There’s not a lot to be said about any subset of Check, Please’s fairly extensive story, whether in print or online, that isn’t going to focus on how unrelentingly joyous it is. There’s little bitty bits¹ of drama that makes you narrow your eyes and vow vengeance on completely fictional characters because they made one of your favorites cry, bleed, or doubt themselves, but you know that it’ll come back around to the joy soon enough. That’s the deal that Ngozi Ukazu has made with us: Bitty’s on a journey, he’s growing, he’ll be better off at the end of it.

But dang if the journey ain’t a wonderful rollercoaster ride in the meantime.

Book 2 (subtitled Sticks & Scones) picks up where Book 1 left off (and, uh, spoilers for that now two-year old book if you haven’t read it, or these strips which ran online years ago), with Bitty and Jack in a relationship, and wondering how to handle the truth of their affection for each other balanced against the truths that they are, respectively, an NCAA Division 1 hockey player and an NHL rookie. It takes a while to reveal their relationship to all the friends from the past two years of story (who are all various degrees of nonplussed), and longer to Jack’s new teammates, and still longer to the world — yeah, kissing on center ice after winning the Stanley Cup is a pretty big statement to the world.

Again, Bitty and Jack are the center of the story, but it’s the side characters that show Ukazu’s genius. Anybody can pour their heart into creating their POV character and their most important relationship, but it takes real skill to make you care about the side characters, and have them consistent enough that their peripheral involvement in the narrative doesn’t feel off. She’s developed — pardon the sports metaphor — a deep bench of supporting players.

• Ransom & Holster remain best bros and would still be the leads in any number of other stories, but we’ve seen goofballs like them before.
• Chowder will always be sweet, good natured, and too willing to apologize. He knows his role is to be the innocent who overlooks things.
• Dex and Nursey will always be at each other’s throat, and morph into indivisibly tight bros so gradually, you never notice.
• Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot (heh), Hops, Bully, and Louis all have enough to distinguish them that the constant cycling in of new teammates doesn’t feel like they’re interchangeable.
• And then there’s Tater. Oh glob, do I love Tater. Alexei Mashov is very Russian, very enthusiastic, fully in Jack & Bitty’s corner (especially as long as Bitty keeps making pies for the team), and always there when the scene needs a little lightening, like a Newfie puppy that just loves you so much². He is gonna teach Bitty how to do a figure-skater lift of full-size NHL players, just you watch.
• Bitty’s parents, good God-fearin’ Southern folks, are more than background players, but we don’t see them much. Their impact on Bitty’s life is mostly in his head, and it works out. We know that there’s an acceptance when Dad (“Coach”) and Jack come in on Bitty and Mom having a third-generation family fight over a jam recipe and decide to quietly peace out together. It’s a quiet, subtle, but triumphant moment that speaks volumes about Ukazu’s worldview.

  Namely, there’s so many big things that get in the way of family, when we let you in to fight about the utterly stupid stuff? That’s love. That’s where we can all thrive, whether the rest of the world says we deserve to or not.

Plus, there’s an egregious use of Comic Sans that actually serves a gag to perfection. I am forced to enjoy it, despite Comic Sans. And plus-plus, did you see that Ukazu has a cartoon in the new issue of The New Yorker because she totally does.

Check, Please! Book 2: Sticks & Scones is available everywhere for months now, I only just got my copy because COVID and Diamond and the G train? Read it enjoy the extras, pass it along to the gay hockey bro fan in your life which should be, goodness, everybody. It’s a delight. For those of you waiting for the fourth volume of the self-published Kickstarted series that will match books 1-3 on your shelf, Ukazu says it’s coming. Nobody expected having to deal with a worldwide pandemic, so patience, please.

Spam of the day:

Sharks: This tiny pill changes everything. Now you can tap 100% of your Brain Power.

Do you … do you think that I’m a shark and that’s why I need this pill? Like all Nimona style I’M A SHARK AAAHH? Sorry, but I’m not a shark.

I’m a sharktopus.

_______________
¹ So to speak.

² Read the tweets at the back of the book — in addition to finally learning Shitty’s name, we find out that after Jack wins the Cup and Bitty’s hiding from facing his parents, Tater (injured in a late Cup game) casually decides he’s crashing with them for the summer to recuperate from his injury. You don’t need to see what happens to know exactly how it’s gonna play out.

I’m not sure that Ryan Estrada and Kim Hyun Sook could have written a more appropriate book for these times. We’re getting right into it, so if you don’t want (admittedly, 30 year old history) spoilers, stop reading now, buy this book, and read it instead.

When I was in college, things were happening in South Korea; my political science professor talked about how critically important it was that the first reasonably credible elections in decades were happening, and what led up to it — regular student protests, which had rules:

The students would go out demanding the authoritarian regime step down; the regime would reflexively brand them as Communists and North Korean agents and send out the riot cops with their Darth Vader helmets, truncheons, tear gas, and water cannons. They’d fight for a while, the students would retreat to campus, and that would be it for the day. Get nabbed off campus and you could be disappeared, but like a game of tag, campus was Home Free.

Then one day, the riot cops went onto campus to continue the beatings and arrests and the world started paying more attention. The Olympics were granted to Seoul, the country beyond the students started to join the protests, change happened. The first elections were still won by the members of the regime because the opposition was at a disadvantage (their leaders having only just been freed to start parties and organize), but by 1992, they had prevailed. Korea dismantled the fascist structures that had been in charge for three decades (and completely remade the police), and generally became a better place. Not perfect, but better.

Banned Book Club is the story of what happened in the years before things got better, when the tear gas and beatings, the contrived charges, show trials, and deaths were happening and a large part of the country — most everybody except for those darn students — just sort of agreed not to notice. It had been that way for 20 years, after all, since the military coup back in ’61, and the second coup in ’80 and second coup leader was still in power but he was only fighting against criminals and agitators, right?

And the books they banned, and the students and teachers in prison for reading them, they were all subversives, right?

And the factory workers being forced to work and the President’s friends getting rich, and the critical newspapers being burned to the ground for spreading “lies” about the regime, and the President not caring if anybody believed him or not, that was just how things worked, right?

Right?

Kim Hyun Sook was part of the generation who’d been shielded from what had actually happened until she made it to university, and fell in with students reading Chomsky and Betty Friedan, Locke and Sartre, Marx and Guevara, Simone de Beauvoir and unapproved Jack London (White Fang was okay, The Iron Heel decidedly wasn’t) and watching bootleg VHS tapes of foreign news reports about Korea.

She watched the cop who was assigned to kill stories in the student newspaper that the regime didn’t want published miss the stories that were being passed hand-to-hand; she watched students on government-sponsored scholarships inform on their classmates; she watched fellow protesters get swept up and subjected to state violence with the lucky ones being released days later.

And now, we’re in a place that’s pretty much exactly where Hyun Sook was, only it didn’t take decades for so many in America to become willfully blind to what’s happening. We have the opportunity to be at the point she and her compatriots were at, with maybe the most prescient lesson being: the fight is never over.

See, in 2016, the daughter of the first coup leader (who was eventually assassinated by his own security forces for being too brutal) became President and tried to go back to Dad’s way of doing things; the people of Korea went into the streets, every weekend for months, as many as 10% of the country’s population at any given time, and demanded that she be impeached for her crimes.

It wasn’t just the students, it was too many to ignore, the reformers had done too thorough a job of dismantling the fascist state¹ and they weren’t going back (and, this time, the cops were marching with the protesters). She was removed from office and then charged with bribery, coercion, leaking government secrets, and abuse of power, leading to a conviction, a 25 year prison sentence, and a fine of nearly US$17 million.

Which is what you need to do when there is a man (and later, his daughter) that regards the presidency as his birthright. Or, and Hyun Sook concludes:

The villains of the past are never really gone. Now we have another President Park blacklisting authors, journalists and filmmakers, and trying to ban textbooks that criticize her father’s regime.

But this time when the people rose up, it was not in the shadows. Not just behind closed doors, and not just a handful of them. It was everyone.

People don’t get that organized unless someone is stubborn enough to fight for what’s right, even when no one’s listening.

The lesson is clear — fight with everything you’ve got, and don’t ever think that the defeated would-be Presidents For Life won’t revive with another face. Even when you do win, keep fighting to ensure that the systems are stronger, better, fairer than they were so that the next nascent fascist doesn’t have as much of a foothold of grievance to work with, because there’s always something that needs fixing. And while we’re figuring out how to do all of that, let this coda keep you warm at night:

In March 2017, President Park Geun-hye was impeached, removed from office, and imprisoned for corruption. The final vote was struck by her own judges, many of whom she had personally placed in office. A special election was held, and the new Preisdent was Moon Jae-in.

Can’t imagine why that thought makes me so very happy. Yep, that’s a stumper.

Banned Book Club is based on the lived experiences of Kim Hyun Sook, with actual people being blended into composite characters for privacy and safety². Kim’s husband Ryan Estrada turned Kim’s stories into a story that works in comics. Ko Hyung-ju provided open, appealing art that draws you into the lives of the characters, emphasizing their ordinariness and the shocking treatment they receive for demanding truth. It is available at bookstores everywhere, and should be read and passed to as many people as you possibly can.

Spam of the day:

LETION LED Torch, UV Light 2 in 1 UV Torch Black Light Flashlight with 500LM Highlight & 4 Mode & Waterproof IPX 4 for Pet Clothing Food Fungus Detection/Night Fishing/Travel

Food Fungus? Look, never bring a UV light into your home unless you want to find out exactly how much dandruff, blood, urine, and semen is hanging around.

_______________
¹ After the fall of the military dictatorship, leaders were charged and convicted for their crimes, with the second coup leader — Chun Doo-hwan — ultimately sentenced to death for ordering a massacre of a town¹. He was pardoned by the current President, who was advised by the President-elect, who in turn had been sentenced to death by Chun’s regime 20 years earlier.

² But they’re talking [grin].

Okay, it was actually Sunday, but that’s not when things are happening and the alternative was … less good.

• Friday is, of course, the start of CXC, the first without director Tom Spurgeon, and the first (not to mention hopefully last) that needs must be distanced. The guest list is deep and impressive (and features Fleen faves like Box Brown, Faith Erin Hicks, Shing Yin Khor, C Spike Trotman, Ben Hatke, Maris Wicks, and more).

  Exhibiting is going to be remote affair, but there’s so many good creators on the list, many of whom you’ll be able to catch during the programming. Okay, okay, the pre-keynote programming actually starts on Thursday the 1st, but the official start of the show is on Friday with a keynote speech by Gene Luen Yang (4:00pm EDT, details here) and a Jeff Smith-hosted opening reception at 5:00pm EDT (registration required)

  Other events to keep an eye on (all times EDT):

  Financial Wellness For Artists (Thursday at 10:00am; registration required)

  Jenny Robb & friends on preserving your artwork (Thursday at 2:30pm; registration required)

  A quick lesson in sketchbooking with Ben Hatke (Saturday at 11:45am)

  The Creator’s Toolkit (Saturday at 5:30pm; registration required)

  Spotlight on Spike Trotman with Jeff Smith (Saturday at 7:00pm; registration required)

  Shing Yin Khor and Carta Monir on oversharing, boundaries, and making porn (Saturday at 8:00pm; adults only, registration required)

  Goth Comics (Sunday, 7:00pm, says it requires registration but no link yet)

  All those registration links? That’s if you want to participate; you’ll get a personal (and traceable) Zoom link, which should help to keep griefers and Zoomboombers the hell away. All sessions (except for those designated adults only) will appear at the CXC stream, on Twitch, and YouTube, and I’ve barely scratched the surface on the interviews, workshops, how-tos, and Discord hangouts.

• Speaking of both Friday and Spike, and heck also porn, the Kickstart (a short-run campaign, only 12 days start to finish) for Iron Circus’s latest quality pornographique ends on Friday. Patience & Esther by SW Searle is 280 pages of Edwardian erotic as the two title characters navigate feels, shifting mores, and — given that this is an Iron Circus NSFW title, I’m confident in saying some hot, hot gettin’ it on.

  If you’re on Spike’s mailing list for something other than all-ages titles? Check your inbox, ’cause you’ve probably been sent a link for the full first chapter, full of upstairs/downstairs class divisions, scene-setting, character backstory, and body positivity.

  Oh, and for anybody grumping about how Esther isn’t lily-white despite being in England, exactly what do you think happened to all of the unintended children of colonizers and the servant classes around the world? However many of them you think made it from the far-flung corners of the Empire back to Jolly Old, I guarantee you it was more, by an order of magnitude or three.

  Patience & Esther has currently raised US$32.2K (of a US$12K goal), and given the immense inrush of funding on day one and the short duration, has already demolished both the FFF mk2 (and the McDonald Ratio won’t help, as there’s simply not time to triple the initial funding period). Top funding level is a mere US$20 (plus shipping) for the physical book, so maybe get in on that? Y’only have a few more days to decide.

Spam of the day:

Nro Code:(o8983B) – Users Say Its Better Than Implants

Unless it’s the kind of implants that let me fight criminals (a cowardly, superstitious lot), not interested.

Sometimes, you come across a comic and you’re convinced that this is what the creator(s) regard(s) as their defining work (at least to date). There’s previous stuff from them, and later stuff, but this is where they plant a flag and pour their heart and soul into it even if that wasn’t their original intent.

It can be fairly obvious where that labor of love is (case in point: The Abominable Charles Christopher, running in fits and starts but Karl Kerschl will always come back to it) and sometimes there’s so much work, so good, so invested, that you aren’t sure if you’ve seen it yet (case in point: I’m not sure if Box Brown would regard any of his projects that way, although I suspect either the André or Andy Kaufman bios could come closest).

But I think the key indicator is not only somebody making a great work, but finding ways to return to it, no matter what gets in the way. Which is a long way of saying that for Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh, I think Barbarous fills that role for them. They’ve done plenty of great work, together and individually, and it’s hard to get more personal than an autobio diary strip¹, but I think that the depth of character and sheer artistic skill on display in their story of a magic school dropout and her unconventional familiar pal just may be their defining work.

And lucky for you, it’s at the perfect point to get caught up — five story arcs² comprising Season 1 (with some canon side-stories drawn by pals starting next week), with infinite re-readability (every time I go back, there’s more layers that reveal themselves), and best of all — a beginning, middle, and end such that if we have to wait until never for Season 2 (because they are busy folks, and there’s paying jobs to get to), it’ll still feel complete while making us want more.

Hirsh and Ota have decades of comic-making experience between them³, all leading to this deceptively deep story; they’ll have more in the future, some that may be better known or more widely read, but I really do think this is where they will look back after a long and lauded career and say Yeah, that one could only have been told by us.

Spam of the day:

Dear Valued Candidate,
You were recently nominated as a biographical candidate for the next edition of Who’ s Who In America. We are pleased to inform you that the first phase of your candidacy was approved! Your prompt response is needed to ensure your complete professional information is considered.

I haven’t seen this particular scam since I was in high school. Respect for pulling out the deep cut.

_______________
¹ One that, a dozen years on, makes you wonder if you want to keep sharing your life with strangers on the internet forever.

² Including one that was the NCS Division Award winner for Online Comic — Longform for 2018. The first two of which are collected into massive oversized print editions, and the third is in the fulfillment pipeline, and the fourth just completed its funding round. Me? I’m waiting for the inevitable Season 1 omnibus.

³ Also, they are cool people and have been to my house and pet my dog.

Stuff leftover from yesterday, that honestly? Better to put it today. Otherwise, the mass of information would mean something worthwhile would be lost.

• Once upon a time there was a very fun webcomic called Gastrophobia that had three books (currently sold out in physical form, available as ebooks) about an Amazon (Phobia) and her son (Gastro) running around the mythic age of Greece. It was a sitcom, complete with theme song, and it was great.

  And a bit into volume 4, it stopped. But now, in concert with the twelfth anniversary of launch, it’s back, with a story to tell below the update:

  If you’re not in touch with my social media, you’re probably wondering what I’ve been doing all this time.

  WELL, in 2017, three things happened to me:

  • I turned 40 and had a small mid-life crisis.
  • I finally admitted to myself that I’m transgender!
  • Lost most of my stuff in Hurricane Harvey (my home was under water).

  ….
  My name’s Daisy and my pronouns are she/her! Everyone’s been ridiculously supportive and I’m way happier now than I’ve ever been! ?

  Gastrophobia is getting a partial reboot.

  The first 3 volumes are still canon. The 43 story pages I drew from 2015-2016 are retconned. They still exist and can be found here.

  I’m different now and I’m taking the comic in a different direction.

  If you read Gastrophobia in the beforetimes, you know that Daisy McGuire¹ has always been a terrific cartoonist. There’s no better time to hop on the (quoting the character bio here) Barbarian MILF funtimes train than now, complete with a new RSS feed.

  As a side note, the number of folks I know who’ve undergone gender transition has increased a zillion percent over the past 15 years or so, and they’re all people I know through my association with comics. Maybe it’s just the passing of the times, or maybe there’s something about comics and storytelling, the creation of which demands your brain be open to possibilities and what-ifs, which allows one to imagine a different way of being that’s closer to what should be than what you’ve always been told. Good on you, comics, for letting people find themselves and be happy.

• Ryan Estrada is kind of on a roll these days. He’s not even done with the critical and popular acclaim from Banned Book Club (a copy of which I am still waiting on from my local comic shop, on account of Diamond is the worst²) and he’s just dropped another book on us, one that takes an experience from his own youth and turns it into what would have been way cooler:
  

  After literal decades of trying to get it off the ground and months of shipping delays, my dream project is finally out in the world. Student Ambassador: The Missing Dragon is now in bookstores everywhere!

  I’m overjoyed to give kids a multicultural hero who represents his country and does good in the world. Whose superpowers are empathy and active listening.

  And I’m proud he has an odd-couple partner who’s a selfish jerk so that doesn’t get annoying.

  I’m proud to create a world where kids can learn that world leaders aren’t always right, even if they are kinder and gentler than in ours.

  I made the US president in my story latinx as well. Because in fiction, you can do whatever you want and the cops can’t stop you.

  I’m proud that the kid who made a hand-written, leatherbound book about his student ambassador travels in 1997, and dreamed of making a book about what he WISHED the trip had been like finally got his wish.

  One of those nerds is me. Can you find me?
  [photo of actual kid student ambassadors in Sydney, Australia, 1997]

  If this book is a success, I am super excited to jump right into making the next Joseph Bazan mystery, Student Ambassador: The Silver City where they explore the mysterious caves under Zacatecas, Mexico.

  Student Ambassador: The Missing Dragon is written by Ryan Estrada, and illustrated by Axur Eneas. It’s the start of the Iron Circus kids line, and is available starting yesterday. I’ma say go get this one for the overly-enthusiastic and imaginative kid(s) in your life.

Spam of the day:

The CIA has been doing intensive research for the past fifty years researching on what we call so called life. That information has been collected and presented for you here [link] This has been the finding as of seventeen years ago as of today. Now governments and other large organizations have develop technology around these concepts for their own deceptive uses. Soon you will be contacted by other means for counter measures and the part that you play in all this.

I’ll tell you something — this is slightly more plausible than the guy with the broken English and Tagalog accent that called earlier claiming to be Social Security Agent Mike Hammer letting me know my number was being revoked for abuse and fraud. When I pressed one to talk to him, I was instead connected to Agent Katherine (same accent and command of English) who was entirely plussed when I told her my name was Harry Mourningwood.

______________
¹ In accordance with the Fleen Manual of Style, persons who transition will only be referred to by their current name/pronouns once that change is announced, but old posting referring to prior identity will not be altered.

Where necessary, context will be given without using deadnames, as in I had some memorable pub crawls with Daisy McGuire — who at the time used a different name — and other NYC cartoonists in the 2005-2008 timeframe. It was fun.

McGuire’s actually done something similar, comparing original author bios with current author bios from volumes 1, 2, and 3.

² At my suggestion, they’ve opened a merchant account with Ingram, the book distro giant. They may be nearly as much of a monopoly as Diamond is for the comics direct market, but damned if Ingram isn’t an efficient, competent monopoly that believes it can make money by giving stores what they friggin’ ask for instead of jerking them around with perpetual backorders (a lie) and shorted shipments (on a weekly basis). Right now Rick (who owns the store and is a nice guy) is going through all of the previous book orders placed through Diamond, re-requesting them from Ingram, and trying to figure out how to cancel them at Diamond so they don’t show up months or years from now with an invoice that says We finally decided to ship these to you, pay up.

Whee doggie, buncha news for you today (okay, some of it’s a couple days old but today’s when we got to it). Let’s dig in.

• It was just about two weeks back that we told you about the Kickstarter for Skin Horse books 9 and 10, which turned around and funded promptly as we all knew it would. The news is that we’re into second stretch goal territory and that means something truly wonderful is on the horizon:
  

  If this campaign reaches $25,000, I will draw a new season of my X-Files recap comic Monster of The Week.

  I’ll be tackling Season Six, which includes a body swap two-parter, Mulder and Scully posing as a married couple in the suburbs, and the episode that got Bryan Cranston his job on Breaking Bad.

  People. You want this. Go back to the start of the MOTW archives and start reading. Shaenon Garrity gets to the essential core of what is, at its heart, a fairly ridiculous show. Think of all the episodes you can recall: killer mites, Flukeman, Clyde Bruckman, killer cockroaches, Alec Trebek and Jesse Ventura as Men In Black, Skinner’s Big Day Out, killer bees, inbred cannibal hillbillies, Scully’s Big Day Out, Fake Mulder’s Big Day Out, the flashback that definitively tied The X-Files to Homicide: Life On The Streets and thence to the Tommy Westphallverse … all of them are reduced to the creamy center of ridiculousness that is the heart of every X-Files episode.

  It’s been more than two years since we got Garrity’s take on Mulder, Scully, Skinner, and all their wacky pals, and it’s high time we got them back. There’s 15 days and less than US$1500 to go to make the magic happen.

• Know what I hate? When a domain name retires and gets snapped up by scammers, particularly when there is zero chance than anybody would go looking for what the site originally represented and would think Oh yeah, I really wanted Vietnamese knockoffs of fast fashion. Case in point: Steve LeCouillard once did a webcomic called Much The Miller’s Son, about one of the lesser-known members of Robin Hood’s band. That link is from the Wayback Machine because the current destination of the URL is trying to entice you into a hookup site and/or sexcam site because … yeah, got nothing. If you have even a marginal number of hits and your domain goes idle, it’s gonna get snapped up because they figure somebody will look for it five or ten years later.

  Anyhoo, I’m mentioning this because LeCouillard is Kickstarting an omnibus of all the Much stories, including some that have never seen print or even online release. If you know LeCouillard from his barbarian mom story or his collaboration with Karla Pacheco, the filthy, filthy pirate tale Dreadful Sirens¹, you know that he puts together a great story with great visuals. Hop on over to the Kicker and help him to goal. Inexplicably, he’s 8 days out from the end of campaign and only 41% of the way to the exceedingly small CA$7000 (approx US$5300) goal. Don’t let this one fail.

Y’know, I had three other books to talk about today, but running things down on the Internet Archive is a time-consuming business, so we’ll come back to them tomorrow. See you back here then.

Spam of the day:

Amazing Invention Takes Over Control of Any Barking Dog

I have a greyhound. They are notoriously rare barkers.

_______________
¹ That one is from the Wayback Machine because the original is offline which … it was full of NSFW stuff which would seem to make it a natural for appropriation by scammers, but it hasn’t been. Weird.

Tie-ins, at the very least. Let’s see what’s up.

• There have been numerous adaptations of Girl Genius (by Professor and Professoressa Foglio) into other media over the years — novelizations, radio dramas, card games — and they’ve expanded to a new frontier now with vidyagames. Girl Genius: Adventures In Castle Heterodyne takes its inspiration from the Castle Heterodyne mega-arc (running roughly from here to here, or about six years of comics), which gives a whole lotta room to play.

  The game itself is made by Rain Games of Norway, who appear to have a track record making games of this sort, but not crowdfunding — this is their first Kickstarter campaign. Goal is set at a reasonable US$200K, but they’ve got stretch goals reaching improbably as high as one million dollars which … I don’t think I’ve ever seen stretch goals go as high as five times base funding and actually be met.

  There’s a huge ask, so the FFF mk2 may not work so well — the trend held really steady for the first couple of days then dropped hard, giving a prediction of about US$135K-200K, which puts goal at the upper end of the range. The McDonald Ratio is predicting about US$150K total, which is worrisomely low.

  Again, this isn’t the sort of project that the predictions were trained on, so we’ll have to see, but with 6 days down and 24 to go, the project sits at 31% of goal at present, and video games are both notoriously expensive, and have a tendency to run over both time and budget. We’ll have to see.

• By contrast, paper-based games are quicker and cheaper to develop, and oftentimes the creator of a comic is deep into a particular game, which helps. Enter: Jim Zub, who’s already got a dedicated Skullkickers“>Skullkickers tabletop game in development, but who also decided to mark the 10th anniversary of the comic by releasing the first new Skullkickers story in five years inside a 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons adventure book.

  Skullkickers: Caster Bastards And The Great Grotesque¹ will feature a 30 page story and 60 page adventure campaign, featuring new spells, game mechanics, magic items, and monsters, adaptable to whatever game you’re currently playing.

  As I may have mentioned previously, I haven’t played D&D since it was called Advanced D&D waaaay back in my college days — before 2nd edition was a thing — and I’m heartily tempted to get this because a) Skullkickers is hilarious, and b) the love that’s pouring out of the game portion of this book is apparent even through the distance of the internet.

  Zub’s been writing official D&D comics for a couple a’ years now, and went so far as to shave his head to better get into character for a live game last year. He’s mentioned multiple times that his course in life was irretrievably set from discovering D&D at the age of 8, so when he tells me that he’s picked out some top-notch game designers to make the playable part of this as good as it can be? It’s gonna be good.

  And, as an added incentive, the crowdfunding/fulfillment parts are being run by George, who mentioned casually he is approaching his 100th crowdfunding project managed, so I think he just might have a handle on how to keep everybody on track. Just a hunch. It’s a little early to apply the FFF mk2 math, but somewhere around a day in, they’re at 64% of the CA$22.3K (or US$16,843) goal with 23 days to go, so I think this one’s gonna fund. In case you were wondering, only one of the top tier reward (where, among other things, you appear as a wizard character in Caster Bastards) remains as of this writing.

Spam of the day:

Hello! I saw you the other day and I really liked you. I live in a neighboring yard, alone) let’s meet at my place?

This town’s ordinances don’t even allow dogs to live in yards, they have to have access to the house. Besides, I know my neighbors and none of them speak Russian like you do.

_______________
¹ I’m sure the similarity of that title to Hamster Huey And The Gooey Kablooie is mere coincidence.

What’s that? You didn’t know how this isn’t the real day to celebrate working folks, the one that’s celebrated around the world? Fortunately, The Nib has you covered, with a timely rerun from two years ago by Sam Wallman.

So in honor of the holiday (not that we can really tell the difference, as today is functionally March 192nd), this is going to be short post, letting you know about the winner of the Fleen Free Graphic Novel Giveaway. We took at look at the responses¹ and from them randomly picked Erik, who wrote:

I’ve been meaning to subscribe to The Nib for quite a while, and this is exactly the push over the line I’ve been needing. Regardless of whether I win a book, I’m subscribing now, for the foreseeable future given the level of content. And if by some chance my name gets pulled, I’d love the George Takei memoir – he’s been a superb role model for how to turn celebrity into positive social energy.

Everybody feel good for Erik! Once They Called Us Enemy gets delivered, there will be a selfie that we’ll run here.

Oh, and as a quick reminder, today is the premiere of Elinor Wonders Why; you can look up broadcast times for your local PBS station at PBS.org and clicking on the link for TV Schedules, which should take you to your local PBS station; for those of you in the NYC metro area, Channel 13 has it at 10:30am and 1:30pm.

That’s it, everybody; enjoy the day, read about the history of the labor movement or other attempts at progress and justice, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow.

Spam of the day:

Hey, great site. Are you guys still open? I’m reaching out businesses who need more customers right away. Here’s how we can increase the visitors to your business immediately

Reply to spam of the day:

If I were any more open, I’d be the Goatse guy!

I swear I actually replied to the email with this. I am both proud and not proud of this.

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¹ Since we posted the contest, we at Fleen have become aware of an irregular email issue where some senders (but not all, and even those that are affected aren’t affected all the time) are getting errors that the domain fleen.com doesn’t exist. I spent some time with tech support today and it’s a nameserver issue, the resolution to which will take another day or two to spread. If you got bounced on your entry, I’m very sorry and better luck next time we give something away.

If there’s one thing true about the opinions of all of us at Fleen, it’s the unnecessarily-pluralized identity that we at Fleen have adopted. But if there’s a second true thing, it’s that we at Fleen are big fans of The Nib. Editor Matt Bors and his staff have put together something special, and if you aren’t supporting them in their mission to bring the best comics possible to the world — while fairly paying the people who make them — then you should be.

But sometimes we need a little push.

I support The Nib with a monthly subscription at a level that qualified me to receive a free book; to be honest, I’d forgotten about it, so when I got the email on Friday with the discount code, it was a surprise. Some of what’s on offer I’ve read already, some of what’s on offer is on my Gotta Get That list, some of what’s on offer I’d never heard of before, but Bors & Co have excellent curation skills and I have no doubt the stuff that new to me belongs on the GGTL.

I’ve also got completely packed booskhelves with a one-in/one-out policy in effect, and a desire to not only talk about The Nib, but to get people to give them money. So here’s the deal: I’m giving away my free book to one of you, gratis. More specifically:

• This offer is good for people that are not presently subscribers to The Nib; we’re looking to expand the subscriber base.
• You’ll get to pick from any of the books on this page (which includes the individual past issues of The Nib magazine, but not the bundle of the first four issues combined).
• We’ll choose randomly from everybody that emails me (that would be gary) at a domain which is also the name of this website, which is a dot-com by end of Friday, 4 September. Heck, if your email is in my inbox by the time I wake up Saturday morning (EDT), I’ll count it.
• You’ll agree to a) subscribe to The Nib at any level you choose for at least six months. Want to cancel after that? Fine; if they can’t hook you in half a year of excellent editorial and nonfiction comics, it’s not for you. You’ll also send in a photo of you holding your choice to run here, so we can all see what good taste in reading material you have.
• You don’t need to send proof of subscription or subscribe in advance to enter our little giveaway; we at Fleen like to think that we’ve promoted a readership that wouldn’t take advantage or go back on their word. And heck, if in a couple of months you’re in such financial straits that keeping a US$4+ subscription is a hardship, it’s not like we’re gonna yell at you. Your good faith attempt is all we’re asking.
• You agree that if you don’t love the book you chose, or if at any time in the future you find yourself ready to get rid of it, you’ll donate it to your local public library.
• Residents of the United States only, please. I don’t regret the ultimately futile attempt at sending a book to Mario from Portugal, but I’m ready for a success this time.

But, Gary!, I hear you cry, I’m already a subscriber to The Nib! What kind of cool stuff can I get in on? Glad you asked, Sparky. How about the new Skin Horse Kickstarter? Harking back to the top of the page, if there’s a third thing that we at Fleen are known for, it’s thinking that Skin Horse, by Shaenon Garrity and Jeffrey C Wells (with colors by Pancha Diaz), is hell of rad, and not just because there’s historically a 50/50 chance that something I’ve written ends up on the back cover as a blurb¹.

Actually, it’s two books, containing strips from 2 October 2017 to 7 March 2020, which if my date math is correct corresponds to 762 full color strips, plus bonus stories, which you can get in print starting at US$40 (you can also get the full ten book run in PDF for US$40, so read the descriptions carefully). 30 days to go on the campaign, which is just over 180% of goal so far. It’s a terrifically fun story with lots of ups and downs, and there’s no time like the present to jump in and enjoy the mad science, non-human intelligence, and omnipresent civil service bureaucracy. Plus goinking.

Spam of the day:

Get an accurate body temperature reading at a distance with this medical-grade infrared thermometer.

Or, y’know, just get one from Home Depot like I did. Okay, it’s industrial and I use it on my oven, but there’s medical use infrareds online for as little as twelve bucks. Don’t let these opportunists talk you into something that can be had in exchange for three easy payments.

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¹ For the record, existing volumes 4, 5, 6, and 8 contain quotes from me, alongside such luminaries as Mark Waid, Dylan Meconis, Lauren Davis, Seanan Maguire, Brigid Alverson, and Christopher Baldwin. I’m also quoted on the cmpaign page for these two books, with one of my more tortured constructions, but one which I think sums up Skin Horse nicely.

Got a couple of things to mention today, starting with a prime example of how science fiction and fantasy are ultimately always about the society you live in now. Let’s just say you don’t need to know 1200+ strips of complex (somtimes very complex) plot to get how the latest update of Order Of The Stick could apply to all kinds of situations today. Well done, Rich Burlew.

Readers may recall that :01 Books have had a couple of con-like virtual events under the title of Comics Relief, the first in April and the second in June be sure to check out the replays of the sessions — the various process events are interesting from a craft perspective, and the three that involve :01 creative director Mark Siegel are a masterclass in how to conduct an interview that flows like a conversation.

Readers may also recall how this page has discussed the impact that :01 Books has had on comics beyond its own backlist of authors, on account of :01 alumni have gone on to other publishers and imprints and how Siegel’s vision of what comics could be is now essentially the mission statement for the entire industry.

Finally, readers had damn well better recall that one of those alumni is Gina Gagliano, a woman not only tasked with launching a new graphic novel imprint in a too-brief timeframe, but also with a debut season beset by a worldwide pandemic. Okay, that last bit wasn’t planned, but she’s got to deal with it all the same. Gagliano knows you have to roll with the punches, and if there’s not been a third Comics Relief in a while now, she’s just gonna have to pitch in with something similar:

Random House Graphic is announcing an exciting kickoff to the fall season with “Falling for Graphic Novels,” a series of virtual events in September hosted by five indie bookstores across the United States.

The panels will feature Random House Graphic’s creators and allow attendees to discover and virtually visit new stores around the country. Each panel will focus on a theme in kids and YA comics, allowing readers to immerse themselves in stories of magic and heroes, queer and diverse representation, and even an interactive art class.

The celebration will give attendees an in-depth look at this exciting medium that continues to grow in popularity and show the power and breadth of visual storytelling. The series begins Wednesday, September 2, with a new event each week.

The five events will be:

• Heart Happy! Tales of Friendship, Family, and Fun! (there’s something very Japanese about that title)
  Wednesday, 2 September, 6:00pm PDT
  Featuring Laura Knetzger, Jose Pimienta, and Jeffrey Brown
  Hosted by Vroman’s Bookstore (Pasadena, CA)
  Moderated by Oliver Sava
  Hosted on Crowdcast
• Random House Graphic Doodle Draw!
  Thursday, 10 September, 4:00pm CDT
  Featuring Mika Song, Kaeti Vandorn, Stephen Shaskan, and Brian Yanish
  Hosted by BookPeople (Austin, TX)
  Moderated by Alex Lu
  Hosted on Zoom
• Magic and Mayhem: Adventures in Graphic Novels!
  Wednesday, 16 September, 7:00pm CDT
  Featuring Sophie Escabasse, Reimena Yee, and Nathan Page and Drew Shannon
  Hosted by The Book Stall (Winnetka, IL)
  Moderated by Nicole Herviou
  Hosted on Crowdcast
• Celebrating LGBTQ+ Representation in Comics!
  Tuesday, 22 September, 6:00pm MDT
  Featuring Trung Le Nguyen, Jessi Zabarsky, and Chad Sell
  Hosted by BookBar (Denver, CO)
  Moderated by Samantha Puc
  Hosted on Crowdcast
• RH Graphic: Pick Your Hero!
  Sunday, 27 September, 2:00pm EDT
  Featuring Judd Winick, Mark Siegel, JC Phillipps, and John Gallagher
  Hosted by Books of Wonder (New York, NY)
  Moderated by Mika Avila
  Hosted on Crowdcast

Click on any of the five titles to go to the reservations page.

There are some great names in there, but I’m particularly interested in the first one because Oliver Sava is one of the very best writers about comics working today. The LGBTQ+ session also looks great, but I’ll have to catch whatever replay is available, as Tuesday is EMT duty night. And did you notice Gagliano’s old boss is a panelist on the last session? Siegel doesn’t just publish graphic novels, he makes them, and the Five Worlds series has been at Penguin Random House since before RHG was formed as a single gathering point.

I was going to talk about one thing more today, but I think I’ll let it sit until tomorrow; it’s getting late to hit Publish and also I want another day to absorb before I’m ready to talk about Shing Yin Khor’s latest meditation in comics form.

Spam of the day:

I have been waiting for you since to contact me regarding your winning amount of US$2, 100, 000.00 (Two Million One Hundred Thousand United State Dollars) loaded on your ATM Visa Card which we discussed. We are duly interred switched, therefore you can make withdrawal in any location of ATM Machine Center Cash point of your choice in any part of the world and the maximum you can withdraw a day is $5,000 US Dollar.

A good, old fashioned 419 scam? That takes me back.