As the various year-end holidays loomed, I looked out daily at the Wide World o’ Webcomics and saw a bunch of crickets putting away their instruments and heading home early cause wasn’t nobody around to listen to ’em. It was a dead ten days or so for news¹, but I said to myself, Self, I bet things pick up as soon as January rolls around. And hoo boy, was I ever right. In no particular order then:

• The third Kel McDonald-edited fairy tale collection, this time focusing on Asian stories, is nearing the end of its Kickstart.
• Tickets to latest iteration of Zach Weinersmith’s BAH! Fest, this one in London, are now live for purchase.
• Perhaps noting the imminent end of Planet of Hats — the last episode of classic Trek will get its treatment the day after tomorrow — creator David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc) is branching out another of his many, many webcomics projects². Taking a page from his Square Root of Minus Garfield (mashups of Garfield), he’s promoted iToons (mashups and parodies of any [web]comic, except Dinosaur Comics³) from Tumblrland to fullbore webcomic, and inviting submissions.

And there’s even more if you look at what got hit the net in the last 24 hours or so:

• Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett announced that he’s cutting back Sheldon to three days a week in order to concentrate more time on Drive. Now I stand second to no man in my love of Drive, but fact is that LArDK has not yet provided canonical proof that Fatty Chunklins exist in the Second Spanish Empire (as opposed to, say, Denny’s) and therefore Sheldon is — by some infinitesimally-small interval — the superior strip. Until we find out exactly what Fatty Chunklins are, I’m going to have to call this one a wash.
• For what is I believe the first time in its nearly ten year history, Three Panel Soul has broken the format declared there in the title. Always it’s been three panels, although not always equal-sized and side-by-side, and breaking the format today comes with a very good — not to mention heartbreaking — reason. Our condolences to everybody that knew and loved Jess McConville’s Poppy, and to everybody that deals with the bastard of a disease known as Alzheimer’s.
• Oh, and then there’s this, fresh from the New York Times, the School Library Journal, or anybody else that’s paying attention: Gene Luen Yang has been appointed by the Children’s Book Council, Every Child a Reader, and the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress to a two-year term as the fifth National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. He will be inaugurated into the role by the acting Librarian of Congress on Thursday, 7 January 2016, in a public ceremony at the Library of Congress.

  Yang is the first graphic novelist to be appointed National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, but then again he has a history of being the first graphic novelist to do things (first to be nominated for a National Book Award and the first to win the ALA’s Michael L Printz Award, both for the masterful American Born Chinese). He basically hasn’t slowed down since ABC, releasing (either alone or with an art partner) Level Up, Boxers & Saints, The Shadow Hero, Secret Coders, The Eternal Smile, Prime Baby, a stack of Avatar tie-ins, reprints pre-ABC work, and much, much more. Oh, and he’s writing something called Superman these days, too.

  Point being, you could hardly find anybody that’s written more for readers of all levels, approaching more different topics, in more different genres, and with a greater level of penetration into the the world of young readers⁴. The next two years are gonna be great for fans of YP lit (not to mention all those YP), and should Yang go mad with power and stage a coup to declare himself National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature For Life, we at Fleen would like to point out that any good benevolent overlord needs good PR and we would be up for the job.

Spam of the day:

Subject: Benachrichtigung

The rest of the spam appears to be a lottery scam in German; I’m just entranced by that wonderful, wonderful subject. Could any other language cram as many awkwardly-sounding syllables into such a randomly-discordant order?

________________
¹ Unless you want to count as news the ongoing attempts of a very large corporation to get me to want to keep giving them money by withholding services and pulling no-shows on repairs. But that word implies something novel or unique, and this was anything but.

² Go here and scroll to the bottom of the page.

³ Because all you have to work with in DC is dialogue, which means you’re not really messing with the form. Besides, he already has a comic for that. I also feel that I should note here that as an electrical engineer, this new endeavour should really be called jToons.

⁴ Okay, yes, Raina Telgemeier, but I would argue her contributions are fewer and more concentrated, whereas Yang’s are greater in number and broader in scope. I still think she’s probably the most important person working in comics today.

It occurs to me that I have somehow managed to not write about Child’s Play yet this season, and that my memory was jogged only by seeing the news that CP coordinator Jamie Dillion has decided to move onto other things. Sorry for missing it until so late into the season, and let us jump immediately to the fundraising history. For those that may not remember the numbers, Child’s Play has over its existence raised (all numbers in US dollars):

2003: $250,000
2004: $310,000
2005: $605,000
2006: $1,024,000
2007: $1,300,000
2008: $1,434,377
2009: $1,780,870
2010: $2,294,317
2011: $3,512,345
2012: $5,085,761
2013: $7,600,000
2014: $8,430,000
Total as of 5 January 2015, the arbitrary end of CP12: $33,626,670

As of this writing¹, cumulative funds raised sit at $38,173,191; that puts CY 2015 at about $4.5 million. I always wonder if any given year is when Child’s Play will fail to exceed the previous year’s total, and I always learn that my doubts did not come to pass. Naturally, there’s only a few days left to go and about four million dollars to exceed 2014; I honestly don’t know if this is the year the streak is broken, but I’ll not be surprised if we have to put that questionable achievement off until next year.

In any event, taking notice of how much or how little is raised in a given year is less important the that fact that Child’s Play has raised nearly forty million damn dollars to help make forays into the world of healthcare less terrible for kids. I’ll keep that in mind, and in my heart all the year.

And to Ms Dillion, tackling an enormous job at a young age and running with it — thanks for all of it.

Spam of the day:

If you don’t want any further emails for this specific offer, Unsubscribe from this offer only here [link and mailing address in California]

If you wish to unsubscribe from all future mailings, click the unsubscribe link below [link and mailing address in Missouri]

Both “links” are part of the same image, and anywhere you click takes you to the same address as any other part of the email offering English-speaking Russian ladies who want to date me and come with professional translation services. That’s a lot of contradictory messages for just one spam.

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¹ Updated immediately before publication, on account of the number keeps changing as I type.

If you’re a reader of Randy Milholland’s Something*Positive (and if you aren’t, what the hell is wrong with you?), you may recognize that combination of words. Old Familiar Faces is the name that Milholland gives to miscellaneous strips, not following regular characters and plotlines, that he runs at the end of the calendar year or running over into the beginning of the next year — a palette cleanser of people we see only rarely¹ (and Silas). He’s done this thirteen times so far.

We’re about to hit fourteen:

S*P Year 14 will end Wednesday. Related, my comic will be 14 years old tomorrow.

If you’d told me back in the early days of 2002 (I started reading not long after Choo-Choo Bear was introduced; he’s now nearly 39 years old and still thriving) that Something*Positive would not only survive this long, but be the most heartfelt, heartbreaking, ideal example of what living, breathing (and sometimes dying) characters in a long-running comic could be, I wouldn’t have believed you. Surely not that marvelously nasty, sarcasm-laden bit of nihilistic joy and cruelty to all (friends and enemies alike, but especially friends).

But something happened along the way. It’s become a continuity strip of the sort that almost existed on the comics page. Mostly, continuity strips change very slowly, with every plotline essentially resetting back to baseline. Kids might be born, but they’ll take decades to age a year. You saw a more realistic approach to the passage of time in, say, For Better or For Worse, but the reset-to-baseline tendency was always going to win². Don’t even get me started on Funky Winkerbean³.

No, if there’s a predecessor to Something*Positive, it’s probably Doonesbury; characters we started with become less relevant each year, as their younger friends, new lovers, and children (some of which we’ve seen since birth) become the centers of story and strip. Only Uncle Duke and Choo-Choo Bear will always be there.

So happy early strippiversary, Randy; I’d guess that you didn’t think you’d still be doing this either. May your characters grow and change and live their lives (until they don’t) for exactly as long as you have these stories to tell.

Speaking of old familiar faces, KC Green dropped a bombshell on the world last night:

ah heck, heres da scoop: shmorky and i are making adult swim ID shorts out of old gunshow strips

just 10 right now including “this is fne” which is what they wanted first. short bumpers for tv and online

.@sashmorky is knockin em out of the park with animating them. and i got to work with @danasnyder for doing a voice also

I’ll let you guys in on a secret: I’ve seen one of these, the famous This Is Fine. I’ve see it with KC doing the voice on a scratch track, and Dana Snyder (Master Shake, Al the Alchemist) doing the final voice. It’s glorious work that Shmorky did on the animation, a perfect match to Green’s comic sensibilities.

Kudos to [adult swim] for seeking out the actual creator of This Is Fine instead of treating it as a spontaneously-generated meme that nobody originally thought up (maybe they could do dickbutt next). Further kudos for finding an animator that would do Green’s work justice. Can’t wait to see the other nine bumpers online, and on my electric teevee machine.

Spam of the day:

McDonalds releases a new healthier menu! Try it now with this $100 Gift!

I can’t even being to fathom what a hundo of McDonald’s foodlike product would look like. Pass.

_______________
¹ Consider the most recent OFF strip, wherein we re-meet a character we hadn’t seen since strip #2.

² Nobody escapes home and family and you will marry your high school sweetheart and/or buy the house you grew up in. Only roadside whores ever left town.

³ Wherein you will return to your hometown and stay in the high school orbit forever, or at least until you’ve passed your existential misery onto the next generation and die.

From cancer.

Let’s just check in with some people we like today. You might even call this nothing more that follow-ups on things we’ve mentioned previously but it’s my damn blog and that’s what I feel like doing today.

• Last week at this time we at Fleen mentioned that Kate Beaton had teased us with the first news of her next childrens book, King Baby. From Publishers Weekly, we can now add a more complete cover image (above) and some details like exactly how long we’ll have to wait to get the book (272 days; look for it on 13 September). I’m confident in predicting it will be at least as wonderful as The Princess And The Pony¹.
• Also mentioned in the past week was the news that the Cartoon Art Museum is engaging in all of its usual activities (classes and such) that it always has, except for the have a physical space where people can come see art thing. A’course, the San Francisco real estate market being what it is, they’re gonna need some cash to get back into that particular habit, so it’s a good thing that one of the things they’re still doing is their annual fund drive:
  

  [CAM is] thrilled about all of the opportunities that lie ahead as we develop plans for the museum’s next chapter. During our search for a new home, the museum is continues to offer innovative educational programs, events and exhibitions through new partnerships with local museums and libraries.

  Help us provide the best in original cartoon art and educational programs by contributing to our Annual Fund today! Thank you in advance for your 100% tax-deductible gift.

  Send your money via their support page, or for those of you that still write checks, you can send ’em to PO Box 566 in San Francisco, CA, postal code 94104-0566.

Spam of the day:

This is to inform you that you were among the lucky beneficiary selected to receive this donations award sum of Eur 350,000.00, as charity donations/aid from the Qatar Foundation held in Doha, Qatar, to promote your business and personal Interest.

Yours Sincerely,
President of Qatar Foundation.

Odd that a Gulf emirate would denominate in Euros, but whatevs. Send half to the Cartoon Art Museum so they can get a new home, and half to Kate Beaton so she can have a herd of fat ponies.

________________
¹ Which, per a conversation a little while ago with my sister, is my youngest niece’s favorite book ever. Nobody tell her that she’s gettin’ a special present for Christmas.

See yesterday, grrr. I won’t be able to say as much as I’d like, and let’s not try to get pictures up, but there’s things I want to point you towards.

• Via Ryan North from yesterday, news that basically every comic creator from Toronto is having a party:
  

  What are you doing this Thursday night [editor’s note: that’s the day after tomorrow, 17 December 2015]? I sure hope it involves coming to The Fifth-Ever Beguiling, Dinosaur Comics, Squirrel Girl, Jughead, Kaptara, A Softer World Holiday Party 2015!!

  Details at the link. Secret Santa, y’all.

• Via the Boston Comics Roundtable, news that there’s still a month to submit to their their upcoming science-based comic anthology, Boundless. Deadline to submit is 15 January 2016, with full submission guidelines here.
• Kickstarter has had more than a few high-profile projects go bust in its time, sometimes for reasons outside the control of the creators, sometimes likely because projects were too ambitious and they couldn’t see that, sometimes possibly because they were big ol’ scams. They commissioned a report about fulfillment, which you can read here, and definitely should read if you’re a creator or backer. Basically, everybody.
• Compare and contrast the uncultured swine declaration (from Mort at the very beginning of KC Green’s The Anime Club) with the ignorant swine declaration (from the unnamed character in today’s SMBC by Zach Weinersmith, but you’ll have to press the big red votey button to see it). Discuss.

Spam of the day:

<blinky hearts emoji />Jody29 wants to Golf with you!<blinky hearts emoji />

I don’t play golf and I doubt the very well-upholstered and very naked young lady pictured really does want to ‘tee off’ with me.

Quick tip: if you’re ever in one of my classes and I say that when you’re asked to set a password in a particular product’s installation that you should write it down because if you forget it you won’t be able to do the rest of the week’s exercises and it will take more than my entire friggin’ lunch break to fix your mistake so that the rest of the class is massively behind and I become both hungry and cranky? Please do that or I will hate you.

• The Cartoon Art Museum may not have a proper home, but that doesn’t mean that it’s quiet. Curator Andrew Farago informs us that they are continuing their tradition of Winter Break cartooning classes for those Bay Area parents looking for something for their kids to do during the day. 28 Dec, 10:30am to noon is the parent & child class on Space Heroes, with an adult class from 1:00pm to 3::00pm. Same times on the 30th, with the morning given to a parent & child class on Cartoon Critters and the afternoon class given over to teens on the topic of character design. Kid classes are US$10, teen & adult classes US$35, with discounts for CAM members. All classes take place at 275 Fifth Street in San Francisco, with tickets available at those links.
• Kickstarter alert: Steve LeCouillard of Much the Miller’s Son (focusing on a bit player of the Robin Hood mythos, which appears to be offline) and Dreadful Sirens (sexy, sexy pirate ladies, as written by Karla Pacheco, so there’s like actual — but tasteful! — penetration of sexy pirate ladies) has launched a crowdfund for his current project: Una the Blade. Think single mom Red Sonja, with the added motivation of wanting to protect a couple of toddlers she’s got in tow. This is gonna be good.
• La bande dessinée est mort, vive la bande dessinée! Or, Brad Guigar is getting out of the comic strip model of webcomics for the half-page graphic novel model of webcomics, while indulging his current tendency for classy porn. Which, let’s face it, is what pays the bills these days. Guigar’s probably thought about how to approach webcomics with respect to what the market is looking for, what will pay, and what’s creatively interesting. He’s put in Jim Davis levels of hard-nose businesslike thought, and he’s shifting his model for at least the third time since I’ve known him. Watch this very carefully, even if you don’t read his comic (maybe especially if you don’t read his comic).

Spam of the day:

Too bad we must return them.

Quit being greedy, it’s somebody else’s turn.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

• Longtime readers of this page will recall that Ryan North (once and future, resurrected from beyond exploding) is one of the living avatars of webcomics, one of the trinity of the Nexus of All Webcomics Realities. He’s kinda a big deal¹.

  He’s also getting attention outside the world o’ webcomics, what with a nice shout-out from The AV Club yesterday, specifically mentioning the first Dinosaur Comics print collection, Your Whole Family Is Made Out Of Meat². And laster this week, North will be interviewing Randall Munroe live on stage in Toronto regarding Munroe’s new book, Thing Explainer. It looks like a lot of fun and if I were in Toronto I’d totally go there!

• Longtime readers also know that I do my blogging primarily at lunchtime, in and around my day job. Day job blew up when I had just finished with that paragraph, so that’s all you’re getting today. More tomorrow, God willin’ and the creek don’t rise (as my grandmother used to say).

Spam of the day:

Old Saint Nick: bring back the magic and excitement when they open there very own personally addressed letter from Santa himself!.

Unless this letter comes from the main character of Nicholas Was by Neil Gaiman, not interested. Hail Satan!

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¹ Not the least because he’s like two meters tall. That is (per the novelization of Star Wars I read as a kid in 1978, before even the infamous Holiday Special) the same height as Darth friggin’ Vader.

² The review of which is maybe my favorite thing I’ve ever written for this site.

David “Damn You,” Willis “!” and his lovely wife Maggie have welcomed twin boys into the world. Let’s let the new daddy tell the story:

here we go
MARTY! ITS YOUR KIDS!
Everyone’s okay!

Judging from the timestamp, sometime between about 8:30pm and 10:00pm last night, the boys got introduced properly to mom and dad:

Do I have to know the weights before making the Official Announcement? That seems like the done thing, but I forgot them. Ohwells
It’s Zachary Dashiel and Chase Alexander Willis! 6lbs4 and 5lbs8 respectively. Hello! http://tmblr.co/Z9FhQx1zH2gBB

Overwhelmed by a rush of emotions, Willis reflected on how evolution now views him as redundant:

I HAVE FULFILLED MY BIOLOGICAL IMPERATIVE

After that, there wasn’t much left to say:

Late night sleepy Chase

Zach, Chase, welcome. The world is bright and noisy and chilly compared to what you’ve been used to, and you aren’t all tangled up in each others business, but we hope you find it adequate. You’ll meet lots of people; some are dumb and hateful, but most are pretty okay when you get down to it. Do your best to be patient with them and enjoy the fact that right now, not one of them thinks you can do any wrong. Ride out that adorable stage as long as you can!

Your parents are pretty great people, and they’re going to make you very happy in the long run; it won’t always feel that way, but in time you’ll see that they always want the best for you. See if you can give ’em as much sleep as possible in the meantime. Oh, and it won’t be long before Dad sets you up with your own toys, but even after he does, best keep your hands off of his. He’s kinda obsessive about them.

Happy Birthday.

I mean, there’s some stuff that isn’t necessarily news, like Jim Zub having a critically-acclaimed run on Samurai Jack comics and now they just so happen to announce a revival of the series for Cartoon Network? We all suspected that would happen when all the Jack fans realized how much they’d missed the show and said so repeatedly during the comic’s twenty issues. TopatoCo rolling out a bunch of new merch for your gift-giving needs? Various creators stocking up, bemoaning the drudgery of shipping, or pointing out forthcoming order deadlines if you want to get stuff in time for your soltice-adjacent holiday? Terrible people insulting my mom¹? No surprises there.

• But there was one bit that I’d consider newsy, and that is that Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett² will be doing a live chat tomorrow, 4 December, at 1:30pm Central Time via the Twitters. Hit up @GoComics with hastag #AskDaveKellett³ and find out what’s up in LA these days. Can’t imagine what else you’d want to ask him.
• Annnd I was just about to put this to bed when some news dropped into my lap, and made me into a horrible liar about the quietness of the day; still keeping everything up there, though. Via a Kickstarter update, Dean Trippe announced something fairly large about the much-delayed Something Terrible:
  

  I’m very pleased to announce that Iron Circus Comics will be handling both the publishing and the reward fulfillment for this project, and everything is proceeding along much quicker with their much-needed assistance.

  What with Iron Circus honcho/showrunner/chief cook and bottle-washer (it’s like that with single proprietorships) C Spike Trotman opening up solicitations for her publishing services, and what with her reaching out to Trippe on the Twitters earlier this week, I should have guessed something was up between them. This is great news all around for several reasons.

  1. It’s clear that the publishing and fulfillment have overwhelmed Trippe; I have my belief why that’s happened, others have theirs. Point is, Spike’s the sort of person that makes things happen, so backers are now absolutely going to get their books sooner than they would have otherwise.
  2. To quote Spike from her part of Trippe’s announcement, Something Terrible is an important book, and it needs to be out there where people can find it; bookstores, libraries, comic shops. I want every backer to leave this project with what they ordered, and I want to do my part to make sure this happens. Whatever you may think of Trippe’s logistical follow-through or about him as a person (again, I have my opinion), the importance of his book is pretty much inarguable. Anything that gets it to the person that doesn’t yet know how much it’s needed is a net good in a world that desperately needs it.

  Not so slow today after all. Cool.

Spam of the day:

Do you like a screamer? Want to see what happens in bed?

Moaners yesterday, screamers today, are these the only noises that fake porn sites care about? What about people into grunting, or honking, or squeaking or squawking or barking or or bleating or burbling? Probably somebody’s into sexual partners that moo or only express their pleasure in Seussian rhyming couplets. I ain’t gonna judge.

______________
¹ Not that she probably doesn’t deserve it. My name is Gary, I’m in my late 40s and don’t get on with my Mom. Hi, Gary.

² Which is how GoComics described him when launching weekly re-runs of Drive and how he will always be referred to on this page. Tough break, LArDK.

³ It would be hilarious if the tag was #AskLosAngelesresidentDaveKellett, but that would bring you down to under 100 characters right there, so I suppose we can forgo it.

We are heading towards the first pie-centered coma of the holiday season¹ and between the actual holiday, travel, and a day off to celebrate Rosenbergmas² on Friday, I’m giving you a bunch of stuff now and won’t guarantee any more posts before Monday.

• Rutabaga volume 2 by Eric Colossal is now up for pre-order.
• Make That Thing’s latest Kickstarter campaign is to make a plush of the bunny from Sarah’s Scribbles, by Sarah Andersen.
• Speaking of Kickstarts, Rich Stevens is the most laconic guy I know, and if a rousing game of Secret Hitler got his heart rate up, then it’s probably a lot of fun.
• Some day, I will be able to give Chris Onstad money in exchange for a second volume of the Achewood cookbook. In the meantime, the Achewood shop returns for all your clothing, artwork, drinkware, mousepad, and iPhone case needs. You an also get totes to put your other Achewood stuff in.
• Zach Weinersmith has done like a half-dozen iterations of the Bad Ad-Hoc Hypothesis seminar, but hasn’t yet received enough proposals for the two-night run scheduled for London in January. Submissions have been extended by a week to get more papers in.
• Lawyer to the self-employed creator community Katie Lane has some thoughts about what makes a good contract. Hint: It’s complicated.
• Devastator and Heidi MacDonald’s The Beat are teaming up again to determine what comics shows actually make money for exhibitors. The past year’s responses have resulted in rather nice data set, so fill out their survey if you want to see this sort of thing continue.

Spam of the day:

See what secret gift did you got

Oh very nice, fake Victoria’s Secret you get a free gift spam — you put up a link that reads Report Spam in your email that goes to exactly the same address as the attempt to get me to click on whatever crapware you’re trying to install on my computer. That’s pure bloody evil.

________________
¹ Yes, yes, I know that Our Friends To The North celebrated Thanksgiving six weeks ago, but we all know when Thanksgiving really happens.

² In addition to the usual disclaimer that Jon Rosenberg owns my actual soul, one must make an annual notification that he and I share a birthday, along with at a Song Dynasty Emperor, the guy who invented the proper temperature scale, the founder of Panasonic, a puppet wrangler, a martyr to democracy, a martial arts master, a guitar master, an Oscar-winning director, an actor mostly known by one of his character’s names, a Science Guy, a goddamn genius taken from us too soon, fuck cancer, the voice of Brak, at least four rap artists, another actor mostly known by one of his character’s names, two porn stars, and Kim Pine.

I guess people just like screwin’ in early February.