Mea culpa, y’all. The thing that is consuming my time is … hopefully limited in duration. I’d much rather be here for real, and not banging out sporadic quick updates but it’s what I can do for now.

Speaking of, good news for people that follow webcomics:

• Ryan North has announced a new book! He’s describing as the spiritual successor to How To Invent Everything, which is sounding good already. Check it:
  

  HOW TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD: Practical Schemes and Scientific Solutions for the Aspiring Supervillain has:
  [splode emoj] real-life comic book schemes
  [test tube emoji] with actual science and technology
  [Earth emoji] across 9 viable world domination plots

  It drops Mar 15 2022: preorder now!
  https://bit.ly/RyanNorthBooks

  In a just world, I would have been discussing this work in progress with North at Comics Camp for the past two Aprils, but it is not a just world and I am learning of it the same as you. Those who know North also know there’s isn’t a malicious bone in his body and he is not actually a villain of any kind such as never-captured hijacker DB Cooper, so know that this book is entirely the product of his fertile imagination and not actually any kind of evil plot that you should be worried about. And the illustrations by everybody’s pal, Carly Monardo, should not be interpreted as giving away secret hints as to his nefarious plans. Not even a little.

• The National Cartoonists Society has announced their division awards for webcomics (long and short form), and there’s some familiar names there. As a reminder, I’m part of the committee that produces a voting ballot for the NCS, but the process is such that even I didn’t know the nominees until the public announcement¹, which you can read for yourself.

  The nominees for Online Comic — Long Form are Tom Parkinson-Morgan for Kill Six Billion Demons, Ariel Ries for Witchy, and Tom Siddell for Gunnerkrigg Court.

  The nominees for Online Comic – -Short Form are Mia Nie for Lone Shadow, Rosemary Mosco for Bird And Moon, and Nick Seluck for Heart And Brain.

  There’s not a weak nominee in the bunch and though I may have preferences, I’ll never tell. Fleen wishes good luck to all the nominees, and watch for the winners to be named at the (virtual) 75th Reuben Awards, 15 and 16 October, at NCSFest.com

Spam of the day:

Magic Pants

Unless you are talking about Icelandic necropants, not interested.

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¹ Which I gotta get somebody over there to tell me when they go up because I could have been talking about this weeks ago.

It’s Holemas, everybody, the most Ryan Northest day of the year, when we commemorate that time he got stuck in a hole so bad that it made the international news¹. The traditional Holemas Eve celebration calls for donuts (which have holes), generous slices of Swiss cheese (because holes) perched atop toasts of whole grain bread (which … aw, you get it), and plenty of beer, champagne, soda, or other carbonated beverages — because what are bubbles but mobile holes in a liquid medium?

Nothing. They’re nothing. Which is sort of what a hole is too, if you think about it.

Today is the sixth anniversary of North getting stuck in the hole; I’m not sure if that makes it the fifth or sixth Holemas, and I fear that in the future doctrinal arguments will call a schism among the faithful. Perhaps North can settle it for us and thus prevent bloodshed.

In the meantime, let us all celebrate the descent of North (and Chompsky) into the stygian depths of a hole, and the triumphant rise of North (and Chompsky) back the world above, the better to redeem us all. Don’t look at me that way; actual religions have been founded on stupider premises than a very funny, cool, tall, smart, handsome Canadian guy (and Chompsky) got stuck in a skate park bowl on a drizzly day until Twitter crowdsourced a text-adventure game solution. I for one welcome North’s lessons, that we may all find out way out of our respective holes, be they metaphorical or actual, Chompsky bless.

Spam of the day:
Can you believe that not one spam today mentions holes²? Disappointing.

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¹ I have seen a self-penned biography of North that includes that line. It will never fail to delight me.

² Probably some of the porn spams do, but they’re actually giving me a break for the past week or so.

And you know what? That’s probably for the best. I want to see and be up in the faces of and hug the shit out of all my comics friends¹ but I am entirely cool on the idea of cramming into a sea of humanity to be able to do it. It’s going to take a while to get to the point where I’d want to be in any mass gathering, and that’s not taking into account the fact that we, as a society, have apparently decided to surrender to a godsdamned plague that we were beginning to control because the smallest actions to protect ourselves and others are too much to expect from a freedom-loving people.

I hate those people. They have been trying to get me killed for the past year and a half. I have to treat them when they call 911 and I dearly wish they had decided that the way to show us all that COVID was fake would be to tattoo DNR and I REFUSE ALL TREATMENT on their foreheads.

Where was I? Oh yes, conventions.

So late summer is one of the cooler smallish conventions on the yearly calendar, and although they’re held in New York City, which is requiring proof of vaccination for indoor activities, they’ve decided the responsible thing to do is to punt again this year² and stay virtual. I speak, naturally, of Flame Con, which focuses on queer comics, creators, and readers. Flame Con will take place this weekend, Saturday, 21 August to Sunday, 22 August, from noon to 5:00pm EDT.

As editor extraordinaire (and occasional official Voice Of Popeye) Tea Fougner reminds us, programming is now publicly available:

We’ve got a great lineup of panels on activism and fan involvement in activism, some fun podcasts and performances, screenings of queer entertainment, awesome conversations about gaming communities, and panels from people creating queer content in the comics and SFF world!

Also noting that while virtual FC is free to visit, you can buy tickets to get stuff while simultaneously keeping Flame Con financially viable to conduct in person next year. Zoom backgrounds, stickers, pins, show badges, and more are up for grabs. If you’ve been to FC in the past or want to go in the future, now’s the time to give them a little love.

And for the sake of whatever you find holy, get the damn shot.

Spam of the day:

Our Medical-Grade Toenail Clippers is the safest and especially recommended for those with troubles with winding nails, hard nails, two nails, nail cracks, deep nails, thickened nails etc..

What.

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¹ Who are smart, wonderful people and definitely vaccinated.

² Quoting from the homepage:

While some states are beginning to reopen and expanding public capacities, this does not change the fact that COVID-19 is still a part of our lives. Flame Con has always aimed to be an inclusive and safe space for all. We wouldn’t be living up to that commitment, if we did not carefully consider how the pandemic has impacted our community — especially the most marginalized amongst us. Our first priority is ensuring your safety and well being.

So, we look forward to seeing you online this summer and in-person at Flame Con in August 2022!

They are absolutely correct.

As was mentioned previously, the stuff that is taking up some brain cycles continues. It’s been light posting of and it’s not done yet. Fortunately, it is the depths of summer when very little new is going on.

But that is not to say that nothing is going on, and we have some quick hits from some familiar names.

• Item! Flash sale over at Iron Circus. In honor of Friday the 13th, spooky books are 30% off until midnight CDT today. Stock up while you can.
• Item! It’s been a quiet time for new work from Howard Tayler since Shlock Mercenary ended its 20+ year run, unsurprisingly. But he’s always been more than just a comics guy, and one of those other areas is to the fore presently. Tayler is Kickstarting a new edition of XDM: X-treme Dungeon Mastery, with words by Tracy & Curtis Hickman, illustrations by Tayler, and cover color/additional interior illos by Jim Zub.

  It’s not a new printing, it’s a new, reworked edition, and it’s available until the campaign runs out¹ in four weeks. Three days in, it’s about 95% of the way to a generous US$50K goal, and the FFF mk2 says it’ll end somewhere around US$130K – US$195K. Maybe. The Fleen Funding Formula, Mark II is pretty good with [web]comics projects, less good with others, particularly games related. We’ll see.

• Speaking of Jim Zub (we were, he’s right there two ‘grafs back), he sent around an email pointing out that he’s still sharing his knowledge, and giving even more advice at his Patreon which he is considering renaming to … Zubstack.

  James J Zub, I want you to go sit by yourself quietly and think about what you’ve done. We will not even discuss how you ask visitors to your YouTube channel to watch, like and Zubscribe. Bad Zub, bad. No prize.

  In all seriousness, Zub’s got the proportional drive and smarts of a comics-writing spider² and if you’re making comics, you should be following his voluminous advice closely.

Okay, let’s his the weekend. Hopefully things will be less like they are on Monday.

Spam of the day:

Just a heads-up that I believe the word “tate” is spelled wrong on your website. I had a couple of errors on my site before I started using a service to monitor for them.

Ignoring the fact that tate is not a word, you are correct in that is not spelled correctly. It should have been taint, as in you damn spammers can snort my. Taint, that is.

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¹ And, presumably, some day at conventions if we ever get those again because people will not fucking get vaccinated or wear masks and I’m starting to have to take in COVID patients again and godsdamn are we stupid as a society.

Not that I am bitter.

² Just work with me, okay?

Hey, remember this? Yeah, it was a bit more than I’d anticipated. The fix wound up over-aggressively discarding emails and some stuff that should have come to me was swept up with the flood of spam and destroyed. Good news is the spam flood is now under control, and testing shows that the email address works again.

The bad news is I’m not sure how much I missed in there. I figured out today from clues elsewhere that Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh have launched a new Kickstart for a new “Leeds-sized” (that would be 9″ x 11.5″, which is a good deal larger than the trim size of almost anything else you’re getting) edition of the most recently completed Barbarous chapter.

Readers of this page will recall that Barbarous is great, that Chapter 5 is where the story really kicked in with a bunch of threads¹ coming together to create a very compelling whole. And now that Barbarous is back with the start of Season 2/Chapter 6, this is the perfect time to get the last one into print.

As of this writing, Ananth & Yuko are sitting a few bucks under US$25K (of a US$18K goal), about a day into the four week campaign; they’re actually higher on backers and total amount today over yesterday. The FFF mk2 says they’re on track for US$64K to US$96K which is entirely typical for their projects.

Even better, with Chapter 5 marking the end of the first story arc of Barbarous, Yuko & Ananth are offering the previous four print collections and a slipcover to put ’em in which would be really, really pretty on your shelf. They’re also offering a limited number of original pages (half of them are gone, get on that if you want ’em) at the ridiculously low price of US$250 for Chapter 5 + extras, or US$310 for the entire Season 1 (uh, those are gone). These are valuing a Yuko Ota original page at less than US$200, which is frankly ludicrous. Got them money? Jump on that.

One quick note — the delivery time on this campaign is approximately a year from now, what with printing schedules being thrown into chaos by the once and future pandemic, and with Ananth & Yuko having their business affairs run by George, I would imagine this date was chosen to be very, very conservative; recall that George has a track record of delivering backer rewards sometimes months early.

Even so, that’s far enough in the future that it’s impossible to predict what shipping costs will be like, so the campaign is not charging shipping at this time. You’ll pay that when it’s time to ship, so keep in mind that sometime in 2022 you’ll have to cough up for that.

Okay, that’s it. Webcomics pretty much don’t get better than whatever Yuko & Ananth are teamed up on. Get in on this now, or wait until conventions come back and maybe get a copy then. You’re better off getting now.

Spam of the day:

This year turned out to be very difficult. But we have optimized and reduced the cost of our products! It is almost impossible to find prices lower than ours, the sale is at the cost price level. Watch and be surprised by our super low prices

Your obvious scam might actually be slightly more plausible if you actually mentioned what your alleged products are.

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¹ If you’re a Barbarous reader, I’m so sorry. If not, trust me, that was hilarious/groanworthy.

This book review is a bit different than most that we at Fleen run, and so I’m going to do something I pretty much never do — I’m going to tell you that we are pretty much entirely spoiler free. There’s less spoilage here than you’d get reading the blurbs in the book flaps.

Now that’s out of the way, I want to start out here by saying that if you haven’t listened to the Maximum Fun podcast Bubble, you should do that. It’s funny, it’s smart, it’s got a lot to say about unfettered capitalism and the gig economy, the voice acting is great (particularly Tavi Gevinson’s narration), and MaxFun are the audio equivalent of webcomics — they even do their merch via TopatoCo.

That said, if you listen to Bubble and then give a read to the graphic novel Bubble (story by Jordan Morris — creator of the podcast — and Sarah Morgan, with Tony Cliff on art and adaptation, and Natalie Riess providing colors), you’re not going to think it’s the same story. There’s so much missing! Characters, subplots, even the famed Laser Dong¹. It’s so very different.

And that’s okay.

Because this isn’t Bubble the podcast, it’s Bubble the graphic novel, and some things won’t fit with the page count that has to be worked with, and some things won’t work in another medium. There’s a reason why Cliff isn’t credited just for art, but for adapting one kind of story into another kind.

We don’t have tolerance for adaptation, collectively, a lot of the time. There’s a reason why I maintain that the only good Harry Potter movie is #3, because they gave it to a director with a personal vision and style and let him do a movie that was not just a straight recitation of the book. Those first two movies? You could practically hear the studio execs screaming at Chris Columbus to make the movies exactly like the books, don’t screw this up, there are billions at stake here, give the kids what they want. And he did, and they were okay, but only okay. Literalism in adaptation is creative death.

Bubble (comic form) works as a graphic novel because it was designed to be one, not a transliteration of a podcast. It’s different, and either version of the story may be your favorite, and either version may seem to be lacking in comparison. That’s okay, too, because the version you prefer is still there, waiting for you to go back to it at your leisure².

And that’s what’s key here — Morris and Morgan have brought a story that if you aren’t familiar with the podcast version, stands on its own with no problems. Cliff has constructed terrific character designs, and his environments³ and action scenes are easily the equal of anything from his Delilah Dirk series. Riess brings an aggressive normality to the color palette of Fairhaven, then kicks it into otherworldly colors during fights and time in the monster-infested Brush.

Anybody looking for an older-teens-and-up romp should pick up Bubble, but as one annoyed looking father in the story says when told that his gig workers had a pretty fun conversation about cum, Well, that’s inappropriate. We have kids. That’s actually pretty typical of the tone, so you can calibrate the ages of who you want to give the book to from that exchange.

Spam of the day:

A memory storage solution is increasingly necessary for our devices, and PhotoSave gives us everything we need. This memory pen allows us to store files from any device.

You are describing a thumb drive. You can get them at the checkout lane in the supermarket.

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¹ It’s exactly what it sounds like, and it was a key enough part of the story that MaxFun made a pin.

² Alan Moore, once asked if he was upset about a movie version ruining of one of his stories pointed to the bookshelf and remarked that the story was still there.

³ Including dead-on logos for soulless corporate offerings and some really clever visual gags.

Administrative note:

I had to disable the main email account (that would be Gary) for this here domain, because it was getting swamped with spam. Like, turn my back for ten minutes and another 20 making it through. I think I’ve adjusted settings sufficiently to allow it to receive again, but I also had to purge a literal thousand spams so if you sent something and it didn’t get through, try again.

Sorry about that, we’ll try to get back to regular stuff tomorrow.

Small things I found amusing today.

• Readers of this page know that I dig everything Erika ‘n’ Matt do over at Oh Joy, Sex Toy, but of late I’ve come to have a particular appreciation for one part of their work. The reviews are still helpful, the guest comics about the wide range of human experience still valuable and enlightening, their educational work still invaluable.

  But lately they’ve been absolutely killing it on the funny, and I am so here for it. No prize for guessing who the mysterious contributor to today’s comic is, for surely that disguise is impenetrable¹.

  

• Irony of ironies, Ryan Estrada was actually banned with respect to Banned Book Club, in a manner of speaking. Tell us the story, Ryan:
  

  I just learned the National Library of Korea, the 76 year old fortress that protects 800 year old foundational documents of Korean history through multiple dynasties, also has [a copy of ]Banned Book Club.

  And it’s two blocks from the last leg of my bike trail route.

  Guess where I’m going?

  I’ll be almost 500 miles and almost zero showers into the trip at that point, so I proooobably won’t introduce myself this time around.

  Got a stack of these ready to slip into any books I spot in the wild.
  

  But it was not to be:

  Wow, I’m not allowed in the National Library. Need an appointment, and can’t get one without my passport. Amazing. I didn’t realize this place was so locked down. Our silly book’s protected like a national treasure (There’s no treasure map on the back)

  Wow, wait, this means I was banned by the Korean government from reading Banned Book Club* this is the best day of my life.

  *because I wasn’t carrying my ID

Spam of the day:

Do you want to be on the first page (or even first place) of Google search results (not to mention paid ads)? Moreover, by paying only $20 per month.

Already there, thanks.

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¹ Ahem.

Mike Holmes has been doing a lot of work in comics, from illustrating graphic adaptations of Tui Sutherland’s Wings Of Fire series to collaborating with Gene Luen Yang on the six-part Secret Coders graphic novel/programming primers. But he hasn’t yet done a full story of his own, until now.

Holmes has produced one of the most affecting portal fantasy stories I’ve ever read in My Own World; as is common the story type, the hero (a not terribly bad off but disaffected youth) finds a way into a fabulous world away from his problems. You’ve seen it a million times before, the Narnia series being the ur-example.

But protagonist Nathan isn’t in a world of fantasy beasts and people and great quests. In his realm there’s him and … not much else, really. Time doesn’t pass, others aren’t there, there’s a primordial goo he can shape into constructs or even facsimile life, but it’s basically all him. He’s not escaping to adventure, he’s escaping from the tedium and drudgery of not fitting in and (although he maybe doesn’t realize it) an incipient tragedy about to befall him. He has absolute mastery of everything that exists in his pocket universe — think hard-light Minecraft responding to his hands and thoughts — but there isn’t anybody there except him.

Before the actual magic, Holmes does maybe an even better job of portraying a different kind of magic — the everyday magic of a time a few decades ago when kids could roam as long as they were back when Mom said, there a trail through the woods might lead to a secret spot with gathered detritus to make it cool; Illicit fireworks or nudie mags a bonus. But secret hangouts in the woods only work if you’re there with friends and Nathan’s kind of short on those.

The tough kids and sorta-friends of his older brother, and the older brothers of his sorta-friends don’t really have time for him. His parents don’t really understand that setting him up on playdates doesn’t really work any more. And so he’s back to his own world, where everything stops except his hunger, leaving to make snack runs and return and heedless of the fact that he’s not where he’s supposed to be and returning anyway. There’s a sense of addiction to a place where reality is subject to whim that I don’t recall seeing before. Nathan’s not processing it in those terms from his POV, but it’s there.

And because Holmes is very, very good at storytelling, he’s not afraid to make Nathan a bit unpleasant, as surely almost all pre-teens are¹. He’s self-focused, worships his older brother (while ignoring Very Large Truths about him), and heedless of the feelings of others. Almost pure impulse and resentment at not getting to do what he wants to, Nathan rings true for anybody that remembers what they were like at nine or ten years old with an honest eye.

The escape has its cost once Nathan ends up back in the real world — the timeless time has to be paid for, and unpleasant truths he didn’t know (or tried to didn’t know) are still there. He can’t put them off, he can’t stop the wheeling of the world, he’s going to have to confront it and grow up.

My Own World is a deeply melancholy story, one best suited for readers that can look back on being Nathan’s age rather than actually being Nathan’s age. All of the awkwardness and discontent you remember feeling when much younger are brought to the fore and laid out for you to remember your own escapes into your own worlds, and how the things you sought to escape were still waiting for you when you returned.

My Own World is published by :01 Books, with words and pictures by Mike Holmes and color assists by Jason Fischer. It’s available wherever books and comics are found.

Spam of the day:

Are you sick of your marriage and feel stuck? It is time to do something about it. Times are very difficult admist the pandemic and sometime we need to try something different. Cryptocurrency is the biggest techological revolution since the internet. Do not miss out on this!

If you’re sick of your marriage, may I suggest either couples therapy or a divorce lawyer prior to crypto? They’ll be more useful.

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¹ Teens bring their own unpleasantness to the table, but they aren’t the focus here.

Readers may recall that about a month ago we checked in on Doug Wilson — animator, comicker, and about to be Kickstarter — and his now-completed story, Jack Astro. I told you at that time that the campaign to print Jack Astro would go up in two days and to check it out. Some of you might have had some difficulty doing so, as Wilson explained to me:

I actually had to delay the kickstarter because of [reason]. Apologies for any confusion.

The Jack Astro Kickstart actually went up this past Monday, but the delay hasn’t hurt things — it funded in about six hours and is presently sitting around 250% of goal. Even better, to make up for the confusion, Wilson sent along an exclusive one-page comic he drew to promote the book (you can see it up top, or embiggen by clicking that last link), as well as a three-page section and process art.

Everybody thank Doug, and if you like what you see, you’ve got another 26 days to get in on the campaign.

Jack Astro: pages 136, 137, and 138.

Initial thumbnail. Pencils of the same pages.

Spam of the day:

Groß wrote: Reparaturklebeband. Ducttape. Breite: 50 mm. Dicke: 165 µ. Trägermaterial: Gewebeband. Klebstoff: HOT-Melt. Rot, weiss, schwarz € 0,40/Rolle.

I’m a little scared that I can make out at least three quarters of that. Don’t really need your red, white, or black 50m rolls of duct tape, though. Thanks?