After all, Todaybor Day is Labor Day. But then I saw the news on the Twitters — Zainab Akhtar launched her final ShortBox project of 2019 and it’s a collaboration with Rosemary Valero-O’Connell. Specifically, it’s a 235mm x 168mm (approximately 9.25″ x 6.6″, or a hair under ISO B5 paper size) volume collecting three stories, two of which are brand new, and one of which is the superlative What Is Left.

What Is Left was produced as a mini in 2017-18 (I got my copy at MoCCA 2018) and is very out of print. It’s a tale of memory and loss and identity and premised on a story conceit that is startlingly original. Because it’s Valero-O’Connell, I don’t mind buying it again (in a larger size) to get the two new stories, which are described as:

Don’t Go Without Me (also the collection title): Two lovers sneak out for a night out on the town — a town where spirits and the supernatural exist as a realm within and alongside our world, with humans crossing over frequently. The lovers get separated, and must barter with stories in exchange for clues as to where the other may be. But, unknown to them, each time they gain a morsel of information, they lose something, too….

Con Temor, Con Ternura [With Fear, With Tenderness]: For years, the residents of a small, ocean-side town have been living in the shadow of the sleeping giant who is prophesised to one day wake up and lay their world to waste. As the foreseen date of their impending doom draws near, the town decides to put on a festival on that very same night, to celebrate their lives and face whatever fate awaits them together.

I am all in. The Kickstart campaign has a relatively large goal — £29,000, or about US$35,300 — to fund a significantly large print run, one that will sustain stocks for the next couple of years. Akhtar believes (as do I) that Valero-O’Connell is about to become a top-tier creator, and as more people discover her work they’ll want to have books to sell¹. Thus, there will be 10,000 copies of Don’t Go Without Me printed (I can’t recall another indie title with such a large run), which will start shipping in November. This November. The month after next. This is less a pledge and more a pre-order of a gift to yourself this coming holiday season.

The rewards are simple — get a PDF and/or a print copy, or a retailer’s bundle. Three people can pledge £1000 for a lifetime subscription to ShortBox. Stretch goals make the book prettier, or produce small, additional items (a sticker, a process zine) for those who are getting print copies. That’s it. The campaign runs until 2 October, by which time the print job will likely we well in hand in order to meet the delivery date. The only way this could be better is if it were available now so I could take my copy to SPX and have Valero-O’Connell sign it. Some future show, then.

Don’t sleep on this. There’s a big, ambitious goal that benefits not only those of us pledging now, but literally the next couple thousand people that discover how good comics can be. So much of what’s gone into ShortBox collections (or, for that matter, so much of what indie creators self-publish) is only available for a brief period, so it’s a welcome change to see works that are being made for the long haul.

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¹ After a book or two of her own, these earlier, shorter works will be what people are scrounging for, like me ordering copies of Tilie Walden’s pre-Spinning books earlier this year. Speaking of which, Walden’s Are You Listening? releases a week from tomorrow; I trust that you are now anticipating it as anxiously as I am.

As I assume you know, the latest graphic novel by Faith Erin Hicks released two days ago. Having knocked down three volumes of the Nameless City series in three years, it’s perhaps unsurprising that she left off writing duties this time; her editor at :01 Books (the inestimably excellent Callista Brill) paired her up with acclaimed YA author Rainbow Rowell and the result is Pumpkinheads (which features colors by Sarah Stern.

This is not a review; I’d almost say a review is not necessary, because the best possible review this book could ever have has already been rendered superfluous by a blurb on the back cover. Mariko Tamaki describes Pumpkinheads as the story of the night before the rest of your life and damn if that isn’t perfect. You know exactly the tone this story is going for, and what it’s going to accomplish. You either love this story in all its variations¹ or you already know that it’s not For You; personally, this story is very For Me and I loved it.

I’m here not-reviewing Pumpkinheads because I need to share one part of the story, a recurring gag that Rowell wrote and Hicks illustrated that absolutely killed me. It concerns one of the two main characters, Josiah, and the long-simmering crush he has on the girl who works in the fudge shoppe, whose name he doesn’t even know. Best friend Deja has determined that Josiah will be speaking to Fudge Girl, come hell or high water.

But every time — every time! — Deja mentions her, she drops a different nickname: Superfudge; Vanilla Fudge; Elmer Fudge; Cornelius Fudge. Each time the panel is drawn such that there’s no pause, Deja’s not fishing for a reaction, but there’s this sly I am so fucking with you vibe that she extends towards Josiah. Each nickname it ramps up a little.

I lost it, laughing out loud in public, when Deja called her Vanessa Fudgens.

There’s just no coming back from that, and I may be projecting, but I think from that point in the story Josiah was drawn just a little bit broken. The slight irritation he showed at the nicknames, the resistance he had to Deja’s command of the night before the rest of their lives became increasingly tokenized. Sometimes, you’re presented with an offhand, almost tossed-off gag so perfect, you know it’ll stay with you for life. Josiah turned that corner, the night continued, and there’s a rest of their lives story that we’ll have to imagine.

It’s a small part of the story, and it may hold significance for almost nobody else like it does for me, but I found it a perfect little grace note in a book full of grace notes, a story that could shift from heartfelt (or even heartbreak) to Road Runner cartoon with the flip of the page. Rowell, Hicks, and Stern knocked it out of the park, and Tamaki provided the ideal context so you know where to drop this particular tale in your own mental map of stories. Pick it up if the sort of thing you like, don’t if it’s not. But whether you read it or not, you won’t find anything this week funnier than Vanessa Fudgens.

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¹ And it is nearly infinitely variable, ranging from Before Sunrise to Superbad.

Hey. How you doing? Me? Oh, nothing, just a Wednesday. You know how it is. Webcomics stuff, some of it pretty random.

• Speaking of random, you’d be hard pressed to find something moreso than a rough caricature of Stan Lee Sharpied onto an egg, with voice supplied by Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett, so let me point you to that lil’ gem right away. It appears roughly 10 seconds into this video, which is in support of LArDK’s latest book Kickstart, Anatomy Of Authors. After you finish muttering Oh, that ain’t right to yourself, take a look at the campaign itself.

  One may, if one so desires, recall the heady days of 2017 and LArDK’s previous Anatomy collection — animals, that time — presented as a faux-1920s reference text, with drawings of various critters from around the world, and commentary on their physical condition supplied by a not particularly astute naturalist¹. The book is very pretty, the contents very funny, and since wrapping up the series of illustrations, LArDK’s been giving the same treatment to prominent authors from throughout history. Case in point: Jules Verne from a few days ago.

  Chances are your favorite author is there (unless they’re still alive; I think that all the authors illustrated have been deceased, and thus safely beyond the chance of being offended at the loving jibes), and if the (as yet, unannounced) stretch goals are anything like Animals, you’ll end up seeing extras like ribbon bookmarks, fancy endpapers, UV cover treatments, and protective wrapping as free bonuses.

  As of this writing, the campaign’s a hair over US$13,000 of the US$20,000 goal; I’d include the FFF mk2 treatment, but LArDK’s in the habit of announcing his Kickstarts on the down-low to his Patreon supporters 12+ hours before they go public, so the numbers on the first 24 hours aren’t suited to the math. It’s gonna fund, it’s gonna hit the stretch goals, it’s going to show up in December as promised (barring the trade war with China getting even stupider than it is now). If you like laugh-chuckles of a literary bent, get in while the gettin’s good.

• Y’know who else does good books? Everybody associated with Iron Circus Comics. I got an email from Iron Circus Supreme Dictatrix For Life And Don’t You Forget It C Spike Trotman that had a list of the accolades piled on various Iron Circus titles, and they included little things like Stonewall Book Honor, starred reviews in Kirkus, Booklist, School Library Journal, and/or Publishers Weekly, Lambda Literary Award nomination and/or winner, Prism Award nomination and/or winner, YALSA Great Graphic Novel For Teens, and so forth. Good stuff. But the gist of the email wasn’t to brag about the books², but to describe a solution to a problem that people have been having.

  I’ve mostly bought my IC books either direct from the creator/the Iron Circus table at a show, because hey — direct support and usually a sketch, too. But when shows are far distant and I’ve tried to give the business to my local comic shop, I wait forever and ultimately get told it’s out of stock and unavailable. This is because comic shops deal with the Diamond monopoly, and Diamond are terrible in every respect. The book isn’t out of stock, Diamond just can’t be arsed to handle less than a few zillion copies of any given book when they’re dealing with book trade’s own monopoly, Ingram. The solution is to go around them. From Spike for your friendly local comic shop:

  To get access to our award-winning, critically acclaimed titles, we encourage you to register an account with Consortium—the division of Ingram in charge of our account—and order directly. You can also order through iPage, if you already have an Ingram account.

  To get started with Ingram, and the ability to order the complete line of award-winning, critically-acclaimed (and fully-returnable!) Iron Circus titles, head over here and register! It’s easy, we promise. And it’ll get you access to even more comics by other publishers, like Uncivilized Books, Alternative Comics, and more!

  That’s how I know that Spike’s more interested in stickin’ it to Diamond than selling books³ — she’s pointing out that the same channel can be used for other publishers, with whom she is nominally in competition. But Alternative or Uncivilized will never take money out of Spike’s pockets (or each other’s, for that matter) to the degree that never making who knows how many sales because Diamond is determined to suck will cost them. Pass it along, and maybe someday Diamond will actually shape up and ha ha ha ha, I almost finished that sentence. Not a chance Diamond ever gets their shit together.

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_______________
¹ But, presumably, said naturalist was at least a gentleman of the requisite background and breeding, and therefore must needs be paid attention, despite any dearth of actual factuals.

² Welllll, mostly. Spike’s always bragging about her backlist, and with justification.

³ Welllll, mostly. Spike’s always selling books. Gotta respect the hustle.

This is something I pretty much thought I’d never had to write for a book review; I’m a little shocked, to be honest. I’ve reviewed a lot of books for Fleen Book Corner — more than 150, if I had to make a guess — and for those that are not just strip collections, anything with a plot, I’ve pretty much always done something, something I will not be doing today.

There is no spoiler warning for this review.

There’s no spoiler warning because there’s pretty much no way to spoil this book. The American Dream? A Journey On Route 66 Discovering Dinosaur Statues, Muffler Men, And The Perfect Breakfast Burrito lays it all out there in the title: Shing Yin Khor — sculptor, installation artist, power tool wrangler, creator of awesome Halloween house decorations, comics artist, and space gnome — took a roadtrip on the famed highway, from LA to Chicago, wandering through California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, and Illinois with faithful Adventure dog Bug riding shotgun. There were dinosaur statues, muffler men, breakfast burritos, and reflections on the meaning of being American¹ (and who gets to be American).

Along the way, Khor reveals as much about their thoughts and self-conception as anything they learned about the country — which is a familiar notion if you’ve read any of their short comics. To read Khor’s work is to understand what it’s like to live life in that particular skin, which is as often as not an unconfortable or painful² experience. You want to know what another person’s lived experiences are like? They’re not all happy, and that’s the price of empathy.

The lack of surprise along the way is not a flaw; it’s a strength. Khor’s laid out a thesis — America is a complicated place full of contradictions, assumptions about each other, beauty, wasted potential, needless cruelty, inclusion and exclusion, dinosaur statues of questionable paleontological accuracy and also both you and your dog will have to poop sometime — and the book is the evidence in support of that thesis.

There’s a singular voice behind all the delicate watercolors, and you’ll end up reading the narration in Khor’s cadences without necessarily knowing that’s what you’re doing. In person, Khor’s vocal delivery has distinctive pauses and inflections, and the words chosen for the text reinforce those characteristics. It’s like Shakespeare and iambic pentameter, only not quite. But trust me, listen to Khor speak for ten minutes, and you’ll realize that’s the rhythm you read the journey in all along.

TAD?AJOR66DDSMMATPBB is available everywhere, including all the places that didn’t have any back on release day. It’s appropriate for any reader that’s willing to listen to how somebody else experiences America without reflexively shouting Nuh-uh! If you go to SPX, you can give her money in exchange for goods, including this book I’ll wager.

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¹ It’s important to note that the drive — three weeks out, two back — took place in 2016, before the election. Whether or not a green-haired (or sometimes blue) gnome-sized brown woman could make the same journey today with the same degree of comfort is a matter for contemplation.

² Heading off complaints — yes, that piece in The Nib was published anonymously. Three years later, Khor claimed it.

The Ignatz Awards are maybe the most democratic of all the major comics awards — if you attend SPX, you get a ballot. At least, if you attend on Saturday, because they tally the votes through the day and the bricks are given out Saturday night, but you get the idea. They also, traditionally, have a very good jury, who provide a very good slate of nominees. This year’s nominees have just been announced, and it’s a cornucopia of quality.

As readers of this page know, I am a major fan and promoter of the work of Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, and her work on Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me could have come from a 20 year veteran of comics, rather than somebody working on their first book who’s still in the first half of their 20s. It’s no surprise that Valero-O’Connell was nominated for Outstanding Artist, Oustanding Graphic Novel, and Oustanding Story, the later two categories being co-nominations with writer Mariko Tamaki. I’m thrilled everytime I am reminded that so many people loved this book as much as I did.

The other multiple nominee that caught my eye, and of which I am a tremendous fan, is The Nib; Matt Bors’s marvelously eclectic endeavour has a history with SPX, debuting their hardcover collection there a few years back. The Nib was nominated as Oustanding Series (for the print magazine), and two issues (Family, and Death) were separately nominated for Oustanding Anthology. Well done Bors, and the entire group of editors and contributors.

But those are not the only deserving nominees; let’s take a look at who we at Fleen will be rooting for.

• Outstanding Artist: In addition to Valero-O’Connell, you’ve got Lucy Knisely for Kid Gloves, which I also loved. I’m not familiar with Koren Shadmi on Highwayman, Sloane Leong’s Prism Stalker, or Ezra Clayton Daniels on Upgrade Soul.
• Outstanding Collection: Love Letters To Jane’s World by Paige Braddock, Girl Town by Carolyn Nowak, Dirty Plotte by Julie Doucet, Leaving Richard’s Valley by Michael DeForge, and This Woman’s Work by Julie Delporte. I have no clear preference, but all these creators are skilled and worthy of the win.
• Outstanding Anthology: In addition to the two issues of The Nib, you have Electrum (edited by Der-shing Helmer), Wayward Sisters (edited by Alison O’Toole), and We’re Still Here: An All-Trans Comics Anthology (edited by Tara Avery and Jeanne Thornton). My preference is for The Nib, only because they do so many different kinds of comics in each issue. I suspect they’ll split the vote, though.
• Outstanding Graphic Novel: In addition to Laura Dean, you’ve got Upgrade Soul by Ezra Clayton Daniels, Woman World by Aminder Dhaliwal, Highwayman by Koren Shadmi, and Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe. I believe I made my preference clear, but Kobabe’s been doing some damn good comics, including Gender Queer.
• Outstanding Minicomic: Trans Girls Hit The Town by Emma Jayne, Gonzalo by Jed McGowan, Silver Wire by Kriota Willberg, Cherry by Inés Estrada, and YLLW YLLW YLLW by Mar Julia. Not familiar with any of the books or creators. If I get the chance to vote, I might throw it to a dude because so maybe at least one dude wins. ‘Cause damn, women having been outshining the dudes at the Ignatzen for a couple years now.
• Outstanding Comic: Lorna by Benji Nate, Infinite Wheat Paste #7 by Pidge, The Saga Of Metalbeard by Joshua Paddon and Matthew Hoddy, Egg Cream by Liz Suburbia, and Check, Please!: #Hockey by Ngozi Ukazu. I do love me some comics about gay collegiate hockey bros, but I’m surprised to see the nomination in print but not for …
• Outstanding Online Comic: Isle Of Elsi by Alec Longstreth, That’s Not My Name! by Hannako Lambert, What Doctors Know About CPR by Nathan Gray, About Face by Nate Powell, and Full Court Crush by Hannah Blumenreich.

  I find it interesting that despite the rules specifying an online comic can be an individual comic, continuing storyline comic or strips, and the only real restriction being that it appears on the web before print, that there’s a real tendency towards shorter works. Three of the nominees (Name, CPR, and Face) are arguably essays in comic form (any one of them could have appeared at The Nib), and Full Court is a 16 page short story. Only Longstreth’s Elsi is a traditional (whatever that means) plot-based, ongoing webcomic.

  The extremely wide-open criteria means that this category, more than any other, varies widely from year to year, based on the jury’s personal views of what a good online comic looks like. I am precisely 50% in favor of having a narrower definition so there can be some consistency, and 50% in favor of the variety that is rewarded by the present system.

  Because of my avocational interests, I am pulling for What Doctors Know About CPR (which really, really could have appeared in The Nib’s Death issue).

• Promising New Talent: Haleigh Buck, Ebony Flowers, Emma Jayne, Mar Julia, and Kelsey Wroten. I’ll have to dig into their work, but I’m really liking the looks of what Jayne and Julia are doing.
• Outstanding Story: In addition to Laura Dean, you’ve got Sacred Heart Vol 2 Part 1: Livin’ In The Future by Liz Suburbia, Sincerely, Harriet by Sarah Winifred Searle, Woman World by Aminder Dhaliwal, and The Dead Eye And The Deep Blue Sea by Vannak Anan Prum. Although I’m a tremendous fan of Searle’s work, Laura Dean remains my favorite book of the year until The Midwinter Witch arrives to make its case.

  Speaking of which, I’m very surprised to not see Molly Ostertag and/or The Hidden Witch in any category, nor Tillie Walden and/or On A Sunbeam anywhere in the nominations. Ah well, if I want the nominations to be perfect, all I have to do is become a comics writer and/or artist, and have a distinguished enough career that people in the industry think enough of me that I’m asked to be part of the jury. Simple.

The Ignatz bricks will be distributed starting at 9:30pm on Saturday, 14 September, at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland.

And hey, if the competition for the Ignatzen is a little to wholesome, there will be some virtual blood in a head-to-head original character deathmatch tournament sponsored by Abbadon over at Kill Six Billion Demons’s Discord. Registration’s open until they get 64 entrants.

Spam of the day:

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I am less concerned by the German language pitch for what appears to be general shipping supplies than I am for the inclusion on the list of Solvent. All kinds. I get the feeling that you are selling to the serial killer market.

It has been a day, people. On the plus side, my copy of The American Dream? by Shing Yin Khor finally arrived, so I got that to look forward to. Let’s just point you at some stuff and call it so I can get to reading. Review soon.

• New Bobbins! Considering these strips take place … I’ma say 18, 19 years ago, maybe longer, they capture the current zeitgeist with amazing accuracy.
• He Is A Good Boy may have finished, but you can get all the Crange you need in your life in the new single-volume collection on Kickstarter. I love that cover design; while I have been chafing for Back to return from its summer hiatus, if this is what KC Green has been spending his time on, it will have been worth it.

  Anyhoo, huge book (444 pages! 8 x 11 trim size! full color!), maybe a t-shirt, stretch goals, etc. Get on that.

• And about two minutes ago (as I write this), You Died finished its two week crowdfunding at US$46,505; when the FFF mk2 would have projected US$31K – US$41K or thereabouts. That’s a handy exceed of the expected range, and in half the time of the usual campaign. I’ll have to take that into account should there ever be a mk3.

Spam of the day:

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I dunno man, why don’t you ask Screamy Orange Grandpa? Apparently he thinks he’s King of the Jews and the Second Coming of God (which, one must take pains to point out, isn’t recognized by Jews) while simultaneously being a huge antisemitic piece of shit. Sounds like he’s credulous enough to work with you and deeply loathe you at the same time.

It’s getting to that point in time that you look to the fall comics shows and festivals: SPX in just about a month, then NYCC (not that they do much with comics these days) about three weeks later, and then Thought Bubble about a month after that. The first two have awards associated with them (the Ignatzen at SPX, and the reconstituted Harveys — which look particularly good as noted — at NYCC), but Thought Bubble has something the others don’t — an anthology that’s always worth talking about.

I mean, hell, in 2016 they did a tenth anniversary volume that may be the only printed work in history whose two lead author credits are Kate Beaton and Warren Ellis¹. Sure, there were a few dozen other names on the collection, but the contrast of those two is just unreal.

TB 2019 will feature Becky Cloonan, Luke Pearson (of Hilda fame), Gerry Duggan, Abigail Jill Harding, Lee Garbett, Benji Goldsmith² Kim-joy (okay, I’ve only seen like one season of The Great British Bake Off, but I understand she was a runner-up in a post-Mel & Sue season), Pernille Ørum, Jock, Daniel Warren Johnson, Helen Mingjue Chen on the cover. The thing about the TB Anthology is it’s always good, so even creators whose work you aren’t familiar with, you’ll probably enjoy. I’m not familiar with Chen, but that cover is gorgeous, and Ørum’s work appears to be both beautifully composed and super cute.

The Thought Bubble Festival will take place in Yorkshire, the week of 4 November, with the comic show on the 9th and 10th. The Anthology will release on 9 October, and can be ordered from your friendly local comic shop ahead of time.

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¹ Now I want a proper collaboration between Beaton and Internet Jesus. Something even more of a pure comic book than Nextwave. I desperately want to see Beaton’s rendering of a character getting kicked and then exploding.

² I’m not sure, but it might be this composer/performer?

Happy Monday, err’body. Let’s see what’s new for us today.

• I do love me a good Kickstart, yessiree. Today, it’s Christopher Baldwin, who’s held off Kickstartering the story arcs of the revived Spacetrawler — one may recall that the original story ran into three books, 100-ish pages each — because he decided to do one big ol’ comprehensive volume, at a full 8.5 x 11 trim size, and full color. Oh, and all books are signed, so that’s cool.

  Actually, it’s more than that. Those three slim volumes from the first Spacetrawler run? Smaller in all three dimensions than the new one, so Baldwin’s also doing the omnibus single volume reprint at the full 8.5 x 11. And a previously web-only bonus story from Spacetrawler: TOS will be included in the big book, or you can get it as a standalone mini (about 30 pages) if you’re only getting the book for Spacetrawler: TNG. It’s all here, Spacetrawler BIG Book 2, where (as of this writing) just under US$5500 of the extremely modest US$6000 goal has been raised.

  What I like best about this is the high-end rewards for inclusion of somebody that looks like you on the back of the book, or somebody named like you included in/your childhood home destroyed in the next series. Because that means more Spacetrawler, y’all. I guess the third series¹ will be Spacetrawler: DS9? They’re all good, and I can’t wait to see how Mr Zorilla fits into the next; he’s such a selfish dick, I can’t wait to find out what being in space has done to him.

• If, at this point, you don’t know about the recent on-goings at The Nib, well that I suspect you aren’t paying attention. We at Fleen have made a thing of it, as has pretty much everybody you know and follow that’s a cartoonist. Heck the New York Times even mentioned their defunding woes, although apparently didn’t bother to mention that Matt Bors has taken the site independent. It’s amazing what’s happened at the Times since they got rid of their public editor. But I digress.

  Although the outpouring of support for The Nib since First Look ditched ’em has been significant, to get back to the level of publishing they were at is going to take capital, so Bors is having a fundraiser. You can still subscribe, but if you wanted to purchase merch, or just make one-off donations, you can do that, too. It’s all here, and I urge you to support the best in nonfiction/political/longform reportage cartooning that exists. They’re like the Pro Publica² of funny pictures.

• It’s been mentioned more than once on this page that I generally don’t promote many new comics. I like to see that there’s something good and consistent before I tell you that you should take time to check something out. There are exceptions for creators with track records, and sometimes I will make early recommendations based on the taste and judgment of people I know and trust. And when a quick read of 10 or 20 strips³ confirms that taste and judgment? Then, my friends, it’s time to share some comics.

  Park Planet is done in black and white and grey washes, almost reminiscent of Roz Chast’s work. It’s a workplace comedy, set in a sci-fi natural park for the preservation of Earth’s nearly extinct flora and fauna; there’s a bunch of extraterrestrials and androids that don’t really understand Earth and it’s critters too well, along with a long human employee named Lorraine who’s trying to find her footing in her very new, very weird job.

  Sammy Newman is absolutely killing it so far, and I heartily recommend you check out Lorraine, and Paisley, and Wurlitzer and all the rest of the staff at Hartwood Park as they awkwardly bumble through their approximations of the human experience together.

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_______________
¹ Which I suspect will not be until after Baldwin’s collaboration with Shaenon Garrity, Willowweep Manor, sees print next year. Garrity and Baldwin have been going over their roughs, and you can see some here and I can’t wait until fall 2020, this book will be so rad.

² Who you should also support, if it’s in your means to do so.

³ Which, it turns out, has been updating on Wednesdays since April. To be fair, it only got its own, non-Tumblr website a few days ago, and I don’t do Tumblr.

We at Fleen have more than once remarked that Island Book by Evan Dahm has a numeral 1 on the spine, tantalizing us with the prospects of further adventures with Sola. At MoCCA this year Dahm was careful with his choice of words, never confirming to me that there would be more to the story, but never outright denying it either. He may as well have adopted Beatrice’s protest: but believe me not; and yet I lie not; I confess nothing, nor I deny nothing.

But wonder no more, for Dahm has made it clear today: there will be a sequel to Island Book, and a third volume as well:

This interview is also maybe the first overt Announcement that there will be TWO SEQUELS TO ISLAND BOOK

The interview mentioned is at The Comics Journal, with the always-erudite Sloan Leong. There’s very few people that think about the act and meaning of creation, and the context of story within the entire artistic tradition as Dahm, and he’s given a lot of room to talk about his intentions in the interview. There’s a lot of creators that make deeply philosophical comics, and of course there’s a McCloudian philosophy of comics, but I think that Dahm is the the closest thing we have to an actual philosopher working out a system of the world via comics.

More about the Island Book sequels is at Dahm’s Tumblr:

Two sequels to Island Book are in production with First Second Books. These sequels build a cohesive trilogy out of Island Book, and expand the fable storytelling of the first book into an enormous, harrowing adventure story with a focus on authoritarianism, looming apocalypse, and queer identity.

Of all of those themes, I would have only said apocalypse was a likely story arc based on reading only the first volume; I would have described the cultures of the islands we’ve seen so far in terms of small-minded prejudice (in once case, something akin to toxic masculinity), but a critique of authoritarianism? Queer identity? I can’t wait to see how those fit into what we’ve seen so far, if only because the big-publisher process of editing² is going to make Dahm refine his message to the point where it’s super effective. The kids that read Island Book don’t know how many big ideas he’s going to hit them with in 2021 and 2022.

Me? I just want to know who that guy on the left is. We saw one of Sola’s fellow islanders was be-stached in passing, but didn’t get any of his deal in volume one. Is this the same character? He looks important, or maybe thinks the sword and epaulets make him important. I want to know his deal, just because he looks so different from what we’ve seen so far. But that’s kind of Dahm’s whole approach — That character right there, we’ve never seen their like, what’s their deal? — and it always pays off.

Spam of the day:

Our International company consists of about 65 Internet projects related to crypto currencies and ICO. Now we recruit staff from around the world. Best regards, Evan Ferguson, HR Dept.

The thought of a crypto farm having an HR department absolutely tickles me.

_______________
¹ I see what I did there.

² Longtime readers may recall that Mark Siegel at :01 Books (who I believe has been working with Dahm) has described his editing process before. It’s pretty much the opposite of how Dahm freeforms his self-published work. I’m not going to say it’s something he’s in need of, but I will say that it likely makes his work far more likely to succeed in a kids demographic than he could have accomplished on his own.

As Jon and Amy Rosenberg’s Kickstarter From A Multiverse successfully concludes at the high end of the expected range (the FFF mk2 had the midpoint of the range right about at the goal), and C Spike Trotman launches her … I want to say 22nd? … campaign for her latest anthology.

You Died is an anthology of what happens to us after death, and for my money the big news is not the participation of Raina Telegemeier (contributing to a story called A Funeral In Foam) or Caitlin Doughty (and could there be a better choice for the foreword than America’s favorite mortician and scholar of death?), but the price point.

In typical Spike fashion, it’s a simple campaign: the two tiers allow you to get a PDF only, or a PDF and print copy (an early bird tier offered free domestic shipping and cheap international shipping, but is otherwise just the print tier); the one stretch goal (a cover enhancement) kicks in at US$5K over goal (which is the same level that the Iron Circus creator page bonus starts at). Two weeks for the campaign and if I know Spike, the art’s in and the production’s ready to begin the day the payment clears. All of this is bog-standard operating procedure.

But that one tier (okay, and the early bird) that gets you a physical book? It’s ten bucks less than Spike’s ever done before:

A thing I’m compelled to point out: As YOU DIED ((link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ironspike/you-died-an-anthology-of-the-afterlife?ref=djikjm) kickstarter.com/projects/irons…) demonstrates, black-&-white Iron Circus anthologies will now be $20 a pop. This is a 33% price reduction.

The reasons for this: Printing larger runs, distro sales on the back-end, and the Hesitation Point.

No, I don’t mean the vista in the Brown County State Park in Indiana (although it IS lovely). I mean the price point at which potential buyers unfamiliar with ICC’s output will no longer outright reject a book before consideration.

$30 was fine when we were a small press that primarily self-distributed, or sold online and at cons. But now, The books have EXTENSIVE lives after the Kickstarter and con season.

Like… I essentially sold 4 figures (unit count, not dollar amount) in one day, last week.

When you’re moving volume, you print in bigger runs. And when you print bigger runs, the per-unit cost craters. Which is why a mid-range publisher can print, say, 10k units and charge $10 each, but a boutique pub maybe puts out runs of 1500-2000, and the same book would be $20.

All the feedback I get from the distro I work with (and sometimes from the folks I have at the ICC booth at shows) is $30 was too much for a book someone was wishy-washy on getting. I wanna convert the wishy-washy folks into customers. That’s what price cuts do.

And goofy as it sounds, the psychological angle is advantageous, as well. Take the price down ten bucks, and suddenly it’s only one bill out of someone’s wallet instead of two.

Weird? Yeah. But Totally A Thing Regardless? Absolutely.

All those scales and side-effects from distribution will make one other thing noticeably different about You Died vs all previous Iron Circus anthologies: delivery isn’t scheduled until September 2020. When you work at distribution scale, you have to give plenty of notice about your offerings. If Spike turned this book around in six to nine months like previous offerings, a fair number of clients might not be able to take it because they’ve already planned their budgets and spending around books that were announced a year ago.

And if they could place an order that quickly but something (cough, cough, trade war, cough) were to delay the books a week or two past the promised date? Promotions budgets, space on bookshelves, even warehouse stock space would be disrupted. And those buyers that got burned would think twice about ever taking another Iron Circus title.

Spike’s in a whole different world now, and I’m pleasantly surprised to see how well she’s done so far. The number of people that can take a company from one-person garage startup to part of a global supply chain with dozens of inputs and thousands of outputs and not screw the pooch is vanishingly small. Those are completely different skillsets, and the managerial mindset necessary for the post-transition business (especially the importance of delegation) is about 173° out of phase with the fast hustle that’s needed pre-transition.

It’s part of why so many start-ups (not to mention mega-huge Kickstarts that keep growing in complexity) crash and burn — the kind of person that can run the one-person endeavour is usually not only really bad at management, they usually are even worse at recognizing the things that they can’t do (or at least, need to do differently). So sincere kudos to Spike for beating the odds in yet another way; it’ll give her detractors one more thing to cry into their Cheerios over.

Spam of the day:

GET YOUR DONALD J TRUMP COMMEMORATIVE COIN TODAY! Best wishes, Your patriotic friends at Ape Survival

So that’s an Australian prepper supply site getting badly misreading my interests in commemorating anything about Donald Trump other than the monumental crap I’m going to take on his grave someday.