Man, I do not know what got past the shields yesterday, but I was laid low by that 24 hour bug. Feeling much better today, hi, how are you? That one day’s worth of illness has thrown me off, as stuff I wanted to mention yesterday gets pushed to today, and my heads up on who will be where at NYCC gets pushed to tomorrow by which time the show will already be open, and due to a combination of work and my niece’s wedding (love you, Heather!), I’ll only be at the show on Friday. Was that a sentence? It feels kind of disorganized as a sentence, and big disorganized thoughts still make my head somewhat swimmy, so let’s dive in.

• But before we jump into stuff that got pushed, something very timely: there appears to be a concerted attempt to reset passwords on WordPress sites. I first became aware of it when I saw the warning on Twitter from Phil “Frumph” Hofer, Word Press expert-for-hire and ComicPress/Comic Easel developer. Since Hofer has helped a lot of people, he got about 30 password reset-attempt emails and raised the alarm. It turned out not to be limited to Hofer, as many people were experiencing the same thing; I noticed an attempt on we at Fleen occurred about 5:00am.

  As Hofer says, you need to secure administrative access to your WordPress site:

  Important as it is, you NEED to set people back to subscriber after they’re done helping you out, the only person who should ever have consistent administrator access is YOU, no one else. (unless in the case of those people who have a site administrator helping them out, but you get the idea … no 3rd party people)

  Embarrassing as it is to say, I wasn’t fully secure; I had long since killed the privileges on former contributors to this site, but I hadn’t disabled Hofer’s account from when he helped me with a hosting migration a year back. Worse, there’s only one account that ever posts on this site these days — which made it a clear target — and I was using it both to post and for administrative operations.

  Please note that I said was, as I’ve changed that. If you’re using WordPress, take the five minutes to demote your main account to “editor” and shift admin duties to an arbitrary account with a non-obvious name and an obnoxiously long password, then never use it except for admin purposes. You’ll be happy you did.

• Evan Dahm’s illustrated edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has launched its Kickstarter, and is about halfway to goal one day in. This is going to be a gorgeous book, and with the assistance of Make That Thing on fulfillment, it should arrive with no hiccups. I’ve just ordered two copies — one to keep, one to present to my youngest niece-and-nephew pair.
• When you talk about old school webcomics, it’s harder to get older than original Blank Label (the site isn’t even parked anymore) member Steve Troop and the venerable webcomic/puppet show known as Melonpool. It’s been off-and-on for years now (to be perfectly honest, mostly off) while Troop has worked towards a movie version, but Melonpool has returned to webcomics with a reboot. Daily updates so far (and a promise of color Sundays), and we’ll have to see what all the old characters get up to.

We’ll do the full roundup of NYCC exhibitors of interest tomorrow, but how about a list of people that won’t be off at their own tables?

• Cameron Stewart will be riding the excitement of his new Batgirl ongoing (with Babs Tarr on art) via signings and panels on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
• Ananth Panagariya will be signing in support of Buzz! with Tessa Stone at the Oni Booth on Friday and Sunday, and in support of Candy Capers with Yuko Ota and Ian McGinty at the BOOM! booth on Sunday.
• Randall Munroe will be signing in support of What If? on Friday, then have a spotlight panel on Saturday with Bill Freakin’ Nye, dang.
• Kate Leth will be signing in support of Bravest Warriors and Adventure Time OGN Seeing Red, Natasha Allegri in support of Bee and Puppycat, and Noelle Stevenson in support of Lumberjanes, all at the BOOM! booth (check at the booth for times).
• Andrew Bell will have several new toys debuting at the show via the My Plastic Heart booth — there will be a collection of previously-released designs in stylish, slimming black, and his newest take on the Dealmaker.

Spam of the day:

I have found that the key to running a popular website is making sure the visitors you are getting are interested in your subject matter.

Wow, never would have guess that the secret to having a popular website is to have a topic people are interested in. It’s like rocket science!

This is not your typical Monday. Shall we count the ways?

• Perhaps the largest news to hit the geekosphere today (I watched the first season of Twin Peaks before thoroughly losing interest, so today’s news of a return isn’t really grabbing me) would be the word of Ryan North’s next project: he’ll be writing an ongoing Squirrel Girl series for Marvel with an inspired choice for artist in the person of Erica Henderson.

  This ranks high in terms of superhero comics I didn’t know I wanted but I totally do, possibly matched only by the thought of Brad Guigar getting a crack at Plastic Man/Ambush Bug teamup or Chris Hastings getting to write an all-ages, lighthearted Spider Man.¹ I love this, despite the well-documented fact that I despise squirrels. Hate ’em. And yet I am ready to give money to Marvel come January (despite my reluctance to give any more money than is strictly necessary to the Disney corporation) because I know this is going to rule so hard.

• So I noticed ‘tother day that Shaenon Garrity and Jeffrey Wells have launched the requisite Kickstarter campaign for their next print collection — their fifth — which is going to make the “S” section of my bookshelf even more crowded than it already is, what with it already hosting Sandman, Starman, Strangers in Paradise, The Spirit, Sheldon, Schlock Mercenary, Starslip, Spacetrawler, and Scary Go Round. Rearrangements will be a necessity, as Skin Horse is one of my genuine daily delights, with the honest laughs cranked up to eleven pert-near every day that I read.

  Unsurprisingly (Garrity and Wells have an extremely loyal following, one that likely exceeds the usual 10% will buy stuff rule of thumb), the campaign has already nearly doubled its (extremely modest) US$6000 goal, and now I need only wait until May or so in order to have said book in my hands. What really caught my attention, though, was something rather clever that was done for this campaign, something that I don’t see done often enough. There was no chance of me missing this Kickstart, because some few hours after it launched, I (along with all backers of Skin Horse volume 4) was sent an email noting that hey, you bought the fourth book in a series, so you’d probably dig the fifth, right? Exactly right.

  Granted, it’s not every project or every creator that can do this kind of carryover marketing, but if you’re producing a sries on a regular schedule, you’d be foolish not to leverage that opted-in mailing list you’ve already got. It doesn’t hurt that Garrity and Wells offer one of the best bargains in webcomics — a sketched & signed physical book, for US$25 (shipping included).

• Speaking of books, my wife had a copy of Randall Munroe’s New York Times bestselling What If? waiting for me after my escape from the city of Chicago (which was more that mildly affected a full week after that disgruntled jerk that tried to burn down the air traffic control center). I am thoroughly enjoying it, and more than a little disturbed how often the people in the addressed situations end up confronted by rapidly-expanding clouds of superheated plasma.
• It is simultaneously the wedding anniversary of two of the most wonderful people ever and the birthday of one of the classiest, most excellent fellows on the planet. I’ll go further: the wedding of Jeffrey and Holly Rowland was the best wedding ever (and I include my own in that statement), and Ananth Panagariya’s continued existence provokes a dilemma in me: I can’t decide if I would rather be Ananth Panagariya, or perhaps one of his roommates, because then I would get to spend every day with Ananth Panagariya. Happy Everything to the excellent lady and dudes.
• Two weeks, two Dresden Codak updates (which I believe all would acknowledge is a land speed record for Aaron Diaz), and the possibility exists of not only sustaining that schedule, but perhaps even increasing it to three pages a month. Diaz is threatening to attempt weekly but acknowledges that such a schedule would possibly break the laws of physics, so on behalf of a frightened world that likes the laws of physics² as they are, please don’t feel the need to fly so close to the sun, Aaron.
• Coincidence? Red Robot shows us how to deal constructively with oppressors and barely four hour later the US Supreme Court declines to hear seven challenges to marriage equality, meaning that five more states have been brought into the fold of modern civilization³. Thirty states down, twenty to go, and as of today more than half the population of the United States can marry whoever the hell they want. So yeah, probably coincidence, but if Stevens wanted to do similarly-themed comics on the eves of other judicial decisions, it couldn’t hurt.

Spam of the day:

You are so cool! I don’t believe I have read a single thing like that before. So good to discover someone with unique thoughts on this subject.

Seriously.. many thanks for starting this up. This site is one thing that is needed on the web, someone with a bit of originality!

Any other day, I would have given this comment no credence viz authenticity, but today I’m in a good mood. Thank you for your good wishes, anonymous commenter who included a link that no way in hell will I ever click on. Much ‘ppreciated.

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¹ Oh please, oh please.

² And thus the universe.

³ No doubt kicking and screaming in some quarters. Darn.

Not to mention the fact that I have a flight to catch out of O’Hare in a couple of hours (FAA willin’ and the creek don’t rise), so this is minimal. I know that you’ll find it in your hearts to forgive me.

• MICE (that is to say, the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo) is both a young show (just five years in) and a relatively small-scale show, but it’s become increasingly significant in the past couple of years; it’s probably comparable to TCAF, SPX, or MoCCA at this point. So if you’re in the greater Boston area, trek over to the Lesley University campus in Cambridge’s Porter Square, where you’ll find free admission, special guests like Raina ‘n’ Dave, James Kochalka, Emily Carroll, and Box Brown.

  Special bonus: exhibitors will be in rooms named for Robert Crumb, Julie Doucet, and Alison Bechdel, and will include the likes of Jason Viola, Alison Wilgus, Jaya Saxena & Matt Lubchansky, Rosemary Mosco, Braden Lamb & Shelli Paroline, Sophie Goldstein, Colin Tedford, Colleen AF Venable, Zack Giallongon, Maki Naro, Molly Ostertag, and Evan Dahm. Tell every single one of them I said hi.

• Still wondering what Patreon does? To help answer the question, they commissioned an explanatory comic from Jon Rosenberg, and you can catch sight of it here. That van Gogh, always with the wanting to eat.

Those of you that follow me on Twitter may know that I am presently in Chicago, and walking around The Loop I’ve encountered people that are near-perfect duplicates of others that I know or at least know of: Hope Larson, Scott C¹, Dustin Harbin, John Allison and more. Lately, it’s been accelerating, and I see people on the street that resemble those I know more rapidly than I can keep up. Either I’m having a very long, very specific, very slow-progressing neurological disorder, or Twitter people are being replaced by invaders from outer space. If any of the people below claims to be in Chicago suddenly instead of where they normally should be, get the shotgun ready.

• Jon Rosenberg and Gemma Correll hit one of those odd bits of internet comic synchrony today, as they each independently released a comic with a rather unusual element in common: the crab with a gun. This is the weirdest coincidence since multiple crocodilian-mentioning comics ran on the day that Steve “Crocodile Hunter” Irwin died. I think the aliens screwed up, and decided that Correll and Rosenberg might be the same person.
• One thing that the aliens are probably pretty good at: coming up with an approximation of human language and logic that doesn’t quite sit right on the ear. By that token I’d say that the posts on new social network Ello by “Kris Straub” are almost certainly the work of nonhuman intelligences, because surely no actual person would speak in such a manner as this. He’s been replaced by aliens that learned to speak from crashing Silicon Valley conferences and collecting “thought leader”-speak! Or he’s just really, really tired from having a new kid at home.

Okay, we’ve played out that gag long enough. Quick milestones:

• Yesterday marked ten years and 1905 strips of Girls With Slingshots, which means that everybody should feel good for GWS creator Danielle Corsetto! There’s not any specific to-do at the comic, what with her taking a six week, cross-country celebration lap this past summer, but a quick Attagirl will surely be appreciated.
• Even more impressive: sometime in the past few weeks, TopatoCo passed one hell of a milestone in that it shipped its 500,000th package. I believe that Jeffrey Rowland is now permitted to list Mogul on the “Job title” box of his tax returns. If this year is anything like previous years, TopatoCo will spend upwards of a quarter million dollars just on postage — all to send smiles to people that love cool things and money to creators who would rather kill themselves than ship a half million packages. Everybody feel good for everybody associate with The Topato Corporation!

Spam of the day:

sorry but there is a mistake at Nr. 8 (there are two nuerbms 8) one vertical and another one horizontal. when you press at the crossword on that number it shows you a question vertically while answers horizontally(question about a camel while answer is about a cow ) .

Godsdammit, more aliens. Will we never be rid of them?

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¹ Not the headband-and-shorts version, regular shirt-and-jeans version.

What can I can? Sometimes I’m behind the game.

• Julia Wertz has produced some of the most painfully funny/honest comics of the young century under the monikers of Fart Party/Museum of Mistakes; painful in the sense that anybody reading them would find something that resembled their own experiences and spend the afternoon cringing all over again. Growing up is often a process of accepting what an idiot/jerk/asshole you were and being relieved that you aren’t anymore¹.

  For most of a week, Wertz has had a print collection of her cartoons available for purchase (pre-orders, which I missed entirely, have been fulfilled, and it’ll be moving into bookstore channels in the coming weeks). Various editions of Museum of Mistakes: The Fart Party Collection (all of which are signed and doodled), offering various additional bits of art, knick-knacks, gewgaws, and tchotchkes.

• Also how did I never notice this: Zach[ary] Weiner[smith], webcomicker par excellence, sketch comedian, meme wrangler, CYOA author, and children’s book wordbender uses one of two commonly-accepted spellings for [the root of] his last name: W-E-I-N-E-R.

  But when speaking of the male generative organ in slang, he uses the other of two commonly-accepted spellings: W-I-E-N-E-R. Now I have to write a graduate thesis on this non-singular self-image that Mister W holds and its likely impact on the origins of his irreverent — even transgressive humor. Either that, or dude typo’ed his own last name.

• Not a missed item: yesterday, the Society of Illustrators announced the dates and special guests for next year’s MoCCA Festival, along with a shift in venue from the 69th Regiment Armory. In order, then, the show will be 11 and 12 April, guest will include Scott McCloud (fresh off the release of The Sculptor) and Raina Telgemeier (no doubt completing six months on the New York Times Bestseller List for Sisters, and about 150 weeks for Smile), along with Aline Kominsky-Crumb and JH Williams III.

  The new venue is Center 548 on Manhattan’s west side at 22nd, near to the famous High Line, one of the most innovative urban parks in existence. More information as it becomes available, but if you’re of a mind to exhibit, applications will open on 3 November.

• Finally, Jeph Jacques launched his new comic today, which caused a demand that promptly made his hosting fall over. At some point in the future, then, you’ll be able to check out Alice Grove in its permanent home twice a week. Until then, you can check out the mirror at Tumblr, where the first two pages don’t give away very much. Can’t wait to see how this one develops.

Spam of the day:

does vinegar kill spiders

Why would you want to kill spiders? They keep nastier things under control, are interesting as hell, and occasionally hilarious with their HEY! LOOK AT ME! OVER HERE ME! ME! ME! LOOK! behavior. Unless you’ve got a crack spider, or live in Australia. Then again, everything in Australia wants to kill you, so no need to be mean to spiders particularly.

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¹ Of course, that just means that in a few years you’ll be looking back on now and realizing that you were still an idiot/jerk/asshole. With any luck, today is to a lesser degree, and eventually the lag time before you recognize your own idiot/jerk/asshole nature narrows to the point that you can see it in real time and adjust your behavior.

Looks like late posts this week; gomen.

• In the roughly one year since Matt Bors launched The Nib for Medium, the site has grown with rapidity; there are a couple of regular contributors whose work doesn’t grab me (and at least one who actively, consistently enrages me), a bunch that I like, and a few that I love¹ — I think that probably makes it a very good comics section by any measure, but especially as editorial comics, as it has avoided the trap of becoming an echo chamber.

  Even better, he’s got a budget and those contributors (a dozen or more on a regular weekly basis, maybe 30 or 40 over the past year in all) get paid. If that seems like a fair amount of work, you’re right, and a couple months back Bors hired Eleri Harris as associate editor.

  Apparently, the growth is too much for two people to easily wrangle, as three months later Matt Lubchansky (of Please Listen To Me and New Amsterdam Mystery Company) is now joining up as editorial assistant:

  Matt’s going to be helping me and associate editor Eleri Harris manage our day to day publishing schedule, as well as tweeting on twitter, contributing his own comics, and working with me on a SECRET PROJECT.

  This seems as good a time as any to share Lubchansky’s classic supersomething, Not-All-Man, as well as his Nibby contribution today, about a problem in the atheist community. Lubchansky’s a skilled skewer-er of those that need skewering, always punches up, and has a visual style that’s well suited to making points and chuckles in equal degree. Best of luck to Lubchansky, and we’ll report back on the rumor that Eleri Harris is thinking of changing her name to “Matt” in order to help confuse The Nib’s enemies.

• In other news, the Joe Shuster Awards were presented over the weekend, honoring the finest in Canadian comics / Bandes dessinée Canadien. This year’s recognition for Webcomics Creator / Créateur de Bandes Dessinées Web went to Jayd Aït-Kaci with Christina Strain for The Fox Sister. Once again, the Shusters remain both well-curated and an excellent source for discovering new webcomics. And heck, anybody that wins in a field that includes Emily Carroll is well worth your attention; for reference, the nominees are found here.

Spam of the day:

Dearest sweet melissa, all the best sweet finerd! I will be here waiting for you but i hope you will drop by on FB once a while to connect with all of us!

Oh … kay.

_______________

¹ Gemma Correll 4 Lyfe, yo.

Let’s just assume I wrote something cool and erudite about each of these.

• Stand Still, Stay Still print drive went live yesterday, and you can get a copy of SSSS in beautiful hardcover (judging from my copy of A Red Tail’s Dream) for US$55, shipped anywhere in the world. The usual premiums apply for signed bookplates/sketches (cats only, but cats are very important in SSSS), and what the heck — full color, hardcover, nearly 300 pages, and Minna Sundberg has proven her ability to ship and deliver. Get in on this before the IndieGoGo campaign closes on 21 October.
• My evil twin is celebrating 10 years as a self-employed cartoonist with an AMA on one of the less scum-and-villainy-oriented corners of Reddit tomorrow. I’ll be working, so somebody ask him if Howard ever feels the urge to be the good twin for a while.
• So matter of fact as to almost be missed over at Questionable Content:
  

  I am launching a new comic this Thursday

  Presumably, this is the new comic promised in the third milestone goal of Jeph Jacques’s Patreon and holy crap he’s on the verge of achieving the fifth milestone goal. Good for you, Jeph, and can’t wait to see the new strip.

• New Dresden Codak, the first in two months. Aaron Diaz has been pretty absent from social media for some weeks now, and he tells us why:
  

  Sorry for the radio silence for so long. I’d been kind of not dealing with anxiety and depression for the better part of a year, and it reached a breaking point last month. I’m doing well now, but all this has necessitated a limited use of the internet for a while. For the next few months I won’t be available much through social media, so if you need to contact me, please email me at dresdencodak [at] gmail [dottity-dot] com. If you don’t follow me on Twitter or Tumblr, you won’t notice any difference, as I’ll still be updating the comic as always! I’ll also be posting sketches and little content updates on the Patreon blog.

  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — depression sucks the life right out of you and good for Diaz finding a way to deal with it; it appears that Diaz’s coping mechanisms must including lots and lots of drawing, because he hadn’t shared much of his usual in-process drawings when he went dark some weeks back. Oh, and as you may have noticed from the quote above, he’s opened up a Patreon, so check that out.

Spam of the day:

Wow that was unusual. I just wrote an really long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t show up. Grrrr … well I’m not writing all that over again. Anyhow, just wanted to say fantastic blog!

Yeah, that sucks. Also, nice spam links.

Maybe it’s everybody getting back into the swing of things after SPX and XOXO Fest last weekend. Maybe it’s everybody trekking to Austin for MondoCon¹ (where one may find Bryan Lee O’Malley, Scott C, and Becky & Frank) or to Portland (they just had XOXO last weekend) for Rose City Comic Con (where one may find Scott Kurtz, Dylan Meconis, Erika Moen, Ethan Nicolle, and the ubiquitous Jim Zub).

Or, to be more precise, those people listed around Rose City are merely the webcomickers who are special guests of the show. Wecomicky exhibitors will also include Christopher Baldwin, Jennie Breeden, Evan Dahm, Sam Logan, Tavis Maiden, Kel McDonald, Bill Mudron, and the various members of Periscope Studio. No doubt others are attending but not listed by their individual names, what with both Dark Horse and Oni being local to Portland, and the Pacific Northwest in general having such an embarrassment of riches in the depth of its cartooning talent.

• Speaking of Dylan Meconis, did you see that today’s update of Family Man was the last page of Chapter 3 and consequently the last page of what will be the second print collection? My copy of the first volume has been sitting lonely on my shelf for four years, and it is thus thrilling news to me that Meconis took the opportunity to announce:
  

  [M]y traditional short break from page updates to start pulling together the print volume. In the meantime, I’ll update with notes on past pages every Friday. If you’d like to know more about something in particular, comment here and I’ll add it to my list!

  I hope to return to page updates in six weeks; you can follow the Facebook page or my Twitter account for alerts.

  Six weeks. Print volume pulled together in six weeks, then the Kickstart and/or preorders, then print time and shipping … I can do this, I can do this, I can do this.

  None of which should take away from just how lovely today’s page is — a cut crystal glass breaking on floor by candlelight. It’s part of a violent moment, but it strikes me as oddly quiet and contemplative — if this were a movie, it would suddenly run in slow motion and the soundtrack would drop low for emphasis. Brava.

• In contrast to the quiet, how about something loud? How about potentially the loudest thing ever associated with webcomics, namely the use of David Malki !’s greatest creation, the Piranhamoose, as a decorative element on a demolition derby² car. When said derbysters wrote to Malki ! to ask permission to include his design, he answered in the only way possible:
  

  I’m dismayed that you have not already completed said car so I can see it. This sounds like the best idea I have ever heard of.

  Click through to the before-and-after pictures. They are — in the literal sense — amazing.

Spam of the day:

September patch adds new levels and gameplay to Steam early access; terrifying new vision of Pac Man now available

That is the greatest subject line ever.

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¹ Whose Guests page is a beautiful piece of design, featuring logos and signatures that turn into actual names when you mouse over ’em — but it’s a pain to determine who’s coming.

² Note for non-American readers: demolition derby is the most American possible of entertainments, where automobiles are purposely driven into each other at speed with the intention of damaging them to the point of no longer being able to be driven. It is loud, stupid, potentially dangerous to all involved, and requires a surprisingly high degree of both engineering and driving skills.

Because honestly, if you’re writing about [web]comics and can’t find a way to fit Brad Guigar in there somewhere, you aren’t trying very hard.

• Chris Yates was at SPX and yet I didn’t mention him yesterday — oversight, or planned thing? In all honesty, a little of both, but mostly I wanted to run that photo up there on a day when nothing else would detract from it. Like all of Yates’s work, this Aku Baffler! is a gorgeous, precise piece of work, and I wanted to share it with you.

  You can catch up with Mr Yates as his peregrinations take him up the east coast towards Queens, and the World Maker Faire therein this weekend. People that Make¹ stuff always dig Yates, so if you want a shot at some of his best work, you’ll have to make² your way to the bedroom borough and check out the scrollsaw work.

• Speaking of Aku, Jim Zub not only continues work on Samurai Jack and a zillion other comics, he was also in Maryland this past weekend, although over on the coastal part. He and Chart Polski were in Annapolis brimping their way through an in-store signing of their latest work; it would have been nice to see them in Bethesda, but they were on a whirlwind fast-turnaround schedule.

  Nevertheless, in that time, Mr Zub found the time to put me on the distribution list for a preview of his forthcoming official Dungeons & Dragons tie-in comic, Legends of Baldur’s Gate, which I loved and will be buying when it releases next month. It’s got that trademark Zub flair for mixing the right amount of humo[u]r and ridiculousness with solid fantasy, but the real thing that caught me was the essay at the back of the issue which I will now quote from:

  Jim Zub the storyteller exists because of Dungeons & Dragons, the game.

  Right from the start, I could tell this wasn’t like any other game I’d ever played before. No cards, no board, no limits. No matter how young or small I was in real life I could create a character just as capable as the adults I was playing with. The Dungeon Master asked us what we were doing and my decisions, along with nerve-wracking rolls of the dice, had as much value as anyone else’s at the table.

  If I did something memorable, the group would laugh and I got to feel like one of the grown-ups. Unexpected banter, battle cries, one-liners — I wanted to entertain everyone and make sure my character left an impression.

  As the years went by, I grew up and roleplaying games grew with me. I moved behind the DM screen and started building grand adventures for my friends to quest through. Drama, plot, dialogue, pacing — all those core creative skills were honed by sitting around the gaming table using my imagination.

  Getting the chance to tell a Dungeons & Dragons story as part of the game’s 40th anniversary, carving out a new chapter in the fabled city of Baldur’s Gate … it’s wonderful, ridiculous, and surreal all at the same time. Somewhere inside of me there’s an 8-year old Li’l Zub screaming with joy as he runs around the house pretending he’s kicking skeletons in the face.

  When issue #1 releases, take the time to read the entire thing; it’s as loving a paean to the twin values of imagination and play as ever I can recall. Also, I now want to see an Adventures of Li’l Zub backup strip in this book. Bonus points if we can get Chris Eliopoulos or Skottie Young to draw it.

• Also not at SPX, because he was busy leading a Shakespeare Festival? Ryan Estrada. But that’s okay, he’s made up for it by teaching us to read another foreign language as part of his Gimme Five project. This time, he’s teamed up with Peter Starr Northrop so that we can all Learn To Read Russian In 15 Minutes and you know what? It works. I may not have any idea what the words mean, but I can now read Спокойной ночй, Gracie³ without too much difficulty. Okay, my accent needs work, but it’s a start.

Spam of the day:
Still nothing good. I am not necessarily upset by this turn of events.

________________
¹ … people … are the luckiest people in the worrrrrllllld.

Sorry.

² So to speak.

³ This gag courtesy of Brad Guigar’s failure to get a reaction from his students today despite dropping some classic laugh-chuckles on them. Kids these days., which I loved and will be buying when it releases next month.

SPX is done for another year, and it’s pretty safe to say that everybody who attended is looking forward to next year with the most baited of breath. It’s a show that’s just the right size, in that you can see everything in a few hours, but also spend the entire weekend in deep dives if that’s what you want. I didn’t have the entire weekend, alas, but I did manage to see the show floor on Saturday and have no regret except not being able to spend more time with everybody¹. Thoughts as they occur to me:

• Congratulations to the Ignatz Award winners², and may I note that unlike every other awards program of the year, I have a good record picking Ignatz winners. Particular congrats to Evan Dahm, Meredith Gran, Sophie Goldstein, Robert Kirby, and Jason Shiga, who appeared on my ballot³, as well as all the other winners.
• Speaking of Evan Dahm, he tells me that he’ll be launching his illustrated Oz book on Kickstarter in the near term, near enough to have the printer order submitted by end of the year. My only desire for this is that he offer a two-book bundle reward tier, as I need a copy, and I have a niece and nephew who will also need one.
• I spoke to both KC Green and Anthony Clark, and somehow managed to completely space on talking about BACK, which makes me an idiot because I love BACK. I did manage to talk to Christopher Hastings about how his involvement in improv and sketch comedy is improving his comic writing and vice versa, but neglected to ask if he has any more major comic book writing gigs coming out soon, given that he’s become Marvel’s go-to guy for the slightly wacky story niche. In each case, I choose to blame the fact that I didn’t want to block the table from people that wanted to talk to these fine gentlemen and buy their wares. That is my story and I’m sticking to it.
• Speaking of Green, and similar to Dahm’s Oz project, did you see that he (Green) launched an adaptation of Pinocchio today? That is to say, the original story by Carlo Collodi, not the Disney version. In case you’ve never been exposed to the original version, The Talking Cricket (il Grillo Parlante) tries to advise Pinocchio and is squished for his troubles, returning as an advice-spewing ghost, whereas his American counterpart Jiminy not only lived all the way through, he got the good song. Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio runs M-W-F, with Gunshow shifting to T-Th for the duration. Five days a week of KC Green comics is like a fairytale.
• Speaking of il Grillo Parlante, that’s been the name of the current story arc over at Skin Horse, where a series of guest artists have filled in for most of the summer for new mom/Radness Queen of Webcomics Shaenon Garrity. Garrity’s returned today to wrap up the last week of the arc, which gives me hope that we may also see the return of Monster of the Week.

Right, SPX. Got distracted for a minute there.

• Becky Dreistadt and Frank Gibson are super excited for their Capture Creatures series, coming in November from BOOM!
• Dean Trippe tells me that the print version of Something Terrible is with the book designer as we speak.
• Tom McHenry, whom I’d never met in person before, is a far more normal person that I would expect to ask people what they named their horses and get excited when I ‘fessed up that my horse was named Buttplumber.
• Carla Speed McNeil viciously underprices her original pages. I came home with three — two of them from the just-released Third World collection, which I have been obsessively reading and re-reading for the ten days or so since I picked it up — and I seriously considered taking out a second mortgage in order to buy the entire bin she had on her table. If you are not reading FINDER you are missing out.
• SPX remains a readers con, with multiple creators (among them Dahm, Jon Rosenberg, and Spike) expressing delight on social media at how much less stock they took home than they brought. Spike, in particular, was essentially sold out on Saturday, some hours after she promised me that she’s getting back to Templar this month, dammit.
• Power couples: Yuko Ota and Ananth Panagariya are maybe the living embodiment of Zen patience. Ota’s well-documented wrist difficulties⁴ are keeping her from drawing (or even signing!) at present, but they are dealing with the situation with admirable calm and equanimity. They shared booth space with Tom Siddell and Magnolia Porter, both of whom are presently doing the best work of their respective careers, and the latter of which was presented with a fan-made, near life-size plush of her character Rixis.

  They were directly across the aisle from Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman, who are gearing up for the Princeton Book Festival next Saturday. Telgemeier was sporting a wrist brace which she assured me was precautionary: the last time she went on book tour (as she is now), she went to the National Book Festival (as she just did) and signed about a thousand books in a short period of time and blew out her wrist and then had to go home and draw a book (which became Sisters). Here’s hoping the precautions work, but at least for now she and Ota get to be wrist-brace superhero buddies.

  Meanwhile, creator duo Braden Lamb and Shelli Paroline — so well known for their collaborations with Ryan North — have the time now that Midas Flesh has wrapped to put together their own story and series pitches. With any luck, in a year or so we may see something that they’ve written as well as drawn, and in the meantime they remain busy. Busy’s good.

• Kel McDonald is having a blast working with Dark Horse on the Misfits of Avalon print collections (the first of which is out next month), and remains her usual, unflappable, hyperorganized self. How organized? She won’t be putting up the Kickstarter for the next Cautionary Fables anthology until the end of 2015, and she’s already got her contributors on lockdown more than a year in advance. Somebody come up with a planning calendar app and get McDonald to endorse it.
• Tony Breed, by all accounts, KILLED it in the DJ booth at the SPX post-Ignatz dance party/prom. I’d never met him before and he struck me as an amazing nice guy. I picked up a copy of his mini of recipes in comic form, which makes me wish that Recipe Comix was still a thing oh wait look, it is. Also amazingly nice: Jess Fink, who in a just world would be in the midst of a bidding war from competing publishers for the soon-to-finish Chester XYV 5000: Isabelle and George. I am an entirely straight dude, and yet I had to tell Fink how thrilled I am to see that those two dudes are about to get down to some serious gettin’ it on. I think it’s my innate desire for George and Robert to get a happy ending, so to speak.
• I know I’m forgetting people; mea maxima culpa.
• New To Be or Not To Be artist signatures obtained count: 25.

Spam of the day:

Nuthin’ good. Sorry.

_______________
¹ That, and I completely lost track of time and missed Raina Telgemeier’s spotlight panel.

² I was already driving home by the time the awards got underway, so Heidi Mac’s writeup was invaluable to me.

³ To be clear, I voted for Shiga for Outstanding Series (which he won) and not for Outstanding Online Comic (which Dahm took), and I voted for Goldsteinn for both Outstanding Minicomic (which she won) and also Outstanding Artist (which went to Sam Bosma, which you can’t really argue with). Likewise, while I backed Gene Yang’s Boxers & Saints for Outstanding Graphic Novel, you can’t really get upset with that one being won by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki for This One Summer.

⁴ Taking advantage of the fact that I am totally ordained, I attempted a faith healing of Ota’s wrist. I don’t think it worked, despite invoking the spirits of Kirby and Herriman.