Editor’s note: Ordinarily I’d have an image of the front cover of the book here, but since that’s how Ben Costa’s bio at the back of the book describes him, I had to design a business card for him. I think it’s at least as good as Chen Guangbiao’s.

This past week I picked up a copy of Ben Costa’s Pàng, The Wandering Shàolín Monk: Winter Worm, Summer Grass, the second collection of his story of Shì Lóng Pàng, a rather doughy and unimpressive monk trying to a) stay alive; b) stay true to his monastic ways; c) find his lost brothers, in whichever order makes the most sense right now. He may not feel himself a very righteous Buddhist, but given the way that he bounces from crisis to crisis — enemies becoming friends and friends enemies — and somehow finding his path as life buffets him Pàng would make a hell of a Daoist (just don’t tell him that).

There’s actually not much I can tell you about PTWSM:WWSG‘s story if you haven’t read at least some of Pàng’s earlier adventures: the period of Chinese history he occupies was laid out in the early pages of Vol 1, the history and legend of Shàolín (and the political context in which these were developed) was presented immersively and resists any quick summary. I can tell you that Costa has done his homework … if your understanding of Gōngfu was developed from watching Black Belt Theater on channel 11 out of New York on Saturday afternoon in the ’70s (as mine was), there are details here that are far deeper than secret techniques and impressive martial arts moves.

Costa’s art is on the thick-lined cartoony side, but it fits the story well; characters are instantly distinguished by silhouette, posture, and color palette, and lengthy visual sequences are always easy to follow. Costa’s especially good at environments, with rain, afternoon sunlight, murky hut interiors, fog, mud, and the dark of shadowed forests (as opposed to the dark of gloomy night) all adding extensively to the mood of the story.

One quick note — the story of Pàng is on pause at the moment, as he wants to develop the third part of the story completely before starting to put pages up at his website. In the meantime, the Supreme Ultimate Chancellor has been busy, working on a fantasy graphic novel¹ in the meantime. This means it’s the perfect time to get caught up with the more than 350 pages in Pàng’s journey.

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¹ Rickety Stitch and the Gelatinous Cube, more info available here. And can I say that I love Costa’s titles? Awesome stuff.

I just have a few brief items for you today; sorry, they can’t all be 800 words paeans to new comics that I’ve fallen in love with.

But heck, since we just mentioned Stand Still, Stay Silent, I’ll note that about the time I was discovering Minna Sundberg’s new (and magnificent) comic epic, SSSS was joining up with Hiveworks. Yesterday while reading the latest online rerun of Skullkickers, I noticed a blogposting that Jim Zub had that day shifted his hosting to Hiveworks. Thinking back about a month prior, Maki Naro announced that Sufficiently Remarkable had joined up with … Hiveworks.

Earlier in the year, they chalked up business agreements with Oh Joy, Sex Toy, Girls With Slingshots, Yellow Peril, Gastrophobia, Nemu*Nemu, Girl Genius, Dumbing of Age, Shortpacked! … the list is too extensive to go into here. Which made me think that something I said in a year-end interview with Tom Spurgeon¹, when I thought I was reaching a bit in speculating how quickly Hiveworks could grow.

Turns out they’re growing faster than I thought possible, and providing support in the form of advertising cash money and more to creators. Frankly, I’m astonished how quickly it’s grown as well as how broad the offerings from its clients and affiliates are. At this point, the chief hazard I see for them isn’t survival, it’s growing too large and too quickly; here’s hoping that principals Joseph Stillwell and Isabelle Melan¸on can scale their abilities as the roster grows.

• There’s a nice review of Midas Flesh #1 by Ryan North (words) and Shelli Paroline and Braden Lamb (pictures) up at The AV Club today; if it’s a little less gushingly positive than some of the reviews that page has given this creative team, well, it’s a first issue, new characters and story concept, and it’s clear that North dropped into the story quickly, knowing he’s got another half-dozen issues to fill in the gaps. It’s really good, you guys. Plus it’s got a space suit-wearing Utahraptor who needs glasses, what more could you ask for?²
• Quick! Anybody in/around Berkeley, California today? You have a few hours yet to make it over to the Central Library, where Gene Luen Yang will be discussing Boxers and Saints at 6:30pm tonight. About seven hours, to be precise, as I write this. Get goin’.

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¹ Which, uh, I promised I would link when it went live and then didn’t. Look, I just saved you reading 9000 words of me– even though the The Spurge made me sound very smart — over your holidays, you’re welcome.

² Well, I could ask for an explanation how a Utahraptor gets into a space suit without shredding it to rags with his razor-sharp death-claws, but I presume that’s coming around issue 4 or 5.

I have a few things that are coming up, things that you might want to keep an eye on, even.

• For people in … almost any corner of North America, actually, Danielle Corsetto has announced the initial outline of her Girls With Slingshots 10th Anniversary Cross-Continent Road Trip, taking place through most of July and August. More dates and locations are coming, and don’t forget that she’ll be in wildest Kenilworth, NJ for a signing at Wild Pig Comics this Saturday, 18 January, from noon to 5:00pm. Be there or miss out.
• The Hugo Awards nominations are open for those that are associated with this year’s WorldCon in London, UK. The rules surrounding who can nominate and who can vote are somewhat complex when speaking of the Hugos, so please read through all the details here; as often happens at this time of year, a number of people associated with webcomics are eligible, either in the Best Graphic Story category¹, or in other writing categories. My evil twin has put together a list of works he thinks worthy of consideration, both his own and others, for your consideration, and it looks both solid and comprehensive.

  If I might make my own additions to the list, the WSFS constitution states the Hugos are for works of science fiction and fantasy, which I think is broad enough to incorporate Kris Straub’s first Broodhollow collection, Curious Little Thing. For those of you that argue that the WSFS rules don’t say anything about horror, there have been plenty of Lovecraft-inspired works nominated for and awarded Hugos in the past, so deal with it. In the inarguably fantasy-compliant domain Minna Sundberg’s A Redtail’s Dream finished in 2013. Also published in 2013: K Brooke “Otter” Spangler’s AGAHF tie-in novel, Digital Divide, which is a cracking good modern-SF thriller. Anybody eligible to nominate, please give them a read if you’re able.

• And in keeping with the looking theme today, best wishes to Irregular Webcomic creator David Morgan-Mar², who shared with us yesterday the fact that he’s currently waiting out an annoying (but hopefully temporary) condition with his left eye. The fact that Morgan-Mar of all people would have a problem with his vision sits somewhere pretty high up on the irony scale, given that he put his PhD in physics to work in research related to image processing and machine vision, and this his 3000+ plus LEGO®™©^etc-based comics required the mechanical vision of a camera in order to be shared with the world. Yeah, comics are a visual medium, it just seems to me that in Morgan-Mar’s case, everything he touches is a bit extra visual, if you take my meaning.

  Anyway. Take care of those eyes, don’t strain yourself on the research necessary for your Sunday explorations of the history of science (more than 100 of those now, in addition to nearly 3200 comics prior to that point), and if you get any more cool photos of the interior of your own retina, do share because damn, that was neat. Those wishing to share in my get-well sentiments, Dr Morgan-Mar can be reached on Twitter, or at his personal site.

• One last bit — I am now especially looking forward to Something Terrible, as it’s passed the stretch goal to achieve hardcovers. Awesome.

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¹ This will be the first year of the BGS’s five-year existence in which Howard Tayler will definitely not be among the nominees, given he didn’t complete a story-arc of Schlock Mercenary in calendar 2013.

² Quick question: are there any other webcomics creators with an Erd#337;s-Bacon number? Morgan-Marr’s is 6, which is pretty damn impressive. Even more impressive, he has an Erd#337;s-Bacon-Sabbath number (something achieved by only 37 people in the history of the world) of 16, although that site overestimates his Bacon number by 3, giving him a likely EBS# of 13. Damn.

Just something to keep in mind as best you can. Let’s finish this up and send y’all off for a weekend of, hopefully, kindness.

• Today marks 14 years of Sam Brown’s Exploding Dog. It’s tough enough to keep comics going with characters (except for Red Robot #C-63) and plots, but to rely upon short phrases from your readers to drive the artwork? That’s a crazy monster-level of daring and skill right there. Happy anniversary, Sam.
• Following up on our earlier mention of Dean Trippe’s Something Terrible Kickstarter, the totals have passed 300% of goal, but that’s not good enough. You may recall that we discussed the possibility of hardcovers for ST, and Trippe has announced that the physical books will get hard covers at US$22,000 and as of this writing the total is at … US$19,535, with a little more than three weeks to go. Let’s get on that, people — the quality of your reward will leap if you can convince just a few more people to join in.
• As long as we’re on Kickstarter, I’ll mention the campaign for Rod Salm’s first Death At Your Door collection. We’ve mentioned DAYD on occasion over the past few years, but I confess that I missed the Kickstarter going up a couple of days ago. Fortunately, Mr Salm for dropping a note in the comments to let me know so thanks for that and mea culpa.

  One should note that the DAYD campaign has set an extremely modest goal of CDN$700, meaning that the usual Fleen Fudge Factor may not apply — but just in case it does, the F³ is presently predicting a final total of CDN$700 to CDN$1400, or 100% to 200% of goal. Everybody feel good for Rod Salm!

Okay, that’s it. Be kind.

I’ll lay this squarely on Chris Hallbeck’s doorstep; he tweeted a recommendation of a webcomic for its gorgeous art, but since I clicked over and started reading, I have been getting increasingly uneasy. The comic is called Stand Still, Stay Silent, it’s by self-described Swedish-Finnish lady person Minna Sundberg, who it turns out is 24 years old today.

1. Happy birthday, Minna
2. You are way to young to be producing work this good¹, stop it
3. You are seriously creeping me out with this comic

Were you to click through to the front page of SSSS (and you should), you’d wonder why I was (am!) creeped out. Six cheerful enough, youthful enough characters are smiling at you. Their dress indicates they are from far northern latitudes, maybe from the Lapland region. Okay, there are a couple of rifles, but also what looks like a medical bag and maybe a collapsible stretcher — they’re biathletes training in backcountry, or ski patrol members in an area with bears. Look at them, they’re so cheerful.

Spoilers occur below here, so decide if you want to start from page one of the prologue before coming back or not. Cool? Okay.

Those youthful, cheerful maybe-Laplanders are survivors of an apocalyptic disaster, and likely a near-total collapse of civilization, one that reveals itself so slowly. We start on the somewhat ominously named Year 0, Day 0² in Norway, when the complaints are about the rain washing out the roads, concern for an elderly grandmother living on her own, and the “rash illness”. A boat trip for supplies on the mainland is arranged to bring Gran to her doting grandson, and all is well. But … Iceland is shutting down the borders? Still, nobody with the mysterious disease in the patient zero group is that badly off.

Three days later, Denmark is closing its borders and conspiracy theories are running rampant. Day 5, everybody’s wearing masks, businesses are closing for the week, and a Finnish family with some weirdo members that fear nuclear war is holing up for a vacation far from everybody else. Oh, and one of the original patient group has died. By Day 9, a Swedish family heading … anywhere away, really, finds the gas station abandoned (although the pumps were kindly left on), the newspapers with only a few pages (the reporters have gone to ground along with everybody else), and seven of the original eleven patients dead, and others infected later starting to succumb. It’s starting, and nobody knows where it came from, where it’s spreading, or how long it will take to resolve.

These four different vignettes (none featuring that core cast of cheerful, youthful characters) in four different countries on four different days aren’t panicked — they’re annoyed, they’re fighting with their bosses, they’re bitching about the weather and the lack of sports pages and crossword puzzles. They still think that it’s going to be a bad month or two, and it looks like people elsewhere in the world may be hard hit and that’s very sad, but they don’t think the world is ending.

And that’s why I’m creeped out — I have a feeling that the 20 or so characters that we’ve met so far (all of them given names and relationships to the others) are already dead and they just don’t know it yet. Those six cheerful, youthful characters that we haven’t met yet? I wonder how long before we meet them, and how much life they had before Year 0, Day 0. I wonder if there are other pockets of people elsewhere in the world that are isolated enough, or closed their borders early enough, are self-sufficient enough, and haven’t succumbed to chaos … or is that youthful cheerfulness the only thing that’s kept these six and their community (however large it may be) from consuming itself?

Not knowing how we get from Day 9 to those six relentlessly cheerful and youthful mysteries is what’s creeping me out. There’s darkness and failure happening in the cracks and shadows, but it’s out of sight for the moment. We may never see the full horror of what happened to the world and whether it burned itself to the ground, or maybe just simply … wound … down as there were fewer and fewer people to perform all the tasks that keep an industrial civilization running.

Fortunately, I won’t have that long to wait to get some answers (however many we get), or at least get to know those six youthful, cheerful — explorers? defenders? scouts? recolonizers? — on account of the fact that Sundberg is putting up pages like this four days a week.

Keep an eye on this one, it’s going to be a wild ride.

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¹ And to have produced another 500+ page webcomic prior to SSSS, that’s just as gorgeous, imaginative, and assured in two languages? Stop that, you’re making everybody else look bad.

² But as yet incongruously so, because everything is still normal.

Quiet day out there, which is odd as it’s usually Thursdays that are dead, dead, dead. I suppose it’s Thursday somewhere as I write this, so let’s chalk it up to that and move on.

The Society of Illustrators has made a number of changes to the management of the MoCCA collection and the MoCCA Festival since the transfer of assets some eighteen months ago. Honestly? I’d say about 98% of the changes have been long-overdue and for the better, with the end result of raising the profile and prestige of the MoCCA collection and brand.

That process of change continues, as the SoI extends one of their annual¹ traditions to the MoCCA crowd: there is now a Call For Entries for the first SoI Cartoon & Comic Art Annual:

As we strive to expand our mission of promoting the understanding and appreciation of comic and cartoon art, we are proud to announce the first Annual Comic and Cartoon Art Competition.

This juried competition will result in an exhibition that will showcase the most outstanding works created in this genre throughout each year.

The original works will be exhibited in the MoCCA Gallery at the Society of Illustrators from May 28 through August 16th, 2014.

Opening Award Galas will be scheduled where Medals and Certificates will be presented to the artists whose works are judged best in each category.

All accepted entries will be reproduced in a full color catalog. This catalog will present not only the year’s finest works, it will also include commentary by the artists, who explain their creative processes in their own words.

A selection of 40 works from each Exhibition will then tour colleges throughout the country in an educational traveling show, a tradition that we have had at the Society for over 30 years.

Categories exist for Long Form (work longer than 40 pages), Short Form (shorter than 40 pages, including work from anthologies), Special Format (think whatever Chris Ware is doing this year), Digital Media (native to a digital format, including webcomics, online comic strips, and other digitally driven works, up to 20 images per entry), Comic Strip (short form work published in newspapers, magazines, books, online, etc. featuring four or more panels), Single Image (self-contained, with or without caption), and Moving Image (includes animated GIFs, intended to be shown on computer, tablet, via app, etc.).

I can see webcomics creators submitting in the Digital, Comic Strip, or Moving Image categories pretty easily, although I think the definitions should allow for a distinction between long form and short form digital. Somebody get on to the Society and tell them that Gary said they should do their thing differently because he said so, and I’m sure they’ll change it right away.

If submitting a long- or short form printed item, six copies need to be provided by mail; special format needs one copy by mail; digital, strip, single image and moving image are submitted electronically, with certain format requirements². Physical entries require an entry form, and the work must have been produced in the time frame Jan 2013 — Jan 2014.

Now here’s the part some of you will not like: as is common in artistic and literary annuals, there is a fee to be considered: US$20 per entry for Society members, US$30 for non-members. I don’t think this is the same as contests that give the winner the opportunity to work for free (considering it’s for work that’s already done, rather than spec work), and there are costs involved in the administration and judging³. Still if that’s a dealbreaker for you, it’s good that you know up front before putting together your submission packets.

Personally, I think that an update by Emily Carroll or Boulet, or a selection of Kate Beatonmas comics would be shoo-ins, but that would depend on how strictly the categories are defined, I suppose. I guess we’ll all find out together come springtime.

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¹ Literally, as we’ll see in a moment.

² Images are submitted at must be 1000 pixels on the longest side, RGB or JPG; moving images need to be MOV for submission through the site linked above, but links for other formats can be emailed.

³ The SoI is stating plainly that all entries will be seen by all members of the category jury, which could make for a hell of a lot of work for the jury members.

Only one of which you need to — perhaps I should say only one of which you can — pay for!
• Let’s start with that one. Readers of this page are perhaps familiar with the fact that I dig on Magnolia Porter’s comics, in large part because she gets voices down. Her characters are people, not roles that need to be filled. If there’s a wacky character, you can be certain that she’s that way because of what’s happened in her life and backstory, not because the Big Book O’ Storytelling says And don’t forget to add a wacky character! I dug my way through Bobwhite, and I stand second to no man in my love of Monster Pulse. But I’d never had the chance to read her first comic, a full-length graphic novel about a criminal and his eleven year old daughter/partner.

  Until now:

  Good news! My very first graphic novel, The Good Crook, is now available in digital form on Gumroad for just 12 dollars. This is a complete 223-page comic that is no longer available online in any other form. I decided to release in a digital format since I couldn’t imagine ever finding enough time and energy to devote to publishing it in print, on top of my more current projects.

  The Good Crook has been offline for a while now so if you want to read my earliest work, you finally have the opportunity.

  The story is very dear to my heart and even though I was still learning a lot about writing and drawing while I was making it (in high school and my first years of college), I’m still pretty proud and happy with how it ended up.

  Here is why I want to read The Good Crook (apart from obsessive completism): Magnolia is a good twenty years younger than I am, and here’s an entire work that is old enough that I missed it years ago, and looking at her first work I can enjoy how good she was, how much better she’s gotten, and how much improvement she still has in front of her. Also, bargain? That’s like five cents a page. And that’s what I’ll be doing tonight.

• In fact, to get in on a greater bargain than The Good Crook, you would have had to make a decision some months, nearly a year, back. You may recall that about a month ago we told you how David Malki ! shared the fact that if you had pledged US$3 or more, you would get a bundle of webcomics in electronic form as part of a stretch goal. I estimated the value of that bundle at north of US$250, so let’s see how far off I was, because in the latest MoD Game Update, Malki ! has shared the manifest for that Webcomics Pals E-bundle:
  

  [copied from image]:

  • A Girl And Her Fed, Rise Up Swearing
  • Alaksa Robotics, Poseidon and Athena
  • Diesel Sweeties, Pocket Sweeties vol 1
  • Dinosaur Comics, All of 2011
  • Dumbing of Age, This Campus Is A Friggin’ Escher Print
  • Gastrophobia The 12 Labours of Gastrophobia
  • Gunshow, Superbook One
    Maximumble, Book 1
  • Ryan North, Poor Yorick
  • Sam and Fuzzy, Fix Your Problem (preview)
  • Scenes From A Multiverse, Book 1
  • Sheldon, Coffee: It’s What’s For Dinner
  • Skullkickers, 1000 Opas And A Dead Body
  • Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, Save Yourself, Mammal!
  • Spacetrawler, The Human Seat
  • Spike & Diana Nock, Poorcraft
  • Wasted Talent, We Are The Engineers

  Holy crap. That’s more than 2043 pages (I don’t know how long the Sam & Fuzzy preview is, and I couldn’t find the AK Robotics book in the store); taking existing e-book prices (or half the price of a physical book, if no e-book is found) gives a total value of US$102; going just from the prices of physical books (when available — Maximumble and Wasted Talent only have e-books at this point; the 2011 Dinosaur Comics strips aren’t collected yet, but the previous three full-year collections went for 20 or 21 dollars), we’re looking at US$214 of value. Actually, it’s a good deal more than that, since the only way to get a copy of Poor Yorick if you didn’t back the Kickstarter is to pony up a princely US$1000, but that will also get you the Dinosaur Comics from 2011, so call it a minimum of US$1100 or so to create this collection by other means.

  So good going, 10,666 people¹ who backed the MoD game! You got a whole mess o’ entertainment for zero extra dollars. Everybody else, you’re kinda pooched². But pooched or not, I think we can appreciate what an undertaking Mr Malki ! has engaged in here, and resolve to let him know that we’re totally glad that The Wizard isn’t plaguing him any more. So, good job, Malki !, I hope that when the shipping is done you don’t get bored.

  Yeah, right. Like you don’t have five other projects just burning a whole in your future waking hours.

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¹ If one were to multiply the number of people eligible for the reward by the estimated value of building up the collection yourself, it could be argued that Malki ! is responsible for more than US$11.7 million of economic activity!

But that would be silly.

² That strip is from 2 September, 2011 so I guess you get one of the 2011 strips for free?

What? Vacation weeks are over? Everybody’s back to work? Well, crap. Fine.

• A few days back (Friday, to be precise), Dean Trippe launched a Kickstarter to print his beautiful, unsparing, painful, and ultimately uplifting Something Terrible. Some people that launch day doubted that Trippe would meet goal over 30 days¹, but those of us that know Trippe’s work knew better.

  Now it’s absolutely true that you can get a copy of Something Terrible for a buck via Sellfy, so why would you back a Kickstarter where the support tiers go to hundreds of dollars? Glad you asked.

  1. Starting at US$5, you get a revised, expanded version of Something Terrible; actually expanded is a weak term, since it’s twice the size of the original.
  2. Starting and US$10, physical rewards come into play, including various sized prints of the splash image You’ll Be Safe Here from the end of Something Terrible.
  3. Sometime today Trippe is getting cost estimates for bumping the print version of Something Terrible to hardcover.
  4. He’s also added a support tier for ten copies, pitched at comic shops and bookstores.

  Now bear with me here, and keep in mind that I’m just spitballing, but what if we combine item #3 with item #4? Hardcover means durability; mass sales means lots of copies; those two items together means libraries and schools can get in on this, and people who really need to read this story (who wouldn’t otherwise) get that opportunity.

  I’ve had my PDF copy for months; I would have backed this campaign regardless; the fact that Trippe brought up hardcovers means I’m upping my pledge because the higher this goes, the greater chance that somebody who needs this book gets to read it. Trippe’s as much as hero as any of the characters he turned to for example and solace; helping him now is closest I can come to making sure his cape is clean and pressed.

• We’ve mentioned Matt Bors and his curatorial efforts at The Nib previously; I love the fact that he’s been seeking out a wide cross-section of [web]cartoonists and paying them American cash money to put their comics up. When we spoke, he included this on the topic of his talent roster:
  

  I have a regular stable of contributors now and that will only be expanding in 2014. I have a substantial budget to do this and you’ll be seeing other names you recognize in coming months.

  Today we found out what his substantial budget is getting him (and us): Fifteen regular cartoonists, three different ones every Monday through Friday. Additional longer-form comics journalism and auto-bio on a weekly basis. Names like Stevens, Weinersmith, Tomorrow, Moen, and Pequin are on the daily list, the likes of Wertz, Neufeld,and Knight will be contributing monthly, and creators such as Bellwood, Delliquanti, Glidden, and Rosenberg are on deck for later in the year.

  Bors, modestly, describes this as A good start, which just makes me excited to see what other shoes he’s going to drop. In the meantime, make The Nib part of your daily reading habit.

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¹ Case in point: a Kickstarter-tracking site called Sidekick gave Trippe a 7% chance of success when he was 8 hours in and 2/3 of the way to goal, which tells me that their algorithms are seriously off. They’ve since decided that yeah, he’ll succeed, so thanks for that, Sidekick!

Meanwhile, the Fleen Fudge Factor (take the Kicktraq trend target at the 24-30 hour mark, and the final total will most likely be one-sixth to one-third of that value) puts Trippe with a likely final total in the range of 3.6x to 7.2x of goal, or about US$23,000 to US$46,000. Heck, he’s more than halfway to the lower bound of that range in three days, with a mere 27 days to go.

There are certain habits you have to have to keep up with as many webcomics as I keep up with¹ — some things get read when the RSS updates, some you wait for the trade (more often because it’s a story that reads better that way), and some you drop in on from time to time to see what’s going on, since you know they’ll be there for a good long time.

Case in point: Arthur, King of Time and Space by Paul Gadzikowski. Launched with a plan to run daily for 25 years² (which wound up being reduced considerably, but still planned to run from 2004 to 2017, which is a damn healthy run), reaching the 75% mark in the Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge³ (having outlasted the likes of Dean Trippe, John Campbell, Scott Kurtz, Greg Dean, Phil McAndrew, Chris Crosby (!), Natasha Allegri, Steve Troop, Tom McHenry, and Jennie Breeden), AKOTAS was just going to always be there.

Except it’s not anymore; thanks to lazugod for the link to Tuesday’s strip:

[transcribed from the comic]

The Monday before Thanksgiving it was announced in this space that the hiatus period that’s been going on would end at the first of the year. Perhaps you didn’t notice that it didn’t actually say anything was going to follow.

[M]y wife and I have been going through a major life transition since, in retrospect, August.

The time and effort of producing a daily webcomic of any quality in one’s off hours effectively constitutes having a second part-time job. I’ve reached a time when I don’t know whether I can do that again; when, unfortunately but importantly, I don’t want to do that again.

But I’m not going to allow AKOTAS to go out on hiatus format cartoons. There’s about a week’s proper cartoons coming to wrap things up.

Life transition is perhaps too kind a term; were I Gadzikowski and his wife I’d be using words like fuck cancer, but it’s evident that they have both far more poise than I would in this situation, undoubtedly a side effect of having far more experience in this situation than I would wish on anybody. Given the choice: a second part-time job, done for free, to entertain strangers on the internet vs help my wife deal with tumors that have metastasized to her lungs and brain?

That is not even a choice. Which is why the last bit of the explanation from Tuesday reveals exactly what a class act Gadzikowski is:

Sorry about the mess. Thanks for reading.

Never apologize to us, Paul. Thanks for letting us read. At whatever point in time it doesn’t impact the well-being of your family and the muse strikes you, we’ll be here to read whatever you might share with us.

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¹ The first being, recognizing that you will never read more than a bare fraction of what’s out there.

² A plan so broad in scope that it’s really only matched by Dave Sim announcing at the very beginning that Cerebus would run for 300 issues, which is exactly what wound up happening. Please note, however, that Sim is batshit insane whereas Gadzikowski seems to offend people about as often as Mr Rogers.

³ Which, by the way, has now been running for 3231 days.

Just before Thanksgiving, the to-date total of Child’s Play stood at US$20 million and I gave them a 50/50 chance of clearing US$25 million by the end of 2013’s campaign. Honestly, though, I thought it was a stretch; it would require the year’s take to be in the neighborhood of US$7.5 million, or about half again 2012’s total, or an amount greater than that raised from 2003 to 2009 inclusive.

Drum roll, please:

Our final fundraising total for 2013 is an astonishing $7.6 million.

The bulk of our donations don’t come in the form of huge grants: the millions are made up of the $10, $20, $50 donations. They come from game marathons, golf tournaments, eBay auctions, and bake sales. They come from the incredible community that makes the tag line “Gamers give back” an understatement. [boldface original]

By the way, that’s up from US$5.7 million just four days prior. So let’s update the numbers, then:

2003: $250,000
2004: $310,000
2005: $605,000
2006: $1,024,000
2007: $1,300,000
2008: $1,434,377
2009: $1,780,870
2010: $2,294,317
2011: $3,512,345
2012: $5,085,761
2013: $7,600,000
To date: $25,196,670