The webcomics blog about webcomics

Been A While Since We Had A :01 Day

Ten years on, :01 Books remains one hell of an impressive publisher; they recognize the value in finding the best creators and the best pitches, curating a catalog down to approximately 20 boos a year, and ensuring that damn near everything they publish is indispensable. So let’s talk :01.

  • We’ll start with that which we’ll have to wait the longest to see — yesterday Spike shared the news that she’s got a book coming from :01 and the subject is such a perfect fit that I momentarily don’t mind that it’s been forever since she’s had time to update Templar, AZ¹:

    Oh hey, I guess I can talk about it now!

    Hi guys, I’m doing a bio-comic about Josephine Baker for @01FirstSecond.

    http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016…

    We won’t get to see Black Pearl: The Graphic Life of Josephine Baker until sometime next year, but when we do I can guaran-fricking-tee it’ll be brilliant. This is the book that Spike was not born to make (that’s way too passive), but which she has, by will and determination and the sweat of her brow has designed her career and skillset to be the book that it is inevitable she make.

  • Also in the future, but a good deal closer, the :01 mailroom (I’m guessing that’s mostly Gina Gagliano, an absolutely key part of their operations) has been busy, with three separate advance review copies showing up on my doorstep today. Many thanks to Ms Gagliano for Ben Hatke’s Nobody Likes A Goblin (due in June), Tony Cliff’s Delilah Dirk And The King’s Shilling (due in March, and serialized in the meantime hereabouts), and what I am prepared to call the greatest book of this or any other year: James Kochalka’s The Glorkian Warrior And the Mustache² Of Destiny (also due in March, and every day after, as it will live in your heart forever).
  • And in the immediate term, available on Tuesday, 2 February (which would also be known formally as St Groundhog’s Day), Sara Varon releases her latest, Sweaterweather & Other Short Stories.

    Sweaterweather consists of eighteen shorter works, going back to the early 2000s and running as late as 2014; compared to Robot Dreams, Bake Sale, or Odd Duck, Varon’s early work is relatively quiet (almost no dialog, although sometimes there’s extensive expository text, especially in Bee Comic) and makes use of a Tezuka-like repertory cast.

    That is, Tezuka reutilized character designs and treated them like actors specializing in various roles — the officious toady, the blustery minor authority figure, the hermitlike loner, and so forth. The names may have been different, and the costumes, settings, and historical era, but the archetype remained the same.

    Likewise, Varon’s recurring characters don’t seem to be the same dog or cat (or whatever), but strike me more as just the particular dog or cat (or whatever) that happens to exist in a particular story. There’s whole families of dogs and cats (and whatevers) populating Varon’s worlds, and we get to visit with whichever ones are sharing their days with us. And that’s really what Sweaterweather is about — people have days, and we get to go along to see what happens. There’s usually nothing huge, little or no conflict, just the experience of being for a while.

    The entire thing reminds me of nothing so much as the slower, less plot-involved (and therefore most emotionally honest and delightful) portions of Tonari no Totoro. Roger Ebert described that movie as based on experience, situation and exploration — not on conflict and threat, and that turn of phrase describes Sweaterweather to a T. Pick it up and let yourself enjoy the crisp air and warm sunshine of Sweaterweather.

    Fleen thanks Gina Gagliano and everybody at :01 Books for the review copy of Sweaterweather.

Spam of the day:

Your Account Has Been Limited PayPal ID PP-658-119-347111

Apparently I need to repeat myself: I don’t have a PayPal account, because the only group of people more determined to screw everybody they come in contact with than these identity-thieving scammers is PayPal³.

________________
¹ Seriously, the entire site just consists of

<html>
<head></head>
<body></body>
</html>

and a favicon. I’m sure relaunch is on her to-do list, but under a bunch of other stuff. Whatevs, down sites don’t affect my printed copies!

² [sic]; we at Fleen prefer the spelling moustache.

³ Walmart being a close third.

posted by Gary Tyrrell on 01.29.16 @ 1:53 pm | 1 Comment

Kickstarts, On A Wednesday


There’s an audacious set of Kickstarts going on with contributions from the webcomics community, both running for just shy of a month, and with the potential to fill your shelves with lots and lots of women-centered work. Let’s dig in.

  • Naturally, we start with the latest on the Smut Peddler Double Header, which we noted yesterday was still too young to qualify for a spin on the Fleen Funding Formula, Mark II¹. We’re remedying that now, and as of this writing, the FFFmk2 gives SPDH an expected final total of US$162.5K +/- 32.5K, or a range of US$130K – 195K. Given that the last Smut Peddler did about US$185K and that this prediction is probably a bit of an underestimate², I’d look for a number on the high end of that range.

    Also of note: the per-backer total of $US42.81 is significantly higher (so far) than that of either of the prior two Smut Peddler projects (5709 backers @ US$32.45 for the 2014 edition, 2291 @ US$36.27 in 2012); if the 1472 backers that exist now merely hold onto the per-backer ratio (and I’d expect them to do so, as the low-priced early bird packages are all long gone, and the high-priced special art packages are yet to be added), meeting only the backer count of the 2012 edition puts the Double Header over US$152; if they reach the backer count of 2014, you’re looking at nearly a quarter of a million dollars.

  • And on the just-launched end of things, a new anthology project, 1001 Knights seeks to create three hardcover volumes, each about 250 pages, with a total of 1001 original characters, who are people-positive with feminist overtones. It’s going to take more than 250 creators to pull this one off, and US$70,000 of which (as of this writing, which is not quite the same time as the writing of the last item³ — I can’t type infinitely fast people!) some US$15,000 has been raised in the couple of hours since launch.

    The webcomics-related creators that have their name associated with the project (a full list of which may be found here) include Aatmaja Pandya, Allison Strejlau, Carey Pietsch, Darryl Ayo, Isabel Melan&ccecil;on, Jordan Witt, Kori Michele Handwerker, Leisl Adams, Molly Ostertag, Ryan North, Sara Winifred Searle, Scott Wegener, Shannon Wright, Steven Sugar, and literally hundreds more.

    Wrangling this many creators and contributions is an enormous task, so I’m pleased to see a couple of things in the campaign that make me confident it won’t collapse into a never-fulfilled fiasco:

    We’ve held off on kickstarting until we we had nearly everything in hand. We’re working with Breadpig to make sure all costs are accounted for and to make sure fulfillment of rewards will be as efficient as possible. We’ve also got the job narrowed down to 3 printers.

    Not having to wait to get art in is going to be huge factor in meeting the promised (and honestly, very aggressive) delivery date of July 2016. But working with Breadpig means that they get the services of George, about whom I once said Problems see George, and wisely decide to be elsewhere. It’s still going to be a near thing to get the books laid out, to the chosen printer, proofed, printed, and transported before fulfillment can begin, but Breadpig have a history of meeting or beating delivery dates, so I’m cautiously optimistic.

    It all depends on meeting goal, though, so if you’ve got room on your shelves for between one and three hardcovers that look to be substantial and handsome, check out 1001 Knights.

Spam of the day:

Checkout the latest Engagement Rings

I’ve been married for more than 20 years, dipshit. Try harder.

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¹ As a reminder, the FFFmk2 states you take the Trend value of a project at the 24-30 hour mark from Kicktraq and call that PV. The range at close will be PV/4 +/- PV/20, but has only shown to be valid for project with at least 200 backers at calculation time.

² The SPDH launched at 9:00pm EST Monday night so we’re actually at about 36 hours now, and the Kicktraq trend chart is angling downwards at this time.

³ And I just went back during the proofing pass on this post, and it’s now up to more than US$17,000, which because Kicktraq only updates totals once an hour, I can tell you is up from less than US$11,000 in 49 minutes.

posted by Gary Tyrrell on 01.27.16 @ 1:57 pm | Comments Off on Kickstarts, On A Wednesday

That Didn’t Take Long

So I went to bed early and wasn’t awake to watch Iron Circus Comics — aka Spike, aka The Woman Who Is Going To Own Comics Publishing, aka Maybe If You Apologize For All Those Years You Told Her She Was Never Going To Succeed She’ll Have You Killed Mercifully — launch its latest Kickstarter. Kickstarters, actually, as two pieces of pure, uncut smut went up together, and you can back one, the other, or (and stay with me here because this is a a little out there) both of them at the same time.

So, uh, maybe assume all the links in this post are probably not things you want to click on if your boss can see.

First up, Yes, Roya, a book-length graphic novel of quality erotica, written by Spike herself and illustrated by Ghost Green, with Kinomatika on the cover. It’s the early 1960s, there’s cartoonists involved, and sexy times as a young upstart finds that life behind closed doors in the Camelot era was decidedly kinkier than your parents and grandparents let on.

Secondly, My Monster Boyfriend, continuing the Iron Circus tradition of ladycentric erotica anthologies, this one is exactly what it says on the cover: there are monsters, and they are various people’s boyfriends, and there may just be hot, hot monster action going on. Lots of creators on this one, and Spike hasn’t released the full contributor list yet, but you’ll find names like EK Weaver, Jess Fink, Gail freakin’ Simone, and Trudy Cooper.

And since this is a Spike Kickstarter, a couple things we knew were going to happen did in fact happen:

  1. The goal was reached ridiculously quickly after launch. Keep in mind it was 9:00pm on the east coast when the campaign went up and promptly started raising US$1000/min before tapering off to US$10K in 15 minutes, US$20K in the first hour, and the entire US$40K goal in less than eight hours. Remember, this was overnight, and word doesn’t spread so quickly when your audience are away from keyboards.
  2. There’s gonna be bonuses. As a result of we at Fleen bungling a description of Iron Circus’s bonus structure a little while back , Spike reached out to us and let us know that these projects would use a different pay structure than previous project¹, one that will scale with the number of pages as well as the overfunding. For My Monster Boyfriend and Yes, Roya, pay starts at US$75/page, with an additional US$5/page for US$10,000 over goal.

    One may note that (as of this writing), pay rates are already up to US$80/page. Assuming this one goes follows the same funding patterns as prior ICC smut offerings, I’d expect funding above US$150K (NB: not a formal prediction; we’re still 8 – 12 hours away from being able to use the FFFmk2), meaning page rates of US$130 or more.

Oh, yeah, and the first stretch goal — a reprint of Smut Peddler 2012 — was met by the time Spike woke up this morning. There will be more. Oh, and did I mention that there are previews, more than 20 pages worth, over on the Kickstarter page? Because there are; no links, I’m gonna make you go read the damn thing and find ’em yourself … and before you complain, I just told you about free porn so hush.

The Smut Peddler Double Header runs until Wednesday, 24 February.

Spam of the day:

why havn’t you claimed this Walmart gift yet?

Because Walmart is a rapacious, evil corporation run by the vampiric scions of the Walton family with a bloodthirstiness that would make Vlad Tepes say Hey, maybe just chill a little, and I would rather deal with the bastard child of Verizon and Comcast for the rest of my natural life than set foot in a Walmart. The only worthwhile thing Walmart has even done is be so awful that walmart.horse provoked not a single twinge of sympathy in anybody anywhere.

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¹ Briefly, contributors got US$50/page, and a US$50 bonus for every US$5000 over goal.

posted by Gary Tyrrell on 01.26.16 @ 3:36 pm | 1 Comment

Fleen Book Corner: Little Dee And The Penguin

This is an odd review to write, because although I stand second to no man as a fan of Christopher Baldwin’s Little Dee, this book isn’t really meant for me. That’s because Little Dee And The Penguin has to serve a completely different purpose for a completely different reader, and that reader and I are going to have fundamentally different experiences.

It’s meant to be read without prior knowledge of Dee and her cohorts (indeed, it starts with three separate introductions), it’s meant to tell a single story (the strip was given over to story arcs of a week or two or three, occasionally revisited over the five years it ran) with a beginning, middle, and end (although the strip had an overall direction and distinct endpoints for each of the characters, it had the ability to meander to get there). Everything that makes LDATP a success for that new reader is very possibly going to strike the longtime fan as somewhat unfamiliar.

For example, despite having second billing in the title, the desire of Paisley the Penguin to get back home¹ (and away from those that want to eat her², via a long arduous route with the occasional expat³ along the way) is really the main driving force of the narrative. Dee comes second (her arrival with the animals is a good deal more disturbing than in the strip, and as a result the overall arc from the strip of getting her back home is compressed and emphasized to where it becomes a parallel goal), and the trio of Ted (a bear), Blake (a dog), and Vachel (a vulture) fill in the background.

While Ted is still the original Ted (with the exception of really wanting to get Dee back to the human world; this sotry takes place in the immediate aftermath of meeting her), Blake and Vachel have less time to establish their two primary motivations (Blake: being a free dog and distrustful of humans; Vachel: being a jerk, but eventually a lovable one) and each is rougher-edged as a result.

Functionally, it’s a reboot, but I realize that word has specific connotations that I don’t want to imply. It’s not a case of a cheesy original becoming darker and grittier (cf: Battlestar Galactica), something cheesy becoming more radical and over the top (cf: Charlie’s Angels), or something well-loved but dated (and yeah, a little cheesy) becoming shinier and more lens flare-y (cf: Star Trek). It’s not just the same names with the serial numbers clumsily filed off; it’s a different set of character motivations and a different plot emphasis to tell a different story in a different medium. If you’re looking for an analogue, look to Snoopy Come Home.

If you haven’t seen the movie, it centers around Snoopy getting a letter from his first owner begging him to come visit her in the hospital. Although previously scarcely-mentioned, she drives the plot while the established cast is secondary and reactive to the sudden change in the status quo. The movie essentially becomes a road trip to a goal that’s not really satisfying to anybody and gets walked back to return to how things should be.

Likewise, the theme of Dee has to go back to the humans, just as soon as we lose the polar bears trying to eat Paisley and possibly the rest of us becomes a parallel quest to returning Paisley to Antarctica. Like Snoopy at Lila’s apartment, Dee’s return to the humans won’t stick and it’s only at the very end that Ted, Blake, and Vachel come around to looking at Dee the way they did in the strip (unalloyed love, affection, and whiningly begrudged tolerance, respectively). Little Dee And The Penguin is a different beast than Little Dee, but they both have the same heart, the same emphasis on family (especially one you make yourself), and the same gorgeous work from Baldwin.

But beneath it all, there’s one inescapable truth: even a diehard original-recipe purist like me is going to find LDATP charming and adorable. That younger reader that’s never met Dee and the others? She’s going to wonder why the webcomic is so slow-paced and meandering, but will revel in all the hijinks. And you know what? Little Dee and her friends have enough depth that we can both be right and love them for different reasons; after all, Dee and her friends won’t mind sharing us.

Except Vachel. That dude never shares.

An advanced review copy of Little Dee And The Penguin was provided by creator Christopher Baldwin and publisher Dial Books. The book is available for pre-order now, and will release on 5 April 2016.

Spam of the day:

This amazing water filter removes 99.9% of impurities including flouride

Let me stop you right there. In this household, we believe in the prevention of oral caries, mister!

_______________
¹ All togther now: Oooo I’m, dyin’!

² And again: Pen-go-wins is practically chickens.

³ And one mo’ ‘gain: Say pardon me, but can you help a fellow American who’s down on his luck?

posted by Gary Tyrrell on 01.22.16 @ 3:36 pm | 1 Comment

Books, Books, Books

It’s a day for books, my friends — the greatest invention in human history¹, the root of civilization, our hope in a world that sometimes seems bleak and utterly opposed to knowledge or even simple facts. Today, we celebrate books that are one their way books which could very well change your life.

Spam of the day:

OH,GOOD BLOG.

I KNOW, RIGHT?

________________
¹ Okay, okay, maybe agriculture, fine.

² Awwwww.

posted by Gary Tyrrell on 01.19.16 @ 2:20 pm | Comments Off on Books, Books, Books

Is There Any Other News Today?

Rassin-frassin Verizon throttling me down to 2585 kbps and now they’ve got me down to friggin’ dial-up speed¹. And on top of that I made a major mistake in logic in yesterday’s post so be sure to click back and read the correction. Is there any good news today?

  • Actually, yes. Today is the day that we acknowledge the birth and continued existence of the very sexy R Stevens Three. Long may he continue to consume oxygen, coffee, and the envy of weak mortals that require sleep. Stevens, of course, is ever-changing, ever-adaptable, and ever-present wherever webcomics are known, and thus will be figuring out new guerrilla marketing strategies for viral merch after the rest of us are food for worms. Let us praise him with great praise, may his deeds never be forgotten while the thrones of the Valar endure!²
  • Speaking of good news, I finally noticed the back cover of Invader Zim issue #6 — written and drawn by KC Green and available at fine comic shops near you since last Wednesday — wherein I learn that Green’s Graveyard Quest (the last long story arc from the now-finished Gunshow) is fixin’ to be published by Oni Press. I’d known that, I’d even written about it, but I’d completely forgotten it. Thank you, house ad on the back of Invader Zim #6, for letting me know we’re a mere eight weeks or so away from the Graveyard Quest print collection!
  • And speaking of webcomickers and work that will appear in the spring, news came today that MoCCA Fest (the 14th iteration of same) will feature a show poster by none other than Noelle Stevenson, and boy is it purty to look at. As a reminder, MoCCA Fest will be in its second new home in two years (owing to last year’s space getting snagged for condos, screw you runaway NYC residential real estate market), the Metropolitan West event space, at about 12th Ave (way far west) and 46th. Panels will take place at the Ink48 hotel at 10th & 48th.

Spam of the day:

What would happen to your family if you died today gary.tyrrell?

I’m guessing a massive party with hookers and blackjack. Why? You got a good supply of either?

_______________
¹ Seriously, I’m metering out at 28 to 40 kbps right now.

² I seem to be channeling Aaron Diaz, the Latin Art-Throb.

posted by Gary Tyrrell on 01.12.16 @ 3:25 pm | 1 Comment

January Dates To Note

One of which is basically today, so be sure to read this one quickly.

  • Apologies for the lateness of this announcement, but I think it snuck up on all of us. We’ve mentioned previously that Christopher Baldwin has a forthcoming original graphic novel of Little Dee (in color!), roundabouts April or so. I’ve actually got a review copy here and will be sharing my thoughts closer to the release date. Now for the time-critical part of this announcement:

    As part of the deal for this new Little Dee story, the old books must be withdrawn from sale and today is your last day to buy them.

    If ever you wanted to get in on the print adventures of an adorable little girl, her wise bear friend, her loyal dog friend, and her terrible, terrible vulture kinda-sorta friend, do it now. You’ll have to pry my copies from my cold, dead hands.

  • Also as previously noted, the Cartoon Art Museum is doing a spiffy job of keeping up programming even without a place to hang its collective hat, much less its extensive collection of cartoon art. To that end, they will be holding their first cartoonist-in-residence event since leaving their former home on Mission Street this weekend:

    On January 9, 2016 from 1:00pm-3:00pm, enjoy a family-friendly event in beautiful Fort Mason exploring the creative process of cartooning with Rachel Dukes and creative possibilities with FLAX at their new location, 2 Marina Boulevard.

    Rachel Dukes will be the first Cartoon Art Museum Cartoonist-in-Residence since the museum vacated its gallery space at 655 Mission Street, and will be the first artist in a series of traveling Cartoonist-in-Residence events in 2016. These events will be held throughout San Francisco in 2016 at creative institutions like FLAX, Comix Experience, Mission: Comics & Art, and Two Cats Comic Book Store.

    You may recognize Ms Dukes from her work for BOOM! or her own webcomics. She does good stuff, so if you’re anywhere near the Fort Mason area in San Francisco,the FLAX art & design store is where you want to be.

  • On the far side of the continent, Jeph Jacques will be doing his own public talk in his new hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia, at the Halifax Central Library. Fun starts at 7:00pm on Wednesday, 27 January, on the first floor. Halifax is one of those towns that have attracted more than the demographically-proportional number of comicker types, so who knows who else you might see in the audience? Actually, I have no specific knowledge and don’t want to mention names, lest I create false expectations, but you know — comics types go to catch up with each other, so keep your eyes peeled.

Spam of the day:

Enter the Computer Training Field – Get Degree Info.

You know that I’ve been in that field for more than twenty years, right? In terms of picking your victim, this is worse that the physical junk mail I’ve gotten the last two days running offering me Medicare plans, which ignore the fact that I am nowhere near 65 years old.

The scammier of the two — the one filled with dire warnings about OFFICIAL COMMUNICATIONS and PENALTIES UNDER FEDERAL LAW FOR FAILING TO DELIVER — just got sent back (I love prepaid postage) with a cheery Fuck off! scribbled in Sharpie.

posted by Gary Tyrrell on 01.05.16 @ 3:19 pm | Comments Off on January Dates To Note

All This And A Bag Of Fatty Chunklins

As the various year-end holidays loomed, I looked out daily at the Wide World o’ Webcomics and saw a bunch of crickets putting away their instruments and heading home early cause wasn’t nobody around to listen to ’em. It was a dead ten days or so for news¹, but I said to myself, Self, I bet things pick up as soon as January rolls around. And hoo boy, was I ever right. In no particular order then:

And there’s even more if you look at what got hit the net in the last 24 hours or so:

  • Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett announced that he’s cutting back Sheldon to three days a week in order to concentrate more time on Drive. Now I stand second to no man in my love of Drive, but fact is that LArDK has not yet provided canonical proof that Fatty Chunklins exist in the Second Spanish Empire (as opposed to, say, Denny’s) and therefore Sheldon is — by some infinitesimally-small interval — the superior strip. Until we find out exactly what Fatty Chunklins are, I’m going to have to call this one a wash.
  • For what is I believe the first time in its nearly ten year history, Three Panel Soul has broken the format declared there in the title. Always it’s been three panels, although not always equal-sized and side-by-side, and breaking the format today comes with a very good — not to mention heartbreaking — reason. Our condolences to everybody that knew and loved Jess McConville’s Poppy, and to everybody that deals with the bastard of a disease known as Alzheimer’s.
  • Oh, and then there’s this, fresh from the New York Times, the School Library Journal, or anybody else that’s paying attention: Gene Luen Yang has been appointed by the Children’s Book Council, Every Child a Reader, and the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress to a two-year term as the fifth National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. He will be inaugurated into the role by the acting Librarian of Congress on Thursday, 7 January 2016, in a public ceremony at the Library of Congress.

    Yang is the first graphic novelist to be appointed National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, but then again he has a history of being the first graphic novelist to do things (first to be nominated for a National Book Award and the first to win the ALA’s Michael L Printz Award, both for the masterful American Born Chinese). He basically hasn’t slowed down since ABC, releasing (either alone or with an art partner) Level Up, Boxers & Saints, The Shadow Hero, Secret Coders, The Eternal Smile, Prime Baby, a stack of Avatar tie-ins, reprints pre-ABC work, and much, much more. Oh, and he’s writing something called Superman these days, too.

    Point being, you could hardly find anybody that’s written more for readers of all levels, approaching more different topics, in more different genres, and with a greater level of penetration into the the world of young readers4. The next two years are gonna be great for fans of YP lit (not to mention all those YP), and should Yang go mad with power and stage a coup to declare himself National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature For Life, we at Fleen would like to point out that any good benevolent overlord needs good PR and we would be up for the job.

Spam of the day:

Subject: Benachrichtigung

The rest of the spam appears to be a lottery scam in German; I’m just entranced by that wonderful, wonderful subject. Could any other language cram as many awkwardly-sounding syllables into such a randomly-discordant order?

________________
¹ Unless you want to count as news the ongoing attempts of a very large corporation to get me to want to keep giving them money by withholding services and pulling no-shows on repairs. But that word implies something novel or unique, and this was anything but.

² Go here and scroll to the bottom of the page.

³ Because all you have to work with in DC is dialogue, which means you’re not really messing with the form. Besides, he already has a comic for that. I also feel that I should note here that as an electrical engineer, this new endeavour should really be called jToons.

4 Okay, yes, Raina Telgemeier, but I would argue her contributions are fewer and more concentrated, whereas Yang’s are greater in number and broader in scope. I still think she’s probably the most important person working in comics today.

posted by Gary Tyrrell on 01.04.16 @ 3:13 pm | 2 Comments

Holiday Shopping

One may recall (if one is so inclined) that about two weeks ago we at Fleen reviewed The Enthusiast by Josh Fruhlinger¹. I’m happy to report that the book launch party took place two nights ago in LA to apparently great success², and that fulfillment via the magical pixies at Make That Thing appears to be well apace.

That means you get to buy it now. Fruhlinger has a dedicated page at his Tumblr for the book with the full range of samples (chapter 1 at Medium; a recording of Fruhlinger reading chapter 3) and a link to Gumroad for those that like e-books. For those that hate trees and want to see them dead³, you can get a copy inscribed on mashed and reconstituted tree-flesh at TopatoCo, in either paperback or hardcover.

It’s a cruel twist of fate that the TopatoCo sales didn’t go up until deep into the shipping deadlines period, but what ya gonna do? What ya gonna do is order up a book, then get Josh Fruhlinger to sign that bad boy next time you’re in the same place as him, that’s what.

And yes, we’re a bit light on news today, but I suspect that will be the case for the next two weeks or so. Heck, you’ll probably be too busy to read it anyway, so don’t feel bad if you just want to catch up on January fourth.

Spam of the day:

Victoria’s Secret Christ.

I am having a hard time parsing those words. Is that something like Buddy Christ only with fewer stigmata and more push-ups? Anything less disturbing in the spam filters?

Pet cats Flaming to be able to “Crazy Train” simply by Ozzy Osbourne Could be the Simply Catharsis You may need Nowadays. And so, devoid of additionally ado, in this article it truly is: 35 moments connected with cats and kittens flaming to help “Crazy Train” by means of Ozzy Osbourne!

That would be no, then.

_______________
¹ Spoiler alert: we liked it.

² At least, no reports have been received of underage guests drowning in their own vomit. The rules for success are different in LA.

³ I might be better inclined towards trees if they’d stop having sex in my respiratory passages, causing sinus headaches and misery and friggin’ vertigo.

posted by Gary Tyrrell on 12.17.15 @ 4:16 pm | Comments Off on Holiday Shopping

Old Friends

Let’s just check in with some people we like today. You might even call this nothing more that follow-ups on things we’ve mentioned previously but it’s my damn blog and that’s what I feel like doing today.

  • Last week at this time we at Fleen mentioned that Kate Beaton had teased us with the first news of her next childrens book, King Baby. From Publishers Weekly, we can now add a more complete cover image (above) and some details like exactly how long we’ll have to wait to get the book (272 days; look for it on 13 September). I’m confident in predicting it will be at least as wonderful as The Princess And The Pony¹.
  • Also mentioned in the past week was the news that the Cartoon Art Museum is engaging in all of its usual activities (classes and such) that it always has, except for the have a physical space where people can come see art thing. A’course, the San Francisco real estate market being what it is, they’re gonna need some cash to get back into that particular habit, so it’s a good thing that one of the things they’re still doing is their annual fund drive:

    [CAM is] thrilled about all of the opportunities that lie ahead as we develop plans for the museum’s next chapter. During our search for a new home, the museum is continues to offer innovative educational programs, events and exhibitions through new partnerships with local museums and libraries.

    Help us provide the best in original cartoon art and educational programs by contributing to our Annual Fund today! Thank you in advance for your 100% tax-deductible gift.

    Send your money via their support page, or for those of you that still write checks, you can send ’em to PO Box 566 in San Francisco, CA, postal code 94104-0566.

Spam of the day:

This is to inform you that you were among the lucky beneficiary selected to receive this donations award sum of Eur 350,000.00, as charity donations/aid from the Qatar Foundation held in Doha, Qatar, to promote your business and personal Interest.

Yours Sincerely,
President of Qatar Foundation.

Odd that a Gulf emirate would denominate in Euros, but whatevs. Send half to the Cartoon Art Museum so they can get a new home, and half to Kate Beaton so she can have a herd of fat ponies.

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¹ Which, per a conversation a little while ago with my sister, is my youngest niece’s favorite book ever. Nobody tell her that she’s gettin’ a special present for Christmas.

posted by Gary Tyrrell on 12.16.15 @ 4:04 pm | Comments Off on Old Friends

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