I refer, naturally, to this Diesel Sweeties strip from a week or so ago; I’m sure anybody that’s watched the last few iterations of Trek intuitively knows what the punchline is¹, I’m just surprised that Rich Stevens didn’t render it in plqaD script, but if you want to read Maura’s line in the original you can do so here.

Yes, that entire thing amused me enough to mention it after my time away. Deal.

In other news:

• TopatoCon 2 (The TopatoConenning? Electric TopatoLoo?) exhibitor and volunteer applications have been up for a while now, and although the show is still five months away, the first cluster of guests has been announced:
  

  Topatocon would like to welcome special guests @ryanqnorth @badmachinery @SarahCAndersen and @hollyblack !!!

  The Toronto Man-Mountain needs no introduction; John Allison appears on this side of the Atlantic about once in forever; Sarah Andersen’s got a first book is out now, and Holly Black is both a hell of a YA author and a mean cocktail-mixer².

• Okay, I lied — said Man-Mountain does need an introduction, as it was announced yesterday that Ryan North is now — in addition to his scripting duties on The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl for Marvel — taking over writing duties on Jughead from Chip Zdarsky with issue #9. At the same time, his Squirrel Girl art partner, Erica Henderson will be turning over the Jughead art duties to Derek Charm. Quite a comic book authoring resume our Mr North is building.

  Oh, and if you weren’t smart enough to back North’s first pickable-path Shakespeare book, you might not have noticed that he’s live-playing through the start of his next pickable-path Shakespeare book in the updates of the Kickstart for the last one. So far we’ve determined that Juliet is ripped and is very possibly curious about rooster testicles! Romeo and/or Juliet drops in just about a month on 7 June.

• So I told you I was going to be keeping an eye on Rosemary Valero-O’Connell last month; she’s not disappointed in the weeks since with the work she’s either announced or shared with us. That streak kept up yesterday, letting us see part of her senior thesis³:
  

  The prologue pages of Black Sun Rising, my senior thesis, are now available to read! http://livertaker.tumblr.com/post/144164545963/a-preview-of-the-first-chapter-of-black-sun …

  It’s gorgeous, it does a bang-up job setting mood and expectations (with more than a bit of Emily Carrollesque dread), and makes me want to read far more than these four pages. Rosemary — however long this comic is, find a way to print it in a handsome presentation, mark it up about four times, and sell it to me (and all other right-thinking folk). There is no mathematical possibility that the rest of this story isn’t excellent.

Spam of the day:

Cadence Williams (Google Team) sent you a message:

You know, the fact that you sent me this spam at Google’s own email service but that it doesn’t have a Google return address? Makes me a mite suspicious.

_______________
¹ If not, you can type Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam into the Bing Translator (but it doesn’t autodectect tlhIngan Hol).
http://yellowantphil.com/pIqaD_converter.php

² Assuming we do a drinks competition again this year like last year, I’d want Black, the reigning 86d! champion, to either take a judging role, or join me in hosting/commenting duties.

³ Yep, she’s just now graduating college and this makes her less than half my age and already so very skilled. She’s only going to get better.

AHHHHHHHH:

Oh hey, what? The Abominable Charles Christopher is back.

This is no minor AHHHHHHHH, this is the AHHHHHHHH from deep in your soul, best accompanied by the declaration I’M A SHARK. Karl Kerschl is between projects, Charles Christopher is back, and all is well in the world again.

Oh, yeah, other stuff is going on, too. Like TCAF later this week, which almost everybody in webcomics attends in alternating years¹. And that event reminds me that Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin noticed that the French contingent at TCAF will be more than just Featured Guest Boulet (who, don’t get me wrong, is great):

Yves Bigerel, better known as Balak, renowned inventor of turbomédia (remember about digital comics? He has kept making this stuff ever since) and of the jambon-beurre-based method of drawing the chonchon [NSFW], who, with Bastien Vivès, will be there for Last Man.

Marguerite Abouet, writer of the fantastic Aya of Yop City and Akissi.

Somehow I missed the announcement of Balak and Vivès, and I don’t know Abouet’s work at all, so be smarter than me and seek them out. Also, that video of Balak? Somebody make sure that Rokudenashiko sees it, since it’s right up her alley². I don’t know if the split verdict on Rokudenashiko’s obscenity trial³ would cause some overzealous prig at Canadian Immigration to keep her out of the country, but here’s hoping it doesn’t happen.

PS: AHHHHHHHH.

Spam of the day:

Checkout the latest Cleaning Service Options
Checkout the latest Used Cars
Checkout the latest Varicose Vein Treatment
Checkout the latest CPAP Options

Four spams, one return address. So I’m an elderly person with bad legs, sleep apnea, a dirty house, and a need to hit the open road? Got it.

______________
¹ TCAF being so popular with vendors and space not being infinite, a couple of years ago showrunner Chris Butcher instituted an every-other-year plan for exhibitors. Some individuals are there more often if they get hosted by, say, a publisher like TopatoCo or Koyama Press.

² So to speak.

³ She was acquitted on charges of displaying plaster casts of her vulva as art, but convicted of distributing 3D printer data files that would allow others to create the same sculptures. The latter hit her with a ¥400,000 (approximately US$4000) fine, which she is appealing.

As for the immigration issue, the customs and immigration folks have long had a bug up their respective butts about what they consider obscenity, especially as regards comics and manga. If anybody traveling to TCAF will invoke their ire, it’ll be Rokudenashiko. On the plus side, if there’s no problems with getting to the show, she can trade kayak stories with Karla Pacheco.

I was going to spend today’s post catching up on all the things that happened during my recent and unfortunate hiatus, but you people keep doing things. So I’m not able to spend a proper amount of time on KC Green’s moment of historiography, Abby Howard’s The Last Halloween Kickstart (back it, dammit, I want my book), Magnolia Porter, Aatmaja Pandya, and Victoria Elliott’s visual novel, the now-open submissions at Creators for Creators, or news from Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin¹. What could be so important as to displace all that awesomeness?

• Oh, I don’t know, how about Oni Press announcing a whole new imprint to be dedicated to erotic and sex education comics?
  

  Oni Press, Portland’s premier independent comic book publisher, is proud to announce Limerence Press, a new erotic and sex education comics imprint focused on positive, diverse, and approachable stories that reflect a wide variety of emotional and intimate experiences.

  Okay, one: great name. And two: sex education comics? Where on earth will they find creators to do serious but sexy education for … oh, right:

  Limerence Press is launching with printed editions of volumes 1–3 of Oh Joy Sex Toy, a popular sex education and sex toy review webcomic by creators by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan.

  To say that this is a perfect match would be an understatement; to say that Moen is excited about it would be be entirely truthful, but lacking in sufficient emphasis. Best of all, this is going to open up avenues that Nolan & Moen have not had for distribution previously:

  Limerence Press is printing Moen and Nolan’s Oh Joy Sex Toy Volume 3 Kickstarter books, helping the creative team reduce costs. The unique and limited-Kickstarter edition cover will be exclusive to Kickstarter backers, and serve as the books that Moen and Nolan sell directly online, at conventions, and at book signings. A separate Limerence Press cover will be distributed to comic shop retailers, bookstores, and specialty shops—avenues previously inaccessible to the creators.

  The Kickstart + regular edition is something Oni have experience with, having previously used the model on Yuko Ota & Ananth Hirsh’s Lucky Penny (which they’ve been taking awards nominations for since I’ve been gone). And sharp-eyed readers will note that Limerence is launching with three volumes of OJST, and yet there have only been two print collections to date — which brings us to the third part of the news:

  Which leads me to my NEXT announcement (oh yes, there’s more!)… The Volume 3 Kickstarter will be launching at 11am PST today!!!!

  Or about 20 minutes from now as I type this line. Congratulations to Moen, Nolan, Oni, and everybody involved with Limerence — but most of all congrats to all the people who haven’t seen OJST before and will now have the opportunity to get factual, healthful, utterly necessary information. There’s way too many people — kids, really — who don’t get anything resembling true information about sexuality, and for whom sex education equates to Don’t do it before you get married or God will blow your legs off, a situation that leads to increased rates of unintended pregnancy and STI transmission. Moen, Nolan, et. al. are serving the public good, and more power to ’em.

• Also coincidentally launching today: Matt Lubchansky (whose Dad Magazine, with wife Jaya Saxena, has launched to great acclaim and is outselling Hamilton for goodness sake) has Kickstarted the first collection of his Please Listen To Me comics and is more than 50% of the way to goal a little less than 14 hours in. Lubchansky’s one of the best gag cartoonists (that is, not using set cast members; he doesn’t limit himself to the single panel gag format) working today, and this book is going to both have excellent cartoons and make the right people cry. Go get it.

Spam of the day:

Secret so powerful it was kept out of The Bible! Click here to read Jesus’ lost words and how they could improve your life!

Let me guess: Drink more Ovaltine?

_______________
¹ Actually, FSFCPL’s news is not time-sensitive, so we’ll get to that one in a day or so.

Not quite back, but soon. Thanks for all of your support in what continues to be a challenging time. I also wanted to duck my head back in because if life had not interfered, I would have been running a review of Lucy Knisley’s Something New, which releases today. Short version then: it’s terrific (expectedly so, since it’s Knisley), and the entire book felt more real than real for me.

This is probably because even though I didn’t know it at the time, the story makes it clear that I know people who were at wedding that is the climax of the book¹; autobio has always felt a bit distant to me, learning what it’s like inside the life of somebody else who is not me and to whom I have only the connection of this story.

But being only a degree of separation away from the action, it becomes less life as story (which my brain is trained to read as fiction) and more a case of Did I tell you what happened at Lucy’s wedding? OMG it was so great which is immediately real. It doesn’t hurt that Knisley is such a personable presence, it’s like she’s telling somebody else the story about how what you did at her wedding was OMG so great. In conclusion, Lucy Knisley’s life journey keeps getting more interesting² and you should join her on it.

Spam of the day:

Pocket-Sized Wallet Holds 3 Dozen Cards, IDs, Money and More!

Part of what it holds is a malware warning for the advertised site. Anyway, I’ve already found the perfect low-profile wallet so eat it, spammers.

_______________
¹ Spoiler alert: they did.

² And given that her shop shows all shipments on hold for maternity leave, it’s going to be more so soon.

Welma Rebecca Pierce died peacefully this morning with her husband of 62 years, Bill, by her side. She was my wife’s mother, as sweet a lady as I’ve ever known, and I will miss her.

I’ll be gone for some time; play nice and be good to each other until I’m back.

Okay, so there’s a Family Emergency brewing, one that may necessitate my absence from El Blog for several days on little to no notice. This is to let you know that if I go silent for a bit, it was because of that and not anything you did, so don’t feel bad. It also means that while waiting for the proverbial shoe to fall, a lot of things are happening in Life, and my blogging time is limited. I thank you in advance for your understanding.

Today we are going to mention (briefly) a trio of Kickstarts.

• Firstly, Ryan Estrada’s Big Data (cf: here) had gone up in an attempt to recoup Estrada’s expenses from making the audioplay (which will be released as a nine-part podcast, or all in one go if you back it). Now thing about this for a moment — Estrada’s already paid everybody associated with making Big Data, which means he’s taking a risk by putting up the campaign; if he doesn’t hit his goal of US$7500 (which will merely bring him back to a net loss of zero dollars), he gets nothing.

  The podcast is still done and paid for. It will release to the world whether he gets paid or not, and whether you pay him or not. The chief benefit of backing is you’ll get all nine hours in one go instead of listening week-to-week trying to solve the mystery like a chump. Okay, yeah, there are little bonuses where it can me implied that the whole mess of Big Data is your fault, but mostly it’s getting to listen early.

  And not cost Estrada a chunk o’ change. He could have put up a ten dollar goal and kept everything, even if it didn’t meet his outlay; instead, he’s putting a monumental amount of faith into the we like creative people community, willing to bet multiple thousands that you’ll come through. Make with the donating.

• Secondly, Shaenon Garrity, Funk Queen of the East Bay and Yea, Even Unto The Far Antipodes, launched the Kickstart for the sixth (full color, this time) volume of Skin Horse. This one is gonna go by the numbers — launch one day, 150% funded the next, 39 days to go, you’ll get your stuff when she said because she is a goddamn professional and acts like one.
• Thirdly, Irregular Webcomic. What the crap, man? Guy does a highly-loved comic for-friggin’-ever, finally get the ability to do a book, and with two and a half days left to do is just under 80% funded? This would be a damn good time for that end-of-campaign uptick to happen. If this falls short, the chance of ever getting other Irregular Webcomics volumes decreases by a nontrivial amount. Clutch time, people.

Spam of the day:

Reply to claim your FREE PANERA BREAD COUPONS worth

Let me stop you right there. Of all the corporate chain “food” that I won’t eat, I most won’t eat the utter garbage at Panera because their “bread” is a travesty. Fake, painted to look like it’s got color and crust, softer and blander than Wonder Bread; I’d literally rather eat the “bread” sticks from Olive frickin’ Garden. It’s in the name of your damn restaurant, it’s got to be not totally sucky and yet it is! Nooooo thank you.

Let’s just wrap this one up and get to the weekend without anything else happening, okay?

• The Doug Wright Awards released their annual slate of nominations, and as in years past I am astonished — in a good way! — that an award program meant to recognize the best of an entire country can get by with only three categories. Given the marathon slogs that many awards presentations can be, this is a refreshing change, and the organizers have put together yet another thoughtful collection of nominees; to wit:

  Best Book

  Michael DeForge, Dressing
  Sylvie Rancourt, Melody
  Seth, Palookaville #22
  Kate Beaton, Step Aside, Pops
  Marc Bell, Stroppy
  Jillian Tamaki, SuperMutant Magic Academy

  Spotlight Award (for cartoonists deserving of wider recognition)

  Ted Gudlat, Funny Ha-Has
  Dakota McFadzean, Don’t Get Eaten By Anything
  Rebecca Roher, Mom Body
  Sabrina Scott, Witchbody
  Kat Verhoeven, Towerkind

  Pigskin Peters Award (recognizing experimental, unconventional, and avant-garde comics)

  Michael Comeau, Leather Vest
  Patrick Kyle, New Comics #6 & 7
  Luke Ramsey, Intelligent Sentient?
  Tin Can Forest and Geoff Berner, We Are Going To Bremen To Be Musicians
  Stanley Wany, Agalma

  Drawn + Quarterly is the dominant publisher of nominated works with six of the total works and five in the Best Book category; Beaton continues her march of many, many nominations for Step Aside, Pops, and Rebecca Roher’s Mom Body is yet another highly-regarded comic first published at The Nib. Best of luck to all the nominees; the Doug Wright Awards will be handed out on Saturday, 14 May at 8:00pm in a ceremony that’s part of the Toronto Comics Art Festival.

• Speaking of TCAF, which is a free-to-attend festival celebration of comics, there’s several other free-to-attend festival celebration of comics in the news: Alaska Robotics Mini-Con kicks off in Juneau, Alaska in the Mendenhall Valley Public Library at 6:30pm local time, continuing tomorrow at the Juneau Arts & Culture Center from 10:00am to 5:00pm. But wait! There’s more!

  Vancouver Comics Art Festival runs next month, 21 and 22 May, at the Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre. And TopatoCon 2016: The TopatoConenning, has just opened up applications for exhibitors and volunteers for 22 and 23 October, in Easthampton, Massachusetts. That’s four cities, two coasts, one Great Lake, two countries, and more great comics than you can shake a stick at. Start saving gas and/or bail money and make your way to the appropriate venue for Comics Fun Times.

Spam of the day:

Discover Bathtub

I expect the next email to say I don’t know how to discover bathtub and something about grues.

I had decided on the title and theme of today’s post last night, and as I sat down today to pound the text into shape the news broke that Prince has died. I’m going to remember him primarily for two things: I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man, which is about as perfect a song as ever was, and his underrated ability to have fun at his own expense. I’m also telling the next two guys I talk about to goddamn take care of themselves, please.

• Jim Zub is a guy who has spent the past decade or so making his way into the comics industry, and the thing about him that strikes me even more than the quality and breadth of his writing — which are both off the charts — is the fact that he’s always given more than he’s gotten. He is selfless and tireless in sharing his skills and wisdom, doing his level best to make it easier for the next generation of creators to find their way … an action that only makes his life harder, both for the effort it costs him now, and the competitors he’ll have to face down for jobs in the future.

  So imagine how much he’d be willing to share with people that are specifically paying him.

  Zub has, at long last, launched a Patreon but it’s kind of on the down-low right now, because there’s no other reason for it to have a paltry 35 backers and US$183 per month support level. The big thing you get for backing the Zubster? Full comic scripts and pitch documents, or as I like to call them, How To Be Zub 101. And considering that Zub is universally liked and respected, that’s a pretty good thing to be.

• So Ryan Estrada sent me a link last night (my time; it would have been daylight in Korea, where he lives) and casually said I could have the exclusive. If you’ve been following his Twitterfeed for the past months, you know that he’s been heads-down on his latest project, an audio play with top-flight talent the names of which he promised would blow our minds. And you know what? He’s not lying.

  Big Data is the story of what happens if the keyholders who keep the internet working got attacked and subverted by a conspiracy of ne’er-do-wells who maybe aren’t all that organized or competent. It posits a world where the internet is dying, and the person who’s determined to get to the bottom of it decides to do so in the form of a podcast, tracing the story of What The Hell Happened, in a weird cross of Serial and whatever Alex Jones is blathering about now. It looks hilarious, and we’ll all get to see what the deal is (duration, full cast, etc) on Monday, when the Kickstarter launches.

  Oh, not the Kickstarter to make Big Data — it’s already been made, the talent’s been paid, it’s in the can and ready to go. And that talent includes people you just might have heard of like Paul F Tompkins, Cecil Baldwin, Kevin Allison, Jermaine Clement, and De Anne Dubin, with a theme by The Doubleclicks. When I asked Estrada how the hell he got these people (and more!) to participate¹, he gave a completely logical answer: I asked nicely, and paid them!

  Here’s the trailer; check the main site on 25 April to see the Kickstart details and learn how we can all get front-row seats to the informational apocalypse. Like all the best apocalypses, the important people will be there.

Spam of the day:

Compare Car Donation Options Today

and

Compare Cancer Treatment Options Today

That’s a pair of damn near identical-looking emails you guys have sent me. Maybe don’t send them within 12 seconds of each other next time and I won’t notice.

_______________
¹ Fun fact: about the time I was wondering how the hell Estrada got his cast, he was wondering how the hell I have a friend who’s actually an ICANN keyholder. She’s done the key-signing ceremony and tells me after a while it gets really boring, and since you’re in one hell of a Faraday cage, you can’t use your phone or post selfies or anything.

Weirdest thing? She’s not an internet hacker from small times — she’s an English major that wound up doing logistics and disaster recovery planning, which utilize her natural aptitudes for organization and yelling at people until they do things correctly². She’s a lot of fun at parties.

² Since the or else in her yelling promises grave physical harm and lasting emotional damage, she is a woman after may own system administrator’s heart. Look, I’m not saying that she once caused a troublemaker to get cavity searched, but I am saying that the belief that she would do such a thing if you pushed her has helped her compliance-with-procedure rates enormously.

Kind of all over the place today, from the serious and sincere to the … well, you’ll see in a moment.

• Okay, real talk time. The Kickstart for the long-awaited first print collection of Irregular Webcomic followed a pretty standard steep start and long tail, but the tail has been lower than usual, and it’s starting to look like it’s going to be a near thing. 70% of the way there with about 72% of the campaign time gone means that the traditional spike upwards in the last week puts everything to rights, but creator David Morgan-Mar is unwilling to leave things to chance and is engaged in desperate measures: he’s added me as a backer reward.
  

  I will be in New York City on Saturday 18 June this year. With this reward you and one partner/friend can meet me over lunch, talk comics or whatever, and get some spur-of-the-moment hand scribbled comic art by me! I’ll also bring along some random physical goodies related to my comics to give to you! This reward is an approximately 2-hour lunch meeting, and you also get a printed copy of the book, a PDF copy, an MP3 of “It’s Quite Irregular”, and a set of postcards.

  Two backers plus two friends plus me makes 5 for lunch, and also joining us will be webcomic blogger Gary Tyrrell of Fleen.com. [emphasis mine]

  There’s already a pledge to meet up with Morgan-Mar in London later this year and I’ll be crushed — crushed! — to think that I’m not an equal draw. Also, it’s no secret that I want this campaign to succeed, but any rumo[u]rs going around that I will be engaging in “favors” for the pledgers are probably overblown. Probably. Only one way to find out!

• For those who’ve been waiting patiently since January for the opportunity to join iPhone-havers and play Exploding Kittens on your Android phones, wait no more. Seemingly in dual celebration over this release and yesterday’s announcement of an Eisner nomination (his third or fourth, I think), Oatmeal creator Matthew Inman has been crushing all rivals in EK matches today.

  You probably can’t beat him (he’s been playing the game since long before anybody else in the world, remember), but if you want to try watch his twitterfeed for announcements of when he’s playing and the game code. Good luck (you won’t win).

• Speaking of Eisner nominations, Iron Circus Comics President For Life¹ Spike Trotman has declared a day of jubilee to celebrate the fact that her very first solo artist project — EK Weaver’s TJ and Amal omnibus reprint — took a nomination for Best Graphic Album — Reprint. You can get the TJ and Amal omnibus from the Iron Circus shop for 15% off with the coupon code EISNERFYEAH. Go cash in, you lucky people.
• Lastly, the sort of thing that I like to see because it has the potential to make people better, more thoughtful creators: KB Spangler of A Girl And Her Fed² has posted a piece on how she approached writing a character that started out minor and became a major part of her story mythos, and how she’s changed her approach after realizing that she was Doing It Wrong. Specifically, Spangler’s take on Rachel Peng’s arguably defining characteristic — her blindness — was initially done without (in retrospect, and certainly not from a point of malice) insufficient consideration of what being blind actually means.

  And before a theoretical subset of you start screaming about PC goons forcing a creator to change her story — honestly, if that’s your first thought, the door’s over there and don’t let it hit you — it’s not in response to anybody yelling at Spangler other than Spangler. It’s about having the honesty to assess when you have sufficient experience in a community/culture to represent it properly, and when you have to shift your approach because you realize you didn’t. As Spangler repeatedly states:

  I’m an asshole but I’m trying to do better

  The first part of that statement is a filthy lie, but the second part you can take to the bank. Even if you’re inadvertently an asshole (or not an asshole at all), you can always do better if you’re willing to admit there’s better to be done. Go read it and think about how to do better yourself; and if there’s better I can be doing, please let me know.

Spam of the day:

Join our professional network

No name for this professional network? Nice try, LinkedIn, but you ain’t getting your hooks in me!

_______________
¹ And co-founder of Creators For Creators; application info coming in ten days.

² AKA my buddy Otter.

There was stuff I was going to go into today, like the announcement that Steven Universe creator Rebecca Sugar is adapting a key plot into childrens book form or that in the run-up to the relaunch of The Nib, Matt Bors is sending out comics in email newsletter form, and Chris Yates is marking twelve years of making Baffler!s. Then the Eisner nominations came out and that kind of swamps everything.

Because webcomics people — and those that came up from webcomics, or run their creative endeavours like webcomics, or likewise have that independent, creator-owned bent — are all over the damn list this year. But there remains a persistent question around what should be the point of greatest interest to readers of this page, namely, what the hell remains up with the Best Digital/Webcomic category? From the FAQ:

For the Best Digital Comic category, works must be longform—that is, comparable to comic books or graphic novels in storytelling or length. Webcomics similar to daily newspaper strips, for example, would not be eligible. Digital comics should have a unique URL, be part of a webcomics site, or otherwise stand alone (not be part of a blog, for instance).

… which seems to be inconsistently applied at best. Most notably, this year in the entirely worthy-of-consideration Lighten Up by Ron Wimberly, as seen at The Nib. It’s six-and-a-half screens tall, each four panels in size; it’s not comparable to either a comic book or graphic novel in length or storytelling. It’s excellent, and I’m glad it’s up for consideration, but there are been dozens — hundreds! — of comparably excellent works that have not been considered for the nomination because the criteria are used to exclude them (except when, as in this case, they’re not). The NCS, for goodness sake, is doing a better job of consistently applying criteria in a way that makes sense¹.

It does a disservice to the nominees to be nominated in such a chaotic fashion, especially considering the quality of the other nominees: Bandette (Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover, Monkeybrain/comiXology); Fresh Romance (edited by Janelle Asselin, Rosy Press/comiXology); The Legend of Wonder Woman (Renae De Liz, DC Digital); These Memories Won’t Last (by Stu Campbell).

Not all of those are what we at Fleen would consider webcomics (after all, that’s not the name of the category), so it’s probably time to scrap the not particularly useful category and just let webcomickers compete in the other categories oh wait that’s exactly what they’re doing:

• Best Short Story includes It’s Going to Be Okay (Matthew Inman); Best Continuing Series includes Bandette and Giant Days (John Allison, Lissa Treiman, and Max Sarin; nice job nominating both artists); Best New Series includes The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (Ryan North and Erica Henderson); Best Humor Publication Cyanide & Happiness: Stab Factory (Kris Wilson, Rob DenBleyker, and Dave McElfatrick) and Step Aside, Pops (Kate Beaton).
• Continuing: Best Anthology includes Eat More Comics: The Best of the Nib (Matt Bors, editor; includes Lighten Up); Best Graphic Album — Reprint includes The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal Omnibus (EK Weaver, via Iron Circus Comics Kickstarter campaign) and Nimona (Nicole Stevenson); Best Writer includes John Allison (for Giant Days); Penciller/Inker or Penciller/Inker Team includes Erica Henderson (for Jughead and The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl); Best Painter/Multimedia Artist includes Colleen Coover (Bandette again … that’s three so far).
• Finishing up: Best Lettering includes Lucy Knisley (for Displacement); Best Publication for Early Readers (up to age 8) includes Anna Banana and the Chocolate Explosion (Dominque Roques and Alexis Dormal) and Little Robot (Ben Hatke), both from First Second; Best Publication for Kids (ages 9-12) includes Baba Yaga’s Assistant (Marika McCoola and Emily Carroll) and Over the Garden Wall (Pat McHale and Jim Campbell); Best Publication for Teens (ages 13-17) includes SuperMutant Magic Academy (Jillian Tamaki)².

That appears to be eighteen nominations outside of the Digital/Webcomic dumping ground for webcomickers and webcomicker-alikes, which is surely a record. At least, last year I was astonished how many webcomickers and webcomicker-alikes were nominated and there were a total of eleven. Progress, she is gradual sometimes, but she is relentless. We’ll see how it all turns out when the Eisners are handed out on Friday, 22 July, at SDCC.

Spam of the day:

livesex cams “[…]Fleen: The Elcoertnic Swiss Army Knife For This Topic » ”

If there are cameras broadcasting Fleen World Headquarters to people expecting live sex, I sure hope they get their money back.

_______________
¹ Obligatory disclaimer: I have been involved in the NCS selection process each year that they’ve recognized webcomics.

² I removed nearly every publisher reference in this rather extensive list for space, but I’ll note that BOOM!/KaBOOM!/BOOM!Box are represented out of proportion to their relative size in the industry. Maybe with all this recognition they can expand their distribution/sales and afford to pay some non-sucky page rates.