The first really warm day of the year, and I haven’t see sun in weeks. I’m going to tend to my beans, you should go outside (remember to keep distance and wear a mask) and get away from the computer. I’ll see you next week.

We’re looking at a pair of nonfiction, largely non-narrative :01 Books (and thus the concept of spoilers doesn’t really apply) today, both of which have been out for a while but which haven’t gotten write-ups because of [waves hands] everything.

Actually, that’s not quite accurate. I held off on reviewing Maker Comics: Grow A Garden (words and pictures by Alexis Frederick-Frost, released 25 February) because I wanted to try out some of the suggestions in my own annual, smallish garden endeavours and see how things worked compared to previous years. And I held off on Science Comics: Crows (words and pictures by Kyla Vanderklugt, released 24 March) because I was going to bring it and make observations of the ravens of Juneau at Alaska Robotics Comics Camp, only that didn’t happen.

Grow A Garden‘s up first, with a framing story about garden gnomes at the garden gnome version of Hogwarts, including the obligatory reveal of the evil professor up to no good. It’s cute, it serves the purpose of providing a rationale for lecture-like content (a similar approach was taken in Falynn Koch’s baking contribution), but it’s not why you’re here. You’re here to learn a bit about dirt, how to make compost (although you’ll likely have to wait until next year to see how it turns out), how to start seedlings and keep them comfortable, and about the things you might do that will mess up your plants.

On these scores, Grow A Garden is a resounding success, particularly in the way it finds MacGuyver solutions to gardening needs. Fancy drainage posts aren’t needed, you can drill a hole in the bottom of any can or container and give it a good cleaning (unless it held paint or other complex chemicals). Cold frames are complicated, but you can clip together a couple of those transparent shields for window wells.

And that seedling you started that is all atrophied right at the dirt line and falling over? Damping-off disease, from cool, wet conditions and soil fungi¹. Once I get my stuff in the dirt outside² (fortunately I started them a bit late this year, otherwise they would have been outside for the polar vortex and hard frost we got on 7 May, what the heck), I’ll be able to try some of the pest control recommendations. Grow A Garden won’t turn a kid (or an adult) into a master gardener in a season, but it’ll give you some time to get your hands dirty and build up some skills, and we could all use a distraction along those lines.

Crows, subtitled Genius Birds, does a bit better with its framing story. It features a flock of crows that use planning, stealth, tools, and misdirection to steal food from Buddy the dog, with one of their number taking Buddy for a walk around town in search of more food. Along the way, Buddy gets taught about crow vision (color perception into the ultraviolet), memory (faces, circumstances, etc), tool use and fabrication, problem solving, counting skills, vocalization, family dynamics, and brain structure, as the POV crow explains how awesome crows are to an eager (but not genius) audience.

Both Buddy and the nameless crow (well, Buddy refers to the crow as Crow, but there’s never a proper introduction) are pretty expressive characters; mention digging or the park or friends or praise him and Buddy is all excited, ears and tail and eyes doing the talking. Crow, meanwhile, uses some distinctly non-corvid eyebrows and primary feather finger-guns to indicate emotion and reaction.

Crow’s also got a pretty healthy sense of self-esteem (I’m the smartest crow in the world, which would put Crow on par with about a five year old human), a sense of mischief, and an occasional streak of dickishness. It’s Crow that orchestrated the heist of Buddy’s food, earning the gratitude of their family for the feat; a’course, Crow ate far better than they did with Buddy’s help, meaning Crow simultaneously put one over on the flock, pillaged multiple garbage cans, suckered Buddy into all kinds of mischief, and got an ego boost in the process.

Honestly, it might be a bit much, except for the fact that I’ve seen ravens — close cousins of crows, after all — act pretty much like Crow just because they can. As the foreword (by corvid scientist John M Marzluff) reminds us, it’s not a coincidence that crows and ravens are part of myth and religious belief around the world, sitting on the shoulders of All-Father Odin, saving Israelite prophet Elijah, or being regarded as the creator spirit of numerous indigenous groups.

Both books are appropriate for any readers that have the patience to sit and plow through 100 pages at a go; Grow A Garden is useful as an activity guide for let’s say 10 and up with supervision as individually necessary. As always, we at Fleen thank everybody at :01 Books for the review copies.

Spam of the day:

Keep America’s Great

Keep America’s what great? And no, I ain’t clicking on your identity stealing link so I can get my (quoting here) free New Donald Trump gold $1,000 Dollar Bill, whatever the hell that’s supposed to be, not even to blow my nose in. I was going to do something far ruder with your Trump thing, but kids might be reading today’s post.

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¹ I’d noticed this in the past with some of my bean seedlings, and was more careful about overwatering this year as a result. Only one seedling out of 24 damped off this time!

² The gnomes recommend starting from seed with two seeds in a pot and then culling the smaller prior to transplant; I’ve traditionally started with two seeds per cup in a pressed-paper egg carton, but never culled. Wondering how that will turn out.

Rose City, this time, which is the biggest event I’ve seen nixed in the September timeframe (anybody that thinks DragonCon, Baltimore, or any of the PAXes is happening, I have a bridge to sell you).

At this point, it’s probably safer to assume that even if a comics event does happen, that attendance will be way down barring extensive measures for disease control. By that I mean widespread vaccination (that ain’t gonna be the case for multiple months after the availability of a proven, effective vaccine), or absolute cultural acceptance of infection prevention measures.

What kind of measures? Societal agreement that not only should masks be worn, but agreement that people refusing masks or refusing to wear them correctly should be shunned. Despite the media attention given to the very noisy agitators for FREEEEDOM¹, pretty much everybody is on board with masks.

But it doesn’t stop there. There has to be widespread, trusted contact tracing and isolation (with people willing to obey isolation guidelines after probable exposure — we’re onto dicier ground here) and point-of-contact confidence measures like no-contact temperature checks & handwashing prior to entering a space. Americans might put up with these obstacles to get into a facility, but how many are going to be willing to step away and abandon their plans if they’re 0.4°ree; over the published limit? That would absolutely require extremely liberalized refund/transfer rules for tickets or entrance fees.

Which show runners may not want to (or, given economic realities, be able to) agree to, because you’re finally going to have to limit attendance to fractions of previous capacities. Want to hold SDCC in a no-vaccine 2021? You’re going to have to keep the number of warm bodies inside the cavernous San Diego Convention Center to about 10-20% of normal. Can Comic-Con afford to rent the space with that few paying attendees? If they do, can they afford to give back money to somebody that fails the door check? And will somebody who made it to the front of the (now much slower) line be willing to shrug and go away for not meeting entrance screening criteria, having paid for flights and hotel?

Here’s another idea: Panels will have to be aggressively capped, from the lineups to the seating inside; the Hall H experience and its equivalents might be dead for good, which in turn might reduce the presence of big media studios at what’s supposed to be a comics event. Either that, or a big media con might have to turn big-ass launch panels into simulcasts on the the event channels of con hotel TVs. Anything other than cramming 6000 people in a room, or having twice that number camping out cheek by jowl for 72 hours.

The only comics events that I’d expect to see in the next calendar year are small ones, with attendance measured in the single digit thousands, and even then likely with capacity controls or time-limited access. Got a red wristband? You can be on the floor from 10:00am to 1:00pm and then you have to vacate². Imagine SPX or MoCCA with 30-40% fewer exhibitors, half as many tickets, and assigned to early half/late half access; the sparsely attended NCSFest on the boardwalk in Huntington Beach this time last year might be the model — outdoors, spread over a large area, no crowded points of contact. Not so many places in the country where you can do something like that and rely on the weather, though.

The wildcard in all of this is how much we can act like members of a godsdamned civilzation in the meantime, show that we can act for the common good instead of pitching hissy fits about getting haircuts or buying toasters. Act like responsible grownups, the odds of events go up; act like entitled babies, and I hope you didn’t want to gawk at cosplay ever again, ’cause it’ll be years before it’ll be safe to, and event longer before people are willing to risk their lives or health on that actually being true.

Spam of the day:

Trøjan V¡rus g¡ves me full access and cøntrøl øver a cømputer ør øther dev¡ce. Th¡s means that ¡ can see everyth¡ng øn yøur screen, turn øn the camera and m¡crøphøne, but yøu dø nøt knøw abøut ¡t.

That would be the camera and microphone that I don’t have on this computer? Or maybe the one on my laptop, which is behind a plastic shield because fuck you and your attempt to extort US$1200 in bitcoin (always bitcoin with these CHUDs) based on your fevered imagination. Now go tell your mom that you’re a failure.

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¹ Covidiots, or if they have a religious justification for their stance, Branch Covidians.

² Which, if nothing else, might finally put a stake in the heart of the worst habit of big cons: the limited edition convention exclusive. The howler monkeys will be out in force if they can’t get in until after the exclusives are definitely sold out.

There’s nothing like getting an unexpected letter to raise your spirits¹. During the Alaska Robotics Camp @ Home event at the end of April, I hosted a session of the ever-popular Talk About Whatever You Want For Five Minutes; there were quick presentations on Mastodon, food manga, English paper piecing, marble sports, and more. I led off with a quick five minutes on cocktail making², mixing along as I spoke into Zoom, then enjoying the fruits of my labors for the rest of the hour.

Lee Post was watching. Something you need to know about Post is that he sketchnotes, much like fellow Camp alum Jason Alderman. He mentioned he enjoyed my talk, and then I got a Post-card (I’m so sorry) in the mail yesterday with six panel version of my five minute talk and I am in a good mood as a result. Let’s see what’s going on in the world today, if we can’t maybe elevate your mood as well.

• I almost picked a different image for the top of the post today, because how could I not love Erika Moen talking about ordering a Small, Flat 7-Up, No Ice, Two Inches High, for $19? [CW: boobs] She regrets nothing, and she’s gonna write it off on her taxes because she is a boss. Also, she is a woman who not only owns an axe, but will use it if necessary to stop the beeping of her hideous CO detector. [CW: dying appliance battery and ensuing madness]
• Now live: Ru Xu’s Saint For Rent, Volume 1 Kickstarter. We’re about a day in and about 25% of the way to goal, which bodes well; there was a contraction of Kickstarter spending for a bit there (not the least evidence being the layoffs at Kickstarter; thankfully their union negotiated one hell of a decent severance package), but I think we’re going to see a bit of a bounce-back, particularly for projects that result in a tangible reward (i.e.: a book, whether print or PDF) at a reasonable pledge level (i.e.: US$25 or under).

  Note that Xu³ has done something very smart, given the determination of Screamy Orange Racist Grandpa to kill the USPS — the pledge levels for physical rewards are only for the items; shipping will be calculated later, closer to actual dispatch time. Given that postal rates may be all over the place or we as a nation will be in an Unconstitutional, postal service-less state, this is the only way to guarantee not taking a bath and losing money hand over fist with a successful campaign.

• Hey, remember Pizza Island, the studio of amazing cartoonists in Brooklyn? Where you could find in one room Meredith Gran, Julia Wertz, Kate Beaton, Domitille Collardey, Lisa Hanawalt, and Sarah Glidden? They closed up shop near a decade ago, and have gone on to do amazing work. Of late, they’ve halfway gotten the band back together, starting up a WordPress blog under the PI name and letting us know what they’re up to — Gran, Wertz, Beaton, Collardy, Hanawalt, and Glidden are all listed as participating, along with Karen Sneider. As Beaton says, it’s been a heck of eight years
• Hey, did you know that VanCAF is running online programs this week, in conjunction with TCAF, Dartmouth Comic Arts Festival (aka DCAF), Festival DB de Montréal (aka MCAF), and Quebec BD under the collective identity of #CanCAF? It’s true! Yesterday there were interviews with Gene Luen Yang, Sloane Leong, Leslie Hung, and Matt Fraction, today there are YouTube sessions with Karensac, Aron Steinke, Steenz, and more.

  Rest of the week will see podcasts, demos, and conversations with everybody from Michael DeForge to Junko Mizuno. Of particular interest are the Publishing Comics With Kickstarter panel (YouTube, 16 May 11:00am presumably PDT) with Jeff Ellis, Lucy Bellwood, Hannako Lambert, and Haley Boros, and the Webcomics panel (also YouTube, 17 May at 3:00pm pPDT) with Alina Pete, Kory Bing, Sam Logan, Angela Melick, and Jephy McJacquesface. Check out the programming page, and keep an eye on the hashtag to see what else the Canadian CAFs have in store for us.

Spam of the day:

1 Bathroom Trick That Kills Diabetes

No, no, that’s not how it works. Bathroom tricks are always about how to clean grime and soap scum out of tile grout, not diabetes. Get with the program.

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¹ In a minute, you’ll be mad at me for that pun.

² I called it Three Drinks In Five Minutes and based it around the idea you need to balance the key flavor components: sweet, sour, and bitter, with your preferred booze in the center. I started from the classic Negroni (1:1:1 gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari), noting that you could sub in other liquors (bourbon makes it a Boulevardier; applejack makes in an Avenue A) or liqueurs (Aperol is distinct from Campari) for a wide variety.

Then I introduced the idea of adding one part citrus (lime would do well if it were gin based, especially if you changed the Campari to something like Suze), and finally kicked it up another notch by mentioning egg whites. Three master recipes, and I got to call James Bond an idiot for insisting on martinis being shaken. It was fun times.

³ Or possibly George, who manages Xu’s business. Smart guy about the Kickstarts, that George.

There are places in this world that are constituents of nations, yet apart; they end up traded between empires and yet somehow remain unchanged. In North America, the best example is New Orleans; New Orleans stands on its own, not part of America any more than it was part of New France or New Spain. It is older than America, wilder, and stays a part of America only out of a sense of bemused sufferance.

Across the ocean, there was a people that occupied great swathes of the continent and the islands to the west, its people living with the sure knowledge of the fae folk and the way they interfere with the lives of humans. The great empires came to displace them — although the empires were sometimes kept at bay by a hero or two and the help of a magic potion — and the people were displaced, pushed to rocky places, hard by the hazardous sea: Scotland, Ireland, Brittany.

The stories are old, in these pushed-to places, and the promise no easy morals. There are punishments for being wicked, but also for turning your face away from the wickedness and pretending it doesn’t happen or isn’t your problem. The Daughters Of Ys is based on one of those old stories, and it has a new graphic novel adaptation from :01 Books, who were kind enough to send me an advanced review copy¹. There’s almost nothing we’re going to say here that isn’t on the back cover or the first five pages, but you may still consider there to be mild spoilers.

It’s written by MT Anderson², who has a fine ear for dialogue. The words that come from his characters sound just a little bardic, a little musical, a little fairy tale-formal, but at the same time natural feeling. It’s easy to imagine them being told around the fire, with just a touch extra dramatic emphasis and the promise this what my grandmother said she saw and heard.

The art is by Jo Rioux (past winner of the Joe Shuster Dragon Award for Cat’s Cradle, her debut graphic novel), and it is a marvel, combining the effects of pencils and pigments, and looking just a little like a cross between ancient vellum illuminations and tapestry embroidery. All of her characters look just a little bit haunted nearly all the time, except for the times that they look like there’s a hunt going on. Of course, sometimes they are hunting, and sometimes they are hunted.

Nobody in the book comes off entirely well, and only one character seems to have a full understanding of what his life actually is — that a blessing that keeps him fed each day is actually a curse. The story is set in what sounds like a made-up place, but is eventually revealed to be real; the now-ancient city of Quimper, the cathedral, the bishop, King Gradlon of Kerne all are or were part of the Brittany landscape. In a country whose names persist to this day (and across the Channel in Cornwall as well), who’s to say if the submerged city of Ys is legend, or a long-repeated object lesson for kings and princesses³ to learn how their forbears failed.

My copy of The Daughters Of Ys by MT Anderson and Jo Rioux says that it releases tomorrow, 12 May, but the website lists the release date as 11 August; I got the book in the Spring 2020 collection of advanced review copies about three weeks back, so it may have been pushed back for pandemic reasons. If you have to wait another three months to read it, let that fuel your anticipation, because it is very, very good. Consider it a top choice of gift for yourself of the reader in your life, let’s say age 12 and up.

Spam of the day:

File has been corrupted

No, see, you have your tenses wrong. If I click on your link then my files will become corrupted. Future, not past.

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¹ As it’s not the final version released to shops and libraries, the usual disclaimers apply: there may be differences between my copy and yours, but this story feels complete. I didn’t find any issues in production that required correction.

² Whose The Astonishing Life Of Octavian Nothing you may recall took the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature in 2006, the year that American Born Chinese was nominated; no shade, Octavian Nothing is an astonishingly good book, and Anderson followed up with a graphic novel finalist of his own in 2018: The Assassination Of Brangwain Spurge. Dude comes up with the best names.

³ In the legends, the daughter, Dahut, is immodest, immoral, and consorting with otherwordly powers; she’s clearly the villain of the tale. Anderson gives her a sister, Rozenn, to spread the consequences around. If Dahut falls because her hands are bloody, Rozenn is too concerned with keeping hers clean by intentional avoidance. Their father has a temperament that mixes both daughters, feigning innocence of crimes while demanding the spoils.

In a world with better planning, a world where scientific offices and liaisons weren’t shuttered, a world where playbooks weren’t ignored and the most brutally stupid and cruel weren’t in charge of the world’s richest country, we might be seeing last-minute anticipation for this weekend’s TCAF. We might see other people gearing up for Comic Arts LA later this year, instead of a cancellation¹. And we (that is, we at Fleen personally) might, in a better world, have a downstairs toilet that didn’t break its flapper valve and be unable to flush, but at least that one I can fix.

In the meantime, take solace in the fact that the CALA organizers took the decision they did for the safety and health of artists and attendees, on account of they are rational humans with an adequate sense of empathy. We can follow the #TCAF2020 hashtag to keep up with the artists and debuts that would have taken place. As for the toilet, I gotta find a hardware store that will let me buy the replacement part, so somebody start a hashtag or do a TikTok dance or something to encourage me.

But people can be resilient, and people can be kind, and people can find things to anticipate even in the drear of a months-long isolation. Some of those people are at :01 Books, and you may recall that last month they put together a series of virtual con panels called Comics Relief, which I thoroughly enjoyed diaing into.

On the off chance you missed the opportunity to attend, I am informed by :01 that the recordings for all the sessions are available at the :01 YouTube account; I particularly recommend the first and last sessions; Mark Siegel is good at fostering quality conversation. So good, that :01 have decided that one Comics Relief isn’t enough; I have an email informing me that they’re going to have another on 6 June, with details forthcoming. As soon as we know, you’ll know.

Spam of the day:

Dan wrote:
Hello,

Nice website

Dan

Thanks, Dan. We’re kind of fond of it. Was there something else you wanted?

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¹ The fact that CALA is traditionally held in December should give one pause. Will we still be shut in by then, or merely unwilling to congregate in groups? With the way things are going, we sure as fuck won’t have widespread testing and tracing by then, if ever.

That title will make sense eventually, I promise.

If there’s one person (and he would be the first to say there’s never just one person, it’s always groups) that has done more to popularize and legitmize webcomics and indie comics, and to make niche foreign comics available to North American audiences than Chevalier Christopher Butcher, then I don’t know who that would be. Y’know, little things like co-founding and largely running TCAF, being instrumental in running The Beguiling for much of its history, scouting manga for importation to the US/Canada market and editing stone fuck classics are why. This is aside from the fact that he is the sweetest dude in the world and is compelled to take care of people down to his core¹.

So when something he’s built is under challenge, when he feels the need to ask for help, people step up. You may recall that TCAF launched a pop-up store in the Toronto Reference Library for the 2014 holiday season; it being what the kids call a roaring success, the shop stuck around as an ongoing concern under the name of Page & Panel². Like everything else, it’s feeling the pinch of public places closing, and with TCAF cancelled, they’re also missing out on an expected bump in sales. So Butcher and the TCAF folks are asking for some help:

Happy Giving Tuesday! The pandemic has hit our festival shop Page & Panel hard and we need your help. Please consider supporting our vibrant community space! https://gofundme.com/f/page-and-panel #GivingTuesdayNow, #GivingTuesdayCa #TCAF2020

Look, I get it, we’re all tired and cranky and many of us are about a week from being From Circumstances. But some of us are still okay, and maybe even don’t need all the stimulus money that we maybe have received from the gubmint, and could kick a few bucks to P&P (along with creators that could use a hand, many of whom have direct cash links on their sites)?

The first day of fundraising went well, and they’re about a third of the way to meeting the goal that will stabilize finances and hopefully allow for staff to be re-hired. If you can’t give away cash, maybe that comic you were going to buy anyway could be bought from them? Or possibly you have your eye on something from The Beguiling’s online art store? Plenty of chances to lend a hand, or (as Topato would say), a finger or two.

Spam of the day:

We are also ready to offer professional EN-RU and RU-EN translations. All our developers are from Ukraine and Russia!

You can’t see it here, but the body of this spam was ridden with not-quite-standard Roman letters, designed to be readable but also defeat text-matching based filters; the f in from was actually italic, with swooping descender, likely the forte indicator (𝆑, which may or may not render in your browser) from a musical score. So color me slightly distrustful that you are actually looking for a business partner to market your computing services in the West, unless those services are widespread cybercrime.

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¹ Although he is an inveterate trash-talker when playing drunk Pac Man Vs and not above attempting to body-check opponents away from the control stick. You might be twice my size, but you ain’t chasing ghosts onto me, Butcher.

² That link took me forever to find, as the name consists of two words that appear all the hell over this blog.

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.

Spam of the day:

High Speed 3 in 1 Backup Storage for iOS and Android Devices
Large Capacity 64GB – 64,000 Photos

You’re talking about a USB drive, or possibly a Micro SD card. You can buy them in the checkout lane at the supermarket or office supply store.

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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?

By which I mean 2020 is a good year for Matts over at The Nib. First, Matt Lubchansky was the finalist for the Herblock Foundation’s annual prize for editorial cartooning (although the promised gala at the Library of Congress was postponed, perhaps indefinitely, from April due to friggin’ coronavirus), and now Matt Bors has been revealed as a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning.

I know it’s traditional to say that it’s an honor just to be nominated, but look at the other names on the ballot: Lalo Alacaraz, Kevin Kallaugher, and winner Barry Blitt have between them dozens of awards, including previous Pulitzer finalists, Herblock Foundation awards, Thomas Nast awards, and others in the US and Europe. Bors himself was a Pulitzer finalist in 2012, and took the Herblock award that same year. It’s a distinguished group, and if Matt & Matt haven’t gotten the actual Big Prize form any of these outfits for their work at The Nib, they’ve got a damn impressive track record of recognition and something maybe more important.

That would be the respect one gets from one’s peers for paying cartoonists for their work. When the news broke yesterday, I could scarcely keep up with the heartfelt congratulations from Nib contributors, because they know that Bors and Lubchansky not only have keen editorial eyes and will give them a place to present their work, but they’ll also provide the cash money that makes cartooning a more viable career.

Speaking of viable careers, here’s a just-released book you might want to check out, from a cartoonist that’s got an body of work like nobody else. Lucas Elliott draws things under the sea. Sometimes that’s a warrior starfish, and sometimes it’s manly mermen. We’re here about the starfish today:

FRIENDS!

I’m happy to finally announce BATTLE STAR #2 is finally available for purchase through my shop!! I had hoped to have these ready for #eccc, but life happens.

Head to my shop, http://lucaselliottart.storenvy.com to get your copy!

#art #comic #storenvy #alaska

The life that happened was, naturally, COVID-19 disrupting the crap out of everything, so his journeys to ECCC and VanCAF (and the commerce that would have happened there) didn’t/ain’t gonna happen. But you can jump in on a comic that has right here (along with some earlier work, it’s all great). If you don’t want to take my recommendation, perhaps you’ll check out his A-Z Star Wars fanart challenge, his Revenge of the Fifth fanart¹, or follow his daily contributions to daily contributions to #MerMay.

And, at some point in the future when we can all get together in groups again, should you meet Elliott in person, do not be scared of his massive beard. He is a gentle sort, and rumors that smaller friends and fans have been devoured by the beard and never seen nor heard from again are almost certainly not true. Probably.

Spam of the day:

We’d like to introduce to you our explainer video service which we feel can benefit your site fleen.com.

Huh. I could spend the US$159 to get a 0-1 minute video telling everybody I’m awesome and also explaining what this “blog” is about, or I could give that money to creators in exchange for their work. Decisions, decisions.

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¹ What can I say, dude likes Star Wars.

Sometimes, you know the wait is gonna be worth it; there’s your favorite creator, tossing notes on the sosh-meeds, cryptic hints to those not at a sufficiently high Patreon tier. They’re working on something, and based on past evidence, it’s got you in a state of anticipation.

Enter: Danielle Corsetto.

She’s done some neat stuff since Girls With Slingshots wrapped in — my goodness! — 2015 (uhh, spoilers at the link if you didn’t read it five years ago). There’s the I-refuse-to-believe-it’s-dead diary comic, 32, and she wrote a sex ed comic for a year over at Webtoons, but that meaty, longform, character-driven narrative has been her behind the scenes project for a couple years now. On Friday, she let those not Patreonizing her in on the news:

Unlike GWS, Elephant Town is going to be a long-form graphic novel! So it’ll be shared online every Monday in chunks of 2-5 pages (depending on the scene – I don’t wanna leave people mid-conversation, waiting a whole week for a character to finish their thought!).

I won’t say too much about the premise, but it’s about life in my little town of Shepherdstown, West Virginia, through the eyes of four characters who don’t know each other … yet.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — Corsetto is at her best when Shepherdstown is involved. She may not have ever made it the location of Girls With Slingshots (actually, it had to be somewhere in central New Jersey, not too far from New Brunswick), but it was, or near enough. The presence of The Meck made that clear enough.

So here’s the deal: enough pages as makes sense go up on Mondays at Patreon. Because of the Current Situation, the first four chapters will be free to read, going to a dedicated site as chapters finish. US$2/month lets you read pages as they go up, US$3/month lets you vote on small details in the comic¹, and US$5/month gets you all the behind the scenes process and progress stuff. So basically your Patreonage means you get to read it early. Oh, and you’re all going to order the book when it becomes available, right? ‘Course you are, on account of you’re not a jerk.

The link for Elephant Town² redirects to Corsetto’s Patreon, to a filter for the appropriate posts, so that’s probably the easiest way to see it. I’ll add the (to be named) site for the free chapters to the sidebar when it’s announced. In the meantime, jump in on the first few pages of Chapter 1, and let’s get to speculating exactly who these two characters are, and who they don’t yet know.

Spam of the day:

[long block of text]
Mrs. Jane Roberts
Acting Manager of First National Bank Limited, South Africa (F.N.B.)

Wow, a good, old-fashioned 419 scam from Africa! Okay, not a Nigerian prince, but asking for US$250 as a processing fee to get the US$2.1 million just waiting for me? That scam is so old school, it drives a yellow bus with gothic arch windows.

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¹ Think What’s in the picture frame, here are your choices and not Which way does this incredibly important plot point go from here? The key word is small.

² Although, disclaimer: It worked for me over the weekend, today it’s timing out without the redirect working.