While Achwood remains down as of this writing, it appears that the worst fears of last week were not realized. Achewood is on its way back:

Achewood will be down for the weekend while we fix big old computer problems. I’m sorry for the absence.

Rioters and looters are urged to cease their devastation and return to their former lives as productive members of society. In other news:

• The Cartoon Art Museum may have lost its gallery space, but that doesn’t mean it’s closed its metaphorical doors. Although the news reached us too late to make it about a future event, CAM participated in the Alternative Press Expo this past weekend in the San Jose Convention Center. Two panels were presented by CAM’s Andrew Farago and Nina Kester, as well as the usual booth-based outreach and fundraising. Expect to see a wide-ranging presence of CAM at various shows, keeping up the mission while trying to find a place outside The Mission¹.
• Progress report, and a happy story of a Kickstart gone so very, very right. Readers of this page will recall that Oh Joy, Sex Toy totally rules, and that also the second annual print collection was crowdfunded to great success back in June, with books expected to be shipped to backers in November.

  Yeah, didn’t work out that way. On account of pretty much every book was already in transit by the last week of September, and OJSTv2 is now available for purchase by the general public via fine merchateers TopatoCo. XX half of the OJST team “Hurricane Erika” Moen rose from her sick bed long enough to send me some excerpts and let me tell you — she and co-conspirator Matt Nolan have hit the sweet spot² of mixing informative, sexy, funny, sexy, engaging, and sexy all into a big ball o’ fun. Sexy, sexy fun.

  Moen and Nolan are just two of the many contributors, what with the many guest strips they’ve run (and, as discussed previously, paid for at a more than fair rate which was retroactively increased) over the year of the collection. Nearly a third of OJSTv2 is by guest contributors, throwing in exciting change-ups from the usual look and feel of the strip. It’s a hell of a bargain (wholesale rates available, even!), and I recommend it to you quite heartily.

Confidential to Mer And Mike On Lawn Guy Land — So happy for you guys. Wrap yourselves up in joy and never emerge.

Spam of the day:

Amazing Opportunity to be Included In Women of Distinction Magazine!

Got some bad news for you there, Sparky.

_______________
¹ Because their gallery space was in San Francisco’s Mission District, or The Mission, and they got priced out because it’s all expensive there now and look it was clever, okay? Sheesh.

² So to speak.

First, scroll down and read about Jaime Hernandez, because that guy rules.

Second, here are some things that are time-dependent:

• Tony Breed is one of the nicest guys on the planet; he was sorely missed at TopatoCon, but with a husband dealing with cancer, he had more important things to deal with. And because complicated diseases can wipe people out financially, friends have prevailed on Tony and Eric to accept a crowdfund on their behalf. This is not optional; give.
• Speaking of TopatoCon, Jeph Jacques had copies of QC book 5 with him there, which the rest of the world will be able to buy the day after tomorrow.
• John Allison shares the news that Giant Days is now an ongoing comic! Happy day, I get Esther deGroot every month!

As was mentioned previously, Fleen today participates in the blogtour for Fable Comics from :01 Books; for those of you that have been following the tour¹ for the past ten days, know that we’re only about a third of the way through the book, and there’s plenty more to come. But in today’s installment we look at the well-known (perhaps the best known of all the fables, anywhere, ever) The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and we consider a question that has perhaps never been asked of a fable before.

Namely, Is there anybody that works as much emotional heft into as few lines as Jaime Hernandez?

Check out the first bit of action in the brief story [click to embiggen]: the colors are flat and contrasting, the clothes and sky and grass as simple as could be, but the faces in in panel one! An extra bit of wobble in a line turns a mouth to a panicked rictus, a few droplets of sweat and slight shifts of posture into crouches turns villagers into men prepared to give their lives to preserve their families and flocks from danger.

Panel two’s simple shrug couldn’t be simpler, the face couldn’t contain fewer details and still be a face, and yet they tell us everything about that shepherd boy. Maybe, just maybe, it was sheer boredom and not malice that prompted the first cry of wolf!, and panel three still leaves him the possibility of knocking off the nonsense. Panel four, he’s edging up to the line of no return.

Panel five. Bam. He’s lost whatever moral struggle he had and gone over to the dark side.

We know what happens next — a repeat, false contrition (I think it might have been real a few panels ago, but now it’s not), and then the inevitable occurs. Enter wolf, stage right [click to embiggen] and it’s suddenly chaos, frantic motion, a Chuck Jones cartoon, all flailing limbs and speed lines. The wolf is a black amorph, all curves when sneaking, limbs not even in view when running flat out, the space of a panel too small to contain his swift traverse. It’s only when the wolf plummets over the cliff that it appears as creature and not force of nature.

And then it wraps up [click to embiggen], with the sure knowledge that nobody will ever believe anything he says again, not even hello, all tied up not in the protestations of panels two, three, and four, but in the slump of shoulders in the final panel [click to embiggen]. Six pages, a handful of drawings per page, as little detail as humanly possible. There are very few pixels in these images, very little actual signal, and the message comes through loud and clear. And that, my friends, is why Jaime Hernandez is (and always will be) a national treasure.

Fleen thanks Gina Gagliano at :01 for the review copy of Fable Comics, and for the high resolution artwork included today.

Spam of the day:

LinkedIn
Subject: There’s a new message

Man, even if your “message” didn’t consist solely of a link to an obviously bogus site, you think I would actually respond to LinkedIn? They’re the biggest spammers on the planet.

_______________
¹ Not unlike following The Dead, only with fewer hippies.

Before anybody makes a call to the local acute psych services on account of me actively wishing for death, consider my recent tweets:

1. New work laptop runs Windows 8.1
2. Max 1 week before I put my fist through the screen of this abomination.
3. Back to data xfer. #killme

It boots
[three blank lines]
so
[eight blank lines]
friggin’
[thirty blank lines]
SLOW.

We have reached a state that Roast Beef would recognize as even worse that the Bead Shop, and the shifting of my work is maybe one third done, which must be done tomorrow, before I leave for TopatoCon on Thursday because when I get back I have to immediately get on a plane for a client gig with said abomination. So this is gonna be brief.

• Thing That Makes Me Less Suicidal Today #1: Whiny manchild convinced that evil minorities and women are keeping Marvel and DC from recognizing his genius. Jim Zub patiently and kindly schools him. I will buy Zub a drink at TopatoCon for this.
• Thing That Makes Me Less Suicidal Today #2: Forbes covers SPX, and chooses Spike as the lead subject of a feature titled Black Wonder Woman, Feminist Smut: Welcome To Indie Comic Con. I will buy Spike a drink at TopatoCon for this.
• Thing That Makes Me Less Suicidal Today #3: Randall Munroe is going on book tour in support of Thing Explainer. I don’t think Randall is going to be at TopatoCon, but if he is, I will buy him a drink on general principles.
• Thing That Makes Me Less Suicidal Today #4: Ta-Nehisi Coates is maybe the smartest writer on race, equality, and social issues working in America today. He’s also a Marvel comics supergeek, and Marvel announced that he’s going to be writing Black Panther. This is perhaps the only thing that could get me to regularly buy a cape comic not involving Squirrel Girl. If I ever have the privilege to meet Mr Coates under any circumstances, I will buy him as many drinks as he wants.

No spam today, I’m already dealing with too much stupid.

Friday! SPX is kicking off in mere hours in Bethesda. TopatoCon has its pre-opening concert in a week. More importantly, it’s almost the weekend. Let’s party.

• Speaking of TopatoCon, comics and science fan Propriety had a great idea, shared on Twitter, that I think should become standard for humane-scale cons: a modification of the showfloor map with creator avatars. Brilliant idea, let’s see if it can become a standard.
• Speaking of both TopatoCon and SPX, know who’s gonna be there? Well, lots of people, but I’m talking about KC Green at the moment. Green’s been alluding on the social media about a mysterious creative task that was taking a lot of his time, and he told us today what it is:
  

  i think i can finally say something a out this: I’m doing a one shot Invader Zim comic issue http://www.previewsworld.com/Home/1/1/71/920?stockItemID=OCT151570 …

  Thinking on the words Invader Zim and comic book and writer-artist, there is no place that you can go for a satisfying outcome except for KC Green. Oni made the 10000% correct choice; this is gonna be great.

• Speaking of SPX, be sure to see the many awesome creators that work with :01 Books who’ll be there. And when you get back, check out the latest :01 Books blogtour, celebrating the launch of Fable Comics from Monday. I’d point out that come the 30th, the blogtour will land here at Fleen where we’ll be talking about the absolutely stellar Jaime Hernandez and his take on The Boy Who Cried Wolf, but modesty forbids.

Weekend. Enjoy the crap out of it, see you next week at TopatoCon!

Spam of the day:

HEY! Noticed you on FB and was hoping maybe we could hook up.

I think you mistake me for somebody who has a Facebook account. I mean, I’m sure a complete stranger who makes that basic a mistake is exactly who I want to hook up with.

Also squirrels. Friggin’ squirrels, man. Let’s talk about things that don’t suck.

• Readers of this page will know that I greatly enjoy the work of David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc and amateur Mr Bean impersonator), a man who has gifted the world with literally an infinite amount of webcomics, and a man to whom I cannot give money in exchange for goods because he has not attempted to monetize his best-known effort, Irregular Webcomic¹. For some short while now, he’s been running a Patreon to offset costs, and hopefully reduce his day job by one day per fortnight.

  And, of late, for another reason. Morgan-Mar has been publicly musing about the possibility of finally doing a print collection of Irregular Webcomic, but as the strip is largely composed of tableaus (tableaux?) of LEGO-brand figures, he needed to navigate their intellectual property boundaries carefully. Not wanting to unleash a torrent of IANAL on Dr Morgan-Mar², I kept quiet as he mentioned that Patreon funds would be going to find competent legal advice on issues of international intellectual property³.

  But that all changed today:

  There’s plenty of net.advice saying that parody is Fair Use of copyright material, but this doesn’t apply for two reasons: (1) I’m concerned about misusing LEGO’s trademarks, not copyright. Also those of Star Wars and Harry Potter, for those comic themes. And (2) I live in Australia, where there is no such thing as Fair Use. (We have Fair Dealing, which is a less permissive law than US Fair Use.) Basically, I have no real idea if I could publish IWC for profit without violating LEGO’s intellectual property.

  …

  I have just signed an agreement to have the lawyers investigate the relevant trademark laws and provide me with professional legal advice. [emphasis mine]

  So, with an actual lawyer consulting actual laws, hopefully Morgan-Mar will not be best by armchair attorneys all day and night, and even more hopefully I’ll be able to exchange money for a copy of an IWC book sooner rather than later. Oh, and if the attorney’s advice comes back as It’s a shame you aren’t in the US, their laws would let you do this but Australia’s won’t, I’m sure that Katie Lane and Make That Thing would just love to find an excuse to head to Sydney for business meetings with Morgan-Mar If you want to see all this come to pass (and honestly, who wouldn’t?), keep that support going to Morgan-Mar at his Patreon.

• Sneaky webcomic of the day goes to Jeffrey Rowland, whose 16 page return to the adventures of Topato and Sheriff Pony (who have gotten kind of … doughy since we saw them last) led through a philosophy of capitalism, a quick peek at an older Wigu Tinkle & family, and ended in naked shilling for TopatoCon.

  I am in awe of the sheer coincidence that a con being put on by Rowland’s company wound up being referenced in Rowland’s comic. And I am delighted to think that by going to TopatoCon in, oh, ten days, I may be contributing directly to the ongoing existence of the Butter Dimensions. I would only add, on behalf of Topato and Sheriff Pony, that in addition to intangible currency, you spend lots and lots of tangible currency with all the exhibitors in Eastworks. Do it to keep existence existing.

• From the comments yesterday:
  

  Kate Beaton did a Q&A on Tumblr the other day. In general, the way she talks to her fans online makes me think that she is basically the best person ever.

  Jacob, in that assessment you would be entirely correct. For those interested in some of those Qs and As (on the day of Step Aside, Pops! launching) and how awesome Beaton is with her fans, check out this, this, this, this, especially this, this, and this.

Spam of the day:

Hi Dear,

Let me stop you right there. Sending a spam in the name of noted philanthropist Charles Feeney, claiming to want to give me a large amount of money, in case I did a 10 second Google search and decided things are more plausible because that’s an actual person? That’s pretty evil. More importantly, I’ve never met Mr Feeney, but I don’t think he’s the sort to open a business email with “Dear”. Maybe if I was his kid? Then again, I am adopted … so he might … I MUST RESPOND TO THIS EMAIL AND GET MY MILLIONS. SO LONG, SUCKERS, I’MA BUY ME SOME BETTER FRIENDS.

_______________
¹ Although I would be remiss if I didn’t point out his Star Trek recap comic, Planet of Hats, does sell originals.

² Which he received anyway.

³ Morgan-Mar lives in Australia,the LEGO empire is Danish, likely the majority of his customer base is in North America.

Books, books, bookity-books!

• Oh yes, it’s here at long last! It of course, is the long-awaited Step Aside, Pops! from the stellar Kate Beaton, and by here I mean in general release since I haven’t snagged a copy at Fleen Central yet. Nevertheless, I’m willing to give this one a big ol’ recommendation on blind faith on account of Our Kate is the most reliably funny person working in comics today. Go get it.
• Oddly, one place that you can’t get Step Aside, Pops! is on comiXology, who announced earlier today that Drawn + Quarterly (Beaton’s publisher) is now distributing nineteen books through the e-comics platform, but I guess not on day-of-release. I went to see if D+Q had any remarks about this (aside from the canned quotes from publisher Peggy Burns in the press release), and it appears not¹.

  Anyway, the D+Q books available via comiXology at launch include work by Peter Bagge, Lynda Barry, Chester Brown, Guy Delisle, Tom Gauld, Gilbert Hernandez, Miriam Katin, Rutu Modan, Anders Nilsen, and Brian Ralph.

• Setting what may be the world land speed record for getting a Kickstarted book designed, printed, and to backers, Matt Bors announced that Eat More Comics will definitely be at SPX (so drop him an email if you’re a backer and want to pick it up in person), that Make That Thing will be shipping immediately on receipt of their inventory, and that if you weren’t a backer, you can put in a pre-order now at TopatoCo to be shipped after the KS backers are shipped, estimated to be 5 October.

  As a reminder, the campaign closed on 12 August, 34 days ago. Books will be place in hand on Saturday, four days from now. Five and a half weeks is unheard of in Kickstartistan, a country where late deliveries in the months-to-years timeframe are not particularly rare. Kudos to Bors, The Nib associate editor Matt Lubchansky (who related stories to me of book layout and custom comic drawing), and everybody else that’s had a hand in showing what a little organization (or, more likely, frantic all-nighters) can accomplish.

• Finally, I’ve seen it mentioned several places, but Colleen AF Venable was the first I saw to mention it, so credit to her. Noelle Stevenson’s print collection of Nimona made the longlist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.

  Previous graphic works recognized by the NBA include American Born Chinese (finalist, YPL, 2006), and Boxers & Saints (finalist, YPL, 2003), both by Gene Luen Yang; Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (finalist, Nonfiction 2014), although none has yet snagged the highly-respected honor. Here’s hoping Stevenson is the first, if only because the NBA could use a winner that espouse the most useful philosophy I’ve ever seen:

  I’M A SHARK AAAHH

  Frankly, I can’t think of a better message for Literature to convey to Young People.

Spam of the day:

DID YOU GET MY EMAIL?

Oh, my. “Mrs Grace Fernandez”, who really wants to give me US$20 million, is getting impatient and following up to make sure that I got the earlier spams that went straight into the trash. Gotta almost admire the thoroughness of a thief that sends follow-up messages.

I declare BOGO on Spam of the day!

Dear Valued Customer, You have a new security of Wells Fargo. please Follow the link below now to confirm your details

Wow. Wow. You know what? If I’m stupid enough to click on that hot mess, I deserve to have all my money stolen. Just … wow.

_______________
¹ Also, their website doesn’t load at all in my preferred browser — complaints about not being able to open secure transactions — and other browsers don’t let me so much as click on links without activating Flash and that ain’t happening. Great publisher, wonderful books, disappointing website.

As mentioned previously, Fleen is happy to contribute today to the ongoing celebration of Ben Hatke’s Little Robot, a wholly delightful book you may recall from our review.

Gina Gagliano at :01 Books was kind enough to arrange for Mr Hatke to answer some questions, which we present below; as the questions touch on specifics of things that happen in the books, be away that here be spoilers.

Fleen thanks Ben Hate, Gina Gagliano, and everybody at :01 Books for helping put this conversation together. If you haven’t gotten a copy of Little Robot for the kid(s) in your life (or yourself, that’s allowed), please do so. It’s a delight. The Little Robot blogtour concludes tomorrow at Cuddlebuggery.

Spam of the day:
We’re giving spam the day off, seeing as how Hatke’s book has put us in too good a mood to deal with spammers.

Hey, welcome back from the long weekend (those of you the States), or just to a random Tuesday (everybody else). Got some things to recommend to you, in the positive and negative senses.

• Maritza Campos and Bachan’s Power Nap is a weird, wildly creative, half-hallucinatory romp o’ fun, and they’re presently crowdfunding their second print collection. A bit atypically for webcomics, they’re doing the Power Nap collctions in a thinner, Euro-style presentation rather than the thick, halfway-to-omnibus style you get in American comics (print and web).

  Naturally, it’ll be full color, the better to make all those gorgeous dreamscapes pop. And I would be remiss to not point out that five readers have a chance to make a cameo in the strip, presumably to be killed in some horrible, hilarious fashion. I positively recommend you get in on this while the gettin’s good (the campaign will run for another 36 days, after that no promises you’ll be able to snag a copy).

• Following up on our earlier story, it appears that the Cartoon Art Museum has nailed down the talent list for this week’s Night of 1000 Sketches, likely the last fundraiser to take place at CAM’s current location in the Mission District of San Francisco.

  Remember, that’s this Thursday, 10 September, from 6:00pm to 9:00pm, with tickets ranging from US$10 to US$100 (the more you pay, the more drinks, sketches, and goodies you get). Tickets are available here, along with a list of the 36 artists who will be sketchin’ their hearts out¹ to benefit CAM’s venue shift. Anybody in the greater Bay Area on Thursday, I recommend this one most positively.

• I also want to positively recommend that you check out the ongoing blog tour for Ben Hatke’s Little Robot, which will be landing here at Fleen on Monday. In the meantime, check out the other places that are talking about Hatke’s latest (and possibly most personal) children’s book at the blog tour HQ.
• Know what’s positively hilarious? Watching people at the website of a comics syndicate trying to wrap their brains around the comics of Jon Rosenberg², selections of whose Scenes From A Multiverse started running at GoComics yesterday.

  My favorite was from the individual who described SFAM as, quote, Mediocre newcomer to gocomics [sic], unquote. Moments later the same person flagged as a favorite this Heathcliff comic, and today was puzzled by a Peanuts strip due to not knowing what the word pompous means. Recommend Rosenberg’s comics for the giggles, double-recommend the confused reactions for double-giggles.

• I promised some negativity, so here we go. I got an email that insisted I had signed up for news from a self-described film production company (I didn’t) that thinks it’s very important for me to tell you about a contest they’re running to design a spaceship for a movie that they say is going to have a Kickstarter, but doesn’t yet. So let me tell you about it.

  The rules tell what they want (broad outlines for the spaceship, deadline, etc), but don’t say boo about rights or what they do with the entries that don’t win. The awards section specifies that the winner will get to do a bunch of stuff:

  – You get an opportunity to have your design included in the TRIBORN universe.
  – You will have an opportunity to work with the production design team as they model and build from your design
  – You will get to design the interior of the cockpit that will be built into a set.
  – You get a special credit in the movie as a concept designer.
  – You will get a one day pass to set in the Los Angeles area during the making of this movie with the opportunity to meet Ricco Ross, plus other cast and crew members. You will see your design in action, get photos of yourself on the set you designed, hang out with cast & crew, and get some other free swag (travel and lodging not provided).

  Anybody want to tell me what’s not included in that list of fabulous prizes? Like maybe compensation (above and beyond the promised free swag) for getting to work with the actual paid people, and getting to do additional design work? They aren’t even promising the bullshit reward of exposure³ because the only exposure they’re offering is a special credit in the end credits of a movie that nobody is ever going to see and which means exactly jack.

  Oh, but they get to share your design on their websites and social media, so the more they get people to draw for free, the more content they have to draw eyeballs to their site (their rules don’t specify you get so much as a link back). So I recommend most heartily that you submit entries to them that consist of a spaceship that resembles the words FUCK YOU, PAY ME.

  I doubt they’re the sort to learn their lesson and resolve to do better, but pointing out how much they suck could at least be amusing.

Spam of the day:

Update Account (Final Notice)
You received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes in services.
Your account gary[at]fleen.com will be terminated if you don’t respond immediately.

You mean the account that I control will somehow be cut off if I don’t click on your link? Wow, how does that work?

_______________
¹ In order to make the name of the event not be a tremendous lie, they will each have to draw approximately 28 sketches, or a bit more than 9 per hour (or one every 6.5 minutes) during the evening. Give an artist a drink ticket and they’ll probably make the sketch 37% awesomer.

² The soulkeeper.

³ Quoting again, as we must, Rich Stevens: People die of exposure.

If there’s a word to describe today, I’d go with generosity.

• For starters, although nearly everybody that backed the Kickstarter for Augie and the Green Knight (a book which I encourage author Zach Weinersmith to send copies of to the appropriate people for consideration of the Newbery Medal) has received their copy, and although the book is now generally available to non-backers, there’s still a group of people that might not get a copy that now have an opportunity to do so.

  Namely, readers that rely on libraries for their books:

  As promised, we have 600 books we can ship to libraries in North America! If you are interested, please contact your local library and have them fill out this request form

  https://docs.google.com/a/breadpig.com/forms/d/1ad1iMWD7rKqk0-IV-lCHM7HuFgNJQcsdfQlVZ6gXTNU/viewform

  Just to be 100% clear, the person filling out the form MUST be a librarian. No exceptions. If you are not a librarian, but think your local library could use a copy, please just ask them to fill out the form.

  Let’s put this in context: 600 copies times US$19.05 (Amazon’s list price for Augie) comes to nearly US$12,000 worth of books that Weinersmith and Breadpig are donating (plus shipping costs, at a approximately US$3.22 if they’re shipping Media Mail, or another US$1932), which is a significant act of generosity. It’s not possible to estimate the value of kids actually reading Augie and dreaming a big bigger.

• Continuing on, the ubiquitous Jim Zub continues his nonstop crusade to teach people all aspects of the comics business¹ with an outright gift. On the one-year anniversary of his most recent creator-owned series, Wayward, he’s released the full script for Wayward #1 on his site so that aspiring comics writers can read and learn. Even better, they can compare the original script to the outcome, meaning that they’ll learn what changes occur between written page and comics page, and hopefully gain some insights into the process of working with an artist.

  Even betterer, Zub did the same thing in the before times for Skullkickers #1², so you can track his own progress as a creator. Zub’s been a hell of a generous guy, sharing his numbers, his tips and tricks, his encouragement, on his own time, to the benefit of the community at large. Sometimes it gets him incredibly entitled whiny demands for more³; more often (I like to think), it gets him the admiration he so richly deserves. Know what else he deserves? A couple of bucks from you, so be sure to check out the first issue of Figment 2 at your local comic shop tomorrow.

• Finally, yay to the return of Jeffrey Rowland to comics, at least for a while:
  

  Shh don’t tell nobody but I put up the first 3 pages of the new MAiS story; will do big hollerings about it Monday. http://jjrowland.com/mais/index.php?comic=71

  That was on Saturday, and page five just went up, and apparently there will be sixteen pages in all. It’s a little sad to see what’s become of Topato and Sheriff Pony, here’s hoping they get their action-spring back.

Spam of the day:

Start earning the degree you need for your future career

Got plenty, you diploma mill hucksters.

_______________
¹ That is, to be his competitors.

² Recently finished, and much missed.

³ Here’s a hint, Anonymous asker: insisting that it’s not fair that somebody you purport to admire won’t give you something for free is not the way to inspire somebody to give a shit about you. The fact that Zub was kind enough to explain his rationale — and give you a mechanism to achieve what you’re asking for! — instead of just deleting your stupid question is a testament to his kindness and character.

And yes, as somebody who teaches professionally, I can assure you that there are such things as stupid questions.