All of a sudden, no network at home for any of the devices, wired or WiFi; reboot the modem, it would come back for about 30 seconds and then disappear. This sort of thing has happened four times in the past, and it’s always been traced to somebody in billing at my DSL provider¹ deciding to switch me to a different circuit further away from my house and crapifying my signal.

Today, however, the tech support drone decides it’s my modem and I need a new one. This declaration came:

1. Just as my signal cleared up and got stable again, which coincided with
2. Me finishing describing my problem, and
3. Reading off the serial number of my modem, which to be fair is sorta old

So I’m gonna get a new modem because it’s probably time and a new one hopefully has a more securely patched chipset inside.

But I’m still pissed off because tech support drone told me he could offer me a US$20 discount on a $US59.99 modem, for a total of US$49.99. I pointed out his math was dodgy. He told me he could give me another discount on a different network plan. I used some bad words internally and told him to just send me the damn thing. No email confirming the order yet either, which absolutely guaranteed means he spelled my name wrong in the email address.

How’s your day going? Let’s talk about something more pleasant.

We mentioned the somewhat circuitous nature of film options last week in the context of Ursula Vernon² and Hamster Princess, noting that just because an option’s been obtained doesn’t mean anything is happening soon. I think the land speed record for option ==> movie in comic land is Scott Pilgrim, and even that took about 3-4 years³. I bring this all up because of some immensely good news that broke yesterday:

Looks like the news is out: Amulet will be a live-action movie, hopefully a series. Looking forward to this. http://deadline.com/2015/11/amulet-kazu-kibuishi-fox-temple-hill-graphic-novel-1201617398/ …

Firstly, there couldn’t be a better property to make a movie out of than Amulet, and live action is going to rule; congrats to Kazu Kibuishi and all his collaborators. Secondly, this did not happen overnight. One may recall (if one has a sufficient memory) that the option for Amulet was first obtained in 2008 (when the plan was for Will Smith to produce and his kids to star).

The Deadline story describes this in terms of X will happen, but so did the Variety story from 2008, so either this is Amulet moving to the next stage of production (which may falter or progress, we’ll all see together), or maybe it’s not closer to being a movie than it was eight and a half years ago. It’s definitely a paycheck for Kibuishi (the 2008 announcement was at Warner Bros and this one is at Fox, so the old option expired, a new one was obtained, and Kazu gets to do the I got paid twice happy dance), so that’s all right.

Thirdly, note the use of the word franchise in that story; with the right cast, the right director, and the right vision, this could be the next Harry Potter. That being said, if some studio dipshit decides that a girl can’t be the central character and changes Emily to a boy, I’m burning down Hollywood, so you best respect the source material, Fox. I’ve got my eye on you. In the meantime, I’ll be over here waiting for the seventh volume of Amulet, due in Feburary.

Okay, going to wrap it here, on the off chance that my network gets stupid again. See you tomorrow, I hope.

Spam of the day:

Predicted In The Sacred Book of Revelation – Obama’s Deadly Curse The massive downfall that willwipe out 49 out of 50 American states … And unfortunately you won’t make it out alive, because what’s coming has the devil sign on it.

Since I won’t make it out alive, I suppose I’ll spend my time wondering which is the heaven-blessed 50th state that survives. I hope it’s something completely unexpected, like Rhode Island, or maybe just the upper peninsula of Michigan.

______________
¹ Rhymes with Morizon.

² Reminder: I loves me some Digger

³ Unless you want to count The Martian as comic land due to Any Weir’s history as a webcomicker. Bit of a stretch, actually.

In all other respects I generally agree with him, but I am firm in this: feta is gross and its presence on an otherwise-delicious pizza is just wrong. I’m getting ahead of myself, we’ll come to that bit later.

• It’s been maybe six weeks since David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc and semi-pro Mr Bean impersonator) announced that he was taking legal advice to determine if it would be possible to produce a printed version of Irregular Webcomic without running afoul of the LEGO corporate behemoth. It appears that the answer was affirmative, given the announcement today:
  

  I have started work to have collections of Irregular Webcomic! strips printed in book format, for purchase.

  Boom. That’s the sound of perhaps the longest-running webcomic without a print collection (going on thirteen years old) giving its readers what they want. Given a deep archive filled with interleaved storylines, Morgan-Mar opted out of the sequential approach, and will be going with a themed collection:

  The first book will collect all of the Fantasy theme strips up to the hiatus period which began with strip #3198. By my count, that’s 504 strips. With some bonus material, we’re estimating about 140 pages.

  Smart move, by the way — grabbing the first 500 or so strips in IW history would require readers to hop between fourteen different storylines, and not get much resolution on any of them. Also, I’ll note that the Fantasy theme probably makes the least use of actual LEGO assets¹ (other than the Me theme), as the main characters are painted RPG miniatures and not LEGO minifigs; the branded building bricks are used more for backgrounds, props, sets, and side characters. Having less prominent LEGO stuff in the LEGO-themed comic is probably a safe move from a legal standpoint, at least to start.

  Morgan-Mar is presently working with the wonderful folks at Make That Thing, with plans to launch the requisite Kickstarter around the first of the year so as to avoid the holiday confusion (not to mention the tax implications of making a bunch of money in 2015 but not spending it until 2016). I’ll keep you appraised of any future developments, but I will say that this exciting news. Very exciting.

• Speaking of unreasonably large Kickstarted books from longtime webcomickers, Ryan North officially finished the last stretch goal of the To Be Or Not To Be campaign: he made a pizza that looked like Kate Beaton’s Hamlet portrait and ate it. And then, because he is a Ryan-sized man and has prodigious hunger, he also made one that looked like Beaton’s Ophelia and then ate it, too.

  There was a third pizza².

  This third pie resembled Beaton’s take on Juliet, and with that, North announced the sequel to TBONTB, the long-rumo[u]red Romeo and/or Juliet. Key points: the book will not be crowdfunded, but rather published by Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin. As a result, a hard release date can be promised (7 June 2016), the book is in a final form (no stretch goals), and will feature 400 pages and (by my count) ninety friggin’ artists providing illustrations. I ain’t typing out the list but you can find a copy/paste of it below the cut.

  Oh, and let me point out this one line near the bottom of the announcement:

  I can’t say more about the book JUST YET, but I will say this: as someone who has backed the original Kickstarter and is also awesome, be sure to hold on to your preorder email receipt. For SURPRISES :0 [emphasis original]

  Done, and done!

• Still on Kickstarted books, the TJ & Amal omnibus got a nice writeup today at The AV Club, and not to do with Kickstarted books at all, yesterday’s Nick Trujillo news has revealed itself: Glitched is running as a Twitter account, and appears to make use of the new polling feature. IN-teresting.

Spam of the day:

You have missed messages vindication Cordially Skype+ service

Weird, it’s almost like I’m being invited to click on links of unknown provenance by services that I don’t use.

_______________
¹ Or maybe the Space theme, for similar reasons.

² cf: Ryan-sized man.

(more…)

Lots of book news today at Fleen Central. Let’s get stuck in.

• Okay, big disclaimer up front: KB Spangler is a great friend of mine, I did the foreword for the first collection of her comic, and I’ve been an alpha reader of each of her novels, so take what I’m about to say with however large a grain of salt as you think it deserves.

  Her latest novel, Greek Key releases today in paperback and various electronic formats, and it is friggin’ fantastic — hardly a surprise, given her prodigious skills as a professional editor. She’s got a sharp way with words, the ability to make sudden plot twists look obvious in retrospect, and a completely new take on the myth of Helen of Troy that took my breath away¹.

  If you read her webcomic, this story will fill in bits of the underlying mythology in ways that you will appreciate; if you don’t read her webcomic², everything you need to know will be recapped for you in a natural way and you’ll enjoy a damn good story on its own. Get on this one now.

• Not released, but well into the print pipeline, Ananth Hirsh was kind enough to share pages from the proofs of Lucky Penny over on his Tumblr. There’s cover shots, under the dustjacket of the hardcover shots, interior pages with new shading shots, and even some wet proof shots. This is gonna be one pretty book.
• Just starting its journey to print, the new edition of Shadoweyes by Sophie Campbell (known these days for her work on the comic of Jem & the Holograms) is now Kickstarting under the auspices of Iron Circus Comics, aka kicker-of-all-asses [C] Spike [Trotman]. Slave Labor Graphics published an earlier edition way back in 2010, but this one will be nearly twice as long and in color, so even those that are familiar with the story will likely want to check it out with an eye towards ordering.

  This’ll be the third Kickstart of the year³ for Spike and the fourth of the past year (Poorcraft: Wish You Were Here wrapped in mid-December 2014), with two more due before the end of the the year. That’s a level of work that would kill most people, but Spike is not most people — she’s the people that was always told that she couldn’t make comics the way she was, and couldn’t make a living doing the things she was doing, and decided to the best way to get the naysayers to shut the hell up forever would be to work hard and just friggin’ do those things.

  Naturally, those people now all bitch and moan that she’s somehow cheating, because it’s obvious that you can’t possibly succeed the way she has. Here’s a quick note for the bitchers and moaner — keep it up. Spike finds your anguish to be absolutely delicious.

  Anyway, Shadoweyes is just shy of 50% of the way to goal just shy of 23 hours after launch; the early bird rewards are all gone, but there’s plenty of comic goodness still to be had.

• The greatest art hunt in comics kicks off on Monday, taking place across a week, 19 cities, and five countries as Scott C celebrates the debut of the latest Great Showdowns collection by hiding (or arranging the hiding of) small paintings inspired by popular films in locations where the films took place, starting Monday 2 November and ending Sunday 8 November.

  Announcements as to which scenes are depicted (and thus which location to search) will be made on io9 on Monday, Slashfilm the rest of the week, as well as at Great Showdowns (and presumably C’s twitterfeed). Keep your eyes on the sites and then get searching!

Spam of the day:

The Best of: Sexy Fish

Thought I’d left something out from the headline, didn’t you?

_______________
¹ She’s also big into footnotes. I’m telling you, she’s the whole package.

² Also, what the hell is wrong with you?

³ Following TJ & Amal omnibus (now nearing the end of fulfillment) and New World (which suffered from the bane of anthologies — late submissions — but will be shipping in the coming weeks).

For those with lesser tolerances for the spooky stuff, things become less scarifying as you read down.

• Kris Straub is, as I write this, somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, headed towards Melbourne and the about-to-occur PAX iteration therein. He’s also just left behind what I an assume is the leading edge of entirely deserved praise for the best contribution to the spirit of the spooky season I’ve seen this year, in the form of a few wobbly images, a couple dozen lines of text, and some deeply unsettling ambient sounds.

  The overnight crew at Channel 58 is not having a good night; something odd is going on, it may well be affecting the entire world and we see only the most local interpretation of events that may be beyond rational comprehension. The … the changes happen in front of us, as two entirely distinct interpretations of what it means to be safe and whole compete for the attention of a vanishingly small audience; those who are asleep are either safe or beyond help, and none of us knows which.

  Straub’s a master of showing no more than is absolutely necessary to get across his message, and this particular nightmare says/shows far less than it could, to terrific — I use that word in its most precise sense — effect. The questions that flood us over the course of a few minutes are more frightening than anything we could have been told/shown; Straub’s made our own imaginations an active co-conspirator in the scares.

  Local58.info — both address and, presumably, title — is the most disturbing thing I’ve seen in the past three years not drawn by Emily Carroll, and a perfect tonal match for her work. It’s exactly what this Halloween season — what every Halloween season — needs to achieve maximum creepitude. Bravo.

• For those not yet sufficiently creeped out, may I point you towards a new project? Adam Tierney (words) and Matthieu Cousin (pictures) have a Kickstarter up for a clever book that you can share with young ‘uns that enjoy the spine-shiver of a good, safe scare. Specifically, they’re putting together an A-to-Z book of 26 one-page illustrations and 26 one-page stories dealing with 26 phobias.

  Afraid of Everything calls to mind an old Peanuts punchline , and you can get a good feel for just how wide-ranging those fears can be by checking out a free 10 page/5 fear preview. The phobic panopticon has cleared a bit more than 50% in its first five days, and is well on track to clear its (exceedingly modest) US$6000 goal in the four weeks remaining. Check ‘er out.

• Ryan Estrada’s Broken Telephone has been mentioned on this page previously, and as the six-interwoven-stories-with-eighteen-creative-teams epic approaches the 2/3s point of its yearlong run, it’s been catching more attention. Today, for instance, it’s the lead comic in The AV Club’s weekly comic roundup, in the company of the likes of the latest :01 Books entry and Usagi freakin’ Yojimbo. If you haven’t been reading Broken Telephone, you should be, and now it’s not just me that’s telling you that.

Spam of the day:

Hey! New message, please read.
El software de antivirus Avast ha analizado este correo electrónico en busca de virus.

Oh! Well, if you tell me that an antivirus program has scanned your spam email and the link you’re sending is http://[redacted].com/safe, then of course it must be fine for me to click through!

I mean, it’s not like anybody thought that Zach Weinersmith would have trouble meeting at US$15K Kickstarter goal, seeing as how his previous projects have funded at levels ranging from US$47,000 (of a US$20K goal) to US$384,000 (of a US$30K goal). I’m not sure that I expected to see Religion: Ruining Everything Since 4004 BC become his third-most funded project before the 30 hour mark, or be on pace to obliterate all prior records, as the Fleen Funding Formula Mark II puts Religion at US$480K to US$720K final funding.

To put that in perspective, it’s potentially twice the take for his second-highest funded previous project, Science: Ruining Everything Since 1543; it’s also well above current top funder Augie and the Green Knight. Heck, even it if continues at its current long tail rate of “only” about US$7K/day, you’re looking at a total of US$356K, or just about midway between Science and Augie.

Since the only question is how incredibly overfunded Religion will be, maybe I should direct your attention to some of the other webcomics Kickstarts that are currently running? As of this writing, Lunarbaboon vol 2 is at 340% of goal with three weeks to go, but the fifth volume of Spinnerette is still a couple thousand shy (although with three weeks to go, it seems pretty safe).

Significantly, the tenth-anniversary edition of SPQR Blues (think Bite Me, but imperial Rome instead of revolutionary France) is sitting at an even US$5000 of a very modest US$8500 goal with only 11 days to go. If you were ever going to take a leap of faith into a webcomic that you weren’t familiar with on my say-so, this would be the one.

Spam of the day:

Breast Reduction Information

First it was the breast enhancement, then bras, now reduction? Make up your mind, spammers! Also, still a cishet dude.

Okay, so yesterday I promised you other stuff, and now we get to it. Hooray for kept promises!

• Via Meredith Gran, news that Image will be comprehensively reprinting Octopus pie:
  

  Image will be collecting the whole OP series starting next year. Out of print material returns! New and never printed comics… IN PRINT

  Specifically, volume 1 will hit in January (a retitled and newly covered edition of the first comprehensive collection, the sadly out of print There Are No Stars In Brooklyn), to be followed by the subsequent collections Listen At Home and Dead Forever, and then on to new stories! No word yet about the release schedule, but I’m already clearing room on my bookshelf for the future volume 4.

• Meanwhile, Oni Press announced the long-anticipated Lucky Penny collection from Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh (serialized from February of 2012 through March of 2015, a timeframe including multiple bouts of near-crippling repetitive stress injuries for Ota). Readers may recall that Ota & Hirsh Kickstarted Lucky Penny so that they could have a stock of the book in addition to what Oni would make, an unusual creator/publisher/crowdfunding partnership that I expect to see more of. The KS version of LP is due in December, and the Oni release is due for March.

  But that’s not all that Oni announced — KC Green’s also part of the press release, as the last long storyline from Gunshow, Graveyard Quest (omitted from the last Gunshow print collection) will also be published in March of 2016. Graveyard Quest is probably the best longform story Green’s ever done, surpassing The Anime Club in depth, and even The Dog’s Sins in terms of unsettling feelings — not from spookyness or unnaturalness, but from the unresolved, heartfelt unease that can only occur in families in crisis.

• Lastly, I want to recommend to you a piece that’s about a week and a half old, but made it way around the technical corners of the web yesterday, and not just because it contains the entirely amazing sentence I worry about Jeff Bezos’ bizarre obsession with dinosaur sex. That line was uttered by Matthew Prince, head of Cloudflare, the DSN and web security company. He was talking about Amazon chief Bezos and the recent ban on e-books containing weird human/dinosaur (or human/monster, or human/whatever) erotica, which has proved oddly lucrative for certain creators, and thus also for Amazon. Amazon don’t do nuthin’ that doesn’t make money, so banning an entire category of books that a) sell and b) give Amazon a cut means that somebody at the top (hi, Jeff!) has a serious beef with people gettin’ it on ceratopsians¹.

  It’s all very amusing, but it masks a more serious problem; part of the whisk[e]y-fueled chat I had with Brad Guigar concerned what happens if (when?) porn becomes so prevalent on Patreon that credit card processors automatically start charging the higher transaction fees that they level on adult material? What happens if the entire site gets cut off from the financial system altogether? Visa and Mastercard have, multiple times in the past, cut off merchants whose business was insufficiently family-friendly rather than be accused of catering to the porn industry.

  There’s also pretty concrete evidence that the Justice Department (or at least the offices of the local US Attorney) have leaned on banks to close the accounts of smut producers (usually small, sometimes essentially individuals) under the authority of laws meant to fight financial crimes and the funding of terrorism. Not to speak for Josh Lesnick, but I’d imagine the biggest headache that Slipshine [NSFW, obvs] has is keeping a payment processor that doesn’t decide to yank his merchant account because somebody has to think of the children.

  We think of webcomics has having evaded gatekeepers, and on a content/editorial basis, it absolutely has. But in trying to make that independent effort a proper business, one must engage in a system that is entirely one-sided. Run afoul of one person at Chase or Bank of America and you’re frozen out; they’ll never take on a major corporate creator of inferior smut (cable and dish companies make a lot of damn money off of naughty pay-per-view; so does every hotel chain other than Hilton, who are weaning themselves off the grumble flicks), but they’ll freeze out anybody that attracts enough attention from a loud enough pressure group.

  Which is why the interview with Prince is important. With the continued concentration of information services into the hands of fewer and fewer providers, the possibility of getting strong-armed by somebody that doesn’t like your personal aesthetic is something we’re going to have to be increasingly cognizant of.

Spam of the day:

I’ve been wanting you inside me since I saw your pictures. Can you please message me so we can hang out this weekend?

Sorry, I think you meant to send this to the Triceratops with the very similar email address.

_______________
¹ I almost wrote women instead of people, but there’s plenty of gay dinosmut as well, although does anything on the hetero/homo axis make sense when you’re talking about different species?

Multiple things happening in the Wide World o’ Webcomics, and I get to have dinner with Brad Guigar? My cup runneth over.

• Fastest moving story of the day: Zach Weinersmith has launched a new book Kickstarter and celebrated by making today a three comic day. Three comics, three alt-texts, three voteys, it’s a weinersmithapalooza! And, surprising nobody, the new collection in question (of the best of SMBC religion comics) launched about four hours ago (as of this writing) and is sitting at 376% of goal, presumably because people want to get their hands on a copy of the Bible, as abridged by Weinersmith to make it relevant to the modern world. My theory: it just has one page that says Stop doing that¹.
• Speaking of Kickstarter: I got my backer survey today for the previously-mentioned customizable sketchbooks, so it appears that I will get my personal philosophy encapsulating notebook after all. Hooray for Book Block!
• Most academically important story of the day: Charlotte Something, aka Charlotte Herbert (a UK-based model and Suicide Girl), is somebody you should be paying attention to today. Not for the fact that she is willing to (as the British would say) get her kit off in a fairly public manner, but because she’s working on her dissertation and needs your help:
  

  COMIC CON ATTENDEES!! I’m conducting this survey for my dissertation, if you can complete it, I’ll love you forever. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/BMQRDX2

  The survey is brief, and somewhat telling in the questions it seeks to answer vis-a-vis comics conventions, particularly with respect to number nine:

  9. Do you read Graphic Novels/Comic Books?
  Yes
  No
  Not yet, but I plan to.

  State of the modern comics show, everybody. Take a minute and fill it out, see if your responses in the freeform questions (what’s changed about these shows, what to you like/dislike about them) can prompt somebody down the line to make comics shows about, oh, comics.

Spam of the day:

Grab 12,000 shed plans inside… (open now)

Amazingly, not a euphemism. Somebody really likes sheds and is eager for you to also really like sheds.

_______________
¹ Given that none of the sample comics on the Kickstarter page feature Islam, but do feature Christianity and atheism² the countdown to somebody frothing on Reddit about it begins … now!

² Also Buddhism, but you don’t find that many mouth-frothy Buddhist determined to scream at you until you achieve inner peace.

A story making the rounds about possibly finding evidence of constructed objects around a distant star has already prompted a thousand SF story hooks, but only one of them is in the hands of a man not afraid to get a .horse domain. I welcome you all to: dord.horse, long may the conversation run.

In other news:

• It’s been about a year since the crowdfunding for an Android version of Comic Chameleon, the mobile webcomic integrator that a) doesn’t suck and b) isn’t a scraper because c) it’s done with the permission of the creators and thus d) pays them. I got to play with a beta version a while back (it was a different phone on a very old release of Android and had some quirks, but was basically solid), and now you can play with the official thing, because Comic Chameleon for Android drops in the Google Play store today.

  I’m really looking forward to digging in with an up to date phone and seeing how it does. Should make getting out of bed in the morning much easier. Thanks to Bernie Hou (of Alien Loves Predator, topic of one of my favorite pieces I’ve written here at Fleen) and his team for all the hard work.

• The National Book Award finalists were announced on NPR’s Morning Edition today, and I was particularly thrilled to hear one shortlist nominee in particular: Nimona not only got mentioned, but was one of the few books that came in for a full discussion from an impromptu panel.

  Unlike NPR’s Glen Weldon, I had no qualms about how it would translate from web to print, but like him and NPR’s Barrie Hardymon, I’m thrilled by its inclusion, and by the depth of Nimona’s story re: how girls get treated. Here’s hoping that Noelle Stevenson gets to give a little speech in a few weeks, and here’s hoping even more she closes with I’M A SHARK AAAAHH.

• Delilah Dirk is making her return, and she’s starting in webcomic form. In the run-up to next year’s print release, the first 90 pages will be serialized online, starting from chapter one, oh, today-ish.

  Four pages a week from Delilah Dirk and the King’s Shilling will go up until March, then we get to read the rest of the story in a glorious single chunk when we all go buy it. We’re all going to go buy it, right? Damn right we are. Tony Cliff’s lost none of his storytelling chops since the release of Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant, and now we all get to enjoy them together.

• Apropos of nothing: that time Emperor Palpatine and Sauron met to bitch about their enemies and deaths. It’s hilarious.

Spam of the day:

You’re so cute.

Damn right I am. I’m friggin’ adorable.

I tried to get the title to have four instances of S-words, but couldn’t quite swing it. Sorry.

• On Saturday at NYCC I endeavoured to keep track of cosplay, and quickly became overwhelmed. For example, here is the list of cosplayers I saw before I ever hit street level in New York Penn Station:
  • Harleys Quinn × 4
  • Joker × 1
  • Minions × 2
  • Gender Swapped Dread Pirate Roberts × 1
  • Semi-sexy Totoro × 1
  • Spider-Man × 1
  • Let Himself Go A Bit Darth Vader × 1
  • Sixth Doctor × 1; the coat was an eyesore and dude even had the hair, so respect

  Heck, I saw one of those Harleys¹ before I left my house, as she was parking her car curbside to take advantage of the nearby NJ Transit station to New York. I warned her that the parking meter in question was disallowed for the day due to a street fair in town and that she absolutely would get towed, and she gave me the raised Starbucks cup salute by way of thanks before finding another parking spot. I think I saw her on the platform half an hour later waiting for the train to pull up.

  Discussing this with Stacy King (while waiting for husband Jim Zub to return to his AA table after a panel), we noted the basic impossibility of trying to keep up a Harley Count for the day, unless one were to narrow the requirements. So I kept a list and can definitely say that I saw five Gender Swapped Harleys Quinn by the end of the day. Also one cluster of Miyazaki heroines (Kiki, Sophie, Sen, San, and Sheeta), Sikh Captain America, a really elaborately good Alexandrite (complete with arms and lower mouth), various Ricks², no Mortys, and a surprising number of Belcher family groups³.

• When I got home on Saturday, there was a parcel waiting for me, postmarked Finland. In case you were wondering if Minna Sundberg let that NCS award go to her head and decided to half-ass the print version of Stand Still, Stay Silent Book 1 the answer is a definitive No. Wrapped with care and delivered across continents, the book arrived in pristine condition and is absolutely gorgeous.

  The effort of packing and shipping so many books by herself (she’s been doing 200/week) has started to wear a bit on Sundberg, as have computer troubles, so if you haven’t been reading her comic, consider this a time to start. Also, check out her store if you didn’t get in on the pre-order for the book; presumably excess copies will go there at some point, but I don’t think there’s a huge overrun on the printing and you may have to scramble to get your hands on one. It’s well worth the future cost & effort, though — the comics were always great, but seeing them pop on the page makes them even more so.

• Okay, so I don’t get wrestling. I just don’t. But people I know, and whose work I enjoy the crap out of do, and they are bringing their love of sports entertainment to print form:
  

  MUSCLE TEMPLE is a group of professional comic artists and cartoonists mostly living and working in Los Angeles. Together we are going to publish a 60ish page, two-color, soft cover comic featuring funny and weird short comics and goofy illustrations about our love and passion… PRO WRESTLING! Yes! Check out some of the weird stuff we’ve made on our Tumblr!

  That’s the inimitable Frank Gibson in the intro to the project video, a man whose love of wrestling possibly surpasses my love for anything on the planet. It’s a love that survives traumatic injury, at least:

  I went to an introductory training camp for professional wrestling when I was an overweight 15 year old, with dreams of jumping off ladders … and I busted both my knees. Now I’m a slightly less overweight 31 year old living in Los Angeles, writing comics and cartoons with my partner of 10 years … and I still love wrestling.

  Muscle Temple # 1 is funding for another 27 days, and is approaching 10% of goal about 18 hours in. If you ever cheered at sight of grown men in tights acting like 9 year olds emulating a previous generation of grown men in tights, I suspect that you will want to get in on this.

Spam of the day:

Gtyrrell we add new photo to your account

Funny, I think I would have remembered signing up for an account at traininghott.com.

_______________
¹ Traditional BTAS leotard Harley, along with a Fake Geek Dude in a Bazinga! t-shirt. The others were two Victorian bustle-skirted Harleys, and one belly-baring-bodiced Juagglo-style Harley.

² The one with the best look totally screwed up his costume by apologizing ever time he bumped into somebody instead of belching and complaining about the brain-dead idiots he was surrounded with.

³ None of whom had a Gene. Poor Gene.

And we’ll get to those things, but before we talk about the other items — before you’re allowed to scroll down, and no cheating because I’ll know — all dudes¹ are required to follow this link and read what’s there. No commenting on this topic is allowed, dudes; if you feel an overwhelming compulsion to say something, let it be some variation on Thank you, Julia Wertz, I think I understand better now. Because goddammit, there is way too much garbage person behavior going around and we all need to do better.
NB: Wertz’s site has been getting hammered, so if you can’t get through, try Tumblr.

• It’s becoming an annual tradition with me that I see the inimitable Scott C at New York Comic Con and buy his latest book; this year will be no exception as the new Great Showdowns collection released today. Pick one up from Mr C in Artists Alley (table N5) if you’re going to be at NYCC, or from your nearest purveyor of quality amusements if not.
• Speaking of comics in print (and also e-publishing), Jim Zub² is back with the latest of his self-evaluations of the world of the creator-owned comics bid’ness, this time with an analysis of the sales of Wayward (presently between story arcs) to date. I really like the discussion of how Wayward is doing in trade sales, as Zub gave me the short version when we spoke at TopatoCon:
  

  Image showed a lot of faith in Wayward and printed enough copies of trade paperback #1 for two years. We sold half of the inventory in the first five months.

  He also notes how the recent conclusion of Skullkickers brings a new dimension to future sales analyses — how an entirely finished series continues, or tails off, or becomes backlisted. Nobody works harder to put out amazingly good comics than Zub, and nobody thinks more about how to do all aspects of the business better. Keep an eye on future installments of his tutorials, they are beyond value and he’s giving them away for free.

• Speaking of comics in e-publishing, Meredith Gran worked her tail off in the weeks leading up to her own wedding to put together a new mini comic, and now that she has the opportunity to breathe again, it’s up on Gumroad. Backstory! Hanna! Character development! Only five bucks! Go get it!
• Still with the comics, Steve Troop decided to embrace the madness of 24 Hour Comics (which you can read now, or on the Melonpool site from Saturday), and Randy Milholland has decided to jump into the Patreon pool with both feet. You can find him on the Patreon site as choochoobear (naturally), and he has gathered a modest (but generous) following in the hours since.
• Finally, one may note that today is the birthday of Ananth Hirsh — storyteller, fashion icon, gentleman about town — and known kingmaker George Rohac is already angling to make this a more Ananthariffic world:
  

  It is @ananthymous’s birthday, which means he is one year closer to his ultimate run for presidency.

  I, for one, welcome his inevitable cruel (but fair) tyranny.

Spam of the day:

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Well done, spammers, determining that I was well and truly sick of offers to buy boner pills. However, I don’t really think I need bigger, firmer breasts, with or without surgery, so … yeah.

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¹ Sadly, there is no need for ladies to do so, as they already know everything there.

² Never play against this man in We Didn’t Playtest This At All, it’ll end in tears. For that matter, don’t play him at Skull either, as he will attempt to set up residence inside your brain and likely succeed.