On the one hand, nobody should be on Disney’s side of the screwing people out of their contractually-agreed royalties issue, not even Disney. So it was good to see a press release of another company getting on board with the efforts of the #DisneyMustPay task force.

On the other hand, it was BOOM!, and the hypocrisy is thick enough to cut with a knife. It’s been at least five years since BOOM! has been, rightly, called out for their shit rates; in fact, here’s three pieces from the first half of 2016, when it was a new and big topic in comic circles, and has since just kind of faded into the background radiation of the industry. Not just shit rates, but pervasive late payments, and legal hardball:

The other recurring conversation regarded the generally crappy terms offered by BOOM! Studios, with more than one creator (none of whom wished to be named) mentioning attempts to get moral rights waived, to allow unlimited editing of art or text without approval or consultation with the original creator, and unconscionable grabs for media rights in exchange for the the simple act of printing.

[This quote references a footnote in the original, which reads: As in, You’re coming to us with a complete story and in exchange for a crappy page rate we get all the movie/TV rights to it, for free, forever. BOOM!, you do not pay enough by at least a two orders of magnitude to make that sort of deal even vaguely fair. If you include secondhand reports, it gets even worse.] [boldface originally italic]

Again, nobody willing to go on the record, but I spoke to creators with lawyers who were tied up for literally years to get rights back from BOOM! that were never agreed upon in the first place. Every creator I spoke to that summer and since has been unanimous: BOOM! has terrific editors; very nearly all of them¹ say that BOOM! also has horrific business practices.

There’s also nothing on BOOM!’s own website, just a brief quote in somebody else’s press release. Oh, and speaking of press releases, here’s one from the end of April, which I believe is BOOM! first got mentioned in conjunction with Disney and royalties:

Fox had licensed the comics rights to Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Dark Horse. After Disney purchased Fox, they withdrew those rights from Dark Horse and granted them to Boom! Comics. When one Buffy author contacted Boom! about missing royalties, they were told that “royalties don’t transfer.”

Disney is one of the owners of Boom! Comics.

The royalties don’t tranfer answer from BOOM! doesn’t really square with yesterday’s announcement that BOOM! wasn’t told by Disney who was supposed to get royalties. I’m reading it as BOOM! getting caught and four weeks later has decided that damage control is warranted; then again, they just might be confused by the idea of royalties, since so much of what they publish is work-for-hire that doesn’t have royalties attached.

But let’s acknowledge that BOOM! are apparently moving in the general direction of doing the right thing. Here’s hoping that getting dragged again — this time by a big enough group and not by individual creators without legal recourse — will be what finally prompts BOOM! to look at their own habits with regard to paying creators.

Spam of the day:

Wouldn’t it be great if you never had to worry about blood sugar spikes and finger pricks? Well, just add this to your morning coffee. It’s that simple!

Uh-huh. Even if I were a raging diabetic (and thus in need of new blood sugar control methods) and also Rich Stevens (and thus 27% coffee by mass), I wouldn’t believe this bullshit. Fuck off, then fuck off some more.

_______________
¹ Those without complaint could be considered bigger names and were also uniformly the only creators I spoke to who didn’t report getting paid late. One was actually kind of offended by my question, noting they weren’t going to piss on [BOOM!]. One may reasonably wonder if there is a sales threshold, beyond which BOOM! is more scrupulous about contracted payment terms.

Hey, want to read about a top-tier comic-crafter from the worlds of print and web and his new project? Or how about a woman with no less skill but earlier in her career about to hit book and comic stores in a big way, to match her deep online following?

• Folks that have read this page for a while know that we at Fleen have boundless enthusiasm for the personage and work of Karl Kerschl. His webcomics work has, on occasion, had to make way for print work — your Teen Titans, Gothams Academy, Isolae, etc — and if it’s been longer than one might have hoped for book three of The Abominable Charles Christopher to see print or for the story to wrap, well, that’s just reason to wake up tomorrow morning. It’s one of the best, most heartfelt, and simple finest looking webcomics that’s ever been, and it’s free so what have we to do but celebrate that we’ve gotten what we’ve gotten?

  Which is why it’s such wonderful news that we’re getting a whole other webcomic from Kerschl, one that’s updating in issue-sized chunks:

  First issue is online for free!!! Read it at http://karlkerschl.com

  The first issue is that of Death Transit Tanager, a manga-influenced sci-fi story about a young woman, a galaxy that needs traveling, and souls that need conduct to their rest. Episode one can be read right now, and if you like it (he said, entirely rhetorically), the PDF is available for purchase, but Kerschl’s noted that subscribing to his site is a better option, providing a pay-what-you-want (two bucks per month and up) means of supporting his work:

  [A]ccess to full-length process videos, pre-production drawings, sketches, community polls and all sorts of fun behind-the-scenes stuff that doesn’t usually see the light of day. AND you’ll also be part of the discussion by having access to comments on posts.

  Plus discounts on everything in his shop, including convention¹ sales, along with first word on new releases, early-bird access, etc. Kerschl’s simply one of the best creators we’ve got, and Death Transit Tanager is an act of faith on his part — that great comics given away will result in tangible support for him and his family. Give it a read, and see if he’s right.

• And speaking of webcomics making a splash and seeking new audiences, Image Comics has looked over at Webtoons and said, Hmmmm, creators with established audiences online, maybe they might like to engage in an exchange of money for physical goods and struck a deal with Linda Šejić of Punderworld (and, for good measure another 10% of her audience is over at Tapas). The retelling of the Persephone/Hades myth² (that isn’t Lore Olympus⁴) will run near 200 pages and release to comic shops and bookstores at the end of August.

  Given the significant number of readers that top-drawing comics have on the aggregator sites (Punderworld has a relatively modest 350,000 verified subscribers; others get into multiple millions), it’s really only surprising that more webcomics haven’t reached deals with publishers — although the vagaries of who gets the right to do so are buried deep in various ToS and I’m not a lawyer — and I expect that we’ll see more of these in the future.

  For reference, 350K would be more readers than any title in 2019 (the latest year for which Brian Hibbs has caluclated year-end sales performance) not by Dav Pilkey or Raina Telgemeier. And would be more than thirteen times greater than the top-selling Image book of that year, the latest Walking Dead Compendium (26K copies sold). Comics doesn’t look like what it used to, and any publisher that twigs to that fact and gives the fans of these very different properties what they want? License to print money.

Spam of the day:

The Kitchen Device You Didn’t Know You Needed Super Sale on the Butter Spreader

A knife. You’re talking about a butter knife. They already have those.

_______________
¹ Conventions were things that we had before the Plague Year And A Half, and will again in the future.

² Hades has been all kinds of hot in the culture for the past bit, so good on Image for striking while the iron is hot³.

³ Yes, I know that’s more of a Hephaestus thing.

⁴ All kinds of hot.

I mean, assuming you have a local bookstore or comics shop that doesn’t rely on Diamond, who are objectively bad at their jobs; my shop is having much better luck with alternate distributors of graphic novels, but old orders in Diamond may show up at literally any time and they’ll demand payment despite being a year or more late¹ and I don’t want to subject my shop to that.

Where was I? Oh, yes, some more books that are about to drop as part of Fleen’s Awesome Books Coming Out Soon Week. Let’s dive in.

• To be fair, I can’t blame Diamond for the year-plus delay in Carla Speed McNeil’s latest Finder volume, Chase The Lady; that was (largely) COVID that pushed back release by a few months, then multiple years, before settling in on the next couple of weeks. It started as part of the Dark Horse’s Dark Horse Presents anthology series, 8 or so pages at a time; then DHP folded about a year and a half later, and McNeil had to finish it on her own, in between paying projects on account of what should have been a reprint collection suddenly became a more than 50% original graphic novel.

  Comics is complicated, y’all. But what’s not complicated are the facts that a) McNeil’s work reads even better in big chunks, and b) she remains one of the best depicters of the human form, in all its variety. You can read entire character histories in her wordless panels, just from body posture and especially facial expression. She has this one trick where the space around the eyes becomes tight that makes me want to find something to hide behind, because shit is about to go down². Chase The Lady hits comic shops on Wednesday next week (that would be 26 May) and the book trade two weeks later (8 June). It’s going to be great.

• Know who really thinks about the worlds that he creates? Evan Dahm. It’s not enough to have various people of various species interacting, he’s got to think about their language, their alphabet, their religion, their societal mores, their history, their ethics, and their motivations for empire. The literally thousands of pages of Overside stories will make that apparent in a hot minute, but if you’re looking for a place to jump on? A place without all of that interconnection? A place that you could share with a younger reader? 2019’s Island Book is a terrific primer.

  And, starting today, Island Book: The Infinite Land returns us to that world of ocean, of distinct cultures, and opens everything a bit wider. I compared Island Book to The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz in my review, and from the description of the second story, I think the comparison is even more apt: into this world of islands he’s dropped a continent. A land, vast and possibly unlimited, calling out to peoples that have only known small specks of dry land and seemingly endless water.

  The followup books to TWWOO were about all those other corners of Oz and other fairy-lands, each one upending the previous established order and at times setting friends at cross purposes. Sola and her friends made their lands safe from the Monster in their first journey onto the oceans, but can their friendship survive the gift of an infinite land, ripe for the taking by whoever gets their first and can keep it?

  There’s a way through that will be true to the characters and their motivations that isn’t too terrible, and many that will end in disaster; I can’t wait to see how Dahm weaves his way to that one (likely only mostly) happy outcome.

• Received in the mail today: the latest keepsake game from Shing Yin Khor, A Mending, of which we have spoken previously. I suspect I will share as little of my playthrough here as I did of Khor’s previous keepsake game with Jeeyon Shim, Field Guide To Memory, as I expect it will take me to similarly personal-reflective places and (occasional evidence to the contrary) there are some things I just keep to myself.

  And to be received on 15 June (if fortune favors us): Khor’s latest graphic novel, The Legend Of Auntie Po. There are some things you need to know about Khor, if you haven’t noted the pieces that have run here over the years: they have thought a great deal about their Chinese ancestry and the immigrant experience, and they love giant prefab statues in the middle of nowhere like nobody’s business. Many of these statues are of Muffler Men.

  The Muffler Men statues are, of course, derived from Paul Bunyan statues, and thus Khor is also deeply invested in the legends and folklore about the giant lumberjack and his enormous blue ox. Those legends and other parts of Americana were invented in work camps — lumber camps, railway camps, mining camps; a great deal of immigrants worked them, from the Scandinavians and Cornishmen of the Upper Midwest, to the African diaspora and Hispanic earlycomers across the prairie and deserts, to the Chinese everywhere accessible from the Pacific.

  And thus: Paul Bunyan reimagined by a 13 year old girl named Mei (already a nonperson in this land, thanks to the first immigration laws America would ever pass, designed specifically to extract labor from Asians and then discard them) in a Nevada logging camp. Po Pan Yan — Auntie Po — is a Chinese matriarch, an adaptation of young American myth, made familiar by casting it in the mold of the much older Chinese myths, and an example of maybe the only part of the story Americans tell themselves that could be true: come here and carve out your place. You’ll make America yours, we’ll (grudgingly, more often than not) make you part of us³.

  The meaning of America is myth, and anybody can adapt myths to find their way. Give it a few decades for The Legend Of Auntie Po to become a much-loved classic and looking back, we’ll decide that Auntie Po always was there in the lumber camps and railway camps and mining camps. We tell ourselves myths to make sense of reality, but often as not the myth becomes the basis of the reality we build.

Spam of the day:

STOP SENDING ME YOUR NUDES! Hi, plz stop messaging me in whatsapp ! why you sending me your photosf

Like I’d send nudes via Whatsapp. First of all, it’s Facebook-owned and I don’t have anything to do with Facebook. Secondly, I wouldn’t send you photos. I’d commission original artwork from a variety of my cartoonist friends and provide those in a tasteful frame. Nice try, scammer, but you really missed the mark on this one.

_______________
¹ I wish I were kidding.

² She also does smug, insufferable teens that will make you want to build a machine that allows you to slap a fictional character. Find a copy of the No Mercy trades (Alex de Campi, words, Jenn Manley Lee, colors) if you don’t believe me.

³ Most likely starting with food, although we’ll probably never stop trying to Whitesplain it back to you.

The next 6-8 weeks have a stack of graphic novels about to drop and I wanted to spend a little time talking about some of them, and their creators. Some of these I’ll have seen advanced review copies of, some I haven’t, and in any event these aren’t going to be reviews — they’re going to be me talking about stuff that looks really friggin’ good so that you can look for them in your local shops. First up: a pair of creators whose work we at Fleen are big fans of.

• It’s been a while since Vera Brosgol had a full graphic novel, but she’s been giving us amazing children’s picture books since then — Leave Me Alone! and The Little Guys are favorites among the younger members of my family — and she’s about to gift us with another.

  Memory Jars is about a young girl who discovers that she can keep anything in jars, safe and whole exactly as it is now, forever. You never have to give it up, you never have to say goodbye. Or, as Brosgol put it somewhat more compactly, [I]t is about canning and death and yeah — there’s some melancholy in there. If a child is ever to gain an appreciation for the ephemerality of life, the fact that all we know will someday cease, there’s hardly a gentler way to learn that with this book. There’s also jam, so that’s cool.

  Although Memory Jars does not release until Tuesday next week, Brosgol will be doing a live reading and drawing chat thing tomorrow at 7:00pm EDT¹ with LeUyen Pham, with An Unlikely Story of Plainville, MA sponsoring (registration here). Copies of Memory Jars purchased through An Unlikely Story will come with signed bookplates (while supplies last), as will copies from Brookline Booksmith (Brookline, MA). Green Bean Books in Portland has signed and sketched copies; try getting awesome extras like that from Jeff Bezos. You can’t!

• We’re a little further out from the release of Molly Ostertag’s The Girl From The Sea — it’ll be in stores a week after Memory Jars — but there’s still time to get your orders in with your local retailer. If you need convincing, the first scene is up for sneak peek and it is terrific at setting up the story. We don’t know where things will go after these few pages, but we know that there’s all kinds of details about Morgan Kwon’s life that we want to know. It’s master-level storytelling economy and proof that Ostertag really thinks about how to structure a story.

  More proof, if any were needed, is over at Ostertag’s alt Twitter account, which is mostly devoted to gayifying Tolkien — I have been reading the various chronicles of Middle Earth for about four decades and cannot believe I didn’t see just how romantic Frodo and Sam are — where she’s shared some of her process work for her latest short gay hobbits comic.

  Thinking about how to compose the pages, thinking about how to end the story, showing off the things she’s figured out on her own make for a better comic in her character-drive mode. Watch how the basic idea becomes a paragraph of idea outline becomes panels. The thing that I never thought about before but which makes perfect sense in retrospect² is her pacing rule of thumb: if the outline has the word and in it, that means a new panel.

  Well, that and the rule about where the reader’s eyes will progress in the panel and how to guide them. And how panel height conveys time. And how words can indicate physical closeness in characters. It’s almost like drawing a hell of a lot of great comics will make you better at drawing great comics³.

Spam of the day:

1 tsp of THIS forces poop constipation out of you – permanently?

That sounds explosively traumatic and permanently disabling. Maybe just improve your diet and get some live-culture yogurt instead?

_______________
¹ I know the tweets says 3:00pm PDT which would be 6:00pm EDT, but the promo image and registration page say 4:00pmt PDT and 7:00pm EDT respectively, so that’s what I’m going with.

² Getting a lot of that from Ostertag, it seems.

³ And it’s also almost like Ostertag has spent way too much time in Appendix C of The Lord Of The Rings, and knows from the family trees that Sam has an older sister named Daisy. Not that I’d know anything about that.

One of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my purchases of comics was waiting until the March trilogy was complete, as it gave me the chance to purchase all three at once from Nate Powell at MoCCA, and tell him how much his work meant to me. It was a quiet moment at the table, nobody else looking to buy or talk for about ten minutes, and the respect that Powell had for his creative partners Andrew Aydin and Congressman¹ John Lewis suffused the entire conversation.

Powell will forever be associated with March² — rightly so — but he’s done plenty of work on his own for years. For those that need a quick primer, you can find a exploration of how fashion (in the sense of what we want our clothes to convey about us) ties into toxic masculinity and fascism, or maybe a look at people for whom global warming is neither abstract nor in the future. There’s a strong tendency towards thoughtful consideration of complex issues, and a sense of seeking justice in Powell’s work, and all of it resonates with emotional heft, not least because of his tendency towards abstract, implied panel gutters (check out the page previews here, here or here, you’ll see what I mean immediately).

And with a new collection of comics essays³, Powell is talking about his work, the message he wants to share, and the world he wants to see. Save It For Later is the book of the month at The Nib (buy it from them and you’ll get a signed bookplate, while they last), and they’ve got a talk with Powell up at their YouTube channel. Also: Powell in conversation with Eleanor Davis (courtesy of Politics & Prose), and an upcoming Q&A with the Monroe County [Indiana] Public Library on Sunday, 16 May at 2:00pm EDT (register here).

That ten minutes that I spent talking with Powell was an experience that I still think back on — it’s the sort of conversation that makes you want to think hard about things and make decisions that will bend the arc of your life in directions that benefit others. Check out the interviews he’s done, sign up for the session in ten days, and see if it doesn’t lead you in some new directions (which may or may not involve good trouble).

Spam of the day:

Scientists at the Dental Study Institute in New Jersey have quickly run some tests and CONFIRMED the mixture is legit and that it indeed eliminates cavities in a very short time. [emphasis original]

There is no “Dental Study Institute” in New Jersey. There is a Dental Studies Institute, but they don’t have scientists; they are an instructional company that teaches dental practice personnel required continuing education courses. The only test they’re running is on the students, to determine if they learned enough about herpes to get their 5 CEUs.

_______________
¹ And strong contender for Greatest Living American Of The Past Century, alongside Mr Rogers and Dolly Parton.

² And, undoubtedly, Run once it releases.

³ I’m still waiting for my copy, which is also your occasional reminder that Diamond’s entire comics distribution business is extraordinarily craptacular.

No time to dilly-dally, we’ve got items to discuss.

Spam of the day:

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren Wir gewähren Darlehen in Höhe von 10.000,00 € bis 5 Mio. € mit einem Zinssatz von 2%

I’m sorry, when I read German in a spam, I go into a frothing rage much like Steve Martin in Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. Please take your concatenated devil language elsewhere.

_______________
¹ Whose character arc I’ve just now realized is a pretty good parallel to that of Mike Dowden over at Something*Positive. Randy Milholland and Shaenon Garrity/Jeffrey C Wells are giving me hope that emotionally stunted manchildren can, with the right influences, become capable of empathy and grow into the sort of person that is a good partner worthy of love.

Boy howdy, I have determined that if there’s one thing in this world I do not want, it’s for Abby Howard to be mad at me, since it’s obvious that her mind works in ways that could devise — as Benedick would have it — brave punishments for any that crossed her.

I’m getting ahead of myself a little.

Received this week after considerable delay¹ in fulfillment of its Kickstart, was Howard’s latest book, The Crossroads At Midnight. It was supposed to have been in backers hands and stores at Halloween time², as one would expect for a horror anthology, but honestly? Waiting for the Spring and the beginnings of hope that the Great Plague may finally be receding from our shores³ probably put me in a better brainspace for reading it, particularly because I opted to do so right before bed.

Genius move, Gary.

The stories range from mildly creepifying but ultimately affirming (wherein an old woman who has always been alone by choice becomes friends with some reanimated corpses from the local bog) to emotionally damaging (a classic come-away-to-Faerie tale, only at the seashore, with sisterly love and regrets) to modern fears that are literally skin-crawling (just don’t — repeating, do not — take a stained and possibly murderous mattress home from the sidewalk, no matter how much it appears to be free to a good home).

The two that stuck with me, though, were the ones that dipped into splatter territory — if Howard ever gets a job storyboarding a horror movie, they better do her dismembering eviscerations justice — because they both dealt (in a roundabout way) with the same theme: what happens when your friend is something monstrous? In a moment of crisis, will they use their monstrosity to protect, or act according to their nature in ways that to human sensibility are an unimaginably cruel betrayal? And who is at fault then, the monster or the hubris?

Howard’s characters encompass a range of ages, genders, types, and personalities; nobody is a victim because of who they are, but rather because of what they choose to do. Sometimes it’s foolishness, sometimes it’s love that precipitates the fall. Sometimes, it’s a salvation of sorts, as the ordinary evils of people who are human contrast with people who are … not. Howard lets you know who each and every one of them is, with just a few lines of dialogue or a panel’s worth of expression⁴.

If you didn’t back the Kickstart, you can get The Crossroads At Midnight from major retailers, and I imagine it’s just a matter of time before it shows up in Howard’s store and that of publisher Iron Circus. It’s decidedly not for kids, but if you’re up for a good scare, Howard’s damn near unmatched at spookification.

Spam of the day:

Welcome.To.Your Life Insurance Offer

Those extra periods are making you sound rather creepier than you intent, methinks.

_______________
¹ Fucking COVID.

² Ibid.

³ But not all shores. Help out the people of India if you can, as they suffer from the malicious incompetence of an authoritarian leader who has better things to do than deal with the death befouling his land, just as we did.

⁴ My favorites: the grabby hand and the eyes. The first is the protagonist’s roomie who deals with sickness in the apartment by getting out the mechanical grabby hand to maintain three feet of distance at all times; the body language instantly tells you this isn’t the first time. The second involved the girl who sacrifices herself and later comes back with distant, disinterested eyes to show how indifferent she now is towards the sister she protected so fervently.

Got someplace to be in a short while, and this book review isn’t coming together just yet. Give me 24 hours and I think I’ll have my thoughts organized.

PS: Check Please, Year 4 Kickstart? McDonald Ratio says (72271 + 136106 + 37783) * 3 = US$738,480. Phew!

Spam of the day:

A new study from Harvard Scientists has revealed that ONE of the following foods is linked to combating Alzheimer’ s and dementia. Can you guess which it is? 1. Red wine 2. Fish 3. Avocados 4. Clams

This one restaurant my wife and I used to go to when we lived in another town had a fried clams entree that wasn’t called Clams or Fried Clams in the menu, it was called Clams, Clams, Clams! (with the exclamation) and since we moved away, I haven’t had clams at all, I think. So I hope the answer is #4 clams, I’ll go back and get some Clams, Clams, Clams!

We at Fleen have been fans of Ngozi Ukazu’s Check, Please! for a long damn time (I’ma guess around 2014 or so was when I was first put onto the delightful story of gay hockey bros), above and beyond her magnificent, record-break Kickstarts, one of which got me invited onto actual National Public Radio to talk about her import and impact.

And amid her announcement that Check, Please! would also see publication as 2-book volumes via First Second — the sort of thing that gets you into far more bookstores than even the record-breakingest Kickstart — was the knowledge that she would do a self-published fourth collection, so that those who’d supported her through the first three could have a complete and consistent set. The Plague Year (gonna probably be Year And A Half by the time it’s even vaguely done) pushed things back a lot, but the time of prophecy is now upon us:

It’s here! It’s massive. It’s the CHECK, PLEASE!: YEAR FOUR Kickstarter. #omgcp [hockey stick emoji] [checkmark emoji] [pie emoji]
The CHECK, PLEASE!: YEAR FOUR Kickstarter aims to

[book emoji] self-publish the last vol. of #omgcp
[stack of books emoji] create collectors slipcases!!
[hockey stick emoji] get jerseys made for PVD Falcs alt. cap. Jack Zimmermann
[two hearts emoji] PRINT MADISON!!

pledge here!

That went up about five hours ago; at present, the campaign is north of US$183 thousand damn dollars (on a goal of US$63000, or just about 300% funded) and merely has a month to go. Tiers go all the way up to US$360 (a four-book signed hardcover collection with slipcase and an ice-ready hockey jersey), which tier has already seen 24 backers. People really love this series.

Oh and one other thing — the Book Two campaign, which set a record for the most-funded webcomics project¹ in Kickstarter history? It raised US$398,520. Book Four has already reached 46% of what Book Two did. Looking at the day one data on Kicktraq, Book Two did US$163,777, or about what Book Four has done in the five hours since it was announced … kinda. We’re actually on day two, as it look like Ukazu did a stealth launch, with US$72K done yesterday, but that also means there’s more than US$110K after the public go-live. You don’t ever see a second-day increase in funding, except for a late-in-the-day launch time, and especially you don’t see them after stealth launches.

Right now, the FFF mk2 predicts US$600K to 900K and the McDonald Ratio at only halfway to the 3-day mark already predicts north of US$550K. The average per backer as of this writing is more than ninety-four dollars, which is just not something you ever see. This is unprecedented territory, and I will be very interested to see where it ends up and also in the time it’s taken me to type the last two paragraphs the total has gone up by more than six hundo.

Oh and also? Heartwarming story that is also hilarious. Give Ukazu your money, your eyeballs, and your attention on her next project, because in the time that she’s made Check, Please!, she’s only gotten better.

Spam of the day:

I need a man for rare and hot meetings! Let’s try? I don’t sit at the post office, write to me here

I’m not sure why you thought I’d wonder if you were sitting at the post office. I mean, our local post office is pretty nice, but it doesn’t offer a seating area, so maybe that’s why you aren’t sitting there.

_______________
¹ Since surpassed by Ava’s Demon, Reborn, with a total of US$530,320.

Sometimes, I surprise even myself at how long I’ve been in the webcomics sphere, which was for a considerable time even before I started opinion-mongering back in December of Aught-Five. I got a reminder in the ol’ inbox¹ from Steve Conley, perhaps best known presently for The Middle Age, but who has been doing comics online for a considerable time; even in my first writeup of The Middle Age, I noted Conley’s past work:

[Conley’s] Astounding Space Thrills I was enjoying back in the Dawn Age of webcomics, some 20 years back.

And what the heck, everything from the past eventually comes back into fashion again, either as treasured vintage or [shudders] nostalgia. From Conley’s email:

Steve Conley’s Astounding Space Thrills webcomic made its debut online in 1998. The series, which ran for ~500 episodes, received a number of honors including:

• 2000 Eagle Award for “Favourite Web-Based Comic”
• 1999 Eisner Award nomination “Talent Deserving Wider Recognition”
• 1999 Squiddy Award for “Best Webcomic”
• 1998 Don Thompson Award for “Favorite New Series”

Two of those awards are from Compuserve and rec.art.comics. That’s how long ago we’re talking about. :)

So why the history lesson from Conley? Oh, you know, just because in addition to vintage and nostalgia, there’s a third possibility: long-overdue reassessment as a new audience finds appreciation for artistic forebears. Or, more succinctly, there’s gonna be a print collection:

These award-winning webcomics have never been in print and this new Kickstarter campaign aims to fix that.

This first hardbound volume will be 40+ pages and collect the remastered first storyline Undersea Menace From The Year 3200. If the campaign is successful, Steve plans additional volumes collecting the next two storylines Space Quakes, and The Faberge Omelet. These beautifully-produced hardcover books will be signed and just $25 each. The campaign has a modest $3,500 goal.

For those that never read AST, think 3- or 4-panel daily newspaper strips, something with a retro Flash Gordon feel, but with a late 20th Century sensibility. Individual story arcs ran from 10 or so pages (short, interstitial stories) to 100+ strip behemoths.

The Kickstarter’s not live until Wednesday (click here for the preview), but the description and the mock-up make this look like a Euro-style collection, which is a form factor we don’t see in the US very often and I’ve more than once wondered why. They’re durable, convenient to read, and look great on the shelf; think any Tintin or Asterix reprint volume² and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, Conley’s been cranking out good webcomics for longer than some folks making good webcomics have been able to dress themselves³, and that’s ’cause he’s been damn good at what he does. Give ‘er a look-see on Wednesday and decide if it’s for you.

Spam of the day:

Stanford researchers have discovered a simple tweak to your breakfast routine which can have a dramatic effect on how often, how easily, and how fully you empty your bowels. In fact, Adam used this to eliminate decades of constipation in just 3 days when nothing else worked… Along with 4 pounds of “stuck poop” that made him feel bloated, fatigued and heavy.

I’m not sure what part of this is spam is more delightful: the return address of easy.poopin@[redacted].com, or the remarkable specificity of 4 pounds (did they take it out and weigh it?). Glad you’re feeling lighter, Adam, and if you weren’t flagged as a likely phishing email I might actually check out your nonsense claims on account of I’ve reached the age when I have to go for a colonoscopy.

Pro tip: the receptionist that answers the phone when you call to make your appointment will not be amused if you refer to the procedure as an anal probe.

_______________
¹ Phrasing? Are we doing phrasing? It sounded a bit rude.

² Alternately, check out the Castle In The Stars series from First Second; it’s not often a US publisher reproduces that Euro collection form factor.

³ I won’t hold the underwear on the outside against you as long as you were intentionally trying to dress up like a superhero. If it was on backwards, I’m less impressed.