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.

The layer of crud on my car and all outside surfaces is matched only by the layer of crud built up in my sinuses and upper lungs, thanks to every tree in the tristate area decided to have sex in public. I yearn for a half hour of gentle rain to wash the air, or at least a maelstrom of cleansing fire. Should I succumb to this sea of snot, avenge me.

• I mentioned earlier in the week how much I love when creators share data, but that extends to more than numbers and business decisions; I’m a sucker for workplace tours, process videos, all the details of how the creative impulse gets channeled into making the abstract concrete.

  But something I don’t see as much is how general life habits can support (or undermine) creative careers; I recall the episode of Webcomics Weekly from last year wherein Brad Guigar¹ and Dave Kellett shared the secrets of cartooning with new babies in attendance to imminent first-time father Kris Straub.

  And earlier this week, Meredith Gran did the same thing in written form, laying out how she approaches time and career management in general. I particularly liked a couple of her tips:

  • When it gets busy, lose everything you can before diet, exercise, and housekeeping. If you feel bad and your work/life space is dirty, you won’t work well.
  • When your day seems impossible, it probably is. Lose one obligation and feel the cool wave of relief wash over you … ~*AHHHH*~
  • On exhausting days, make no promises. I never commit to intense work on a Thursday after class. I know I’ll be cooked when I get home — why commit to a weekly sesh of disappointing myself?
  • Make time for breaks. Schedule them in and earn them. Maintain your friendships and leave the house. There is nothing cool and romantic about being “the busy guy”.

  Read the whole thing — whether you work for yourself or for others, make your own schedule or have to punch a clock, there’s good advice here.

• Speaking of working for somebody else, there’s a job opening at Blind Ferret Enterprises for a Junior Affiliate Manager; some things that are not explicitly mentioned in the ad but probably should be:
  • BFE Supremo Ryan Sohmer harbo[u]rs delusions of Bond-level supervillainy; do not under any circumstances accept any work uniforms that consist of colo[u]r-coded jumpsuits with a “henchman ID number” embroidered on the chest, and if you hear him muttering The fools! They’ll all see! for more than ten minutes a day, tender your resignation and seek a minimum safe distance¹.
  • Sohmer looks forward to weekly paintball matches with a ferocity that can be slightly intimidating, but don’t be scared! He just wants you to enjoy a healthy, social time with others while building intra-company camaraderie. Rumo[u]rs that he is a lethal shot that scored five yellow capsules directly on the crotch of an intern who can now only walk with a 15° tilt to the left are probably unfounded, so join in the fun and don’t forget your cup.
  • You may be required to help “Unca” Lar DeSouza into his Sailor Bacon outfit; if he offers to demonstrate his “moon magic”, politely decline.
  • Do not touch the LEGO models if you value your life. Just … don’t.

  All kidding aside, the one thing that’s not in the job listing that should be is that Ryan Sohmer has committed to paying decent wages to his employees and that’s a sad exception to the comics and internet sectors of the economy. It may be hard work, but working for BFE will be a fun, weird, well-compensated kind of hard work, so check it out if you’re near Montreal.

Spam of the day:

My spouse and I absolutely love your blog and fijd a lot of your post’s to be just what I’m looking for.

Hey man, hey, keep me out of your sex games. That’s between you and your spouse.

_______________
¹ Recommended: Saskatchewan.

I believe that I mentioned recently that David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc and semi-pro Mr Bean impersonator) very kindly offered me my choice of original strips from Planet of Hats and how I chose the ur-“Planet Of” episode of old-school Trek: Patterns Of Force, aka Planet Of The Nazis. Well, my friends, that strip successfully wended its way from distant ‘Straya to deepest New Jersey, and I have learned a few things:

• Morgan-Mar works at a fairly standard size — the four-row, twelve-panel strip took up two sheets of drawing paper, approximately letter/A4 size.
• Morgan-Mar does not screw around when it comes to protecting art — the two sheets of art paper were sandwiched in two sheets of plain paper, which in turn were sandwiched in what appears to be the carefully-excised cardstock-and-vinyl covers of a three-ring binder, which package was bound up by five strips of duct tape. The end times could come and that artwork would have survived all the vagaries of Armageddon.
• I’ll share a visual once the original strip runs so as not to steal Morgan-Mar’s thunder; today’s update at Planet of Hats is Return to Tomorrow, which means Patterns of Force is next. However, Morgan-Mar also announced today that he’s skipping next week as he’ll be on vacation, so it’ll be another week.

All of which leads to one inevitable conclusion: Morgan-Mar will be away next week and I now know his home address. The opportunities for mischief boggle the mind!

I think the best would be if I broke into his house and photographed myself covered in all his LEGO bricks, American Beauty style. The fact that he also knows my home address doesn’t really bother me since the only thing here to photograph himself covered with is one very lazy greyhound.

While I’m making my way Down Under on my errand of chaos, here’s what everybody else in webcomics will be doing:

• Approximately half of them will be going to TCAF, where the fun at the Toronto Reference Library starts on Saturday, but where comic-related events are already happening around town. The other half of webcomics will be there next year; they have to alternate because the TRL can only contain so many awesome folks at once.
• Brad Guigar¹, it’s been previously established, will be spending the weekend at his home-town Megan Fox Tits Wolverine show, where he hope that people will not be confused by the proximity of his booth and that of Mr Burt Reynolds. Brad’s prepared a little guide to help you keep them straight.
• Those few who won’t be at TCAF this year, planning on being at TCAF next year, or trying to tell the difference between one of the sexiest men in American history and Burt Reynolds will be checking out some numbers: there are Kickstarts for Oh Joy Sex Toy and A Softer World to consider², both of which are well on their way to meeting or exceeding the previous (successful) Kickstarts for each creator team, respectively.

  A final bit of math: what are the odds that Erika Moen & Matthew Nolan could get Emily Horne & Joey Comeau to do one last ASW next year as an OJST guest comic? That would be the very, very best, but I put it at maybe one in seven. Or, for the ultimate guest strip, make sure there’s some LEGO models in the photos, and whatever kind of sexy business is happening in the main field of vision? Over to the side is laughing Brad Guigar, approving of the hijinks all you wacky kids are getting up to. I’ll put that at one in several million, but I can dream, can’t I?

Spam of the day:

Personalised Hollywood Walk Of Fame Star comes already framed.

Unless it comes with an original horned Grinch on the back side, I ain’t interested.

_______________
¹ Rebel, loner, heartbreaker.

² They each funded out in less than a day and meet the criteria for Fleen Funding Formula predictions (>= 200 backers in that first 24 hours), so let’s call it US$84K to US$126K for OJST and US$136K to US$204K for ASW.

It’s a little somber up ahead; you might want to have a picture of adorable animal babies ready in case it gets too heavy.

• I had all sorts of stuff cued up to talk about today, but that’s before the news broke (scarcely fifteen minutes ago as I write this sentence) and all previous plans got scratched. A Softer World — bastion of weirdness and melancholy, in the best possible sense of all of those words — will be coming to an end:
  

  It’s the end of the world. A Softer World is ending, and we want to do something fun to celebrate! Are you with us?! tinyurl.com/RIP-ASW

  I feel like I just pushed a big red button.

  There have been other melancholy comics, other places where weirdness reigned supreme, but none so perfectly encapsulate the beautiful and banal horror of everyday life like the joint effort of Emily Horne and Joey Comeau; their comics pulled no punches and after more than 1200 they aren’t about to start now. This will not be an extended goodbye, old favorite characters trotted out to give their storylines a wrap-up¹; the trigger gets pulled today, the bullet lands in 27 days.

  Which date will coincide with the ending of the Kickstarter campaign to print a hardcover collection of the very best 200 strips from A Softer World’s dozen-year history. Emily Horne and Joey Comeau, claims in their Kickstarter video notwithstanding, are not going to fake their deaths and disappear in a month; they both will continue to share their creativity for as long as there are such things as photos and words.

  Well, Horne certainly will; Comeau’s always been the sort that you suspect will end up in circumstances that cause bystanders to be completely baffled until they’re running in terror. But until then, he’ll totally be sharing his words! Until then, you can ask them what their future plans (creative and/or destructive) this weekend at TCAF, where they’ll be exhibiting and delighting their fans.

• One other thing that was on my to discuss list for today fits the mood that’s come over Fleen Central today, so I think I’ll keep it. In my time writing this here page, I’ve been privileged to meet many, many creators; some were friends and acquaintances before I joined the ranks of pixel-stained wretches and have been kind enough to continue to be seen with me, others I have come to know specifically because I’ve pounded out maybe a million words on the topic of webcomics.

  It’s pretty unusual for well-known creator to be completely unknown to me, as I’ve been able to wrangle at least a passing Hey with so many. But for all that, I’ve never been lucky enough to meet the creators of the internet’s most sporadic piece of great art and know little about them. David Hellman has had acclaimed pursuits outside of ALILBTDII, but I knew nearly nothing about Dale Beran until this morning.

  Dale Beran, I learned, is a weekly contributor of comics to Baltimore’s City Paper, which has done so much valuable reporting of the terrible events of the past week, and which is not a newcomer to the story of inequality, economic challenge, and systematic oppression in the Charm City. I learned this because today The Nib ran a lengthy piece of cartoon reportage by Beran about navigating the recent events in Baltimore, where he is a public school teacher.

  It’s a powerful read — enlightening as to the sociopolitical state of Baltimore, depressing in the sense that everything we see happening now has happened in nearly identical form before² — and one that you should take ten minutes now to absorb. It’s not a new situation, but only first-hand accounts by observers that middle America will give credence to³ will get the rest of us to own up to the reality of what’s always been happening.

  I still don’t know who Dale Beran is from personal experience, but his words and pictures are doing a pretty damn good job of convincing me he’s somebody we should all know and listen to.

Spam of the day:

The many shades in brown, from dark to mild, will help you pick a unique one.

I don’t even want to know.

_______________
¹ It doesn’t hurt that they don’t have characters or storylines, apart from the ever-popular spot the Ryan North cameo.

² And unless we as a society are much smarter than we have been to date, will inevitably happen again.

³ That is to say, not the people who have to live on the receiving end of a system built on centuries of dehumanization and marginalization, who were not miraculously elevated to political and economic parity in 1965.

That is to say, a white guy.

Because it was more or less a year ago (okay, a year less about 17 days) that Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan launched the Kickstart for the first volume of Oh Joy, Sex Toy, which (above and beyond its financial success) was notable for a couple of reasons:

• Taking a page from Spike’s playbook, stretch goals directly benefited guest contributors by increasing payments to them — and that higher page rate is still in effect.
• Nolan and Moen shared a detailed breakdown on how all the financials for OJST vol 1 went, and followed up with more data on how their career making sex toy review comics actually works. I love it when successful creators provide details like this.

Which is to say The Hurricane and Matt¹ are good ‘uns, and their success well-earned.

And wouldn’t you know it, it’s time for a new, larger, second volume of OJST, with the campaign over here just past the one hour mark (and pushing 15% of goal) as I type this. From the project description, Moen & Nolan are plowing some of the money they made on the last book back into this book, so they’re in the slightly precarious position that if they just make goal, they’ll actually be out a chunk o’ change, so let’s not let that happen. They’re running simple on this campaign, with essentially no stretch goals — simple means you get your Big Book of Happy Educational Smut faster, and they’ve already locked in those higher page rates thanks to last year’s campaign. Plus you’ve got seventeen guest contributors, along with some brand new comics and essays.

Quick side note: Fleen will be going dark next week. There’s a family wedding coming up with lots of events planned and while that will only be a couple of days, it occurred to me that I haven’t been seriously offline in maybe 20 years (certainly not in the nearly 10 years I’ve been writing here) and I’m gonna do it. Oh, sure, I’ve taken time off before in exigent circumstances, but I was reachable; I intend to be as off-grid as I can manage this time around. Emails will pile up, comics will go unread, entire subcultures centered around Twitter shitfights will be born, rise to prominence, and fade away before I come back to you on the 18th. So if you’ve got something going on next week, now would be a good time to let me (that would be gary) know (at this website, known as fleen, which is a dot-com) ’cause come the weekend, I’m going cold turkey for a week.

Maybe. We’ll see how the withdrawal symptoms are.

Spam of the day:

Changing your Facebook status from “In a relationship” to “Single” is a childish involving “sending a message” in the partner since got angry at your sweetheart. Even though this immature act is a lot more often done by girls involving anger from the moment, in order to make a little impact on you, really are millions some men that I’ve noticed attempt that too.

I’m not on Facebook so I have no idea what you’re whining about, but I’m sure it’s super important.

_______________
¹ That sounds sorta like a Saturday morning cartoon, doesn’t it?

• So applications for TopatoCon have closed, but they just opened for MICE, which is a show I keep hearing more and more good about. If you think you could arrange to be in Cambridge, MA¹ — across the river from the somewhat better-known Boston² — in the middle of October, this may be something you want to look into.
• Yeah, I know — you’re waiting until the overeager crowds have quieted down before seeing the new Avengers³, you already binged on Daredevil, and have no idea what to watch that’s comics-themed this weekend. Might I recommend STRIPPED, which has joined Netflix and is now available for convenient in-home streaming?
• So I got my copy of Cuttings in the mail yesterday, and it is expectedly gorgeous inside, but in and among the anticipated delights are some things that surprised me. One thing, however, surprised me more than anything else — more than the variety of styles and genres that Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh can work in, more than the amount of money I want to give them to see some of their as-yet-unrealized stories, more than the fact that when a wrist injury sidelined Ota’s right hand, she started drawing her comics with her left and quickly achieved mastery with it.

  And that thing is that Ota can not only draw better with her non-dominant hand than most people will ever draw period, but that there is a page included where she does gesture drawing with her right and left hands simultaneously. What the hell. You should buy all their stuff because anybody that can do that deserves your money.

Spam of the day:

Have you ever thought about creating an ebook or guest authoring on other sites? I have a blog based upon on the same topics you discuss and would love to have you share some stories/information.

You’ve linked to eyelash enhancers, and as I am widely reputed to have the best eyelashes in all of webcomics pseudojournalism, I don’t see why I should lend you any of my hard-won credibility on the eyelash front.

_______________
¹ Our Fair City; requiscat in pace, Tommy.

² Don’t worry about the show not being in Boston — it’s not a big college town.

³ Alternately: you couldn’t get a sitter.

Might as well not fight it.

• The top thing in webcomics, naturally, would be the unexpected reappearance of A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible’s David Hellmand and Dale Beran, this time at The Nib. A Slime To Remember is the first that we’ve seen from Beran & Hellmann (working together, that is) in 18 months or so, their third comic this decade, and the 44th overall collaborative exploration of the odder corners of their respective imaginations. It’s a good ‘un, and according to The Nib editor Matt Bors, It’s probably safe to say we’ll work together again, which hopefully means a shorter wait for the next installment.
• How about a pair of reminders of looming deadlines? Today is the final day to apply to TopatoCon, so if you want to have the most fun it is mathematically possible to have¹ this September, now’s the time to get in while you can.

  In a similar vein (albeit on the far side of the North American continent), we’re also down to the last day for artists to apply to be part of the Alaska Robotics 2015-2016 gallery exhibition season in beautiful and scenic (I mean that sincerely, it’s breathtaking) Juneau, Alaska. Quit procrastinating and get your applications in!

• I just realized that both of those application deadlines have pretty much been open for a month. Know what else has been going on for a month that probably none of you noticed?
  

  And that marks one month of not having any men in my comics on my site. I guess one or two might come back. http://www.dieselsweeties.com/archive/3805

  The last time we saw an actual dude in Diesel Sweeties (not counting Roger and John Stamos, who are above petty concepts like human gender) was 27 March, with Indie Rock Pete being … well, being himself. And as we all know, one appearance by Peter Gaylord Weiner is enough to suck all respect and liking for dudes out of the room, even after two consecutive days of the best dude.

  Thanks to best dude R Stevens for showing us that entertainment that features men as often as most entertainments feature women isn’t strange and off-putting (or at least, no more so than normal).

• Future happenings 1: Brad Guigar (cartooning force of nature and real-life sexy dad²) will be doing four panels at the upcoming Wizard World Philadelphia — one each day, Thursday through Sunday of next week — on webcomics and podcasting (the latter with his two sons, falling on Sunday, which is traditionally the family-friendly at most comics shows).
• Future happenings 2: Jorge Cham is into the tail end of production of his second PhD feature film with the release of the trailer. The last movie screened in more than 500 locations, on all seven continents³, so keep your eye on the film’s page for announcements as to where Cham will be bringing the sequel.

Spam of the day:

Coming out of your box can be frightening.

This piece of life advice came from a site purporting to sell Michael Kors, the most orange man this side of John Boehner. Tell you what — I’ll come out of my box when you get Kors to lay off the self-tanner.

_______________
¹ And, I suspect, several times that it is legal to have.

² [Mostly] Ladies [and a certain percentage of gentlemen], control yourselves. He’s taken.

³ Is this a good enough reason to wrangle yourself a year-long appointment on the staff of an Antarctic research facility to increase the odds that you’ll be near a screening?

Yes. Yes, it is.

• I find the best stuff via the twitterfeed of Katie Lane — lawyer extraordinaire to the creative community and explainer of legal doctrines — and even when she’s not the originator, the stuff she retweets is gold. Case in point, yesterday she was the proximate cause of seeing a tweet by K Matthew Dames that led me to what may be an invaluable resource for the everyday creator: a guide to Fair Use from the Copyright Office of the federal government.

  Specifically, it’s an index of case law and precedent, which may help you to determine if what you’re doing (or what’s being done to you) falls under the purview of Fair Use (yay!) or plain ol’ thieving (boo!). While not offering legal advice, the index:

  is designed to be user-friendly. For each decision, we have provided a brief summary of the facts, the relevant question(s) presented, and the court’s determination as to whether the contested use was fair. You may browse all of the cases, search for cases involving specific subject matter or categories of work, or review cases from specific courts. The Index ordinarily will reflect only the highest court decision issued in a case. It does not include the court opinions themselves. We have provided the full legal citation, however, allowing those who wish to read the actual decisions to access them through free online resources (such as Google Scholar and Justia), commercial databases (such as Westlaw and LEXIS), or the federal courts’ PACER electronic filing system, available at www.pacer.gov.

  In other words, it’s not for settling shit-fights where people are tossing around Wikipedia links as proof of the rightness of their claim; it may help provide a rationale to decide to fight/not fight a particular situation, or to help a lawyer (you have a lawyer, right) that doesn’t specialize in IP issues to get up to speed quickly. In any event, it’s got the potential to be broadly useful and I thought you should see it.

• Naturally, protecting your rights in your creations against infringement is made much easier when you have rights in the first place. Today’s example of a big IP factory being a complete dick and making me pig-biting mad¹ comes to us from Gerry Conway, longtime vet of the superhero mines, and how DC Comics gets to define characters as spontaneously existing without any creators who might need to get a small residual check. I particularly like the part where if DC decided that:
  

  … if [Conway] wanted to receive an equity participation contract for a character I created, I had to request one, in writing, for each character, before that character appeared in another media, because DC would refuse to make equity payments retroactively.

  By a rough guesstimate, I probably created over five hundred characters for DC between 1969 and 1985…. Unless I’m willing to commit a large chunk of my life to tracking down each character and filing a separate equity request in anticipation that somehow, some day, one of these characters might end up on a TV show, I risk being cut off from any share in the fruits DC enjoys from the product of my labor.

  Which serves as notice to DC that they have to go to the trouble of writing Conway a letter to declare that he didn’t in fact create the character; they don’t even crank up the bullshit excuse generator unless they’re notified to do so, in writing, in advance. That’s not just evil as hell, it’s lazy, and over amounts that to a behemoth like Warner Bros are trivial:

  Yes, money is involved, but thanks to the way DC and Warners structure their in-house deals, the actual payout for the use of a character on an episode of The Flash or Arrow is ridiculously small. (I receive an average of $47 for each appearance of Felicity Smoak, for example; nothing to sneeze at, of course, but I’m not gonna be buying any mansions with my comic book character profits anytime soon.)

  Did I say trivial? I meant lost in the roundoff errors that result when a WB executive decides to fund his hookers-and-coke expenses under “Craft Services”.

• Let us end on a happier note. Despite getting priced out of their location by San Francisco’s super-expensive real estate market, the Cartoon Art Museum isn’t spending their last few weeks on Mission Street moping around; they’re out there creating new traditions when less committed people might be starting to pack up the gift shop and send the art off to storage.

  Specifically, they’re launching the inaugural San Francisco Comics Fest, running from this Sunday (3 May, the day after Free Comic Book Day) to the following Saturday (10 May). Events will be taking place throughout the city, including workshops, meetups, talks by prominent comics creators, figure drawing, and a dance party; many of these will be free, and all of them can be found on the calendar page.

  I actually love the timing of all of this — if CAM is about to lose its home, the very best thing it can do is go big and show its hometown how indispensable it is. As a reminder, you can help shorten the downtown that hits at the end of June by donating to the CAM capital campaign and helping to fund their new home.

Spam of the day:

Download Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star Movie.

Jeez man, why would you even send me such a thing? Do I come to your house and take a dump on the middle of the floor?

________________
¹ One of many colorful intensifiers I recall from faithfully reading columnist Ed Anger (“American”) in the Weekly World News back when it was a printed paper. I miss ol’ Ed.

Sometimes you just can get enough of a story, and then you need to stretch out a little.

• For example, take the single greatest premise ever devised for a comic: a teen who can turn into a boat. Teen Boat! has been around in one form or another for years; I remember seeing the banner at one of the first SPX iterations I attended, which must’ve been ten years ago. Since those early days, the creators of Teen Boat!¹ have gone on to create — jointly and severally — a whole mess o’ rightly–lauded comics, web- and otherwise, including a Teen Boat! graphic novel, and the previously-noted forthcoming sequel, Teen Boat! The Race For Boatlantis.

  It is the latter of these that concerns us today.

  Because Teen Boat! creators John Green and Dave Roman have decided that the best way to drum up interest in Boatlantis — indeed, the best way to get everybody aboard the Teen Boat! juggernaut — is to give the story away. Taking a page from previous the graphic novel is done let’s serialize online until it’s time to sell it projects as Lucky Penny, Friends With Boys, Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong, Sailor Twain (the list goes on and on), Boatlantis is about to launch as a free webcomic to churn up the waters of Teen Boat! interest. Per the press release:

  Teen Boat! The Race for Boatlantis launches with the first four pages on May 1st, and will update with a new page every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, up until the release of the print edition. Select chapters of the first Teen Boat! book are also readable online at TeenBoatComics.com

  In conclusion: get onboard or get out of the way. Teen Boat! rules.

• Or, if you have more hooks than you know what to do with (some of which haven’t even occurred to you), you can take a leap of faith and throw open your story’s universe for others to play in. You have to be supremely self-confident in the skills of those that you invite into the sandbox though — no matter how much you describe these as side stories in the world of or here’s what happened elsewhere while canon was going on, it’s going to cause changes in your setting, which may strengthen or weaken your main narrative.

  Which is why every time Dave Kellett drops in a stray page of world-building like this or this into Drive, it makes me wonder if I’ll live long enough to hear all the stories he’s got in his head about this future Second Spanish Empire.

  Probably not, but while I’m waiting for him to get to what the heck life was like in the 3000 year old Grasskan Empire, why ring travel is banned in Nuevo Chile, and how exactly the [presumed secret police branch that Orla apparently belongs to, we always knew something was up with her)] Jinyiwei can save Nosh², it appears that I can content myself with a metric buttload of other stories.

  That teaser doesn’t tell us if these other artists are dreaming up their own stories, or just illustrating what Kellett wrote, but in either event it’s a brave and exciting thing to invite in collaborators. Now, when does this happen and how much money do I have to pay for it? Acceptable answers include Last week and Not more than class money³.

Spam of the day:

Cardiovascular disease prospects will now be to spotlight needs that bring back attendees to state that more about themselves, their potential customers important subjects or even an individual’s situations when (their stories).

Or, you know, cut back on the saturated fats, get some aerobic exercise. That works, too.

_______________
¹ Much like Steve Holt!, Teen Boat! must always feature an exclamation.

² Two things: 1. God dammit Dave, you better not be messing with me; losing Nosh broke my heart. 2. If you do that thing where you jump to another storyline for like five months and leave us on this cliffhanger I swear I’m coming to LA with a baseball bat for a chat with your knees. Don’t screw with me, cartoon boy.

³ Six hundo.

Last week was a challenge and I’m sorry about the less-than-usual volume of opinion-mongering. I trust that we’ll make up for it this week.

• It’s been a long time since we had a new Broodhollow; as previously noted, Kris Straub has been on an extended hiatus, what with getting the Broodhollow book 2 collection produced and having a small human around the house. This had the effect of turning one hell of a dramatic cliffhanger into an extended, existential question — would Wadsworth be stuck in that place of mystery and loss forever?

  Occasional stolen time allowed Straub to show he had lost neither his whimsy nor his ability to craft laughter; yesterday brought a chapter title page and today! Today drags out the mystery by at least a few days more as a dark and forgotten place (for dark and forgotten secrets, in a place that forgets plenty) gives way to springtime cheer and no word of Wadsworth Zane. It’s been a long time, and it’s good to see West Virginia’s most unsettling corner again.

• Just about exactly three years before Broodhollow went on hiatus, David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc posted his last photocomic, coming full circle some nine years and about 3200 comics after his start. In the three and a half years since he’s had a series of nearly 200 digressions on the nature of the physical world, the science that makes it work, and the consequences we experience in our daily lives — all of which have run in parallel with six- days-a-week reruns with commentary of Irregular Webcomic from the beginning, 1093 of them so far.

  Until today.

  Thanks to the generosity of his Patreon backers, it’s back to the LEGO mines for Dr Morgan-Mar, as he’s constructing two new Irregular Webcomics strips per week, to run on Sundays and Thursdays. If I can make one suggestion, it’s that everybody drop a buck or two towards Morgan-Mar, as while we’re about five times over the threshold that gets us two new IWs a week¹, we’re about one-fifth of the way to where he cuts his day job by one day a week to give us all the creative stuff he’s got stuck in his head. And if you think that he hasn’t been tucking away gag and storyline ideas for the past three years, you haven’t been paying attention.

• About three months back I mentioned that another PhD-bearing, photo-taking webcomicker — Dante Shepherd, in his day job alias of an ordinary mild-mannered professor of chemical engineering² — was applying for a grant to bring comics to the world of STEM education. Grant writing is a hell of a tough thing (I’ve done enough of it myself), and the odds were not in Shepherd’s favor.

  As it turns out, on Thursday he found out he’d received the US$10,000 grant, which will allow him to pay artists to develop the first generation of materials, and also to develop skills in art/design students to make the program ongoing and sustaining. Which had to be the highlight of his week, except for the part where he received two student-voted awards for teaching, in his second year of teaching. I dare say that this week, everything’s coming up Milhouse Shepherd!

• Finally, one minor down note — from Heidi Mac we get word that Jeff Smith’s Tüki Save The Humans is going to be returning later than expected. A recurrence of an old overwork injury means that instead of a May/June timeframe, Tüki is delayed until the end of the year. Naturally, this is only bad in the sense that I want more Tüki strips now, which is a minor concern when balanced against the possibilities of all the comics that Smith will grace us with in the future. And has been adequately established already today, what’s six months between friends?

Spam of the day:

Este homem de meia-idade n?o ? t?o generosa como sua m?e e ele pensa de si mesmo antes de pensar no conforto dos outros.

Which, according to Google Translate, is This middle-aged man not so generous as his mother and he thinks of himself before the comfort of others when the source language is autodetected, but This homem of meia-idade not as generous to me and ele pensa sua whether mesmo before thinking no two outros comfort when the source language sets itself specifically to Spanish. Apparently, it makes sense if you don’t try to make the rules of a language apply, and is properly spammy gibberish when you do.

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¹ And while we’re at a funding level of approximately ten times his monthly hosting costs, keep in mind that he’s been paying those costs since 2002 and it costs him $50/month in art materials for Planet of Hats (which has been running for the past year now). At current funding levels, he’ll break even in about two more years.

² Much like the theory that Batman is the actual person and Bruce Wayne the invented personality, I have changed my mind and now subscribe to the belief that Dante Shepherd is real and Lucas Landherr the secret identity; just substitute a Red Sox cap and lab coat for the cowl and cape, and the graduate assistant for the youthful ward.