Because honestly, I could not possible have a more jaundiced view of human nature than I did yesterday. But you know what makes things better? Seeing creators succeed on the merits of their work, such as I just happened to notice Becky Dreistadt & Frank Gibson’s twitterfeed make a cryptical announcement to big news today, and the Benign Kingdom imprint just happened to launch a Tumblr yesterday, and just now I checked their profile at Kickstarter and heck if it doesn’t look like they’ve announced their latest creator slate:

Emily Carroll
Gigi DG
Tyson Hesse
Phil McAndrew (who surely must be feeling better than he was yesterday)

I was all impressed with myself that I maybe noticed this before any announcement, but I see that the new Benign Kingdom twitter account made an announcement eleven minutes ago, but for the record I totally found this myself. Look for an announcement of the Winter Spring 2013 collection/Kickstart in the immediate future¹.

As long as we’re on a happy kick, Joe Decie did a rather pretty fifth anniversary comic yesterday, which makes me wonder why he hasn’t done a Recipe Comix submission for Saveur. I bet that the celebratory cake in question would make for a lovely contribution; if you’re reading this Joe, drop me a line via our contact link over there to the right and I’ll put you in touch with the right people.

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¹ It’s there now, added since I wrote that sentence, and already at 17 backers and nearly US$1000. Seriously, I just became the fourth person to snag a hardcover, and the campaign’s been live a whole five minutes. Oh, and it’s apparently the one year anniversary of B9’s launch, so go wish them a happy birthday with a pledge or perhaps at their brand-new storefront, yes?

Sometimes you really have to wonder how we as a species have managed to get this far when it’s clear that we are all working at cross-purposes. Because I’m hopeful, I like to think that the average non-sociopath doesn’t wake up in the morning and wonder exactly what kind of jerkass behavior would be most fun today. Because I’m a realist, I know that while true sociopaths are rare, there are an awful lot of close approximations out there who just don’t care to make the effort to look any further than the tip of their noses in determining who might be affected by the actions they take in their daily lives.

Case in point: it made the rounds on Twitter yesterday that Sophie Goldstein had some of her artwork appropriated by a linkfarm site¹ without permission. Happens all the time, sadly, and as of this writing the offenders have had a full 23 hours to respond to Goldstein and have seemingly not done so. But wait — it gets better.

About an hour after Goldstein tweeted, I was forwarded an email conversation between the offending site (I don’t even want to name them, despite the fact that their logo is right there in the screencap, so I’m just going to call them Useless Jerkasses, LLC) and another creator², where they were asking to partner up³:

Hey [creator’s first name],

My name is [redacted because I’m a nice guy] and I am an account executive for [UJLLC]. I was just browsing your site and I think that it will actually be perfect for our network given its content.

Our network has grown to become one of the largest on the internet an we can promote your site to get you more visibility. Our price is $.04 per click, would that be something you would be interested in?

—
[redacted]
Account Executive
[address]
New York, NY, 10005
Direct: (646) [redacted]
Mobile: (646) [redacted]

E-mail: [redacted]@[ujllc].com
www: http://www.[ujllc].com

[UJLLC] – News and Entertainment Portal
Monthly Reach: Over 17 Million Unique Visitors

This transmission may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, photocopying or distribution of these contents is unauthorized and prohibited. If you have received this in error, please notify the sender immediately and destroy all copies.

So, they have clearly got an understanding over at UJLLC, that creators have an interest in being associated with their creations that that interest is worth money; in Goldstein’s case, they simply don’t care. However, there is an outcome here that may reaffirm some of your faith in humanity, as Mr Account Guy at UJLLC received this reply:

Funny you should write. My friend Sophie was just pointing out that you are using her artwork (“come here”) illegally on this page: [link removed to not give them traffic] – how about you make this right and then we can talk.

That was 22 hours ago and they haven’t stopped being useless jerkasses (but what can you expect? It’s right there in the name); in some small way they’ve been told exactly what they are, and I’ll take that small slap as a first step towards a better world.

At least until Phil McAndrew tweeted three hours ago that another linkfarm had done essentially the same thing⁴, adding a stupid caption and omitting credit from one of his cartoons. If anybody gets approached by these entirely different jerkasses (or any one of the jerkass linkfarms out there), may I suggest that we all reply with a variation of the No, you’re a jerk email above?

It doesn’t even end there, as in the past 48 hours I’ve learned of the depressing extent to which two different creators (again, no names; again, prominent people) are getting jerked around not by content-appropriators, but by two different corporations that apparently believe the best way to deal with creators is to scream Dance for me, little monkey, dance!

I swear on whatever you find convincing, if you people elect me as benign dictator of the world, these production suits will be the first people up against the wall in a brief reign of terror that will be based on Golgafrincham Ark “B”.

Happily, not everything in webcomicdom involves creators getting jerked around. From various corners of the intertubes, we learned more today about Strip Search as Robert Khoo, Mike Krahulik, and Jerry Holkins sat down with Mashable. My two favorite quotes were from Krahulik, on the twelve contestants getting along:

We never had to call an ambulance to the house. And to me, that’s something we need to work on for season two.

… and from Holkins, on what was difficult about sitting in judgment of others:

[It] turns out that dashing people’s hopes is actually a very tough business if you are the sort of person that has hopes yourself. Like, I know exactly how they feel and what they’re up against, trying to lead a creative life. In one hand, I have the life that they want. In the other hand, I have a black sword. And it’s hard to have those two things.

And finally, BOOM! Studios⁵ made it known today that their latest licensed Cartoon Network tie-in comic to take talent from webcomics will be Regular Show, to be written by KC Green and drawn by Allison Strejlau. Disclaimer: I don’t watch Regular Show (not out of sense of dislike, I’ve just never seen it), but it’s my understanding that it’s built around exactly the sort of anarchic humor that one would find at Gunshow, or even Hugsown (but not, curiously, Hung Sow). Oh, and KC also wanted it made know far and wide that he is known on Twitter as BarfCaptain, at least this week.

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¹ Ordinarily, I’d link to the original tweet from Goldstein, but I don’t want to do so because it contains a link to the offending site and I’m not interested in giving them traffic. Thus, the screenshot up top.

² I haven’t received explicit permission to use this creator’s name, so let’s just say that he is one of the successful ones, and you’d definitely recognize his name as a longtime pro webcomicker.

³ The letter is written such that I can’t tell if Useless Jerkasses, LLC is asking to use the webcomicker’s IP and pay him for the privilege, or if they’re offering to promote his content and charge him for the privilege. If it’s the latter, I have to say that their usual audience is absolutely useless to this creator.

⁴ Again, no link. I swear, it’s almost like all these linkfarms are just different aspects of one shell company, run out of some seedy office in Delaware, maintaining the fiction that they’re all different people. Jerkasses.

⁵ About whom some creators of long standing have vented on the web for being willing to pay criminally low rates for various aspects of comic book production. I have no direct confirmation of this from the people I know that work for them, but one must acknowledge elephants in the room even while hoping people you like aren’t getting glazed in elephant poo.

Let’s recognize some achievements today, yes? Are achievements still a thing, or do the kids have a new word for them? Cheevs? Cheevos? Cheev-a-rama-lama-ding-dongs? Peoples is doing things, and we should notice.

• The Academy Award nominations hit this morning, and I should like to mention that among the Best Animated Feature nods is one for ParaNorman (a terrific film, by the way), whose production company is well-integrated into the webcomics world, what with people like Vera Brosgol and Graham Annable working there and webcomickers being given super-cool artifacts from the making of the film.¹
• Speaking of awards season, we’ve mentioned in the recent past that nominations are open for the Hugo Awards and the NCS Awards; now it’s time for the Eisners to collect worthy nominees. The relevant section is not too different from past years:
  

  The best digital comic category is open to any new, professionally produced long-form original comics work posted online in 2012. Webcomics must have a unique domain name or be part of a larger comics community to be considered. The work must be online-exclusive for a significant period prior to being collected in print form. The URL and any necessary access information should be emailed to Eisner Awards administrator Jackie Estrada: jackie@comic-con.org.

• Noted yesterday: webcartoonist/roboticist/popularizer of science Jorge Cham is talking about What We Don’t Know and the gaps in our scientific knowledge² via the auspices of TEDx³. One advantage to being a cartoonist when you hit the speaker’s stage — when it’s time to project something on the big board for everybody to see, comics are more interesting that slides full of text. Go watch The Science Gap: Jorge Cham at TEDxUCLA and then ask yourself: what don’t we know?
• Almost missed: John Kovalic has been creating Dork Tower strips since about forever, initially as a monthly comic in a now-defunct gaming magazine, and then several times a week. I’ll admit it dropped off my radar a while ago, but I’m glad to say I noticed something yesterday: as of 1 January, 2013, Dork Tower has been around a phenomenal sixteen years, with no signs of stopping.
• Similarly, I had fallen away from regular reading of Tom Brazelton’s Theater Hopper (largely because I’m not into movies enough to be the core audience, and partly because do you know how many comics I read in a day already?), but I did manage to notice that Brazelton wrapped the nearly-ten year old strip on 31 December 2012.

  Since then, he’s launched a Kickstarter to produce the last seven years of TH as e-books, as well as converting the first three years, which were dead-tree printed. A Kickstarter which just ticked over the (very modest) goal yesterday with nearly a month still to go, as it turns out. If you want to get ten e-books with nearly a decade’s worth of comics, such can be yours for as little as US$35, which is really a great bargain when you think of it — 35 bucks for about 3500 days, or a penny a day. You’ve got a change jar somewhere — crack it open.

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¹ I should note that one of those receiving a animation maquette was Ryan North, who at the time was living but has since exploded and thus is possibly a zombie himself now. If you got one of these gifts from Laika, take care that you don’t explode also.

² Where “our” knowledge refers to both the scientific community and that of society at large.

³ Contrary to rumor, TEDx is not A little-known cousin of Malcolm X, although he has spent his career organizing a series of multidisciplinary symposia by any means necessary.

Sometimes stories just grab a hold of you and don’t let go. Ryan Estrada, who does everything, was kind enough to send me review copies of two of the stories in the current The Whole Story bundle, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t intend to send stories that would worm their way into my brain and refuse to vacate, but that’s the way it turned out. By the way, spoilers ahead.

• First up: Estrada’s own Plagued, involving endless locusts, raining frogs, and Hitlercats in the wake of the 2004 tsunami. It makes for a great bar story (Estrada draws himself relating it as an open-mic piece) and it’s pretty humorous, but then he follows it up with the in-his-own-words tale of a survivor of the tsunami.

  Looh’s Story is only eight pages long, but it’s packed with a sense of feeling helpless before the might of nature, the condition of losing everything, and the simple determination to regain what went away. Looh was lucky — his family (minus one cat) survived¹, but they lost their home, and the taxi and boat that formed the basis of their income. I don’t know if Estrada has any way to let us know how Looh and his family have done in the eight years since, but I’d be fascinated to find out.

• Estrada also sent along a copy of KC Green’s The Dog’s Sins, where it turns out that a quiet, elderly, slightly pain-in-the-ass dog may have been the most vicious criminal in all of the world, and at the end of his life it’s time to account for his wrongdoing. Unfortunately, dogs don’t have souls, so God and his representatives can’t try or punish ol’ Buster or hold him to account, so it falls to his owner, teenage Rachel, to be given a time of pointless purgatory in lieu of her pooch.

  She’s supposed to be silently contemplating Buster’s wicked ways, but she’s mostly wanting to let the heavenly bureaucracy know how much this sucks. She’s left haunted by the experience, as is her family who had lost her for five years of her short life. She’ll never be the same because The Rules say somebody has to be punished, fair or not.

  Green’s loose, comical style contrasts perfectly with the sense of the universe screwing with Rachel to no good end — it’s got to be a joke, and God’s not got a very good sense of humor. It’s bleak and spare and perfectly balanced between outrage and absurdity. That’s a lot of very heavy storytelling in only 22 pages.

  Both Plagued and The Dog’s Sins are available for another 21 days via The Whole Story Kickstarter, for a name-your-own price of one dollar or more, along with more than 200 pages of other comics. It’s hard to imagine a bigger bargain this season.

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¹ Including his previously-bedridden grandmother, who was “outrunning water like she is 20.”

Not nearly so much going on. But you know what? That’s okay! Because we’re Young Ones. Bachelor boys. Crazy, mad, wild-eyed, big-bottomed anarchists. And now I get to find out who in my audience is as middle-aged as I am.

• New Jellaby, courtesy of creator Kean Soo. I miss Jellaby something fierce, but as long as Keaner’s working on new stuff, I suppose we can all muddle through somehow.
• New Dr McNinja collection, which I think I mentioned I picked up last month. To elaborate on my micro-est of reviews then, Timefist makes the extremely involved, mythology-heavy, and long-running Army of One–Space Savers–Futures Trading mega-arc much easier to follow than a page-at-a-time pace.

  Also, it has the entirely adorable Judy Gets A Kitten and the Axe Cop crossover, Stolen Pizza, Stolen Lives. As the years go by, Christopher “Doc” Hastings becomes only more madcap, somehow.

• Speaking of Axe Cop, we now have a premiere date for the Axe Cop animated series: Saturday, 27 July, 11:00pm on FOX.
• Kristen Siebecker, original showrunner of MoCCA Fest, and certified sommelier, is continuing her work demystifying the fruit of the vine and helping people learn to drink like grown-ups (that is, to be able to tell what’s good from what’s bad, and to get into the habits of drinking better stuff, not more stuff). Her previous iterations of the Popping Your Cork series have been noted with discount codes, and the next session is no exception.

  Those of you¹ in Manhattan on Wednesday, 30 January from 6:15pm can spend 90 minutes learning about wine that makes the winter less dreary, and this time she’s got a chef buddy coming by with tasty little nibbles to go with. Popping Your Cork: Winter Blends goes for US$25, but because you’re cool, you can use discount code FRIEND15 for a 15% discount. The fun happens at Simple Studios, 134 W 29th St (2nd floor).

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¹ Of legal drinking age, naturally.

Hoo boy, where to start? Since we spoke last on Friday, the following things have occurred:

• In their continuing march to dominate independent artist merchandising, TopatoCo now has its own building, which is being leased from Sheriff Pony LLC¹. As a measure of the growth of TopatoCo, consider this brief history from TopatoCo Vice President of Kicking Ass and Taking Names Holly Rowland:
  

  It may not look like much, but it is a huge deal to us. Ten years ago, TopatoCo was a shelving unit in Jeffrey’s bedroom in Oklahoma. Seven years ago, it was a third of an office space. Five years ago, it was one full office space. As of now it is four consecutive spaces, five employees, fifty three clients, a 44” giclee’ fine art printer, and a publishing imprint.

  We have big plans for 2013. Stay tuned.

• In her continuing march to dominate independent artist themed anthology collections, Spike announced the contributors to The Sleep of Reason, a list which includes the likes of Aaron Diaz², Evan Dahm, and Carla Speed McNeil, three creators whose world-building will lend itself towards the creeptacular.

  Not convinced? How about KC Green, and Sophie Goldstein, whose work often tends towards the cutely humorous with an underscore of sorrow verging on menace? Not convinced yet? How about the no-brainer of the year, the woman whose work is the definition of atmospheric, existential fear-inducing dread, Emily Carroll? Oh, and 22 other creators/creator teams, including Spike herself. This one is going to rock any sock left tragically unrocked by Smut Peddler.

• Ryan Estrada, last mentioned as stretching outside webcomics via the medium of an online gameshow, has announced a launch date for Asking For Trouble: Thursday, 10 January (that would be this week) at 9:00pm EST. I know that the event invite says Japan Standard Time (GMT+9) instead of Eastern Standard Time (GMT-5), but I’ve confirmed with Estrada that it’s EST.
• Danielle Corsetto, last mentioned as stretching outside webcomics via two graphic novels she’s writing, has announced the first of them as an Adventure Time original graphic novel, to be illustrated by Zack Sterling, entitled Playing With Fire. It’ll be the story of Flame Princess’s romance with Finn, clock in at 160 pages, and show up in April. Sharp eyed readers may note that Corsetto is working on two graphic novels, but I’ve confirmed with her that the second is not another AT book; it will be an original story for another publisher.
• Returning from hiatus: Jim Zub and Shun Hong Chan’s Makeshift Miracle, moving on to what will form the second volume of the rewritten series. Less a return and more a new-material launch: Dave Roman’s Astronaut Academy will shortly have a second volume, and it’s serializing courtesy of publisher :01 Books. And because Roman loves you, Astronaut Academy: Re-Entry already has 25 pages of story ready for your enjoyment.
• The definitive numbers for Child’s Play 2012 came out on Friday, and the result is staggering: more than five million dollars were raised last year, eclipsing the prior year’s record by nearly 50%. For reference, the Child’s Play history looks like this (all figures in US dollars):
  

  2003: $250,000
  2004: $310,000
  2005: $605,000
  2006: $1,024,000
  2007: $1,300,000
  2008: $1,434,377
  2009: $1,780,870
  2010: $2,294,317
  2011: $3,512,345
  2012: $5,085,761
  To date: $17,596,670

  Not a bad first decade all at all.

• Finally, sneaking in just before press time, Bernie Hou announced on Twitter that Comic Chameleon (last mentioned three weeks back) is opening its submission process so that more creators can get in on the webcomics reading app that doesn’t screw them over. Looks like launch on CC is getting close.

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¹ Sheriff Pony LLC exists as a distinct entity from The Topato Corporation for reasons of Business.

² The Tolkien Scholar Par Excellence.

We’re less than eighteen hours into 2013 where I am, and already things are off to a fast start.

• Firstly, more news of Strip Search has come to light, including details I couldn’t get Robert Khoo to divulge if his (or, more likely, my) life depended on it. Maki [Edit to add: I’ve discovered that Maki is not uni-named, and is more fully known as Maki Naro; Fleen regrets the deviation from our usual naming conventions], from Sci-ənce dropped news that he was a participant, that production took place in December, and that the other eleven creators vying for the top prize were Lexxy Douglass, Amy Falcone, Ty Halley, Alex Hobbs, Abby Howard, Monica Ray, Katie Rice, Mackenzie Schubert, Nick Trujillo, and “Hurricane” Erika Moen.

  [Edit to add: Missed one! I took my list from Naro’s posting, and did not notice that there were only ten names listed rather than eleven; Naro initially omitted Tavis Maiden, and I missed his name on Lexxy Douglass’s post. Mr Maiden helpfully contacted me via Twitter to point out the oversight; Fleen regrets the error.]

  Best news: most of these creators aren’t known to me, so I can now get exposed to new talent. Even bester news: the three whose work I am familiar with are really damn good, which gives me confidence in the other nine. Specifically, I’ve had my eye on Douglass’s¹ art blog since she was featured on PA: The Series going through the hiring process; Rice has been tearing it up at Dumm Comics for going on five years, and Moen is basically an unstoppable force of nature. My already-high level of anticipation for SS just went through the roof.

  One last thought — I’m really hoping that Maki didn’t speak out of turn (it is mere days since Khoo wasn’t willing to tell when production took place or who was involved) and as he (Maki) rightly observes:

  Khoo is a very kind, friendly, and utterly terrifying man

  I kid, I kid, Douglass also disclosed her involvement today, but she didn’t make a show of terror so she doesn’t have as good a pull quote. Obviously, the NDA period is over — or Maki and Douglass are dangerously overconfident, not realizing that their doom is nigh.

• Speaking of fast starts, Ryan Estrada has launched the second iteration of The Whole Story (six months after the first), this time on Kickstarter. Since the launch at midnight EST, TWS: Winter 2013 has exceeded the extremely modest US$2500 goal, which had the entire purpose of reimbursing Estrada for the out-of-pocket costs that he fronted to creators and translators; everything that comes in from this point will be split among the creators (of which Estrada is one, meaning he gets a share, but not the entire total going forward).

  Moving TWS to Kickstarter from its earlier distribution site makes sense — it’s easiest to just set the “pay what you want” model to a minimum of a buck, and to add bonus content by exceeding the average amount paid in the prior incarnation, than it is to adjust those pricing structures on the fly. Having a set period of time for the campaign creates a scarcity that wouldn’t exist otherwise for electronic content.

  And holy jeeze, there’s a lot of previously-released and brand-new content available, including KC Green’s latest story comic at the pay-what-you-want level; the bonus level (a paltry thirteen American dollars) includes almost 200 pages of Ryan Andrews comics that bore themselves into your soul and don’t let go plus Green’s magnum opus, The Anime Club. At this point, just call The Whole Story the e-book equivalent of Benign Kingdom.

• Finishing up on the Kickstarter front, at the beginning of December we at Fleen mentioned a Kickstarter from longtime mystery man Eben Burgoon for a project called B-Squad, wherein characters will be killed off by the roll of a die and replaced by others waiting in the wings. Burgoon’s project is four days from completion, and I’m particularly interested in its progress, because it’s the first test of something I learned back in October.

  Some may recall how I shared some information from Kickstarter Director of Community Cindy Au, at the B9 panel at NYCC; specifically, the magic inflection point appears to be 1/3 of goal. If you reach 1/3, you’re extremely likely to succeed, and if you fail, you very likely didn’t approach even 1/3 of goal. As of this writing, Burgoon’s B-Squad is at 39% of goal, with four days to go.

  The projects I’ve had my eyes on since I learned of Au’s thumb-rule haven’t hung around the 1/3 mark for more than a few minutes before racing ahead to success, so I’m curious to see what happens here — a big push to get support and a slide over the line before the campaign closes? Or a statistical outlier? Dare we, as Kickstarter attention-payers, turn Ms Au’s prediction on its head? That could cause the laws of Kickstarter physics to start to fail and create a tear in the fabric of crowdfunding-spacetime, the likes of which not even the ghost of Ryan North could navigate. I’m just saying, if Kickstarter eats itself, we only have ourselves to blame.

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¹ That’s entirely too many “s”es.²

² So is that.³

³ And Guigar.

She finally did it. There are googly eyes staring at me as I write this. Send help.

Things to keep an eye (so to speak) out for:

• Well done, ghost of Ryan North, you’re officially the most-funded publishing project in Kickstarter history, more than doubling the second-place contender. Also, what was up with raising more than US$101,000 in the last full day of the campaign? That is nuts and the people that support you, we they are nuts.
• Want to drive yourself crazy? Check out the 19 page preview of Cameron Stewart’s next project, NIRO. Crazy, because now you need to see the rest of the story, and Stewart hasn’t released it yet, ha ha ha¹. 180 degrees removed from the psychological drama of Sin Titulo, NIRO appears to mix some apocalyptic setting here, some unspeakable danger there, and a loner with a moral/religious code trying to do the right thing right about … h’yahhh. NIRO will release as choose-your-price (99 cents or more) digital issues starting early next year, culminating in a print collection.
• Erika Moen has been doing a public service behind the scenes for a good while now, studying to become more knowledgeable about how human sexuality works than anybody this side of the Kinsey Institute for the purposes of putting together a graphic novel that’s an educational resource for teens. It’s slow work, though, and she’s dying to share helpful information with the reading public before 2015. What to do?
  

  I’m thinking I’ll start up a smaller comic to run in the mean time. I’m thinking a sex toy review comic. WOULD YOU READ THAT?

  I am asking everybody reading this now to contact Moen (her Twitterpage should suffice) to say Yes, please, let us see this comic of yours as often as you can produce it!

Several subsets of Alliday will be dropping in the next week or so — whichever things you might celebrate or find comfort in, enjoy the heck out of ’em. We at Fleen will do our best to scrape up news in the coming days, but it may be kind of scarce on the ground.

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¹ If I get driven crazy from the cliffhanger, you’re all coming with me.

To quote the ghost of Ryan North:

boom

That would be the formerly-living Nexus of All Webcomics Realities (Great White North Division) ceasing to exist in our plane of reality as he sploded a little more than an hour ago. Astonishingly, I can only assume that North’s backers had murder on their minds, as his Kicktraq pledge history shows that today is already his single highest-grossing day with some nine hours still to go¹, a situation which I’ve never observed. Kickstarters are always frontloaded, and yeah you’ll get a tick upwards at or near the end, but to have your highest daily totals then is unheard of.

Heck, his projected total is trending upwards for the past couple of days, and it’s entirely possible he could hit US$550,000² before things finish tomorrow morning. HE’S ALREADY DEAD YOU BASTARDS, YOU CAN’T KILL HIS CORPSE ANY MORE.

As amazing as all of that is, the most amazing part of this month-long rollercoaster was revealed earlier today by the onetime tallest man in webcomics on what used to be his Tumblr, regarding a man named Tom Helleberg:

… who is the nicest guy. Sorry everyone else, but you’re all tied for second place now. About a week after To Be Or Not To Be launched I got an email from him that congratulated me on the success of the book, said I now owed it to him to make it the best book it could possibly be, and concluded with the fact he’d been talking to publishers and shopping around his own idea for a book without success for the past two years: also a choose-your-own-path version of Hamlet.

It took me two days to write him back, because I kept putting myself in his shoes (I’m about to launch my Kickstarter when Quirk³ or someone announces Tom’s book) and it feels awful. Just awful. What could I say to him? When I did write him back I basically said those things: I felt terrible, and I couldn’t believe we’d both come up with the same idea and had such different experiences with it. Again, Tom was the nicest guy (he thanked me for being a decent human being: honestly touching, and he said he was dismantling his large-scale revenge photocollage about me: also nice) and he mentioned was actually relieved to be done with the project and able to move on to his next idea — and when that’s done, would I be willing to supply a quote for the back of the book? [emphasis original]

Reached for comment, the late Mr North remarked that he had tried to find a definition for “explode” in the OED that would forestall his gruesome death, but was unable to do so before his demise, where witnesses report a couple was observed to be high-fiving. We at Fleen extend our condolences to North’s wife, family, friends, dog, and to Mr Helleberg, who will now have to find somebody else to write that blurb.

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¹ In today’s totals that is; there’s still some 17 hours in all for the campaign.

² Also known as “2750% of goal”, or “getting pretty damn close to double the previously highest-funded publishing project in Kickstarter history which was done by marketing guru Seth Godin, dang yo”.

³ Editor’s note: Quirk are the publishing house behind such ventures as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and it’s amazing that they didn’t announce such a think as choose-your-own-Hamlet already. Tough luck, Quirk. Maybe you can negotiate with North’s literary estate for the rights to mass-market editions once the Kickstarter rewards are all distributed.

In the most reckless stretch goal of all time, North has promised that his final stretch goals for TBONTB:ACFABRNAAWST will be:

$425,000 = another 25 books sent to libraries and schools!
$450,000 = another 25 books sent to libraries and schools! Also I will … create a pizza that looks like Hamlet and… eat it?
$475,000 = another 50 books sent to libraries and schools!
$500,000 = I will literally explode [emphasis original]

Judging from the uptick in support in the past couple of days, it appears that he just might do it. Please, people, think of Chompsky! Do not cause Ryan North to explode, if only because he is a giant of a man and the pieces would require immense cleanup .

• You know who’s a stellar (pun intended) guy, just an amazingly wonderful representative of all the best that [web]comics offers? Dave Roman. Sometimes he gets lost in the shuffle when his wife, the fabulously talented Raina Telgemeier goes and dominates the New York Times YA bestseller lists for two or three years at a time, but just look at the stuff that Roman’s done (oftentimes with partner John Green): Jax Epoch. Teen Boat¹. Agnes Quill. Fantasy, goofball teen angst, mystery — all genres and audiences find something by Roman to call their own.

  And, as he has for some time now, Roman also brings in the youngest readers with the Sci-Fi school days adventure of Astronaut Academy, the second collection of which is rapidly approaching. This is the book I give to kids just starting to read longer books for pleasure; when they’ve outgrown it, there’s plenty more Roman to keep ’em busy. So thank you, Dave, for all your varied work, and keep doing what you’re doing.

• Today’s reason to keep on going in an uncertain future: Tracy White’s return to webcomics:
  

  About to start drawing my first new comic (online only) in three years. #goodtobeback

  I’ll got out on a limb and guess you’ll be able to find the new work (as yet unnamed) at White’s main site, Traced. Given the two and a half years since How I Made It To Eighteen was released, I’ll go out on another limb and say that White’s got some stories building up just waiting to be shared with the world. Keep your eyes peeled and your hands inside the car at all times.

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¹ Obligatory warning: do not ever Google the words “teen boat” without appending the word “comic(s)”, and especially not image searches. Just … just trust me on this one.