It just occurred to me that the two people I’m talking about here occupy far ends of the human size spectrum. I have to try to get a photo of them together.

• When you walk down the aisle in Artists Alley and see where Shing Yin Khor is supposed to be set up and see only blank space? Don’t panic. Because if you walk by again two-three hours later, you’ll see an immersive table set up, looking like an apothecary of weird and wonderful things, and no sign of the proprietor because she’s gone someplace better for the remaining six hours until show opening.

  A transplant from a slightly confused alternate future, Khor does art from small artifacts to big installations, and you should go see her stuff. The easiest way to find her is to make it known you know where a roadside Paul Bunyan statue may be found and she’ll find you, but I hear that this year’s XOXO Fest will be a good bet.

  As previously mentioned, Khor has a trade-only set of goods at her booth this year, and I was pleased to be the first person to make a trade with the Space Gnome. You can only make the trade for one (or more, I suppose) of:

  1. A cool rock
  2. A story about your favorite roadside statue
  3. A handmade ceramic vessel
  4. A compliment, in iambic pentameter or limerick.

  And no lie, I actually dreamt a limmerick about Khor last week. It declared both Khor’s stature to be slighty but also the Space Gnome to be Paul Bunyan-mighty.

  I received several stickers, a mystery item (which turned out to be a badge reading I Got This), and a beautiful enamel pin; I noticed later that at some time while we were talking, she managed to inscribe a personalization on the back of the card it came on. It’s marked as 1 of 200, so get to scrounging rocks, vessels, roadside statue stories, and verses; there’s about 194 of them left. Khor is also providing fortunes, beautiful watercolor miniprints, and I received one reading:

  THE SHARP TALON
  desire, anger, retribution

  The fight you know is on the horizon is long and arduous, but you are prepared for it.
  Your instincts are sharp, and your skills will be called upon to create a better future for you and yours.

  Shing Yin Khor can be found at the Center For Otherworld Studies most times during the show, Small Press table O-04.

• Ryan North is a smart, funny man, one that towers over all he surveys both figuratively and literally. We spent some time chatting about his forthcoming book, How To Invent Everything (an Amazon-avoiding Kickstart for which is running now, with exclusive cool stuff), and he let me in on an exclusive story — appropriate for a book about changing history — of what could have been.

  In the book, he tells you how musical notation works, and provides the sheet music for some of the great works of the Western canon (Pachelbel’s, specifically, along with some Mozart and Bach), which if you’re in the past you can write down before they do and be the greatest composer ever!

  But one masterwork eluded him. Because while Mozart, Bach, and Pachelbel are in the public domain, the fourth Greatest Song In History is not, and he was unable to get to the rights to include the music in the book. The rights administrator was confused — it’s not a mechanical reproduction as in a cover version recording, that’s got an easy, established process. North offered to do the arrangement himself, and the administrator kept asking, Is this for a textbook?, not really getting that it’s a general science book about time travel and humo[u]r.

  In the end, they were not able to come to an agreement, and so if you are ever trapped in the past, you will sadly not be able to retroactively teach the world to Shoop before Salt-n-Pepa do. Our futurepast culture will somehow have to survive. North did get an appropriate alternate fourth Greatest Song In History for inclusion, but I promised I wouldn’t spoil it. You’ll just have to get the book yourself and see.

  Ryan North can be found at TopatoCo most times during the show, booth 1229.

I mean, I’m not mad, it’s natural to try to get in on the attention that the rest of the press pays to comics this one week of the year, but these deserve to not have their message missed. Wanna see something cool? Of course you do!

• It’s been announced for months, but next week (or the day after tomorrow, if you go by the Oni booth¹ at SDCC) will be the debut of The Long Con by Dylan Meconis and Ben Coleman (words), EA Denich (pictures), M Victoria Robado (colors) and Aditya Bidikar (letters). It’s the story of what happens when the world ends during a San Diego-alike con, and the convention never ends.

  Oni saw fit to send an advance copy PDF of issue #1 my way, and although I’d been planning on buying the series, I am doubly resolved now because this story is off to a very, very good start. There’s a thousand little touchstones that congoers will recognize, from lines to cosplayers² to the very culty behavior of the hardcore fans. Neither the attendees of Long Con 50 nor the outside world knows that the other survived, and the culture clash when contact is re-established is going to be cuttingly hilarious as well as deflating of pretensions all around.

  Bonus points to Meconis for naming the city where the convention is held Los Spinoza — a nod to the philosopher who’s all over her Enlightenment-era vampire and werewolf stories³ — and to the entire team for creating a 60s-era TV show that perfectly captures the feel not just of Star Trek, but everything else SF of the time, in sensibility, design, color scheme, and silliness masked with seriousness. It’s all going to tie together and it’s going to be a heck of a ride getting there.

• Speaking of announced for months but just now breaking out with the details, Ryan North has launched the co-Kickstart for his next book. How To Invent Everything will be in bookstores everywhere in September, so why a Kickstart? Two reasons: exclusive stuff and supporting local bookstores. Let’s take the second one first:
  

  This book is already being printed, and it’ll be available in bookstores on September 18th… but these days most book orders happen online. That’s great, but it would be MORE great if you could support independent booksellers! That’s where this Kickstarter comes in: all the books ordered through this Kickstarter will be funneled through indie bookstores.

  By buying the book through this Kickstarter, you not only get the exact same book you’d get from a giant online bookstore, but you also get it signed by the author (that’s me!), PLUS you get the time traveler’s bandanna, PLUS the stretch goals we unlock (see below) — all for the same price you’d pay at retail. It’ll be shipped direct to your door on the release day, and you’ll get to feel good about supporting cool indie bookstores like:

  The Strand in NYC
  BookPeople in Austin Texas
  The Beguiling in Toronto, Canada

  It’s thanks to these amazing booksellers that we can offer the book at a price low enough to give you all these exclusive goodies on top!

  And that’s the first part there as well — there’s a set of postcards from the future, and a bandanna version of the famous t-shirt for time travelers with a broken time machine that inspired this book in the first place. Stretch goals will unlock vignettes from North as he is stuck in various points in time, with postcards produced (and added to the order) for each goal reached.

  Given that the campaign is about 55% of the way funded in its opening hour (38 minutes ago, Kicktraq tells me, it was at 11%), that’s going to be some considerable postcards. And in the time it took me to write that sentence, funding jumped to 59%.

  Got a pre-order already with Amazon? Cancel it and go through the Kickstarter. You might not always have the book with you if you get hurled through time, but you can carry a bandanna with you at all times, and Amazon ain’t getting any bandanna, folks.

Spam of the day:

In order to get help we are interested in helping the animals. Could you be interested in hearing details?

Bonus points for appealing to my sense of altruism instead of my sense of greed. Still not biting, though.

_______________
¹ That would be number 1833.

² And cosplayer outrage at being asked to compromise their vision, man.

³ Speaking of which, I am desperate to give you money in exchange for new Family Man print collections, Meconis.

Sometimes, it’s the details that catch you.

For example, I saw a notification via the Tweetmachine of a crowdfunding for an Eisner-nominated webcomic to get a print collection. Now, I could tell you that the detail was the lovely bit of lettering in the title — The Carpet Merchant Of Konstantiniyya — that jumped out at me. Delicate, flowing, the double-y grabbing the eye. It could be the color, it could be the immediate focus on the cover of a woman of middle age with heavy eyebrows cast as a notable character, although she appears to be behind (perhaps supporting) the likely title character. That guy absolutely looks like a carpet merchant. Or that bat. That bat is gorgeous.

But, no. What caught my eye was something else. Let’s look at that tweet again:

Support my comic’s kickstarter!
If you like POC-centered historical fantasy, a fresh take on the vampire genre, & pretty historically inspired comic layouts, this book’s for you! https://unbound.com/books/the-carpet-merchant-voli …

88 backers, & 15% funded!
(if you buy 2 books you save on shipping)

What caught my eye was the lowercase-k kickstarter, and the link, which is not to Kickstarter, but to Unbound, which crowdfunds books specifically. Reimena Yee might be the first, but she won’t be the last — Kickstarter has just been aspirined, kleenexed, xeroxed, googled. The proper name has become the generic term¹.

Oh, and the comic is damn pretty, too. It’s only at 20% funding so far, but Unbound doesn’t appear to be time-limited like Kickstarter campaigns; the books are funding because the creators pitched to editors, who agreed to take them on. It’s a mix of crowdfunding and traditional publishing, and while I haven’t seen it make inroads into comics and graphic novels (I only found 12 instances in the four or so years of Unbound’s existence), I’m going to keep an eye on it in future.

And, I imagine, somewhere in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, they’re going to be keeping an eye on lowercase-k usages of Kickstarter. Sometimes, being ubiquitous is a lot of work.

Spam of the day:

OFFICIAL, LIMITED EDITION PANTERA MINI-GUITARS AT SDCC

Rumor has it Stryper wanted to do this too, but Pantera beat them to the punch.

_______________
¹ Also on the list of now-generic terms? Comic Con. Just saying.

Okay so our Friends To The North celebrated their big holiday already, and we here in ‘Merika won’t until tomorrow, but the holiday doldrums are well upon us. Not much going on, but there is one thing to keep an eye out for in the coming weeks:

On July 17 we’re Kickstarting The Nib Magazine, a 100 page print quarterly. The first four issues — Death, Family, Empire and Scams — have been in the works all year and we will hit send to the printer the second it’s funded.

All new comics every issue — journalism, strips, Nib crew, Intercept journalists, names from mainstream comics. I can’t wait to drop who is on board.

That from The Nib editor and driving force Matt Bors, who’s shepherded the editorial/reportage comics site from (intermittently neglected) Medium section to big-ass book to recurring calendar to animated series, the contributors to which keep showing up in consideration of various awards.

You’ve got two weeks notice. Be prepared.

And I just realized that I haven’t discussed this year’s Eisner nominations, on account of they came out while I was at Camp. As we’ve seen in the past forever or so, the distinctions between Best Digital Comic and Best Webcomic are confusing and/or confused, and which are described as:

For the Best Digital Comic category, works must be longform — that is, comparable to comic books or graphic novels in storytelling or length. Webcomics similar to daily newspaper strips, for example, would not be eligible. Digital comics should have a unique URL, be part of a webcomics site, or otherwise stand alone (not be part of a blog, for instance).

So webcomics are defined by what they aren’t rather than by what they are, but for the most part they’ve come to largely be creator-owned work without publisher gatekeeping (although there are a couple of fascinating exceptions in the Best Webcomic Category. This year’s nominees are:

Best Digital Comic

• Bandette, by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover (Monkeybrain/comiXology)
• Barrier, by Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin (Panel Syndicate)
• The Carpet Merchant of Konstaniniyya, by Reimena Yee (reimenayee.com/the-carpet-merchant)
• Contact High, by James F. Wright and Josh Eckert (gumroad.com/l/YnxSm)
• Harvey Kurtzman’s Marley’s Ghost, by Harvey Kurtzman, Josh O’Neill, Shannon Wheeler, and Gideon Kendall (comiXology Originals/Kitchen, Lind & Associates)
• Quince, by Sebastian Kadlecik, Kit Steinkellner, and Emma Steinkellner, translated by Valeria Tranier (Fanbase Press/comiXology)

Best Webcomic

• Awaiting a Wave, by Dale Carpenter and Nate Powell, features.weather.com/us-climate-change/arkansas (The Weather Channel Digital)
• Brothers Bond, by Kevin Grevioux and Ryan Benjamin, www.webtoons.com/en/action/brothers-bond/list?title_no=1191 (LINE Webtoon)
• Dispatch from a Sanctuary City, by Mike Dawson, https://thenib.com/dispatch-from-a-sanctuary-city (The Nib)
• The Tea Dragon Society, by Katie O’Neill, teadragonsociety.com (Oni Press)
• Welcome to the New World, by Jake Halpern and Michael Sloan, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/26/opinion/sunday/welcome-to-the-new-world.html (New York Times Sunday Review)

I’ll go out on a limb and say that Carpenter & Powell, and Halpern & Sloan were doing Work For Hire; I’ll also note that O’Neill’s The Tea Dragon Society is functionally indistinct from what the Eisners call a Digital Comic — to the extent that she and it are also nominated in the category of Best Publication for Kids (ages 9–12).

Outside the immediately applicable categories, you’ll find Giant Days (John Allison, Max Sarin, and Liz Fleming) nominated as Best Continuing Series, Spinning (Tillie Walden) in both Best Publication for Teens (ages 13-17) and Best Reality-Based Work, What Is Left (Rosemary Valero-O’Connell) in both Best Single Issue/One-Shot and Best Coloring, and Elements: Fire (edited by Taneka Stotts) in Best Anthology¹.

The Eisner Awards will be presented on Friday, 20 July, as part of San Diego Comic Con. Best of luck to all the nominees.

Spam of the day:

Only here the choice of young girls for every unique guy and completely free! They are wettest slaves, they will and want implement everything you command !

I’ve often wondered if there was some way to make Russian mail-order bride spam not the ickiest thing in the spam filters, and … ick. Just ick.

_______________
¹ Presumably, if it wins, Stotts will have Shing Yin Khor devise some means of breaking up the statue into components that can be distributed to the contributors.

So yesterday I wondered in a footnote about the possible impacts of the looming Trade War With China on webcomics. Here’s the crux of what I said:

Thought that just occurred to me. What with the whole trade war with China stupidity going on now, we aren’t shipping as much stuff to China, we won’t be getting as much stuff from China, is this going to take container ship capacity away (as they’re redirected to other trade routes) or make it more plentiful/cheaper (as there may be an excess of space/ships)?

My thoughts were almost entirely in terms of the raw costs of container shipping; if we aren’t sending soybeans to Shanghai in the immediate term, will there be freshly unloaded ships waiting to be loaded up with stuff for the holiday selling season? Would things not specifically on the threatened tariffs list (which is a moving target, day to day) be impacted as collateral damage? I figured there was only one person to ask.

Readers of this page know the regard that we at Fleen have for George Rohac: slayer of problems, fixer of systems, arranger of logistics. He’s overseen maybe more Kickstarts than anybody else, to the point that they recognize him as an official Expert. He knows the sausage-making end of getting things made, especially via print. SO when I asked, I was unsurprised that he’s been thinking about it, but a bit surprised that he’s looking at things from another angle. To quote:

So for now, it isn’t hitting anything. But as with anything in the world of Trump, that could change on a dime. I haven’t seen/heard anything happening with regards to more frequent customs crackdowns, so right now its basically business as normal.

Not capacity/logistics, but the possibility of policy decisions mess with things. If the order comes down to make every Customs inspection of everything from China extra specific, time and costs (storage, brokerage, etc) go up.

That said I am encouraging people to just factor in an extra 25% as a trump tax in case stuff gets fucked. This I’d recommend regardless of where you’re manufacturing. Since he’s hitting Canada the plants people use in Montreal often could be hit, and also US plants that are part of global multinationals could wind up having trickle down cost increases.

Again, not the shipping end of things, but the possibility that Screamy Racist Orange Grandpa decides to suddenly slap worldwide tariffs on paper, or finished printed goods, or whatever. Planning ahead for extra costs also seems to be smart planning in that if you get hit with unexpected expenses, you’re covered; if you get lucky and the costs don’t materialize, you’ve suddenly got more money and that’s not a bad thing.

A quote will typically have a “price good until X date” so if you’re printing in that window, fine, if not, then build in buffer.

And here’s where George’s long experience with printing comes in — if your printing proposal doesn’t have a timeframe on the pricing, any unexpected costs could be passed along. The last thing you want is a profitable project suddenly turning into a break-even or money-losing project. If I were to summarize George’s answers, it would be Do your due diligence, get everything in writing, and assume your unexpected costs could be even greater than your past calculus. Much like planning now for the potential of a USPS shipping rated increase in six months¹, this is going to be a careful balancing of probabilities, optimism, and pessimism.

There will probably be people that offer to help cropping up in greater numbers than in the past, and it’ll be important to ensure that they know what they’re talking about before paying them money, or tying the success of your project to their supposed expertise. I’m not saying they have to have George-level experience², but I am saying that there’s a difference between a company that’s done this before and one that’s assuming it can do this³.

Just as for every Make That Thing there’s several dozen companies whose ability sits somewhere between aspirational and completely fictional, there are going to be newcomers and fly-by-night operators in this facilitation space. Choose carefully. Or, if we’re lucky, George (or somebody like him) will do some seminar-type training on how to navigate these challenges on your own. Like somebody that I just made up in my head once said, Trumpian chaos is just another way to say opportunity.

Spam of the day:

What Company is #1 Rated Overall for Home Security?

The answer suggested by this spam is bestcompany™, which appears to not be a home security company, but rather a directory of all kinds of companies. It’s some pretty mixed messaging

_______________
¹ Never mind what would happen if SROG’s stated intention to privatize the US Postal Service actually gains steam.

² Only George has George-level expertise, pretty much by definition.

³ Fun fact that came up in an unrelated conversation today; when you fly into Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport, all the usual airport ads for car services, hotels, etc, are entirely replaced by ads for contract logistics and merch-management companies, whose entire pitch is Hire us if you want to be less screwed by Walmart. Some of them tout years or decades of experience navigating the Walmartian minefield and others … do not.

Ahhhhh, Barbarous by Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh, could I love you any more? No, no I could not. And the between-chapters bumper is a delight, three pages where the most important action takes place off-panel and is still perfectly clear. It — the bumper that is — starts here, and the story starts here and if you haven’t read it, you’ll love it.

If you haven’t read it, come to think, you’ve got an easy way to a) catch up, and b) support the comic just now. Hirsh and Ota haven’t finished the story, not by a long shot, and they’ve released the first chapter as a short print collection — some three dozen pages — in an oversized trim. If you didn’t pick it up at the time, the only place it’s currently available is as part of the rewards package for the Kickstart for the second chapter.

Same deal as before — slim volume, Euro trim size, lots of extras as they hit the stretch goals. Best of all, it’s a sure deal since they’re nearly 50% over goal with two weeks left to go, so all you have to do is pledge and wait for the print edition to come in¹.

• Speaking of Kickstarts, there have been recent conclusions of both the 17th Iron Circus project and the third collection of gay college hockey bromance/comedy. How’d they do?

  FTL Y’all was predicted by the Fleen Funding Formula, Mark II to raise US$50K +/- US$10K, and came in at US$51,432; to be entirely honest, the Iron Circus projects have been a dominant contributor to the math of FFF mk2, and they nearly always fall right in the center of the range. I’m starting to think that for Spike-affiliated projects, it would be possible to narrow the margin of error by a factor of 3 or 4.

• Check, Please!: Year Three was funding too rapidly when we wrote about its launch, and further skewed it’s day one/day two totals by doing a stealth launch to Patreon backers, with a sudden, later surge when the campaign went public; as noted in the past these situations don’t track well with the FFF mk2. According to the straight application of FFF logic, the prediction would come to US$336K – US$504K, but that incorporates the surge. If we go the second full day, the numbers drop to US$250K – US$375K; the actual total was US$353,764.

  That would be at the high end of the range for a surge-ignoring calculation, and at the low end of the range for a surge-ignoring calculation, neither of which is particularly satisfying from a predictive POV. There may need to be a further change to the FFF mk2 logic² to maybe look at a point midway between a Day One peak and a Day Two relaxation³? Further experiments will need to take place, but there will be a Year Four down the line, after all.

  Curiously, Year Three, did not clear the US$398,520 that Year Two raised, but I’m chalking that up to people having information they didn’t have in the Fall of 2016: that :01 Books is printing Check, Please! as two volumes; some people may have decided to trade-wait and get Year Three combined with Year Four next year.

Spam of the day:

Have an invention idea? Where do I start – Free Info Kit!

In fact, last week I had a zillion-dollar invention idea, and I did the only rational thing with it: I gave it to Rich Stevens, because if anybody can execute on it, he can.

_______________
¹ Thought that just occurred to me. What with the whole trade war with China stupidity going on now, we aren’t shipping as much stuff to China, we won’t be getting as much stuff from China, is this going to take container ship capacity away (as they’re redirected to other trade routes) or make it more plentiful/cheaper (as there may be an excess of space/ships)?

I have no idea how this might shake out, it could plausibly go either of two entirely opposite ways. But you know who probably does know? George, who just happens to work closely with Ota & Hirsh. I’ve got an email into him to get his thoughts and will report back.

² Take the 24-30 hour trend value from Kicktraq and divide by four; that’s the center of the predicted range. Divide further by five, and that’s the margin of error. Exception: low-backed projects (fewer than ~ 200 backers) are not predictable.

³ Doing so would have given us US$290K – US$435K, with a centerpoint of US$362.5K; that’s much tighter, but it’s also a case of poking around the data until finding something that fits. Many more trials will be needed.

Y’know, pretty damn soon it’ll be easier to talk about an area where comics — web and otherwise — and graphic novels aren’t making inroads instead of those where they are. Consider:

Down New Orleans way — and I’ve been to NOLA in the summer, so everybody there has my sympathies — the American Library Association Annual Conference is underway, and webcomickers are all over the damn place. Just from my sosh-meeds, I’ve noticed Hope Larson, Rosemary Mosco, George Rohac, Ngozi Ukazu, Vera Brosgol, Raina Telgemeier, Andy Runton, Melanie Gillman, the omnipresent C Spike Trotman, and the irreplaceable Gina Gagliano.

First observation: no disrespect to Rohac and Runton, who are both outstanding dudes, but it’s all well and meet that the ladies are dominating here. The books that the women present make (or facilitate the making of) are going to form the spine of a new canon.

Second observation: the universality of comics is not lost on the librarians (which, I would note, is a profession that skews heavily female), who are seeking out ways to bring comics into their collections. This year, the ALA approved the creation of a new round table dedicated to graphic novels, which is a significantly big deal.

The round tables produce research (don’t ever get in the way of a group of librarians who’re researching a topic) which results in best practices, standards, and guidelines for libraries everywhere. Need to figure out what to add to the stacks, how to organize it, how to get and keep the public’s interest? An ALA round table has probably figured it out.

They also provide legitimacy. It is, after all, the ALA’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table that convened to present the Stonewall Book Awards earlier today¹, and Gillman was on hand for As The Crow Flies to be recognized as a Stonewall Honor Book — the only graphic novel so recognized.

Being recognized for one of the big literary awards can result in a demand for thousands or even tens of thousands of copies of a book. It conveys to the larger reading world that the book and/or creator is Serious Business, and it’s one of the reasons that Mark Siegel put get on the radar of the the literary awards on his to-do list when founding :01 Books. Siegel figured it would take 5-10 years, and they made it all the way to the National Book Awards 18 months later thanks to American Born Chinese by Gene Yang.

You remember Yang — two-time NBA nominee, Eisner winner, MacArthur laureate, and the fifth National Ambassador For Young People’s Literature², guiding force of the Reading Without Walls challenge? Guy’s probably done more to put books in the hands of kids than anybody else this side of Dolly Parton. And since he’s the sort of really smart, really engaged person that you want to represent reading, it’s no surprise that he’s been named the newest board member of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund:

“I’m so excited to be joining the board of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund,” Gene Yang says. “Like many people, I’ve found it more and more difficult to wrap my head around issues of free speech because of recent news events. However, I still believe that, to borrow a phrase from poet Liu Xiaobo, free expression is the mother of truth. The CBLDF has been at the forefront of these issues for many years now, which makes our work more important than ever.”

Some of you just went to look up Liu Xiaobo, because that’s what Yang does — make you go learn stuff. Between the librarians and the creators, I’m going to say that the future of reading’s in good hands. Now let’s everybody get out there and make sure the eyes — and minds! — are open to follow where they lead.

Spam of the day:

Contact me today if you are considering buying, selling, or just want to know more about market conditions in your neighborhood. [links to multiple-million dollar homes in the Greater LA area]

My home has a wall-to-wall area of 130 square meters (not including hallways, stairs, etc), and is not in West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, or Los Feliz. I suspect you meant to send this to somebody very different.

_______________
¹ To be completely clear, the awards were announced in January, but were presented today at the annual conference.

² Which I believe entitles him to be addressed as His/Your Excellency.

The Fleen Fight For Fungible Futures Fund is back on.

I’m sure you saw the announcement; it’s been several times in my twitterfeed, but let’s go with the one from Ryan North, who (as a giant of a man) cannot be denied:

Our goal is to raise $42,000 for legal defense and support for separated children and their families. I just donated, and you can too:
https://bit.ly/kidlitsaysnokidsincages …

Good news: ActBlue reports the US$42,000 goal was hit in under 24 hours. The site is still live. Send me (that would be gary) at this-here website, which is a dot-com your receipt for any amount¹, by the end of the week, and I’ll match the first US$2000. I’m giving away a lot of money these days. Gonna keep doing so, until we prevail.

I’m not the only one making matches or doing fundraising! For example, since I started writing this, Molly Ostertag announced that’s she’s making available three personalized copies of The Witch Boy with three original pieces of art, with proceeds going to Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center. You can’t get any of them though, because they went in about 20 minutes. I’m counting her $400 as the first matching donation, so we’re already well on our way.

And for the sake of all that is good, make some noise. Do not let the current administration of racist sociopaths decide for the rest of us that their policy of imprisoning children (how long before they’re put to work, I wonder? I hear work sets you free …) is a thing that’s acceptable in any fashion.

As long as we’re making plans, those of you that attend San Diego Comic Con next month may have another means of support and direct action. Pat Race noted that there’s an ICE child detention center (I hated having to type those words) in San Diego, and he’s making enquiries to determine if there’s some way for creators to come and engage the kids with art and comics.

It’s been noted that there’s a risk that engaging in this fashion may normalize the practice, but you know what? I think having eyes on the inside, belonging to ordinary people, has tremendous value. I can’t teach art or speak Spanish, but I will provide witness if given the chance. Fill out the contact form if you’re willing to help, should this turn out to be a possibility.

Spam of the day:
Spammers don’t get to share this day.

_______________
¹ Along with how you’d like to be credited, or if you’d prefer to be anonymous.

Know who loves comics? Dads. It’s true! And as it turns out, there’s a couple of comics-related things you can do with your (or as a) Dad, on opposite sides of the country! Choose whichever is closest to you!

• On the Left Coast, our friends at the Cartoon Art Museum are so invested in your Dad having a good time, they’re offering him free admission:
  

  The Cartoon Art Museum is offering free admission to all fathers for Father’s Day weekend with paid admission for their child or grandchild. Visit us at 781 Beach Street on Saturday, June 16 and Sunday, June 17, 2018 and enjoy our current exhibitions.

  Those current exhibitions include a look at the MARCH trilogy by Congressman John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell, and Jen Wang’s latest, The Prince And The Dressmaker (with which I had considerable concerns, but read it and decide for yourself).

• On the Eastside, Danielle Corsetto Heavy Book Tour starts at Philadelphia’s Amalgam Comics & Coffeehouse tomorrow, with a Q&A at noon and signing until 4:00pm. She’ll be spending the rest of the weekend and the early part of next week in transit and sharpening up her Laser Tag skills in anticipation of the Albany signing on Tuesday, with special guests Jess Fink and Eric Colossal¹.

  The mayhem starts at 6:30pm at Zero Gravity FuntimeLaserPlace, 1240 Central Avenue, and will run you US$17 for up to three games of laser tag, plus the usual signing stuff.

  BUT!

  They need at least 22 people signed up (with a maximum of 30) and there are presently 14. You must RSVP so they know they have enough to make the venue happy, and you only have until tomorrow to do so. Hudson Valley folks, this is your moment to shine. Do not make Danielle haul those big-ass books all the way to Albany and then not get to shoot you with a laser.

Side note: Monday may not have a post; I have to travel for work, and as this one will involve a visit to Our Neighbo[u]rs To The North, and since Screamy Orange Grandpa is shitting all over Canada these days, I may be some time at Customs & Immigration.

Hopefully, relations between our countries do not deteriorate to the point that I needs be held as an enemy national … and if so, let me remind our gracious Canadian friends that I know The Toronto Man-Mountain and he can personally vouch for my good character. Thank you.

Spam of the day:

Hey sexy, its Christy Mack!! I added some topless photos just for you on Instagram

I don’t know if the photos in this email are or are not of Christy Mack, but they are not topless. Also, doesn’t IG pretty much ban topless pictures? Try harder, spammers.

_______________
¹ Whom I accidentally left out of my previous mention of the event.

Happy Strippiversary to my Evil Twin. I see you’re celebrating in the traditional manner: reconfiguring the websserver so that leaving off the “www” part means you don’t get the site. Still, eighteen years and 6574 strips is nothing to sneer at. And the art’s gotten better, too! You may have taken away the “first” navigation button, but I will pull out strip #1 every year, so that people understand the raw value of sticking with it.

Now, things that happened in The Before Times that I’m just getting to:

• The winner of the Be Prepared giveaway has been chosen, and it’s Steven from St Paul, Minnesota. Book coming your way as soon as I can get to the post office, Steven.
• Shing Yin Khor is many things: comics artist, installation artist, constructor of awesome haunted houses, space mechanic/hobo, and decrier of capitalism. Come to San Diego Comic Con (holy crud, less than six weeks out) and she’ll have certain stuff for you only if you have something suitable to barter with:
  

  Can’t wait to launch my Space Gnome Mercantile TRADE ONLY merch at SDCC. In 2018, the space gnome will trade for:
  1. A cool rock
  2. A story about your favourite roadside statue
  3. A handmade ceramic vessel
  4. A compliment, in iambic pentameter or limerick.

  Best believe I’m brushing up on my poetic forms and keeping my eyes peeled for rocks.

• Kerstin La Cross, adventure cartoonist, has a habit of walking far places with her stuff on her back, scaling high peaks, traversing low valleys, and then sharing what the experience was like with those of us who appreciate The Great Outdoors just fine as long as we can do our appreciating from The Great Indoors. Her newest recounting is an autobio treatment of a 100 mile (161 km) hike took with their husband, and it’s a brave piece of self-examination.

  It took all of three strips to get to the point where they have to portray the most humble-making thing that any of us can experience — getting deservedly smacked upside the head with the ol’ cluebat. It’s a hell of a cold open, and determining how they got to that point is just getting started. Buckle up and be prepared to keep up — there’s rocky times ahead.

• Is there anything C Spike Trotman can’t do? Aside from being listed as one of the upcoming creators in ComiXology’s new foray into original, creator-owned stories, she’s got Iron Circus’s 17th damn Kickstart going, one that funded out in the customary few hours, and which is headed for US$40K-60K according to the FFF mk2¹.
• Hey, remember the Multiplex animated short? It’s on Amazon Prime.
• Hey, remember KC Green and Anthony Clark? They have a double treat for us tomorrow. In addition to the weekly dose of BACK goodness (and it’s been very good lately), they partnered up on an issue of Invader Zim from Oni, releasing this week.
• Danielle Corsetto’s Big Ass Heavy Book Tour kicks off in Philly this weekend (I may try to hop down for that one) before exploring the Northeast and Canada. Highlight: next Tuesday in Albany, the tour will feature LASER TAG WITH JESS FINK if enough people reserve spots. I’m going to be in Ottawa, or hell of yes I’d be there.

Spam of the day:

Look inside! New Credit Card may be available here.

That shit doesn’t work when you send me an actual envelope, it’s not going to work with a friggin’ email.

_______________
¹ By the Iron Circus model, there’s a US$5/page pay bump for every US$5K over goal, so between 4 and 8 bumps, or another US$20-40 per page on top of the already-earned page rate.