Back to normal posting next week.

Trying to decide whether or not to quit my job.

For those who were intrigued by the early descriptions of SPX panels, I should note that the programming schedule is now posted, with speakers including Jillian Tamaki, Eleanor Davis, Tillie Walden, Gene Yang, Keith Knight, and Shannon Wheeler.

Of those, Tamaki and Walden will have book debuts; it’s not listed on the site as a debut, but the English-language edition of Alex Alice’s Castle In The Stars: The Space Race of 1869¹ is on Tuesday and I say that’s close enough.

And then, of course, there are the many, many exhibitors who’ll be in the Marriott Bethesda North ballroom; in roughly geographic order, you should keep an eye out for:

Green Zone
Top Shelf (wall 64 to 67), Iron Circus Comics (wall 72 and 73), Kel McDonald (wall 74), Ananth Hirsh and Yuko Ota with George Rohac (wall 81), Ngozi Ukazu and Mad Rupert (wall 82), Ru Xu (wall 91A).

Blue Zone
Drawn & Quarterly (wall 1 to 4), Miss Lasko-Gross (table H10A), Whit Taylor (table H14B), Tony Breed (table I3B), Ross Nover (table I10), Natasha Petrovic (table J6), Adam Aylard, David Yoder, Joey Weiser, and Drew Weing, Eleanor Davis (tables K12 to 14), Cartozia Tales (table K8), Lucy Bellwood (table K9), Retrofit Comics (tables L2 and 3), Nilah Magruder (table L6), Shan Murphy (table L10B), Koyama Press (tables M1 and 2), Dustin Harbin (table M4), Carla Speed McNeil (table M7A), Sophie Yanow (table M12A), Toronto Comics Art Festival (table M14), MK Reed (table N1), Gemma Correll (table N2), Sophie Goldstein (N13B), Ed Luce (N14), Fantagraphics (wall 56 to 61).

Red Zone
School of Visual Arts (wall 7 to 8), Colleen Frakes (table B5), former Fleen scribe Anne Thalheimer (table B6A), Liz Pulido (table B8), Zach Morrison (table B11), Jamie Noguchi (table B9), Barry Deutsch (table C13), 2dcloud (tables D1 and 2), Evan Dahm (table D8), Becky Dreistadt and Frank Gibson (table D9), Penina Gal (table D13), Carolyn Belefski (table E4A), Carolyn Nowak (table E6), Carey Pietsch (table E7A), Natalie Riess (table E7B), The New York Review Of Books (table E13B), Liz Prince (table E14A), Falynn Koch and Tucker Waugh (table E14B), Rebecca Mock (table F3A), The Center For Cartoon Studies (table F4), NBM Comics (tables G1 and 2), Tillie Walden (table G3), Alex and Lindsay Small-Butera (table G4), Kori Michele Handwerker and Melanie Gillman (table G5), Adhouse Books (wall 53 to 55).

Yellow Zone
Sara & Tom McHenry (wall 25), Jess Fink and Eric Colossal (wall 28), Danielle Corsetto (wall 29), TopatoCo² (wall 31 to 33), The Nib (wall 34), Meredith Gran and Mike Holmes (wall 35A), Out Of Step Arts³ (wall 44 to 46).

The Small Press Expo runs on Saturday 16 September (11:00am to 7:00pm) and Sunday 17 September (noon to 6:00pm). Admission at the door is US$10 on Sunday, US$15 on Saturday, and US$20 for the weekend.

Spam of the day:

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What features? You put money on the card, you give it to somebody, they get that much gas. Done.

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¹ Imagine a Miyazaki story with a male protagonist, set in Jules Verne’s Europe, against a backdrop of Prussia’s quest to unify all the German states under their banners (and the threat of an unstoppable fleet of near-space ships as the Romantic period wound down and the Belle Epoque got underway; also, Mad King Ludwig is in it).

It’s a lushly-painted story with a tight story that will be concluded in a second volume; the hdardcover itself is in the dimensions of a children’s book, but clocks in at 60 pages of gorgeous bandes dessinées. Get it for the airship fan you know.

² Including Kate Leth and Abby Howard

³ Including Andrew MacLean, Paul Maybury, Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, and Neil Bramlette.

I read all the lessons of Katie Lane¹’s How To Read Contracts free e-course last week, and they were great. Really, realy great. Like, I can’t believe they’re free levels of great. It started with Don’t Read The Contract, then progressed through lessons on How To Mark That Shit Up, How To Prioritize Revisions, and Tips And Tricks To Make This All Easier. I don’t have to do any contracts on a regular basis², but if I do have to pay attention to one, you can bet that I’m reviewing these lessons first.

But what happens when I’ve reached the limits of my knowledge? Lane had that thought too, and surprisingly her response isn’t Pay me money to handle it, I’m a lawyer. Her response was, extra surprisingly, to set out a solution that may very well cost her business:

I want to help, especially in situations where the contract is written in an unnecessarily confusing way. I know I can translate that nonsense into Real People language. I just don’t have the time to do it one-on-one.
…
But I don’t necessarily think you need an attorney’s input on a contract that will pay you a couple hundred dollars for work you don’t particularly care about.

I also don’t think that your only options should be “Attorney” or “No Attorney, Sign and Hope Everything is OK.”

For the last couple of years I’ve been talking about making a tool that would address this exact problem. It would help artists and freelancers read and understand their contracts. An alternative to the Hire an Attorney/Hold Your Nose and Sign dichotomy.

My first few attempts to make the tool were duds. Everything I came up with was too long or too complex (or both). They didn’t make reviewing a contract easier, they just make it more straight forward.

But after a lot of trial and error, I think I’ve found the solution: a simple checklist that walks you through the process of reading and understanding a contract. [emphasis original]

The Contract Checklist for Design and Drawing will be released to the wide world on Monday, which happens to be Lane’s birthday³, with extra features for those who sign up early, so keep your eye on Lane’s site and her Twitterfeed for details. And if you should happen to have a need for contract advice in areas other than Design and Drawing, she wants to know. She’s got a brief survey up about what your work/contract needs are like, so that she can work on other checklists for later release.

Katie’s one of the good ones — when she says that she’s got a tool to help you, believe her.

Spam of the day:

Check your 2017 Credit Score Instantly Online

My credit score is roughly a billion, in part because I don’t give random spammers like you info sufficient to trash it.

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¹ Light-ning Law-yer!!

² Ever.

³ Light-ning Birth-day!!

A review copy of Mighty Jack And The Goblin King was provided by Gina Gagliano at :01 Books; as you might expect, this review will include spoilers.

You gotta give Ben Hatke (comics artist, adventurer, gymnast, archer, fire breather, and a bunch of other things besides) a couple of things: he works fast (more on that in a moment), and he knows how to tie his stories together (also, that). Oh, and he knows how to tell a cracking good yarn.

Mighty Jack released a year ago today, ending on a cruel cliffhanger; yesterday three separate books with his name on the cover were released — two by Ann M Martin (of Baby Sitters Club fame) that he illustrated, and the conclusion to Jack’s story, Mighty Jack And The Goblin King. We’re here to discuss the latter.

Jack, you may recall, is new to the hero business. He kind of made it up as he went along under the tutelage of Lilly from down the block (who’s really much better at the swords and fighting and adventuring stuff, as well as being generally much smarter about things; at that early teens age, girls are much more level headed than boys¹). Magic beans, weird creatures, his sister kidnapped by an ogre at the end of the first book … he has no idea what’s going on, but Maddie is his sister and he loves her and he will charge into whatever unknown fate to get her back.

You see, in those worlds beyond, where magic and space collide, Jack is less a name and more of a title; Jacks are heroes of great renown. To get Maddie back, Jack will have to climb magical plants and defeat giants and he’s just one kid with more ambition than true skill; but unlike all those Jacks from the stories, our Jack isn’t going in alone. He’s got Maddie, and before it’s over he’ll have a classic Shelby Mustang and an army of goblins and a dragon there alongside him.

Most of all he’s got Lilly and her example — she is lost and injured because he was reckless; she defeats the Goblin King and takes his crown (not to mention inheriting the goblin horde that she leads to Jack’s aid); she shows him what the meaning of sacrifice really is.

He feels hurt. He feels loss. He saves his sister (and she saves him in return) and heals the place between worlds and he sees the cost and even if it all works out he feels the sting of his failures. He returns home a bit wiser, a bit more melancholy, sufficiently wealthier (what’s a Jack that returns from the giant lands beyond beanstalk without gold to show for it, after all?), but no smarter about some things staring him in the face².

Things might be getting back to normal, except the goblins declare that it doesn’t matter that King Lilly is going back to her world — Goblins come for her when need³ — and the stranger that sold him the beans back in the first book is hanging around with some familiar friends and they need Jack and Lilly’s help. Nothing too difficult, says the heroine of another series, Just saving the world. Just the sort of thing that calls for a Jack.

And there the circle closes — in that place between worlds, Hatke is able to tie together the casts of Mighty Jack and Zita The Spacegirl and Nobody Likes A Goblin and any other stories he chooses to. All of the heroes — young and old, comic and serious, technological, magical, suburban, other — are part of one story, one that tells us to be brave, be kind, stand by your friends, persevere. Do those things, Hatke tells us, and we can save the world. It’s a heck of a message, one that I think we can all stand to hear as often as he cares to share it with us.

Mighty Jack And The Goblin King is available in bookstores everywhere; get it for your favorite Jack or Lilly (or Zita or Goblin), and maybe give it a good read before you hand it over. All of us, whatever age or condition, we can all be Jacks.

Spam of the day:

No matter who you’re looking for, they’re looking for you too

Hmmm, compelling. But let me counter with another viewpoint courtesy of Jaeger Ayers: No matter how hot you are, no matter how rich, how smart, how cool you are, somebody, somewhere, is sick of your shit.

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¹ Not to mention pretty much every other age.

² Fortunately, Lilly has the gumption — and the advice of a Magic 8-Ball — to act and make the situation clear to him.

³ Although, as Jack notes, they are vague about whether that means when Lilly needs, or when the goblins need.

Yesterday afternoon, the contributions to four Houston-area charities for Hurricane Harvey-related relief stood at US$175. Overnight, additional donors brought that up another two hundo for a final total of US$375.

As it turned out, everybody who donated gave to the Houston Food Bank, so that is where my US$375 match went; by donating through my employer, another US$375 was matched, bringing the total impact to US$1125 in American cash money to help those whose lives have been disrupted, in both the short and long terms.

The Fleen Fight For Fungible Futures Fund wishes to thank Ben Cordes, Pierre Lebeaupin, Mark V, and multiple people that wish to remain anonymous. Based on HFB’s ratio of one dollar = three meals, you’ve been instrumental in ensuring 3375 people get something to eat. There’ll be more to do tomorrow, and for many days after, on all the atrocities that 2017 seems to be throwing at us¹, but for now you all get to think Today, I damn well did something.

Spam of the day:

Tower usually cylindrical in structure that can go up to 275 feet; made of fit in your files and folders

That’s a lot of files and folders.

_______________
¹ It’s even money we’ll be back here next week, thanks to Hurricane Irma.

But I will point out that there’s still a few hours to contribute to the F-Six Hurricane Harvey fund-match giveapalooza. Contributions currently sit at US$175, which is less than I’d hoped, to be honest. I realize this is the third time I’ve come to you for the year, but the year continues to be garbage in ways that money will help with, so….

In the meantime, anybody want to watch Ryan North get totally smashed and recount the plot of his favorite episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation? And then for a bunch of loonballs wrangled by Jon “Ferocious J” Sung re-enact said drunken recount? North’s contribution was recorded at San Diego Comic Con 2016¹, so I’ve been waiting quietly for this for more than a year, and it was worth it.

Good thing, too, as J is (as listeners to his regular podcast, Idea Factory Giveaway well know), he and his wife are expecting their first child around Halloween, meaning the time he has to don the ol’ Picard bald cap and engage in his other frivolities for our entertainment will soon be greatly curtailed. Dive in now while you can.

Spam of the day:

This article is great. It is very nice to read it. I want more. I cordially greet you.

If you can tell me one thing that post said, I will give you a dollar.

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¹ Fun fact: J had to obtain a better microphone for the interview portion, and one was lent to him by Isaiah Mustafa, aka The Old Spice Guy. That’s right, this whole ridiculous situation just got even sexier.

Another webcomic announced forthcoming retirement, but it’s more like a beloved sports figure having a farewell season. Today is the start of September and in many parts of the world, that’s as close to the start of the academic year as you’re going to get. A number of Fleen’s readers and subjects are academic, and so they’re thinking of this as back to work season. For one of them, it’s the last season before retiring:

[T]his is the time that feels most appropriate for reviewing the past year and preparing for the oncoming year, setting what your goals will be and challenging yourself to do what you want to, as well as figure out where everything should be when the Academic Year is over.

So with that in mind, I’ll be ending Surviving the World on June 1st, 2018.

I started Surviving the World because I needed it, and it was crucial to my happiness and success through the end of grad school and through my post-doc. It started off my professorial career on just the right note. And then in what has been my dream job of being a teaching professor, not to mention the raising of two awesome kids, STW slowly became less and less important in my life and to my happiness. And while I still love STW, I know this should be the year that STW graduates, if you will, if I want my love for it to persist. So I’ll pack away the chalk at the end of the Academic Year.

I hope to make good comics straight through the end of STW. I hope you’ll enjoy them. I’ll try to crowdfund the one and only STW book (finally) early next year, and hopefully that will be successful. I don’t know exactly how well it will finish up, but I never expected many of you to be along for this ride in the first place, so I guess we’ll find out together.

So let’s roll into this last Academic Year together. I hope you liked what the class has been so far. I hope you like what’s left. Thanks for being here, either way.

(Also, June 1st will be one day past the 10th anniversary of STW, so I’ll be able to honestly claim that STW ran for 10+ years! It’s a small and ridiculous detail, but STW has always been about both small and ridiculous details, so it feels appropriate.)

That would be Dr Lucas Landherr of the Chemical Engineering faculty at Northeastern University, in his alter ego of Dante Shepherd, chalk addict and labcoat aficionado. What he doesn’t mention in his essay is that he will no doubt keep the comics coming in other forms, as he’s received both grants and significant professional acclaim¹ for his innovative use of comics to teach complex STEM concepts [PDF].

What I am saying is that it’s been a fun ride, and things are only likely to get funner as the year wears on. I hear during Spring Break, he’ll be naked, drunk, and cavorting with dry-erase whiteboards for the whole week. Scandal!

Now get out and enjoy the long weekend. As a reminder, the F-Six matching campaign for Houston flood relief continues until midnight on Monday, so don’t forget to give even a little; as mentioned earlier, your contribution will be tripled.

Current fundraising for Houston total: US$175

Spam of the day:

Start fresh this spring – consolidate your debt

No foolin’, I have no debt to consolidate. My debt is negative.

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¹ American Institute of Chemical Engineers 35 Under 35 Award, 2017;
American Society of Engineering Education Northeast Section Outstanding Teacher Award, 2016. Not to mention awards for teaching at Northeastern, all within his first five years of teaching. For a person at the start of his professing career, this is an amazing track record.

Here’s some fine folks that want to help you make your life in the creative end of things just a bit easier. They’re great.

• Katie Lane¹ reported t’other day that her How To Read A Contract free e-course got an overwhelming response from fine people such as yourself. So overwhelming, in fact, that it broke the email system she’s using to deliver the lessons. It took a day or so to resolve, but the emails are going out now, and Lesson One is a counterintuitive doozy.

  For a course on How To Read A Contract, it seems a little weird to start by saying don’t read the contract yet; however, readers that are familiar with Lane may recall that her chief objective in contracts is to reach a place of mutual understanding. The key to that is to first understand yourself and what you want the contract to reflect. So before you read it, think hard on what it is you want to see in the contract — what terms, what guarantees, what understanding.

  Only after you have that worked out do you have the framework to evaluate if the contract reflects what you want the agreement to be. Then you’re in a position to say This is not going to work for me, where do we go from here? Focusing on the language of the contract too soon means you’re already dealing solely on the terms and conditions that whoever wrote the contract considers important, which may not address everything you find to be important. It’s a neat way to look at things, and I’m guessing that the next lessons will build on it.

• On a related note, those that follow the small press that serves independent creators will be familiar with Koyama Press and its founder, Annie Koyama. She’s got her own opinions on how creators need to develop business skills and the ability to evaluate contracts and proposals; to help them protect themselves, she’s looking to hold a Toronto-area workshop along those lines:
  

  I’d like to gauge interest in holding a 2 hour workshop with a pro at KP headquarters to teach artists some of these basics. A full course is taught at OCADU and Sheridan College so if you are enrolled in those courses, this is not for you.

  It would be a one time thing unless there was a ton of interest to follow up with other topics. Probably to occur in late fall.

  Preference would be given to KP published artists initially but anyone is invited to attend.

  If there is enough interest, say ten people, Koyama Press would subsidize the cost and the artists could attend free of charge. If more than ten people wanted to attend, I’d look at repeating the event later.

  If interested, please comment here and send me an quick email at: anne at koyamapress dot-com. Thanks!

  The comment here bit refers to the Facebook posting, where she’s posted in the past hour that there’s definitely enough interest and the workshop will take place. But! All communications about the workshop and logistics will be email-only, so if you want to attend be sure to drop her a line. Anybody that attends, do let the rest of us know how it goes.

• Hey, you know who’s great? Lucy Bellwood (Adventure Cartoonist!), that’s who. I don’t know if you followed her artist’s residency in Iceland on Twitter earlier this month, but there were many majestic vistas featured, and more than a few really lovely paintings that she shared². But consider: a berth on a tall ship (or even a modern research vessel) may only offer a very small space for stowage and personal belongings; trekking across the blasted heath of Iceland, you ain’t carrying a full Cintiq rig with you (and there’s no place to plug it in if you did).

  So how art? Today, she’s done a writeup of how she manages to go to the far ends of the land and water and get all of the visual sketching and painting and such done; it’s at her Patreon, but it’s open for anybody to read:

  There’s a lot of bluster around asking artists about their tools. On the one hand, newer artists can become needlessly hung up on shortcuts, prying into artists’ toolkits to try and find the Magic Paintbrush that will grant them the power they desire. (Bad news: it doesn’t exist.) On the other hand, asking about people’s tools is a GREAT way to discover new materials and techniques.

  When I think about tools I picked up because artists I admire used them (Windsor and Newton Series 7 No. 2 Sable Brushes, Pentel Pocketbrush, etc.) I realize that they were neat to learn from, but ultimately didn’t stick around. When I found something that really worked for my tendencies and preferences (Kuretake’s felt-tip brush pen, for example) it felt right. However, like choosing a college major or a life path, that rightness is generally only attainable after a LOT of experimentation! [emphasis original]

  Her conclusion: trial and error is how you put together your travel art kit, but she’s helpfully included hers. It’s pretty compact! I’m guessing that all the stuff she’s included is super-neat for artists to ooh and ahh over, but I’m not qualified to judge. I can tell, though, that the tone of the post is pretty identical to when I talk about emergency kits with fellow EMTs and we have Opinions; whatever the tools of your trade, there’s always that discussion to have.

  Oh, and in case you think that your art isn’t good enough, regardless of the kit/tools/travel/whatever? She’s got you covered there. Punch your inner demons in the face when self-doubt strikes.

Current fundraising for Houston total: US$150
Come on, people! We’ve stalled since yesterday.

Spam of the day:

We are ready to offer a free accomplishment of written work hoping for further cooperation and honest feedback about our service.

Here’s my feedback: I have no idea what you’re trying to say by offer a free accomplishment of written work. I will not be buying the writing services of people who cannot write clearly.

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¹ Light-ning Law-yer!! I need to write a macro to set up that footnote automatically.

² There were also boats.

Here we are a little more than two weeks out from SPX — to be held 16 and 17 September in Bethesda, Maryland¹, and I’m eager to talk to you about the programming slate, which is always well-curated and humanely paced. Unfortunately, it’s not posted yet.

More precisely, the schedule of events is not posted, but SPX did give us a fairly extensive list of highlights. Traditionally, SPX runs two programming rooms, one panel in each, on offset schedules. Maybe six events per room on each of two days, for a total of a two dozen or so panels (plus the Ignatz Awards and dance party on Saturday night). And at least eight of those two dozen or so panels have had descriptions released. Highlights include:

• Last year’s multiple honoree and current hot creator du jour Tillie Walden talking about her new book, Spinning, with SPX executive director Warren Bernard.
• Perennial favorites Jillian Tamaki and Eleanor Davis in conversation with Jim Rugg.
• MacArthur Fellow and National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Gene Luen Yang discussing his Reading Without Walls initiative with Johanna Draper Carlson.
• Political cartoonists Ann Telnaes (current NCS honoree for political cartoons, plus a Pulitzer), Matt Wuerker (also a Pulitzer alum), Keith Knight (Glyph and Harvey awards), and Ben Passmore talking with The Spurge the reality of political cartooning in the current climate.

Plus Sikoryak! Heidi Mac! Shannon Wheeler! 2dcloud! Jeremy Sorese! And many more! I’ma guess sometime between now and this time next week, we’ll have the proper schedule, until then, prepare for your time in Bethesda, and don’t forget to stock up on Faygo.

Know who else you’ll find in Maryland, on account of he lives there? Jamie Noguchi. When you see him at SPX, he’ll be halfway done with his Tokutember project, about which we now have some details. Check it:

Starting September 1, I’m going to kick off a little art project called Tokutember. It’s like daily drawing or Inktober or any other drawing challenge, except it’s tokusatsu themed! I’ll be posting my daily creations here as well as twitter and instagram with the hashtag #tokutember. Please feel free to join in on the fun!

That link takes you to the main Tokutember site with the details: from now on, September is Tokutember, and every year will have an appropriate theme. For 2017, the theme is insects, so draw something (in the theme or not, he’s not your boss), post it, and repeat at whatever interval you desire.

Noguchi will post his contributions at the site, and he’s included handy sosh–meeds links to tags so you can find all the best kaiju, rangers, and other effects-heavy Japanese entertainment tributes.

Current fundraising for Houston total: US$150

Spam of the day:

Get up to 1200 as soon as tomorrow

Up to 1200 what? Is this one of those over 9000 deals?

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¹ Coincidentally, the same weekend as the Juggalo March on nearby Washington, DC.