In that the world is still in the parallel grips of coronavirus and stupidity, the greatest concentration of the latter coming from the Oval Office and also certain Senate offices. Last week setting Twitter (and every other form of social media) to the side was a sanity saver, but I’m back and suffering to bring you the webcomics deets, so I hope you appreciate it, you magnificent bastards.

• Item! Longtime Fleen fave A Girl And Her Fed wrapped up Act 2 of the decade-plus story on Friday, and today marks the start of Act 3, featuring a time jump (12 years) and a new artist. Ale Presser takes over from creator KB Spangler, who will stay on writing duties. Presser’s also recently defended her dissertation (on webcomics!) and given birth, so this is an exciting time for all involved. Still to be determined is if our current pandemic times end up in the backstory of Spangler’s near-future exploration of civil rights, information, and power.
• Item! SPX opened the table lottery today, under the theory that we’ll be able to move around again by September. This reminds me — the Hotel Rodeo for SDCC (typically late April) is going to be an act of supreme optimism. If you feel like rolling the SPX dice, lottery closes on 3 April.
• Item! Gene Yang took his virtual book tour for Dragon Hoops to the radio. Okay, he would have done that anyway, but check out the interview with NPR’s Petra Mayer (a friend of comics if ever there was one).
• Item! The list of new entertainment to consume via computer while staying the hell home continues to grow. Today, please enjoy Emily Carroll’s short comic, Beneath The Dead Oak Tree, free for download thanks to ShortBox (and certainly with Ms Carroll’s blessing) at Gumroad. If that’s not enough, Strong Bad has some earworms for you about staying safe and distant and uninfected.
• Item! Mandatory shutdowns have hit the heart of Webcomickia, with Topato Potato’s personal armor of poison judged insufficient by the government of Massachusetts to keep the package wranglers safe. Your orders will be sent once it’s safe to do so, and any new orders you want to send in will keep both TopatoCo and the many individual creators they enable solvent in these trying times. Naturally, if you want to change or cancel anything, they will do their best to accommodate. In the meantime, please consider the digital offerings that Topato, Sheriff Pony, Jeffrey, Talahassee, Paperklip, Lucid John, Weedmaster P, and the rest of the crowd would be happy to see sold to you.
• Item! Finally, Abby Howard is a creator that we at Fleen really, really like. And she’s launching a Kickstarter to make a plush version of her real-life kitty, Spoons. Spoons (The Cat) The Plush will capture that wide-eyed — possibly high as balls — feline’s countenance, including the possibility of getting a 100% certified haunted version of the plush.

  There’s also catsonas for you, humansonas for your cat (she will draw your cat like the cats from Cats; no word how she feels about the #buttholecut), and Polaroid photos of the real Spoons. Campaign runs through 22 April and with any luck production will fall in behind the worst of the pandemic shutdowns, slowdowns, and cooldowns. It’s a perfectly-timed opportunity for you to support a creator now, as so many other opportunities are impacted by the novel coronavirus. Do it for Spoons.

Spam of the day:

Scientists: Tinnitus Has Nothing To Do With Your Ears

Oh, really? So that’s why pressure changes when my ears are clogged have always caused ringing, with clear complaints on my part going back to the age of seven? And that’s why flying pretty much guarantees at least 24 hours of ringing that reaches distraction levels? Nothing to do with my ears at all. Right.

The news continues apace, so let’s get that out of the way.

• TCAF pulled the plug today, so there will be no show in 2020. Anticipating questions about postponement, the organizers noted the extreme uncertainty about when travel and crowd guidances will be lifted, and the fact that it would take about five months to make everything start up again from a pause. As noted in their statement, the cancellation was the only ethical path left open to them.
• But on the plus side, nerdpop siblings Aubrey Turner and Laser Malena-Webber (aka The Doubleclicks) are offering up some sunshine and distraction — they’ve got a new album they’re Kickstarting, and it’s a musical. Desribed as Little Shop Of Horrors meets R2-D2, Teaching A Robot To Love sounds like both the most Doubleclicks thing ever, and a sore needed balm. Cabin fever (and I once shared a cabin with both of them at Comics Camp) is best fought with a cello, a ukulele, and a keyboard that goes meow meow meow.
• Noelle Stevenson has been very damn busy for her entire career. Nimona’s movie adaptation may or may not be a casualty of the Disney/Fox acquisition and/or COVID-19 disrupting production on everything, but the book is still over there on your bookshelf¹ and she’s still a National Book Award nominee because of it. Not just a National Book Award nominee, but the third in history for graphic work, and the youngest nominee in the history of the awards.

  And a stack of Eisners and Harveys. And the ongoing success of Lumberjanes, which she co-created. And acclaim she’s gotten for the reboot of She-Ra. That’s a damn lot ask of somebody, going from groundbreaking success to groundbreakinger success without a pause. It would lead in anybody to a fear of failure, or even standing still. In those terms, it’s kind of easy to see why so many child stars turn out so badly, and why the best child star outcome of all time is probably Peter Ostrum².

  The danger of tying yourself to your successes is a recurring theme in The Fire Never Goes Out: A Memoir In Pictures, Stevenson’s new memoir (consisting of existing cartoons and illustrations and year-end summaries from social media, some expanded), a diary of sorts covering the years 2011 to 2019; being born on 31 December, the end of the calendar year is a natural time of reflection for Stevenson. She grows from a teenager unsure of her sexuality to a Hollywood showrunner married to the love of her life, but many — oh, so many — of the drawings she does of herself over that time feature a literal hole in the middle of her body or burning flames threatening to consume her or diamondlike crystal erupting from her heart to protect her.

  The end of the book clearly states that Stevenson avoided proper care for herself and her mental health for a long time, and that proper psychiatric care and medication have made a tremendous improvement — her flame is now gentle and warming — but the message I found is that in addition to mental health, Stevenson’s journey also must be read as an indictment of how we (I’m talking society here) treat young women.

  It starts early in the book with a discussion of female bodies, and the ones you see in public and the ones you don’t; it’s art school and figure drawing and being exposed to naked bodies of all sizes and shapes — none like the fashion models placed before us — and all of them being beautiful³ that’s the first hint. Those few pages, that corner turned in Stevenson’s mind reminded me so very much of the painful and necessary Unhealthy by Abby Howard and Sarah Winifred Searle.

  I thought about how Howard and Searle each went undiagnosed with mental illness because doctors didn’t consider them as having anything more important than unacceptable bodies. Stevenson, during art school, tells her mother she thinks she might be bipolar but is dismissed. There’s nothing wrong with you except you _____ is the message young women (and before that, girls) get from nearly everywhere. Except you

    don’t have the right clothes
        don’t have the right makeup
            aren’t sexy enough
                like the wrong right things
                    are too sexy
                        are dumb
                            are too smart

  The impossibility of conforming to an unachievable ideal leads to actual problems being dismissed. Later, running a show and trying to do everything herself and take care of everybody and make it all perfect and if she makes a mistake it’ll be her fault and they’ll be right she’s a fraud agh I just need to try harder Stevenson is on the verge of falling into the third trap laid for young women (and girls, and women no longer young): that of the difficult woman, who
    can’t take the pressure
        can’t take a joke
            should be nicer
                should be tougher
                    is too angry
                        is too weak
                            isn’t cut out for being in charge

  It’s a societal mindset that doesn’t let girls, young women, no longer young women (who also are now useless because they aren’t hot anymore) fail, learn, pick up, and go on again. Stevenson finally sees it for what it is⁴:

  here’s what they don’t tell you about climbing mountains
  almost everyone who dies dies on the way down.

  the summit, as much as you want it, is only the halfway point.

  and night will be here soon, and there will be no way to go but down, and you will be so tired.

  It’s something we need to teach everybody, but especially girls, young women, women who are no longer young. Stevenson came to the realization at a breaking point:

  you have broken but you will not stay broken.

  It turns out there can be freedom in the falling, and strength in the breaking.

  And finally … I sought out help.

  It’s okay to ask for help. It’s okay to not be able to do everything yourself. Partnerships and collectives are stronger than any individual. It’s what we need to tell girls, and young women, and women who are no longer young and boys to keep them from absorbing the toxic aspects that have been accepted as gender roles forever.

  You needn’t be diamond-hard to protect yourself. You can be A SHARK AAHHH, but remember how Nimona ends (uhh, spoiler): You don’t have to be alone; asking for help is better. As a young woman, Stevenson knew that, but it took time to sink in. By sharing her experience, maybe others won’t have journeys that are as bumpy.

  The Fire Never Goes Out released on 3 March, and is available in bookstores everywhere. Read it, and put it in front of everybody you know.

Spam of the day:

Its about time – a cure for herpes that works fast

I might be more convinced about your secret, miracle cure for herpes if there were any indication in your email that you knew even one thing about herpes.

_______________
¹ At least it should be; it’s great. True story, I spend a lot of time proselytizing comics and graphic novels to people I know. One night on EMS duty a couple of years ago the new guy on the crew sat down in the lounge with the rest of us and pulled out a book to read and it was Nimona. He’s not a comic guy, he didn’t jump from there to other comics, but something about it caught his eye at the library and he was hooked. Stevenson’s work has that effect on people who aren’t comic people.

² Charlie Bucket in Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory, which remains his sole acting credit. He declined an offer of a three-movie contract so that he would have the freedom to choose roles, and decided he didn’t like acting as much as he liked horses. He became and remains to this day a veterinarian.

³ I find it utterly unsurprising that the Princesses Of Power on the new She-Ra are varied in body shape, and that screaming man-children have decided that She-Ra and the other princesses no longer being conventionally sexy on a show for children is the worst insult they could have received in their lives. I really hate screaming man-children.

⁴ Note that these quotes come partly from illustration captions, and partly from the accompanying text; the captions do not feature capitals at the starts of sentences or complete punctuation. I’ve tried to preserve the original presentation as much as possible.

It’s just coming too fast at us. Here’s what we’ve got:

• TCAF and VanCAF are, for now, not cancelled or postponed; they’re a bit further out than other events and we may have a better idea in a few weeks what the finally-got-their-ass-in-gear actions being taken now have accomplished. From the combined statement:
  

  The health and the well-being of everyone involved is our paramount concern. We are closely monitoring updates from Centres of Disease Control, Emergency Management Agencies, the Public Health Agency of Canada, local health agencies, and other official sources for the latest risk assessment. At the time of writing (March 11, 2020), public health officials in Canada have assessed that the risk of COVID-19 transmission remains low, and they have specifically not requested that events be cancelled. We encourage individuals to seek direct updates from public health officials going forward. Regular updates from the Public Health Agency of Canada are being posted on their official website.

  We encourage creators to make the best choices for themselves, and weigh the pros and cons of any actions. If exhibitors at either show wish to cancel their participation, they may do so and receive a refund of table fees. We only ask that exhibitors please contact the appropriate email address (info@vancaf.com or registration@torontocomics.com) as soon as possible to allow us to open up space on our waitlist. If you are exhibiting but unsure of your travel arrangements, please plan accordingly and book flexible travel options that will allow you to cancel or postpone with minimal financial penalty.

  Closing mass gatherings that are happening now and for the next few weeks is the best we can do, and to quote an epidemiologist I saw online today, now is the absolute most uncertain time about what’s going to happen next; a month ago or a month from now, the effects of current actions would have been/will be much more predictable. One day at a time, folks.

• You know what you don’t need to venture out into the world to get? Webcomics. Gene Luen Yang has had to 86 his book tour for Dragon Hoops (proper review coming soon), so he’s doing one virtually on The Grams. Here’s the talk about the coach that inspired him to make the book, here’s a book trailer, here’s Yang learning the history of basketball, and the latest is about athletes, superheros, and writing for DC. The two most recent have reader questions, and Yang wants you not only to submit your own questions, but also tell him what cosplay to draw you in. He’s a rad guy.
• More webcomics! John Allison may be on pause from the Tackleverse at the moment (at least until the Charlotte Grote miniseries hits comic shops next week), but he’s doing an epilogue to his last comic series — the very, very good Steeple — online for the next bit. If you didn’t read Steeple, a) what’s wrong with you, and 2) it’s the story of Billie, a young priest who finds herself in a remote seaside town where the local Satanists are only the fourth or fifth biggest challenge to her faith. It’s really good. You can get the extra comics that will run in the back of the collected trade (out in May) starting here, and a successor series, The Silvery Moon, will run here through summer. MWF updates, first four up now.
• For those new to the working away from all humans deal, Beth Barnett is doing a diary comic on social distancing, which is the term you want to search for on her Twitterfeed. If you enjoy it (you will), drop her some thanks, compare notes on lifting, or (if you’re brave and have time) inquire as to her feelings on the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Oh, and visit her store! Good stuff there.

Spam of the day:

Your Card has been temporarily suspended.

Call me suspicious, but I kiiiinda doubt that American Express would be emailing me from @wecome.xjez.com. Also, if you’re going to copy the text from an actual AmEx email that says Your account information is included above to help you recognize this as a customer care e-mail from American Express, you maybe might want to include something that looks like account information? Even just a name and a fake first-and-last digits card number? Oh, and you might want to get rid of the boilerplate text that says We kindly ask you not to reply to this e-mail but instead contact us via Customer Care. You really suck at this.

We’re going to be seeing a lot more of these:

It is with the safety and well-being of our community that we have made the difficult decision to reschedule the MoCCA Arts Festival. We are currently working with Metropolitan West to find a suitable replacement date.

Now here’s the important part, because it looks like we aren’t going to get coherent guidance from the White House:

While New York is not officially calling for events of large gatherings to be canceled, many have been and we do not know what the next few weeks will entail. We recognize the amount of work and finances our exhibitors put into their tables and are trying to minimize the burden on them.

The curve-flattening is going to be on thousands of individual entities making decisions like this one. It’s going to get more widespread, and quickly, before it starts to ease.

In the meantime, we have made the decision to move forward and continue to judge the Awards of Excellence. In addition to the cash prize and Wacom tablets for Gold and Silver medalists, the Society will feature the award winners in an exhibition at the onsite Gallery we build at MoCCA Fest.

And there’s going to be a lot more of this at-a-distance events. Good luck to everybody under consideration for the Awards of Excellence, hope that the cash and tablets help you continue to create and sustain your career as we all figure out what the next howevermany months are going to look like. For example, a zine that was to debut at ECCC this weekend is now becoming available online, with print to be available in the near future. Gentlesentients, I give you Deep Space Zine.

In the meantime, pretend you’re T-Rex and only have stubby, vestigal pokin’ sticks:

Spam of the day:

We can put your website on 1st page of Google to drive relevant traffic to your site.

Searching “fleen” puts us at the second entry on page one (behind a bullshit entry at Urban Dictionary) and searching for “webcomics blog” has three separate results that point to us. So there.

That would be two different fallen; the first would be Michael Payne of which more was said in the Breaking News Bulletin earlier today. The second would be the latest round of cancellations, of which there are two to mention at the moment:

• You may have noticed that Matt Inman and his compatriots in the Exploding Kittens empire have been planning a boardgame convention in Portland, known as Burning Cat, for the weekend of 16-17 May. Lots of Inmanian weirdness planned — enormous cards to play EK with, a giant vending machine shaped like a fuzzy cat, a two-story tall firebreathing cat monster — and guests including Bill Amend and Sarah Andersen.

  Yeah, PDX, which is kind of right next to one or two of the (as of this writing, based on latest information) worst-hit hotspots of COVID-19&sup2. I didn’t see any estimates of attendance, but any large gathering that involves widespread travel at this point is probably a bad idea; this afternoon, Inman, et al, called it off and the first ever/second annual Burning Cat will be next year. Kudos to them to making it all simple — everybody is fully refunded, this year’s ticket holders will be contacted for early bird purchase next year, pretty much the same deal with exhibitors. That’s how you do it.

• Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin dropped an update via comment after hours on Friday:
  

  Not sure that is worth a full correspondent dispatch, but as a complement I can report that Paris Manga, which was to take place this weekend, has simply been cancelled, among many other events in March. Indeed, I don’t know how the authorities are managing the situation on your side of the Atlantic, but on this side the French government has prohibited all events totaling more than 5000 people in a closed space. Application was swift, too: the decision was taken Saturday, February 29th, and as early as Sunday some events had to adapt (e.g. Japan Tours Festival only accepted attendees who had bought their tickets in advance, in order to ensure they would remain under the gauge), or in some cases simply not reopen on Sunday. It goes without saying many creators here are financially affected as well.

  The answer to how authorities are handling the novel coronavirus is, bluntly, not well. Cancellations are left to local discretion and I’ve not seen anything resembling a guidance as to permissible crowd size². Things are happening at the last minute, as a general rule. For example, my wife is in the final semester of her return to university and due to graduate in May; today we got a postcard talking about the time and location of the commencement ceremony, and I imagine literally nobody has any idea if it will actually happen.

• Also unknown: MoCCA Fest, 4-5 April at Metropolitan West in Manhattan. While the bulk of confirmed cases in New York have been in Westchester County and associated with a single individual, and Manhattan is (as of this writing, etc) sporting approximately 1 confirmed case per half million residents, you never know what could happen in the four weeks. Until we at Fleen hear that it’s nixed, we’re going to report on planned goings-on, including guests and exhibitors, in the coming weeks.

  Just one caveat — last year’s exhibitor list was severely underpopulated, as it turned out the exhibitors had to supply info directly and many apparently didn’t know. If you’ve got a table, be sure supply your info so we can find you.

• Helping to mitigate even in the face of events getting called off: C Spike Trotman has declared a virtual event will take place with everybody at home, where you can touch your own face (wash your hands first) or shake hands with your roomies (wash your hands first) to your heart’s content. PajamaCon:³
  

  We’re planning three days of livestreams on the Pajama Con Twitch channel March 13th–15th, 12pm–6pm CST. The livestreams will be like a talk show or live podcast where we feature creators who also had to cancel their ECCC appearances. Joining us so far will be Steve Leiber, Chris Roberson, Lin Visel, Genue Revuelta, C Spike Trotman, Kate Leth, and we’d love to invite more. We’ll also be promoting on the Iron Circus Twitter account using the #pajamacon2020 hashtag, and will update this page with more information as our plans come together.

  We plan to announce a schedule by Wednesday, March 11th, so that is the due-date to apply!

  So, get on that. And, as Spike points out, there are other convention-alternatives, including #VVSN Very Very Shopping Network and Oni Press #ECCC2020 Pop Up Store, plus I’ve seen a guerrilla PDX comics get-together distributed event planned for this weekend, with creators taking four-hour blocks at retailers around town. No fees for exhibitors or attendees to PDX Pop Up Con, but get your application in by end of day tomorrow for possible inclusion on 14-15 March.

• Finally, if you’re a friend of Freddave Kellett-Schroeder, you should be checking your email. Just sayin’.

Spam of the day:

I don’t want to scare you….
But I do want to wake you up to the fact that corona could be the most dangerous epidemic this country has seen since it started.

Fuck on off out of here with that shit. You don’t care about a godsdamned thing except separating fearful people from their money. Also, you apparently have never heard of smallpox, you fucking parasitoid.

_______________
¹ Namely, Seattle and San Francisco. Of course, it’s likely that everywhere has far more cases that have been reported due to the slow rollout and insufficient numbers of tests.

At this point we’re probably better off skipping testing for anybody that’s not symptomatic except for healthcare workers (don’t want to spread it, but don’t want to require self-quarantine and removal from duty on the basis of a casual contact that didn’t take) and so we may never know the true extent.

I’ll tell you this, though — it’s at least two orders of magnitude of diagnosable cases than the approximately 600 that have been test-confirmed in the country so far.

² And as an EMT, I’m getting guidances from both the CDC and the New Jersey state Department of Health, in addition to that of the local hospitals we deal with.

³ Originally announced as ComfyCon, but it was pointed out that’s not a generic term, but rather a specific name used by Danielle Corsetto and her convention wife Randy Milholland for their con-from-home, and has been since 2014. Spike immediately and graciously apologized for the “con” fusion and rebranded.

From Andrew Rothery (who you may remember from here) approximately 20 minutes ago:

After fifteen years, one week, and a day, Michael Payne has chosen to bring his webcomic Daily Grind to a close. A special farewell update went up on Monday, and The Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge is officially over as of Tuesday, March 10th. Andrew Rothery, whose strip TRU-Life Adventures happens to turn nineteen on Thursday, March 12th, is the winner.

Cue the Robert Downey Jr. video clips.

A moment of silence, if you will, for the last of the valiant competitors. Ave.

Update to add: Just saw that Payne commented to this effect two days ago, making Fleen officially the breaking source of this news. Go, us.

• I am speaking, obvs, of David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™ ^etc)’s new comic project which turns out not to be Genesis II or Planet Earth. Pity. From Planet Of Hats:
  

  Now, I am not committing to a regular weekly update for this. I’m not planning regular updates at all. For now, I’m going to squeeze in some drawing of new strips when I have time — I anticipate roughly once a month or so. If that changes, I’ll let you know.

  But that said, yes, we’re off on a brand new continuing mission!

  Encounter At Farpoint is a double episode, so I’ve split it into two comics. The second half will be along in a month or so.

  At the rate of one episode per month or so, it’ll be roughly four years before we get to the good stretch at the start of Season 3; on the other hand, it also means we have roughly until November of 2023 before we have to deal with the horror that is Planet Of Space Irish, so that’s okay. If you’re looking for decent episodes, check in around April next year, November next year, February 2022, or September 2022.

  For the best episode ever¹, you’ll have to wait until Summer 2030, unless Morgan-Mar steps up the pace, abandons the project, or we are reduced to a post-atomic horror not unlike that depicted in this month’s featured episode. Fun!

• Side note: This is normally when I’d be telling you who all would be at Em City, but a) I’d have to tell you about all the people that opted to sit this one out because of the novel coronavirus prevalence in Seatte, and 2) earlier this afternoon Reed!POP announced they’re postponing:
  

  We have been closely monitoring the situation around the COVID-19 virus in Seattle, and, after many hours of conversation internally and consultation with local government officials and the tourism bureau, we have decided to move next week’s Emerald City Comic Con to Summer 2020 with date and detail announcement forthcoming.

  I think this is probably the right decision, particularly given the financial hit so many creators were going to take whether they went (to diminished crowds and spending potential) or not (having to eat the costs of hotel and booth cancellations).

  To all of our fans – you will receive a refund on your tickets, no further action is needed on your part. Due to the volume, we expect you will receive your refund in 30 days. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

  That’s good, although I hope they offer the possibility of people keeping their badges for the reschedule date or otherwise offer them to the existing badgeholders first.

  Also, I notice nothing in there about exhibitors and booth costs being refunded; it makes a certain amount of sense to assume that they’d want back in at the later date, but if there’s a conflict, they shouldn’t be penalized. People clear their schedules to exhibit at ECCC, and if the new date is one they can’t make, they deserve a refund on the booth and they shouldn’t have to wait potentially months to determine if they can’t make the new dates. I’d really like to see a statement that all booth costs are being refunded now, but as soon as new dates are decided, creators will have an appropriate amount of time — say, 10-14 days — to plunk down the money to get the same booth back.

  Fleen wishes the best to all the creators who made a difficult decision (and reminds you — lots of airlines started allowing ticket cancellations without penalty in the past couple of days; if you were told to eat a penalty before, ask again), especially those who now have to scramble to figure out where an expected chunk of income will come from. If you’ve got a favorite creator, check out their store.

Spam of the day:

On February 11, 2019, Transformco purchased substantially all of the Sears Holdings assets*. As part of that sale, Transformco acquired Sears Holdings’ customer information, including personally identifiable information.

Turns out this is actually legit, but damn if Transformco didn’t set off my bullshit detector for sounding like the fakest-ass name of 2020. Weird.

_______________
¹ You may have your own opinion on this, but have that discussion elsewhere. This was TNG’s finest hour.

Updates to two things that happened yesterday:

• Matt Lubchansky, new Herblock Foundation Prize Finalist, appeared in the pinnacle of sort-of pop culture fame — as the clue in a crossword puzzle. It looks like USA Today releases its puzzles outside of the paper on at least a one day delay, and I gotta warn you that it’s a crappy piece of webpage programming¹, but still: from 1 March 2020 onwards, Lubchansky will be known as Matt “17 Across” Lubchansky, and I can hardly think of a better nickname. Whatever the timing, clearly The Powers That Be are aware of Lubchansky’s relevance and are adjusting the culture in response.
• Warren’s out. I really thought she’d stay in until the next debate and unleash her wrath on Biden; she’s still gotta be nursing a grudge for when he gutted the bankruptcy reform process she’d spearheaded. I also really hope that the final debate rules will allow for candidates to tag in a partner, on account of Screamy Orange Grandpa would be absolutely dismantled in record time by a Warren with no restrictions and out of fucks to give.

  Regardless of what else happens, Sanders has a platform that is substantially the same as Warren², and he’s got my support, and there’s still time to email Rosemary to donate to Sanders and get amazing art simultaneously.

Spam of the day:

Prime Web Traffic 2764 Pleasant Road Bld APMB # 934 Fort Mill SC 29708

That address is literally a mail drop. Not giving me a lot of confidence here, spammer.

_______________
¹ At least in my Chromium-based brower; I’m still waiting for it to load the puzzle from Sunday so I can type in M A T T. Might be better in Firefox?

² I find myself largely in agreement with the logic of one Mr David Malki ! as to the abilities/outcomes of Warren v Bernie, but coming to a different conclusion. Namely, that she is more likely to get stuff done than Bernie, but that he is more ambitious in his goals; he concluded that you have to shoot for the less likely, but more transformative outcome and I think you need to grab improvements wherever possible. Or, to put it another way, I hope like hell that Bernie actually can enact his priorities by means of mobilizing mass support, but institutional power has done a damn effective job of ignoring the shit out of mobilized mass support as long as I’ve been alive.

I also think that Wall Street and your average billionaire regard Warren as more of an existential threat than Bernie, in that they’ve largely ignored him for his career, and they fought her tooth and nail at least twice before she was even elected.

With any luck, she’ll lead a party coup to replace the utterly worthless Chuck Schumer as Senate {at least Minority, please please please Majority} Leader.

Namely, wash your hands a lot (hot water, plenty of soap and water), don’t touch your face, cover your coughs and sneezes. You know, all the stuff you’re supposed to do in cold season, flu season, and every other season because we are trying to have a godsdamned society you filthy animals.

Yes, I was talking to you. As long as I ride on an ambulance for free, I get to remind y’all to please do your part to not spread the contagion that may kill me. Also, I write about webcomics and have some things to point you towards:

• The Herblock Foundation, which celebrates and promotes the work of the legendary political cartoonist, has announced the winner and finalist of their annual prize for excellence in editorial cartooning. The winner was Michael de Adder of New Brunswick, Canada, who you may recall was entirely coincidentally laid off about two days after running this cartoon.

  The finalist was webcomics’ own Matt Lubchansky, whose work is frequently seen at The Nib, where they are the associate editor and an integral part of the process of producing the finest in nonfiction cartooning today. As a side note, Chef José Andrés was chosen to present a lecture on behalf of the Foundation. Curiously, all three of the honorees are famously willing to get up the nose of Screamy Orange Grandpa, and good on them for it.

• As long as we’re speaking of presidential politics, there’s an opportunity to mix some primo art acquisition with political action. Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, who we at Fleen may have mentioned on some few occasions, is offering up original pencil pages from Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me (we at Fleen love that book), with all proceeds going to the Bernie Sanders campaign.

  Full disclosure: unless she drops out, I’m supporting Elizabeth Warren; as far as platforms go, hers and Bernie’s are distinguishable only in degree, and more similar than any other that have been proposed. In terms of what they can actually get accomplished, I think the ultimate legislation that either can expect to enact (with Bernie starting further along and inevitably having to negotiate towards the middle, and Warren starting closer to where either would end up anyway) would be pretty much indistinguishable.

  I’m supporting Warren because I think she has a better chance of executing on her plans¹, but if she decides to drop out I’ll vote for Sanders gladly². I’ve given money to Warren and likely will again, I don’t feel that also giving to Bernie is a contradiction. It’s not like I’ll have any chance to really affect the nomination, seeing as how New Jersey is in the last tranche of states to vote, on 2 June.

  Now grab your copy of Laura Dean, pick out your favorite page(s), and don’t you dare pick any that I did.

Spam of the day:

Solar fountain pump with 4 Nozzle Spray settings to create a relaxing environment.

Is this a bidet thing? If so, I’m curious about the solar aspect.

_______________
¹ Not to be confused with executing Mike Bloomberg’s aspirations which was totally sweet to watch.

² If neither Sanders nor Warren gets the nomination, I’ll do what I’ve done in very nearly every presidential election of my life and vote against instead of voting for.

Well, that’s for damn sure a Big Round Number:

Welp, that’s 5,000 comics.

The very sexy R Stevens did 4000 comics in the first incarnation of Diesel Sweeties and 1000 since — not counting his foray into newspapers for a year and a half. Now those 5000 comics weren’t all on consecutive days, what with weekends, and the occasional MWF update weeks, but imagine they were. How much is 5000 days?

5000 days ago, they were still doing primary cleanup from Hurricane Katrina. Donald Rumsfeld was still committing war crimes, Windows Vista didn’t exist, Mooninites hadn’t sparked the stupidest terrorism panic ever, and Bob Barker was waiting for you to come on down.

And by complete coincidence, today has a second Big Round Number, as David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™ ^etc), without fanfare, hit Irregular Webcomic number 4200 today, which also makes you wonder about the confluence of the two. It would make no sense to add those two, very large numbers together, you end up with 9200.

9200 comics, at one per day, would take you back more than a quarter century, you’d find Calvin & Hobbes on the comics page, Christopher Reeve walking around; it was world with no Pixar movies, no understanding of what it would sound like to introduce Oprah to Uma, or knowledge of who Kevin Mitnick is. Then again, you wouldn’t be able to learn most of that because there was also a near-total lack of search engines worth anything.

Heck, that takes you back far enough that my evil twin had only been cranking out daily comics for a little more than four and a half years. As of today, that makes for 7021 consecutive strips, but it’s not a Big Round Number so we’re not talking about it. We will, however, wish Howard Tayler a happy birthday tomorrow, his 13th since he made his appearance 52 years ago on Leap Day 1968. 13 and 1968 and 29 aren’t Big Round Numbers either, nor is 52, but believe me — when you’ve lived for 52 years, it’s feels like a big number.

Spam of the day:
Spammers don’t get to share the day with Rich, David, and Howard. Buy their stuff.