This was decided a few hours prior to the news breaking about Kickstarter firing three people in the space of eight days, who all were involved in the unionization effort there. But since that happened, my trip will now be a dual-purpose wallow in some comics and awesome people trip mixed with commit some godsdammned journalism overtones.

For those that haven’t seen all of the brewing shitstorm: Clarissa Redwine asserts that she exceeded all her employment performance metrics for Q2, but Kickstarter told her she was fired for performance deficiencies. Taylor Moore says he was offered no explanations as to his termination. I’ve not seen a public identification of the third employee yet. Both Redwine and Moore have said their severance was contingent on signing an NDA/non-disparagement agreement which is both common and totally weaksauce¹.

Kickstarter, for its part, put out a statement that no employee has or will be fired for union organizing. It’s … not being received well, possibly because it reads like it was crafted in a sterile legal environment to stay on the right side of perjury laws rather than the right side of the community they’ve built.

Some webcomics (and webcomics-adjacent) folk have chimed in already, the two most significant of which are probably Andy Baio (one half of The Andys behind XOXO and the attempt to re-engineer Drip, not to mention pre-launch board member and onetime CTO of Kickstarter; Andy McMillan is the other) and George (who is probably more closely associated with Kickstarts than anybody else in the web/indie comics world).

I have some emails out to people closely associated with Kickstarter asking if they are willing to go on the record with their thoughts; one response indicates they will specifically not say anything until certain direct discussions take place, which is entirely fair. A bunch of people that have tied their business models to Kickstarter will be at SPX this weekend (including some Thought Leaders), and I’m going to ask as many of them as I can what they think, then I’m going to tell you what they said.

In advance, please do not impute motives to anybody that isn’t named in the quotes, or that you are certain you have figured out from an off-the-record comment. Just don’t. You may be very pissed at Kickstarter right now² and ready to burn them to the ground, but there is a mountain of difference between choosing to not contribute to Kickstarter campaigns, and having to suddenly figure out how — or if it’s even possible — to no longer use them as a creator platform while meeting rent. It will be difficult for more than a few of them to navigate a course between what they want to do ethically and what they are required to do practically.

Spam of the day:

Do you know that you are able to earn more than 1200 euros per day? Hurry up to be one of the first to use this method before it becomes widespread.

Take your fucking pyramid scheme somewhere else, please.

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¹ How fucking insecure do you have to be as a corporation that you can’t tolerate people you fired complaining about it? Bitching about current/past employers is an inalienable fucking right.

² I certainly am, and this is what I’ve decided: I am prepared to suspend my support of future campaigns if the Kickstarter Union calls for that, which they are not presently doing. If that changes, I’ll make my intentions public.

Regardless of the requests of Kickstarter United, I will not be canceling any present pledges, because taking back money that creators expect, money that I pledged prior to this douchebaggery, isn’t fair to those creators.

All of this is subject to revision pending what I learn this weekend, and from further verified information (including statements from Kickstarter or KRSU) in the future.

One of the things I love about the SPX exhibitor listing is that it’s geographic in nature rather than alphabetical by name. You can see who’s near who, and plan out which of the blobby pods you want to hit first (even though the floor is small enough that you can see everybody pretty easily). Here, then are the folks we at Fleen noticed on the 650+ deep exhibitor list, which was due for final update today.

Pod A
Britt Sabo (A5B), Collen AF Venable (A9), and onetime Fleen scribe Anne Thalheimer (A11B).

Pod B
Kevin Czap and the associated Czap Books folks (B4B), Ananth Hirsch and Yuko Ota along with George Rohac (B9; I wonder who they had to bribe to get that table spot).

Pod C
Lauren Davis (C3); I’m not saying Pod C is a bad place, just that I didn’t recognize names.

Pod D
D1 Ben Sears (D1), Eric Colossal and Jess Fink (D2), Megan Rose Gedris (D4A), Becky Dreistadt and Frank Gibson (D9), and Gigi DG (D12A).

Pod E
Keith Knight (also the Ignatz MC, E1), Beth Barnett (E4A), Mike Holmes (E5B), Ben Passmore (E10B), Darryl Ayo Brathwaite (E10B), Ronald Wimberly (E12A)

Pod F
MK Reed (F1), Paulina and Savanna Ganucheau (F8), and Bianca Xunise (F12A).

Pod G
NBM Graphic Novels, including Jessica Abel (G1-2).

Pod H
Sara and Tom McHenry (H12), and Evan Dahm (H14).

Pod I
Shing Yin Khor (I4A), Julia Gfröer (I5B), Sarah Horrocks (I6A), Katie Skelly (I6B), Tony Breed (I7A), Monica Gallagher (I8), Penina Gal and Radiator Comics (I9), and Carta Monir and Diskette Press (I14).

Pod J
Maia Kobabe (J4B), Emi Gennis (J5B), and Kory Bing (J10).

Pod K
Carla Speed McNeil (K1), Gemma Correll (K2), Audrey and Jamie Noguchi (K9), and Drew Weing (K10-11).

Pod L
Retrofit Comics (L2), Danielle Corsetto (L8), Eleri Harris, Matt Bors, Matt Lubchansky, and Sarah Mirk, which is to say, The Nib (L9).

Pod M
Annie Koyama and Koyama Press, including Connor Willumsen, Daniel Nishio, Ed Kanerva, and Emily Carroll (M1-2).

Pod N
Dustin Harbin but not his bike (N2), and Secret Acres (N3-4).

Left Side Wall
Drawn & Quarterly including Ebony Flowers, Eleanor Davis, Kevin Huizenga, and Sylvia Nickerson (W1-4), Jessica Trevino (W7A), ShortBox (W8), Carey Pietsch (W9A), Cathy G Johnson (W9B), and Meredith Gran (W10A).

Back Wall
Hope Nicholson (W19), Self Made Hero including Sam Humphrey (W23-24), Mari Naomi (W27A), Box Brown (W27B), Kori Michele Handwerker and Melanie Gillman (W30), TopatoCo featuring Abby Howard, Chris Yates, Elliot Jasper, Holly Rowland, KC Green, and Tom Siddell (W31-33), Out Of Step Arts featuring Rebecca Kirby, Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, and Venesa Del Ray (W38-39).

Right Side Wall
Alison Wilgus (W41), and Fantagraphics featuring Jaime Hernandez (W50-54).

Front Wall
Top Shelf including James Kochalka, Kim Dwinell, Leigh Walton, and MK Reed (W56-59), Ru Xu (W60A), Natalie Riess (W60B), a contingent of Danish comic book artists (W68-69), Steenz (W71A), Blue Delliquanti (W71B), Iron Circus including Amanda Lafrenais and C Spike Trotman (W72-73), Lucy Knisley (W75), and the CBLDF including Alex Cox, Chris Ware, and Raina Telgemeier (W80-83).

As always, I very possibly missed you or your favorite; drop us an email and we’ll update.

The Small Press Expo runs Saturday, 14 September (11:00am-7:00pm) and Sunday, 15 September (noon-6:00pm) at the Bethesda Marriott North in Bethesda, Maryland.

Spam of the day:
Your very own portable oxygen concentrator
I do not suffer from CHF or other respiratory conditions, and besides, I can get the pure stuff in the green cylinders. It’s good for hangovers.

This, in this particular circumstance, being a clearly full of crap website that’s selling simply dozens — dozens, I tell you! — of stolen TopatoCo t-shirts every day. A full of crap website that’s stolen not only the designs (which are sarcastic air quotes submitted to us by independent designers close sarcastic air quotes) but even the SKUs. They may or may not be associated with another full of crap website that appears to lay off the stolen webcomics designs but has lots of other stuff stolen too, like traditional Haida designs that non-Haida people don’t get to use or sell. And the most hilarious part? Their shitty knockoffs (if in fact they actually produce and send anything) are priced above the genuine articles.

Normally, I’d tell you to politely contact the full of crap website to very politely ask them what the fuck, but a) they’ve done their best to hide who they actually are (although it appears the possibly-associated second crappy website keeps an address in Delaware that coincidentally houses a consultancy that provides a incorporation services and possibly a mail drop), and b) Jeff Rowland is already on it, and c) they may have roused the wrath of R Stevens III, in which case I doubt you’ll even find DNA when he’s done with his vengeance.

So instead, how about we look at some shirts that are both official and original?

• From TopatoCo, there’s new Lucy Knisley designs, including her take on the performatively/toxicly masculine tee designs that have been making the rounds lately. I’ll admit it, I do like all the responses to the GRRRRR I AM A WALKING COMMENT SECTION GET OUT OF MY WAY GRUNT designs, but I stand by my belief that the originals are just wordier variations on Roast Beef’s shirt.
• Meanwhile, Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh are settled in at their new storefront and celebrating by bringing back their ZooLOLogy design for a limited time only. Also, if you missed out on the Kickstart for their latest print collection, Wander, the after-campaign pledge add-on process is live and you can pick up a copy for yourself before it hits the store at a future date.
• Finally, they’ll be at Flame Con this weekend, which I realize now that I’ve not been through the guest and exhibitor lists to let you know who’s gonna be in Midtown Manhattan on Saturday and Sunday. So: Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, Melanie Gillman, Kate Leth, Taneka Stotts, and Steenz are among the guests; Alison Wilgus, Bianca Xunise, Bill Roundy, Blue Delliquanti, Carey Pietsch, Catuallie, Jakface, Megan Rose Gedris, and TopatoCo will be among the exhibitors¹.

  The fun goes down at the Sheraton Times Square, from noon to 8:00pm (Saturday) and noon to 6:00pm (Sunday). Tickets are US$25/day or US$40 for the weekend. I’d be there to say hi, but I’ve got EMS duty all weekend. Y’all have fun in my stead, ‘kay?

Spam of the day:

Big Ass-Photos – Free Huge Butt Porn, Big Booty Pics

Holy crap, this spam has adopted the [adjective] ass [noun] rule from xkcd #37.

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¹ Unfortunately, the website doesn’t link the exhibitors to the floor map, and those that qualify as publishers (around the perimeter of the main floor) appear not to be listed on the site at present. But there will be several creators associated with George Rohac’s Creative Havoc, and given the likes of Iron Circus and Hiveworks are listed as Sponsors, I’d presume they have a presence as well.

Fortunately, the scale of the show is such that you probably won’t miss out on anybody, even if you didn’t specifically know they were going to be there. If the exhibitor info updates before the show, we’ll add to our listings here.

Things are afoot, my friends. They are footy. Footlike. Gotta keep on our toes.

• It’s been just about a year since the ALA created a new round table dedicated to graphic novels, and that means that the annual conference in Washington, DC next week will likely see a larger contingent of comics folk than in the recent past.

  Taking a quick peek at the exhibitor list/floor plan, you’ve got Iron Circus (2108A), not far from Dark Horse (1915), and somewhere in the enormous mass of Penguin/Random House (the entire 1800-block) is Random House Graphic (Hi, Gina!). Finishing up over in the 1500-plus-or-minus zone you’ve got Macmillan Childrens Publishing Group (that’s :01 Books and allies, 1504 & 1505), Oni Press (1519), Drawn & Quarterly (1514), BOOM! Studios (1616, and spend a little less on your damn booth so you can pay your creators). Scholastic (1232 and 1233) is off on its own, and includes the Graphix imprint, which means Raina Telgemeier, Kazu Kibuishi, Baby Sitters Club, BONE, and I don’t know how many other mega-titles. Yen Press (1134) is ove there too, and I’ve probably missed a bunch.

  But the significant thing is, about 20 aisles west of Iron Circus, I’m noting an entire section given over to graphic novels and an Artist Alley (which I think is a new development). There you’ll find Ngozi Ukazu (3934), Yuko Ota & Ananth Hirsh (3936), Ru Xu (3938), Tess Stone (3940), Brian Clevinger (3951) — basically, the entire George Rohac lineup) — along with names such as Jim Rugg, Gene Ha, and Top Shelf/IDW.

  It’s into this new acknowledgment of the importance of comics in reading that Booklist, a publication of the ALA, will be letting everybody get back from Annual and then take a couple of weeks to sort through what they brought home before diving into a free two-part webinar on graphic novels. The first features BOOM!, Diamond distributors (ick), Image Comics, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Scholastic. It’ll be at 1:00pm CDT (GMT-05:00) on Tuesday, 9 July. Want to see where libraries are going with comics? Yeah, you do, because that’s the first step to getting yours included.

• On the far side of the continent from Washington, DC you’ll find San Francisco and the Cartoon Art Museum. They’d like to remind you that one of their current exhibitions looks at teens and their teenness via the medium of comics. Specifically they’d like you to know that the selection of modern teen comics published by BOOM! Studios from the exhibition abstract includes originals from pencils to finished work:
  

  Before and after: ‘Giant Days’ (@lbtreiman, @smashpansy, @badmachinery) and ‘Lumberjanes’ (@BrooklynAAllen, @PencilCat, @Gingerhazing, @shanito) — now featured as part of our #teenage comics retrospective. @boomstudios @Lumberjanes

  Obligatory moment to note that Giant Days will be ending in just a few issues, sniff. But dang, Max Sarin can draw pretty pictures.

Spam of the day:

Alzheimer’s!

That superfluous exclamation makes me think you’re trying to reference the title of a Broadway musical. You know, Allllllllllzheimer’s, where the wait what was I saying?

The signs were there, of course. A sale because a webcomic storefront would be moving. Tweets about a trip and veiled references to Montana, and moving a few tons of merch. When the announcement came a few hours ago, all the pieces fell into place:

Had a few ppl ask why I was in Montana a few weeks ago and… Hey now… What’s this… https://store.dftba.com/pages/creators

That from George, Slayer Of Problems, First And Only Of His Name For No Other Person Will Ever Have The Essential Georgeness Of He Who Was Once Surnamed Rohac, announcing a new marketplace titled Don’t Forget To Be Awesome. It’s got some folks you may have heard of selling stuff there, including webcomics Johnny Wander, Atomic Robo, and Check, Please!, but also McElroys, Greens, Brad Meltzer, Anita Sarkesian¹, How It Should Have Ended, Rainbow Rowell, and Star Talk.

Some of them are Rohac’s management-services clients over at Organized Havoc, some are certainly there because DFTBA is a Hank Green deal. In any event, you’ve got some webcomic names sitting in business relationships with — I hate this term — influencer-type folks, and in a number of cases, I’d argue the webocmics folks are bigger deals. Maybe it’s just because George brought his clients over, but did you notice who’s at the top of the client list? And if you’re as widely known as Hank and John Green, how much sway does George’s management/consultancy deal have to have before you’re noticeable?

Rhetorical questions. This is a continuation of a trend that’s been going on for a decade or more where a guy that blows stuff up on TV, nerd musicians, and a pixel-stained wretch can overlap their creative forces, like some kind of latter-day Algonquin Round Table, only if the ART included some experimental chemists, an aviatrix, and some vaudevillians. In this case, it’s an astrophysicist, a gender politics theorist, and some science communicators along with fandom cheerleaders and webcomickers in addition to your writers. Even if you don’t care about all those other folks, webcomics has a seat at the creative community table.

As long as you’re checking out the table, George would also like you to know that Tess Stone is Kickstarting volume 2 of Not Drunk Enough, and all the fancier stuff associated with the Samwell Men’s Hockey Team that was previously only available in Kickstarts is now has ongoing availability².

Spam of the day:

BECAUSE Hillary JUST let Something HUGE SLIP… NOW it’s back DESTROYING her election campaign. THREATENING her with impeachment. HUMILIATING her speechless supporters.

You … you think that Hillary Clinton is in an elected office subject to impeachment? That’s … THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS, YOU FIVELIGHTING ASSHOLES.

_______________
¹ Who, it must be said attracts griefers and CHUDs like nobody’s business. Which means that the store infrastructure is pretty well tested and CHUD-proof, which should be a point of reassurance to any webcomicker that wants to be sure their merch sales aren’t disrupted by whiny manchildren.

² Bitty’s great, but I wonder if the economies of scale work to offer jerseys for other players. I know some Shitty fans³ who’d wear #42.

³ That’s fans of the character named Shitty, not fans who are themselves shitty.

New stuff arriving, old stuff going away, and a new direction or two. Oh and apropos of nothing, the people that make IT infrastructure decisions for my employer are sociopaths that have no regard for their end users¹. But let’s focus on webcomics!

• New Stuff: George — Mister Rohac, if you’re nasty — knows more than one or maybe no dudes in a million about the logistics and business of getting stuff made and managing projects with respect to the independent creative professional. He’s gathered up a lot of his accumulated wisdom in one easy-to-read Google Doc and shared it publicly because he loves you. There’s more to come, but even if another word is never added, there’s seven pages of goodness there including names of vendors that he’s used so as to save you flailing about. George is a national treasure.
• Old Stuff: There’s little in webcomics with the depth and breadth of worldbuilding and interconnectedness to match John Allison’s Tackleverse. From 1998 on, Allison’s been giving us stories of the mundane and the weird, across a variety of aesthetic styles, predominantly solo but also partnering with top-notch artistic talent (particularly on the Giant Days comics from BOOM!, issue 47 of which is out this week, and which gets better month after month). Alas, there are only so many hours in a day, and that means Things Are Going To Change. Specifically, the return to the beginning of the Tacklfordillion is coming to a close:
  

  Sorry to say, this is the last comic of the current run. I’m about to start work on a (completely new, non-SGR) print project that I will be writing and drawing, which means new webcomics are off the cards for the forseeable future. I have plans for more Bobbins stories following on from this, but I don’t know when I’ll be back, so your best bet is to subscribe to the mailing list for updates.

  You can subscribe on the comic page linked above, or you can read his Tinyletter missives by following his Twitterfeed, or you can go old school and hit the RSS. Things may be to be continued for the moment, but I wager they’ll be back.

• New Direction: There is probably no longer-running, more consistent webcomicker who has never even tried to make comics a career than David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc), he of many comics. Specifically, his employer has prompted him to make a leap after 16+ years:
  

  My employer has informed me that my job is being declared redundant. My last day of paid employment is 4 March. I’m looking at this as an opportunity rather than a setback. My plan is to take about 6 months off work, and spend the equivalent of full-time working hours doing creative things — making comics, writing, photography, making videos, etc. — and ramping up my efforts to market them and try to make a living income off them. If after 6 months I feel comfortable that I can make enough from my creative work, then I will continue — if not, then it’ll be time to look for another job.

  As part of this effort, I’ve already moved Irregular Webcomic! from 4-a-week to a slightly more “full time” schedule of new comics on Monday-Friday. Coming soon there will be announcements of new projects that I’ll be ramping up over the next few weeks. Importantly, if this is to continue, I’ll be looking for your support. I’ll be pushing Patreon as a way to support me, producing merchandise for sale, and may also consider some other things like Google Ads.

  [That newsbox doesn’t appear to have a permalink, but for now it’s on the main page of Irregular Webcomic, if you scroll down.]

  There is probably nobody that approaches creativity with such enthusiastic abandon as Morgan-Mar; he gets an idea for a comic, he jumps in with both feet, and does it until it reaches a natural ending point or maybe never. And he doesn’t make it easy on himself — comics that require constructing and re-constructing LEGO sets, with 18 interlocking story threads? Learning to draw and doing a weekly comic as a way to measure his skill progress? He’s living proof that it’s not a lack of ideas that holds back creation, it’s a lack of time to act on the ideas.

  I recommend you make the time worthwhile. He’s got his two (so far) books up at TopatoCo’s Internet Thingporium, and there will be more to come. You’ve got six months to convince him to let all those ideas run riot, or he goes back to Dayjoblandia, and there actually are going to be positions open for a PhD astrophysicist that’s involved in the international standards for digital photography. He can go back to meetings and conferences like that, people. Don’t let him slip through your fingers.

• Miscellaneous: Lucas Landherr (the mild-mannered college professor and alter ego of deranged chalkvenger Dante Shepherd) is 36 years old today. Also a PhD, he’s establishing new modes of using comics in STEM education, and also turning chemical engineering exams into a means to channel his inner Gonzo The Great. He’s also just one of the best people. Everybody wish him a happy birthday because damn, dude deserves it.

Spam of the day:

Give your dog’s mouth the attention it deserves with DogDentist and save a TON of money in vet bills.

While watching my dog stagger around tripping balls after getting anesthetized for dental treatment is hilarious, it’s really much simpler to brush her teeth. Plus, her toothpaste tastes like chicken!

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¹ Did I say that out loud?

If there are people that have thought more about how to interact with their respective audiences than Zach Weinersmith, Ryan North, and Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett, I’m not sure of who they are. And when they start kibbitzing in public about how you done screwed up and made them want to not work with you any more, then Sparky, you screwed up.

And by Sparky, I of course mean Facebook.

LArDK’s feelings have been well-established for some time now, and Weinersmith cited Kellett’s thesis in his public musings on Friday:

For the record, though: We used to do lots of “free” stuff on facebook, back before they turned into an extortion racket for artists.

Btw, @davekellett pointed this out in 2015 (http://www.sheldoncomics.com/archive/150128.html …) and I poo-pooed it. But, facebook’s basically just gotten worse since. I personally have doubled my facebook “audience” since then, but my reach among them has dropped.

… which prompted concurrence from North, LArDK, MC Frontalot, and others:

yep! same here. I actually did an interview for an article explaining this and giving numbers for why it was so bad, but then the next week it was revealed how bad Facebook was for DEMOCRACY ITSELF, so I think the article got canned :0

I’m actually really close to closing down DC on Facebook – I don’t want to lose the readers, but at a certain point supporting FB becomes a tacit endorsement of what they do… and besides, if they’re not actually showing my stuff to the readers there anyway… SHRUG EMOJI

I would love love love to see Facebook become a vast content graveyard, just page after page perpetually autoposting “we’ve moved on…”

I ended up taking down my personal FB page. For me, their role with Cambridge Analytica and the other groups tacitly working for the FSB/GRU was the final straw.

The last being a reference to the fact that Facebook, presented with evidence that it was being used to spread propaganda, responded by hiring a political hit-firm to spread stories that their critics were paid by George Soros, playing into the most vilely antisemitic tropes that — gosh! — they’ve been so instrumental in spreading. Not that Zuckerberg knows anything about it. Nope, not it.

Which is leading to a fairly fundamental question: why should (in this case) Weinersmith post content for free to Facebook, who then sells ads and makes money that they don’t share with him, and which further charges him money to actually deliver his posts that might make him money so he can afford to keep making the content they’re monetizing? Why should anybody?

And, as I’ve been writing this post, I’m seeing word that Tumblr is apparently taking down NSFW accounts, despite the fact that NSFW content isn’t prohibited by the terms of service. If you don’t trust Tumblr randos, trust George, who’s reporting the same, and back up your content.

There’s been a major shift away from webcomics folk maintaining their own sites in the past few years, with Tumblr and various portal-type sites (Taptastic, Webtoon) offering free hosting and eyeballs that might not have landed on an individual site in this mostly post-RSS (and bookmarkless) world.

But any time you rely on somebody else’s infrastructure to run your business/art/lifestyle/whatever, you run the possibility of it being taken away by somebody whose priorities are not yours. Let us not even talk about Flickr’s forthcoming changes or the fact we’re coming up on the anniversary of the Great Patreon Balls-Up Of Aught–Seventeen.

So today’s sentence¹ is as follows: use other (free) services all you like, but keep your content someplace besides the free service. You don’t have to put up your own site! You don’t have to do anything you don’t want! But please, for the sake of your work and my peace of mind, keep a copy someplace so you can rebuild when the free service du jour decides you don’t get to use them for free (or at all) after today.

Spam of the day:

Furnish Your Outdoor Area in Style

Let’s leave my area out of this.

_______________
¹ And how is it more than ten years since today’s sentence?

So yesterday I wondered in a footnote about the possible impacts of the looming Trade War With China on webcomics. Here’s the crux of what I said:

Thought that just occurred to me. What with the whole trade war with China stupidity going on now, we aren’t shipping as much stuff to China, we won’t be getting as much stuff from China, is this going to take container ship capacity away (as they’re redirected to other trade routes) or make it more plentiful/cheaper (as there may be an excess of space/ships)?

My thoughts were almost entirely in terms of the raw costs of container shipping; if we aren’t sending soybeans to Shanghai in the immediate term, will there be freshly unloaded ships waiting to be loaded up with stuff for the holiday selling season? Would things not specifically on the threatened tariffs list (which is a moving target, day to day) be impacted as collateral damage? I figured there was only one person to ask.

Readers of this page know the regard that we at Fleen have for George Rohac: slayer of problems, fixer of systems, arranger of logistics. He’s overseen maybe more Kickstarts than anybody else, to the point that they recognize him as an official Expert. He knows the sausage-making end of getting things made, especially via print. SO when I asked, I was unsurprised that he’s been thinking about it, but a bit surprised that he’s looking at things from another angle. To quote:

So for now, it isn’t hitting anything. But as with anything in the world of Trump, that could change on a dime. I haven’t seen/heard anything happening with regards to more frequent customs crackdowns, so right now its basically business as normal.

Not capacity/logistics, but the possibility of policy decisions mess with things. If the order comes down to make every Customs inspection of everything from China extra specific, time and costs (storage, brokerage, etc) go up.

That said I am encouraging people to just factor in an extra 25% as a trump tax in case stuff gets fucked. This I’d recommend regardless of where you’re manufacturing. Since he’s hitting Canada the plants people use in Montreal often could be hit, and also US plants that are part of global multinationals could wind up having trickle down cost increases.

Again, not the shipping end of things, but the possibility that Screamy Racist Orange Grandpa decides to suddenly slap worldwide tariffs on paper, or finished printed goods, or whatever. Planning ahead for extra costs also seems to be smart planning in that if you get hit with unexpected expenses, you’re covered; if you get lucky and the costs don’t materialize, you’ve suddenly got more money and that’s not a bad thing.

A quote will typically have a “price good until X date” so if you’re printing in that window, fine, if not, then build in buffer.

And here’s where George’s long experience with printing comes in — if your printing proposal doesn’t have a timeframe on the pricing, any unexpected costs could be passed along. The last thing you want is a profitable project suddenly turning into a break-even or money-losing project. If I were to summarize George’s answers, it would be Do your due diligence, get everything in writing, and assume your unexpected costs could be even greater than your past calculus. Much like planning now for the potential of a USPS shipping rated increase in six months¹, this is going to be a careful balancing of probabilities, optimism, and pessimism.

There will probably be people that offer to help cropping up in greater numbers than in the past, and it’ll be important to ensure that they know what they’re talking about before paying them money, or tying the success of your project to their supposed expertise. I’m not saying they have to have George-level experience², but I am saying that there’s a difference between a company that’s done this before and one that’s assuming it can do this³.

Just as for every Make That Thing there’s several dozen companies whose ability sits somewhere between aspirational and completely fictional, there are going to be newcomers and fly-by-night operators in this facilitation space. Choose carefully. Or, if we’re lucky, George (or somebody like him) will do some seminar-type training on how to navigate these challenges on your own. Like somebody that I just made up in my head once said, Trumpian chaos is just another way to say opportunity.

Spam of the day:

What Company is #1 Rated Overall for Home Security?

The answer suggested by this spam is bestcompany™, which appears to not be a home security company, but rather a directory of all kinds of companies. It’s some pretty mixed messaging

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¹ Never mind what would happen if SROG’s stated intention to privatize the US Postal Service actually gains steam.

² Only George has George-level expertise, pretty much by definition.

³ Fun fact that came up in an unrelated conversation today; when you fly into Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport, all the usual airport ads for car services, hotels, etc, are entirely replaced by ads for contract logistics and merch-management companies, whose entire pitch is Hire us if you want to be less screwed by Walmart. Some of them tout years or decades of experience navigating the Walmartian minefield and others … do not.

Ahhhhh, Barbarous by Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh, could I love you any more? No, no I could not. And the between-chapters bumper is a delight, three pages where the most important action takes place off-panel and is still perfectly clear. It — the bumper that is — starts here, and the story starts here and if you haven’t read it, you’ll love it.

If you haven’t read it, come to think, you’ve got an easy way to a) catch up, and b) support the comic just now. Hirsh and Ota haven’t finished the story, not by a long shot, and they’ve released the first chapter as a short print collection — some three dozen pages — in an oversized trim. If you didn’t pick it up at the time, the only place it’s currently available is as part of the rewards package for the Kickstart for the second chapter.

Same deal as before — slim volume, Euro trim size, lots of extras as they hit the stretch goals. Best of all, it’s a sure deal since they’re nearly 50% over goal with two weeks left to go, so all you have to do is pledge and wait for the print edition to come in¹.

• Speaking of Kickstarts, there have been recent conclusions of both the 17th Iron Circus project and the third collection of gay college hockey bromance/comedy. How’d they do?

  FTL Y’all was predicted by the Fleen Funding Formula, Mark II to raise US$50K +/- US$10K, and came in at US$51,432; to be entirely honest, the Iron Circus projects have been a dominant contributor to the math of FFF mk2, and they nearly always fall right in the center of the range. I’m starting to think that for Spike-affiliated projects, it would be possible to narrow the margin of error by a factor of 3 or 4.

• Check, Please!: Year Three was funding too rapidly when we wrote about its launch, and further skewed it’s day one/day two totals by doing a stealth launch to Patreon backers, with a sudden, later surge when the campaign went public; as noted in the past these situations don’t track well with the FFF mk2. According to the straight application of FFF logic, the prediction would come to US$336K – US$504K, but that incorporates the surge. If we go the second full day, the numbers drop to US$250K – US$375K; the actual total was US$353,764.

  That would be at the high end of the range for a surge-ignoring calculation, and at the low end of the range for a surge-ignoring calculation, neither of which is particularly satisfying from a predictive POV. There may need to be a further change to the FFF mk2 logic² to maybe look at a point midway between a Day One peak and a Day Two relaxation³? Further experiments will need to take place, but there will be a Year Four down the line, after all.

  Curiously, Year Three, did not clear the US$398,520 that Year Two raised, but I’m chalking that up to people having information they didn’t have in the Fall of 2016: that :01 Books is printing Check, Please! as two volumes; some people may have decided to trade-wait and get Year Three combined with Year Four next year.

Spam of the day:

Have an invention idea? Where do I start – Free Info Kit!

In fact, last week I had a zillion-dollar invention idea, and I did the only rational thing with it: I gave it to Rich Stevens, because if anybody can execute on it, he can.

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¹ Thought that just occurred to me. What with the whole trade war with China stupidity going on now, we aren’t shipping as much stuff to China, we won’t be getting as much stuff from China, is this going to take container ship capacity away (as they’re redirected to other trade routes) or make it more plentiful/cheaper (as there may be an excess of space/ships)?

I have no idea how this might shake out, it could plausibly go either of two entirely opposite ways. But you know who probably does know? George, who just happens to work closely with Ota & Hirsh. I’ve got an email into him to get his thoughts and will report back.

² Take the 24-30 hour trend value from Kicktraq and divide by four; that’s the center of the predicted range. Divide further by five, and that’s the margin of error. Exception: low-backed projects (fewer than ~ 200 backers) are not predictable.

³ Doing so would have given us US$290K – US$435K, with a centerpoint of US$362.5K; that’s much tighter, but it’s also a case of poking around the data until finding something that fits. Many more trials will be needed.

Y’know, pretty damn soon it’ll be easier to talk about an area where comics — web and otherwise — and graphic novels aren’t making inroads instead of those where they are. Consider:

Down New Orleans way — and I’ve been to NOLA in the summer, so everybody there has my sympathies — the American Library Association Annual Conference is underway, and webcomickers are all over the damn place. Just from my sosh-meeds, I’ve noticed Hope Larson, Rosemary Mosco, George Rohac, Ngozi Ukazu, Vera Brosgol, Raina Telgemeier, Andy Runton, Melanie Gillman, the omnipresent C Spike Trotman, and the irreplaceable Gina Gagliano.

First observation: no disrespect to Rohac and Runton, who are both outstanding dudes, but it’s all well and meet that the ladies are dominating here. The books that the women present make (or facilitate the making of) are going to form the spine of a new canon.

Second observation: the universality of comics is not lost on the librarians (which, I would note, is a profession that skews heavily female), who are seeking out ways to bring comics into their collections. This year, the ALA approved the creation of a new round table dedicated to graphic novels, which is a significantly big deal.

The round tables produce research (don’t ever get in the way of a group of librarians who’re researching a topic) which results in best practices, standards, and guidelines for libraries everywhere. Need to figure out what to add to the stacks, how to organize it, how to get and keep the public’s interest? An ALA round table has probably figured it out.

They also provide legitimacy. It is, after all, the ALA’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table that convened to present the Stonewall Book Awards earlier today¹, and Gillman was on hand for As The Crow Flies to be recognized as a Stonewall Honor Book — the only graphic novel so recognized.

Being recognized for one of the big literary awards can result in a demand for thousands or even tens of thousands of copies of a book. It conveys to the larger reading world that the book and/or creator is Serious Business, and it’s one of the reasons that Mark Siegel put get on the radar of the the literary awards on his to-do list when founding :01 Books. Siegel figured it would take 5-10 years, and they made it all the way to the National Book Awards 18 months later thanks to American Born Chinese by Gene Yang.

You remember Yang — two-time NBA nominee, Eisner winner, MacArthur laureate, and the fifth National Ambassador For Young People’s Literature², guiding force of the Reading Without Walls challenge? Guy’s probably done more to put books in the hands of kids than anybody else this side of Dolly Parton. And since he’s the sort of really smart, really engaged person that you want to represent reading, it’s no surprise that he’s been named the newest board member of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund:

“I’m so excited to be joining the board of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund,” Gene Yang says. “Like many people, I’ve found it more and more difficult to wrap my head around issues of free speech because of recent news events. However, I still believe that, to borrow a phrase from poet Liu Xiaobo, free expression is the mother of truth. The CBLDF has been at the forefront of these issues for many years now, which makes our work more important than ever.”

Some of you just went to look up Liu Xiaobo, because that’s what Yang does — make you go learn stuff. Between the librarians and the creators, I’m going to say that the future of reading’s in good hands. Now let’s everybody get out there and make sure the eyes — and minds! — are open to follow where they lead.

Spam of the day:

Contact me today if you are considering buying, selling, or just want to know more about market conditions in your neighborhood. [links to multiple-million dollar homes in the Greater LA area]

My home has a wall-to-wall area of 130 square meters (not including hallways, stairs, etc), and is not in West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, or Los Feliz. I suspect you meant to send this to somebody very different.

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¹ To be completely clear, the awards were announced in January, but were presented today at the annual conference.

² Which I believe entitles him to be addressed as His/Your Excellency.