Painstakingly, I might add. As per my Twitterfeed, locked out of the client-provided computer I’m using for this class (it would be entirely too convenient to let me use my laptop, after all), so this will be short and heavy on cut/paste.

Edit to add: Have computer access back now, not retyping this whole damn thing, but will fix typos and add links.

• Not webcomics, but too bad: Pittsburgh’s ToonSeum is running some classic animated Christmas fare a week from tomorrow. Enjoy A Charlie Brown Christmas (everybody do the repetitive dance!), A Wish For Wings That Work (the definitive performance by Mister The Cat), and The Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick is a genius). Vince Guaraldi’s soundtrack (with accompanying cartoon) starts at 6:30, with Bill and Opus at 7:00pm and Jack Skellington at 7:45pm. Suggested donation: five bucks. The ToonSeum is at 945 Liberty Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Cultural District.
• I met Cari Corene at San Diego Comic-Con ’09 when she was Dave Kellett‘s assistant (you could totally tell, because she kept calling him “Mister Kellett”, which is a dangerously large amount of respect to show a cartoonist, lest they get ideas about their station in life). Anywho, Ms Corene did a bang-up job in that year’s sketchbook (theme: beards and moustaches) and she since launched her own webcomics endeavours, DOOR, which is the story of a pug dog and a genie that’s not trapped in the usual bottle or lamp, but ann overhead-tank-pull-chain-type toilet. It’s better than it sounds, with a lot of really neat visuals.

  Chapter 1 made it to a modest print run, and Chapter 2 is up for the same, pending funding. The Kickstarter’s here, and though some people I deeply respect wonder if Kickstarter has outlived its usefulness, for situations like this, I just see it as a pre-order with a bit of structure. Not enough funds raised? You never get charged and don’t have to wait for a refund to get processed. Works for me.

• I didn’t mention yesterday’s A Girl And Her Fed when it ran, but better late than never. Blazing Saddles reference that manages to avoid the obvious fart joke? Classy. Also building up to something just in time for creator “Otter” to take an end-of-year break. If you aren’t reading AGAHF, get going so you can share in my misery.

Must dash very soon, so let me point you towards the pre-order announcement for Order of Tales book 3, The Tower of Smoke. Evan Dahm puts together books that are heavy, substantially so, that provide intense tactile pleasure even as the gorgeous, color-saturated (Rice Boy)/lusciously-detailed B&W (Order of Tales) pages tickle your eyes and brain. They feel good in your hand, they capture the imagination, and if you’re a completist, next year is your lucky year — The Tower of Smoke ships in January, with a one-volume edition of Order of Tales due later in 2011 (with a foreword by Jeff Smith).

By my estimate, that’s going to be about twice the size of the Rice Boy collection, although only about 60% the size of the BONE one-volume edition (now in the … I think it’s the 14th or 15th printing?), which remains the greatest bargain in the history of comics. Now, if Dahm can just get the info from Smith’s publisher/wife, Vijaya Iyer, about the bindery she used for the hardcover/leatherbound/gold-edged BONE OVE (she told me that the place she used normally does gift-edition Bibles), that would be one hell of a present-to-myself for Christmas ’11 (or ’12, or ’13…).

Also, since we’re talking about books, big thanks to Dave Kellett, who very kindly sent me a copy of his eighth collection, Delightful Jokes for High Class Folks. True to its title, it started with three strips of Arthur horkin’ his guts up in the throes of food poisoning. Weirdly, these strips are from June of 2010, where the rest of the book appears to start around September of 2009. I can only assume that this was intentional, with Kellett searching out the most classy strips in his not-yet-published archive and leading with them. I thought it was hilarious.

While we at this page have recently bemoaned the lack of regular/frequent Achewood updates, it appears that it was all for good cause. Having recently obtained and read Dark Horse’s third Achewood collection, A Home For Scared People, one easily understands that Chris Onstad has been putting much of him time into the supplementary material in this book.

As if the strips from early May to late October 2002 (including the entirety of Roast Beef on the moon, plus Ray’s first two startup businesses) were not enough, there are multiple character portraits of Ray and Roast Beef (including Ray on Beef, Beef on Ray, and digressions on the both of them by Téodor and Mr Bear), as well as an interview of the pair of knuckleheads since small times, by Téodor. The latter contains pure, unbridled comedic gold at every turn. For example, when Téodor makes the mistake of bringing up avocado in the conversation:

Téodor: What?
Ray: [scratches cheek]
Beef: [looks at floor]
Téodor: Seriously, what?
Ray: You uh … I mean, Beef and I really ain’t down with avocado.
Téodor: Avocado is delicious. What do you think guacamole is?
Beef: Guacamole is a lot of tasty stuff held together with a necessary green slime. Served on a tasty, salty, fried corn chip.
Ray: Did you know that they did some tests, and an avocado is the exact bell-like shape of a filled-up colon? That’s why the Incas called it the ptoxábl, or “hind fruit”.

That’s what I’ve been missing for the past months; I thought it might have gone away for good, but it was getting collected in prose form. Here’s hoping that Onstad, having produced such for one book (and presumably more), will now have the time to get his store updated. I’m being completely serious here — I want to reward him with cash money for giving me these thoughts out of his brain, and the Achewood shop is entirely too heavily dominated by “out of stock” messages.

• In other news, almost exactly six months ago, a Canadian gentleman given to blogging on comics-related items named Chris Bird (the eponymous Mighty God King of this bloggishness) released the first page of his own webcomic. Al’Rashad: City of Myths has now hit 24 pages, wrapping up Part One (or issue #1, if you prefer), and collecting the weekly pages in one spot for easy reading.

  In correspondence with Mr Bird, I commented on his ability to spin a world that obviously has much richness beyond the pages and characters that he has revealed so far. His disturbing tendency to show, not tell, and to create something new instead of rehashing a plot that had been done at regular five-to-seven year intervals since the Silver Age is rare and infuriating — how am I to enjoy this story if I don’t already know the entire thing?

  He did not, he assured me, miss that memo, but rather he set it on fire, and then jump[ed] up and down on the burny bits. Check out Al’Rashad, and if you like comics from the Big Two, read his pitches for Legion of Superheroes and Doctor Strange, and somebody give him a writing gig.

• Y’all have been reading Box Brown’s Everything Dies, right? His exploration of religion, faith, and What Comes Next goes self-reflective in the latest update, But I Don’t Want To Die … A Personal Religious History. Much like Tolstoy remarked that happy families are all alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, I suspect that every formerly-religious, currently-not person has their own story as to how they wound up that way. Kudos to Brown for sharing his.

If you thought that Ryan Estrada was going to go heads-down and radio silent during the One Month Animated Feature challenge and we’d see what he had been up to on New Year’s Day, we got a treat for you. No, not you, Christopher Wright who has placed my moustache on notice, this information isn’t for you¹. For everybody else, Estrada has released teaser designs of his major characters and linked them to their voice actors, including some webcomics luminaries. You got yer Kurtz ‘n’ Straub, naturally, but also Steve Wolfhard, animator Barney Wornoff, and nemesis to podcasters/John Allison lackey/semi-pro Stan Lee Channeller Kevin McShane.

And for your listening pleasure, a voice track of Straub and Kurtz that hints at the plot of what may be called The Alias Men. It appears that the aliens want to rob Earth of its most precious resource, scarce throughout the known universe: free WiFi. More, including Estrada’s MacGyvering-up of a lightbox out of string and chewing gum, at the project’s Tumblr or Estrada’s Ell-Jay.

• Meanwhile, there’s a pretty nifty, not-quite-noirish murder mystery webcomic that wrapped up today — She Died In Terrebonne ran for just about a year, and it featured a beginning, middle, end, and coda in just over fifty pages. If you’ve got a spare hour, read the whole thing through from the beginning, and maybe check out the other webcomics work from writer Kevin Church, of which there are multiple worthy examples, with a variety of talented artists.
• I have mentioned Skin Horse by Shaenon Garrity and Jeffrey Wells on this page plenty of times, mostly because it’s awesome. On my more restrained days (such as back in July of 2009) I may describe it as:
  

  [O]ne of the highlights of my day, because what can possibly be wrong about a webcomic that deals primarily with paranormal-managing government bureaucrats who subtly recall the less-well-known Oz books and gets regularly cranked up to about 14 on the Insane-o-Meter? Unstoppable zombies, talking dogs, killer robots, crystalline entities, baby cobras that only want hugs, opera-loving silverfish, a likely-undiagnosed-Asperger’s brain transplanted into a military airframe, and a transvestite psychologist who bags all the babes?

  And it’s drawn by Shaenon Garrity, the one person able to compete with Ryan North for the title of Nexus of All Webcomics Realities?

  But not enough of you are reading it. I say this not because I have any inside information on what Skin Horse’s readership numbers are like, but merely because not every person on the planet is revelling in the fun. For a limited time, you may now get in on said fun for a super-bargain discount — for December only, get both Skin Horse books (two full years of strips) for twenty dollars American cash money (plus shipping and handling), representing a nearly 30% discount. If nothing else entices you, it is the one webcomic I know of that has ever paid proper respect to New Jersey’s contribution to traffic engineering: the dedicated left-turn lane/jughandle. Thank you Mr Wells and Ms Garrity, and you’re welcome, rest of the world.

_______________
¹ Oh boy, is this my new Internet Feud? My previous nemesis, The Midnight Cartooner over at Digital Strips, has been really quiet about our internet grudgery for a while now.

I have a dilemma — perhaps even it could be called a Circumstance — involving too many books. Dave Kellett has just announced his eighth sequential collection of Sheldon; I recently obtained the sixth Schlock Mercenary book. Like Kellett Howard Tayler adds to his Well of Strips for Publication at a rate of hundreds per year; Danielle Corsetto, whose fifth Girls With Slingshots collection is now on order. Questionable Content only has one book, but Jeph Jacques will be releasing more than one a year until he’s caught up, which will be in a half-dozen books or so (god help me if Randy Milholland ever starts releasing his Something*Positive backlog in book form).

It used to be that a dedicated reader of comic strips might collect books from one or two creators that were especially liked; at different times I collected volumes of Doonesbury, Foxtrot, Bloom County, and Calvin and Hobbes, and that was it — over the first 35 years of my life, only four strips merited book purchase. But now I have literally dozens, from creators who are far closer to the start of their careers than the end (the list above merely recounts the most recent must-adds), and that’s not counting even more creators whose work I enjoy, but I made the strategic decision to not purchase their collections.

Yeah, I know, first world problem, but I wonder if it’s a concern that any of these creators had considered. Fifteen or twenty years into their careers, are they going to run into fans that have actually run out of room for physical artifacts? I may be the canary in the coal mine with this one.

• In other news, Otter always sends me the best stuff (cf: the Rifftrax/Axe Cop sighting two days back), best of all she doesn’t have a book out yet. Oh she will, and sooner than my bookshelves would appreciate (at this point, each new purchase pretty much necessitates the removal of an earlier purchase), but for today she is not contributing to the load-bearing test of my office/library’s floor.

  In any event, she pointed me towards an interesting piece on Why Conventions May Not Be A Good Idea For Creators by Tony DiGerolamo. It dovetails nicely with a discussion in a recent edition of the newly-resurgent Webcomics Weekly; as I recall, Kurtz, Guigar, and Straub took some heat for telling creators that jumping straight into conventions may not have the appeal that it once did. DiGerolamo’s logic approaches from a different direction that Kurtz et. al., but comes to a startlingly similar conclusion. Read and consider well.

• Did everybody see the guest strip Rebecca Clements did for Octopus Pie today? Clements nailed Gran’s style from the first frame while still conceptually (and typographically) referencing Little Nemo in Slumberland and at the same time (perhaps unintentionally) invoking one of the finest pieces of Appalachian literature ever produced. If you should ever come across a short story called The Beard by Fred Chappell, remember that this is what is meant by an elegant sufficiency.
• I’ll admit — I hadn’t heard of Namir Deiter by Isabel Marks before today, but her husband Terrence thought it worth mentioning that today marks Namir Deiter’s 2896th update, or 11th anniversary. And you know what? It is worth mentioning. I dedicate an unholy number of hours each week to this medium, and the fact that a nearly 3000-strip-deep webcomic has been going for more than a decade that I’d never come across exists has ceased to surprise me. I read a about 65 strips regularly, another 50 or 60 irregularly, and am probably familiar with a few hundred beyond that. Statisticians have yet to come up with a term to describe what a drop in the bucket those numbers represent.

Thomas Pynchon reference. It started when I read David Malki !‘s tweet regarding “recent” events in Achewood —

Wow Téodor has been in that van for almost SEVEN MONTHS.

That can’t be right, I thought, but yeah — the current storyline started on May 9th, and Téodor got in the van on May 11th, which puts us just shy of seven months. In that time we’ve had approximately two dozen strips on the topic of High School Horror (excluding things like the odd Fuck You Friday), giving us a new literary parallel for Chris Onstad … he’s now less Faulknerian than Pynchonian.

Then the latest Webcomics Weekly and the lead post at Webcomics Dot Com today both referenced Achewood’s current situation (ironically, Onstad has been asking for donations to cover server bills at the same time that both strips and merchandise have become scarce — cross-referencing earlier Webcomics Weeklies, this would be an inversion of charging for the scarce).

That made me think that it’s been a good long while since I could exchange money for Achewood goods (the second cookbook has shown as out of stock for a solid year now), so it was a particularly telling thing when I hit the unexpected Achewood reference trifecta and happened to notice today that the newest Dark Horse volume will be out in two days.

Which is to say, if you like Achewood, tossing Onstad a few bucks for the latest collection might be the best way to incent him to get us some more strips.

• Also out in two days time, and without months of wondering: an original graphic novel about Danny Husk by Scott Thompson. Yes, that Danny Husk, and that Scott Thompson. It’s like a beautiful dream.
• Museum alert! Rene Engström and Rasmus Gran had a showing as part of the Östersund [Sweden] Documentary Festival over the weekend; basically, it’s done now so if you didn’t see it you won’t have the chance now. Also, I love that Rene uses the word vernissage to describe these kinds of showings — she’s the only person I know that’s that classy; everybody else just says preview or opening or the night with the free booze.

  Speaking of which, Hurricane Erika will have such a night in London at the end of December for her first international solo art show. And given that it’s Moen, you know what that means — tentacles ahoy.

• Final thoughts in a day full of random thoughts, this from Friend o’ Fleen Otter:
  

  I’m about 85% certain the Rifftrax for Clash of the Titans mentioned Axe Cop. As in “What the hell, there is a guy throwing lightning at scorpions that grew from demon blood while waving around the severed head of a snake woman. Is this an episode of Axe Cop?”

  Anybody that can confirm, please let us know. In the meantime, I’m going to pre-emptively declare that awesome.

So, um, I guess Ryan North went to Comics Alliance to announce his new book? That is okay Ryan we are still friends. In fact, the Toronto Man-Mountain and I are friends to the degree that something like two years ago he revealed to me that there is a secret code embedded in the name of this book, one that may not be apparent until two or even three more books come out in THE FUTURE. So if you don’t want to die all befuddled, buy lots of copies of Dinosaur Comics: fig. d Dudes Already Know About Chickens and all future Dinosaur Comics books and then you can figure it out too! It’s not for sale yet, but when it is, it will most likely show up here.

• Speaking of newly-announced books, Tom Dell’Aringa would like you to know that he also has a second book coming out, Marooned Vol 2: Mars Wars. In fact, pre-orders are now up for grabs, including standard and artist editions, with international customers getting the artist upgrade for free to make up for the fact that shipping is more. I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a creator throw that freebie towards international customers previously, but it’s a terrific idea and I wholeheartedly support it. There’s also a stack of bonus comics from ten creators that have contributed to Sunday strips (including such notables as Christopher Baldwin and Ramón Pérez), plus a bunch of book-exclusive stuff adding up to more than 40 pages on top of the more than 120 pages of strips. Check ‘er out.
• Nathan Sorry, webcomic-presented graphic novel in progress is now also Nathan Sorry, digital-purchasable comic book. Creator Rich Barrett is making what would have been issue #1 (if print issues were still the goal) available via Graphic.ly for 99 cents, which he points out is not only about a buck cheaper than most digital comics, it’s literally “the price of a song”. Longform comics like Nathan Sorry are probably far better suited to this niche than gag strips, but as we’re still in the early days of digital issues, we’ll certainly have to see over the coming [insert unit of time here]s.
• Speaking of digital comics, I was invited to take a new webapp out for a spin, but it’s not playing happily with my browser (possibly a result of my halfway-paranoid settings regarding Javascript and other executable content on pages), so there you go. You, however, might want to take Caption Mash for a spin, as it promises to “add captions/bubbles to any image without doing any image manipulation.” Like I said, I haven’t played with it, but I can see possible uses — unless I miss my guess, this is less “tool for making comics” and more “potentially a tool for building community, as you let your audience do their own take on your comics”. Maybe? Demo here if you want to play.

Some interesting followups in the wilds of Webcomicstan today; let’s see what we’ve got on tap.

• Once, long ago, in the wilds of British Columbia, there lived a man named GORD, who owned unto himself a videogame store, and lo his legend is wond’rous. There are those that have dedicated themselves to spreading accounts of the Acts of GORD (love the GORD, fear the GORD), and though the miracles of GORD have not been recounted in many a year (last update I recall was around 2003, 2004, something like that).

  Towards the end of those days a young man took it upon himself to illustrate (nay, illuminate) the teachings of GORD. And verily did Other Things pass into the life of that young man, and the stories of GORD were not completed, even unto this very day when at last they are complete. And that young man’s name? Ryan Estrada. True story.

• New in your local comic shop: the collected edition of Captain Excelsior Stupendous by Zach Weiner and Chris Jones. I’d read the full story of the good Captain online, of course, but I was struck by how much more of a dick he becomes in the quicker-reading dead-tree format. Hell, in the entire book there’s really only one or two sympathetic characters, things are not resolved in a good way for just about anybody, and everybody is almost entirely the Worst Person Alive.

  The most sympathetic character (and the one on the receiving end of the worst screwing-over) is probably the creepy old pedophile at the prom. A’course, Weiner keeps up that sensibility (it’s a jerk world and everybody in it are jerks) in the SMBC Theater shorts that he contributes to, so no surprises; it’s a cynical, pessimistic, and very funny worldview from a guy who’s really pretty sweet and sunny in person. Pick it up.

• Machine of Death update du Jour: MoD has made it onto Amazon’s Best Books of 2010 list, and as MoD frontman David Malki ! points out:
  

  Every other book on that Amazon list is an entry in a massive franchise. Anita Blake Vampire Hunter BOOK 18? #genrefanslovethemserials

  So I guess that means that MoD2 will be nigh-obligatory at some point.

• A little light reading for you, aimed by John Allison at the indy comic “scene” in the UK, but equally applicable ’round the world — A MANIFESTO FOR UK INDIE COMICS IN 2010. Highlights include:

  2. Small press: it is not 1994 any more

  There are comics on the internet now. If you’re good enough, have a decent website, and keep a reliable schedule, you can have a whole career there. The notion of the primacy of a photocopied quasi-zine “small press scene” in the UK is ludicrous. 1 in 4 people in the world can speak English. Questionable Content has half a million readers. It is not rocket science.

  4. Forget what you learned at art school and read some business books

  You need entrepreneurial chops to make a living from your art, or the help of someone who has them. It’s not that hard. You copy someone who has already succeeded. It usually works.

  5. Making money from art is not vulgar

  Art is a commodity. It makes people feel something. It raises the greater sum of human happiness. It increases the gaiety of the nation. It has a value.

  7. Diary comics: stop it

  If your only comics outlet is a diary comic on the internet, you are wasting your time and your energy. The success stories in this field are the product of people with strong, often eccentric personalities and a robust visual vocabulary, capable of turning their lives into a compelling narrative. The 200 people who read your diary comic, on the other hand, all make their own dull diary comics. Or are about to start.

  The whole thing is good, and if there’s not at least two or three items that apply to you, you’re probably doing really well.

Only one item today kiddies, but it’s a good one: the much-respected (and usually amusingly snarky) Kirkus Reviews have started releasing their Best of 2010 lists, and we’ll be paying particular attention to the Best Children’s Books and Best Books for Teens (both lists are broken down to sub-groupings — historical novels, nonfiction, picture books, etc — just look at the complete lists for each age range), because there is where you will find webcomickers.

From the Children’s list (graphic novel and chapter books division), two by Collen AF Venable, creator of the late, lamented Fluff in Brooklyn and possessor of the awesome connect-the-dots giraffe tat — Hamster and Cheese and And Then There Were Gnomes (Guinea PIG, Pet Shop Private Eye, #1 and #2, respectively, with art by Stephanie Yue). Sasspants the guinea pig solves mysteries in the pet shop, with just the right tone of sarcasm to demonstrate that Venable knows kids get subtle humor, too (also discussions of animals and their poop). As an added bonus, Venable spends her days book-designing the :01 Second line, including fellow honoree Aaron Renier’s The Unsinkable Walker Bean.

Same division, two books by Fleen Fave Ursula Vernon, Dragonbreath — Attack of the Ninja Frogs and Dragonbreath — Curse of the Were-Wiener (the second and third entries in the Dragonbreath series). Same sensibilities and goofy fun as found in Vernon’s (soon to be wrapped, sniff) Digger, toned down a bit for the pre-teen set. Be sure to also check out the first (self-titled) Dragonbreath and the vaguely-related-to-Digger Nurk: The Strange, Surprising Adventures of a (Somewhat) Brave Shrew for more delights.

Moving up to the Teens (or Young Adult, if you prefer) list, again in graphic novels, one each from Raina Telgemeier and Hope Larson — the justly-famous SMILE and Mercury, about which much has been said previously in these parts.

Fleen congratulates the honorees, and thanks them for their service to comics — keep in mind, all of the books recognized by Kirkus on these lists were for younger readers. The extent to which creators have jobs in the future (and that readers have worthwhile material to consume) will be determined in large part by the numbers of kids that pick up the habit of reading words + pictures. Larson, Telgemeier, Venable, and Vernon are doing their part to pass that habit on, and we are all luckier for it.

But before we get started, let me point out that Jeph Jacques is doing his level best to displace John Allison as the reigning King of Fan-Fiction. Okay, so Jacques did his in-strip, but you can’t tell me that he didn’t enjoy writing this:

Also Hermione and Ginny were both 25 years old and NOT married to Ron and Harry because the epilogue at the end of the last book is STUPID and NEVER HAPPENED.

Which eventually leads to:

So they totally had sex, and it was the most amazing sex in the history of wizarding or muggles or even Space Wizards (who had a lot of sex but it was really bad sex because they were all evil).

• Speaking of Jeph Jacques, I have now a copy of Questionable Content Volume 1, which came with the news that Jacques plans to do a similarly-sized book every nine months or so until he’s caught up. Look for Volume 2 around San Diego time.
• Speaking of John Allison, I picked up his newest book at NEWW — the very limited, convention-only A Feral Flag Will Fly. I enjoy Bad Machinëry to the extent that, although we are presently getting a five-days-a-week Esther story (and Esther is my absolute favorite SGR character), I find myself counting the days until BM and those mystery-solving youths return. AFFWF has soothed my soul until the wait is done.
• Completing the book-buying trifecta, I now also have a copy of Howard Tayler’s sixth Schlock Mercenary collection, Resident Mad Scientist. Much like AFFWF and QCv1, RSM features an oversize trim, a good “in the hand” feel, and a story that is richer, funnier, and more enjoyable for being presented in large chunks. Excellent reads, all three.
• Not full books, but still from NEWW: I purchased David McGuire‘s latest mini, Marty’s Big Day (no link, sorry), the story of a cat having the best first day as cat ever — fifteen minutes in, he’s on furniture scratching duty and they think they’ll move him up to shedding and hairballs within a week! Lots of fun, and an excellent use of McGuire’s clean, heavy-lined, angry-eyed style.

  Also on the mini front, Sophie Goldstein was kind enough to give me copies of her two minis (again, no link), one a collection of hourlies from her time teaching English in Korea (dated 2009-2010), and one a pair of stories about her father (dated 2006).

  The art styles are obviously different (you have to go simple on hourlies), but each fits the tone of the book. The father stories are particularly strong, recounting a visit to Goldstein’s Alzheimer’s-afflicted grandmother and a terrifying dream of monsters (with her balding, bespectacled, utterly badass father to the rescue). Very different from her work on Darwin Carmichel, very moving work.

• Recurring theme at NEWW: Garies. There exists somewhere a picture of Evan Dahm in the Garies shirt, standing next to me for the absolute maximum amount of Garies. The only thing that could have increased the Gary-count would be if I had been wearing the GARY shirt, but as we all know, that may well have resulted in a Gary singularity.
• Speaking of singularities, Mr Dahm was on a panel with Mr Diaz, Ms Spike, Ms Baillie, and Mr Riley on the topic of worldbuilding; an audio recording of said panel is now available, which saves me the trouble of typing up my notes.

  But be sure to particularly pay attention about halfway through when the topic turned to the nature of comics itself, and particularly the ability of comics to present background information and foreground information simultaneously and in appropriate weightings, something all but impossible in prose. Heady stuff from people who have clearly thought about comics.

• Finally, some of the discussion I had with David Malki ! regarding Machine of Death is now public: agreements have been agreed, and MoD is due in bookstores across the US in the next three weeks.