Thursdays famously being the day that one just can never get the hang of¹, how about a few things that are readily hangable?

• Questions have arisen in both the comments to yesterday’s post and in my twitterstream regarding exactly when Angela Melick’s Welcome to the Real World goes on sale. Looking back, I can see the source of confusion, as the WTTRW page mentions an on-sale time of 24 March 2012 11:00am PST, but when I looked up Pacific Time to get the offset from GMT, my search gave me the result for PDT, because we’re in Daylight Savings Time now. At least we are in the US; Canada may be a different beast. Also, the countdown timer would appear to zero out at about 11:00 Eastern Daylight Time, not Pacific. So how about we call it “a bit before lunch in Vancouver the day after tomorrow” and decide that’s close enough?
• As long as we’re talking about things timing out, approximately nine hours from now, Jon Rosenberg will know exactly how much work he has to go to as a result of the Goats Kickstarter campaign, but early indications would point to “a lot”, given that he’s now obligated to return to weekly Goats updates. I’m hoping we see some Shazam Twix or Eva Pudenda sooner rather than later. Speaking of sooner rather than later, after this Kickstart wraps up, I’ve got some more musings on the whole idea of Kickstarter.
• Go, look: a mutual interview (or “conversation” as the hep kids call it these days) between Chris Hastings and Ethan Nicolle is up at the Dark Horse website, and it’s damn good. Similarly, what may be the definitive answer to How Do You Break In To … ?² (in this case, comics) has been posted by Bryan Lee O’Malley, and it’s mandatory reading for anybody who wants to move from creative hobbyist to creative professional.
• Events: Scott C has a new exhibit/gallery show coming up, this one paired up with the book release party for East Dragon, West Dragon, at the usual stomping grounds of Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra, California. Opening reception 14 April, 7:00 – 10:00pm, show running until 6 May, details here or here. For those on the opposite coast on 11 May, the book launch party for John Green and Dave Roman’s Teen Boat at the decidedly unusual stomping grounds of an actual boat. Namely, the Waterfront Barge Museum in New York City, which doesn’t have a street address, it has a pier (Pier 25, at Hudson River Park, in the vicinity of West Street and N. Moore Street). Fun starts on 11 May, 7:00pm, and you can ris-vip at the Facebook event page.

  Also, please note that I could have made any number of Guigar-level puns around words like “launch” or “moor[e]”, or embedded any number of I’m On A Boat mashup videos, and did not. You’re welcome.

_______________
¹ We salute you, Dentarthurdent.

² Short version: it’s not a discrete point in time with a secret handshake that gets you in the door.

About now as I’m writing this, the last — hopefully not too frantic — polishes are being put on two corners of webcomics, each of which will lead to new and hopefully wonderful things. A third corner is polishing up something different, but we won’t be able to tell how shiny it gets for a while.

• Firstly, this:
  

  Hi everyone. I quit my job today. I will be working on Gunnerkrigg full time now. There will be a proper announcement on Monday.

  Tom Siddell has made the leap into full time comickin’, and I believe all right-thinking folk will agree that he’s going to do very, very well. If absolutely nothing else comes of it (and much will), he won’t have to hold himself to doing three strips on the weekend before allowing himself to relax any longer. Best of luck, Tom, your comics are great and you should feel great.

• Wondercon 2012 opens in a couple of hours, and anybody making the annual trip to San Francisco should first realize they’re in the wrong place, on account of it’s in Anaheim this year. Um, sorry ’bout that. Webcomicky people are to be found there in the small press and main floor area, including (but mostly likely not limited to:

  Small Press

  Table 11 Jimbo Hillin and the Wire-Heads crüe.
  Table 48 Evan “Overside” Dahm and Kel “Sorcery 101and also some fairy tales” McDonald.
  Table 49 Kory Bing, who does many things, as does Sfé Monster, along with Dave Shabet who mostly does Dead Winter.
  Table 51 Party Tymez with Ananth and Yuko and Becky and Frank and maybe you.
  Table 53 Ben Costa, Dean of Iron Crotch studies at Iron Crotch University¹.

  Main Floor

  Booth 452 More keen-ness than you can handle with Keenspot.
  Booth 504 The closest thing to functional adults in our community, Professors Foglio.
  Booth 615 A man haunted by a house move which is still in progress², Dave Kellett.
  Booth 617 Did somebody call for handsome men? Kris Straub and David Malki ! heed your cry.
  Booth 716 The poster children for Kids, Don’t Do That, Danielle Corsetto and Randy Milholland; give ’em both a big ol’ kiss for me.

• Are you the sort that wonders where you can spend your hard-earned entertainment dollar in a month or so? Simple! You should give it to Jorge Cham, who in return will send you The PhD Movie either via stream or DVD! The countdown timer on the movie page is, even as we speak, ticking forward at a rate of one second per second, towards that golden day (15 April) when you can enact this transaction. Yay!

_______________
¹ Since the Shi Long Pang books are published by Iron Crotch University Press, it follows that there would have to be an Iron Crotch University, right? I just want to know what their sports mascot is. I bet its nickname is “Rusty”.

² Prediction: if you ask him how the house move is going, he will likely be his answering with Buuuuhhhh.

I don’t know about where you are, but it is absolutely gorgeous out today, and I’m almost over my plague. Let’s concentrate on happy stories today.

• There is nothing that warms the cockles of my black heart more than seeing an example of extreme customer service. This could be as simple as acknowledging a mistake and making good; it could be going out of your way to deal with a customer that’s determined to be a jerk¹. Sometimes you didn’t even make a mistake and instead, found a way to do something better; the old way was good, people that you dealt with then were dealt with fairly, but you want to give ’em a little something anyway. That’s where customer service enters the heroic realm², which I saw an example of today.

  Back up a couple of years, and Penny Arcade sold some polo shirts that their more office-job-type fans could wear to work. Nice, understated game controller logo stitched on the left breast, breathable cotton, decent color selection. They sold well. But the PA people weren’t 100% satisfied with them, so after they sold out they went away for about a year for retooling:

  When asked for comment about the improvements made in v2.0, Penny Arcade’s President of Operations and Business Development Robert Khoo addressed the issues seen in v1.0, stating the “the v1.0s had really specific care instructions, because the materials we selected weren’t treated to be preshrunk. Well… it turns out folks hated the idea of dealing with care instructions, so for the v2.0s we switched to a higher quality cotton that shrinks less and is quite a bit softer.”

  So far, so good; product improvement ought to be everybody’s goal. But now that the second iteration of the shirts are coming online, Penny Arcade decided to do something extraordinary: they’ve decided that everybody that bought one of the first version of the shirt is entitled to a free shirt upgrade [PDF]. Short version: cut out the logo on the 1.0 version of the shirt, include it with your name and address on a form, and bam! New shirt.

  No fee, no shipping on domestic orders (US$10 flat for international), and you’ve got until 30 June to take advantage. The new shirts aren’t up at the PA store just yet, but as far as loss leaders go, I can’t think of a better demonstration to your customer base to convey the idea We will take care of you³.

• As I told many, many people⁴ on many, many occasions, I loves me some Digger, concluded or no. Of course, just because Ursula Vernon is out of the regular webcomickin’ game doesn’t mean that she’s off my radar — I follow creators I love into their other, not-webcomicky projects, be those comic books or gallery shows or animation or whatever. The POV and voice of the creator is the important part, not the particular medium they choose to work in today. Anyway: Ursula Vernon.

  She’s the subject of a retrospective in April, on the campus of Lamar University’s Dishman Art Museum in scenic Beaumont, Texas (which I’m reliably informed is about 90 minutes east of Houston or four hours west of New Orleans). Show runs from 4 — 26 April, with a reception⁵ on the 6th, from 7:00 to 9:00pm.

  The show, which is co-curated by Larry “mckenzee” Holderfield[see below], will incorporate local signings, previews of Vernon’s latest Dragonbreath book, and a single-page comic contest for the kids. Details on the flyer (front, back), which somehow neglect to include what might be the show’s centerpiece: a brief history of the Biting Pear. Now all I need to do is get my job to send me to Texas next month.

Edit to add: I inexcusably truncated Larry Holderfield’s name in the original posting; we at Fleen apologize for the mistake.

_______________
¹ May I recommend to you the Nerd of Advice podcast on this very topic?

² And I’m going to acknowledge up front that almost nobody smaller than a mid-sized corporation has the resources to engage in this kind of customer service. That alone doesn’t explain its rarity, as those that do have the resources typically don’t.

³ Where the “we” probably refers mostly to Brian Sunter, who is seemingly everywhere that merchandise and fulfillment occur on PA’s behalf. He’s like a magical shipping ghost made out of Khoo’s sentient shadow.

⁴ That one’s for you, Ivy.

⁵ Read: “Food and booze”.

I am sick and spreading my illness to all who come close; I’d sit a little further back from the screen if I were you.

• Worried about the Mayan Doom Prophecy? Rich Stevens has you covered:
  

  For $2,012, I will personally prevent the end of all life on Earth if the Apocalypse occurs on December 21, 2012. No refunds if by some off chance a religious prophecy was misinterpreted and winds up being bullshit.

  Sounds like the best deal since the invention of post-rapture pet care.

• For a rebuttal with today’s sign of the apocalypse, let’s go to Robert Khoo:
  

  For anyone that sells apparel, bad news today. India stopped all cotton exports. Global prices on the white stuff are going up.

  Reuters and the Wall Street Journal treated the story in a somewhat dry manner, but I found a couple of quotes in the WSJ story that may indicate that it’s not necessarily gloom for your favorite t-shirt monger:

  The announcement sent cotton prices on the ICE Futures U.S. exchange higher. But domestic prices will likely plunge, said A. Ramani, secretary of the Indian Cotton Federation. They have already slid over the past year on expectations of a record crop this year.

  This is the second time in nearly two years that India has banned cotton exports in response to concerns about local supplies.

  The front-month ICE Futures U.S. cotton contract, which had dropped from above 200 cents a pound a year ago to less than 90 cents, surged 4.337 cents, or 4.9%, to 92.23 cents midday in New York.

  So let’s recap — cotton prices are up about 5%, but are still less than half what they were a year ago. That drop didn’t result in t-shirts becoming suddenly more affordable, so hopefully a small recoup in prices won’t be used as an excuse to jack up prices now¹. Other analyses remind us that global production and market supply are actually up over last year, meaning this may be a temporary thing.

• Even if we are heading to a hellish future of all life extinguished/slightly higher t-shirt prices, no reason we can’t laugh along the way — Business Insider magazine will have you meet your doom with some insights from Zach Weiner on how he does what he does. Just in time for his birthday², too. Happy Birthday, Zach — by living one more day, you made the BI headline a total lie.

______________
¹ Since as we all know, large international firms would never engage in such asymmetry in pricing to their profit and the consumer’s detriment.

² Also my sister’s. Happy Birthday, Laura; I hope you’re enjoying those umbrella drinks in the piano bar of that enormous cruise ship you’re on.

As a side note, posts may be wonky for the next couple of weeks; I’ll be working from a client site, and the extent of network access during the day isn’t known. Somehow, I know you’ll cope.

• From MoCCA comes word of their programming for Will Eisner Week (celebrating what would have been the master’s 95th birthday), centering on a panel discussion at 7:00pm, Thursday 1 March. The panel composition caught my eye — couple of comic book guys¹, an academic², and Judith Hansen.

  If I were going to be in town (cf: irregular updates for the next couple of weeks³), I’d be attending this panel and listening to Ms Hansen very closely, as she is the literary agent to [web]comics. Name a major creator, Ms Hansen’s repped them⁴. She has Ideas and Thoughts about where this creator-driven industry has been, where it is, and where it’s going. Also — and this may be my favorite thing about her — she’s tremendously knowledgeable about Belgian beer, and she and I have pointed each other in the direction of some seriously tasty stuff. Anyway, 7:00pm next Thursday, at the Museum (594 Broadway, fourth floor), $7 general admission, members free.

• Let’s contrast on the Business of Comics angle for a moment; you may have noticed this week that Corey Pandolph announced that he was discontinuing his syndicated strip, The Elderberries, on Sunday 4 March. Relevant parts from Pandolph’s blogpost:
  

  Put simply, my career is going in another direction. I’ve been writing and performing more comedy, finding my cartoons in the pages of The New Yorker and discovering new ways to work in comedy, while still keeping myself happy and food in the refrigerator. I’ve done a daily comic strip in one form or another for nearly 15 years. There have been some real breaks along the way — a few reasons to really get excited about a future in comics strips — but nothing seemed to manifest itself into a solid career path.

  As I mentioned, this is all on me. I chose the manner in which I wanted to find success in the world of comic strips. I chose to not involve myself in today’s artist-owned business model of embracing the Internet and constantly hustling my own work to make a buck. I tried all that for a time with Barkeater Lake and I knew it was just not for me. Those who find success at being both creator and salesman in this world have my respect. It is very hard, very disciplined and it is not my bag.

  Best of luck to Pandolph — and especially thanks to him for that second paragraph quoted. With the Golden Age of Syndicated Strips fading ever further, I think that history will eventually come to observe it as a temporary blip in the great continuum of Art, where the usual condition always was (and likely always will be), To be an artist, you gotta hustle. It’s hard, it’s an entirely different skillset from the art itself, and it must be mastered at least as much as the creative portion.

  I’ve been having a back-and-forth with a creator of my acquaintance about a possible dark side to all of the Kickstarter successes that [web]comics have been seeing lately. The crux of the matter is, by focusing on the tremendous successes — which by definition are noteworthy — and not the many failed kickstarts, are creators who don’t have established audiences and a reputation for high-quality work going to be falsely convinced that raising money (read: success) is easy? The more I think of it, the more I’m convinced that making a go of comics is just like joining my volunteer EMS agency.

  Bear with me.

  As the Membership Trustee for my organization (also: Vice President, Cadet Advisor, Captain, and all-around datagathering and IT guy), I spend a significant amount of time telling prospective members that riding with us isn’t what they think it is. It’s not wall-to-wall excitement, dramatically shouting Live, dammit! until the CPR works, and walking away from explosions in dramatic slo-mo. Not only does none of that exist, most of our time is spend on the business of keeping everything running: inventory, supply management, raising money, paying bills, keeping the grounds and rental hall bathrooms clean.

  Everything that I just said that doesn’t involve a lights-and-sirens ambulance call? That’s the business of being a cartoonist. No matter how cool the creation, business remains paramount if you want it to be your living. There’s no shortcuts, no magic fountain of free money, no way to get around both putting in the work to build the audience, and putting in the work to make it pay. By all means, create because you can’t contemplate not creating, but don’t convince yourself that it’ll be easy; the best things never are.

_______________
¹ Paul Levitz and Dennis O’Neil, both from DC.

² Karen Green, librarian for Columbia University’s Ancient & Medieval History and Religion collections; she started the Columbia libraries graphic novel collection, which seems a deliciously broad range of interests to span from ancient times to modern graphic novels — but not one that’s unprecedented. Jennifer Babcock has done plenty of research tying ancient Egyptian art and ancient Greek ostraka to modern comics. Fascinating stuff.

³ Speaking of which, anybody I know in Boston want to get a drink?

⁴ Just names like Eisner, Brosgol, Gran, Kibuishi, Larson, McCloud, O’Malley, and Smith.

Things are coming up — some on the horizon, some in the more immediate future.

• For example, if the worst were to happen and the MS Westerdam were to encounter bad fortune¹ next week, not only would Jonathan Coulton, Paul, Storm, the Honorable John Hodgman, Wil Wheaton, and numerous other luminaries of our popular culture be forced to live out a sitcom existence like monkeys, so too would be lost some of society’s waste products. One would hope that the inherent value of personages such as David Willis and Joel Watson might be recognized but let’s face it — they’re gonna be the first ones cannibalized³. Sadly, this means we may never learn the outcome of Willis’s slash contest, wherein he is inviting you to draw his characters making out — and if you can’t draw, cosplay is acceptable.
• Looking a little further out to the future, the first really big conventions of the season are coming up; oh, sure, Katsucon and MegaCon are serving as warm-ups this weekend, but the real six-months-plus slog/death march starts in earnest mid-March with WonderCon and hits full stride with Emerald City⁴ two weeks later. Any/all webcomickers planning to hit the shows, feel free to drop a note to us so we can include you in the lists; Jennie Breeden has already started the listing/map for Calgary at the end of April.
• Finally, looking forward to the end of summer, the Baltimore Comic Con will once again host the Harvey Awards, which will again be emceed by Scott Kurtz⁵. But since the Harveys are both nominated and voted upon by comics industry pros, we should point out that the nominating ballot [PDF] is now available and due back 16 April. Let the bloc voting begin!

_______________
¹ Not sunk with all persons aboard consigned to a watery grave; more like the episode of The Love Boat where all the regulars except Isaac the bartender² wound up stranded on an island by a storm.

² Oh sure, leave the black guy behind.

³ While we all know that Wheaton won’t let anybody die on his watch, he is down one fan-hugging arm and that may impede his heroic intentions.

⁴ A mere one day after the hotel scramble for this year’s San Diego Comic Con.

⁵ Check out his Harveys 2009 intro Blam, or the intro in 2010 via Fake Stan Lee.

As I sit here, thinking about webcomics for your amusement, that is what a motor inside my house’s furnace sounds like. A very nice man named Jared has just gone to fetch the part that will fix my furnace so that I may have heat; the price attached to this part is not something I wanted to hear¹. My dog² just knows that a new person was in the house and will be coming back soon oh boy oh boy oh boy. Forgive me if I’m rambling; it’s a combination of cold and carbon monoxide paranoia, yay.

• The idea of storyline as ebook proof of concept appears to be gaining steam, as Brad Guigar³ compiled a recent Evil, Inc storyline (with roots going back four years or so), one that threatened to change everything you know forever!! Naturally, being comics, “change forever” lasted about six weeks (and brought Guigar some criticism from his readers; I thought he might have milked it another six months easy and really cheesed ’em off), but we’re getting away from the major point here.

  Much like Rich Stevens’s recent foray into free e-books (not to be confused with his future foray into free e-books), Guigar’s testing waters, figuring out what works for various devices, and learning how to best make things tablet-friendly. I’m guessing in another few months, this experimentation will be common enough that we won’t even notice when a creator mentions they’re diving in.

• Wanna see something pretty? Chris Yates has photos of the second tranche of mass-market Baffler! puzzles, due this spring. Start here and work your way through the pretty pictures.
• Have you heard of Solid Saints? Long story short, they’re a charitable works aggregator — people that want to make a difference (but lack large economic resources) are matched up with people who are looking for goods/services of a unique nature (and don’t mind the proceeds being used for something more meaningful than lining the pockets of a heartless corporation⁴.

  The goods/services are auctioned by Solid Saints, and all proceeds go to Child’s Play, and the ramp-up period comes to an end at 9:00pm PST (GMT-8) tonight when the auctions launch. Three days later, all the cash gets totaled up and we find out how much it was.

  Of particular interest to readers of this page, perhaps: an original comic by KC Green, a bundle o’ fun from Anthony Clark, and custom art by Nic “Tynic” Carey, who some of you may recall was an original contributor to this site and who presently spends her days creating robots with meat brains⁵. Now who wouldn’t want to have art created by a woman that has meat-brained robots⁶ at her disposal? Only people who have lost all joy in life, that’s who. Get bidding.

______________
¹ Were I a creator, it would sound like, “Time to sell some originals and take some commissions.”

² Portrait by Mary Cagle.

³ He’s dreamy.

⁴ Foreign sweatshop/migrant labor optional.

⁵ I’m oversimplifying here somewhat, but when you start throwing around terms like neurobiology and mechatronics, most people start to tune you out.

⁶ Possibly of the “killer” variety.

It seems we’ve hit the season of accomplishments.

• About six weeks back I was doing a mini-crawl through the Gunnerkrigg Court archives and noticed that the current strip appeared to be the 983rd one in Tom Siddell’s exploration of consciousness, myth, technology, friendship, plus bozos, jerks, numbnuts, doofs and jabronis¹.

  Making a mental note to scan the archive picker a bit more closely over the ensuing month, it appears that the pages are, in fact, numbered sequentially. That means that today marks the 1000th update of Gunnerkrigg Court, which as we all know is the hallmark of quality in the struggle against a sea of schmendricks and crumbums. One should also note that this most recent ninnyhammer-heavy story is going to look great when volume 4 hits the shelves; so that you’re all caught up by then, mayhap you ought to pick up the earlier books?

• Likewise, if my math (and a helpful note from Bill Barnes) may be trusted, tomorrow would appear to be the tenth anniversary of Unshelved, which began its long march to dominance of the library science departments of the world on 16 February, 2002. They were younger then, Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum, a little freer, a little more lighthearted perhaps.

  But in the passing of their youth they have gained wisdom, the sort that only comes from hitting the ALA convention floor and having a crowd of librarians threaten to tear their clothes from their bodies so as to absorb some of their mighty essence. If this makes Ambaum and Barnes sound like a sort of thinner and less musical Tenacious D, well, there are merits to the analogy. Unlikely superstars within a specific milieu, varying degrees of bald and middle-aged, but still able to pull down the groupies like nobody’s business?

  Yeah, okay, I ain’t buying the groupie thing either², but the Unshelved Crüe remain the epitome of niche appeal, which makes for a pretty comfortable environment when an underserved cohort decides you’re their #1 favorite entertainment provider. Congrats to Ambaum and Barnes for not only having one of the long-term successful webcomics, but also one of the long-term successful webcomics partnerships. If the library thing ever grows old, they could take what they learned from dealing with each other for a decade and hit the marriage counseling circuit.

• Okay, it’s not a power of ten, but how about 200 comics over at All New Issues, with an extra-special Jamie Noguchi guest strip? You don’t need to know anything about the fictional comic book character of Lobster Boy, or the various relationships and infatuations (requited and not) in the strip to get the message of today’s strip. It’s all there in the last panel.

Some other quick numbers, with thanks to the Harpers Index:

• Likelihood that Rich Burlew will clear $US800,000 and 10,000 backers in the five days left to his Kickstarter project: 100%.
• Likelihood that the George Rohac conspiracy (okay, okay, “Benign Kingdom”) will hit US$50,000 and 1000 backers in the nine remaining days of their Kickstarter project: 100%
• Likelihood that Rich Stevens will have to take a road trip to deliver a Pac-Man arcade machine to Wil Wheaton in the twenty two days remaining in his Kickstarter project: 100%
• Further likelihood that somebody will make Rich eat at least one more pound of bacon (that would be the second) and/or force him to do a month of strips on a Windows machine instead of his beloved Mac and/or give up coffee for a month: 2/3^{3, 4}

_______________
¹ Especially jabronis.

² It’s not like they got Brad Guigar in the band.

³ Unlike the other Kickstarter items noted, which are based on uplifting possibilities of joy and happiness, this one has only the potential for schadenfreude. Shame on you person(s) that make it happen, and bless you at the same time.

⁴ That “3” is a footnote, not a mathematical exponent. Likewise, so that I can avoid an infinite series of footnotes explaining that yes, the previous footnote was also a footnote, the “4” is a footnote and not an exponent.

Rich Stevens is actually doing it:

Someone actually pledged $666 to dare me to break vegetarian and eat a pound of bacon. Daniel Valentine, you amazing dark wizard of death. I am going to survive this and evolve new mutant powers in the process! Perhaps this will be the radioactive spider that eventually teaches me about responsibility.

Speaking of Valentines, Daniel and otherwise …

• You know who is every lady’s dream valentine? Brad Guigar, but that’s too bad because he’s only got eyes for his wife, sons, and cartooning¹. Today he celebrates twelve years of juggling those competing demands on his time in a manner so deft that he cartooning gets stronger, the wisdom he shares gets wiser, and the husband-and-father routine becomes more natural and rewarding².
• Know what else is associated with Valentine’s Day besides Brad Guigar? Yes, yes, we know, “horny werewolves”, thank you Internet Jesus. I was just gonna say “sexy times”, and use that to point out that the long-awaited Smut Peddler collection (with a submission period of more than a year, recently closed) is nearly completion. Posted today: the cover, by the too-talented-to-be-believed Emily Carroll. Prepare to read this with somebody you love (or at least really, really like).
• For your consideration: not quite a tip jar, not quite an obligation, more an expression of appreciation for those that don’t like to buy stuff. John Allison has introduced a subscription model for Bad Machinëry that is entirely optional, and for which you, the subscriber receive nothing in particular above and beyond the sense of satisfaction you get for supporting an artist. I was recently asked what the proper way to read a webcomic was (the original intent was RSS or go to the page), but my reply was:
  

  Mentally track how many pages you read, buy $1 of merch for every 10 pages.

  If you don’t like stuff cluttering your home, here’s your alternative; by my calculation, Mr Allison gives you about 250 pages per year, making the Silver level of subscription about right.

• One should note that asking for money for doing a comic (whether in the form of donations, a tip jar, fund drives, and the like) attracts a range of opinions, from support to criticism. Also found in the world of comics and no consensus opinion: motion comics. For those of us of a certain age, motion comics (no matter how well done, and often they aren’t well done) will always invoke the super-cheap Marvel animated show of the ’60s, where panels were slid on the screen with entirely static characters and a voice track overlaid (seriously; they made the animated Star Trek look like a Pixar production).

  That being said, I freely admit my own youthful experiences color my impressions of motion comics. Done well, it might add something to the original that I never realized was lacking. And if anybody is going to do it well, it’s probably Rob Balder, who is launching a project to motion comic-ize Book One of Erfworld. I have affection for Erfworld, in a way that I didn’t for Iron Man or Hulk when I was three or four years old. Technology has progressed by leaps and bounds, as has the judgment of what constitutes proficient voice acting. Hell, the US$24,000 that Balder has set as his goal may well exceed the budget that Marvel was working with back in ’66. So despite my misgivings (again, born entirely of my past experiences), I’m very curious to see how this could turn out.

_______________
¹ A lesser man would have a mistress, but Brad’s not lesser in any sense of the word. Ladies.

² I don’t have empirical, observed evidence for that like for the other two things but come on — dude’s obviously got love for his family seeping from every pore. Every moment he’s cartooning, he’s champing³ at the bit to get back to his family.

³ You’re welcome, Brad.

Lots of call-backs today.

• Re: Rich Burlew’s Kickstarter, which we are trying mightily to mention only when it hits a significant landmark: how does half a million dollars/900% of goal sound? Burlew has now claimed the #6 all-time spot on Kickstarter¹, has cemented the all-time top creative work, and bested the previous comics Kickstarter by nearly five times over. Oh, and he still has almost two weeks to go. Sheesh.
• I believe that everybody knows that the Ryan North-written Adventure Time comic debuts tomorrow in comic shops everywhere. Did you know that as a result of like five tweets, Mike Krahulik will now be doing a cover for a future issue? And did you know that there will be a launch party for Adventure Time at children’s comics offshoot of The Beguiling, Little Island, on Saturday afternoon? And did you know that at this party, you can do crafts with Ryan North and Steve Wolfhard? It’s true!
• I only remember about three things² from high school French class, but I remember this: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Proof: David Malki ! dug up the SOPA/PIPA/ACTA debate of its day from the 1870s, and damn if a lot of the arguments aren’t familiar. Give it a good read, then resolve to stay ever-vigilant because it’s just a matter of time before the same arguments we just defeated come around again.
• Final thoughts: I think that Kris Straub is not going to a very good climbing gym³. Everybody knows the archer should only be trying to pick off top-ropers.

_______________
¹ Yes, I know that we said he was approaching #5 before, but the threshold for that — some US$486,000 — did not take into account an active Kickstarter campaign, which doesn’t show in a casual inspection of top funding achievements. Burlew knew it, Gendron and I missed it. Slot #5 is now believed to be around US$556,000, which at current rates should be achieved by end of the week. Slot #4 is probably north of US$800,000, which Burlew will only reach if I publicly doubt he will, so I’m doubtin’ away.

² I’m of the opinion that if you know enough of a language to buy food, beer, a room for the night, and a train ticket, you’re functional in that language.

³ Re: “buttocks only”; I have been on gym routes that specified you had to climb with your back to the wall. Damn right I used the larger holds as butt-rests.