It was eight weeks back that we saw the ending of Giant Days, regular comic series, with the graduation of Esther and Daisy (Susan’s medical training continuing), the culmination of a friendship that started three academic years prior (and wedged in between other Tackleford stories for us). We knew there would be one for go-round for the three best friends, and today it’s available in the comics shops.

Giant Days: As Time Goes By is a return to the loopy, laws-of-physics-need-not-apply rules that held in the original miniseries, and even into the start of the regular series¹. We’ve had a lot of the uncontrolled happenstance that comes about from small things — bad housemates, illicit chinchillas, the death of a parent, falling in love, fear of change — and it’s only fair to come full circle and remember when these characters weren’t quite so grounded². We’ve seen hints of it as the regular series wrapped up (particularly as Daisy finished her archeology degree and began to learn the most important thing about being an archeologist — avoiding curses), and now it’s time to have one last explosion of the fantastical as the ladies settle into their lives.

It all comes down, as all inciting incidents do, to Esther. She’s a year out from university, on the cusp of who she will be, and conflicted about how much that person will be her, and how much the diametric opposite. There are, as in the first mini, evil posh girls that must be defeated. True to form, Daisy believes in better natures, Susan in removing organs from those who offend her, McGraw in the avoidance of conflict, and Ed Gemmell in seeking a path with the least potential for bloody vengeance.

I was going to say it ends on a cliffhanger, but that’s not right because this is the Proverbial It; there will be no follow on to see how the decisions made turn out (or even what some of those decisions are). It ends, full stop, and while life goes on for those we’ve followed, we aren’t privy to their lives any longer.

For those that have read it, John Allison hast posted a set of annotations and explanations at the Bobbins site, immediately below Ryan and Shelley in the long-ago times, a decade or more of story time before³ what we see in print today. It’s one big spoiler, so don’t click through until you’re ready.

And when you’ve read the issue, and when you’ve read the commentary track, take a moment to thank Allison, artists Lissa Tremain and Max Sarin, inker Liz Fleming, colorist Whitney Cogar, and letterer Jim Campbell. Allison will have more stories to tell, the others will tell their own and collaborate with writers, but any time that you find two or more of them coming back together on a project, it’ll be special; this was a creative team that hit on all cylinders and made something that got better, month after month, for most of five years. These are comics that will hold up and be just as good any time you go back to revisit them in the decades ahead.

Or, as I plan to, this weekend. It’s only about … I’m going to ballpark it at about 1300 pages, a section of my bookshelf that will never be retired.

Spam of the day:

The 3 Deadly “Small Shop” Mistakes (and how to avoid them!)

Woodworking spam today, in honor of Graham McGraw. He’s had a hard time this year, and correcting bad carpentry practice will surely lift his spirits.

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¹ Lest we forget the introduction of one of the most important supporting characters, McGraw, was accomplished by the exploitation of Esther’s drama field, where things just happen around her to the benefit of maximum chaos.

² Yes, I just described Esther, Daisy, and Susan as grounded, a word properly applied to McGraw, Ed Gemmell, and Nina.

³ Time in and around the Tackleverse never was much more than a series of suggestions, after all. The last Bad Machinery story would have taken place a good five years past As Time Goes By and my goodness, that was finished more than two and a half years ago.

Oh, but it is drear out there today, but I’ve had conversations about literature and art, and there are nifty things a-borning that I’m happy to share with you.

• This page stands second to none in its admiration of Tillie Walden’s work, as well as consideration of the fact that she must at some point take a breath before diving into her next head-down, year-long creative endeavour. You can’t work like you’re 23 forever, after all. And while I will always greet the announcement of a story from Walden, I’m also pleased to see that her next announced release will not be narrative in form, but an act of almost pure illustration:
  

  It may be a year away but multiple award-winning artist Tillie Walden’s next project from mind-body-spirit publisher Liminal 11 is one that will no doubt be eagerly anticipated for the next twelve months by her ever growing fanbase. Walden’s Cosmic Slumber Tarot is described by Liminal 11 as “a unique exploration that will undoubtedly bring tarot to a whole new audience. At once, both gloriously universal and deeply personal.”

  Did I say non-narrative? I meant in the sense of named characters and dialogue and plot; anybody that’s been following Walden’s twitterfeed for Inktober can tell you that her illustrated pages tell stories of their own, your imagination supplying all the necessary details. Walden will be sharing the work as it’s made over the next however long online, so follow her if you aren’t already.

• Hey, you know who is the best friend to individual creators in comics is? Scott McCloud. His superpower is he forgets no one, no matter how long it’s been since he saw you last, or how long it takes you to complete a work because little things like life insist on being attended to. It’s because of McCloud’s twitternouncement this morning that I now know that Dirk Tiede is celebrating two damn decades of Paradigm Shift¹ with a Kickstarting.

  Quick recap: Tiede started Paradigm shift in 1999, hopped to the Modern Tales (RIP) platform in 2002, self-published three books by 2010 and launched part four of story, which wrapped up last year. That fourth part was published as single issue minicomics, five of them, and they will be collected along with the first three parts of the story in a comprehensive, two-volume collection:

  Volume One will collect the original books, Part One: Equilibrium, Part Two: Agitation, and Part Three: Emergence into one beautiful new collection with 340+ pages of artwork, footnotes and bonus material, including 22 new colorized pages.
  Volume Two will collect the latest storyline, Part Four: Flight into a brand new graphic novel edition with 250+ pages, including 10 new colorized pages and footnotes.

  Those two volumes are available for US$25 each, or US$50 for the pair, along with other, fancier support tiers. Campaign runs until the day before [American] Thanksgiving, and is more than half way to its (exceedingly modest) goal of US$5000. This one’s a reward for everybody that’s stuck with a story like an old friend, and for everybody who’d like to see what it’s like to hold onto the act of creation for the long term. Check ‘er out.

• Finally, today is book launch day for Zach Weinersmith and Bryan Caplan’s policy paper with word balloons, Open Borders. Weinersmith first mentioned it as a thing back during the book tour for Soonish, with a formal announcement and release date coming back in the spring.

  This book has taken a lot of Weinersmith’s time for a while now, but the thing about him is, he’s basically unable to spend much time working on only one daily comic strip, raising two small humans, and reading more than anybody you know²; he’s constitutionally got to have a much bigger project to work on at the same time. For a while there, he was doing all his dad-and-SMBC work, and working on Open Borders, and creating a civic-education comic with his political scientist brother.

  Before that, it was Soonish. Mixed in with all that, BAH! Fest, on at least three continents. Before that, Augie And The Green Knight with Boulet. Before that, SMBC Theatre shorts and a feature-length movie. Before that, a handful of other comics.

  My point is, with Weinersmith now merely responsible for the not-dying of two children, supporting his wife’s academic career, and producing comics on the daily, he’s going to get that itch again at some point, which means take the opportunity to grab Open Borders now because it’s just a matter of time before we have to run to catch up to him on the next thing. Or at the very least, check out the video interview with the two of them over at Heidi’s place.

Spam of the day:

A breakthrough study has shown that this “odd” vegetable reverses diabetes at the source. Can you guess which one it is? a) Horned Melon b) Kohlrabi c) Jicama

Well gosh, a) is a fruit, b) isn’t odd, it’s genetically identical to a half-dozen of the most commonly eaten veg that exist (thanks, Brassica oleracea), so I’m guessing jicama? But why hedge your bets? I bet you could do an awesome slaw out of all three and never have to click your malware-infested clickbait site to clarify the fake fact you’re dangling at me.

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¹ Near as I can tell, the first mention of him here at Fleen was in February 2008 on the occasion of picking up the first volume of PS.

² For real, guy reads 25 – 30 books a month, and I’m not exaggerating.

I mean, Jesus H Christ in a chicken basket, bullshit is happening faster than the news can keep up with it. Surely there’s something to look upon, ye mighty, and not despair?

As it turns out, yes.

• Item! You may recall that yesterday I talked about the forthcoming ALA GNCRT recommended graphic novels for adults list, and wondered how much a spot on that list might goose sales figures. I dropped some emails to publishers to see if anybody wanted to venture a guess on the record, and nobody did, but I did get one off-the-record response, speculating that being named to a spot on [a] list like that would probably be good for 5k sales.

  I’m taking that to be immediate sales of the book in question; once library patrons get their hands on it (and a book is assumed to hold up to ~ 60 circulations at a library before needing replacement), I’ll bet that some number of them will be interested in other works by the same creator, causing a knock-on effect. Bottom line: keep an eye on this, and find people willing to nominate your work.

• Item! You may recall that Nancy is the best thing on the newspaper comics page, that Olivia Jaimes has been affirmatively identified as a webcomicker, and that Sluggo Is Lit. It’s also been known that a number of potential cartoonists were auditioned for the Nancy gig, and that one of the was the inestimable Shaenon Garrity, Tiki Queen of the Greater Bay Area And Surrounds, and Nexus Of All Webcomics Realities.

  What wasn’t known before now is what Garrity’s audition material looked like:

  Found some notes from when I was trying out for the job of drawing Nancy, a thing that happened. The border doodles (except for Mustache Nancy) are by [Cartoon Art Museum curator and Garrity’s husband] @andrewfarago.

  Garrity’s ideas are amazing, including a storyline suggestion of Sluggo getting kidnapped by evil doppelgangers of the main cast, involving the Order Of The Three Rocks. Three rocks, you will recall, being one of the hallmarks of Ernie Bushmiller’s run on Nancy, in that it’s the exact minimum number of rocks he could get away with drawing to convey the idea of some rocks. Not a rock, or two rocks, but some nonspecific number of rocks. I love this with all my heart, and hope that someday the syndicate opens up Nancy to a fanfic collection, and Garrity gives this the treatment it deserves (even though it could be argued that Jaimes mined the Three Rocks — so to speak — for comedic effect already).

• Item! Okay, this started in the world-burning-down category, but ended up okay. Amazon Web Services had a bit of a wobbly period for a goodly chunk of hours there, making it impossible for people to reach their AWS resources thanks to a DDOS attack. The problem being, lots of people rely on AWS for hosting, allowing for scalable responses to whatever demand your site may experience. This includes webcomics, and while I didn’t see a lot of impact on my morning trawl, there were missing images at PvP until midmorning my time.

  The resources in question pulled from s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com, which my browser was telling me was unavailable for a considerable amount of time past when Jeff Bezos declared everything was working again. Curiously, other images pulling from the same Amazon bucket were getting through without any problems, which just goes to show that in any mass outage, somebody is going to be the last one reconnected.

  My whole point being, yes there’s value in making an enormous, successful, reputable platform a partner for your critical services. But there’s just as much value in recognizing that putting too much infrastructure in one proverbial basket is a bad idea. I’ve long said that if Bezos ever wanted to go full supervillain, he’d just have to get on the giant viewscreens at the UN and tell the Security Council that he would be activating the self-destruct on all the AWS servers¹ in 48 hours unless they gave him US$1 trillion and the Chaos Emeralds.

  You can’t control that Amazon is the proverbial 363kg gorilla, but you can have a backup plan. Take it from the database administrator — have multiple backup plans, and test them with dry runs before the next wobbly. You’ll thank me later.

Spam of the day:

Eula O’Donovan wrote:

Eula? EULA? As in End User License Agreement? Fuck on outta here with that shit.

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¹ Alternately, releasing everybody’s browsing history.

• Sasha Bassett is a PhD student at Portland State¹ specializing in gender, organizations, and pop culture. Know where you’re seeing a lot of intersection of those three things these days? Comics, which just happens to be a focus of Bassett’s interests. We’re bringing it all up today because of a recent tweet by Bassett on a study of who works in comics, and what their status as workers (for hire) vs creators (with ownership interest in their work) might be, along with a fun fact or two.

  Obviously, there’s a hell of a lot of detail behind those four graphics and the very top-level summary, which Bassett is happy to share with you. If you’re interested in the people reading comics as opposed to those making them, Bassett’s got you covered there, too (although the data are from 2016, as opposed to 2019 for the creator study). All in all, the rates of creators either neither owning what they work on or getting any kind of royalty explains Bassett’s use of the #UnionizeComics hashtag, which has some good info. Check it out, creators.

• Speaking of the need for unionization, which is to say, speaking of Kickstarter (and lots of you are, cf: The Very Sexy Brad Guigar and Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett on same), you’re starting to see projects launch with explicit acknowledgement re: the Kickstarter Union and taking their lead. Case in point, Evil Twin Howard Tayler, who couched the use of KS for his next Schlock Mercenary print project in terms of following the KU’s recommendation that creators not boycott at this time.

  And, since he launched said project earlier today, I’ll note that he has the same sentiment on the project page:

  We are aware of Kickstarter’s position with regard to unionization. We support the unionizers at Kickstarter United, and agree with them: boycotting Kickstarter will hurt all the wrong people. Please follow those links for complete statements, and the latest information.

  Tayler hedges a little, in that he doesn’t explicitly say that if the KU organizers call for a boycott during the campaign, that he’ll take it down (something I’m starting to see). Based on what he’s said publicly, I believe he would, but I also wouldn’t blame anybody that only held off starting new projects once a boycott got called rather than canceling existing ones. Tayler’s been in business long enough that I suspect he suspects what I suspect — that any action called by KU wouldn’t come until closer to a vote, most likely afterwards if Kickstarter slow-walked recognition or challenged results. But we’ll see. Now go and pledge so the guy can stop hitting F5 on his browser every coupla minutes.

• Finally, we have mentioned here at Fleen the fact that the ALA introduced a round table (their name for a working group that studies policy options and makes recommendations) for graphic novels and comics, which is one of the marks of legitimacy in the world of libraries². Via Heidi Mac’s joint, I see that the GNCRT is undertaking its first public-facing project. We’re a bit late on this — the ALA announced it four days ago, and the news made its ways into the comics press since then, and earlier today I noticed The Beat’s discussion:
  

  The group just announced the formation of a committee to oversee a Best Graphic Novels for Adults Reading List, which will launch in 2021.

  The inaugural list will highlight the best graphic novels for adults published in late 2019 and throughout 2020. According to a press release, the goal is to increase awareness of the medium, raise up diverse voices, and aid library staff in developing graphic novel collections.

  On the one hand, I’d note that there’s nobody checking IDs and keeping those over the age of 18 from reading YA or even Middle Grade comics. On the other hand, I get it — sometimes, you just want a protagonist that’s no longer in the throes of (pre-)puberty confusion. The committee will look at all graphic novels published from 1 Sept 2019 through the end of 2020, and release their list at ALA’s midwinter convention in early 2021; the committee will meet throughout the year to consider works as they’re released, and presumably they’ll move to a calendar-year eligibility schedule in future.

  Now here’s the part you should pay attention to:

  Nominations can be made by all members of the public, including committee members and ALA members though an online form that will be available in January 2020 on the GNCRT website.[emphasis mine]

  The wording of the press release made it seem like we, members of the public, could also participate in the committee, but a close reading indicates it will be made up of members of GNCRT, meaning ALA members. Ah, well — I will have to content myself with making nominations through the form once it opens up. Oh, and creators? Check this out:

  Publishers are welcome to submit copies of titles to the committee for review, though they are not eligible to nominate their own titles for consideration.

  I’m sure you can find a loyal reader of your stuff to put your title into nomination, and if you send a couple copies along so that it’s easier for the committee members to actually read your work? Librarians use these lists to develop their collections. There are an estimated 116,687 libraries in the United States, which should be motivation enough for you to keep an eye on this program.

  Oh, and in case you didn’t think to pay attention to the YALSA Great Graphic Novels for Teens (which has been going on for 15 years now), maybe you should get on that. I’m not sure anybody’s got an accurate metric on how many extra copies you should print of a title that makes the ALA lists (Spike, maybe? I’ll ask and get back to you), but I’d submit it’s the sort of problem you want to have.

Spam of the day:

Your account is listed as the recovery email for [redacted]

Nice try, lowlife. You almost made that email look like a legit security notification, but for two things: 1) the email company in question doesn’t ask me to click on links like you did, and b) you apparently think that an email address will use itself as the recovery address if something goes wrong. That doesn’t make sense! That requires more imagination than Perfect Ron Sipes talking about stumps.

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¹ Also an adjunct instructor at Williamette University, and if there’s one cohort whose general overwork and poverty exceeds that of grad students, it’s adjuncts. Respect.

² Given how important librarians have been to the adoption of graphic novels and comics over the past decade or so, I’m a little surprised it took until last year.

Hey, some stuff happened since I saw you last, we should talk about that.

• The Ringo Awards took place at Baltimore Comic Con over the weekend, and there were some winners with relations to webcomics. We don’t talk about the Ringos a lot here at Fleen, they’ve got an odd jury+fan voting component that can lead to some … let us say mass responses to the ballot box.

  Am I going to say that comics on Webtoons or Tapas are unworthy of inclusion when considering for awards nominations? Heck, no. But do I believe that a single creator that posts only on those platforms and has work that is … let us say Tumblresque in nature should be considered as the best of the best in comics? Let us say, one last time, that such folks were perhaps over-represented in the ballot.

  All those sayings being said, the Best Comic Strip Or Panel went, as is right and proper, to onetime webcomicker Olivia Jaimes for Nancy, and Best Webcomic went to The Nib, who apart from the whole losing their financial backing thing are having a very good year. A full list of nominees and winners has yet to be posted at the Ringo site¹, but The Spurge has you covered.

• I may have noted, on some several occasions how the New York Times appeared to be bending over backwards to not acknowledge the crucial place that Raina Telgemeier occupies in modern literature, and the culture at large. Today, they seem to be extending an olive branch, devoting a significant chunk of interactive space in their books reportage to Raina, and Guts, and her creative process.

  How Raina Telgemeier Faces Her Fear by Alexandra Alter, with production by Aliza Aufrichtig and Erica Ackerberg, is part interview, part behind-the-scenes look, and all stuffed with goodness for anybody that wants to see what the steps involved in creating a page of comics looks like. Just be sure to take your time scrolling; on my copy of Firefox, once a page went from thumbnails to pencils to inks to color, it didn’t go back. You can re-experience the transforms by refreshing the page.

• And looking forward, Maris Wicks would like you to know that the New England Free Lecture Series continues this Thursday, 24 October, at 7:00pm, with a discussion of using comics for sci-comm presented by … Maris Wicks! From the NEA website:
  

  Registration is requested for all programs, which start at 7 p.m. in the Aquarium’s Simons IMAX® Theatre unless otherwise noted. Programs last approximately one hour. Most lectures are recorded and available for viewing on the lecture series archive page.

  Also on that page, the fact that there’s a cash bar from the time the doors open at 6:00pm until the start of the talk. You can register here, then make your way to 1 Central Wharf in Boston on Thursday. If you get there early, NEA’s a great aquarium that you should absolutely spend some time perusing. They got squid!

Spam of the day:

Hello! If you’re reading this then you’re living proof that advertising through contact forms works! We can send your ad message to people via their feedback form on their website.

You are sending me your crap through my contact form, and you expect me to immediately turn around and give you money so you can pester other people? No. Die alone and unmourned, you parasite.

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¹ This is a proud tradition; I can’t think of a single comics award program that updates their own damn website in less than a week after handing out the awards. Get with it, peoples!

Okay, it’s not a book, or at least not yet — it’s about 75 pages in a square-bound format, part 1 of 3, that will undoubtedly be collected into a 200+ page proper book in the future. Doesn’t matter, we’re talking about it today.

And for once, I’m not sure that a spoiler warning is necessary, as Superman Smashes The Klan (words by Gene Luen Yang, art by Gurihiru, letters by Janice Chiang) is an adaptation of a radio serial that’s nearly 75 years old at this point. Heck, you can listen to the whole thing right now if you want to, and even the basic outline is well-known Superman lore. I’m pretty sure we’re past the statute of limitations on spoilers.

So: family moves from the Chinatown section of Metropolis to a white section, adults object to Dr Lee’s new position as a bacteriologist in the health department, kid objects to son Tommy’s success as a pitcher on the neighborhood baseball team, Klansmen burn crosses, plan tar-and-featherings, Superman saves the day. It’s what Yang adds to this well-known story that makes it stand out.

Firstly, he introduces a new POV character — Roberta, Tommy’s younger sister, who is upset and fearful about leaving the familiar environs of Chinatown, and who must overcome her fear to help Superman save her brother and everybody else threatened by white supremacist CHUDs. Tommy’s mother/Dr Lee’s wife is also given more to do, still more comfortable in Cantonese and using Chinese names, a more reluctant immigrant that her aggressively assimilated husband. He introduces a story arc that involves Superman’s first exposure to kryptonite¹ and allows him to reflect on his own immigrant experience and doubts about his own place in American society.

But the most important thing? The small, almost fleeting racism that the Lees face in passing. It’s easy to see the evil in the hearts of the robe-sporting klansmen, but what of everyday, ordinary people that wouldn’t consider themselves to be racist?

• Dr Jennings, one of Dr Lee’s colleagues, at a housewarming attributes all of Lee’s success to luck, mocks Mrs Lee’s English ability, and assures that the pie he brought is apple, not dog².
• A cop on duty in front of the Lee’s home, insisting to Roberta: This city is very, very safe, especially for people like you. Metropolis goes out of its way for you, giving you houses and jobs and promotions you don’t even have to earn.
• Dr Lee attempting to chase off three black men that stop to put of the fire, afraid that attracting more attention will make it worse: You! Nobody asked you to come here! We don’t want any more trouble! Get out of here!, prompting one of the men to exclaim: They don’t want us around, not even when their house is on fire!

  One of the three is Metropolis PD inspector Henderson who has to bring it back into perspective: They got a burning cross on their lawn, don’t they? For tonight, at least, they are us. Even if they don’t want to admit it.

• But the one that really sticks? Tommy, recounting to his new friends that he wasn’t scared: Then they lit that fire! But believe me, these wontons don’t fry up that easy!

See, Tommy’s the one that makes friends easily. But Tommy’s even further along than his father in trying to prove to the world that he’s just another American, yessiree, and that takes the form of denying who he is.

We’ve seen Tommy before, only then he was called Jin and there were no klansman, just the everyday, low-level racism that acted like background noise to be overcome. Jin (uhhh, spoilers ahead for a different book) denied himself so hard, he became Danny — blonde, all-American, definitely not Chinese and especially not anything like Cousin Chin-Kee. Tommy’s not there yet, but he could be if he doesn’t learn the dark side of the lesson Jin learned: It’s easy to become anything you wish … so long as you’re willing to forfeit your soul.

When I wrote about American Born Chinese, I described Jin’s story as not quite autobiographical, and not quite fictional; it was a good deal less than fictional than I’d realized. Yang’s afterword, about what Superman means to him, tells the story of seventh-grade Gene, and the white kid that refused to high-five him while casually dropping a slur. Yang attempted to transform himself like Jin did, wearing the clothes and adopting the style that he hoped would protect him from the disdain of the broad-shouldered, the hazel-eyed, the athletic.

I do not believe it is coincidence that Yang chooses, in this story, to refer to his classmate as Danny.

There’s a lot for Superman to do in the two forthcoming volumes; there’s a Klan to smash³, kids indoctrinated into the Klan’s ways to deprogram, and a brother and sister to help navigate their way into their new home. Roberta needs to not be afraid of who she is, Tommy needs to not deny who he is.

I suspect that he’ll do that less by means of an inspiring heart-to-heart, and more by example; he needs to figure out what the green crystal was, figure out why he feels strangely affected and is having visions of alien creatures speaking in a different language. At this point in his heroic journey, nobody knows where he came from, and especially the public doesn’t know he’s an alien.

I guarantee that the klansmen regard Superman as one of them; by revealing his own immigrant story, I think a lot of prejudices and self-misconceptions will have to be confronted. And because Yang is the opposite of a trite storyteller, I suspect it won’t be a magically smooth journey for any of the characters involved. Some of those in the robes will stop chanting One race! One color! One religion! and others will start chanting One species! One planet!

And five bucks says Dr Jennings spends the rest of his life snidely talking behind Dr Lee’s back and muttering that Superman’s not a real hero.

Yang knows — and trusts his readers enough to realize — that those small, everyday, background noises require just as much work to disrupt as knocking klansmen’s heads together (work that is ultimately almost as satisfying as the head-knocking; Superman not only would punch a Nazi, he spends the opening pages doing just that).

Superman Smashes The Klan is available in comic shops and bookstores everywhere. It’s full of old-school radio serial-style goodness, and is gorgeous to look at⁴. If you give it to a kid, make sure they read Yang’s essay at the back.

Spam of the day:

Hi, I’m senior Graphic designing & 3D Artist and a professional online marketing Designer. I’m having more than 5 years of experience in this field and have done several projects. These days I’m looking for a new project to work on so that’s why I’m contacting you. I’m sure you would love my portfolio. Here are few projects listed i have worked on

This appears to actually be from the person list in the return address, and it includes a link (that I went to by roundabout means because no way I’m clicking a link in a cold-call email) to a portfolio that actually has some good work. But this is not the way to drum up work. If you want to sell your skills, you have to know who you’re selling to and what they might want.

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¹ Introduced in the radio serial across two stories in 1945 and early 1946, six months prior to Clan Of The Fiery Cross. And since I didn’t mention it, this is the original Superman — black background on the shield, can leap but can’t fly, changes in phone booths (there are phone booths everywhere in 1946), and runs along power lines to get around town so as not to disrupt traffic.

² Roberta thinks Dr Jennings is a creep and he’s sneering like he’ll be back as a more clear-cut villain. I think that he won’t, though. I think he’s there to show that even the well-it’s-not-like-he’s-a-real-racist types are just as poisonous as the ones that wear stupid robes and burn crosses. I thoroughly hate him.

³ It’s right there in the title!

⁴ I mean, it’s Gurihiru. Obviously, their work is heavily tilted to the slightly cartoony, cute/adorable end of the scale, but it’s more than that. Gurihiru’s work is effortless to read.

Each page layout, each character pose (or sense of motion, really, because nobody’s ever stiff or static), each use of color is designed to focus your eye exactly where it needs to be to convey the thoughts and mood of whoever’s on the page, and to move the story in the direction it needs to go. It’s not just that their art is beautiful, it’s that it’s perfectly suited to storytelling.

And hoo boy do the colors pop. Superman’s baby blues have been waiting all this time for their definitive depiction.

Chiang’s lettering is exactly the same sort of effortless, disappearing until it’s time to make itself known. But with 30+ years of experience, that’s to be expected.

Alert readers may recall that last just ’bout ten months back, we looked at the educational comics of Julia Evans, aka the funnest way to learn programming¹. Longtime Fleen reader Mark V (who was also the one to tip us off to the programming comics in the first place) has pointed out that Evans has shared some numbers on the sales/licensing of her zines, and it’s fascinating reading.

The bottom line is one that should be familiar to webcomics folks — if you have a niche that nobody else is addressing, and you fulfill a need with a quality comic? There’s money to be made there:

This adds up to $87,858 USD for 2019 so far, which (depending on what I release in the rest of this year) is on track to be similar to revenue for 2018 ($101,558).

Until quite recently I’d been writing zines in my spare time, and now I’m taking a year to focus on it.

The most obvious thing in that monthly revenue graph above is that 2 months (September and March) have way more revenue than all the others. This is because I released new zines (Bite Size Networking and HTTP: Learn Your Browser’s Language) in those months.

Key metric? 15% of the revenue was from corporate licenses, which is something I don’t usually see creators focus on. Granted, if you’re doing a gag strip, it doesn’t really lend itself to such a use², but if you’re doing anything vaguely instructive? It’s likely that what you’re charging is a fraction of what one day-long “team-building” exercise with Myers-Briggs toting scam artists would charge.

Something Evans doesn’t say: those big jumps indicate that she’s developed an audience of people that trust her work and jump to buy the new thing because all their previous purchases lived up to (and likely exceeded) expectations. That simple act of doing quality work is the most important thing to keep in mind.

The other thing that jumped out at me was Evans’s choice to do a pay-forward BOGO of certain zines, giving away one copy for every copy sold. If you can’t afford US$12 for the HTTP zine, there’s copies up for grabs because other people bought it. If those skills helped you develop professional skills, I trust you’ll pay it forward. I’ll bet you anything that every giveaway copy more than makes up for its lost revenue in subsequent sales.

So if you want to mine some data (or some inspiration), go check out what Evans is doing³. Find something that you’re good at that a bunch of other people need to know, and maybe you can take a year off to do just that, too.

Spam of the day:

Not too long ago I have come across one post which I assume you might find helpful. Somebody may take a steaming dump all over it, however it clarified some of my questions.

This is a great example of trying to use colloquial English and not quite getting it. Keep trying, overseas scammer!

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¹ Although there is a challenger in the form of Code This Game! by Meg Ray and Keith Zoo, a copy of which was sent to me by the fine folks at Macmillan and which I’ve been working my way through in odd bits of free time here and there. In addition to being highly visual (although not what you’d call comics), it offers a structured walkthrough a defined project — we’re building a game! then we’re gonna break it and make it better! — along with access to downloadable art assets.

If you want to learn Python, it’s a damn good introduction to the practical end of programming, and features a unique built-in easel back, so it stands up while you’re working at the keyboard. Odd Dot design supremo Colleen AF Venable credits the design to one of her team, and I’ve begged her to share it with the cookbook division of Macmillan because it’s a friggin’ game changer.

² Although folks like Zach Weinersmith and Jorge Cham have been known to license comics for textbooks.

³ Particularly on this page, where she tackles SQL query optimization and execution, topics near and dear to my heart.

Alliteration, too. Let’s jump in.

• I first started reading Jennie Breeden’s non-Satanic, non-porn autobio strip, The Devil’s Panties, way the hell in the past. Maybe 2002? 2003? I’d been a reader for years before she tipped me off to A Girl And Her Fed¹, and that was 2006 so somewhere in there. I’ve followed a post-college career, time working in a comic shop², dating, pirates, breakups, marriage, family, a cross-country move, kilt-blowing, and now pregnancy and imminent childbirth (the real life corresponding event being some two years in the past by now).

  Although she exited the Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge after about two years (and let’s not forget that the Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge site itself is no longer operational, but that the last two contestants continue on, 14.5 years on from the start), she’s been putting strips up like clockwork since.

  As of today, for eighteen damn years:

  Guys… guys, my comic is 18 today. It needs to move out or start paying rent.

  The start was understated, and today’s strip takes approximately zero time to acknowledge the strip’s birthday. That’s just the way it is with daily autobio — no time to gloat, tomorrow’s strip is due. Happy Strippiversary, Jennie, Obby, Devil Girl, Angel Girl, Pretty Pretty Princess, and Small Child To Be Named Later.

• Hey, whatcha doing tomorrow? If you’re around Boston, you could be seeing science-comics types in conversation at Porter Square Books in Cambridge:
  

  We interrupt these Inktober posts with an important announcement: I’ll be doing another awesome Science Comics event with @toonyballoony @Zackules and @jasonviola at @PorterSqBooks this Wednesday October 9th 7 PM!!

  That from Maris Wicks, who’s done books on coral reefs and the human body, and paired up with Jim Ottaviani for books on women on the leading edge of primate research, and women on the leading edge of space exploration (the latter coming in February). Oh, and she’s also done nature cartoons from the middle of the sea, the edge of a frozen continent, and the heart of the city.

  Alex Graudins illustrated a book about Reginald Barkley and also the human brain, and an upcoming book on the Great Chicago Fire (due next June). Zack Giallongo and Jason Viola teamed up to teach us about polar bears, and Viola has also chosen a manatee and an amoeba as stars of other comics. They’re all there because of their association with the :01 Books Science Comics line, which remains an excellent way to spend your time and money. The talk starts at 7:00pm, next to the Porter Square stop on the MTA.

• Finally, the latest from Kickstarter United, ways that you can help their efforts to make Kickstarter see the sense of recognizing the union:
  

  Make your opinion heard:

  • email Kickstarter’s senior leadership:
  • kickstarter-sot[at]kickstarterunited.org
  • post your support using #RecognizeKSRU
  • post a picture showing your solidarity and tag @ksr_united
  • download a version of our logo to use as your icon on Kickstarter, Twitter, and anywhere else
  • back projects that show solidarity with Kickstarter United
  • have another idea? get in touch!

  Show solidarity on your project page:

  • add #RecognizeKSRU to your project title or subtitle
  • include a note of solidarity at the top of your campaign text
  • download a solidarity badge to add to your project image
  • post a project update to rally your backers

  For reference? While both logos are nice and eye-catching if somebody is looking at your Kickstarter profile page, the white one is easier to read if it’s showing as an avatar, say on a comments page³. Just sayin’.

Spam of the day:

Senior Discounts|The Complete List Of Senior Citizen Discounts nice senior

I am, despite my desire for you durn kids to stay off my lawn, not yet a senior citizen. And I can assure you that when I become one, I will not be a nice senior.

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¹ When I did the foreword for the first AGAHF collection, I mentioned coming to the comic via Ms Breeden, and Otter gave me crap about pimping another comic in her book. So we’re square now, right?

² Oxford, which is a very good shop that I make sure to visit whenever I’m in Atlanta.

³ Oh, and while it’s nothing to do with webcomics, please look at that project page for ceratopsian action figures and pledge up the total to somewhere around US$450K in the next week, please. It has to hit that funding level to unlock the full-size Triceratops horridus (stretch goal #20). I have the sub-adult trike figure pledged, along with a Zunicertaops christopheri (each of which is approximately the size of my BONE Stupid Rat Creature, if you disregard the tail), but I need that full size critter (approximately the size of Kingdok, again neglecting the tail) if at all possible. Thank you.

Well, goodness, a whole bunch of stuff has occurred since last we spoke. Let’s look at just a few things, ‘kay?

• This past Saturday saw the Harvey Awards handed out at New York Comic Con; you may recall that this year’s nomination slate was really very strong. While the official page hasn’t updated with the winners list yet, you can find the laureates around the web, say at Newsarama.

  The three categories that I was most invested in — the three categories where there really couldn’t be a bad choice to receive the statue — were Book Of The Year (Hey Kiddo by Jarrett J Krosoczka), Digital Book Of The Year (Check, Please by Ngozi Ukazu), and Best Children’s Or Young Adult Book¹ (Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell). The last of them, particularly, is going to run out of room on the cover for stickers proclaiming the Harvey and Ignatz wins, especially if it’s keeping some space for next year’s Eisners.

• Saturday was also 24 Hour Comic Day, and while there are literally too many excellent works to point out, I would be remiss if I didn’t share a modern fairy tale by Melanie Gillman. A young woman feleing unloved in an arranged betrothal finds herself beseeching the Goddess Of Mishaps for help, and it’s damn near perfect.
• Heidi Mac spent the morning at the ICv2 2019 Conference, held adjacent to NYCCC. You can find her livetweets via this search, but the one you want to pay attention to is this:
  

  The slide that shocked ComicsPRO showing size of manga and kids genres.
  #nycc2019 #icv22019 #nycc

  

  In case you don’t feel like zooming in, more than two-thirds of all comics sold fell into one of two categories: Juvenile Fiction (41%, think Raina and similar) and Manga (28%). Superheros were the third-largest market category, but they account for one comic sold out of every ten. This is why C Spike Trotman has been most vocal about the YA offerings from Iron Circus.

• Finally, especially for those that perhaps over-indulged in 24HrCD or maybe are pushing it too hard for Inktober? Stretch.

Spam of the day:

15 Military Discounts Only Available To Those That Served Our Country

While it is true that I have, probably in the depths of the US Army Cadet Command at Fort Knox, a form 139-R from 1985 (enrolling me in ROTC so I could take two mandatory, 1-credit classes, which my college required instead of physical education), complete with an X in the box labeled I decline to state that I am not an conscientious objector and a strikethrough in the loyalty oath section, I cannot say that I served in any meaningful fashion as that concept is generally understood. But given that your email came from Hesse, Germany (from a domain registration that has existed for a whole 12 days), I’m going to doubly say that no, I haven’t served “our” country.

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¹ Okay, one complaint — there’s a world of distance between children’s books and young adult books, leading to YA books that are distinctly at the upper end of the age range like Laura Dean, Hey, Kiddo, and On A Sunbeam contending with books intended for a much younger audience like Mr Wolf’s Class #2: Mystery Club (7-10) and New Kid (8-12). Yes, the over-proliferation of categories is, but maybe split this one into pre-teen and teens-plus?

Recall, if you would, my observation of how the New York Times was dragged kicking and screaming into recognizing Raina Telgemeier‘s Guts in what’s turned out to be the most half-assed way possible. They pushed graphic books off to a monthly bestseller list (among other things, this makes me wonder if they will bother with a ___ weeks on the list notation), and they expanded the list to fifteen titles from ten (to be fair, all their lists appear to do this now), so that nobody can dominate it too much.

Didn’t change a damn thing. In the inaugural Graphic Books And Manga list, Guts is in the top slot, Drama (2012), Smile (2010), and Sisters (2014) in positions 5, 7, and 12, respectively. One may recall from the previous NYT Bestsellers list that included comics that Drama had an accumulated 179 weeks on the list, Smile 240 weeks, and Sisters 117 weeks (also, Ghosts was #1)¹.

And now that I’ve finished my mockery of the Times for all this weaksaucery, I’m happy to tell you that Raina hasn’t lost a step with her latest. I was lucky to read an advance copy at Comics Camp, but it was only yesterday that I got my own² and was able to refresh my memory.

Guts, for a long time, wasn’t the book that we were supposed to be reading. On her Ghosts book tour three years back, when she asked Do you guys want to see some pages from my next book?³, what she shared was an expanded version of her story about Barefoot Gen, the comic that changed her life. It focused on her relationship with her father. It was supposed to be out a year ago. It just wasn’t coming together like it needed to. And during that stalled creative process, she four herself moving across the country, back to her hometown of San Francisco and away from an ending marriage.

I can’t imagine the stress and anxiety it must have caused to have to travel the country and be on for her fans, be all-caps RAINA at each tour stop. Eventually, the solution was a complete shift of the book that would be delivered, a prolonged period of stress and frustration leading to a story about another prolonged period of stress and frustration.

As Guts tells us, stress and anxiety have been there in Raina’s life for a very long time. Some of those stressors we all live through — mean kids in grade school, say — and are grown out of. Some of them take root and cause a self-perpetuating cycle of I’m anxious, I’m going to barf, I don’t want to barf, now thinking about barfing is making me more anxious than I was and … oh no.

The real trauma of growing up Raina? It started before the teeth.

Her prior two memoirs have had a hell of an important message for her readers: You aren’t alone. Everything that’s wearing on you, it happened to me, too. I got to grow up and draw comics for a living! You can grow up and do what you want to do.

But she’s added several things that are more raw, more true than she’d previously shared: When you grow up, even if you get to draw comics for a living, things won’t be perfect. My phobias and fears are still with me, but they’re part of who I am. I learned to accept them, but not by myself. I got to talk about my fears, therapy has helped, and just like I didn’t have to deal with my challenges alone, you don’t have to deal with yours alone, either.

The reason that Raina’s on a first name basis with kids (or nearly so … I usually hear them, very shyly, call her Miss Raina; it’s adorable) is that they know that she respects them enough to tell them the truth. That she will tell them that she remembers the parts of that age that sucked, that she won’t discount their hurts and stressors and anxieties. She also remembers the value of a well-timed fart joke which, come on, that’s kid comedy gold there.

But it’s about 96% the truth telling, the creation of a space in her stories where kids can feel safe to admit their fears and vulnerabilities, to feel seen and validated, to try and fall short, but be able to try again.

Guts carries the dedication For anyone who feels afraid, and that’s essentially all of us. We won’t all get to grow up to draw comics for a living, but we can learn to deal with those fears and feel confident that at least one person is going to encourage us to be our best, bravest selves.

Guts by Raina Telgemeier — with colors by the indispensable Braden Lamb — may be found wherever books are sold. If you aren’t sure where that is, find a kid about 8 – 13 years and ask where they got their copy.

Spam of the day:

What bananas do to your body

I’m going to guess your contention is not provide nutrition, as part of a varied and healthy diet.

_______________
¹ I’ll go a little farther; in that final accounting of Paperback Graphic Books, the 18 weeks for Ghosts all occurred in the 20 weeks since its release in September 2016; 117 weeks for Sisters happened in a span of 127 weeks since release; 179 weeks for Drama out of 230 weeks in print; Smile‘s 240 weeks were out of 365 weeks since release. Or, considering that Smile didn’t make the list until September of 2011, 240 of 279 weeks since it debuted in the #9 spot.

A Raina book will sit on that list, week after week, between 65% and 92% of the weeks since it’s first printed, forever. And keep in mind, there are far more books vying for a spot on the list these days than in 2010. The only conclusion is that Raina Telgemeier is the most significant voice in comics today. No pressure.

² I’d ordered it at that start of summer from my local comics shop, and Diamond finally saw fit to send it along this week. Monopolies, folks!

³ For the record, asking that in an auditorium full of tweens will cause them to loudly and completely lose their shit.