This day in Great Outdoor Fight history: No strip; Beef is undoubtedly deciding who among the gathering hordes will be invited to roll with Son of Rodney.

So much going on, I barely know where to start. Let’s just go in the order of when I scribbled notes to myself.

• Longtime Friend o’ Fleen Eben Burgoon started in [web]comickry with spy spoof Eben07, then moved onto action-adventure spoof B-Squad (and, almost uniquely among creators, managed to repurpose a failed Kickstart into success with the first volume). He’s back with more weird deconstruction of the ragtag-team concept as B-Squad volume 2 launched on the ‘starter yesterday. I was going to write about it yesterday, but honestly when C&H dropped their immediately megasuccessful card game¹ on the world, any other new Kickstart was just gonna be overshadowed and so I pushed back a day.

  And B-Squad didn’t deserve that, so here we are today. One day in, 38 to go, sitting at about 16% of goal, as Burgoon pairs up with five artists to tell five stories and also deal with the worst writing constraint in history: each story, at least one character is going to kick it, as determined by a die roll that Burgoon must then adapt to. They say that writing is about killing your darlings, but what if you put work and love into a character and then the die says they gotta, well, die? Help make it all a bit less painful for Burgoon by at least making financially worthwhile for the creators to deal with the challenge and heartbreak.

• The ongoing endeavour that is trying to figure out who the heck gets a table at SPX hits a significant date soon; the curated portion of the floor is being allocated, and soon the showrunners will know exactly how many spots will go into the table lottery. Want to exhibit but not specifically invited? Check it:
  

  On February 12, 2016, the lottery registration will become available and the lottery registration period will last between February 12 and February 26, 2016.

  The lottery registration will take place through a web page on the SPXPO.com website. We will provide basic instructions on this page that can also be viewed in the FAQ section below.

  Each lottery registrant will receive an e-mail containing their own randomly generated 6-digit number that you will receive within 48 hours of registering for the lottery.

  Once the lottery registration period is completed on February 26, 2016, we will have a digital coin flipper to determine whether we sort the random numbers by ascending or descending order. The lottery registrant list will then be sorted by random number according to the coin flip, and those tables above the capacity threshold will be selected to exhibit at SPX 2016. The order of the tables below the capacity threshold will determine the wait list. [emphasis original]

  Got that? Friday is the day to start looking at the website for lottery applications. This is a much better system than the frantic rush to apply that SPX used before the lottery system, meaning that timestamps and postmarks and checks received don’t determine who gets in. Two weeks, same chance whenever you apply, and hope to see you in September.

• For those wondering, Queen of Comictopia Raina Telgemeier has topped off a recent move back to San Francisco with the release of the fourth of her newly-colored Baby Sitters Club adaptations and whaddaya know, it’s entered the New York Times Best Seller List in its first week. In slot #1. With five other books (Smile, Drama, Sisters, and two other BSC volumes) in slots 2, 5, 7, 8, and 9. Okay, book purchasers, let’s get that last BSC book on the list so that Telgemeier can have 70% of it to herself (until Ghosts comes out and she hits 80%). It’s her world, comics, we may as well acknowledge it.

• The Nib, lost to a reorg at Medium, has pretty much been Matt Bors’s singular focus for the past eight months or so. First it was the Kickstart to reprint the best of the site, and much of the time since has been dedicated to finding a new home for editorial cartooning on the web that pays. Good news dropping this morning, then:

  First Look Media today announced that they have partnered with award winning cartoonist Matt Bors on his irreverent comics publication, The Nib. Formerly part of the online platform Medium, The Nib will re-launch this summer through First Look Media as an independent daily publication and online newsletter.

  Great news, in fact, but why do I recognize that name, First Look Media?

  Bors will remain editor of The Nib as it joins First Look Media’s family of media properties including The Intercept, reported.ly, and Field of Vision.

  Ohhhh, right, The Intercept — that’s Greg Greenwald and Laura Poitras, the people that brought Edward Snowden’s leaks to light. Damn, this is going to be a match made in heaven, with adversarial journalism committed in both words and pictures. It’ll have been a year spent Nibless, but before long we’re going to have voices back that we haven’t seen as much lately, in one place, both delighting and enraging me, and (most importantly) getting paid. That’ll do, Matt. That’ll do.

Spam of the day:

say hello to these naughty and wild milfs

Why, for the love of all that you might find holy, why would you send me a spam trying to intrigue me on a sexual basis and then write that spam in ficking Comic Sans?

_______________
¹ As of this writing, above US$400K on a US$10K goal, with more than 8700 backers. The FFFmk2 predicts a final funding in the US$1.5million (plus or minus call it US$300K) range, which would be frankly insane if not for the example of Exploding Kittens last year.

This day in Great Outdoor Fight history: Running credit and the relative merits of recumbent Tai-Chi.

• Well, that was fast. Between morning break and when I caught up at lunch, the lads over at Cyanide & Happiness launched, funded (about 30 minutes later), and continue to overfund (as of this writing, by about a factor of nine) a Kickstarter for a card game, Joking Hazard. Short version, it appears to be an in-person, competitive version of the C&H random comic generator. It’s Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity with pictures. It’s going to fund a million dollars (we can do a proper prediction when the Kickstart’s not two and a half hours old.
• As a quick reminder, the Smut Peddler Double Header Kickstarter is about halfway through its run, and is just shy of US$100,000. What’s more popular? A somewhat rude card game, or hot, hot pornography? Reminder: it can be both! Success of one need not come a the expense of the other.
• Going back to 2011, I’ve been keeping an eye on Tyler Page’s slowly-evolving Raised on Ritalin, a memoir-slash-exploration of mental health issues (specifically, ADD/ADHD) in comic form. It’s been released in chapters approximately 3 – 4 times a year, and today’s latest update bears both the tagline What does the future hold? and a notation that the next chapter will be the last. It’s been a long, sometimes painfully honest story that Page has shared with us, and while I’ll be sorry to see it go, I’ll be happier to know that he got such a monumental project finished and in shape. It’s worth a read from the beginning.

Spam of the day:
Compare and contrast —

local moms need easy sex

and

local mom in need of some very hardsex

Firstly, get your message consistent as to the hardness of the needed sex. Secondly, if you want to make people think of sex, stop using the word mom in any context in my direction because ew.

This day in Great Outdoor Fight history: The weekend saw our several-times-noted episode of Beef recounting GOF lore¹, and the revelation that Beef is not Frederick H Coca-Cola. Today, Polish sausages and pencil necks.

Once again, we have new from Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin; I’m excited to see what he drops us from the continent, the coverage the that rest of us here at Fleen provide is decidedly English-centric (and within that subset of the world’s comics, primarily focused on the US/Canada). The French language has an enormous tradition of comics, more than any other culture except perhaps Japan, and not speaking it fluently (or having time to look things up) has restricted our coverage to either stupidity explosions and whatever cool thing Boulet is doing now.

Also, FSFCPL’s contributions make for less typing, so that’s a bonus. Here’s today’s news from the world of bande dessinées (nouvelles du monde de la bande dessinée):

I got news about a newly released, let’s say, digital comics experiment called Phallaina. Start downloading the app right now, it’s a bit big, and run it as soon as it is downloaded, as it needs to process its own resources for two additional minutes.

While the page is in French, the app has both French and English text, and there is an English teaser trailer (however, the press kit is inexplicably only in French). While they say it’s optimized for tablets (and I have played with it on my iPad), it is also legible on an Android phone (Galaxy S II), though (as some also also report) I indeed had to kill it the first time and it worked the second, so you should have what it needs to experience it.

They claim it’s the first « bande défilée » (literally, “scrolling band”, while sounding like « bande dessinée »), but (besides, of course, the Bayeux Tapestry) I remember http://www.nevermindthebullets.com/ (still online, amazingly enough for a promotional creation) doing the pretty much the same thing, and with web technologies to boot. On the other hand, Never Mind The Bullets has movement everywhere in no discernible pattern, which makes it more confusing than anything; Phallaina is much better done in my opinion.

I have never heard of the author, and I can’t bring you much in the way of context, other than it has the backing of France Télévisions (through the domain: francetv.fr, the credits, etc.), which is nothing less than France’s public TV corporation (think France’s BBC, though restricted to TV).

News via Boulet. I swear, I’m trying to diversify my sources: I now follow a dozen French webcomic authors and related people (some on a secondary Twitter account), and yet all the interesting stuff comes via Boulet.

I can pretty safely say that I never would have heard about Phallaina without this note from Lebeaupin, even though I follow Boulet in English. I’m going to see what’s up with Phallaina first chance I get, and can’t help but wonder if this becomes a platform for more creators and more stories. I can’t help think of what McCloud’s My Obsession With Chess would look like optimized for a modern mobile presentation. Is this me coming around on infinite canvas? Maybe we just needed a way to make the idea not tedious in implementation and technology is finally catching up.

As usual, Fleen thanks Lebeaupin for his contribution. Going to have to create a tag for posts he contributes to for easy future reference.

Spam of the day:
I’m putting this one behind the cut because it is so awesome I couldn’t find an excerpt to quote. I have to run the entire damn thing verbatim.

(more…)

What a week, what a week. Let’s recap the things that have happened and call it.

• This day in Great Outdoor Fight history: No strip. Ray’s probably dealing with his hat guy to ensure he has the proper hat, and he and Beef are packing up the motorcycle and sidecar for the trip to The Acres.
• The entirely delightful Rene Engström has, indeed, resurrected Anders Loves Maria with remastered art. Compare, if you will, the first two installments against the original version. There’s better pacing for the gag, better sense of space, better use of panel count and size to establish the time. There’s also — crucially — a shift from steam forming a heart in the original final panel to Maria looking gobsmacked. There’s an entirely different emotional payoff in this strip, a revision that could only come from a creator that is looking back with a better sense of who her characters are/were in hindsight, instead of just discovering them. I suspect the swing from idyllic love story to relationship trainwreck¹ and back again is going to have a different timbre (sometimes subtle, sometimes not) this time around. I’m looking forward to reading my favorite [SPOILER ALERT] ultimately heartbreaking story again for the first time.
• Ian Jones-Quartey has been mentioned many times on this page; he is, perhaps, best known for his work on Steven Universe and other collaborations with Rebecca Sugar, but before that he did minis, animated and directed various shows (including The Venture Brothers and Adventure Time), did some kick-ass minicomics, and (oh yeah) a little thing called RPG World². He’s been back-and-forth with Cartoon Network with his own projects (such as Secret Mountain Fort Awesome), and reported been working on a secret project.

  That project has been revealed: CN has picked up his Lakewood Plaza Turbo not as a series, but as their first property outside of broadcast. Specifically, it’s the centerpiece of a mobile game, OK K.O.! Lakewood Plaza Turbo, and the start of an ambitious new direction for the media empire. Now follow me on this: if you’re a network that’s taking a big gamble, making a move that has not been made before by any network, you are not going to make your first project (the one that determines whether or not this gamble goes forward) on somebody you don’t have total confidence in.

  And that confidence appears to have been well placed, as OKKO!LPT currently scoring ratings of 4.5/5.0 on both Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store. There’s probably no good way to determine how many times it’s been downloaded since launch yesterday, but given that the percentage of people that rate downloads is pretty low, having a few hundred (damn near universally positive) ratings in a day means it’s doing pretty well.

  This isn’t a one-off; it’s the start of a new business model for CN, and likely the start of a franchise for Jones-Quartey. Congrats to him, to his team, and to everybody that’s having fun beating stuff up in OKKO!LPT. And if you aren’t one of those people, let me point out that it’s free, so there’s nothing but download time keeping you from playing. You’re welcome.

• In case you missed it, Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin continued his How to curse in French lessons in yesterday’s comments. Don’t say we never taught you anything worthwhile.

Spam of the day:

Your website has to be the elcoertnic Swiss army knife for this topic.

I’m putting that on my next round of business cards.

_______________
¹ Go back through the first run of ALM writeups on this page and you’ll see I spent plenty of time sniffly over those two crazy kids, and plenty of time wanting to boot one or both of them in the skull for being so stupid and cruel. Usually Anders, though — I suspect this time around the motivations for his behavior will be a little more emotionally deep and little less just him being a dick.

² Reminder that you do not ask Jones-Quartey when RPG World is getting finished. Every time he’s asked, he pushes the return date back another month (current estimate: February 2038).

This day in Great Outdoor Fight history: No strip. I’d guess it’s mostly involving Beef and Ray obtaining the motorcycle and sidecar.

As anticipated, I’m way behind the curve in work today, and if I try to cram in a posting in the … twelve minutes I’ve got for lunch, I will not be treating a couple of topics with the depth they deserve. Tomorrow will be better, I promise.

I will say this for the overly-challenging corporate hell I’m in — the soundtrack outside this demo room is surprisingly good. In Between Days (maybe my favorite Cure song ever) was just playing, and now it’s London Calling. Throw on some XTC or maybe Save It For Later and I’ll even call this day a win.

Update to add: No XTC or English Beat, but as I type, the piped-in music is playing Daft Punk. And now I brave I-95.

Spam of the day:

View Pictures of ChristianMingle Singles in your area

I dunno, that one creepy guy at the bottom looks like he should be featured on ChristianNonconsensualAssmasters. I have no trouble at all believing he’s single.

This day in Great Outdoor Fight history: Beef recounts the history of Rodney Leonard Stubbs and becomes Ray’s fight roadie. It’s like those Canadian Heritage Minutes, only with the Great Outdoor Fight.

And in other news, today I can top Beef’s 127 days since the last dumbest workplace sentence (making a total of 3780 days, I would suppose), namely:

Let the students each bring their own laptop; they’ll surely work with the educational landscape and they’ll be able to do the course exercises with no problem.

That is sass in the main and also why I don’t get a proper lunch today and you don’t get a proper post today, or maybe tomorrow, as a two-day class that’s packed to the gills has had an enormous hole blown in it that’s not yet resolved. Oh, and if anybody knows the son of a bitch that invented Comic Sans the doctrine of Bring Your Own Device, please point me in his general direction. I understand he wants to taste the curb.

But I can’t leave you with nothing, so please enjoy (as a followup to yesterday’s discussion) a graphic of all 157 titles from the first ten years of :01 Books; click to embiggen, naturally, and let me know how many of them you’ve read. I think I’m at 101 (and, to be fair, some of the books on the list aren’t out yet). Not bad, still a ways to go.

Spam of the day:

(That is the common thought among ladies. These types of workouts are what allow Matthew Mc – Conaughey to keep his body lean and sculpted.

I am not qualified to declare what is or is not the common thought among ladies.

But first, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin in yesterday’s comments, not so much for his Angoulême take (which is, as usual, cogent and worth your while) as for his excellent lesson in how to curse in French. I suspect that by the end of calendar year 2016, we’ll be able to drop some really creative vulgarity in the most beautiful of languages.

Looking back in history, then:

• One day in 2012, Shaenon Garrity (Funk Queen of the Great Bay Area and Tiki Mistress Extraordinaire) embarked upon one of the greatest projects in the history of webomics: an epsiode-by-episode recapping of The X-Files in comic form. Skinner’s mighty fist! Bees! Mites! Autoerotic asphyixiation! Monster of the Week had it all. Then, after season 4 (which meant we got to see the single best hour of ’90s, Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space’ in season 3), concerns like giving birth to an alive human child took precedence and the recaps sadly went on hiatus.

  She’s held out the possibility of return, contingent on you people giving more to her Patreon, but unless that happens, the season 4 summary of June 2014 will be where we leave Mulder and Scully and sexy shirtless Skinner.

  Until today.

  With the return of The X-Files, Garrity has felt the siren song of unresolved sexual tension, aliens, and exactly what Scully’s been up to (wine and binging Parks & Rec), and has made with the recaps for Season X. Well, recap, singular, so far. She’ll get to the others, I mean she’s still got that kid to look out for¹.

• A little further back — a little after this here blog was getting off the ground, in the February that we first met Envelópe Martinez², a small upstart publisher called :01 Books was just getting started. 157 books later, :01 is now 10, and they’re marking the anniversary year with Happenings. Watch for authors to be on the road, interviews in public places, and every time National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Gene Luen Yang makes an appearance, keep in mind that he’s been :01 since the start.

  You’ll find people posing with their favorite :01 Books selections on the Twitter machine under #10yearsof01, and you’ll find we at Fleen talking about :01’s many offerings throughout the year. Which, uh we would have done anyway. Happy tenth, :01, and here’s to many more!

• And further back still. Yesterday marked 25 years to the day that I met my wife; today marks 25 years since the day that involved overlong and not necessarily great movies, my introduction to collegiate hockey, an unplanned side-trip (or kidnapping, in certain senses of the word) to the sovereign nation of Canada, and hassles with US Customs on the way back. With that as arguably our first date, it’s no surprise that I haven’t been able to match up with any others since.

  It is solely by her infinite forbearance and patience that I have the time to engage in this weird, obsessive hobby and pseudojournalistic hackery. If you ever see her about, thank her if you find what I do worth your time. And if you don’t, thank her anyway, because she’s the best human being.

Spam of the day:

Breaking Story: Trump has a pill for America – you have to read this..

Let me guess — contact a doctor if your election rallies last more than four hours?

______________
¹ Confidential to FQ in the BA: after taking your child for smallpox and other vaccines, be sure to remove the alien tracking device!

² Is there an interest in a Ten Years Ago At The Great Outdoor Fight runner here at Fleen? For example, we are now at ten years, one week, and one day since we first heard tell of Ramses Luther and the GOF, ten years and six days since we saw a grainy photo of The Man With The Blood On His Hands, and we are but one day from the tenth anniversary of sass in the main and the dire fates of Carl Veldt Grimps and Fancy Mark Clancy.

I think I just answered my own question.

But I haven’t studied French since high school and we never got to the rude words so I’m trusting them on this one. But I digress.

• The FIBD in Angoulême apparently decided that all of the idiocy it went through in the runup to this year’s festival wasn’t enough, and decided that as long as there are pooches to screw then par Dieu, they were gonna screw ’em. It seems ridiculous to say, but the big awards ceremony at Angoulême kicked off by presenting fake awards to unsuspecting creators and then pulling the metaphorical rug out from under them because … comics?

  The invaluable Brigid Alverson¹ has the best summary of the events, including a reasonably heartfelt apology from the host who perpetrated the cruelty, and the quote from FIBD president Franck “there are no notable women in the history of comics” Bondoux declaring that the conteremps is all our fault because they got caught being enormous dicks instead of being able to pretend it didn’t happen². Oh, wait, I was paraphrasing … the actual wording was The problem is the dictatorship of the tweet.

  No kidding, I’m wondering who in the world of comics will be willing to show up next year. The only thing I can see that will prevent name creators from abandoning Angoulême in droves is for Bondoux and his entire staff to be replaced (bitterly complaining, of course, that nobody can take a goddamned joke). I’ve always wanted to see the FIBD in person, but now you couldn’t pay me to go.

• While we’re in Europe: Rene Engström has been largely absent from webcomics for a number of years; Sofa Rap Art got taken down a while back due to the intervention of evil scammers, and last we heard from her and partner Rasmus Gran, they were expecting a child. Engström’s telling us what having a toddler around is like in her Hourly Comics today (starting here), and we have news that her most famous comics work is on its way back:
  

  Starting on the 4th of February, 6 years to the day the series first ended, I will be republishing Anders Loves Maria with both old and new content.

  The schedule will be roughly 1-2 pages per week initially.

  New ALM, y’all. Read it again for the first time, hooray!

• Speaking of February anniversaries:
  

  .@dinosaurcomics is 13 years old today! I HAVE A TEEN.

  IF YOU HAD REPRODUCTIVE SEX WHEN I STARTED MY COMIC YOU COULD ALMOST HAVE A TEEN TOO

  Congratulations on your strip anniversary Ryan and also for not making the passage of time seem creepy at all!

• And to finish things up, the inimitable Dante Shepherd (so don’t even try imit him!) has taught me about a concept that kept me from ever taking a second class in thermodynamics back in my college days³, one that befuddles the bejabbers out of more than a few baby engineers: fugacity.

  His latest science comic is the one that gave him the idea for a series of scientific-concept comics in the first place, the reason that he went out and got a grant to produce ’em, so it’s kind of a big deal. Hey, Dante, let me know if you want to get around to talking about Nyquist’s ratio or Shannon’s Figure 1 for the next set of science comics. They can’t all be about smelly stuff in tanks and columns.

Spam of the day:

Our processing center is waiting for your response

A response on a VA loan that I don’t have because I wasn’t ever in the military? Yeah, you’re gonna be waiting a while longer.

_______________
¹ Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin has yet to check in, and we’ve been asking him to deal with a lot of complete and utter stupidity and I completely understand if he wants to give this one a miss in the interests of mental health.

² As I said, my high school French is rusty, but I can make out the meaning of Bondoux insisting on le droit à l’impertinence.

³ Aside from the fact that electrical engineers were only required to take one thermo class, and one fluid dynamics class, and there’s no rational reason to take any more of either. I bet he hasn’t taken even one class in communications systems, so he shouldn’t be getting too full of himself.

Ten years on, :01 Books remains one hell of an impressive publisher; they recognize the value in finding the best creators and the best pitches, curating a catalog down to approximately 20 boos a year, and ensuring that damn near everything they publish is indispensable. So let’s talk :01.

• We’ll start with that which we’ll have to wait the longest to see — yesterday Spike shared the news that she’s got a book coming from :01 and the subject is such a perfect fit that I momentarily don’t mind that it’s been forever since she’s had time to update Templar, AZ¹:
  

  Oh hey, I guess I can talk about it now!

  Hi guys, I’m doing a bio-comic about Josephine Baker for @01FirstSecond.

  http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016…

  We won’t get to see Black Pearl: The Graphic Life of Josephine Baker until sometime next year, but when we do I can guaran-fricking-tee it’ll be brilliant. This is the book that Spike was not born to make (that’s way too passive), but which she has, by will and determination and the sweat of her brow has designed her career and skillset to be the book that it is inevitable she make.

• Also in the future, but a good deal closer, the :01 mailroom (I’m guessing that’s mostly Gina Gagliano, an absolutely key part of their operations) has been busy, with three separate advance review copies showing up on my doorstep today. Many thanks to Ms Gagliano for Ben Hatke’s Nobody Likes A Goblin (due in June), Tony Cliff’s Delilah Dirk And The King’s Shilling (due in March, and serialized in the meantime hereabouts), and what I am prepared to call the greatest book of this or any other year: James Kochalka’s The Glorkian Warrior And the Mustache² Of Destiny (also due in March, and every day after, as it will live in your heart forever).
• And in the immediate term, available on Tuesday, 2 February (which would also be known formally as St Groundhog’s Day), Sara Varon releases her latest, Sweaterweather & Other Short Stories.

  Sweaterweather consists of eighteen shorter works, going back to the early 2000s and running as late as 2014; compared to Robot Dreams, Bake Sale, or Odd Duck, Varon’s early work is relatively quiet (almost no dialog, although sometimes there’s extensive expository text, especially in Bee Comic) and makes use of a Tezuka-like repertory cast.

  That is, Tezuka reutilized character designs and treated them like actors specializing in various roles — the officious toady, the blustery minor authority figure, the hermitlike loner, and so forth. The names may have been different, and the costumes, settings, and historical era, but the archetype remained the same.

  Likewise, Varon’s recurring characters don’t seem to be the same dog or cat (or whatever), but strike me more as just the particular dog or cat (or whatever) that happens to exist in a particular story. There’s whole families of dogs and cats (and whatevers) populating Varon’s worlds, and we get to visit with whichever ones are sharing their days with us. And that’s really what Sweaterweather is about — people have days, and we get to go along to see what happens. There’s usually nothing huge, little or no conflict, just the experience of being for a while.

  The entire thing reminds me of nothing so much as the slower, less plot-involved (and therefore most emotionally honest and delightful) portions of Tonari no Totoro. Roger Ebert described that movie as based on experience, situation and exploration — not on conflict and threat, and that turn of phrase describes Sweaterweather to a T. Pick it up and let yourself enjoy the crisp air and warm sunshine of Sweaterweather.

  Fleen thanks Gina Gagliano and everybody at :01 Books for the review copy of Sweaterweather.

Spam of the day:

Your Account Has Been Limited PayPal ID PP-658-119-347111

Apparently I need to repeat myself: I don’t have a PayPal account, because the only group of people more determined to screw everybody they come in contact with than these identity-thieving scammers is PayPal³.

________________
¹ Seriously, the entire site just consists of

<html>
<head></head>
<body></body>
</html>

and a favicon. I’m sure relaunch is on her to-do list, but under a bunch of other stuff. Whatevs, down sites don’t affect my printed copies!

² [sic]; we at Fleen prefer the spelling moustache.

³ Walmart being a close third.

So I’m undergoing mandatory training in how not to destroy my company by secretly renegotiating contracts behind the backs of the executive sales staff; the fact that I don’t ever have anything to do with contracts doesn’t seem to have any bearing on the fact that I must listen to Virtual Compliance Officer Mike drone on in his somnolent, emotionless, monotone vocoder as he reads material at me. Let’s see what’s up with webcomics before I open a vein.

• It was ten days ago that we reported the start of filming on Penny Arcade’s original web series, Automata. At the time I figured the filming would be done in a couple of weeks, depending how how elaborate locations needed to be, and if weather the cooperated. Earlier today PA benevolent dictator Robert Khoo shared the news that shooting had wrapped, just in time for PAX South to kick off tomorrow.

  No news as to whether or not any footage will be shown there (at this point, I wouldn’t hold my breath), but I stand by my hunch that at least some final cut will be available by PAX East in April. Those of you headed to San Antonio for South, have fun and remember to wash your damn hands.

• Speaking of conventions, MoCCA Fest just announced the Guests of Honor for their shindig the weekend of 2-3 April. Please be prepared to welcome:
  • Cece Bell, creator of El Deafo and winner of both the Newberry Honor and the Eisner
  • RO Blechman, Emmy Award-winning illustrator, animator, cartoonist and author
  • Phoebe Gloeckner, creator of The Diary of a Teenage Girl, which is kind of a big deal these days
  • Sonny Liew, who’s done a stack of graphic novels, including the art on The Shadow Hero (with Gene Luen Yang), and whose latest is The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye
  • Rebecca Sugar, who made us all believe in Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl, and Steven, and who is disgustingly young¹

  See you all at the Metropolitan West event space on 2 April.

• Still speaking of events, it appears that Angoulême managed to vote themselves a winner of the Grand Prix after all; Fleen Senior French Correspodent Pierre Lebeaupin has thoughts on the selection of Belgian cartoonist Hermann to be next year’s (largely ceremonial) President of the festival. Here’s hoping that next year’s FIBD can be held with less bumbling.

Spam of the day:

MY LAST RESPONSE

Jeeze, I hope so. You’ve been after me with your attempts to 419 me for months, Mr. Wang Zhiqiang working with Wing Lung Bank Hong Kong. Get bent.

________________
¹ Seriously, she wasn’t even born until after I’d finished my sophomore year of college. Stop being so damn young, incredibly skilled people that are achieving more than I ever have.