Friday is a busy day for comics types in Juneau; Pat Race, Aaron Suring, and the other Alaska Robotics folks have been in contact with schools across the region, and there will be fifty assemblies and class talks that take place today. Consensus best one: The Toronto Man-Mountain went to a junior high class that’s been intensively studying Shakespeare and his choose-your-own books are a hit. They got all the jokes and smutty bits Willy S hid in iambic pentameter!

In the time before, after, and between their visits, a steady stream of creators passes between the lobby of the Juneau hotel where most are staying, and the aforementioned Rookery for coffee, tea, snacks, lunch, and good times. I was talking with Erika Moen¹ (force of nature and Beetmistress General) and Molly Ostertag (creator of my favorite book of 2017) in the lobby and we wandered into The Rookery for hot beverages.

This was where Georgina Hayns — late of Laika Studio, now taking time off before deciding on the next stage of her professional life — found us with a box that claimed to contain … I want to say a medium-sized florescent light fixture, but maybe it was a smallish set of blinds? Anyway, about the length of a box of aluminum foil, with a 50% larger cross section. Do you want to see ParaNorman? she asked, as if people say no.

This, she explained, was her own puppet (gifted to her by one of the animators), and she let us get our grubby hands all over it. Having had the opportunity to play with multiple puppets from Kubo And The Two Strings last year, I knew that Norman’s face would pop off and proceeded to do so immediately; it’s possible that Ostertag and Moen thought I’d just mutilated Hayns’s priceless possession, but any trepidation quickly gave way to fascination with the puppet.

Here’s the thing — the Laika animation puppets defy that simple word. They are perfectly designed objects that are both practical and aesthetic at the same time. There are few things that blend function and form so well, I told Hayns — the Zippo lighter, the Fender Strat, the Swiss Army Officer’s Knife — but ParaNorman (and Coraline, and Beetle, and Eggs, and all the other stars of Laika’s movies) falls squarely into the category. I appreciate the artistry, and the engineering in equal measure. Plus, check out the wardrobe. Somebody had to reproduce the scuffs and tears in Norman’s clothing across dozens of iterations of the puppet.

Friday evening is given over to a public show at the Juneau Public Library; Seth Boyer, Marian Call, and Molly Lewis sing songs and play comics folks on with appropriate snippets (Raina Telgemeier enters to her name being sung to the tune of My Girl²; Molly Ostertag gets Concerning Hobbits from Howard Shore’s Lord Of The Rings soundtrack) as they each spend five minutes on something interesting. Raina does a reading from Smile, and Ryan North reads his recently-announced children’s book How To Be A T-Rex³.

Ostertag talks about how to run a D&D game; Andy Runton shares an Owly short; Vera Brosgol shares the research that went into her stellar Be Prepared (a book she shared the beginning pages of here last year). Ben Hatke talked about why drawing Wolverine in nonstandard costumes (ex: Vampirella) and saying Bub is always funny; Jon Klassen did a reading accompanied by Boyer on guitar — Can you make it sound like Zorba The Greek? asked Klassen. As it turned out, Boyer could.

Shing Yin Khor shared her love of roadside America’s greatest public art series, the giant fiberglass muffler man in all his infinite variations; Dylan Meconis shared a story-in-a-story from her forthcoming Queen Of The Sea, and C Spike Trotman talked about why everybody who thinks aliens built the pyramids of Egypt is an idiot who doesn’t know their history. Lucy Bellwood spoke about, oddly, not boats, but the process of creating 100 Demon Dialogues and the attendant little jerk; Scott C closed things out with a discussion of his past career and how one comes to do a painting of Jeff Goldblums or Carl Sagans or whatever strikes your fancy. How many Carl Sagans are there, you guys? Can science answer this for us? Maybe.

There was an afterparty in a house designed for large groups of people to mix easily and comfortably; there was amazing ice cream (charred coconut and wild blueberry) and chili and cornbread and far too little sleep. The morning would require packing up, packing in, running a convention, packing out, and heading to Camp. Juneau was behind us, and a long road ahead.

Pictures:

Not so many this time, since I was running A/V for the Library show. But you still get to see Norman, the incredible detail in his clothing, and what he looks like without a face.

Here’s a fun game: how many famous cartoonists can you find in this picture? For reference, that room at the Juneau Library was entirely set up, populated, entertained for two hours, and cleaned up again in about three and a half hours; much of that was down to the well-organized MCing of Pat Race, who kept things humming.

Seth Boyer and Andy Runton were the only performer and presenter I managed to get pics of. Like I said, I was busy.

_______________
¹ Who did not get murdered by a serial killer. It’s not my story to tell, but if you know her IRL, ask her.

² Taaalllkin’ ’bout Raaaainnnna, Raina!

³ Best part of this book? It’s got multiple places where whoever is reading (or reading along) gets to ROAR, which makes kids really happy.

For anybody that’s read this page, you may recall that Comics Camp was a major formative experience for me in 2017; if you wish, you can read about 10,000 words on it here.

The first I realized I was truly on the verge of Comics Camp this year was 26 April, early afternoon in Juneau; I was 13 hours and four time zones from when I started my day at Oh-Stupid-Thirty, and I stared out of my fourth floor hotel room and pretty much directly into what looks like the kitchen of a house not that far behind the hotel. Juneau is a very vertical city, populated at all times by ravens, at some times by wolves and/or bears, and pretty much nonstop by eagles if you’re near the dump. A raven alighted on the roof of the house whose kitchen I was staring into, nonplussed.

The thing about Alaska Robotics, the one-day con they put on, the myriad of school visits by creators they arrange¹, and the Camp associated with all of the previous, is that it’s run by the very best people, attended by even more of the very best people, in a location that is almost as far as it could be from my home. As I find myself past the half-century mark, the travel necessary to attend these marvels is taxing in ways it would not have been ten, or even five years ago. And as I find myself in an increasingly chaotic society, those rigors of travel become a price I am increasingly willing to pay.

Thursday is the travel day for most who are making their way to the Mini-Con/Camp², so the afternoon is largely open; I dropped by the Alaska Robotics Gallery (a comics/game store, with art supplies and magnificent works of local artists) to get my volunteer assignments for the Mini-Con, as well as my staff t-shirt. I also make arrangements for my assisting gig at the kick-off event of Comics Time in Juneau; the musical cohort of Camp — Marian Call, Seth Boyer, Molly Lewis — will be playing at local cafe The Rookery³ and there’s seating to arrange and a door to watch.

The show is the latest iteration of Call’s Space Time series, which often involves writers, scientists, Flight Controllers and Directors … you get the idea. Tonight, it’s Three musicians and a series of comics artists that will be livedrawing along to the music. There’s a local poet, Catherine Hatch, talking about relationships and fighting and compromise If You Want Your Laundry Folded. There’s a reading from The Little Prince (the meeting with The Businessman); the tone slides from earnest to silly to contemplative and back.

Lewis sang her ode to Juneau hirsuteness, The Year Of The Beard. Boyer brought the room to tears with the saddest, most melancholy song in English. Call shared the story of how her signature tune got turned upside down and backwards via a musicbox and a Moebius strip, and became a tribute to last year’s eclipse. Georgia Patton, Lee Post, Lucy Bellwood, Lucas Elliott, and Kerstin La Cross took inspiration from the songs and created Art.

And through it all one thought resonated, but was finally brought to voice in the refrain of the second to last song of the show, which is also the last song of Call’s latest album:

Beggar, Banker, King, and Pawn
We’re only bones with stories on

We are the sum of our stories, the ones we tell each other and the ones we tell ourselves. The storytellers were gathering, and Juneau was poised to listen.

Pictures:

The crowd gathers, and the performers perform. Pictures drawn to Good Morning, Moon, No Paper, The Year Of The Beard, Pantsuit Sasquatch, Frozen Man, the story of The Businessman, Good Night, Moon, I don’t recall which song, Mediocre Algorithmic First Date, The Avocado Song, don’t recall again but man, it’s pretty, All Star, Like This, Grandpa Had It Right, and Space Weird Thing.

Music:

• Something Fierce by Marian Call (includes Good Morning, Moon; The Avocado Song)
• Standing Stones by Marian Call (includes No Paper; Like This; Mediocre Algorithmic First Date; Grandpa Had It Right)
• Fun Singles In Your Area by Marian Call (contains Space Weird Thing feat. Molly Lewis)
• Frozen Man by James Taylor (covered by Molly Lewis feat. Marian Call)
• The Same Old Songs, But Live by Molly Lewis (includes The Year Of The Beard)
• Pantsuit Sasquatch by Molly Lewis (demo)
• Get Rekt by Seth Boyer (does not include All Star, but that’s why we have YouTube)

Spam of the day:
Sent away until Camp recaps are done.

_______________
¹ More than 50 of them this year; last year, it was closer to 35.

² At least, those who are coming on the exhibitor side of things; attendees will be making their way to Juneau from across Alaska, but not until after work on Friday in many cases. Alaskans think nothing of hopping down to the local airport and flying for hours in this fashion; organizer Pat Race would recount stories of traveling a thousand miles or more in order for his high school soccer team to play in an away game. Things are just bigger up there.

³ Run by lovely people, and home to some of the most outrageous cookies known to humanity. Try the Chocolate Chip, Cornflake, and Marshmallow cookies.

That is to say, a bunch of work and nonwork stuff must be dug out from under, then we can get to Camp Stories. In the meanwhile, I’ll note that two separate webcomics Kickstarts have launched an overfunded since the first, and that’s good. On the one hand, you’ve got the first and last collection of Surviving The World by Dante Shepherd and/or Lucas Landherr¹, and on the other you’ve got the all-sex ed collection of Oh Joy, Sex Toy by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan².

But most importantly, Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin has been thinking about how we relatively measure crowdfunding campaigns, and he is ready to share. Let’s see how things compare and contrast with the other side of the Atlantique.

How do you assess the scope of a comic crowdfunding campaign?

This is no simple question: even if the total amount of funds raised is an indicator, it is only approximate. And now we have to consider creators and campaigns where that amount is not disclosed, most notably seen with Maliki (as previously covered), but for their campaigns Skuld and Editions Rouquemoute have adopted this custom as well, for instance.

We could use the unit count instead, including for other campaigns: even if it is not directly disclosed, just add up the number of pledges per reward level (and multiply if necessary for these levels that have 2 or more books as reward), since all crowdfunding sites provide that information; for instance, for the first campaign for Comme Convenu, the unit amount comes to 7982 books³. For some purposes, that can be useful.

However, book size and page count can and does vary widely between independent comics, which means the raw unit count is not a good indicator for many purposes. How many pallets a book print run takes certainly depends on more than just how many there are, for instance.

That is why I am proud to introduce the Comme Convenu Equivalent Book, or Book_cce for short. A Book_cce amount is proportional to the amount of comics ordered, being the product of the page size, the page count, and the raw unit count. Of course, since that would give an amount in terms of cm² (centimeters squared, not a footnote), a more practical unit is necessary, whose definition is as follows:

One Book_cce is defined as one 7982^nd of the amount of comics preordered during the first Comme Convenu campaign.

How should it be applied? For the first Comme Convenu campaign, of course, it’s trivial: by definition, it represents a preorder of exactly 7982 Books_cce; for a real example, let us take Maliki: Blog: we are in luck, as the size is the same (A5), so we only have to take the page count into account (or rather the page counts, since the collector edition has 16 extra pages), and apply a rule of three, which gives us ((304×2197) + (320×6330))/264 = 10203 Books_cce (rounded to nearest: no point in keeping decimals).

While it can serve as a general indicator for the scope of a comics crowdfunding campaign, where this indicator is most useful is to estimate the scope of the printing and bulk shipping job, as well as the storage requirements, for instance: They have cleared out their garage in preparation for the reception of the print run, after their 5713 books_cce preorder campaign. It is less useful to assess the scope of the fulfillment job, where backer count (rather than unit count) multiplied with the number of extras (plus one) would better indicate the complexity.

A few notes: back editions of books that are being sold as part of pledge levels are counted provided the campaign will contribute to their reprint if necessary, which is almost always the case, so for the second Comme Convenu campaign, the total has to be 12688 Books_cce (9501 for book 2 and 3187 for book 1). Digital copies are not counted. The official French translation of Comme Convenu Equivalent Book is Exemplaire Equivalent Comme Convenu or Ex_ecc for short. And of course, the FFFmk2 predictor can be applied to that indicator just as well as to the total money amount or the unit count.

Updated to add:

Totals sampled at May the 4th 2018 12:30 CET (24 hours after start of campaign):
2369 backers over the following levels

• 233 classique (304 pages)
• 1080 collector (320)
• 109 pack (304 + 304)
• 705 super collector (320)
• 132/130 pack collector (320 (+ 320 not counted for cce))
• 110/130 pack super collector (320 (+ 320 not counted for cce))

Which gives us 2976 Books_cce

Campaign duration is taken to be 27 days

FFFmk2: 12793 to 19189 backers
16072 to 24108 Books_cce

I find it interesting that the American approach for assessing crowdfunding (FFFmk2, McDonald Ratio) focuses on amounts raised, and the French approach looks at what is being created (how many pages/what size). It even carries over to the crowdfunding sites themselves: Kickstarter et al usually feature stretch goals in terms of money raised, but Ulule commonly looks at units ordered.

Yes, there are people that do stretch goals in other ways — looking at you, Inman & cohorts, but it’s almost always in terms of dollar value over here. I’d not ever considered applying the FFFmk2 to backer counts or units produced. I’m pretty sure there’s some revealed truths about national character there — tangible people and things vs the fiction of money — and we at Fleen thank our colleague Pierre Lebeaupin for prompting the comparison.

Spam of the day:

Anastacia_1502 sent you a SEXT, Respond Now! (no body)

Nnnnnooo, that picture is definitely of a body, and a pretty damn naked one at that.

_______________
¹ Who sent me a very nice note not to promo his crowdfunding, but to congratulate my on my 25th anniversary. Danteluke’s a classy guy.

² Likewise, I spent days at Camp with Erika Moen and we spoke about her beetlings at length, but not a word of self-promotion. She even let me look through her beetling sketchbook! I believe that this bit of germination talk is what caused my bean plants — when I left New Jersey there were two small sprouts — to erupt in my absence. As I have said before, Erika Moen is a force of nature.

³ I initially miscounted that as 8342; consider this a correction.

As I believe that I may have mentioned one or two times, tomorrow I awake Stupid-Thirty and make my way to Juneau for Alaska Robotics Mini Con and Comics Camp; as a result, I’ll be largely absent from The Interwebz for the best part of a week. So let this be your last bit of that Fleen-Flavored Goodness¹ for a while.

• Speaking of Camp, I believe that Shing Yin Khor will be there, and I wanted to point you to something really cool she built recently. Some things, plural, to be accurate. See, when Taneka Stotts accepting the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Anthology for Elements (in her role as editor), she wanted a way to honor all of the contributors.

  Enter Khor, and a sledgehammer.

  She took the brick (the Ignatzen are actual bricks) and crunched it up into slivers, mounted them onto triangular wooden bases — the upright triangle is the alchemcial symbol for fire — and added little engraved nameplates. It’s as classy an acknowledgment of one’s collaborators as I can recall in comics, and I thought you should know about it.

• Something else I think you should know: although large corporations stealing the art of independent artists persists at a shameless rate², there is an important new development. Susie Ghahremani called out a variety of related companies for stealing pin designs, and has scored an important precedent in what appears to be federal court:
  

  Basically, this says if you put your name and/or other identifying information on your work (as we did), and someone removes that (as they did), they broke the law. And if they put their own name or other branding on copies (they did), they broke the law AGAIN.

  The infringers were trying to argue that the art they stole was too simple and therefore not deserving of copyright. No, really. Of course, they don’t mind associating with simple designs as long as they get to make money from it, I guess? Anyway, the precedent is a powerful tool the next creator who wants to actually own what they created for themselves can use, and not a moment too soon.

  Because Old Navy has been caught stealing designs from Lili Chin and are actually having their lawyer try to get a judge to order Chin pay for the privilege of being sued because she called them out. But now there’s a precedent, and if Old Navy’s lawyers aren’t aware of it, they should read up quickly and re-evaluate their strategy.

  Now I don’t know which jurisdiction Old Navy is pulling their shenanigans in, but I’m guessing that since it’s a copyright matter, federal law pertains (but, obviously, I Am Not A Lawyer). Here’s hoping that since they’ve decided to be dicks about it, this precedent bites them in the ass and provides a significant deterrent for the next corporation that decides to be dicks. Hey corporations, want to get good designs from artists? Fucking well pay them.

Spam of the day:

Natalie wants to share her 21 private photos, Access NOW, nbwabi

Huh, nbwabi appears to not be completely random, and previously appeared on page 4 of The Daily Times from New Brunswick, New Jersey, dated 13 May 1893. Weird.

_______________
¹ I’d like to say that sounded better in my head, but it really didn’t. Let’s not do that again.

² And it seems to me, in a more aggressive form. Used to be a company caught art thieving would blame a junior designer or contractor and promise to never do it again, cross their heart. Now, they’re fighting in court to defend their right to violate copyright.

You’re a monster, Zach Weinersmith, a monster for today’s strip (trimmed above so as not to give away the punchline). And the extra gag (or votey, as the cool kids call it) was even more cruel.

It’s all so mean, in fact, that all I can do today is present my occasional Clearing Of The Spams in lieu of anything else that might require me to feel joy, damn you. It’s impossible for me to note that today is the release date of Vera Brosgol’s superlative Be Prepared, or that today’s Oh Joy, Sex Toy [NSFW, obvs] contained a nice little namecheck of ComicLab with Brad Guigar and Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett¹. Nope, it’s nothing but spams today, thanks ZACH.

PS: Yeah, okay, it’s not like you haven’t warned us before.

Spams of the day:

But as for the mystery of what happened to Australia’s megafauna, Price said: “The reality is that we just don’t have that much information.”

This eventually shifts around to the topic of knockoff NBA jersey available for bulk purchase from China. It’s kind of impressive, really.

The persons shown in photographs in this email may not necessarily be actual users of loveswans.com

Well, yeah, seeing as how it’s women in the photo and not swans.

The persons shown in photographs in this email may not necessarily be actual users of asiacharm.com

And another thing, as long we’re doing boilerplate disclaimers and what claim to be unsubscribe addresses — are you in fact located in Inverness, Scotland, or Madison, South Dakota? Because you use both addresses in all your spams, and South Dakota is not exactly known as a place you can get good single malt, golf courses by dramatic seaside cliffs, or fog-enshrouded moors. Make up your mind, already!

Nude selfies of women you most likely know are available for you to view

Those women are not nude. Do you get how words work?

Chase Finance

I get the feeling this is a setup for a joke. Is your finance running? Well, you better catch it!

Ever heard of Medical Bill Sharing? See if you qualify!
Christian Healthcare is a community of devout Christians helping each other out with unfortunate healthcare burdens. It is flexible, compliant with the Affordable care act, and provides a proper sense of community

Yeah, lemme stop you there. One, your cost-sharing model seem to shortchange people right when they need help the most (especially if the folks reviewing claims decide the claimants aren’t righteous enough). Two, you aren’t an insurance plan, and you replicate many of the drawbacks that the Affordable Care Act meant to deal with. Third, do you know that you’ve got the same opt-out address as the mail order bride folks up above?

_______________
¹ Persevere. You gotta scroll down a ways before you find the plug (so to speak).

So I’ve spent the day trying to get Work Stuff™ in shape before I head off for The Comicest Place On Earth (aka Alaska Robotics Comics Camp), and there were issues with the site¹, so this is going to be a bit brief. Then again, it about something that, if you’re truly interested, you don’t need me talking at length, you need a link and then for me to get out of the way.

So then — on Friday last, C Spike Trotman (who is making noises about a YA line within Iron Circus, about which I will be certain to ask at ARCC) released a new e-book on the topic of marijuana. Not about the legal fights over legalization, or about the disparities of unequal prosecution and incarceration, but about the practical, nuts-and-bolts details of how to get high. Totally high, mildly high, completely balls-tripping high, plausibly deniable high, the whole range:

Twenty-six states and Washington, DC have decriminalized or legalized marijuana use, and more are joining the policy shift every year. Dispensaries are popping up everywhere, and experienced users are openly rejoicing—but where does that leave the marijuana newbie, cowed by years of Just-Say-No disinformation but curious about what they’ve missed?

Written by experienced, conscientious users and presented in an easy-to-read comic book format, How Do You Smoke Weed? fills that gap, covering everything from weed history to strains, couch-locks to body highs, and edibles to vaporizers. Perfect for the cannabis-curious, and with new insights for the veteran smoker.

Apart from the comics aspects, this is something I have absolutely zero interest in. My experiences with pot consist of a painful, resinous feeling in the back of my throat from being around people that smoke, which means I’ve never tried it myself because damn, it hurts just to be adjacent. Also, having a bedroom across the hall from my brother in high school, I probably would have failed any pee test due to proximity.

But you know what? ‘Long as y’all aren’t blowing smoke in my face (or stinking up my house), do what y’all want. Oh, and every state that legalizes weed? You have a moral obligation to release and expunge the records of everybody you imprisoned for possession².

You can find HDYSAW? in the Iron Circus Shop for five bucks (which will certainly pay for itself in reduced experimentation costs, if nothing else), 82 pages of non-hysterical info for your reading pleasure and future reference.

Spam of the day:

Check credit scores instantly

Gee, I dunno, what do you get from scrupulously paying off everything in full every month since forever?

_______________
¹ Grumble, grumble, DNS not finding my site on the wired internet, but phone’s over-the-air data working just fine.

² And, barring ancillary crimes of violence, dealing as well.

This is the official notice that there will be only a few postings next week, and most likely none the week after; I’ll be going dark to accommodate my travel to beautiful Juneau, Alaska, for the Alaska Robotics Mini-Con (Saturday, 28 April) and the Comics Camp that follows immediately thereunto. A murdersworth of amazing creators will be there, and I’ll have all the news when I get back in early May; if you’re curious if you should attend Mini-Con and Camp some day, the answer is almost certainly yes; if you’re wondering what the experience is like, I happen to have 10,000 relevant words.

• Update: John Keogh is providing us with new comics at a deliberate — some might say sensuous — pace. Enjoy numbers 34 and 35.
• Magnolia Porter, as this page has noted more than once, tells good comic stories. Monster Pulse is the most visible, but she was responsible for a goodly chunk of some video games, which offers a very different set of story demands. And today comes word of another project that’s more different still.

  Physicians for Reproductive Health have told the stories about people and their health care needs, and they’ve discovered that comics is an effective medium; they’ve partnered with Porter to produce a comics series titled This Is Life to accompany some of those stories. The first one concerns a young soldier who discovered her pregnancy the same time she was diagnosed with kidney cancer; the story is compelling enough, but distilling it down to four panels in Porter’s open, approachable style focuses the narrative even further.

  The compact nature of the story makes it easy to disperse via social media, and you can find this first installment on Twitter under the hashtag #ThisIsLife (which, quite frankly, is a bit crowded with messages; maybe search the hashtag specifically within the account?). These are going to be tough stories, and Porter is going to do them justice.

Spam of the day:

ALERT Bank Account Exceeded Login Attempts If This Was Not You Please Call Now, Your Information Maybe At Risk 1 855-261-6462

Motherfucker, my bank account name bears no relation to anything that identifies me, the password is maximum length, it requires a physical 2FA token, and I’m posting your identity-thieving number here so that people can call you up and give you shit. Sod off.

The last time Vera Brosgol wrote a graphic novel, I had this to say:

I could go on for another 1000 words and still not address these adequately, so let’s just finish up with the facts: Anya’s Ghost goes on sale on 7 June. It is 224 pages long, was written and drawn by Vera Brosgol, and is the best comics work of 2011.

That was just about exactly seven years ago, and if there’s one thing you can say about Brosgol, she’s consistent. Her new autobio-graphic novel from :01 Books (who I thank for the review copy), Be Prepared, goes on sale 24 April. It is 256 pages long, and is the best comics work of 2018. I’ll qualify that with a so far this time, because quite frankly the graphic novel game has gotten so much stronger in the past seven years, and we’ve got books from top flight creators on the way. More about the book below, with spoilers aplenty.

Vera just wants to fit in, like any other nine (almost ten!) year old girl, but she doesn’t. She’s too different, too poor, too Russian. The rules of fitting in are pretty clear (sleepover parties with Carvel ice cream cakes and stuffed-crust pizza), but the execution just isn’t quite there (cake from the Russian bakery, pizza with crusts tragically devoid of stuff) and so she sits on the periphery of grade school social circles, drawing and wondering where she’ll fit in. Most of all, all the other kids clear out for summer camp, leaving Vera and her brother Phil the only kids in town.

Until she learned about a camp where she’d surely fit in — a camp for Russian expat kids and their kids, a camp that understands the mysteries of Slavic language (they keep chiding her to not use English), a camp that knows about the Orthodox ritual, a camp full of kids just like her.

Except even when you’re with the kids you’re just like, snotty teenage girls are still snotty, open-air latrines full of spiders are still disgusting, and boys — from eight to eighteen — are still infuriatingly immature and gross. It’s going to be a long two weeks.

Did I say two? On the day that she’s supposed to come home, Mom has news: she’s got an important job interview, and if Vera and Phil can hang in there another two weeks, it could mean a job that she’s been working towards ever since they came to America; the sort that could keep them from being too poor (but Vera knows she’ll still be too different and too Russian). It’s a huge sacrifice for a nine year old, staying where the other kids hate you and the counselors don’t understand and you have to poop in a hole.

It’s even more painful when she realizes that in some ways, she’s been picking up the mean girl lessons too well; Vera catches herself in some incidences of casual cruelty, shocked at herself. It’s cringey and painful in exactly the right way, like all realizations that make us better people. It accompanies the occasion of making a friend, of rising above the disdain of snotty teen girls, and finding a way to get back at the boys¹. The remainder of camp gets lighter (even if you have to poop in a hole), and the prospect of returning the next year becomes less horrifying — but still not as appealing as the idea of a hike around the park at home, where they have toilets.

I’m certain that when the book launches next week (and sees its premiere at the Alaska Robotics Mini-Con in Juneau, next Saturday), Brosgol will have plenty to talk to kids about. The experiences she writes about are so true, so universal (and so, so funny) that they’re going to declare her a kindred soul. Every kid that finds themselves on the outs, awkward, unsure, hiding behind their glasses, will find themselves in this book, and find a bit of hopefulness for the future.

Because by the end of the book, she’s getting the hang of it just a bit. Maybe her first friend is at Russian camp and lives far away, but she’s a friend. And if she can figure out how to navigate mean girls at Russian camp, she can figure out how to do it back in Albany! She’s finally — finally — starting to feel at home in America, if not yet American.

But to be Russian is to suffer, and there’s one more upheaval in store as the book winds down; Vera didn’t fit in in the upstate suburbs, she didn’t fit in at Russian camp, and now she’ll have the opportunity to reset and not fit in someplace completely new. There’s a natural hook for a sequel in the closing pages, and I just hope it doesn’t take seven years for it to come to fruition.

But if it does? I’ll have a spot on the bookshelves waiting for it — like young Vera, I have learned to Be Prepared.

Be Prepared goes on sale Tuesday, 24 April, at bookstores everywhere.

Spam of the day:

Some things are better left to the professionals

I was afraid to see what kind of pornspam this was, and relieved to see it’s actually for Terminix pest control.

_______________
¹ Which required the development of sweet ninja skills. Nine year old (almost ten!) Vera is so cool.

John Keogh has been one of the most detailed (and simultaneously disturbing) webcomickers ever since the days of Lucid TV (which now exists only in the memories of those that followed the adventures in Jim Belushi Memorial Hospital). Every once in a while he pops up with an insanely detailed poster or album cover or tranche of comics. There is little warning when this happens; he just says Comics and there they are.

• In this case, on Twitter, with the first third of one damn hundred new comics. They’re all amazing, but I most enjoyed those titled Ultimate Hubris, Bread That Gets You High, Unbridled Male Sexuality, Uncle Boonmee Who Is Supposed To Be In Jail, West Coast Turnaround, Hungry Ghosts That Fear Iron Objects And Water, Kush Purp Strong Dro, Orange Julius Secret Menu Password = “Fucked Up Julius” Orange Julius Double Secret Menu Password = “Dark Julius … Strange, Painful Julius”¹, The Cult Of The Coiled Pepitone, Whose Hierophants Prowl With Impunity², and especially Slow Unemployed Loris.

  Take your time. Breathe them in. There’s a lot of artistic brilliance and more than a little messing-with-us going on here. And if he’s not messing with us to another degree, there’s another 67 comics on the way. You can ask him about them if you’ll be in Boston this weekend, as he’ll be tabling at the Feminist Zine Fest with Hey, Pais creator (and Make That Thing asskicker at large) Sara McHenry. Sara’s great, John’s great, you’ll have a great time.

• Speaking of having a great time, on the first of May [audio, video], the new Oh Joy, Sex Toy book — one with purely educational comics — goes up on Kickstarter. You’ll want to look it up and back it; I’d remind you on the day, but I’ll be at Comics Camp, as will OJST co-creator Erika Moen; you’d be doing me a solid if, when she got off the plane home and checked her phone, she saw that thing cruising to full funding with extra to spare.

  Other OJST co-creator Matthew Nolan will be working his brains to the bone³ to get the book and crowdfunding campaign ready for launch, and it would be great for him to meet his wife at the airport with the news that OJST Book 4 is running away with success. Do it for the children.

Spam of the day:

Factor clearly utilized..

What kind of factor? What kind of utilization?
Ohhhhh, boner pills. Gotcha.

_______________
¹ With bonus points for the New Yorker universal caption.

² With callback to Orange Julius Secret Menu Password = “Fucked Up Julius” Orange Julius Double Secret Menu Password = “Dark Julius … Strange, Painful Julius”.

³ Heh, “bone”.

This was going to be a post about the megathread that David Malki ! did on Twitter end of last week, about the benefits of incorporation for self-employed types come tax time. Of course, end of last week was too late for anybody to get in on the tax benefits for this year’s filings, but see the title.

Then he went and turned the 70-plus tweets into a nice writeup, and that was even better. Planning for next year, get on that now I was going to say. Don’t let I’m so sick of taxes, I’ll do it in a couple of months tendencies keep you from getting this done. Make it a to-do item for May! But about three hours ago something bigger popped up. Suitably enough, it also deals with looking at the long term.

Lagies and jenglefenz, allow me to introduce you to Ascend Comics.

Ascend is a new publishing company, courtesy of Der-shing Helmer and Taneka Stotts, dedicated to the proposition that comics are created by all sorts of people, and if you don’t look like the folks that have traditionally been published by the comics world, that doesn’t mean you aren’t making some damn good comics. Not getting where you know you could be? Well, if there’s one thing that Spike Trotman taught us, it’s that you can build a publishing company up into a force of nature if you commit to bringing new voices and new kinds of stories to print. Also, that if you Kickstart anthologies, you can find those voices before anybody else snaps them up.

Ascend is starting off with an impressive bench, too: the Elements anthology (for stories by POC creators, edited by Stotts), The Meek and Mare Internum (webcomics by Helmer), and the Alloy anthology (for stories by mixed-race creators, edited by Helmer and Kiku Hughes, with an assist by Stotts).

At the heart of it, though, is the mutual respect and hard work of Helmer and Stotts; read their respective launch announcements and tell me they aren’t both going to work as hard for each other (and whoever else comes along for the ride), and that’s where the planning comes in.

Ascend is brand new; right now, it’s a platform for two creators and their works, but look at the mission statement right there in their logotype:

Iron Circus started as a way for Spike to make her comics projects, and then here and there she picked up a story for reprint, or an original, or the first of a series. With anthologies under their belts, Stotts and Helmer will have a roster of creators whose works (and work habits) they know; give ’em enough time to find their feet, give them one or two projects to show what they can do in this new structure, and I’ll bet you Five Dollars American Cash Money that they start following the path that Iron Circus blazed¹. Got a story that you think would be a good fit for Ascend? I’m gonna say start polishing your craft now so you’re ready when they make the inevitable announcement down the line.

Better yet, since Iron Circus has shown that distribution works for independent creators and publishers, Ascend will find it a less onerous process to get to that point themselves. It’ll be even easier for the next company after (and so on, until somebody screws the pooch very badly and the business of comics community gets cautious again; that won’t be Ascend, it’ll be somebody with less time in the game and fewer hard-won skills). So if you’re at a slightly differently inclined, or have done the work that Spike, Stotts, and Helmer have done, start planning for what your company is going to look like, and decide what’s going to set you apart from those that are already there.

But above all, start planning. Whatever move you’re going to make — tax wise, working with a publisher, becoming a publisher, whatever — it’s not going to just all in your lap. Want it to work to your favor? Figure out how to get there from where you are now. Fortune favors the bold rather less than it favors the well-prepared.

Spam of the day:

Jenny — Satisfy her like never before (no body)

Oh man, the disembodied, uploaded computer consciousnesses are getting in on the pornspam game. I got this one five times in the past eighteen hours.

_______________
¹ I see them as running parallel paths rather than competitors. It’s gonna be a bunch more indie publishing concerns seeking out new creators and stories before they start getting in each other’s way and threatening each other’s lunch.