Some things are just unforgivable, Blake. Good thing Ted, Dee, and Vachel love you. PS: Welcome back, I will enjoy reading your new adventures twice a week.

On the three-fold Kickstarter path:

• The new Cautionary Tales anthology from Kel McDonald is kicking; as noted in the past, each CT volume takes a continent as its source of inspiration, and for volume 3 we’ve made it to Asia. I knew this one was coming sooner rather than later, as Carla Speed McNeil mentioned her contribution when I spoke to her at NYCC.

  That, naturally, makes me think of the NYCC three years back when McDonald first shared the idea for Cautionary Tales and we speculated on what volume 7 — Antarctica — would be like. It’ll be a few years before we see it, though, so in the meantime enjoy the creators joining McDonald and McNeil, like Meredith McClaren, Randy McMilholland & Andrew McSides, EK McWeaver, Gene McYang¹, Blue McDelliquanti, Nina McMatsumoto, and Mcmany Mcmore. These anthologies are always a treat, so jump on that.

• Speaking of Kickstarter, Evan Dahm launched the Kickstarter for the second volume of Vattu (Vattu 2? Vatutu?), The Sword and the Sacrament. There may be no better mythology-heavy storyteller in webcomics than Dahm, and the history of Vattu and her adventures in the wide world (in ways both within out out of her control) keeps getting broader, deeper, and more satisfying. Almost any of the side characters could be the lead in another series², and Dahm’s physical books have a tangible beauty that match the story. Get in on this one immediately.
• Last 24 hours for the Kickstarter of Zach Weinersmith’s religion-themed comics. It looks like it might fund under my prediction, which means it will merely be in the US$350K range and be his second-highest-funded project. I’m sure he’s crying all the way to self-publishing success.

Spam of the day:

Your husband has it all until now (the only guide to build anything from wood)

Curiously for a spam-filtered communiqué, this is describing actual wood and concerns itself with carpentry. It’s not about the sort of wood that you might be concerned your husband has had until now and presently is presumably lacking.

_______________
¹ A Monkey King story!

² I’d love to see Junti’s story, showing her intersections with Vattu from her POV. Or Shezek and his brother, or Emperor Arrius as a young hothead, or the War-Man, or, or, or.

Lots of air travel, lots of client-site work. I’ll do what I can.

In the meantime, please enjoy this very important clarification from Rembrand Le Compte of Black Tea Comics (previously known as Beardfluff.com), who points out something I meant to say with respect to the How To Go To Space video: namely, the video was about/inspired by Randall Munroe’s Thing Explainer, but was actually made by the folks at the Minute Physics YouTube channel. I knew that, I meant to say that, I got it wrong. Thanks, Rembrand!

I have obtained a new WiFi modem, and things appear to be better than they were for the past couple of days. I’m still nailing everything down and figuring out how to secure stuff. If, uh, you’re hanging around outside my house, please don’t steal my bandwidth, ‘kay?

• We’re getting close to the release of Randal Munroe’s Thing Explainer and its attendant book tour. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make the New York event on 24 November (EMS duty night; trying to swap nights during Thanksgiving week is pretty much impossible), so I’ll just offer him my congratulations now. Condolences also, as I see his next event will be Monday the 30th, which means he’ll be traveling during the single busiest travel weekend of the year¹.

  He’ll bounce down the left coast the first week of December, then do a vertical shot up the Central Time Zone (including a stop in Houston, where I hope he’ll get to visit the Christopher C Kraft Jr Mission Control Center, then a shift eastward to Toronto before heading home. It’ll be a whirlwind of fun, and with any luck, Munroe will manage to conduct himself for those two weeks using only the ten-hundred most common words in English. I understand that after about the first week of a book tour, longer words mostly go away on their own.

  In case that doesn’t make you want to buy his book/attend his tour, consider the video that Munroe made that explains how to be an astronaut (How To Go To Space), endorsed by no less a space-goer² than Commander Hadfield.

• Shifting gears now, I’m looking over an email I got a couple of weeks ago, but haven’t had a chance to work into a post before now. That’s the way it is when stories break, other things get pushed back a day, then another, and so on. In this case, it’s from Douglas Wilson, Manchester animator and webcomicker, regarding a Kickstarter for a print collection of his comics.

  It’s not going well, with five days remaining out of a thirty day campaign, and about 8% raised. Not 8% to go, mind, but 8% total. And I’m not sure why that is.

  It appears that Wilson did everything he was supposed to — has the material already produced, set a modest goal (£3000, or about US$4600), he’s got existing sales channels which presumably produce sales, which means he has an audience. He’s pushed the Kickstarter on his own site, and sent out announcements to the likes of me³ (and it’s a better press release than I usually get). I think it’s just a matter of having people that read his strip, like it well enough, but it’s not their absolute favorite (or second, or third) and thus something they want to drop £15 to £30 on to get a book.

  And that’s okay.

  Kickstarter has produced so many successful projects in absolute terms that we forget that that average fail-to-fund rate is about 50% (if I recall correctly from the last time I saw Cindy Au, director of Community Relations for Kickstarter; I also recall it’s a little better than that for comics). Kickstarter’s not a guarantee, and that is actually a very good thing.

  Because in the years Before Kickstarter, your alternative was to scrape together a bunch of money, make your thing, and then hope to hell it sold because if it didn’t, you were out a bunch of time and money. I feel bad for Wilson that this project isn’t going to happen (at least, not at this time). I think I’d feel worse for him if he’d sunk that three grand into books and sold … looks like eleven print copies, and one more PDF.

  I don’t want to make this sound too rosy — five days from now is going to suck for Wilson, but that’s a lot better than sucks, plus the car doesn’t get fixed, and the thermostat stays lower all winter, and the shoes don’t get replaced.

  Failure is where we learn. Given the lack of psychotic whining one often sees from deluded would-be Kickstarter moguls whose dreams don’t pan out I’ve seen from Wilson, I think he’s taking a reality-based approach to this entire thing.

  Maybe he learns that this readers lied when they said they wanted a book. Maybe he learns that his sales don’t extrapolate. Maybe he learns that a different approach to monetizing his strip is necessary. Maybe he learns that it’s not going to monetize and that time/effort are better spent elsewhere. I’m pretty sure he learns something, and it’s not too expensive a lesson.

  I’m sorry it didn’t work out for him, but I’m not sorry that the costs of this failure are bearable. Here’s hoping it goes better next time.

Spam of the day:
Okay, this is a new one — I got a text message through an email relay, which consists solely of a picture of a business card. That card is for “NJ’s Largest Adult Entertainer”, which appears to be an agency that supplies bachelor parties with naked ladies. The card promises 23 Years Of Excellence, and the name on the card reads:

It’s … it’s beautiful.

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¹ So will I; the Sunday after Thanksgiving, I get to fly on the busiest travel day of the year to the busiest airport in the world. Yay.

² Also a noted moustache-haver.

³ I’m not sure how many people ran those announcements, and honestly I’m not sure that running those makes a huge difference.

Lots of stuff going on today. What shall we go to first?

• Thought Bubble is one of those comics festivals that I really need to get to some day; events have been happening around Leeds for the week, and the creators-meet-fans part happens this weekend. Guests include Kate Beaton (who, according to the Twitter machine, is presently hanging about historical Viking sites, and may never leave them), Noelle Stevenson, John Allison (possessor of the greatest show banner of all time; unobstructed view of the image here), Gemma Correll, Darryl Cunningham, Nicholas Gurewitch, and Kate Leth.

  Exhibitors are listed in a fashion I’ve not seen before: by physical location (TB splits its exhibitors up across several venues), and then by a small image representative of a creator’s work, by property name (not all of which are spelled out). Thus, one may see that the New Dock Hall has an image for Gunnerkrigg Court (captioned, in case you didn’t recognize Coyote), and one may presume Tom Siddell will be there (along with Phillipa Rice and Retrofit Comics).

  This method has a lot of browsability — rather than look for names one is familiar with, you look for art that appeals and then figure out who it may be that creates it. It’s a little less helpful if the display image is atypical for a creator’s work, or if you want to quickly determine who will be there, but for promoting serendipity, it’s pretty great. But it means that I have a harder time recommending specific creators, so maybe next year TB could also provide the traditional alphabetical list? In any event, the creators to be found at the Royal Armouries Hall include Monica Gallagher, Isabel Melançon & Megan Lavey-Heaton; over at the TB Marquee you’ll find Emma Vieceli and Elaine Will.

  Two final thoughts: One, there are many more creators in each of those venues; two, I find it interesting that having to click on art samples that appealed and knowing nothing of the creators until I did, I appear to have discovered almost exclusively the work of women. Dudes, you got to up your game.

• Speaking of Gemma Correll, I now have in my hands the very handsome Eat More Comics, with cover by Correll. I expect that I’m going to love about 80% of what’s inside, loathe about 7%, and like the remainder well enough. That’s actually what I thought was the chief strength of The Nib — editor Matt Bors didn’t seek to have just one point of view. By casting his net wide, I found stuff I never would have otherwise, including stuff I found horrible. It was an anechoic chamber for editorial opinion.

Spam of the day:

F3CkBuddyAlert my username is Volup2us Kisees :)

I’m not sure what kisees means, but I think it costs and extra fifty.

All of a sudden, no network at home for any of the devices, wired or WiFi; reboot the modem, it would come back for about 30 seconds and then disappear. This sort of thing has happened four times in the past, and it’s always been traced to somebody in billing at my DSL provider¹ deciding to switch me to a different circuit further away from my house and crapifying my signal.

Today, however, the tech support drone decides it’s my modem and I need a new one. This declaration came:

1. Just as my signal cleared up and got stable again, which coincided with
2. Me finishing describing my problem, and
3. Reading off the serial number of my modem, which to be fair is sorta old

So I’m gonna get a new modem because it’s probably time and a new one hopefully has a more securely patched chipset inside.

But I’m still pissed off because tech support drone told me he could offer me a US$20 discount on a $US59.99 modem, for a total of US$49.99. I pointed out his math was dodgy. He told me he could give me another discount on a different network plan. I used some bad words internally and told him to just send me the damn thing. No email confirming the order yet either, which absolutely guaranteed means he spelled my name wrong in the email address.

How’s your day going? Let’s talk about something more pleasant.

We mentioned the somewhat circuitous nature of film options last week in the context of Ursula Vernon² and Hamster Princess, noting that just because an option’s been obtained doesn’t mean anything is happening soon. I think the land speed record for option ==> movie in comic land is Scott Pilgrim, and even that took about 3-4 years³. I bring this all up because of some immensely good news that broke yesterday:

Looks like the news is out: Amulet will be a live-action movie, hopefully a series. Looking forward to this. http://deadline.com/2015/11/amulet-kazu-kibuishi-fox-temple-hill-graphic-novel-1201617398/ …

Firstly, there couldn’t be a better property to make a movie out of than Amulet, and live action is going to rule; congrats to Kazu Kibuishi and all his collaborators. Secondly, this did not happen overnight. One may recall (if one has a sufficient memory) that the option for Amulet was first obtained in 2008 (when the plan was for Will Smith to produce and his kids to star).

The Deadline story describes this in terms of X will happen, but so did the Variety story from 2008, so either this is Amulet moving to the next stage of production (which may falter or progress, we’ll all see together), or maybe it’s not closer to being a movie than it was eight and a half years ago. It’s definitely a paycheck for Kibuishi (the 2008 announcement was at Warner Bros and this one is at Fox, so the old option expired, a new one was obtained, and Kazu gets to do the I got paid twice happy dance), so that’s all right.

Thirdly, note the use of the word franchise in that story; with the right cast, the right director, and the right vision, this could be the next Harry Potter. That being said, if some studio dipshit decides that a girl can’t be the central character and changes Emily to a boy, I’m burning down Hollywood, so you best respect the source material, Fox. I’ve got my eye on you. In the meantime, I’ll be over here waiting for the seventh volume of Amulet, due in Feburary.

Okay, going to wrap it here, on the off chance that my network gets stupid again. See you tomorrow, I hope.

Spam of the day:

Predicted In The Sacred Book of Revelation – Obama’s Deadly Curse The massive downfall that willwipe out 49 out of 50 American states … And unfortunately you won’t make it out alive, because what’s coming has the devil sign on it.

Since I won’t make it out alive, I suppose I’ll spend my time wondering which is the heaven-blessed 50th state that survives. I hope it’s something completely unexpected, like Rhode Island, or maybe just the upper peninsula of Michigan.

______________
¹ Rhymes with Morizon.

² Reminder: I loves me some Digger

³ Unless you want to count The Martian as comic land due to Any Weir’s history as a webcomicker. Bit of a stretch, actually.

So this is gonna have to be brief.

• Speaking of crazed rodents, Ryan North and Erika Henderson’s Squirrel Girl continues to charm all and sundry (including me, and I loathe those brush-tailed little terrorists), and to push into every corner of the popular consciousness. Case in point: a statistics assignment being offered up today. I can’t recall ever getting a statistics test/homework problem that mentioned Squirrel Girl, Chipmunk Hunk, and Koi Boi, so point to Stephen Davidson from The Internet for making life a little more absurd for his students.
• Speaking of statistics, Matt Nolan is back with the complete Numberwang on Oh Joy, Sex Toy’s second Kickstart. I realize that not all creators are comfortable with sharing data like this and some actively object to the notion that they should; I would never advocate that it be required, but man I love digging into numbers, and the value to the next crop of creators in planning their own crowdfunding efforts is impossible to overstate. Many thanks to Nolan for providing the data and the learning opportunity; more thanks to Nolan and Erika Moen for making sweet, sweet love to the internet every week with OJST.
• Speaking of nothing in particular, turns out I’m not the only one that’s having problems getting San Diego Comic Con to issue press credentials with anything approaching functionality. For the record, I still haven’t heard back from the inquiry I made to SDCC press reg email last month, nor have I received any replies on the process I began a year ago to get credentialed for 2015. I have received an offer from another comics news outlet that believes it will be able to provide me with access (they bring stringers each year, so this is legit), for which I am grateful. We pixel-stained wretches helping each other out doesn’t change the fact that the SDCC press reg process is broken, and the people running it are bad at their jobs.

Spam of the day:

Stephanie’s 145-Pound Weight Loss

If I get on Stephanie’s miracle diet, I will mass negative six kilos. Pass.

This is going to be brief, because it stands alone nicely. Mark V dropped me an email over the weekend to make sure I saw a blogpost from Darrin Bell of Candorville¹ on the topic of working for exposure. Let us remind ourselves momentarily of the Stevens Rule: People die of exposure², and then enjoy Bell’s decision to tell the Huffington Post to go pound sand:

I’ve been “Huffed” too. Five years ago, I noticed they’d written an article transcribing a Candorville strip. They repeated it word for word, and described the action. I wrote to the author and asked why they didn’t just pay to run the cartoon itself, or at the very least link to the cartoon on my website (not that that would’ve been a good substitute for payment, but at least it wouldn’t have been a kick in the slap in the face). I sent them the contact info for my syndicate. Instead of licensing it, they simply –- immediately –- deleted the article.

But lots of people find themselves in that position, sadly; what made Bell’s post worthwhile was the story of how he learned to never work for free, because of an object lesson he received from his godmother at the age of thirteen. I’m not going to copy it here — follow the link above and read the entire thing, it’s not long — but I wanted you to see it because it can never be said too often: your creative work has value. Honestly, we ought to make that lesson a little more compact, but for some reason those that don’t value your work get pissy when you tell them Fuck you, pay me.

Gotta clean out the spam filters, they’re piling up. Time for the Spam of the day lightning round!

Hey, Missed e-mails phenomenally

Liar.

©GOOGLE E-MAIL LOTTERY PROMOTION INETRNATIONAL LOTTERY SECTION (E) SPAIN 2015. Attn: Winner

Enormous liar.

Chat with 20000 Russian and Ukrainian Beauties

While your stock photos are enticing, I don’t believe you.

55+ And Looking For An Apartment in Your Area? Click here!

I am not a senior citizen.

Your Account Has Been Limited PayPal ID PP-658-119-347

I don’t have a PayPal account.

Browse Profiles of Local Jewish Singles at JDate

I’m married. Also not Jewish, unless selling my soul to Rosenberg includes a retroactive transitive bar mitzvah.

_______________
¹ Those of you who’ve seen STRIPPED know that he gets a lot of screen time, because he’s got a lot of smart, interesting things to say. The hivemind made up of Fred Schroeder and Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett chose well in making him one of the central voices in the film.

² And its corollary: when the work has already been run by somebody that assumed you’d be fine with exposure, the proper response is I don’t care that you took it down, you ran it already and that costs money; my invoice is on its way.

Working outside them, finding places that can be them.

• So if there’s one thing that I’m deeply conflicted on, it’s pointing out failures to fulfill Kicstarter rewards. I’m not talking about obvious scams or people that clearly have no idea what they’re doing; I’m talking about people who have the ability to create what they say they’re going to create, have every intention of making good, and then things happen.

  Sometimes, it’s out of their control. Sometimes it’s reach exceeding grasp. I’ve got one promised reward that I know I’m never going to see and I’ll never mention it to the creators (who are friends of mine) because it’s honestly not worth the headache.

  But sometimes it’s impossible to not talk about; case in point, the very prominent, very high-funded Kickstart from Strip Search alum Lexxy Douglass that started towards its stated goals, almost immediately stalled, and unexpected revived:

  After a two year hiatus, page 008 of The Cloud Factory is up http://tmblr.co/ZnogBy1xWW3Tv

  At a certain point, no matter what kept you from fulfilling, even when those obstacles seem less and progress could be made, the thought of going back to something that you publicly promised and didn’t make good on when you said you would … you end up with the makings of the most vicious of circles.

  This unfinished page has been one of the biggest obstacles in my repeated attempts to resume the project.

  There’s more at the Tumblr; go read it. It must have been tough for Douglass to write, and she’s not making any promise about a defined schedule for future updates. From the outside, she seems to be staring directly into the classic dilemma of being so swept up into worldbuilding and backstory and design that the actual production fails to match up to internal expectations and keeps getting pushed back.

  I wonder how many intricately-plotted stories exist in the world, locked away in imaginations and never making it to the page¹? If nothing else, let’s try to remember that behind every well-intentioned crowdfunded campaign, there’s a person there feeling the weight of expectations. Even the best handled campaigns must be stressful out of all reasonable measure.

• How about a less fraught story to send you out on the weekend? I knew this was coming on account of how at the end of TopatoCon, the TopatoCo store that I worked (alongside the legendary Ferocious J, under the guidance of Agent Paperklip) was, per the direction of TopatoCo Vice President Of Kicking Your Ass Holly Rowland, not torn down and packed out at the end of the show.

  The decision was made to leave the store stocked, and run it through the holidays for the benefit and convenience of Pioneer Valley locals. The shopping season begins tomorrow and runs past even the worst New Year’s hangover. Go nuts.

Spam of the day:

You have deferred notifications traitor
With many thanks, Facebook team
I’m honestly not sure if I’m more offended by the notion that I’ve committed treason, or that I have a Facebook account.

_______________
¹ And if my memory serves me, this is still the extent of ongoing story that she’s produced so far; she’s an amazing illustrator, but as I noted during her time on Strip Search, her ability to craft and pace a story is still unknown.

Along those same lines, Kickstarts like hers — intended to fund time to create something — have become markedly less popular of late, and remain inherently risky for both backers (who can easily end up feeling burned) and creators (who can kill the goodwill of their fans).

So I was surprised to see that a high-goal campaign launched the other day along exactly those lines. Jake Parker’s a known quantity as a creator, but if something comes up that derails his ambitious production schedule? SkyHeart could become the next Cloud Factory and nobody wants that.

You’d think after doing this for nearly 10 years, I’d have a better feel for when work was gonna get in the way. Then again, my match says this is the 2663rd posting I’ve made on this here blog, meaning I’ve posted about 73% of the days since launch, so I’m not gonna beat myself up too much over it. Here’s that big news that I promised you.

• I’m assuming that you’ve all seen the big interview with Kate Beaton running at The Comics Journal? It was started at SPX (a place as formative to Kate Beaton, Internet Cartoonist as Cape Breton is to Kate Beaton, Alive Human) and gives a nice recap of how she simultaneously got to be the favorite cartoonist of those who love comics and those who are completely indifferent to comics.

  Personally, I was struck by how things happened for Beaton both very quickly and very slowly — she bounced around between the Maritimes, Vancouver, the Alberta tar sands, and Toronto, becoming a huge deal in webcomics circles while simultaneously isolated from the community. The success of her first pieces of merchandise brought her quickly to full-time pro status, but at the same time she went back to Fort McMurray and the tool crib to retire student loan debt. She exploded in popularity at that time, with her ballpoint-on-printer-paper drawings¹ — uploaded at night from the middle of an environmental moonscape — capturing something in all our hearts, and then found herself an Official Big Deal with her return to the faster pace of metropolitan life.

  See also: her entry into childrens books took a couple of years from suggestion to pitch to launch, and some of her best work comes about from leaving the speed of urban life for the sedate pace of Nova Scotia (cf: any of her family comics). She’s a pile of contradictions, then; she contains multitudes, all of them funny, insightful, charming, adorable. Go read it.

• The other big news I wanted to make sure you all saw came from The Hollywood Reporter; it’s been a while since Ursula Vernon did webcomics on the regular², what with all the kids lit she’s writing, and the modern takes on fairy tales and fantasy, and the podcasting on disturbing events/disturbing food, and all the rest. So maybe you didn’t notice that one of her books got optioned for film by an obscure sometimes voice actor:
  

  Disney has optioned the movie rights to Castle Hangnail, a children’s book by Ursula Vernon, for an adaptation to be produced by Ellen DeGeneres.

  So that’s all right. As noted on this page on several previous occasions, an option doesn’t mean that Vernon is now rolling in huge piles of money; it doesn’t even mean that a movie will get made anytime soon or at all. Lots of things can happen between now and some nebulous point in the future, particularly if Degeneres and Disney decide to go the animated route ’cause dang, that takes time. But it means that Vernon’s more on the radar of the deep-pocketed entertainment industry, that other studios may try to lock up rights to her other works in case Castle Hangnail becomes a monster hit, and each of those things means the possibility of less financial wobbliness than is usually found in the indy comics/indy writer career path.

  Vernon celebrated the announcement by welcoming a new rescued dog into her household and threatening a hack webcomics pseudojournalist who smarted off at her on Twitter. Honestly, she’s probably happier about identifying a new moth in her garden than anything else in the last week, which means she’s unlikely to go the coke and hookers route of other suddenly successful people; Fleen congratulates Vernon on not letting Hollywood change her.

Spam of the day:

****Second email notice***** Sequel to your non response of our earlier letter sent by post to you by to you on behalf of the Trustees and Executors of the Estate of our late client.

Been getting a lot more of these scams lately; bonus points for this actually being a second email and being signed by the same fake lawyer (who claims to be from Zurich but has a Russian character in the middle of his Germanic name and give a UK phone number).

______________
¹ As Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett, her choice of topic (literature, history), posting schedule (irregular), posting location (Livejournal), and drawing materials should have killed any chance of success, but her style, humo[u]r, and raw skill overcame those presumed handicaps.

² As always, I loves me some Digger.

The world’s neediest class and a new furnace installation have robbed me of all time today, which is a shame because there’s stuff I wanted to talk about. Tomorrow, promise.