Only one of which you need to — perhaps I should say only one of which you can — pay for!
• Let’s start with that one. Readers of this page are perhaps familiar with the fact that I dig on Magnolia Porter’s comics, in large part because she gets voices down. Her characters are people, not roles that need to be filled. If there’s a wacky character, you can be certain that she’s that way because of what’s happened in her life and backstory, not because the Big Book O’ Storytelling says And don’t forget to add a wacky character! I dug my way through Bobwhite, and I stand second to no man in my love of Monster Pulse. But I’d never had the chance to read her first comic, a full-length graphic novel about a criminal and his eleven year old daughter/partner.

  Until now:

  Good news! My very first graphic novel, The Good Crook, is now available in digital form on Gumroad for just 12 dollars. This is a complete 223-page comic that is no longer available online in any other form. I decided to release in a digital format since I couldn’t imagine ever finding enough time and energy to devote to publishing it in print, on top of my more current projects.

  The Good Crook has been offline for a while now so if you want to read my earliest work, you finally have the opportunity.

  The story is very dear to my heart and even though I was still learning a lot about writing and drawing while I was making it (in high school and my first years of college), I’m still pretty proud and happy with how it ended up.

  Here is why I want to read The Good Crook (apart from obsessive completism): Magnolia is a good twenty years younger than I am, and here’s an entire work that is old enough that I missed it years ago, and looking at her first work I can enjoy how good she was, how much better she’s gotten, and how much improvement she still has in front of her. Also, bargain? That’s like five cents a page. And that’s what I’ll be doing tonight.

• In fact, to get in on a greater bargain than The Good Crook, you would have had to make a decision some months, nearly a year, back. You may recall that about a month ago we told you how David Malki ! shared the fact that if you had pledged US$3 or more, you would get a bundle of webcomics in electronic form as part of a stretch goal. I estimated the value of that bundle at north of US$250, so let’s see how far off I was, because in the latest MoD Game Update, Malki ! has shared the manifest for that Webcomics Pals E-bundle:
  

  [copied from image]:

  • A Girl And Her Fed, Rise Up Swearing
  • Alaksa Robotics, Poseidon and Athena
  • Diesel Sweeties, Pocket Sweeties vol 1
  • Dinosaur Comics, All of 2011
  • Dumbing of Age, This Campus Is A Friggin’ Escher Print
  • Gastrophobia The 12 Labours of Gastrophobia
  • Gunshow, Superbook One
    Maximumble, Book 1
  • Ryan North, Poor Yorick
  • Sam and Fuzzy, Fix Your Problem (preview)
  • Scenes From A Multiverse, Book 1
  • Sheldon, Coffee: It’s What’s For Dinner
  • Skullkickers, 1000 Opas And A Dead Body
  • Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, Save Yourself, Mammal!
  • Spacetrawler, The Human Seat
  • Spike & Diana Nock, Poorcraft
  • Wasted Talent, We Are The Engineers

  Holy crap. That’s more than 2043 pages (I don’t know how long the Sam & Fuzzy preview is, and I couldn’t find the AK Robotics book in the store); taking existing e-book prices (or half the price of a physical book, if no e-book is found) gives a total value of US$102; going just from the prices of physical books (when available — Maximumble and Wasted Talent only have e-books at this point; the 2011 Dinosaur Comics strips aren’t collected yet, but the previous three full-year collections went for 20 or 21 dollars), we’re looking at US$214 of value. Actually, it’s a good deal more than that, since the only way to get a copy of Poor Yorick if you didn’t back the Kickstarter is to pony up a princely US$1000, but that will also get you the Dinosaur Comics from 2011, so call it a minimum of US$1100 or so to create this collection by other means.

  So good going, 10,666 people¹ who backed the MoD game! You got a whole mess o’ entertainment for zero extra dollars. Everybody else, you’re kinda pooched². But pooched or not, I think we can appreciate what an undertaking Mr Malki ! has engaged in here, and resolve to let him know that we’re totally glad that The Wizard isn’t plaguing him any more. So, good job, Malki !, I hope that when the shipping is done you don’t get bored.

  Yeah, right. Like you don’t have five other projects just burning a whole in your future waking hours.

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¹ If one were to multiply the number of people eligible for the reward by the estimated value of building up the collection yourself, it could be argued that Malki ! is responsible for more than US$11.7 million of economic activity!

But that would be silly.

² That strip is from 2 September, 2011 so I guess you get one of the 2011 strips for free?

What? Vacation weeks are over? Everybody’s back to work? Well, crap. Fine.

• A few days back (Friday, to be precise), Dean Trippe launched a Kickstarter to print his beautiful, unsparing, painful, and ultimately uplifting Something Terrible. Some people that launch day doubted that Trippe would meet goal over 30 days¹, but those of us that know Trippe’s work knew better.

  Now it’s absolutely true that you can get a copy of Something Terrible for a buck via Sellfy, so why would you back a Kickstarter where the support tiers go to hundreds of dollars? Glad you asked.

  1. Starting at US$5, you get a revised, expanded version of Something Terrible; actually expanded is a weak term, since it’s twice the size of the original.
  2. Starting and US$10, physical rewards come into play, including various sized prints of the splash image You’ll Be Safe Here from the end of Something Terrible.
  3. Sometime today Trippe is getting cost estimates for bumping the print version of Something Terrible to hardcover.
  4. He’s also added a support tier for ten copies, pitched at comic shops and bookstores.

  Now bear with me here, and keep in mind that I’m just spitballing, but what if we combine item #3 with item #4? Hardcover means durability; mass sales means lots of copies; those two items together means libraries and schools can get in on this, and people who really need to read this story (who wouldn’t otherwise) get that opportunity.

  I’ve had my PDF copy for months; I would have backed this campaign regardless; the fact that Trippe brought up hardcovers means I’m upping my pledge because the higher this goes, the greater chance that somebody who needs this book gets to read it. Trippe’s as much as hero as any of the characters he turned to for example and solace; helping him now is closest I can come to making sure his cape is clean and pressed.

• We’ve mentioned Matt Bors and his curatorial efforts at The Nib previously; I love the fact that he’s been seeking out a wide cross-section of [web]cartoonists and paying them American cash money to put their comics up. When we spoke, he included this on the topic of his talent roster:
  

  I have a regular stable of contributors now and that will only be expanding in 2014. I have a substantial budget to do this and you’ll be seeing other names you recognize in coming months.

  Today we found out what his substantial budget is getting him (and us): Fifteen regular cartoonists, three different ones every Monday through Friday. Additional longer-form comics journalism and auto-bio on a weekly basis. Names like Stevens, Weinersmith, Tomorrow, Moen, and Pequin are on the daily list, the likes of Wertz, Neufeld,and Knight will be contributing monthly, and creators such as Bellwood, Delliquanti, Glidden, and Rosenberg are on deck for later in the year.

  Bors, modestly, describes this as A good start, which just makes me excited to see what other shoes he’s going to drop. In the meantime, make The Nib part of your daily reading habit.

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¹ Case in point: a Kickstarter-tracking site called Sidekick gave Trippe a 7% chance of success when he was 8 hours in and 2/3 of the way to goal, which tells me that their algorithms are seriously off. They’ve since decided that yeah, he’ll succeed, so thanks for that, Sidekick!

Meanwhile, the Fleen Fudge Factor (take the Kicktraq trend target at the 24-30 hour mark, and the final total will most likely be one-sixth to one-third of that value) puts Trippe with a likely final total in the range of 3.6x to 7.2x of goal, or about US$23,000 to US$46,000. Heck, he’s more than halfway to the lower bound of that range in three days, with a mere 27 days to go.

Guys. Guys. I don’t know how your Christmas week is going, but as of right now, mine is going great. And by great, I mean full-on creepy and existentially dreadful because I got my copy of Broodhollow Book 1 in the mail and it is so good.

So, in case you hadn’t gotten me a present yet, here is what I want — share this story with me. Start reading Broodhollow from the beginning, if you haven’t previously, and then go to his store and give Kris Straub some money so that he will continue to make Broodhollow. You can get a digital edition now, and I’ll wager that in the not-too-distant future¹, you’ll be able to obtain this handsome volume for your bookshelf, where it will proceed to scare the bejabbers out of your other books. I’m sorry if you were particular attached to the bejabbers of your other books, but that’s just how these things work.

On the off chance that:

1. you have been reading Broodhollow
2. you have already given Kris Straub your money
3. your other books still require some de-bejabbering

May I recommend you step outside of webcomics for a spell and check out Rachel Rising by Terry Moore? Dude’s been self-publishing for decades now, with the absolutely stellar relationship-meets-mob-enforcers Strangers In Paradise and the techno-espionage thriller Echo. Rachel just adds to his genre-hopping, as it deals with a little case of demonic assault on a small town, no big.

Compared to Broodhollow’s interior dread, Rachel is more exterior in its scares (if you take my meaning), but between the two of them, they represent the very best of fright-oriented comics², and what more could you ask for in these days of long nights and wintry chills³?

Rachel (and Echo, and Strangers) is available in print collections or at comiXology, and it gets my highest possible recommendation. Everything I said up there about giving Straub your money also goes for Moore. Now if you’ll excuse me, I still have one or two bejabbers that need removing.

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¹ That is, once the Kickstarter orders have been sent.

² In all likelihood to be joined by The Sleep of Reason, once I get a chance to read it.

³ Northern hemisphere only.

Man, there’s nothing like that grinding fan noise that says Forget about getting any work done over this racket, I am just waiting for you to turn your back before I burst into flame and destroy all I can. Oh, wait, yes there is and it’s the hand damage that’s built into the act of disconnecting and reconnecting a bunch of Molex connectors. Love the secure fit, hate the blood that is inevitably drawn.

Let’s finish up the week on some cool news, ‘kay? Mike Holmes, cartoonist¹, main artist on the Bravest Warriors comic series², is also known for his self portraits in the styles of various artists, Miknessess. Today he got a little attention at one of the science-themed blogs at NPR, handled by RadioLab³ co-host Robert Krulwich. Titled One Man. One Cat. Multiplied, there’s not much here from a science angle, but Krulwich knows as well as anybody that sometimes, you just gotta run some cartoony self-portraits in the style of Hergé, Watterson, Larson and more.

In case you’ve never checked out the Mikenesses (and I’ve been remiss in not mentioning them before today), now’s a good time. There’s about 100 of them, there’s a new one this week in the style of Hope Larson that’s really great. If you like what you see, might you be inclined to download the first collection of Mikenesses, 100 styles in all, at Gumroad for five measly bucks? I think you might.

Okay, weeekend now. Also holiday times coming up, so there may be somewhat fewer entries until the new year. Be good.

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¹ As opposed to Mike Holmes, contracturally-sleeveless Canadian building contractor with his own bobblehead.

² I haven’t been able to find issue #15 this week, nobody spoil it for me.

³ Everybody loves RadioLab except, inexplicably, Rene Engström. Minus one point on her awesomeness score, leaving her a total of … 239,837, well above the threshold score for One of the Best People status (15).

Oh my stars and garters, The Boy! Neil threw me a bit there, what with identifying Eustace Boyce as 25, but then Bad Machinery has been running more than four years now, and that was three years after the end of Scary Go Round¹, and I guess you leave school around age 18 in Britain, so yeah, 25. Looks like since breaking up with Esther, he’s moved well onto the Susan end of life. Still, good to see him again.

• It’s been a while since we at Fleen have mention Matt Lubchansky, which is Our Bad, because he keeps doing good comics. For just about exactly one year (the first strip dates from a year ago yesterday), The New Amsterdam Mystery Company by Lubchansky and Jaya Saxena has been bringing the mystery, and yesterday the first NAMC collection, The Curse of the Dying Dutchman (which coincides with the first NAMC story arc) went up for pre-order. You’ve got two slim weeks to get in on a story that’s part supernatural mystery, part love letter to New York.
• Hat tip to Ryan Estrada (or at least, the twitterfeed of The Whole Story): Jerzy Drozd² of Comics Are Great!³ is now offering a course in comic-making; okay, lots of people do that, even people that make (and promote the art of) comics as much as Drozd. What distinguishes this one (and makes sense, being linked by The Whole Story, the name your price publisher) is that Drozd’s course is being offered on Gumroad, pay what you want:
  

  In this four-part series we’ll explore how to build a comics story from the ground up! There’s a lot to consider when making a comic: developing a dynamic cast of characters, defining your world, devising visually exciting pages, and more. And what about figuring out your options for getting your work to your audience? This series of interactive presentations will provide you with some context and options in navigating those waters.

  Name your price for seven hours of comics instruction! You’ll be able to download the DRM-Free videos or stream them from Gumroad.

  So that’s seven videos, seven hours, for free? Well, yes, but only if you’re a chump. There’s a lot of knowledge and work there, so if you decide to download, don’t leave the price set to zero, ‘kay?

• I expected to wake up this morning to a bigger than usual backlog on Twitter, what with the last episode of The Best Show, but I didn’t expect to see a new Penny Arcade/PAX controversy. Here’s the short version: Indie Statik broke (and Kotaku confirmed) the story of a new offering at future PAXes: a diversity lounge. There’s been a lot of back and forth about segregation and I’ve seen the word ghetto used more than once; I think that a lot of the reactions have come from people that read the Indie Statik and Kotaku stories, and more of the reactions have come from people that read the first reactions.

  I also think that a lot of people aren’t discussing things so much as they’re projecting assumptions on on each other. We’ve got one set of primary source material here, the document describing the lunge in question, the originals of which may be seen at Indie Statik (image 1, image 2). I think that everybody that’s got an opinion on the matter might want to follow those links, because they might not say what you think they say.

  Most importantly, a lot of people I’ve seen have been describing the lounge as a designated safe space and getting angry that all of PAX isn’t likewise. Thing is, my reading of the document doesn’t indicate that’s what’s planned at all. I do see indications that it’s a place that people can come and learn, and that part of what can be taught is how to establish safe spaces.

  My reading of the description is Hey, want to learn about people who aren’t like you but play games anyway? Willing to pry yourself away from demos for half an hour, maybe? Go here. Implicit in that is a subtext: Everybody that’s always complained that you get jumped on for being oppressive and wondering what you’re doing wrong and why won’t anybody teach you? This is what you’ve been asking for, so avail yourself or shut up.

  What I didn’t see anywhere in the description is All minorities go here so the rest of us don’t have to think about you, which is a pretty close paraphrase of one of the criticisms I read earlier today. But you know what? It hasn’t happened yet, and whether or not it’s well-executed will be determined months from now; whatever aspects of it aren’t done well at PAX East, will they be done better at Prime and Aus? Will the PA principals be involved in curating the content, or will they be delegating that to somebody else? How credible will the content slate be? Crucially, will Mike and Jerry be spending some learning time in there?

  What we’ve got at the moment is a two-page outline, vague enough that it could have come out of a corporate mission-statement generating workshop. It’s not a blueprint, it’s the brainstorm that will build the structure that will eventually be used to define the blueprint. Maybe nobody avails themselves of it and it fails spectacularly. Maybe it succeeds to the extent that the hub and lounge grow and assume more floor space at each subsequent show. Maybe it’s an expression of Mike & Jerry’s parental concern that their kids come up in the hobby they love, but without absorbing the worst parts of the culture that surrounds it⁴.

  Penny Arcade is too big to do anything quietly — or subtly, for that matter; they’ve got a load of momentum to shed before they can chart a new course. It will take years to work past some of their mistakes (if in fact they ever completely do) and to be known for more than their worst behavior. Maybe — just maybe — this is where it changes.

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¹ We’ve actually seen The Boy within the pages of Giant Days, if memory serves, but that’s from the early days of university and thus seven years ago in story time.

² Improbably enough, there are two Jerzy Drozds out there, the other being a bass luthier of some repute. Odd, but no odder than there being two Gary Tyrrells, I suppose.

³ Word.

⁴ Mike and Jerry have not always been wise in picking which fights to have or how to have them. I suspect that like all conscientious parents, they want their kids to be wiser, smarter, kinder, better people than they themselves have been. Or maybe I’m projecting because my parents and grandparents taught me to be better than the prejudices that they learned and didn’t always grow out of.

Guhhh, this bout of the Martian Death Flu apparently wanted to cram four or five days worth of feeling crappy into about twelve hours. I’m over the worst of it, and don’t actually feel bad, but I could use about ten hours of sleep. Thankfully, the snow appears to have stopped with less accumulation than would have required shoveling, so yay. Oh, yes, also webcomics.

I don’t think that there’s a world-builder of alien¹ environments and characters² that’s more accomplished, more thorough, more in tune with the totality of what’s being dreamed up and then deposited on the page³ for you to read than Evan Dahm. We’re conditioned by years — decades — of entertainment to think of not human as human, but slightly taller/shorter with different ears/nose/forehead, possibly a vocal tic, and entirely analogous to one particular culture, but Dahm’s creatures and characters and architecture and scripts and, and, and spring from a place that isn’t merely the familiar with a smear of paint and some prosthetics.

Case in point: Overside.

I’ve lost count of how many cultures and species and languages and geographies and histories Dahm has created to populate this place that feels organically⁴ real, and for each of those that he shares with us, there are hints about many more just around the corner. Junti becomes the most curious and inventive Surin in history and takes to the skies and it is exhilarating … but around each of those corners and alleys surrounding the Chapterhouse enclave there’s a debate, a haggle, an argument, a conspiracy taking place, because the city of Sahta is more than just the scene that’s being depicted now — it’s someplace that Dahm has made breathe since the first time we glimpsed it.

By the way, we spent 200 pages building up the story of Vattu, whose world can’t conceive of such a city. And as of yesterday, he’s spent another 300 pages building up the experience of Vattu (and Junti, and other captives, exiles, citizens, and rulers, highborn and low) in that city, and bringing us along for the ride. We’ve learned bits of culture, society, religious thought, calendrical structure, climate, politics, economy, and natural philosophy⁵, never laid out explicitly, always sneaking in at the periphery of whatever’s happening on the main stage.

So there we are, 500 pages of the current Overside story, rendered in glorious color, and we might be approaching the 40% mark of the story. There’s much more ahead of us than we have behind, and there are many more eras and lands in Overside still to share their secrets⁶. Given that Dahm’s about to be able to ship the first volume of Vattu, this would be a good time to catch up on at least one of those stories (there are others), and luxuriate in all the world-building. You’ll be glad you did.

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¹ In the sense of not like that which is familiar rather than the sense of outer space monsters.

² I should probably say people instead.

³ Or screen; work with me here.

⁴ Free-range, even. Locally-sourced.

⁵ I almost said science, but I think that Junti is the first Surin to approach unweight — and life, possibly — with the critical, systemic approach that demarcates the line between natural philosophers and scientists. She’s going to spark the Sahtan equivalent of the Enlightenment, that girl is.

⁶ Not to mention what he’s doing with L Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Dear glob, that’s going to be beautiful.

In case anybody had any doubts that Chris Onstad is a languagesmith of the highest order, may I refer you to today’s Achewood. Even if this storyline ends here, it was worth it.

• In other news, a tweet dropped that makes perfect, perfect sense, so much so that in retrospect, we at Fleen are surprised that it doesn’t drop earlier:
  

  We can now announce that Becky is the character designer on Bee and PuppyCat!

  That would be Becky Dreistadt, and naturally everybody here knows Bee and PuppyCat and on the off chance you don’t know Bee and PuppyCat, please acquaint yourself with Bee and PuppyCat immediately. Heck, go watch it now anyway, I’ll wait.

  Back? Awesome. In case there were any doubts that Dreistadt were the right person for this design job¹, check out any part of her portfolio, including her work on Tiny Kitten Teeth, Capture Creatures, The Bear, or Benign Kingdom. You would have to spend a decade of concentrated mad-scientist bioengineering to create somebody better suited to this role on this webseries. Also, I would pay money to see Beer and PuppyFrat expanded into an episode, much like Natasha Allegri’s gender-reversed joke illustrations became Adventure Time’s Fionna and Cake².

• The recognition of webcomics-type ladies and dudes continues at The AV Club, this time with the staffers indicating what one piece of pop culture from 2013 they would share with the entire world if possible. Among the responses: Nimona by Noelle Stephenson and To Be or Not To Be by the ubiquitous Ryan North.
• The Patreon train continues its travel through Webcomicsville; since Jon Rosenberg³ launched his page on Monday, he’s nearly reached his first extra-reward tier. On Wednesday, Zach Weinersmith jumped on board and is already on the verge of altering the ad mix on his page. Today Ryan Sohmer got his ticket punched, with the potential of launching another comic.

  I’d worry about the additional writing duties causing his brain to collapse from over-mining, but honestly — the difference between the workload of writing two regular webcomics, one ongoing children’s book⁴, two webseries, and two editorial comics and writing three regular webcomics, one ongoing children’s book, two webseries, and two editorial comics isn’t that much, incrementally. Back the Patreon campaign, and you can help drive him to the brink of neural overload!

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¹ And that’s before one considers the neat symmetry that the “Frank” of BeckyandFrank would be Frank Gibson, who provided the voice of Wallace in Bee and PuppyCat

² And who created Bee and PuppyCat? Natasha Allegri. Wheels within wheels, plans within plans. It all fits together!

³ Obligatory disclaimer, etc.

⁴ Illustrated by Becky Dreistadt! It all comes back around!

Well, that’s my holidays all cheered up — the inimitable Tom Spurgeon¹ decided that his year-end interview schedule needed a hack webcomics pseudojournalist for balance, and we just had a delightful talk. Assuming you don’t get enough of my semi-abusive opinionmongering here, I’ll be sure to let you know when that goes live. And may I say, this was the first time Spurgeon and I have interacted person-to-person, and he’s simply a terrific conversationalist. In case you still need a little something to cheer up your holidays, there’s places out there that would provide you with gifts for the comics center of your brain; let’s go check ’em out.

• Via the tweet-feed of Mr Scott C, I see that Gallery 1988 will be holding the latest iteration of its Crazy 4 Cult show in New York this year, meaning that I get a shot at Scott C art without having to fly to LA. Opening is tomorrow night, at G1988’s Manhattan space, 355A Bowery (at 3rd), from 7:00pm to 10:00pm. Past experience of gallery openings suggests that there may well be snacks and booze available. There will be an associated signing event on Sunday, from noon to 4:00pm, and the show will run each day from noon to 7:00pm, until Saturday, 21 December.
• Word is appearing online that the 12 Days of Holiday Bullshit packages o’ fun are arriving in mailboxes. I, alas, missed my chance to get in on the gifting extravaganza, despite the exhortations of people like Rich Stevens and Dylan Meconis dropping broad hints on Twitter that I really should be signing up.

  There are still nine days to go according to the official page, and given that they’ve commissioned a Molly Lewis song about Hawai’ian detachable-vagina gods, I’m guessing that when the Stevens/Meconis thing drops, we’ll all recognize it immediately. If one of you who are in the lucky 100,000 subscribers would let us know when that happens, that would be awesome.

• This page is well known to be in the tank for K Brooke “Otter” Spangler, creator extraordinaire of A Girl And Her Fed, and aside from the fact that she regularly gifts us with one of my favorite webcomics for free, she’s decided to up the ante somewhat. Take ‘er away, Otter [no direct link]:
  

  How would you like the first nine chapters of MAKER SPACE?

  Maker Space would be the second of Spangler’s AGAHFiverse novels; the first, Digital Divide, was terrific, and the second looks to be even better. Disclaimer: Otter asked me to do a reality-check on a plot point involving a branch of engineering I’m not trained in, so I’ve seen a snippet of the book and loved it, even though I was spectacularly useless with respect to the technical check she was seeking².

  How would you like them for free?

  Now we’re talkin’. Spangler is offering approximately the first third of her next novel for the princely sum of zero dollars because she’s awesome. Also because when the book actually comes out in March, some of you will want to see how it turns out and might pony up more than zero dollars for the ending. In the meantime, if you haven’t taken my advice on how good a story-wrangler Otter is, this is your no-risk chance to check out her stuff, in PDF format here or Kindle-style MOBI here.

  Those links will take you to Gumroad, where you’ll be asked for a credit card number — don’t provide one. As soon as you enter 0 in the price box, the request for your plastic will go away; give ’em an email address to send the link to, and get to downloadin’ and readin’ and enjoyin’. Oh, and be sure to leave out a plated of cookies and glass of milk for Otter Claus³.

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¹ So don’t even try to imit him!

² Not that that kept me from commenting on almost every other aspect of what she sent me. Pedantry, thy name is, uh, me.

³ If anybody wanted to draw a sketch of Otter Claus, well, I wouldn’t say no.

Several repeat visits today; sometimes that’s just how things reveal themselves.

• Speaking of Penny Arcade, Child’s Play, etc: The progress graph on the main page is a little out of date, as the recent formal dinner/auction raised more than US$250,000 and have brought the year’s total to the neighborhood of US$3.4 million. This brings the ten-year total to some US$21 million, and there’s still US$1.6 million to go to pass last year’s total (CP have always grown in absolute terms, year-on-year).
• Speaking of The AV Club and their year-end best-of lists, today they tackled Graphic Novels and Art Comics¹ wherein they recognized Emily Carroll’s Out of Skin and Gene Yang’s Boxers & Saints, all of which also count as “speaking of …”. One should note as well that another of their recognized graphic novels, while not strictly webcomic-related, does come from :01 Books (speaking of, once more) — namely, Paul Pope’s Battling Boy.
• Okay, this might stretch the limits of “speaking of”, since we have to go back exactly one year when A Lesson Is Learned By The Damage Is Irreversible returned for what was claimed to be a one-off. They have since released a second new comic within the past five weeks, meaning they’re only now restarting the hiatus clock and will have to go more than six and a half years to equal their previous absence.

  It actually makes sense that they’ve produced but one comic since their return for hiatus, as it would seem that significant amount of time would be needed for them to put a collection of their past strips as prints up at TopatoCo, seeing as how they’re all different sizes and degrees of complexity. Those factors mean that not all ALILBTDII strips are available, and that those that are will have prices varying from US$14 to US$60 (for a single-piece humongous print of I Name Thee Annihilator, which is 190 cm tall, or nearly one Ryan North in height).

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¹ To distinguish from yesterday’s list of mainstream comic books, the boundaries being somewhat arbitrary.

To quote The Spurge, who tweeted last evening:

emily carroll emily carroll emily carroll

Spurge’s tweet led to a Tumblr that led to Zainab Akhtar’s blog that’s got images and info — a full preview, honestly — of Emily Carroll’s first print collection.

Due in July 2014 in a 200+ page hardcover, Through The Woods looks to be exactly what anybody that’s read Carroll’s comics will want — fairy- and folk-tale influenced, deeply unsettling stories, including a reconfigured-for-print version of her breakout story, His Face All Red. Akhtar asserts that this is one of the books that most comics fans are looking forward to and I’m gonna go out on a limb and agree; at least for me, this may be my most-anticipated book since, jeeze, I dunno? Anya’s Ghost? Boxers & Saints? Darkness? Just head over to Akhtar’s site and drink in the beauty.

Okay, one other story that matters: you’re coming up on your last chances to get in on a pair of webcomics Kickstarts.

• You’ve got 10 hours to get in on Sophie Goldstein and Jenn Jordan’s Darwin Carmichael Is Going To Hell campaign (which, sitting at about 180% of goal, is definitely going to be made, but you won’t get your copy any quicker than on the KS). DCIGTH is charming, comforting, and a complete story, so this is it — your chance to support Jordan and Goldstein for the free comics they supplied you.
• And since I last wrote about it a week ago, the Broken Telephone campaign has seen a resurgence, sitting at about 91% with three days to do. Kicktraq has the latest iteration of Ryan Estrada’s The Whole Story series finishing at 104% of goal (which is loads better than the heartbreaking 96% it was predicting last week), but nothing counts until it crosses that 100% threshold. There’s an armful of creators who stand to get paid with actual, real money, but only if a little less that US$2200 of more pledges show up. Time’s running out, don’t let this one stumble.