I got the email yesterday from Alert Reader Rob:

Hey, have you noticed that Kukuburi is back? This is why I will never give up RSS.
http://www.kukuburi.com/v2/2020/01/14/one-eighty/

I keep an antiquated browser around solely because it’s got an integrated RSS feature, but as I confessed to Rob, I sometimes prune my feeds when I feel that things will not update again. The last time we at Fleen mentioned a story element from the ever-delightful Kukuburi (by the ever-delightful Ramón Pérez) was probably this piece from May of 2009.

It got sporadic, finally going on hiatus in 2012. Repeatedly since then I hoped for its return (while never criticizing Pérez for concentrating on work that pays), and as recently as two and a half years ago declared my belief it would return some day. And now I can proudly state that the link over there in the blogroll has been updated to say no longer on hiatus, hooray! Let’s love it for as long as it lasts; I’ll be binging the entire archive in the immediate future.

• Speaking of immediate future, Evan Dahm would like to remind you that the most wonderful week of the year starts on Sunday:
  

  Goblin Week 2020 starts SUNDAY #goblinweek #goblinweek2020 https://goblinweek.tumblr.com/post/190290598 …

  Yes, Goblin Week! Wait, you’ve never heard of Goblin Week? I’ll let Dahm explain:

  IT IS A PERIOD OF 7 DAYS WHEREIN YOU MAKE GOBLINS EVERY DAY OR AS MUCH AS YOU WANT WAHTEVER A GOBLIN IS. DONT WORRY ABOUT IT GOD IS DEAD

  You can trust Dahm, he draws the best goblins ever, although I’ll give Ben Hatke the edge in doing goblin voices at story time. If you need to get in the mood, here’s last year’s goblins for your enjoyment.

• Speaking of enjoyment (and here I am talking to comics creators), would you like to enjoy your chosen career while also having the ability to purchase food, clothing, and shelter? Of course you would! But as has been made abundantly clear, page rates for comics have stagnated badly, and taking inflation into account, are significantly lower than they were at pretty much any point since the ’60s.

  Partly this happens because publishers discourage any kind of open discussion of rates and what’s reasonable, leading to the perception that, say, a 200 page graphic novel is worth a US$20,000 advance. That’s a hundo per page, which may take ten or more hours to complete, leaving a skilled professional with a pay rate of US$8-10 an hour.

  Enter Gale Galligan (perhaps best known for taking over the Baby-Sitters Club graphic novel adaptations from Raina, whose assistant she used to be) and Ngozi Ukazu (who, given the ubiquity of her gay college hockey bros saga, should need no introduction). Prompted by the current Portfolio Day posts, Ukazu wanted to know:

  When is fair page rates day again? Some comic folks are organizing a hashtag re: avoiding unfair pay and how to know when you’re dealing with ethical compensation.

  Prompting Galligan to suggest:

  Hmmm how about a nice memorable date with plenty of lead-in time to get the word out? How’s your calendar looking on June first?

  Which looked good to Ukazu:

  Is that it? OKAY: June 1st is #FairPageRates day.

  Sorted, and if she’s good with it you should be, too. What will be discussed on Fair Page Rates Day? Galligan has some suggestions:

  SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN. See you June 1st, on #FairPageRates day, where we will be talking about fair compensation for people working in comics and everything that entails

  “Are royalties real, and should I be negotiating them? What’s a reasonable rate for x comic job?” These are all things we can talk about any time of year, but ESPECIALLY June 1, which is now officially #FairPageRates Day.

  Spread the word — 1 June, we talk money, and what just compensation looks like, because some creators that have made it (for varying definitions of making it) are decent people who don’t want to pull up the ladder behind them, they want up-and-coming creators to have an easier, more rewarding path to a career than they had.

Spam of the day:
Massive Holiday Wine Sale get 15 bottels of Holiday Wines
Received on 3 January, so not sure what holiday they’re talking about. The email claims to come from a company in Eagle, Idaho, which naturally reminded me of this.

That’s a big book haul. The photo was going to include a lounging greyhound for scale, some somedog decided she had better things to do than get her picture took, hmph! Starting from the top:

• Don’t Go Without Me by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, in fulfillment of the recent Kickstart from ShortBox.
• Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang; I’ve spoken with him briefly about this one, where Yang’s chronicling of Chinese culture and the immigrant experience meets Raina-style memoir. Likely to be a monster hit this year.
• Go With The Flow by Lily Williams and Karen Schneemann; want to be this Kids In The Hall character? You need this book which is designed to give young uterus-havers the lowdown on what’s happening with their bodies, and everybody else an appreciation for what they go through. I actually had fairly good public-school sex education starting in 5th grade, and I still expect to learn a ton. Also, a measure of how good :01 Books is — this isn’t an advanced review copy, it’s the regular release of a book that went on sale yesterday.
• Kairos by Ulysse Malassagne; one of the great services that :01 has done for comics in the US is find great work in French and bring it over. There is such a huge pool of comics and creators that are just starting to become known over here.
• Maker Comics: Grow A Garden! by Alexis Frederick-Frost; my beans have been okay for the past coupla’ years, and I hope this helps be improve them somewhat.
• Science Comics: Crows by Kyla Vanderklugt; corvids are scary smart and you should always seek to make friends with them. Never annoy a crow, raven, jay, jackdaw, or rook.
• The Phantom Twin by Lisa Brown; girl haunted by the ghost of her conjoined twin? Sounds like the best ghost story since Anya had ghost trubs.
• Astronauts by Jim Ottaviani and Maris Wicks; the story of women that have been to space, by a team that’s done some of my favorite science–oriented comics for years now. Also, Ottaviani is a fabulous person to talk to, and this remains one of my favorite interviews ever.
• Snapdragon by Kat Leyh; ever wonder what would happen if there were a witch in town, like a real witch, and you decided to make friends? Leyh has, and we get to follow along.

To be clear, it’s a coincidence that Don’t Go Without Me arrived on the same day as the trove of books from :01, but now I get to take it with me to the reading next week. I’ll be working my way through the pile as quickly as I can while still absorbing enough to give proper reviews; it’ll probably be Astronauts and Dragon Hoops first, so watch for reviews in the coming weeks

Oh, and I saw this on the tweetmachine today; it’s from October, but it’s very possibly new to you as it was for me. Eight tight pages, an unreliable narrator who is not having any more of this street harassment shit that we get to see past, and a satisfying gut punch of a finish. Words by Julio Anta, pictures by Katherine Lobo, letters by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, and if these folks aren’t planning a collection of similar stories, that would be very unfortunate.

Spam of the day:

How a Clorox Wipe Made my Herpes Disappear

Jesus tapdancing … do not rub Clorox wipes on your junk, godsdammit.

Look, there are these sanitary wipes that we used on the ambulance for decontamination. You know what’s on the top of the can? The international do not use on babies or other sensitive things symbol, that’s what. Know what’s not even in most of these babykiller wipes? Bleach. Use bleach wipes on hard, non-porous surfaces only and keep them the hell off of your joybits, genius.

______________
¹ No promises for the future; prostate cancer is basically the escape clause that says individuals like me will not live forever. If nothing else gets you, that walnut-sized gland will.

Hey, running late and sorry about that. Let’s jump into the good stuff.

• Item! Alex de Campi is one of the very best comics writers out there, and she has unerring instincts with respect to who to pair up with on art duties. Don’t believe me? Check out her collaboration with Carla Speed McNeil and Jenn Manley Lee on No Mercy, which made me want to punch characters in the face through the page. So when de Campi tells me:
  

  I’m doing a creator-owned horror thing with @EricaFails this year and I just have to say that 1) she’s the best; 2) her colour roughs are better than most people’s finished pages; and 3) this book is going to knock your socks off. The MOOD and sense of place… immaculate

  I say Welp, have to add that to my pull list when it comes out. Erica Henderson has done some great work since stepping back from Squirrel Girl, with Assassin Nation particularly showing a skill for depicting charlie-foxtrot action leading to severely traumatized bodies. I also can’t wait to see her FCBD contribution to Judge Dredd.

• Item! Readers of this page will no doubt recognize the fact that I absolutely adore the work of Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, and take no small satisfaction in seeing the entire rest of comics recognize how very good she is since Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me released. Hooray for Rosemary!

  So I’m more than happy to tell you that Valero-O’Connell will be doing a reading of her work next Wednesday night, 22 January, as part of the launch of a new monthly comics series by queer and trans creators to be held at Bluestockings Bookstore in lower Manhattan. Come say hi to all the readers, Valero-O’Connell will have copies of her latest collection for sale², and enjoy some awesome comics.

  Details at the Facebook event page, and I’ll be certain to keep an eye on future events — it’s tough for me to get out to Brooklyn (where things of this nature usually occur) and back on a work night, and the LES is a lot closer.

• Item! As you may have noticed, I now have in my possession two copies of the first print collection of Junior Scientist Power Hour by Abby Howard¹, which is one more than I reasonably need. Time for a giveaway contest. So by 11:59pm EST on Friday, 24 January, email me (that would be gary) at this here website (that would be fleen, which is a dot com) with a reference to your favorite dinosaur or other extinct critter from any of Howard’s three Earth Before Us titles. I want to know which critter and why you love it so much. Random draw will determine the winner, I’ll be in touch about getting it shipped to you.

Spam of the day:

gary.tyrrell Pay off your mortgage faster and save money!…

I am on track to pay off my mortgage ten years early but sure, I’ll click on your link and give you all my financial information for the possibility of paying it off sooner. [sarcastic thumbs-up emoji]

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¹ Also the original pages to The Most Precious Substance In The Cosmos. When I leave all my original comic art to my alma mater, some of it is going to cause more giggles than others.

² With luck, I’ll have my copy in hand from the Kickstart by then.

I believe that I’m on record that Kendra Wells’s contributions at The Nib are rad. I was reminded of this when Wells’s latest hit the web, along with a parallel thought:

Did you know that one of the reasons koalas are threatened in the wild is that they nearly all have chlamydia? And that the current bushfires hit an island that was the home of the only wild population of koalas that weren’t infected?

Yeah, so that HotCelebrityInfluencer up there in the koala bikini definitely has an STI now. And somebody that’s actually using influencer juice to help out with the devastation in Oz has been bounced from her social media accounts after raising more money that Bezos is donating in exchange for nudes. I’m not sure what lesson to draw from all of this but it’s weird where your brain goes after seeing a cartoon sometimes.

In other news, those of you in the San Francisco Bay area will want to think about heading over to the Cartoon Art Museum this weekend, and returning until mid-May; that’s because George Takei’s graphic novel memoir, They Called Us Enemy — about his personal experience being imprisoned in a concentration camp by the government of his country for xenophobic reasons in defiance of Constitutional rights — is getting the featured exhibition treatment.

Once Saturday rolls around and the exhibition opens, you’ll find details on the Current Exhibitions page, and once 18 May arrives and the exhibition closes you’ll find it on the Past Exhibitions page. For the moment, however, you’ll need to read about it here, so:

The Cartoon Art Museum, Top Shelf Productions and IDW Publishing proudly present They Called Us Enemy featuring artist Harmony Becker’s artwork from the acclaimed graphic memoir written by actor, author, and activist George Takei in which Takei revisits his haunting childhood in American concentration camps, as one of 120,000 Americans imprisoned by the U.S. government during World War II. The exhibition includes an inside look at Becker’s creative process, including excerpts from her reference library and never before seen preparatory illustrations.

This exhibition also features a selection of original artwork from the Cartoon Art Museum’s permanent collection, including comic strips and animation from the 1940s, providing patrons with a snapshot of popular entertainment on the home front during the second World War.

Opening reception — during which there are frequently creators present, along with snacks — details to be announced, but we’ll let you know when we find out. Enjoy the launch, I’d be there except I’m on the wrong side of the country and also I’ve got Richard Thompson tickets for Saturday; it’s been more than 20 years since I’ve seen him live, and near as I can tell his finger have lost nothing. If you’re wondering why I’m talking about a 70 year old guitar virtuoso, it’s because he shares a name with multiple sadly departed cartoon/comics virtuosi. Some names are just blessed.

Spam of the day:

Your Wine is Cold – 15 Premium Wines for 70% off PLUS Bottle Ugly Sweater!

Not only does that topic line make zero sense, the body of the email is touting their Black Friday sale — traditionally, the day after US Thanksgiving (this year, 29 November) — but wasn’t sent until 28 December. Are they trying to get me hooked for Black Friday 2020?

Sometimes, folks disappear. Pretty regularly, even; there’s artifacts of creativity and commentary that are lost to us forever. Occasionally, they come back, and that’s a useful thing for which we should be grateful.

If you do a search (over there in the box, underneath the archives drop-down) for “Xaviar” or “Xerexes”, or “[X]X-man”, you’ll find a stack of references — mostly more than a decade back — to the words and activities of the pseudonymous Xaviar Xerexes, who held for at Comixtalk for a considerable period of time in the heydey of webcomics. Being a lawyer has taken more of his time for the past while, but he was always a welcome contributor back in the day. He even did webcomics himself, c 2002–4, before he concentrated more on the writing about webcomics.

I think you see where this is going:

I am posting LIFE IN FOUR PANELS all this year at http://XaviarXerexes.com. Technically some of it is a repost of the same comic I created from 2002-2004 but I‘ve revised it quite a bit to be more like the story I originally envisioned.

I have plotted out a year of daily LIFE IN FOUR PANEL strips and am updating Monday through Friday at http://Xaviarxerexes.com

I’ve got all of January already done on LIFE IN FOUR PANELS and loaded to the buffer at http://Xaviarxerexes.com so I’d be grateful if everyone could check it out at their convenience. Thanks!

Now before you go rushing over there, keep in mind that this is less here’s a continuation of my webcomic from way back when and more I figured out how to do what I wanted to do way back when but didn’t know how:

At first, I was just going to re-post the strips here, but in re-reading them I realized that I hadn’t really hit the story that I had wanted to tell when I started it. So I’ve taken a lot of the original run and sorted it around so that something closer to the story that I envisioned plays out over the course of 2020.

Fifteen years is a heck of a hiatus, but XX-Man’s got the entire thing plotted out for M-F release through the whole of 2020, and if there’s one thing that being 50-ish has over being 30-ish: you’ve got a better appreciation for big pictures. As for LI4P itself, the first few (I’ll confess, if I read it in the early years of the century, I’ve forgotten) have a feel that feels like my memory of the early runs of strips like Three Panel Soul or perhaps Three Word Phrase — and given that LI4P is from before The Threes launched, it’s a bit embryonic in comparison. Or as Xerexes puts it:

I had been reading Jim’s Journal and other “anti-humor” comics at time. The idea that a comic could be kind of “eh” was pretty freeing for me at that time in terms of trying to write.

So it anticipated some other webcomics, maybe? It’s a look back at some old-school sensibilities? It’ll let you see what an intentional design from somebody who’s thought about these things for a long time looks like? Or maybe it’s just a place to see where XX-Man’s head is these days. In any event, I thought I should mention.

Quick note: I’ve got EMT stuff to do tomorrow, it will likely keep me away from computers all day, so probably no post. If I don’t see you before Monday, have a good weekend.

Spam of the day:

Ultra Wifi Pro Boos

Spammers never stop, not even when they’re ghosts.

Because a recurring theme of the manchildren that want comics that solely cater to their own preconceptions and prejudices is that anything not wholly reflecting their own identity is unnecessary politics that comics were never sullied with previously, goodness, never, a few items reminding you that politics and art — even comics — are inextricably linked.

• Word comes today that there will be a comics adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five releasing later this year, from artist Albert Monteys, colorist Ricard Zaplana, and oh that’s what he’s been working on this makes perfect sense Ryan North on words.

  A scathingly funny indictment of war, Slaughterhouse Five will anger some people just by existing, but then people like them have been angered by Slaughterhouse Five existing in all its forms for the past fifty years, and will anger other people for the next fifty and beyond. The cohort of people determined not to learn the lessons of war are as unstuck in time as Billy Pilgrim. The graphic adaptation is due in September from BOOM.

• A central part of Slaughterhouse Five is protagonist Billy Pilgrim’s unlikely survival of the the Dresden firebombing, which Vonnegut experienced firsthand. There may be nothing more terrifying than fire so widespread and hot that it alters the normal patterns of weather, physics, and reality around it, becoming a wholly unpredictable and uncontrollable entity in its own right. There’s a reason that Dresden and March 1945¹ are shorthands for destruction beyond comprehension.

  Conflagration need not come from war, but human stupidity will certainly be involved:

  As I type this (on Monday 6 January), 25 people have been confirmed killed by the fires, 7 remain missing. Well over 1500 homes have been destroyed, as well as thousands of other buildings and structures. The total area burnt so far is over 80,000 square kilometres, which is larger than Ireland, almost as large as Austria. These numbers will continue increasing for weeks, as the fires continue to burn, unstoppable in the hottest part of summer, as we suffer the worst drought in recorded history.

  Even in places not directly affected by flames, the smoke from the fires is causing hazardous air quality across much of south-eastern Australia. For over a month now, air quality in Sydney (where I live) has been marginal some days, and officially “hazardous” on many other days. Visibility has been down to 100 metres or so because of thick smoke in the air, the sun shines down with an apocalyptic orange glow even during the middle of the day, and the smell of smoke is everywhere. Ash and burnt leaves fall from the sky, even in the middle of the city. Outdoor surfaces, wiped clean, are covered in a fine gritty ash the next day. Hospital admissions are up around 10-15% because of people experiencing increased asthma and other respiratory conditions. Canberra, which is a long way from any fires, has experienced several days in a row of horrible air conditions, with many institutions and government departments shutting down because it’s too hazardous even inside the buildings for people to work.

  That from David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™ ^etc) from his vantage point in Sydney, on the ongoing fire season in Australia — which started four months earlier than usual, exacerbated by climate change-driven drought and high temperatures. The news from Down Under is heartbreaking, with serious predictions that by the end of fire season in March or April, there may be essentially no non-urban space untouched by the bushfires. Places that I’ve visited and loved may not recover in my lifetime.

  And more infuriating is the now repeatedly demonstrated utter indifference on the part of Australia’s senior governmental officials, starting with their sociopathy-demonstrating Prime Minister. Read the whole thing, get mad, and do what you can to express to your own government, wherever you are, that climate disasters aren’t abstract, they aren’t off in the future after senior officials will be safely dead and thus insulated from their effects, that we are well past prevention of worldwide tragedy, and instead playing a game of mitigation.

• And yet, even in the face of ongoing crisis, small acts of utter optimism and hope in the future take place every day. It’s a couple years late (then again, the documentation is a couple years behind the event), but let’s take a moment to welcome Elizabeth Anna Trogdor Breeden to the world, and to resolve to make her lifetime less stupidly hellish than the current trajectory seems determined to be. Vonnegut had a famous benediction for newborns that’s widely quoted, and I’d like to offer it up to young Trogdor with an addendum: God damn us, babies, we weren’t kind and now it’s all on you. I’m sorry.

Spam of the day:

Xone Phone has a smooth appeal that will turn heads due to its slick surface and pleasing texture. Hold The Vibrancy In Your Fingertips

This sounds like it should be covered by Erika ‘n’ Matt when they come back from their break.

_______________
¹ Please, Ryan, I love your work, but do not also adapt the other great narrative work about World War II firebombings. It’s the greatest piece of art that I never want to experience again.

So I trust that you’ve seen that Heidi Mac over The Beat way has combined the responses from her people-in-comics survey (cf: yesterday) to determine the most important industry people of the year (Dav Pilkey and Tom Spurgeon), and also the most significant person of the past decade.

If you read through the survey, there’s no doubt as to the consensus: it’s Raina¹, and who among us can disagree?

Well, technically I did. I’ve marked down Raina as the most important person in comics in pretty much every one of The Beat’s surveys since I’ve been invited to participate, and anybody that’s been reading this page for a hot minute knows that I don’t ever shut up about her central importance to the industry. So what was I thinking? Allow me to quote myself:

Uncharacteristically, I’m not going to say Raina/SMILE, because the past decade in comics nearly completely coincides with the work done by Mark Siegel and the people he’s nurtured at First Second.

It’s because I took a view of the entire system of comics. Raina is key, she kicked off an explosion of new readers, and there will be untold new creators of comics — new Rainas if you will — from her fanbase. But because of Mark Siegel, those new Rainas will have publishers, plural, to partner with. Siegel not only oversaw the creation of :01 Books into a powerhouse publisher, he has seen members of his team go on to found other imprints at other publishers. There’s a view of comics that he has (quoting again):

[H]ow broad comics can be — everything from board books to treatises on immigration policy — is now de facto editorial policy across the publishing industry.

Raina is the superstar that was necessary to jumpstart an industry out of doldrums. Siegel built the infrastructure that ensures Raina isn’t a one-off. If you’ll allow me to indulge in a sports metaphor — something I probably wouldn’t have ever done had I not gotten to talk to Gene Yang² about his process of discovering a love of basketball — no superstar can play the game solo. There’s an ongoing infrastructure of coaching, finding talent and developing them, building a team that ebbs and flows and spreads its influence and enables that superstar to be the best ever.

So: Raina is Megan Rapinoe, Siegel is the entire structure of women’s soccer, from college up to the pros, only without being institutionally exploitative and sexist. Shit, this probably would have worked better as LeBron/the NBA, but I really like Rapinoe.

One last quote, promise:

Literary awards, widespread adoption by libraries, growing acceptance in classrooms, the explosion of nonfiction and educational comics, creators headlining book festivals, new title announcement exclusives in major newspapers and magazines, the odd genius grant or ambassadorship — all of these would have happened without First Second, but they happened a hell of a lot sooner with First Second.

And that’s why I broke with my own precedent, despite the fact that Raina is a dear friend of mine and an absolute marvel of a human being, and coincidentally why I don’t mind in the least that I was far, far outvoted. We need the superstars and the league both, but one is too large and diffuse for us to properly appreciate all it does.

And on that note, let me point out that we are two weeks away from the release of the first title from Gina Gagliano’s Random House Graphic, The Runaway Princess, which is going to be the start of a damn interesting 2020. Forward to the new decade.

Spam of the day:

I made a screenshot of adult sites on which you’re having fun (you know what this is, right?). After that I made screenshots as you quite unusual satisfy themselves (using your device’s camera) and glue them.

Would that be the camera that I don’t have (desktop), or the camera that has a physical shutter across it (laptop)? Also, since you only gave me 48 hours from the reading of your email threat to send you five hundo in bitcoins and that was back on 19 Dec, can I assume all my friends and family have now been sent completely black pictures that I’m supposed to be embarrassed about?

_______________
¹ The Fleen Style Guide states that a full name should be used on first reference, followed by family name only on subsequent references, unless the presence of duplicated family names would cause confusion. Exceptions exist for longtime established nicknames, and for the two persons who are known on this page solely by mononyms: Raina and George.

² Do I need to say that Yang’s past decade is inextricably linked with Siegel’s?

Hey. How you doing? Have a good set of holidays? Good, good. I spent what was supposed to be rejuvenative downtime fighting a cold which is still hanging on by its bacterial fingertips, so I hope yours was better. 2020 has started out more terrifyingly chaotic — and more quickly — than I’d expected, even at my most cynical. I’ve been pretty buried in the step back from the fight and catch your breath mode that we all have to engage in from time to time, but I’m back to exercising my opinion at lawmakers with specificity and persistence¹. But today, let’s talk comics.

• I cribbed that last bit from the introductory tagline that Brad “Sexy, sexy man” Guigar and “Los Angeles resident” Dave Kellett use at the start of each episode of ComicLab (at least, once they’ve finished up with whatever weirdass random absurdity they have on deck for the cold open), and if you’re not a regular listener, let me direct you to their year-end, best-of-2019 clip show.

  There is absolutely zero useful advice in here — unless you want to get a commercial film crew to stop shooting in front of your house, or possibly to stay married — but there are plentiful hilarious stories and rants, plus Drunk Orson Welles. I advise you not drink anything while listening, because you will end up spit-taking on multiple occasions.

  Oh, and Happy Birthday to LArDK. You had a hell of a 2019 and I suspect 2020 is going to be even better.

• As long as we’re talking about 2019, Heidi Mac over at The Beat has compiled her annual survey of folks in the comics biz looking back over the year and forwards towards the next. As of this writing, the first three parts are up, but you’ll eventually find all of them (there’s usually a half-dozen or more) here. You’ll find the excessively wordy input of a hack webcomics pseudojournalist in Part 1.
• When Tom Spurgeon’s memorial service was announced, word was that in addition to Columbus in mid-December, there were tentative plans to also remember The Spurge in New York in the new year. Those plans are concrete now, with the Society of Illustrators building on 63rd the venue. New York isn’t quite the center of the comics universe it used to be, but there’s plenty of people within daytrip distance of Manhattan, and on the 24th (that’s a Friday), they’re invited to the 3rd floor reception at 6:30pm, and the 1st floor memorial at 7:30pm.

  If you’ve been feeling the absence of Tom Spurgeon for the past two months, I’m going to encourage you to attend if it’s in your means to do so. Don’t feel that you didn’t know him well enough, or that you aren’t important enough — I can tell you with absolute confidence that if Tom knew your work he wanted you to succeed at comics, and if he had no idea who you are, he still wanted you to succeed. I am undecided if I’m going to go again, but I’ll tell you without hyperbole — in these unsettled, fraught times, saying goodbye to Tom among a tiny fraction of the community he loved was a balm.

• When people say that comics is a medium of almost infinite potential, I like to think that some of them are thinking about things like graphic medicine — the idea that comics can help educate people about health and medicine, whether as providers, patients, or policymakers. Cathy Leamy has been ahead of the curve in providing comics in this niche, which has grown to the point that panels and even entire conferences are being organized around the idea; fittingly, it’s via Leamy’s Twitterfeed that I’ve learned of some upcoming events.

  Following last year’s first event in the Boston area, there will be a three-day schedule for the New England Graphic Medicine Conference hosted by Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Boston; the call for papers ends on 10 January, but given that the topic list contains such areas as artist health, climate change, comics journalism, and The Nib cited as an area of discussion, there’s probably some folks reading this that are what NEGMC are looking for.

  Then, in July, Toronto will host the Graphic Medicine Conference the weekend before SDCC, covering similar territory, with a deadline for submissions on 31 January. Note that GMC presenters are responsible for their own expenses (including conference registration), although they note that [d]iscounted rates and some limited scholarships will be available for students, artists, and others in need; registration info isn’t up yet, so no idea what that might cost you (it appears that in past years, presentation by videoconference was an option).

Spam of the day:

Get better photos with the optical zoom lens with manual focus telescope

No lie, my current phone (a midrange 2019 model) has a better camera on it than any actual physical camera I ever owned, going back to my 35mm film days. I don’t need a doodad to make that differential even greater.

_______________
¹ Truly, I never thought that I would need to have both local and DC offices for my representative and senators on speed dial.

In case you don’t feel like clicking through, it reads:

Please RT. Per his last wishes, donations of funds in Tom Spurgeon’s name can now be made to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum — specifically in support of Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC) programming. Here is the link: http://go.osu.edu/cxcsupport

The new year will be upon us soon, and with it I imagine we’ll be talking about other things. To help ease into that new world, please take a moment to think about Congressman John Lewis, who shared some grave news¹ with us over the weekend. Lewis, aside from the acclaim rightly earned with Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell for the March trilogy, is a bona fide hero, a man who was nearly beaten to death on the Edmund Pettus bridge by men who hated him for the dangerous ideal he championed — that all persons deserve equal protection of the law.

For me, I’m going to be taking to heart Charlie Pierce’s words:

John Lewis is still alive. That must be understood before the announcement of his illness causes the news cycle to inter him prematurely, and to cover the causes for which he still fights to be buried under flowers, and encomia, and empty pious bullshit of a very high grade. John Lewis is still alive. His causes are still this nation’s causes. His life’s work is unfinished, and it will remain unfinished, and the forces seeking to diminish it may pause if and when he finally passes, pauses for all the flowers, encomia, and empty pious bullshit, but those forces will be back at work very quickly after the funeral music fades. Votes still will be suppressed. Poverty still will be blamed on the poor. The question of race still will be put off for another day. But, for the moment, John Lewis is still alive.

and resolving to take up, even moreso than in past years, the fights that John Lewis fought, to get in that good trouble that he encouraged. This page has, over the past while, become more political out of necessity; I suspect it will only continue in the coming year. I do hope you’ll continue to join with me.

Spam of the day:

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You’re an asshole who is actively catering to those that are ruining the world. Fuck all the way off and when you get there, continue to fuck off.

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¹ Pancreatic cancer, for those lucky enough not to know, is perhaps the most vicious bastard in the cancer family. It it usually not symptomatic until after it has spread to other organs and although it is a somewhat rare cancer, it is among the most lethal, both in terms of mortality rates and absolute numbers of deaths.

For your consideration: the Tom Spurgeon memorial pin from Ad House Books, available for a limited time for the astonishingly low price of three American dollars each, plus shipping. I got mine today.

The art was taken from Sam Henderson’s masthead representation of The Spurge at The Comics Reporter. Right now the page is down, but that link will hopefully work again in the future; until such time as the site is working again, you always use the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive, which has The Comics Reporter archived.

While there you may note that the Internet Archive is in the midst of a funding drive, and that donations today are 2-for-1 matched, so if you’re inclined to give, today would be an excellent time to do so. I just gave ’em US$25 and I encourage you to do likewise in whatever amount you’re able.

Regardless, I hope you’re having a nice Boxing Day¹, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Feast of Stephen, or however you name this day.

Spam of the day:

High Demand for propertieS juSt like yourS review inquirieS

Odd capitalization aside, you’re overlooking one thing: if I sold you my property, that is to say the house I live in, I would have to move, and I would rather do almost anything than that. There are boxes still to be unpacked from when we moved in, May of 2004. No thank you, I will die in this house.

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¹ I have EMT duty tonight, and I sincerely hope it goes better than the last time I had EMT duty on Boxing Day. It was 2010, and my crew lucked out in that our holiday duty for the year — Christmas Day — fell on the Saturday of our regularly-scheduled weekend duty. We didn’t have to ride a holiday plus our weekend, bonus!

Saturday (we didn’t go on until 7:00pm, so the crew had a nice time with their families, although my wife was visiting relatives out of state) went fine, but around noon on Sunday it started snowing at a pretty good clip. By 4:00pm we were called out for a motor vehicle collision and it was getting distinctly hazardous. I was supposed to go off duty at 7:00pm, but as it looked like a blizzard was setting up shop, I declared an emergency² and put out an alert for all available personnel to report to our building for the duration.

I got four experienced EMTs and three not-EMTs. We figured out bedding, got dinner squared away, and I took the ambulance to my house to get my dog, who was patiently waiting for a walk and supper. By this time there was 30cm of snow on the ground and I damn near got the ambulance stuck twice³. If you’re ever called upon to carry a slightly panicky, 30kg greyhound (plus blanket and food) through 30cm of snow, I recommend against it.

We bunked down, seven folks on improvised bedding in one lounge (one young lady reported my dog slept on her most of the night, resulting in a toasty-warm experience in a chilly building), waking to:

• A deep sense of relief that no calls had come in overnight
• A total of 66cm of snow on the ground
• Our driveway and approach road clear (the town’s public works department had plowed us every three hours overnight)
• Roads passable enough to procure foodstuffs to cook for the crew

By 10:00am, with everybody fed (and the dog in heaven from all the petting and attention), we settled back, hoping that things would remain quiet.

At 10:06am, the first call came in.

Normally, our small town averages 2 or 3 calls in any 24 hour period. We took 19 calls before the crew went off duty at 7:00am Tuesday, frequently to houses that had not shoveled out their driveway or walkway. We took everything from cardiac events to a dude that had a basil leaf stuck in his throat and, quote, It’s kind of scratchy. One crew would come back from a run and collapse, tones would drop, and the other crew would go out. We hopscotched the calls in this manner until daylight faded and returned again.

Tuesday morning I stumbled home, craving my first change of clothes and shower since Saturday morning, cleaned up, went to bed, and woke up in time to go back on duty for my regular Tuesday shift at 7:00pm. Wednesday morning I went home again and slept for 18 hours. Thursday, the state of New Jersey put out a call for spare ambulances and personnel to head up to Brooklyn to help work down their backlog and on behalf of the crew still in town I said Ha, ha, ha, NO.

So yeah, hoping it goes easier than that.

² I was, at the time, Captain, the third-ranking officer. Numbers 1, 2, and 4 were all out of town for the holidays, the bastards.

³ This was the weather event you may have heard of where New York City had a backlog 3000 pending medical calls as late as Thursday, with more than 100 ambulances stuck in the snow, dozens of which had patients onboard. My little town of 13 000 folks, with seven people running two ambulances, didn’t fail to respond to a single call. I am inordinately proud of what we accomplished.