And, in case you’re new here, that’s an entirely positive development.

• You gotta hand it to Ryan Estrada, things just sort of happen to him. It’s an open question if he naturally intuits situations where things are more likely to happen, or if (as I’ve always maintained) he is some form of natural chaos generator function, causing weird situations to coalesce about him in places where they ordinarily would not occur.

  As far as the Estradian Weirdness scale goes, hiking in the woods in Korea and coming across an art installation/comic book you can wander inside is pretty low scoring, but neat nonetheless:

  In just 9 pages, it tells of the war, the refugees building the city, the locals thriving by embracing nature, and gentrification taking that away.

  But this story takes @scottmccloud‘s lessons about the real story happening in the space between panels to the extreme.

  Because here, the space between panels is an actual hike through the very nature that brings the characters joy, with glimpses through the trees of the very village it takes place in.

  I have never seen anything like it and I am so happy to have stumbled upon it.

  In case you don’t have your copy of Understanding Comics handy, it’s chapter 3 (Blood In The Gutter, p60 in my 1994 Harper reprinting of the Kitchen Sink edition) where McCloud talks about how much story happens in the gutters, and the various kinds of transitions that take you from one panel to the next¹. It’s a terrifyingly creative way to tell the story of a place, and I’m glad that the artist was found by Estrada’s wife, Kim Hyung Sook, and that she could be told of how much enjoyment her work brought to Estrada’s followers.

• While I’m not sure if Estrada is a catalyst for weirdness or merely wanders into it at a greater than normal rate, I have no such illusions regarding Shing Yin Khor; they don’t wait to find or provoke weirdness, they seek it out and when necessary, create it. Consider the multiple road trips in search of muffler men, or the dragging of the Center For Otherworld Science into our reality via a multimedia AR mystery, or perhaps just deciding to give the 12 foot Home Depot skeleton they brought home a proper axe for Halloween. For Khor, that’s just a random Wednesday.

  So I am very excited that Khor has decided to team up with game designer Jeeyon Shim to create … let’s just quote the whole thing:

  [Sparkles] ANNOUNCEMENT! [Sparkles]²

  Shing Yin Khor (@sawdustbear) and I are co-designing The Field Guide To Memory, an interactive journaling game about legacy, wonder, and cryptids. Launching on KS this winter!

  Keep an eye on the hashtag #FieldGuideToMemory and follow our accounts for more!

  The weirdness creator cannot be stopped by pandemic or quarantine, they only become stronger. But is it, as I implied in the title, a thing that stretches the definition of comics, or something merely wildly creative and somewhat comics-adjacent? Given that the story panels will in some cases be 3D objects and the gutters human emotion and experience, I’m gonna call it comics. If it’s not, maybe we need to expand the definition.

Spam of the day:

Hi, I was just taking a look at your site and filled out your feedback form. The feedback page on your site sends you these messages via email which is why you’re reading my message right now right? That’s half the battle with any type of online ad, making people actually READ your message and I did that just now with you! If you have something you would like to promote to millions of websites via their contact forms in the US or to any country worldwide send me a quick note now, I can even focus on particular niches and my pricing is super low.

So you want me to pay you to annoy other people the same way you’re annoying me right now by abusing the site that I provide? No. Fuck off.

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¹ Given Estrada’s description, I’d say it was mostly Type 4, scene-to-scene transitions. Which, given McCloud’s analysis, is more likely to occur in Asian comics than Western comics.

² That’s how it showed up in my copy of the tweet’s text. Okay, I added the brackets, but it really did say Sparkles to represent the emoji.

The Egg Situation at Breakfast on Monday is off the hook; it’s a scramble/caprese deal, more delicate and loved that even Ray Smuckles would manage.

The structure of the programming has loosened; yesterday, a considerable number of games were conducted, role-playing and otherwise, and space in the schedule is being made so that people can improvise. Scott C talks about how to find inspiration while Sophie Lager (a local artist and musician, and all-around awesome lady) shows me how to cast yarn onto needles. I spend the rest of Camp adding knit stitches into something that nothing in particular, letting the physical work allow my mind to drift¹. I suspect Scott C’s journey through art and artists that inspire him will always come to mind when I have needles in my hands.

When I first mentioned to Dylan Meconis at last year’s Camp that I wanted to learn to knit, she immediately declared that I’d be great at it. It’s all just math, Gary she told me. Now I can see the geometry of the yarn hangs together, and I’m reminded of ropework that I’ve practiced in my habit of rock climbing. I’ll eventually abandon the mutant first project (Meconis told me to pick a skein of wool in a color I didn’t care about, so I wouldn’t be precious about unraveling as needed) and start a second practice work: 20 stitches wide, careful counting, uniform slack. It’s got about 1000 stitches in and I haven’t picked it up for nearly two weeks, but I’ve got flights for work next week and I suspect it’ll be in my carry-on. Eventually, I may even learn a second stitch.

I learn a bit later that as long as I keep my hands within my peripheral vision, I can knit and use language; brains are funny things — I learned from a decade of work commuting that I can’t listen to podcasts or music and talk or read or fill in a crossword, but I can do sudoku. Likewise, knitting and conversation flow together when Lucy Bellwood hosts a conversation on how to sustain a [creative] career. Bellwood’s rightly known for her large personality and adventurous nature, but she’s also the perfect moderator of a discussion that deals with smaller, quieter issues — emotional stability, worries about money, confidence in your work and place. The leap she took in sharing her little jerk and speaking about him honestly has made her a center in this quirky culture.

The sense of community is more powerful than I recall from last year, maybe because this year I’m a little more in control of my impostor syndrome. It’s revivifying to be around people who are insanely creative, innately good-hearted, willing to let down their hard-earned defenses (remember, most of them make their living in large part on the friggin’ internet, and a majority of this year’s attendees are women), to talk honestly about their ambitions and their own little jerks.

I’ll tell you that this discussion took place, for this block of time on Monday afternoon and throughout the rest of the weekend. That’s all I’ll tell you. But I will urge you — if you haven’t already — to find a similar intentional community within your own geographic/professional/whatever circles and to allow yourselves the same sort of discussions. I said it more than once to friends since I first attended, but I’ll say it now for public consumption: for me, attending Comics Camp is better than a year’s therapy.

Part of that is because Pat Race (and he’s far from the only person that makes Comics Camp run, but he’s the heart and soul of it) is very, very aggressive about soliciting and acting on feedback. He wants to know about how we’ve experienced the logistics and arrangements, the activities and scheduling, both before and during Camp. He talked about how school the visits worked, about how after three years the students finding continuity; he asks our opinions on the Library show and the involvement of the community at all stages. It’s universally agreed that everybody loved what Lily and Ishmael Hope shared with us, and would like to see more exposure to local culture in future.

Maybe it’s because it’s the last day, but the main lodge seems to hold more people than any time since arrival; our banner is hoisted, POoOP Number Two voting continues, people circulate in ever-changing swirls. After dinner, there’s a rundown of how Tuesday morning will go — breakfast, followed by cleanup, and a bus departure for those on the cartoonist-heavy flight to Seattle at lunchtime. And there’s a special presentation to Jeste. You may recall that when introduced to us, Jeste announced she had a requirement. You’re all cartoonists, she declared, and nobody’s drawn me yet.

Well. Let it not be said that cartoonists are not up to a challenge.

Over the weekend the Jeste Shrine takes form; from the high altarpiece — it reads Our Lady Of Dank Snax — which lights up to the many, many portraits, it continuously grows and changes. Each time I take a picture, it has a new representation of Jeste that needs to find room for inclusion. I think my favorite is by Vera Brosgol, who’s drawn Jeste like one of the summer camp kitchen ladies in Be Prepared. She’s a bomb-ass chef, she fed us better than anybody would expect from a summer camp kitchen, and she is beloved.

Tuesday morning passes quickly, but not before a drizzly group photo; my flight isn’t until stupid early on Wednesday; others will be around until late afternoon or evening. Those of us not on the early bus spend a little extra time cleaning the lodge and kitchen, before making our way back to town. Shing Yin Khor and I have Mexican, then are called over to the local distillery for delicious gin drinks by Marian Call.

That night, I end up going to see The Avengers: Infinity War with Call, Race, and some of the other local Juneau folks, a reintroduction to the machinery of mass culture after days of being away. I’d started tapering off my email checking and Twitter habit before heading into the woods, and the lack of cell signal means I went into the movie entirely devoid of spoilers. The trip home and the days following will see me slowly reintroduce my regular life.

I love Camp, I love the people there, I love Juneau. I couldn’t live there, partly because I’ve made my home in the place that feels like home, but partly because living in Juneau would make the place start to feel ordinary. It’s where I can go to reset, to spend some time (never enough) with an intentional community of my people, to take what I learn from them home. I know that’s sounding distinctly Campbellian, and I’m no journeying hero².

Juneau gets to be my Rivendell because it’s a journey away; the people I meet there are sometimes in my neck of the woods, and their welcome in my home is perpetual. It’s not for everybody, particularly in this very cynical age³, but if it’s in your means, I urge to you visit the Mini-Con as you are able, or apply to attend the Comics Camp, or to build your own intentional (if intermittent) community in a similar vein. It’s not a time or a place, it’s a process and a commitment to each other. Join ours, or build your own, but in a world that seems out of control, take a step back and seek out a bit of re-creation.

One final thing before we go: Aud Koch (who I’d not met before, and who was a fellow inhabitant of my very polite cabin) has shared some pieces from her sketchbook. They’re really pretty.

Pictures:

Pack out always has a bit of confusion, cartoonists love doggos, and Amalga Distillery has the Portland International Airport carpet of wallpaper.

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¹ Which may explain that what started as a 15-stitch wide swath of yarn eventually turns into a 28-stitch wide swath of yarn. I’m not sure how I managed to make things wider (or why I didn’t notice earlier), but Sophie assures me it’s an advanced technique that I’ve stumbled on to.

² Mostly because the hero doesn’t get to return to the land of wisdom and peace on a yearly basis, as I plan to.

³ And I am a very cynical man, but Comics Camp is enough to make me declare my allegiance to sincerity.

Anybody that follows this page know that my crusty, cynical exterior last only so long as I’m not in proximity or otherwise thinking about the work or actual persons of Becky Dreistadt and Frank Gibson. They do work that is lovely to look at, heartwarming to read, and just plain fun.

A couple of years back, their tribute to the spirit of Pokémon, Capture Creatures, morphed from painting series to art book to monthly comic, which hit a prolonged hiatus in the middle of the story. The delays have been resolved, though, and Capture Creatures Volume 1 is about to be published as a trade paperback. Getting everybody back in Capture Creatures mood brought Gibson to Fleen for a chat, and a bit of schedule-clearing made Dresistadt available as well.

We at Fleen thank Becky Dreistadt and Frank Gibson for their time. Capture Creatures Volume 1 is available everywhere on 27 February.

Spam of the day:

Up to $950 Off Sakai Rammers!

Dunno, don’t want to know, and I’m fairly certain this has nothing to do with Usagi Yojimbo.

Okay, this is my fault: I dropped the ball on pushing the Hispanic Federation’s UNIDOS campaign for hurricane relief after I launched my matching campaign last week. Jon Rosenberg’s medical fundraiser¹ hit just after and distracted me, as did the general state of the world being awful. Regardless, we didn’t get as much as we might have otherwise (then again, having four matching fundraisers this year, plus helping Alec Rosenberg to walk without pain, means that we may all be feeling collectively tapped out).

Nevertheless, you came through. Backers (all of whom elected to remain anonymous) donated and I rounded up my match to US$500. It’s not enough, but it’s a start. For reference, this brings the Fleen Fight For Fungible Futures Fund to a total of US$9275 of matches, plus another US$375 from my employer. Between you and me, that’s nearly twenty thousand damn dollars from fans of webcomics to help and defend those that need it. Thank you all.

In other, less immediately financial news:

• We wrote last week of the return of Christopher “Doctor” Hastings to webcomickin’, and he had one more surprise for us. Turns out the five comics we saw last week are not related to each other at all, but were each the launching point for a separate story:
  

  Here are my FIVE new weekly comics!

  Mon: Magical Merlin
  Tue: Queen of Clubs
  Wed: Asimov’s Laws
  Thu: Karate Sewer Gator
  Fri: Woodsman!

  Magical Merlin is naturally a wizard; Queen of Clubs looks to be a domestic sitcom; Asimov’s Laws features Inventor Dad and wacky maker mishaps; Karate Sewer Gator is intrigue involving punks, dope, and the eponymous gator; and Woodsman! so far is heavy on camping mishaps at the hands of bears. Friggin’ bears. One or more of them is sure to tickle your fancy.

• Did I mention that my wife quit her job last year to go back to school for a good old-fashioned re-careering? Because she totally did. Which is why last night, I was helping her study the geological time scale, from the Hadean eon (formation of the Earth to ~ 3.6 billion years ago) through to the modern day (we’re in the tail end of the Quaternary period of the Cenozoic era, of the Phanerozoic eon, starting a paltry 2 million years ago). At the conclusion of the study session², I passed her my copy of Abby Howard’s Dinosaur Empire and told her just to read that. All the life before dinosaurs back to the pre-Cambrian, and all the life since the K-T extinction event have all sucked rocks compared to dinosaurs³.

  As noted when I reviewed Dinosaur Empire, that book is listed as the first volume in a series called Earth Before Us, but it wasn’t clear who might be making subsequent books.

  Wonder no more.

  Hey, folks! Just to let you know where I’ve been all month, I’ve been hard at work on the pencils for book 2 in the Earth Before Us series~

  So this is why I haven’t been updating. Sorry for all the waiting you’ve had to do, and thank you for your patience!

  Speaking for myself, this is great news. Sure, I like getting free comics from Abby Howard, but getting more ancient critter books? Maybe the Oligocene, aka The Age Of Horns? Or the Devonian, aka The Age Of Fish? Heck, let her take a shot at the Cambrian explosion and all the protofish and sea scorpions and weird-ass spiral shell squid. I’m so in, and ready to give her money in exchange for books 2 through infinity.

Spam of the day:

Jane Seymour explains how Crepe Erase can help you look as young as you feel.

I feel about sixteen most days, and if you ditch the random grey in my hair and the moustache, I still look it. Do I win?

_______________
¹ Which, as I write this five days later, is sitting just north of 93% of goal. You are all amazing.

² And that’s why the writers of Doctor Who screwed up in the Third Doctor era, because they were described as having dinosaurs, but the Silurian Period was over a good 160, 170 million years before the first dinosaurs appeared in the Triassic period. I’m not sure her professor will appreciate my nerdrage.

³ Not sure what the academic appreciation of that opinion would be, either. Don’t care. Dinosaurs are the best.

I’ll be honest; Sunday started a bit stressfully for me; Pat Race had asked me to give a presentation on the history of webcomics, and I was in absolute terror it would devolve immediately into uselessness:

Hey, Ryan North? Remember when you pranked Wikipedia about chickens? That was great. And Kate Beaton, you did a comic where a duck said “Aw yiss”. That was great, too.

And to be honest, I have to this day little memory of what I actually said. I have notes, mind you, that say things like The first webcomics are about as easily identified as the first jazz or punk songs and (double-underlined) Algonquin Roundtablesque!!

I remember my main thesis being that webcomics (aside from being a useless term, but we haven’t come up with a better one yet) is less a medium of distribution and more of an attitude: creator ownership, minimal gatekeeping, merchandising on the back end for scrappy entrepreneurship. It’s an attitude whose technical and business rules are constantly changing, and whose only constant is the ease of collaboration. Not just between cartoonists, either; I remember this bit:

So one day I leave my offices at Bryant Park in Manhattan, and as I walk by the southern end of Times Square, I noticed a full-sized billboard advertising W00tstock 2.0; it’s portraits of a former child actor/writer, an SFX goofball that blows things up for science, a pair of internet musicians/pirate fetishists, and it’s all been done 8-bit style by a quasireclusive pixelsmith.

If Dorthy Parker got drunk with fewer writers and more sculptors, aviatrixes, and telegraphers you’d approximate the degree of cross-media collaboration you have going on now. Instead, you’ve got Marian [Call] including NASA mission controllers in her shows and Molly Lewis gets hired by quasi-respectable party game designers to write a Christmas song about a Hawai’ian goddess with a flying vagina¹ because why the hell not.

Shortly after that, I shifted away from talking and turned it into a discussion session, getting people to share what they saw webcomics as, where they started, what their experiences were; considering that the room contained the likes of Kazu Kibuishi and Ryan North, it seemed a pretty good course to follow. Fortunately, the invaluable Jason Alderman did his thing and sketch-noted the session²; if you follow his twitter, you’ve seen these before when he attends sessions at various conferences. He doesn’t just take notes, he renders the speakers and finds their key points in real time, turning them into the most beautiful recaps imaginable. When you meet him, demand to look through his notebook, because you will very quickly get smarter on a wide variety of topics.

It was a good time; people went out of their way to thank me for the discussion later, and having the first time slot meant I was able to relax for the remainder of Camp … thanks, Pat! Even better, I got to see the next session, where Jeremy Spake and Georgina Hayns (mentioned yesterday) brought out the puppets and armature they’d shown at the Mini-Con, and really got down to details with us. For 90 glorious minutes we learned about fabrication, the CNC and 3D printing techniques used to construct the puppets³, and had our minds blown by the intricate details. Much more about this down in the photos section. Let me just leave you with a quick thought, though — when the stop-motion needs to look especially smooth, there are variant puppets with multiple limbs or whatever so that, say, an arm can be in multiple places at the same time. It’s the stop-motion equivalent of smear animation.

At lunch, I learned just how different life in Alaska can be; Sarah told me about living on an island approximately 100 km west of Juneau, where a fortunate quirk of geography allows a straight line of sight to a cell tower that provides enough internet to permit a freelancer’s life. She consults on land use and conservation policy, mixed with teaching art and movement. The nearest neighbors are 5 km away, and overwintering is a matter of personal choice and preparation. If the apocalypse ever comes, I want to convince her that I’d somehow be useful to her because she represents my best chance at survival.

Figure drawing took up a chunk of the afternoon, as did various project noodlings. Alderman brought along a little hand-cranked music box mechanism and a set of paper sheets that could be punched with holes to specify what notes would be played; think a very small player piano⁴. Call punched one of her songs into a strip and then wondered if it was possible to turn that into a Moebius song. Turns out it was, and the very quiet music became nicely amplified if the mechanism was held firmly against the body of one of the many camp ukuleles. Did I mention that there were 40 ukes delivered to Camp, leading many to take up the instrument? Because that happened.

Raina Telgemeier taught about how to present and get paid to do so; Tony Cliff showed how to snazz up those presentations with fancy flying transitions. Dinner featured the most nutritious cut of steak, and my turn at clean-up meant I missed much of the most significant session of the weekend as Cliff convened the Pacific Order of Onomatopoeia Professionals First Annual Regional Terminology Summit⁵ to decide once and for all how to spell certain sounds in comics. Suggestions were gathered, voting was conducted⁶, and Cliff released the final results [PDF] a couple of days ago. Comics creators, please note that the results linked to are definitive, official, and must be used as shown on pain of looking very foolish.

The last program of the night was the most insanely creative thing I’ve ever been involved in, but I’m going to be purposefully vague; as I mentioned at the start of these recaps, some things that took place at Comics Camp can — should? may? — only exist in the context of the time and place they took place. To delve into them too deeply is to rob them of meaning.

So it was as we gathered to create a musical — a main character was brainstormed, the introductory, “I Want”, villain, and emotional turning point songs were outlined, and we broke into four groups to actually write the damn things. I will show you in the photos section some wisdom from Marian Call, who shared her process for getting that first line of a song written; I think her technique applies to nearly any creative endeavour. Ultimately, I contributed two titles⁷ and one good line⁸.

Just about an hour from the start of the exercise, The Doubleclicks started playing the first song and the others followed as quickly as one musician could sit down and the next stand up. I am being completely honest with you when I tell you that more than one of them has been rattling around in my brain near continuously ever since; they are legitimately that sticky. Surprising everybody and nobody, there was a Hamilton-style rap from Pat Race.

I called it early that night, and so it wasn’t until the next morning I learned the anticipated northern lights were thwarted by cloud cover, but Ben Hatke mitigated the disappointment by teaching people how to breathe fire. In case you ever wondered what mineral oil tastes like, about half the Campers can tell you.

Photos

• Along with everything else, Jason Alderman’s handwriting is extraordinarily neat. Sketchnotes of my talk on the history of modern [web]comics.
• To start our deep dive in the Laika’s finest, let me note that it’s possible to take a photo where just about everybody’s eyes are closed. From left: Jeremy, Kubo, Kubo’s internal armature, Beetle, George, Monkey, Sarah, Kazu.
• The puppets all start with an internal armature; here you have a full-dressed Kubo and his internal structure. You can’t see it but it’s got tensioning screws for each and every joint except for the fingers and the jaw. The fingers don’t have metal inside (too small), but are fully poseable. The jaw isn’t jointed, but implied by the shape of the face plates.
• Okay: faces. They each consist of an upper half and a lower half; they allow for different mouth positions and expressions, and they pop right off. High strength miniature magnets hold the plates in place, and each piece is inscribed with a unique serial number describing exactly what it is. Popping off just the upper face gives access to the eyes and eyelids, which can be individually positioned however you like. Here’s a better shot of the upper and lower eyelids.
• With the face plates in place, seams are still potentially visible — as here, in the bridge of Kubo’s nose — which are removed digitally. George mentioned that on Coraline, Henry Selick argued strongly to leave the seams in, as an acknowledgment of the physical nature of the stop motion creative process.
• The models themselves hide access points for tensioning their armatures, and connection sockets for when the model must be supported externally due to posing; in Kubo or Monkey, it’s under clothing or fur. In Beetle, there are little pop-off panels and bits of cloth where joints meet. Monkey’s fur is made from a four-way stretch fabric which has been impregnated with a silicone; it stays where you pose it. Kubo’s hair is human hair, likewise laced with silicone for posing.
• I’ve over-lit this shot so you can get a good look at the clothing; Hayns said that cloth is a particular challenge because it doesn’t look right at scale without significant effort.
• Everything on these models is poseable. Beetle’s six limbs can move widely enough to draw his bow, for instance. It’s not a different model or a different bow. We were all very careful in positioning the models, despite the fact that they’re meant to stand up to significant wear and rough handling. There’s just so much care in their construction, we couldn’t treat them cavalierly; they are legitimate works of art and the highest craftsmanship.
• Figure drawing; the fellow providing that rock-solid five minute pose (!) is Khail Ballard, and you should read his stuff. Ballard also played the lead in that night’s musical.
• You thought I was kidding about the ukes, didn’t you?
• Voting underway in the wake of the POoOP FARTS debate.
• How to get to that first line, by Marian Call. I’ve been thinking about this one a lot.

________________
¹ The fact that I got to nod at Molly Lewis while saying that last part is a highlight of my life.

² Bonus: preliminary sketches of the library kickoff show!

³ Of which there are potentially dozens of each character — and each animator has a precise preference about how much tension there is in the articulation, which presents design challenges you can scarcely conceive of.

⁴ A discussion of which led to me holding forth on one of my favorite topics — how Hedy Lamarr used player-piano rolls to defeat the Axis in World War II and at the same time invented frequency-hopping spread spectrum, which makes your cell phone possible.

⁵ I’ll wait.

⁶ While I did not make any spelling suggestions, I did exercise my voting rights.

⁷ The “I Want” song, Proof, and the villain song, Sweet, Sweet Untraceable Cash.

⁸ Near the end of the first verse of Proof; the music for that song was all Marian Call, the remainder of the lyrics were by her, North, Telgemeier, and Hollis Kitchin, who runs the best bra shop in Juneau. Other groups were headed up by the Webber sisters, Lewis, and Seth Boyer.

News and things! Things and news! Let’s see what there is to see out there.

• I believe I’ve mentioned the excitement that we at Fleen have for the imminent release of Hope Larson & Rebecca Mock’s Compass South (that would be in just under a week). I don’t know if I mentioned that a chunk of the story involves twins Cleo and Alex trying to make their way to San Francisco (by steamer and train, in the mid-1800s, when such successes were not guaranteed and plagued by greater dangers than a lack in in-flight WiFi), thus tying into today’s theme.

  What I know that I haven’t mentioned is that Larson and Mock will be taking a virtual book tour in support of Compass South, visiting on-line and in the [virtual] cafés talk about how Compass South was created. The blogtour kicks off Monday (the day before release) at Supernatural Snark, and in subsequent days will make daily port calls at Love is not a Triangle, Forever YA, YA Bibliophile, Sharpread, and finishing up at Watch. Connect. Read. on Saturday.

• And while Cleo and Alex might have to wait a century or so before the Cartoon Art Museum gets organized in San Francisco, we need not engage in any such temporal chicanery, and CAM has plenty of events in the coming weeks, just in case you missed their just-closed exhibitions with the Queer Cultural Center at SOMArts Cultural Center and were wondering what’s up next.

  The highlight, at least in my opinion, will be A Salute to Chuck Jones¹ at the Castro Theater. Jones, naturally, is best defined by his cartoons and so the salute will be a screening of over a dozen shorts, including One Froggy Evening, Feed the Kitty, Duck Amuck, Rabbit of Seville, and motherscratching What’s Opera, Doc?.

  You have probably never seen these on the big screen. You need to see these on the big screen, with a big, booming sound system². If you are anywhere near San Francisco on Sunday, 10 July from noon to 3:00pm, you must see these cartoons on the big screen. Packages run from US$17 to US$150 (with various goodies and perks on top of admission, naturally) and may be purchased in advance through Guestlist. Presenters from the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity — conservators of Chuck’s³ legacy — will be on hand to talk about the films and memories of their creator.

• Should you find CAM’s efforts to continue to bring you the finest in cartoon art laudable (and really, you damn well better), there’s a new channel by which you can indicated your support. Check out their new Patreon, where you can help unlock curator blogs, online exhibitions, member pricing for events, and the general running of the museum.

  Granted, they only just launched it, but at the moment the Patreon has a shamefully insufficient eleven (11) backers pledging US$33 (thirty-damn-three dollars) per month. The people who love cartoons and comics (and who do you know that doesn’t?) can do better, and CAM deserves better. Support, and spread the word.

Spam of the day:

Re:Scelerisque Dui Suspendisse Corp. Please find attached the bill

I’m supposed to believe that your company is actually named after a section of lorem ipsum text? Nnnnope.

_______________
¹ Very possibly the greatest animator America’s produced yet, and definitely a dominant influence on every comicker, animator, filmmaker, and teller of stories and jokes for the past 60 -70 years.

² Not that I ever have, at least not by actual modern theater standards, but even a poor imitation was life-changing. Below the cut, a small story how how life-changing, adapted from a letter I wrote in 2001 to be included in a collection of letters from Chuck’s fans as a birthday present for the master.

³ It is Fleen’s editorial policy to refer to people by given and family name on first reference, and family name thereafter. There are two exceptions to this rule, namely Chuck (because he is always Chuck) and George (because he is always George).
(more…)

There are people that you know in life, and then there are people that are the best people that you know in life — people who you want to be around because they exude sheer joy in whatever they are undertaking. Undertakings that you want to be a part of, or at the very least consume& with gustosup1;. Several such people are up for discussion today.

• Firstly, today is the anniversary of the birth of two gents I normally only see in San Diego at the Festival du Nerds each July. MC Frontalot makes the songs that make you want to move, is arguably the inventor of an entire category of music, and travels the world like a bespectacled and headlamped Pied Piper. Jon Ferocious J Sung chronicles the lives of dogs, marshals vast armies in battle, boldly goes, and engages in unholy beveragalogical experiments. Both are worth seeking out in whatever form you find easiest, and you should engage wholly in everything they create, with the exception of the candy corn-laced vodka that Ferocious came up with that one time because ick.
• Secondly, this is the time of year that serious organizations make serious lists of the best of various things, books being no exception. Today I note that ur-serious organization NPR have come up with a listing of the best books of the year, a significant fraction of which are of the graphical variety. There one may find appropriate amounts of love heaped upon the likes of Raina Telgemeier², Gene Luen Yang, Emily Carroll, Stan Sakai³, and Chort Zubaz. Hooray for validation!
• Thirdly, the first part of a two-part interview onthe past and future of the Adventure Time comic is now up at Comics Alliance; it’s a conversation between CA’s Chris Sims and real-life pals Ryan North (outgoing AT writer) and Christopher Hastings (incoming AT writer). You can sense the Friendship right there on your screen, it practically oozes out of the internet into your lap.

  That went someplace a little more disturbing than I’d intended. As a palate-cleanse, how about the news that Ryan North will be writing a back-up story in the forthcoming officially-licensed Bill & Ted comic book? Or perhaps the two new pages of Squirrel Girl #1, available for preview sans words? Or the fact that Slate named Midas Flesh (by North, with Shelli Paroline and Braden Lamb on art) as one of the unjustly-overlooked books of 2014, which is another example of serious people recognizing webcomics and kind of drags us back to “secondly”.

• You know who I wish did a whole lot more work, like just about every hour of every day? Nicholas Gurewitch, whose The Perry Bible Fellowship exists almost like a perfectly-preserved specimen in amber. It’s unchanging, and wonderful, and everything he’s done since PBF regularly updated is likewise wonderful. And now there’s a new thing, and it’s up to you to make sure it sees the light of day: Notes on a Case of Melancholia is Gurewitch by way of Edward Gorey, and will only make its way to my hands if some number of you help put the Kickstarter over its goal; as of this writing, it’s sitting at about 80% of the requisite US$25,000 which means it’s going to succeed, barring some odd set of circumstances I can scarcely conceive of. Of particular note in the upper tiers of rewards: original Gurewitch sketches, original art from the book, and PBF originals. It’s like a macabre dream come true.

Spam of the day:

Download Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star Movie.

Under no circumstances should you do this. I get that spam only works if you assume the recipient is a little dumb, but this would require absolutely brainlessness to subject yourself to that actual movie product.

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¹ With one tragic exception, to be noted momentarily.

² About whom enough good things simply cannot be said.

³ Who essentially is a webcomicker that happens to distribute via floppy-paper comic books and who — honestly — has remained at the top of the quality game for longer than many of his readers have been alive.

Are you ready for the weekend? I am. Let’s do some quick clean-up on the news and get outta here.

• They say LA is an unforgiving town, built around the entertainment industry, not kind to those who aren’t Botoxed, rich, and connected. So how to explain LA Weekly naming Jorge Cham to its annual list of the most interesting people in LA¹, a list which includes the likes of models, porn stars, fashion designers, athletes and actors? Oh, maybe because it also features the likes of George Takei and Bobak Ferdowsi, so there’s room in there for the geek-friendly. Cham’s journey from robots to cartoons to generalized high-ed boosting is a feel-good story, one which just might get him a table in the hot restaurants and clubs for a week or two.
• Speaking of LA, a quick fact on the upcoming Capture Creatures show at Gallery Nucleus; Frank Gibson has shared with us that if you’re lucky enough to snag one of the151 different paintings that Becky Dreistadt will have on display, it’ll set you back a thematically-appropriate US$151. For a five-by-seven (inches) original, that’s a damn bargain.
• If you have anything to do with writing about [web]comics, you should have an ironclad rule: When Dave Roman sends you announcement about a project he’s involved with, pay attention to that. In this case, Roman has teamed up with his Kids Comics Revolution podcasting partner (Jerzy Drozd, and not the one that makes bass guitars), his former partner in the heyday of the now-shuttered Nickelodeon magazine (Chris Duffy, and not the baseball player or the other baseball player)², and the Ann Arbor District Library to honor the best of all-ages comics for 2012:
  

  From now through June 23rd, 2013, kids vote online at http://www.kidscomicsrevolution.com or by filling out the paper ballot at the Toronto Comics Art Festival or the Kids Read Comics celebration. Voting will be filmed and posted online. Results will be announced June 23rd at a special ceremony during the Kids Read Comics celebration at the Ann Arbor District Library.

  Categories include four variations on Favorite Graphic Novel, two variations on Favorite Comic Book Series, Favorite Cartoonist/Author, and four categories not likely to make it to the Eisners: Cutest Character, Best Hair in Comics, Grossest Thing in Comics, and Special Award for Excellence in Drawing Delicious-Looking Food (I must admit I’m particularly interested in the results of those). Oh, yes, and there’s also Favorite Webcomic category, with nods given to:

  • Cucumber Quest by Gigi D.G.
  • Nemu*Nemu by Aurdra Furuichi and Scott Yoshinaga
  • Nedroid Picture Diary by Anthony Clark
  • Ellie on the Planet X by James Anderson
  • My Sister, the Freak by Dani Jones

  Strong slate, and similarly well thought out throughout the other categories. Well done, Messers Duffy, Drozd, Roman, and everybody at AADL, and here’s hoping that we see the Second Annual KCR! Awards become even bigger and more prestigious.

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¹ Which is not to say that we at Fleen think that Cham couldn’t succeed on LA’s traditional terms. Little nip here, a tuck there, he could headline a Bravo series about Real Engineers of Pasadena.

² While Chris Duffy doesn’t strike me as too uncommon a name, I would have been really surprised by the fact that there are two guys out there named Jerzy Drozd were it not for some other, equally-improbable repeats that I’m aware of.

If you’ve been paying attention to the Twitterfeed of one Mr David Kellett (“The David stands for Dave”), you may have noticed a trend over the last several weeks: tweet after tweet after tweet after tweet of screencaps from a mysterious documentary, often in proximity to the mysterious (and beautiful) Fred Schroeder (tiny piano optional).

During NEWW I sat down with Mr Kellett and Mr Schroeder to find out about this documentary. Be warned, on the topic of this project, the two of them speak almost as one voice, starting and finishing thoughts for each other, like a hive mind that decided two brains was sufficient and why bother with the rest. Thus, except for a brief bit near the end, it is not clear who said what exactly, nor does it really matter.

Bottom line: Dave and Fred like comics, think this is an important point in the history of comics, and want to produce a record of what these times are like. What started as (potentially) a look at one cartoonist (Kellett), his studio and methods, and how he approaches the business end of his craft, has become a fairly broad look as the state of cartooning as a technological shift undoes a century’s worth of business model.

We think this is a really interesting time, not just casually, but in relation to how the business models are changing, the technology to create comics is changing, and also changing the way people read comics.

Other media have had turning points like this, but they weren’t captured at the time. It could be viewed as a scary time, but we see it as fascinating.

Comics have had at least five different business models in their history; they’ve gone from a patronage/subscription system to portfolios and pamphlets to printmaking to today’s comic magazine/strip format. This is just the latest of changes the artform has gone through, but it survives because it’s so powerful, and so flexible.

It’s also interesting to talk to creators, see their process, see their studios, learn how they approach things. When I was starting out, I’d have killed for a peek inside that curtain.
— Freddave Kellett-Schroeder, except for that last bit which is probably more the Dave half of the collective intelligence

They’ve spoken to established masters, some upcoming geniuses, and, weirdly, at least one hack webcomics pseduo-journalist. On this score, they are perhaps a third of the way through their interviews, with at least 75 sessions to be completed before that portion of production is complete. Asked for a list of dream interviews, they mentioned names like Trudeau, Groening (who agreed to sit with them while at the OSU Festival of Cartoon Art, as soon as schedules allow), Breathed, Adams, Rall, Spiegelman, and Munroe. Commenting on such an ambitious list of names, they noted that everybody they’ve spoken to has been enthusiastic and supportive of the process once they’ve seen the level of care that Schroeder and Kellett are bringing to the table:

Thankfully, people have been very generous, very open, 99% of the time it’s been just a matter of timing and logistics. From a filmmaking standpoint, it’s heartening to see how supportive cartoonists are of each other. It’s nice to see the snowballing effect of cartoonists recognizing that we love the medium, and want to explore it in depth.

Jeff Keane was a little wary at first, but during the interview he saw what we were doing. We got to the end of our time and he said, “I’ve got an appointment, but I can give you another half-hour.” He wanted to know what he could do to contribute to the process. — Freddave Kellett-Schroeder

It’s worth noting that Schroeder and Kellett were particularly productive with interviews at the OSU conference and a recent trip to SCAD; this is not a coincidence, given their view of where cartooning is headed:

We’re also at a new place in terms of how cartooning is accepted in academia; it’s achieved a legitimacy and even a sense of equality (with respect to literature, film, music) is building (but not yet achieved). Ohio State is out there, finally putting a stamp down to say “We need to preserve and save this work.” SCAD, RISD, SVA are saying it’s worth teaching the techniques and skills so that each generation doesn’t have to relearn the art from scratch. And not only worth teaching, but teaching at the university scope, and not merely as a skill for trade schools. — Freddave Kellett-Schroeder

Just in case there wasn’t enough to address in the film (which doesn’t yet have a name — not an unusual occurrence in the world of documentaries, I gather), there’s the nature of how current society itself is changing:

[The movie] also gives us the chance to use the microcosm of comics to explore the macrocosm of the shift from analog to digital. That’s the fundamental shift of the present century, and it hasn’t been explored in a fun way yet.

Interviews are projected to continue through the spring, then the serious business of editing can take place. In addition to a feature-length cut of 90 minutes or so (hopefully by next October to hit the film festival submission dates), Kellett and Schroeder are promising supplemental material (possibly to be released online, possibly as DVD extras). These could include full unedited interviews, or alternate cuts of the interviews on given themes or topics. They acknowledge that such niche material might not appeal to a large audience, but see it as service to those that are interested. Kellett compared it to how the Eisner lectures or Wally Wood’s 22 panels are still passed around by comics artists because of their value. As for the width of distribution:

SCAD has asked us to their film festival in the fall, but we’re not certain yet what form the film would be in. We’d love to put it in theatres, but it might be on public television, or it could just go around the festivals. Our other option is to follow the webcomics model and distribute it online ourselves. Most likely, it’ll be two or three of these methods. — Freddave Kellett-Schroeder

Naturally, all of this will depend on financing; at the moment, Schroeder and Kellett are footing the bills themselves, but hoping to get some third-party support soon. There are grant-making foundations that might contribute, or it’s possible that a promo trailer could prompt PBS to supply funding to finish it (in which case it could take the form of a multipart series). Individuals might choose to invest in the film, and Kickstarter remains a possibility. Once done with the interviews, the long process of sound mixing, color timing, creation of infographics, transitions, and editing remain, but both Schroeder and Kellet describe it as a passion project — that they will find a way to get it made. Expanding on the issue of money and potential market:

And with that, I think we have a title for the film; look for Hot Pen On Paper COMIXXX Action in late 2011.

Carly Monardo’s Webcomic Auction for the Gulf Coast continues to garner steam, with the contributors list roughly doubling in the past 24 hours. Contributions of original art will be accepted through the end of the month, with the auction currently slated for the first week of July.

• Meredith Gran has a book coming out any day now, and the release party will kick off the Spring Signing Tour of America (and a Tiny Bit of Canada) on 22 June in Seattle. 7 – 9pm, Comics Dungeon, NE 45th St in Seattle, with Erika Moen as special co-celebrant.

  The tour then moves to Portland on the 23rd, as Gran and Moen return home, hang with fellow Stumptowner (and Latin Heartthrob) Aaron Diaz, as KrisDavid MalkiStraub ! drop by to play Book Me Harder at the same time. Details and RSVP on the Facebook page.

  The fun will hit other cities as the summer progresses, including Toronto’s The Beguiling, culminating in a triumphant arrival at SDCC. Have pity on her as the miles and list of cities grows, and maybe bring her some healthy snacks or fruit?

• Seen the list of guests for first-iteration con Intervention lately? The phrase “leaps and bounds” comes to mind, and one should note that the first round of Artist’s Alley applications is closing this week. There’s at least 25 tables up for grabs, with the possibility of more being added.

  Keep in mind that Intervention is being held same weekend and about a mile from SPX, so the nexus of [web]comics types in town that weekend will be truly staggering.

• And finally, today’s sign that the Apocalypse is nigh: life imitates art, or at least actual humans imitate Ray Smuckles. Cartilage Head preserve us.