Know who we haven’t heard from in a while? Eben Burgoon. Longtime readers may recall that through the first half of Fleen’s history, we frequently noted happenings in Burgoon’s spy spoof, Eben07, in an appropriately purple prose. Then Burgoon and his compatriots moved onto B-Squad and he even gave me beer themed to his webcomic.

Burgoon’s been doing workshops and Maker Faires from Northern California (his normal stomping grounds) to as far away as Vilnius, Lithuania (no, really), the breadth of which made me wonder if he’d really gotten all that spycraft and secret mission tendency out of his system. Apparently not; Burgoon’s partnering with Starburns Industries to bring B-Squad back:

Starburns Industries Press sets its eyes on remastering an independent series, B-Squad, from indie darling author Eben Burgoon and a rotating roster illustrators and artists that change issue to issue.

B-Squad shares the ridiculous and dangerous missions of an expendable team of misfit mercenaries ranging from pop-culture riffs to cut from whole cloth oddballs. The bargain-bin commandos tackle leftover assignments of other more respected mercenary groups. SBI Press’s run begins with a remaster of the series debut Conspiracy in Cambodia, originally independently published in 2013, written by Burgoon and illustrated by Lauren Monardo.

In the spirit of a Saturday morning cartoon block, each B-Squad book serves as home for brand new tangential comics like [B-Squad illustrator Michael] Calero’s Monster Safari” and Burgoon’s newest creation about six-inch tall wizards trapped in the fast-food culture of a remote truck stop titled Tiny Wizards.

The remastered books are rounded out with activities, puzzles, and bonus content in homage to dentist office staples like Highlights magazine and ZooBooks.

No word as to whether or not the remastered B-Squad will feature Goofus and/or Gallant. You (where you is taken to mean folks in/around the Sacramento, California area) can ask him at the next workshop he’ll be running, on three Tuesdays in February (12th, 19th, 26th), at the Crocker Art Museum.

Spam of the day:

Account Name : ANDREW FARRINGTON
Account Number : [redacted]
IMPORTANT – YOUR PAYMENT CARD IS NEARING ITS EXPIRY DATE

Weird, why would you send something for Andrew Farrington to me? Then again, this might not be spam, but the latest in a long line of Other Garies Tyrrell sending their emails my way. Usually that’s easy to clear up, but I’ve had to resort to using the British tech press to shame Ryanair over their persistent screwups. Fun!

As promised yesterday, we have a second dispatch from Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin, still in the Greater Toulouse region of France. Take it away, FSFCPL!

A mere two weeks after the Colomiers comics festival, Toulouse was hosting the Toulouse Game Show or TGS, and since this is a show that Maliki’s Souillon regularly attends (though he and Becky skipped it this year), I thought it would be worth checking out. Yup, time for another four-hour train ride to Toulouse …

While the TGS has video games content, it is more general than that and is best thought of as a marketplace for pop culture paraphernalia (taking the whole of the Parc des Expositions de Toulouse), much like any other anime con. In it you could find apparel merchants, steampunk accessories dealers, retrogaming preservation associations, a lot of cosplay of course¹, diorama creation clubs, a food court, booths for many webseries, etc.

And the TGS did feature comics content, and not just Ankama (found in pretty much every anime con in France, Belgium, and possibly Switzerland). I did not spot any creator I previously knew about, so it seems webcomics have not significantly invaded the TGS so far, but this also means everything was new to me. In particular, the fanzine scene was well-represented.

Still, the comics presence was not sufficient to have a dedicated section or artist’s alley, with most comics booths being next to one of the steampunk accessories dealers. Not that there is anything wrong with mixing comics with steampunk), but the TGS and other such conventions could make themselves more attractive to both comics creators and comics fans by dedicating an area to comics, in my opinion.

I am still catching up on my haul of comics bought there (work has been hectic lately), but I was already able to note the variety of approaches the creators I met there have with the web. In some cases, the pages were initially posted online, such as for Blue Bird’s Oath. Other creators put books as a whole on Mangadraft after the fact, keeping the latest print-exclusive until its successor comes out. And some creators barely have a web presence at all.

So while I am not done with my assessment, this trip to the TGS is already a net win to me², and I will keep an eye on it, especially as it provides a view of indie comics outside that of Paris or Brussels, and which is itself nevertheless different from that of Colomiers: I found no overlap at all.

Thanks as always to M Lebeaupin; when we at the US branch of Fleen eventually make it to France, we’ll have a much better idea of where to go for comics³.

Notspam of the day:

I keep getting email for other Gary Tyrrells (Garys Tyrrell? Garies Tyrrell?). If it’s important, I try to sort things out, but it doesn’t usually work. This morning, I got an invoice for lintels from Perth, Australia. As a special holiday treat, I’m sharing a typical reply:

Hi Wanita,

Wrong person. Bunch of Gary Tyrrells around the world (at least two in England, maybe three in Ireland, two or more in Oz, and one electrical contractor in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, US) think my email is their email. There’s also a sort-of famous Gary Tyrrell in California, but he’s cool. We had lunch together once.

I have not ordered any lintels from you. Truth be told, I’m not 100% sure what lintels are. I mean, I visited Australia once but what with the bridge-climbing, wine-touring, wombat-petting, and Great Barrier Reef snorkling, lintels didn’t come up at all. I’m sure your lintels are very nice, though.

For the record, I also do not have a Peugot that needs service in the Lakes District, have an order for a Brexit-supporting cloisonne badge to be delivered to the Scottish Borderlands, owe registrations fees on a vehicle in Dublin, have a Jurassic Park Smash ‘n’ Throw T-Rex on order at a toy shop in Kildare, have plans to fly between Ireland and Eindhoven, hold a Lawson’s card in Melbourne, or hold any interest in various contracts and requests-for-bid for electrical jobs. Oh and I don’t have a warranty on tires in California, but that wasn’t the Gary Tyrrell that I know, so at least one more?

Please contact your guy and update your records. Tell him Gary said hi.

Gary
The one in New Jersey

_______________
¹ Among the characters spotted: Arthur, king of the Britons with his personal coconut knocker, a T-Rex, two ghostbusters of opposite genders, and a wheelchair-riding Aquawoman.

² Not to mention everything else you can do there, such as eating takoyaki, buying retro games (be sure to have your console so you can check they work: you’ll have a hard time returning them otherwise), or attending a panel by the competitive Puyo Puyo playing community.

³ Other than Belgium, that is. Several of the best English language collections in comics shops I’ve ever seen were in Brussels, Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp …

* Where You is defined as Dispatches from France courtesy of Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin. Let us jump into the first of them now.

I didn’t know what to expect in Colomiers, but I wasn’t disappointed in the end.

The town of Colomiers (located next to Toulouse, home of the French aeronautics industry) has been hosting a comics festival for the past 32 years, and it is remarkable for its focus. Indeed, while it is directly set up by the cultural services of the town, it is not mainstream-oriented, as those tend to be (which makes sense: these towns typically intend to provide quality entertainment for their inhabitants, without any grander ambition).

Rather, with this festival the municipal authorities clearly mean to try and make the town, which might otherwise seem like an ordinary suburban town, a cultural attraction with their editorial choices, the first of which being a clear focus on indie comics.

First came the professional day, which was very student-oriented: at the start of the day I was given a proof of attendance, for instance. And the matters covered were undoubtedly advanced, such as the state of comics creation in Argentina, or the carrier of a master of comics in Argentina, Alberto Breccia¹.

Then I was able to go to the exhibition of his work the following day, and he indeed had a varied career, working with a variety of styles and means, though the published pages (often shown next to the originals) were often unfortunately not up to preserving his midtones. I was able to visit the other exhibitions the festival set up, all involving people I had never heard about before.

But besides the exhibitions, where the focus is most clear is in the main expo space that I trawled on the third day, which was almost entirely dedicated to independent creators and publishers, without even sellers of historical editions of comics as you can find even in SoBD for instance (there was a small space for a general comics library and a few invited creators). As a result, Colomiers provides the indie French-Belgian comics scene with the most space of any festival or convention in France.

I went back home with a few realizations.

First, it is interesting to note that, except in a few cases (Lapin, in particular), this scene is still largely independent from webcomics, by contrast with the small press scene in the U.S. which has by now entirely merged with the webcomics culture. So most of the works and creators were new to me, and it is clear it is going to take me some time to properly penetrate this scene.

In particular, the works shown made me realize I did not previously give much though about the legibility/reader effort dimension of comics: while webcomics, in French or in English, have made many experiments mainstream comics haven’t, on the other hand they would rather err on the side of being legible without much effort as a survival strategy on the web, where attention is very limited. Not so in this indie comics scene, and this brought me back to Scott McCloud’s theories on the subject (fortunately the local library, very much involved with the festival activities, did have Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics for me to refresh my memory).

The festival also veered towards the edge of what constitutes comics, showcasing for instance the publishing part of an artist collective as one of the four featured publisher, where the shown works were hard to distinguish from merely separately framed pictures in succession (they were wordless). Was it comics? Was it not? Heck if I know.

I did find familiar ground that nevertheless I think is representative of the festival, which is the works of Joan Cornella, published in France by Ici Même, one of the four featured publishers. You have probably seen one of his absurd, wordless, slightly disturbing four-panels cartoons floating on the web, but those are only the tip of the iceberg, and only with the book can you see how absurd he can go; I would recommend at least taking a look.

Yet all this focus on indie comics does not mean the expo space was empty: it did have significant attendance without it being free to attend (while SoBD, also focused on indie comics, is free to attend), with many families coming. So it is clear the organizers have managed to create an interest for indie comics in a wide demographic; this was best represented by the presence of Biscoto, an indie youth comics magazine. And the organizers do not always have it easy: it is quite a balancing act for instance to have under the same roof the creator of Avni as a featured creator, and the creators of its not-as-sensible parody Proutchi, themselves present as part of the Lapin booth.

I will be sure to come back next year, but meanwhile it has provided me with much food for thought.

Thanks as always to FSFCPL, and come back tomorrow for his take on the comics scene at the Toulouse Game Show

Spam of the day:

It’s no secret the liberal news HATES the Bible and anything to do with it.

Nobody ever whines as much about being oppressed as a scammer trying to appear to be evangelical. Nobody.

_______________
¹ The day ended with a drawn concert, which itself was much more experimental in nature than any I previously saw. No way to recount it; I will just note that, on the drawing side, actual plant leaves, and on the musical side, the support springs of a desk lamp were at one point involved.

Why? Why would you break things in a class the days running up to Christmas vacation? Why would you do this to yourself?

More importantly, how did you manage to make two separate tools fail in ways that were never before seen and are theoretically impossible?

Happy Strippiversary to Something*Positive, 17 years, woo, lots more to say but no time to say it. I’m starting to understand how Randy Milholland can be a magnet for the biggest screwups and morons on the planet.

It’s been an up and down couple of years for Kate Beaton and family — for every book or wedding, there were setbacks in Becky’s fight against cancer. But even amid grief there’s new hope, and sometimes very, very good news:

My dad just had open heart surgery, and he is through and doing good! Phew. Truly, no one else could keep me in my place.

Beaton’s burying the lede in that tweet just a little, as the accompanying cartoon made clear. She and husband Morgan Murray are expecting a child, her mom is over the moon (as we knew she would be), Da always has a unique perspective on things, and pregnancy is serious overrated.

Anybody that loves Kate’s cartoons (that would be everybody, near as I can tell) is filled with happiness — not only because she and her family are overdue for some joy, but also because this is going to result in many, many moments of hilarity large and small, some of which will be shared with us and the majority of which will be held close to the hearts of those that were there at the time. Some will likely involve turnips.

Congratulations and love, Kate and Morgan and little one to be named later. We’re all thrilled for you.

Spam of the day:

NOTE: In return for the FREE CONTENT/ARTICLE that I will be providing you, I would expect just a favor of a backlink from within the main body of the article.

Oh please, tell me what topics you have on hand that are appropriate for a blog that deals 99.47% with webcomics, a topic that pretty much nobody else cares to write about.

It’s been established in the past that the exact date is lost to us, but I’m gonna say that today is as good as day as any to say that Fleen went live. It was as early as the 5th of December 2005 that we were banking posts, and it was the 22nd when Jon posted the public announcement and rules, which have mostly been adhered to (although that whole firing thing would be a neat trick, as I’d have to form a majority to fire myself).

But it was around now, somewhere between the 12th and 15th when posts started going public and getting written daily in reaction to things happening on the day. The 13th of December 2005 featured some recurring themes — drama, shitstorms, personalities clashing — to a degree that we may as well declare it the official start.

So, that’s 13 years down; this page is now a Teen, with all that implies. Here’s hoping it doesn’t turn so snotty that we have to murder it before it becomes legal to drink.

Spam of the day
We didn’t feature spams when we launched, so we’re giving them a rest for the anniversary.

We see the return of a coupla’ things today, one recent and one it’s been a while.

• Readers may recall Project: Rooftop, the superhero fashion website launched in 2006 by Dean Trippe and Chris Arrant to highlight the best in superhero costume/character design and redesign. The site’s featured various art over the years, but it’s been since Summer 2013 since there was a redesign contest — the once-regular highlight of P:R

  Or rather, it was since Summer 2013, because the contests are back:

  CONTEST ANNOUNCEMENT – X-Men: Days of Future Pants!
  THE RULES:

  Pick 2-5 of your favorite X-Men. They can be the team you’ve always wanted to see, your favorite line-up of the past, or just your favorite X-Folks to draw.

  Design a core uniform. For this challenge, we’re inviting you to redesign the base team look, the cohesive uniform that says they’re a team, but as is often the case with a team of varied powers, abilities, and personal motifs, feel free to show individual members in personalized versions of that core uniform.

  The teaser for the contest has to be seen to be believed — a Kirby-style Cyclops having that dream when Professor X summons you to battle for a world that hates and fears you and you’re in your underwear¹. Or, uh, just look up top, it’s right there.

  If you think you can help Cyke (or other, better X-Men) never have to worry about a lack of functional, attractive uniform again, send your design to projectrooftop at gmail, which is a dot-com by 14 January. Judges (which appear to be Trippe, Arrant, and Jay Rachel Edidin & Miles Stokes (hosts of Jay And Miles X-Plain The X-Men) will be back with winners and commentary in February. Bragging rights await!

• More recently, David Malki ! caught a case of Munchausen’s elphatiasis² by proxy. Approximately 8 episodes into the 23 strip epic, I tweeted the following:
  

  Oh glob, I just had a terrible premonition. Next year’s @wondermark calendar by @malki is going to be 12 months of check out my sick elephant. And so help me, I’m going to buy it.

  To which David Malki ! replied with denial:

  Gary, Gary, Gary. You really think there will be meat left on this bone by the time the calendar rolls around??

  Which, in fact I did, despite the Malki !dian scoffing. And I was right to believe:

  Here are some pictures of the (presently in-production) 2019 Wondermark Calendar, Examining Ill Pachyderms: A Veteronorfian Field Guide.

  For those not familiar, Malki ! produces a calendar each year, with beautifully printed cards for two-week periods, arranged in two rows so you can always see at least two weeks into the future³. And while this year’s calendar will feature none of the strips from the recent epic, it will be an entire year of sick elephants.

  For the recent epic, you’ll have to purchase the book (at the same link, but be careful — some browsers don’t offer the choice to get the calendar with the book, or the book on its own; Chrome- and Mozilla-based browsers seem to work okay, though) wherein the entire saga of The Elephant Of Surprise. I ordered my calendar before the book was announced, so I’ll have to pick up a copy later — preferably when I can get Malki ! to sign it, at which time I fully intend to challenge him to come up with a new sick elephant pun. I am fearfully confident he will do it, too.

Spam of the day:

Latest hair growth released from the sharks

Sharks don’t have hair. That’s kind of the whole deal for mammals — hair. Sharks aren’t mammals, so no hair. Duh. Get your fake hair growth psuedoscience right, email spammers!

_______________
¹ And visor, since it’s Cyclops. Because of the visor, the dude is even more of a never-nude than Tobias Fünke.

² Look it up.

³ As opposed to a traditional calendar where an entire month is shown, and on the last day of the month you see exactly zero days of the next month until you flip the page. It’s ingenious.

It’s going to take a bit before that title makes sense.

This Friday, the Cartoon Art Museum hosts a screening for a movie with an unusual history. The Folks Behind The Funnies is about newspaper strip artists, and it takes a look at a lot of familiar — which is to say, old — names: Chris Browne, Bil Keane, Mell Lazrus, Mort Walker, and Scott Adams are prominently featured. But Gary, I hear you cry, aren’t most of those dudes dead or clinically insane? Yep, and there’s a reason beyond the mortality of all living things and the fact that we live in the worst timeline.

The Folks Behind The Funnies was originally co-produced as a national PBS documentary on the history of the comic strips, looking broadly at comic strips from the 1950s to the present. Principal photography started in May 2003. In October of that year, the film’s director/producer, Nicholas Armington passed away in an accident. The project was left dormant until 2015 when Sari Armington (Nicholas’s widow and business partner) revived the footage.

Okay, so it’s fifteen years old, which might explain why the only creators on the list that haven’t been syndicated since before the 90s are Darby Conley, Patrick McDonnell, Stepahn Pastis, and Hillary Price. Maybe a few others, I haven’t memorized everybody’s resume. There’s twenty one folks there in all, and Olivia Jaimes ain’t one of them.

But the amusing part of it all? Two of the creators listed have parentheticals after their names, one of which is:

Cathy Guisewiste, Cathy (retired)

Which I thought was a bit weird, as I don’t think she was retired during principal photography, although she certainly is now. If current working status is the criterion, then folks like Walker, Keane, and Lazarus¹ should be marked as deceased. But the real kicker? The one that I wanted to bring to your attention?

Lynn Johnston, For Better Or For Worse (Canadian)

Yep, being Canadian or retired is worthy of note, being dead less so. That just amuses me.

The Folks Behind The Funnies by Sari Armington premieres at CAM on Friday, 7 December 2018 at 6:30pm. Tickets are available online on Eventbrite and, possibly at the door if seats remain. As of this writing, just under 100 tickets remain available.

Spam of the day:

Welcome to Boxwoodmeans.com. Your user registration is activated. We appreciate your business and look forward to supporting your collateral valuation needs.

As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly have no idea what they are selling.

_______________
¹ Irony!

Check out a trailer for The Folks Behind the Funnies here.

Hey, you see that image up top? Go click it, if you haven’t seen it — it’s the latest episode of the irregularly-released Hell’s Kitchen Movie Club, wherein writer Alex de Campi wonders what it would be like if Frank “The Punisher” Castle and Bucky “Half Of Stucky” Barnes hung out occasionally for movie night. This is the Hanukkah Special, wherein we meet some of Buck’s family on the first night and it’s fantastic.

The story is both touching and hilarious, the art (from Ted Brandt, Ro Stein, and Dee Cunniffe, is beautiful, and de Campi includes a piece of advice that I don’t recall seeing elsewhere:

Lettering some of your own work helps a lot, so you’re better able to “see” the letters on the page. (Also doing a lettering script once the art is in.)

Because de Campi not only wrote it, she lettered it. Obviously, single-creator webcomics are lettered by the writer, but if you’re only writing? Taking this step to make sure the words really do what you mean them to do is very, very smart.

• By the way, de Campi notes that you can see a higher-resolution version on Tumblr, at least for the moment. And Tumblr, it seems, has decided that it doesn’t really want to be in business any longer. In case you didn’t click through, it appears that Tumblr is banning adult content from 17 December, which it defines as real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples, unless they decide that it’s classy enough to pass muster today (breastfeeding, works of art).

  No promises about what they decide is classy enough tomorrow; those definitions are loose enough to drive a truck — filled, no doubt, with human porn, furries gettin’ it on, and the traditional shitting dick nipples — through, and basically provide cover for whatever they want to no longer be associated with. Is it because they’re for sale, or got a new investor, or a payment processor doesn’t like teh nudez, or they just got sick of being banned from the various app stores? Who knows. They’re going to say that they only mean to get right of the child porn¹, but it seems to me they could get rid of that without discarding the rest.

  Consensus is this is going to kill fandom Tumblr, which is likely going to kill Tumblr as a whole. If your comic, or your blog, or whatever is hosted solely on Tumblr, time to find alternatives that you control, because the next TOS change doesn’t have to be about naughty bits, it could be about anything.

• If you’re outraged enough over Tumblr to want to Do Something, may I suggest another path for your ire? The Indie Comics Eleven are still deep in the lawsuit brought by Cody Pickrodt, with various responses and counter-responses to the (in my non-lawyerly opinion, bullshit) claims therein occurring in the recent past; The Comics Journal has a rundown. My reading of the situation is there’s at least three respondents that have a good chance of being dismissed from the action, but the fight will continue on as Pickrodt — raise your hand if you ever heard of him before this — continues to insist that his reputation and business prospects have been fatally damaged to the tune of US$2.5million².

  Which is to say that the need to fund the defense for Pickrodt’s targets continues, and you can contribute to their legal bills via the SPX-established Go Fund Me. There’s an estimated US$37,000 or so still needed to keep legal ruination away.

• Lastly, I was going to point out that Dustin Harbin — who, near as I can tell, is universally beloved — had put up a funding request for surgery for his dog, but a few hours ago he noted that the campaign had fully funded in half a day. Still, if you’ve ever enjoyed Harbin’s work (and I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that you have), maybe hit up his store? Paying for the surgery is one thing, having the financial cushion to take a little time off and spoil a Very Good Boy would be useful.

Spam of the day:

To stop receiving these emails from us ( adulte & dating emails ) just send us ” remove me ” for normal process or ” remove me now ” for fast process

Oh, yes, you are absolutely from Google™. For certain.

_______________
¹ Pretend I bothered to track down the Helen Lovejoy GIF here. You know the one.

² Real talk here — I’ve been a ridiculously highly-paid technical professional for transnational computing corporations for more than 20 damn years, and my total earnings in that time do not add up to two-point-five mil. Pickrodt has a very high opinion of his earning potential.

This one takes a little while to roll around to webcomics. Stay with me, people.

You may be familiar with Pat Rothfuss — fantasy author, comic book collaborator, comic strip character, D&D enthusiast, and general beardo¹. He also raises a metric shit-ton² of money for good works every holiday season through his charity, Worldbuilders. This time of year, he ceaselessly wrangles other creative folk to run auctions, merch availabilities, lotteries and such; he’ll even commit himself to doing you a service, Godfather style

The chief beneficiary of all of Rothfuss’s efforts via WB is Heifer International, who alleviate poverty and hunger around the world by matching up those in need with livestock — cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, bees — and veterinary knowledge & tools. As of this writing, Rothfuss has raised 92% of a US$400K goal for the year, with a bit more than eleven days left; not that reaching the goal will ever stop him until the timer runs out. He’s north of US$7.4 million raised over the past decade, which adds up to a lot of livestock.

Okay, I told you all that so I could tell you this: Rothfuss has done (and convinced others to do) damn near everything weird thing under the sun, in promotion of Heifer. But he’s never written a guest strip for a sex education webcomic:

Hey so, one of Pat’s stretch goals is writing a comic for OJST with his NotW characters =D You all should help make this happen =D

I’m not sure if those are smiley faces in the tweet from Oh Joy, Sex Toy creator Matthew Nolan, or very short dicks. But I do know that Rothfuss’s Name Of The Wind (aka The Kingkiller Chronicles … the last book of which is perpetually pending) features some sex. Like, whole sequences of prime fuckomancy. I have no idea what he might write that was illuminating and educating, or who he might get to illustrate it, but I suddenly want to read it as badly as Nolan does. Only one way to make that happen.

Spam of the day:

Take a Dip Into Style

I cannot express the degree to which I am not in the market for ladies swimwear.

_______________
¹ I know that I once commented on the Twitterfeed of my evil twin re: a picture of him and a magnificiently bearded Rothfuss, that should Rothfuss and Randy Milholland ever meet, it would be Beardaggedon. Their beards would tangle, fight, and love fiercely. Can’t find it now, dammit.

² Equal to 2.54 imperial shit-tons.