Will this be the last time I feel the need to talk about Raina Telgemeier‘s stellar new graphic novel, SMILE? Maybe! I mean, there’s the launch party next week at Rocketship in Brooklyn, and it’ll certainly be making the rounds of the awards at shows for the next year or so. But it’s out now, I’ve gorged myself on it, and you should too.

Here’s the deal: I know Raina personally. I met her as an adult, I never knew the sixth-grader who when through a nearly five-year ordeal to repair a busted set of teeth. I know firsthand that things turned out okay, but I still found myself flipping pages in the grips of the story, wondering if it would all turn out okay. I winced with Young Raina, hurt with her, triumphed with her, and around the corners of memory of my own dental dramas, tasted way too much blood with her as I read along.

SMILE is more than the tale of one person, it’s a Hero’s Journey from gangly still-a-kid to almost-adult; the teeth are the hook that the story hangs on, but it’s really about the pain and effort to grow up. It’s telling that at times, Telegemeier draws herself as still looking like her 12 year old self, while her friends seem to already be grown women — have any of us at that age not wondered why we seem not to be as at ease with ourselves, not as grown-up as those around us?

SMILE is also the book that’s destined to put a stake in the heart of Highlights for Children, which has haunted every pediatric dentist’s and orthodontist’s office since the Truman administration. It struck me as awful, ugly, insipid, and insulting when I was 7, and I was desperately convinced that some day, somebody would come up with something better to read while waiting for the guy with the drill to call my name. If there’s anything on this planet that would improve trips to the dentist than a story that says, “Yeah, I was sitting where you are now, I went through the pain, and the headgear, and the teasing, and it turned out okay, promise”, I can’t imagine it.

A few side notes before we wrap up today:

• What The Hell?! Con is scheduled for Greensboro, NC this weekend, but a major storm system looks like it might smack the area, at least peripherally. As NC native Otter puts it:
  

  [P]lease check the main page and the weather reports before you [head to the show]. North Carolina has a Zero Tolerance policy for snow and since a minor dusting of flurries is expected, there’s a chance the convention might be canceled. Check, check, triple-check, and save yourself the gas!

• Good couple of comments in the followup to yesterday’s story of Karl Kerschl’s woes. ComicPress is a terrific product, but as a dominant player, it runs the risk of monocultures everywhere — susceptibility to disease. As Rob Tracy (also mentioned in yesterday’s dispatches) notes, Webcomics Community is working up some ComicPress alternatives, which can only be a good thing.
• Finally, nice pro-tip at Wapsi Square today: when causing a supernatural event, convince the cops that nothing happened by babbling about flying saucers. Works every time!

I see a book-buying trip in my immediate future.

• Are mini-things the new merch trend? Erika Moen made a whole bunch of mini-characters for various webcomickers as fan art, and she’s done all those tentacle–themed sculptures (the anemones are gorgeous, if sadly not for sale). Sean Archer has gotten into the game of pocket art with representations of his own Milo the Cloud. If you’re shy on space, this could entirely be a thing.
• Early news of the UK Web & Mini Comix Thing is drifting in, with Peter Vine now officially first out of the gate with “I’ll be there with my friends” notification. If you head up to Mile End on 27th March (unfortunately, I’ll be at Pax East that weekend; I really have to pencil The Thing in for one of these years) you’ll be seeing the likes of Rose Loughran, Steve Dismukes,and German Erramouspe). As Vine noted:
  

  If Kate Beaton is attending then it must be good.

  Indeed, but there are easily a half-dozen draws at the show just as compelling.

• Webomics and webcomickers (indeed, much of our modern society) appears to orbit the Robot Juice; for those (such as myself) who have never understood the appeal of the The Bean, the world is a lonely and judgemental place that shuns our kind. What of the noble, gentle-steeped leaf of Camellia sinensis? Well, our time has come. Adagio Teas have commissioned Katie Sekelsky (of the twice-weekly SF story Magpie Luck) to produce a new, tea-themed webcomic for their monthly newsletter, Tea Muse. Tea Tales (first installment here, hopefully an easily-accessible archive in the future) provides an illustrated look into some of the quirkier areas of tea’s history; it is both suitably pretty and sufficiently weird for anyone.

You need to read that title out loud, in the voice of a newsreel announcer; click the picture for an example and then try to get that voice out of your head. When you’re done listening to the news of yesteryear, stick around YouTube for a moment and check out the video trailer for Raina Telgemeier’s SMILE, which is due for release so soon that I can barely stand it. Yes, I keep bringing this book up. No, I’m not going to apologize. It’s terrific and the world must know.

• As long as we’re playing with A/V capabilities, let’s take a listen to a podcast: The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe is a creature after my own heart — ruthlessly rational, determined to shine the light of reason on pseduo-science of all sorts, and not above a bit of snarkiness in the pursuit of those goals. Show #236 features Jon Rosenberg, who’s been known to address skeptical audiences from time to time … something about writing a webcomic that settled the answer of the existence of God definitively by having two characters eat him. It’s a pretty general-purpose interview, not so much about the webcomic, more about science, influences, and Rosenberg’s worldview. Jon, for his part, comes across as reasonably normal, which makes me wonder how much he drank from the bottle of Scotch Baio prior to the interview.
• Got a double dose of Scott Kurtz news for you — in about two weeks time, those of you in NoCal will have two opportunities to see him do the formal talk thing, at a pair of fairly prestigious venues. To start, he’ll be at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco on Thursday, 11 February from 7:00 to 9:00pm for a talk and signing. It’s free, but it’s a museum, and the suggested donation of $5.00 isn’t going to break you. Give ’em $10 if you can.

  Two days later, Kurtz will head up to Santa Rosa and the Schulz Museum; that would be the museum devoted to Charles ‘Sparky’ Schulz, the most wildly successful, influential, and vaguely depressing strip cartoonist the world has ever known. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess this is about the most exciting possible invitation for any working cartoonist.

  On Saturday, 13 February, Kurtz will be speaking and teaching. The fun kicks off at 10:00am with a 1.5 hour Master Class for Adults, then continues as Kurtz becomes the latest Cartoonist-in-Residence; he’ll be talking from 1:00pm with meet/greet and signing to follow. The Master Class requires registration and a fee, which can be arranged by calling (707) 284-1263. For the general presentation, ten bucks gets you in the door, five if you’re a kid.

• Oh yeah, then there’s this: the Android (Operating System) Android (mascot). Andy Bell first dropped hints to me about these guys way back at SDCC 2009, and I’ve been anxiously waiting to see how they would turn out. Answer: Awesome. As the owner of an Android phone, I want one.

I gots stuff to take care of, so let’s do this.

• Want a free copy of SMILE? There’s a giveaway in progress, which holds out the possibility of a free book in exchange for the story of your most embarrassing dental experience. You’ve got just over a month to get your entries in, so make ’em good.
• Little Dee is busting out all the old one-shot characters; I expect that this buildup to the end will encompass everyone who’s ever appeared in the strip. As long as we get more Rogues, I’ll be happy.
• Speaking of Little, Little Gamers now ha an iPhone app for you to download and enjoy; perhaps this will convince the authors of webcomics-scrapers that they should knock it the hell off.
• Myth Adventures occupied a fair amount of my mindspace from my early high school years, and the Phil Foglio-adapted comic version was one of my earliest regular purchases. Like Buck Godot before it, Myth Adventures will be running 3 pages a week at Foglio’s website (starting here), but with eight issues to get through, it’ll take a couple years to get through the whole thing, so it you enjoy it, might I point out that you can short-circuit the excruciating wait and just buy the whole damn thing in one go? Why yes, I might.
• Finally, I have a new goal in life: to find circumstances where I can legitimately use the phrase homeopathic blow job in casual conversation. Chris Onstad, he tasks me.

Everybody saw how the American Library Association announced the Caldecott, Newbery, and Printz awards yesterday, right? Today the Young Adult Library Services Association of the ALA announced their annual list of Great Graphic Novels for Teens. There’s the requisite Huh moments to be found, but on the Top Ten list, one may find two items from the realm of webcomickry: Tom Siddell‘s Gunnerkrigg Court Volume 1: Orientation, and Jeremy Love‘s Bayou. Toss in a mention on the main list of the Dave Roman/Raina Telgemeier-scripted X-Men: Misfits 1 and you’ve got a pretty respectable showing. Well done, all.

So. Dave Kellett. Ignore the weapons-grade punnery that pervaded his strip earlier in the week, he’s got something good to talk about; two things, in fact.

• Thing the First: Dave’s lovely and talented wife, Gloria Calderón Kellett is an actress, screenwriter, and playwright of no mean talent; on Monday, she’ll be reviving her show Skirts & Flirts in LA for One Night Only to benefit the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. Both Kelletts are in the show, along with a considerable number of their severely talented friends. Tickets are twenty bucks, and if you’re of legal age you get free vodka. I saw the show when it ran in New York, and it were damn funny. Go.
• Thing the Second: Dave can talk well. That seems like a minor thing, I mean most everybody manages that on their own, but what I mean is that he has one of those moderately rare brains that allows one to organize thoughts, put them into a compelling order, and make them sound interesting on the fly, which is a pretty neat trick. If you read this page, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve heard Dave on a majority of the Halfpixel Webcomics Weekly podcasts (now on indefinite hiatus), but hearing him go one-on-one is a different beast altogether. Tom Racine of Tall Tales Radio did exactly that, sitting down with Kellett for a lengthy, rambling (but not random) podcast interview. It’s worth a good listen.

Just now noticed, and worth a read right now now now: Great, by Ryan Armand, who gave us the sublimely beautiful Minus. Starts here, hit “next” 58 times until you’re caught up.

Daisy Owl, friend to moustachery everywhere.

• Okay, this sucks: Kean Soo‘s most famous work, the award-winning Jellaby, is losing half its presence in print. For reasons beyond our Earth Logic, Disney-Hyperion are yanking Jellaby volume 1 from print:
  

  It was, I presume, a financial decision on the part of my publisher, Disney-Hyperion, even though the book has been a modest success by comic standards (more than 18,000 copies sold over the span of 21 months), and had been slowly picking up readers as time went on. Having Jellaby off the shelves does create an unfortunate situation, however — the second book, Jellaby: Monster in the City, is the conclusion of the story that runs through both books, and by removing the availability of the first book, Monster in the City is in danger of leading a shortened life as well, being a now- incomplete second half to a two-part story.

  Now, I’m no publishing mogul, but it seems to me that if you have something that sells, then making more means you can sell more. So yeah, terrific logic there, Disney-Hyperion. Heckuva job. Bottom line, if you want a copy of this utterly charming book, better grab it now. Those of you that plan on having children some day, get a copy or two now and lay them down like fine wine for your progeny to enjoy in the future.

• How about some good news that relates to our Northerly Friends? The Toronto Comics Art Festival has had a reputation for being one of the best shows on the circuit, and 2010 marks the move from biannual to annual occurrences. Furthermore, the exhibitors list has been released, with the guests forming a veritable who’s who of our chosen artform. In addition to Mr Soo, in no particular order, you got yer Spike, yer Doc Hastings, yer John Campbell, and yer KC Green.

  Want more? You also have Graham Annable, Kate Beaton, Box Brown, Danielle Corsetto, Joey Comeau & Emily Horne, Becky Dreistadt & Frank Gibson, Rene Engström, Meredith Gran, Chris Hallbeck, Andrew Hussie, Jeph Jacques, Lucy Knisley, Sam Logan, Davids Malki ! and Maguire, Dylan Meconis, Hurricane Erika, The Toronto Man-Mountain, Yuko Ota & Ananth Panagariya, Dave Roman & Raina Telgemeier, Jon Rosenberg, Jeff Rowland & the TopatoCo crüe, Rich Stevens, and Jim Zubkavich, plus about a million others that I’ve no doubt missed on the list.

  Whew. My travel plans for the spring aren’t entirely set yet (there’s this pretty awesome out-of-state post-wedding party-up later in May), but I hope to attend TCAF if only to say howdy to all the incredible talent that will be attending. But whether I make it there or not, if you’re not doing anything much, much cooler on May 8th & 9th, the Toronto Reference Library will be the place to be.

Whoof — the dry air here in the northeast is playing merry hell with my sinuses, and I can only hope to get to the end of this post without another sudden onset of epistaxis.

• I’m gonna start with a quick mini-review, as I got my copy of Tyler Page’s Nothing Better volume 2: Into the Wild. I know that I said months ago that this was going to be my next purchase, but I’m apparently a challenge to buy gifts for; it was requested that I ramp back my purchases and make desired volumes known such that some might appear in festive wrappings one December morn. Afterwards, I resumed my buying and now I have copies of most of the things I would have otherwise bought earlier for myself, including this one.

  It’s good, you guys. Really good. On the heels of volume one, Kat and Jane are moving from at-odds unwilling roomies to friends, as the freshman year slips from Halloweento Christmas). I’m particularly impressed by how Page treats the storyline of Jane’s new college boyfriend, Ryan — at times, both she and he are too quick to jump to jealous conclusions over innocent interactions, which was handled with far more subtlety that one usually finds in fiction. These three pages could easily have turned (in less skilled hands) into a Very Special Episode on the dangers of controlling boyfriends, low self-esteem, abusive relationships, or whatever. In fact, Page made sure to present the vulnerability one feels in a new relationship as equally likely on the part of both people.

  As the book wraps up, none of the principal characters are who they were at the beginning (except for Trish and Victoria, the total bitches that live on Kat & Jane’s floor), but it never feels contrived or artificial how they’ve changed. They’re growing, more rapidly and awkwardly than they will at any other time in their lives, and we get to watch it happen. With any luck, Volume 3 (currently serializing) will show us more of Darby (with his puppylike crush on Jane) and Gene (with his creepily menacing Jesus-freak vibe).

• Also new this week — my copy of Skin Horse volume 1, with free art! Now when I talked about the free art aspect to the book (until the end of the month, so hurry), I mentioned in an offhand manner one or two strips that I thought were extra-neato. What with Shaenon Garrity being in the middle of moving house and explicitly stating that the art would be random, I gave it no further thought. Then I opened the package, which despite the prominent DO NOT BEND warning, somebody had valiantly tried to mutilate. Miracle of miracles, the art and book were perfectly intact, and it just so happened that my strip was one of my aforementioned favorites. This is why Shaenon Garrity is the Radness Queen of the Universe (or at least the East Bay).
• As long as we’re mentioning Her Radness, she emailed to let you know about something interesting at a site she edits:
  

  This is seriously cool. John Barber’s new webcomic, Outside Infinity, has just joined the Modern Tales lineup. As you may or may not recall, John’s previous webcomic, “Vicious Souvenirs,” one of the first interactive Flash-based comics, was part of the Modern Tales launch lineup way back in the day. Then John went off to work for this place called Marvel Comics. But now he’s back with a new, non-Flash-based series, and I’ve got him on Modern Tales.

  John describes Outside Infinity as “the sort-of true story of a guy who discovers the mathematical proof of the existence of black holes … while dying on of an incurable disease on the losing side of Russian front in World War I.”

  There is pretty much nothing in that description that isn’t really awesome.

• Last bit, then the weekend: Phil Foglio writes the best press releases:
  

  The comic book site Comic Book Resources just put up a list of The 30 Most Important Comics Of The Decade. Some reasonable picks. However I’m writing to say that one of their choices was Girl Genius, so you can see that they are indeed serious & responsible journalists. It also behooves me to mention that 3 other webcomics made their list, a respectable percentage over all. The others are: Penny Arcade, Achewood, and MegaTokyo. We salute our fellow webcomic creators.

  “But Gary,” I hear you cry, “that looks nothing like what I’ve been told by reliable sources (including yourself) what a proper press release should look like! How do I get to write something like that and have you run it?”

  Simple. Go back in time thirty years and be as consistently funny as Phil up to the present day, and I’ll run any dang thing you write.

The thing to keep in mind is, in the Maritimes, they remember how things used to be. We are, after all, talking about a corner of the world where third-generation locals may still be told that they’re “from away”. They remember what it was like in the old days, when the veils that separate one world from the next weren’t quite so thick. They remember that words have power, and formal curses may follow you for a long, long time. They remember about The Sight, even if they try to forget, since after all it’s unseemly and un-Christian. Keep those things in mind when you read Hope Larson‘s newest graphic novel, Mercury.

When Larson very kindly gifted me with an early copy of her book, I had some expectations: that the art would be clean enough to conduct surgery in its immediate vicinity; that the characters would all be individual, fully thought-out, and unique looking; that the story would find its focus in an adolescent girl, but not the Adolescent Girl Proto-Consumer™ that is so common in modern media. What I didn’t expect was the overall darkness of the story, nor the across-time cyclic nature it would have. Those who favor surprises may wish to stop reading before they hit the spoilers; take it as given that the book is fabulous.

Tara Fraser lives in Nova Scotia, Canada, and she’s in rough straits; she’s bunking with her aunt, uncle, and cousin because her house burned down and mom has had to travel to the oilfields out west for work. She’s got almost nothing, school’s starting up and she doesn’t know anybody, and she feels her connection to the family land slipping away. There’s easily enough material there for a damn strong story, so it’s entirely natural that Larson abandons it on page 14; we’ll come back to Tara in a bit, but there’s another story that needs telling.

Josey Fraser lives in Nova Scotia (“Canada” being more of a concept than a country at this point), and she’s in rough straits; her family lives a pretty hardscrabble life in the woods, the farm doesn’t do as well as it should, her father frets about providing a future for his children, and her mother’s never been happy with these circumstances (and every once in a while, mom sees dead people, but tries to forget that she does since it’s unseemly and un-Christian). But there may be an improvement in circumstances: a handsome (if somewhat scruffy) young man named Asa Curry (who has come from far, exotic Australia!) claims to have found gold on the Fraser family’s land, and their lot looks to improve.

By page 20 we’re 150 years in Josey’s future and it seems like whatever improvements the Frasers may have experienced have faded by Tara’s time. Fortunes rise and fortunes fade, but some experiences echo across time: Asa has his eye on Josey, with unspoken considerations of marriage. The easy-going Ben (he’s from Toronto, and his parents from somewhere in Asia) seems to have a thing for Tara, but the focus is more on double-doubles and cheap pizza than a new family. Their mothers push and pull in similar ways from opposite directions: Josey’s mother won’t abide the thought of her daughter leaving the family and land; Tara’s mother has a lead on a job in Edmonton, but will have to pull Josey thousands of miles from her family and sell the land. The gold itself ripples across time to affect both girls: Josey may have a bright new future, residue from refining in the groundwater at least gets Tara a day off from school.

The real tie between the girls takes the form of a gewgaw seen in the hands of Asa from time to time; it shows up in a box of costume jewelry that Tara’s mom had left behind. Josey learns that Asa is protective of the little globe with a blob of mercury in it; he claims it’s what finds the gold. Tara discovers that it’s good for finding lost keys and earrings. Josey sees her father killed for the gold and her mother curse her would-be suitor — a real curse, because words have power even when we forget and pretend that they’re just words. Tara wonders if lost treasure could provide her family the means to rebuild. The death spirit that plagued Josey’s family still lurks in the woods to bedevil Tara, but he finds his powers less in these days when such things are no longer believed (but still, deep down, some remember that spirits and curses and magic are real, and all things have rules — like the rule that says don’t speak when there’s magic going on).

In the end, Tara’s family has come full circle; the fortune that plagued one generation near to ruination may well save the latest — even if it appears that you can’t have family, home, and wealth all at the same time. On the last page, Tara looks over her new treasure and gets ready to tell her mom that their troubles are done.

But those of a low and suspicious nature would do well to remember that this is the Maritimes, where they remember that all things have their cost. That trending-towards-happy ending? We’ve seen that sort of fortune before, just as Josey’s father was riding off, before he came to his untimely end. I wonder if Larson has, in the back of her head (even if she tried to forget, because it’s unseemly) another ten pages or so where we find out that curses follow you even in these modern times when such things are no longer believed. That fortune has blood on it (figuratively and possibly literally) and while magic has rules, I wouldn’t bet whether that curse would decide the gold returning to the Fraser family means that its job is done, or still ongoing.

Words (and moreso: words and pictures) have power, even for those of us that don’t live in the Maritimes. The story of Josey and Tara will stay with you long after you’ve closed the covers on Mercury, and it will reveal more depth each time you open them again. Take your time, revel in the details, and enjoy — in a career full of stellar work, this is Larson’s best so far.

Whole bunch of stuff that came up in the past 30 hours or so that we just didn’t have time to address previously. Let’s take it one at a time, shall we?

• KC Green has preorders for Horribleville Vol 1 (with release scheduled for 16 February) open at New Reliable Press. He’s also got a really touching strip up at Gunshow today, and not the bad kind of touch, either. Don’t be surprised as you read it that you discover you’ve got something stuck in your eye.
• I first heard about Mocktopus from the tweetings of Chris Sims (he of The Invincible Super-Blog; I’ve since learned both that creator Max Huffman is ludicrously young (that would be “15” in your Earth years) and he has a pretty good eye/hand/brain for absurdity. The art started off pretty rough and has since become much better in a really short period of time.

  Comics Alliance (which site is shockingly well done most of the time, and pretty damn funny when the aforementioned Mr Sims is writing) interviewed Huffman recently on the experience of being one of the younger creators out there, with an undercurrent of Risinig star who will be the hotshot cartoonist of 2013 (of course, the world will end in 2012, so that’s less to look forward to than one might have hoped).

  Anyhoo, Huffman acquits himself well; Dawkins knows that if somebody had interviewed me when I was 15, I’d have come off like a complete idiot, which is the natural state of most teenaged males.

• Wondermark makes a return appearance over at at MySpace Dark Horse Presents (note: the direct links for the various stories all seem to go to “Brody’s Ghost” by Mark Crilley which was pretty good, but you’ll have to click to get to Wondermark) with an eight-page tribute to awkwardness. Also, the next issue of MDHP (due 3 February) will feature stories by Yuko Ota and Graham Annable, so keep your eyes open for that, hey?
• The last Teaching Baby Paranoia went up yesterday. Ten years, more than 500 comics, and an unknown amount of true knowledge mixed with an even more unknown amount of complete apocrypha. Thanks to Bryant Paul Johnson for all the pseduohistory.
• Via Joey Manley: there’s a Skottie Young webcomic a-comin’ and I for one am excited. Anybody that hasn’t seen his work on the Eric Shanower-adapted OZ comics (if you think you know the story from the Judy Garland movie, you’re sadly mistaken) from Marvel (of all places) is missing out. Completely charming work, and I can’t wait to see what he comes up with when given the opportunity to work with an original creation of his own.
• Speaking of Marvel, this was pointed out to me by my friend Brett: VC money backing “an immersive social experience and marketplace around digital comics and associated merchandise.” Partnership announced with Marvel, but it’s not clear what (if any) impact this will have on the indy creators that we focus on here; from the very minimal description, it sound like a turnkey solution so that the next time a publisher decides that “webcomics” means “put our back catalogue pages online”, they don’t have to build the whole damn thing from scratch. So in the forthcoming maybe-battle-for-marketshare between Graphic.ly and Longbox, which one is Betamax?

Finally, had another back-and-forth with The Guig-star late yesterday to find out how the somewhat abrupt transition at Webomics Dot Com had gone. In no particular order, it was established that:

1. The lack of Terms & Conditions for subscribers at launch was an oversight that needs to be fixed and will be “soon”
2. Those who wrote articles for WDC will be able to give their approval to Guigar to use their stuff or not as they wish; those that don’t want their stuff on Pay!WDC can run it elsewhere as they wish
3. It’s been bumpy, but WDC got more subscribers on Day One than anticipated (Guigar described the number as “For a non-porn site, encouraging”)
4. If Pay!WDC doesn’t work out, there may be a market for Guigar Porn, ’cause the ladies love them some Brad Guigar

That’s nearly 2009 done; let’s be frank, in a lot of ways the year was a challenge, and it’s capping 10 years that really kind of sucked. Sucked in a way that prompts me to share the first comic strip that I can recall reading, more than 30 years past (certainly, I read comics before this one, but it’s the oldest that’s stuck with me): a kidney stone of a decade, indeed.

But … webcomics.

Sure, webcomics existed prior to 1 January 2000 (hell, you can see a stack of ’em in the links over to the right), but the start of the 21st century is when they exploded. For going on half that time, I’ve been sharing my thoughts with literally dozens of you, and if this particular implementation of a delivery system/business model/art form isn’t enough to redeem a time when we as a species seemed to be sliding backwards, well, it’s helped keep me from screaming myself awake. So there’s my Best of the Decade list in a single (possible obsolete now) word: webcomics. As Sturgeon would have it, most of ’em are crap, but there are so damn many of them now, it was inevitable that some would be gems.

It was not inevitable that some of the creators, rather than have their work undiscovered, would create comics loved so much by so many, that they could make this most frivolous of passtimes a career. It was not inevitable that one of those webcomics would launch a charity that would, in seven years, raise $US6.5 million to benefit children’s hospitals. It was not inevitable that numerous creators would score Hollywood movie deals (some of which will even get made). It was not inevitable that a new kind of publisher/merch fulfillment/services provider would not only slouch its way towards success, but bring a stack of creators along for the ride.

Maybe it was a series of happy accidents, maybe it was down to the pure determination of the parties involved. But it happened, and I think those of us reading this page are happier for it.

And, because it’s become a slight tradition for me to talk about Shaenon Garrity on New Year’s Eve, check this out: she wants to give you fifty bucks for free. More precisely, she wants to give you fifty bucks of original artwork just so she doesn’t have to move it:

From now until the end of January, for every copy of Skin Horse Volume One you purchase, I will send a randomly selected original daily strip. These normally sell for $50, but I’m moving and I need to lighten my load.

In one of the most profound lessons that I ever took to heart, Chuck Jones once wrote that his beloved Uncle Lynn taught him that being lazy is a virtue, and it takes a good deal of brains to be effectively lazy. Garrity has learned this lesson well, and to your benefit. Naturally, she knows how to work all the angles on this deal:

Oh, and if you want a specific strip, you can purchase one for the normal price of $50. Which might be worth doing if you don’t want your favorite strip to go to somebody who doesn’t appreciate it on the same level you do.

My only problem is that there’s too many strips that I feel that way about, and only so much money that I can spend, so I think I’ll take my chances (but if I were to randomly get a strip of Dr Lee looking all hot, or “Man, there ain’t nothing in this world sadder than a wet transvestite”, that would be extra rad). I wonder if I could order enough copies to be declared a distributor?

See everybody on Monday.