With EmCity and C2E2¹ behind us, there’s a stretch of festival-type comics shows in April and May², to be found in Chicago², Toronto, and Vancouver. They’re all respected institutions, and they kick off each year in New York with MoCCA Fest.

And if there’s one thing that tends to happen with festival-type events, it’s that organization and details can happen late in the game. Some are super organized³ and down to a science, some we’ll get programming the week of and updates to the exhibitors list almost up to the day of. What I’m saying here is, please remember as we move into festival season that any information we present now, there will probably be updates and addenda in the weeks to come.

All of which is to say, I saw somebody on the Twitters over the weekend remarking that the MoCCA exhibitor’s list was mostly illustrators and not comics folk, but I think that’s just a function of which names are posted to date. As I write this, there’s about 125 entries on the list, with many longtime MoCCA vets not listed (yet), and a typical MoCCA floorplan offering easily twice that many tables. There’s also the fact that some larger exhibitors (such as :01 Books) will have many creators rotating in and out, not to mention the TBA main signing table

So with the caveat that this list will certainly grow over the next couple o’ weeks, if you head to the Metropolitan West event space (West 46th between 11th and 12th, across the street from the USS Intrepid) on Saturday 6 April (11:00am to 7:00pm) or Sunday 7 April (11:00am to 6:00pm) and pay your ten bucks (eighteen for a weekend pass), you’ll get to see Aatmaja Pandya and Alison Wilgus sharing space at table F217, Sara Varon at table D156a, and an unknown number of folks associated with :01 Books at table E162, and likewise some number of folks associated with Czap Books at table H253b. The food court is damn good, too.

There will be more! [Editor’s note: Case in point, there was just an announcement from Iron Circus that they’ll be there.] And just because I don’t recognize a lot of the names on the current exhibitor’s list, that’s not a bad thing! I’ve learned about more new people I want to follow at MoCCA than at any other show, even in the disastrous post-Puck, whole-exec-board-quit, somebody-forgot-to-get-cash-registers-so-they-could-take-money-for-passes, Society of Illustrators-hadn’t-stepped-in-yet years. I expect this year will be no different. So keep an eye on the show page, keep an eye on this page, and if you have plans for MoCCA that haven’t made it onto the official site yet, drop me a line and I’ll share the news.

Spam of the day:

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Look, I like you guys a lot and all, but when I set my email preferences to Coupons and special offers and Events at my local store and Only send updates once per week and you bombard me with this crap multiple times a day, you’re getting called out. Fix your shit, Barnes & Noble. I worked too long at your predecessor (RIP, B Dalton) to put up with this.

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¹ Which, also being a Reed!Pop show, is pretty similar in a lot of respects to ECCC, just a week or two later; for my money, CAKE is the webcomicky show in the Windy City.

² Okay, technically CAKE is in June but it’s the 1st and 2nd. Close enough, dammit.

³ Lookin’ at TCAF here, who have information up earlier than pretty much any other show of the year, festival-type, massive pop culture type, or gym-scale one day longbox vendor events. This is because Chris Butcher is not only an organizational machine, he has spent the past decade-plus training everybody that works on TCAF to be the same. Institutional memory and capability are real things, and to be prized when you have them.

The National Cartoonists Society is a venerable organization, founded on the principle that cartoonists ought to get together and have a big ol’ drink-up. Oh, and promoting the art and craft of cartooning, and later endowing scholarships, doing USO visits, public outreach, but mostly? Cartoonists like to hang out and party.

In the past, they’ve spread the partying around (case in point: I got to dress up in a damn tuxedo and gamble like I was James Frickin’ Bond one year), but this year and going forward, it’ll be Huntington Beach and a public, Euro-style festival that hosts the (members and guests only) Reuben Awards.

(Requisite disclaimer: I have been a member of the advisory jury for every iteration of webcomics awards the NCS has presented, from 2012 to present; I will not discuss the details of my participation or the process by which the jury made its determinations.)

This year, the nominees for Online Comics — Short Form are Cat And Girl by Dorothy Gambrell, bacön by Lonnie Milsap, and Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zach Weinersmith. The nominees for Online Comics — Long Form are Untold Tales Of Bigfoot by Vince Dorse, Kill Six Billion Demons by Tom Parkinson-Morgan, and Barbarous by Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh.

Webcomickers and adjacent folks in other categories include Pia Guerra (who tears it up at The Nib) for Gag Cartoons and John Allison (and let’s acknowledge the rest of the Giant Days team: Max Sarin, Liz Fleming, Jim Campbell, Whitney Cogar) for Comic Books.

With respect to my disclaimer above, my thoughts:

• All of the nominees in both categories have that je ne sais webcomiques that says this is something that could only exist on the internet, it would never work in the paper, with the exception of bacön, which could have been slotted into the Gag Cartoons category.
• As previously stated, the categories have undergone a several years refinement process, both in developing an eye as for what makes webcomics webcomics, and in seeking out a wide variety of nominees¹ that wouldn’t ordinarily fall into the orbit of the average NCS member.
• Due to the nature of webcomics and the fact that the term itself is terribly imprecise, there will possibly never be a slate of nominees that entirely satisfies the sort of person that cares about this sort of thing² which makes these categories par for the course in comics awards. That being said, I think this year’s nominees represent well the breadth of webcomics.
• Having previously won, I think Dorse won’t win Long Form this year.
• It’s weird that the revived Nancy did not get nominated for newspaper strip, but since Olivia Jaimes took over in the middle of the nomination period, maybe it’s to avoid confusion. But if Nancy stays as good as it has been (a virtual certainty) and isn’t nominated next year, the pier at Huntington Beach may see riots.
• All three nominees for Feature Animation are recognized for their work on Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, which is only right and proper. Well done, Shiyoon Kim (character animation), Peter Ramsay (director), and Justin K Thompson (production design). It must have been terribly difficult to single out only three names, and I suspect whichever wins will declare that the recognition belongs to everybody that worked on the movie.
• I don’t know who won; until the public announcement, I didn’t know who the final nominees were.
• I have and will continue to have opinions.

The various awards will be presented on 18 May in Huntington Beach, California. Best of luck to all the nominees, but if I had to express one preference? I think it would be awesome if the NCS gave an award to a story about a sorority girl, a genderqueer angel, and a demon fanfic author pulling off a heist from an infinite fractal vault in Hell, if only because a bunch of old dudes that didn’t like dames or beatniks or minorities even appearing in comics (much less making them) would turn in their graves, giving us a perpetual source of clean energy.

Spam of the day:

You are rewarded with clean and healthy feet with japanese fungus code

What.

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¹ Including Jon Rosenberg’s Scenes From A Multiverse (won), Meredith Gran’s Octopus Pie, Danielle Corsetto’s Girls With Slingshots (won), Minna Sundberg’s Stand Still, Stay Silent (won), Ngozi Ukazu’s Check Please (won), Drew Weing’s The Creepy Casefiles Of Margo Maloo (won), Boulet’s Bouletcorp, and Allison’s Bad Machinery (won).

² AKA all of you.

There’s so many terrible things happening, so much tragedy perpetrated by those unable to conceive of a world where they are not universally acknowledged as masters, and yet …

And yet, there’s always good news to give us a respite from the terrible. Maybe you noticed four words at today’s Gunnerkrigg Court¹. Maybe you saw a tweet that was fairly brimming with joy. Magnolia Porter and Tom Siddell celebrated his relocation from the UK to New York City earlier this week by getting married this morning, and there is a world of good right there. Situations like these, I always fall back on on of my favorite bit from Willy Shakes:

Claudio: Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much. Lady, as you are mine, I am yours

Okay, Claudio’s a drip that needs his ass kicked², but that’s a great line. And like Claudio, I cannot properly say how happy I am for Porter and Siddell; may they find all the joy they can scarce find words to express.

And on the off chance you aren’t the sentimental sort, more good news: KC Green has retrieved his adaptation of Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio from Tumblr’s foul clutches and set it up on its own site, as well as released Chapter 25. This puts us at about the start of the final act in this three-act story, so get caught up if you want to see how the story looked before the grillo parlante got a name.

Spam of the day:

E-File Your IRS Taxes For Free* & Get Your Refund Fast.

I got my refund like six weeks ago; it must not be denied but you are a plain-dealing villain.

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¹ Which, let’s be fair, went up approximately 5:45am EDT, speaking in the past tense about something that likely was still a few hours off.

² Benedick calling him on his shit is another of my favorite bits from Dub-S; in fact, pretty much all of Much Ado is a nonstop delight, and I have regular, lengthy internal arguments about my favorite interpretations of those roles. On any given day, Emma Thompson/Kenneth Branagh and Catherine Tate/David Tennant go back and forth as my favorite Beatrice and Benedick.

I prefer Denzel Washington as Don Pedro and Richard Briers as Leonato, but Nathan Fillion and Tom Lenk beat out everybody for Dogberry and Verges. Not sure why Antonio gets short shrift in so many productions, but it doesn’t matter — Brian Blessed is untouchable in that role. And dammit, I think that Keanu does a great one-dimensional villain.

Hey, y’all. I know that many of you are in the act of traveling to Seattle for Emerald City Comic Con, but here’s some programming you might want to keep an eye out for; because there are numerous panels that fall into clear topic lanes with certain people repeating, I’ve taken the liberty of first examining these clusters before going strictly sequential; naturally, many other people will contribute to these sessions.

The Katie Lane Cluster
Katie Lane¹ brings the legal knowledge; note that some of these require separate admission.

From Panel To Publisher (Thursday, 11:45 to 3:15, TCC L3-R2) is intended for lawyers representing clients in the comics field. Comic Book Negotiation And Contract Drafting Practicum (Friday, 1:30 to 3:45, TCC L3-R2) is for the same office, on Lane’s favorite topic ever. Critical Contracts And Copyrights For The Comic Book Creator (Saturday, 11:00 to 12:00, WSCC 3A) is for a general audience of creators and also all appreciators of alliteration.

The Gina Gagliano Cluster
Gina Gagliano had a very good 2018, is going to have an even better 2019, and will turn comics upside down in 2020. Ignore her at your peril.
The Graphic Novel Survival Guide: Tips, Strategies, And Tools For Building Your Graphic Novel Classroom (Thursday, 12:00 to 1:00, Seattle Public Library Microsoft Auditorium) is skewed towards teachers. Graphic Nonfiction: An Introduction (Thursday, 1:45 to 2:45, Seattle Public Library Level 4, Room 2) is for everybody from creators to teachers. STEAM-Powered Graphic Novels (Friday, 3:00 to 4:00, TCC L2-R4) will focus on the sci-comm potential of the medium.

The Colleen AF Venable Cluster
Colleen AF will be busy AF, talking about very nearly every aspect of comics and graphic novels.
99 Problems But A Comic Ain’t One — Comics As Therapy (Thursday, 3:00 to 4:00, Seattle Public Library Level 4, Room 2) wins for best title, as well as looking at the humanistic support comics offer.
Inclusive Comics 101: Or, Comics For The Rest Of Us (Thursday, 4:15 to 5:15, Seattle Public Library Microsoft Auditorium) should be the last time we have to discuss the fact that comics don’t “belong” to any subset of readers, and that gatekeepers suck. No More “Others”: Cultural Connection Through Comics (Saturday, 5:30 to 6:30, TCC L2-R4) should be the last time we have to discuss the fact that comics exist in every country and describe every culture. Writing Graphic Novels For Any Audience (Saturday, 6:30 to 7:30, WSCC 603) assumes you aren’t objecting to the self-evident truths of those last two panels and are looking to expand your audience to the historically underserved.
LGBTQ+ In Kids Comics (Sunday 12:00 to 1:00, TCC, L3-R2) discusses how kids are learning about what it’s like to be queer from some friggin’ great comics.

The Noelle Stevenson/She-Ra Cluster
Noelle Stevenson took a fairly soulless toy cash-in from decades ago and made something really beautiful that’s delighted people. Conversation With She-Ra And The Princesses Of Power Creator Noelle Stevenson (Saturday, 10:45 to 11:15, ECCC Live Stage, Booth 1239) and Dreamworks She-Ra And The Princesses Of Power (Saturday, 12:15 to 1:15, WSCC 611) will give her a chance to talk about the show, its message, and what’s coming up.

The Dylan Meconis Cluster

I’ve long said that I adore Dylan Meconis as a friend because she’s just a little bit evil. That desire to poke at what she loves is evident in The Long Con, the story of a comics convention that never ends and all the weirdness that would inevitably result; ain’t no nerds that don’t come in for some noogies here. Tales From The Long Con (Saturday, 4:00 to 5:00, TCC L3-R1) is a telling of real-life con stories, and Dylan Meconis And Ben Coleman On The Long Con (Sunday, 5:45 to 6:00, ECCC Live Stage, Booth 1239) will give you the chance to finish out ECCC with the knowledge it can always be worse — you might have been trapped in the convention center for five years while the world outside ended.

Other Panels Of Note
The Reurgence Of Anthologies And Zines (Thursday, 4:00 to 5:00, TCC L3-R5) will talk about one of the surer ways to level up your comics career.

Convention Horror Stories, An ECCC Tradition (Thursday, 4:15 to 5:15, TCC L3-R4) will feature the worst from co vets Jim Zub and Katie Cook.

Spotlight On Iron Circus Comics (Thursday, 5:30 to 6:30, TCC L3-R4) is what it says on the tin, with Blue Delliquanti, Evan Dahm, Kel McDonald, and Maria Frantz.

Kickstarter Presents: Kickstarting Your Comic (Friday, 5:30 to 5:45, ECCC Live Stage, Booth 1239) is brief, so go, listen, learn, and stop thinking Kickstarter is a magic money machine, godsdammit.

Can You Suggest A Good Comic With No Butts And Guts: Exploring Amazing Elementary And Middle Grade Comics And Graphic Novels (Saturday, 1:45 to 2:45, TCC L2-R4) is seriously completely self-descriptive.

The Lost In Wikipedia Game Show! (Sunday, 4:00 to 5:00, TCC L3-R5) has a superfluous exclamation, so you know David Malki ! is involved. He Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett, Kris Straub, James Sutter, and Camilla Zhang will be professionally funny for your amusement.

And Then There’s This Thing:
Boats And Boners 2: Too Boat, Too Boner (Saturday, 6:30 to 7:30, TCC L3-R2). Yeah. Lucy Bellwood (boats) and Erika Moen (boners) reprise their discussion in front of a classy fireplace from last year. I’m just relieved they didn’t title it Boats And Boners 2: Electric Bonerboataloo.

Spam of the day:

Sie haben unseren kostenlosen ERFURT Newsletter abonniert.

How do you say Nnnnnoooope in German? Google Translate is letting me down here.

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¹ Light-ning Law-yer!!

I’m going to call it a quirk of the category definitions rather than some inability to determine what a thing is.

Wait, let me back up..

For years now (seven, if my count is correct), Slate and the Center For Cartoon Studies have offered the Cartoonist Studio Prize, with one thousand American smackeroos going to the winners of the two categories: Print Comic and Web Comic [sic]. Ten nominees on the final ballot in each category. Simple, straightforward, a history of high quality nominees representing all genres and formats, and nice as a brick or statue may be, cash money is something many cartoonists can really use.

This year’s nominees are out in the wild, and there’s an anomaly. An unusual occurrence. A weirdness.

As is entirely right and proper, Nancy is nominated … as a webcomic.

Okay, on the one hand, I get it, Nancy has a website and updates there daily. But it’s a syndicated comic that originated in the newspapers, one that is owned by that syndicate, one that can replace artist and/or writer at will — which is how we got Olivia Jaimes on the gig in the first place.

And I get that the print collection is really for things that are self-contained in the form of minis and graphic novels, and Nancy is only now getting to the point where you could get a print collection of the Jaimes era. But it’s in print, literally every day. The corporate ownership and multiple layers of editorial control are the antithesis of webcomics. But Jaimes, as we are told, is a webcomicker.

I get the dilemma that the judges panel must have struggled with, as there’s no way you can’t acknowledge Nancy — it’s simply too good — but that it doesn’t fall neatly into either category and despite the seeming contradiction, it is more similar to the other Web Comic nominees than it is to the Print Comic nominees (especially considering the category also considers This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow, once found in alternative weekly newspapers, now at The Nib, and two contenders that ran at The New Yorker).

All of which is to say, pretty much every comic — at least, those not initially sold as bound floppy magazines or as an original graphic novel — is a webcomic. Good luck Olivia Jaimes, good luck everybody else, and the Cartoonist Studio Prize will be awarded on 12 April.

Spam of the day:

You have a website, right? Of course you do. I found fleen.com today. It gets traffic every day – that you’re probably spending $2 / $4 / $10 or more a click to get.

Yeah, you utterly do not get how we do things here at Fleen.

I’m always behind in pointing folks towards Emerald City Comic Con (which starts on Thursday and runs to Sunday), and I resolve to get my act together one of these years. After a couple of EmCity iterations under the ReedPop banner, I get the sense that this is a make-or-break year for the until-now universally beloved show — it’s showing signs to messing with things that didn’t need to be messed with, and possibly reducing the comic component of the show.

As long as it doesn’t devolve further unto a generic pop culture show, I think it’ll be okay, but I’m not sure if it can still claim the mantle of premier comics-oriented show¹. After all, the Literary Guests² outnumber the Entertainment Guests by 2:1, and the Comic Guests outumber the Literary and Entertainment Guests put together by a third.

Some of those Comic Guests likely to be of interest to readers of this page include Abby Howard (booth KK19), Blue Delliquanti (booth KK20), Chip Zdarsky³ (booth JJ12), Edwin Huang (booth E14), Emi Lenox (booth G11), Erica Henderson (booth O3), Jim Zub (booth Y14), Kazu Kibuishi (no booth, here’s his schedule), Ngozi Ukazu (booth P7), Ru Xu (booth P3), Sarah Andersen (no booth here’s her schedule), Sfé Monster (booth G1), and Taneka Stotts (booth P14).

On the main show floor, you’ve got Alaska Robotics (booth 204), Cautionary Fables & Fairy Tales (booth 208), Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett (booth 1616, on the skybridge), Girl Genius (booth 118), Harper Collins (booth 2202), Hiveworks (booth 2002), Iron Circus (booth 644), Little Vampires (booth 310), Oni Press (booth 216), TopatoCo (booth 1606, on the skybridge).

Over in Artist Alley you have the traditional cluster of folks in Aisle H-for-Helioscope Studio (including Aaron McConnell, Aud Koch, Cat Farris, Dylan Meconis, Erika Moen, Jonathan Case Katie Lane, Kerstin La Cross, Leila Del Luca, Lucy Bellwood, Maria Frantz, Matthew Nolan, Ron Chan, Ron Randall, Steve Lieber, and Terry Blas). Also around you’ll find Yuko Ota & Ananth Hirsh of Johhny Wander (booth P6), Gigi DG (booth OO4), Haley Boros (booth U9), Mad Rupert (booth P2), Megan Rose Gedris (booth LL7), Jam from Wasted Talent (booth G1), Molly “Jakface” Nemecek (booth R3), Lexxy Douglas (booth BB13), Tyson Hesse (Q11), and the inimitable, indefatigable, indomitable, and indescribably awesome Tony Breed (booth S10).

Note that Blind Ferret will not be at the show, but Lucas Elliott and Evan Dahm and will, at booths 1916 and 208, respectively.
Updated to add: Mary Cagle, at booth 2002.

Okay, that’s it. Yeah, it’s not that long a post, but wrangling that many links? Takes forever. Let me know if I missed anybody, and we’ll talk programming in a day or so.

Spam of the day:

If you’re a man, you will spend 65,520 minutes, or 1,092 hours, shaving your face. That means you sit down, haul out the shaving cream, make a mess, wet your clothes, and annoy your wife.

You are very bad at shaving.

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¹ To the extent that such thing as a premiere comics-oriented show still exists outside the Festival model. Everything on the convention center, multi-day scale is pretty heavily invested in the TV, movie, wrestling, and generic entertainment component.

² At least some of which — Molly Muldoon, Colleen AF Venable, Judd Winick, Gale Galligan, Alison Wilgus to name just a few — could easily have counted in the comics category.

Oh, and all those links (and the others for individuals) are to Twitter, since that’s what the ECCC guest profiles provided. Comics will generally be to the website in question.

³ Losing out the “last person by family name alphabetical order” crown to Zub again.

Hey, want to do some mass science? David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc)’s new sci-comm projects (cf: yesterday) is looking to see if we, in the modern age, can figure the size of the Earth and distance to the sun using the same methodology as Eratosthenes (that is to say, a stick, a piece of string, and math), but perhaps with more accuracy:

[prep steps omitted]
On the equinox date, at the exact time of your local solar noon: If it’s sunny, place your stick vertically on your flat area. Do this as accurately as you can — use a spirit level or inclinometer if you can. If you don’t have one, let the stick dangle from the top, with the bottom just barely touching the ground. With the stick vertical, measure the length of its shadow cast by the sun, again as accurately as you can manage. Using a friend to help you will make things easier.

Once you have the shadow length, you’re ready to report your data! I need to know: (1) Where you were — city, state, country — enough that I don’t get it wrong. (2) The length of your vertical stick. (3) The length of the shadow you measured. Send these three bits of data to me by email [dmm at dangermouse.net], by the end of March.

As luck would have it, I already have a stick from a couple of years ago when Radiolab crowdsourced ground temperature data¹ to predict when the 17 year cicadas would come up. I also live in a somewhat perplexing microclimate where massive meteorological events will suddenly split in half, go around town, then rejoin on the far side.

The other part of this situation is that everything in the sky that is interesting — lunar eclipses, solar eclipses, astronomical conjunctions and convergences — invariably happens behind a thick bank of clouds. But I’ll give it a try as best I can, and I invite you to do the same. Five minutes of looking stuff up on the internet, two minutes of holding a stick and making a measurement, one minute to send an email. It’s for science.

Spam of the day:

Get 5,000 visitors to your website for $54.95

You want to pay me to put up with the sort of visitors who would sell their clicks? Sure, I’ll accept them for a half-hundo.

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¹ A stick with a temperature sensor, attached to an Arduino and a string of LEDs, no less. For Morgan-Mar’s deal, you just need a stick.

I almost titled this Some People Really Piss Me Off, but didn’t want any confusion re: the first person mentioned.

• As mentioned previously, David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc) has recently been dejobbed, and he’s decided to throw himself into cartooning instead of seeking out new gainful employment immediately.

  Welcome to the ranks of full-time pixel-stained wretches, Dr Morgan-Mar! A few of the other webcomics PhDs will no doubt tell you that webcartooning is exactly as remunerative and professionally fulfilling as other physics/engineering careers! And, hey, being in Australia — a country with a proper approach towards healthcare¹ — you have at least some safety net to explore your comicking options rather than scheduling an imminent demise in the gutter.

  And since Morgan-Mar has jumped headlong into funemployment this week, he’s already dug into his famed collection fountain firehose of ideas and unleashed the first new implementation:

  As part of my new Jobless-let’s-make-more-stuff state, I’m launching a new science blog site: 100 Proofs that the Earth is a Globe.

  This is an idea I’ve long had for a book. But I don’t have a publisher in my pocket, so I’m launching this site to generate some buzz. As stated in the site’s About page: This is not primarily an attempt to debunk Flat Earth theory. It’s just a way of organising a bunch of surprisingly diverse science essays with a common theme. The challenge I’ve set myself is to see if I can come up with 100 different scientific observations or experiments that we can do that show the Earth is much more likely to be spherical than flat.

  Can I do it? Let’s see!

  Speaking purely as someone who finds sincere Flat Earthers annoying and conspiracy-minded², I approve. Got soak up some science, and maybe check out Morgan-Mar’s previous webcomics endeavours for which you can exchange money.

• Folks that piss me off more than Flat Earthers or even Moon-Landing Deniers: content leeches. I got a press release (names redacted, don’t want to give these folks any exposure, ironically) promoting a loot box focused on manga with an announcement: A contest! The winner get their manga included in our crate!

  That was it. No details, just a link to a Google Form for submissions to this (quoting here) rare opportunity. I emailed asking about judging (criteria and who’d be judging), deadlines, rights, and so forth. On the plus side, they weren’t asking for any rights. On the minus side, the reply stated, and I quote:

  Hey Gary, there aren’t any actual rules. They just need to submit content and we’ll decide who gets featured. The winner gets their manga printed and distributed for free to the 5k+ [name] subscribers plus the newsletter subscribers. Deadline doesn’t exist as this is an ongoing thing. The owner wants to support manga creators for as long as possible. The creator maintains 100% ownership rights. [name] is purely acting as a distributor and promoter.

  To which I pointed out that distributors and promoters are people that you pay to get your product into sales channels, so what was this going to cost. Quoting again:

  No cost here at all and no hidden agenda. [name] will feature their content for free. He gets content for his subscribers and the creators get free exposure.

  There we go — exposure. I imagine that you can imagine what my voice is doing with that word. I replied:

  Yeah, I don’t promote “for exposure”. Artists and writers get paid for what they create. If they want to give it away, fine. But for somebody to say “if your stuff is good enough I’ll let you give it to me so I can sell it and keep the money”?

  No.

  I’d have thought that would have ended it, but PR guy said that I could call him (but not now, because he’s traveling) and he would try to convince me. Couldn’t come up with a factual counter as to why I was misinterpreting the contest with no rules where the prize is you get to let somebody else make a profit off your work by exposing it to subscribers who, even if they like you work, wouldn’t necessarily be able to get it from you any cheaper than they already got it from the guy making the money.

  Loot boxes are for stuff you’ve already made, maybe it’s underselling or not worth keeping in print/storage, and you sell to a repackager at a discount to get out from under it. It’s not where you create something new to supply somebody else with content they can sell. Don’t fall for this. And sweet suffering fuck, don’t enter contests without rules. No rules means they’re explicitly saying there’s no way for you to win.

Spam of the day:
That would be the thing from the content leech.

_______________
¹ Which is to say, an acknowledgement that losing a job should not immediately condemn one to a never seeing the doctor again, and just as well since everything in your country wants to kill you.

² But I can tolerate them if they aren’t also anti-vaxxers. In a just world, Jenny McCarthy would not be on my TV, she’d be in the dock at The Hague. Fuck every one of those lazy childkillers.

Okay, so you know that the National Cartoonists Society has a big to-do every year, right? Different city every year, give out the Reubens, very fancy, I went to it once. It’s also pretty insular, by cartoonists and for cartoonists, no real public component to keep people excited about cartooning, either as consumers or the next generation of creators.

Which is why the NCS is doing a damn near 180 turn and going full Euro-style festival this year: NCSFest will be held in Huntington Beach, California, 17-19 May, and the vast majority of it will be a) in public, and b) free. This is not going to be a fill-the-convention-center type event, it’s going to be on the beach, on the pier, in the Arts Center, occupying a significant portion of common space.

Now we all know that first year events are rough, but NCSFest is getting advice from show partners Lakes International Comic Art Festival in the UK, and LyonBD Festival in France. Their consultation must have been great — did you see the guest list they have lined up for this one? Keep in mind that all of the newspaper creators, they aren’t used to the idea of tabling and meeting the public and sales and such, and they’re going to be able to learn from the comic book and webcomics folk, who are all over this in droves. If you’re in SoCal the weekend after TCAF, you’ll be able to see a frankly astonishing array (I’m going to link to the NCSFest bios instead of websites, because it will feature their appearances).

On the legit superstars list, you’ve got Boulet, Jaime Hernandez, Pénélope Bagieu, Sergio Aragonés, and Lewis Trondheim. From the world of museums, you’ve got Andrew Farago (of the Cartoon Art Museum, and Joe Wos (is it a coincidence without him as a driving force, Pittsburgh’s ToonSeum has closed shop?). Speaking of Pittsburgh, you’ve got Rob Rogers, who was a staff editorial cartoonist that was fired by a Trumpalo publisher for being too tough on Cheeto Mussolini and Shaenon Garrity, who is Yinzer by upbringing¹.

The Nib regulars Ann Telnaes and Gemma Correll will be side by side with indie/webcomickers Carolyn Belefski, Lucas Turnbloom, Brad Guigar (who noted that he is listed as a podcaster rather than cartoonist … be sure to ask him when you see him!), and Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett. Newspaper editor Tea Fougner will represent along with the likes of Patrick McDonnell², Lalo Alcaraz, and a bunch of others whose work makes regular appearances over at The Comics Curmudgeon³.

And that’s before you get to Mary Fleener. Everybody doing off the wall, let’s push the boundaries of weirdness and see how they stretch comics for the past couple of decades owes a debt to Mary Fleener. They’re putting her out in public where she can freak out the tourists and I love it.

Note that some events (seminars, workshops, meet-and-greets) are ticketed, and are predominantly being held in conference rooms at the Hyatt Regency. Details are available on the Tickets page.

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¹ Today, she brings her sensibilities of Pittsburgh-area linguistic tradition and upbringing to her new roles as Funk Queen Of The Bay Area And Surrounding Environs, Tiki Ambassadrix At Large, and Nexus Of All Webcomics Realities (West Coast division).

² Who lives one town over; sometimes I bump into him on Main Street, and we chose our vet based on his recommendation.

³ Including Jerry van Amergongen, who wrote a gag strip when I was in high school that I still recall with perfect clarity.

Heya. Let’s bring you up to speed on some things mentioned recently.

• TCAF! We mentioned the first tranche of Very Special Guests two weeks ago, and we mentioned the International Guests a bit more than one week ago, which means it’s time to talk about the latest additions to the guest roster, the Young Adult Guests¹.

  Joining others (maybe you?) at the Toronto Reference Library on Saturday and Sunday, 11 and 12 May, will be Flavia Biondi (best known for Generations, Kevin Panetta and Savanna Ganucheau (Bloom), Renee Nault (the new graphic adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale), Ryan North (you know who he is), Sarah Winifred Searle (the forthcoming graphic novel, The Greatest Thing, due out next year), Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell (Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me, my review copy of which will hopefully be here soon), Colleen AF Venable² and Ellen T Crenshaw (Kiss Number 8, which is wonderful, review to appear here soon), and Tillie Walden (On A Sunbeam).

  Oh, yes, and how about a few superstars over the Kids Guests? You got yer Raina (her guide to making comics, Share Your Smile, will be out in April), Kazu Kibuishi and Jason Caffoe (I think this is their first joint appearance since Amulet Book 8: Supernova came out). Additions to the Exhibitor ranks since last we spoke include the 5 Worlds team and Shan Murphy; there’s probably others, and I will notice them on the next read-through, or the one after that.

• CAM! A few days back, we mentioned a bunch of stuff happening at the Cartoon Art Musuem over the next month or so; among those items was an exhibition dedicate to the art of A Fire Story by Brian Fies. Fies will be on book tour when the exhibition opens, so it makes sense that he won’t be ther for the usual launch-of-exhibit reception. Or rather, it would make sense, but why give up a good reception? Fies will be there a bit later in the month:

  The Cartoon Art Museum is proud to present an evening with cartoonist Brian Fies on Saturday, March 30, 2019 from 7:00-8:30pm as he discusses his new graphic novel A Fire Story: A Graphic Memoir, depicting the artist’s firsthand account of the 2017 Northern California wildfires. A book signing will follow Fies’s discussion. Advance tickets for the Saturday, March 30 event are available through Guestlist: Fire Story Tickets

  That’s from the email that CAM sent me; the event doesn’t appear to be on their webpage yet. US$10 for the public, free for CAM members.

• Zub! Okay, not an update, but you should know. Jim Zub, his wife Stacy King, and Andrew Wheeler (all of whom will absolutely shark you in a game of We Didn’t Playtest This At All, especially in the presence of presents³) announced that they were given the opportunity of a geek’s lifetime — to create a series of books for younger players of tabletop RPGs to introduce them to the ideas of roleplaying and constructing a seat-of-your-pants story together. Specifically, books for the most hallowed of tabletop RPGs, Dungeons & Dragons. Spill it, Zub:
  

  As experienced DMs/players, it’s easy to forget how intimidating tabletop RPGs can be for people who haven’t played before. These guides lay out the major concepts (class, race, equipment, creatures) in a way anyone can understand and encourage them to create their own stories. Readers can use the material in these books to brainstorm a character and imagine their role in an adventuring party. Get them excited about the possibilities, and then bring them to the gaming table to show them how those initial ideas can really flourish with a roll of the dice.

  The two guides in the D&D Young Adventurer’s Guides, Monsters & Creatures and Warriors & Weapons, release on 16 July, which I believe is the day before Preview Night at SDCC, and just long enough before Gen Con to get out into the public and thoroughly read before heading to Indy. Congrats to King, Wheeler, and Zub for the nerd experience of a lifetime.

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¹ That would be guests of interest to YA and younger readers, not guest who are themselves young adults. I mean, some of them are pretty young for adult humans, but that’s not why they’re in the category.

² I just now realized that her two middle initials, instead of being pronounced aff as I have always done in my internal monologue, could instead be pronounced A-F, because she is in fact Colleen As Fuck.

³ On opposite coasts of North America, DanteLuke Landherr-Shepherd and Ferocious Jon Sung just shuddered and don’t know why.