They’re getting a little clogged, you see. And what with Screamy Orange Grandpa ranting his face off today and declaring Nancy Pelosi no longer the Speaker¹, comics news is mostly pushed to the side (apart from the welcome news of Lynda Barry’s MacArthur Fellowship). So let’s make fun of some spammers!

Spams of the day:

15 Discounts For Veteran Eyes Only

Not a veteran. Next!

Netflix’s The Toys That Made Us offers a deep nostalgic dive into the minds behind history’s most iconic toy franchises, as they discuss the rise (and sometimes fall) of their billion-dollar creations.

Nostalgia is a toxic impulse. Next!

[Are you ready?] Become a millionaire or be a loser

Between the fact that I’m a homeowner in suburban New Jersey and the fact that I’ve been dutifully contributing to a 401(k) for decades, I’m going to have to say you’ve got nothing to offer me. Next!

The Tactic AIR Drone features dual cameras that can be used and viewed simultaneously or independently

I like how you almost managed to work the word tactical in there, in a transparent ploy to appeal to my fragile masculinity. However, my EMT training has taught me to not look tactical, and to keep several large, solid vehicles (or perhaps a building or two) between me and anybody that does look tactical, on account of they’re either engaged in an unfortunate exercise of 2nd Amendment FREEDOM!!! or there to deal with the first guy. Next!

sexxxlisa946@gmx.net referred you to this post: We invite you to our new website for quick SEX DATING

Sorry, I don’t know anybody named sexxxlisa; I did know a friendlyhuggglisa in college, though. Next!

I’m Zlata, living in Ukraine. To be honest, I live in a village and we have no job. That’s why I can do it for a little money: send you a video of sex with an ex-boyfriend (if you don’t put it out there!)

Sorry, Zlata, I think your ex-boyfriend deserves the same expectations of not having the video shared that you’re asking of me. Next!

The largest search engine for airline tickets in Russia.

Check me on this — aside from the very unfortunate 737 Max 8 disasters, isn’t the only commercial airline in the world that regularly crashes Aeroflot? Not really interested in taking my chances. Next!

Every Holiday we have Tennis camps for juniors. Tennis Center is located in a gated comunity Sosua Ocean Village

Why is this giving me a Jeffrey Epstein private-island vibe? Please go away.

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Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
No.

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¹ Shit, if I knew that was all it took, I woulda done so months ago in favor of AOC.

It was a week ago that I wrote about Unhealthy from Sarah Winifred Searle and Abby Howard, and the journeys that each of them has had through not only the experience of fatness, but the mental health implications of their size. I mean, it’s not just being told by society that you don’t deserve to exist that leads to disordered eating and self-destructive behavior, there’s the whole coupling between brain chemistry and gut¹ that we’re only just beginning to understand.

Speaking from the experience of growing up in a chubby family², my father would always experience serious brain fog if his weight got too low (in this case, still well into the range that is diagnosed as morbid obesity), to the extent that he was as slow and labored to respond in conversation when at his thinnest (in his late 40s)³ as he was after a stroke he had (in his late 50s). What I am saying is, our mental state is intricately integrated with the rest of our bodies, and trying to force one in a particular direction will necessarily tug on the other.

And today, we have a look at mental health from another point of view, from Erika Moen. I’ve dubbed her Hurricane Erika in the past, because she’s a force of nature, one that’s willing to share the highs and lows of her life with brutal honesty, which exposes her to griefers and jerks of every stripe, but which also likely reaches people who are vulnerable and desperately need to see that somebody else understands their own struggles. Today’s Oh Joy, Sex Toy is about both the latest variant of the Magic Wand vibrator and mental health.

In fact, it’s mostly about mental health. Starting in the comic and continuing into the blogpost below, Moen recaps her bipolar diagnosis (for the benefit of those who haven’t been following her ever since the Dar! days), shares the story of her recent interaction with an intensive outpatient program Space Camp, and her future plans for a six-month behavioral therapy program. The purpose of all of these is to figure out management strategies for adapting your life to your particular set of mental health challenges. She doesn’t sugarcoat things — it’s not a cure, and there probably is no cure.

But you can reduce your suffering. And no matter how unlike yourself you feel, making (letting? allowing?) yourself to feel physically good can help with the brain trubs.

If you’re hurting, she’s been there. She’s not a therapist and she’s especially not your therapist, but she’s been there and doesn’t want you to be there a moment longer. She knows that getting to the point of not hurting is work, and requires more effort than those of us without brains lying to us will likely ever understand. She’s helping to destigmatize mental illness, and she is a godsdamned rock star that will save lives because she’s brave enough to share. The only thing I’d disagree — politely — with Moen about is the bit in the comic where she says:

My mental health has never been great. I mean, you could probably guess that. Look at what I do for a job.

Sorry, I don’t think that getting to explore all the myriad experience of sex and test drive a buncha sexy toys/sites/experiences for review purposes makes you broken. I think it means Erika and Matt won at life. I mean, they got a fuck couch⁴ out of the deal!

Sorry, I got a little distracted. Read today’s update. Do a check in, make sure you’re okay, and that the people around you are okay. Anybody that’s not okay, follow the links she provides for resources and that structured help that’s needed. And if OJST has ever brought you amusement, or understanding, or information, or led you to a kind of personal pleasure, maybe drop her a note of thanks. Even forces of nature need a metaphorical pat on the back.

Spam of the day:

unique domains backlinks package

I can’t wait to figure out what kind of sites you’d offer me for SEO purposes that make any kind of sense. I’m talking about family medical history, mental health, and fuck couches on the same page.

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¹ All those brain chemicals that you learned about from Radiolab? Turns out as much as 80% of your body’s stores of them are in your stomach and your intestines, not your gray matter.

² Those of you that have seen or met me know that I’m rail thin; I’m also adopted.

³ Not to mention he felt like crap all the time when he was merely overweight. Constant colds and aches. At his resting weight, healthy as a friggin’ horse.

⁴ To paraphrase a wise observer of such things, When the universe offers you a free [fuck couch], YOU DON’T TURN IT DOWN.

Last week had its ups and downs, huh? I will note with some grim satisfaction that Ida Hatke’s memorial page has been overwhelmingly supported by generous people. I’m sure that Anna and Ben and their daughters would prefer anything to the reality of Ida being gone, but I am glad that they needn’t add lifelong debt or bankruptcy to their heartache. The need persists, even after the Hatkes begin to heal, so if you have it in your means to donate, please do so. Requiescat in pace, little one. We love you and will miss you.

On a badly-needed lighter note, I’ve decided to check in with Bob The Unsettling as he slowly deflates; the most unsettling thing is not that he’s smaller, it’s that his head keeps rotating further back, Exorcist-style.

And getting back to comics, let’s check in with the Cartoon Art Museum:

The Cartoon Art Museum welcomes Kim Dwinnell, creator of the popular Surfside Girls graphic novel series for a presentation and booksigning on Saturday, October 12, 2019 from 1:00-3:00pm. Dwinell’s discussion and booksigning are free and open to the public.

Sounds good. Anything else?

The Cartoon Art Museum presents an exhibition of original comic book art from the heyday of storied publisher EC Comics, Pre-Code Horror: Scary Stories And Ghastly Graphics from EC Comics, on display from October 12, 2019 through March 1, 2020.

There’s no announcement yet, but the mounting of an exhibition like this usually features a reception with food and/or booze. I’m guessing sometime adjacent to Halloween for thematic appropriateness. Keep your eyes open and don’t go down to the basement if you hear weird noises, just in case.

Spam of the day:

[deleted]

Every single one of you lowlifes that tried to spam last Friday, you’re trash. I’ve locked the post so Ida never has to compete with you.

I’ve mentioned Ben Hatke many times on this page; he’s written and illustrated many, many great books, including one just two weeks ago. We know each other from Camp, which is where I also met his wife Anna, and youngest child, Ida. They are all the best, warmest people; I was continuously impressed that a toddler could travel across the continent and be thrown in with 80 strangers and still be in a continual good humor. Joyous would be the correct word. Vivacious would be the example set by her parents.

I’ve just learned that she was injured by a horse this past Sunday and has since died. She was four years old. I cannot imagine the grief they, and their other daughters, must be feeling now. Anything I say will be insufficient to the task, but it feels like there’s a hole in the world right now.

Friends of the Hatkes have started a fundraiser to defer medical and funeral costs, which you can find here. If it is in your means to help in this tragic time, please do so. If you pray, they would appreciate that. If you don’t, keep them in your thoughts and try to do something generous, something adventurous, something good for Ida.

Hey, folks in the Greater New York City region, you know that it’s the Brooklyn Book Festival this weekend, right? And that in addition to being free, BKBF will have events and talks and interviews and discussions all over the borough, which may include not only erudite discussion of the events of the day, but also some of your favorite comics folk? If not, then let’s talk.

Comics-related people at BKBF will include Ebony Flowers (off her Ignatz win last weekend for Promising New Talent), Melanie Gillman, Sarah Glidden, Lucy Knisley, MariNaomi, Dylan Meconis, Ben Passmore, Summer Pierre, Frank Santoro, and Magdalene Visaggio. There are others whose names I don’t recognize, and some of them will show up below.

One of the great things about the BKBF bio pages is it links you direct to appearances by the folk in question, so you may want to check out the following events (all on Sunday):

There’s plenty of other events, with start times from 10:00am. There’s also plenty going on Saturday, and points to BKBF for making Children’s Day the start of the festival, instead of the end (as seen in so many events). Luminaries such as Mo Willems¹ and Jon Scieszka will be paneling, and there’s a session specifically on making comics at 1:00pm with Ivan Brunetti. It’s largely different venues from the comics talks on Sunday, so plan your travel accordingly.

And heck, I should point out that events have actually been underway all around the city since Monday (including a panel on translating Japanese, European, and Brazilian comics, tomorrow night at 6:00pm at NYU), continuing until Monday next². Much more information at the BKBF site, with a map of the Sunday venues³ available for your perusal.

Spam of the day:

Thanks for Registering at Acvark Fire Equipment

There’s a little too much Russian in this email for me to click on anything from what purports to be Jamaica’s #1 supplier of fire extinguishers.

_______________
¹ Willems is also this year’s Best Of Brooklyn Award winner.

² When we’ll see if Lauren Duca can recover from that Buzzfeed profile wherein she pitched a major wobbly, via the occasion of her book launch.

³ Drawn and Quarterly will be at booths 234 and 235, and Iron Circus at booth 122. But please note that the Heliotrope and Baffler listed on the vendor page are not the ones you’re thinking of.

Sometimes, the stars just align and a whole bunch of stuff happens at once; today, for example, the redoubtable¹ Jim Zub sees five different comics from three publishers², including two series premieres. Zub’s an incredibly varied and skilled writer, and while I’ve generally enjoyed his original work best, you know that he’s always going to do a good job with premade IP — it’ll make perfect sense if you don’t know the characters, and have a million deep cuts for those who’re up on all the continuity. Keep him in mind as you visit the shops this week.

Also of note for your pull list today: John Allison’s latest miniseries, Steeple. While not explicitly part of the Tackleverse (it takes place in the far corner of England), there are some offhand references, and anytime Allison gets to write British characters, we’re in for a delight. By Night was terrific, but American characters don’t allow Allison to use all his powers, and with Giant Days about to wrap up for good, we can use something to fill the void. And hey, maybe this will be the latest Allison project to go from miniseries to longer miniseries to ongoing, if we’ve all been good and Father Christmas smiles on us.

• If Kickstarter thought that ditching people involved in the unionization effort³ would blow over quickly, they thought wrong. I really wanted to hear what C Spike Trotman had to say, and she’s unambiguous in her feelings over Twitter way:
  

  Kickstarter is such an inherently democratic platform. Seeing the people currently in charge of it stoop to such transparently anti-democratic measures to deny their staff basic protections is incredibly disappointing.

  And Tyler Moore (one of what we may as well be calling the Kickstarter Three) answered a question that had been going around in a reply to Spike: in addition to the creators petition, there is a second petition for creators, backers, former employees … anybody with a relationship with Kickstarter. I’ve signed this one as Gary Tyrrell, 125 project superbacker, over US$7650 paid to creators, and if you think what the Kickstarter Union is trying to do is worthwhile, I urge you to consider doing likewise.

• That being said, I want to stress one last time that the Kickstarter Union is not, at this time, asking creators to forgo or withdraw projects from the platform, or backers to withhold pledges. So you should note that Spike has a new Kickstart going for the latest Smut Peddler collection. All the usual hallmarks apply — funded quickly, a day or so in, pay raises have been secured for creators and more will surely happen, it’ll appear in your mailbox when promised — along with one surprise.

  See, the collection is themed around the idea of maturity and experience, and tell me that’s not Jeff Goldblum on the cover. It’s totally Jeff Goldblum, and if you can come up with a better way to sell the idea of gettin’ it on with hot, hot older folks, I’d like to hear it. Everybody wants sexytimes with Jeff Goldblum. That’s why the FFF mk2 is predicting a final take of US$56K to US$84K when things wrap up in just over two weeks.

• Lastly, and it was getting to be a bit of a close thing so thank glob for the end-of-campaign bump, it appears that KC Green’s print collection of He Is A Good Boy has funded with just about two days to go. It was an unusually high-goal campaign, featuring reward tiers for physical items above the US$25 most-common-pledge-level-on-Kickstarter, for a smart, sprawling work that is (to be fair) not Green’s most accessible work. I get it, people want Dickbutt and This Is Fine and the easily memeable from Green, but he has these enormous ideas that may take hundreds of pages to see the whole picture, and that’s a challenge.

  But did you notice all the cartoonists that have been supporting Green and pushing this project on the sosh-meeds? They know that if you’re going to have somebody that is untrammeled creativity personified out there doing everything from short gags to massive ruminations on identity and the nature of good/evil, it makes comics as a whole a stronger, more expansive medium.

  Plus it’s a 444 page book. In a pinch, you could defend yourself from an attacker with it, a thought which I think would amuse both Green and Crange the titular Good Boy. I’d say you want to hop in and grab his magnum opus before things close on Friday, but knowing Green, he’s got something bigger, more important, more dense with meaning on deck for next Tuesday which will be his masterwork until the one after that launches. Don’t ever think you’ve seen his best and most important comics, they’re always coming at you sometime the week after next.

Spam of the day:

After only 29 days of mental training activities, her brain scan came up clean!

This is from a spam that claims Big Pharma is suppressing news of a cheap, simple treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. Only thing is, the first paper that showed it’s even possible to see the amyloid plaques characteristic of Alzheimer’s via imaging (instead of postmortem dissection) was published on 2 April of this year.

There is no fucking way that anything resembling treatment has been developed since then. You identity-thieving assholes are playing on the emotions of people who are watching loved ones slip away before their eyes, and you can’t even be bothered come up with a plausible lie. I hope you die in either a single very large fire, or a sufficient number of smaller fires.

_______________
¹ So don’t doubt him unless you’re also willing to redoubt him, buckaroo.

² Okay, so one title is a co-publication of two companies, don’t ruin this.

³ Although, the more I think of it, the more it seems that nearly everybody outside of senior management is in on the unionization effort.

This is going to be brief, not because I don’t have lots to say, but because what I have to say is ultimately unimportant. The words you should be reading aren’t mine.

At SPX, I had the privilege to talk to Abby Howard and to tell her how much I enjoy her work. I loaded up with all of her stuff that I didn’t already own, most notably Unhealthy, a pair of autobio stories by Howard and Sarah Winifred Searle. The subtitle is Two Stories Of Mental Health And Body Image.

It’s a gut punch courtesy of two women that are willing to lay bare their relationships with their bodies and the lies that their brains tell them, lies born from our society instructing us all to hate them for their fatness. Instructions that lead to self-hatred and destructive behavior, because as we all know, anything is better than being fat.

Fat means you’re lazy. Fat means you’re stupid. Fat means you’re obviously wrong and bad and unlovable and need to be shunned so you don’t get any on the rest of us because then we would be lazy, stupid, wrong, bad, and unlovable.

That entire paragraph is bullshit.

If you never thought about it in those terms, you need to read Unhealthy. If you have thought about it in those terms because of your own body, or the bodies of those you love, you need to read Unhealthy. Every high school health class should have copies of Unhealthy next to the nutrition posters, people should be handing out copies of Unhealthy outside Weight Watchers, and it should be required reading in medical school.

Searle and Howard have sacrificed and bled¹ to be at the point in their lives where they could tell these stories, to teach us the smallest bit of what it’s like to be them. It’s equal parts cri de coeur and selfless gift and at the risk of repeating myself: We don’t deserve them.

Oh, and today is the launch day for Abby Howard’s third Earth Before Us book, Mammal Takeover! I’ll be obtaining my copy as soon as possible for review, but I’ma go out on a limb and say it’s at least as good as Dinosaur Empire! and Ocean Renegades!, which is to say excellent.

Unhealthy is available for download via itch.io or in physical form from TopatoCo.

Spam of the day:

The price of one million messages 49 USD. There is a discount program when you purchase more than two million message packages. Free trial mailing of 50,000 messages to any country of your selection.

You’re spamming me to sell your spamming services? How very meta.

_______________
¹ And, because a certain percentage of society can’t exist without finding somebody to be cruel to, they have likely opened themselves to further hatred and harassment for daring to point out that they aren’t lazy, stupid, wrong, bad, and unlovable.

SPX was pretty excellent this year, everybody. I saw too many wonderful folks (and forgot to include some on the list while I was waiting for a burger, like Jamie Noguchi, Boum, MK Reed, Patrick Lay, Lucy Knisley, Maia Kobabe, Britt Sabo, Lauren Davis, Kori Bing, Blue Delliquanti, Kori Michele Handwerker, and Melanie Gillman, plus I hadn’t run into George, Raina Telgemeier, and Andy Runton yet), a side effect of the concentrated nature of excellence:space that the North Bethesda Marriott engenders.

But the trip took on an actual reporting task, as the common perception of Kickstarter’s actions last week skewed nearly 100% to They’re unionbusting. The near-universal consensus of everybody I spoke to hit several repeated points:

• Kickstarter’s upper management does not reflect the community-interface folks, who were spoken of with warmth and support. It was pointed out that the Kickstarter representatives as the show were, themselves, involved in the unionization efforts.
• Creators indicated that they’ll be looking to the Kickstarter Union folks for guidance and will follow their lead. Boycotting right now has not been requested, and would very likely be counterproductive.
• Several acknowledged the difficulty of finding a platform that could serve to replace Kickstarter if the Union calls for a boycott.
• There’s a willingness to lend voices of support to the unionization effort, to the extent that personal involvement with Kickstarter might hold any moral authority or ability to sway management’s decisions.

Speaking of the second and fourth points above, Taylor Moore (one of those ousted last week) is currently tweeting a call to action, asking creators to sign on to a petition to Kickstarter management. Not being a project creator myself I am not the intended signatory, but I’ve noticed more than a few webcomics folks retweeting and stating they’ve signed, so maybe take a look.

Specific responses when I asked if there were comments about the situation for the record:

I’ll just end on a couple of personal notes: I had a couple of people come up to me on Saturday to thank me for this page³, and one woman who told me that she took a photo of me at MoCCA 2018 to use as reference for a painting, which she showed me on her phone (and which she’ll be emailing to me soon, I hope; I’ll share it when I get it). Thanks very much, Susan, John, and Qu.

Congratulations to Colleen AF Venable and Ellen T Crenshaw, who found out this morning that Kiss Number 8 is longlisted for a National Book Award.

And congratulations to Rosemary Valero-O’Connell on your three (!) Ignatzen for Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me. I told her when I met her that her already-strong work was going to become world-class; I told her on Saturday to make room in her luggage for three bricks. So far I’m two-for-two. Back her Kickstarter, which I guess brings us full circle.

Spam of the day:

Every my part are getting hot when I see you

I am a sexy, sexy man, it’s true.

_______________
¹ They had a bunch of balloons and I saw similar critters on half the tables on the show floor. They were … yeah.

That’s mine in the picture up top. I call him Bob The Unsettling. He lives on the shelf above my computer, with my Stupid, Stupid Rat Creature. The Rat Creature has a quiche as an accessory!

² I noticed later that Evan Dahm similarly editorialized on the balloon at his table.

Oh, and that’s not a silver wang in the background, pervs. SPX has helium balloon letters of the alphabet floating above each table pod, and that’s Pod J, listing to the side.

³ One added it had been their homepage when I was in high school, which I took as a tremendous compliment. There’s all kinds of things you fixate on at that age, and a hack webcomics pseudojournalist wouldn’t make the top 1000 most popular online topics among highschoolers. Thanks for that, and for the mini — it’s good work.

This was decided a few hours prior to the news breaking about Kickstarter firing three people in the space of eight days, who all were involved in the unionization effort there. But since that happened, my trip will now be a dual-purpose wallow in some comics and awesome people trip mixed with commit some godsdammned journalism overtones.

For those that haven’t seen all of the brewing shitstorm: Clarissa Redwine asserts that she exceeded all her employment performance metrics for Q2, but Kickstarter told her she was fired for performance deficiencies. Taylor Moore says he was offered no explanations as to his termination. I’ve not seen a public identification of the third employee yet. Both Redwine and Moore have said their severance was contingent on signing an NDA/non-disparagement agreement which is both common and totally weaksauce¹.

Kickstarter, for its part, put out a statement that no employee has or will be fired for union organizing. It’s … not being received well, possibly because it reads like it was crafted in a sterile legal environment to stay on the right side of perjury laws rather than the right side of the community they’ve built.

Some webcomics (and webcomics-adjacent) folk have chimed in already, the two most significant of which are probably Andy Baio (one half of The Andys behind XOXO and the attempt to re-engineer Drip, not to mention pre-launch board member and onetime CTO of Kickstarter; Andy McMillan is the other) and George (who is probably more closely associated with Kickstarts than anybody else in the web/indie comics world).

I have some emails out to people closely associated with Kickstarter asking if they are willing to go on the record with their thoughts; one response indicates they will specifically not say anything until certain direct discussions take place, which is entirely fair. A bunch of people that have tied their business models to Kickstarter will be at SPX this weekend (including some Thought Leaders), and I’m going to ask as many of them as I can what they think, then I’m going to tell you what they said.

In advance, please do not impute motives to anybody that isn’t named in the quotes, or that you are certain you have figured out from an off-the-record comment. Just don’t. You may be very pissed at Kickstarter right now² and ready to burn them to the ground, but there is a mountain of difference between choosing to not contribute to Kickstarter campaigns, and having to suddenly figure out how — or if it’s even possible — to no longer use them as a creator platform while meeting rent. It will be difficult for more than a few of them to navigate a course between what they want to do ethically and what they are required to do practically.

Spam of the day:

Do you know that you are able to earn more than 1200 euros per day? Hurry up to be one of the first to use this method before it becomes widespread.

Take your fucking pyramid scheme somewhere else, please.

_______________
¹ How fucking insecure do you have to be as a corporation that you can’t tolerate people you fired complaining about it? Bitching about current/past employers is an inalienable fucking right.

² I certainly am, and this is what I’ve decided: I am prepared to suspend my support of future campaigns if the Kickstarter Union calls for that, which they are not presently doing. If that changes, I’ll make my intentions public.

Regardless of the requests of Kickstarter United, I will not be canceling any present pledges, because taking back money that creators expect, money that I pledged prior to this douchebaggery, isn’t fair to those creators.

All of this is subject to revision pending what I learn this weekend, and from further verified information (including statements from Kickstarter or KRSU) in the future.

Editor’s note: During the writing of this piece, news broke regarding Kickstarter firing two of the organizers of unionization efforts in the past eight days. We will address this more fully when we have more information.

In either a tremendous case of bad scheduling, or a tremendous case of making sure nobody gets left out for being on the wrong side of the country, both Rose City Comic Con and the Small Press Expo take place this weekend (RCCC, tomorrow-Sunday; SPX, Saturday-Sunday). We’ve gone over the SPX exhibitor list — please note that Box Brown announced this morning he will unfortunately not be able to attend — but let’s take a look at their programming, and what’s going on at RCCC.

SPX’s programming is simple and to the point: everything lasts just under an hour, workshops in the Glen Echo Room require signup (and are mostly filled already), panels happen in the White Oak Room or the White Flint Auditorium, and all of them start on either the hour or the half-hour (WO on the hour Saturday, WF on the hour Sunday). Some you might be interested in include:

• Queer SF And World Building (WO, Saturday, noon)
• Spotlight: Emily Carroll (WF, Saturday, 12:30pm)
• Blurring The Visual Lines In Fantasy Fiction (WF, Saturday, 1:30pm)
• Libraries And Comics: Past, Present, And Future Trends (WO, Saturday, 2:00pm)
• Birthing Stories (WF, Saturday, 2:30pm)
• Image, Activism, And Autobiography (WO, Saturday, 3:00pm)
• Friendships, Relationships, And Chosen Family In YA Comics (WF, Saturday, 3:30pm)
• Intersection Between Comics And Animation (WF, Saturday, 4:30pm)
• Science Fiction And Social Justice (WO, Saturday, 6:00pm)
• Racial Illiteracy (WO, Sunday, 2:30pm)
• Graphic Advocacy (WF, Sunday, 3:00pm)

Rose City’s listings mostly distinguish between Artists Alley being people and Exhibitors being companies. In some cases, the same floor assignment shows up on both lists, as Helioscope Studio on the Exhibitor pages, and the studio folks/friends who’ll be there (Aud Koch, Cat Farris, Ron Chan, Steve Lieber, and more) all showing up on the AA page.

As a result, it’s easy to miss people, but in addition to the folks already listed, one may expect to find: Barry Deutsch (AA05), Haley Boros (AA01), Kel McDonald (A01), Kerstin La Cross (X11), Lucas Elliott (DD11), Molly Muldoon (JJ04), Iron Circus Comics (918), Nucleus (1008), and Oni Press (901); those exhibitors will likely host associated creators, so swing by to check on that.

Of special note: the Oregon Health Insurance Marketplace will be at booth 1070 and the Washington County Library at booth 1098. I think that public service outreach of this nature is an excellent idea.

RCCC’s programming descriptions are brief, and range from celebrity fluffings to the suddenly relevant — anybody want to attend the Kickstarter And Games panel tomorrow to ask about how union retaliation fits in with being a Public Benefit Corporation? You’ll be in Room 3 at 1:30pm. Others to consider:

• Is Phoebe And Her Unicorn The Best Comic Strip Since Calvin And Hobbes? (Room 2, Friday, 2:00pm)
  I would very much like to hear this discussion.
• MAKE IT GAY, YA COWARDS! [EMPHASIS original] (Room 7, Friday, 4:30pm)
  I just love the title.
• Tales From The Long Con (Room 6, Sunday, noon) Note that Dylan Meconis is not listed as tabling or attending outside this panel, so this is your chance to thank her for Queen Of The Sea.

The Small Press Expo will take place at the Marriott North Bethesda in Bethesda, Maryland, from 11:00 to 7:00pm on Saturday, and noon to 6:00pm on Sunday. Admission is US$15 for Saturday, US$10 for Sunday, or US$20 for the weekend.

Rose City Comic Con will take place at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon, from 1:00pm to 8:00pm on Friday, 10:00am to 7:00pm on Saturday, and 10:00am to 5:00pm on Sunday. Admission packages range from US$15 to US$140.

Spam of the day:

Would you be interested in an advertising service that costs less than $39 every month and delivers tons of people who are ready to buy directly to your website?

I would be fascinated to discover what you think I’m selling.