We’ll do good news first, okay?

• It’s been a while since the last update to the TopatoCon exhibitor list, but what with applications being closed, we can add a series of new creators to the expected roster. You may recall that five weeks back the list sat at:

  KC Green
  Jeph Jacques
  Jess Fink
  Tom Siddell
  Rosemary Mosco
  Kate Leth
  Anthony Clark
  Christopher Hastings
  Danielle Corsetto
  David Malki !
  Dante Shepherd

  Judging from the various tweets that went out yesterday (predominantly from the creators themselves; TopatoCon has retweeted them, but hasn’t provided a definitive list so far — probably because communications are still ongoing, and this is only for tabling creators, not presenters or podcasters or gamerunners), we may confidently add (in no particular order):

  Becky Dreistadt & Frank Gibson
  Michael Rapa
  Mildred Louis
  Sara Goetter
  Jon Rosenberg
  Karla Pacheco¹
  RJ Lake
  Spike
  Allison Shabet
  Lauren Jordan
  Joshua AC Newman
  Magnolia Porter
  Alison Wilgus
  Shoona Browning
  Randy Millholland
  Brian Lee
  Skullmandible
  David Willis
  Kori Michele
  Hannah McGill
  Blue Delliquanti
  Evan Dahm
  Molly Ostertag

  Thirty-four tables, thirty-five people if I’ve counted correctly. That’s a bit more than half of the 70 exhibitor limit that Holly Rowland told us about two months back, and I’ve seen indications of four creators on the waitlist, with others undoubtedly out there. How many more webcomic-type creators we get, how many podcasters, game builders, and other creative types is presently unknown, but will hopefully be revealed in the near future. For now, it looks like the last weekend in September is gonna rule.

• In other news, the first indication I had that things might be awry was a fairly direct tweet from the very sexy R Stevens:
  

  Today only! My last regular comic on @medium : BATTLE OF THE OLDEST https://thenib.com/battle-of-the-oldest-21843559d267 …

  I’d seen chatter in the infosphere about a change of focus at Medium, without specific indications how it would affect The Nib, and it appears that the effects are going to be significant:

  Assistant editor Eleri Mai Harris was let go a few weeks ago, the first warning sign, and now the cartoonists who were syndicated on the site, such as Tom Tomorrow and Ruben Bolling, as indicating they they will not appear there any more.

  It’s been only three months since Nib editor Matt Bors was ramping up the talent pool, and honestly not that long since the whole thing started. Everybody that wondered how long the money would keep going out when Medium didn’t seem to be making any, we may have our answer. We’ll have to see what the next week or so brings, but it won’t be the same excellent resource is was, dammit.

Spam of the day:

If you are to lazy to write unique articles everyday you should search in google for:

Yes, that’s it — tell the guy that’s written maybe 2500 articles over nine and a half years that’s he’s lazy. I’m sure to buy your product and/or service!

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¹ And may Glob have mercy on that place where a soul would be in a regular person.

This is something that I’ve resisted writing for a while; I wanted to hold off and look at the work in question as a whole, but it’s become increasingly difficult as the story progresses and gets stronger and more revealing as it does. I’m probably jumping the gun a little, but today is when I decided that I couldn’t wait any longer. And with that out of the way, I suppose I should tell you what the heck I’m on about.

I’ve written several times before that Meredith Gran was doing the best work of her career on Octopus Pie, and I meant it every time; I’ll go so far as to say that she’s the one of the few creators with a long-running comic that hasn’t hit a rut or plateau — she’s been on a long, improving arc, punctuated by bursts where she ups her game to an astonishing degree. Remarkably, each of those bursts takes a different approach.

She’s previously dropped in story arcs that played with the overall plot and progression of Octopie; she’s done arcs that played with the form of the comic. What she’s doing in the latest storyline (which starts here and which rewards a familiarity with the characters but which will still entice the first-time reader) trumps everything she’s done before.

Without ever once tipping her hand, she’s showing us how breakups work from multiple perspectives; she’s letting us hear the words (and not many of them, more on that in a bit) that come out of their mouths, but their body language¹ tells us when those words are false. We see the lies that these characters tell themselves and each other, we see them stripped down to their innermost cores, and there’s not a wrong beat or misstep along the way as the focus of the story shifts from Eve to Hanna to Will to Aimee. Everything that happens is smooth and organic and (in retrospect) inevitable.

And quiet. The words are perfect, the words are true, but the real revelations come in the silent panels, or the ones where the words are tiny and unimportant. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that partway through this storyline Gran made the decision to use social media in a different way — her day is quieter, and her comic is quieter, and every word has weight. I can’t find a single one that isn’t entirely necessary.

As Eve and Hanna and the presently absent (maybe permanently) Marek and Will and Marigold and all the other characters age out of their twenties, the exaggerated nature of their reality (overturned cars and evil skaters and escapes out windows and exploding lairs of evil geniuses and rock lobsters and renfaire misadventures and, and, and) is getting sanded down in the face of … reality? adulthood? There’s a palpable sense of change and maturation, that things can’t stay the way they have been. There’s a feeling that you can’t stay the way you were in your twenties, not unless you want to wake up one day and suddenly you’re fifty and have turned into Olly.

There’s a feeling of a stage of life — the one that comic keys on — coming to an end, and with it our time with the characters. I’ll miss them terribly, but in a period of time where Gran said she’s been working on layout and drawing, and when her writing has broken through to the next level, I can only imagine what her next project will look like when she can unleash those skills on something open and new and unrestrained. It’s a sad time in the Brooklyn of Octopus Pie, but it’s a great time to be reading Meredith Gran.

And tomorrow? Next month? Next year, and the years after that? They’re going to be even greater.

By happy coincidence, somebody else was in a pensive mood today; if you haven’t read Ryan North’s incredibly moving essay on A Softer World and his friendship with Emily Horne & Joey Comeau, now would be the time to do that.

Spam of the day:

Don’t continue putting off your lifestyle change.

Unlike Dentarthurdent, I am not having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle. It’s pretty good in fact, but thanks I guess?

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¹ Weirdly, it reminds me of Fury Road; I read a description online (and I’m sorry, I neglected to note who said it; if you know, please share!) that given the dearth of dialogue, Fury Road amounted to the loudest silent movie ever made. The emphasis on showing, the use of language to the degree required and not one syllable more, resulting in clarity of motivation … that’s what I’m getting at.

• Every year, I resolve to remember the cluster of webcomicker birthdays that occurs at the end of May; since I’m already well into the missed the start and try to remember next year, bozo phase, I’ll point out that today is the co-birthday of Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman, as if they could be any more adorable together. Additionally, it is Becky Dreistadt’s birthday, yesterday was Holly Rowland’s, and about three-four days back was Jeffrey Rowland’s¹.

  So happy [recent, in some cases] births-day, Jeffrey, Holly, Raina, Dave, and Becky! You are all awesome people.

• Speaking of birthdays, I think I’ve got the upcoming birthdays of my youngest niece and nephew covered; I received over the weekend my copies (one to keep, one to give away) of Evan Dahm’s² Wonderful Wizard of Oz adaptation, and with any luck the next couple of weeks will bring my copies (one to keep, one to give away) of Zach Weinersmith and Boulet’s³ Augie and the Green Knight.

  Here is my question: given those two books, which would you give to the younger sister, and which to the older brother? I’m leaning towards Oz for the older brother (as he’s just about old enough to read it for himself) and Augie for the younger sister (as she’d need either one read to her, and Augie’s such a kick-ass hero and it’s never too early to start that habit in nieces).

  I imagine that they’ll both end up reading (or having read to them) both books, I’m just wondering if anybody out there who’s maybe read the PDF backer copy of Augie or Oz has a definite idea of age ranges. Help me out, peoples, and make a couple of little kid birthdays happier.

Spam of the day:

Shed 25lbs of bellyfat for bikini season,

You really sent this to the wrong person; to get rid of 25 pounds from my abdomen, you’d have to remove at least four major organs.

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¹ Not so weird that such a cluster occurred; at one point in the past, there were three separate people (me being one of them) on my EMS agency with the same birthday; it’s just a matter of time until you get these coincidences and duplications.

Heck, some day I’m going to start a business with another Gary Tyrrell just so we can confuse people that call up the main phone line. Can I speak to Gary Tyrrell? Which one? The one that went to nerd school. Which one? The one that likes beer. Which one? The one that pronounces his last name like “Ferrell”. Which one? The trombone guy? Please hold for Mr Tyrrell.

² Who, by the by, yesterday started rerunning his seminal series Rice Boy with commentary over at Tumblr. Read it again for the first time!

³ Who, by the by, will be having his French-language books released in English, starting next April and continuing for the next half-dozen years or so. Goo news for those of us who can’t get enough Boulet.

Since we spoke last, good news has come in from opposite sides of the country, and on this holiday (for those of you in the US, at least), I figured some good news would be just the thing.

• Firstly, late Friday afternoon brought word that the Cartoon Art Museum has received a reprieve on their loss of location due to the kindness of their landlord (who have been working with CAM to resolve their rent issues longer than was generally known):
  

  The Cartoon Art Museum is delighted to announce that their month-to-month tenancy at 655 Mission Street has been extended through September 2015. Their current landlord, Brad Bernheim of Coast Counties Property Management, and Matthew Cuevas of Cappa & Graham, Inc., a San Francisco event management company, made this extension possible.

  … CAM’s lease was up a few years ago, and it has been functioning on a month-to-month since then. “We knew that we could not sustain our location as the economy skyrocketed and have been looking for a more long term space for a while,” says Executive Director, Summerlea Kashar.

  “I was really touched when Cappa and Graham came to me with the offer to help extend our current term in our location, even just for a few months. For all of the businesses that feel like the economy and the landlords have been pricing us out, it was heartwarming to hear that Matt and Brad were willing to support us,” remarked Kashar.

  Good news indeed, and from the sounds of it the landlords have gone out of their way to support CAM; the press release noted that their lease actually elapsed several years ago, and they had been accommodated¹ on month-to-month basis since. Congratulations to CAM for getting three months more for keep their collections and programs in the public eye before being forced into what will hopefully be a brief hiatus.

• Meanwhile, on Saturday night in Washington, DC, the National Cartoonists Society’s 69th Annual Reuben Awards were given out, and while I wasn’t able to be there, Brigid Alverson was on hand to let us know about the awards as they were given out. Most relevant to this page, I for once saw the two nominees I was rooting for take the division awards for Online Comics — Short Form and Online Comics — Long Form.

  In the Short Form category, Danielle Corsetto won for Girls With Slingshots, and was on hand to receive the plaque. In the Long Form category, Minna Sundberg won for Stand Still, Stay Silent, and was in Finland instead of DC but that’s okay.

  I’ve mentioned my involvement in the NCS online comics division awards in the past; I’m not going to go into either the comics that were presented by the advisory committee to the jury for selection of the final three nominees, or which comics I specifically nominated, but I will say this: Sundberg and Corsetto didn’t just win, they were selected to move onto the voting round against the best webcomics we could find, and then they captivated the electorate².

  To put it another way: an organization with a significant percentage of its membership in the 80+ age range chose the short form webcomic based on a lesbian wedding storyline and a long form webcomic where a major plot point is the divergence of Scandinavian languages. I don’t know about you, but to me that says that generational distance aside, cartoonists recognize great cartoonists.

  Congratulations, Danielle Corsetto and Minna Sundberg — I can’t wait to see what you each come up with tomorrow.

hi!,I love your writing so a lot! proportion we keep up a correspondence more about ykur post on AOL? I

This is probably going to sound terribly elitist of me, but I try not to have any correspondence on AOL.

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¹ So to speak.

² Each nominee’s work was represented by a selection of twelve strips — either sent along with their nomination paperwork, or compiled by a committee member that nominated them. I’ll share that of the comics I placed in nomination, I did my best to end on a cliffhanger, and I’m confident that I caused some archive binges.

I’ve been waiting for my copy of Skin Horse volume 5 for ages now¹, which I should note is not the same thing as being late. Ms Garrity and Mr Wells wisely put plenty of time for fulfillment into their crowdfunding plan, and the book which was due in May 2015² arrived yesterday, on time and as promised. I love that phrase, about as much as I love checking the box on my Kickstarter Backed Projects page that says Got it! By the way, of the 40 projects I’ve backed with delivery dates not in the future, this makes six that are late³, which is a pretty damn good record as far as Kickstarts go.

I’m particularly happy to receive this book because while Skin Horse is one of those comics that I read daily (indeed, I’m grumpy if I don’t get to read it daily for some reason), I get much more out of it in big chunks; receiving the new book means I get to read two full story arcs in one sitting, and given the way the story is resolving at present, volume 5 ends on the record scratch that marks the big reveal at the end of the second act of the overall story. That means that I probably won’t get more than seven or eight books in the full story and that makes me sad — but then again, I was sad when Narbonic ended and now I have faith that whatever Garrity and/or Wells do next (jointly and severally, as the lawyers say), it’ll be well worth my time.

Okay, Monday’s a holiday in the States; I expect I’ll have something to say about the NCS division awards (I don’t get a vote, but I’m very happy to see Danielle Corsetto and Minna Sundberg in their respective categories and am rooting for them), but otherwise you likely won’t miss much if you don’t come back until Tuesday. Have a good weekend, everybody!

Spam of the day:

Hi my name is Olivie and I just wanted to drop you a quick note here instead of calling you.

Feel free to try to call me, but understand two things:

1. I answer the house phone, which lacks caller ID, with a cheery Ahoy-hoy! which weirds most people out.
2. I will string out cold-calling telemarketers like yourself as long as possible, figuring that while none of you scamming bastards will ever stop calling (given that you’re already ignoring the Do Not Call list), I can at least cost you money by wasting your time at least as much as you’re wasting mine.

________________
¹ The first rule of Webcomickers Having Kids is it puts a crimp the schedules of my entertainment (both free and paid), and thus is to be discouraged. The world, alas, must be peopled, so they get a pass for now.

² Also due this month: Evan Dahm’s Wonderful Wizard of Oz adaptation, for which I have tracking info that indicates it is presently on a truck in my geographical vicinity. I’ma call that one fulfilled on time as well.

³ One of which is moderately late, and I believe affected by West Coast dockworkers strikes; three are about a year overdue, two for reasons out of control of the creators; the last two are more than two years late, one of which I expect to see in the next couple of months and one of which I’ve mentally written off. Oh, and there were some on other platforms, but mostly it’s Kickstarter for me.

If you’ll indulge me, today isn’t going to be about webcomics, per se. It’s going to be about David Letterman, who retired from broadcasting last night (or early this morning, if you prefer), and who is a seminal influence for so many people — in the world of late night shows and comedy, obviously, but for so many of us that hit the teens-to-twenties phase at some point in the past 35 years (including pretty much all of the first couple of generations of webcomics creators). Everybody that has an appreciation for absurdist humor, for knowing irony in the face (and service) of stupidity owes Letterman a debt. And so, on this day after I watched Letterman wrap up his career, I am full of memories.

I remember watching his daytime show, ahead of its time, weirding out the typical early-80s daytime audience. The least weird thing he did in that period was abandon the studio with ten minutes to go in the last show before the long Labor Day weekend, leaving a somewhat confused woman from Iowa he plucked out of the audience in his place. He pointed her at the cue cards, showed her which camera to look at, and left. It was the most audacious thing I’d seen in my life and I loved it.

I have a fondness for Larry “Bud” Melman (portrayed by the peerless Calvert DeForest, who never entirely let on as to the degree that he was in on joke with us), particularly considering that in the first six months of Late Night, he did a remote from my town. As the proprietor of Melman Bus Lines, he toured my small suburban New Jersey borough, making an inspection of our bus stops and shelters, deciding if we were worthy of addition to his network of day tours. A year or so later he nearly caused Dave to choke during his infamous remote segment, greeting arrivals at the Port Authority bus terminal. I remember the last night we saw Larry “Bud” Melman’s son, Troy “Skipper” Melman.

I remember being lucky enough to get bonus Dave, as Late Night taped down the hall from, and at the same time as, NBC’s local late-afternoon new magazine show, Live At Five. Any time they got a good guest he couldn’t book (Wayne Gretzky, former president Jimmy Carter), he’d take a camera crew down and bust into their set and interject himself, amusing Sue Simmons and pissing off Jack Cafferty mightily

I treasured the guerrilla comedy of those early years: throwin’ stuff off a five-story tower, crushing stuff in a 80,000 lb drop press, or drivin’ around LA in a convertible gettin’ drive-through fast food with Zsa Zsa. Dave never left the studio enough, preferring in later years to hide behind a Taco Bell mic or a walkie-talkie connected to Rupert Jee to mess with people.

Those were the days of rampant anarchy on Late Night, as we got to know stage manager Biff Henderson, director Hal Gertner¹, Chris Elliot as Marlon Brando, the Stupidest of Pet and Human Tricks, Bob the dog, and the sky-, monkey-, thrill-, Anton-, and tiger- cams.

Maybe it’s because there is no better time to watch Dave than in college, but this period stands out as his creative peak for me — when there was no better block of TV than The Tonight Show-Dave-Later, when Dave took the opportunity to mess with his audience during Monday reruns (dubbing an entire episode into Spanish; rotating the camera continuously over the course of the hour), or his colleagues any old time (I remember him taking the last two minutes of his show to play the Star Spangled Banner and run a we now conclude our broadcast day announcement before walking into frame and admitting it was just a prank on Bob Costas).

It was the era of why the hell not?, when Jack Hanna² got his start as a recurring guest, when Marv Albert or Tony Randall would appear in the most random of cameos and Connie Chung would crush walnuts in her bare hands because why the hell not? Harvey Pekar, the person least likely to ever appear on TV, guested multiple times because why the hell not? More seriously, it was also a time of glasnost and perestroika and it made perfect sense for 22 members of the Red Army Chorus — on a goodwill tour of the US to promote friendship with the Soviet Union — to drop by repeatedly to sing the Henry Mancini-penned Viewer Mail theme song because why the hell not?

I remember watching Crispin Glover freak Dave out and the next night when he was reported that Glover had been murdered by Paul and Biff; I remember watching Madonna derail the show and Dave’s reaction the next night. I remember the great Top Ten lists — Amish pickup lines, Effects of Y2K with James Earl Jones, one where Isabella Rossellini was played by Dave Foley³. And always, always, always: Dave’s mom.

We all remember the night he returned from his bypass surgery and his medical team welcomed him back to the world of the living; the night in September 2001 when he welcomed us all back from despair and to the start of finding our way back to normal following a goddamn disgrace; the nights he said goodbye to Johnny and to Warren.

People with more cause than me to have been inspired by Dave have already paid tribute to him, including Conan’s incredibly gracious insistence people should watch Dave instead of him, and James Corden entrance to Letterman’s theme music before offering up his own thanks to Dave. It’s been a long, weird, funny journey, and we’ll never be the same as we were before we started.

Thanks, Dave.

_______________
¹ Uh, that’s Gurnee, with two Es.

² The only person who could reliably mess with Dave, apart from Penn & Teller what with the rat traps and cockroaches, and the Tokyo Shock Boys.

³ I can’t find this anywhere and am toying with the idea that I invented it in my head, but it sure sounds like something Dave (and Dave) would do.

Briefly, as I promised: the original art from Planet of Hats episode #51, Patterns of Force, by David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc), shared with you now that the colo[u]red strip is up. Click to embiggen.

If my memory serves me right¹, this will be the fourth time that the Vancouver Comic Arts Festival has graced the jewel of the Pacific Northwest, and by all accounts it’s getting better with each year that goes by.

The venue in Yaletown is open and inviting (and this year, VanCAF expands into two of the spaces, up from prior years), the guest and exhibitor lists are deep and varied, and attendance is free. We may have TCAF to thank for pioneering this kind of comics show, but VanCAF has quickly grown into its own unique thing. Congrats to the showrunners, the exhibitors, and the attendees, all of whom have collaborated to build the show up.

Speaking of guests, those of webcomicky nature that you’ll find in Vancouver this weekend will include Matt Bors, Ed Brisson, Zac Gorman, Jeph Jacques, and David Malki !.

They’ll be joined by exhibitors including Lucy Bellwood, Kory Bing, Boum, Jennie Breeden, Tony Cliff, Joey Comeau & Emily Horne², Blue Delliquanti, Jeff Ellis, Cat Farris, Christianne Goudreau, Hazel & Bell, Abby Howard, Amanda Lafrenais, Steve LeCouilliard, Sam Logan, Kel McDonald, Dylan Meconis, Angela Melick, and Erika Moen, Sfé Monster.

That’s right, every exhibitor has a name that falls in the first half of that alphabet, nobody at all from the N-Z range.

Okay, fine — but if my fingers fall off after adding Maki Naro³, Gabrielle Ng, Karla Pacheco, Alina Pete, Doug Savage, Mackenzie Schubert, Katie & Steve Shanahan, Anise Shaw, Spencer Soares, Kat Verhoeven, and Alison Wilgus to the list, it’s on your head.

Also please note some twenty hours of programming and , starting with a book launch on Friday night, and including discussions on the art of editing comics, the realm of all-ages comics, the realm of some-ages comics (the ones with butts and boobs and weiners), the art of self-promotion, and the sheer laugh-chuckles of competitive quick-draw improvisation. Also, for some reason, this atrocity, filled with the work of multiple terrible people; this one should be a hoot.

Spam of the day:

The company main business is further process the petrochemical production, with 8 production lines of ten-thousand-ton capacity for C9 and C10 separators, thermal & cold polymerization petroleum resin, petroleum naphthalene, tar and thousand-ton capacit

True story: my credit card company once called me up to ask if I’d placed an order for US$7000 of industrial solvents, to be delivered to somewhere in the middle of nowhere, Kansas. No, I replied, on account of I’m not a meth cook. That was what they figured, and I had a new credit card three days later. Presumably, that chemical supplier is the one that passed my contact info onto this one; at least the petrochemical industry is marginally less sleazy than the meth trade, so I’m attracting a somewhat better class of environmentally-destructive supplier these days.

______________
¹ Now I have the urge to bite into a pepper. Thanks for that, Chairman Kaga.

² Whose Kickstarter for the definitive collection of A Softer World is kicking loads of ass: nearly 500% of goal and twelve days yet to go.

³ Speaking of whom, Naro was one of two creators whose traffic growth data was shared by Hiveworks CEO Joseph Stillwell last night/today. I’m a sucker for this sort of information, and Stillwell is one of those people whose analysis you ignore at your peril.

The other creator, by the way, is Minna Sundberg, whose growth is hell of impressive. Sundberg, as a reminder, will be paying attention to the NCS Reubens gala in Washington DC this weekend, where she’s up for the NCS Division Award for Online — Long Form.

One may recall from a bit more than two months back that Jeph Jacques — in what amounted to a private joke that twelve people would have ever noticed — registered the domain name walmart.horse¹, slapped a stupid picture² on the index page, and called it a day.

The Walmart corporation did not call it a day. As noted at the time, they sent Jacques a C&D and threatened him with dire consequences if he didn’t acquiesce to their demands to surrender ownership of walmart.horse within two weeks.

We learn today that they actually were preparing to take their claims of rightful ownership over walmart.horseto the World Internet Property Organization when Jacques decided he had more productive uses for his time than continuing to cause the Walmart corporation to continue to expend lawyerly time and effort over the fight for walmart.horse. It apparently never escalated to a hearing and today walmart.horse no longer displays the image of a horse in front of a Walmart. In fact, walmart.horse leads to an error page.

So well done, Walmart corporation — you absolutely didn’t spend dozens of hours by multiple lawyers on a trivial non-issue. And certainly anybody that searches for walmart.horse will never see the image of the horse in front of a Walmart anywhere except for here at Fleen, or at Ars Technica, Consumerist, The Guardian, Vice, Business Insider, The Daily News, or approximately (as of this writing) 11.9 million other places on the web.

As for Jacques? He doesn’t seem to be horribly broken up about the whole thing, possibly because he’s got Ryan North to commiserate with³, more likely because he’s getting ready to head to the Pacific Northwest for his special guest gig at VanCAF this weekend. We’ll talk about his fellow guests and exhibitors tomorrow. In the meantime, please enjoy this link to TaylorSwift.horse, and props to her for having a sense of humor about these things.

PS: walmart.horse

Spam of the day:

{ {I have|I’ve} been {surfing|browsing} online more than {three|3|2|4} hours today, yet I never founhd any interesting article like yours. {It’s|It is} pretty worth enough ffor me.
{In my opinion|Personally|In my view}, if all {webmasters|site owners|website owners|web owners} and bloggers made good content aas you did, the {internet|net|web} wikl be {much more|a lot more} usefyl than ever before.|

text omitted

{I am|I’m} {trying to|attempting to} find things to {improve|enhance} myy {website|site|web site}!I suppose its
ok to use {some of|a few of} your ideas!!\

I’m pretty sure that somewhere in the 2745 words/358 lines/8 pages that I cut out is a lengthy discourse on walmart.horse, but I’m not going to look for it.

_______________
¹ Which phrase is going to be repeated here a number of times, which may have the unfortunate effect of forever linking the phrase walmart.horse with the story of the walmart.horse domain name fight in Google aka the first draft of history.

² Of a horse in front of what appears to be a Walmart in Nova Scotia, judging from the flag.

³ As of this writing, walmart.horse.rip leads to a blank page but who knows how long before Walmart seeks to stamp it out as well.

Hey, everybody! ‘Dja miss me? It’s going to take a day or two to get fully back into the swing of things, so today is mostly about me getting caught up on things that happened while I was gone.

• Going furthest back you may or may not have noticed that Jillian Tamaki did an interview with The AV Club about SuperMutant Magic Academy, This One Summer¹, her episodes of Adventure Time, and more. It’s a great conversation and I recommend it to you if you hadn’t seen it before.
• Howard Tayler² has been running a fairly massive Kickstart for an RPG to be set in his Schlockiverse for the past month or so; the management of expectations and stretch goal announcements have done well to make the traditional last-week bump in backers and pledges into more of a last fortnight, as well as causing that rarest of things on the Long Tail: an uptick in funding predictions.

  As I write this line, the Planet Mercenary campaign will be wrapping up in about five minutes, somewhere in the vicinity of US$350,000 (or 777% of goal)³. For reference, the Fleen Funding Formula Mark 2 would have predicted a whopping US$206K — US$309K which he’s handily exceeded. Well done, Tayler and partners, and enjoy the massive pile of creative output that you’ll be engaging in for the next year or so.

• Speaking of Kickstarts, Spike Trotman launched her latest on Friday; as mentioned in the before times, she continues to alternate anthology topics, with a Smut Peddler followed by a specific genre, followed by more porn, and then another genre. It’s Sci Fi’s turn, and New World (specifically dealing with the topic of cultures coming into contact/conflict) is off to a rousing start.

  From launch on Friday to nowish, it’s reached 102% of the US$20,000 goal, meaning we’re now into the Iron Circus Comics Overfunding Bonus Plan: every contributor (or contributor team) just earned a US$50 bonus on top of the page rate they’re already been paid with another US$50 for each additional US$5000 on the campaign. For references, the bonuses paid for Smut Peddler 2012, The Sleep of Reason, and Smut Peddler 2014 were US$650, US$300, and US$1700 (!), respectively.

  In any event, four weeks left to make Spike write as large a check as possible to her incredibly skilled list of contributors; given the FFFmk2 prediction of somewhere between US$55K and US$83K, would be on the order of US$400 to US$650 a pop (which would be in line with the bonuses pad for TSOR and further proving the point that porn is innately more popular than anything else). This is why people want to work on Spike’s books — she pays, then she pays more.

• Finally, Zubday — that regularly-occurring holiday that happens every Wednesday when there’s a new Jim Zub comic (or two, or more) on the stands — comes early this week. That’s because today is Zubday Prime, aka Zub’s birthday. Early reports are that Zub is spending the day much like any other: planning to take over the world writing and editing and merchandising and designing and generally making comics. In other words, a good day. Happy Zubday, everybody.

Spam of the day:

send 10,000 blog comments Fee just $ 100
send 100,000 blog comments Fee just $ 800
send 200,000 blog comments Fee just $ 1200

Yes, please, let me give you money to make the percentage of my life spent on crap comment pruning even greater than it already is.

_______________
¹ Which — goodness! — is a year old now. Time sure does fly.

² My evil twin, etc.

³ Actual total: 5,312 backers for a total of US$348,641, or 775% of a US$45,000 goal.

I believe that I am well on record that Raina Telgemeier is the most important person working in comics today, and if the industry wants to really grow they should be watching everything she does and emulating it. I thought she’d reached a pinnacle when she had three books on the New York Times Bestseller List, then specifically the top three slots on the list¹.

Pfft, old news.

As her publisher, Scholastic, noted via tweet earlier today, Telgemeier has added the first of the reissued-in-color Baby-Sitters Club books to the list, meaning she now owns the top four positions all by her lonesome².

I am through being astonished, and will no longer be surprised at anything Telgemeier manages to pull off.

If I remember a-right, the BSC books are being re-released at six month intervals, which should mean that we’re never more than half a year from something new with Raina’s name on the cover between now and her next original graphic novel in 2017. Could the entire four-book BSC stay on the list along with the other three? To be (inevitably) joined by that next OGN? Could we actually see between five and eight Raina Telgemeier titles hogging the NYTBSL, to the point where — in order to maintain any relevance — it’s repurposed as a list of the best selling paperback graphic novels specifically not by Raina Telgemeier? No bets, my friends, no bets.

Fleen congratulates Telgemeier and reminds an industry that lurches spasmodically from line-wide-crossover-that-changes-everything to line-wide-crossover-that-re-changes-everything: this woman is single-handedly eating your lunch, half of your dinner, and is in the process of repossessing your coffee machine and all the good snacks. Adapt or die.

Reminder: Next week is my internet hiatus. I’ll be back online and posting again on the 18th.

Spam of the day:

Yes! Finally something about Michael Kors.

Weirdly, although I have mentioned His Orangeness several times over Fleen’s history, including once within the past two weeks, this particular spam was left on a post that didn’t mention Kors at all. Feel free to insert a paraphrase of Kirk telling Khan that he keeps … missing … the target.

¹ Since then, the order has been shifting back and forth, but Smile, Drama, and Sisters have been holding strong.

² Rest of the list? Cece Bell (El Deafo), Victoria Jamieson (Roller Girl), G Willow Wilson (the second Ms Marvel collection), and Jillian Tamaki (Supermutant Magic Academy), all aimed squarely at girls. Only two books could be said to be “traditional” comics — the fourth Saga collection and a resurgence of the nearly 30 year old Dark Knight Returns, probably because they just announced Miller would be doing a second sequel. Figure it won’t be off the list in a week.