Are you sitting comfortably? Would you like to be more comfortable?

• The schedule for ComfyCon 2014 — the Con that you attend from home! — dropped last night, so now you can see what many of your favorite webcomickers and enablers are going to be doing between a couple of hours from now and Sunday evening. Fire up the compy, make sure the speakers and mic are working properly, and settle in with some snacks.

  Fun starts at 4:00pm today (all times are EST), but the official Opening Ceremonies don’t occur until 6:00pm; this was described at one point as [Something*Positive creator] Randy [Milholland] screams a lot, but now it’s the Randy and Danielle [Corsetto, of Girls With Slingshots] team-up, and those two are always a delight together.

  Tomorrow’s chock-full o’ fun with a pajama party with Jennie Breeden of The Devil’s Panties at 1:00pm (Jennie’s in Portland so it’s still morning for her, shut up), anthology secrets with Spike, Kel, and more at 3:00pm, and sexy, sexy porn with Josh Lesnick and other Slipshiners at 9:00pm. On Sunday there’s panels ranging from dealing with day jobs (2:00pm), a Super Art Fight (7:00pm), and closing ceremonies (more of Randy sobbing uncontrollably; 5:00pm). There’s lots more that I didn’t mention, and it’s likely that panelists and panels will continue to be added. Head over to the main ComfyCon page for the latest info.

• And just in case that you aren’t quite comfy enough, Pusheen has teamed up with plush manufacture giant GUND to do an official Pusheen plush, with a full line of Pusheen products in 2015. In the meantime you’ll just have to content yourself with the plushes, the holiday cards and tree ornaments, t-shirts, jewelry, the most awesome hoodie ever, and much, much more from the fine folks at Hey Chickadee. Some items are already sold out, so get to clickin’ if you want that special someone to be super comfy on [insert holiday of choice here] morn.

Spam of they day:

The following are just three examples of why defamation laws are so important; if these cases were never resolved, we may have read much differently of these historic figures.

Cartoonists, man. Nuthin’ but defamation city around them.

Where to start, where to start? How about in Yorkshire? I love their pudding.

• Convention Season is almost done, with what I think is the last sizable comics show of the year going on in Leeds this weekend. Actually, the Thought Bubble Festival runs this entire week, but the bulk of the events are in and around the exhibitors/panels event this weekend on 15-16 November.

  Webcomicker (and related independent artist type) guests of Thought Bubble include Natasha Allegri, Danielle Corsetto, John Allison, Becky Dreistadt & Frank Gibson¹, Boulet, Emily Carroll, Gemma Correll², Darryl Cunningham, Hope Larson, Phil McAndrew, and Cameron Stewart.

  Additional webcomics types who will be exhibiting in the various venues include Rembrandt le Compte, Tom Siddell, Marc Ellerby, Paul Duffield, Lucy Bellwood, and many, many more. Tell them all I said hi.

• As long as we’re talking about conventions, Howard Tayler³ wrote up a bit about a medical emergency that happened at the World Fantasy Convention in Washington, DC, this past weekend. His part in resolving the issue was minor, but utterly necessary: nobody else and taken the initiative to simply report the person in distress to those that could help. He did, and in short order the situation was resolved. As Tayler put it:
  

  I’m an Eagle Scout. I can staunch bleeding, and feel for a pulse. I can do the Heimlich, and though my CPR skills are rusty, if I’m the only guy around who can do it, I’ll do all I can. But the critical skill in this particular situation, and in most of the convention medical emergencies I’m likely to run into, was the ability to speak clearly.

  Oh, and the ability to decide to speak.

  I concur with everything that he said, with the exception that you shouldn’t let your CPR skills get rusty. Going into a place with a lot of people (alternately, hanging out in the bar until the wee small hours)? Note the exits, where any public AEDs may be, and where the nearest place to get assistance (hotel reception, security post, whatever) is. That’s all. Oh, and take a CPR class, it ain’t rocket science⁴.

• I mentioned Gemma Correll and The Nib up above; news comes from that esteemed aggregator of comics (esteemed because they pay) that they’re doing a calendar for the coming year if only they get enough orders. Your favorite Nib contributors will be illustrating obscure holidays, so if you ever wanted to see what Rich Stevens would do with National Fetish Day⁵, now is your chance. As of this writing, 183 more orders are needed over the next 15 days, or no calendrical joy for you.
• Speaking of funding/pre-orders, Kel McDonald is now crowdfunding the first volume (of two) for her omnibus reprint of Sorcery 101, which will be a 750 page book covering the first five years of the story. Guys, that book is going to be friggin’ huge, and McDonald is offering it up as a backer reward of as little as US$30 which is insane.

  Oh, and did we mention that she had to redraw more than 450 pages because in their original form they weren’t suitable for print? Or that she’s hired colorist par excellence Mary Cagle to apply her magic? Let’s repeat it once more: thirty bucks for 750 pages in color is stupidly cheap.

• Finally, speaking of crowdfunding and colorists, Ed Ryzowski does color duties for a bunch of your favorite webcomics and now he’s Kickstarting a new self-published comic book series. Normally, I wouldn’t recommend a comic project for something new to be created, but I make exceptions for creators who’ve proven themselves on other work, and Ryzowski counts by any measure.

  Season of the SHARK issues 1 to 4 will chronicle what happens when your underfunded espionage agency has to sell video rights to reality TV in order to do its work. It’ll be released digitally starting in December, with special low pricing for you early adopters. Honestly, this one looks like a hoot.

Spam of the day:

Get away from the traffic cone orange you envision, and type in the world of tangerine, bronze, burnt orange, gingery undertones and also the calla lily.

Lots of gingers in the UK. Just saying.

________________
¹ As part of their Capture Creatures debut tour.

² She’s rapidly become my favorite regular contributor over at The Nib.

³ My evil twin, etc.

⁴ Didn’t take a class and somebody’s got no pulse? Call 911, or the appropriate emergency services number wherever you are. Open the shirt, make a fist, put in the center of the chest midway between the nipples. Wrap your other hand around the fist. Lock your elbows and push down hard and fast and don’t stop. Substitute somebody else in every two minutes because you’re gonna get tired. Now go take a class.

⁵ Or possibly Erika Moen, Zach Weinersmith, Gemma Correll, Matt Bors, Jen Sorensen, Brian McFadden, Eleri Harris, Andy Warner, Matt Lubchansky, Liza Donnelly, or Scott Bateman.

• New Emily Carroll comic! Boo!
• What’s better than getting full-size Snickers bars in your treat bag instead of “Fun” size? A successful Kickstart! Case in point: the Unshelved e-books USB drive. Second case in point: a significant bump over the past day or so for Evan Dahm’s illustrated edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

  Or even making progress on already-concluded campgaigns, such as the welcome news that Augie and the Green Knight is on the verge of going to press or that the Rachel Peng audiobooks have finished recording and those who have been patiently waiting are getting an extra e-book for their troubles¹.

• Followup! Regarding TopatoCo invoice numbers and how much business they’re doing: David Malki ! (who in addition to his myriad other projects is in charge of communications for TopatoCo) throws some cold hard data into the game:
  

  Like most ecommerce software, TopatoCo’s increments order numbers whenever a new shopping cart is created…. The number references that unique cart whether or not the person actually goes on to check out….

  So, the number of completed sales is less than the difference in invoice numbers, because you have to deduct some number of abandoned carts — I couldn’t say how many that is for TopatoCo in particular, but perhaps about 30% (based on industry averages).

  Good to know, but then there was the announcement from TopatoCo Supreme Leader For Life Jeffrey Rowland that they have definitely passed 500,000 orders, and it seems impossible to have done that with fewer than 500,000 invoice numbers. More on this as we mess with math³.

Okay, get out there, get some candy, and rot the hell out of your teeth.

Spam of the day:

Of course, he follows the scalper’s golden rule — never carry more than 10 tickets at a time. His partner carries most of the tickets and hides in dark lanes awaiting a call from him.

Yes, yes, very clever. The spam is coming in thick these days — up from maybe 3 or 4 a day to 50 or 60. For the love of glob, nobody here wants your fancy sunglasses or footwear.

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¹ Disclaimer: I did a technology test on that e-book for author KB Spangler² to make sure that it looks good on a variety of screen types and resolutions, and I can assure you that Come Bowling With Us is friggin’ gorgeous. As soon as Spangler adds this item to her store, you’re going to want to get it.

² AKA “my buddy Otter”.

&sup3: To wit: do we assume that every invoice number since #500,000 up to 519,348 was abandoned except for mine, and that reported by Alice Bentley? That would seem to be the worst possible case, making for an abandonment rate of 19,436/519,348 or about 3.74%. This requires more thought.

Health and commerce and flying through Atlanta in a couple of hours; Wednesday, in other words.

• This deserves to be quoted at length, because it speaks directly to how capital-A Art impacts capital-L Life, for both creator and audience; Dean Trippe on why the Something Terrible books are behind schedule:
  

  Just a quick note: I’ve had to temporarily stop reading messages and emails from fans of Something Terrible due to emotional health and safety concerns.

  The books are still in progress, and I’m hoping pre-orders continue to make the purchase order larger and my unit cost lower. But it’s been slow going during con season due to the emotional toll hearing so many similarly heartbreaking stories has been taking on me. I think I was better at this in the beginning, when I was mostly getting messages from fellow adults and folks who shared minimal details.

  So please understand: I don’t want to discourage anyone from writing, but it’ll be a little bit before I respond, as I need to stay functional for my family and the folks who rely on me. This year has been amazing, traveling the country and meeting people who needed my story. But while it’s validated every ounce of the small courage I mustered to tell my story, it’s also been fairly overwhelming on a regular basis.

  I don’t think it’ll surprise anyone to hear I have a bit of a Batman complex with this stuff, and feel a strong push to fight through the tough parts to be the shoulder and sometimes the symbol fellow victims need to help them process their own pasts. But while what I present to the world tends to be chipper Adam West or driven Kevin Conroy, the cumulative effect of these stories has left me wallowing in decidedly Frank Miller territory.

  I appreciate your patience as I plot this batboat back on course, and I’m sorry for the delays in getting the ST hardcovers printed. It’s all down to decisions now, but I’m the one who’s been flaking on making them. But I’m dragging my broken back to Nanda Parbat to get my head right again so I can finish this.

  Watch for my signal.

  Anybody that’s met Dean Trippe or seen him at a show in the time since Something Terrible released knows that his Batman Complex is absolutely true; I’ve never seen anybody that wanted to take care of the entire world as much as he does¹ and he is absolutely right to adopt a posture of defense for as long as he finds it necessary. Light the signal when the time is right, we’ll repeat it as needed. Be well, SuperBatDeanMan.

• Because I’m curious: I placed a TopatoCo order yesterday (for volume 8 of Girls With Slingshots, out now!) and I noticed the invoice number on the confirmation page: 519348. Every order I’ve ever placed with TopatoCo has had an increasing invoice number, and I believe that it’s actually serially increasing. Combined with the announcement that they recently passed order #500,000, this would mean nearly 20 thousand orders have gone out in the past few weeks. We’re arguably at the point where year-end holiday (Alliday?) shopping kicks into high gear, and I’m curious as to exactly how much work that is for the Space Potato and his earthly minions.

  So I am going to make a small order at the start of the year, compare invoice numbers, and get my answer. Right now I’m going to estimate it’s somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 orders between now and then.

Spam of the day:

In honor of James Gunn’s Marvel movie masterpiece becoming the highest grossing film of 2014 domestically, and the recent announcement of the upcoming sequel, [site I’m not shilling] knew that now was the time to begin work on showing the world what real space genitals should look like. Gnardians of the Galaxy: 50 Shades of Groot will be written & directed by Lee Roy Myers.

What.

_______________
¹ Which is why I actually look on Trippe as having a big red S on his chest. In my eyes, he’ll always be Superman from issue 10 of All Star Superman. If you haven’t read it for God’s sake go do that and understand why this character inspires despite being so badly bungled by recent movies.

Seriously, three things dropped yesterday that exceed all my wants and desires except for the places reserved in my heart for my wife and dog.

• Item the First: Rich Stevens and Danielle Corsetto decided to kibbitz about work into a pair of microphones and it is glorious. Ladies and gentlemens, please enjoy Coffee & Cider, your new favorite podcast.
• Item the Second: David Malki !’s comic about a terrible, terrible sea lion has been verbed, and turned into a wearable declaration that you are not a terrible, terrible person, at least for the next six days or so.
• Item the Third: Similarly, Chris Hallbeck also has a comment on current events in wearable form, also for the next six days. Gird your loins or whatever else need girding in the shirt that declares your allegiance to opposing terrible, terrible people. Coincidentally, also available for the next six days or so. It would be kind of neat if both of these were such motherscratching runaway successes that they got added to regular merch rotations.

Okay, that’s it. Enjoy the crap out of your weekend, and hope you avoid all the terrible, terrible people.

Spam of the day:

We are a group of volunteers and opening a new scheme in our community. Your web site provided us with valuable info to work on. You’ve done an impressive job and our entire community will be thankful to you.

I find your schemes to be insufficient. You may wait outside the Pilgrim’s Door.

There are several projects that I feel you should pay attention to, in no particular order.

• First of all, recent Atlanta-to-Stumptown transplant Jennie “It’s Not Satanic Porn” Breeden¹ has returned to the Kickstarter well to finish off her doll line; about this time last year she made plush versions of two of the three voices in her head: the Devil Girl and Angel Girl as a stretch goal. The campaign fell just shy of creating the Pretty Princess as a final stretch goal, but people have apparently been hounding her mercilessly, for lo the Pretty Princess Plush now springs fully from Breeden’s skull (like unto Athena from the brow of Zeus), sitting about a third of the way to success with four weeks to go. Completists, take note.
• One may have noticed that I didn’t make a prediction about where the Pretty Princess KS will end up; I’ve come to the conclusion that the Fleen Funding Formula really doesn’t work well with fewer than a couple hundred backers, and the PPKS is in the 130s as we speak. While I think it’s very likely that Breeden’s fanbase (which is loyal in a brutally efficient manner) will not let the campaign falter I cannot predict where the final tally will go. Heck, my ballpark estimate for the Stand Still, Stay Silent book 1 campaign was some US$50K short (in this case, that was about a 40% underestimation), although in my defense it was on Indiegogo and thus didn’t show up on Kicktraq, the basis of the FFF. What I am saying here is congratulations, Minna Sundberg, and I can’t wait to get my copy.
• I can predict where the next campaign will end up, though: very, very high. Gigi DG has also gone to the crowdfunding platform to make a third thing; in this case, a third print collection of the wholly delightful Cucumber Quest. With a launch less than 24 hours ago and more than 500 backers driving the total to nearly 200% of goal with more than a month to go, Ms DG’s US$20K target is likely to hit a 5x to 6x overfunding. Call it US$150K +/- US$25K; given that the last two Kickstarters for CQ books have achieved, respectively, 645% and 627% of goal, I’d say she’s got a pretty good likelihood of her previous readers sticking around.
• For going on two years, Comic Chameleon has been bringing webcomics to the mobile masses with the full support of creators; coincidentally, we’ve seen far fewer scrapers since CC’s beta was announced at the end of 2012 and formally launched (of iOs devices) in May of 2013. At the time, I noted that I’m an Android guy and thus don’t get to share in the phone-based goodness, a situation that economics did not off an easy remedy for.

  Until tomorrow. From Comic Chameleon principal (and erstwhile Alien Loves Predator photochronicler) Bernie Hou:

  The time has come to make Comic Chameleon available for your phone! [O]ur Kickstarter campaign to fund the Android version of our app [is] launching this Thursday

  The sharp-eyed among you may notice some elided content in that quote, which was necessary to chop it into a grammatically sound form because I took out some stuff I wanted to address here. Namely, that Hou (knowing as he did that I’m an Android guy) has sent along an alpha version of the app for me to play with and report back on. Work has kept me from doing so yet today, but I will be doing so at the first opportunity, and given the generally happy reviews of the CC userbase on the iDevice platform(s), I expect it (once the inevitable early bugs are identified and squashed) to make the Googleheads as happy as the Jobsters. Keep your eyes on Kickstrater tomorrow, and let’s get that sumbitch funded.

El spam del día:

Me gusta el artículo, la mente es muy clara, yo también hago eso, gracias.

No es nada.

______________
¹ Plain ol’ non-Satanic porn by Ms Breeden is another thing altogether (that link is relatively safe for work).

Man, I do not know what got past the shields yesterday, but I was laid low by that 24 hour bug. Feeling much better today, hi, how are you? That one day’s worth of illness has thrown me off, as stuff I wanted to mention yesterday gets pushed to today, and my heads up on who will be where at NYCC gets pushed to tomorrow by which time the show will already be open, and due to a combination of work and my niece’s wedding (love you, Heather!), I’ll only be at the show on Friday. Was that a sentence? It feels kind of disorganized as a sentence, and big disorganized thoughts still make my head somewhat swimmy, so let’s dive in.

• But before we jump into stuff that got pushed, something very timely: there appears to be a concerted attempt to reset passwords on WordPress sites. I first became aware of it when I saw the warning on Twitter from Phil “Frumph” Hofer, Word Press expert-for-hire and ComicPress/Comic Easel developer. Since Hofer has helped a lot of people, he got about 30 password reset-attempt emails and raised the alarm. It turned out not to be limited to Hofer, as many people were experiencing the same thing; I noticed an attempt on we at Fleen occurred about 5:00am.

  As Hofer says, you need to secure administrative access to your WordPress site:

  Important as it is, you NEED to set people back to subscriber after they’re done helping you out, the only person who should ever have consistent administrator access is YOU, no one else. (unless in the case of those people who have a site administrator helping them out, but you get the idea … no 3rd party people)

  Embarrassing as it is to say, I wasn’t fully secure; I had long since killed the privileges on former contributors to this site, but I hadn’t disabled Hofer’s account from when he helped me with a hosting migration a year back. Worse, there’s only one account that ever posts on this site these days — which made it a clear target — and I was using it both to post and for administrative operations.

  Please note that I said was, as I’ve changed that. If you’re using WordPress, take the five minutes to demote your main account to “editor” and shift admin duties to an arbitrary account with a non-obvious name and an obnoxiously long password, then never use it except for admin purposes. You’ll be happy you did.

• Evan Dahm’s illustrated edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has launched its Kickstarter, and is about halfway to goal one day in. This is going to be a gorgeous book, and with the assistance of Make That Thing on fulfillment, it should arrive with no hiccups. I’ve just ordered two copies — one to keep, one to present to my youngest niece-and-nephew pair.
• When you talk about old school webcomics, it’s harder to get older than original Blank Label (the site isn’t even parked anymore) member Steve Troop and the venerable webcomic/puppet show known as Melonpool. It’s been off-and-on for years now (to be perfectly honest, mostly off) while Troop has worked towards a movie version, but Melonpool has returned to webcomics with a reboot. Daily updates so far (and a promise of color Sundays), and we’ll have to see what all the old characters get up to.

We’ll do the full roundup of NYCC exhibitors of interest tomorrow, but how about a list of people that won’t be off at their own tables?

• Cameron Stewart will be riding the excitement of his new Batgirl ongoing (with Babs Tarr on art) via signings and panels on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
• Ananth Panagariya will be signing in support of Buzz! with Tessa Stone at the Oni Booth on Friday and Sunday, and in support of Candy Capers with Yuko Ota and Ian McGinty at the BOOM! booth on Sunday.
• Randall Munroe will be signing in support of What If? on Friday, then have a spotlight panel on Saturday with Bill Freakin’ Nye, dang.
• Kate Leth will be signing in support of Bravest Warriors and Adventure Time OGN Seeing Red, Natasha Allegri in support of Bee and Puppycat, and Noelle Stevenson in support of Lumberjanes, all at the BOOM! booth (check at the booth for times).
• Andrew Bell will have several new toys debuting at the show via the My Plastic Heart booth — there will be a collection of previously-released designs in stylish, slimming black, and his newest take on the Dealmaker.

Spam of the day:

I have found that the key to running a popular website is making sure the visitors you are getting are interested in your subject matter.

Wow, never would have guess that the secret to having a popular website is to have a topic people are interested in. It’s like rocket science!

Those of you that follow me on Twitter may know that I am presently in Chicago, and walking around The Loop I’ve encountered people that are near-perfect duplicates of others that I know or at least know of: Hope Larson, Scott C¹, Dustin Harbin, John Allison and more. Lately, it’s been accelerating, and I see people on the street that resemble those I know more rapidly than I can keep up. Either I’m having a very long, very specific, very slow-progressing neurological disorder, or Twitter people are being replaced by invaders from outer space. If any of the people below claims to be in Chicago suddenly instead of where they normally should be, get the shotgun ready.

• Jon Rosenberg and Gemma Correll hit one of those odd bits of internet comic synchrony today, as they each independently released a comic with a rather unusual element in common: the crab with a gun. This is the weirdest coincidence since multiple crocodilian-mentioning comics ran on the day that Steve “Crocodile Hunter” Irwin died. I think the aliens screwed up, and decided that Correll and Rosenberg might be the same person.
• One thing that the aliens are probably pretty good at: coming up with an approximation of human language and logic that doesn’t quite sit right on the ear. By that token I’d say that the posts on new social network Ello by “Kris Straub” are almost certainly the work of nonhuman intelligences, because surely no actual person would speak in such a manner as this. He’s been replaced by aliens that learned to speak from crashing Silicon Valley conferences and collecting “thought leader”-speak! Or he’s just really, really tired from having a new kid at home.

Okay, we’ve played out that gag long enough. Quick milestones:

• Yesterday marked ten years and 1905 strips of Girls With Slingshots, which means that everybody should feel good for GWS creator Danielle Corsetto! There’s not any specific to-do at the comic, what with her taking a six week, cross-country celebration lap this past summer, but a quick Attagirl will surely be appreciated.
• Even more impressive: sometime in the past few weeks, TopatoCo passed one hell of a milestone in that it shipped its 500,000th package. I believe that Jeffrey Rowland is now permitted to list Mogul on the “Job title” box of his tax returns. If this year is anything like previous years, TopatoCo will spend upwards of a quarter million dollars just on postage — all to send smiles to people that love cool things and money to creators who would rather kill themselves than ship a half million packages. Everybody feel good for everybody associate with The Topato Corporation!

Spam of the day:

sorry but there is a mistake at Nr. 8 (there are two nuerbms 8) one vertical and another one horizontal. when you press at the crossword on that number it shows you a question vertically while answers horizontally(question about a camel while answer is about a cow ) .

Godsdammit, more aliens. Will we never be rid of them?

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¹ Not the headband-and-shorts version, regular shirt-and-jeans version.

• It’s not hard to understand Nimona coming to an end, as it did some few hours ago; creator Noelle Stevenson is busy with lots of comics projects these days (not the least being the excellent Lumberjanes), and the story always had a beginning-middle-end feel to it. Still, I would have been perfectly happy for chapter 11 to wrap up a book of the story, if you will, and then for another book to start with a new chapter 1; then again, it’s about the story that Stevenson wanted to tell, not the preferences that I may have.

  In any event, 250-odd (sometimes very odd) pages is a good run for a story, and we’ll always be able to read about the adventures of Nimona and Lord Blackheart, and the ethics of “villainy” from the beginning … or in handy print form from HarperCollins in May, which you may preorder for convenience. Oh, and Stevenson is promising a book-only epilogue and if that’s not ongoing adventure, it’s the next best thing.

• Kickstarter news I: Unshelved has a problem — namely too damn many comics to put in print form easily. Ten books worth already, an eleventh on the way, and vansihing shelf space the world over. In order to make as many comics available to as many people as cheaply and easily as possible, creators Gene Ambaum and Bill Barnes have opted to take the path broken by Diesel Sweeties a few years back and offer the entire damn back catalog on a novelty USB key, presuming all the funding goals get met.

  Stretch goals will mean that the to-be-released book eleven gets included in the ebook bundle, audio commentaries get recorded by Barnes & Ambaum, and — most importantly — free copies of (as of this writing, at least two) books are made available to libraries. It’s an odd thing, making most of the stretch goals into give more stuff to people that aren’t you rather than make the stuff you get more special, but library folk are generous that way.

• Kickstarter news II: David Malki ! has almost finished the production of nonphysical rewards for the Machine of Death card game, and has a project megapost detailing what’s available now (the audiobook version of the game cards; the game to non-backers via various retail outlets; a downloadable version of the game under a Creative Commons license; new rule variants) and what is yet to come (a downloadable artbook; an MC Frontalot song; an original rules song; various personal appearances) in the culmination of a multi-year project.

  Most excitingly for people like me, Malki ! includes an expenses breakdown and a pretty complete financial accounting of what it costs to put together a project like this, which should serve as critical information for anybody that wants to run their own Kickstart. Please note especially where Postage cost just 0.5% less than Game Production, and consider that some of the production involved complex, handmade wooden boxes that must have cost a bundle, without which post fees would probably have been the single largest expense. How big an expense was postage, at 35.9%? Sending two actual humans (Malki ! and Chun Ming Huang) to China and returning them home safely cost less than 1% of the total expenses.

• Not quite Kickstarter: As noted in the beforetimes, Operation Let’s Build A Goddamned Tesla Museum was only the beginning — a physical site was saved, but millions more would be needed to build up the actual museum itself — a monumental undertaking, even with the real-life Tony Stark on your side. To that end, honorary Tesla family member Matthew Inman is running funding drives for the GDTM in the form of commemorative bricks (as seen at many cultural and educational institutions that do not feature the word Goddamned in the name) and t-shirts (which feature the Tesla Motors logo, by personal dispensation of Elon Musk). It is not too early to do holiday shopping for the nerds in your life, and both shirts and bricks cost a hell of a lot less than Tesla motorcars, just sayin’.

Spam of the day:

really not, of course.

Of course!

PS: Mary I am very sorry if linking to your delightful stories of teaching English in Japan means you have been brought to the attention of garbage-person spammers.

Because honestly, if you’re writing about [web]comics and can’t find a way to fit Brad Guigar in there somewhere, you aren’t trying very hard.

• Chris Yates was at SPX and yet I didn’t mention him yesterday — oversight, or planned thing? In all honesty, a little of both, but mostly I wanted to run that photo up there on a day when nothing else would detract from it. Like all of Yates’s work, this Aku Baffler! is a gorgeous, precise piece of work, and I wanted to share it with you.

  You can catch up with Mr Yates as his peregrinations take him up the east coast towards Queens, and the World Maker Faire therein this weekend. People that Make¹ stuff always dig Yates, so if you want a shot at some of his best work, you’ll have to make² your way to the bedroom borough and check out the scrollsaw work.

• Speaking of Aku, Jim Zub not only continues work on Samurai Jack and a zillion other comics, he was also in Maryland this past weekend, although over on the coastal part. He and Chart Polski were in Annapolis brimping their way through an in-store signing of their latest work; it would have been nice to see them in Bethesda, but they were on a whirlwind fast-turnaround schedule.

  Nevertheless, in that time, Mr Zub found the time to put me on the distribution list for a preview of his forthcoming official Dungeons & Dragons tie-in comic, Legends of Baldur’s Gate, which I loved and will be buying when it releases next month. It’s got that trademark Zub flair for mixing the right amount of humo[u]r and ridiculousness with solid fantasy, but the real thing that caught me was the essay at the back of the issue which I will now quote from:

  Jim Zub the storyteller exists because of Dungeons & Dragons, the game.

  Right from the start, I could tell this wasn’t like any other game I’d ever played before. No cards, no board, no limits. No matter how young or small I was in real life I could create a character just as capable as the adults I was playing with. The Dungeon Master asked us what we were doing and my decisions, along with nerve-wracking rolls of the dice, had as much value as anyone else’s at the table.

  If I did something memorable, the group would laugh and I got to feel like one of the grown-ups. Unexpected banter, battle cries, one-liners — I wanted to entertain everyone and make sure my character left an impression.

  As the years went by, I grew up and roleplaying games grew with me. I moved behind the DM screen and started building grand adventures for my friends to quest through. Drama, plot, dialogue, pacing — all those core creative skills were honed by sitting around the gaming table using my imagination.

  Getting the chance to tell a Dungeons & Dragons story as part of the game’s 40th anniversary, carving out a new chapter in the fabled city of Baldur’s Gate … it’s wonderful, ridiculous, and surreal all at the same time. Somewhere inside of me there’s an 8-year old Li’l Zub screaming with joy as he runs around the house pretending he’s kicking skeletons in the face.

  When issue #1 releases, take the time to read the entire thing; it’s as loving a paean to the twin values of imagination and play as ever I can recall. Also, I now want to see an Adventures of Li’l Zub backup strip in this book. Bonus points if we can get Chris Eliopoulos or Skottie Young to draw it.

• Also not at SPX, because he was busy leading a Shakespeare Festival? Ryan Estrada. But that’s okay, he’s made up for it by teaching us to read another foreign language as part of his Gimme Five project. This time, he’s teamed up with Peter Starr Northrop so that we can all Learn To Read Russian In 15 Minutes and you know what? It works. I may not have any idea what the words mean, but I can now read Спокойной ночй, Gracie³ without too much difficulty. Okay, my accent needs work, but it’s a start.

Spam of the day:
Still nothing good. I am not necessarily upset by this turn of events.

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¹ … people … are the luckiest people in the worrrrrllllld.

Sorry.

² So to speak.

³ This gag courtesy of Brad Guigar’s failure to get a reaction from his students today despite dropping some classic laugh-chuckles on them. Kids these days., which I loved and will be buying when it releases next month.