A pair of large media companies sought to use content from independent creators, and the results could not have been more starkly different; let’s take a look, shall we?

• Via a much-retweeted notice on The Twitters came news of the musician NJ White being asked by a TV production company to use his music for free; his response is wonderful (and, unfortunately, an image and not easily copy/pasted, so click on the picture up above to embiggen), but let me type out one brief bit by hand:
  

  Or would you walk into someones home, eat from their bowl, and walk out smiling, saying “So sorry, I’ve no budget for food”? Of course you would not. Because culturally, we classify that as theft….

  Yet you send me this shabby request — give me your property, for free. Just give us what you own, we want it.

  The answer is a resouding, and permanent NO.

  I don’t know White from a hole in the ground, but I’m going to start searching out his music and give it a good (paid for) listen.

• By contrast, Zach Weinersmith had an announcement barely three hours after White’s that turned out far better:
  

  Announcing! SMBC will now also be syndicated on @BuzzFeed ! http://www.buzzfeed.com/smbc/smbc-infographic …

  Buzzfeed, like pretty much all of the big aggregators, has come in for criticism for taking content without attribution or payment, but Weinersmith seems to have worked that out:

  They gave us terms that comported with artistic and business integrity. I was very pleased by the whole experience :)

  [regarding Buzzfeed’s prior habits of not attributing/paying] I dunno about that, but at least in my case they’re giving us the kind of deal I wish were prevalent.

  And may I add, this just shows that sites like Buzzfeed and independent creators can work together. @buzzfeed did it the right way.

  I’m going to take that to mean (and I have no inside information, so this is speculation) that Buzzfeed offered Weinersmith something of value — money, or an equivalent¹ of sufficient value. Appropriately enough, today’s SMBC cartoon, the one that ushers in this ongoing Buzzfeed deal, is in the very Buzzfeed-friendly form of a Top N Things list/infographic (with an art assist from Ross Nover of The System). And because Weinersmith is Weinersmith, it’s a Top N Things list/infographic about how much infographics are worthless. Well done, Mr Weinersmith.

Oddly enough, there were also instances of creators bypassing media gatekeepers to deal directly with audience/other creators, with a goal of obtaining money in the right places.

• On the creator/audience front, Meredith Gran has released another tranche of originals from her (wonderful) six-issue Marceline and the Scream Queens miniseries — all remaining pages are 50% off for a limited time, with prices as criminally low as US$75 in her store.
• Meanwhile, Spike is over the Death Flu that laid her low last month and had the side-effect of delaying the acceptances for the next Smut Peddler. Spike reports more than 370 creators submitted for consideration, far more than could possibly be accommodated in the gig², and is understandably down about having to tell so many people no. Despite what would obviously be a disappointing outcome to nearly everybody involved, she also reports that everybody’s cool about the rejections, which means that a lot of people have been taking the professionalism lessons from the likes of Estrada and Zub seriously.

  My sincere hope is that everybody that didn’t make the cut for SP2104 work their comics skills (and their smut skills, for that matter) hard so that when the next open submission for the next ‘Peddler comes around, it’s an even harder decision to pick out the best. Creators get better at comics, I get better smut — that’s a win-win.

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¹ I’m not saying that the rumors that Weinersmith has a fetish for Bolivian marmosets are true, just that he might find some things more valuable than mere cash.

² The paying gig, we should note; some lucky people are getting paid to draw porn!

Another day, another reason to pay attention to Ryan Estrada, or (as the case may be), two reasons. Firstly, Estrada drops some wisdom on what will get you hired for comics gigs, based on his past history of not only hustling for work, but also from his history of hiring people for his various projects. Secondly, one of those projects, which Estrada has been teasing, is nearing fruition and he was kind enough to share some details with us. Broken Telephone is a story which Estrada has been working on for years, and which will require the services of (at present) 18 webcomickers.

The Kickstarter to launch it will be dropping in the immediate future, but in the meantime Estrada’s given us the skinny on everybody participating: Rachel Dukes, Carolyn Nowak, Brittney Sabo, Kelly Bastow, Irena Freitas, Will Kirkby, Amy T. Falcone, E.A. Denich, Chad Thomas, KC Green, Maya Kern, Amanda LaFreinas, Dan Ciurczak and JR Robinson, Justin Peterson, Tauhid Bondia, Elias Ericson, and Matt Cummings (plus Estrada himself, of course). Oh, and since Estrada’s not a jerk, you know that those collaborators are people that he’s hired, for money, which just reinforces the other aspect of how to get hired for comics gigs: it doesn’t count as hiring if you don’t get money.

• In other news, I was simultaneously thrilled and disappointed to see the announcement that Longshot Saves The Marvel Universe hits tomorrow. Thrilled because it’s going to be hilarious; annoyed because (at the time of this writing) it appears to be announced multiple places that should know better without a writer credit. Well, the writer is Christopher Hastings, as should be obvious to anybody that looks at the bottom of that cover image.
• This morning, I saw a good lesson in double-checking everything, and an even better lesson in treating your readers right. Firstly, Kris Straub: updated the world on the progress of the Broodhollow books. They look great, but there’s a problem:
  

  I opened the package and was knocked over by how beautiful both the softcover and hardcover books are. I felt along the lovely clothbound spine of the hardcover edition… and I realized the manufacturer forgot the red ribbon bookmark.

  Somehow that spec got left off the final quote from a previous one, and after conferring with them, I found out the books were approaching the end of their manufacture process. No chance to correct this.

  So that’s lesson #1: no matter how good your relationship with a vendor, you need to double-check every order, every spec sheet, every everything. But, there’s good news to offset the bad, not least because Straub is — far from his namesake — a stand-up guy:

  Here’s the good news — I also was not charged for the missing ribbons, so I have decided to take that savings — and some of my own money — and have nice dust jackets made for all the hardcovers. You guys at hardcover levels dug deep for the Kickstarter and you have earned my affection and gratitude, so I wanted to make up for the ribbon oversight. [boldface original]

  The bold isn’t the important part; the aside just before the bold is. Straub could have looked for a solution that didn’t cost him out of pocket (I’m wagering that he could have substituted printed bookmarks and satisfied his backers for less than dustcovers), but he wanted to more than make things up to his readers. Straub’s incredible comics makes me read Broodhollow, but knowing that he won’t ever short his readers is what will make me upgrade my book order next time¹. Culturally, webcomics is far more likely to take Straub’s approach here, and each example of doing right by your readers just reinforces that culture.

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¹ Despite the fact that now book one and future books won’t match on my bookshelf. Dammit!

The thing to understand is that Goats will always be in my bookmarks, and since I run a browser that makes it trivially simple to open all the bookmarks in a folder in separate tabs, Goats is always going to be staring me in the face in the morning, be it updated or no.

Today it was updated for the first time in a considerable while, complete with a working link to a new/old strip (more about which in a moment), as after a long hiatus where creator Jon Rosenberg¹ has been concentrating on the many worlds that are the natural outgrowth of the second half of Goats run, it’s coming back. It’s not back just yet, though, so a trip to the Wayback Machine is in order.

The “ten years ago” that Rosenberg mentioned in his tweet was the start of a storyline that introduced a new character that caused the old Goats storylines of beer, silly mayhem, and more beer, to transmogrify into something resembling vaguely-firmish sci-fi, rooted in various many-worlds hypotheses and imminent apocalyptic crunchtimes². A few strips later, Rosenberg introduced such cartoon fancies as color and backgrounds, and a creative swtich closed and he piled weirdness upon weirdness at a rapid pace for a good six and a half years.

Like many artists, Rosenberg is filled with self-loathing, particularly as regarding his own older work; from personal experience, this extends on a sliding scale to about 18 months ago — anything more recent than that is okay, and anything before is utter shit. Thus, I’m not surprised that if you click around a little on the new placeholder page, you’ll find a redrawn version of that ten-years-ago strip which is lookin’ mighty fine³. That generalized dislike of older work also means that I don’t hold out hope that the first six and a half years of Goats will be his first priority. For those wishing a refresher on the early strips, knock yourself out.

• Speaking of websites, the troubles over at Sinfest persisted at various times from about the 30th of October to this morning (at times, even the forums, which had provided a path to comics when the main site was buggered, were unavailable; it appears to be back at the present time, but on the off chance it runs into difficulty again, people have reported good outcomes by browsing to http://143.95.95.99/~sinfest/.
• There’s a nice meditation on one of the advantages of webcomics from Dave Kellett today over at Sheldon:
  

  The single greatest thing I love about webcomics is that you’re not wed to one format, one way of doing things, or one style of communication. So, for example, Sheldon has had lovely character arcs, fun adventure arcs, pokes at literature or pop culture, non sequitorial children’s literature, fake magazines, nods to pre-War comic strips, post-war industrial films, and the surreal.

  Or, as we see today, editorial cartooning. Editorial cartooning that doesn’t require every element of the page to be labeled, even.

• Might be burying the lede a little, but I often put the big news item at the end of the update, so deal with it. News comes to me from the good folks at :01 Books that they’ve locked in Faith Erin Hicks for a three-part graphic novel series, which is good news for everybody that likes good comics.

  The Nameless City will center around the children of conquerors and conquered, looking to reconcile their lives with each other’s culture, and (because you gotta have an overarching obstacle if you’re gonna have a trilogy) foil a conspiracy that threatens all. It’s not going to be out until 2016, so look for serialization to start on the :01 website in two, two and a half years.

  Oh, yeah, and it looks gorgeous. Years in advance, I’m calling it: these books will be must-buys.

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¹ Here’s that disclaimer: I am an internet opnionmonger pretty much entirely because of Jon Rosenberg, who also owns my soul. He gave Fleen its name and domain, has for intervals provided hosting, and has provided more help than I can recount. Keep all of that in mind as you read anything I write about him so nobody feels like I’m trying to pull a fast one, ‘kay?

² The original plan would have tied things into the Mayan Calendrical Endtimes of Aught-Twelve, but other priorities presented themselves.

³ And, since I started writing, more strips have joined it.

Kickstarter is not a free money machine. It’s an opportunity machine. You still have to sell your product.

I get a lot of emails with a lot of questions that can be answered simply with those three sentences. — David Malki !

Look at that, opening up with a pithy, intriguing quote just like some fancy writer guy. It doesn’t hurt that David Malki ! managed to sum up the state of Kickstarter, how many people perceive it, and why some succeed in their campaigns while others crash and burn and get mad at everybody but themselves. It’s as concise a declaration of perception vs reality as ever I’ve seen.

• Since we’re talking about Kickstarter, this would be a good time to point out that a campaign I figured would fund out in about six hours is still chugging away towards goal, but maybe not the massive overfunding success I would have anticipated. I speak, naturally, of the Bee and PuppyCat series (as of this writing, sitting at 73% of goal with just under two weeks to go). Surprising, especially given that the stretch goals mean more episodes.

  Not that B&P will fail to fund out, or that the series will fail to delight, or that the mentioned-almost-in-passing-in-the-pitch B&P comic book series will fail to attract the cream of indy comics. Yep, it’s all officially announced now. It’ll be by BOOM, of course, joining B&P creator Natasha Allegri’ Adventure Time: Fionna & Cake mini, and other animated-show tie-ins by the likes of Yuko & Ananth, Meredith Gran, Ryan North, Shelli Paroline, Braden Lamb, Joey Comeau, Mike Holmes, and Danielle Corsetto.

• As long as we’re on Kickstarters, there’s a new one that caught my eye today: Pat Race’s Alaska Robotics is more than just a webcomic; it’s a comic shop, an art/exhibition gallery, a bring-interesting-and-creative-folks-to-town enterprise, and more. And now, it’ll be a satirical series of short films covering the 2014 session of the Alaska state legislature.

  They’ve already reached their (very modest US$3000 ) initial goal, and are well on their way to reaching their (modest by dollar figures, ambitious in terms of what they want to accomplish) stretch goals. Something tells me that the representatives of the people of Alaska may come to fear the attentions of Pat Race et. al. as much as national politicians fear the attentions of The Rev. Sir Doctor Stephen Tyrone Mos Def Colbert, D.F.A., Heavyweight Champion of the World? featuring Flo Rida.

• Speaking of short films and stretching yourself creatively, mad woodworking genius and inventor of the self-photobomb Chris Yates is doing just that. Today marks the end of photo-webcomic Reprographics and the start of Yates’s next creative outlet: Nothing But Flowers, a webseries of short films from now until he’s either conquered the world or decided to conquer another medium of expression.

  The first two NBF episodes are live now, one featuring retro videogames and puppets and the second featuring Yates at his most physically expressive¹. Judging from the images in the last Repgrographics, Yates is collaborating with some of his webcomics cohorts and maybe a ninja, and that can only lead to the best kind of madness. New episodes will go up on Fridays, so drop by the site or the YouTube channel and check ’em out.

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¹ Anybody that’s ever noted his extreme emoting in photos, just imagine what he can do with full motion and audio.

Happy Halloween, kids! Try not to rot your teeth out by the weekend.

• November is shaping up to be a momentous month, as it’s finally been announced when Jeff Smith’s new webcomic will be launching. As previously noted, Tüki Save The Humans [that link may just be a placeholder; we’ll all find out together in a couple of weeks] will be about the first human to leave Africa for the wider world, and it’s been in the planning stages for a very long time (Smith’s wife and publisher, Vijaya Iyer, was dropping hints as long ago as SDCC 2012). Working in a share-first, print-later model will be a big change for Smith, and his shift to the webcomic model will represent perhaps the biggest name in dead-tree comics to take a flyer on our weird little community.

  In any event, Tüki will be unveiled in a 10 November brunch at the Society of Illustrators in New York, as a benefit for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (Smith has been a long-time supporter of the Fund), which you can attend in exchange for a donation to the CBLDF. You’ve got US$100 general admission tickets (US$40 of which is tax deductible), and for those that want to get up close and in-person with Smith, there’s the US$250 VIP ticket (US$190 deductible). Drat and darn, about the time the program starts at noon I’ll be at the airport getting ready to depart for Wildest Iowa for work, or I would most likely be there, because Jeff’s great, the Society is great, the CBLDF is great, and I have a feeling that Tüki is going to be great as well.

• For those that can’t be in New York on the tenth, how about Pittsburgh on the ninth? The Toonseum will be holding a memorial service for Lou Scheimer, the recently-departed animation impresario and co-founder of Filmation. For those that were too young to catch Filmation in its heyday on Saturday mornings, or perhaps after school, the animation was basic, limited, featured a lot of re-used stock footage, and was pretty often in the service of not particularly great shows.

  He also made sure that Filmation’s work was never sent overseas and was a major contributor to keeping animation jobs and skills in America. There’s a lot of animators today that grew up watching Filmation’s various shows, and they’ve been the teachers and inspirations of at least one more generation. Scheimer was a Pittsburgh native, as well as a supporter and booster of The Toonseum, where a gallery is named in his honor. The memorial is open to the public, and will run from 7:00pm to 9:00pm.

• On the off chance that you’re having trouble keeping track of all these dates, can I suggest you invest in a webcomic-themed calendar? Okay, the offerings from Jorge Cham and Brad Guigar might only start in January, 2014 … but if you’d bought one last year, you’d have someplace to note your Pittsburgh or New York comics-themed events right now, wouldn’t you? Don’t let that happen to you next year.

All Hallows’ Eve approaches, and comics are well into the spirit. You can choose from disturbing with a funny undercurrent or just damn disturbing; make your heart stout and fear the darkness as little as you can manage.

• First up, Strip Search runner-up Abby Howard will be giving us Halloween all year long with the ongoing, longform The Last Halloween, but today’s fourth installment is where things get seriously spooky. The world is coming apart, respected author/punter/pundit Chris Kluwe meets his end, and Mona must deal with crappy candy and no TV. It’s a perfect treading of the line between seriously scary and hilarious, and it’s only going to get scarier and hilariouser¹ from here.
• Nextly, Emily Carroll may have actually met the Devil at a crossroads and asked for the ability to see into souls to discover what is more than terrifying, but disturbing on an existential level, and then to portray those disturbances in moody, atmospheric, fuzzy visuals. Not fuzzy in sense of low resolution², but fuzzy in the sense of a dream half-remembered, or a dream so real that as it fades it feels like something you know is true is fading away and taking a part of you with it. She taps deep into the primitive part of the brain, the part that knows that there are men of bad intent and worse in the dark, the part that knows that in the places away from the purifying sun, other laws hold, will you or no.

  Carroll’s latest is possibly her most disturbing yet, a slow descent into possibly madness (or possibly perfect clarity) tinged with body horror. Somewhere, around the corner from a crossroads, the Devil is carefully reading his copy of a contract looking for an exit clause and hoping against hope that Carroll never decides to portray what would scare the ruler of Hell.

• Lastly, Randy Milholland’s series The Last Trick-or-Treaters (found in the Rhymes With Witch archives) has seen nearly 30 watercolor paintings presented at Halloweentime each year since 2011. Some are … I don’t know if I want to say lighthearted, but at least the menace was inverted or muted, or carried a sense of deserved comeuppance. Some have highlighted bravery and loyalty in the face of the unspeakable. But the latest set have ramped up the sense of innocents seduced into malevolence, and they are his best so far. Milholland’s made some mention of plans to collect TLT-o-T in print so keep your eyes open for that.

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¹ Shut up, it is too a word.

² And certainly not in the sense of the adorable little kitties and puppies with their fuzzy ears and OMG SO ADORBS. Those kitties and puppies still rule, though.

Sometimes that’s good, sometimes less so. Let’s take ’em as I found ’em, shall we?

• First up, The Verge describes itself as covering
  

  the intersection of technology, science, art, and culture. Its mission is to offer in-depth reporting and long-form feature stories, breaking news coverage, product information, and community content in a unified and cohesive manner.

  So there’s a bit of pop culture there at the edges, but it’s not the focus. Which is why I was happily surprised to see a fairly comprehensive summary of Achewood, with a particular focus on the recently shopped-around TV series, along with an update of what creator Chris Onstad is up to these days (short version: refining the pitch for round two of trying to get somebody interested). I’m with author of the piece, Adrianne Jeffries, in my puzzlement at the lack of grabbed-up status for an Achewood show. I’m not sure which metric is used to quantify the “top five cable networks” that all took a pass, but I’d have to believe that somebody at [Adult Swim] would be smart enough to snag at least a pilot commitment. Like Ms Jeffries, I await Achewood’s eventual triumph.

• The National Wildlife Federation is the largest private nonprofit organization to focus on conservation education and advocacy, unless I miss my guess; generations of American kids grew up reading NWF’s Ranger Rick magazine, and they’ve got more magazines pitched at older and younger age ranges, along with a mountain of multimedia and broadcast programming. They’re a big deal, and their blog collection is pretty comprehensive in its scope and coverage.

  Yesterday, this Official Big Deal in the world of Nature took some time to talk to webcomics own naturalist, Rosemary Mosco, about her nature-oriented comics, her favorite wildlife environs (bogs and fens), and included some of her best work in the piece. I expect to see a lot more Parts of the Bird and Animals with Misleading Names prints out “in the wild”; now if only we could get some prints of If You Find A Baby Songbird Out Of The Nest into our nation’s schools, kids would be able to help said birds and also be safer from raptor attack. I call that a win-win.

• It’s irregular as all hell (which, let’s be honest, is part of its charm), but Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half is also one of the most straight-to-the-truth-of-the-matter acts of comics ever. Brosh spoke to Mother Jones magazine (the current newstand issue, no less) about her upbringing her, now widely-publicized struggle with depression, and — oh yeah — her new book which releases today. I have feeds for HaaH, I follow Brosh on Twitter, and I entirely missed any hint that Brosh was was compiling and expanding her comics into print form:
  

  This full-color, beautifully illustrated edition features more than fifty percent new content, with ten never-before-seen essays and one wholly revised and expanded piece as well as classics from the website like, “The God of Cake,” “Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving,” and her astonishing, “Adventures in Depression,” and “Depression Part Two”.

  Fifty. Percent. New. Allie Brosh. All at once. Oh, hell yes. I’m gonna just go right ahead and tell you to buy this one sight-unseen.

• Not that outside attention is always good; IP churn-factory/possible fraudulent enterprise Platinum (no link because screw those guys; go read what Heidi Mac has to say about the state of their corporate governance back at the start of the year) got a bad reputation in webcomics circles back in the old days of Aught-Six and Aught-Seven, but their influence persists to the present day, as Megan Rosalarian Gedris can sadly attest:
  

  Right now, Lesbian Pirates From Outer Space is one of the comics Platinum is most proud of. They can show it off to investors as a success that they created, despite not doing a thing with the property except for one small print run 6 years ago. I have not seen a dime from them since 2007. Once the initial 6 issues they commissioned were over in 07, I was “allowed” to keep working on the series, which I did because I enjoyed the characters, but I received no payment. I received no support in any other capacity. I built the comic up by myself and with some gracious help from Hiveworks. Platinum Studios did nothing but hold it back. I had plans for a 4th and 5th arc of the comic, but ended the series this past January when I realized things with Platinum would never get better and as much as I loved these characters, I was being taken advantage of by continuing the series.

  So I have to take it off the internet. I won’t let my work be used to boost the reputation of this slimy company even a little bit. I’d rather see it disappear.

  There’s no good outcome here for Gedris; she’ll see the work of years disappear down the memory hole and likely won’t even have the satisfaction of inconveniencing Platinum (they’ve tied up the rights to so many different IPs, they likely won’t notice one that goes away). The only good comes from the possibility of an object lesson for younger creators, and not one that relates solely to Platinum … there are a lot of people out there that would love to take advantage of you. So let’s go over the key points again:

  1. Contracts offered are starting points, not ending points.
  2. It’s okay to grant a limited license to develop a specific project with clear terms describing rights reversion; it’s not okay for somebody else to say And that’s why we own your entire idea now.
  3. It is not a once-in-a-lifetime chance you have to snag right this very minute; if your work is good, there will be other offers.
  4. Never forget the immortal words of Scott Kurtz: Hire a lawyer. Hire a lawyer. Hire a lawyer.¹ Repeat as many times as it takes to get the idea thoroughly ingrained in your skull.

  Got it? Good. Now pay it forward and make sure everybody else knows these lessons as well.

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¹ Said lawyer’s hotness or Jewishness is up to you.

The spam filter is getting far less of a workout ever since I set topics more than 30 days old to be locked; if perchance you come across an old post that you really want to comment on, drop me a line¹ and I’ll see what I can do.

In one of those perfect storm confluences of independent forces², a bunch of projects launched today:

• If you’re a Maki Naro Kickstarter backer, you now have access to Sufficiently Remarkable; everybody else will get to see the deal in four weeks.
• If you’re a Brad Guigar Kickstarter backer, you now have access to the first of his Webcomics Movers And Shakers interview podcasts, this one with Webcomics Impressario At Large George Rohac; everybody else will get access to the recording at some point in the future.
• No backer requirements this time; sometime today the long-awaited, Strip Search-wining Camp Weedonwantcha by the irrepressible Katie Rice will go live. Hooray!
• Adding yet another a tip to the proverbial iceberg, Ryan Estrada announced that in addition to all the comics he does, all the comics done by others that he publishes, all the work in exposing the lie that is the promise of exposure in lieu of payment, the adventure videos, live stagings of Choose Your Own Hamlet, and just generally living in a foreign land (whose non-Roman script he’s taught a squajillion people how to read), he is now the non-union Korean equivalent of Ira Glass:
  

  Super exciting news! I’m now the host of People & Places, a short weekly radio show on Busan eFM!

  I knew all that podcasting experience would amount to something! I pitched and developed it myself, and the goal is to make it the Busan, South Korea equivalent of This American Life, filled with stories that make the audience laugh, cry, think or swear. My first episode airs wednesday morning, during drive time!

  You know, in his copious free time.

• If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that Estrada had a time machine and had gone back in time after having thoroughly internalized John Allison’s just-released contribution at 10 Rules for Drawing Comics, especially #5:
  

  Allow yourself to be bored. There are a million ways to distract yourself today. Turn your phone off when you go out, give yourself time to let your mind wander. That’s when a lot of the best work gets done. Computer games aren’t productive. Checking Twitter/email/Tumblr every three minutes to see if anything has happened isn’t productive. It’s counter-productive. You’re wasting your limited lifespan.

  Not the “being bored” part (I don’t think Estrada is biologically capable of it), but the sense of doing lots of different things, so that creativity doesn’t get clogged up. While we’re on the topic, you should take a few minutes and read all the other entries at 10 Rules, especially considering there’s only ten entries so far.

• Finally, not sure how I missed it last week, but the episode of Bullseye that features the very funny and fascinating Nick Offerman also has a really nice discussion with Brandon Bird about The Day He Became An Artist (Bird starts at about the 42 minute mark ).

  Bird’s out visiting Sears stores at the moment or I’m sure he’d have more to say about it; probably the least surprising aspect of this whole bit is that Bird and Bullseye host Jesse Thorn know each other from college. Creative, interesting people just seem to eventually overlap, circles of friends merging with ever-broader circles of friends, to the point that it would be weird if two people from completely different communities didn’t know each other.

  Anyway, it’s a really good listen, and you will likely enjoy it.

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¹ That would be at gary who maintains a point of contact at this here website, which exists in the dot-com TLD.

² And you do not need to remind me that a year ago, we were staring down the barrel of Superstorm Sandy, which took some time to return from. I got off far luckier than many (and everybody’s circumstances were unique), but I’m still taking a moment on the eve to send good thoughts to those that are still rebuilding their homes, businesses, and lives.

It’s just like squirrels; if you see one, there’s probably others lurking around.

• Congratulations to Darren J Gendron, creator of many webcomics and webcomics-adjacent projects, who reports this morning:
  

  As of 6:32 a.m., we have the arrival of one Montgomery Ironwill Gendron, weighing 6 pounds, 15 ounces. Mommy and Monty are doing fine.

  Those clicking on the link will find that this time that photo is of a cleaned-up and suitable for the Amiden Great-Aunt baby, so that’s good. Also, if Young Master Gendron’s middle name actually is Ironwill, that is totally badass¹; considering that Monty’s big brother is named Franklin Powers Gendron, there’s an excellent chance of badassery.

  Also, Jesse Thorn² tweeted a little while ago:

  Oscar Thorn was born this morning at 3:45. He and @TheresaThorn are healthy and beautiful and amazing.

  Considering that the Thorns are west coasters, that would be about fifteen minutes after Ironwill entered the world. One is forced to conclude two things:

  1. Man, Jesse really didn’t want to get a dog.
  2. These babies are coming closer and closer together; the (last we saw) tremendously preggers Rene Engström has probably had five babies as a result of all this prompting.
• Know who’s had a lot of overlap with Jesse and Theresa Thorn, particularly vis-à-vis multiple iterations of MaxFunCon? David Malki !. Despite being busier than twelve ordinary humans trying to determine the optimal delivery method of the Machine of Death game, he also ends up with ideas that must be dealt with immediately.

  Let’s be clear, that beard-related idea occurred yesterday; the shirt is available for order today. And for the process nerds among you, Malki ! has shared a very nice writeup of how the design was constructed, possibly as an excuse to talk about a favorite (free) design tool.

• How do you know you’ve arrived? Make a ridiculously implausible comic, then hours later have the premise confirmed by the frighteningly smart and capable people you’re spoofing. Mr Weinersmith, I believe that Stockholm is on the line with news of your Nobel.

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¹ Not to mention unlikely to be duplicated once he ends up in class with all the Jadens and Jaydens and Jaedons.

² He doesn’t do a webcomic, but the Maximum Fun empire is a client of Mr I Am Made of Poison, and he has followed the independent creator give it away/monetize the back end model for years, so he counts.

Pretty much good news across the board today, in fact.

• Word comes from New England today, that Paul Southworth (late of Ugly Hill, currently of Not Invented Here) is part of a special event that one might choose to remember every 24th of October for the forseeable future:
  

  ITS A GIRL! Eloise Karin Southworth is 8lbs 5oz and everyone is doing great! http://instagram.com/p/f2l3CNp3tM/

  Those clicking on the link should be aware that it features an alive human child moments after its emergence into the world, and not looking like the angelic baby with the beatifically-reposed mother that might feature in the birth announcement you send to your maiden great-aunt. There’s vernix¹, and a full-throated protest at being dragged into a noisy, bright, cold world, and it looks like a lot of wriggling and pinking-up and you know what? She’s gorgeous. Congrats to Eloise, her two big brothers, mom and dad, and sincere hopes that every day just gets better for them all.²

• One of the things that Chris Hastings mentioned as an upcoming project during his NYCC panel was a Dr McNinja-themed card game. It was all designed, he had a prototype at home, and everybody that came to visit got to play it and nobody said it was less than lots of fun. The Kickstarter would be starting in the near future.

  In this case, “near future” meant yesterday, and it (that is to say, Dr McNinja’s Legendary Showdown) is already funded. What I found most interesting about DMLS (I’m afraid that it simply demands boldfacing) is the first stretch goal of the campaign, which is not based on a dollar figure, but on backer involvement.

  In case you can’t read that image up top, it says:

  2,500 Facebook shares or #LegendaryShowdown tweets
  NEW CHARACTER CARD

  I don’t recall at the moment another campaign tying content to the breadth of discussion of the project in question; it’s a damn clever idea, since that many tweets and shares puts the game in front of more potential backers. I’ll be watching this one very carefully. If I could make one suggestion to the project runners at Killer Robot Games³, maybe they want to also count Kicktraq shares? Just spitballing here.

• Not new, per se, but still good news — per the comments on yesterday’s post, Sinfest is having website issues, but Tatsuya Ishida is posting updates on the forums (yesterday, today). Hopefully the main page will sort itself out soon, but in the meantime, there’s still comics and that’s all right.

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¹ Look it up.

² Although if Southworth is good at his job as father, today will mark the last time his daughter is naked on the internet.

³ Couldn’t find a website for them, on account of the words “killer robot” spawn a lot of matches in Google.