I blame Carla Speed McNeil¹; having compulsively read and re-read Finder: Voice since I picked it up Thursday afternoon, I’ve been drawn into a re-reading of the previous eight Finder trades. The first half of Sin-Eater volume 1 is a little rough on the artwork, but it settles down rapidly and damn! There’s so many story-hooks that reference later elements and this is just going to demand late-night re-reads until I’ve re-absorbed it all. I’d be really mad if these weren’t such good comics. If you’re not reading Finder (in print, online, wherever), it better be because you’re waiting for the omnibus editions.

• I have discovered a flaw in the voting mechanism of Jon Rosenberg’s Scenes From A Multiverse: with five fan-favorites in a showdown, how can anybody in good conscience choose between Sciencemaster Adler and Cornelius Snarlington, Business Deer? Well, I guess about a thousand of you did, since Adler beat Snarlington pretty handily in the champions poll, but I have equal regard for both of them. No matter who won, disappointment was sure to follow. Minions, I command you to make Cornelius Snarlington cosplay accoutrements for the coming con season so that I may not miss that be-antlered sociopath overmuch. Also, buy Rosenberg a drink when you see him ’cause damn, he’s doing funny work.
• From the Twitters came some unanticipated news from Sylvan Migdal:
  

  Book proof back from the printer!

  That would be the proof copy of the second Curvy collected edition, which somehow slipped past my radars and surprised me with its imminent existence. For those not familiar, Migdal’s earlier works are all utterly charming, possessing of a loose, cartoony style capable of great expressiveness, and frequently making use of artificial restraints (like the limitations of color palette on Ascent, for example) to great effect.

  Curvy is just like those earlier comics, with the added bonus of gettin’ it on in every possible combination. Whoo yeah, reverse mermaid! Uh, that would be a mermaid with the fish-parts up top and the lady-parts down below, duh. Also potentially of interest — I’ve never met Migdal, but I met and had a terrific conversation with his mom once at MoCCA Fest. Anyway, get reading on Volume 1 (it’s only ten bucks), so you’re all caught up for Volume 2 at this year’s iteration of MoCCA.

• I swear this list wasn’t posted when I wrote about Martz, Mutch and LeCouilliard winning Xeric Grants. But there it is — the November list, for your consideration; Fleen congratulates all the laureates, and reminds everybody else that the next application deadline is 31 March.

_______________
¹ I also blame Ms McNeil for the disturbing dream I had last night; for those of you familiar with Finder, I have three words for you:

IZZAT FOR MEEEEE?

Those of you not familiar, too bad.

You really couldn’t come up with two more different stories, but I think there’s actually a thread pulling these two together. In any event, I’ve been spending way too much time reading and re-reading both of them — Astronaut Academy: Zero Gravity by Dave Roman since the :01 Books folks were kind enough to send me an advanced review copy (which may see changes prior to release in June), and Finder: Voice by Carla Speed McNeil since I picked it up yesterday. Let’s take AA: ZG first, shall we?

• Hakata Soy is the new kid at school — which just happens to be a Space School on a Space Station, where you learn all kinds of Space Things. He also used to the be the leader of a Voltron-like robotics hero team and is joining a term already in progress. There are predecessors for this story — substitute magic or mythosteampunk in various proportions and you’d in Harry Potter or Gunnerkrigg Court territory — but Roman hits on a story technique that sets this story apart.

  Yes, this is Hakata’s story, but each chapter (some as short as a page, some ten or more pages) is told from the point of view of a different character. There’s an overall story arc, but it’s told in bits from many angles; it’s not quite Rashomon (there’s not just one incident in play here), it’s more like an oral history where the interview subjects sometimes have only the slightest desire to be associated with each other. There’s nominal villains, but there’s nobody that can’t be understood or redeemed, even the vain and spoiled Maribelle Mellonbelly (who rules the school as the richest and prettiest girl) learns that friendship and selflessness are admirable.

  But the best character literally wafts his way through the narrative, trying to avoid all entanglements and spend his time floating in the emptiness of space under the distant stars. All of the students are refreshingly direct about what they’re thinking and why (young kids can, after all, be one step away from sociopaths in their concern about nothing other than themselves), about abilities and possessions that they just remembered they have (ditto on kids being generally scatterbrained), but Doug absolutely wins for honesty. During an emergency anti-gravity drill, Maliik Mehendale floats close to Doug for mutual support:

  M: Hey, Doug. Looks like we’re partners.
  D: If you turn out to be dead weight, I’ll cut you loose without hesitation.

  What keeps Doug (and Maribelle, and Scab Wellington, and Cybert the killer robot) from coming off as evil is that they’re just so darned cute. Roman’s art is equal parts cartoony-style Tezuka (think more Mighty Atom and less Black Jack) and Dig-Dug, with thick, chunky lines and art that plays well in silhouette — reduce any character to a filled-in black shape and you’ll still be able to tell who it is and what they’re feeling from body language. It’s a delight to read from start to finish.

• Finder, by contrast, is a deep, deep study of a culture-clashing powderkeg of a domed city, with art that has found the ideal balance point between “utterly realistic people” and “but some things need to be exaggerated for the story”, with nary a hint of the Uncanny Valley. It’s a long, long story of goin’-on 2000 pages, with Voice being the ninth collection released, and the first since McNeil shifted from a print-pamphlets-then-collect-the-trade model to a release-pages-as-a-webcomic-then-release-the-trade model. It is also an absolute refutation of the notion that webcomics can’t do longform stories, considering it’s not just a 200 page story, but a portion of the larger, interlocking tale.

  The focus of Voice is on 18 year old Rachel Grosvenor and her immediate challenge to gain a full membership her clan — it’s one of the oldest and most prestigious in her society, full membership will allow her to care for her siblings and see them educated, and failure to achieve means her best alternative is to become somebody’s mistress. Oh, and you get one shot at winning membership, there are only a limited number of slots open, and the legal right to attempt is tied to an heirloom ring that was just taken off her in a mugging.

  Rachel needs something found, and nominal main character of the overall story arc is Jaeger, the titular Finder (who can not only find things that you ask him to, but by virtue of the title is obligated to do so, and without payment), and he doesn’t appear in this story at all. With the sort-of hero (Jaeger is half Campbellian Hero, half capricious wanderer, and half trickster figure) appearing only in bits of memory, this isn’t going to be a conventional story. In order to find her ring (which may allow her to find a place in her clan), Rachel must find the Finder — or learn to make do herself without the need for the hero to save her.

  This is where Finder and Astronaut Academy converge. Take the many viewpoints of AA and expand them from short chapters to entire books — each volume of Finder has a different POV character, the stories overlap and happen around the fringes of each other, and contribute to a single (albeit loosely connected) narrative.

  It’s not so much dealing with how the characters interact as how entire cultures do, with Jaeger’s status as outsider (literally — his legal right to be in the domed city is at times tenuous) allowing him to cross the metaphorical and physical boundaries and see how their mores interact. For sheer depth of backstory and implication and untold stories around every streetcorner (much of which is hinted at in her page-by-page endnotes, as detailed as you’d find in Family Man or Templar, AZ) McNeil has no peer.

  This is as good as [web]comics gets, and Voice works well enough as a standalone story that you won’t lose out having not read the previous eight collections — but when you’re done reading (and re-reading, and re-re-reading) Voice, make sure you’ve got some budget to get those earlier collections, because you’re going to be drawn back to Jaeger’s meandering path again and gain. Fortunately, Dark Horse (who are now McNeil’s publishers) will be releasing the first four volumes in a highly-affordable (more than 600 pages for $24.95!) collected edition in less than a month. Start saving, you’re going to want it.

I refer, of course, to the mouseover text at today’s xkcd:

I heard the general anesthesia drugs can cause amnesia, so when I woke up mid-extraction I started taking notes on my hand so I’d remember things later. I managed ‘AWAKE BUT EVERYTHING OK’ before the dental assistant managed to find and confiscate all my pens.

See, when I woke up mid-extraction, I spent my time desperately trying to get the oral surgeon to make me not be awake anymore¹. Further details of dental trauma are behind the cut so that the squeamish may avoid them, and I guess we can chalk one up in the Comics make shared experiences come alive! column.

• Another painful shared experience? Junior high school. Allow me to paraphrase Matt Groening’s description of junior high, as the brilliant cartoon wherein he expounded his theory (School Is Hell, Lesson 10: Junior High School, The Deepest Pit In Hell) doesn’t appear in the Big Book of Hell omnibus, which is close to hand):
  

  Junior high is designed to help children through the formative “snotty” years. By isolating them from younger kids, they will be less likely to torture them, and keeping them from high school kids, means they will be less likely to receive the beatings they so richly deserve.

  That’s as good as I can recall it. But the feelings of horror, not fitting in, inadequacy? For the past year and a half, Jason Dobbins has been voluntarily going to that well with Tales of the 8th Grade Nothing, dredging up his experiences for the laugh-chuckles of others; in sports, I believe this is what’s know as taking one for the team.

  To spend even more time reliving those times, Dobbins has begun a print version of Tot8GN, with issue one (featuring Days One and Two of the first week of school) in pre-orders until 1 March. Dobbins was kind enough to send along a copy issue one (hey, any time I get an unexpected package on the porch and it’s not a flaming bag of poo, that’s a good day), along with a sketch edition.

  Taking a page from the major comics publishers and their “con editions”, this is a comic with a big ol’ blank frame on the front cover, to be filled in with art; mine features his main two characters, Eve from Octopus Pie (because Dobbins figures — correctly — that I dig Octopus Pie) and moustachery. Lesson to be gained: if you’re going to send review copies, maxing out on the recipient’s interests makes it much more likely to get read and/or plugged.

• Speaking of guys that know effective techniques for getting their work plugged — Gene Ambaum and Bill Barnes have one of the most unique vectors for pulling in new readers I’ve ever seen in the Unshelved Book Club. So many creators dropping in to review books in their own style, then those creators mention it on their own sites. New readers come to see what the deal is, some fraction of them stay. Simple, elegant, and works to hook in the readers and Barnes and Ambaum want the most (book people). I’m wondering what part of their sustained run as webcomickers is due to the mechanism of the guest Book Club review, but whatever it might be, it’s working.

  Did I mention that Unshelved hit nine years old today? I’m sure that neither Gene nor Bill thinks it feels like almost a decade since they started (possibly it feels much, much longer). That begs an interesting question: are there any other creative teams on comics that have lasted as long? Pretty much only Holkins & Krahulik and Foglio & Foglio come to mind. There aren’t many webcomics that have existed that long, and there aren’t many creative types that can work together for the long run, so I think it’s a pretty exclusive club at the moment — and they’re all from the Seattle area. Coincidence?

(more…)

Sometimes, it’s so very incremental that changes take place that you scarcely realize they’re happening, but in the past day or so, I realized that some things are now here with us for good:

• Achewood has become a subscription site, with zero (0) new strips since 5 January, but 50 pages in the Fanflow.
• Howard Tayler has been paid off by Jerry Holkins to produce art inspired directly by his fetish. So slender.

Okay, that last one is actually true. One may note that —

• How to Make Webcomics has entered a third printing in as many years and is now again generally available after a period of drought.
• Christopher Baldwin’s first Spacetrawler print collection has now made its way through the mails (and a complimentary review copy has landed on my doorstep), meaning that the pre-order blues are done. I’ll admit that I was slightly concerned — not about the story or art, which I have been following since the strip launched and have reaved about here in the past — by the possibility that print technology might not do justice to what Baldwin’s been drawing.

  Luckily, the colors are deep, rich, and satisfying, the paper stock shows no artifacts or bleeding, and fancy details (check out the last panel of this strip, where a space city is seen through the jet-wash of the titular ‘trawler) come through as wonderfully precise on the page as on my screen. In all honesty, I didn’t think you could do a print job this good and still price the book at twenty bucks. Guess the global economic slowdown means excess press capacity.

• Tyler Page has made both print volumes of his charming and entertaining Nothing Better, available in PDF form for free under a Creative Commons license. And he did it because:
  

  I want as many people as possible to see and enjoy my work. I’ve been putting it online for years for people to see for free, and I’ve enjoyed a small but loyal group of fans who have bought the book collections I’ve put out. Offering a PDF of the books seemed like a great way to expand that readership.

  Initially I thought I should sell the PDFs. But in doing so I really hoped that what would happen was that a few people would buy the PDFs and then spread the files around online. Eventually I started thinking, “why not just start the sharing myself?”

  A big influence on that line of thought was re-reading about the experience the Machine of Death folks had with their book. If I wanted as many people as possible to experience my work, why put that payment roadblock out in front?

  This is good work. It just needs more eyeballs on it. And once that happens I’m confident at least some of those people will pay for it.

  And if you feel like you’ve been entertained, consider paying something for it.

If I didn’t already own both Nothing Better books, I’d be doing just that right about now.

Other new things (predominantly books) of note:

• Ryan Sias may not be working on Silent Kimbly anymore (boo!), but that doesn’t mean he isn’t doing creative work. Balloon Toons: Zoe and Robot, Let’s Pretend is now available for the kid in your life that you actually like and want to encourage to be creative and imaginative. You never know what imagination in a kid will lead to.
• A Girl And Her Fed, readers of this page may recall, is one of my preferred strips. It’s grown so very much since it launched lo those many years ago, and just keeps getting deeper and better. The first volume of AGAHF, Rise Up Swearing, is now available for your pre-order attentions.

  I hear that in addition to the prologue and first chapter of the story (we’re on chapter seven now), there’s a bonus story entitled, Some Bad Choices I Have Made: An Illustrated Primer (I shudder to think what kind of bad choices a webcomicker could have made) and an Introduction by some hack webcomics pseudojournalist. This one’s gonna be a keeper.

• Finally, I clearly have to invest in a new shelf for my [web]comics toys. Between the army of Androids getting ready to expand, and the just-announced plushy McPedro (pre-order), I’m out of room. Of course I have to get a McPedro! Did you see the moustache on that thing? So bushy.

Coupla things happened yesterday, after I’d done my story-collecting for the day. My pardon if you’ve seen either of these stories already, but they’re worth mentioning again.

• It’s not every day that webcomickers decide to go full time, and even less common when they take the opportunity to branch out into other media at the same time. But Curt Franklin and Chris Haley of Let’s Be Friends Again have done just that. With respect to the first, yesterday they announced that comics will be their full-time gig, having been working at laying the groundwork for more than two years.

  To throw a multimedia spanner in the works, LBFA will be a three-person endeavor, as Franklin and Haley are joining forces with rappeur nerdique Eugene Ahn, aka Adam War Rock. Mr Rock, of course, has plenty of connections to webcomickry, having released songs in honor of webcomics¹ as diverse as Nedroid, Johnny Wander, and earlier today, Dresden Codak.

  Weirdly for one who spends so much time on webcomics, I first became aware of Rock because of his tribute to/adaptation of the theme song for The Sound of Young America; then again, TSOYA and the rest of the Maximum Fun empire have their merchandise distributed by TopatoCo, so it all comes full circle.

• You know what else rarely makes the transition to sustained support? Museums. Even the most established have to be creative about funding their collections and exhibitions, but I think that the Cartoon Art Museum may have just set a new standard. In conjunction with the just-launched Berke Breathed exhibit, CAM are looking to fund the print run of exhibition catalog via Kickstarter. With one day down and 29 to go, From Bloom County to Mars: The Art of Berkeley Breathed is, as of this writing, a little more than a third of the way towards its $3000 goal.

  Among the first wave of webcomickers, Breathed’s Bloom County stands as one of the Holy Trinity of Cited Inspirations (along with Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes, and Gary Larson’s The Far Side); I can see a lot of old Breathed fans (not to mention those just learning about his work for the first time via the IDW reprint collection) wanting to get their hands on this.

  Adding to the webcomics appeal, the catalog will contain contributions from Bill Amend and Keith Knight, who may work with syndicates, but “get it” when the discussion turns to webcomics. There’s even a lengthy interview with Breathed by Nexus of All Webcomics Realities (non-Canadian division) Shaenon Garrity; okay, so she’s married to CAM curator Andrew Farago, but Garrity does a hell of a job at interviewing, and so does Breathed when you give him the right person or situation to bounce off of.

  As a bonus, being funded directly by the purchasers means a balanced look at Breathed’s entire career. Disney are getting ready to release a movie based on Breathed’s Mars Needs Moms and I’m sure they could have found three grand in the couch cushions to fund this project, but how much of the catalog would then have have to focus on one not-yet-released movie?

_______________
¹ Said songs may be found at the following locations; this list is not meant to be comprehensive, it was just what I recalled off the top of my head.

• Dresden Codak — I Will Do Science To It (kHill Remix)
• Johnny Wander — Call Me Johnny Wander
• Nedroid — Best Friends! (Nedroid!)
• The Sound of Young America — The Sound

Gahhh, busy busy busy. So let me point you at people that have useful advice for you:

• Howard Tayler, on various forms of publishing and the rewards one may anticipate from them
• Kate Beaton, on what to do and what to expect as a webcomicker (scroll allll the way down, and pay special attention to the last ‘graf)
• Gax the Gaxian, on wedding etiquette, jobs, and dealing with insomnia

In other news:

• Today is the 750th page of Digger, as we progress into the coda of this most unusual epic. In the face of the rapidly approaching end of the story of one determined wombat, we at Fleen appeal for calm. Yes, the adventures will be finishing, but they will still be there online and in the books and you can read them again whenever you like!
• Speaking of books, the first year and first story arc of Spacetrawler finished up pretty much concurrently, which means that it’s time to make a book out of them. It? The comics from that year/arc. It’s available now, and even though I’ve been reading the story from the beginning, you’ll have to wait for a review until I’ve got a copy in hand.

One of the very best things that’s come about from talking about web/indy comics and their creators is getting on :01 Books reviewers list. Almost embarrassingly often, one of their new offerings (my preference list skews heavily towards YA and/or graphic novels) shows up in the mail, and then I get to read the likes of Walker Bean, Koko Be Good, or Dawn Land, and that makes my day (often, my week).

And before I even get to open the book, I get to revel in yet another gorgeous book design, because :01’s secret weapon is Colleen AF Venable. Even if Ms Venable isn’t doing her webcomic anymore, she’s expending a lot of creative muscle on the embosses, debosses, glosses, foils, and shiny mirror finishes (case in point: the advance copy of Astronaut Academy — née Astronaut Elementary — I got last week) that appear on her covers. Where careless use of such features just makes things look cheap (cf: the entire “speculator boom” of 1990s comic books), Venable uses each carefully, adding maximum interest without overwhelming the essential purpose of the cover, which is to be appealing and intriguing.

Because good design is something that deserves attention, please spend a little of yours on this new interview with Collen AF Venable by That Cover Girl, complete with sneak previews of forthcoming projects. If you aren’t salivating to get your hands on those Feynman and Anya’s Ghost covers, there’s something wrong with you.

• I’m going to confess that I understand almost none of this next item, but then again, I don’t know squat about Photoshop. John Allison worked himself up a way to greatly reduce the time necessary to get from pencils to ready-to-colo[u]r lineart. And because he’s a nice guy, he’s sharing his technique with you over at his blog. Might I echo his very polite suggestion that if this saves you time, a brief shopping trip could be in order by way of saying Thank You?
• Gallery time! Those that follow this page may be aware that some of the most whimsical webcomickry being produced comes from (at least, from the reference point of myself, in the upper-right corner of the US) the literal Far Side of the World. Namely, Frank Gibson & Becky Dreistadt’s Tiny Kitten Teeth, from New Zealand, and the various projects of Rebecca Clements (easily accessible at KinokoFry), from Australia. Now they are teaming up for great comics (and possibly great justice), along with illustrators Melanie Matthews and Erin Hunting, for a show at the Owl & Pussycat Gallery in suburban Melbourne.

  The O&P webpage isn’t providing details yet, but Gibson informs us that the show goes up on 19 February (that’s a Saturday) at 6pm, and runs until the 22nd. Those of you not dropping everything to fly Down Under for the show, expect to see more of Dreistadt & Gibson in North America in the future, as Gibson has finally been given permission to Have Freedom; with access to the major studios now much easier, look for Dreistadt to be a major fixture in animation in the immediate future.

• A new theory of mythogenesis for you to consider.
• And finally, because he knows why: Howard Tayler.

That would be trying to catch up everything at work the day after a snow day. Which is why I’m terribly behind on my reading (again), and will be dipping into the mailbag so as not to post nothing. If the Fimbulvetr continues, those of you with press releases will have a much better chance than usual to get them run.

• Item! Friend to words-with-pictures everywhere and curator of the Cartoon Art Museum Andrew Farago (aka Prince Consort to the Radness Queen of the Greater Bay Area) would like very much for you to come to an event next month:
  

  San Francisco, CA: The Cartoon Art Museum welcomes celebrated cartoonists Aaron Renier and Jason Shiga on Thursday, February 17, 2011 as Renier celebrates the release of his new book, The Unsinkable Walker Bean, published by First Second Books and Shiga presents his innovative graphic novel Meanwhile, published by Abrams ComicArts. Please join Renier and Shiga at 7:00pm for a discussion of their latest books, followed by a signing in the museum’s bookstore. Copies of The Unsinkable Walker Bean and Meanwhile will be available for purchase onsite. Please call 415.227.8666, ext. 310 to reserve a copy. The suggested donation for this event is $5.

  If you didn’t read Meanwhile, go find a copy and leaf through it — it’s a pick-your-path comic so complex that new computer software had to be constructed from base theory in order to track all of the story paths. And Walker Bean was one of the standout books that First Second sent me last year, one that I’d recommend to reader that’s … let’s say eight and up. Fabulous stuff.

• Item! Back in the Spring, when snow seemed far away, we spoke a bit about Flash interface comics (also about David Malki !‘s Big Paper conspiracy theory), and as such brought up Red Light Properties. Creator Dan Goldman has been hard at work, seeing as how he’s about to crank out his 250th update in just over a year; given that he has to construct interactive features into each update, that’s quite a accomplishment. If you haven’t read the story of a Miami real estate office run by a hallcinogen-boosted shaman, his broker ex-wife, and the“previously-haunted” homes that they flip, maybe you should.
• Item! Speaking of Mr Malki !, everybody should read this. Doesn’t matter if you’re working on a webcomic, or any kind of creative endeavour. Just read it.
• Item! Spy talk, cryptic remark, offhand reference to Eben07 by Eben Burgoon. Clancyesque, overblown description of clandestine meeting. Fake intelligence report on the wrap-up of the second chapter of the on-going series Operation: 3-Ring Bound. Mission instructions that Burgoon is expected to lie low for a two month hiatus to build up a buffer of comics and to obtain all possible information on his work in the meantime, perhaps by listening to the Full Disclosure podcast.

  Tip that known associate Lauren Monardo of Brainfood Comics (which succeeded with its Kickstart, woo!) is providing the variant cover to the new Eben07 book, now available for pre-order. Cut-off sentence evoking danger and disaster. Honestly, it all reads a bit like a semi-drunken pastiche of the far superior work of Department Head Rawlings¹.

_______________
¹ REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS, EYES ONLY
Have planted rumor that previous leaked intelligence reports regarding subject: Burgoon were only meant as attempts at humor. Believe that this version of events will take root and become dominant. Continue operations as normal and initiate protocol omega.

With any luck, I won’t spend hours upon hours in transit.

In the meantime: Cat Rackham book! Debuts at TCAF! And later today, the greatest of all possible strip subjects — squirrel chew.

What’s that? A day’s respite without freezing rain, slush, and general suicide-inducing ick from the skies? I’ll take it, particularly since it looks like another snowfall is heading our way Thursday into Friday. At least it isn’t the theoretical California murderstorm.

• It seems like just yesterday I was going on about visual references and talking about how even with terrific mastery over facial expressions and body types, you still have to draw hands and feet or you’re just half-assing it. Lo and behold, Meredith Gran comes to the rescue, linking to a treasure trove of hand samples. That there are so many, with such a variety of anatomies and range of expressions should come as no surprise, as most of them are by legendary (literally) Disney animator Milt Kahl. Even if you can’t put all of the liveliness into hands that Kahl did (and honestly, who can?), at least don’t give Josh Fruhlinger’s the jibblies over your mutant digits.
• The latest Xeric season continues apace, and although the foundation’s website is a little behind the times, we hear today that John Martz will get to publish a new edition of Heaven All Day thanks to the grant. If you don’t want to wait until the Spring for that new printing, Heaven All Day is available online, along with other mini (print)/longish (web) comics, as well as shorter experiments (under the Machine Gum branding) at his website. Good stuff, and well done Mr Martz.

  Just prior to press time, news of another webcomicky Xeric grant, this one for Kevin Fraser Mutch, for his previous webcomic, Fantastic Life (the first chapter of which is still online). Mutch’s current webcomic, The Moon Prince is also well worth your time, and well done Mr Mutch. As a side note, if a third Xeric grant is given to another webcomicker with a family name starting with “M”, we’ll know that it’s a conspiracy; please prepare your tinfoil hats in advance.

• Speaking of well done, last week’s Girl Genius Day (aka Kaja Foglio’s birthday) was a roaring success, with the first Girl Genius novelization heading back to print. Let’s go to the official announcement for details:
  

  [Tuesday 18 January 2011], Night Shade Books, the publisher of Agatha H and the Airship City by Phil & Kaja Foglio, announced that the first hardcover print run of 4000 copies had sold out and that they will be going back to press.

  On January 12th, The Foglios coordinated a “Girl Genius Day” promotion. In this they were aided by many luminaries in the web comics world, such as Scott Kurtz and David Malki [sic], as well as a plethora of others who helped spread the word. This proved remarkably successful: the book actually sold out on Amazon.com, but not before it cracked the site’s Top Twenty list of best sellers for the day.

  Let’s be clear: 4000 copies in hardcover is nothing to sneeze at for any author, even one with such as following as the Foglios, because they don’t have a history of moving traditional books without pictures (actually, you will find Phil Foglio’s name attached to a couple of book-books, not specifically as illustrator, none of which get very far into Amazon’s Top 100,000 best sellers); hitting the Top 20 for the day is pretty significant.

  Even more significantly, it appears the Machine of Death strategy works, with the important caveat that you have to bring a motivated audience with you in order for it to work. There’s no telling how far Airship City would have gone if it didn’t hit backorder status, and it’s current positioning (as of this writing, in the Top 100 of several specialty lists, and around 3800 overall) is certainly enough to be proud of (best I ever managed was around 19,000).

  With luck, the return to print will happen quickly enough to drop the current Amazon expected shipping time from 1 to 3 months (if you follow that link and it doesn’t say “1 to 3 months”, the awesome — everybody wins). If the presses don’t get up to speed quickly enough just take solace from the fact that “out of print” doesn’t mean that every single copy in the world is spoken for — it means that booksellers can’t get any more shipments. You’ll still find copies on the shelves, and no doubt every sale tickles the (slightly mercenary, and I mean that in the best possible way) heart-strings of the Foglios.