Tl;dr version: Amtrak’s power supply was pooched this morning, putting my commute massively behind and leaving me with an insufficient number of hours to get work done, much less embloggination. We’ll return tomorrow.

In the meantime, everybody wish Christopher “Doctor” Hastings a very happy birthday. In a community filled with excellent people, he is one of the excellentest¹.

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¹ It’s a perfectly cromulent word.

But first, some quick bits from over the weekend:

• Graphic Smash went away over the weekend for a little bit, but appears to be back now. Judging from some of the comments in our posting on this topic over the weekend, there seems to be an expectation in some quarters that the Modern Tales family of websites, like the stars at the end of The Nine Billions Names of God, will start blinking out without any fuss. We’ll see.
• Eric Burns-White has announced the return of the new Websnark, should you wish to update your bookmarks or RSS subscriptions. Mr E B-White got into the talkin’ ’bout webcomics game a good 14 months before this page debuted, and for a pretty good while there he and I were roughly contemporaries. The ways to tell us apart were relatively few:
  • He has a bigger thesaurus than I do
  • He has one more wife named Wednesday than me
  • He’s got a beard

  Apart from that, we are roughly contemporaneous in age, in temperament, and interests,and despite the exceedingly kind words he has for this page (and the hack webcomics pseudo-journalist that runs it), he’s already got more words written today than I’ve managed in the past week or so. Ooh, did I just make fun of Mr Snark for excess verbiage? Burnsauce¹.

• The Joe Shuster Awards for excellence in comics by Canadian creators were handed out at the Calgary Expo over the weekend; the award for Outstanding Web Comics Creator/Créateur Exceptionnel de Bandes Dessinées Web went to Emily Carroll for her body of work, including the truly excellent His Face All Red. Carroll burst onto the scene seemingly from nowhere last year, and it’s heartening to see that new talents can be recognized; the Shusters remain the paragon of stripped-down, quality comics awards.

Okay, book time. This one meanders a bit, so bear with me. As always, thanks to the good folks at :01 Books for the review copy.

There are people that I’ve met that have given me a thrill (Neil deGrasse Tyson, Ira Glass, Scott McCloud, Neil Gaiman) and those who I will never get the chance to meet (Chuck Jones, Jim Henson, Stephen Jay Gould, Claude Shannnon), whose absence cannot ever be filled. But primus inter pares of these luminaries is Richard Feynman².

A bit of context: in the mid- to late ’80s, a budding geek like me, full into the rigors of Nerd School, couldn’t not know about Feynman. His first book of personal anecdotes released about the same time he came to the public eye as a result of his role in the Challenger board of inquiry, and then he died just as the wider world was getting to know this curious character. We nerdlings knew of his famed lectures on physics, his Nobel-winning work on quantum electrodynamics, but what made us adopt him as our tribal ideal, as the ur-geek, were those stories from his life.

Plus, the guy got laid. A lot.

And that was what made him stand out, what relates him to those others in those lists up there; no, not the sex — the stories³.

Feynman was a born storyteller, whether it was stories of his life and experiences, or the stories that told how the world around us works, the stories that translated the highly abstract mathematics of physics that even physicists found to be obscure into the language that nearly anybody could understand. He knew the value of approximations and round-offs and pictures. Pictures! Two others independently did the same work that earned Feynman the Nobel Prize, but it’s the Feynman diagrams that let you skip the calculations and come to the answer with just a few squiggles^{4, 5, 6}.

So what I am saying is that Richard Feynman has been a big influence on my life. This book was made for me, and as such it was going to get a rave from me as long as it is more than merely adequate in terms of writing and art. Fortunately, it is far more than merely adequate.

Jim Ottaviani has combed through a multiple-meter-tall stack of stories, technical documents, biographies, and writings on Feynman, and brought together the best bits in a mostly-chronological (with occasional flashbacks and flashforwards, as any good storyteller might use to break up an overly-linear tale) fashion.

Opening on a talk that Feynman gave at his old high school, the bulk of the book could well be a graphical representation of the most riveting, meandering assembly those students ever got. Best of all, near the end of the book Ottaviani works in excerpts of some of Feynman’s famed lectures (introductory physics for freshmen, and also on QED) in his famed conversational style — those that never “got” physics, read these few non-threatening pages, and let them convince you to look up the originals.

Artist Leland Myrick does a great job of making cartoon Feynman evoke actual Feynman, without losing any of the expression and looseness that good cartoons can bring to bear. For those familiar with Feynman and other famous scientific luminaries, they all look like themselves, but not so much as to be reduced to “others”. We can identify with this one lanky fellow with the wavy hair (which occasionally looks like the wavy part of a Feynman diagram) and like him. His voice gets inside the reader’s head (if you haven’t ever heard recordings of Feynman, go look some up) and makes us feel that, like the best storytellers manage even in front of enormous crowds, this story is meant for an audience of one.

Starting from the observation of the what (Feynman’s father taught him in observing the world), one can develop the basis to determine the how and why, whether it’s the how and why of a bird pecking at the ground, or the how and why of the universe’s workings. For those that weren’t familiar with Feynman before, you’ve got the beginnings of what he did, the ways he behaved, and can start to put together the how and why of one man. That translation of knowledge from one mind to another, and done in a way to make more interesting than mere transfer of fact? That’s the essence of storytelling. Feynman appreciated it like no other, and Ottaviani and Myrick are worthy practitioners of the art.

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¹ Or Burns-Whitesauce, if you prefer.

² Maybe Benjamin Franklin; I have a feeling that he was probably as much fun as Feynman, and probably knew more dick jokes.

³ One might argue that Shannon was not a storyteller to the degree that the others were, but given that his work made possible all the modern forms of communication, we can consider him a builder of storyteller infrastructure. It’s my essay, I’ll gloss where I want to.

⁴ And with the inclusion of pictures, Shannon’s right back in the running since his famed Figure 1 encapsulated an entire field of study into just one diagram. If I ever decide to get a tattoo, it’s gonna be this.

⁵ One of the greatest teachers I ever had, Dr Frank Acker, was big on diagrams. I once completed an entire final exam on electromagnetic fields forgoing calculations and formulas and using the field diagrams he taught and got full credit. Although the answers weren’t as “correct” as if I’d done the math, it was far easier and well within the 2% tolerance than any physical parts would have been expected to meet.

⁶ Speaking of diagrams, I’d like to thank whatever deranged freak decided that New Math was a good idea, which led to me learning Set Theory at the age of six, leading to a life-long love of Venn diagrams and pictures in place of formulas. I’m probably the only person that actually benefitted, though — the Venn diagram of today’s adults that took New Math and those that saw any benefit from it hell of looks like an eight.

Okay, one comment: that ain’t good.

The last eighteen hours or so has been full of surprises. Please allow me to share some with you.

• Following up on a pair of stories from Wednesday — going on 50 hours later, the Penny Arcade strip (you know which one) is still up, as of this writing, and Rene Engström has her website back. I particularly wanted to bring the latter to your attention, since I said some uncomplimentary things about the person that snagged the domain (which honestly, had to be at least a little bit in bad faith — nobody else in the world could have a legitimate interest in AndersLovesMaria.com unless maybe two people of those names were getting married). But although it was set up as an ad farm to milk whatever Google Juju Engström’s comic had, better natures won out and the best possible outcome happened. I’m sorry I thought uncharitably of you, Mr or Ms Temporary Domain Squatter. Kudos for proving me wrong.
• Also in surprising news, it’s always a a pleasant (if unexpected) occurrence when a new Dresden Codak hits (stop looking at me that way; Latin Art-Throb Aaron Diaz has no illusions about the regularity or frequency of his updates, and quite frankly with RSS it’s a moot point). My complaint is not in getting a new update (the tenth in the Dark Science story arc, over approximately 54 weeks), it’s the inevitable wait to find out more of this new, sinister character’s story.

  Tripping a geek with an armful of papers, that’s high school bully stuff, totally lamesauce, but casually pitching a little old lady with a walker off a skyscraper? That’s bringing the evil A-game, which makes me suspect that Melchior may actually turn out to be one of the good guys in this story. You don’t know what kind of shit that little old lady was up to; she was probably a war criminal or something¹.

• Those that follow my twitterfeed may have noticed that the good folks at :01 Books gifted me with a copy of Feynman which I devoured last night. Proper review coming early next week, after I have time to thoroughly re-read and digest. Short version: it’s wonderful.
• It’s really not a surprise anymore when Scott Adams gets on his Idiot Horse and rides for the hills. Nor is it really a surprise that the many, many people willing to call him on his crap have done so with far more logic and consistency than Adams can muster. At the risk of breaking today’s theme, I just really liked how well today’s installment of The Rack utterly — what’s the word I’m looking for? — eviscerated his latest nonsense diatribe. Scott, this is maybe your cue to stop saying sentences.
• Finishing up with one last bit of surprise. Oh, not that Shaenon Garrity (Radness Queen of the Greater Pacific Time Zone region and Nexus of All Webcomics Realities, West Coast Division²) was putting together a comprehensive, two volume, omnibus edition of Narbonic together; anybody could have guessed that was likely in the cards. No, the surprise was the Kickstarter campaign to fund it; again, not that the funding has (as of this writing) reached more than 50% of goal in 22 hours or so. No, the surprise was the funding/contributor ratio.

  Again, as of this writing, there are 55 contributors for a total of US$5050, or just under US$92 per person; of those 55 people, a grand total of three (3) (III) have opted for the bottom tier of rewards (that would be the US$10 level) and twelve (12) (4 × 3) for the top tier (that would be the $US200 level). Nobody even bothered themselves with the second-highest tier ($US150), and only six contributors opted for the third tier ($US100). I’ve seen people say, Ah, hell, may as we spend twenty instead of ten, what’s ten extra bucks? but I’ve never seen them casually opt in for an extra hundo.

  There’s probably a few different forces at work here — the most popular reward tier is the second lowest (28 of 55 people), but it’s a full US$50, making for a pretty big jump over the bottom; moving up, there’s six more at the $US70 level, meaning that if you’re willing spend more than US$50, there are as many people opting up to US$200 as to the US$51-100 range.

  That fifty buck reward level is the first with a physical reward (signed and sketched copy of the books, which judging from previous Garrity Kickstarts, may actually be slightly less than the eventual price of the volumes once you count shipping), and from there on up the incremental stuff you get seems to be so damn enticing that contributors figure, What the hell, who needs all this plasma anyway?

  Put another way, the differential in stuff to be had between the US$10 and US$50 levels (or $US50 and $US200) is perceived to be more valuable than the incremental cash layout. This is a very cleverly-designed funding campaign that Garrity’s put together.

  Lessons to be learned:

  • Careful placement of the reward levels (at irregular increments) can drive people to the optimal funding level
  • Good stuff at the higher levels can drive a significant fraction of people to the upper funding levels
  • A fanatical reader base don’t hurt

  I’ll be curious to see what funding intervals are like on future Kickstarts; I don’t doubt that what we see here is related to the intermittent reinforcement phenomenon that makes gambling so addictive. There’s a real sense of Just. A Little. MORE. that a clever creator should be able to use to a financial advantage.

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¹ Yeah, I’m not buying it either, but you have to admit that a plain-dealing villain spices things up.

² All other divisions: Ryan North. Also, for quantum-webcomical reasons, North and Garrity are never allowed within arm’s reach of each other, lest their respective nexii cascade out of control.

One brief thing for you to consider. It’s been more than five years since I unilaterally declared a moratorium on the webcomics internecine pissing match over micropayments (and you know — it’s worked! Nobody gets het up about micropayments anymore). Key points for those on both sides of that one-time debate:

If you think that [micropayments are] crap, please acknowledge that they may eventually come about, but only by piggybacking on other protocols that will establish identity in a manner much stronger than is available today. If you’re in favor of them, please acknowledge that a viable one-click micropayment system won’t be developed until a viable one-click macropayment system is developed (because with the costs of building the damn thing, any developer is going to need to see a return on investment before scaling down). To get to the McCloudian promised land is probably going to require something analogous to a national ID card, linked to your bank account, along with the inevitable unintended consequences (think identity theft is bad now?). [emphasis original]

It all comes down to identity and accountability, and the twin horns of that dilemma got thrown into sharp relief, thanks to a startling claim made by a user of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not micropayments; it’s much closer to macropayments, but in all honesty it’s less a payment service than an attempt to set up an independent, anonymous, as-untraceable-as-sweet-sweet-untraceable-cash e-currency¹. The user in question claims to have had 25,000 “bitcoins” (which currently trade for US$18 to the BTC or so) stolen from his account.

The problem? Since Bitcoin is set up as a peer-to-peer architecture that makes users independent of central authority, but also provides those running Bitcoin no way to determine if the theft actually took place. The P2P model of Bitcoin certainly has the side-effect of minimizing friction and transaction costs, but those transaction costs (which have a definite lower threshold) are what give you the ability to investigate and resolve cases like this.

Having a robust transaction guarantee mechanism, however, costs personnel and servers, and that sets a minimum on the amount of money that can be practically transferred, leading to the ever-present disclaimer, Feel free to drop a contribution in my PayPal account, but keep in mind that less than ____, I don’t actually get anything because of fees. Right now there doesn’t seem to be any way to build a happy medium between “cheap to use in small amounts” and “we can protect you against bogus transactions”.

In non-technological news, as of this writing, it appears that Hallmark either has a sense of humor, or lawyers that type slowly.

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¹ Those of you familiar with Cryptonomicon know what I’m talking about.

So, there’s these guys, that do these things, some of which are significant. Shall we?

• Box Brown is back from his honeymoon (you saw the hobo wedding pictures, right? those were great) and deep into a new project; we got to talk a bit about this back at MoCCA Fest, and I’m impressed by the scope and ambition. Let’s let the guy tell you hisself:
  

  Hey Guys I’m starting this project called @retrofitcomics. I am going to publish one comic a month for 16 months.

  Expanding on those thoughts a bit, Retrofit Comics has a nice description up at its Kickstarter page:

  Retrofit Comics aims to publish 16 32-page floppy-style comics by 16 of the best comic artists in the business. I am all too envious of fans of superhero-style comics. Every week they get to go into a comic shop and for a couple of bucks get some new comics to read. Alternative comic fans don’t have that luxury anymore. Graphic novels have taken over the alt-comics industry as a natural progression. It’s worked out well for fans and publishers, but the floppy comic has fallen by the wayside. Drawn and Quarterly, Top Shelf, and Fantagraphics used to publish lots of floppy comics but now, for a variety of reasons, they do not. Retrofit aims to highlight the importance of the floppy comic to retailers, fans, and the industry.

  The floppy comic allows artists to experiment and work on comics while building an audience. Without the floppy comic (or mini-comic), the artist is forced to work on a largescale graphic novel mostly in private and then sell it. What if it doesn’t sell? What if the audience isn’t there? What if there are kinks that could have been worked out somehow? The artist basically has to go back to the drawing board. If there is an avenue and audience to work with, the artist can produce better and more refined work. ?

  For retailers, the cheap and frequent publication of floppy comics creates an incentive for people to visit the shop on a regular basis. It can also help to bring in new readers not willing to drop $20 on a book.

  For fans it means more and more frequent content!

  Sounds good, as does the list of the 16 top creators that Brown has lined up, which include the likes of James Kochalka, Joe Decie, Liz Baillie, Tom Hart, Colleen Frakes, and many more. To make this happen will require US$9000, which as of this writing is not quite 1/6 of the way achieved with 40 days to go. Books will be released monthly from September, and there’s an impressive list of brick-and-mortar comics shops across the country (plus Toronto, plus the UK) where they’ll be available.

  There’s a plethora of Kickstarter pledge levels with multi-month subscriptions plus other goodies up for grabs. As a final observation, I don’t have any specific knowledge to this effect, but I suspect that after a year and a half on the project, Box Brown may find that he enjoys being a publisher, and the Retrofit brand name may well get attached to other projects for the forseeable future.

• Still on the “good” end of things, “Uncle”¹ Randy Milholland is celebrating seven years of independence, as it was just about this time back in the heady days of Aught-Four that he challenged readers that didn’t think he provided enough unpaid entertainment to put up or shut up. Within days, his readership had contributed the equivalent of a year’s salary at his soul-destroying day job, and Milholland quit to make comics.
• Also to scar our psyches. Clearly, we’re onto the “bad” end of things as we note that Milholland has taken something as wholesome and appealing as a swimsuit issue (for those of you that worry about objectification, Randy’s always included as many exploited males as females in his sun ‘n’ fun extravaganzas) and turned it into something … yeah [NSFbrain]. Thanks for that, and pass the bleach.
• Thoroughly on the bad side of things, Rene Engström is dealing with the screw-up of an internet domain registrar and a parasitic domain squatter:
  

  100 sad faces. :( The redirect site anderslovesmaria.com was lost to a squatter due to a tech error during a renewal/transfer process.

  If you linked to anderslovesmaria.com please update to anderslovesmaria.reneengstrom.com until, and if, I can regain control of the domain.

  It’s royally stupid, but if you want to starve the squatter of whatever income he might derive from parking a bunch of shady advertisements on a site that has nothing to do with Anders and Maria, please reset any bookmarks you may have. Should Engström regain her rightful home on the internets, we’ll let you know.

• Finally: It’s been eight years, two months, and a day since the lads at Penny Arcade found out that apparently, the question of satirists (A) making fun of public figure (B) using an unrelated cultural referencepoint (C) is not a settled point in US copyright law, and sometimes you just gotta follow the takedown request. Thankfully, this being the internet and all, nobody will ever be traumatized by the P-A treatment of Strawberry Shortcake ever again.

  That being said, (A) and (B) are making a return visit via (C-prime) which only means one thing: enjoy it for whatever interval it might take for Hallmark Cards to decide if they have more of a sense of humor than American Greetings².

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¹ Possibly of the “creepy” variety.

² This being eight years later, what with corporations having dedicated teams watching the internet and swooping in with the proverbial quickness and DCMA boilerplate, and considering the comic in question has been up for more than twelve hours at this point, signs cautiously point to “yes”.

How do you feel about words? Particularly words put together to entertain, inform and/or delight? I have some to share with you today.

• First up, Chris Sims (of Comics Alliance, the Invincible Super-Blog, Awesome Hospital, and Batmanology fame) has dropped one of his excellent thinky pieces — not that I don’t love the funny stuff, like his justly-famous evisceration of Tarot #53 [as NSFW as you possibly can be], but when he’s serious, he’s as good a writer on comics as we have.

  He’s looking at the question of why comic book publishers aren’t doing webcomics to drive interest in their characters (really focusing on Marvel and DC, since one could argue that Dark Horse has had a setup similar to what he’s described via their Myspace Dark Horse Presents, despite the clunky interface), and while the issue has been discussed many places in the past (including this page), Sims has a knack for cutting through the crap.

  What he’s saying makes sense … it makes all the sense in the world, and there are executive types in executive-type offices that need to be giving his arguments serious consideration. Had Zuda [RIP] follow Sims’s model, it would still be with us and DC wouldn’t be trying the Hail Mary pass of rebooting-but-not-really their entire line.

• In other corners of the internet, Ryan North is talking with Smithsonian magazine’s online arm about … dinosaurs! Yeah, okay, not much of a surprise, topic-wise, but given that Smithsonian is probably the best general-interest magazine being produced in the US today, and given that I’m likely on the low end of the age cohort for their subscriber base, it’s a big deal. Ryan says some words about his creative process, about how his readers teach him about dinosaurs, and some very nice things about Anthony Clark’s Nedroid.
• Speaking of Nedroid, did you see the very calm (far calmer than I would have been) tweet that Clark dropped earlier today regarding a blatant act of theivery?
  

  Reminder: There is no official “Nedroid App,” and if you buy one you are getting ripped off.

  Near as I can tell (Clark, rightly, isn’t giving the perp any links and neither will I), this is in reference to an app at an unofficial iOS market that promises Nedroid Comics for the low-low price of only US$1.99, which would be awesome if it were the developer’s legal right to sell them. While we’ve has the discussion on this page in the past about what constitutes fair vs unfair development of webcomics apps, this one is way over the line.

  It’s not an RSS aggregator. It’s not a fancy skin on the browser that directs you to Clark’s site. Near as I can tell (I don’t have an iDevice, nor would I give the developer any money to test my theory), it’s an entire damn archive of Nedroid comics delivered in one big bolus to your phone. I come to this conclusion because the size of the app is helpfully listed as 136.4 MB, and there’s no damn way a non-thieving app could ever require that much space.

  A DMCA takedown request has been sent, which is good. Better would be finding out it had been honored promptly, the developer suitably chastised, and monies recovered on Clark’s behalf. But if I find that app still exists in public form in, say, 48 hours, I will gladly offer to bankroll whatever further legal measures that need to be taken to put a stop to this nonsense.

• Let’s finish with some happy news. There are words from mad genius toymaker¹ Andy Bell regarding his newest, somewhat fishy, creation. And there’s a sample panel from Chris Eliopolous of his contribution (with Mike Maihack) to a comics adaptation of Jim Henson’s The Storyteller.

  The Storyteller is a particular favorite of his very large body of work (as with a lot of Henson’s late period, it’s animatronic heavy and appealed to a young engineering geek), and the dark nature of original fairy tales (before the Brothers Grimm cleaned them up, way the hell before Disney made them safe) has always appealed to me², so I’m waiting for this one with bated breath. Urge to kill … fading³.

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¹ Or “nightmare maker”, I can never remember which.

² More thoughts on fairy tales vis-à-vis webcomics may be found here; had I been thinking when writing that piece, I would have linked the performance fleece line to this comic.

³ Except for the urge to kill some tasty fish. Mmmmm … sashimi.

So, I gotta renew my CPR certification this weekend, do some community events with my EMS crew, or I’d be totally heading to conventions, one or the other, on opposite sides of the continent for my convenience.

• For those of the Canadian bent (or with a current passport, mine’s in renewal right now), there’s the Calgary Expo, featuring the likes of Cameron Stewart, Danielle Corsetto, Dave Kellett, Kris Straub, Lar deSouza & Ryan Sohmer, Scott Kurtz, Tarol Hunt, and the TopatoCo Crüe (including Chris Hastings, David Malki !, Emily Horne & Joey Comoeau, Ethan Nicolle, Jeffrey Rowland, Jeph Jacques, Kate Beaton, KC Green, and Ryan North).
• For those of you that don’t have Calgary in your plans, there’s MFTWWorld¹ — Philadelphia, featuring Christopher Baldwin, Colleen AF Venable, and hometown boy Brad Guigar, who’s debuting his latest Evil, Inc collected volume, which only just arrived.
• Instead of hitting the shows, I believe I’ll be mixing up some drinks at home, with the help of some new recipes from my fellow cocktail-enthusiast, “Doctor” Chris Hastings. Seems that Saveur magazine has been contracting with a series of cartoonists for recipes in comics form², and Doc’s just went up — an exploration of ginger-themed mixed drinks, which I am assured underwent extensive and rigorous quality testing.

  There’s both classics and original recipes, one of which, the GingerJack, makes liberal use of Laird’s bottled in bond straight apple brandy [PDF] (aka “the good stuff”). It’s been confirmed that Hastings’s recipe for the GingerJack is original, as I was present when he was introduced to Lisa Laird Dunn (the 11th generation of Lairds to head the family distillery), who confirmed that she’s heard of no such use of her product before, and that it sounds “delicious”. I’m gonna count that as proof — 100 proof, to be exact.

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¹ Megan Fox Tits Wolverine, the truth-in-advertising name for the magazine once known as Wizard, whose successor company runs this and a million other “comics” shows.

² Check out last week’s contribution, by Dorothy Gambrell, for chocolate ice cream with chili peppers. Yum.

Kindly allow me to point you towards some words of note, then get the hell out of Dodge for the weekend.

From Christopher Butcher, mad genius Kit Kat enthusiast and TCAF showrunner, a wrap-up of this year’s show:

TCAF 2011 was our third annual show, and our third year partnering with [the Toronto Public Library], and it was clearly another successful partnership. TCAF at Toronto Reference Library reinforces the core ideals of the Festival: that it’s a free event, that it’s about the books, and that it is open to everyone—not just the comics initiated. While I think all involved agreed that the library was more than a little crowded at times on Saturday afternoon, it never stopped having a great, friendly vibe and an amazing energy. Those are the reasons that we partner with Toronto Public Library, and those are the reasons that we’re going to be working together again in 2012.

There’s no TCAF without great creators and works of art to celebrate, and so we’d like to thank all of the cartoonists, publishers, writers, artists, and other agencies that took the time to exhibit and present at TCAF 2011. This was our most diverse and international fest yet, with creators from 12 different countries around the world presenting a variety of idiosyncratic worldviews through the comics medium.

… and important dates for next year’s:

TCAF 2012 will be continue to occur at Toronto Reference Library and The Bram and Bluma Appel Salon — and now it comes down to when. After much discussion internally and with TPL staff, we’ve decided that TCAF 2012 will occur on Saturday May 5 and Sunday May 6, 2012. Exhibitor Applications for 2012 will open on Monday, August 1st at www.TorontoComics.com.

That’s all. Enjoy the hell out of your weekend.

It was that, or GANK A BIG HOOLER, BUDDY! TELL’M GARY SENT YA!

• Since we’re quoting Karl Kerschl’s entirely wonderful The Abominable Charles Christopher (which turned 200 weekly updates or just shy of four years old yesterday), one should note that the big guy is about to undergo some changes. X-TREME changes:
  

  While ‘The Abominable Charles Christopher‘ is dear to my heart, it is unfortunately not reaching a wide enough readership to sustain its continued production. Not in its current incarnation, at least!

  I present to you a bold new direction. I call it ‘ABOMINABLE X-TREME’ and it will change forever the way you think about woodland creatures or integrity!

  Gone are the boring conversations! Gone are the insufferable antics! Prepare for a whole new world of pain as CHARLES X-TOPHER fights his way through hordes of wolves, bats and killer spiders, all in the name of ACTION!

  ABOMINABLE X-TREME starts NEXT WEDNESDAY and will cost 99 cents, less than a dollar more than it costs now!

  It’s not just ABOMINABLE, it’s EXXXXXXTREEEEEEEME!!!

  So, yeah. That’s certainly … a thing¹.

• If you like things all loud and shouty, may I also suggest that you pick up the debut Chris Hastings major-publisher comical book? I’ve never read a Deadpool comic before, and apart from the overabundance of Deadpool cosplayers (of all shapes and sizes) at conventions, have had literally no interaction with the character. Hastings, however, writes a comic book that disposes of whatever character backstory and line-wide crossover (THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING!!!) in a quick narration box and gets down to the story at hand. A story that reads like how King Radical might behave if he were seriously unhinged and more interested in making a quick buck than supporting the fine folk of Cumberland, Maryland. Also, there are bees exploding out of the gas tank of a monster truck. I’d say that you can’t pay somebody to think up entertainment this good, but in fact you can, and should you buy Fear Itself: Deadpool (1 of 3), you will be doing exactly that.
• We at Fleen have mentioned the forthcoming PhD Comics movie in the past, as it was under development. Well, consider it developed fully, as it’s got a spankin’ new website, complete with trailer, cast and character info, and photos galore. I have just a few things to say:
  1. This looks great, Jorge
  2. The actors you got for Professor Smith and Mike are so close to your designs, you must have grown them in a lab
  3. I see that you have a screening in the works for Rutgers, which just happens to be in my back yard, so I will be attending the hell out your fine cinematical entertainment, just tell me the where ‘n’ when

  Best of all, with the movie all wrapped and every-damn-thing, we will hopefully get more PhD Comics updates in the near future.

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¹ For the overly gullible, it is no kind of thing at all. Relax.