No photos, no experiences to relate, just waiting around for Pacific Time to happen and watch the panels go live online. Updates as warranted.

Couple of Howards to talk about today. Weird how that works out.

• I’m either one day late or two days early on this, but there’s something fairly tremendous is going on with my evil twin:
  

  Calling it: 6pm, July 21, 2020, I finished inking the last Schlock Mercenary strip of my 7,345-day run of daily-without-fail updates.

  Except I got the math wrong. 7,348. Because Friday is still three days off.

  I speak, naturally, of the fact that Howard Tayler, the indefatigable machine of webcomics, was working with only a two day buffer.

  Oh, and the 20 years, 1 month, 1 week, and 5 day streak, that’s important too.

  MET will be taking some well-earned time off and some overdue attention to his health, which has been challenging for some time now. And I want to be very clear about something as I add my congratulations to those of pert-near everybody: Howard, buddy, evil twin from a mirror dimension, you waited too long to take these three months. I think that somewhere along the line the idea of having a single, uninterrupted story became more important than it should have, and you neglected yourself to a degree you should not have.

  And while Tayler is being lauded for his achievement — and rightfully so! — we, all of us who are holding up this achievement and maybe shifting our expectations a little bit to the no skip days ever side of the spectrum need to remember that behind that beloved strip we never want to wait for an update from? There’s one or more people whose obligations is first and foremost to their own well being.

  I’m guilty of over-emphasizing the streak aspect of Tayler’s longevity in webcomics as much as anybody, and wish I could go back to every anniversary or Big Round Number when I extolled his achievement and excise however many mentions of and he did it without skipping any days, with its unspoken, not serious (but not entirely unserious) subtext of now get back to the drawing board, Comic Boy, and entertain me.

  You done good, Howard. I expect that you are going to sleep in until next Tuesday or so, and I expect everybody that is making noise about the capital-A Achievement to resolve to purchase stuff from his store, as well as to resolve that we don’t place such expectations on his next project, or any other creator, ever again. Deal? Deal.

• Speaking of misplaced emphasis, I want to point you to the most clueless, self-proclaimed Kickstarter expert of 2020. Dude (of course it’s a dude) emailed C Spike Trotman with a mealy-mouthed, faintly negging description of the latest Iron Circus Kickstart, offering to make it successful.

  Spike. This Spike, who apparently would be incapable of making a success from a horror anthology by Abby freakin’ Howard without taking the extremely important step of … paying some rando thirty five bucks.

  Don’t be this guy. And get a copy of The Crossroads At Midnight which, granted, has a pretty hefty shipping charge associated but it’s also 380 damn pages long full of Howardian goodness unsettling creepiness. Maybe don’t read it alone in the dark.

Today In SDCC@Home:
The virtual show floor is live, which allows you to click on a booth’s exhibitor and see if they have any merch specials. Panels start in a couple of hours (as I write this).

Spam of the day:

Sterilizes and cleans your room within 30-60 minutes

Ooooh, a UV gizmo with a rechargable battery! Know what’ll sterilize and clean (those are actually different things) my room in 30-60 minutes? Me, with a rag and a 10% bleach solution in a bucket.

Scared by fancy percent-type numbers? Get a bucket of water, add bleach until it smells about twice as strong as the chlorine a pool. Wipe surfaces, allow to air-dry at least four minutes. Kills everything you’re promising plus more stuff including the novel coronavirus. Used exactly this method last night to clean up all the blood that a trauma patient with a head injury thoughtfully left on our stretcher cushion.

It’s gonna be a weird year for SDCC programming. There’s no Sergio ‘n’ Mark panel! And in a year that would seemingly require the Tell Us What We Can Do Better session on Sunday afternoon has none. And every session starts at the top of the hour, when they could be staggered easily?

But there’s lots of what appear to be pre-recorded media launches, so there’s that. I’m looking at things that interest me, many of which are at the same time, but which will probably be much easier to bounce between if one turns out to be a dud — no standing at the back of the room after you walk halfway across San Diego, and the library/school/YA panels aren’t a (granted, very pleasant) 20 minute walk away at the library.

Let’s dig in.

Wednesday

Comics In The Classroom Ask Me Anything: Pick The Brains Of Teachers, Administrators, Creators, And Publishers
3:00pm — 4:00pm, SDCC or YouTube
Appears to be pre-recorded rather than live; high school teachers from around the country posed questions to Ronnell Whittaker (teacher), Lucy Knisley, Jason Walz, and Lisa Wu (consultant and former teacher). Doesn’t appear to have a publisher?

Teaching And Learning With Comics
3:00pm — 4:00pm, SDCC or YouTube
Reps of public schools, state universities, and private universities talking with Ebony Flowers, David Walker, and Brian Michael Bendis.

New Kids Comics From Eisner Award Publishers
5:00pm — 6:00pm, SDCC or YouTube
It’s got Jerry Craft and Faith Erin Hicks, that’s reason enough before you add in Robin Ha, Derick Brooks, and Jonathan Hill; moderated by YALSA’s Candice Mack. This one looks like a must-see.

Thursday

Web Comics: Saving The Entertainment Industry, Four Panels At A Time
11:00am — noon, SDCC or YouTube
Maybe you don’t look for solutions to saving an industry, maybe webcomics can be their own thing? And it’s not a good sign that one of the panelists has website listed that doesn’t seem to exist, and when it did exist didn’t seem to have anything to do with comics.

Shaenon Garrity In Conversation With Andrew Farago
2:00pm — 3:00pm, SDCC or YouTube
Now these two folks, they know webcomics. Also manga, museum operations, tiki culture, and all of each other’s secrets, seeing as how they’ve been married for more than a decade. I hope that Shaenon Garrity gets invited back as a featured guest next year seeing as how this one’s a bust, but at least she gets her spotlight panel.

The Adventure Zone: Petals To The Metal Graphic Novel
2:00pm — 3:00pm, SDCC or YouTube
Indispensible for Mcelfans, as Clint, Travis, and Griffin sit down to talk with artist Carey Pietsch about the third (and presumably not last) Adventure Zone adaptation. Moderated by Satine Phoenix.

Friday

Raina And Robin In Conversation
11:00am — noon, SDCC or YouTube
That would be Robin Ha, and Raina is, of course, Raina. Want to learn how to do memoir in comics? Watch this.

History Goes Graphic
noon — 1:00pm, SDCC or YouTube
I expected this one to involve folks from :01 Books, what with the launch of their history and civic engagement lines, but nope. However, let’s be clear: there’s nothing to be disappointed by here, as the panel features Fred Van Lente, Tom Scioli, David Walker, Mikki Kendall, and Malaka Gharib, moderated by Kaitlin Ketchum.

The 32nd Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards
7:00pm — 8:00pm, no links provided
Yeah, I don’t know what it means either, but no functional links associated with the Eisners? Par for the course this year. Interesting that they only blocked out an hour, which I guess means no acceptance speeches and it’s all a pre-recorded list o’ names from host Phil LaMarr
Edit to add: Links are now provided for SDCC and YouTube.

Saturday
Diversity And Comics: Why Inclusion And Visibility Matter
noon — 1:00pm, SDCC or YouTube
For the sake of the panelists, I hope that this one is pre-recorded and that comments are disabled, because the C*micsg*te CHUDs are going to be mortally offended that this exists and nobody needs that shit. But kudos to whoever wrote the description because they included the websites for the panelists — John Jennings, Frederick Aldama, Christina ‘Steenz’ Stewart, Chelsea ‘Ché’ Grayson, David Walker (making his third appearance in this post), and Stanford Carpenter, who between them have three Eisners and two more nominations¹ — and thus saved me the time of hunting them down.
Edit to add: In fact, I was so astonished by those time-saving links that I initially forgot to include them. Fixed!

Best And Worst Manga of 2020
3:00pm — 4:00pm, SDCC or YouTube
Speaking of times to disable comments, as I previously noted, the howler monkeys won’t get to shout abuse at the panel, at least not in a way that they have to hear. This may form a decent precedent for future iterations. With Brigid Alverson, Justin Stroman, Morgana Santilli, Eva Volin, Megan Peters, Rob McMonigal, and Deb Aoki.

Sunday

Inspired By Real Life: The True Stories Behind Graphic Novels
2:00pm — 3:00pm, SDCC or YouTube
Nate Powell is going to be there and if the entire thing turns into a remembrance of John Lewis, well, I’m okay with that and I imagine it wouldn’t annoy Van Jensen, Scott Chantler, or moderator Diana Pho too much either.

LGBTQ Comics And Popular Media For Young People
2:00pm — 3:00pm, SDCC or YouTube
I think I might just set up two monitors on two computers and double up during this timeslot. Moderator Cort Lane talks with Gina Gagliano, Trungles, Alex Sanchez, Noelle Stevenson, Mariko Tamaki, Brittney Williams, and Michael Vogel.

Keenspot 20th Annual Comic-Con Panel: Pandemic Edition
3:00pm — 4:00pm, SDCC or YouTube
You can’t keep a good tradition down, and Keenspot closing things out on Sunday afternoon is certainly a tradition. This year’s giveaway will be digital, naturally.

Spam of the day:

How To Get Paid For What You Already know

I do that every day. It’s called a job.

_______________
¹ Take that, C*micsg*te CHUDs.

Hi. Some stuff has been going on since we at Fleen have been away. Let’s try to ease back into it.

Near as I can tell, San Diego Comic Con has still not, institutionally, recognized what a fiasco the Eisner voting data leak was. My hiatus coincided just about perfectly with the deadline I gave CCI’s Communications & Strategy office to respond on the record, a deadline which was blown, and an office that still has not deigned to reply.

But they are talking plenty about what’s going on for Comic-Con@Home, complete with a schedule of panels. We’ll come up with a (likely very brief) list of what looks most interesting and run that tomorrow, so you can make plans to connect to sessions starting on Wednesday afternoon¹.

There will also be some sort of live virtual exhibit hall running from Wednesday through Sunday, but not many details as to what that means. Here’s the gist:

You’ll find company listings, exclusive products for sale, promotional links, and a whole lot more. The Exhibit Hall will be available for all five days of the convention.

That sounds almost like what I was advocating for back in June:

[I]f you could come up with something that lets an attendee produce a verifiable payment, then talk with a creator for five minutes while watching merch get personalized, you’d have something replicating the experience and providing a value-add for so many people who’ve watched their income tank this year.

Related question: is there a mechanism that provides for con exclusives, something that gives people a chance at their favorite variant stuff but keeping eBay churners from snapping everything up?

That being said, creators I’ve seen who are promising interaction with people during the SDCC dates, including the ability to watch your purchases get personalized, don’t seem to be pointing people towards the SDCC site. Case in point: Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett is doing instant-send Zoom links² if you make purchases during specific hours (1 hour pre-dinner on Wednesday night, 1 hour midday on Thursday and Friday, and four hours in the afternoon on Saturday and Sunday; all times PDT).

Jeff Smith is taking pre-orders and scheduling times for visible sketching via Facebook Live, which it looks like anybody can watch. And that’s about it, actually. I haven’t found anybody else replicating the fan interaction experience at a distance, which makes me think that SDCC hasn’t devised and destributed a mechanism, leaving exhibitors to work it out themselves.

In non-quasievent news:

• Achewood has gone full academic: please enjoy a video conference presentation on Achewood and views on masculinity by Ken Alba of Boston University. It’s an intriguing, well-supported thesis, and apart from the abstract’s characterization of xkcd³, there’s pretty much nothing to disagree with here.
• Oglaf, book 3. The strip keeps getting funnier and ruder from week to week, and your order at Tier 4 and up will contain many stickers and multiple KS-exclusive Sithrak tracts because Stretch Goals. I love the (previous editions here) and when I win the lottery I’m going to buy a few zillion of those and leave them in the bathrooms of every highway rest stop I can find.

Spam of the day:

Strangest Japanese “sex” practice

Oh spammers, how I missed you.

No, wait, the complete opposite of that. And may I say, those scare quotes are doing a lot of work.

_______________
¹ Presumably, San Diego time, which is GMT-7.

² Watch the video if you want to see LArDK’s adorable weiner dog, Ollie, doing adorable things.

³ In which Achewood is contrasted with, quote, XKCD, Penny Arcade, and the other ‘manly’ webcomics of the aughts, which just confused the hell out of me. That description is Just Sick as Hell in a way that not even a 3-cell D Maglite can compensate for.

As previously noted, SDCC 2020 isn’t happening in person (and I wouldn’t bet on 2021, between you and me), but will be having virtual programs.

Guess who just got credentialed as press for said virtual programs?

Curiously, this happened with ease and efficiency (the entire process took me about ten minutes) at the same time that other persons within Comic Con International can’t seem to respond to me about the Eisners data breach fiasco. Nice to know they don’t institutionally hold grudges¹, but I really want some answers.

Since it’s been a week, and since the Eisner re-vote has finished, I’m going to try one more reminder that I’m still waiting on a response to my questions. Given that it’s about to be a holiday weekend, I’ll give them until end of day on Tuesday (that’s 7 July) before I take their response to be No Comment². I’ll leave it to each of you to decide if no comment on the their responsibilities re: notifications to victims and the state of California³ to be an ass-covering, or a failure to recognize the relevance and importance of the situation.

With any luck, the virtual SDCC will have the traditional Give us feedback about the show session on the last day, and I’ll be able to nail down an answer then.

Spam of the day:

Drug Prices Are Too High

Look, even if that were a site that did more than openly ask you for your email address without identifying who the fuck they are, there’s no way anybody sees that domain name and thinks of anything other than The Rent Is Too Damn High guy. I saw him on the streets of Manhattan once. Dude totally looks like a karate expert.

_______________
¹ Or at least they didn’t connect my name with my submitted questions.

² In the EMS world, we call that one refusal by action.

³ Not to mention jurisdictions around the world. The European Union may have opinions on the matter, but I’m not qualified to comment.

New Barbarous, y’all, Go back and read the chapter starting from here to get caught up. No, wait, that started right after the previous chapter ended on a cliffhanger, it’s in media res; better go back to the very beginning and read the whole thing. Yuko (that would be Ota) and Ananth (Hirsh, y’all) are so very good at what they do.

Now, about that Stupid I mentioned …

No. [screenshot taken today]

Now, that’s not necessarily definitive, as EmCity’s Google search still lists it as on [screenshot taken today], but the convention was cancelled by ReedPop¹ two weeks back. So let’s drill into the DragonCon site and see what’s up.

Double No. [screenshot taken oh hell, you know]

That’s on an undated page that says further decisions will be made within two weeks, and that the Westin con hotel will have an announcement about what happens to reservations within the next 48 hours. Not sure when the clock started on those statements, and nothing on the Wayback Machine, so I can’t say with any certainty that it went up after a certain date, either. I guess pester them on social media?

Let’s be clear about something, folks. There is no way in hell that a mere two weeks after it’s too dangerous to hold EmCity in Seattle (which was an early hotspot for the novel coronavirus, and which has actually done a decent job of managing this outbreak since), it’ll be safe to hold DragonCon in Atlanta (which is currently an accelerating hotspot for the novel coronavirus because the governor opened the state too early, too aggressively, and which is setting new record highs for diagnoses, hospitalizations, ventilations, and deaths every godsdamned day).

And even if by some dark magic the powers that be in Atlanta decide What the fuck, Disneyworld and Universal Studios will have been open for more than a month by then², we can’t kill people any worse that that with one weekend! it will not under any circumstances be safe to attend. Even if capacity is limited, even if everybody decides to socially distance, even if there is widespread mask acceptance (that ain’t happening), even if the traditional 12-to-a-room geek habit dies, it will not be safe.

Look. We’re all getting cabin fever. But as Jim Zub put it so eloquently about Toronto’s moves towards Phase II:

All I can think of is someone I love dying in a hospital while the shuddering realization washes over me that this is happening because I was bored.

Bored and impatient.

Well said, Zub. Yeah, he wasn’t speaking about DragonCon specifically, but you know who is? Jennie Breeden. If the queen of DragonCon guerrilla exhibiting can decide that after-midnight kilt-blowing isn’t a necessity³, you can give it up. And that goes for you, too, Baltimore Comic Con. Take your shit off sale. Mass gatherings ain’t gonna cut it until there’s an effective, widespread vaccine, or Americans can learn to put up with a minor amount of inconvenience for the general good.

Which means not until the vaccine.

Notspam of the day:
Today marks 31 years since the last public performance of XTC that I’m aware of; they went on Letterman to promote Oranges & Lemons. It was their first appearance in seven years, thanks to Andy Partridge’s crippling stage fright. He seems to be doing okay in that clip.

Anyway, thought you’d enjoy.

_______________
¹ More precisely, converted to a digital event sometime in August, with automatic refunds of memberships transferred from March to August due to be refunded by yesterday.

² The spread due to the people that flock to the parks on their reopnenings next month will only just be getting traced to all over the country by that point … thankfully, New Jersey has announced a mandatory 14 day quarantine going into effect tomorrow for people returning from high-infection states, and Georgia and Florida are on the list.

³ In case you didn’t look at the alt-text for that comic, it reads:

Yeah, Skipping Dragon Con. It’s going to SUCK but I’d rather see everyone in the future than lose some of you now.

Thank you, Jennie.

By that, I mean the news a mere seven days ago that the Eisner voting had been extended, amid rumors of a technical problem with the voting site. We hear that voting was entirely scrapped and has been re-opened until the 30th at a new site.

Y’all. This was a fucking fiasco from top to bottom, and here’s why: at the piece that ran at The Beat, at the Eisner voting site itself, there is no mention of the fact that the individual accounts were completely unsecured:

The Eisner’s voting site was closed because the people of the Marginalized Genders and POC of Comics Discord channel discovered that we could see and adjust each other’s votes and personal information, including addresses, while we were all talking about sexual assault in comics.

and that the Eisner folks seem to be falling down on a necessary part of the cleanup:

The fact that I found out about this from twitter third-hand and not directly from them… yeah

Okay, let’s back up. There appears to have been a misconfiguration in the website that allowed easy access to the personally identifying information (PII) and votes other registered users, including the ability to change them. The voting issue is actually secondary, the PII issue is primary.

As I’ve mentioned previously, I teach for a technology company; in fact, day job today involves teaching students in two countries how to secure a database from intrusion and keep it secure. I am not a web stack security or incident response expert, but as near as I can tell, I have two legs up on the folks at the Eisners/Comic Con International:

With respect to item #1, the Eisners/CCI (Eisners from now on for short) are likely in violation of at least one strong mandated data-reporting law.

See, Comic-Con International (of which the Eisners are a part) is incorporated in California. California has a stringent law regarding data breaches¹. Any incident that affects California residents must be reported to those residents; because it can often be difficult to isolate just the CA residents, this practically has the effect of making a national reporting requirement. Further, any breach that involves more than 500 Californians must also be reported to the state Attorney General. It’s all spelled out clearly at that last link.

But people are publicly saying (see second quote block above) that they haven’t been notified by the Eisners. And according to the search form that the State of California provides, there have been no breaches reported by any spelling variation of “Comic[-]Con International” or “Eisner[s] [Awards]” that I could come up with over the past year.

Oh, yeah, and the European voters? GDPR. I’m not knowledgeable enough on their requirements to say what the Eisners are obligated to do (see point #2 above), but I do know that they need to consult legal counsel (not to mention some experts in crisis communication) in Cali and Europe and act on their advice yesterday. This is not a situation where you can say Whoopsie! Revote and it’s all good!

It’s not a case where you can shut down a site and open a new one back up in less than a week and have any credibility. There needs to be a full explanation of what happened (crickets so far), whatever is presently known about how it happened (with the caveat that a proper investigation takes time), and why the new system is to be trusted. Oh, yeah, and what the Eisners will do to make up for the risk of identity theft that’s been going on for who knows how the hell long.

Incident response for situations like this is a specialized, skilled discipline; it’s not a job for amateurs (and I’m including myself in that statement: see #2 above again). It’s going to take serious money, serious time, and credentialed experts, before I would recommend that anybody vote for the Eisners in any form other than paper ballot.

I’m utterly serious. As of right now, the organization has zero credibility when it comes to the integrity of this vote, and has shown no evidence that they understand the responsibility for safekeeping PII that they owe to their voters.

I have submitted a written request for comment about the incident response and when voters can expect a formal explanation as to what, how, and why. I will update this page with any response.

Update #1: (25 June 1800EDT) Jackie Estrada, longtime administrator of the Eisner Awards, was the listed point of contact on the Eisner vote page. She replied to me within seven minutes, referring me to the communications & strategy department of CCI. Remember what I said above about there being specific skills? Responding to a reporter² is a specific skill not for amateurs and she did the exact correct thing. Kudos to her for her prompt, courteous, and professional reply.

A fresh request has been sent to the C&S department.

Update #2: (26 June 1812 EDT) It’s been 24 hours and no response from CCI. I will, however, note this tweet from last night:

im an eisner voter and guess what i just found out from THIS tweet

Not the only Eisner voter I’ve seen online saying they’ve received no notification from CCI. The tweet that Jamey Bash is referring to is one by prominent creator/editor Steenz, who tweeted to respond and agree to the points I made above. As the old saying goes, If Steenz agrees with you, you’re probably doing something right.

The other common thread I’m seeing online is people want to know why the revote is being crammed into a week, when there isn’t a set date for the awards anyway. It would be no problem to delay, get all the proverbial ducks in a row, and do some disclosures prior to running a vote. The alternative is, as my wife put it, for this year’s winners to feel there’s an asterisk next to their names in the history of the awards: Hey, you won an Eisner? That’s great! Oh, it was in 2020? That’s … great?

Further updates as warranted.

Update #3: (29 June 1622 EDT) This is likely the last update. The CCI Communications & Strategy officer has not responded, even with a “no comment”. I have not seen a general discussion in social media about CCI communicating the details of the breach, the specifics of remediation, or the reason that a revote had to be wedged into a week’s time.

For those that trust the voting system, the deadline is tomorrow. I stand by my opinion that the only trustworthy means for voting for the Eisners, in the absence of transparency, is via paper ballot.

Update #4: (25 July 1433 EDT) Take a look at what a proper response to a data breach looks like.

Spam of the day:
Spam doesn’t share the page with actual journalism, only random embloggenation. Sorry.

_______________
¹ The law actually mandates reporting regardless of where the company is; the fact that CCI is incorporated in California means that they really should know about their obligations to that state.

² Shut up, I am too.

Woo, Thursday. Woo.

• Hmmm, he said, in his role as both computer professional and hack webcomics pseudojournalist, that’s interesting. That, of course, being the news that the Eisner voting had been extended (tweet from a 2019 nominee, who was contacted by the Eisner folks). I’ve seen reports (near as I can tell right now, all deleted) that there was a security issue with the voting database, and that voters were being urged to check that their ballots had the correct choices listed. I’ve also just been by the site, which says voting is now closed. I’m … not feeling great about this, y’all.
• Longtime readers of this page may recall that of all the people that Fleen encourages you to dislike and never support, top of the list is James Ashby, aka History’s Greatest Monster. So I particularly want to warn you (so you don’t accidentally end up entangled with HGM) that Ashby is running a Kickstart right now to revive a YouTube series from years ago, which taught people how to cook with just the cheap ingredients that could be had, things that could produce a mountain of leftovers and be dressed up various ways in their re-presentations.

  It was called Hand To Mouth, and it featured the infinitely patient Marque Franklin-Williams, trying desperately to keep HGM from … well, being HGM while simultaneously making potentially sucky food suck less. It ran for three seasons, and Ashby is now back seeking to make a fourth; Franklin-Williams has moved onto other projects but has given his blessing to Season Four¹.

  If, for some reason, you think that HGM should be trusted with what you put in your body, I suppose I can’t stop you from helping to fund the project, but I would suggest seeing some kind of therapist. I suppose, in the best of all possible world, HGM might be so inept in his evil that he might accidentally provide useful, helpful information to people who need it. I mean, anything’s possible, including the outside chance that James Ashby might not be History’s Greatest Monster.

  Naaaahhhh.

Spam of the day:

Get your Hemp Infused Coffee Here

I use neither cannabis products nor coffee products.

_______________
¹ Alternately, if he can keep Ashby busy on Season Four, at least he won’t have time to get up to any other reprehensible behavior for a while.

First of all, I need to apologize if you posted a comment since Friday’s post went up … a miscreant engaged in a little Grand Spamming¹ and I found 120 pending comments as I opened up the editor and wasn’t too careful with my mass delete. Mea culpa, if you got caught up.

Second of all, we’re starting out the week with a little cross-oceanic news, as Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin, who is always on top of what’s happening in the world of bandes dessinées [web].

No real focus today:
[Editor’s note: been there.]

• Maliki has launched their latest crowdfunding campaign; the start, helped by Team Maliki spreading the link in advance, was too explosive (4000 copies in 24 hours) to allow the FFF to be reliable since it would have predicted more than a twofold increase from their previous campaign, but there was little doubt anyway it would be at least as successful as their campaigns always are.
• LyonBD has launched their non-festival, with plenty of non-programming [PDF] all over Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
• At the end of an enjoyable live stream hosted by Natalie Nourigat (part 1, part 2), Boulet dropped that Donjon, the series created by Lewis Trondheim and Joann Sfar for which he has drawn the latest installments would be translated in English and come to the U.S. of A.

  [Editor’s note: !!!]

  We at Fleen will be sure to keep you informed.

• Speaking of Sfar, he is being sued by the SGDL, a French society of writers, for defamation; yes, the very same society of writers responsible for dispatching aid meant for creators, with Cy wondering at the time why such a private entity would be entrusted with public money. Sfar, as the honorary president of the Professional Creators League was interviewed by Alexandra Bensaid Saturday May the 23rd (replay available here), Sfar segment starting at 1:19:30, if you can understand French), and as we at Fleen understand it the SGDL objects to Sfar denouncing these organisms, such as the SGDL, […] which occasionally get a hold of enormous amounts of money which do not end up going to the creators (all the caveats about both transcribing an audio interview and translating the meaning from French apply).

  The suit has led to quite a backslash, with the Professional Creators League publicly reacting in support of Sfar, and many creators loudly surrendering their SGDL memberships for the same reason. We at Fleen are not in a position to either assess Sfar’s claims nor analyze his legal position, but we regret the use of such tactics by the SGDL, and we think Sfar ought to be able to express himself with few if any restrictions on such a matter of public interest.

• Finally, we at Fleen think you should be following Kéké for his amazing animations. There is no particular reason for why today we would make this suggestion.

As always, we at Fleen (US division) thank FSFCPL for his contributions.

Spam of the day:
Anyone Can Learn Piano or Keyboard
I seem to recall a claim along these lines from Planet Of The Apes: The Musical. I love you, Dr Zaius!

_______________
¹ Coincidentally, Grand Spamming is a crime in the universe of Howard Tayler’s Schlock Mercenary, which was the topic of Friday’s post.

It looks like a bunch of aspects of San Diego Comic Con are on after all:

Plans for Comic-Con@Home include an online Exhibit Hall complete with everyone’s favorite exhibitors offering promotions, specials, and limited-edition products unique to the celebration. As well, Comic-Con@Home promises exclusive panels and presentations about comics, gaming, television, film, and a wide variety of topics from publishers, studios, and more. As if that weren’t enough, Comic-Con@Home will also have a Masquerade, gaming, and many other activities in which fans can participate from their own homes.

Not a lot of details about how all of this will work, yet. Will exhibitors be linked from an official platform, one that offers both transaction capability but also the ability to interact with a creator? For real, if you could come up with something that lets an attendee produce a verifiable payment, then talk with a creator for five minutes while watching merch get personalized, you’d have something replicating the experience and providing a value-add for so many people who’ve watched their income tank this year¹.

Related question: is there a mechanism that provides for con exclusives, something that gives people a chance at their favorite variant stuff but keeping eBay churners from snapping everything up? It’s not a simple problem, as anybody who’s tried to get a hot concert ticket can attest.

How do you wrangle the cosplay Masquerade and/or the Eisner ceremony with far-flung participants? Will the former, particularly, feel the same without the presence of an adoring crowd? More generally, are there some panels and discussions that will have less cachet if they don’t come with a veneer of I was there, you weren’t²?

On the other hand, the lack of crowds, the lack of overpriced (and frequently terrible) convention center food, the lack of hours-long lines to get into a popular panel, and having to dodge maniacs on electric rental scooters are all positives. And then there’s this:

Although Comic-Con@Home will provide badges for fans to print and wear proudly, all aspects of the initiative are free and there are no limits to how many can attend.

If this is a success, there will be a tremendous pressure to keep some parts of the no-cost, at-home participation in future; there are many more people that want to attend than are able to score passes, after all. It’ll also mean that I could just sit and listen to panels for the first time, rather than try to take notes and pictures for write-ups.

For those interested in blocking out time to attend, Comic-Con@Home will be held on original SDCC 2020 dates, 22-26 July³, although times (and time zone!) have not been announced. If I can figure out how to replicate the experience of having lovely drinks at my favorite speakeasy with my craft cocktail best buds, or hanging out by the fire pits with my friends from #ComicsCamp, I’ll be sure to let you know.

In other news, it’s been about two years since Dante Shepherd wrapped up Surviving The World, but there will never be a day when Shepherd’s real life alter ego, Professor Lucas Landherr, isn’t looking for ways to help others not merely survive, but thrive:

[G]iven the current Black Rights Matter protest, and JKR even further torpedoing her legacy yesterday with her transphobia (happy Pride, by the way), this comic seems like it meets the current moment well enough.

When STW ended, we made a book of the best 300 comics. You can buy the PDF of the book right now, and all sales are going to go to support Black Lives Matter, and foodbanks in need because of the coronavirus. And there’s more. You can also buy all the videos ever made for STW, including many that were not openly shared, and all sales are also going to the same causes.

If you’ve ever wondered what a chemical engineer doing a velociraptor impression looks like, let’s just say it’s enough to make Randall Munroe break into a sweat.

SM20 Countdown for 11 June 2020:
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¹ If there’s not such a mechanism, I’d urge creators to start working out something similar for themselves.

² On the other hand, some may run more smoothly without the crowd; I’m thinking here about the annual Best/Worst Manga panel, when the crowd goes full howler monkey when told their favorite it Not Good, Actually.

³ Reminder: if you had badges for SDCC 2020, you can either roll them over for the same days in 2021, or get a refund. Refund requests are good until 1 July, after that your badge will transfer automatically.

Oh, and in case you’ve forgotten, Reed!Pop apparently still thinks that people will congregate in large numbers for EmCity a month later, which … I just … no.