You wouldn’t think so, but it is — that’s the number of pieces in the latest Baffler! from Chris Yates, the 3000th in the series. Five layers deep, colors all but indistinguishable from layer to layer, it’s a work of art. Serious enquiries only, please.

Other Big Round Numbers to note:

• If I’ve followed the news a’right, today marks the 4000th strip at Unshelved. That’s a lot of stories from the library (what, didn’t you know that every single Unshelved strip, including the most horrifying ones, are completely true and taken directly from writer Gene Ambaum’s life?). Congrats to the webcomics power duo of Ambaum and Bill Barnes, and here’s to another 4000.
• Hey, know what’s almost the same as 4000 strips? 400. What? It’s only one digit different. Anyways, fans of the Greatest Superhero Ever will want to make a special effort to see what Wonderella’s up to on Saturday, as that will be strip #400. I bet she jumps hella high and also yells at Hitlerlla and maybe also teaches a lesson. It’s what superheroes do.

Not big round numbers:

• Boulet paints the iconic image from Augie and the Green Knight in only five and a half minutes (with a little help from YouTube).
• Huh, accidentally called it: last time I mentioned Jeph Jacques it was also in proximity to Augie and the Green Knight, where I speculated that the second strip (which his burgeoning Patreon would prompt) might deal with the concept of AI rights in his QC-verse. Looks like he’s not waiting for the as-yet unnamed second strip to tackle some of those issues, as today’s QC reveals. This is going to be good.

Spam of the day:

fleen.com, with region cricket, a well known fact their co-workers may state in order to as well as bemoan within equivalent amounts.

I spend a tidy sum to spray for region crickets, so I’ll thank you not to imply we have them.

It’s been described as outdated, and the webcomics-centric RSSPect even closed its doors recently, but RSS is still worth the very minimal effort it takes to subscribe to a feed or check it once a day. Why, without RSS, I don’t know how many people would have known about the imminent return of Tüki Save The Humans.

What’s that? You didn’t know that Tüki was coming back from hiatus¹? Well, let me point you towards the announcement, which I received via RSS:

The wait is almost over!
Season Two of Tüki Save the Humans is set to kick off here on boneville on Monday afternoon, June 9th! We are also working on a Social Media campaign that will widen our presence on the web! Thanks to all our readers for the support on our recently won, Rueben Award [for online strip — long form]! [emphasis original]

Okay, you might have seen that if you’d been in the habit of checking the Boneville blog, but otherwise you probably wouldn’t have known, as I haven’t seen the announcement anywhere else yet. So do Smith a favor, and spread the word — Tüki is back, and that can only be a good thing.

Speaking of RSS feeds, I’m not the only one that feels fondly about them — the redoubtable R Stevens likes ’em so much, he wears his heart on² his sleeve, or at least his chest. Alas, the RSS shirt design is being retired to make room for new stuff³, so it’s on sale now for US$15 while they last. The technology persists even while the shirt needs must go, but given the quality of shirts that Stevens (and everybody else that sources from Brunetto) vends, it’ll last roughly forever, or at least until RSS gets replaced by DBS (Direct Brain Syndication, which won’t be creepy at all).

Spam of the day:

fleen.com, recommend which you reply simply by discussing a location regarding development, yet swiftly increase everything you already are carrying out to be able to improve in which talent.

The robot uprising has come, and they’re starting with blogspam.

________________
¹ The original plan was that Tüki would run in 24-page chapters, one page a day, three days a week, taking two months. Then, there would be a two month hiatus to prep up the next chapter. By that schedule, we should have seen the launch of chapter two in April, and just been wrapping it up about now. A’course, some of the time between the end of chapter one and April was taken up retooling the website, which was pretty necessary.

Please note, I am not criticizing Jeff Smith for not following the original plan. The man can produce his comics on whatever damn schedule he feels like and I’ll be there to read it, and come next month, to buy the reprint of the first issue. Fortunately, reading things on whatever schedule may come is really easy, because RSS feed.

² <sigh> Yes, yes, Hurrr … he said heart-on. You’re very clever.

³ Quote from the announcement that Stevens sent out via — you guessed it — RSS.

Before we start, a quick note — next week work will take me to the Left Coast, and in particular to a client where I may have extremely limited access to … well, anything, really. It’s a Bring your passport if you want to make it past Security kind of place, although I’ve been assured that I will most likely be permitted to make bathroom trips unescorted¹. Bottom line, expect late and/or minimal posting next week.

• I see that Dante Shepherd will be braving the den of Reddit for an Ask Me Anything tomorrow morning at 10:00am. I’m not on the Reddit, but I did recall that you can see who’s upcoming for AMAs² and I took a peek — turns out that Shepherd’s not the only webcomicker due to take on all comers. A few hours from now (sorry for the late notice), Box Brown will be doing the AMA thang at 4:20pm EST.

  The timing makes me think that Maureen Dowd’s now-infamous column may come up in conversation, along with hopefully lots of questions about André The Giant: The Life and Legend. Drop by and say hi! And ask Dante about his preposterous claim that velociraptors would never square dance. I’m calling bullshit on that one.

• Final update on the Cuttings Kickstart: US$73,264, meaning that they overran the Stretch Goal list and will in fact be adding 64 pages to the book. Also overrunning the Stretch Goal list (it’s missing at least one, maybe two disclosed goals if the US$10K interval holds): Augie and the Green Knight. Just a reminder, this project has blown through funding and more than a dozen stretch goals in three days, or a grand total of 10% of its campaign run time. At this point, I’m giving Augie a 50/50 chance to make it to To Be Or Not To Be territory.

  Put another way, Augie is (as of this writing) already the 12th most-funded publishing project in Kickstarter history. For reference, at this point in its campaign, TBONTB had raised about two thirds as much as Augie has, with approximately the same number of backers. Yeah, calling it: Augie breaks into Top 5 in the Publishing category, and if Weinersmith can keep up the interest with stretch goals, may well challenge for the top spot.

Spam of the day:

your doing such amazing things

It’s good to be loved.

_______________
¹ Don’t laugh; I knew a guy that worked for a Three-Letter Agency in the vicinity of Washington, DC. Contractors at his site not only had to be escorted everywhere beyond the bounds of the cubicle they were working in, during those travels they had to carry a “squawker” — a device which emitted an obnoxious beeping sound that meant Somebody is being escorted, if you can hear this stop talking about secret things.

He had a cube near the bathroom and hated the squawker because it was guaranteed to interrupt him every five minutes and so he tried to force all contractors to have a single coordinated bathroom break per day. In case you’ve ever wondered what could make somebody so psychologically damaged as to spy on their fellow citizen indiscriminately, it was probably having to listen to a squawker all day long.

² As of this writing, Shepherd is not listed, but I’m sure that’s just a matter of the page needing a refresh.

You Damn Kid! was maybe not the first webcomic I followed, but it was the first that I got a reprint collection for, and the first that I got a sketch from, and there will never be a day that I don’t think that the frog rocket wiener is the funniest damn thing ever. I don’t care how many times he’s gone on hiatus, I know that Owen Dunne — like King Arthur before him — will always return in our time of greatest need. And apparently that time will be the first of September.

• This page has been of the opinion that one of the better-curated comics awards programs out there would be the Joe Shuster Awards; perhaps it’s because of a reasonable number of categories, perhaps because of its tight focus on Canadian creators¹, perhaps because Canada produces an outsize crop of really talented writers and artists. This year’s nominees have been announced, and it’s the usual distinct lack of wondering How the hell did that get nominated?

  Webcomickers (past and present) getting nods from the Shusters include Ed Brisson (various titles for Image and Marvel) and Ryan North (Adventure Time) as Writer/Scénariste, Stuart Immonen (two different X-Men series) and Chip Zdarsky (Sex Criminals) for Artist/Dessinateur, Faith Erin Hicks both solo (The Adventures of Superhero Girl) and with J Torres (Bigfoot Boy vol 2) for The Dragon Award (Comics for Kids)/Le Prix Dragon (Bandes Dessinées pour Enfants), and the Cloudscape Comic Collective (Waterlogged: Tales from the Seventh Sea) for the Gene Day Award (Self-Publishers)/Prix Gene Day (Auto-éditeurs).

  The actual award for Webcomics Creator/Créateur de Bandes Dessinées Web is the usual strong lineup featuring Attila Adorjany, Jayd Aït-Kaci (with Christina Strain), Olivier Carpentier and Gautier Langevin, Emily Carroll, Kadi Fedoruk, Canaan Grall, Dakota McFadzean, and Ty Templeton (half of whom are repeat nominees, meaning they’re keeping up quality work over the long term).

  What I love about the Shuster nods for Webcomics/Bandes Dessinées Web is that I always learn about something good that I hadn’t been reading — they really do dig for outstanding work. That said, I think that Emily Carroll will take her third win in three nominations (2011, 2012), but any of the nominees are worthy of recognition. Time and date of the announcement of the winners will be announced later.

• This page has also long been of the opinion that there’s possibly no single creator working in more different story styles than Dave Roman. While almost always working in an all-ages (or at least YA) mode, his stories have run the gamut from SF school stories to spooky mystery, from be-true-to-yourself character studies (with boats) to fantasy. And sometimes, he just opts for maximum adorableness, as in the case of the Cupcake Helicopter The Great Bunny Migration minis.

  The latter has now spawned a new ongoing webcomic in the form of Starbunny, Inc, which launched today with a time jump and corporate intrigue, leading one to suspect that this won’t be just adorable bunnies and having fun all day with their galactic milkshake industry. You can bet there will be twists and turns (but not too twisty or scary), and the good-hearted will win out in the end (but not too easily) over the mean bullies (maybe those birds? they suck), who just might be convinced to change their ways.

  So grab a little one that you want to introduce to comics — if you don’t want to be see reading it by yourself — and follow along together as Blue tries to find his place in a galaxy that doesn’t know what to do with a lactose-intolerant bunny. OMG I just read that last line back to myself and I almost squealed, it’s so adorable.

Spam of the day:

FIFA coins

The filters were actually empty until just after I hit Publish, but the spammers came through. A little terse (that’s the entirety of the message), but beautiful in its own way.
________________
¹ Non-Canadians working on a comic don’t disqualify it from consideration, but you will see things like a nominated anthology listed as by [Canadian] and [Canadian] (with various non-Canadian artists).

Thanks, Top Men! Now, where to start, where to start?

• How about here? I should have pointed you towards a short (really short, like less than 1500 words short) story by Ursula Vernon from last November, because it’s excellent (as is pretty much all her writing) and also an excellent example of what her story-voice is like. I remember dragging my wife to the computer and making her read it, so there’s that.

  But now there’s a Disney-revisionist movie playing, and Lauren Davis at io9 remembered Vernon’s story, and then The AV Club noticed it, and what kind of Vernon superfan would I be if I didn’t signal boost a little? If you like The Sea Witch Sets The Record Straight, read Digger, and the Dragonbreath series, and everything else that she’s written, and thank me later.

• Speaking of people you should be reading under all circumstances: Hope Larson. I believe that the record is clear that I hold Larson as perhaps the best creator of graphic novels (original and adaptations) working in English today, but it’s been some time since she had a webcomic. The Secret Friend Society (once the home of Larson’s Salamander Dream, and Kean Soo’s Jellaby) has long since shuttered its doors, leaving no place for a between-books dose of Larson’s magic.

  Until now:

  I wrote the script for Solo last year. This story has been in my brain, in one incarnation or another, since mid-2012, and I’m ready for it to go out into the world. I’ll be drawing the pages and slapping them up online the moment the ink’s dry, raw and fresh and full of mistakes. And full of swear words—the subject matter is fairly tame, but it’s not a kids’ comic.

  I won’t be adhering to any sort of update schedule and I currently have no plans to publish Solo with a book or comics publisher, but I will put together a permanent website as soon as possible.

  Just bookmark it and check it regularly, yeah? It’ll be just about guaranteed the best thing you read any day that it updates.

• Kickstarter news: less than 20 hours to go, and less than US$200 from adding yet another 8-page extension to Cuttings by Yuko Ota and Ananth Panagariya. For the record, if that stretch goal is made (it will be), that will make more than 50 extra pages of art in the book; if the usual last-day bump reaches the next stretch goal after (that’s another US$5000), it’ll be more than 60 extra pages added to what was original going to be a 72 page book. Added value for extra funding — that’s how you do it.
• Kickstarter news: Somewhere around the 24 hour mark, Zach Weinersmith’s campaign for Augie and the Green Knight crossed the US$100,000 mark, knocking down stretch goals faster than Weinersmith can update. At present, though, there will be an additional five art pieces in the book, which now has a ribbon bookmark, will be made available to libraries, and recorded as an audiobook.

  Oh, and if you’re in a support tier that gets art prints along with your book(s), you now are getting five of those instead of two. Per the FFF, AatGK is headed to a finish of US$400K +/- US$134K. So, plenty of room for more improvements to come. How many extra Boulet paintings can this book hold? I’m hoping for at least 25 in all.

• Kickstarter news: Speaking of US$100,000, that’s the goal line for Jorge Cham’s newest campaign. That’s a hell of a total, but considering that it’s intended to make a sequel to 2012’s The PhD Movie, that’s kind of a bargain. The first movie was funded by Cham and his cohorts, but since it’s apparent that there’s now an audience for the film (screenings have been held more than 500 universities and research centers, including Antarctica), why not spread around the costs? Better yet, the more money raised, the more of The PHD Movie 2: Still in Grad School you’ll get, as every dollar above goal will go into lengthening the film.

  It’s currently sitting at just under 15% of goal after about eight hours, so it appears the only question is how long the movie will actually be: raise enough and you could force Cham to make the Berlin Alexanderplatz of grad school narratives. In case you’re worried that might kill him, don’t — dude went through grad school, he’s used to never-ending, frustrating, wondering-if-it’s-all-worth-it undertakings that last for years.

Spam of the day:

With the site outage, not much got caught up in the filters. So sad! The spammers might be moving on to sites that have a higher uptime.

Some days, there’s just no ambiguity about what image goes at the top of the page.

• In case you haven’t seen it in the roughly 105 minutes (as I write this) since the Kickstarter went live, Zach Weinersmith and Boulet have collaborated on more than just the foreword and one strip from Weinersmith’s French-language strip collection last week; they’re producing an illustrated children’s story, about a young girl named Augie who insists on treating the fantasy world she finds herself in with a sense of scientific rigor.

  Augie and the Green Knight is a retelling of Gawain and the Green Knight, only with a Weinersmithian sensibility instead of a medieval romantic one. Oh, and Boulet’s illustrations will surely outclass those of any of the monastic illuminators of bygone days, and every copy of Augie will be a hardcover book rather than hand-inscribed on vellum. And this one probably has more Baba Yaga than the original.

  Amazingly, that hardcover will only set you back US$25, for some 20,000 words and at least 10 watercolor illustrations; exceeding the base goal of US$30K will result in more illustrations — and seeing as how Weinersmith has only revealed the US$35K and US$40K stretch goals, there will presumably be the opportunity for many more.

  The only question in my mind is, When I get my two-book bundle¹, which lucky niece or nephew gets the other copy? Oh, and naturally, How quickly will this campaign make goal, and how much will it raise total? At current rates, I expect to see goal reached before the four-hour mark, and by this time tomorrow I may have a decent estimate of the final total.

  [Edit to add: it was actually a bit less than three hours. Good job, Zach!]

• You don’t have a specific goal or period of time for Patreon campaigns, but sometimes you can pick an arbitrary milestone goal and see if it hits in a reasonable amount of time. Also, with webcomics Patreons thick on the ground² I haven’t been mentioning them much since the first few to launch earlier this year. But sometimes, something catches my eye and that makes a mention almost obligatory; case in point: Jeph Jacques has, since launching his Patreon overnight, made it roughly two thirds of the way to making a second strip:
  

  A WHOLE NEW COMIC OH MY GOSH
  $3,000 per month
  WHOA WHOA WHOA WHAAAAT

  Yes, it’s true. If we meet this goal, I will start publishing an all-new comic strip along side QC in the fall of 2014. This is something I’ve been thinking about for years, and Patreon can make this happen

  Now that caught my attention, because for a creator whose work appears pretty obvious on the surface (group of friends in a particular time and place and their lives via music and coffee and hangouts and sometimes makeouts), he’s got some fairly deep currents that don’t get addressed except in passing. Now I don’t know that Jacques’s second strip will take place in the QC-iverse³, but if it does, he could do some pretty interesting storytelling about the one fantastical element of his stories that’s just taken as a given by his characters: the presence of fully-developed, widespread Artificial Intelligence.

  He’s hinted at all kinds of story hooks, including (with the return of May in the current story arc) the idea of Robot Jail. How did AIs become recognized? How did they achieve any degree of civil rights and personal autonomy? Can they vote? In a criminal justice system, can you distinguish between the physical manifestation and the intelligence behind it? That’s a story setting that could have a very different tone than his usual work, and perhaps start a good old fashioned Webcomics Feud:

  I was looking at these aspects of AI and Transcendence when you were just making hipster jokes! Aaron Diaz might shout, Go find you own niche and leave the cyborg girls to me!

  The air crackled with Super-Saiyan energy as Jeph rose up to his full, nearly-two meter height. Just because some of us measure panel drawing times in hours instead of weeks, he growled.

  Oh, it is on! bellowed Diaz. Nearby, Randy watched with feverish anticipation as the titanic clash began, ready to hinder or help as the mood struck him. Soon, he crooned to the half-feral cat sitting in his lap, it will be our time.⁴

  Huh. I think I finally figured out why people write fan fiction. I wonder if they’ll kiss⁵.

Spam of the day:

You can sign up for our UP SCALE network with a free trial as we get started with the public’s orders. Imagine how your bank account will look when your website gets the traffic it deserves.

Any traffic this website gets is undoubtedly more than it deserves.

________________
¹ One regular hardcover, one super-deluxe foil-embossed cloth-covered.

² And, at present, no good means of searching within a category. I know that Patreon’s brand new and still evolving but if the word Comics shows up as a link, it should take me to a page of all the different campaigns tagged as Comics, not to one particular campaign. I have no doubt that functionality will debut soon (because clearly, the people behind Patreon aren’t idiots), and I expect uptake of the platform to increase with that feature in place.

³ Yes, I said will; at this point, it’s just a matter of time.

⁴ If anybody gets the urge to draw this scene, I will pay you a dollar.

⁵ Note to self — next time you get the urge to make a funny, try not to pick a giant man (with a giant dog), a martial-arts expert, and a man with a scary hobo beard who eats internet punks for afternoon tea as your targets.

Very little going on today, except for a repeat story that I feel bears mentioning again, mostly because it reminds me of the best that can result from the unmediated proximity of creators and audience.

KB Spangler writes and draws A Girl And Her Fed¹, as well as prose novels set in the same world². Some also know that she writes perhaps the most hilarious³ home-renovation blog known to humanity. It’s sporadic because the immense amount of work her home requires would leave any rational person unable to muster the energy to type.

I mention this because (off the top of my head) her house (which was inspected — twice! — prior to purchase and given a clean bill of health) has required:

• tree removal to prevent dead trees from falling destroying the house
• extensive landscaping to redirect water runoff away from the foundation before it destroys the house
• rebuilding of load-bearing structures in the basement to prevent the destruction of the house
• redigging of the drainage system so that the sump pumps don’t direct water directly back into the basement, which could undermine the foundation and destroy the house
• repeated use of chemicals that rightly belong on the list of some international convention against WMDs to remove ivy that threatens to overrun all and possibly destroy the house
• extensive repairwork to a long-neglected pool so it doesn’t spontaneously burst and destroy the house
• a moderately uneasy coexistence with a six foot long snake in the attic

I mention that last one because it’s the one that doesn’t keep her up at night wondering if it wouldn’t be simpler to fake her death and head for Mexico. Also because a it at least removes the possibility of mice as an annoyance. All of this was before she and her husband had to have Hired Dudes out of the house to determine what it would cost keep an entire corner of it from spontaneously sinking into the earth. Answer: all of the money.

In times like this, when you are watching every bit of money you and your spouse make go to keep a roof literally over your head and not collapsing around your ears, there is only one thing to do: give away your work. Because Spangler gives away her ebooks if readers can’t afford them [no permalink]:

Brown and I just spent a hell of a lot of money to keep our house from falling in on itself, and I know on days like this I could really use a free story or two. If your house is falling in, or if the bills are adding up, email me. Tell me which .pdfs you want. If you feel awkward about it, don’t. Pride shouldn’t keep you from stories. Just tell a friend, or leave a review, or buy a copy when you’re back on your feet.

So this is me telling you all that Spangler’s stories are well worth the very small amount that she asks of those that can afford it, and should you choose to purchase them you are not merely helping her keep that benighted roof over her head, you are helping others that really need a story and can’t afford one. I’ve mentioned her generosity before, but I’m mentioning it again because it’s worth mentioning.

Spam of the day:

¤Î2013-14ÄêÇﶬ¥³¥ì¥¯¥·¥ç¥ó¤¬¥ß¥é¥Î¤Ç°k±í¤µ¤ì¤¿¡£¥Æ©`¥Þ¤Ï¥í¥¦?¥¨¥ì¥¬¥ó¥¹(Raw Elegance)¡£¥·¥ç©`¤¬¥¹¥¿©`¥È¤¹¤ë¤È¡¢»áˆö¤Î±Ú¤ÎËÄ·½¤ËÓ³¤·³ö¤µ¤ì¤¿Ã¨¤äÅ®ÐÔ¡¢¥Õ¥¡¥ó¤Î¥·¥ë¥¨¥Ã¥È¤¬Ò»”Ť˄Ӥ¤À¤·¡¢¹¤ˆö¤ÎŽüÐæ¤ò˼¤ï¤»¤ë¤è¤¦¤Ê¥ß¥¹¥Æ¥ê¥¢¥¹¤Ê냇ìšÝ¤ÎÖС¢

A little trite, but still some insight there.

_______________
¹ AKA My buddy, Otter, and obligatory disclaimer: I wrote the foreword for her first AGAHF collection on account of I not only love her work, we’re friends in the no questions I need bail at 3:00am sense of the word.

² Which she’s spent considerable time and effort to get converted to Braille so that vision-impaired readers can read her books instead of just passively listen to an audiobook.

³ In a laugh-so-you-don’t-cry sense.

Just because the movie’s all done and released and all doesn’t mean that STRIPPED is no longer making news.

For instance, I received my copy of the Watterson poster ‘tother day¹, and by my reckoning that means that hive mind Freddave Kellett-Schroeder just have to whip up the book of the film to finish out their Kickstarter obligations. Kellett’s done what? A dozen books on his own plus How To Make Webcomics, so he can almost certainly get that put together by … I dunno, next Tuesday?

Okay, I kid, but it’s impressive to see how much of a massive undertaking Kellett & Schroeder have just about finished, which will naturally mean that it’s time for the next movie project². But on the off chance that they don’t feel like jumping straight back into a project that will take years and many, many dollars, they can at least keep the film-making habit satisfied by producing and releasing more full interviews from their 300 hour collection.

Case in point: in addition to the various bonus material found on the streamable and DVD editions, and the previously-released Bonus Material 1 (fifteen full-length interviews for more than sixteen hours of additional content), one may now obtain Bonus Material 2 (seven interviews, ten creators, nearly twelve hours of content). Or heck, go for the everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink edition with literally more than a day’s worth of discussion from more than twenty interviews³. Comics creators, there’s a lot of in-depth discussion and more than a few process demos, making this a must-have for your reference library.

And that’s not all! Their roadshow screenings continue apace, with the University of Oregon hosting a screening and Q&A tomorrow night, the Schulz Museum hosting a screening and Q&A on 21 June, Webster University (St Louis) hosting screenings on 11 and 13 July, and possibly a screening at SDCC. If Freddave aren’t careful, they’ll spend more time on the road with the finished film than they spent on gathering interviews.

Spam of the day, from our filters to you:

My parents would always share their own communion bread with us, even when we were too young to go up to the rail ourselves. It made us feel welcome as part of the church family and we learned through them what communion means and just how special and important it is. I would always serve children if their parents agreed. buy soundcloud likes

That’s just … that’s beautiful, man.

_______________
¹ I haven’t found anyplace where suckas who didn’t contribute to Kickstarts can avail themselves of this poster, which I hope that Freddave will remedy shortly because damn this thing is gorgeous.

² If I am found mysteriously murdered after suggesting he should spend another half-decade making another movie, remember that he may appear to be an easygoing guy, that Dave Kellett, but those are the ones that have secret murderous tendencies for maximum irony when the neighbors all appear on TV and can’t believe that he’d do such a thing.

³ “Over 26 hours”, to be precise; given the 300 hours of original interview footage, this means that Schroeder and Kellett have released less than a tenth of the total material they have on hand, and can continue to give you more and more and more for some time to come. Given that a DVD can typically hold up to about 4 hours of video, the inevitable 75-disc box set is going to take some considerable shelf space, which you should start clearing now. Alternately, wait for terabyte-scale thumb drives to get cheaper and save on shipping.

Received in the mail today: one copy of Meredith Gran’s latest Octopus Pie collection, Dead Again. I can’t wait to read it tonight¹; I think this is the pivot pint where Gran went from Damn good comic take on life to Amazingly revealing examination of our lives and times (with jokes). Highest recommendation.

• Statistically speaking, Danielle Corsetto will be coming to a place near you this summer, as she heads off on a ten-year stippiversary signing tour of more than 20 cities. Naturally, such an undertaking requires time, planning, and plenty of gas-and-toll money (if my map-reading skills are up to par, she’ll be passing through 30 different states, with stops in 18 of them across a period of six weeks and some 14,500 km).

  And yet her biggest concern is having enough money to pay artists to put up guest strips in her absence, so she’s Kickstarting the whole shebang and has hit about 75% funding in the past four hours or so. She won’t be getting rich on this tour, and considering six weeks away means six weeks of not working on strips that could fill her next book or other merch that would pay for little things like rent and groceries, it seems like a break-even proposition at best. Giving a few bucks to this campaign isn’t to benefit Corsetto — it’s to benefit your fellow fans. Just sayin’.

• One place that Corsetto won’t hit on her tour (mostly because she’ll be back home for a month by the time it rolls around): SPX in Bethesda, Maryland (but that doesn’t mean she won’t hit it after her tour). But lots of other people will be, and I went down the initial exhibitor list to see which creators you might want to make plans to see. As always, this is a preliminary listing, produced by scanning more than 700 names, so my apologies if I’ve missed anybody. That being said, webcomickers and natural allies at the show will include:

  Amanda Lafrenais, Ananth Panagariya & Yuko Ota, Audrey & Jamie Noguchi, Blue Delliquanti, Box Brown, Braden Lamb & Shelli Paroline, C Spike Trotman, Carla Speed McNeil, Christopher Hastings, Danielle Corsetto (told you), Darryl Ayo, Dave Roman, David McGuire, Dean Trippe, Drew Weing, Dustin Harbin, Eric Colossal, Evan Dahm, Jess Fink, John Green, Julia Wertz, Katie Sekelsky, KC Green, Kel McDonald, Kory Bing …

  [inhale]

  … Madeleine Flores, Magnolia Porter, Matthew Bennardo, Meredith Gran, MK Reed, Molly Ostertag, Monica Ray, Phil McAndrew, Rachel Dukes, Raina Telgemeier, Rebecca Mock, Sara McHenry, Shmorky, Sophie Goldstein, Sylvan Migdal, Tom McHenry, Tom Siddell, and Tony Breed, not to mention your Firsts Second, Topatos Co, Tops Shelf, and other quality publishers. Drop by and tell ’em you enjoy their work.

_______________
¹ Or, more properly, reread it, since I read each of these strips as they updated, and frequently went back to read entire story arcs because they’re that good.

Oh my goodness you people have never heard of long holiday weekends, have you? When you consider that :01 Books managed to place three (out of ten) books on the New York Times softcover graphic novel bestseller list (including the #1 slot to Ben Hatke’s The Return of Zita the Spacegirl, This One Summer by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki at #7, and André The Giant by Box Brown in position #9), that’s pretty damn impressive¹, and that’s just where we’re starting today.

• Anybody that reads this page will have seen Poorcraft mentioned more than once; it was an early webcomics Kickstarter (a full four and a half years ago, raising US$13,000 for a comics project was nigh-unheard of), and it’s been mentioned time and again for its clear, lucid advice for making it suck less to not have a lot of money. You can buy a copy for US$10, a scratch-and-dent copy for US$5 (a classic Poorcraft strategy), or a PDF for US$5, but if you were in desperate need of Poorcraft’s lessons and couldn’t even scrape up a spare fiver, what were you to do?

  Be patient, basically, and see your patience pay off: Poorcraft (the book) is now Poorcraft (the webcomic), with daily updates from now until the entire thing is posted:

  Poorcraft was Kickstarted in 2009 and completed in 2012. And now, I’m posting the whole thing online for everyone to enjoy. I’ll be updating it every day with a new page, until the entire comic’s been posted. Where applicable, I’ll also be adding author’s comments and updates here in the text section.

  This should take a few months. About five, to be exact.

  Kudos to Spike for sharing the wealth, so to speak.

• I first noticed via the twitterfeed of Maki Naro a link to Tumblr that shared the news: Zach Weinersmith has released his latest collection of SMBC strips in French, and he’s got the incomparable Boulet to provide a preface, as well as to illustrate one of the pages in the book.

  And because Boulet is very, very kind to we whose command of French is less than complete, you can read his contribution both en Français and in English. I’m glad these two creators seem to have buried their differences and hope to see them work together more in the future.

• Jeff Smith won a pretty big award over the weekend, and I’m honestly a little conflicted about it. I want to be very careful about this, partly because I stand second to no man in my admiration of Smith’s body of work (I hold him to be analogous to what the Japanese would call a Living National Treasure), partly because he’s always been gracious to me in person², and partly because I’m a part of the process that led to Tüki being nominated for the NCS Online — Long Form division award. Understand that I congratulate him most sincerely and I would begrudge that gentleman nothing in this life, but I think he got the wrong award.

  I think that the NCS membership voted him a lifetime achievement award instead of an award for the quality of work in a single year. Tüki Save The Humans has, to date, published 26 pages (chapter two is yet to start after the post-chapter one hiatus), with perhaps a third of them actually in calendar year 2013. I’m pretty sure that Smith would be the first to say that he’s only gotten started and the best work on Tüki is still to come.

  Much like Steve Purcell’s Eisner win, I think I would not have these misgivings if Tüki had run all year, or if it had won out over work that was of poor quality — but anybody that would characterize Family Man, Dicebox, or Red’s Planet in such terms would be thoroughly mistaken.

  Did Smith benefit from name recognition? Undoubtedly. Would it be easier for the NCS voting membership to look at a work with fewer updates from the start of a story, instead of one with dozens of updates and a storyline stretching back years? Almost certainly. Does it take anything away from a career to say I lost an award to Jeff Smith? At the risk of cliche, that’s a nomination that’s an honor by itself. But I do think that this result undervalues the potential of Smith’s future work as well as the present work of his co-nominees Dylan Meconis, Jenn Manley Lee, and Eddie Pittman.

  Of course, the purpose of the NCS Awards is not to reward my personal preferences (although they did with the selection of Ryan Pagelow’s Buni, which was my favorite of the three nominees in the Online — Short Form division), but for the the membership of the NCS to recognize what they think is the best work in a given discipline. A few short years ago we would not be having this discussion at all, as online comics were not considered by the NCS, with the members of that organization the worse off for their narrower focus. In just those few short years they’ve been exposed to — and recognized — work that is incredibly different from the vast majority of what the NCS honored for the majority of its existence, and that in and of itself is worthy of celebration.

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¹ Especially when one considers that :01 is essentially a four-person operation, and typically puts out fewer than two dozen books a year. Quality over quantity, my friends.

² We are far from hanging-out-on-a-Wednesday-night buddies, but for more than a decade now Jeff Smith has taken the time to greet me and ask how I’m doing on the infrequent occasions when we see each other, and it would kill me to repay that kindness with discourtesy.