I have read and agree to the Terms of Service.

As some may recall, those ToS may make claims against original content¹ or be entirely self-contradictory as to requirements for originality and/or present elsewhere, so creators run a special risk in not reading those terms, but let’s face it — nobody reads the damn things. Actually, I read one once, an End User License Agreement for one of my employer’s products, and it accomplished two things:

1. I got a headache
2. I became convinced that I somehow owed The Mob a favor

Which is why I was intrigued when the Twitterfeed of amazingly smart guy Rands pointed me towards a new project to categorize Terms of Service and rate them for how badly you can get screwed for checking the box, lying, and signing up.

Terms of Service, Didn’t Read is starting with social media and search engines, rating each ToS from Very Very Good (Class A) to Is This Really Necessary? (Class E), and everything in between. I’d recommend that anybody who puts their original work on the web via a site they don’t entirely own themselves review the ToS;DR ratings on a regular basis from here on out.

• Know what day it is? Jenny Everywhere Day. Somehow, I missed it last year, but to remind all and sundry, Ms Everywhere is:
  

  [A]n open source character created in 2001 by Steven Wintle and the members of the Barbalith forums. She’s free to use by anyone in any capacity they see fit.

  Jenny exists in all realities at the same time and her powers stem from an ability to “Shift” herself and others from one reality to another. Her exact powers/limitations within any given story are up to the people working on it.

  The two things that make her “Jenny Everywhere” are her goggles and her scarf. Every other aspect to her design (including race, body type, hair color, eye color, number of limbs, etc.) are completely up for grabs and fall under the discretion of the creator.

  Examples of Ms Everywhere are free-flowing at JennyEverywhereDay.com, but don’t feel restricted to just one day of the year; Jenny can be used any time you like (with the proper disclaimers) to tie all of comics into one overarching shared reality, just in time to destroy everything.

• The Ignatz Awards nominees (not at the Ignatz website yet, but give ’em time; meanwhile, take a look at the list via Heidi or The Spurge)have been announced, and what caught my eye more than any particular nominee (and it’s a nicely balanced, broad slate of nominees this year) was the list of judges.

  Edie Fake, Minty Lewis, Julia Wertz, Dylan Meconis, and Lark Pien did the jury-ing of the nominations list, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen an awards jury with such a deep experience of webcomics before — Wertz and Meconis have been in webcomics forever, Lark Pien has closely collaborated with Gene Luen Yang on multiple projects, notably coloring American Born Chinese. It doesn’t look like Fake or Lewis have a lot to do with webcomics per se, but they’re young enough to have robust web presences and I’ll wage that the idea of internet presentation of their work isn’t a strange thing to them.

  Oh, and the jury is 80% female, and yet somehow that fact is not a dominant point of reference in their task, their choices, or the awards in general. Is … is that allowed? ‘Cause I totally thought I read that there aren’t any ladies doing comics and they don’t hardly ever apply to do comics because they have an idea how anatomy works? Weird.

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¹ Does anybody use MySpace since Jeff Rowland killed it?

² <cough cough Pinterest cough>.

Indulge me in not talking particularly about webcomics for a few hundred words. David Rakoff — writer, actor, This American Life contributor, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor¹, and all-around genius — has died, and the world is poorer for his passing.

I met him once, back in 2000 when TAL had their fifth-anniversary tour² and my wife and I were privileged to meet the performers³ at an after-show reception. In his story on office politics he had mentioned, in an offhand way, voles, and it had triggered a memory in the back of my mind. A year before while waiting to get my hair cut, I’d read a piece by him in Outside magazine, the title of which described him as:

Acolyte of the Standard Class, Master Bowdriller, Sweat Lodge Scaredy-Cat, and Friend to the Vole

Go read it now. If it’s not the sort of thing you find to be hilarious, chances are we can never be friends.

Now voles are not something that come up particularly often in casual writing or conversation, which is I suppose why I remembered the earlier reference. So I asked him — was he particularly fond of voles?

Oh, I hate you, he exclaimed before immediately apologizing that it was nothing personal. He and his editors for the then-in-progress collection, Fraud, had figured that the Venn Diagram of people that had read his work in Outside and those that followed him in other, more NPRish venues hell of looked like an eight, so he wouldn’t have to bother rewriting either his TAL piece or his Outside piece to remove a redundant reference to a rarely-recalled rodent. I had just disproved the theory and now he was going to have to do some work, and so he (very briefly) hated me before laughing about the absurdity of it all.

I have never been happy to be hated before or since.

So this is what I think about comics today — anybody that’s not familiar with Rakoff’s very unique, wry, witty, funny, funny, funny and humane voice should immerse themselves in his work. Audio or transcripts of his This American Life contributions may be a good place to start. And if you want to practice drawing characters in a mood you’ve likely never seen outside of Achewood, may I suggest the following snippet as an exercise?

Sheila taught me a survival technique for getting through seemingly intolerable situations, interminable lunches, stern lectures on attitude or time management, being trapped by the office bore beside the sheetcake in the conference room, and the like. Maintaining eye contact, keep your face inscrutable and mask-like with the faintest hint of a smile. Keep this up as long as you possibly can. And just as you feel you’re about to crack and take a letter opener and plunge it into someone’s neck, fold your hands in your lap, one nestled inside the other, like those of a supplicant in a priory. Now with the index finger of your inner hand, write on the palm of the other, very discreetly and undetectably, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, over and over again as you pretend to listen.

Rest in peace, Mr Rakoff. Thank you for your words and your (very temporary) hate.

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¹ Although Mr Rakoff never denied his innate Canadianness, cf: here or here.

² Although he was part of the recording tour, Mr Rakoff’s piece was cut for time and included in a later show.

³ Including Ira Glass, Sarah Vowell, Russell Banks, several TAL staffers, and Ira’s dad who is a very funny guy. Also, Ira is much larger than his voice has ever led you to believe — 190cm, broad build, everything about him except the glasses screamed “recreational rugby player”.

Item One: At this point, the w00tstock phenomenon has grown to the point that any number of geekly types can attract other geekly types to join them on a stage and just generally be as entertaining as heck. In expanding their usual PAX “Just being us” session to a PAX-adjacent two-night stand, Kris and Scott (or possibly “Scott and Kris”, take your pick) are joining the new tradition. In three years, look for all of nerddom to join together in one mega-variety-show that puts Jerry Lewis’s telethon extravaganzas¹ to shame, curated by the ever-present Dammit Liz.

Confidential to everybody attending the show: rumor has it slipping Scott and Kris a six-pack makes the show even hilariouser.

Item Two: I made sure to keep myself out of the very minor controversy launched by the inexplicably angry sell your boots editorial by Dan Nadel in The Comics Journal’s blog a few weeks back. If one is going to decide that Kickstarter is emblematic of all that is wrong with comics, the Box Brown-edited Garo tribute seemed like an odd target. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and the dominant reaction appeared to be Seriously, this is what you get upset about? Case in point, Evan Dahm took it upon himself to express the obvious:

People are still thinking kickstarter is fundamentally some charity operation. we are not taking donations, we are taking preorders.

I don’t understand the confusion about this. you are just allowing some of the people who want the book to buy it in advance.

It is not a magic bullet; it’s a convenient platform to allow promotion and preorders. that is all it is to me.

But there’s not lack of smart people on the internets², and a very thoughtful piece on a potential drawback to Kickstarter-only books appeared this afternoon from Gina Gagliano³ of :01 Books which you should check out:

The thing I see on Kickstarter that I am confused by is the only-published-through-Kickstarter graphic novel.

Sometimes there pops up a project on Kickstarter where an author’s like, ‘okay, I’m publishing an original graphic novel, it’s 200 pages long and it will take me two more years to complete after this point and you should all support it!’ And sometimes I’m like, ‘huh, that looks like something that we wouldn’t publish at all because the zombies are exploding whilst having sex,’ and sometimes I’m like, ‘huh, we didn’t get this charming and interesting project in our submissions inbox.’

The format of Kickstarter seems to heavily weight the promotion and availability of the book to the front end, rather than the back end — something I find problematic for these books that people say, ‘we’ll have this done in two years — or a year — or even eight months.’ Because what happens when your book is available — and then a school in Kansas wants to use it in their class and needs 40 copies . . . and then the New York Public Library system wants to carry it and needs 80 copies . . . and then BoingBoing reviews it and a few hundred people want to order the book?

There’s considerably more in the full posting, which should give a certain type of creator (namely, those already capable of doing top-notch work) some things to think about. And if you’re not that creator today, I sincerely hope that it’s your desire to be that creator someday, and to look at questions you’ll need to consider down the line instead of keeping your mindset static.

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¹ And I have no doubt that such a nerdapalooza could raise enormous charitable dollars, perhaps in support of Child’s Play.

² All casual evidence to the contrary.

³ Who supplies me with review copies of the best stuff, you guys she is seriously awesome.

Today is set up the new work computer day and it’s … yeah. Let’s just not think about computers for a while and focus on some upcoming events.

• THURSDAY THURSDAY THURSDAY For those purists insisting that only “Sunday” can be repeated three times to drum up excitement for an event, bear in mind that Sunday’s happening features some truly horrific contents, and Thursday’s (that would be tomorrow) features cool art. At least, if you’re in New York, in the vicinity of Gansevoort Street and the temporary East Coast location of Gallery1988 as they bring their annual cult movie art show, Crazy 4 Cult, to the Big Apple.

  C4C2012 launches 9 August from 6:00 — 9:00pm and runs until 1 September. The website doesn’t show art yet but one of my favorites, the inimitable Scott C, will be sending along more Pee-Wees¹ than you can shake a stick at.

• Everybody’s favorite invented and randomly-timed holiday, Feel Free To Talk To Me If I’m Wearing A Dinosaur Comics Shirt Day, will be held on Friday, 31 August. Take it away, Ryan North:
  

  Last year we did it in December for the Australians, but I didn’t hear about ANY of them hooking up, so it’s summer again for North America!

  The Facebook event is here where we can all discuss our results! MARK IT ON YOUR CALENDAR

MARK IT NOW, DAMN YOU.

• And a little further out still, summer of 2013 will forever be known as the Summer of TMI Tuesday Every Day, as Danielle Corsetto undertakes a continent-wide roadtrip to catch up with fans in far-flung, non-Canadian locations:
  

  Canada, my love, my darling, I wish I could visit you on this trip, because you know I love you. But I’mma have to make a completely separate Canada-centric trip another time, so’s I don’t have to do paperwork at any borders to sell my wares on this trip. I still write my name like “Danielle Canada” in cursive in my diaries, with hearts around it. You’ll always be my favorite Top Hat.² <3

  Obviously, further information forthcoming as Ms Corsetto figures out exactly what her itinerary will be. Best just mark down a season-long “save the date” in your calendars to make sure you’re free when she does announce locations and times.

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¹ Pees-Wee? Can I get a ruling here?

² Exactly what Danielle meant by “Top Hat” is up for discussion in the comments. I, for one, find it difficult to believe she didn’t intend at least two or three different meanings.

If you were lucky enough to hang around the Dumbrella booth at San Diego Comic Con last month, scrollsaw-wielding madman Chris Yates might have shown you something very interesting indeed — a prerelease version of the new Baffler! for iPad app, which released today. Developer Twenty Sided Planet’s been at work for a year on this, and having played with it some, I can say it was time well spent. The grab-a-piece-and-spin-it-around functionality is crisp and smooth, and the timer counting up how long it takes you to solve a puzzle is maddening in its insistence at ticking along at a rate of one second per second.

Best of all, consider what you get — fifteen Chris Yates original puzzles, the digital versions scanned from actual physical puzzles, the prices of which would range from the dozens of American Cash Dollars to multiple hundreds. To obtain fifteen Baffler! originals would be out of the reach of all but the most devoted (and wealthy) collector, but Yates and Twenty Sided Planet are letting you have this for a measly three bucks (with future expansion packs undoubtedly at a similar pricepoint). Take a look at the launch video (there’s some nice quick shots of multi-level Baffler!s around the 1:10 mark) and then we can all sit here and wait to see how long it takes Apple to make The Baffler! for iPad an official demo app in their stores. ‘Cause man, this thing is addictive.

• With the country going all excited for Bobak Ferdowsi¹, would this be a good time to point out that Jorge Cham’s new video series, Ph.Detours, talked to him last week? Yes, yes it would. Ferdowsi’s about halfway through the video (with mohawk but without coloration), but the real stars of the show are JPL program engineer Chaz Morantz and the full-size Curiosity test model.

  As long as we’re talking PhD Comics, we should also mention that their Two Minute Thesis Contest is up to the voting stage — grad students give a brief pitch about what they’re working on, you can listen in and get smarter in your spare time, and the thesis with the most votes will be the first to be illustrated for a new web series, along with other fabulous prizes.

  Me, I’m leaning towards Rescue Times Need[ed] By Fire Services At The Critical Structure Fire by Thomas Lindemann, Rescue Engineering, Cologne University of Applied Sciences because come on — how many other candidates have to do their research inside burning buildings?

• Called it: Khoo putting together Strip Search entry guidelines based on Penny Arcade hiring practice.
• Okay, we all knew that B9.5 was going to crush its goal, we just didn’t know the final number. As it turns out, the final number was slightly over US$140,000, meaning that the Benign Kingdom project as a whole has taken in just over 200 grand. On behalf of everybody that pledged early and kept seeing new stuff added to our rewards packages, I’d like to thank the incredible upsurge in backers that brought in more than US$50K in the last six days of the campaign. Seriously, you just don’t see the curve of the projected total go up all that often on Kickstarts. Now the only question is what the Benign Ones do to top this.

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¹ I’ve mentioned previously that despite my childhood daydreams, I know I never could make it as an astronaut, but if I had been born 20 or 25 years earlier, I would have fought like hell to earn a chair in NASA mission control, so indulge me as I take a moment to recognize that not only has Bobak Ferdowsi got great hair and style out the wazoo, he’s a Flight Director.

Less than ten years out of college, and he’s calling the shots for all the flight controllers in that mission control center. That’s how it works when you’ve got the headsets on — a year or two out of school you’re saving an Apollo mission from an unnecessary abort, and if you stick with it by the time you’re 30 you’re very possibly sitting in Gene Kranz’s chair.

Think I exaggerate? John Aaron (EECOM) and Steve Bales (GUIDO) were twenty four years old when they called (respectively) “SCE to Aux”, and “We’re Go on that program alarm”. Every single person that’s ever plugged into a flight controller’s loop and called, “Go, Flight” is a goddamn hero and if you don’t know their names and stories, shame on you.

Honestly, some of my favorite times in comics involve seeing what creators I follow already come up with as their next project. No matter how much I like the current work, seeing what they come up with to distinguish the new from the old usually involves a real stretch of the creative muscles — your Chex vs Starslip, Sheldon vs Drive, Ugly Hill vs Not Invented Here, Goats vs Scenes From A Multiverse, Bobwhite vs Monster Pulse, Captain Stupendous vs Snowflakes, Little Dee vs Spacetrawler, Kilroy and Tina vs Wonderella.

To that list, we can now add You’ll Have That/Max vs Max creator Wes Molebash, who launches Insert Image today. It looks to be more story/plot oriented rather than based around what could broadly be called “relationships” (which formed the core of his earlier work), but it’s still recognizably Molebash — the character designs are unmistakably his¹, church (as both an institution and a setting) appears to be a prominent element, there’s (even with just one strip) a sense of fundamental decency about the characters. I’ll be keeping an eye on this one; I think that Molebash may have found a vehicle that matches his voice even better than his earlier comics.

Know where there’s a sense of fundamental decency that’s a full 180° from Molebash’s midwest? Brooklyn. Not that Meredith Gran’s cast of characters aren’t decent enough people, they’re just the living embodiments of “It’s complicated”.

Which, the more I think about it, is probably why she was the perfect choice to write/draw Marceline and the Scream Queens, because the residents of the Land of Ooo aren’t as simple as their very handy labels would make them seem at first blush. The Candy Kingdom isn’t all sweetness and light; Marceline’s not letting her Nightosphere origins decide what kind of person she should be, and Princess Bubblegum sometimes has to do some not-very-nice things. Gran knows how to write characters with obvious surfaces and deeper contradictions.

So it’s pretty cool that just in time for MatSQ#2 to hit the stands this week, there’s a very nice review of MatSQ#1 at The AV Club today:

Gran has a firm handle on both characters’ voices, and in signature Adventure Time fashion, crafts a story that is rooted in a realistic situation and then amplified by the fantastic setting. Marceline’s popularity intimidates Bubblegum, prompting the cruel words that cause Marceline to doubt her creativity.

The two are ultimately united through art, as the Scream Queens put on an epic show that completely changes Bubblegum’s point of view. Over four silent pages, Gran dramatically captures all the energy and theatricality of Marceline’s show, aided by Lisa Moore’s vibrant color palette of complimentary reds and purples.

Damn straight.

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¹ I always thought Molebash’s designs sat about midway between Ryan Estrada and Mike Krahulik, and [img] carries on that aesthetic pretty strongly.

Not saying they’re completely out of the blue, but still.

• Very much a Huh moment: I’m not entirely sure what the read-between-the-lines part of the announcement means, but I’m pretty sure the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art just said it’s ceasing to exist:
  

  The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) and the Society of Illustrators have announced plans for MoCCA to transfer its assets to the Society, creating a single cultural institution supporting and celebrating illustration, comics, and animation.

  The Society will continue and expand MoCCA’s mission in a number of ways: staging MoCCA Fest in its current location, dedicating a gallery in the Society building to MoCCA’s Permanent Collection, continuing MoCCA programming, and curating a special exhibition of works from MoCCA’s Permanent Collection in their Hall of Fame Gallery […]. There will be extensive arts programming around both of these exhibits, including lectures, workshops, film and music series. Current MoCCA memberships will be honored at the Society of Illustrators.

  So, that’s something more than a de-accession of artifacts, or construction of an institution-within-an-institution. Does somebody with access to legal filings know where to look for a corporate dissolution? Because that’s what this sounds like:

  Commenting on the transfer of MoCCA’s assets, including its permanent art collection and the MoCCA Fest name, Society Executive Director Anelle Miller observed, “The Society of Illustrators has a long, proud history of promoting the art and appreciation of all genres of illustration. We are honored to be able to spearhead the expansion and growth of the incredible foundation that MoCCA has created over the past ten years.”

  More on this as it develops.

• Maybe not so much Huh as Hmmm: As of this moment, an artboook anthology is on the verge of becoming the third most-funded comics project in Kickstarter history, which position it will hold for approximately a week until Penny Arcade takes the number two slot, and then another week or so before CreatureBox takes number four.

  Still, Top Five status is nothing to sneeze at, and taking two separate projects into the Top Twenty in the space of six months (with a combined take somewhere northward of US$165,000) makes George Rohac the Kickstarter Guru of 2012, I’m thinking.

• Less Huh and more Hooray: Congratulations to Emily Nagoksi and Rich Stevens, who totally changed their respective Facebook relationship statuses, with cake. I can’t express how happy I am for them. And dang is that an impressive cake.

Those that don’t care about the mechanics of press access to conventions (which can range from simple and painless to frustratingly opaque, show to show, year to year) can read the first two bits and skip the long piece at the end.

• Know who’s a smart guy? Jim Zub; it wouldn’t surprise me that X number of years from now when a definitive history of North American comics in the 21st century is written, he’s recognized as much for his savvy in navigating UDON through the various realms of webcomics, licensed IP, and creator-owned print as he is for his own comics projects.

  I enjoy every chance I get to talk to him, and carefully follow what he says online; recently, he did a series of Twitterposts that became longer blogposts on comics writing, and with them all done, he’s helpfully linked to all of them. If you enjoy the craft of comics, take a careful read at what he has to say on brainstorming, pacing, page planning, scripting, and dialogue. Good stuff.

• Because there’s nothing like an unexploited niche: Andy Bell appears to be the most celebrated toy designer in all of Gibraltar (scroll forward to pages 28 & 29 for the August 2012 issue; no direct link I could find). Given Gibraltar’s estimated population of around 29,000 (or, to put it another way, a little more than twice that of my town), if his prominence there was representative of the entire world, there would be about one and a third Andys Bell in his usual stomping grounds of Greenpoint, which is roughly the same as the one they currently have.

  Of course, that undersupplies New York City as a whole (there should be 284 and a fraction Andys Bell, but actually have only one), and don’t get me started on the Expected Andy Bell Population of the United States (let’s just say there should be nearly 10,300 more of him running around, or nearly four per county. Clearly, we suffer a shortage, and somebody should get on that.

(more…)

Guys, an EMS call at zero-dark-thirty¹ has left me wiped and unable to form complex thoughts. Please enjoy these largely factual informational transferences.

• I have been slack about keeping you up to date with the Recipe Comix series at Saveur magazine, for which I apologize. Go check out the most appetizing food + words + pictures this side of Get Jiro!, courtesy of Lucy Knisley (a food-oriented excerpt of a longer travelogue) and Marnie Galloway (a love letter to menudo).
• Book release party for Skin Horse volume 3 in about three weeks time. Join Shaenon Garrity² and her mom for cupcakes, wine³, and assorted craziness. Saturday, 25 August at Borderlands Books in San Francisco, until either the books or the booze runs out.
• In case you missed it: Meredith Gran’s Marceline and the Scream Queens #1 sold out and went to a second printing prior to release. Well done, Mer.
• TCAF 2013 applications are now open; given that this is:
  • A curated show that
  • Has a great deal of demand for tables and
  • Limited space

  … there are priorities as to who gets a table. Don’t just fill out an application and figure you’ll get in, make a case for why you should be there. As showrunner Christopher Butcher puts it:

  Are you an artist? Do you have a professional bio? If not: you are killing me.

  I feel like an artist Bio should be written like a piece of reporting, essentially.

  Lead with the most important/current information, in one bite-sized chunk. Then order most-to-least important facts following.

  And, in response to one creator that couldn’t manage that:

  If you’re not proud enough of your comic to muster 5 sentences about it and your work on it, why are you making a comic? [no link, no need to call out the person Butcher was talking to]

• Finally, congrats to Jeph Jacques on nine got-damn years of Questionable Content. We’re a long way from strip #1 and he’s got every reason to be proud of what he’s accomplished. Everybody feel good for Jeph.

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¹ Actually 00:33, to be precise; took ’til nearly 02:00 to get back to bed.

² Funk Queen of All Lands Touched By The Northeastern Pacific Ocean, and one third of the Nexus of All Webcomics Realities Triumvirate.

³ Most likely from a box, given Garrity’s margin notes regarding her mom. Also, I’m guessing that being the mom of a Funk Queen make you one badass mother.

I believe that it is a matter of record that one of this page’s favoritest creators is “Hurricane” Erika Moen, who is funny, brave, honest, and knows her way around risqué material¹ like a champ. It is a matter of record that this page cannot wait for the print release of her latest comic, Bucko (with Jeff Parker), despite the cognitive dissonance this page gets when realizing that Bucko presented juggalos as fully-realized characters worthy of our attention. Honestly, Erika and Jeff — this page may never forgive you for that.³

So it’s understandable that it’s considered newsworthy in these parts to point out that Ms Moen will be part of a three-woman art show in Portland, Oregon this Thursday, 2 August. And because it’s Erika Moen, it’s understandable that the theme of the show is erotic art by comics artists, and perhaps inevitable that the venue will be Gallery Sesso, contained within the walls of Club Sesso, which is owned by Ron “Yes, that Ron Jeremy” Jeremy.

Perhaps you shouldn’t click on those last two links if you’re at work? All the details are available at Moen’s website.

Oh, and about that nickname that I bestowed on Ms Moen? Come 2015, it could be literally true.

Side note for any that missed it: Kwanza Johnson (onetime Zuda editor; while I think that the design and interface of Zuda left much to be desired, there were some damn good comics there while it lasted) has neatly summarized the priorities of [digital] comics creators in one picture. Ignore the numbers at your peril.

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¹ Including when to be classy, instructive, just revel in the smut (or a combo platter of any of the preceding) as the situation dictates.²

² Heh, heh, he said, “dick”.

³ Oh, who is this page kidding — c’mere, you.