Only tangentially related to webcomics but I regret nothing, except that I wish I could have found a trophy that was even more sarcastically small. Onwards.

• She said it wasn’t going to be a regular comic, just a one-off gag sketch, but Abby Howard just could help returning to the idea of giving your pets People Juice and sending them to school. School 4 Petz is small, pure gag cartooning, often without text, each a perfect distillation of funny. Lately, dreaded continuity has snuck in with Lil’ Paulie, and the desire to worldbuild has manifested.

  Since I think that Howard will keep to her promise to not make School 4 Petz into a thing, I’d say bookmark that Twitter thread, as I also think that now and again Howard will have a fleeting idea and half an hour later there will be another wonderful three or four panels. Plus, you know, if she ever did make School 4 Petz into a thing, there are artists out there who make bank with the Anthrocon crowd and catering to furries in exchange for cash is way more productive and ethical than, say, involving oneself in cryptoart Ponzi schemes.

• With vaccine distribution ramping up (something like a quarter of adults in the US have had at least one shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, and the J&J single-administration vaccine is just starting to roll out), people are naturally looking forward to what the social aspects of life will look like when it’s safe to gather in groups again.

  If you forced me to make my best prediction, I’d say today — knowing that everything could change tomorrow — that the end of summer would probably support the holding of reduced-capacity cons. 100,000+ people together for four-five days? No. But a space that held that many people allowing for 50K or so, I think that might work.

  The megacons of the Spring and Summer will probably not happen in their traditional form this year either, but the smaller festival-type gatherings? Not MoCCA in April, but I’d say better than even odds on SPX in September. The SDCC-alike in November seems like a safe bet, too. However, I will absolutely never criticize organizers for playing it safe because a) we just don’t know, and b) they have to make their best decisions based on the best information available months in advance.

  Thus, the announcement that CXC will go virtual again this year, with exhibitor applications available starting tomorrow. From Boneville, which has the news in advance of the CXC page:

  Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s expo will be an online showcase with programming track that will air primarily on a CXC Discord channel and potentially other CXC streaming platforms. CXC will not charge a tabling fee for the expo.

  Those accepted as CXC exhibitors will work with CXC to provide programming that will air on Discord and other channels during the weekend of the show. CXC will provide training and support on using Discord and will also provide online support available throughout the weekend of the show. Additionally, CXC may also request that exhibitors participate in additional panels or programs during the show weekend. These programs may be scheduled in advance, and participation is optional. Honoraria will be paid to all exhibitors participating in programming, whether it is a panel, presentation, or Discord event.

  As with prior years, CXC’s exhibitors will be chosen via a juried selection process. We will notify those selected via email, and have a waiting list for those not selected.[emphasis original]

  That’s how you do it, and can I say it’s beyond past time for comics conventions to compensate those on panels and programming. If there’s not the cost of badges/travel to provide, then payment is the right thing to do, even if it’s a modest amount.

  Once things get back to in-person, this idea should be retained and spread — sure, the established shows will provide travel, lodging, and appearance fees for the biggest guests, but if you’re providing programming you should get something as well. Props to the showrunners in Columbus (Tom Spurgeon would be proud), and hopefully everybody else will get with the idea.

  The exhibitor application for CXC 2021 will be linked at the show’s blog starting tomorrow.

Spam of the day:

Impossibile trovare l’indirizzo di posta elettronica immesso. Verificare l’indirizzo di posta elettronica del destinatario e provare a inviare di nuovo il messaggio. Se il problema persiste, contattare il supporto tecnico.

Darn. Looks like I won’t get to carefully consider your offer (in Italian) about getting Bitcoin worth 100,000 Euro. Darn.

For anybody that pays attention to Young Adult and Middle Grade books (and gosh, can you pay attention to [web]comics and not pay attention to YA and MG?), there was a lot of chatter in your social media feeds, as the American Library Association Midwinter meeting is where the awards for the best of media for youth are presented. The most prestigious awards are the Newbery Medal (for most outstanding contribution to children’s literature) and the Caldecott Medal (for the most distinguished American picture book for children), but there are a whole swathe of what are properly termed the Youth Media Awards, including the Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature, Sydney Taylor Book Award (for books and teens that authentically portray the Jewish experience) and the American Indian Youth Literature Award (awarded in even-numbered years).

And anybody that reads this page knows that comics have been making deep inroads into the realm of literary awards, and the YMAs are no exception. We’ll start with Michaela Goade’s Caldecott for her work illustrating We Are Water Protectors (words by Carole Lindstrom) — a book that’s already been recognized with the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, is a Kirkus Prize finalist, and was listed as a best book of the year for the New York Public Library, School Library Journal, NPR, and Publishers Weekly¹. It’s been my pleasure to know Goade (how many times do I have to tell you how much Comics Camp enriches lives?) and to become familiar with her work, and I cannot think of a more deserved recognition.

But let us note that other [web]comics folk are all over the YMA categories, and I recognize that I’ve probably missed some here and there — Gene Yang’s absolutely stellar Dragon Hoops is Printz Honor Book², Displacement by Kiku Hughes was an APALA Honor Book³. I also noticed Kent State: Four Dead In Ohio by Derf Backderf as one the recipients of the Alex Awards, which are given to ten books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults.

I would be remiss not to note that multiple wins by All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys’ Soccer Team, which is one of five Newbery Honor books, one of three Sibert⁴ Honor books, and a finalist for the YALSA Award For Excellence In Nonfiction. The full list of winners and honorees can be found here [PDF], and you can find the full presentation for replay here [A/V]. Fleen congratulates all the winners, but reserves the right to give Goade the biggest high-five the next time we see her.

In other news of good work:

• Julia Kaye would like you know that her second book, My Life In Transition, a collection of her autobio comics (a sampling of which can be found here) is about to release. It’ll be nearly 200 pages of comics goodness, go for US$14.99, and will be out on 16 February, so get your pre-orders in now, if you please.
• If you read Skin Horse — and if you don’t, why the hell don’t you? — you could tell that the story is building up to a finish. It’s been thirteen years since I recommended you read it from the very first strip, and rarely have I been so correct; but all good things come to an end, and yesterday Shaenon Garrity⁵ and Jeffrey C Wells⁶ made it official that the wrap-up is coming this year.

  Ish.

  Maybe.

  It’s flexible.

  Look, the story is gonna go where it’s gonna go, plus Wells has to figure out where to shoehorn my ass into the narrative on account of I splurged for one of the We Write You Into The Comic tiers on their latest book-kicker because I think I knew this might be my last chance. The story has taken wide digressions and loops from its original plans — go back through the archives, hit all the Sunday process strips, and see how many times Garrity and Wells say This started off as something completely different or We just couldn’t work this in so we dropped it over the past baker’s dozen of years — while still remaining true to the vision that was there from the beginning⁷.

  And having tortured the English language to the breaking point in that last sentence, I’ll just remind you — it’s never to late to do an archive trawl and get in on a great story. Join us now, so we can all be weepy together later when it’s done.

Spam of the day:

Hey, I just opened a hydroponic hemp farm here in Miami, Florida. It’s the first of it’s kind of this size. I was wondering if you would be interested in writing an article about our farm to help us or if you offer paid advertisement articles on your website?

Hey, Box? I think this is yours and came to me by accident.

_______________
¹ It’s not hard to imagine that if it were an even-numbered year, We Are Water Keepers may have taken the American Indian Youth Literature Award for the very best writing and illustrations by and about Native Americans and Indigenous peoples of North America. Lindstrom (a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe) and Goade (a member of the Tlingit and Haida peoples of Alaska) drew on their own traditions, and those of the original peoples from across the continent.

² The Michael L Printz Award recognizes the best book written for teens strictly on literary merit; the award went to Everything Sad Is Untrue (a true story), and Dragon Hoops was one of four additional honorees.

³ The sole honoree alongside winner This Light Between Us in the Youth Literature category. I never did get a review of Displacement written as it fell during a personally bad time last year, but it’s a hell of a good account of generational trauma and memory set against the crime perpetrated against Japanese-Americans in World War II.

⁴ Given to the authors(s) and illustrator(s) of the most distinguished informational book published in the United States in English.

⁵ Mistress of Funk and Tiki, and Nexus Of All Webcomics Realities, Greater San Andreas Fault Regional Division.

⁶ A sharp writer in a flat cap who keeps a pretty low profile, actually.

⁷ Makeouts and animals in hats. It’s the highest of high concepts.

Boy, 2020 is the season for long-ago strips to come back. We already saw the return of Dr Kathy Peterson’s Kidnapped By Gnomes, which was on the downswing at the dawn of the last decade. About the time taht KGB was 2.54 centimetering towards hiatus, Bob Scott was launching Molly And The Bear, about which I said:

[I]t occupies a spot midway between Little Dee (in that a kid and an animal interact in an all-ages appropriate manner) and (of all things) the Least I Could Do Beginnings strips on Sundays (which have a very similar, ’60s-era gag cartoon feel to the artwork).

Turns out that since that day eleven and a half years ago (!), Scott has continued with the strip, although it went on several lengthy hiatuses and less-than-regular periods of updating, ironically right around the time of that post. But it’s been publishing at least 5 days a week (sometimes 6, and often 7) since November of 2018 (although much of that was curated reruns; the current run of new strips goes back to August of 2019). There was a strip collection in 2016 under the old title and a new one is a-bornin’ under the strips current title, Bear With Me. From an email from Mr Scott:

My Bear With Me webcomic has a new strip compilation book being published by Hermès Press that will be out January 2021. This is the second book.

The book is currently in pre-order at a US$10 discount off the US$60 price; considering it’s a 250+ page hardcover and Hermès concentrates on archival-quality reprints of classic strips, that somewhat steep price looks justified. If you know somebody that’s got a liking for the classic comic strip laugh-chuckles, take a run through the archives (starting here) and decide if a few zillion strips will keep your loved one busy and indoors until we’ve got a handle on the pandemic.

In other news that’s about as far from the Scott’s strip as it is possible to get and still be in webcomics, I was mightily intrigued by something Matthew Nolan said in the news below today’s Oh Joy, Sex Toy. A fair amount of it was about some Numberwang he and Erika Moen have run on their latest Kickstarter, which has led to a pay bump for their guest contributors:

From now on, we’ll be paying folks $140 a page (each comic is 4-5 pages long), and $160 a page for returning artists. As always, all the work done for OJST is creator-owned, so artists keep all the rights to their work. It’s still a long way from a professional Marvel or DC rate, but we’re still pretty proud. For just two nerds running a lil ol sex-ed webcomic, the idea that we can now pay $700-$800 for a comic is amazing.

It might not be Marvel/DC money (or heck, it might be), but considering some of the downright exploitative rates I’ve seen some of the mid- and small-size publishers offer, it’s laudable. But the intriguing part isn’t that Moen & Nolan are awesome people who are doing their damndest to support the community in a rent-and-groceries way; it’s an almost throwaway addendum in two lines:

With that in mind, we are constantly hiring for guest comics.
More of a hubaballoo to come about that in the next few days =)

Creators, I’m going to say that it’s worth your while to keep an eye on Nolan and/or Moen’s social media accounts. When they mention the possibility of a hubaballoo, I start paying attention.

Spam of the day:

Good day my friend I see you moving around my house. You looks nice ;). Do you would like to meet?

Is this some kind of scam trying to say my house is your house? Because this house comes with a deer problem in the backyard and a greyhound that is a butt sometimes.

Okay, let me be clear for a moment– change purely for the sake of change isn’t a good thing. Change purely for the sake of change is why I work for a corporation that, approximately every 18 months, reorganizes itself from top to bottom, leaving tens of thousands of people in dozens of countries unsure sure of exactly who they work for or what the purpose of their organization is, for no good reason whatsoever¹. The work is something I’m very skilled at and enjoy, the salary and benefits are good, and the checks don’t bounce is literally the extent of why I work there, because there is no broader sense of mission or purpose that will be retained 18 months from now and I’ve opted out of even trying to pretend to care².

But change that improves upon the stale or inappropriate, that updates the old in favor of something better? That’s necessary; it’s why every five years, there are new protocols for CPR, as we figure out with empirical evidence what works and what doesn’t, stop doing things that are harmful, and iterate our way to practices that are better.

All of which is to say, it’s been two weeks since we learned that Mark Trail has a new dad, and today’s the day that the strip switches to new creator Jules Rivera (the latest in editor Tea Fougner’s webcomics-originating strip-assumers). The regular readers of Mark Trail were largely caught unawares, judging by the comments section under today’s strip, and it is hilarious.

All of these hidebound folks lamenting that the strip won’t look anachronistic any longer, decrying that it’ll now be written and drawn by a woman (gasp!) of color (double gasp!!), and therefore suck and they’re quitting right now.

They don’t know what they’re going to be missing:

The opening story arc has no less than five boat explosions.

If that’s their idea of ruination, I’m sorry they hate fun.

Which is all the more hilarious because so many of them specifically cited boat explosions as one of the things that make Old School Mark Trail awesome that will obviously never happen again³. But I guess when you demand comic strips never change⁴, you miss out on a lot of stuff.

Speaking of never changing, I have a feeling that the diehard Trail-heads would be be upset about anything that allows things they like to be enjoyed by somebody new because scarcity means value? I’m thinking now about a very neat idea that a friend pointed me towards the same day I learned about the imminent Apocalypse Mark Trail transition, one aims to make comics more accessible.

ComicA11y comes from Aussie designer/illustrator/developer Paul Spencer, and is designed to make comic strips open to people with various challenges. Actually, let me rephrase that; as Scott McCloud once put it, all of us have cognitive limits when reading, whether we fit into a traditional model of disability or not, and ComicA11y is designed to reduce the burden of reading comics, because while they may be simple enough for you or me to read, that doesn’t mean they’re equally easy for somebody else.

So let’s enhance comics. Spencer’s starting list includes:

• Resizable text; of all the adaptations found on comic websites, this is the most likely to have some kind of inclusion (probably within the browser), along with responsive design for the viewing device.
• The native font can be substituted with a simpler one that features more easily-discerned letter shapes (notably, mixed case instead of all uppercase; take that Brad Guigar!⁵).
• A closed caption mode prints the text for the strip below the panels, one balloon at a time. With each new caption, a headshot of the speaker is shown, and the speaker themself is highlighted in the strip to stand out from the background. Having text outside the image means that screen readers can see it.
• High contrast mode strips out the color, leaving sharp black and white, with extraneous background details suppressed.
• The strip can switch between horizontal and vertical layouts.
• A large number of languages are provided for translation, with or without the captioning; support for both left-to-right and right-to-left languages is included.
• Crucially, behind the scenes there’s support for HTML5 markups that tie into various assistive technologies.

Spencer is still looking at further improvements, including the ability to work with unalike panel sizes, connected speech bubbles, and ways to incorporate all of these features without impeding the creators. That last is probably the most important, in that all of these enhancements will rely on the willingness of creators to do extra work. Christopher Baldwin, for example, includes an audio narration of each Spacetrawler strip, and kudos to him for doing so.

But even when an accessibility feature is easy to use, how many people will use it? Do you include alt-text captions on images in your Tweets for screen readers for the visually impaired? I do so about two time out of three, if I’m being honest.

In addition to ease of use, ComicA11y (and whatever similar solutions may be developed) need ubiquity and an expectation on the part of the audience needs to get back to the creators that this is expected. They need to hear that if a comic is made for you, it needs to be made for as many other people as possible. Any ideas on that, or features, or improvements, Spencer’s email is at the bottom of the ComicA11y page, and he’s inviting feedback. Here’s hoping he gets some that’s really good, and he gets further in his goals of making comics available to everybody.

Even sticks in the mud that ragequit Mark Trail before the boatsplosions.

Spam of the day:

Dial Vision Glasses are unique glasses with adjustable lenses designed to correct vision issues on an as needed basis.
It is easy to adjust the individual lenses using the control knob.

Or — and try to follow me because this is a little complicated — I could go to the drugstore where they have a waide variety of eyeglasses with various levels of magnification for about seven bucks a pair, which is what people do if they don’t have more complex problems (like my astigmatism) that require specific lens shapes. You’ve invented a pair of head-mounted, open-frame, low-power binoculars.

_______________
¹ Aside from the obvious, which is to settle feuds at the senior executive level and make it impossible for anybody to take responsibility for anything that happened in a line of reporting that no longer exists, duh.

² Fortunately, approximately 94% of all the very important mandatory all-hands teleconferences that are meant to obfuscate what’s going on happen during times when I’m teaching and thus can’t attend, oh darn.

³ While not a daily reader, I think I’ve paid close enough attention to Mark Trail over the past 20 years to notice two, maybe three boat explosions in that time. When something exciting happens that infrequently, I guess you cling to it. Curiously, none of the commenters is worried about a lack of Mark Trail punching a bad guy so hard he loses his facial hair.

⁴ Another commenter mourns that Heart Of The City sucks now, which it curiously started to do when taken over by a Black woman.

⁵ You know I love you, Brad.

It’s gonna be a weird year for SDCC programming. There’s no Sergio ‘n’ Mark panel! And in a year that would seemingly require the Tell Us What We Can Do Better session on Sunday afternoon has none. And every session starts at the top of the hour, when they could be staggered easily?

But there’s lots of what appear to be pre-recorded media launches, so there’s that. I’m looking at things that interest me, many of which are at the same time, but which will probably be much easier to bounce between if one turns out to be a dud — no standing at the back of the room after you walk halfway across San Diego, and the library/school/YA panels aren’t a (granted, very pleasant) 20 minute walk away at the library.

Let’s dig in.

Wednesday

Comics In The Classroom Ask Me Anything: Pick The Brains Of Teachers, Administrators, Creators, And Publishers
3:00pm — 4:00pm, SDCC or YouTube
Appears to be pre-recorded rather than live; high school teachers from around the country posed questions to Ronnell Whittaker (teacher), Lucy Knisley, Jason Walz, and Lisa Wu (consultant and former teacher). Doesn’t appear to have a publisher?

Teaching And Learning With Comics
3:00pm — 4:00pm, SDCC or YouTube
Reps of public schools, state universities, and private universities talking with Ebony Flowers, David Walker, and Brian Michael Bendis.

New Kids Comics From Eisner Award Publishers
5:00pm — 6:00pm, SDCC or YouTube
It’s got Jerry Craft and Faith Erin Hicks, that’s reason enough before you add in Robin Ha, Derick Brooks, and Jonathan Hill; moderated by YALSA’s Candice Mack. This one looks like a must-see.

Thursday

Web Comics: Saving The Entertainment Industry, Four Panels At A Time
11:00am — noon, SDCC or YouTube
Maybe you don’t look for solutions to saving an industry, maybe webcomics can be their own thing? And it’s not a good sign that one of the panelists has website listed that doesn’t seem to exist, and when it did exist didn’t seem to have anything to do with comics.

Shaenon Garrity In Conversation With Andrew Farago
2:00pm — 3:00pm, SDCC or YouTube
Now these two folks, they know webcomics. Also manga, museum operations, tiki culture, and all of each other’s secrets, seeing as how they’ve been married for more than a decade. I hope that Shaenon Garrity gets invited back as a featured guest next year seeing as how this one’s a bust, but at least she gets her spotlight panel.

The Adventure Zone: Petals To The Metal Graphic Novel
2:00pm — 3:00pm, SDCC or YouTube
Indispensible for Mcelfans, as Clint, Travis, and Griffin sit down to talk with artist Carey Pietsch about the third (and presumably not last) Adventure Zone adaptation. Moderated by Satine Phoenix.

Friday

Raina And Robin In Conversation
11:00am — noon, SDCC or YouTube
That would be Robin Ha, and Raina is, of course, Raina. Want to learn how to do memoir in comics? Watch this.

History Goes Graphic
noon — 1:00pm, SDCC or YouTube
I expected this one to involve folks from :01 Books, what with the launch of their history and civic engagement lines, but nope. However, let’s be clear: there’s nothing to be disappointed by here, as the panel features Fred Van Lente, Tom Scioli, David Walker, Mikki Kendall, and Malaka Gharib, moderated by Kaitlin Ketchum.

The 32nd Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards
7:00pm — 8:00pm, no links provided
Yeah, I don’t know what it means either, but no functional links associated with the Eisners? Par for the course this year. Interesting that they only blocked out an hour, which I guess means no acceptance speeches and it’s all a pre-recorded list o’ names from host Phil LaMarr
Edit to add: Links are now provided for SDCC and YouTube.

Saturday
Diversity And Comics: Why Inclusion And Visibility Matter
noon — 1:00pm, SDCC or YouTube
For the sake of the panelists, I hope that this one is pre-recorded and that comments are disabled, because the C*micsg*te CHUDs are going to be mortally offended that this exists and nobody needs that shit. But kudos to whoever wrote the description because they included the websites for the panelists — John Jennings, Frederick Aldama, Christina ‘Steenz’ Stewart, Chelsea ‘Ché’ Grayson, David Walker (making his third appearance in this post), and Stanford Carpenter, who between them have three Eisners and two more nominations¹ — and thus saved me the time of hunting them down.
Edit to add: In fact, I was so astonished by those time-saving links that I initially forgot to include them. Fixed!

Best And Worst Manga of 2020
3:00pm — 4:00pm, SDCC or YouTube
Speaking of times to disable comments, as I previously noted, the howler monkeys won’t get to shout abuse at the panel, at least not in a way that they have to hear. This may form a decent precedent for future iterations. With Brigid Alverson, Justin Stroman, Morgana Santilli, Eva Volin, Megan Peters, Rob McMonigal, and Deb Aoki.

Sunday

Inspired By Real Life: The True Stories Behind Graphic Novels
2:00pm — 3:00pm, SDCC or YouTube
Nate Powell is going to be there and if the entire thing turns into a remembrance of John Lewis, well, I’m okay with that and I imagine it wouldn’t annoy Van Jensen, Scott Chantler, or moderator Diana Pho too much either.

LGBTQ Comics And Popular Media For Young People
2:00pm — 3:00pm, SDCC or YouTube
I think I might just set up two monitors on two computers and double up during this timeslot. Moderator Cort Lane talks with Gina Gagliano, Trungles, Alex Sanchez, Noelle Stevenson, Mariko Tamaki, Brittney Williams, and Michael Vogel.

Keenspot 20th Annual Comic-Con Panel: Pandemic Edition
3:00pm — 4:00pm, SDCC or YouTube
You can’t keep a good tradition down, and Keenspot closing things out on Sunday afternoon is certainly a tradition. This year’s giveaway will be digital, naturally.

Spam of the day:

How To Get Paid For What You Already know

I do that every day. It’s called a job.

_______________
¹ Take that, C*micsg*te CHUDs.

Sure, we’ve seen some epic pauses from webcomics before, but one that goes on for roughly eleven years so that the cartoonist can go to med school and finish a residency? That’s gotta be a first.

I speak, naturally, of Kidnapped By Gnomes, which started somewhere in the first half of 2007, hit 100 strips that October, stuck around until 2009, eked out a few more strips over the next year, and finally just … went away.

Until a sudden realization on the part of Ed (the blue one) and Wilson (the purple fuzzy one) that a lot has happened and maybe they need to get back to it. So KBG’s two most recent strips dropped this morning, with a Tuesday-Thursday schedule starting next week. Creator Kathy Peterson — Doctor Peterson if you’re nasty — dropped me the press release as well as a personal email, noting that I gave her some promotion back at the first launch, and noting that there are some actual storylines in the hopper come the Fall.

We at Fleen welcome Peterson, Wilson, and Ed back to the weird world of webcomics, and hope to see what a doctor’s perspective brings to the laugh-chuckles.

Oh, and in case you were wondering why I used the image up above instead of anything from KBG, it’s because Now That’s What I Call Music vol 31 inspired one of the most cutting turns of phrase — and a terrific running gag — that’s stuck with me for nearly a decade. In his comprehensive review of NTWICM (or at least the 38 volumes that were available by the time he’d caught up to the end; there’s hundreds of them now), Nathan Rabin at The AV Club had a special dislike for the Black Eyed Peas, which came to the fore in his review of NTWICMv31:

At this point in the series I think we can all agree that the Black Eyed Peas are essentially a four-person advertising agency flimsily masquerading as a pop group. Think of them as the distinguished firm of Hologram Man, Meth Lady, The Other Guy, and The Other Other Guy, Inc.

Chairman and CEO Will.I.Am understands the secret power of irritation better than anyone this side of Ke$ha or Katy Perry. I suspect he just wanders around wherever the hell he lives (for some reason I see him living in a penthouse suite at the Trump Tower in Las Vegas and having a walk-in closet full of nothing but fur boots) with a Casio keyboard, randomly hitting various notes until whoever he’s with can’t take it anymore and finally blurts out, “Jesus fucking Christ! That is so fucking annoying! Can you cut that out? That has to be the most obnoxious noise I’ve ever heard.”

That’s when Will.I.Am knows he has a hit. After discerning the most irritating possible melody imaginable, Will.I.Am then moves on to the next step in the songwriting process. He heads down to the lyrics lab of Hologram Man, Meth Lady, The Other Guy, and The Other Other Guy, Inc., where scientists with clipboards monitor crazy homeless men around the clock and write down their most annoying patter. Once the most irritating possible melody is married to the most obnoxious conceivable lyric, the song is given to Fergie and the horrible-ification process is complete.

Some day, I hope to write something that enduring, and I wanted to share its glory with all of you.

Spam of the day:

This is bigger and more dangerous than we are being told And it’s headed to YOUR neighborhood…

This is a scarespam meant to engender panic about the novel coronavirus, when so much of its impact could be blunted by wearing a damn mask and avoiding crowded, indoor spaces. Know who agrees with me? Kathy Peterson, an actual doctor!

Y’know, I’ve missed an awful lot of comic news these days, simply because the volume on social media exceeds my ability to keep up with it. When I get to open Twitter, I’m not reading from where I left off to the present to catch up; I’m scanning what’s immediately in front of me and skipping over entire swathes. Finding the new story is entirely hit or miss if I’m not tagged.

Last night, I happened to open Twitter directly on a story du jour, this one about a creep whose whisper network is finally speaking out loud; the volume of discussion vs my time was such that I’m sure I haven’t seen all of it. Cameron Stewart [no link] did the fairly brilliant (if sporadic) Sin Titulo [no link, although see below], I met him back around 2007 or 8, I bought an original or two from him at MoCCAs past, and we would talk webcomics once or twice a year at shows until, I dunno? 2013? Before he got the Batgirl gig. From multiple people willing to go on the record, he was a sex pest towards much younger women, and arguably grooming teens for later sexual relationships.

I’m not getting into arguments as to whether or not he did anything illegal or if hitting on comics fans (as opposed to up and coming creators) by leveraging his status in the field obstructs new careers while they’re getting started. We’re also not having those arguments on this page — have them elsewhere. His behavior was predatory, and if it was a guy in his 30s in a van hanging around the high school, I think fewer people would be reluctant to call our his behavior. But it wasn’t, it was a respected creator using his position at cons to cultivate relationships not with women he sought out, but with ones he could get alone.

I’ve reached a point in life where I don’t have any compunctions about calling out shitty behavior, or demanding the people I associate with not engage in established patterns of shitty behavior. He hadn’t posted anything on Twitter in about forever that I recall (and his account was locked when I looked this morning), but I’ve unfollowed. His work exists, but I’m no longer promoting it¹. It’s not really a very high bar to clear that you don’t willingly associate with shitty people, or tell people that are perhaps thinking about engaging in shitty behavior that they have to do better.

There are too many people out there doing better, doing too much good work, to waste time on those that can’t be bothered to not be a garbage person. I doubt I’ll have cause to speak of him again, and would like to spend the rest of today talking about some of those folks that find ways to do better².

• Jim Zub is the opposite of an obstruction to new creators; I’ve remarked on this page that his habit of sharing information, best practices, and data from his own creator-owned career has had the effect of making up-and-coming creators more effective and more likely to succeed in their careers, which is arguably against Zub’s interests. If those newbies that he’s coaching become runaway successes, they might take jobs (or comic-buying dollars) that might have gone to Zub instead, and he doesn’t have a problem with that. He wants to succeed in comics, but not by pulling up the ladder behind him. If somebody grows past him, he’ll be thrilled because he’ll get to read awesome new comics.

  Which is why it’s heartening to see him score a success off his first creator-owned comic series³, Skullkickers:

  Copernicus Studios Inc is proud to announce a development deal to adapt the SKULLKICKERS comic series written by Zub and illustrated by Edwin Huang and Chris Stevens into an animated action-adventure series for adults.

  The rest is out of the press release stylebook that talks about Zub, talks about the studio, makes reference to why adult animated makes sense from a market perspective, then has the artificially enthusiastic quote at the end. I’m not sure why press releases feel the need to format themselves in such a way as to invite — nay, demand — a businessperson exclaiming It’s time to kick some skulls!, but there are entire B-school marketing curricula that train people to do that. Anyway, Zub’s a great guy and I’m looking forward to Adult Swim or whoever featuring a pair (sometimes trio) of reprobates that take apart every fantasy trope and cliche.

• Speaking of those younger creators who hit the stratosphere in terms of critical and popular success, you’d be hard pressed to find one with as meteoric a rise as Tillie Walden. In my review of her spectacular Are You Listening?, I wrote:
  

  There is a moment when I open a Tillie Walden book when I pause, knowing that there’s a very high chance that what I’m about to read will take up residence in my brain for an extended period of time until I am changed by the experience.

  I pause not because I am reluctant, but because I’ll never again have that moment of anticipation when I have an entire new Tillie Walden story to look forward to.

  So to say that I love her comics is a bit of an understatement. I also know that Walden’s comics are possibly not a thing we’ll get to enjoy indefinitely; musing on how Are You Listening? wouldn’t be out of place as a career-capping masterwork after 50 years of comics making:

  Given how Tillie Walden threw herself into skating to the exclusion of all else for ten years or so before shifting to comics, it might well be the capstone of her comics career if she decides it’s time to shift again. It would be a tragedy to have no more comics from Walden, except for the fact that whichever next artistic endeavour she threw herself into would surely be as assured and captivating as this one.

  I’m not saying that Walden is leaving comics behind, but she’s spent a good deal of the past year or so illustrating a tarot deck, and she’s now part of a comics-adjacent-but-not-comics project that could take her career in a new direction:

  entering the world of picture books with @edhunsinger

  More precisely, Walden and Emma Hunsinger (Eisner nominee this year for How To Draw A Horse in The New Yorker, which was really amazing — even more amazing is for a young woman to break into the ranks of New Yorker cartoon regulars) are partnered up on My Parents Won’t Stop Talking:

  The co-authored, co-illustrated book, which marks Walden’s picture book debut and Hunsinger’s publishing debut, stars siblings whose trip to the park is waylaid by a torturously slow but wildly imaginative wait, as their endlessly with the neighbors.

  And whee-doggies, the world of picture books seems to have different economics than the world of comics, as Roaring Brook Press (sister imprint to :01 Books) bought MPWST for a euphemistically large six figures.

  We at Fleen offer the heartiest congratulations to Hunsinger and Walden. I’ll need to clear space next to The Princess And The Pony, King Baby, Leave Me Alone!, The Little Guys, and the soon-to-be-released Let’s Get Sleepy by fall of next year.

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¹ He’s no longer linked on the suggested comics list, but for more than being shitty. When I clicked on Sin Titulo’s link earlier today prior to removing it, I found that it’s been replaced by a Japanese language site offering Perfect Bridal Dress [sic], so you couldn’t follow the link even if I wanted to point you towards it. I suppose it’s still at the Wayback Machine, but I ain’t providing a shortcut.

² And may entropy grant that more people whose work and company I’ve enjoyed don’t turn out to be shitty people in future. Giving up their company and their art isn’t the issue — it’s that even a handful is too damn many.

³ Or perhaps, series of miniseries; there were multiple four-issue arcs, each separated by a single issue of short stories.

We have today a follow-up from Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin, on the state of web- and indie creators in the time of lockdown. Without further adieu¹, FSFCPL:

Thanks, as always, to FSFCPL for his insights and digging. We should contrast the relatively stable crowdfunding in France with the uncertainty that killed off Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett’s interview series (at least until he judges the time is right for another shot at it), and caused more than one no-brainer sure thing to delay, seeking a bit more certainty. Americans are, for all our foundational myth of rugged self-sufficiency, a deeply fearful people, no place more than at the top of society where the fear of losing even a miniscule percent of vast wealth causes all courses of action beyond capital preservation to die on the vine. We really need to do something about that.

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¹ Err, so to speak.

² Editor’s note: I’m not sure if it’s reassuring or depressing that other countries are just as fucked up at providing for artists and freelancers as the US. Is anywhere other than Germany not screwing this particular pooch?

:01 Books held a day-long series of online chats on Saturday, and a couple hundred people came. Titled Comics Relief, it was bookended by casual talks between :01 creators and imprint director Mark Siegel, with a series of how-to sessions in the middle. Given the limitations of the format, Siegel’s casual talks, which went wherever the conversation preferred, were the most successful parts of the day, with the exception of some technical glitches¹ of the sort that we’re all becoming accustomed to these days.

Speaking for myself, I found a particular comfort in several things that Gene Luen Yang said in the conversations; in the first, he spoke how he was doing mini comics, sleeping twelve to a room at cons and losing money on everything he published at the time he met Siegel, and eighteen months later I had to rent a tux for the National Book Awards ceremony, where American Born Chinese was the first graphic work to be nominated.

And in the last session, as Yang, Siegel, and Ukazu were talking about how much of an influence Avatar: The Last Airbender has become, Yang talked about being a high school computer science teacher, listening to students talk about A:TLA instead of working and thinking it sounded cool, but not getting in on the conversation. After Derek Kirk Kim loaned him the DVDs of the first two seasons (and watching the third as it aired); a few years later, the creators came to him to write the comics that would bridge Aang’s story and Korra’s.

He didn’t come out and say it, but the lesson is inescapable: there’s a lot that’s getting ready to happen, no matter how behind the curve we are at the moment, and some of it will be doing something you love a lot. We can’t all be Ambassadors or MacArthur Fellowship geniuses, but there’s still stuff out there to take joy from coming down the pike.

In other news:

• Brad Guigar, sexy man about town, is jumping into the web-presence game, and he’s doing it in the form of a professional development seminar for the Graphic Artists Guild. His teaching gig may be on hold what with all the colleges being closed, but you can hear what twenty-plus years of cartooning online has taught him.

  If you’re a GAG member it’s free, and non-members can connect for US$45; if you’re a subscriber to Guigar’s Webcomics Dot Com, he’s got a coupon in the members area good for US$15 off. The session kicks off at 2:00pm EDT (GMT-4) on Wedensday, 22 April. The seminar will last an hour, with Q&A to follow.

• Speaking of Guigar, the latest episode of Comic Lab has a pretty extensive discussion about keeping a cartooning business going in times of quarantine. For a different view, check out Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan’s announcement about their delayed Oh Joy, Sex Toy Kickstarter; they run one about this time every year, and they’ve looked at the uncertain climate (particularly the unsettled state of the US Postal Service) and decided putting it off for a month is the most responsible thing they can do.

  So this is your reminder that if you like comics, it’s probably time to not just toss what you can afford to your favorite creators², but also to call your elected officials and insist on measures to ensure the ongoing stability of the USPS. Repealing the nakedly antagonistic requirement that they pre-fund pensions and insurance 75 years in advance — they have to pay today for the retirement of employees who won’t even be born for a decade! — would be an excellent place to start.

Spam of the day:

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Yes, spammers, I am quite certain that my old friend Jim (who was best man in my wedding, 27 years ago next week), is urgently emailing me with your bullshit. Thing is, you misspelled his name, in a way that particularly annoys him. So yeah, you kind of pooched that one.

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¹ Ngozi Ukazu’s audio was unreliable and delayed, and Lucy Knisley never got her connection quite working (although we all got to see her rather disinterested cat snoozin’ in the background. Hi, Rhino!).

² I haven’t received it yet, but I’ve decided that when I get the stimulus check, it will all be going to comics creators.

Sometimes, a detail jumps out at you and catches your attention, and it leads to something that leads to something and before you know it, something secret and disturbing is revealed. Down the rabbit hole we go.

David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™ ^etc) hitting a Big Round Number last Friday prompted me to go check out the stuff that he’s doing that isn’t Irregular Webcomic — his ongoing series of proofs that the Earth is not flat, his lengthy list of creative endeavours, his personal blog. It was at the latter that something jumped out at me that led me … some unsavory places.

From the blog entry dated (remember, Morgan-Mar is in Sydney, meaning he is many hours ahead of almost everybody reading this) 3 March:

On the way back, I popped into my local art supply shop to get some new felt tip markers and drawing paper, because I planned to spend today doing some drawing. This is for a secret project which should be completed tomorrow, and which I’ll announce in the next few days. And drawing was pretty much what I did for the rest of the day.

For a guy that’s famously a photographer¹, this reference to markers and drawing paper caught my eye. To the best of my knowledge, the only drawing he’s done has been his recap comic of old-school Trek, Planet Of Hats. It very much a comic you read for the writing, but it noticeably improves over its run, at least as much as some other famously rough starts improved in their first 110–120 strips.

Morgan-Mar’s got a Patreon, where the most recent locked posts just barely reveal the text:

Some character study sketches for a secret project

and:

Super-duper sneak preview, definitely patrons only! A thing that will go public this weekend.

and a post title:

Star Trek stirrings

Put the pieces together, people! Morgan-Mar has clearly fallen back into the Gene Roddenberry trap, and being the completist he is, there’s only one possibility: having exhausted all the original Trek episodes, the animated series, and the original cast movies, he will naturally move on to recap G-Rod’s next live action projects, Genesis II and Planet Earth.

Which, if you’ve never seen them, oooof, maybe don’t? They’re both essentially the same story, with Leading Man Dylan Hunt (played by two different actors) waking up in a primitive future of mutants (GII)/a primitve future of mutants and also a society where women rule and men are slaves (PE). Several characters repeat between the two stories (Yuloff, Haper-Smythe), several actors are cast in both (like Majel Barrett), and Ted Cassidy — best known as Lurch from The Addams Family² — managed to do both, cast in both as the looming giant Isiah.

How bad are these? In Genesis II, Mariette Hartley reveals that she’s a despised, twisted, evil mutant by displaying her two belly buttons. That’s about the high point for character and drama, and apart from some stuff that ‘splodes real good, nothing of value to be found in either. There’s a third, Strange New World, but that one features multiple hibernating characters waking up on a spaceship and no Majel Barrett or Ted Cassidy so it’s barely worth mentioning. Also, I didn’t see that one.

And this, I’m certain, is what Morgan-Mar is going to inflict on us. At least I hope it is, because the alternative would be he’s about to start recapping Tne Next Generation and hoo-boy, the first 50 or so episodes of that were stinkers. You got the first Borg episode, the wargames with the Picard Maneuver, Data on trial for his life, and the rest³ should be blotted from memory. At least Genesis II has Alex Cord with a sweet ‘stache, and the general … Seventiesness of it all can be explained by the plentiful cocaine Hollywood was awash in. Maybe if it is TNG, Morgan-Mar will skip the bad episodes and jump ahead to when they got the collars on the Starfleet uniforms and/or a beard on Riker. We can only hope.

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¹ He’s got multiple photo-based webcomics, he’s one of the experts that determines what international photographic standards actually are, and he’s now got a shop of some of his best photos from around the world.

¹ Although he also voiced characters like Moltar on the original Space Ghost and the Gorn in the original Trek. The connections are right there in front of you!!

³ Planet Of The Joggers! Planet Of Women In Charge (guess Roddo finally got that story made)! Planet Of Don’t Do Drugs! Planet Of Space Irish! The Ship Full Of Space Idiots That Kidnap Geordi To Make It Go! And others that I can’t be bothered to look up!