Okay, that’s got nothing to do with anything today, other than I’ve always liked that page and hey — reee-markable.

• First thing: EK Weaver has gotten a lot of notice over the years for The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal, especially over the last year or so since it was published in omnibus form via Iron Circus and Kickstarter. I mean, hey, Eisner nom and all that. But today she’s back with something that’s much briefer, much rougher, and maybe much more important than TJ and Amal, being the first exploration I’ve seen in comics about the toll that finishing a creative project can take:
  

  A personal, messy comic about depression + the fallout from finishing a major creative project: http://tjandamal.com/other/depressioncomic.png …

  It’s not pretty, it’s not polished, and it’s terribly, terribly valuable every time a creator that fights against the brain-lies depression shines a light on that struggle. And even when there isn’t the additional burden of mental illness, it’s worth remembering that creation is an act of great effort under any circumstances. To pass something out of your imagination into the wider world (particularly something with an extended, serialized existence) and then to see it end? Put another way, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Gary Larson or Bill Watterson — to name just two — have withdrawn from public life (even if their works wrapped on their own terms), or that Charles Schulz couldn’t live without creating Peanuts.

  I think I’m probably in danger of conflating my two points here — that creation is effortful and ending it stressful, and that stress can exacerbate existing mental conditions. Schulz would absolutely be diagnosed as depressive today, but I am making no implications of such a condition in Watterson or Larson. To bring it back to my original point, Weaver’s letting us in on an important set of ideas, and there’s a third one there as well: that creation is itself sustaining as well as straining. Give it a read and have a bit more empathy the next time your favorite creator’s a bit late with updates, yeah?

• Second thing: fifty-two weeks makes a year, so it appears from the latest New York Times Best Seller List that Raina Telgemeier’s Smile has now spent the equivalent of four full years on the list¹, along with a total of 149 weeks for Drama, 90 weeks for Sisters (out of 94 weeks since release!), 54 weeks for Kristy’s Great Idea (I missed it’s one-year anniversary, sorry), and 14 for Claudia and Mean Janine. Yep, only five spots out of ten so the cumulative total of 515 weeks is artificially low, but don’t worry — Ghosts is already racking up the advance praise and we’ll see the others back soon enough.
• Third thing: book day! Two review copies from the wonderful Gina Gagliano at :01 Books² — the fifth in the Last Man series and the second in Gene Yang & Mike Holmes’s Secret Coders series — and the second volume of Vattu from Evan Dahm (soon to be added to Dahm’s TopatoCo store).

Spam of the day:

Free Gold IRA offer

I’m sure Ira’s a nice guy and all, but I don’t want him gold-plated, thanks.

______________
¹ 208 weeks out of the 332 since publication on 1 February 2010.

² Who, I see, added a new editorial assistant yesterday, increasing the staff by 25% because a remarkably small staff produces all those great books. By the way, want to feel old? Kiara Valdez, the new addition, was asked the first comic she can remember reading and replied I vaguely remember reading the 1st volume of Scott Pilgrim at the library when I was in 5th grade. I was in my mid thirties.

Something’s going on with WordPress where I lose connection to the back end and editing functions, but the front end continues to show the site. And then it comes back without doing anything! So let’s be quick about this, and I hope you will appreciate how much work went into this one.

See, I owe Amazon an apology, as I was complaining t’other day about my copy of Romeo And/Or Juliet not being here on day of release, and now I’ve got it. Thanks, Amazon! It’s wacky and wonderful, and features many, many terrific artists and story ending illustrations. Author Ryan North’s sense of both complete absurdism and Shakespearean drama are intact, as he takes us through multiple plots, multiple story styles (I’m presently following along a noir pastische), and pulls in multiple plays for inspiration (said pastiche stars Rosalind from As You Like It, and there are short versions of Twelfth Night, Macbeth, Midsummer Night’s Dream, and even Midsummer’s play-in-a-play, Pyramus and Thisbe). There’s time travel, giant robots, sex-having, sweet fights, record-setting one-rep weightlifting, a cookie recipe, and even a nod to Back To The Future¹.

Sadly, the best thing we saw in To Be Or Not To Be: That Is The Adventure — where those illustrations were full page with the minor text associated with the story ending (usually grisly death) — is modified somewhat; the illos are mostly 1/3 page in size, with a continuous stream of text-illustration-next story point. As a result, RAOJ doesn’t have page numbers, it has passage numbers — a passage being a node in the story, ranging from a line or two to more than a page. Additionally, instead of the full-color glossy illustrations from TBONTBTITA, the papr stock is matte and the pictures are all combinations of black, white, and red. The changes do make the book less of a bicep-building than TBONTBTITA, though … that was one seriously heavy book.

But despite all of the good points, Romeo And/Or Juliet has one stunning flaw, one shared with To Be Or Not To Be: That Is The Adventure, namely: the index of artists in the back of the book contains only an alphabetical listing, not a listing by passage (or page, in the earlier book) number. So when I came across a stunningly beautiful (or funny, or disturbing … ) illustration in my read-through, I’d sometimes recognize the artist by style, but more often not. Then I had to scan the index, looking for the passage (or page) number, to find it who it was.

Well, no more! Ryan North, I am calling you out for having a defective book, and furthermore I am doing something about it. Specifically, I have painstakingly transcribed the passage numbers and artist names and compiled them into a table (below the cut) that you may print and stick in your copy of RAOJ. I trust Mr North will prevail on his publishers to include information in future printings; with a clear typeface, you might be able to fit it on a promotional bookmark, but at the least you could “tip in” some pages in this and future North/Shakespeare collaborations.

It’s a minor thing, though — don’t let the lack of reverse-lookup prevent you from picking up Romeo And Or Juliet; it’s a brilliant job from a brilliant writer and nearly 100 brilliant artists. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to decide what to do in this game of rock-paper-scissors I seem to have found myself in.

Spam of the day:

Identity Issue PP-658-119-347

I believe that you are the PayPal Review Department exactly as much as I believe the South Asian-accented man who called himself Steve Martin on the phone yesterday really was calling from the Treasury Department².

_______________
¹ Or at least North’s obsession with the novelization of the movie.

² I called him to point out he is very bad at being a thief and he hung up on me. So I called back and got him again and continued my spiel. After five further discussions (sample statement from me: I can do this all day), he apparently decided he had to take a break and a woman picked up in his place. She said I was very rude and not to call their scam operation again or I would be in trouble. That was fun.

(more…)

Let’s check in with our friends at the (somewhat vagabond) Cartoon Art Museum, since the lack of a permanent exhibition space doesn’t slow them down. Three things from them about the next while that you may be interested in.

• This Saturday, 11 June, their Cartoonist In Residence¹ will be Ajuan Mance: artist, English professor, destroyer of stereotypes, and actual person that most sounds like the head of a great House from Game of Thrones². The residency will be at FLAX art & design store’s location in the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, from 11:00am to 2:00pm; details may be found here. And after her public residency event, Mance will be headed over to Comix Experience on Divisidero Street from 4:00pm to 7:00pm to continue the conversation. Both events are free and open to the public.
• Next Saturday (18 June) and Sunday (19 June), the Queer Comics Expo will be running at the SOMArts Cultural Center from 11:00am to 5:00pm, and they’re partnering with the Cartoon Arts Museum for some unique ticket packages. Purchases at the VIP levels (Unicorn: US$65; Double Rainbow: US$101) will include admission for the weekend for two or up to four people, respectively, and include a one-year CAM membership (single or family, respectively).

  There’s also a unique (at least, I’ve never seen it before) Pay It Forward ticket that for US$10 allows you to fund a weekend ticket that will be passed to a Bay Area LGBTQ nonprofit so people who otherwise couldn’t go get to attend. Finally, all proceeds will benefit CAM, so Bay Areans take a look at this one, yes?

• By partnering with the American Bookbinders Museum, CAM will be offering its traditional summer Cartooning Boot Camp: four sessions (two hours per day, Monday through Friday) will cover a specific topic, for a small group (up to 15 campers) of 10-15 year olds (those younger or older will not be admitted. The four sessions will be:
  • Character Design with Ellis Kim, 27 June to 1 July
  • Storytelling with Matt Harding, 11 to 15 July
  • Book Making with Ellis Kim, 25 to 29 July
  • Game Creation with Matt Harding, 1 to 5 August; note that this is related to board games

  Materials are included in the US$135 fee (but naturally, students may bring their own sketchbooks and supplies if they wish), and CAM members get a US$35 discount. Registration and detailed descriptions at the links above.

Spam of the day:

Sneakier Gtyrrell cPurchasegTabuOnliner ;) unpublished

I’m reminded about that line in Blazing Saddles about authentic frontier gibberish.

______________
¹ Yes, yes, the residence is borrowed space, but that’s what these things are called.

² Seriously, that is a great name one that’s going to stick in my head. I’ve encountered maybe three people with names that have reached out and demanded my attention to that degree in my adult life.

Books! Is there anything as good in life as a book? The shelves behind me with a literally ton of paper on them say probably not¹. There are three books I want to talk about today.

• As you should know, Ben Hatke is one heck of an illustrator and comics creator, responsible for such wonderful tales as Little Robot and the Zita The Spacegirl trilogy. His latest book, Nobody Likes A Goblin (an ARC of which was sent to me by the invaluable Gina Gagliano at :01 Books) releases today, and it’s a must-get.

  It’s more rambunctious than Little Robot (although the naming conventions are somewhat similar; the titular goblin is just named Goblin; his best friend is Skeleton), less swashbuckling (or plot-driven) than Zita, and most resembles Julia’s House For Lost Creatures in that it’s meant to be read in a single bedtime, has a simple story, and a powerful pair of messages.

  Firstly, friendship is wonderful. Secondly, don’t believe all the stories that you’ve heard about the Heroic Adventurers that blunder their way through dungeons, terrorizing the likes of Goblin (and his neighbor, Troll), who’ve done nobody any harm. Just because you’re different and people hate you on sight doesn’t mean that you’re bad, or that they’re in any way right. The Adventurers² may have taken all his stuff, the farmers and innkeepers and elves may be chasing him on general principals, but not everybody is subject to their prejudices.

  See, hanging out on the loot cart of the Adventurers is a young woman that doesn’t look thrilled to be there, and when Goblin finds friends to defend him, she grabs Skeleton’s sword (he used to be a mighty warrior, you see) and helps run the Adventurers (and farmers, innkeepers, and elves) off, returning to the dungeon with her new friends. I found her fascinating, and the lack of any narration or explanation about her motivations means there’s plenty of room for young readers to make up her story.

  And when they do make up her story, they’ll have a chance to share it with Hatke on his book tour, touching down today in Richmond (Virginia), with additional appearances in Takoma Park (that would be Maryland), Ann Arbor (Michigan, naturally), Orlando (the ALA conference, not the theme parks), and San Diego Comic Con. Dates, addresses, and times at the link.

• Speaking of book tours, Lucy Bellwood is on one right now, for Baggywrinkles, her autobio-slash-tall ships primer that she Kickstarted last summer. Bellwood’s East Coast tour goes for another two weeks or so, touching down in Boston, Washington, DC, New York City, and Ann Arbor. Unfortunately, we’ve already missed her Portland (the Maine version) and Mystic (Connecticut) stops, but can I point out how awesome that most of her stops will be at nautical-themed locations?

  Boston’s stop is at the USS Constitution Museum, the New York stop at South Street Seaport Museum, and both Portland and Mystic are basically living paeans to the nautical life. By the way, the Ann Arbor stop will be at the Ann Arbor Comic Arts Festival on 18 and 19 June, which will be the same time that Hatke will be there. Goblins and Boats, in the same place at the same time!

• As previously noted, Romeo And/Or Juliet by Ryan North releases today (with a launch party starting in a few hours in Toronto). I’ve had that book on pre-order since the second of November and today Amazon says oh yeah, they suppose they’ll drop it in the mail and I’ll get it someday and not on release day that is the deal we had Amazon.

  Ahem.

  Anyway, I’m assured by people who have actually gotten their pre-orders that it’s brilliant and I hope to confirm that fact at some point.

• Finally, I’d like to note that I’m seeing people on the SoshMeed share the fact that Something Terrible (book by Dean Trippe, for the last six months or so published by Spike Trotman and Iron Circus Comics) is showing up in their mailboxes. Good news, can’t wait to get my copy.

Spam of the day:

Miracle Bamboo Bra Wants To Hear From You!

This prompts so many questions, I don’t know where to start.

______________
¹ Okay, probably dogs are better than books, but let’s not lose the thread.

² Your standard party of Wizard, Dwarf, Elvish Swordmaiden, and skulky looking Rogue.

Perhaps you saw the posting earlier today, the 400th update at Hark! A Vagrant, which consisted of an announcement of Kate Beaton’s next children’s book — King Baby, which I will buy multiple copies of day-of-release — and a long apologetic note about the lack of frequency of updates at H!AV and the likely continued paucity of same:

Hark! is always in the back of my head when I’m working on anything else, and I find myself wracked with guilt for not keeping the updates coming, I have one foot here and one foot there. This push and pull, I have to accept, makes anything I’m working on suffer. And I’ve been trying to figure out a solution to this! Something better than slow work all around. Because if I’m honest, I’m scared that if I leave this site alone too long, I’ll lose something very precious to me.

You.

I’ve worked a long time to bring you here, and you’ve been good to come here and read my comics and support my work. I feel that we have built a relationship, my readers and I, it’s very important to me, and I never want to put it in peril. So what to do? [emphasis original]

I do not accept this apology. Mostly because Kate Beaton has nothing to apologize for. The amount of pure research she must do to bring us the figures from history that we’ve never heard of¹ (and should have!) is mind-boggling. Okay, sure, sometimes it’s relatively quick (and usually from a place of ire) to come up ridiculousness for our amusement, but most of the time she’s got to dig deep to understand her subject before she can mine those beautiful, shining specks of humo[u]r from what is often extremely serious source material.

Like so many others that have entertained us for free, we have no claim on Beaton’s time or attention. Particularly not when she talks about what’s taking up her time and attention:

[T]he main thing is the graphic novel, which is a memoir of my time in the oil sands, years ago. You may have seen the sketch that launched it, Ducks. Or the few comics on this site that are memoir-ish that don’t really fit with the rest of the things on here and I should probably get rid of. It’s a very different story from anything in Hark! A Vagrant, and a different mind set to work on. And I need to give that mindset some time and concentration in order to do a good job. So, I’m going to do that. [emphasis original]

Beaton’s time in the oil sands is something I want to read; it will be the confluence of so many different stories — toxic masculinity and toxic industries being just the two most obvious — that will be told by her in a way that nobody else can tell them. I want to read longform Beaton more than anything else, and if that means she feels bad about not producing more shortform laugh-chuckles, then I feel it’s us that should be apologizing to her.

For anybody that’s ever place a sense of obligation on her for anybody that has acted on that entitlement, I unreservedly apologize. And keep in mind that I once said that I would be willing to trade all comics, everywhere, for all time for more of Beaton’s “momics”, but that’s me wanting what I want for my own selfish reasons.

Really, what I want — what we should all want — is for Beaton to follow her muse and show us what it looks like when she stretches into another kind of storytelling. Whenever she feels the need to put together more Hark! strips, that’s awesome. If we ever get another story of Princess Pinecone and Pony, that would be wonderful. And if I never get another comic from Beaton that looks like what she’s done before, that will be best of all because she’ll be doing what she wants to do.

Thank you, Kate Beaton — for all the comics you’ve given us, for all the comics you will give us, for all the things that aren’t comics that you have kicking around in your head. You look at lives just a little bit differently than the rest of us do, and for us to get to share that is an act of profound generosity. Find what works for you, we’ll be waiting when you’re ready to tell us what’s next.

Plus, come on, King Baby. Look at that little guy. He’s gonna be great.

I other news, I can assure Ryan North from personal experience that it is completely normal to be nervous the first time you solemnize a marriage, but it’s also the best feeling in the world. Glad to have you with us.

Spam of the day:

Save on Coffee at Your Favorite Place!

Paging Richard Stevens, Richard Stevens pick up the mocha courtesy phone.

______________
¹ I count myself as reasonably well-read in the history of several nations — although I am hopelessly turned around on Chinese dynasties, have a sketchy (at best) sense of sub-Saharan history, and essentially no good sense of Southeast Asian or pre-Columbian South American history at all — and she still manages to surprise me four updates out of seven. Most recently: Karl Heinrich Ulrichs.

Lots of things going on today, so let’s just jump into it.

• Kelly Tindall has been around the webcomics game for a while, what with Strangebeard for three-four years now, and the diary comic Adventurers (which follows the everyday excitement that life offers when you’re a kid; it starts with his daughter aged one year). The former got its first print collection a while back, and a campaign is running to do the same for the second now. It’s down to the home stretch and right on the bubble of succeeding or not — which is something that happens to [web]comics projects every day, so why am I paying attention this time?

  Short answer: Tindall’s got some really cool friends who are supporting him. The foreword to the Adventurers collection will be written by Darkwing Duck creator Tad Stones, and every order will include mini prints by animator Elliot Cowan and comics legend Tim Sale. If creators that skilled like Tindall’s work, you ought to give it a serious look.

• Speaking of Canadian gentlemen in the webcomics game, Karl Kerschl has recently found time in his schedule to get back to The Abominable Charles Christopher and that means the story of our favorite big-hearted sasquatch (and all the side critters in the forest) is coming to an end. From Kerschl’s twitterfeed:
  

  50% off ALL Abominable Charles Christopher books! Gotta make room for the next volume! https://werehouse.ca/collections/brands/karl-kerschl …

  Catch that? Next volume. I am clearing space on my bookshelf in anticipation already, but it’s a hard decision as to what needs to go in order to fit in Charles Christopher’s third hardcover. It might have to be the comprehensive reprints of The Spirit.

• Still with the Canadian dudes, Ryan North is less than a week from the release of his second chooseable-path collaboration with some hack named Shakespeare, Romeo and/or Juliet. He’s been running art excerpts over at his Tumblr (a tiny fraction of the illustrated endings and waypoints from some amazing artists), and on release day, he’s having a party in Toronto:
  

  REMINDER: I’m throwing a BOOK PARTY next week, with COOL ARTISTS, and you should come!! https://www.facebook.com/events/1602452860067750/ ..

  That would be on Tuesday, 5:00pm to 8:00pm at The Beguiling, with a half-dozen of the contributing artists. I’m still collecting signatures from the artists in To Be Or Not To Be: That Is The Adventure, so getting a head start on that would be great if I could be in Toronto which I can’t.

• In case you don’t love Rich Stevens enough, consider the following:
  

  I don’t actually remember when I started my comic, so I just celebrate Quitting Day

  Dude knows what’s important — the day you stop working for The Man¹. That day, bee-tee-dubs, would be today:

  ??? I just celebrated 14 years since quitting my job to do comics. Today is a good day to join my store email list! https://confirmsubscription.com/h/i/0FB98FB2EAA783F3 …

  [Those three emoji at the start of the quoted tweet, which may not render for you, are captioned as Shortcake, Pile of poo, and Love letter, respectively. Dude also knows his brand.] Happy Quittiversary, Rich.

• And finally, readers of this page know that I recommend what I like, and I don’t expect you to plunk down cash on something that I don’t feel is worth it; I won’t ask you to lay out money or effort on something that I wouldn’t. But today, I’m going to ask you for a small amount of effort that I can’t do myself.

  FedEx is giving out a series of grants to small businesses, chosen by popular vote, with winners getting up to US$25,000. Voting is open to anybody with a Facebook account, which never fails to annoy me when it’s used as a universal identifier because not all of us have Facebook accounts, dammit. And by us I mean me and I know that makes me a weirdo.

  But I’m sharing this with you anyway because I learned about this grant contest via Rosemary Valero-O’Connell (who I may have mentioned once or twice in the past couple of months), as she’s part of a comic artists collective that’s part of the contest.

  You can vote for Out Of Step Arts by clicking here, once per day, until 13 June. As of this writing, they have fewer than 80 votes, and that is not going to cut it. If you’ve got a Facebook account, give a click, spread the word, and repeat for the next eleven days. Do it for the children.

Spam of the day:

Re: Your Current Debt

Is measurable only by scientific instruments that can see very, very small things. If you were really a financial-services firm you’d know that, wouldn’t you, “Bridget from cardholder services”?

_______________
¹ Not that all iterations of The Man are as Manny as others. Case in point: Spike Trotman is no longer the sole employee of Iron Circus Comics.

Like one of those flowers that’s all pretty and colorful dripping in nectar and then WHAM it’s snacking on insects.

The flower, in this case, is a series of monthly Drink (nectar) and Draw (pretty, colorful) events, to be hosted by TopatoCo in the run-up to TopatoCon II (the TopatoConenning). I’m actually not sure who the insect is in all of this, other than the possibility of the hangover one is likely to have after a night of drinking with cartoonists¹.

The fun (and oh my, it will be fun) will go down on 8 June, 6 July, 10 August, 7 September, and 12 October, which is to say either the first or second Wednesday of each month, with different guest creators each time. The first one being just a week away, I feel I should share that it will feature KC Green², starting at 7:00pm and running until 10:00pm. As will surprise absolutely no one, it’ll be held at Eastworks in Easthampton, and will feature a cash bar, prizes, games, and fun.

Guests for subsequent Drinks and Draws have not yet been announced, but I did notice interest from various cartoon-type people in the original announcement, and mentions of desiring to attend future dates. It would be premature to try to hold anybody to a specific date. Keep an eye on the TopatoCon twitterfeed for definite announcements over the next several months

Oh, yeah, and this guy will be there next week, and likely in the following months. What more could you want?

Spam of the day:

New Golf Club – Never Hit a Bad Shot Again!

Seeing as how I never intend to play golf, I guess I don’t need a special club to avoid bad shots.

______________
¹ Honestly, I’d rather go round-for-round with Tokyo salarymen.

² Who remains the most fearless cartoonist I’ve ever seen work — bare paper, brush, no pencils, no prep, just straight from his outer synapses to permanent record.

Things are starting, things are discontinuing, things are changing. It’s almost like time exists so we don’t have to experience all possible quantum superposition states simultaneously, causing fractured perceptions of reality and widespread insanity! So, in roughly chronological order of when they occurred:

• Advanced notice: The Nonadventures of Wonderella by Justin Pierce is a gem; I don’t talk about it much on account of it updates on the weekends, but it’s never not worth reading, and frequently is the most biting (not to mention hilarious) cape comic currently in production. And come August, there’s gonna be some changes:
  

  August 27, 2016 will officially be the end of the weekly one-page schedule. From then on, I’ll update when I have a completed story to post. Based on feedback, people seem to enjoy longer comics as much as, if not more than, the shorties. But that raises a few questions, and while a lot of this is in the ether for me, I think I can answer:

  Much like Octopus Pie, I suspect that we, the Wonderella-loving public, will get net more comics than before. My advice is to stay in the habit of checking the site on Saturdays (since that’s still when new comics will drop), follow Wonderella on Twitter, or take advantage of the fact that — popular announcements in the technical press aside — Justin Pierce understands that RSS is hella useful.

• Congratulations in order:It was closing in on midnight Saturday night, east coast time, when the news came from Nashville (courtesy of the incomparable Terry Moore in my case, who was kind enough to live-tweet results) of the NCS awards ceremony. The newest laureates for Online Comics are Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett (Short Form, for Sheldon) and Drew Weing (Long Form, for The Creepy Casefiles of Margo Maloo). I was pulling for Meredith Gran for Long Form but honestly — when your competition is named Weing, Kellett, Holbrook, and Boulet, you can’t say you’re in bad company. Congratulations to Kellett and Weing.
• Pretty!: It’s been a while — three years, to be precise — since the creators at Benign Kingdom released one of their famous art book collections. Too long, I say! But the attention required to coordinate so many creators (at its forming, B9K had six principals: Yuko Ota, Ananth Hirsh, KC Green, Evan Dahm, Becky Dreistadt, and Frank Gibson; they’ve since pruned themselves down to a more manageable three as Ota, Hirsh, and Green have moved on), combined with the time taken up by so many other projects (the six named above must have released between them a dozen and a half print projects, literally thousands of pages worth), means that some things get back-burnered.

  Time for the front burner, then. The Kingdom is back, with a brand-new series of four art books (or one hardcover collection), this time from Dahm, Dreistadt, Dustin Harbin, and Meredith Gran (who’s just all over today’s post). I actually saw a number of pieces that Gran’s done for her book at the Octopie launch party last week, but as the B9 book hadn’t been announced yet it wasn’t yet the time to discuss.

  In any event, it’s the usual handsome, high-quality art on offer, with a campaign that’s off to a bit of a slow start, most likely due to having launched on a holiday. It’s also worth noting that this iteration of the books is being printed in the US, so delivery will be at the end of the summer; that’s a tremendously fast turnaround, leading me to conclude that the books and layout are complete, awaiting only that sweet, sweet Kickstarter check to tell the presses to make with the printing.

• Holy heck: It’s been twelve years since a spider tried to kill Jeff Rowland and failed? Time friggin’ flies. I still recall seeing Rowland’s necrosis get done up all cheerful-like [warning: gross] by Vera Brosgol at SPX some months later, and now I’m wondering where the hell the intervening time has gone. Glad the spider failed, Jeff!
• Pretty! redux: Not the least because in the intervening years, you’ve turned TopatoCo into a vital resource for dozens of independent creators, including (as of today) new TopatoCo Pal™ Ursula Vernon’s art prints. Some day, I sweart I’m going to get the full set of animal saints, weather them to look old, put ’em in fancy distressed frames, and sneak them onto the walls of the local cathedral.
• All good things: Christopher Baldwin has been doing webcomics for about forever, in every imaginable genre, but for a lot of us he’ll always be best known for Little Dee. Following a comprehensive re-run of Little Dee (with commentary), Baldwin ran twice-weekly new, classic Dee strips starting last November. Since then, he’s finished one sci-fi epic (Yontengu), started another (Anna Galactic, his fourth following Spacetrawler, One Way, and Yontengu), released a Little Dee OGN, and started planning for what comes next. And that’s enough work that something’s got to give:
  

  So, today is going to be the last day of daily “Little Dee” strips for now. [I]t has become harder and harder (and less fun) to focus and come up with “Little Dee” strips, and I wish to put it aside before I start putting up sub-standard work.

  If you wish me to send you an email if there is more Little Dee material to come, email me here, and I’ll add you to an email list….

  The past six months of extra Little Dee has been a gift, and thank you for it, Christopher. We’ll be waiting when you decide to revisit the forest and that deeply goofball family.

• And not the fancy Himalayan kind, either: Today marks eight years of chalkboards (oh glob he looks so young) and children¹ from your favorite semi-pseudonymous chemical engineer, Dante Shepherd/Lucas Landherr². Happy Strippiversary, Dr Shepherd/Landherr, good luck on the currently-running Kickstart, and here’s to more chalk-encrusted comics from what is almost certainly not a rough-hewn murder basement.

Spam of the day:

thingCHARGER — Use THIS To Charge Your Devices Without Cables or Outlets

I do have things to charge, but no cables or outlets? This is gonna turn into a a thing that tries to spin some of Tesla’s more theoretical devices into a grand conspiracy by the electric companies and smart phone makers, isn’t it? Maybe next time pitch your through the aether magic charger at a guy that didn’t get a degree in electrical engineering?

_______________
¹ Apologies to Andy Partridge.

² He’s like Two-Face, only without the murderous tendencies and numerical obsession!

I mean, for those of you in the US; others don’t celebrate Memorial Day on Monday and so this will serve as a reminder that there likely won’t a post on Monday, what with parades and cookouts and such.

• Those others include Our Friends To The North, Canadians, such as the immensely skilled Tony Cliff¹, who got to share some good news yesterday:
  

  We’re delighted that Disney has bought the film rights for @TangoCharlie’s amazing DELILAH DIRK graphic novels: http://deadline.com/2016/05/delilah-dirk-and-the-turkish-leuitenant-graphic-novel-disney-movie-1201763479/ … !

  Here’s hoping that Disney don’t ignore the most important fact about Ms Dirk: she is no princess, or if one must treat her as such, she is of the self-rescuing type. Please, please, please don’t make the semi-enthusiastic (but mostly unflappable) Mr Selim the hero of the piece. It’s Delilah’s show, and while he’s no mere sidekick, he is definitely the junior partner in adventure. Thankfully, it’s planned to be live action, so there need not be an I Wish song up front for Delilah to lay out all her hopes and dreams.

  Congratulations to Tony Cliff and also to the movie-going girls of the world, who will hopefully soon have one more swashbuckling hero of their own to look up to (with the obligatory note that option does not necessarily mean gets made any time soon. We’re still waiting for BONE, for goodness sake, not to mention Amulet, Agnes Quill, Odd Jobs, Last Blood, The New Kid, and You Damn Kid. The options on Nimona and Castle Hangnail are too recent for anything to have happened yet).

• Speaking of Memorial Day weekend, the National Cartoonists Society are having their annual meet-up/party, and around 30 hours from now we’ll know who this year’s honorees for webcomics will be. To refresh you, the nominees for Online Comic — Long Form are The Creepy Casefiles of Margo Maloo (Drew Weing), Drive (Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett), and Octopus Pie (Meredith Gran, her second nomination in the five cycles the awards have been offered). The nominees for Online Comic — Short Form are Bouletcorp (Boulet), Kevin and Kell (Bill Holbrook), and Sheldon (LArDK, again).

  If I have my records right, only Meredith Gran and Vince Dorse have been nominated twice in the NCS Online — Long Form category, and Dorse has previously won² (and also isn’t nominated this year). The lesson seems clear: get two nominations in Long Form, and you win, so I’m going to preemptively congratulate Gran, while wishing all the nominees the best of luck.

• Speaking of Dorse, his two nominations were for Untold Tales of Bigfoot, which has wrapped up its run as a webcomic and is seeking a new existence in print. You know where this is going — the Kickstarter’s been up for a couple of days, and while only about 100 people have gotten in while the gettin’s good, Dorse’s extremely modest goal of US$8000 means he’s more than halfway there with nearly a month to go. It’s really a neat story, check it out.

Spam of the day:

Strathmore Professional Network — Congratulations! You’ve been selected to Join

Join what? The Bristol Of The Month Club? I don’t actually draw comics, so that’s not the most … what? Oh, it’s a sleazy Who’s Who ripoff that will not only charge me money for the privilege of including it in an allegedly prestigious directory that nobody will ever see, but will also facilitate the theft of my identity? Yeah, no.

_______________
¹ Also including Christopher Bird who commented on our story regarding his Patreon to correct our suppostings regarding the finances of Al’Rashad. Namely, he and illustrator Davinder Brar worked that project without pay, hoping for sales down the line. Fleen regrets the error.

² Interestingly, over Meredith Gran, the last time she was nominated.

For those wondering, the Octopus Pie Volume 4 launch party last night was a lot of fun; I’m not going to do a write-up here, as much of what I was told by Meredith Gran, Mike Holmes, and fellow attendee Evan Dahm hasn’t been announced yet. Rather than run the risk of mentioning things they want to announce on their own terms, I’ll just say that they’re all working on Cool Things that you will love. Look for them on the con circuit this year and ask ’em yourself what they’re up to.

Instead, let’s talk about other things that have come up.

• At the launch party, I was pleased to make the acquaintance of a young lady that came because (as she put it) she’s grown up reading the likes of Gran, Beaton, Munroe, and other lights of webcomickry. She had stickers of her original character (Bus Man … possibly Busman, or Bus-Man¹) and sent me a PDF of a short story she recently completed on her Tumblr. Her name is Sam[antha] Schroeder, you can see her portfolio here and her comics here.

  There’s so many people making comics — at every stage of their individual artistic journeys — that finding one whose work you want to share is always a Good Thing; I’m sharing Schroeder’s doodles and comics (there’s not much there yet) because I think it’s great to follow somebody from the beginning. A few years one and she’ll probably be embarrassed by this work, but that’ll only be because of how much she’s progressed.

  The story I mentioned is a sweet-natured look at what it’s like to be a not particularly grim reaper² who’s wondering about whether all those reapings are fair. It’s charming, and you can find it at these links.

• It’s been not quite five years that Tyler Page (creator of Nothing Better) has been working on his medical memoir, Raised on Ritalin (of a piece with other personal stories about health, like Tracy White’s How I Made It To Eighteen or even Raina Telgemeier’s Smile), which recently hit its final chapter. It’s a book that’s undoubtedly changed in the time it took to produce, and it’s now possible to read the entire thing at once.

  And for those of you that hate hitting the Next button a few hundred times in a row, you can get a hardcopy:

  HERE IT IS: @Kickstarter for Raised on Ritalin – A Graphic Novel/Memoir about #ADHD by tyler page http://kck.st/1WfH1k4 #kickstarter

  It’s probably partly a shift in the openness with which people are now willing to discuss mental illness, partly changes in psychiatric diagnoses and treatments, and partly who I hang out with these days, but things like ADHD and depression weren’t things I knew that people had — actual people, that is, people I knew personally — before about a dozen years ago. A lot of your favorite creators have been open about the challenges they face with psychiatric conditions, and that’s a tremendous help for people that don’t know why their brains work the way they do. Lots more people need to get that help, and Raised on Ritalin has to potential to provide that help.

  It’s not just the story of Page’s diagnosis and what ADHD means to him personally; it’s a biography of the disease and the drugs that are used to treat it, as well. It’s an important story, and it’s only going to get to the places it needs to be³ if it’s in a printed and bound form. And that will only happen if a measly US$6000 gets raised in the next month or so.

  Page is already about 40% of the way to goal, but he really needs to go way over goal — that’s what will allow not only physical improvements to the book (he cited better paper, for one), but to print enough copies that the people who don’t yet know that they need it will be able to find it in places that can help them³ in the future. If you know somebody that lives with ADHD or any other mental condition, if you want to learn more (because you’re a good person and have a sense of empathy), you could hardly find a better starting place that Page’s book. Pledge, spread the word, and share your copy when you get it.

• Happies Birthsdays. The aforementioned Raina Telgemeier (I did mention her … just scroll back up and you’ll see) and Becky Dreistadt are having birthdays today. Actually, it’s a good deal more extensive that just two people; 26 May is apparently the most popular birthday in indy/webcomics:
  

  @beckyandfrank @CoryCasoni @TomTomShimShim @JNoze + @the_kochalka @NickBertozzi @bannister01! #birthdaysquad

  To be clear, in that tweet Telgemeier is replying to Cory Casoni, who is not one of the co-birthdayists; that still makes for at least seven people celebrating today, which makes today The Best. And you can get in on the celebrations, either by tweeting and maybe getting an advanced copy of Telgemeier’s next book, or by sending Dreistadt a picture of a cat to make her happy.

Spam of the day:

New York Comic Con

Nope, we’re done. Don’t find my presence to be helpful to your strategy of selling people to advertisers? I don’t have to read your emails any more. Bye, now.

______________
¹ However you spell it, Bus Man has the best superpower for an urban environment ever; whenever he needs to get somewhere, regardless of schedule or time of day, a bus will pull up and it will be an express to his current destination.

² She’s still a reaper, mind you, but not the doom-and-gloom kind.

³ Libraries, therapist’s practices, school counseling offices, etc.