There were originally going to be more words in today’s post, but I’ve had to clear snow twice so far — 40 cm and counting of snowfall will do that — and will likely have to do so twice more again before it’s done. So you get some pointers and the assurance that I had many clever words on deck in my brain that just won’t come out now.

As you may have gathered from the title, our common thread today is new work from Matt Lubchansky — cartoonist, associate editor at The Nib, and international bon vivant — who was most recently mentioned on this page in association with their new original graphic novel¹ ’bout two weeks back. As well as being a prolific cartoonist in their own right, Lubchansky is also works with other comickers (web and otherwise) on group efforts and anthologies. Let’s see what’s on deck:

• Firstly, Lubchansky is one of a dozen artists that are pairing up with journalist and podcast host Rose Eveleth (Flash Forward) on a new graphic novel about ways to imagine our future(s). Flash Forward: An Illustrated Guide To Possible (And Not So Possible) Tomorrows will contain a myriad of subjects, each expanded from interviews with experts, about what’s possible and what probably won’t be (which makes it sound similar to Soonish but with more illustrations from more people).

  Along with Eveleth’s words, pictures will be supplied by Lubchansky, Blue Delliquanti², Box Brown, Ben Passmore, Sophie Goldstein, Julia Gfröer, John Jennings, and more. Five more, by my count. Flash Forward releases on 30 March, is nearly 300 pages long, and is available for pre-orders now.

• Just in case you haven’t gotten enough Lubchansky — and honestly, how could you? — they’re going to be doing a panel discussion with the other editors at The Nib this Thursday, 4 February:
  

  Extremely exciting news: I/@kellywritershse get to host some awesome @thenib editors in conversation on Feb. 4 at 6pm ET

  The panel features ~ @MattBors @Lubchansky@WhitTaylorComix and @elerimai ~!

  You can watch live on Youtube.

  That from writer/cartoonist Alli Katz, with additional event details at Facebook. In case you didn’t recognize the other names in the announcement, that was Editor/Publisher Matt Bors, Features Editor Eleri Harris, and Contributing Editor Whit Taylor.

Spam of the day:

TruGreen lawn services We know you take pride in your lawn.

My lawn is a morass of divots thrown up by greyhound zoomies, and is currently buried under knee-deep snow. You’re high if you think pride comes within a half kilometer of this benighted patch of grass.

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¹ Pre-orders still open!

² Who would like you to know that the events in their signature work, O Human Star, start in-story on 2 Feb 2021. Starting tomorrow, Delliquanti will be re-running OHS on their social media pages, one page per day, with commentary. Dive in if you haven’t previously.

We have to start with Molly Ostertag’s news. Readers will recall that her Witch Boy series is a modern marvel that everybody should read and pass on to other to read. And today we found out that Netflix is making it not just into a movie, but a musical:

Netflix To Release Animated Musical From Oscar-Nominated Director Minkyu Lee

The Witch Boy will also feature original music by the Grammy-nominated sister trio Haim. Maria Melnik writes the script with Roy Lee, Miri Yoon and Ryan Harris producing. Vertigo Entertainment produces the feature and Netflix releases.

Ostertag’s … honestly, happy doesn’t seem like a big enough word for what Ostertag is with respect to the production. Elated? Ecstatic? Joyous? What caught my eye the most, though, is the combo of the teaser image in the Deadline story and this bit from her tweet thread:

Seeing the way [Lee] connects to THE WITCH BOY and is transforming it for film, with thoughtfulness and care and artistry, has legitimately been the honor of my creative career. When I saw his first drawings of Aster I cried. I think you all will love this movie [purple heart emoji] [emphasis mine]

This will not be The Witch Boy exactly as shown in the book, a straight implementation designed only to appeal to existing fans¹. It’s an adaptation to another medium, one that has its own strengths and weaknesses apart from comics — comics are not just storyboards, people! — and will look and play out differently than the original.

That image seems to feature an older, more citified Aster than we’ve seen before, and the story may aim for a different age range than the original books. This is all good, and if you have any doubts, read what Ostertag said again. If you love the original (and glob knows I do), the originals are still there on your shelf and won’t change even if this turned out to be a fiasco — which, to be absolutely clear, I don’t think it will be.

It’s something new, with a different set of creative hands and different points of view on it, and it is absolutely going to piss the right people off. Can’t ask for anything more than that. Oh, and note to self — figure out when you need to subscribe to Netflix. Given the lead time on animation, it’ll likely be a while.

Other good stuff today:

• Did everybody see Nancy today? That last panel is a legit brilliant idea.
• I’ve made more of a thing about it over on social media than here, but I’ve really been digging the art on A Girl And Her Fed since creator KB Spangler² did the third act time jump and handed the drawing off to Brazilian artist Ale Presser. I mentioned at the time that Presser had both recently given birth and defended her doctoral thesis, and I may have mentioned at one point that she was soliciting survey input for that same thesis.

  Not long ago³, she contacted me with the actual output of her thesis, including the video of her defense [in Brazilian Portuguese] and the full text [PDF, also Brazilian Portuguese], but with something that you, dear reader, may find useful. The dissertation is full of data and analysis, but its conclusions are a guide to making comics for small-screen devices, and it’s both chock-full of good advice and also available in English [PDF]. Also, Messers Guigar, Kellett, Kurtz, and Straub: is this the first appearance of How To Make Webcomics in a bibliography? Maybe!

Spam of the day:

Exposed NASA-Funded Report Sends Shockwaves Through The US Population

They release those like twice a month, only they’re about anthropogenic climate change so people like you that start emails Dear Patriot ignore and downplay them.

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¹ Lookin’ at you, first couple of Harry Potter films.

² Disclaimer: I am personal friends with Spangler, of the post-bail-and-help-you-hide-bodies variety, I did the foreword for her first AGAHF collection, and have served as an early reader for ten or so of her novels. She’s rad.

³ Pandemics and new small humans means things take a while.

Let’s face it, nobody right now is exhaling or relaxing, no matter how many walking exemplars of impunity are finding themselves being taken into Federal custody in a manner that is simultaneously tragic, enraging, and hilarious. So let us be grateful that the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum is doing their damndest to bring a little light to us all.

• On Sunday afternoon next weekend (that would be 24 January), there will be an interactive game of Paper Charades (like they did at CxC this year), which is a non-copyright-infringing game that looks a little bit like Pictionary but which is legally distinct. Raina Telgemeier, Dana Simpson, and Shannon Wright will be there to play along, with folks chiming in from chat to guess what’s getting drawn.

  The fun starts at 4:00pm EST (that’s 1:00pm for those of you on the west coast; everybody else figure it out on your own), it’s free, and open to all, but you do have to register in advance.

• The following weekend (that would be 30 January), the Billy opens a new exhibit of Walt Kelly’s Pogo, specifically focusing on the political commentary that the eponymous possum and his cohorts gleefully engaged in. Into The Swamp: The Social And Political Satire of Walt Kelly’s Pogo will be on view until 31 October, with a hiatus from 19 April through 11 June.

  Now you may be saying to yourself, Self, hasn’t Gary been pretty adamant that this is not the time to engage in public events, place-going, and suchlike? and in this you would be right. Hopefully we’ll be back to some semblance of public engagement well before the exhibit closes — wearing your masks keeping your distance now, and getting your shot as soon as you’re eligible radically increases the odds of getting there, especially in the back half of the run — and in the meantime, the Billy has restricted hours and capacity.

  Reservations are required (see here), with information on Ohio State’s safety guidelines here. Don’t go travelling just for this until we’ve got the pandemic under control, but once that happens? You’ll want to see this.

Spam of the day:

(Did you order an intimacy?)

No, but I am still waiting on a Negroni, a plate of jamon iberico, and an order of duck-fat fries. Could you check on when those will come out?

June? You expect them in June? Yeah, okay. Thanks.

Gene Luen Yang has an answer for you, as the two he scored last month have apparently arrived in the mail. Gotta say, it’s a much better likeness than the Eisner globe is of Will Eisner.

Speaking of Yang, he’s going to be half of the latest iteration of :01 Books’s current online hangout series for these isolated times. They’ve been running Comics Creators Getting Coffee about monthly since August as an extension of their Comics Relief online events, but I just realized that I hadn’t written about them.

More to the point, I haven’t really thought about them, because when the first one was announced (with editor Calista Brill and creator Kiku Hughes), I saw the bit that said Instagram Live and immediately tuned out because I’m not on The Grams. Since then, there have been talks between Natalie Riess and Sara Goetter with editor Kiara Valdez, and Brill and Lisa Brown. Me not being on The Grams isn’t a reason to not talk about these, though, so this is me informing you that Yang will be talking with Sloane Leong, next Wednesday at noon EST, on the :01 Instagram account.

And, uh, let me know what they say, on account of no account, and also day job. Thanks.

Spam of the day:

Coca-Cola Award (£2,000,000.00)

In Russian? Really? Do you not realize that I know the history of American cola-flavored caffeinated soda beverages wrt the Soviet Union? That Eisenhower was personal friends with a Red Army marshal that he got so hooked on Coke that Ike had to convince the Coca-Cola company to produce a version of their bottlecaps with red stars instead of their usual swoopy logo?

Or that later, Eisenhower’s vice president (and history’s yard waste) Richard Nixon undermined Coke’s private supply for the senior army officers in the USSR because he had once been a staff lawyer for Pepsi and was a close personal friend of Pepsi’s president, and they arranged for Pepsi to be the first Western mass-market brand to get a foothold behind the Iron Curtain?

Or that after the fall of the Soviet Union and the cratering of the ruble, Russia was so addicted to Pepsi that they traded twenty decommissioned warships for US$3 billion worth of fizzy sugar water, briefly rendering PepsiCo the sixth largest navy in the world? They had 17 submarines, a cruiser, a frigate, and a destroyer!

So yeah, you want me to fall for this scam in Russian, it fucking better be a fake Pepsi Award, not Coke.

Okay, let me be clear for a moment– change purely for the sake of change isn’t a good thing. Change purely for the sake of change is why I work for a corporation that, approximately every 18 months, reorganizes itself from top to bottom, leaving tens of thousands of people in dozens of countries unsure sure of exactly who they work for or what the purpose of their organization is, for no good reason whatsoever¹. The work is something I’m very skilled at and enjoy, the salary and benefits are good, and the checks don’t bounce is literally the extent of why I work there, because there is no broader sense of mission or purpose that will be retained 18 months from now and I’ve opted out of even trying to pretend to care².

But change that improves upon the stale or inappropriate, that updates the old in favor of something better? That’s necessary; it’s why every five years, there are new protocols for CPR, as we figure out with empirical evidence what works and what doesn’t, stop doing things that are harmful, and iterate our way to practices that are better.

All of which is to say, it’s been two weeks since we learned that Mark Trail has a new dad, and today’s the day that the strip switches to new creator Jules Rivera (the latest in editor Tea Fougner’s webcomics-originating strip-assumers). The regular readers of Mark Trail were largely caught unawares, judging by the comments section under today’s strip, and it is hilarious.

All of these hidebound folks lamenting that the strip won’t look anachronistic any longer, decrying that it’ll now be written and drawn by a woman (gasp!) of color (double gasp!!), and therefore suck and they’re quitting right now.

They don’t know what they’re going to be missing:

The opening story arc has no less than five boat explosions.

If that’s their idea of ruination, I’m sorry they hate fun.

Which is all the more hilarious because so many of them specifically cited boat explosions as one of the things that make Old School Mark Trail awesome that will obviously never happen again³. But I guess when you demand comic strips never change⁴, you miss out on a lot of stuff.

Speaking of never changing, I have a feeling that the diehard Trail-heads would be be upset about anything that allows things they like to be enjoyed by somebody new because scarcity means value? I’m thinking now about a very neat idea that a friend pointed me towards the same day I learned about the imminent Apocalypse Mark Trail transition, one aims to make comics more accessible.

ComicA11y comes from Aussie designer/illustrator/developer Paul Spencer, and is designed to make comic strips open to people with various challenges. Actually, let me rephrase that; as Scott McCloud once put it, all of us have cognitive limits when reading, whether we fit into a traditional model of disability or not, and ComicA11y is designed to reduce the burden of reading comics, because while they may be simple enough for you or me to read, that doesn’t mean they’re equally easy for somebody else.

So let’s enhance comics. Spencer’s starting list includes:

• Resizable text; of all the adaptations found on comic websites, this is the most likely to have some kind of inclusion (probably within the browser), along with responsive design for the viewing device.
• The native font can be substituted with a simpler one that features more easily-discerned letter shapes (notably, mixed case instead of all uppercase; take that Brad Guigar!⁵).
• A closed caption mode prints the text for the strip below the panels, one balloon at a time. With each new caption, a headshot of the speaker is shown, and the speaker themself is highlighted in the strip to stand out from the background. Having text outside the image means that screen readers can see it.
• High contrast mode strips out the color, leaving sharp black and white, with extraneous background details suppressed.
• The strip can switch between horizontal and vertical layouts.
• A large number of languages are provided for translation, with or without the captioning; support for both left-to-right and right-to-left languages is included.
• Crucially, behind the scenes there’s support for HTML5 markups that tie into various assistive technologies.

Spencer is still looking at further improvements, including the ability to work with unalike panel sizes, connected speech bubbles, and ways to incorporate all of these features without impeding the creators. That last is probably the most important, in that all of these enhancements will rely on the willingness of creators to do extra work. Christopher Baldwin, for example, includes an audio narration of each Spacetrawler strip, and kudos to him for doing so.

But even when an accessibility feature is easy to use, how many people will use it? Do you include alt-text captions on images in your Tweets for screen readers for the visually impaired? I do so about two time out of three, if I’m being honest.

In addition to ease of use, ComicA11y (and whatever similar solutions may be developed) need ubiquity and an expectation on the part of the audience needs to get back to the creators that this is expected. They need to hear that if a comic is made for you, it needs to be made for as many other people as possible. Any ideas on that, or features, or improvements, Spencer’s email is at the bottom of the ComicA11y page, and he’s inviting feedback. Here’s hoping he gets some that’s really good, and he gets further in his goals of making comics available to everybody.

Even sticks in the mud that ragequit Mark Trail before the boatsplosions.

Spam of the day:

Dial Vision Glasses are unique glasses with adjustable lenses designed to correct vision issues on an as needed basis.
It is easy to adjust the individual lenses using the control knob.

Or — and try to follow me because this is a little complicated — I could go to the drugstore where they have a waide variety of eyeglasses with various levels of magnification for about seven bucks a pair, which is what people do if they don’t have more complex problems (like my astigmatism) that require specific lens shapes. You’ve invented a pair of head-mounted, open-frame, low-power binoculars.

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¹ Aside from the obvious, which is to settle feuds at the senior executive level and make it impossible for anybody to take responsibility for anything that happened in a line of reporting that no longer exists, duh.

² Fortunately, approximately 94% of all the very important mandatory all-hands teleconferences that are meant to obfuscate what’s going on happen during times when I’m teaching and thus can’t attend, oh darn.

³ While not a daily reader, I think I’ve paid close enough attention to Mark Trail over the past 20 years to notice two, maybe three boat explosions in that time. When something exciting happens that infrequently, I guess you cling to it. Curiously, none of the commenters is worried about a lack of Mark Trail punching a bad guy so hard he loses his facial hair.

⁴ Another commenter mourns that Heart Of The City sucks now, which it curiously started to do when taken over by a Black woman.

⁵ You know I love you, Brad.

Stepping away from webcomics for a day; if you saw my tweet over the weekend, you know that I’m deep into multiple books and review are forthcoming. Also, work tech is failing today and robbing me of nearly all free time and also the will to live.

So I’ll just point out that it’s 21 September, and that means Demi Adejuyigbe has released his annual video celebrating this fact and it is a socially-distanced delight of impeccable timing.

It includes has an appeal at the end that I feel Fleen folks are amenable to¹ — to ensure there’s another video next year, Adejuyigbe is asking for US$50K to be raised for a collection of action groups serving BIPOC, trans, and the unhoused across the country. You can give at sept21st.com but maybe hold off a day or two, as the high response is, uh, throttling the funding site (as of this writing, 3 hours and five minutes after launch, he’s 95% of the way to goal).

And, as a bonus, he’ll do another video if funding hits US$69,420 because One Sexweed is a good amount.

Spam of the day:

I wanted to ask a question about your business and the credit card processing fees you pay every month. You shouldn’t be paying 1.5% to 2.5% in Credit Card Processing Fees anymore. New laws are on your side.

I pay negative a zillion percent on credit card processing fees and if you want my business, you’ll have to agree to rebates of 157% on every charge I put through. My business is valuable, and you’ll make up the costs in volume!

______________
¹ Also a good doggo.

Tie-ins, at the very least. Let’s see what’s up.

• There have been numerous adaptations of Girl Genius (by Professor and Professoressa Foglio) into other media over the years — novelizations, radio dramas, card games — and they’ve expanded to a new frontier now with vidyagames. Girl Genius: Adventures In Castle Heterodyne takes its inspiration from the Castle Heterodyne mega-arc (running roughly from here to here, or about six years of comics), which gives a whole lotta room to play.

  The game itself is made by Rain Games of Norway, who appear to have a track record making games of this sort, but not crowdfunding — this is their first Kickstarter campaign. Goal is set at a reasonable US$200K, but they’ve got stretch goals reaching improbably as high as one million dollars which … I don’t think I’ve ever seen stretch goals go as high as five times base funding and actually be met.

  There’s a huge ask, so the FFF mk2 may not work so well — the trend held really steady for the first couple of days then dropped hard, giving a prediction of about US$135K-200K, which puts goal at the upper end of the range. The McDonald Ratio is predicting about US$150K total, which is worrisomely low.

  Again, this isn’t the sort of project that the predictions were trained on, so we’ll have to see, but with 6 days down and 24 to go, the project sits at 31% of goal at present, and video games are both notoriously expensive, and have a tendency to run over both time and budget. We’ll have to see.

• By contrast, paper-based games are quicker and cheaper to develop, and oftentimes the creator of a comic is deep into a particular game, which helps. Enter: Jim Zub, who’s already got a dedicated Skullkickers“>Skullkickers tabletop game in development, but who also decided to mark the 10th anniversary of the comic by releasing the first new Skullkickers story in five years inside a 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons adventure book.

  Skullkickers: Caster Bastards And The Great Grotesque¹ will feature a 30 page story and 60 page adventure campaign, featuring new spells, game mechanics, magic items, and monsters, adaptable to whatever game you’re currently playing.

  As I may have mentioned previously, I haven’t played D&D since it was called Advanced D&D waaaay back in my college days — before 2nd edition was a thing — and I’m heartily tempted to get this because a) Skullkickers is hilarious, and b) the love that’s pouring out of the game portion of this book is apparent even through the distance of the internet.

  Zub’s been writing official D&D comics for a couple a’ years now, and went so far as to shave his head to better get into character for a live game last year. He’s mentioned multiple times that his course in life was irretrievably set from discovering D&D at the age of 8, so when he tells me that he’s picked out some top-notch game designers to make the playable part of this as good as it can be? It’s gonna be good.

  And, as an added incentive, the crowdfunding/fulfillment parts are being run by George, who mentioned casually he is approaching his 100th crowdfunding project managed, so I think he just might have a handle on how to keep everybody on track. Just a hunch. It’s a little early to apply the FFF mk2 math, but somewhere around a day in, they’re at 64% of the CA$22.3K (or US$16,843) goal with 23 days to go, so I think this one’s gonna fund. In case you were wondering, only one of the top tier reward (where, among other things, you appear as a wizard character in Caster Bastards) remains as of this writing.

Spam of the day:

Hello! I saw you the other day and I really liked you. I live in a neighboring yard, alone) let’s meet at my place?

This town’s ordinances don’t even allow dogs to live in yards, they have to have access to the house. Besides, I know my neighbors and none of them speak Russian like you do.

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¹ I’m sure the similarity of that title to Hamster Huey And The Gooey Kablooie is mere coincidence.

What’s that? You didn’t know how this isn’t the real day to celebrate working folks, the one that’s celebrated around the world? Fortunately, The Nib has you covered, with a timely rerun from two years ago by Sam Wallman.

So in honor of the holiday (not that we can really tell the difference, as today is functionally March 192nd), this is going to be short post, letting you know about the winner of the Fleen Free Graphic Novel Giveaway. We took at look at the responses¹ and from them randomly picked Erik, who wrote:

I’ve been meaning to subscribe to The Nib for quite a while, and this is exactly the push over the line I’ve been needing. Regardless of whether I win a book, I’m subscribing now, for the foreseeable future given the level of content. And if by some chance my name gets pulled, I’d love the George Takei memoir – he’s been a superb role model for how to turn celebrity into positive social energy.

Everybody feel good for Erik! Once They Called Us Enemy gets delivered, there will be a selfie that we’ll run here.

Oh, and as a quick reminder, today is the premiere of Elinor Wonders Why; you can look up broadcast times for your local PBS station at PBS.org and clicking on the link for TV Schedules, which should take you to your local PBS station; for those of you in the NYC metro area, Channel 13 has it at 10:30am and 1:30pm.

That’s it, everybody; enjoy the day, read about the history of the labor movement or other attempts at progress and justice, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow.

Spam of the day:

Hey, great site. Are you guys still open? I’m reaching out businesses who need more customers right away. Here’s how we can increase the visitors to your business immediately

Reply to spam of the day:

If I were any more open, I’d be the Goatse guy!

I swear I actually replied to the email with this. I am both proud and not proud of this.

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¹ Since we posted the contest, we at Fleen have become aware of an irregular email issue where some senders (but not all, and even those that are affected aren’t affected all the time) are getting errors that the domain fleen.com doesn’t exist. I spent some time with tech support today and it’s a nameserver issue, the resolution to which will take another day or two to spread. If you got bounced on your entry, I’m very sorry and better luck next time we give something away.

Got a couple of things to mention today, starting with a prime example of how science fiction and fantasy are ultimately always about the society you live in now. Let’s just say you don’t need to know 1200+ strips of complex (somtimes very complex) plot to get how the latest update of Order Of The Stick could apply to all kinds of situations today. Well done, Rich Burlew.

Readers may recall that :01 Books have had a couple of con-like virtual events under the title of Comics Relief, the first in April and the second in June be sure to check out the replays of the sessions — the various process events are interesting from a craft perspective, and the three that involve :01 creative director Mark Siegel are a masterclass in how to conduct an interview that flows like a conversation.

Readers may also recall how this page has discussed the impact that :01 Books has had on comics beyond its own backlist of authors, on account of :01 alumni have gone on to other publishers and imprints and how Siegel’s vision of what comics could be is now essentially the mission statement for the entire industry.

Finally, readers had damn well better recall that one of those alumni is Gina Gagliano, a woman not only tasked with launching a new graphic novel imprint in a too-brief timeframe, but also with a debut season beset by a worldwide pandemic. Okay, that last bit wasn’t planned, but she’s got to deal with it all the same. Gagliano knows you have to roll with the punches, and if there’s not been a third Comics Relief in a while now, she’s just gonna have to pitch in with something similar:

Random House Graphic is announcing an exciting kickoff to the fall season with “Falling for Graphic Novels,” a series of virtual events in September hosted by five indie bookstores across the United States.

The panels will feature Random House Graphic’s creators and allow attendees to discover and virtually visit new stores around the country. Each panel will focus on a theme in kids and YA comics, allowing readers to immerse themselves in stories of magic and heroes, queer and diverse representation, and even an interactive art class.

The celebration will give attendees an in-depth look at this exciting medium that continues to grow in popularity and show the power and breadth of visual storytelling. The series begins Wednesday, September 2, with a new event each week.

The five events will be:

• Heart Happy! Tales of Friendship, Family, and Fun! (there’s something very Japanese about that title)
  Wednesday, 2 September, 6:00pm PDT
  Featuring Laura Knetzger, Jose Pimienta, and Jeffrey Brown
  Hosted by Vroman’s Bookstore (Pasadena, CA)
  Moderated by Oliver Sava
  Hosted on Crowdcast
• Random House Graphic Doodle Draw!
  Thursday, 10 September, 4:00pm CDT
  Featuring Mika Song, Kaeti Vandorn, Stephen Shaskan, and Brian Yanish
  Hosted by BookPeople (Austin, TX)
  Moderated by Alex Lu
  Hosted on Zoom
• Magic and Mayhem: Adventures in Graphic Novels!
  Wednesday, 16 September, 7:00pm CDT
  Featuring Sophie Escabasse, Reimena Yee, and Nathan Page and Drew Shannon
  Hosted by The Book Stall (Winnetka, IL)
  Moderated by Nicole Herviou
  Hosted on Crowdcast
• Celebrating LGBTQ+ Representation in Comics!
  Tuesday, 22 September, 6:00pm MDT
  Featuring Trung Le Nguyen, Jessi Zabarsky, and Chad Sell
  Hosted by BookBar (Denver, CO)
  Moderated by Samantha Puc
  Hosted on Crowdcast
• RH Graphic: Pick Your Hero!
  Sunday, 27 September, 2:00pm EDT
  Featuring Judd Winick, Mark Siegel, JC Phillipps, and John Gallagher
  Hosted by Books of Wonder (New York, NY)
  Moderated by Mika Avila
  Hosted on Crowdcast

Click on any of the five titles to go to the reservations page.

There are some great names in there, but I’m particularly interested in the first one because Oliver Sava is one of the very best writers about comics working today. The LGBTQ+ session also looks great, but I’ll have to catch whatever replay is available, as Tuesday is EMT duty night. And did you notice Gagliano’s old boss is a panelist on the last session? Siegel doesn’t just publish graphic novels, he makes them, and the Five Worlds series has been at Penguin Random House since before RHG was formed as a single gathering point.

I was going to talk about one thing more today, but I think I’ll let it sit until tomorrow; it’s getting late to hit Publish and also I want another day to absorb before I’m ready to talk about Shing Yin Khor’s latest meditation in comics form.

Spam of the day:

I have been waiting for you since to contact me regarding your winning amount of US$2, 100, 000.00 (Two Million One Hundred Thousand United State Dollars) loaded on your ATM Visa Card which we discussed. We are duly interred switched, therefore you can make withdrawal in any location of ATM Machine Center Cash point of your choice in any part of the world and the maximum you can withdraw a day is $5,000 US Dollar.

A good, old fashioned 419 scam? That takes me back.

As I trust you all remember, yesterday was Holemas, the day that we commemorate Ryan North getting stuck in a hole. In fact, yesterday was the 5th Holemas, the original adventure having taken place in 2015. And if yesterday was Holemas, that makes today Holeboxing Day, when the mighty give gifts to the meek.

And who — who, I ask you — is mightier than Strong Bad? Nobody, that’s who. And since it is long-standing doctrine in these parts the Homestar*Runner is a webcomic, I wanted to tell you about something the estimable Mr Bad has coming up, along with some friends of his.

One of the side effects of the Oh Glob, We’re Going To Be Like This Forever Thanks To Incompetent Federal Behavior pandemic is that live shows pretty much don’t exist, unless you’re Smash Mouth and you feel like doing your damndest to turn Sturgis, South Dakota into the latest contact-tracing nexus. It’s a tough thing, relying on people that will pay you to be in the same space at the same time as you, but some internet-centric musicians have been doing remote concertlike events for some time, and I’m not saying that COVIDtimes are good times for them, but they’re at least a bit ahead of the curve in figuring out how to ply their trade.

Enter: The Doubleclicks, nerdy musicians par excellence. They’ve been running shows everywhere from straight YouTube to inside Animal Crossing for a bit now, and they’re ready to bring a bunch of their nerdiest friends together for a big ol’ show of music and comedy on Saturday, 22 August at 6:00pm PDT/9:00pm EDT:

Join Internet musicians Jonathan Coulton, the Doubleclicks, Nur-D and Molly Lewis for an evening of music, comedy and love, with lots of special guests including: Hal Lublin (Thrilling Adventure Hour, Nightvale), Danielle Radford (SyFy’s Great Debate), Strongbad (Homestarrunner), Zach Reino (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend), Kim Evey (The Guild), and SO MANY MORE, with sketches written by Kayla Cagan (Piper Perish) and produced by Ben Blacker (Thrilling Adventure Hour)!

It’s like one of those big variety shows at conventions with lots of cameos and funny bits, except it’s in your house, and it’s very very very well-organized, because we’re running it.

That from the email that Los Dobles Clics sent me because I give them money in exchange for their albums, but also on their website. Due to the number of folks performing, it won’t be a tip jar kind of situation, it’ll be a ticketed event, moreso because the show is a benefit for MacArthur Project and Mutual Aid Disaster Relief — proceeds will be used to obtain food, medicine, shelter, hygiene supplies, and other needs of LA denizens without homes.

Getting your ticket now means you’ll get an email with the link for the livestream (which will be replayble until Sunday, 6 September at midnight EDT) instead of waiting for a possibly over-busy website at showtime. Tickets are US$6.50, with an option to make an additional donation of any amount on top.

And because you’d like to know who all is on the bill, in addition to amazing superstar headliner Strong Bad and special guests The Doubleclicks, you’ll also have Jonathan Coulton, Nur-D, Molly Lewis, Amy Dallen, Aydrea Walden, Hal Lublin, Lexie Grace, Danielle Radford, Kim Evey, The Library Bards, Mary Robinette Kowal, Paul and Storm, and Zach Reino, in an extravaganza written by Laser Malena-Weber and Kayla Cagan.

Honestly, it’s a little too much entertainment for the cost of a fancy coffee and two-thirds of a pastry to go with it. It’s not like it’ll sell out, but get your tickets ahead of time anyway; when they see how much they’ve raised for the cause, the performers will put that much more love into the show.

Spam of the day:

We’ve developed the bots to act as salespeople in order to generate a consistent source of quality leads. They’re not only outperforming a typical sales persons workload by the equivalent of ten times, but they also drive down lead costs by a phenomenal amount.

This was sent to me because I’m the listed tech contact for my EMS agency’s website. I’m half-tempted to see if their bots can actually generate more sick and injured people and if they can, to get them shut down because it’ll be the friggin’ robot apocalypse.