More webcomics, of course.

• Readers of this page, or any other page for that matter, know that one of the great tragedies of modern webcomickry is that running a business empire has left Jeffrey Rowland too busy to do comics more than alternate fortnights, or possibly I mean “stone”; the sooner we get metric time units the better, but I digress.

  In Rowland’s most recent comics, Joanna the undead cat went missing in mid-June, was possibly sighted at the start of July¹ and the search was on again with only a minor hygiene detour, then promptly stopped for San Diego. Not to worry, Rowland assured me as I held a piece of pipe that would support TopatoCo booth banners, I got plans.

  And over the last week or so, a series of mysterious tweets² that mentioned the mysterious Iverly. Yesterday’s Overcompensating update was titled Iverly, and then a few hours later, a new domain went live at Iverly.com³, with an accompanying announcement:

  There’s a new comic on the scene and it is called Iverly. Journey Into The Hole with Joanna. http://iverly.com/iverly/index.php?comic=4…

  Actually, don’t click on that link in that quote, since it jumps you ahead to strip #4, and you’ll want to read Iverly from the beginning. Here is everything you need to know about Iverly:

  1. Iverly is the place where animals go.
  2. Iverly comics will update Monday-Wednesday-Friday, marking the return of Jeffrey Rowland to regular cartooning, and given the setup, it looks to be the sort of loopy, cryptid-filled flight of fancy that nobody does better.

  That’s it, two things. I’m already filled with questions: What exactly is Mel’s Hole? Will we ever learn about The Incident, or is it like Calvin’s Noodle Incident? What are the odds that this is a 100% true account of what’s under the trailer parked out behind TopatoCo’s warehouse?⁴ We’ll learn the answers on Rowland’s own schedule which, heavens be praised, will be regular for the next while. Hooray!

• It would be ungracious to demand more than one creator to return to regular webcomicking, but that is exactly what happened by chance. With his Broken Telephone project nearing the end of his need to babysit, Estrada has jumped back into comicking with a Patreon-supported project, titled Gimme Five!

  Short version: people write into Estrada with questions, and he answers them in comic form. In case you’re wondering if he can actually explain the works of Shakespeare to the point you could learn about them in five minutes, remember this is the man that has taught more people to (phonetically) read Korean script than anybody else in history.

  While Patreon supporters will get their questions answered sooner, Estrada is open to answering anybody’s queries, probably particularly now as he’s trying to ramp up production. And that’s just for US$1 a month. Supporters at US$3 a month get a bundle of Estrada comics, more than 1000 pages; at US$5 per month, there’s another 400 pages of comics from collaborators. But from my POV, the really interesting thing happens at the US$10/month tier:

  The Commercial Use Program
  You have the right to commercial use of any Gimme Five comic, Learn To Read Korean in 15 Minutes, and How To Travel Anywhere on $20 a Day. This means you can republish the comics anywhere you like, and make money off of them.

  Syndicate it on your blog! Use it in your lesson plans! Publish it in your magazine! Make a poster! Staple up a mini! As long as I’m credited as the creator, you can do whatever you want.

  I will provide high resolution copies of any strip upon request!

  This is the most original form of licensing I’ve ever seen; one thing I wonder is if you lose your commercial reuse rights if you stop your support, so that’s something you might want to clear up with Estrada. From personal experience he’s a fairly easy-going guy and I doubt he’d want to take the time to police an enforcement mechanism more complex than Please don’t rip me off, but if you’re conscientious enough to want to license his stuff, you probably want to make sure you aren’t violating his rules. Magazines and books in particular will probably require something concrete.

  Weirdly enough, as of this writing Estrada has only three (3) supporters. Not a typo! One, two, three. I don’t expect that to last very long, and early backers will probably be the first ones to get their questions answered, so jump on this while you can.

Spam of the day:

With havin so much written content do you ever run into any problems of plagorism or copyright infringement? My site has a lot of completely unique content I’ve either authored myself or outsourced but it looks like a lot of it is popping it up all over the internet without my agreement. Do you know any techniques to help protect against content from being ripped off?

Just keep spelling like that and I think you’ll solve the problem.

_______________
¹ Weedmaster P is never the most reliable eyewitness.

² Editor’s note: in this case, the DO NOT HUMP label is not sexual in nature; it refers to a technique that uses gravity to assist in the switching of rail cars.

³ Not that a new website associated with Rowland is in any way unusual.

⁴ Given that it’s Rowland, I’ll put it at 55-60%.

Let’s just hit you with a quick list of things that caught my eye today, and then we can all enjoy the weekend.

• What with all the (entirely justified) attention given to the comic-making juggernaut that is Raina Telgemeier, the world at large sometimes overlooks her biggest booster and cheerleader — namely, her husband, Dave Roman. Roman and Telgemeier have been travelling a bit since SDCC, checking out sites and ice cream places far and wide, but now it’s time to get back to the dual tasks of making awesome comics and teaching the next generation to make awesome comics:
  

  I doing a comics-making workshop at the New York Public Library, St. Agnes Branch, on [Thursday] August 21 from 2:30pm -– 4:00pm.

  This is part of the library’s Authors & Young Writers 2014 program, which is pitched to kids in 4th through 7th grades; you can follow that link for directions to the Upper West Side, and to pre-register.

• RIP KC’s ass, but also please note what is written underneath that pictorial representation of an ass-related tragedy:
  

  Next week, we begin… The final chapter of Graveyard Quest. For pretty much all of August and a little Spillover in September, we will see how it all ends.

  In my opinion, Graveyard Quest is Green’s best longform work at Gunshow, even outshining The Anime Club. Speaking of which, there’s a small Anime Club-related character study up at The Medium. Oh Mort, you are such a jerk certainly factually correct in all things and clearly have your mother’s best interests at heart.

• It’s been just about exactly a month since Shaenon Garrity and Andrew Farago welcomed their first child into the world, and one would hope that the grand adventure they have embarked upon is treating them easily. Although I’ll note that I ran into Farago briefly at SDCC and he had the look of sleep deprivation madness, and then there was this brief Garrity note on the Twitter machine earlier today:
  

  Tonight, nothing in this world would make me happier than if the baby could learn to fart without screaming. #parenthood

  So much is left unsaid. Is the child screaming in delight, because come on — farts! Or does he get startled by the physical, auditory, and olfactory sensations, reacting in fear? Perhaps it is a scream of pure challenge: World, I send forth this tangible notice of my existence! Tremble before me! In any event, I suspect that the fart/scream decoupling will have to occur before Garrity contemplates returning to Monster of the Week to take on season five of The X-Files, so lets hope the child in question gets on that quickly for all our sakes.

• Good news:
  

  Vattu page 572 http://www.rice-boy.com BOOK 2 IS FINISHED

  Vattu is a monumental accomplishment. I wonder how much more there will be?

  2 MORE BOOKS TO GO

  Oh, well that’s good, then. Okay, looking forward to Book 3 next week.

  No Vattu updates for about a month, now! Gotta write and work on other stuff.

  Well, poop. Citizens are urged to remain calm. If only there were a good reason for the hiatus!

  I hope that is cool with everybody. Main concern is that book 3 is the most densely-plotted thing i have ever written…
  …and i need to nail down some stuff in the writing. it will be better for this break.

  Based on past pronouncements from Evan Dahm about where in the story various things were happening, we may well expect Books 3 and 4 to be considerably longer than 1 and 2. Okay, Dahm, you’ve got your month, and furthermore, I’m looking forward to what you will do with this story.

Spams of the day:

Have you ever considered about including a little bit more than just your articles? I mean, what you say is important and all. But imagine if you added some great images or video clips to give your posts more, “pop”!

And …

Write more, thats all I have to say. Literally, it seems as though you relied on the video to make your point. You definitely know what youre talking about, why throw away your intelligence on just posting videos to your site when you could be giving us something enlightening to read?

I’m just going to let the two of you fight this one out.

First off, a final update on the Randy Queen/Escher Girls circumstances of the past couple of days: Ami Angelwings first posted a bit of good news:

Since yesterday, I’ve had private contact with Randy Queen. He’s apologized to me & I’ve accepted it. He is withdrawing the DMCA complaints.

Tumblr has yet to restore the content, and I hope they will soon.

I am also making sure that the DMCA complaints will not count against EG or the Tumblr users that submitted content to EG that was removed.

That’s pretty much the best possible resolution, and kudos to Queen for stepping up and acting in a way that showed he really was serious about making amends. But then Ms Angelwings took it a step further and became perhaps the classiest person in the history of Tumblr, and possibly the internet:

I consider the matter over, and I wish Randy Queen well. Please spread this around if you also spread the initial controversy.

If you’re a media outlet that’s been following this story, please update that he has apologized to me personally & withdrawn the takedowns.

And that I accept his apology, am checking with Tumblr to make sure the content is restored, & consider the situation resolved.

I know sometimes the controversy gets a lot of play & ppl miss the retraction/resolution, and I want to make sure that doesn’t happen. :)

A full statement regarding the resolution (including the fact that Tumblr wasn’t quite so quick to remove content without notice as was previously thought) can be found here. Here’s hoping that the next time a dispute of this nature crops up, people can act with a modicum of the patience and maturity that Ami Angelwings (and, eventually, Randy Queen) showed over the past couple of days.

Let’s follow up a story that turned out good with one that started good, ‘kay? There’s a new Humble Bundle in town, one of the occasional ones that is webcomic-heavy; rather than reprint collections of online work this one contains a stack o’ comic books by webcomics creators.

To wit: the present Humble Books Bundle is sponsored by BOOM! Studios, and they are using webcomics-related books as a premium reward. So for the next (as of this writing, not quite thirteen days) you can get nine different BOOM! title (39 issues in all, including the complete runs of Imagine Agents, Curse, and Hit) in digital form for any contribution amount at all.

If you contribute more than the average of all contributions (as of this writing US$9.96), you also unlock six more titles (36 more issues, including the complete run of Six-Gun Gorilla and Hacktivist) with more to be added later. And if you contribute more than US$15, you unlock the Webcomics Bonanza:

• Issues 1-4 of Bravest Warriors (Joey Comeau, words; Mike Holmes, pictures)
• Issues 1-2 of Bee and Puppycat (Garrett Jackson & Natasha Allegri, words; Natasha Allegri, pictures)
• Issues 1-4 of Lumberjanes (Grace Ellis & Noelle Stevenson, words; Brooke Allen, pictures)
• Issues 1-8 (the complete run) of The Midas Flesh (Ryan ‘Muscles’ North, words; Shelli Paroline & Braden Lamb,¹ pictures)

Put another way, I happen to have issues 1-8 of The Midas Flesh right here, for which I paid US$3.99 (plus tax) apiece, a total of more than US$34². If you donate the requisite fifteen bucks, you’ll get the the entire series for less than half of what I paid (okay, digital rather than physical copies, but that just means you don’t have to find shelf space for ’em, and they’re DRM free), plus another 85 issues of comics for free.

That’s an average of just over sixteen cents per issue spread across the 93 issues, meaning it doesn’t matter if you hate an entire run — it’s beyond cheap and you can spread around the donation between the creators and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. If you missed the Ryan Northiest story of all time, this is the perfect time to grab onto it and support a great cause at the same time. Well done, BOOM! and Humble Bundle, Inc.

Spam of the day:

Sailboats and horses might be mandatory just to have to some objectives.

Dude³, if you’re keeping a horse on your sailboat, you are going to get exactly what you deserve.

______________
¹ Who were lucky/foolish enough to buy a house earlier this week; congratulations/condolences to them on this major life achievement/neverending nightmare.

² I bought them in various states as I travelled for work, so I can’t be more specific than that, sorry. this one contains a stack o, and Ryan

³ Or lady-dude, to be inclusive, but let’s face it — ladies have too many brains to expect spam like this to actually work so it’s totally a dude.

For those wondering what may have happened in the Randy Queen/Escher Girls dustup from yesterday, there have been a few occurrences that are noteworthy:

• Ami Angelwings, proprietor of the Escher Girls blog, put up a timeline of events¹ last night.
• Some time after that, Tumblr restored the text of the posts that Queen had DMCAed, but not the images.
• Some time after that, Randy Queen apologized, sort of. Turthfully, it was not really an apology in the sense of saying I wronged you and I’m sorry and I won’t do it again, it was more in the vein of a statement that yeah, something happened but we cool now, but that walkback was probably the best that could be expected. In case the text isn’t visible to you (I don’t know how Facebook works, sometimes I can see links there and sometimes I can’t), here it is as an image.

Much as I would have been thrilled to cover a prolonged story, the stress and headache for Angelwings would not be a fair tradeoff for easy posts on my part, so let’s just be glad that this one wrapped up without too much unpleasantness. If Queen revokes his DMCA takedown on the original images, then we can call it a 100% satisfactory outcome and respect him as a stand-up guy. I’d add Tumblr restoring the rebloggings that they removed to that list, but I don’t think any of us think that’s going to happen.

Want to read something that’s unambiguously happier? How about the first portion(s) of a lengthy discussion between Becky Dreistadt and Phil McAndrew, both contributors to the Benign Kingdom series of art books. The conversation presently has two parts up, here and here (I missed the first part when it came out, just before SDCC, but when the second part came out yesterday I went back to read it), and future installments will be found here.

Dreistadt and McAndrew have both spent considerable time in the art mines, leading them to have a great deal to say about topics ranging from digital vs traditional media to the value of art school. In fact, let me pull out a choice quote on that latter topic: Asked about her time at SCAD, Dreistadt said:

I enjoyed my time there and met a lot of incredibly talented artists that helped me to push my work. I think for me I needed to go to art school, it helped to discipline myself and to find my style. Before I had attended art school I was into gothy anime and thought that the only way to tell if someone was a good artist was if they drew really detailed. So I’d do these terribly cross hatched to hell dark moody pictures. And school helped to teach me how to tell stories that had a point and that you didn’t have to make serious work to be taken seriously.

Now recommending art school or SCAD is tricky to me. Some people need it, I know many people who never went and have careers as cartoonists. But I also know people who have gone to art school and never made a living doing art and are in debt. Art schools are not good at teaching you how to get a job or how to get your art seen. I really wish that my school had said that you need to go to conventions and you need to post your work online. That is how I have gotten all of my jobs and how I’ve made a living. And the artists that aren’t making a living seem to not do either of those things. [emphasis added]

Here’s why I bolded that chunk: it occurred to me while I was in San Diego that the faculty in the sequential art and/or animation departments of fancy art schools ought to find the time to buy one Mr Bradley J Guigar a whiskey sour or two and pick his brains about how he’s teaching his arts entrepreneurship class. I’ve had that conversation with him (over the phone, so I don’t know if he had a whiskey sour close to hand or not, but I’d wager he probably did), and what he’s teaching is revolutionary — how to make a living as a working artist.

A lot of faculty probably don’t want to have that conversation, as the romantic image of making art in poverty until your genius is recognized is still rather prevalent, webcomickers are probably not opposed to the idea of burying that poisonous ideal once and for all². Some of them have in the past, presently are, or at some point in the future will be teaching in some of those art schools, and would be benefiting their {past | present | theoretical future} students an immense amount. Plus, you’d see Brad on whiskey sours, which is always fun times.

Spam of the day:

I Finlandesi dunque vogliono riformarla in questo senso; in caso contrario – è la conclusione – ?uscire dalla Ue è un’opzione, se la Finlandia si convincerà che comporta più svantaggi che benefici?

I’m pretty sure that with very low trade barriers and possibly the most efficient agriculture in Europe, Finland is better off in the EU than they could ever be out of it.

_______________
¹ Wisely, she put it up on Blogspot, seeing as how Tumblr have proven remarkably amenable to pulling down posts in response to DMCA requests that range from iffy to utterly baseless.

² Paging C Spike Trotman, message for Spike Trotman on the topic of paying artists.

So normally I don’t expect to first find [web]comics news from my habit of following the Popehat twitterfeed.

Let me back up a moment.

Popehat is a group blog, dealing mostly with legal issues (particularly First Amendment and free speech issues), where most of the content comes from a gentleman of approximately my own age named Ken White. I don’t agree with every position that White holds, and find myself at near-visceral levels of disagreement with some of his co-authors; some of them are pretty absolutist in their libertarian beliefs¹, but at least I know what I’m getting into when I see the author’s name at the top of posts².

Regardless of any political disagreements, I have the utmost admiration for the work that White has done in defending First Amendment rights, as well as his remarkable facility with creative profanity³ and the snarktacular edge to his writing that verges on the sublime. I first became aware of White (and Popehat) during the Matt Inman/Charles Carreon dustup, and I certainly wish I’d known of him when we at Fleen received a lawsuit threat from Todd Goldman back in 2007 (followed by, as of today, 2664 consecutive days of governing ourselves accordingly).

So it was via the estimable Mr Hat that I saw a comic book artist named Randy Queen (whom I had never heard of), who created something called Darkchylde (which I have never read), has his boxers in a knot over the inclusion of some of his more choice images on the Escher Girls blog (dedicated to identifying and critiquing crappy artistic representations of female anatomy) at Tumblr.

So he sent a DMCA takedown notice, which Tumblr complied with without notifying the blog’s owner (this may or may not have happened if the images were hosted on a privately-owned domain), who goes by Ami Angelwings. Despite having an extraordinarily strong counterclaim (the blog was pretty much engaging in the definition of Fair Use), Ms Angelwings opted to not contest the takedown, and posted about what had happened in a pretty damn measured and calm way.

But Mr Queen couldn’t let that stand, so he issued a second DMCA takedown notice, this time against the post that truthfully reported the fact that the first takedown occurred. Now remember, the DMCA is a legal tool that allows content owners to force the removal of their work from other sites on the web that infringe on their property rights; it is not a tool to fight tender feelings. Queen has no copyright interest in being identified as suffering from butthurt. Nevertheless, Tumblr has apparently removed all repostings of the challenged blogpost, although (as of this writing) the original remains up.

You know how sometimes people don’t know when to stop digging? Since Angelwings won’t go away and shut up about what is (factually and verifiably) happening to her, Queen is now threatening to get lawyers involved and throwing around the word defamation. Just in case the various sites that the image up top links to decide to take down the image of the email that Queen sent to Angelwings, here’s a local copy. The part that gets to me is this:

Instead of simply removing the content you do not have the right to electronically distribute, you wish to push further, and publicly challenge my right to protect the perception of my IP as it exists today. [emphasis added]

Where to start, where to start? Hey, Randy, hate to break it to you, but the perception of your IP is not something you have the right to protect. I’m happy to refer you to Eric Burns-White for a remedial lesson in the Death of the Author, but let’s try a more direct approach. Right now I’m perceiving your IP; try to protect it. Nope, not working. I’m perceiving it all I want, and forming my opinion about your grasp of anatomy, composition, panel layout, and the rest. Better yet, forget the IP and try to protect the perception of you, Randy Queen, because as of right now typing your name into Google results in a host of critical press before it gets to your actual IP.

I’m counting four critical stories before the Wikipedia article about your comic and that ratio is not going to improve any time soon. Hell, the io9 story titled Comic Artist Uses DMCA to Bully Escher Girls is presently the #2 Google result for DMCA. Queen has earned the ire of pretty much the entirety of comics press, and guaranteed that the next several projects he tries to launch will garner coverage that includes some variation on:

Randy Queen, who in 2014 attempted to strongarm the Escher Girls Tumblr into removing references to his DMCA takedown notice but was met with a widespread backlash, has announced …

That’s if he can get coverage at all; after all, if Queen can protect the perception of his IP, what role is there for the comics press to review or pay attention to his efforts? Unless he can find a comics news site that will run the review Queen writes of his own work, we have no guarantee that he won’t come after us next. Cut your losses, Randy — your email “got hacked”, you’ve “had a bad reaction to medication that caused temporary erratic behavior”, or some other face-saving walkback is your best shot now.

Or, you know — keep doing what you’re doing, because that always works.

Spam of the day:

will white wine vinegar go bad

There’s an interesting philosophical hook to this question, atcherly — on the one hand, you could say that white wine vinegar has already gone bad, in that it’s no longer fit to be described as white wine, but on the other hand, it’s achieved the best possible vinegarness and doesn’t deviate or degrade from that state. For more on this I refer you to the master.

________________
¹ A philosophy that I find to have some interesting ideas on the surface, undergirded by immense illogic. I will, however, credit those Popehat contributors with whom I disagree with a remarkable degree of internal consistency, a strict adherence to logic, and a willingness to engage contrary opinions in good faith. I ain’t ever drinking their Kool-Aid, but I imagine that arguing with them over a beer or two would be both highly entertaining and likely educational.

² This happens less so on the twitter account, where it’s not always evident who is writing.

³ My life was forever changed the day that I saw White invite the TSA to snort my taint.

Want advice on getting ahead in [web]comics? We’ve got it in spades today!

• Do! Engage people on social media, so they know what you’re up to. For example, if your Kickstarter gets approved on a Friday afternoon when your East Coast (of North America, at least) readers are maybe getting a head start commuting before the weekend, give them reasons to care¹, keep them up to date on significant campaign milestones, and let them know about extras you’re giving out.

  Also, since all of those links involve Wonderella (the most indifferent superhero this side of Kate Beaton’s Wonder Woman) they may be less than perfectly safe for work, depending on how/when/where you work.

• Don’t! Make the mistakes that Lauren Davis identified at io9, with the help of a mess o’ webcomickers who were showing at SDCC. In fact, the only part of Davis’s piece that I’d quibble with is where she identifies:
  

  Jon Sung, who has learned a great deal about webcomics merchandise while manning the Dumbrella booth at San Diego Comic-Con

  Sung, aka Ferocious J, aka chronicler of the dogs of San Francisco, aka inventor of Ultimate Team Cardboard Fortress Battle, aka resident mad scientist of the Candy Booze Lab², aka the God Hates Jedi guy, didn’t learn about webcomics merchandise from his time in the Dumbrella booth. He, sui generis, created that knowledge out of nothingness, like unto Athena emerging from the forehead of Zeus.

• Do! Get your work in front of as many eyes as possible. For example, you could take your very popular Tumblr comics recounting your experience teaching English in Japan and make them easier to find by giving them their own site, complete with RSS feed.

  Alternately, you could take an existing webcomic with a deep archive of strips and hand-pick the most accessible of them to be included in a syndicate-run website, where people who have never heard of webcomics may see them. Join the likes of C’est La Vie, Medium Large, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal³, Savage Chickens, Skin Horse, and Starslip, who have gone on before. Where, uh, people who spend all day commenting on Heathcliff can say this about it:

  Mediocre comic with dinosaurs in it.

  Ignore these people because seriously what the hell?

• Don’t! Ever fail to show Ferocious J sufficient and due respect. All hail.
• Do! And also Don’t! Read and draw lessons from this heartfelt (painfully so) piece by Mike Dawson titled Advice to the mid-career cartoonist who has failed to build an audience, yikes. It includes both things that you want to do, and things that you don’t want to do, and there will be a wide variability in how you react to Dawson’s conclusions, not least because of individual temperament; for example, I doubt Dawson’s anguished assessment Ugh, fucking Social Media will be entirely in line with the feelings of most people reading Fleen.

  It’s a brave and honest self-examination from somebody that’s done everything right in making compelling comics while he has simultaneously (quoting directly here) shit the bed in audience-building. The unspoken point of the entire piece may as well be you can’t afford to ignore any part of your career if you’re in comics, along with be prepared to look at your efforts honestly, and adjust what’s not working. Kudos to Dawson for what must have been a painful piece to write.

Spam of the day:

Hello just wanted to give you a brief heads up and let you know a few of the images aren’t loading properly. I’m not sure why but I think its a linking issue. I’ve tried it in two different web browsers and both show the same results.

I believe that we dealt with this a little more than a month ago; do try to keep up.

_______________
¹ This is by far the best use of that potato salad thing I’ve seen.

² If he ever offers you the candy corn-infused vodka, find a way to politely decline; trust me on this.

³ Minus the votey, darn.

I am mathematically certain that I will get more angry comments for the mouseover text in that image up there than anything else I write today.

• While we’re all anxiously awaiting the launch of the Wonderella Kickstarter that’s due today, two separate webcomickers (that deal significantly in the various sciences) lighted upon the same topic for the day. On the one hand, engaging in descriptive precision not often seen outside the brain of T-Rex, you have Zach Weinersmith describing the production of cheese in needlessly clinical terminology while simultaneously calling out young children for hypocrisy. Stupid young children!

  On the other hand, you have Maki Naro looking at the history of cheesemaking, wherein we learn that it’s one long string of Hey, dare you to eat this. I would note that the dare-to-eats that were filled with deadly pathogens are not shown, which leads to a couple of possible conclusions:

  • If we take them to have happened but are no remembered, then cheese evolved, with deadly (or more likely, non-palatable) variants being selected against.
  • If instead we take them to have never existed in transitional forms and all cheese to be intelligently designed by a Prime Cheesemover, then God is real and those that eat secularist cheeses are going to hell.

  Arguments for or against may be directed to Mr Naro, but given the nature of this new interview which discusses in part his skeptic tendencies, we can safely conclude he believes in Godless evolutionary/Big Bang-derived Devil’s cheese¹, the atheist pervert.

• Dealing with neither cheese or the question of divine existence, those in and around Dallas are advised to seek out Zeus Comics tomorrow, as Danielle Corsetto catches up with her convention husband Randy Milholland for a joint signing from 4:00pm to 8:00pm. Danielle’s already under instructions to give Randy a hug for me, but if you wanted to do so as well, that’s cool.

Spam of the day:

It’s a shame you don’t have a donate button! I’d most certainly donate to this outstanding blog! I suppose for now i’ll settle for book-marking and adding your RSS feed to my Google account. I look forward to fresh updates and will share this website with my Facebook group. Talk soon!

Reader, you do not ever have to feel shame over wanting to give me money; simply find me in person, and hand me cash. Sweet, sweet, untraceable cash.

______________
¹ Which begs the question, would the Devil’s cheese be the most sumptuous, delicious, decadent cheeses, designed to lure the unwary into lives of pleasure? Or would they be pressurized goo in a spray can (which — much like the unholy “wyngz” — may not be referred to legally with a proper spelling) and rubbery, flavorless, individually wrapped slices of “cheese food”, a term which contains two words that are both lies?

I’ve been on quite a tear about Jim Zub lately, because he’s an example of what this page concerns itself with — a creator that is focused on good work, and owning as much of it as possible. He’s also incredibly generous with the hard-won knowledge that he’s accumulated from a decade or more of struggling upwards to the point where he can seem like an overnight success. It doesn’t hurt that he’s a damn fine writer (and underutilized artist), and so when he’s got a project coming out, I am more than happy to pimp the crap out of it.

I’ve mentioned his upcoming creator-owned series, Wayward, and how it’s very, very good, and how it will arrive in about a month’s time. The last part is most important because — due to a detail in how comics are distributed — a key milestone will occur on Monday. Pretty much every comic is distributed through one company, Diamond¹, and they have something called final order cutoff whereby retails can adjust their orders 20 days before shipping; for Wayward, FOC is on Monday.

What this means is, if you are interested in Zub’s work, if you want to give Wayward a shot, you should tell your local comic shop this weekend, so they can adjust their order by Monday’s deadline. Publishers that subscribe to FOC will adjust their print runs based on these numbers, meaning an under-anticipated title may be difficult to find, and may even not make sufficient sales to be continued despite demand.

Off the top of my head, Lumberjanes, Midas Flesh, and Figment — all from the past year, and all with webcomicker-heavy creative teams– were under-ordered and people had difficulty finding them when they launched; fortunately, they seem to have rallied and went back to press as necessary². For Wayward, first issue sales (and the drop — or hopefully rise — between first and second issue sales) will be critical in determining if it continues or maybe just gets one story arc before wrapping up.

So it’s be-counted time; if you like creators being able to make their own stuff — and ten minutes discussion with any creator will reveal that it’s the stories and characters they create for (and own!) themselves that they value over any work-for-hire gigs, no matter how high-profile and prestigious — you can help perpetuate that by not just resolving to buy a comic, but by letting a retailer know that you want to buy a comic.

That one action will help to keep Zub’s creator-owned work viable, which in turn will make creator-owned work from other creators look like a good risk to the publishers, retailers, and market in general. It’s a small thing, but it’s got a multiplicative effect.

Spam of the day:

“The best method all of us towards just where we want to be go winning tournament for instance and any other signs is with them,’ LaForge announced, who will be preparing a placed statement

Man, don’t even. Geordi never said any damn thing about it. Quit putting words in his mouth.

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¹ The wisdom of having an entire industry of independent shops dependent on just one company is a topic best left for another time but damn, there needs to be competition in this business again. Case in point: there’s an alternate distributor out there that pretty much handles self-published books only, which means my local shop is now offering a number of books by Brad Guigar, and is starting to pick up the Evil, Inc collections. However, it’s a small minority of shops that work with these alternate channels.

² As it turns out, they are all also limited series, so it wasn’t as likely they would be canceled due to low initial sales; however, an underprinted issue is the same as leaving money on the table, for both publisher and creative team.

Spam of the day:

You always wonder if the aftermath of a big show is going to be a dead time, news-wise, but somehow webcomicdom always comes up with fresh stuff. It’s amazing, really. Oh, and the mention I made ‘tother day about Colleen AF Venable leaving :01 Books for an art director gig elsewhere? There’s a job posting up if you’re in New York and are a design pro.

• No word yet if Bill Barnes has had to turn around from the front seat and tell his kids If you don’t settle down I swear I’m turning this thirteen month long roadtrip around, but given there’s still twelve months and twenty-nine days to go, I’d bet that the odds of it happening at least once are pretty good. You can keep track of his dispatches from the road (either to try to catch up to him or to get out of Dodge before he arrives), and if you want to book him to speak at your venue (he travels to libraries around the world), that can be arranged, too.
• Wonderella’s temporary hiatus to prep for a volume three Kickstarter continues, but the latest (and possibly last) preview of KS-related swag is up now in advance of the campaign launch on Friday. In case the cover, this print, and this print aren’t enough, how about the chance for a piece of personalized art? Specifically, Wonderella chronicler Justin Pierce will draw you as a mermaid or centaur and that may be the best thing ever.
• Well, maybe the second best thing ever. KB “Otter” Spangler of A Girl And Her Fed and the Rachel Peng novel series was setting up a Patreon when it went live-ish about two hours ago, placeholders and all. One quick cleanup later, the campaign is actually live and it features one of the best rewards I’ve ever seen:

  Dick jokes. Not necessarily unclean dick jokes, delivered to your email box every weekday, for US$5/month:

  This joke might be NSFW. Or it might be a regular old knock-knock joke as told by a hang-gliding penis. Or it could feature my new stick figure characters, Richard Dickerson the Third and Martha Von Vagerton (of the Connecticut Von Vagertons).

  There’s a decent chance that Dick and Martha’s relationship will deteriorate into daily knife fights.

  So just like The Lockhorns, then.

  To ease you into the type of thing you can expect from the Daily Dick Joke package¹ please enjoy these two samples that Spangler has made public: Dick and Martha (their mutual psychosexual loathing is already apaprent), and a rather cheerful penis making a dad joke. It appears that as of this writing, every one of Spangler’s Patreon backers is opting for dick jokes or better (we’ve all got an inner 13 year old), so I’m hoping that Spangler eventually collects these for print; at an estimated 250 jokes per year, this could make an interesting annual project.

• The AV Club is featuring a lot of comics content this week, and one of their primary articles today concerns who they would cast in movie versions of various comic strips; along with the usual syndicated strips your parents have heard of, they dropped in two of the best webcomics running today. For Meredith Gran’s Ocotpus Pie they suggest Brenda Song and Greta Gerwig for Eve and Hannah², respectively. For Noelle Stevenson’s Nimona, they offer up Felicia Day, Robert Downey, Jr, and Michael Fassbender as Nimona, Lord Ballister Blackheart, and Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin.

  Those three are the only characters of note in Nimona, but Octopie has a large and varied cast (nearly all of whom have had POV chapters devoted to them), so the question is open: who would play Marek, Will, and Marigold? What about Puget Sean, Jane, Olly, and Eve’s mom? Clearly Eff-Nocka should be played by his real-life inspiration, and I’m pretty sure Rudy Guiliani isn’t doing anything too important to make a cameo, so that just leaves two critical casting decisions⁴. Any ideas? Drop ’em in the comments.

Spam of the day:

Greetings from Carolina! I’m bored to tears at work so I decided to browse your blog on my iphone during lunch break. I love the information you present here and can’t wait to take a look when I get home. I’m shocked at how fast your blog loaded on my phone .. I’m not even using WIFI, just 3G .. Anyways, superb blog!

Chris Sims, is that you?

_______________
¹ So to speak.

² Who is incorrectly identified as selling pot; as we all know, Hanna bakes pastries while 100% high for for years³, supplying high-end shops throughout New York City.

³ Fun math fact: the 61,320 hours that Hanna cited in that strip corresponds to exactly seven years, but that strip ran in December of 2011, meaning she’s likely up to 84,528 hours as of today.

I wish I could get that sparkly effect to work in-line with the rest of the text, but oh well.

Got a lot of stuff at SDCC this year, all of it readable (I’m usually good for at least one toy, but not this year); I spread it out for the customary photo, which my dog decided to crash. For the record, he was here in New Jersey the entire week. In case any of you want to know what’s good, let’s do a survey:

• On the left hand side, the Stan Sakai tribute book and the hardcover collection of 47 Ronin (on which Sakai supplied the art); the former is new, the latter’s been out since March, but I hadn’t been able to find a copy anywhere so yay. Sakai is one of the great treasures of comics, and if you haven’t been reading his work all along, you could do far worse than to read the standalone story of the loyal retainers of the Asano Clan.
• Top center you’ve got the two cheats: In Real Life and To Be Or Not To Be. My copy of TBONTB is nearly a year old, but the key word is nearly; my copy came in the mail just after SDCC ’13, and thus I missed the opportunity to get contributors to sign it. I brought it this year, and now have 19 of the 69 contributors; this one may take a few more cons. A copy of In Real Life by Jen Wang and Cory Doctorow was offered to me at the :01 Books booth, but I suspected I’d have a copy waiting for me when I got home and so it was.
• Continuing clockwise, we get the latest Bravest Warriors and the last issue of Midas Flesh, both of which are excellent (Midas #8 is the Ryan Northiest story that there ever could be), and for both of which I offer my profound thanks to the folks at BOOM!, in that they actually sell their comics at their booth.
• I see now that I could have composed the placement of items a little better to keep similar things together, but oh well. We have the previously-mentioned Penultimate Quest by Lars Brown and Cautionary Fables and Fairy Tales: Africa Edition, edited by Kel McDonald, both of which I devoured on the plane. Penultimate dares to ask the question Why are we invading this same dungeon day after day and why doesn’t time pass? from the perspective of a character in that situation. It’s a ballsy thing to decide that Valhalla gets kind of old when it might be your eternal reward; it’s ballsier for Brown to end the book on a cliffhanger, with resolution to come in volume 2.

  Unsurprisingly, there were a lot of damn good stories in Cautionary, ranging in their treatment and degree of fidelity to source material. Also unsurprisingly, the standout was Carla Speed McNeil’s story of why Frog and Snake don’t play together; no other story captured the sense of timelessness, the speech rhythms of griot, and drop-dead gorgeous art that precisely matched the needs of the tale to quite the same degree. Then again, if you’re producing a story that isn’t quite as assured as one by McNeil, you’re doing pretty damn well.

• In between Brown and McDonald’s gifts is the first issue of Terry Moore’s SIP Kids, bringing characters from his justly-acclaimed Strangers In Paradise together as Peanuts-age children. It’s hilarious and you should get it even if you never read Strangers; you’ll get more out of it if you’re familiar with Moore’s work, but it stands marvelously on its own.
• In the center, you’ve got Jim Zub’s most recent Skullkickers issue (I had trouble finding it previously) and Jeff Smith’s first print issue of his webcomic Tüki Save the Humans. Typing their names in such close proximity makes me want to see those two dudes collaborate on something someday. Oh man, that would be awesome.

Oh, and my hotel clerk gave me these, which was very generous given that I hear there’s a trade in them on eBay.

Spam of the day:

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In the words of the inimitable Helen Rosner, My safe word is STOP MAKING SEX REFERENCES ABOUT KALE.