Words. Pictures. Boom: comics.

3548 comics, give or take. Ten years and a day. Grad school, industry, academia. Dante Shepherd Lucas Landherr ends Surviving The World on the message he’s always had for us, and while he won’t be watching over us, yea, as a shepherd watches over the flocks, he’ll still be out there making comics to make the world better, smarter, kinder.

And weirder, probably. Dude’s got an appreciation of The Weird.

For those so inclined, as of this writing you’ve got about 70 minutes to get in on the Kickstarter for the one and only print collection of Surviving The World; from here on out if you want to see Landherr’s comics, you’ll have to check out PhD Unknown, or maybe be enrolled in a course of STEM study, or if we’re lucky we’ll find an Easter egg or two in the Crash Course: Engineering series.

Okay, enjoy your weekend, see you again on Monday, and let’s each say one thing that’s good, smart, kind, or weird to one person in Landherr’s honor. And Luke? Kick back, enjoy a tasty and refreshing beverage, enjoy the love of your wife and daughters for a bit. Then it’s back to work — the world won’t be getting better, smarter, kinder, or weirder on its own, and putting down the chalk doesn’t mean you’re off the clock, Sparky.

Good job. Can’t wait to see what’s next.

PS: Speaking of comics that make the world better/smarter/kinder/especially weirder, there’s a new What If? today!

Spam of the day:

Live WebCam ( . )( . )

Man, that just does not work when you apply the quoted text style to it. Looks like the putative naked lady is leaning hard to her left and about to tumble over. Just — somebody steady her, please?

It’s late, there’s lots to talk about, onwards.

• Today marks ten years and 3547 strips from Lucas Landherr, or Dante Shepherd, or whatever he calls himself, the beardy chemical engineering guy with the chalkboard over at Surviving The World. Here is where I’d ordinarily wish the strip and creator many years of continued success, but that would be pointless. As previously announced, tomorrow will be the final strip for STW; when Landshep started, he was a doctoral student, and ten years later he’s a father twice over, a beloved faculty member at Northeastern University, and recognized as one of the most innovative teachers of engineering in the country.

  I’m not going to say that it’s because of webcomics, but I’m pretty sure the guy will tell you that having a creative¹ outlet is crucial for getting through the rigors of nerd school; for me it was being on the radio, for Dantecus, it’s horrible puns and chalk dust, raptor impressions, and Peanuts dances. He tried to keep his weirdo side on the downlow for a while after he got the teaching gig, but the students found him and embraced him. They’ve taken his weirdness and multiplied it, and will coincidentally take his other lessons out to their careers (and possibly their own students).

  It’s a significant legacy, and if you find it inspirational in the slightest², a reminder that tomorrow also marks the end of the Kickstart for the one and only STW print collection. Landherr (for that is his proper name) has future comics and future lessons in him, and it’s time to turn the page on the present³ project in favor of what comes next. Make your chalk always be the dust-free variety may the erasers always clap clean, and may you never lose the lab coat and Red Sox cap, Dr Landherr. Thanks for all the laugh-chuckles along the way.

• Speaking of Kickstarts, did you see that Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan broke all their previous records in funding the all-educational strips collection of Oh Joy, Sex Toy, titled Drawn To Sex? And that the just about 3000 backers blew through the nice-thousand funding level, and the US$80085 funding level, and ponied up a total of 85,793 damn dollars (American)?

  Congrats to Nolan and Moen — it must feel great to know that five years in, you’re more necessary and more appreciated than ever. Celebrate tonight, be remember that tomorrow you’ve got to produce a book that will blow (heh, heh) everybody’s socks off. Seeing as how you’ve done that repeatedly, I think you’ll manage it again this time.

• Speaking of blowing socks off, did you see that Molly Ostertag released a cover for the sequel to last year’s The Witch Boy, a book which I was not shy about declaring my favorite book (not just favorite graphic novel) of 2017? And that you can pre-order it now? The Hidden Witch releases on 30 October, just in time for Halloween, and it looks like we get a lot more of Charlie in this one. Set aside cash and space on the shelf now, this one is going to be great.
• Speaking of going to be great, we have the promised name of the new kids imprint at Macmillan, the one where Colleen AF Venable will be determining the look of things as the Creative Director. In her words, Odd Dot is Run by weirdos, making fun non-fiction for kids, and they’ve announced their first tranche of releases: the Tinker Active series of workbooks on STEM topics, Code This Game, aimed at teaching tweens to make videogames, and One More Wheel (written by Venable herself), a counting board book with a spinning wheel on the cover.

  If you’re at BEA (running in New York at the Javits, through tomorrow), look up Odd Dot at booth 2444 and give Venable a high five (or a hug, if she’s amenable) for me. I couldn’t be happier for all she’s done and is yet to do.

Spam of the day:

My name is Orko

What.

and we are a Video Content creation solution that helps businesses create videos easily. I would like to invite you to please review how you can easily produce quality videos to show or communicate more about Fleen.

Why is He-Man’s faceless dipshit sidekick trying to sell me on content (ew, ick) creation solutions?

_______________
¹ Or weird, if you prefer

² I find it hell of inspirational, even though Shepland insists on cleaving to an objectively inferior form of engineering. Electrical rules, chemical is stinky and gloopy and sometimes glowing green.

³ Want to creep him out? Stare him in the eye and in an overly enthusiastic voice ask the one word question, Presents? Trust me on this.

I know, sports? Just stick with me.

• Okay, this is just great: we have previously been informed that Kazu Kibuishi had received the ultimate sports geek honor — an official Day in his honor at a major league ballpark — but over the weekend the Seattle Mariners upped the stakes. On Sunday, Kibuishi threw out the first pitch at a Mariners home game.

  It may be that MLB is recognizing that the jock/nerd dichotomy is a fake idea, it may be that somebody in the front office has a kid who’s a huge Amulet fan, or maybe it’s the team members themselves that can’t wait until Book 8 drops¹. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter. Kibuishi got to suit up and throw a pitch from the mound in his hometown ballpark, and he looked pretty damn happy to be doing so. Here’s hoping that there are even bigger achievements and thrills in store for him the future.

• Speaking of bigger achievements and thrills, we are (as of this writing) a bit less than six and a half hours since the news broke this morning of Kickstart for the third print collection of Check, Please! by Ngozi Ukazu, and the book has already raised more than US$106,000 (nearly 500% of goal), provided by 1325 backers. Those numbers are changing as I type, so I’ll update them below just before I hit “post”.

  What’s not changing is the fact that all the top rewards (5 @ US$250, you get an original art bookplate; 5 @ US$400, you also get original character sketches; 1 @ US$1000, you get to be in the comic) have been snapped up already; if not for the fact that they were limited, I’m certain that each of those tiers would have ten times the claimants they do now.

  For reference, this campaign is already well over the total numbers for the first collection of Check, Please! (1577 backers, just under US$75K), and if we adopt the McDonald Rule², Ukazu is well on her way to eclipsing the second collection³. By tomorrow morning we’ll possibly be able to apply the FFF mk2, but it seems safe to say (especially given all the press and excitement right now around the upcoming release of a combined Year One/Year Two edition from :01 Books) that this will certainly clear the half-million mark.

  And, as I observed this morning within that first public hour, I can’t wait the hear the rhetorical knots that the “Diversity is killing comics” bozos will have to twist themselves into to explain about how this doesn’t really count, and how a comic by a Nigerian-American (!) woman (!!) with an ethnically-diverse cast (!!!) about gay (!!!!) hockey players is really a failure. The schadenfreude will be delicious.

• Not sports: Over the weekend the National Cartoonists Society held their annual meet-up in Philadelphia, and on Saturday night the various division awards were presented. The two awards for Online Comics went to (Long Form) John Allison for Bad Machinery (which is once again Scary Go Round), and (Short Form) to Gemma Correll for various work.

  Again, as a disclaimer, I’m involved in the process of producing the nominations for these two divisions, but I do not have a vote towards the awards themselves. And, as previously noted, I am a tremendous fan of both Correll’s and Allison’s work and am pleased to see their stellar work recognized.

  We at Fleen congratulate the winners as well as their fellow nominees, and note that between the wins for Bad Machinery and Scenes From A Multiverse, and the unprecedented three nominations for Octopus Pie, the reprobates of Dumbrella must be considered some of the best webcomickers ever.

Update to add: At 1447 EDT 29 May, 1370 backers, US$109,726, or 490% of goal.

Spam of the day:

Did you not file with the IRS this year because you owe back taxes?

No, because not filing is literally the dumbest thing you can do. If you owe three bucks, the penalty for not filing will dwarf the penalty for underpaying/paying over time if you owe three thousand (or thirty thousand, for that matter). And geez, you can file for an automatically-granted extension, which gives you more time to get your shit together.

_______________
¹ 25 September, y’all.

² The first three days of funding will represent 1/3 of your eventual total.

³ 5088 backers, just about US$399K raised. Right now, both backer count and total raised are about 27% of what Year Two achieved in 31 days. While we’re here, a note about timing: the campaign was publicized last night for Patreon backers, where it funded in less than half an hour. It hit 300% within an hour of the public announcement.

We’re kind of all over the place today.

• Okay, this one is going to cost you some money, maybe. Brad Guigar — cartoonist, speaker, consultant, itinerant smutmonger, and weaponized jollity delivery device — has stepped up to talk about the (almost entirely bad faith) backlash against diversity in comics. The vast majority of those who are opposed to characters who aren’t straight white dudes are like the anonymous guys (of course they’re guys) that regularly shit on Jim Zub for “caving”, who gives them far more thoughtful responses than they deserve. But somewhere in there are some few that — if you squint really hard — aren’t opposed to creating characters that don’t look like them, but are scared.

  If I get it wrong, their argument goes, they’ll call me racist/homophobic/whatever. I’m not! They’re making me that way! Yeah, it’s about this far from the claim that calling out racists makes them become full-bore Nazis, but let’s have a Zublike moment of patience for the argument. Or, better yet, let’s let Guigar do so in a post today at Webcomics Dot Com:

  “I’d write more black characters into my comic, but I’m … scared.”

  The rest is behind the WDC paywall, but the gist is this: yes, if you write outside your comfort zone, you’ll get it wrong sometimes (likely in inverse proportion to the amount of research and listening you do). People can tell the difference between somebody that tries, gets it wrong, apologizes, and learns, and somebody who’s being disingenuous. As a writer, stretching yourself is something you ought to do. I’d only add one thing to what Guigar wrote, and that’s the value of cultural/sensitivity reviewers, who can tell you where you’re getting things wrong before your work hits the wider world.

  It’s a neat refutation of the argument that everybody that’s trying to avoid diversity but I’m not like those haters over there, and the only drawback is that a bunch of those that most need to see it won’t. But then again, Guigar brings back posts for free preview on Fridays, and this would be a great one to include at some point in the future. Either that, or find the diversity-resistant creator you know and convince ’em to drop five bucks for a one-month trial.

• Speaking of diversity, the latest Cautionary Fables anthology has started its funding, this one with a focus on Oceania. Previous volumes did attract some discussion as to how many creators contributing stories about Africa and Asia belonged to the cultures and traditions that originated the stories; this time, I’m seeing a fair number of creators who identify as being from Pacific Island cultures contributing, and prominently promoting the campaign. For instance, from Rob Cham:
  

  I gotta commend @KateDrawsComics @sloanesloane and @kellhound for putting together such a rad anthology and giving us a platform to share our stories Got to read through this antho and man it is an amazing book

  That focus on a platform to share our stories wasn’t as visible in the last couple of volumes, and it’s a credit to series editor Kel McDonald (joined this time by Kate Ashwin and Sloane Leong) that she recognized that this makes for a better book and better stories. The Kickstart runs until 13 July (about a week shorter than the 60 days McDonald usually runs, but the 20th would run into SDCC and nobody needs that complication).

• Know what never attracts any controversy? Awesome cartoons about delightful pets. Sam Logan tallied up the pet-themed comics from the long and storied history of his career, and discovered he had more than 100 pages worth of President Dog (a dog), Baker (a corgi), Butcher (a cat), Buddy (a goldfish), and more. They’re now collected into Vote Dog, Kickstarting in softcover, hardcover, and deluxe artist editions, along with prints, pins, and commissions of your bestest fuzzy friend.

  Basically, this is your chance to get an entire book with the sensibilities of that corgi shapes poster, which is pretty much guaranteed to make anybody happy. The campaign runs until 21 June, with rewards expected by December aka the gifting season, hint, hint.

Spam of the day:

Can your idea survive the Shark Tank?

You’re looking for inventions you can rip off and exploit? May I point you at a dude that is literally giving ideas away?

You know I probably could have broken up all the news into several posts, but I couldn’t bear to not talk about any of the stuff that’s on deck today. My apologies in advance is this is more than you wanted to read, or if a scarcity of news in the coming days means there’s not much to discuss later in the week.

• I received multiple packages of joy from the good folks at :01 Books since lasts we spoke, and it’s going to be very weird to not credit the until-now omnipresent Gina Gagliano¹ for these review copies. :01 no longer being a one-person-per-job-function kind of place, it looks like Sophie Kahn is the one who sent out All Summer Long by Hope Larson, Animus by Antoine Revoy, and Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (words) and Emily Carroll (pictures). Give me time to thoroughly read them, and we’ll talk.

  Additionally, I received a copy of Be Prepared by Vera Brosgol (previously received and reviewed here), which means I now have an extra. Which means that one lucky reader is going to get a copy of Be Prepared in the mail, with the sole requirement that they ensure at least one age-appropriate reader (say, a kid from 9 up) gets to read it when you’re done. Pass it on, loan it out, whatevs … just make sure kids get to read it.

  If you want to be considered, send an email to me (that would be gary) who is the editor at this blog (Fleen), which is a dot-com. You have until I wake up on 1 June 2018 to get your entries in. Be aware, you may set the book down more than once because of feelings and or cringes of recognition. These are not bad things.

• It’s tough to find any bit of positivity in the world of social media, but like some metaphor about something beautiful rising from the muck that I can’t be bothered to construct right now, there’s occasionally bits that restore your hope. So far today, I’ve seen three.
  • First, via Lucy Bellwood, a comics piece by Wendy MacNaughton about prisoners in the infamous San Quentin lockup confronting the reality that America’s prison population — thanks to mandatory minimums and three strikes laws — has a rapidly graying population; there are a lot of incarcerated people who are elderly, sickly, and approaching the end of their lives.

    Eight inmates — all lifers, which means we’re meant to understand they are the worst of the worst — have responded by asking to create a hospice program so that their fellow inmates don’t have to die alone. They aren’t approved yet, but if there’s any sanity in the prison-industrial complex, this will be approved and spread to other facilities yesterday.

  • Second, from Scott McCloud, a note that comics and medical care seem to be overlapping to a growing degree (cf: Cathy Leamy, who uses comics for medical education and outreach), and a pointer towards the newest instance he’s noticed.

    Therapy Comics is tackling the problems that arise when mental care services (in this case, in England) rely on a baseline level of literacy and facility in English; whether because those in need of services speak other languages, or because whatever prompts the need for mental health care keeps them from communicating effectively, comics can help provide interventions without relying on language.

    The practitioner behind Therapy Comics, Michael Safranek, has so far provided resources for improving sleep hygiene, dealing with panic disorders, and learning progressive muscle relaxation. Safranek’s asking for feedback, so if you think you could use some help in any of these areas, or if you’re well-versed in how to build effective comics, give them a good reading and let him know your thoughts.

  • Thirdly, from many, many people, a thread by Steve Lieber of Helioscope Studio in Portland on how to give art critiques that is the best I’ve ever seen. It focuses on what the person seeking feedback needs (both in terms of what the reviewer sees in the work and what the reviwee identifies as the direction they want to take their work).

    It mostly boils down to a small — but crucial — bit of empathy at the beginning: We only have a little time, so I’m going to talk about what I see that needs improvement in your work, but that doesn’t mean everything is wrong. Show me your best, tell me what kind of work you’re seeking, who do you emulate or look to for inspiration? The rest is a set of principles that Lieber applies to himself as he looks through the portfolio, and it’s deeply insightful. If you work with others in any kind of creative fashion, this is worth your time.

• The hoo-ha in the Interwubs about exactly whose childhood is being ruined by the announcemnt of a Thundercats reboot has driven out another announcement out of the news cycle. Which is a pity, because the previous announcement, the one that nobody has anything by enthusiasm for, is that Noelle Stevenson will be co-executive producing and showrunning a She-Ra reboot for Netflix.

  On the one hand, it’s a little sad that more people will see Stevenson’s work because of a legacy IP than for her groundbreaking comics. On the other hand, a generation of kids will be influenced by the stories, the designs, the message that she gets to set into their eyeballs. And heck, her comics ain’t going anywhere, they’re still right there on my bookshelf and will be until the bindings fall apart from overuse.

  Congrats to Stevenson, and whether the next big thing you work on is more She-Ra, the Nimona adaptation, or something completely new, we’ll be here to snap it up.

Spam of the day:

Record and Download Any Video from Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO, The CW, NBC, CBS, FOX, ABC, and More. This is a Limited-Time Offer.

Wow. You get a one-time payment of US$39.99, I get infringement grief from at least nine famously litigious and massive corporations. I think your business model may not be skewed to my advantage.

_______________
¹ Every publishing house in the English-speaking world is mentally re-evaluating how well they’ve treated their key people; when Gina gets to hiring, you’re going to see the absolute best in the business go to work for her.

Likewise, I imagine every graphic novel imprint is frantically looking at their most lucrative creators, wondering if they can sneak in a contract extension a year early; when Gina gets to signing talent, you’re going to see some seismic shifts.

At least one of which, I’m certain, the Cool Person would preferred to not have made!

• That would be Yuko Ota, who in years past started developing a repetitive stress injury in her right (dominant) hand and arm. Kids! Don’t let anybody in the art community (school, peers, bosses) tell you that pain is normal and you just have to work through it or you’re a wuss. These people suck and I hate them. Because just work through it was the path that Ota took, and it wound up damaging her hand and arm in lasting ways.

  So she started — initially out of curiosity, latter out of necessity — drawing with her left (nondominant) hand to see how well she could do. Eventually, it became a lifeline that saved her career, in that she could do some work with her left while saving her right for more important (deadline, paying, etc) gigs¹. This years-long process is now documented in Offhand, Ota’s collection of her left-hand drawings (and in one spread, matching left- and right-hand drawings done at the same time), previously Kickstarted, now being delivered to backers. Give it a couple of weeks for fulfillment to finish up, and I’ll bet you’ll be able to score a copy in the Johnny Wander store.

  This book is for anybody that likes Ota’s work, anybody that has interest in the how and process of art, anybody that likes to see artistic progress, and anybody with an interest in the biology and anatomy of the human wrist (it’s basically a cobbled-together disaster!). For the latter, see if you can talk a Kickstarter backer out of the limited edition hardcover, which the lenticular image of Ota’s wrist MRI; please note that you cannot have my copy under any circumstances.

  For the art progress fans, it’s fascinating to watch how quickly Ota was able to move from crayon scribble level drawings to work that’s nearly indistinguishable from her baseline skill level; it’s evidence that art and style and more about brain than hands. In a couple of years, Ota’s left hand was able to develop the fine control that her brain spent a lifetime teaching to the right hand. For Johnny Wander fans in general, you’ll see early sketches of Percy and Leeds from Ota’s current work, Barbarous, from 2014, and what appears to be a proto-Leeds from as far back as 2013. Considering that Barbarous launched in 2016, it shows just how long the development of characters and story takes.

  And good news! When I spoke to Ananth Hirsh (Ota’s husband and creative partner) at MoCCA Fest last month, he mentioned that she’s found a treatment that is maintaining her function and keeping the discomfort where it should be. The damage is there, but it’s being contained, and now that you’ve got her example in front of you, Young Artist, make sure you don’t fall into the same trap. Take breaks! Stretch! Take breaks! Working through pain is not a good idea! Take friggin’ breaks!

• In what will also be a long-development-time project (with an equally long run), Lucas Landherr has been spending a chunk of his Surviving The World wind-down time consulting on a new series for the Crash Course channel at YouTube (a collaboration of John & Hank Green, and PBS Digital Studios). This one will be on the topic of Engineering and launched Episode 1 (What Is Engineering?) yesterday.

  The series is hosted by Dr Shini Somara, and over the next year will be looking at electrical engineering and other, lesser forms of engineering (like Landherr’s chemical engineering, Somara’s mechanical engineering, and Joey Chestnut’s civil engineering); Somara will talk about what the engineers doe in their disciplines, and show how they apply the laws of science to the solving of problems and the making of things. Or, as David Malki ! put it, how to make math louder.

  I’m certain that the entire series will be enlightening and teach people (many of whom have no idea what my professional tribe does) the hows and whys of engineering. And here’s hoping that we get some much served attention paid to the engineer who, perhaps more than any other, was responsible for modern communications and computing. Yes, I will always find a way to mention Shannon. Figure One, yo. Right-hand rule represent.

Spam of the day:

Save on printer ink

Nnnnnope. Nope, nope, nope, the spam filter is also telling me that you’re attempting to steal my identity just by looking at this ugly piece of garbage on the screen. Bugger off.

_______________
¹ Which is to say, she was able to damage her right hand more slowly while investigating possible treatments.

Whew, it’s been a while since we at Fleen had a regular post; lots of things have happened since then. Let’s hit them in no particular order.

• This year’s Creators For Creators grant has been announced, and the recipient is a British individual named Des (who, by the way, has a Patreon that is woefully undersubscribed). As a reminder, C4C offers a grant of US$30,000 to support a cartoonist or writer/artist duo to produce a new original work of 64-100 pages over the course of a year.

  Want to keep this Golden Age of comics that we’re in right now going? Make it possible for creators to live while they produce that first work and hopefully jump-start a sustaining career. It’s important work, and seeing as how there are names of people I know on the contributor’s list, I think it’s high time I found out if I can contribute as well. I’ll report back what I find out; I’m not a creator myself, after all, but damn if I don’t feel a need to support this medium that I love so.

• Jorge Cham doesn’t do comics anywhere near as frequently as he used to; a life of far-flung travel for speaking engagements, making two movies, and co-authoring a general-audience book on the frontiers of physics (with a possible future Nobel laureate¹) will do that. But he decided that he needed to acknowledge a proverbial elephant in the room, given that PhD started on 27 October 199-damn-7, which means he has more than two decades in the comics game.

  Between that milestone, and recently passing strip #2000, it’s time to acknowledge the age and do something appropriate. So on Friday last Cham announced that there’s going to be a 20th Anniversary book, the Kickstarting for which launched yesterday. Goal (plus an extra US$48) was met on Day One, naturally, and as of now the FFFmk2 puts the eventual total at US$80K-120K.

• Speaking of Kickstarts, how about a little love for the sequel to the Greatest Kickstarter Of All Time? No, not the potato salad guy, Brandon Bird and his Jerry Orbach lowrider. Thanks to 622 people who love the idea of capital-a Art, Jerry Orbach is forever memorialized on an art car; now it’s time to trick that mutha out and take it on the road:
  

  [W]hat do you *do* with a Jerry Orbach car? The most common suggestion I’ve had is, “You should take it to [name of town where I live].” I think they’re right: the world needs to experience the Orbach Car.

  So, the purpose of this project is: 1) upgrade and improve the car to make it tour-worthy, and then 2) take it on tour. How fancy and how far, that’s up to you! [emphasis original]

  Since the launch of the campaign yesterday morning, the Orbach Across America project has nearly reached its (exceedingly modest) goal of US$2500; at that level, the Orbachster will get new tires and rims and make its way to some local SoCal car shows. After that comes mechanical improvements and bling (LED effects! Orbach stencils for the cop spotlights!) with an ultimate stretch goal of US$18,000, which means that the car will drive all the way to New York City for a meet-up on West 53^rd and 8^th, aka Jerry Orbach Way. I can already hear the echoes of doink-doink.

And a quick side note: tomorrow will largely be spent in transit, so there may or may not be a posting. Hopefully! But no promises.

_______________
¹ Although please note that we at Fleen refer to all particle physicists as possible future Nobel laureates, given that pretty much only the particle types ever get the Nobel.

Spam of the day:

YOUR AREA HAS BEEN APPROVED FOR SOLAR
Federal, state, and local governments are offering limited time incentives in 2016

Received 25 April 2018. You are very bad at your job.

You’re a monster, Zach Weinersmith, a monster for today’s strip (trimmed above so as not to give away the punchline). And the extra gag (or votey, as the cool kids call it) was even more cruel.

It’s all so mean, in fact, that all I can do today is present my occasional Clearing Of The Spams in lieu of anything else that might require me to feel joy, damn you. It’s impossible for me to note that today is the release date of Vera Brosgol’s superlative Be Prepared, or that today’s Oh Joy, Sex Toy [NSFW, obvs] contained a nice little namecheck of ComicLab with Brad Guigar and Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett¹. Nope, it’s nothing but spams today, thanks ZACH.

PS: Yeah, okay, it’s not like you haven’t warned us before.

Spams of the day:

But as for the mystery of what happened to Australia’s megafauna, Price said: “The reality is that we just don’t have that much information.”

This eventually shifts around to the topic of knockoff NBA jersey available for bulk purchase from China. It’s kind of impressive, really.

The persons shown in photographs in this email may not necessarily be actual users of loveswans.com

Well, yeah, seeing as how it’s women in the photo and not swans.

The persons shown in photographs in this email may not necessarily be actual users of asiacharm.com

And another thing, as long we’re doing boilerplate disclaimers and what claim to be unsubscribe addresses — are you in fact located in Inverness, Scotland, or Madison, South Dakota? Because you use both addresses in all your spams, and South Dakota is not exactly known as a place you can get good single malt, golf courses by dramatic seaside cliffs, or fog-enshrouded moors. Make up your mind, already!

Nude selfies of women you most likely know are available for you to view

Those women are not nude. Do you get how words work?

Chase Finance

I get the feeling this is a setup for a joke. Is your finance running? Well, you better catch it!

Ever heard of Medical Bill Sharing? See if you qualify!
Christian Healthcare is a community of devout Christians helping each other out with unfortunate healthcare burdens. It is flexible, compliant with the Affordable care act, and provides a proper sense of community

Yeah, lemme stop you there. One, your cost-sharing model seem to shortchange people right when they need help the most (especially if the folks reviewing claims decide the claimants aren’t righteous enough). Two, you aren’t an insurance plan, and you replicate many of the drawbacks that the Affordable Care Act meant to deal with. Third, do you know that you’ve got the same opt-out address as the mail order bride folks up above?

_______________
¹ Persevere. You gotta scroll down a ways before you find the plug (so to speak).

So I’ve spent the day trying to get Work Stuff™ in shape before I head off for The Comicest Place On Earth (aka Alaska Robotics Comics Camp), and there were issues with the site¹, so this is going to be a bit brief. Then again, it about something that, if you’re truly interested, you don’t need me talking at length, you need a link and then for me to get out of the way.

So then — on Friday last, C Spike Trotman (who is making noises about a YA line within Iron Circus, about which I will be certain to ask at ARCC) released a new e-book on the topic of marijuana. Not about the legal fights over legalization, or about the disparities of unequal prosecution and incarceration, but about the practical, nuts-and-bolts details of how to get high. Totally high, mildly high, completely balls-tripping high, plausibly deniable high, the whole range:

Twenty-six states and Washington, DC have decriminalized or legalized marijuana use, and more are joining the policy shift every year. Dispensaries are popping up everywhere, and experienced users are openly rejoicing—but where does that leave the marijuana newbie, cowed by years of Just-Say-No disinformation but curious about what they’ve missed?

Written by experienced, conscientious users and presented in an easy-to-read comic book format, How Do You Smoke Weed? fills that gap, covering everything from weed history to strains, couch-locks to body highs, and edibles to vaporizers. Perfect for the cannabis-curious, and with new insights for the veteran smoker.

Apart from the comics aspects, this is something I have absolutely zero interest in. My experiences with pot consist of a painful, resinous feeling in the back of my throat from being around people that smoke, which means I’ve never tried it myself because damn, it hurts just to be adjacent. Also, having a bedroom across the hall from my brother in high school, I probably would have failed any pee test due to proximity.

But you know what? ‘Long as y’all aren’t blowing smoke in my face (or stinking up my house), do what y’all want. Oh, and every state that legalizes weed? You have a moral obligation to release and expunge the records of everybody you imprisoned for possession².

You can find HDYSAW? in the Iron Circus Shop for five bucks (which will certainly pay for itself in reduced experimentation costs, if nothing else), 82 pages of non-hysterical info for your reading pleasure and future reference.

Spam of the day:

Check credit scores instantly

Gee, I dunno, what do you get from scrupulously paying off everything in full every month since forever?

_______________
¹ Grumble, grumble, DNS not finding my site on the wired internet, but phone’s over-the-air data working just fine.

² And, barring ancillary crimes of violence, dealing as well.

The last time Vera Brosgol wrote a graphic novel, I had this to say:

I could go on for another 1000 words and still not address these adequately, so let’s just finish up with the facts: Anya’s Ghost goes on sale on 7 June. It is 224 pages long, was written and drawn by Vera Brosgol, and is the best comics work of 2011.

That was just about exactly seven years ago, and if there’s one thing you can say about Brosgol, she’s consistent. Her new autobio-graphic novel from :01 Books (who I thank for the review copy), Be Prepared, goes on sale 24 April. It is 256 pages long, and is the best comics work of 2018. I’ll qualify that with a so far this time, because quite frankly the graphic novel game has gotten so much stronger in the past seven years, and we’ve got books from top flight creators on the way. More about the book below, with spoilers aplenty.

Vera just wants to fit in, like any other nine (almost ten!) year old girl, but she doesn’t. She’s too different, too poor, too Russian. The rules of fitting in are pretty clear (sleepover parties with Carvel ice cream cakes and stuffed-crust pizza), but the execution just isn’t quite there (cake from the Russian bakery, pizza with crusts tragically devoid of stuff) and so she sits on the periphery of grade school social circles, drawing and wondering where she’ll fit in. Most of all, all the other kids clear out for summer camp, leaving Vera and her brother Phil the only kids in town.

Until she learned about a camp where she’d surely fit in — a camp for Russian expat kids and their kids, a camp that understands the mysteries of Slavic language (they keep chiding her to not use English), a camp that knows about the Orthodox ritual, a camp full of kids just like her.

Except even when you’re with the kids you’re just like, snotty teenage girls are still snotty, open-air latrines full of spiders are still disgusting, and boys — from eight to eighteen — are still infuriatingly immature and gross. It’s going to be a long two weeks.

Did I say two? On the day that she’s supposed to come home, Mom has news: she’s got an important job interview, and if Vera and Phil can hang in there another two weeks, it could mean a job that she’s been working towards ever since they came to America; the sort that could keep them from being too poor (but Vera knows she’ll still be too different and too Russian). It’s a huge sacrifice for a nine year old, staying where the other kids hate you and the counselors don’t understand and you have to poop in a hole.

It’s even more painful when she realizes that in some ways, she’s been picking up the mean girl lessons too well; Vera catches herself in some incidences of casual cruelty, shocked at herself. It’s cringey and painful in exactly the right way, like all realizations that make us better people. It accompanies the occasion of making a friend, of rising above the disdain of snotty teen girls, and finding a way to get back at the boys¹. The remainder of camp gets lighter (even if you have to poop in a hole), and the prospect of returning the next year becomes less horrifying — but still not as appealing as the idea of a hike around the park at home, where they have toilets.

I’m certain that when the book launches next week (and sees its premiere at the Alaska Robotics Mini-Con in Juneau, next Saturday), Brosgol will have plenty to talk to kids about. The experiences she writes about are so true, so universal (and so, so funny) that they’re going to declare her a kindred soul. Every kid that finds themselves on the outs, awkward, unsure, hiding behind their glasses, will find themselves in this book, and find a bit of hopefulness for the future.

Because by the end of the book, she’s getting the hang of it just a bit. Maybe her first friend is at Russian camp and lives far away, but she’s a friend. And if she can figure out how to navigate mean girls at Russian camp, she can figure out how to do it back in Albany! She’s finally — finally — starting to feel at home in America, if not yet American.

But to be Russian is to suffer, and there’s one more upheaval in store as the book winds down; Vera didn’t fit in in the upstate suburbs, she didn’t fit in at Russian camp, and now she’ll have the opportunity to reset and not fit in someplace completely new. There’s a natural hook for a sequel in the closing pages, and I just hope it doesn’t take seven years for it to come to fruition.

But if it does? I’ll have a spot on the bookshelves waiting for it — like young Vera, I have learned to Be Prepared.

Be Prepared goes on sale Tuesday, 24 April, at bookstores everywhere.

Spam of the day:

Some things are better left to the professionals

I was afraid to see what kind of pornspam this was, and relieved to see it’s actually for Terminix pest control.

_______________
¹ Which required the development of sweet ninja skills. Nine year old (almost ten!) Vera is so cool.