There are two occasions on which I got really, really angry with my parents for inadvertently withholding from me knowledge of people they knew that I would have desperately wanted to know myself. While studying electrical engineering I happened to mention to my father something I’d read in Robert Lucky’s column in IEEE Spectrum. Oh, how’s Bob doing? my father inquired. “Bob?” Bob Lucky. We were in the fraternity together. Still sends us Christmas cards.

I looked at him carefully and said, Robert Lucky, head of communications research at Bell Labs¹, inventor of the adaptive equalizer, future Nobel laureate, the foremost communications engineer of the past thirty years, the man that practically defines the very specific field of study that I concentrate in, the very best possible mentor I could have had for the past three years of school is your fraternity brother and you never mentioned it? Dad shrugged a huh-how-about-that shrug.

It was maybe a year later that that my mother brought up her hidden connection; I’d been sitting in the kitchen when she said, Oh I meant to tell you, because you like cartoons, right? Tish from Garden Club, her son Tom won a Daytime Emmy. “That’s nice, what was it for?” Something called Little Toons, I think. “Little … Little? Wait, you mean Tiny Toons? Tish Ruegger’s son is Tom Ruegger, head of Warner’s animation? That Tom Ruegger?” That’s right, I babysat him back when I was in high school.

I didn’t have an irritated how-could-you-keep-that-from-me reply because I hadn’t ever told my mom that something I had always wanted to do in the back of my mind, but never knew how you could go about it, was voice acting. My time in college radio, writing and performing in radio sketch comedy, had shown that I had some talent for voice work, but how the heck do you even start down that path whether from New Jersey (home) or Indiana (college) without knowing somebody on the inside?

Which brings me (at considerable length) to my point: no such inside-track is needed these days. Want to do voices for animation? Go do that, slap it up on the internet, and if it’s good enough you’ll get noticed by somebody, or you’ll make a fan of somebody who just happens to be making something cool. Which is exactly what happened with Scott Kurtz, as he told us yesterday:

When Doug TenNapel told me he was going to make a “Neverhood style” claymation adventure game and that he wanted me to provide a voice for one of the characters I was very excited. It wasn’t until later that he bothered to mention that I would have to contribute “voice acting” alongside Mike J. Nelson (MST3K/Riff Trax), Rob (Animaniacs) Paulson, Veronica Belmont, and Jon (Napoleon Dynamite) Heder. Now I’m terrified.

I’m no voice actor. I don’t do voices. But Doug assures me that I’m the right guy for this job, and I already said yes. So I’m going to put on a brave face and fake my way through this thing. *gulp*

I’m going to respectfully disagree with Kurtz on one point — he may say that he’s no voice actor, that he doesn’t do voices, but I think that he’s wrong. Bear with me a moment (as if you haven’t been all along); the way I see it, voice acting falls into roughly three categories:

• The stunt voice actor, commonly seen on big-budget animated films, where it’s clear that the purpose is to get the famous name rather than the right voice for the character. The less said about them, the better.
• The professional voice actors, the ones with a stable of voices that they do, adapting on project after project, honing their craft, whose names are mostly unknown to us. The good ones can hide themselves behind many roles and appear in so many different projects for decades; it’s why the actor that has been in the most movies with the greatest cumulative box office is Frank Welker². I have much respect for the professionals, and from his close work with Dino Andrade on the PvP animated series, I imagine that this is the sort of voice actor that Kurtz is unfavorably comparing himself to.
• The person chosen to do one particular voice because there’s nobody in the world that will do it better; sometimes it’s a famous actor, sometimes it’s somebody who’s not necessarily a household name, sometimes it’s nobody you’ve heard of but who is absolutely perfect for the role in question.

  Pixar has a great track record in this regard (cf: Brad Bird as Edna Mode or Sarah Vowell as Violet Incredible), but the best examples come from a woman you’ve probably never heard of: voice casting director Andrea Romano. She’s why every voice on Warner’s various Batman/Superman/Justice League series was absolutely perfect (cf: Ed Asner as Granny Goodness). I think the reason that Doug TenNapel wants Kurtz on Armikrog is because he falls into this category.

We, however, will only get to hear what character Kurtz is perfect for if Armikrog raises its US$900,000; at more than US$189,000 raised since the project launched yesterday, it seems pretty certain that the goal will be met in the remaining 28 days, but there’s only one way to be sure. Forget the fact that Doug TenNapel is a great comics artist and game designer, forget that Neverhood was a great game. Do it because it’s never a bad thing for creative types to stretch themselves into other avenues of creation³. And do it for all the actors, pros and perfect one-shots alike, who’ve given voice to the characters that you’ve loved.

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¹ Requiscat in pace, Bell Labs. We will not see your like again.

² AKA the only guy that’s ever voiced Fred from Scooby Doo, and nearly 700 other credits.

³ Well, maybe not “never”. Dirk Diggler’s attempt to reinvent himself as a musician, that was pretty dire.

So round about 3:00am¹ today my EMS pager went off (holiday duty, y’all) and I realized while getting ready to head out lights-and-sirens on a chest pain call that I’d been dreaming about Erika Moen choreographing her fellow Strip Search Artists into an (interpretive, classy, educational, and definitely PG-13 rated) pole dance routine designed to teach the lessons imparted in Oh Joy, Sex Toy. This indicates either I am dangerously insane, or I may have discovered the greatest side project for webcomics creators ever. Don’t tell me if it’s the insane one.

• Over the weekend the National Cartoonists Society had their big weekend o’ fun and for the second year recognized excellence in the field of online comics. Although Jon Rosenberg will always be the first person to receive an NCS division award for an online comic, this year the award was split in two, so two more creators can say that they were the first ever honored by the NCS for (respectively) the Long Form and Short Form online comic.

  Long Form went to Vince Dorse for Untold Tales of Bigfoot, which I’ve enjoyed reading since the nominations were announced back in March. Somebody more clever than me described UToB as “Bone-esque” which is pretty high praise, and I’m happy to say that any of the three nominees could have been found a deserving winner, although I was totally pulling for Meredith Gran² ³.

  Over on the Short Form side, Graham Harrop’s Ten Cats won over Jonathan Lemon’s Rabbits Against Magic and Michael McParlane’s Mac; there was some dissatisfaction expressed back in March that these three strips are all associated with GoComics, not independent in the sense of the other six nominees for Online Comics have been over two years, and not representative of that not-really-definable “webcomic aesthetic”. And I’ve been thinking about that.

  The thing is, if (as webcomics boosters have said, and we at Fleen are no exception to this) webcomics should be allowed to compete against whatever you can define (if anything, at the point) not-webcomics, without distinction to medium of distribution, then the three nominees in Short Form make sense — they were chosen for consideration by the NCS jury without consideration to where they came from, and may well be seen as representing a step towards not having “online” as a separate category of the NCS awards.

  Would I prefer to see Girl Genius or The Abominable Charles Christopher up against, say, Fables, Johnny Wander or Girls With Slingshots up against Pearls Before Swine⁴, and Becky Dreistadt dominating the Book Illustration category? Absolutely, and I’ll be certain to get right on that as soon as I’m in charge of the world. In the meantime, progress.

• Speaking of Becky Dreistadt⁵, I confess myself surprised to see that she’s involved in some book Kickstarters that look like they’re going to make goal, but aren’t seeing the big multipliers that history would have indicated. Firstly, the original four B9 Kingdom creators are nine days out from their three themed books collection, Midnight Monsters closing; while they’re on track to make goal, they aren’t going to do the three-to-nine times overfunding that B9 has managed in the past. Similarly, the second volume of The Bear is verging in on goal with eight days to go but won’t hit the nearly five times overfunding of volume one.

  I can’t figure out what the slowness in support is down to. Midnight Monsters is actually a pick-your-favorite collection of three books rather than a single project, and I thought that structure might have driven more support to the project by allowing a super-fan of (say) Evan Dahm who isn’t that fond of (say) KC Green (not that I think any such people actually exist) to back one creator economically rather than decided to forgo because money would have gone to another and made support too expensive. Additionally, the lack of stretch goals may be removing some of the “game” aspect from this campaign.

  But then, The Bear 2 has stretch goals, and two reasonably rabid fan bases behind it (the other supplied by Ryan Sohmer), and it looks like it will make the first stretch but won’t be achieving one after another like the first time out. I wonder if having the two projects are cannibalizing each other by running at the same time rather than being separated by a couple of months? Have we just reached market saturation on gorgeous, high-quality art books?

  In any event, this is neither the time for complacency nor for despair, as I want my damn Midnight Monsters and The Bear 2 books, so kindly go sell some plasma or tell your grandkids that plenty of people get by without insulin for a week and pledge, dadnugget.

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¹ Coincidentally about the same time that the latest episode of Strip Search went live.

² Not that that’s much help; I was also totally pulling for Erika Moen in Strip Search; in my heart, they are both winners.

³ I shouldn’t neglect to note that Pat Lewis was the third nominee, for Muscles Diablo in Where Terror Lurks, which is also terrific.

⁴ And hoo boy, Stephan Pastis may as well start signing himself Susan Lucci, having been nominated six years running for the top NCS award — the eponymous Reuben — and this year losing out to both other nominees in a tie.

⁵ And before I forget, happy belated birthday, Becky.

As national holidays go, Memorial Day is a good one, usually attended by decent weather and cookouts. For those of you celebrating on Monday, I hope it’s fun time for you, and let’s get you into the weekend as quickly as possible.

• I am less concerned about how gruntled Phil Foglio appears in his new, official, pancake-on-the-head portrait than I am about what appears to be a tentacle trying to escape from an Erlenmeyer flask on the windowsill behind him. Oh, and the ghostly image of Kaja Foglio, trapped between dimensions behind him, that’s pretty concerning too. But mostly this just reminds me that you can’t go wrong with a pancake.
• Cranking out the strips until the inevitable cease & desist notice: Park Slope Family Circus by Erin Bradley. Read it while you still can.
• Waaay back in January I mentioned that everybody’s favorite professor, Dante Shepherd, would be launching a new strip this year; Dr Shepherd is on writing duties, Joan Cooke does the pretty pictures, and together they’re telling the stories of graduate students studying cryptozoology in a world with actual monsters and things.

  For months now I’ve been wanting to share with you the art that Shepherd teased me with, of a hapless grad student running from a dragon-creature wearing what by all appearances is an enormous sports bikini. PhD Unknown is now live, will be updating weekly (at least to start), and may strike a more familiar chord in your local doctoral candidate than they’ve ever let on before. Highly recommended.

• Hey, you! Want to get a few zillion comics for almost nothing? To be more specific, more than 1200 The Book of Biff spread across ten collections, and more than 500 Maximumble strips in four collections? Chris Hallbeck is offering all his books as DRM-free PDFs at a price you name yourself, so long as it’s at least a dollar a book. Fourteen books, fourteen bucks (if you’re cheap) comes to nearly 125 comics per dollar, or 0.8 cents per laugh-chuckle.

  If you read one cartoon per day, you’d be at it for four years and nine months before exhausting these strips, meaning it’s the bargain of the (admittedly, still young) century. So how about this: kick in one lousy dollar, get either the Biff or Maximumble book #1, and if you like it (you’ll like it), adjust your purchase price upwards for subsequent volumes to two bucks? Or even three? Have a little pride, you’re not some bizarre cheap-o.

It’s been a miserable couple of days, weather-wise, here in the vast New Jersey hinterlands — heat and humidity more expected in July than May, and my house’s HVAC is having issues. Bleah. If the predictions hold true, we’re in for a couple of days of rain, which ought to break the temperatures if not the humidity, and hopefully climate control will be re-established inside before it gets nasty again; in the meantime, just me and the dog, hangin’ around, being too warm for comfort. Let’s think cool thoughts.

• They always say that you shouldn’t drink booze when you’re over-hot, because it’ll dehydrate you and make you more miserable in the long term; I’m fully prepared to say that “they” can suck it. And while they’re sucking it, those of you in New York City can look forward to the latest attempt by Kristen Siebecker¹ to teach you uncultured heathens dear, dear friends to appreciate wine.

  This iteration of Popping Your Cork will be on 12 June at 6:15pm in Midtown, where she’ll be pairing wines from the Finger Lakes with food from India. Because Kristen appreciates comics and loves us, she’s given us a coupon code for 10% off the cost of the evening: use EMAIL10 at checkout and save a couple of bucks. And just a thought, anybody that went to a couple of these and did a comic about their learning journey? That would be legit fascinating and I would pay to read it.

• The shows will be nonstop from here out to at least the end of the summer. Consider:
  • Phoenix Comicon is already underway, with a healthy representation of webcomickers (and a very helpful webcomics category on the guest list)
  • MCM London starts tomorrow for those of you on the British side of the Atlantic and a stack of comics types in attendance (helpful map from Robin Hoelzemann of Curia Regis here)
  • VanCAF runs Saturday and Sunday, with the cream of the PNW crop making their way across the border, with a cluster of TopatoCo-affiliated creators, some Cloudscapers, a pair of superbros, and many, many more (it looks to be the webcomickiest of the three shows going on this weekend)

  That’s not even considering the fact that Philadelphia Comic Con² hits next weekend, and HeroesCon the weekend after that. Anybody with a moment to catch their breath before San Diego, raise your hand and also I hate you.

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¹ Original showrunner of MoCCA Fest, back in the Puck Building before fires and such.

² Also known as “The Con Formerly Known as Megan Fox Tits Wolverine World”, or hell let’s just call it .

Want to know about a miracle of modern medicine? Megatokyo¹ creator Fred Gallagher has been under treatment for the past several months for a fairly serious heart arrhythmia, the sort that makes the one and only ticker you’ve got work far harder than it should, to push far less blood than it should, and which has the effect of making your life shorter than it should be. The good news is that the right sorts of arrhythmias can be treated by burning out the portions of the heart that are screwing up with lasers². The even better news is that Gallagher got lasered³ last week and is already feeling better.

Speaking as somebody with a mild cardiac arrhythmia of my own (not one that causes damage, but which freaks people out who take my pulse, and which could kill me if somebody ever tried to fix it with drugs), I appreciate Gallagher’s reaction to waking up and finding that his heartbeat just doesn’t feel the same way it has his whole life — it’s the sort of thing that tends to make an impression. Anybody that doesn’t think that, I can change your mind. Hell, I can change your heartbeat right now.

Put your hand on your heart. Take a minute and really get a feel for that ba-dump, ba-dump that’s been there your whole life. Take a deep breath in and savor it. When you’re ready, read the next sentence.

Some day, your heartbeat is going to stop.

Okay, okay, calm down, it ain’t happening today (probably). But that thudding you felt, maybe a skipped beat or two? That’s what Gallagher’s lived with his entire life, until last week. It’s a heartbeat designed to deal with an immediate stressor, like a lion that wants to eat you; it’s not supposed to stay that way for decades at a time. It’ll be months — maybe a year — of medication that’s designed to make his heart relax, take a break, get its strength back before he can be said to be back to normal … but it’s something that can happen. Congratulations to Fred Gallagher, and here’s hoping that you find yourself feeling as good as you were supposed to all this time, except that your stupid heart had to be all stupid and stubborn and stupid again.

• Did we mention that Boulet is doing diary comics of his time in America, without the customary years-long wait to translate from French to English. They’re really awesome.
• As has been established many, many times in the past, I loves me some Digger, and nothing will ever get me to give up the collection of trade reprints on my shelf. Or so I thought:
  

  The downside (and the reason we haven’t done it already) is that hardcover omnibuseseses require a big chunk of cash up front—we’re talking a big print job here, on the order of the Bone omnibus edition, and that does not run cheap…. So, in a couple of weeks, we’ll be Kickstartering!

  Dammit! Now I gotta find room on my shelf, grumble grumble, friggin’ creators giving me what I didn’t know I wanted all along. News on the Kickstarter as soon as it launches.

• This page has been remiss in not mentioning Ian Jones-Quartey (once of RPG World, presently of many things including the voice of Wallow), but he’s fixed that right the hell up. Yesterday, two separate cartoons that he’s involved in — Lakewood Plaza Turbo and Rebecca Sugar’s Steven Universe (on which he’s the Creative Director) — hit the webs. The Cartoon Network site that hosts ’em is presently down, but you can see the Steven Universe pilot on YouTube until CN gets their act together.

  I’ve been lucky enough to know Ian since his days at SVA, and ever since his thesis film I’ve been amazed at not just how good an animator he is, but how well he can tell a story in animation. The really great animators aren’t necessarily the ones with the best drafting skills, they’re the ones that can lay out all the pieces and parts, assemble the right talent, get the visuals and sound and voices to meld together into something greater than the sum of its parts.

  The fact that Mr J-Q collaborates so often with Ms Sugar (who may be one of the best two or three animators in the country right now) just magnifies the talents that each of them bring to the table. Keep an eye on everything they touch — it’s going to be gold.

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¹ Which I should have stopped reading long ago because I really can’t follow the story without archive binges of hundreds of strips, but I still drop by every other month or so.

² Actually, there are several different ways of implementing ablative therapy and I don’t know that lasers were used in this case, but it’s the future and lasers are cool. Not that it’s not already cool enough that doctors can thread miniature instrument packages into your heart from blood vessels in your legs without killing you — that’s pretty damn cool, actually.

³ Admit it, you want to be able to say that you’ve been lasered and survived.

Having picked up a copy at my local comic shop over the weekend, I was going to tell you what I thought of We Can Fix It today, but then I made the mistake of reading The AV Club and saw that Noel Murray said everything I wanted to, only better:

A clever, poignant twist on the autobio comics format, Jess Fink’s We Can Fix It!: A Time Travel Memoir (Top Shelf) ponders what would happen if the author went back in time to warn her younger selves not to make so many dumb mistakes, whether it be trusting the wrong boy, taking the wrong drug, or acting rudely toward her mother. […] The result is a book in which Fink treats her own life as a series of loosely connected vignettes, open to different interpretations depending on who she’s become by the time she looks back at them. This isn’t just an effective way to handle autobiography, it’s one with a touching take on the interconnectedness of people’s best and worst moments.

That’s much better than what I was able to come up, which isn’t really a surprise given that Murray is a nationally-regarded culture critic and all. In any event, I’m more than happy to point you towards words that may convince you to read We Can Fix It, as I think it’s something everybody should do. It’s smart and funny and sweet and wise and full of joy and hurt and sexy, sexy time-travel jumpsuits. Give it to the person in your life that needs to be reassured that none of us has all the answers, but that’s okay.

• Hail to our new overlords protectors, I meant protectors. Wes Citti and Tony Wilson, previously best known for making some amazing soup, have decided to branch out into technology and are Kickstarting the entire process. I must say, their campaign to build an orbital death ray is going to throw off my Kickstarter models, what with having backer tiers up to the US$100,000,000,000 level and a total goal that could be expressed as approximately 4% of US GDP.

  Going by the Fleen Fudge Factor for Kickstart predictions¹, Wes and Tony are on track for reaching their second stretch goal. On the other hand, I expect the usual delays in delivering on the promised rewards, so don’t hold your breath that the world will be destroyed until at least six months after the predicted doomsday.

• Readers of this page should be well familiar with Zahra’s Paradise from :01 Books, which launched back in 2010 and saw print eighteen months later; for those who are new around here, it’s the work of semi-anonymous political exiles commenting on life in Iran since the discredited elections of 2009. When the state has taken your child and you’ve finally retrieved his body, what more is there to fight for?

  The thing about elections, even in places where only the vestiges of democracy exist, is that they come around again. Zahra may not be a real person (although her experiences mirror those of far, far too many people in Iran), but that hasn’t stopped her from taking a stand in this election cycle. Vote4Zahra chronicles the story since “the end” as Zahra declares herself a candidate for President and speaks truth to the clerics that hold power in a country made up predominantly of youth eager to engage with the world. Here’s hoping her message makes its way to where it can encourage those who need encouragement.

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¹ Look at the Kicktraq prediction afer two days of funding, and at the trend prediction; most projects will hit somewhere between 1/3 and 1/6 of the prediction.

Dare we hope? And just in time for FunkyWatch May?

• I already knew I was going to tell you today about the launch of the Skin Horse Book 4 Kickstarter once I saw some late-night tweets on Friday about it going live over the weekend; as I believe this page has established, I likes me some Skin Horse. What I didn’t expect was to find myself quoted in the Kickstarter video. I gotta confess, even having been asked to provide quotes, blurbs, forwards, and the like a fair number of times, it’s a little thrill every time I see that somebody might actually care for my opinion-mongerings. Although, ahem.

  I shouldn’t get snarky, not when Jeffrey Wells and Shaenon Garrity¹ entertain me so wonderfully for free six days a week, when they offer up original art as a supporter reward², and when backers get the opportunity to attend a freakin’ TIKI PARTY at the tiki shack that Ms Garrity has had built in her backyard for the express purpose of gettin’ messed up on fruity drinks in mugs with faces on them. I’m pretty sure that no other webcomicker has ever allowed a prize of Come get drunk at my house which means you will know where I live, meaning that Ms Garrity is either slightly foolhardy, trusts absolutely in her fanbase, or has mysterious Funk Queen powers that protect her from all harm. I’m betting on that third one.

• Merch alert for those going to Phoenix Comicon this weekend: Andrew Hussie’s legion of devoted fans³ are about to discover the majesty that is the Chris Yates handmade puzzle line as a collection of GOD TIER BAFFLER!s is placed on sale and promptly sells out ten minutes later. If you make it past the Homestucks to the rest of the TopatoCo table, tell ’em I said hi.
• Speaking of TopatoCo, KC Green won’t be there, presumably because he’s busy scripting new Regular Show comics in the wake of the success of issue #1. Let’s put this in perspective: the highest-selling comic of April 2013 had something like 132,000 copies sold, and that was Batman. Green has put a new comic, aimed at kids, at fully half the sales of the marquee book of the most-recognized character in the country. That never happens. Everybody feel good for KC, or Mr Green if you’re nasty.

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¹ Funk Queen of Everything That Will Survive When All East Of The San Andreas Drops Into The Atlantic.

² Now at the entirely more-appropriate US$100 backer level; previous efforts by Ms Garrity have criminally undervalued her originals.

³ Or Elite Shock Troops of the Forthcoming Purification, take your pick.

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.

One of these days I’ma have to add a category for Kickstarter around these parts, ’cause I sure talk about it a lot.

• If webcomics didn’t exist, something tells me that Phil Foglio, beloved uncle figure of independent comics, would have had to create them. He and creative collaborator/life partner/fellow mad scientist Kaja Foglio have been prominent converts from dead-tree publishing (after a decades-long career, mind you) to producing their flagship work, Girl Genius from the finest quality of pixels and collecting for print afterwards.

  This is not a new endeavour! Story development started twenty damn years ago, and at this point Girl Genius has existed as a web-then-print comic for going on twice as long as it was print-only. Eleven volumes totalling nearly 1500 pages are already in print, and by my reading of the story (every Mon-Wed-Fri, with binges every time a new volume comes out) we might be approaching the midpoint of the overall story¹.

  In all that time, Professor and Professoressa Foglio have entirely self-financed and published their work, but when Kickstarter exists and makes for such a handy pre-order and financing platform, they’d be silly not to take advantage of it. Actually, “silly” is probably pretty high up on any list of adjectives applied to P&P F, but when the choice is Use Kickstarter to avoid fronting some fifty grand to print a book and Nah, let’s be silly and pay the equivalent of a college education ourselves, again, I think silly is overrated.

  Thus Girl Genius Volume 12, nearly 200 pages of full-color comics, is getting the crowdfund treatment, with the additional benefit that exceeding the US$55,000 goal means older volumes can be revived from the out-of-print doldrums, and the Foglio children get to eat more than once a day for the rest of the year. Win-win! Since the campaign went live yesterday, it’s on the cusp of US$34,000 (or 61%) funded, with a relatively brief 17 days to go.

  That’s right, the Foglios allotted themselves less than three weeks to raise their funds, which I’m guessing may have the effect of damping the usual wild swings in successful Kickstarts. Most of them have a huge first two or three days, drop to a low, sustained funding rate, and pick up in the last week. With such a short turnaround, I think GGV12 may not have the time to see the dropoff, and may well have a more uniform intake rate.

  In any event, I think it may well perform closer to the 3 side of the Fleen Fudge Factor² as applied to Kicktraq predictions. If you’re still on the fence about pre-ordering, consider that back volumes run US$23 + shipping, whereas a softcover of GGV12 will be yours for US$30, and it’ll be between 25% and 50% larger than those older books. BARGAIN OF THE YEAR, people.

• I held off as late as I could before posting yesterday, and so missed by mere hours some details on the Capture Creatures books that I wanted to share with you. See, the book wasn’t so much delayed as it was waiting to be part of a package deal, as the Benign Kingdom founders are back in the art book game — only this time instead of a common book, they’re producing a themed set of books. From Becky & Frank, the aforementioned Capture Creatures collection. From Yuko Ota and Evan Dahm, the eagerly-awaited Exquisite Beast collection. And from KC Green, a second volume of his Midnight Surprise artblog.

  Each book is available individually in softcover or deluxe hardcover and in three-book combos³ and in a break from past B9K offerings, stretch goals aren’t being used to make the books better. The deluxe books are full-bore awesome and available right from the start without any wondering if goal would be exceeded enough to get the better paper, the embossing, or any of the other enhancements.

  I’m also interested to see how this campaign does compared to the first B9 collection (which featured the same creators) — what if, hypothetically, you were a huge KC Green fan but didn’t like the others? Would Green’s work comprising a quarter of the book’s content be enough to get your support? With the Midnight Monsters collection, that Green uberfan can back a Green-only book, but also contribute towards the making of the other two books. How this campaign goes may well help determine the production decisions of future B9 efforts.

• The third webcomics Kickstart to launch yesterday was Rob Balder’s latest Erfworld project, which serves the dual purpose of getting something to the strip’s fans this year (neither the illustrated nor the mostly-text storylines that are alternating at Erfworld presently is finished, making it difficult to put a collection together) while simultaneously providing a breaking-in period for a new Erfworld artist.

  David Hahn will be taking over for Xin Ye, and E is for Erfworld will give him time to get his style on-model. Balder did a soft launch of the fundraiser to past project backers and saw the totals exceed 200% of goal in less than a day; I think that Hahn’s going to be getting a lot of practice in pretty soon.

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¹ By the time it’s done, Girl Genius will probably be about about as long as the standard-bearer for impossibly-long indy comics, Cerebus the Aardvark, with 100% less batshit insanity on the part of the creators.

² Namely, look at the Kicktraq prediction afer two days of funding, and at the trend prediction; most projects will hit somewhere between 1/3 and 1/6 of the prediction, which in GGv12’s case means somewhere between 95% and 190% of goal. Since it’s a stone certainty that the Foglios will make goal, I’m going to predict GGv12 is closer to 190%, meaning the majority of stretch goals will be met, and the majority of back volumes get restocked.

³ I didn’t notice any two-book combos but come on — who’s going to want to exclude one of these three books?

There’s some really neat stuff for you today, kids. Let’s jump into it.

• More details on the Capture Creatures gallery show in June, which we teased two weeks back. First off, you may have noticed that said Creatures are appearing on the website at a furious pace, Becky Dreistadt having finished all 151 paintings some time ago; today’s installment is #121, meaning only 30 to go, meaning 17 creatures will still be unposted when the show/book pre-launch hits on 1 June:
  

  LA’s Gallery Nucleus will host the early book release and gallery show on June 1st at 7:00pm: all 151 creature paintings will be on display and available for purchase, along with a yet-to-be-announced resin ?gure, prints, and larger mystery pieces. Opening night features both Becky and Frank signing, as well as complementary drinks, snacks and secret musical guests; the show itself runs through June 23rd.

  That’s from a press release, so no link, but party details are at the Gallery Nucleus site. Unfortunately, the show was scheduled for a time when it was anticipated the book would be done but some delays hit and it’s not done. However, given the track record that Becky Dreistadt and Frank Gibson have on their books, not to mention the fact that it’s coming from the quality factory of Benign Kingdom¹, I’m not terribly concerned about anything other than the fact that I don’t already have the book in my hands right now.

  Also, Becky and Frank need to get one of their gallery shows to launch in New York already so I have a chance at purchasing paintings before they’re snapped up by other people; on the off chance that your favorite Creature isn’t snapped up by somebody else, chances are you can purchase it from Dreistadt’s artist page at Gallery Nucleus.

  In the meantime, Gibson was kind enough to share with Fleen readers an as-yet unseen Creature, Bechder, who may be spied at the top of the page. He’s all badgery, so I’m guessing he’s an Earth type, but with that smoke/steam coming from his mouth there might also be some Fire in his makeup. Am I doing this right? I never got into Pokémon so I’m new to all this lingo.

• Speaking of B9, it’s well known that lurking just behind the scenes is a tactical genius named George Rohac. As it happens, George² and I happened to be talking about ten days back under social circumstances; nothing formal, no notes taken, and we were having some excellent drinks, which is why I didn’t share with you the news he shared with me that night.

  However, Heidi Mac is all over the story today so you probably ought to know that George has left Oni Press (where he got a passel of webcomickers to do projects) for What Pumpkin Studios, aka Homestuck Intergalatic Headquarters. Just in case you were wondering how Andrew Hussie could conquer the internet even more than he already had, there’s your answer. Between WP and B9 and all the side advice that he hands out, George is practically synonymous with webcomic-related Kickstarts, with an estimated 30+ campaigns under his belt and (by my rough accounting) somewhere north of US$4.0 million in total funds raised.

• Two pieces of merch to point you towards, one real and one hypothetical. Firstly, let me point you towards the LympheDIVAs, which markets specialty clothing for survivors of breast cancer — a side effect of treatment can lead to swelling and chronic inflammation in the arms. There’s no treatment for lymphedema, but compression sleeves can help control the condition and help prevent it from progressing.

  Like a lot of medical clothing, compression sleeves tended to be uncomfortable and ugly, and there’s no reason to put up with that nonsense. Comfortable, fashionable sleeves and gauntlets are what LympheDIVAs set out to make, and the designs are visually stunning.

  They’ve just launched a new product family designs by mad pixelmancer R Stevens, with the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network³ getting a portion of each sale of 8-Bit Owl, Pixel Hearts, Pixel Skulls, and Red Robot. It’s not easy to make a stretchy garment retain a blocky, pixel look when it can be pulled in various directions, but it appears that Stevens and LympheDIVAs have done so (not that I should have doubted — my Red Robot socks look great, even on my weirdly asymmetric feet). Here’s where I’d send you all to a store and tell you to buy, but I sincerely hope that you never need to.

  On the theoretical end of things, I think that Hurricane Erika simply must — must — make the smiley-face panties shown halfway down the latest entry⁴ at Oh Joy, Sex Toy [probably NSFW]. For those not willing to click the link, here’s a clip of the relevant panel [almost certainly SFW]. Just get the little Yay! speech balloon on the front and your sexytimes will get 37% sexier.

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¹ Unofficial motto: Makers of fine qualities since 2011.

² While the Fleen Manual of Style dictates that on second and subsequent references, individuals should be predominantly referred to by their family names, there are exceptions to every rule and George is one of them. It just doesn’t work to call him Rohac, or Mr Rohac, or even Éogeorge of the Riders of Rohac. He’s just George.

³ Pancreatic may be the most miserable, evil bastard in the cancer family, if I may be allowed a moment of unwarranted anthopomorphization. It has poor treatment options, fast progression, aggressive metastasizive tendencies, and it kills in amounts that even Red Robot #C-63 would find excessive. It’s not particularly linked to lymphedema, but if Stevens wants to take a chunk out of pancreatic cancer, I say more power to him; I hope he gives it a good curbstomping.

⁴ So to speak.