In all other respects I generally agree with him, but I am firm in this: feta is gross and its presence on an otherwise-delicious pizza is just wrong. I’m getting ahead of myself, we’ll come to that bit later.

• It’s been maybe six weeks since David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc and semi-pro Mr Bean impersonator) announced that he was taking legal advice to determine if it would be possible to produce a printed version of Irregular Webcomic without running afoul of the LEGO corporate behemoth. It appears that the answer was affirmative, given the announcement today:
  

  I have started work to have collections of Irregular Webcomic! strips printed in book format, for purchase.

  Boom. That’s the sound of perhaps the longest-running webcomic without a print collection (going on thirteen years old) giving its readers what they want. Given a deep archive filled with interleaved storylines, Morgan-Mar opted out of the sequential approach, and will be going with a themed collection:

  The first book will collect all of the Fantasy theme strips up to the hiatus period which began with strip #3198. By my count, that’s 504 strips. With some bonus material, we’re estimating about 140 pages.

  Smart move, by the way — grabbing the first 500 or so strips in IW history would require readers to hop between fourteen different storylines, and not get much resolution on any of them. Also, I’ll note that the Fantasy theme probably makes the least use of actual LEGO assets¹ (other than the Me theme), as the main characters are painted RPG miniatures and not LEGO minifigs; the branded building bricks are used more for backgrounds, props, sets, and side characters. Having less prominent LEGO stuff in the LEGO-themed comic is probably a safe move from a legal standpoint, at least to start.

  Morgan-Mar is presently working with the wonderful folks at Make That Thing, with plans to launch the requisite Kickstarter around the first of the year so as to avoid the holiday confusion (not to mention the tax implications of making a bunch of money in 2015 but not spending it until 2016). I’ll keep you appraised of any future developments, but I will say that this exciting news. Very exciting.

• Speaking of unreasonably large Kickstarted books from longtime webcomickers, Ryan North officially finished the last stretch goal of the To Be Or Not To Be campaign: he made a pizza that looked like Kate Beaton’s Hamlet portrait and ate it. And then, because he is a Ryan-sized man and has prodigious hunger, he also made one that looked like Beaton’s Ophelia and then ate it, too.

  There was a third pizza².

  This third pie resembled Beaton’s take on Juliet, and with that, North announced the sequel to TBONTB, the long-rumo[u]red Romeo and/or Juliet. Key points: the book will not be crowdfunded, but rather published by Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin. As a result, a hard release date can be promised (7 June 2016), the book is in a final form (no stretch goals), and will feature 400 pages and (by my count) ninety friggin’ artists providing illustrations. I ain’t typing out the list but you can find a copy/paste of it below the cut.

  Oh, and let me point out this one line near the bottom of the announcement:

  I can’t say more about the book JUST YET, but I will say this: as someone who has backed the original Kickstarter and is also awesome, be sure to hold on to your preorder email receipt. For SURPRISES :0 [emphasis original]

  Done, and done!

• Still on Kickstarted books, the TJ & Amal omnibus got a nice writeup today at The AV Club, and not to do with Kickstarted books at all, yesterday’s Nick Trujillo news has revealed itself: Glitched is running as a Twitter account, and appears to make use of the new polling feature. IN-teresting.

Spam of the day:

You have missed messages vindication Cordially Skype+ service

Weird, it’s almost like I’m being invited to click on links of unknown provenance by services that I don’t use.

_______________
¹ Or maybe the Space theme, for similar reasons.

² cf: Ryan-sized man.

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So much exciting news today, you guys. So very, very much.

• The Race Is On! The first four Scott C paintings (cf: here) have been released into the wild, and residents of Monterey, New York, somewhere in London I guess, and Toronto have been scrambling to find the treasure.

  Follow C’s twitterfeed to learn which ones have been claimed (there was a person that missed the Ghostbusters painting by seven minutes, but got to meet Mr C as a bonus), and keep an eye on Slashfilm and Great Showdowns for the rest of the week to learn about the remaining 21 paintings up for grabs.

• The Reviews Are In! Jorge Cham’s second tie-in movie — titled The PhD Movie 2, appropriately enough — has garnered its first major-media review in the pages of the New York Times. Okay, it’s the Education section, not the film section, and it’s less a review, more of an abstract, but when was the last time something you wrote got quoted in the Times, Mr or Ms Smartypants? For the record, I’m not a postdoc and I sound Statistically speaking, you’re three times more likely to get cancer than you are to get a grant funded by the NIH to cure cancer to be pretty damn amusing.
• The Wait Is Killing Me! Nick Trujillo made an impression in his too-short time in competition on Strip Search; he romped all over the immunity challenges for the first couple of days before being double-eliminated with Mackenzie Schubert on Day 4 and, uh, spoilers for a web series that ran more than two years ago.

  Nick’s getting ready to launch a brand new comic sometime today, but first he’s busy letting us all know he’s got to do work stuff and leaving us hanging for the time being which is building up the anticipation and attention. Well played, Trujillo, congratulations for getting us to fall into your little trap.

• Aaaaahhhhh! Fat Pony plushes are now available for purchase. I repeat, a niece who loved the crap out of The Princess and the Pony at her birthday is going to really enjoy Christmas. She’s a bit young to worry about things like what day of the week it is, but if you need a calendar for 2016, Beaton and the Pony have you covered there, too.

Spam of the day:

Looking for the ultimate way to experience GIANTS Software’s blockbuster Farming Simulator 2015 Gold Edition?

You guys, this is amazing. It’s less spam and more press release, but some company thinks that farm equipment driving simulation games are going to be so massively popular that they have produced a specialized controller bundle that goes for US$299. They want to send me a review unit.

Must be the incipient Halloween, when the dead walk, but we’ve got some revivals to mention today.

Let us note that a new A Softer World may be found today, on the topic of Halloween. Second, the Cartoon Art Museum (which, as we noted recently, is not so much gone as couch-surfing until it finds its own place again) announced that it will be at a new Disney fan event, Mouse-Con, on 15 November in Concord, CA.

But the big news is twofold.

Firstly, the long-hiatused Achewood sees a return of sorts today. Specifically, the Achewood in-character blogs, which have been on hiatus more than two years¹, see a new post from Peter “Nice Pete” Cropes². It is a meditation on life, death, the passage of time, Meyer lemon curd, and gluten-free pastry. It is the best thing that you could possibly read today, unless you scrolled down through Nice Pete’s archives to rediscover his thoughts on the topic of Rachael Ray.

And secondly, that Homestar Runner’s annual Halloween cartoon is out and — as usual — the costumes are excellent as well as being deep cuts. I’d say my favorite is probably Homestar himself as [spoiler — see below the cut], The Cheat as [spoiler], or The Poopsmith as [spoiler].

Happy Halloween (early), don’t forget to turn your clocks back this weekend (USA only) and remember to change the batteries in your smoke detectors. See you all on Monday.

Spam of the day:

Dear Sir/Ma, September 2015 Invoice is yet to be paid and we are sending you a reminder. Attached is September Invoice #7446-483 kindly review and have this settled.

That’s odd, I don’t remember doing business with an anonymous company in Lithuania. Let me just click on this completely innocuous document link so I can clear this up!

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¹ Last strip update: 7 April 2014. Last blog updates: Emeril, 12 May 2006; Lil’ Nephew and Lyle, 4 May 2008; Molly, 29 July 2008; Ray, 12 December 2008; Cornelius Bear, 4 April 2009; Pat, 6 April 2009; Téodor, 16 July 2012; Roast Beef, 25 October 2013.

² Nice Pete last updated on 6 October 2013.

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Lots of book news today at Fleen Central. Let’s get stuck in.

• Okay, big disclaimer up front: KB Spangler is a great friend of mine, I did the foreword for the first collection of her comic, and I’ve been an alpha reader of each of her novels, so take what I’m about to say with however large a grain of salt as you think it deserves.

  Her latest novel, Greek Key releases today in paperback and various electronic formats, and it is friggin’ fantastic — hardly a surprise, given her prodigious skills as a professional editor. She’s got a sharp way with words, the ability to make sudden plot twists look obvious in retrospect, and a completely new take on the myth of Helen of Troy that took my breath away¹.

  If you read her webcomic, this story will fill in bits of the underlying mythology in ways that you will appreciate; if you don’t read her webcomic², everything you need to know will be recapped for you in a natural way and you’ll enjoy a damn good story on its own. Get on this one now.

• Not released, but well into the print pipeline, Ananth Hirsh was kind enough to share pages from the proofs of Lucky Penny over on his Tumblr. There’s cover shots, under the dustjacket of the hardcover shots, interior pages with new shading shots, and even some wet proof shots. This is gonna be one pretty book.
• Just starting its journey to print, the new edition of Shadoweyes by Sophie Campbell (known these days for her work on the comic of Jem & the Holograms) is now Kickstarting under the auspices of Iron Circus Comics, aka kicker-of-all-asses [C] Spike [Trotman]. Slave Labor Graphics published an earlier edition way back in 2010, but this one will be nearly twice as long and in color, so even those that are familiar with the story will likely want to check it out with an eye towards ordering.

  This’ll be the third Kickstart of the year³ for Spike and the fourth of the past year (Poorcraft: Wish You Were Here wrapped in mid-December 2014), with two more due before the end of the the year. That’s a level of work that would kill most people, but Spike is not most people — she’s the people that was always told that she couldn’t make comics the way she was, and couldn’t make a living doing the things she was doing, and decided to the best way to get the naysayers to shut the hell up forever would be to work hard and just friggin’ do those things.

  Naturally, those people now all bitch and moan that she’s somehow cheating, because it’s obvious that you can’t possibly succeed the way she has. Here’s a quick note for the bitchers and moaner — keep it up. Spike finds your anguish to be absolutely delicious.

  Anyway, Shadoweyes is just shy of 50% of the way to goal just shy of 23 hours after launch; the early bird rewards are all gone, but there’s plenty of comic goodness still to be had.

• The greatest art hunt in comics kicks off on Monday, taking place across a week, 19 cities, and five countries as Scott C celebrates the debut of the latest Great Showdowns collection by hiding (or arranging the hiding of) small paintings inspired by popular films in locations where the films took place, starting Monday 2 November and ending Sunday 8 November.

  Announcements as to which scenes are depicted (and thus which location to search) will be made on io9 on Monday, Slashfilm the rest of the week, as well as at Great Showdowns (and presumably C’s twitterfeed). Keep your eyes on the sites and then get searching!

Spam of the day:

The Best of: Sexy Fish

Thought I’d left something out from the headline, didn’t you?

_______________
¹ She’s also big into footnotes. I’m telling you, she’s the whole package.

² Also, what the hell is wrong with you?

³ Following TJ & Amal omnibus (now nearing the end of fulfillment) and New World (which suffered from the bane of anthologies — late submissions — but will be shipping in the coming weeks).

I mean, it’s not like anybody thought that Zach Weinersmith would have trouble meeting at US$15K Kickstarter goal, seeing as how his previous projects have funded at levels ranging from US$47,000 (of a US$20K goal) to US$384,000 (of a US$30K goal). I’m not sure that I expected to see Religion: Ruining Everything Since 4004 BC become his third-most funded project before the 30 hour mark, or be on pace to obliterate all prior records, as the Fleen Funding Formula Mark II puts Religion at US$480K to US$720K final funding.

To put that in perspective, it’s potentially twice the take for his second-highest funded previous project, Science: Ruining Everything Since 1543; it’s also well above current top funder Augie and the Green Knight. Heck, even it if continues at its current long tail rate of “only” about US$7K/day, you’re looking at a total of US$356K, or just about midway between Science and Augie.

Since the only question is how incredibly overfunded Religion will be, maybe I should direct your attention to some of the other webcomics Kickstarts that are currently running? As of this writing, Lunarbaboon vol 2 is at 340% of goal with three weeks to go, but the fifth volume of Spinnerette is still a couple thousand shy (although with three weeks to go, it seems pretty safe).

Significantly, the tenth-anniversary edition of SPQR Blues (think Bite Me, but imperial Rome instead of revolutionary France) is sitting at an even US$5000 of a very modest US$8500 goal with only 11 days to go. If you were ever going to take a leap of faith into a webcomic that you weren’t familiar with on my say-so, this would be the one.

Spam of the day:

Breast Reduction Information

First it was the breast enhancement, then bras, now reduction? Make up your mind, spammers! Also, still a cishet dude.

And when I do, I have two Turnpikes (Pennsylvania and New Jersey) to deal with on a Friday afternoon. That’s it, never seeing home again, I had a good run. In the meantime, consider the following:

• The Joe Shuster Awards get respect ’round these parts for consistently having a strong slate of candidates, and being restricted to very few categories. The 2015 iteration was posted on Sunday but it’s only in the past 24 hours or so that the comics press has noticed on account of they were given out at the Forest City Comicon of London, Ontario and it appears to have been lightly attended by said press. Collectively, we suck.

  There were three honorees from the world of (approximately) webcomics this time around, with Outstanding Cartoonist / Auteur going to Bryan Lee O’Malley for Seconds, Outstanding Webcomics Creator / Créateur de Bandes Dessinées Web to Nicole Chartrand for Fey Winds, and This One Summer continuing its romp through awards season with Outstanding Writer / Scénariste going to Mariko Tamaki. Congratulations to all the winners.

• It’s been said a lot that being a webcomic creator means that you have 10,000 bosses that would need to fire you in order to lose your job, but also that having one superfan who’s willing to buy your stuff is more important than a thousand of them. I can only imagine what having a billionaire fan means, although I suppose we could ask Matt Inman about his buddy Elon, and today it appears that Randall Munroe has a fan named Bill.

  Bill Gates, that is. Never hurts when the actual richest guy in the world name checks you:

  I’m a fan of Randall Munroe, the guy behind the Web comic XKCD and the book What If?. I’m also a big supporter of the effort to end polio. So anything that combines Randall and polio eradication is great in my book.

  Here’s a strip Randall drew for us in honor of World Polio Day. I got a kick out of it and thought I’d share it with you.

  Sometime in the recent past, Gates passed the threshold where he has not been in charge of Microsoft longer than he was in charge of it, and I for one am thrilled, given that his free time these days is spent on things such as eradicating polio. At some point in the future people will forget how Gates made his money and only marvel at how much of it he gave away; I can’t think of a better thing to spend it on that causing this particular extinction, and if the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is looking for another pernicious evil that needs extirpation, may I suggest squirrels? Okay, fine, not as icky as, say, ticks, but that’s part of their evil — they look all innocent and fuzzy and then BAM! Murder city.

• I was listening to NPR this morning and heard a story about how the United Autoworkers basically started with a strike in Flint, Michigan that involved the National Guard and improvised weapons. Here’s hoping the grad students at the University of Missouri highlighted in today’s PhD have a listen to that story and find a way to accomplish the same. Not sure they’re going to set up industrial-strength slingshots and wang door hinges at riot cops, but they have other weapons. Like, say, if the riot cops all submit essay tests and the grad students mark ’em up with extra red ink.

  Kidding aside, the grad students (and adjunct faculty) are the only thing holding together the college educational system in a lot of schools, and they’ve had the crap exploited out of them for far too long. I hope they light an organizational fire that resolves at least some of their legit grievances.

Spam of the day:

Too bad we must return them.

Yeah, but what are you going to do with five gallon of ticks?

I had other things I was going to talk about today, and I will tomorrow. But an update this morning has preoccupied me to such as extent that I can’t do anything else justice today.

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of everything that Dave Kellett’s doing with Drive, and I’ve got plenty to be a fan of, seeing as how the story is maybe a third of the way told at this point. I have a million questions about the future Kellett’s laid out, the nature of the conflict, the structure of the society, and he’s politely deferred all of them.

But I’ve never had so many questions spring from a single sentence before.

Here’s what we know — the Jinyiwei are the secret police that even the regular secret police don’t know about; they are the Emperor’s all-powerful sword-hand, the instrument of his (or her, there have been Empresses in this Second Spanish Empire) will. The Emperor says fight and they fight, he says kill and they kill, he says utterly suppress and dominate an entire planet and it becomes their headquarters. At least, that’s the story up until six words are uttered by a woman high up (perhaps highest up) the malevolent food chain:

Can’t have the Emperor asking questions.

That line chilled me, more than the casual cruelty this woman is shown to have dished out on the page, more than the horrific injuries she’s apparently survived (presumably in the line of duty)¹. Because the Jinyiwei are meant to be the tool of the Emperor, but what do they actually serve? His will? What they think will best serve his will and don’t bother him with the messy details? What they think his will should be? Because by announcing that the Jinyiwei will take over the mission of the Machito’s crew, Ms Terrifying³ is directly countermanding the Emperor’s orders and condemning at least one member of La Familia to death.

So now I’ve got questions: To what extent is the Jinyiwei a loyal force verses an independent power center? How many members of La Familia serve in their ranks (I’m guessing a smart Emperor would want to keep possible rival claimants far away from secrets and skullduggery)? And if they’re so very, very good at being the secret police, how is it possible that the current Emperor was successful in his murder of the previous Emperor without their knowledge? Do they protect the Emperor as long as he lives and transfer their loyalty regardless of the circumstances of accession, or is it not possible to take the throne without their assent/active participation? There were hints before, but that’s exactly the sort of reputation a secret police would want to promote to make their job easier; this is confirmation straight from the viper’s mouth.

More than a single new antagonist, those six words have revealed an entire (likely thoroughly corrupt, with the idealistic weeded out early and fatally) power structure that probably holds an entire planet in a state of slavery and cannot be reasoned with or evaded — the Machito’s crew cannot come out this alive without effectively taking on the entire empire and doing so in such a thorough manner as to effectively smash all the existing power centers. Young ‘Nando is either going to die or take the throne; there are no other outcomes.

Oh, and Steve is totally doomed. He’s either a complete dick or redeems himself defying his superior. No way he can carry out the order to kill Taneel, ‘Nando, Cuddow, and the others.

The story has taken a darker turn, and the greatest threats to humanity are no longer their hubris, their recklessness with the Drive, the Continuum of Makers, the Vinn, or the Emperor’s quest for power. It’s a deadly bureaucracy that likely tells itself that everything it’s doing is for the greater good. The much-discussed banality of evil has rarely been revealed so efficiently.

And it’s all one strip after the story of First Minister Huggstable. I think that’s what they call turning on a dime.

Spam of the day:

3 zones of comfort to life, shape and support

Yeah, not really in the bra market right now.

________________
¹ Even more than those glasses. Seriously, Kellett, what’s with you and the Far Side-style cats-eye glasses? Or are we meant to infer a relationship between this obvious antagonist and the kindly Captain Taneel²?

² Boo, by the way. Booooo.

³ Or El Puño, the Fist, to use her title.

To be fair, Brad Guigar and I spoke about many things over dinner and island whisk[e]y last night (he stayed on Islay, I started in Japan and ended in Orkney), ranging from who is doing great comics and the potential for a Patreon bubble collapse to his discovery of how challenging drawing the naughty comics has been for him these past few months. Short version: the money is very nice, but there are societal hurdles. Shorter version: he’s never been so glad that his mom doesn’t ever read his comic. On the plus side, he gets to deduct porn as legitimate business expenses. It was a wonderfully wry conversation that looked at both sides of that tension.

But today, there’s a far better conversation, far briefer, and we all get to share in it. You’ll have to supply your own booze.

I call Erika Moen Hurricane Erika (although I may stop, as that name was actually used this season and was rather deadly) because she’s a force of nature. She’s spent a significant amount of her comics career getting shit on by people that have decided to assign motives to her or make her the villain in their own personal psychodramas. Basically, people forgot that DAR-era Erika was not a cartoon character, but an actual person with a life that doesn’t perfectly parallel with those of her critics; once they forgot, they never remembered.

Today’s a little different. Today, she’s anticipating getting shit for being who she is and what she actually does. I imagine it’s marginally better to get grief for your actual own self instead of somebody’s invented version, but not a whole lot better.

Let me back up a moment.

Today’s Oh Joy, Sex Toy is about something Moen hasn’t test-driven or done, but something she’s thinking about doing and how she’s conflicted about the likely blowback. Specifically, porn star James Deen has invited Moen and husband Matt Nolan to make porn with him¹ and do a comic about the experience. They’re into the idea, they want to do it, and they haven’t yet — or at least, haven’t told us if they have or not — because of the likely side effects. Moen’s comic career work will no longer be what you find on Google:

If I do this, when you search for my name the first thing you’re gunna see is my vadge getting pounded. A video of me fucking will eclipse everything else I’ve accomplished and created. [emphasis original]

And that’s before the internet commentariat that despised Moen for who they thought she was will start to despise Moen for something she’s actually done; fortunately, internet people never make their displeasure with complete strangers known². And even worse than asshole internet randos, Moen anticipates getting treated differently by actual people in her life:

They’re cool with you reviewing sex toys and going to sex parties and featuring sex work in your comics, but if they knew a video of you fucking existed they’d be appalled?

That’s Leia Weatherington, the other half of the conversation featured in today’s comic; she has zero fucks to give for anybody that pulls that shit, and good for her. It’s entirely possible that she and Moen will get an uptick in their average internet asshole contact rates just for being shown to have this conversation, which makes them both brave as hell in my book.

So there’s the dilemma — something that Moen wants to do, with her husband’s enthusiastic cooperation, completely in line with the sort of experiential consumer reporting/education comics journalism that she’s known for could carry significant negatives. I’d love to reach out to her and advise her to tell her haters (present and future) to fuck off, but I’m not the one that would have to bear the brunt of that bravado from my safe remove.

The comic ends on a To be continued, and whatever Moen decides, I hope she can find the balance between brave and emotional safety, long-held want and personal relationships. Maybe Erika and Matt and James Deen make porn despite the negatives. Maybe Dan Savage’s HUMP Festival³ offers a middle path. Maybe the discussion is the most important thing. But in any event, Moen (and Weatherington, and Nolan, and hell, James Deen too and let’s throw Guigar on the pile while we’re at it⁴) are all to be applauded for challenging a culture that wants everything to be sexy all the time but also wants to punish those that are/create material that is.

My most sincere thanks to Moen for once again generously, courageously sharing who she is. It’s not easy to tell the world that you exist and what you’re like, but she always makes it look graceful and messy in equal measure.

Spam of the day:

(1) New Message from Jessgirl86 (9 miles away)

Oh great, now I’ve got a Rick Springfield earworm going on. THANKS, spammers.

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¹ Something that apparently anybody can apply to do on Deen’s website [NSFW, obviously)

² I am not meaning to minimize Nolan’s involvement in all of this; he and Moen are partners in OJST as well as life, and would be partners in this porn adventure. But let’s face it, a dude is not going to get even one percent of the vitriol that a woman would.

³ Where amateur filmmakers create five minute porn shorts — of any degree of explicitness, any topic, any genre or medium — and they get shown in an actual theater to an audience, then the movie file is publicly destroyed. You get to be in porn but not have it follow you around for the rest of your life.

⁴ Ladies and gentlemen, start your fanfics.

Multiple things happening in the Wide World o’ Webcomics, and I get to have dinner with Brad Guigar? My cup runneth over.

• Fastest moving story of the day: Zach Weinersmith has launched a new book Kickstarter and celebrated by making today a three comic day. Three comics, three alt-texts, three voteys, it’s a weinersmithapalooza! And, surprising nobody, the new collection in question (of the best of SMBC religion comics) launched about four hours ago (as of this writing) and is sitting at 376% of goal, presumably because people want to get their hands on a copy of the Bible, as abridged by Weinersmith to make it relevant to the modern world. My theory: it just has one page that says Stop doing that¹.
• Speaking of Kickstarter: I got my backer survey today for the previously-mentioned customizable sketchbooks, so it appears that I will get my personal philosophy encapsulating notebook after all. Hooray for Book Block!
• Most academically important story of the day: Charlotte Something, aka Charlotte Herbert (a UK-based model and Suicide Girl), is somebody you should be paying attention to today. Not for the fact that she is willing to (as the British would say) get her kit off in a fairly public manner, but because she’s working on her dissertation and needs your help:
  

  COMIC CON ATTENDEES!! I’m conducting this survey for my dissertation, if you can complete it, I’ll love you forever. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/BMQRDX2

  The survey is brief, and somewhat telling in the questions it seeks to answer vis-a-vis comics conventions, particularly with respect to number nine:

  9. Do you read Graphic Novels/Comic Books?
  Yes
  No
  Not yet, but I plan to.

  State of the modern comics show, everybody. Take a minute and fill it out, see if your responses in the freeform questions (what’s changed about these shows, what to you like/dislike about them) can prompt somebody down the line to make comics shows about, oh, comics.

Spam of the day:

Grab 12,000 shed plans inside… (open now)

Amazingly, not a euphemism. Somebody really likes sheds and is eager for you to also really like sheds.

_______________
¹ Given that none of the sample comics on the Kickstarter page feature Islam, but do feature Christianity and atheism² the countdown to somebody frothing on Reddit about it begins … now!

² Also Buddhism, but you don’t find that many mouth-frothy Buddhist determined to scream at you until you achieve inner peace.

Re: yesterday’s post about Webcomics Rampage being the last webcomics-heavy show of the year? I stupidly overlooked the fact that MICE — the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo — will be chock-full of webcomickers, and it also runs this weekend, and it also also is a free event.

This is a particularly egregious oversight on my part, because I’ve been enjoying the crap out of the Ryan North-written, guest-artist drawn Dinosaur Comics in honor of MICE this week (by, respectively, Braden Lamb¹, Mitra Farmand, and Patt Kelley). I mean, lookit them! The casual lab wear on Lamb’s strip! The substitution of cats and mice in Farmand’s! The cosplay and the commuter bus and the bloody mouths and the sad, old dinosaurs toddling off to early bird specials at Denny’s in Kelley’s! They’re amazing and I completely spaced on how they were pointing out that MICE is this weekend.

Naturally, more creators than just North, Lamb, Farmand, and Kelley will be descending on Lesley University in Cambridge, MA²; they’ll be joined by (in no particular order, and this is certainly an incomplete list) Gene Luen Yang, Lucy Knisley, Dustin Harbin, Aatmaja Pandya, Matt Lubchansky, Evan Dahm, Meredith Gran & Mike Holmes, Alison Wilgus, George O’Connor, Nick Offerman³, Janelle Asselin, Jason Viola, Carey Pietsch, Cathy Leamy, John Green & Dave Roman, Rosemary Mosco, Sophie Goldstein, Colleen Frakes, Dante Shepherd, Dirk Tiede, and many, many more.

There will also be corn programming.

If you’re not in either metro Cambridge or metro Austin this weekend, I dunno — just sit home and be sad about that fact? Not too sad, just a little. I’m sure that the right degree of sadness can be properly expressed with the help of a highly-customizable greeting card, such as those being preorderable from David Malki ! on Kickstarter. They’re available for the next three weeks, they will definitely get made, seeing as how they’ve achieved more than 108,000% of goal (as of this writing), and will hopefully arrive in time for the holiday card-sending season.

Spam of the day:

Stephanie’s 145-Pound Weight Loss

Dudes, I mass 60kg soakin’ wet. For those of you that cling to an antiquated unit of measure, that’s about 132 pounds. You lost more than an entire me, which scares the crap-hell out me. Pass.

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¹ Already used to working with North on Adventure Time and Midas Flesh, where he got to draw lots of dinosaurs(!).

² Not Boston, but as we all know, Boston is not a big college town.

³ Not that one.