Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett put up the Kickstarter for the Drive chapter one collection around midnight Easterly Time, and as of this writing (call it a bit less than fifteen hours in), he’s above US$24K of the US$35K goal. Looking good on the stretch goals (which I’m told will include the Tales of the Drive anthology stories, from the likes of Dylan Meconis, Ryan North & Tony Cliff, Zach Weinersmith, Christopher Hastings & Anthony Clark, and Evan Dahm), looking like I have to clear space on my shelves, etc. Two things I wanted to talk about beyond the fact this is a cool Kickstarter.

• No, three. Three things. Because first, I note that three people have taken advantage of the top reward tier (US$500), which includes the complete eight book Sheldon library, various Drive tchotchkes, and one of the few pages of original art Drive art (the strip has been produced digitally since very nearly the start). It’s a bargain, and quite frankly underprices the Drive art.
• Second, I want to note that LArDK pulled a sneaky launch on the campaign, as there are two reward tiers that he apparently tipped off his Patreon supporters to yesterday, as they were only good on that day. Basically, they got a shot to grab the US$65 tier for US$50 or the $US90 tier for US$75, and a total of 240 people did. Now consider the momentum you get from letting your most ardent fans — the ones giving you money every month — an early shot at a bargain for one day only.

  The FOMO is strong, the campaign goes widely public more than halfway to goal (as of right now, there are 362 backers, meaning two thirds of the backers are from the early access period), and you get to screw with my formulas for predicting final tally all at the same time. Curse you, Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett! But seriously — this was a masterful stroke of leveraging an existing support base.

• Third, everybody that actually knows how to run a good Kickstarter (i.e.: not anybody that spams you promising a successful campaign for a usurious service fee) will tell you that a good, to-the-point video is a key part of the campaign. Of course, LArDK has provided one (it’s hilarious, and at 82 seconds in length, gets the point across efficiently), but that’s a given. And it’s super unfair.

  Not everybody trying to Kickstart their thing made a feature film (and a fine looking one at that) and has experienced Hollywood types (director/cinematographer, film editor) at their beck and call. Everybody else that ever makes a Kickstarter video from today forward has to up their game because LArDK just went and blew the curve for you. Email your complaints to screw.you@losangelesresidentdavekellet.com.

Spam of the day:

The DRIVE Kickstarter is finally here! YOU GUYS I’M VERY EXCITED THIS IS VERY EXCITING http://http://DriveKickstarter.com

We get it, Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett, you’re excited about your book.

This is going to be brief, because it stands alone nicely. Mark V dropped me an email over the weekend to make sure I saw a blogpost from Darrin Bell of Candorville¹ on the topic of working for exposure. Let us remind ourselves momentarily of the Stevens Rule: People die of exposure², and then enjoy Bell’s decision to tell the Huffington Post to go pound sand:

I’ve been “Huffed” too. Five years ago, I noticed they’d written an article transcribing a Candorville strip. They repeated it word for word, and described the action. I wrote to the author and asked why they didn’t just pay to run the cartoon itself, or at the very least link to the cartoon on my website (not that that would’ve been a good substitute for payment, but at least it wouldn’t have been a kick in the slap in the face). I sent them the contact info for my syndicate. Instead of licensing it, they simply –- immediately –- deleted the article.

But lots of people find themselves in that position, sadly; what made Bell’s post worthwhile was the story of how he learned to never work for free, because of an object lesson he received from his godmother at the age of thirteen. I’m not going to copy it here — follow the link above and read the entire thing, it’s not long — but I wanted you to see it because it can never be said too often: your creative work has value. Honestly, we ought to make that lesson a little more compact, but for some reason those that don’t value your work get pissy when you tell them Fuck you, pay me.

Gotta clean out the spam filters, they’re piling up. Time for the Spam of the day lightning round!

Hey, Missed e-mails phenomenally

Liar.

©GOOGLE E-MAIL LOTTERY PROMOTION INETRNATIONAL LOTTERY SECTION (E) SPAIN 2015. Attn: Winner

Enormous liar.

Chat with 20000 Russian and Ukrainian Beauties

While your stock photos are enticing, I don’t believe you.

55+ And Looking For An Apartment in Your Area? Click here!

I am not a senior citizen.

Your Account Has Been Limited PayPal ID PP-658-119-347

I don’t have a PayPal account.

Browse Profiles of Local Jewish Singles at JDate

I’m married. Also not Jewish, unless selling my soul to Rosenberg includes a retroactive transitive bar mitzvah.

_______________
¹ Those of you who’ve seen STRIPPED know that he gets a lot of screen time, because he’s got a lot of smart, interesting things to say. The hivemind made up of Fred Schroeder and Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett chose well in making him one of the central voices in the film.

² And its corollary: when the work has already been run by somebody that assumed you’d be fine with exposure, the proper response is I don’t care that you took it down, you ran it already and that costs money; my invoice is on its way.

When Jeph comes back from his vacation (and happy birthday, Jeph!), I hope to hell that QC becomes all #buttrocket, all the time. Add Christopher Baldwin to the list of awesomest people ever (which presently consists of KB Spangler and Zach Weinersmith).

Who wants to see the floor map for this year’s San Diego Comic Con? Well too bad, because you’re gonna, mister. As usual, you can download the entire thing [PDF], or browse around below for the guide to Webcomics and the Webcomics-Adjacent. If you’ve been before, people that you want to see are mostly in the same places as past years. As always, if there are corrections or additional detail, I will post as I receive them and update here.

As in past years, the floor divides roughly in half where the hall bends about 15° clockwise. Also as in past years, we’ll consider those halves separately.

The Low Numbers
Let’s start over to the right side of the map, which is the side of the building away from the stadium parking lot where so much offsite stuff will be found. It looks like this:

The Webcomics, Small Press, and Independent Press Pavilions are all reasonably accessible from the “B” lobby. Let’s break ’em down.

The Sexy Lagoon
Centered roughly on booth #1332, you’ll find a majority of the webcomickers who will be at the show within about a 1.5 aisle radius; some are slightly outside the orange area, but not too far.

Notes:

• Blank Label is the increasingly-disused name for Willis, Spike, and whoever’s sharing space this year, and if I heard correctly Spike won’t be there this time.
• The biggest bummer about not attending this year will be missing out on seeing my good friends at Dumbrella, who provide me refuge from the floor each year.
• There’s always a rotating roster at TopatoCo; we’ll let you know who’s gonna be there as we become definitively aware.
• Penny Arcade and Blind Ferret have opted out of SDCC; as giving up your booth means waiting a hell of a long time to get another one, this is likely permanent. Correction: Blind Ferret will be attending, but under the Comic Bento name; we’ve noted their inclusion above.

Small Press Is The Best Press
Right by the Webcomics section is Small Press. Here you should find:

From the Small Press section, you’re close by:

Notes:

• Gallery Nucleus will feature arty types when they aren’t hanging out at Mondo down in booth 835. Keep an eye out for your Scotts C, your Beckys and/or Franks, and alumni of the various Flight anthologies.
• No confirmation yet on which webcomickers will be at the BOOM! booth when, but I’d expect a pretty strong rotation.
• A San Diego without Keith Knight is weird, man.

Now head back toward the “B” Lobby into the Independent Press area and you’ll find the area where Unshelved and Axe Cop used to be. Jeff Smith’s totally a webcomicker these days, though — you’ll find him sharing space with the incomparably good Terry Moore at Booth 2109.

Going back to that larger map of the northern half of the exhibit hall. Wedged in between the Marvel and Image megabooths you’ll find Keenspot in Booth 2635.

High Numbers
There’s still some neat stuff if you keep wandering past the video games, Star Wars, Legos, and suchlike.

Give yourself half an hour or so, try not to spend all your money on Copic markers (Booth 5338), and you’ll find both Udon Entertainment (home of such worthies as Christopher Butcher and Jim Zub at Booth 4529); and The Hero Initiative (at Booth 5003). Zub’s Skullkickers cohort, Edwin Huang will be in the Artists Alley at table DD-14, and Katie Cook will be at table HH-17.

Offsite
The offsite components of SDCC just keep growing year after year; the massive parking lots by the stadium and the north end of the Gaslamp, and the field by the Hilton, are likely to host enough to keep you busy whole days.

Spam of the day:

SEO become very hard nowadays, i know what can help you,

If SEO remains very hard for longer than four hours, SEO should seek medical attention.

_______________
¹ Be sure to thank them for making Space Weird Thing.

Today’s post is not about spam in that it’s about something that actually is relevant to this page, but which was crafted so poorly as to make calling it out necessary.

Let me back up a moment and take a trip into history. There is an expression in the newspaper biz called burying the lede, where the lede is the leading idea of your story¹, the part you want the reader to take away. When you bury the lede, you hide that key idea in irrelevant information or fail to mention relevant information up front. The greatest possible example of such, the ur-buried lede, was promulgated by the Associated Press a little more than 150 years ago:

WASHINGTON, APRIL 14 [1865] — President Lincoln and wife visited Ford’s Theatre this evening for the purpose of witnessing the performance of ‘The American Cousin.'[sic, ²] It was announced in the papers that Gen. Grant would also be present, but that gentleman took the late train of cars for New Jersey.

The theatre was densely crowded, and everybody seemed delighted with the scene before them. During the third act and while there was a temporary pause for one of the actors to enter, a sharp report of a pistol was heard, which merely attracted attention, but suggested nothing serious until a man rushed to the front of the President’s box, waving a long dagger in his right hand, exclaiming, ‘Sic semper tyrannis,’ and immediately leaped from the box, which was in the second tier, to the stage beneath, and ran across to the opposite side, made his escape amid the bewilderment of the audience from the rear of the theatre, and mounted a horse and fled.

The groans of Mrs. Lincoln first disclosed the fact that the President had been shot, when all present rose to their feet rushing towards the stage, many exclaiming, ‘Hang him, hang him!’ The excitement was of the wildest possible description.

It takes until the third paragraph to get to the fact that Lincoln was shot. Now, while what I’m about to share with you is not that bad, it’s a pretty poor way to write a press release. I received overnight an email with the following subject line:

Press Release: Los Angeles Resident’s Comic Strip Now Available on GoComics

Los Angeles resident sounds an awful lot like The Onion’s Area Man. The fun continues into the body of the release which begins:

GoComics, a part of the Universal Uclick syndicate family, is excited to announce the addition of “Drive” to its lineup of new and classic comic strips, including Big Nate, Calvin and Hobbes, Dilbert, Garfield and Peanuts.

Created by Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett, the comic strip “Drive” is now available on GoComics. Kellett is an award-winning cartoonist and the co-director of the hit documentary “Stripped”, which includes interviews with more than 70 cartoonists.

The fact that Dave Kellett live in LA is not the relevant thing that we should be discussing, people. The fact that he’s a longstanding creator of multiple strips, has published a dozen collections, been nominated for the highest awards in comicking, and is an award-winning filmmaker who go the first audio interview with Bill Freakin’ Watterson in decades are not less important that the fact he lives in LA.

Note that all those things I brought up are in the release, three paragraphs later, in an attached PDF.

I hate attachments. Best case: I have to download and open and go rooting through to get the information I need to write my story (or, quite possibly, cut-and-paste). Median case: the attachment is a goddamn image (let me be clear, that did not happen here, but it has happened in the past) meaning I have to re-transcribe the information that you want to share with me so I will share it with my readers — making it more difficult for me to tease out this information makes me want to toss your press release (or mock it).

Worst case: you have some hideous virus on your computer and your attachment infects my computer, which is why every other press release I’ve ever received with the relevant information in an attachment has gone straight into the trash and the topic that was meant to be shared died unloved and unmourned. I took the risk in this one case so I could find out if the useful information actually appeared. This will never, ever happen again.

I don’t mean to shit specifically on GoComics (and I’m not naming the person responsible for this steaming pile of failure); I’ve gotten plenty of bad press releases from individuals, and from PR shops both large and small. I just didn’t expect this stunning level of profound skill-lack from a very large syndicate with decades of experience dealing with newspapers (who, after all, are the traditional targets of press releases).

Take a lesson, kids. Nobody cares that General Grant took the late train of cars for New Jersey. Although one good thing came out of this: from now on, I will always refer to the creator in question as Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett.

Spam of the day: See above.

_______________
¹ Not lead; newspapers developed the alternate spelling of lede because at the time presses used type that was cast from molten lead (the metallic chemical element, Pb) and they wanted to avoid confusion. Not that anybody would be burying hot type in the ground or anything. Look, it’s a charming artifact of another age, okay?

² The play is actually called Our American Cousin, but we’ll give the reporter and fact-checker a break after a century and a half.

This is something that I’ve resisted writing for a while; I wanted to hold off and look at the work in question as a whole, but it’s become increasingly difficult as the story progresses and gets stronger and more revealing as it does. I’m probably jumping the gun a little, but today is when I decided that I couldn’t wait any longer. And with that out of the way, I suppose I should tell you what the heck I’m on about.

I’ve written several times before that Meredith Gran was doing the best work of her career on Octopus Pie, and I meant it every time; I’ll go so far as to say that she’s the one of the few creators with a long-running comic that hasn’t hit a rut or plateau — she’s been on a long, improving arc, punctuated by bursts where she ups her game to an astonishing degree. Remarkably, each of those bursts takes a different approach.

She’s previously dropped in story arcs that played with the overall plot and progression of Octopie; she’s done arcs that played with the form of the comic. What she’s doing in the latest storyline (which starts here and which rewards a familiarity with the characters but which will still entice the first-time reader) trumps everything she’s done before.

Without ever once tipping her hand, she’s showing us how breakups work from multiple perspectives; she’s letting us hear the words (and not many of them, more on that in a bit) that come out of their mouths, but their body language¹ tells us when those words are false. We see the lies that these characters tell themselves and each other, we see them stripped down to their innermost cores, and there’s not a wrong beat or misstep along the way as the focus of the story shifts from Eve to Hanna to Will to Aimee. Everything that happens is smooth and organic and (in retrospect) inevitable.

And quiet. The words are perfect, the words are true, but the real revelations come in the silent panels, or the ones where the words are tiny and unimportant. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that partway through this storyline Gran made the decision to use social media in a different way — her day is quieter, and her comic is quieter, and every word has weight. I can’t find a single one that isn’t entirely necessary.

As Eve and Hanna and the presently absent (maybe permanently) Marek and Will and Marigold and all the other characters age out of their twenties, the exaggerated nature of their reality (overturned cars and evil skaters and escapes out windows and exploding lairs of evil geniuses and rock lobsters and renfaire misadventures and, and, and) is getting sanded down in the face of … reality? adulthood? There’s a palpable sense of change and maturation, that things can’t stay the way they have been. There’s a feeling that you can’t stay the way you were in your twenties, not unless you want to wake up one day and suddenly you’re fifty and have turned into Olly.

There’s a feeling of a stage of life — the one that comic keys on — coming to an end, and with it our time with the characters. I’ll miss them terribly, but in a period of time where Gran said she’s been working on layout and drawing, and when her writing has broken through to the next level, I can only imagine what her next project will look like when she can unleash those skills on something open and new and unrestrained. It’s a sad time in the Brooklyn of Octopus Pie, but it’s a great time to be reading Meredith Gran.

And tomorrow? Next month? Next year, and the years after that? They’re going to be even greater.

By happy coincidence, somebody else was in a pensive mood today; if you haven’t read Ryan North’s incredibly moving essay on A Softer World and his friendship with Emily Horne & Joey Comeau, now would be the time to do that.

Spam of the day:

Don’t continue putting off your lifestyle change.

Unlike Dentarthurdent, I am not having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle. It’s pretty good in fact, but thanks I guess?

_______________
¹ Weirdly, it reminds me of Fury Road; I read a description online (and I’m sorry, I neglected to note who said it; if you know, please share!) that given the dearth of dialogue, Fury Road amounted to the loudest silent movie ever made. The emphasis on showing, the use of language to the degree required and not one syllable more, resulting in clarity of motivation … that’s what I’m getting at.

• So applications for TopatoCon have closed, but they just opened for MICE, which is a show I keep hearing more and more good about. If you think you could arrange to be in Cambridge, MA¹ — across the river from the somewhat better-known Boston² — in the middle of October, this may be something you want to look into.
• Yeah, I know — you’re waiting until the overeager crowds have quieted down before seeing the new Avengers³, you already binged on Daredevil, and have no idea what to watch that’s comics-themed this weekend. Might I recommend STRIPPED, which has joined Netflix and is now available for convenient in-home streaming?
• So I got my copy of Cuttings in the mail yesterday, and it is expectedly gorgeous inside, but in and among the anticipated delights are some things that surprised me. One thing, however, surprised me more than anything else — more than the variety of styles and genres that Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh can work in, more than the amount of money I want to give them to see some of their as-yet-unrealized stories, more than the fact that when a wrist injury sidelined Ota’s right hand, she started drawing her comics with her left and quickly achieved mastery with it.

  And that thing is that Ota can not only draw better with her non-dominant hand than most people will ever draw period, but that there is a page included where she does gesture drawing with her right and left hands simultaneously. What the hell. You should buy all their stuff because anybody that can do that deserves your money.

Spam of the day:

Have you ever thought about creating an ebook or guest authoring on other sites? I have a blog based upon on the same topics you discuss and would love to have you share some stories/information.

You’ve linked to eyelash enhancers, and as I am widely reputed to have the best eyelashes in all of webcomics pseudojournalism, I don’t see why I should lend you any of my hard-won credibility on the eyelash front.

_______________
¹ Our Fair City; requiscat in pace, Tommy.

² Don’t worry about the show not being in Boston — it’s not a big college town.

³ Alternately: you couldn’t get a sitter.

Just yesterday I was raving about the gallery/event space known as Center 548, site of this year’s MoCCA Festival in Chelsea, Manhattan, New York City, and how I hoped the Society of Illustrators had found a new, permanent home for the show. Turns out, nope:

Sad news for anybody who is currently enjoying MoCCA’s new location https://news.artnet.com/art-world/owne…

In case you didn’t click that link, the owners of the building has sold out to a new landlord who intends to — wait for it — build condos, or so say the rumors. I’m sure somebody will be making a buttload of money off the deal, and while I’ve only ever been in that space on one day of its entire existence, the continual repurposing of NYC real estate into high-priced residences is something that will set off another cycle of decline in the city if the real estate industry isn’t very careful.

It’s happened before, as the city became too expensive and people moved away; pretty soon there’s nobody to cook and clean for the owners of those multi-million dollar residences, or to make their coffee or deliver their dry cleaning. Then the super rich all decide to leave, the neighborhood falls into underuse, and then the artists and squatters move back in. Cue one of those Disney songs about eternal circles of real property valuation. Thanks to Darryl Ayo for digging up the story.

• Welp, regardless of what happens with arts happenings in New York, there’s still going to be a TopatoCon in *hampton Mass this fall, and the exhibitor list grows by the day:
  

  Can you guess who the next guest announcement is? I’ll give you a hint; his name rhymes with “Schmanthony Slark”.

  I’m going to throw another guest announcement at you. Go long!

  IT’S CHRIS HASTINGS! @drhastings IS GOING TO BE AT TOPATOCON!!

  The complete list as it now stands is under the cut.

• That’s moving fast — Howard Tayler¹ has been making noise about launching a Kickstarter to fund a role-playing game set in his comic’s universe, and in the hours since launch it’s racked up 66% of of a US$45,000 goal. Not so unusual, but these things are unusual: the US$30K he’s gathered so far is from just 300 backers, for an average of a hundo per; he’s logged eight backers (out of total limit of 15) across two US$500 tiers, and five (out of a limit of 10) backers at the US$1000 (!) tier. People love them some games, but even more love them some Howard. No idea where this is going but I suspect all my predictive models would be garbage given the obvious skew going on.
• How about a simple Kickstarter story? It’s been a while since we had one of thems. Dave Kellett has decided to celebrate the first anniversary of his film, STRIPPED (funded via Kickstarts), with a sale. Until 17 April, you can get the movie and bonus features for 50% off. If you didn’t see it before, see it now.

Spam of the day:

Does your website have a contact page? I’m having a tough time locating it but, I’d like to send yyou an e-mail.

Yeah, it would be that thing under the masthead on the right that says CONTACT US, can’t imagine how anybody’s ever found it ever.

_______________
¹ Evil twin, etc.

(more…)

I didn’t enter today’s hotel rodeo because I still have received no assurance that I’d be let in the front door¹ and hell if I’m spending the money to get out to San Diego and not get in; let’s focus on shows that answer their damn email.

• EmCity happens later this week, and there’s a plethora of webomicky programming going on. Of particular note, you may find Spike, Destroyer of All That Oppose Her on four panels:
  

  MY 4 ECCC PANELS: Running a Comics Anthology- Fri, 1:10 Adult Comics- Fri, 6:50 Non-Compliant- Fri, 5:00 Discussing Diversity- Sun, 3:50

  The one on Adult Comics will also feature Leia Weatherington and the invaluable Hurricane Erika and Blue Delliquanti

• And for those that want to learn some of the best tips for making your way in the waters of business, superlawyer to the creative community Katie Lane will have a series of appearances: building up your legal toolkit, on the role of the artist in this electronic world (with Gene Ambaum, Pat Race, and Nadia Kayyali), and how to negotiate like a murderous acrobatic spy. If you aspire to destroy all those that oppose you (and truthfully, who doesn’t?), that last panel is a good place to start.
• After you’re done bein’ all adult and all lawyerly, there’s a screening of STRIPPED Friday at 6:00pm in Hall A, with a Q&A featuring Danielle Corsetto, Kris Straub, Dylan Meconis, and the very sexy Brad Guigar (we appear to have looped back around to the adult portion of the show, if you know what I mean).
• Not to be outdone, MoCCA Fest released their programming schedule for this year’s show, with a Q&A with Scott McCloud and another with Raina Telgemeier being the two standouts to my eye. Given its size, MoCCA only does a dozen programs, only two at a given time, so you can see a significant fraction of the offering if you’re determined to do so. Reminder: the programming is not at the main venue (Center 548), but rather about 2 blocks away at the High Line Hotel; see the map on the programming page.

  Please note that due to limited space in the panel rooms, the Q&A sessions on Saturday require a reservation which you can get by “purchasing” a free ticket. Yeah, it’s a pain to sign up for an account, but Raina! Scott! Worth it.

Spam of the day:

Hi, my name is Pauline and I am the marketing manager

Nnnnnnope!

_______________
¹ If I didn’t earn back my press status this year, SDCC, just bloody tell me. Don’t not tell me by your own announced deadline and then refuse to respond to my enquiries for three damn months.

So one of the things I’ve been working on recently, which I hope to mention more fully shortly, has required me to think about webcomics ceators in terms of what they do that isn’t webcomics. That’s a terrible sentence, so just consider the panel held at NYCC 2013 titled Beyond The Webcomic wherein Kate Beaton, Christopher Hastings and Ryan North talked about how they were bursting with creative impulses beyond just webcomics. Or, as I put it in a piece of writing that you may be able to read some day:

Having won their toehold in one medium, creators expanded outward into prose, children’s books, animation, short films, feature films, theater, sketch comedy, new media, games, apps, and academia; if there was a channel for expression, webcomics creators moved into it, applying the habits of hustle and invention that they’d developed. Whatever the next disruptive change in comics might be, they weren’t waiting for it to show up and leave them behind; they were going to go find it and make it theirs.

I kinda like that paragraph; the original even has a footnote in it, because that’s how I roll. It’s been on my mind because of the recognition that webcomics creators have been getting for things they’ve done that aren’t webcomics, like the news that STRIPPED is going to Angoulême, or the fact that two webcomickers have made the list of Best Books of 2014 at The AV Club. And before you say, Yeah, we know, you wrote about it the same day as the STRIPPED thing, this isn’t about comics. It’s about (what some would call) book books, without those filthy, degenerate pictures that cheapen everything.

Well, kinda. One of the honorees is What If? by Randall Munroe, based directly on the webcomic of the same name, but it’s more a general nonfiction book than a comic. At least, there’s not a story there. But the other is The Martian by Andy Weir; it’s his debut novel, but he previously created both Casey and Andy and Cheshire Crossing, making him a webcomicker since small times (although not for about six years or so).

We’re just at the start of this expansion, with tremendously creative people who feel no need to be creative in only one mode of expression (c.f.: also on that list at The AV Club was Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle, aka frontman of The Mountain Goats), and I say it’s a great thing. I create neat things is an even better way to describe your job than I make cartoons and put them on the internet.

Spam of the day:

Do you suffer from KIDNEY DISEASE?

No. Next!

The good news(es) are very good, and the bad is … yikes.

• Okay, a little background: just after Thanksgiving, Dave Kellett dropped some hints on Twitter that STRIPPED (his love-letter to comics with hivemind-lifepartner Fred Schroeder) was possibly going to screen next year someplace very cool. Cooler, he said, than frickin’ Pixar.

  Angoulême, muthascratchers.

  STRIPPED is going to air continuously for three days at the 42e Festival International de la Bande Dessinée aka the second biggest comics festival in Europe and third biggest in the world, way the heck out of the way more than 400 km from Paris, France. Think twice as many comics fans as they cram into the San Diego Convention Center, spread out across an entire damn medieval town, oh, and you can get a four-day pass for only €31 I think that just maybe Kellett was right — this was bigger than Pixar, and anybody on the other side of the Atlantic at the end of January/start of February ought to consider dropping by.

• Speaking of year-end good news, The AV Club has doubled down on their John Allison appreciation (noted here last week) by naming Bad Machinery one of the Best Comics of 2014, alongside North/Paroline/Braden’s Adventure Time (which is coming to a close and a hand-off to Hastings/Sterling just about now-ish). Considering that the rest of the list contains the biggest of big titles, things like Saga and somebody called “Super-Man” (sp?), that’s some pretty significant praise there. Also called out for recognition: Ed Piskor’s Hip Hop Family Tree, originally serialized on Boing Boing and presently re-running on The Nib, so that’s a pretty healthy appreciation for the webcomickers.
• Not all the year-end news is good.

  Fred MacIntire has known for — holy cats — more than nine years that he’d tested positively for Alzheimer’s; he celebrated Thanksgiving that year with typical MacIntire tact by telling his son. Shortly after the worst day of his life the rest of his family knew, too. That was so long ago, and he’s been so feisty since, it seemed that the possibility of a false positive had been borne out.

  He hasn’t needed the help that Davan and PeeJee have been there to provide for most of a decade, he’s been a curmudgeonly sarcastic cuss, terror to the stupid and fundamentally decent human being simultaneously.

  Then he started falling. Loss of motor control is common in mid-stage Alzheimer’s. And now his recall is impaired.

  Damn you, Randy Milholland. You’ve made us care about your characters, you’ve made us share their triumphs, feel their losses, weep with their pain. You’ve never made things artificially happy or shied from the costs of life, and that’s part of why we love Something*Positive and a big part of why you can hurt us now. We knew in the backs of our minds that this day would come, but we maybe didn’t entirely believe it. This is going to be painful, but we’re going to have to read it because we owe Fred that witness to his life. As for you, Milholland … this is no cheap twist coming out of nowhere; you’ve earned this. Damn you.

Spam of the day:

There is a company that you can get traffic from and they let you try the service for free. I managed to get over 300 targeted visitors to day to my site.

Man, my dog could set up a website can get over 300 visitors a day. Try again before you try to sell me a service that would produce a traffic cut.