The webcomics blog about webcomics

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.

Ringo Redux

Revisiting yesterday’s post, we can add a bit more on the two things that got way the hell under my skin, the lack of a nominees listing for the Ringo Awards and the reality-blind full speed ahead intention of the Baltimore Comic Con to take place in person. Let’s take ’em in reverse order.

  • The BCC (that would be the Con) seems intent on the fiction that in two months, they’ll be seeing all of you in 3D at the BCC (that would be the Baltimore Convention Center). One more reason that the Con Committee needs to change their messaging to Sorry, we’ll see you in 2021, everybody be safe was added in a comment by reader Rob Nobody:

    I feel compelled to point out that the Baltimore Convention Center is ALSO the primary public COVID-19 testing center in Baltimore. (I just got tested today for the second time; very quick and smooth operation and have been getting our results in ~36 hours, highly recommend as much as one CAN recommend getting that thing jabbed up your nose into your sinuses.) So yeah, if the Comic Con people think they have a chance in hell of actually doing this in person, they are in for a RUDE awakening.

    Just pointing that out because the ConCom apparently doesn’t know.

  • Right, the Ringos. They are, hands down, the weirdest awards in comics, with a complex structure designed (at least it’s my reading) to deal with the critiques that jury-nominated awards don’t match up with fan interests, and fan-nominated awards can be gamed by block voting. Thus, there are four entirely different kinds of awards at the Ringos:
    • OPEN+JURY NOMINATED AWARDS: Two nominees will be selected by an open, online nomination process. The remaining three nominees will be selected by a jury of comics industry professionals. A tie among the jury’s choices may result in more than five nominees in a category.
    • OPEN NOMINATED AND VOTED AWARDS: All the nominees and the winner of these five categories will be selected by open voting. The five top Fan-Only Favorites will be announced at the Award Ceremony in September at the Baltimore Comic-Con. A winner in a given year’s Fan Favorite category is not eligible to be nominated in that category the following year.
    • THE MIKE WIERINGO SPIRIT AWARD: The nominated works will be voted on by the professional jury as well as three additional, perennial jurors: Matt Wieringo, Todd Dezago, and Mark Waid.
    • THE HERO INITIATIVE LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AND DICK GIORDANO HUMANITARIAN AWARDS: These award are selected by Hero Initiative and will be announced at the Ringo Awards Ceremony.

    It’s only the first cohort that has a proper ballot, as the second is all write-in and the third and fourth are closed processes. Since we spoke yesterday, the Ringos have made public the nominees for the 17 Open+Jury categories, 8 which have five nominees and 9 of which have between 6 and 9 nominees. Folks, this is getting overly complicated already.

    Look, I’m not going to fault the jury for having ties, but when you’re supposed to come up with 3 nominees and you end up with as many as 7, you need to pare that down a little. I’ve been part of a jury process eight times (holy crap), and we’ve had protracted voting rounds to get down to three nominees every single time.

    You’ve got to work it down because if you’ve got eight or nine nominees, you’re going to have a winner with somewhere in the 20% range of votes. It’s a situation tailor-made to get the most excitable, antisocial, attack-oriented chuds (and no, I’m not naming their little hate movement here because fuck those guys) screaming about how the real fans were excluded by secret SJW cabals trying to destroy comics and also tits.

    Anyways, you can find web- and indie comickers up and down the ballot, including in Best Cartoonist (Writer/Artist) (which features alternative/political comics makers alongside arthouse comics makers alongside strip cartoonists alongside monthly floppy folks alongside Raina, just in case you were wondering), Best Writer (where you’ll find Mariko Tamaki), Best Artist Or Penciller (including Fleen fave Rosemary Vallero-O’Connell), Best Single Issue Or Story (which includes Hot Comb by Ebony Flowers), Best Original Graphic Novel (Hot Comb again but weirdly this category has essentially zero overlap with the Cartoonist, Writer, and Artist categories in terms of people and their work both being nominated), Best Comic Strip Or Panel (including Nancy by Olivia Jaimes, Sarah’s Scribbles by Sarah Andersen, The Middle Age by Steve Conley, and specifically Pia Guerra’s comics at The Nib but looks like not anybody else), and Best Kids Comic Or Graphic Novel (Guts).

    The Best Webomic category has seven nominees:

    The category is dominated that what you’d call graphic novels updated in chunks, with only Penny Arcade following the strip format.

    But the one that’s most unlike the others is Rocío Diestra, which is a) on Instagram (which means I can’t really read it because fuck Zuckerberg), b) single comics panels interspersed with photos and other content, and c) in Spanish. From what I can see, the art style is reminiscent of Gemma Correll, so that’s all right. I’m intrigued and honestly surprised that Americans would nominate something not in English.

If you want to vote on stuff, you can do so here. The winners will be announced on 24 October, but despite what both websites say there is zero chance that this will be a presentation at Baltimore Comic Con.


Spam of the day:

In general, I recently broke up with our mutual friend (if interested, I’ll tell you later when we meet)
Well, now I need a man for hot, but very pleasant meetings.

The only mutual friend we might have that speaks Russian is John, who I knew in college, and who learned to drink from Russians one summer on a work exchange in Orel back before the Berlin Wall came down (and thus was responsible a year later for the single most epic drunk incident at my college in the entirety of the 80s). He’s why I have a genuine Red Army furry hat, which he got in trade for an old, worn-out pair of New Balances I was going to discard. Fun fact: John’s wife doesn’t speak Russian so I think you might be fibbing.

Eisners 2020 Post 1

The Eisner awards presentation went up last night, with Phil LaMarr doing a nice job of providing context and hopefully making all the nominees and winners feel like this is significant thing, even with the distance required.

It was a nice touch that the Hall Of Fame inductees (near the end of the program) were given the opportunity to make video acceptance speeches; I’m wondering if the Eisners will reach out to the winners of the 32 regular categories and give them the same opportunity.

Of the six inductees voted in (Nell Brinkley and E Simms Campbell were the historic inductees chosen by the jury), Alison Bechdel, Stan Sakai, and Louise Simonson spoke on their own behalf; Maggie Thompson accepted for herself, but also her late husband Don; Howard Cruse died last year and his award was accepted by Ed Sedarbaum, his husband. Bill Watterson declined to send an acceptance, but honestly — if you had the chance to have an award accepted on your behalf by Sergio Aragonés instead of public speaking, you’d probably do so, too.

Of the 32 regular categories, I called a couple closely-contested decisions, including Ebony Flowers (Hot Comb) for Best Short Story and The Way Of The Househusband, vol 1 as Best Humor Publication. I never did get around to looking at the digital/web nominees (on account of … yeah, everything), but we should acknowledge Chip Zdarsky and Jason Loo (Afterlift) as Best Digital Comic, and Erica Eng (Fried Rice Comic) as Best Webcomic¹.

But let’s talk about some Fleen favorites from last year:

  • Raina Telgemeier took both her nominated categories — Best Publication For Kids and Best Writer/Artist for Guts.
  • Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me touched three awards, with Mariko Tamaki getting the Best Writer nod (which included other works for the year), as well as Best Publication For Teens and Best Penciller/Inker for Rosemary Valero-O’Connell.
  • Tillie Walden was up for three awards, and lost out on the lettering award to Stan Sakai² (who’s literally been winning Eisners since before Walden was born) and the writer/artist award to Raina, so no shame in either of those. But I imagine that’s made up for the fact that Are You Listening? took Best Graphic Album — New, marking at as the best, single new graphic novel of the year which … damn.

Kindly consider that of the 32 categories and 43 named winners³, 23 were women (25 men and 28 women if you count the Hall Of Famers). Black women, queer women, young women, old women, women going back to the dawn of cartooning are the major force in the creation of comics, and the people that make them — including the people that make cape comics that can only recycle storylines and try to maintain sales with endless reboots, variant covers, and line-wide crossovers — recognize them as the best in the medium.

And given that Walden and Valero-O’Connell are still in their mid-20s and getting better — not to mention teaching and inspiring the creators of tomorrow — none of that is changing anytime soon. That keening sound you hear in the distance is the increasingly-irrelevant cohort of manchildren that want comics to be their boys-only club that never changes, and their tears are delicious.

Weirdly, they didn’t announce the Spirit Of Comics Retailer Award in the video, but just as weirdly, they only announced the short list a couple of days ago; the website does mention that Sergio López of Nostromo Sevilla in Seville, Spain was recognized. That makes two years in a row for shops from Spanish-speaking countries, which is just another change for the better — comics is a worldwide artform, and the more people from different backgrounds about, the better it is for all of us.


Spam of the day:
Spammers don’t get to share the day with these awesome folks.

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¹ As a reminder, Best Digital Comic appears online in comic book format, and Best Webcomic is a longform work created for viewing online, neither of which necessarily describe a lot of the best work being done on the web, which is why Matt Inman keeps getting nominated for Best Short Story, I guess.

² Who had a very good virtual night; Sakai also took the award Best Archival Collection/Project — Comic Books, for the hardcover/slipcased edition of the complete Grasscutter story from Usagi Yojimbo.

³ I’m omitting translators in this count.

SDCC@Home Friday Panels Report

It’s a little odd to do a panel writeup when anybody can go back to see the panel themselves, but maybe some of you wouldn’t have watched the panel in the first place until somebody gave you a rundown and said Hey, this is neat. So consider this to be that — the conversation between Raina Telgemeier and Robin Ha was a talk that went some expected places, some unexpected places, and nicely overcame the inherent limitations of the video talk.

Excitement and enthusiasm aren’t things you expect to get in a teleconference, but Raina and Robin found a way to bring energy to their audience, despite being separated by time, space, and networking distance. Given that my job is teaching, and even in the Before Times it was often done over Zoom, so trust me when I tell you that to summon energy over the camera and make the viewer feel like they’re there in the room is entirely a thing.

The other thing that really struck me is how well the conversation flowed; there’s a need in such situations for somebody to direct things, and even moreso when network lag might enter into it. The best are able to sense when they need to yield the lead role to the other person for a while, and when to pick it up and run with it; Robin and Raina probably did the best job at knowing when to let the other drive I’ve seen since Scott McCloud and Gene Yang had a spotlight talk back in 2014. Like that earlier example, it was a case of two creators with similar sensibilities finding a resonant frequency that they could hop onto and off from as needed.

I’m almost tempted to make the paraphrases more exact and mine the video for quotes, but if I do that, I’ll never finish. I’m treating the session as if I sat in the room and just had the one shot to experience it; the words attributed to Ha and Telgemeier are paraphrases I’ve tried to make as accurate as possible, but words in italics are direct quotes.

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The video was mostly split screen, with Robin on the left and Raina on the right, but occasionally it would switch to just one of them for emphasis. Both are spaces that have been carefully designed to show that they’re creative spaces, but neat and organized; everything is very professional-looking, and it makes an impression. You can tell that Raina’s done a lot of video remote interviews, as she’s got quite the setup — pro-looking mic on a boom with baffle, fill lights to make everything look even, and cameras that point down at her drawing desk that can feed a shadowless image.

Raina started off by asking Robin for details about her work, then Robin asked Raina about her latest book. The common theme between their work might be anxiety (appropriately enough, there was a Lucy Bellwood Inner Demon behind Raina on the shelf). Ha remarked that she had frequent stomachaches as a child which doctors could find no cause for; she noted that at that time, Korean culture’s view on stress and anxiety was … maybe not that they weren’t recognized, but maybe more that they were denied. Raina, by contrast, talked about how helpful it was that her parents were able to get her therapy to help deal with her anxiety as a child.

Ha brought the conversation around to the process of constructing a memoir, with Raina noting that it’s not always easy to tap into memories and history and something that’s a story in them; Guts wasn’t easy to make due to the subject, but also because the memories of the real people involved can vary. Her father was in his 40s when the story started, she was 8, so her memories are more directs to how she felt at the time about what happened. It’s necessary to take creative license, but you also have to want to get to the kernel of truth.

For Robin, growing up reading fantasy, scifi comics, and other work not based in reality makes it strange to be a cartoonist that draws mostly nonfiction, but at least I know what happens and how it’s going to end. She deeply feels the obligation to tell the story as truthfully as possible, given that it’s about real people, real life, wants to do justice to all of them as well. Her mother was completely against being in the book and was upset about being one of the main characters, because most of the things I talk about in the book happen because of her. Robin talked about how she had to earn her mother’s trust, tell her this is going to be a book that’s important to me but I respect you and want you to be okay with it. She gave her the manuscript after the layout stage, and was relieve that after two or three days she only had a couple of edits and loved it.

Raina asked if Robin and her mother talk about [the events of Almost American Girl] now that it’s done, or are you glad it’s done and don’t have to deal with it any longer. Robin talked about how the first couple of times she had a book signing in the DC area, her mother came and during Q&A had some of the questions directed to her. She was embarrassed by the spotlight, but enjoyed people telling her how much her action and bravery meant to them.

Raina brought up the topic of comics influences, and Robin mentioned that all of her most formative favorites were Korean or Japanese; her favorite creator wrote grand epic, LOTR style fantasy, but also loved CLAMP and the other 80s and 90s big names in manga, especially Ikeda Riyoko’s Rose Of Versailles, which was translated into Korean. When Robin first read around 8 years old, she didn’t know it was Japanese. I didn’t have a concept of anybody other than Koreans living on the Earth, I watched American shows dubbed into Korean and just figured the Friends spoke perfect Korean.

Raina, growing up years earlier and an ocean away from Japan, didn’t get much manga, but was much influenced by newspaper comic strips. As recounted numerous times, her first manga was Barefoot Gen, which her father gave her at age 10 because hey, she loves comics, right? Yeah, a tragic story about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima opened her mind, but it was also a disconnect from, say, Calvin And Hobbes. Robin remarked on the power of comics to take something huge and hurtful and turn it into something meaningful for readers.

She then suggested that they each do a drawing of something that happened during self-isolation, and turned to an easel to draw herself in her first Zoom session, unnecessarily shouting to be heard. I’m the worst at technology, worse than some of the grandmothers I know, she explained. Raina did a sketch of her compromise with everybody’s new bread-baking habit during quarantine. After all, there’s only so much bread you can each by yourself, so she’s shifted into baking pizza, on account of you can always eat pizza.

The back half of the talk was dedicated to questions solicited from readers on Instagram and Twitter.

Maddy, age 13: What would your non-author job be?
Robin: Probably fine arts, like a painter. When I was little, I went to art school after school, I did fine art in college, I was always a painter first.
Raina: What I enjoy most is planning stuff. I’ve had to change my personality because of pandemic, because I am no longer planning my next trip, my next tour, deciding where I’m going to eat in the next city. So I think I might have been a publicist. I love spreadsheets and plans and calendars!

Brisa, age 9: How did you get over your fear of vomit? I’m afraid of it too.
Robin: Me too!
Raina: The clinical term is emetophobia, and I didn’t learn the term until my early 30s. Once I learned the term, I learned there are ways to make it better. I went to therapist that specialized in treating phobias, did and did cognitive behavior therapy. I learned a lot about breathing, how to ground myself, how to engage my mind in other ways when I felt the panic. One of the techniques is exposure therapy, which means experiencing the thing you’re afraid of in small doses. [Editor’s note: The look on Ha’s face read, Oh, no.]

My therapist did not make me throw up in his office [Editor’s note: And now Ha’s expression shifted to Whew.] It was about saying the word out loud, seeing it written on paper, and eventually I got to see photographs or hear audio recordings. I learned to face my fear and very, very gradually your anxiety decreases. I would not have been able to write Guts without having had the therapy first.

Fox, age 13: You get bullied a lot in your books, do have any advice for readers who are bullied?
Robin: The most important thing is to know it’s the bully who has a problem, not you. Never think of it as like it’s your fault. It’s not something to be ashamed of, or that there are reasons you’re being treated that way. Don’t try to go through it alone, find allies, talk about it.
Raina: I’m going to echo finding somebody you can trust, a place to talk about it, somebody on your side to remind you of everything Robin said. There’s so many kinds of bullying and one of the worst is when the bully is your friend.
Robin: You end up afraid of losing your friends, but there’s millions of people out there and the “friends” you’re afraid of losing and being alone aren’t going to be around forever! They’re going to be replaced by somebody better as you grow older and evolve into a new person, so don’t worry about keeping them.

Mia, age 12: What made you have the passion to start writing?
Robin: I started reading comics before books, thanks to my mom who is also a big comics reader; I wanted to grow up and become a cartoonist, write down my ideas, plan on what I’d create.
Raina: I was a big diary writer in addition to drawing, then figured I could put them together. I made my first journal comics when I was 11 years old about what happened to me each day and never showed them to anybody. People would ask if I wanted to be a writer when I grew up and I said No, because I don’t have any ideas. [Editor’s note: It appears that young Raina was a bit mistaken.]

So you thought you were going to be a fantasy writer and wound up doing personal comics and memoir, I thought that wasn’t even an option. This isn’t a job! I wish I’d had more access to memoir when I was growing up as an example. [Editor’s note: This is a classic case of how if something you need doesn’t exist, the best thing is to invent it.]
Robin: Are you going to show your comics you made when you were 11?
Raina: They’re not very good! I think not being good is kind of important, they don’t have to perfect, they don’t have to be for show, they don’t have to be for anybody but yourself because you enjoy doing it. I did it as a hobby, would have continued if I was a publicist instead.

Josie, age 13: Do you envision drawings first or words first?
Raina: For me they come together; in my head it’s visual and I can hear the words. I draw a quick box, some stick figures, words, balloon, expression on the face. I write entire manuscripts and my editor works from these thumbnails. I have to draw the head, and the mouth before the words come to me. I’m actually not great at keeping a sketchbook, if they’re not acting, not talking, it doesn’t work.
Robin: I’m the same way; the story comes to me like a movie or a dream, a scene with characters acting in my head. I draw index card size at the scene level. Now I’m working on fiction, a fantasy like it was my childhood dream to create. I actually had to transcribe what I envisioned in my head as text, as it’s easier to edit and have other read it because my sketches are super rough, they only make sense to me. I have a synopsis, I can’t wait to draw it.
Raina: Is this an announcement?
Robin: I can show you a few drawings [holds up two pages of character studies; see below for the images] It’s going to be like drama and action, there’s going to be shapeshifters and murder.
Raina: Oooo!

Chandrima, no age: I want to publish my own graphic novel, what suggestions do you have?
Robin: You need to first learn to finish your comics. I had a plan for an epic, 500 page fantasy for my first graphic novel and they’re very fun for the first 20 pages, but you have to be able to finish it! Start small, maybe 20 pages, finish it, have something you can show to people.
Raina: I always say that, start small! Have two characters in a conversation, or a small adventure. Do another, maybe turn it into a collection of short stories in your world, work on your skills, maybe you find that you don’t really like doing comics and want to just write or just draw. Just start on page 1, put in some sketches and word balloons.
Robin: One danger of doing something long as a young creator is your style may change over the course of that 500 page epic, or your taste in stories may change. So if you’re on a project that going to take years to finish and by the middle you’re a different kind of writer or artist, it’s not fun.
Raina: Read lots of comics! Different kinds, styles, genres. There’s so many out there to read and learn from.

They finished up by recommending some book and comic stores that they’re familiar with.
Robin: Here in Washington, DC, Loyalty Bookstores is owned by a queer Black woman; it has a lot of great signings and community events, I highly recommend them. Also, Big Planet Comics, they have an excellent curation of indie and mainstream comics, there’s always something going on there.
Raina: Brain Lair Books¹ in South Bend, Indiana, is Black owned, and has a great graphic novel selection which you can find on their website. Check out their recommendations on YA and MG books, too. And Green Apple Books is my local independent bookstore in San Francisco; I’ve been going there since I was a teen, they have great comics and kids selections. Check them out, and support your local bookstore.

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Photos!
Robin Ha shared two images of characters from her forthcoming drama/action/shapeshifters/murder fantasy epic. I love the hair designs in the female-presenting character — they have a lot to say about station and class. The male-presenting character has a little Jaeger by Carla Speed McNeil in his DNA. It might be the attitude, it might be the eyes. I very much want to read this book.

The Eisners are tonight; I’ll post this now so you don’t have to wait until after midnight EDT to read, and do a writeup of notable winners later.

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¹ As per the description on the panel page, The first 100 purchases of Raina books from Brain Lair that use the promo code RAINATA at checkout will receive a signed bookplate.

SDCC 2020 Programming@Home

It’s gonna be a weird year for SDCC programming. There’s no Sergio ‘n’ Mark panel! And in a year that would seemingly require the Tell Us What We Can Do Better session on Sunday afternoon has none. And every session starts at the top of the hour, when they could be staggered easily?

But there’s lots of what appear to be pre-recorded media launches, so there’s that. I’m looking at things that interest me, many of which are at the same time, but which will probably be much easier to bounce between if one turns out to be a dud — no standing at the back of the room after you walk halfway across San Diego, and the library/school/YA panels aren’t a (granted, very pleasant) 20 minute walk away at the library.

Let’s dig in.


Wednesday

Comics In The Classroom Ask Me Anything: Pick The Brains Of Teachers, Administrators, Creators, And Publishers
3:00pm — 4:00pm, SDCC or YouTube

Appears to be pre-recorded rather than live; high school teachers from around the country posed questions to Ronnell Whittaker (teacher), Lucy Knisley, Jason Walz, and Lisa Wu (consultant and former teacher). Doesn’t appear to have a publisher?

Teaching And Learning With Comics
3:00pm — 4:00pm, SDCC or YouTube

Reps of public schools, state universities, and private universities talking with Ebony Flowers, David Walker, and Brian Michael Bendis.

New Kids Comics From Eisner Award Publishers
5:00pm — 6:00pm, SDCC or YouTube

It’s got Jerry Craft and Faith Erin Hicks, that’s reason enough before you add in Robin Ha, Derick Brooks, and Jonathan Hill; moderated by YALSA’s Candice Mack. This one looks like a must-see.


Thursday

Web Comics: Saving The Entertainment Industry, Four Panels At A Time
11:00am — noon, SDCC or YouTube

Maybe you don’t look for solutions to saving an industry, maybe webcomics can be their own thing? And it’s not a good sign that one of the panelists has website listed that doesn’t seem to exist, and when it did exist didn’t seem to have anything to do with comics.

Shaenon Garrity In Conversation With Andrew Farago
2:00pm — 3:00pm, SDCC or YouTube

Now these two folks, they know webcomics. Also manga, museum operations, tiki culture, and all of each other’s secrets, seeing as how they’ve been married for more than a decade. I hope that Shaenon Garrity gets invited back as a featured guest next year seeing as how this one’s a bust, but at least she gets her spotlight panel.

The Adventure Zone: Petals To The Metal Graphic Novel
2:00pm — 3:00pm, SDCC or YouTube

Indispensible for Mcelfans, as Clint, Travis, and Griffin sit down to talk with artist Carey Pietsch about the third (and presumably not last) Adventure Zone adaptation. Moderated by Satine Phoenix.


Friday

Raina And Robin In Conversation
11:00am — noon, SDCC or YouTube

That would be Robin Ha, and Raina is, of course, Raina. Want to learn how to do memoir in comics? Watch this.

History Goes Graphic
noon — 1:00pm, SDCC or YouTube

I expected this one to involve folks from :01 Books, what with the launch of their history and civic engagement lines, but nope. However, let’s be clear: there’s nothing to be disappointed by here, as the panel features Fred Van Lente, Tom Scioli, David Walker, Mikki Kendall, and Malaka Gharib, moderated by Kaitlin Ketchum.

The 32nd Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards
7:00pm — 8:00pm, no links provided

Yeah, I don’t know what it means either, but no functional links associated with the Eisners? Par for the course this year. Interesting that they only blocked out an hour, which I guess means no acceptance speeches and it’s all a pre-recorded list o’ names from host Phil LaMarr
Edit to add: Links are now provided for SDCC and YouTube.


Saturday

Diversity And Comics: Why Inclusion And Visibility Matter
noon — 1:00pm, SDCC or YouTube

For the sake of the panelists, I hope that this one is pre-recorded and that comments are disabled, because the C*micsg*te CHUDs are going to be mortally offended that this exists and nobody needs that shit. But kudos to whoever wrote the description because they included the websites for the panelists — John Jennings, Frederick Aldama, Christina ‘Steenz’ Stewart, Chelsea ‘Ché’ Grayson, David Walker (making his third appearance in this post), and Stanford Carpenter, who between them have three Eisners and two more nominations¹ — and thus saved me the time of hunting them down.
Edit to add: In fact, I was so astonished by those time-saving links that I initially forgot to include them. Fixed!

Best And Worst Manga of 2020
3:00pm — 4:00pm, SDCC or YouTube

Speaking of times to disable comments, as I previously noted, the howler monkeys won’t get to shout abuse at the panel, at least not in a way that they have to hear. This may form a decent precedent for future iterations. With Brigid Alverson, Justin Stroman, Morgana Santilli, Eva Volin, Megan Peters, Rob McMonigal, and Deb Aoki.


Sunday

Inspired By Real Life: The True Stories Behind Graphic Novels
2:00pm — 3:00pm, SDCC or YouTube

Nate Powell is going to be there and if the entire thing turns into a remembrance of John Lewis, well, I’m okay with that and I imagine it wouldn’t annoy Van Jensen, Scott Chantler, or moderator Diana Pho too much either.

LGBTQ Comics And Popular Media For Young People
2:00pm — 3:00pm, SDCC or YouTube

I think I might just set up two monitors on two computers and double up during this timeslot. Moderator Cort Lane talks with Gina Gagliano, Trungles, Alex Sanchez, Noelle Stevenson, Mariko Tamaki, Brittney Williams, and Michael Vogel.

Keenspot 20th Annual Comic-Con Panel: Pandemic Edition
3:00pm — 4:00pm, SDCC or YouTube
You can’t keep a good tradition down, and Keenspot closing things out on Sunday afternoon is certainly a tradition. This year’s giveaway will be digital, naturally.


Spam of the day:

How To Get Paid For What You Already know

I do that every day. It’s called a job.

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¹ Take that, C*micsg*te CHUDs.

Looks Like It’s Time To Formalize A New Standard In The Fleen Manual Of Style

Bet you didn’t know I had one of those, did you? Granted, it’s mostly in my head, but it determines things like when to go to an aside in em-dashes — like this one — and when it’s time for a parenthetical (I’m big on those), not to mention the absolute necessity of Oxford commas. Footnotes speak for themselves¹. Semicolons are our friend; we have a habit of using italics for both emphasis and direct quotes³, with only the direst of emphases elevated to bold face, bold italics, or larger text sizes. Oh, and print comic names are also italicized; webcomic names are not. Title text always capitalizes articles and other “minor” words, unless there’s a specific artistic reason not to.

Creators are referred to by full name on first usage, and by family name thereafter, unless it’s getting tedious and switching it up will make the flow better. There are exceptions to this policy, persons that are referred to primarily by first name because they earned it — George and Raina come to mind — but even this has limits. Ryan North is The Toronto Man-Mountain. Shaenon Garrity is Tiki Queen Of The Greater Bay Area. Jon Rosenberg is my co-birthdayist, and Howard Tayler my evil twin. Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett knows what he did.

It is actually naming that brings us here today, and a situation that has actually occurred before, but which has now become prominent enough to warrant formalization. Namely, what to do with persons who change their pronouns, gender, or name?

I mean, obviously we at Fleen honor that because we’re not monsters. I’m talking about past references to before the announced change (or the time when we at Fleen became aware of the change, as oft-times people don’t tell everybody in the world simultaneously). I thought about instituting a policy of going back through the archives to make the change everywhere I could find it, and ultimately decided against it. Not because — as has been noted on numerous occasions over the past forever — I am a lazy, lazy man. I actually have a good reason to do thing that requires less effort this time.

It’s because this page forms a part of the historical record, and knowing that people can — and have — changed their pronouns, gender, or name is important to remember. If somebody were to bring to my attention that they had recently decided to share one of those changes with the world, and would I mind editing a post that went up today, I’m not adverse to that. But I won’t go back five or ten years to a post that far predates and change it, mostly because it would inevitably lead to a scrambled record, some under one identity and others under a different one, interleaved in time. I will of course not deadname anybody, and endeavour to note when linking back into the archives that at the time, the person referenced was known differently.

All of which is to say, by 20142015, Real Life had gotten increasingly sporadic, and then it went away for a couple of years. 20182019 kept a fairly regular schedule until partway through the year. Things resumed this month and continued from where it left off, wrapping up a storyline last Friday.

And today, everything changed. Or, more precisely, today everything in the strip Real Life is starting to catch up with actual Real Life:

Well, it’s live. So, it’s official: I’m out.

Hi, nice to meet you. I’m Mae, the creator and cartoonist for Real Life Comics, which I started back in 1999 when I was just 18.

Over the next 3 weeks, I’ve got a storyline running about my journey.

reallifecomics.com

Eep!

Welcome to the world of webcomics creators, Maelyn Dean; we’re glad to meet you. I have a feeling that somewhere in this storyline, Cartoon Greg (as he still is) will be leaning out of the last panel to edit that copyright credit and embark on a very different, and hopefully far more joyous life.


Spam of the day:

Hidden technology leaks from NASA

One of the most significant things about NASA is that they literally document and release everything. Once data comes into their possession, they have a ridiculously short number of hours before they have to release it, or their Public Information Officers get fired and/or pulled up in front of Congressional committees. There was a whole sub-plot in The Martian about it. So fuck on outta here with this bullshit.

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¹ Namely, whenever there’s a long enough explainer that it would break the flow of the paragraph(s) in the body text, were it to be included there. Or just for a joke, particularly one involving Brad Guigar². And footnotes themselves go inside the punctuation at the end of a clause or sentence.

² He’s dreamy.

³ The distinction between which should be self-evident in the text.

A Little Normality; I’ll Take It

It took all day to find a story that didn’t make me want to despair, but the Eisner nominating committee came through with this year’s nominations. Let’s talk webcomics and indie comics presence, which we’ve seen spreading way outside the two official (and increasingly nebulous) web-adjacent categories. As they’ve been out for less than an hour as I write this, it’s going to be initial impressions, and we’ll go back and revisit in future as warranted.

First thing I noticed: The web is where you find short comics; the five nominees for Best Short Story are dominated by established web properties (Matt Inman at The Oatmeal, Miriam Libicki at The Nib) and places that include comics, but are general-audience magazines (Mira Jacob in Believer, Emma Hunsinger in The New Yorker). Only one of the nominees is in an actual comic comic, Ebony Flowers (Promising New Talent, 2019 Ignatzen) for Hot Comb, which was all over best of lists for last year and which is my pick to take the category.

Second thing I noticed: The category for Best Single Issue/One-Shot is entirely indie producers, with Zainab Akhtar’s Shortbox taking two of the five (Minotäar, by Lissa Treiman and Sobek by James Stokoe). The others are Coin-Op No. 8: Infatuation, by Peter and Maria Hoey, The Freak, by Matt Lesniewski, and Our Favorite Thing Is My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, where the ubiquitous-in-2019 Emil Ferris told a few last stories about My Favorite Thing Is Monsters. Gotta give this one to Treiman or Stokoe, as those are the two I saw last year and they’re both great.

Third Thing I Noticed: The competition in Best Publication For Kids is going to be fierce. It’s got Raina’s latest, of course, but also last year’s Dog Man by Dav Pilkey (the dude’s a machine), New Kid by Jerry Craft, This Was Our Pact by Ryan Andrews, Akissi: More Tales of Mischief, by Marguerite Abouet and Mathieu Sapin, and The Wolf in Underpants, by Wilfrid Lupano, Mayana Itoïz, and Paul Cauuet. Haven’t seen the last one, but the others are all excellent and I do not envy the judges their task.

Fourth Thing I Noticed: The repeat nominees have been cleaning up earlier awards (particularly the Ignatz last fall), with Hot Comb also nomindated in Best Publication For Teens, alongside Kiss Number 8 (Colleen AF Venable and Ellen T Crenshaw), Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me (Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Vallero-O’Connell), Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass (Tamaki again, and Steve Pugh), and Penny Nichols (MK Reed, Greg Means, and Matt Wiegle). For the record, I absolutely could not choose between Kiss and Laura Dean, both of which I adore. Also, one may note that Venable appears as the model of a character in MK Reed’s The Cute Girl Network because excellent people feed off each other’s creativity.

Fifth Thing I Noticed: Comics types not only feed off each other creatively, they sometimes become a hive mind. Best Humour Publication include Sobek and Minotaär, Death Wins A Goldfish (Brian Rea) and The Way Of The Househusband, Vol 1¹ (Kousuke Oono, translated by Sheldon Drzka), but also two very handsome hardcovers by a couple of dudes that last time I saw them, were throwing Stan Lee impressions at each other at warp speed — David Malki ! (Friends You Can Ride On), and Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett (Anatomy Of Authors). David, Dave, love you guys, but I can’t choose between you. I’ll have to give it to Househusband to preserve our friendships.

Sixth Thing I Noticed: Aside from individual stories at The Nib getting all sorts of nominations all over comics awards for the past several years, the print magazine is starting to get notice; issues 2 through 4 (Matt Bors and about five dozen other people) are collectively nominated for Best Anthology.

Seventh Thing I Noticed: If you put together a few zillion pages of comics in a half dozen years, you’re gonna get really good at it; if you were already really good when you started, you’re going to get amazing. Tillie Walden scored three nominations for the magnificent Are You Listening?, for Best Graphic Album — New, Best Writer/Artist, and Best Lettering. I cannot say enough good things about that book, it’s entirely remarkable. And since we’re here, we should note that Raina, Jacob, and Stokoe are also nominated for Best Writer/Artist. That’s gonna be a tough category.

Eighth Thing I Noticed: Original graphic novels sharpen your chops like nobody’s business. Best Writer includes Tamaki again, alongside Reed and Means.

There’s more, I know I’ve missed stuff but it’s getting late and I need to post this. I also know I haven’t talked about the Digital and Webcomic categories because once again I can’t figure out the distinction, but we’ll come back and do that after I’ve had more time to digest.

As a reminder, all comics industry professionals are eligible to vote on the Eisners; results will be announced in July at a time to be announced.


SM20 Countdown for 4 June 2020:
8

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¹ About the meanest member of the yakuza, who gives it up to keep house for his wife.

Fleen Book Corner: :01 Catch Up Twofer

We’re looking at a pair of nonfiction, largely non-narrative :01 Books (and thus the concept of spoilers doesn’t really apply) today, both of which have been out for a while but which haven’t gotten write-ups because of [waves hands] everything.

Actually, that’s not quite accurate. I held off on reviewing Maker Comics: Grow A Garden (words and pictures by Alexis Frederick-Frost, released 25 February) because I wanted to try out some of the suggestions in my own annual, smallish garden endeavours and see how things worked compared to previous years. And I held off on Science Comics: Crows (words and pictures by Kyla Vanderklugt, released 24 March) because I was going to bring it and make observations of the ravens of Juneau at Alaska Robotics Comics Camp, only that didn’t happen.

Grow A Garden‘s up first, with a framing story about garden gnomes at the garden gnome version of Hogwarts, including the obligatory reveal of the evil professor up to no good. It’s cute, it serves the purpose of providing a rationale for lecture-like content (a similar approach was taken in Falynn Koch’s baking contribution), but it’s not why you’re here. You’re here to learn a bit about dirt, how to make compost (although you’ll likely have to wait until next year to see how it turns out), how to start seedlings and keep them comfortable, and about the things you might do that will mess up your plants.

On these scores, Grow A Garden is a resounding success, particularly in the way it finds MacGuyver solutions to gardening needs. Fancy drainage posts aren’t needed, you can drill a hole in the bottom of any can or container and give it a good cleaning (unless it held paint or other complex chemicals). Cold frames are complicated, but you can clip together a couple of those transparent shields for window wells.

And that seedling you started that is all atrophied right at the dirt line and falling over? Damping-off disease, from cool, wet conditions and soil fungi¹. Once I get my stuff in the dirt outside² (fortunately I started them a bit late this year, otherwise they would have been outside for the polar vortex and hard frost we got on 7 May, what the heck), I’ll be able to try some of the pest control recommendations. Grow A Garden won’t turn a kid (or an adult) into a master gardener in a season, but it’ll give you some time to get your hands dirty and build up some skills, and we could all use a distraction along those lines.

Crows, subtitled Genius Birds, does a bit better with its framing story. It features a flock of crows that use planning, stealth, tools, and misdirection to steal food from Buddy the dog, with one of their number taking Buddy for a walk around town in search of more food. Along the way, Buddy gets taught about crow vision (color perception into the ultraviolet), memory (faces, circumstances, etc), tool use and fabrication, problem solving, counting skills, vocalization, family dynamics, and brain structure, as the POV crow explains how awesome crows are to an eager (but not genius) audience.

Both Buddy and the nameless crow (well, Buddy refers to the crow as Crow, but there’s never a proper introduction) are pretty expressive characters; mention digging or the park or friends or praise him and Buddy is all excited, ears and tail and eyes doing the talking. Crow, meanwhile, uses some distinctly non-corvid eyebrows and primary feather finger-guns to indicate emotion and reaction.

Crow’s also got a pretty healthy sense of self-esteem (I’m the smartest crow in the world, which would put Crow on par with about a five year old human), a sense of mischief, and an occasional streak of dickishness. It’s Crow that orchestrated the heist of Buddy’s food, earning the gratitude of their family for the feat; a’course, Crow ate far better than they did with Buddy’s help, meaning Crow simultaneously put one over on the flock, pillaged multiple garbage cans, suckered Buddy into all kinds of mischief, and got an ego boost in the process.

Honestly, it might be a bit much, except for the fact that I’ve seen ravens — close cousins of crows, after all — act pretty much like Crow just because they can. As the foreword (by corvid scientist John M Marzluff) reminds us, it’s not a coincidence that crows and ravens are part of myth and religious belief around the world, sitting on the shoulders of All-Father Odin, saving Israelite prophet Elijah, or being regarded as the creator spirit of numerous indigenous groups.

Both books are appropriate for any readers that have the patience to sit and plow through 100 pages at a go; Grow A Garden is useful as an activity guide for let’s say 10 and up with supervision as individually necessary. As always, we at Fleen thank everybody at :01 Books for the review copies.


Spam of the day:

Keep America’s Great

Keep America’s what great? And no, I ain’t clicking on your identity stealing link so I can get my (quoting here) free New Donald Trump gold $1,000 Dollar Bill, whatever the hell that’s supposed to be, not even to blow my nose in. I was going to do something far ruder with your Trump thing, but kids might be reading today’s post.

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¹ I’d noticed this in the past with some of my bean seedlings, and was more careful about overwatering this year as a result. Only one seedling out of 24 damped off this time!

² The gnomes recommend starting from seed with two seeds in a pot and then culling the smaller prior to transplant; I’ve traditionally started with two seeds per cup in a pressed-paper egg carton, but never culled. Wondering how that will turn out.

Small Delights

Welp, I said a couple of days ago that I just might be getting royally drunk today so I could properly mourn the fact that I am not at this moment flying to #ComicsCamp as I should. Haven’t started, probably won’t on account of treating your life stressors with alcohol is not the best of coping strategies, but damn do I miss me some friends and also large impressive beards. There’s just so many of the in Alaska.

The weather forecast says it’s drizzling there pretty much nonstop through when I would leave next week, and it’s in the temperature range that makes drizzle most oppressively gross, so … yeah, still not calling it a dodged bullet. I’d put up with all of the weather in a heartbeat. But there are small things that are cheering me today and I figured I would share them with you.

  • Speaking of #ComicsCamp, Gale Galligan has been a treasured Camp Buddy™ for the past couple of years, particularly when she is teaching us about the ways in which bunnies are adorable and also very, very gross. And she’s the latest creator to sit down with the Brad “Sexy, Sexy Man” Guigar and Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett at Comic Lab.

    Dave ‘n’ Brad do a great job of brining as much lightness as possible to these very challenging days, but when they bring in another creator to bounce off of, it gets really fun. Galligan, as you may recall, has been responsible for the Baby Sitters Club graphic novel adaptations since Raina Telgemeier got too busy with her own work after the fourth book, and she knows the YA market like nobody’s business. Galligan joins the boys around the 25:40 mark in this week’s episode, and if you want to enjoy more recent convos, check out Karl Kerschl¹ (26:45 or so), or Lar de Souza (around 20:00). They’ll absolutely lift your spirits.

  • Well, that’s one way to convince obsessive completists² to read three months worth of archive. Randy Milholland included a throwaway caption that today’s Something*Positive exists because of a flash-forward panel from a 2013 strip … and then didn’t say which strip it was. And that’s what caused me to start at 1 January of that year and read forward until I found the damn thing. Thanks, Randy. Seriously, though — do you keep a spreadsheet of all the future reference dates in S*P? You must.
  • And Nicholas Gurewitch has come up with a seriously disturbing appeal to support his Patreon. I loved it and simultaneously feel like something wrong has colonized a corner of my psyche.

Spam of the way:

COVID-19 – Corona Virus Update from Survival Magazine

Oh, please. Your readers spent decades constructing their infinite tactical survival bunkers and immediately turned into the dipshits out screaming they need everything opened back up so they can get a haircut and free refills on their iced tea.

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¹ Who, weirdly, Google search results believes is 70 years old.

² [waves] Hey.

We All Knew It Was Gonna Happen

Now that it has, we can spend some time rearranging that week in July, be mad for the opportunities lost, and start to move on. And bonus? No hotel rodeo to negotiate this year.

In the meantime, let’s consider some good news:

Okay, see you on Monday with highlights from the :01 Books virtual con that runs tomorrow. Still time to register if you haven’t! But I did just get an email saying that there’s been a huge response and the conferencing solution might actually max out. In which case, wait for somebody else to leave, check out the livestream on the :01 Facebook page, or wait for the recordings to be released. It’s just like an SDCC panel room that gets too full!


Spam of the day:

Why is your website – fleen.com not featured on Google’s first page for most of your keywords?

It is. Get lost.