What to do when your e-book publisher decides to drop comics of an adult nature, including your very popular anthology that is surely bringing in a considerable amount of money? Sale on the physical copy, naturally. Let’s let Smut Peddler editor Spike tell the story:

Hey folks FYI: Gumroad has temporarily dropped adult content. But Smut Peddler will be available on Comixology, starting in May!

I’ve been working with Comixology for a while to get my stuff on there, and it’s scheduled to go live in a couple of weeks. EXCITED.

SALE: Smut Peddler is ALL GUMMED UP! Until April 30th, physical copies of this fabulous anthology are 33% OFF!

That was where it stood 30 minutes ago (as of the time of writing this paragraph): unfortunate occurrence, making the best of it, resilience of the artist, etc. Then I noticed that Bleeding Cool was reporting on this situation, and their report (more precisely, a link from their report) made this situation seem a bit more … tawdry.

Not because of the porn (especially tastefully done porn, predominantly from the ladies), and not because Gumroad pulled Smut Peddler (taking credit cards means that they have to adhere to policies put forth by the card companies and payment processors, a situation that has tripped up more than one previous purveyor of porntastic provisions). See, the Bleeding Cool piece talked with a guy who had his gay-themed e-book pulled by Gumroad, and he asked why, if he’s being pulled, is Smut Peddler allowed to be on the service?

More precisely, he asked three times, by name, in all caps, via an open posting on Facebook.

All of which leads me to a dilemma. We at Fleen are not in favor of rewarding people who behave poorly with links or attention. Yet we also realize that you shouldn’t necessarily take my interpretation of this situation at face value, and you should have the opportunity to judge for yourself, which is less likely to happen if you have to go searching all over the hell’s half-acre that is the internet to find what I’m talking about.

So here’s what I’ve done: Ive screenshotted the posting that the person in question made to Facebook (seen above), and removed his name. This is for two reasons:

1. If I’m being unduly harsh, the creator in question doesn’t deserve to have his name unduly linked with critical rhetoric.
2. If, on the other hand, my gut feeling on this is correct and the creator in question is engaging in behavior somewhere between a hissy fit and sour grapes¹, he doesn’t deserve the publicity that even a critical assessment would bring him.

In any event: Smut Peddler’s on sale for 33% off until the end of the month.

Let’s talk about things that are more unambiguously positive, ‘kay?

• The Jeff Rowland’s Flickr account has a new video up showing some of the activity around the in-renovations future home of TopatoCo. At one point in the video (18 seconds, to be precise), Rowland approaches a road roller, leading to the possibility that joyrides may take place at some point in the future. There is no part of this that could possibly end unawesomely.
• There are several webcomics “review” sites that are little more than exercises in drive-by vandalism, delighting in the negative for the sheer nihilistic joy of it². So I am overjoyed to see a new webcomics review site pop up that is dedicated to the prospect of sharing what the author finds to be good rather than tearing down what’s subjectively bad.³ Ladies and gentlemen, may I commend to you Robynne Blume’s Webcomics Worth Wreading, which opens with a discussion of Reptilis Rex by William Tallman.
• Strip Search Elimination #5 spoilers ahoy. Hold up here if you haven’t seen it yet.

  All good? ‘Kay, let’s start off by saying that was the best visit to Artdome we’ve had yet, and I was sorry to think that either Amy or Maki would be going home because we really are past the point of obviously weak competitors; anybody in the house could win it at this point. Also they both interacted with each other and the Creators in a way that was more lively and unguarded than we’ve seen before. Also-also, Jerry drank a comic⁴, which is not a sentence I ever thought I would type.

  Now what I find to be the curious thing at this point is where the show goes from here. When I spoke to Robert Khoo and Erika Sadsad about the show before it debuted, Khoo said that while there will be no way to tell the entire story of what happened in the mansion, there was a natural narrative that emerged during filming.

  Up until now, I’d been expecting that narrative to be Amy’s, from her initial presentation as the one person playing the game part of the competition, to her meeting and befriending of Erika Moen, aka my fucking hero. Sadly, that story’s come to an end⁵, which got me to wondering what else might be the new narrative if it’s not Amy’s Journey. Possibilities include:

  • Dr Strangeabby or: How Mike Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Tangent
  • Monica’s Story, brought to you by Depends
  • Katie Will Kill All Who Challenge Her And Eat Whatever She Kills
  • Lexxy: Third Time’s The Charm!
  • Maki, Tavis, Beardlove by Elizabeth Gilbert
  • Erika Just Wins Everything Because We At Fleen Have Been Team Hurricane Since Day Minus 218

  Your best guesses as to where the heck the story goes from here in the comments, please.

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¹ If anybody knows a short, pithy expression that means If I can’t have something I’ll make sure others can’t either, I’ll be happy to use it. For now we’ll make do with “sour grapes”.

² No links, but if you want to know why such things still exist, my best guess is found in the extended digression on the nature of criticism by Anton Ego at the end of Ratatouille:

We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read.

³ Honestly, if it’s that bad, let it alone and it’ll go away on its own. Or just repeat to yourself Okay, I don’t like it but that doesn’t mean other people aren’t allowed to.

⁴ And he just … kept … drinking.

⁵ At least within the context of the show, but Ms T Falcone has skillfully parlayed her time on the show into more attention and eyeballs on her comic than she could reasonably expected to have had otherwise. A lot of people are going to be following her career closely from here on out.

We at Fleen have long been impressed by the Doug Wright Awards for excellence in English-language Canadian cartooning — the list of categories is mercifully short¹, the nominees are traditionally very strong, and the ceremony is held in conjunction with one of the best shows of the year, TCAF.

To that list, one may now add the fact that this year’s awards program will be hosted by Scott Thompson, best known from roles such as Best Friend of the Time Gate Operator, Tomin the drunk alien ambassador, Pleakley’s Mother, Dusty Gozongas, and various roles on some obscure sketch comedy show in the ’80s.

Thompson actually does have a comics connection, having co-written a graphic novel relating the alternate-world-barbarian-fantasy adventures of the most staid businessman in history, Danny Husk. I foresee an amusing evening full of uplifting frolic and cavortment.

Sticking with Canada in general, and Toronto in particular, word dropped from Ryan North yesterday that the webcomics domination of Cartoon Network-related programming continues apace:

Breehn is doing a Bravest Warriors AMA! He lets drop that @achewood and I are each writing an episode :o

The “Breehn” referenced would be Breehn Burns, the writer/director to whom Bravest Warriors (and Adventure Time) creator Pen Ward entrusted the adventures of the emotion-laden space teens. The remainder of North’s tweet referenced a question posed to Burns if he needed help on writing duties, prompting the reply:

This year we’ve brought several writers to the show, so I’m writing about half the scripts with my co-writer Jason Johnson, and for the rest I’m supervising new writers. Among them are Ryan North who does the [Adventure Time] comics, and Chris Onstad who writes the best web comic in existence, Achewood.

So far as I know, animated shorts is a new area of creative endeavour for both North and Onstad². North, naturally, has a feel for Wardian absurdism, what with the Adventure Time comics being one of the breakout successes of the past year, and he and Onstad have deep reserves of skill in making language dance in their comics³. Usually this is the sort of thing that I would view with cautious optimism, but screw that — this is gonna be great.

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¹ To be precise: three. Namely, Best Book, Best Emerging Talent, and the Pigskin Peters Award (for experimental or transgressive work).

² Although the proposed Achewood cartoon show has certainly given Onstad experience in adapting to animation, not to mention voice acting.

³ As well as the fact that Ryan North used to live with Joey Comeau, who writes the Bravest Warriors comics! Oh man, how deep does this rabbit hole go?

Spoilers if you haven’t seen the latest episode of Strip Search: the challenge involved doing a Magic: The Gathering-themed deck for a skateboard, and in a scant 90 minutes (scarcely enough time to come up with a preliminary design and ask for client feedback) some remarkably polished work got done. However, there could be only one winner and that for the challenge and that was “Hurricane” Erika Moen¹ and well deserved it was, too.

The only thing in this particular challenge that caught me off guard was the fact that although the challenge was described as work-for-hire and that Wizards of the Coast would be producing the skate deck for giveaway during Vans Warped Tour, Strip Search host Graham Stark did not, as has been traditional, explicitly say that Moen won x-number-of-dollars for her design.

Also, as this is a work based around another company’s IP, the usual rule that “the Artists own everything they produce” may not apply; there’s been a lot of online clamoring for one design or another to be produced as a print (notably Maki’s), and I’ve yet to notice any movement in that direction as of the time of this writing. I’ve reached out to Strip Search executive producer Robert Khoo for comment, and I’ll be sure to let you know what I find out².

In other news, one of the nicest, most modest guys in webcomics, Ryan Pequin, had some big news last night:

Anyway by the way I’m a real-ass storyboard guy on Regular Show now.

I’m actually almost finished my first board but frankly I expect the ground to swallow me whole somehow before I feel like this is official.

You’ll get to see the first episode I worked on in ten months so keep your eyes peeled until then!

Taken as a piece with the other webcomics types working on Cartoon Network–affiliated shows and comics, it certainly seems like webcomics is not just a goal in and of itself, but also a damn fine mechanism for making talent known in other fields.

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¹ Personal pick of this page to win the entire competition since the day that the reality show was announced as a stretch goal to the Penny Arcade Kickstarter.

² Keeping in mind that it may be the only answer he can give is Our arrangements with sponsors don’t allow me to comment on that, which is entirely fair.

Seriously, I have multiple labcoat-related items today.

• Project Runway meets webcomics for the second time. Last time it was a puking clown; this time it’s fashionable labcoats put together by a contestant from Season 10 and one of Jorge Cham’s collaborators from The PhD Movie. We will get Tim Gunn to take notice of us yet.
• Unless and until the Project X² ¹ takes off, the most famous lab coat in webcomics will remain that worn by Dante Shepherd, who brought himself to the fore twice today: once because he’s the latest creator to guest star in Jon Rosenberg’s anything-goes sandbox (and does so on a topic near to Rosenberg’s heart, booze), but he’s also making progress on a second strip first mentioned back in January (the title of that post also concerns booze …. COINCIDENCE??).

  It appears that the working title of that project will in fact be the final, so look for PhD Unknown to launch sometime this month and the reference to PhDs takes us back to the first item in an ever-deepening spiral of recursion from which there is no escape.

• Except there’s always an escape when there’s something shiny² ³ to look at, such as the latest infodump from the redoubtable Jim Zub on making a career of independent comics. Forget the fact that Zub opted not to include numbers, just look at the graphs showing losses and gains, slowly clawing their way in the direction of profitability.

  Actually, ignore everything except for that last graph on the page (helpfully reproduced above, where you see the red area of loss growing inexorably over time until a sharp about-face kicks in at the start of 2012 and a rapid climb towards the magic “break even” point.

  That inflection point is from when Zub put Skullkickers online and started driving browsers towards his print collections. Ignore that particular unslippery slope at your peril.

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¹ For once, that’s not a footnote, that’s an exponent. Unless I come up with a second footnote in this piece, in which case we’re in trouble.

² Such as my just-received copy of Benign Kingdom: Spring 2013 which — no kidding — has a gold foil embossment on the cover that’s so shiny that it reflected the afternoon sun into my eyes and made me turn my head, blinking away an afterimage. That’s pretty damn shiny.

³ This time it’s actually a footnote. I trust that you’ve navigated any potential confusion without too much trouble.

It’s one of those words with entirely too many definitions.

• Hey, have I mentioned that MoCCA Fest is this weekend? Because it totally is, and I will be roaming the crap out of the show floor¹ on Saturday². Look for a healthy contingent of webcomickers and their natural allies, including the various B9 creators, Magnolia Porter, Lauren Zukauskas, Mike Isenberg & Oliver Mertz, David McGuire, Sophie Goldstein, Sylvan Migdal, Oni Press, Top Shelf, and :01 Books — who will be debuting Lucy Knisley’s Relish, which it seems everybody loves.
• Let’s take a trip to the picture show, as The Economist examined closely the efforts of Freddave Kellett-Schroeder to navigate the waters of Fair Use in the production of Stripped. It says something that the vagaries of US copyright law would get such a close reading in a London-based magazine, but I’m not sure if I can articulate exactly what it says.

  It’s probably very insightful and about midway between the ubiquity of US-made media and the inability of the newsy segment of that same media to do in-depth reporting on issues raised in odd corners of the culture. Anyhoo, as of this writing there’s just under two days left to help get more sound and video clips into Stripped, if you should be so inclined.

• From the movie show to the reality show, Stripped to Strip Search:
  

  [Regarding surprises during the production period] Khoo echoed this, noting especially how Krahulik hit a particular point where his respect for The Artists became a major influence on his participation.

  Well! We know what Robert was talking about now, don’t we? My regard for Mike Krahulik [SPOILERS in that link] has jumped several notches with his insistence that he would not [redacted] the losing Artist’s contribution in Strip Search elimination #3.

  Very tense episode, and had Khoo not said in previous interviews that every day resulted in an elimination, I would have bet good money that this would be a candidate for playing a “nobody goes home” card. We at Fleen want to congratulate Lexxy Douglass and Tavis Maiden for sharing their best work with us; you both rock.

• Dang if it doesn’t make my heart sing as Chris Onstad decides to show us he’s getting the (metaphorical) band back together:
  

  Achewood’s hiatus has been the stuff of much speculation, and the lack of information from me has contributed to this. In some cases, silence on my part was construed as disregard; this truly was never the reason for it. Some of my personal struggles became all-consuming and needed addressing. We can go over the unsavory details later. I’m grateful—and lucky—to be able to tell you that these are, after a long, dark tea-time, behind me. But during this period, many of my relationships suffered. Some were with my readers and supporters. For you affected by my difficulties, I sincerely apologize. Please know I’m working to restore that relationship —- first and foremost by addressing the second cookbook —- and will have good news on that to share with you soon. [emphasis mine]

  Chris, all is forgiven if even one of those recipes in the second cookbook is even half as good as Perfect Oven Fries Every Time.

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¹ Which is small enough that I’m not bothering with table numbers here.

² Sunday I’m helping to skills-test a class of EMT students, finding out who’s learned how to not kill their patients.

PAXEast kicked off this morning and if I’ve done my timekeeping correctly, a whole passel of Strip Search Artists are, even as I type, on a panel having just watched the second elimination episode with the PAXers on a suitably large screen. Two thoughts:

• These eliminations are starting to get both heartbreaking and heartwarming, as Mike and Jerry clearly are pulling no punched in the judging, yet going out of their way to encourage the Artists in such a way as challenge them to better themselves in their careers. Can’t wait to see when in the season we get to peek in on what’s happening at The Afterlife¹.
• The editing process must have been tougher than the producers estimated in January, when it was predicted that the episodes would track in the 12 – 15 minute range. So far, only one episode has been less than 15 minutes, two between 15 and 20, and the remainder over 20 minutes. Instead of a three-episode day taking the equivalent of 45 minutes (an “hour” of TV minus commercials), it’s going to be closer to a full hour, meaning this show is more content-rich than actual broadcast alternatives.
• Okay, third thing, I lied. Strip Search Artist Monica Ray is crowdfunding her first Phuzzy Comics collection, and the video is alternately hilarious and adorable. Were I not backing Hurricane Erika, I think that Monica would be one of my picks to win the competition, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want her book. Others seem to agree, as she’s a day in and over her goal by a good 20%, with 30 days left to go. If you were at the panel and saw her, I hope you told her, “Gary said hi”.

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¹ The name given by production staff to the house where the eliminated Artists were held until the competition was done. Once again, I am compelled to point out that even when given a specific opportunity to do so, Robert Khoo did not deny that The Afterlife was stocked with booze and hookers of all genders. I wonder how airtight the NDAs actually are….

It all seems to be about the green¹ today.

• The first of the Big Four Webcomics Kickstarters of February Aught-Thirteen has wrapped, with the Cyanide & Happiness guys netting just over US$770,000 with a slight upward tick at the end there. For reference, as of this writing the other three of the Big Four are sitting at:
  • Machine of Death: US$454,000
  • Schlock Mercenary: US$115,000
  • Dresden Codak: US$362,000

  For a grand total of 1.701 million dollars American cash money. Granted, there’s Kickstarter² fees and Amazon fees and taxes and all the rest, but the compelling story remains: more money, more value for your backer contribution.

• The ur-example of more value for your backer contribution remains the Choose Your Own Hamlet by the Reconstituted Toronto Man-Mountain, who is even as we speak laying out the book, overseeing the recording of the audiobook, prototyping lil’ plush Yorick skulls, and giving us a sneak peek at one gorgeous map of the choices that can be made, which is itself made too look like Yorick’s skull. Dang, y’all.
• In fact, the only part of the increasing coolness of the Choose Your Own Hamlet that the aforementioned RTM-M³ isn’t responsible for would be the live-action version of Choose Your Own Hamlet, which will have its premiere this weekend in Busan, South Korea, thanks to local director (and webcomickin’ madman) Ryan Estrada. The presentation of To Be or Not To Be (a live, choose-your-own-adventure play) will be this Saturday at 9:00 EDT (GMT-4, or check your local time here) over the internet.

  Sure, the live audience will have the thrill of watching the actors try to manage hundreds of possible story paths, but you at home can do the same thing, and you can vote on those choices that will affect the story. Just don’t make the choices that keep Ophelia in her original, put-upon, depressive, dishrag-type personality because if you do, the text of the book (and presumably the play) will say that you aren’t allowed to be Ophelia for a while.

  The details on To Be or Not To Be (a live, choose-your-own-adventure play) are at Google+ where you can choose to watch the streaming glory and participate. It is in all likelihood the first live play designed for such social media technology and you’ll want to be able to tell your grandkids where you there at the beginning.

• As part of my theme on money, I was going to point you to a situation where a billing mishap left The Adventures of Dr McNinja facing a shutdown later this week, with the possibility of creator Chris Hastings being sent to collections⁴. Fortunately, that all got resolved before I had a chance to say anything about it, so well done McNinja fans. As always, there’s a lesson here, which in this case unfortunately is of the variety that you have to police the people that are (supposed to be) taking your money because if they don’t do so successfully they may make your life miserable.

  I once had a cable company that received the checks I sent them and credited my bill as paid, but never actually cashed them. This went on for six months and only came to a head when I moved house and tried to get my cable disconnected. Then they tried to hit me with hundreds of dollars of “late fees” because I dunno, they lost my checks or something? The fact that I had statements showing that my bills were paid each month didn’t seem to matter until I mentioned involving utility regulators with the state of New Jersey, then they decided to write it off in the interests of keeping a satisfied customer. Then I moved and never used them again THE END.

  Where was I? Oh, yes — it seems stupid to have to follow up with people to make sure they’re actually taking your money (you’d think they were really interested in doing so on their own), but sadly it’s true. You have to be more business type than artist to make it as an independent artist, so take those steps towards due diligence and it will make your life easier in the long run.

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¹ Note for people not in the US: our paper currency is boring, kinda greenish on one side and mostly black on the other. We desperately need somebody from a country that knows how to make pretty cash convince the stick-up-their-asses types in Washington that bills don’t need to be drab.

² How ubiquitous is Kickstarter these days? My sister brought it up the other day, asking me to explain how her friend, a musician, managed to raise US$49,000 to master & press an album and what the crap-hell?

³ Known around the house as Ryan North

⁴ If you don’t happen to know Chris Hastings, you should be aware of two things:

• He is just the nicest guy, even nicer than he appears to be via the internet if you can imagine such a thing
• He is too pretty to be sent to collections, you guys

Out of context and mostly spoiler-free quotes from Strip Search’s first elimination:

• What is your favorite thing about Hitler?¹
• I know a lot of stuff is changing, are we still releasing the bats at the ten-minute mark?
• We just need you to wait in the car.

In all seriouslness, though, I was struck by how very, very good-natured Alex and Katie were throughout what must have been one of the more stressful times in their lives, and was sorry that there had to be a winner and a loser. Also by one piece that was very, very telling about how Creators Mike & Jerry are approaching the show and the Artists:

What’s interesting is … seeing you copy my mistakes.

That’s a critique that has a lot of sting, but also a tremendous amount of potential to help an Artist improve. It may be that the most interesting part of Strip Search is seeing how all twelve contestants have upped their game in a year or so.

A Girl And Her Fed creator (and Official Fleen Fave) K. Brooke “Otter” Spangler must have had a bit of a frantic month, what with the discovery of forthcoming TV pilot based on a yet-to-be-published YA novel that bear a resemblance to her own strip (and its spin-off digital novel). Lots of people are still contacting her urging Big Dramatic Gestures and Drawing Lines In The Sand and maybe even Cutting A Bitch.

Spangler, however, did the smart thing — talked to her lawyer, made sure to establish that her work has been the earlier instance of Federal agents with chips in their heads (and dick jokes; so, so many dick jokes), and is generally going about this situation the smart way. The TV show may or may not be picked up; the YA series may or may not see print next year; the time to Release The Metaphorical Hounds is not yet here, as she outlines in an interview at Altergamer on copyright and IP in the modern world. It’s a good set of questions/answers, and an even better example of how to be a grown-up in the age of the internet.

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¹ For anybody that ever gets asked that Hitler question? Your go-to answer should be He’s dead.

Don’t worry, the math is mostly philosophical in nature.

• So if you haven’t seen the newest¹ episode of Strip Search, be aware that winning a challenge carries with it a twist that made me suspect that Robert Khoo, et. al., had finally given into their supervillain destiny. At least, the ratio of Good:Evil is dropping somewhat precipitously

  In case I had any doubts, I saw the list of PAXEast Omeganuats and certain names jumped out at me from the list of 32 names:

  Casey Carper
  Norwood Carper
  …
  Harry Hayes
  Dylan Hayes
  …
  Caleb Thompson
  Amanda Thompson
  Chelsea Thompson

  Okay “Thompson” and even “Hayes” are reasonably common surnames, but “Carper”? Are the Omegathon gamemakers (why, that would also involve Mr Khoo) choosing family members to compete against each other? Better start looking for extinct volcanoes in Lair Monthly, Robert, you’ll need one for when you make the call to threaten the UN.

• Speaking of updates today, Evan Dahm’s Vattu hit 400 pages, and as near as I can tell, we’re still somewhere in Act I. Best guess, we are maybe twenty percent of the way through the story as a whole, which is taking as much time as it needs. Heck, for the past 100 pages or so, Vattu herself has been a supporting player in her own story as Junti and the mysterious Surin alchemist enclave and their even more mysterious “unweight” have been the recent focus.

  Not that I am complaining! I would read a thousand pages about Junti and her curiosity about unweight² and its ratio³ that leads to balance. She (and goodness, so many primary characters in Vattu are female, including seemingly all of the Surin) is possessed of that most dangerous of all qualities in a place dedicated to balance: curiosity. Combined with Vattu’s drive it could change face of Overside.

• No ratio (unless you’re counting alcohol by volume), but today’s Questionable Content made me snerk out loud, particularly the title. Also, let’s not overlook the fact that the word whisky is derived from the Gaelic for water of life which would be entirely appropriate as it appears that Claire is now a Reverend Mother. Honestly, no book could ever inspire more nerdery than Dune.

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¹ And longest, clocking in at more than 20 minutes. The earlier estimates of approximately 9 hours total running time may no longer be valid.

² We know it’s a refinement of a naturally-occurring substance, but why have no other people learned to distill it? It’s a luxury good for its coloration, its flavor, and possibly drug-like properties? Oh, yeah, and the fact that it defies gravity without violating the suspension of disbelief. Honestly, the Junti portions of Vattu remind me of nothing so much as H. Beam Piper’s Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen and its story of a world where gunpowder was a semi-sacred, entirely secret concoction.

³ It’s at least 12:1, assuming that “weight” is a standard reference substance.

You can’t accuse Dave Kellett of burying the lede with respect to the new Kickstarter he’s launched to finish off STRIPPED; not ten seconds into the video the words appear on the screen:

Voice of Bill Watterson

Watterson, a man so reclusive¹ that last summer’s announcement that he’d agreed to provide written responses to Kellett’s questions for STRIPPED was rightly seen as a coup, has actually gone and recorded audio of his thoughts vis-à-vis comics for inclusion in the film. This is by far his most public appearance in the context of comics since wrapping Calvin and Hobbes more than seventeen years ago. Ignore everything else about STRIPPED², that right there is sufficient reason for this film to exist.

And to get things out of the way, yes, STRIPPED already had a Kickstarter that was very successful; as Kellett explains, this second campaign is being held not to finish the film, but to pay the fees (which are well into the five figures and could hit six) for the rights to include footage from other sources: brief clips of Peanuts specials and Johnny Carson interviewing Cathy Guisewite will cost nine grand, for example.

If you already contributed to the previous Kickstarter (and full disclosure: I did), you’ve already had a communications from Kellett and Schroeder that they are not asking prior backers to pony up again. They are specifically looking for people that missed the first campaign (or weren’t aware of Kickstarter at that time) to fund this push not to make the film, but to make it better. It’s a classy move, and I want to congratulate Kellett and Schroeder for not taking the easy route and hitting up people whose names they already have.

• Speaking of Kickstarter, Rob DenBleyker had some interesting news to share yesterday:
  

  The Cyanide & Happiness Show just became the most funded animation project on Kickstarter. Holy shit!

• Okay, so between the C&H show, the Machine of Death game, the Dresden Codak book, and the Schlock Mercenary challenge coins, the high-profile webcomics projects launched in February have collectively raised more than US$1,051,000. Yikes.
• It appears that Saveur magazine really needed submissions for their Recipe Comix again, as they sent Chicago artist Marnie Galloway to Marrakesh and she comicked the whole thing up but good. Galloway had a previous entry in the series, so I imagine that played a part in Saveur offering the trip.

  I’m not saying that if you submit a recipe to Recipe Comix, Saveur will necessarily send you business class to a foreign destination for luxury and gourmet foods, but I can say that if you never submit a recipe to them, they won’t know who the hell you are and thus definitely will not send you on an adventure. Look, they pay for your comics, you might get a fabulous reward down the line, and most importantly, I get more Recipe Comix. That’s a win-win-win, people.

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¹ By extreme coincidence, Ryan Estrada had a couple of tweets yesterday talking about Watterson’s seclusion and Kickstarter. Hell, there’s an entire other movie that’s been produced and now showing on the festival circuit that’s entirely about how the filmmaker couldn’t even get in contact with Watterson.

² Particularly the inclusion of a hack webcomics pseudojournalist on the interview list, inexplicably not buried at the very bottom in tiny type. Given the amount of footage that Kellett and partner Fred Schroeder recorded, if I make the final cut for more than eight frames, something more important is definitely getting shortchanged.