If anybody was going to do an extra-special comic for update number Six! Six! Six!, you knew it would be KC Green.

Ah, late February, when the comic-reading public’s fancy turns towards the far northwestern reaches and the first major show of the year: Emerald City Comic Con. As in past years, the webcomics contingent and their allies are well represented but the show floor is a bit compex, recalling the bifurcated layout of MoCCA Fest back when it was still in the Puck Building¹. The main floor of EmCity is broken into North and South areas, with a section of Artists Alley in each area. Let’s break ’em down so you can find people.

The bulk of the webby-ish creators are going to be in the South area, shown here:

And the showrunners have helpfully clustered webcomics types within about a two-aisle radius of the easily-located Dark Horse booth (1102), immediately in front of the main hall entrance. Start from there and follow the arrows:

and you’ll end up in the booths of Weregeek/Lunasea (705), Wasted Talent (806), the Great and Bountiful TopatoCoan Empire (with a dozen or more creators at 905 and 1002), Kel McDonald, Kory Bing, Magnolia Porter, Meredith McClaren, David Willis, and Tyler Crook (1008), Dave Kellett & Kris Straub (1107)², Something*Positive and Girls With Slingshots (1108), Scott Kurtz (1105)², Blind Ferret (1106), The Oatmeal (1202), Girl Genius (1204), The Devil’s Panties (1205), Brad Guigar (1206)², and Unshelved.

Staying in the South area, the bulk of the Artists Alley denizens may be found in the B, D, and F islands:

That would be Katie Cook (B-08), Raina Telgemeier (B-10), Dean Trippe (D-01), KrazyKow (D-03), Dave Roman and John Green (D-11), Mary Cagle (F-10), Evan Dahm (F-12), Phil McAndrew (F-13), and Yuko & Ananth (F-16).

Casting your eyes to the North area, you’re going to want to head left coming off the Sky Bridge:

Over on the west side of the hall you’ll find Alaska Robotics (2606), Erika Moen and Dylan Meconis³ (2615), John Troutman and Ryan Smith (Q-19), and the Cloudscape Comics collective (R-03). It’s a little bit of a hike from the South area, but worth the few minutes it’ll take you to traverse the distance.

Naturally, I’ve probably missed people in my survey that I should have included, so if you want to correct any oversights, the comments are open and awaiting your feedback.

Edit to add: exhibitors to list, updated map of the North area.
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¹ Back before the Great Comics Conflagration of Aught-Eight. Such a tragic day.

² The members of Halfpixel appear to have split themselves across three booths; unconfirmed reports indicate that they may be arriving at the show in separate limousines, and that Yoko Ono has been seen canoodling with an unnamed member of the collective. More on this as it warrants.

³ If you see Snowicane Erika, ask her if this time she’s come to Seattle to make friends. #teamerika

It’s been more than five months since Rich Burlew sliced his thumb up good and his return to comics has been slow — he managed to get one update in just before the end of 2012, and has averaged about one a week since then. Having so few chances to get story into play over such a log time must surely be frustrating, as he [SPOILERS] dropped a (long-awaited, it’s true) bombshell on us today.

Certainly, Burlew has been willing to kill off major and minor recurring characters in the past, but the one previous case of killing off a major cast member resulted in him getting better¹. This feels somehow more permanent, and the loving rendering on the last panel speaks to an artist being forced to wait nearly half a year longer than he’d planned to get to that particular development. Rest In Peace (perhaps temporarily), Death’s Lil’ Helper. You’ll be sort of missed, kinda.

I don’t think I mentioned the Johnny Wander book launch party on Saturday night — it was a blast watching Yuko Ota draw a strip with panels determined by suggestions written on little slips of paper and chosen randomly (the first of them should be today’s update, which should be available here at some point in the next few hours but which presently doesn’t exist). Let’s just say that small cats, unicorn power, and droopy socks work together surprisingly well. Oh, and also that Aaron Diaz‘s dog, Special Agent Dale Cooper, is both adorable and remarkably well-behaved in a large crowd.

Speaking of Aaron Diaz², we had a terrific talk about recent progress in dromaeosaurine research³ — to the point that Evan Dahm came over and guessed You’re talking about Deinonychus, aren’t you? — and his immediate publishing plans. You’ve no doubt seen the teaser image for the forthcoming Dresden Codak book, which has proved to be a production challenge.

Consider: Diaz regularly does individual updates that are actually a page or so in size and then intersperses them with single images that are the equivalent of four or five pages. How the heck do you put those in a single book? Answer: with a lot of creative layout, and two different trim sizes, the smaller of which will be at least 30 cm tall by 25 cm wide and the larger of which will approximately match the dimensions of the Little Nemo collections (a mind-bending 53 x 42 cm).

With any luck, he’ll be Kickstarting the books in the very near term, and sometime after that — presumably after his all-but-certain Machine of Death game card set — he’ll have time to do a book of dinosaur art. Dude’s got opinions on the thunder lizards and I want to see them illustrated.

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¹ Albeit more than 220 updates and two years later.

² The Tolkien Dinosaur Scholar Par Excellence.

³ This doesn’t have anything to do with past questions like whether or not theropods are represented by modern avians, or if they had feathers — Diaz will brook no dissent on these topics. Rather, it was about hunting styles, with the smaller, shorter-legged, stiffer-tailed dromaeosaurs now being thought of as not active, chase ’em down type predators like their larger, longer-legged, flexi-tailed cousins. Rather, they make have been arboreal, hanging out in tree branches (perhaps their feathers forming camouflage) and dropping onto their prey as they wandered by.

Yesterday, Chris Yates put up images of the last Baffler!s in Webcomics Fortnight Deux, meaning since we last mentioned them there have been contributions from Evan Dahm, David Willis, Rebecca Clements (that one astonishes me; I simply can’t believe that Yates and Assistant Emily the Lion were able to translate such a complex image into wood and paint), Andy Bell, and Danielle Corsetto. Mr Yates has been busy posting the Baffler!s to eBay, where as of this writing 13 of the 16 puzzles are available for bidding.

Guys, they start at fifty bucks, which is criminally cheap¹. As much as I’d love to grab up the Fat Pony, Tigerbuttah, Beartato and Friends Pizza Party, and Year in Japan [no link yet] for a grand total of US$200, we all know that ain’t gonna happen, and nor should it.

Yates and Assistant Emily deserve as much money as possible for the hard work they’ve put in, and the individual creators who contributed designs likewise should be fairly compensated for coming up with such wonderful designs. The auctions run for five days each; go crazy, outbid me, and have fun reassembling them.

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¹ As of this writing, none of the bids have cracked US$65, plus shipping. And don’t go complaining about the shipping charges, Yates packs his stuff to the point that tactical nuclear weapons couldn’t damage it in transit, which is exactly what you want if you care about your puzzle arriving with all of its pieces present.

I realize that I’ve been looking at Kickstarter wrongly with respect to a fairly fundamental question: When does it reach steady state? When does it happen that the high-profile projects slow down, hit a nice, predictable rate, and my budget for supporting such things stops getting busted? Answer: It doesn’t.

Case in point: the promised Kickstarter campaign for the the Machine of Death game hit yesterday afternoon, achieved its US$23,000 goal in about twelve hours, and is plugging away for another month. The sheer creativity that this game will demand of its players¹ (not to mention the track records of the principals) virtually guarantees the that stretch goals (and there will be many, many stretch goals) are likewise sticky and attractive. I’m guessing somewhere between US$150-200K by the time it’s all done.

And yet, the most intriguing part has little to do with the game itself. About two thirds of the way down the project page is a paragraph that I can only call a soft launch announcement for what could be the most exciting Kickstarter-related thing of 2013:

I’ll also be working with TopatoCo’s new subsidiary, Make That Thing, which is a dedicated fulfillment agency specifically for campaigns like this. TopatoCo has a warehouse full of people who do nothing but receive pallets and ship packages all day long for over fifty of the internet’s top artists (including me, Kris, and Ryan). So they and I will be working together to ensure that all the products and rewards from this campaign will be produced and shipped to you as quickly and efficiently as possible. [emphasis original]

One of the perennial complaints about Kickstarter campaigns (and by no means is this limited to the [web]comics sphere) is the sometimes very long time it takes to fulfill pledge rewards, even once the project in question has been actually produced. A very successful project can overwhelm a creator with shipping and fulfillment for literally months, and now TopatoCo are stepping into that niche.

Nothing is known outside the walls of either current or future TopatoCo World Headquarters about Make That Thing, so I’ll be sitting down next weekend with TopatoCo VP of Asskicking Holly Rowland to ask her about it. TopatoCo has been extraordinarily careful about picking clients and not growing their business past the point that they can handle the work, but if Make That Thing is truly a subsidiary, with its own systems, procedures, and staff, and if they decide to make their services available to Kickstarter projects outside of the TopatoCo stable? Game changer. Now we know why they needed that whole damn building for themselves² — they’re on their way to become the Amazon of one-off projects.

And that was going to be all I wrote until the four jolly lads at Cyanide and Happiness took the only logical step after turning down TV money for a C&H show last month — they launched their Kickstarter about ten hours ago and are already past 25% of their base goal of US$250,000. I’m very curious how much money will be necessary to achieve their top stretch goal (it’s presently masked), which is:

The C&H guys will 4-way joust to the death

Presumably, the last survivor will get to keep the money. No bets on this one, I can think up completely plausible reasons why each of the four would be the winner of that particular deathmatch. I hope they stream it.

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¹ Machine of Death: The Game of Creative Assasination is going to reward those who are quick with their wits and able to jump from idea to idea with ease. The description of the project is going to act as a filter for those who will not be temperamentally inclined to excel at or enjoy this game, as it is full of dancing language, leaping from place to place in a dizzying fashion. In other words, I have to plunk down money on this sumbitch.

² And if they do become a fulfillment house for major Kickstarter projects, they’ll need to start looking for another, larger building pretty damn soon. Maybe just head back to Eastworks and take over the whole thing?

I don’t mean to be flip, and we will talk comics in a minute, but today almost all my mental bandwidth is being taken up by a music video featuring a youth choir, the Barenaked Ladies, and Commander Frickin’ Hadfield¹. I am not immune to earnest hopefulness, especially when it’s got a catchy tune.

So, comics.

• I first noticed French webcomicker Boulet about this time last year when he posted an absolutely astonishing 24 hour comic called Darkness. Today I noticed an announcement from AdHouse Books that Darkness will see print in April which makes me very, very happy. Sadly, it’s being produced in limited numbers, and will primarily be available — as near as I can tell — at Boulet’s appearances at Stumptown and MoCCA. If you get a chance to grab a copy of Darkness, absolutely do so.
• KaBOOM! continues mining the talent of webomickry and indy arts for covers of its Cartoon Network-spinoff comics, with Brian Butler, Mary Cagle, David McGuire, and Mad Rupert getting the nod for the covers of Regular Show #2. Gotta say, Rupert’s realist take on the main cast is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.
• Finally, congrats to Brad Guigar, for today marks the day that his internet comicking efforts become a teenager, and we all know how difficult teens can be. In three years when his webcomics are screaming that they hate Brad and why can’t they borrow the car, be sure to give the guy some love.

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¹ He is seriously the most inspiring, fire-up-everybody-on-the-potential-of-space astronaut we’ve had since forever.

The big news in webcomics has to be the PR maelstrom surrounding the fact that the fabulously talented Kazu Kibuishi has been selected to produce new covers for the US trade paperbacks of the Harry Potter novels:

The stunning art for the new editions is by critically acclaimed artist Kazu Kibuishi, best known for his #1 New York Times bestselling graphic novel series, Amulet. Kibuishi is a longtime Harry Potter fan who called this opportunity, “more than a little surreal.” Each of the seven new covers will depict a distinctive and memorable moment from the respective book. The collection, which will also be released in September as a boxed set, will offer new readers just reaching the age to begin the series a glimpse of J.K. Rowling’s magical world and the epic story they are about to enter.

“The Harry Potter covers by Mary GrandPré are so fantastic and iconic,” said Kibuishi. “When I was asked to submit samples, I initially hesitated because I didn’t want to see them reinterpreted! However, I felt that if I were to handle the project, I could bring something to it that many other designers and illustrators probably couldn’t, and that was that I was also a writer of my own series of middle grade fiction. As an author myself, I tried to answer the question, ‘If I were the author of the books – and they were like my own children – how would I want them to be seen years from now?’

Even if Kibuishi wasn’t in the Scholastic family¹, there could hardly have been a better choice than Kibuishi, given his feel for the balance point between the fantastical and mundane, his appeal to YA readers, and his ability to convey flight better than anybody this side of Miyazaki².

We shouls also Note the fact that Kibuishi apparently serves as his own Secret-Keeper — some of his closest colleagues and friends are deep into Potter fandom and they didn’t know. One entirely plausible reading of a tweet would indicate that his wife didn’t know. Well done, Kazu, and I think I speak for all of us when I say I can’t wait to see the rest of the covers. Also, congratulations for finding the rarest of all things: a work for hire job that actually does provide high-profile exposure benefits for a career.

• Speaking of gorgeous pictures, it was actually a bit of a tough decision to put that Kibuishi piece up top, given that there’s also an Anthony Clark-designed Baffler! to share with you. Can there ever be anything as wonderful as Beartato with a pizza for Reginald and Harrison? No, there cannot, unless you maybe consider Conscience Cat riding a corgi by Sam Logan.
• It appears that Federal agents with chips in their heads that can see into the electromagnetic spectrum are now a thing, but answer me this: will the (as yet unpublished) YA novel or the TV series it’s inspired feature the ghost of Ben Franklin? Or a hyperintelligent, Machiavellian, and thoroughly chlamydia-ridden koala? Or a plethora of dick jokes? Stick with the original, and consider that this may have an upside: AGAHF creator K. Brooke “Otter” Spangler has commented that this will prod her to speed up the timetable for completing her spinoff novel, Digital Divide, the first three quarters of which is really good, you guys.

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¹ They publish the Amulet series [warning: potential time-suck once you discover how to make the characters conga the day away].

² I remain firm in my belief that the only reason that Kibuishi is not the living reincarnation of Miyazaki is that Miyazaki is still alive.

We at Fleen have long followed the career of Ryan North, the Toronto Man-Mountain of legend. Even his tragic death from sploding could not stop his relentless march towards ever greater creative endeavours, a march which is somewhat simpler today thanks to his recent re-embodiment.

Alert readers may recall that North took the precaution of constructing a mathematical representation of his physical body such that even the icy talons of death would not long grip him. After arcane rituals that are best left undescribed, a sacramental libation was poured into a representation of North’s skull, his ineffable life-force came rushing back in, bursting the vessel with his mighty essence and causing his physical being to spontaneously reconstruct from nothing, a process which was thankfully caught on video.

Doubters may feel that this account of North Re-Risen is implausible, and cling to the cover story that North never died in the first place, but merely exploded a model of his head. To those doubters I ask: If this is the case, why is the newly reborn North seen in the video at the 0:40 mark in a dry, clean set of clothes despite the slushy weather? Not so much as a waterspot or splash upon his person, or even his shoes!

Clearly, it can only be because he did not exist in that slushy alleyway, manifesting not only a new body but also pristine raiment appropriate to the climate. Clapping his hands to show appreciation to those that helped in this resurrection, one can almost hear his jovial thoughts: Good work everybody; thanks for helping me return from the Lands Beyond Living on account of my spectral form was freaking out Chompsky.

In any event, we at Fleen welcome North¹ back to the world of the living and will await with bated breath the wisdom that he brings. Not to mention the fact that having a physical body again will make it much easier to finish copy-editing TBONTB:ACFABRNAAWST, which appears to be well situated for an on-time release in May.

As long as we’re on a Ryan North kick today, we would be remiss if we didn’t note one of his other major projects², the Machine of Death anthology which is due in July to coincide with San Diego Comic Con.

North’s co-editor, David Malki !³, dropped some MoD news on us this morning with the announcement that the MoD structured card game (distinguishing it from the previously-available MoD cards which could be adapted to many play styles or just freaking out your friends) has been finalized and will be available via the obligatory Kickstart later this week. The Kris Straub-designed cards look like they perfectly straddle the line between amusing and morbid, which is no surprise to anybody that’s been reading Straub’s Broodhollow. Keep your eyes peeled for the KS announcement, and be ready to hop on this one.

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¹ All hail.

² You know, besides the all-time top-funded publishing project on Kickstarter and defeating Death Itself.

³ Who himself was named yesterday to the presentation staff at this year’s MaxFunCon

The last Wigu update went up over the weekend¹. In case you’re wondering, the story does lead to a natural scene, which may be found here. Click 1179 times and end up where you started, which is the best possible metaphor for Wigu Tinkle’s life I can think of — live, experience, grow, repeat, secure in the knowledge that being eight lasts forever.

• In case you missed it, professional comics funnyman and Twitter personality Anthony Clark has a new pay-what-you-want sketchbook available for your purchase and download. Few things in this world are as purely fun as Clark’s cartoons and even the briefest of his sketches is made from uncut joy. With a one dollar minimum, the 100+ pages you receive are the bargain of the year.
• Chris Yates continues Webcomics Baffler! Fortnight II with contributions from Scott C, Kate Beaton, Becky Dreistadt & Frank Gibson, and Chris Hastings, each better looking than the one before it. Furthermore, I have information that the most intricate of these Baffler!s is yet to come, so be prepared for some good old-fashioned bidding wars when they hit auction a week from today.

  And heck, as long as we’re talking about Yates and Baffler!s, even a blizzard couldn’t prevent the debut of the brand new dual-level production Baffler!s (from Ceaco) at Toy Fair 2013 in New York.

• There’s some hospital stories to share with you, not all good I’m afraid. Longtime webcomicker Michael Poe was hospitalized with acute renal failure on Friday, with his wife sharing the details on Saturday. Like so many self-employed creators, Poe lacks health insurance and delayed seeking medical help despite obvious illness since the beginning of the year. Those wishing to help Poe with what will surely be considerable costs are requested to make their way to his Etsy shop or online store.

  Meantimes, webcomicker Jeff “Zugs” Zugale and longstanding Friend of Webcomics Rick Marshall² found themselves in hospitals on opposite coasts over the weekend, helping to usher new people into the world.

  Young Miss Marshall, Young Master Zugale, welcome to the world. It’s noisy and bright and too warm or too cold and sometimes people are jerks, but more often they’re pretty nice if they have a chance to be. Enjoy the crap out of it, and when your parents get that glazed-over look in their eyes that says they’re asleep standing up? That’s the time to double down on the screaming adorably curl into a sleeping ball and let them have six hours of uninterrupted quiet.

• Finally, the results of last week’s impromptu contest to see who gets a copy of Johnny Wander volume 3. You may recall that the terms for entry were to leave the most convincing argument as to why a friend needs to read Johnny Wander, and after careful deliberation the book will be sent to “Root” to pass onto friend “M”, largely on the basis that “M” is a student librarian active in Young Adult programs, and thus has a great potential to spread the wealth around. “Root”, drop an email to gary in care of this here website with a shipping address and I’ll get the book in the mail.

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¹ Although we’ve seen the end of Wigu before, what with things like the WIGU TV network channel comics, and the somewhat-related and entirely coincidentally predecessor strip, When I Grow Up. Also, has Romy ever loved Quincy as much as when she was watching him drive a tricked out van/mecha in a battle to the death with Space Mummy for the fate of the Earth? I think not.

² Willenholly.

Yeah, yeah, I know — sounds like an episode title from an especially enthusiastic anime series. It also describes what’s going on outside the window, so there you are.

• There’s still (as of this writing) approximately nine hours to get in on the Johnny Wander volume 3 giveaway. I want to have this thing in the mail before the JWv3 book launch party next weekend at Bergen Street Comics. Be there and, uh, I guess that means you don’t need a free copy.
• Speaking of Kickstarted books, Benign Kingdom Spring 2013 finished up last night a bit over US$45,000 (or three times goal) and Zach Weinersmith’s SCIENCE: Ruining Everything Since 1543 ticked over US$200K (with two weeks still to go) at about the same time and is closing on a stretch goal of hardcover books.
• Still speaking of books, you may recall last October that Stephan Pastis completely missed the point on webcomics which prompted me to offer a deal:
  

  Tomorrow, or this weekend, or sometime during the run of NYCC, I’m going to seek out Matthew Inman (whom I’ve met briefly, and liked quite a lot), who has a new book out, and I’m going to ask him if he’d be willing to release an approximate copies-sold total for that book for, say, the three months of quarter 4, 2012. Then come January we’ll run that number here, and Pastis can compare it to the first three months of whichever Pearls collection he likes.

  I didn’t have the chance to have that talk with Inman at New York Comic Con on account of the extremely long lines and crowding, but he’s gone and shared the to-date sales numbers with the world anyway¹ in a State of the Strip presentation:

  As of today, How To Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting To Kill You has been on the New York Times Best Sellers List for 17 consecutive weeks, and it held the #1 spot on that list for 7 of those weeks. We’re into our 11th printing, which puts us at over 450,000 copies in print. This has been drastically different from my first book, which saw strong sales at the beginning but then dropped off after all my readers bought copies. Instead, sales have been continually flourishing ever since the book came out in October. It’s mind-boggling for me to imagine nearly half a million cat books out there.

  For reference, Pearls Freaks the #*%# Out released at almost the same time as HTTIYCIPTKY; both books have appeared in the NY Times Best Seller List (Pastis under Paperback Graphic Books as seen here; Inman under Paperback Advice & Misc. as seen here), and I haven’t done any searching through the lists to find out how many times each has been there.

  But I did notice for the first time that PFT#O and HTTIYCIPTKY are both published by Andrews McMeel, so Pastis can probably work out if 450,000 copies is a typical run for a comics collection there, and probably figure that he and Inman are making a similar amount per book sold. That’s how you make a living at it.²

• Not that popular consciousness equals great wealth. Ethan Nicolle points out that a success on the scale of Axe Cop will get you the freedom to make comics and also a cup of coffee:
  

  I have made one giant step in comics and that is that I have managed to live off of creating my own material (for the most part) for the last few years. I have made an income that most people who went to college would frown on. That is to say I could probably make a similar income as a shift manager at Starbucks (in fact I could, I checked).

  Not that Nicolle is crying poverty to play for sympathy; his real goal is to spread an understanding of what the business is like:

  I think it’s good for aspiring creators to know that even with a lot of critical acclaim, you still have to do a lot of climbing and the battle is never really over. That is why it is good to know why you are doing it in the first place. Don’t blame those with success for your failure. Don’t do it for the success, do it in spite of the success. Do it because you love it and don’t know what else to do with yourself, and success or not, do it happily and gratefully because making art is a blessing.

  Well said, and the whole thing is well worth reading.

• More than once this page has discussed the proposition that ideas are a dime a dozen, and that art is more about the execution than the lightning-striking inspiration. On an occasion or two, we’ve even thrown out ideas for anybody to use that might want to. Got another one of those for you (I had some odd dreams t’other night), which you’ll find below the cut. If you want to use it, I waive any and all rights or interests in perpetuity, in all forms of storage and transmission current or future, and likewise release any claims by my heirs and assignees. Go nuts.

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¹ Not that I had anything to do with it.

² Also, Inman managed to wang his girlfriend’s website, but it’s back now if you like reading about coffee.

(more…)

Oh my goodness, so many things today.

• The final word on the place of webcomics in the larger comics world was offered by TopatoCo VP of Asskicking Holly Rowland:
  

  TopatoCo is between Oni and Dark Horse at ECCC. If there’s anyone still talking about the legitimacy of webcomics, I will pants them.

  Please, somebody, call her bluff. I’m begging you. Everybody else, have video cameras ready.

• Today marks ten years of Emily Horne and Joey Comeau making A Softer World; ten years and 931 instances of breathtakingly beautiful photos and profoundly arresting captions. In all of webcomickry, I can’t think of another example that simultaneously pulls in two so very different directions and expresses two so very different voices so very, very well.
• Once upon a time there was a simple acknowledgment of fact: any collection of webcomickers, impromptu or organized, was incomplete without at least one Ryan in the immediate vicinity. While Ryans Estrada and North have been publicly very busy of late¹, Ryan Sias of Silent Kimbly fame pulled back a bit, did some children’s books and storyboarding, and wasn’t so much with the webcomicking.

  Until today, that is, when Sias announced the return of the no longer silent Kimbly with new weekly adventures. One quick note: you get to The Kimbly Chronicles by using the address http://www.kimblychronicales.com/, with an extra “a” in the middle there. Just bookmark it and you’ll be fine.

• The countdown to Strip Search kicked into a quicker tempo yesterday with the launch of StripSearch.tv. Obviously no episodes yet, but you can meet the Artists, learn about the show, and puzzle your way through some rather odd numbers associated with the production. I don’t know what the whole pineapples thing is about², but I’m intensely curious. Hit the RSS feed and you won’t miss any Tuesday/Friday episodes when they start later this month.

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¹ Respectively involved in global trekking, single-person animation, and Korean comic translating (Estrada), and totally math comic book writing, Kickstarter record breaking choose your own Shakespeare adventure creating, and beloved movie novelization close reading (North).

² My own fault, I suppose. When Robert Khoo asked if I had any more questions, I specifically did not ask if any edible bromeliads featured prominently in the show. Mea culpa.