Hey, gang. How’s everybody holding up? Good? Good. It’s like I told my EMS crews last night: this isn’t what we signed up for, but we stay safe and do the job right, and after we’re done we can go back to life being somewhat more boring again. To the end of keeping my head in the game where it’s needed, I am vastly cutting back on my social media reading; if there’s something you think I should know, email or DM me.

Now let’s check in on other people who are dealing with the pandemic in constructive ways:

• Joining just about every other institution, the Cartoon Art Museum announced over the weekend that they were closing their galleries and cancelling programs until the 29th; any return dates that are announced for the next while should probably be seen as on the cautiously optimistic side of the scale. Similarly, all of the public-facing events around the Month O’ Scott C at Gallery 1988 are off. This is a good and responsible pair of decisions, and we at Fleen thank the management of both venues.
• Not just here, either. From Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebaupin:
  

  I come as the bearer of good news, of an evangelion if you will. Fëanor, our envoy of the Religion of the Invisible, has vanquished Death and come back to us.

  Readers will no doubt remember Fëanor, Who was cursed early in life by a tragic slipper. But blessed as well, since that gave Him the gift of seeing the invisible, and soon afterward He adopted Maliki as His caretaker. And lo, the years passed, and Maliki started a webcomic, where He made many appearances, inspired many artefacts, current and past, becoming a general symbol) of Maliki. And lo, the years passed, with Maliki spreading the image of our beloved prophet. But resentment was rising with rumors being spread against Fëanor.

  This week, Fëanor showed all detractors wrong by revealing through His caretaker that He had vanquished Death and come back to us, ascending to godhood in the process. And yet He is content to keep a presence for His Earthly caretakers, rather than fully ascend after 40 days. All praise the eternal Fëanor.

  Fanart is accepted as proof of adoration, and to be directed to His Earthly caretakers through the keyword #PetitDieuFeanor.

  In other news, the French government as announced banning all events involving more than 100 participants, which implies pretty much all cultural events, so Fëanor kindly requests that no public celebration be made of His new status.

  Guess no more Smurf festivals for a while, then.

• For those stuck at home with time on their hands, the invaluable Jim Zub (who, to my recollection, was one of the first to cancel his appearance at EmCity, a good week before the ball really started rolling; you don’t get much appreciation for being the first at a good decision of this nature so allow us to say Good choice, Zub) has decided to make the time away from everything a little more enjoyable:
  

  Click the attachment links over on my public Patreon post for two full volume PDFs of two of my creator-owned comics, free of charge and with no strings attached:

  https://www.patreon.com/posts/34846589

  Enjoy, share, and be good to each other.

  One may recall that Zub, via his extensive series of guides to making a living self-publishing, makes a good chunk of his living not from individual floppy sales, but via trades, particularly in digital. This is going to cost him some money. If you find you like the stories, maybe purchase the subsequent volumes or some of his other work? He’s doing the world a solid, you can do him one back.

• For those stuck at home with offspring on their hands, Joe Wos (once the head of Pittsburgh’s ToonSeum, which sadly is no more) is offering a free online cartooning course for kids:
  

  Beginning on Weds March 18th Joe will be offering free live cartooning classes online for all ages.
  The live classes will take place on YouTube channel HowToToon at 1pm, 3 days a week (Tuesdays-Thursdays). Students can access the channel by visiting www.Howtotoon.com

  Joe has been teaching cartooning for over three decades! He currently teaches a daily cartooning class at Central Catholic High School in Pittsburgh, PA and is has also been the visiting resident cartoonist of the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa California for the past 18 years. Joe has been a staple of comic cons, school assemblies and library programs for the past thirty years touring worldwide.

  Same deal as with Zub: solid, buy stuff, etc.

• Finally, let us not forget that — global pandemic or no — plans get made and must be followed up on lest opportunities be lost forever. C Spike Trotman had plans to announce a major Kickstarter today, the largest and most ambitious in Iron Circus history, and about two and a half hours ago she delivered:
  

  Lackadaisy Cats has been running online since 2006, immersing its readership in a world of sepia-toned crime, adventure, action, and comedy. And now, it’s ready for its next big move … to a screen near you.

  It’s an art book, to fund the 10-minute short (digital download of which is available at tiers US$80+). As of this writing, funding is north of US$60K of the US$80K goal, with stretch goals going all the way up to a mind-bending US$225K (post-credits scene featuring fan-favorite character Mordecai Heller). It’s a new realm for ICC, a big ask, and a lot of logistics, but Lackadaisy Cats has a deep and ferociously invested fanbase, so I think those wacky kids might just pull this one off. Not sure if you’d be into it? You got time in isolation, start reading.

Spam of the day:

United Steel Industries is a new Rolling Mill in Fujairah. USI is incorporated in 140,000 square meters of land.

Sorry, I require all my steel to be cast, not rolled.

It’s just coming too fast at us. Here’s what we’ve got:

• TCAF and VanCAF are, for now, not cancelled or postponed; they’re a bit further out than other events and we may have a better idea in a few weeks what the finally-got-their-ass-in-gear actions being taken now have accomplished. From the combined statement:
  

  The health and the well-being of everyone involved is our paramount concern. We are closely monitoring updates from Centres of Disease Control, Emergency Management Agencies, the Public Health Agency of Canada, local health agencies, and other official sources for the latest risk assessment. At the time of writing (March 11, 2020), public health officials in Canada have assessed that the risk of COVID-19 transmission remains low, and they have specifically not requested that events be cancelled. We encourage individuals to seek direct updates from public health officials going forward. Regular updates from the Public Health Agency of Canada are being posted on their official website.

  We encourage creators to make the best choices for themselves, and weigh the pros and cons of any actions. If exhibitors at either show wish to cancel their participation, they may do so and receive a refund of table fees. We only ask that exhibitors please contact the appropriate email address (info@vancaf.com or registration@torontocomics.com) as soon as possible to allow us to open up space on our waitlist. If you are exhibiting but unsure of your travel arrangements, please plan accordingly and book flexible travel options that will allow you to cancel or postpone with minimal financial penalty.

  Closing mass gatherings that are happening now and for the next few weeks is the best we can do, and to quote an epidemiologist I saw online today, now is the absolute most uncertain time about what’s going to happen next; a month ago or a month from now, the effects of current actions would have been/will be much more predictable. One day at a time, folks.

• You know what you don’t need to venture out into the world to get? Webcomics. Gene Luen Yang has had to 86 his book tour for Dragon Hoops (proper review coming soon), so he’s doing one virtually on The Grams. Here’s the talk about the coach that inspired him to make the book, here’s a book trailer, here’s Yang learning the history of basketball, and the latest is about athletes, superheros, and writing for DC. The two most recent have reader questions, and Yang wants you not only to submit your own questions, but also tell him what cosplay to draw you in. He’s a rad guy.
• More webcomics! John Allison may be on pause from the Tackleverse at the moment (at least until the Charlotte Grote miniseries hits comic shops next week), but he’s doing an epilogue to his last comic series — the very, very good Steeple — online for the next bit. If you didn’t read Steeple, a) what’s wrong with you, and 2) it’s the story of Billie, a young priest who finds herself in a remote seaside town where the local Satanists are only the fourth or fifth biggest challenge to her faith. It’s really good. You can get the extra comics that will run in the back of the collected trade (out in May) starting here, and a successor series, The Silvery Moon, will run here through summer. MWF updates, first four up now.
• For those new to the working away from all humans deal, Beth Barnett is doing a diary comic on social distancing, which is the term you want to search for on her Twitterfeed. If you enjoy it (you will), drop her some thanks, compare notes on lifting, or (if you’re brave and have time) inquire as to her feelings on the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Oh, and visit her store! Good stuff there.

Spam of the day:

Your Card has been temporarily suspended.

Call me suspicious, but I kiiiinda doubt that American Express would be emailing me from @wecome.xjez.com. Also, if you’re going to copy the text from an actual AmEx email that says Your account information is included above to help you recognize this as a customer care e-mail from American Express, you maybe might want to include something that looks like account information? Even just a name and a fake first-and-last digits card number? Oh, and you might want to get rid of the boilerplate text that says We kindly ask you not to reply to this e-mail but instead contact us via Customer Care. You really suck at this.

We’re going to be seeing a lot more of these:

It is with the safety and well-being of our community that we have made the difficult decision to reschedule the MoCCA Arts Festival. We are currently working with Metropolitan West to find a suitable replacement date.

Now here’s the important part, because it looks like we aren’t going to get coherent guidance from the White House:

While New York is not officially calling for events of large gatherings to be canceled, many have been and we do not know what the next few weeks will entail. We recognize the amount of work and finances our exhibitors put into their tables and are trying to minimize the burden on them.

The curve-flattening is going to be on thousands of individual entities making decisions like this one. It’s going to get more widespread, and quickly, before it starts to ease.

In the meantime, we have made the decision to move forward and continue to judge the Awards of Excellence. In addition to the cash prize and Wacom tablets for Gold and Silver medalists, the Society will feature the award winners in an exhibition at the onsite Gallery we build at MoCCA Fest.

And there’s going to be a lot more of this at-a-distance events. Good luck to everybody under consideration for the Awards of Excellence, hope that the cash and tablets help you continue to create and sustain your career as we all figure out what the next howevermany months are going to look like. For example, a zine that was to debut at ECCC this weekend is now becoming available online, with print to be available in the near future. Gentlesentients, I give you Deep Space Zine.

In the meantime, pretend you’re T-Rex and only have stubby, vestigal pokin’ sticks:

Spam of the day:

We can put your website on 1st page of Google to drive relevant traffic to your site.

Searching “fleen” puts us at the second entry on page one (behind a bullshit entry at Urban Dictionary) and searching for “webcomics blog” has three separate results that point to us. So there.

So on the one hand, the majority of my work is done from home these days, so I’m practically in self-quarantine away from the big, bad COVID; on the other hand, I teach a lot of classes where the exercises are group projects and the chances that the student will succeed in exercises drops when they aren’t there in the room together. Seeing as how a) the success rate can be mitigated if they’ll just communicate with each other¹, 2) I get paid whether they play nice with each or not, and π) I get to pet my dog during the day, I’m okay with it. Everybody who has to leave the house/put on pants more than three times a week, stay safe.

• Speaking of petting my dog, one of the best things that happened at SPX last year was running into the altogether excellent Jeffrey Rowland and having some time to talk to him. Although he’s been preoccupied with running TopatoCo to the exclusion of almost everything else², he expressed a desire to get back to regular cartooning.

  Which he’s done, and which has hit the point of regularity that I feel pointing it out to you will not bring unfortune upon his head, like unto the gods striking down a mortal for the sin of hubris. There was a strip back in September, and then a half-dozen since mid-February, so I’m a say he’s in the groove.

  Mulder Lessons (also found mixed into Rowland’s twitterfeed or on the Grams), is a two-character, four-panel affair. Rowland’s dogs, Mulder and Howard, discuss life with an existential fatalism not seen since Charlie Brown and Linus got into it. Suitably, the strip is drawn entirely from the POV of these two small dogs; people are shown from the knees down and are as mysterious as Charlie Brown’s teacher with the wah-wah trumpet voice. Check back regularly for wisdom on squirrels, planes, the nanny state, and How Things Work. Much like the real Mulder, who I got to pet at SPX, Mulder Lessons is delightful.

• Speaking of delightful, Chris Hallbeck decided to channel his inner Ryan North with a Choose Your Own Comic today over at Minimumble. It’s got cowboys, and a showdown, and love with presumably smooching. Hooray!
• Finally, a word about Snapdragon, the new graphic novel from Kat Leyh. It’s a charming story about growing up and finding yourself (the titular Snap discovers she’s at least a bit of a witch; her neighbor Louis begins transitioning to Lulu), growing as a person (Snap’s mom is working — probably as a bartender, and in college, and something else we’ll get to a minute), and finding out who has your back (Lu’s older brothers are rowdy and obnoxious, but never question or belittle the transition). Oh, and most of the characters are people of color, which is badly needed representation. But mostly I want to talk about small details.

  See, there’s a witch in the woods; she collects roadkill and sends the spirits of the forgotten animals on their way, and then articulates the skeletons because people on the internet will pay big money for those. Nobody’s fool, old Jacks the witch, as she lovingly reconstructs those skeletons, which are nicely accurate. Leyh could have easily fudged details, but she’s got more respect for her readers than that (also, at least one of them will be into vertebrate anatomy, guarantee it).

  The degree to which Leyh pays attention to the details hit me when it’s first hinted that Snap’s mom, Violet³, is going to fight fires. There’s an offhand reference to dropping by the station for training that’s not explained, but in that scene (and a couple others), Vi’s wearing a job shirt.

  A job shirt is a quarter-zip pullover with reinforced collar and elbows, handwarmer pockets, and others for radios, pens, and assorted gear; they’re common duty wear in the fire service and EMS. They’re comfy as hell, durable, and instantly identify emergency services to each other even if you can’t see a Maltese Cross or Star of Life embroidered on the left breast, or patches on the shoulders.

  Over the next 100 pages, it gets revealed that yes, Vi is one of those crazy people that will run into buildings on fire, but Leyh trusts her readers to put together the context as it’s presented. It’s emblematic of the degree to which Leyh constructed her story to show everything that needed to be shown, but not hit her readers over the head with it.

  I caught it immediately, somebody with a parent or older family member or friend that does the lights-and-sirens gig gets a little high-five for figuring out the context before the f-word gets used, and everybody has it revealed by the end. There’s other places where the little details reveal what’s going on, but spoilers. Read it for yourself and see how many you can find.

Spam of the day:

The law could change anytime, get your concealed carry certification

Have I ever mentioned how very glad I am to live in New Jersey, a state that makes it difficult to carry a weapon under nearly any circumstances, and not because you have Dirty Harry revenge fantasies about killing brown people? I am very glad that you have to keep your murdertoys out of my state, you constantly-referenced upstanding law-abiding gun owner, you.

_______________
¹ They absolutely refuse to do this.

² Good for all the creators that get paid as a result, but stressful for Rowland.

³ The family has one tradition — girls are named after their mom’s favorite flower.

We’ve got two kinds of embarrassment to talk about today. Buckle up.

• Here’s a rule that I live by: when Sophie Goldstein emails to ask if you’d like a PDF review copy of her latest full length graphic novel, you say yes. When she clarifies that it’s her first collaboration with Jenn Jordan since Darwin Carmichael Is Going To Hell, you say yes, please.

  Not long after, a 200+ page high-res PDF hit my inbox, titled An Embarrassment Of Witches (from Top Shelf next Tuesday), and I’ve been stealing bits and pieces of time since, seeing how much I can get read in and around work.

  Much like DCIGTH laid out it world-with-magic-critters milieu in the opening pages, we get some framework for the rules of AEOW pretty quickly. Rory is an at airport, being dumped by her jerk boyfriend (fiance? husband) immediately prior to boarding. He doesn’t know why she’s so upset, since she gets earaches when she flies he couldn’t very well dump her in the air, which means he’s really being the mature, courteous one here, why can’t she see that?

  Flashback twelve hours, Rory and Dickly O’Smug (okay, his name’s actually Holden) are revealed to be heading to Australia for several months, doing important work on dragon conservation. Her familiar is being a pain about not wanting to go. Magic exists, witches do important work (in between the rest of their grad studies), and bad boyfriends are a multiversal constant.

  This is not a review; reviews take time and multiple readings. This is me sharing my excitement with you about something new that I think it pretty awesome as I dive in. There’s a million little details, and like DCIGTH, it’s all in service of some real adult-human drama that’s belied by the loose, cartoony style that Jordan uses. I’m ready to dive into this world of mundane witchery and beasties and see what I can learn about myself on the journey.

  And I’d be lying if I didn’t expect at least one line to match my absolute favorite jawdropper of a dirty joke, which was in DCIGTH and for which Jordan (unnecessarily, I thought) apologized in the endnotes; I have every faith that the trash-talking unicorn declaring that another unicorn’s pure maiden companion was the wet slut double penetration queen of virgins will be surpassed in gross-out giggles somewhere in AEOW, and I can’t wait to discover the degree to which it does.

• Now, for the sake of balance, some grossness of the non-amusing variety. Blue Delliquanti’s twitterfeed is where I first caught word of Patreon’s latest foray into either fundamentally not understanding their users and why they’re on the platform, or fundamentally not caring:
  

  I’m getting tired of Patreon finding creative new ways to make its service worse and think it’s doing users a favor.
  Here’s an email I got telling me what a great idea it will be for me to unpublish my $1+ tier, cutting off new $1+ patrons and disincentivizing current ones.

  It’s accompanied by a screenshot of the email, and I’d encourage you to go look at it.

  I’ve been pretty consistent in my opinion of Patreon every since they started their back-and-forth dance with ToS changes, depublishing naughty content, shifting payment rules to favor large creators, opinions that were absolutely cemented last year when they started engaging in the naked pursuit of pumped-up quarterly numbers.

  Patreon has now officially ceased to even pretend it cares about its user base; it’s trying to pump revenue because the VC money backing them is doing what VC money always does: demanding a fuck-all huge payout in return for their earlier funding, without giving a single shit if that leaves the company with a viable service. None of this is to make you, the creator more money. None of it.

  Unfortunately, my thoughts about Patreon being Uberlike are looking more and more true — they can’t make money in a sustainable way, so they’ll squeeze the people that create value (that’s everybody with a Patreon) to make the money guys happy. And since the attempt at making a Patreon killer didn’t pan out because The Andys were unwilling to create an unsustainable platform that would screw over their users, there’s not much that can be done except to find other revenue streams and not put your eggs in the Patreon basket.

  Because they not only don’t care about you, they never did, and it’s embarrassing how much they’re trying to pretend otherwise.

Spam of the day:

Karl Budd wrote:
Hi, Could you direct me to the person that handles your online marketing?

Hi Karl, that would be nobody. Does that work for you? Works great for me.

That’s my dog, Thyla¹ Squirrelbane², who is normally very mellow after her breakfast, but who this morning was yipping and stomping her feet at me, demanding attention now now now now before sulking off to the couch. I couldn’t figure out why she was so cranky about needing pets and scruffles and skritches when normally breakfast is followed by a hearty 3-4 hour nap, a brief stretch, and then another 3-4 hours snoozin’.

This makes it easy to work from home (lot of remote class teaches), but today she was low key demanding and vocal all through lecture, and bouncy up in my face Hi hi hi look at me look at me LOOK AT ME every break I got — which is when I normally write these posts, which is why we’re late today.

Thing is, according to her registry papers — there’s an extensive paper trail on retired racing greyhounds, from a 55-point physical description to verification of her ear tats — today, 24 February, is her birthday. I’d forgotten until halfway through the day, but somehow she knows and needs to have it explained why she is not being spoiled rotten³ on her Very Special Day. None of this has anything to do with webcomics, but we can always use a dog story to keep the day lighthearted, right?

• Speaking of something that will lighten your heart, Magnolia Porter Siddell is having a good day, one of a string of good days for the past 10-11 months since she and Tom Siddell got hitched⁴. Specifically, she announced today that she and Maddi Gonzalez will be publishing an original graphic novel, Tiffany’s Griffon, with :01 Books. The deets:
  

  The book, set for 2022, is, the publisher said, “about a girl whose favorite fantasy book series comes to life, leading her to lie about her identity in order to steal the destiny of the Chosen One from a popular girl in her grade.”

  So teenage girl social hierarchy story à la Mean Girls, mixed with a Chosen One fantasy? That sounds brilliant, and I am entirely here for it. Congrats to Gonzalez and Porter Siddell, who will have the good fortune to be working with :01’s Kiara Valdez (who’s been doing good work in her time with the imprint, despite being tragically young.

• And since we’re here, Zach Weinersmith announced the next BAH!Fest dates in comic form today. Houston will be 7:00pm at Rice University (where Kelly Weinersmith — who will be hosting — does her teaching) on 8 March, and London will be at 7:00pm at Imperial College (where my wife did a semester abroad way back when) on 21 March. Those links will take you to ticket-purchasing options (the London show is being held adjacent to the Ig Nobel Prize recap tour), with a sliding scale for student/nonstudents/etc.

Not kidding — Thyla just harrumphed her way into the room and is giving me the stinkeye. I have to pay attention to her before she expires from lovelornness like a Dickensian character with consumption.

Spam of the day:

UecJtsjWFzRB wrote: zCAwIfEnrRqJNd

I affirm most solemnly, that is the actual text of a spam I got and not my dog pounding her nose on the keyboard to encourage pets. At least, it was this time.

_______________
¹ Name courtesy of Yuko Ota, who was the first to comment (when we posted pictures of her from the greyhound adoption event where we got her) that she looks like a thylacine. She’s got these stripes down her tail that really do look that way.

² One so far, snagged in midair as it leapt from branch to branch. Coupla close calls with bunnies, too.

³ Or, to be fair, rottener.

⁴ I’ve never met anybody so overjoyed at the thought and reality of being married as Mags, except maybe Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett, who happens to be celebrating his 19th wedding anniversary today with his adorable wife, Gloria Calderon Kellett. Dave and Glo are awesome, and we at Fleen wish them all the happiness on their Very Special Day.

I’ll be honest, I’m of at least two minds about this:

“Our next movie musical project is with Marc Platt and it is a musical version of a graphic novel called The Prince And The Dressmaker.”

The team is working with Pulitzer Prize finalist Amy Herzog (4000 Miles) to adapt the graphic novel by Jen Wang.

That from Kristen and Bobby Lopez, who you may know from a catchy tunes that they’ve penned. My thought processes run roughly in the following directions:

• Curiously, I haven’t seen anywhere if this will be animated or live action. Not important, just something I noticed. Moving on.
• When paired with the right material, Jen Wang is one of the finest graphic novelists working today. Koko Be Good remains one of my all-time favorites, and last year’s Stargazing deserved all of the near-universal acclaim it’s received.

  But, like any graphic novelist, masterful visual representation can only do so much when paired to a meh story (like her adaptation of Cory Doctorow’s In Real Life), and cannot make up for a story with severe structural problems.

• I am on the record (and pretty much alone) in saying that The Prince And The Dressmaker is in the latter category¹. As a fairytale, it’s at the extreme Walt end of the spectrum that runs from Cautionary Tale to Disney Fluff, treating those who most need to comfort of the story to an implausibly optimistic promise of how awesome life is.
• Then again, the Lopezes have worked on projects that have a bit more growl and earned heart to them; the protagonist of Coco has to struggle harder against a worse outcome than Prince Sebastian ever did², and the big I Want song in Frozen — the biggest every kid knows it song of the decade — went to the antagonist. These are not folks that keep too-neat resolutions in their creative toolbox.

  And that’s before you consider that Bobby Lopez was also a co-creator of Avenue Q and The Book Of Mormon, two musicals that and know how to balance optimism with the crappy end of life. If the Lopezes come up with even one moment with half the emotional wallop as There’s A Fine, Fine Line, the adaptation could resolve one of my biggest problems with the graphic novel³.

So as I said up top, cautiously optimistic; if anybody can produce an adaptation that makes me re-evaluate my stance, it’s the Lopezes.

Spam of the day:

Our licensed health insurance agents have helped tens of thousands of Americans work through Medicare over the years, and now that expertise is available to you in one convenient publication.

Godsdammit, I am not old enough for Medicare. Buy better lists of marks for your bullshit, spammers!

_______________
¹ Although, too be fair, the absolute critical flaw has been corrected, so you don’t have to wrestle with crimes against humanity being adjacent to a story about gender expression and acceptance. Respect to Wang, editor Calista Brill, and everybody at :01 Books for recognizing and owning the mistake and fixing it in subsequent printings.

² In comparing the travails that I’m-not-a-princess Moana or Miguel compared to those of Sebastian, I am reminded of the old Simpsons gag, Marge, I’m asking for white-hot rage and you’re giving me a hissy fit.

³ The other I’m less hopeful about — I didn’t have room to address this in the original review and only hinted at it in the alt-text of the header image, but the book was mis-titled. Given the relative number of pages each gets the respective character journeys, it should have been called The Dressmaker And The Prince. Alas, the Playbill story describes the book as:

Set in Paris, the story follows Prince Sebastian, whose parents are scouring the country for a bride for their son. But Sebastian leads a secret life. By night, he dons spectacular dresses and goes out as Lady Crystallia, a Parisian fashion icon. His best friend, dressmaker Frances, is the only one who knows the truth, and she doesn’t want the credit for her creations to be secret anymore.

Frances should be the center of the story, but the title reduces her to afterthought, and I fear the focus will go entirely to Sebastian. Frances struggles, achieves, loses, and re-estabishes herself based on her skill and determination. Sebastian is indulged, privileged, briefly inconvenienced, and returned to his rightful place of high-born status. His is a character journey on a glass-smooth autobahn with a traffic bump at the end.

I’ll leave it to the boss herself:

It turns out that sometimes if you and @ppcrotty, @WhitLeopard, @RoxieReads, and @jhautsethi work very hard, people bring you cake. Who knew?!

That from Gina Gagliano, head of Random House Graphic, at the party thrown to celebrate the first releases from the imprint, and a debut year that will see twelve graphic novels for kids released¹. She and her stalwart staff² — senior editor Whitney Leopard, designer Patrick Crotty, and publicist/marketer Nicole Valdez — talked about the books out now (and coming soon) that they really want you to know about. And since I accepted a piece of their cake, I feel like I should hold up my end of the bargain.

• Gagliano’s choice for favorite upcoming book is Witchlight by Jessi Zbarsky, which she described as a girl with swords meets a girl that does magic, they have adventures and fall in love and in the middle there’s food which is just … I’m in. Look for it on 14 April.
• Leopard wants you to read The Runaway Princess (out for the past three week) by Johan Troïowski, because it’s got an interactive element in each chapter, as the reader is asked to do or achieve something, and also Stepping Stones (due 5 May), the first kids book by Lucy Knisley, who is the best.
• Crotty, coming from a background of indie comics, particularly wants you to read Bug Boys (released three days ago) by Laura Knetzger, noting how many of the great comics we’re getting these days wouldn’t exist without the indie creators doing 8 to 12 page minis, never anticipating they’ll be collected in a print volume. The Bug Boys are for kids but have a Charlie Brownesque philosophical side, and Knetzger keeps cranking out the minis, so it won’t be long before the second collection arrives.
• Valdez allowed that there was some disagreement over who would get to talk about Bug Boys, but was enthused to talk instead about Aster And The Accidental Magic (coming in two and a half weeks) by Thom Pico and Karensac. This girl is me is the message she wanted to convey, an idea that underlies RHG’s mission — to put a graphic novel in the hands of every kid in America³.

They’re on their way. Gagliano talked about how she started in the industry fifteen years ago, how comics were regarded with suspicion but now schools and libraries are their biggest champions. There’s a lot of hands out there that still haven’t gotten comics, and lot of minds that still have to develop that higher level of reading, and she and her team are going to do their level best to fix that.

And yes, publishing is a very Manhattan-centric business, but the crowd was overflowing the aisles at Books Of Wonder, and not just because of the cake. There were younger folk there, mid-20s a lot of them, ready to answer that call and pitch their ideas and end up on some of those shelves. Here’s to finding out what makes it there in the coming years.

Spam of the day:

Your regular glasses can get lost, break or your prescription can change over time, resulting in expensive trips to the optometrist!

I’ve been wearing glasses since I was 19, and in the 30+ years since, I have lost exactly one pair (sunglasses, on my way home from Tom Spurgeon’s memorial), broken none, and yes, my prescription has changed because my eyeballs have changed. This is the definition of a straw man you’re propping up here.

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¹ Out of a total twenty four for Random House Children’s Books. No pressure, just got to make up half the output for one of the most storied publishing imprints in history in your first year, that’s all.

² Random House associate publisher Judith Haut, while not part of Gagliano’s staff, is the one that decided that there needed to be a RHG and found the right person for the job.

³ Quoting Gagliano, and echoing their tagline, A graphic novel on every bookshelf. Whoever that kid is, wherever that shelf is, Leopard told us back in July, they will have at least one title that makes that kid say This is the book I was waiting for.

Hey, y’all. Got some time-sensitive info for you, and some advance-planning info for you. Let’s do this.

• Time Sensitive! Iron Circus Comics has a sale going on. In honor of Horny Werewolf Day tomorrow, there’s discounts to be had on all of their funtime sexytime offerings.

  Until the famous gettin’ it on holiday is done, you get 30% on books, softcover and hard¹ PDFs, special editions, and even the already-discounted scratch-and-dent copies of The Art of Kaneoya Sachiko, The Complete Curvy, Crossplay, Iris and Angel, TJ and Amal (including the prequel and side story), Letters for Lucardo, all the various Smut Peddlers, and Yes, Roya. Get ’em while the gettin’s good.

• Advance Planning! Ngozi Ukazu just a few updates away from the big finish of Check, Please!, and getting ready to release the second half of the story in print form through :01 Books. Check Please: Sticks And Scones drops on 7 April, and to mark the occasion, Ukazu’s going on book tour.

  Her travel kicks off on the 4th, with launch day in her hometown of Austin, before heading on to DC, Brooklyn, Long Island, suburban Boston, and Chicago over the next ten days. Now’s the time to prepare yourself to attend an event if you can, but also to say goodbye to the best bros² you could ever wish for.

Spam of the day:

Best Weight Loss Program:Lose Weight for Good with Noom

Even if Noom wasn’t the stupidest brand name of the century, I’d still tell you to get the fuck out of here with your diet program bullshit.

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¹ Hurr, hurr.

² I have so much headcanon about what Ransom and Holster will get up to. They are basically going to have to live next door to each other for the rest of their lives or they’ll be too sad. Also, Shitty will be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court some day.

We at Fleen have been very excited for goin’ on two years now about the launch of Random House Graphic, and about Gina Gagliano being named to head up the imprint. We’ve followed the announcements, watched the first book hit release, looked out the next couple of years at what’s coming down the line.

Now it’s time to celebrate, y’all:

Come meet the Random House Graphic publishing team: GINA GAGLIANO, WHITNEY LEOPARD, PATRICK CROTTY, and NICOLE VALDEZ, as they discuss the launch of this new imprint, featuring The Runaway Princess by JOHAN TRIANOWSKI and Bug Boys by LAURA KNETZGER. [emphasis original]

That from the events page of Books Of Wonder, the venerable New York children’s bookstore. They’ll be hosting the imprint launch party on Thursday, 13 February, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm at their 18th Street location, in the vicinity of Union Square Park. Both Bug Boys and The Runaway Princess will be available for purchase, and each copy sold will be matched with a donated copy to a children’s charity. Light snacks provided, but I’d grab an insurance slice beforehand if I were you.

There’s a lot of talk these days about how publishing remains overwhelmingly white, but if you kept an eye on the acquisition announcements, RHG is buying books from a lot of POC, and mostly from women. True, graphic novels take a long time and we won’t see a lot of them until next year or later, but it’s clear that Gagliano, Leopard, et al, have decided that they’re going to be part of a solution to books only reflecting a small percentage of the population, and I intend to thank them in person for it. If I see you there, say hi.

Spam of the day:

Are You __ gary tyrrell !!

I am, but possibly not the one you’re thinking of.