But Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin is still running down the news, at least. Give us heed to what he has to say.

I’m writing this because the FIBD at Angoulême was set to be taking place right now. But it isn’t.

It isn’t because the French government announced on December 27th that entertainment gatherings (sport events, cultural ones, etc.) attendance would be capped to 2000 if indoors, or 5000 if outdoors, which wouldn’t have allowed the festival to take place with any semblance of normalcy.

Worse, by making such an announcement merely one month before it was to take place, the government did not leave the festival any opportunity to rework the format so as to make fit under the cap (e.g. as Lyon BD did), even if the organizers had wanted to do so. No, by that time obviously all expenses had been incurred and it was either go or no go, so the only way left was no go.

Then, adding insult to injury, about one week later the government clarified (in the same sense Oceania clarified having always been at war with Eastasia) that the caps would in fact apply to events (concerts, sports, etc.), and not to festivals or to trade shows. We were in fact given the reasoning that the latter would be safer since people wouldn’t be static in those, which makes me question the epidemiological consulting they received.

That came of course way too late to the Angoulême organizers, who had by then announced the festival’s cancellation (and even if they hadn’t, everyone else would have cancelled their plans anyway); I think the only reason this staggering display of amateurism on the government’s part did not get discussed more was that it was overshadowed by the even more staggering amateurism they displayed in the unpreparedness for the schools reopening on January 3rd. But I digress.

The only thing left to do, then, was for the FIBD to announce their new dates: March 17th to 20th, 2022. I still won’t be going, still a bit early for my standards (I’d rather they would have waiting for spring), but I wish them luck.

In more positive news, we at Fleen have learned that starting in February newly issued Belgian passports will feature a comics theme, more specifically imagery from comics from Belgian creators of course: Tintin (more specifically his Moon rocket), the Smurfs, Lucky Luke, Spirou, Largo Winch, Bob & Bobette (known as Suske & Wiske in Flanders), the Marsupilami, etc. If we estimate the life expectancy of this model based on that of the previous one (about 14 years), I say it should be possible, if you move to Belgium right now and apply for citizenship once the conditions are met, to obtain this model before it is itself replaced. But you shouldn’t dawdle.

We at Fleen at the end there, of course, means FSFCPL alone, as the rest of we at Fleen are waaaay behind on comics news and appreciate that he at Fleen is paying attention. We at Fleen (that being, the rest of us who are not FSFCPL¹) thank FSFCPL for his diligence, without which there would be literally nothing here right about now.

Spam of the day:

Deine Freunde verdienen bereits Vor 19300 EUR pro Tag

Google Translate says that this means Your friends are already earning 19300 EUR per day which assumes I have friends and is thus pretty presumptuous.

_______________
¹ Meaning more specifically, Gary. Hi.

And one in such exquisite detail even more so.

Welcome back to the coverage of this year’s Quai des Bulles festival, courtesy of Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin. As mentioned in Part One, this is his report on the career retrospective interview of Pénélope Bagieu.

The interview took place Saturday at 2:30 PM in the Amphithéâtre Maupertuis, with Vincent Brunner interviewing.

30 minutes before the start, available spots were already thinning out. 15 minutes bore the start, there was no room left at all.

When Pénélope Bagieu entered the room, the audience broke into applause.

After a welcome message, a reminder of her exhibition, and a quick recap of her career, including her Eisner award, the interview started in earnest.

Brunner: How did she realize she wanted to become a comics creator, with so few examples, such as Claire Brétécher?
Bagieu: As far as her young self was concerned, the comics she read appeared out of thin air without anyone needing to be involved, and in fact she noticed female protagonists more than female creators. Later on she studied animation, then worked in illustration, at which point she started being commissioned for comics work as part of her job, and that turned out to be to her liking.

She realized she had been doing comics as a teen (typically girls playing sports, inspired by Attacker You), but she did not think of it at the time as being comics.

Brunner: So she created a blog, a new medium at the time.
Bagieu: She was not interested then in putting out a book; she had always been doing commission work, as she was hired straight out of school, so the blog provided her with a space to express herself freely: no need for any of it to provide a return on investment. In the end, it was a training ground for her to be able to make books eventually.

Brunner: And it provided her direct interactions with the public.
Bagieu: Not necessarily as interactive as with some since her blog did not have comments, but yes that meant being exposed to many people, but pre-Instagram standards. It was an ongoing entertainer job: back then when you went on holidays you used to ask another creator to cover your away days! Today she couldn’t imagine doing the same: she’s just too busy.

The blog removed some of the solemn aspect of books: she never stopped herself thinking: This joke is going to end up in a book and enter the public record! She enjoyed the lack of restraint. She found it nice for it to become a book in the end, but that was never the end goal. Now she has better outlook on the process: for instance, it has become apparent visitors do not necessarily translate to sales.

Brunner: This is where Joséphine starts.
Bagieu: It was a commission work, and her first character in fiction, so the matter was finding out in which scenarios, in which contexts, and between which characters she was going to be inserted. Once she had consistent characters, it was just a matter of coming up with setups such as the company party at which point the stories write themselves, even after 20 years.

Brunner: Then a movie.
Bagieu: Joséphine was a kind of training camp, and once it had stopped being fun to do, she stopped. She hasn’t regretted it, even when in Japan when she got asked for more at a signing (the Japanese public is more interested in the pictures than in the stories of comics of the French-Belgian tradition). She is proud of it being her first published book in Asia.

Brunner: Isn’t there always some part of treason when adapting for a movie?
Bagieu: To avoid feeling betrayed, you either do it yourself (which as a creator you always have the option to do, by law, as part of your moral rights), and you’re safe; or you put it in the hands of someone else and own up already that it’s going to be their work.

She find movies to be a source of frustration as compared to comics: in the latter, she can afford to put ellipses for instance, and one person can have total creative control, without sharing it with actors, the people responsible for lighting, sets, or props. That means it’s solitary work, but it’s fine for her.

Brunner: Exquisite Corpse was another milestone.
Bagieu: She had huge worries going into it: was she going to succeed, in particular when it comes to writing? But it didn’t matter in the end: she had fun working on it, and it was the start of a realization that once everything is said and done, the only thing that remains out of a book is the experience she has had working on it, as far as she’s concerned, so the only thing that matters is how much she enjoyed herself doing it.

Brunner: Does she follow any sort of process when creating a book?
Bagieu: She does write a synopsis ahead of time for validation, which is always a source of worries, but beyond that no particular methodology. So she works on her books in an almost school-like manner: plan, introduction, development, conclusion. Other creators may follow different methods: some start without necessarily knowing how the book will end.

Brunner: What form does this take?
Bagieu: A mix of words, arrows, roughs, sketches, in order the represent the staging in her head, and which only she can make heads or tails of it. They are literally impossible to display: it’s hard to even know which orientation the sheet is meant to have.

Brunner: And she has also worked with writers.
Bagieu: At the time of her being proposed La Page Blanche (which occurred before Cadavre Exquis), she requested being paired with a writer, and ended up with Boulet, which was great, in particular so she could concentrate on the illustrations, and moreso the colors: I handle the writing duties.

But she did get frustrated somewhat, as she missed not so much writing the story, as being able to stage it, which is the part she loves best. Stars Of The Stars* was another attempt at drawing someone else’s scenario, this time with Johann Sfar, who had initiated the project. None of this being out of the ordinary: there are no two pairs of writers and artists who collaborate the same way, no two writers who are alike. Sfar taught her a lot, she finds him to be an incredible storyteller.

In the end, she decided she did not want anyone else writing stories for her to draw anymore, even if she isn’t the best writer. And even if that meant leaving Stars Of The Stars stranded with a single tome.

Brunner: What kind of tooling did she use?
Bagieu: Back then, Photoshop and graphic tablet: it was just easier for her. Sometimes you have to find the right tool, as for California Dreamin’, but sometimes also get out of your comfort zone.

Brunner: On that matter, why did she draw this story?
Bagieu: First of all, she’s of course a huge fan. And she found Mama Cass’s story to be incredible and felt the need to transmit it. Her penciling came alive on the page, but any inking froze that, so she decided she would do it all in pencils.

This was her first long-haul book; she loved the feeling of spending 18 months with someone, so she came to appreciate creating biographies. If only she could tell of more women that way …

Brunner: What kind of documentation did she use for that?
Bagieu: Immersing yourself in a setting for the purpose of writing, that sounds fantastic! So she travelled to New York City, sleeping in a B&B in Greenwich Village and spending her days in cafés, and by the end of the week the book was basically written.

Brunner: To which extent does she embellish these life stories with fiction?
Bagieu: She prefers biographies that don’t lean heavily on factuals, as opposed to those that go on that date they did this then that date they did that: the biographies that made a mark on her were those from which readers received love for the person, doesn’t matter if there’s a 20-year time skip in the middle.

Which does not mean she gets to do as she pleases: there are extant relatives who could object. So she had to double-check biographical details: whether they were raised in a rich or poor family, the kind of siblings they had, etc. Her role is to provide embellishments and draw the lines between the given points as she prefers. Out of the truth, shape her own Mama Cass: the one she wants to see.

On that note, if you need background characters who nevertheless need to stay consistent from panel to panel, use your own relatives.

She’d rather introduce the subject to the reader and make him love them, rather than teaching him information.

Brunner: Did she hear from the rights holders?
Bagieu: They refused to license the lyrics, so yes she did hear about them … But other than that, when she went to Baltimore, she got feedback from someone from her parents’ generation that she did render well the high school ambiance, which she did not expect but was glad to hear.

Brunner: So what’s the relationship with Brazen?
Bagieu: Let’s do a Katia Krafft bio! No, it’d be better to do a Peggy Guggenheim one! Wait, what if I did 30 of them? She was looking for a format with Le Monde: what if she did women bios, told as children’s tales of sorts, and randomly said 30 as to how many, once every Monday? She went on to call her publisher, who said it’d have to be two books then.

Brunner: How did she settle on which ones to write?
Bagieu: She had settled on about 2/3rds of them right away, and the last third came during the course of the project: she got heaps of suggestions, not to mention those who did not make the cut and still regrets. Some who were suggested she passed on because she found them to be sufficiently well-known already, but it could also be because their stories did not connect with her. But sometimes it was love at first sight, such as when Lisa Mandel suggested Phoolan Devi¹ to her.

Brunner: That was quite a synthesis work. What was her process?
Bagieu: Oh yes, there we do learn information. She started the week with their biographies, then she’d have about two days to write and draw their chapter. This was a good exercise, as with such constraints this is what hit her that remains, and in particular their switch: the trigger, the one event where they go I’m done playing by the rules, I’m going to live my life how I decide (either in terms of career, lifestyle, etc). That was in fact her main contribution to the animated version: confirming, and in some cases reminding, of where that spot happens in the stories.

Brunner: How did she handle the publishing schedule?
Bagieu: She did do a few ahead of time, for use in rainy days and the like. But the immediate feedback kept her very motivated, as opposed to her latest book which she was done drawing back in May but isn’t out yet … (Author’s note: at the time this interview was conducted)

Brunner: No sequel then?
Bagieu: No, she’s sticking with the 30 she initially committed to. Tove Jansson never lost sight of her priorities in life, and she’s taken that in turn: she knows that if she works on something she’d rather not work on, readers will notice.

Brunner: So she has no regret on any particular one who did not make the cut?
Bagieu: No, not on one in particular, and anyway there’s nothing stopping her from from discovering more women and reading their biographies.

Brunner: And it was not intended for children specifically, was it?
Bagieu: And yet, there they are.

Brunner: Which leads us to The Witches.
Bagieu: As far as she’s concerned, the children audience is demanding, as you can’t bluff your way out, which is especially the case for drawings: she holds children book illustrators in highest esteem. So when she inadvertently brought a younger readership, she realized it was not necessary to write in a way that targets them. As a result, when she got the offer to adapt Roald Dahl, she was less afraid to do so.

That still meant some pressure, especially for backgrounds: she herself as a young reader demanded to be able to witness everything, down to the smallest detail. Luckily, everything was there in the book already: scary antagonists, funny moments, actual action. He was pretty much the only writer in children’s literature to introduce somber themes.

When she first read the book she was aged about the same as the protagonists, so it helped her get back to the right frame of mind.

Brunner: And it’s a book about grandmothers.
Bagieu: She drew a lot from her own grandmother, as part of generally making an imprint on the story: rather than being an illustrator like Quentin Blake, she was adapting the book and so needed for it to become her own, so the grandmother went from being Dahl’s to being hers as a result. As well as making a character into a girl.

Brunner: Yes, that Bruno character.
Bagieu: He made no impression on her at all, so she wondered: why is he here at all? Let’s replace him, and as we’re at it by a girl who is interesting, has her own backstory, and serves some story purpose.

Brunner: Haven’t witches evolved since then?
Bagieu: It was complicated to adapt The Witches in 2020. But it mattered for them to remain fairy tale witches, as that is what worked for her at the time, because they were impressive. But there is the grandmother who exposes and is a different kind of witch.

Brunner: What were the rights holders like?
Bagieu: A single person in fact, who was open to anything that made sense. He was very settled on some aspects: the setting being England for instance. But he accepted a female character who made sense. He reminded her of an important theme: the grandmother has to love her grandchild no mater what, and it has to be shown.

Brunner: And she created it on the road.
Bagieu: During her Brazen promo tour, so she remembers every page being done in a train or in a waiting room. The iPad was very useful for her: for instance the pencil effect, as seen in this page.

Brunner: And we get to her latest, Strates, set to release on November 10th …
Bagieu: And available at the Gallimard booth ahead of the public launch.

Brunner: Where she gets back to autobio, with moments that made an impression on her.
Bagieu: On the blogs you take highlights out of your life and make scenes out of them, without really exposing yourself: everything has to be made into comedy. Here she collected deeply personal stories, some of which aren’t funny. But it’s a jigsaw puzzle of elements that built her, out of very diverse subject matters, even if some of them appear unimportant at first glance.

Brunner: There is not even any consistent page count.
Bagieu: She’s trusting the reader to follow. This one story she wrote down ten years ago. Then years later she did three in a month. This was originally a cathartic process not meant for anyone else, but eventually she decided she should not be afraid to make a book out of it.

For this, she redrew some of the oldest ones. She thought to herself that if this was enjoyable to make, it would have to be enjoyable to read. But it’s still not easy for her, as she puts herself bare in these pages. With any luck, she hopes it has some universality and impresses other people in turn.

Audience Member: She went from bios, to an adaptation, to autobio; what’s next?
Bagieu: She does not know herself. About one week before heading into it in earnest, she’ll know. It’s never the same thing twice, because she easily gets bored. Right now she wants to do colors, painting, as Strates is in black and white; if she’s still in that state of mind in a few weeks, she’ll attempt a few pages, and if after three pages it’s still too hard, she’ll give up.

Audience Member: What would be her advice for starting out?
Bagieu: She’s not comfortable providing such advice: she started out in days that are now fully gone, and wouldn’t know how to start over today. But people today are lucky to have Instagram, even if that imposes a format constraint, which she could get bored of: she worries about Instagram formatting stories for swiping as early as inception, for fear of there not being nearly as much of an outlet for them otherwise.

Also, there are some things that shouldn’t be shown right away and need to mature, because feedback on them would catch the ego in too fragile a state.

But it is key to generally show, otherwise you never work up the nerve to do so.

Don’t worry about what pleases the public, as you’re never going to be able to hold that up in the long run: you’re going to get sick of it. Same for artificial constraints: your work as to be personal, and that comes from drawing a lot; that is how your style comes, you don’t decide it.

Existing in an era of abundance requires being demanding with the editing side: you have to demand being backed up and respected, so be careful. You must speak with other creators so as to avoid being alone, to counteract the tendency of being solitary already.

Audience Member: Do woman creators earn less?
Bagieu: Yes, big surprise here: statistically advances are lower for female creators. There has always been female creators (and readers) but now they’re spreading to other parts of the book chain, such as editors.

Things have changed in the last ten-fifteen years, and besides feminization, some commercials successes have forced the attention on them; but women creators are still invisibilized in many cases, or assigned to some boxes, etc.

It’s not the worst occupation in that regard, but not the best either. But now female creators are banding, under the descriptively-named umbrella of Collectif des Créatrices de Bandes Dessinées.

Audience Member: (Author’s note: a young girl who happened to be next to me) How did she learn how to draw?
Bagieu: As the audience member did: pencils and paper which was laying around, then art school after high school. But there are some self-taught creators, who draw better than her.

One additional piece of advice, on that matter: she herself drew a lot because she was made to treat paper and pencils as mundane: the paper won’t serve for any other purpose since there’s a bill on the other side, the pencils are old but abundant, so she was free to draw a lot. The opposite of the shiny Caran d’Ache painting set. Given disposable materials like old markers: you go ahead.

Audience Member: What kind of representation, of feminine role model did she have?
Bagieu: No, she did not know women who drew, or even the people who did: the question of who were creating comics did not occur to her. She did love Mafalda and anime as they featured girls, they were part of the action. Sometimes stories were stereotypical girl stories: rivalries, pests, etc., but it was cool to have girl protagonists. For her the golden era of French-Belgian comic book heroines starts now, with the female creators who are 20-25 today.

Audience Member: What kind of pressure does she have after her previous successes, in particular Brazen?
Bagieu: Now everything she does will be widely read as being from the creator of Brazen. Including when unrelated, such as Strates. But in the worst case, she has already put out a best-seller, so that’s something taken care of already. She’s in awe of the other creators who can keep doing books in a series, because she on the other hand has to be passionate about her work. It helps to be well backed up, and not necessarily driven to what will make the most money.

And that will wrap this year’s report from St Malo. As always, we at Fleen are grateful for the contributions of FSFCPL, and all the hard work he puts in to keep us informed of the state of webcomics in the French tradition.

Spam of the day:

The ZoomShot Pro is the new tactical zoom for smartphones and tablets that resists all types of terrain and that with its magnification up to X18 will allow you to take the best photos outdoors without the need to carry a professional camera.

Make up your mind and decide on your audience: are you trying to scam warrior wannabes with the tactical angle, or serious photographers. This is just muddled.

_______________
¹ Editor’s note: Phoolan Devi, the Bandit Queen of India, was the one subject in the original French edition that was omitted from the US/Canada translation of Brazen.

And taking the time to produce either would prevent me from getting you to the latest festival report from Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin, and we can’t have that.

Thanks to Ted Naifeh, I now have my cosplayer identity: Unkempt Superman. At first I thought this was about my hair: I haven’t bothered cutting my pandemic hair, plus the bad weather outside wasn’t doing it any favors. But I realized my attempts to help fellow festival-goers identify my costume (this was on Halloween’s day), namely having my cape stick out of my collar, and my shirt being open in front, doubled as painting the image of a Clark Kent who had barely had time to change back from his superheroing duties. So I’m definitely keeping the image of a superhero that goes increasingly unkept as the festival progresses; in fact, as soon as masks are off (vaccines providing sterilizing immunity can’t come soon enough), this will include increasing amounts of stubble.

This year, Quai des Bulles took advantage of November 1st (a holiday in France) falling on a Monday to go from three days to four, and while this was a good way to compensate for the cancellation of last year’s edition, this also meant this was my first four-day festival.

As the first large-scale festival in months (remember the 2021 edition of Lyon BD had limited scale, and no publisher presence), this was the occasion to reconnect with some creators, such as Cy, which I hadn’t seen (except through a screen) since the release of her latest work, Radium Girls (to be available stateside from Iron Circus in 2022), so lining for a signing with her was a no-brainer. But also the occasion to meet creators I had never seen in a festival before, such as Gally: she has illustrated l’Esprit Critique (a McCloudesque treatise in defense of critical thinking) and created Mon Gras et Moi (My Fat And I), so of course I had her sign both.

And I of course couldn’t skip having John Allison sign one of his Giant Days collections at the Akileos booth (where Naifeh was as well). While Akileos does not have all the interesting adaptations of non-cape English language sequential art (the adaptation of Witch Boy was found elsewhere), they do publish the French editions of Stand Still Stay Silent, of Jen Wang’s recent works, of pretty much everything by Raina Telgemeier, and as you may have guessed those of Allison and Naifeh. While I had caught a glimpse of Allison at Angoulême in 2020, Angoulême also is a big mayhem and I couldn’t manage to meet him at the time. So many thanks to Akileos in general.

Also returning were the fairy tale performances, the drawn concert performance, the painted shop windows, exhibitions (including one of Pénélope Bagieu’s works), and various events such as movie projections. In fact, it would be easier to list the differences: the previously mentioned extra day, the absence of in-hall food options (which was a relief to me), way fewer small scale meetups in bars or the like (which is fortunate, because I don’t think I’d have attended them; in unrelated news, cases were already on the rise at the time in France), and most significantly, an impressive pipeline for validating the mandatory health pass (either vaccination, certificate of remission from COVID-19, or a recent test) before you were given the festival bracelet, valid for the day, that would allow you to enter the festival spaces. In the end, while there were lines at times, everything otherwise went smoothly all things considered, which is testament to the festival organizers.

Stay tuned, I should soon be done transcribing the interview Vincent Brunner did of Bagieu about her whole career, but in particular her latest release, Strates.

We at Fleen, as always, thank FSFCPL for his contributions, and will share the Bagieu interview as soon as it is ready.

Oh, Last Week With John Oliver, you find the best things to spend money on and you’re sending them on tour to the Cartoon Art Museum in January and I need to find some way to see them in person. It’s not on the website yet so let me quote the press release liberally:

The Cartoon Art Museum is pleased to announce that it will host a public exhibition of The Last Week Tonight Masterpiece Gallery in January thanks to the generous patronage of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. The Last Week Tonight Masterpiece Gallery will complete its national tour in San Francisco at the Cartoon Art Museum as part of John Oliver’s effort to showcase his unique art collection and to highlight museums that have been impacted by the global pandemic. The Cartoon Art Museum has been awarded a $10,000 donation from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver to facilitate the exhibition, and the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank will receive a $10,000 matching donation.

The three works featured in the Masterpiece Gallery include a painting of talk show host Wendy Williams preparing to eat a lamb chop; a still life of ties painted by Judy Kudlow, wife of Fox Business Network host Larry Kudlow, and Stay Up Late, a painting by Pennsylvania-based artist Brian Swords, which depicts two anthropomorphized rats engaged in an act that inspired Oliver to proclaim the piece “high-quality rat erotica.” [emphasis original]

In non-rat erotica news:

• The Quai des Bulles Festival will be in St Malo, France between 29 October (that would be Friday, the day after tomorrow) and 1 November (that would be Monday). If my rudimentary (at best) French is to be believed, it’s the 40th iteration of QdB, which is a nicely auspicious round number. Folks like Pénélope Bagieu will have public meetups, and creators such as John Allison, Cy, Pascal Jousselin, and Rodolphe — all mentioned on this page, some more than others — are expected to be in attendance.
• For those on the correct side of the Atlantic, but perhaps not the correct side of the Channel, Thought Bubble will be held in the Harrowgate Convention Centre in Yorkshire a mere two weeks later; the likes of Cecil Castelluci, Sarah Graley, Ron Wimberly, John Allison, and Marc Ellerby will be guesting, and exhibitors will include Avery Hill Publishing, Doug Wilson, Tiny Wizards, and Widdershins — also variously mentioned on this page.

It’s a weird time for comics shows, and the spread-out festival type appears to have a better shot at keeping guests and attendees safe than the massive nerd herds of the super shows, but all the same — get your shots, keep your distance, and wear a mask. Reports from the shows as practicality and time allow.

Spam of the day:

This is because it’ s shown that if these lethal toxins accumulate in your body they can ATTACK the pancreas and liver…making it virtually impossible to regulate your blood sugar…

Please peddle your bullshit to somebody who does not know that the purpose of the liver is to remove toxins from the body, and that very little can damage it apart from prolonged alcohol abuse or certain mycotoxins you get from eating the wrong mushrooms. Milk, coffee, orange juice, and black tea do not come from the wrong mushrooms.

Discuss.

It is one of the most magical days of the year, as today is the day John Allison was born which means (as previously established) it is also the day Ryan North was born. Two such fine members of webcomicdom sharing a birthday? That never happens. Happy Birthdays (Birthsday?) Ryan and John, and many happy returns¹

And it is also the day that I catch up with the latest Iron Circus Kickstart, this one for Real Hero Shit by Kendra Wells. Wells, you may recall, is a favorite around these parts, and the description of RHS caught my eye, especially this bit:

Every day is Spring Break for Eugene, but outside palace walls, he crashes into a hard reality: the system that keeps him safe in his silk-sheeted bed isn’t particularly concerned with the well-being of anyone who isn’t him. Eugene will have to level-up his awareness if he means to be a real hero, and time is running short! [emphasis original]

So that’s sword and sorcery, plenty of queer representation, and a critique of entrenched, generational power structures. Sounds good. Stretch goals include prints and pins, and are about to unlock as the campaign approaches US$40K on a goal of US$15K. It’s a short campaign, having launched the day before yesterday and wrapping up in a mere 9 days more — why hang about when you got books to sell and fulfillment to start hopefully before the friggin’ Post Office gets even more gutted around the start of the year². FFF mk2 says US$53K +/- 10.6K, or somewhere in the US$42.4K – US$63.6K range, but the calculations aren’t built for short runs like this, so we’ll all see whether the Factor or the McDonald Ratio holds true in about ten days.

Spam of the day:

32-second ritual cures back pain (do this tonight)

Is this one of those rituals that you have to like strangle a marmot or you can’t achieve orgasm? Because I’m not strangling any marmots even to relieve my back pain.

_______________
¹ All returns must be accompanied by a receipt.

² The apparently-unfireable hack that Trump appointed to run the USPS has decreed that First Class Mail slow down in 2022, meaning it will get worse by pretty much the only metric that matters — how soon your shit gets to where it’s supposed to. Louis DeJoy can fuck off into the ocean.

And technically the embargo is until 9:00pm EDT today, but since this win was announced yesterday, I’m sharing it:

:0 I just won Best Online Comic – Short Form at the @NatCartoonSoc awards!! Here’s me and my birdies accepting our collective award.

Congrats to the fabulous Rosemary Mosco of Bird And Moon. As mentioned previously, I did not and will not express my preference among the short form nominees, but will say that Mosco is well deserving.

And since it was also announced yesterday, congratulations to Tom Siddell of Gunnerkrigg Court for the win in Online Comic — Long Form!

At some point, the online streams from NCSFest.com will all go online for re-viewing, and you can watch for yourselves. In the meantime, congratulations to a pair of great people!

For everybody else, there’s the entire rest of the post, which is less time-sensitive than the UK bit. Take it away, Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin!

It was always a given that Boulet’s first crowdfunding campaign would make a splash. The only questions were when and how big.

In case you missed it, as a new year’s resolution Boulet set himself a daily strip schedule, as a way to reconnect with the spontaneity of web creation; as a sign of the times, he created them as Instagram vignettes. So even if he has later put them on his blog as well so as not to be solely dependent on Facebook infrastructure, they are quite specific in format (notably, they are narrow enough to be easily readable on handsets).

After a year 2020 where the average productivity was slightly lowered, he surprised himself when he reached update 100 and didn’t stop until May (with a few more in August) — all that in parallel with his breadwinning activities.

Which raised the question of what to do with them.

As he reveals in the crowdfunding video, his publisher, or to be more accurate, the one where he has published his comics blog collections so far under the name Notes, did proactively contact him about, maybe, publishing these?

But not only did he feel these were sufficiently different in format and tone to warrant developing them as a specific project, also times had changed since the last tome: a new kind of publishing house where his promotional efforts would be taken into account, where he would not sign away any more rights (merchandizing, translation, adaptations, etc.) than he strictly needed to, and where he would need to only give up a share of the crowdfunding money proportionate with the work taken off his plate, which was the main obstacle keeping him away from self-publishing? (Note who was agreeing with Boulet in this discussion? Lisa Mandel)

As he put it, it’s as if Fate had sent him a sign. Hence, Rogatons.

After an explosive start that dissuaded me from reporting on the extravagant amount that applying the FFFmk2 would have given (given the lack of track record), the campaign did nevertheless reach 7195 preordered books, or 6759 Books_ecc, putting him among the top crowdfunded French comics creators.

I don’t know if that allows him to be completely independent from traditional publishers (if you think this book just required the 6 months or so of work where we actually saw his strip output, you’re fooling yourself). But he certainly took a giant step towards that.

Meanwhile, he isn’t leaving his historical publishers down so far, as evidenced by the fact that he’ll be in Cumbria this weekend for the Comic Art Festival) where he will sign Notes for Soaring Penguin Press, and by his relaying of the availability of Dungeon in English at NBM Graphic Novels.

As always, we at Fleen thank FSFCPL for keeping us up on the Continental scene. Have a good weekend, everybody, espeically those of you in Cumbria. Oh, and maybe come back sometime over the weekend? I’ll have some news for you then.

Spam of the day:

Summer is here Is your lawn ready?

I’ll note this was sent on 18 September, which is just before the end of summer in the northern hemisphere.

Hey, how are you? Enjoying Canadian Thanksgiving, or utterly ignoring that piece of shit Christopher Columbus? Good, good.

• Let’s start with the big round number, shall we? Take a gander at Jennie Breeden’s strip from last Friday, which doesn’t look like much out of the ordinary. But those of long memory may recall this strip from 8 October, 2001, which just so happens to be the first strip that Breeden uploaded under the Devil’s Panties moniker, and which also just so happens to have been twenty years to the day before last Friday’s redraw.

  There’s not so many folks that keep with webcomics for two decades, and even fewer that operate in the autobio sphere, so let’s give Breeden the requisite congrats for the accomplishment, and note that the next day, and the next, and the next (that would be today), updates went up as scheduled. She’s hit the ground running on Year Twenty One.

• One thing I’ve noticed about C Spike Trotman, Presidente For Life over at Iron Circus/? She sees something good, she grabs it:
  

  TFW you see something on Twitter and sign it like three weeks later because it’s so goddamn intriguing it makes you wanna scream

  It doesn’t hurt that the book in question is by Evan Dahm, who is both very good at comics and has already done books for Iron Circus (if you haven’t read the superlative The Harrowing Of Hell, maybe get on that). Mansion X is exactly the kind of uniquely brilliant weirdness that Dahm specializes in when he’s not telling more serious stories (and sometimes when he is).

  I am less familiar with Kyle Smeallie’s work, but if Spike is grabbing up The Actual Witch Society Of Derrybridge Middle School, I’m gonna say it’s worth attention, even though it’ll be a while before we get to read it. TAWSODMS is due in 2025 (thanks, global supply chain issues), and Mansion X in 2023. We’ll keep you informed of any updates.

• Speaking of Dahm, his long-running meditation on empire, subject peoples, indigenous belief, dynastic power struggles, and a whole lot else, Vattu, is going through some rapid story progress at the moment. Ideas and plots that have been laid in place for years are about to come crashing into each other, as entire peoples are about to find out exactly what a powderkeg of a society they’ve been a part of.
• Also speaking of which (Iron Circus this time), they’re having a Halloween Sale at the moment, with 33% off select titles — generally ones with at least a tangential spooky theme, although it being Iron Circus there’s some sexy stuff in there too — between now and 25 October. Go grab some good comics now, while the postal service is still operating.

Spam of the day:

YOU NEED QUALITY VISITORS FOR YOUR: fleen.com ?

Dude (you know it’s a dude), I’ve already got the best visitors for my fleen.com, ain’t nothing you can give me with your fake account fire hose.

And why not?

• First up, a quick point over to the current Steeple storyline — Clotted Crime by name — and a news item from John Allison yesterday. A name from the hallowed past is being shared and that caught my interest:
  

  Kelly Vivanco has done the cover for the upcoming Clotted Crime part 3, but that is not all.

  I’m not sure what caught more of my interest, to be honest. Kelly Vivanco is the creator of Patches, a much beloved and long-hiatused webcomic that is still online for your delectation and enjoyment. Patches went on hiatus about the time Vivanco started producing what might be called fine art¹. Any time I come across Vivanco’s name, I take notice and fall in love with her work again. A cover page for Part 3 of Clotted Crime will be welcome indeed.

  But then there’s the second part of the newsbite, where Allison says that Vivanco has gone and done fan art of a previously-unknown bit of Tackleverse lore:

  She has also submitted some archival pictures of Tredregyn’s sole all-merman folk outfit of the 1960s, TENTANGLE.

  And the images are everything about her work that I love. Go check them out, and check out Vivanco’s work more generally if you aren’t familiar with it.

• Secondly, let us compare and contrast two upcoming comics events. On the one hand you have CXC, kicking off tomorrow and running through Sunday. On the other hand, you have the SDCC special event thingy — they’re calling it Special Edition — over [American] Thanksgiving weekend. The former is remote and online. The latter is in person.

  Nobody knows what SDCC/SE will look like or how many people might be there — badges are on sale now, a marked contrast to normal SDCC iterations where they sell out instantly — and thus it’s hard to make a case why one should attend, but it’s easy to make the counter-case:

  It is too soon for an in-person event, particularly one that takes place on the busiest travel weekend of the year², doubly-particularly since many people did not get to gather with family last year and just might be able to this year.

  CXC will be taking place in a combo of mostly virtual and a few in-person events at The Billy (which will also be available online). The schedule is packed with Zoom, YouTube, and Discord channels, the guests are lined up, and it’s free. CXC is a no-brainer. And, in a completely different way, so is SDCC/SE.

Spam of the day:

No matter if you have a big bust or small bust, this is the best wireless bra that looks great under clothes while feeling like loungewear.Cooling Bra Pro can actually have a great impact on your life.

I, uh, do not have a need for such a foundation garment. Thanks?

_______________
¹ Which I once described as moody, dreamy, whimsical-on-the-verge-of-disturbing paintings and that they reminded me of fairy tales, at the moment just before everything starts to go seriously wrong.

² Meaning that large amounts of people injected into the travel stream will interact with the greatest number of other people, making disease vectors all the more effective.