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.

First, watch this.

Second, tell people you know to watch this.

Third, maybe drop a line to George Rohac and tell him he’s a goddamn hero.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that You Can Do Good has the potential to become the next It Gets Better, and it’s important for all the same reasons. You heard the man: I figured I’d go first. First in saying mental illness challenges me, but it’s not who I am; I’m more than what my mind tries to shoehorn me into being; I can prevail over this, and so can you.

It’s a cliche that greatly creative people have a touch of madness about them; it’s a truth-fact that in the eight or nine years I’ve spent getting to know webcomics creators, I’ve met more people with various diagnoses and medications to help control psychiatric conditions than I’d ever known in the first 35 years in my life. Could be because they’re mostly younger than I am, and were more likely to be diagnosed that people my age; could be they’re just more willing to talk about mental illness and a huge number of my contemporaries are in the psychiatric closet.

What I can tell you is, this move to destigmatize mental illness can only help things; I literally watched George’s video for the first time last night five seconds before my EMS pager summoned me to help the second patient in three hours having a psychiatric crisis. Undiagnosed, untreated, unacknowledged, these conditions eat away at lives and leave people damaged to the point of ruin. Getting help¹, not letting shame or contempt prevent that help — so many lives can be improved and saved.

Like I said — a goddamn hero, and all of his considerable contributions to comics aren’t as important as what he’s started. We can all do good; get doing.

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¹ Which in large part is going to require us all to demand that those who need help have realistic means of getting it.

So it’s approximately the Fleeniversary ’round these parts; the official announcement of my entrée into semi-abusive opinion-mongering occurred in the old Goats forums on 22 December 2005, but I’d been banking postings as far back as 5 December, and was really into the daily posting routine (even though nobody was reading yet) around the 15th or so. Which is a long way of saying — today is as close to seven years of what the masthead calls The webcomics blog about webcomics as you’re gonna get.

If I’ve got all my dates right, at this time seven years ago Jon Rosenberg¹ was not yet staring down 40 and had never changed a diaper. Seven years ago, people were somewhat more justified in thinking that Yuko Ota was in her early teens. Seven years ago, Jeff Rowland had proved himself unkillable by mere killer spiders and had started the great and vast TopatoCo Empire, even tangling with weird t-shirt company perverts.

So many of the tools and services we take for granted in webcomics were missing; at that time, there was no Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Kickstarter, Project Wonderful, or :01 Books. Seven years ago, George Rohac had not yet sprung fully formed from the forehead of Zeus.

Return to Sender had only been on hiatus for a year, TCAF had only started to conquer the world, Commissioner James Gordon Hastings had not been whelped, the Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge had been going for less than a year, we had only just met Dan McNinja’s moustache, and the Great Outdoor Fight was still a month away from its stealthy beginnings, and further from its legendary majesty.

Rich Stevens was exactly the same, endless and unchanging, save only he is now married and likes dogs.

They say seven years in is when you get tired of things, but I have to say, I still enjoy the heck out all of this, so I hope you’ll join me as I start Year Eight of working out my thoughts on various matters — mostly webcomics, but no promises — where you can hear them. Also, if you happen to be in north/central New Jersey tomorrow, do drop by to see the webcomickers at Wild Pig Comics from noon to 4:00pm, won’t you?

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¹ Who, Svengali-like, planted the seeds in my head and made them bear the desired brainfruit that I should be writing all of this stuff.

Seriously, internet, you need to refine your personal index of suspicion when something potentially outrageous comes across your screen. Take a breath. Consider the source. Ask yourself, Is it possible that maybe this isn’t meant to be taken seriously? And think twice before you decide to make with the complaints and virtual lynch mobs because, well … yeah.

• Let’s talk about something more pleasant, shall we? As noted yesterday, the Hour of Truth is rapidly approaching for R Stevens, and you can follow along his own personal Grand Guignol online. If anybody has access to an emergency services scanner in the Easthampton area, maybe listen for dispatches¹ and let us all know if things go wobbly? Time to smoky, salty, delicious danger is (as of posting), approximately 22 minutes.
• The New York Comic Con is in three weeks, and they’ve done us the service of listing programming, albeit in a pretty inconvenient format. I’ve gone combing through for sessions that are related to webcomickry in general, and have found the following for you; please note that times and locations are subject to change.

  Thursday, 11 October
  Surviving the Public (Unshelved)
  12:00-1:00pm, Room 1A08
  Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum of Unshelved get things off to an early start on Press/Pros/VIPs day, before the show floor opens even, with a keynote on customer service (library focused, naturally) and the immutable truth known to anybody that’s ever dealt with the public: the customer is seldom right.

  Friday, 12 October
  Webcomics – From Hobby to Business
  6:30–7:30pm, Room 1A08
  If you camp out in the room long enough after Gene & Bill, you can see Ryan Sohmer and Lar de Souza recount the story of how they got to a multimedia empire from a humble start in the Canadian comics mines. Bonus: you can probably get Sohmer to talk about his personal ascent into healthy, clean living from the hell of Red Bull addiction. It’ll be like Behind the Music only without Jim Forbes narrating.

  Scott C and The Great Showdowns, from Ripley vs the Alien Queen to Han vs the Green Fellow!
  7:00–7:45pm, Unbound Stage
  Scott C gets the brand-new Great Showdowns book off to a roaring start; this one is going to be so fun you guys.

  UDON Crew: New Titles & Tributes
  7:45–8:45pm, 1A06
  Jim Zub and his studio are all over the damn place these days, what with tribute books, webcomics, licensed properties and every damn thing. The secret to this is that they, like the great and magnificent shark, never stop moving. Okay, they do sometimes (sharks, I mean), but Zub & Co don’t; come find out what they’ve got on tap next.

  Saturday, 13 October
  Kickstarter and Indie Comics!
  4:00–5:00pm, Room 1A08
  Benign Kingdom. George Rohac. Secrets of successful Kickstartering. Just remember one thing: George might teach you everything you know about Kickstarter, but he won’t teach you everything he knows.

  Sunday, 14 October
  I got nothin’.

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¹ Key words to listen for: Man down, smells delicious. If they have to slap paddles on him and shout Clear!, I’ll bet he sizzles.

I thought I was so smart this morning before work, figuring out that today’s xkcd is 165,888 x 79,872 worth of pixels, and determining Randall Munroe’s tile naming scheme, which would allow me to explore the entire, massive environment at my later leisure. Naturally, others had reconstructed the entire image before I’d had my breakfast, including at least one zoomable image of the whole damn thing. For the record, I discovered the secret UFO base by manual clicking and dragging. I think the one thing we can all take away from this experience is the fact that Munroe is never bored if he’s got the time to do stuff like this on random Wednesdays.

• Catching up: the Joe Shuster Awards were given out over the weekend; this page is on record that the Canadian comics awards are consistently well-curated in the breadth and depth of their nominees, and particularly find good webcomics to recognize. That streak remains intact, as the Shusters regonized Emily Carroll for her body of work in 2011 as Outstanding Web Comics Creator / Créateur de bande dessinée web exceptionnel for the second year in a row. Following up on his recent Harvey Award win, the award for Outstanding Comic Book Cartoonist / Auteur de bande dessinée exceptionnel went to Ramón Pérez for Jim Henson’s Tale of Sand.
• Looking forward: rumblings in the twitosphere indicate that the time is nigh. R Stevens, in accordance with the unholy pact he made for the sake of US$1332, and is about to eat two pounds of bacon. Much like ancient samurai would have a trusted retainer act as their second when committing seppuku, Stevens has engaged Anthony Clark and KC Green as witnesses to what is to happen, and may glob have mercy on us all.
• Intriguing: TopatoCo are apparently continuing their march to dominate all in their path:
  

  Just submitted an offer to BUY A TOPATOCO BUILDING.

  With George Rohac heading east to represent his employers, the possibility of collaboration — one might say conspirations — between these superstars of webcomics-related success-shepherding exists, and who knows how this will all shake out. I for one intend to be on the right side of history, and I welcome our new, space potato overlord.

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.

As previously noted in the discussions of this year’s MoCCA Fest, Benign Kingdom was not a one-shot, and the second iteration of the artbook is upon us, with four more beyond-talented creators: Aaron Diaz, Danielle Corsetto, Emmy Cicierega, and Anthony Clark, once again under the guidance of George Rohac, mysterious man of [comics] mystery. The only thing that could make this project better (which, naturally, is sitting near 200% of goal around 15 hours after launch) would be if Cicierega and Clark were to resurrect their occasional online collaborations known as Laserpony Studios.

• SDCC update #1: Know who I’ve never met that will be in San Diego? Sarah Becan, debuting her new book, Shuteye. Catch her in Artists Alley, table DD-07, and in the Small Press Pavilion, table M-04, which the alert reader may note is the same space occupied by Eliza Frye — two mad-talented creators in one stop? Bonus.
• SDCC update #2: Seen on the website of one mister Jim “Jim Zub” Zubkavich, the oddest, most clever approach I’ve ever seen to The E-Bay Problem. Namely, creator spends time signing, sketching, knocking themselves out for a “fan”¹, who immediately turns around an slaps that book/sketch/whatever on an auction site to make money. It’s dickish behavior of the first rank, and it’s always pissed me off. But what to do?

  How about providing a financial disincentive?

  Our exclusive for the show this year is our Kitten variant cover for Skullkickers #15, which will be available in limited quantities.They’ll be selling for $5 personalized, or $10 signed/raw as an incentive for fans to keep their copy rather than flipping it.

  Genius. You want to E-Bay that show-exclusive? It’s going to cost you more if you don’t want it personalized, because the only possible reason you wouldn’t want that comic made out to you is because you’re a profiteer and Jim Zub is putting a five dollar bounty on your activity, Bunky. Here’s hoping other creators put a similar surcharge on unpersonalized exclusives/commissions.

• Last thoughts for the day: For those of us who have been going back to Starslip since the strip wrapped because it’s a hard habit to break, and for everybody that wants to enjoy it for the first time, Kris Straub is bringing his sci-fi epic to GoComics:
  

  “No catch, kid. Howzabout your Starslip runs five days a week at GoComics.com starting July 9?” I tried to act nonchalant but suddenly realized I was wearing mismatched shoes. “Sounds like a sweetheart deal for you, maybe,” I said coolly, “but what’s in it for me?” I glanced down again. Getting dressed in the dark, I had also accidentally put on one of my wife’s blouses.

  “A whole new audience who’s never heard of it before. They’ll probably love it. With Starslip finished, maybe this’ll give it a chance to reach new people. Give it new life.”

  Your job: find somebody that never read Starslip the first time around, and tell them to clear a few minutes each weekday morning for the next seven years. Go.

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¹ Who insists it’s not necessary to sign the work in question made out to any particular name.

And through all my discussion of Aaron Diaz yesterday, I never mentioned the suit; it’s beautiful, it fits him perfectly, it classes up the immediate environment. His tablemates, Yuka Ota and Ananth Panagariya, were not to be outdone — they had their own black three-pieces, and resulting in a localized dapperness singularity and made my midweight fleece jacket seek a means of exit from the vicinity, so great was its shame. To distract from my suitless disgrace, I had to ask Panagariya about everything he and Ota are working on. Spoiler alert: it’s a lot.

As if the warmest, most generous¹ journal comic weren’t enough, the pair are a quarter of the way through production on Lucky Penny, their project from Oni, overseen by the ubiquitous George Rohac². That means that 200 page have to be done in time for all the production work to be completed to enable an 2013 release. A year, a book, lots of people work to that schedule.

Except that more is already in the works — Johnny Wander book 3 is due this fall (with a goal of a book a year), and a fuller version of Girl With The Skeleton Hand. Other projects, too; Panagariya wants to make sure that in addition to JW, there’s a book a year, and in his copious free time, he’s getting back into the narrative webcomics game. No name of either comic or artistic partner to share with you yet, but he’s got story planned to the extent that he knows it will take a “television season” approach: 25 to 50 pages per episode, six episodes to the season, keep those writing skills sharp.

It’ll be a stretch, naturally, to work with an artist other that Ota, especially when their skills are so complementary. Yuko noted that while Ananth tends to focus on character, she centers on story structure, making the combination stronger than what either could accomplish on their own. Turns out that Jeph Jacques was right — they really are like Voltron.

Naturally, while Panagariya is collaborating with others, Ota has plenty to keep her busy. Her trade-off sketching with Evan Dahm via the Exquisite Beast is just the most public of these. Dahm, by the way, indicated that the Beast has no planned endpoint — it will just keep evolving³ for as long as they have fun with it. Likely there will be a book at some point, which would make a nice shelf companion to the (as yet hypothetical) Diaz Dinosaur Compendium mentioned yesterday.

Dahm, meanwhile, continues with the largest, most sprawling story he’s ever tackled. At more than 270 pages long, Vattu is perhaps one fifth of the way through the story he wants to tell. And consider: even once he’s done — in five years, or maybe seven — he will have chronicled only a few discrete years distantly separated in the 5000+ year history of Overside. Every odd species, every writing system, every story he’s told so far fits into a few temporal niches on (mostly) one continent.

The scope and scale of this particular Overside story also means that the one-volume editions we’ve seen of Rice Boy and Order of Tales are probably not practical to attempt with Vattu. The complete story would be more than twice the size of the OoT one-volume. Instead, Dahm plans on releasing a series of impressively thick reprint volumes, 300 – 400 pages each, in both paperback and deluxe hardcover presentations.

In keeping with his prior releases, he’s experimenting with wordless cover designs, with an eye towards releasing the first volume of Vattu in early 2013. Rumors that MoCCA staff are arranging with Armory personnel to reinforce the floor in anticipation of Dahm’s expanded catalog at next year’s art festival could not be confirmed at press time.

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¹ Not to mention true-to-life; for those wondering, the Punishment Shirt is real.

² For somebody not at the show, Rohac loomed large in numerous conversations; I must have words with him, long words about the direction of independent comics and the direction that he seems to be steering them in.

³ Which at this point has evolved through every ecological niche and environmental habitat and keeps on cranking. I have a feeling that eventually it will have evolved through more forms than an actual biological entity could manage in the entire lifespan of the universe.

The thing about Frank Gibson and Becky Dreistadt¹ is that they are living proof that all you need to be super-successful in any creative field is reasonably talented, a little lucky, and a completely insane, work longer and harder than anybody else and eat their friggin’ lunch machine. Like Becky does. She paints nonstop, moving from project to project, dropping beauty via gouache and watercolor the way other people accidentally drop a gum wrapper out of their jacket pocked while fumbling for their keys.

Much of this you will never get to see. Some of it, shortly, nobody will ever get to see again, and that is a goddamn shame². And if a few things come together in the offices where such things are decided, Dreistadt will be doing more of it than she ever has before, with a higher profile than ever before. And even if none of that comes to anything, she and Gibson have enough projects confirmed and in-progress to make anybody this side of a meth freak on a coke bender wonder where the requisite energy to do all the work might come from.

And the infuriating thing about them is, they are so damned cheerful about the whole thing.

They’ve got their new hardcover collection of Tiny Kitten Teeth to finish up, naturally (since it will undoubtedly see the influence of the rapidly-approaching mythical status George Rohac, it will no doubt look as gorgeous as the Benign Kingdom hardcover, and — Gibson tells me — three or so times thicker). There’s the Capture Creatures gallery show and book to do this year, as well as finishing up Ryan Sohmer’s The Bear, and whatever else people may pay them to do. At this point, the only limit on them is time.

Speaking of B9, three of the four creator teams were at MoCCA (all except KC Green), and I got to express to Becky/Frank, Yuko/Ananth, and Evan Dahm how beautiful their work is. They spoke seemingly with one voice about what happens next with B9 (or at least I didn’t write down which of them told me): the Kingdom was not a one-shot, there will be future releases in sets of four, perhaps new hardcovers even. Then there was this from the original solicitation:

If this goes well, it could be the foundation of a much bigger project in the future: Benign Kingdom could print more books, and maybe involve other artists! Thank you very much for your support!

At this point, I say that the runaway success of B9.1 pretty much ensures that other artists will be brought into the fold. I sense that Mr Rohac has plans where all of this might go, plans that he and I must needs discuss, because I have often commented on the need for webcomics to have a shadowy genius providing specialty genius-type services in a financially self-sustaining fashion, and I have a suspicion we might be looking at the seed of such now.
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¹ The hive mind that is the artist/writer combo is nearly always referred to as “Becky and Frank”, so I decided that just this once I’m puttin’ Frank first. Also, the majority of the time I have news from the Tiny Kitten Teeth duo, it comes from Frank, since he is like me an inveterate talker.

² You may have heard about the Adventure Time gallery show which is going on in Austin, Texas about now. Follow that link, and check out the photos . See the murals, with the squarish Finn and Jake and the all-swoops-and-curves Fionna and Cake, and the Rainicorn that meanders along the walls? Better get your ass down to Austin and see ’em in person, because when the show’s over, they’re getting painted over.

Every art conservator that puts an Old Masters painting through X-rays and MRIs trying to look under the layers of paint and see what’s underneath ought to be descending on the world’s art galleries and carefully disassembling every piece of drywall they can find, because there are friggin’ masterpieces under all that Behr matte white hi-cover and the thought of it makes me want to drink until I can’t cry anymore.

Who likes numbers? Sure, we all do, but what numbers should we talk about?

• From the wilds of the Pacific Northwest comes the news that Penny Arcade are shifting publishers, with Oni Press getting the nod this time. On the one hand, this shift¹ could lead some to wonder if Mike and Jerry are capable of forming long-lasting bonds of commitment. It’s not you, baby, they tell Random House imprint Del Rey, it’s us. Alas, the trail of broken hearts is long, with other exes in their history, but considering one of them was a vanity press that screwed Jerry and Mike sideways, maybe a little fear of commitment is a good thing.

  On the other hand, Oni Press means that they’re getting the love and attention of a good man — the best man — in the person of George Rohac. Besides shepherding the Benign Kingdom project to Kickstarter superstar statues, George is a man who cannot be destroyed except that he returns under his own power. His smiles last through anything, and good thing too for us all. He reserves his hatred for forces of nature and his punchings for problems². And Yuko. What I am saying is that Penny Arcade are likely in good hands.

• I think I can be forgiven for missing the date (especially seeing as how the creator missed it as well), but Help Desk turned sixteen years old on three days ago. Granted, a chunk of that history was in print, or subject to occasionally-lengthy hiatuses (hiati?), but it’s been there in one form or another, finding new variations on the theme for 2065 comics³ and counting. Happy (belated) birthday to Help Desk, and happy stripperversary to Christopher Wright.

  Edit to correct: As Mr Wight points out in the comments, Help Desk was never in print and I am an idiot; it was originally published as part of an online magazine. Fleen regrets the error.

• If there were only 72 websites in the world that you should pay attention to in 2012, what would #61 (alphabetically) be? TopatoCo. From the Maximum PC list/declaration/manifesto:
  

  Topatoco Web artists make our lives better by publishing their work on the web for free. You can make sure your favorite artist has food, shelter, online access, ink, paper, and other necessities of life by shopping at Topatoco; buy T-shirts, books, coffee cups, and lots of other art-emblazoned goodies.

  All of which are valid points, but which I think might miss the most wonderful thing about TopatoCo — the customer service experience, which is snarky, informative, timely, and offers the opportunity to interact with members of the Great and Bountiful TopatoCo Empire in curious and wonderful ways. Well done, you crazy, magnificent bastards.

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¹ By my count, this would make Oni the fourth publisher of Penny Arcade books, but I’ll have to check my bookshelf when I get home.

² Which wisely decide it’s a good time to be elsewhere.

³ Which is equivalent to one comic every 2.83 days on average across the total time period.