And technically the embargo is until 9:00pm EDT today, but since this win was announced yesterday, I’m sharing it:

:0 I just won Best Online Comic – Short Form at the @NatCartoonSoc awards!! Here’s me and my birdies accepting our collective award.

Congrats to the fabulous Rosemary Mosco of Bird And Moon. As mentioned previously, I did not and will not express my preference among the short form nominees, but will say that Mosco is well deserving.

And since it was also announced yesterday, congratulations to Tom Siddell of Gunnerkrigg Court for the win in Online Comic — Long Form!

At some point, the online streams from NCSFest.com will all go online for re-viewing, and you can watch for yourselves. In the meantime, congratulations to a pair of great people!

For everybody else, there’s the entire rest of the post, which is less time-sensitive than the UK bit. Take it away, Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin!

It was always a given that Boulet’s first crowdfunding campaign would make a splash. The only questions were when and how big.

In case you missed it, as a new year’s resolution Boulet set himself a daily strip schedule, as a way to reconnect with the spontaneity of web creation; as a sign of the times, he created them as Instagram vignettes. So even if he has later put them on his blog as well so as not to be solely dependent on Facebook infrastructure, they are quite specific in format (notably, they are narrow enough to be easily readable on handsets).

After a year 2020 where the average productivity was slightly lowered, he surprised himself when he reached update 100 and didn’t stop until May (with a few more in August) — all that in parallel with his breadwinning activities.

Which raised the question of what to do with them.

As he reveals in the crowdfunding video, his publisher, or to be more accurate, the one where he has published his comics blog collections so far under the name Notes, did proactively contact him about, maybe, publishing these?

But not only did he feel these were sufficiently different in format and tone to warrant developing them as a specific project, also times had changed since the last tome: a new kind of publishing house where his promotional efforts would be taken into account, where he would not sign away any more rights (merchandizing, translation, adaptations, etc.) than he strictly needed to, and where he would need to only give up a share of the crowdfunding money proportionate with the work taken off his plate, which was the main obstacle keeping him away from self-publishing? (Note who was agreeing with Boulet in this discussion? Lisa Mandel)

As he put it, it’s as if Fate had sent him a sign. Hence, Rogatons.

After an explosive start that dissuaded me from reporting on the extravagant amount that applying the FFFmk2 would have given (given the lack of track record), the campaign did nevertheless reach 7195 preordered books, or 6759 Books_ecc, putting him among the top crowdfunded French comics creators.

I don’t know if that allows him to be completely independent from traditional publishers (if you think this book just required the 6 months or so of work where we actually saw his strip output, you’re fooling yourself). But he certainly took a giant step towards that.

Meanwhile, he isn’t leaving his historical publishers down so far, as evidenced by the fact that he’ll be in Cumbria this weekend for the Comic Art Festival) where he will sign Notes for Soaring Penguin Press, and by his relaying of the availability of Dungeon in English at NBM Graphic Novels.

As always, we at Fleen thank FSFCPL for keeping us up on the Continental scene. Have a good weekend, everybody, espeically those of you in Cumbria. Oh, and maybe come back sometime over the weekend? I’ll have some news for you then.

Spam of the day:

Summer is here Is your lawn ready?

I’ll note this was sent on 18 September, which is just before the end of summer in the northern hemisphere.

Hey, how are you? Enjoying Canadian Thanksgiving, or utterly ignoring that piece of shit Christopher Columbus? Good, good.

• Let’s start with the big round number, shall we? Take a gander at Jennie Breeden’s strip from last Friday, which doesn’t look like much out of the ordinary. But those of long memory may recall this strip from 8 October, 2001, which just so happens to be the first strip that Breeden uploaded under the Devil’s Panties moniker, and which also just so happens to have been twenty years to the day before last Friday’s redraw.

  There’s not so many folks that keep with webcomics for two decades, and even fewer that operate in the autobio sphere, so let’s give Breeden the requisite congrats for the accomplishment, and note that the next day, and the next, and the next (that would be today), updates went up as scheduled. She’s hit the ground running on Year Twenty One.

• One thing I’ve noticed about C Spike Trotman, Presidente For Life over at Iron Circus/? She sees something good, she grabs it:
  

  TFW you see something on Twitter and sign it like three weeks later because it’s so goddamn intriguing it makes you wanna scream

  It doesn’t hurt that the book in question is by Evan Dahm, who is both very good at comics and has already done books for Iron Circus (if you haven’t read the superlative The Harrowing Of Hell, maybe get on that). Mansion X is exactly the kind of uniquely brilliant weirdness that Dahm specializes in when he’s not telling more serious stories (and sometimes when he is).

  I am less familiar with Kyle Smeallie’s work, but if Spike is grabbing up The Actual Witch Society Of Derrybridge Middle School, I’m gonna say it’s worth attention, even though it’ll be a while before we get to read it. TAWSODMS is due in 2025 (thanks, global supply chain issues), and Mansion X in 2023. We’ll keep you informed of any updates.

• Speaking of Dahm, his long-running meditation on empire, subject peoples, indigenous belief, dynastic power struggles, and a whole lot else, Vattu, is going through some rapid story progress at the moment. Ideas and plots that have been laid in place for years are about to come crashing into each other, as entire peoples are about to find out exactly what a powderkeg of a society they’ve been a part of.
• Also speaking of which (Iron Circus this time), they’re having a Halloween Sale at the moment, with 33% off select titles — generally ones with at least a tangential spooky theme, although it being Iron Circus there’s some sexy stuff in there too — between now and 25 October. Go grab some good comics now, while the postal service is still operating.

Spam of the day:

YOU NEED QUALITY VISITORS FOR YOUR: fleen.com ?

Dude (you know it’s a dude), I’ve already got the best visitors for my fleen.com, ain’t nothing you can give me with your fake account fire hose.

This is too exciting to put off so we are just going to cut to the chase:

I had a bit over 12 hours to prepare something dignified to say about this but instead I am lying in bed at 7:15am going a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a

(Also that I am so proud and happy that The Legend of Auntie Po is a National Book Award youth lit finalist this year!!!)

The fact that the news broke just about the time a plane door was closing and I was in cut off from the internet is no excuse; Shing Yin Khor is a dear friend of mine and I should have been able to hear the a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a in my brain and I apologize to them most sincerely.

The Legend Of Auntie Po as a reminder, is a great favorite of all of us at Fleen as has been since before it was finished, when Khor and I talked about it over Mexican food¹ more than three years before it saw print.

And let us not forget about the previous nominees in graphic form that have been nominated for the National Book Award: the March trilogy, Gene Luen Yang’s stellar American Born Chinese — mentioned here but one post back — and Boxers & Saints, Nimona. Each of them is the best of what comics is, and Auntie Po stands tall next to them.

Year after year, the National Book Awards find the very best in literature, and this year’s nominees are no different. If the stickers affixed to the covers of future printings of Auntie Po say National Book Award Finalist rather than National Book Award Winner, that’s no shame. Then again, how many past National Book Award winners have featured a giant blue water buffalo and the best pie for miles around? Tragically few, and it’s past time to remedy that.

Seriously though, The Legend Of Auntie Po really is that good, and will be a part of the comics canon going forward, and if you haven’t read it yet maybe get on that. We at Fleen wish the best of luck to all the nominees, but maybe a little extra to the tiny gnome who is an absolute fucking rock star that brought us The Legend Of Auntie Po. Shing, I am so proud to call you my friend.

Spam of the day:

Hi, plz stop messaging me in whatsapp ! why you sending me your photos

The very fact that you think I’m using WhatsApp, which requires a godsdamned Facebook account, shows that your victim-identification algorithms are utter shit. Get on my level, spammers.

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¹ I thought it was pretty good; being from LA, Khor thought it adequate. We both agreed that the company was excellent.

Almost the first book review we at Fleen¹ ever ran was for Gene Luen Yang‘s American Born Chinese, at a time when it was possible for me to write I don’t know much about Gene Yang. We all know about Gene Yang now, of course — two-time National Book Award finalist, multiple winner of every award comics has to offer, MacArthur Fellow, National Ambassador for Children’s Literature, and supremely skilled writer of comics.

But American Born Chinese was, as much as anything, the thesis statement for his outlook on life and the work he would use to express it. It is, as near as damn, a perfect piece of comics work — smart, funny, insightful, bringing together disparate threads into a single whole, with a grounding in both the Chinese classics and Yang’s Catholic faith.

And now the way too many people — five would be too many — who aren’t familiar with American Born Chinese will have another opportunity to become familiar:

I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS!!! I can’t believe I get to work with such an amazingly talented team!

That, in reference to this:

Disney+ Greenlights ‘American Born Chinese’ Series From Melvin Mar, Kelvin Yu & Jake Kasdan; ‘Shang-Chi’s Destin Daniel Cretton To Direct

[Note to self: subscribe to Disney+ when this releases.]

I really hope they find some way to make Cousin Chin-Kee obviously nonhuman; animate him, some kind of visual effect to drop him into the uncanny valley, make a college mascot costume, something like that.

Just the idea of a series meant to explore the notions of identity, racism, and living at a disadvantage in a white world that doesn’t recognize its casual biases is going to make the right heads explode; I am looking forward to their bad-faith shrieking that Yang and the creative team are the real racists with fervor.

In the meantime, tell everybody you know. This is going to be something special, maybe even a landmark in the culture. It’s a good time for the story to be told, and we are all going to be lucky to see it.

Spam of the day:

I have Donation For You

This is from a spam that variously mentions a charity project, a lost zillionaire with a will that for some reason names me, and also a tremendously large lottery win that for some reason requires my banking information. Yeahno.

_______________
¹ Well, it was number eighteen, but we’ve been at this for maybe 600 or so reviews, and the ones before then weren’t actually as analytic. Sort of how Chris Onstad regards Achewood as starting some four month after the debut, with the introduction of Ray, Pat, and Roast Beef.

And why not?

• First up, a quick point over to the current Steeple storyline — Clotted Crime by name — and a news item from John Allison yesterday. A name from the hallowed past is being shared and that caught my interest:
  

  Kelly Vivanco has done the cover for the upcoming Clotted Crime part 3, but that is not all.

  I’m not sure what caught more of my interest, to be honest. Kelly Vivanco is the creator of Patches, a much beloved and long-hiatused webcomic that is still online for your delectation and enjoyment. Patches went on hiatus about the time Vivanco started producing what might be called fine art¹. Any time I come across Vivanco’s name, I take notice and fall in love with her work again. A cover page for Part 3 of Clotted Crime will be welcome indeed.

  But then there’s the second part of the newsbite, where Allison says that Vivanco has gone and done fan art of a previously-unknown bit of Tackleverse lore:

  She has also submitted some archival pictures of Tredregyn’s sole all-merman folk outfit of the 1960s, TENTANGLE.

  And the images are everything about her work that I love. Go check them out, and check out Vivanco’s work more generally if you aren’t familiar with it.

• Secondly, let us compare and contrast two upcoming comics events. On the one hand you have CXC, kicking off tomorrow and running through Sunday. On the other hand, you have the SDCC special event thingy — they’re calling it Special Edition — over [American] Thanksgiving weekend. The former is remote and online. The latter is in person.

  Nobody knows what SDCC/SE will look like or how many people might be there — badges are on sale now, a marked contrast to normal SDCC iterations where they sell out instantly — and thus it’s hard to make a case why one should attend, but it’s easy to make the counter-case:

  It is too soon for an in-person event, particularly one that takes place on the busiest travel weekend of the year², doubly-particularly since many people did not get to gather with family last year and just might be able to this year.

  CXC will be taking place in a combo of mostly virtual and a few in-person events at The Billy (which will also be available online). The schedule is packed with Zoom, YouTube, and Discord channels, the guests are lined up, and it’s free. CXC is a no-brainer. And, in a completely different way, so is SDCC/SE.

Spam of the day:

No matter if you have a big bust or small bust, this is the best wireless bra that looks great under clothes while feeling like loungewear.Cooling Bra Pro can actually have a great impact on your life.

I, uh, do not have a need for such a foundation garment. Thanks?

_______________
¹ Which I once described as moody, dreamy, whimsical-on-the-verge-of-disturbing paintings and that they reminded me of fairy tales, at the moment just before everything starts to go seriously wrong.

² Meaning that large amounts of people injected into the travel stream will interact with the greatest number of other people, making disease vectors all the more effective.

It’s the little things that catch your attention, sometimes. Case in point, a tweet of three words and one link from Kate Beaton t’other day:

First book announcement

That book would be Ducks, an expansion of sketch comics in longish installments over the years, and long planned to be a book. Book plans get put to the side for good reasons¹ and tragic², but there was never a question that Ducks would see the light of day.

I am looking forward to this book as I always look forward to Kate’s work, because my favorite of her work is always the next. I’m also dreading this book a little, because it tells the story of a time and a place that’s uniquely toxic — toxic to the land, toxic to the souls of the men working there, and particularly toxic for the women who are just trying to do a job surrounded by men with toxicity in their souls.

There are bits of the original five-part story that put chills down my spine and not in a good way. There’s pain tied up in the oil sands for just about everybody that passed through there, I’ll warrant — and for those without that pain, I would steer well away because I fear they’re broken in a dangerous way. Ducks is at the top of my reading list for fall 2022, because it will be by turns wonderful, painful, and searingly honest.

That’s what Kate does, and we owe it to her to read the story she brings us and not look away when the painful comes to the fore. Parts of that story are going to hurt; Ducks is asking us to bear witness, and to resolve to make a world where the hurt is less in the future.

Ducks is due from Drawn & Quarterly in Fall 2022. I’m putting it on your must-buy list now.

Spam of the day:
Spammers don’t get to share the day with Kate.

_______________
¹ A wedding, a baby, a second baby. Some joyous occasions for Kate Beaton since 2014.

² We love you still, Becky, because our friend loved you so. Rest peacefully and know you will not be forgotten.

Readers will hopefully recall that one of the things that distinguishes Fleen from all other webcomics blogs of long standing is that we have a dedicated European reporting desk. He’s back with news of what’s going on upon the Atlantic’s eastern shores.

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Let us catch up.

• Earlier this month, public French TV had a special report on Fric News (Fric being slang for money), in which¹ the reporters checked in with the crowdfunding platforms where a conspiracy-peddling documentary about Covid was able to get funding.

  While Ulule was apologetic, Tipeee was much less so, and that has led some YouTubers to reconsider their use of Tipeee, often moving (or encouraging their patrons to move) to uTip) instead. Webcartoonists have tended to follow YouTubers’ footsteps when joining Tipeee, will they do the same here? We’ll see.

• Speaking of Tipeee, Maliki’s translation of their comic on the matter certainly took some time, but still progressed faster than French justice. Did you note that background joke consisting of a Bisous du Panama (from Panama, with love) postcard? That was referring to Jacques Glénat, founder of the Glénat publishing house, more specifically his name appearing in the then recently revealed Panama Papers.

  Earlier this month, Jacques Glénat pled guilty to charges of tax evasion, and was sentenced to 18 months, fully suspended, as well as a 200,000€ fine, which is on top of seized 470,000€ assets. Boulet only commented: The wonderful world of publishing, episode 94493922.

• Speaking of Boulet, let us follow up on previous coverage): Natalie Nourigat let us know during the summer that she’d be moving to Paris in the end! We at the Fleen French news desk are proud to be in the same country as she now is, and look forward to seeing what she will come up with next and to seeing her more regularly in local conventions.
• Meanwhile, other French national treasure Kéké let us know he’d be going the other way: to Los Angeles to work in animation! Congratulations are in order; my only suggestion would be for him to read Natalie Nourigat’s guide on the matter of course, but also Comme Convenu …
• Finally, Team Maliki recently revealed why their (usual) summer hiatus was extending way beyond the end of August (which was less usual): they have a few projects going, including a big one. The mother is obviously going well, as after the fact she was proud to reveal she had received the vaccine while knowingly pregnant, at a time when recommendations were still in the air. Congratulations to the mother, to the other parent, to eldest Tiko, and to little Tanooki (my own term for them, since they don’t even have a pseudonym yet).

Stay tuned: normally our next report from France will cover Boulet’s first crowdfunding campaign.

As always, we at Fleen thank FSFCPL for his reportage. It’s always welcome and it’s good to get an idea of what’s happening beyond your own corner of the world. As a reminder, you can find all of his previous contributions here.

Spam of the day:

You do need a large number of affiliates to make things work. I was lucky to sign up 3 friends who put in USD$10,000 each and depending from their trade volume, I made an extra USD$1000 to $5000 per month PASSIVELY.

Aside from the redundancy of typing both USD and the $, you are literally describing a pyramid scheme. Go peddle your desperation somewhere else, when your digital god comes crashing down I will have no sympathy for you.

_______________
¹ Among other coverage: the same report also had a segment about the Gateway Pundit and its monetization through Google ads, and I’m sure it’s sheer coincidence that Google demonetized that site mere days before that report aired.

[Editor’s note: I never before realized that when reading quickly, it’s very easy to see demonized in place of demonetized. Seems indicative of something but hell if I know what.]

Some bad DNS took the site down at the end of the week. We’re back, though, and thank you as always for joining us.

• Remote SPX took place over the weekend, and that means that the Ignatz Awards were handed out on Saturday night. The coveted bricks are surely winging their way towards the winners, who include Lee Lai for Stone Fruit (Outstanding Artist, Outstanding Graphic Novel), Glaeolia 2 (Best Anthology), Abby Howard for The Crossroads At Midnight (Outstanding Collection), Ashanti Fortson for Leaf Lace (Outstanding Comic),

  [inhale]

  Casey Nowak for Bodyseed (Outstanding Minicomic), Michael Deforge for Birds Of Maine (Outstanding Online Comic), Ex.Mag (Outstanding Series), Freddy Carasco for Personal Companion in Ex.Mag #1 (Outstanding Story), and Pa-Luis (Promising New Talent). Fleen congratulates all the winners, and we sincerely hope that they find a way to send the chocolate fountain on tour to all of you.

• Jorge Cham has been busy with TV work for a good while now, but every once in a while he drops some new PhD Comics on us, and that’s why RSS will never die. I get to see the new strips and you probably didn’t know they were even coming out! The latest is a really great explainer of how the SARS-CoV-2 virus works. Cham’s always great when he talks to people that are really, really deep into a thing and want to share everything they know.

  Thus, discussion about spike proteins, about maybe why the delta variant is so much more infectious, about the importance of basic research — by the time you figure out what the very important crisis topic is, it’s too late because you needed a body of experts with 20 years experience and you can’t spin that up overnight¹ — and the importance of truthful information getting out ahead of the bullshit. Cham’s always been a skilled public communicator of science and technology, and he’s doing good service here.

  Oh, and he has a book coming out, too. Frequently Asked Questions About The Universe will be, well, a discussion of questions on the cosmic scale, and a new team-up with Daniel Whiteson, his collaborator on We Have No Idea. Remember what I said about Cham being great at sci-com? Order FAQATU before it drops on 2 November.

Spam of the day:

I have dirt on you.
Now I know everything.
The price of my silence is 0.21 BTC,
transfer them to me by August 26 to this bitcoin wallet
bc1qw220sye4cxya05ahpuw9lwfu7acwql660h73tq
otherwise I’ll tell everyone.
And then you will feel very bad.

Firstly, congrats on coming up with a spam what slightly reminds me of plums and iceboxes, good job.

Secondly, looks like I blew your deadline by like three and a half weeks so I guess everybody knows my deal by now.

Thirdly, it would be a shame if people started to mess with that crypto wallet. Real shame.

_______________
¹ Of all the myriad ways that Donald Trump fucked up the response to the pandemic, thinking that he could just hire a bunch of MD/PhDs and virologists and they’d be on the job next Monday was possibly the most egregiously stupid. This is your reminder that my thoughts on the coronavirus remain in effect.

One of my favorite KB Spangler¹ novels — and heck, it’s got a prequel so it’s really a series — is a galaxy-wide sweeping epic about the most important thing in the universe as humans expand and change both worlds and themselves as they see fit:

Supply chains.

Don’t laugh. The best scifi recognizes that all the stuff that makes the fictional worlds come alive has to come from somewhere; hell, one of the greatest cyberpunk novels of all time makes it all the way to page two before talking about making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here — once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel because that’s the only way the rest of the story can make sense.

Supply chains are why you have everything you have except maybe some of the sadder looking produce at the local farmer’s market and even that’s tied up in something cheap from Bulgaria like as not. The people who understand supply chains are to the modern economy what computer experts were from about 1972 to maybe 1988 — unseen, underappreciated, and absolutely vital². And it’s the topic of a particularly trenchant Twitterthread that was brought to me by graphic novelist and comics editor extraordinaire Ali Wilgus t’other day:

This is a fantastic thread about delays we’re currently dealing with in publishing, why they’re happening, and why they’re likely to get worse before they improve.

If you don’t have the time to read the thread — and it is very worth your time — Wilgus cuts to the chase:

A major takeaway: if you want to support your favorite authors and imprints, preorders are especially vital right now

The thread itself is the social media about of New Orleans indie bookstore Tubby & Coo’s, and it hits all the reasons that books — and that includes all forms of comics — are so damn hard to get hold of these days, where these days has for me been since roughly an hour into the pandemic as my preorders get repeatedly shit on by Diamond not that I have an axe to grind, nope not me.

Where was I? Oh yes, supply chains. T&C breaks it down into the highlights (each link jumps to a breakpoint in the thread that you can follow for several tweets on the topic): paper (there’s massive shortages of all forms of woodstock), printing (already a problem for smaller publishers/self-publishing as printers delayed small orders for big ones), warehouses (in which we should all resolve to never use the phrase unskilled labor again, as the lack of skilled warehouse workers is leading to both delays and fires), and shipping (everything from lack of dockworkers — skilled labor again — to lack of shipping containers).

Add it all up and there’s only one conclusion:

As you can see, literally every piece of the supply chain is disrupted in some way. This means major delays in getting books printed & shipped at both ends of the process, which affects pretty much any order.

If a store doesn’t have a book in stock/sells out, it could be 6-8 weeks before we can get more. If we have a book in stock that we can immediately ship out, delays will be less, but there will likely still be shipping delays, especially as we get closer to the holidays.

All this to say: PLEASE ORDER NOW for the holidays. And PLEASE do not get angry at or blame bookstores (especially indies) or bookstore workers. This is in no way our fault, and we are doing our absolute best. These delays are happening in ALL retail. Don’t be a dick.

And for anybody producing comics that wants to sell them? I would conservatively double the time you think that printing and shipping will take for the next while. It’ll be at least the end of the pandemic³ plus nine to twelve months before things get back to normal, whatever normal may have been. It’s been a while since any of us experienced normal.

So: order early, encourage others to do likewise, and be patient. It’s going to be frustrating for a good while yet, and there’s no point to making somebody else’s life more difficult than it already is.

Spam of the day:

I am Mrs. Dara, 70 years old, Dumb, and a widow.

Whoa there Sparky Spammer, there’s self-deprecation but that’s verging on clinical depression. Get yourself some help, maybe find a line of work that doesn’t make you so miserable?

_______________
¹ AKA my buddy Otter. She’s rad.

² Since then the computer geeks have become no less vital but they will make sure they’re never unseen or underappreciated again if it kills them or preferably us.

³ Everywhere in the world, not just here, wherever here may be for you.