Let us not focus on the reasons we cannot have nice things¹ and instead focus on the nice things that happen sometimes. I am, on this occasion, talking about the second iteration of :01 Books deciding that we needed to talk comics, Comics Relief, and the four talks therein. Editorial note: I didn’t attempt to transcribe the conversations, but where I move from paraphrase to the vicinity of quotation, you’ll find the text in italics.

They were, from the top:

• Space Comics with Jim Ottaviani and Maris Wicks talking about their latest collaboration, Astronauts, with editor² Alison Wilgus.
• Maker Comics with Falyn Koch (Bake Like A Pro), JP Coovert (Draw A Comic), Sarah Myer (Create A Costume), with series editor Robyn Chapman³.
• Documentary Comics with Box Brown and editor Calista Brill.
• Comics Creators Getting Coffee with Clint McElroy, LeUyen Pham, and :01 top honcho Mark Siegel.

The first three talked process and methods, the last was just three friendly folks killing time with amusing stories, fond reminiscences, and the side effects of having kids mess with your Zoom settings. More on that below.

Importantly, each session started with a statement of solidarity and principles from the panelists; in some cases I believe it was drafted together, in others I think the panelists deferred to the moderator, but all of them acknowledged the current situation and the plain truth that black lives matter. In Siegel’s case, he went so far as to note that if you’re going to move from acknowledging that you benefit from a racist society to becoming actively racist, you’ve got some work to do; he recommended starting with Stamped From The Beginning by Ibrahim X Kendi.

Things that stood out:

• Ottaviani noted that Astronauts came about when he learned the story of the Mercury 13 and couldn’t fit their story into what he was working on at the time, so he parked it to come back to later. But you can’t have a book with 13 protagonists, and he didn’t want to invent a composite character to stand in for them, so he went looking for an astronaut that wasn’t famous because most people aren’t. The book features three women, but it’s about Mary Cleave because she isn’t famous like Valentina Tereshkova or Sally Ride. That lack of fame (much like Wicks’s choices to have very detailed technology but rather cartoony characters) allows a reader to see themselves in the story.
• Makers of all stripes have made maker comics; Koch attended culinary school, Myer is a costume-maker and cosplayer since small times, and Coovert has put at least as much thought into the hows and whys of what works in comics as anybody. The key to Maker Comics, Chapman shared, is to have a series of distinct, achievable, build-each-on-the-previous projects for those following along to tackle. Ideally, six to eight of them, with something really familiar to start with, and going deeper from there.
• Box Brown doesn’t always do documentary comics⁴ and doesn’t intentionally alternate between books about people (Andre The Giant, Is This Guy For Real?) with books about cultural phenomena (Tetris, Cannabis), its just that sometimes that’s how the story gets into his head. Tetris could just have easily been told about Alexey Pajitnov.

  Brown’s talk with Brill showed how important the working relationship between creator and editor is — it was a revealing look at how they work together, and what the result of that work is like. Brill will not only bring out the best in your work, she’ll find a way to get Mandy Patinkin to blurb your book and to keep your talk going if your internet goes out, as Brown’s did for about five minutes⁵.

• Pro tip from LeUyen Pham: check out what your Zoom background looks like before you start the session, lest you find out that your kids have set it and you don’t know it’s a very elaborate painting of a dragon until Clint McElroy compliments you and asks if you did it yourself. For a relaxed conversation with no set agenda, Pham’s frantic attempts to clear the background (in fact, it was one of hers, and it was stunning; McElroy later commented that he missed [her] dragon hat) got things off to an amusing start, which was followed up by some amusing How did we first meet? stories.

  For Pham, it was when Siegel was a lowly, peon designer (that’s an exact quote) at Simon & Schuster, around August of 2001. Siegel’s boss was frantic because an illustrator on a children’s book had completely failed to deliver and there were only a few months left to get art in. Pham’s sample work wasn’t a typical children’s book illo, it was an oil painting and despite the incredible detail in her work, she met the original deadline in November despite the upheavals of 9/11.

  Siegel: Everybody at Simon & Schuster was “Here’s a keeper!”
  Pham: Mark was impressed with my thumbnails and wanted to know if I’d ever want to do comics.

  For McElroy, it was at the :01 SDCC booth, the summer before the first Adventure Zone book came out. I walked up to the booth to introduce myself on the first day and this guy with glasses said “Hey, Buddy, end of the line!” [furious pointing gesture].

  Siegel remembers realizing that they had something really huge on their hands — the McElroy’s were brought out to the con, there wasn’t any swag yet for a book that was a year off, just some postcards, and he figured a few hardcore fans might show up. And then this MOB came to the booth, I didn’t recognize any of the cosplay, and we had to have con security help us wrangle the line which spanned three aisles. We put up tickets for a livecast and 1500 of them sold in four minutes. John Turner Sargent, the CEO of Macmillan, is calling up me looking at pre-orders for a book that’s a year away and asking “What the hell is The Adventure Zone?”

  McElroy remarked on that scheduled signing: We came out of the secret security tunnels in the convention center and saw this huge line that just kept going and said “We feel sorry for whoever’s line that is.” But it kept moving in the direction of the :01 booth, and there were people in Taako hats and … [gestures to Siegel on the screen] and then that night you bought my dinner and I loaded up on appetizers. Success!

  Siegel wanted to come back to the idea of huge, ongoing successes (TAZ, Pham’s collaborations with Shannon Hale, Real Friends and Best Friends), neither of which he saw coming. Every time I try to design a cash cow for :01, it tanks. People can smell it a mile off.

  Pham remarked how her kids are somewhat a barometer for that — they aren’t fans of her work, per se, it’s just what mom does; but towards the end of Real Friends, when young Shannon does something jerky, it affected her older son, who wanted to know why mom couldn’t just change the story to make her nicer. I had to explain what a memoir is. It was when he got really invested in the story that she started to think it might be more than just another book.

  And it all wrapped up with McElroy wanting to pitch Siegel on his cash cow idea: a billionaire cow that travels around spending cash. And y’know, if he partnered with Carey Pietsch on it, I think it just might work.

SM20 Countdown for 8 June 2020:
4

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¹ In this case, “Nick”, who decided to be a jerk about halfway through the first session and got the chat disabled as a result. I hope you got kicked out, Nick, I hope you got banned from future events, I hope you some day realize how little your inchoate rage at women is regarded by the world. You’re terrible and we’ve all decided to forget you.

² And author; Wilgus’s own graphic novel (Wyeth Yates provides the pictures), The Mars Challenge, comes out next week. How into space is Wilgus? She lays out Tsiolkovsky’s Rocket Equation in story form in chapter two, Gravity Is A Jerk.

³ Who was quick to note that she shares series editing duties with Bethany Bryan.

⁴ His next, Child Star (due out 30 June), is a fictional story inspired by multiple people who were child stars in the 80s. Brill, his longtime editor, remarked that she is in awe of his facility with awful 80s sitcom dialogue, and putting words in the mouths of assholish people.

⁵ At just about exactly the time that Brill’s mom was calling her. All of the classic Zoom interruptions happened at the same time.

It took all day to find a story that didn’t make me want to despair, but the Eisner nominating committee came through with this year’s nominations. Let’s talk webcomics and indie comics presence, which we’ve seen spreading way outside the two official (and increasingly nebulous) web-adjacent categories. As they’ve been out for less than an hour as I write this, it’s going to be initial impressions, and we’ll go back and revisit in future as warranted.

First thing I noticed: The web is where you find short comics; the five nominees for Best Short Story are dominated by established web properties (Matt Inman at The Oatmeal, Miriam Libicki at The Nib) and places that include comics, but are general-audience magazines (Mira Jacob in Believer, Emma Hunsinger in The New Yorker). Only one of the nominees is in an actual comic comic, Ebony Flowers (Promising New Talent, 2019 Ignatzen) for Hot Comb, which was all over best of lists for last year and which is my pick to take the category.

Second thing I noticed: The category for Best Single Issue/One-Shot is entirely indie producers, with Zainab Akhtar’s Shortbox taking two of the five (Minotäar, by Lissa Treiman and Sobek by James Stokoe). The others are Coin-Op No. 8: Infatuation, by Peter and Maria Hoey, The Freak, by Matt Lesniewski, and Our Favorite Thing Is My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, where the ubiquitous-in-2019 Emil Ferris told a few last stories about My Favorite Thing Is Monsters. Gotta give this one to Treiman or Stokoe, as those are the two I saw last year and they’re both great.

Third Thing I Noticed: The competition in Best Publication For Kids is going to be fierce. It’s got Raina’s latest, of course, but also last year’s Dog Man by Dav Pilkey (the dude’s a machine), New Kid by Jerry Craft, This Was Our Pact by Ryan Andrews, Akissi: More Tales of Mischief, by Marguerite Abouet and Mathieu Sapin, and The Wolf in Underpants, by Wilfrid Lupano, Mayana Itoïz, and Paul Cauuet. Haven’t seen the last one, but the others are all excellent and I do not envy the judges their task.

Fourth Thing I Noticed: The repeat nominees have been cleaning up earlier awards (particularly the Ignatz last fall), with Hot Comb also nomindated in Best Publication For Teens, alongside Kiss Number 8 (Colleen AF Venable and Ellen T Crenshaw), Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me (Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Vallero-O’Connell), Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass (Tamaki again, and Steve Pugh), and Penny Nichols (MK Reed, Greg Means, and Matt Wiegle). For the record, I absolutely could not choose between Kiss and Laura Dean, both of which I adore. Also, one may note that Venable appears as the model of a character in MK Reed’s The Cute Girl Network because excellent people feed off each other’s creativity.

Fifth Thing I Noticed: Comics types not only feed off each other creatively, they sometimes become a hive mind. Best Humour Publication include Sobek and Minotaär, Death Wins A Goldfish (Brian Rea) and The Way Of The Househusband, Vol 1¹ (Kousuke Oono, translated by Sheldon Drzka), but also two very handsome hardcovers by a couple of dudes that last time I saw them, were throwing Stan Lee impressions at each other at warp speed — David Malki ! (Friends You Can Ride On), and Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett (Anatomy Of Authors). David, Dave, love you guys, but I can’t choose between you. I’ll have to give it to Househusband to preserve our friendships.

Sixth Thing I Noticed: Aside from individual stories at The Nib getting all sorts of nominations all over comics awards for the past several years, the print magazine is starting to get notice; issues 2 through 4 (Matt Bors and about five dozen other people) are collectively nominated for Best Anthology.

Seventh Thing I Noticed: If you put together a few zillion pages of comics in a half dozen years, you’re gonna get really good at it; if you were already really good when you started, you’re going to get amazing. Tillie Walden scored three nominations for the magnificent Are You Listening?, for Best Graphic Album — New, Best Writer/Artist, and Best Lettering. I cannot say enough good things about that book, it’s entirely remarkable. And since we’re here, we should note that Raina, Jacob, and Stokoe are also nominated for Best Writer/Artist. That’s gonna be a tough category.

Eighth Thing I Noticed: Original graphic novels sharpen your chops like nobody’s business. Best Writer includes Tamaki again, alongside Reed and Means.

There’s more, I know I’ve missed stuff but it’s getting late and I need to post this. I also know I haven’t talked about the Digital and Webcomic categories because once again I can’t figure out the distinction, but we’ll come back and do that after I’ve had more time to digest.

As a reminder, all comics industry professionals are eligible to vote on the Eisners; results will be announced in July at a time to be announced.

SM20 Countdown for 4 June 2020:
8

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¹ About the meanest member of the yakuza, who gives it up to keep house for his wife.

Sometimes, things are just rational, from Point A to about Point K with no deviations or sidetracks. They just make sense.

Which is not to say that sometimes those straight tracks are good, mind you. The news of the Flame Con 2020 cancellation is unsurprising, entirely expected, and the right call. We’ll note that we are now seeing events punted to next year in the same timeframe as — or even after — the rescheduled EmCity, and I remain somewhat perplexed that Reed!Pop haven’t called it yet. Doubly so, given that Seattle was the first COVID-19 hotspot in the country, and they well know the consequences of a new wave of cases.

Likewise, it sucks that it looks like we’ll get a hiatus of Irregular Webcomic in the next couple of weeks, as David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc) had a mishap in the kitchen and wound up with ten stitches in his hand, but that’s a completely understandable outcome. Also completely understandable: requiring your society to provide for medical care, such that Morgan-Mar was able to go to the Emergency Department, get treated for the immediate condition, and return the next morning for surgery to repair the damage to his hand. Oh, wait, I meant completely understandable except to residents of the USA because Freedom.

But at least sometimes, the sense-making things are also good; very, very good. Case in point, Randy Milholland is one of the premiere scholars of both Disney Duck comics and the work of EC Segar. The former is undergoing a renewal of interest thanks to the DuckTales revival, but Uncle Randy can tell you — in detail — about the original Carl Barks comics that inspired so much of what you see in half-hour episodes. Ever want to know the full story of the intra-family dynamics of the Duck and McDuck families? Milholland has you covered.

The latter has been pretty irrelevant for a while, but something interesting happened starting last year — King Features editor Tea Fougner, whose responsibilities include Popeye (for Segar invented the character of Popeye as part of Thimble Theater), convinced the syndicate to let a bunch of today’s cartoonists take a whack at the sailor man’s exploits with Sunday strips, and they were great¹.

Because Fougner is good at their job, Milholland was among those creating strips, and he dug down deep into the Popeye lore. An Oyl family reunion? A history of Popeye and the now-forgotten kids he had in his care? Love it.

And because Fougner is very, very good at their job, Milholland is getting a run of daily-updating strips for the next three weeks at Popeye’s Cartoon Club. As I told Fougner once, Milholland on Popeye is the second biggest no-brainer in comics (Milholland on the Duck comics is the first, but I think that Disney might not go for that), and I encourage everybody to read and provide feedback on the strips.

Like ’em, add comments to ’em², give King Features every possible reason to do the logical thing and keep bringing Milholland back. Bonus points as the strips will surely enrage the small-minded by delving into such canon topics as Popeye’s documented history of cross-dressing and gender ambiguity.

Spam of the day:

As a patent inspector, he discovered something that will take the electricity world and change it forever.

Look, I don’t want to over-generalize, but patent inspectors don’t have a great track record. They are frequently tasked with examining bogus inventions outside their area of technical expertise, fail to appreciate prior art, and are required to put far too little time in. The likelihood that one of them found something that would change the electricity world is zero. Signed, an electrical engineer who really disliked the power generation part of his education but still got an A in that class.

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¹ All of them were great, but the one I keep going back to was Shaenon Garrity and Andrew Farrago having Popeye live in a garbage can and go swimmin’ with bare naked wimmin.

² We really need more places where’s it’s acceptable — nay, expected — to use Popeye words. Disgustipating is such a great word.

Hoo boy, I hope that Elon Musk cares more about astronauts using his rocket, capsule, and spacesuits than he cares about people building his cars. I mean, when I say his let us not fall into the trap of thinking that he personally came up with anything beyond a napkin scribble that says People go up WHOOSH and Step 3: I AM MARS KING; a whole host of very smart people made the stuff that’s about to be used.

Okay:

• Shing Yin Khor on Muffler Men, one of their passions in life. Looks to be the first of a series of graphic columns on the cultural weirdness of America.
• Hot on the heels of the revival of Tuca & Bertie, Lisa Hanawalt let us know that she’s got a solo show at Gallery Nucleus on 13 June, and this time it’s personal virtual. Sign up for online previews of the work to be shown at the exhibition page and good luck grabbing some good stuff.
• We knew it was gonna happen: CXC 2020 will not have any in-person component due to the risks of the novel coronavirus. They’d put out a survey earlier to get a feel for what people wanted from this iteration and while people want to talk comics, it’s clear that comics are not worth the risk to life that will still be hanging over all of us in October.

  Exhibitors will be invited back to the next CXC, and fees will be refunded. Somewhere in the great beyond, Tom Spurgeon is shouting into the void that you don’t need him there personally to have the show because he wanted everybody to experience as many comics as possible.

  Stay the fuck home, everybody. Wear a damn mask, everybody. Wash your friggin’ hands, everybody.

Update: Launch scrubbed due to weather rules. Bob and Doug will not Take Off, eh.

Spam of the day:

Cops say brutal new tool is too powerful for most men (get yours here)

Read the fucking room you violence-worshiping bastards.

… but I need to mention again that Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan are a godsdamned delight and I don’t know anybody else that could start a comic with anxiety over the looming menace of COVID-19 and immediately transition to butt toys. Read their comic and buy their books, you cowards.

In other, non-buttcentric news:

It’s been a while since we talked about folks that don’t do webcomics, but who do do independent creations on the internet, and it’s time the reset the counter. The Doubleclicks (siblings Aubrey Turner and Laser Malena-Webber) make wonderfully nerdy music and Kickstart equally wonderful projects. When not Kickstarting, they still make nerdy projects to keep in touch with their audience and they’ve got a doozy on both the wonderful and nerdy scales for the Isolation Times:

We made a new music video. Together! In one place!

For our song DIMETRODON. From a thousand miles away — we went to a museum, danced in a square … all in the video game Animal Crossing.

It was a ton of fun. And we are debuting it RIGHT NOW!!!

Now, on the off chance you’re not familiar with Dimetrodon, understand that the original music video for the song was pretty damn amazing, so there are some big, clawfooted shoes to fill here, but the new one does just great. But yeah, buncha folks have made cute videos in Animal Crossing, so is there more?

Oh, but of course there is:

Speaking of Animal Crossing… our incredible friend Jules just opened up a queer bookshop and cafe inside this video game (WILD) and invited us to do a concert there.

So on THURSDAY — at 3pm Pacific/6pm Eastern — we are performing live, inside Animal Crossing, and streaming it on YouTube — with our friend Molly Lewis! The whole thing is free to watch, and we’ll be encouraging donations to a charity that supports trans folx in financial need.

The concert will be here, and I remind you of a crucial piece of math: anything involving Molly Lewis is automatically 38% cooler than it would be ordinarily.

Are we done yet? Not yet, Sparky:

PPS — if you play Animal Crossing and have reliable internet, you can be maybe in the studio audience for our show! reply to this email and let me know if you’re interested!!

I’m not gonna share that email address, as it goes to those that have subscribed to Doubleclick emails (via purchases, Kickstart backing, or merely signing up) and it wouldn’t be right for those folks to maybe get crowded out. Guess you should sign up in advance of the next cool thing that they do, huh?

Finally, I would like you to know one more thing:

You may know that Laser is a Kickstarter coach. We wanted to let you know that they made a FOURTEEN WEEK How-To-Crowdfund class and they’re launching it RIGHT NOW!

Here are three pieces of information.

1. Laser has raised $1 million for independent artists, consulted for folks including Jonathan Coulton and the Presidents of the United States of America, and worked on book, music, game, and film projects.
2. Crowdfunding pledges are NOT GOING DOWN during this time — and crowdfunding is just the goshdarn best way to get your art made and connect with your audience. (half of that is opinion, but it is TRUE OPINION).
3. You can get 50% off (yeah, that’s half) of Laser’s step-by-step audience-building and crowdfunding class until May 31, because you are a doubleclicks email list person. the code is THANKYOU

Okay, that’s a separate email, but it seemed like at least some of you might benefit from it; unlike the first communication, this one explicitly included permission to share the discount code, so go nuts. Laser’s super smart and you can only get better at your next crowdfunding unless you’re like, George or Spike¹.

Spam of the day:

Hey – I’m working with a company that is looking for sites that have content relating to clothing and I came across yours. Any chance you’d be open to hearing about a way you could link to a merchant and make money in the case someone clicks on the link and purchases something?

Is that a dig at webcomics creators being nothing but t-shirt sellers? You’re about a dozen years late with that shit, Rob A if that is your name.

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¹ All the best crowdfunders have single names.

Some new things kicking off, and a very cool thing returning for another go.

• If you’ve read Fleen ever, one indisputable fact will jump out at you: Ryan Estrada doesn’t do things by half measures. We’re on the eve of release of his new collaborative graphic novel, Banned Book Club (co-written by Estrada and his wife, Kim Hyun Sook; art by Ko Hyung-Ju), based on his wife’s experiences in the former South Korean military dictatorship. Not content to rest on any laurels (a mountain of glowing press, and continually-increasing pre-orders of the book count as laurels), Estrada decided to launch his latest project: a podcast of sorts.

  Big deal, I hear you cry, everybody and their dog is startin’ a podcast during quarantimes. To which I reply, a) Estrada’s experience of quarantine is very different from yours and mine, as he and his wife live in Busan, South Korea, which has managed the pandemic better than probably anyplace else on the planet¹ and b) it’s not a podcast. It’s a series of radio plays based on the sequels to A Christmas Carol that Dickens wrote and the world promptly forgot about. Let’s let Estrada tell it himself:

  I’m the new writer/host/director of BeFM Drama!

  I’m turning Charles Dickens’ 22 weird forgotten Christmas Carol sequels into brand new radio plays for Korean radio. Not direct adaptations, but kinda like how Clueless is based on Emma.

  Please enjoy episode 1 of my new radio show!

  This one is about a man who has such a bad day that he wishes he didn’t exist. But he reconsiders his position when he’s tricked into believing he’s already dead.
  https://youtu.be/XFRFP0kkzcs

  Yep, sounds weird. The Riverside Chimes is a bit under 20 minutes, and if you like it, there’s three more stories already posted to the Tubes. And if that doesn’t satisfy you, BeFM Drama has a few dozen audio adaptations of Sherlock Holmes and other classic English language short fiction for your listening pleasure.

• Also kicking off, The Nib is partnering with Reveal, the investigative reporting project from The Center For Investigative Reporting; the new series is called In/Vulnerable, and it’s chronicling the ways that the COVID pandemic is hitting all layers of society, where billionaires are demanding everybody else go back to work with insufficient protections.

  Up today: the story of Manuel, a refugee from Cuba who’s been in prison humane and efficient temporary detention for more than a year, and is watching the threat of the virus creep closer. Whatever your views on immigration, you cannot possibly argue that fleeing a repressive government (it’s even one that Screamy Orange Racist Grandpa hates!) is a crime merits being thrown into inhumane conditions until a deadly disease kills you.

  And if you do argue that? Do me a favor and leave my page and never return. I make it a policy not to consort with sociopaths.

• Lastly, the :01 Books virtual comics show, Comics Relief, has announced sign-ups for its second session:
  

  Comics fans, mark your calendars for Comics Relief: June 2020 on Saturday, 6/6 from 12pm-4pm ET! Click here to register for the next virtual :01 festival: https://bit.ly/2WFlTcs #ComicsRelief

  Four sessions this time, with a discussion of space comics at noon EDT (Maris Wicks! Jim Ottaviani! Alison Wilgus!), a discussion of Maker Comics at 1:00pm (Falynn Koch! JP Coovert! Sarah Myer! Robyn Chapman!), a discussion of documentary comics at 2:00pm (Box Brown! Calista Brill!), and a talk about whatever’s on their minds at 3:00pm (Clint McElroy! Leuyun Pham! Mark Siegel!). Sign up at the link above, and I’ll see you in the conference on the 6th.

Spam of the day:

New project started to be available today, check it out [redacted].com/?renee

I’m including you because you listed out a series of porn genre terms, and one of them was tannie. Assuming this is a new genre based on, I dunno, well tanned people gettin’ it on, okay for giving people what they want I guess?

But if you managed to misspell the derogatory term for trans folks, then you get double my normal dose of contempt, which I assure you is both well merited and considerable.

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¹ Which is what happens when your country demands competency from its leaders, and learned the lessons of the SARS outbreak and determined to never fail in pandemic response again.

Rose City, this time, which is the biggest event I’ve seen nixed in the September timeframe (anybody that thinks DragonCon, Baltimore, or any of the PAXes is happening, I have a bridge to sell you).

At this point, it’s probably safer to assume that even if a comics event does happen, that attendance will be way down barring extensive measures for disease control. By that I mean widespread vaccination (that ain’t gonna be the case for multiple months after the availability of a proven, effective vaccine), or absolute cultural acceptance of infection prevention measures.

What kind of measures? Societal agreement that not only should masks be worn, but agreement that people refusing masks or refusing to wear them correctly should be shunned. Despite the media attention given to the very noisy agitators for FREEEEDOM¹, pretty much everybody is on board with masks.

But it doesn’t stop there. There has to be widespread, trusted contact tracing and isolation (with people willing to obey isolation guidelines after probable exposure — we’re onto dicier ground here) and point-of-contact confidence measures like no-contact temperature checks & handwashing prior to entering a space. Americans might put up with these obstacles to get into a facility, but how many are going to be willing to step away and abandon their plans if they’re 0.4°ree; over the published limit? That would absolutely require extremely liberalized refund/transfer rules for tickets or entrance fees.

Which show runners may not want to (or, given economic realities, be able to) agree to, because you’re finally going to have to limit attendance to fractions of previous capacities. Want to hold SDCC in a no-vaccine 2021? You’re going to have to keep the number of warm bodies inside the cavernous San Diego Convention Center to about 10-20% of normal. Can Comic-Con afford to rent the space with that few paying attendees? If they do, can they afford to give back money to somebody that fails the door check? And will somebody who made it to the front of the (now much slower) line be willing to shrug and go away for not meeting entrance screening criteria, having paid for flights and hotel?

Here’s another idea: Panels will have to be aggressively capped, from the lineups to the seating inside; the Hall H experience and its equivalents might be dead for good, which in turn might reduce the presence of big media studios at what’s supposed to be a comics event. Either that, or a big media con might have to turn big-ass launch panels into simulcasts on the the event channels of con hotel TVs. Anything other than cramming 6000 people in a room, or having twice that number camping out cheek by jowl for 72 hours.

The only comics events that I’d expect to see in the next calendar year are small ones, with attendance measured in the single digit thousands, and even then likely with capacity controls or time-limited access. Got a red wristband? You can be on the floor from 10:00am to 1:00pm and then you have to vacate². Imagine SPX or MoCCA with 30-40% fewer exhibitors, half as many tickets, and assigned to early half/late half access; the sparsely attended NCSFest on the boardwalk in Huntington Beach this time last year might be the model — outdoors, spread over a large area, no crowded points of contact. Not so many places in the country where you can do something like that and rely on the weather, though.

The wildcard in all of this is how much we can act like members of a godsdamned civilzation in the meantime, show that we can act for the common good instead of pitching hissy fits about getting haircuts or buying toasters. Act like responsible grownups, the odds of events go up; act like entitled babies, and I hope you didn’t want to gawk at cosplay ever again, ’cause it’ll be years before it’ll be safe to, and event longer before people are willing to risk their lives or health on that actually being true.

Spam of the day:

Trøjan V¡rus g¡ves me full access and cøntrøl øver a cømputer ør øther dev¡ce. Th¡s means that ¡ can see everyth¡ng øn yøur screen, turn øn the camera and m¡crøphøne, but yøu dø nøt knøw abøut ¡t.

That would be the camera and microphone that I don’t have on this computer? Or maybe the one on my laptop, which is behind a plastic shield because fuck you and your attempt to extort US$1200 in bitcoin (always bitcoin with these CHUDs) based on your fevered imagination. Now go tell your mom that you’re a failure.

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¹ Covidiots, or if they have a religious justification for their stance, Branch Covidians.

² Which, if nothing else, might finally put a stake in the heart of the worst habit of big cons: the limited edition convention exclusive. The howler monkeys will be out in force if they can’t get in until after the exclusives are definitely sold out.

There’s nothing like getting an unexpected letter to raise your spirits¹. During the Alaska Robotics Camp @ Home event at the end of April, I hosted a session of the ever-popular Talk About Whatever You Want For Five Minutes; there were quick presentations on Mastodon, food manga, English paper piecing, marble sports, and more. I led off with a quick five minutes on cocktail making², mixing along as I spoke into Zoom, then enjoying the fruits of my labors for the rest of the hour.

Lee Post was watching. Something you need to know about Post is that he sketchnotes, much like fellow Camp alum Jason Alderman. He mentioned he enjoyed my talk, and then I got a Post-card (I’m so sorry) in the mail yesterday with six panel version of my five minute talk and I am in a good mood as a result. Let’s see what’s going on in the world today, if we can’t maybe elevate your mood as well.

• I almost picked a different image for the top of the post today, because how could I not love Erika Moen talking about ordering a Small, Flat 7-Up, No Ice, Two Inches High, for $19? [CW: boobs] She regrets nothing, and she’s gonna write it off on her taxes because she is a boss. Also, she is a woman who not only owns an axe, but will use it if necessary to stop the beeping of her hideous CO detector. [CW: dying appliance battery and ensuing madness]
• Now live: Ru Xu’s Saint For Rent, Volume 1 Kickstarter. We’re about a day in and about 25% of the way to goal, which bodes well; there was a contraction of Kickstarter spending for a bit there (not the least evidence being the layoffs at Kickstarter; thankfully their union negotiated one hell of a decent severance package), but I think we’re going to see a bit of a bounce-back, particularly for projects that result in a tangible reward (i.e.: a book, whether print or PDF) at a reasonable pledge level (i.e.: US$25 or under).

  Note that Xu³ has done something very smart, given the determination of Screamy Orange Racist Grandpa to kill the USPS — the pledge levels for physical rewards are only for the items; shipping will be calculated later, closer to actual dispatch time. Given that postal rates may be all over the place or we as a nation will be in an Unconstitutional, postal service-less state, this is the only way to guarantee not taking a bath and losing money hand over fist with a successful campaign.

• Hey, remember Pizza Island, the studio of amazing cartoonists in Brooklyn? Where you could find in one room Meredith Gran, Julia Wertz, Kate Beaton, Domitille Collardey, Lisa Hanawalt, and Sarah Glidden? They closed up shop near a decade ago, and have gone on to do amazing work. Of late, they’ve halfway gotten the band back together, starting up a WordPress blog under the PI name and letting us know what they’re up to — Gran, Wertz, Beaton, Collardy, Hanawalt, and Glidden are all listed as participating, along with Karen Sneider. As Beaton says, it’s been a heck of eight years
• Hey, did you know that VanCAF is running online programs this week, in conjunction with TCAF, Dartmouth Comic Arts Festival (aka DCAF), Festival DB de Montréal (aka MCAF), and Quebec BD under the collective identity of #CanCAF? It’s true! Yesterday there were interviews with Gene Luen Yang, Sloane Leong, Leslie Hung, and Matt Fraction, today there are YouTube sessions with Karensac, Aron Steinke, Steenz, and more.

  Rest of the week will see podcasts, demos, and conversations with everybody from Michael DeForge to Junko Mizuno. Of particular interest are the Publishing Comics With Kickstarter panel (YouTube, 16 May 11:00am presumably PDT) with Jeff Ellis, Lucy Bellwood, Hannako Lambert, and Haley Boros, and the Webcomics panel (also YouTube, 17 May at 3:00pm pPDT) with Alina Pete, Kory Bing, Sam Logan, Angela Melick, and Jephy McJacquesface. Check out the programming page, and keep an eye on the hashtag to see what else the Canadian CAFs have in store for us.

Spam of the day:

1 Bathroom Trick That Kills Diabetes

No, no, that’s not how it works. Bathroom tricks are always about how to clean grime and soap scum out of tile grout, not diabetes. Get with the program.

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¹ In a minute, you’ll be mad at me for that pun.

² I called it Three Drinks In Five Minutes and based it around the idea you need to balance the key flavor components: sweet, sour, and bitter, with your preferred booze in the center. I started from the classic Negroni (1:1:1 gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari), noting that you could sub in other liquors (bourbon makes it a Boulevardier; applejack makes in an Avenue A) or liqueurs (Aperol is distinct from Campari) for a wide variety.

Then I introduced the idea of adding one part citrus (lime would do well if it were gin based, especially if you changed the Campari to something like Suze), and finally kicked it up another notch by mentioning egg whites. Three master recipes, and I got to call James Bond an idiot for insisting on martinis being shaken. It was fun times.

³ Or possibly George, who manages Xu’s business. Smart guy about the Kickstarts, that George.

In a world with better planning, a world where scientific offices and liaisons weren’t shuttered, a world where playbooks weren’t ignored and the most brutally stupid and cruel weren’t in charge of the world’s richest country, we might be seeing last-minute anticipation for this weekend’s TCAF. We might see other people gearing up for Comic Arts LA later this year, instead of a cancellation¹. And we (that is, we at Fleen personally) might, in a better world, have a downstairs toilet that didn’t break its flapper valve and be unable to flush, but at least that one I can fix.

In the meantime, take solace in the fact that the CALA organizers took the decision they did for the safety and health of artists and attendees, on account of they are rational humans with an adequate sense of empathy. We can follow the #TCAF2020 hashtag to keep up with the artists and debuts that would have taken place. As for the toilet, I gotta find a hardware store that will let me buy the replacement part, so somebody start a hashtag or do a TikTok dance or something to encourage me.

But people can be resilient, and people can be kind, and people can find things to anticipate even in the drear of a months-long isolation. Some of those people are at :01 Books, and you may recall that last month they put together a series of virtual con panels called Comics Relief, which I thoroughly enjoyed diaing into.

On the off chance you missed the opportunity to attend, I am informed by :01 that the recordings for all the sessions are available at the :01 YouTube account; I particularly recommend the first and last sessions; Mark Siegel is good at fostering quality conversation. So good, that :01 have decided that one Comics Relief isn’t enough; I have an email informing me that they’re going to have another on 6 June, with details forthcoming. As soon as we know, you’ll know.

Spam of the day:

Dan wrote:
Hello,

Nice website

Dan

Thanks, Dan. We’re kind of fond of it. Was there something else you wanted?

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¹ The fact that CALA is traditionally held in December should give one pause. Will we still be shut in by then, or merely unwilling to congregate in groups? With the way things are going, we sure as fuck won’t have widespread testing and tracing by then, if ever.

By which I mean 2020 is a good year for Matts over at The Nib. First, Matt Lubchansky was the finalist for the Herblock Foundation’s annual prize for editorial cartooning (although the promised gala at the Library of Congress was postponed, perhaps indefinitely, from April due to friggin’ coronavirus), and now Matt Bors has been revealed as a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning.

I know it’s traditional to say that it’s an honor just to be nominated, but look at the other names on the ballot: Lalo Alacaraz, Kevin Kallaugher, and winner Barry Blitt have between them dozens of awards, including previous Pulitzer finalists, Herblock Foundation awards, Thomas Nast awards, and others in the US and Europe. Bors himself was a Pulitzer finalist in 2012, and took the Herblock award that same year. It’s a distinguished group, and if Matt & Matt haven’t gotten the actual Big Prize form any of these outfits for their work at The Nib, they’ve got a damn impressive track record of recognition and something maybe more important.

That would be the respect one gets from one’s peers for paying cartoonists for their work. When the news broke yesterday, I could scarcely keep up with the heartfelt congratulations from Nib contributors, because they know that Bors and Lubchansky not only have keen editorial eyes and will give them a place to present their work, but they’ll also provide the cash money that makes cartooning a more viable career.

Speaking of viable careers, here’s a just-released book you might want to check out, from a cartoonist that’s got an body of work like nobody else. Lucas Elliott draws things under the sea. Sometimes that’s a warrior starfish, and sometimes it’s manly mermen. We’re here about the starfish today:

FRIENDS!

I’m happy to finally announce BATTLE STAR #2 is finally available for purchase through my shop!! I had hoped to have these ready for #eccc, but life happens.

Head to my shop, http://lucaselliottart.storenvy.com to get your copy!

#art #comic #storenvy #alaska

The life that happened was, naturally, COVID-19 disrupting the crap out of everything, so his journeys to ECCC and VanCAF (and the commerce that would have happened there) didn’t/ain’t gonna happen. But you can jump in on a comic that has right here (along with some earlier work, it’s all great). If you don’t want to take my recommendation, perhaps you’ll check out his A-Z Star Wars fanart challenge, his Revenge of the Fifth fanart¹, or follow his daily contributions to daily contributions to #MerMay.

And, at some point in the future when we can all get together in groups again, should you meet Elliott in person, do not be scared of his massive beard. He is a gentle sort, and rumors that smaller friends and fans have been devoured by the beard and never seen nor heard from again are almost certainly not true. Probably.

Spam of the day:

We’d like to introduce to you our explainer video service which we feel can benefit your site fleen.com.

Huh. I could spend the US$159 to get a 0-1 minute video telling everybody I’m awesome and also explaining what this “blog” is about, or I could give that money to creators in exchange for their work. Decisions, decisions.

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¹ What can I say, dude likes Star Wars.