Let’s face it, nobody right now is exhaling or relaxing, no matter how many walking exemplars of impunity are finding themselves being taken into Federal custody in a manner that is simultaneously tragic, enraging, and hilarious. So let us be grateful that the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum is doing their damndest to bring a little light to us all.

• On Sunday afternoon next weekend (that would be 24 January), there will be an interactive game of Paper Charades (like they did at CxC this year), which is a non-copyright-infringing game that looks a little bit like Pictionary but which is legally distinct. Raina Telgemeier, Dana Simpson, and Shannon Wright will be there to play along, with folks chiming in from chat to guess what’s getting drawn.

  The fun starts at 4:00pm EST (that’s 1:00pm for those of you on the west coast; everybody else figure it out on your own), it’s free, and open to all, but you do have to register in advance.

• The following weekend (that would be 30 January), the Billy opens a new exhibit of Walt Kelly’s Pogo, specifically focusing on the political commentary that the eponymous possum and his cohorts gleefully engaged in. Into The Swamp: The Social And Political Satire of Walt Kelly’s Pogo will be on view until 31 October, with a hiatus from 19 April through 11 June.

  Now you may be saying to yourself, Self, hasn’t Gary been pretty adamant that this is not the time to engage in public events, place-going, and suchlike? and in this you would be right. Hopefully we’ll be back to some semblance of public engagement well before the exhibit closes — wearing your masks keeping your distance now, and getting your shot as soon as you’re eligible radically increases the odds of getting there, especially in the back half of the run — and in the meantime, the Billy has restricted hours and capacity.

  Reservations are required (see here), with information on Ohio State’s safety guidelines here. Don’t go travelling just for this until we’ve got the pandemic under control, but once that happens? You’ll want to see this.

Spam of the day:

(Did you order an intimacy?)

No, but I am still waiting on a Negroni, a plate of jamon iberico, and an order of duck-fat fries. Could you check on when those will come out?

June? You expect them in June? Yeah, okay. Thanks.

Sometimes, though you’d be forgiven for thinking me loathe to admit it, there are things bigger than webcomics. I just listened to hours of mendacious bullshit coming out of the noise-holes of dozens of people who think anybody not exactly like them should not have a say in our society, and in the end their object of worship was held to account anyway.

Ten Republican members of the House voted to forward the article of impeachment to the Senate, which officially makes this the most bipartisan impeachment ever. Who knows what happens now, or how we begin to extricate this malignant growth from the nation — which is only personified in its ultimate end state in Donald Trump, not solely composed of him — and begin to undo the damage of the last four years and the last 400.

But on this momentous, knife-edge day that has been sadly foreseeable since forever, I suppose we should all do our best to preserve our thoughts on what’s happened so that future generations may know what it was like. To that end, allow me to say:

Donald Trump, it’s my fondest wish that you and your entire wannabe-mobster family¹ and all your fascist collaborators and enablers die in prison where you just might have enough self-awareness to understand how loathed you are, but I kinda doubt it. Eat me.

And although I believe I’ve done a good job of communicating what the political position of this page has been, and my readers have been remarkably non-assholish over the years, if you find yourself shocked!, offended! and, shocked some more!!!, door’s over there. Ain’t nobody forcing you to stay.

Spam of the day:

mRNA vaccine by Moderna contains *Luciferin* dissolved with *66.6* ml of distilled *phosphate* buffer solution. You can fact check this by going directedly to the link down below that goes to google patents. You will see the patent has been filed by moderna on the right hand column. When you download the pdf, press ctrl + f on your keyword and look up the word “luciferin” which pops up 5 times in the document. Also search up the word “luciferase” in which that word pops up 59 times

Luciferin and luciferase are the chemicals that make firefly butts light up, you credulous fuckwit. You can eat me, too.

_______________
¹ I sincerely hope that Barron grows up to be like his cousin Mary, and escapes the enormous toxicity he’s been bathed in since birth. None of this was your fault, kid, and biology is not destiny.

Before we get started, I believe that birthday Version 1.0 release anniversary wishes are in order to everybody’s favorite robot pal, R Stevens. Selfless and giving entity that he is, he’s celebrated with a great new pin design in limited quantities that ships for free starting tomorrow. Fuzzy nightmare pals forever!

• I got my copy of The Nib’s latest print collection, Greetings From The Wasteland in the mail today, and it’s great. For starters, the collection of political cartoons is in large part arranged by creator, so all of your Pia Guerra cartoons are together, all the Gemma Corrells, all the Kendra Wellses, etc.

  Sadly, there wasn’t enough space to dedicate to the entire story of the future wasteland cartoons of editor Matt Bors — there would have been no room for anybody else — which, if arranged in the correct order, form a single, coherent story¹. But that’s hardly a surprise, given that they had four years of daily cartoons from dozens of cartoonists (15 of which get featured sections) to curate and only 200 pages to play with. Get yours now.

• We are facing down the second year of disrupted in-person events, but if there’s one thing comics-as-a-community has gotten good at, it’s finding ways to shift to virtual gatherings. Thus, the Cartoon Art Museum would like you to know that uncontrolled pandemic² or no, there will be some form of Queer Comics Expo and some way to announce the annual Prism Awards:
  

  Awards will be presented to comic works by queer authors and works that promote the growing body of diverse, powerful, innovative, positive or challenging representations of LGBTQAI+ characters in fiction or nonfiction comics. The goal of the Awards is to recognize, promote and celebrate diversity and excellence in the field of queer comics.

  The Queer Comics Expo launched as an annual event in 2014 as a celebration of queer culture and to promote diverse queer representation in comics, animation, and other great ways to tell our stories. QCE also serves as a fundraiser for San Francisco’’s Cartoon Art Museum. This year the event will take place May 15-16, 2021. Applications to participate as a creator or presenter for 2021 are OPEN until Monday, March 15, 2021 and will be NOTIFIED by Thursday, April 15, 2021.

  You can submit for both the QCE and the Prisms by browsing to cartoonart.org/qcexpo. Submissions for the Prisms are open until 28 February, with finalists announced at QCE (15-16 May) and winners announced over the summer. Categories include Best Short Form Comic, Best Webcomic, Best Comic From A Small To Midsize Press, Best Comic From A Mainstream Publisher, Best Comic Anthology, and Best Comic For Young Readers (new category).

  Category-specific requirements vary, but in general all submissions must have been first published in calendar year 2020, be in English, and have prominent LGBTQAI+ themes or be a strong allegory to the queer experience. See the entry form for more details.

Spam of the day:

This professor plugged his house to Earth’s core… that can harvest the power of Earth’s core making him 100% energy independent.

Yeah, I don’t have the patience to explain the concept of “electrical ground” to this spamming asshole, but I attended nerd schools — as an undergrad and grad — for six years specifically to learn that the Earth is where electricity goes to die.

_______________
¹ Really, Bors said it himself. Two comics more recent than the book provide the bookends. By the way, their names are Gorm and Tinsel.

² Seriously, people, stay the fuck home, wear a mask, and make people that you know who won’t do those things feel your wrath until they decide to stop killing the rest of us.

I’d intended to talk about how I was doing post-COVID vaccine, but then Warnock & Ossoff did their old parishoner/boss John Lewis proud and Donald Trump instigated the Stupid Putsch and here we are.

So I was more than a bit mad yesterday when I heard that Fox News was trying to act like it was BLM and antifa that were invading the Capitol and doing violence¹ and wondered what I can do. There’s regular, organized campaigns against their advertisers, but the real money they make is in the fees they charge cable providers for the privilege of carrying their programming, whether anybody watches it or not. And you can’t unbundle and get rid of single channels, everybody knows that.

But I tried anyway, and what the hell? It worked. And I told the world to do the same and hopefully a few zillion people are calling up their cable companies and asking for Fox/Fox Business/OANN/Newsmax/The Blaze/etc to not get any more of their money. And even if the cable companies won’t do that (cf: Comcast continues to be the worst), they’re hearing from a bunch of people who are upset as hell about the propaganda networks (key phrase I used: I will not have any of my money used for the material support of terrorism) and will hopefully use that as justification to negotiate those carriage fees down.

I mean, the cable companies don’t want to pay that money to Fox/etc, they want to keep it. And yes, the cable industry as a whole is terrible, but if they can take a dime or two from Fox (et al) for every one of their subscribers for every month going forward? That’s a hell of a lot more money than any ad campaign you could get yanked off the air. Murdoch is supposed to have cut ties with Trump as it is, time for him to feel some financial sting rather than just walk away.

So I started typing while I was cradling the phone to my ear² and talking with “James” (surely not his real name, which I do not begrudge him) and he listened very politely and I said that if he couldn’t that I’d like him to pass the word to his superiors and he found a way to do it. No bundle changes, just Fox and its ilk will not arrive in my house any longer, and my share of the fees is withheld. I thanked him, and said I hoped he got a lot of similar calls. Weirdly, although the cable industry is verifiably the worst, I’ve always had good dealings with Cablevision/Optimum.

I have no idea if it’ll work at scale, but it was tremendously satisfying — and likely more productive than the time I spent yelling at Rudy Giuliani³ on Twitter.

I also spent time today calling my Senators and Congressman (had to go with their local district offices — when you call, convey to the staffer taking the message your profound relief that they/their colleagues weren’t hurt after yesterday’s disgrace) to warn them not to trust anything electrical or electronic that was left behind in their offices and oh yeah to impeach that motherfucker again, to send the architects of insurrection the fuck out of Congress (lookin’ at you, Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz; and what’s your deal anyway, Ted? Afraid you would lose the Most Hated By Your Cowokers trophy to Josh?), to bring down some scrupulously fair but motherfucking consequences on Y’all Qaeda and Vanilla Isis, and to fix the injustices of the last 4 years, not to mention the last 400.

So that’s why comments are off for the next while here at Fleen. I thought it prudent, even though the MAGA chuds seem to leave me alone. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get back to comics at some point, but we’ll take it day by day. Take care of yourselves, friendos, there’s more than just COVID out there that wants to wreck everything, and it’s going to be a long-haul project to repair all the damage.

And get the shot when it’s offered. My arm still hurts, but it’s a damn sight better than COVID.

Spam of the day:

which the conventional graphic symbols are executed. drafts of literary works

Something in the Master Spam Wordsalad Generator Algorithm is really hung up on the idea of manuscripts right now. 90% of what I’m getting reads like this.

_______________
¹ It was a pretty damn lily-white crowd and they were plainly the fa that antifa does us the favor of fighting. Plus they all keep doing incredibly stupid shit like posting video of themselves or giving on the record interviews bragging about doing crimes. Bunch a’ real brain geniuses there.

² Awkwardness, anger, and multitasking are to blame for the typos in my tweets. Swear.

³ I dream of the day I can call him a craven shitstain to his face, but for now it’ll have to be via the internet. All the same, if he spends even a fraction of a second with his eyeballs having to process my visceral hatred of him, if I take even a little bit of his hauteur away, it’ll have been 47 seconds well spent.

It’s been pretty much all Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin, all the time this week. Below find his general thoughts on a standout comics festival in the plague year, and we’ll see him the next time something catches his eye and he puts up the FSFCPL Signal.

?Comic book festivals always leave me physically exhausted at the end, but not the Pleine Page Festival (well, except for my fingers). After France went back in lockdown October 30th, Lise and her accomplices set up this virtual festival on her Twitch channel to compensate for the festivals that couldn’t take place in 2020, and while it can’t replace a proper festival, take a look at this lineup! When it comes to programming, the quality is on par with the best festivals, with additionally a large focus on matters of interest to this blog. As a result, you can now enjoy on Fleen the transcripts of:

• The interview with Pénélope Bagieu
• The panel Is Being Known Necessary To Be Published?, with Cy, Marie Spénale, and Sita, moderated by Lise
• The panel Why Choose Self-Publishing?, with Yatuu and Lisa Mandel, moderated by Aurélien Fernandez

But that doesn’t mean the other events were uninteresting! For instance, in a traditional festival I always check what’s next for me about 5-10 minutes before the end of an event so I can get to the next one in time, if necessary. Well, even if this time I was in front of my tablet I ended up doing the same, even though that was going to be the next thing on the channel anyway, because I was eager to see what was next.

So I also followed with interest her interviews with Cyril Pedrosa and Mathieu Bablet. Thankfully for my fingers, the programming alternated these with more contemplative events where artists would draw, either competitively, or cooperatively, or as a reward for lottery winners, or just as a drawing lesson.

All the while, the event went smoothly, or as smoothly as can be expected for a pandemic-era virtual event: Lise was never any less professional than a mainstream newscaster in the face of trouble, even though I had pegged her more as a wordsmith; I guess I failed to account for her video activities on YouTube and Twitch. For instance, when it turned out Cyril Pedrosa would be unable to be present at the programmed time, she arranged to record the interview the previous day, and except for the disclaimer at the beginning that we would be unable to ask questions because of that, that was integrated as seamlessly as possible in the event.

The success of this event shows Lise has got the best rolodex of any of us in this beat, and the team to organize anything. So congratulations to her, Fernandez (co-host and provider of drawings for the lottery), Fanny (who handled backstage activities such as the video feeds), and a Matthias who could be seen passing books to Lise while she was on stage. I hope this was only the first of many such events to come.

For those keeping track at home, that’s about 8000 words from FSFCPL, which is a frankly unreasonable number of words to crank out at this most soul-crushingly hectic magical time of year. As always, our thanks to him, and a sincere hope for a restful remainder of the year. Personally, I’m thinking that he earned the Odinsleep.

Spam of the day:

We..have..a..surprise..for_UPS_Customer

Is that supposed to be UPS as in United Parcel Service, or as in uninterruptible power supply. Because I’m probably about a year from having to replace the battery in the UPS, and I order most of my stuff specifically asking for Postal Service delivery because the postal service is awesome.

Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin continues his recaps of the Pleine Page Festival, this time with a panel discussion from the festival co-host. I’ll note that this is the third 2200+ word piece you’ve gotten this week, because that’s how we do things at Fleen: news from around the world from people on the ground, not the same old cape comic press releases.

The panel discussion Why Choose Self-Publishing?, moderated by festival co-host Aurélien Fernandez¹, began with an introduction of the panelists and their own crowdfunded projects: Yatuu switched to crowdfunding after working with various publishers, with 5000 books preordered for her latest campaign, up from 2800. Lisa Mandel produced various works with various publishers before running Une Année Exemplaire first on Instagram, then funding a print run for it with a crowdfunding campaign.

Mandel: She launched it on a hunch; at the time her blog on the website of Le Monde has stopped, as well as her own blog, and she had few Instagram followers. So in the end she got sufficient funding, but no further, from the crowdfunding campaign proper (about 550 books, which amounts to about 15,000€) [Author’s note: her campaign completely flew under my radar at the time, though my radar could always stand improvement anyway]. She later did a post-campaign preorder offer about 4-5 months ago, which doubled the preordered amount, and later on her selection for Angoulême netted her additional sales. Her participation in the Exemplaire project was a long time coming, they even intend not to contract with a distributor so as to get experience themselves with all the parts of the book value-adding process.

Fernandez: They both have experience with the traditional publishing system, why self-publish then?

Yatuu: First issue: she did have interested publishers, but they only agreed to a single book … which wasn’t compatible with the worldbuilding she intended to develop; none of them wanted to take a risk on a book series. And even if she could sign with a cooperative publisher, he could later change his mind and not fund the following book, which wasn’t acceptable to her.

Second issue: the financials, as she intended to live off making comics, while before she had to alternate that with freelance illustration work, due to weak advances. As for royalties, the percentages are so slim she doesn’t start earning out until many books have been sold, so in the end it was too difficult for her to make a living on comics.

Mandel: More or less the same reasons for her, first as an experiment as she was comfortable with her situation and had a 17-year career behind her. She started with Nini Patalo in 2000, and by 2003 the golden era was coming to an end: she was earning 15000€ advances per book, or 300€ per page before taxes, but half of that was funded by the book being first published in a comics magazine found in newsstands, which no longer exists.

It went downhill from there, as when she proposed doing a 6th book, her publisher attempted Wouldn’t you want to earn less than 17 years ago?: between the increased cost of living and her carrier progression, that was unacceptable, and she had to negotiate to merely track inflation.

She has seen everything: in her late teens manga was still unknown except for heavyweights like Dragon Ball, now the market is saturated even if it is not necessarily with bad works. Now, she’s currently on contracts allowing her to make a decent living, but solely off advances for books which never earn out. And she realized that she had no coverage for holidays, unemployment, etc. Which resulted in her never taking a break to assess her situation.

Fernandez: Don’t the creators rely less and less on royalties these days anyway?

Mandel: She still did so at the time of the first Nini Patalo book, and while she is not in the same situation as Yatuu, she’s been chomping at the bit² for the last 20 years on the contracts she is being proposed being warped (with the notable exception of L’Association, which have always been transparent with her).

She mentions publishers acting in bad faith: tying the audiovisual rights, attempting to introduce abusive clauses and when called on it, pretending we’re not going to exercise it, and for instance on a series the contract did commit the creator to three books, but did not similarly commit them to publish these same three books. She is sick and tired of having to double-check her contracts because of dishonest publishers who seem to think they’re a creator, they did not study business administration.

Yatuu: She’s a dummy when it comes to negotiation, she signed her first contract blind, trusting the publisher, then for her second she sough the help of the SNAC [Author’s note: a trade union of comics creators], which she was right to so: she was proposed a contract meant for a prose book.

Mandel: Even if there is a need for creators to take some responsibility, the publishers end up abusing their legitimate trust, they play on the partnership and the emotional relationship even though creators are in practice in the weaker position.

Fernandez: He did read in the Racine report that many creators coming to comics from other fields don’t know how to defend the creation side, and end up with too little money to share.

Mandel: Even as a lineup lead, she is barred from discussing payment with creators. She’s unhappy with any situation where two fellow creators don’t earn the same from the same publisher, just because one of them can negotiate; she had to learn that on her own, not in art school.

Fernandez: The Twitch commenters agree such a thing is missing from art school curriculum.

Mandel: What kind of art school can pretend to prepare their students to this field without touching on such matters? This is part of the job, it’s not all just artistry. She denounces the favors being made to creators who don’t sell all that much but are prestigious to feature in the publisher’s catalog, and as a result get better advances and get better promo, to the detriment of others.

Fernandez: On the matter of promotion, isn’t the creator’s presence on social networks watched by publishers?

Mandel: You know the answer. (Fernandez: Yes, but the audience does not.) Of course, creators enjoying success on social networks are hired by publishers, but get offered stinky advances and poor conditions, on the pretense that they’re starting out and their audience does not necessarily translate to sales. Except that may not be a fair assessment of the market, so publishers pick and choose from that pool and freely use the marketing done by the creator while they should be paying these creators in accordance with the promotion these creators do by themselves.

Fernandez: Erika And The Princes In Distress started on Yatuu’s blog.

Yatuu: Her first published book started on her blog already, and led her to receive offers from publishers (it was on overworked trainees in the advertising industry). The promotional work was done already as a result, and yet since she was naive about the whole thing she signed away her rights for a pittance (8000€).

Mandel: Right away she started with multiple publishers by happenstance, so she avoided the whole being emotionally blackmailed by a publisher pretending to be family, and therefore finds it absurd to fear presenting a project to other publishers just because you already have a relationship with one. There can be a contract clause for that [Author’s note: which would be known as right of first refusal in English-speaking countries].

Fernandez: Which can be justified for further books in a series, but not in general. In fact this doesn’t bother anybody: editors know one another, even in different houses. Let us move on: what kind of workload does the entail, what kind of support do platforms provide?

Yatuu: She’s got a contact assigned to her who gives her feedback on the campaign, introduces her to suppliers, so she’s not being left to fend for herself even if creators do most of the job. The workload is huge, in non-obvious ways. For the second book, she’s planning for a May release, and she has a full schedule until then: book layout, suppliers, print run sizing, color matching: all the work performed by a publisher lands on her lap. She gets some followup from Ulule.

Fernandez: Does this mean 3000 books end up in your living room?

Yatuu: Ah, storage. Her boyfriend’s parents have a big garage which they can use to store the multiple pallets of books which are going to arrive, which amount to more than just the preordered books. She gets a lot of help from Brice, the boyfriend –he handles book layout, printer interactions, suppliers, logistical issues such as amounts ordered, etc. The workload is so huge she wouldn’t have done so without him; there would be too many roles to play.

Mandel: When she revealed her intents she was warned many times: Fly, you fool!

Fernandez: So it’s not just for upstarts intent on staining the beaten pulp of dead trees, but also in case you want an out on the system.

Mandel: It’s impossible to do everything yourself unless you want to sleep 2 hours per night, so she sought help: on paper type, on printer quotes; then she was able to have the books delivered at the studio, so she hired people to package them: she already had 1000 preorders to fulfill, on top of day-to-day sales, not to mention customer service — people who moved without telling, but also those who did but weren’t taken into account because the address label was printed too early, packages lost en route.

So she hired her sister as her own Brice-alike, her sister handles distribution in particular as that is an important source of interruptions: logistical issues unrelated to her artistic activities would otherwise interrupt her every hour or so, and prevent her from focusing on her drawing.

Yatuu: You have to accept having less time available to draw.

Mandel: It can be good to take a break from drawing, but it is time-consuming, so don’t expect being able to start drawing your next book right after completing the previous one.

Fernandez: Which leads us to the Exemplaire project.

Mandel: Indeed, she has confirmed from experience that it was possible and even profitable, but not possible by yourself, so might as well set up a mutualized structure. So rather than have all the risk taken up by the publisher, and badly paid creators, have a structure that does not take on debt, and relies on crowdfunding instead.

Fernandez: What is the legal status of the entity, how different is it actually from a publisher?

Mandel: It will be a S.A.S. [Author’s note: I am not remotely competent enough to provide a U.S. equivalent, if there even is, all I know is that is is a kind of incorporation³] with other associates later, for now herself with a software engineer. The principle is that the creator does his own marketing, and need to take on some other publisher responsibilities, such as storage; then, he chooses what kind of further implication he takes on: if he does only that minimum, he gets 30%.

Capitalization is reduced to a minimum: the earnings from a successful book are not retained to later fund unrelated ones. There will be no salaries: everyone is paid a portion of sales including non-creators (book layout, etc.). And obviously no printing if the crowdfunding for the book fails. They do consider distributing to bookshops.

At this point Fernandez fetched question from the chat log:

• What is Yatuu’s work relationship with Brice?

  Yatuu: He has a job of his own, and help in his spare time. It was complicated for the first book as he had a day job in an agency, so he could only help on evenings and weekends, now he works as a freelancer, as a result it works better for his time management. He is head of the legal structure they set up, which allows him to charge promo-related expenses (such as when coming to a festival) to that structure. They found an accountant which helped them set that up, which Mandel now hired as well.

  Mandel: That greatly helped making the project viable: Get an accountant involved right away.

  Fernandez: So emancipation involves someone with a law training.

  Mandel: Books earnings go to hiring someone who enables that. Since they’re creating this structure (Fernandez: … of which he is part …) she would like to hire her sister to be a chaperone in attending to the authors who self-publish, however she made her girlfriend work for free.

• What status must be adopted for self-publishing?

  Yatuu: I had to create a S.A.S., no choice, in order to receive the crowdfunding money without running afoul of the taxman.

  Mandel: Even if a recently passed bill should allow receiving crowdfunding money and self-publishing while keeping your artist-author status.

• Can you embark on self-publishing right out of art school without a community?

  Yatuu: Try to make your own place on the Internet first. With an Ulule campaign right away, you risk having no pledges. First build a solid base, even if small in numbers.

  Fernandez: Traditionally self-publishing was used when making fanzines or badly bound books; now Instagram has replaced that.

  Yatuu: Indeed, and she would suggest getting into it sooner rather than later before it becomes completely like Facebook.

  Mandel: First create your space on social networks where you can serialize, then build a small community and you can consider launching a crowdfunding campaign: friends and family are insufficient when crowdfunding.

Fernandez: Any last word?

Mandel: It’s good that this exists, and if that could lead everyone in the traditional book value-adding process to rethink their role, that would be great; they’re not out to kill publishers.

Yatuu: Exactly: they’re not against them, rather using an alternative. Both work, everyone can make their own choice.

Mandel concluded by encouraging everyone to support the (then-ongoing) Exemplaire crowdfunding project.

Come back for a rare late-pandemic Friday post, as we continue with the news from PPF.

Spam of the day:

The 3 best NUTS that shrink your swollen prostate and boost testosterone

I’m sure that the nuts = testicles thing is a complete coincidence.

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¹ Editor’s note: This session took place a full nine hours into the Twitchstream, and also Fernandez is the first dude we’ve seen in FSFCPL’s writeups. As here in the States, definitely the future French comics and likely the present belongs to women.

² Editor’s note: Confidential to Brad Guigar — in French, the word is chomping, not champing, so put away your righteous fury.

³ Editor’s note: apparently, it’s similar to a British limited company or a US LLC; Wikipedia says the Delaware LLC was the model, and uniquely in French law, it’s based on common law principles rather than civil law. Neat!

Heya. If you read yesterday’s blogiversary victory lap, you know that I read some emails out of order, and thus on Monday we had Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin’s recap of Pénélope Bagieu’s interview, but not the initial framing post about the online festival it was a part of. We’re continuing today with highlights from the festival, and we’ll run a summary post with the overview later rather than try to insert it in the past. I mean, if I’ve got the ability to go back and do things in the past I’m not wasting that on fixing a blog post sequence error, not when there’s Powerball jackpots to win. We at Fleen, as always, than FSFCPL for his ceaseless efforts to bring us the news of bandes dessiné3ss web.

The panel was titled Is Being Known A Prerequisite To Being Published?, and began with introductions: in particular Marie Spénale is known for Heidi In Spring and Wonder Pony, and Cy for Real Sex From Real Life, Radium Girls, etc.

[Festival host]Lise: Do they think being known is a prerequisite to being published?

Spénale: No, she wasn’t know at the time of Heidi so she veers towards no: the prerequisite to her is building a file for the project to present to a publisher, no need for subscribers, as far as she can tell.

Lise: So could being known influence the process?

Spénale: It can be brought up as a strength point, a bonus, so it can be useful, but not a prerequisite.

Cy: It can be a double-edged sword; first, she agrees that it is not a prerequisite, subscribers mean nothing when it comes to sales in the end. And when she submitted the file she built for Radium Girls, her editor when forwarding to the publisher mentioned she made YouTube videos, to which the the latter allegedly reacted Ah, another book from a female YouTuber. In the end he opened the file and the project was made, but it could have started better.

Spénale: She once was introduced in an article as blogger Marie Spénale, which may not necessarily be flattering.

Lise: As for Sita, she started making a name for herself with her YouTube channel, then Instagram account; did that help getting to make webtoons?

Sita: No, it can help, be brought up to strengthen the case, but what’s really important is knowing the field and having the right contacts. The contacts she made when she made YouTube videos in turn led to knowing the editors and publishers to contact.

Lise: All three of them have an Instagram account, does a creator have to have one?

Cy: Have to would be presumptuous; there are no hard rules, each creator can employ different means. She no longer has any portfolio proper, as Instagram has taken up that role for her, more specifically her Instagram feed (as opposed to stories, which she uses for food pictures, etc.)

Sita: She has two accounts, one for drawings and one for book reviews. It takes a lot of time to do right, as well as energy, so it must be accounted for rather than put all your energy to it to the detriment of working on your files, universes, etc. It did earn her commissions, some of them for communication campaigns.

Spénale: She sees her Instagram account more as a display window for readers than as a professional tool.

Lise: And all three also have a YouTube channel, why?

Sita: That originally was for book reviews, everyone had a blog already and she felt it was the right time to get into YouTube; then for her own drawings on top of that. She wanted to create things she appreciated herself, and be able to better reach English-speaking audiences. Oh, and receive book recommendations herself. At the time she did not intend to create books, she had only begun to get back into drawing and was a developer by trade, creation only came later.

Cy: She was getting tired of answering always the same questions, so the intent was being able to send a link for an answer; her first video was on crayons. Then she started publishing speed drawing videos, captured using an iPad in suspension. It can be a versatile medium, with many possible formats, so she published animated GIF, vlogs, explanations for the general public, ad debunking, etc. Community management is a job in itself, so it can take time. She’s having fun, if that weren’t the case she’d stop. There is something of a disdain towards YouTube creators, such as EnjoyPhoenix even though it requires a significant skillset. At some point making a comic book was in fashion with YouTubers, and not all of it was good, as would be the case for any such category in accordance with Sturgeon’s Law, but the negative branding of YouTuber comic book remained.

Sita: Which intersects with the disdain towards comics for children and licensed comics.

Spénale: The main interest for her was experimenting, in particular with longform content which she couldn’t do as well on the blog she already had. Then she worked on her Instagram with short formats, if not instant. She’d like to go back to longform, but it takes time.

Cy: It does take a lot of headspace, and must be done as a batch, instead of answers which can be done as bite-sized work items as questions come.

Spénale: Yes, it does take a lot of time; she did it on the influence of Cy. She did have to invest on it when Wonder Pony, meant for children, was to be released: the publisher hardly promoted it, so she had to take that into her own hands.

Lise: What about Twitch, then?

Cy: She was already a consumer of Twitch livestreams, such as Boulet’s, and opened hers on the prodding of Gauvain Manhattan (who since stopped doing so). She has done a lot of them in the last two years; it allowed her to survive when doing Radium Girls because she’s a hermit, and draws traditionally which means she has to work on her drawing table, so streaming allowed her to exchange with people. It allowed her to have feedback on her work. Now she sometimes feels up to it, sometimes not: it requires some concentration for instance. She does it with her mobile phone using the Twitch app. At the beginning she was uploading with her 4G connection and had to closely watch her credit, now it’s OK.

Sita: Same, she started hitting the ground running, this summer, she wanted to livestream as a fundraiser for BLM/George Floyd, she had no hardware and had to improvise. She appreciated the Twitch community and kept doing so with her phone used as a webcam which wasn’t great, but she kept doing so in the same way so as to survive during the tunnel where she is doing nothing else but draw and starts hating it. And obviously, she never streams client work.

Spénale: Not yet, she has all the necessary hardware, obviously she wouldn’t stream client work either. But wouldn’t spoilers be an issue?

Cy: On the other hand, it would be hard to spoil Radium Girls [Author’s Note: a book telling the story of women who painted clock figures with radium-laced paint so these would be visible in the dark. Without any precaution to speak of]. Anyway, the speech bubbles are done later, and in the end the plates are done over such a long stretch of time that it would be hard to follow that way, not to mention she’s only ever had 80 viewers maximum.

Spénale: So yes, one of these days, though YouTube does consume a lot of her time already.

Lise: So Twitch is more of a community building tool than a portfolio, as Instagram on the other hand appears to be?

Cy: Maybe, but also a very selfish one, it allows a more intimate bubble than Twitter, YouTube, or Instagram allow. There is indeed more of a community feeling, of direct feedback: she feels less on a pedestal to her viewers there. Though of course pests exist there too.

Sita: Artist Twitch is different from the remainder of Twitch, especially in the French-speaking sphere where this is still niche.

Lise: Does it take time away from the job?

Cy: Oh yes.

Spénale: it does take time, but is it time away from her job as a creator? It’s a leisure activity in the end, as if she’d taken up pottery.

Sita: She creates a Webtoon, on a platform which is not really a publisher, so she does a bit of her own outreach, and uses Instagram for that: she schedules posts as a community manager would. And she did a whole campaign when her work came out.

Cy: It is part of the background of her work, and couldn’t tell how much time it takes her. There is no community management to speak of when publishing a comic book in the French-Belgian tradition, and she isn’t paid for that part of the work. She does not fault her publisher for Radium Girls, but for Real Sex From Real Life she invested in her social networks, which amounts to unpaid work. So it’s disheartening when there is no online followup when a comic book comes out.

Spénale: She did start her own channel to make up for the shortcomings of her publisher, so being known was a double-edged sword: her publisher was expecting her to come up with content for promotion on her Instagram, even though that is not her job, fundamentally.

Cy: She got Why don’t you put it on your Instagram? for commission work. And the same goes for some media outlets: when she gets begged to retweet e.g. interviews of her, then who’s promoting whom, exactly?

Spénale: There is the more general issue of not all books being well-supported marketing-wise, because of the general strategy to flood the market, so publishers tend to offload that to the creator if they are known.

Lise: So creators need to do their own communication and community management?

Sita: it’s a role we add to our activities if we are already present on social networks. Some creators are content not doing any of that and more power to them.

Cy: It depends on more than social network activity, even for those already “famous” there: the reader demographics matter a lot. So for books targeting the 12-30 years old range, of course it matters, but readers of history-based comic books are not reachable through social networks. Of course for Real Sex From Real Life the social networks were squarely the target market. Don’t expect an Instagram account to be the key to fame: it’s frustrating and you end up begging for reshares. Nothing happens in a day: she has been on Instagram for 10 years, and found her public there.

Spénale: The matter of the pubic reached is interesting, we do bring a certain public, for instance when signing she sees young women who are less traditionally present on festivals.

Cy: When she signed in a very cool library led by three women, they were impressed: You got women coming to signings!” Cy: Don’t they read comics? Them: Yes, but they don’t come to signings.

Spénale: There is an interest in shifting the balance of power with publishers, it brings new points to the table, she can point to her own community and tell she doesn’t need them as much as she would if she didn’t have it.

Sita: Which is why she wanted to publish on the web first. It’s hard to get published, unless you’re willing to accept pathetic terms, having a public bring some weight when negotiating.

Lise: Does Cy agree?

Cy: She agrees, but it has to be made into a strength, to be brought up on the negotiating table: I bet as much on you as you do on me, and I see our relation as teamwork, rather than the publisher doing her a favor by publishing her. She would like for her promotional work to be properly accounted for by having the publisher pay her for it, but she has been unsuccessful so far.

Spénale: They’re already underpaid when published, with the reasoning being that the publisher brings them fame and the symbolic value of being published, but when any of their YouTube videos accrue many more views, this reasoning from the publishers loses a lot of its value.

At this point Lise fetched questions from the chat log:

• How do they balance these additional efforts with their core creator job?

  Spénale: You have to realize that, and bring it up with the publisher. Given Cy’s reach, she’d better use it as a negotiation point to help her position.

  Cy: To change the relationship you have to stop being passive in front of contracts, so unravel them, even if that’s complicated. She has a good relationship with her editor, but her contractual relationship is with her publisher, with the contracted rights going for 75 years after her death. If all creators start negotiating to add clauses accounting for the value they add when promoting, things are bound to change.

• Are social networks a way to diversify revenues?

  Sita: She doesn’t earn anything from social networks.

  Cy: YouTube money exists, but doesn’t even begin to compare with the time load. Twitch may be more substantial, but only if you become a Twitch partner, and then it becomes closer to mini-patronage. But you can have the occasional benefit.

  Sita: Yes, not so much the social networks proper than people coming with offers.

  Spénale: Social network revenue is insignificant in her experience.

  Cy: However when selling original works the buyers do come from her Instagram audience.

For the record, this is nearly 5000 words from FSFCPL in the space of two posts. I really have to buy him a drink sometime.

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Iced 15th Birthday cake with burning number candles over a pink background with copyspace for your greeting and wishes

Today is 15 December. And while through inattention and writing some posts that were queued up before this page was announced the actual day that this site went live is not known, today is the day that the blogiversary is celebrated. Sort of like how the Queen of England has an official birthday, or all thoroughbred horses are considered to be born on 1 January.

It’s been 15 years, 4293 posts (including this one), 3940 written by me (again, including this one). Lot’s happened in that time. Wrote some good stuff. Wrote some hard stuff. Made some mistakes¹. Made some of the best friends of my life. Rough estimate is that we’ve raised north of US$12,000 for worthy causes in the past four years through the Fleen Fight For Fungible Futures Fund. I’m not sure how long this page will continue (nobody’s certain of anything in the depths of a pandemic that has been grievously and intentionally mismanaged), but as long as I’ve got opinions — and, like T-rex, I got opinions — I’ll be here to share them with you.

If you like what we at Fleen have done here, head over to Jon Rosenberg’s store or Patreon and support him, since he’s the one that basically browbeat me into doing it. Sincerely, thanks for that, Jon. I’m a better person because of it.

Happy fifteenth Fleensday. Stay safe, read good comics, we’ll do it all again in Year 16.

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_______________
¹ Case in point: Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin sent several posts worth of info regarding the Twitch-hosted BD festival that occurred recently in France, and because I was short on time and read them out of order, I posted yesterday’s Pénélope Bagieu interview without the context that would have been provided by what should have been the first post. We’ll sort that out, promise.

Last week ended badly, post-wise (it ended worse for me and my students), but although I wasn’t able to come up for air in time to see it, Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin came through with a recap of a Pénélope Bagieu interview, which is absolutely worth your time. Today, we cede to him the pride of place of the last post of Fleen’s 14th year, as tomorrow is 15 December and the blog’s birthday. More on that tomorrow, let’s get to the news from European shores.

As part of the Twitch-hosted Pleine Page Festival , Bagieu spoke with host LiseF (en Franĉais), which most everybody reading this will not understand, but which you can now get the gist of. Let’s dive in.

After the introductions, the interview began with Bagieu recapping the genesis of her adaptation of The Witches for the benefit of those who missed it from previous coverage.

• On the matter of the reception, she was worried about the British public, where Roald Dahl is sacred, more than about the US public. In the end it went well, not the least because it was well-supported marketing-wise, even though some aspects do not necessarily make that easy to do: for instance, the smoking habit of one of the main characters could have doomed this book to be placed out of the reach of children.
• On the matter of her additions, she sums it up as changed a lot of things while keeping the original spirit. She added what she would have wanted to see at the time: while she had no trouble with the fate of the main character, she wanted to make it less sad if not less hard by him having a friend. So she inserted a girl character to that end, even if she felt such a character was missing at any rate. More generally she tried to make the setting somewhat more contemporaneous.
• On the matter of the 2020 movie adaptation, she finds the trailer absolutely bonkers, which she expects from Robert Zemeckis, and appreciates the atmosphere similar to the children horror of the era of her childhood. She was eager for the private projection she was to receive two days later.
• On the matter of further adaptations, she is not interested, while she appreciated the opportunity she does not want to make it an habit of making comics adaptations. Furthermore, the other books — she mentioned Mathilda in particular — tend have more of an associated imagery, especially since illustrator Quentin Blake was able to provide feedback to Dahl priori to publication, making him sort of a co-author.
• On the matter of her Harvey award (for California Dreamin’) and Eisner award (for Brazen) having ever been a goal for her, she answered not really, or maybe only post-facto. She was already impressed of even having been nominated for her Eisner, and had even hesitated to show up to the ceremony since she didn’t think it was possible for her to win. Now don’t get her wrong, it’s a fantastic feeling and she couldn’t touch the ground the evening after the ceremony, but once that is past her life is not changed in any way. Later on in the interview, she mentioned misplacing the smoking pipe from the Harvey Awards statue.
• On the matter of her work always publishing in France first, she told that when she lived in the US, she tried to make a book intended for the US market on the prodding of her editor, but there are many constraints, many codes: all edges must be filed away for instance, so she was always rethinking her project and it ended up being artificial. The initial spark is fragile to begin with, so if you add self-censorship to that … she got feedback on the order of that is quite French, so she realized she wasn’t that interested: why bother in the first place? Her creation process is selfish, she pleases herself first of all, then in the end considers everyone else. While for a US story, she took the example of a project meant for early teens which was to take place in a school setting, which she visualized as that from Saved By The Bell*, but she was told it wasn’t like that, and this matters: it ended up being a pain in her ass. She reminds us these kinds of projects are long-running, so it must be somewhat enjoyable for her not to burn out.
• On the matter of her goals in life, she answers the main one is to make a living out of comics, and that is hard enough already that wishing for more is not obvious. She is already grateful to be able to make a living out of it, so her goal for now is to keep doing so.
• On the matter of her making drawings at an early age, she answers she did, already with bubbles, first with animated cartoon characters, then her own characters but still involved in sports, influenced by Attacker You. She then did a drawn diary, which carried over to her blog. She did recently locate one of these notebooks, with liberally borrowed plots centered around rhythmic gymnastics.
• On the matter of her participation to Inktober, she mentions hardly participating before, but this year, lacking any active book project, and her various activities being performed on iPad, she jumped on the occasion to draw on paper. Inspired by a Cindy Sherman expo she saw, she tried to feature artists that aren’t already known. Then, she was a jury member for a podcast award which led her to discover Légitime Violence, which ends on Abbé Pierre’s address on inaction in the face of injustice; as a result, she put her works up for sale for the benefit of his foundation. She had a hard time putting a price to them, and after she did she still had doubts, but in the end they sold out so quickly (around a few minutes) that she didn’t realize what happened. So she’s up to doing it again next year.
• On the matter of it being a goal to contribute in this way, she answers it helps coping when working in such a way that aligns with her principles, a bit like taking a stroll when having pins and needles. It’s an outlet for her overflowing revolt. She hates comics being reduced to teaching tools, but she admits it can be useful to deliver a message, more so that a 5000-line pamphlet, as she did for Bloom). It’s a bit of the same process that has led a group of artists to draw portraits of shame of the French representatives who voted to approve the global security bill. If she had some other skills she would use them in a similar fashion: it’s a selfish process which evacuates her overflowing anger. Now she has to consider her audience and not over-solicit them, but also has to consider leveraging them when needed.
• On the matter of her impostor syndrome, if any, she answers having it, of course; it never completely goes away for artists, and merely showing her creations results in a lifetime subscription, so she had to learn to live with it, to cope. How does she do it? It is important for her to remember past experiences. She can’t always shake doubts that her family and friends are sincere when they praise her for being talented, because of course they’d say that, but they are sincere. Every time she shows her work she feels like the student who has to show her exposé to the whole class. The same goes for her fans: of course they’d be nice to me”. Conversely, one hater can be enough to shatter the mood, while on the other hand she glosses over praise.
• On the matter of her promotional activities on TV and radio, she reports being used to it by now: it is a machine so well-oiled with preparation that it’s not her work that is being put to the test. It ends up being always the same questions such that it’s like following a script. The first times, she was terrified of making a blunder; now she ends up being familiar with every show, so she’s in bring ’em on mode, for instance when a show contributor ends up attempting to mansplain life to her. However, she remains afraid of drawing with children: they have no inhibitions. But when it comes to doing the 50th promo show for her book, on the other hand …
• On the matter of advice for handling that, she has a few. The biggest challenge is remaining calm: she mentions rewatching herself and being surprised at how angry she appeared. As a woman she’s not supposed to be angry: even the most violent retort she must deliver as a lady, even in front of a polemicist who is on the other hand allowed to make being angry his whole shtick. She thinks of it as being in the local bar, rather than on TV. She’s not looking to convince her opponent as much as the audience. And she keeps the option of saying I won’t come to be the token feminist and decline the invitation. While she may look preternaturally calm, inside she’s boiling with rage.
• On the matter of unexpected questions, she mentions being taken by surprise by Augustin Trapenard asking her What is brazenness? In such a case, she can’t just drive on autopilot. But when she heard Céline Sciamma in the same situation and struggling as well, it helped reassure her that she wasn’t alone. And she does appreciate complex questions that make her think about it. For instance, she was asked whether the boy at the beginning of The Witches plays with toy cars because that is how his parents died, and she never thought of it that way! That kind of questions can make her rethink herself.
• On the matter of whether she told these stories about women as a way to cure her impostor syndrome, she answers she didn’t see it that way, and it was always a personal project, but it couldn’t help but influence her in the end. Telling such stories of women who take their destiny into their own hands was bound to galvanize her and filled something in her, she absorbed it like a sponge. Furthermore, each one did it in their own way.
• On the matter of whether female reader reactions make her feel she is helping them, she answers the ones who write her already belong to a favorable environment, with many having teacher parents for instance; she already belongs to their environment. She has a lot of appreciation for parents who prod their children into writing her letters, send these, etc. These motivate her to keep going. She keeps them in a box, and answers them on paper.
• On the matter of her role in the Brazen animated series, she answers having had very little. She validated them of course, but when she first met the team she knew the project was in the right hands. Her main contribution was reviewing the scripts and pointing out when they had missed something which she felt important, but otherwise she did not have any reproach. She cried for each episode of the final product, especially when considering it was to air during children’s prime time.

At this point Lise fetched question from the chat log:

• On the matter of sharing her first works, she answers they look like run of the mill children drawings.
• On the matter of advice for beginners, she advises showing your work often first of all, even if it’s the hardest thing in the process, and paradoxically not take too much into account any feedback, which is not necessarily constructive. Indeed, it’s important to show in order to get into the habit early.
• On the matter of her selection process for comics project ideas, she answers she is always having sprouts of a book idea, and she waits and sees which ones stick and keep obsessing her: either she gets bored with the idea eventually, or she keeps following it.
• On the matter of the lockdown hampering her artistically, she confirms being completely blocked on all fronts, and ended up doing nothing but eat. At the beginning she put pressure on herself to use this opportunity, and in the end nothing came out of it, including after the lockdown by inertia of the block. She has zero remorse, as this is a difficult time.
• On the matter of finding her style between Pénélope Jolicoeur and The Witches, she answers you do not so much find your style as having one already and refining it. There is not secret about it, you have to draw a lot, and thank God she did improve on the technical front. It’s important to copy first, it’s OK, and then keep drawing and it will affirm itself.
• On the matter of the indispensable comic book according to her, she points towards her Instagram recommendations, then all of Anne Simon published by Misma, for having a complex universe, incredible characters, and stunning artwork; they can be read in any order. And of course her reviews on MadmoiZelle.
• On the matter of her current book projects, nothing, as discussed. But despite the unfavorable context, she does have an idea that is eating at her, so it will end up having to be done.
• On the matter of a feel-good podcast recommendation, she answers the Distorsion podcast, made by people from Québec, so their accent is surprising at first but she got used to it after one episode.

As always, we at Fleen thank FSFCPL for his efforts to share what’s going on in the world of Eurocomics. We’d literally have had no idea about this interview without his hard work translating and summarizing.

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In case you forgot.

[Updated to add: the image at the top of the post; it was only tweeted by Ryan North a few days ago, and I legit wrote this post a year ago and scheduled it to update today. I have been waiting so long for this, everybody.]

[Updated to additionally add: We hope that Mr North is having a marvelous Bucketmas Day, and encourage him to remember that a bucket is nothing more than a very bounded hole, which we all know are nature’s greatest menaces.]

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