Okay, I can feel a fever starting, so I’ma get some sleep before I do anything else. Play nice until I’m back, kids.

In case anybody had any doubts that Chris Onstad is a languagesmith of the highest order, may I refer you to today’s Achewood. Even if this storyline ends here, it was worth it.

• In other news, a tweet dropped that makes perfect, perfect sense, so much so that in retrospect, we at Fleen are surprised that it doesn’t drop earlier:
  

  We can now announce that Becky is the character designer on Bee and PuppyCat!

  That would be Becky Dreistadt, and naturally everybody here knows Bee and PuppyCat and on the off chance you don’t know Bee and PuppyCat, please acquaint yourself with Bee and PuppyCat immediately. Heck, go watch it now anyway, I’ll wait.

  Back? Awesome. In case there were any doubts that Dreistadt were the right person for this design job¹, check out any part of her portfolio, including her work on Tiny Kitten Teeth, Capture Creatures, The Bear, or Benign Kingdom. You would have to spend a decade of concentrated mad-scientist bioengineering to create somebody better suited to this role on this webseries. Also, I would pay money to see Beer and PuppyFrat expanded into an episode, much like Natasha Allegri’s gender-reversed joke illustrations became Adventure Time’s Fionna and Cake².

• The recognition of webcomics-type ladies and dudes continues at The AV Club, this time with the staffers indicating what one piece of pop culture from 2013 they would share with the entire world if possible. Among the responses: Nimona by Noelle Stephenson and To Be or Not To Be by the ubiquitous Ryan North.
• The Patreon train continues its travel through Webcomicsville; since Jon Rosenberg³ launched his page on Monday, he’s nearly reached his first extra-reward tier. On Wednesday, Zach Weinersmith jumped on board and is already on the verge of altering the ad mix on his page. Today Ryan Sohmer got his ticket punched, with the potential of launching another comic.

  I’d worry about the additional writing duties causing his brain to collapse from over-mining, but honestly — the difference between the workload of writing two regular webcomics, one ongoing children’s book⁴, two webseries, and two editorial comics and writing three regular webcomics, one ongoing children’s book, two webseries, and two editorial comics isn’t that much, incrementally. Back the Patreon campaign, and you can help drive him to the brink of neural overload!

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¹ And that’s before one considers the neat symmetry that the “Frank” of BeckyandFrank would be Frank Gibson, who provided the voice of Wallace in Bee and PuppyCat

² And who created Bee and PuppyCat? Natasha Allegri. Wheels within wheels, plans within plans. It all fits together!

³ Obligatory disclaimer, etc.

⁴ Illustrated by Becky Dreistadt! It all comes back around!

Well, that’s my holidays all cheered up — the inimitable Tom Spurgeon¹ decided that his year-end interview schedule needed a hack webcomics pseudojournalist for balance, and we just had a delightful talk. Assuming you don’t get enough of my semi-abusive opinionmongering here, I’ll be sure to let you know when that goes live. And may I say, this was the first time Spurgeon and I have interacted person-to-person, and he’s simply a terrific conversationalist. In case you still need a little something to cheer up your holidays, there’s places out there that would provide you with gifts for the comics center of your brain; let’s go check ’em out.

• Via the tweet-feed of Mr Scott C, I see that Gallery 1988 will be holding the latest iteration of its Crazy 4 Cult show in New York this year, meaning that I get a shot at Scott C art without having to fly to LA. Opening is tomorrow night, at G1988’s Manhattan space, 355A Bowery (at 3rd), from 7:00pm to 10:00pm. Past experience of gallery openings suggests that there may well be snacks and booze available. There will be an associated signing event on Sunday, from noon to 4:00pm, and the show will run each day from noon to 7:00pm, until Saturday, 21 December.
• Word is appearing online that the 12 Days of Holiday Bullshit packages o’ fun are arriving in mailboxes. I, alas, missed my chance to get in on the gifting extravaganza, despite the exhortations of people like Rich Stevens and Dylan Meconis dropping broad hints on Twitter that I really should be signing up.

  There are still nine days to go according to the official page, and given that they’ve commissioned a Molly Lewis song about Hawai’ian detachable-vagina gods, I’m guessing that when the Stevens/Meconis thing drops, we’ll all recognize it immediately. If one of you who are in the lucky 100,000 subscribers would let us know when that happens, that would be awesome.

• This page is well known to be in the tank for K Brooke “Otter” Spangler, creator extraordinaire of A Girl And Her Fed, and aside from the fact that she regularly gifts us with one of my favorite webcomics for free, she’s decided to up the ante somewhat. Take ‘er away, Otter [no direct link]:
  

  How would you like the first nine chapters of MAKER SPACE?

  Maker Space would be the second of Spangler’s AGAHFiverse novels; the first, Digital Divide, was terrific, and the second looks to be even better. Disclaimer: Otter asked me to do a reality-check on a plot point involving a branch of engineering I’m not trained in, so I’ve seen a snippet of the book and loved it, even though I was spectacularly useless with respect to the technical check she was seeking².

  How would you like them for free?

  Now we’re talkin’. Spangler is offering approximately the first third of her next novel for the princely sum of zero dollars because she’s awesome. Also because when the book actually comes out in March, some of you will want to see how it turns out and might pony up more than zero dollars for the ending. In the meantime, if you haven’t taken my advice on how good a story-wrangler Otter is, this is your no-risk chance to check out her stuff, in PDF format here or Kindle-style MOBI here.

  Those links will take you to Gumroad, where you’ll be asked for a credit card number — don’t provide one. As soon as you enter 0 in the price box, the request for your plastic will go away; give ’em an email address to send the link to, and get to downloadin’ and readin’ and enjoyin’. Oh, and be sure to leave out a plated of cookies and glass of milk for Otter Claus³.

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¹ So don’t even try to imit him!

² Not that that kept me from commenting on almost every other aspect of what she sent me. Pedantry, thy name is, uh, me.

³ If anybody wanted to draw a sketch of Otter Claus, well, I wouldn’t say no.

Several repeat visits today; sometimes that’s just how things reveal themselves.

• Speaking of Penny Arcade, Child’s Play, etc: The progress graph on the main page is a little out of date, as the recent formal dinner/auction raised more than US$250,000 and have brought the year’s total to the neighborhood of US$3.4 million. This brings the ten-year total to some US$21 million, and there’s still US$1.6 million to go to pass last year’s total (CP have always grown in absolute terms, year-on-year).
• Speaking of The AV Club and their year-end best-of lists, today they tackled Graphic Novels and Art Comics¹ wherein they recognized Emily Carroll’s Out of Skin and Gene Yang’s Boxers & Saints, all of which also count as “speaking of …”. One should note as well that another of their recognized graphic novels, while not strictly webcomic-related, does come from :01 Books (speaking of, once more) — namely, Paul Pope’s Battling Boy.
• Okay, this might stretch the limits of “speaking of”, since we have to go back exactly one year when A Lesson Is Learned By The Damage Is Irreversible returned for what was claimed to be a one-off. They have since released a second new comic within the past five weeks, meaning they’re only now restarting the hiatus clock and will have to go more than six and a half years to equal their previous absence.

  It actually makes sense that they’ve produced but one comic since their return for hiatus, as it would seem that significant amount of time would be needed for them to put a collection of their past strips as prints up at TopatoCo, seeing as how they’re all different sizes and degrees of complexity. Those factors mean that not all ALILBTDII strips are available, and that those that are will have prices varying from US$14 to US$60 (for a single-piece humongous print of I Name Thee Annihilator, which is 190 cm tall, or nearly one Ryan North in height).

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¹ To distinguish from yesterday’s list of mainstream comic books, the boundaries being somewhat arbitrary.

To quote The Spurge, who tweeted last evening:

emily carroll emily carroll emily carroll

Spurge’s tweet led to a Tumblr that led to Zainab Akhtar’s blog that’s got images and info — a full preview, honestly — of Emily Carroll’s first print collection.

Due in July 2014 in a 200+ page hardcover, Through The Woods looks to be exactly what anybody that’s read Carroll’s comics will want — fairy- and folk-tale influenced, deeply unsettling stories, including a reconfigured-for-print version of her breakout story, His Face All Red. Akhtar asserts that this is one of the books that most comics fans are looking forward to and I’m gonna go out on a limb and agree; at least for me, this may be my most-anticipated book since, jeeze, I dunno? Anya’s Ghost? Boxers & Saints? Darkness? Just head over to Akhtar’s site and drink in the beauty.

Okay, one other story that matters: you’re coming up on your last chances to get in on a pair of webcomics Kickstarts.

• You’ve got 10 hours to get in on Sophie Goldstein and Jenn Jordan’s Darwin Carmichael Is Going To Hell campaign (which, sitting at about 180% of goal, is definitely going to be made, but you won’t get your copy any quicker than on the KS). DCIGTH is charming, comforting, and a complete story, so this is it — your chance to support Jordan and Goldstein for the free comics they supplied you.
• And since I last wrote about it a week ago, the Broken Telephone campaign has seen a resurgence, sitting at about 91% with three days to do. Kicktraq has the latest iteration of Ryan Estrada’s The Whole Story series finishing at 104% of goal (which is loads better than the heartbreaking 96% it was predicting last week), but nothing counts until it crosses that 100% threshold. There’s an armful of creators who stand to get paid with actual, real money, but only if a little less that US$2200 of more pledges show up. Time’s running out, don’t let this one stumble.

Changes coming down the pike, Clem, and hard to say where they’re gonna lead.

• Let’s not bury the lede — Jerry Holkins posted a rather startling news update on Friday afternoon, of which the key point was:
  

  But I don’t think I want to “grow my business” anymore; I sort of want to do the opposite. And I’m tired, sick to death, of saying “Maybe Someday” when it comes to the things we really want to make. So, we’re not going to do that anymore. The next year is going to be a pretty big one, one of the biggest yet; it’s the year the previous fifteen have been leading up to in the literal sense but also in other ways. I think they’re going to be “big years” from now on, frankly. And it hurts pretty bad, but I don’t know where PATV as a “channel” for third party shows and The Penny Arcade Report fit into that. We’ll be shutting those things down at the end of this year.

  It may just be a sign that webcomics qua webcomics has finally gotten to an age where something like a fundamental shift of direction can take place and be noticed; plenty of creators make strategic shifts every other month¹, but they affect far fewer people or have fewer visible effects. For an enterprise like Penny Arcade to make such a shift² for essentially philosophical reasons — I suspect it’s not the last we’ll see, but probably also it’ll be a while before another such appears.

  In the meantime, this opens up questions about the future of Blamimations and other Scott & Kris-type productions, not to mention current and future productions from LRR, Mega64, and some pretty damn skilled game journalists. I’d guess that the PATV banner will now be focused solely on what happens inside the walls (so to speak) of Penny Arcade Industries, and that future iterations of Strip Search are no less likely than they were before, but at this point we’ll have to see.

  I would quibble with Holkins on one point though, and that’s that he still will be building his business, but less by incorporating the creations of others, and more by expanding the offerings of his own.

  But it’s time to start making good on some of the promises we’ve made in our work. Recognizing that things like the Pins or The New Kid or Daughters of the Eyrewood or Thornwatch or The Lookouts or Automata deserve every ounce of our resources. Novels and albums, too – all these things that got put off in the interests of Empire. Essentially, we’ve decided to be Penny Arcade.

  This refocusing of effort casts certain decisions in a new light — the expansion of PAX to a third event (and what I’ve interpreted as hints that there may be more in the future), the handing-off of art and writing duties on The Trenches … Holkins gives every impression of having built up his sandbox and now wanting to get to play in it again. I wonder how long he’ll get to before the Empire starts to raise its head again.

• The scope and scale are entirely different, but I can’t help but see parallels in the appeal made by Jon Rosenberg today — he wants to be able to direct more of his energies to the creation of comics, but instead of having too much business to attend to, it’s the unique challenges of children³ and family. The world is in some degree cyclical in its nature, and webcomics is not different in that respect — the Patreon system that Rosenberg is now banking his creative career on is reminiscent of the public broadcasting-model approaches that webcomics returns to on occasion.

  Someday, the pendulum will swing the other way again, and maybe it won’t be necessary. For now, though — if you like his work (and I’m too lazy to type out the obligatory disclaimer re: me and Jon again, but you can read it here), a very small amount of money will make it possible for that work to continue.

• The AV Club, who I think of as being rather trustworthy when it comes to cultural recommendations, is writing about its favorite books of the year today, and in among your Thomases Pynchon and Davids Foster Wallace, one may find a couple of entries from our weird little corner of the cultural conversation. Allie Brosh’s collection of Hyperbole and a Half and the second volume of Machine of Death are both called out as among the year’s best. Well done Ms Brosh, and everybody at MoD.

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¹ Indeed, that agility is one of the great advantages of being an independent creator, where the distance from see an opportunity to decide on a plan of attack to make it happen to all done can be measured in hours. that

² And not in response to a crisis or failure, which is how things of this sort normally go in the business world.

³ And Jon didn’t bring it up, but I will: his situation isn’t helped by the fact that his twin sons (happy and healthy today, thank whatever you thank in these situations) entered the world sooner than would be optimal, after an extraordinarily risky pregnancy. No father on the planet could have been prouder than Jon when the son he was told might never walk on his own did exactly that.

However, these triumphs came at a time when the system for the delivery of healthcare in this country — both to get those boys born, and the extensive needs for physical therapy since — is structured in such a way as to make a situation like this financially ruinous. I don’t know the particulars, but I suspect that if you looked around everything you could see within a 50 meter radius taken together probably doesn’t have as high a dollar value as the medical bills Jon’s family have racked up.

So understand, Jon’s not trying to make comics under the usual constraints of family; he’s trying to make comics under the usual constraints of family and medical debt that likely reaches seven figures, and after more than two years of that unique financial burden, is finally asking for help.

Damn, webcomickers got some patience sometimes. They get an idea, they get plans, and you get to enjoy the fruits of their labors. Check it:

• Earlier this year, Gunnerkrigg Court Tom Siddell did an extra story, taking place between chapters 31 and 32 of his long-running story. Annie in the Forest part one was released in limited quantities through TopatoCo (and then restocked, so you can get one now), and part two was on his table at the recently-concluded Thought Bubble Festival (and is not otherwise available as of this writing). Today, however, Siddell opened a new section of his site for extra stories, and lo and behold — AITFp1 is there for you to read for free, with the second part coming soon.

  It’s a heck of a thing that Siddell’s doing — taking a reasonably pricey item and discounting it down to exactly zero dollars, so if you enjoy watching Annie grow the hell up a bit, do consider dropping a little something towards his ongoing spiders-to-money research. Alternately, you could buy something good from him when he hits MoCCA Festival in April, where he will be tabling alongside Magnolia Porter. In fact, give her lots of money, too, because her comics rule.

• Next up, David Malki ! shares more about the Machine of Death game, shipping mishaps, and farm animals¹, which really just means that it’s a random day of the week. The interesting part comes a little bit further along in the update, wherein we learn:
  

  Some of you may remember the $400,000 stretch goal: “All backers get a MEGA-CRAZY FUN-TIME KIT that includes Wondermark ebooks, the MOD v.1 ebook, free music from our favorite pals, addt’l bonus ebooks …”

  Those “addt’l bonus ebooks” are a Webcomics Pals Ebook Bundle containing over 2,000 pages of comics

  What.

  from artists like Ryan North, Dave Kellett, Chris Hallbeck, Spike, KC Green, Sam Logan, Angela Melick, David Willis, Zach Weinersmith, Jim Zub, K.B. Spangler, R. Stevens, Jon Rosenberg, Christopher Baldwin, and more. I’m paying them a license fee for their ebooks and giving them to you for free. The retail value of this bundle is probably a million zillion dollars.

  Actually, I probably own most of that particular payload of creamy comics goodness, and guessing that the content includes one random book from each of the other creators. If that’s true, then I’d put the value of that bundle at over US$250 if they were physical copies (and that’s not including the Wondermark/MoDv1/music content).

  Even if you paid one dollar at the “JUST THE TIP” level, you’re getting all this content for free. It would take you a hundred years to read all this stuff. The bundle will be ready for download next week. A gift from me to you.

  Know what I’m going to do next week? I’m downloading that entire bolus of entertainment, and I’m going to come back with an actual dollar value so that you know exactly what Malki ! is giving you, and keeping in mind that what he is paying other creators and the value of what you get is probably not going to be covered by the value of the Kickstarter pledges except for the ten people that pledged at the Goat Stare² level and above. Hell, I’m in for the Boxed In level and once you account for the value of the stuff I’m getting, Malki ! is probably out so much money that it would have been cheaper (and certainly less hassle) for him to have never had a Kickstarter and just sent me twenty bucks and we’d call it even.

• Still speaking of Malki !, a Wondermark strip from six and a half years ago got a callback in today’s xkcd. Nice.
• Speaking of six and a half years ago, Christopher Hastings has been holding onto a key, secret plot point for about that long. Attend: the introduction of the Cumberland, Maryland Zombie Defense System and Mayor Chuck Goodrich, astronaut. Add a dash of King Radical, ancient tennis gods, time folds, dimensional portals, alternate Chuck Goodriches with problems with King Radical.

  And all those plot threads paid off today. If Dr McNinja ended on this story, it would stand as a magnificent achievement in long-term storytelling served well by shorter, connected arcs. Fortunately, I think we’re a bit further than that from the end of Dr McNinja, which means that at this point Hastings has nowhere to go but up.

• And that wasn’t even the oldest callback today. Behold, a super-size Achewood that both promises a story arc and calls back to, oh, April of 2002. Damn.

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¹ Just go with it.

² See the bit about farm animals above.

It’s a day for learning things, including the fact that today is Repeal Day¹, the anniversary of the day when the United States ended one of the most stupid experiments in law and social policy in all of human history. The other things I learned all involve comics.

• First thing I learned: Really never underestimate David Malki ! We spoke not long ago about not ignoring his boundless font of creativity, so I shouldn’t have been surprised, honestly. See, I had gotten it into my head that with all that Malki ! had taken on this year, including the logistics of shipping something like a million collated cards², he might give the Wondermark calendar a year off. After all, it’s less than three weeks from Christmas and thus less than four until the new year, when the calendar is most needed.

  Nope. In fact, he’s upped the proverbial ante by also offering a book of the art and verse from the 2008 — 2012 iterations of the calendar, and original art from last year’s Gaxian travelogue edition. As in past years, the calendar is in a limited edition of 250, and there are but 29 pieces of original art from last year’s calendar. The book may or may not be available after the calendars sell out, but for now I’m guessing there’s only 250 copies of that as well. Best jump on that soon if you want in.

• Second thing I learned: The good folks at :01 Books are successful out of all proportion to their size³. Seriously, there’s something like four people involved in the entire acquisitions/editing/production end at the imprint, and they gather accolades for a hefty percentage of their output every year. Latest proof: NPR’s year-end guide to the best of 2013 books has a category for graphic novels & comics, and :01 garnered a full 25% of the recognition.

  It’s worth noting that the :01 Spring and Fall catalogs contain a total of 14 books (I can’t find a copy of their Winter catalog right now, but I’m confident in putting their total releases for the year in the vicinity of 20). There are publishers that drop more graphic novels than that in a month, but it’s all about the quality, not the quantity.

  Oh, and it looks like next year will be just as fun. I just want to publicly thank the :01 crew: Callista, Colleen, Gina, Mark, and anybody else I might be overlooking at the scrappiest, most thoughtful, best damn imprint in the New York publishing scene. Y’all rock.

• Third thing I learned: If I’m reading this announcement correctly, the folks behind the Making Comics podcast are getting ready to launch a repository of comics-making online courses. They’re talking about live courses to start with, aimed at the 10 — 12 year old range to begin with … but if those lessons remain on YouTube, does it matter how old you are if you want to watch ’em?

  As a thing, the Massive Open Online Course is still rapidly changing, and I’m not sure that any number of pre-recorded lessons can replace the experience of working with a skilled instructor who also knows the material inside-out⁴, but this does have the potential of spreading the basics of comics-making far more widely that it has been in the past. It’s worth keeping an eye on.

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¹ Actually, I knew that, but I did learn that heavily Mormon Utah was the state that provided the clinching vote to repeal the 18th Amendment so thanks for that one, Utah! Oddly, my own state of New Jersey provided the last vote in favor of ratification of Prohibition, but not until 1922, more than three years after the 18th Amendment was approved and more than two years after the Volstead Act came into force.

² Which logistics, by the way, also involves the container ship developing mechanical problems and having to return to the far side of the Pacific Ocean.

³ Okay, I knew that one, too.

⁴ As some of you know, my day job is teaching for a technology company. For the past decade, an increasing percentage of my course load has been delivered from my home office in a virtual classroom rather than in-person. The advantages to students are numerous — no travel costs being paramount — but there are challenges as well; most important from my perspective is the lack of immediate feedback to me as to how well the students are getting it during lecture.

There are dozens of small cues that an instructor picks up from a student sitting right over there that convey clearly — they understand or I need to do that last bit over in another way — that are severely attenuated over a net connection. There are other logistical concerns as well, especially of the show me what you’re doing right now variety. Those challenges are compounded when the session isn’t live, but pre-recorded. However, any form of instruction is a step up from struggling on your own to the point that you decide I can’t do this.

Understand as we get started here, today I get to share with you hints of things that make me very, very happy. You can assign any kind of assumptions of bias that you like, doesn’t matter. What I am about to share with you is truth.

• Firstly, Christopher Hastings is going to be remembered by history as one of the the great writer/artists of comics. His story sense is amazingly solid, his art is clear and concise, and he’s a professional when he’s working for others. He would rather die than blow a commitment he’s made to somebody else (and if that means that his own stuff gets delayed so that he can make good to an employer, so be it). Oh, and he’s friggin’ hilarious, which is just kind of unfair when you add it to his other good qualities¹.

  For the past month, his Marvel-published miniseries, Longshot Saves The Marvel Universe, has been dialing up the absurdity and mayhem in equal measures, but is only with today’s release of issue #3 that you get to see Hastings at his best. Because today is when you get to see Sad Future Magneto leaving increasingly pathetic voicemails for Charles Xavier. Hastings gave me a rundown on these back at SDCC and no lie, I was rolling. As an added bonus, I’ve been imagining that someday, somehow, real-life besties Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Patrick Stewart might be enticed to re-enact what Hastings has written. It would be the best thing.

• For two years now (longer, even), something has kept me going in bad times. One particular thought has sustained me when all seems bleak. And lo, in this season of miracles, the Day of Jubilee has arrived, and on Christmas Day no less, we will all get to see History’s Greatest Monster blow up in space.

  James Ashby, I’m looking at you.

  It’s been a long time since the money was raised, the equipment obtained, occasionally-shirtless James was filmed, all in preparation for Starpocalypse!. Back when the project was first announced, Zach Weiner confirmed for me that the time and funding that would be required for Starpocalypse would all be worth it given the many different was they would get to explode James. In space. Now we are a mere three weeks away from the realization of that dream, and it’s so beautiful.

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¹ Also: impeccable food- and drink-producing skills, and his dog is ridiculous.

Hey. How are you? Good, good. There are some things coming up that you might want to keep an eye on.

• T minus 10 days That’s when the latest iteration of The Whole Story finishes up its Kickstarter campaign, and truth be told, it looks like it might be a squeaker. The last release of The Whole Story handily cleared its goal, but this one is presently predicted to hit around 95% of goal, and that is just heartbreaking for a couple of reasons:
  1. Ryan Estrada is trying something really audacious here, where the main reward is an e-comic sent to you every two weeks, and the stories are interlinked. The hero of the first installment of Broken Telephone (for that is its name) has a villain to defeat, but that villain doesn’t know that he’s the villain — he’s the hero of his own story, which will be the second installment. Each antagonist gets a turn in the spotlight, through an 18 part epic by 19 creators.
  2. Those that go above the bare minimum of one stinking dollar will get more comics, including a 24 page bonus story at the US$18 level, 160 pages of various stories¹ added to your fortnightly subscription at the US$24 level, and a mind-boggling 850 pages from various creators² delivered this month before the Broken Telephone subscription even starts. That would be nearly 1050 pages plus the BT subscription (18 chapters, each 12 – 24 pages, call it 300 or so as a round number), or a whopping 3.3 cents per page.
  3. All the money goes to the artists. Estrada, maybe more than anybody, understands that working for exposure is a vile, filthy lie, so aside from postage costs for some top-tier backers getting originals and such, everything raised goes to pay the people who are drawing the comics. Go take a look at the list of names that Estrada’s posted — I’ll wager that there’s at least one person there whose work you enjoy. That person gets paid if The Whole Story makes goal.

  Do it for the children.

• T minus 15 days The Beguiling’s annual comics-funtimes party will be on Wednesday, 18 December, starting at 7:30pm, mere steps from the famed comic shop at Pauper’s Pub where there will be plentiful adult beverages and webcomics superstars. Kate Beaton! Joey Comeau! Ryan North! The launch of Midas Flesh! And I don’t want to make it sound too enticing, but we have been promised both Surprise Mystery Guests and shenanigans. There will be signings of all their various booklike creations, and a Secret Santa gift exchange.

  Also do this for the children.

• T minus about 90 days, dang Hat tip to Kean Soo who pointed me to an amazing new webcomic, Maralinga 1956, which launched a story of post-apocalyptic survival and monsters about a week ago. Good news: there’s ten pages of very good story there. Bad news: the creators will be updating with ten-page chapters on a quarterly basis, meaning that:
  

  Maralinga will be a 200ish page graphic novel posted in quarterly 10 page installments, so should be wrapping up in around, ulp, 2018.

  I’m annoyed because I want more of this story yesterday, but waiting for few-and-far-between updates in longform stories is nothing new. No RSS, but there is a form to sign up for email notification when Maralinga updates in, I’m guessing late February/early March.

  You’ll have to do this for the children, since children have no concept of in three months.

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¹ Including one of Estrada’s true-life adventures, The Bear From The Bear And The Beach From The Beach, wherein Estrada gets close to the movies and nearly dies a lot.

² Including more true-life adventures in Estradavision and Dean Trippe’s Something Terrible, which is going to appear on a lot of best-of lists this year and awards ballots next year.