This day in Great Outdoor Fight history: I choose the believe that the retired band teacher is a warning of what things may be if Scrooge Ray does not mend his ways. In this case, by beating down on a bunch of long-time dudes and not embarrassing his dad.

So this is late, but I only came across it yesterday when visiting my friendly local comic shop to pick up this week’s books¹; it appears, much like the webcomics stay-at-home “convention” known as ComfyCon, the comics industry has put together a virtual con that will be broadcast to comics shops this Saturday, 5 March. It appears this is even the second time it’s happened, who knew?

The In-Store Convention Kickoff, as it is named, suffers from one stunning disadvantage, which is that the flyer they produced for handout in comics shops doesn’t mention their website. There are references to Facebook and Twitter, which eventually lead to the site, but that was a hell of an overlook.

Fortunately, it appears that the rest of the arrangements are better thought-out. The idea of having to go specifically to a store to participate is pretty clever, driving attention and potentially sales to those stores; there are even exclusive comics that only participating stores can order. There’s also a wide variety of guests that will be part of presentations and panel discussions, from (if I counted correctly) nine different publishers plus a toy company, not to mention the obligatory media guests (Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk).

Best of all, they found people that webcomics fans ought to be interested in: Hope Larson, Christopher Hastings, Ryan North, and Jim Zub will all get time in the program, although whoever thought that 10 – 15 minutes is enough time for Hastings, North, or Zub to be interesting and charming and erudite and entertaining as hell is kind of dumb. Then again, its not like they were singled out — the only sessions longer than 15 minutes are the DC Comics panel (45), the BOOM! Studios panel (30), and the Marvel panel (45). Hope Larson’s part of the BOOM! panel (what with Goldie Vance getting ready to launch), so there may actually be time to say something, given that there are four other people speaking with her.

To be honest, the scheduling and durations [PDF] are a bit concerning. The very short times (along with the disclaimer that times and schedules are subject to change) makes me wonder if some of the less well-known guests might serve the role of cushioning to allow for last-minute shifts in the big names (your Matts Fraction or Kellys Sues DeConnick, for example, who themselves are only allocated 15 minutes total what the hell people). A technical issue here or there, might they decide to cancel somebody with less industry pull than Brian Michael Bendis or Dan Didio to get back on schedule²? That would be unfortunate.

Those caveats aside, it’s an ambitious eight hours planned, and I’ll be curious to see how it turns out. If you have questions for any of the creators, you can tweet them to #ConKickoff2016.

Spam of the day:

These astronomers gathered X-ray data utilizing the orbiting Chandra X-ray
Observatory and brightness information from
one in every of TSU’s automated telescopes in southern Arizona, hoping to measure the age of
the star.

It’s really less spam and more free verse.

_______________
¹ Book of the week: Giant Days #12, where John Allison cliffhangered me and made me sniffly for Esther DeGroot, my favorite of all his creations. Except maybe Shauna and Lottie when they’re fixing time and space.

² Also a concern: there are few breaks allocated between sessions³. Things go over? Maybe there’s a cushion before the next session, maybe not. Somebody’s in the middle of a great story? Next person doesn’t get their ten minutes. I think there may be an overestimation as to the reliability of streaming software on the various computers of 37 different people.

³ Specifically, there are 26 events scheduled, with nine irregularly-spaced breaks:

• Opening keynote speaker Jim Lee ends at 12:15, the Dynamite panel starts at 12:20
• The Dynamite panel ends at 12:35, the Valiant panel starts at 12:40
• The DC panel ends at 1:50, Skottie Young starts at 1:55
• The Top Cow panel ends 3:25, Dan Jurgens starts at 3:30
• The Dark Horse panel ends at 4:20, Ryan North starts at 4:25
• Fillion & Tudyk end at 4:55, the Marvel panel starts at 5:00
• The Marvel panel ends at 5:45, the Zenescope panel starts at 5:50
• Jim Zub ends at 6:45, Mike Deodato starts at 6:50
• The IDW panel ends at 7:45, closing keynote speaker Kevin Eastman starts at 7:55

It appears that if you are a publisher with a panel or if you are a very famous person, you can run long. Everybody else is out of luck. And yes, by this measure Jim Zub is a very famous person; glad I’m not the only one that thinks so.

This day in Great Outdoor Fight history: Ray is getting a bit full of himself with Beef and showing depths that, if not quite hidden, reveal insight into his heritage. Also, we learn all there is to know about Bob Raffles.

• If I didn’t have a strict policy about what goes at the top of posts where there is an anniversary strip from the Great Outdoor Fight, I know for an absolute fact that today’s post would be the results of me playing around with my new favorite online toy. Which toy? I hear you ask — let’s let Kate Beaton fill you in:
  

  now you can actually play with my @TorontoComics paper doll! torontocomics.com/news/announcing-the-kate-beaton-digital-paper-doll/

  Yes! The delightful show poster that Beaton did for TCAF is now interactive, complete with music, encouraging voice-overs, and screenshot capability. And in case the pictures are just too darn small for you, creator (and TCAF staffer) Kim Hoang made a fullscreen version available at her site. Just don’t blame me if you’re playing dress-up for the rest of the day.

• It’s Will Eisner Week, an annual recognition of the innumerable contributions made to comics by Will Eisner, timed to coincide with his 6 March birthday¹. Events are going on around the world between now and next Monday, and the good folks at the Cartoon Art Museum aren’t letting a little thing like a lack of gallery space keep from recognizing the master and his works. CAM invites you out to Mission: Comics and Art (2250 Mission Street, San Francisco) on Sunday for their celebration.

  The centerpiece of the event (which runs 2:00pm to 4:00pm) will be a panel discussion between prominent Bay Area creators Steve Englehart, Al Gordon, John Heebink, Mario Hernandez, and Steve Leialoha, free and open to the public. For those that might have favorite stories and characters created by these longtime pros, there will be a signing that follows immediately after. And heck, it’s The Mission, so I imagine people will be going for drinks after.

Spam of the day:

Prevent Your Fatal Heart Attack: Watch For These Signs

Sorry, but for some reason I don’t believe that “Princeton Health” (is that supposed to make me think you’re actually University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro, or possibly Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, which is the fictional hosptial from House?) really has an email address at mkvtqh2.[redacted].xyz … call it a hunch. Try harder, spammers.

________________
¹ Eisner would have been 99 this year, which means you should start planning on how to celebrate his centenary next year, oh, now-ish.

This day in Great Outdoor Fight history: No strip; there was no 29th of February in 2006.

Please forgive any autocorrections that remain.

• Happy twelfth birthday to my Evil Twin, Howard Tayler. It’s gotta be rough only having a birthday every four years, but aging at one fourth the rate of the rest of us is a decent tradeoff. He’s youthful to the point that I suspect he may actually be aging backwards. In any event, may I suggest that you celebrate by reading his entire archive from the beginning? If you read four strips a day, you should be done by the next time his birthday comes around.
• It entirely makes sense that The Woz is starting a comics convention in Silicon Valley. It makes even more sense that a passel of Bay Area webcomickers will be doing a podcast panel together On whether a webcomickers can form the basis of an arts career. The panel in question will take place at high noon on Sunday, 20 March at the inaugural Silicon Valley Comic Con, in the San Jose Convention Center’s Room 2. New shows are always an unknown factor, but I’m guessing that the well-known geek tendencies of The Woz, plus the fact that he’s pretty damn rich, give SVCC a better than even shot at being well-run out of the gate.
• Well, dammit. I had a whole bit here about how Thought Bubble had announced its first slate of guests, including Faith Erin Hicks and The Toronto Man-Mountain, but a mis-timed choice to pay attention to the jury room manager means I wiped it accidentally. Look, just get your tickets for Leeds the first week of November (with the comic convention proper on the 5th and 6th); the middle part of England is nice then.

Spam of the day:

This is Genovera Killings. I’m in town. SHALL WE MEET Gary Ty Rrell?

Well gosh, how can I say no to somebody that says she saw my pictures on Facebook and needs a real cutie to give her “luv” and also is totally named like a James Bond femme fatale that fucks dudes to death? Sign me up, totally legit Russian dating site!

This day in Great Outdoor Fight history: Vlad is entirely correct. Is SO cool.

But mostly because I feel like it, dammit.

• David Malki ! is in the mood to give stuff away, and you’re in a position to take advantage. For the obsessive completists out there (cough, cough), Malki ! has announced that his new series of “cast cards” — little plaques of what appears to be fiberboard, with a colorful, Wondermarkesque character attached to the front — is about to get larger, thanks to the introduction of a subscription program at his Patreon. But there is also a new, non-subscription-based card that some of you can get for free right now:
  

  If you own five or more Wondermark books, you are a Library Ace right now! You qualify to get one of these cards, for free, to commemorate your great achievement!

  To claim your card, take a cool picture of your five (or more) Wondermark books. I wanna see what you got, and show your collection to other people too!

  Then: tweet your picture with #libraryace, and tag either @malki or @wondermarkfeed. (And make sure you’re following one or both of of those accounts, so I can DM you your claim instructions once I see your post!)

  And if you don’t own at least five Wondermark books, Malki ! is coincidentally running a 13-day sale in advance of Wondermark’s 13th anniversary; it’s also approximately the 10th anniversary of the Machine of Death (the original Dinosaur Comics strip was run in December of 2005, but the idea for an anthology of MoD stories dates to about this time, 2006), so you can get MoD stuff for cheaps, too.

  Specifically, you can get any three Wondermark books for eighteen dollars, and ten bucks will get you either MoD anthology, the base card game, or the expansion set. Everything’s at the Wondermark store until 9 March.

• We at Fleen have mentioned Josh Fruhlinger’s delightful debut novel, The Enthusiast, on several occasions. It was the hit of the publishing season among people that heard of it and bought it and read it and enjoyed it; now those same people can drag their friends to the just-announced Enthusiast book tour, which will take Fruhlinger to four cities of personal significance.

  He’ll start on 26 April in Washington, DC (where the book takes place), then making his way to Baltimore (Frulinger was a longtime Charm City resident, including the time he wrote the book), Brooklyn (home of his cover illustrator, Matt Lubchansky, plus who doesn’t want to visit Brooklyn in the spring?), and finishing in Buffalo (home of the future Josh Fruhlinger Birthplace National Monument) on 5 May. Come meet Fruhlinger (enthusiastically), get your book signed (enthusiastically), shoot the shit about Mary Worth or whatever (enthusiastically), and let other people know where your enthusiasms lie.

Spam of the day:

We have had so many people wanting to help run or support blood drives for Free Tickets to the Vans Warped Tour, our staff is working over time. All free tickets will be earned and set up with the blood centers. With this many of you committed to helping, it’s going to take us a couple weeks to sort through everyone and connect you to running blood drives.

Why am I being offered a shot at free and VIP tickets for the Warped Tour? Oh shit, did I sign up to run a blood drive and forget it? Do I have to be a sneering, hipster-glasses-wearing, Day-Glo snakeheaded Medusa to qualify? That’s what your email implies.

This day in Great Outdoor Fight history: No strip; I believe that Sound And Motion is getting up from his Downward Dog or some such.

It’s nearly the weekend and by way of advance notice, the next couple of weeks look to be a little weird. My teaching schedule next week will be to accommodate students who are variously located in Holland, India, and Australia. The week after that is jury duty (one day or one trial; really hoping for the former). Starting the week after that will be a fairly lengthy period of travel. Apologies in advance for any interruptions.

• However, the day I anticipate sitting around in a room waiting to find out if I’m part of a jury, I intend to catch up on some reading. Stacked up and waiting to be read: no fewer than four review copies from the good folks at :01 Books (by Ben Hatke, Tony Cliff, Faith Erin Hicks, and James Kochalka¹). I’ve also got a PDF of the second part of Sophie Goldstein’s House of Women (the first part of which garnered a 2013 Ignatz), which Ms Goldstein was kind enough to send along. Everybody else in the jury room can stare glumly into their phones, I’ma get my comics on.
• I’ve expressed this before, but I really need to learn to draw one of these days. And, were I not on jury duty, I just might spend that week in San Francisco² seeing as how the Cartoon Art Museum is kicking off their latest education program on Thursday, 3 March, at 7:00pm. To be more specific, Mark Badger will be running a class on drawing, in conjunction with CAM, each Thursday night in March.

  Mark Badger’s Just Draw is for older teens, adults, runs two hours per session, held at the temporary educational space in the Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center at 275 Fifth Street. It’ll cover everything from four-page minis to the four hundred page magnum opus, with a veteran cartoonist/teacher (thirty years and fifteen years, respectively) for the low, low price of US$200 (US$175 for CAM members), with enrollment available here.

• Now that the thirteen part travel halfway round the world and get married epic is done at Johnny Wander, Ananth Hirsh and Yuko Ota are getting ready to drop their next project on us, and it looks like a doozy. It’s tempting to think of them as one Voltron-like single entity, but they are actually separate people! And sometimes they work on their own projects! And starting Tuesday, the latest of these will begin serialization. Let’s let Hirsh tell us all about it:
  

  Beginning next week we’ll be running the first chapter of IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED, a comic I’ve been collaborating on with Tessa Stone and Sarah Stone! I’ve worked with Tess previously on BUZZ!, a graphic novel about full-contact spelling bees (available through Oni Press). Tessa currently does Not Drunk Enough, and Sarah Stone has worked on a huge range of projects, including Transformers: Windblade!

  We’ll be running the first chapter on Johnny Wander, at which point the comic will migrate to its own website. The first four pages will run on Tuesday, and then we’ll post a comic per update like normal.

  One chapter to get us hooked, eh? I’m onto you, Hirsh, and if your previous collab with Tessa Stone wasn’t so good, I’d be getting the hell out of here before you got your greedy hooks in me. But BUZZ! was good — very, very good — and so I’m willingly coming back to you. I trust you’ll make it worth my while.

• And, from Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin:
  

  Sorry, it turns out my reference for [the end of Notes on paper](http://fleen.com/archives/2016/02/17/happy-returns-of-the-day/) was outdated, as more recently Boulet indicated that « [Volume 9 was a “pentimento” after I planned to stop after volume 8](http://www.bouletcorp.com/#answer54) » and that he even had extra pages that would end up in a volume 10, where we are today. It is probably best to consider each volume of Notes as being potentially the last, while leaving open the possibility of future volumes, much like these singers who always claim this is their last tour but can’t seem to actually bring themselves to stop.

  Duly noted; on the plus side, we’re gonna get several hundred pages of Boulet, so that’s all right. Have a good weekend, everybody.

Spam of the day:

Keep your bait possibilities different by pking a couple dozen leeches just in case.

Gotta say, leeches are a welcome respite from the slutty moms in my area that want to have sex with me. Pretty sure that combination of words has never been uttered in any context throughout human history.

_______________
¹ Which is in all likelihood the greatest book in history.

² Okay, not really — if I don’t get picked for trial, I have to head to Dallas for work later that week.

This day in Great Outdoor Fight history: We see how fallen fighters are removed from The Acres.

• Speaking of, Happy Birthday to the nearest thing this broken world will ever have to a real-life amalgam of Achewood characters, KC Green. He is the best parts of the entire cast except Pat, because Pat’s a jerk and KC is no jerk. Celebrate with some of his comics, or perhaps by pre-ordering Graveyard Quest.
• TCAF announced its second lineup of special guests today, and oh boy is this one talent-heavy show. You got your Boulet (appearing in conjunction with the launch of the English translation of his 10-volumes-and-counting Notes series), you got your Faith Erin Hicks (launching the first volume of a new trilogy from :01 Books), you got your Emi Lenox (launching a new boo, Plutona, co-created with Jeff Lemire), and I guess that means you also got your Jeff Lemire (also launching the second print collection of Descender).

  In addition, the very international character of TCAF’s guest list is on full display, with creators from Germany, Portugal, Japan, Italy, and the very odd lands of Canada and New Jersey [NB: jenniferhayden.com; no link since I’m getting a security warning, but you can visit if you like]. TCAF runs at the Toronto Reference Library on 14 and 15 May.

• It’s Big Round Number season in webcomics — 4000-plus for R Stevens, 5000-plus for Jennie Breeden, and now 5400-plus for Brad Guigar, taking 14 February as the 16th anniversary of his descent into madness pro cartooning, and counting up contributions from five different series plus Patreon naughties and miscellaneous strips that may not rise to level of ongoing series yet.

  The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but I think you can bet that cartooning success goes to whoever is stubborn enough to keep improving, keep showing up every day, and to keep developing a laugh that will frighten off scavengers in the night. Happy Big Round Numberday, Brad!

Spam of the day:

Hello Stella. it’s Mike. can you please send my photos from Jake’s wedding? thanks.

I think I’ll reply with this link.

This day in Great Outdoor Fight history: Still waiting for the Fight to start; things really kick in tomorrow, though.

• Ordinarily, I’d have run the story that linked to the art as the first item, but this is too big to go anyplace but the lead slot; I trust that Kate will understand. Re: our call two days ago for book purchasers to push Raina Telgemeier from holding 60% of the New York Times Best Seller List to 70%; that didn’t take long. Thanks, book purchasers! Now hold on until Ghosts comes out and make it 80%!
• Now then: Kate Beaton, who all right-thinking folk regard as a treasure and one of the very best creators in both comics, and in any creative medium from the Great White North. Beaton was tapped to provide a show poster for TCAF, and it’s a beaut. More than all the geekly references, it’s also terrific because the message could not be any more clear: TCAF¹ is for everyone. Be sure to thank Beaton when you see her at the Toronto Reference Library on the 14th & 15th of May.
• I got a press release and some sample pages from a guy named Derrick Johnson recently, and I wasn’t going to do much with it — another first release of a webcomic in print form, I see those literally every day, and mention only the ones that grab me in the eyeballs and don’t let go. But something about Johnson’s missive did grab me, and I wasn’t sure exactly what for a couple of minutes. Then it hit me:
  

  I’m a comics creator, that posted comics regularly to my website for a 4 year period in 2007-10. After a long hiatus, I decided to collect the best strips from that time and self-publish a book, The Best of Colored Comics, Volume 1.

  Everybody catch that? 2007-10. Comics creators (like artistic types of all sorts) that I know have a definite tendency to be their own worst critics. The most well-balanced of them can stand to look at their most recent work without berating themselves, but maybe on an 18 month rotating cycle. That is, today’s work is pretty okay, anything from last year is barely adequate, and older than 18 months is fit only to be burned. Of course, 18 months from now, today’s work will fall firmly into the burn category. Thus does skill push itself to improve, on the back of total neuroticism.

  So to read that Johnson worked at Colored Comics for four years, then to set it aside for five with plans to print, then to resume? That’s an act of supreme bravery. The samples that Johnson sent along, I can tell which are older and which are more recent; the new comics on the site reveal that regularly updating or no, Johnson’s been practicing and improving. I can’t imagine what it was like to go through work almost a decade old to prepare it for print, but it’s the most self-challenging and fundamentally optimistic act I’ve seen in quite a while.

  Confidence is a major part of creativity, the feeling that putting a part of yourself out there won’t come back to bite you in the ass, that the random cruelties of a thousand internet griefers won’t drag you down. So yeah — if you’re looking for what early work (that improves as you read it, and gets better still past the end) looks like, Derrick Johnson’s your guy. Here’s hoping he continues to develop without falling to the 18 month neurosis, because I want to see just how good he gets. The Best of Colored Comics, volume 1 is US$15 from Johnson, and pay what you want at Gumroad. Check ‘er out.

• Oh, and 4000 is a hell of a big number, minus maybe a couple dozen guest strips, plus more than 700 for the newspapers. Happy Big Round Number Day, Rich Stevens. You’re a goddamn inspiration.

Spam of the day:

Discount COSTC0 MEMBERSHIPS

So I’ve gone from being on the sexy MILFs spam list to the bootleg warehouse-club membership spam list? Guess it’s just a matter of time before I end up on the oatmeal-and-diabetes-meds spam list, then the prepaid funeral services spam list. Welp, it was nice knowing you.

_______________
¹ Indeed, comics, and nerdery, and all fandoms you can think of.

This day in Great Outdoor Fight history: No strip; I suspect that SoRod is napping while Beef makes plans.

• We have mentioned several times the fact that Yuko Ota & Ananth Hirsh’s Lucky Penny (long delayed by repetitive stress injuries in Ota’s drawing hand … so she taught herself to draw with the other muthascratchin’ hand) is approaching publication. Should be here next month from the good folks at Oni Press), and to celebrate, there’s a contest that could net you three (three!) copies of Lucky Penny, if you’re funny enough:
  

  Make up a steamy romance novel for Penny to read for a chance to win copies of Lucky Penny! #LuckyPennyPicks

  See, Penny reads terrible-slash-awesome sounding romance novels (excerpts of which have been shared), and if you come up with the best title for a novel out of Penny’s collection between now and Sunday (Valentine’s Day!) at 11:59pm PST, you could get a copy of the standard edition of Lucky Penny, plus copies of the Kickstarter-exclusive softcover and hardcover editions. Details at the Oni blog, along with the rest of the rules. Think up your best romance novel title (nothing too creepy or rude but definitely suggestive would be my advice) and good luck to all.

• The Cartoon Art Museum continues its traveling roadshow of events while it is between permanent locations; as in the past several months, the Third Thursday of February (that would be the 18th) will see CAM set up in the new location of the American Bookbinders Museum at 355 Clementina Street in San Francisco. Fun starts at 5:30pm and runs until 8:00pm, and will feature live art demos, trivia, food & drink, and is free and open to the public. Creators on hand this month will be Myisha Haynes, Melissa Pagluica, and Liz Mayorga. Check out their work — lots of great looking stuff there.

Spam of the day:

Breaking Story: Trump has been taking a ‘smart pill’ – you have to read this..

If this is Trump on smart pills, I don’t want to see what he’s like when he runs out.

This day in Great Outdoor Fight history: No strip; Beef is undoubtedly deciding who among the gathering hordes will be invited to roll with Son of Rodney.

So much going on, I barely know where to start. Let’s just go in the order of when I scribbled notes to myself.

• Longtime Friend o’ Fleen Eben Burgoon started in [web]comickry with spy spoof Eben07, then moved onto action-adventure spoof B-Squad (and, almost uniquely among creators, managed to repurpose a failed Kickstart into success with the first volume). He’s back with more weird deconstruction of the ragtag-team concept as B-Squad volume 2 launched on the ‘starter yesterday. I was going to write about it yesterday, but honestly when C&H dropped their immediately megasuccessful card game¹ on the world, any other new Kickstart was just gonna be overshadowed and so I pushed back a day.

  And B-Squad didn’t deserve that, so here we are today. One day in, 38 to go, sitting at about 16% of goal, as Burgoon pairs up with five artists to tell five stories and also deal with the worst writing constraint in history: each story, at least one character is going to kick it, as determined by a die roll that Burgoon must then adapt to. They say that writing is about killing your darlings, but what if you put work and love into a character and then the die says they gotta, well, die? Help make it all a bit less painful for Burgoon by at least making financially worthwhile for the creators to deal with the challenge and heartbreak.

• The ongoing endeavour that is trying to figure out who the heck gets a table at SPX hits a significant date soon; the curated portion of the floor is being allocated, and soon the showrunners will know exactly how many spots will go into the table lottery. Want to exhibit but not specifically invited? Check it:
  

  On February 12, 2016, the lottery registration will become available and the lottery registration period will last between February 12 and February 26, 2016.

  The lottery registration will take place through a web page on the SPXPO.com website. We will provide basic instructions on this page that can also be viewed in the FAQ section below.

  Each lottery registrant will receive an e-mail containing their own randomly generated 6-digit number that you will receive within 48 hours of registering for the lottery.

  Once the lottery registration period is completed on February 26, 2016, we will have a digital coin flipper to determine whether we sort the random numbers by ascending or descending order. The lottery registrant list will then be sorted by random number according to the coin flip, and those tables above the capacity threshold will be selected to exhibit at SPX 2016. The order of the tables below the capacity threshold will determine the wait list. [emphasis original]

  Got that? Friday is the day to start looking at the website for lottery applications. This is a much better system than the frantic rush to apply that SPX used before the lottery system, meaning that timestamps and postmarks and checks received don’t determine who gets in. Two weeks, same chance whenever you apply, and hope to see you in September.

• For those wondering, Queen of Comictopia Raina Telgemeier has topped off a recent move back to San Francisco with the release of the fourth of her newly-colored Baby Sitters Club adaptations and whaddaya know, it’s entered the New York Times Best Seller List in its first week. In slot #1. With five other books (Smile, Drama, Sisters, and two other BSC volumes) in slots 2, 5, 7, 8, and 9. Okay, book purchasers, let’s get that last BSC book on the list so that Telgemeier can have 70% of it to herself (until Ghosts comes out and she hits 80%). It’s her world, comics, we may as well acknowledge it.

• The Nib, lost to a reorg at Medium, has pretty much been Matt Bors’s singular focus for the past eight months or so. First it was the Kickstart to reprint the best of the site, and much of the time since has been dedicated to finding a new home for editorial cartooning on the web that pays. Good news dropping this morning, then:

  First Look Media today announced that they have partnered with award winning cartoonist Matt Bors on his irreverent comics publication, The Nib. Formerly part of the online platform Medium, The Nib will re-launch this summer through First Look Media as an independent daily publication and online newsletter.

  Great news, in fact, but why do I recognize that name, First Look Media?

  Bors will remain editor of The Nib as it joins First Look Media’s family of media properties including The Intercept, reported.ly, and Field of Vision.

  Ohhhh, right, The Intercept — that’s Greg Greenwald and Laura Poitras, the people that brought Edward Snowden’s leaks to light. Damn, this is going to be a match made in heaven, with adversarial journalism committed in both words and pictures. It’ll have been a year spent Nibless, but before long we’re going to have voices back that we haven’t seen as much lately, in one place, both delighting and enraging me, and (most importantly) getting paid. That’ll do, Matt. That’ll do.

Spam of the day:

say hello to these naughty and wild milfs

Why, for the love of all that you might find holy, why would you send me a spam trying to intrigue me on a sexual basis and then write that spam in ficking Comic Sans?

_______________
¹ As of this writing, above US$400K on a US$10K goal, with more than 8700 backers. The FFFmk2 predicts a final funding in the US$1.5million (plus or minus call it US$300K) range, which would be frankly insane if not for the example of Exploding Kittens last year.

But first, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin in yesterday’s comments, not so much for his Angoulême take (which is, as usual, cogent and worth your while) as for his excellent lesson in how to curse in French. I suspect that by the end of calendar year 2016, we’ll be able to drop some really creative vulgarity in the most beautiful of languages.

Looking back in history, then:

• One day in 2012, Shaenon Garrity (Funk Queen of the Great Bay Area and Tiki Mistress Extraordinaire) embarked upon one of the greatest projects in the history of webomics: an epsiode-by-episode recapping of The X-Files in comic form. Skinner’s mighty fist! Bees! Mites! Autoerotic asphyixiation! Monster of the Week had it all. Then, after season 4 (which meant we got to see the single best hour of ’90s, Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space’ in season 3), concerns like giving birth to an alive human child took precedence and the recaps sadly went on hiatus.

  She’s held out the possibility of return, contingent on you people giving more to her Patreon, but unless that happens, the season 4 summary of June 2014 will be where we leave Mulder and Scully and sexy shirtless Skinner.

  Until today.

  With the return of The X-Files, Garrity has felt the siren song of unresolved sexual tension, aliens, and exactly what Scully’s been up to (wine and binging Parks & Rec), and has made with the recaps for Season X. Well, recap, singular, so far. She’ll get to the others, I mean she’s still got that kid to look out for¹.

• A little further back — a little after this here blog was getting off the ground, in the February that we first met Envelópe Martinez², a small upstart publisher called :01 Books was just getting started. 157 books later, :01 is now 10, and they’re marking the anniversary year with Happenings. Watch for authors to be on the road, interviews in public places, and every time National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Gene Luen Yang makes an appearance, keep in mind that he’s been :01 since the start.

  You’ll find people posing with their favorite :01 Books selections on the Twitter machine under #10yearsof01, and you’ll find we at Fleen talking about :01’s many offerings throughout the year. Which, uh we would have done anyway. Happy tenth, :01, and here’s to many more!

• And further back still. Yesterday marked 25 years to the day that I met my wife; today marks 25 years since the day that involved overlong and not necessarily great movies, my introduction to collegiate hockey, an unplanned side-trip (or kidnapping, in certain senses of the word) to the sovereign nation of Canada, and hassles with US Customs on the way back. With that as arguably our first date, it’s no surprise that I haven’t been able to match up with any others since.

  It is solely by her infinite forbearance and patience that I have the time to engage in this weird, obsessive hobby and pseudojournalistic hackery. If you ever see her about, thank her if you find what I do worth your time. And if you don’t, thank her anyway, because she’s the best human being.

Spam of the day:

Breaking Story: Trump has a pill for America – you have to read this..

Let me guess — contact a doctor if your election rallies last more than four hours?

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¹ Confidential to FQ in the BA: after taking your child for smallpox and other vaccines, be sure to remove the alien tracking device!

² Is there an interest in a Ten Years Ago At The Great Outdoor Fight runner here at Fleen? For example, we are now at ten years, one week, and one day since we first heard tell of Ramses Luther and the GOF, ten years and six days since we saw a grainy photo of The Man With The Blood On His Hands, and we are but one day from the tenth anniversary of sass in the main and the dire fates of Carl Veldt Grimps and Fancy Mark Clancy.

I think I just answered my own question.