Everybody’s on a plane right about now, heading to Emerald City Comic Con; I suppose it’ll be just as bad when TCAF or SDCC come around, but man I’ll breathe easier when this flight lands in Seattle:

.@aidosaur @yaytime @goraina @dresdencodak @caitefa @MagnoliaPearl @hanoodlez @jnwiedle @johngreenart @jonrosenberg on same flight! Wowwww

Go safely, my friends. Oh, and when Aaron Diaz lands, somebody tell him that his Kickstarter cleared US$200,000.

Speaking of Kickstarts, Ben Costa’s Shi Long Pang, The Wandering Shaolin Monk has built up enough pages for Volume 2 to hit, to the production of which you may now contribute. Pàng, The Wandering Shàolín Monk, volume 2 is, in the few hours it’s been up, about 10% of the way towards its relatively modest US$6000 goal. Sure, there are Kickstarts asking for less, but consider that PTWSMv2 will match the form factor of volume 1 (full disclosure: Costa was kind enough to give me a copy at SDCC 2010, namely a full-color, heavy-stock, hardcover volume which is as well-designed an upmarket as anything put out by :01 Books.

For a self-published collection, it’s about as high-quality as you can get, and it’s offered right at the base reward tier, US$25 bucks to get a copy sent to you in August. Bargain of the year, easily, and that’s before you factor in the pitch video, which features 1970s-style Hong Kong cinematography and cheapo, out-of-sync dubbing. For anybody that grew up watching Black Belt Theater on channel 11 out of New York (or your local equivalent), the video is a trip down nostalgia lane, and no less than one would expect from the Dean of Iron Crotch Studies at Iron Crotch University¹, and founding publisher, Iron Crotch University Press.

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¹ Home of the Fightin’ Rusties.

Everybody is either in transit to Seattle for EmCity or making final preparations before leaving tomorrow. I could mention that Dresden Codak’s Kickstarter is being reported as the fastest-funding initial 24 hours of any comics project and is already the #8 most-funded Comics project after approximately 40 hours, or that the Machine of Death card game Kickstarter has just unlocked something called — rather ominously — FATE BLITZ, but we’ve heard enough about those two projects of late, so I won’t.

Instead, two brief items:

• One, for the next while, Yuko Ota and Ananth Panagariya will be running Lucky Penny in lieu of their regular diary strips. For those that didn’t catch the announcement last year, Lucky Penny is an original graphic novel by Panagariya and Ota for Oni Press, which unfortunately doesn’t seem to have a release date just yet. The shift to LP will let Ota work on just one thing for a while, hopefully speeding the day when we see a print collection, new Benign Kingdom projects, and more.
• Two, I have on past occasions mentioned Christopher Bird and Davinder Brar’s Al’Rashad: City of Myths, a weekly longform comic of politics, religion, intrigue, and characters that tell you what you need to know about them by how they dress¹ and hold themselves when they speak. It’s terrific stuff.

  But please note that I said “need to know”, as for a great deal of time I have wanted to know a great deal more about these characters and the world they inhabit; my guess is perhaps 10% of what Bird has world-built in his head will ever see the page. And wonder of wonders, Bird has answered my silent plea with a character page chock full of biographical and geopolitical nuggets that make my heart sing. I am so happy that I’m not even going to engage in the privilege of every comics reader and kvetch about the obvious contradiction between biography and previously established story and clearly Bird doesn’t care about continuity like true fans would and … [Editor’s note: At this point Gary was dragged away and had some manners slapped into him; we apologize for the fuss.]

  Ahem. As I was saying, please enjoy Al’Rashad, updates Mondays, and please overlook both my misplaced enthusiasm as well as my inexplicable omission of Al’Rashad from the recommended comics list over there to the right. Get to reading.

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¹ I particularly note that the Caliph of Al’Rashad dresses very plainly, which reveals great deal of his character.

The annual scramble for San Diego Comic Con hotel rooms started at 12:00 noon EST and by 12:02 I was done with a promise of an email with my assignment. Here’s hoping.

Oh, and since this is going to be a Kickstarter-heavy post,let’s get something non-Kickstarter out of the way up front — I have of late been enjoying the crap out of Help Us! Greatest Warrior, which appears at a Tumblr near you The title character is bean-like, more than a little dude-crazy and will utterly kick your ass if she can be bothered. Creator Madéleine Flores has been killing it, and you should hit the (very brief) archives right now.

• Is this new? I think this is new. David Malki ! posted in an update for the Machine of Death card game Kickstarter that he will use the powers of technology to add a special reward for backers that also back a different, unrelated game. This is, I believe, the first Kickstarter crossover:
  

  Story War is a little bit similar to Machine of Death in its broad strokes (“combine random elements to accomplish a wacky objective”), but varies in the particulars.

  If you pledge to both games (physical versions), we’re gonna compare our backer lists and each send you an exclusive bonus card: a Machine of Death card that references Story War, and a Story War card that references Machine of Death! We’ll also send you a PDF with a set of suggested CROSSOVER RULES for combining both cards in HIGH STAKES INTERLEAGUE PLAY. [emphasis and SHOUTING original]

  I can’t wait to see what other cross-pollinations this might lead to. In this case, it’s a match of equals (both Story War and Machine of Death are well over their goals, so neither is trying to gain success by drafting off the other), but I could see especially successful projects being approached by struggling projects, trying to succeed via cross promotion that mostly goes one way. Secondary market, anyone?

• Speaking of secondary markets, about ten days back we mentioned a new service from TopatoCo called Make That Thing with some speculation about how MTT might be structured and a promise of more details soon. That was supposed to have been last weekend via an interview with TopatoCo VP Holly Rowland, but weather systems (and now EmCity) got in the way, so we’ll be talking with Holly next week.

  In the meantime, Make That Thing had a public unveiling last night, and we’re able to see some of how MTT is going to operate. In addition to shipping and fulfillment services, MTT will be offering promotional services, and will also be able to offer certain kinds of production:

  Because each campaign involves a high amount of personal attention and attention to detail, we only take on a handful of projects at a time, and only those that we think match up well with the kinds of things we know how to make – primarily comics, books, and games.

  We don’t know how to make USB toasters or solar-powered flashlights, so we simply won’t take on Hardware, Design, Video Game, or Fashion projects. Other people are better at that than we are. However, the rewards for your project are heavily weighed toward the following:

  • Printed materials (books, comics, posters)
  • Printed or embroidered apparel items (T-shirts, polos, neckties, aprons)
  • Novelties and baubles (stickers, patches, bookmarks, foam swords)
  • Other things that don’t involve inventing a new type of manufacturing apparatus

  Then we might be a good fit.

  They’re in closed beta right now, and as MTT finds its feet, I suspect they’ll be taking on projects primarily from the existing roster of TopatoCo clients. However, I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if future clients found an MTT campaign as being similar to an audition for joining up with TopatoCo as an ongoing client. More when I get to chance to talk to Rowland, where I’ll be sure to ask who thought it was a good idea to leave a forklift with the TopatoCo Funployees.

• Speaking of Make That Thing, we knew that the Machine of Death card game was going to use MTT on account of that was sort of their soft launch. Now we know that their second client will be the Dresden Codak book which is well into holy shit territory with nearly US$120,000 raised in the first 15 hours. Aaron Diaz¹ has been hard at work since launch trying to come up with stretch goals that he hadn’t anticipated needing for a week or more. Even if you don’t read Dresden Codak, go check out the campaign just for video, then ask yourself honestly how fancy your pants are.

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¹ The Tolkien and Dinosaur Scholar Par Excellence. Oh my glob, Aaron, you need to draw the main players of The Silmarillion as maniraptors.

I ain’t Elisabeth Kübler-Ross but I do know something about the stages of grief, such as when Achewood (the once-unstoppable behemoth of absurdist-realist philosophizing) sputters to a near-halt¹. As noted previously, Chris Onstad is not my bitch and however he may find joy in producing aspects of Achewood that I may then consume, it’s all good. I get to share that particular creation that he lets loose on the world whether it’s once a day or twice a year, and however much I may miss it, I cannot complain too much about not getting free entertainment on a my desired schedule rather than that which Onstad can accommodate given the shape of his life.

So it is with a mixture of excitement and don’t-get-too-excited-yet that I noted his first Achewood-related bloggance in more than a year:

Hi. I’m back. I have some good news for you. It’s been a long time coming. A lot has changed since I fell off the face of the earth.

First and foremost: I’ve been working with a team of artists, engineers, and producers to bring Achewood to life. To give it the voices, richness, and opportunities it never had as a comic strip.

I’m flying to Los Angeles today to begin a week of network pitch meetings. If things go well, we’ll find a home for our show. Please cross your fingers for us, send us your good energy. And please, share this clip with your world. I’m very proud of what we’ve done.

There are many other things I want to share with you. About Achewood, about this, about all the loose ends, and about my plans for it going forward. This is the tip and the bulk of the iceberg, but there is much more. It’s been a very busy couple years, full of life-size tragedies, manifold germinations of happiness, and surprising rebirths—just like Achewood.

The pitch meetings mentioned are to explore the possibility of an Achewood-related animated series? special? film? project of some sort, the teaser of which makes me smile. Because I’m totally in the tank for Achewood, I’ve been parsing through those 19 seconds of sound and motion² for any clues they might offer³. Because I’m a realist, I know that even properties with a constituency within an entertainment company can be optioned, paid for, and spend years or decades in development without ever coming to fruition. At this time, possibilities exist — which is more than was true last week.

• Poorcraft 2, on the topic of traveling on the cheap, is well in production and on Saturday Poorcraft bookrunner Spike dropped some news on it. While P2 will see Diana Nock returning for art duties, Spike herself will be stepping back from writing duties as Ryan Estrada — webcomics own Marco Polo — handles the script. Or handled, as the book is well into the gettin’ drawed stage, meaning that Estrada’s work is largely done. Can’t wait to see how Poorcraft: Wish You Were Here turns out.
• Updating our EmCity seating information, news comes this morning that a fairly substantial chunk of Artists Alley island F will be given over to Benign Kingdom. The official exhibitor’s list mentions B9 occupying seat F-16, which is also listed as the home of Johnny Wander. However, word is that B9 will actually occupy seats F12-F16, of which three seats are listed as occupied, and two not listed, which tells me that Grand Vizier George is probably planning to have people rotate into the space seats throughout the show, as well as giving the usual occupants a little more breathing room than is normally found in Artists Alley.
• Given that various Strip Search parties have said that the show will be launching this month, and that the Strip Search site lists the show as running Tuesdays and Fridays, and there’s only one of those weekdays left in the month, Im’a keep a browser window refreshing tomorrow. If nothing else, I’ve been very impressed with the Artist interviews that have run, and how well the Strip Search producers (possibly Khoo) are at stirring up shit in such a blatant fashion. If there’s a reunion show, we may see murder yet.

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¹ To wit: five strips in all of 2011, twelve in the first six months of 2012, and zero since.

² As opposed to Sound and Motion.

³ Such as the 0:11 mark, where it appears that Teodor has been retired in favor of Roast Beef as Ray tests his Whiskey á la Mood sampler. It also appears that Ray is the centerpiece of this teaser, which makes me wonder if he still sounds the same as when Onstad voiced him.

So Howard Tayler’s Kickstarter is running at some 3000% of goal and counting, and he’s got a really important update that you should read. Certainly, read it if you’re a backer, but also read it if you’ve ever considered running a Kickstarter yourself because he talks about how your plans can get completely pooched not just from failing at a Kickstarter, but from succeeding too well¹.

The original scope for this project was as follows:

• Fund the creation of up to five different coins, at volumes which allow me to sell them at conventions, and keep stock on hand.
• Fund at somewhere between $10k and $20k after thirty days.
• Ship all the coins in mid-April

For reference, Tayler is just shy of US$55,000 as of this writing. Between Tayler’s experience and other runaway successes we’ve seen where the delivery of rewards becomes a serious burden², I’m starting to wonder if creators should make much more liberal use of limited rewards. Expecting to see no more than X to Y and a proportional number of backers, and you’ve arranged your schedule for the next few months around those assumptions? Limit the rewards so if you get a blowout success in the opening hours, you aren’t obligated to do more than you’re capable of.

If there’s pent-up demand, you can always say, I’m gratified so many of you want in on this, I’ll whip up some new rewards tiers and let the rest of you give me money while making the appropriate shifts to your schedule. And hey, nothing drives up interest like initial scarcity. If you’ve got a relatively straightforward set of rewards with a predictable production schedule, reliable supply chain, and scalable delivery operations, feel free to leave everything unlimited. In all other cases, some hard-nosed realistic self-assessment will probably be what stands between you and madness.

• Speaking of Kickstarters, Zach Weinersmith wrapped up his this morning, raising US$341,667 towards his newest book. If my math is correct, the number of backers he’s gotten at the various tiers means he’ll be signing his name approximately 4194 times in the various books that get signatures. Although many of those signatures will come from earlier books, which means Weinersmith may already have them signed and his hand won’t fall off the week after the big pallets arrive at his house.
• Nobody does data–sharing like Dorothy Gambrell³, and it was gratifying to see that her latest way to envision information is blowing up all over the damn place in the last couple of days. You won’t find it on her website, though, as it was made for Psychology Today’ February 2013 issue. In case you don’t subscribe, the editors have made her infographic of where missed connections occur by state available. If you’re a Scientologist, it’s all over Tumblr without attribution, which totally sucks.
• More EmCity participant notifications have come in, meaning I’ll have to go back to my earlier post and update the lists and maps. In the meantime, please consider yourselves notified that John Troutman and Ryan Smith will be at table Q-19 in Artists Alley.

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¹ Paging Rich Burlew, who gets all the slack in the world for an unpredictable injury that forced him to stop work for months, but who also wound up in the situation of having to create 25 separate product categories and try to keep nearly 15,000 backers happy while being just one person. That’s the sort of situation that sends sensible, grounded people on benders that take Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas as a to-do list.

² Above and beyond the simple shipping aspect, regarding which I will have more to say next week; the real work is in the design and production of everything you promise.

³ Except maybe Randall Munroe. If Gambrell and Munroe ever collaborated, my brain would explode from sheer enjoyment.

It’s been more than five months since Rich Burlew sliced his thumb up good and his return to comics has been slow — he managed to get one update in just before the end of 2012, and has averaged about one a week since then. Having so few chances to get story into play over such a log time must surely be frustrating, as he [SPOILERS] dropped a (long-awaited, it’s true) bombshell on us today.

Certainly, Burlew has been willing to kill off major and minor recurring characters in the past, but the one previous case of killing off a major cast member resulted in him getting better¹. This feels somehow more permanent, and the loving rendering on the last panel speaks to an artist being forced to wait nearly half a year longer than he’d planned to get to that particular development. Rest In Peace (perhaps temporarily), Death’s Lil’ Helper. You’ll be sort of missed, kinda.

I don’t think I mentioned the Johnny Wander book launch party on Saturday night — it was a blast watching Yuko Ota draw a strip with panels determined by suggestions written on little slips of paper and chosen randomly (the first of them should be today’s update, which should be available here at some point in the next few hours but which presently doesn’t exist). Let’s just say that small cats, unicorn power, and droopy socks work together surprisingly well. Oh, and also that Aaron Diaz‘s dog, Special Agent Dale Cooper, is both adorable and remarkably well-behaved in a large crowd.

Speaking of Aaron Diaz², we had a terrific talk about recent progress in dromaeosaurine research³ — to the point that Evan Dahm came over and guessed You’re talking about Deinonychus, aren’t you? — and his immediate publishing plans. You’ve no doubt seen the teaser image for the forthcoming Dresden Codak book, which has proved to be a production challenge.

Consider: Diaz regularly does individual updates that are actually a page or so in size and then intersperses them with single images that are the equivalent of four or five pages. How the heck do you put those in a single book? Answer: with a lot of creative layout, and two different trim sizes, the smaller of which will be at least 30 cm tall by 25 cm wide and the larger of which will approximately match the dimensions of the Little Nemo collections (a mind-bending 53 x 42 cm).

With any luck, he’ll be Kickstarting the books in the very near term, and sometime after that — presumably after his all-but-certain Machine of Death game card set — he’ll have time to do a book of dinosaur art. Dude’s got opinions on the thunder lizards and I want to see them illustrated.

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¹ Albeit more than 220 updates and two years later.

² The Tolkien Dinosaur Scholar Par Excellence.

³ This doesn’t have anything to do with past questions like whether or not theropods are represented by modern avians, or if they had feathers — Diaz will brook no dissent on these topics. Rather, it was about hunting styles, with the smaller, shorter-legged, stiffer-tailed dromaeosaurs now being thought of as not active, chase ’em down type predators like their larger, longer-legged, flexi-tailed cousins. Rather, they make have been arboreal, hanging out in tree branches (perhaps their feathers forming camouflage) and dropping onto their prey as they wandered by.

I don’t mean to be flip, and we will talk comics in a minute, but today almost all my mental bandwidth is being taken up by a music video featuring a youth choir, the Barenaked Ladies, and Commander Frickin’ Hadfield¹. I am not immune to earnest hopefulness, especially when it’s got a catchy tune.

So, comics.

• I first noticed French webcomicker Boulet about this time last year when he posted an absolutely astonishing 24 hour comic called Darkness. Today I noticed an announcement from AdHouse Books that Darkness will see print in April which makes me very, very happy. Sadly, it’s being produced in limited numbers, and will primarily be available — as near as I can tell — at Boulet’s appearances at Stumptown and MoCCA. If you get a chance to grab a copy of Darkness, absolutely do so.
• KaBOOM! continues mining the talent of webomickry and indy arts for covers of its Cartoon Network-spinoff comics, with Brian Butler, Mary Cagle, David McGuire, and Mad Rupert getting the nod for the covers of Regular Show #2. Gotta say, Rupert’s realist take on the main cast is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.
• Finally, congrats to Brad Guigar, for today marks the day that his internet comicking efforts become a teenager, and we all know how difficult teens can be. In three years when his webcomics are screaming that they hate Brad and why can’t they borrow the car, be sure to give the guy some love.

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¹ He is seriously the most inspiring, fire-up-everybody-on-the-potential-of-space astronaut we’ve had since forever.

The big news in webcomics has to be the PR maelstrom surrounding the fact that the fabulously talented Kazu Kibuishi has been selected to produce new covers for the US trade paperbacks of the Harry Potter novels:

The stunning art for the new editions is by critically acclaimed artist Kazu Kibuishi, best known for his #1 New York Times bestselling graphic novel series, Amulet. Kibuishi is a longtime Harry Potter fan who called this opportunity, “more than a little surreal.” Each of the seven new covers will depict a distinctive and memorable moment from the respective book. The collection, which will also be released in September as a boxed set, will offer new readers just reaching the age to begin the series a glimpse of J.K. Rowling’s magical world and the epic story they are about to enter.

“The Harry Potter covers by Mary GrandPré are so fantastic and iconic,” said Kibuishi. “When I was asked to submit samples, I initially hesitated because I didn’t want to see them reinterpreted! However, I felt that if I were to handle the project, I could bring something to it that many other designers and illustrators probably couldn’t, and that was that I was also a writer of my own series of middle grade fiction. As an author myself, I tried to answer the question, ‘If I were the author of the books – and they were like my own children – how would I want them to be seen years from now?’

Even if Kibuishi wasn’t in the Scholastic family¹, there could hardly have been a better choice than Kibuishi, given his feel for the balance point between the fantastical and mundane, his appeal to YA readers, and his ability to convey flight better than anybody this side of Miyazaki².

We shouls also Note the fact that Kibuishi apparently serves as his own Secret-Keeper — some of his closest colleagues and friends are deep into Potter fandom and they didn’t know. One entirely plausible reading of a tweet would indicate that his wife didn’t know. Well done, Kazu, and I think I speak for all of us when I say I can’t wait to see the rest of the covers. Also, congratulations for finding the rarest of all things: a work for hire job that actually does provide high-profile exposure benefits for a career.

• Speaking of gorgeous pictures, it was actually a bit of a tough decision to put that Kibuishi piece up top, given that there’s also an Anthony Clark-designed Baffler! to share with you. Can there ever be anything as wonderful as Beartato with a pizza for Reginald and Harrison? No, there cannot, unless you maybe consider Conscience Cat riding a corgi by Sam Logan.
• It appears that Federal agents with chips in their heads that can see into the electromagnetic spectrum are now a thing, but answer me this: will the (as yet unpublished) YA novel or the TV series it’s inspired feature the ghost of Ben Franklin? Or a hyperintelligent, Machiavellian, and thoroughly chlamydia-ridden koala? Or a plethora of dick jokes? Stick with the original, and consider that this may have an upside: AGAHF creator K. Brooke “Otter” Spangler has commented that this will prod her to speed up the timetable for completing her spinoff novel, Digital Divide, the first three quarters of which is really good, you guys.

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¹ They publish the Amulet series [warning: potential time-suck once you discover how to make the characters conga the day away].

² I remain firm in my belief that the only reason that Kibuishi is not the living reincarnation of Miyazaki is that Miyazaki is still alive.

We at Fleen have long followed the career of Ryan North, the Toronto Man-Mountain of legend. Even his tragic death from sploding could not stop his relentless march towards ever greater creative endeavours, a march which is somewhat simpler today thanks to his recent re-embodiment.

Alert readers may recall that North took the precaution of constructing a mathematical representation of his physical body such that even the icy talons of death would not long grip him. After arcane rituals that are best left undescribed, a sacramental libation was poured into a representation of North’s skull, his ineffable life-force came rushing back in, bursting the vessel with his mighty essence and causing his physical being to spontaneously reconstruct from nothing, a process which was thankfully caught on video.

Doubters may feel that this account of North Re-Risen is implausible, and cling to the cover story that North never died in the first place, but merely exploded a model of his head. To those doubters I ask: If this is the case, why is the newly reborn North seen in the video at the 0:40 mark in a dry, clean set of clothes despite the slushy weather? Not so much as a waterspot or splash upon his person, or even his shoes!

Clearly, it can only be because he did not exist in that slushy alleyway, manifesting not only a new body but also pristine raiment appropriate to the climate. Clapping his hands to show appreciation to those that helped in this resurrection, one can almost hear his jovial thoughts: Good work everybody; thanks for helping me return from the Lands Beyond Living on account of my spectral form was freaking out Chompsky.

In any event, we at Fleen welcome North¹ back to the world of the living and will await with bated breath the wisdom that he brings. Not to mention the fact that having a physical body again will make it much easier to finish copy-editing TBONTB:ACFABRNAAWST, which appears to be well situated for an on-time release in May.

As long as we’re on a Ryan North kick today, we would be remiss if we didn’t note one of his other major projects², the Machine of Death anthology which is due in July to coincide with San Diego Comic Con.

North’s co-editor, David Malki !³, dropped some MoD news on us this morning with the announcement that the MoD structured card game (distinguishing it from the previously-available MoD cards which could be adapted to many play styles or just freaking out your friends) has been finalized and will be available via the obligatory Kickstart later this week. The Kris Straub-designed cards look like they perfectly straddle the line between amusing and morbid, which is no surprise to anybody that’s been reading Straub’s Broodhollow. Keep your eyes peeled for the KS announcement, and be ready to hop on this one.

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¹ All hail.

² You know, besides the all-time top-funded publishing project on Kickstarter and defeating Death Itself.

³ Who himself was named yesterday to the presentation staff at this year’s MaxFunCon

Yeah, yeah, I know — sounds like an episode title from an especially enthusiastic anime series. It also describes what’s going on outside the window, so there you are.

• There’s still (as of this writing) approximately nine hours to get in on the Johnny Wander volume 3 giveaway. I want to have this thing in the mail before the JWv3 book launch party next weekend at Bergen Street Comics. Be there and, uh, I guess that means you don’t need a free copy.
• Speaking of Kickstarted books, Benign Kingdom Spring 2013 finished up last night a bit over US$45,000 (or three times goal) and Zach Weinersmith’s SCIENCE: Ruining Everything Since 1543 ticked over US$200K (with two weeks still to go) at about the same time and is closing on a stretch goal of hardcover books.
• Still speaking of books, you may recall last October that Stephan Pastis completely missed the point on webcomics which prompted me to offer a deal:
  

  Tomorrow, or this weekend, or sometime during the run of NYCC, I’m going to seek out Matthew Inman (whom I’ve met briefly, and liked quite a lot), who has a new book out, and I’m going to ask him if he’d be willing to release an approximate copies-sold total for that book for, say, the three months of quarter 4, 2012. Then come January we’ll run that number here, and Pastis can compare it to the first three months of whichever Pearls collection he likes.

  I didn’t have the chance to have that talk with Inman at New York Comic Con on account of the extremely long lines and crowding, but he’s gone and shared the to-date sales numbers with the world anyway¹ in a State of the Strip presentation:

  As of today, How To Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting To Kill You has been on the New York Times Best Sellers List for 17 consecutive weeks, and it held the #1 spot on that list for 7 of those weeks. We’re into our 11th printing, which puts us at over 450,000 copies in print. This has been drastically different from my first book, which saw strong sales at the beginning but then dropped off after all my readers bought copies. Instead, sales have been continually flourishing ever since the book came out in October. It’s mind-boggling for me to imagine nearly half a million cat books out there.

  For reference, Pearls Freaks the #*%# Out released at almost the same time as HTTIYCIPTKY; both books have appeared in the NY Times Best Seller List (Pastis under Paperback Graphic Books as seen here; Inman under Paperback Advice & Misc. as seen here), and I haven’t done any searching through the lists to find out how many times each has been there.

  But I did notice for the first time that PFT#O and HTTIYCIPTKY are both published by Andrews McMeel, so Pastis can probably work out if 450,000 copies is a typical run for a comics collection there, and probably figure that he and Inman are making a similar amount per book sold. That’s how you make a living at it.²

• Not that popular consciousness equals great wealth. Ethan Nicolle points out that a success on the scale of Axe Cop will get you the freedom to make comics and also a cup of coffee:
  

  I have made one giant step in comics and that is that I have managed to live off of creating my own material (for the most part) for the last few years. I have made an income that most people who went to college would frown on. That is to say I could probably make a similar income as a shift manager at Starbucks (in fact I could, I checked).

  Not that Nicolle is crying poverty to play for sympathy; his real goal is to spread an understanding of what the business is like:

  I think it’s good for aspiring creators to know that even with a lot of critical acclaim, you still have to do a lot of climbing and the battle is never really over. That is why it is good to know why you are doing it in the first place. Don’t blame those with success for your failure. Don’t do it for the success, do it in spite of the success. Do it because you love it and don’t know what else to do with yourself, and success or not, do it happily and gratefully because making art is a blessing.

  Well said, and the whole thing is well worth reading.

• More than once this page has discussed the proposition that ideas are a dime a dozen, and that art is more about the execution than the lightning-striking inspiration. On an occasion or two, we’ve even thrown out ideas for anybody to use that might want to. Got another one of those for you (I had some odd dreams t’other night), which you’ll find below the cut. If you want to use it, I waive any and all rights or interests in perpetuity, in all forms of storage and transmission current or future, and likewise release any claims by my heirs and assignees. Go nuts.

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¹ Not that I had anything to do with it.

² Also, Inman managed to wang his girlfriend’s website, but it’s back now if you like reading about coffee.

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