Understand that it was more than 30 years since I’d read A Wrinkle In Time when Hope Larson¹ announced that Madeleine L’Engle’s literary executors had asked her to adapt the classic book into a graphic novel. I couldn’t imagine a better mix of talents two and a half years ago, and now that I’ve got my hands on a copy², I am more impressed than ever.

Given that the original Newbery Medal-winning book is fifty years old, and given the entirely valid assumption that anybody that loves comics will likely have read AWIT, this review is not going to follow the usual approaches — plot and story will be freely discussed, no spoiler warnings will be given, and one may safely conclude that AWIT:TGN will fall squarely in the Required Reading category upon its release in October. What we will be talking about is how Larson adapted the source material into a unique offering.

I’m not sure about you, but I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so … let’s say nonplussed as by the first two Harry Potter movies. It was clear to me that the marching orders that Chris Columbus had been given boiled down to Make it as familiar as possible so the kids can follow along, don’t change a thing, and for God’s sake, don’t screw this up and we’ll all be employed for the next decade. The very literalness of the transition from page to screen, the almost complete absence of any real artistic changes meant that the films could bring nothing new beyond the visual design and the quality of the acting.³

By contrast, a little bit after Prisoner of Azkaban came out, I found myself (over beers after the close of day one of that year’s MoCCA Festival) holding the opinion that Warner Bros should just give the rest of the series to Alfonso Cuarón, because that movie cast off the literalism and showed a determination to be its own story. This wasn’t a movie that relied solely on what JK Rowling had written on the page to define the entirety of its world, it filled in between the words to create a dynamic, living, breathing, feels-real sense of place. Instead of viewers being told Only what’s on the page needs to be shown, the message was Here’s what one person’s imagination found in the story, which might not be what your imagination found, but isn’t it cool to think that your imagination can be a participant in the story?

I don’t want to stretch the analogy too far and say that a too-slavish transliteration is to a proper adaptation what the relationship between the hyperconformist world of Camazotz is to the bursting-with-creativity Murry household, but maybe I do. Particularly given the way that comics (as McCloud taught us) actively involve the reader as a co-conspirator in the story, a skillful determination of where to deviate from the source is an absolute necessity for AWIT:TGN to be a worthy addition to the Murry-O’Keefe stories. Fortunately, that’s what it is.

Larson follows the story closely enough that long-buried details of story came rushing back to me, but added nuances that wouldn’t have worked in the original. For example, the anachronistically formal way that many of the characters have of speaking (particularly Charles Wallace, but even the straightforward Calvin is capable of dropping lines like By what countries is Peru bounded?) serves to place the story in a timeless time instead of tying it explicitly to a particular year or decade. Along those lines, I will wager that it was a deliberate choice on Larson’s part to not show cars, phones, or other physical objects that would lead the reader to a too-specific determination of when the story takes place — it takes place in its own time and returns five minutes before it left.

Working with a palette of only black, white, and blue in various combinations (an overall blue wash for flashback, oppressive black for Camazotz), Larson is able in the space of a panel to convey mood and emotion more effectively than pages of adjectives could accomplish. Her character designs don’t look like the characters in my head (or yours either), but they do look like the characters themselves. Meg and Calvin reveal on the page how they feel about themselves — Meg’s shoulders and stance become stronger when she realizes that it’s not possible for others to repair things for her, Calvin’s ears get slightly larger and he becomes gawkier and less guarded when he finds kindred spirits in the Murry kitchen.

Most impressively to me, her renderings of Charles Wallace are subtle and powerful: the slightest change in the tilt of the head, curve of the mouth, or shape of the eyes are sufficient to change him from bemused and friendly to starkly malevolent. For a certain period of time, while their moral framework is still undeveloped, children that can walk and talk and act on their own are just this side of sociopaths, their entire world defined only in terms of themselves. When given over to IT, Larson’s Charles Wallace conveys that cruelty and utter lack of empathy; he is the very embodiment of selfishness and need to see the world conform exactly to his wishes, and it’s chillingly effective.

Larson’s interpretations and adaptations work as well as they do, naturally, because of the strength of the story that they’re built on; she knows when not to change the source material — it’s not possible to improve on defining dialogue like Well, a line or Tesser, sir! — and by recognizing where to keep and where to change, she’s built something that is recognizably L’Engle’s, but simultaneously all her own and easily the equal of the original. But as Meg Murry would angrily remind IT, Like and equal are two entirely different things.

Madeleine L’Engle found ways to tell a story that was about the uncertainties of now (and not-now, and every time), to make concepts like Good and Evil both starkly delineated and subtle, to delight children and piss off those who don’t want children exposed to “the wrong ideas”. Hope Larson found ways to make that story resonate in a new medium for a new generation of readers. In another fifty years, some new practitioner of some new artform will find a way to adapt AWIT for yet another generation. The story belongs to all times, and if you haven’t read it in far too long, you have the perfect amount of time to leisurely reacquaint yourself. Because from October forward, it won’t be possible to fully know A Winkle In Time without also knowing A Wrinkle In Time: The Graphic Novel.
______________
¹ Let me repeat for the benefit of those who only know Ms Larson because of her husband and figure she’s only known because of him, knock that shit off right now.

² As always, my most sincere thanks to Gina Gagliano at :01 Books; L’Engle’s longtime publisher Farrar Strauss and Giroux, their imprint Margaret Ferguson Books, and :01 are all part of the Macmillan family of publishers, thus Gina was able to get me a review copy.

³ The best thing about those first two movies — and this is not meant as a slight — was the casting. The choices of child actors that were (luckily) able to grow into the roles, and of the greats of British film (particularly Alan Rickman) were their enduring contributions.

Happy anniversary to a webcomic that I’m pretty sure I’ve never written about before — Jerkcity is fourteen years (that’s like 98 to you or me) and 4975 strips old today. I’m far more likely to follow Rands in his other, less boner-related aspect, but still — fourteen years is a long damn time in internet terms, and virtually the entire time that webcomics have been around.

Particularly on a day when word comes down that one of the great comic strips of all time is about a month from ending, that continuity is something that I think we can all appreciate. Happy birthday to Rands, Pants, Deuce, Spigot, and all the other semisensical reprobates. You’re something like respectable for one day.

I mean, webcomics has had some fairly good ones, like Operation Kill The Bad Guys And Take Back Our Library or Operation Freedom Showers, but it’s tough to beat Operation Let’s Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum.

Inman’s love for Nikola Tesla is well-documented, and he had turned his famously effective ability to whip up a cash-generating frenzy to the goal of, well, building a goddamn Tesla museum. So what’s new?

Mostly, the intake rate on all that sweet American Cash Money; in Operation Bear Love Good, Cancer Bad Inman raised the target US$20,000 in the first hour; this time he doubled that to US$40K in the first 60 minutes, US$100K in 200 minutes, and (as of this writing) at just over 20 hours into the month-and-a-half campaign, has raised let’s just round up to US$400K.¹ At this rate, the target of US$850,000 will be achieved sometime before the weekend’s over, and Nikola Tesla will get his goddamn museum.

Oh, did I mention that he’s caught the eye (and a public pledge of support) from at least one actual billionaire? Also as a side note, it should be illegal for people as serially successful and innovating as Elon Musk to be younger than me. Hear that, Elon Musk? Stay the hell off my lawn!²

Anyway, we now have empirical evidence that every time Matthew Inman comes up with an Operation, he will double his first-hour fundraising total; if he can keep that record alive, in another dozen or so Operations we’ll be in the neighborhood of Operation Fix The National Debt.

______________
¹ Actual number: US$399,436, which is within the margins of roundoff error.

² By which I mean, feel free to be on my lawn anytime you like, Mr Musk, it is totally okay. Have a pear off the tree if you like, you just have to fight the squirrels for it.

Will I ever be able to put Kickstarter behind me? Probably not — the admixture of nerdy analysis and optimistic financials will, I suspect, always captivate me, and I’m not alone. Yesterday, TopatoCo Vice Premier In Charge Of Kicking Your Ass Holly Post pointed out an infographic and article at Wired that I’d previously missed, despite the fact it’s been out for most of a month. Then again, it hit while I was trying to catch up from San Diego Comic Con, so I don’t feel too badly about it.

Said article is about the generalities of Kickstarter campaigns, and correlations that state the more X is true, the more (or less likely) Y will occur — there’s some nice, quick take-aways in the infographic about how if you succeed, you’ll likely squeak over the line rather than destroy your goal, and if you fail, you’ll likely fail big (the latter of which squares with my own, earlier analyses). Drilling down to the underlying article, however, something caught me on my first read.

Namely, webcomics seem to buck a lot of trends. Go read the work of Jeanne Pi and Ethan Mollick (of the Wharton School), and it seems that their first (and most prominent) conclusion doesn’t track well with our corner of funnybooks:

Projects that successfully fund tend to do so by relatively small margins. 25% of them funded at 3% or less over their goal. And 50% raised only 10% over their goal. In other words, when you succeed, it’s not by much. Projects that raised double or more over their goal are the exception.

I’m not going to gainsay their conclusions because I know they’re speaking from a large population of data (as much as 99% of successful projects and 82% of failed projects from the entire history of Kickstarter), and the webcomics I looked at were a pitifully small population by comparison (39 projects, if I remember my math), and that’s exactly the sort of situation where local contradictions to larger truths can hide. So if you were wondering if webcomics are inherently special, the answer is “Maybe, sorta”.

But the part that really stopped me in my tracks was this:

Failures happen by large amounts, successes by small amounts…unless you are: An Overachiever

Over·achiev·er: A large project (over $10,000) that received over 10x its funding goal.

• Of the 106 projects that received over 10 times their goal, only 33 were large projects.
• With the exception of a single music project, all of these 33 overachievers were in the hardware, software, games, or product design categories.

Now, Pi and Mollick’s piece is, as near as I can tell, undated, but it is referenced in Wired in mid-July. It also references an earlier piece by Pi which garnered attention in mid-June, so I’m guessing they did the bulk of their analysis in that monthlong timeframe.

Last time I checked, mid-June to mid-July is after February, which was the closing date of a project with a goal over US$10,000, which achieved more than 10x goal, and which did not fall into the categories of music, hardware, software, games, or product design categories. You might have heard of it. Other comics projects may not have met the $10K floor or the 10x multiplier, but Order of the Stick damn well did, so like I said in the title, I’m hoping that Pi and Mollick just missed including “comics” on their list.

Webcomics: special snowflakes kinda maybe, and also easily overlooked.

Also, I’ll note that Penny Arcade’s Kickstarter to kick advertising in the junk will complete in about … ten minutes as I write this, and will probably hit somewhere in the US$525 to 535K range and somewhere in the vicinity of 9000 backers. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the new Number Two.

Edit to add: Yep, there we go.

Oh, cool my wife said as she was bringing in the mail and saw a package with the characteristic look of having come from overseas, where she has friends of long standing. Then her face fell and she said, Never mind, it’s for you.

And so it came to be that unlooked-for, I received from Belgium a copy of the latest print collection by Beardfluff creator Rembrand Le Compte¹, most recently mentioned on this page a little more than a year ago. Le Compte’s art is more assured, and while Beardfluff retains a healthy number of random-topic strips (if fewer journal-style entries starring the creator and a sentient beard), in the Spring of last year, Le Compte started a series of linked stories under the heading Fire & Stone.

The weird, beautiful, show-don’t-tell stories deal with birds (some seemingly ordinary, one definitely a phoenix), golems powered by heat of firebirds, cranes, weasels, a great war in the distant past, and a dark inversion of life’s energy. It drops you immediately into the story, leaves questions unanswered, and it a thoroughly satisfying tale; Le Compte played with the story for most of a year (between May 2011 and April 2012), updating multiple pages in a go, and interspersing with random ephemera until the narrative called him again. It’s a good, affecting story, and it’s a shame that the Ignatz nominees are already announced, because Fire & Stone is right up their alley.

• Also on the book front, Ryan North² today wraps his comprehensive reading of Steven Spielberg Presents: Back To The Future: A Robert Zemeckis Film: The Novel by George Gipe based on a screenplay by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale and has decided that it’s too much for one Tumblr. Thus, B^F: The Novelization Of The Feature Film, the e-book, is now available for purchase as North explores just how … very not good a quick-turnaround novelization based on an in-revision script for a movie that’s not out yet can be. Of special note would be the stellar reviews that North is receiving already, particularly this one:
  

  I wrote this book and I think it’s pretty great! It has a lot of jokes and is a fun thing to read with your eyes. Good work, Ryan! Best friends forever, Ryan!!

  Could anything be as wonderful as being best friends forever with Ryan? Only one man knows.

• Does anybody know if Red Bull comes in forties? Because if it does and you have one handy, you might want to pour it out for Ryan Sohmer, who is going Cold Red Bull Turkey due to concerns that mainlining the stuff like he does might actually kill him. Sohmer’s had a relationship with the go go juice that predates the birth of his son, and possibly he has known and loved the ‘Bull since before meeting his wife, so we are talking about the death of a deep and meaningful friendship here. On the other hand, not having to worry about his heart leaping out of his chest cavity must surely be its own reward, so best of luck to Mr Sohmer as he enters this new, brave, and much sleepier stage of his life.

______________
¹ A man after my own heart.

² Exemplar of All That Is Most Worthy And Awesome (Great White North Quadrant) and Tallest One-Third of the Collective Nexus of All Webcomics Realities.

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service.

As some may recall, those ToS may make claims against original content¹ or be entirely self-contradictory as to requirements for originality and/or present elsewhere, so creators run a special risk in not reading those terms, but let’s face it — nobody reads the damn things. Actually, I read one once, an End User License Agreement for one of my employer’s products, and it accomplished two things:

1. I got a headache
2. I became convinced that I somehow owed The Mob a favor

Which is why I was intrigued when the Twitterfeed of amazingly smart guy Rands pointed me towards a new project to categorize Terms of Service and rate them for how badly you can get screwed for checking the box, lying, and signing up.

Terms of Service, Didn’t Read is starting with social media and search engines, rating each ToS from Very Very Good (Class A) to Is This Really Necessary? (Class E), and everything in between. I’d recommend that anybody who puts their original work on the web via a site they don’t entirely own themselves review the ToS;DR ratings on a regular basis from here on out.

• Know what day it is? Jenny Everywhere Day. Somehow, I missed it last year, but to remind all and sundry, Ms Everywhere is:
  

  [A]n open source character created in 2001 by Steven Wintle and the members of the Barbalith forums. She’s free to use by anyone in any capacity they see fit.

  Jenny exists in all realities at the same time and her powers stem from an ability to “Shift” herself and others from one reality to another. Her exact powers/limitations within any given story are up to the people working on it.

  The two things that make her “Jenny Everywhere” are her goggles and her scarf. Every other aspect to her design (including race, body type, hair color, eye color, number of limbs, etc.) are completely up for grabs and fall under the discretion of the creator.

  Examples of Ms Everywhere are free-flowing at JennyEverywhereDay.com, but don’t feel restricted to just one day of the year; Jenny can be used any time you like (with the proper disclaimers) to tie all of comics into one overarching shared reality, just in time to destroy everything.

• The Ignatz Awards nominees (not at the Ignatz website yet, but give ’em time; meanwhile, take a look at the list via Heidi or The Spurge)have been announced, and what caught my eye more than any particular nominee (and it’s a nicely balanced, broad slate of nominees this year) was the list of judges.

  Edie Fake, Minty Lewis, Julia Wertz, Dylan Meconis, and Lark Pien did the jury-ing of the nominations list, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen an awards jury with such a deep experience of webcomics before — Wertz and Meconis have been in webcomics forever, Lark Pien has closely collaborated with Gene Luen Yang on multiple projects, notably coloring American Born Chinese. It doesn’t look like Fake or Lewis have a lot to do with webcomics per se, but they’re young enough to have robust web presences and I’ll wage that the idea of internet presentation of their work isn’t a strange thing to them.

  Oh, and the jury is 80% female, and yet somehow that fact is not a dominant point of reference in their task, their choices, or the awards in general. Is … is that allowed? ‘Cause I totally thought I read that there aren’t any ladies doing comics and they don’t hardly ever apply to do comics because they have an idea how anatomy works? Weird.

______________
¹ Does anybody use MySpace since Jeff Rowland killed it?

² <cough cough Pinterest cough>.

Indulge me in not talking particularly about webcomics for a few hundred words. David Rakoff — writer, actor, This American Life contributor, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor¹, and all-around genius — has died, and the world is poorer for his passing.

I met him once, back in 2000 when TAL had their fifth-anniversary tour² and my wife and I were privileged to meet the performers³ at an after-show reception. In his story on office politics he had mentioned, in an offhand way, voles, and it had triggered a memory in the back of my mind. A year before while waiting to get my hair cut, I’d read a piece by him in Outside magazine, the title of which described him as:

Acolyte of the Standard Class, Master Bowdriller, Sweat Lodge Scaredy-Cat, and Friend to the Vole

Go read it now. If it’s not the sort of thing you find to be hilarious, chances are we can never be friends.

Now voles are not something that come up particularly often in casual writing or conversation, which is I suppose why I remembered the earlier reference. So I asked him — was he particularly fond of voles?

Oh, I hate you, he exclaimed before immediately apologizing that it was nothing personal. He and his editors for the then-in-progress collection, Fraud, had figured that the Venn Diagram of people that had read his work in Outside and those that followed him in other, more NPRish venues hell of looked like an eight, so he wouldn’t have to bother rewriting either his TAL piece or his Outside piece to remove a redundant reference to a rarely-recalled rodent. I had just disproved the theory and now he was going to have to do some work, and so he (very briefly) hated me before laughing about the absurdity of it all.

I have never been happy to be hated before or since.

So this is what I think about comics today — anybody that’s not familiar with Rakoff’s very unique, wry, witty, funny, funny, funny and humane voice should immerse themselves in his work. Audio or transcripts of his This American Life contributions may be a good place to start. And if you want to practice drawing characters in a mood you’ve likely never seen outside of Achewood, may I suggest the following snippet as an exercise?

Sheila taught me a survival technique for getting through seemingly intolerable situations, interminable lunches, stern lectures on attitude or time management, being trapped by the office bore beside the sheetcake in the conference room, and the like. Maintaining eye contact, keep your face inscrutable and mask-like with the faintest hint of a smile. Keep this up as long as you possibly can. And just as you feel you’re about to crack and take a letter opener and plunge it into someone’s neck, fold your hands in your lap, one nestled inside the other, like those of a supplicant in a priory. Now with the index finger of your inner hand, write on the palm of the other, very discreetly and undetectably, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, over and over again as you pretend to listen.

Rest in peace, Mr Rakoff. Thank you for your words and your (very temporary) hate.

_______________
¹ Although Mr Rakoff never denied his innate Canadianness, cf: here or here.

² Although he was part of the recording tour, Mr Rakoff’s piece was cut for time and included in a later show.

³ Including Ira Glass, Sarah Vowell, Russell Banks, several TAL staffers, and Ira’s dad who is a very funny guy. Also, Ira is much larger than his voice has ever led you to believe — 190cm, broad build, everything about him except the glasses screamed “recreational rugby player”.

Item One: At this point, the w00tstock phenomenon has grown to the point that any number of geekly types can attract other geekly types to join them on a stage and just generally be as entertaining as heck. In expanding their usual PAX “Just being us” session to a PAX-adjacent two-night stand, Kris and Scott (or possibly “Scott and Kris”, take your pick) are joining the new tradition. In three years, look for all of nerddom to join together in one mega-variety-show that puts Jerry Lewis’s telethon extravaganzas¹ to shame, curated by the ever-present Dammit Liz.

Confidential to everybody attending the show: rumor has it slipping Scott and Kris a six-pack makes the show even hilariouser.

Item Two: I made sure to keep myself out of the very minor controversy launched by the inexplicably angry sell your boots editorial by Dan Nadel in The Comics Journal’s blog a few weeks back. If one is going to decide that Kickstarter is emblematic of all that is wrong with comics, the Box Brown-edited Garo tribute seemed like an odd target. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and the dominant reaction appeared to be Seriously, this is what you get upset about? Case in point, Evan Dahm took it upon himself to express the obvious:

People are still thinking kickstarter is fundamentally some charity operation. we are not taking donations, we are taking preorders.

I don’t understand the confusion about this. you are just allowing some of the people who want the book to buy it in advance.

It is not a magic bullet; it’s a convenient platform to allow promotion and preorders. that is all it is to me.

But there’s not lack of smart people on the internets², and a very thoughtful piece on a potential drawback to Kickstarter-only books appeared this afternoon from Gina Gagliano³ of :01 Books which you should check out:

The thing I see on Kickstarter that I am confused by is the only-published-through-Kickstarter graphic novel.

Sometimes there pops up a project on Kickstarter where an author’s like, ‘okay, I’m publishing an original graphic novel, it’s 200 pages long and it will take me two more years to complete after this point and you should all support it!’ And sometimes I’m like, ‘huh, that looks like something that we wouldn’t publish at all because the zombies are exploding whilst having sex,’ and sometimes I’m like, ‘huh, we didn’t get this charming and interesting project in our submissions inbox.’

The format of Kickstarter seems to heavily weight the promotion and availability of the book to the front end, rather than the back end — something I find problematic for these books that people say, ‘we’ll have this done in two years — or a year — or even eight months.’ Because what happens when your book is available — and then a school in Kansas wants to use it in their class and needs 40 copies . . . and then the New York Public Library system wants to carry it and needs 80 copies . . . and then BoingBoing reviews it and a few hundred people want to order the book?

There’s considerably more in the full posting, which should give a certain type of creator (namely, those already capable of doing top-notch work) some things to think about. And if you’re not that creator today, I sincerely hope that it’s your desire to be that creator someday, and to look at questions you’ll need to consider down the line instead of keeping your mindset static.

_______________
¹ And I have no doubt that such a nerdapalooza could raise enormous charitable dollars, perhaps in support of Child’s Play.

² All casual evidence to the contrary.

³ Who supplies me with review copies of the best stuff, you guys she is seriously awesome.

Today is set up the new work computer day and it’s … yeah. Let’s just not think about computers for a while and focus on some upcoming events.

• THURSDAY THURSDAY THURSDAY For those purists insisting that only “Sunday” can be repeated three times to drum up excitement for an event, bear in mind that Sunday’s happening features some truly horrific contents, and Thursday’s (that would be tomorrow) features cool art. At least, if you’re in New York, in the vicinity of Gansevoort Street and the temporary East Coast location of Gallery1988 as they bring their annual cult movie art show, Crazy 4 Cult, to the Big Apple.

  C4C2012 launches 9 August from 6:00 — 9:00pm and runs until 1 September. The website doesn’t show art yet but one of my favorites, the inimitable Scott C, will be sending along more Pee-Wees¹ than you can shake a stick at.

• Everybody’s favorite invented and randomly-timed holiday, Feel Free To Talk To Me If I’m Wearing A Dinosaur Comics Shirt Day, will be held on Friday, 31 August. Take it away, Ryan North:
  

  Last year we did it in December for the Australians, but I didn’t hear about ANY of them hooking up, so it’s summer again for North America!

  The Facebook event is here where we can all discuss our results! MARK IT ON YOUR CALENDAR

MARK IT NOW, DAMN YOU.

• And a little further out still, summer of 2013 will forever be known as the Summer of TMI Tuesday Every Day, as Danielle Corsetto undertakes a continent-wide roadtrip to catch up with fans in far-flung, non-Canadian locations:
  

  Canada, my love, my darling, I wish I could visit you on this trip, because you know I love you. But I’mma have to make a completely separate Canada-centric trip another time, so’s I don’t have to do paperwork at any borders to sell my wares on this trip. I still write my name like “Danielle Canada” in cursive in my diaries, with hearts around it. You’ll always be my favorite Top Hat.² <3

  Obviously, further information forthcoming as Ms Corsetto figures out exactly what her itinerary will be. Best just mark down a season-long “save the date” in your calendars to make sure you’re free when she does announce locations and times.

_______________
¹ Pees-Wee? Can I get a ruling here?

² Exactly what Danielle meant by “Top Hat” is up for discussion in the comments. I, for one, find it difficult to believe she didn’t intend at least two or three different meanings.

If you were lucky enough to hang around the Dumbrella booth at San Diego Comic Con last month, scrollsaw-wielding madman Chris Yates might have shown you something very interesting indeed — a prerelease version of the new Baffler! for iPad app, which released today. Developer Twenty Sided Planet’s been at work for a year on this, and having played with it some, I can say it was time well spent. The grab-a-piece-and-spin-it-around functionality is crisp and smooth, and the timer counting up how long it takes you to solve a puzzle is maddening in its insistence at ticking along at a rate of one second per second.

Best of all, consider what you get — fifteen Chris Yates original puzzles, the digital versions scanned from actual physical puzzles, the prices of which would range from the dozens of American Cash Dollars to multiple hundreds. To obtain fifteen Baffler! originals would be out of the reach of all but the most devoted (and wealthy) collector, but Yates and Twenty Sided Planet are letting you have this for a measly three bucks (with future expansion packs undoubtedly at a similar pricepoint). Take a look at the launch video (there’s some nice quick shots of multi-level Baffler!s around the 1:10 mark) and then we can all sit here and wait to see how long it takes Apple to make The Baffler! for iPad an official demo app in their stores. ‘Cause man, this thing is addictive.

• With the country going all excited for Bobak Ferdowsi¹, would this be a good time to point out that Jorge Cham’s new video series, Ph.Detours, talked to him last week? Yes, yes it would. Ferdowsi’s about halfway through the video (with mohawk but without coloration), but the real stars of the show are JPL program engineer Chaz Morantz and the full-size Curiosity test model.

  As long as we’re talking PhD Comics, we should also mention that their Two Minute Thesis Contest is up to the voting stage — grad students give a brief pitch about what they’re working on, you can listen in and get smarter in your spare time, and the thesis with the most votes will be the first to be illustrated for a new web series, along with other fabulous prizes.

  Me, I’m leaning towards Rescue Times Need[ed] By Fire Services At The Critical Structure Fire by Thomas Lindemann, Rescue Engineering, Cologne University of Applied Sciences because come on — how many other candidates have to do their research inside burning buildings?

• Called it: Khoo putting together Strip Search entry guidelines based on Penny Arcade hiring practice.
• Okay, we all knew that B9.5 was going to crush its goal, we just didn’t know the final number. As it turns out, the final number was slightly over US$140,000, meaning that the Benign Kingdom project as a whole has taken in just over 200 grand. On behalf of everybody that pledged early and kept seeing new stuff added to our rewards packages, I’d like to thank the incredible upsurge in backers that brought in more than US$50K in the last six days of the campaign. Seriously, you just don’t see the curve of the projected total go up all that often on Kickstarts. Now the only question is what the Benign Ones do to top this.

_______________
¹ I’ve mentioned previously that despite my childhood daydreams, I know I never could make it as an astronaut, but if I had been born 20 or 25 years earlier, I would have fought like hell to earn a chair in NASA mission control, so indulge me as I take a moment to recognize that not only has Bobak Ferdowsi got great hair and style out the wazoo, he’s a Flight Director.

Less than ten years out of college, and he’s calling the shots for all the flight controllers in that mission control center. That’s how it works when you’ve got the headsets on — a year or two out of school you’re saving an Apollo mission from an unnecessary abort, and if you stick with it by the time you’re 30 you’re very possibly sitting in Gene Kranz’s chair.

Think I exaggerate? John Aaron (EECOM) and Steve Bales (GUIDO) were twenty four years old when they called (respectively) “SCE to Aux”, and “We’re Go on that program alarm”. Every single person that’s ever plugged into a flight controller’s loop and called, “Go, Flight” is a goddamn hero and if you don’t know their names and stories, shame on you.