Fifteen years yesterday, and it’s the start of Year Sixteen today; around for five years, more or less before this here page even got started. I speak, naturally, of Randy Milholland’s Something*Positive, a behemoth of a strip in terms of archive depth, dramatis personae, and a complete adherence to the progress of time.

Characters have grown — it’s all but impossible to see Davan as the asshole he was in strip one, for example¹ — and characters have died² and characters are becoming their own people in unexpected ways. It’s all natural and slow and organic, and it remains one of the most emotionally honest works of webcomics, every damn day.

Happy anniversary, Davan, Aubrey, PeeJee, Jason, Fred, and Choochoobear, who’ve been there from the beginning. Happy anniversary, Vanessa, Nancy, PamJee, Donna, Rory, and those that have come later. Happy anniversary, Kharisma, Mike, Monette, Ollie, Kyle, Berenger, and all those who’ve managed to stop being terrible human beings because at the bottom of his grumpy exterior, Milholland has the heart of a true optimist. Happy anniversary, Avagadro, Pepito, Twitchy-Hug, Fluffmodeus, and all the other horrors that whisper terrible things at us (including the Last Trick or Treaters, my favorite of which are the kids that show the horrors what for).

Happy anniversary, Randy; something about you invites the casually entitled to throw more grief your way than any three random webcomickers, and still you send these bizarre, frustrating, lovable characters out to us every week. We’re the better for it.

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¹ Although some might argue he’s merely a different kind of asshole these days.

² We are coming up on eleven years since the most heartbreaking moment of the strip and Fred is still kept from Faye. Worse, he’s getting lost in the past, but

There’s something about the depths of winter, the short days, that makes us seek out family; for some it’s a matter of travel, for some the journey is longer. For nearly all of us, it’s where our strength and hope reside.

• Longtime readers of this page may recall that Brian Warmoth¹ and Rick Marshall² were a couple of guys that Megan Fox Tits Wolverine magazine put on the webomics beat back when they still had a magazine and weren’t busy screwing up their business of comics conventions with penny-ante grifting. Instead, MFTW just criminally underpaid a bunch of writers (of whom Warmoth and Marshall were the most prolific) to build up the magazine’s web presence and then fired them unceremoniously, taking down their stories in the process.

  Both Marshall and Warmoth landed on their feet, though, and have done well for themselves in the intervening years. In Warmoth’s case, very well as of this weekend, as he and his wife, Julia, welcomed their first child into the world — an act of profound optimism in the best of times — at their home in the Bay Area.

  Brian’s one of the sweetest, most genuine guys you’ll ever meet, and the rarest of things in the digital media age: a damned skilled editor who can bring out the best words from his writers, while building up audiences in niche media. I’ve seen the photos and while they aren’t mine to share (nor are the specific details), take it from me that Young Master Warmoth is adorable, and will undoubtedly grow to make his parents proud. Fleen congratulates the newly-expanded family, and wishes them all the best (along with a few uninterrupted nights of sleep).

• But when anybody in webcomics mentions the word family, it’s pretty likely that one idea springs to mind: Kate Beaton is visiting her parents, and at least some of her sisters will be there with their families, and the Best Comics Ever will come about as a result. And that’s pretty much what happened from yesterday, as Beaton made her way to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia from her writerly stomping grounds in Newfoundland. There’s Mom, and Da, and Agnes, of course. Everybody loves Agnes.

  And then Kate shared something more; it was low key and undramatic, as befits the folk of Cape Breton who (one would believe from Beaton’s comics) hate more than anything else the possibility of Making A Fuss. Kate’s sister Becky warned her to be ready, and she reached up and removed her hair. It’s not hair, you realize, it’s a wig and she’s bald underneath. She’s chemo bald and that means … oh, no.

  Here’s the thing — we don’t know Becky; Kate has been extraordinarily generous in sharing her life, and all the Beatons have been willing to be part of that sharing. I can’t imagine that Kate would have done that without Becky’s express permission and it feels real even though we don’t know them because Kate’s always made them feel like they’re right there, we can touch them they’re so close.

  And I don’t know you, Becky Beaton, or Kate’s other sisters, or her parents, or Agnes, or any of the extended clan in Cape Breton³, but I wish I did. I want you to know that everybody that reads Kate’s comics (especially the silly, ordinary family comics) considers every Beaton to be The Best. Love and strength to you, and your family, and laughter too, because that’s pretty much what all the comics since have been about. When there’s laughter in the Beaton household, there’s no room for Fuss.

Spam of the day:

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Are you talking about the solder thing, because that would be the best spam logic leap ever.

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¹ Shown here, right.

² Will, and Holly, shown here, center right in khaki.

³ Well, except for her relative Jeff Smith.

Possibly also bad, and maybe stupid¹. There’s loads of things going on. To wit:

• The second half of the Calista Brill interview is up at The Beat, and it’s just as enlightening as the first part.
• The first new installment of Kazu Kibuishi’s webcomic, Copper, in forever (the previous installment was April of 2009, before Amulet Book 2 was out) has been released to the wide world, and Kibuishi’s dog-and-his-boy team haven’t missed a step. It’s entirely in character with all the previous episodes, but you know what caught my eye? That hanging lamp, which puts a Schulzian overtone on the vignette. Fred, Copper, don’t be strangers.
• Le Millionnaire est mort, vive le millionnaire: Tony Millionaire announced the end of Maakies today and pointed us all towards his new comic venture, Rickets & Scurvy at about the same time. While not necessarily a webcomic, Maakies has had more than its share of influence on the webcomickin’ world; particularly given the demise of alternative newspapers, the comics that would have wound up there are online these days, in large part to Millionaire and his contemporaries.
• You know how I can tell Brad Guigar is doing good with his ongoing exploration of smut? He’s shutting down a project that probably didn’t take much of his time and from which he clearly derived a lot of dad-joke amusement², presumably due to being busy with the aforementioned smut. Tales From The Con has been running at the Emerald City Comicon site for more than four year, featuring a rotating cast of artists depicting Guigar’s takes on what the con circuit is like from both sides of the exhibitor table. But comes now the news that TFTC is wrapping its run and going out with a new softcover collection of all 250+ strips, available for preorder now
• But the biggest news in webcomics today is also the biggest webcomic I can ever recall seeing from Zach Weinersmith — 62 panels³ of deep-dive on quantum computing (with a writing assist from Scott Aaronson), which is a pretty damn good primer on an entire field of theoretical work, in the form of a parent and teen sex talk. Enjoy a week’s worth of funny and nerdery all in a single sitting, thanks to a burning desire to (as per the secret punchline behind the big red button) make Randall Munroe look like a slacker. Bravo.

Spam of the day:

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and

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¹ I’m tempted to distill it down to the Zappaesque Dumb all over, an’ maybe even a little ugly on the side, but then I decided not to. PS: Hi Brett and Rich.

² Case in point: most recent strip, which I suppose may be the last.

³ Sure, Weinersmith regularly goes from single panel to a dozen or more, but this is waaaay outside his usual length. Previous similar atypically long single comics: 50 states, 50 slogans, any particular installment of Ducks.

There is a very large holiday party being set up outside the classroom here at VeryLargeSoftCorp — balloons being filled with our precious stocks of helium, garbage bins being wrapped in festive mylar and foil, dance floors and bars being installed everywhere. Seriously, the reception desk outside my classroom is now stocked with mixers and garnish fruit (sadly, the booze doesn’t arrive until later). I, however, will not be hanging out here until 6:00pm when the party starts, getting blind drunk, then driving home for several hours as a hazard to myself and all around me. Since everybody’s gone home to get ready for the big drink-up (the taxis and Ubers are prebooked in bulk, no worries), let’s finish this and I can hit the road.

• In case you missed it the other day, Gene Luen Yang (MacArthur Fellow and Library of Congress ambassador) did a TEDx talk recently (it’s a TED Talk, but not at the official fancy-pants conference) on why comics belong in the classroom. It’s good. Go watch it because dang, as of right now there’s only 594 views and a couple of them are me.
• The Cartoon Art Museum continues its partnership with the Museum of the African Diaspora in this, the ever-dwindling time before it gets its own space again. Continuing the Third Thursdays tradition of San Francisco museums, next week (that would be the 15th, which is naturally a Thursday) will see an evening of storytelling in conjunction with MOAD’s current exhibit Where is Here.

  The exhibit is about travel and the places we inhabit, and participants will get the opportunity to make “place cards”, where they write and draw about somewhere meaningful to them. It’s free and open to the public, running from 5:00pm to 8:00pm, and includes admission to MOAD’s various exhibitions (address: 685 Mission Street). You’ll even get wristbands good for Third Thursday events as neighborhood bars and restaurants.

Okay, gotta jet. Have a great weekend, see you back on Monday.

Spam of the day:

One Trick to a Great Christmas

AUUUGH!, cried Charlie Brown. Not only is Christmas too commercial, now even Santa is clickbaiting!

Fun fact, I was in the audience in New York City when This American Life recorded Birthdays, Anniversaries, and Milestones¹ (episode #174, celebrating their fifth anniversary), which was also my introduction to the sick, tight dance moves of OK Go. Not quite anything so momentous today, but still worth noting them.

• First and foremost, let us acknowledge that today marks ten years of Erfworld², by Rob Balder and (to date) three artists: Jamie Noguchi, Xin Ye, and David Hahn (with Ye the current and most prolific of the contributing artists). Balder’s written more than 725 pages of comics since — sometimes literally, since a significant number of those updates are not comics pages, but pages of text with inset illustrations, which take a lot more words than a comic script.

  Along the way, he’s built perhaps the deepest, world-buildiest, detail-richest, backstory and lore of any comics work (not just webcomics) of similar age. Certainly, the entirety of the DC or Marvel multiverse has more nerdly details (or even better, Carla Speed McNeil’s Finder, which at least has an intentional mythology around it, instead of being the side-effect of hundreds of conflicting writers retconning into what’s supposed to be a cohesive whole), but they’ve taken many decades to get there. Along the way, he also pioneered a patronage support model that (if my memory serves me correctly) predated Patreon. It’s quite an achievement for only ten years.

• Regarding yesterday’s reports on Anthony Clark and a mediocre pizza chain, the latest news is that Little Caesar’s have removed the thieved content but have not offered any compensation to Clark. Confidential to Little Caesar’s — the offense didn’t end because you stopped using something stolen from an artist, and you still owe him money.
• Still on the unhappy end of things, Colorist Supreme Steve Hamaker reports that his webcomic, PLOX, is currently down. Really down, as his hosting company managed to lose the entire site. I can think of webcomics sites that have been taken down for various durations by scammers, hackers, and griefers — Bad Gods, Anders Loves Maria, Hark! A Vagrant, The Abominable Charles Christopher off the top of my head — but this is the first time I can think of because of sheer incompetence on the part of a host. Then again, it was apparently GoDaddy.

  Hamaker’s not a web admin, and when your host says Uh we deleted your database k thanks bye even web admins may not have a lot to go on; PLOX will come back, but there will be delays as prior commitments take up his time. Fortunately, Hamaker’s got a Patreon that he can use to push out new updates, and I suspect that supporting him there will help to speed along the restoration of the archives and the design/implementation/launch of the new site (hopefully far, far away from GoDaddy).

• MoCCA Fest 2017, y’all. Saturday and Sunday, 1st & 2nd of April 2017 at Metropolitan West, programming at the local Kimpton Hotel, guests of honor to include Official MacArthur Genius Gene Luen Yang.
• Wonder what Gene Ambaum is up to when he’s not writing Library Comic? How about risking his own personal sanity for your education and edification? Read, if you dare, his review of Sweet Bro And Hella Jeff.

Spam of the day:

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Booze? I’m going with booze.

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¹ I met Ira Glass, and Sarah Vowell, and Russell Banks, and Ira’s dad, and Dan Savage, and David Rakoff (who told me he hated me, then decided he didn’t when it turned out we shared a birthday). Earlier that year I was on Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me (but the archive doesn’t go back that far) and as a result I have Carl Kasell’s voice on my home answering machine, where he reads a haiku of my own invention. It was a good year for me with respect to public media.

² I possibly should have titled today’s post Welcome to Erf, but honestly that was the stupidest line in Independence Day.

Who would have ever thought a private tutoring session is more difficult than a classroom full of people? Actually, I would have, because it’s happened a couple times in my career and it’s either the Easiest Week You’re Ever Paid For or a Complete Horrorshow. Weekend, take me away.

But first! It’s been a while since we changed the tagline at the top of the blog; in the past we have been known (intermittently but not exhaustively) as

Fleen: The Webcomics Blog About Webcomics
Fleen: Written By Bitter, Haggard Wordbeasts
Fleen: Try Our Thick, Creamy Shakes
Fleen: Hack Webcomics Pseudojournalists

and the current

Fleen: The Elcoertnic Swiss Army Knife For This Topic [thank you, spammer with a questionable command of English]

It’s time for a change. Thanks to today’s Achewood, we will for the next while be known as

Fleen: The Awkward Christmas Dinner Of Our Obligation To Existence¹

Here’s something to look forward to: Ryan North, henceforth known by his alternate moniker of The Joybringer, has declared the annual Dinosaur Comics Holiday Party (okay, it’s actually the party of Toronto’s legendary comics shop The Beguiling, but you gonna tell North that he’s wrong?), where there will be FUN and PALS and the traditional SECRET SANTA EXCHANGE all fueled by TASTY, ADULT BEVERAGES. Wednesday, 21 December, 7:00pm to 10:00pm, at Paupers Pub (539 Bloor Street West).

And in honor of North bringing us this news, let us direct your attention to the alt-text of today’s Dinosaur Comics wherein he notes that he (North) has become the greatest hero to Dudes in history by (and I quote) [coming] up with a problem that is ACTUALLY SOLVED by jerking off. Although I would also point out that in a related Dinosaur Comics from July 2009, Ryan noted i the alt-text that (at the time) Google returned no results for the phrase it’s all thanks to sperm, which in the intervening seven-plus years is no longer true². Progress?

Spam of the day:

35 People Having Fun With Random Statues

I ain’t opening this one, but it’s all drunks pretending to blow statues of Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders, right?

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¹ Although a quick survey of the office revealed a strong minority preference for F-F-FFFUCK cunt-ass shit blogs what ain’t safe.

² Although unsurprisingly, this appears to be because of CafePress, who surely waited a whole hour after reading North’s 2009 declaration before running out and producing a full line (55 products worth!) of It’S [sic] All Thanks To Sperm merchandise. Thanks for ruining things again, CafePress!

How’s December treating you so far? Me, I’m glad that this absolute kidney stone of a year¹ is coming finally to an end, and also that it appears not to have claimed Buzz Aldrin as it was threatening to do. You’ll have to do better than that to get Buzz, 2016!

Anyway. WordPress is acting up, so here’s a quick rundown:

• You know whose ass 2016 can kiss, on account of she is unstoppable and undestroyable by conventional means? Spike Trotman, that’s whose. Back over the summer she announced what the next Iron Circus Comics anthology would be, and today she opened the call for submissions. Take ‘er away, Spike:
  

  The Tim’rous Beastie anthology project is now open for submissions. We’ll be accepting them between Dec 1st, 2016 and Jan 1st, 2017. The full list of anthology participants will be announced Jan 15th, except in the instance we receive more submissions than expected, in which case this may be extended 1 week to accommodate volume.

  This is an anthology by and for those of us who grew up inspired by Redwall, The Deptford Mice, Rats of NIMH, and other tales of brave and imperiled critters defying their size and place in the natural order. We want to not only channel that inspiration into the medium of comics, but to approach familiar themes with fresh eyes.

  Tim’rous Beastie will be a joint venture, with Amanda Lafrenais as Managing Editor and Iron Circus Comics publishing and distributing.

  Thoughts:

  • With Lafrenais acting as editor on this project, Spike is developing a farm team of creative partners that can be delegated to; this is important given that she’s got like a dozen and a half projects scheduled for the near- to mid-term, and is now coordinating national-scale distribution for ICC. It’s no longer a one-person enterprise over there in Chicago, and she’s building up the talent pool. Ten bucks says in ten years she’s running a company that publishes as many pages per annum as any of the second-tier comics publishers do today.
  • Creators already announced on Beastie include Evan Dahm, Abby Howard, and KC Green, hecka yeah.
  • If you’re going to submit for glob’s sake read the guidelines thoroughly; every time Spike announces an anthology, somebody or other doesn’t follow the rules then bitches at length about how they’re being discriminated against because blah, blah, blah. She’s gotta be sick of that shit by now, and I’ma go out on a limb and guess that anybody that doesn’t follow the rules will find their submission tossed without a moment’s regret.
• Pat Race is tireless in his efforts to bring Art and Comics and Fun to his corner of the world (that would be Juneau, Alaska), and that trend continues tomorrow as his Alaska Robotics Gallery from tomorrow, as his new show (Postcards From Juneau by name) opens with the traditional cheese and crackers. Gallery hours are noon to 6:00pm local time, but I suspect that if you bring Pat a beer, he’ll hang out with you after closing for a while.
• The XOXO Festival — celebrating independent creators of art, technology, society, etc; think TED without the multinational corporate approval — has done a nice job of posting video of its talks and presentations. A new one went up yesterday that’s well worth the half hour it’ll take to watch.

  David Rees has been many things: a webcomicker, one of the first to really dig deep on the War on Terror; an artisanal pencil sharpener; a TV host that celebrated the profundity of the everyday. He’s also an inveterate record-keeper, and in XOXO’s new video, he tells us about his new podcast with This American Life vet Starlee Kine and the economics of the creative life. Specifically, his personal economics, laid bare and transparent to a degree that would make the President-elect melt. There have been really useful peeks inside the monetary curtain from the likes of Dorothy Gambrell and Erika Moen/Matthew Nolan in the past, but the sheer breadth of what Rees shares makes it uniquely valuable. Go watch.

Spam of the day:

Should these be legal? The military recently released technology that is not available to the public.

Okay, one, it they released it then it’s available to the public. Think before you hit publish, people! Two, you’re talking about a friggin’ pair of sunglasses. It’s not exactly the realm of secret technology that could affect national security. Get a grip.

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¹ Fun story — the oldest comic strip I can remember reading is a Doonesbury strip from late December sometime around 1978 or ’79. Mike and Zonker are talking about how bad life sucks and Mike notes that his his grandfather always said This too shall pass about bad times. He and Zonker agree to the sentiment and toast: To the worst of times! To a kidney stone of a year! as a boop-boop heavy disco song comes on the jukebox.

That punchline has stayed with me for near on 40 years now. Comics, everybody.

We all do what we can; the way forward seems fraught and full of those who would harm us for who we are, but forward we go. Two people doing their damndest to find that way forward today.

• First, Jaime Noguchi of Yellow Peril, who sums it all up beautifully in today’s panel one:
  What to do if you see a swastika. Because that’s where we fucking are now.

  Which follows with handy tips how a hateful symbol can be hidden, its intent to intimidate and oppress turned into a delightful kitty or turtle or corporate logo. I suspect that this is the sort of thing that fucking Nazis will hate more than anything else; they’re so convinced of their superiority and the purity of their philosophy, message, and iconography that to see it subverted is likely to make them sputter But, but … my mighty swastika¹.

  Fat Tardises. Super Triforces. Pixel hearts. Screw the cowards, screw their message, put ’em in the ash-heap of history where they belong.

• Secondly, when we have (eventually, and I have no illusion it will be quickly or easily) fully populated the ash-heap of history², the task will remain to ensure that this crap doesn’t happen again³. That’s going to require a population that’s far more rigorous about sifting actual information from propaganda, reality from falsity, facts from lies. Learn well we will have to tell future generations or repeat our folly. One of the people on the front lines of that learning is the semipseudonymous Dr Dante Shepherd.

  Today his photo-webcomic, Surviving The World, celebrates 3000 entries with an observation that an exercise meant to help deal with the stresses of graduate school has turned into a professing career, and also:

  I am very pleased to announce that I have been asked to make science comics for the quarterly scientific journal Chemical Engineering Education over the next year, and will have the first comic released in the spring issue next year.

  For those of you wondering how that teaches the next generations to not be fooled by charlatans, let me assure you that chemical engineering does not care if your pet theory comes from your preferred Weltanschauung⁴ or not; if the equation that keeps the chemical reactor from blowing up in your face came from a person that you consider beneath you and you disregard it, it’s gonna blow up in your damn face.

  Honestly, a stronger grounding in the scientific method (which pits ideas against the test of reality) over the past three decades could have saved us all a lot of problems. In the meantime, send your youngsters to Shepherd and others like him; the vaccine of knowledge is armor against the plague of ignorance or some other similarly mixed metaphor.

Spam of the day:

That Realty Chick — CA Real Estate Market News & Updates from your local real estate agent

California is not local, but thanks so much for thinking I’d be interested in buying a house — pardon me, an estate — in Beverly freakin’ Hills.

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¹ Any coincidence with Randy Newman’s pondering as to Why must everybody laugh at my mighty sword? entirely intentional.

² And, hopefully, found a way to re-burn things that have already been burned.

³ One of the most astute things I’ve read since the election is the observation that this rising tide of authoritarianism is occurring as living memory of World War II is lost. Dunno about you, but my grandfather would not have put up with this fascist posturing. As he was the biggest man in the world in all of my memories pretty sure he would have fixed it all by his lonesome.

⁴ Look it up.

I may have opinions (oh baby I got opinions) on which previous works of comicdom nominated for the National Book Award should have received the honor without doing so.

But it hard to hold the contrary opinion that the March trilogy — the story of the civil rights movement as recollected by Representative John Lewis and realized in comics form by Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell — is anything other than a towering achievement of remembering our history lest we repeat it. And it is equally impossible to say that March: Book Three is anything other than a wholly deserving nominee for the National Book Award.

So it’s pretty fitting that it won last night in the category of Young Peoples Literature.

In the words of Congressman Lewis:

This book is for all of America. It is for all people, but especially young people, to understand the essence of the civil rights movement, to walk through the pages of history to learn about the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence, to be inspired to stand up to speak out and to find a way to get in the way when they see something that is not right, not fair, not just.

It’s been five decades since the years that John Lewis put his body and his life on the line to ensure that all Americans would be recognized before the law as equal. It’s been 35 years since he ascended into political office in Atlanta as a city councilor, and this year marks the 30th since he was first elected to the House of Representatives. I’m certain he had hopes that some fundamental questions about the nature of our democracy were settled. I’m pretty sure that he’s got a close eye on current events and keeps a well broken-in pair of shoes ready for the next march he needs to make.

Congratulations to Congressman Lewis, Aydin, and Powell; I wish that we had learned your lessons better.

Spam of the day:

From: Gliceria Tyrrell
Your message is ready to be sent with the following file or link attachments: 20160831_104911
Note: To protect against computer viruses, e-mail programs may prevent sending or receiving certain types of file attachments. Check your e-mail security settings to determine how attachments are handled.

You’re going to send me an email from a fake relative with a Harry Potter first name and I’m just going to click on your virus-laden attachment because you put in a sentence about being safe around viruses and implying I should disable safety measures? That’s just insulting.

It’s been a week, that’s for sure. A week of feeling alternately on edge and sad and defiant and angry and depressed¹. We can’t let unprecedented evil become normalized, but we also can’t let ourselves be on edge 100% of the time. No kidding, that’s where PTSD comes from.

So while we plan for a long struggle to not lose the societal gains that have been made in our lifetimes, while we plan our warnings to future generations just how fragile those gains can be, we do have to find happiness where it presents itself. And today’s got a double dose of such, as we are reminded by two of the exemplars of [web]comicdom from Toronto.

• From Christopher Butcher, a reminder that today is Heidi MacDonald’s birthday. Heidi Mac has been in the comics journalism game longer than most people have been in comics², and the day that I knew I wasn’t just spinning my wheels was when she first said something nice about something I’d written over at The Beat. Cheers, Heidi.
• From Ryan North, a reminder that today is Anthony Clark’s birthday as well. Anthony Clark is one of those rare people about whom nobody can be found to say anything bad. His colo[u]ring work enhances and enriches many a comic, and his own Nedroid Picture Diary is a font of pure, unbridled joy.

  When I talk to friends from outside my webcomics circles and they bring up the topic, saying that there’s one webcomic they love more than any other, it’s invariably Nedroid. Good job, Anthony, and please consider this to be my occasional plea to get hold of Emmy Cicierega and revive Laserpony Studios.

Spam of the day:

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Everything about this sentence makes me want to travel back in time and punch the child that will eventually grow up to write it.

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¹ For some, that describes every week; for those of us that find this to be a new experience, welcome to the lives of the institutionally disadvantaged. Hi, my name is Gary and I go through life on the lowest difficulty level. I thought I was pretty empathetic before 8 November 2016 but was fooling myself. I’ll try to do better.

² Alternately, longer than most comics people have been, period.