Hey, Franck? Franck Bondeux? I know that you think that women just haven’t ever made comics, and that your complete dismissal of considering even one woman for inclusion on the list of nominees for the Grand Prix d’Angoulême is therefore just logical¹, but let me help you out a little.

On the very same day that you decide there’s simply no notable women making comics for a lifetime, the cover of Ghosts, Raina Telgemeier’s next book — not due for nine months! — was released along with a brief excerpt. It wasn’t released to the comics press, it was released to Entertainment friggin’ Weekly because she’s that ingrained in the popular culture. But, you know, women haven’t made careers of comics.

Or maybe we could look at today’s announcement of Hope Larson’s upcoming series, Goldie Vance, a collaboration with Brittney Williams. That one ran in the LA Times, the paper of record of the popular entertainment capital of the world … but you can’t think of any women that have made contributions to comics.

Franck? I hate to say this, but you are not very good at your job. I’ll leave it to others to provide the extensive lists of names that support this argument (and seriously, Rumiko Takahashi is gonna surpass Tezuka’s lifetime page count before long), as there are so damn many of them running around today.

Just — just stop doubling down on the stupid, okay? Withdraw the award for 2016, let some other person start transitioning into your position, and they can do better next year. Because honestly, if you give out the Grand Prix this year, you’re gonna have to mark it with an asterisk that notes the severe dumbassery that surrounded this entire process.

Spams of the day:

Find Divorce lawyers here

Is there something that you know that I don’t?

Your name nominated to list of distinguished women of achievement

Seriously, is there something that you know that I don’t?

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¹ In the most fedora-topped sense of the word.

One of which is basically today, so be sure to read this one quickly.

• Apologies for the lateness of this announcement, but I think it snuck up on all of us. We’ve mentioned previously that Christopher Baldwin has a forthcoming original graphic novel of Little Dee (in color!), roundabouts April or so. I’ve actually got a review copy here and will be sharing my thoughts closer to the release date. Now for the time-critical part of this announcement:

  As part of the deal for this new Little Dee story, the old books must be withdrawn from sale and today is your last day to buy them.

  If ever you wanted to get in on the print adventures of an adorable little girl, her wise bear friend, her loyal dog friend, and her terrible, terrible vulture kinda-sorta friend, do it now. You’ll have to pry my copies from my cold, dead hands.

• Also as previously noted, the Cartoon Art Museum is doing a spiffy job of keeping up programming even without a place to hang its collective hat, much less its extensive collection of cartoon art. To that end, they will be holding their first cartoonist-in-residence event since leaving their former home on Mission Street this weekend:
  

  On January 9, 2016 from 1:00pm-3:00pm, enjoy a family-friendly event in beautiful Fort Mason exploring the creative process of cartooning with Rachel Dukes and creative possibilities with FLAX at their new location, 2 Marina Boulevard.

  Rachel Dukes will be the first Cartoon Art Museum Cartoonist-in-Residence since the museum vacated its gallery space at 655 Mission Street, and will be the first artist in a series of traveling Cartoonist-in-Residence events in 2016. These events will be held throughout San Francisco in 2016 at creative institutions like FLAX, Comix Experience, Mission: Comics & Art, and Two Cats Comic Book Store.

  You may recognize Ms Dukes from her work for BOOM! or her own webcomics. She does good stuff, so if you’re anywhere near the Fort Mason area in San Francisco,the FLAX art & design store is where you want to be.

• On the far side of the continent, Jeph Jacques will be doing his own public talk in his new hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia, at the Halifax Central Library. Fun starts at 7:00pm on Wednesday, 27 January, on the first floor. Halifax is one of those towns that have attracted more than the demographically-proportional number of comicker types, so who knows who else you might see in the audience? Actually, I have no specific knowledge and don’t want to mention names, lest I create false expectations, but you know — comics types go to catch up with each other, so keep your eyes peeled.

Spam of the day:

Enter the Computer Training Field – Get Degree Info.

You know that I’ve been in that field for more than twenty years, right? In terms of picking your victim, this is worse that the physical junk mail I’ve gotten the last two days running offering me Medicare plans, which ignore the fact that I am nowhere near 65 years old.

The scammier of the two — the one filled with dire warnings about OFFICIAL COMMUNICATIONS and PENALTIES UNDER FEDERAL LAW FOR FAILING TO DELIVER — just got sent back (I love prepaid postage) with a cheery Fuck off! scribbled in Sharpie.

As the various year-end holidays loomed, I looked out daily at the Wide World o’ Webcomics and saw a bunch of crickets putting away their instruments and heading home early cause wasn’t nobody around to listen to ’em. It was a dead ten days or so for news¹, but I said to myself, Self, I bet things pick up as soon as January rolls around. And hoo boy, was I ever right. In no particular order then:

• The third Kel McDonald-edited fairy tale collection, this time focusing on Asian stories, is nearing the end of its Kickstart.
• Tickets to latest iteration of Zach Weinersmith’s BAH! Fest, this one in London, are now live for purchase.
• Perhaps noting the imminent end of Planet of Hats — the last episode of classic Trek will get its treatment the day after tomorrow — creator David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc) is branching out another of his many, many webcomics projects². Taking a page from his Square Root of Minus Garfield (mashups of Garfield), he’s promoted iToons (mashups and parodies of any [web]comic, except Dinosaur Comics³) from Tumblrland to fullbore webcomic, and inviting submissions.

And there’s even more if you look at what got hit the net in the last 24 hours or so:

• Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett announced that he’s cutting back Sheldon to three days a week in order to concentrate more time on Drive. Now I stand second to no man in my love of Drive, but fact is that LArDK has not yet provided canonical proof that Fatty Chunklins exist in the Second Spanish Empire (as opposed to, say, Denny’s) and therefore Sheldon is — by some infinitesimally-small interval — the superior strip. Until we find out exactly what Fatty Chunklins are, I’m going to have to call this one a wash.
• For what is I believe the first time in its nearly ten year history, Three Panel Soul has broken the format declared there in the title. Always it’s been three panels, although not always equal-sized and side-by-side, and breaking the format today comes with a very good — not to mention heartbreaking — reason. Our condolences to everybody that knew and loved Jess McConville’s Poppy, and to everybody that deals with the bastard of a disease known as Alzheimer’s.
• Oh, and then there’s this, fresh from the New York Times, the School Library Journal, or anybody else that’s paying attention: Gene Luen Yang has been appointed by the Children’s Book Council, Every Child a Reader, and the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress to a two-year term as the fifth National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. He will be inaugurated into the role by the acting Librarian of Congress on Thursday, 7 January 2016, in a public ceremony at the Library of Congress.

  Yang is the first graphic novelist to be appointed National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, but then again he has a history of being the first graphic novelist to do things (first to be nominated for a National Book Award and the first to win the ALA’s Michael L Printz Award, both for the masterful American Born Chinese). He basically hasn’t slowed down since ABC, releasing (either alone or with an art partner) Level Up, Boxers & Saints, The Shadow Hero, Secret Coders, The Eternal Smile, Prime Baby, a stack of Avatar tie-ins, reprints pre-ABC work, and much, much more. Oh, and he’s writing something called Superman these days, too.

  Point being, you could hardly find anybody that’s written more for readers of all levels, approaching more different topics, in more different genres, and with a greater level of penetration into the the world of young readers⁴. The next two years are gonna be great for fans of YP lit (not to mention all those YP), and should Yang go mad with power and stage a coup to declare himself National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature For Life, we at Fleen would like to point out that any good benevolent overlord needs good PR and we would be up for the job.

Spam of the day:

Subject: Benachrichtigung

The rest of the spam appears to be a lottery scam in German; I’m just entranced by that wonderful, wonderful subject. Could any other language cram as many awkwardly-sounding syllables into such a randomly-discordant order?

________________
¹ Unless you want to count as news the ongoing attempts of a very large corporation to get me to want to keep giving them money by withholding services and pulling no-shows on repairs. But that word implies something novel or unique, and this was anything but.

² Go here and scroll to the bottom of the page.

³ Because all you have to work with in DC is dialogue, which means you’re not really messing with the form. Besides, he already has a comic for that. I also feel that I should note here that as an electrical engineer, this new endeavour should really be called jToons.

⁴ Okay, yes, Raina Telgemeier, but I would argue her contributions are fewer and more concentrated, whereas Yang’s are greater in number and broader in scope. I still think she’s probably the most important person working in comics today.

It occurs to me that I have somehow managed to not write about Child’s Play yet this season, and that my memory was jogged only by seeing the news that CP coordinator Jamie Dillion has decided to move onto other things. Sorry for missing it until so late into the season, and let us jump immediately to the fundraising history. For those that may not remember the numbers, Child’s Play has over its existence raised (all numbers in US dollars):

2003: $250,000
2004: $310,000
2005: $605,000
2006: $1,024,000
2007: $1,300,000
2008: $1,434,377
2009: $1,780,870
2010: $2,294,317
2011: $3,512,345
2012: $5,085,761
2013: $7,600,000
2014: $8,430,000
Total as of 5 January 2015, the arbitrary end of CP12: $33,626,670

As of this writing¹, cumulative funds raised sit at $38,173,191; that puts CY 2015 at about $4.5 million. I always wonder if any given year is when Child’s Play will fail to exceed the previous year’s total, and I always learn that my doubts did not come to pass. Naturally, there’s only a few days left to go and about four million dollars to exceed 2014; I honestly don’t know if this is the year the streak is broken, but I’ll not be surprised if we have to put that questionable achievement off until next year.

In any event, taking notice of how much or how little is raised in a given year is less important the that fact that Child’s Play has raised nearly forty million damn dollars to help make forays into the world of healthcare less terrible for kids. I’ll keep that in mind, and in my heart all the year.

And to Ms Dillion, tackling an enormous job at a young age and running with it — thanks for all of it.

Spam of the day:

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If you wish to unsubscribe from all future mailings, click the unsubscribe link below [link and mailing address in Missouri]

Both “links” are part of the same image, and anywhere you click takes you to the same address as any other part of the email offering English-speaking Russian ladies who want to date me and come with professional translation services. That’s a lot of contradictory messages for just one spam.

_______________
¹ Updated immediately before publication, on account of the number keeps changing as I type.

Happy Festivus Eve, everybody. I got my gifts early.

From the Twitters, evidence that Chris Onstad may be working on new comics:

Dusted off the old Com-ex 5000 and started banging around

This makes me think back to the waning days of 2005 when this act of embloggenation was brand new, and we were two weeks away from Todd needing to make fake nuts for your ride phone, which two weeks later turned into The Great Outdoor Fight. You guys, it has been nearly ten years since The Great Outdoor Fight.

That means it has been nearly ten years since I met Christopher Hastings in a Great Outdoor Fight t-shirt¹. And, as luck would have it, the other big news today concerns Mr “Doctor” Hastings, and what he’ll be doing for the next while:

HA HA HA YES WE’RE DOING THIS THING ew.com/article/2015/1…

For those of you not clicking through, there’s a great big picture of issue #1 of the ongoing Gwenpool series that Hastings will be writing, and a link to an interview with Entertainment Weekly. You guys, Hastings for all intents and purposes is the only writer this character has had (or will have, for some time), and will indelibly put a stamp on her for all future time. That’s really (pardon my language, but I feel the situation calls for it) fucking cool. When Gwenpool shows up as a cameo in some future Phase IV or V Marvel movie? There’s gonna be a credit thanking him. I am so very proud of him and cannot wait to see what kind of goofball adventures Ms Poole has².

Spams of the day:

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Received two minutes later:

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Okay spammers, get together and figure out a consistent message please.

_______________
¹ The day we met would have been the day we all met Ramses Luther Smuckles.

² In all honesty I had little interest in the character until I found out that Hastings would be writing the three backup stories in Howard the Duck and the Gwen part of the holiday special. I planned to buy them because I know that Hastings doesn’t have a bad story in him, but they’re hilarious and far better than such a contrived character birth deserves to be. If you doubt me, pick up the holiday special and tell me that the bit with Swords isn’t the funniest thing in any comic book from calendar year 2015 that isn’t primarily about Squirrel Girl.

No posting today.

If you’re a reader of Randy Milholland’s Something*Positive (and if you aren’t, what the hell is wrong with you?), you may recognize that combination of words. Old Familiar Faces is the name that Milholland gives to miscellaneous strips, not following regular characters and plotlines, that he runs at the end of the calendar year or running over into the beginning of the next year — a palette cleanser of people we see only rarely¹ (and Silas). He’s done this thirteen times so far.

We’re about to hit fourteen:

S*P Year 14 will end Wednesday. Related, my comic will be 14 years old tomorrow.

If you’d told me back in the early days of 2002 (I started reading not long after Choo-Choo Bear was introduced; he’s now nearly 39 years old and still thriving) that Something*Positive would not only survive this long, but be the most heartfelt, heartbreaking, ideal example of what living, breathing (and sometimes dying) characters in a long-running comic could be, I wouldn’t have believed you. Surely not that marvelously nasty, sarcasm-laden bit of nihilistic joy and cruelty to all (friends and enemies alike, but especially friends).

But something happened along the way. It’s become a continuity strip of the sort that almost existed on the comics page. Mostly, continuity strips change very slowly, with every plotline essentially resetting back to baseline. Kids might be born, but they’ll take decades to age a year. You saw a more realistic approach to the passage of time in, say, For Better or For Worse, but the reset-to-baseline tendency was always going to win². Don’t even get me started on Funky Winkerbean³.

No, if there’s a predecessor to Something*Positive, it’s probably Doonesbury; characters we started with become less relevant each year, as their younger friends, new lovers, and children (some of which we’ve seen since birth) become the centers of story and strip. Only Uncle Duke and Choo-Choo Bear will always be there.

So happy early strippiversary, Randy; I’d guess that you didn’t think you’d still be doing this either. May your characters grow and change and live their lives (until they don’t) for exactly as long as you have these stories to tell.

Speaking of old familiar faces, KC Green dropped a bombshell on the world last night:

ah heck, heres da scoop: shmorky and i are making adult swim ID shorts out of old gunshow strips

just 10 right now including “this is fne” which is what they wanted first. short bumpers for tv and online

.@sashmorky is knockin em out of the park with animating them. and i got to work with @danasnyder for doing a voice also

I’ll let you guys in on a secret: I’ve seen one of these, the famous This Is Fine. I’ve see it with KC doing the voice on a scratch track, and Dana Snyder (Master Shake, Al the Alchemist) doing the final voice. It’s glorious work that Shmorky did on the animation, a perfect match to Green’s comic sensibilities.

Kudos to [adult swim] for seeking out the actual creator of This Is Fine instead of treating it as a spontaneously-generated meme that nobody originally thought up (maybe they could do dickbutt next). Further kudos for finding an animator that would do Green’s work justice. Can’t wait to see the other nine bumpers online, and on my electric teevee machine.

Spam of the day:

McDonalds releases a new healthier menu! Try it now with this $100 Gift!

I can’t even being to fathom what a hundo of McDonald’s foodlike product would look like. Pass.

_______________
¹ Consider the most recent OFF strip, wherein we re-meet a character we hadn’t seen since strip #2.

² Nobody escapes home and family and you will marry your high school sweetheart and/or buy the house you grew up in. Only roadside whores ever left town.

³ Wherein you will return to your hometown and stay in the high school orbit forever, or at least until you’ve passed your existential misery onto the next generation and die.

From cancer.

One may recall (if one is so inclined) that about two weeks ago we at Fleen reviewed The Enthusiast by Josh Fruhlinger¹. I’m happy to report that the book launch party took place two nights ago in LA to apparently great success², and that fulfillment via the magical pixies at Make That Thing appears to be well apace.

That means you get to buy it now. Fruhlinger has a dedicated page at his Tumblr for the book with the full range of samples (chapter 1 at Medium; a recording of Fruhlinger reading chapter 3) and a link to Gumroad for those that like e-books. For those that hate trees and want to see them dead³, you can get a copy inscribed on mashed and reconstituted tree-flesh at TopatoCo, in either paperback or hardcover.

It’s a cruel twist of fate that the TopatoCo sales didn’t go up until deep into the shipping deadlines period, but what ya gonna do? What ya gonna do is order up a book, then get Josh Fruhlinger to sign that bad boy next time you’re in the same place as him, that’s what.

And yes, we’re a bit light on news today, but I suspect that will be the case for the next two weeks or so. Heck, you’ll probably be too busy to read it anyway, so don’t feel bad if you just want to catch up on January fourth.

Spam of the day:

Victoria’s Secret Christ.

I am having a hard time parsing those words. Is that something like Buddy Christ only with fewer stigmata and more push-ups? Anything less disturbing in the spam filters?

Pet cats Flaming to be able to “Crazy Train” simply by Ozzy Osbourne Could be the Simply Catharsis You may need Nowadays. And so, devoid of additionally ado, in this article it truly is: 35 moments connected with cats and kittens flaming to help “Crazy Train” by means of Ozzy Osbourne!

That would be no, then.

_______________
¹ Spoiler alert: we liked it.

² At least, no reports have been received of underage guests drowning in their own vomit. The rules for success are different in LA.

³ I might be better inclined towards trees if they’d stop having sex in my respiratory passages, causing sinus headaches and misery and friggin’ vertigo.

Let’s just check in with some people we like today. You might even call this nothing more that follow-ups on things we’ve mentioned previously but it’s my damn blog and that’s what I feel like doing today.

• Last week at this time we at Fleen mentioned that Kate Beaton had teased us with the first news of her next childrens book, King Baby. From Publishers Weekly, we can now add a more complete cover image (above) and some details like exactly how long we’ll have to wait to get the book (272 days; look for it on 13 September). I’m confident in predicting it will be at least as wonderful as The Princess And The Pony¹.
• Also mentioned in the past week was the news that the Cartoon Art Museum is engaging in all of its usual activities (classes and such) that it always has, except for the have a physical space where people can come see art thing. A’course, the San Francisco real estate market being what it is, they’re gonna need some cash to get back into that particular habit, so it’s a good thing that one of the things they’re still doing is their annual fund drive:
  

  [CAM is] thrilled about all of the opportunities that lie ahead as we develop plans for the museum’s next chapter. During our search for a new home, the museum is continues to offer innovative educational programs, events and exhibitions through new partnerships with local museums and libraries.

  Help us provide the best in original cartoon art and educational programs by contributing to our Annual Fund today! Thank you in advance for your 100% tax-deductible gift.

  Send your money via their support page, or for those of you that still write checks, you can send ’em to PO Box 566 in San Francisco, CA, postal code 94104-0566.

Spam of the day:

This is to inform you that you were among the lucky beneficiary selected to receive this donations award sum of Eur 350,000.00, as charity donations/aid from the Qatar Foundation held in Doha, Qatar, to promote your business and personal Interest.

Yours Sincerely,
President of Qatar Foundation.

Odd that a Gulf emirate would denominate in Euros, but whatevs. Send half to the Cartoon Art Museum so they can get a new home, and half to Kate Beaton so she can have a herd of fat ponies.

________________
¹ Which, per a conversation a little while ago with my sister, is my youngest niece’s favorite book ever. Nobody tell her that she’s gettin’ a special present for Christmas.

See yesterday, grrr. I won’t be able to say as much as I’d like, and let’s not try to get pictures up, but there’s things I want to point you towards.

• Via Ryan North from yesterday, news that basically every comic creator from Toronto is having a party:
  

  What are you doing this Thursday night [editor’s note: that’s the day after tomorrow, 17 December 2015]? I sure hope it involves coming to The Fifth-Ever Beguiling, Dinosaur Comics, Squirrel Girl, Jughead, Kaptara, A Softer World Holiday Party 2015!!

  Details at the link. Secret Santa, y’all.

• Via the Boston Comics Roundtable, news that there’s still a month to submit to their their upcoming science-based comic anthology, Boundless. Deadline to submit is 15 January 2016, with full submission guidelines here.
• Kickstarter has had more than a few high-profile projects go bust in its time, sometimes for reasons outside the control of the creators, sometimes likely because projects were too ambitious and they couldn’t see that, sometimes possibly because they were big ol’ scams. They commissioned a report about fulfillment, which you can read here, and definitely should read if you’re a creator or backer. Basically, everybody.
• Compare and contrast the uncultured swine declaration (from Mort at the very beginning of KC Green’s The Anime Club) with the ignorant swine declaration (from the unnamed character in today’s SMBC by Zach Weinersmith, but you’ll have to press the big red votey button to see it). Discuss.

Spam of the day:

<blinky hearts emoji />Jody29 wants to Golf with you!<blinky hearts emoji />

I don’t play golf and I doubt the very well-upholstered and very naked young lady pictured really does want to ‘tee off’ with me.