Attention (on projects past, present, and future) is being paid to webcomickers, and that it all meet and proper.

• We’ve mentioned the ongoing series of geographically-themed fairy tale anthologies from Kel McDonald, Cautionary Fables and Fairy Tales, on more than one occasion. Volume three’s been out for a while now, and it’s gathering notice. Caitlin Rosenberg over at The AV Club does her usual thorough analysis and found parts of the Asia edition of CF&FT a mixed bag — while she finds the stories visually appealing, she finds their overall quality variable, and the book as a whole lacking in cohesion beyond “Asia”.

  I’d argue that what she’s describing is one of the defining characteristics of anthologies, which she acknowledges in noting the individual stories are good, but don’t seem to work together. I’ve read the two prior CF&FT editions, and never found that awkwardness to be an issue, but I also approach anthologies as a book that I revisit time and again, consuming small chunks in isolation rather than reading through. I’ll pick it up at some point in the future, if only to read a new Monkey King story from Gene Luen Yang and to find creators I wasn’t familiar with before.

  And when you’re done reading Rosenberg’s review, check out Tim O’Neil’s take on the last few months of Achewood; O’Neil’s a critic I find myself disagreeing with more than agreeing, but he holds forth on the weirdness and melancholy of Achewood to a masturbatory degree that I not only appreciate, but find as obsessive as my own writings on the topic. I don’t want to get all article on you, but Achewood is definitely something you should be paying attention to.

• In my hold box at my local comic shop today: issue #2 of Goldie Vance by the inimitable Hope Larson (words) and Brittney Williams (pictures). Issue #1 did a great job of capturing a moment in the early Space Age, finding a niche where a whole host of non-white people could represent all strata of society, and wrapped the whole thing up in a Nancy Drewesque mystery motif.

  Comes now the news (which I first noticed from Johanna Draper Carlson) that GV is no longer a four-issue miniseries but an ongoing title. Based on that first issue (and presumably, those making the decisions have seen the full four issues), this was a no-brainer of a decision. It’s a terrific book.

  It’s been mentioned more than once that GV publisher BOOM! is crappy with the page rates, so one can only hope (no pun intended) that by tapping one of the best known and successful creators of her generation, Larson had the leverage to explain that she does not value things like building your career and great exposure. If BOOM! is able to maintain profits on Goldie Vance, they’ll have no excuse to plead poverty in underpaying so many other of their writers and artists.

• First it was Christopher Hastings, tapped for one-shots and minis before landing Gwenpool, then Ryan North, tasked to make Squirrel Girl the surprise breakout hit of the past year. It appears that Marvel’s learned that if you need a more light-hearted — one might even say comical — comic book in a world of capes that are overly serious, you tap a longtime webcomicker.

  Latest proof: a tie-in book (due in August) to the latest no-really-this-will-change-everything line-wide crossover will feature the writing of one John Allison, whose work is the diametric opposite of grimdark.

  Judging from the description, it appears that Allison will be contributing a story about the Marvel Universe’s most blusteringly beleaguered newspaperman¹, which ought to allow for plenty of room for a story that flirts with humo[u]r². So well done, Mr Allison, and damn you for making me buy a damn line-wide event tie-in book … that’s how they get you.

• Rosemary Valero-O’Connell has shared a bit more of her next book³ — the centerspread this time. Do yourself a favor, set aside a buck or two each month, so that you’ll be ready to purchase the moment it releases. Given the polish it’s got with at least a year and a half to go until release, I’m willing to say entirely on faith that it’s going to be great.

Spam of the day:

Poster & Release Date Announced: #TravelBoobs

It claims to be a forthcoming YouTube series, but I’m not clicking on anything in this email to find out.

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¹ Want to stop feeling like the entire world is arrayed against you, Jameson? Maybe don’t wear a friggin’ Hitler moustache.

² Dare I say, whimsy?

³ Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me, words by Mariko Tamaki, coming from :01 Books in 2018 (whimper).

When I first checked social media this morning I was surprised when Twitter told me I had 456 unread tweets; usually an overnight is good for fewer than 200, given the number of people I follow and their sleep patterns. 250 would be a lot for one night, above that indicates something stupid happening in a Republican presidential debate that I didn’t stay up for or somebody influential kicking it.

This time, however, it was down to one person — and if you’re gonna do a serious tweetstorm, this is the one to do. [C] Spike [Trotman] has been on top of the Rat Queens brouhaha¹ and last night during her typical small hours worktime decided on a course of action:

In light of Rat Queens disappointing everybody: Women/NB creators, tweet me w/links to your cool comics starring tuff gals. I’ll RT.

There was an immediate flood of responses and Spike made with the retweets, blowing up my timelines, pausing for a while to catch some sleep before resuming some hours later. I’d be hard pressed to estimate how many creators she retweeted, but I’d say probably in the vicinity of 200-300 before giving it a rest about eight hours later. Best of all? I recognized a mere handful of the comics that got the RT treatment (and by that I mean literally five), so there’s a lot of new comics to check out.

Probably most of them aren’t great, because most of everything isn’t great. But I’ll betcha there’s 20 to 50 in that grouping that damn good to excellent, just waiting for anybody that’s got the time to start collecting links. Anybody that’s really enterprising could Storify the list; do it for the children.

In other news:

• My evil twin announced pre-orders on his next book open on Monday along with a deadline to provide shipping info for this last Kickstarter and another deadline to register for the chance to take a tropical cruise with him. If you can think of something better to do for a week in September than spend it on a ship with my evil twin, sipping on fruity drinks and learning about writing, I don’t know what it is.
• Speaking of Kickstarts, Dante Shepherd² announced that he’s doing another page-a-day calendar for 2017, seeing as how the 2014 one was a success³. Kickstarter went up a couple hours ago, with the able help of TopatoCo and Make That Thing.
• Heh, when I went by the MTT page to check on Shepherd’s calendar, it told me that Jess Fink’s second Chester 5000 collection will finish its funding round in 69 hours. Yes, I am perpetually twelve years old.
• Finally, KC Green and Anthony Clark are making the best weekly-updating comic publishing today (BACK) and they are not the sort to screw around with pre-orders or crowdfunding. No! They are men of action and when they want to print a collection of their work they by Glob go out and print it and and pay John Keogh and Britt Wilson for enhancements to the book and then they sell it, financial risks be damned. As a result, you can now purchase a copy of BACK Book 1 from the web’s finest boutiquery so go do that.

Spam of the day:

Stunning waterfront property in Michigan’s majestic Upper Peninsula
Private setting with convenient location to ATV / snowmobile trails.

Translation: no roads, no utilities, you will die out here alone. Also, for a significant portion of the year, the Upper Peninsula is cold as fuck.

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¹ Long story short — a comic about female empowerment had its original artist yanked from the book after a domestic violence arrest; other artists have since filled in. A hiatus announcement led to the current artist indicating she was removed from the book in favor of the original guy returning — meaning an abusive husband would again be drawing a book about women that don’t put up with shit, yikes.

On a personal note, literally two days before the news broke I picked up Rat Queens trade paperback one on the recommendation of my niece and loved it, having been unaware of the unsavory reputation of the original artist, and was planing on purchasing the second and third collections but now I’m not sure.

² Who is his own evil twin, or at least his own dark reflection. Which one is more like Batman?

³ He was kind enough to send me one — it took up so much space on my desk. This is not a tiny page-a-day, it has heft and also terrible jokes.

… and I’m going to have to drive through it up ol’ I-95¹. Let’s make this brief.

Over the past three months, the full run of previously-published Octopus Pie (by Meredith Gran, who remains Best At Comics) has been republished by Image in three handsome volumes; in a little less than two weeks time, the fourth book in the series — never before published material! color! — will hit the shops and Gran’s having an event to celebrate:

I’m hosting a pop-up event for the release of my new book, Octopus Pie Volume 4!

This is the first time in years that brand new OP material has been in print, and I’m damn proud of this book and hope you would like a copy! They will be for sale at the event, in addition to Volumes 1-3, a bit of TBA merch, and original comic art on the walls!

That’ll be on Wednesday, 25 May (release day!) at Creations Gallery, 89 Avenue C (corner of East 6th) in Manhattan, from 6:00pm to 9:00pm. You can RSVP at the Facebook event page (which I would do except I’m not on Facebook — Mer, barring disaster I’ll totally be there), and come enjoy some Good Times.

And a few days after, Octopus Pie will be considered for the Online Comics — Long Form division award from the NCS at the Reubens weekend in Nashville; Gran’s got some formidable opposition in her category, but I think with some luck and gumption, she’ll wake up the following day a Broadway star!

I may have gotten a little ahead of myself there, but for reals — tell your local comic shop you want a copy of Octopie 4 because it’s full of great comics.

Spam of the day:

Hi my name is Emily and I just wanted to send you a quick note here instead of calling you.

Who the hell are you and how did you get my number.

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¹ If I don’t make it, tell KB Spangler that I died in battle with her nemesis.

I refer, naturally, to this Diesel Sweeties strip from a week or so ago; I’m sure anybody that’s watched the last few iterations of Trek intuitively knows what the punchline is¹, I’m just surprised that Rich Stevens didn’t render it in plqaD script, but if you want to read Maura’s line in the original you can do so here.

Yes, that entire thing amused me enough to mention it after my time away. Deal.

In other news:

• TopatoCon 2 (The TopatoConenning? Electric TopatoLoo?) exhibitor and volunteer applications have been up for a while now, and although the show is still five months away, the first cluster of guests has been announced:
  

  Topatocon would like to welcome special guests @ryanqnorth @badmachinery @SarahCAndersen and @hollyblack !!!

  The Toronto Man-Mountain needs no introduction; John Allison appears on this side of the Atlantic about once in forever; Sarah Andersen’s got a first book is out now, and Holly Black is both a hell of a YA author and a mean cocktail-mixer².

• Okay, I lied — said Man-Mountain does need an introduction, as it was announced yesterday that Ryan North is now — in addition to his scripting duties on The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl for Marvel — taking over writing duties on Jughead from Chip Zdarsky with issue #9. At the same time, his Squirrel Girl art partner, Erica Henderson will be turning over the Jughead art duties to Derek Charm. Quite a comic book authoring resume our Mr North is building.

  Oh, and if you weren’t smart enough to back North’s first pickable-path Shakespeare book, you might not have noticed that he’s live-playing through the start of his next pickable-path Shakespeare book in the updates of the Kickstart for the last one. So far we’ve determined that Juliet is ripped and is very possibly curious about rooster testicles! Romeo and/or Juliet drops in just about a month on 7 June.

• So I told you I was going to be keeping an eye on Rosemary Valero-O’Connell last month; she’s not disappointed in the weeks since with the work she’s either announced or shared with us. That streak kept up yesterday, letting us see part of her senior thesis³:
  

  The prologue pages of Black Sun Rising, my senior thesis, are now available to read! http://livertaker.tumblr.com/post/144164545963/a-preview-of-the-first-chapter-of-black-sun …

  It’s gorgeous, it does a bang-up job setting mood and expectations (with more than a bit of Emily Carrollesque dread), and makes me want to read far more than these four pages. Rosemary — however long this comic is, find a way to print it in a handsome presentation, mark it up about four times, and sell it to me (and all other right-thinking folk). There is no mathematical possibility that the rest of this story isn’t excellent.

Spam of the day:

Cadence Williams (Google Team) sent you a message:

You know, the fact that you sent me this spam at Google’s own email service but that it doesn’t have a Google return address? Makes me a mite suspicious.

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¹ If not, you can type Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam into the Bing Translator (but it doesn’t autodectect tlhIngan Hol).
http://yellowantphil.com/pIqaD_converter.php

² Assuming we do a drinks competition again this year like last year, I’d want Black, the reigning 86d! champion, to either take a judging role, or join me in hosting/commenting duties.

³ Yep, she’s just now graduating college and this makes her less than half my age and already so very skilled. She’s only going to get better.

I was going to spend today’s post catching up on all the things that happened during my recent and unfortunate hiatus, but you people keep doing things. So I’m not able to spend a proper amount of time on KC Green’s moment of historiography, Abby Howard’s The Last Halloween Kickstart (back it, dammit, I want my book), Magnolia Porter, Aatmaja Pandya, and Victoria Elliott’s visual novel, the now-open submissions at Creators for Creators, or news from Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin¹. What could be so important as to displace all that awesomeness?

• Oh, I don’t know, how about Oni Press announcing a whole new imprint to be dedicated to erotic and sex education comics?
  

  Oni Press, Portland’s premier independent comic book publisher, is proud to announce Limerence Press, a new erotic and sex education comics imprint focused on positive, diverse, and approachable stories that reflect a wide variety of emotional and intimate experiences.

  Okay, one: great name. And two: sex education comics? Where on earth will they find creators to do serious but sexy education for … oh, right:

  Limerence Press is launching with printed editions of volumes 1–3 of Oh Joy Sex Toy, a popular sex education and sex toy review webcomic by creators by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan.

  To say that this is a perfect match would be an understatement; to say that Moen is excited about it would be be entirely truthful, but lacking in sufficient emphasis. Best of all, this is going to open up avenues that Nolan & Moen have not had for distribution previously:

  Limerence Press is printing Moen and Nolan’s Oh Joy Sex Toy Volume 3 Kickstarter books, helping the creative team reduce costs. The unique and limited-Kickstarter edition cover will be exclusive to Kickstarter backers, and serve as the books that Moen and Nolan sell directly online, at conventions, and at book signings. A separate Limerence Press cover will be distributed to comic shop retailers, bookstores, and specialty shops—avenues previously inaccessible to the creators.

  The Kickstart + regular edition is something Oni have experience with, having previously used the model on Yuko Ota & Ananth Hirsh’s Lucky Penny (which they’ve been taking awards nominations for since I’ve been gone). And sharp-eyed readers will note that Limerence is launching with three volumes of OJST, and yet there have only been two print collections to date — which brings us to the third part of the news:

  Which leads me to my NEXT announcement (oh yes, there’s more!)… The Volume 3 Kickstarter will be launching at 11am PST today!!!!

  Or about 20 minutes from now as I type this line. Congratulations to Moen, Nolan, Oni, and everybody involved with Limerence — but most of all congrats to all the people who haven’t seen OJST before and will now have the opportunity to get factual, healthful, utterly necessary information. There’s way too many people — kids, really — who don’t get anything resembling true information about sexuality, and for whom sex education equates to Don’t do it before you get married or God will blow your legs off, a situation that leads to increased rates of unintended pregnancy and STI transmission. Moen, Nolan, et. al. are serving the public good, and more power to ’em.

• Also coincidentally launching today: Matt Lubchansky (whose Dad Magazine, with wife Jaya Saxena, has launched to great acclaim and is outselling Hamilton for goodness sake) has Kickstarted the first collection of his Please Listen To Me comics and is more than 50% of the way to goal a little less than 14 hours in. Lubchansky’s one of the best gag cartoonists (that is, not using set cast members; he doesn’t limit himself to the single panel gag format) working today, and this book is going to both have excellent cartoons and make the right people cry. Go get it.

Spam of the day:

Secret so powerful it was kept out of The Bible! Click here to read Jesus’ lost words and how they could improve your life!

Let me guess: Drink more Ovaltine?

_______________
¹ Actually, FSFCPL’s news is not time-sensitive, so we’ll get to that one in a day or so.

Not quite back, but soon. Thanks for all of your support in what continues to be a challenging time. I also wanted to duck my head back in because if life had not interfered, I would have been running a review of Lucy Knisley’s Something New, which releases today. Short version then: it’s terrific (expectedly so, since it’s Knisley), and the entire book felt more real than real for me.

This is probably because even though I didn’t know it at the time, the story makes it clear that I know people who were at wedding that is the climax of the book¹; autobio has always felt a bit distant to me, learning what it’s like inside the life of somebody else who is not me and to whom I have only the connection of this story.

But being only a degree of separation away from the action, it becomes less life as story (which my brain is trained to read as fiction) and more a case of Did I tell you what happened at Lucy’s wedding? OMG it was so great which is immediately real. It doesn’t hurt that Knisley is such a personable presence, it’s like she’s telling somebody else the story about how what you did at her wedding was OMG so great. In conclusion, Lucy Knisley’s life journey keeps getting more interesting² and you should join her on it.

Spam of the day:

Pocket-Sized Wallet Holds 3 Dozen Cards, IDs, Money and More!

Part of what it holds is a malware warning for the advertised site. Anyway, I’ve already found the perfect low-profile wallet so eat it, spammers.

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¹ Spoiler alert: they did.

² And given that her shop shows all shipments on hold for maternity leave, it’s going to be more so soon.

Okay, so there’s a Family Emergency brewing, one that may necessitate my absence from El Blog for several days on little to no notice. This is to let you know that if I go silent for a bit, it was because of that and not anything you did, so don’t feel bad. It also means that while waiting for the proverbial shoe to fall, a lot of things are happening in Life, and my blogging time is limited. I thank you in advance for your understanding.

Today we are going to mention (briefly) a trio of Kickstarts.

• Firstly, Ryan Estrada’s Big Data (cf: here) had gone up in an attempt to recoup Estrada’s expenses from making the audioplay (which will be released as a nine-part podcast, or all in one go if you back it). Now thing about this for a moment — Estrada’s already paid everybody associated with making Big Data, which means he’s taking a risk by putting up the campaign; if he doesn’t hit his goal of US$7500 (which will merely bring him back to a net loss of zero dollars), he gets nothing.

  The podcast is still done and paid for. It will release to the world whether he gets paid or not, and whether you pay him or not. The chief benefit of backing is you’ll get all nine hours in one go instead of listening week-to-week trying to solve the mystery like a chump. Okay, yeah, there are little bonuses where it can me implied that the whole mess of Big Data is your fault, but mostly it’s getting to listen early.

  And not cost Estrada a chunk o’ change. He could have put up a ten dollar goal and kept everything, even if it didn’t meet his outlay; instead, he’s putting a monumental amount of faith into the we like creative people community, willing to bet multiple thousands that you’ll come through. Make with the donating.

• Secondly, Shaenon Garrity, Funk Queen of the East Bay and Yea, Even Unto The Far Antipodes, launched the Kickstart for the sixth (full color, this time) volume of Skin Horse. This one is gonna go by the numbers — launch one day, 150% funded the next, 39 days to go, you’ll get your stuff when she said because she is a goddamn professional and acts like one.
• Thirdly, Irregular Webcomic. What the crap, man? Guy does a highly-loved comic for-friggin’-ever, finally get the ability to do a book, and with two and a half days left to do is just under 80% funded? This would be a damn good time for that end-of-campaign uptick to happen. If this falls short, the chance of ever getting other Irregular Webcomics volumes decreases by a nontrivial amount. Clutch time, people.

Spam of the day:

Reply to claim your FREE PANERA BREAD COUPONS worth

Let me stop you right there. Of all the corporate chain “food” that I won’t eat, I most won’t eat the utter garbage at Panera because their “bread” is a travesty. Fake, painted to look like it’s got color and crust, softer and blander than Wonder Bread; I’d literally rather eat the “bread” sticks from Olive frickin’ Garden. It’s in the name of your damn restaurant, it’s got to be not totally sucky and yet it is! Nooooo thank you.

Kind of all over the place today, from the serious and sincere to the … well, you’ll see in a moment.

• Okay, real talk time. The Kickstart for the long-awaited first print collection of Irregular Webcomic followed a pretty standard steep start and long tail, but the tail has been lower than usual, and it’s starting to look like it’s going to be a near thing. 70% of the way there with about 72% of the campaign time gone means that the traditional spike upwards in the last week puts everything to rights, but creator David Morgan-Mar is unwilling to leave things to chance and is engaged in desperate measures: he’s added me as a backer reward.
  

  I will be in New York City on Saturday 18 June this year. With this reward you and one partner/friend can meet me over lunch, talk comics or whatever, and get some spur-of-the-moment hand scribbled comic art by me! I’ll also bring along some random physical goodies related to my comics to give to you! This reward is an approximately 2-hour lunch meeting, and you also get a printed copy of the book, a PDF copy, an MP3 of “It’s Quite Irregular”, and a set of postcards.

  Two backers plus two friends plus me makes 5 for lunch, and also joining us will be webcomic blogger Gary Tyrrell of Fleen.com. [emphasis mine]

  There’s already a pledge to meet up with Morgan-Mar in London later this year and I’ll be crushed — crushed! — to think that I’m not an equal draw. Also, it’s no secret that I want this campaign to succeed, but any rumo[u]rs going around that I will be engaging in “favors” for the pledgers are probably overblown. Probably. Only one way to find out!

• For those who’ve been waiting patiently since January for the opportunity to join iPhone-havers and play Exploding Kittens on your Android phones, wait no more. Seemingly in dual celebration over this release and yesterday’s announcement of an Eisner nomination (his third or fourth, I think), Oatmeal creator Matthew Inman has been crushing all rivals in EK matches today.

  You probably can’t beat him (he’s been playing the game since long before anybody else in the world, remember), but if you want to try watch his twitterfeed for announcements of when he’s playing and the game code. Good luck (you won’t win).

• Speaking of Eisner nominations, Iron Circus Comics President For Life¹ Spike Trotman has declared a day of jubilee to celebrate the fact that her very first solo artist project — EK Weaver’s TJ and Amal omnibus reprint — took a nomination for Best Graphic Album — Reprint. You can get the TJ and Amal omnibus from the Iron Circus shop for 15% off with the coupon code EISNERFYEAH. Go cash in, you lucky people.
• Lastly, the sort of thing that I like to see because it has the potential to make people better, more thoughtful creators: KB Spangler of A Girl And Her Fed² has posted a piece on how she approached writing a character that started out minor and became a major part of her story mythos, and how she’s changed her approach after realizing that she was Doing It Wrong. Specifically, Spangler’s take on Rachel Peng’s arguably defining characteristic — her blindness — was initially done without (in retrospect, and certainly not from a point of malice) insufficient consideration of what being blind actually means.

  And before a theoretical subset of you start screaming about PC goons forcing a creator to change her story — honestly, if that’s your first thought, the door’s over there and don’t let it hit you — it’s not in response to anybody yelling at Spangler other than Spangler. It’s about having the honesty to assess when you have sufficient experience in a community/culture to represent it properly, and when you have to shift your approach because you realize you didn’t. As Spangler repeatedly states:

  I’m an asshole but I’m trying to do better

  The first part of that statement is a filthy lie, but the second part you can take to the bank. Even if you’re inadvertently an asshole (or not an asshole at all), you can always do better if you’re willing to admit there’s better to be done. Go read it and think about how to do better yourself; and if there’s better I can be doing, please let me know.

Spam of the day:

Join our professional network

No name for this professional network? Nice try, LinkedIn, but you ain’t getting your hooks in me!

_______________
¹ And co-founder of Creators For Creators; application info coming in ten days.

² AKA my buddy Otter.

Tom Siddell, you perfect bastard, how could you do this to us?

Let me back up. Siddell has done three print side-stories to Gunnerkrigg Court’s main story — Annie In The Forest: Part One, Annie In The Forest: Part Two, and Traveller: A Story From Beyond The Walls — the first two of which have for some time also been available for free viewing online.

Today, Traveller joined the Annies, in both English and Galician¹, at the Extras page.

Okay, no spoilers, but it’s a heartbreaker and Tom Siddell is bad and mean and bad some more … you made Paz cry, you son of a bitch.

(Siddell is actually a very nice guy without a mean bone in his body and the story both works on multiple levels and is structured well; I bear him no ill will, but damn it’s dusty in here.)

With that preparation, please read and enjoy Traveller² and if you like it, please remember that he’s given you something for free that other people paid for, and maybe drop him a few bob? And if you need something cheerier after having your guts ripped out and stomped on the pavement (>ahem<), maybe enjoy this fine Nedroid Comic shared earlier today by Anthony Clark; it ends on a positive note!³ Now get outside and enjoy the weekend.

UPDATE TO ADD: OH HELL OF YES, JESS FINK HAS KICKSTARTED THE SECOND CHESTER 5000 STORY YES I AM YELLING GO BACK THIS NOW.

Spam of the day:

And they passed the night in a crockery-jar who had a little curl this ball was her favorite plaything

I received this from Glenda. I ain’t want to go out and be Glenda’s acid guide! On the plus side, Achewood is back with the first Fuck You Friday of 2016.

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¹ The story concerns Paz and her visit home from the Court, and Galician is her native tongue; I’m told it’s linguistically sort of midway between Castilian (that is to say, formal) Spanish and Portuguese.

² Enjoy may not be the most accurate word, but you get the idea.

³ Or at least as positive as Reginald is going to manage.

Multiple things to point you towards today; let’s get right to it.

• So when I met Rosemary Valero-O’Connell last weekend at MoCCA Fest she told me that she was working on captial-S Stuff that wasn’t announced yet so she couldn’t talk about it. Fair enough, I figured it would be a couple months before we heard, at least not until she was closer to done with the Lumberjanes/Gotham Central crossover.

  Nope! Friday, word came down that she’s going to be illustrating a graphic novel written by Mariko Tamaki for :01 Books, so that’s basically the best of everything in one bundle. It won’t be until 2018 that we get to see Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me, but Valero-O’Connell was kind enough to share two pages on Twitter today. Note to self: do not die or become blind before this book releases.

• John Allison has hinted that part of the reason for running neoBobbins strips for the next couple of months is time management; what with writing Giant Days and daily cartooning and working up new pages for the Bad Machinery books, he’s got to be pretty busy. He’s just added a fourth channel to get his cartooning goodness, this time for people that weren’t likely to have seen him other places — GoComics:
  

  From today, Bad Machinery is running at @gocomics – I think about 1/4 of the pages running there will be new to you. http://www.gocomics.com/bad-machinery

  Which is to say, he puts a lot of redrawn/bridging art into the books (check out his tweets on the subject of prepping book 6, The Case Of The Fire Inside), so if you’ve not given him money for those, you get to see the new art now. You’re welcome.

• A month ago we saw the nominees for the 2016 Cartoonist Studio Prize (a joint effort of the Center for Cartoon Studies and Slate magazine), and today we see that the winners have been announced. As in prior years, there are two categories: Best Print Comic and Best Web Comic, ten nominees per category, and lots of strong work in both.

  The winners get US$1000 cash money, and presumably a nice card, which will be inscribed with the names of (respectively) Carol Tyler (for Soldier’s Heart: The Campaign to Understand My WWII Veteran Father; Fantagraphics) and Boulet (for I Want To Believe). Fun fact: Boulet has been nominated all four years of the CSP’s existence, but considering the past winners were Winston Rowntree, Noelle Stevenson, and Emily Carroll, he’s in damn good company.

• From the twitterfeed of Melanie Gillman, word of a new anthology looking for submissions:
  

  Here’s a comics anthology about bad online dating experiences that’s looking for submissions: http://littleredbirdmedia.com/blocked

  The application is here, and I’m extremely grateful that I’ve been married since before online dating was a thing, just saying.

• A little exercise in visualization because math. Personally, I prefer The Dot And The Line if only because it ends on an exquisitely terrible pun.

Spam of the day:

From Dr. David Katz

Sorry, bud. There’s only room for one Dr Katz in my life.