1500 strips at Girls With Slingshots. Woo!

• Dave Kellett dropped a comment on yesterday’s post disclaiming the words about having to be fired by thousands of readers, thinking perhaps that it was Rich Stevens. I decided to go through my listings for particular words o’ wisdom and match them up with known sources:
  “People die of exposure” — Stevens
  Anything to do with a “liminal state” — Kellett
  On how to make a good webcomic, “Don’t suck; if you do suck, stop sucking as quickly as possible” — either Matt Boyd or Greg Dean, I forget which (but I totally used the quote when moderating a panel at the first NEWW, so if you think that was me, it wasn’t)

  Any others that you would add to the list of Webcomics Wisdom?

• Per the twitterfeed of the fighteningly-talented Kazu Kibuishi, a recommendation for a Kickstarter campaign for you:
  

  @gagnemichel is one of my favorite people on the planet. And this project will be amazing like everything he does. http://kck.st/RiLUEN

  For those of you unused to following the advice of talented people like Kibuishi¹, that project is for a short film based on Michel Gagné’s Rex, which was pretty much guaranteed to be the most charming and adorable part of any of the Flight anthologies. The goal is extremely modest (only US$15,000), and Gagné has been a professional animator for longer than many of you have been alive, so if there’s anybody that knows what a film meeting his vision should cost in terms of time/effort/money, it’s him.

• Holy crap, somebody let Chris Yates have access to an acrylic-cutting laser and he’s produced a transparent Baffler!. Most encouraging thing? That little inscription that notes the photo is “00/100”, presumably a prototype of something I’m going to have to get this holiday season.

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¹ Speaking of Kibuishi, I realize that I have yet to review Amulet 5 and it’s no longer really a timely thing — suffice it to say it is as impressive and engaging as the first four, delving into some serious darkness, and making me wonder if the Big Bad’s Assistant has fallen so far (despite the best intentions at the start) that he cannot be redeemed. We’re only at the halfway point, folks.

Even I, non-MMPORG player that I am, know about the oddly alliterative affirmative, although to me those letters will always make me think instead of Jeff Zugale, illustrator¹, webcomicker, and finest of fine arteests. I had the rare opportunity (seein’ as how he lives in LA and me on the east coast) to catch up with the wonderfully talented Mr Zugs² and see how he’s doing.

See, Zugale had the chance to grow up in northern New Jersey, right around the corner from a comic shop that opened up some twenty years ago and is still owned by a guy who will take any opportunity to throw a party. Twenty years is a long time in the funnybooks business, a long time for a friendship, and a sufficient excuse to bring Zugale back home from the Left Coast for the weekend to hang out with some special guests, run a sound board for contests and interviews and games and such. If you ever watched The Uncle Floyd Show in your formative years, that’s pretty much the feel of what Zugale found himself in this past weekend, and to which he graciously invited me to come and hang out.

Then the sweetener: one of the guests (and, coincidentally enough, the ex-wife of the owner of the comic shop in question) was Amanda Conner, aka My Favorite and the only reason I’ve bought cape comics in the past half-decade or so, if only because (quoting Shaenon Garrity here) she draws everybody like they’re just a little bit drunk and it lends a great deal of humanity to a genre that often lacks it³. So that was awesome.

Along the way, I got to talk to Zugale about some of the work he’s doing on Not Invented Here (loving it), whether or not there’ll be another ClownSweaterUniPegaKitty-like commission anytime soon (Scalzi’s busy finishing his next book, so maybe after that), and about his family (best ever, yours probably sucks by comparison). Through it all, I was struck by how wide-ranging Zugale’s talents, skills, and clients are, which is probably the very best thing you can do in a world where you work for yourself — you might have a client decide not to work with you, but unless they all do, you aren’t officially Out Of Work.

In that way, freelancing is pretty much like the webcomics model; as Dave Kellett (who, living in LA, probably gets to see Zugale a lot more than I do) once pointed out, a syndicated cartooner can be fired by one person (a syndicate rep) or dropped by a, editor (preventing an entire paper’s readership from seeing the strip), but putting his work on the ‘net means tens of thousands of people would all have to independently decide to fire him for the strip to collapse. Not a bad lesson to learn from an odd assemblage of comic-book fans in an American Legion hall who were watching a highly-competitive Rock-Paper-Scissors tournament bracket. Weird times, fun times, best times.

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¹ I don’t think I ever followed up on that earlier posting; I read Scalzi’s reboot of Little Fuzzy and although it was a very different book than Piper’s, it was pretty damn satisfying. Congratulations critically- and popularly-acclaimed author John Scalzi! You have earned the approval of a hack webcomics pseudojournalist!

² Not to be confused with Mr Zub; I’d ask what the likelihood of two “JZ”-initialled creators in webcomics might be, but then I remembered the two Chrises Eliopoulos (Chris Eliopouli? Does that work for Greek roots, or only Latin?) and wondered why we don’t have a third JZ creator in the webcomics world.

³ If you haven’t read her Power Girl series, seek it out; twelve of the most fun issues of comics since Jeff Smith took on Captain Marvel.

There are a few people that I pay close attention to in webcomics for their continued performance over the long haul. For example, Krishna Sadasivam hit fifteen years of making comics for the onlines at the start of the week, with no sign of stopping.

Also down as a long-haul vet, particularly when you recall the years running webcomics in parallel with print, and before that comics in print solely? Phil and Kaja Foglio, especially considering that I was reading Phil’s stuff in nineteen-friggin’-eighty-two, making the more than a dozen years of Girl Genius not even half of a long and storied career. Considering the time that the Foglios also ran the Buck Godot series online (from print, then back again), you’ve got a few thousand pages that have gone online (plus some really sex-positive porn over at Slipshine [NSFW], I’m told), and even more comics that haven’t made it online … you don’t have a career like that without making some good decisions, or at least learning how to not repeat the bad ones too many times.

And the thing about good decisions? Over time, they can change to become “indifferent” or “suboptimal” or “why did I choose to do this, again?”. Case in point, the Foglios have decided that running a store is no longer in their interests, and hooked up with the merch-slingin’ wizards of Starhampton, TopatoCo, just in time to not worry about the holiday rush. The news page and the press release essentially say the same thing; from Professoressa Foglio:

We are very excited to be handing the direct sales of our Airship Entertainment products over to the wonderful people at TopatoCo.com They are all set up to sell you fun things from lots of great webcomics, and we absolutely LOVE the idea of not having to pack orders in our basement any more. Our sales have simply gotten too big for us to handle ourselves, and we really need to concentrate on making more things over shipping more things. So please have a look, and check out all the other great webcomic-related stuff they sell.

And and from her male half:

The creative staff at Studio Foglio have been running a successful business since 1993, but lately the increased volume of sales has become difficult for their small organization to handle. Also, Phil Foglio grouses: “We aren’t getting any younger. The last thing I want is to be shlepping forty-five pound boxes when I’m sixty.” The Foglios believe that TopatoCo will be an excellent solution for dispensing books, especially since it puts them in the company of so many top-notch webcomic creators.

Taking on Studio Foglio’s stock had some unique challenges for TopatoCo. Diamond Comics has been the distributor for Studio Foglio’s brick-and-mortar sales since dinosaurs walked the Earth, and that will not change. Studio Foglio also has rather large initial print runs, which translates to massive stacks of books that need storage when they arrive from the printer. All of this had to be dealt with by TopatoCo’s shipping and warehousing staff, and has been handled with remarkably little bloodshed.

Note to self: still need to pick up Girl Genius volume 11, and can now bundle that with QC book 3 and perhaps Tom Tomorrow’s latest, since he’s part of the TopatoCo Cult Family You Can Never Leave Burgeoning Empire of Minimal Bloodshed now, too.

• Today’s remarkable thing: Jillian Tamaki did a short story called Half Life that has been preying on my mind all day. It’s quiet, contemplative, occasionally creepifying, and ultimately … I’m not sure if “peaceful” or “resigned” is the better word? It’s a damn good comic is what I’m telling you and you need to go read it now.
• Dave Kellett’s talked to me a few times about the difficulty in getting clips for STRIPPED at a reasonable price; the estate of Johnny Carson saw that a few seconds here or there were worth a modest fee, but other, bigger players have been tightening the thumbscrews because they can. Even in what must be a frustrating situation, Kellett is determined to stay on the ethical side of things, which I get the feeling is even more important that the legal side of things.

  I can understand his reluctance to pull the trigger on what would be a logical solution, and at this point I’m hoping somebody gives him a winning lottery ticket for a nice investment opportunity. Fleen wishes Kellett all the best and notes that he and Schroeder are doing so well on generating their own footage that we’d be willing to kick in a few extra bucks. Just sayin’.¹

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¹ What I am saying is I would pay money that Kellett could to a major motion picture studio in payment for its “Bein’ a Dick” tax.

Know what? You don’t care about my situation, so let’s point you toward things you might want to buy.

• First up, in line with last week’s predictions, Sin Titulo has wrapped and will be available in a handsome hardcover collected edition from Dark Horse next year.
• Nextly, three short adventures from John Allison, including the recently-concluded THAT, are now available for your obtaining. Plenty of Shelly Winters for those fans of the ginger ninja, and even the story of Dark Esther¹ at university.
• For those of you that want to exhibit at TCAF in the springtime, uh, the deadline for applications passed over the weekend. But don’t get too discouraged, as the new MoCCA, merged into the Society of Illustrators earlier this year, returns with the MoCCA Festival in April, with the application here [PDF].
• If there’s one thing that We at Fleen can be counted on appreciating, it’s comics-related furniture; if you want a sturdy piece of wood to help with the creating of comics rather than the storage of them, Dave Kellett has something fancy to show you.
• Want to make Jon Rosenberg’s daughter hate you? She’s got about a thousand of the cutest bunnies ever hanging around for hug times, and now you can get your own if you want to take a bunny away from an adorable child. You monster.

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¹ My favorite.

Must pack, check out of hotel, present a session, do a conference call, get fondled for freedom, and fly cross-country for six hours. Oh, tell you that Octopus Pie returns soon (presumably as Meredith Gran’s work on Marceline wraps up), which I choose to interpret as a present just in time for my birthday.

Probably no post tomorrow, due to work and travel demands. I know, somehow you’ll muddle through to the weekend.

• Karl Kerschl switches between story threads without warning, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that although it’s been eleven months since we’ve seen Vivol, he is not forgotten. His long flashback to the circus days is done, but even lo these many years later, his dreams are troubling. Conflating his mother and his surrogate cub, the tragic Moon Bear, both lost to him? The melancholy in that final panel of yesterday’s strip is so thick you can touch it. Bravo¹.

  What’s that? You don’t know about Vivol, and Moon Bear, and all the other inhabitants of the forest and surrounding lands? Good thing for you there’s a softcover collection of the first two years of The Abominable Charles Christopher (and others), and a just-announced pre-order for the second volume in hardcover. My advice: spring for the sketch edition, on account of what Kerschl calls a “sketch” would in any other context be called “an amazingly subtle and detailed animal portrait”

• Speaking of Kerschl, how about a reminder of his erstwhile studiomate, now Berlin-resident? It’s been more than five years, what with interruptions for paying work and such, but Cameron Stewart’s Sin Titulo is down to the last few pages of its very moody, atmospheric story of art made (literally, dangerously) alive. The last page should be up any day now, and look for a collection in the near future and trust me, if you’ve never read it, read it from the beginning now that it’s (almost) complete. So much meaning that wasn’t apparent at the beginning is fairly screaming at me now. Highest possible recommendation.
• Quick note on a comment from Morgan Wick regarding NYCC and the Javits Center: there really is no mega-convention center in the New York area, what with the crowded nature of the metroplex and the necessity of building up rather than out. There were plans for a bit there to scrap the Javits and build a new megaplex featuring a convention center, hotels, and casino in Queens, but that presumes that people coming to New York would want to go to what is the bedroom community of the city instead of the business/entertainment district. Also, the South Asian casino magnate that was maybe going to pony up about a billion dollars to kickstart (no relation) the project decided not to, and it would be a decade before something like that could be done.

  The Javits could be made usable, but it will have to expand — that’s not so feasible north or south (due to road infrastructure), or to the east (due to a million buildings and a major north-south artery), so west over the water is the only possibility. There needs to be a lot more support services in the area of the Javits (steps outside the San Diego Convention Center is the Gaslamp District; an equivalent distance from the Javits is the odd deli, a service garage for taxis, and a stable for Central Park carriage horses; in terms of tourist services, it’s a desert until you get to Midtown, most of a mile away), and there needs to be mass transit, which I’m sure they’ll get to sometime after the Second Avenue subway is done. The only approach that can practically improve the insufficiency of the Javits (apart from capping attendance and changing their exhibitor preferences) is, as Wick points out, to have a second show to take some of the demand off. Somebody go do that.

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¹ Now, when can we expect to see Luga again?

Now it’s just like you were there!

Okay, quick post today, but you got like 1100 words of organizational analysis yesterday so it’s all good.

Everybody knows about the Humble Bundles, right? Buy a package of videogames (most of the iterations going back to 2010), music (once, earlier this year), or books (going on now), DRM-free, and the proceeds go to charity? The name-your-own-price feature (with more content unlocked if you exceed the average price already paid by everybody else, which is a moving target) was so effectively popular that Ryan Estrada borrowed it for The Whole Story comics collection back in June. In a case of great minds thinking alike, the Humble Bundlers yesterday added webcomics to the currently-running e-book bundle.

So if you’re a fan of Randall Munroe, Zach Weinersmith, or Mike Krahulik & Jerry Holkins, you can get a total of five of their comic collections, along with eight novels from the likes of Gaiman, Scalzi, Lackey, and Doctorow, for the low-low price of (as of this writing) US$13.48. The interesting thing is, that average price has gone up by more than a dollar since yesterday when the comics collections were first added. So you’ve got about six days to get on that, internet.

Alert readers of this page may note that I haven’t mentioned any of the webcomickers who were in Artists Alley at NYCC, and that’s for the very good reason that I never made it over there.

Let me sum up; no, wait, there’s too much. Let me ‘splain.

On Saturday, the entire inbound stream of attendees was directed (by bullhorn-wielding staffers on the streets surrounding the Javits Center) to enter only at the 38th Street (northern) side of the hall. Got that? A few thousand people a minute are streaming into the hall, on the second floor, in a southerly direction. Artists Alley, as previously noted, was in an annex that is reached by navigating to the second floor, at the 38th street side, and then proceeding north towards an access tunnel. The people trying to get to AA had to fight against the much larger in-flow of people into the hall. I took one look at that mess from the exhibit floor and decided that this was indeed the day that bonds of fellowship died and I was not braving those rapids to see people that I very much wanted to see.

Which is a shame, as I’m told that Artists Alley was very nice, with plentiful ATMs, lots of space, and natural light.

Now, we have explored in the past how the Javits Center is, on its face, a nightmare to deal with. There are still lessons to be learned and improvements to be made, and presumably some of that will come as NYCC gets older and acquires institutional memory; the showrunners at SDCC have four decades of collective experience, with a slow ramp-up in the intensity and size of the crowds to hone their skills at booth placement, aisle design, and line wrangling. Therefore, I want to respectfully suggest that the NYCC showrunners find the people from SDCC with those skills and drive a dump truck full of money up to their front doors so that they will share their secrets, because there were some bad situations on the show floor this year.

Understand that when I say that at times on Saturday the crowds at NYCC were the second most hazardous crowds I’ve ever experienced in my life¹, and the worst I’ve ever experienced in New York City, I am comparing against some very bad crowds. If you look very closely in the famous Vincent Laforet photo of the 38th Street ferry docks during the blackout of 2003, you can just make me out in the crowd² and that crowd was not as bad as some of what I encountered in the 1100 aisle this past Saturday. On the docks, we were at least all moving in one direction and managed to let people off the boats so some of us could get on; on the showfloor, it was complete immobility to the extent that the thought crossed my mind If there is a panic at this time, I am going to be seriously injured or killed.

So what can be done? SDCC sees similarly-sized crowds without this degree of problem, but they have a few advantages: more floor space, many entrances to the show floor (the JVCC floor is accessed in relatively few places, in some cases by escalator), a wide concourse off the floor for moving from one end to the other, wide “travel aisles” for people trying to get places instead of browse, and no construction³. The last issue will take care of itself eventually (and partially alleviate the floor space issue), the others will take some work. If the number of “you have to be kidding me” booths were reduced, the travel aisles become possible. If an endcap booth were sacrificed every couple aisles, the space could be used for people wanting to get photos of cosplayers, instead of doing it in the middle of the goddamn walkway⁴.

One more thing that SDCC has to a greater degree than NYCC is massive panels that take a few ten-thousand people off the floor at a time; unfortunately, this ain’t gonna happen, because the Javits again is working against us. In San Diego, the panel rooms are laid out such that this aisle can be designated as one-way going to the panels, and that aisle as one-way coming from the panels, and the circulation of attendees flows continuously. In New York, the largest panel area is essentially a blind alley, with no way to manage flow other than “everybody goes in and also comes out in this same area”. You may append whatever intensifier to the word “cluster” that you wish to describe this situation. Honestly, I was surprised at times that the fire marshals didn’t shut down the entrances until the crowds had thinned (it’s happened in the past).

In a way, all of this (barring the construction issues, which I believe we’ve hammered into the ground by now) is the result of NYCC being a victim of its own success. Too many people want in for the amount and shape of the space that’s available. While there are certainly improvements that can be made by laying the floor out smarter (there was a massively popular dancing videogame demo stage just inside one of the show floor entrances that backed up crowds to the point that no ingress was possible) and exploiting techniques for crowd management (which largely comes down to figuring out which booths will have massive lines and separating them), there’s ultimately going to be no getting around a fundamental truth: the show is over capacity, and it’s probably necessary to both limit tickets more aggressively and reduce the number of exhibitors.

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¹ The worst, most hazardous crowding I ever experienced was on a lovely spring day in Osaka, as my wife and I attempted to make our way out of the main rail station while a measurable percentage of the population of Japan tried to make its way in. It was seriously a case of “lift up both feet from the floor and you will not fall” and I developed some seriously sharp elbows as a self-preservation technique.

² I am standing next to an absolutely lovely young lady named Chrissy, who was wearing an absolutely stunning cocktail dress and stiletto heels, who was trying to make her way back to Jersey City. We became Disaster Buddies that day on account of no way was I letting her try to navigate her way home dressed like that by herself.

³ Somewhere, there is a graduate student in traffic engineering writing a thesis on how the Javits Center construction affects human flow patterns.

⁴ For this one, the organizers and even the venue are blameless; for a city that despises tourists that stop in the middle of the sidewalk so very, very much, New York is astonishingly willing to allow people to block aisles for photos. I suggest that an elite force of staffers be given cattle prods to put an end to this and also to enforce line discipline.

Couple of quick notes for you before we get to the main discussion today. One, I’m on Pacific Time this week (and with intermittent internet access), so expect less-timely-than-usual postings. Two, congrats to webcomicky types Darryl Cunningham and John Allison for their nominations in the British Comics Awards (for Best Book and Best Comic, respectively), to be presented in a month’s time at Thought Bubble Festival in Leeds. Also thanks to the BCAs for pointing me towards Josceline Fenton, nominated for Best Comic for Hemlock, a webcomic with which I was not previously familiar. Fenton is also nominated as Emerging Talent for broader body of work, which is going to bear some examination in the very near future.

Okay: George (it is the general policy of this blog to refer to people by their full names on first reference, and to prefer family name thereafter, with first name used to make thing read well, but really — “George” is the only way to name this fine gentleman).

He doesn’t make himself the center of attention, but he’s a significant guy in the world of web/indy comics. When he’s not scouting for talent and finding people for projects at Oni, he’s the behind-the-scenes make-things-happen guy in the Benign Kingdom, and may understand Kickstarter better than Kickstarter does (I believe he may have been involved in more campaigns than anybody else on the planet at this point). But apart from the day job, the Kingdom appears to be his major avenue for world domination right now, so that’s what we talked about. With the second B9 collection getting ready to ship, I wanted to find out what the future directions for the Kingdom might be.

First of all, I have to change the terminology I’ve been using, because “B9.5” isn’t going to cut it much longer; it worked when there was an original book, then a second book, but plans are for two more artbook collections every year (Spring and Fall), so I’d be running out of decimals pretty quickly. Like the Fall 2012 collection, these new books will be:

• collections of four artists
• by invitation (please, no unsolicited submissions)
• ongoing for the forseeable future

That last one is pretty important — the original four creators (Ota/Green/Dreistadt/Dahm) won’t be returning until 2014, which means that the intervening 18-24 months are already planned out and the respective details are already being worked out¹. George wouldn’t spill as to who the contributors to the 2013 books would be “until pen’s on paper”, but he was quite interested in knowing who I would want to see included. I dropped some names² on him, carefully looking for tells that I’d guessed correctly, but he gave away nothing.

More than just having a beautiful book of your best/favorite work, being in one of the biannual collections means that a creator is now “part of the Kingdom”, with the ability to do other projects that strike your fancy; the Kingdom means having a structure to arrange for the logistics of production and fulfillment, as well as serving as a guarantee of quality. As the number of projects from the Kingdom increases, expect to see an ever-wider audience that was not familiar with the creators in question³ to dominate the purchasing, based on a string of previous projects, each successful and full of positive feedback from backers.

These projects can be solo or in combination with other creators (George allowed that there will be an Exquisite Beast/Capture Creatures tandem project), and I can think of a few other projects that I’d love to see — I’ve mentioned more than once that Aaron Diaz should do an artbook of dinosaurs, and I all but begged Anthony Clark over the weekend to revive his collaboration with Emmy Cicierega, Laserpony Studios. Heck, while casually talking with Evan Dahm and Frank Gibson, we accidentally came up with an idea for a Kingdom book that would be awesome and unique and I’m not sure I should talk too much about it.

So there you are — the Kingdom is an ongoing concern, it will continue to expand as makes sense, it’s got a plan for convention appearances, and a store is on the way. The foundations are solid, in part because nothing (not even more Big Gay Ice Cream than you could eat in a lifetime) can distract George when he has a goal in mind. Also, never forget that he has the power to end the world, so let’s all make sure that he meets those goals — it’s safer for all concerned.

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¹ One of the key things to realize about George: the man pays attention and has a plan at all times. The first B9 collection shipped a month early, and the only reason the second isn’t going out early is that a quality issue made the first printing unacceptable, causing a delay to merely “at the time we promised”. George is ready to go to press the day the Kickstarter ends, because he’s planned for submissions and layout before he announces the project.

² In no particular order (and keeping in mind that the goal of B9 is to provide a channel for creators to do artbooks separate from their usual work, so creators already working in an artbook mode like Scott C don’t really need the Kingdom): Carly Monardo, Dylan Meconis, Ursula Vernon, Erika Moen, Vera Brosgol, Emily Carroll, Karl Kerschl, Cameron Stewart, and man oh man I’d kill to see a book of Randy Milholland’s watercolors. I have no idea who on that list would have the time/inclination, but there you go — more than enough people for 2013 and beyond.

³ This is already occurring. The first B9 collection had about 20% of the backers come from Kickstarter itself rather than from the established audiences of the creators; for the second collection, it was over 60% from people searching out KS projects to back.

Didn’t spend a whole lot of time at NYCC yesterday for the you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me-noon-til-nine-pm Preview Day, just long enough to touch base with the Benign Kingdom table (the new B9.5 hardcovers are absolutely gorgeous, as are the TKT hardcovers — I’m going to have some very welcome packages arrive at the Fleenplex in the coming weeks), say howdy to Zach Weiner (he’s selling disposable monocles!), pick up a copy of the new book from Matthew Inman (I unfortunately didn’t have time to discuss the purchase of the future Tesla Museum grounds at anything resembling full length), bump fists with the Most Handsome Man In Comics, and have two slightly longer conversations. Saturday will be hanging with creators day. As to those conversations:

• So, yep, you may have already seen the announcement that Chris Hastings, Anthony Clark, and Cardboard Cutout Ryan North made yesterday on behalf of ShiftyLook: they’ll be doing an ongoing webcomic based on Galaga, of all things. The problem being, Galaga doesn’t really lend itself to a story so much.

  Enter Ryan North, Human Giant (that picture up top? the cardboard cutout is life sized¹). He’s constructed a storyline around two teenage girls (who Chris Hastings tells me he was very glad he got to design not as your typical comics version of “teenage girls”, namely, “undiscovered Playmates” … they will be actual person-type girls) who manage to take salvaged bits of alien tech (which look an awful lot like giant pixels) and build spaceships in their backyard to defend the Earth.

  The launch date for the new comic is officially (and cheerfully, may I note) described as The Future!, so keep your eyes on this page for further information. In the meantime I’m going to go out on a limb and say that three established, talented creators with a history of tearing it up when working together are going to deliver a great series. I’m also going to go out on a separate limb and add how thrilled I am about all the creators whose work I love that are getting work on different properties, expanding their name recognition, and establishing themselves as talent beyond their core audiences.

  I love Dr McNinja as much as any man alive (and maybe more than most), but some day Hastings will have told the last story he wants to tell about the good doctor and his friendly staff, and I want him to have an income when that day comes. A diverse set of projects (such as ShiftyLook and all the Adventure Time spinoffs²) and a reputation for meeting deadlines make that future day all the brighter.

• Speaking of diversity of projects, Kel McDonald found me yesterday to drop some news. On the heels of Cautionary Fables & Fairy Tales hitting general availability, she’s making plans for the next anthology. Okay, sequel to a popular item, no big deal, but McDonald is looking at doing something new — the next CF&FT abandons the familiar ground of Grimm, Andersen, et. al., and will have as its theme African stories, which have never gotten a wide purchase in our popular culture.

  Even better, McDonald reports that in addition to returning creators from volume 1, she’s got a commitment from Dylan Meconis (who knows her way around a fairy tale or two). If that weren’t ambition enough for you, the plans are to take a continental approach and have each subsequent volume focus on a different tectonic landmass (volume 3 will most likely tackle Asia). Taking things to their logical conclusion, Kel and I brainstormed an approach for an Antarctic story³.

  If you want to take a shot at inclusion, you’ve got time to put together your best work — McDonald is allowing a solid year before the stories are due, and the Kickstarter to pay for book production will go up in October of 2013. Naturally, she’ll be working on plenty of other things in the meantime, but we’ll just have to wait until she’s ready to announce ’em.

• Side note: while on the floor, I was approached by a very nice young lady (and I’m very sorry, I didn’t get your name, I suck) in a Big Gay Ice Cream (try the Salty Pimp, it’s amazing) t-shirt who wanted to let me know when the Big Damn Homestuck Photo Ops would be. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it to them (I’m not at the show today, and on Saturday it’ll conflict with the B9 panel), but I did promise to help spread the word.

  If you want to witness the power of what Andrew Hussie has unleashed, it’ll be at 4:13pm today and Saturday, on the second floor, around the corner from the coat check. Look for the candy corn horns and watch their numbers swell until you realize that you’re really glad that Hussie has decided to use his powers for good and not evil.

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¹ Don’t believe me? Check out Ryan at stately TopatoCo Manor from last weekend. In fact, check out all the photos from the Greatest Wedding Ever, which are to be found here. My favorites, in no particular order:

• MC Frontalot Not Really Contemplating A Bust Of MC Frontalot
• Massachusetts Gothic With Teens
• The Last Supper (2012)
• Meredith Has Had Enough Of This Cutesy Shit I Don’t Care If We Were Roommates Carly I Mean Come On

² Speaking of Adventure Time, the not-yet-released AT videogame exists on a pair of handhelds at the ShiftyLook booth. Look for the giant Finn & Jake and find the table below their butts.

³ This is the story that the penguins tell: In the first days the Great Sky Penguin made a vast land of snow and ice, with lots of fish and leopard seals waaaaay the heck over there, and decreed we should walk back and forth from the nesting grounds. And that’s why we’re in this long line while our spouses are sitting on the eggs. The End.