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Timely mentions: A Girl and Her Fed are bustin’ out the bwow-chicka-wow soundtrack, and Paul Southworth’s Ugly Hill is still pining away for your wholesome love. Won’t you go take a look, please? Guy just had a kid, you owe him for doing his part to populate the planet with cool kids.

So, final notes from SPX — it’s not a webcomics specific show (really, what is?), but it’s got the same aesthetic as webcomics: lots of creative people, each one saying I made this, and other people responding with emotional and financial support. Witness, if you will, this entirely typical verbal exchange from Saturday afternoon:

This sort of thing was going on all weekend, and while not every exhibitor in the hall is as cool and talented as I hold Raina and Dave to be (not to mention lovely people — we’d been introduced previously, but this was the first time we’d had a chance to talk), every exhibitor in the hall was held in that regard by somebody. And chances are, that somebody came to buy.

What they tend to buy is on some form of wood — prints, art, books, Chris Yates’s incredible jigsaw puzzles — rather than t-shirts, which makes this an unusual audience for the webcomics creator. Although there were shirts to be had, and I did purchase one from Leah Riley (in the past my CBLDF boothmate, once one of the Lovely Ladies of Lulu, currently half of the husband-and-wife creative team behind Robohobo and Willrad, and always one of the sweetest people you’ll ever meet). Not because my wife needed another t-shirt mind you, but because the design of a squid forming a heart with its tentacles was just so damn good. Missed my chance for her fabric sculpture robots because they sold out too quickly, dammit. But my point being, if it’s fabric and it’s good enough, it’ll still sell.

I’ll also note that those are just starting out in webcomics would find SPX an attractive place to get the word out. Case in point, I met a couple of guys named Doc and Todd walking around and dropping the business card for their new collective, Killjoy Comics. Five years ago, they probably would have spent most of the year producing minis and hitting two or three shows with cheap tables, trying to get the word out. Today, you can still do those minis, but you don’t have to wait to pull your readers in, because you can continuously post your work to the web while accumulating enough material for print.

We’ve really reached that happy point where the distinction between indy/small press comics and webcomics is largely academic. So if you read this, if you love webcomics like I do, make your plans for Bethesda next year — there’s a mountain of talent and it’s all deserving of your support.

Photos below the cut.
(more…)

Sometimes, I surprise even myself at how long I’ve been in the webcomics sphere, which was for a considerable time even before I started opinion-mongering back in December of Aught-Five. I got a reminder in the ol’ inbox¹ from Steve Conley, perhaps best known presently for The Middle Age, but who has been doing comics online for a considerable time; even in my first writeup of The Middle Age, I noted Conley’s past work:

[Conley’s] Astounding Space Thrills I was enjoying back in the Dawn Age of webcomics, some 20 years back.

And what the heck, everything from the past eventually comes back into fashion again, either as treasured vintage or [shudders] nostalgia. From Conley’s email:

Steve Conley’s Astounding Space Thrills webcomic made its debut online in 1998. The series, which ran for ~500 episodes, received a number of honors including:

• 2000 Eagle Award for “Favourite Web-Based Comic”
• 1999 Eisner Award nomination “Talent Deserving Wider Recognition”
• 1999 Squiddy Award for “Best Webcomic”
• 1998 Don Thompson Award for “Favorite New Series”

Two of those awards are from Compuserve and rec.art.comics. That’s how long ago we’re talking about. :)

So why the history lesson from Conley? Oh, you know, just because in addition to vintage and nostalgia, there’s a third possibility: long-overdue reassessment as a new audience finds appreciation for artistic forebears. Or, more succinctly, there’s gonna be a print collection:

These award-winning webcomics have never been in print and this new Kickstarter campaign aims to fix that.

This first hardbound volume will be 40+ pages and collect the remastered first storyline Undersea Menace From The Year 3200. If the campaign is successful, Steve plans additional volumes collecting the next two storylines Space Quakes, and The Faberge Omelet. These beautifully-produced hardcover books will be signed and just $25 each. The campaign has a modest $3,500 goal.

For those that never read AST, think 3- or 4-panel daily newspaper strips, something with a retro Flash Gordon feel, but with a late 20th Century sensibility. Individual story arcs ran from 10 or so pages (short, interstitial stories) to 100+ strip behemoths.

The Kickstarter’s not live until Wednesday (click here for the preview), but the description and the mock-up make this look like a Euro-style collection, which is a form factor we don’t see in the US very often and I’ve more than once wondered why. They’re durable, convenient to read, and look great on the shelf; think any Tintin or Asterix reprint volume² and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, Conley’s been cranking out good webcomics for longer than some folks making good webcomics have been able to dress themselves³, and that’s ’cause he’s been damn good at what he does. Give ‘er a look-see on Wednesday and decide if it’s for you.

Spam of the day:

Stanford researchers have discovered a simple tweak to your breakfast routine which can have a dramatic effect on how often, how easily, and how fully you empty your bowels. In fact, Adam used this to eliminate decades of constipation in just 3 days when nothing else worked… Along with 4 pounds of “stuck poop” that made him feel bloated, fatigued and heavy.

I’m not sure what part of this is spam is more delightful: the return address of easy.poopin@[redacted].com, or the remarkable specificity of 4 pounds (did they take it out and weigh it?). Glad you’re feeling lighter, Adam, and if you weren’t flagged as a likely phishing email I might actually check out your nonsense claims on account of I’ve reached the age when I have to go for a colonoscopy.

Pro tip: the receptionist that answers the phone when you call to make your appointment will not be amused if you refer to the procedure as an anal probe.

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¹ Phrasing? Are we doing phrasing? It sounded a bit rude.

² Alternately, check out the Castle In The Stars series from First Second; it’s not often a US publisher reproduces that Euro collection form factor.

³ I won’t hold the underwear on the outside against you as long as you were intentionally trying to dress up like a superhero. If it was on backwards, I’m less impressed.

If you get contacted by the Census Bureau to take part in their Household Pulse Survey, you should take that. After a bunch of questions about the topic of the week (mine were all about coronavirus, from employment and food security to plans put off and even depression), you get a free response field where you can type in whatever you want and they have to take notice of it.

After your name/demo details are stripped off, it becomes part of the data set and people can see what you were thinking! I don’t think that my response, above, was a surprise; I’m just sad that the display space given to the comment field wouldn’t hold my entire text block, but I think what you can see describes my feelings nicely.

In other news, merch:

• As I mentioned on the Twitters, I received an R Stevens original COMPUTERS PROFESSIONAL t-shirt for my birthday. What I didn’t mention is that I also received an I Square Pixels t-shirt, because a) my wife knows that I am an incorrigible nerd, and b) I have a number of shirts that are in need of retirement. Case in point, this shirt which has worn through directly along the bottom edge of the screenprint.

  I have at least three others that are in need of retirement (which proclaim my allegiance to, respectively, electric sheep, Weinermobilivorous cephalopods, and greyhounds. Fortunately, Gritty has me covered (literally, in this case).

• And for those of you needing to keep track of the passage of time, may I suggest a calendar with bears on it? There’s also a calendar with whales on it, and my wife and I were only able to choose between the two with the help of two different specialty coins¹. Maybe you need more than one calendar and could get both!

There’s lots of other webcomics folk selling stuff — pretty much all of them — and they’re able to get you stuff at a distance thanks to the kindly services of the mail system. Do some holiday shopping, stay the hell away from malls, and support your favorite creators all at the same time.

Spam of the day:

Brain Molecule Contains Key To Terminate All Herpes Strains

Would this be the molecule that makes you not tell your partner that you’ve got herpes? That’s a shitty molecule.

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¹ For those wondering, bears are land mammals, so they got the monkey side of the monkey/circus coin; whales are big like circuses, so they got the circus side. The yes/no coin was flipped a bunch of times just because it feels so good to flip it. Seriously, it’s a tactile pleasure.

Know what we need more of? Science.

• Readers of this page know that, whatever else may be true, Rosemary Mosco of Bird And Moon is one hell of a naturalist, a terrific explainer of all things biological (particularly snakes, birds, and butterflies), a walking compendium of knowledge ranging from identifying what’s in owl barf to climate change.

  And for those of you that can’t get enough of her¹, you’ll have a shot at an in-person event in just about five weeks:

  This is going to be amazing. I’m taking part in a @scifri event on Jan 16 in Boston! Come see a video about my comics (and my interrupting pet birds), chat with folks including the amazing @mariswicks, and check out a ton of art and science collaborations.

  Just for the uninitiated, @scifri would be Science Friday, the long-running NPR show which — among other public services — broadcasts the annual IgNobel Prize ceremony. Ira Flatow has hosted the show since its inception, and he’s been an entertaining, effective communicator of Science Stuff ever since the early Newton’s Apple days. Yes, I watched it from the premiere episode. Yes, I am old.

  I expect that readers of this page are already familiar with Maris Wicks.

  Anyways, the event that Mosco’s so rightly excited about would be the Science Friday Create Curiosity Fair, to be held in the pubic space of NPR member station WBUR, on 16 January 2020 from 6:30pm to 8:00pm. The event is all ages, general admission US$10, kids under 12 free with registration. In addition to Mosco and Wicks, you’ll have folks from the Harvard Museum of Natural History², the New England Aquarium³, and other sciencey types from the region.

• Speaking of the IgNobel Prizes (and we were, just about two paragraphs due up), did you know that one IgNobel laureate has also won a Nobel Prize? It’s true! There was a levitating frog involved!

  Unsurprisingly, it’s a white dude, which fact would also not surprise you if you’ve read the latest from Maki Naro (cartoonist, science communicator, and Best At Drawing Totoro) and Matthew Francis (physicist, science writer, bowler hat enthusiast, and author — with illustrations by Naro — of Who Owns An Asteroid?) on why women are systematically excluded from the science Nobels.

  It’s a good read, one that’ll make you mad. And if anybody says Well, chicks just ain’t good at science, ask them whose notes Watson and Crick cribbed from and who discovered pulsars. I could go on, but honestly, this hypothetical I’m just a believer in merit and ability bozo hasn’t heard of Watson, Crick, or pulsars, so screw that dude (of course it’s a dude).

Spam of the day:

Keep yourself AND your wine warm this winter 15 bottels of our AMAZING Holiday wines

So this appeal from “Thanksgiving Wines” (which arrived four days ago) is apparently that rare wine merchant that believes in keeping their bottels [sic] warm, which will only accelerate the march to vinegar. Try again.

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¹ And how could you, really?

² They got dinosaurs.

³ They got squid.

Hey, some stuff happened since I saw you last, we should talk about that.

• The Ringo Awards took place at Baltimore Comic Con over the weekend, and there were some winners with relations to webcomics. We don’t talk about the Ringos a lot here at Fleen, they’ve got an odd jury+fan voting component that can lead to some … let us say mass responses to the ballot box.

  Am I going to say that comics on Webtoons or Tapas are unworthy of inclusion when considering for awards nominations? Heck, no. But do I believe that a single creator that posts only on those platforms and has work that is … let us say Tumblresque in nature should be considered as the best of the best in comics? Let us say, one last time, that such folks were perhaps over-represented in the ballot.

  All those sayings being said, the Best Comic Strip Or Panel went, as is right and proper, to onetime webcomicker Olivia Jaimes for Nancy, and Best Webcomic went to The Nib, who apart from the whole losing their financial backing thing are having a very good year. A full list of nominees and winners has yet to be posted at the Ringo site¹, but The Spurge has you covered.

• I may have noted, on some several occasions how the New York Times appeared to be bending over backwards to not acknowledge the crucial place that Raina Telgemeier occupies in modern literature, and the culture at large. Today, they seem to be extending an olive branch, devoting a significant chunk of interactive space in their books reportage to Raina, and Guts, and her creative process.

  How Raina Telgemeier Faces Her Fear by Alexandra Alter, with production by Aliza Aufrichtig and Erica Ackerberg, is part interview, part behind-the-scenes look, and all stuffed with goodness for anybody that wants to see what the steps involved in creating a page of comics looks like. Just be sure to take your time scrolling; on my copy of Firefox, once a page went from thumbnails to pencils to inks to color, it didn’t go back. You can re-experience the transforms by refreshing the page.

• And looking forward, Maris Wicks would like you to know that the New England Free Lecture Series continues this Thursday, 24 October, at 7:00pm, with a discussion of using comics for sci-comm presented by … Maris Wicks! From the NEA website:
  

  Registration is requested for all programs, which start at 7 p.m. in the Aquarium’s Simons IMAX® Theatre unless otherwise noted. Programs last approximately one hour. Most lectures are recorded and available for viewing on the lecture series archive page.

  Also on that page, the fact that there’s a cash bar from the time the doors open at 6:00pm until the start of the talk. You can register here, then make your way to 1 Central Wharf in Boston on Thursday. If you get there early, NEA’s a great aquarium that you should absolutely spend some time perusing. They got squid!

Spam of the day:

Hello! If you’re reading this then you’re living proof that advertising through contact forms works! We can send your ad message to people via their feedback form on their website.

You are sending me your crap through my contact form, and you expect me to immediately turn around and give you money so you can pester other people? No. Die alone and unmourned, you parasite.

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¹ This is a proud tradition; I can’t think of a single comics award program that updates their own damn website in less than a week after handing out the awards. Get with it, peoples!

Okay, this is my fault: I dropped the ball on pushing the Hispanic Federation’s UNIDOS campaign for hurricane relief after I launched my matching campaign last week. Jon Rosenberg’s medical fundraiser¹ hit just after and distracted me, as did the general state of the world being awful. Regardless, we didn’t get as much as we might have otherwise (then again, having four matching fundraisers this year, plus helping Alec Rosenberg to walk without pain, means that we may all be feeling collectively tapped out).

Nevertheless, you came through. Backers (all of whom elected to remain anonymous) donated and I rounded up my match to US$500. It’s not enough, but it’s a start. For reference, this brings the Fleen Fight For Fungible Futures Fund to a total of US$9275 of matches, plus another US$375 from my employer. Between you and me, that’s nearly twenty thousand damn dollars from fans of webcomics to help and defend those that need it. Thank you all.

In other, less immediately financial news:

• We wrote last week of the return of Christopher “Doctor” Hastings to webcomickin’, and he had one more surprise for us. Turns out the five comics we saw last week are not related to each other at all, but were each the launching point for a separate story:
  

  Here are my FIVE new weekly comics!

  Mon: Magical Merlin
  Tue: Queen of Clubs
  Wed: Asimov’s Laws
  Thu: Karate Sewer Gator
  Fri: Woodsman!

  Magical Merlin is naturally a wizard; Queen of Clubs looks to be a domestic sitcom; Asimov’s Laws features Inventor Dad and wacky maker mishaps; Karate Sewer Gator is intrigue involving punks, dope, and the eponymous gator; and Woodsman! so far is heavy on camping mishaps at the hands of bears. Friggin’ bears. One or more of them is sure to tickle your fancy.

• Did I mention that my wife quit her job last year to go back to school for a good old-fashioned re-careering? Because she totally did. Which is why last night, I was helping her study the geological time scale, from the Hadean eon (formation of the Earth to ~ 3.6 billion years ago) through to the modern day (we’re in the tail end of the Quaternary period of the Cenozoic era, of the Phanerozoic eon, starting a paltry 2 million years ago). At the conclusion of the study session², I passed her my copy of Abby Howard’s Dinosaur Empire and told her just to read that. All the life before dinosaurs back to the pre-Cambrian, and all the life since the K-T extinction event have all sucked rocks compared to dinosaurs³.

  As noted when I reviewed Dinosaur Empire, that book is listed as the first volume in a series called Earth Before Us, but it wasn’t clear who might be making subsequent books.

  Wonder no more.

  Hey, folks! Just to let you know where I’ve been all month, I’ve been hard at work on the pencils for book 2 in the Earth Before Us series~

  So this is why I haven’t been updating. Sorry for all the waiting you’ve had to do, and thank you for your patience!

  Speaking for myself, this is great news. Sure, I like getting free comics from Abby Howard, but getting more ancient critter books? Maybe the Oligocene, aka The Age Of Horns? Or the Devonian, aka The Age Of Fish? Heck, let her take a shot at the Cambrian explosion and all the protofish and sea scorpions and weird-ass spiral shell squid. I’m so in, and ready to give her money in exchange for books 2 through infinity.

Spam of the day:

Jane Seymour explains how Crepe Erase can help you look as young as you feel.

I feel about sixteen most days, and if you ditch the random grey in my hair and the moustache, I still look it. Do I win?

_______________
¹ Which, as I write this five days later, is sitting just north of 93% of goal. You are all amazing.

² And that’s why the writers of Doctor Who screwed up in the Third Doctor era, because they were described as having dinosaurs, but the Silurian Period was over a good 160, 170 million years before the first dinosaurs appeared in the Triassic period. I’m not sure her professor will appreciate my nerdrage.

³ Not sure what the academic appreciation of that opinion would be, either. Don’t care. Dinosaurs are the best.

So some things have happened since Friday afternoon; for example, Christopher Hastings wrapped up The Adventures of Dr McNinja without the customary end-of-chapter Final Thoughts. I suspect that this is because there is no Dr McNinja any longer, only Dr Patrick Goodrich, and so nobody to give said Final Thoughts. Not to worry, Hastings’s wife, Carly Monardo, brought a Final Thoughts cake to the wrap party Friday night, and somebody else brought Dr McNinja cookies! They were delicious.

• In other news, a slew of awards for youth literature were announced this morning in conjunction with the big ALA convention going on, and surprising absolutely nobody, March, Book 3 is going to have to find some more room on the cover for more stickers indicating more laurels. Unless I missed anything, March is now the recipient of the Excellence In Nonfiction for Young Adults award, the Coretta Scott King Book Awards Author winner, and the Sibert Medal¹.

  Not to be left out, the Alex Awards recognized Ryan North’s Romeo And/Or Juliet, and Vera Brosgol took at friggin’ Caldecott Honor (again, basically the runner-up to the actual winner, but it’s only the most prestigious award for picture books) for Leave Me Alone! Webcomickers are in some seriously good company this awards season. Can’t wait to see what the NCS, Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz awards bring.

• How about a moment for just a terrific comic? No huge event, no big conclusion, just an example of excellence on an ordinary day. Boulet is kind of the autobio equivalent of Stan Sakai; the work he turns out is uniformly excellent, comic after comic, to the point that you can lose sight of what an accomplished creator he is. Just as writers on comic books must get tired of writing every month Sakai was amazing, again, do you really need me to mention it, any random update at Bouletcorp is going to be beautiful, funny, insightful, or a combination of all three.

  Thus, last Thursday’s update, which is now making the rounds in English. While we haven’t all dodged that particular bullet, I think we can all appreciate just how horrible it might have been; I’m not even on Facebook and I’m sweating over here. Anyway, on a day marked by excellence all around, a tip of the hat to Boulet for making art that grabbed us all by the panic gland.

Spam of the day:

URGENT Message Regarding Your Outstanding Debt

Oh, no! You mean the US$78 I’ve got on my credit cards this month? I’d best sign my house over to you to manage my debt immediately!

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¹ As a side note, the Sibert Honor books — basically, the runners-up — mostly dealt with themes of governmental oppression in some form or another.

You had one about the White Rose youth movement against Hitler, one about surviving Nagasaki, one about being Japanese Americans being interned during World War II, and one about … um, giant squid. Squid are cool.

Where to start? How about here, because it’s always good to see a fresh Paul Southworth comic, and not because of any name-related preferential treatment. Please enjoy the return (after about two years) of Lake Gary.

• Know what’s got a damn-near universal, gut-level meaning to anybody that grew up in the US and swaths of Canada? Sears. It’s just that place with everything, not too exciting, tools right next to teen clothing because why not? And a place that ubiquitous, that mundane, was inevitably going to attract the attention of the 21 Century’s visual depictor of ubiquity, Brandon Bird.

  He launched his Sears Project three years back, Kickstarting a cross-country trip to visit as many Sears locations as possible, to paint representations of them, to capture the Searsness of modern American life.

  And now comes the next stage of Searsification:

  p.s. do you guys know about my Sears event? http://brandonbird.com/

  On Tuesday, 13 September (already established as the most important release day in webcomics), Bird will be doing the most mundane thing you could do after a trip to chronicle mundanity: he’ll be giving a slide show:

  It’s been three years since I embarked on a dangerous quest to document all the Sears stores in the land and in honor of that anniversary I’m hosting a little event next month. Enjoy a slideshow, Sears-themed refreshments, and Q & A with myself and co-Sears tripper Erin Pearce about just what it was like to live on the road in search of Sears. Get a peek at upcoming Sears art and learn what’s next for the Sears project. (Seating is limited, so if you know for sure you can make it and want to reserve a seat, rsvp to brandonbird [at sign] gmail.com.)

  That’ll be the 13th, 8:00pm, at the Echo Park Film Center in Los Angeles (on Alvarado, right near Sunset Boulevard).

• I don’t know if you noticed the Kickstarter for an indie videogame about the feral dogs of Moscow’s subways, but it’s now got two links to webcomics. As a result of unlocking achievements, they’ve unlocked a particular real-life dog as a playable character: Reginald Barkley, loyal pooch of Kean Soo. And last night it was announced that you can also play as KC Green’s Question Hound, which seems appropriate given it’s a game that involves both dogs and fire.

  At least, you may be able to, as Russian Subway Dogs is only about 40% of the way to goal with 23 days to go. There’s other dogs to unlock, though, and for a Canadian outfit, developer Spooky Squid Games would be foolish to not try to entice us with Ryan North’s dog, Chompsky AKA The Dog Who Was Stuck In A Hole With Ryan That Time.

  Let me be clear that I don’t know that they want to include Chompsky, or that either North or Chompsky would be willing to be included, but come on — what is a subway but a very fancy hole?

• Speaking of Green and Question Hound, looks like the long tail is ticking up slightly. In any other campaign, pulling in US$3-6K per day in the final week would be really damn impressive; when you’ve got a first day’s take of US$165K, it kind of gets lost in the vertical scale. Just under four days left to go, maybe ending in the vicinity of US$450K? Neat.

Spam of the day:

My So-Called Life won acclaim for its honest treatment of the issues facing adolescents in the mid-1990’s.

Don’t start. Angela should have gone with Brian Krakow because Jordan Catalano was a dick, and was played by the single most full-of-himself actor in history this side of Shia Labeouf.

Happy Festivus Eve, everybody. I got my gifts early.

From the Twitters, evidence that Chris Onstad may be working on new comics:

Dusted off the old Com-ex 5000 and started banging around

This makes me think back to the waning days of 2005 when this act of embloggenation was brand new, and we were two weeks away from Todd needing to make fake nuts for your ride phone, which two weeks later turned into The Great Outdoor Fight. You guys, it has been nearly ten years since The Great Outdoor Fight.

That means it has been nearly ten years since I met Christopher Hastings in a Great Outdoor Fight t-shirt¹. And, as luck would have it, the other big news today concerns Mr “Doctor” Hastings, and what he’ll be doing for the next while:

HA HA HA YES WE’RE DOING THIS THING ew.com/article/2015/1…

For those of you not clicking through, there’s a great big picture of issue #1 of the ongoing Gwenpool series that Hastings will be writing, and a link to an interview with Entertainment Weekly. You guys, Hastings for all intents and purposes is the only writer this character has had (or will have, for some time), and will indelibly put a stamp on her for all future time. That’s really (pardon my language, but I feel the situation calls for it) fucking cool. When Gwenpool shows up as a cameo in some future Phase IV or V Marvel movie? There’s gonna be a credit thanking him. I am so very proud of him and cannot wait to see what kind of goofball adventures Ms Poole has².

Spams of the day:

The New Blue Pill: Confirm Your Shipping Address – (1) Free Trial Available – 235905998

Received two minutes later:

Why You Must Stop Taking ED Pills NOW

Okay spammers, get together and figure out a consistent message please.

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¹ The day we met would have been the day we all met Ramses Luther Smuckles.

² In all honesty I had little interest in the character until I found out that Hastings would be writing the three backup stories in Howard the Duck and the Gwen part of the holiday special. I planned to buy them because I know that Hastings doesn’t have a bad story in him, but they’re hilarious and far better than such a contrived character birth deserves to be. If you doubt me, pick up the holiday special and tell me that the bit with Swords isn’t the funniest thing in any comic book from calendar year 2015 that isn’t primarily about Squirrel Girl.

It has long been an unstated policy of this blog that certain things will always get a mention; some may argue that the list of qualifying items constantly changes to prevent people from gaming the system, and that I’m merely trying to make a system of whim and caprice sound all official. Fine. But right now I am stating that I will always highlight Erika Moen laughing like a supervillain. Always.

In other news:

• Called it. Six days ago I predicted that the Smut Peddler 2014 Kickstarter would clear US$100,000, provide US$1000 bonuses for creators and eclipse the totals of the 2012 edition. As of this writing, the totals of SP2014 are sitting at US$117K (or 588% of goal); the thousand-dollar bonuses were achieved at US$115K, and by any measure I’d say that the first book’s take of US$83K is well and truly eclipsed, having been exceeded by nearly 50%. Oh, and there’s still twelve days to go. Time for the traditional end-campaign uptick to kick in.

  I didn’t calculate the FFF at project launch, but going by the standard formula it appears that the very strong start (some US$30,000 in the first day) results in a high target: somewhere in the US$133 — 266K range, which seems entirely plausible. The real question is, can those creator bonuses hit fifteen hundred apiece (at US$165K)? At this point, I’m giving it a 50/50 chance.

• TCAF alert: depending on the presence of ocean monsters and the cooperation of Customs, there may be two more debut books for those swarming TopatoCo’s table in Toronto:
  

  Ok! Questionable Content Vol. 4 and Three Panel Soul Vol. 2 are now both on boats winding their way across the kraken-strewn Pacific Ocean.

  As we all know, squid love them some comics, and there exists a precedent for boats carrying webomics-related materiel to have to turn back. Here’s hoping the briny deep doesn’t decide to get greedy.