What, no, it’s nothing to do with the weather outside (where the snow is rapidly accumulating and I may or may not make it back to my hotel tonight). It’s to do with the gut-level clench of fear fighting against cautious optimism when John Allison goes from saying (in regard to his characters) as Bad Machinery wrapped up:

Think of this as a Doctor Who-style regeneration in progress. Your friends will be back.

to saying (in regard to his broader shared universe of Tackleford) as the Bobbins revival is close to concluding:

People sometimes ask me why there’s Bobbins, and Scary Go Round, and Bad Machinery, “when they’re all just the same thing.” The answer is, so that I can work out where the line is between these projects, so I don’t have to remember too much, so that I can divide it all up semi-neatly. This last Bobbins story is what happens if I take out all those dividing lines in my head, just so you can see what it looks like. It’s a mess. I’ve started to get emails from people asking for clarification on certain “historical” characters, which suggests to me that it’s time to stop. Time’s pretty much up for the “Tackleverse”, which is why I did it – this is the end of the road for a lot of the characters.

I hope you enjoyed the experiment as much as I have – it’s gone in directions I didn’t expect. At the start of April it will be time for something new.

I am the last person to suggest that Allison (or any other creator) ought to be catering to my whims. If this is the end for many of these characters, I will mourn their departure just as I eagerly await that which April will bring. It’ll be sad, and I know exactly how to react to this — by hunting down people whose obsessive need for continuity have driven Allison to this and wreaking a horrific vengeance. If I have to exist in a world without teen mystery-solvers, fish-men, serial entrepreneurs that speak of themselves in the third person, Devil Bears and Space Owl, then I’m making sure that they won’t enjoy the fruits of their cursed inquiries after filthy continuity.

In all seriousness — if this is the end for Tackleford, let us all take a moment to raise a pint of the best heavy or rough scrumpy (regional) to what may be webcomics longest-running shared universe¹. Things change, after all. We’ll be okay.

Unless Carrot comes a bad end — that happens, I’m going on a spree.

• Following up on the recent post regarding Raina Telgemeier crushing all who dare approach with her mighty sales figures: I’d wondered if the sales of the Sisters/Smile box set was incorporated into the Bookscan numbers compiled by Brian Hibbs. Hibbs was kind enough to chime in with a clarification:
  

  Boxed sets have separate listings. Even though I cut this data out of what I present, Bookscan entries are tracked by ISBN, and the box set has a different one.

  Translation: Telgemeier sold more books than the numbers indicated. In fact, due to the limitations of Bookscan, Hibbs would have us know that she sold a lot more:

  Also worthy of note is that SISTERS sold AT LEAST 2 million copies according to the NYT — I can only present Bookscan data that I have though.

  Remember, that’s in four months, and more than ten times the numbers indicated by Bookscan; I knew there were undercounts from the Nielsen data, but never knew how large they were. To put it another way, for more than a decade, the top-selling ongoing comic book from a major publisher in any given month has probably sold on the order of 100,000 copies² in the last four months of 2104, the total number of copies of the top selling book each month amounted to approximately 837,000 floppies sold; if you bought all four of those books, the total cost to you was probably not too far off of the Sisters cover price.

  In as apples-to-apples a comparison as you could make, Telgemeier outsold that wisecracking webslinger, brooding vigilante, most popular mutant of all time, or scrappy set of survivors of the zombie apocalypse by a factor of two and a half to one if you combine their efforts, or at least six to one compared against single titles. Oh, and that was before we consider Smile and Drama (one of which sold steadily through the year, one of which bumped up in the last quarter). Next time some aging fanboy bitches about the comics industry pandering to [fill in the blank], share that little factoid and watch his head explode.

Spam of the day:

Touche. Great arguments. Keep up the good work.

Will do.

_______________
¹ Okay, okay, it’s the recently-concluded Walkyverse. Work with me, people.

² There are some outlier books in the back third of 2014, with some one-shots, special events, and zillion-variant-cover tricks, leading to some unusually large numbers.

Over at The Beat, Heidi Mac does a nice piece on the year-end graphic novel sales figures compiled by retailer Brian Hibbs and something awesome jumps out right at the top of the list (of which the ten highest are shown here):

176,197 — SISTERS
152,220 — TALES FROM A NOT SO FABULOUS LIFE
150,523 — SMILE
129,679 — HYPERBOLE AND A HALF
94,152 — DRAMA
84,707 — BIG NATE GRT MINDS THINK ALIKE
83,639 — STAR WARS JEDI ACADEMY
78,132 — STAR WARS JEDI ACADEMY RETURN
74,581 — DORK DIARIES OMG ALL ABOUT ME
72,520 — CANT WE TALK ABOUT SOMETHING M

Several somethings, actually. First, Raina Telgemeier absolutely dominated GN sales in 2014. Second, keep in mind that Sisters wasn’t released until the last week of August, meaning it was only on sale for about a third of the year; a full-year sales figure would be likely above 500,000 copies. But Gary I hear you cry wouldn’t sales taper off after everybody bought the book?

Third thing: the #3 best selling GN of the year was Smile¹, perennial New York Times bestseller; if she can sustain that kind of interest across five years, Sisters could continue to sell across one. And what’s that at #5? Drama, which came back onto the bestseller list because a new cohort of readers is discovering Telgemeier’s work and seeking it out. If Sisters had released earlier, there would have been a bump on Drama as well.

Yes, this is all based on Bookscan from Nielsen, and it doesn’t cover everything, and the actual sales numbers are estimates² and yadda, yadda. Take all the friction points into account, and the story of one young girl who a) got her teeth knocked out; and b) learned to have a relationship with her younger sister sold twice as many copies as the largest, most globally-dominant IP factory in history; Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, the Avengers, and all the rest aren’t even in the same league as a 10 to 14 year old with braces from San Francisco. It was the Year of Raina, and I’ll fight any man-jack of you that says different.

Also awesome:

• Here’s the deal — I’ve never read Moby-Dick, and despite all I’ve heard about it being the Definitive American Novel³, I’ve never really felt the urge to do so. But then I saw flutterings in the Twittersphere that Evan Dahm wants to give the same illustrated adaptation treatment to Moby-Dick that he did to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. So while I still don’t want to read Moby-Dick, I have a powerful hankering to read an unabridged edition of Moby-Dick with illustrations by Evan Dahm. This may turn into a scene out of BONE where Dahm is Fone Bone and I’m … well, everybody else that Fone Bone tries to get to read Moby-Dick, but goshdarnit I’m gonna try.
• What’s more adorable than Scott C illustrations? Darn near nothing, with the possible exception of Scott C illustrations of classic Disney animated films, which just happens to be the topic of the poll to determine what the next series of Great Showdown prints will be! Voting ends tomorrow, so be quick and pick out your five favorites, and either reply to the poll post, or via email to a gentleman named scottlava who happens to be available at the Google mail dot-com. Me, I don’t think you can ever have enough Pongo and Perdita, but everybody’s got their own favorites.

Spam of the day:

APPRENEZ A PIRATER LE COMPTE ET LE MOT DE PASSE

Man, I wish that Google Translate could come up with an acceptable French phrasing for snort my taint (all credit to the inestimable Ken White).

_______________
¹ As it turns out, today is Smile day, 26 years to the day since Raina knocked out her teeth.

² Come to think of it, I wonder how these numbers account for the Sisters/Smile combo box set? One copy of each sold, or does it show up under another line item further down the list?

³ One of three that I hear regularly given the title, the other two being The Great Gatsby (which I loathe) and Tom Sawyer (which is terrific and I guess means the designation of Definitive American Novel has at least a one-in-three hit rate).

It’s cold, it’s going to snow at least once more this week, and New England has turned into Ice Station Zero.

• I could have used a different reference in footnote #1 (and a different image for the header of the post), but R Stevens hasn’t (as I write this) yet gotten around to President #39 in his Pixel Presidents series, updating now on his Tumblr. They go up in batches of six or so at a time, at about one minute intervals, because how else are you going to kill time when you’re on hold with the cable company?
• Which bit of inevitable news should we go with first? That the Exploding Kittens Kickstarter met its 30-cheevo stretch goal and can only drum up further excitement by declaring virtual and IRL party events for the next three days? Or that Scott McCloud’s The Sculptor debuted at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List for hardcover graphic novels²?
• Actually, I think one other thing was more inevitable: when waiting to enter the McCloud talk at the 92nd Street Y a couple weeks back, and talking with Raina Telgemeier, she told me that she fully expected McCloud to knock her out of her spot on the Times Best Sellers List.

  He didn’t, due largely to the fact that Telgemeier is on the softcover list, but I am not sure he would have if they were on the same list. Significantly, Telgemeier regained her clean sweep of slots 1, 2, and 3. Even more interesting, Drama is in the top slot, presumably because all of the readers that tore through Smile and its sequel Sisters are now digging through the back catalog for anything Raina-related. What with the newly colored editions of the Baby Sitters Club books about to release, it’s a very good time to be Raina Telgemeier.

• Speaking of McCloud and Telgemeier, they will be among the Guests of Honor at this year’s MoCCA Fest, just about two months from now, presuming we haven’t all frozen to death by then. The Society of Illustrators have celebrated by releasing the main visual for this year’s event, by Eleanor Davis. I maintain that MoCCA is one of the great bargains in comics shows, costing a whopping $5/day at the door and existing on a scale that allows you to see everything without feeling homicidal.
• Finally, let us take a moment to reflect on those that perhaps have a harder time with the cold than we do. I am thinking here of ectotherms, particularly snakes, and most particularly one snake that’s trying to find her way in the world:
  

  New chapter of my webcomic, THE WHITE SNAKE! http://jenwang.net/whitesnake/

  One of the things I love about The White Snake is that it releases a chapter at a time; getting 20 – 24 pages of story in a chunk is much more satisfying than two pages a week over a period of months. It has been a while since we met Lily, so maybe go back and refresh on Chapter One before moving on to Chapter Two.

Spam of the day:

Heya i’m for the first time here. I found this board and I to find It really useful & it helped me out a lot.

Happy to be of service.

________________
¹ Jodie Foster.

² Despite the art being merely serviceable, as judged by this guy who is the walking embodiment of the New Yorker substitute cartoon punchline.

A little advice for you — if you go to a talk by Scott McCloud in a city known to have a hefty cartoonist presence, don’t be surprised when a cartoonist you know shows up. Even better, don’t be a half face-blind bozo and stare directly at Raina Telgemeier for like 30 seconds as she smiles wider and wider wondering how long it’s going to take you to realize it’s her. Not that I would know, of course.

• Once my brain finally worked out that I was, in fact, looking at somebody I knew, it woke the hell up and I was able to determine that the room also contained Mark Siegel, Callista Brill, and Gina Gagliano of :01 Books (logical, as they’re the publisher), as well as Judy Hansen (McCloud’s agent, as well as much of indy/webcomics, a woman with whom I enjoy discussing Belgian beer), and the incomparable Brooke Gladstone of NPR’s On The Media (whom I’d never met before, but because of a well-timed pledge to WNYC, she crocheted me a winter hat that I was wearing and was able to thank her for).

  McCloud and Entertainment Weekly’s Tim Leong spoke for about 45 minutes and took questions for about the same — the underlying theme was creativity and the process of creation and how McCloud had to write Making Comics to teach himself what he needed to learn¹ so that he could actually produce The Sculptor (an idea which had been kicking around his brain since he was 17 or so). No quotes to offer (I was listening instead of taking notes) except for this one:

  By 2024, comics is going to be a majority-female industry

  By which he means both creators and readers (and thinks in the art schools, we’ve already exceeded parity). Here’s hoping.

  Speaking of hope, one thing that gave me a great deal of hope about the evening, comics, and society in general. Waiting in the lobby of the 92nd Street Y, I noticed a cluster of West Point cadets in their distinctive grey uniforms, along with some active-duty Army officers in dress blues; I wondered at the time what program they were there for (92Y does many cultural programs on any given day, as well as being a full Y-style gym).

  They disappeared from the lobby about 20 minutes before we were let into the auditorium. During the seating period, though, I noticed them come into the auditorium and take seats, and Ivy McCloud mentioned that they’d been meeting with Scott; they were in town with professors and staff officers because they’re reading V for Vendetta and Watchmen as part of a literature class.

  After the talk, while waiting in the signing line, my friend Brett and I started talking with an earnest (and serious, and very young) second-year cadet named Fred and a major (alas, I didn’t catch her name) that he was standing with. They were both thrilled to be there, and I never thought I’d be talking comics in that particular company and context. Fred didn’t say explicitly he was also drawing comics², but he did mention at one point he’d wondered if there was some way to surgically remove about half the little finger of his left hand and fit a prosthetic eraser there for convenience.

  Knowing that somebody so unstereotypically military will be commissioned an officer and become part of the Army leadership structure in a little more than two years makes me hopeful. Knowing that somebody (likely multiple somebodies) on the faculty of the most traditional of Army institutions looks towards comics (Alan Moore comics, no less) to shape the minds of Fred and his fellow cadets (about a third of whom at the talk were young women — a little longer to get to parity there) is likewise a comforting thought. All in all, a damn good evening. If you have the opportunity to see McCloud on his book tour, do so.

• Here’s the thing that you don’t see a lot in Kickstarters: tying stretch goals to thing that happen outside of the campaign itself. We saw it in the campaign for Dr McNinja’s Legendary Showdown back in October 2013, when 2500 Facebook likes or hashtag tweets meant bonus content in the game. See how that worked? You didn’t have to get one more person to pony up one more dollar, but you had to spread the word. Clever.

  Naturally, the phenomenally successful campaign for Exploding Kittens (as of this writing: nearly 135,000 backers, the most in Kickstarter history, and more than $US5.3 million pledged, #7 highest total and closing in on #6) has finally added a series of stretch goals, but mostly not related directly to the campaign itself. Instead, there are a series of achievements based on things like how many backers, percent overfunding, Facebook likes, and public stunts. As of right now, fifteen of them have been achieved, and the stretch goals will be unlocked when 20 or 30 of the ‘cheevos are met.

  They’ve gamified Kickstarter. It doesn’t matter which five achievements are met to reach the 20 goal, just whichever get piled up first. And yeah, it may be near impossible to achieve all 30 goals³, but they’ve made the last two weeks of the campaign pretty damn fun to watch. Heck, if they get the Ellen or GRRM things to happen (see footnotes), this project could break into mainstream consciousness. Well done, Exploding Kittens team.

• Per today’s newsbox at Dinosaur Comics: the previously-mentioned game version of To Be Or Not To Be now has a release date, and it’s, oh, today. Go get it.

Spam of the day:
Nothing in particular today, except to note that something about the recent posting referencing Larry Gonick is attracting spam like nobody’s business. So far today, I’ve cleared more than 50 largely-identical submissions (consisting mostly of question marks) from that thing. I have to figure out how their algorithms work so I can avoid doing whatever caused this flood. Yeesh.

_______________
¹ This reminds me a great deal of Minna Sundberg wanting to create Stand Still, Stay Silent but feeling her skills weren’t up to the task, so she instead created the 556 page A Redtail’s Dream first to teach herself what she needed to know.

² Unsurprisingly, they don’t have art majors at West Point; if I remember correctly, about 70% of the student major in some form of engineering, and obviously all cadets study military science.

³ They include things like 10,000 and 100,000 Twitter followers or 100,000 Facebook likes — trivial, given the number of supporters. But they also include things like Get @Ellen [Degeneres] to tweet “A Butt Tuba” is a palindrome and Get George RR Martin to tweet “I use Pantene Pro-V on my beard, because vitamins”.

For the record, I think the following goals are going to be met fairly easily:

• 150,000 backers (they’re above 134K)
• 10,000 Twitter followers (already met: @gameofkittens is now at 19.8K)
• 100,000 Twitter followers (doesn’t require even all of the backers click on “follow”)
• 100,000 Facebook likes (no idea how may they have, I don’t have Facebook)
• Get @wilw[heaton] to tweet all cats should wear underpants (will probably happen as soon as Wheaton is back from the JoCo cruise)
• Post 25 pics of a beardcat (a cat crawling out of a dude’s beard)
• Post 25 pics of a potatocat (a cat with legs tucked under, looking like a furry potato)
• Post 25 selfies with goats

The others, involving things like group photos of people wearing cat ears, and pictures of “weaponized back hair” (I don’t want to know), as well as the Ellen and GRRM things will be trickier. Since they aren’t saying what we’ll get if all 30 achievements are hit, it’s hard to say how hard people will work on the goal.

Let’s get the bad news out of the way right away.

• Christopher Baldwin’s One Way recently wrapped, and as noted at the time, launched a Kickstarter to collect the story in print. Baldwin, of course, is well known as the webcomicker behind the funny and tragic Spacetrawler, the heartfelt and wonderful Little Dee, and the long-running and groundbreaking Bruno; he’s got the reputation of creating successful work and quality books.

  So why in the hell is his Kickstarter less than half a day out from completion and barely over 50% of goal? Granted, One Way ended on a melancholy note (though one we’d been primed for from the very beginning), but so did Little Dee, and Bruno was nothing but ups and downs. Maybe because One Way ran for just about exactly a year, and we didn’t have the time to get as emotionally invested in the characters? Maybe because none the characters in One Way were what you’d call sympathetic? Really, they were all terrible — but that was a bit part of what made them compelling. Honestly, this is a travesty and you’ve got a bit more than eight hours to make it right.

It’s better news from here on.

• Raina Telgemeier gets so much press (not sure who provides all of that, certainly nobody we know here at Fleen) that sometimes it’s easy to forget that her husband is just as accomplished in comics as she is. Dave Roman and his longtime creative partner John Green announced the latest entry in the Teen Boat¹ series of comics/graphic novels has a cover. Look for Teen Boat! The Race For Boatlantis in October wherever comics, books, or boats are sold.
• As noted about ten days ago, Erika Moen and Matt Nolan did everybody considering a crowdsourcing campaign a tremendous favor by releasing a detailed Numberwang on their experiences with the first OJST print volume Kickstart. Nolan’s back with more information that explains just how a webcomic about sex toys can support two adults, which I would sum up in one word: diversification.

  It’s a fascinating read for anybody that wants to make comics their livelihood, but I urge you to keep a sense of reality as you do. Moen spent a decade on earlier comicking projects and a good nine months on OJST before launching her Patreon; without that loyal following and proven ability to produce quality comics, she could not have gotten support in excess of US$1000/comic. Remember: you’ve got to show people that you’re good enough to give money to before you can expect them to give you money.

• From George², busiest man in webcomics, as part of one of his myriad jobs (in this case with the doing-well-by-doing-good anarchosyndicate known as Breadpig) comes news of a shift to webcomics. Specifically, the critically-lauded (but curiously not chart-topping, because people don’t know how good it is I guess) Atomic Robo is getting ready to serialize its first nine volumes of stories online, leading up to the debut of volume 10 later this year. For those that haven’t been keeping up Atomic Robo is the brainchild of Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener, and this release the back catalog online approach is the same one used by such creator-owned stalwarts as Jim Zub and the Foglios.

  For those that haven’t followed the earlier stories, Zub has credited the online serialization of Skullkickers with driving convention sales of print collections and Girl Genius started as dead-tree quarterly comics, a model which proved to be economically nonviable, prompting the shift to online distribution of the back-catalog, then eventually all new story pages. Going forward, AR will follow the Girl Genius model of web-first, as opposed to the Skullkickers model of print issue first.

  What’s a bit unique about AR‘s shift to the web is how it’s going online: the entirety of Atomic Robo volume 1 will be released on 21 January, followed by a full issue each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. We’re going to see more than 1000 pages hit in short order, the better to get everybody up to speed for the debut of volume 10 this summer. To make sure that Clevinger, Wegener, et. al. actually get some value from this massive act of sharing, they’re going to be part of the Hiveworks family, where you’ll find approximately every webcomic and its dog.

  Plus, y’know, Atomic Robo has dinosaur mad scientists creating weapon-bedecked cyborg T. rexes, which can only be good.

Spam of the day:

Both men and woman have been using perfumes for over 4,000 years.

That’s almost as long as they’ve been using knives. THESE KNIVES!

________________
¹ This is the obligatory reminder to never do a Google image search on any string including the word “teen” unless Safe Search is as on as it possibly can be.

² Who, in accordance with the Fleen Manual of Style, is only ever referred to by his first name

Deadlines are wonderful things — they focus the mind, and anybody that says they don’t screw around until the last possible moment before deadline is dangerously self-deluded. I, uh, may have heard that somewhere, not that I’d know. Nope. Not me.

Society of Illustrators and the second iteration of the Comic & Cartoon Art Annual and how the deadline for submission in all categories (several of which track neatly with webcomics) would be (was, now) yesterday. Well, good news, procrastinators! Deadline’s been extended to this Friday, 9 January.
• As long as we’re talking about juried processes involving the comics and cartoon arts, there was this bit from the twitterfeed of National Cartoonists Society president Tom Richmond:
  

  NCS Divisional Reuben Awards Submission Call http://wp.me/pcEqc-4Vo

  In other words, time for my annual reminder that webcomics are represented by two awards, long form and short form, and if you want to be considered you should follow that link and decide which category you fall into. One might also note that a number of you reading this may also fall into other categories, particularly the Comic Books (Ryan, Shelli, and Braden ought to really be submitting for Adventure Time, as should Noelle et. al. for Lumberjanes) and Graphic Novels (Box, Emily, Raina, Gene & Sonny, and Kazu, just off the top of my head).

  As in past years, I’ll be part of Richmond’s advisory committee, making sure that the best webcomics don’t get overlooked from consideration, so if there’s something that you feel I should bring to the membership’s attention, let me know. Please note that the deadline for submission is 15 February, which is sooner than you think.

• Speaking of the NCS awards, last year’s winner for On-Line Comics — Long Form, Jeff Smith¹, has returned from hiatus with the latest chapter of Tüki Save The Humans (that would be number three) kicking off yesterday. Tüki hasn’t run as frequently as was originally planned¹, and the site has had growing pains, but you know what? Free Jeff Smith comics delivered to me by magic internet lasers are good under any circumstances.

  Oh, right, deadline … deadline … okay, Tüki’s been in that fight with Big Ugly there since midway through the last chapter, and I’d say that one or the other one is gonna be dead soon. Considering it’s Tüki’s book, my money is on Toothless to be the one with his ass on the line.

Spam of the day:

Thank you for your helping hand.

You’re welcome. I pride myself on being a helpful kind of guy.

_______________
¹ As was explained to me by Cartoon Books publisher and all-around nerd-wrangling badass Vijaya Iyer, Tüki was to run M-W-F for eight weeks, then take two months off, then on to the next chapter. Instead, we’re averaging about two chapters a year. Please don’t take this as a criticism of Smith and Iyer; I love them both to death, I love the story, and if that’s the pace that they can deliver the free webcomic at while maintaining their paying work, then I am happy for it.

• Back: KC Green ran one last Gunshow to say goodbye, and we should remind you that he is retiring one comic, not from the comics game. His adaptation of Pinocchio is top-notch, his collaboration with Anthony Clark, BACK, makes Wednesdays a joy, and you can keep up with his other comings and goings fairly easily at his main site. Thanks for 900 pages of funny, touching, sometimes heartbreaking comics, KC. You remain one of the most fearless creators working today. Also, I just now realized that KC does the comic called BACK and I gave this paragraph the heading of Back and that was totally unintentional. I’m a little tired today.
• Forward: The future of comics depends on bringing new readers into the fold, not just trying to appeal to an ever-shrinking cohort of lifelong¹ fanboys. Those readers have — rightly! — an expectation that they should be able to see themselves in the comics they read²; as I wrote in a piece that will hopefully see print in the coming year, there’s a sense of I’ve never seen comics about an experience like mine before and it’s damn well time I did. The future of comics is increasingly going to be determined by women and girls. As I’ve long said, nobody embodies that trend more than Raina Telgemeier, and it’s so apparent that no less an embodiment of established authority than the Wall Street Journal agrees. 2014 was the Year of Raina, but I suspect that future years will make 2014 look merely okay by comparison.
• Back: Readers may recall my placement of an order with TopatoCo back in October, number 519348 to be precise. You may also recall the notice last week regarding the rate at which TopatoCo shipped merch in the first two weeks of December. As I threatened to do in October, I placed an order (for John Allison’s Giant Days three-pack) yesterday, the last day of the year, close enough to the very end of the year as makes no difference and noted the order number: 545856. What can we learn from this?

  Some 26500 orders were placed between the end of October and the end of December, which one may reasonably conclude is the TopatoCo busy season. In just one quarter of that time, more than 15000 items were shipped; even accounting for the fact that some orders surely would have been cancelled, you’ve still got between 26.5K and let’s say 60K items (15K in two weeks, extrapolated out to two months) which is a tremendous lot of business, and good news for all involved. Take a moment to thank the merch elves of TopatoCo, much as I did with my end-of-order special instructions³.

• Forward: There are creative couples in comics where it’s pretty impossible to think of one half without thinking of the other as well — Raina Telgemeier is surely pushed to make even better comics (and pushes in return) thanks to the good fortune of being married to Dave Roman. Other power couples exist: Chris and Carly, Yuko and Ananth, Shelli and Braden, Ryan and Joey, and, of course, Mer and Mike. That last pair up and made it official last night, to which I can only say congratulations. Draw, love, laugh, and if Heidi and Ella can reach some kind of détente, there’s nothing the two of you can’t accomplish. Hooray!

Spam of the day:

BY USING OUR FAMILY, YOU CARRY OUT FULL RESPONSIBILITY DATA THESE MATERIALS AND MAY INDEMNIFY US AS WELL AS DAMAGES IT MAY BE INCURRED.

Is this some kind of cult thing? Because you have to tell me if you’re a cult.

_______________
¹ That is, cape-obsessed.

² And, increasingly, create.

³ The drink referenced in that image was originally constructed for the Pineapple Maki contest, but since it looks like that’s not going to happen I have released it into the wild for all to enjoy.

This has nothing to do with webcomics whatsoever, but it’s my blog so too damn bad.

After years — decades! — of waiting, season 4 episodes of The Muppet Show exist other than in my memory! Okay, Disney (who bought out Henson Associates, which never would have happened when Jim was alive) hasn’t released past season 3 on DVD, damn them, but my twice-yearly trawl of Youtube revealed somebody (and I have no idea if they’re authorized or infringing and right now I don’t care) has uploaded a goodly chunk of season 4 full episodes.

Including my very favorite backstage gag of all time: How To Fly, from the Lynda Carter episode, where Scooter, Gonzo, Fozzie, Link, and Lew Zealand all try to be superheroes via correspondence course. As a side note, watch the whole thing — no guest was ever more gleeful at being around the Muppets than Lynda Carter. Just watch how she’s practically cracking up interacting with Beauregard in the dressing room gag after the news flash. It’s a joy to watch. Reezal-eevad-gib!

Where was I? Oh, yes — webcomics.

Well, close to webcomics, at least. Assuming San Francisco doesn’t wash away in the current Rainageddon¹, Bay Area parents may be looking for fun activities to engage in with their children during the upcoming school holidays. The Cartoon Art Museum is stepping up with two days of multiple parent/child cartooning classes, available for reservation now. First day is Friday, 26 December and the second is Tuesday, 30 December, with a total of four different 90-minute sessions to choose from.

Each class is US$10 a head (and adults must have a kid to register), on the topics of drawing the Boxtrolls (Friday, 11:30am), clip art comics (Friday, 2:00pm), caricatures (Tuesday, 11:30am), and superheroes (Tuesday, 2:00pm). No more than two ids per adult, please, and follow the links to reserve your place. Oh, and if you sign up for that last one, be sure to draw Lew Zealand with his fish helmet and Gonzo with his chicken helmet. Wonder Lynda would want it that way.

Spam of the day:

Pourquoi ne pas combiner les deux passions de votre vie et de devenir un artiste de tatouage? . formation et de persistence pour. Comment.

Myr French is a little rusty — mon français est un peu rouillé — but I’m pretty sure that what you just said has nothing to do with Muppets, Lynda Carter, or any combination of Muppets and Lynda Carter, so I don’t give a rat’s ass. Rats, by the way, can be found in this backstage gag.

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¹ As opposed to Raina-geddon, Raina Telgemeier’s continued domination of the New York Times bestseller list, of which she personally commands 30% and the top two entries this week.

There are people that you know in life, and then there are people that are the best people that you know in life — people who you want to be around because they exude sheer joy in whatever they are undertaking. Undertakings that you want to be a part of, or at the very least consume& with gustosup1;. Several such people are up for discussion today.

• Firstly, today is the anniversary of the birth of two gents I normally only see in San Diego at the Festival du Nerds each July. MC Frontalot makes the songs that make you want to move, is arguably the inventor of an entire category of music, and travels the world like a bespectacled and headlamped Pied Piper. Jon Ferocious J Sung chronicles the lives of dogs, marshals vast armies in battle, boldly goes, and engages in unholy beveragalogical experiments. Both are worth seeking out in whatever form you find easiest, and you should engage wholly in everything they create, with the exception of the candy corn-laced vodka that Ferocious came up with that one time because ick.
• Secondly, this is the time of year that serious organizations make serious lists of the best of various things, books being no exception. Today I note that ur-serious organization NPR have come up with a listing of the best books of the year, a significant fraction of which are of the graphical variety. There one may find appropriate amounts of love heaped upon the likes of Raina Telgemeier², Gene Luen Yang, Emily Carroll, Stan Sakai³, and Chort Zubaz. Hooray for validation!
• Thirdly, the first part of a two-part interview onthe past and future of the Adventure Time comic is now up at Comics Alliance; it’s a conversation between CA’s Chris Sims and real-life pals Ryan North (outgoing AT writer) and Christopher Hastings (incoming AT writer). You can sense the Friendship right there on your screen, it practically oozes out of the internet into your lap.

  That went someplace a little more disturbing than I’d intended. As a palate-cleanse, how about the news that Ryan North will be writing a back-up story in the forthcoming officially-licensed Bill & Ted comic book? Or perhaps the two new pages of Squirrel Girl #1, available for preview sans words? Or the fact that Slate named Midas Flesh (by North, with Shelli Paroline and Braden Lamb on art) as one of the unjustly-overlooked books of 2014, which is another example of serious people recognizing webcomics and kind of drags us back to “secondly”.

• You know who I wish did a whole lot more work, like just about every hour of every day? Nicholas Gurewitch, whose The Perry Bible Fellowship exists almost like a perfectly-preserved specimen in amber. It’s unchanging, and wonderful, and everything he’s done since PBF regularly updated is likewise wonderful. And now there’s a new thing, and it’s up to you to make sure it sees the light of day: Notes on a Case of Melancholia is Gurewitch by way of Edward Gorey, and will only make its way to my hands if some number of you help put the Kickstarter over its goal; as of this writing, it’s sitting at about 80% of the requisite US$25,000 which means it’s going to succeed, barring some odd set of circumstances I can scarcely conceive of. Of particular note in the upper tiers of rewards: original Gurewitch sketches, original art from the book, and PBF originals. It’s like a macabre dream come true.

Spam of the day:

Download Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star Movie.

Under no circumstances should you do this. I get that spam only works if you assume the recipient is a little dumb, but this would require absolutely brainlessness to subject yourself to that actual movie product.

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¹ With one tragic exception, to be noted momentarily.

² About whom enough good things simply cannot be said.

³ Who essentially is a webcomicker that happens to distribute via floppy-paper comic books and who — honestly — has remained at the top of the quality game for longer than many of his readers have been alive.

Dreary days outside, but at least there’s things happening this week. Let’s take a look.

• It’s been a long time since Christian Fundin and Pontus Madsen have made daily updates of Little Gamers a priority; design shops and creative consultancies don’t run themselves, nor do jaunts to furthest Mongolia just happen on their own. But even if the archives are no longer as active as they were, they do stretch back to the halcyon days of 2000, a full fourteen years from yesterday, which is a damn long time to keep even occasional updates of a comic going. Happy Strippiversary to Christian, Mr Madsen, the couch ninjas, and all their reprobate friends.
• Looking forward a couple of days, if you were planning on exhibiting at next April’s MoCCA Festival (at its new venue in Chelsea), you’ve got until this Friday, 5 December, to get your table application in. Special guests will include the likes of Raina Telgemeier, and perhaps the only person capable of dislodging her from the top of the New York Times Best Seller List, Scott McCloud. Thing is, they’re both so nice that if McCloud did knock Telgemeier from the #1 slot, she’d just congratulate him; come see the love in person 11 & 12 April, 2015.
• This weekend, 6 & 7 December, Texas welcomes the sixth iteration of Webcomics Rampage to the Dragon’s Lair in Austin. As in past years this is an in-store show, free to attend, but some sessions are likely to be crowded and so you might want to get there early. Open time with creators runs 1:00pm to 7:00pm both days, with livedraws at 2:00pm, 4:00pm, and 6:00pm. Both nights feature the Webomics … After Dark open Q&A from 9:00pm to 11:00pm, which may feature adult themes and language, growwwwllll¹.

  Ever want to see Randy Milholland and Danielle Corsetto spill all their secrets? Or wonder about what Spike and David Willis talk about when you aren’t standing in front of their booth? I … I don’t know what shameful things the other creators would get up to, so assume they’re just as reprehensible as those four, all right?

  Okay, fine, David Malki ! is always secretly measuring you for the shallow grave he dug out behind the show, but that’s all creators, duh. Tell them all I said “hi” and tell Randy he has to do the Fluffmodeus voice at the Q&A. I know that’s not a question, just do it. Trust me.

Spam of the day:

figure of macho modeling, lots of academy academy acceptance accordant to photograph frolicking nude over a beachfront or alone clay shirtless afore to an cruel camera.

Sounds like Fluffmodeus is writing advertising copy again.

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¹ I don’t know how you’re supposed to spell that half-meow, half-growl sound that’s all sexy-sounding from the naked lady in the made-for-Cinemax movies. You know the one.