Business model just starting, business model just wrapped up. Let’s get digging.

• Know what I love? Kickstarter post-mortems. I can’t get enough of people sharing how a campaign went, and especially talking about how finances measured up (or out, or whatever ever direction finances are measured in). The latest one comes courtesy of David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc, arbiter of image quality standards and part-time Mr Bean impersonator), who spent a longer than average (and more expensive than usual) time last year putting together the first print collection of his comics.

  Since Morgan-Mar works in LEGO-brand construction sets and minifigs, he had to consult with lawyers to figure out if printing a book made up of photos of LEGO things he built would possibly raise the ire of the Danish brickmongers before he even got to the usual book parts of making a book. Conclusion: maybe, but if they did sue him, he’d be able to mount a credible defense (whatever that might cost).

  Not quite as reassuring as Heck no, they’d never be able to touch you!, but good enough to get started! And, in fact, if not for the more than three thousand Aussie fun bucks, he would have lost only AU$260.21 on the endeavour. With the legal fees — well, ouch. But one thing not included in the breakdown is how many books over the Kickstarter rewards were printed, and thus may make a dent in the debits column as they sell in future.

  But the good news is, he notes in the post-mortem that he intends to print more books, and considerable costs are one-offs, making what would otherwise be a pricey hobby a less pricey — or even slightly remunerative — hobby instead. And in case you missed out on the Kickstart and wanted to help Morgan-Mar reduce the loss he took to provide you, his loyal readers, with what you always said you wanted, the book’s available at TopatoCo¹.

• I’ve mentioned Douglas Wilson on this page previously; he’s a cartoonist and animator from Manchester, England, UK, and work’s pretty damn good. He’s looking to shift a character — Jack Astro — that’s he’s been working into animated shorts for about five years into a longform story, and the first part of that went live yesterday. Take ‘er away, Doug:
  

  Jack Astro is a test pilot for the experimental Singularity Drive program. After sending a duplicate version of Jack and his ship to multiple galaxies in the universe – the drive scattered across space. He must reassemble the lost pieces before the drive re-activates to send him home. Doug is currently writing and drawing a 130 page comic which will update twice a month in 5 page vertical scrolling chunks of story on his website BandOfOne.co.uk.

  Patreon backers will receive PDF downloads of each issue of the comic as he completes them so they can read the story in larger chunks (first issue is 33 pages) instead of waiting for the story to unfold on the website.

  More precisely, Patreons at the $1 level get access to that first block of story, and if you aren’t on Patreon you can also obtain it via Gumroad for £1.50 (along with the Jack Astro shorts & earlier works as pay-what-you-want). Wilson kindly sent along a copy of issue 1 for me to peruse, and I enjoyed it — it’s well worth an entry-level Patreon pledge or cost of a cup of coffee (not even the fancy coffee, just the regular kind).

Spam of the day:

Magnificent things from you, guy

Spelled my name wrong.

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¹ Just sayin’. Also, if Morgan-Mar received 100% of the cost of the books (which won’t be the case — TopatoCo’s providing warehousing and handling services, and gets paid for them), a mere eight books would erase the non-legal loss (which is reasonable, as the legal costs will apply to future books). If you wanted to bring him all the way up to zero loss (which also means making nothing on considerable personal effort), it’ll take just about exactly 100 books (AU$3560.21 lost, US$27 or AU$35.57 per book at today’s exchange rate).

The news is out, albeit after an unavoidable week’s delay: Kelly & Zach, the principals of Weinersmith & Weinersmith Enterprises, have announced their biggest project to date¹: a book on the technologies most likely to change the world in a relatively immediate timeframe (call it the next handful of decades) and how likely each one is to come to pass as their adherents claim.

It’s called Soonish, it’s got wonderful introductions to ten areas of technological exploration², and the occasional cartoon. Explainer here, pre-orders here, and despite the fact that Soonish has a major publisher behind it (Penguin), Weinersmith (Z) can’t get away from the indie creator let’s Kickstart this to the moon! habit, and thus the number of pre-orders (release date is in October) will determine rewards that will be widely distributed.

Oh, yeah, and Weinersmith (Z) has also produced — in addition to today’s announcement cartoon, with requisite Phil Plait mockery³ — two regular SMBC comics today. I say regular advisedly, as it’s not a word I’d normally apply to W(Z). The first of them is a fairly standard SMBC, but the second features the single most horrifying thing ever drawn in a comic by a Certified Genius Master Hypnotist. Steel your hearts and be not afraid. Or actually, just don’t eat anything before you read that second one. Trust me.

For non-Weinersmith related news:

• I’m not sure if it’s pop-culture saturation or just Rich Stevens being really good at expressing the intrinsic character of things in the minimum number of pixels, but you can totally tell exactly what each of those action figures behind Electron Mike are in today’s Diesel Sweeties. It’s a marvel of refined deisgn.
• The Creators For Creators grant was announced about eleven months ago, took its first applications about ten months ago, closed them about four months ago, and announced its first recipient over the weekend and EmCity. M Dean, illustrator and cartoonist, is figuring out what to do with an extra US$30K to support her creative efforts while working on her next project, titled I Am Young. There’s a brief interview with Dean at the C4C homepage (undoubtedly, it’ll move to a subpage in future), which is well worth a read.

  Also worth mentioning: that the C4C grant was founded with the financial backing of a bunch of Image folks and C Spike Trotman, who continues to rip shit up in webcomics publishing. It’s been a bit less than two days since Dean’s recognition, so give ’em a bit of time to regroup and then we’ll see what this year’s application cycle looks like; I’d imagine it looks a lot like last year’s six month application period, but we’ll all find out authoritatively in the near future.

• It is a well established phenomenon that we at Fleen — that is to say, me at Fleen, aka Gary — loves me some Digger (yes, I know there’s serious singular-plural disagreement in there; deal with it.gif). A large part of that comes from the fact that Digger creator Ursula Vernon is probably the best writer of (vague handwavy gestures because I know this is an almost wholly useless term) fantasy this side of Neil Gaiman, the best writer of (more gestures) YA this side of Raina Telgemeier, and the best combiner of the two this side of Jeff Smith. Specifically, she does smart, empathetic, actual-person girls better than anybody this side of Hayao Miyazaki.

  Thus, when her serialized novel Summer In Orcus debuted online last equinox, I recommended it sight unseen. Well, not quite, she’d done the equivalent of the first chapter on LiveJournal a few years prior, so I knew it started with Baba Yaga’s chicken house trotting down the back alley of suburbia, and how can you dispute a start like that? It was going to be damn good, there existed no other mathematical possibility.

  It exceeded my expectations significantly, and caused me no small outbursts of emotions at regular intervals over the next three months. Frustrations at the days-long waits between chapters. Utter and true heartbreak at loses suffered (and I use that word precisely; Vernon made her heroine hurt, because sometimes that’s what life teaches you: that you can do your best with the best of intentions and people still get hurt and you can’t shake the feeling it’s your fault even when it isn’t but maybe it is a little), blind hatred of the second-tier villain, soaring exultation at particularly smart or heartwarming or weird circumstances in the story.

  This is not a fairy tale that instructs moral lessons, it’s one that offers warnings about what the world is like. It’s certainly not one that gets you to Happily Ever After without an equal measure of regrets. Also, there’s the bit with the cheeses, which is pretty damn hilarious.

  The complete Summer In Orcus has been available in various e-formats since the story wrapped eight-ten weeks back, and Vernon acknowledged the wants of those of us that craved a book book version, one that works by flashlight under the covers, and said she’d try to figure something out. The figuring is apparently past, as her Digger publisher, Sofawolf Press, had an announcement over the weekend:

  We are still working out final details, but we can reveal that there will be both a softcover and a hardcover edition, and the cover and interior illustrations will be done by Lauren Henderson (aka: “Louvelex”). We’ll be doing a very simple Kickstarter to help us gauge demand, but we’ll also have a couple stretch goals that will allow us to spiffy up the final book.

  Final details to come over the next month or so. For me, that’ll be a hardcover for my library, and I figure I’ll get a stack of paperbacks — I’ve got nieces and nephews that need this book, and for half a year I’ve been pointing people at Summer In Orcus as the entry point to Vernon’s work; now I won’t have to try to remember the URL, I can just put a copy in their hands.

  We’ll be sure to let you know about the Kickstart when it comes, but do yourself a favor and start clearing space on your shelves now. And if anybody reading this is at Laika and wants to figure out their next project, I would suggest that Summer + stop motion is a friggin’ license to print money.

Spam of the day:

Up yours!

Somebody’s seen Sweet Charity too many times. Yeesh.

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¹ Again, if we discount the production of two miniature alive humans.

² Reminder-slash-disclaimer: I’ve read a late pre-final version, and it’s impressive how many absolutely brilliant, Nobel laureate-level people were willing to go on the record in a book that also features dick jokes.

³ Scroll to the bottom, and don’t forget to hover over the comic for a bonus gag.

Hey, are you a person that loves the dinosaurs? Ha, that was a trick question because everybody loves the dinosaurs, they were the best and knowing that they existed is a pure joy for every living human today. I think this may be the one instance of R Stevens being factually wrong about something, there being only type of person in the world: the type that loves dinosaurs.

(I’m not even going to mention the fact that I’m contracting with an artist that makes bird models out of PVC pipe that you can plant in your yard; I want him to construct for me a pack of velociraptors to hide behind the big tree in my front yard.)

When there’s a new book that will teach the young (and when it comes to dinosaurs, we are all young), I am there. And when that book comes from a onetime paleontological field worker, one with a deep and abiding love of dinosaurs (and other extinct critters that were not dinosaurs), and who does comics that are delightful? I’m swooning at the news:

Oh! I guess this was announced!! You can now pre-order Earth Before Us: Dinosaur Empire, my book about the Mesozoic~ https://www.amazon.com/Dinosaur-Empire-Earth-Before-Us/dp/1419723065/…

I can’t think of a webcomicker I’d want to do a book about dinosaurs more than Abby Howard. Her art style is clean and accessible, her mania for getting dinosaurs right is mighty, and her knowledge of extinct critters is damn near encyclopedic. Dinosaur Empire! wouldn’t be out of place in :01’s Science Comics series, but for the fact that they led off with a book about dinosaurs which was pretty damn good. The color is going to let her imagination run riot with respect to what the pelts and plumages of dinosaurs looked like¹, and the premise (young girl and retired paleontologist neighbor lady go on a tour of the Mesozoic thanks to Science Magic) will let Howard drop some knowledge in an easy, conversational fashion.

Dinosaur Empire! (128 pages, color, hardcover) releases on 1 August from Abrams Books, with a list price of US15.99; pre-orders are available now from your preferred vendor. With any luck, we’ll see a book tour to natural history museums.

Spam of the day:

The Meaning of 24

Well, numerology-peddling spammer, I’ma go out on a limb here and say that the meaning of 24 is it’s one more than 23 and one less than 25. I know that multiples of 6 and 12 are really, really significant if you’re an ancient Babylonian (and we can thank them for things like 360 degrees in a circle), but round these parts, it just means that eggs were on sale and I bought two cartons instead of one.

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¹ The one part of my own youth-born interest in dinosaurs that I resent is that I grew up being taught they were drab grey and green and brown creatures. Boring! Kids these days get crests and colors and displays and their dreams of dinosaurs are so much richer for it.

In this case, their announcement of Kids and YA Guests for 2017 (held, as always, in/around the Toronto Reference Library, this year on 13 & 14 May), which includes some huge names: Isabelle Arsenault and Fanny Britt! Svetlana Chmakova! Elise Gravel! Matt Forsythe! Jarrett Williams! And also a huge crew of creators coming with :01 Books, including Scott Westerfeld, Shannon Hale, LeUyen Pham, Faith Erin Hicks, Molly Ostertag, Matthew Loux, Mike Cavallaro, Mike Holmes, George O’Connor, Farel Dalrymple, Box Brown, Penelope Bagieu, and Alison Wilgus, half of whom will have debuts. It’s gonna be a great time in the Big Smoke¹.

Spam of the day:

Monthly curated natural treats and toys for your pup

My dog is presently barking his head off at a pile of squirrel poop. Got that in your curation?

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¹ They call Toronto that, right? I mean, I knew about Cabbagetown being a nickname, but I’m pretty sure I saw Big Smoke somewhere.

No big, I just make my living by speaking all day, argh. Let’s do a roundup.

• I had a chance to talk to him about it a month back at the Dr McNinja Wrap Party, but as the announcement hadn’t been made, I told Christopher Hastings that I’d hold onto the news. But now the announcement is live and we can all enjoy the fact that Hastings is writing a Baby Groot series for Marvel, starting in May. It’s planned for a story arc that can extend depending on how well the early issues sell, and I both like to read Hastings’s stuff and want him to make a living¹, so make a note to order I Am Groot from your local comic shop.
• A two-fer from the Theorist Emeritus Of Comics, Scott McCloud: Firstly, a general announcement of his next book, which we won’t see for a couple of years. He told me about this one in the wake of The Sculptor, and it’s been on my mind ever since. Short form, he’s doing a book about how visual communication works, which means that he’s combining the philosophical thrusts of three of my favorite works: The Visual Display Of Quantitative Information by Tufte; The Elements Of Typographic Style by Bringhurst, and his own Understanding/Reinventing/Making Comics trilogy.

  Speaking of the trilogy, McCloud also gave us a sneak peek at the new cover for Understanding Comics, with a promise of Reinventing and Making getting a similar redesign. I have great affection for the original covers and I’m not running out to replace them with the new, but I do like the strong design and statement the new cover(s) make(s). There’s a shift in emphasis from the comics to McCloud himself, with his cartoon avatar’s face too prominent to even entirely fit in the image.

  The message is unmistakably clear — these glasses have seen some things, and behind those lenses there is wisdom waiting to be dropped. The medium isn’t the message any longer, the messenger is now the focus; in a few decades, cartoon!McCloud will be as iconic and indicative of the idea of comics as cityscape spelling out The Spirit or a superhero surrounded by Kirby crackle.

• Speaking of prophets, Jon Rosenberg² has been killing it on the editorial cartooning lately, with his Michael Flynn cartoon sneaking in mere hours before Flynn’s resignation. In today’s contribution at The Nib, he seeks to harness this power for good. Meanwhile, Tatsuya Ishida just cuts to the chase to say what we’re all feeling.

Spam of the day:

Hey man… hows it going I noticed the debt you are in and I’m here to help

Nice try. My debt-to-income ratio is negative. Those predatory banks owe me money, that’s how good I am at savings.

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¹ Also on the want list — in some future Marvel movie, I want to see his name listed in the credits for his work defining Gwenpool; for that matter, lets see Ryan North and Erica Henderson listed for their definitive work on Squirrel Girl in the same credits.

² Disclaimer: the guy that first prompted me to start this page, and my source for hosting.

So this is gonna be quick so I can get some tea and sleep.

Coincidentally after yesterday’s noting of Iron Circus’s distribution deal putting new books into stores, C Spike Trotman is making it worth your while to get any of the Smut Peddler series of books — in print or PDF — at a discount, for today only:

With the Smut Peddler Double Header Kickstarter rewards shipping out to backers, we’re finally able to offer the print editions of My Monster Boyfriend and Yes, Roya in the store! Additionally, the 2012 edition of Smut Peddler is back in print at last! Finally, it is Valentine’s Day, so we thought we’d give you a little love.

Today only, you can use the voucher code VolcanicDeclaration at check out to get 15% off on these three dirty books. This applies to both the print and PDF editions, too.

So get your Valentine something romantical or treat yourself! Today is all about lovin!

Thanks for all the love facilitation, Spike. Rest of you, get on that¹. Oh, and while I’m absolutely, mathematically certain that Spike decided to do this weeks ago — she is not a woman that leaves things to chance — if by any happenstance my post yesterday prompted her, you’re all welcome, and please enjoy the high-class erotica.

Spam of the day:

Go here to help out someone’s super hot mom

You know what they say: every horny MILF slut is someone’s super hot mom, so treat her right [SFW, promise!].

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¹ And get your mind out of the gutter.

Oh, that’s not what you call it? Internet Jesus was the first person I ever saw to point out that Saint Valentine’s Day was originally a Roman celebration of blood, werewolves, and sex called Lupercalia; they’ve got cards and everything. ANYway, if you’re into the modern interpretation of sexytimes without the blood and werewolves, read on.

Because webcomics (and even webcomics collections) often don’t make it into traditional distribution channels, it is sometimes months or even years before a long-since-available webcomic collection makes it to comics shops, or regular bookstores¹. Case in point: I’ve had my copy of Chester 5000: Isabelle And George by Jess Fink for months now (and it’s been in her TopatoCo store for nearly as long), but even with Top Shelf Comix behind the book, it’s lagged getting into the stores.

Until now:

Chester 5000: Isabelle & George comes out in stores & on Amazon tomorrow, VALENTINES DAY!! ? ? ? http://www.topshelfcomix.com/catalog/chester-5000-book-2-isabelle-george/954 …

Not sure if those heart emoji are going to come through or not. They’re cute, so I hope they do. [Editor’s note: they didn’t.]

Anyway, if you haven’t read Isabelle And George, it’s mostly a prequel to Chester 5000. That is, it tells the story before Chester 5000, then there’s a tiny bit in the middle that recaps the events of the earlier book, then adds a coda to the now-expanded cast and all their various combinations of friendship, love, and hot, hot Victorian boning down (with or without robots).

But seriously, though — even though both Chester books are definitely (defiantly, even!) adults-only, there’s a sweetness to them, a sense of empathy towards the characters that is utterly charming as well as pulse-quickening; Fink is unparalleled in her ability to make us care about her characters as people, and to be happy for their joys and orgasms.

Get a copy for the love of your life and let it inspire you towards feats of horny werewolfdom. Don’t give it to your kids (even though, being largely wordless², it’s an easy story to follow), and probably don’t give it to your mom. Your cool aunt, though, the one that your parents vaguely warn you about, but who takes you ballooning over river gorges? She’ll love it.

Spam of the day:

:):)LetsPlayCALLOOFBOOTY:):)

Gosh, @SeXXXyChikk69, thanks for the offer, but did you really mean Call Oof Booty? The Oof makes it sound less fun and more like moving furniture, you know, like Oof, this damn sofa is heavy, gonna be sore tomorrow.

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¹ And mad props to C Spike Trotman, as Iron Circus’s distro deal means a whole lot more webcomics gonna make it to a whole lot more store a whole lot quicker. My Monster Boyfriend made to the trade last week, concurrent with its initial release; Poorcraft: Wish You Were Here never would have made it into shops widely without the deal, and is now playing distro catch-up.

² Seriously, the only wordless story that’s easier to follow would be one of Andy Runton’s Owly books. C5K: I&G would make Owly and Wormy hell of blush but they’d seriously be happy for all involved.

Don’t look at me like that. Find any cluster of comickers in the bar on a convention night, and they’re drawing their characters getting up to shenanigans. I seen some things that Owly and Jellaby have done that’ll turn your hair white.

Oh my goodness, are you ready for some terrific news? Hundreds of strips that are (by any reasonable measure) long past due in print will finally be collected, and there was much rejoicing:

Cat and Girl has been a thing online since 1999, publishing three print volumes and 1,420 comics. Now finally (FINALLY!) we can make the comics from 2010 to 2015 available in print. That’s 536 full color pages of mostly black and white comics in two books. We’ve decided to call them Cat and Girl Vol. IV and Cat and Girl Vol. V. Dinotrux was taken.

That’s straight from Cat and Girl creator Dorothy Gambrell, via the fine folks at Make That Thing; MTT’s involvement means that the Kickstarter campaign [link pending] is planned out in detail, will run by the numbers when it goes up next week, and that the physical production and fulfillment will be out of Gambrell’s hair leaving her free to make comics.

Comics which, it must be admitted, we do not talk about nearly enough here at Fleen; the greatness of Cat and Girl is self-evident and omnipresent. Just as it would be a waste of time to say The sky continues to be above the land or This background radiation occurs according to mathematically-predictable patterns, so would it be to say Cat and Girl is one of the sharpest observations of life in the world, and at times is also startlingly prescient. Just take it as a given that this remains true, and if ever it isn’t, be sure to duck and cover because we’ll be full into the eschaton.

And the data geek in me would be remiss if I didn’t notice that line in Gambrell’s announcement about mostly black and white comics, which means some will be in color, which means we’ll get the data shares, yes. So keep your eyes peeled on Thursday, 16 February, as Cat and Girl’s next half-decade worth of strips go up for crowdfunding; you have until then to make room on your shelves.

Spam of the day

Enjoy Free Live Chat with Russian Beauties

But you’re claiming to represent UkraineBrides4You.com! Classifying Ukrainian ladies as Russian is sort of a manifestation of the nationalist hegemony that is causing armed fighting in eastern Ukraine. Your come-on for your identity-theft site is lost in all the tragedy that you have glibly tried to gloss over.

It’s astonishing how quickly a series of books can be released when you’ve got all the pages done. Case in point: Jason Shiga’s Demon wrapped its online run about the time its first volume made it to these shores some six months ago. Two months later it released to comics shops and bookstores, and today is the release of Demon, volume two (of four). Thanks to Gina Gagliano at :01 Books, who sent me a review copy, we can talk about Shiga’s latest book.

It’s really fun, you guys. And more than a little disturbing in a way that makes sociopathy downright fun.

For those of you that didn’t read the first one, a quick recap (which Shiga accomplishes in 25 quick panels): Jimmy Yee is a demon. He can’t die; when events occur that would end the life of an ordinary person, his consciousness hops into the nearest person and he takes over their life. This is both very inconvenient (as he’s very much trying to die, having lost his wife and daughter to a drunk driver, and failed in his plan for revenge) and puzzling (he didn’t know he was a demon before the first suicide attempt), and he’s trying to both figure out his situation and stay out the of the clutches of the OSS, who want to use him for their own purposes. But they didn’t count on the smarts and amorality of a man who’s willing to repeatedly kill himself by any means necessary to possess his way out of his current situation.

That’s right, they tried to out-think an actuary.

Now (and here ends the recap of volume 1, so spoilers ahoy for volume 2) Jimmy’s pieced together enough of his powers to come to a logical conclusion: all he has to do is outlive his adversaries. Couple of possessions of random folk, lie low, wait 75 years or so and BAM! Victory. After his revenge on the man that killed his family, that is. Jimmy Yee (mild-mannered actuary pushed to the edge) may have been thwarted, but Jimmy Yee (demon) is pretty well unstoppable.

There’s just one thing he hadn’t counted on: demonism is hereditary and his daughter, Sweetpea, isn’t dead. She’s in the body of her killer. Then there’s another: the OSS figures it out, and also figures that a quiet guy with no interests beyond being an actuary will do anything for his remaining family, and they’ve got her. They want to use Jimmy (and undoubtedly Sweetpea as well, once she’s grown) to impose a new order on the world, and the only way out from under their extremely well-planned thumb is to kill a whole buttload of people that he either actively hates or has never met and cares nothing for. To be honest, it’s probably more the latter.

Yeah, Jimmy’s a lot smart, a lot ruthless, and more than a teeny bit amoral; every single person in that buttload has hopes and dreams and Jimmy absolutely does not care that possessing and then discarding each of them in favor of the next one is no different than murder¹. And that’s just the ones he possesses — there’s going to be a bunch he just straight up kills because they’re in his way, or wrong place/wrong time. Getting out from under the OSS’s thumb is going to easily triple the size of the buttload and Jimmy is going to sleep like a baby at the far end of it. Jimmy and Sweetpea could get to see the end of the species (if not the planet, or the universe) if they’re just a little bit careful and that’s the improbably happy note the book ends on, 90 years in the future, free and clear.

Except.

There’s still two more books, and Shiga’s not likely to spend them all on a flashback of how Jimmy spent the intervening time because there’s no stakes in that story. But there is one dangling thread, one danger that Jimmy has certainly not overlooked — there’s one other person knows about demons. The inventor of the demonizing process used it on himself and killed multiple buttloads of people making his escape back in the ’40s. Since then he’s made himself absolute ruler of a South Asian petrostate, and he certainly knows the one way to kill a demon is to make it impossible to possess anybody at death by having another demon be the nearest person. With one demon in the world, you’re functionally immortal²; with more than one there is a threat out there, somewhere, that you can’t ignore. July will bring volume 3 and November volume 4, in which we’ll learn just how much one man³ with one power can reshape the world into his own image.

In the meantime, enjoy Demon volume 2 (and pick up volume 1 while you’re at it) — it’s smart, tight, fun, and a bit disturbing once you realize just how bloody the hands of the hero (who you’re rooting for) have become. Somewhere, Jason Shiga is smiling as we enjoy the story, and that smile is just a little too wide and filled with teeth.

Spam of the day:

20???????hat Will Make Your Day More Interesting

This only works if you actually attach the 20 pictures, or at least a link to your virus-ridden hellsite. YOU ARE VERY BAD AT BEING A SPAMMER.

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¹ Informed that his body count is up to 287 men, women, and children, Jimmy is utterly unaffected

² Which brings up an interesting situation — if Jimmy and/or Sweetpea ever tires of immortality, either one just has to commit suicide near the other to be actually dead-dead. But the remaining one? No way to die, ever. That’s gonna get lonely.

³ More precisely, two men and by then one woman, all more than a century old and with varying degrees of desire for all that life offers. But Jimmy’s clearly our protagonist, so let’s just go with one man.

So I’d heard that this week’s New York Times Best Seller List would feature March mixed in with the real-people books which don’t have pictures, but heck if I can find it. The Children’s lists (which is not synonymous with Graphic Novels either) feature a distinct lack of Raina Telgemeier, and she’s not in the Fiction lists either¹.

But if the paper of record’s Books editor doesn’t think that graphic novels deserve note (and I’m not going to link in her entirely insulting Look, kids, COMICS! quote about March the same week it became the most honored book of the damn year), then we’ll have to recognize the best of [web]comics via other channels. Let this, then, serve as your reminder that nominations for the 2016 NCS Awards close tomorrow, and that there are two separate categories for work first published online: long form and short form. Oh, and you can submit work of another cartoonist, if you think it’s likely to be overlooked.

Either form requires 12 pages of comics be submitted (no physical copies), along with some basic biographical information. And I feel that I should also remind you that I have been involved in the process of selecting nominees since the online division awards were established in 2012². I’d be fascinated to see what changes have been wrought on the membership and direction of the NCS in the years since I sat in on some of their sessions.

Jut be wary of one possible side effect: if you win, you turn into Jon Rosenberg for a year, until the next winner is announced. Unless you’re already Jon, in which case you get to spend a year as Jon-Squared, which is both better and worse than you are presently imagining.

Spam of the day:

GAIN BENEFITS OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA – LEGALLY

While it’s true that the hoops one must jump through to get medical-indicated cannabis in New Jersey are stupid onerous and withholding approved-buyer credentials from those who would benefit from them is idiotic, your offer does not entice me because:

a) I don’t have any conditions that would benefit from weed, and;

b) Having grown up in the same household as my brother and the omnipresent THC cloud that followed him, I can tell you with absolute certainty that for me the chief effect of being even moderately pot smoke-adjacent (as opposed to wood smoke, liquid smoke, charcoal grill smoke, or even cigar smoke) is to experience a significant pain reaction from the resinous layer that immediately forms in my trachea. Alas, there is no epi-pen for this condition.

This may have been due to the extremely crap quality of weed he bought back in the ’80s, but I’m good not finding out.

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¹ One reason why, maybe: the paperback fiction list is now combined print & ebook. Not all graphic novels get a digital release, and those that do are dominated by Comixology, which I can’t tell are or are not included in the vaunted methodology.

² At that time, a single category; since 2013, both long and short forms.