I’m always behind in pointing folks towards Emerald City Comic Con (which starts on Thursday and runs to Sunday), and I resolve to get my act together one of these years. After a couple of EmCity iterations under the ReedPop banner, I get the sense that this is a make-or-break year for the until-now universally beloved show — it’s showing signs to messing with things that didn’t need to be messed with, and possibly reducing the comic component of the show.

As long as it doesn’t devolve further unto a generic pop culture show, I think it’ll be okay, but I’m not sure if it can still claim the mantle of premier comics-oriented show¹. After all, the Literary Guests² outnumber the Entertainment Guests by 2:1, and the Comic Guests outumber the Literary and Entertainment Guests put together by a third.

Some of those Comic Guests likely to be of interest to readers of this page include Abby Howard (booth KK19), Blue Delliquanti (booth KK20), Chip Zdarsky³ (booth JJ12), Edwin Huang (booth E14), Emi Lenox (booth G11), Erica Henderson (booth O3), Jim Zub (booth Y14), Kazu Kibuishi (no booth, here’s his schedule), Ngozi Ukazu (booth P7), Ru Xu (booth P3), Sarah Andersen (no booth here’s her schedule), Sfé Monster (booth G1), and Taneka Stotts (booth P14).

On the main show floor, you’ve got Alaska Robotics (booth 204), Cautionary Fables & Fairy Tales (booth 208), Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett (booth 1616, on the skybridge), Girl Genius (booth 118), Harper Collins (booth 2202), Hiveworks (booth 2002), Iron Circus (booth 644), Little Vampires (booth 310), Oni Press (booth 216), TopatoCo (booth 1606, on the skybridge).

Over in Artist Alley you have the traditional cluster of folks in Aisle H-for-Helioscope Studio (including Aaron McConnell, Aud Koch, Cat Farris, Dylan Meconis, Erika Moen, Jonathan Case Katie Lane, Kerstin La Cross, Leila Del Luca, Lucy Bellwood, Maria Frantz, Matthew Nolan, Ron Chan, Ron Randall, Steve Lieber, and Terry Blas). Also around you’ll find Yuko Ota & Ananth Hirsh of Johhny Wander (booth P6), Gigi DG (booth OO4), Haley Boros (booth U9), Mad Rupert (booth P2), Megan Rose Gedris (booth LL7), Jam from Wasted Talent (booth G1), Molly “Jakface” Nemecek (booth R3), Lexxy Douglas (booth BB13), Tyson Hesse (Q11), and the inimitable, indefatigable, indomitable, and indescribably awesome Tony Breed (booth S10).

Note that Blind Ferret will not be at the show, but Lucas Elliott and Evan Dahm and will, at booths 1916 and 208, respectively.
Updated to add: Mary Cagle, at booth 2002.

Okay, that’s it. Yeah, it’s not that long a post, but wrangling that many links? Takes forever. Let me know if I missed anybody, and we’ll talk programming in a day or so.

Spam of the day:

If you’re a man, you will spend 65,520 minutes, or 1,092 hours, shaving your face. That means you sit down, haul out the shaving cream, make a mess, wet your clothes, and annoy your wife.

You are very bad at shaving.

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¹ To the extent that such thing as a premiere comics-oriented show still exists outside the Festival model. Everything on the convention center, multi-day scale is pretty heavily invested in the TV, movie, wrestling, and generic entertainment component.

² At least some of which — Molly Muldoon, Colleen AF Venable, Judd Winick, Gale Galligan, Alison Wilgus to name just a few — could easily have counted in the comics category.

Oh, and all those links (and the others for individuals) are to Twitter, since that’s what the ECCC guest profiles provided. Comics will generally be to the website in question.

³ Losing out the “last person by family name alphabetical order” crown to Zub again.

This review has been the hardest to write that I’ve ever done, and probably won’t be displaced any time soon; I’ve long had a policy of writing about work that I could wholeheartedly recommend, rather than trying to discourage people from reading what I thought fell short of the mark. Then again, I don’t think I’ve ever reviewed a book that could come back to positive territory with the change of literally one word.

So I’m going to be very careful to explain my thoughts on this book, and I’m possibly going to fail. It’s entirely plausible that my major criticism would reflect the reading experience of approximately nobody else in the world. I mean no disrespect to Jen Wang (whose work I’ve enjoyed for years and whose Koko Be Good has been a favorite for pretty much the entirety of this decade) or any of the folks at :01 Books (who sent me the review copy I’ve been reading and re-reading for a couple of months now).

Comments are open down thataway, and spoilers are everywhere from this point on.

Okay, let’s get the basics out of the way — The Prince And The Dressmaker is the story of Frances (the dressmaker) and Sebastian (the prince) in fin de siècle Paris; he likes wearing beautiful dresses, she wants to be a fashion designer, they end up working together underneath the noses of Parisian Society and his stuffy parents, who just want to arrange a nice, traditional, royal betrothal.

On the surface, it’s a sweet story with a message about accepting different identities and finding one’s path in life, in full Disney mode (more on that momentarily). A little bit deeper, it’s got flaws — some slight, some more severe. We’ll start at the benign end of the scale.

We know what the Disney version of things looks like, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Sebastian is found out as a cross-dresser, flees court for a monastery in shame, and returns to fabulous acclaim in a fashion show that features not just the begowned prince, but his father the conquering military hero king and a platoon’s worth of soldiers, all in fabulous women’s wear.

There’s the Disney mode of fairy tale logic, and then there’s stretching things to the breaking point; the sudden shift of half of Paris society towards accepting the disgraced prince, the willingness of his giant-of-a-man father to appear on a catwalk in an off-the-shoulder haute couture creation thirty minutes after the emotional confession I’m a prince who likes dresses breaks the suspension of disbelief.

There’s a portion of TPATD’s intended audience that needs this message that they can be accepted, but by making it so total, so sudden, so implausible, I fear it’ll be received as but that only happens in fairy tales and make believe. The Disney version has its place, but the entire message was much better conveyed in Molly Ostertag’s The Witch Boy (review here).

For a young reader in Sebastian’s position, nothing that TPATD promises is likely to happen; TWB promises a less happily ever after ending, but one that is conveyed as achievable by mere mortals. It’s the difference between Sebastian got to live happily ever after because he’s a prince so they have to accept him and Aster and his family are working towards acceptance in a way that I could do, too.

Maybe it’s necessary to see the external success (Sebastian is happy and accepted) before being able to imagine the personal (I could be happy and accepted), but it still reads false to me. Or maybe I’m just surprised that Scholastic describes TWB as for ages 8-12 and :01 describes TPATD as for ages 12-18; the former’s message reads to me as more sophisticated than the latter.

The real flaws, however, the stop-me-cold-I-did-not-just-read-that flaws, are probably more down to editing that anything else, and they’re encapsulated in one word: Belgium.

Sebastian is the Prince of Belgium, visiting Paris for the season with his parents. In a couple of places, he and his father each try to pull rank with Parisians of the Third Republic (As your Prince, I forbid you to leave! Return to your servant quarters, now! and I’m the King. This show will go on exactly as they please.), which … yeah, not buying it. Okay, I’ll give that some slack and take it as evidence of royalty used to getting their way forgetting they aren’t in their sovereign lands at the moment.

But I can’t give slack to Sebastian’s father, King Leo.

King Leo, of Belgium, somewhere at the end of the 19th Century. King Leo, who bears a more than slight visual resemblance to Leopold II, who was King of the Belgians at the same time in history. Leopold II, who was perhaps the greatest enslaver and mass murderer of modern history.

This is why you make up little Grand Duchies for your fairy tales.

Leopold II was the brutal son of a bitch who held the entirety of the Congo and all of its people as his personal property. Between the ivory and the rubber he set production quotas that resulted in roughly half the inhabitants of Congo — ten million people — dying at the hands of his mercenary security forces, with uncounted more mutilated to set an example for others. When the Belgian parliament confronted the horrors — and this was the time when the mission of enlightening and Christianizing the brown peoples of the world was seen as right and proper and worth the occasional unfortunate brutality — and forced him to turn the colony over to the nation for management, he had the Congolese archives burned to hide his crimes.

It’s not intentional, but it is inescapable — for anybody that knows the history of Europe and/or colonialism, the name Leo will not evoke a somewhat pushy but ultimately sympathetic figure who only wants the best for his people and his son. It’s not possible for me to separate the unfortunate parallels of Leopold II and Leo; the benign landbound King Triton of the Gilded Age will always appear to me as the evil incarnate butcher that literally inspired the concept of crimes against humanity.

Which leaves me in a peculiar position. There’s so much that’s well done in TPATD; Wang’s character designs are terrific, her fashion designs are both era-appropriate and suitably fairy tale-fantastic¹, the look and feel of Paris is both gritty and glittering. A lot of people love it, and it’s easy to see why. For the right reader, with the right expectations, and the right people to answer the questions about a very bad time in history (questions that may never come), it could become a cherished favorite.

But for the love of God, in future printings change Belgium to literally anything else.

The Prince And The Dressmaker will be released on 13 February from :01 Books.

No spam today.

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¹ With one exception at the very beginning, but it’s for story reasons.

What I think might be the longest read that The Nib has ever put up as a single update ran today; Andrew Greenstone has gone out and done participatory-type things and then done docu-comics on them, and today he brings the story of the days-long post-apocalyptic LARP known as Wasteland Weekend. It’s a cracking good read, and that’s before I consider that I know somebody that’s fought in Thunderdome. Take 20 minutes and enjoy the crap out of it.

• Sometimes, you gotta start ’em young in webcomics; it’s been a week or so and I have shamefully not yet congratulated Randy Milholland and his wife Stephanie¹ on the birth of their daughter. As befits a reasonably private guy (who has attracted some of the worst, most entitled, boundary-disrespecting “fans” ever), Milholland has shared some anecdotes, but no details on the lil’ replicant, so if you’re wondering about name or birth weight, too bad.

  By all accounts mom & child are doing well (indeed, she appears to be mastering skills at a terrifying rate), and I’m sure all of us wish them all the best. Some more than others — KB Spangler did a kickin’ guest strip for Daddy Randy today, whereas I’m just saying nice things about him².

• One of my favorite stories of recent vintage has been Ursula Ver … I mean, T Kingfisher’s Summer In Orcus (okay, okay, they’re the same person, and the TK name normally means a more adult bent to the stories than UV, which are decidedly kid-friendlier; I don’t see a whole lot of age range difference between, say, Orcus and Vernon’s Digger). It hit all the notes I want in a fairy tale (unsurprising, as Vernon/Kingfisher’s prose typically dig their way into my brain and wrap around the primitive structures, resulting in pure emotion³), and I’ve been recommending it to everybody ever since.

  The Kickstarter campaign to print what had been an online-only serial went up in July; the accompanying illustrations Lauren Henderson were gathered, the books (in both hardcover and soft) designed and printed, and fulfillment is happening now. I got my books (hardcover for me, soft for whichever niece or nephew I deem needs it most in the next round of birthdays) today, and I can’t say enough good about them.

  With those who Kickstarted getting their stuff in the mail, look for publisher Sofawolf to add them to their store in the near future. Okay, sure, it’s been available in e-book form for ages now, but you know what? Some books just demand to be held, pages flipped, corners bent, etc. Don’t sit on this one; it’s some of the best work of one of our best wordbenders.

Spam of the day:

Give The Gift Of Music! Rich, Room Filling Sound

I have a friend, an audiophile of note, who have more invested in his pre-amps than my wife and I do in both our cars combined. His speakers have a pricetag that resembles the student loans you take out to go to a top-tier med school. And you know what? In a blind test, I bet they sound better than these rich, room filling sound triangle speakers, but not hundred of thousands of dollars better.

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¹ She and Randy haven’t been public about her surname online, so I won’t be using it here.

² For now; within webcomics circles, my new baby gifts are well-regarded. Speaking of which, Randy, I need your new address.

³ Normally joy, but sometimes rage, despair, and murderlust; whatever the story calls for at the time, really

I finally got the chance over the weekend to pick up a copy of The Witch Boy by Molly Ostertag; given that it released nearly two weeks ago, this was long overdue. Short version: you want to read this book which is beautifully illustrated, clever and subtle in its message, and a cracking good read; more importantly, you probably know somebody in the target age range (call it 8-12) that desperately needs to read this book. Longer version is below, with the requisite warning that spoilers abound.

Aster has the same problems as any other just-teen boy — cousins that make fun of him, a family that doesn’t understand him, expectations that he beats himself up for not fulfilling, or even feeling that he can fulfill. Then again, he’s got some problems that other just-teen boys don’t — three generations of his family, 20 or more people, all live together in a big house that’s somewhere between isolated and quasireligious compound.

There are rules in the family, too, some of which would be downright sinister in a slightly different story (don’t talk to strangers, don’t leave the property, there are evil things away from this place of safety that want to destroy you), and a great big one that dominates the story:

The family (and others like it, scattered around the world) has magic. Girls are witches. Boy are shapeshifters. Acting outside those roles is forbidden and dangerous.

Come to think of it, the blind faith in gender roles is still sinister, even though it comes from a place that’s more benign that a lot of real-world implementations¹. Aster understands, and he wants to fit in — he begs unseen fates to let him fit into his assigned role — but the truth inside him is undeniable. Shapeshifting doesn’t work for him, and he’s drawn to witchery.

Nobody understands, not his parents, his sister, his cousins, aunts and uncles … although Grandmother surprisingly doesn’t berate him, despite knowing more than any the danger in fighting the system. If you’re going to be playing with witchery, she says while correcting his pronunciation, at least get it right.

The only person he can confide it should think him even crazier than his family does — wandering out past the wards and guardian spells into suburbia, he meets Charlie: nonmagical, dreads on her head, denied participation on sports teams because they don’t let girls on them. She catches him doing magic, he confesses his misgivings, she tells him he should be who he knows himself to be. He’s a witch, and hers is the only encouragement he gets.

Good thing too, because one of those dangerous things wanting to destroy the family starts stealing away Aster’s cousins as they try to improve their shapeshifting. It whispers in their ears that it will make them powerful, let them defeat all those that have wronged them; Aster should be easy prey for temptation, but the tempter can only offer what Aster’s not interested in: mastery of shifting. Ultimately, it’s Aster’s delving into forbidden areas (scrying, healing, binding) that saves his cousins and unmasks the danger preying on his family. It takes some time (and a rather surprising remonstration from Grandmother) to set his family on the path of acceptance.

But — and I think this is the most important part of Ostertag’s message — there’s tension still there when Aster admits to Charlie, Mom and Dad don’t really get it, but … I don’t know, they haven’t kicked me out or anything. It’s a shock to their worldview and they don’t understand, but they love him. The rules are changing more quickly than anybody knows what to do with, but Grandmother’s word is I think we have much to learn from each other. And Aster decides that there are some rules you have to figure out for yourself.

Aster doesn’t get happily ever after because his life isn’t a fairy tale. It all worked out is messier, but ultimately more achievable. There’s a lot of readers of The Witch Boy (young and old) that need to be reminded that achievable changes and the path of acceptance and figuring out rules for yourself are things that can happen. Not usually as quickly as for Aster, but they can. And if their families aren’t as accepting as Aster’s, then deciding who gets to be their family is one of those rules you figure out for yourself.

Aster is people, Ostertag is telling us. Grandmother, who’s more than solely a witch and never admitted it before, is people. The rest of the family, coming around on their lifetimes of habit, are people. Charlie is people. Even the adversary is people, or was before he fell and rejected everybody that wasn’t him². The Witch Boy tells us unambiguously that anybody that tells you that you aren’t people, they need to come around.

In the meantime, you can come sit here with us. We know you’re people.

Spam of the day:

Black Friday racking up debt?

This doesn’t work until after Black Friday. You’re ten days early, scammers.

_______________
¹ Rather than being based on ancient dictates and the subjugation of women, the customs of gender roles is reinforced by a recent, living memory disaster of what happened when Grandmother’s twin brother tried to be a witch. Think fallen Jedi in thrall to the Dark Side.

² Or perhaps, was rejected by everybody around him, leading to the fall. There’s plenty of blame to go around there, even among the good folk of the family.

What’s better than transatlantic comics coverage? Nothing! Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin continues his reportage from Saint-Malo, with the first part of Day Two coverage, with more to come.

Saint-Malo is not a big city; if you’ve never heard of it before, one of its claim to fame is that it was the home harbor for famed corsairs such as Robert Surcouf. And it is because the Falklands were often visited by sailors from there that in France we call them: les îles malouines (which is why the Argentinians call them the Malvinas).

But Quai des Bulles is big. They claim to be the second biggest French-Belgian comics festival, and I have no trouble believing them: just look at that program, list of expected creators, and exhibitors floor plan. And let me tell you, after a while the sheer number of people meant the ambiance under the tent was quite warm, even though it was cold outside.

There were not many webcartoonists present; for instance, this year Lapin had no booth. But this was more than compensated for by excellent programming which will be covered in the highlights.

• Catching a glimpse of Maester, who came to sign for one hour even though he is still recovering from a stroke that left his left side paralyzed. Kudos, master.
• A fairy tale (East Of The Sun And West Of The Moon, if my references are correct) performance with professional conductor and musician, with scenes drawn live by Obion.
• A “conference” by “Prof” Bernstein and James on the art of the joke … which was itself silly, or at least ostensibly so: it is true that context and timing matter a lot for joke delivery for instance. It took place in the same auditorium (the amphitéatre Maupertuis in the Palais du Grand Large) as the Montaigne event from the previous day, and I must thank the designers of that auditorium for including a power outlet and a folding tablet for each seat, greatly facilitating this hack pseudojournalism activity. [Editor’s note: I didn’t make him say that, but it makes me very, very happy.]
• A meetup with Marie Spénale set up by N. Masztaler on the matter of new publishing means [Editor’s note: transcription coming soon; the translation on this one is tricky]; in attendance was only a small cohort of about a dozen people where everyone could ask questions, and many did (your correspondent included). It ended up going over the planned hour for it by half an hour, though no one (least of all your correspondent) seemed to mind.
• A memorial exhibition for Michel Plessix, local creator who created the poster image for this year’s festival before his untimely death in August of this year. While he had a varied career (as recounted by that exhibition), he was best know for his comics adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind In The Willows (that is his representation of Toad that can be seen in the poster). The exhibition included, as customary, a number of tribute pieces (written or drawn) from many fellow comics creators and professionals.
• Finally, a drawn concert with Volo (musical instruments) and Grégory Panaccione (drawing instruments).

We’ll continue with Day Two coverage tomorrow, as FSFCPL brings us the details on panel on new methods of publishing. Small audience discussions yield the best questions, but boy are they a pain to transcribe, much less translate. As always, we at Fleen are grateful for FSFCPL’s extensive efforts.

Spam of the day:

Hey guys!!!
designs and builds specialty lines of lead oxide production equipment, material handling systems, battery related process machinery, parts, and accessories for the battery, pigment, glass, and chemical industries.

I am haunted by the missing start of that sentence. Who designs and builds these lines of lead oxide production equipment? I must know!

The news is out, albeit after an unavoidable week’s delay: Kelly & Zach, the principals of Weinersmith & Weinersmith Enterprises, have announced their biggest project to date¹: a book on the technologies most likely to change the world in a relatively immediate timeframe (call it the next handful of decades) and how likely each one is to come to pass as their adherents claim.

It’s called Soonish, it’s got wonderful introductions to ten areas of technological exploration², and the occasional cartoon. Explainer here, pre-orders here, and despite the fact that Soonish has a major publisher behind it (Penguin), Weinersmith (Z) can’t get away from the indie creator let’s Kickstart this to the moon! habit, and thus the number of pre-orders (release date is in October) will determine rewards that will be widely distributed.

Oh, yeah, and Weinersmith (Z) has also produced — in addition to today’s announcement cartoon, with requisite Phil Plait mockery³ — two regular SMBC comics today. I say regular advisedly, as it’s not a word I’d normally apply to W(Z). The first of them is a fairly standard SMBC, but the second features the single most horrifying thing ever drawn in a comic by a Certified Genius Master Hypnotist. Steel your hearts and be not afraid. Or actually, just don’t eat anything before you read that second one. Trust me.

For non-Weinersmith related news:

• I’m not sure if it’s pop-culture saturation or just Rich Stevens being really good at expressing the intrinsic character of things in the minimum number of pixels, but you can totally tell exactly what each of those action figures behind Electron Mike are in today’s Diesel Sweeties. It’s a marvel of refined deisgn.
• The Creators For Creators grant was announced about eleven months ago, took its first applications about ten months ago, closed them about four months ago, and announced its first recipient over the weekend and EmCity. M Dean, illustrator and cartoonist, is figuring out what to do with an extra US$30K to support her creative efforts while working on her next project, titled I Am Young. There’s a brief interview with Dean at the C4C homepage (undoubtedly, it’ll move to a subpage in future), which is well worth a read.

  Also worth mentioning: that the C4C grant was founded with the financial backing of a bunch of Image folks and C Spike Trotman, who continues to rip shit up in webcomics publishing. It’s been a bit less than two days since Dean’s recognition, so give ’em a bit of time to regroup and then we’ll see what this year’s application cycle looks like; I’d imagine it looks a lot like last year’s six month application period, but we’ll all find out authoritatively in the near future.

• It is a well established phenomenon that we at Fleen — that is to say, me at Fleen, aka Gary — loves me some Digger (yes, I know there’s serious singular-plural disagreement in there; deal with it.gif). A large part of that comes from the fact that Digger creator Ursula Vernon is probably the best writer of (vague handwavy gestures because I know this is an almost wholly useless term) fantasy this side of Neil Gaiman, the best writer of (more gestures) YA this side of Raina Telgemeier, and the best combiner of the two this side of Jeff Smith. Specifically, she does smart, empathetic, actual-person girls better than anybody this side of Hayao Miyazaki.

  Thus, when her serialized novel Summer In Orcus debuted online last equinox, I recommended it sight unseen. Well, not quite, she’d done the equivalent of the first chapter on LiveJournal a few years prior, so I knew it started with Baba Yaga’s chicken house trotting down the back alley of suburbia, and how can you dispute a start like that? It was going to be damn good, there existed no other mathematical possibility.

  It exceeded my expectations significantly, and caused me no small outbursts of emotions at regular intervals over the next three months. Frustrations at the days-long waits between chapters. Utter and true heartbreak at loses suffered (and I use that word precisely; Vernon made her heroine hurt, because sometimes that’s what life teaches you: that you can do your best with the best of intentions and people still get hurt and you can’t shake the feeling it’s your fault even when it isn’t but maybe it is a little), blind hatred of the second-tier villain, soaring exultation at particularly smart or heartwarming or weird circumstances in the story.

  This is not a fairy tale that instructs moral lessons, it’s one that offers warnings about what the world is like. It’s certainly not one that gets you to Happily Ever After without an equal measure of regrets. Also, there’s the bit with the cheeses, which is pretty damn hilarious.

  The complete Summer In Orcus has been available in various e-formats since the story wrapped eight-ten weeks back, and Vernon acknowledged the wants of those of us that craved a book book version, one that works by flashlight under the covers, and said she’d try to figure something out. The figuring is apparently past, as her Digger publisher, Sofawolf Press, had an announcement over the weekend:

  We are still working out final details, but we can reveal that there will be both a softcover and a hardcover edition, and the cover and interior illustrations will be done by Lauren Henderson (aka: “Louvelex”). We’ll be doing a very simple Kickstarter to help us gauge demand, but we’ll also have a couple stretch goals that will allow us to spiffy up the final book.

  Final details to come over the next month or so. For me, that’ll be a hardcover for my library, and I figure I’ll get a stack of paperbacks — I’ve got nieces and nephews that need this book, and for half a year I’ve been pointing people at Summer In Orcus as the entry point to Vernon’s work; now I won’t have to try to remember the URL, I can just put a copy in their hands.

  We’ll be sure to let you know about the Kickstart when it comes, but do yourself a favor and start clearing space on your shelves now. And if anybody reading this is at Laika and wants to figure out their next project, I would suggest that Summer + stop motion is a friggin’ license to print money.

Spam of the day:

Up yours!

Somebody’s seen Sweet Charity too many times. Yeesh.

_______________
¹ Again, if we discount the production of two miniature alive humans.

² Reminder-slash-disclaimer: I’ve read a late pre-final version, and it’s impressive how many absolutely brilliant, Nobel laureate-level people were willing to go on the record in a book that also features dick jokes.

³ Scroll to the bottom, and don’t forget to hover over the comic for a bonus gag.

Saturday, oh Saturday, the day where hopes go to die in San Diego. Sunday, the day where the light at the end of the tunnel is visible, except for those that have to wait to bring their cars around to the docks for load-out. Before we get to those, let’s make a quick visit to a pair of Fridays.

First, last Friday, C Spike Trotman¹ announced her latest forthcoming publication, this Sarah W Searle is bringing her Sparks from serialization at Filthy Figments {NSFW, depending on your W]. Second, this coming Friday, when Kel McDonald finds out if the second and final Sorcery 101 omnibus funds or not. I’m kind of astonished how many established creators are having trouble making funding on their Kickstarts, and McDonald’s sitting on a projected 97% final funding, so this is literally make or break time.

Okay, onward and conward, and as always, let us know what we overlooked.

Saturday Programming
Once Upon A Time: Teaching Fables, Fairy Tales, And Myths With Comics And Graphic Novels
10:00am — 11:00am, Shiley Special Events, San Diego Central Library
The aforementioned Ms McDonald will be talking about fantastical tales for a library-centric crowd, along with Chris Duffy, Alexis Fajardo, Ben Hatke, and Trina Robbins, with moderator Tracy Edmunds, MA Ed.

Spotlight On Kate Beaton
10:30am — 12:00pm, Room 5AB
This will be my first chance to tell Kate Beaton in person how much my niece loves The Princess And The Pony. Hint: a lot.

Comic Book Law School 303: New Revelations
10:30pm — 12:00pm, 30CDE
Part three, which bee-tee-dubs is qualified for continuing education credits for lawyers. This one’s on complex issues of copyright and trademark.

Spotlight On William Gibson
11:30pm — 12:30pm, Room 24ABC
Appropriate, since we seem to be living in one of his cyberpunk dystopias at the moment.

Spotlight On Jeff Smith
12:30pm — 1:30pm, Room 8
Jeff Smith is the opposite of a dystopia. Let’s all go and have some fun and ignore stupid, stupid [fill in horrible person type here]s.

The Kids Comics Revolution
1:00pm — 2:00pm, Room 29AB
Best panel ever? Emily Carroll, John Patrick Green, Noelle Stevenson, G. Willow Wilson, and Gene Luen Yang.

Spotlight On Noelle Stevenson
4:00pm — 5:00pm, Room 23ABC
Because she’s a shark, AAAAHHH.

Buckaroo Banzai: Getting The Band Back Together
5:30pm — 6:30pm, Room 8
Holy crap: Perfect Tommy, Pinky Caruthers, Scooter Lindley, and Rugsucker will be on stage together.

Sunday Programming
Historical Comics
1:00pm — 2:00pm, Room 28DE
Kate Beaton, Chester Brown, and Derf Backderf in conversation with Calvin Reid. Hopefully to contain Nemeses.

YA? Why Not? The Importance Of Teen And Young Adult Comics
1:00pm — 2:0pam, Room 24ABC
Going to be tough to decide where to be this hour — Kate down the hall, Hope Larson, Raina Telgemeier, Cecil Castellucci, and Brenden Fletcher over here at the same time.

Spotlight On Emily Carroll
2:00pm — 3:00pm, Room 4
It’ll be the spooktaculariest room all weekend for an hour.

Kickstarter Secrets Revealed
3:00pm — 4:00pm, Room 4
At last, they finally admitted that if you’re gonna do a how-to on Kickstarter, you got to get goddammned George Rohac there. Also the afivementioned Kel McDonald, Hope Nicholson, and Kickstarter’s comics outreach lead, Jamie Turner.

Markiplier Comics & More: Keenspot/Red Giant 2016
4:00pm — 5:00pm, Room 7AB
The annual Keenspot panel, pretty much closing out the programming for the year.

Spam of the day:

Make $7,682/month from home

a. That’s a supiciously specific number. b. Who’s to say that I don’t already?

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¹ C Spike Trotman. Trotman, Spike, Trotman!

No? Fine.

Attention (on projects past, present, and future) is being paid to webcomickers, and that it all meet and proper.

• We’ve mentioned the ongoing series of geographically-themed fairy tale anthologies from Kel McDonald, Cautionary Fables and Fairy Tales, on more than one occasion. Volume three’s been out for a while now, and it’s gathering notice. Caitlin Rosenberg over at The AV Club does her usual thorough analysis and found parts of the Asia edition of CF&FT a mixed bag — while she finds the stories visually appealing, she finds their overall quality variable, and the book as a whole lacking in cohesion beyond “Asia”.

  I’d argue that what she’s describing is one of the defining characteristics of anthologies, which she acknowledges in noting the individual stories are good, but don’t seem to work together. I’ve read the two prior CF&FT editions, and never found that awkwardness to be an issue, but I also approach anthologies as a book that I revisit time and again, consuming small chunks in isolation rather than reading through. I’ll pick it up at some point in the future, if only to read a new Monkey King story from Gene Luen Yang and to find creators I wasn’t familiar with before.

  And when you’re done reading Rosenberg’s review, check out Tim O’Neil’s take on the last few months of Achewood; O’Neil’s a critic I find myself disagreeing with more than agreeing, but he holds forth on the weirdness and melancholy of Achewood to a masturbatory degree that I not only appreciate, but find as obsessive as my own writings on the topic. I don’t want to get all article on you, but Achewood is definitely something you should be paying attention to.

• In my hold box at my local comic shop today: issue #2 of Goldie Vance by the inimitable Hope Larson (words) and Brittney Williams (pictures). Issue #1 did a great job of capturing a moment in the early Space Age, finding a niche where a whole host of non-white people could represent all strata of society, and wrapped the whole thing up in a Nancy Drewesque mystery motif.

  Comes now the news (which I first noticed from Johanna Draper Carlson) that GV is no longer a four-issue miniseries but an ongoing title. Based on that first issue (and presumably, those making the decisions have seen the full four issues), this was a no-brainer of a decision. It’s a terrific book.

  It’s been mentioned more than once that GV publisher BOOM! is crappy with the page rates, so one can only hope (no pun intended) that by tapping one of the best known and successful creators of her generation, Larson had the leverage to explain that she does not value things like building your career and great exposure. If BOOM! is able to maintain profits on Goldie Vance, they’ll have no excuse to plead poverty in underpaying so many other of their writers and artists.

• First it was Christopher Hastings, tapped for one-shots and minis before landing Gwenpool, then Ryan North, tasked to make Squirrel Girl the surprise breakout hit of the past year. It appears that Marvel’s learned that if you need a more light-hearted — one might even say comical — comic book in a world of capes that are overly serious, you tap a longtime webcomicker.

  Latest proof: a tie-in book (due in August) to the latest no-really-this-will-change-everything line-wide crossover will feature the writing of one John Allison, whose work is the diametric opposite of grimdark.

  Judging from the description, it appears that Allison will be contributing a story about the Marvel Universe’s most blusteringly beleaguered newspaperman¹, which ought to allow for plenty of room for a story that flirts with humo[u]r². So well done, Mr Allison, and damn you for making me buy a damn line-wide event tie-in book … that’s how they get you.

• Rosemary Valero-O’Connell has shared a bit more of her next book³ — the centerspread this time. Do yourself a favor, set aside a buck or two each month, so that you’ll be ready to purchase the moment it releases. Given the polish it’s got with at least a year and a half to go until release, I’m willing to say entirely on faith that it’s going to be great.

Spam of the day:

Poster & Release Date Announced: #TravelBoobs

It claims to be a forthcoming YouTube series, but I’m not clicking on anything in this email to find out.

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¹ Want to stop feeling like the entire world is arrayed against you, Jameson? Maybe don’t wear a friggin’ Hitler moustache.

² Dare I say, whimsy?

³ Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me, words by Mariko Tamaki, coming from :01 Books in 2018 (whimper).

As the various year-end holidays loomed, I looked out daily at the Wide World o’ Webcomics and saw a bunch of crickets putting away their instruments and heading home early cause wasn’t nobody around to listen to ’em. It was a dead ten days or so for news¹, but I said to myself, Self, I bet things pick up as soon as January rolls around. And hoo boy, was I ever right. In no particular order then:

• The third Kel McDonald-edited fairy tale collection, this time focusing on Asian stories, is nearing the end of its Kickstart.
• Tickets to latest iteration of Zach Weinersmith’s BAH! Fest, this one in London, are now live for purchase.
• Perhaps noting the imminent end of Planet of Hats — the last episode of classic Trek will get its treatment the day after tomorrow — creator David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc) is branching out another of his many, many webcomics projects². Taking a page from his Square Root of Minus Garfield (mashups of Garfield), he’s promoted iToons (mashups and parodies of any [web]comic, except Dinosaur Comics³) from Tumblrland to fullbore webcomic, and inviting submissions.

And there’s even more if you look at what got hit the net in the last 24 hours or so:

• Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett announced that he’s cutting back Sheldon to three days a week in order to concentrate more time on Drive. Now I stand second to no man in my love of Drive, but fact is that LArDK has not yet provided canonical proof that Fatty Chunklins exist in the Second Spanish Empire (as opposed to, say, Denny’s) and therefore Sheldon is — by some infinitesimally-small interval — the superior strip. Until we find out exactly what Fatty Chunklins are, I’m going to have to call this one a wash.
• For what is I believe the first time in its nearly ten year history, Three Panel Soul has broken the format declared there in the title. Always it’s been three panels, although not always equal-sized and side-by-side, and breaking the format today comes with a very good — not to mention heartbreaking — reason. Our condolences to everybody that knew and loved Jess McConville’s Poppy, and to everybody that deals with the bastard of a disease known as Alzheimer’s.
• Oh, and then there’s this, fresh from the New York Times, the School Library Journal, or anybody else that’s paying attention: Gene Luen Yang has been appointed by the Children’s Book Council, Every Child a Reader, and the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress to a two-year term as the fifth National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. He will be inaugurated into the role by the acting Librarian of Congress on Thursday, 7 January 2016, in a public ceremony at the Library of Congress.

  Yang is the first graphic novelist to be appointed National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, but then again he has a history of being the first graphic novelist to do things (first to be nominated for a National Book Award and the first to win the ALA’s Michael L Printz Award, both for the masterful American Born Chinese). He basically hasn’t slowed down since ABC, releasing (either alone or with an art partner) Level Up, Boxers & Saints, The Shadow Hero, Secret Coders, The Eternal Smile, Prime Baby, a stack of Avatar tie-ins, reprints pre-ABC work, and much, much more. Oh, and he’s writing something called Superman these days, too.

  Point being, you could hardly find anybody that’s written more for readers of all levels, approaching more different topics, in more different genres, and with a greater level of penetration into the the world of young readers⁴. The next two years are gonna be great for fans of YP lit (not to mention all those YP), and should Yang go mad with power and stage a coup to declare himself National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature For Life, we at Fleen would like to point out that any good benevolent overlord needs good PR and we would be up for the job.

Spam of the day:

Subject: Benachrichtigung

The rest of the spam appears to be a lottery scam in German; I’m just entranced by that wonderful, wonderful subject. Could any other language cram as many awkwardly-sounding syllables into such a randomly-discordant order?

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¹ Unless you want to count as news the ongoing attempts of a very large corporation to get me to want to keep giving them money by withholding services and pulling no-shows on repairs. But that word implies something novel or unique, and this was anything but.

² Go here and scroll to the bottom of the page.

³ Because all you have to work with in DC is dialogue, which means you’re not really messing with the form. Besides, he already has a comic for that. I also feel that I should note here that as an electrical engineer, this new endeavour should really be called jToons.

⁴ Okay, yes, Raina Telgemeier, but I would argue her contributions are fewer and more concentrated, whereas Yang’s are greater in number and broader in scope. I still think she’s probably the most important person working in comics today.

You’d think after doing this for nearly 10 years, I’d have a better feel for when work was gonna get in the way. Then again, my match says this is the 2663rd posting I’ve made on this here blog, meaning I’ve posted about 73% of the days since launch, so I’m not gonna beat myself up too much over it. Here’s that big news that I promised you.

• I’m assuming that you’ve all seen the big interview with Kate Beaton running at The Comics Journal? It was started at SPX (a place as formative to Kate Beaton, Internet Cartoonist as Cape Breton is to Kate Beaton, Alive Human) and gives a nice recap of how she simultaneously got to be the favorite cartoonist of those who love comics and those who are completely indifferent to comics.

  Personally, I was struck by how things happened for Beaton both very quickly and very slowly — she bounced around between the Maritimes, Vancouver, the Alberta tar sands, and Toronto, becoming a huge deal in webcomics circles while simultaneously isolated from the community. The success of her first pieces of merchandise brought her quickly to full-time pro status, but at the same time she went back to Fort McMurray and the tool crib to retire student loan debt. She exploded in popularity at that time, with her ballpoint-on-printer-paper drawings¹ — uploaded at night from the middle of an environmental moonscape — capturing something in all our hearts, and then found herself an Official Big Deal with her return to the faster pace of metropolitan life.

  See also: her entry into childrens books took a couple of years from suggestion to pitch to launch, and some of her best work comes about from leaving the speed of urban life for the sedate pace of Nova Scotia (cf: any of her family comics). She’s a pile of contradictions, then; she contains multitudes, all of them funny, insightful, charming, adorable. Go read it.

• The other big news I wanted to make sure you all saw came from The Hollywood Reporter; it’s been a while since Ursula Vernon did webcomics on the regular², what with all the kids lit she’s writing, and the modern takes on fairy tales and fantasy, and the podcasting on disturbing events/disturbing food, and all the rest. So maybe you didn’t notice that one of her books got optioned for film by an obscure sometimes voice actor:
  

  Disney has optioned the movie rights to Castle Hangnail, a children’s book by Ursula Vernon, for an adaptation to be produced by Ellen DeGeneres.

  So that’s all right. As noted on this page on several previous occasions, an option doesn’t mean that Vernon is now rolling in huge piles of money; it doesn’t even mean that a movie will get made anytime soon or at all. Lots of things can happen between now and some nebulous point in the future, particularly if Degeneres and Disney decide to go the animated route ’cause dang, that takes time. But it means that Vernon’s more on the radar of the deep-pocketed entertainment industry, that other studios may try to lock up rights to her other works in case Castle Hangnail becomes a monster hit, and each of those things means the possibility of less financial wobbliness than is usually found in the indy comics/indy writer career path.

  Vernon celebrated the announcement by welcoming a new rescued dog into her household and threatening a hack webcomics pseudojournalist who smarted off at her on Twitter. Honestly, she’s probably happier about identifying a new moth in her garden than anything else in the last week, which means she’s unlikely to go the coke and hookers route of other suddenly successful people; Fleen congratulates Vernon on not letting Hollywood change her.

Spam of the day:

****Second email notice***** Sequel to your non response of our earlier letter sent by post to you by to you on behalf of the Trustees and Executors of the Estate of our late client.

Been getting a lot more of these scams lately; bonus points for this actually being a second email and being signed by the same fake lawyer (who claims to be from Zurich but has a Russian character in the middle of his Germanic name and give a UK phone number).

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¹ As Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett, her choice of topic (literature, history), posting schedule (irregular), posting location (Livejournal), and drawing materials should have killed any chance of success, but her style, humo[u]r, and raw skill overcame those presumed handicaps.

² As always, I loves me some Digger.