I’m not sure what was more unusual — that the closest thing I have to a home-town convention got covered (due to Work and Family circumstances) in about half of a Saturday, or that the Javits Center’s renovations have cleared off the main show floor to the extent that such was possible for me to do.

Having learned my lesson last year re: the impossibility of swimming against the tide to Artists Alley, I arrived good and early on Saturday morning, my press badge in hand and my Twitter account credentials resolutely un-registered. Early enough, in fact, that the possible chokepoints where you had to physically touch your badge to a reader to enter or exit the grounds weren’t very chokepointy at all, but I wasn’t entering or exiting with large swells of people.

• A few minutes after 10 they let us into Artists Alley were I immediately made my way to the table of Scott C. to purchase the second Great Showdowns collection¹, which came with an amazing sketch of Mr The Frog and an amusing story as to why Mr C. always thinks of me as Doug.
• A short while later I was making the acquaintance of Maki Naro, Strip Search veteran and PopSci cartoonist without portfolio. This was a casual visit rather than a formal interview, and so I can tell you that Naro’s got some good-looking stuff ready to drop in the near term, and I’ll be talking more about that once it does. For now, I’ll merely say that his beard was as magnificent as I suspected. Also, his Hippie Love Commune compatriot, Mackenzie Schubert, was busy with somebody every time Naro and I had a conversational lull until such time as I had to leave the AA floor, so I apologize that I didn’t get a chance to talk with him also. Next time!
• I was initially disappointed that the redoubtable Jim Zub wasn’t at his AA table, but on a hunch I dropped into the orbit of the ShiftyLook booth, waiting for an on-stage interview. I believe I mentioned previously that the forthcoming Samurai Jack comic by Zub looks great, and I shared this opinion with him; he replied with some good news: the five-issue mini has already been extended to a ten-issue run. So when Jack launches later this month, do me a personal solid and buy it, and keep buying it, because good numbers at the start of the run could be what convinces IDW to change things to “ongoing” status.

  Before leaving, I mentioned to Zub that more than anybody else I know in web-/creator owned-/freelance comics, he’s succeeded in making himself the brand, as opposed to any particular project he works on. People that have never heard of Skullkickers will read Samurai Jack, others will read his Lil’ Red Sonja oneshot, or Makeshift Miracle, of ShiftyLook projects … a lot of them will take a leap of faith and try out one of his different projects because he’s done such a good job at transferring fan interests from one to another. Hold that thought, it’ll be recurring.

• Moving a few aisles over to the BOOM! booth, I ran into Yuko Ota and Ananth Panagariya, waiting to start their signing for Adventure Time: Candy Capers. Speaking of creator-as-brand — they’ve moved from autobio into licensed work-for-hire, as well as original graphic novels (like Lucky Penny, serializing now at JW), along with other projects. It’s not easy to move from such close association with a project that is literally about your own life into being well-regarded in lots of different spheres, but they’re well on their way.

  They didn’t even mention at the time (because it wouldn’t be announced for a few more hours) their involvement on the NAMCO High game (previously mentioned with respect to the involvement of Andrew Hussie back in San Diego). Because that announcement? Involves a significant chunk of webcomics. Hussie is now identified as Creative Director, Panagariya as Head Writer, with a writer’s room including Magnolia Porter and Brian Clevinger, and character design/animations from Ota, R Stevens, JN Wiedle, Ashley Davis, and Geneva Hodgson, with more contributors to be revealed. Kudos to Ota and Panagariya for keeping to the terms of the NDA, and congrats to everybody else for getting to work with so many creative people at once².

• This is getting a bit long, so I’ll bring you the fun quotes from the Kate Beaton, Chris Hastings, and Ryan North panel on life Beyond the Webcomic tomorrow, but I will leave you with one choice bit now. Beaton has projects she’s working on, so many that she can’t talk about, but she announced one of them at the panel: a 32 page illustrated children’s book for Scholastic, featuring a certain pony that you may recognize; in fact, the panel was the very earliest that Beaton could announce the deal, as her agent (Seth Fishman, who moderated) handed her the contract to sign as she was sharing the news. That’s what you call immediacy in the internet age.

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¹ Bonus fun: this book contains the Showdown from The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, which hangs on my wall.

² I wasn’t going to get NAMCO High, but if Magnolia Porter is writing character/dialog for high school students? I’m there.

Sometimes things happen quickly. Time from noted SF author John Scalzi tweeting about being referred to as a mangina to noted fantasy author Seanan McGuire deciding that sounds more like a kaiju than an insult: 2 minutes. Time from that to noted SF author/webcomicker Howard Tayler¹ to throw a little fuel on the fire of there needing to be a mangina kaiju illustration: 8 minutes. Time from that to noted webcomicker and thriller/pulp author K Brooke “Otter” Spangler² to take up the stylus and get to artin’: 2 minutes.

And a mere 69³ minutes later (which included research), the kaiju in question was unleashed on an unsuspecting world. From offhand complaint to brain-melting horror: 81 minutes. Not to mention Tayler’s later upping of the ante (complete with robo-tighty-whities), and a short while ago the unveiling of the inevitable battle between the two by webcomicker Kasey Gibbs. We live in a weird, weird world, my friends.

• Hey, you know how Godzilla — or Gojira, if you prefer — was the first of the kaiju, and how he’s basically a great big dinosaur? Okay, radioactive and otherwise informed by movie logic but a dinosaur nonetheless. Dinosaurs have power, and dinosaurs don’t have to do what parents and teachers say, and this is a fundamental truth that every child knows.

  None moreso that Allie Brosh who has illustrated to great effect exactly what happens when you let a child become a dinosaur and it escalates to an entirely out-of-control state with awesome and fearful speed. What I love about Brosh’s (too infrequent, but I’ll gladly take what I can get) missives on childhood is how truthfully they capture the state of being a child; children can be little sociopaths (in the clinical sense of the word) and she doesn’t shy from that fact.

• Coming soon! Katie Rice announced a start date for her Strip Search-winning new webcomic, Camp Weedonwantcha, on Monday 28 October.
• Not to be outdone, fellow Strip Search finalist Abby Howard has already released the first two installments of The Last Halloween to Kickstarter backers (no, I’m not sharing my link with you, that’s what you get for not backing when you had the chance), which were described as “three weeks early”, so we should be getting the launch of TLH in a week.
• Also not to be outdone, final Strip Search finalist Maki Naro is dropping hints that his new webcomic, Sufficiently Remarkable, is gettin’ close. If I were a betting man, I’d bet that when I track Mr Naro down in the NYCC Artists Alley next weekend, we will have some SuRe to discuss (and since he’ll be sitting next to Ms Rice, I’m certain that CW will also come up). Also please note that I am not a betting man. In any event, this month will most likely go down in history as The Great Strip Search Launchening Of October Aught-Thirteen, yaaaay.

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¹ My evil twin.

² Disclaimer: a personal friend, and curiously the only one mentioned so far without at least one Hugo Award; get on that, Hugo nominating committee!

³ It’s a coincidence, grow up.

So the floor plan for NYCC 2013 is out and do you see what I see? Or rather, what I don’t see? The hazardous-to-life-and-sanity construction zone running east-west through the Javits Center is gone, praise be to whatever you find praiseworthy¹. That means that we can tell you who is webcomics-like that’s gonna be there, and where you can find ’em. As in past years, the people that you’re going to want to see are in several clusters, including Artists Alley, and aisles 900, 1300, 1600, and 2200. Also, there’s a couple of gonzo you’ve got to be kidding booth choices way the heck over in the 300-400 zone that I’m including for giggles. Let’s check ’em out.

Artists Alley
As was the case last year, Artists Alley is in the North Pavilion of the Javits, accessible via a roughly two block long passageway from the north end of the main convention center. It is my most sincere wish that the showrunners have learned how to funnel people into and out of the convention center without making it impossible to navigate to the North Pavilion². Unfortunately, the AA map requires a zoom of 650%+ to get to the point of legible table numbers, so I won’t be marking those up the diagram. Nevertheless you may here find Ramón Pérez (K10), Jim Zub & Edwin Huang (H6), Katie Cook (C10), and Strip Search hippie love commune survivors Katie Rice, Maki Naro, and Mackenzie Schubert (V5, V6, V7). Also, plentiful ATMs and natural light, yay.

Main Floor
Since we were just in the North Pavilion, let’s start from the north, high-numbered end of the main show floor (on the right side of the image) and progress southward.

The 2200 Aisle is our first cluster of interest, where we’ll find comic strip publisher Andrews McMeel (booth 2219), occasional show home of Matthew Inman. A little deeper into the hall and you’ll get :01 Books (booth 2237), Blind Ferret (booth 2246), and Cyanide & Happiness (booth 2247). For those playing at home, that’s two high-traffic booths directly across the from each other; fortunately, they’re also on a main travel aisle.

Continuing south, there’s a quick jog to the front of the hall for ShiftyLook (booth 1620), which is probably your best show of catching up with random webcomickers who aren’t at their own booths or tables. Three aisles over, you can find Boom! Studios (another possible place to find random webcomickers, at booth 1344), and 1977 The Comic creator Byron Wilkins (booth 1367).

A few more aisles along, you’ll get The First Law Of Mad Science (booth 972) close by the deserving-of-your-support Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (booth 965). A bit thin on webcomickers this year, I’ll grant, offset somewhat by the largest contingent of webcomickers as invited guests of the show that I can recall.

Oh, and for anybody looking to get away from comics entirely, keep heading south until you hit the 300-400 zone and there you will find both Brooklyn Bewery (booth 427), which I sorta get as there is a panel on comics and beer on Friday, and the Embassy of Spain Trade Commission (booth 341), which I don’t get at all. But I am going to go and ask why the Spanish love comics.

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¹ I’m chuckin’ around praise today like it’s going out of style.

² Or perhaps I should say dangerous, to the point that I never made it there last year, despite hearing that it was very nice.

A couple of things happened that people have been kind enough to email me about, and I figure I could share those with you. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? Sure it would.

• The accolades keep rolling in for Gene Luen Yang’s Boxers and Saints, which has been included in consideration for the National Book Award (where it is the only graphic novel this year). This is the longlist, the finalists have yet to be determined, but Yang’s got a proven track record, considering that American Born Chinese was an NBA finalist in 2006. Not only that, but if my search skills are correct, ABCwas the last graphic novel to get an NBA nod, and Mr Yang also appears to be the only repeat nominee in the Young Adult category in that time. Interesting.
• New York Comic Con is fast approaching and I’ll be keeping an eye on webcomicky goings-on from the show floor again this year; programming has appeared on the NYCC website, with all four days populated as of this writing. As usual, watch out for last-minute changes, and as others have noted, there are some interesting scheduling conflicts:
  

  @NY_Comic_Con has programmed @KodanshaUSA‘s panel against @shonenjump‘s, & the @FUNimation+Kodansha panel against @yenpress. Nice.

  And the Funimation and Vertical panels are also at the same time! Yay!

  I’ll do a thorough schedule-trawl and let you know what happens in webcomics world on the floor; if nothing else, you can meet/greet Maki Naro, Katie Rice, and Mac Schubert of Strip Search in the Artists Alley, as a result of having won reward challenge #4.

• Speaking of big-city cons, Pittsburgh Comic Con kicks off a week from Friday, and you know who will be there, at the booth of Official Fleen-Approved Cool Place The Toonseum? Caroll Spinney. If you don’t recognize that name, perhaps you recognize his work in the personages of Mr Bird or Mr The Grouch? It’s Pittsburgh for crying out loud, the hometown of Mr Rogers, so take a cue from him and do the neighborly thing: if you’re at PCC, drop by the Toonseum booth and thank Spinney for his contributions to the world. If you don’t, I’m not mad, but I will be disappointed in you.
• Speaking of museums and the weekend of the 28th, the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco will be participating in the Smithsonian magazine’s ninth annual Museum Day Live event:
  

  The Smithsonian magazine Museum Day is a nationwide event and offers free admission to any visitor and one guest with a Museum Day Live! Ticket to a participating museum or cultural institution.

  Inclusive by design, the event represents Smithsonian’s commitment to make learning and the spread of knowledge accessible to everyone, giving museums across all 50 states the opportunity to emulate the admission policy of the Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C. Last year’s event drew over 400,000 participants, and this year’s event expects record-high participation.

  The Museum Day Live! Ticket is available to download now at Smithsonian.com/museumday. Visitors who present the Museum Day Live! Ticket will gain free entrance for themselves and one guest at participating venues for one day only.

  For those that don’t happen to be in San Francisco on the 28th, there will be plenty of other venues participating, so grab your tickets now (one per household, per email address, more information on the tickets page).

This was supposed to be a day of catching up on things, and instead it’s a day of nursing a spine that’s determined to insist that it is the boss of me. Ow. Let’s see what some young’uns with presumably good backs are up to.

• As previously noted, it was a weekend with several important cons, at least of one — PAX Prime — which is still going on. As anticipated last week, word came regarding the new artist of The Trenches, and it turns out to be Strip Search alumna Monica Ray¹; congrats to Dan Stefanidis who emailed me on Tuesday with a guess that the line weights and color palette reminded him of Ms Ray’s work.

  Continuing their habit of throwing projects to people who don’t end up working in-house (cf: the Penny Arcade Personality Pins, as drawn by Tavis Maiden, whose Kickstarter is down to its final two days), not only will Monica Ray be drawing The Trenches, she’ll find fellow Artist Ty Halley on writing duties.

  Given the trend in the ten weeks or so since Katie Rice was declared the winner², it appears that nobody lost that first season, except those of us who were looking forward to the traps. Certainly not audience- and crew-favorite Cool Guy “Nick” Trujillo who took the opportunity of the Artist Reunion panel at PAX Prime to propose to his girlfriend and simultaneously raised the bar for all future PAX-related proposals.

  In any event, Ray, Halley and Trujillo are all disgustingly young and presumably have backs that do not give them trouble, for which they should be grateful. Also, apropos of nothing, Strip Search Artist Abby Howard, who also just moved to Seattle, should know that thanks to a sketch she did at PAX this past weekend, I finally have found an image that I think is important enough to get tattooed on my body. Oh, Robert … so dreamy.

• Know who else is young and had a good weekend? Howard Tayler, born on the 29th of February, and thus between the 11th and 12th occurrences of his birthday. Last night, he failed to break his streak of winless nominations for the Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story; he can take some solace from the fact that he is the only person to be nominated for this award every year since it was introduced in 2009³.

  Oh, and also from the Hugo that he won in the category of Best Related Work, for his part in the podcast series Writing Excuses.

  Now I’m speculating here (Tayler being my Evil Twin only gives me so much insight into his thought process), but I feel that this award might mean even more to him than Best Graphic Story; Tayler’s a pretty self-effacing guy and as much as Schlock Mercenary is where he made his bones, he’s grown to be more than a single-creation creator. He’s done both illustration and writing in the SF/gaming world, and Writing Excuses is all about providing advice and mentorship for future writers, and I just get the feeling that it’s where he might allow himself to feel a bit more pride.

  You done good, Howard; you’re the best nemesis I could hope for, and I’m thrilled that we’re not the sort of mismatched pair that annihilates each other if we come into contact. Assuming that we truly are opposites, I’m guessing that today’s discomfort means that your back is in stellar shape and I’ll let you have that one today. Tomorrow though — I’m expecting you to take your fair share of this stiffness.

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¹ Her dinosaur/rollerskates comic was possibly my favorite piece of art produced in all of Strip Search season one, and you can get an absolutely beautiful print of the comic, cleaned up and reworked for color, is available from her store and you should get it.

² And who just started her year in residency at Penny Arcade, and who has already worked on the PA Presents Project Fairway Solitaire.

³ I’m not about to do a comprehensive search of Hugo history, but this may make Tayler the only person to be nominated every year of a permanent award’s existence. While there are some other repeats in new awards — such as Best Fancast, existing for two years, featuring a number of repeat nominees, and in fact won both years by the crew of SF Squeecast — the key there is new awards. Hugo rules, as I understand them, will require a vote after three iterations to determine if these awards become permanent.

Dead water heater? Of course! Netbook bricking itself and requiring a Linux reinstall? Why not? But dammit, I’m going to tell you something today if it kills me¹.

• For starters, it’s another three-con weekend for fans of webcomics; you have your choice of stalking meeting your favorite creators at Dragon*Con² in Atlanta, WorldCon 71 in the guise of LoneStarCon3³ in San Antonio, or PAX Prime⁴ in Seattle.

  At Dragon*Con you can see possibly the most aggressive cosplayers and sexytimes atmosphere of the annual con circuit — including the obligatory kilt blowing. At WorldCon you can see the Hugo Awards — or join the live stream — where Howard Tayler will either continue or break his streak as the Susan Lucci of the Best Graphic Story category. PAX Prime will feature the first reunion of Strip Search artists since the show revealed Katie Rice as the winner.

• Assuming you need more than that, how about some hot, hot porn?
  

  Smut Peddler 2014 begins next week. Submission guidelines, invited line-up, deadline, and planned release date. Watch for it, folks.

  Countdown to quality, lady-friendly sexytimes? Starts now.

And I realize that I am tempting the metaphorical demons of fate itself by saying this, but I hope that tomorrow will be back to normal, just in time to slide into the long weekend here in the States. See you then.

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¹ It very well may kill me.

² And with con co-founder/accused child molester Ed Kramer finally going to trial — and legally separated from the legal entity that owns D*C — a shadow that has hung over the show for some years is finally lifted.

³ Who had their own kerfuffle last week, as it was noticed that they were going to be showing the largely-unseen and deeply racist Disney film, Song of the South. Questions were raised as to what context the film would be shown (it can definitely be watched in the context of an artifact of its times, with a frank acknowledgement of how poisonous much of its content is to modern eyes), as well as whether or not the film could possibly be legally licensed (Disney does not want Song to be associated with their name and has kept it locked up in the vaults for decades). In any event, con organizers nixed that idea.

⁴ The tenth consecutive PAX, for those counting.

Welcome back to Part Two of our talk with Tavis Maiden; yesterday we talked about his upcoming project, Tenko King, and how Kickstarter fit into his launch plans. Today we’ll be discussing how most people came to know him and his work, Strip Search, the nature of being around creative people, and how facial hair is critical to marital stability.

(more…)

One of the more gratifying aspects of Strip Search has been watching a pretty significant explosion of creativity from the Artists; while they surely would have continued on their individual trajectories of comic-making, that period of time when they were cooped up together in a luxury mansion and able to resonate off each other has produced a lot of interesting work, not all of it seen yet. So when Tavis Maiden offered to talk to me about his plans for his next comics project, I was happy to do so.

The back-and-forth that we had was so extensive, I’ve had to split it into two parts. Today, Maiden talks about how being a father has influenced the forthcoming Tenko King, what he wants to achieve with it, and his thoughts on Kickstarter.

(more…)

As noted last week, A Softer World launched a Kickstarter campaign and released their 999th update, leaving everybody (or at least me) wondering what Emily and Joey would cook up for strip #1000.

Wonder no more.

What initially appeared (to me, at least) as a double-size update has been growing over the past few hours:

We are updating the 1000th comic all day! It’s like a story! A whole big STORY! *passes out* PS KICKSTARTER

As of this writing, it’s eleven rows tall, and each time another strip is added the alt-text changes with it. I suspect that there may be meaning — even a parallel story — there, all those yellow pop-ups will be lost in time, like tears in rain.¹

• There’s been a foofaraw in the writerly corners of blogistan for a couple of days, as a posting credited to the VP of the Horror Writers Association (and on the HWA Los Angeles chapter blog) purported to divide the world into professional writers and — gasp! — hobbyists, and succeeded mostly in pissing off a great number of professional writers. As is often the case, I find the John Scalzi (who is not the only writer I follow that scored only 1/10 on the quiz, far below the 8/10 necessary for validation) may have put it best:
  

  Here’s the actual quiz for knowing whether you are a pro writer or not:

  1. Are you getting paid to write?

  If the answer here is “yes,” then congratulations, you’re a professional writer!

  Okay, that’s Scalzi in snippy mode; he made an even better point a bit further down:

  The problem with [HWA VP’s]² quiz is that it confuses process for end result. Her quiz is about process, and presumably her process — what she thinks is necessary for one to do in order to produce the work that create the end result of making money as a writer. But process isn’t end result, otherwise in this case I wouldn’t be a professional writer, which I clearly and obviously am.

  Confusing process and result here is not a good thing. It confuses writers who are hungry to know what “being professional” means. The things [HWA VP] describes can lead to being a pro writer, but it’s not the only path, or a guaranteed one, not by a long shot. In this respect this quiz defeats its own purpose — it offers no indication about whether one actually is a professional writer, only whether one has jumped through the process hoops that one single writer believes are important to become a pro. [emphasis original]

  This thought of process vs status has been on my mind a fair bit; I don’t think that I’m letting any cats out of any bags to say that Brad Guigar asked me to do a first read on The Webcomics Handbook³, and I find it suffused with a tone of Topic A: Okay, here’s how I do it, and this works for me; you may find a variation on this that works better, or a way that’s completely different and that’s cool. What matters is what you produce. and how few absolutes there are. Maybe Guigar should send a copy care of the HWA.

• Speaking of what you produce, readers may recall that international mystery man Eben Burgoon of Eben 07 launched a Kickstart for a side project called B-Squad back in December, one which didn’t fund very well, and was ultimately unsuccessful. Like others before him, Burgoon has opted to resubmit the B-Squad, a technique that is rarely successful.⁴

  Unlike those others before him, Burgoon is capable of learning from his mistakes: he’s redone his project scope (reducing a US$8000 goal to US$3000), tinkered with his stretch goals, and borrowed successful ideas from other projects (case in point: challenge coins). As a result, he’s much more likely to succeed the second time around.

  In a domain where success is too often assumed to be inevitable, it’s natural for Kickstart campaign owners to look towards successes as things to emulate. These might be your own previous projects (such as Bill Barnes, Paul Southworth, and Jeff Zugale funding the second Not Invented here collection), or they may rely on accumulated name recognition and goodwill (say, Tavis Maiden taking a boost from Strip Search to launch a new strip, much like his fellow Artists have done). It’s rare to see somebody adjust approaches after a stumble rather than just have a hissy fit⁵ about it. Here’s hoping that Burgoon is the start of a trend.

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¹ Rutger Hauer is the man.

² I’ve taken the name because it’s pretty obvious in the posting, and because I suspect that the VP in question is taking a fair amount of shit today for the pretty significant overreach in the original article. I just don’t feel like piling on right now, as I’m presuming that the mistake was one of execution and not intent. Should reports come about that no, the execution matched the intent that that’s actually the viewpoint being promulgated, I may reconsider this notion.

³ Spoiler alert: it’s very good.

⁴ No names, but seriously I’ve seen Kickstarts that failed to raise even ten bucks resubmitted with nothing changed expecting a different result.

⁵ Again, no names, but remember the guy whose project failed to fund and he changed the video into an obscenity-laden screed about how the world didn’t deserve his genius ideas? That was great.

One of the things that I now recall speaking with Christopher Butcher about on Friday night over copious drinks was the forthcoming plan for a dual book launch for Ryan North (and Wm Shakespeare, and you)’s new book, To Be or Not To Be, and also This Is How You Die, edited by Ryan North, Matt Bennardo and David Malki !.

My recall was prompted by the good Mr North, who announced that the then-nebulous details are now solid: The Beguiling, the world-class comic store managed by Butcher, will host the Choose Your Own Launch Party this coming Monday, 29 July, from 7:00pm to 10:00pm in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Two venues, side by side, will host the two books, and you can choose which is more worthy by your presence and participation.

On the North side of the party, you can engage in choose-your-own live readings from the book and Shakespeare rap battles! On the Malki ! side¹, you can get a completely accurate prediction of how you will die and play a game which is absolutely, positively, legally not Pictionary with MoD cards.

Kickstarts!

• We have one that’s been teased for a while from the intrepid Amy T Falcone to launch her new comic, Clique Refresh, and which — in the way of Strip Search alumni — funded out almost immediately. It’s a new trend being seen in Kickstarter, pre-funding webcomics and their content for a period of time (typically a year), and hopefully seeing content at the end of that time in print.

  I think that this leap of faith approach to webcomics can work where the creator is a known quantity with work you can see, looking to make a change in project (always a risky prospect, one that may lose you audience). In this way, it’s in contrast from a stack of failed dead-tree-floppy comics that tried to Kickstart completely unknown creators with no body of work to judge by.

  Hopefully, the latter won’t try to emulate people like Abby Howard, Maki Naro, and Ms T Falcone, because while I may (have) backed people that have given me comics and want to shift to other comics, I will likely never back somebody that promises that their very first comic will be super awesome you guys even though I’ve never written one before and I haven’t found an artist yet, trust me.

• On the more traditional approach to Kickstarting — here’s a production of something physical from material already produced — allow me to point you to Christopher Baldwin’s third (and final, sniff) volume of Spacetrawler (getting a head start on the finishing up of the strip, which is rapidly approaching), and Tom Dell’Aringa’s comprehensive omnibus, collecting the full five year run of his comic in a reworked, single-story format. If you’re going to back just one surprisingly deep comedic sci-fi webcomic collection that takes place in space, you’re screwed Bunky, because there’s two here that deserve your attention.

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¹ You have no idea how badly I want there to be a hip-hop rivalry between “northside” and “malki!side”.