A story making the rounds about possibly finding evidence of constructed objects around a distant star has already prompted a thousand SF story hooks, but only one of them is in the hands of a man not afraid to get a .horse domain. I welcome you all to: dord.horse, long may the conversation run.

In other news:

• It’s been about a year since the crowdfunding for an Android version of Comic Chameleon, the mobile webcomic integrator that a) doesn’t suck and b) isn’t a scraper because c) it’s done with the permission of the creators and thus d) pays them. I got to play with a beta version a while back (it was a different phone on a very old release of Android and had some quirks, but was basically solid), and now you can play with the official thing, because Comic Chameleon for Android drops in the Google Play store today.

  I’m really looking forward to digging in with an up to date phone and seeing how it does. Should make getting out of bed in the morning much easier. Thanks to Bernie Hou (of Alien Loves Predator, topic of one of my favorite pieces I’ve written here at Fleen) and his team for all the hard work.

• The National Book Award finalists were announced on NPR’s Morning Edition today, and I was particularly thrilled to hear one shortlist nominee in particular: Nimona not only got mentioned, but was one of the few books that came in for a full discussion from an impromptu panel.

  Unlike NPR’s Glen Weldon, I had no qualms about how it would translate from web to print, but like him and NPR’s Barrie Hardymon, I’m thrilled by its inclusion, and by the depth of Nimona’s story re: how girls get treated. Here’s hoping that Noelle Stevenson gets to give a little speech in a few weeks, and here’s hoping even more she closes with I’M A SHARK AAAAHH.

• Delilah Dirk is making her return, and she’s starting in webcomic form. In the run-up to next year’s print release, the first 90 pages will be serialized online, starting from chapter one, oh, today-ish.

  Four pages a week from Delilah Dirk and the King’s Shilling will go up until March, then we get to read the rest of the story in a glorious single chunk when we all go buy it. We’re all going to go buy it, right? Damn right we are. Tony Cliff’s lost none of his storytelling chops since the release of Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant, and now we all get to enjoy them together.

• Apropos of nothing: that time Emperor Palpatine and Sauron met to bitch about their enemies and deaths. It’s hilarious.

Spam of the day:

You’re so cute.

Damn right I am. I’m friggin’ adorable.

I like those days with lots of random things instead of one big story — it’s pretty much a promise that something in the news will appeal to you.

• I spoke to you of Ursula Vernon and the SWFA contretemps last week; there’s an aftermath that caught my eye yesterday. Namely, more Ursula Vernon arty goodness. Honestly, people that scream loudly about the moving of the tide can scream themselves silly if it means I get more Ursula Vernon drawings; I’m not sure how, but she makes chitinous, six-legged, antennaed things from the far side of the Valley of Not Like Us almost cuddly.
• I’ve mentioned, from time to time, Christopher Bird and Davinder Brar’s Al’Rashad; I like its scope, its approach to page-at-a-time storytelling, the show-don’t-tell worldbuilding, not to mention sharp writing and gorgeous art. Bird’s story feels like it’s coming into the endgame, but it’s not quite there yet; it’s a bit early to be doing post-mortems and analytic looks back, but he has taken the time to share his experiences in trying to build up readership via Project Wonderful ads. The campaign started some two weeks ago (around this page), so Bird’s got enough data to say adverts = readership bump and which were most effective.
• New Delilah Dirk story:
  

  DELILAH DIRK AND THE SEEDS OF GOOD FORTUNE: a self-contained tale of adventure, now available as a digital download! https://gum.co/dd-seeds

  Creator Tony Cliff doesn’t say in that tweet (darn those 140 character limits), but The Seeds of Good Fortune is pay what you want, noting:

  At a loss for how much to contribute? Most Marvel/DC digital comics are $0.99. The print edition of Seeds was $6.00 plus shipping. If in doubt, why not split the difference?

  That would be three and a half bucks, by the way. Pretty fair price for 36 pages.

• New Diesel Sweeties collection [no permalink]:
  

  Victory! My second Oni Press book, “Bacon is a Vegetable; Coffee is a Vitamin” is out today. I’ve got them a day early in my store. I’m doing paperbacks for just $15 this week so you can upgrade to a personalized version and still only pay normal price.*

  *Or just save money. It’s Wizard Magic.®

  Only Bacon Wizards and Coffee Warlocks are authorized to click this link. By clicking this link, you certify that you are a Bacon Wizard or Coffee Warlock under penalty of Space Law.

  Listen to the man, you do not want to run afoul of Space Law.

• New Christopher Hastings comic book:
  

  Tumblr, I wrote this comic for you.

  DEADPOOL ANNUAL #2, MAY 2014

  CHRISTOPHER HASTINGS (w) • JACOPO CAMAGNI (a)
  Cover by DAVID NAKAYAMA
  • Hang on…is that Deadpool or Spider-Man? YES.
  • Deadpool “helps out” his “friend” Spider-Man by donning his webs!
  • Think Spidey will appreciate it?
  40 PGS./ ONE-SHOT/Rated T+ …$4.99

  Hastings is fast becoming the go-to guy at Marvel for goofball characters and stories that are actually fun. Given the increasing visibility (tolerance?) for such projects at the Big M, I hope this means more work for Hastings. A lot more work, because I enjoy the crap out of it.

Catching up from the weekend yesterday means I left out a few items for space; let’s get them the attention they deserve, along with a few new things for today.

• The buzz around Buzz! is beginning to build, as the previously-mentioned original graphic novel from Ananth Panagariya (pretty words) and Tessa Stone (pretty pictures) approaches release. The spelling-bee-as-combat-sport story drops in a few weeks time, and the creators took the time to talk to Caleb Goellner at Comics Alliance about the power of words, words-as-pictures, and pictures-as-words. Good stuff.
• John Allison’s Bad Machinery has had a slow build for the past few years; a lot of fans of his previous Tackleford-set series never made the leap to the new protagonists and their mystery-solving ways, but those that have joined up in the meantime have become well attached to the wonder-teens¹. Now Publishers Weekly is getting in the love, naming the first Bad Machinery print collection to Best Books of 2013 (Children’s Fiction) list; I’d argue for an “all ages” designation rather than “children’s”², but there’s no arguing with the inclusion of The Case of the Team Spirit.
• Dean Trippe and Jim Zub get a little love from The AV Club, in the form of the latest comics review round-up, which appreciates both Something Terrible and Samurai Jack, respectively. Well done, Messers Z and T.
• Animators at Dreamworks will have another reason to appreciate their career path³, as the Stripped team head studioward for a Very Special Reason:
  

  Today, Dreamworks is having us over to screen @strippedfilm for their animators & staff, as an inspiration film. How cool is that!

  Pretty damn cool, Stripped co-director, co-producer, co-almost-everything Dave Kellett, pretty damn cool. I want to see this movie like you can hardly believe.

_______________
¹ I, for one, appreciate how Lottie, Shauna, and Mildred are the centerpiece of the story; teen boys get all the attention in much of mass media that has teens as characters.

² Especially considering the fact that Delilah Dirk and Boxers & Saints also appear on the list, which is clearly not for children qua children. It’s really a YA list at the very least.

³ Apart from I’m a professional animator which, I know every job has its challenges and sucky days, but from here that’s pretty damn magical.

Yesterday was the day that I discovered that porn starlet Tera Patrick (who is apparently a cousin by marriage to a guy I ride EMS with) is signing on the show floor. Go Team Central Jersey.

• Speaking of porn, Smut Peddler impressario Spike confirmed for me that there will be a new edition of the sexytime comics anthology next year, possibly in the spring, maybe in the summer. After that, it looks like alternating porn and not-porn anthologies, with the next not-porn project in 2015, probably on the theme of fantasy, and much like The Sleep of Reason will be restricted to no cliches: TSoR said no vampires, no werewolves, no zombies, and Untitled Fantasy Anthology will say no elves, no dwarves, no Tolkien analogs. In a decade or so of alternating anthologies, we should be able to finally quantify how much people like porn compared to other entertainments.
• Speaking of forthcoming print projects, I got to speak to Evan Dahm about his first Vattu collection, The Name and the Mark; Dahm’s happy to report that the book is at the printers, and well on the way to release in October. In fact, he’ll have a limited number of books to debut at SPX alongside his Midnight Monsters collaboration with Yuko Ota, The Exquisite Beast. SPX is a good book-buying crowd, and having debuts ought to drive a lot of commerce for Dahm, so that’s all right.
• Speaking of Yuko, she and Ananth Panagariya got a nice mention at the Adventure Time Comics panel, seeing as how their Candy Capers miniseries launched last week; BOOM! editor Shannon Watters gave us a some advance details of the next couple of issues, as Peppermint Butler pairs up characters as the new heroes of the Candy Kingdom in Finn & Jake’s absence. The next issue will feature Tree Trunks and Marceline as partners, and the issue after that will partner up Lumpy Space Princess (!) and Lemongrab (!!).

  The bulk of the panel was a discussion of the creative process of Braden Lamb, Shellie Paroline, Ryan North, and Meredith Gran, their approaches to all-ages comics, and their best jobs at doing the voices in live readings. North, Paroline, and Lamb were of course fresh off their Eisner win, so it’s no surprise that in a room that allowed 500, there were few empty seats, and the audience was predominantly there for the current panel, not squatting in the room for some later panel; the wealth of cosplay (especially on younger kids) was proof of this.

  Watters also let us know that there will be another Adventure Time graphic novel penned by Danielle Corsetto and drawn by Zach Sterling; the theme of the series is pretty quickly becoming princesses go on adventures, as the new book will feature LSP facing trials (maybe) and tribulations (possibly) and saving the world (probably not). But hey — one of the messages of Adventure Time is that we can all be more than we appear initially, even spoiled princesses from Lumpy Space.

  In the main Adventure Time comics, the next issue will wrap up the current story arc (it features Jake stuck in a dream existence with a stretchy-powers Finn!), and the one after that will be a Princess Bubblegum-centered story. Peebles stories often feature her need to control and manage everything (from her kingdom to the fundamental forces of physics) and how her messing with Things That Should Not Be Messed With have consequences, but they aren’t usually taken past the end of the episode.

  Prubs is a genius, but she also pretty damn irresponsible with her mad science and her creations are idiotically dangerous as often as they’re helpful. In this new story, PB goes off the rails and actually has to deal with one of these things that she’s responsible for rather than foisting it off on Finn and Jake.

  The Q&A section had time for ten questions, and the first was from a boy maybe ten years old that wanted to know if Ryan knew about a webcomic called Homestuck and does he use it for inspiration?, particularly because of one Homestuck-referencing quote that North snuck into a recent issue. He was apparently unaware that Ryan and Andrew Hussie are credit card bros, and Ryan told the young gentleman that Everything I write is Homestuck fan-fiction. The seriousness of the exchange was honestly charming, as was the number of kids in the audience that had brought binders full of their Adventure Time-themed drawings, eager to show them to the comics creators.

  After the session I got a chance to chat with Braden Lamb, where we immediately fell to talking about Kitty Hawk, his long-hiatused adventure webcomic project with Vincent LaBate. On the one hand, Lamb would love to get back to Kitty Hawk, on the other other, BOOM! projects keep him busy to the point that an ongoing webcomic isn’t practical. A complete story might be a possiblity, but with the releases of stories like Delilah Dirk and Lady Sabre, the market may be a bit crowded, even for a story that predated the others.

  We also spoke about the challenges that Lamb and Paroline had producing the Choose Your Own Adventure Time issue that North penned a while back, making the choices easy for kids to follow, but not so obvious that you could cheat your way to the desired outcome; it probably helped a lot that North has some experience writing such stories, but the best contributor to the success of that issue was probably Lamb’s choice to do some color-coding. Future artists/writers of such stories, take note.

• Speaking of Andrew Hussie, I saw the initial start of the ShiftyLook panel referenced yesterday, and I owe the SDCC showrunners an apology. I very much doubted that the maximum capacity of 170 in room 28DE would be sufficient for the presumed crowd o’ Homestucks that would descend upon Hussie like unto a tsunami, and it turned out that they fit just fine; there was a minimal line outside the room prior to the panel, but a pretty healthy population of fantrolls were already in there for the prior panel¹.

  The panel discussed the Zach Weinersmith²/Dave Shabet collaboration (interactive DigDug), the previously-announced Andrew Hussie-penned MMO (NAMCO High, available pre-holiday, 2015), and the Kris Straub/Scott Kurtz Mappy series (first episode goes live tomorrow).

• Speaking of room 28DE, it would later host the STRIPPED panel, which managed to fill the room despite being scheduled at the late hour of 7:00pm, against large media screenings, ramp-up to industry parties, and pre-Masquerade prep. I have nearly 1500 words of notes that need to be whipped into shape, so let’s put that off for another post. But speaking of STRIPPED, yesterday I learned that co-director Fred Schroeder’s agent is from my town, despite his currently agenting in the nearly polar opposite of LA. Go Team Central Jersey.

Below the cut, the best cosplay photos of the day: Simon Petrikov and Hello Randy.

(more…)

Douglas Adams was right¹ — there’s something about Thursdays that’s just off, and Dentarthurdent is not unique in that assessment. Today is probably the Thursdayiest Thursday in some time, too. Let’s see if there might be some news out there that will break through the doldrums.

• I had the good fortune to catch up with both Kate Beaton and Scott C last weekend at MoCCA Fest, and I take it as a sign that both have lots of things going on that neither specifically mentioned that they have a series of events coming up next week in Juneau, Alaska that you can totally attend if you have access to either a boat or a plane. Juneau, y’see, isn’t exactly what you’d call accessible by road unless you’re already there.

  It is, however, breathtakingly beautiful, almost entirely deceptive in its sense of scale², and a surprisingly comics-friendly town. At least, that’s what Scott McCloud and family discovered during the Alaska loop of their year-long book tour which was — goodness! — just about six years ago.

  Anyways, Ms Beaton and Mr C will be guests of Alaska Robotics, with lectures, signings, and workshops from Thursday to Saturday next week. Juneau’s not that large³, so if you can find your way out there, I imagine somebody can point you in the right direction.

• Looking a few weeks into the future, those of you (us) that backed the Schlock Mercenary challenge coin Kickstarter who might have been hoping to get your goods shipped in late April per the original estimates? You’ll be waiting a few weeks longer than originally planned as y’all swamped the foundry:
  

  Sadly, there will be a delay — we did, in fact, swamp the manufacturer. The full coin order will not arrive at Chez Tayler for another 40 days. From there it will take us at least a week to assemble bundles for shipping, and then, sometime in early June, we’ll have a shipping party in which 3,000 packages go out the door, and Sandra and I rack up $30,000 in expenses for postage.

  The delay means that your coins will ship in early June, not late April as previously promised.

  I’m thinking that on the grand spectrum reasons for Kickstarter delays, exhausting the manufacturing capacity of a specialized industry is waaaay over towards the Acceptable end, and I do hope that nobody will be bitching at Howard Tayler⁴ for blowing that particular deadline. We’re into you would only get it faster by violating the laws of physics territory here.

• Looking a little further out, we have a release date for the print collection of Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant, namely 27 August. The news prompted a remembrance of something long forgot and a happy discovery: there’s a Delilah Dirk short story in the fifth Flight collection which is substantially the same as Chapter 3 of Turkish Lieutenant. Those of you with both in your collection (or will have, come the end of summer) can do a side-by-side comparison for changes, not that I am for a moment suggesting that you (I) might be a detail-obsessed completionist. Not at all.
• Speaking of detail-obsessed completionists, I’ve been digging deeper into the reconstructed archives of Lore Sjöberg’s Bad Gods, and found another long-forgotten favorite — within the collection of POKE/PEEK mini-animations are five perfectly formed arguments proving the most important collorary to Tyrrell’s First Law Of The Internet⁵: Also, don’t engage with anybody who would read the comments. It’s odd how little some things change in — goodness! — seven years.

_______________
¹ About far more than just Thursdays, in fact.

² Starting out from a park building on what we’d assumed would be a 15 minute or so hike to the Mendenhall Glacier which was right there, we found ourselves turning back after two hours on account of the damn thing was no closer than when we’d started. There was simply no visual cue as to the actual distance, which was weird.

³ Actually, that depends on how you define “large”. The actual urban portion of Juneau is pretty small (about 12 square miles and 17,000 people, and chunks of that are university/state capital land), but if you include all of the “city and borough” land, you’re looking at more than 3200 square miles/32,000 residents (or a bit smaller than Rhode Island and Delaware put together). By contrast, my town runs a relatively compact 2.8 sqare miles, but manages to fit 13,500 people into that space.

⁴ My evil twin.

⁵ Namely, Never read the comments.

Webcomics are beginning, ending, making transitions … it’s an unusually busy end-of-year timeframe, presumably because of the oncoming Blood Wave and Dogstorm and general Superpocalypse. Better get these mentioned before we all expire in terror.

• Goodbye For those that missed the (admittedly soft) announcement, James Kochalka is ending American Elf in an orgy of dental hygiene. But at the same time, the animated SuperF*ckers is off to a good start, which brings us dangerously close to a chorus of the circle of liiiiiife, etc, so let’s just be glad we got as much of American Elf as we did, and watch to see what Kochalka does next. My guess? Something awesome.
• Hello Scott Kurtz has been talking up the work he’s put into developing the soon-to-launch Table Titans for so long, it was easy to think of it arriving at some nebulous point in the future. Well, the future is here, kiddies, with Table Titans dropping on 28 January, with updates as needed to tell the story at a pace that best suits it. Seriously, if you haven’t listened to the latest episode of Webcomics Weekly, there’s a fascinating bit in there about how Kurtz may challenge the long-held idea that regularity trumps almost everything in webcomics — Table Titans may run a variable number of days a week depending on need, interspersing with PvP.

  It’s always interesting to watch the status quo not only get questioned, but actively experimented upon; granted, not everybody has the audience that Kurtz does, and success in such variable scheduling may be restricted to those with the most established audiences¹. Oh, and did I mention the part where Table Titans is teaming up with Wizards of the Coast to not just publish collections, but to treat the storylines as actual playable D&D adventures? That partnership, in an ongoing fashion rather than being a one-off project, looks to be the beginning of anew way of producing creative content beyond the daily strip; watch for more such expansions beyond strippery from other creators in the next couple of years.

• Hello Again Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant was one of the prettiest, most lush webcomics on the scene when it launched in June of last year, and given that the story had (over the next nine months or so) a definite beginning, middle, and end², it was a no-brainer that its 160-odd pages would get collected into a nice, neat, print collection sooner rather than later. My only question was who would land Tony Cliff’s tale of derring-do, and it’s really no surprise who won that particular sweepstakes:
  

  We’re thrilled to be bringing you @TangoCharlie’s DELILAH DIRK as a graphic novel next fall, + here’s the cover! pic.twitter.com/8lBpnW2J

  That would be the estimable :01 Books, for those of you that didn’t follow the link, and it is certain that they will give Cliff’s gorgeous story the treatment it deserves.

Oh, and nearly forgot: TBONTB:ACFABRNAAWST has cleared US$300,000 in its Kickstarter and thus will be in colo[u]r. I am nearly afraid to see what happens at US$400K, given a whole ten days still to go.

_______________
¹ Yes, Table Titans is new, but it’s leveraging directly off of more than a dozen years of PvP, and will bring a substantial portion of that audience on day one.

² And yes, Delilah clearly had adventures before we first saw her, and yes, it wrapped with Delilah and Selim clearly heading out for more exciting times … it was still a self-contained story.

So many talented folks to talk about today. Are you ready? You should be ready.

Updating more people at SDCC (which kicks off, goodness, a week from tomorrow for Preview Night), namely:

• I missed Becky Dreistadt and Frank Gibson because they’re exhibiting under the name Monster Milk, their LA-based collective of friends and colleagues; had I but known, I would have pointed you to booth 1232. And I managed to completely overlook the fact that Kazu Kibuishi has taken out space under the name of Bolt City Productions, booth 2235; lots of Flight, Flight Explorer, and Explorer: Mystery Boxes contributors will be dropping by there, so keep your eyes open.
• Speaking of big comics shows, the Harvey Awards have announced their nominees, to be voted upon and handed out at Baltimore Comic-Con, 8 and 9 September in (obviously) Baltimore. As is often the case with the Harveys¹ there are some headscratchers and discussions as to whether or not a particular nominee really belongs on the ballot, but they’ve done a pretty good job in the category of Best Online Comics Work, and I don’t have any complaints with this year’s field:
  • Battlepug, Mike Norton
  • Bucko, Erika Moen and Jeff Parker (and just in time for Bucko’s print release)
  • Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant, Tony Cliff
  • Gronk, Katie Cook
  • Hark! A Vagrant, Kate Beaton

  Fantasy (with giant critters), murder-mystery (with juggalos and dick jokes), swashbuckling action (with kick-ass ladies), all-ages humor (with cutie-pie of a monster), and history/literature used as a prism to comment on the state of society (with Strong Female Characters searching out yogurt that makes you poop) represents a pretty wide swathe of story forms and genres. Nicely done, nominators!

  The Harveys also have a number of creators from the web/indy-comics world scattered through the other categories, including Beaton’s print edition of Hark! A Vagrant (Special Award for Humor in Comics), Vera Brosgol’s Anya’s Ghost (Best Original Graphic Publication for Younger Readers, and this page’s Best Comic of 2011), the many talented creators of Flight #8 (Best Anthology), and Beaton one mo’ ‘gin as Best Cartoonist. Fleen wishes all of the nominees the best of luck.

• Speaking of burying the lede, you have probably noticed by now (since the story broke yesterday while I was messing with SDCC session listings) that Pendleton Ward’s other Frederator Studios animated series, Bravest Warriors, is getting a comics treatment, and it comes courtesy of artist Mike Holmes and A Softer World scribe Joey Comeau, with cover work from Boxer Hockey creator Tyson Hesse.

  Should I mention that it is completely a coincidence that Ward’s Adventure Time comics are written by Ryan North², in whose attic Joey Comeau once lived? Or that Mr North can often be found in proximity to Mr Comeau in a shirtless and/or unconscious state? Coincidence?

  Only in the sense that Mr North and Mr Comeau, both being incredibly creative individuals with a habit of seeking out likewise creative individuals, would inevitably meet. And in all honesty, I can’t think of anybody better suited than Joey Comeau to embody the spirit of teens that save aliens with the power of their emotions, since we all know that Joey Comeau is 147% unfiltered emotions by weight.

________________
¹ Which are nominated by petition, with no jurying or comitteeing between the masses and the nominations, resulting in sometimes unusual choices dominating with nods in multiple fields.

² Nexus of all Webcomics Realities and So Many Other Things, You Guys.

So the Eisner nominees got announced the other day, and I was pleasantly surprised to see some of the work that was recognized, along with unpleasantly surprised to see some of what was omitted. In other words, a completely typical year. Let’s start with the nominees for Best Digital Comic, which we will recall are:

[O]pen to any new, professionally produced long-form original comics work posted online in 2011. Webcomics must have a unique domain name or be part of a larger comics community to be considered. The work must be online-exclusive for a significant period prior to being collected in print form.

That would be represented this year by:

• Bahrain by Josh Neufeld
• Battlepug by Mike Norton
• Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant by Tony Cliff
• Outfoxed by Dylan Meconis
• Sarah and the Seed by Ryan Andrews

They are, respectively, a piece of comics journalism (16 pages), a serialized fantasy story (ongoing), a serialized adventure story (wrapped at 118 pages, second story forthcoming), a fairy tale from the POV of the participants (22 pages), and a macabre story reminiscent of Momotaro (5 infinite canvas installments, equivalent to approximately 100 pages). Bahrain is the only one new to me.

The nominees provide a nice glimpse into both the the strength and the weakness of the category — there’s an incredible variety of work, but it’s just as hard to decide what the requirement of “long-form” means. Serialized ongoing story? Check. Done-in-one? Check. Seemingly anything that’s not a continuity-light gag strip or single panels would qualify, but there’s still a conceptual difficulty in seeing works that are five to ten times longer than others in the same category. Still, if I have my questions about things that might have been nominated (top of my list: anything Emily Carroll did in 2011), it’s entirely down to preference; there’s nothing on this slate to be embarrassed about.

Speaking of missing, I understand that the nominations are mostly drawn from submissions sent in by the creators themselves (or their publishers), but I’m wondering about some things that were left out. While the submission policies don’t explicitly say that the judges can include overlooked works that weren’t submitted, I have to believe that such discretion wouldn’t be frowned upon either¹. All this to say, no nomination for Hark! A Vagrant for either Best Humor Publication or Best Graphic Album — Reprint? Kate Beaton was everywhere in 2011 (and deservedly so), inarguably one of the two or three biggest stories in comics², and likely the one that reached the most people outside our rather insular community. Her absence is baffling.

That being said, having been on the inside of an awards process this year — and having taken some lumps for it — I can say with certainty that I have much more sympathy for Jackie Estrada and the Eisner committee than at any prior point in my life. It’s an imperfect set of nominations, because no process for choosing and no people involved in that process can be perfect. I trust that everybody involved did the best they could with honest intentions. Nor could I be annoyed with any nominations list that includes the likes of Dave Kellett (for Best Humor Publication), Colleen AF Venable (Best Publication for Kids (ages 8–12)), or Vera Brosgol³ (Best Publication for Young Adults (Ages 12-17)). Congratulations and good luck to all the nominees.

• In other news, Brad Guigar has taken an idea and run it in a new direction. Rich Stevens messed around with releasing a month or so of Diesel Sweeties strips as an e-book (mostly to play around with iBooks Author), which Guigar is also doing right now with Evil, Inc., but with a twist. Brad’s download lets you see into the future. The entire month of April’s storyline (and please recall that today is only the sixth day of April) is packaged up and can be yours for a buck and a half.

  I’ve seen webcomics collections hit print with a few strips at the end still to run online, but I can’t recall such an example of sneak peak access before. Approximately 24 hours after announcing the deal, Guigar found the response strong enough that he’ll be repeating in May, and hints at further developments. For those wondering what he would do with all that extra time, Kicking his buffer in the ass appears to have been at the top of the list.

• Jeph Jacques is heading to the entirely classy environs of Yale University on Thursday, 12 April, for a Master’s Tea, which (as noted previously) is a Big Damn Deal. Not noted in print previously — but believe me I noted the crap hell out of it privately — Yale does a really terrible job of providing any public information about said Teas. We’re six days out and the only schedule I can find only goes up to the 10th. There are many colleges at Yale, and this tea might not be held at Pierson, or maybe it will?

  Basically if you want to go, I’d advise hanging around the Pioneer Valley on Thursday morning until you see a large man with tats and piercings and a Great Pyrenees headed south towards New Haven, and follow him.

_______________
¹ The guidelines do say that the judges could add, modify, or delete entire categories (and it’s my understanding that happened this year), which to me is a much broader power than merely including additional works for consideration.

² NB: not just comic books.

³ I told you Anya’s Ghost was the best comics of the year. Also, disclaimer: stuff that I wrote appears in Kellett’s book.

Dumped all my good story points yesterday, and today’s a slow day. Dadnugget.

• One thing I neglected to mention from NYCC: I had discussions at the Dumbrella table about Jon Rosenberg’s entirely adorable bunnies. The discussion I had was actually with <name withheld> about a collaboration, to produce bunnies in the form of <detail withheld>, which will be an awesome announcement once it’s made. Trust me. But what I didn’t get even a hint of was the fact that Rosenberg’s got prototype in hand for a plush adorable bunny¹.

  Guys this is so cute I am ready to destroy stuffed animals my wife has owned since childhood just to have room to keep this thing in my house. Also, one cannot but hope that if the adorable bunny plushes are a hit, we could possibly see an in-scale Mother of All Bunnies? I cannot wait to put that thing in a menacing posture next to my Diablo The Satanic Chicken².

• New webcomic alert — I missed out on the early days of Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant, and Lady Sabre and the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether, but this time I’m on top of what looks like the next promising, full-page webcomic based on a recognizable setting but not quite our world: The Water Clock launched today, with a definite Dynastic Egypt design sensibility, but a wiki that indicates it’s going to be drawing inspiration from all of the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean. Thanks to Magnolia Porter for the heads-up.
• Followup-cubed: Mia Wiesner has confirmed to me that the results of her digital comics survey (announced here, initial results here, final results discussed last week) are available to anybody who wants them. There’s not a server set up for the PDF, so if you’re interested, drop me a line at the contact link up there on the right, and I’ll send you her email address. Hopefully, this will keep her from getting spammed into next month.

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¹ If nothing else, Rosenberg has certainly cemented his reputation has Greatest Dad Ever in the eyes of his daughter, who is undoubtedly playtesting the prototype as we speak.

² Mint in box, not to be confused with Mints in box.

Still tethering, so let’s do this quickly:

• In re: that ol’ LICD Kickstarter thang, Ryan Sohmer opines:
  

  Holy balls. We just sailed right through 75k. Looks like I’ve got a pilot to make.

• First informed of via the Twitterings of Kean Soo, I’ve been enjoying the hell out of the utterly gorgeous Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant (by Tony Cliff), which started a few days ago and is more gorgeous than anything not born directly from the hand of Hergé. The first four pages of the online graphic novel are now available for your perusal, and hoo boy if that splash panel on the home page doesn’t leave me waiting for the action to kick in. This is going to be one to watch, folks.
• Have been obsessively re-reading the copy of Save Yourself, Mammal which Zach Weiner was kind enough to gift me with just prior to the long weekend. Not that it’s a long read (even the most appreciative of Mr Weiner’s fans will be tearing through the pages as warp speed, devouring the gags), but there’s a Choose Your Own Adventure scattered through the first 65 or so pages, and I haven’t achieved all the endings yet. First time through, though? I became a doctor that performed surgery with a katana — it’s hard to top that.
• Finally, the best news I’ve heard all year, from Mr Jon Rosenberg:
  

  Yes! My babies are coming home from the hospital today!

  A few months ago we didn’t know if they were going to survive, and now they are healthy and adorable. Modern medical science is amazing.

  Babies are finally home, safe and sound. For the first time since Feb. I don’t have to go to a hospital tomorrow.

  There’s a photo of young Messers Rosenberg which you may wish to enjoy before the honeymoon’s over. Because babies, they change things:

  Survived our first night with the twins. Not to imply that they are trying to assassinate me. But I did find a tiny piece of piano wire.

  Well done, Team Babies.