So Ryan North continues to make all of the money, as To Be Or Not To Be: A Choice-Filled Adventure By Ryan North And Also William Shakespeare Too has, as of this writing, passed the US$132,000 mark, and is rapidly driving the continued economic recovery by itself.

Personally, I’m hoping North will pass the dollars/word ratio of 3.0, which would make the past year’s effort of coming up with some 80,000 words pretty darn worthwhile especially considering that freelance writing gigs are normally measured in pennies per word. Naturally, North doesn’t get to pocket all of the money raised, what with having to produce the books and pay his artists, but it would still be a nice, round target for him.

• Speaking of Kickstartings, this page has had the opportunity in the past to mention the campaigns of one Mr Darren “Dern” Gendron, who doesn’t usually work within the comics sphere on Kickstarter, but who has run some darn successful campaigns, considering that his least overfunded project raised 108% of goal. The others have done, respectively, 117% of goal, a staggering 5015% of goal, and 3385% of goal with about two and a half days to go.

  Big numbers, although to be fair it helps when your goal is in the US$500 to US$1000 range to hit huge percentages like that. But! — and this is a big but — does this mean that Gendron is sitting pretty from the (approximately) US$101,000 he’s raised since September of last year? Funny you should ask, as Gendron’s thrown open his metaphorical kimono to share some numbers on his latest project:

  Right now [approximately three days ago as of this writing — Gary], we’re at 1,101 backers and $32,807.

  After the Kickstarter and Amazon fees, that’s $29,854.

  We have a chart tracking how much has been collected for international shipping fees. That’s a 0-profit area, because every dollar brought in for that goes right back out. Currently, that fund is taking out $3,615. So we’re at $26,239. We’re also budgeting in another $3,888 in current domestic shipping orders, so our subtotal drops to $22,351.

  So then the next big check is production. And lumping together the cards, the chips and the dice, we’re at $19,006 in costs.

  That leaves O [Gendron’s artistic partner, O Abnormal — Gary] and I with $3,345 currently.

  So to round off the numbers somewhat, out of about US$33,000, the creators are left with about US$3300, or ten percent. That number put me in mind of something that Howard Tayler said at SDCC years and years back when this page was just a lil’ baby blog, about how 90% of a book’s cost was going to end up in pockets other than the creator’s; Tayler’s point was to get more of the percentage by taking over other jobs, and on the surface it appears that Gendron’s experience is disproving Tayler’s thesis. Read on, though, and learn about economies of scale:

  We’re pushing to hit $40,000. Because almost all of the high-ticket production items are covered, we’ll probably pull in about $6,000 more from that final $7,200. And we’ll have a good supply of playing cards to sell for the next couple years.

  Catch that? If the high-ticket items are covered and the incremental costs on the lower-priced items come down, you’d get a return of (very roughly) US$9300 out of US$40,000, or comfortably in the 20-25% range for rate of return. One may also note that Gendron includes in those numbers stocking up for future sales, which doesn’t show up as immediate benefit.

  It’s a nice reality check for those considering Kickstarter, seeing one of the repeat users of the platform lay out exactly what the expected return will be (and honestly, I know a lot of small businesses that would be thrilled with a 10% margin). I’m wondering if anybody would be willing to run a Kickstarter with these numbers laid out from the beginning — here’s what I’m asking for, here’s what it will cost, here’s what we’re left with — and update those numbers (as closely as can be approximated) during the run of the project. I think it would serve to demystify the platform a great deal, remove some scales from eyes, and perhaps also to change a few minds about how “rich” project owners are getting from their runaway-success campaigns. In almost all cases, I’m betting it’s a lot closer to break even than to Kiss my ass, bitch! I’ll be at Duane’s!¹.

• It’s more than a year since Rebecca Clements did a charming 24 hour comic/chooseable-path story called Come Inside My Body, and with her recent return to comickin’, Clements has put the you-decide guided tour of her own interior spaces up as a you-decide-on-a-price e-book for instant download.

  Guys, if you’ve ever wondered what all those squishy, squirmy, goopy organs do, this is the ideal time to find out. If you have a gross anatomy exam coming up, this is the best way to study and if your teacher tells you that your views on the spleen are incorrect, you can point out that they are entirely correct and who would know about a Clementine spleen better than Clements anyway? It’s less than any of those human anatomy coloring books and far more amusing.

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¹ In this analogy, everybody wondering where their Kickstarter reward is “bitch” and a bottle-service cabana in Vegas is “Duane’s”.

Two quick items for you today, and it’s not like any of you aren’t suffering from pie coma anyway.

• Thanks to a couple of classes on optical engineering back in my college days, I know a bit about the additive nature of color, but I never really understood how artists see it; enter a nice primer on color (or colour, if you prefer) theory from the artist’s perspective, which I found nicely informative and I hope you do, too.
• Weirdly, Brad Guigar does not entirely depend on punnery for humor (or humour, if you prefer), which was demonstrated when he did a stand-up comedy set back in the springtime. For anybody that got to listen to the recording¹, Guigar’s brad-up comedic stylings are very old school — he’d have killed in the Catskills if only his name were “Shecky”.

  In any event, Brad’s heading back to the microphone and bare stage, and you can check him out yourself if you’re in Philadelphia on Sunday, 9 December. The Bradster will hit the stage of the Helium Comedy Club² at 7:30pm, and please remember to tip your waitress.

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¹ Or watch the video, here.

² Try the veal.

Look what Chris Yates went and lasered¹ up for me!

In all, Aperture #26 is three layers deep, and I haven’t had the courage to spill it out and try to assemble it. Also, it’s just too pretty to disturb yet. Also also, Chris and Assistant Emily threw in a bunch of art extras because they are awesome dudes.

Quick note: there are some photographic artifacts due to the transparent nature of the material and our old friend, compound interest refraction: the outside vertical edges really do line up, and the signature is not really smeary like it appears in the image.

In conclusion, the Pilgrims ate well at the first Thanksgiving because of Squanto and they survived the boredom of that first winter with clear Baffler!s from Chris Yates Studios. The End.
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¹ It is too a verb, shut up.

I have an entirely rhetorical question for you, and by “you”, I mean “you individually and in particular”, not some more abstract “you”: Do you like it when language is bent into patterns that delight and entertain? Because I have something that you will want to see: an 80,000 word book written by master languagebender Ryan North re-envisioning Hamlet as a choosable-path adventure, which has (predictably) surpassed its Kickstarter goal in about three hours.

I should pause here a moment to issue a disclaimer — Ryan asked me proofread a near-final version of To Be Or Not To Be: A Choice-Filled Adventure By Ryan North And Also William Shakespeare Too, which I gladly did, and so I’ve had the opportunity to read through the entire thing.

I also played through every single story node for both Ophelia (who kicks ass and does not resemble the inertial doormat that Shakespeare portrayed) and Hamlet’s dad, King Hamlet Sr (who dies on the first page and must play as a ghost and that is awesome). I did not play through every story node for Hamlet because I have always felt that Hamlet is a CHUMP and I do not traffic in CHUMPS but I’ve read enough of his story paths to see that North does manage to DECHUMPIFY him in some of the paths so that’s good.

True to form, Ryan North has put together an amazing Kickstarter campaign (including what may be the definitive Kickstarter video which is itself choosable-path) featuring awesome backer rewards, including visualizations of the story structure which is a thing of mathematical beauty and intricate, interwoven geometries. Speaking of interwoven geometries, should you read your way through TBONTB:ACFABRNAAWST, keep a chessboard handy; no spoilers, but let’s just say that I would have died fewer embarrassing deaths had I not been trying to keep a chess game straight in my head.

Speaking of those embarrassing deaths, 30 of them are illustrated by the finest creators in webcomics today, and further funds raised only increase the number of illustrations until all 110 deaths get pictures. The full set of illustrations happens at US$50,000 and given that Ryan is already north¹ of US$25,000 about four hours into this thing, that’s a certainty. The only question is how long it takes to get to US$70,000 and the audiobook, and to US$100,000 and the sequel, which I hope concerns Ophelia branching out from boring pre-Renaissance Denmark into other times and places and maybe wrestling dinosaurs.

Guys, I am excited for this project to come to fruition and I’ve already read it so it contains no more surprises for me, but every one of you (yes, you) that reads TBONTB:ACFABRNAAWST has delightful hours of delight in front of you, so get in on this while you can and thank Ryan North for the herculean labors of the past year, secretly and carefully bending language into its most perfect form.

Oh, and for those of you wavering, the early adopters have got your back — every US$5000 raised above the initial US$20,000 goal reveals another story page and a choice, to be decided by backer voting. Thanks to Update #1 voting, it appears that we will get to read the book’s acknowledgments, which SPOILER ALERT could lead to a page where YOU GET TO BE RYAN NORTH.

If you are awesome enough to support TBONTB:ACFABRNAAWST click here. If you are so CHUMPY to make Hamlet himself look like somebody who is NOT A CHUMP AT ALL, I don’t know, maybe go look at pictures of cats on the internet? I mean, that’s nice and all, and your CHUMPNESS doesn’t make you a bad person or anything. Just … let’s not talk about this possible choice anymore and we are still friends.

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¹ Ha, ha.

Friend o’ Fleen Rick Marshall did a set of live, on-camera interviews at Long Beach Comic and Horror Con earlier this month the first of which is now available for your viewing pleasure. Be sure to turn your speakers UP, as the little percussion sting at start takes on a Lalo Schifrinesque character when given sufficient volume. Don’t wuss out with little speakers on your laptop, either — give that sucker some bass.

• We’re a little more than two weeks into this year’s Child’s Play holiday campaign which makes it a good time to note that the current take is north of half a million dollars, which if the current giving rate can be maintained will produce a total normally only seen attached to things like Homestuck Kickstarters.

  Though unlike Kickstarters, which see a huge front-loaded effort that then drops off (maybe regaining momentum at the end of the campaign), Child’s Play tends to see week-on-week increases through at least the first half of the campaign, typically peaking around the phenomenally well-funded charity dinner/auction (which this year will be on Thursday, 6 December in Bellevue, WA). Recall that Child’s Play has an unbroken streak (even through the economic meltdown) of increasing totals year-to-year, which means another US$3million need to be raised to keep the tradition alive.

• Speaking of Child’s Play, there’s an entire calendar of events covering the next few weeks, meaning that nearly everybody has a chance to do something that’s simultaneously fund and beneficial and maybe even local. Case in point: my favorite recurring event is Ümloud!, because you really can’t have too many umlauts in your life.

  Having long since grown beyond its conception as some people playing Rock Band in a bar, this year’s Ümloud! will stream the Rock Band fun over the internet, so everybody can enjoy it. Everybody that’s not at the charity auction in Bellevue, that is, as it’s also on 6 December. If you’re catching the fun from home, maybe check out the participating hospital map¹ and find a local beneficiary that you could toss a few bucks? Just sayin’.

• Interesting: a Top 100 Most Important People List (such as you would find this time of year), this time referring to movers and/or shakers in the comics industry. Unsurprisingly, it’s reportedly overwhelmingly male² with the first woman not showing up until slot #29 (Diane Nelson, head of DC Entertainment).

  In fact, all but one of the women are outside the creative end of comics, the one outlier, the single woman deemed important from a creative standpoint being Kate Beaton. While I have to object that no other female creators are worthy of recognition, it’s hard to argue with the influence Beaton’s had, particularly given the very wide swath of attention that she’s earned both inside and outside comics for the past year and a half or so.

  But seriously, no Amanda Conner? Fiona Staples is redefining how beautiful comic art can be with her work on Saga, Carla Speed McNeil is breaking the boundaries of SF work with Finder, Colleen Doran’s Gone to Amerikay has been received with universal acclaim, and Spike Trotman released Poorcraft to fill a niche that nobody else even recognized. Raina Telgemeier continues a multi-year domination of the YA market, and Hope Larson and Meredith Gran are hauling new/young/female readers into comics hand over fist.

  Granted, the list is reportedly focused on who has power within the industry, but if you don’t have comics that people want to read, you don’t have an industry. If you can’t see how these women (and I could name plenty more) are influential on comics today, and especially to keeping comics alive as a vital industry for the coming decades, you’ve got some research to do.

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¹ Which initially centers on North America, yes, but which is scrollable for reasons. Drag ‘er around to other hemispheres, see what you can find!

² On account of the whole thing won’t be revealed until tomorrow, in the inaugural issue of a print companion to the Bleeding Cool website.

I received this morning an email from a woman named Mary R with an observation and a question:

You mentioned in an article a while back that Box Brown lost the Everything Dies site and it got replaced by a linkfarm. Fleen still links to it though–is it there as a dire warning to other creators, or have you not gotten around to removing it yet?

Which I was glad to receive as I was under the impression that I had removed the link to what used to be Box Brown’s eschatological¹ comical exercise and was surprised to see that it was still there. Several attempts to kill it via WordPress resulted in processes that seemed like they should have succeeded, but did not. It did allow me to set the link to not display, but it’s still there in the database, mocking me.

As a result of Ms R’s eagle-eyed observation, we know have top men working on the WordPress issue, and I have taken the opportunity to comb through the blogroll and do some recategorizing, some pruning, and also to remedy some inexcusably-overlooked sites (welcome, Broodhollow!) so thanks to her. If you notice something odd about the site, please do let us know, as looking at it every day means that things you would find obvious have faded into the background noise of my brain.

• Speaking of followups, the cancelled-due-to-superstorm webcomics creator hullabaloo at Wild Pig Comics in Kenilworth, NJ, is back on! Saturday, 15 December from noon to 4:00pm will be when you get to meet and/or greet Danielle Corsetto, Bill Ellis & Dani O’Brien, and Jamie Noguchi right about here, around the corner from Dunkin’ Donuts and right next to a great smelling hot dog shop.

  Wild Pig itself is convenient to major transportation arteries, they offer terrific discounts, and also have a lounge area/library (I’ve never seen that before in a comics shop) where the person you drag along with you can relax in comfy seating and maybe flip through a copy of BONE.

• So everybody that went to Thought Bubble over the weekend had a fabulous time, by all accounts. The accounts also say that webcomics own John Allison took the “gong” (as our British cousins say) for Best Comic in the inaugural British Comics Awards. Fellow webcomicker Darryl Cunningham lost out in the Best Book category to Nelson, an anthology featuring the absolute best of British cartooning talent (including Allison and Cunningham, so it’s like Cunningham won anyway and Allison won one-and-a-half times). As previously noted, webcomicker Josceline Fenton was nominated for both Best Comic and Emerging Talent (which she won), and I see she was also part of Nelson, making her somebody to really keep an eye on in the future.
• Launched over the weekend (and piggybacking off of attention given by recent a Carson Daly appearance and a teaser/trailer featuring Nick Offerman), a Kickstarter campaign to get Axe Cop into the one media channel it hasn’t yet conquered: documentary film. The goal is to release by May 2013 to coincide with the launch of the Axe Cop TV show, which given the nearly four-year effort to bring Stripped to a final cut, seems ambitious.

  However, there are factors that probably make the Axe Copumentary simpler — it appears that filming has been done over the past several years of the Axe Cop phenomenon, and having a singular focus would certainly make for an easier time with respect to the number of people that you’d have to interview, trying to come up with a coherent narrative through-line, and heck, just getting copyright clearances for all the visuals. ANYway, if you want to watch Malachai Nicolle grow up on camera, now’s your chance.

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¹ Fleen: not just rumination on webcomics, but also a vocabulary-building exercise. You’re welcome.

It is nearly the weekend; a somewhat vexing obstacle at work has been resolved; next week will feature pie; my dog’s insides are not nearly so poisonous as they were yesterday. There’s a few things from webcomics, too.

• One of the ways I judge the reach of creators is by noting when they intersect with people I know from outside webcomics. Thus, the EMT student wearing the Bearmonster shirt (who got surprised with a Jeph Jacques sketch and who actually head-desked in surprise), the niece asking Zach Weinersmith for rules clarifications on an in-comic tabletop game, and the friend of 20 years casually remarking that nothing brightens his day like Anthony Clark’s twitterfeed.

  That day-brightening effect is a fairly widespread opinion, and it is also empirically observable (at least to me) that Clark is pretty much the Most Beloved Guy in Webcomics. Thus, the tremendous outpouring of good wishes yesterday — his 30^th birthday — culminating in multiple life retrospectives for all to enjoy. If you didn’t get a chance to wish Clark happy returns yesterday, there’s no time like the present.

• Speaking of birthdays, yesterday was also the birthday of Greg Dean’s Real Life Comics which is now an actual teenager on the internet, holy crap. Need proof? Here you go, Sparky. And not a birthday per se, more a rebirth, as Brad Guigar (who likely does not remember being 13, or even 30, on account of his advanced age²) announced the return of Courting Disaster from hiatus, and did so with a bang³.

  In CD’s run, there’ve been questions about dating, sexual etiquette, slut-shaming, embarrassment, infidelity, happy funtime toys, intrusive relatives, and more, but to celebrate the resumption Guigar went straight to the sine qua non of sex-advice columns: the three-way. HOT, and almost like he’s trying to generate attention for the strip just as it returns from break! Also, as if my calculations are correct, Brad’s getting to the point of having to have “The Talk” with his sons, which means he can just drop ’em in front of the CD archives and tell them to start clicking, then check in with him if there are any questions. CONVENIENT. True, this course is possibly not recommended by experts, but let’s let him have this one.

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¹ If we allow “now” to include “memories of last night”: My bartender invents amazing drinks.

² Which happens to be a full year and a half younger than me, sigh.

³ I’m so, so sorry.

Make that normal-ish; a power outage in Manhattan (thanks, superstorm!) resulted in Fleen’s hosting being up, yet unable to connect to other resources necessary to actually appear on your brain-boxes for a period of time yesterday. I haven’t seen it recur, but I’m also not self-browsing all day long; should you see problems crop up, feel free to drop a line to gary at this here site.

In the meantime, let’s return to one of our recurring themes: ideas. Raw material destined for refinement, currency, object of sacred communion, or more common than dirt — everybody’s got an idea about ideas. They form the center part of Matthew Inman’s latest comic, an eighteen screen behemoth about creating on the internet (which touches on many more things that just ideas, and includes a nicely-argued support for my own personal rule of browsing¹). The ideas section talk about where they come from, and leads to a particularly useful metaphor of ideas not as discrete items, but as the generated result of a process, here described as a river².

Nobody’s idea-river (or pond, or pool, or puddle, or superstorm) is going to produce exactly the same quantity of ideas any anybody else’s, or the same quality for that matter. Although distinct, they will often bear striking similarities to others, to the point of cliche. Enter Ryan Estrada, remarking over Twitter how tiresome he finds the overused concept of The Prophesied Chosen One. Tiresome enough that he comes up with his own twist and throws it out for others to use:

Story idea: A crazy old man just tells hundreds of kids they’re the chosen one, hoping that by law of averages, one of them will succeed.

He just looks up their details on Facebook when they enter his cave so it sounds authentic.

Someone steal this idea, I’m too bored by chosen one stories to even write a parody of one.

Maybe it’s like a ‘thing’ in the kingdom. All the creatures know that whenever a stranger walks by they go “are you HIM?”

There’s just like, a mountain of dead chosen ones outside the villain’s castle.

I’m in favor of this — tossing ideas out, seeing what people can make of them; there will always be germs of stories or gags that you can’t see a way to use (cf: Chris Hallbeck’s professed inability to use ideas if he doesn’t draw them right away) which are doing the world no good cooped up in your brain. If it’s something that you can use later, great, tuck it away, see what becomes of it; but if it’s something you aren’t ever going to use? Throw ’em out there and see if somebody can use ’em:

A Director falls in love with an extra. But due to union rules, he is not allowed to speak to her. Has to communicate through assistant.

The obvious thing is that she would fall in love with the assistant, but if you’re gonna steal my idea, please make it better than that.

I just love the idea of a romance story centered around an obscure film industry union rule.

I don’t think that Estrada really meant “steal” in that middle quote, but I think he was quite serious about wanting to see his open-sourced idea not be used in an obvious way; just because you don’t have the time, inclination, or vision to shepherd an idea through to fruition doesn’t mean you want to see it treated cavalierly. So if you share an idea with the world, feel free to make a suggestion to spur maximal creativity in its usage; if you use an idea so offered, do your best to not be lazy or obvious in its development. Ideas might be more common than dirt, but there’s still value to be found with a bit of care.

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¹ “Never read the comments”. The only regular exception to this rule is The AV Club, and they’re less amusing now that Frakes doesn’t get to reminisce about his wild times on the TNG set all the time.

² Complete with beaver slap fights, which are awesome.

Rich Burlew continues to heal his sliced-up thumb as fast as willpower allows¹, but both new comics and progress on the many, many projects related to his Kickstarter² remain fairly well stalled at the moment. But a simmering secret project (that didn’t require direct involvement to the same degree as other items) has come to fruition that ought to satisfy the most die-hard Order of the Stick fans: the first in-scale tabletop game miniature, eventually to become a full line. Roy Greenhilt comes unpainted, with multiple eyebrow options, and is as near a perfect projection into three dimensions of Burlew’s stick-figure style as could ever be expected. No word yet on who the second figure will be, but personally I’m hoping for a sexy, shoeless god of war.

• Missed in the superstorm: the recently-announced, Spike-led horror anthology did indeed open up for submissions as scheduled and is accepting story proposals for another sixteen days. Note that you don’t have to have a comic done by then, just get your story pitch in — the actual submission isn’t due until May. In case you’re wondering if The Sleep of Reason is a cool enough project for you to get involved in, check out the murderers row of already-confirmed participants and wonder how it could possibly get any better³.
• How about something a bit more hopeful, but still with enough darkness to keep it from being all weak tea? The New York International Children’s Film Festival announced the return of their annual Studio Ghibli retrospective for five full weeks starting 16 November and running until 20 December. Week one’s schedule is already posted, featuring screenings (in new 35mm prints, both dubbed and subbed) of Nausicaä, Laputa, Totoro, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away. If you’ve never seen these films on the big screen, you’re missing out; if you’ve never seen these films, period, what the hell is wrong with you?
• If we move further away from the darkness to where there is only sunny optimism and gentle humo[u]r, I’m pleased to note that I received my copies (one to keep, one to give to the next first-time parent I know) of The Bear in yesterday’s mail, and dang if it isn’t beautiful. I’m not sure how much direction Ryan Sohmer gave to Becky Dreistadt in the choice of animals and staging each of the little vignettes he wrote but if he’s smart (and Sohmer is very smart) he got out of her way and let her imagination run wild. Because dang, have I mentioned what you get when Becky’s imagination runs wild?

  In any event, it’s a gorgeous book, and I am encouraged by rumo[u]rs I hear that there will be a The Bear 2, as that means more animal paintings from Dreistadt, and if there’s one thing that a nation (and world) badly divided by petty dislikes and prejudices needs, it’s more of her animal paintings. You literally cannot maintain a bad mood looking at these. The only downside to a second volume? Sohmer and Dreistadt had to sign nearly 4000 copies of The Bear; I’m figuring a second book could easily double that, leading one or both to possibly have an arm fall off and nobody wants that. Just in case, the magic word is Xam! Really.

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¹ Which is roughly the same speed if willpower is taken out of the equation. Honestly, thinking at a sliced tendon doesn’t do much at all.

² Of which, to be fair, several were clearly labeled at the time of the Kickstart as This will get done some considerable time in the future after the easier things to fulfill to the most people are done.

³ Answer: if Terry Moore decided to get involved somehow; seriously, Rachel Rising disturbs me on a deep, existential level every damn month.

No new big surprises or aftereffects from the superstorm, gas rationing got lifted this morning, trains are almost back to their usual, semi-fictional schedule, and last night’s Adventure Time season premiere was amazing. Feelin’ good!

• I have been neglectful of pointing out that Thought Bubble is running this week in Leeds, with the emphasis on this coming weekend, 17-18 November. Guests of webcomicky note include Kate Beaton, John Allison¹, Becky Dreistadt & Frank Gibson, Scott C, Darryl Cunningham, Paul Duffield, Cameron Stewart, and Huw Davis will be there also, but he may be a bit tired on Sunday as he’s running a 10K race that morning. Maybe bring him a smoothie or something?

  There will be book debuts (including from Marc Ellerby, and the European debut of Tiny Kitten Teeth), panels (including a discussion on digital comics: Bury Theatre, Royal Armouries, 1:40pm – 2:30pm, with Dreistadt, Gibson, Beaton, C, Duffield, and Simon Fraser), and the annual British Comics Awards (Bury Theatre, Royal Armouries, 6:00pm – 7:00pm). Any/all [web]comics fans in the middle part of England are encouraged to drop by and say “hi”.

• New Wigu! Times two! Jeff Rowland has apparently found a moment’s free time in between the wedding and the immense holiday rush of new things to drop comics on us! Add in a new Overcompensating on the same day and it’s like Christmas came early for me.
• Hey, know what I haven’t mentioned for a while? Recipe Comix, courtesy of Saveur magazine, which had been a bit spare on the ground, but have of late resumed an approximately biweekly schedule. I bring this up as a twitter exchange yesterday allowed me to point Mike Russell towards Helen Rosner, who handles submissions for Recipe Comix in between getting to enjoy fabulous meals that she then tweets about for the sole purpose of making me hungry.

  Ahem. That is to say, if you have a connection to food (and don’t we all, particularly in this harvest/holiday timeframe) and make comics, you might want to drop a line to Ms Rosner and see if your idea would work for Recipe Comix. Guys, let’s come up with so many pitches that RC has to run weekly — that is the definition of a win for creators (you get paid), a win for Saveur (content to share) and a win for me (new food experiences to check out). Get cracking.

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¹ Speaking of John Allison, a Tumblrpost of his from this morning caught my eye and made me snort out loud. A certain percentage of my readership may well have attended the same college I did, and if they did so in a nearly 30 year span from about 1972 to about 2000, then the name “Thad Smith” evokes not muscle-bound beach hunks, but rather a lanky professor of political science who just may be the greatest teacher to ever push chalk.

From teaching students how to read Pentagon black budgets to breaking Kris Kristofferson’s collarbone in a rugby match during his own undergrad days, Thad (as he insisted on being called) was never less than a font of fascinating information who was careful to never let on what his opinions were as he forced his classes to defend their own. Hell, in four years the only political opinion I ever got him to ‘fess up to was an almost visceral dislike of Ed Meese, who is somehow still alive and as soon as I’m done writing this sentence will go back to being forgotten as he so richly deserves.

So yeah, that was pretty funny.