Hey, thanks for that time off. As readers of this page probably know, I traditionally spend the end of April at Alaska Robotics Comics Camp, which means I’m largely off the grid for a week or so. And as anybody probably knew, the entire world is full of canceled or postponed events, and Camp was one of them. Big sads all around.

But Pat Race and Aaron Suring, the stellar fellows behind AK Robotics, Camp, and numerous other projects, got a brainstorm that at least some part of the Camp experience could be improvised online. It was a last-minute thing because of other stuff they had front-burnered, but it came together. Over the space of five days nearly three dozen sessions occurred, mostly on Zoom, with Camp alumni and would-have-been first-timers coming together to form the intentional and intensely weird community that coalesces around Camp each year.

I already had vacation time blocked out for Camp that left me with no work obligations, so I decided to replicate the Camp experience as much as possible — between the round trip to Alaska and the fact that there’s no internet at Camp itself, I opted to step back from social media and the news¹ for the same period of time that I would have been gone anyway. The only question is if it would succeed the way that people really needed it to.

Yes, Zoom sucks² and we’ve all got Zoom fatigue, but it worked; it worked to the degree that during the opening session, which was mostly just people introducing themselves, saw attendance go up during the nearly 90 minutes it took for everybody to say hi. It worked to the degree that people who were supposed to attend Camp for the first time raved about the virtual experience and have had to recalibrate their expectations for the real thing being even better. There may not have been campfires, drizzle, ravens, and s’mores, but it worked.

There were skills demos, hangout time, socially distant boardgames, and one memorable presentation on the evolution of orcs in fiction, games, and fanart (from the original evil and pretty racist sword-fodder to he big to the modern pinnacle of he big and horny³). There are plans for a zine of favorite recipes (a quaran-zine full of cui-zine, if you will). People that might not have been able to make it regardless of pandemic got to attend. Relationships were established and re-established. Cats and dogs showed up on camera. By my estimation, at least a half-dozen people were logged in every hour the Camp events were running.

I’m not sure there’s a lesson here other than one that we all already know — human connection is important — but it’s worth reiterating. Every year at Camp I give a variation of Lesson One that we teach to Lil’ Baby EMTs — You are the most important person in the world, your safety and well-being are paramount, you cannot help anybody unless you first take care of yourself — and I’ll admit that this year I was saying it as much for myself as for anybody else that needed to hear it. The theme kept coming up, at discussions of [waves hand] all of this, of economic realities, of cooking, pretty much nonstop: I don’t want to ask for help. Other people have it worse. I’m doing okay.

Everybody that said it was sincere, and everybody that heard it was also sincere in stomping on that shit and saying Stop. It’s okay to ask for help. Any kind of help. And the thing is, I’m pretty sure that everybody was, at some point or another, on either side of that exchange. There’s a lot of self-denial going around, mixed with a lot of (in many cases, frustrated) desire to help others.

There’s room for a lot of intentional and intensely weird communities out there, and I encourage you to find and/or found them as you need to. For some of you that will mean applying to #ComicsCamp next time it comes around. For others, it will be grabbing friends and friends-of-friends and getting online and just hanging out being awesome/stupid together. For all of us, it will be a step towards a better frame of mind while we’re still taking rainchecks on the in-person connections we’re all so desperately craving.

Oh, and if you did want to take a whack at forming your own community — online for now, maybe IRL later — Pat and Aaron are full of excellent ideas and have worked out a lot of wrinkles. Maybe they could add a We advise you on community building and support tier to the Alaska Robotics Patreon⁴? Regardless — take a deep breath, make some contacts, and go lift each other up. The world and all of its bullshit will still be here when you get back, but the burden will be a little bit lighter.

Spam of the day:
I was going to include the email I got offering me quick turnaround on mortuary body racks, but that one got me so mad that I called the company to yell at them for spamming something so inappropriate, and it turned out that one of the other Garies Tyrrell (who thinks my email is his email) was supposed to be the recipient. So not evil spam after all!

_______________
¹ As much as I’ve written here in years past that Camp is a place that gets my head on straight, I have to acknowledge the act of stepping away from the shouty echo chamber is a big contributor to that rejuvenation.

² It’s also a tool I’ve used all day, nearly every day, for more than two years at the day job. I like to think that my Zoom wrangling skills helped make it suck a little less for the virtual Campers.

³ It was the mostly hilariously WHAT-filled ten minutes of the past decade.

⁴ Which could use your support, or maybe take a look at the prints, shirts, comics, calendars, postcards, and other stuff at their shop, which they won’t be able to take to/sell at conventions, or out of their store in Juneau, which is likely seeing its entire tourist season drop to zero.

Before we get started — this is nothing to do with webcomics, but check out what actor/director Mary Neely’s been up to on Twitter. Guaranteed to improve your mood. Now, as a reminder that we in the United States do not have the only severely challenging times (merely those most exacerbated by the greatest idiot possible), Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin joins us today to talk about how things are progressing in the land of bandes dessinées.

After a period of uncertainty regarding what could be planned beyond April, recently France was given more visibility (through the voice of president Emmanuel Macron): the lockdown is now targeted to end May the 11th. This means bookshops, among other retail points, will be allowed to reopen at that date, Glob willing, and that is obviously a relief for comics publishers, and consequently, for the creators they publish.

But the same announcement made it clear this would not be going to be a return to business as usual (and not just in the way retail points will have to adopt social distancing measures): no festival is to take place until mid-July, at the earliest¹. At that point, it was inevitable for both Lyon BD (set to take place in early June) and Japan Expo Paris (set to take place in early July) to announce their respective cancellations this year. This will of course impact our coverage here at the Fleen French headquarters, but will much more dramatically impact the livelihood of the many stakeholders of these opposite kinds of festivals.

As I see it, while many businesses will be able to wake after a period of hibernation and resume more or less as usual (there certainly won’t be as many parties centered around cake and other pastries at my workplace), it is clear many activities that relied on social events will have to reinvent themselves in order to survive the longer period where we will have to live with Covid-19.

First, we have the festival structures themselves: they no longer need to spend the money necessary to rent the congress center or to defray the various contributors or to spend for other various logistics, but (non-profit or not) they do still have to pay the salaries of the few permanent employees they have, as well as various fees, like the rent for organization headquarters, now without the money intake from exhibitors and attendees. Now, they happen to be in the same boat as the many, many live arts festivals (think Avignon for theater and the myriad of music festivals), and it is unlikely that authorities will allow this boat to sink, but that does not mean they will make it unscathed.

Then we have exhibitions and other various unmanned expositions, which are an essential part of comics outreach. Those will not benefit from a centered festival weekend and the publicity that comes with it, but will otherwise be able to take place more or less as usual, since most of those are set up to last a few weeks anyway, allowing visitors to space themselves out. In fact, Lyon BD organization has planned to set up such cultural activities starting in the fall.

Also essential for outreach are panels, but I am afraid those will have to take place online for the foreseeable future. This raises the question on how to make sure contributors would be paid for the trouble, as compensation for panels is an essential complement for some of them, allowing them to dedicate time to properly prepare them and provide quality information. Traditional pay-per-view video on demand seems ill-suited for such endeavors, however; relying on ongoing crowdfunding platforms such as Patreon may be a better starting point.

As for signings, those could take place in bookshops in the same way that many bookshops have always set up such signings year long, but with some additional care: line management is going to become a much pressing concern than it already was, and will probably preclude the most popular creators from even considering this solution. An alternative could be signing in local libraries, though this is more viable for self-published creators: the others apparently cannot normally retail their own books, as evidenced by the fact that a local bookshop would set up a small retail point in the library for the books of these creators when I attended such a library-hosted event.

Finally, as a replacement for anime cons which are often a significant source of encounters and income, I imagine some creators could experiment with local markets. Indeed, France has a healthy network of local markets, and even if they are dominated by foodstuffs, they have always hosted local businesses such as basket weavers, and creators, especially if they’re local, would not be out of place in such a setting. It’s worth remembering it is unlikely to sustain them as well as a market centered on cultural goods would, but it could be worth the attempt.

Besides, I’d bet a pretty penny that local markets are where the decorative face masks (that can no longer be retailed in the now cancelled anime cons) will end up being sold …

So, about like here, then, with the added complication that the rescheduled date for EmCity is 21-23 August, only a month after the now-shuttered SDCC. I wouldn’t hold my breath regarding SPX or Baltimore, either. Looks like there’s going to have to be a bunch more remote programs and (once restrictions start to lift) distributed pop-ups; regardless of official decisions, I don’t see anybody anxious to jump into a tens-of-thousands-and-up situation until testing, vaccination, and treatment are well perfected.

As always, we at Fleen are grateful to FSFCPL for his valued perspective.

Spam of the day:

Votre Site

Although it claimed to be sent by “Pierre”, I don’t believe that it was from our much loved and right trusted Pierre Lebeaupin. So into the bitshredder it goes! Helpfully, Google Translate offers up a suggestion for Other Pierre that I feel almost captures the necessary idiom: vous pliez tu sac à vent crétineux.

________________________

¹ Belgium is unlikely to be a recourse, seeing as it has been hit even harder by the disease, relatively to its population.

:01 Books held a day-long series of online chats on Saturday, and a couple hundred people came. Titled Comics Relief, it was bookended by casual talks between :01 creators and imprint director Mark Siegel, with a series of how-to sessions in the middle. Given the limitations of the format, Siegel’s casual talks, which went wherever the conversation preferred, were the most successful parts of the day, with the exception of some technical glitches¹ of the sort that we’re all becoming accustomed to these days.

Speaking for myself, I found a particular comfort in several things that Gene Luen Yang said in the conversations; in the first, he spoke how he was doing mini comics, sleeping twelve to a room at cons and losing money on everything he published at the time he met Siegel, and eighteen months later I had to rent a tux for the National Book Awards ceremony, where American Born Chinese was the first graphic work to be nominated.

And in the last session, as Yang, Siegel, and Ukazu were talking about how much of an influence Avatar: The Last Airbender has become, Yang talked about being a high school computer science teacher, listening to students talk about A:TLA instead of working and thinking it sounded cool, but not getting in on the conversation. After Derek Kirk Kim loaned him the DVDs of the first two seasons (and watching the third as it aired); a few years later, the creators came to him to write the comics that would bridge Aang’s story and Korra’s.

He didn’t come out and say it, but the lesson is inescapable: there’s a lot that’s getting ready to happen, no matter how behind the curve we are at the moment, and some of it will be doing something you love a lot. We can’t all be Ambassadors or MacArthur Fellowship geniuses, but there’s still stuff out there to take joy from coming down the pike.

In other news:

• Brad Guigar, sexy man about town, is jumping into the web-presence game, and he’s doing it in the form of a professional development seminar for the Graphic Artists Guild. His teaching gig may be on hold what with all the colleges being closed, but you can hear what twenty-plus years of cartooning online has taught him.

  If you’re a GAG member it’s free, and non-members can connect for US$45; if you’re a subscriber to Guigar’s Webcomics Dot Com, he’s got a coupon in the members area good for US$15 off. The session kicks off at 2:00pm EDT (GMT-4) on Wedensday, 22 April. The seminar will last an hour, with Q&A to follow.

• Speaking of Guigar, the latest episode of Comic Lab has a pretty extensive discussion about keeping a cartooning business going in times of quarantine. For a different view, check out Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan’s announcement about their delayed Oh Joy, Sex Toy Kickstarter; they run one about this time every year, and they’ve looked at the uncertain climate (particularly the unsettled state of the US Postal Service) and decided putting it off for a month is the most responsible thing they can do.

  So this is your reminder that if you like comics, it’s probably time to not just toss what you can afford to your favorite creators², but also to call your elected officials and insist on measures to ensure the ongoing stability of the USPS. Repealing the nakedly antagonistic requirement that they pre-fund pensions and insurance 75 years in advance — they have to pay today for the retirement of employees who won’t even be born for a decade! — would be an excellent place to start.

Spam of the day:

Urgent news about metformin

Yes, spammers, I am quite certain that my old friend Jim (who was best man in my wedding, 27 years ago next week), is urgently emailing me with your bullshit. Thing is, you misspelled his name, in a way that particularly annoys him. So yeah, you kind of pooched that one.

_______________
¹ Ngozi Ukazu’s audio was unreliable and delayed, and Lucy Knisley never got her connection quite working (although we all got to see her rather disinterested cat snoozin’ in the background. Hi, Rhino!).

² I haven’t received it yet, but I’ve decided that when I get the stimulus check, it will all be going to comics creators.

Now that it has, we can spend some time rearranging that week in July, be mad for the opportunities lost, and start to move on. And bonus? No hotel rodeo to negotiate this year.

In the meantime, let’s consider some good news:

• The Excellence In Graphic Literature Awards have spent the past couple of days releasing the names of winners, and they’re nearly ready to announce the Book Of The Year. But so far they’ve shared the following:
  • Children’s: Akissi: More Tales Of Mischief by Marguerite Abouet and Mathieu Sapin.
  • Middle Grade (Fiction): White Bird: A Wonder Story by RJ Palacio.
  • Middle Grade (Nonfiction): Guts by Raina Telgemeier.
  • Young Adult (Fiction): Kiss Number 8 by Colleen AF Venable and Ellen T Crenshaw.
  • Young Adult (Nonfiction): King Of King Court by Travis Dandro.
  • Adult (Fiction): The Hard Tomorrow by Eleanor Davis.
  • Adult (Nonfiction): A Fire Story by Brian Fies.
  • Mosaic Award: recognizing a work that serves diverse, underserved audiences, Kiss Number 8 by Venable and Crenshaw.
  • Book Of The Year: Not yet announced as of publication time. I’ve been stalling, hopingn they’d announced before I hit Publish but nothing yet. We’ll update when we know; wouldn’t bet against KN8, though.

    Update to add: White Bird by Palacio.

  Congratulations to all the honorees; it’s all terrific work.

• Hey, need something to do this weekend (and yes, it is about to be the weekend)? Matt Bors has you covered. He’s made two print issues of The Nib free to download for the month of April. Specifically, you can get the Family and Empire issues (the second and third of five so far), with comicky goodness from the likes of Alison Bechdel, Emily Flake, Joe Decie, Andy Warner, Keith Knight, Sarah Glidden, Eleri Harris, Kendra Wells, Nomi Kane, Matt Lubchansky, Jon Rosenberg, Gemma Correll

  Paragraph break! That was getting long!

  … Joey Allison Sayers, Ben Passmore, Niccolo Pizarro, Masha Gessen, Whit Taylor, Ellen T Crenshaw, Kasia Babis, Brian McFadden, and more. If you like them and would like to encourage Bors to make more (not to mention getting in on that awesome Nib magazine ink smell), drop by the store and pick up the physical thing.

Okay, see you on Monday with highlights from the :01 Books virtual con that runs tomorrow. Still time to register if you haven’t! But I did just get an email saying that there’s been a huge response and the conferencing solution might actually max out. In which case, wait for somebody else to leave, check out the livestream on the :01 Facebook page, or wait for the recordings to be released. It’s just like an SDCC panel room that gets too full!

Spam of the day:

Why is your website – fleen.com not featured on Google’s first page for most of your keywords?

It is. Get lost.

Thanks as always to Jon Rosenberg for hosting Fleen, and for doing what’s necessary to get it back up and running when it stops.

Also, thanks are due to a bunch of creators up and down comicdom, who’ve decided that they aren’t going to let something like a pandemic that forces us all inside take down the friendly local comic shop that depends on us all going out. Creators 4 Comics¹ have come together to offer a series of auctions, the proceeds of which will be pooled to support the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (BINC, although I’m not sure how that works out unless it’s in French or something), which is taking applications for direct aid to stores, to disburse starting at the end of the month.

Various creators are running their own auctions of stuff that is, at times, very them. Chip Zdarsky, for instance, is auctioning off an original erotic story starring the auction winner, a situation for which the phrase self insert is both tailor-made and somehow insufficient. Ryan North, by contrast, is offering an original erotic story about Chip Zdarsky writing erotica about the auction winner and if these two keep this up it’ll turn Tinglesque in no time (North is also offering a never-before-seen comic book script). You can find commissions, signed books, TV show set visits, care packages, promo swag collections, logo designs, and more.

If you want to find a constantly-changing possibly current list of everything, that’s here. Then take a run over to Twitter and look for the #creators4comics hashtag and tweet a bid at the person making the offering you like (increments of a dollar, please). At noon EDT on Monday 20 April, bidding closes² — if you’re the high bidder, make your donation to BINC, send the creator your receipt, and get your stuff. Also keep in mind that new auctions will be going up for the next while, so keep checking in case you don’t find anything grabbing you.

Spam of the day:

Made with nanotechnology to filter the air you breathe

Oh for fuck’s … ahem. Making a mask with a very fine mesh to filter out things as small as viruses is not nanotechnology, you enormous, blithering bullshit artiste.

_______________
¹ Not to be confused with Creators For Creators, who are awesome in a different manner.

² Well, officially at least. Creators may run things with different end times, so check with them.

Hey, have the days started to run together for you, rendering all sense of what’s a work day and what’s the weekend meaningless? Cool, cool … but I’ve got a work from home job and the weekend actually still has meaning for me and I am looking forward to this one like you wouldn’t believe. If the same is true for you, or if weekends are whenever you want them to be for the time being, doesn’t matter. I decree that tomorrow is the day for you to kick back and relax a bit. Here’s some info to help you plan what you might do.

• The :01 Books virtual convention, Comics Relief, which is set for Saturday next week¹, has released some more details in the form of a schedule. The event is shaping up to be something like an All :01 All The Time day of panel content, with the schedule and participants now up for your perusal. Fun starts at 11:00am EDT on the 18th (platform TBA), and if you have any questions for the panelists, you can submit them now².
• The Ringo Awards nominations are up, because pandemic or no, there were some great comics last year and it would be a shame not to recognize them. You (yes, you!) can nominate here until 5 June. The winners are presently scheduled to be presented at Baltimore Comic Con on 24 October, but I don’t think they can make any promises in that regard right now. Whether there’s a physical event or not, I’m sure the honorees will be sufficiently thrilled.
• As you may recall, I have noted that Homestar*Runner is a webcomic, and thanks to the machinations of one Mr S Bad, Homestar*Runner is now a webcomic with a free to listen soundtrack of 180 songs, jingles, background music, and other audio miscellania. It doesn’t contain the classic Strong Bad Sings And Other Type Hits (featuring Limozeen), but you can purchase that for a measly ten bucks (American). While you’re waiting for it to be delivered, revel (revel, damn you!) in 20 years worth of random aural delight.

Spam of the day:

Gwenith Paltrow and Kate Hudson have both taken selfies wearing the mask N95

Dude, don’t even. The only thing “Gwenith” ever takes selfies with is a fake-ass pseudoscience doodad — hello, jade vag egg! — that you can conveniently buy from the Goop store for the equivalent of two days labor at minimum wage. N95s ain’t got nearly enough woo to interest her.

_______________
¹ Reminder: today is Friday. Unless you’re reading this on a different day, in which case maybe it’s not. Look at your phone, it’ll tell you what day it is.

² Oh, and everybody that submits questions will be entered into a drawing for a free STACK O’ BOOKS, winner to be announced during the Q&A session (session #6, 4:00pm EDT). 13 years or older, resident of the US to win, good luck everybody.

Is it BINGO if you fill all the boxes? I mean, any random day I teach I hit everything except Cat, Child, and Glasses Reflection before we’re done with introductions. Gemma Correll remains our most insightful observer of everyday absurdities and I’m so happy that The Nib runs her stuff regularly.

• Speaking of The Nib, editor/supremo/guy that keeps it all running when new media funding gets yanked Matt Bors has a new collection of his editorial cartoons that you can obtain via The Nib. Named for maybe his most famous cartoon, We Should Improve Society Somewhat is 184 pages of Bors at his best, and while it’s available via bookstores or comic stores near you, you should consider picking it up directly from The Nib.

  That’s due to the fact it’s pretty much sold out elsewhere¹, but also because The Nib is where you can add on a sketch/sign option, meaning that Bors will touch your copy himself, guaranteed. While you’re there, take a look at the other Improve Society stuff (your book will come with a sticker!) and back issues of The Nib in print; every sale will get turned into paychecks for cartoonists because shelter-in-place pandemic or no, The Nib is founded on the principle that cartoonists get paid for their work.

• The sixth annual Queer Comics Expo was due to occur 16-17 May, hosted as in years past by the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco. Naturally, nobody knows the degree to which travel and congregation will be allowed/advisable in five weeks time, so like other events before (and likely some still to come — looking at you, SDCC), it’s gone virtual.

  Applications are now being accepted for the digital artists alley, streaming content proposals, and merchant participation. If you are looking to exhibit or produce programming, applications are being taken until 11:55pm PDT on Friday, 1 May; acceptances will be on a rolling basis until available slots are filled.

  You might not have thought that a virtual con would need volunteers, but QCE has an application up to compile a list of volunteers for the next physical event, so get your name in early. Finally, admission will be free, but as QCE is in part a fundraiser for CAM, if you attend any part of the remote event (and even if you don’t), please consider dropping some cash CAM’s way.

Spam of the day:

Gibson Gives – Helps Nashville Musicians and Community After Tennessee Tornado

Okay, ordinarily I wouldn’t consider this spam, but the PR shop that sent it to me is abusing Constant Contact’s unsubscribe process. When I click on the unsubscribe link, it claims that the email was sent only to the address that it came from, and when I enter in my email address it claims I’m not part of the mailing list and so can’t be unsubscribed. Pretty crappy behavior, primeprgroup.com, and if I see any more of this bullshit from you I’m ratting you out to Constant Contact. They revoke customer access over nonsense like this.

_______________
¹ Likely due to the disruptions at the distributor level, as the book should have been shipping at just about the exact moment that everything shut down, dammit.

Busy EMT shift on Tuesday night, including my first definite (as in, previous positive test) COVID-19 patient; with the decontamination and sanitization required, everything takes about twice as long as it does normally. I am short on sleep and despairing for the safety of everybody working the healthcare end of this crisis¹, but at least there’s some good stuff happening in Webcomickia:

• Rich Stevens often reacts to uncertainty by throwing himself into merch design and/or giving away stuff. He can’t really get out and work, but he’s got a bunch of envelopes, a bunch of stamps, and a bunch of stickers ’round the house, and figures giving them away will while away some hours. Details here, first come first served.
• Ryan Estrada has had the great good luck to live for a number of years in Busan, South Korea, a country that knows how to treat pandemics — particularly the respiratory kind — seriously. COVID-19 may have delayed his next book (see Monday’s post re: Iron Circus), but it’s about to come out and his co-author/wife, Kim Hyun Sook, have made a comic about their experience making the graphic novel.

  In case you didn’t know, Kim has had experience living through an authoritarian regime, having grown up in South Korea in its military dictatorship period; that time in her life is the basis of Banned Book Club, as she and her friends defied a repressive government to read forbidden books. If the thought of Estrada living in a society that’s functional in the face of pandemic threats isn’t interesting, maybe learning from Kim how to undermine the grip of a jumped-up authoritarian with a cabal of noncompetent sycophant enablers will be useful to you at this time.

• We’re light on specifics at the moment, but :01 Books (a place where everybody there is just the best person) have announced a virtual book festival for a week from Saturday. On 18 April from 11:00am to 5:00pm EDT (8:00am to 2:00pm PDT), creators will come together to show how the comics you (and they) love are made. Info here, register here (they’ll get back to you with further info), and we’ll share details in the coming days as they’re released.

Spam of the day:

Introducing the multi-state concealed carry certification. One ONLINE ONLY Certification is changing the way Americans get multi-state concealed carry permits.

Oh yes, please, all you gunhumpers please give this scammer your money for a piece of paper and try to conceal-carry in the state of New Jersey. No, don’t look up our laws, or how multi-state concealed carry isn’t a thing, just do it and see what happens.

And be sure to do it where there’s lots of cameras, because I can’t wait to watch that video on YouTube.

_______________
¹ And let me be clear, I am doing this once a week, with sufficient PPE; if that ceases to be the case, I will not put my crew in harm’s way because nothing about being an EMT requires you to commit suicide, especially when you’re doing it for free. So for the sake of whatever you hold dear, keep your ass at home, no exceptions, until we’ve got a handle on this shit.

I myself am too spiteful to die in a pandemic that Donald Trump is mismanaging out of a combination of ignorance, stupidity, and malice (no matter what, I will live long enough to shit on his grave and to see his spawn and also Jared sent to prison for the rest of their lives) but others won’t be so indestructible. Stay home and leave the good masks for those doing the work.

As promised, Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin has a remembrance of Alberto Uderzo, co-creator and artist of Astérix.

I am still reeling. Astérix, like Tintin and the Smurfs, were the ubiquitous comics of my childhood, I literally grew up with them; but by the time I was born René Goscinny and Hergé were gone already, I could never mourn them, and once Peyo left us too, I had grown out of the Smurfs. But you never grow out of Astérix.

Uderzo was born in France but named Alberto, since his parents immigrated from Italy, and in that his origins parallel Goscinny’s (born in Paris of a Jewish family from Poland). Indeed, Uderzo is commonly associated with Astérix, with reason, but even more characteristic of his career is his association with Goscinny: their meeting was clearly decisive for both their careers, and from then on they never stopped collaborating. Beginning with a first iteration of Umpah-Pah, which they solicited in the US, without success, but the techniques of the time had them put the English lettering directly on the original plates, where it still remains, including in reprints of that pilot: they can only be read in English. Then various other series with uneven success, among which Luc Junior or Jehan Pistolet. Then a retooled Umpah-Pah, probably his second best-known work (5 books).

And then the pair, with a few other friends, founded Pilote, with Obélix quickly settling on the cover masthead. Imagine if Stan Lee has left Marvel in 1959 along with Jack Kirby to found Dark Horse, and succeeded in making it bigger than the Big Two? This is what Goscinny and his friends did, and much the same way that Hergé was Tintin magazine’s star artist, and Franquin was Spirou magazine’s, Uderzo was Pilote‘s.

And as such, while Astérix was born in the first issue of Pilote, in there Uderzo also worked on Tanguy et Laverdure, this time on a scenario from Jean-Michel Charlier and in a more realistic style for which he is less known, and that’s too bad, because his work is just as remarkable there than it is in Astérix. But the success of Pilote, and then of Astérix within Pilote, led the pair to drop Umpah-Pah (which they were creating for Tintin magazine), and led Uderzo to relinquish drawing duties on Tanguy et Laverdure to Jijé. From then on, Uderzo would work on Astérix and only Astérix, with the success for which he is now known worldwide.

I have never seen his work prior to his collaboration with Goscinny, but even after they started working together his style was still evolving: at the beginning of Jehan Pistolet for instance he drew scenes and characters with dense strokes, but later on in Jehan Pistolet he evolved to a very cartoonish style, reminiscent of Disney. While far from Hergé’s ligne claire, the style he settled on can’t really be tied to the Marcinelle school either: while he reported being influenced by US artists, in many ways he cleared his own path.

A style which appears deceivingly simple. It is exceedingly readable and thus instrumental to Astérix’ all-ages appeal: even if you barely understand what is going on you can easily follow along, which better allows you to read them again later, where Goscinny’s writing picks up the slack and reveals additional layers of meaning. And yet when looking more closely you can see how he adds emphasis lines, varies lines width, suggests volumes, etc. without it being salient.

But it wasn’t just the style. When Asterix chez les Pictes, the first book drawn by Didier Conrad, was about to come out Le Monde ran a feature telling how Uderzo initially looked only for a writer for resuming the series without him, as he thought he already had the drawing talent in house: Frédéric Mébarki, who was already punctually filling in for the aging master, seamlessly so. But when it came time to create a full book, no one was satisfied with his “graphical narration”, Mébarki most of all: he had to drop the project, and another search had to be made, this time for an artist.

He was also the last of his generation, of those comics creators of the French-Belgian tradition who broke out in the 50s. Goscinny, Charlier, Delporte, Jijé, Franquin, Peyo, Greg, Morris, Roba, Giraud, are all gone, and so with Uderzo died the last witness to a lot of the history of comics.

It is clear the success of Astérix owes a lot to the work of Albert Uderzo. In the last Tintin book that Hergé completed, Tintin and the Picaros, the last pages occur during a carnival, and while most of the costumes are of public domain characters (harlequin, giant heads, etc.), you can find a Mickey, a Donald … and an Asterix costume. A passing of the guard, in a way.

What to read of Uderzo?

• Umpah-pah the Redskin (remember it was the 50s, and is best thought as alternate history anyway): the first part of the Umpah-pah series; most of what will be in Astérix is there already.
• Tanguy et Laverdure: any of the books he drew in this series, just so you can see what he is capable of in a more realistic style as well.
• Asterix and Cleopatra: clearly inspired by/spoofing the Mankiewicz movie (the original cover boasted of the 67 liters of beer, among other resources, necessary for the book’s creation), the sense of scale is impressive.
• Asterix the Legionary: How many kinds of Roman legionaries do you think he can draw? More than you think.
• Asterix in Britain: A crazy rugby game? Of course he can do that.
• Asterix and the Roman Agent: The strained friendships in this one are incredibly represented.
  (note that Uderzo was at his best when Goscinny wrote for him. In particular, everyone would rather forget the last book he created alone)

Finally, Augie De Blieck Jr of Pipeline Comics has a nice roundup of tributes, but my favorite has to be Eudes’:

Halt Gauls! On order of Coronavirus, prefect of Gaul, you are to provide me your travel certificate.
A certificate … These Romans are crazy.

Mashing news events is a dicey proposition, doubly so when trying to pay tribute to a departed person, but here it works perfectly. Especially as the lockdown in France restricts attendance of funeral services to … 20 people. And obviously forbids any other tribute event or ceremony from taking place, as there doubtlessly would have been for such a celebrity death. My thoughts go to Uderzo’s family who have to mourn him in these constrained times.

Spam of the day:
Spammers don’t get to share the day with Uderzo.

And we’ll get to that in a moment. In the meantime, I trust you’ve seen that MICE has postponed its exhibitor registration, to be re-evaluated in June, that BOOM! Studios has made Hope Larson’s first Goldie Vance graphic novel free to read, and Diamond (a blight on comics in general) has announced it’s not going to be doing anything for a while. Having a monopoly on distribution in the comics direct market is an awesome idea, you guys.

That one story today, thought? We lost a giant in the world of comics. Albert Uderzo, illustrator and co-creator (with René Goscinny¹) of Astérix, died at the age of 92. It was unrelated to the current global crisis, not that there’s a good time or way to die, but reports are that he died in his sleep of a heart attack after feeling tired for a couple weeks. In the grand scheme of things, I’d be happy to have that one. Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeapin is working on a suitable remembrance, which we will have in the next day or two.

But while Uderzo’s death was unexpected, the ongoing effects of the novel coronavirus are not, and FSFCPL has some words from our European desk about how the [web]comics scene over there is reacting.

In these times of lockdown it seems that publishers left and right are dropping digital comics to read for free, but in that they are merely following in the footsteps of webcartoonists, who have already moved on from that to the next thing: creating works where you can contribute. Yes, you.

• Many creators have posted the inked layer for comics plates or illustrations, for everyone to color; not particularly unexpected, but this is a classic exercise and is worth a mention. We can report that Riad Sattouf, Pénélope Bagieu, Marie Boiseau, Norbert, Thorn (twice), Fabien Lambert, Marion Barraud, Timothy Hannem (where you can also look for the hidden 20 cats), Alice Des where you can also look for some objects — instructions only in French, sorry), Marion Poinsot, Julie Gore et Eric Wantiez, Aurélien Fernandez, and Sandrine Deloffre are doing so (careful, some of these links may expire shortly).
• Let us stay with Deloffre a bit longer: those are taken from her book called Les Cartes de Désavoeux, which I will roughly translate as Ill-Wishing Cards. Kind of a mirror universe Hallmark or American Greetings, though omitting any IP, thankfully. And she has posted the instructions on how you can do your own, which I will translate as best as I can manage:
  1. Trace a round shape with a round object (e.g. glass, soccer ball, the cap of a Pringles can, swimming pool, …)
  2. Define a goal: to whom? Why? How much do you care about this person? Do you have means of defense in the event of an aggression?
  3. Settle on a pattern an apply it on the outer surface of the previously traced round shape (e.g. flowers, stars, golden statues representing Vercingétorix, penis wearing a sombrero …)
  4. Settle on a message combining subtlety and realism and inscribe it upon the center of the circle while applying yourself. Don’t hesitate to overdo it.
  5. Gift the ill-wishing card to someone who deserves it. (e.g. nobody, because nobody deserves this card, because everyone walks in isolation in this long putrid and foul-smelling sewer we call life, we walk alone and we will die alone, eaten up by our cats, except if we’re allergic).
• On the initiative of Bagieu, an idea by Oscar Barda, critical contributions by Deloffre, and a template by Hannem, the Coronamaison (translated hastag #coronahome was suggested by Moemai, should you need one) was born. The prompt: you draw the house floor along with its decoration/companions/pets/food/windows where you would want to be locked down, ideally.

  It kind of exploded, with #coronamaison having now thousands of hits on Instagram, though I think they are best seen on Twitter, where they remain (mostly) uncropped; alternately, Hammen is retweeting pretty much all of them. Of particular notice to your correspondent are Obion’s), Boulet’s, Luppi’s, Moemai’s, Maitre et Talons’, Jakuboy’s, Margaux Saltel’s, and of course Bagieu’s, Deloffre’s, Hannem’s, and Barda’s.

• Meanwhile, Maliki offers a dialogue-free version of her latest strip, for you to represent what your timeline is looking like in these days of lockdown (and yes, Animal Crossing vs Doom has already been done).
• Every day, Lewis Trondheim proposes a challenge where he posts the first three panels of a strip he just created, to see if you can guess the punchline in the fourth panel; the challenge being that your response must be in the form of a drawn panel, even badly. Be sure to follow him closely, as some have managed to find the solution in 10 mere minutes.
• Meanwhile, Boulet proposes a game he co-created with his goddaughter Maya, where the game is mostly a pretext to draw hybrids; many creations can be seen in response to his tweet. Note that they need not be as elaborate as his barbarian Slowbro.
• And Erwann Surcouf, on his side, proposes the randomized comic story generator he created for Spirou magazine a while back; no English version of the instructions appears to be available, unfortunately.
• We complete by a digression though French law Twitter, where Solinette proposes we liven up the form where we French must attest for ourselves the business we have for going outside our home (e.g. buy basic necessity goods or bring out the pet), and that many of us (your correspondent included) have to fully copy by hand, for lack of a printer at home. Every day: they’re dated. Yes, it’s France, of course we have to have bureaucracy even between one and oneself.
• Still in French law Twitter, Maitre et Talons encourages children to draw in support of healthcare professionals to thank them like she or Deloffre do. She also wants you to send her photos so she can draw herself in them.

And remember: wash your hands, sneeze and cough in your elbow pit, practice social distancing, and for the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s sake, stay at home. You have more than enough to keep yourself busy now.

Fleen, as always, thanks M Lebeapin for his reportage.

Spam of the day:

It looks like you’ve misspelled the word “remeniscences” on your website. I thought you would like to know :)

Nobody tell her.

_______________
¹ Who died more than 40 years ago. For that matter, Uderzo retired nearly a decade ago, turning over writing and art to Jean-Yves Ferri and Didier Conrad, respectively.