which is amazing, but all the others are characters I get to invent. I made a droid that’s on Wookieepedia now!

Galligan got the last of the directed questions, asking about how her relationship with the BSC books changed since she read them herself as a young person. Galligan said the biggest change was she read them originally from the POV of the kid characters, but now that I’m older and grumpier and have paid a bill, she relates to all the chars more wholly, but still has fond memories from childhood. Raina noted that her run on BSC was her only adapted work, and found the process required throwing yourself into somebody else’s head (in this case, Ann M Martin, not a fictional character).

And with that, it was time for the Lightning Round.
Hardest thing to draw!
Krosoczka: Cars.
Steinke: Bikes
Ostertag: Crowds.
Boothby: Horses. Horses driving cars.

Favorite junk food!
Galligan: Shrimp chips.
Boothby: Oreo Double-Stuf, but you take two and make it a Quad-Stuf.
Ostertag: Wonder Bread that you toast and smother in too much butter and cinnamon and have ten of them for breakfast.
Steinke: I use to make this Bisquick dough and other stuff in a bowl in the micro, called it bowl pizza.
Krosoczka: I used to make bread balls, little balls of mushed up Wonder Bread.

Comic character you most want to walk the SDCC floor with!
Krosoczka: Lunch Lady! No, someone dressed as me!
Steinke: Spider-Man.
Ostertag: The flying carpet from Aladdin.
Boothby: Ant Man, so he can shrink all the stuff you buy so it’s easier to carry around. Also, Dr Strange? His cape is basically that carpet from Aladdin.
Galligan: The Flash, so you get Point A, Point B, done.

Most memorable fan interaction!
Galligan: The kind of kid that hands you a book and it’s clearly very lovingly read through.
Boothby: Kids that read in the line, but don’t want to talk to me because they want to keep reading, and I take the book and it’s annoying to them because I sign and draw so they can’t read it during that time. Then they plunk down to keep reading.
Ostertag: There’s a camp in the Bay Area that studies The Witch Boy as part of their curriculum.
Steinke: I met a girl that was going to see the new Jurassic Park movie but started reading my book and came to see me instead.
Krosoczka: In the Fall of 2002, I was just getting started and had a signing at bookstore with nobody there. This kid comes up and slowly reaches up towards me, towards my face, then reached past me to pull Captain Underpants books of the shelf by my head.

Recommend one comic for young readers!
Krosoczka: The Witch Boy!
Ostertag: That’s cheating!
Galligan: Awkward and Brave by Svetlana Chmakova.
Boothby: Be Prepared by Vera Brosgol.
Steinke: You stole mine.
Ostertag: The adaptation of Speak by Emily Carroll. It’s not for kids, it’s older.
Raina: Yotsuba.

Q&A time²! From a kid: What job would you do if you were not an author?
Steinke: I’m a teacher. I’d still be drawing no matter what.
Ostertag: Maybe a chef.
Raina: I’d want to produce you on Food TV.
Boothby: Improv.
Krosoczka: Teaching.
Gale: Working in an office, I’m good with Excel.

At what stage of the creative process do you figure out the audience — will this be for kids, YA, does it develop as you do the story?
Ostertag: When I made The Witch Boy, I thought it would be YA (12+), but my editor determined it was actually a Middle Grade book (8+). They have criteria, and the fact that it’s family oriented and has no romance makes it MG. She suggested aging down the chars a little.
Steinke: It’s important to share the story, don’t keep it to yourself, your friends and family will give the feedback, they’ll tell you where the book goes.

From a kid: What’s your favorite character in one of your books?
Galligan: Claudia. I get to go wild with clothes and style.
Boothby: The narrator of Sparks is a talking litter box, a fancy butler you poop in.
Ostertag: Charlie is not like me, and she’s fun to draw because she’s always making big gestures.
Steinke: Randy is a cat, wears cowboy boots, has a funny personality, and dominates the room.
Krosoczka: My newest book is autobio, so my favorite is my grandmother who cursed like a truck driver who used to be a sailor and smoked two packs a day.

The last question, from a kid, was the old standard about where you get your ideas, but Boothby came up with both a unique answer I’d never heard before, and one that a kid would appreciate: Look at an animal and ask what it would never do, then find a way to make it do that. Well done, Ian Boothby.

_______________
¹ Also well done: the panel room for this session did a great job of scheduling topics that would not necessarily have audience overlap from one to the next, ensuring a good turnover of seats. Not many people hung around after an academic look at Mary Shelley’s work, and not many children’s graphic novel fans stuck around to see Shannon Wheeler talk about Too Much Coffee Man.

² It took some time to get some questions; as I noted, multiple kids in the room had their noses buried in books and didn’t look like they wanted to be interrupted. Awesome.

Okay, so yesterday I promised you other stuff, and now we get to it. Hooray for kept promises!

• Via Meredith Gran, news that Image will be comprehensively reprinting Octopus pie:
  

  Image will be collecting the whole OP series starting next year. Out of print material returns! New and never printed comics… IN PRINT

  Specifically, volume 1 will hit in January (a retitled and newly covered edition of the first comprehensive collection, the sadly out of print There Are No Stars In Brooklyn), to be followed by the subsequent collections Listen At Home and Dead Forever, and then on to new stories! No word yet about the release schedule, but I’m already clearing room on my bookshelf for the future volume 4.

• Meanwhile, Oni Press announced the long-anticipated Lucky Penny collection from Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh (serialized from February of 2012 through March of 2015, a timeframe including multiple bouts of near-crippling repetitive stress injuries for Ota). Readers may recall that Ota & Hirsh Kickstarted Lucky Penny so that they could have a stock of the book in addition to what Oni would make, an unusual creator/publisher/crowdfunding partnership that I expect to see more of. The KS version of LP is due in December, and the Oni release is due for March.

  But that’s not all that Oni announced — KC Green’s also part of the press release, as the last long storyline from Gunshow, Graveyard Quest (omitted from the last Gunshow print collection) will also be published in March of 2016. Graveyard Quest is probably the best longform story Green’s ever done, surpassing The Anime Club in depth, and even The Dog’s Sins in terms of unsettling feelings — not from spookyness or unnaturalness, but from the unresolved, heartfelt unease that can only occur in families in crisis.

• Lastly, I want to recommend to you a piece that’s about a week and a half old, but made it way around the technical corners of the web yesterday, and not just because it contains the entirely amazing sentence I worry about Jeff Bezos’ bizarre obsession with dinosaur sex. That line was uttered by Matthew Prince, head of Cloudflare, the DSN and web security company. He was talking about Amazon chief Bezos and the recent ban on e-books containing weird human/dinosaur (or human/monster, or human/whatever) erotica, which has proved oddly lucrative for certain creators, and thus also for Amazon. Amazon don’t do nuthin’ that doesn’t make money, so banning an entire category of books that a) sell and b) give Amazon a cut means that somebody at the top (hi, Jeff!) has a serious beef with people gettin’ it on ceratopsians¹.

  It’s all very amusing, but it masks a more serious problem; part of the whisk[e]y-fueled chat I had with Brad Guigar concerned what happens if (when?) porn becomes so prevalent on Patreon that credit card processors automatically start charging the higher transaction fees that they level on adult material? What happens if the entire site gets cut off from the financial system altogether? Visa and Mastercard have, multiple times in the past, cut off merchants whose business was insufficiently family-friendly rather than be accused of catering to the porn industry.

  There’s also pretty concrete evidence that the Justice Department (or at least the offices of the local US Attorney) have leaned on banks to close the accounts of smut producers (usually small, sometimes essentially individuals) under the authority of laws meant to fight financial crimes and the funding of terrorism. Not to speak for Josh Lesnick, but I’d imagine the biggest headache that Slipshine [NSFW, obvs] has is keeping a payment processor that doesn’t decide to yank his merchant account because somebody has to think of the children.

  We think of webcomics has having evaded gatekeepers, and on a content/editorial basis, it absolutely has. But in trying to make that independent effort a proper business, one must engage in a system that is entirely one-sided. Run afoul of one person at Chase or Bank of America and you’re frozen out; they’ll never take on a major corporate creator of inferior smut (cable and dish companies make a lot of damn money off of naughty pay-per-view; so does every hotel chain other than Hilton, who are weaning themselves off the grumble flicks), but they’ll freeze out anybody that attracts enough attention from a loud enough pressure group.

  Which is why the interview with Prince is important. With the continued concentration of information services into the hands of fewer and fewer providers, the possibility of getting strong-armed by somebody that doesn’t like your personal aesthetic is something we’re going to have to be increasingly cognizant of.

Spam of the day:

I’ve been wanting you inside me since I saw your pictures. Can you please message me so we can hang out this weekend?

Sorry, I think you meant to send this to the Triceratops with the very similar email address.

_______________
¹ I almost wrote women instead of people, but there’s plenty of gay dinosmut as well, although does anything on the hetero/homo axis make sense when you’re talking about different species?