So I’ve seen two separate (and yet similar) webcomics go up this week from veteran creators, ones that involve a healthy dose of reader interactivity. Since we could all do with a good distraction, let’s take a look.

First up, David Hellman (of the still-revered A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible launched They Always Die on Monday — an improvised fantasy adventure that relies on reader feedback to determine the action. It actually started at the end of June over Twitterward, with an explanatory post on the site. Updates have occurred at intervals since, and what Hellman actually launched was a summary of what’s happened before — twenty or more updates all put up on the 7th, and providing a wide-ranging and fairly loopy story for your enjoyment. Get caught up and keep an eye out for the next installment.

The second (and somewhat more immediate) iteration went up Tuesday morning, that we might all tolerate Election Day more easily. Randy Milholland dropped the announcement and then the sole rule: turns last thirty minutes, with voting to determine the next action. At the conclusion of the poll, Milholland would draw the scene and set up the next poll. It was a bloody, funny, failure-filled affair and it was enjoyed by all.

Enough so that today Milholland announced a new Twitter account, with a more-than-slightly disturbing name: Uncle Randy’s Game. The first poll (running until tomorrow) will determine the genre of the game and this time the character will have stats and hit points, also to be determined by poll.

It’s that last that sets the next Uncle Randy’s Game apart from They Always Die, an earlier locked-room puzzle from Jon Rosenberg¹, or Ryan North’s occasional forays into crowd-driven Shakespearean choose your own adventures (most recently also on 8 November via Twitter poll) — stats! There could be dice. Instead of a path inevitably leading to disaster², there is now an element of randomness that could shift defeat to victory and back again.

Unfortunately, I’ve got work on Monday (and pretty much every Monday), so y’all will have to tell me how the game (at present, the most votes are for humor/scifi) goes. I’m betting there will be Space Marines and Facehuggers.

Spam of the day:

Get New Laser Eye Care Results

Unless this is about giving me laser eyes, I don’t care.

_______________
¹ Running on 5 September, it involved a featureless room, a table, a lightbulb, a pile of cocaine, and an increasingly bizarre plotline.

² Milholland listed eight different ways you could have died in his first game.

So in the election last night….

Aw, Gary, no, don’t talk politics, this blog is about webcomics!

Wow, that’s a pretty harsh start to our discussion, random straw person, but I’ll remind you that reading my page isn’t mandatory, and let me tell you a bit about why what I’m about to do is webcomics.

I’m an upper middle class, straight white guy, of Anglo descent as near as can be told¹, brought up in a professional family (my father and his father both being engineering professors; my mother being a church musician more to keep busy than to bring in an income), raised mainline Protestant (which I’ve since shed). Growing up in suburban New Jersey, I had a fairly diverse peer group (among other things, it was the early hotbed for Indian immigration; I’ve being hanging with people named Sunil and Amit for about four decades) but very little outside of a cultural medium that was mutually agreed upon. I’ve had two large-scale shifts in the people I’m exposed to.

The first was college; as I’ve mentioned before, my alma mater didn’t admit women into the undergraduate program until some years after I’d graduated (and mostly because the economic giving of young alumni who thought it was stupid finally outweighed the giving of old alumni who remembered how it was shiny and wonderful without any dames around thinking they could be engineers; the longtime president was instrumental in forcing the change), but more importantly was located in rural Indiana.

Most of my classmates were the first in their families to go to school; few of them came from the socioeconomic background I had; they were far more religious than me; I was the closest thing many of them had seen to an ethnic minority, in that they had grown up in very nearly entirely white surroundings. We didn’t know what to make of each other at first, but we figured out how to learn from each other².

My long professional career in the greater New York City area kept me exposed to lots of nationalities and religions³, but still a fundamentally shared outlook on life.

The second shift came from webcomics.

The creators whose work I fell in love with are further afield in their backgrounds and experiences than I’d ever encountered. A lot more women, gays, lesbians, trans people, non-binary people, ace people, people that had grown up in different countries or religions or circumstances or socioeconomic categories. People with considerably more melanin than me, whose pigmentation and hair and dress marked them as different in a society whose willingness to tolerate their existence varied widely from theory to practice.

People who, despite having popular and quality work, needed food stamps or lacked affordable health insurance. People whose families spoke entirely different languages from each other and still fell in love. People who made stories that reflected their own existences and, as a result, forced me to expand my understanding of life beyond that enclave I’d grown up in and returned to. My appreciation for their work — especially for inviting me into their lived experiences, that I may learn — knows no bounds.

And last night a significant number of them find themselves on the receiving end of a message that it’s cute they thought they mattered for a while, but things are going back to the old ways. Time to stop thinking they’re real people.

Fuck that.

So I thought on it this morning, and I mentioned it on Twitter. It’s not enough for me to say I’m with you. I’m putting my advantages into action, I’m going to be shifting my charitable giving in favor of organizations that will fight to preserve the gains that the disadvantaged (basically everybody that didn’t grow up like me) have made, and to continue the process of making ours a fairer society. I suspect this will take a lifelong effort, but between now and when Donald Trump is inaugurated, I’m pledging US$10,000 with the goal of matching donations from any of you.

At the moment, I’m gathering suggestions as to what organizations I should concentrate on this time around; I’m trying to avoid overlap in mission, so it may come down to deciding between support for, say, the Southern Poverty Legal Center and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. The only ones I know I’m going to be supporting right now are Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and Campaign Zero. I’d like to choose six to ten in all.

This may change between now and 20 January, but right now I see one of two directions:

• If the total giving to organizations from all of you adds up to less than US$10K, I’ll match dollar-for-dollar.
• If the total giving from all of you exceeds US$10K, I’ll determine the percentage each organization contributes to the total, and give that fraction of the 10K. I’m going to figure out those percentages anyway, as some people have asked me if they can join in on the matching. Damn right you can.

The organizations I’m investigating (and please, send suggestions) are below the cut; kindly spread the word, as I’m going to be disappointed if I don’t have to spend all of the money. Oh, and I’ve been in transit all day and I’m hungry, so no links.

In the meantime, draw comfort from art, learn from art, get inspired, be better than those who only see safety and security in denying it to others. I’ll try to get my head back into webcomics tomorrow. Right now, I’ve got work to do.

(more…)

I’m a straight, white, professional male; a homeowner in a comfortable suburb. I don’t know if I’ll ever think of myself as wealthy but I’m more than comfortable, free of debt, and well set for retirement. I have the privilege to opt out of religious belief and not be despised openly for it. I am, in this ability to go through life at the lowest difficulty setting, unbelievably lucky.

If I were a different color, had a different sexual preference, elsewhere on the gender spectrum, not able bodied, not neurotypical, not able to handle a sudden expense without it proving financially ruinous, an adherent of an unpopular religion, descended from an unpopular culture, or in any other way marginalized I would be terrified today. I’m as well set as one can be no matter what the outcome of the election today is, and I’m sick to my stomach on behalf of all my friends who deal with one or more of those weights that they were given at birth and told Here’s your de-buffs, now succeed on your merits just like Gary, it’s a completely level playing field. Because they don’t have the luxury of going to sleep tonight and thinking Well, whatever happens, it won’t be that bad.

If all goes well for the next four to eight years, my taxes will go up. My job may be less secure because people that don’t look like me will finally be able to compete with me for it. My relative standing in this society will decrease. I’m okay with this because if all this comes to pass, things will be more fair for people who’ve had fairness denied to them.

And if things go very, very badly, I’m going to spend the next however many years standing with all those who are still waiting for the promises of America’s foundational myth to make it to them.

Today I’m voting for them. Today I’m voting for her. Today I’m voting to send a message to the regressive forces that this country is imperfect, but that we’re better than the supremacist, misogynist, phobic, bigoted rage-spasm of ignorance that you espouse. I know that you’re not going away, that we’ll have to pull you out of whatever comfortable hate you inhabit one at a time, and that process may well take the rest of my life and more years besides. Let’s do it.

A final thought: as the long demographic march continues that makes straight, white, professional males a smaller and smaller slice of society, I really hope that everybody else treats us better than we’ve treated them. But if they don’t, I can’t say that we didn’t deserve it.

Spam of the day (because we have to have something to laugh at today):

You have 1 unread personal message from Wilma Connor

Wait. This is a fake LinkedIn message. What about me makes you think that I’d ever read a message from friggin’ LinkedIn? They’re more annoying and persistent than you are, Spammy.

First it was chiming in on the Chocolate Milk Cuties vs Spaghetti Sweeties debate. Then I, shamed by a young member of my EMS crew who has turned the quiet times of Duty Night into Boardgame Funtimes, finally got on the Bears vs Babies bandwagon. And in the past little while, for the first time in my Kickstarter career, I managed to be Supporter Number One for a campaign that both delights and saddens me.

Jam vs Not Wanting To Do A Weekly, Hand Drawn, Hand Colored Comic Anymore¹ has gone live, wherein we learn that Angela Melick — mechanical engineer and webcomicker par excellence — is funding both books four and five of her long-running diary comic (today’s update is #787, minus a few guest strips while getting married/going on her honeymoon), and simultaneously announcing the Wasted Talent will wrap in four weeks. There will be two updates this week (check back on Wednesday) and each week between now and then that’ll be it. Strip #795 (if I have my count right) will be the last one in book five, and Melick will retire from this phase of her cartooning career.

She’s got more stories in her — she’s shared work on them in the past — and we’ll see her create more in the future, but it won’t be on a weekly schedule. We’ll miss Jam and Trevor, psycho squirrels and psycho engineers, bikes and corgis and swords and Vancouver, but we’ll still get the humanity and humo[u]r that infuse her work, no matter what those stories are.

It’s been two years since her last book released, covering the strip up until the 2009-2010 timeframe, which is about the last time I saw her), so there’s pent-up demand and six years of strips to print; this probably explains why before her Kickstarter launch announcement was cold people were rushing to pledge. As of this writing she has 43 backers and US$4094 in pledges, which is easily explained when you realize all but seven of them have pledged high enough to get a limited reward². I’ve not seen a per-backer pledge average of US$95 in … actually, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that before. And it’s not for doo-dads and fancy bits, it’s for books (signed or personalized) and art (prints, and for up to five lucky people, originals); okay, yeah, there’s a cloisonne pin and a magnet, but I think the other backers are thinking as I am — that’s nice, but give me the pictures and words.

To what degree? How about this — just before I started writing this post I realized that I’d pledged for both new books signed, but not personalized like my earlier WT books, so I upped my pledge. And just before writing this sentence I realized that the top tier featured three original WT pages in the bundle and upped it again. There is no further upping possible, that is how much I love Melick’s work (and Jam, if you’re reading and will allow requests for original pages, the moustache–themed strips are pretty cool).

If you aren’t convinced, check out what I’ve said about Melick’s comicking previously; her comics are that good, and if that’s not enough to impress you, she can both build a robot to kick your ass, and teach the robot enough longsword fighting to kick your ass even more effectively. She and her comics are a delight, and you should check them out.

Oh, and in the time it took me to write and edit the last few paragraphs, she’s up to 53 backers, US$5452 pledges, US$102.87 backer average, and the top tier is gone. As well, last night the Cloudscape Comics Collective of British Columbia (of which Melick is a member) was recognized with a Joe Shuster Award last night (the Gene Day Award for self-publishers) Jam, you can’t see it from three time zones away, but I’m generally facing in the direction of Vancouver and tossing a snappy right-hand rule salute in your direction. You rock.

Spam of the day:
None. Melick’s engineering prowess has scared the spammers off.

_______________
¹ Not its actual name, but come on! Things come in threes, and we’d already established the vs theme.

² Which starts at CDN$65/US$48, and goes to CDN$350/US$261.

In case you didn’t read the alt-text in yesterday’s post header¹, I played speculative games about the meaning of culottées. The closest to smart in that digression was the start, where I noted that Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin would have to check me. And check me he did, in the comments:

There is a double meaning, in that « avoir du culot » indeed means “having some nerve”, so culotté -> cheeky, but there is also the meaning of « culotté » meaning “wearing breeches”, something which women were traditionally not allowed to do; the breaking of such expectations is very much in the theme of the series.

Which is to say, I’m an American native English speaker, and I can count it a massive success if I can recall enough of a different language to obtain any two of {train ticket | hotel room | food and booze}. My logic was maybe 30% correct, which is more correct than I had any right being. I’m just chasing past foreign-language glory².

As always, our thanks to FSFCPL for taking the time to correct my egregious inaccuracies without actually using the word dumbass. And now, it’s really nice out on Friday afternoon and I’m going to enjoy it. See you on Monday for the countdown to {doom | salvation}.

Spam of the day:

I see your website needs some unique content. Writing manually is time consuming

You don’t know the half of it. When Jon Rosenberg browbeat convinced me to start this blog, I argued about how long the writing would take. He mocked me, insisting I could knock out 300 – 400 words over lunch without a problem.

Joke’s on him — now I often knock out 700-1000 words over lunch. If I ever figure out how many words I’ve knocked out on this site over the past nearly eleven years, all unpaid, I’m going to be less than fully pleased. In conclusion: Jon, you stole my youth.

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¹ For your convenience:

I’ll have to have FSFCPL check me on this, but I’m pretty sure that the title is a pun. Culottes are short pants (a class signifier in the revolution), culo is “ass”, and culottees could slide along the axis of buttcheeks -> cheeky -> impertinent or ambitious or impolite, with the second “e” at the end making it more feminine. Possibly not too far off the recent phenomenon of “Nasty Women”.

² At a screening of Night On Earth some 25 years ago, I was the only person in the theater to laugh at a joke in the Paris segment³, which was entirely in French. A pair of drunken businessmen demand to know where their cab driver is from and he replies Ivoirean, indicating he’s from Ivory Coast — Côte d’Ivoire.

One of the passengers starts laughing uproariously, shouting Il voire rien, that’s why he drives so badly! He’s blind!. Il voire rien means, literally He sees nothing. Later, the cabbie picks up a blind woman; Jim Jarmusch is all about the thematic unity, yo.

³ Everybody laughed nonstop at the Rome segment, missing probably 2/3 of the jokes because it was an improvised tour de force by Roberto Benigni before his career crawled up his own ass and became a parody of itself.

This post must surely set the record for the longest header image alt-text in Fleen history.

• Ever wonder how the universe really works? What the answers to the big, mysterious questions really are? Ever want a book that would — once and for all — provide clear and concise details about the inner workings of everything? Well, too bad, because what you’re getting is a book about everything that we don’t know:
  

  Announcing WE HAVE NO IDEA! A book about the big mysteries of the Universe: http://bit.ly/WeHaveNoIdea @DanielWhiteson @riverheadbooks

  That would be courtesy of Jorge Cham, actual PhD smart guy and explainer of science to the masses, teamed up with particle physicist Daniel Whiteson, to look at the stuff that we know we don’t know¹, due in May, and with a forthcoming book tour to spread the word. You can get more details from the book’s site, which will hopefully contain recipes and hints for particles you can cook up at home on a lazy weekend afternoon.

• Ever wonder what we can definitively say? Well, when it comes to the state of French [web]comics/bande desinée [-web], we can always relay on Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin, who has some knowledge to drop:
  

  • Pénélope Bagieu (La Page Blanche, Cadavre Exquis, California Dreamin’) has wrapped up Les Culottées.
  • Comme Convenu has come full circle, with page 389-390 showing her drawing page 1.
  • Maliki’s Ulule campaign has wrapped up, funded at 8527 books with a nice last-day surge; FFF mkII predicted between 7312-10968 books. This is also allegedly more books than any Ulule campaign so far, e.g. by my count Comme Convenu ended up totaling 8342 books.

  Reminders and Cultural Context:

  • Pénélope Bagieu was a guest at MoCCA 2015, and has seen her Cadavre Exquis translated by :01 Books as Exquisite Corpse (a personal favorite of mine last year), with California Dreamin’ (a bio of Mama Cass) due in March.
  • Laurel [Duermael] and Maliki’s adventures in Eurocrowdfunding and the model of books (instead of currency) forming a goal was discussed on this page a few weeks back.
  • Also previously discussed: the phenomenon of how French-language webcomics are almost always autobio in nature (albeit a bit magical; cf: Maliki, Bouletcorp). Les Culotées was an outlier, being a collection bio/historical portraits of prominent women. Recent subjects [French] including Mae Jemison, Hedy Lamarr, and The Shaggs.

  Thanks as always to Lebeaupin for keeping us informed of the comings and goings in BD-web.

Spam of the day:

VIEW NEW SLIDING DOOR OPTIONS

Gotta confess, sliding doors is not an area of my life where I felt as if I lacked for options.

_______________
¹ A book containing all of the stuff that we didn’t know we don’t know would be much, much larger.

For once, a logistical screwup at work has resulted in me having more time to get something done, not less! Which is why on what should have been an uncreedable¹ day full of shenanigans, I actually have time to bang out a quick update instead of being without the luxury of time. And what an update, which I would have missed had I posted earlier!

Our long national nightmare is over. The Cartoon Art Museum will (soon) no longer be couch-surfing:

Opening to the public in the spring of 2017, with a breathtaking view of the San Francisco Bay, the Cartoon Art Museum’s new location at 781 Beach Street in San Francisco is just one block from Aquatic Park, the Maritime Museum, Ghirardelli Square, and the Hyde Street cable car turnaround. The new space allows the museum to design a perfect venue for viewing, discussing, creating, and interacting with all forms of cartoon art and connecting with the artists who make it.

The 1912 brick building features a beautiful historic façade, prominent street presence, convenient parking, and easy access to and from public transportation. It offers highly visible public access to the Museum’s nearly 8,000 square feet of spacious galleries with a screening area, classrooms, bookstore, library and collections facility. [emphasis original]

Having been to the previous location, that bit about parking is huge. In fact, the size is (if my memory serves me correctly) considerably more than the public space in the old location, as well. It’s been more than a year, and will be longer still until the new site is open to the public, but this is among the very best possible news one could expect.

Congratulations to curator Andrew Farago, CAM’s trustees and board, the members, the greater Bay Area cartoonist community, and all the ships at sea. And were I you, I’d start making plans to drop by as soon as the opening date is a bit firmed up. It’s going to be glorious.

Spam of the day:

IT Cosmetics — 2 free beauty gifts!

I’m not sure if that IT means it, as in “it stands in for a nonspecific item” or possibly “It Girl”, or it means IT as in “Information Technology”. If it’s the latter, they clearly are selling to the wrong crowd because I’ve worked in IT for decades and cosmetics ain’t exactly top of the priority list for anybody I’ve ever worked with.

______________
¹ This time, I do get to drop a Zappa quote. Galoot Up-Date, y’all. Okay, it’s just one word, but it’s unmistakably Frank.

I thought momentarily that I was possibly quoting some Zappa lyrics, but Wiki Jawaka says no; I think most likely I conflated multiple different lyrics (odds are, from Joe’s Garage or Thing-Fish) and with three links in close proximity, I should be tripping all kinds of SEO right about now. Let’s talk webcomics.

• For those who’ll be in Portland next week and will be looking to either celebrate the salvation of our republic or alternately to grab one last bit of joy before the Apocalypse, Wednesday night should fit the bill nicely. The very sexy, very smart, very educational Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan will be hosting a launch party for the third volume of Oh Joy, Sex Toy, which will be the first place to get a copy if you weren’t part of the recent Kickstart.

  There will be raffle and door prizes of an appropriate nature, as well as the opportunity to rub elbows¹ with people that appreciate the fact that sex really resides a couple of centimeters behind your eyeballs and is best appreciated with plentiful use of that particular organ. Fun starts at 6:00pm, runs until 9:00pm², at Portland’s newest (pretty sure, but you never know in Stumptown) comics shop, ,Books With Pictures, 1100 SE Division Street. Tell Erika and Matt I said hi.

• For those that believe that the launch party will be in celebration mode and not Happy End Of The World Mode, and are looking hopefully towards the future (or perhaps just looking to get out of the country), next May (the 27th & 28th) marks the return of VanCAF. It’s been a bright spot in the Comic Arts Fest circuit of shows inspired by TCAF, attracting an eclectic mix of creators (big names, indie, and a healthy intersection), readers, and food trucks. Showrunner Shannon Campbell has done a bang-up job shepherding VanCAF into existence and a steady upwards trend in both size and quality.

  But everybody needs to step back and try new things from time to time. Ordinarily, I’d be concerned about a drop-off in quality, had I heard only that Campbell was giving up her position as the festival director. Fortunately, I heard a good deal more than that, as it was announced today that several changes are afoot, all of them positive:

  • While Campbell is stepping down as director, she is joining a new advisory board for VanCAF
  • The new director will be Andrea Demonakos, formerly of Emerald City Comicon³
  • The entire shebang will be under the organizational umbrella of TCAF
  • Other members of the VanCAF board will include TCAF’s Miles Baker and Andrew Woodrow-Butcher, Vancouver-based comic creator Nathan Fairbairn, and musician/visual artist Jarrett Samson

  The sheer amount of talent and experience on display is mind-boggling, and given that TCAF just finished a delegation to Tokyo to exhibit at Kaigai Manga Fest (and has likewise been to various European festivals), I can only imagine that VanCAF’s overseas reputation (and ability to invite guests) is about to take a step up.

  The only possible downside right now is that the two CAFs presently retain their scheduling two weeks apart; while not impacting either show’s ability to attract guests or audience in the past, it may prove to be a logistical challenge for one organization to coordinate two shows on opposite ends of a continent in such a narrow timeframe. I’m going to place even odds on one show (more likely VanCAF) shifting to a different part of the calendar in future years.

• But in the meantime, if you should want to be in Vancouver at the end of May, applications for 2017 opened today.

Spam of the day:

3 Habits To Fight Off Dementia.

There’s a picture of what looks like a French Onion SunChip attached to the inside of a forearm with packing tape⁴, which leads me to believe that they want me to do this to stave off dementia. Given that they have not provided any dosing information for the chip shown — duration, weight or age restrictions, effectiveness of French Onion vs Garden Salsa, viability of TransPore easy-removing tape — this is highly irresponsible. I’m not sure if I should report them to the FDA, the USDA, or the Snack Food Association.

_______________
¹ Or whatever else you are into and can politely arrange in a consensual fashion.

² Or until whenever you and your partner(s) decide, but you gotta find someplace else to be by nine.

³ When ReedPOP bought EmCity a couple years back, speculation ran rampant that it was less about buying the show and more about acquiring the expertise of Demonakos and husband Jim, EmCity’s founder. Jim’s still with ReedPOP, Andrea was until today-ish.

Given the inclination that ReedPOP has towards less comic-centric shows, Andrea heading over to VanCAF is probably a both a better fit for her, and an indication that VanCAF will get even larger while retaining its reputation for excellent administration.

⁴ That is not the original photo from the email, it’s a screenshot. I ain’t stupid enough to click on or distribute that thing.

It’s Halloween and I have to get back to handing out candy, so this is going to be brief. But as it is Halloween, one would be remiss if one did not remind all of you fine people to check out the latest Homestar Runner Halloween toon. While not a webcomic per se (and despite being around for years before this page even debuted), H*R epitomizes the do it yourself, own it yourself aesthetic that is the focus of this page. Brothers Chaps, I salute you and really wish I could have been at your 20th anniversary concert last month.

• And while we’re on the topic of Halloween, has there ever been a webcomicker with a moodier, more … unsettling Uncanny Valleyesque style than John Keogh? Given that it’s my rhetorical question I’m going to answer and say No, no there has not. Lucid TV may gone these six and a half years (even to the Wayback Machine, thanks to robots), but the staff and patients of Jim Belushi Memorial Hospital live on in the memories of those of us that got to follow their lives. Our hazy, unreliable memories.

  So it’s with no small joy that we at Fleen can note that Keogh dropped a series of new comics on us yesterday — nine to be precise — at his Tumblr (the aptly named Pillars Of Fear, which may also be accessed via http://hamburger.football). Among the brilliant (and occasionally tender and heartwarming) comics, please also enjoy the best titles this side of Burke’s Peerage, particularly what may be the single greatest title for a one-off strip in history¹.

• And to round out our tribute to the weirdest time of year (in what is surely the weirdest year any of us has yet seen; courage, friends; The Mountain Goats would not want you to despair, at least not too much ), for what webcomicker could be said to hold the spirit of Halloween in his heart all the year ’round more than Lar DeSouza?

  And in what is surely the greatest proof yet that not only is our existence some kind of simulation, but also that whoever programmed said simulation needed a good editor (because damn, this is some contrivance verging on cliche), today is also DeSouza’s birthday. I’d tell you to have a very happy one, Lar, but given your universally cheerful (and beloved) demeanor, I’m not sure how you’d tell the difference between a very happy birthday and any other ordinary day. Regardless, many happy returns, and here’s to many more.

Spam of the day:

Are You Ready To Retire In A Tropical Paradise? Here’s How

Come on dudes, does anybody ever say no?

_______________
¹ Namely, If Mike Wazowski Does Not Feel The Pain Of Death By Your Hand Then You Will Be My Daughter Nevermore, which prompts just so many questions.

End of the week at long last, and it can’t come soon enough. Let’s do this.

• It’s been long suspected in corners and cafes here at Fleen Central, but one of the old school webcomics artists, who in recent times has been an away-from-the-web artist more than anything, has made it official. Exploding Dog by Sam Brown¹ has been around for a long time — the images were iconic, and in at least one case, landed in other fertile soil. He’s been away from the convention scene for a long time but still making drawings based on text sent to him; however, nothing lasts forever:
  

  I’ve not answered that question yet. Explodingdog.com is no longer the path I’m walking down. I haven’t updated it since 2015 and have been wondering away. I feel like the old me sat down on a rock to rest. I never planned on going as long as I have and it was made for a different time. Maybe if the weather changes I’ll loop back to it.

  I’m not sure what I’m doing. The new me is moving forward.

  I’m still drawing and will put drawings here at draw.buildingaworld.com along with some projects that wouldn’t fit in at Explodingdog.com This is a fresh start. I needed a fresh start. I’d like to reflect and write up a “What Explodingdog meant to me” post. Right now I’m not reflecting well.

  Thanks for reminding me to say goodbye to the old me and not just walk away.

  The art, the vision, the drive go on, even if the address is different. Exploding Dog is dead, long live Building A World.

• And on the Beginnings side of the spectrum, this is your periodic reminder that Rosemary Valero-O’Connell is one hell of an artist, one that you should be paying attention to. This message is brought to you on the occasion of her twenty-second birthday, which will no doubt cause one of two reactions: Wow, she’s so good, I can’t wait to see what she’s like in ____ years! or How the hell is she so good and so young oh glob I’m old and I suck. I can assure you that it is possible to hold both thoughts simultaneously.

  In all seriousness, Ms Valero-O’Connell is absolutely somebody you should be following now, in advance of her major work appearing (that would be illustrating Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me, written by Mariko Tamaki, due in 2018; plus whatever she comes up with on her own afterwards). Get used to seeing her name, get used to seeing her work; in a comics future that includes names like Brosgol, Gran, Hicks, Larson, Meconis, Mock, Stevenson, Telgemeier, Wang, Williams, and many more, Valero-O’Connell is going to more than hold her own. Happy Birthday, Rosemary. Hi. Hello.

Spam of the day:

Important Information Regarding Medicare

Jumped-up Jesus on a pogo stick, who do I have to kill in Junk Mail Central to get them to realize I’m nowhere near Medicare age? It’s not just email spammers, I get this shit constantly mailed to my house. I blame the AARP and the time they thought I was 50 when I was 32. Sonsabitches sold my name on a list and now they think I’m 65. Time for a rampage.

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¹ A nom du internet.