Iced 15th Birthday cake with burning number candles over a pink background with copyspace for your greeting and wishes

Today is 15 December. And while through inattention and writing some posts that were queued up before this page was announced the actual day that this site went live is not known, today is the day that the blogiversary is celebrated. Sort of like how the Queen of England has an official birthday, or all thoroughbred horses are considered to be born on 1 January.

It’s been 15 years, 4293 posts (including this one), 3940 written by me (again, including this one). Lot’s happened in that time. Wrote some good stuff. Wrote some hard stuff. Made some mistakes¹. Made some of the best friends of my life. Rough estimate is that we’ve raised north of US$12,000 for worthy causes in the past four years through the Fleen Fight For Fungible Futures Fund. I’m not sure how long this page will continue (nobody’s certain of anything in the depths of a pandemic that has been grievously and intentionally mismanaged), but as long as I’ve got opinions — and, like T-rex, I got opinions — I’ll be here to share them with you.

If you like what we at Fleen have done here, head over to Jon Rosenberg’s store or Patreon and support him, since he’s the one that basically browbeat me into doing it. Sincerely, thanks for that, Jon. I’m a better person because of it.

Happy fifteenth Fleensday. Stay safe, read good comics, we’ll do it all again in Year 16.

Spam of the day:

You should add website protection from unwanted messages As we’ve had contact with you in the past, I think your website is not protected from spam, you have to protect it

You’re spamming me to say that you want to protect me from spam? Kind of undermining your own message there, Slappy.

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¹ Case in point: Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin sent several posts worth of info regarding the Twitch-hosted BD festival that occurred recently in France, and because I was short on time and read them out of order, I posted yesterday’s Pénélope Bagieu interview without the context that would have been provided by what should have been the first post. We’ll sort that out, promise.

If you want to know why, ask the asshole that wrote a course with a known showstopper flaw in it that affects only instructors and then didn’t tell anybody.

When my boss and I emailed him in a panic, he replied breezily with the fix and a smiley face. I want to punch him in the neck and see if he’s still smiling then.

In case you forgot.

[Updated to add: the image at the top of the post; it was only tweeted by Ryan North a few days ago, and I legit wrote this post a year ago and scheduled it to update today. I have been waiting so long for this, everybody.]

[Updated to additionally add: We hope that Mr North is having a marvelous Bucketmas Day, and encourage him to remember that a bucket is nothing more than a very bounded hole, which we all know are nature’s greatest menaces.]

Spam of the day:
The Mystery Bucket is spam made physical, and no spam emails could possibly compare. Learn from the Mystery Bucket, spammers, for it is in possession of a mastery of your craft that you will likely never achieve.

Boy, 2020 is the season for long-ago strips to come back. We already saw the return of Dr Kathy Peterson’s Kidnapped By Gnomes, which was on the downswing at the dawn of the last decade. About the time taht KGB was 2.54 centimetering towards hiatus, Bob Scott was launching Molly And The Bear, about which I said:

[I]t occupies a spot midway between Little Dee (in that a kid and an animal interact in an all-ages appropriate manner) and (of all things) the Least I Could Do Beginnings strips on Sundays (which have a very similar, ’60s-era gag cartoon feel to the artwork).

Turns out that since that day eleven and a half years ago (!), Scott has continued with the strip, although it went on several lengthy hiatuses and less-than-regular periods of updating, ironically right around the time of that post. But it’s been publishing at least 5 days a week (sometimes 6, and often 7) since November of 2018 (although much of that was curated reruns; the current run of new strips goes back to August of 2019). There was a strip collection in 2016 under the old title and a new one is a-bornin’ under the strips current title, Bear With Me. From an email from Mr Scott:

My Bear With Me webcomic has a new strip compilation book being published by Hermès Press that will be out January 2021. This is the second book.

The book is currently in pre-order at a US$10 discount off the US$60 price; considering it’s a 250+ page hardcover and Hermès concentrates on archival-quality reprints of classic strips, that somewhat steep price looks justified. If you know somebody that’s got a liking for the classic comic strip laugh-chuckles, take a run through the archives (starting here) and decide if a few zillion strips will keep your loved one busy and indoors until we’ve got a handle on the pandemic.

In other news that’s about as far from the Scott’s strip as it is possible to get and still be in webcomics, I was mightily intrigued by something Matthew Nolan said in the news below today’s Oh Joy, Sex Toy. A fair amount of it was about some Numberwang he and Erika Moen have run on their latest Kickstarter, which has led to a pay bump for their guest contributors:

From now on, we’ll be paying folks $140 a page (each comic is 4-5 pages long), and $160 a page for returning artists. As always, all the work done for OJST is creator-owned, so artists keep all the rights to their work. It’s still a long way from a professional Marvel or DC rate, but we’re still pretty proud. For just two nerds running a lil ol sex-ed webcomic, the idea that we can now pay $700-$800 for a comic is amazing.

It might not be Marvel/DC money (or heck, it might be), but considering some of the downright exploitative rates I’ve seen some of the mid- and small-size publishers offer, it’s laudable. But the intriguing part isn’t that Moen & Nolan are awesome people who are doing their damndest to support the community in a rent-and-groceries way; it’s an almost throwaway addendum in two lines:

With that in mind, we are constantly hiring for guest comics.
More of a hubaballoo to come about that in the next few days =)

Creators, I’m going to say that it’s worth your while to keep an eye on Nolan and/or Moen’s social media accounts. When they mention the possibility of a hubaballoo, I start paying attention.

Spam of the day:

Good day my friend I see you moving around my house. You looks nice ;). Do you would like to meet?

Is this some kind of scam trying to say my house is your house? Because this house comes with a deer problem in the backyard and a greyhound that is a butt sometimes.

There is a post coming on Wednesday that I need you to know that I wrote a solid damn year ago, and have had scheduled to run all that time. It is, even now, looming both on the horizon and in the shadows, waiting to reveal itself. It is an example of my dedication to the important things in life, and I hope you appreciate it.

Speaking of looming …

You know who can loom menacingly with the best of them? Conan. We all know what he’ll say if you ask him what is best in life, but it’s slightly less known that if you ask him what’s second best in life, he’ll tell you that the menacing loom is pretty awesome.

The 240 character limit doesn’t often allow our best modern interpretation of Conan to loom a lot, but you know who writes a properly-looming Conan? Jim Zub. He took over the regular Conan title back in February, got two issues out, and then comic publishing fell over thanks to pandemic and Diamond deciding to not do its job while continuing to charge money at every end of the distro channel.

It’s been a long road to get series started up again; Ryan North’s Power Pack five-parter was supposed to start back in the first half of the year and be done by now, but only got issue #1 out about 10 days ago. Similarly, Karla Pacheco’s run on Spider-Woman¹ was delayed some months, but it running pretty regularly now. In other cases, existing series have been indefinitely delayed.

Presumably, somebody in an office somewhere decides when to resume interrupted series, using whatever priorities they have in mind that are mysterious to the rest of us. For example, the last two issues of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s run on Black Panther — like the last two issues of his run, period, as it’s due to wrap with issue #24 — still haven’t released, and over at Dark Horse, Matt Wagner’s latest Grendel series has been stalled at issue #4 with no resumption in sight. But Conan finally resumed in October, meaning that the first four-issue Zub arc is now complete.

Not that reading four issues in February, March, October, and November is ideal, mind you, but if you were looking for an awesome story, started reading said awesome story, and then forgot about the awesome story while the world went over a cliff, one could hardly blame you. But it’s done, so maybe go back and read the start of the story as you get caught up on the back half. Or wait until March when it gets collected in the trade (which will include this first story arc plus the next two issues), but I’m pretty sure Zub would appreciate you reading it now.

Spam of the day:

>>>> BlackFriday – Top 20 Gadgets for 2020 <<<< 50% OFF Mega Sale :)

You’re a little late there, Champ. You tried. [thumbs-up emoji]

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¹ Which is terrific if you like your superheroes blowing up helicopters and punching mutant dinosaurs in the face.

Our deepest sympathies to Ryan Estrada and his family; this isn’t a singular moment of loss, but rather the start of a long term period of coping and compromise and so very much pain, and none of it had to happen. I know that the howler monkeys who think that they are the only people in the world that matter will be screaming about how this isn’t COVID related; if it happens in your vicinity, you have my permission to punch them in the throat until they can’t spew their stupidity any longer.

You know people like that, too. Maybe they aren’t screaming about conspiracies and RFID and 5G, but they think that it’s overblown, it’s not that bad, that they don’t need to wear a mask and it’ll be okay.

As you know, I’m a volunteer EMT. More, I was recently elected Chief of my agency. I’m responsible for the lives and well-being of the approximately 15000 people in my town (and the quarter million in the surrounding area we serve by mutual aid), but especially the two dozen people I have staffing ambulances.

There’s a few old guys like me, one dude that joined us right out of high school and is still riding despite being four months into his internal medicine residency, and a bunch of relative newbies, people on for less than two years, who have STEPPED THE FUCK UP at a time when they could be doing anything else at less risk to themselves.

A couple of moms and dads, mostly college students. A quarter of them are literal kids — we have a half dozen high school students riding as cadets and we try to keep them off COVID calls, but they’re all presumed COVID calls at this point. It’s not enough that every aspect of their lives has been upended, they’re putting on N95s and going into enclosed spaces with sick people. Anybody that complains about COVID fatigue because they haven’t been able to do exactly as they please for up to a month at a time should try doing CPR for 20 minutes with full PPE on a hot summer’s day¹.

So those people that you know, the ones that think it’s not that big a deal? I need you to do something, fam. I need you to contact them — at a distance –and tell them that this is a crisis point in your relationship. Explain that they are actively trying to kill my two dozen crew members and everybody else in the world. People with COVID, and people without COVID who can’t get the care they need because there’s no room for them, and not enough staff to take care of them.

Tell them they need to

Wear

MASK

or they’re dead to you, because they are trying to harm you and everybody you love with their solipsistic bullshit. Want to be a person that can talk to me, ever? You can’t be such a narcissist that you’re willing to kill others without a care in the world when you could avoid it by doing almost nothing. This is murderously malignant behavior, and none of us are getting out of this pandemic untouched by tragedy. There should be no room in your life for people who are choosing to make it worse.

And when this is all done — and it will be, someday — remember who they were. Because if the greatest public health crisis in a century wasn’t enough to make them do the absolute bare minimum, they’ll do the same to you again, again, and again over matters great and small. I don’t get to choose the patients I serve, so if one of them calls me for help, I’ll provide it. But godsdamn if I don’t wish sometimes I could tell them No, you’re not worth the risk to my people and something about petards.

Stay safe, people. And keep everybody else safe, too.

No spammers today.

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¹ That patient was pronounced in the ED, but at least we had a bed to put him on and there was staff sufficient to work the code. That was August. If you have a heart attack this weekend when I’ve got my 24 hour shift, I can’t guarantee you’ll get a bed or a full staff because both of those are in short supply these days.

But this? This is fine. Get all your official KC Green This Is Fine merch at http://famous.dog.

Spam of the day¹:

Easily and safely clean your ears with Rotating ear cleaner

Oh hell no. I did my time in the power generation/rotating machines lab in college, and the first rule of rotating machines is you keep your body parts away from them².

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¹ Don’t think I didn’t try to get this up into the title. Oh, how I tried.

² The first rule of power generation is one of your hands is in a back pocket at all times. This is so if you bridge a high potential, the current will travel down your arm, along the side of your body, and out your feet. You’ll get gnarly burns along the path, maybe cook an organ or two, and have some nasty wounds at the entrance/exit points, possibly blowing some extremities off. Maybe just a finger/toe or two, but possibly an entire hand/foot.

But the alternative is if both hands are in play, that electrical current will almost certainly want to travel up one arm, through the chest, and down the other in search of its beloved Ground, and along the way it will play merry havoc with the electrically-controlled organ known as your heart.

Or, as Dr Acker shared by way of motivation back in the late 80s: If you allow a current of 100 mA to travel through your chest and heart, it will stop and you will lose consciousness and die almost immediately. If you allow a current of 400 mA to travel across through³ your chest and heart, it will put you into very nasty arrhythmias and you will die painfully in a full panic.

This was before automated external defibrillators, one of which would probably bring you back even from the 400 mA zap. I mean yeah, electrical burns and physical trauma to the heart, but you’d likely avoid the whole dead thing. Note to self: call up alma mater, make sure they require CPR/AED training as a requirement to enter the power gen lab. If not, yell at them.

³ This was edited after publication because I made a rookie mistake that shamed me when I noticed it was published to the wide world. Potential (or voltage, if you’re nasty) is across, current is through. Words have meanings.

It’s December! How in the crap-hell did that happen?

Anyways, you can celebrate the incipient end of this dumpster fire of a year¹ with any of the following sources of delight and joy.

• There have been magnetic comic sets before, but how many of them have involved little tiny magnets reading Balrog, Klingon or Fudgies? I submit: None.

  None, that is, until Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett decided to get into the game. Behold: the Sheldon magnetic make a comic set, which is up for preorder and if the stars align will make it to your US address in time for Yule. Everybody else, invent a holiday in January.

  I just have one question, LArDK: can I make a comic that refers to Fatty Chunklins? If not, I think you owe us an explanation.

• You must needs acquire every one! John Allison has launched the Advent season with a series of collectible stamps which may be redeemed for fabulous merchandise.

  I think perhaps kids these may not ever have experienced the thrill of getting S&H Green Stamps, and carefully counting how many were pasted on each page of your collection book, wondering where you could get just eleven more so you could could get that fabulous rolling typewriter table. Uh, not that I’m old enough to have done that².

  Anyway, now you can get in on the stamp-collection and redemption fun:

  You’ll be able to trade in your stamps at branches of Rumbelows, Woolworths and Woolco across the United Kingdom (excepting the Channel Islands).

  BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!

  • Green stamps have a multiplier of 1.1x when redeemed at weekends.
  • Collect ten red stamps to enjoy a secret multiplier bonus at participating shops. If in doubt, ask the manager.
  • Rumbelows Hi-Fi Club members get a 50 point bonus on production of your membership pennant.

• Last but not least, Happy Twentieth Strippaversary to Little Gamers. It’s an infinitely weirder world than when LG premiered in the far-flung past of THE YEAR TWO THOUSAND, and anybody that keeps a comic going for most of 15 years, gets sporadic, then comes back? Props.

Spam of the day:

Tact Machete Knife – Full Tang Blade 60% off

Is a tact machete what you use to cut through your prose and make it blunter and ruder? I think we could use with fewer of those, actually.

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¹ As I was typing that sentence, I heard Mary Louise Kelly on All Things Considered refer to, and I quote, a godawful year.

² I totally did and that typewriter got me through college. Word processors weren’t always a thing, kids these days.

If you get contacted by the Census Bureau to take part in their Household Pulse Survey, you should take that. After a bunch of questions about the topic of the week (mine were all about coronavirus, from employment and food security to plans put off and even depression), you get a free response field where you can type in whatever you want and they have to take notice of it.

After your name/demo details are stripped off, it becomes part of the data set and people can see what you were thinking! I don’t think that my response, above, was a surprise; I’m just sad that the display space given to the comment field wouldn’t hold my entire text block, but I think what you can see describes my feelings nicely.

In other news, merch:

• As I mentioned on the Twitters, I received an R Stevens original COMPUTERS PROFESSIONAL t-shirt for my birthday. What I didn’t mention is that I also received an I Square Pixels t-shirt, because a) my wife knows that I am an incorrigible nerd, and b) I have a number of shirts that are in need of retirement. Case in point, this shirt which has worn through directly along the bottom edge of the screenprint.

  I have at least three others that are in need of retirement (which proclaim my allegiance to, respectively, electric sheep, Weinermobilivorous cephalopods, and greyhounds. Fortunately, Gritty has me covered (literally, in this case).

• And for those of you needing to keep track of the passage of time, may I suggest a calendar with bears on it? There’s also a calendar with whales on it, and my wife and I were only able to choose between the two with the help of two different specialty coins¹. Maybe you need more than one calendar and could get both!

There’s lots of other webcomics folk selling stuff — pretty much all of them — and they’re able to get you stuff at a distance thanks to the kindly services of the mail system. Do some holiday shopping, stay the hell away from malls, and support your favorite creators all at the same time.

Spam of the day:

Brain Molecule Contains Key To Terminate All Herpes Strains

Would this be the molecule that makes you not tell your partner that you’ve got herpes? That’s a shitty molecule.

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¹ For those wondering, bears are land mammals, so they got the monkey side of the monkey/circus coin; whales are big like circuses, so they got the circus side. The yes/no coin was flipped a bunch of times just because it feels so good to flip it. Seriously, it’s a tactile pleasure.

On this last day before we break for pie, Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin brings us news of how the pandemic is affecting next year’s festivals.

The Festival International de Bande Dessinée d’Angoulême has finally acknowledged there would appear to be a pandemic going on, and has announced their plans for the 48th edition (warning: inaccessible, untranslated video). Unsurprisingly, the main event in January is canceled, to be replaced by just the awards ceremony with limited if any attendance, similarly to how Lyon BD and Quai des Bulles awarded their prizes in 2020.

But contrary to these festivals, the Angoulême organizers won’t want for a year to pass without any proper festival, and have thus scheduled a new 48th edition to take place from June 24th to 27th. We know for instance the Grand Prix will be awarded at that time and not be part of the January aways ceremony, but other than that details were light on what this edition will entail, which is fine: we can always learn that as the date for that event approaches.

So what did they announce besides the new schedule? Mostly, the selections for the various awards (Fauve d’Or, 8-12, 12-16, high schoolers, noir, and reissues); of note are G. Willow Wilson for Invisible Kingdom*, Derf Backderf for Kent State, Chris Ware for Rusty Brown, Boulet for Bolchoi Arena, and Lisa Mandel for Une Année Exemplaire) (which interestingly enough is self-published), all for the Fauve d’Or (Kent State being also in the running for the high schoolers award).

Now, had they made their announcement two weeks earlier, I would have asked what made them hope June would turn out to be better than January; after all, Lyon BD was set to take place in June 2020 and had to cancel. But the announcement at their intermediate milestones that the most advanced vaccine candidates turn out to be remarkably effective (you may remember Derek Lowe from Randall Munroe’s What If) is a game changer, because having at least one efficient vaccine is probably the only thing that could possibly allow an event remotely the scale of Angoulême to take place in a way remotely resembling normalcy in the era of COVID-19.

So, yes, vaccine distribution willing, I am going to try and check out what Angoulême is like at the beginning of Summer.

Many thanks, as always, to FSFCPL. I know that it isn’t Thanksgiving in France, but all of us here at Fleen are thankful for his myriad contributions and the bragging rights for being the only comics press with a European desk. In your face, every other comics press that’s won an Eisner!

Stay safe, friends. Keep isolated, wear the mask, and hopefully we’ll be doing better soon¹.

Spam of the day:

Top-1 job in SWorker world rankings

You’re trying to recruit me as a sex worker?

Okay, but you gotta buy me dinner first.

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¹ If we’re back here in three weeks with a widespread acceleration in diagnoses because people just had to travel and gather in large groups, I am going to go into a Dutch fugue on those assholes.