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?

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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.

• Since … call it September first of last year … Raina Telgemeier has gone from having two books on the New York Times Best Seller List (graphic novels, paperback) — namely Smile and Sisters — to three (as Drama returned), then four (the first Baby Sitters Club color re-release), five (second BSC), then back to four for a bit.

  Screw that, she’s not got a supermajority of the list with six books on the list now that there’s a third BSC re-release with one more book to go. You thought I was kidding when I suggested Telgemeier could have as many as eight books on the list? I wasn’t. All hail.

• In fact, Raina’s triumph is almost enough to make up for the fact that Noelle Stevenson somehow was not win the National Book Award (YA category) for Nimona t’other night. Nimona was only the fourth graphic novel to be so nominated (two of the others were by Gene Luen Yang, the remaining book by David Small), so it’s honestly not a line of crap to say it was an honor just to make the list of finalists. I still think that I’M A SHARK AAAAHH would be the best acceptance speech ever.

  Thing is, Nimona is essentially a first book; it is entirely in the realm of plausibility to say that Stevenson will likely be back on the finalists list and going up to the podium with her thank-yous some year down the line.

• For anybody that wants to understand intellectual property better — because they have some, or want to be sure that they’re using somebody else’s properly — there’s a very good long read on the topic over at Medium by Will Frank. Frank is a lawyer specializing in IP law, and is the sort of person that hangs out on social media with author/artist types, mostly as an excuse to make terrible, terrible puns¹. Seriously, never allow Will Frank and Brad Guigar to meet in person unless you’re trying to bring about The Punularity.

  Questionable use of modern communications aside, Frank knows his stuff and knows how to explain it. Take half an hour and really read what he’s got to say. I was going to quote a particularly good bit here (Fair Use!), but I can’t find a single bit that’s particularly better than the rest because the entire thing is damn good. Go. Read. Learn.

Spam of the day:

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_______________
¹ A significant fraction of his twitterfeed consists of people helplessly sending him the same two-word message: Will, no. Hasn’t worked yet.

Take that as you will. In light of the need to get to said airport, today will be brief, but worth your while. We’ve got Dave Roman on deck, in and around his multiple NYCC appearances this weekend, has scored an interview with The AV Club that starts off with a line I wish I’d written myself:

Over the past dozen years, Dave Roman has been akin to the patron saint of all-ages comics.

There are other candidates for such an honor, but it’s hard to argue that Roman has, in addition to creating many great all-ages works, has uniquely been at the center of enabling others to do the same (particularly through his editorship of the late Nickelodeon Magazine). It probably also doesn’t hurt that Roman and Raina Telgemeier¹ have, between them, the best possible spouses/sounding boards/early readers of all-ages comic work imaginable. And he’s funny off the top of his head. Asked how reading Astronaut Academy might impress a potential job recruiter, Roman answered:

Pop culture is ultimately the commerce of the future. It’s just going to be Simpsons references and quotes from anime from the ’80s. The more you can digest in a very succinct, compressed package, which Astronaut Academy is, the better fluent you’ll be in that pop culture commerce of the future. It’s like bitcoin except a lot more fun.

Read the whole thing, and if you’re in New York this weekend, check out his panels and signings and tell him Gary said hi.

Spam of the day:
Dammit, I had a good one about winning the Netherlands national lottery in Dutch and I accidentally deleted it. Dang.

______________
¹ Who, shockingly, claims only four of ten slots on the latest New York Times Best Seller List; they add up to a total of 346 weeks worth of best sales, though, so that’s all right.

Before we get to the NYCC stuff that happens next week (assuming Hurricane Joaquin doesn’t ruin everything), everybody knows that Patreon announced a security breach, right? If not, Brad Guigar has a decent summary up at Webcomics Dot Com. From what’s been announced so far, this doesn’t seem to be a big deal, but I’m always reluctant to sign on to anything that says all … information remain[s] safely encrypted without further details of how that’s been determined. Could have been worse, never a bad idea to change passwords, and let this be a lesson: don’t leave dev sites publicly available.

Thanks very much to Heidi Mac, on account of she’s got an actual readable, searchable text dump of the NYCC panel offerings, which makes looking for things of interest a damn sight easier than it is on the actual NYCC webpage. It’s just a quick runthrough, but things you might want to look at include:

And if that’s not enough for you, please search out the likes of Carla Speed McNeill (Artists Alley, B4), Comic Bento (aka the Blind Ferret folks, 2345), the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (1764), Cyanide & Happiness (2247), the First Law of Mad Science (1046), :01 Books (2237), the Hero Initiative (Artists Alley, N104), Jim Zub (Artists Alley, X3), Katie Cook (Artists Alley, C10), Scott C (Artists Alley, N5), and, oddly enough, The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore (Artists Alley, NC132).

Spam of the day:

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That link leads to a site literally called hellabad.faith and you want me to click it? Nnnnnnoooope.

Three things that I want to bring to your attention today. Honestly, no one of them is any less important than another, so let’s just dive in.

• The Cartoon Art Museum may be closing the doors of its present location in a couple of weeks, but they’re not closing for good. Furthermore, they’re going to engage in their mission of making the cartoon arts available to the widest possible audience until the very last minute. To that end, please note that they have named their cartoonist-in-residence for the (abbreviated) month, and it’s Ben Collison. He’ll be presenting on Thursday, 3 September, from 2:00pm to 5:30pm at CAM on his techniques for making comics with ink and coffee (attention: R Stevens). And now to 12 September, CAM is having a moving sale, with nearly everything in their store’s stock going for 20% – 40% off sticker price. Anybody in San Francisco should drop by 655 Mission Street and browse, or just give them your best regards.
• This page keeps a weather eye on the New York Times Best Seller List for graphic novels, and notes with approval that the latest iteration of same is still 50% occupied by Raina Telgemeier, but also notes a surprise in the #10 slot. Debuting on the NYTBSL is Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese, which readers of this page may remember was reviewed by Fleen when it debuted nine years ago. It’s unexpected, but that I got to thinking — just as MAUS and Persepolis make reappearances on the list about this time of year every year as school resumes and they become part of the curriculum, it appears that American Born Chinese is becoming part of the canon and being studied.

  Yang’s no stranger to the NYTBSL, but I imagine it’s a great feeling to see his first, most autobiographical work finally recognized. Also, there’s the whole bit where the Times didn’t have a Best Seller List for graphic novels when American Born Chinese was released, as it undoubtedly would have sat on the list for a good long while otherwise. In any event, congrats to Yang for what’s got to be a heartwarming return to the school year, and watch this space for the inevitable news that Secret Coders (due for release in four weeks) has been added to the NYTBSL.

• This page also keeps an eye on Kickstarter campaigns and the management thereof. I’m pleased to note that on Saturday, the very best writeup of how to plan the financial end of a campaign — the so-called Kickstarter Math — that I’ve ever seen was released to the world. And it’s not for a webcomic, or a comic-comic. Marian Call, singer, songwriter, adventurer, bon vivante, and life partner of the repeatedly-mentioned-on-this-blog Pat Race, has a Kickstart going on right now to release her next album, which is down to the last two days. She’s well over goal and into stretch territory, and a big part of that is the planning that she put into the crowdfunding effort. Go read her post right now if you’ve ever thought about Kickstarting anything, particular the bit about modeling multiple levels of success and running a full set of numbers for each.

  Or possible do that a little later, as it appears that her host is down at the moment, possibly due to the twin loads of people rushing to give her money (she runs a sponsorship program in addition to Kickstarts) and to absorb her wisdom. Oh, and listen to (and buy!) her music, because she’s got a hell of a voice, a great sense of what makes a good song, and can channel everybody from Bowie to the Brothers Chaps.

Spam of the day:

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A year ago I wrote this:

Out today! Raina Telgemeier has dominated the New York Times bestseller charts for graphic novels with Smile and Drama, and since the Smile sequel Sisters hits today, the only questions to be asked are How long will she stay at #1? and Will she manage the trifecta of Drama coming back to the list? (Smile hasn’t left in more than two years), and Will she pull off the trick of holding the first three positions simultaneously?

My predictions: At least a month, Probably, and I’d bet ten bucks on it.

Here we are, a year later, Sisters has been on the list for 52 out of 52 weeks, and the actual outcomes to the predictions are: I lost count but I think it was close to 20 weeks over the year, starting in week 2, She’s got five books on the list right now, so yes, and Yep, she did, and then she took the top four spots simultaneously and nobody will take my bets anymore.

And for those keeping track at home, as of today, Raina Telgemeier has a cumulative 343 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List (two of which are Eisner winners), which is insane. Consider what it takes to manage that feat — these books are not only insanely popular, but they are sustaining demand over the long haul; she is creating new readers with each new book, not just selling to the same demographic cohort¹. I’m calling it now: Raina Telgemeier will sell 100 million books over the length of her career. She will be one of those authors whose total sales count is measured in reference to the Bible.

Happy Sistersversary, Raina. You’re amazing, and you just keep getting better.

Spam of the day:

Once you’re it a fact that the common gladness on the bestexperiences in a foreign country.

I think this is selling some kind of sex tourism?

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¹ The last person I can think of that expanded the reading pool like this was JK Rowling.

I was tempted to break with the pattern of :01 Books week here at Fleen, particularly since the prediction that I made eight days ago has come to pass, where Raina Telgemeier now holds fully half of the latest New York Times Best Seller List for paperback graphic novels. Suffice it to say that this domination of the graphic novel sales channel is unprecedented at the level of an entire company, much less a single creator. Whatever superlatives you feel best describe this situation, I assure you that I feel just as strongly. Everybody feel good for Raina!

But theme weeks are theme weeks, and so we’re going to spend the rest of today on Maris Wicks, who has a history in educomics — we saw her team up with Jim Ottaviani in 2013 to tell the stories of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas, and she spends her non-comics time as a program educator at the New England Aquarium. This time around, she’s tackling the marvel of science that defines us — the human body, from stem to stern, in the informative Human Body Theater.

Now let’s get something out of the way — some people are not going to like this book. It acknowledges the existence of things that they are uncomfortable with, things like sex, puberty, genitals, HIV, menstruation, erections, pee, poop, farts, and snot. It includes everything from primers on cell theory, atomic theory, and the nature of visible light, as well a thorough discussion of the major systems of the body and their functions. Some people are not going to want their kids (the book is easily acceptable for children 10 and up) to learn about how things work on the inside, preferring them to treat such matters as fit only for a sense of shame. Those kids are the ones that need this book most of all.

Because beyond the simple, factual discussion of things that provoke that shame reaction, Human Body Theater is a terrific guide to gross anatomy, how everything from the histamine reaction to the autonomic nervous system works, and how to keep it working properly. There’s nice asides about the importance of hygiene and nutrition, and in the chapter on sensory function, acknowledgment that not everybody gets to have a body in perfect working order and that’s okay.

For example, color blindness means that you have more trouble picking out matching clothes, actual blindness means you use assistive devices or animals, and deafness is countered with sign language. It’s a particularly nice touch that Wicks includes both Braille and ASL alphabets and plants the idea Yes, this is more challenging, but people adapt.

Along the way, Wicks demystifies all the stuff that your average 10 year old is probably entranced and grossed out by in equal measure: blood, farts, burps, snot, pee, and poop (this is looking a lot like that earlier shame list) all get attention that sends the message This happens to everybody; just be cool and be polite. Some of those kids may not yet be aware of things like erections, but they’re treated as matter-of-factly without getting overly explicit. The young reader is going to come away with the impression that bodies are weird, complicated, wonderful, with lots of cool stuff going on when you stop to think about it.

The older reader is going to learn as well — you may have forgotten (or never been taught) about the musculoskeletal, cardiopulumonary, digestive, excretory, endocrine, reproductive, immune, and neurological functions of the human body, and this book is as good an overview as I’ve seen. I’m thinking it belongs in middle-school health classes, and very possibly in the anatomy and physiology section of the EMT classes I teach¹.

Human Body Theater releases on 6 October, which is enough time to remember how to pronounce things like mitochondria and metatarsals. One last time, we at Fleen thank Gina Gagliano and everybody at :01 for the review copies

Spam of the day:

Hi fleen.com admin, i see you need some fresh content. Daily updates will rank your page in google higher, content is king nowadays.

Yes, because nearly 4800 words about six books in five days isn’t fresh content. Bozo.

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¹ Heck, I know baby EMTs who can’t tell you about the three kinds of muscle, how they differ, and where they occur. It’s all here in a couple of full-color pages that makes everything clear and obvious; if HBT included a full discussion of terms like distal and proximal and the planes of the body, I’d make it mandatory reading for A&P.

• Holy cats! Raina Telgemeier has somehow slipped, as the latest iteration of the New York Times Best Seller List includes only three of her books, in the relatively modest #4, 5, and 6 slots (although we’re also a mere four weeks away from Sisters being on the list for 52 consecutive weeks, so there’s that). Not to worry; although the first Baby-Sitters Club color reissue has slipped off the list (after dropping to #10 last week, its 11th on the list), the second BSC color reissue released the day before yesterday.

  You can see where I’m going with this.

  There’s a lag time on the NYTBSL, but I’ma guess we’re shortly going to see The Truth About Stacey join Smile, Drama, and Sisters, and very possibly see the return of Kristy’s Great Idea. Can we do five Telgemeier books simultaneously? With the remaining two BSC color reissues due in October and January, could we see an actual majority of the ten slots owned by books about tween girls? No bets, my friends.

• Holey Cats! Now this is how you meet promised Kickstarter fulfillment goals:
  

  When we launched our Kickstarter back in January, we hoped to sell 500 copies of our game. With that in mind, we wrote the following on our Kickstarter page: “Estimated delivery: July 2015”

  We wound up selling more than 500 copies. We sold 460,000 copies.

  …

  I know we promised we’d deliver in July. But that’s a lot of things we had to do. So, the new expected delivery date is …

  Still July!

  Yep, kittens that ‘splode start their rolling shipping today; it would be impossible to ship to ship every one of the 220,000-odd (some very odd) backers in 122 different countries on the same day, despite the fact that the EK crüe have sent massive quantities of games to various countries around the world to ship domestically, rather than from the US (which would involve customs, and international shipping, and headaches and delays and missing packages galore). Heck, they had to partner with six companies for production and fulfillment, including seeing the Cards Against Humanity folks set up an entire company — Blackbox — just to handle the shipping and notifications.

  Those specific details — 122 countries, six companies, Blackbox — all come from the shipping-commencement announcement along with other facts about the game; my favorite fact-cluster is that printing the 26.8 million cards required 2356 gallons¹ of paint, producing a gross tonnage of 104,000 pounds² requiring 17 rail-car sized shipping containers to hold them all. You can find at least one member ExKit team at GenCon, with copies of the game, just in case you didn’t back the campaign and/or can’t wait until sometime next week. And if you need a primer on how to play, they released a video starring the voice of Dr Krieger, because listening to Lucky Yates talk about stuff exploding won’t cause nightmares at all.

• Depending on what topics he decides to cover, there may or may not be cats (holy or otherwise) involved! Ryan Estrada is feelin’ creative again, and we all know what that means: a burst of comics to bury ourselves in. This time, he’s decided to do fake pitches for licensed comics based on existing concepts, and Dylan Meconis has already tossed the first suggestion out: an animated version of Murder She Wrote. But Estrada being Estrada, he’s already got a half-dozen in the pipeline, and posted his unlicensed adaptation of Bringing Out The Dead. Keep your eye on Unlicensed By Ryan Estrada for more insanity in the coming … forever, possibly.

Spam of the day:

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Hey, Erika and Matt? I think this one is for you.

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¹ Just shy of 9000 liters, or 0.007230289 acre-feet.

² About 47,200 kilos, or 1 adult humpback whale.

We’re all over the place today, from the neatest, most encouraging news to the most horrifying visions of what eternal damnation must surely look like. I suspect that no two of you will precisely agree where on that scale each of these items will fall.

• Well, okay, I suspect that everybody will place the already-fully-funded Kickstart for Lucy Bellwood’s nautical comics collection, Baggywrinkles, on the positive side of that scale. It’s part autobio, part educational, a downright bargain with physical copies of the book going for as little as US$16, and featuring an all-new story about scurvy! And a very modest US$20K stretch goal will take the collection from B&W to color!
• Sticking with Kickstarter for the moment, we’ll note that Matt Bors was lying to us when he said that the Eat More Comics Kickstarter campaign would not have stretch goals, on account of they just announced some stretch goals. Every coupla’ thousand bucks from the US$45K goal means exclusive comics from the likes of Zach Weinersmith, Rich Stevens, Gemma Correll, and Bors himself.

  Even better, hitting US$60K means that all the artists — who are getting paid for their comics to run in the collection, on top of the pay they received to run at The Nib, on top of whatever they made from drawing them in the first place — will get a page rate boost. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — the best part about Bors & Co is that they pay, and even if some of what The Nib ran made you grind your teeth and regret that money went/will go to cartoonists you despise, I can pretty much guarantee that even more money went/will go to cartoonists you love. Let’s help ’em make rent.

• Love ’em, hate ’em, wonder how they became so dominant in at least one field (webcomics) and superdominant in another (videogames), there’s no denying that the lads at Penny Arcade cast a long shadow and that they attract attention from outside both those areas of endeavour.

  This time it’s the advertising world, where Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik were named to a list of 10 visual artists who are remaking advertising, part of an overall list of the 100 most creative people in/adjacent to advertising. Also on that list with Krahulik & Holkins: Annie Leibovitz (the most important portrait photographer of the past four decades) and Brett Doar (who creates all those Rube Goldbergian installations for OK Go music videos).

  And as long as we’re on the topic, Randall Munroe was recognized not specifically for comics or art, but for his ability to create viral content that blows the hell up. Also on that list with Munroe: Serial’s Sarah Koenig. Looking at the other 80 names on the list, you’ll find the likes of John Carmack (for Oculus VR), Amy Schumer, Janelle Monáe, Mindy Kaling, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and a whole bunch of ad pros and commercial directors you’ll never have heard of. This time next year I’d expect to see Raina Telgemeier or somebody at Ad Week is missing the boat.

• Finally, I think that we all also will agree on which item definitely falls on the negative side of the scale: for all those who have ever seen Lar DeSouza’s Sailor Bacon cosplay has never been able to un-see that spectacle, that extravaganza, those bloomers. We can console ourselves that the display was always for a good cause (namely, the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada), even if there was no way to convey the full horror to those that weren’t there to share in the mental scarring.

  Until now:

  In a grand effort to support me and my wife in our annual fundraising efforts for Multiple Sclerosis research, [Ryan] Sohmer and Blind Ferret have made available these adorable and somewhat disturbing Sailor Bacon plushies!! Designed by me and manufactured by the fine folks at Soft Stuff (who also donated a portion of their manufacturing costs to the MS Society of Canada!), these tiny ambassadors of hugs are now shipping from the BFE headquarters.

  You can order up one of these abominations and send it to somebody that needs a good disturbing! Why should you be the only one unable to ever sleep again without seeing … that … lurking behind your eyeballs? Drop your twenty five bucks, spread the madness, take some minor solace that this great sin against Nature benefits a worthy cause, or maybe just buy them all up and see if you can destroy them before they worm their way into your brain.

  It’s too late. They’ve got you. Pray for the mercy that you’ll succumb to sweet, forgetful madness quickly and Glob have mercy on your soul.

Spam of the day:

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I’ll admit — this one almost got me. I’m a sucker for a good LED flashlight.

Namely, the return of Berke Breathed to strip cartooning, with the now ubiquitously shared Bloom County 2015.

I’m not concerned that Breathed has returned to stripping and quit multiple times before, or that he’s apparently going to be releasing his comics online rather than to papers (online, after all, means no deadlines other than those he imposes on himself … although the constant deadline battles of Bloom County in its heyday were probably as responsible for its manic energy as anything). I stand by my comments t’other day that I don’t know that Breathed can recapture the feel of a strip that was of its time, of his time, and of its audience’s time.

While Bloom County doesn’t age well — and I say that as a man who still owns a Flexi-disk of Deathtögue backed with Billy and the Boingers¹ — the influence of Breathed on the first two or so generations of webcomickers cannot be overstated. Bloom County spanned the high school and/or college years of a lot of people that made the first webcomics, and the lessons they learned are legion and obvious. The anarchic humor, the willingness to dedicate everything to a stupid joke and then just ride it to see how far it would go, the increasingly deranged cast surrounding one semi-sane audience-identification character, and the semi-serialized tendency of the stories are foundational to webcomics, to a degree that we’re only now getting away from those habits.

Does there have to be a creator of such outsized (if distanced in time) influence? Bloom County wrapped up more than 25 years ago, call it 8 – 10 years before the creators that loved it so began their own works. Will they (and their progeny) recognize the figure of legend as he returns, or has the world changed so much that he can’t make sense of it? This is becoming needlessly Campbellian, isn’t it?

Related: regardless of Breathed coming back, has webcomics synthetically evolved his Mexican non-union equivalent already? Will the future generations of cartoonists look to Achewood or Homestuck as their foundational myth the way that early webcomics looked to Bloom County? Or has the explosion of new voices, built from a broader base of divergent influences and experiences, mean that he was the last one to cast such a shadow?²

So I’ll guess we’ll find out together if Berke Breathed returns as an imitation of his past self, as a 25 years improved secret and ascended master, or as a dilettante. I hope he finds the joy in creation sufficient to propel him to tell the stories he wants to tell; I hope that those stories still compel me to seek them out (but I’m still not getting a Facebook account). But honestly, I’m more interested in seeing what the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Bloom County are up to — the Reagan era is long past, but there’s an awful lot of future yet to be seen through a lot of different eyes.

Spam of the day:

I always spent my half an hour to read this website’s articles daily aloong with a mug of coffee.

Please don’t blame me for your caffeine habit, or the slowness of your reading.

_______________
¹ There is also still a stuffed Opus somewhere in my house, but I’m not sure I could tell you exactly where.

² Probably, yeah — but if the future generations of cartoonists do look to anybody to such a dominant degree, it’s likely going to be Raina Telgemeier (but you can take that as a given in almost any discussion on this site).