One of my favorite creators in any medium is Richard Thompson¹ and I’ve just heard a really great interview with him on New York’s public radio station, WNYC, with the always-entertaining Leonard Lopate. Lenny (as those who listen to him invariably refer to him) asked Thompson early in the interview about the nature of creativity.

When asked if he could describe the creative process, Thompson wryly noted that he’d … never heard anybody do that successfully. I just write stories. and when that prompted a question if he particularly approached songwriting by doing lyrics first, he said he will … do it both ways, start with music, start with lyrics, the hard thing is starting the process.

Then came the question that made me go back and transcribe a lengthy answer, and the reason I wanted to point out the interview to you in the first place. Noting Thompson’s prolific and lengthy career², Lenny asked if he ever gets writer’s block. The answer:

Today? Yesterday? The day before yesterday? Yes, I do. What I do to try to overcome it is to have something half-finished that I can be working on so there’s always 30 or 40 songs that are just one-verses and I can go in and think “I can just touch that up” … I just try to keep ticking over.

Want to create something? Keep moving, don’t pause, don’t wait for divine inspiration to strike. While it’s tempting to think that 1952 Vincent Black Lightning sprung from Thompson’s forehead fully formed, it sat around half-finished and embryonic same as everything else that is now complete and whole and wonderfully executed. And if you aren’t familiar with Richard Thompson’s work, for glob’s sake go listen to some (may I suggest you start with the Song-o-matic?), because he might be 63 years old and look like your grandfather, but he’s still got the nimblest fingers that ever saw a fretboard.

• Chris “Super” Yates³ has some more webcomicker Baffler!s up for your consideration, this time by KC Green. They’re tasty.
• Reminder! You still have two days to get in on the comment-enters-you contest for a free! copy of the not-yet-available-for-purchase Johnny Wander volume 3.

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¹ This time I’m not talking about Richard Thompson the cartoonist, but Richard Thompson the musician, although it occurs to me they have some similarities. Both of them excel at bringing unusually clear personal vision and POV to their work, and fly under the radar in popular consciousness. But if you ask a cartoonist who their favorite cartoonist is or a guitarist who their favorite guitarist is, all of a sudden the name Richard Thompson becomes a lot more prominent.

² His newest disk, Electric, was released yesterday, and was recorded in its entirety in four days, giving it a raw immediacy and energy that artists half his age can scarcely manage (cf: his cover of Oops I Did It Again). It might be his best since Rumour and Sigh

³ Not to be confused with “super yachts” unless, of course, you can’t spell.

Strip Search appears to be on the verge of going live, having graduated from a parking page to a test pattern. I’m not a betting man¹, but I’d wager that we’ll see the site live in the next day or two. Then it’s just a matter of how long Robert Khoo feels like teasing us before the first episodes start streaming.

• Webcomic? Check. Crossovers? Check. Print collection? Check. Original print series? Check. Card game? Check. TV show? Check. What’s left of Malachai and Ethan Nicolle to conquer? Judging from the photos tweeted by MTV² Geek, the answer would be toys. Weirdly, searching for “Axe Cop” at the website of Mezco Toys brings up a couple of Thundercats figures, so I guess they’re really early in the preview cycle for now. There’s a reference to Axe Cop in Mezco’s exhibitor profile for next week’s New York Toy Fair so I’d say wait for the summer’s big shows to see these generally available.
• To paraphrase James³ and Marque, Being broke sucks, and now Jerzy Drozd is the latest creative type to try to make it suck less. Tomorrow will see the Comics Are Great! show will do an on-air Google+ hangout, with special guests Laurianne Uy and Poorcraft scribe C Spike Trotman on the topic of smart frugality. If you can’t make the Hangout, tomorrow at 12:30pm EST (GMT-5), it’ll be up at the Comics Are Great! YouTube channel sooner rather than later. It’s a live event, so warm up your questions on how to make do with less for fun and profit.
• Surprisingly, nobody is in the running for a free copy of Johnny Wander volume 3, as per the contest announced last Friday. It’s not even in the store yet, people! You can only get this is you were in the Kickstarter! Free book, people!

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¹ It’s that whole “pretty good at math” thing.

² Who’re still on my list for the shameful way they treated Rick Marshall Willenholly, so you best watch yourself, Viacom!

³ History’s greatest villain.

Feeling somewhat less insane today. Dunno what was up with that. Hey, is that a copy of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff? I gotta get on reading that!

• Speaking of books, I received this week my Kickstarter-backed copy of Johnny Wander volume 3, which is an awesome read. I actually was given a copy by creators Yuko Ota and Ananth Panagariya a bit more than a month ago (thanks), so I’ve decided to give away the copy that came in the mail. You (yes, you) know somebody that doesn’t read Johnny Wander and should; tell me about who that person is and why they need to read JW, and you’ll win the book. Best comment contribution by, let’s say end-of-day next Friday, 8 February, wins for their friend/relative/whoever.
• Speaking even more about books, the Young Adult Library Services Association has released their annual list of best graphic novels for teens, and there’s some familiar names on the list. In addition to the almost obligatory Raina Telgemeier’s Drama and Hope Larson’s adaptation of A Wrinkle In Time, you’ve got Chris Eilopoulos & Nate Cosby’s Cow Boy, and a whopping six entries from :01 Books: Hades: Lord of the Dead by George O’Connor, Broxo by Zack Giallongo, Legends of Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke, Friends with Boys by Faith Erin Hicks, The Silence of Our Friends by Jim Demonakos, Mark Long and Nate Powell, and Sumo by Thien Pham. That’s like one book out of three of their output in 2012. I’ll also note that Drama, Friends (boys) and Friends (silent) were also listed as among the top ten for 2013.
• Happy ten yeariversary to Dinosaur Comics and the nearly-resurrected Ryan North; highlights of the past ten years (from North’s perspective beyond the grave) are here¹, and you can see how far he’s come as an artist by comparing the first strip to today’s. Congratulations for being so awesome at comics Ryan and also for getting better at parties. In your hono[u]r, please enjoy once more this review I wrote of your first Dinosaur Comics book, composed entirely of quotes by T-Rex.
• East Coast (of the United States, that is) denizens! Make your way to New Haven, Connecticut and the Ivy League university contained therein by next Friday, as “Hurricane” Erika Moen will be speaking at the IvyQ conference. According to the conference schedule, that’ll be at 2:45pm in WLH 208; I’m told that “WLH” stands for “Harkness Hall” at 100 Wall Street on the campus of Yale, which is apparently the home of Yale’s LGBT Studies program. Tell Erika I said “hi” and “Hope you won Strip Search although I won’t know for months yet”.

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¹ Warning: features photos illustrating North’s fetish for oddly spherical dinosaurs crushing Admiral Ackbars. It’s kinda out there?

Publisher’s note: Usual Fleen scribe Gary Tyrrell was found curled in a small fetal ball, sobbing; he is now resting comfortably in hospital. The following was found scribbled on various pieces of paper near him, along with a Subway employee’s apron and hat.

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Publisher’s note: Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff is available from TopatoCo, while supplies last. Doctors indicate that Gary is detoxing nicely, and should be back to blogging with only mild perceptual impairments shortly. Rumors that the DEA is investigating SBaHJ for making readers “high as balls” could not be confirmed at press time.

• Magnolia Porter is doing some of my favorite comics right now, writing adolescent characters that feel like actual kids: friendships are made, and challenged, and there are enthusiasms and jealousies and oh yeah, a mysterious corporate conspiracy has turned parts of their bodies into giant battling monsters. Monster Pulse never loses the ability to surprise me, and after too long a time it’s getting a proper book of the first six chapters, available at your nearest Kickstarter access terminal now.

  Let me also say that I love the brevity and clarity of Porter’s pitch:

  Please help fund the first volume of Magnolia Porter’s Monster Pulse, a YA adventure comic about kids whose body parts transform into fighting monsters. Six chapters of this critically lauded series are collected in this first book.

  That’s it — it’s everything you need to know; no hype, no wild promises, just the facts. If the story hook doesn’t appeal to you after that description, it never will. While I think that Porter could have talked things up just a bit more (she’s very modest about her work), I’m not sure it would entice anybody that doesn’t want to know more about battling monsters anyway. Get it, you’ll love it.

Is Everything Fuzzy And Hazy For You, Too?

I … I’m not sure why, but it’s really hard to think co … co … coherently today. Actually, yesterday waasn’t so good either. The last time I remember my brain working right was Monday, jsut before I opened a package from ToopatosCo. I’m probably just tired.

Whi.le I’m trying to get my act together again, how about some things to look at with your eyes and see them .

• After a pretty long hiatus (a touch more than three years, actually), Bryant Paul Johnson has given us just one more (dare I hope for more) update of Teaching Baby Paranoia, this time delving into the little-known history of Sputnik, dental conspiracies, and the shameful era of payola. Trust me, it’s the only thing that’s making sense in my head for the last couple of days.

That title was “Linkapalooza”, and it featured a photo of Frank Zappa in an Uncle Sam-patterned oversized novelty tophat because at that time that title produced that result in a Google image search. Anyhoo, things to point you towards today.

• James Kochalka may have retired American Elf, but he’s keeping plenty busy what with voicing Grotus in the SuperF*ckers shorts [NSFW, obviously] and starting a new strip for his local newspaper¹, and collaborating with Shmorky on a comic that fits hopes and dreams and malice and loss into one page. What I am basically saying is that you can keep up with all your Kochalka needs by keeping an eye on his Tumblr.
• Jim Zub, one-man living embodiment of the creation/destruction duality that undergirds comics, is back with more of his ongoing series of analyses of how the heck you make it in such a crazy industry. His latest looks back at a year of Skullkickers² running on Keenspot (starts here), which has brought the online reader to the end of the second story arc and just into the first story of the second Tavern Tales collection. It’s a topic that we at Fleen have discussed with Zub more than once over the past year, but seeing numbers puts everything in perspective:
  

  Skullkickers online has garnered just over 5.8 million pageviews and been visited by 272,000+ people over the past 12 months. More than 90 times the number of people who buy our monthly issues have checked out Skullickers online so far. Each month an average of 22,600+ new people come on board the story and the site generates almost 486,000 pageviews. I don’t know how it compares to other webcomics (though I’m sure it’s far lower than a lot of the long running and financially self sufficient sites) but it’s reaching 7-8 times our floppy comic print run worth of new readers every month, building up awareness of the title day by day using content we already had archived and ready to go. [emphasis original]

  That bit about “content we already had archived and ready to go”? That’s Zubese for “free money”.

• Over the years, we at Fleen have been eagerly waiting for Jess Fink’s We Can Fix It, her very sexy time-travel self-makeout story of sexy sexiness. Unfortunately, over the years, We Can Fix It (which has been complete forever, come on guys) has been repeatedly delayed by the publisher, which to be fair, they may have had extremely good reasons for doing. It may be working out for the best, as Top Shelf³ have had Fink go back and make everything even prettier than it was before Also, because she loves you, Fink has posted a seven page preview where Future Jess resolves that make the past as sexy as possible by making out with it. Oh, like you wouldn’t.
• A bare 24 hours since our posting yesterday, and Zach Weinersmith’s newest book collection has gone from about US$40K on Kickstarter to damn near US$110K (as of this writing). He’s burned through twelve more stretch goals, extended the Map Of Mystery twice, and had to space out new goals to increments of US$10K instead of US$5K, because they were being achieved too quickly.

  One may note that Science: Ruining Everything Since 1543 is in the Kickstarter Comics category, and the not-quite-resurrected Ryan North’s To Be Or Not To Be: A Choice-Filled Adventure By Ryan North And Also William Shakespeare Too is in the Publishing category, meaning that Weinersmith cannot break North’s record ’cause different categories. However, looking at their respective backers-and-dollars reports at Kicktraq, one can see that Zach may well hit Ryanesque numbers by the time this is done in — my glob — a month.

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¹ Note for our younger readers: a “newspaper” is a means of distributing information by printing it on multiple sheets of thin paper, folding to a convenient size, and making it available for sale to interested parties. Formerly, they roamed the American landscape in vast herds, but the population has lately dwindled to near-extinction levels.

² Which tends pretty much all the way towards the “destruction” end of the spectrum.

³ Who are all the very best people, and I always make sure to drop by their booth at any show I attend to buy anything I don’t have already, but also just to say hi. Seriously, they’re wonderful.

Dammit, WordPress is being a pain about uploading images. I’ll get a picture in here as soon as I’m able.

Blah blah blah webcomics-related Kickstarter blah blah goal met in three hours blah. In other words, Wednesday. What’s the big deal?

Glad you asked me that, Sparky; the big deal here is something I haven’t seen before in a Kickstarter, something that’s slightly self-contradictory, and perhaps unnecessary in this case, but it still caught my eye. Let’s take those in reverse order.

I say unnecessary because nobody that follows Zach Weinersmith would ever suspect he’d fail to make a Kickstarter goal handily because he knows his audience, he offers what they want, and he pays attention to what works from campaign to campaign¹, crafting the next one to be more foolproof than the one before. So a neato-nifty new technique designed to drive interest was probably not needed (but then, Weinersmith has never been one to rest on his laurels).

Now, self-contradictory, that’s the interesting part. Because what Weinersmith introduced into the Kickstarter for SCIENCE: Ruining Everything Since 1543 was the idea of pre-success stretch goals. Stretch goals are a given in Kickstarters, driving the interest by adding more stuff in, getting past mere success and into stratospheric levels of mega-success by giving the supporters more and more and more for their hard-earned money. Awesome.

What Weinersmith did for S:RES1543 was to set down milestones that would trigger extra content for the book at support levels prior to reaching the funding goal of US$20,000. Check out the progress map — at just 5% of goal, a bonus story is added to the book by Bad Astronomer Phil Plait.

Now on the surface, this makes no sense. If you don’t raise at least US$20,000 the book doesn’t get made at all, so you must raise at least US$1000, meaning that Plait’s contribution isn’t a bonus in any sense, it’s going to be part of the book if the book exists at all. Similarly, book-exclusive comics were announced at US$5000, US$10,000 and US$15,000 which would have to be there anyway, on account of you can’t raise the 20 grand to make the book without passing those milestones. Weinersmith could have just mentioned those comics and Plait’s story as part of the book instead of making them goals of some sort. Weinersmith, you illogical man! I shake my fist at you, thusly!

Except.

Look at that map again. It meanders and wanders and has portents of danger, and by the time goal has been met, five of the eleven landmarks have been filled in. There’s a sense of progress and momentum it creates just by existing, setting up a feeling that Wow, Zach keeps adding stuff to what the book will contain² so I better keep up the forward motion. Weinersmith is moving beyond what stretch goals have always been: teasing enticements — Give us enough and we’ll show you what we’ve got — and has moved into the active psychological management of expectations. This is operations research at Disney style anticipation-engineering³.

Is it working? Weinersmith said he’d expected to hit US$10,000 by the end of the day; we’re now about five and a half hours in and he’s already filled in the landmark at US$40,000, is updating progress more than hourly, and has to prepare the extension of the rewards map into Rewarda Incognito well before he expected to.

As I said, all probably unnecessary, since Weinersmith was going to make these numbers anyway, but possibly not this quickly. But for another creator, one that might sneak over the line or might not? Managing expectations and building a desire for momentum early could make the difference between meeting goal and going down to ignominious defeat. If you think you can antipeneer⁴ as well as Zach Weinersmith that is.

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¹ And, naturally, to what doesn’t work.

² Despite the fact he isn’t really, not until the sixth marker.

³ Or “antipeneering”, as I call it COPYRIGHT 2013 MUST CREDIT ME WHEN YOU USE IT.

⁴ Big scary goggles optional, but recommended.

I can always tell it’s going to be a good day when Gina Gagliano sends me a review copy of whatever :01 Books has in the release pipeline; honestly, that imprint’s name is the closest thing that exists to a sure bet in the world of publishing. Not everything by :01 is going to appeal equally to every segment of their audience, but it’s surely going to be a well-executed, handsomely-produced piece of graphic storytelling.

In other words, feel free to judge a certain subset of books by their cover, or at least that little bit on the base of the spine that Colleen AF Venable¹ put there.

Lucy Knisley has been featured on this page in the past, often in relation to her food-based comickin’, and sometimes just as a countervailing opinion in my ranting on the topic of molecular gastronomy. If I have perhaps given Knisley’s other, non-food-centric work short shrift, maybe it’s because she does the food part so very, very well. Case in point: Relish⁰, which neatly straddles the line between memoir and foodie travel journal. There are recipes, reminiscences, and a bit of retrospection. It’s masterful.

Not a lot of people Knisley’s age can produce a work that seeks to sum up their lives (and although Relish doesn’t have a plot, per se, I will be mentioning specific things that happen, so Beware Ye Who Fear Spoilers)without coming off as self-important; Knisley, on the other hand, is saying less Look at me, I’m interesting and more Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I was twelve and my buddy got fearful of Mexican Customs and ditched two hundred dollars worth of grade-A porn in an airport bathroom? The former can rarely be accomplished without interminable smugness; the latter is a tease that draws you in, and probably starts a conversation about the stupid things you witnessed (or did) in your own tween years.

The artwork has just enough detail to imbue the characters and places with weight and existence, without so much as to make them distancing. Who remembers everything from when we were six or seven in perfect clarity? There’s a bit of fuzziness to those memories, with the shapes a bit simpler, the colors a bit flatter than how it must have been, and that’s where emotional truth comes from. The clean, simple designs that Knisley uses feel more real than the family photos she used for reference that get a few pages in the back².

And what a realness she shares — sights, sounds, and above all smells from her own life, and passed down in family stories. Food (the preparation of it, the preferences for some things and not others, the experience of eating it) form the lens through which Knisley shares the stories of her life and how it helped her grow into the person she is today. She even manages a spirited defense of occasional indulgence in junk food³ that halfway convinced me that maybe my diet should contain a few more nitrate-laden, won’t-rot-no-matter-how-long-they-sit McFries.

Every food has its own value⁴, she could be saying, which corresponds pretty closely to And so does every person and experience⁵. From farms to gourmet markets, street-food stalls to the finest restaurants in the world, Knisley has embraced food in all of its various forms and made it part of who she is. Like good hosts everywhere, she’s inviting you (in April, when Relish releases) to sit down and share in this bounty. Breathe in deeply, take your time, come back for seconds, and bon appétit.

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⁰ Or, more fully, Relish My Life In The Kitchen (as it appears on the cover and title page) or perhaps Relish: My Life In The Kitchen (as it appears in the supporting information from :01). I love the fact that the title can be read two very different ways depending on whether or not you include the colon.

¹ I consider it symptomatic that I’ve gone completely bonkers given the fact that I have a favorite book designer.

² Actual thought I had when I saw Knisley’s author photo in the back: Wow, good picture. Looks almost like her. My brain had accepted the cartoon Lucy as the reality to which the photo must have referred.

³ Sugar, salt, fat, and artificial flavors are bad enough; young Knisley goes so far as to make a request for ketchup that earns her mother’s ire, and to purchase McDonalds in the heart of Rome, sending her father into a tizzy.

⁴ Well, everything except for one spectacularly foul recipe that a friend of Knisley’s made; it involved basting chicken in frozen concentrated lemonade.

⁵ And even that lemonade chicken fiasco has the benefit of being a touchstone between friends that will never be forgotten.

Photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid

It may help to have some gin on hand.

• If you’re gonna have capital-A Art, then tanjdammit, you ought to have Art that provokes the occasional Art Riot, by which I do not mean some bluenose tut-tutting on TV about how something is insufficiently in line with existing religious or moral beliefs; I’m talking angry Parisians or perhaps Viennese in the streets, offended to their very core that something so wrong could be perpetrated on an unsuspecting world. And if this were 1913 instead of 2013, I do believe that we would have righteous cause for such an action:
  

  “I’m really not sure what you call this,” says TopatoCo founder and CEO Jeffrey Rowland. “There’s probably a German word for it, but I’m afraid to look it up.”

  If the entire internet, in all of its random, rambling, poor-spelled, nonsensical non-glory could be distilled down to its very essence, it would be the Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff hardcover collection from TopatoCo. It is the sort of revolutionary, transgressive, frankly frightening creation that makes me want to tear the seats out of an opera house and give future radio¹ documentarians cause to talk about the unrest in hushed, sincere tones². This is Le Scare du Printemps for a later, more addled age:

  The book Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff lavishly presents the comic’s entire run in a treatment worthy of the highest masters of the form. It contains a completely gratuitous 4-page centerfold reading simply “centaurfold” in bright pink type.

  “The printing company we used was utterly convinced that we, as designers, didn’t know what in the world we were doing,” says [book co-designer David] Malki [!]. “The proof sheet listing supposed ‘errors’ in the book’s layout ran five pages long. I had to initial each one saying, ‘Yes, that’s OK. Yes, that’s OK. Yes, that’s OK, trust us.’”

  Scattered throughout the book are perforated business-reply cards taking the form of irredeemable Subway coupons (a first for comic strip collections). Each copy of the book also comes with a “travel version” (a removable poster of all the book’s pages in grid format); a custom commemorative coin (randomly chosen from 4 designs struck); an oversized plastic paperclip imprinted with the word “paperclop”; and an animated lenticular bookmark. Bound into the spine is a red ribbon approximately three feet long, and if you scratch the nacho chip sticker on the back cover, it smells faintly of pizza. (The hologram sticker of Tony Hawk smells only of chemicals.) [emphasis original]

  The Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff Limited Hardcover is available for US$44, in one print run, while supplies last. I’ll put this link up just in case you need it; you’re on your own for torches

• Speaking of riotous unrest, “Uncle” Randy Milholland will be the keynote speaker at the biennial Comic Studies Conference at the University of North Texas. The conference will be 22-23 March, and speakers slots are up for grabs [PDF] if you want to get all academic for an hour or two. If you’ve never had the opportunity to listen to Milholland speak, he is really, really funny in front of an audience, not to mention thoughtful, engaging, self-deprecating, and willing to use naughty words. If there’s a Q&A component (there usually isn’t in keynote speeches), get him to do the Fluffmodeus voice.
• I got an email over the weekend from Dante Shepherd, telling me about a new project he’s dropped a few hints to, here and there. Long story short, a guy who does his comics work primarily in chalk has decided to get all narrative. Professor Blackboard has teamed up with artist Joan Cooke and will in the coming months be launching a strip about hapless grad students dealing with improbably hazardous research. Not hazardous in the make sure you use safety goggles sense, more in the keep the car running and get us out of here quickly and maybe we won’t all die horribly sense.

  Shepherd doesn’t want me to give away the big gag on the first page (which he has shown me, and which is making me giggle as I type this), so let’s just say that PhD Unknown (working title) reminds me of something written by Internet Jesus and drawn by Stuart Immonen that you may have read previously and if you haven’t what the hell is wrong with you.

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¹ Of course there will be radio in the future; it’s the one medium that will never be superseded.

² Follow that link and give Culture Shock 1913 a listen; it’s really good.

Happy Friday afternoon, everybody. Here’s what’s giving me hope today.

• Indpendent Creator Meets Corporation 1: Jonathan Coulton noticed that the makers of Glee decided to appropriate his arrangement (including a unique melody and lyric swaps) — and possibly the audio itself — of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s Baby Got Back. Coulton, being a classy guy, got a license to release his cover, but the Glee producers haven’t contacted him or sought permission.

  A few hours later, the hive mind that is the internet had confirmed that this was indeed produced by the Glee people (as evidenced by an official release in advance of the broadcast through at least the Swedish version of iTunes), and it appears that Glee/FOX are presently depublishing while saying nothing. At this point, I suppose thing to do is wait to see if the song actually shows up when the series next airs, but I find it encouraging that a major entertainment property would have to backpedal so quickly. Not as encouraging as if they didn’t pull this shit in the first place, but baby steps.

• Indpendent Creator Meets Corporation 2: And when those corporations are good enough to not pull that shit in the first place, to actually come to creators and treat them to offers, I find it encouraging when creators don’t sell themselves short. Case in point: the slightly bizarre (but terribly nice) lads behind Cyanide & Happiness have again turned down Hollywood money because it would mean giving up ownership of their work.

  Kris Wilson, Dave McElfatrick, Rob DenBleyker, and Matt Melvin aren’t the only creators that I know to have made that decision — I know of creators who have been offered some fairly large checks if only they would be willing to sell their creations outright. Maybe they would be hired to write or draw for this thing they created, maybe not. Certainly, a one-time check with multiple zeros on it is enticing, but creators are getting too smart to agree to deals where they don’t own what they thought up. Good for them.

• As noted in Wilson’s forum posting, the C&H crew will be doing their show on their own, raising money through Kickstarter, which has been fertile ground for creators with talent and a habit of making good on their promises. Case in point: a day after launch, the Spring 2013 B9 collection is already past its first stretch goal and well on its way crushing the remaining stretches. I find that encouraging because this is the first B9 collection not to be centered on creators with serialized webcomics, and I note that it’s the first to be categorized not as Comics, but as an Art Book.

  In seeking support from people trawling the Kicktarter categories, that means maybe having to win over a new audience, one that doesn’t know the B9 brand to the same degree; then again, Kickstarter knows that B9 is worth looking at, having made the Spring 2013 collection a Staff Pick at launch. Come to think of it, George never said that being “part of the Kingdom” required that you do comics; if this imprint eventually reaches out to other niches of publishing, I won’t be surprised in the least.

• And sometimes you’re just encouraged because people want to help other people and are willing to put their talents and money towards that end. See also: Howard Tayler contributing art and spirit-raising towards a campaign to help science fiction writer Jay Lake kick cancer square in the ass. As a side note, one of the people depicted in Tayler’s artwork is famed genre writer Patrick Rothfuss, whose work on behalf of Heifer International (with the assistance of many webcomickers) has been noted in the past. Not content to merely organize an enormous undertaking, Rothfuss has decided to put some more skin in the game:
  

  This year we’re trying out the stretch goal thing, and one of our big ones happens when we hit [US]$400,000.

  Specifically, if we hit 400,000 dollars before January 21st at midnight, I’ll donate [US]$100,000 to Heifer, bringing our yearly total to over half a million.

  If not, I will keep that money and do something stupid with it. I swear I will blow it on catgirls, methadone, and multiple pairs of the same kind of shoes.

  And that’s before he commissioned three gold rings engraved with his name, which permit the bearer to redeem for any favor they want from him. You do my faith in humanity good, Mr Rothfuss, and as of this writing the 2012 Worldbuilders campaign is sitting at US$368,609.42, so you’d better warm up your checkbook¹.

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¹ Sorry about the methadone and catgirls.