There’s an audacious set of Kickstarts going on with contributions from the webcomics community, both running for just shy of a month, and with the potential to fill your shelves with lots and lots of women-centered work. Let’s dig in.

• Naturally, we start with the latest on the Smut Peddler Double Header, which we noted yesterday was still too young to qualify for a spin on the Fleen Funding Formula, Mark II¹. We’re remedying that now, and as of this writing, the FFFmk2 gives SPDH an expected final total of US$162.5K +/- 32.5K, or a range of US$130K – 195K. Given that the last Smut Peddler did about US$185K and that this prediction is probably a bit of an underestimate², I’d look for a number on the high end of that range.

  Also of note: the per-backer total of $US42.81 is significantly higher (so far) than that of either of the prior two Smut Peddler projects (5709 backers @ US$32.45 for the 2014 edition, 2291 @ US$36.27 in 2012); if the 1472 backers that exist now merely hold onto the per-backer ratio (and I’d expect them to do so, as the low-priced early bird packages are all long gone, and the high-priced special art packages are yet to be added), meeting only the backer count of the 2012 edition puts the Double Header over US$152; if they reach the backer count of 2014, you’re looking at nearly a quarter of a million dollars.

• And on the just-launched end of things, a new anthology project, 1001 Knights seeks to create three hardcover volumes, each about 250 pages, with a total of 1001 original characters, who are people-positive with feminist overtones. It’s going to take more than 250 creators to pull this one off, and US$70,000 of which (as of this writing, which is not quite the same time as the writing of the last item³ — I can’t type infinitely fast people!) some US$15,000 has been raised in the couple of hours since launch.

  The webcomics-related creators that have their name associated with the project (a full list of which may be found here) include Aatmaja Pandya, Allison Strejlau, Carey Pietsch, Darryl Ayo, Isabel Melan&ccecil;on, Jordan Witt, Kori Michele Handwerker, Leisl Adams, Molly Ostertag, Ryan North, Sara Winifred Searle, Scott Wegener, Shannon Wright, Steven Sugar, and literally hundreds more.

  Wrangling this many creators and contributions is an enormous task, so I’m pleased to see a couple of things in the campaign that make me confident it won’t collapse into a never-fulfilled fiasco:

  We’ve held off on kickstarting until we we had nearly everything in hand. We’re working with Breadpig to make sure all costs are accounted for and to make sure fulfillment of rewards will be as efficient as possible. We’ve also got the job narrowed down to 3 printers.

  Not having to wait to get art in is going to be huge factor in meeting the promised (and honestly, very aggressive) delivery date of July 2016. But working with Breadpig means that they get the services of George, about whom I once said Problems see George, and wisely decide to be elsewhere. It’s still going to be a near thing to get the books laid out, to the chosen printer, proofed, printed, and transported before fulfillment can begin, but Breadpig have a history of meeting or beating delivery dates, so I’m cautiously optimistic.

  It all depends on meeting goal, though, so if you’ve got room on your shelves for between one and three hardcovers that look to be substantial and handsome, check out 1001 Knights.

Spam of the day:

Checkout the latest Engagement Rings

I’ve been married for more than 20 years, dipshit. Try harder.

_______________
¹ As a reminder, the FFFmk2 states you take the Trend value of a project at the 24-30 hour mark from Kicktraq and call that PV. The range at close will be PV/4 +/- PV/20, but has only shown to be valid for project with at least 200 backers at calculation time.

² The SPDH launched at 9:00pm EST Monday night so we’re actually at about 36 hours now, and the Kicktraq trend chart is angling downwards at this time.

³ And I just went back during the proofing pass on this post, and it’s now up to more than US$17,000, which because Kicktraq only updates totals once an hour, I can tell you is up from less than US$11,000 in 49 minutes.

So I went to bed early and wasn’t awake to watch Iron Circus Comics — aka Spike, aka The Woman Who Is Going To Own Comics Publishing, aka Maybe If You Apologize For All Those Years You Told Her She Was Never Going To Succeed She’ll Have You Killed Mercifully — launch its latest Kickstarter. Kickstarters, actually, as two pieces of pure, uncut smut went up together, and you can back one, the other, or (and stay with me here because this is a a little out there) both of them at the same time.

So, uh, maybe assume all the links in this post are probably not things you want to click on if your boss can see.

First up, Yes, Roya, a book-length graphic novel of quality erotica, written by Spike herself and illustrated by Ghost Green, with Kinomatika on the cover. It’s the early 1960s, there’s cartoonists involved, and sexy times as a young upstart finds that life behind closed doors in the Camelot era was decidedly kinkier than your parents and grandparents let on.

Secondly, My Monster Boyfriend, continuing the Iron Circus tradition of ladycentric erotica anthologies, this one is exactly what it says on the cover: there are monsters, and they are various people’s boyfriends, and there may just be hot, hot monster action going on. Lots of creators on this one, and Spike hasn’t released the full contributor list yet, but you’ll find names like EK Weaver, Jess Fink, Gail freakin’ Simone, and Trudy Cooper.

And since this is a Spike Kickstarter, a couple things we knew were going to happen did in fact happen:

1. The goal was reached ridiculously quickly after launch. Keep in mind it was 9:00pm on the east coast when the campaign went up and promptly started raising US$1000/min before tapering off to US$10K in 15 minutes, US$20K in the first hour, and the entire US$40K goal in less than eight hours. Remember, this was overnight, and word doesn’t spread so quickly when your audience are away from keyboards.
2. There’s gonna be bonuses. As a result of we at Fleen bungling a description of Iron Circus’s bonus structure a little while back , Spike reached out to us and let us know that these projects would use a different pay structure than previous project¹, one that will scale with the number of pages as well as the overfunding. For My Monster Boyfriend and Yes, Roya, pay starts at US$75/page, with an additional US$5/page for US$10,000 over goal.

   One may note that (as of this writing), pay rates are already up to US$80/page. Assuming this one goes follows the same funding patterns as prior ICC smut offerings, I’d expect funding above US$150K (NB: not a formal prediction; we’re still 8 – 12 hours away from being able to use the FFFmk2), meaning page rates of US$130 or more.

Oh, yeah, and the first stretch goal — a reprint of Smut Peddler 2012 — was met by the time Spike woke up this morning. There will be more. Oh, and did I mention that there are previews, more than 20 pages worth, over on the Kickstarter page? Because there are; no links, I’m gonna make you go read the damn thing and find ’em yourself … and before you complain, I just told you about free porn so hush.

The Smut Peddler Double Header runs until Wednesday, 24 February.

Spam of the day:

why havn’t you claimed this Walmart gift yet?

Because Walmart is a rapacious, evil corporation run by the vampiric scions of the Walton family with a bloodthirstiness that would make Vlad Tepes say Hey, maybe just chill a little, and I would rather deal with the bastard child of Verizon and Comcast for the rest of my natural life than set foot in a Walmart. The only worthwhile thing Walmart has even done is be so awful that walmart.horse provoked not a single twinge of sympathy in anybody anywhere.

______________
¹ Briefly, contributors got US$50/page, and a US$50 bonus for every US$5000 over goal.

I would have been willing to spend two or even three of my Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys coins but it turns out blizzards (70.3 cm of snow!) don’t work that way. My spine and I are going back to bed as soon as we’re done here.

• Scott McCloud will be teaching a two day class on comics at the Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art on 20 – 21 February (that’s a Saturday and Sunday) in Van Nuys, California. It’s US$495 for the course, but it’s probably equivalent to at least a semester’s worth of classes at Art School™ if you want to make comics, so jump on that.
• First noted during the blizzard thanks to the work of Fleen Senior French Correspodent Pierre Lebeaupin, cartoonist extraordinaire Boulet had released a do-it-yourself avatar-o-matic, the products of which I’m already starting to see pop up on Twitter. I’ma have to play around with this.

  FSFC Lebeaupin is also staying on top of the ongoing Angoulême story, and we’ll be looking to him for his reactions on the eventual winner of the Grad Prix, and whether or not the voters take the opportunity to leave off for a year.

• This makes so much sense I’m surprised it didn’t happen before today: Angela Melick, engineer and cartoonist, now has a Patreon. Jam’s one of the best — do support her.
• Of course Jim Zub is announcing another series that he’ll be writing for Marvel (Thunderbolts this time). It’s what he does.
• Diana Nock (of Intrepid Girlbot fame) is launching a new webcomic, Wonderlust, today-ish, with five pages, so be sure to scroll back to the beginning. It’s too soon to make a recommendation, but Nock’s past work makes this worth a look.

There’s a new Science Comic from Dante Shepherd, this one illustrated by Matt Lubchanksy on the topic of heat exchangers.

Spam of the day:
So, you guys know that I’ve been in an ongoing dispute with Verizon, which is why it’s especially amusing that they sent this:

Jonas is coming, are you ready?
The most common storm-related occurance is a power outage which can affect your Fios® by Verizon services.

Consider:

1. I don’t have FIOS. They know this, despite the fact that they’ve been trying to upsell me FIOS in lieu of fixing my DSL, and oh yeah — FIOS isn’t available in my area.
2. They sent this oh-so-helpful prep email approximately 03:11 on Sunday, after the snow had been stopped for some six hours.
3. They sent it again twelve hours later.

So in addition to an ongoing dispute, Verizon apparently believes I have the ability to go back in time by 36 – 48 hours.

This is an odd review to write, because although I stand second to no man as a fan of Christopher Baldwin’s Little Dee, this book isn’t really meant for me. That’s because Little Dee And The Penguin has to serve a completely different purpose for a completely different reader, and that reader and I are going to have fundamentally different experiences.

It’s meant to be read without prior knowledge of Dee and her cohorts (indeed, it starts with three separate introductions), it’s meant to tell a single story (the strip was given over to story arcs of a week or two or three, occasionally revisited over the five years it ran) with a beginning, middle, and end (although the strip had an overall direction and distinct endpoints for each of the characters, it had the ability to meander to get there). Everything that makes LDATP a success for that new reader is very possibly going to strike the longtime fan as somewhat unfamiliar.

For example, despite having second billing in the title, the desire of Paisley the Penguin to get back home¹ (and away from those that want to eat her², via a long arduous route with the occasional expat³ along the way) is really the main driving force of the narrative. Dee comes second (her arrival with the animals is a good deal more disturbing than in the strip, and as a result the overall arc from the strip of getting her back home is compressed and emphasized to where it becomes a parallel goal), and the trio of Ted (a bear), Blake (a dog), and Vachel (a vulture) fill in the background.

While Ted is still the original Ted (with the exception of really wanting to get Dee back to the human world; this sotry takes place in the immediate aftermath of meeting her), Blake and Vachel have less time to establish their two primary motivations (Blake: being a free dog and distrustful of humans; Vachel: being a jerk, but eventually a lovable one) and each is rougher-edged as a result.

Functionally, it’s a reboot, but I realize that word has specific connotations that I don’t want to imply. It’s not a case of a cheesy original becoming darker and grittier (cf: Battlestar Galactica), something cheesy becoming more radical and over the top (cf: Charlie’s Angels), or something well-loved but dated (and yeah, a little cheesy) becoming shinier and more lens flare-y (cf: Star Trek). It’s not just the same names with the serial numbers clumsily filed off; it’s a different set of character motivations and a different plot emphasis to tell a different story in a different medium. If you’re looking for an analogue, look to Snoopy Come Home.

If you haven’t seen the movie, it centers around Snoopy getting a letter from his first owner begging him to come visit her in the hospital. Although previously scarcely-mentioned, she drives the plot while the established cast is secondary and reactive to the sudden change in the status quo. The movie essentially becomes a road trip to a goal that’s not really satisfying to anybody and gets walked back to return to how things should be.

Likewise, the theme of Dee has to go back to the humans, just as soon as we lose the polar bears trying to eat Paisley and possibly the rest of us becomes a parallel quest to returning Paisley to Antarctica. Like Snoopy at Lila’s apartment, Dee’s return to the humans won’t stick and it’s only at the very end that Ted, Blake, and Vachel come around to looking at Dee the way they did in the strip (unalloyed love, affection, and whiningly begrudged tolerance, respectively). Little Dee And The Penguin is a different beast than Little Dee, but they both have the same heart, the same emphasis on family (especially one you make yourself), and the same gorgeous work from Baldwin.

But beneath it all, there’s one inescapable truth: even a diehard original-recipe purist like me is going to find LDATP charming and adorable. That younger reader that’s never met Dee and the others? She’s going to wonder why the webcomic is so slow-paced and meandering, but will revel in all the hijinks. And you know what? Little Dee and her friends have enough depth that we can both be right and love them for different reasons; after all, Dee and her friends won’t mind sharing us.

Except Vachel. That dude never shares.

An advanced review copy of Little Dee And The Penguin was provided by creator Christopher Baldwin and publisher Dial Books. The book is available for pre-order now, and will release on 5 April 2016.

Spam of the day:

This amazing water filter removes 99.9% of impurities including flouride

Let me stop you right there. In this household, we believe in the prevention of oral caries, mister!

_______________
¹ All togther now: Oooo I’m, dyin’!

² And again: Pen-go-wins is practically chickens.

³ And one mo’ ‘gain: Say pardon me, but can you help a fellow American who’s down on his luck?

But first, everybody knows that there’s a new Emily Carroll cartoon today, yes? I swear, each story that she puts out is somehow creepier than the one before, and Some Other Animal’s Meat is no exception. She gets more mileage out of one slightly wobbly line, one miniscule suggestion that Something Is Slightly Off (leading to the inevitable truth that Something Is Seriously Off And We’re All Screwed And/Or Doomed) than other horroristas get out of entire novels. 10/10 would be scared witless again.

• It has been about ten months since we pointed you to the fact that Boum was translating her La Petite Révolution into English and running it two pages per week as a webcomic. A Small Revolution had its big gut-punch climax a couple of days back, but today is the day that it wraps up. There’s been plenty of downs and precious few ups along the way, but there’s an odd potential for hope at the end of the tale.

  Revolutions lead to struggle and strife and sacrifice and disquiet¹, trees watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants; yet this particular watering might just lead to a society where just waterings are no longer necessary². Maybe all that happened was one sufferer exacted a price from those that made her suffer. Read the whole thing through.

• The Cartoon Art Musuem continues their cartoonist-in-residence program, as well as their new event-hosting partnership with the FLAX art & design retail concern at their location in the Fort Mason Center for Art & Culture. Specifically, they will be hosting Matt Harding on Saturday, 13 February, from 1:00pm to 3:00pm; the event is free and open to the public, and further details may be found here.
• It’s been a year since Exploding Kittens launched its Kickstarter campaign that became one of the biggest crowdfund deals ever. Not much you can do to surpass that, so why not try? Today marks the launch (iPhone only, booo) of the slightly modified³ Exploding Kittens play-against-your-friends app, with all in-game purchases discounted down to zero for the next four days or so.

  The only way I can think to damage your friendships more than playing Exploding Kittens would be to do so on an app, or to take up Scrabble. Those of you with iDevices, give ‘er a look while those of us with Androids look on sorrowfully from outside in the cold and snow where we’ll die of misery. Have fun without us!

Spam of the day:

Directory of engineering programs available here! Start your search to earn a degree!

I’ve had an engineering degree for more than 25 years, Bunky.

_______________
¹ And they aren’t revolutions until they do; cf: John Adams, on the Congress’s argument as to whether or not to be so rude as to refer to George III as a tyrant, This is a revolution, dammit! We’re going to have to offend somebody!

² I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Painting and Poetry Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine. John Adams, in a letter to Abigail Adams, 12 May 1780

³ It lacks NOPE! functionality, booo.

It’s a good day for those of you that travel to the northerly climes for comics conventions featuring indy-type creators, and are interested in discovering exactly who the guests of such cons would be. Let’s take ’em from North to South, earlier to later, and smaller to larger.

• We mentioned that there was going to be a small convention in Juneau, Alaska, under the aegis of Pat Race and Alaska Robotics about two weeks back. Race has now put up a dedicated site for what is now dubbed Alaska Robotics Mini-Con and the associated camping trip, to be held 22-26 April.

  Confirmed guests appear to have been heavily pulled from those that Race has brought to Juneau over the past couple of years for spotlight appearances; the fact that they’re willing to make the long trek to Juneau speaks well towards how AKR treats its guests. So if you’re in the land of whales ‘n’ bears in April you’ll be likely to meet Kate Beaton¹, Vera Brosgol, Tony Cliff, Amy Kibuishi, Kazu Kibuishi, Dylan Meconis, Ryan North, and Raina Telgemier.

  Joining them will be musicians Seth Boyer, Marian Call, and Molly Lewis, as well as Georgina Hayns and Jeremy Spake from Studio Laika (they’re responsible for the puppet and armature manufacture behind such films as Coraline, ParaNorman, and The Boxtrolls), and superlawyer to the artistic world Katie Lane. After the convention on Saturday, the artists head off camping for a creative retreat, with a limited number of spots for [aspiring and accomplished] artists who want to attend.

  Best of all, AKRMCon has the best first-year show harassment policy I’ve ever seen:

  Many conventions have harassment policies and we feel like it’s important to approach this event in the spirit of inclusion. We love the many varied groups and fandoms that congregate at comic conventions we’ve attended and we want everyone to feel safe and welcome at our convention. If anyone makes you feel unsafe or goes out of their way to make you feel uncomfortable, let us know. We’ll feed them to the bears. [emphasis mine]

  I call upon every convention in the world to adopt this sanction for jerk behavior; f you don’t bears, put the offenders in a box and ship ’em to Juneau with a note asking Pat Race to help and I’m sure he’ll do you a solid.

• Some three weeks later, many of those that were at AKRMCon will be making their way southeast about four time zones to Toronto for TCAF, who have just announced their first eight featured guests. Kate Beaton will be there, of course, along with Duncan Fegredo, Lisa Hanawalt, MariNaomi, Sean Phillips, Michel Rabagliati, Chip Zdarsky, Japanese vulva sculptor Rokudenashiko (really! look her up, she’s super cool!).

  The exhibitor list is too extensive to copy here, but it’ll include Lucy Bellwood, Tony Breed, the Boston Comics Roundtable, Anthony Clark, Eric Colossal, Tony Cliff, Rachel Dukes, Mike Dawson, Sophie Goldstein, John Green, KC Green, Megan Rose Gedris, Meredith Gran, Nick Gurewitch, Der-shing Helmer, Mike Holmes, Kori Michele Handwerker, Alex Heberling

  [inhale]

  Ananth Hirsh & Yuko Ota, Abby Howard, Dustin Harbin, Faith Erin Hicks, Kel McDonald, Erika Moen, Angela Melick, Sfé R Monster, Tom McHenry, Hope Nicholson, Ryan North, Em Partridge, Ryan Pequin, Carey Pietsch, MK Reed, Sarah Winifred Searle, Kean Soo, Tessa Stone, Ben Towle, and EK Weaver. Oh, and also publishers Drawn + Quarterly, Iron Circus Comics, Koyama Press, and Retrofit Comics.

  Also professional terrible person Karla Pacheco, who should not — repeat, NOT — be allowed in the same space as Tony Breed and/or Chip Zdarsky if we (as a people) wish to avoid unpleasantness. Like, international incident unpleasantness.

  As in past years, TCAF, will take place at the Toronto Reference Library, 789 Yonge Street, on 14 (9:00am – 5:00pm) and 15 (11:00am – 5:00pm) May, and it free and open to the public.

Spam of the day:

Your life is at stake: I’m Offering you My special ritual to remove the negative energetic vibration in your home — Adrian Medium – Mentalist – Master Hypnotist – Prophetic Expert

Can you tell what I’m thinking at you right now, Adrian? Here’s a hint: it starts g-o-a-t-s-e.

________________
¹ Beaton’s travel distance from Nova Scotia to Juneau will be approximately 5000 km, greater than the distance to London, Madrid, Havana, or Mexico City.

It’s a day for books, my friends — the greatest invention in human history¹, the root of civilization, our hope in a world that sometimes seems bleak and utterly opposed to knowledge or even simple facts. Today, we celebrate books that are one their way books which could very well change your life.

• Matt Lubchansky and Jaya Saxena together created The New Amsterdam Mystery Company, which has sadly been on hiatus while they work on other projects. Those projects would include Please Listen To Me and associate editorship of The Nib (Lubchanksy), writings in many place but especially The Toast and Hairpin, and one very special project together: their marriage².

  Actually, two very special projects together, as Saxena & Lubchansky are the creators of Dad Magazine (the magazine For Dads – By Dads), the latest issue of which is out now. Even more excitingly, Dad Magazine is getting the book treatment and today reveals its cover (scroll down). Dad Magazine (the book) doesn’t drop until April, but you can order it now, and didn’t Dad always tell you to plan ahead?.

• It is now about two and a half months since Ryan North — The Toronto Man-Mountain and Nexus of All [Web]Comic Realities North of 41°57’51” — announced the forthcoming existence of his second interactive Shakespearean adaptation, Romeo and/or Juliet. Today comes the release of the cover of said book as well as an interview with the mad story path convolutor himself, both at The Mary Sue.

  The release date for R+/-J remains 7 June, and the advice to pre-order stands, as Ryan North promises a special treat to backers of his first interactive Shakespearean adaptation who pre-order the second. Looks like once June rolls around I’m going stop lugging around my copy of TBONTB to shows to get the many awesome artists inside to sign their work, I’ll be lugging around my copy of R+/-J instead. Yay?

• By now you probably realize that I don’t recommend brand-new webcomics — especially pre-launch! — without a damn good reason. Today, I add League of Fonts by Emma T Capps to that very short list because:
  • Fonts
  • Personified as characters
  • Fonts, people

  As mentioned previously, I loves me some fonts, even letting that love guide me on overseas travel to visit places where 500 year old punches and matricies may be observed and not quite touched.

  So far we only know that Times New Roman and Futura are going to be in the cast (bonus points for rendering their employee IDs in the appropriate faces); I’m hoping for some of my favorites like Palatino, Garamond, and Hoefler Text (I’m a sucker for Old-style type design). I think we all suspect that the villain of the piece will be Comic Sans, but we’ll find out together when League of Fonts launches.

  What’s that? You don’t see how today’s post is all about books? Well, what are books set in? Typefaces. Checkmate, pedants.

Spam of the day:

OH,GOOD BLOG.

I KNOW, RIGHT?

________________
¹ Okay, okay, maybe agriculture, fine.

² Awwwww.

Sorry about that — the hosting facility that brings you Fleen was down from approximately 23:30 14 January (last Thursday) until 20:30 15 January (last Friday), and thus we weren’t able to update on Friday. It also appears that when the server came back, Thursday’s update was lost, meaning that news relating to my holy book, Abby Howard, the Cartoon Art Museum, and multiple creators whose comics are coming to film would be lost to the ages.

Except for VaultPress. Their service pings this page pretty much continuously, and when there are changes they are automatically recorded. It was the work of a moment to find the backup taken after Thursday’s update and to restore it to its proper place¹. Heck, as I am writing this the restored site and the draft that I am partway through writing are being backed up in case anything goes wrong again.

Honestly, if you run a WordPress install of any kind, you really should be using VaultPress (their simplest plans are five bucks a month; I pay ’em more for a greater degree of confidence and automation). They don’t pay me to say that, I just think that they’re a damn good service and worth every penny they charge.

• Professional terrible person Karla Pacheco (she’s a lot of fun to drink with!) has a lot of irons in various fires: the most inappropriate children’s book ever, naughty, naughty pirates, and a vagabond lifestyle of boats and comics. In keeping her fans (I know! crazy!) up with the latter, she posted her convention schedule for 2016 and inadvertently let us all in on a key piece of information: TopatoCon 2016 will take place 22-23 October. Seriously, she even scooped TopatoCon’s own site on that one. Start making your plans for *hampton, MA in late October — the cocktail competition we had was such a hit, we’re sure to do a repeat variation of some kind.
• We mentioned the Penny Arcade Kickstart to fund a live-action webseries of Automata, and in what’s nearly world lans speed record time for the entertainment industy², filming has gotten underway and they’ve shared with us costumed photos of their leads with bios.

  Given a series length of five episodes each at 10 – 12 minutes, principal filming may well be done in a week or so (it probably depends on complexity of locations and set dressing as much as anything). Then the long process of post-production and effects generation starts, but I’m guessing they may have rough footage to share at PAX South later this month and possibly a finished episode or two by PAX East in the spring.

• The National Cartoonists Society is soliciting nominations for its various division awards, including (for the fifth year) those in the webcomics sphere. Deadline for nomination is 7 February and in the interests of disclosure I’m part of the consulting committee again this year and will be doing my best to make sure that the best work of the past year makes it to the final ballot.

  Like any institutional awards structure, the NCS division awards are not always going to go to what I personally think is the best work, and no winner is going to satisfy everybody (unless we manage to find the webcomics equivalent of Mad Max: Fury Road), but the odds are better when you participate. So if you can think of longform or shortform webcomics that did stellar work in calendar year 2015 that you think I might not have otherwise noticed, make with the comments.

For reals though, back up your shit³. Like, today.

Spams of the day:
Three messages, all coming from the same source (or at least, all claiming the same, likely bogus, contact address to stop being emailed, ha ha ha):

Is alcohol affecting your life? Search for rehab centers here
Senior Independent-Living May Be The Right Choice-For You
Are you in need of – treatment for an addiction

So apparently I’m in the throes of alcohol use disorder and need treatment and/or a stint in a rehab center, preferably one catering to still-active senior citizens. I can’t wait to figure out what combination of click-tracking led them to that conclusion, but it’s probably somehow Facebook’s fault. Fucking Facebook.
_______________
¹ Okay, it took a moment to find the appropriate backup, about 15 minutes to completely restore the site to the appropriate point in time, and about 2 minutes more to fix the header image.

² Seriously, if this was done through the Hollywood studio system, midlevel executives would still be holding cocaine-and-hookers “meetings” to figure out exactly how much they could pad the production budget to cover cocaine and hookers.

³ To quote the oh-so-quotable R Stevens: I named my hard drive DAT ASS so I remember to always back it up.

What’s this package with no return address and a mess of British stamps on it?, I asked myself. One quick rip of the opening strip later, I had an answer: my personal philosophy encapsulating notebook, courtesy of Stefan Johnson’s Book Block Kickstarter campaign; a bit late, but absolutely exactly what I wanted in all of its Figure 1 glory. This is enough to make me carry a sketchbook to conventions again.

And, per the letter included with the delivery, the Book Block team are gearing up to launch a commercial upload/customization service in the coming months; keep your eyes on www.bookblock.com in the near future if you want to get in on it.

• I realize that January is not, traditionally speaking, an especially spooky time of year (Straubian efforts notwithstanding), but there’s a nice bit of info for those of you that are interested in good, hearty scares. Namely: Abby Howard (whose The Last Halloween just pulled an eleventh-hour reversal on us and now I have no idea where the story is going, in the best possible manner) has announced a new website for her short horror projects, which makes it easy to find some really great work. Bookmark Terror Town to get your short- to mid-length startles on, which so far has features Howard teaming up with writers.

  I love Howard’s take on what’s truly scary, but seeing her work in somebody else’s voice makes it somehow even more unsettling — I’ve perhaps gotten used to how Howard would develop a scene and to see her pictures following a different pace and progression makes everything more a surprise. And you can purchase these comics for your very own in both digital and physical forms, so you’re helping Abby make a living being Abby, which is the very best thing you can do. Check ‘er out.

• The Verge has a nice roundup of upcoming comics adaptations to film and/or TV, as compiled by one of my favorite former writers at The AV Club, Tasha Robinson. Of particular interest to those of us that dig the web-slash-indy comics scene: Kazu Kibuishi’s Amulet¹, Ursula Vernon’s Castle Hangnail², Scott McCloud’s The Sculptor³, Jeff Smith’s RASL⁴, and the omnipresent Noelle Stevenson’s Nimona⁵.
• Continuing their involvement with the community while awaiting a new home, San Francisco’s Cartoon Art Museum is about to have the first of a traveling series of events to be held on the third Thursday of the month, hosted each time at a different Bay Area museum. The inaugural Traveling Third Thursday will be next week, 21 January, at the Museum of the African Diaspora in Yerba Buena.

  The program runs from 5:00pm to 8:00pm, and is free and open to the public. This first event will feature Ajuan Mance, CM Campbell, and Myisha Haynes; those attending can pick up a wristband at MoAD good for all-night happy hours at area bars and restaurants. For info on events in the coming months, visit thirdthursdaysf.wordpress.com.

Spam of the day:

It will flop out of his pants and into you

Oooo, floppy. That’s not half-hearted and mediocre at all!

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¹ With book 7 getting ready to release, this one’s got franchise written all over it.

² From her kids-lit career as opposed to her webcomics career, but man it would be great to get a Digger adaptation.

³ That’s gonna take an SFX budget and a half.

⁴ I love RASL but where the heck is our BONE movie Hollywood do you hate making money or something.

⁵ About which enough good can never be said.

Ten ninjas, even. Through a combination of patience, taking names, insisting politely on being referred to supervisors, patience, refusing to accept a disconnect or promise of a call back, and patience, I have penetrated to the fabled fourth tier of Verizon customer support¹ and am in the channel to talk to somebody at the policy level.²

But my DSL is still borked. Since Sunday afternoon (when I was told things would be fixed in 24-48 hours; we’re now at 72 and counting) I’ve been capped at approximately 2585kbps, and for periods of time I’m down to actual, literal double digit numbers of “k”. The only thing missing from this late-80s early-90s experience is the shrieking modem handshake sound³. Oh, and the original problem, the one that keeps mutating into worse problems, is still there. Fun!

So I’m not real up on webcomics at the moment. Please take some time to enjoy this latest Channel 58 spookathon from Kris Straub, which looked very spooky and creepy except everything is buffering and that is the absolute destroyer of mood and suspense. But it’s Straub, so it’s creepy, I can tell you that on faith alone.

Spam of the day:

Travel in Style! Amazing-Priced Private-Jet Flights.

Maybe if I win the Powerball tonight (not that I’ve bought a ticket or anything).

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¹ Which is actually a contract shop in the Philippines.

² And if that doesn’t work, I have tracked down the Verizon exec in charge of consumer business to a public social media account.

³ Kids, ask your parents, or click here.