Project: Read A Bunch Of Books continues apace, interrupted slightly by last night’s EMS duty shift. Hey, a quick favor: if you need to call for help, please be extremely specific about why you’re calling, but also anything else that may be relevant. You got a broken arm! That’s great, tell us that! But if you’ve also got a fever and dry cough which you’re coping with tell us that, too! Okay! End of PSA!

• After a hiatus, Sophie Yannow has resumed The Contradictions, with updates twice a week two-page updates, five days a week. It’s been quite a period of recognition for Yanow since launched about 18 months back, which will theoretically culminate in her debuting the print edition from D&Q at SDCC, where she will be a Special Guest if the show goes off as planned. Here’s hoping it does, she’s earned it.
• There’s nobody in comics that I’ve known longer than Jon Rosenberg¹ except for Yuko Ota, on account of one day the two of us realized that we had met while she was still in high school at a northern New Jersey Sluggy Freelance meetup. Look, the early Aughts were a weird time, a time when one might visit the Fairly Large Electronic Entertainment Network to read Goats, Waiting For Bob, When I Grow Up, Bobbins, User Friendly, Superosity, and PvP. I believe the technical term for this is strange bedfellows.

  I met Jon at an early MoCCA Festival, back in the sweltering humidity of the Puck Building (it’s an REI now), with the amazing Puck Fair bar across the street. I was working the CBLDF table, Jon was selling Goats collections and originals. I made some purchases, we got to talking about beer, I got invited to the legendary Pub Night and stayed until Jon decamped from Manhattan for a place with room for his growing family. Conversations in those days about Pocky, moustaches, or where in Jersey Hell is located found their way into the strip because every idea can be massaged into a good idea if you treat it with enough vodka and Red Bull².

  But you know what? Even with the crazed careening from high stakes to higher stakes to universal ending stakes (and the whole thing was basically Woody Allen’s fault), Goats was a limitation on Rosenberg’s imagination. Enter: Scenes From A Multiverse, where any idea that occurred could be a strip, and the dictates of narrative be damned. Not that he didn’t find himself with throughlines — Sciencemastering, scary owl lawyers and murderous business deer, breaking news, modern politics, dungeon divers, and bunnies. Oh thank Christ, bunnies.

  And he’s never been better.

  Scenes From A Multiverse: Greetings From Bunnies Planet is the third SFAM collection, covering all of 2012 except for about five days in January that were in the second collection. I got my copy because I backed the Kickstarter, but you’ll be able to get your copy from Rosenberg’s store once fulfillment is done. When you do it will be pretty, heavy (I love a heavy paper stock), full of rich color. What you won’t get that I did is a massive-ass signed bookplate, because Kickstarter.

  The strips themselves show Rosenberg hitting his stride — having finished with the vote-for-returning-characters mechanism that SFAM started with — and becoming first (and only) recipient of the National Cartoonist Society’s division award for On-Line Comic Strip³. It continued through a year that had disasters that made sense and elections that weren’t won by the dumbest man imaginable. He’d continue to get sharper and more incisive, but if you’re looking for the time when Jon Rosenberg really cut loose, this is the beginning of that period.

  Greeting From The Bunnies Planet is alternately sweet, fluffy, terrifying, vicious, and a blunt instrument upside the head of people that deserve it. Despite the cover, it is not for children unless you have raised them to be moodily cynical, enraged at the world, and willing to upend some tables that need upending. You know, cool kids.

_______________
¹ In no particular order: co-birthdayist, owner of my soul, and guy who got me started on this blogging project; probably other personal connections, now that I think about it. Consider yourself properly disclaimed.

² At least, the way Stephanie at the Peculier made them: a pint glass of vodka, enough Red Bull to give it color.

³ The following year, the award was split into longform and shortform categories. That night remains the most satisfying event at which I’ve worn a tuxedo, but keep in mind that a) my wedding was a blur that I can scarcely recall, and b) the rental tux at my wedding fit poorly whereas at the NCS dinner I was decked out like a champ and later got to gamble while dressed like James Bond.

We’re going to be kicking off a series of book reviews today, since so many of us are cooped up, we may as well talk about new graphic novels and collections. I’m also going to sprinkle in other, most likely COVID-related news before we get down the review. Today, that’s going to be the news that Zach Weinersmith is making a series of his books free to download to help you through whatever isolation you may be in. He’s a good dude, Zach is.

Today’s review is Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang, an advanced review copy of which was provided by the excellent folks at :01 Books in January, and which I have been thinking about very deeply ever since. Go back and read about my initial impression on first read, and the most powerful recurring visual motif Yang uses; it’ll save us some time here.

When I talked with Yang briefly at SDCC last summer, I remarked that Dragon Hoops was going to be his version of a Raina Telgemeier story — unlike all of his previous graphic novels, this one is memoir¹. It also means that the usual warning about spoilers ahead is perhaps less earned this time; after all, DH is about the high school Yang taught at making a run for the California boys basketball championship in the 2014-15 academic year. Anybody can determine with a moment’s search how the book is going to turn out. We also know what’s in Yang’s personal future at this time of his life: appointment as National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature (January 2016) and MacArthur Fellow (September 2016). Heck, he and I were talking about this season of the Bishop O’Dowd Dragons when I interviewed him in July of 2016. So how do you build suspense when everything is already known?

And this is where Yang’s genius² for making comics comes in. It’s not just a memoir of his coming to terms with sports (his lack of interest for the first four decades or so of life, his discovery of how much they can catch you up), or a narrative of following the team on their quest (which is meticulously end noted — he wants you to know exactly when a conversation or event was abridged or time-shifted to serve the story, and when it was exactly as shown), it’s also a meta-narrative about making the book.

Let’s back up a moment.

The 2014-15 school years was a crossroads for Yang; he’d been dividing his time between teaching and comics and family his entire adult life. All of his successes, multiple critically-acclaimed graphic novels, all done during nights and weekends. Coming off of Boxers & Saints (a work that consumed six years), he was looking for the next story and found it in front of him at work. He would subsequently resign his teaching position to concentrate on comics (and, coincidentally, the ambassadorship that he didn’t yet know was coming his way), eventually making his way back to part-time teaching because he’s the sort of guy that believes you needn’t have just one calling.

And since the idea of the story of the Bishop O’Dowd Dragons was so much on his mind, it’s part of Dragon Hoops; Yang continuously portrays himself wondering how to tell the story of what’s happening around him while he’s experiencing it. He wonders what to bring into the book, what to leave out, and has an amazing conversation with one of the O’Dowd players (Jeevin Sandhu, #24) about his character design. Yang had drawn Sandhu with a zigzag hairline to make sure he read as Punjabi, not African-American, but gets that it looks silly. As they discuss options, the hairline changes from panel to panel, settling into a new design that’s used for the rest of the book.

That conversation gets played out in larger form throughout the book, as Yang incorporates the ups and downs of the season, the backgrounds of individual players and coaches, the history of basketball, and the changes in himself over the course of the year.

And maybe there’s no change as big as the dilemma over how to continue to balance teaching, family, and comics becoming complicated when his agent calls with an offer from DC: they want him to write Superman³. Even before that offer, Yang feels the balance slipping as the book becomes more complicated. But one of the greatest moments of uncertainty about the book shows Yang wearing a Zot! t-shirt, adopting the dress of a teen who decides to be a hero because that’s what you do if you have the ability, and who comes to learn the world is more subtle and complicated than simple good/evil bust ’em ups. Yang’s coming to acknowledge the complications inherent in his life choices, the team is acknowledging their storied past and nationwide ranking don’t ensure an easy path, and everything is feeding back on itself.

And it never gets lost in the weeds. This is the densest, richest, and yet simultaneously most logically-structured story I can recall. Every complication feeds back to the central stories of the Dragon’s season and Yang’s own version of a championship run (because what could make you more the champion of comics than writing Superman?). And I realize this is an abrupt shift and doesn’t really fit in this paragraph but I don’t have any better place for it — Yang also has a killer running gag about an assistant coach with a newborn. Every time he is shown, the kid is in a Baby Bjorn, and every time this particularly foul-mouthed coach is cursing, he’s conscientiously covering the kid’s ears with his hands. It never gets old.

Yang’s super-clean visual style is a perfect vehicle for the twists and turns of the story, and I must take time to mention that his usual colorist, Lark Pien, has done career-best work here. The sepia tones that slip into the scenes depicting the invention and development of basketball, the use of period-matching palettes with a slight faded effect for the personal histories of Yang and the coaches, every one of them acts as a visual cue that seamlessly places flashbacks and decades-ago in a continuous timeline leading up to the bright lights and excitement of now on the court.

Dragon Hoops is going to go down as a worthy companion to Yang’s best work (and you know, he’s only been nominated for the National Book Award twice). It releases today from :01 Books, and would be widely available at a bookstore near you if we weren’t all hanging at home. More than one independent bookstore is taking phone orders and either meeting you at the door for pickup and handoff or mailing to you, so look up one of them and pick up a copy today. It’s really good.

Spam of the day:

This Bracelet is to keep people safe from insects and mosquitoes

Got bigger problems right now, thanks.

_______________
¹ Although certainly he’s drawn from his own experiences growing up Chinese-American in everything from American Born Chinese to the recently-concluded Superman Smashes The Klan.

² Lower-case genius, not the uppercase version frequently used to refer to the MacArthur grant. I will never forget the time I asked him what it’s like to be an official Genius and he laughed I still have to do the dishes. Perhaps not coincidentally, he is shown more than once in this book at moments of change doing the dishes.

³ Superman being a recurring motif in the book. Yang’s got a lifelong love for the character, he comes to see the reluctant-to-share star players as superheroes on the court deciding to be Clark Kentish away from the boards, and of course Superman is well known as a champion of the disadvantaged (most of the players are African-American, many being raised by single mothers) and immigrants (Jeevin’s got to explain, as a Sikh, why not everybody loves Gandhi; exchange student Quianjun “Alex” Zhao is chasing a dream of playing pro ball in China, trying to earn playing time on one of the best teams in America).

By the way, the conversations shown between Yang and the editors at DC in the lead-up to his tenure on Superman pretty much confirmed my suspicions that they fundamentally don’t get who Superman is, and leave me more convinced than ever that they were messing with his stories, leading to whip-saw reverses in direction that made the book pretty messy.

They got out of his way for New Super-Man, with a Chinese teen learning to be worthy of being the Superman of China, which was a much more cohesive story. And with Superman Smashes The Klan, it’s obvious that Yang understands heroes in general — and Superman in particular — as much as anybody of the past eighty years.

Hey, gang. How’s everybody holding up? Good? Good. It’s like I told my EMS crews last night: this isn’t what we signed up for, but we stay safe and do the job right, and after we’re done we can go back to life being somewhat more boring again. To the end of keeping my head in the game where it’s needed, I am vastly cutting back on my social media reading; if there’s something you think I should know, email or DM me.

Now let’s check in on other people who are dealing with the pandemic in constructive ways:

• Joining just about every other institution, the Cartoon Art Museum announced over the weekend that they were closing their galleries and cancelling programs until the 29th; any return dates that are announced for the next while should probably be seen as on the cautiously optimistic side of the scale. Similarly, all of the public-facing events around the Month O’ Scott C at Gallery 1988 are off. This is a good and responsible pair of decisions, and we at Fleen thank the management of both venues.
• Not just here, either. From Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebaupin:
  

  I come as the bearer of good news, of an evangelion if you will. Fëanor, our envoy of the Religion of the Invisible, has vanquished Death and come back to us.

  Readers will no doubt remember Fëanor, Who was cursed early in life by a tragic slipper. But blessed as well, since that gave Him the gift of seeing the invisible, and soon afterward He adopted Maliki as His caretaker. And lo, the years passed, and Maliki started a webcomic, where He made many appearances, inspired many artefacts, current and past, becoming a general symbol) of Maliki. And lo, the years passed, with Maliki spreading the image of our beloved prophet. But resentment was rising with rumors being spread against Fëanor.

  This week, Fëanor showed all detractors wrong by revealing through His caretaker that He had vanquished Death and come back to us, ascending to godhood in the process. And yet He is content to keep a presence for His Earthly caretakers, rather than fully ascend after 40 days. All praise the eternal Fëanor.

  Fanart is accepted as proof of adoration, and to be directed to His Earthly caretakers through the keyword #PetitDieuFeanor.

  In other news, the French government as announced banning all events involving more than 100 participants, which implies pretty much all cultural events, so Fëanor kindly requests that no public celebration be made of His new status.

  Guess no more Smurf festivals for a while, then.

• For those stuck at home with time on their hands, the invaluable Jim Zub (who, to my recollection, was one of the first to cancel his appearance at EmCity, a good week before the ball really started rolling; you don’t get much appreciation for being the first at a good decision of this nature so allow us to say Good choice, Zub) has decided to make the time away from everything a little more enjoyable:
  

  Click the attachment links over on my public Patreon post for two full volume PDFs of two of my creator-owned comics, free of charge and with no strings attached:

  https://www.patreon.com/posts/34846589

  Enjoy, share, and be good to each other.

  One may recall that Zub, via his extensive series of guides to making a living self-publishing, makes a good chunk of his living not from individual floppy sales, but via trades, particularly in digital. This is going to cost him some money. If you find you like the stories, maybe purchase the subsequent volumes or some of his other work? He’s doing the world a solid, you can do him one back.

• For those stuck at home with offspring on their hands, Joe Wos (once the head of Pittsburgh’s ToonSeum, which sadly is no more) is offering a free online cartooning course for kids:
  

  Beginning on Weds March 18th Joe will be offering free live cartooning classes online for all ages.
  The live classes will take place on YouTube channel HowToToon at 1pm, 3 days a week (Tuesdays-Thursdays). Students can access the channel by visiting www.Howtotoon.com

  Joe has been teaching cartooning for over three decades! He currently teaches a daily cartooning class at Central Catholic High School in Pittsburgh, PA and is has also been the visiting resident cartoonist of the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa California for the past 18 years. Joe has been a staple of comic cons, school assemblies and library programs for the past thirty years touring worldwide.

  Same deal as with Zub: solid, buy stuff, etc.

• Finally, let us not forget that — global pandemic or no — plans get made and must be followed up on lest opportunities be lost forever. C Spike Trotman had plans to announce a major Kickstarter today, the largest and most ambitious in Iron Circus history, and about two and a half hours ago she delivered:
  

  Lackadaisy Cats has been running online since 2006, immersing its readership in a world of sepia-toned crime, adventure, action, and comedy. And now, it’s ready for its next big move … to a screen near you.

  It’s an art book, to fund the 10-minute short (digital download of which is available at tiers US$80+). As of this writing, funding is north of US$60K of the US$80K goal, with stretch goals going all the way up to a mind-bending US$225K (post-credits scene featuring fan-favorite character Mordecai Heller). It’s a new realm for ICC, a big ask, and a lot of logistics, but Lackadaisy Cats has a deep and ferociously invested fanbase, so I think those wacky kids might just pull this one off. Not sure if you’d be into it? You got time in isolation, start reading.

Spam of the day:

United Steel Industries is a new Rolling Mill in Fujairah. USI is incorporated in 140,000 square meters of land.

Sorry, I require all my steel to be cast, not rolled.

I … I think the strain got to Ryan North, Fleeps (that’s like peeps or tweeps, but for peeps at Fleen … I’m workshopping it). He didn’t get to go to a San Mateo County library talk last Saturday, he’s just found out Lexington Comic Con is postponed and thus also his proximity to high quality and plentiful bourbon.

As we all know, Ryan is a giant of a man, as smart as he is ruggedly handsome, as modest as he is charming. He has spent decades honing himself, improving all of his stats and abilities to their max except for Resistance To Holes.

What if … what if social distancing is the hole that he can’t escape? What if it’s the hole on the inside? How else to explain today’s Dinosaur Comics where he falls into the bottomless pit¹ of crafting the dialogue into the merciless dictates of π?

We love you, Ryan, every person that’s ever met you or even just heard of you. Chompsky thinks that you are the entire world. You don’t have to bend Dinosaur Comics to some bizarrely specific creative impulse!

I, of course, am immune from some foolishness and would never do anything like that. Nope. Not me.

Okay, enjoy your weekend of distancing. One week done, two to five to go!

Spam of the day:

It’s a really easy but an effective software to create 3d animations, models, games, graphics and much more.

This is a weirdly specific product that will probably not benefit from you spamming everybody and their dog.

______________
¹ I.e.: a type of hole.

It’s just coming too fast at us. Here’s what we’ve got:

• TCAF and VanCAF are, for now, not cancelled or postponed; they’re a bit further out than other events and we may have a better idea in a few weeks what the finally-got-their-ass-in-gear actions being taken now have accomplished. From the combined statement:
  

  The health and the well-being of everyone involved is our paramount concern. We are closely monitoring updates from Centres of Disease Control, Emergency Management Agencies, the Public Health Agency of Canada, local health agencies, and other official sources for the latest risk assessment. At the time of writing (March 11, 2020), public health officials in Canada have assessed that the risk of COVID-19 transmission remains low, and they have specifically not requested that events be cancelled. We encourage individuals to seek direct updates from public health officials going forward. Regular updates from the Public Health Agency of Canada are being posted on their official website.

  We encourage creators to make the best choices for themselves, and weigh the pros and cons of any actions. If exhibitors at either show wish to cancel their participation, they may do so and receive a refund of table fees. We only ask that exhibitors please contact the appropriate email address (info@vancaf.com or registration@torontocomics.com) as soon as possible to allow us to open up space on our waitlist. If you are exhibiting but unsure of your travel arrangements, please plan accordingly and book flexible travel options that will allow you to cancel or postpone with minimal financial penalty.

  Closing mass gatherings that are happening now and for the next few weeks is the best we can do, and to quote an epidemiologist I saw online today, now is the absolute most uncertain time about what’s going to happen next; a month ago or a month from now, the effects of current actions would have been/will be much more predictable. One day at a time, folks.

• You know what you don’t need to venture out into the world to get? Webcomics. Gene Luen Yang has had to 86 his book tour for Dragon Hoops (proper review coming soon), so he’s doing one virtually on The Grams. Here’s the talk about the coach that inspired him to make the book, here’s a book trailer, here’s Yang learning the history of basketball, and the latest is about athletes, superheros, and writing for DC. The two most recent have reader questions, and Yang wants you not only to submit your own questions, but also tell him what cosplay to draw you in. He’s a rad guy.
• More webcomics! John Allison may be on pause from the Tackleverse at the moment (at least until the Charlotte Grote miniseries hits comic shops next week), but he’s doing an epilogue to his last comic series — the very, very good Steeple — online for the next bit. If you didn’t read Steeple, a) what’s wrong with you, and 2) it’s the story of Billie, a young priest who finds herself in a remote seaside town where the local Satanists are only the fourth or fifth biggest challenge to her faith. It’s really good. You can get the extra comics that will run in the back of the collected trade (out in May) starting here, and a successor series, The Silvery Moon, will run here through summer. MWF updates, first four up now.
• For those new to the working away from all humans deal, Beth Barnett is doing a diary comic on social distancing, which is the term you want to search for on her Twitterfeed. If you enjoy it (you will), drop her some thanks, compare notes on lifting, or (if you’re brave and have time) inquire as to her feelings on the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Oh, and visit her store! Good stuff there.

Spam of the day:

Your Card has been temporarily suspended.

Call me suspicious, but I kiiiinda doubt that American Express would be emailing me from @wecome.xjez.com. Also, if you’re going to copy the text from an actual AmEx email that says Your account information is included above to help you recognize this as a customer care e-mail from American Express, you maybe might want to include something that looks like account information? Even just a name and a fake first-and-last digits card number? Oh, and you might want to get rid of the boilerplate text that says We kindly ask you not to reply to this e-mail but instead contact us via Customer Care. You really suck at this.

We’re going to be seeing a lot more of these:

It is with the safety and well-being of our community that we have made the difficult decision to reschedule the MoCCA Arts Festival. We are currently working with Metropolitan West to find a suitable replacement date.

Now here’s the important part, because it looks like we aren’t going to get coherent guidance from the White House:

While New York is not officially calling for events of large gatherings to be canceled, many have been and we do not know what the next few weeks will entail. We recognize the amount of work and finances our exhibitors put into their tables and are trying to minimize the burden on them.

The curve-flattening is going to be on thousands of individual entities making decisions like this one. It’s going to get more widespread, and quickly, before it starts to ease.

In the meantime, we have made the decision to move forward and continue to judge the Awards of Excellence. In addition to the cash prize and Wacom tablets for Gold and Silver medalists, the Society will feature the award winners in an exhibition at the onsite Gallery we build at MoCCA Fest.

And there’s going to be a lot more of this at-a-distance events. Good luck to everybody under consideration for the Awards of Excellence, hope that the cash and tablets help you continue to create and sustain your career as we all figure out what the next howevermany months are going to look like. For example, a zine that was to debut at ECCC this weekend is now becoming available online, with print to be available in the near future. Gentlesentients, I give you Deep Space Zine.

In the meantime, pretend you’re T-Rex and only have stubby, vestigal pokin’ sticks:

Spam of the day:

We can put your website on 1st page of Google to drive relevant traffic to your site.

Searching “fleen” puts us at the second entry on page one (behind a bullshit entry at Urban Dictionary) and searching for “webcomics blog” has three separate results that point to us. So there.

Yesterday, we mentioned that fans of STRIPPED check their emails, on account of the hivemind known as Freddave Kellett–Schroeder had sent emails to Kickstarter backers of that fine movie (and it’s second Kickstart to finish production) to let them in on a secret: they apparently didn’t have enough travails in the four years or so it took to make the movie, so now they’re making a series:

Story/Line will be a love-letter to the art of cartooning, featuring in-depth, thoughtful interviews about the craft. These will be deep conversations, in the style of a PBS or BBC interview. Each will be beautifully shot in 4K, with one of the best crews in Los Angeles. Among our four Kickstarted interviews, we’ve already scheduled with Academy Award-winning Directors Chris Miller & Phil Lord (Spider-Verse, The Lego Movie, and every other great movie from the last decade), and Eisner-Award-Winning cartoonist Scott McCloud (The Sculptor, Understanding Comics, 24-Hour Comics Day).

So they’ll be channeling their inner Bill Moyers, or hopefully Graham Norton; Norton gets the absolute best out of his subjects via the simple expedient of boozing them up for the talk. Look into this, Freddave! They’ve got one interview in the can (and on their own dime) so far — Jake Parker of Inktober fame — and the campaign is to get another four interviews for general distribution to backers, with a secret additional interview mentioned.

Here’s where I think their rewards tiers are a little hecked up — to get that last, secret, interview, you have to be a backer at a high level; at present, it requires US$30 or more to get the Parker + four interview series, but US$85 to get the secret interview (or US$300 if you want a bunch of Sheldon e-books and an original comic to go along with ’em). That’s a pretty big jump from five interviews to five interviews, uncut footage, a poster, and the secret interview unless that secret interview is amazing.

Then again, they got Watterson on audio for STRIPPED and the Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett half of Freddave Schroeder-Kellett attends fancy industry parties with the likes of Lin-Manuel Miranda and Taika Waititi, so who knows? I want to make it clear that I have no idea who the secret interview is and I think I just convinced myself to up my pledge after typing that last sentence. Well played, Freddave Kellett-Schroeder! Well played.

Update to add: Third interview announced. Raina.

Spam of the day:

justin l____ district manager at Primerica Financial Services would like to connect on LinkedIn.

This is actually from LinkedIn, which means it is definitely spam. I have no damn idea who Justin L____ is, and have had no relationship with Primerica except once more than 20 years ago when the local office called me in for an interview “for an executive position” that turned out to be a room full of people being encouraged to join and push penny stocks on cold-called dupes. Ever see The Wolf Of Wall Street? That.

I gave them about 20 minutes to get to the point then got up, said I was asked to come in for a job interview and instead you’re trying to get us to join some kind of Amway cult (which tremendously offended the woman at the front of the room) and walked out.

So yeah — get lost, Justin.

That would be two different fallen; the first would be Michael Payne of which more was said in the Breaking News Bulletin earlier today. The second would be the latest round of cancellations, of which there are two to mention at the moment:

• You may have noticed that Matt Inman and his compatriots in the Exploding Kittens empire have been planning a boardgame convention in Portland, known as Burning Cat, for the weekend of 16-17 May. Lots of Inmanian weirdness planned — enormous cards to play EK with, a giant vending machine shaped like a fuzzy cat, a two-story tall firebreathing cat monster — and guests including Bill Amend and Sarah Andersen.

  Yeah, PDX, which is kind of right next to one or two of the (as of this writing, based on latest information) worst-hit hotspots of COVID-19&sup2. I didn’t see any estimates of attendance, but any large gathering that involves widespread travel at this point is probably a bad idea; this afternoon, Inman, et al, called it off and the first ever/second annual Burning Cat will be next year. Kudos to them to making it all simple — everybody is fully refunded, this year’s ticket holders will be contacted for early bird purchase next year, pretty much the same deal with exhibitors. That’s how you do it.

• Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin dropped an update via comment after hours on Friday:
  

  Not sure that is worth a full correspondent dispatch, but as a complement I can report that Paris Manga, which was to take place this weekend, has simply been cancelled, among many other events in March. Indeed, I don’t know how the authorities are managing the situation on your side of the Atlantic, but on this side the French government has prohibited all events totaling more than 5000 people in a closed space. Application was swift, too: the decision was taken Saturday, February 29th, and as early as Sunday some events had to adapt (e.g. Japan Tours Festival only accepted attendees who had bought their tickets in advance, in order to ensure they would remain under the gauge), or in some cases simply not reopen on Sunday. It goes without saying many creators here are financially affected as well.

  The answer to how authorities are handling the novel coronavirus is, bluntly, not well. Cancellations are left to local discretion and I’ve not seen anything resembling a guidance as to permissible crowd size². Things are happening at the last minute, as a general rule. For example, my wife is in the final semester of her return to university and due to graduate in May; today we got a postcard talking about the time and location of the commencement ceremony, and I imagine literally nobody has any idea if it will actually happen.

• Also unknown: MoCCA Fest, 4-5 April at Metropolitan West in Manhattan. While the bulk of confirmed cases in New York have been in Westchester County and associated with a single individual, and Manhattan is (as of this writing, etc) sporting approximately 1 confirmed case per half million residents, you never know what could happen in the four weeks. Until we at Fleen hear that it’s nixed, we’re going to report on planned goings-on, including guests and exhibitors, in the coming weeks.

  Just one caveat — last year’s exhibitor list was severely underpopulated, as it turned out the exhibitors had to supply info directly and many apparently didn’t know. If you’ve got a table, be sure supply your info so we can find you.

• Helping to mitigate even in the face of events getting called off: C Spike Trotman has declared a virtual event will take place with everybody at home, where you can touch your own face (wash your hands first) or shake hands with your roomies (wash your hands first) to your heart’s content. PajamaCon:³
  

  We’re planning three days of livestreams on the Pajama Con Twitch channel March 13th–15th, 12pm–6pm CST. The livestreams will be like a talk show or live podcast where we feature creators who also had to cancel their ECCC appearances. Joining us so far will be Steve Leiber, Chris Roberson, Lin Visel, Genue Revuelta, C Spike Trotman, Kate Leth, and we’d love to invite more. We’ll also be promoting on the Iron Circus Twitter account using the #pajamacon2020 hashtag, and will update this page with more information as our plans come together.

  We plan to announce a schedule by Wednesday, March 11th, so that is the due-date to apply!

  So, get on that. And, as Spike points out, there are other convention-alternatives, including #VVSN Very Very Shopping Network and Oni Press #ECCC2020 Pop Up Store, plus I’ve seen a guerrilla PDX comics get-together distributed event planned for this weekend, with creators taking four-hour blocks at retailers around town. No fees for exhibitors or attendees to PDX Pop Up Con, but get your application in by end of day tomorrow for possible inclusion on 14-15 March.

• Finally, if you’re a friend of Freddave Kellett-Schroeder, you should be checking your email. Just sayin’.

Spam of the day:

I don’t want to scare you….
But I do want to wake you up to the fact that corona could be the most dangerous epidemic this country has seen since it started.

Fuck on off out of here with that shit. You don’t care about a godsdamned thing except separating fearful people from their money. Also, you apparently have never heard of smallpox, you fucking parasitoid.

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¹ Namely, Seattle and San Francisco. Of course, it’s likely that everywhere has far more cases that have been reported due to the slow rollout and insufficient numbers of tests.

At this point we’re probably better off skipping testing for anybody that’s not symptomatic except for healthcare workers (don’t want to spread it, but don’t want to require self-quarantine and removal from duty on the basis of a casual contact that didn’t take) and so we may never know the true extent.

I’ll tell you this, though — it’s at least two orders of magnitude of diagnosable cases than the approximately 600 that have been test-confirmed in the country so far.

² And as an EMT, I’m getting guidances from both the CDC and the New Jersey state Department of Health, in addition to that of the local hospitals we deal with.

³ Originally announced as ComfyCon, but it was pointed out that’s not a generic term, but rather a specific name used by Danielle Corsetto and her convention wife Randy Milholland for their con-from-home, and has been since 2014. Spike immediately and graciously apologized for the “con” fusion and rebranded.

From Andrew Rothery (who you may remember from here) approximately 20 minutes ago:

After fifteen years, one week, and a day, Michael Payne has chosen to bring his webcomic Daily Grind to a close. A special farewell update went up on Monday, and The Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge is officially over as of Tuesday, March 10th. Andrew Rothery, whose strip TRU-Life Adventures happens to turn nineteen on Thursday, March 12th, is the winner.

Cue the Robert Downey Jr. video clips.

A moment of silence, if you will, for the last of the valiant competitors. Ave.

Update to add: Just saw that Payne commented to this effect two days ago, making Fleen officially the breaking source of this news. Go, us.

• I am speaking, obvs, of David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™ ^etc)’s new comic project which turns out not to be Genesis II or Planet Earth. Pity. From Planet Of Hats:
  

  Now, I am not committing to a regular weekly update for this. I’m not planning regular updates at all. For now, I’m going to squeeze in some drawing of new strips when I have time — I anticipate roughly once a month or so. If that changes, I’ll let you know.

  But that said, yes, we’re off on a brand new continuing mission!

  Encounter At Farpoint is a double episode, so I’ve split it into two comics. The second half will be along in a month or so.

  At the rate of one episode per month or so, it’ll be roughly four years before we get to the good stretch at the start of Season 3; on the other hand, it also means we have roughly until November of 2023 before we have to deal with the horror that is Planet Of Space Irish, so that’s okay. If you’re looking for decent episodes, check in around April next year, November next year, February 2022, or September 2022.

  For the best episode ever¹, you’ll have to wait until Summer 2030, unless Morgan-Mar steps up the pace, abandons the project, or we are reduced to a post-atomic horror not unlike that depicted in this month’s featured episode. Fun!

• Side note: This is normally when I’d be telling you who all would be at Em City, but a) I’d have to tell you about all the people that opted to sit this one out because of the novel coronavirus prevalence in Seatte, and 2) earlier this afternoon Reed!POP announced they’re postponing:
  

  We have been closely monitoring the situation around the COVID-19 virus in Seattle, and, after many hours of conversation internally and consultation with local government officials and the tourism bureau, we have decided to move next week’s Emerald City Comic Con to Summer 2020 with date and detail announcement forthcoming.

  I think this is probably the right decision, particularly given the financial hit so many creators were going to take whether they went (to diminished crowds and spending potential) or not (having to eat the costs of hotel and booth cancellations).

  To all of our fans – you will receive a refund on your tickets, no further action is needed on your part. Due to the volume, we expect you will receive your refund in 30 days. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

  That’s good, although I hope they offer the possibility of people keeping their badges for the reschedule date or otherwise offer them to the existing badgeholders first.

  Also, I notice nothing in there about exhibitors and booth costs being refunded; it makes a certain amount of sense to assume that they’d want back in at the later date, but if there’s a conflict, they shouldn’t be penalized. People clear their schedules to exhibit at ECCC, and if the new date is one they can’t make, they deserve a refund on the booth and they shouldn’t have to wait potentially months to determine if they can’t make the new dates. I’d really like to see a statement that all booth costs are being refunded now, but as soon as new dates are decided, creators will have an appropriate amount of time — say, 10-14 days — to plunk down the money to get the same booth back.

  Fleen wishes the best to all the creators who made a difficult decision (and reminds you — lots of airlines started allowing ticket cancellations without penalty in the past couple of days; if you were told to eat a penalty before, ask again), especially those who now have to scramble to figure out where an expected chunk of income will come from. If you’ve got a favorite creator, check out their store.

Spam of the day:

On February 11, 2019, Transformco purchased substantially all of the Sears Holdings assets*. As part of that sale, Transformco acquired Sears Holdings’ customer information, including personally identifiable information.

Turns out this is actually legit, but damn if Transformco didn’t set off my bullshit detector for sounding like the fakest-ass name of 2020. Weird.

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¹ You may have your own opinion on this, but have that discussion elsewhere. This was TNG’s finest hour.