We’ll talk about what webcomickers are up to in a moment, but first I want to address an email I got about 20 minutes ago (as I write the first draft of this). It appears that Emerald City Comicon has been bought out by ReedPOP, showrunners of New York Comic Con, the PAX family of shows, C2E2, and more high-draw conventions dealing with everything from Star Wars to sweaty dick punching.

ECCC has had a reputation for a few things — extremely rapid growth, and the personal touch of show founder Jim Demonakos, who’s kept the focus of the show squarely on the comics side of the equation. Put bluntly, there are not a lot of big “comics” shows (and EmCity is going to be somewhere in the 70 – 80K attendance range this year) that don’t actually focus on TV, movies, wrestling, or other aspects of nerd culture.

It can’t be easy running a show that big, and I have no reason to criticize Demonakos for turning to ReedPOP to provide showrunning services; I only hope (and it’s not clear from the press release I received) that the team and focus that were developed under Demonakos are retained. I know a lot of webcomickers that look to ECCC as one of their best shows of the year, and if it goes the way of NYCC and C2E2 (with their far lesser emphasis on the comics end), that would be a hard blow. The full press release is below the cut, so you can read and interpret it for yourself.

• KC Green may have wrapped up Gunshow, but he’s got plenty of other outlets for his comics, and he added a new one yesterday. US Gamer has added a weekly videogame-themed comic from Green known as Cheats n’ Beatums, the first of which you can read here. Maybe. It might be my choice of browser, it might be my choice of security settings, but the comic did not render on the page for me, instead substituting an image placeholder.

  Clicking on the placeholder gave me an error in opening a secure connection, but editing the URL from https: to http: did the trick. I’m not sure I would have gone to so much trouble for anybody else, but I got my reward: Green’s first Cn’B showed us why Mario always wins … he cheats.

• Readers of this page may recall that Kate Beaton is the best. So it was no small amount of happy-making to see her announce this morning that D&Q have announced her next comic collection; Step Aside, Pops will be released in September, and will no doubt put the fear of Victorian-era velocipeditriennes (velocipeditrixes? velocipeditrices?) into the fear of bowler-hatted men everywhere.

  For added fun times, Beaton spoke to the Los Angeles Times; I only wish they had asked if any of her Kate-goes-home-to-Nova Scotia-and-we-see-lots-of-her-mom comics (aka momics) will be included. I sure hope so. As I’ve said in the past — and I stand by this — you could burn down all of San Diego Comic Con and everybody inside, but if we got daily momics it would be a fair trade.

Spam of the day:

The 500 Euro note makes it much easier to smuggle cash out of Europe. After the police officer conducted his investigation he informed me that the manager’s signature wasn’t an original signature.

While I stand second to no man in my appreciation of sweet, sweet, untraceable cash, I think that perhaps you have misapprehended the focus of this blog.

(more…)

We’re down to the final week of original strips in the Exclamation Universe. While Walkyverse has its adherents, I prefer to note that David “Walky” Walkerton does not appear (prominently or even at all) in all the related strips, each of them is titled with an Exclamation: Roomies!, It’s Walky! Joyce and Walky!, and Shortpacked!, which wraps up this week.

So naturally David “Damn You” Willis decides to spend his last plot not on his best, most well-handled themes (toxic masculinity in popular culture and Batman), swerving away from an arc that started on the theme of diversity and suddenly found itself staring down an interdimensional rupture because why not? Over the weekend I wondered if the sudden appearance of Exclamationverse Dina (as opposed to her counterpart in the exclamationless Dumbing of Age, where she is also appearing right nowby an amazing coincidence) was merely a sight gag, not to be followed up on.

Nope; she’s there and interacting with the rest of the cast today which is a neat trick, since the Dina Sarazu with this character design and from this continuity [spoiler alert for a plot point that’s literally a dozen years old] died back in 2003¹. If memory serves, Dina’s death in It’s Walky! was a sore point for many of his fans, and he’s used parallel-dimensional handwaving to bring back other charactres in the Shortpacked! era¹, so giving her a happy ending before shutting the door on that version of the characters — a continuous storytelling endeavour that is old enough to drive in all 50 states — would be a kindness. Just as long as he incorporates Batman, or maybe some webcomics bloggers/psuedojournalists³.

In the meantime, come Friday I’ll be updating the blogroll over to the right there to indicated that Shortpacked! is [finished], and I’ll be updating my RSS subscriptions to grab the feed from Dumbing of Age (I’ve always just clicked through to DoA from SP! … I’ve done this for more than four years, rather than click one to directly subscribe because I am a lazy, lazy man), and something that I’ve read 3 – 5 times a week for a decade will be something that’s done.

You’ve still got time to power-read all 2200 or so Shortpacked! strips if you start now. Me, I’m pouring out a blind-box assortment of Transformers (I have no idea if that’s a thing, just work with me) on the sidewalk in honor of what Willis built. To toys, and frustrations, and the eternal thwarting of Soggies — thanks, David.

PS: Damn you.

Spam of the day:

The seductive, alluring girls of Japan, Thailand, China and Korea are online now searching for U.S. men like you.

Why yes, I am very gullible and will click on your links, seductive, alluring girls.

_______________
¹ No presently-linkable example of that strip exists in Willis’s archives right now; there are a good three years of story between today’s historical rerun.

² Which, for reference, goes back just about exactly 10 years, starting a full 11 months before this here blogging enterprise.

³ As god is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly didn’t know this strip existed (or if I ever did, I’d forgotten it); I found it while searching the Batman tag. Kudos to Willis for the prime depiction of moustachery, and also for spelling my name correctly.

Sometimes they’re deliberate, sometimes they’re happenstance.

• Huh. Today’s update at Scenes From A Multiverse featured Cornelius Snarlington (business deer) and not anything vaguely reminiscent of GarbleGlab, and for some reason, the site did NOT go down shortly after the update went up. Odd, that.
• Here’s a brief lesson in what I like to term useful paranoia; as has been mentioned with varying degrees of obliqueness over the years, my day job consists of teaching for a software company, predominantly about databases, and significantly with respect to administration of same. Or, as I like to put it, I teach people to have the right personality defects to keep their systems up and running, of which paranoia is just the most obvious¹. The lesson has actually been playing out for most of the week, but I didn’t want to pile on until the outcome was known.

  Readers of this page know that one of my favorite webcomics is Monster Pulse, which coincidentally is the work of one of my favorite creators, Magnolia Porter. Ms Porter spent some time in England over the recent year-end holidays, and all seemed to be going well until her return (which was delayed by an oversold flight) but yay, she made it home. Unfortunately, her laptop wouldn’t boot. Then again, it had been utterly without power for an extended period of time, so maybe just a good charging before trying again?

  Unfortunately, no luck, and what’s worse, it looked like there was a massive data loss to boot². Hope was held onto, and the data were ultimately intact as Porter learned one of two key lessons: it may suck to have to buy new hardware, but data are what’s important.

  So what was the other lesson? You can never be too paranoid about backups. You’ve got things set to automatically back up? Great! Are you sure? When’s the last time you checked? Fortunately, everything turned out good for Porter, and I don’t mean to beat up on her — anybody can become complacent about backups³.

  So what’s the takeaway? Backups are only good if they are a) physically separated from the original; b) in multiple locations; c) using multiple technologies⁴; and d) verified from time to time. Now I know that I don’t have data files anywhere near the number or aggregate size of even the slowest webcomic creator, but my basic approach should be scalable for anybody’s needs:

  1. Any time I create a file, it gets copied to a second hard drive. This is quick, easy, and doesn’t do squat for me if there’s a big enough failure inside the case.
  2. Weekly, changes on the data drives are copied to two high-capacity thumb drives that are made out of machined aircraft aluminum; you can run a dump truck over these things and not damage them. One of them lives in the computer room, the other is always kept in my pants pocket. In the event of a disaster that requires evacuation, I’m most likely going to take my pants with me. Oh, and because I don’t always empty my pockets before doing laundry, they’re also water-tight to 100 meters and will survive a trip through the washer and dryer. These drives are password-protected.
  3. Especially important files are emailed to myself. I use a dedicated email account for this purpose and no other, which features an account name that has zero correlation with my name, my wife’s name, or any combination of words I’ve ever used in any public fashion. Access to this account is protected by two-factor authentication.
  4. Once a quarter, I do a random pull of a half-dozen files from each thumb drive and from the email account to make sure they’re readable.

  Plus the fact that in addition to hardware failures, there’s a lotta evil people in the world, so add on the usual firewall, spyware, and antivirus measures.

  Do I slack on things occasionally? Sure. Could I make this process even more bulletproof? Absolutely, but as we all know, security is inversely proportional to convenience and this is the balance point I’ve come to. If you make your living from the files you create, you should find a way to make a system at least as rigorous part of your day. The only thing less convenient than going through all this nonsense is wishing you had in the first place.

  Many thanks to Magnolia Porter for sharing her travails; she probably motivated at least one person to clean up their act by serving as a cautionary example. Read her comic!

Spam of the day:

These types of workouts are what allow Matthew Mc – Conaughey to keep his body lean and sculpted.

Welp, that leaves me out. If I get any more lean and sculpted, too many peoples is gonna be hittin’ on me and my wife will be upset.

_______________
¹ Others include, but are not limited to, megalomania, control-freakism, and a hearty sense of vengeance. These are necessary for adopting the correct mental posture as an administrator, i.e.: This system is my system, and the users are trying very hard to break it. Decide to screw around in one of my systems in ways that I’ve told you not to? You’re going to find your password’s minimum length set to 30 characters, which must be changed every day, without reusing the last 100 passwords you’ve used, and which you get one attempt to type correctly before you get locked out.

And honestly, I’m one of the nice ones. A former colleague (working at the time for a defense contractor in a security-clearance site) had somebody screw around in things he shouldn’t have been screwing around in, the end result of which was massive data corruption and weeks of repair time. She quietly arranged for the idiot to be chosen for daily “special” security screenings until he decided to seek employment elsewhere. Whispered rumors that cavity searches were involved are almost certainly exaggerations. Probably.

² Oh god, I’m turning into Brad Guigar.

³ I have a particularly embarrassing story about screwing up my own approach to backups which happened after I’d been teaching best paranoia practices professionally for a dozen years. It was a dumb, rookie mistake and I’m lucky I caught myself before anything bad happened.

⁴ Don’t rely on some cloud-based backup solution to save you, either! What if you can’t reach it? What if it’s broken into? What if it goes out of business?

Every once in a while, you get a comic that just couldn’t be done on paper, and Meredith Gran delivered one to wrap up the latest Octopus Pie story arc. The act of scrolling through the very tall image and the fact that there’s more and more space between the panels to control your sense of the passage of time are giving Chapter Four of Understanding Comics a boner¹ without falling into an infinite canvas-for-the-sake-of-infinite canvas circle jerk². Even if you’ve never read Octopus Pie before, click through that header image, scroll on down, read the (nearly wordless!) story, and tell me you don’t know exactly what’s going on. I double dog dare you.

• It is always a good thing when new dinosaur comics³ make the rounds, and Bird and Moon creator Rosemary Mosco partnered up with David Orr to bring us a beaut. For everybody that feels a little guilty — raises hand — for thinking that Chris Pratt riding a motorcycle in the midst of a pack of trained raptors is pretty cool despite the fact that they (the raptors) have no feathers, Mosco and Orr have the balm to soothe your conscience. Hooray for feathers!
• From Katie Lane, your unofficial source for legal advice that you aren’t paying for⁴, has a New Year’s resolution for you, with a handy walkthrough to make good: how to register your copyrights and why you should bother. Bottom line: you’re even more protected with a formally-registered copyright than an implied one.
• Kickstarter is changing payment processors, and it looks like it’s going to be transparent process, except for the check-out. Right now, I get shunted to an Amazon page and punch in my password, then just approve the details. I’m guessing that with Stripe I’ll either have to provide name/address/credit card details each time, or start a new account.

  I’m kind of curious about seeing if I cancel a pledge on a campaign that I’m presently supporting and then immediately re-pledge, if it’ll shunt me to the new process? In fact, I have such a campaign (supported just prior to the change announcement), but I’m afraid if I cancel, I may cause the creator [warning: link Not Safe For Anyone, seriously] to freak out a little (which is probably reason enough to do the experiment by itself).

  In the interests of full disclosure, I have both a hand-stapled, illustrate-it-yourself minicomic of Inspector Pancakes and a PDF review copy, both presented to me by author Karla Pacheco; the ARC is better, because it’s got illustrations (by Maren Marmulla) and a series of fabulous pin-ups by the likes of Kate Leth, Becky Dreistadt, Anthony Clark, Jeph Jacques, Lauren Jordan, Matt Cummings, and Leia Weathington, and they are pretty.

• For those wondering, Child’s Play continues the streak of beating each year’s total:
  

  2003: $250,000
  2004: $310,000
  2005: $605,000
  2006: $1,024,000
  2007: $1,300,000
  2008: $1,434,377
  2009: $1,780,870
  2010: $2,294,317
  2011: $3,512,345
  2012: $5,085,761
  2013: $7,600,000
  2014: $8,430,000
  To date: $33,626,670

  That’s as of 5 January 2015, which we’ll call the end of the season.

  Of course, looking at the main CP page, the counter is still incrementing twice a minute or more, and as of this writing is sitting at $34,947,208 or more than 1 point 3 million dollars since Monday. Taking bets now — assuming calendar year 2015 starts at the 5 Jan total, will this be the year to top ten million?

Spam of the day:

I think one of your ads caused my web browser to resize, you may well want to put that on your blacklist.

I think that’s pretty unlikely.

_________________
¹ Yes, yes, that was a little rude, I apologize.

² That too; sorry.

³ Not to be confused with Dinosaur Comics; the near-ubiquity of The Toronto Man-Mountain aside, the two are not synonymous.

⁴ This means that she is not your lawyer, the advice is general, and you should consult a legal professional before taking any action, as your circumstances will vary. If you are paying her and she is your lawyer, the congratulations — she’s the best you could have in your corner unless Hammurabi, Learned Hand, and Richard Posner all have a kid together.

A number of things would have been covered yesterday, but were delayed because of a god-damned disgrace¹. Let’s point out some things have come to light regarding the Charlie Hebdo incident, then we’ll play catch-up. If this is all too depressing for you, there will be a regular post up in a little while.

• Via Brigid Alverson, news that a fifth cartoonist, Philippe Honoré, died of his wounds after the attack. I couldn’t find a photo of Honoré that’s freely usable, so let me direct you to this page at The Guardian that features him in a composite of some of the victims.
• In fact, stay at The Guardian for a moment longer, because they are the first place I’ve found that lists all the dead, which I’m going to quote from at length:
  

  The 12 victims of the attack have been identified. They are: Charb — whose real name was Stéphane Charbonnier, 47, artist and publisher of Charlie Hebdo; Cabu — whose real name was Jean Cabut, 76, Charlie Hebdo’s lead cartoonist, who was honoured with the Légion d’honneur, France’s highest civil decoration, in 2005; Georges Wolinski — Tunisian-born artist, 80, who had been drawing cartoons since the 1960s, and worked for Hara-Kiri, a satirical magazine considered a forerunner to Charlie Hebdo; Tignous — whose real name was Bernard Verlhac, 57, was a member of a group of artists called Cartoonists for Peace; Bernard Maris — known as “Uncle Bernard”, 68, was an economist and wrote a regular column for Charlie Hebdo; Philippe Honoré, AKA Honoré, 73, a cartoonist who had worked for Charlie Hebdo since 1992 and drew the last cartoon tweeted by the weekly only moments before the massacre; Michel Renaud — a former journalist and political staffer who founded a cultural festival, who was visiting the Charlie Hebdo offices from Clermont-Ferrard; Mustapha Ourrad — a copy editor for Charlie Hebdo of Algerian descent; Elsa Cayat — Charlie Hebdo analyst and columnist; Frederic Boisseau — building maintenance worker; Franck Brinsolaro — 49-year-old police officer appointed to head security for Charb and father of a one-year-old girl; Ahmed Merabet — 42, a French Muslim police officer and member of the 11th arrondissement brigade.

  Since yesterday, I’ve read a number of pieces that verge on saying some variation of Well, they provoked it/deserved it/were terrible people; everybody getting on a high horse and declaring that they aren’t going to mourn for racists, sexists, or whichever -ists it is for you, be so kind in your calculus of who is worthy and who isn’t to consider that this was a varied group of individuals. Thank you.

• In fact, anybody that has formed an opinion of what Charlie Hebdo is or who these people were based on something you’ve seen that was copied from something else, which was based on something somebody heard, please acknowledge that you’re reacting from a place of emotion and — and I use this word precisely — ignorance.

  I didn’t comment on the content of Charlie Hebdo and the motivations of those who published and contributed not because I agreed with it, or disagreed with it, or am afraid to do so, but because I didn’t read it (my French is nowhere near good enough, nor my sense of Continental irony) and I’m fundamentally unfamiliar with the nuances.

  Fortunately, Pierre Lebeaupin was kind enough to provide some of that context in a comment on yesterday’s post, which I found extremely valuable and am reproducing here in its entirety:

  Since you decided to focus on the cartoonists who died today, let me expand on them a bit.

  Cabu! Oh my God Cabu. Where to start? By the fact he coined a word (beauf, meaning a narrow-minded average French) which is now in all French language dictionaries? By his extensive career stretching back at least 50 years? By his prowess at both caricature and comics (Le Grand Duduche, in particular)? He is, basically, a fundamental French cultural reference. Period.

  Wolinski was the reference for political cartooning in the French communist movement, long officiating at l’Humanité, the official paper of the French communist party. Among his many accomplishments, he once received the Grand Prix in Angoulème. One of his most famous cartoons read:

  Well-off Father (crying): Our daughter engaged to a one-eyed, lame negro jew!
  Well-off Mother (crying): Jesus Mary Joseph!
  Daughter: Be kind, dear, don’t tell them right away you are communist.

  Charb was pretty much the soul of Charlie Hebdo, illustrating the covers most of the time, to the best of my knowledge, as well as contributing many of the interior cartoons (as far as I know, I did not buy Charlie Hebdo) and serving as the magazine’s editor. He did work for other publications, but his recent career is pretty much synonymous with Charlie Hebdo itself.

  I am not familiar with Tignous and his work, most unfortunately.

  Lastly, among the names released as being among the dead is economist, contributing the Charlie Hebdo as such, Bernard Maris, who also officiated in various other media, such as France Inter (France generalist public radio channel).

  For Fleen, this was French correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin reporting from Paris; to you Gary.

  Nous vous remercions de votre rapport, Pierre.

That’s all. Try to be good to each other.

_______________
¹ My recollection is that Jerry Holkins used this descriptor to describe the events of 11 September 2001, and the economy of his phrasing has always stayed with me; however, the Penny Arcade text posts don’t go back that far so maybe I’m making it all up.

I woke up to the news of the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo and still can’t quite wrap my mind around it. Among the (as reported at this time) dozen people killed were four cartoonists: Georges Wolinski, Tignous, Charb, and Cabu. Although we are in the very early hours after the event, and all the rules for breaking news apply, Charlie Hebdo‘s previous offices were firebombed in 2011 after one of their somewhat frequent skewerings (in words and cartoons) of Islam. It is likely that today’s atrocity was for the same reason.

Charlie Hebdo has a reputation that can be described — depending on your views — as anywhere from provocative to being a dick to everybody they dislike, a fairly lengthy list. They were known for reprinting the Killer Danish Muhammed Cartoons and creating plenty of their own (as well as vicious cartoons about pretty much every other religion, given the antireligious bent of the magazine).

But being a dick is not a capital crime.

I don’t understand the tendency of zealous believers — almost always of the privileged variety¹ — to defend their beliefs with coercion, force, and violence. If your belief, your argument, your self-identified in-group is built upon such a weak foundation that being criticized or made fun of undermines it, then whatever you believe, argue, or identify with is exactly as weak and pointless as you fear. If the mere fact that different people have different beliefs, different experiences, different priorities in life, different people that they love is a threat to you, you’re the one with the losing proposition.

There’s plenty of people today re-running various anti-Islamic cartoons from Charlie Hebdo, choosing that means of supporting freedom of speech. I’ve decided instead to run photos of the four cartoonists²; I’d rather remember those who made the cartoons than the cartoons themselves. So then:

Georges Wolinksi

Photo by Wikimedia user Alvaro, used under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Tignous

Photo by Wikimedia user Okki, used under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Charb

Photo by Wikimedia user Coyau, used under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Cabu

Photo by Wikimedia user Eriotac, used under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-SA 3.0).

If you have fought to forbid speech you dislike, you killed them. If you’ve abused the authority given to you and tolerate no criticism of your behavior, you killed them. If your reaction to a cartoon you don’t like is to take down the website, you killed them. If somebody you dislike exists in public and you react with violence, you killed them.

Back to lighthearted tomorrow.

________________
¹ This includes everybody that’s part of a historically privileged group (and likely a majority) within a society vehemently opposed to sharing wealth and power, those who believe that they are privileged by a god or gods, and those to whom great authority is given. The truer and purer the belief that the current situation represents all that is Right and Proper, the greater the tendency to regard any insult, relative loss of advantage, or failure to completely subordinate oneself to the privileged class as an existential threat.

But most especially this refers to the most fundamentalist believers of supreme beings that are at once omnipotent but also so susceptible to critique than all who don’t believe in exactly the same way must be punished, here and now. I always figured endless, omnipotent beings could take their time and spend eternity punishing me for my manifold heresies, so why the urge of their most fanatical followers to have to “protect” the all-powerful?

² I would note that current reports are that eight other people died, reportedly Charlie Hebdo staffers and police. Others that are wounded may yet die. They are no less worthy of being remembered, but have not been identified yet. Please spare a moment to reflect on all the victims and their families.

Deadlines are wonderful things — they focus the mind, and anybody that says they don’t screw around until the last possible moment before deadline is dangerously self-deluded. I, uh, may have heard that somewhere, not that I’d know. Nope. Not me.

Society of Illustrators and the second iteration of the Comic & Cartoon Art Annual and how the deadline for submission in all categories (several of which track neatly with webcomics) would be (was, now) yesterday. Well, good news, procrastinators! Deadline’s been extended to this Friday, 9 January.
• As long as we’re talking about juried processes involving the comics and cartoon arts, there was this bit from the twitterfeed of National Cartoonists Society president Tom Richmond:
  

  NCS Divisional Reuben Awards Submission Call http://wp.me/pcEqc-4Vo

  In other words, time for my annual reminder that webcomics are represented by two awards, long form and short form, and if you want to be considered you should follow that link and decide which category you fall into. One might also note that a number of you reading this may also fall into other categories, particularly the Comic Books (Ryan, Shelli, and Braden ought to really be submitting for Adventure Time, as should Noelle et. al. for Lumberjanes) and Graphic Novels (Box, Emily, Raina, Gene & Sonny, and Kazu, just off the top of my head).

  As in past years, I’ll be part of Richmond’s advisory committee, making sure that the best webcomics don’t get overlooked from consideration, so if there’s something that you feel I should bring to the membership’s attention, let me know. Please note that the deadline for submission is 15 February, which is sooner than you think.

• Speaking of the NCS awards, last year’s winner for On-Line Comics — Long Form, Jeff Smith¹, has returned from hiatus with the latest chapter of Tüki Save The Humans (that would be number three) kicking off yesterday. Tüki hasn’t run as frequently as was originally planned¹, and the site has had growing pains, but you know what? Free Jeff Smith comics delivered to me by magic internet lasers are good under any circumstances.

  Oh, right, deadline … deadline … okay, Tüki’s been in that fight with Big Ugly there since midway through the last chapter, and I’d say that one or the other one is gonna be dead soon. Considering it’s Tüki’s book, my money is on Toothless to be the one with his ass on the line.

Spam of the day:

Thank you for your helping hand.

You’re welcome. I pride myself on being a helpful kind of guy.

_______________
¹ As was explained to me by Cartoon Books publisher and all-around nerd-wrangling badass Vijaya Iyer, Tüki was to run M-W-F for eight weeks, then take two months off, then on to the next chapter. Instead, we’re averaging about two chapters a year. Please don’t take this as a criticism of Smith and Iyer; I love them both to death, I love the story, and if that’s the pace that they can deliver the free webcomic at while maintaining their paying work, then I am happy for it.

One may recall that on Friday we spoke of Jon Rosenberg¹ getting his site DDOSed because some terrible people saw themselves in a terrible, made up cartoon character. Having apparently not learned his lesson — that depicting a person behaving terribly is akin to a hate crime — Rosenberg re-ran that comic today at The Nib, and pointed out the central flaw in the logic of his opponents: if you identify with somebody who is terrible because you also behave terribly, perhaps you should stop being terrible.

In a calm, reasoned response — completely foreseen in panel four — Rosenberg’s site was hit with more DDOS attempts today. And much like last Monday’s strip, Rosenberg’s comic is being seen by new readers, making it entirely likely that far more people are seeing his critique of terrible people than if they hadn’t been terrible in reaction to the incontrovertible statement Terrible people are those who behave in a terrible manner. Then again, if they weren’t terrible, Rosenberg wouldn’t have been paying attention to them in the first place, so there you are: the stupid comes full circle and is ultimately self-defeating.

• Let’s move on from regular terrible to terribly useful: relatively late on Friday, Matthew Nolan (Erika Moen’s husband and co-creator on Oh Joy, Sex Toy) did creators everywhere a favor and released a big ol’ data dump relating to the recently-concluded² OJST Kickstarter campaign. Even if Nolan hadn’t titled the article in reference to the greatest game show ever, it would still be a great thing because of the summary right at the top where you can quickly determine:
  • Expenses (including bonuses to guest artists) and production constituted just over 50% of the take
  • Fulfillment costs just under 30%
  • Estimated taxes are given their own line item

  Honestly, I’ve sat in too many convention sessions about Kickstarter where it’s absolutely clear that the people asking the questions have no idea that Kickstarter is not a magical money machine. Profit here was an estimated US$10,427.03 and 1647 books left over to sell at various price points in the future³, but that required six months worth of effort.

  Put another way, that US$10K constitutes just over Oregon’s minimum wage (where Nolan and Moen live) for one person for six months, and the value of the books yet to be sold comes to something shy of the median annual household income in Multnomah County (again, where they live).

  From my outsider standpoint, it looks from the post-mortem that they did everything just about as well as they possibly could have, avoided any major missteps, and have ideas how to do the next one a bit better.

  But what all of that got them was this: OJST didn’t make US$70K in 30 days; it took half a year’s continuous work gave two artists a reasonable shot (taking into account all of the other work they’ll do) at a decent standard of living for the next year, assuming demand for that accumulated inventory doesn’t drop off. Considering the number of working artists that don’t achieve a decent standard of living, I’ll count that as a win.

  Next year? Another book, another campaign, hopefully with less effort and a better margin, but that’s the funny thing about a big success — it doesn’t last forever and you have to keep working for the next one or you’re sunk.

• Finally, speaking of building on the last success to achieve the next one, Spike is my hero:
  

  My records state I paid other cartoonists over $100,000 in 2014.

  Well, shit.

  Way I figure it, if she were as evil as the guys that screwed Siegel & Shuster, she could be making big bank by screwing today’s creators. The fact that she uses her powers to spread the wealth around instead of exploiting aspiring creators is worth (at the very least) a polite round of applause.

Spam of the day:

Why do not we try this ?

Probably because you suck.

_______________
¹ Standard disclaimers apply.

² In the sense that reward fulfillment is all done.

³ Since those books have already been paid for, if they are all sold directly by Nolan and Moen — say, at conventions and not sold at discount to other vendors — and shipping is entirely taken care of, Moen and Nolan are sitting on just shy of US$50,000 in inventory.

However, the OJST store is with TopatoCo, so the value is reduced. Then again, you can get signed and doodled versions for extra charges, which will offset the distribution discount for a fraction of those books. There’s also the e-book version, which requires no inventory, production costs, or shipping expense.

Honestly, it’s impossible to put a number on the value of future sales; we can establish the upper boundary, but nothing more.

As of right now, I have posted on 100% of the days in 2015; wonder how long I’ll keep this up? That being said, it’s the Friday after a legal holiday and I know that nobody’s on the internet, so let’s do a couple of quick items and call it a day.

• Okay, so back on Monday, Jon Rosenberg¹ ran this strip on the general topic of forests, trees, and fundamentally missing the point you hopeless man-child. Laugh-chuckles all ’round for his usual readers, and nothing else to say, except that he was apparently feeling much better following his recent surgery, as this level of piss-taking required a bit too much energy during his convalescence. Come Wednesday, there’s a new strip on the theme of the new year, and all is still well. Yay for finishing up an absolute kidney stone of a year!

  But.

  Mid-afternoon on Wednesday is when the technical issues began, as well as people contacting Rosenberg to tell him why his site was down, leading to much contrition on Rosenberg’s part. Weird thing, though — the comic that apparently caused so much drama was available via other channels and far from impairing Rosenberg, the attempt at punishing him for the crime of … I’m not sure what, exactly … instead brought him to the attention of far more people than usual. So, congrats nameless self-styled internet vengeance-dealer, you kept everybody from seeing Jon’s work ever again, jorb well done.

• Rich Stevens, I’ve long suspected, enjoys making sudden changes to his website and store more than he enjoys making money, with the latest proof being that he’s put into effect a flash sale that effectively chops prices on rare items in half:
  

  Let’s start the year off right! All hardcover books on my site are just $20.15 this weekend. http://store.dieselsweeties.com/collections/limited-edition-hardcover-books …

  For reference, the softcover versions of the Oni collections list for US$19.99 and the hardcovers for US$40, so this sale is like getting an upgrade from softcover to hard for sixteen cents. Heck, he’s even offering signed/personalized books for no extra charge. Take advantage while you can.

• Okay, didn’t see this one turning out this way; about six weeks back I noted that Kel McDonald was Kickstarting the first friggin’ huge volume of an omnibus edition of Sorcery 101 for the absurdly low target of US$22,000 (it’s a 750 page book, in color), with an absurdly low get-the-physical-book reward tier of US$30. McDonald has had five successful Kickstarts before, with targets ranging from US$3000 to US$20,000, and while she has had past campaigns hit goal late in the game, we are six days out and still 16% shy on funding.

  As of right now, Kicktraq show her topping out at 95% of goal which is frankly baffling to me. Folks. Kel McDonald does things right. She puts together anthologies that attract top-notch talent. She produces quality work for publishers as well as self-publishing. She delivers on her Kickstart promises. So what the heck? Six days, people, let’s make this happen.

Spam of the day:

After many years in the making, the whole world third largest shopping mall, Meadowlands Xanadu will probably be indulging every person’s fantasies.The much-awaited opening during the summer of 2009 is determined to attract various shoppers, gawkers, artists, sports enthusiasts, and useful seekers.Don’t you want to be where there on freedom day?

Speaking as a resident of New Jersey, please tell me where your time machine is that you are looking forward to the triumphant opening of this colossal boondoggle in the far-flung optimistic future of 2009. I’d like to borrow it to go back in time and give myself some stock tips and lottery numbers.

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¹ Obligatory disclaimer: Jon is the guy who got me to start up this here blog, conspiring with me for a good six months pre-launch, and who also owns my soul as the result of a perfectly legal cash transaction.

• Back: KC Green ran one last Gunshow to say goodbye, and we should remind you that he is retiring one comic, not from the comics game. His adaptation of Pinocchio is top-notch, his collaboration with Anthony Clark, BACK, makes Wednesdays a joy, and you can keep up with his other comings and goings fairly easily at his main site. Thanks for 900 pages of funny, touching, sometimes heartbreaking comics, KC. You remain one of the most fearless creators working today. Also, I just now realized that KC does the comic called BACK and I gave this paragraph the heading of Back and that was totally unintentional. I’m a little tired today.
• Forward: The future of comics depends on bringing new readers into the fold, not just trying to appeal to an ever-shrinking cohort of lifelong¹ fanboys. Those readers have — rightly! — an expectation that they should be able to see themselves in the comics they read²; as I wrote in a piece that will hopefully see print in the coming year, there’s a sense of I’ve never seen comics about an experience like mine before and it’s damn well time I did. The future of comics is increasingly going to be determined by women and girls. As I’ve long said, nobody embodies that trend more than Raina Telgemeier, and it’s so apparent that no less an embodiment of established authority than the Wall Street Journal agrees. 2014 was the Year of Raina, but I suspect that future years will make 2014 look merely okay by comparison.
• Back: Readers may recall my placement of an order with TopatoCo back in October, number 519348 to be precise. You may also recall the notice last week regarding the rate at which TopatoCo shipped merch in the first two weeks of December. As I threatened to do in October, I placed an order (for John Allison’s Giant Days three-pack) yesterday, the last day of the year, close enough to the very end of the year as makes no difference and noted the order number: 545856. What can we learn from this?

  Some 26500 orders were placed between the end of October and the end of December, which one may reasonably conclude is the TopatoCo busy season. In just one quarter of that time, more than 15000 items were shipped; even accounting for the fact that some orders surely would have been cancelled, you’ve still got between 26.5K and let’s say 60K items (15K in two weeks, extrapolated out to two months) which is a tremendous lot of business, and good news for all involved. Take a moment to thank the merch elves of TopatoCo, much as I did with my end-of-order special instructions³.

• Forward: There are creative couples in comics where it’s pretty impossible to think of one half without thinking of the other as well — Raina Telgemeier is surely pushed to make even better comics (and pushes in return) thanks to the good fortune of being married to Dave Roman. Other power couples exist: Chris and Carly, Yuko and Ananth, Shelli and Braden, Ryan and Joey, and, of course, Mer and Mike. That last pair up and made it official last night, to which I can only say congratulations. Draw, love, laugh, and if Heidi and Ella can reach some kind of détente, there’s nothing the two of you can’t accomplish. Hooray!

Spam of the day:

BY USING OUR FAMILY, YOU CARRY OUT FULL RESPONSIBILITY DATA THESE MATERIALS AND MAY INDEMNIFY US AS WELL AS DAMAGES IT MAY BE INCURRED.

Is this some kind of cult thing? Because you have to tell me if you’re a cult.

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¹ That is, cape-obsessed.

² And, increasingly, create.

³ The drink referenced in that image was originally constructed for the Pineapple Maki contest, but since it looks like that’s not going to happen I have released it into the wild for all to enjoy.