Trying to fly out of O’Hare is always a challenge. But for now, let’s see what we’ve got.

• From yesterday’s twitterfeed of one Mr Ryan Q North¹ comes news of a certain milestone:
  

  Today is the 2000th comic at www.qwantz.com! That is a lot of comics with the same pictures !! #iknowright

  As North himself acknowledged in the past, a significant number of those strips are guest outings, but still … 2000 strips that (nearly) all use the same six panels (or variations thereunto) and (pretty much) portray the same scene — house, tiny woman, stomping. Impressive indeed, and the famously modest North² didn’t even make mention of it on his site. Here’s to another 2000.

• Speaking of round numbers, Danielle Corsetto hit 1200 Girls With Slingshots strips today, with an update that’s equal parts D’awwww and Woo-hoo, 200 strips means a new book I can add to my collection (plus the fact that Corsetto turns around books quickly — no waiting years for the trade here, Sparky). And given that the last 200 strips (starting here) have been in color, that means a color book, much to my delight³.
• Speaking of tigers (we were so, pay attention to the footnotes, they’re not just there for my health), Andy Bell should watch out for them on his trip to Southeast Asia; word broke today that Bell will be a featured guest at the Singapore Toy, Games and Comic Con in August. Curiously enough, STGCC appears to be an offshoot of New York Comic Con, which brings a whole new scope and scale to the idea of a satellite show.
• Last thoughts for today, and no names on this one, let’s just call it a cautionary tale. If you’re going to send me a press release, having the only link in the email lead to an online PR site and essentially reiterates and builds on the release, and having neither the email nor the full release contain a link to your webcomic? You’re doing it wrong.

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¹ Nexus of All Webcomics Realities, Northern Division.

² I have a sketchbook contribution that consists of a tiny T-Rex uttering the words I try hard, which I imagine is North’s personal motto.

³ I’m tempted to quote an old Bugs Bunny cartoon: Three cheers and a tiger for me!

Achewood’s home page is delivering up random comics every time I load it. So far today, I’ve seen obnoxious rich entrepreneur Philippe, Roast Beef’s first depression, the beginnings of Mister Band, Ray’s toast at Beef and Molly’s rehearsal dinner, and robot ass in a TV (BOO TO THAT). I’ve set my browser to reload the page every five minutes, meaning every time I click on the tab, there’s a new delight awaiting me.

• Rich Burlew’s overcome the latest unexpected hiatus (which, given Burlew’s ongoing health concerns, is entirely acceptable — if you don’t like it, point your RSS client at the feed and work on having some empathy) to Order of the Stick and is back with a new strip and the stated desire to put out a lengthy string of comics before the next unplanned hiatus. While he hadn’t been able to produce comics, Burlew was able to work up proofs for the next OoTS book, which should be in physical form forthwith. Everybody welcome back Mr Burlew and toss him some continued wishes for continued health, yes?
• Speaking of books, I believe that I mentioned that I picked up Jess Fink‘s Chester 5000 XYV when it hit my local comic shop a few weeks back, right? Now? Well, I did, and it’s adorable. Also, calling back to Fink’s mention that Chester pages were being included in a MoSex show, a reminder:
  

  Hey if you are in NYC this week you can still see art from Chester 5000 at the Museum of Sex dirty comics show!

  I just may have to do that. Not enough museums have exhibits built around awesome sexy fun (just don’t try to travel to Canada with a copy of Chester in your bag).

• Speaking of Chester, this may not be the first Chester fan-art, but I think that so far it’s probably the funniest. I know that I mentioned Chris Hallbeck’s Maximumble when it debuted back at the start of the year, but haven’t really since then. It’s pretty much always a hoot and a half, and the flexibility that it affords Hallbeck to do silly one-off gags (without the strictures — such as they are — of Biff) must be considerable, given that Hallbeck’s now doing twice as many comics without skipping a beat.

Ryan Armand’s GREAT finished yesterday with little warning, but it couldn’t be argued that the story was left hanging. The indomitable Mr Phipps/Flipps had conquered nearly every opponent (even the derision of his son) and decided that being truly GREAT didn’t necessarily mean conquering the world. Indeed, just having the best ramen cart in the park is its own GREATness.

So we’ve come full circle, from the day that young Lyle Phipps lost everything to this, the day that another young man believes he has, too. But just as Mr Phipps encouraged so many others, the newcomer finds resolve and sets off to fix his circumstances. What else is there to say?

Only that there are books, with the new, second volume clocking in at more than 400 pages, for a total of 600-odd pages of comics, including more than 30 pages of new scenes. It’s more than good — it’s GREAT.

Site note: Updates may be sporadic next week, as I deal with limited connectivity during the day. Rest assured, you’ll get as much of my blather as you can handle.

Getting back into the swing of work, a bit behind, so perhaps you’ll forgive me if I point you towards some things that I’ve noticed over the last little bit and forgo the more thinky things like the Harvey nominations?

• For starters, we’re coming up on the opening of We Love Webcomics at Doublepunch Gallery in San Francisco. It’ll feature the works of incredibly, almost stupidly talented people. Quite frankly, it would be worthwhile to attend if it featured no more than three random Showdowns, any two Rebecca Clement whimsies, and Natasha Allegri’s tribute to Snooki. As it turns out, I have no special knowledge that any of those things will be present, but then again, you could substitute just about anything by Campbell, Clement and Allegri and have it rock, not to mention the work of Furuichi, Green, Jonathan, and more. Those in the westerly climes, do check it out for us, yes?
• Late-breaking realization #37: by not attending SDCC this year, I am missing out on obvious purchasing opportunities. Under normal circumstances I’d be picking up copies of the new Chainsawsuit, Starslip, Scenes From A Multiverse, Penny Arcade, Super Stupor, Drive, and Flight collections. Just the shipping on all of these books is almost enough to justify the flight and hotel costs for the week¹. That’s not even considering that I wouldn’t be able to pick up the newest Schlock Mercenary and Digger books, since Tayler and Vernon won’t be there either. Gonna be an expensive July….
• Doing me the favor of not having a new book that needs purchasing, the ever-mysterious E Burgoon passed some information to us² regarding some of his(?) recent semi-covert activities. Of greatest interest is the fact that Burgoon has worked a deal with the seemingly-legitimate front organization friendly local comic shop, Empire’s Comics Vault in Sacramento, to offer seminars designed to bring more artists and writers to webcomickry. It’s possible that there may even be video of the first of these for your edification and/or viewing pleasure in the near future.

Okay. Going slightly off script here for a moment; I think that I’ve calmed down enough to approach this rationally and not go on the written equivalent of a tower-based shooting spree. A few hours ago I read this:

[Blog] : One chapter ends, another begins… http://www.mindpollution.org/2011/07/05/one-chapter-ends-another-begins/

… which lead to the unwelcome news that Rick Marshall, consummate comics reportage pro and relentless booster of webcomics, has been let go from this position at MTV Splash Page (no link, because screw them). Rick’s way too much of a gentleman to see this as anything but an opportunity to explore new projects, but I’m not. I’m going to say that MTV are foolish for not realizing what a resource they had (Rick’s Rolodex is deep and broad, and his interviews revealed a knowledge of comics to match); keeping him on a blog with the too-narrow focus of comics-meets-movies-and-TV was understandable when that was all that MTV had in the way of comics coverage, but not asking him to helm their dedicated comics blog (MTV Geek; again, no link because still screw them) was shortsighted in the extreme³.

So, if you’re looking for somebody that exemplifies journalistic best practices and has a deep and abiding love of comics and all they do, drop Rick a line — he makes the rest of us that dabble in banging out copy look bad, while making the medium, its creators, and fans look very, very good. Anybody that’s lucky enough to snatch him up will be lucky to have his talents working on their behalf.

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¹ It is very, very expensive to ship to the Fleenplex.

² Via the traditional dead-drop, as befits his(?) strict adherence to the best practices of tradecraft.

³ Which should not be construed as a criticism of anybody that MTV did invite in to work on MTV Geek. There’s some good work being done over there, but I think you’ll forgive me if I decline to read it in future.

In honor of Canada Day today and Independence Day Monday, Fleen is taking a long weekend. So as to not leave you completely bereft of content, please enjoy this picture and link of Jon Rosenberg’s newest magnum opus, which is now orderable. It’s pretty much every foray into the wild ‘n’ wooly multiverse pre-Cornelius Snarlington, Business Deer¹.

Okay, one more thing: Ryan Estrada, not known for doing things in a small way, dropped a 200 page update today. The entirety of Aki Alliance, a complete graphic novel, is awaiting your eyeballs.

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¹ Say it like Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute for maximum giggles.

The aristotelian ideal form of all t-shirts has been designed by Meredith Gran; look upon it and tremble. I said tremble, damn you! And while you’re trembling, please enjoy more Strong Female Characters with dialogue (via Kate Beaton) and motion (via Carly Monardo) and color (fanart by Pascalle Lepas).

You know, that comic book nod to female spinal structure, where both breasts and buttocks are simultaneously presented to the viewer? Over the weekend, Kate Beaton, Meredith Gran, and Carly Monardo via their respective twitters, took that pose and used it to create the greatest female-empowering female heroes ever: Georgia O’Queefe, Queen Elizatits, and Susan B Assthony. Fan art quickly followed. What with 52 new comics launching from DC in the fall, there’s going to be a need for new characters and I cannot think of any that typifies cape comics better than these three.

• Hey, remember Recipe Comix at Saveur magazine? Much like Chris Hastings two weeks ago, Emily Horne has opted to make her contribution an adult beverage¹. By the way, this means that fully 50% of the first four installments of Recipe Comix are booze-related, a situation that I wholly approve of.
• Showing that his mission in life is to be far more patient than I ever could be with those that don’t² understand basic science, Darryl Cunningham is back with a comic that lays out the basic evidence for evolution. Young Earth Creationist and Intelligent Design aficionados, this is your wake-up call. Thanks to Scott McCloud for passing on the link.

  I’ll also note that Cunningham’s collection of comics on psychiatry (that would be the appropriately-named Psychiatric Tales) is available at many fine comic shops now; I was going to pick it up at Midtown last week, but they were sold out before I could get one. On balance, I’m going to call that a good thing.

• Let’s end on some good, old-fashioned commerce, shall we? My Evil Twin has opened pre-orders on his latest release, covering strips first published between 24 July 2005 and 16 August 2006. When he started his reprint publishing program, back in 2006, Tayler was reprinting strips from 2003. Now it’s five years later and he’s publishing strips from 2005. Granted, he went back as far as 2000 and has done more than one book a year since, but at this rate, it appears that he’ll never run out of material to print. That there is some kind of self-sustaining business genius, I tells ya.

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¹ Specifically, an adult beverage in the class known as the reviver, a class specifically designed for use the morning after a night of too many other adult beverages. I like to think that if you get in trouble with two many Hastings-style ginger-based cocktails, Horne is there to help you have Ideas.

² Or possible choose to refuse to understand basic science.

But first, some quick bits from over the weekend:

• Graphic Smash went away over the weekend for a little bit, but appears to be back now. Judging from some of the comments in our posting on this topic over the weekend, there seems to be an expectation in some quarters that the Modern Tales family of websites, like the stars at the end of The Nine Billions Names of God, will start blinking out without any fuss. We’ll see.
• Eric Burns-White has announced the return of the new Websnark, should you wish to update your bookmarks or RSS subscriptions. Mr E B-White got into the talkin’ ’bout webcomics game a good 14 months before this page debuted, and for a pretty good while there he and I were roughly contemporaries. The ways to tell us apart were relatively few:
  • He has a bigger thesaurus than I do
  • He has one more wife named Wednesday than me
  • He’s got a beard

  Apart from that, we are roughly contemporaneous in age, in temperament, and interests,and despite the exceedingly kind words he has for this page (and the hack webcomics pseudo-journalist that runs it), he’s already got more words written today than I’ve managed in the past week or so. Ooh, did I just make fun of Mr Snark for excess verbiage? Burnsauce¹.

• The Joe Shuster Awards for excellence in comics by Canadian creators were handed out at the Calgary Expo over the weekend; the award for Outstanding Web Comics Creator/Créateur Exceptionnel de Bandes Dessinées Web went to Emily Carroll for her body of work, including the truly excellent His Face All Red. Carroll burst onto the scene seemingly from nowhere last year, and it’s heartening to see that new talents can be recognized; the Shusters remain the paragon of stripped-down, quality comics awards.

Okay, book time. This one meanders a bit, so bear with me. As always, thanks to the good folks at :01 Books for the review copy.

There are people that I’ve met that have given me a thrill (Neil deGrasse Tyson, Ira Glass, Scott McCloud, Neil Gaiman) and those who I will never get the chance to meet (Chuck Jones, Jim Henson, Stephen Jay Gould, Claude Shannnon), whose absence cannot ever be filled. But primus inter pares of these luminaries is Richard Feynman².

A bit of context: in the mid- to late ’80s, a budding geek like me, full into the rigors of Nerd School, couldn’t not know about Feynman. His first book of personal anecdotes released about the same time he came to the public eye as a result of his role in the Challenger board of inquiry, and then he died just as the wider world was getting to know this curious character. We nerdlings knew of his famed lectures on physics, his Nobel-winning work on quantum electrodynamics, but what made us adopt him as our tribal ideal, as the ur-geek, were those stories from his life.

Plus, the guy got laid. A lot.

And that was what made him stand out, what relates him to those others in those lists up there; no, not the sex — the stories³.

Feynman was a born storyteller, whether it was stories of his life and experiences, or the stories that told how the world around us works, the stories that translated the highly abstract mathematics of physics that even physicists found to be obscure into the language that nearly anybody could understand. He knew the value of approximations and round-offs and pictures. Pictures! Two others independently did the same work that earned Feynman the Nobel Prize, but it’s the Feynman diagrams that let you skip the calculations and come to the answer with just a few squiggles^{4, 5, 6}.

So what I am saying is that Richard Feynman has been a big influence on my life. This book was made for me, and as such it was going to get a rave from me as long as it is more than merely adequate in terms of writing and art. Fortunately, it is far more than merely adequate.

Jim Ottaviani has combed through a multiple-meter-tall stack of stories, technical documents, biographies, and writings on Feynman, and brought together the best bits in a mostly-chronological (with occasional flashbacks and flashforwards, as any good storyteller might use to break up an overly-linear tale) fashion.

Opening on a talk that Feynman gave at his old high school, the bulk of the book could well be a graphical representation of the most riveting, meandering assembly those students ever got. Best of all, near the end of the book Ottaviani works in excerpts of some of Feynman’s famed lectures (introductory physics for freshmen, and also on QED) in his famed conversational style — those that never “got” physics, read these few non-threatening pages, and let them convince you to look up the originals.

Artist Leland Myrick does a great job of making cartoon Feynman evoke actual Feynman, without losing any of the expression and looseness that good cartoons can bring to bear. For those familiar with Feynman and other famous scientific luminaries, they all look like themselves, but not so much as to be reduced to “others”. We can identify with this one lanky fellow with the wavy hair (which occasionally looks like the wavy part of a Feynman diagram) and like him. His voice gets inside the reader’s head (if you haven’t ever heard recordings of Feynman, go look some up) and makes us feel that, like the best storytellers manage even in front of enormous crowds, this story is meant for an audience of one.

Starting from the observation of the what (Feynman’s father taught him in observing the world), one can develop the basis to determine the how and why, whether it’s the how and why of a bird pecking at the ground, or the how and why of the universe’s workings. For those that weren’t familiar with Feynman before, you’ve got the beginnings of what he did, the ways he behaved, and can start to put together the how and why of one man. That translation of knowledge from one mind to another, and done in a way to make more interesting than mere transfer of fact? That’s the essence of storytelling. Feynman appreciated it like no other, and Ottaviani and Myrick are worthy practitioners of the art.

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¹ Or Burns-Whitesauce, if you prefer.

² Maybe Benjamin Franklin; I have a feeling that he was probably as much fun as Feynman, and probably knew more dick jokes.

³ One might argue that Shannon was not a storyteller to the degree that the others were, but given that his work made possible all the modern forms of communication, we can consider him a builder of storyteller infrastructure. It’s my essay, I’ll gloss where I want to.

⁴ And with the inclusion of pictures, Shannon’s right back in the running since his famed Figure 1 encapsulated an entire field of study into just one diagram. If I ever decide to get a tattoo, it’s gonna be this.

⁵ One of the greatest teachers I ever had, Dr Frank Acker, was big on diagrams. I once completed an entire final exam on electromagnetic fields forgoing calculations and formulas and using the field diagrams he taught and got full credit. Although the answers weren’t as “correct” as if I’d done the math, it was far easier and well within the 2% tolerance than any physical parts would have been expected to meet.

⁶ Speaking of diagrams, I’d like to thank whatever deranged freak decided that New Math was a good idea, which led to me learning Set Theory at the age of six, leading to a life-long love of Venn diagrams and pictures in place of formulas. I’m probably the only person that actually benefitted, though — the Venn diagram of today’s adults that took New Math and those that saw any benefit from it hell of looks like an eight.

The last eighteen hours or so has been full of surprises. Please allow me to share some with you.

• Following up on a pair of stories from Wednesday — going on 50 hours later, the Penny Arcade strip (you know which one) is still up, as of this writing, and Rene Engström has her website back. I particularly wanted to bring the latter to your attention, since I said some uncomplimentary things about the person that snagged the domain (which honestly, had to be at least a little bit in bad faith — nobody else in the world could have a legitimate interest in AndersLovesMaria.com unless maybe two people of those names were getting married). But although it was set up as an ad farm to milk whatever Google Juju Engström’s comic had, better natures won out and the best possible outcome happened. I’m sorry I thought uncharitably of you, Mr or Ms Temporary Domain Squatter. Kudos for proving me wrong.
• Also in surprising news, it’s always a a pleasant (if unexpected) occurrence when a new Dresden Codak hits (stop looking at me that way; Latin Art-Throb Aaron Diaz has no illusions about the regularity or frequency of his updates, and quite frankly with RSS it’s a moot point). My complaint is not in getting a new update (the tenth in the Dark Science story arc, over approximately 54 weeks), it’s the inevitable wait to find out more of this new, sinister character’s story.

  Tripping a geek with an armful of papers, that’s high school bully stuff, totally lamesauce, but casually pitching a little old lady with a walker off a skyscraper? That’s bringing the evil A-game, which makes me suspect that Melchior may actually turn out to be one of the good guys in this story. You don’t know what kind of shit that little old lady was up to; she was probably a war criminal or something¹.

• Those that follow my twitterfeed may have noticed that the good folks at :01 Books gifted me with a copy of Feynman which I devoured last night. Proper review coming early next week, after I have time to thoroughly re-read and digest. Short version: it’s wonderful.
• It’s really not a surprise anymore when Scott Adams gets on his Idiot Horse and rides for the hills. Nor is it really a surprise that the many, many people willing to call him on his crap have done so with far more logic and consistency than Adams can muster. At the risk of breaking today’s theme, I just really liked how well today’s installment of The Rack utterly — what’s the word I’m looking for? — eviscerated his latest nonsense diatribe. Scott, this is maybe your cue to stop saying sentences.
• Finishing up with one last bit of surprise. Oh, not that Shaenon Garrity (Radness Queen of the Greater Pacific Time Zone region and Nexus of All Webcomics Realities, West Coast Division²) was putting together a comprehensive, two volume, omnibus edition of Narbonic together; anybody could have guessed that was likely in the cards. No, the surprise was the Kickstarter campaign to fund it; again, not that the funding has (as of this writing) reached more than 50% of goal in 22 hours or so. No, the surprise was the funding/contributor ratio.

  Again, as of this writing, there are 55 contributors for a total of US$5050, or just under US$92 per person; of those 55 people, a grand total of three (3) (III) have opted for the bottom tier of rewards (that would be the US$10 level) and twelve (12) (4 × 3) for the top tier (that would be the $US200 level). Nobody even bothered themselves with the second-highest tier ($US150), and only six contributors opted for the third tier ($US100). I’ve seen people say, Ah, hell, may as we spend twenty instead of ten, what’s ten extra bucks? but I’ve never seen them casually opt in for an extra hundo.

  There’s probably a few different forces at work here — the most popular reward tier is the second lowest (28 of 55 people), but it’s a full US$50, making for a pretty big jump over the bottom; moving up, there’s six more at the $US70 level, meaning that if you’re willing spend more than US$50, there are as many people opting up to US$200 as to the US$51-100 range.

  That fifty buck reward level is the first with a physical reward (signed and sketched copy of the books, which judging from previous Garrity Kickstarts, may actually be slightly less than the eventual price of the volumes once you count shipping), and from there on up the incremental stuff you get seems to be so damn enticing that contributors figure, What the hell, who needs all this plasma anyway?

  Put another way, the differential in stuff to be had between the US$10 and US$50 levels (or $US50 and $US200) is perceived to be more valuable than the incremental cash layout. This is a very cleverly-designed funding campaign that Garrity’s put together.

  Lessons to be learned:

  • Careful placement of the reward levels (at irregular increments) can drive people to the optimal funding level
  • Good stuff at the higher levels can drive a significant fraction of people to the upper funding levels
  • A fanatical reader base don’t hurt

  I’ll be curious to see what funding intervals are like on future Kickstarts; I don’t doubt that what we see here is related to the intermittent reinforcement phenomenon that makes gambling so addictive. There’s a real sense of Just. A Little. MORE. that a clever creator should be able to use to a financial advantage.

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¹ Yeah, I’m not buying it either, but you have to admit that a plain-dealing villain spices things up.

² All other divisions: Ryan North. Also, for quantum-webcomical reasons, North and Garrity are never allowed within arm’s reach of each other, lest their respective nexii cascade out of control.

So, there’s these guys, that do these things, some of which are significant. Shall we?

• Box Brown is back from his honeymoon (you saw the hobo wedding pictures, right? those were great) and deep into a new project; we got to talk a bit about this back at MoCCA Fest, and I’m impressed by the scope and ambition. Let’s let the guy tell you hisself:
  

  Hey Guys I’m starting this project called @retrofitcomics. I am going to publish one comic a month for 16 months.

  Expanding on those thoughts a bit, Retrofit Comics has a nice description up at its Kickstarter page:

  Retrofit Comics aims to publish 16 32-page floppy-style comics by 16 of the best comic artists in the business. I am all too envious of fans of superhero-style comics. Every week they get to go into a comic shop and for a couple of bucks get some new comics to read. Alternative comic fans don’t have that luxury anymore. Graphic novels have taken over the alt-comics industry as a natural progression. It’s worked out well for fans and publishers, but the floppy comic has fallen by the wayside. Drawn and Quarterly, Top Shelf, and Fantagraphics used to publish lots of floppy comics but now, for a variety of reasons, they do not. Retrofit aims to highlight the importance of the floppy comic to retailers, fans, and the industry.

  The floppy comic allows artists to experiment and work on comics while building an audience. Without the floppy comic (or mini-comic), the artist is forced to work on a largescale graphic novel mostly in private and then sell it. What if it doesn’t sell? What if the audience isn’t there? What if there are kinks that could have been worked out somehow? The artist basically has to go back to the drawing board. If there is an avenue and audience to work with, the artist can produce better and more refined work. ?

  For retailers, the cheap and frequent publication of floppy comics creates an incentive for people to visit the shop on a regular basis. It can also help to bring in new readers not willing to drop $20 on a book.

  For fans it means more and more frequent content!

  Sounds good, as does the list of the 16 top creators that Brown has lined up, which include the likes of James Kochalka, Joe Decie, Liz Baillie, Tom Hart, Colleen Frakes, and many more. To make this happen will require US$9000, which as of this writing is not quite 1/6 of the way achieved with 40 days to go. Books will be released monthly from September, and there’s an impressive list of brick-and-mortar comics shops across the country (plus Toronto, plus the UK) where they’ll be available.

  There’s a plethora of Kickstarter pledge levels with multi-month subscriptions plus other goodies up for grabs. As a final observation, I don’t have any specific knowledge to this effect, but I suspect that after a year and a half on the project, Box Brown may find that he enjoys being a publisher, and the Retrofit brand name may well get attached to other projects for the forseeable future.

• Still on the “good” end of things, “Uncle”¹ Randy Milholland is celebrating seven years of independence, as it was just about this time back in the heady days of Aught-Four that he challenged readers that didn’t think he provided enough unpaid entertainment to put up or shut up. Within days, his readership had contributed the equivalent of a year’s salary at his soul-destroying day job, and Milholland quit to make comics.
• Also to scar our psyches. Clearly, we’re onto the “bad” end of things as we note that Milholland has taken something as wholesome and appealing as a swimsuit issue (for those of you that worry about objectification, Randy’s always included as many exploited males as females in his sun ‘n’ fun extravaganzas) and turned it into something … yeah [NSFbrain]. Thanks for that, and pass the bleach.
• Thoroughly on the bad side of things, Rene Engström is dealing with the screw-up of an internet domain registrar and a parasitic domain squatter:
  

  100 sad faces. :( The redirect site anderslovesmaria.com was lost to a squatter due to a tech error during a renewal/transfer process.

  If you linked to anderslovesmaria.com please update to anderslovesmaria.reneengstrom.com until, and if, I can regain control of the domain.

  It’s royally stupid, but if you want to starve the squatter of whatever income he might derive from parking a bunch of shady advertisements on a site that has nothing to do with Anders and Maria, please reset any bookmarks you may have. Should Engström regain her rightful home on the internets, we’ll let you know.

• Finally: It’s been eight years, two months, and a day since the lads at Penny Arcade found out that apparently, the question of satirists (A) making fun of public figure (B) using an unrelated cultural referencepoint (C) is not a settled point in US copyright law, and sometimes you just gotta follow the takedown request. Thankfully, this being the internet and all, nobody will ever be traumatized by the P-A treatment of Strawberry Shortcake ever again.

  That being said, (A) and (B) are making a return visit via (C-prime) which only means one thing: enjoy it for whatever interval it might take for Hallmark Cards to decide if they have more of a sense of humor than American Greetings².

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¹ Possibly of the “creepy” variety.

² This being eight years later, what with corporations having dedicated teams watching the internet and swooping in with the proverbial quickness and DCMA boilerplate, and considering the comic in question has been up for more than twelve hours at this point, signs cautiously point to “yes”.