John Allison has neatly, in just two panels from today’s Bobbins redux, why half of EMTs regard the two most important words on a childbirth call to be Don’t push¹. Naturally, Shelly is enthusiastic about all things, and here’s hoping that Amy doesn’t murder her in retribution.

• I wasn’t going to say anything about the big, fat nothingburger petition that’s decrying rampant, oppressive, Big Brotheresque censorship re: the Science Fiction Writers of America. For one, it gravely misunderstands what the concepts censorship and freedom of speech and fascistic; for another, it’s extremely illogical and poorly written. John Scalzi neatly addressed those points and I could gladly go back to not caring.

  But.

  Ursula Vernon — and I believe the record will show that I am on the record as loving me some Digger — decided that she is not just a writer but an arter also and attempted to bring some perspective. Some people aggressively didn’t get it, others aggressively nitpicked wording, and in the end, there was only one thing to do: add more honey badgers. Morally ambiguous honey badgers, honey badgers looking for love, honey badgers decrying things aren’t like they used to be, honey badgers coming face to face with change, honey badgers seeking an equal voice. If a grumbly hissy fit about how Things Should Be Like They Used To Be is what gets Vernon drawing honey badgers, I am more than willing to poke the cage of a codger.

• Times come when creators feel the need to apologize about not making updates on time, and I think that in very nearly every case that’s unnecessary. As well established by precedent, your favorite creator who entertains you² owes you nothing other than to create. But there are times when it is especially unnecessary to apologize regarding missed updates, hiatuses, or other irregularities, and that is when meeting a particular schedule will take away from the time the creator needs to care for either their own or their family’s well-being.

  Cases in point: a printer that delivered weeks ahead of schedule and has disrupted Minna Sundberg’s production of new episodes of Stand Still, Stay Silent (a comic that updates with a gorgeous full-page in color four days a week!). But you know what? Fulfilling the orders of people that have already given you money for the last series trumps production of new pages for people like me that haven’t given you anything. Creators: in all cases, your well-being comes first.

  Actually, in some cases it comes second. Parents³ know what I’m talking about, and in no reasonable universe should Paul Taylor feel the need to apologize for taking a few days off when his young son is facing a hospitalization. Best of luck to your little guy, and to your entire family, Paul. We’ll be here when he’s back on his feet; in the meantime, do what you have to do.

• Advance notice: two of my favorite people are about to have a conversation that some of you have already had the chance to hear. Brad Guigar continues his series of Kickstarter-funded podcasts, which release first to backers, then to subscribers of Webcomics Dot Com, and then the world in general. The lastest ‘cast (which will be generally available on Friday) features the very sexy Rich Stevens, and I am hard pressed to think of two people who are so different (particularly in terms of improvisation vs planning) and yet so similar (both are whip-smart) at the same time. An hour and forty five minutes never went by so fast.

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¹ Alternately, I’ll drive.

² In exchange for money or other considerations for a section of their work, and especially if they distribute their work for free.

³ And others with younglings in their care, which is a situation I find myself in from time to time with EMS cadets.

How the hell are ya today? Pretty damn good day if you ask me.

• It could be argued that it is, in some sense, “late”, but Wondermark #1000 has arrived and David Malki ! has put the freely-shared assets of the British Library to their greatest possible use: to convey the meeting of Piranhamoose and Sharkhawk. Welcome to the thousand-strip club, Mr Malki !, and long may you bring fresh life to the forgotten work of Victorian engravers.
• Wondermark is not the only strip encountering a milestone, as Emily Softerworld and Joey Also Softerworld celebrate eleven years of A Softer World:
  

  A Softer World is eleven years old!! Look at these chumps from the early 2000s, what did they think they were doing?!

  The “chumps” in question are, of course, Emily Horne and Joey Comeau, perhaps even before the latter lived in Ryan North’s attic and became his best friend. Fun fact! This month, Dinosaur Comics by Ryan North also had an eleven-year anniversary? It’s true!

• Success! The Kickstarter campaign for Rachel Peng audiobooks by my buddy Otter sits, as of this writing, at US$15,005, or just enough to meet the second stretch goal which will get the backers absolutely nothing new for their pledge dollars. Nothing but the satisfaction of bringing the experience of active reading to the visually impaired, as this is where Digital Divide and Maker Space get a professional Braille conversion and copies donated to libraries.

  And not for nothing¹, but I happened to read a nearly-complete version of Maker Space last night and holy crap you guys is it good. Better than Digital Divide, in fact. Good enough that with full knowledge that I have work today I stayed up three hours later than usual because I couldn’t put it down. Nine days to go on the audiobook campaign, and just a couple weeks after than until the novel releases; get in on this now and thank me later.

• Speaking of webcomickers writing books, The AV Club gave a rave review to The Martian, the first novel by Casey Weir. Weir, before taking up the without-pictures writing mantle, was the creator of both Casey and Andy and Cheshire Crossing. How many more webcomickers will release prose works before it becomes just another expected part of the creator’s professional development? I can think of a few who I think would make some terrific words-no-pictures storytellers.

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¹ And please note with a proper degree of skepticism the degree of personal familiarity I have with Otter aka KB Spangler aka “my buddy”.

The snow we were promised over the weekend turned out to be a light dusting. I found out that work will be sending me to Portland next month¹. The dog we fostered for a couple of weeks has settled in nicely at his permanent home.

But even these positive outcomes are tempered by the fact that the world is still filled with terrible, terrible people, particularly if you have the gall to be both a) creative, and b) a lady. Combine this with weather systems that have disrupted life in the various centers of comics creation (and the post-Angoulême European dispersal), there is very little new happening today.

So let us instead focus this day — when we could all use a bit of brightness in our lives — on the one thing that is unashamedly, unambiguously beautiful and right and pure in this tarnished world:

Davis.

Thank you, Anthony Clark. Thank you.

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¹ Opportunity to see friends on somebody else’s dime? Excellent. Only two days long? Booo.

Yay. Even better, Soterios Johnson took the time to send me an email debunking the rampant rumors around the region that we were going to be getting 70 – 80 cm of snow this weekend. Rumors be damned, if SoJo says we get a dusting, Mother Nature herself must needs obey. Only good news today!

• How you know Hiveworks is doing something right: they’re well-known enough to be a target of people with nothing better to do. In a recap of last year’s incident, miscreants broke in, did minimal damage, and triggered malware warnings from Google. No malware (never was), and the actual interruption was brief, but warnings may linger. Hey, miscreants? We get it, you’re very clever. Maybe give people that just want to read comics a break for a while?
• Jason Shiga has a new comic, years in the planning, and anything that guy does is more likely than not going to be brilliant. I mean, did you see Meanwhile? Demon starts here, features Jimmy from Meanwhile, has seven pages so far, and will be updating daily. Most interestingly, at the top of the comic is a progress bar, which kicked over from 0% to 1% on page four, making me thing we’ll be getting patented Shiga wonderfulness for the next year-plus.
• Slate’s Book Review and the Center for Cartoon Studies have announced their nominations for the Cartoonist Studio Prize (last year’s winner: Chris Ware’s Building Stories in the Graphic Novel category, and Noelle Stevenson’s Nimona in the Webcomic category), and there’s some brilliant stuff listed there by the likes of Gene Yang, Boulet, Erika Moen, Gabrielle Bell, Emily Carroll, KC Green, and many more.

  I can’t say that I’ve read everything on the list (consulting judge Christopher Butcher has knowledge that is both broad and deep), but everything on the list that I’m familiar with damn well deserves to be there. Even better, the breadth of form, content, and genre is breathtaking; the only thing that some of these nominees have in common is, they’re comics. Winners will be announced next month.

Just a hint, if you’re ever crewing an ambulance headed towards a patient, the last thing you want to hear over the radio is Be advised, CPR is in progress¹. Let’s find things that are infinitely more cheerful on this sunny day before the weekend brings us — what’s that from the back? Repeat that a little louder, please? That’s right! More snow! Fortunately, the past couple of days have brought some beautiful artwork and encouraging announcements from some veteran creators. Let’s enjoy it before the fimbulvetr kills us all.

• It’s hard to anybody more universally respected and beloved than Raina Telgemeier, who’s been sitting on the New York Times bestseller lists for her previous two graphic novels (if my search skills are strong, Drama was there for more than half a year and as of this week, the paperback of Smile has been there a staggering 89 weeks). It’s just a matter of time before her next book joins them, and we can get excited starting now, since Sisters now has a cover; the visual similarity to Smile‘s cover ought to make everybody that has read (and re-read) the story of dental challenges rush to read (and re-read) the story of sisterly challenges.
• No stranger to the Times bestseller list, Kazu Kibuishi hasn’t been there for a while, thanks to last year’s illness which robbed him of months of writing and drawing time. He’s bounced back nicely, and also has a cover to share with us for the forthcoming Amulet 6.It’s gorgeous, and the only thing about it that doesn’t make me ecstatic is the wait:
  

  Amulet 6: Escape From Lucien will be released August 26th, 2014.

  Dammit! Another six-plus months!

• We knew back in October that Jim Zub’s Samurai Jack would be running at least ten issues, up from the initial five issue miniseries. Now comes the word that sales are justifying another extension:
  

  Just received wonderful news from my editor- the SAMURAI JACK comic will continue through 2014, taking us to at least issue 15! YIPPY!

  Folks, I cannot stress this enough — for a comic to get an extension like this is purely a matter of sales, and SamJack is a wonderful story, so there’s no reason that anybody that enjoyed the heck out of the TV series² shouldn’t be buying the comic. I wants my Zub, people, so make sure the sales stay strong.

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¹ Much respect to our local police, who are always on scene with us, and since they’re dispatched first usually beat us to the scene. They were providing high-quality compressions by the time we got up the narrow staircase, climbed over the banister and railing, and got to work in a hallway that was narrow enough to require straddling the patient in order to reach the chest. Ultimately it took three EMTs, four cops, and two medics to get the patient packaged and down the stairs, through tight corners in an old, twisty house, and out to an ambulance via slushy/icy exterior stairs and sidewalk.

² I.e.: all right-thinking people.

All that slush and ice we were expecting?

Yeah. Got that. Cleared it from the driveway and sidewalk. More built up before the clearing was done.

Ow.

Going to collapse now. Updates when the weather gods stop tormenting me with their frosty hell.

Okay seriously whoever has been wishing for a snow-filled winter like we used to have kindly knock that shit off. The demands of keeping up with weather kept me from noticing details in things I referenced yesterday, so let’s play catch-up.

• Regarding: Ryan North and David Malki ! fighting via the specialized medium of unflattering book covers, I neglected to note that both of these fine gentlemen have webcomics-related anniversaries going on. North observed yesterday:
  

  Hey you know what happened on Saturday? Saturday was February 1st 2014 ALSO KNOWN AS the eleven-year anniversary of Dinosaur Comics! Is that not nuts? It is ENTIRELY NUTS. When I started Dinosaur Comics on February 1st, 2003 I thought the comic would last a month, and at the end of that month I’d change the template to something involving astronauts. But then I ended up liking T-Rex and Dromiciomimus and Utahraptor and thought, “okay, maybe I’ll change templates every two months instead of every month”. And now here we are 11 years later! The moral is: changing templates is a lot of work that can be easily postponed, THE END.

  So congratulations to Ryan North on reaching the eleventh stripiversary (traditional gift: verified Twitter status). Meanwhile, Malki ! (perhaps due to a lack of self-confidence due to the fight with North) neglected the opportunity today to put up the 1000th Wondermark strip. See? Last Friday: number 999. Today: previously-seen artwork¹ that graced the front matter of Emperor of the Food Chain, the most recent Wondermark collection. Come on, David Malki !, give us strip number 1000! Do it for the children.

• Regarding: the 90 year time jump in Stand Still, Stay Silent, I was entirely too focused on the time jump in question and did not look more carefully at Minna Sundberg’s demographic profile of Reykjavík after decades of pandemic:
  

  Population: 41 750
  Immunity rate: 11%

  Now granted, Iceland is not a large country, containing perhaps a third of a million people all told², the capital city containing on the order of 120,000 of those people. According to Sundberg, that population is a third of what it was at the start of the “rash illness”, even though they closed their borders almost immediately and likely came out better than any other nation on the planet. One little caption, so many deaths, and still the risk exists for 89% of those few. Good thing they’ve got geothermal power, so that the capital of the known world will have some semblance of technology remaining.

• Regarding: I completely missed it yesterday, Drew Weing has a new webcomic! The Creepy Casefiles of Margo Maloo will update Mondays, and the first four pages are already live, tossing us headfirst into a young boy — perhaps ten or eleven years old³ — into a new city, a new home that is definitely haunted, and no small amount of complaining about those facts. Keep your eyes on this one, it’s likely to be a masterclass in comics creation.

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¹ Make no mistake, it’s gorgeous and disturbing at the same time.

² By contrast, the county I live in has nearly three times the population, less than 1% of the geographical area, and 100% fewer volcanos, geothermal pools, and construction projects detoured by the presence of elves.

³ That’s the third eleven of this post. Weird.

Of course once the working day is done, there’s a good six inches of heavy snow at home that needs clearing. Yikes.

• Back: Makeshift Miracle. Yay.
• Coming soon: Wasted Talent book 3. Do not step to Jam, she will slash you.
• Won’t somebody please think of the children: Ryan North and David Malki! are at loggerheads. Heavens preserve us.
• Time jump resolved: 90 years.
• Anybody that’s been in comics — creating or reading — learns pretty quickly that there’s possibly no creator more respected and beloved than Stan Sakai, creator of Usagi Yojimbo. Sakai has meticulously researched and presented Japan during the Shogun’s peace, with dress, social standings, customs, culture, and conflict all presented with the highest standards of accuracy¹ — and if the characters who inhabit this feudal Japan are all anthropomorphic animals, well, that’s okay.

  Nobody draws panels and action sequences that are as easy to follow as Sakai, nobody has as fluid and organic a line as Sakai, nobody has kept an independent creation going for per-near thirty years with the consistency and quality that Sakai has. It should go without saying that in person, he is the most gracious and kindly of people; he is like a beloved uncle to entire convention halls.

  Unfortunately, Sakai has had some horrible months of late; his wife, Sharon, has been struggling with a severe illness that has depleted their insurance, and just before the new year his infant grandson died in his sleep. A benefit to defray the medical costs has been set up through the Cartoonist Art Professional Society, and last week Dark Horse announced a 30th anniversary tribute book to Usagi Yojimbo, all proceeds to benefit the Sakais.

  If you’re a creator and can contribute art to the CAPS project (which will be auctioned), please do so. If you want to contribute to the Dark Horse book, please do so.

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¹ Did use knowledge of Tokugawa-era Japan gleaned from Usagi Yojimbo when touring Osaka to make a tour guide wonder how the hell I knew about the hollyhock crest and the relative power centers of Edo, Kyoto, and clan centers? Maaaaybe.

Yeah, yesterday sucked, but at least somebody will get something useful out of it. Better today, thanks for asking, but still a little behind so this will be brief.

Strip Search alum Amy T Falcone, formerly of Citation Needed and Cardigan Weather, has launched her latest comics, Clique Refresh:

You might hear a faint buzzing in your ears right now. No, that’s not your tinnitus acting up, that’s just me screaming at the top of my lungs. Thank you to everyone who backed the Kickstarter, helped me in the creation process, or kept me motivated to push through with this project. I couldn’t be more excited to tell a story about Internet friendship, growing up, establishing oneself in a new city…

Hmmm, that last bit sounds a little autobiographical; granted, Cardigan Weather was a journal comic, but sometimes the works of fiction are more true than those of nonfiction. Sometimes. In any event, Ms T Falcone has a lot of comics chops, and she has the redoubtable Mary Cagle on colors.

But what really caught my eye is the fact that on the very day of launch, Clique Refresh is already a member of Hiveworks, which until now has been partnering with established comics. Granted, a Stripmonaut matched up with one of the hottest colorists-for-hire¹ in webcomics is a pretty sure bet. With updates coming Tuesdays and Fridays, it shouldn’t take too long to see how Clique Refresh develops as both a story and an eyeball-attracting machine.

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¹ Cagle is in the same league as the very prolific Anthony Clark and Ed Ryzowski.

So today I’ve been dealing with IT Support at my company. An issue with my laptop¹ that I reported on Monday went back and forth for days, as the solution marked it would be best if you did this in the offices became oh you tried that and it blew things up, so you have to go to the office became oh you’re in the office and the original problem is triggering network security to quarantine your laptop became the laptop is no longer quarantined but you can’t recognize a working network became okay you can see the network again now try the fix we originally recommended.

The fix describes clicking on things that do not exist. The latest call resulted in Oh no you can’t do that yourself we have to do it by remote access to your laptop and wait where you are until you get an email from us.

I have burned literally all day on this, and though I now have network connection again, it is for the first time all day.

If you don’t hear from me tomorrow, it’s because I chucked this laptop out the window and then got myself arrested.

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¹ Which took eight separate attempts to report, between phone lines that were never answered until they disconnected, an online system that timed out before I could type my description, and finally a live chat system that miraculously worked.