Got someplace to be in a short while, and this book review isn’t coming together just yet. Give me 24 hours and I think I’ll have my thoughts organized.

PS: Check Please, Year 4 Kickstart? McDonald Ratio says (72271 + 136106 + 37783) * 3 = US$738,480. Phew!

Spam of the day:

A new study from Harvard Scientists has revealed that ONE of the following foods is linked to combating Alzheimer’ s and dementia. Can you guess which it is? 1. Red wine 2. Fish 3. Avocados 4. Clams

This one restaurant my wife and I used to go to when we lived in another town had a fried clams entree that wasn’t called Clams or Fried Clams in the menu, it was called Clams, Clams, Clams! (with the exclamation) and since we moved away, I haven’t had clams at all, I think. So I hope the answer is #4 clams, I’ll go back and get some Clams, Clams, Clams!

Between the good news¹ and the bad², it’s a little hard to concentrate. Then again, there’s always time for at least a bit of webcomics news.

I wrote not long ago about Nicholas Gurewitch doing collaborations with other creators over at The Perry Bible Fellowship. He’s dropped a bunch more since, including about a half-dozen all in one day about a week back, and there’s now a section in his archive where they’re all collected together. The new ones start with Seltzer and continue with Spared³, Mr Scoop, Arise, The Mission, Tickle Monster, Geopardy, Night Shift, Clear Message, and Not A Wolf.

In some, Gurewitch is clearly supplying the art. In others, it’s the collaborator (Shen, Rob DenBlyker, Matt Inman) working in their own signature visual style. They all have that PBF feel, and if none of them are going have the lasting impact of Weeaboo or Skub, that’s okay. They’re still new PBF comics and I’ll take those whenever I can.

Spam of the day:

It was the MOST watched episode in Shark Tank history …

Funny coincidence, I saw Shark Tank for the first time last night and that one guy, the bald jowly one? I don’t know a damn thing about him, but a) I am convinced he cannot achieve orgasm unless he strangles a puppy, and b) his face makes me want to punch him on a scale hitherto achieved only by Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller, and Martin Shkreli. So maybe this isn’t the way to impress me is all I’m saying.

_______________
¹ Federal agents executed a search warrant on Rudy Giuliani’s apartment, where he was doubtlessly stupid enough to keep complete and meticulous documentation of all his crime-doing. This does, however, give me a reason to remind you about one of the greatest t-shirts of all time. Mine’s in the wash right now, but I still have a powerful urge to dig it out and put it on.

² Michael Collins, command module pilot of Apollo 11 and taker of one of the most famous photographs in history, died. He was 90 years old and so this was not unexpected, but damn. Buzz Aldrin is still around, and Jim Lovell, but the Apollo fraternity is getting smaller by the day. Fair skies and good flying, CMP Collins.

³ With Jordan Morris, who has his hands in numerous media but not comics, unless you count the forthcoming adaptation of his sci-fi comedy podcast, Bubble, with words by Morris and Sarah Morgan, pictures by Tony Cliff and colors by Natalie Riess. I will be wearing my LASER DONG pin as I read it.

We at Fleen have been fans of Ngozi Ukazu’s Check, Please! for a long damn time (I’ma guess around 2014 or so was when I was first put onto the delightful story of gay hockey bros), above and beyond her magnificent, record-break Kickstarts, one of which got me invited onto actual National Public Radio to talk about her import and impact.

And amid her announcement that Check, Please! would also see publication as 2-book volumes via First Second — the sort of thing that gets you into far more bookstores than even the record-breakingest Kickstart — was the knowledge that she would do a self-published fourth collection, so that those who’d supported her through the first three could have a complete and consistent set. The Plague Year (gonna probably be Year And A Half by the time it’s even vaguely done) pushed things back a lot, but the time of prophecy is now upon us:

It’s here! It’s massive. It’s the CHECK, PLEASE!: YEAR FOUR Kickstarter. #omgcp [hockey stick emoji] [checkmark emoji] [pie emoji]
The CHECK, PLEASE!: YEAR FOUR Kickstarter aims to

[book emoji] self-publish the last vol. of #omgcp
[stack of books emoji] create collectors slipcases!!
[hockey stick emoji] get jerseys made for PVD Falcs alt. cap. Jack Zimmermann
[two hearts emoji] PRINT MADISON!!

pledge here!

That went up about five hours ago; at present, the campaign is north of US$183 thousand damn dollars (on a goal of US$63000, or just about 300% funded) and merely has a month to go. Tiers go all the way up to US$360 (a four-book signed hardcover collection with slipcase and an ice-ready hockey jersey), which tier has already seen 24 backers. People really love this series.

Oh and one other thing — the Book Two campaign, which set a record for the most-funded webcomics project¹ in Kickstarter history? It raised US$398,520. Book Four has already reached 46% of what Book Two did. Looking at the day one data on Kicktraq, Book Two did US$163,777, or about what Book Four has done in the five hours since it was announced … kinda. We’re actually on day two, as it look like Ukazu did a stealth launch, with US$72K done yesterday, but that also means there’s more than US$110K after the public go-live. You don’t ever see a second-day increase in funding, except for a late-in-the-day launch time, and especially you don’t see them after stealth launches.

Right now, the FFF mk2 predicts US$600K to 900K and the McDonald Ratio at only halfway to the 3-day mark already predicts north of US$550K. The average per backer as of this writing is more than ninety-four dollars, which is just not something you ever see. This is unprecedented territory, and I will be very interested to see where it ends up and also in the time it’s taken me to type the last two paragraphs the total has gone up by more than six hundo.

Oh and also? Heartwarming story that is also hilarious. Give Ukazu your money, your eyeballs, and your attention on her next project, because in the time that she’s made Check, Please!, she’s only gotten better.

Spam of the day:

I need a man for rare and hot meetings! Let’s try? I don’t sit at the post office, write to me here

I’m not sure why you thought I’d wonder if you were sitting at the post office. I mean, our local post office is pretty nice, but it doesn’t offer a seating area, so maybe that’s why you aren’t sitting there.

_______________
¹ Since surpassed by Ava’s Demon, Reborn, with a total of US$530,320.

Sometimes, I surprise even myself at how long I’ve been in the webcomics sphere, which was for a considerable time even before I started opinion-mongering back in December of Aught-Five. I got a reminder in the ol’ inbox¹ from Steve Conley, perhaps best known presently for The Middle Age, but who has been doing comics online for a considerable time; even in my first writeup of The Middle Age, I noted Conley’s past work:

[Conley’s] Astounding Space Thrills I was enjoying back in the Dawn Age of webcomics, some 20 years back.

And what the heck, everything from the past eventually comes back into fashion again, either as treasured vintage or [shudders] nostalgia. From Conley’s email:

Steve Conley’s Astounding Space Thrills webcomic made its debut online in 1998. The series, which ran for ~500 episodes, received a number of honors including:

• 2000 Eagle Award for “Favourite Web-Based Comic”
• 1999 Eisner Award nomination “Talent Deserving Wider Recognition”
• 1999 Squiddy Award for “Best Webcomic”
• 1998 Don Thompson Award for “Favorite New Series”

Two of those awards are from Compuserve and rec.art.comics. That’s how long ago we’re talking about. :)

So why the history lesson from Conley? Oh, you know, just because in addition to vintage and nostalgia, there’s a third possibility: long-overdue reassessment as a new audience finds appreciation for artistic forebears. Or, more succinctly, there’s gonna be a print collection:

These award-winning webcomics have never been in print and this new Kickstarter campaign aims to fix that.

This first hardbound volume will be 40+ pages and collect the remastered first storyline Undersea Menace From The Year 3200. If the campaign is successful, Steve plans additional volumes collecting the next two storylines Space Quakes, and The Faberge Omelet. These beautifully-produced hardcover books will be signed and just $25 each. The campaign has a modest $3,500 goal.

For those that never read AST, think 3- or 4-panel daily newspaper strips, something with a retro Flash Gordon feel, but with a late 20th Century sensibility. Individual story arcs ran from 10 or so pages (short, interstitial stories) to 100+ strip behemoths.

The Kickstarter’s not live until Wednesday (click here for the preview), but the description and the mock-up make this look like a Euro-style collection, which is a form factor we don’t see in the US very often and I’ve more than once wondered why. They’re durable, convenient to read, and look great on the shelf; think any Tintin or Asterix reprint volume² and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, Conley’s been cranking out good webcomics for longer than some folks making good webcomics have been able to dress themselves³, and that’s ’cause he’s been damn good at what he does. Give ‘er a look-see on Wednesday and decide if it’s for you.

Spam of the day:

Stanford researchers have discovered a simple tweak to your breakfast routine which can have a dramatic effect on how often, how easily, and how fully you empty your bowels. In fact, Adam used this to eliminate decades of constipation in just 3 days when nothing else worked… Along with 4 pounds of “stuck poop” that made him feel bloated, fatigued and heavy.

I’m not sure what part of this is spam is more delightful: the return address of easy.poopin@[redacted].com, or the remarkable specificity of 4 pounds (did they take it out and weigh it?). Glad you’re feeling lighter, Adam, and if you weren’t flagged as a likely phishing email I might actually check out your nonsense claims on account of I’ve reached the age when I have to go for a colonoscopy.

Pro tip: the receptionist that answers the phone when you call to make your appointment will not be amused if you refer to the procedure as an anal probe.

_______________
¹ Phrasing? Are we doing phrasing? It sounded a bit rude.

² Alternately, check out the Castle In The Stars series from First Second; it’s not often a US publisher reproduces that Euro collection form factor.

³ I won’t hold the underwear on the outside against you as long as you were intentionally trying to dress up like a superhero. If it was on backwards, I’m less impressed.

Some of my favorite webcomics are autobio (possibly fake autobio), or are autobio-inspired fiction, at least at their beginning. Even if the creator doesn’t do work that’s even vaguely autobiographical, drawing on personal history (and the realness of feelings thereunto) can enrich fictional characters, bringing them to life in ways that completely made up folks don’t necessarily have. Learn to tell the story of yourself is bound up with learn to tell your own stories¹.

Which is why this caught my eye:

Learn how to transform your personal experiences into visual narratives in our new Comics Journaling workshop. Next session is Sun., Apr. 25, with special guest @hiHelloHans — writer, digital creative, and lifelong maker of auto-bio comics.
More info at http://guestlist.co/events/680421.

That from the Twitterfeed of the fine folks at the Cartoon Art Museum, San Francisco, who are running a series of online seminars aimed at teens (let’s say 14+) and adults who are creative-minded and comics-loving. You don’t have to be a great artist to do autobio! Take a look at Harvey Pekar’s stick figures, which certainly lack the polish of his art partners, but which still express the personal viewpoint that was at the heart of all of his stories.

We’re halfway through the CAM seminar series; Cartooning My Day and Cartooning My Life took place on 11 and 18 April, respectively. Sunday, 25 April will be Cartooning My World, and Sunday, 2 May will be Cartooning My Self; each seminar starts at 4:00pm PDT, runs for an hour and a half, and costs US$20. Reservations have to be made by 5:00pm PDT the previous day, with links sent to participants no later than 2 hours before start time. Speaking of time, be on time, as nobody will be admitted more than 10 minutes after start time.

And while programs like this will be more effective in person once the pandemic isolation ends, I can’t help but think that making at least some programming of this nature available online will make the outreach and education offered by CAM (and other institutions) much broader than it would be otherwise.

There’s countless people that live a world away from San Francisco that would jump at the chance for some of the workshops CAM offers, but which are restricted by time, distance, and room capacity. Here’s hoping everybody makes an effort to include them in the future.

Spam of the day:

This weird-looking food reverses dementia
Though bizarre, Harvard researchers have discovered a shocking link between your sleep and the onset of Alzheimer’ s.The big question is – do you sleep on your side or on your back?
Dr. Will Mitchell, DOM, MS Nutrition

Make up your mind! Are you going to steal my identity by promising a food that cures dementia (first line, signature of fake nutritionist) or by promising a positional cure for Alzheimer’s (bit in the middle). It’s not too much to ask that you keep your bullshit stories straight instead of intermixing them.

_______________
¹ I’m thinking at the moment of a young adult of my acquaintance who’s got a universe of family stories to tell; they just need to set pencil to paper and tell them. Your Naruto-inspired pseudomanga epic? Million of those. Your story of you is unique.

Hubris, /ˈhjuːbrɪs/, is defined by Wikipedia¹ as a personality quality of extreme or foolish pride or dangerous overconfidence, often in combination with (or synonymous with) arrogance. It is not a thing you want, and the wise will strive to avoid it, especially if they are aware of their prior challenges, thus avoiding an ironic fate.

Ryan North, I expected better of you.

In case you didn’t follow that link, the alt-text reads, and I quote, i know i’m playing with fire by making fun of holes. i know i’ve been burned before, and publicly too. however, i defy all holes. no hole can ever stop me² which just, what are you doing tempting ironic fate like this Ryan North I must now scream in frustration at something entirely avoidable. I realize it is nearly six years since the terms Ryan North and hole became inextricably linked, but that is not nearly enough time to declare Jubilee³ and be free from the burden, the debt, the eternal quantum entanglement to and with holes⁴.

Even more disturbing was the annotation below the comic, which reads and again I quote: April 21st, 2021: This weekend I dug a hole and found the experience very satisfying! You can see the results of your work instantly (slightly larger hole).

Ryan, stop taunting the holes.

Look, Ryan, we are (I flatter myself) friends, and I want nothing but the best for you. I want you to be around for the launch of your middle grade OGN with Derek Charm (art) and Wes Abbott (letters), The Mystery Of The Meanest Teacher: A Johnny Constantine Graphic Novel, due in stores everywhere on 29 June. I want to see your virtual book tour talk with Heather Einhorn and Adam Staffaroni, the creators of The Curie Society (from MIT Press — yes, that MIT) on 3 May.

But these things cannot be guaranteed if you continue to tempt ironic fate. Holes can be anywhere, striking without warning. They can swallow trucks, garbage and otherwise, living rooms, entire homes, dental practices, human beings, and dogs. Sometimes they disrupt major thoroughfares, and sometimes they are on fire. The terrifying thing? All of those holes struck in the past three and a half weeks.

We haven’t even mentioned the most dangerous hole of all, which has led to Hell for more than half a century.

Please, Ryan, be humble about holes. Don’t attract their attention or their ire. They could be lurking anywhere, waiting to take their shot at you. We can’t lose you Ryan, not to a hole. Thank you for your attention in this matter, and please consider inventing a kind of quick-deployable personal dirigible to be carried on your person at all times.

Spam of the day:

Check out these teen sluts with eager holes to please

DO NOT LISTEN TO THE SPAMMERS, RYAN. STAY AWAY FROM THE HOLES.

_______________
¹ I never thought I would use those words.

² Spelling original. Apparently, the first stage in ironic fate is being possessed by e e cummings.

³ Recalling that Hebrew law states that the Jubilee year is concerned with, among other things, the ownership of land (i.e.: the medium in which holes are typically dug), and commandments to let the land lie fallow (i.e.: undisturbed by planting, which is predicated on placing seed in a series of holes).

⁴ Which in itself suggests an entirely new physics, in that entanglement occurs between particles which may be very small, but can be said to exist. Ryan North is a particularly complex set of particles, but a hole by its nature is the absence of particles. This is possibly a Nobel Prize for whoever can reconcile the maths of this with the Standard Model.

And by this, I mean this Kickstarter to turn a comedy podcast into a comic book. There’s a pretty serious flaw in the campaign, one that the creators will adjust in the future.

I don’t mean the project itself, which is a comic book about wacky space adventures drawn by Lucas Elliott¹, and which looks pretty damn funny. That’s a winner right there. What I’m talking about is a strategic error, one so fundamental I fear I’m about to channel my inner Brad Guigar² ranting at the 2/3 mark of ComicLab when something really gets under his skin. It’s this:

They’re making a comic book and barely talk about the comic book.

How many pages is it? What’s the trim size? Stapled? Squarebound? Color cover? There’s a few sample pages, but how much story are we getting? I get that the comic is a spinoff from the podcast, but the main thing on offer here is barely mentioned, which means that the audience of this campaign is necessarily limited. If you’re already a listener, great! There’s a video from one of the voice cast talking about comics and even spending 30 seconds inside a comic shop, but nothing about this comic. If you’re a fan, there’s audio interviews with seven cast members down the page.

If you’re a comics reader that has never heard of Oz 9 before? You’re told Elliott’s a great comics artist (he is), and given a link to some drawings on the Oz 9 site and his ‘Grams. That’s individual images, not comics pages. Not even a dummy comic to hold up to say what you’re making?

You’ve given no reason for anybody outside your existing audience to back the Kickstarter, unless they came here specifically because they know Lucas Elliott’s work. The discoverability for a potential new audience is nil.

Not for nothing, here’s how I would have done it:

[Fade up on spokesperson] Hi! My name is ______ and I’m one of the creators of Oz 9, a sci-fi comedy podcast. If you’ve never heard it, we’re about what happens with one hapless ship sent out from Earth in a great wave of attempted interstellar colonization. You can listen to episodes here [caption: website for audio episodes]. After making more than 50 episodes over 3 seasons, we’ve decided to expand into comic books with this [hold up a dummy of the comic], the Oz 9 origin story. If you love the podcast, it tells the start of the story in a whole new way, and if you’re new, it’s the perfect jumping on point.

Now as podcasters, we don’t necessarily know how to make great comics, so we partnered up with this guy [inset: photos of Elliott waving, working at the drawing board, goofing off]: Lucas Elliott. He’s done everything from portraits of manly mermen [fade in: succession of images] to the ongoing webcomic adventures of a warrior starfish [pan across: pages of Battlestar]. He knows how to tell a visual story on the page, bringing a whole new dimension to the humor we’re known for.

Oz 9, the comic will be _____ pages long, with Lucas adapting from the scripts for episode 1 through _____. It’s not just writing out what we said into your ears — this is a whole new take on the story, bringing all the magic of comics to bear in a way we think will make you laugh over and over.

Rewards include PDF and print copies of Oz 9, your name in the credits of the comic, mentions in upcoming episodes of the podcast, even a cameo appearance in the story, but we think the comic is the real prize here. Check out some sample pages down below [pan across: sample pages], and be sure to let us know what you think when you get to read the whole thing.

In the meantime, you can listen to Oz-9 episodes for free, and Lucas’s webcomic is linked so you can catch up on his work, too. Thanks for listening, and hope to see you on board with all the other Space Monkeys.

That’s off the top of my head. It’s also maybe half focused on the comic, which is way more than the current video/project page. Take a look at any successful [web]comic Kickstart you can think of, and it’s closer to 90% focused on the current comic or the creative team’s history. Without knowing how much of the book is done, this is the best I can do.

I hope that the Oz 9 Kickstart succeeds; while I don’t know the podcast at all, Elliott’s work has always tickled me, and he will surely delight anybody that reads the comic, should they get funded. The campaign runs until midmorning EDT on 1 May — a little less than 10 days from now — and they’re about 60% of the way towards their US$9000 goal. The FFF mk2 and McDonald Ratio may not be much good (although they both predict just about US$10K in funding) as the backer count is so low — only 84 pledges so far, which I’m betting come entirely from the existing fanbase.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure there’s much that can be done at this point to pull more people in from outside that current audience, so if you think Elliott’s other work is promising, maybe give Oz 9 a go. It’s likely gonna be a squeaker either way, and I’d hate to see a promising project fall over not because of poor quality, but because they just didn’t tell people why they’d want to support it in the first place.

Spam of the day:

leading institutions like Harvard, Mayo Clinic, and the Cleveland Clinic have hailed this newfound discovery as thousands of people are “turning off” their pain within seconds as proof. Just a couple of drops and a few seconds to instant pain relief.

Your subject link is about a simple 45-second motion, but also it’s a couple of drops? Or did you mean a couple of bogus name drops, say of Harvard and the Cleveland & Mayo Clinics? Take off your clown shoes and try again.

_______________
¹Depicter of manly mermen, chronicler of badass starfish, and evil, fibbing fibber.

² A sexy, sexy man … ladies.

And for once, the title refers to both the main topic and to the daily spam.

Everybody should have a friend like Lucy Bellwood; in fact, I’m pretty sure that if you’re reading this, Lucy Bellwood is your friend, on account of she is damn near everybody’s friend. Are you a completely horrible person? No? Then she’s probably your friend.

Anyhoo, she dropped me a note about something she thought I might find interesting, and as usual her instincts are dead on; from the text exchange we had:

I don’t know whether this has crossed your radar, but my pal Luke just launched this absolutely DELIGHTFUL publishing experiment for his latest minicomic that’s based on sort of anti-capitalist, pay-it-forward-if-you-can get-comics-for-free model and I thought of you immediately.

Luke would be Luke Kruger-Howard, and the experiment would be GOES BOOKS, where you are greeted with text that reads

OH MY! A KIND STRANGER HAS ALREADY PAID FOR YOUR COPY OF…

GOES
a new comic from Luke Kruger-Howard.
The first GOES is about “touch.”
110 B/W pages – 4.125 x 5.875 (105 x 148) – printed in Canada, 2021. There are only 2,000 copies of this book available.

Published by GOES BOOKS (a not-for-profit publisher)

(fill out the form below)

As of this writing, only domestic-US copies are available; all of the copies set aside for international distribution have been claimed. The form is for your mailing info, in exchange for which a copy of GOES will be sent to you, gratis. There is a button that takes you to a page where you can pay for a copy to go to a stranger.

Kruger-Howard notes that US$4 is the approximate cost of making and sending a copy in the US (again, international orders have been closed), but the amount you give is up to you. Funds in excess of those needed to distribute the 2000 copy print run will be donated to charity, as this is entirely a nonprofit endeavour.

This is the most delightful thing I’ve seen since Shing Yin Khor announced the Space Gnome Mercantile Exchange, with merchandise that can only be obtained by barter of poems, good rocks, plant cuttings, and other near-ephemera. The only quibble I’d have is that at 110 pages, GOES is considerably longer than a minicomic, and approaches the realm of interactive art:

GOES BOOKS is an experiment.
Our focus is on creating a relationship between artist and reader, and to not allow money to become a factor in that relationship wherever possible. Instead we aim to explore the idea that there may be other untapped benefits available outside a “dollars-and-cents” model. No profit is had in the making or distribution of these books. Money received by GOES BOOKS will be put toward gifting copies to other readers. Any money earned beyond that will be donated.

The charity for our first project is:
RAICES — a refugee and immigrant center for education and legal services.

Part of the reason that Lucy thought about me was she’d been thinking of my recent reminder about why I don’t give to Patreons, and figured (rightly!) that putting that amount of thought into payment models meant that I’d be interested in this. Since this falls cleanly into the already produced, not subsidizing the creation of that which I might review category, and since I figure US$20 is a fair price for a 110 page comic, I’ve given that much to the experiment. Unable to pay US$4 forward? Don’t feel bad, gotcha covered.

Here’s hoping that Kruger-Howard finds more topics of exploration for future issues of GOES, and other creators willing to work for him (and not for free, either).

Spam of the day:

Hello Mr (Mrs) GARY, I’m A Student And I’m Honored To Be Selling T-Shirts For You. I have all Size – Color – Product Type – Gender Guaranteed Delivery in 4-10 days for you I know you very love your Family and want have T-Shirt for your Family. I would be honored to sell T-Shirts for you, Help me have many orders. Thank you a lot, Have a good day.

I think this person thinks that Gary is my family name, on account of they’ve sent pictures of more than a dozen amazing shirt designs, the message of which really only makes sense if it’s not just me, Gary, hanging out here¹. Just look at these beauties. There’s more! They wouldn’t all fit on one screen!

_______________
¹ In fact, a bit later in our text chain, Lucy and I both expressed much admiration for each other and determined to be more like the other when we grew up, so at some point in the future she may also be a Gary. I might have to pick up a hoodie for her that says GARY BLOOD RUNS THROUGH MY VEINS.

About two and a half months ago, I noted that a new book was a-bornin’ and to be with us soon: one on possible futures, featuring a dozen comics creators (or creator teams), talking about what the World Of Tomorrow might be like. I’ve now had a chance to read Flash Forward: An Illustrated Guide To Possible (And Not So Possible) Tomorrows by Rose Eveleth¹ and a murderer’s row of comics talent, with editing by Matt Lubchansky and Sophie Goldstein; many thanks to Maya at Abrams Books who was kind enough to send me a hardback copy.

On first glance, Flash Forward looks a fair amount like Soonish by Weinersmith & Weinersmith, which is unsurprising as Zach Weinersmith is a contributor here (with old stomping buddy Chris Jones on art), talking about Fake News and the death of The Real. The key difference is that Zach & Kelly Weinersmith were looking at specific technologies and looking as what stands between us and them; Eveleth, et al, are looking more at societal trends, and extrapolating out what culture might look like if they continue to their logical conclusions.

Eveleth has provided a outline of the direction of travel, and left it to the comickers to determine what they want to talk about; different people would focus on different aspects, and Eveleth, Lubchansky, and Goldstein have done a great job of matching up the particular cartoonist with a topic they could really sink their teeth into.

Case in point: Ben Passmore, whose work explores the reality of being Black, looks at the future of smart homes integrated with smart cities (with damn few civic services, but everything available for hire, with a convenient monthly bill) and asks who gets to participate. The inability of facial recognition systems to distinguish nonwhite people necessarily poses the question: what happens when your car hire/grocery store/home/city decides that it doesn’t know who you are, so you don’t get a ride/banana/place to sleep/right to exist?

Other creator/topic pairings include:

• Julia Gfrörer on algorithmic art and art for algorithms
• John Jennings on the cost of pharmaceuticals leading to IP piracy in order to live
• Sophia Foster-Dimino on animal rights, and the slope between the abolition of meat, the abolition of zoos, and the abolution of pet ownership²
• Box Brown on the implications of absolute, measurable truth
• Maki Naro on dealing with legal conflicts in space, which has no law
• Kate Sheridan on uploaded consciousness and delaying the sting of death
• Ziyed Y Ayoub and Blue Delliquanti on gender being as changeable as hairstyle
• Amelia Onorato on living and working on/under the sea
• Lubchansky on how eliminating the need to sleep would upend work and leisure
• Goldstein on how entertainment personalities (already subject to parasocial relationships) could become entirely personalized to the individual audience member via data, personality modeling, and AI³

Eveleth provides an essay to accompany each vignette, providing context and reinforcing the central conceit of Flash Forward: none of this is written in stone; it’s a series of possible futures (some likely mutually incompatible), and identifying possibles is the first step to determining which are undesirable so that we can work now to avoid then. For all the grimness of some of the possibilities, the idea that we can shape the future — surely the radical difference between the modern era and all prior human history — remains somewhat hopeful.

Flash Forward: An Illustrated Guide To Possible (And Not So Possible) Tomorrows releases on Tuesday, 20 April. It’s a thought-provoking read that just happens do most of its provocation via comics. Some of your favorite creators are here, and likely you’ll find at least one or two that are new to you that you’ll want to keep an eye on.

Spam of the day:

When doctors at the University of Georgia also tested this fruit …They nearly fell out of their chairs after it fixed people’s failing vision in as little as 15-minutes.

Uh huh. Because eating a fruit reshapes corneas, removes cataracts, reattaches retinas, and repairs neurological damage. As somebody whose left eye recently decided to no longer have astigmatism, fuck all the way off with this bullshit.

_______________
¹ Host of the podcast of the same name.

² This one was a surprise to me — I didn’t know that there were folks who truly want to abolish family pets, but then I remembered PETA running an animal shelter with sky high kill rate within 24 hours of intake and exhibit an attitude that leads me to conclude they believe any animal is better off dead than in human care. Any PETA types that come for my dog had better be able to run.

³ No humans need apply, as they’ll never be fine-tunable to the precise desires of each and every consumer.

Dog continues to improve, I should be able to do proper posting again from tomorrow. In the meantime, we at Fleen congratulate Matt Lubchansky — honored cartoonist, Nib editor, and gentlethem about town — on their just-announced original graphic novel. For those that can’t read the graphic, the meat of the book deal announcement is:

Cartoonist and Associate Editor of The Nib Matt Lubchansky’s BOYS WEEKEND, part autobiographical fiction, part satire, and part SF horror, following Sammie, who a year after they came out as trans must navigate a bachelor party weekend on El Campo, a hedonistic floating wonderland in international waters, while a murderous cult tries to take over the island, to Anna Kaufman at Pantheon, by Kate McKean and Howard Morhaim Literary Agency (world).

There’s a particular format to book deal announcements that is heavy on commas and light on anything else resembling punctuation, but the gist is clear: it’s Lubchansky’s story, and the description sounds great. The rest is the acquiring editor and publisher, the agent and agency, and the fact that the deal was for worldwide publishing rights. Lubchansky has indicated we’re at least a year and a half from release, not least because it’s still being worked on and publishing schedules are such that a release less than 12 months after final manuscript submission would be considered warp speed.

Lubchansky has exactly the cartoony energy in their character designs, and exactly the right anarchic streak to their story work to make Boys Weekend really shine. Looking forward to it like whoa, and we at Fleen will likely have more to mention about Lubchansky’s recent work tomorrow.

Spam of the day:

Chilly in your cubicle? This tiny space heater sits on your plug and blasts the heat.

It’s already Spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and it looks like the Pacific Northwest fire season has already started. Fuck off.