The webcomics blog about webcomics

Lubtacular

There were originally going to be more words in today’s post, but I’ve had to clear snow twice so far — 40 cm and counting of snowfall will do that — and will likely have to do so twice more again before it’s done. So you get some pointers and the assurance that I had many clever words on deck in my brain that just won’t come out now.

As you may have gathered from the title, our common thread today is new work from Matt Lubchansky — cartoonist, associate editor at The Nib, and international bon vivant — who was most recently mentioned on this page in association with their new original graphic novel¹ ’bout two weeks back. As well as being a prolific cartoonist in their own right, Lubchansky is also works with other comickers (web and otherwise) on group efforts and anthologies. Let’s see what’s on deck:


Spam of the day:

TruGreen lawn services We know you take pride in your lawn.

My lawn is a morass of divots thrown up by greyhound zoomies, and is currently buried under knee-deep snow. You’re high if you think pride comes within a half kilometer of this benighted patch of grass.

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¹ Pre-orders still open!

² Who would like you to know that the events in their signature work, O Human Star, start in-story on 2 Feb 2021. Starting tomorrow, Delliquanti will be re-running OHS on their social media pages, one page per day, with commentary. Dive in if you haven’t previously.

Carrying On As Best We Can

Before we get started, I believe that birthday Version 1.0 release anniversary wishes are in order to everybody’s favorite robot pal, R Stevens. Selfless and giving entity that he is, he’s celebrated with a great new pin design in limited quantities that ships for free starting tomorrow. Fuzzy nightmare pals forever!

  • I got my copy of The Nib’s latest print collection, Greetings From The Wasteland in the mail today, and it’s great. For starters, the collection of political cartoons is in large part arranged by creator, so all of your Pia Guerra cartoons are together, all the Gemma Corrells, all the Kendra Wellses, etc.

    Sadly, there wasn’t enough space to dedicate to the entire story of the future wasteland cartoons of editor Matt Bors — there would have been no room for anybody else — which, if arranged in the correct order, form a single, coherent story¹. But that’s hardly a surprise, given that they had four years of daily cartoons from dozens of cartoonists (15 of which get featured sections) to curate and only 200 pages to play with. Get yours now.

  • We are facing down the second year of disrupted in-person events, but if there’s one thing comics-as-a-community has gotten good at, it’s finding ways to shift to virtual gatherings. Thus, the Cartoon Art Museum would like you to know that uncontrolled pandemic² or no, there will be some form of Queer Comics Expo and some way to announce the annual Prism Awards:

    Awards will be presented to comic works by queer authors and works that promote the growing body of diverse, powerful, innovative, positive or challenging representations of LGBTQAI+ characters in fiction or nonfiction comics. The goal of the Awards is to recognize, promote and celebrate diversity and excellence in the field of queer comics.

    The Queer Comics Expo launched as an annual event in 2014 as a celebration of queer culture and to promote diverse queer representation in comics, animation, and other great ways to tell our stories. QCE also serves as a fundraiser for San Francisco’’s Cartoon Art Museum. This year the event will take place May 15-16, 2021. Applications to participate as a creator or presenter for 2021 are OPEN until Monday, March 15, 2021 and will be NOTIFIED by Thursday, April 15, 2021.

    You can submit for both the QCE and the Prisms by browsing to cartoonart.org/qcexpo. Submissions for the Prisms are open until 28 February, with finalists announced at QCE (15-16 May) and winners announced over the summer. Categories include Best Short Form Comic, Best Webcomic, Best Comic From A Small To Midsize Press, Best Comic From A Mainstream Publisher, Best Comic Anthology, and Best Comic For Young Readers (new category).

    Category-specific requirements vary, but in general all submissions must have been first published in calendar year 2020, be in English, and have prominent LGBTQAI+ themes or be a strong allegory to the queer experience. See the entry form for more details.


Spam of the day:

This professor plugged his house to Earth’s core… that can harvest the power of Earth’s core making him 100% energy independent.

Yeah, I don’t have the patience to explain the concept of “electrical ground” to this spamming asshole, but I attended nerd schools — as an undergrad and grad — for six years specifically to learn that the Earth is where electricity goes to die.

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¹ Really, Bors said it himself. Two comics more recent than the book provide the bookends. By the way, their names are Gorm and Tinsel.

² Seriously, people, stay the fuck home, wear a mask, and make people that you know who won’t do those things feel your wrath until they decide to stop killing the rest of us.

For Crap’s Sake, Stay Home

Yeah, I’m talking to you. Everybody that leaves their personal bubble for Thanksgiving to gather with family or friends is absolutely, positively going to kill somebody by Christmas. Might be somebody you know and love; might be a complete stranger. And while I think I’ve done a pretty good job for selecting against sociopaths among my readership, if it’s the only motivation that moves you, it might be you. Chris Eliopoulos put is succinctly on the Twitters today:

Lots of people upset they can’t be with families this Thanksgiving or selfishly plan on being with a large group anyway. Well, my family will have 1 member on call for the EMT, so do him and all of the first responders a favor & stay out of large groups & wear masks.

This quote is an endorsement¹.

Despite not traveling anywhere, this is your advance notice that the blog will go quiet after Wednesday for the long weekend, so please enjoy your tryptophan and pie at home, away from everybody else. Don’t be That Guy².

In actual webcomics news:

  • I am pleased to note that Wondermark creator David Malki ! is at it again, and by it I mean a deep dive into the wildly inconsistent and frankly disturbing coloring of Garfield strips over the past however many decades. I know that it sounds like the stupidest thing ever, but it’s actually pretty fascinating after a while. Check it.
  • Iron Circus holiday sale? Iron Circus holiday sale, from now until 1 Dec, with 25% off all physical items (unless already discounted) in the store. Keep in mind that thanks to the fuckery with the Postal System earlier in the year, you really should get your shopping done sooner to allow for what will surely be longer mailing times — do not under any circumstances go to the mall this season — and you should probably keep an eye on the TopatoCo annual shipping advisory as they are the gold standard when it comes to shipping smarts:

    Please allow orders up to 8 business days to ship
    DEADLINE FOR NON-US ORDERS: November 23
    DEADLINE FOR US ORDERS: December 10

    Also note that the non-US deadline is today and good luck to you as you make your orders very quickly.

  • Something to look forward to in December besides possible vaccine availability: Jeeyon Shim and Shing Yin Khor’s new interactive journaling game. Prelaunch for the Kickstart is now live, witha green button on the page you can click to be notified when it goes live. This looks like a good ‘un.
  • Seriously, stay home. Do it for the old folks. What are you, some kind of monster that hates grandmas?

Relax Your Neck Muscles in 10 Minutes Using Neck Massager

That is … surprisingly reasonable. Is this a trap?

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¹ As most readers will know, I am also an EMT; in fact, I got elected to be Chief of my agency, so I’m now responsible for the well-being of two dozen EMTs. We’re having to once again take PPE and decontamination precautions that we were able to stop with back in May because somebody you know is a plague vector that is trying to kill themselves, everybody around them, and my people. Knock that shit off.

² And by That Guy, I mean US Senator and fae changeling Ted Cruz, specifically. Of all the people you don’t want to be, Ted Cruz is at the top of the list because seriously, fuck that guy.

Let’s End The Week On Some Good News

Hey, remember when I said I was gonna give away an awesome graphic novel, way back at the end of summer? And remember around Labo[u]r Day, when alert reader Erik won? It took a while to get him his book (there was a move involved, and a new baby, plus the general fuckery with the Postal Service), but Erik emailed me last night to say that he got the book and took the smiling photo that was the cost of entry. Erik says:

Thanks again, both for the book and for the impetus to get off my tush and subscribe to The Nib.

My work here is done. Everybody feel good for Erik!


Spam of the day:

A recent charge attempt requires your attention

Oh my, that sounds serious, americanexpress@kiwiinsure.net, I am certain to click on the completely harmless buttons you have included in your email, or even the links to the American Express website which mysteriously appear to redirect to kiwiinsure.net. Thanks for looking out for me!

PS: I don’t have an American Express card so maybe try a little harder then next time you attempt a crime, jackass.

A Couple Of Minutes And A Couple Of Bucks

I wanted to share with you something I received yesterday, something that if you were to act on it, say, today or later, that will absolutely not be a problem. It’s about the cost of comics.

Producing comics costs money, and it should be in all circumstances that the dominant cost is paying the creators. By a fluke of timing, yesterday also brought forth a damning bit of reporting into throwback practices of the bad old days from a huckster who should be avoided at all costs. If you’re thinking of getting into comics remember that the first rule is money flows to the creator(s).

For a hell of a contrast to Andrew Rev¹, consider that for years now, The Nib has been putting out comics five days a week, and paying the best rates seen since the heyday when every general-audience magazine ran cartoons and there were people making mortgage payments on homes with pools in Connecticut from making those cartoons. These days, it’s pretty much The New Yorker and The Nib. But unlike the heyday of general-audience magazines, anybody can read their stuff for free, no subscription required, and so there’s an appeal that was sent to everybody that’s signed up for their newsletter (which is free and separate from their Inkwell subscriber program). They’re asking people for a few bucks:

This week’s Nib comics cost $2,500. Will you help us cover it?
Each week at The Nib we publish thousands of dollars in comics — most of them original works we’ve commissioned from our artists. A short comic you read on the site costs $300, while our long form often goes over $1,000.

Producing comics isn’t cheap and we have no financial backing other than our monthly members. This is an entirely reader-funded publication.

So we’re setting modest goal of raising $2,500 in donations [14 October 2020] to cover our costs of publishing.

That’s it. If all our readers gave us $10, we’d fund our publishing efforts well into next year!

Ten bucks. If you read The Nib online, can you make a one-time donation of ten bucks? I’m a monthly subscriber and also buy all of the The Nib’s print collections, which comes to maybe six hundo over the lifetime of the site; Matt Bors isn’t asking for class money, he’s asking for ten bucks, once.

If you’ve thought about being a subscriber and this is a good time for US$4/month (or more — more is good) instead of ten bucks once, that’s also a great idea. If you don’t like the thought of an ongoing subscription and another account that needs to be updated the next time TJMaxx or whoever has a data breach and you get a new credit card, I get it … maybe take that US$48 that represents a one-year subscription and send it over all at once.

You can donate here. A few minutes, a few bucks. I’ve always figured my fair contribution to creators at about US$0.10/page (which is about the cost of a print collection), and The Nib does at least three short comics/day (with much longer ones interspersed), so that’s at least a buck and a half a week, or six bucks a month — that lowest level of subscription is a bargain, and a tenner will cover your moral obligation for most of two months.

Comics cost, and money flows to the creators. You’re here because you love comics. Take a few minutes, take the credit card equivalent of the change jar you have on the table by where you keep your keys, and join with others to keep the comics coming and the money flowing in the right direction.

And for the love of all that’s holy, if you’re a creator read that longer piece linked above and never work for Terrific Production.


Spam of the day:

Smart way that can do your ear clean within seconds

This is just that mind-control bug thing from Wrath Of Khan, isn’t it?

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¹ The most vile part of the contracts in that story, for me, wasn’t the We don’t have to pay you until COVID has been defeated to a mathematically impossible degree clause. It was the part that says you’re exclusively tied to Terrific as long as they aren’t more than 45 days late in paying you. Who the hell expects that a contract that says I can violate my obligations to you for a month and a half and it’s all good won’t immediately turn into permission to do exactly that, forever?

Birthaversary!

As has been noted in the past, there are certain folks within the webcomics ambit that have closely-aligned significant dates; Ryan North and John Allison, for example, share a birthdate, and I am a co-birthdayist with Jon Rosenberg. Dylan Meconis and her wife, Katie Lane¹, have two birthdays and an anniversary on three consecutive days.

And today, the 6th of October, one may find celebrations of the birth of Ananth Hirshbon vivant, man about town, possessor of the best poker face in history — and also eight years since the awesome wedding² of Holly Jeffrey Rowland.

Today is also the day that we found out who the 2020 MacArthur Fellows are (no [web]comics folks this year, but still a stunning cross-disciplinary collection of people representing the breadth of human endeavours) and the winners of the Harvey Awards, which will be formally presented by streaming ceremony on Friday evening, in conjunction with virtual NYCC.

  • The Book Of The Year and Best Children Or Young Adult Book went to Gene Yang for Dragon Hoops and Superman Smashes The Klan, respectively; the latter is shared with Gurihiru as the artists. The former was up against the likes of Lynda Barry and Tillie Walden’s Are You Listening? (one of my favorite books of the past year), along with Chris Ware, Eleanor Davis, and more.

    The latter was an even more impressive win, as Yang was competing against himself (Dragon Hoops being double-nominated), Guts, Stargazing, and Almost American Girl. It’s pretty unheard of to go against Raina with a Raina-alike book and then defeat both of them with the cheeriest story about stomping Nazis ever. Also, although I never got back to Books 2 and 3 of SSTK, let me say that Yang not only gets Superman better than anybody in the past couple of decades, his Lois Lane is perfect.

  • Digital Book Of The Year went to The Nib which I’m not sure is a book in the way the other nominees were, but certainly well-deserved. Matt Bors and his co-conspirators do amazing work, five days a week.

Because I’m a glutton for punishment, I decided to check back in on the Ringo Awards, due to be announced in a few weeks. It’s finally acknowledged (as near as I can tell, the announcement about two hours after I last wrote about it) that Baltimore Comic Con ain’t happening in person, and the awards will be streamed from the virtual BCC. So, glad to see sanity prevailing.


Spam of the day:

Alison Wethering wrote: Hey, great site! Have you thought about adding a video in response to COVID-19?

I believe that I am firmly on the record that my response to COVID is Isolate and wear a mask, or stay the fuck away from me forever, you plague rats.

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¹ Light-ning Law-yer!!

² No cake at this shindig, there was an ice cream truck complete with Choco Tacos.

Defining Moments

Sometimes, you come across a comic and you’re convinced that this is what the creator(s) regard(s) as their defining work (at least to date). There’s previous stuff from them, and later stuff, but this is where they plant a flag and pour their heart and soul into it even if that wasn’t their original intent.

It can be fairly obvious where that labor of love is (case in point: The Abominable Charles Christopher, running in fits and starts but Karl Kerschl will always come back to it) and sometimes there’s so much work, so good, so invested, that you aren’t sure if you’ve seen it yet (case in point: I’m not sure if Box Brown would regard any of his projects that way, although I suspect either the André or Andy Kaufman bios could come closest).

But I think the key indicator is not only somebody making a great work, but finding ways to return to it, no matter what gets in the way. Which is a long way of saying that for Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh, I think Barbarous fills that role for them. They’ve done plenty of great work, together and individually, and it’s hard to get more personal than an autobio diary strip¹, but I think that the depth of character and sheer artistic skill on display in their story of a magic school dropout and her unconventional familiar pal just may be their defining work.

And lucky for you, it’s at the perfect point to get caught up — five story arcs² comprising Season 1 (with some canon side-stories drawn by pals starting next week), with infinite re-readability (every time I go back, there’s more layers that reveal themselves), and best of all — a beginning, middle, and end such that if we have to wait until never for Season 2 (because they are busy folks, and there’s paying jobs to get to), it’ll still feel complete while making us want more.

Hirsh and Ota have decades of comic-making experience between them³, all leading to this deceptively deep story; they’ll have more in the future, some that may be better known or more widely read, but I really do think this is where they will look back after a long and lauded career and say Yeah, that one could only have been told by us.


Spam of the day:

Dear Valued Candidate,
You were recently nominated as a biographical candidate for the next edition of Who’ s Who In America. We are pleased to inform you that the first phase of your candidacy was approved! Your prompt response is needed to ensure your complete professional information is considered.

I haven’t seen this particular scam since I was in high school. Respect for pulling out the deep cut.

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¹ One that, a dozen years on, makes you wonder if you want to keep sharing your life with strangers on the internet forever.

² Including one that was the NCS Division Award winner for Online Comic — Longform for 2018. The first two of which are collected into massive oversized print editions, and the third is in the fulfillment pipeline, and the fourth just completed its funding round. Me? I’m waiting for the inevitable Season 1 omnibus.

³ Also, they are cool people and have been to my house and pet my dog.

Book News!

Whee doggie, buncha news for you today (okay, some of it’s a couple days old but today’s when we got to it). Let’s dig in.

Y’know, I had three other books to talk about today, but running things down on the Internet Archive is a time-consuming business, so we’ll come back to them tomorrow. See you back here then.


Spam of the day:

Amazing Invention Takes Over Control of Any Barking Dog

I have a greyhound. They are notoriously rare barkers.

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¹ That one is from the Wayback Machine because the original is offline which … it was full of NSFW stuff which would seem to make it a natural for appropriation by scammers, but it hasn’t been. Weird.

Busy Weekend

You know, what with two different sets of comics awards being given out, nominally from different coasts but practically speaking all from the confines of cyberspace.

  • On the delayed hand, you had NCSFest handing out the various NCS Division Awards, along with the Reuben¹. In the Online Comics categories, you had wins by Alec Longstreth (Long Form) and Jim Benton (Short Form); the latter wouldn’t have been my votegetter if I had a vote, but I can’t say it’s undeserving; I can say it was probably the most familiar work for the membership who, as previously noted, notoriously skew old.

    Which might explain why The Reuben itself went to the oldest nominee, one with a career stretching back four decades. A’course, the oldest nominee is the deeply subversive living legend Lynda Barry, whose work is most definitely not what I’d have expected the older members to vote for. It’s hard argue with the choice, and easy to argue that there might not have been a Raina Telgemeier if not for Lynda Barry’s deeply personal, memoirlike work (which started in print when Raina was about 2 years old) blazing the way. So no complaints here — Raina’s mantlepiece is getting a bit crowded anyway — and I suspect every one of the other nominees up for the top prize agreed that Barry was the right choice.

    As a side note, I see that Joe Wos — once a recurring name on this page during his years of directing Pittsburgh’s now-folded Toonseum — was given the division award for Variety Entertainment for his Mazetoons. Congrats, Joe.

  • And on schedule (although distanced), the Ignatzen were also presented on Saturday, and managed a simultaneous best-and-worst outcome in the same category. Do a quick refresh on the dilemma that the Ignatz Awards found themselves in this year and you’ll understand. Rosemary Valero-O’Connell is a creator whose work I deeply admire and, I daresay, a friend. The work for which she was nominated as Outstanding Artist, the short story collection Don’t Go Without Me, is magnificent and entirely worthy of the brick.

    But Valero-O’Connell was also on the jury. And while I stand second to no person in my love of and evangelical fervor for her work, and I recognize the accomplishment of being only the second person to win Outstanding Artist twice² and the only one to repeat in back-to-back years, I wish that it hadn’t happened. I do think that this situation has lessened the credibility of the Ignatz Awards, and I really, really hope that they write some ground rules to ensure that this appearance of a conflict of interest cannot happen again.

    Looking at other winners, Ebony Flowers has had nearly as good a year on the awards circuit as Valero-O’Connell; last year she took the Promising New Talent brick for the short story Hot Comb and this year for the expanded print collection incorporating it (also titled Hot Comb), she’s recognized for Outstanding Graphic Novel. Ariel Ries received bricks for Outstanding Online Comic (for Witchy) and Outstanding Comic (for Cry Wolf Girl); if you weren’t following her work before, you really should be.

    Outstanding Anthology went to Be Gay, Do Comics by the various contributors of The Nib. Look, you know that on a daily basis, it’s the most wide-ranging source of original editorial and nonfiction comics around, with a list of contributors that kicks every ass. Curating their best work on a theme is something that Matt Bors, Eleri Harris, and Matt Lubchansky were going to throw themselves into, and produce something terrific.

    Speaking of The Nib, Whit Taylor’s contributions there have always impressed the hell out of me (as well as everyplace else her work runs), and today she must take some solace in the fact that after two years of utter bullshit being inflicted on her in the form of a baseless lawsuit³, her Fizzle took the Ignatz for Oustanding Series and nobody can remember that other guy’s name. Seriously, I had to look him up, whereas members of The Eleven keep getting recognized for their work. It was a long, expensive, pointless road, but I have to imagine that the heft of that brick is gonna feel really good in Taylor’s hands.


Spam of the day:

As of today there is a limited supply of LUMIGUARD Solar Motion Sensor Floodlights Click the Button below to find out if they are still available.

I got something like this for literally twelve bucks at the local hardware store two years ago. It picks up the neighborhood outdoor cats when they wander by after dark. Why exactly do I need your more complicated and expensive version?

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¹ Yes, yes, common parlance refers to all of these awards as Reubens, but the term proper applies only to the Cartoonist Of The Year, the one chosen by the entirety of the NCS membership rather than those of a particular area. It’s the COTY that gets the fancy Rube Goldbergian trophy, where the division winners get a (admittedly, handsome and heavy) plaque.

² The first being Jaime Hernandez in 2007 and 2012.

³ Which resolved after tens of thousands of dollars of legal fees and the plaintiff not getting his US$2.5 million, which is apparently the going rate for butthurt in the first degree.

Appropriately Distanced Celebrations Of Comics

Just under ten years ago, David “Damn You” Willis launched his rebooted Walkyverse¹ comic, Dumbing Of Age. In the 9 years, 11 months, 3 weeks, and 5 days since then, the story has progressed from college move-in day through about … eight weeks of story. Up to midterms or so, a rate of about 5 days of story time per real-world year.

Since Sunday, the story has wordlessly jumped forward three whole months, saving us about 15 years of daily reading. Given that Thursday is the actual tenth anniversary, I expect we’ll get one more timeskip update tomorrow, and we’ll finally reach second semester on Thursday. Which means that in four strips, Willis has shifted the rate of story time:real time up to ten years per sememster, meaning we’ll see graduation sometime in 2090 instead of 2170 at the old rate.

Given that comic strips have a long history of being passed down to third and even fourth generation creative teams, I have no doubt that Dumbing Of Age will still be running when graduation comes in, whenever that may be. In any event, congratulations to Willis on ten years of DOA and 23 years of continuous webcomicking. That’s a damn big round number.

In other news:

  • We’re down to the wire on the Ignatz voting, with votes due before 9 September, which means you have until 11:59pm EDT to get yours in. The bricks will be awarded on Saturday the 12th, which is actually a very leisurely turnaround time for the Ignatzen, with the tallies normally taking between close of the exhibit hall and 9:30pm the same day.

    For reference, given the poor situation that the Ignatzes have found themselves in, I voted Michael DeForge for Outstanding Artist rather than personal fave Rosemary Valero-O’Connell. In the Outstanding Onnline Comic category, I had a dilemma because the work is all very good. But what do you do when end up with a short editorial comic like I Exist (by Breena Nuñez) up against a words+pictures poem like Like The Tide (by Isabella Rotman), an Insta account of single-panel gags (by Gabby Schulz), and a long-stretches-silent, page-a-week updater like Superpose (by Seosamh & Anka). I tossed my vote to Witchy (by Ariel Ries) because I dig the story. Good luck to all of the nominees.

  • Know what else is happening this weekend, virtually? NCSFest. I lost track of it in the lockdown, but I got an email today that it’s going on this weekend, including the Reuben Awards, which will be broken up into six separate programs (the programming page doesn’t have hard start times, but the day’s programming starts at 10:00am EDT).

    I wasn’t involved in the process this year, so I couldn’t tell you anything about the webcomic awards beyond what’s been publicly shared. The Online Comics — Long Form nominees are Steven Conley for The Middle Age, Maaria Laurinen for Phantomland, and Alec Longstreth for Isle Of Elsi. The most interesting thing there is that Phantomland is on Tapas, which is about three revolutions in comicking beyond what a large part of the NCS membership is aware of.

    The nominees for Online Comics — Short Form are Jim Benton, Christopher Grady, and Emma Hunsinger. The short forms don’t have specific titles to go with the creators, but I’ll wager that Hunsinger is on the list because of How To Draw A Horse as much as anything else. That’s magnificent work, but so is Grady’s Lunarbaboon. Benton’s a one-man IP factory, but I think he’s outclassed by the other two.

    But the Reubens news that has me most curious isn’t in the Online categories, it’s the Big Award Of The Night, the Cartoonist Of The Year, the one that’s gone to folks like Schulz, Johnston, Watterson, Larson, Trudeau, Amend, Thompson, Guisewite, and other legends of cartooning. The nominees are:

    That’s three solid practitioners of the comic strip and one living legend in Lynda Barry. Also, four nominees where normally there are only three². Also, three women. And … wait, I’m being told that there’s a fifth nominee:

    Okay, the NCS almost never nominates somebody whose work is outside the newsprint mode — comic strips, editorial comics, magazine work, all periodicals is my point — and the last one to win Cartoonist Of The Year from outside that world was Matt Groening back in 2002³. I don’t think they’ve ever recognized a graphic novelist, and certainly not anybody whose medium is middle grade autobio aimed at girls.

    That sound you hear is the industry coming to grips with the fact that the literal Old Boys Club is fading from existence and getting replaced by those damn Millennials. Gonna have to figure out when that broadcast is and pay some damn attention to it.

Edit to add: The NCSFest schedule page now has start times for sessions, instead of just durations.


Spam of the day:

Currency printed is NOT wealth, real wealth is what we produce (in terms and goods and services) and exchanged for currency (a measure of your productivity).

Oh crap, this is a pitch for some new blockchain fantasy, which is even more of a fiction that actual money. Go peddle your shit to somebody that’s bad at math.

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¹ So named because a series of related comics — Roomies!, It’s Walky!, Joyce And Walky!, and Shortpacked! — had one David “Walky” Walkerton as a central character, to whom all of the others could trace relationships. The Walkyverse itself debuted 13 years to the day before DOA.

² I mean, since Pastis broke his Susan Lucci streak last year, may as well open it up. [shrugmoji]

³ Okay, Glen Keane, animator, won a couple of years ago, but being the son of Bil Keane of The Family Circus means he’s part of that world. The only others I can think of are Sergio Aragonés and Will Eisner, the latter of whom won in 1998 — well past his creative peak, and clearly as a lifetime achievement.