Okay, it’s been a while since my daily drive-by of Graphic Smash showed any new updates to anything I had a habit of reading there, but habits, y’know? Today’s page is a bit unexpected, particularly considering the date shown. Odd. Reached for comment, Joey Manley said:

I’m sad to see it go, but it was time. It hadn’t been an active publication in years. Note that Modern Tales and serializer also went down at the same time, and Girlamatic will be doing so. Webcomics continues to thrive as a medium, but the age of the collective (especially the subscription-based collective) is behind us. For my part, E-Line is moving on to a new, very ambitious comics projects. It’s the end of an era but not the end of the world.

Longtime readers may recall previous reports of Manley’s ideas for projects with E-Line stretching back a number of years, but not much in the past — yeesh — four years or so. At this point it may be that anybody making plans for ambitious comics-related projects whose company name doesn’t rhyme with -opatoco is going to have to run hell of fast to catch up to the current leaders. However, in line with blog policy, we at Fleen remain cautiously optimistic that we’ll see some of Manley’s ideas produce something interesting in the near- to medium-term.

Where you get those ideas, of course, is a matter of some divergent theories. One school of thought holds that ideas are retrieved from perverse depths with arcane, disturbing tools¹. Others believe ideas are plentiful on the ground and ripe for the taking. Ryan Estrada has long been part of the latter camp, but he’s got a new twist.

In brief, he’s taken a script that he’s decided that he won’t ever have time to properly develop and shared it with the world, just to see what others might do with it. Ahuizotl, as it’s called, is released under a Creative Commons license that requires nothing but attribution; if you turn it into a million dollars, you just won the metaphorical lottery. Even more exciting:

If this works out, and someone makes something cool with it, maybe I’ll release more!

Let’s clarify that: making use of free ideas is what’s going to prompt Estrada to release more free ideas. I can think of nothing more exciting than others jumping in on this concept and turning Estrada’s initial offering into the ideas equivalent of a take-a-penny-leave-a-penny dish at the cash register of the webcomics Kwik-E-Mart.

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¹ In case you can’t see what Maura’s saying that so disturbs Library Anne, it is:

Let’s just say Vaseline, a frozen kielbasa and some cold medication are involved.

It’s one of those words with entirely too many definitions.

• Hey, have I mentioned that MoCCA Fest is this weekend? Because it totally is, and I will be roaming the crap out of the show floor¹ on Saturday². Look for a healthy contingent of webcomickers and their natural allies, including the various B9 creators, Magnolia Porter, Lauren Zukauskas, Mike Isenberg & Oliver Mertz, David McGuire, Sophie Goldstein, Sylvan Migdal, Oni Press, Top Shelf, and :01 Books — who will be debuting Lucy Knisley’s Relish, which it seems everybody loves.
• Let’s take a trip to the picture show, as The Economist examined closely the efforts of Freddave Kellett-Schroeder to navigate the waters of Fair Use in the production of Stripped. It says something that the vagaries of US copyright law would get such a close reading in a London-based magazine, but I’m not sure if I can articulate exactly what it says.

  It’s probably very insightful and about midway between the ubiquity of US-made media and the inability of the newsy segment of that same media to do in-depth reporting on issues raised in odd corners of the culture. Anyhoo, as of this writing there’s just under two days left to help get more sound and video clips into Stripped, if you should be so inclined.

• From the movie show to the reality show, Stripped to Strip Search:
  

  [Regarding surprises during the production period] Khoo echoed this, noting especially how Krahulik hit a particular point where his respect for The Artists became a major influence on his participation.

  Well! We know what Robert was talking about now, don’t we? My regard for Mike Krahulik [SPOILERS in that link] has jumped several notches with his insistence that he would not [redacted] the losing Artist’s contribution in Strip Search elimination #3.

  Very tense episode, and had Khoo not said in previous interviews that every day resulted in an elimination, I would have bet good money that this would be a candidate for playing a “nobody goes home” card. We at Fleen want to congratulate Lexxy Douglass and Tavis Maiden for sharing their best work with us; you both rock.

• Dang if it doesn’t make my heart sing as Chris Onstad decides to show us he’s getting the (metaphorical) band back together:
  

  Achewood’s hiatus has been the stuff of much speculation, and the lack of information from me has contributed to this. In some cases, silence on my part was construed as disregard; this truly was never the reason for it. Some of my personal struggles became all-consuming and needed addressing. We can go over the unsavory details later. I’m grateful—and lucky—to be able to tell you that these are, after a long, dark tea-time, behind me. But during this period, many of my relationships suffered. Some were with my readers and supporters. For you affected by my difficulties, I sincerely apologize. Please know I’m working to restore that relationship —- first and foremost by addressing the second cookbook —- and will have good news on that to share with you soon. [emphasis mine]

  Chris, all is forgiven if even one of those recipes in the second cookbook is even half as good as Perfect Oven Fries Every Time.

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¹ Which is small enough that I’m not bothering with table numbers here.

² Sunday I’m helping to skills-test a class of EMT students, finding out who’s learned how to not kill their patients.

The first one is: No April Fool’s Day gags at Fleen. No, wait, the pants thing, that would be Rule To Live By #0, then the April Fool’s thing can still be RTLB #1.

RTLB #φ: It’s always appropriate to say Happy Birthday, so let’s note that Christopher Wright has, as of yesterday, been doing Help Desk for seventeen (occasionally irregular) years, making it one of the Grand Old Webcomics.

RTLB #e: You can never have enough Jeff Smith, ever. Much as I loved his turn towards sci-fi/horror and his turn on Captain Marvel, when I think “Jeff Smith”, my eye inevitably turns towards my gilt-edged first printing of the hardcover BONE one-volume collection because BONE is the best and I’ll fight any man-jack among you says different. And now we get word that Smith is returning to humor/fantasy, and he’ll be doing it as a webcomic called Tüki Save The Humans:

It will be about the first human to leave Africa. It takes place about 2 million years ago during the Ice Age and Africa has been turned into a desert. Everyone is trying to stop Tüki –- the Animal spirits, other humans, and more.

Looking to do this in color from the beginning. Plans to release it weekly online as free webcomic, and eventually releasing the chapters or arcs for sale. Jeff said he would need to have at least 6 months of the book in the can before he started to make sure he stays on schedule.

Big props to Smith for thinking in terms of maybe the most impressive webcomic buffer ever, and finally I get what Smith’s wife and publisher, the very smart Vijaya Iyer, was hinting at last year at SDCC when we talked Kickstarter and webcomics and I had the distinct pleasure of introducing her to a mess of people who have figured out the webcomics model.

RTLB #π: Optimism wins out, maybe? I first noticed the Jeff Smith announcement because of a tweet from Faith Erin Hicks, which reminded me that it’s time to again talk about Hicks’s collaboration with Prudence Shen, Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong. NCPGW has been running since the fall via :01 Books online-to-print curatorial site, and it rapidly approaching its conclusion (eight pages of battlin’ robots mark today’s update, starting here).

Now here’s the thing: I know how NCPGW ends, because :01 Books were kind enough to send me a review copy a couple weeks back in advance of the 7 May release date. No spoilers, but I can say that although Shen and Hicks have been thoroughly debunking the titular assertion for more than 250 pages¹, I will say that the conclusion is satisfying, reasonably non-painful for the protagonists, and arrived at entirely fairly.

It would have been easy for Shen to make things too easy for her band of barely-speaking-to-each-other rivals, and she avoids it deftly. Along the way, we get a terrific exploration of friends that aren’t really, enemies that are really, the absolute terror that’s engendered by cheerleaders, and the universal utility of Richard Ayodade.

If this sounds kind of awesome (and it is), and if you plan on being at the MoCCA Festival this weekend, be sure to drop by the :01 table and tell ’em how much you appreciate their providing a platform for such terrific work from such talented creators. I sure will be.

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¹ Anybody that has seen or read any story, or lived in any way whatsoever, will be able to tell you that phrases like Trust me and This will absolutely work and Nothing can stop us are full of deception. Especially when used in proximity to references to industrial-strength weed killer.

Nobody likes a good internet riot more than me¹, and there’s a call going around in webcomics circles using exactly that terminology today:

Hey Internet, it’s Time to Riot For Howie Noel

Executive Summary: webcomicker Howie Noel has had for a number of years a comic called Tara Normal, which attracted some attention and perhaps even offers from the entertainment conglomerates. Simon & Schuster has, over the past year or so, released a series of books aimed at readers eight and up under the series name SaraNormal. Both deal with an alive female person who has mysterious ghost-seeing powers. I think that’s about the limit of what all people would regard as “undisputed facts”.

Ryan Fisher (he of the riot-rousing post linked above) reports that Tara Normal creator Noel went on the TGT podcast last month talking about Tara Normal and SaraNormal, and feeling poorly treated by the latter; I haven’t had a chance to listen to the podcast, so much of what follows is based on Fisher’s interpretation of what was said there:

Not only is the name a blatent [sic] rip-off of Howie’s Tara Normal, the comparisons don’t stop there. SaraNormal features a young woman with the same abilities as Tara, hits some of the EXACT SAME plot points and even includes some of the same cast members! If that isn’t bad enough, the fictional author Simon & Schuster created to huck this brand of copyright infringement has the SAME DAMN BIO THAT HOWIE USED. The bastards couldn’t even come up with an original background for their made up AUTHOR! SaraNormal is now a book series that has 9 different books, meanwhile Howie is left with the pieces of the baby he created.

Let’s take those one at a time:

• Titles aren’t sacrosanct; the same riffing that led from “paranormal” to “Tara Normal” could lead to “SaraNormal”, or for that matter, ParaNorman. I’m not saying that it was an independent derivation, just that this is probably the weakest claim.
• Regarding the powers, abilities, and plot points, I’ve not read either TN or SN, so I can’t comment; Fisher said he hasn’t either, and it’s understandable if Noel reports seeing massive similarities — in any person’s mind, coincidence only explains so much.

  However, ideas like “young woman talks to the dead and investigates paranormal activities” aren’t protected by copyright, only their execution. From my reading of synopses, it appears that Tara is a licensed paranormal investigator that beats up zombies; Sara is 12 and apart from the talking to ghosts thing, has life problems closer to what you’d find in a Judy Blume novel.

• Fisher’s last point is probably the strongest — if S&S have appropriated Noel’s bio for the author of the SaraNormal books, that’s pretty blatant. However, I couldn’t find a side-by-side comparison of the two bios. When I asked Fisher about it, he referenced the bio provided for the author of SaraNormal as seen on Amazon:
  

  Phoebe Rivers had a brush with the paranormal when she was thirteen years old², and ever since then, she has been fascinated by people who see spirits and can communicate with them. In addition to her intrigue with all things paranormal, Phoebe also loves cats, French cuisine, and wiling her afternoons away in coffee shops writing stories. Phoebe has written dozens of middle-grade fiction books and is thrilled to now be exploring Sara’s paranormal world.

  … but did not have a copy of Noel’s books to compare to, so that’s inconclusive.

The best thing about this (and what makes the riot calls premature) is that Fisher says Noel’s been advised by a lawyer to not disclose other details. If you think you’ve been ripped off, lawyering up is the smart thing to do, as is keeping quiet on things the lawyer says not to yap about, as is not starting any riots or letting others start them on your behalf.

Guys. We’ve got speculation here, not self-reported, and the creator has a lawyer whose job will be much more difficult if any unsanctioned riots get underway. Know how you know that last bit is true? If a riot would have helped, the lawyer would be leading it.

Whether Sara is a thinly-disguised version of how Tara was described at 13, I can’t say (and from a third-hand perspective, neither can you). I can easily believe that given the YA (read: mid-teens and up) explosion in paranormal fiction, S&S would be looking to expand the concept down to the pre-teen readers. I can, barring other information, can find the explanation of “same idea, different people” to be reasonable.

I am not saying that these explainings-away are true, just that we don’t have enough information to break out the pitchforks, as one might if you saw a drawing suddenly lifted from a cartoon to a suspiciously-identical unauthorized shirt or art gallery print.

Should Noel’s lawyer decide that a het-up internet is the appropriate response, or evidence come to light that somebody at S&S planned an appropriation, then swing by my place: I’ve got a whetstone that’ll put a nice edge on your rhetorical pitchfork. Until then, please recognize that there is no clear set of rules to govern situations like this and sometimes the best thing you can do is keep your powder dry.

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¹ Okay, that’s probably not true, but let’s face it — the internet creates a tendency towards mobs greater than anywhere this side of Springfield.

² That bio does seem a bit contrived to me, but contrived to make the author resemble the protagonist.

Anytime you have to ask yourself Should I be establishing a document trail? is not the easiest of days, but that’s neither here nor there. Let’s (briefly) talk webcomics (of course) and Kickstarter (big surprise there).

• Aaron Diaz¹ wrapped up his Kickstarter for The Tomorrow Girl last night with a few surprises:
  • He took the number two slot from Penny Arcade in the Comics section
  • He did not pass the Machine of Death game, which Diaz and David Malki ! both seemed to think would happen
  • He wound up very close to a nice round multiple of US$5000, but came up six dollars short which is the most baffling thing of all — you watch pledge totals go up and down all the time as individuals try to be the one to make a project exactly make goal² or exactly hit a round number
  • Being a generous soul, Diaz has declared that although he finished with US$534,994 he will make good on the stretch goal for US$550K (drawing all the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park according to modern scientific thought) but let’s not kid ourselves, he likes drawing dinosaurs more than he likes breathing

  Well done, Mr Diaz, and thereisnogodspeed on all those stretch goals (and dinosaurs); between this and the MoD game, Make That Thing is going to have one hell of a beta test.

• It’s been a while since we mentioned Super Art Fight, the DC-area premiere competitive improvisatory movable art feast because honestly, we all know the drill by now. SAF shows up in a town (much like a rampaging cycle gang), takes over a bar or show venue or convention session room (again, much like a rampaging cycle gang), and proceeds to art the crap out of a bunch of large drawing boards while music blares and a play-by-play (draw-by-draw?) commentary takes place at a level of enthusiasm slightly greater than than of a match where a pair of luchadors have their masks on the line. Then they blow out of town, property damage and broken hearts in their wake. You kinda have to be there to understand it.

  Until now. [cue appropriate music]

  The best of Super Art Fight’s art (show posters, art from the Wheel of Death, original contributions from competitors) is now being collected into a … I’m sure that book is not a word sufficient to contain what’s inside the covers. Let’s go with “being collected into a” tome over on the ol’ Kickstarter. The producers of Super Art Fight would like it to be known that they are not responsible for pledgers suffering nosebleeds, temporary deafness, hysterical blindness, or mysterious pregnancies, and that if you have an art-boner that lasts more than four hours, consult a physician.

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¹ Tolkien scholar par excellence and paleontology buff with the passion of every single six year old in the world taken together.

² Heck, I gave two bucks to the second Stripped Kickstarter to make it hit exactly goal. I’m not proud of that.

A little behind the times on some things, pretty up to date on others.

• Just a reminder that Lucy Knisley’s Relish will be in stores next week, and that it got the Fleen Seal of Approval and you should totally pick it up. As an appetizer, why not check out Knisley’s collaboration with Erin Meister at Saveur’s Recipe Comix?
• Time for a periodic reminder that you New York area types can drag your silly comic-obsessed asses into adult sophistication with the help of a little wine education, courtesy of Kristen Siebecker¹ and her recurring Popping Your Cork series. The Spring PYC will be Wednesday, 10 April (for all you people maybe hanging around after MoCCA?) at Simple Studios in Midtown. Previous classes have sold out so hurry — and use the code FRIEND10 for a 10% discount.
• One of the hallmarks of Kickstarter is that you can’t solicit for charity, which makes sense — you don’t want to get into a dispute where you wonder if money raised under the pretenses of going (wholly or partially) to charity doesn’t. So Machine of Death impressario David Malki ! didn’t come close to mentioning that he wanted to devote some of the proceeds of the MoD game to the literacy and writing charity, 826LA. From the MoD project update page:
  

  MYSTERY STRETCH GOALS:
  Continue reading this post on the Machine of Death blog!

  And from there, the news that the MoD Squad planned to donate one dollar per game (both physical and PDF) ordered to 826LA, for a total of 10,938 games which rounds up nicely to US$11,000. This was enabled by clearing the US$382,600 level. And as a further act of being an stellar person, Malki ! announced that by clearing 8260 backers, MoD books and games will be donated to 826LA for sale in their shop to support their programs. As if that weren’t enough, there will be 826LA-exclusive MoD game content for purchases of MoD stuff via the 826LA online store starting in June.

  Given that the Machine of Death game is about creative and collaborative storytelling, I can’t think of a better place for their largesse to go — 826LA (and its affiliated programs around the country) may well be responsible for finding the next great storyteller, one that wouldn’t have been nurtured without 826’s help.

  Malki ! also did a vlog interview with Matthew Lesko². I suspect that although the interview was very well managed by Malki ! and conveyed his philosophy of Kickstarting very well, the wrong message may be taken by a percentage of the people that watch it. Lesko’s spent so much time hawking the idea that there is free money out there for the having, and here this guy wound up with half a million dollars, that the people most receptive to Lesko’s message will only hear that number and apply it to the message he’s so well known for.

  This is not an unknown situation in crowdfunding, and while those that watch the video because they know Malki !, or MoD, or Kickstarter in general will likely be more resistant to the siren call of Free! Money!, I sincerely hope that he (Malki !) has put in place good filters on his email, as he’s most likely going to be getting a substantial number of people wanting to know how they can get half a million dollars, too³.

• Oh, and one more thing: new Nicholas Gurewitch cartoon at Boing Boing! Great gag, terrific visual, and Mass Casualty Incident classes will be using that last panel to illustrate what a cluster MCIs can become.

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¹ Sommelier, wife of a comics guy of some note, and original showrunner of MoCCA Fest, the latest iteration of which is approaching rapidly.

² Full disclaimer: I have encountered Lesko twice in person at random — once on the streets of Bethesda, MD and once in New York’s Penn Station. He looked really annoyed at life both times and kinda elbowed me in the ribs semi-accidentally on his way through a tight slalom of people.

³ We at Fleen haven’t done a comprehensive survey, but this is most likely the new contender for the longest, most convoluted sentence in the blog’s history. Yay?

GIFs and graphics process and generational struggles, oh my.

• Oh Rich Stevens, you coffee-fueled, pixel-wrangling, furiously-kerning machine, how I wish I could put a copy of today’s strip up there in all its animated GIF glory. More to the point, props for constructing a strip that can be read in more than one pattern and still make sense — it’s like a small-scale exercise in Carl.
• Off to a good start: PC Weenies creator and process geek Krishna Sadasivam has set up a Tumblr that allows him to ask artists he admires four questions about how they work:
   
  1. Who are you and what do you do?
  2. What’s your hardware setup?
  3. What’s your workspace look like?
  4. What tools do you use to make your cartoons?

  … and then get them to tie that information into a demonstration of their art via the simple instruction Draw Me A Robot, thus delving into the mind of a fellow creator. No word yet on what Sadasivam plans to do with those minds (one hopes nothing too icky, but as we all know, there ain’t nothing so fun as having a pile o’ brains), but until it all turns sinister, you can enjoy the questions and answers.

  Quick note, though — if you’re not reading DMAR on mobile, the pictures of hardware, workspaces, and robots won’t show until you click on the navigation arrows that are to either side of the artist’s photo (Sadasivam has coded things so they’ll highlight in orange when you mouse over them), so don’t overlook those. If you’re on mobile (at least, on my Android), you’ll see all the photos for a given post together.

• That National Cartoonists Society announced nominations for its various division awards this morning, including the second year of webcomics getting nods (and the first for long-form webcomics). Okay, this is gonna require a couple of disclaimers.
   
  • I was part of the screening committee for the webcomics awards again this year. This meant that we received all of the self-nominated works, vetted them against the criteria that the NCS established. We were able to add additional comics for consideration¹, and forwarded the list of self-nominees and committee adds onto a jury, which whittled each category down to three comics.
  • That illustration up there at the top of the page? A webcomicker happily webcomicking? That’s by Meredith Gran, who is a friend of mine.

  Everybody got all that? Cards all on the table? Good. Because I want to point out that one of the nominees in the long-form category this year is — Meredith Gran for Octopus Pie, and I can’t think of anybody that deserves the recognition more. Reached for comment, Gran said

  It feels rad. These guys are the foundation of my comics experience. And I’m so pleased to see the new category for “long form” comic strips, a format that has really thrived in webcomics.

  Now it wouldn’t be an award if there weren’t a difference of opinions². Quoth Jon Rosenberg³ (winner of the very first NCS webcomics division award, last year), on Twitter:

  All three of the Online Comic Short Form nominees are from GoComics/Universal. None are independent. Pathetic. http://www.reuben.org/

  That prompted a rely from Tom Richmond, NCS President, member of the usual gang of idiots, and exception to the rule that cartoonists are malnourished, hunched-over physical wrecks; seriously, he’s huge with arms the size of my chest cavity. Enormous, muscular, and thankfully very polite man, because he could definitely intone the answer to What is best in life? and make you believe it.

  Where was I? Oh, yes, Richmond responded to Rosenberg about the nomination process, and I believe that they finished on good terms; awesome, disagreement but polite. Apparently, not everybody was as generous towards Rosenberg, which is unfortunate.

  The process isn’t perfect — I’ve said that before and I’ll say it again — because no process is perfect, at least not until I’m made Benevolent God-Dictator For Life and get to decide who lives and who dies. As I’ve said before, perfect is the enemy of progress, and the way to get closer to perfect is to participate.

  I’ve been honored to participate on the screening committee for two years now, because I want to see the best creators recognized; the fact that it has to go through another set of hands (which may or may not track my views on what is the best work of the year) doesn’t change the fact that my views are at least getting into the process.

  Richmond is participating; probably nobody has worked harder to get these categories considered and now finally implemented. Rosenberg is participating because he’s now a member of the NCS and at some point they’ll call on him to be a part of one of these juries because what the heck — he knows what the kids are doing because he’s one of them⁴.

  Think the nominations could have been better? Awesome — join (or replace!) me and Tom and Jon in the process next year; join the NCS if you’re eligible and before you know it you’ll be part of the generation running things, while the new kids wonder why you’re keeping them down. You can tell them it’s my fault, that’s cool.

  And with that thought in mind, the full set of nominees for webcomics at the NCS Awards this year will be:

  Short Form
  Graham Harrop for Ten Cats
  Jonathan Lemon for Rabbits Against Magic
  Michael McParlane for Mac

  Long Form
  Vince Dorse for Untold Tales of Bigfoot
  Meredith Gran for Octopus Pie
  Pat N. Lewis for Muscles Diablo in Where Terror Lurks

  Fleen congratulates all of the nominees and wishes them good luck, but is totally in the tank for Meredith.

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¹ And did — by my count, nineteen additional short- and long-form comics were added by the committee.

² Let me be perfectly clear: I am not indicating any agreement nor disagreement with any opinions opined upon by various people here, and am acting purely as a hack webcomics pseudojournalist. Given my participation in the process, I feel editorializing on the nominations themselves is bad form.

³ Disclaimer time again — as noted a few days ago, Jon and I have deep ties.

⁴ Frank Zappa wrote of how the explosion of musical talent in the ’60s really happened: a cigar-chomping record company exec said to his assistant about the kid in the mailroom, Sherman, listen — I think we can trust him. We’ll make him an A&R man — let HIM talk to these stupid fuckers with the tambourine ‘n incense. He understands this shit — he’s got the same hair. (page 204).

Not webcomics, but I first noticed it because of the Twitterfeed of Cameron Stewart: a new collaborative project to wrangle 468 artists to each reinterpret five pages from the six volumes of Otomo Katsuhiro’s Akira in the style of The Simpsons. Bartkira, as it’s been dubbed, now has over 300 artists participating and a character assignment map that is brilliant in how appropriate some of the choices are. Part of Stewart’s contribution (with Ralph Wiggum in the title role) is shown above.

All together now:

BAAAAAAART!
MIIIILLLLLHOOOOOUUUUUUSE!
<mutations, lasers, sattelites ‘splode stuff>

• Howard Tayler¹ sent me a very nice (automated) email over the weekend, regarding his recently-concluded Kickstarter campaign and pointing me towards something I hadn’t encountered before.

  After The Crowd is a pledge-management solution that imports the data that a creator (Tayler in this case) receives from Kickstarter, and allows the mapping of pledges to specific rewards (Tayler had several tiers that amounted to choose any x out of these y options) and add-on purchases.

  Unfortunately, I can’t show you the very nice interface that I was presented with (access to that part of ATC is via individually-tailored² links that are good for one use), but trust me, it was spiffy: pictures of all the possible rewards, an accounting of what I’d already pledged, what I’d already be receiving, and an easy way to tinker with my desired order. Then the money got added up and if I owed more for add-ons (I didn’t), a link to PayPal.

  Per Tayler, the add-ons that were so very easy (and tempting) to add pushed his funding total as of yesterday from 8571% of goal to over 9000 [A/V]. For anybody that’s running a Kickstarter³ with a wide variety of pledge rewards (or a mix-and-match approach to rewards), I’d strong urge you to check out After The Crowd or one of the similar solutions that will inevitably be developed in the very near future.

• Also, a little bit after that, Tayler wrote up the most recent of his received wisdoms re: crowdfunding where he opines that the worst risk of a Kickstarter isn’t failing to fund — it’s a mixture of failing to deliver or to learn. Or maybe it’s just the risk of finding out that the world disappointed you deeply [NSFW?]. Bad world, bad, bad world!
• In case you hadn’t seen it yet, Randall Munroe is playing out a story very, very slowly in today’s xkcd — from my casual observation it’s running about one frame per hour. Undoubtedly, once it’s complete it will be collected many places around for you to take in the full experience at a faster pace, but for the moment it’s utterly captivating, melancholy, and on the verge of existentialist dread. It could be telling us either a gentle, hopeful story or one full of loss. There needs to be an adjective to describe that midpoint between anticipation and dread.

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¹ Evil twin, opposites in all ways, etc.

² Or perhaps “Taylered”, in this case.

³ And isn’t able to get Make That Thing to handle all the logistics.

PAXEast kicked off this morning and if I’ve done my timekeeping correctly, a whole passel of Strip Search Artists are, even as I type, on a panel having just watched the second elimination episode with the PAXers on a suitably large screen. Two thoughts:

• These eliminations are starting to get both heartbreaking and heartwarming, as Mike and Jerry clearly are pulling no punched in the judging, yet going out of their way to encourage the Artists in such a way as challenge them to better themselves in their careers. Can’t wait to see when in the season we get to peek in on what’s happening at The Afterlife¹.
• The editing process must have been tougher than the producers estimated in January, when it was predicted that the episodes would track in the 12 – 15 minute range. So far, only one episode has been less than 15 minutes, two between 15 and 20, and the remainder over 20 minutes. Instead of a three-episode day taking the equivalent of 45 minutes (an “hour” of TV minus commercials), it’s going to be closer to a full hour, meaning this show is more content-rich than actual broadcast alternatives.
• Okay, third thing, I lied. Strip Search Artist Monica Ray is crowdfunding her first Phuzzy Comics collection, and the video is alternately hilarious and adorable. Were I not backing Hurricane Erika, I think that Monica would be one of my picks to win the competition, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want her book. Others seem to agree, as she’s a day in and over her goal by a good 20%, with 30 days left to go. If you were at the panel and saw her, I hope you told her, “Gary said hi”.

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¹ The name given by production staff to the house where the eliminated Artists were held until the competition was done. Once again, I am compelled to point out that even when given a specific opportunity to do so, Robert Khoo did not deny that The Afterlife was stocked with booze and hookers of all genders. I wonder how airtight the NDAs actually are….

Jon Rosenberg¹ is in the midst of running a Guest Month at his comic, for the very best of reasons: knuckling down to complete a project that was Kickstarted longer ago than he’d like to admit. For the record, he is behind on that project for an even best-er of reasons: the demands on his time presented by medical circumstances that saw his wife beat the odds on a gestational syndrome that frequently claims the lives of unborn children.

Jon’s twin sons were born tiny, premature to a degree that would have meant certain death only a decade ago. Today they are adorable and healthy, but with developmental challenges that would sap 28 hours a day from people who are not also trying to maintain an independent arts career².

Where was I? Oh, yes: the muse, she is sometimes fickle when you’re trying to work out a physical therapy regimen for toddlers, which means Guest Month frees up the time to produce Goats IV: Inhuman Resources, the progress of which is now kicked into gear; all of this is right and good. However, Jon found a way to make it right-er and good-er this morning with an announcement:

Just received the Goats IV foreword, written by none other than @doctorow himself. I’m at a loss for words. It’s wonderful.

At press time, it was not determined if Cory Doctorow either wrote or delivered the foreword in question while wearing a red cape and goggles, nor if either activity was performed in/by a balloon. It is confirmed that Doctorow’s command of language is absolute:

The words “ferocious headmeat” are employed.

I for one cannot wait to see what follows those two words, and thanks to the generosity of Jon’s colleagues³, I won’t have to wait much longer.

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¹ Full disclosures: Jon is almost entirely responsible for my immersion in webcomics circles, and entirely responsible for the launch of this blog. Also, he owns my soul (I got a dollar for it) and despite his general aversion to being in physical contact or even being closer to me than three postal codes, remains a very good friend.

² He is also regularly beset by idiots in social media that don’t know shit about him or his situation and feel this gives them the right to explain exactly how he is therefore wrong. Seriously, fuck those guys, and especially fuck you, guy that threatened from the far side of the globe to report Jon to child protective services because you didn’t know what the word physiatrist meant.

³ David Willis, Zach Weinersmith, David McGuire, Chris Yates, and William Tallman so far, with more to come.