I’m not sure that Ryan Estrada and Kim Hyun Sook could have written a more appropriate book for these times. We’re getting right into it, so if you don’t want (admittedly, 30 year old history) spoilers, stop reading now, buy this book, and read it instead.

When I was in college, things were happening in South Korea; my political science professor talked about how critically important it was that the first reasonably credible elections in decades were happening, and what led up to it — regular student protests, which had rules:

The students would go out demanding the authoritarian regime step down; the regime would reflexively brand them as Communists and North Korean agents and send out the riot cops with their Darth Vader helmets, truncheons, tear gas, and water cannons. They’d fight for a while, the students would retreat to campus, and that would be it for the day. Get nabbed off campus and you could be disappeared, but like a game of tag, campus was Home Free.

Then one day, the riot cops went onto campus to continue the beatings and arrests and the world started paying more attention. The Olympics were granted to Seoul, the country beyond the students started to join the protests, change happened. The first elections were still won by the members of the regime because the opposition was at a disadvantage (their leaders having only just been freed to start parties and organize), but by 1992, they had prevailed. Korea dismantled the fascist structures that had been in charge for three decades (and completely remade the police), and generally became a better place. Not perfect, but better.

Banned Book Club is the story of what happened in the years before things got better, when the tear gas and beatings, the contrived charges, show trials, and deaths were happening and a large part of the country — most everybody except for those darn students — just sort of agreed not to notice. It had been that way for 20 years, after all, since the military coup back in ’61, and the second coup in ’80 and second coup leader was still in power but he was only fighting against criminals and agitators, right?

And the books they banned, and the students and teachers in prison for reading them, they were all subversives, right?

And the factory workers being forced to work and the President’s friends getting rich, and the critical newspapers being burned to the ground for spreading “lies” about the regime, and the President not caring if anybody believed him or not, that was just how things worked, right?

Right?

Kim Hyun Sook was part of the generation who’d been shielded from what had actually happened until she made it to university, and fell in with students reading Chomsky and Betty Friedan, Locke and Sartre, Marx and Guevara, Simone de Beauvoir and unapproved Jack London (White Fang was okay, The Iron Heel decidedly wasn’t) and watching bootleg VHS tapes of foreign news reports about Korea.

She watched the cop who was assigned to kill stories in the student newspaper that the regime didn’t want published miss the stories that were being passed hand-to-hand; she watched students on government-sponsored scholarships inform on their classmates; she watched fellow protesters get swept up and subjected to state violence with the lucky ones being released days later.

And now, we’re in a place that’s pretty much exactly where Hyun Sook was, only it didn’t take decades for so many in America to become willfully blind to what’s happening. We have the opportunity to be at the point she and her compatriots were at, with maybe the most prescient lesson being: the fight is never over.

See, in 2016, the daughter of the first coup leader (who was eventually assassinated by his own security forces for being too brutal) became President and tried to go back to Dad’s way of doing things; the people of Korea went into the streets, every weekend for months, as many as 10% of the country’s population at any given time, and demanded that she be impeached for her crimes.

It wasn’t just the students, it was too many to ignore, the reformers had done too thorough a job of dismantling the fascist state¹ and they weren’t going back (and, this time, the cops were marching with the protesters). She was removed from office and then charged with bribery, coercion, leaking government secrets, and abuse of power, leading to a conviction, a 25 year prison sentence, and a fine of nearly US$17 million.

Which is what you need to do when there is a man (and later, his daughter) that regards the presidency as his birthright. Or, and Hyun Sook concludes:

The villains of the past are never really gone. Now we have another President Park blacklisting authors, journalists and filmmakers, and trying to ban textbooks that criticize her father’s regime.

But this time when the people rose up, it was not in the shadows. Not just behind closed doors, and not just a handful of them. It was everyone.

People don’t get that organized unless someone is stubborn enough to fight for what’s right, even when no one’s listening.

The lesson is clear — fight with everything you’ve got, and don’t ever think that the defeated would-be Presidents For Life won’t revive with another face. Even when you do win, keep fighting to ensure that the systems are stronger, better, fairer than they were so that the next nascent fascist doesn’t have as much of a foothold of grievance to work with, because there’s always something that needs fixing. And while we’re figuring out how to do all of that, let this coda keep you warm at night:

In March 2017, President Park Geun-hye was impeached, removed from office, and imprisoned for corruption. The final vote was struck by her own judges, many of whom she had personally placed in office. A special election was held, and the new Preisdent was Moon Jae-in.

Can’t imagine why that thought makes me so very happy. Yep, that’s a stumper.

Banned Book Club is based on the lived experiences of Kim Hyun Sook, with actual people being blended into composite characters for privacy and safety². Kim’s husband Ryan Estrada turned Kim’s stories into a story that works in comics. Ko Hyung-ju provided open, appealing art that draws you into the lives of the characters, emphasizing their ordinariness and the shocking treatment they receive for demanding truth. It is available at bookstores everywhere, and should be read and passed to as many people as you possibly can.

Spam of the day:

LETION LED Torch, UV Light 2 in 1 UV Torch Black Light Flashlight with 500LM Highlight & 4 Mode & Waterproof IPX 4 for Pet Clothing Food Fungus Detection/Night Fishing/Travel

Food Fungus? Look, never bring a UV light into your home unless you want to find out exactly how much dandruff, blood, urine, and semen is hanging around.

_______________
¹ After the fall of the military dictatorship, leaders were charged and convicted for their crimes, with the second coup leader — Chun Doo-hwan — ultimately sentenced to death for ordering a massacre of a town¹. He was pardoned by the current President, who was advised by the President-elect, who in turn had been sentenced to death by Chun’s regime 20 years earlier.

² But they’re talking [grin].

Stuff leftover from yesterday, that honestly? Better to put it today. Otherwise, the mass of information would mean something worthwhile would be lost.

• Once upon a time there was a very fun webcomic called Gastrophobia that had three books (currently sold out in physical form, available as ebooks) about an Amazon (Phobia) and her son (Gastro) running around the mythic age of Greece. It was a sitcom, complete with theme song, and it was great.

  And a bit into volume 4, it stopped. But now, in concert with the twelfth anniversary of launch, it’s back, with a story to tell below the update:

  If you’re not in touch with my social media, you’re probably wondering what I’ve been doing all this time.

  WELL, in 2017, three things happened to me:

  • I turned 40 and had a small mid-life crisis.
  • I finally admitted to myself that I’m transgender!
  • Lost most of my stuff in Hurricane Harvey (my home was under water).

  ….
  My name’s Daisy and my pronouns are she/her! Everyone’s been ridiculously supportive and I’m way happier now than I’ve ever been! ?

  Gastrophobia is getting a partial reboot.

  The first 3 volumes are still canon. The 43 story pages I drew from 2015-2016 are retconned. They still exist and can be found here.

  I’m different now and I’m taking the comic in a different direction.

  If you read Gastrophobia in the beforetimes, you know that Daisy McGuire¹ has always been a terrific cartoonist. There’s no better time to hop on the (quoting the character bio here) Barbarian MILF funtimes train than now, complete with a new RSS feed.

  As a side note, the number of folks I know who’ve undergone gender transition has increased a zillion percent over the past 15 years or so, and they’re all people I know through my association with comics. Maybe it’s just the passing of the times, or maybe there’s something about comics and storytelling, the creation of which demands your brain be open to possibilities and what-ifs, which allows one to imagine a different way of being that’s closer to what should be than what you’ve always been told. Good on you, comics, for letting people find themselves and be happy.

• Ryan Estrada is kind of on a roll these days. He’s not even done with the critical and popular acclaim from Banned Book Club (a copy of which I am still waiting on from my local comic shop, on account of Diamond is the worst²) and he’s just dropped another book on us, one that takes an experience from his own youth and turns it into what would have been way cooler:
  

  After literal decades of trying to get it off the ground and months of shipping delays, my dream project is finally out in the world. Student Ambassador: The Missing Dragon is now in bookstores everywhere!

  I’m overjoyed to give kids a multicultural hero who represents his country and does good in the world. Whose superpowers are empathy and active listening.

  And I’m proud he has an odd-couple partner who’s a selfish jerk so that doesn’t get annoying.

  I’m proud to create a world where kids can learn that world leaders aren’t always right, even if they are kinder and gentler than in ours.

  I made the US president in my story latinx as well. Because in fiction, you can do whatever you want and the cops can’t stop you.

  I’m proud that the kid who made a hand-written, leatherbound book about his student ambassador travels in 1997, and dreamed of making a book about what he WISHED the trip had been like finally got his wish.

  One of those nerds is me. Can you find me?
  [photo of actual kid student ambassadors in Sydney, Australia, 1997]

  If this book is a success, I am super excited to jump right into making the next Joseph Bazan mystery, Student Ambassador: The Silver City where they explore the mysterious caves under Zacatecas, Mexico.

  Student Ambassador: The Missing Dragon is written by Ryan Estrada, and illustrated by Axur Eneas. It’s the start of the Iron Circus kids line, and is available starting yesterday. I’ma say go get this one for the overly-enthusiastic and imaginative kid(s) in your life.

Spam of the day:

The CIA has been doing intensive research for the past fifty years researching on what we call so called life. That information has been collected and presented for you here [link] This has been the finding as of seventeen years ago as of today. Now governments and other large organizations have develop technology around these concepts for their own deceptive uses. Soon you will be contacted by other means for counter measures and the part that you play in all this.

I’ll tell you something — this is slightly more plausible than the guy with the broken English and Tagalog accent that called earlier claiming to be Social Security Agent Mike Hammer letting me know my number was being revoked for abuse and fraud. When I pressed one to talk to him, I was instead connected to Agent Katherine (same accent and command of English) who was entirely plussed when I told her my name was Harry Mourningwood.

______________
¹ In accordance with the Fleen Manual of Style, persons who transition will only be referred to by their current name/pronouns once that change is announced, but old posting referring to prior identity will not be altered.

Where necessary, context will be given without using deadnames, as in I had some memorable pub crawls with Daisy McGuire — who at the time used a different name — and other NYC cartoonists in the 2005-2008 timeframe. It was fun.

McGuire’s actually done something similar, comparing original author bios with current author bios from volumes 1, 2, and 3.

² At my suggestion, they’ve opened a merchant account with Ingram, the book distro giant. They may be nearly as much of a monopoly as Diamond is for the comics direct market, but damned if Ingram isn’t an efficient, competent monopoly that believes it can make money by giving stores what they friggin’ ask for instead of jerking them around with perpetual backorders (a lie) and shorted shipments (on a weekly basis). Right now Rick (who owns the store and is a nice guy) is going through all of the previous book orders placed through Diamond, re-requesting them from Ingram, and trying to figure out how to cancel them at Diamond so they don’t show up months or years from now with an invoice that says We finally decided to ship these to you, pay up.

Some new things kicking off, and a very cool thing returning for another go.

• If you’ve read Fleen ever, one indisputable fact will jump out at you: Ryan Estrada doesn’t do things by half measures. We’re on the eve of release of his new collaborative graphic novel, Banned Book Club (co-written by Estrada and his wife, Kim Hyun Sook; art by Ko Hyung-Ju), based on his wife’s experiences in the former South Korean military dictatorship. Not content to rest on any laurels (a mountain of glowing press, and continually-increasing pre-orders of the book count as laurels), Estrada decided to launch his latest project: a podcast of sorts.

  Big deal, I hear you cry, everybody and their dog is startin’ a podcast during quarantimes. To which I reply, a) Estrada’s experience of quarantine is very different from yours and mine, as he and his wife live in Busan, South Korea, which has managed the pandemic better than probably anyplace else on the planet¹ and b) it’s not a podcast. It’s a series of radio plays based on the sequels to A Christmas Carol that Dickens wrote and the world promptly forgot about. Let’s let Estrada tell it himself:

  I’m the new writer/host/director of BeFM Drama!

  I’m turning Charles Dickens’ 22 weird forgotten Christmas Carol sequels into brand new radio plays for Korean radio. Not direct adaptations, but kinda like how Clueless is based on Emma.

  Please enjoy episode 1 of my new radio show!

  This one is about a man who has such a bad day that he wishes he didn’t exist. But he reconsiders his position when he’s tricked into believing he’s already dead.
  https://youtu.be/XFRFP0kkzcs

  Yep, sounds weird. The Riverside Chimes is a bit under 20 minutes, and if you like it, there’s three more stories already posted to the Tubes. And if that doesn’t satisfy you, BeFM Drama has a few dozen audio adaptations of Sherlock Holmes and other classic English language short fiction for your listening pleasure.

• Also kicking off, The Nib is partnering with Reveal, the investigative reporting project from The Center For Investigative Reporting; the new series is called In/Vulnerable, and it’s chronicling the ways that the COVID pandemic is hitting all layers of society, where billionaires are demanding everybody else go back to work with insufficient protections.

  Up today: the story of Manuel, a refugee from Cuba who’s been in prison humane and efficient temporary detention for more than a year, and is watching the threat of the virus creep closer. Whatever your views on immigration, you cannot possibly argue that fleeing a repressive government (it’s even one that Screamy Orange Racist Grandpa hates!) is a crime merits being thrown into inhumane conditions until a deadly disease kills you.

  And if you do argue that? Do me a favor and leave my page and never return. I make it a policy not to consort with sociopaths.

• Lastly, the :01 Books virtual comics show, Comics Relief, has announced sign-ups for its second session:
  

  Comics fans, mark your calendars for Comics Relief: June 2020 on Saturday, 6/6 from 12pm-4pm ET! Click here to register for the next virtual :01 festival: https://bit.ly/2WFlTcs #ComicsRelief

  Four sessions this time, with a discussion of space comics at noon EDT (Maris Wicks! Jim Ottaviani! Alison Wilgus!), a discussion of Maker Comics at 1:00pm (Falynn Koch! JP Coovert! Sarah Myer! Robyn Chapman!), a discussion of documentary comics at 2:00pm (Box Brown! Calista Brill!), and a talk about whatever’s on their minds at 3:00pm (Clint McElroy! Leuyun Pham! Mark Siegel!). Sign up at the link above, and I’ll see you in the conference on the 6th.

Spam of the day:

New project started to be available today, check it out [redacted].com/?renee

I’m including you because you listed out a series of porn genre terms, and one of them was tannie. Assuming this is a new genre based on, I dunno, well tanned people gettin’ it on, okay for giving people what they want I guess?

But if you managed to misspell the derogatory term for trans folks, then you get double my normal dose of contempt, which I assure you is both well merited and considerable.

_______________
¹ Which is what happens when your country demands competency from its leaders, and learned the lessons of the SARS outbreak and determined to never fail in pandemic response again.

Busy EMT shift on Tuesday night, including my first definite (as in, previous positive test) COVID-19 patient; with the decontamination and sanitization required, everything takes about twice as long as it does normally. I am short on sleep and despairing for the safety of everybody working the healthcare end of this crisis¹, but at least there’s some good stuff happening in Webcomickia:

• Rich Stevens often reacts to uncertainty by throwing himself into merch design and/or giving away stuff. He can’t really get out and work, but he’s got a bunch of envelopes, a bunch of stamps, and a bunch of stickers ’round the house, and figures giving them away will while away some hours. Details here, first come first served.
• Ryan Estrada has had the great good luck to live for a number of years in Busan, South Korea, a country that knows how to treat pandemics — particularly the respiratory kind — seriously. COVID-19 may have delayed his next book (see Monday’s post re: Iron Circus), but it’s about to come out and his co-author/wife, Kim Hyun Sook, have made a comic about their experience making the graphic novel.

  In case you didn’t know, Kim has had experience living through an authoritarian regime, having grown up in South Korea in its military dictatorship period; that time in her life is the basis of Banned Book Club, as she and her friends defied a repressive government to read forbidden books. If the thought of Estrada living in a society that’s functional in the face of pandemic threats isn’t interesting, maybe learning from Kim how to undermine the grip of a jumped-up authoritarian with a cabal of noncompetent sycophant enablers will be useful to you at this time.

• We’re light on specifics at the moment, but :01 Books (a place where everybody there is just the best person) have announced a virtual book festival for a week from Saturday. On 18 April from 11:00am to 5:00pm EDT (8:00am to 2:00pm PDT), creators will come together to show how the comics you (and they) love are made. Info here, register here (they’ll get back to you with further info), and we’ll share details in the coming days as they’re released.

Spam of the day:

Introducing the multi-state concealed carry certification. One ONLINE ONLY Certification is changing the way Americans get multi-state concealed carry permits.

Oh yes, please, all you gunhumpers please give this scammer your money for a piece of paper and try to conceal-carry in the state of New Jersey. No, don’t look up our laws, or how multi-state concealed carry isn’t a thing, just do it and see what happens.

And be sure to do it where there’s lots of cameras, because I can’t wait to watch that video on YouTube.

_______________
¹ And let me be clear, I am doing this once a week, with sufficient PPE; if that ceases to be the case, I will not put my crew in harm’s way because nothing about being an EMT requires you to commit suicide, especially when you’re doing it for free. So for the sake of whatever you hold dear, keep your ass at home, no exceptions, until we’ve got a handle on this shit.

I myself am too spiteful to die in a pandemic that Donald Trump is mismanaging out of a combination of ignorance, stupidity, and malice (no matter what, I will live long enough to shit on his grave and to see his spawn and also Jared sent to prison for the rest of their lives) but others won’t be so indestructible. Stay home and leave the good masks for those doing the work.

I’ve been thinking about memoir for a bit, which I’m bringing up because today’s review is of an illustrated memoir, Almost American Girl by Robin Ha. Let’s talk generally for a bit before we get to the specifics of this book.

The thing about memoirs is that they could be about anybody, but we don’t want to read (or hear … more on that in a moment) about just anybody; there are lots of anybodies that just aren’t going to be interesting, even though their personal story isn’t all that different from other anybodies that are fascinating. So what’s the distinction?

I’m thinking here about 20 years back, when my local public radio station (WNYC in New York) shifted around Saturday programming and eliminated two programs I really liked in favor of one I hated almost immediately. Satellite Sisters was pitched as five sisters who lived in different parts of the world having a conversation; it existed primarily because one of the sisters was an executive at Nike and friends with the President of WNYC, and secondarily so that they could talk to each other for an hour and not have to pay international long distance.

It wasn’t good. They sounded stilted, scripted, engineered to unnatural smoothness, and never made a compelling argument as to why, exactly, I should care about any of them. A couple of them barely said anything, even when they were supposed to be in the hosting seat. It was real-time memoir that was a failure. Although the program persisted on some public radio stations, it was removed quickly from WNYC because everybody listening hated it. I understand it’s since become a podcast because of course it has.

Now let’s move from the question Why would anybody want to listen to five sisters around the world talk about what’s happened to them this week? to Why would anybody want to listen to three brothers from West Virginia talk about … well, anything and everything, really? Because any random podcast that involves the McElroy family succeeds where Satellite Sisters failed because of what they don’t do.

My Brother, My Brother, And Me is defined by a willingness on the part of Justin, Travis, and Griffin to let themselves look like a goofball, an idiot, or even a jerk instead of trying to convince the world you’re somehow important because you’ve got their eyeballs or earholes. They talk over each other, they crack up at stupid shit, they definitely do not sound over-engineered or scripted. The Satellite Sisters were trying to declare relevance because they had a program, the Good, Good Boys became relevant because people wanted to listen to their program. The Sisters were wannabe influencers before we knew that was a thing, and the McElroys (and their dad, their wives, and their sisters in law) are people that we want to hang out with because they crack us up with the most ridiculous nonsense and they exude authenticity.

On the scale of Satellite Sisters to MBMBAM, Robin Ha is definitely a one-person McElfamily.

Okay, that’s a dangerous statement (and this is where the possible spoilers begin); what I mean by that is, even in a medium that requires multiple passes to create, with editing at each stage to refine the words and pictures, Almost American Girl is interested in telling an authentic, non-focus-grouped, un-optimally-engineered story, one that only she could tell, and inviting us along for the ride.

And the most important part of her upended life isn’t Young Robin, it’s Mom.

Robin’s mother — who isn’t even referred to by a given name until the acknowledgments, because you don’t talk about your mom by name — is many things, and Ha is willing to show them all. She’s strong willed and also insecure; meticulous and also impatient; generous and also dictatorial; willing to sacrifice everything for her daughter and also a stereotypical demanding mother. Oh, yes, and she has absolute terrible judgment in picking romantic partners, and a stubbornness that makes for a low chance of success in dealing with a 14 year old daughter who is convinced that she (the mom) has just ruined her (the daughter’s) life.

Thing is, 14 year old Robin isn’t far wrong about that. She and her single (and unmarried — still a viciously taboo situation in Korea) have a pretty good life in Korea; Robin’s got friends she loves, a routine, and she and her mom are taking on the world. But mom’s met a recently-divorced Korean man, who’s split from his wife in LA, each taking one of their teen daughters, and currently living close to his brother’s family (including their mother) in Alabama. Robin’s mom decides they’ll take a vacation to Alabama to visit, but doesn’t explain why they’re visiting this particular family.

Then she says they’re staying. She’s getting married, Robin (who doesn’t speak English) will leave behind her friends, her school, her culture (including pop culture) and start over with a stepfather and step sister and step cousins, aunt, uncle, and grandmother she’s never met. All in all, the months that Robin spends miserable and crying at her suddenly reversed life, inability to communicate, new experience of racism, and a new quasi-sister that clearly loathes her is a pretty reasonable reaction.

But, as the back cover blurb tells us, things get better thanks to a comic-making class that Robin’s mother finds. And because we live in a world of irony, as Robin’s life improves, her mom’s starts spiraling in. Her new husband isn’t a good businessman (whereas mom was pretty damn successful back in Korea). He heads to LA to try to launch a deli business, and the in-laws pressure mom to join him. Although she and Robin are just starting to acclimate to Alabama, he’s insisting they relocate, and the cultural norms re: families and who’s in charge butt heads with a very independent woman. And for the second time in a year, Robin finds herself moving to someplace new.

Thing is, this one turns out pretty okay. They land in northern Virginia, where the families of embassy staff live; Robin gets into an ESL class for the first time since arriving in America. There are other Koreans here! And comics! She enters high school and makes friends and finds a place of balance. We knew it was going to be okay because the back cover said so, but Ha’s got the skills to make a story that could happen to anybody into one that isn’t about just anybody, particularly because of one last twist that makes it into the book.

Having finally found a path to assimilation in her new country and culture (this is where most memoirs would end), Ha tacks on a trip back to Korea seven years later, as a college student. Her high school friends are with her, they meet up with the friends she left behind, and it’s the World Cup on top of everything else.

But.

Coming back to Korea after so long away, she’s looking at the culture with a fresh set of eyes. The casual sexism and expectations of women to serve male friends and relatives, the omnipresent plastic surgery, the toxicity of certain norms all hit in ways that her middle school friends and high school friends who have been back and forth aren’t noticing. She’s even re-evaluating the bullshit experiences she and her mother suffered in her childhood, and realizing that when her mother blithely declared that America was a better place for her to grow up than Korea, there may have been reasons for that. That introspection at the end, finding a balance between her mother’s flaws and her mother’s wisdom, and wrapping it all up in a personal Hero’s Journey return to home but finding it changed? That’s a damn good story.

More importantly, finding a way to honestly portray how your mom ruined your life, but maybe didn’t, but kinda definitely did maybe, while getting your very proud, very stubborn mother to (eventually) engage and participate and agree Yeah, that’s what happened? That’s a damned good storyteller, and that’s what makes memoir work.

Almost American Girl by Robin Ha released at the end of January. It’s available wherever books are sold, and will make an excellent addition to your coronavirus isolation reading list. Enjoy while reflecting on how Korea is putting the rest of the world — the US in particular — to shame with its handling of the pandemic.

Spam of the day:

Here’s a handy video that explains how to boost your immune system so you can protect yourself from the coronavirus

Okay, you sent this on 6 March, before the panademic really started to hammer us, but still: Fuck all the way off, then fuck off some more, you ghoul.

Friday. Friday! And one where it appears Spring may finally be here, no take-backs, at long last, and you know what that means. Mailbag roundup!

• Jim Zub, I’m of the opinion, can write any kind of comic story he sets his mind to. We’re nearing the wrap-up of the big, months-long, weekly Avengers story he co-wrote, and that means it’s time to build up excitement for his next project. Not satisfied with taking on a major IP, not satisfied with partnering with well-known, best-seller co-authors, he’s decided the appropriate challenge is to meld together two major IPs and partner up with a world-renowned author:
  

  Pat Rothfuss (New York Times Best-Selling author of The Kingkiller Chronicles), Troy Little (multiple Eisner-nominated cartoonist), and [Zub] are unleashing a love letter to gaming glory and nihilistic dimension hopping with RICK AND MORTY VS DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, a 4-issue mini-series launching in August.

  Dear glob, that’s more nerderies in one spot than I can count and they’re launching it at GenCon. Normally in these situations, you’d be able to tell which author was taking which part of the story; Zub’s the big D&D comics author, but Rothfuss is famous for sword&sorcery work as well, so they’ve both got that part covered. Then again, Zub’s hilarious, and so is Rothfuss, so there’s no clear delineation. Honestly, the only thing that surprised me is that Sam Sykes and Chuck Wendig aren’t in on this thing.

• Ryan Estrada’s gotten some traction out of his account calling out bad attempts to screw artists, For Exposure, and by traction I mean abusive emails and death threats from people who are mad about being called out, even though he never reveals their names. Of course, he’s got the love and gratitude of the creative community for calling out this crap, so that’s good. And now he’s got a wider audience than a couple days ago, because the BBC decided to send him some love:
  

  Creative industries are already cutthroat and budding artists often leap at the chance to get their work in front of as many people as possible.

  “I was very confused as a young artist,” [Estrada] says. “I had all of these people telling me that they were just small companies, so they couldn’t afford to pay me, but could offer me exposure so that big companies would want to hire me.”

  Many told him that he was lucky to be getting the opportunity at all.

  “I realized that I had to be my own advocate for my work, and figure out a way to make a living.”

  The Twitter account struck a chord with creatives around the world. Since he opened the account five years ago, it has grown to over 167,000 followers.

  Even better, Format Magazine contacted Estrada about his ongoing project (five years and counting), and they commissioned Emmie Tsumura, to do imaginary portraits of some of the most egregious time-and-art leeches. She produced a gallery collection last year. Heck if I remember seeing anything about it. But the BBC noticed it, and now we all get to enjoy. Even better, this means that an artist got paid for something that arose out of For Exposure. First time for everything.

Okay, almost the weekend. Enjoy the heck out of it.

Spam of the day:
But I have big titties and fuck the shit out of you. try me
I’m trying to figure out which missing word(s) will make that whole offer a little less creepy. Not succeeding.

Not to mention the calibre of their attacks on him; in this case you have on the one hand Ryan Estrada, world traveler, bon vivant, endless creators of [web]comics, films, podcasts, radio drama, nonradio drama approximately legitimate theater, and all-around cool guy.

On the other hand, a bunch of whiny you’re oppressing me by trying to be a professional artist instead of giving me what I want for free and anyway it’s totally simple and I could do better than that but I don’t wanna chuds.

Estrada has been holding this mindset up to general ridicule for several years now via the For Exposure Twitter account, where he is scrupulously careful to attack the behavior, not the person. Everybody that demands art for free and berates artists for (gasp!) wanting money for little things like groceries and rent has their message shared, but carefully anonymized; Estrada doesn’t want the internet mob to form, and has stated he’ll close down For Exposure should that happen.

I think he might be reconsidering the policy:

The person(s) behind the scraper site, perhaps not appreciating the irony in asking for money to fulfill the holy mission of punishing artists that ask for money in exchange for their labor, has/have proved to be unreasonable; creators that attempt to follow legal processes to assert control over their copyrighted material find their emails posted for griefers to spam for months. Lacking anything better to do, they’ve decided that Estrada is the World’s Worst Person¹ and subject to their most withering insult.

Ah, yes. Cuck. The opprobrium of choice for GamerGaters, pseudoironic alt-righters, and outright white supremacists. I suspect that Estrada is so cut to the quick that he has retreated to a closest in shame, wondering why his wife prefers those specimens of obvious genetic quality to him.

Oh, no, wait, he’s working with PayPal to get their accounts suspended. It’ll be a game of Whack-a-Dipshit, but once it happens, others will join in. There will always be somebody pissed off enough in future to make a complaint to the financial providers, and the malefactors may learn the hard way that getting a PayPal account revoked for being a massive internet jerk carries over into other parts of their existence. Plenty of legit creators have had their PayPal accounts frozen or seized outright because of overzealous policies that misconstrue freelancing with nefarious endeavours; I can’t wait to see what happens when people are found to be engaging in fraudulent behavior.

And because Estrada deserves far better than to be associated with these bottom dwellers, let’s end on a positive note. As mentioned previously, Estrada and his wife Kim Hyun Sook are writing a graphic novel (to be illustrated by @kevin9143, whose actual human name I am not able to locate) about her experience defying South Korea’s military dictatorship by reading banned books.

A new Twitter account, Banned Book Clubs, will follow Estrada as he reads all the banned books she read back then and adding sassy commentary on them. So far: What Is History by EH Carr², The Iron Heel by Jack London, and Two Treatises Of Government by John Locke. Just the sort of thing any aspiring dictator would want to keep the populace from reading; not saying that there’s a pressing need for any USAians to start skimming, but maybe not the worst idea, either.

Spam of the day:

DATE BEAUTIFUL RUSSIAN WOMEN

Pretty sure one of those women you’re promising I can date tonight is a Kardashian, and another is Denise Richards in the role of the worst Bond Girl ever, nuclear physicist Dr Christmas Jones. Try harder, scam-mongers.

_______________
¹ He’s not; I’d be willing to bet that in the competition for that title, Ryan will be coming in last, tied with Mr Rogers, Tom Hanks, and Mr Rogers again.

² Per Estrada: 22 people were arrested, beaten, tortured and imprisoned for reading this book in the Burim Book Club case.

Phonetics! It’s basically enough to drive all reason from the language center of your brain! Let’s get some quick items out of the way.

• The Beguiling is known for a few things: being one of the finest comics shops in the Western World (even if longtime manager Chris Butcher has moved on), being closely associated with TCAF (founding showrunner: Chris Butcher … coincidence!?), and having a kick-ass holiday party. Guess what? Holiday time!
  

  OH HEY It’s almost time for our annual Dinosaur Comics/Beguiling Holiday party!!!
  Special guests Nicholas Gurewitch (debuting his new book!) and Erica Henderson!
  More info/rsvp here: https://tinyurl.com/dinoholiday

  Whoa, hey, new book from Nicholas Gurewitch? That would be Notes On A Case Of Melancholia, as previously noted. Those of you in The TO on Monday, 11 December, drop in and have a damn good time.

• Twofer from C Spike Trotman: First up, the last Iron Circus Kickstart of the year is live, and it’s for some good old-fashioned smut. Crossplay by Niki Smith has comfortably cruised past its goal and is on its way, with physical books available down to the US$15 level.

  Second up: Iron Circus will be delving into autobio comics in 2018, with the amazing true story of students opposing a military dictatorship via the power of … reading? Oh, and it’s by Ryan Estrada:

  I am so excited to be writing this book with my amazing badass wife Hyun Sook, and art by @kevin9143

  People that weren’t alive then don’t realize how dictatorial South Korea was for about 40 years. I was studying national security politics with a guy that used to teach at the Army War College in the late 80s, and we paid a lot of attention to the utterly undemocratic (yet oddly rules-bound) military government in Seoul¹. Heck, it wasn’t until 1998 that a peaceful change of government between parties took place. This is gonna be a good read.

Spam of the day:

She ain’t the hottest, But She’ll Meet You Tonight

Congratulations, I think that’s the first time I’ve gotten a spam that simultaneously negs and slut-shames. Asshole.

_______________
¹ There was a ritual to the college student protests — they’d get noisy in the streets, the water cannon and tear gas and beatings would start, they’d run back to the campus gates, and the cops would stop there. One day the cops didn’t stop and continued their beatings on the campus grounds, and that was one of the events that forced popular change.

Okay, it’s day after a holiday, but that’s not why I’m late. I’m late because I spent the day yesterday under the weather
and I’m just now getting caught up. But I couldn’t let these stories — some days old! — go by.

• Spike — we’re done with the initial C, we’re done with the Trotman, we all know who I’m talking about — has launched the latest Iron Circus Comics anthology of wonder over Kickstarter way. Tim’rous Beastie, a collection about little anthropomorphic critters having adventures — was announced in December, went through submissions in January, and per Spike’s Twitterfeed, has all of its contributor’s work finished and received by editor Amanda Lafrenais to do her magic.

  Nothing left to do but fund the printing bill on that sum’bitch, a process that started Monday night, and which is presently (as of this writing) 72% complete. Per the FFFmk2, look for a final funding of US$40-58K, or 2x to 2.5x goal, more or less.

  Uncharacteristically for Iron Circus, this is a lean campaign with only three pledge levels (PDF, PDF+book, early bird PDF+book with discounted shipping) and one stretch goal (a fancier cover at 125% of goal) along with the customary unlimited artist bonuses (US$10/page for every US$10K over goal). Evan Dahm, Ryan Estrada & Rachel Dukes, KC Green, Abby Howard & Eli Church¹, Sloane Leong & Lauren H, David McGuire, Jemma Salume, and Jessi Zabarsky, along with Lafreais and Spike.

• As long as we’re on Kickstarts, the Foglios are Kicking the newest Girl Genius collection, with the customary soft launch (they went live on 27 June, but didn’t start talking about it until the next day, and only notified past backers several days after), short run (18 days), and fast turnaround (rewards at due to go out in September).

  It appears to be somewhat simpler than the past campaign or two — the fancier rewards are things they’ve done before and have a decent idea of what production times will be — and hopefully the efforts of putting together thousands of sometimes complex fulfillment packages won’t drive them insane.

• 2017 is going to go down as the year of finishes; so far we’ve seen Dr McNinja and Octopus Pie conclude well-loved decade-long runs, and there’s at least one more on the horizon. Sometime this year, John Allison will be putting up the chairs of the ScaryGoVerse and turning off the lights:
  

  Hard Yards will be the last story set in the little Tackleford universe we’ve been visiting nearly every day since 1998. While I still love the characters, I feel like I’ve done almost all I can with them, and for the last two years I’ve been trying to find ways to create a satisfying end to things, or a possible way to continue that felt somehow the same, but new. In the end I’ve had to settle on ending things.

  I don’t know exactly when the last strip will be, just that it will be before the end of 2017, so I’ll let you know when we get into the final straight. In the meantime, as you were.

  We’ve come a long way since Rich, Shelley, and Tim first appeaared; it’ll be nineteen years that the every-widening gyre of characters centered on the ginger ninja have been engaged in their wordplay and skylarking. The good, the bad, the indifferent (frequently the same character, just at different times) have had their time and if we don’t get Britain’s weirdest little town, at least we’ll still have Giant Days (as of today, 28 issues and better each month)².

  I won’t weep; it’s better for Tackleford to end without diminishing. If Allison finds down the road that he has more stories to tell from that end of his imagination, the weirdness magnet that is Tackleford will still be there³. It’s harder still to be sad when one realizes what’s coming next: Desmond comics, from Desmond Comics [SFW, but contains Desmond].

  So if you happen to be in San Diego in a couple of weeks, do look Mr Allison (and Mr Fishman) up and thank him for all the weird times; me, I’m clearing a spot in the links list over there to the side for whatever comes next, because it’s going to be great.

Spam of the day:

Final Notice Regarding Your Payment Info

[next day]

Final Notice Regarding Your Payment Info

[next day]

Final Notice Regarding Your Payment Info

I’m starting to think that “Greg” doesn’t actually understand the world “final”.

_______________
¹ I tried to find a website for Church, but the name may well be un-Googleable. Searching for eli church cartoonist brought up a lot of serviceable cartoons featuring Noah’s Ark.

² Although Giant Days would seemingly have its own expiration date: if I understand correctly, the British university system is built around a three-year course of study, and Esther, Daisy, Susan, and Ed have already seen their second Christmas together.

³ And Lor’, what I wouldn’t give to see Shauna and Lottie grown to adulthood some day.

Readers may recall a ToS change at the once-relevant, now mostly moribund LiveJournal a couple months back that said any postings had to comply with Russia’s draconian internet content laws, the enforced part of which indicates that acknowledging the existence and humanity of LGBTQ folks is injurious to morals and children. Buncha folks nope’d out¹ and closed their accounts; I bothered myself to write my first LJ post in eight and a half years and gave ’em the finger².

As gestures go, it was slightly satisfying and probably accomplished nothing; two and a half months later, it’s still there. But what if you had the ability to not only post in protest, but to do so under the official stamp of approval of LiveJournal itself?

Enter Ryan Estrada:

I hope this isn’t the worst mistake I ever made. http://frankthecomic.livejournal.com/25276.html

Most of the post is text in an image, so allow me to transcribe:

What do you do if a site you once loved is used by the Russian government to silence critics and punish journalists …

… but they forgot to take away the permissions and login credentials that allow you to post comics to their site featuring their mascot?

If you want to find out, you may want to click the link above while the loophole and link still work. [emphasis original]

Let’s be clear, the loophole that Estrada is mentioning is not just the credentials, but the fact that his you get to make comics featuring Frank the Goat contract was never canceled, meaning he has the legal right to do what he’s done. It’s not vandalism; it’s official LJ content.

As of this writing, approximately two and a half hours after Estrada posted the link, the comic is still up. And just in case LJ or some censorious thug at the Kremlin decides to take it down, I added it to the Wayback Machine a little while ago, where it will live forever.

In the meantime, spread the link.

_______________
¹ From Matt Inman’s comic The Terrible And Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distances, which has spawned an entire series of organized runs.

² And in case LJ ever makes good on killing my account for my transgression, here it is at the Wayback Machine.