First and foremost, there is a gorgeous blue sky in Portland; the rain and drizzle of the morning burned off into a wonderful day. Neat. Shame I have to leave tomorrow.

• Dropping today: KB “Otter” Spangler’s second novel, Maker Space; it’s the one that you (yes, you) helped to get converted to audiobook and Braille. It’s available in a variety of formats and places:
  

  It’s March 3rd, and that means Maker Space is live! Ebooks only right now; I need to make sure the formatting changes for the Kickstarter character winners have gone through before I release print copies.

  This is the Amazon (US) link for .mobi files. I made sure that DRM is not enabled. International links should be live by Tuesday.

  The AGAHF store has .pdfs.

  At the time of writing, I’m still waiting for the files at the Smashwords site to go live. This site has multiple file options for e-readers, and no DRM.

  Disclaimer: I was an earlier reader of both Rachel Peng novels, and Otter is a personal buddy; doesn’t change the fact that they are all kinds of good.

• Dropping today: Tavis Maiden, he of the Beast Aura, had his Kickstart and said that his new comic would launch in March, and here it is March, and here is Tenko King. Check ‘er out.
• Coming Soon: Surviving The World’s Dante Shepherd announced that he’s joining the I Love Charts team, and the I Love Charts Team is joining The Medium (parent site of The Nib):
  

  So, big announcement: I’ll be contributing to the @ilovecharts team over on @Medium with a new comic once a week: https://medium.com/i-love-charts/e6d9ee47ba60 …

  As somebody who firmly believes you can never have too many charts, this is good news.

• Coming Soon: TopatoCo has a new client in The Fullbright Company, maker of last year’s artistic and experimental videogame, Gone Home. I can’t recall TopatoCo partnering with a game company before, but they work with fine artists and educators and public radio producers, so why not a game company, if it matches with the TopatoCo aesthetic? Gone Home gear is available now, with delivery to your grubby little hands likely in the next 10-12 days.
• Coming Soon: The previously-mentioned new webcomic from David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc) is expected sometime in April, and Morgan-Mar has specifically shared what the new strip is about:
  

  So if you want to know what my new comic will be about, this is what it’s about: It’s about improving my drawing skills.

  He may be stealing an approach from Scott McCloud, who when asked — over the past few years — what his forthcoming graphic novel is about replied About 400 pages.

Three things coming up, some more immediately than others.

• Jim Zub’s Samurai Jack #5 is out today, and in this issue he brings the first story arc to a close (it’s been great), and gives us a sneak peek towards next month’s issue in a promo ad at the back. Friends, I’ve been sitting on this news since Zub told me in confidence back in October, but now that the issue’s hit the streets, I’m talking. Two words for your pleasure:

  The. Scotsman.

  Oh, hecka yeah. And yeah, this news has appeared elsewhere, but I promised Zub I wouldn’t mention it until something appeared in the comic so there.

• Received in the mail (but not yet read): Box Brown’s forthcoming work of graphic novel biography, Andre the Giant. It’s an uncorrected advance copy so things may change by the time it sees print in May, but I hope that they keep the two front-cover blurbs by Mandy Patinkin and Mick Foley (who, coincidentally, have been two of my very favorite interviews on Fresh Air with Terry Gross). Many thanks to Gina Gagliano at :01 Books, I’m sure that even non-wrestling-watching me is going to love the crap out of this book.
• Howard Tayler¹ never stops thinking, never stops planning, never stops looking for a way to a) tell more stories, and b) preferably get paid at least twice² for doing so. It could hardly have escaped his notice that people want to play around in the sandbox that is the Schlockiverse, and even a boardgame isn’t enough to satisfy them. Thus, a tabletop roleplaying game is in the works, and you (for a small percentage of “you” that are in Utah this weekend) can participate in a playtest for charity:
  

  [Y]ou should note that the Schlock Mercenary RPG session will be on Saturday from noon until 4pm.

  A seat at the table will set you back $25, and that will get you that seat for about four hours of role-playing as a mercenary in the Schlockiverse, with me as the storyteller, and Alan as the referee and “physics engine.” The players will be their own mercenary company, and the contract will be a spot of law-enforcement in which they’ll be encouraged to keep the collateral damage to a minimum.

  Consider, for a moment, what you would expect from a Schlock Mercenary storyline in which Tagon’s Toughs were told to keep collateral damage to a minimum. Now imagine yourself embedded in that scenario, and armed with something that goes “OMMMINOUS HUMMM” when turned on, but which you’ve been instructed not to use under any circumstances.

  The beneficiary of this semi-sanctioned (pretend) mayhem will be Junior Achievement of Utah³, at Epic Puzzles & Games in West Valley City. If you can’t get a seat at the table, Tayler advises that there will probably be observer space as well. Look for the game in question to show up sometime next year.

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¹ Evil twin, almost time for his fake “birthday”, etc.

² In this case, three times, for which I rewarded him with a delicious smoothie.

³ If he were a little more important, perhaps Tayler could have gotten the charity-fundraising gig with Senior Achievement of Utah. Gotta start at the bottom, though.

Still on slow network, but not quite as bad as yesterday. I’ll take it.

• Best reason to get an eBay account if you don’t already have one: the Stan and Sharon Sakai Benefit Auction, launching next week. Watch this space for further information as it become available. Or, you know, just wait until the 6th and search for “sakai benefit auction” on eBay.
• The Bram Stoker Awards, given by the Horror Writers Association, are the premiere recognition that you are writing something seriously spookifying and creeping others the hell out, while also serving as an inducement to always stay personally on the straight and narrow¹. The finalists for the 2013 awards are in, and alongside familiar names such as Stephen King (competing against his son) and Joe Hill (competing against his father), there is the category for Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel, where one may find a series of print efforts, as well as Cameron Stewart’s Sin Titulo. Okay, granted, he’s nominated for Sin Titulo (Dark Horse Comics), meaning the print edition, but we know it was a webcomic first. Best of luck to Stewart, that Stoker Award would look great next to his Eisner.
• Week to week, it’s even money whether the most thinky comic will come from Randall Munroe or Zach Weinersmith; while the competition may still be open for thinkiest comic, unless Munroe does some real quick publishing Weinersmith won for the thinkiest book by a webcomicker this week. Behold: Polystate: A Thought Experiment in Distributed Government, presently sitting at #5 in Kindle books on the topic of political science.

  I haven’t read Polystate yet (no Kindle, for one thing), but judging from the description I feel confident in reminding Weinersmith that when Stephenson thought up franchulates in Snow Crash he meant them to be all dystopian and satirical, not a model for serious consideration. It’s on your head if society breaks up and devolves into an anarchic, polystatic form, Zach. Yeah, yeah, I know — about to have a new baby in the house, you wouldn’t notice if society collapsed for the next eighteen months or so, but some of us are trying to have a civilization here.

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¹ on the grounds that if you ever do stray and commit some crime, the fact that you thought up something scary enough to win a Brammy will almost certainly be used as evidence at your trial that you are malevolent and spend time thinking about how to harm your neighbors.

Quick programming note before we get started — I’ll be on site with a client for work at the start of next week, with the quality of connectivity unknown at this time. There may be late updates.

• On the value of revisiting old work, Part The First: John Allison often takes a break to tell a side-story in between the arcs of Bad Machinery, though rarely as long as the 10 weeks since The Case of the Forked Road wrapped up. Allison scoffed at the notion of taking off for year-end holidays, and quickly settled into a seven-strips-a-week jaunt back to the days of Bobbins, a run which has seen a house blown up, a child wracked with guilt, Tim chased out of a second country, the return of a long-absent character, the rekindling of a long-ago relationship, and a birth under trying circumstances.

  Even better, revisiting old characters sometimes leads to a recharge of the creative batteries; Allison is ready to dive back into Bad Machinery, and with a vengeance:

  This run of Bobbins ends on Saturday. I couldn’t have imagined that something I re-started just because it made me laugh would have proved so popular. It’s really reminded me of the joy of daily cartooning and why I started all those years ago. I’ll be archiving all the pages from this run on the new Bobbins site, and I see no reason why we shouldn’t return to these characters another time. I’m sure I’ll do the odd strip from time to time prior to a longer run when the schedule allows/demands it.

  That means Bad Machinery returns on Sunday with The Case Of The Modern Men. I’ll continue to run strips seven days a week, and see how that works out. I think you’ll like this story, it kind of gets back to what I’m about. [emphasis added]

  That gives Tim one day to patch things up with Riley, get back to inventing with Scout, Erin and The Boy to decide where they are … Allison will pretty much have to revisit Bobbins to deal with all these stories waiting to be told. In the meantime, though — Lottie and Shauna and Mildred and Sonny and Linton and Jack await, and that’s always a good thing.

• On the value of revisiting old work, Part The Second: It’s been a long damn time since Mac Hall wrapped up, a comic which will never let you think of sad girls and snow the same way again. It’s been a long damn time since creators Ian McConville and Matt Boyd shifted their concentration to Three Panel Soul, a concentration that has been interspersed on occasion with other concerns. So it’s maybe not surprising that in all that time, the original Mac Hall print collection (200o to 2002!) had disappeared into the aether, as the aether is where it’s returned to. Ten bucks on Gumroad, for your immediate gratification.
• On the value of your work, period: Dean Trippe wrote something on the Something Terrible Kickstarter page that struck me, about two stories that have recently been related to him. He’s made no secret of how making ST was therapeutic for him, but now he’s hearing about the value it has had — or could have had — for others:
  

  Right now, I’m in tears because of two stories I got this week. One from someone who reads Something Terrible every day to help them through the darkness, and another about someone who left us shortly before I’d figured out how to tell this story, someone who died never knowing there wasn’t a secret monster lurking inside.

  To those of you who came here because of my story, thank you. My next projects will be fictional, all-ages, colorful, and fun. But I know that you all understand why stories like that matter to us. Because we shared Something Terrible.

  Thank you for making my lifelong dream of using comics to help people come true somehow. It almost doesn’t make sense. But here we are. So let’s keep going. Together.

  Since Something Terrible released, I’ve thought about it in terms of people who need to read it, and sadly it doesn’t appear as if that need will ever go away. Share it, share it widely, get this story to as many people as possible and hopefully those that need it will be among them.

Don’t worry, we’re talking about the good kind of trailer today, the kind that doesn’t give away every good joke and scene, and makes you more anxious to see something instead of feeling like you’ve already seen everything worth seeing. Promise.

• This page has not been shy about the general awesomeness of people that occupy my voluntary tribal affiliation, the Engineers¹; there are a surprisingly large number of engineer-cartoonists in webcomicdom, particularly given the relative stealthiness of engineers in society² compared to other careers and professions.

  What can I say? They don’t make exciting and/or sexy TV shows about my mathematically-inclined, winging-it brethren. This may well be because we aren’t really very good at explaining what we do³, beyond it’s very complicated and it would take too long so don’t worry. Which may go a long way to explaining why my very favorite engineer-cartoonist is the one that does the most to demystify the ways of my people; while never dismissing the hard work and lifelong study that are the hallmarks of engineering, Angela Melick also shows the sheer delight of making something awesome.

  The latest chronicles of Melick’s life as an engineer (and just as importantly, life beyond engineering) is rapidly approaching, and she has graced us with a book trailer for Cubicle Warrior, the third collection of Wasted Talent. Be ready come March to order the crap out of what will be the best collection yet of the best webcomic dealing with engineering, life, change, Canadianess, and the best stuff in life. Nothing will exceed it until the fourth collection of Wasted Talent, because that’s when we’ll get swords.

• I have watched the trailer for STRIPPED more times than I can count. I am full of anticipation for the final film, and have tried to be patient, lo these long months since an ever-optimistic FredDave Kellett-Schroeder thought that they could have the film wrapped and Kickstarter rewards delivered by January 2012, or at least December 2013. Nobody could have known how many outside limiting factors would delay the production of STRIPPED (not the least being licensing and legal clearances from copyright holders), but for a while now the progress on releasing movie has been dependent upon literally the richest corporation in the world. Thus, these tweets yesterday:
  

  Hooray! Good news from iTunes, today, means good news is coming shortly for 5,000 Kickstarter backers. Just sayinnnnnnnn’.

  Kickstarter backers! @strippedfilm email went out asking for your info to send rewards! If you have probs/questions: dave@davekellett.com :)

  I have a feeling that I am shortly going to be toasting Freddave, and Jen and Ben, and everybody else in the production of STRIPPED with a very generous pour of very good scotch⁴. I’ve known in my heart for a long time that y’all have done good; now’s just when we finally get to see it.

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¹ Right-hand rule represent.

² I speak here of actual engineers, those that are trained, examined, eligible for licensing, and have drummed into them the idea that what they do matters because lives and safety depend on doing their work right.

Anybody that mentions fake “engineering” fancifications designed to make a crappy job sound more appealing will be beaten.

³ My preferred elevator pitch is Engineers bend the laws of nature and math to practical use. If it stands up instead of falling down, goes where it’s supposed to instead of stopping, turns on instead of powering down, or generally works instead of breaking, then engineers designed the interesting bits.

⁴ I have it on good authority that that Kellett half of Freddave Kellett-Schroeder will be celebrating with a delightful wine cooler.

I like those days with lots of random things instead of one big story — it’s pretty much a promise that something in the news will appeal to you.

• I spoke to you of Ursula Vernon and the SWFA contretemps last week; there’s an aftermath that caught my eye yesterday. Namely, more Ursula Vernon arty goodness. Honestly, people that scream loudly about the moving of the tide can scream themselves silly if it means I get more Ursula Vernon drawings; I’m not sure how, but she makes chitinous, six-legged, antennaed things from the far side of the Valley of Not Like Us almost cuddly.
• I’ve mentioned, from time to time, Christopher Bird and Davinder Brar’s Al’Rashad; I like its scope, its approach to page-at-a-time storytelling, the show-don’t-tell worldbuilding, not to mention sharp writing and gorgeous art. Bird’s story feels like it’s coming into the endgame, but it’s not quite there yet; it’s a bit early to be doing post-mortems and analytic looks back, but he has taken the time to share his experiences in trying to build up readership via Project Wonderful ads. The campaign started some two weeks ago (around this page), so Bird’s got enough data to say adverts = readership bump and which were most effective.
• New Delilah Dirk story:
  

  DELILAH DIRK AND THE SEEDS OF GOOD FORTUNE: a self-contained tale of adventure, now available as a digital download! https://gum.co/dd-seeds

  Creator Tony Cliff doesn’t say in that tweet (darn those 140 character limits), but The Seeds of Good Fortune is pay what you want, noting:

  At a loss for how much to contribute? Most Marvel/DC digital comics are $0.99. The print edition of Seeds was $6.00 plus shipping. If in doubt, why not split the difference?

  That would be three and a half bucks, by the way. Pretty fair price for 36 pages.

• New Diesel Sweeties collection [no permalink]:
  

  Victory! My second Oni Press book, “Bacon is a Vegetable; Coffee is a Vitamin” is out today. I’ve got them a day early in my store. I’m doing paperbacks for just $15 this week so you can upgrade to a personalized version and still only pay normal price.*

  *Or just save money. It’s Wizard Magic.®

  Only Bacon Wizards and Coffee Warlocks are authorized to click this link. By clicking this link, you certify that you are a Bacon Wizard or Coffee Warlock under penalty of Space Law.

  Listen to the man, you do not want to run afoul of Space Law.

• New Christopher Hastings comic book:
  

  Tumblr, I wrote this comic for you.

  DEADPOOL ANNUAL #2, MAY 2014

  CHRISTOPHER HASTINGS (w) • JACOPO CAMAGNI (a)
  Cover by DAVID NAKAYAMA
  • Hang on…is that Deadpool or Spider-Man? YES.
  • Deadpool “helps out” his “friend” Spider-Man by donning his webs!
  • Think Spidey will appreciate it?
  40 PGS./ ONE-SHOT/Rated T+ …$4.99

  Hastings is fast becoming the go-to guy at Marvel for goofball characters and stories that are actually fun. Given the increasing visibility (tolerance?) for such projects at the Big M, I hope this means more work for Hastings. A lot more work, because I enjoy the crap out of it.

Done with snow, done with slush, done with packed ice from the plow at the end of my driveway, done. Done, done, done. Two more inches of snow tomorrow? It had better be the last of the season or me and Mother Nature are going to throw down.

Yet always is the winter of discontent made glorious summer by the sun of webcomics, by which I naturally mean Brad Guigar¹. Take ‘er away, Brad:

Today marks 14 years of my doing a daily comic strip on the Web — and the beginning of the second full year since I left my day job to fulfill my lifelong goal of being a full-time professional cartoonist.

We all know what this means: Brad is one of the good guys, one who’s always there to share knowledge and hard-won wisdom, so I expect that you will all be there for him in two years when his webcomicking career turns 16 and gets its driving license and stays out all night causing poor Brad endless worry. It’s only right.

Kickstarter update time!

• It’s been two and a half weeks, roughly, since Jesse Thorn’s Make Your Thing campaign launched, and it’s not looking too likely. It’s stalled at about the 20% mark with a bit less than eleven days to go to make its US$120,000 goal. The idea behind the conference is entirely laudable, and I hope that Thorn, et. al., find a way to make it work even without funding up front; if nothing else, they’ve learned that there’s a scope-and-scale disconnect between what they want to do and what people are willing to participate in.
• In better news, Tony Breed is, as I write this, on the verge of meeting goal for the fourth collection of Finn & Charlie Are Hitched … like eleven dollars away from the very modest US$3800 goal, also with a bit less than eleven days to go. Be the person to put him over goal and we can see how the stretch goal(s) will make the books nicer. Do it just because this book is dedicated to the very concept that the very wise Lore Sjöberg noted are the three most wonderful words in the English language: I’m somebody’s fetish.
• Two days in, about 20% of the way there — Great Adaptations will be a children’s book about evolution, with contributions from the likes of Rosemary Mosco, Yuko Ota, Zach Weinersmith², and JN Wiedle (plus a bunch of scientists that — let’s face it — you wouldn’t recognize by name). It’s a very neat project, and I’m a little surprised that it’s only sitting at about 150 backers, with the limited rewards at the higher tiers mostly unclaimed. Let’s get the word out on this one — little Ada Weinersmith needs good books to be read to her when she arrives, and this is our chance to help make that happen.

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¹ Ladies.

² Illustrating a story called The Mystery of the Vanishing Killifish, which just happens to be the subject of a doctoral dissertation by Kelly Weinersmith, who is coincidentally married to Zach Weinersmith, the two of whom are in the end stages of a possibly-illegal cloning experiment.

How the hell are ya today? Pretty damn good day if you ask me.

• It could be argued that it is, in some sense, “late”, but Wondermark #1000 has arrived and David Malki ! has put the freely-shared assets of the British Library to their greatest possible use: to convey the meeting of Piranhamoose and Sharkhawk. Welcome to the thousand-strip club, Mr Malki !, and long may you bring fresh life to the forgotten work of Victorian engravers.
• Wondermark is not the only strip encountering a milestone, as Emily Softerworld and Joey Also Softerworld celebrate eleven years of A Softer World:
  

  A Softer World is eleven years old!! Look at these chumps from the early 2000s, what did they think they were doing?!

  The “chumps” in question are, of course, Emily Horne and Joey Comeau, perhaps even before the latter lived in Ryan North’s attic and became his best friend. Fun fact! This month, Dinosaur Comics by Ryan North also had an eleven-year anniversary? It’s true!

• Success! The Kickstarter campaign for Rachel Peng audiobooks by my buddy Otter sits, as of this writing, at US$15,005, or just enough to meet the second stretch goal which will get the backers absolutely nothing new for their pledge dollars. Nothing but the satisfaction of bringing the experience of active reading to the visually impaired, as this is where Digital Divide and Maker Space get a professional Braille conversion and copies donated to libraries.

  And not for nothing¹, but I happened to read a nearly-complete version of Maker Space last night and holy crap you guys is it good. Better than Digital Divide, in fact. Good enough that with full knowledge that I have work today I stayed up three hours later than usual because I couldn’t put it down. Nine days to go on the audiobook campaign, and just a couple weeks after than until the novel releases; get in on this now and thank me later.

• Speaking of webcomickers writing books, The AV Club gave a rave review to The Martian, the first novel by Casey Weir. Weir, before taking up the without-pictures writing mantle, was the creator of both Casey and Andy and Cheshire Crossing. How many more webcomickers will release prose works before it becomes just another expected part of the creator’s professional development? I can think of a few who I think would make some terrific words-no-pictures storytellers.

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¹ And please note with a proper degree of skepticism the degree of personal familiarity I have with Otter aka KB Spangler aka “my buddy”.

Yay. Even better, Soterios Johnson took the time to send me an email debunking the rampant rumors around the region that we were going to be getting 70 – 80 cm of snow this weekend. Rumors be damned, if SoJo says we get a dusting, Mother Nature herself must needs obey. Only good news today!

• How you know Hiveworks is doing something right: they’re well-known enough to be a target of people with nothing better to do. In a recap of last year’s incident, miscreants broke in, did minimal damage, and triggered malware warnings from Google. No malware (never was), and the actual interruption was brief, but warnings may linger. Hey, miscreants? We get it, you’re very clever. Maybe give people that just want to read comics a break for a while?
• Jason Shiga has a new comic, years in the planning, and anything that guy does is more likely than not going to be brilliant. I mean, did you see Meanwhile? Demon starts here, features Jimmy from Meanwhile, has seven pages so far, and will be updating daily. Most interestingly, at the top of the comic is a progress bar, which kicked over from 0% to 1% on page four, making me thing we’ll be getting patented Shiga wonderfulness for the next year-plus.
• Slate’s Book Review and the Center for Cartoon Studies have announced their nominations for the Cartoonist Studio Prize (last year’s winner: Chris Ware’s Building Stories in the Graphic Novel category, and Noelle Stevenson’s Nimona in the Webcomic category), and there’s some brilliant stuff listed there by the likes of Gene Yang, Boulet, Erika Moen, Gabrielle Bell, Emily Carroll, KC Green, and many more.

  I can’t say that I’ve read everything on the list (consulting judge Christopher Butcher has knowledge that is both broad and deep), but everything on the list that I’m familiar with damn well deserves to be there. Even better, the breadth of form, content, and genre is breathtaking; the only thing that some of these nominees have in common is, they’re comics. Winners will be announced next month.

Just a hint, if you’re ever crewing an ambulance headed towards a patient, the last thing you want to hear over the radio is Be advised, CPR is in progress¹. Let’s find things that are infinitely more cheerful on this sunny day before the weekend brings us — what’s that from the back? Repeat that a little louder, please? That’s right! More snow! Fortunately, the past couple of days have brought some beautiful artwork and encouraging announcements from some veteran creators. Let’s enjoy it before the fimbulvetr kills us all.

• It’s hard to anybody more universally respected and beloved than Raina Telgemeier, who’s been sitting on the New York Times bestseller lists for her previous two graphic novels (if my search skills are strong, Drama was there for more than half a year and as of this week, the paperback of Smile has been there a staggering 89 weeks). It’s just a matter of time before her next book joins them, and we can get excited starting now, since Sisters now has a cover; the visual similarity to Smile‘s cover ought to make everybody that has read (and re-read) the story of dental challenges rush to read (and re-read) the story of sisterly challenges.
• No stranger to the Times bestseller list, Kazu Kibuishi hasn’t been there for a while, thanks to last year’s illness which robbed him of months of writing and drawing time. He’s bounced back nicely, and also has a cover to share with us for the forthcoming Amulet 6.It’s gorgeous, and the only thing about it that doesn’t make me ecstatic is the wait:
  

  Amulet 6: Escape From Lucien will be released August 26th, 2014.

  Dammit! Another six-plus months!

• We knew back in October that Jim Zub’s Samurai Jack would be running at least ten issues, up from the initial five issue miniseries. Now comes the word that sales are justifying another extension:
  

  Just received wonderful news from my editor- the SAMURAI JACK comic will continue through 2014, taking us to at least issue 15! YIPPY!

  Folks, I cannot stress this enough — for a comic to get an extension like this is purely a matter of sales, and SamJack is a wonderful story, so there’s no reason that anybody that enjoyed the heck out of the TV series² shouldn’t be buying the comic. I wants my Zub, people, so make sure the sales stay strong.

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¹ Much respect to our local police, who are always on scene with us, and since they’re dispatched first usually beat us to the scene. They were providing high-quality compressions by the time we got up the narrow staircase, climbed over the banister and railing, and got to work in a hallway that was narrow enough to require straddling the patient in order to reach the chest. Ultimately it took three EMTs, four cops, and two medics to get the patient packaged and down the stairs, through tight corners in an old, twisty house, and out to an ambulance via slushy/icy exterior stairs and sidewalk.

² I.e.: all right-thinking people.