Dammit, WordPress is being a pain about uploading images. I’ll get a picture in here as soon as I’m able.

Blah blah blah webcomics-related Kickstarter blah blah goal met in three hours blah. In other words, Wednesday. What’s the big deal?

Glad you asked me that, Sparky; the big deal here is something I haven’t seen before in a Kickstarter, something that’s slightly self-contradictory, and perhaps unnecessary in this case, but it still caught my eye. Let’s take those in reverse order.

I say unnecessary because nobody that follows Zach Weinersmith would ever suspect he’d fail to make a Kickstarter goal handily because he knows his audience, he offers what they want, and he pays attention to what works from campaign to campaign¹, crafting the next one to be more foolproof than the one before. So a neato-nifty new technique designed to drive interest was probably not needed (but then, Weinersmith has never been one to rest on his laurels).

Now, self-contradictory, that’s the interesting part. Because what Weinersmith introduced into the Kickstarter for SCIENCE: Ruining Everything Since 1543 was the idea of pre-success stretch goals. Stretch goals are a given in Kickstarters, driving the interest by adding more stuff in, getting past mere success and into stratospheric levels of mega-success by giving the supporters more and more and more for their hard-earned money. Awesome.

What Weinersmith did for S:RES1543 was to set down milestones that would trigger extra content for the book at support levels prior to reaching the funding goal of US$20,000. Check out the progress map — at just 5% of goal, a bonus story is added to the book by Bad Astronomer Phil Plait.

Now on the surface, this makes no sense. If you don’t raise at least US$20,000 the book doesn’t get made at all, so you must raise at least US$1000, meaning that Plait’s contribution isn’t a bonus in any sense, it’s going to be part of the book if the book exists at all. Similarly, book-exclusive comics were announced at US$5000, US$10,000 and US$15,000 which would have to be there anyway, on account of you can’t raise the 20 grand to make the book without passing those milestones. Weinersmith could have just mentioned those comics and Plait’s story as part of the book instead of making them goals of some sort. Weinersmith, you illogical man! I shake my fist at you, thusly!

Except.

Look at that map again. It meanders and wanders and has portents of danger, and by the time goal has been met, five of the eleven landmarks have been filled in. There’s a sense of progress and momentum it creates just by existing, setting up a feeling that Wow, Zach keeps adding stuff to what the book will contain² so I better keep up the forward motion. Weinersmith is moving beyond what stretch goals have always been: teasing enticements — Give us enough and we’ll show you what we’ve got — and has moved into the active psychological management of expectations. This is operations research at Disney style anticipation-engineering³.

Is it working? Weinersmith said he’d expected to hit US$10,000 by the end of the day; we’re now about five and a half hours in and he’s already filled in the landmark at US$40,000, is updating progress more than hourly, and has to prepare the extension of the rewards map into Rewarda Incognito well before he expected to.

As I said, all probably unnecessary, since Weinersmith was going to make these numbers anyway, but possibly not this quickly. But for another creator, one that might sneak over the line or might not? Managing expectations and building a desire for momentum early could make the difference between meeting goal and going down to ignominious defeat. If you think you can antipeneer⁴ as well as Zach Weinersmith that is.

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¹ And, naturally, to what doesn’t work.

² Despite the fact he isn’t really, not until the sixth marker.

³ Or “antipeneering”, as I call it COPYRIGHT 2013 MUST CREDIT ME WHEN YOU USE IT.

⁴ Big scary goggles optional, but recommended.

I can always tell it’s going to be a good day when Gina Gagliano sends me a review copy of whatever :01 Books has in the release pipeline; honestly, that imprint’s name is the closest thing that exists to a sure bet in the world of publishing. Not everything by :01 is going to appeal equally to every segment of their audience, but it’s surely going to be a well-executed, handsomely-produced piece of graphic storytelling.

In other words, feel free to judge a certain subset of books by their cover, or at least that little bit on the base of the spine that Colleen AF Venable¹ put there.

Lucy Knisley has been featured on this page in the past, often in relation to her food-based comickin’, and sometimes just as a countervailing opinion in my ranting on the topic of molecular gastronomy. If I have perhaps given Knisley’s other, non-food-centric work short shrift, maybe it’s because she does the food part so very, very well. Case in point: Relish⁰, which neatly straddles the line between memoir and foodie travel journal. There are recipes, reminiscences, and a bit of retrospection. It’s masterful.

Not a lot of people Knisley’s age can produce a work that seeks to sum up their lives (and although Relish doesn’t have a plot, per se, I will be mentioning specific things that happen, so Beware Ye Who Fear Spoilers)without coming off as self-important; Knisley, on the other hand, is saying less Look at me, I’m interesting and more Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I was twelve and my buddy got fearful of Mexican Customs and ditched two hundred dollars worth of grade-A porn in an airport bathroom? The former can rarely be accomplished without interminable smugness; the latter is a tease that draws you in, and probably starts a conversation about the stupid things you witnessed (or did) in your own tween years.

The artwork has just enough detail to imbue the characters and places with weight and existence, without so much as to make them distancing. Who remembers everything from when we were six or seven in perfect clarity? There’s a bit of fuzziness to those memories, with the shapes a bit simpler, the colors a bit flatter than how it must have been, and that’s where emotional truth comes from. The clean, simple designs that Knisley uses feel more real than the family photos she used for reference that get a few pages in the back².

And what a realness she shares — sights, sounds, and above all smells from her own life, and passed down in family stories. Food (the preparation of it, the preferences for some things and not others, the experience of eating it) form the lens through which Knisley shares the stories of her life and how it helped her grow into the person she is today. She even manages a spirited defense of occasional indulgence in junk food³ that halfway convinced me that maybe my diet should contain a few more nitrate-laden, won’t-rot-no-matter-how-long-they-sit McFries.

Every food has its own value⁴, she could be saying, which corresponds pretty closely to And so does every person and experience⁵. From farms to gourmet markets, street-food stalls to the finest restaurants in the world, Knisley has embraced food in all of its various forms and made it part of who she is. Like good hosts everywhere, she’s inviting you (in April, when Relish releases) to sit down and share in this bounty. Breathe in deeply, take your time, come back for seconds, and bon appétit.

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⁰ Or, more fully, Relish My Life In The Kitchen (as it appears on the cover and title page) or perhaps Relish: My Life In The Kitchen (as it appears in the supporting information from :01). I love the fact that the title can be read two very different ways depending on whether or not you include the colon.

¹ I consider it symptomatic that I’ve gone completely bonkers given the fact that I have a favorite book designer.

² Actual thought I had when I saw Knisley’s author photo in the back: Wow, good picture. Looks almost like her. My brain had accepted the cartoon Lucy as the reality to which the photo must have referred.

³ Sugar, salt, fat, and artificial flavors are bad enough; young Knisley goes so far as to make a request for ketchup that earns her mother’s ire, and to purchase McDonalds in the heart of Rome, sending her father into a tizzy.

⁴ Well, everything except for one spectacularly foul recipe that a friend of Knisley’s made; it involved basting chicken in frozen concentrated lemonade.

⁵ And even that lemonade chicken fiasco has the benefit of being a touchstone between friends that will never be forgotten.

Photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid

It may help to have some gin on hand.

• If you’re gonna have capital-A Art, then tanjdammit, you ought to have Art that provokes the occasional Art Riot, by which I do not mean some bluenose tut-tutting on TV about how something is insufficiently in line with existing religious or moral beliefs; I’m talking angry Parisians or perhaps Viennese in the streets, offended to their very core that something so wrong could be perpetrated on an unsuspecting world. And if this were 1913 instead of 2013, I do believe that we would have righteous cause for such an action:
  

  “I’m really not sure what you call this,” says TopatoCo founder and CEO Jeffrey Rowland. “There’s probably a German word for it, but I’m afraid to look it up.”

  If the entire internet, in all of its random, rambling, poor-spelled, nonsensical non-glory could be distilled down to its very essence, it would be the Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff hardcover collection from TopatoCo. It is the sort of revolutionary, transgressive, frankly frightening creation that makes me want to tear the seats out of an opera house and give future radio¹ documentarians cause to talk about the unrest in hushed, sincere tones². This is Le Scare du Printemps for a later, more addled age:

  The book Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff lavishly presents the comic’s entire run in a treatment worthy of the highest masters of the form. It contains a completely gratuitous 4-page centerfold reading simply “centaurfold” in bright pink type.

  “The printing company we used was utterly convinced that we, as designers, didn’t know what in the world we were doing,” says [book co-designer David] Malki [!]. “The proof sheet listing supposed ‘errors’ in the book’s layout ran five pages long. I had to initial each one saying, ‘Yes, that’s OK. Yes, that’s OK. Yes, that’s OK, trust us.’”

  Scattered throughout the book are perforated business-reply cards taking the form of irredeemable Subway coupons (a first for comic strip collections). Each copy of the book also comes with a “travel version” (a removable poster of all the book’s pages in grid format); a custom commemorative coin (randomly chosen from 4 designs struck); an oversized plastic paperclip imprinted with the word “paperclop”; and an animated lenticular bookmark. Bound into the spine is a red ribbon approximately three feet long, and if you scratch the nacho chip sticker on the back cover, it smells faintly of pizza. (The hologram sticker of Tony Hawk smells only of chemicals.) [emphasis original]

  The Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff Limited Hardcover is available for US$44, in one print run, while supplies last. I’ll put this link up just in case you need it; you’re on your own for torches

• Speaking of riotous unrest, “Uncle” Randy Milholland will be the keynote speaker at the biennial Comic Studies Conference at the University of North Texas. The conference will be 22-23 March, and speakers slots are up for grabs [PDF] if you want to get all academic for an hour or two. If you’ve never had the opportunity to listen to Milholland speak, he is really, really funny in front of an audience, not to mention thoughtful, engaging, self-deprecating, and willing to use naughty words. If there’s a Q&A component (there usually isn’t in keynote speeches), get him to do the Fluffmodeus voice.
• I got an email over the weekend from Dante Shepherd, telling me about a new project he’s dropped a few hints to, here and there. Long story short, a guy who does his comics work primarily in chalk has decided to get all narrative. Professor Blackboard has teamed up with artist Joan Cooke and will in the coming months be launching a strip about hapless grad students dealing with improbably hazardous research. Not hazardous in the make sure you use safety goggles sense, more in the keep the car running and get us out of here quickly and maybe we won’t all die horribly sense.

  Shepherd doesn’t want me to give away the big gag on the first page (which he has shown me, and which is making me giggle as I type this), so let’s just say that PhD Unknown (working title) reminds me of something written by Internet Jesus and drawn by Stuart Immonen that you may have read previously and if you haven’t what the hell is wrong with you.

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¹ Of course there will be radio in the future; it’s the one medium that will never be superseded.

² Follow that link and give Culture Shock 1913 a listen; it’s really good.

Happy Friday afternoon, everybody. Here’s what’s giving me hope today.

• Indpendent Creator Meets Corporation 1: Jonathan Coulton noticed that the makers of Glee decided to appropriate his arrangement (including a unique melody and lyric swaps) — and possibly the audio itself — of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s Baby Got Back. Coulton, being a classy guy, got a license to release his cover, but the Glee producers haven’t contacted him or sought permission.

  A few hours later, the hive mind that is the internet had confirmed that this was indeed produced by the Glee people (as evidenced by an official release in advance of the broadcast through at least the Swedish version of iTunes), and it appears that Glee/FOX are presently depublishing while saying nothing. At this point, I suppose thing to do is wait to see if the song actually shows up when the series next airs, but I find it encouraging that a major entertainment property would have to backpedal so quickly. Not as encouraging as if they didn’t pull this shit in the first place, but baby steps.

• Indpendent Creator Meets Corporation 2: And when those corporations are good enough to not pull that shit in the first place, to actually come to creators and treat them to offers, I find it encouraging when creators don’t sell themselves short. Case in point: the slightly bizarre (but terribly nice) lads behind Cyanide & Happiness have again turned down Hollywood money because it would mean giving up ownership of their work.

  Kris Wilson, Dave McElfatrick, Rob DenBleyker, and Matt Melvin aren’t the only creators that I know to have made that decision — I know of creators who have been offered some fairly large checks if only they would be willing to sell their creations outright. Maybe they would be hired to write or draw for this thing they created, maybe not. Certainly, a one-time check with multiple zeros on it is enticing, but creators are getting too smart to agree to deals where they don’t own what they thought up. Good for them.

• As noted in Wilson’s forum posting, the C&H crew will be doing their show on their own, raising money through Kickstarter, which has been fertile ground for creators with talent and a habit of making good on their promises. Case in point: a day after launch, the Spring 2013 B9 collection is already past its first stretch goal and well on its way crushing the remaining stretches. I find that encouraging because this is the first B9 collection not to be centered on creators with serialized webcomics, and I note that it’s the first to be categorized not as Comics, but as an Art Book.

  In seeking support from people trawling the Kicktarter categories, that means maybe having to win over a new audience, one that doesn’t know the B9 brand to the same degree; then again, Kickstarter knows that B9 is worth looking at, having made the Spring 2013 collection a Staff Pick at launch. Come to think of it, George never said that being “part of the Kingdom” required that you do comics; if this imprint eventually reaches out to other niches of publishing, I won’t be surprised in the least.

• And sometimes you’re just encouraged because people want to help other people and are willing to put their talents and money towards that end. See also: Howard Tayler contributing art and spirit-raising towards a campaign to help science fiction writer Jay Lake kick cancer square in the ass. As a side note, one of the people depicted in Tayler’s artwork is famed genre writer Patrick Rothfuss, whose work on behalf of Heifer International (with the assistance of many webcomickers) has been noted in the past. Not content to merely organize an enormous undertaking, Rothfuss has decided to put some more skin in the game:
  

  This year we’re trying out the stretch goal thing, and one of our big ones happens when we hit [US]$400,000.

  Specifically, if we hit 400,000 dollars before January 21st at midnight, I’ll donate [US]$100,000 to Heifer, bringing our yearly total to over half a million.

  If not, I will keep that money and do something stupid with it. I swear I will blow it on catgirls, methadone, and multiple pairs of the same kind of shoes.

  And that’s before he commissioned three gold rings engraved with his name, which permit the bearer to redeem for any favor they want from him. You do my faith in humanity good, Mr Rothfuss, and as of this writing the 2012 Worldbuilders campaign is sitting at US$368,609.42, so you’d better warm up your checkbook¹.

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¹ Sorry about the methadone and catgirls.

Because honestly, I could not possible have a more jaundiced view of human nature than I did yesterday. But you know what makes things better? Seeing creators succeed on the merits of their work, such as I just happened to notice Becky Dreistadt & Frank Gibson’s twitterfeed make a cryptical announcement to big news today, and the Benign Kingdom imprint just happened to launch a Tumblr yesterday, and just now I checked their profile at Kickstarter and heck if it doesn’t look like they’ve announced their latest creator slate:

Emily Carroll
Gigi DG
Tyson Hesse
Phil McAndrew (who surely must be feeling better than he was yesterday)

I was all impressed with myself that I maybe noticed this before any announcement, but I see that the new Benign Kingdom twitter account made an announcement eleven minutes ago, but for the record I totally found this myself. Look for an announcement of the Winter Spring 2013 collection/Kickstart in the immediate future¹.

As long as we’re on a happy kick, Joe Decie did a rather pretty fifth anniversary comic yesterday, which makes me wonder why he hasn’t done a Recipe Comix submission for Saveur. I bet that the celebratory cake in question would make for a lovely contribution; if you’re reading this Joe, drop me a line via our contact link over there to the right and I’ll put you in touch with the right people.

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¹ It’s there now, added since I wrote that sentence, and already at 17 backers and nearly US$1000. Seriously, I just became the fourth person to snag a hardcover, and the campaign’s been live a whole five minutes. Oh, and it’s apparently the one year anniversary of B9’s launch, so go wish them a happy birthday with a pledge or perhaps at their brand-new storefront, yes?

Sometimes you really have to wonder how we as a species have managed to get this far when it’s clear that we are all working at cross-purposes. Because I’m hopeful, I like to think that the average non-sociopath doesn’t wake up in the morning and wonder exactly what kind of jerkass behavior would be most fun today. Because I’m a realist, I know that while true sociopaths are rare, there are an awful lot of close approximations out there who just don’t care to make the effort to look any further than the tip of their noses in determining who might be affected by the actions they take in their daily lives.

Case in point: it made the rounds on Twitter yesterday that Sophie Goldstein had some of her artwork appropriated by a linkfarm site¹ without permission. Happens all the time, sadly, and as of this writing the offenders have had a full 23 hours to respond to Goldstein and have seemingly not done so. But wait — it gets better.

About an hour after Goldstein tweeted, I was forwarded an email conversation between the offending site (I don’t even want to name them, despite the fact that their logo is right there in the screencap, so I’m just going to call them Useless Jerkasses, LLC) and another creator², where they were asking to partner up³:

Hey [creator’s first name],

My name is [redacted because I’m a nice guy] and I am an account executive for [UJLLC]. I was just browsing your site and I think that it will actually be perfect for our network given its content.

Our network has grown to become one of the largest on the internet an we can promote your site to get you more visibility. Our price is $.04 per click, would that be something you would be interested in?

—
[redacted]
Account Executive
[address]
New York, NY, 10005
Direct: (646) [redacted]
Mobile: (646) [redacted]

E-mail: [redacted]@[ujllc].com
www: http://www.[ujllc].com

[UJLLC] – News and Entertainment Portal
Monthly Reach: Over 17 Million Unique Visitors

This transmission may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, photocopying or distribution of these contents is unauthorized and prohibited. If you have received this in error, please notify the sender immediately and destroy all copies.

So, they have clearly got an understanding over at UJLLC, that creators have an interest in being associated with their creations that that interest is worth money; in Goldstein’s case, they simply don’t care. However, there is an outcome here that may reaffirm some of your faith in humanity, as Mr Account Guy at UJLLC received this reply:

Funny you should write. My friend Sophie was just pointing out that you are using her artwork (“come here”) illegally on this page: [link removed to not give them traffic] – how about you make this right and then we can talk.

That was 22 hours ago and they haven’t stopped being useless jerkasses (but what can you expect? It’s right there in the name); in some small way they’ve been told exactly what they are, and I’ll take that small slap as a first step towards a better world.

At least until Phil McAndrew tweeted three hours ago that another linkfarm had done essentially the same thing⁴, adding a stupid caption and omitting credit from one of his cartoons. If anybody gets approached by these entirely different jerkasses (or any one of the jerkass linkfarms out there), may I suggest that we all reply with a variation of the No, you’re a jerk email above?

It doesn’t even end there, as in the past 48 hours I’ve learned of the depressing extent to which two different creators (again, no names; again, prominent people) are getting jerked around not by content-appropriators, but by two different corporations that apparently believe the best way to deal with creators is to scream Dance for me, little monkey, dance!

I swear on whatever you find convincing, if you people elect me as benign dictator of the world, these production suits will be the first people up against the wall in a brief reign of terror that will be based on Golgafrincham Ark “B”.

Happily, not everything in webcomicdom involves creators getting jerked around. From various corners of the intertubes, we learned more today about Strip Search as Robert Khoo, Mike Krahulik, and Jerry Holkins sat down with Mashable. My two favorite quotes were from Krahulik, on the twelve contestants getting along:

We never had to call an ambulance to the house. And to me, that’s something we need to work on for season two.

… and from Holkins, on what was difficult about sitting in judgment of others:

[It] turns out that dashing people’s hopes is actually a very tough business if you are the sort of person that has hopes yourself. Like, I know exactly how they feel and what they’re up against, trying to lead a creative life. In one hand, I have the life that they want. In the other hand, I have a black sword. And it’s hard to have those two things.

And finally, BOOM! Studios⁵ made it known today that their latest licensed Cartoon Network tie-in comic to take talent from webcomics will be Regular Show, to be written by KC Green and drawn by Allison Strejlau. Disclaimer: I don’t watch Regular Show (not out of sense of dislike, I’ve just never seen it), but it’s my understanding that it’s built around exactly the sort of anarchic humor that one would find at Gunshow, or even Hugsown (but not, curiously, Hung Sow). Oh, and KC also wanted it made know far and wide that he is known on Twitter as BarfCaptain, at least this week.

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¹ Ordinarily, I’d link to the original tweet from Goldstein, but I don’t want to do so because it contains a link to the offending site and I’m not interested in giving them traffic. Thus, the screenshot up top.

² I haven’t received explicit permission to use this creator’s name, so let’s just say that he is one of the successful ones, and you’d definitely recognize his name as a longtime pro webcomicker.

³ The letter is written such that I can’t tell if Useless Jerkasses, LLC is asking to use the webcomicker’s IP and pay him for the privilege, or if they’re offering to promote his content and charge him for the privilege. If it’s the latter, I have to say that their usual audience is absolutely useless to this creator.

⁴ Again, no link. I swear, it’s almost like all these linkfarms are just different aspects of one shell company, run out of some seedy office in Delaware, maintaining the fiction that they’re all different people. Jerkasses.

⁵ About whom some creators of long standing have vented on the web for being willing to pay criminally low rates for various aspects of comic book production. I have no direct confirmation of this from the people I know that work for them, but one must acknowledge elephants in the room even while hoping people you like aren’t getting glazed in elephant poo.

Or, TCAF Turns Ten, as the press release I’ve just received informs me. Reliably one of the best showrunners each year, Chris Butcher has put together a stellar lineup for this year’s iteration (to be held 11 and 12 May), including headliners Art Spiegelman, Francoise Mouly, Taiyo Matsumoto, Raina Telgemeier, Blutch, Gengoroh Tagame, Dash Shaw, Maurice Vellekoop¹, plus the crème de la crème of webcomics (pick ’em out from the list here, there’s too many for me to hunt ’em all down).

Quick shots:

• Kazu Kibuishi (Daisy Kutter, Copper, the Flight anthology, and a little thing called Amulet) announced yesterday that he’ll be one of the judges (along with some guy named “Pendleton”, which is surely not an actual name people give their kids) for this year’s Doodle 4 Google competition for schoolkids. The idea of art contests often brings up hard feelings in the independent arts, but the terms for the D4G contest seem pretty reasonable:
  

  11. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS: As between Google and the Entrant, the Entrant retains ownership of all intellectual and industrial property rights (including moral rights) in and to the Doodle (excluding Google’s rights in the Google logo/trademark). As a condition of entry, Entrant grants Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, transferable, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, adapt, modify, publish, distribute, publicly perform, create a derivative work from, and publicly display the Doodle for any purpose, including display on the Google website, without any attribution or compensation to Entrant. Entries will not be returned. [boldface original]

  Google can use your Doodle, but it’s still yours, and I’ll note that the prizes are far more fabulous than for any art contest when I was in school. The top 50 winners get a trip to New York City and a Wacom digital tablet; places 2 through 5 get US$5000 scholarships, and the overall winner gets a Chromebook, a US$30,000 scholarship, plus a US$50,000 technology grant for their school².

• Courtesy of John Campbell, michaelkeaton.net for all your Michael Keaton needs, with special guest appearance by Mister Rogers.
• As promised, you can now make your own Ryan North.

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¹ Of whom, Matsumoto, Blutch, and Tagame are making North American debuts.

² If homeschooled, they get a US$5000 grant for home, and get to designate a local library or public school to receive the remaining US$45,000.

Wherein I follow up on things that have already happened.

• 1106 days ago, regarding the previous day’s (somewhat abrupt) conversion of Webcomics Dot Com to a paysite, I wrote:
  

  I can see the argument that WDC takes [Brad] Guigar as long to produce on a daily basis as any of his strips, but with no recompense other than perhaps driving a few people to his strips (although I doubt many who frequented WDC didn’t already read his comics). That effort deserves remuneration, and Guigar has set what he thinks is a fair price.

  I just don’t think that many people are going to pay it.

  Guigar’s betting that the distinction between entertainment and information is sufficient that people will pony up a couple bucks a month for access (side note to those attempting such things in the future: “ten cents a day” sounds much less than “thirty bucks a year”).

  Unfortunately, with the exception of very few prominent brands, with high-quality content, pitching to niche audiences (we’re talking Wall Street Journal grade, here), this hasn’t proved to be the case on the internet so far — people pretty much equate “content” and “free”.

  Guigar’s got a brand, quality content, and a niche audience, but I don’t think this is going to work any more than when Murdoch attempts to monetize his entire media portfolio (and/or get fees from Google) this year.

  It’s looking back on pronouncements like that one that I wish this blog had a memory hole into which I could stuff particularly wrong things. Even by the next day it was becoming apparent that Guigar was onto something and his gamble was more likely than not to pay off. He’s kept actual numbers pretty close to his chest for the past three years, but it’s safe to say that the WDC paywall implementation was more successful than even he anticipated, and has remained so to the present day. After seeing him make another unexpected play in the spring with his monthly downloads, and having spoken to him extensively for years now (both on the record and off), I have come to the inescapable conclusion that One Should Not Doubt Brad.

• That didn’t take long. A mere five weeks after DC Comics announced that Jim Zub would be taking over as writer on Birds of Prey, it appears that said announcement lacked the crucial “no take backs” clause:
  

  I just wanted to give everyone a heads up on things happening here so there was no confusion when the DC April 2013 solicitations went public.

  DC has decided to go in a different direction with Birds of Prey and it’s been decided that I won’t be the writer on board the series after all.

  Two thoughts: One, Zub remains the consummate professional; while disappointed, he knows that it’s just how things go sometimes¹; he even took the time to thank the people at DC that had been working with him on BoP. Two, sudden, public reversals do not give me confidence in any company; Zub was one of two creators replaced on DC books before any issues hit the stands, and there was the situation where Gail Simone was unexpectedly taken off Batgirl and reinstated two weeks later. I’ve worked for corporations where the decision-making process is marked by public careening back-and-forth, and it’s never a sign of a thought-out strategy or capable management².

  I can’t say if Zub is better off or not as a result of this change (surely, being away from an institutionally chaotic environment is good, but the loss of the pay/prestige is bad). Fortunately, this writing gig was not the only thing he had going for 2013 and this will free up time to work on his own projects, where he is the only person that can fire him³.

• Let’s end on a happy note. Calling back to her work on Marceline and the Scream Queens #3, Meredith Gran shared something awesome with you today. In the hallowed tradition of Adventure Time, Gran wrote songs in the MatSQ series (especially appropriate for the story of a band), and found herself needing to write a diss track for Marceline to sing.

  Who does disses better than professional rappers? Nobody! And who is housemates with the the world’s 579th greatest rapper, MC Frontalot? Gran! Front brought the braggadocio, Gran altered the rap to the structure of a Scream Queens song for print, but there was still the demo track of Frontalot channeling Marceline sitting on a computer, hidden from the world.

  Until today. Ladies and gentlemen, I can only hope that this means more comics will have accompanying soundtracks from Mr Alot or other geek-inflected acts.

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¹ And for their part, DC’s Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Director are on the record that this outcome was only business and they always liked Zub.

² Another danger sign: an unwillingness to speak plainly or admit to mistakes. In the same piece that announced Zub was out, the EiC (Bob Harras) and ED (Bobbie Chase) were asked directly if Gail Simone’s reinstatement was a result of fan uproar. The verbatim response:

Harras: What we had was Ray [Fawkes] coming on for two months to help out, schedule-wise. We’re very happy Gail is back; she’s on the book moving forward, so to me, that was a moment in time where we were just looking for Gail’s next plot to come in and we’re moving forward.

Which is a pretty impressive non-answer to the question that was actually asked.

³ I hope Zub has taken the time to negotiate a good kill fee in his agreement to work for himself.

Since the sad death of Ryan North from sploding a few short weeks ago, we at Fleen have been wondering when the man-mountainous will once contained within his massive frame would force itself back into the world of the living¹. Actually, I suspect that North could have done so anytime he wished, but what vessel could contain his mighty essence?

Answer: nothing less than a 3D-printed likeness of pre-exploded Ryan North.

Although a cover story has been constructed wherein Ryan North never exploded and he is merely getting scanned to create a model of himself and then explode that, we at Fleen have discovered that North actually left behind a mathematical representation of his physical self which scientists from the future are now refining until it is sufficiently granular as to be indistinguishable from the original Ryan North.

Sure, they will 3D-print a spare likeness of Ryan North’s head and subject it to explosions as part of the subterfuge, but secretly they are making an entire, new Ryan North. When his life-force enters into the doppelgänger (like unto Galatea or the Seven Fathers of the Dwarves), it will become Ryan North, and possibly reach back in time to before any splosions such that it always was Ryan North².

In the meantime, they’ll be releasing the model specs just in case you want to make your own Ryan North and honestly, who wouldn’t?

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¹ Hey, it’s comics, you think he was going to stay dead forever? This is a guy who conquered space and time just to get some smooches.

² Likewise, this bending of time explains how new work continues to appear under Ryan North’s name — while a portion of it is surely from a buffer left behind at the time of his death, the majority was called into existence on the internet by force of disembodied will directly on the domain of pure, abstract information. No need to even telekinetically manipulate a keyboard and type!

Reports from Toronto also indicate that the late Ryan North’s dog, Noam Chompsky, has been seen traveling to the dog park and seemingly playing and reacting to commands, although no person has been seen to accompany him. Additionally, other dogs have been observed staring at a space slightly less than 2 meters above and to the side of Chompsky, as well as wagging at, sniffing, and begging scritches from the empty space. One small child was also noted as interacting with the air near Chompsky, eventually drawing a picture of the “nice, funny giant” that spoke to her.

Let’s recognize some achievements today, yes? Are achievements still a thing, or do the kids have a new word for them? Cheevs? Cheevos? Cheev-a-rama-lama-ding-dongs? Peoples is doing things, and we should notice.

• The Academy Award nominations hit this morning, and I should like to mention that among the Best Animated Feature nods is one for ParaNorman (a terrific film, by the way), whose production company is well-integrated into the webcomics world, what with people like Vera Brosgol and Graham Annable working there and webcomickers being given super-cool artifacts from the making of the film.¹
• Speaking of awards season, we’ve mentioned in the recent past that nominations are open for the Hugo Awards and the NCS Awards; now it’s time for the Eisners to collect worthy nominees. The relevant section is not too different from past years:
  

  The best digital comic category is open to any new, professionally produced long-form original comics work posted online in 2012. Webcomics must have a unique domain name or be part of a larger comics community to be considered. The work must be online-exclusive for a significant period prior to being collected in print form. The URL and any necessary access information should be emailed to Eisner Awards administrator Jackie Estrada: jackie@comic-con.org.

• Noted yesterday: webcartoonist/roboticist/popularizer of science Jorge Cham is talking about What We Don’t Know and the gaps in our scientific knowledge² via the auspices of TEDx³. One advantage to being a cartoonist when you hit the speaker’s stage — when it’s time to project something on the big board for everybody to see, comics are more interesting that slides full of text. Go watch The Science Gap: Jorge Cham at TEDxUCLA and then ask yourself: what don’t we know?
• Almost missed: John Kovalic has been creating Dork Tower strips since about forever, initially as a monthly comic in a now-defunct gaming magazine, and then several times a week. I’ll admit it dropped off my radar a while ago, but I’m glad to say I noticed something yesterday: as of 1 January, 2013, Dork Tower has been around a phenomenal sixteen years, with no signs of stopping.
• Similarly, I had fallen away from regular reading of Tom Brazelton’s Theater Hopper (largely because I’m not into movies enough to be the core audience, and partly because do you know how many comics I read in a day already?), but I did manage to notice that Brazelton wrapped the nearly-ten year old strip on 31 December 2012.

  Since then, he’s launched a Kickstarter to produce the last seven years of TH as e-books, as well as converting the first three years, which were dead-tree printed. A Kickstarter which just ticked over the (very modest) goal yesterday with nearly a month still to go, as it turns out. If you want to get ten e-books with nearly a decade’s worth of comics, such can be yours for as little as US$35, which is really a great bargain when you think of it — 35 bucks for about 3500 days, or a penny a day. You’ve got a change jar somewhere — crack it open.

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¹ I should note that one of those receiving a animation maquette was Ryan North, who at the time was living but has since exploded and thus is possibly a zombie himself now. If you got one of these gifts from Laika, take care that you don’t explode also.

² Where “our” knowledge refers to both the scientific community and that of society at large.

³ Contrary to rumor, TEDx is not A little-known cousin of Malcolm X, although he has spent his career organizing a series of multidisciplinary symposia by any means necessary.