Okay, let me see if I’ve got this straight: ShiftyLook is a subsidiary of Bandai Namco, which through predecessor companies and associated firms, has a deep catalog of videogames going back a few decades. The purpose of ShiftyLook has been to find new ways to use the IP associated with those old games, which they’ve done by starting up webcomics, webtoons, and a multiplayer large visual novel-type game. That’s pretty much everything they could be doing, right?

Wrong.

Jim Zub (well known to readers of this page) has been pretty involved in the development of the ShiftyLook comics (writing, scouting talent, etc), and one of his comics projects, Wonder Momo, is about to square the circle that is Momo’s Wonder-Hoop.

Having originated as an arcade side-scroller, Zub, co-author Erik Ko, and artist Omar Dogan (all of whom are part of UDON Entertainment) turned it into the story of a wannabe idol singer with lots of over-the-top Power Ranger-type action¹. Now Bandai Namco are turning the new story based on the old game into an anime miniseries, with a videogame to follow. So that’s a game based on an anime based on a webcomic based on an arcade game. Opined Mr Zub on Twitter:

Bandai-Namco made a Wonder Momo anime based on the comic strip story I wrote! Unveiled in Japan just now! @ShiftyLook

And there’s a new Wonder Momo video game also in development based on our comic story. Absolutely surreal.

For a little more context as to what this means to Zub, check out his history with anime, and what this would have meant to his 15 year old self.

Wonder Momo (the anime series) will stream as five, 5-minute episodes on Crunchyroll on Thursdays at 7:30pm (presumably EST), starting in February. Wonder Momo (the game) is under development for PC and Android. Jim Zub (the architect of Momo’s revival) probably took about half an hour to feel justifiably proud, then got back to work because that’s the kind of guy he is.

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¹ And, given that the protagonist, the frenemy and the protagonist’s mom are all magical girls with transformation sequences and battle suits that don’t feature pants, surprisingly tame and tasteful fan service. Heck, the original arcade game featured a perv with a camera distracting Momo with upskirt attempts; Zub’s repurposed him into a legit photojournalist.

Well! That was a fun couple of days, including two separate airports that just did not want me to leave their premises and threw every possible obstacle in my way. Now let’s never speak of the last 48 hours again.

• Catching up! My buddy Otter — or more properly, KB “Otter” Spangler — of A Girl And Her Fed has launched her first Kickstarter campaign, to take her first novel (released last year) and her next novel (to be released in about six weeks) recorded as audiobooks. On casual inspection this would seem an odd project, since wouldn’t you just make that a stretch goal of the Kickstarter for the books themselves?

  In this case, no, because a) the books weren’t Kickstarted, they were just released on her own; and b) the protagonist of Digital Divide and Maker Space is blind, and releasing them as audiobooks is outreach to an audience that wouldn’t otherwise be able to connect to a relatable character. In fact, one of the stretch goals will be to convert the books to Braille and donate copies to libraries that serve the visually impaired, so this is maybe less about help me make a cool thing and more about help me extend this cool thing to people who tend not to get as many cool things in a form they can access.

  We’re not quite 48 hours in (like, 12 minutes shy of 48 hours as I write this) and we’re sitting around 95% of goal; per the venerable F^3 calculation, this project should finish up somewhere between 200% and 400% of its modest US$7000 goal. Go support it, and enjoy the project video, which is a puppet show¹.

• Catching up! Some new comics launching over at ShiftyLook, with some veteran creators taking a whack at videogame characters that have … shall we say thin? … plots. Shannon Campbell and Sam Logan are breathing life into Tower of Babel, which is essentially a Jenga-in-reverse puzzler/platformer. Meanwhile Team Nice Wizard (aka Ryan North, Christopher Hastings, and Anthony Clark) are fleshing out the story of Dig Dug.
• Catching up! Box Brown’s Retrofit Comics started as a limited-duration project to publish comics for a year. Then it became an ongoing imprint. Brown himself spent a lot of time working up André the Giant² for much of the past two years, but as that project’s all done but the shipping at this point, he’s back to his publisher role with a vengeance:
  

  After only publishing 7 books in 2013, we ARE BACK to a 12-comics-a-year schedule! In 2014 we’ll be releasing comics from these HOT comics artists!

  Which you can click through to see; I just wanted to stress that this is not a funding announcement, this is an availability-of-subscriptions announcement. These comics are getting published, the only questions are how many, and will you get them or not.

Whew, I think that’s everything I needed to get caught up on. Fortunately, nothing going on in comics today except for the surprise announcement that Scott McCloud is an android. Reached for comment, McCloud responded Of course not, I am a completely alive human, beep, null set. You heard it here first.

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¹ No sign of Spinal Tap, who presumably made off with the audio equipment for the puppet show as the sound levels are bit low. You’ll want to bring the volume up on your computer for all the puppety goodness.

² No lie, this looks to be premier work of André the Giant scholarship; I’m not into professional wrestling³, but like everybody, I know (and have a fond spot for) André the Giant.

³ By which I mean I had a brief period of watching in late junior high school. If I understand my wrestling history right, this was when what is now the WWE was moving from a mostly Northeast base into a wider national profile, pre-Hulkamania. Anyway, my knowledge of pro wrestling is from 30+ years ago, aside from some bored Saturdays watching GLOW⁴ in college.

⁴ That would be the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, because come on, watching Amy the Farmer’s Daughter getting beat down by Matilda the Hun until her [Amy’s] little brother Timmy pulls himself from his hospital bed and makes his way ringside on crutches to inspire her [again, Amy] to defeat her evil rival? That’s gold, from the time of two-reel 1930s melodramas⁵ to the first epic battle between Morimoto and Flay on Iron Chef. Heck, I’m pretty sure that the kid cheering on Morimoto actually was named Timmy!

⁵ By the way, I experimented with the construction 1930s two-reel melodramas before rewriting. I heard on the radio last week (or maybe it was an episode of Judge John Hodgman that there are certain rules of grammar that aren’t taught, but which we instinctively absorb; for instance, you wouldn’t say the red big car instead of the big red car. If anybody knows the name for this phenomenon, I’d love to hear it. Ryan North, I’m looking at you.

Footnotes, everybody!

Also, Happy Starpocalypse Release Day Plus One.

As promised the long-awaited SMBC project dropped yesterday; it’s got a would-be prophet, a would-be robosexual, the alternating triumphs of (thoroughly insane and perverse) God and (thoroughly disdainful of everything other than neuro-helmet induced orgasms) Science, and James Ashby¹ getting torn apart. It’s five episodes of a rudely hilarious sketch-comedy series thrown together to form a full season, complete with cliffhanger. Oh, and in and around the various perversities and transgressions, there’s the question of whether humanity should put its faith in anything blindly, whether the supernatural or the scientific².

If the effect look a little rough, keep in mind that it was done on a budget that wouldn’t cover a day’s craft services on a regular sci-fi movie or TV show, and in that context, they look damn good. I’d go so far as to say that I enjoyed all the FX, and was disappointed only in that there weren’t more effects of James getting destroyed in creative ways, but there’s always Season Two! Order it up for three measly dollars here, and enjoy the blasphemy.

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¹ History’s greatest villain.

² Although many of the scientific types are dicks, they also didn’t invent suffering and vengeful smiting like the malevolent alien pervert claiming to be God did. Potato, potato.

In case anybody had any doubts that Chris Onstad is a languagesmith of the highest order, may I refer you to today’s Achewood. Even if this storyline ends here, it was worth it.

• In other news, a tweet dropped that makes perfect, perfect sense, so much so that in retrospect, we at Fleen are surprised that it doesn’t drop earlier:
  

  We can now announce that Becky is the character designer on Bee and PuppyCat!

  That would be Becky Dreistadt, and naturally everybody here knows Bee and PuppyCat and on the off chance you don’t know Bee and PuppyCat, please acquaint yourself with Bee and PuppyCat immediately. Heck, go watch it now anyway, I’ll wait.

  Back? Awesome. In case there were any doubts that Dreistadt were the right person for this design job¹, check out any part of her portfolio, including her work on Tiny Kitten Teeth, Capture Creatures, The Bear, or Benign Kingdom. You would have to spend a decade of concentrated mad-scientist bioengineering to create somebody better suited to this role on this webseries. Also, I would pay money to see Beer and PuppyFrat expanded into an episode, much like Natasha Allegri’s gender-reversed joke illustrations became Adventure Time’s Fionna and Cake².

• The recognition of webcomics-type ladies and dudes continues at The AV Club, this time with the staffers indicating what one piece of pop culture from 2013 they would share with the entire world if possible. Among the responses: Nimona by Noelle Stephenson and To Be or Not To Be by the ubiquitous Ryan North.
• The Patreon train continues its travel through Webcomicsville; since Jon Rosenberg³ launched his page on Monday, he’s nearly reached his first extra-reward tier. On Wednesday, Zach Weinersmith jumped on board and is already on the verge of altering the ad mix on his page. Today Ryan Sohmer got his ticket punched, with the potential of launching another comic.

  I’d worry about the additional writing duties causing his brain to collapse from over-mining, but honestly — the difference between the workload of writing two regular webcomics, one ongoing children’s book⁴, two webseries, and two editorial comics and writing three regular webcomics, one ongoing children’s book, two webseries, and two editorial comics isn’t that much, incrementally. Back the Patreon campaign, and you can help drive him to the brink of neural overload!

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¹ And that’s before one considers the neat symmetry that the “Frank” of BeckyandFrank would be Frank Gibson, who provided the voice of Wallace in Bee and PuppyCat

² And who created Bee and PuppyCat? Natasha Allegri. Wheels within wheels, plans within plans. It all fits together!

³ Obligatory disclaimer, etc.

⁴ Illustrated by Becky Dreistadt! It all comes back around!

It’s a day for learning things, including the fact that today is Repeal Day¹, the anniversary of the day when the United States ended one of the most stupid experiments in law and social policy in all of human history. The other things I learned all involve comics.

• First thing I learned: Really never underestimate David Malki ! We spoke not long ago about not ignoring his boundless font of creativity, so I shouldn’t have been surprised, honestly. See, I had gotten it into my head that with all that Malki ! had taken on this year, including the logistics of shipping something like a million collated cards², he might give the Wondermark calendar a year off. After all, it’s less than three weeks from Christmas and thus less than four until the new year, when the calendar is most needed.

  Nope. In fact, he’s upped the proverbial ante by also offering a book of the art and verse from the 2008 — 2012 iterations of the calendar, and original art from last year’s Gaxian travelogue edition. As in past years, the calendar is in a limited edition of 250, and there are but 29 pieces of original art from last year’s calendar. The book may or may not be available after the calendars sell out, but for now I’m guessing there’s only 250 copies of that as well. Best jump on that soon if you want in.

• Second thing I learned: The good folks at :01 Books are successful out of all proportion to their size³. Seriously, there’s something like four people involved in the entire acquisitions/editing/production end at the imprint, and they gather accolades for a hefty percentage of their output every year. Latest proof: NPR’s year-end guide to the best of 2013 books has a category for graphic novels & comics, and :01 garnered a full 25% of the recognition.

  It’s worth noting that the :01 Spring and Fall catalogs contain a total of 14 books (I can’t find a copy of their Winter catalog right now, but I’m confident in putting their total releases for the year in the vicinity of 20). There are publishers that drop more graphic novels than that in a month, but it’s all about the quality, not the quantity.

  Oh, and it looks like next year will be just as fun. I just want to publicly thank the :01 crew: Callista, Colleen, Gina, Mark, and anybody else I might be overlooking at the scrappiest, most thoughtful, best damn imprint in the New York publishing scene. Y’all rock.

• Third thing I learned: If I’m reading this announcement correctly, the folks behind the Making Comics podcast are getting ready to launch a repository of comics-making online courses. They’re talking about live courses to start with, aimed at the 10 — 12 year old range to begin with … but if those lessons remain on YouTube, does it matter how old you are if you want to watch ’em?

  As a thing, the Massive Open Online Course is still rapidly changing, and I’m not sure that any number of pre-recorded lessons can replace the experience of working with a skilled instructor who also knows the material inside-out⁴, but this does have the potential of spreading the basics of comics-making far more widely that it has been in the past. It’s worth keeping an eye on.

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¹ Actually, I knew that, but I did learn that heavily Mormon Utah was the state that provided the clinching vote to repeal the 18th Amendment so thanks for that one, Utah! Oddly, my own state of New Jersey provided the last vote in favor of ratification of Prohibition, but not until 1922, more than three years after the 18th Amendment was approved and more than two years after the Volstead Act came into force.

² Which logistics, by the way, also involves the container ship developing mechanical problems and having to return to the far side of the Pacific Ocean.

³ Okay, I knew that one, too.

⁴ As some of you know, my day job is teaching for a technology company. For the past decade, an increasing percentage of my course load has been delivered from my home office in a virtual classroom rather than in-person. The advantages to students are numerous — no travel costs being paramount — but there are challenges as well; most important from my perspective is the lack of immediate feedback to me as to how well the students are getting it during lecture.

There are dozens of small cues that an instructor picks up from a student sitting right over there that convey clearly — they understand or I need to do that last bit over in another way — that are severely attenuated over a net connection. There are other logistical concerns as well, especially of the show me what you’re doing right now variety. Those challenges are compounded when the session isn’t live, but pre-recorded. However, any form of instruction is a step up from struggling on your own to the point that you decide I can’t do this.

Understand as we get started here, today I get to share with you hints of things that make me very, very happy. You can assign any kind of assumptions of bias that you like, doesn’t matter. What I am about to share with you is truth.

• Firstly, Christopher Hastings is going to be remembered by history as one of the the great writer/artists of comics. His story sense is amazingly solid, his art is clear and concise, and he’s a professional when he’s working for others. He would rather die than blow a commitment he’s made to somebody else (and if that means that his own stuff gets delayed so that he can make good to an employer, so be it). Oh, and he’s friggin’ hilarious, which is just kind of unfair when you add it to his other good qualities¹.

  For the past month, his Marvel-published miniseries, Longshot Saves The Marvel Universe, has been dialing up the absurdity and mayhem in equal measures, but is only with today’s release of issue #3 that you get to see Hastings at his best. Because today is when you get to see Sad Future Magneto leaving increasingly pathetic voicemails for Charles Xavier. Hastings gave me a rundown on these back at SDCC and no lie, I was rolling. As an added bonus, I’ve been imagining that someday, somehow, real-life besties Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Patrick Stewart might be enticed to re-enact what Hastings has written. It would be the best thing.

• For two years now (longer, even), something has kept me going in bad times. One particular thought has sustained me when all seems bleak. And lo, in this season of miracles, the Day of Jubilee has arrived, and on Christmas Day no less, we will all get to see History’s Greatest Monster blow up in space.

  James Ashby, I’m looking at you.

  It’s been a long time since the money was raised, the equipment obtained, occasionally-shirtless James was filmed, all in preparation for Starpocalypse!. Back when the project was first announced, Zach Weiner confirmed for me that the time and funding that would be required for Starpocalypse would all be worth it given the many different was they would get to explode James. In space. Now we are a mere three weeks away from the realization of that dream, and it’s so beautiful.

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¹ Also: impeccable food- and drink-producing skills, and his dog is ridiculous.

It is fast becoming a basic tenet in the world of independent creation that you ignore David Malki ! as your peril. He has his hands in more endeavours than you can easily count, he has stumbled into problems and found solutions that you need not recreate, and he’s generous about sharing his knowledge. Also all those projects take so much time that by my calculations he’s averaging about 37 minutes of sleep a night, meaning by now he’s dangerously insane; definitely you want to keep your eyes on him at all times so he can’t sneak up behind you.

Case in point: in and around all of his own projects, Malki ! took on a gig with Audible UK to promote a new book by Bill Bryson, which became Real True Actual Stories of America (here, and here, and here). Now Malki ! has done animated versions of his Victorian illustrations before, with some paperstock and sticks and suchlike, but for the RTASoA he went and invented a motion-capture technique that allows real-time rendering of virtual performers. Check out the entire behind the scenes video and then come back here.

All done? Here’s a thought for you — one of the last projects that Jim Henson worked on before his untimely death was a motion-capture system for real-time virtual puppeteering. It required an elaborate electromechanical interface and 120 hours of rendering for a 2-minute short. Malki ! has essentially achieved the same thing with some paper, some clothespins and sticks, and a Mac; certainly some of that is down to Moore’s Law and the work done by previous generations of motion-capture development, but a hell of a lot of it is due to Malki ! messing around with an idea that might. just. work.

Not that everything works out so easily. With the long, intercontinental production of the Machine of Death game nearing the endgame, it’s time to make one last attempt to make sure everything goes to where it should:

So now that we’re getting really close to shipping, we sent out an email to all 10,468 people asking if the address we had on file for them was correct, and providing a link to a form they could fill out to correct it if necessary. We used the email addresses we collected from Kickstarter.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but for the sake of data and trivia, here are some of the results, so far, of sending out that mass email at roughly 1pm this afternoon:

• Autoresponses saying “My email address has changed”: 4
• Autoresponses saying “My email address has changed”, but without providing the new address: 1
• “Out of office” autoreplies: 5
• Earthlink anti-spam prove-you’re-human autoreplies: 2
• Non-problem emails just saying “Everything’s fine, you’re doing a great job”: 8
• “I’ll be out of town from x date to y date, can we make a special arrangement”: 5
• “Using such-and-such courier service will cause me a problem, can we make a special arrangement”: 5
• Verifying or confirming something specific in their order: 3
• “I don’t currently have an address so don’t send anything yet”: 2
• “I’m in a different place in my life now, so you know what, don’t send it at all”: 1
• Undeliverable email bouncebacks: 19

[bold original]

So that’s 50 out of more than 10,000, not bad.

Responses to the form submitting a correction to their shipping address (so far, more are coming in every minute): SEVEN HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN

That is BONKERS. Overnight it will probably top 1,000 people. That’s TEN PERCENT who need to change their shipping address all of a sudden TODAY.

If we hadn’t sent out that email, would 1,000 packages have been returned to us as undeliverable? The thought is terrifying! [bold original]

Oh. Mind you, every single person that replied at the last possible moment that their address had changed has had access to BackerKit since April, and has been occasionally exhorted by Malki ! in project updates to make sure that their addresses were current. And let’s not overlook the likelihood that even the first 50 backers Malki ! recounted could be incredibly hassle-filled and expensive:

then you you send a package overseas and it’s returned to you because the backer moved and then they ask for a refund of their pledge

that is not only a true story, it happened more than once

That would be Sara McHenry and Holly Rowland, logistical geniuses at TopatoCo and Make That Thing. Take this as a lesson, anybody that’s creating a Kickstarter campaign — there are things almost entirely out of your control that could very possibly ruin your attempts to provide a timely delivery to your backers, and eventually drive you as insane. In which case you might be the next person we ignore at our peril.

Three of them, in fact.

• Miracle the First: Paul Taylor is the first person in comics history to correctly depict a nasal cannula. That’s the oxygen tube that goes in the nose, as opposed to more high-delivery methods like masks¹. Every. Friggin’. Time. I’ve ever read a comic (book, strip, web, whatever) that featured somebody getting oxygen, they’ve gotten the nasal wrong:
  • it doesn’t shove one tube up one nostril leaving the other empty
  • it doesn’t end in two prongs shoved in the two nostrils, hanging down like some long, hollow booger
  • it doesn’t clip to the nose

  It does exactly what Taylor has drawn: form a closed loop with two prongs in the middle that go in the nostrils, and the tubing itself is draped over the ears and snugged up under the chin to keep everything in place. From today forward, proclaim that there is never reason to get this one wrong again.

• Miracle the Second: Six of the extremely talented and personable folks at Periscope Studio have banded together, like Voltron, to bring justice to the galaxy print up a series of art books, and you can support ’em over at Kickstarter. A pledge of as little as US$5 will get you PDFs of all six books (from Ron Randall, Paul Guinan, David Hahn, Natalie Nourigat, Benjamin Dewey, and Erika Moen — who yesterday survived largely unscathed² a rather scary auto-vs-bike collision that scared the crap out of me from 5000 km away and which we will dub Miracle the Second and a Half). Naturally, higher pledge levels get you physical comics of breathtaking beauty and vision, so make with the pledging.
• Miracle the Third: So yesterday when I went down the list of Thought Bubble attendees, I noted the attendance of Nicholas Gurewitch of the long-hiatused, much-beloved Perry Bible Fellowship and thought to myself, Man, I hope he’s working on something new.

  Ask and ye shall receive: Gurewitch tweet-announced a new animated short that he wrote and directed, featuring death, destruction, and a cameo by one Zachary T Paleozogt. It’s hilarious, but you knew that would be the case.

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¹ Of which there are several types, which we need not go into here.

² I’m giving at least partial credit to the incredible shape that Moen is in due to her pole-based acrobatic skills, and partial credit to the fact that she’s a force of nature and cannot be defeated by mortal instruments.

A number of things happened Thursday, but I felt like Friday belonged to Joey. I don’t imagine a slight delay in discussion has changed any of these things too much.

• If you aren’t familiar with Horace Greenstein, Scary Owl Lawyer, you damn well should be. Now available in scarier, sound-and-vision form courtesy of Nothing But Flowers.
• New A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible!
• It’s been ten years since the first Child’s Play was announced¹, and in that time its focus has been singular: make life a little easier for sick kids (and their families) via a network of affiliated (now world-wide) hospitals. Announced late last week is the first expansion of the Child’s Play mission, extending the same promise of relief to kids outside of the hospital environment, but in no less miserable straits:
  

  With the holiday season upon us, we wanted to share some exciting news from Child’s Play. Due to the incredible amount of support from gamers around the world, we’ve been working on a new initiative to benefit children and their families in domestic violence facilities.

  Unlike the network of hospitals we serve, domestic violence shelters operate on a much smaller scale and can have specific needs and challenges: Anonymous locations, apartment-style housing, multilingual families, and more.

  Within our pilot program, we have domestic violence facilities that provide emergency housing, long term housing, counseling, legal advocacy, and a variety of youth and family care programs, but there was one unifying factor to each and every one: They’re in need of ways to support, entertain, distract and interact with traumatised youth.

  I’m proud to announce we have selected ten facilities to participate in the pilot program for our domestic violence assistance initiative. Over the past year, we’ve been working to build a custom designed game kiosk, complete with console, TV, and appropriate games.

  As we get feedback and fine-tune the manufacturing and distribution process, we will expand the network to include facilities nationwide.

  PA co-creator Mike Krahulik isn’t the most popular guy in some communities these days; if you can separate the creator from the creation, there’s some good work being done here by a lot of people (not the least Child’s Play coordinator Jamie Dillion) and the good that can be produced here is tangible and much-needed. Just sayin’.

• I’ve been thinking about the Kickstarter scam-backer incident since it broke last week, and while I’m gratified that things came to a quick resolution (tl;dr: Kickstarter revoked the account of the scammer in question), I’ve been wondering what kind of protections could be baked into the Kickstarter ecosystem to discourage such scam attempts in the future. I’m not sure that anything foolproof could be devised² without impairing the the utility of the site, given that disputes of this nature are between a customer (in this case, a scammer), a credit card company, and a merchant (which Kickstarter is not; Kickstarter is a permanent marketplace with a floating roster of merchants).

  Amazon’s not very involved either, given that it’s little more than a credit processing service rather than a merchant. The bank issuing the card is obligated to investigate on behalf of the allegedly aggrieved party³, but it doesn’t want to be stuck with a deadbeat customer and is somewhat incentivized to find in favor of their cardmember because that makes it Somebody Else’s Problem. The Somebody in that SEP is the merchant, who get hit with a chargeback.

  So what to do? For starters, I don’t know what Kickstarter may be planning to deter scammers in the future — although I am confident that they are planning, since this particular cat it out of the bag, and dong nothing means having to spend the time and effort to react to them one at a time — but if I were over there I’d consider at least some of the following:

  • At a campaigner organizer’s request (or maybe automatically), make chargeback investigators aware of past disputes against other campaigns
  • Allow campaigns to approve backers above some threshold dollar value
  • Require backers above some threshold dollar value to provide some amount of their pledge in escrow/bond

  Those last two might work to deter the next guy that’s determined to steal top-value backer rewards; the hassle of dealing with credit card complaints (and the risk of triggering fraud alerts at the credit card companies) might not be worth it if you could “only” steal, say, US$100 worth of stuff as opposed to US$1000. Much to think about, and much to keep an eye on in future.

• Speaking of Kickstarter, and not on the topic of scams — one of the most delightfully thoughtful (or thoughtfully delightful) webcomics is finally getting a proper print collection, and they’re fundraising as we speak. Darwin Carmichael Is Going To Hell creators Sophie Goldstein and Jenn Jordan would like very much for you to join their eponymous hero on the karmic rollercoaster ride that is his life, and to enjoy the paper-based versions of the laugh-chuckles which can be yours for as little as US$30 (it was US$25, but the early birds beat you to the savings).

  DCIGTH is terrific, funny, heartfelt stuff, and you should get in on this while the getting’s good. Oh, and collectors of comics art: please note that originals from the DCIGTH run are included in reward packages starting at the US$60 level, which is criminally cheap. Also, handmade plushies of Skittles the Manticore, hooray!

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¹ Perhaps appropriately, it started in reaction to what the PA guys perceived as persecuting, dickish behavior on the part of another. You may argue if you wish about the presence or absence of irony in that state of affairs, but it is inarguable that Child’s Play has done a great deal of good for sick kids and their families in the decade since.

² cf: the prevalence of scammers on eBay, who always find exploits within policies that are meant for honest participants. But, like they say, locks are for honest people.

³ Remind me to tell you sometime about the dark days before card swipers and how customers could get screwed by stolen credit cards for weeks until the numbers got into the hands of merchants.

Kickstarter is not a free money machine. It’s an opportunity machine. You still have to sell your product.

I get a lot of emails with a lot of questions that can be answered simply with those three sentences. — David Malki !

Look at that, opening up with a pithy, intriguing quote just like some fancy writer guy. It doesn’t hurt that David Malki ! managed to sum up the state of Kickstarter, how many people perceive it, and why some succeed in their campaigns while others crash and burn and get mad at everybody but themselves. It’s as concise a declaration of perception vs reality as ever I’ve seen.

• Since we’re talking about Kickstarter, this would be a good time to point out that a campaign I figured would fund out in about six hours is still chugging away towards goal, but maybe not the massive overfunding success I would have anticipated. I speak, naturally, of the Bee and PuppyCat series (as of this writing, sitting at 73% of goal with just under two weeks to go). Surprising, especially given that the stretch goals mean more episodes.

  Not that B&P will fail to fund out, or that the series will fail to delight, or that the mentioned-almost-in-passing-in-the-pitch B&P comic book series will fail to attract the cream of indy comics. Yep, it’s all officially announced now. It’ll be by BOOM, of course, joining B&P creator Natasha Allegri’ Adventure Time: Fionna & Cake mini, and other animated-show tie-ins by the likes of Yuko & Ananth, Meredith Gran, Ryan North, Shelli Paroline, Braden Lamb, Joey Comeau, Mike Holmes, and Danielle Corsetto.

• As long as we’re on Kickstarters, there’s a new one that caught my eye today: Pat Race’s Alaska Robotics is more than just a webcomic; it’s a comic shop, an art/exhibition gallery, a bring-interesting-and-creative-folks-to-town enterprise, and more. And now, it’ll be a satirical series of short films covering the 2014 session of the Alaska state legislature.

  They’ve already reached their (very modest US$3000 ) initial goal, and are well on their way to reaching their (modest by dollar figures, ambitious in terms of what they want to accomplish) stretch goals. Something tells me that the representatives of the people of Alaska may come to fear the attentions of Pat Race et. al. as much as national politicians fear the attentions of The Rev. Sir Doctor Stephen Tyrone Mos Def Colbert, D.F.A., Heavyweight Champion of the World? featuring Flo Rida.

• Speaking of short films and stretching yourself creatively, mad woodworking genius and inventor of the self-photobomb Chris Yates is doing just that. Today marks the end of photo-webcomic Reprographics and the start of Yates’s next creative outlet: Nothing But Flowers, a webseries of short films from now until he’s either conquered the world or decided to conquer another medium of expression.

  The first two NBF episodes are live now, one featuring retro videogames and puppets and the second featuring Yates at his most physically expressive¹. Judging from the images in the last Repgrographics, Yates is collaborating with some of his webcomics cohorts and maybe a ninja, and that can only lead to the best kind of madness. New episodes will go up on Fridays, so drop by the site or the YouTube channel and check ’em out.

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¹ Anybody that’s ever noted his extreme emoting in photos, just imagine what he can do with full motion and audio.