The annual Emergency Action Plan refresher [PDF] took place today in my office, which ate up some time and has me slightly in the weeds today. My apologies if this is brief.

• How the heck did CAKE sneak up on me?¹ And why the heck does Chicago Alternative Comics Expo get to misspell its acronym like that?² Regardless, the likes of Sarah Becan, Matt Bors, Box Brown, Anthony Clark, Zac Gorman, Meredith Gran, Lisa Hanawalt, Lucy Knisley, Tom McHenry, Tyler Page, Spike, Jason Viola, and more.
• Speaking of Matt Bors, I understand that he’s now done 1000 comics on the great and the good and venal and the stupid. Sometimes he ruffles the right feathers, sometimes he picks on people I think don’t deserve it, but he’s always got a point of view that makes me think. Well done, Mr Bors.
• As was foretold in the beforetimes, Schlock Mercenary has now achieved 13 years of hard sci-fi adventure, mayhem, and artistic refinements. Oddly, this makes the strip slightly older than creator Howard Tayler, has he has celebrated
  eleven proper birthdays, being one of those 29 February-birthed mutants. But what the heck, he’s done time-travel stories, I’m sure it all makes sense somewhere in this crazy universe. Congratulations, evil twin.

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¹ Many thanks to the TopatoCo blog for reminding me.

² This is not ‘Nam, there are rules, etc.

Thanks very much Ryan North¹ I will never sleep again thanks to today’s Dinosaur Comics. As a quick hint, nobody wants to consider an afterlife full of parasites except for Kelly Weinersmith. Ick.

• Something weird happened today: Cyanide and Happiness appeared in the comics section of more than 650 newspapers worldwide, an occurrence which all reasonable persons would have figured to be damn near impossible. Okay, it’s just one panel, and it’s a pastiche by Pearls Before Swine creator Stephan Pastis, and covered by censor bars, but still — just imagine all the people that read newspaper comic strips deciding to do a Google search on Cyanide & Happiness because they figure it can’t be as bad as all that. I can hear the heads exploding from here.
• Well, that was fast — a few weeks back I mentioned that Digger² would be Kickstarting an omnibus edition, which went live after our update yesterday. Surprising absolutely nobody (except possibly Digger creator Ursula Vernon), it completely funded at approximately the thirteen hour mark, and is well on its way to (per the Fleen Rule of Kickstarter Projections) the US$100,000 — US$200,000 range. Yeah, got it, webcomics with built-in audiences overfund their Kickstarts all the time, what’s the big deal?

  The deal is that the Digger campaign may have the most unusual reward ever offered — hand-forged, wombat-sized pickaxes at the $US1000 (!) backer level. Yesterday I was wondering what could be cooler than Dante Shepherd’s mallets and I guess I have my answer, if only because the pickaxes will involve a forge and anvil and metalcrafting. However, somebody really should point John Scalzi toward’s Shepherd’s campaign, as I bet he’d love an even larger Mallet of Loving Correction.

• It’s been a good two months since Saveur has run any recipe comics, which means I guess I should be prodding people more to produce some of them things. I can put you in touch with their digital editor, and it’s my understanding that the checks she cuts for accepted comics cash without problems. In any event, Christopher Bird of Mighty God King (and the writerly half of the stellar Al’Rashad, which improbably keeps getting better) teamed up with Shelli Hay to present a family recipe on his own damn site.

  We’ve never met, but Bird’s always struck me as a reasonable man as well as being chock-full of good comics ideas (although probably the most intriguing comic idea he ever presented was a collaboration), but I have no doubt in my mind that he means it when he says in panel number eight that he will cut you for making unauthorized substitutions. Let the home cook beware.

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¹ Your status as Toronto Man-Mountain and one of the Three Ineffable Avatars of Webcomics (along with Shaenon Garrity and George Rohac) remains unimpeachable, but dang bro you brought the creepy today.

² I loves me some Digger.

There are few things in this life more certain than Death, Taxes, and the fact that Howard Tayler¹ will have a new update to Schlock Mercenary gracing the intertoobz every dang day, come hell or high water; after all, as of the day after tomorrow it will be thirteen years of miss-free updates, so one comes to expect the pattern to continue. So naturally, I thought it was just me when about 07:10 EDT (GMT-4) I saw Schlock Mercenary was erroring out. Then a while later I saw that others were reporting issues and silently thought Not my circus, not my monkeys. It’s been back for some hours, so let’s all site quietly and think stable server thoughts in Tayler’s direction.

New Kickstarters this morning:

• As mentioned recently, Dante Shepherd is doing page-a-day calendars, meaning you can get 365 versions of Shepherd looking at you in all your most private moments for a whole year, like unto some kind of judgmental, pagan deity. At least, that’s what will happen if his funding campaign (presently about one sixth of the way to goal) succeeds over the next four weeks, which looks pretty likely.
• Master anthology-wrangler Spike kicked all sorts of asses with the delightul pornthology Smut Peddler, particularly with respect to the notion of sharing the wealth and paying her contributors ever more as the funding goals were eclipsed, and it was pretty certain that she would apply the same approach to her forthcoming horror anthology, The Sleep of Reason.

  Today it became official: US$20,000 (the goal) will not only ensure the book is printed, but also means a US$50 bonus for each creator/creator team; every additional US$5000 pledged means another US$50 for each creator, with no cap. Last time, it was an extra US$600 in each bonus; I can hardly think of a better use of excess funds than to reward the creators (and goodness, what a list!) that made the thing that people will love. Pledge.

• For those wondering if the show at the Toonseum in conjunction with Reubens Weekend, the one with original art from 60+ years of Reuben winners, would stay up, the answer is yes:
  

  The ToonSeum, Pittsburgh’s Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art will be exhibiting seven decades’ worth of original art from cartooning’s highest honor, The Reuben Award. The exhibit runs through August 11th 2013.

  I actually got that bit of information a week ago, and I apologize for neglecting it in the meantime. Fortunately, you’ve still got two months to make your way to the riverfront arts district of Pittsburgh and enjoy some rarely-seen treasures.

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¹ My evil twin.

I’d like to start off today with a correction, or a clarification, or whatever’s appropriate when you specualte out loud and it turns out you were totally off base, but since it involves spoilery information I’ma stick it down at the bottom of the page and we can start with something else.

Books! New books! Second volumes, in fact, the both of them!

• There may be no single [web]comics character of the past few years that is as disturbing as Cornelius Snarlington, Business Deer (although whatever the hell that is menacing Wadsworth Zane in today’s Broodhollow is rapidly heading for the top spot). In case his mayhem-related office activities (or office-related mayhem activities) aren’t enough to piece your very soul, he also stares at you dead-eyed, menacingly, from the cover of the new collection of Jon Rosenberg’s Scenes From A Multiverse, Business Animals, which has just gone up for pre-order.

  Usual disclaimer: Jon got me started in this blog-based opinion-having racket and also he owns my soul. But none of that changes the fact that regardless of whatever bias I might be injecting into this discussion, PZ Frickin’ Myers wrote the foreword, and you can’t do much better than that.

• In a neat bit of self-wanging, Zach Weinersmith managed to hose up his own site by crosslinking SMBC and the Kickstarter campaign for his newest original book, Trial of the Clone 2: Wrath of the Pacifist. Like the original Trial of the Clone, ToTC 2:WotP is a choosable-path comedic story, wherein your character from ToTC has failed upward to being in charge of the galaxy and now must rule; near the end of the first book’s Kickstarter campaign Weinersmith asked if the sequel should follow the protagonist on a Good path or an Evil one, and the consensus was Good.

  While Evil often looks to be more fun, you can’t deny that there’s nothing funnier than to watch somebody attempt to do Good and screw it up (and since the “hero” of ToTC is easily the most inept being in all of time and space, there should be plenty of room for up-screwing).

  In the hours since the book-kick launched, ToTC 2: WotP has cleared 75% of its US$20,000 goal, and reached the first four stretch goals (Weinersmith having pioneered the art of setting goals below the funding goal, building excitement while guaranteeing some outcomes). So far the stretches have all been related to getting more illustrations (by Weinersmith’s longtime collaborator, Chris Jones), but I imagine that there are some interesting goals in store once goal has been met in … oh, I’d say about two hours from now.

Okay, here’s that correction and remember: spoilers ahoy.

• Four days ago I laid out a timeline for the remainder of the season of Strip Search:
  

  Okay, looking at the calendar we’ve got the Maki/Lexxy elimination tomorrow, then four more episodes on 7, 11, 14, and 18 June. I had speculated early that there might be a final three approach (there’s ample precedent in the reality competition genre), but given the setup of the Strip Search Thunderdome, it make sense that all eliminations will be two Artists head-to-head, and this schedule reinforces that thought Consider: that gives us time for a social challenge among three competitors (7 June), a competitive challenge for immunity (11 June), an elimination to get us down to two (14 June), and the Big Ready-Set-Art on 18 June.

  So, yeah, my guess was wrong; as seen in today’s episode of Strip Search, none of that is happening. I should have stuck with my original speculations, since it turns out that by defeating Lexxy on Tuesday, Maki advanced to the Strip Search equivalent of Fashion Week: he and Abby and Katie face no more challenges in the house, are sent home to work up a final challenge for two months, then return to make their pitches.

  The original strips that they develop over eight weeks must include a name, three character bios, six sample strips¹ and a t-shirt design. Judging will be shown in a two-part finale, next Friday (14 June) and the following Tuesday (18 June), which per Robert Khoo will have some live component.

  There is at this point no way to tell which of the three finalists has the edge — each of the three could (and deserves) to win the prize, who wins almost doesn’t matter. While US$15,000 and a year’s embed in the Penny Arcade machine are nothing to sneeze at, the attention that the Artists have garnered, the audience that each of their new comics will have right from the beginning, and the support system that they’ve forged among themselves² means that they’re all winners³. Abby, Katie, Maki, it’s been a hell of a ride that you’ve given us and I just want to thank you for it.

Updated to add: Tickets for the Strip Search finale just went on sale. Tuesday, 18 June at 6:30pm PDT (GMT-7) at the Meydenbauer Center in Seattle. The final three episodes will be played in the theater, with the final episode released to the world at 7:30pm. Oh and on an unrelated note, kudos to the Meydenbauer for keeping ticketing fees to an entirely-reasonable US$1.52; I just bought tickets for Alton Brown’s Tour O’ Fun and I got socked for ten bucks a ticket. Screw you, Ticketmaster.

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¹ It’s gotta be the best six strips I’ve ever written — Abby.

² Everything that the nominal winner learns from their year in the PA offices will absolutely filter out to the other Artists. There’s a precedent for this kind of very fast, very thorough knowledge diffusion, and it’s within Mission Control during the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo era. As Gene Kranz observed, it wasn’t necessary for one flight controller group (or crew) to experience everything themselves, because they worked under the model of What any one of us learns, we all learn and build on.

³ There’s no lose in this. — Maki.

Who’s in the mood for brief items? I sure am!

• Anniversaries can be tricky things. For example, today’s SMBC bears the number 3000, which is an official Big Damn Round Number in the Fleen ordinal system of mathematics. However, Zach Weinersmith has actually done a good deal more than 3000 comics, if you consider his archive.

  For starters, today’s strip is the 2955th of the current series, but then there are 132 comics in the so-called “Classic” SMBC collection (black and white, strip-style comics with actual characters and things) and another five dozen or so that appeared sporadically during the modern age (some during a hiatus in 2003 and 2004, some alongside regular SMBC from 2005 to 2007).

  But what the hell, since at least 2005 it appears that the strip numbers have been going up monotonically, and that makes today as good a day as any to recognize Weinersmith for reaching 3000 strips so everybody feel good for Zach.

• Following up on Erika Moen’s win in the Magic: The Gathering challenge on Strip Search, there was a question at the time as to whether or not Wizards of the Coast would actually be producing said deck, and you may recall that Robert Khoo was unable to comment at the time. Well, wonder no more, as Hurricane Erika shared the news on twitter that the deck is being produced:
  

  We went back to the winner, Erika Moen, and had her finish out her design without the time pressure on the show and finalized an awesome design for a skateboard deck. Now we are excited to announce that attendees to the event can enter for a chance to win a skate deck featuring Erika’s final design by Hooligan!

  More precisely, four decks¹ are being made for the giveaway, and dang do they look sharp². Congrats again to Moen, and thanks to all involved for letting us know how things ultimately turned out.

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¹ I’m guessing at least one of them makes its way to Ebay.

² You can compare Moen’s original design against the final design; it’s pretty impressive how close the colors are given that the original was done with marker rather than computer color-matching against a Pantone standard.

This page has, for a number of years, noted that the Joe Shuster Awards are perhaps the best-curated of the comics awards — they look at all genres and media, and so long as the creators meet the requirement of being Canadian, they’re good for consideration.

Of particular note is the list of past winners in the category of Webcomics Creator / Créateur de Bandes Dessinées Web: Dan Kim, Ryan Sohmer and Lar De Souza, Cameron Stewart, Karl Kerschl, and Emily Carroll (two years running) represent the breadth and depth of Canadian cartooning, and possibly Canadianess itself. And if the Shusters are a bit less spare than they once were, there are still only nine categories, compared to nearly thirty for the Eisners.

This year’s nominations are out, and those singled out for recognition that may be of interest to the webcomics community include:

Fleen congratulates all of the nominees, and notes again the general lack of weak or inexplicable names on the list. The 2013 Joe Shuster Awards/Le Prix Joe Shuster 2013 will be presented not at a convention, but at a gala in Toronto (time/location TBA) on Saturday, 25 August.

Just checking, on account of not matter how often I say that :01 Books are the best, it’s not often enough.

See, I got an envelope in the mail yesterday from :01, a thin one that made me think it was the catalog of upcoming releases ’cause they don’t do books that lack for heft. Instead, I found inside a early pair of excertps of Gene Luen Yang’s forthcoming books, Boxers and Saints, due in September. Together, the two books tell the story of the Boxer Rebellion from opposite viewpoints — the first from the POV young man looking to expel the foreign powers from China, the second from that of a young woman who converted to Catholicism and is much a target for death as any European.

Given the size of the two books (more than 500 pages total), I wasn’t expecting review copies; 16 pages of Boxers form one half of the flip booklet, 16 pages of Saints the other, each tells just enough of a scene to grab the reader and make them want to know more. Both stories are drenched in the supernatural, although it’s not possible to tell from the brief fractions of story how much of that may be metaphorical.

Bao and his fellow Boxers appear to transform themselves into literal gods to fight their enemies; Vibiana the convert has conversations with Joan of Arc¹ that are more detailed than she likely could have learned from the priest that lives in her community. Whatever degree to which these heavenly warriors actually involve themselves in this corner of China circa 1900, Vibiana and Bao believe it to be true.

And in a way, I suspect that what they perceive to be true is true enough; in this fight between nations, and expressions of national will, individual peasant and village folk must have viewed the conflict as being so much larger than themselves, something that could only be explained as a clash of two distinct heavens to determine for good and all who holds sway over China². Yang has melded his own Catholic faith with his Chinese heritage in past works³, so it will be interesting to see how he approaches each of those ancient traditions as warring opponents.

We’ll know soon enough, as it turns out that more than 500 pages in two volumes (plus a deluxe box set) is just slightly more complex than your standard graphic novel, so :01 Book are using the sampler as an early peek until they can send actual books out to their review list this summer. Many thanks to them in advance, and we’ll have more to say about Boxers and Saints when the full copies arrive.

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¹ Who herself had conversations with people that weren’t entirely there.

² If there’s ever an audiobook, Daniel Day-Lewis needs to narrate.

³ Particularly in American Born Chinese, which managed to intersect Journey to the West with the Nativity of Jesus.

Via Robert Khoo’s twitterfeed:

Anyone in Seattle have access to a theatre for a live Stripsearch Finale Screening on June 18th? :)

Okay, looking at the calendar we’ve got the Maki/Lexxy elimination tomorrow, then four more episodes on 7, 11, 14, and 18 June. I had speculated early that there might be a final three approach (there’s ample precedent in the reality competition genre), but given the setup of the Strip Search Thunderdome, it make sense that all eliminations will be two Artists head-to-head, and this schedule reinforces that thought Consider: that gives us time for a social challenge among three competitors (7 June), a competitive challenge for immunity (11 June), an elimination to get us down to two (14 June), and the Big Ready-Set-Art on 18 June.

Now the most important word in Khoo’s tweet is live. In all my conversations with him regarding Strip Search, he’s never definitively answered my question if the winner was chosen during the filming back in December; while there could be an argument that this will merely be a screening of a episode already in the can, I think it’s more likely the case that whoever the final two Stripmonauts might be¹, they’ll be hashing it out in real time in front of an audience (or possibly simulcast, depending on what kind of “theater” we’re talking about). I would expect that the entire thing will be livestreamed, or at least it’d better be if Khoo, et. al., wishes to avoid a pitchfork-wielding mob because you know anybody in said theater is going to be livetweeting the crap out of this showdown.

As brought up by the Katie/Abby dinner with Khoo, Mike Krahulik, and Jerry Holkins at the end of the last episode, there remains the question of what kind of twist² the show’s conclusion may have. While I’ve seen a lot of thought given to the idea of bounced Artists forming a kind of jury (cf: Survivor), the focus of the show has been on the preferences and judgments of Holkins and Krahulik and I don’t see them opening the decision-making process to anybody else — not Khoo, not other trusted PA employees, not Artists. Penny Arcade has always been an expression of the unholy melded ids of Mike and Jerry³ and I wouldn’t expect them to break that habit at this late date.

I imagine that all of the speculation will be cleared up in the next day or so; I intend to keep an eye on the Strip Search news page, Khoo’s tweets, and Seattle performance listings.

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¹ I consider words that Khoo did share back in January: While there will be no way to tell the entire story of what happened in the mansion, there was a natural narrative that emerged during filming. By that standard alone, among the four remaining Artists there are three really compelling narratives:

• Katie starts out wobbly and goes on to dominate the challenges
• Abby starts out under-confident and proves herself a natural
• Lexxy prevails over past instances of coming up just short of the brass ring and finally makes it in the doors of Penny Arcade

Maki — whose work I adore and who also was responsible for the single best visual of the show — doesn’t have the punch to his narrative (last guy standing makes a comeback against super-talented ladies) so I’m afraid he’s not in the final. If I had to guess I’d say it’s Katie vs Abby in the final just because they are unstoppable and Lexxy doesn’t actually have a webcomic yet. But I’ve been wrong on subjective and elimination challenge calls about two thirds of the time so what the hell do I know?

² For example, I don’t consider it entirely beyond the pale that some Creator’s fiat brings back Team AmErika for a joint win.

³ In this model, Khoo forms the ego role, and I’m not sure that there is a super-ego in the mix.

We are on Day Two of at least three days of 91F (33C) weather, the air conditioning is out, and the afternoon sun is just starting to crank up the joules. Somebody kill me, or at least send me a bucket full of cold I can pour on me and my dog. That’s right, I want a bucket of pure, uncut, essence-of-cold. And yes, I’m well aware there’s no such thing as cold, only heat and less heat. What you’re overlooking is the fact that I don’t care so kindly rework the laws of physics and get me some cold, please.

• You know who is, right about now, absolutely horrified by that whole bucket of cold thing? Dante Shepherd, professor of Chemical Engineering, thermodynamicist-at-large, educational innovator, and itinerant webcomicker. Today marks five years of Shepherd’s dailyish Surviving The World¹, and on top of that he’s got some exciting announcements:
  

  Many of you have asked for a collection of STW comics for a while now, so in response, with the help of Topatoco and Make That Thing, sometime next week will see the launch of a Kickstarter campaign to help make STW page-a-day calendars! … [H]ere’s a potential example of the final product.

  Just as many of you have asked for an app for STW for years, so I’m also happy to announce that starting Monday, STW will be available through the Comic Chameleon app!

  What? You want yet one more announcement? OK, OK – based on requests, I’ll bring back recitations² sometime soon, too.

  We at Fleen congratulate Shepherd on his achievements, his future plans, and hopes sincerely he doesn’t apply that mallet to our heads for the whole bucket of cold thing. We at Fleen are very, very sorry.

• In our discussion of Shaenon Garrity’s imminent wrap-up of Narbonic reruns yesterday, we inexcusably neglected to mention that Garrity will still be doing two actively-updating webcomics for the forseeable future. Skin Horse (co-written with Jeffrey Wells) just gets weirder and more loopy as it careens from classic children’s literature reference to classic children’s literature reference³ with no sign of end in sight.

  And although it will be, by design, a limited affair, Garrity’s Monster of the Week has, over the past not-quite-year, brilliantly deconstructed most of the first two seasons of The X-Files, which means two very important things:

  1. Garrity’s got three episodes to the end of season 2 (plus one season-ending recap), and four weeks to her one year anniversary, so let’s call it two seasons per year. At this rate, we’ll get another three and a half years of what is this crap Scully and sexy, sexy Skinner. Also, mites and annoyed Shaenon.
  2. On 19 July, the Friday of SDCC week, we will be Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose and on 8 November we will get Jose Chung’s From Outer Space, the two greatest episodes of The X-Files ever and I’ll fight any man-jack that says different.
• The latest episode of Strip Search put the four remaining Artists through contract hell and — spolier alert! — Robert Khoo enjoyed himself entirely too much, cranking the charm, the smarm, and the hostility up to eleven while trying to fast-talk the Artists into thinking that his very sticky contract is a good thing for them because they’re friends. No kidding, I would watch an entire season of Robert doling out the passive aggression.

  But even above its entertainment value, episode #27 is valuable because it emphasized the importance of not letting yourself get screwed, which even veterans can have problems with⁴.

  By coincidence, today also marked the release of the latest posting at Work Made For Hire, which presented a brilliant technique for directing a negotiation on contractual points that everybody who freelances needs to read right now. Key point:

  The difference between what Dylan [Meconis] and I asked Lo was that when Dylan talked to him, he was given the power to make a very specific choice, and both options were something Dylan wanted him to do.

  Guys, I’m not a freelancer and I intend to use “The Babysitting Question” in my life every chance I get from now on. It’s brilliant.

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¹ To be precise, today is StL #1773 and in the past five years there have been 1826 days what with the leap year and all, meaning that Shepherd comes up 53 strips short of “daily”, or just over one missing day every five weeks. I think we can count this as “daily”.

² The recitations, of which there have been 100, are answers to specific questions sent to Shepherd. Since there have been 100 of them, that means he’s really done 1873 updates in 1826 days, or an average of one extra strip every five weeks. So really we can call StL daily-plus.

³ I’m still holding out for some Purple Crayon.

⁴ It may have just been the editing, but in the episode as streamed, only two of the Artists brought up the idea of having a lawyer review the contract, and only one did so right at the beginning to put Robert on notice; I was hoping it would be all four.

Reduxes? Reduxi? Judging from my recollections of mathy terms, I’d most likely go with Reducies. In any event we’ve got two blasts from the past.

• Firstly, since the start of 2007, Shaenon Garrity¹ has been re-running Narbonic with director’s commentary, which process will end in about two days time, as she’s running out of strips to re-run. I’m not sure that she could find enough new to say for a double re-run but I hope that the end of the story doesn’t mean the end of daily Narbonic updates, as I consider it to be as essential to webcomics as I Love Lucy is to TV. Hold on, this is going to be slightly lengthy².

  Back in my college days it was well known that about three weeks into junior year was when the math majors would all become major grumpy-pusses, because they were told it was now their turn to Prove that the multiplicative identity is unique. In other words, they were asked to prove that one (1) is one (1), which always struck everybody who wasn’t a math type to be a waste of several hours of mental effort. What possible purpose could it serve? It was eventually explained to me that this was a sort of votive sacrifice, that if math majors didn’t repeat the ritual every year, math would cease to work.

  From that starting point, I derived the theory that I Love Lucy, having been re-run so very many times, has integrated itself into the very fabric and nature of television to the extent that if — at any moment in time — an episode of I Love Lucy is not being broadcast somewhere in the world, TV will stop working. Now we find ourselves at the end of the second presentation of Narbonic, and I hope that Garrity can whip up a script that will update once a day in perpetuity. The existence of the internet as we know it depends on it.

  Oh, and come Saturday night, make yourself a drink with lots of rum, ice, fruit juices, decorate a a glass with a face on it with a little umbrella or some flowers, and drink it in the general direction of Berkeley, California in Garrity’s honor. I have some good recipes if you need a starting place, but you’re on your own for the umbrella and face-glass.

• Secondly, Little Dee by Christopher Baldwin³ has likewise been running with commentary since it wrapped up a little more more than three years ago (the reruns started three years ago tomorrow). Although Little Dee was reprinted in your choice of four rather spiffy volumes or two rather spiffier anthologies, and despite the fact that the story came to a definite end, Baldwin’s apparently had a hankering to return to the cave and visit with Dee, Ted, Vachel, and Blake. Cue the big announcement:
  

  There will be more Little Dee.

  Penguin/Dial books will be publishing my comic strip “Little Dee” as a 120 page full graphic novel of all new material! I’ll be writing, drawing, and coloring it, and it’s due out in about a year or so. I’m very excited about this, what fun! [large text original]

  Certain things jumped out at me from the announcement, color and all new material being the ones that have me excited, and about a year or so making me all frowny because I want it yesterday. As for what I want plotwise, I see there are roughly three possibilities:

  1. The six year run of Little Dee gets recapped as one continuous story
  2. A particular story (possibly one that was previously untold) from the time Dee spent in the forest gets the book-length treatment
  3. Dee and the Gang reunite, having been apart for the past x years

  With a lesser writer, any of the three could come off poorly — #1 could be rushed (or too familiar to past readers), #2 could come off like trying to recapture the magic of a story that’s over and done, and #3 could read like the epilogue to the last Harry Potter book.

  However, Baldwin spent so long with the characters (and just as importantly, has spent time away from them), and spent so much time establishing them as organic characters who interacted the way they did because of who they were, I have no doubts that he could turn any of the possibilities into one of my favorite books of 2014. Everybody be very patient and calm so that we don’t disturb him and he can get this done quickly, yes? Thank you, and please close the door quietly as you leave.

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¹ High Commissioner Of Tiki In All Its Forms.

² Quelle surprise.

³ May I note that Little Dee is about as polar an opposite of Baldwin’s current-although-approaching-its-finish webcomic Sapcetrawler? Yes, yes I may.