Hey, remember this? Yeah, it was a bit more than I’d anticipated. The fix wound up over-aggressively discarding emails and some stuff that should have come to me was swept up with the flood of spam and destroyed. Good news is the spam flood is now under control, and testing shows that the email address works again.

The bad news is I’m not sure how much I missed in there. I figured out today from clues elsewhere that Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh have launched a new Kickstart for a new “Leeds-sized” (that would be 9″ x 11.5″, which is a good deal larger than the trim size of almost anything else you’re getting) edition of the most recently completed Barbarous chapter.

Readers of this page will recall that Barbarous is great, that Chapter 5 is where the story really kicked in with a bunch of threads¹ coming together to create a very compelling whole. And now that Barbarous is back with the start of Season 2/Chapter 6, this is the perfect time to get the last one into print.

As of this writing, Ananth & Yuko are sitting a few bucks under US$25K (of a US$18K goal), about a day into the four week campaign; they’re actually higher on backers and total amount today over yesterday. The FFF mk2 says they’re on track for US$64K to US$96K which is entirely typical for their projects.

Even better, with Chapter 5 marking the end of the first story arc of Barbarous, Yuko & Ananth are offering the previous four print collections and a slipcover to put ’em in which would be really, really pretty on your shelf. They’re also offering a limited number of original pages (half of them are gone, get on that if you want ’em) at the ridiculously low price of US$250 for Chapter 5 + extras, or US$310 for the entire Season 1 (uh, those are gone). These are valuing a Yuko Ota original page at less than US$200, which is frankly ludicrous. Got them money? Jump on that.

One quick note — the delivery time on this campaign is approximately a year from now, what with printing schedules being thrown into chaos by the once and future pandemic, and with Ananth & Yuko having their business affairs run by George, I would imagine this date was chosen to be very, very conservative; recall that George has a track record of delivering backer rewards sometimes months early.

Even so, that’s far enough in the future that it’s impossible to predict what shipping costs will be like, so the campaign is not charging shipping at this time. You’ll pay that when it’s time to ship, so keep in mind that sometime in 2022 you’ll have to cough up for that.

Okay, that’s it. Webcomics pretty much don’t get better than whatever Yuko & Ananth are teamed up on. Get in on this now, or wait until conventions come back and maybe get a copy then. You’re better off getting now.

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¹ If you’re a Barbarous reader, I’m so sorry. If not, trust me, that was hilarious/groanworthy.

This book review is a bit different than most that we at Fleen run, and so I’m going to do something I pretty much never do — I’m going to tell you that we are pretty much entirely spoiler free. There’s less spoilage here than you’d get reading the blurbs in the book flaps.

Now that’s out of the way, I want to start out here by saying that if you haven’t listened to the Maximum Fun podcast Bubble, you should do that. It’s funny, it’s smart, it’s got a lot to say about unfettered capitalism and the gig economy, the voice acting is great (particularly Tavi Gevinson’s narration), and MaxFun are the audio equivalent of webcomics — they even do their merch via TopatoCo.

That said, if you listen to Bubble and then give a read to the graphic novel Bubble (story by Jordan Morris — creator of the podcast — and Sarah Morgan, with Tony Cliff on art and adaptation, and Natalie Riess providing colors), you’re not going to think it’s the same story. There’s so much missing! Characters, subplots, even the famed Laser Dong¹. It’s so very different.

And that’s okay.

Because this isn’t Bubble the podcast, it’s Bubble the graphic novel, and some things won’t fit with the page count that has to be worked with, and some things won’t work in another medium. There’s a reason why Cliff isn’t credited just for art, but for adapting one kind of story into another kind.

We don’t have tolerance for adaptation, collectively, a lot of the time. There’s a reason why I maintain that the only good Harry Potter movie is #3, because they gave it to a director with a personal vision and style and let him do a movie that was not just a straight recitation of the book. Those first two movies? You could practically hear the studio execs screaming at Chris Columbus to make the movies exactly like the books, don’t screw this up, there are billions at stake here, give the kids what they want. And he did, and they were okay, but only okay. Literalism in adaptation is creative death.

Bubble (comic form) works as a graphic novel because it was designed to be one, not a transliteration of a podcast. It’s different, and either version of the story may be your favorite, and either version may seem to be lacking in comparison. That’s okay, too, because the version you prefer is still there, waiting for you to go back to it at your leisure².

And that’s what’s key here — Morris and Morgan have brought a story that if you aren’t familiar with the podcast version, stands on its own with no problems. Cliff has constructed terrific character designs, and his environments³ and action scenes are easily the equal of anything from his Delilah Dirk series. Riess brings an aggressive normality to the color palette of Fairhaven, then kicks it into otherworldly colors during fights and time in the monster-infested Brush.

Anybody looking for an older-teens-and-up romp should pick up Bubble, but as one annoyed looking father in the story says when told that his gig workers had a pretty fun conversation about cum, Well, that’s inappropriate. We have kids. That’s actually pretty typical of the tone, so you can calibrate the ages of who you want to give the book to from that exchange.

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¹ It’s exactly what it sounds like, and it was a key enough part of the story that MaxFun made a pin.

² Alan Moore, once asked if he was upset about a movie version ruining of one of his stories pointed to the bookshelf and remarked that the story was still there.

³ Including dead-on logos for soulless corporate offerings and some really clever visual gags.

Mike Holmes has been doing a lot of work in comics, from illustrating graphic adaptations of Tui Sutherland’s Wings Of Fire series to collaborating with Gene Luen Yang on the six-part Secret Coders graphic novel/programming primers. But he hasn’t yet done a full story of his own, until now.

Holmes has produced one of the most affecting portal fantasy stories I’ve ever read in My Own World; as is common the story type, the hero (a not terribly bad off but disaffected youth) finds a way into a fabulous world away from his problems. You’ve seen it a million times before, the Narnia series being the ur-example.

But protagonist Nathan isn’t in a world of fantasy beasts and people and great quests. In his realm there’s him and … not much else, really. Time doesn’t pass, others aren’t there, there’s a primordial goo he can shape into constructs or even facsimile life, but it’s basically all him. He’s not escaping to adventure, he’s escaping from the tedium and drudgery of not fitting in and (although he maybe doesn’t realize it) an incipient tragedy about to befall him. He has absolute mastery of everything that exists in his pocket universe — think hard-light Minecraft responding to his hands and thoughts — but there isn’t anybody there except him.

Before the actual magic, Holmes does maybe an even better job of portraying a different kind of magic — the everyday magic of a time a few decades ago when kids could roam as long as they were back when Mom said, there a trail through the woods might lead to a secret spot with gathered detritus to make it cool; Illicit fireworks or nudie mags a bonus. But secret hangouts in the woods only work if you’re there with friends and Nathan’s kind of short on those.

The tough kids and sorta-friends of his older brother, and the older brothers of his sorta-friends don’t really have time for him. His parents don’t really understand that setting him up on playdates doesn’t really work any more. And so he’s back to his own world, where everything stops except his hunger, leaving to make snack runs and return and heedless of the fact that he’s not where he’s supposed to be and returning anyway. There’s a sense of addiction to a place where reality is subject to whim that I don’t recall seeing before. Nathan’s not processing it in those terms from his POV, but it’s there.

And because Holmes is very, very good at storytelling, he’s not afraid to make Nathan a bit unpleasant, as surely almost all pre-teens are¹. He’s self-focused, worships his older brother (while ignoring Very Large Truths about him), and heedless of the feelings of others. Almost pure impulse and resentment at not getting to do what he wants to, Nathan rings true for anybody that remembers what they were like at nine or ten years old with an honest eye.

The escape has its cost once Nathan ends up back in the real world — the timeless time has to be paid for, and unpleasant truths he didn’t know (or tried to didn’t know) are still there. He can’t put them off, he can’t stop the wheeling of the world, he’s going to have to confront it and grow up.

My Own World is a deeply melancholy story, one best suited for readers that can look back on being Nathan’s age rather than actually being Nathan’s age. All of the awkwardness and discontent you remember feeling when much younger are brought to the fore and laid out for you to remember your own escapes into your own worlds, and how the things you sought to escape were still waiting for you when you returned.

My Own World is published by :01 Books, with words and pictures by Mike Holmes and color assists by Jason Fischer. It’s available wherever books and comics are found.

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¹ Teens bring their own unpleasantness to the table, but they aren’t the focus here.

Readers may recall that about a month ago we checked in on Doug Wilson — animator, comicker, and about to be Kickstarter — and his now-completed story, Jack Astro. I told you at that time that the campaign to print Jack Astro would go up in two days and to check it out. Some of you might have had some difficulty doing so, as Wilson explained to me:

I actually had to delay the kickstarter because of [reason]. Apologies for any confusion.

The Jack Astro Kickstart actually went up this past Monday, but the delay hasn’t hurt things — it funded in about six hours and is presently sitting around 250% of goal. Even better, to make up for the confusion, Wilson sent along an exclusive one-page comic he drew to promote the book (you can see it up top, or embiggen by clicking that last link), as well as a three-page section and process art.

Everybody thank Doug, and if you like what you see, you’ve got another 26 days to get in on the campaign.

Jack Astro: pages 136, 137, and 138.

Initial thumbnail. Pencils of the same pages.

Spam of the day:

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I’m a little scared that I can make out at least three quarters of that. Don’t really need your red, white, or black 50m rolls of duct tape, though. Thanks?

This review is going to be a bit briefer than many of my past reviews; it’s because of other stuff in my life, not because the book doesn’t deserve more words. In fact, I’ll say that it deserves all the words (some of which are spoilers), but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Jukebox is the sophomore graphic novel from Nidhi Chanani; full disclosure, she’s a friend of mine and we have spent time at Comics Camp in the past and hopefully will do so again in the future. When her first graphic novel, Pashmina, came out, I said:

[W]hen the worst I can say of a book is that I wish it had another three dozen pages to spend on its protagonist, you’re doing pretty damn well, and debut stories aren’t given the resources of proven creators. I expect that Chanani’s next book will reflect an increase in confidence from the market and the pages that will come with it.

I’m going to modestly declare, called it; Jukebox gets the pages needed to let the story breathe and as a result it’s a more satisfying reading experience. It’s also got one of the most unusual structures I’ve ever seen in a complete story, in that there isn’t really an antagonist¹.

Let me back up.

Jukebox is the story of Shaheen, San Francisco tween who’s relationship with her father Giovanni is defined by music. He’s a vinyl collector with eclectic tastes and determined that his daughter grow to love the depth and breadth of music as he does. Every song has a story, and a backstory, and context and history and details and, and, and … and Shaheen thinks that maybe Dad could take a bit of interest in what she likes. Anything other than the latest, timeless acquisition. It’s a point of friction between them.

Until he disappears. As does his vinyl dealer. They’re traced to a room with a mysterious jukebox that’s been designed to play whole albums rather than singles, and Shaheen finds herself and her cousin Tannaz flung through time and space as she plays her Dad’s favorites. He was lost somewhere relevant to whatever was playing on the jukebox when he was whisked away, and has no way to return unless Shahi and Naz can find him.

So if Shahi’s the hero of this story — which isn’t afraid to make her alternately timid, stubborn, scared, and a bit selfish — and Naz is the sidekick and Dad is the princess to be rescued, who’s the villain? Earl, the vinyl store owner who created the jukebox and has been using it to plunder the past of valuable first pressings to sell? Not really, he’s misguided.

The real antagonist is the overly obsessive focus that both Earl and Giovanni have for their music collections, which their lives revolve around in different ways, which alienate them from others. It’s not greed so much as it is excessive fanboyism, and if that’s not a lesson for the modern culture, I’m not sure what is². It’s only by loosening up, finding other interests, becoming broader people that Gio and Earl can put their lives back in balance. Their health, too, as the jukebox carries a cost to use it — it steals your hearing in one of the great ironic punishments. Seriously, this is the genie in the lamp ironically fulfilling your wish territory, which never turns out well unless you’re a sociopath.

Uh, maybe don’t share that last link with any of the 10-14 year olds that you give the book to. But definitely give them the book and an afternoon to devour it. They’ll learn about some key points in history (that don’t revolve around white dudes — that’s part of why Shahi and Naz don’t find Gio in their first four or five jaunts), about taking care of vinyl, and about how you can love somebody and still be totally exasperated at them at the same time.

All of it is wrapped up in Chanani’s open, inviting, slightly cartoony and very vibrant art that shifts color palette a half dozen times to portray a half dozen different moods. You’ll finish reading and want to put on a favorite playlist — just don’t go so loud you hurt your ears.

Jukebox, with words and pictures by Nidhi Chanani, is published by :01 Books and continues their long streak of excellent graphic novels. It’s available at book and comic shops everywhere, and maybe even a record store or two.

Spam of the day:

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Rarely do the spams and the post content line up so neatly. Not sure you want to be telling people to eat brains, though. That’s how you get zombies.

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¹ To those confidently stating a compelling story must have an antagonist I have one word: Totoro.

² Honestly, it reminds me a bit of the heedless interest in food that Chihiro’s parents have at the start of Spirited Away. Her journey to redeem them has more than a few parallels here. Miyazaki’s influence reaches far.

And, as much as it pains me to say it, it looks like Jerry was right. Not that Ryan Estrada can’t win an Eisner, mind you, just that he didn’t this time around and when your competition in the category is Adrian Tomine, that’s not such a hard loss¹.

If you want to watch the ceremony, it’s here, and if you want to just read down the list of winners, you can find that here.

Surprisingly absolutely zero people, Gene Luen Yang was the big winner, taking two Eisners for the collected edition of Superman Smashes The Klan (Best Publication For Kids (Ages 9-12), Best Adaptation From Another Medium), and one for Dragon Hoops (Best Publication For Teens (Ages 13-17)). Dragon Hoops was also nominated for Best Writer/Artist and Best Reality Based Work but you know what? Dude’s mantelpiece was crowded before last Friday night, no need to bounce the rubble.

Other web/indy comics folk that came away with spinny globes include Ben Passmore for Sports Is Hell (Best Single Issue), Jillian Tamaki for Our Little Kitchen (Best Publication for Early Readers (Up To Age 8)), Derf Backderf for Kent State: Four Dead In Ohio (Best Reality Based Work), Simon Hanselmann for Seeds And Stems (Best Graphic Album — Reprint) and also Crisis Zone (Best Webcomic).

Congratulations to all the winners, and if Fleen faves like Ryan North, Ngozi Ukazu, and Lily Williams didn’t come up winners, you just have to look at who they were competing against (Yang, Yang, and Yang, respectively).

Spam of the day:

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¹ And what the heck — they made up and are buds now.

Readers of this page will recall that on more than one occasion I have noted how Diamond (until recently, the only distributor that the comics industry allowed itself to have) absolutely refused to get me books that had been on order. Sometimes, the better part of a year would go by, much to the consternation of myself and the staff of my local comics shop (who I hold blameless in this fiasco).

Thus, somewhat recently, books that have been in release for a really long damn time have come into my possession and I’d like to talk about some of them. Since they’ve been long out in the world and other people have talked about them, these will be somewhat briefer reviews than normally found here. Oh, and spoilers may abound.

• Evan Dahm’s The Harrowing Of Hell first came onto my radar in the summer of 2018, and I made a habit of asking Dahm about it at MoCCA each year. It was delayed by COVID for some months from the appropriate Lenten season last year¹, finally releasing about eleven months ago.

  Given that it’s a 2000 year old story — accounting for those days between the Crucifixion of Jesus and the Resurrection — maybe waiting not quite a year isn’t such a big deal. On the other hand, it’s such a gorgeous book, I reserve the right to be annoyed. Dahm’s taken what is often a triumphant story — various apocrypha tell of Jesus tearing things up in Hell, rebuking the fallen angels, and redeeming the souls of the righteous — and turned it into a cautionary tale.

  The mocking of demons echoes the cries of Jesus’s own followers: Blessed, Hosana, this is the Son of God. Their message is one of twisted praise, predicting how his message will be corrupted in the years to come: he will be remembered not as a teacher and storyteller, but as a conquering king, bringing punishment and retribution rather than redemption. The greatest damnation that the fallen can offer Jesus is to grant his name power and glory rather than humility.

  The book is done in stark black-and-white (with the occasional splash of red in the robes of Sanhedrin or the uniforms of Roman soldiers) in the scenes of Jesus’s ministry, and given a lurid blood-red fill during the descent; there’s not a bit of white on the Hell pages, except to depict Jesus’s figure. It’s a first-rank mood-setter, as well as drawing the eye to exactly where Dahm wants it.

  Regardless of one’s own belief system, it is not possible to move in Western society without acknowledging the influence of the Christian faith; here’s a story that even many Christians don’t know, and those that do will find a very different interpretation, one that casts a very different light on that historical and pervasive influence.

• Dahm also released Island Book 2: The Infinite Land this year, a sequel to a quiet, contemplative story that’s reminiscent of The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz. In that review, I noted that in the many sequels Dorothy would return to Oz and get her companions back together to meet the next challenge, and in Island Book 2 Sola does the same. Like Dorothy, Sola is hailed as a liberator in a way that isn’t really warranted (witch-killer in Dorothy’s case; monster slayer in Sola’s), and given power and authority (Dorothy as a Princess of Oz, Sola as a leader of her people in a new nation, one that is rapidly moving forward in technology²).

  But Dorothy didn’t find one of her peers hellbent on turning Oz into an empire, determined to sweep all unknowns away in case they became threats later. She didn’t have one of her companions fall into the dream of empire. Dorothy remained an innocent, Sola is nothing but doubts and wondering if she’s unleashed a great plague upon the world in the form of her own people.

  We’ve left Oz behind and found ourselves in a place more like the Empire of Sahta, and it’s going to take Sola a hell of a lot of work to stop what is starting to look like colonization, pogroms, and genocide. Island Book 3 is going to have a tightope to walk, and I know that Dahm’s up to the challenge.

• There might not be anybody better suited to adapting an elliptical, almost Möbius-shaped story like Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five into graphical form than Ryan North. He gets nonlinear storytelling and the sometimes counterintuitive way that something that happens here/now can be intimately linked with something that happens there/then. Billy Pilgrim is unstuck in time, and having pictures (by Albert Monteys) to navigate the branching paths is a tremendous aid.

  One of the first page spreads shows Billy Pilgrim at the various key stages of his life, and the way he looks at each age on this timeline go a long way to demystifying when Billy lands as he jumps back and forth within his life. We know where the story is heading, because Vonnegut, North, and Monteys tell us almost from the beginning (after, as it turns out, a brief few pages where North notes that much of what occurs in the book actually happened to Vonnegut), but the journey is still full of surprises and despite that.

  Slaughterhouse Five is rightly regarded as one of the most brilliant, most important novels ever written; this new version of Slaughterhouse Five for a different medium can stand next to the original with head held high.

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I find your story somewhat unconvincing. Can’t quite put my finger on it. Oh well, one less opportunity for me.

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¹ You got a horror book, you want that out in October. Book about what happened when Jesus threw down the gates to Hell? You want that out at Easter.

² The better analogy might be the leap from agrarianism to an industrial revolution between Avatar: The Last Airbender and Avatar: The Legend Of Korra.

Late night with a dude in crisis in EMT-land. Couple quick items before I try to make up for being six hours short on sleep.

• Tillie Walden is a particular favorite here at Fleen. We’ve talked about her modern books (Spinning, On A Sunbeam, Are You Listening?) at some length, and have made oblique references to her earlier work, published by Avery Hill as the result of a cold-call email and a decision on Walden’s part that it probably wasn’t a scam. She some Ignatzen for them, but they’ve been difficult to track down since the print runs were small and overseas¹.

  So let’s all be glad that Avery Hill have compiled those earlier, hard-to-find works into a single omnibus edition called Alone In Space. The bookplate editions are sold out, but the hardcover is still available and will cost you less than individually tracking down The End Of Summer, I Love This Part, and A City Inside, as well as adding various short pieces from print and the web. Tillie Walden is a staggeringly skilled cartoonist and this should be on your shelf.

• Lots of other stuff should be on your shelf, and now it a terrific time to make that happen. Via the twitterfeed of George:
  

  Graphic Novels went from 9.3% of adult fiction to 20%. Making it the 2nd largest category. Like dang.

  He goes on to note that it’s all lumped together, regardless of genre and a lot of it is manga, but it’s still comics, it’s still fiction, and it’s only going to grow. We live in good times for comics.

Spam of the day:

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Nope. Deleting that one unread. Don’t wanna know.

Pervs.

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¹ I’d never seen a copy of any of the three until I met Walden at Comics Camp 2019 and she had two of them at her Mini-Con table.

Oh, it hurt to cut down something so pretty, so well constructed to its purpose as that recap image. Then again, it was nearly in a 1 x 10 aspect ratio (width x height), so there’s no way I could have put it at the top of the post.

I speak, obvs, of the teaser for Barbarous Season Two, scheduled to start in two weeks. On the one hand, yay, after the better part of a year since the end of Season One, two weeks is blessedly soon. On the other, fourteen days is practically an eternity from now, I may die of the anticipation, etc.

For those that perhaps need a recap to go with the recap, Barbarous is the current longform webcomic from Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh; it follows a magic university dropout and an impossible familiar in the best exploration of being unsure of yourself at a certain age in New York since Octopus Pie. It’s run approximately one chapter per year since 2016 (with side stories in between) the first five of which made up a reasonably complete story, and now it’s coming back.

And because there’s a lot of meat on the story, there’s a recap, although it’s not a straight linear precis of the story. The scenes jump back and forth along the storyline, which means it’s really there to prod the memory of those who’ve been reading, not provide a cheat sheet to jump in fresh. The really clever bit is that the arrangement of scenes in the recap gives a new reading on Percy (said dropout) and Leeds (said familiar) and their motivations. Bits of personal development that were separated by a year or more have new resonance when put side by side. Even moreso that the return of a beloved story, I wanted to bring this story technique up, because I can think of a lot of plot-driven [web]comics that could get a lot of benefit from it.

Oh, and since we’re here and all, Hirsh and Ota are teaming up on words — with art by JR Doyle — on a new original graphic novel out from Abrams in November. A couple weeks ago they talked about their inspirations for Pixels Of You¹ in a promo video and it’s a neat look at where story ideas can come from, and how characters reveal themselves to creators. Give ‘er a watch or two while you’re waiting for Barbarous to start back up.

Spam of the day:
No spam, but I do want to point it that there’s less than a day to get a hardcopy of The Abominable Charles Christopher Book 3 via Kickstarter add-on. It is gonna be so pretty.

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¹ Now I have The Cure going through my brain. This is not a bad thing.

The world is slowly returning to in-person experiences; granted, the word world is doing some heavy lifting there, as COVID-19 decides to create new waves in various parts of the world. Some have not yet had the chance to vaccinate, and others steadfastly refuse to do so, which is an idiocy I will never understand. As long as I live, that will never make any godsdamned sense.

But in places where it’s safe¹, comics fans are again gathering. Or, in the case of Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin, bandes dessinées fans. Here, then, is his report from this year’s Lyon BD festival.

As ever, we at Fleen thank FSFCPL for his endeavours on behalf of our readers. He’s a good dude.

Spam of the day:

Mining farm for Chia coin

Unless the farming results in a coin base upon which grows actual Chiapet style chia, not interested.

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¹ And, tragically, many places where it is not — looking at you, Missouri. When you’re done with your little muh freedom temper tantrum and your healthcare professionals are so traumatized at how you chose to abuse them that they leave and never return, I am going to be hard pressed to have sympathy. On behalf of my colleagues, fuck you.

² I believe that FSFCPL is here using gross in the English sense of disgusting rather than the French sense of large, although honestly it works either way. — Ed.