The news is out, albeit after an unavoidable week’s delay: Kelly & Zach, the principals of Weinersmith & Weinersmith Enterprises, have announced their biggest project to date¹: a book on the technologies most likely to change the world in a relatively immediate timeframe (call it the next handful of decades) and how likely each one is to come to pass as their adherents claim.

It’s called Soonish, it’s got wonderful introductions to ten areas of technological exploration², and the occasional cartoon. Explainer here, pre-orders here, and despite the fact that Soonish has a major publisher behind it (Penguin), Weinersmith (Z) can’t get away from the indie creator let’s Kickstart this to the moon! habit, and thus the number of pre-orders (release date is in October) will determine rewards that will be widely distributed.

Oh, yeah, and Weinersmith (Z) has also produced — in addition to today’s announcement cartoon, with requisite Phil Plait mockery³ — two regular SMBC comics today. I say regular advisedly, as it’s not a word I’d normally apply to W(Z). The first of them is a fairly standard SMBC, but the second features the single most horrifying thing ever drawn in a comic by a Certified Genius Master Hypnotist. Steel your hearts and be not afraid. Or actually, just don’t eat anything before you read that second one. Trust me.

For non-Weinersmith related news:

• I’m not sure if it’s pop-culture saturation or just Rich Stevens being really good at expressing the intrinsic character of things in the minimum number of pixels, but you can totally tell exactly what each of those action figures behind Electron Mike are in today’s Diesel Sweeties. It’s a marvel of refined deisgn.
• The Creators For Creators grant was announced about eleven months ago, took its first applications about ten months ago, closed them about four months ago, and announced its first recipient over the weekend and EmCity. M Dean, illustrator and cartoonist, is figuring out what to do with an extra US$30K to support her creative efforts while working on her next project, titled I Am Young. There’s a brief interview with Dean at the C4C homepage (undoubtedly, it’ll move to a subpage in future), which is well worth a read.

  Also worth mentioning: that the C4C grant was founded with the financial backing of a bunch of Image folks and C Spike Trotman, who continues to rip shit up in webcomics publishing. It’s been a bit less than two days since Dean’s recognition, so give ’em a bit of time to regroup and then we’ll see what this year’s application cycle looks like; I’d imagine it looks a lot like last year’s six month application period, but we’ll all find out authoritatively in the near future.

• It is a well established phenomenon that we at Fleen — that is to say, me at Fleen, aka Gary — loves me some Digger (yes, I know there’s serious singular-plural disagreement in there; deal with it.gif). A large part of that comes from the fact that Digger creator Ursula Vernon is probably the best writer of (vague handwavy gestures because I know this is an almost wholly useless term) fantasy this side of Neil Gaiman, the best writer of (more gestures) YA this side of Raina Telgemeier, and the best combiner of the two this side of Jeff Smith. Specifically, she does smart, empathetic, actual-person girls better than anybody this side of Hayao Miyazaki.

  Thus, when her serialized novel Summer In Orcus debuted online last equinox, I recommended it sight unseen. Well, not quite, she’d done the equivalent of the first chapter on LiveJournal a few years prior, so I knew it started with Baba Yaga’s chicken house trotting down the back alley of suburbia, and how can you dispute a start like that? It was going to be damn good, there existed no other mathematical possibility.

  It exceeded my expectations significantly, and caused me no small outbursts of emotions at regular intervals over the next three months. Frustrations at the days-long waits between chapters. Utter and true heartbreak at loses suffered (and I use that word precisely; Vernon made her heroine hurt, because sometimes that’s what life teaches you: that you can do your best with the best of intentions and people still get hurt and you can’t shake the feeling it’s your fault even when it isn’t but maybe it is a little), blind hatred of the second-tier villain, soaring exultation at particularly smart or heartwarming or weird circumstances in the story.

  This is not a fairy tale that instructs moral lessons, it’s one that offers warnings about what the world is like. It’s certainly not one that gets you to Happily Ever After without an equal measure of regrets. Also, there’s the bit with the cheeses, which is pretty damn hilarious.

  The complete Summer In Orcus has been available in various e-formats since the story wrapped eight-ten weeks back, and Vernon acknowledged the wants of those of us that craved a book book version, one that works by flashlight under the covers, and said she’d try to figure something out. The figuring is apparently past, as her Digger publisher, Sofawolf Press, had an announcement over the weekend:

  We are still working out final details, but we can reveal that there will be both a softcover and a hardcover edition, and the cover and interior illustrations will be done by Lauren Henderson (aka: “Louvelex”). We’ll be doing a very simple Kickstarter to help us gauge demand, but we’ll also have a couple stretch goals that will allow us to spiffy up the final book.

  Final details to come over the next month or so. For me, that’ll be a hardcover for my library, and I figure I’ll get a stack of paperbacks — I’ve got nieces and nephews that need this book, and for half a year I’ve been pointing people at Summer In Orcus as the entry point to Vernon’s work; now I won’t have to try to remember the URL, I can just put a copy in their hands.

  We’ll be sure to let you know about the Kickstart when it comes, but do yourself a favor and start clearing space on your shelves now. And if anybody reading this is at Laika and wants to figure out their next project, I would suggest that Summer + stop motion is a friggin’ license to print money.

Spam of the day:

Up yours!

Somebody’s seen Sweet Charity too many times. Yeesh.

_______________
¹ Again, if we discount the production of two miniature alive humans.

² Reminder-slash-disclaimer: I’ve read a late pre-final version, and it’s impressive how many absolutely brilliant, Nobel laureate-level people were willing to go on the record in a book that also features dick jokes.

³ Scroll to the bottom, and don’t forget to hover over the comic for a bonus gag.

So I’d heard that this week’s New York Times Best Seller List would feature March mixed in with the real-people books which don’t have pictures, but heck if I can find it. The Children’s lists (which is not synonymous with Graphic Novels either) feature a distinct lack of Raina Telgemeier, and she’s not in the Fiction lists either¹.

But if the paper of record’s Books editor doesn’t think that graphic novels deserve note (and I’m not going to link in her entirely insulting Look, kids, COMICS! quote about March the same week it became the most honored book of the damn year), then we’ll have to recognize the best of [web]comics via other channels. Let this, then, serve as your reminder that nominations for the 2016 NCS Awards close tomorrow, and that there are two separate categories for work first published online: long form and short form. Oh, and you can submit work of another cartoonist, if you think it’s likely to be overlooked.

Either form requires 12 pages of comics be submitted (no physical copies), along with some basic biographical information. And I feel that I should also remind you that I have been involved in the process of selecting nominees since the online division awards were established in 2012². I’d be fascinated to see what changes have been wrought on the membership and direction of the NCS in the years since I sat in on some of their sessions.

Jut be wary of one possible side effect: if you win, you turn into Jon Rosenberg for a year, until the next winner is announced. Unless you’re already Jon, in which case you get to spend a year as Jon-Squared, which is both better and worse than you are presently imagining.

Spam of the day:

GAIN BENEFITS OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA – LEGALLY

While it’s true that the hoops one must jump through to get medical-indicated cannabis in New Jersey are stupid onerous and withholding approved-buyer credentials from those who would benefit from them is idiotic, your offer does not entice me because:

a) I don’t have any conditions that would benefit from weed, and;

b) Having grown up in the same household as my brother and the omnipresent THC cloud that followed him, I can tell you with absolute certainty that for me the chief effect of being even moderately pot smoke-adjacent (as opposed to wood smoke, liquid smoke, charcoal grill smoke, or even cigar smoke) is to experience a significant pain reaction from the resinous layer that immediately forms in my trachea. Alas, there is no epi-pen for this condition.

This may have been due to the extremely crap quality of weed he bought back in the ’80s, but I’m good not finding out.

_______________
¹ One reason why, maybe: the paperback fiction list is now combined print & ebook. Not all graphic novels get a digital release, and those that do are dominated by Comixology, which I can’t tell are or are not included in the vaunted methodology.

² At that time, a single category; since 2013, both long and short forms.

Well, this is some bullshit right here; from literary agent Charlie Olsen:

Graphic novels can no longer be @nytimes bestsellers as of February 5th. No explanation for change, I think we deserve one. Please RT!

Olsen was commenting on the edition of the New York Times Best Seller List that isn’t publicly available yet, as he gets early access. Here’s what it looks like today, dated 29 January 2017. Olsen indicated that there’s no presence for graphic novels, manga, and a slew of YA/genre fiction from the 5th forward.

I poked around the the NYTBSL site and found an email, and wrote to ask what the hell. Specifically, I wrote:

My name’s Gary Tyrrell. I write about webcomics and independent comics. One of the things I’ve followed closely and written about frequently has been the NYTBSL for graphic novels.

I hear today that the Times is discontinuing the lists for graphic novels and manga. Is this actually true?

And if so, will the books be treated as regular books in the appropriate category (MARCH, to name one, in nonfiction; Raina Telgemeier’s work in fiction or nonfiction as appropriate)?

If not, what is the rationale to decide that such a vibrant part of American publishing is no longer worthy of inclusion?

I got an autoreply that led me to believe I wouldn’t get a substantive response, but this morning there was an actual reply which reads as follows:

Hi, Gary –

Your query was forwarded to me. [Note: I’m not naming the person that wrote to me; she caught the question but undoubtedly is not responsible for the decision.]

It is true. Beginning February 5, The New York Times will eliminate a number of print but mostly online-only bestseller lists. In recent years, we introduced a number of new lists as an experiment, many of which are being discontinued.

We will continue to cover all genres of books in our news coverage (in print and online). The change allows us to devote more space and resources to our coverage beyond the bestseller lists.

Our major lists will remain, including: Top 15 Hardcover Fiction, Top 15 Hardcover Nonfiction, Top 15 Combined Print and E Fiction, Top 15 Combined Print and E Nonfiction, Top 10 Children’s Hardcover Picture Books, Top 10 Children’s Middle Grade Hardcover Chapter Books, Top 10 Children’s Young Adult Hardcover Chapter Books and Top 10 Children’s Series. Several more including Paperback Trade Fiction, Paperback Nonfiction, Business, Sports, Science and Advice Miscellaneous will remain online.

Readers will be notified that individual lists will no longer be compiled and updated by The New York Times on the relevant article pages.

Okay, props for all that info, but this is some straight-up nonsense right here. As I noted, comics are a dynamic and rapidly expanding part of American publishing; shall we note that Raina Telgemeier’s Ghosts launched with an intial printing of half a friggin’ million copies? Show me one book on the surviving lists that has as large a print run and is still present 18 weeks later. Show me one book on the surviving lists that is as (justly) celebrated as MARCH.

Most importantly, show me one way for readers of books — not lit-er-uh-chooor, but goddamned books — that will see their favorites getting the attention and promotion and word-of-mouth that would result from being recognized on the BSL. The Times is selling out people that wait eagerly and devour a book over and over until the next one comes along, because you know what? Most YA and Middle Grade books aren’t hardcovers.

But at least they can focus on people that get the Book Of The Season and skim it so they can drop bon mots at the best parties. And the argument about having more room to discuss things by reducing lists is a complete crock since most of the dropped lists (including GN/manga) only appeared online where there’s no lack of space.

Well, let this bear witness, then — until whoever did make this decision removes the LitCrit stick from their ass, on the last week that the Times deigned to look at comics, Raina had five books listed on the Paperback Graphic Books list:

• Ghosts (#1, 18 weeks)
• Drama (#2, 179 weeks)
• Smile (#3 240 weeks)
• Sisters (#8, 117 weeks)
• The Baby-Sitters Club: Kristy’s Great Idea (#10, 77 weeks)

Pretty sure that she had at least one book on the list every damn week that the list existed, with her four original works totaling five hundred and fifty-four weeks, or a bit more than ten and a half cumulative years. But no, nothing to see here.

Jackasses.

Spam of the day:

Here’s your chance to get a month of Dollar Shave Club for only $1

Know how I know you’re a scam? Because the whole deal of DSC is it’s only a dollar a month, so your special offer is pointless. Also the emails I get from the actual DSC (I’m a customer) don’t end up in my spam folder because they don’t have a return address from the Keeling Islands with their 600 inhabitants.

New book to come, books for the past year getting recognition. It’s a book kind of day.

• While I may be slightly wondering what I’ve got to do to launch big announcements, instead of it going to CBR and Comics Alliance (or to niche, non-comics outlets like Entertainment Weekly and the LA Times), I understand it’s a matter of reach. I mean, well-known webcomicker that I’ve covered extensively gets to launch a new book with a major publisher of graphic novels, you want to get the eyeballs on that. I’m not jealous, I’m not mad¹, I’m just happy I can talk about something I first saw a loooong time ago.

  Evan Dahm has a new book on the way from :01 Books, with the announcement by Oliver Sava at The AV Club. Island Book (for that is its name) is not part of the existing Overside stories, and it’s not an illustrated edition of a classic American story². It’s a standalone story, about a young girl (in the Dahmian sense, which is to say that the people of this story are not remotely human) named Sola who is ostracized by her island-living, seafaring people because when she was little, a monster on a rampage didn’t kill her.

  It seemed to like her.

  And now her fisher-folk think that she’s responsible.

  It may be that you don’t get quite that much from the preview that :01 provided, but here’s where I have a secret to share — I’ve seen the first 25 or so pages of Island Book; it didn’t have a title then, and Dahm wasn’t sure if he was going to develop the story to full length, and in the long run from first idea to publication (it’s not due until winter of 2019³) it will inevitably change. Heck, what I saw amounts to not even the opening scene to establish the need for Sola to head out on adventures on the great wide ocean.

  But what I saw was full of Dahm’s trademark ability to make us care about characters from the get-go, to fill in just enough detail that it’s clear that more (much more!) will be revealed, and to reassure us that the journey will be worth it. Island Story will likely be 250 – 300 pages, meaning it’s a relatively short tale for Dahm. The most exciting thing is that over the next three years he’ll only get better as a writer and artist, and the book will be all the more compelling for it.

• And if you want more to read for the next three years, can I recommend you check out NPR’s annual recommendations (specifically, the comics and graphic novels section)? You’ll find webcomics and webcomickers like Kate Leth (on Hellcat), Kate Beaton (King Baby), Jason Shiga (Demon), Lisa Hanawalt (Hot Dog Taste Test), and the ubiquitous Raina Telgemeier (Ghosts).

Spam of the day:

F?nd the Best Walk-In Bathtub Deals near your city

I didn’t realize that walk-in bathtub deals were so common that there would be a price disparity. Learn something new every day.

______________
¹ I am glad that Ryan Estrada gives me his exclusives. Thanks, Ryan!

² Speaking of which, get on that Moby-Dick Kickstarter already. It’s five days from conclusion and hasn’t hit goal yet.

³ Which means you’ve got time to read Rice Boy and Order Of Tales, and I’ll give a 50/50 shot that Vattu is concluded by then.

End of the week at long last, and it can’t come soon enough. Let’s do this.

• It’s been long suspected in corners and cafes here at Fleen Central, but one of the old school webcomics artists, who in recent times has been an away-from-the-web artist more than anything, has made it official. Exploding Dog by Sam Brown¹ has been around for a long time — the images were iconic, and in at least one case, landed in other fertile soil. He’s been away from the convention scene for a long time but still making drawings based on text sent to him; however, nothing lasts forever:
  

  I’ve not answered that question yet. Explodingdog.com is no longer the path I’m walking down. I haven’t updated it since 2015 and have been wondering away. I feel like the old me sat down on a rock to rest. I never planned on going as long as I have and it was made for a different time. Maybe if the weather changes I’ll loop back to it.

  I’m not sure what I’m doing. The new me is moving forward.

  I’m still drawing and will put drawings here at draw.buildingaworld.com along with some projects that wouldn’t fit in at Explodingdog.com This is a fresh start. I needed a fresh start. I’d like to reflect and write up a “What Explodingdog meant to me” post. Right now I’m not reflecting well.

  Thanks for reminding me to say goodbye to the old me and not just walk away.

  The art, the vision, the drive go on, even if the address is different. Exploding Dog is dead, long live Building A World.

• And on the Beginnings side of the spectrum, this is your periodic reminder that Rosemary Valero-O’Connell is one hell of an artist, one that you should be paying attention to. This message is brought to you on the occasion of her twenty-second birthday, which will no doubt cause one of two reactions: Wow, she’s so good, I can’t wait to see what she’s like in ____ years! or How the hell is she so good and so young oh glob I’m old and I suck. I can assure you that it is possible to hold both thoughts simultaneously.

  In all seriousness, Ms Valero-O’Connell is absolutely somebody you should be following now, in advance of her major work appearing (that would be illustrating Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me, written by Mariko Tamaki, due in 2018; plus whatever she comes up with on her own afterwards). Get used to seeing her name, get used to seeing her work; in a comics future that includes names like Brosgol, Gran, Hicks, Larson, Meconis, Mock, Stevenson, Telgemeier, Wang, Williams, and many more, Valero-O’Connell is going to more than hold her own. Happy Birthday, Rosemary. Hi. Hello.

Spam of the day:

Important Information Regarding Medicare

Jumped-up Jesus on a pogo stick, who do I have to kill in Junk Mail Central to get them to realize I’m nowhere near Medicare age? It’s not just email spammers, I get this shit constantly mailed to my house. I blame the AARP and the time they thought I was 50 when I was 32. Sonsabitches sold my name on a list and now they think I’m 65. Time for a rampage.

_______________
¹ A nom du internet.

Well, that turned out to be less disastrous that it could have (in that the bill was about 10% of the bad outcome, but still greater than most people could throw together on short notice — I’m lucky to have the ability to keep an emergency repairs slush fund without too much sacrifice), but required a bunch of time and it’s still not quite done. Missed a bunch of stuff while I was gone, too:

• Announcement of the monthly TopatoCo Drink ‘n’ Draw, the last for 2016 if my memory serves
• The return of The Abominable Charles Christopher (these pups are going to learn not to screw with Vivol, and if Luga was around he’d knock sense into them)
• The release of Tyler Page’s Raised On Ritalin print collection to the general public (last month when I was in Minneapolis, Page and his wife Cori Doerrfeld graciously had me over for dinner and a lively discussion with our mutual friend Raina Telgemeier)
• An update from France from esteemed Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin (that one’s not time-sensitive and appears below)
• An entire convention

On the other hand, I am around to catch some timely things, like:

• The incomparable Hope Larson (comics maestra, ice cream maker extraordinaire, and caterpillar wrangler to the stars) has found enough time in her schedule (between Batgirl and her next book, out sometime in 2018) to resume Solo¹, or the news that after fifteen years, 4500 strips, and one-and-a-half creative teams, Unshelved is coming to an end next month.
• There’s also word of a benefit for the Cartoon Art Museum (reminder: they’ve been sleeping on the couches of other museums for a while now, and could really use some help getting back to a place of their own) next month, featuring cast members of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra:
  

  Go behind the scenes of The Legend of Korra and Avatar: The Last Airbender with special guests voice actors Janet Varney, John Michael Higgins, Mindy Sterling, Dante Basco and Avatar: Legacy illustrator Dan Parsons. Cosplay highly encouraged! All ages welcome.

  The event will be 19 November, starting at 7:00pm, at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco. General admission tickets at US$28, with premium tickets (which get you an autograph from each special guest) for US$38, with CAM members receiving a 10% discount. Tickets can be purchased via the Friends For Benefits website and are likely going to go fast.

And, as promised:

Team Maliki has just unveiled the first self-published Maliki collection, and to the surprise of absolutely no one they have launched a preorder [French version] for it on a crowdfunding platform called Ulule [English version]. One aspect which stands out is the use of “books” rather than “sum collected” to define stretch goals.

Gary here. That’s a new one on me — I’m going to have to think about how it differs from regular currency-based stretch goals, but it could allow a project with multiple forms of a book (PDF, softcover, hardcover, limited edition, retailer discount multi-packs) to count equally towards stretch goals. Interesting.

[T]here is some precedent for a French comics campaign of this scale, which in fact may be a daunting yardstick to be compared to; I couldn’t cover it at the time, as it was before I took up the mantle of Fleen Senior French Correspondent in January of this year, so this is the ideal opportunity to introduce it as background …

Laurel [Duermael, athough she’s mononymic in her work], while French, lives in the San Francisco bay area with her husband, and works there as an illustrator, mostly for Docker. She maintains a comics blog about her life there. Don’t be misled by her seemingly happy style, as she can deal serious blows, whether it is to cover her experience (French-only) dealing with the French consulate in San Francisco, or to excoriate (French-only) French magazine Biba and Little Market for a “competition” that amounted to providing illustration work for little more than exposure (and you know what they say about exposure).

Her blog is currently taken up by a story (only in French so far) titled Comme Convenu [As Agreed] which is inspired by her experience starting out in the Bay Area in a video game startup. Around this time last year, she launched a crowdfunding campaign on Ulule as a preorder for printing the first volume, with a goal of €9167.

It ended up funding in about one hour. After about one day, it was already 800% funded. It ended up funding at 2,860%² (no, this is not a typo). And remember, the story and book are only available in French, so this couldn’t have been tapping in the established English-speaking comics crowdfunding audience.

Of course, Maliki: Blog does not need to reach the same kind of total amount to be considered a success, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up overfunding in a similar fashion.

At present, Maliki: Blog has pledges for 3414 books (on a goal of 1000); as those are spread out across three different quality levels (Classic, Collector, Super Collector), it’s hard to say how much money it represents, but if everybody only opted for the lowest tier, that would be nearly €70,000³. With just over two weeks left to go, Maliki seems like as not to hit €100K.

Spam of the day:

Mighty Dolly

Okay, so they’re pretending to sell me industrial warehouse equipment for moving heavy loads but you know what? If they told me that their dolly product was named Parton, I’d click on the link because Dolly Parton rules.

_______________
¹ I really dig Solo; it’s her most adult (in the sense of acknowledging that being an adult can suck sometimes) and melancholy work to date, I think. In case you were wondering, no Karl Lagerfeld here.

² That would be in excess of a quarter-million Euro. If I have my exchange rates correct, that would have been just shy of US$300,000.

³ Conversely, if they all opted for Super Collector, it would be over €170K; just a €100K margin of uncertainty, no big. Oh, and as of this writing, €1 is a buck-eleven (US$1.1139 to be exact, which there’s no point in being since it’s gonna float).

Some of these will concern you, some will grab at your sense of empathy, some will intrigue; basically we’re all over the place today.

• I’m very interested to see what the unintended consequences of a new law in California concerning the sales of autographs/autographed memorabilia will do to the major comics shows. Via the twitterfeed of author Amy Stewart, a new law (presumably intended to keep people from buying fake autographs/tchotchkes for big bucks) will require any signed item (think books and art) costing more than five damn dollars (think: everything) to come with a certificate of authenticity with a seven year retention requirement.

  It might be that people at SDCC next year are forced into the charade of selling books/prints/whatever and making the person who bought it then come back for a separate signature. It may be that the “signed & sketched” price variant is actually illegal. It may mean that California-residing creators can no longer supply pre-signed merch to stores (think Raina Telgemeier and the signed copies that bookstores have of Ghosts … they’ll have to dump stock yesterday or risk sanctions that I don’t know how to determine under California’s Civil Code).

  Okay, the summary of the bill indicates that the person signing things is exempt, but resellers appear not to be. Raina can sign a book without recordkeeping, but any comic shop or bookstore with a signed by the author! sticker on books is potentially screwed. California creators/vendors, your thoughts please.

• From Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin, a dispatch regarding a Kickstarter that’s burning up the webcomics category in two languages:
  

  Commit Strip, the strip about the daily life of coders, has launched a Kickstarter for their new book collection, and their first in English, at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/commitstrip/commitstrip-rise-of-the-coders-a-book-about-the-fu. And about 24 hours in they [had] already blown past twice their (admittedly modest) goal. Note that, much like the Last Man campaign, they have rewards in multiple languages but had to set up a separate page for the French description of the campaign as Kickstarter does not support campaigns in multiple languages.

  That last bit surprises me. I wonder if KS would object if you just had a bunch of text in more than one language, or set up support alternating languages but with identical price points and rewards. Certainly that would be a pain; I wonder what our friends to the bilingual north think about this particular feature lack.

• We’ve spoken here at Fleen about Something Terrible, and the burden that Dean Trippe has taken upon himself, because the key thing about being Batman is, you don’t want any other people to have to be Batman. Your trauma defined your adulthood, but you can use that to help others not become as I Am The Night as you wound up; for Trippe, it means making himself available¹ to other survivors of childhood sexual abuse and creating his own impromptu Bat-Family, meeting and offering solace to one person at a time.

  But there’s more people out there than you can meet one at a time that need him, so Trippe’s gone the media route. Last Friday saw the launch of the Something Terrible podcast, hosted by Trippe and no doubt finding its own direction for future episodes. Trippe calls it a mission², I call it a most unfortunately necessary public service that I absolutely will not be listening to; I’m not burying my head in the sand, but in order to keep myself where I need to be to help when necessary³, I need to deal with trauma-bearing people individually, in person, as the need arises. I can’t go seeking them out.

  But those on the other side of the equation, who don’t have my luxury of distancing themselves? Who need Batman to avoid becoming Batman? The Something Terrible podcast is going to be a godsend. Here’s hoping you never have to subscribe.

Spam of the day:

Search For Baby Shower Gifts Options

The one part of the patriarchy and general male privilege that I will gleefully engage in is the general pass I get for baby showers. I know that makes me a terrible feminist, but this is the opinion that fire cannot melt out of me. I will die in it at the stake. PS: Benedick rules.

______________
¹ I suspect, on occasion, to his own detriment. Dean, there’s a reason that they tell you to secure your own mask before helping others — if you aren’t well and whole, you can’t be of assistance to them, no matter how much they need it. Don’t overdo it, please.

² A very Batman-like approach to it, I must say.

³ Occasional reminder: I am an active Emergency Medical Technician.

YOU get an event, and YOU get an event, EVERYBODY gets an event to go to!

• In conjunction with NYCC (which, ahem, has decided not to credential me), there will be an off-site, open to everybody pair of events at a branch of the NY Public Library during NYCC weekend. First up: Friday, 7 October in Greenwich Village at the Jefferson Market Library from 7:00pm to 9:00pm. Guests include Ryan North and Box Brown. Then on Saturday the 8th from 3:00pm to 5:00pm at the 53rd Street Library, the all-ages panel will include Rebecca Mock and Carey Pietsch. The events are free, but do require registration, so hit the links to reserve your spot.
• No time to bask in the glory of Geniusdom, Gene Luen Yang is on tour for the latest Secret Coders collection — featuring Mike Holmes on art — from :01 Books, starting tomorrow at the National Book Festival in DC. He’ll be bouncing around — New York, Naperville, IL, Cincinnati, Dallas, Albuquerque, and Denver — for the next ten days or so. Locations, dates, and times here.
• Big news for Ben Hatke — Zita The Spacegirl has been picked up for animation by Fox; as she so often does, Heidi Mac’s The Beat has the story by Alexander Lu, who seems to be getting all the good stories lately. There’s hardly a better story for middle grade readers than Zita, so I’m looking forward to the final product. In the meantime, Hatke’s on tour to promote Mighty Jack, starting Monday in Louisville, Kentucky and bouncing mostly around the midwest until 4 October (special congrats to Naperville, which also shows up on Hatke’s schedule). Details and dates here.
• The Check, Please! Kickstarter has passed the three-day mark, meaning we can now compare the FFF mk2 with the McDoanld Ratio — named for Kel McDonald, who predicts that the first three days of funding will equal one third the total — and see how they stack up. Recall that the very steep dropoff after day one (representing fanatical, pent-up, no-delay-brooked demand instead of a more gradual decision to yeah, I’ll back that) throws off the Fleen Funding Formula (Mark II). The day three total is US$206,586, giving an MR value of US$619,758, against an FFF mk2 value of US$750K +/- 150K — approximately in line with each other (at least, in the same order of magnitude); we’ll be able to see which came closer in another 28 days.

Spam of the day:

REPLACE MISSING TEETH IN A DAY!

Dude, if you were able to repair what was shown in that photo (it was gross) in a day, the arc of Raina Telgemeier’s career would have been very different. You lyin’.

Okay, so I make it a policy to not read certain comics during the work hours — NSFW means something different to everybody, after all. But a misclick today brought up a blocker when the browser requested Oh Joy, Sex Toy, which is fair enough. Everybody has a right to decide what is displayed in their own environs. But the reason cited — that’s pissing me the hell off and fairly emblematic of so many damn problems we have because America, as a country, is way too hung¹ up about sex. Not blocked for sexual content or situations, not blocked on the basis of explicitness, blocked because sex education is forbidden. This one time, I’ma say Screw you, nanny filter; you suck.

Let’s talk about happier things, any of which should have contributed the header image for today’s post instead of that dumbassery. In fact, let’s have multiple header images because these other items deserve it.

The Ghosts tour rolled into Minneapolis last night and I’ve never seen a crowd of 10 to 14 year olds so physically unable to sit still, they were vibrating at the excitement of being in the same room as Raina Telgemeier. The presentation is a tight half-hour of Ghosts read-along (with audience sound effects), inspirations, past books, and how comics are made. The crowd was larger than what’s shown in the photo by at least a third in that room, plus an overflow room down the hall. The folks at UMinn had the signing down to a science, with numbered tickets being called in groups of twenty, and comics-drawing activities for those waiting. A++++, would attend again.

Boulet’s avatar generator is now an app, with an even wider range of features and expressions. Download the Bouletmaton for Android, and I dunno about Apple but if this means for once we get the app first and the iPhone users gotta wait, I’m fine with that.

Ngozi Ukazu does a hella cute, irregularly scheduled webcomic about college hockey that I can only read about twice a year because I have to read the story in chunks. She had a hella blowout Kickstarter for a Year One print edition last spring, and she’s just blown the damn doors off of the Year Two campaign, launching (as of this writing) in the past three hours and already past 1300 backers and 117 damn thousand American dollars cash money, holy crap.

Speaking of Kickstarter, Brandon Bird just put one up for his latest creative project — I have internally referred to each of these as an Art Thing — and it’s a doozy. Bird wants to make a lowrider dedicated to the late Jerry Orbach: half art car, half statement of purpose for a life lived following your muse, wherever that leads. In this case, hopefully, to an impromptu back-alley competition to see whose Jerry Orbach tribute car can bounce the highest.

Who wants serialied fiction? T Kingfisher, the authorial pseudonym of Digger² creator Ursula Vernon had one of those stories that just wouldn’t go away, and so wrote out 90,000 words and has decided that her Patreon support is such that she can release it for free, Tuesdays and Thursdays (with bonus material on Sundays) until it’s complete. It’s a through-the-portal story, but not the kind you read as kids, which starts with a young girl named Summer — not allowed to do anything thanks to her overprotective mother — being surprised by the sight of a house on chicken legs over the back fence.

Baba Yaga is nobody’s kindly fairy godmother, and when she offers Summer her heart’s desire (or to suck the marrow from her bones … could go either way, really) it’s pretty certain that wherever Summer ends up, she’s going to come back different — sadder, wiser perhaps, very possibly scarred inside or out. Summer In Orcus starts today; read the introduction to get where Vernon’s coming from, then dive into Chapter 1 and join me in counting down to Thursday.

Finally, Tillie Walden picked up a couple of Ignatzen over the weekend (Promising New Talent for I Love This Part and Outstanding Artist for The End Of Summer), and the :01 Books twitterfeed (with whom she has a book coming; :01, not the twitterfeed) tells us that she’s about to start a weekly webcomic on top of everything else. Per Broken Frontier, it’s titled On A Sunbeam, it debuts next Wednesday, the 28th, and will run weekly. It’s early to tell where the story is going to go, but I’m getting a rebellious prep school students in space vibe, which is a combination of words that pleases me.

Spam of the day:

From: Andrea Chamberlin
To: Me, that is to say, Gary
Message: Hi George, Just checking the emails is this a good one for you?

Tom

Every single name wrong. Good job, team. Good job. Lotta hustle.

_______________
¹ Heh … he said hung.

² Obligatory reminder: I loves me some Digger.

News came in from the Bethesda Marriott on Saturday night that all and sundry were having a great time at SPX’s Ignatz Awards ceremony¹, and the winners (list from the always valuable Johanna Draper Carlson, as it was her livetweets I saw first) include Kate Beaton (Outstanding Anthology Or Collection for Step Aside, Pops), Meredith Gran (Outstanding Online Comic for Octopus Pie), and Lisa Hanawalt (Outstanding Graphic Novel for Hot Dog Taste Test), all members of the since-disbanded-by-rent-pressures Pizza Island studio in Brooklyn.

Also pointed out Carlson, the nine awards were spread out across eight creators (only Tillie Walden repeated) and only two were won by dudes². Ladies are the future of comics, y’all — it’s scientific.

Speaking of scientific, there are two stellar examples of comics-as-science-education to commend to you today.

• First up, The Nib continues its habit of providing as much space as is necessary to tell the story, this time so that Andy Warner can bring you a sidelight the story of the biologic revolution du jour, CRISPR. If you’re not familiar with CRISPR, there’s a nice introduction at Radiolab that you can listen to; suffice it to say that it’s as revolutionary as Polymerase Chain Reaction, and may well beat out PCR for the introduction-to-Nobel Prize land speed record³.

  Amazing stuff, CRISPR, with incredible potential and incredible ethical challenges ahead — and one hell of a messy legal fight between two research labs that assert they should be given the patent in lieu of their competitor. Bad Blood is Warner’s look at the issues and the fight over the potential billions of dollars of future value. You know it’s journalism masked as comics when the caption below the last panel reads Doudna, Charpentier and Zhang [the primary researchers/litigants] all declined to comment for this piece.

• Meanwhile, Dante Shepherd, or Lucas Landherr, or whoever the Batman/Bruce Wayne of Chemical Engineering is, shared the latest comic done under education research grant to teach STEM subjects. Science Comic #7, Assumptions talks about the value of approximations in scientific/engineering inquiry, starting from a reference to one of my favorite books ever: Consider A Spherical Cow, first recommended to me by Dr Frank Acker, the man that taught me to viciously oversimplify complex waveforms because damn, it works.

  Shepherr⁴ is joined by a co-author for the first time in Science Comics, Christopher Cogswell, who is the primary explicator in the comic. Artist Carey Pietsch did a great job, in that it was immediately apparent that the teacher character was an actual person, where the learner is a stand-in for anybody that wants to know about assumptions/approximations. The result is the most accessible and readable of the comics that have been produced so far, and sets the bar for future iterations (which, per the note at the bottom of the comic, will continue later this week).

Spam of the day:

Verizon Info — Make your home safer, smarter, and more connected

The Internet of Things is a hodge-podge of ferociously insecure crap, and Verizon is a company that, 48 weeks on, still has not resolved the problem with DSL, although they finally have finally fixed the enormous static they managed to introduce into my landline. I don’t trust them to control the elements of my house any further than I could fling the members of Verizon’s executive board for distance from the height of a cliff.

BONUS PROBLEM

Consider a cliff of 100 m height, with a cylindrical Verizon board member of radius 0.25 m, length 1.7 m, and a mass of 75 kg. Gary is able to loft the board member upwards at a 12° angle above the horizontal plane at an initial velocity of 2.5 m/sec.

Neglecting tumbling effects and air resistance, how far can Gary trust Verizon to control the elements of his house? At what velocity will the Verizon board member crater into the damp sand at the base of the cliff?

_______________
¹ Sadly, I couldn’t be at any part of SPX, but I do get to see Raina Telgemeier’s Ghosts book tour tonight, so I’m going to call it even.

² I expect to see panel discussions at every con next year asking promising male creators what it’s like to create comics while male.

³ Truly huge scientific breakthroughs often take decades to show their effect, with a corresponding lag in time from publication/demonstration to the fancy award ceremony with the King of Sweden. PCR was developed in 1983 and its developer, Kary Mullis, was awarded the Nobel a scant ten years later.

⁴ It’s not everybody that gets their own celeb couple/shipping name all to themselves.