Hey, have the days started to run together for you, rendering all sense of what’s a work day and what’s the weekend meaningless? Cool, cool … but I’ve got a work from home job and the weekend actually still has meaning for me and I am looking forward to this one like you wouldn’t believe. If the same is true for you, or if weekends are whenever you want them to be for the time being, doesn’t matter. I decree that tomorrow is the day for you to kick back and relax a bit. Here’s some info to help you plan what you might do.

• The :01 Books virtual convention, Comics Relief, which is set for Saturday next week¹, has released some more details in the form of a schedule. The event is shaping up to be something like an All :01 All The Time day of panel content, with the schedule and participants now up for your perusal. Fun starts at 11:00am EDT on the 18th (platform TBA), and if you have any questions for the panelists, you can submit them now².
• The Ringo Awards nominations are up, because pandemic or no, there were some great comics last year and it would be a shame not to recognize them. You (yes, you!) can nominate here until 5 June. The winners are presently scheduled to be presented at Baltimore Comic Con on 24 October, but I don’t think they can make any promises in that regard right now. Whether there’s a physical event or not, I’m sure the honorees will be sufficiently thrilled.
• As you may recall, I have noted that Homestar*Runner is a webcomic, and thanks to the machinations of one Mr S Bad, Homestar*Runner is now a webcomic with a free to listen soundtrack of 180 songs, jingles, background music, and other audio miscellania. It doesn’t contain the classic Strong Bad Sings And Other Type Hits (featuring Limozeen), but you can purchase that for a measly ten bucks (American). While you’re waiting for it to be delivered, revel (revel, damn you!) in 20 years worth of random aural delight.

Spam of the day:

Gwenith Paltrow and Kate Hudson have both taken selfies wearing the mask N95

Dude, don’t even. The only thing “Gwenith” ever takes selfies with is a fake-ass pseudoscience doodad — hello, jade vag egg! — that you can conveniently buy from the Goop store for the equivalent of two days labor at minimum wage. N95s ain’t got nearly enough woo to interest her.

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¹ Reminder: today is Friday. Unless you’re reading this on a different day, in which case maybe it’s not. Look at your phone, it’ll tell you what day it is.

² Oh, and everybody that submits questions will be entered into a drawing for a free STACK O’ BOOKS, winner to be announced during the Q&A session (session #6, 4:00pm EDT). 13 years or older, resident of the US to win, good luck everybody.

I’m wondering if we’re starting to hit the end of Phase One of the coronavirus response. We still don’t have full distancing in all places (thanks, Republican governors!), and those of us that have been under restrictions for a couple weeks are hitting the it’s going to be how much longer? stage. Various notable people are being reported in critical condition or deceased because of COVID-19, new evidence how just how bad it’s going to get for the areas still in denial drop daily, and a concentrated, national response still hasn’t even started because of the insecure egotist in charge.

Things are about to get explosively bad in Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Georgia — and then everywhere else, hopefully not until we pass the peaks in the early-hit places. We’ll get there. We’ll find that what seems hard and isolating becomes doable (and those of us who’ve been doing it for a while will have it incumbent on us to help those that come behind). Practice helps (says the guy that had his first positive-screened patient over the weekend, and expects to get them regularly from here on out), but not as much as patience.

So. Deep breath. There’s some stuff here to take your mind off things for a bit, and an opportunity to help make something amazing, if it’s within your ability at the present time (which is absolutely not the ideal time). And, because we live in a crapsack reality, something that’s usually pretty bad has become downright terrible. Let’s start with that one and work our way up:

• Diamond is a monopoly, and those are never a good idea. Having already decided it won’t receive/ship comics for the foreseeable future, it decided today that because it’s not got money coming in from comic stores — that would be the comic stores that Diamond’s already said won’t be getting the product they ordered — it’s not going to pay its suppliers for product they’ve already received and sold.

  It’s a neat tornado of shitty behavior: announce you’re not going to be sending stuff to your customers, which causes customers to not pay you to do nothing, which causes you to not have money coming in, so you decide to keep what money you’ve already got and not pay the vendors that supplied you in good faith. Whatever form the direct market takes when all of this is done, I sincerely hope this course of action is the death knell for the crappiest link in the comics chain and that multiple new companies arise and put Diamond in the dirt.

  Oh, yeah, they did the same to the games distribution vendors as well.

• Couple weeks back we brought you news of Fredddave Kellett-Schroeder’s new interview series Kickstart, a project which got off to a comfortable start and then just sort of stalled. Don’t get me wrong — this funding curve would be great if it were depicting, say, a count of coronavirus infections¹, but it’s not where you want to be for a project funding. The FFF mk2 isn’t looking promising: US$64K-96K, with a goal of just under US$90K would be promising, except for one thing.

  The project was promoted to past backers of Stripped and other Kellett projects for 18 hours or so before the public reveal, and a good chunk of that day one total comes from the pre-announcement period. It’s a useful technique, but it throws off the funding formula, which relies on an organic launch. A better metric in this case would be the McDonald Ratio, which states that the first three days of funding equals one third of the total raised, or in this case about US$65K, well under goal. The dramatic dropoff from day two to day three, and the almost zero funding since² make this one a longshot.

  Which is a damn shame, because this series looks super interesting. There’s still time to turn things around, weirder things have happened, but it’s going to take a lot of people deciding they want this in the next nine days (days of uncertainty and economic stress nobody was considering back in early March). More likely, this is going to have to be shelved until a later time when people have spare money again. Just … if you have discretionary funds right now, give it some thought, okay?

• Let’s end on some unalloyed good news. Aud Koch has shared her first week’s quarantine art, and it’s stunning. Go take a good long look and forget all of … this … for a while.

Spam of the day:
Got a call from “Mike” who claimed to be calling to reduce my electric bill, from a clearly audible boiler room. I told him You’re lying, you’re trying to steal from me while a plague is underway, and I hate you. Felt great.

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¹ It bears a striking resemblance to the curve for South Korea, who have done everything in just about the complete opposite way that the US has. Never forget: both countries saw their first confirmed case on the same day. That being said, some of the worst-hit areas here in the US are starting to just maybe see a flattening in the curve and that’s good news. Don’t slack off now; hold the line and drive it down into the dirt.

² Including three days of negative funding. Ouch.

Hey, gang. How’s everybody holding up? Good? Good. It’s like I told my EMS crews last night: this isn’t what we signed up for, but we stay safe and do the job right, and after we’re done we can go back to life being somewhat more boring again. To the end of keeping my head in the game where it’s needed, I am vastly cutting back on my social media reading; if there’s something you think I should know, email or DM me.

Now let’s check in on other people who are dealing with the pandemic in constructive ways:

• Joining just about every other institution, the Cartoon Art Museum announced over the weekend that they were closing their galleries and cancelling programs until the 29th; any return dates that are announced for the next while should probably be seen as on the cautiously optimistic side of the scale. Similarly, all of the public-facing events around the Month O’ Scott C at Gallery 1988 are off. This is a good and responsible pair of decisions, and we at Fleen thank the management of both venues.
• Not just here, either. From Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebaupin:
  

  I come as the bearer of good news, of an evangelion if you will. Fëanor, our envoy of the Religion of the Invisible, has vanquished Death and come back to us.

  Readers will no doubt remember Fëanor, Who was cursed early in life by a tragic slipper. But blessed as well, since that gave Him the gift of seeing the invisible, and soon afterward He adopted Maliki as His caretaker. And lo, the years passed, and Maliki started a webcomic, where He made many appearances, inspired many artefacts, current and past, becoming a general symbol) of Maliki. And lo, the years passed, with Maliki spreading the image of our beloved prophet. But resentment was rising with rumors being spread against Fëanor.

  This week, Fëanor showed all detractors wrong by revealing through His caretaker that He had vanquished Death and come back to us, ascending to godhood in the process. And yet He is content to keep a presence for His Earthly caretakers, rather than fully ascend after 40 days. All praise the eternal Fëanor.

  Fanart is accepted as proof of adoration, and to be directed to His Earthly caretakers through the keyword #PetitDieuFeanor.

  In other news, the French government as announced banning all events involving more than 100 participants, which implies pretty much all cultural events, so Fëanor kindly requests that no public celebration be made of His new status.

  Guess no more Smurf festivals for a while, then.

• For those stuck at home with time on their hands, the invaluable Jim Zub (who, to my recollection, was one of the first to cancel his appearance at EmCity, a good week before the ball really started rolling; you don’t get much appreciation for being the first at a good decision of this nature so allow us to say Good choice, Zub) has decided to make the time away from everything a little more enjoyable:
  

  Click the attachment links over on my public Patreon post for two full volume PDFs of two of my creator-owned comics, free of charge and with no strings attached:

  https://www.patreon.com/posts/34846589

  Enjoy, share, and be good to each other.

  One may recall that Zub, via his extensive series of guides to making a living self-publishing, makes a good chunk of his living not from individual floppy sales, but via trades, particularly in digital. This is going to cost him some money. If you find you like the stories, maybe purchase the subsequent volumes or some of his other work? He’s doing the world a solid, you can do him one back.

• For those stuck at home with offspring on their hands, Joe Wos (once the head of Pittsburgh’s ToonSeum, which sadly is no more) is offering a free online cartooning course for kids:
  

  Beginning on Weds March 18th Joe will be offering free live cartooning classes online for all ages.
  The live classes will take place on YouTube channel HowToToon at 1pm, 3 days a week (Tuesdays-Thursdays). Students can access the channel by visiting www.Howtotoon.com

  Joe has been teaching cartooning for over three decades! He currently teaches a daily cartooning class at Central Catholic High School in Pittsburgh, PA and is has also been the visiting resident cartoonist of the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa California for the past 18 years. Joe has been a staple of comic cons, school assemblies and library programs for the past thirty years touring worldwide.

  Same deal as with Zub: solid, buy stuff, etc.

• Finally, let us not forget that — global pandemic or no — plans get made and must be followed up on lest opportunities be lost forever. C Spike Trotman had plans to announce a major Kickstarter today, the largest and most ambitious in Iron Circus history, and about two and a half hours ago she delivered:
  

  Lackadaisy Cats has been running online since 2006, immersing its readership in a world of sepia-toned crime, adventure, action, and comedy. And now, it’s ready for its next big move … to a screen near you.

  It’s an art book, to fund the 10-minute short (digital download of which is available at tiers US$80+). As of this writing, funding is north of US$60K of the US$80K goal, with stretch goals going all the way up to a mind-bending US$225K (post-credits scene featuring fan-favorite character Mordecai Heller). It’s a new realm for ICC, a big ask, and a lot of logistics, but Lackadaisy Cats has a deep and ferociously invested fanbase, so I think those wacky kids might just pull this one off. Not sure if you’d be into it? You got time in isolation, start reading.

Spam of the day:

United Steel Industries is a new Rolling Mill in Fujairah. USI is incorporated in 140,000 square meters of land.

Sorry, I require all my steel to be cast, not rolled.

Yesterday, we mentioned that fans of STRIPPED check their emails, on account of the hivemind known as Freddave Kellett–Schroeder had sent emails to Kickstarter backers of that fine movie (and it’s second Kickstart to finish production) to let them in on a secret: they apparently didn’t have enough travails in the four years or so it took to make the movie, so now they’re making a series:

Story/Line will be a love-letter to the art of cartooning, featuring in-depth, thoughtful interviews about the craft. These will be deep conversations, in the style of a PBS or BBC interview. Each will be beautifully shot in 4K, with one of the best crews in Los Angeles. Among our four Kickstarted interviews, we’ve already scheduled with Academy Award-winning Directors Chris Miller & Phil Lord (Spider-Verse, The Lego Movie, and every other great movie from the last decade), and Eisner-Award-Winning cartoonist Scott McCloud (The Sculptor, Understanding Comics, 24-Hour Comics Day).

So they’ll be channeling their inner Bill Moyers, or hopefully Graham Norton; Norton gets the absolute best out of his subjects via the simple expedient of boozing them up for the talk. Look into this, Freddave! They’ve got one interview in the can (and on their own dime) so far — Jake Parker of Inktober fame — and the campaign is to get another four interviews for general distribution to backers, with a secret additional interview mentioned.

Here’s where I think their rewards tiers are a little hecked up — to get that last, secret, interview, you have to be a backer at a high level; at present, it requires US$30 or more to get the Parker + four interview series, but US$85 to get the secret interview (or US$300 if you want a bunch of Sheldon e-books and an original comic to go along with ’em). That’s a pretty big jump from five interviews to five interviews, uncut footage, a poster, and the secret interview unless that secret interview is amazing.

Then again, they got Watterson on audio for STRIPPED and the Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett half of Freddave Schroeder-Kellett attends fancy industry parties with the likes of Lin-Manuel Miranda and Taika Waititi, so who knows? I want to make it clear that I have no idea who the secret interview is and I think I just convinced myself to up my pledge after typing that last sentence. Well played, Freddave Kellett-Schroeder! Well played.

Update to add: Third interview announced. Raina.

Spam of the day:

justin l____ district manager at Primerica Financial Services would like to connect on LinkedIn.

This is actually from LinkedIn, which means it is definitely spam. I have no damn idea who Justin L____ is, and have had no relationship with Primerica except once more than 20 years ago when the local office called me in for an interview “for an executive position” that turned out to be a room full of people being encouraged to join and push penny stocks on cold-called dupes. Ever see The Wolf Of Wall Street? That.

I gave them about 20 minutes to get to the point then got up, said I was asked to come in for a job interview and instead you’re trying to get us to join some kind of Amway cult (which tremendously offended the woman at the front of the room) and walked out.

So yeah — get lost, Justin.

Sometimes, a detail jumps out at you and catches your attention, and it leads to something that leads to something and before you know it, something secret and disturbing is revealed. Down the rabbit hole we go.

David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™ ^etc) hitting a Big Round Number last Friday prompted me to go check out the stuff that he’s doing that isn’t Irregular Webcomic — his ongoing series of proofs that the Earth is not flat, his lengthy list of creative endeavours, his personal blog. It was at the latter that something jumped out at me that led me … some unsavory places.

From the blog entry dated (remember, Morgan-Mar is in Sydney, meaning he is many hours ahead of almost everybody reading this) 3 March:

On the way back, I popped into my local art supply shop to get some new felt tip markers and drawing paper, because I planned to spend today doing some drawing. This is for a secret project which should be completed tomorrow, and which I’ll announce in the next few days. And drawing was pretty much what I did for the rest of the day.

For a guy that’s famously a photographer¹, this reference to markers and drawing paper caught my eye. To the best of my knowledge, the only drawing he’s done has been his recap comic of old-school Trek, Planet Of Hats. It very much a comic you read for the writing, but it noticeably improves over its run, at least as much as some other famously rough starts improved in their first 110–120 strips.

Morgan-Mar’s got a Patreon, where the most recent locked posts just barely reveal the text:

Some character study sketches for a secret project

and:

Super-duper sneak preview, definitely patrons only! A thing that will go public this weekend.

and a post title:

Star Trek stirrings

Put the pieces together, people! Morgan-Mar has clearly fallen back into the Gene Roddenberry trap, and being the completist he is, there’s only one possibility: having exhausted all the original Trek episodes, the animated series, and the original cast movies, he will naturally move on to recap G-Rod’s next live action projects, Genesis II and Planet Earth.

Which, if you’ve never seen them, oooof, maybe don’t? They’re both essentially the same story, with Leading Man Dylan Hunt (played by two different actors) waking up in a primitive future of mutants (GII)/a primitve future of mutants and also a society where women rule and men are slaves (PE). Several characters repeat between the two stories (Yuloff, Haper-Smythe), several actors are cast in both (like Majel Barrett), and Ted Cassidy — best known as Lurch from The Addams Family² — managed to do both, cast in both as the looming giant Isiah.

How bad are these? In Genesis II, Mariette Hartley reveals that she’s a despised, twisted, evil mutant by displaying her two belly buttons. That’s about the high point for character and drama, and apart from some stuff that ‘splodes real good, nothing of value to be found in either. There’s a third, Strange New World, but that one features multiple hibernating characters waking up on a spaceship and no Majel Barrett or Ted Cassidy so it’s barely worth mentioning. Also, I didn’t see that one.

And this, I’m certain, is what Morgan-Mar is going to inflict on us. At least I hope it is, because the alternative would be he’s about to start recapping Tne Next Generation and hoo-boy, the first 50 or so episodes of that were stinkers. You got the first Borg episode, the wargames with the Picard Maneuver, Data on trial for his life, and the rest³ should be blotted from memory. At least Genesis II has Alex Cord with a sweet ‘stache, and the general … Seventiesness of it all can be explained by the plentiful cocaine Hollywood was awash in. Maybe if it is TNG, Morgan-Mar will skip the bad episodes and jump ahead to when they got the collars on the Starfleet uniforms and/or a beard on Riker. We can only hope.

Spam of the day:

Tim Skwiat just wrote a brand new free report showing you the top 14 foods to boost your thyroid, and he’s giving it away for free

Do these idiots not know that having too much thyroid activity is also a health problem? They don’t, do they?

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¹ He’s got multiple photo-based webcomics, he’s one of the experts that determines what international photographic standards actually are, and he’s now got a shop of some of his best photos from around the world.

¹ Although he also voiced characters like Moltar on the original Space Ghost and the Gorn in the original Trek. The connections are right there in front of you!!

³ Planet Of The Joggers! Planet Of Women In Charge (guess Roddo finally got that story made)! Planet Of Don’t Do Drugs! Planet Of Space Irish! The Ship Full Of Space Idiots That Kidnap Geordi To Make It Go! And others that I can’t be bothered to look up!

I’ll be honest, I’m of at least two minds about this:

“Our next movie musical project is with Marc Platt and it is a musical version of a graphic novel called The Prince And The Dressmaker.”

The team is working with Pulitzer Prize finalist Amy Herzog (4000 Miles) to adapt the graphic novel by Jen Wang.

That from Kristen and Bobby Lopez, who you may know from a catchy tunes that they’ve penned. My thought processes run roughly in the following directions:

• Curiously, I haven’t seen anywhere if this will be animated or live action. Not important, just something I noticed. Moving on.
• When paired with the right material, Jen Wang is one of the finest graphic novelists working today. Koko Be Good remains one of my all-time favorites, and last year’s Stargazing deserved all of the near-universal acclaim it’s received.

  But, like any graphic novelist, masterful visual representation can only do so much when paired to a meh story (like her adaptation of Cory Doctorow’s In Real Life), and cannot make up for a story with severe structural problems.

• I am on the record (and pretty much alone) in saying that The Prince And The Dressmaker is in the latter category¹. As a fairytale, it’s at the extreme Walt end of the spectrum that runs from Cautionary Tale to Disney Fluff, treating those who most need to comfort of the story to an implausibly optimistic promise of how awesome life is.
• Then again, the Lopezes have worked on projects that have a bit more growl and earned heart to them; the protagonist of Coco has to struggle harder against a worse outcome than Prince Sebastian ever did², and the big I Want song in Frozen — the biggest every kid knows it song of the decade — went to the antagonist. These are not folks that keep too-neat resolutions in their creative toolbox.

  And that’s before you consider that Bobby Lopez was also a co-creator of Avenue Q and The Book Of Mormon, two musicals that and know how to balance optimism with the crappy end of life. If the Lopezes come up with even one moment with half the emotional wallop as There’s A Fine, Fine Line, the adaptation could resolve one of my biggest problems with the graphic novel³.

So as I said up top, cautiously optimistic; if anybody can produce an adaptation that makes me re-evaluate my stance, it’s the Lopezes.

Spam of the day:

Our licensed health insurance agents have helped tens of thousands of Americans work through Medicare over the years, and now that expertise is available to you in one convenient publication.

Godsdammit, I am not old enough for Medicare. Buy better lists of marks for your bullshit, spammers!

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¹ Although, too be fair, the absolute critical flaw has been corrected, so you don’t have to wrestle with crimes against humanity being adjacent to a story about gender expression and acceptance. Respect to Wang, editor Calista Brill, and everybody at :01 Books for recognizing and owning the mistake and fixing it in subsequent printings.

² In comparing the travails that I’m-not-a-princess Moana or Miguel compared to those of Sebastian, I am reminded of the old Simpsons gag, Marge, I’m asking for white-hot rage and you’re giving me a hissy fit.

³ The other I’m less hopeful about — I didn’t have room to address this in the original review and only hinted at it in the alt-text of the header image, but the book was mis-titled. Given the relative number of pages each gets the respective character journeys, it should have been called The Dressmaker And The Prince. Alas, the Playbill story describes the book as:

Set in Paris, the story follows Prince Sebastian, whose parents are scouring the country for a bride for their son. But Sebastian leads a secret life. By night, he dons spectacular dresses and goes out as Lady Crystallia, a Parisian fashion icon. His best friend, dressmaker Frances, is the only one who knows the truth, and she doesn’t want the credit for her creations to be secret anymore.

Frances should be the center of the story, but the title reduces her to afterthought, and I fear the focus will go entirely to Sebastian. Frances struggles, achieves, loses, and re-estabishes herself based on her skill and determination. Sebastian is indulged, privileged, briefly inconvenienced, and returned to his rightful place of high-born status. His is a character journey on a glass-smooth autobahn with a traffic bump at the end.

That post title sounds like a particularly unfortunate Doctor Who porn parody. Sorry. Let me make it up to you with a pair of brief items.

• I’m sure you’ve seen it, but Gunnerkrigg Court got optioned as a series. Reminder — we’ve been here before and it’s a long, long way from option to something we can watch. That being said, there’s a mountain of story that Tom Siddell has graced us with since my goodness, April of 2005 — the strip predates this page — and given the smart animated series that have been made since then (looking at you, Aang and Korra), it’s one that I think could find an audience. Fingers crossed that it progresses in exactly the way that Siddell wants.
• Haley Boros is an illustrator, designer, and comics artist from Vancouver, and she draws dogs really, really well. I mean, super good; she drew my good boy Flynn before he died, but it’s not her best dog drawing. Those are reserved for her good boy, Rusty, who among other things was the star of a fantasy epic using the prompt words for Inktober 2019.

  Now she’s Kickstarting a print version of his good boy adventures as a MAKE 100 project. 75 folks can get the print book (CA$20, approx US$16), 25 more can get the book plus a marker portrait of their own good doggo or other, lesser pet¹ (CA$50, approx US$38). And 31 people can get one of the original illustrations from Rusty’s Inktober 2019 adventure, on a first come, first dibs basis (CA$75, approx US$57). No FFF Mk2 on MAKE 100 projects, the potential backer counts are too small to make predictions, but it’s just under 50% funded with another 27 days to go. Boros is great, Rusty’s great, and the combo of his inspiration for her art is super-great. Check ‘er out.

Spam of the day:

Attention: Accounts Payable Or Domain Owner – Fleen: The Awkward Christmas Dinner Of Our Obligation To Existence > The Thing About Holidays And IT Failure to complete your fleen.com search engine registration by the expiration date may result in cancellation of this proposal making it difficult for your customers to locate you on the web.

All I know about Accounts Payable is that it’s a bunch of no-account losers, and all the real accounting gets done in Accounts Receivable. RIP, Herbert Kornfeld.

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¹ I know people that keep various fish, cats, lizards, hamsters, gerbils, chinchillas, turtles, tortoises, pigs, snakes, birds, chickens, geckos, and/or axolotls as pets. They are all loved and wonderful, but deep down we all know dogs are the best and make the best portraits. Don’t believe me? Look up the warrior dogs that Ron Dan Chan illustrated on Twitter. I think the greyhound is the best, but the Pomeranian phalanx always makes me smile

Gil Roth, who spoke at Tom Spurgeon’s memorial service, captured an audio recording, which he has shared. It’s absolutely worth your time to listen to it.

Nearly done with November, which means we’re nearly done with this kidney stone of a year. Let’s get to it.

• We’re into one of those birthday-rich times of year in webcomics, today being the day that one may, if one wishes, offer glad betidings to Randall J “Uncle Randy” Milholland, aka The Nicest Guy In Webcomics.

  I’m serious — Milholland is the absolutely nicest guy who attracts the absolute most terrible people, which results in consequences. Look, being the nicest guy in the world doesn’t mean you have to let people shit on you. Niceness is not synonymous with being a doormat.

  Anyway, in addition to birthday wishes, and sincere hopes that his toddler daughter goes easy on him, today is the day of the year that I remind you that Milholland is also one of the best writers in webcomics, with a knack for creating characters we really care about (even the ones we really hate sometimes), characters that live and breathe and change, because none of us is who we were half a lifetime ago.

  Also, the characters are terribly funny, frequently in horrible ways. Thanks for all you do, Uncle Randy, and if your next instance of not letting people shit on you means you need a place to lie low for a bit, or maybe stash a body, you’ve got my number.

• In other news today, Mike Maihack has some of the good variety to share. Maihack’s Cleopatra In Space series (which we’ve discussed before but which I don’t think I’ve ever done a review of — suffice it to say it’s five great books for the all-ages reader in your life, with a sixth on the way) has been a delightful read, with a strong sense of design aesthetics, and a compelling heroine, supporting cast, and Big Bag. Not to mention cats. So many cats.

  So it’s a surprise that the obvious wasn’t announced until today — Cleo is making the leap to the small screen:

  So yeah. This is a thing. A pretty exciting thing.

  http://palawanderer.com/dreamworks-announces-asian-premiere-of-cleopatra-in-space/…

  Asian premier tonight. Stay tuned for more information about the series in the US and around the world!

  #CleopatraInSpace #dreamworksanimation

  For now, Cleopatra In Space will be available in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, the Philippines, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. Judging from the still in the story, Cleo’s friends Akila and Brian made the jump to the show, although Akila’s apparently gone from human with robot arm to fish-person with robot arm.

  Weirdly, to my eye the designs of the faces and the cats seem to have been complicated a bit from Maihack’s originals, where things are normally simplified for animation to reduce the production efforts; they look good, though. We’ll probably hear more about the series in the coming weeks, but for now it’s all very exciting for Maihack. We at Fleen congratulate him, and look forward to Cleo & friends making the leap to the US market.

Spam of the day:

I’m talking about people like this “CRAZY” nurse who discovered one of the biggest secrets of the mankind… It’s the same device that was used with great success by the US navy to propel their ships for millions of miles… without any fuel… and that big energy fat cats almost started another war for… just to hide it from the public.

Roping nurses (widely regarded as the most respected and trusted of professions) into your free energy bullshit is a new approach, I’ll give you that.

I had my top story of the day all laid out, full of righteous indignation ‘n’ such, and it got knocked out of the first slot by something more important. Partly because it’s a happy story instead of an enraging one. Partly because it’s something you can act on instead of something where we’re basically forced to be passive. But mostly because it’s #ComicsCamp:

Hi. Applications for our Comics Camp are now open! https://minicon.alaskarobotics.com/comics-camp/

That from Pat Race of Alaska Robotics, Camp Dad and guttersnipe most profane. You best believe my application is in, and there’s more than one of you I’ve spoken to this year about the necessity of you applying to come to Juneau next April. There’s s’mores, and boardgames, and music, and amazing food, and Northern Lights, confirmed guests, and an intentional community that will energize you for the year. There’s also financial aid offered if you’re unable to afford the costs. If you’re not sure if #ComicsCamp is for you¹, here’s some words² to help you decide.

As with so many things, The Onion had it right, and more than two decades ago: Disney being one of the few remaining corporations sucks ass for a bunch of reasons. It was end of the summer that we found out that pretty much every Fox-affiliated movie in development has been canceled, and Fox’s movie library is being memory-holed, and now some of the animated features that had been presumably unaffected have been pushed back.

Specifically, Nimona, godsdammit:

Nimona, the Blue Sky Studios feature based on Noelle Stevenson’s comic and directed by Patrick Osborne (Disney’s Feast), has been delayed over 10 months, from March 5, 2021, to January 14, 2022. Prior to Disney’s takeover, Fox had announced a Nimona release date of February 14, 2020.

That original release date means that Nimona is essentially done, ready, in the can and releasable. But it’s being pushed back so that various Disney/Pixar movies (including at least two that don’t even have titles yet) can go first. Because Disney is fundamentally hostile to anything it doesn’t own in its entirety. Because today is Mickey Mouse’s birthday and copyright will continue to be extended until the heat death of the fucking universe before Disney will ever see the cartoon rodent presented or shown in any way that doesn’t make them all the money. Because owning Star Wars, Marvel, The Simpsons, Pixar, and every other damn thing is never enough.

And we still don’t have seasons four and five of The Muppet Show released.

Fortunately, Nimona is going nowhere. You can buy a copy today, at least until Harper Collins (which is owned by News Corp, which is Fox) gets bought by Disney and they suppress it because somebody else dared to make it. We’re about fifteen years away from owning non-Disney media or stories of any kind is declared a crime; I’m prepared to circulate the samizdat as we speak.

Spam of the day:

Do THIS When A Gun Is Pointed At Your Head

If your secret isn’t cry and wet yourself, you’re lying.

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¹ It is.

² About 35,000 words, to be exact.