Well, it’s just about two weeks out from Preview Night and (as of this writing) we don’t have a definitive programming schedule for San Diego Comic Con 2014; despite this, there are hints leaking out here and there, such as Dean Trippe’s Something Terrible panel on Friday morning. But what we do have is an exhibitor list for the main floor, Small Press, and Artists Alley areas, which we at Fleen have broken down for your convenience.

Surprising nobody, the SDCC exhibit floor [PDF] remains unreasonably huge; good news, though — if you’ve been before, webcomickers and similar folks are mostly where you’ve found them in prior years. Please note that all the information given is what I could confirm at press time, and as more information becomes available I will update or correct this page.

On The Right Side
Let’s start over to the right side of the map, which is the side of the building away from the stadium parking lot where so much offsite stuff will be found. It looks like this:

The Webcomics, Small Press, and Independent Press Pavilions are all reasonably accessible from the “B” lobby. Let’s break ’em down.

The Sexy Lagoon
Centered roughly on booth #1332, you’ll find a majority of the webcomickers who will be at the show within about a 1.5 aisle radius; some are slightly outside the orange area, but not too far.

Notes:

• Gene Luen Yang and Lucy Knisley will both be at the :01 Books booth during the show.
• Blank Label is the increasingly-disused name for Willis, Spike, and whoever’s sharing space this year.
• Dumbrella will include Andy Bell, Meredith Gran, Rich Stevens, Chris Yates, and me.
• Congrats to Matt Inman on finally getting a booth of his own. Watch out for Blerch cosplayers in the aisles.
• Danielle Corsetto’s cross-country roadtrip will land at the TopatoCo booth on Saturday and Sunday from 1:00pm to 4:00pm only.

Small Press Is The Best Press
Right by the Webcomics section is Small Press. Here you should find:

From the Small Press section, you’re close by:

Notes:

• Gallery Nucleus/Bolt City will feature Kazu Kibuishi, and no doubt other arty types when they aren’t hanging out at Mondo down in booth 805.
• No confirmation yet on which webcomickers will be at the BOOM! booth when, but I’d expect a pretty strong rotation.

Now head back toward the “B” Lobby into the Independent Press area and you’ll find Unshelved in Booth 2300. Head towards entrance B2 in particular and you’ll be right next to Axe Cop at Booth 1603.

Going back to that larger map of the northern half of the exhibit hall. Wedged in between the Marvel and Image megabooths you’ll find Keenspot in Booth 2635.

Down South
Two last places to mention, if you trek down to the southern (that’s the end closer to the Happiest Place On Earth¹) end of the hall:

Waaay down there, past all the art materials and vinyl toys and Copic markers, you’ll find Udon Entertainment (home of such worthies as Christopher Butcher and Jim Zub at Booth 4529); and The Hero Initiative at Booth 5003. One may also find Mr Zub in Artists Alley, table GG-06, or variously at the Dark Horse, IDW, Image, or Marvel booths; look for the Canadian-shaped blur and that will be him.

Offsite
I don’t have a specific place to direct you like last year’s ShiftyLook (RIP) Arcade featuring Andrew Hussie, but I’m guessing that neither the Gaslamp Hilton terrace nor the massive parking lots within a kilometer of the convention center will be empty. I’ll add info to this page as I become aware of it. I’ll also update any info I get on people that are going to SDCC, but not necessarily boothing on their own.

Spam of the day:

does pizza go bad overnight

You shut your filthy mouth, pizza is never bad.

_______________
¹ Tijuana.

New — in some cases long-awaited — things popping up all over the damn place today.

• Ever want a Scott C painting of your very own? I’ve got a couple and they’re great, but they aren’t necessarily in everybody’s price range. The valiant Mr C heard your cries of despair, though, and has a solution:
  

  THE GREAT, GREAT SHOWDOWNS HUNT

  DAY 1

  Here’s what’s happening: I will post a little painting from a popular little film once every day this week leading up to the Revenge of the Great Showdowns exhibition on Friday, July 11th at Gallery 1988. These paintings shall be placed into envelopes and hidden somewhere at the location in which that scene happened.

  The first person to find this painting shall keep this painting as a gift from me to you! I only ask that you post a picture of the found painting in your possession, so I can congratulate you in front of the world. Tweet it or whatever you like. #GreatGreatShowdownsHunt

  Today’s painting appears to be of the cast of Reservoir Dogs, and it’s been placed in proximity to the diner from the early scene where they discussed tipping. Get on that, LA people! Presumably the others between now and Friday will also be in LA, but maybe he’s arranged for one to be left somewhere in suburban New Jersey. Please?

• From the twitter machine yesterday
  

  Baby arrived 8:14 this morning. Seven pounds, four ounces, 19 1/2″ long. Enjoying family bonding time at the hospital right now.

  That would be the sprog of Shaenon Garrity and Andrew Farago, born to webcomics royalty. There’s only so much you can say in 140 characters, so we at Fleen will presume that mother, child, and father are all doing well, and hope that all settle into their new routines easily. Child, you are going to have an amazing life, with parents that not only love the crap out of you, but also draw great pictures for your amusement and have a appreciation of nerdy things second to none.

  Listen to them well, learn their lessons, and you may someday inherit your mother’s crown as one of the three Nexuses of All Webcomics Reality and Radness Queen of the East Bay and Adjoining Metropolitan Areas. Welcome, little one; we’ll try to make the world worthy of you.

• Little baby children are all adorable, and a good thing too, or the stories of what they’re like at two years old would have led to a lot more of them being raised by wolves¹. Nightmares at that age, the lot of ’em. Not that nightmares don’t have their appeal from a storytelling perspective, which is why I’m equally curious and (given the imagery coming out of Broodhollow these says) trepidatious about Kris Straub’s newest project:
  

  What if there was a company that could go into your dreams and kill your nightmares? EXTERMINITE is a mind-bending 5-part graphic novel from Len Peralta, Mikey Neumann, and Kris Straub that will scare you out of your own pants, hilariously.

  Okay, sure, the blurb there claims that Exterminite will also have the hands of Len Peralta and Mikey Neumann, but when you start talking about nightmares, really disturbing nightmares, my mind goes straight to Straub. Hopefully the ha, ha aspects of this one will outweigh the Well great, you can just rock me to sleep tonight, Kris aspects.

  May Straub find this project a means to deal with his well-known fear of ghosts, because he’s just way too nice a guy to spend his days spooked by the things that aren’t quite there. Besides, he’s expecting his own first child soon, and as I understand it worrying about everything dangerous your infant can do to her/himself leaves little time to worry about ghosts.

• New book cover/recently rediscovered Art Deco masterpiece courtesy of Justin Pierce; Wonderella may be taking a little break while the third collection of her nonadventures is being put together, but if we get beautiful renditions like this (love the juniper, barley, and hops, very apropos) I’d call that a fair trade. Kickstarter information to come soon.

Spam of the day:

Depending which type, gas powered or electric, make certain you hands are dry before plugging it in to operate. You can buy this dryer at Sears, Home Depot and select Loews locations.

And remember, you have to keep the lint screen clear or you’ll burn down your house.

_______________
¹ Or perhaps moles; I can never keep those two straight.

We need rituals in our lives; for example, on the 4th of July, my rituals include the reading of the Declaration of Independence on Morning Edition, a viewing of 1776, and a reflection on what it means to be a part of this marvelous, contentious mess we call America. Each ideal we fall short of, each step backwards has (at least so far, and I hope will continue to) pushed us to try be better.

Which was pretty parallel to what I was thinking as I read the print collection of Darwin Carmichael Is Going To Hell (a review copy of which was kindly gifted to me by creators Jenn Jordan and Sophie Goldstein).

Darwin’s world is a Brooklyn where the melting pot didn’t stop with people in the human sense — gods, angels, demons, fantastic beings of all sorts have joined in the great migrations from their homelands because when the old ways stop working for you, what else are you going to do? No more labyrinth to inhabit? Patrick the minotaur is the super of Darwin’s building. Maybe the worshippers forget to provide you milk on holy days? Ganesh works at the diner down the corner. Spent the last 2000 years buddying it up with the great and notable? Skittle the manticore knows who needs a friend in life, and he latched onto Darwin early. Angels become stoners (mostly to kill time), muses latch onto conceptual artists (but I’m betting that Koons and Hirst never met one), and atheists have it tough in a world where actual gods live down the street, but they still try.

And it’s that thought that you have to still try that sits at the heart of the story. Darwin¹ was momentarily careless once, years ago, and he accidentally harmed the just-reincarnated Dalai Lama. Look, these things just happen, like the thunderstorm last night knocked a piece of my neighbor’s roof off and it hit my wife’s car. We live in a world where you deal with that by exchanging insurance information; Darwin lives a world where that completely non-intentional act has earned him a karmic debt so deep, a lifetime of good deeds won’t make up for it. Whether it’s just or not, he will suffer eternally.

So it’s understandable that he’s a bit mopey, especially considering his best friend is blessed by fortune (she inherited an immense amount of karma from her parents and so life just works out for her), his sidekick is perpetually innocent, his roommate is a complete douchebag, and the karma police arrest him regularly. But he’s trying.

The angels that won’t move out of his living room want him to pick up a soul, only the guy wants to live past his suicide attempt and Darwin takes him to the hospital; the guy lives, but the angels inform him that he disobyed the word of God, and God hates that. The Dalai Lama comes to New York and Darwin goes to apologize, but DL’s security goons (enormous monks in saffron robes with radio watches and earpieces) rough him up. Unicorns stab the hell out his butt as they race get to a virgin². He meets a young woman (made of snow) that falls for him and promptly melts from his warmth. Nothing quite works out for him no matter how hard he tries.

So when the forces of destruction (all of them, from all the religions) try to bring about the Apocalypse with Darwin as its harbinger (just after finding a girlfriend he really clicks with, naturally), you’d think he’d be willing to say screw it and bring about the end of all things. But he’s trying.

Darwin Carmichael Is Going To Hell is a complete story; there’s a beginning, and callbacks to the bits before the beginning, and the characters squabble and make up and love each other, and in the end we are well and truly caught up in learning if just trying is enough. Goldstein and Jordan have put a complex and subtle message behind a lightweight and deeply silly facade³; it’s variously cheery, melancholy, bright, dark, full of characters that you want to hang with and sometimes want to smack, and always deeply, deeply human. Darwin’s struggle against his fate is a fascinating story; squeeze into the handbasket and take the ride along with him.

Spam of the day:

Wonderful to determine ‘someone’ is definitely ultimately battling the actual RIAA Camorra. I have observed this wicked climate obtain power many years rear, pondering: “surely somebody on the market becomes aware of the big injustice and also inequality a is usually perpetrating”; Solitary mums; grandma and grandpa who else avoid perhaps have a computer becoming uneasy. Eventually I realize lighting at the end of typically the canal, because of each one of “you”!! Keep up the good function people. You may have a lot of buddies.

Wow, I’ve heard the RIAA compared to the Mafia before, but Camorra is a deep cut. Kudos.

______________
¹ And let me just note that that is the perfect name for a character that desperately wishes for a world with a little more clockwork operation and fewer supernatural realities.

² And coincidentally, we discover that unicorns are way creepy about their attraction to virgins (Check out the maidenhead on her! Man, I bet that hymen is like steel!), and will smack-talk the crap out of each other’s owners (I bet my owner’s had waaaay less temptation than her. Pssht, your girl? She’s like the wet slut double penetration queen of virgins.). Quite frankly, they’re all kind of dicks, especially the one that’s inspired by Kate Beaton’s fat pony, who is the chosen steed of the Whore of Babylon.

³ Especially when Patrick hits on a mermaid at a party, and ends up drunkenly sleeping with her sister. He was hoping for the hot redhead with enormous breasts, and wound up with the reverse mermaid: fish on top, human on the bottom. He will never be permitted to live that one down.

You bid Dave’s watercolor up to US$520.

And here’s my match:

It is, of course, a luxury to be able to do this; if I’m going to have drop-a-couple-hundo¹ flexibility in life, I promise that I’ll use it for good (an occasionally for awesome).

_______________
¹ I am kicking myself for not rounding it up to US$600, because as we all know, six hundred dollars is class money.

Just a bunch of people I need to toss props to today.

• Zach Weinersmith and Boulet are, as of about 37 minutes ago (as I hit publish on this), responsible for the #1 most-funded children’s book on Kickstarter, and the #4 publishing project of any kind. Also, if you’re me and draw a distinction between publishing and t-shirt¹, one could argue that it’s actually #3. Well done, you scruffy ginger men.
• The redoubtable² Heidi Mac has been one of the mainstays of comics reportage and commentary; it’s probably fair to say that if she hadn’t started The Beat, a whole bunch of other sites never would have launched, or tried so hard to keep up with her example. Having lost the actual go-live date to the mists of history –it was June or July 2004 — she’s decided on 1 July as her official blog birthday, making yesterday the day that The Beat hit the decade mark.

  Speaking as somebody who’s around the eight and half year mark (no to mention the fact that I cover a much narrower swathe of comics, and file a hell of a lot less copy than she does), I can tell you that’s an enormous accomplishment. I’ll let you in on a little secret — any time I actually come across a story before Heidi³, I get a little thrill like I’m not just a part-timer sneaking in some light opinion-mongering over lunchtime. Congrats on the landmark, Heidi, and long may you continue to lay The Beat down on my dilettante ass.

• Congratulations to you bidders that have added another US$100 to the price of the Drive cast/Team Cul de Sac benefit auction since yesterday. Specifically thanks to reader Maarvarq, who tried to bid even higher and ran into some kind of eBay limitation. There’s still some hours to go before this one finishes up, so if you were interested in costing me some money, pile on while you still have time.

Spam of the day:

You … are … my … hero!!! I cant believe something like this exists on the internet! Its so true, so honest, and more than that you dont sound like an idiot! Finally, someone who knows how to talk about a subject without sounding like a kid who didnt get that bike he wanted for Christmas.

Ma’am, thanks for the kind words, but I’m just a simple webcomics pseudo-journalist, doing the best he can in this crazy, mixed-up world. [flexes; crying eagle flies in front of explosions]

_______________
¹ Not to mention the fact that the presence of the most vile creature on the planet — the squirrel — should disqualify the Planet Money (who are otherwise upright citizens of the highest repute) project from existence, much less record-holding status. Friggin’ squirrels.

² So don’t even try to doubt her, because she will re-doubt you right back, Sparky.

³ Also The Spurge, Brigid Alverson, Johanna Draper Carlson, everybody at Comics Alliance, and a half-dozen other heavy-hitters. But mostly Heidi.

Okay, there’s still a day left to cost me and Dave Kellett some money. If it wouldn’t be unethical as hell, I’d bid the damn thing up to somewhere in the US$500+ range. In fact, let’s make this game a little more interesting: I pledged to match the purchase price of this piece up to US$500. If this is what it takes to spur some of you to get in the spirit of things (only full cast of Drive watercolor in existence, people!), I’m going to change the terms of my pledge:

I, Gary Tyrrell, will match the selling price of Dave’s piece as a donation to Team Cul de Sac up to US$1000, and with a minimum of US$500 in any case

You can’t afford to bid on a piece that might cost you multiple hundreds of dollars? Pledge a donation — however small — in the comments. You’ll get a reward beyond measure: official mensch¹ status, as declared by Richard Thompson himself.

• One of the things that I’ve observed with interest over the past few years is the (slow, but growing) adoption of writer’s rooms in webcomics. You could say that there’s an element of it at Cyanide & Happiness where it’s easy to imagine one of the lads bouncing an idea off another of them, but I think primarily it’s individual efforts. Anyplace you get a writer/artist partnership, there’s certainly give-and-take there.

  But I think you could probably trace proper writer’s rooms to the Pacific Northwest where (as often happens) you find Scott Kurtz at the center of experiments in webcomics. The Trenches started as an explicit writerly collaboration between Kurtz and the established duo of Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins; along with the artist changes, the writer’s room reduced to a singular voice: that of Strip Searchmonaut Ty Halley. While he may have withdrawn from one writer’s room, Kurtz was busy building up another as Dylan Meconis² joined him on writing duties on PvP.

  Crucially, I think the fact that Meconis creates comics so very different from Kurtz is a strength of this particular partnership. While Kurtz, Krahulik, and Holkins undoubtedly work well together they have similar strip approaches (gag-oriented, videogame and pop culture focii) and that limits the number of additional viewpoints that can be brought to bear on the final product. One might wish to compare with the writer’s room that was put together for the now-shuttered NAMCO High, featuring a bunch of creators of different ages and backgrounds (although there was a tendency for them to presently live in Brookklyn).

  I’m bringing this up because for anybody that’s considering a writer’s room, finding that balance of different experiences is probably one of the most crucial elements for success, but historically it’s something that’s been elusive. The traditional venue for writer’s rooms has been TV comedy, and much has been written in the past about how those rooms tend to be dominated by white dudes, often from Ivy League colleges, and viciously under-representative of women and minorities.

  And all of that is by way of pointing out a discussion that anybody considering a writing partnership (whether in a room or not) will probably want to listen to: as I write this sentence, WNYC midday host Leonard Lopate is introducing the author of a new book on comedy writing to discuss writer’s rooms at places like SNL, Letterman, and The Onion. You can listen to the interview here, and we can discover together what makes a good writer’s room (or perhaps the discussion follows some other track, but it’ll probably still be enlightening).

• Skin Horse, by Shaenon Garrity and C Jeffrey Wells, is in an odd semi-hiatus right now. Those of you paying attention may have noted that Garrity is (as of this writing), hugely pregnant and not intending to do a daily strip whilst dealing with the immediate aftermath of presenting a small human child to the world³.

  Having wrapped up a storyline on Saturday, she announced that she was done drawing comics for a while on Sunday, and the next storyline (a catch-up-with-peripheral-characters melange, to feature a variety of guest artists) started on Monday. And if my eye does not fool me, Garrity even provided the art for the first vignette herself (or somebody out there has her style down cold), easing us into a summer of random fun, with Wells undoubtedly shifting plot and pacing to best match the fill-in artists.

  And in one of those weird coincidences, today’s strip features an offhand reference to an obscure cryptid known as The Hodag, which by a peculiar corincidence just happens to be one of the critters mentioned in an endnote of Darwin Carmichael Is Going To Hell, to wit:

  In 1893, the Rhinelander Daily News reported the discovery of the corpse of a hideous creature with huge claws and a spiked tail. It’s discoverer, local land surveyor Eugene Shpher, called it the hodag, then claimed to have caught a live one in 1896. Shortly after, he displayed it at the First Oneida County Fair. He stood by the veracity of his claims until the Smithsonian Institution announced it would travel to Wisconsin to inspect the evidence, after which he promptly recanted. This ridiculous hoax is now the official symbol Rhinelander, Wisconsin, which is pretty great.

  The more you know!

• The last time David Malki ! thought up a game, it turned into a half million dollar Kickstarter and a year-plus process of production and fulfillment. This time, he’s just decided to put the damn thing up in a post and let you play without going down the path that leads to things like livestock and international shipping incidents.

Spam of the day:

Today, I went to the beachfront with my kids. I found a sea shell and gave it to my 4 year old daughter and said “You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She placed the shell to her ear and screamed. There was a hermit crab inside and it pinched her ear. She never wants to go back!

Yeah, that’ll happen. My suggestion is that to avoid future trauma to unsuspecting and blameless hermit crabs, you seal your daughter in a barrel, with a small opening to pass in food and water.

_________________
¹ For those of you that didn’t grow up someplace where you got off from school for Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, being a mensch is a good thing.

² About whom it is literally impossible to say too many good things.

³ With, it should be noted, the assistance of husband and Cartoon Art Museum curator Andrew Farago.

Following up on last week’s story about Dave Kellett putting up a watercolor for auction and pledging to donate twice the sale price via Team Cul de Sac in honor of Richard Thompson’s career. I thought this is such a great thing that he’s doing, I pledged to meet the sale price myself up to US$500. At the time I wrote that, the watercolor was going for US$305.

As of this writing it’s up to … US$325. Huh.

Come on people, you have the shot at a never-before-produced full-cast watercolor from Drive plus the opportunity to pull money out of my own personal wallet for a good cause. If the good cause part isn’t doing it for you, maybe the make it expensive for Gary part will. There’s just over two days left on the auction, and I want to see that number go higher. If you don’t have the kind of money to bid on the art, drop a note in the comments telling us how much you might be able to spare for this very worthy cause — several thousand of you read this page any given week, and even five or ten bucks from just a fraction of you could add up to something significant.

• Speaking of two days left, we’ve got just under 48 hours to go on the Augie and the Green Knight Kickstarter, and there are still stretch goals unmet. The start of the late-campaign daily backer bump is showing a bit, but still no impressive uptick like you’d expect. Look, backing now gets you far more book than you would have gotten four weeks ago — B&W spot illustrations, ten more full-page illustrations, nine prints plus a tip-in print, and acid-free paper — but you know what else you have a greater chance of getting now than you had back then?

  I’d say you have a greater chance of future collaborations between Zach Weinersmith and Boulet. Can you imagine what the bookshelf of a kid you care about might look like five or ten years from now if they did another Augie-style every 18 or 24 months? It would look like the bookshelf of a kid that loves reading and stories, that’s what. You still have a couple of days to spread the word.

• Speaking of book Kickstarts, on Saturday I was lucky enough to receive a review copy of the print collection of Darwin Carmichael Is Going To Hell, kindly gifted to me by DC co-creators Sophie Goldstein and Jenn Jordan. Here’s what I knew: I was going to love this book, because I really enjoyed the meandering adventures (and non-adventures) of Darwin and his friends while the comic was running. Here’s what I didn’t know until I opened the mail: Sophie & Jenn chose something I wrote to include, alongside blurbs by Sylvan Migdal and Yuko Ota, which is pretty damn good company to be in¹.

  This is not a review; that will come later, after I’ve read DCIGTH a couple more times. This is a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and it reads very differently as a continuous narrative than it does a page at a time. I’m also taking the time to appreciate the endnotes, which provide both supplementary mythological facts, and also choice factoids about the creation of the story².

• Seriously though — bid or let us know what you pledge in the comments.

Spam of the day:

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

Thank you, anonymous spammer that wants to sell me shoes or sunglasses or boner pills. In fact, there are linking problems with some images, primarily for two reasons. The first is that in the server switches that Fleen took last summer, some paths got changed around and then changed back, and while the images are still stored on our server, the code at the top of posts refers to a location that doesn’t exist.

I’ve believe that I’ve fixed the image links for every post from January 2013 to the present, but I may have missed one or two in there. For posts before January 2013, any time I link back to something in our archives, I ensure that post (and any posts it links to) have fixed image links. Please note that I’m only talking about images and pages here at Fleen; things that happen at other sites, there are absolutely dead links and I imagine I’ll fix them approximately never.

The second reason is that for the first several years of the blog, WordPress (or pehapas a plug in) generated the text for the header image in a different way that it does now. At some point, the block of code attached to each post that references the image, the link, and the alt-text ceased to exist for posts up to about August 2008.

The associated images are still on our server, but there are no references in the individual posts as to which images should be included in each post. As it turns out, the oldest post that still has a header image is the The Great Outdoor Fight book review from 27 August 2008.

Thus, the blog is now divided into BTGOFBR and ATGOFBR dates, which in my opinion is pretty damn perfect. If you come across a post that is ATGOFBR and has broken image links, drop me an email or post a comment, and I’ll fix it.

_______________
¹ They also spelled my last name correctly, which is a secondary thrill. Seriously, I recently missed out on like the first two weeks of a fairly major project at work that I was assigned to because I have professional colleagues who can’t figure out how to spell Tyrrell. I appreciate the hell out of anybody that takes the extra two seconds to get it right.

² Such as, which panel contains the Grossest Thing Jenn Ever Wrote, for which she apologizes. Let’s just say that for avatars of purity and righteousness, unicorns can throw down Yo Mama jokes with the best of them.

Today just seems to be chock-full of further references to things we spoke about earlier in the week. Weird how that happens sometimes.

• I hate to keep flogging the :01 Books is awesome horse¹, but they keep cropping up in my daily life. Today it’s because the mail brought a review copy of Farel Dalrymple’s forthcoming graphic novel, The Wrenchies². Look for a review a little closer to the September release.
• Scott C persists in his scruffy, charming ways — so much so that the jaded, flinty-eyed tastemakers at The AV Club noticed, lavishing some well-deserved praise on The Great Showdowns.
• Thanks to the Spam of the day, this week also saw mention of Angela Melick and her prodigious skill in both engineering and autobio comics. Word is today is her birthday, which should be marked on my calendar of significant births in engineering history. Oh, you doubt I have a calendar that features the birthdays of famous engineers³? Check it — annotated version for your viewing pleasure.

  As long as we’re on the topic of birthdays, it is also the birthday of Lore Sjöberg, whose website presence is less these days than it has been sometimes. Nevertheless, there’s still a significant amount of his old Brunching Shuttlecocks work available, including Lore Brand Comics and the greatest use of Flash animation in history. I am pretty secure in my atheism, but every day I thank the possibility of God that I was born into a world featuring the phrase depleted uranium Beholder statue.

Weekend now. Enjoy the crap out of it, and I’ll see you on Monday.

Spam of the day:

After a three month long research project, I’ve been able to conclude that how to change your minecraft name doesn’t negatively effect the environment at all.

That is exactly what I’d expect a shill for Big Change Your Minecraft Name to say. Don’t believe the “official” story! Stand up against those who would despoil our natural world by changing Minecraft names!

_______________
¹ Not true; I’ll tell you that :01 Books is awesome every day and twice on Sundays.

² Book design by Colleen AF Venable, natch.

³ Okay, technically it’s a calendar with the birthdates of significant electrical engineers. With all the circuit-building and Arduino-wrangling that Melick does these days, I’m declaring her one of us in spirit.

About the time I was getting all excited about Colleen AF Venable’s book announcement yesterday, USA Today and Heidi Mac were showing off the long-awaited cover to Scott McCloud’s new graphic novel, The Sculptor. It’s been more than five years since the book was first announced; it was originally due for release in 2013 but the tale (as they say) grew in the telling — every time I spoke to McCloud those first couple of years after the announcement, the estimated number of pages (for what was still an untitled book) bumped up by 50 to 100.

So if you’re wondering why you haven’t had the book for a year and a half already, that’s why — you’re getting much, much more book. In fact, I’m pretty sure that McCloud would still be adding pages were it not for some insistent calls from New York to please just send them what was done, it will be brilliant, a situation that is not without precedent among treasured creators of geek entertainments¹.

But I digress.

The important thing is, McCloud’s first work of fiction in about forever (the ZOT! Omnibus was 2008; The New Adventures of Abraham Lincoln was 1998) will be out the first week of February; the cover design is done (and who designed the cover? Ms AF Venable, that’s who, so yesterday really was a case of everything coming up Colleen), which means that the logistics of printing and assembly and transport and customs and distribution and every other thing that needs to happen to deliver a physical artifact is in progress. There’s no stopping it now.

• Know what else is larger than life, or eventually might be? The Bartkira Project. It’s been more than a year since we first heard tell of the attempt to get more than 450 artists to each render five pages from Otomo Katsuhiro’s epic, six-volume Akira, rendering all the characters in the style of specific counterparts from The Simpsons.

  In the meantime, the project has somehow managed to not run afoul of copyright enforcers at Fox, Random House, Tokyo Movie Shinsha, Toho, Kodansha, Warner Brothers, Bongo Comics Group, and Krustylu Studios, any or all of whom may have copyright interests in one or the other aspects of this particular mashup. And hoping that that particular streak of luck holds, the project honchos have launched the first print content associated with TBP.

  Bartkira is not a first volume of the full story; rather, it’s a curated exhibition of pages from the project, in advance of (it is presently planned) the release of the serial story online. It will feature 80 pages from TBP, 16 color pages in a gallery section, and contain work from 19 artists (not including Otomo or Matt Groening). It’s being published by Floating World Comics of Portland, and will set you back US$15, and is a non-profit enterprise:

  Proceeds from this exhibition book are being split between two charities, Naka-Kon (a charity for Katsuhiro Otomo’s home prefecture of Miyagi, which was decimated during the 2011 Tohuko tsunami) and Save the Children (a charity of choice from Simpsons co-creator Sam Simon).

  If this goes through without any angry cease-and-desist letters, I’d expect the full narrative project to get through at least the first volume; if the lawyers get involved, I’m guessing the 2300+ pages won’t see the light of day.

• Also larger than life, despite being tragically cut short? The boundless skill and lauded career of Richard Thompson. A lot of money has been raised by a lot of cartoonists in support of research into Parkinson’s Disease, including via the Team Cul de Sac book and the forthcoming auction of those Bill Watterson guest strips from Pearls Before Swine.

  To that, we can add one more:

  I’ve been thinking a lot about the brilliant and hilarious cartoonist Richard Thompson, who’s career was robbed by Parkinson’s. His strip Cul de Sac is amazing, with such a unique writing style and energetic, scratchy line.

  So! I made this DRIVE watercolor specifically for eBay. It’s the first full-cast watercolor I’ve ever done for DRIVE. And here’s the kicker: Whatever it raises, I’m gonna double to give to Parkinson’s research under the Team Cul de Sac banner.

  Everybody catch that? The more this piece goes for, the more you’re going to cost Dave Kellett, since he’s going to match the selling price. As of this writing, it’s going for a paltry US$305, but there are more than six days to go. Let’s make Kellett dig deep into his wallet on this one; if you can’t afford to bid, you could offer to add to Kellett’s donation. It’s simple, you just say something like, I, [your name], will match the selling price of Dave’s piece as a donation to Team Cul de Sac up to US$____ and then do that once the auction ends. I’ll start it out:

  I, Gary Tyrrell, will match the selling price of Dave’s piece as a donation to Team Cul de Sac up to US$500

  There. It’s on the internet, and that means y’all get to hold me to it. Who’s with me?

Spam of the day:

Fantastic post however , I was wondering if you could write a litte more on this topic? I’d be very grateful if you could elaborate a little bit more. Many thanks!

I don’t normally respond to requests in this fashion, but since the post in question was about the latest Wasted Talent book I will write a litte [sic] more: Angela Melick is awesome and her comics are awesome and you should read them and buy her stuff. And by buy her stuff I mean that you should purchase the items that she makes, not that you should purchase things for her.

_______________
¹ I was commissioned by Pan Books in England to write up the series in book form, and after a lot of procrastination and hiding and inventing excuses and having baths, I managed to get about two-thirds of it done. At this point they said, very pleasantly and politely, that I had already passed ten deadlines, so would I please just finish the page I was on and let them have the damn thing. — Douglas Adams

That’s from the introduction to the Omnibus Edition of The Hitchhiker’s Trilogy, published 1983 by Harmony Books. I am not suggesting for a moment that McCloud took too many baths or blew ten deadlines; as noted above, The Sculptor got longer from its initial contracted form, as opposed the the truncation of the first Hitchhiker’s novel.

There are few things in this mortal coil that are going to put me in as good a mood as getting to talk about (or, preferably, with) Colleen AF Venable. Onetime photowebcomicker¹, Eisner-nominated kids book author (with Stephanie Yue), and integral part of :01 Books. How integral? Well, she’s designed more than 100 books for them over the past few years, she was the visual reference for a main character in one of their best books of last year, and she’s the latest proof that :01 knows that sometimes, the best talent is right under your nose³.

Because :01 just picked Venable’s YA graphic novel, Kiss Number Eight, for publication in 2016:

I wanted to write a hopeful book about growing up queer in a conservative community — both in the present day but also in the past —- inspired partially by my older sister’s coming out and the reaction of my very Catholic family, both good and bad. (How Catholic you may ask? Let’s just say it includes multiple nuns … who wound up being incredibly supportive.) There’s this obsession to box things in: Blue on this side. Pink on this side. But gender lines are much more fluid. Love is love, and if we had any control over it the world would be a lot less interesting.

I may have mentioned in the past that my secret to Not Dying is to pick out some piece of culture that I must have, that either isn’t released or isn’t finished yet; I then make the command decision that obviously I have to live until _____ comes out. Kiss Number Eight just became my newest mortality-avoiding goal, because I cannot wait to see what Venable (a one-woman cheerfulness factory) does with a topic that requires an acknowledgment that those you love the most can very much hurt you. Venable’s light, humane touch with characters will well serve a story that could (in lesser hands) turn into a cloying, mawkish, clumsy after school special⁴.

The art will be supplied by Leela Wagner, and it looks fabulous; in fact, the preview pages are such confident work⁵ that it makes it hard to believe that this will be Wagner’s first book. My guess is that by the end of the week, she’s getting serious inquiries for future work. In the meantime, let’s just hope that Wagner and :01 Books release more sample pages because waiting two years is going to hurt.

Spam of the day:

????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????
Woman ???? ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????
???????????????????????

There are so many things this could be trying to say, I am hard pressed to come up with just one interpretation.

• A fedora-laden comment on the unknowability of the female mind as compared to that of the putatively logical Man?
• A keyboard with an overly-aggressive repeat-press sensor?
• Deleted dialogue from that one Next Generation episode with the aliens that didn’t have genders but Riker still got laid?

The mind boggles.

_______________
¹ Rejecting traditional notions of drawing, Venable’s photocomic found common ground with Bernie Hou’s Alien Loves Predator, David Malki !’s Wondermark, Chris Yates’s Reprographics, Chris Dlugosz’s Pixel, and Steve Hogan’s Acid Keg², collectively known as the Playground Ghosts, which engendered much loyalty in their readers and still has some discussion in its old forum.

² Which bucked the trend by not being a pixel, montage, or photocomic.

³ There’s precedent, as :01 published editorial honcho Mark Siegel’s hauntingly beautiful Sailor Twain. As there’s really just four people that make :01 Books work, this means that once Callista Brill and Gina Gagliano get books out from :01, they can change their motto to Remember, we’re not only the publishers of the best graphic novels in the business. We’re also creators.

Yeah, it’s a little longer than By Art We Live, but it’s got that certain je ne sais quoi that just screams classy.

⁴ Alternately, a Very Special Episode of Blossom.

⁵ It reminds me variously of Jillian Tamaki on This One Summer, Jen Wang on Koko Be Good, and Boulet on Darkness. Hey, :01 Books, get Boulet to do a graphic novel!