There two brief items up here before we get to the major point of discussion today: STRIPPED.

• Via R Stevens at The Nib, itself at Medium: pixel Neil deGrasse Tyson. You know who else R Stevens has pixelized? Me. Is this proof that Dr Tyson and I are destined to be best friends? Probably.
• For your consideration, Tom Siddell has added his previously print-only Annie in the Forest Part 2¹ to his website, free for you to read. Once again, Siddell’s done us a service, making an item freely available that could otherwise be making him money. Read it, enjoy it, drop a few bob via his donation link, or possibly by buying something from him next month at the MoCCA Fest in three weeks.

I watched STRIPPED over the weekend; anybody that caught my twitterfeed between Friday night and Saturday morning saw what I thought of it — it was masterful. But what I’ve been thinking about since was the choice of interview subjects that filmmakers Fred Schroeder and Dave Kellett chose to return to time and again. These folks were the centerpieces of the story of comics.

• There was less of Bill Watterson’s (rightly) lauded contribution than I might have suspected, and the film was not the less for it; in a handful of voiced cutaways, he made incisive points, but he wasn’t used in the film merely for the sake of Being Bill Watterson. I never thought I’d say this, but I admire the restraint that must have been required to not include every syllable of Watterson’s voice that found its way to tape.
• Darrin Bell is not a household name; Candorville and Rudy Park are both pretty damn good strips, but you likely wouldn’t place him or his work without prompting because we’re past the era of superstar comics-page creators. He’s disarmingly young, frighteningly smart, and wonderfully sincere in his many interview snippets. There have to have been many, many creators that spoke about their journey of becoming a creator, but there was a spark to Bell’s interview segments that made him a natural. I can’t wait to see the entirety of his interview.
• Greg Evans is a man I met, briefly, at the NCS Ruebens Weekend; he very kindly took the time to make me feel welcome in a place where I felt out of place. His strip isn’t for me, and I found myself surprised and a little thrilled at how much he was in the film. He almost perfectly straddles the line of long-term creator recognizing the changes in the industry², looking at them realistically, and really wondering how he can ride that wave rather than rail against it. He might have been the decades-long syndicated creator that jumped feetfirst into indy creator endeavours if Bill Amend hadn’t beat him to it.
• Patrick McDonnell is unapologetically Old School³. His tools are old school, the art style is old school — midway between Segar and Herriman, with a verbal sensibility perched directly between Schulz and Kelly — and his air of not concerning himself with the challenges facing the syndication model is older than old school. Syndicated cartoonists didn’t worry about their business model ceasing to exist in the ’40s and ’50s and ’60s; it simply was and would continue to be. Around McDonnell, you get the impression — at least for him — that reality has not changed and will not. His approach to cartooning and the business of cartooning is as Zen as the spare, airy, light-filled studio where he was interviewed.
• Jim Davis, who came up through the cartooning trenches as an assistant before catching lightning in a bottle with Garfield, is far more philosophical about cartooning than one would think he would need to be. He famously created Garfield with a businessman’s eye — there were lots of dogs on the comics page but not many cats, and he saw a market niche⁴ — and has overseen a juggernaut of success based on the broadest possible appeal.

  He is, as a result, richer than God — maybe richer than any cartoonist has ever been, barring only Sparky himself — and is reported to be sitting on a buffer longer than a year. He has a small corporation’s worth of people working with and for him to get All Things Garf delivered to the world on a daily basis. He needn’t involve himself in any aspects of Garfield at this point, he could walk away and live in luxury for the rest of his days.

  But he does. He does because (and this is from the Kickstarter backers-only full interview with Davis; the rest of you, I hope you get to see it) he thinks that one day, he could write the strip that makes the whole world laugh. Because that possibility matters more than every TV series, movie, and tchotchke put together.

• Mort Walker has been in cartooning for more than six decades. He oversees strips that have been on the page long enough that your parents (or grandparents) read them. He could be everything that’s wrong with comics but it’s clear that he stays in the game not out of stubbornness or to show Those Darn Kids how it’s done, but because he remembers reading Moon Mullins on Sunday mornings with his father, back in the 1920s. He’s see the rise and maybe-fall of comics first hand and never lost his full investment in the medium.
• Stephan Pastis is perhaps the one voice not completely in harmony with the others; he’s perhaps the most recent syndicated cartoonist to find widespread success (or at least, as widespread as it’s possible for any strip launched in the last 20 years to have achieved), and for all the success he’s had with Pearls Before Swine, there’s an edge in his interviews.

  In his segments, he seems like he’s pushing back against the changes in the model, like he wants to actively drag the entire industry back four or five decades. In his most telling exchange, his frustration becomes overt — and completely understandable — when he notes the odds of ever making it as a syndicated cartoonist, and then doing so just as the business implodes. I made it to the NBA, and the stadium is collapsing. His energy would make him a stellar independent creator/owner in the webcomics mode, if only he hadn’t spent so much time in the past openly contemptuous of it.

  His counterpoint, however, is absolutely crucial to the film, if only because he’s willing to express the frustrations that probably everybody in syndicated cartooning (or maybe those not named Davis or McDonnell) must be feeling. Pastis is not the enemy of progress, but he’s no friend of the particular path it’s taking.

Oh, yeah, some webcomics types said smart things too, and Chris Hastings gave as concise an explanation of How Webcomics Work as ever could have been.

Also Cathy Guisewite. And Scott McCloud⁵. And Lynn Johnston. And Jenny Robb. And RC Harvey. And Kazu Kibuishi. And Shaenon Garrity. And David Malki !. And more that I’m certainly forgetting now.

STRIPPED is sprawling, comprehensive, hilarious, heartfelt, honest, and wonderful. It went by in an eyeblink, with no wasted moments or times that don’t serve the narrative. It’s as good a history of comics — where they came from, where they are, where they’re going — as ever there has been, and it’s only the merest fraction⁶ of the material that was collected during production. It feels like the work of a lifetime, and I mean it as the highest compliment that it’s astonishing to think that it only took four years to produce.

If you haven’t seen it yet, there’s probably somebody in your circle of friends that has, given that you’re on this page to begin with. Ask around; I think you’re going to find that everybody’s that seen the movie is of one mind. Something uniquely American that’s touched three or four generations is changing, but will never go away; you should know its history, and barring a time machine that lets you experience the last century of comics first-hand, STRIPPED is the best way to do so.

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¹ More specifically, only available at the 2013 Thought Bubble Festival, now obtainable through the internet boutiquery services of TopatoCo.

² For example, Evans has produced Luann digitally for more than a decade.

³ Disclaimer: he’s also approximately a neighbor; we very occasionally run into each other on the street or in a restaurant and do that 20 second Hey! How are you? thing. It happened at the Reuben Weekend, which caused us both a moment of cognitive dissonance, as we were 3500km away from our usual random meeting stomping grounds. Finally, we chose the vet that took care of our greyhound for most of her life (and our new greyhound, who just had his first visit) based on his recommendation.

⁴ Which, if you think about it, is a very webcomics thing to do — find a niche that isn’t served and become their favorite. Only Davis did it in nineteen-freaking-seventy-eight, before a lot of webcomickers were born. Hell, if you go to his website, he’s got the entire 35+ year archive freely available — you can’t get more webcomics than that.

⁵ The full interview with McCloud — a couple of hours worth! — was released to KS backers last year. I really hope you get to see it someday because dang is that guy smart.

⁶ At just about ninety minutes, carved out of more than 300 hours of interviews, it would be possible to produce another 199 movies of equivalent length from material already on hand. Although I’m pretty sure that the 10 or 15 minutes that they spent talking to me needn’t be seen by anybody.

All LA-casual rumpled clothing and smiling faces. I’d buy life insurance from them if they were selling door-to-door. They being the notorious film/comic hivemind Freddave Kellett-Schroeder; they’re on the move, in these final weeks of moving STRIPPED towards a 1 April iTunes launch, and now towards a fancy-pants Hollywood premiere event:

Tickets now avail for the @strippedfilm premiere! We’re giving away 10 Watterson posters that night! http://strippedfilm.bpt.me

The skinny: Wednesday, 26 March, at the Cinearama Dome Theatre on the fabled Sunset Boulevard, from 7:00pm until they throw you out, for the low, low price US$20 (plus service fees). Be sure to dress up, there will be celebrities there, along with Messers Kellett-Schroeder. Wish I could be there, tell the paparazzi I said hi.

• Rebecca Clements has been absent from comics for a bit, something about getting a “graduate degree” in “something important that matters to the world”¹, but she’s got a new Kinokofry today, featuring everybody’s favorite blue globby dude … IN SPACE. Go, Space Engineers!
• Kristen Siebecker’s ongoing class series on How To Not Suck At Wine (not the official title) rolls on, with the next session devoted to the most elegant (and sneakily alcoholic) of boozes: champagne and other sparkling wines. Fun starts for those 21 & up at West Elm in Chelsea, on 20 March from 6:30pm. Ten percent off the cost of class if you use the super-secret discount code EMAIL10.
• Scott Kurtz has done a lot of comics, but it seems like the one with the most heart in it (if we don’t count Wedlock, but that’s lost to the ages) is Table Titans. The first year’s story arc concluded recently, which means that it’s time for the print collection, and since preorders are passé, the requisite Kickstarter launched today.

  It’s over 20% of goal in the first few hours, and by this time tomorrow we’ll be able to come up with a predicted total for the 30-day campaign by applying the Fleen Funding Factor to Kicktraq’s prediction. But honestly, we can absolutely say this one is going to hit goal, so the only question is if there are any stretch goals not yet announced that will make the book more fancy. I’m betting that there are.

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¹ Urban Planning, to be specific.

Let’s do this, then let’s follow Sir Patrick’s lead and have a nice drink.

• The very sexy R Stevens wants you to know about his presence in Columbus, Ohio, where he is crushing some dreams and selling some stuff:
  

  I’ll be in town Thursday through Saturday at CCAD with some far more gifted friends. There is a panel Thursday night you can sign up for. (it’s lower on the page) I’m bringing a carload of stuff from my store and can be bribed with pounds of locally-roasted coffee.

  You can connect to the event on the Facebooks here. I believe if you just pop your name into the google doc you can go to the panel.

  I’ll be at Laughing Ogre (possibly with special guests) from 1-3pm on Saturday, too!

  The CCAD he mentioned is the Columbus College of Art and Design, where Stevens, C Spike Trotman, Molly Crabapple, and Tanisha Robinson have been letting art students know what awaits them after leaving school, hopefully using the words doom, starvation, and embitterment in the right proportions.

• Following up on the observations of KB Spangler re: Kickstarters ‘tother day, Minna Sundberg shares how a crowdfunding can be monstrously successful and go pretty much according to plan¹ and still be a complete nightmare. Read it carefully.
• Zach Weinersmith is on the cusp of becoming a first-time father, which any reasonable person would expect having an impact on his creative projects. That might explain why Weinersmith released an ebook ten days ago and a second one earlier this week. Twins in Time is a child-aimed picture book told in rhyme about relativistic physics² with longtime collaborator Chris Jones. Look for between one and fifty-three more projects to drop from Weinersmith in the immediate future, depending on when labor starts.
• The Cartoonist Studio Prize, nominations for which were announced a month ago, has been awarded, and the winners are Emily Carroll in the Webcomics category, and Taiyo Matsumoto in the Graphic Novel category; in addition to the acclaim of all, Matsumoto and Carroll each get US$1000, which is a pretty good complement to a fancy plaque.

  As noted when the nominations were released, pretty much everything in the running this year was worthy of recognition, but it’s hard to come up with webcomics better than Carroll’s Out of Skin. We’ll let this discussion of merit and quality take us out; now let’s all get drunk and play ping-pong.

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¹ She received the books a month sooner than expected and just finished shipping; considering the original plan was for shipping to take place in springtime of 2014, I’d say she did pretty damn well.

² Specifically, the so-called twin paradox relating to velocity and time dilation. Perfect for bedtime!

Why the heck not? I’ve got an evil twin, I can have a long lost sister.

• Last night I had the pleasure of dining with Dylan Meconis and her wife, Katie Lane of Work Made For Hire. The conversation went far and wide¹, but a recurring theme was why do artists not apply the same fervor that goes into their art to the legal/business aspects of their careers? And how can I help change that? The question never resolved into a neat answer, but in thinking on it since I’m tending in the direction that artists (for the most part) know that this is stuff they’re supposed to care about, but if they don’t have somebody to to help them with ______ ² and don’t know where to get one, the whole issue gets back-burnered like a diet resolution on January third.

  So I’m solving the issue now: Knock that shit off, artists. Your work has value. Your time has value. Insisting that people pay you as agreed doesn’t make you a jerk, it makes you somebody who will meet rent this month. If you don’t know who to talk to, talk to Katie. I don’t have a need for IP or contracts advice, but if I ever did, she is the first person I’d contact and I’d do whatever she told me to³ because she is scary smart and not out to screw me. Yes, that will cost me money, but you know what would cost me more? Getting screwed on the fact that I thought I knew the terms of a contract and didn’t know it as well I’d convinced myself.

  There. Problem solved.

• News! Since the launch of Maker Space a whole day ago, KB “Otter” Spangler has seen the precipice and taken the leap of faith:
  

  I am a full-time Thing-Maker now. I’m not really sure how this happened. I am totally sure it’s all your fault. Yes, you. Thank you for buying my stuff, and for leaving reviews, and for telling your friends about this wacky corner of the Internet. It all adds up, and it is appreciated!

  If you haven’t bought your copy of Maker Space yet, I’ve put a list of links here. I’ll update this page when new formats are made available.

  I am still waiting on a piece of art to do the final Kickstarter update,* so I’ll do that when I receive it.

  See you on Thursday!

  *Since this is the Internet and we all know how the Internet thinks, I should probably mention that my single source of income for the next year will be from sales of Maker Space, not the Kickstarter. Guys, if you walk away from a project-oriented Kickstarter with spending money in your pocket, you are not using Kickstarter correctly.

  I wanted to share this to say two things:

  1. Congrats, Otter, and keep up the good work.
  2. Look at that last part, particularly the last sentence; Otter has summed up the fundamental truth about Kickstarts that everybody looking to get in on the Magic Money Machine needs to have tattooed on the insides of their eyelids.
• Procrastination alert! Jorge Cham is wandering around the UK, apparently alone and up to his own devices. It’s probably too late to point you to the talk at St Andrew’s University as it’s already happened, but the next three days will bring Cham to Warwick University, Cambridge University (where they arguably invented the idea of university), and Queen Mary University (details TBA, check Cham’s events page). If anybody sees Cham and he looks lost, jetlagged, like he might be driving on the wrong side of the road, or perhaps too deep into his cups, make sure he gets pointed in the right direction, yes?

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¹ A discussion about where electric power goes if you don’t have a transmission system? Swoon! I think I fell a little bit in love with Katie, and Dylan very kindly did not brain us both.

² Contracts. Getting paid. IP issues. Fill in the blank as you wish.

³ Which would probably include Talk to this other person who has the more precise expertise or regional locality that will benefit you.

Three things coming up, some more immediately than others.

• Jim Zub’s Samurai Jack #5 is out today, and in this issue he brings the first story arc to a close (it’s been great), and gives us a sneak peek towards next month’s issue in a promo ad at the back. Friends, I’ve been sitting on this news since Zub told me in confidence back in October, but now that the issue’s hit the streets, I’m talking. Two words for your pleasure:

  The. Scotsman.

  Oh, hecka yeah. And yeah, this news has appeared elsewhere, but I promised Zub I wouldn’t mention it until something appeared in the comic so there.

• Received in the mail (but not yet read): Box Brown’s forthcoming work of graphic novel biography, Andre the Giant. It’s an uncorrected advance copy so things may change by the time it sees print in May, but I hope that they keep the two front-cover blurbs by Mandy Patinkin and Mick Foley (who, coincidentally, have been two of my very favorite interviews on Fresh Air with Terry Gross). Many thanks to Gina Gagliano at :01 Books, I’m sure that even non-wrestling-watching me is going to love the crap out of this book.
• Howard Tayler¹ never stops thinking, never stops planning, never stops looking for a way to a) tell more stories, and b) preferably get paid at least twice² for doing so. It could hardly have escaped his notice that people want to play around in the sandbox that is the Schlockiverse, and even a boardgame isn’t enough to satisfy them. Thus, a tabletop roleplaying game is in the works, and you (for a small percentage of “you” that are in Utah this weekend) can participate in a playtest for charity:
  

  [Y]ou should note that the Schlock Mercenary RPG session will be on Saturday from noon until 4pm.

  A seat at the table will set you back $25, and that will get you that seat for about four hours of role-playing as a mercenary in the Schlockiverse, with me as the storyteller, and Alan as the referee and “physics engine.” The players will be their own mercenary company, and the contract will be a spot of law-enforcement in which they’ll be encouraged to keep the collateral damage to a minimum.

  Consider, for a moment, what you would expect from a Schlock Mercenary storyline in which Tagon’s Toughs were told to keep collateral damage to a minimum. Now imagine yourself embedded in that scenario, and armed with something that goes “OMMMINOUS HUMMM” when turned on, but which you’ve been instructed not to use under any circumstances.

  The beneficiary of this semi-sanctioned (pretend) mayhem will be Junior Achievement of Utah³, at Epic Puzzles & Games in West Valley City. If you can’t get a seat at the table, Tayler advises that there will probably be observer space as well. Look for the game in question to show up sometime next year.

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¹ Evil twin, almost time for his fake “birthday”, etc.

² In this case, three times, for which I rewarded him with a delicious smoothie.

³ If he were a little more important, perhaps Tayler could have gotten the charity-fundraising gig with Senior Achievement of Utah. Gotta start at the bottom, though.

Still on slow network, but not quite as bad as yesterday. I’ll take it.

• Best reason to get an eBay account if you don’t already have one: the Stan and Sharon Sakai Benefit Auction, launching next week. Watch this space for further information as it become available. Or, you know, just wait until the 6th and search for “sakai benefit auction” on eBay.
• The Bram Stoker Awards, given by the Horror Writers Association, are the premiere recognition that you are writing something seriously spookifying and creeping others the hell out, while also serving as an inducement to always stay personally on the straight and narrow¹. The finalists for the 2013 awards are in, and alongside familiar names such as Stephen King (competing against his son) and Joe Hill (competing against his father), there is the category for Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel, where one may find a series of print efforts, as well as Cameron Stewart’s Sin Titulo. Okay, granted, he’s nominated for Sin Titulo (Dark Horse Comics), meaning the print edition, but we know it was a webcomic first. Best of luck to Stewart, that Stoker Award would look great next to his Eisner.
• Week to week, it’s even money whether the most thinky comic will come from Randall Munroe or Zach Weinersmith; while the competition may still be open for thinkiest comic, unless Munroe does some real quick publishing Weinersmith won for the thinkiest book by a webcomicker this week. Behold: Polystate: A Thought Experiment in Distributed Government, presently sitting at #5 in Kindle books on the topic of political science.

  I haven’t read Polystate yet (no Kindle, for one thing), but judging from the description I feel confident in reminding Weinersmith that when Stephenson thought up franchulates in Snow Crash he meant them to be all dystopian and satirical, not a model for serious consideration. It’s on your head if society breaks up and devolves into an anarchic, polystatic form, Zach. Yeah, yeah, I know — about to have a new baby in the house, you wouldn’t notice if society collapsed for the next eighteen months or so, but some of us are trying to have a civilization here.

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¹ on the grounds that if you ever do stray and commit some crime, the fact that you thought up something scary enough to win a Brammy will almost certainly be used as evidence at your trial that you are malevolent and spend time thinking about how to harm your neighbors.

Yeah, pictures ain’t happening today.

Okay, not naming any names, but when a major technology company¹ has in-house WiFi that is chugging along at 47.3kbps, I’ma say that you’re not doing a good job as a major technology company. In fact, this has been a sad trend in my career; even two years ago when I visited a client, speedy network was a given; now, it’s a sad crapshoot. This will necessarily be brief.

Etiquette lessons, via Ryan North:

So far this year I have shared a meal with TWO former Olympians entirely by random chance, and in case it happens a third time in as many months I’ve looked up an etiquette thing that I will now share with you. When someone reveals that they’ve competed in the Olympics, are you allowed to say “…Did you win?”

The answer is no!

What you CAN say is “How did you do?” or “What was it like?” or “Wowowowow” but you should leave it to them to tell you if they won a medal. So now we’re all ready to dine with elite-level athletes. (For the first one when he said he was in the Olympics I just said “Oh that must have been really really neat” and so if you want to share a meal with someone who sounds like he’s touched in the head, I’m available.)

Worth mentioning again, and it comes from one of my favoritest creators, Magnolia Porter:

Hello friends! Some of you have asked me to give slightly more notice about what cons I will be attending this year, so I’ll let you know right now that the next time you can see me in person will be at MoCCA in New York, April 5 & 6. I will be sharing my table with Tom Siddell so come on down if you want to meet us! I’ll mention MoCCA again when it’s a little closer to the date, but there you go.

Did you catch it? The almost-in-passing reference to Gunnerkrigg Court creator Tom Siddell splitting table space with Monster Pulse creator Porter. We knew that Siddell was coming to New York in the spring, but being reminded six weeks out instead of five months out does make it easier to keep track of. Hooray for the table with possibly the highest concentration of well-written teen characters.

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¹ You are disappointing me, client.

Noted by the inimitable (and very sexy) R Stevens on Twitter: Team USA skier Ted Ligety competes with Red Robot #C-63 (created by Sam Brown, but perhaps most closely associated with Stevens) on his helmet. While it makes perfect sense that Ligety would want to CRUSH his competition, I think that there may be another reason — Red Robot physically resembles the gates that he must slalom through.

Clearly the gates are themselves designed to CRUSH all in their vicinity, and Red Robot’s presence acts as a sort of guarantee of safe passage. Although Ligety didn’t medal in the super combined¹, I’d say coming through the runs without being CRUSHed is a pretty good consolation.

• Looking forward: Dean Trippe will be doing the first of undoubtedly many con panels on his astonishingly good Something Terrible at Emerald City Comic Con next month. Specifically, it will be in Hall D, 4:40pm, Friday 28 March, and it will be moderated by Kate Leth. Programming and floor map haven’t been released for ECCC yet, so there could be some changes still; let’s hope that Hall D, wherever it is, is nice and large.
• Looking at numbers: Almost nobody² shares more data about how he’s doing in comics more often than Jim Zub (perhaps Ryan Estrada); really, the only difference is in detail, as Zub tends to scrub numbers but keep trends visible, and Estrada shares actual dollars and cents. Thus it is in his latest share, this time about submitting to comiXology and how the money breaks down from doing so.

  The big conclusion I took away from Estrada’s tale of submitting (and getting rejected more than accepted) to comiXology? Apple is the big winner, taking more than 25% of the proceeds while not being responsible for either the act of creation nor the curatorial/editorial efforts. Good for Apple — I hear they could use a few bucks. Sarcasm aside, there’s money to be made in the infrastructure end of content industries; the only question is if economies of scale will permit anybody to ever take crumbs away from Apple’s table.

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¹ One part KILL ALL HU-MANS, one part kitty care.

² One should note that nobody in comics comes close to Dorothy Gambrell when it comes to detailed data sharing, but she didn’t have a data dump today.

Done with snow, done with slush, done with packed ice from the plow at the end of my driveway, done. Done, done, done. Two more inches of snow tomorrow? It had better be the last of the season or me and Mother Nature are going to throw down.

Yet always is the winter of discontent made glorious summer by the sun of webcomics, by which I naturally mean Brad Guigar¹. Take ‘er away, Brad:

Today marks 14 years of my doing a daily comic strip on the Web — and the beginning of the second full year since I left my day job to fulfill my lifelong goal of being a full-time professional cartoonist.

We all know what this means: Brad is one of the good guys, one who’s always there to share knowledge and hard-won wisdom, so I expect that you will all be there for him in two years when his webcomicking career turns 16 and gets its driving license and stays out all night causing poor Brad endless worry. It’s only right.

Kickstarter update time!

• It’s been two and a half weeks, roughly, since Jesse Thorn’s Make Your Thing campaign launched, and it’s not looking too likely. It’s stalled at about the 20% mark with a bit less than eleven days to go to make its US$120,000 goal. The idea behind the conference is entirely laudable, and I hope that Thorn, et. al., find a way to make it work even without funding up front; if nothing else, they’ve learned that there’s a scope-and-scale disconnect between what they want to do and what people are willing to participate in.
• In better news, Tony Breed is, as I write this, on the verge of meeting goal for the fourth collection of Finn & Charlie Are Hitched … like eleven dollars away from the very modest US$3800 goal, also with a bit less than eleven days to go. Be the person to put him over goal and we can see how the stretch goal(s) will make the books nicer. Do it just because this book is dedicated to the very concept that the very wise Lore Sjöberg noted are the three most wonderful words in the English language: I’m somebody’s fetish.
• Two days in, about 20% of the way there — Great Adaptations will be a children’s book about evolution, with contributions from the likes of Rosemary Mosco, Yuko Ota, Zach Weinersmith², and JN Wiedle (plus a bunch of scientists that — let’s face it — you wouldn’t recognize by name). It’s a very neat project, and I’m a little surprised that it’s only sitting at about 150 backers, with the limited rewards at the higher tiers mostly unclaimed. Let’s get the word out on this one — little Ada Weinersmith needs good books to be read to her when she arrives, and this is our chance to help make that happen.

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¹ Ladies.

² Illustrating a story called The Mystery of the Vanishing Killifish, which just happens to be the subject of a doctoral dissertation by Kelly Weinersmith, who is coincidentally married to Zach Weinersmith, the two of whom are in the end stages of a possibly-illegal cloning experiment.

How the hell are ya today? Pretty damn good day if you ask me.

• It could be argued that it is, in some sense, “late”, but Wondermark #1000 has arrived and David Malki ! has put the freely-shared assets of the British Library to their greatest possible use: to convey the meeting of Piranhamoose and Sharkhawk. Welcome to the thousand-strip club, Mr Malki !, and long may you bring fresh life to the forgotten work of Victorian engravers.
• Wondermark is not the only strip encountering a milestone, as Emily Softerworld and Joey Also Softerworld celebrate eleven years of A Softer World:
  

  A Softer World is eleven years old!! Look at these chumps from the early 2000s, what did they think they were doing?!

  The “chumps” in question are, of course, Emily Horne and Joey Comeau, perhaps even before the latter lived in Ryan North’s attic and became his best friend. Fun fact! This month, Dinosaur Comics by Ryan North also had an eleven-year anniversary? It’s true!

• Success! The Kickstarter campaign for Rachel Peng audiobooks by my buddy Otter sits, as of this writing, at US$15,005, or just enough to meet the second stretch goal which will get the backers absolutely nothing new for their pledge dollars. Nothing but the satisfaction of bringing the experience of active reading to the visually impaired, as this is where Digital Divide and Maker Space get a professional Braille conversion and copies donated to libraries.

  And not for nothing¹, but I happened to read a nearly-complete version of Maker Space last night and holy crap you guys is it good. Better than Digital Divide, in fact. Good enough that with full knowledge that I have work today I stayed up three hours later than usual because I couldn’t put it down. Nine days to go on the audiobook campaign, and just a couple weeks after than until the novel releases; get in on this now and thank me later.

• Speaking of webcomickers writing books, The AV Club gave a rave review to The Martian, the first novel by Casey Weir. Weir, before taking up the without-pictures writing mantle, was the creator of both Casey and Andy and Cheshire Crossing. How many more webcomickers will release prose works before it becomes just another expected part of the creator’s professional development? I can think of a few who I think would make some terrific words-no-pictures storytellers.

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¹ And please note with a proper degree of skepticism the degree of personal familiarity I have with Otter aka KB Spangler aka “my buddy”.