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.

Spam of the day:

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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!

So on the one hand, the majority of my work is done from home these days, so I’m practically in self-quarantine away from the big, bad COVID; on the other hand, I teach a lot of classes where the exercises are group projects and the chances that the student will succeed in exercises drops when they aren’t there in the room together. Seeing as how a) the success rate can be mitigated if they’ll just communicate with each other¹, 2) I get paid whether they play nice with each or not, and π) I get to pet my dog during the day, I’m okay with it. Everybody who has to leave the house/put on pants more than three times a week, stay safe.

• Speaking of petting my dog, one of the best things that happened at SPX last year was running into the altogether excellent Jeffrey Rowland and having some time to talk to him. Although he’s been preoccupied with running TopatoCo to the exclusion of almost everything else², he expressed a desire to get back to regular cartooning.

  Which he’s done, and which has hit the point of regularity that I feel pointing it out to you will not bring unfortune upon his head, like unto the gods striking down a mortal for the sin of hubris. There was a strip back in September, and then a half-dozen since mid-February, so I’m a say he’s in the groove.

  Mulder Lessons (also found mixed into Rowland’s twitterfeed or on the Grams), is a two-character, four-panel affair. Rowland’s dogs, Mulder and Howard, discuss life with an existential fatalism not seen since Charlie Brown and Linus got into it. Suitably, the strip is drawn entirely from the POV of these two small dogs; people are shown from the knees down and are as mysterious as Charlie Brown’s teacher with the wah-wah trumpet voice. Check back regularly for wisdom on squirrels, planes, the nanny state, and How Things Work. Much like the real Mulder, who I got to pet at SPX, Mulder Lessons is delightful.

• Speaking of delightful, Chris Hallbeck decided to channel his inner Ryan North with a Choose Your Own Comic today over at Minimumble. It’s got cowboys, and a showdown, and love with presumably smooching. Hooray!
• Finally, a word about Snapdragon, the new graphic novel from Kat Leyh. It’s a charming story about growing up and finding yourself (the titular Snap discovers she’s at least a bit of a witch; her neighbor Louis begins transitioning to Lulu), growing as a person (Snap’s mom is working — probably as a bartender, and in college, and something else we’ll get to a minute), and finding out who has your back (Lu’s older brothers are rowdy and obnoxious, but never question or belittle the transition). Oh, and most of the characters are people of color, which is badly needed representation. But mostly I want to talk about small details.

  See, there’s a witch in the woods; she collects roadkill and sends the spirits of the forgotten animals on their way, and then articulates the skeletons because people on the internet will pay big money for those. Nobody’s fool, old Jacks the witch, as she lovingly reconstructs those skeletons, which are nicely accurate. Leyh could have easily fudged details, but she’s got more respect for her readers than that (also, at least one of them will be into vertebrate anatomy, guarantee it).

  The degree to which Leyh pays attention to the details hit me when it’s first hinted that Snap’s mom, Violet³, is going to fight fires. There’s an offhand reference to dropping by the station for training that’s not explained, but in that scene (and a couple others), Vi’s wearing a job shirt.

  A job shirt is a quarter-zip pullover with reinforced collar and elbows, handwarmer pockets, and others for radios, pens, and assorted gear; they’re common duty wear in the fire service and EMS. They’re comfy as hell, durable, and instantly identify emergency services to each other even if you can’t see a Maltese Cross or Star of Life embroidered on the left breast, or patches on the shoulders.

  Over the next 100 pages, it gets revealed that yes, Vi is one of those crazy people that will run into buildings on fire, but Leyh trusts her readers to put together the context as it’s presented. It’s emblematic of the degree to which Leyh constructed her story to show everything that needed to be shown, but not hit her readers over the head with it.

  I caught it immediately, somebody with a parent or older family member or friend that does the lights-and-sirens gig gets a little high-five for figuring out the context before the f-word gets used, and everybody has it revealed by the end. There’s other places where the little details reveal what’s going on, but spoilers. Read it for yourself and see how many you can find.

Spam of the day:

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¹ They absolutely refuse to do this.

² Good for all the creators that get paid as a result, but stressful for Rowland.

³ The family has one tradition — girls are named after their mom’s favorite flower.

Well, that’s for damn sure a Big Round Number:

Welp, that’s 5,000 comics.

The very sexy R Stevens did 4000 comics in the first incarnation of Diesel Sweeties and 1000 since — not counting his foray into newspapers for a year and a half. Now those 5000 comics weren’t all on consecutive days, what with weekends, and the occasional MWF update weeks, but imagine they were. How much is 5000 days?

5000 days ago, they were still doing primary cleanup from Hurricane Katrina. Donald Rumsfeld was still committing war crimes, Windows Vista didn’t exist, Mooninites hadn’t sparked the stupidest terrorism panic ever, and Bob Barker was waiting for you to come on down.

And by complete coincidence, today has a second Big Round Number, as David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™ ^etc), without fanfare, hit Irregular Webcomic number 4200 today, which also makes you wonder about the confluence of the two. It would make no sense to add those two, very large numbers together, you end up with 9200.

9200 comics, at one per day, would take you back more than a quarter century, you’d find Calvin & Hobbes on the comics page, Christopher Reeve walking around; it was world with no Pixar movies, no understanding of what it would sound like to introduce Oprah to Uma, or knowledge of who Kevin Mitnick is. Then again, you wouldn’t be able to learn most of that because there was also a near-total lack of search engines worth anything.

Heck, that takes you back far enough that my evil twin had only been cranking out daily comics for a little more than four and a half years. As of today, that makes for 7021 consecutive strips, but it’s not a Big Round Number so we’re not talking about it. We will, however, wish Howard Tayler a happy birthday tomorrow, his 13th since he made his appearance 52 years ago on Leap Day 1968. 13 and 1968 and 29 aren’t Big Round Numbers either, nor is 52, but believe me — when you’ve lived for 52 years, it’s feels like a big number.

Spam of the day:
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I got an email t’other day, one that I can’t say I ever expected to receive. It’s worth quoting in full:

This coming Friday, February 28th, marks fifteen years of the venerable Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge. Michael H. Payne’s Daily Grind and my own TRU-Life Adventures are still updating every weekday. Thought it might make a nice bullet point for you, maybe down in Spam of the Day.

That from Andrew Rothery, and therein, friends, lies a tale. If you’re new around here, you may not recall the Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge, a thing so old that its website has long since lapsed and been staked out by domain squatters¹. A thing so old that our first, offhand mention was in 2007, when it was assumed anybody reading this page would just know what we meant. Since that was a long damn time ago, let us recap:

In February of 2005, the denizens of a message board decided to see who could maintain a Mon-Fri daily webcomic schedule longest. There were rules: No posting of sketches, two panels minimum (but you could do a single-panel update every ten strips), your update must go up by midnight PST, and if your hosting went down you had to post somewhere by deadline and let people know where to find it. The contest would start 28 Feb 2005, it cost US$20 to buy in, and the last person standing got the pot, which amounted to US$112 (next to last would get the money raised from site ads, last thought to be about US$135).

There were names that you’d recognize in there: Natasha Allegri, Jennie Breeden, Tom McHenry, Scott Kurtz, John Campbell², Phil McAndrew. People that were prominent webcomickers and then weren’t and then were again: Steve Troop, Greg Dean, DJ Coffman. Ed Brisson, who is writing at half the comic book publishers, was one of the referees. Ali Graham does media marketing now; Dean Trippe teaches kids how to make comics.

By the time this blog started, half the field had been eliminated; heck, even Chris Crosby, who is presently on year twenty one of Superosity, was out by November of 2005. Seven remained at the five year mark; there were only three remaining at the end of 2014 (among them the very sexy Brad Guigar³) and only two on the 10th anniversary (Guigar ran three days worth of single panels close out the old year and ring in the new).

And there they have sat for the past five years: Payne and Rothery, here on the last day of Year Fifteen, ready for the first day of Year Sixteen tomorrow, continuing on out os a sense of pride and sheer cussedness. At this pint, I imagine it’ll be one of the two claiming the big purse and the estate of the other getting the small purse. Or, alternately, they both decide to celebrate having reached the milestone by getting blind drunk tonight, and both accidentally sleep through updating tomorrow, leading to a dual disqualification; after all, you can’t spell irony without Iron.

Spam of the day:

This coming Friday, February 28th, marks fifteen years of the venerable Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge. Michael H. Payne’s Daily Grind and my own TRU-Life Adventures are still updating every weekday. Thought it might make a nice bullet point for you, maybe down in Spam of the Day.

We aim to please.

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¹ The oldest instance of which was April of last year with an asking price of US$1888. Today’s asking price has gone up to US$94,888 which seems a tad unrealistic.

² That’s a sad story, one of bad choices and brain chemistry gone wrong.

³ At the start of the IMDGC, you’d have been hard pressed to find a stronger advocate of regularity in posting schedule than Guigar. Take a listen to him on ComicLab these days, it’s the furthest thing from a priority for him. Time changes us all.

I think we could use a little chill these days; what with the world’s single most gleefully vindictive ignoramus in charge of our country’s response to an incipient pandemic, chill sounds like a good idea.

• Few people that I’ve met are on a more even keel, less perturbable than Scott C; very nearly all of his art conveys a feeling of just take a deep breath for a moment, no need to get all excited, even when the topic is the most spectacular of spectacles. Mr C’s been working on several projects for a while now, we haven’t seen as many Great Showdowns as in the past, and fans are hungering for another collection.

  So Gallery 1988 (which, along with Nucleus, is the place for modern takes on pop culture) is have a weeks-long celebration of Scott C:

  With the HIGHLY anticipated return of the Great Showdowns exhibit from @scottlava opening on March 6th, we’re excited to share the calendar of events for the show. It’s action-packed and unlike anything we’ve done before. Get ready for the true Showdowns experience!!!

  Events include an opening reception on the 6th from 7:00pm to 9:00pm, complete with a mystery Showdowns trivia contest, a Scott C painting for the trivia winner (livepainted on the 7th at 1:00pm), limited edition toy and print releases, a daily scavenger hunt, a drawing party with pizza, and a closing party. Whew! See the graphic up top for all the stuff going on, and keep an eye on the exhibitions page at the G1988 site for details.

• Know who else just surfs through a sometimes turbulent world on a wave of comics, sometimes from one far corner of the globe¹ to another? Eben Burgoon. He was the inspiration of one of our earliest running gags here at Fleen, he holds down the fort of comics-making and evangelism in the Sacramento Sector, and he makes a habit of not only keeping me up with his goings-on, but also those of current and former collaborators. To that end, I received an email:
  

  D.Bethel — the illustrator and co-creator of Eben07 — has been making his opus of a webcomic in Long John. It’s a western-genre comic that focuses on a revenge story about a gunslinger left to die in just his long-johns by his former gang.

  Burgoon undersells the premise a bit, but he’s absolutely right that Bethel has constructed a slow-burn story that reveals itself in a deliberate manner, much like a classic ’60s splatter Western. And Burgoon himself is collaborating with Dean Beattie on Tiny Wizards, about french-fry sized wizards doing their wizardly battles as they struggle to survive in a sea of fast food joints in a road-side truck stop in the middle of nowhere.

  Remember what I said about mundane magic in a regular world yesterday? Magic hidden in the most ridiculous way from plain sight is also a great premise, and I’ll be interested to see how it turns out. In the meantime, I’ve seen a sampler that Burgoon sent along, and Beattie is channeling Skottie Young’s work on I Hate Fairyland; your enjoyment will depend on the answer to one question², which if you opt for the affirmative, you should definitely check out the Kicker³.

Spam of the day:

Military Source Exposes Shocking TRUTH About Coronavirus And The “1 Thing” You Must Do Before It’s TOO LATE

Hey. Emergency medicine/public health source here. The “1 Thing” is wash your godsdamned hands, stay out of public if you feel sick, and vote for somebody that will implement labor law/healthcare systems that allow people to go to the doctor and stay home from work when they’re sick. Everything else is bullshit.

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¹ This mixed metaphor is here only to annoy flat earthers.

² Do I feel that tiny, pink, derptacular unicorns should sport visible buttholes?

³ Which is a bit more than 50% of the way to goal, with 16 days to go.

We’ve got two kinds of embarrassment to talk about today. Buckle up.

• Here’s a rule that I live by: when Sophie Goldstein emails to ask if you’d like a PDF review copy of her latest full length graphic novel, you say yes. When she clarifies that it’s her first collaboration with Jenn Jordan since Darwin Carmichael Is Going To Hell, you say yes, please.

  Not long after, a 200+ page high-res PDF hit my inbox, titled An Embarrassment Of Witches (from Top Shelf next Tuesday), and I’ve been stealing bits and pieces of time since, seeing how much I can get read in and around work.

  Much like DCIGTH laid out it world-with-magic-critters milieu in the opening pages, we get some framework for the rules of AEOW pretty quickly. Rory is an at airport, being dumped by her jerk boyfriend (fiance? husband) immediately prior to boarding. He doesn’t know why she’s so upset, since she gets earaches when she flies he couldn’t very well dump her in the air, which means he’s really being the mature, courteous one here, why can’t she see that?

  Flashback twelve hours, Rory and Dickly O’Smug (okay, his name’s actually Holden) are revealed to be heading to Australia for several months, doing important work on dragon conservation. Her familiar is being a pain about not wanting to go. Magic exists, witches do important work (in between the rest of their grad studies), and bad boyfriends are a multiversal constant.

  This is not a review; reviews take time and multiple readings. This is me sharing my excitement with you about something new that I think it pretty awesome as I dive in. There’s a million little details, and like DCIGTH, it’s all in service of some real adult-human drama that’s belied by the loose, cartoony style that Jordan uses. I’m ready to dive into this world of mundane witchery and beasties and see what I can learn about myself on the journey.

  And I’d be lying if I didn’t expect at least one line to match my absolute favorite jawdropper of a dirty joke, which was in DCIGTH and for which Jordan (unnecessarily, I thought) apologized in the endnotes; I have every faith that the trash-talking unicorn declaring that another unicorn’s pure maiden companion was the wet slut double penetration queen of virgins will be surpassed in gross-out giggles somewhere in AEOW, and I can’t wait to discover the degree to which it does.

• Now, for the sake of balance, some grossness of the non-amusing variety. Blue Delliquanti’s twitterfeed is where I first caught word of Patreon’s latest foray into either fundamentally not understanding their users and why they’re on the platform, or fundamentally not caring:
  

  I’m getting tired of Patreon finding creative new ways to make its service worse and think it’s doing users a favor.
  Here’s an email I got telling me what a great idea it will be for me to unpublish my $1+ tier, cutting off new $1+ patrons and disincentivizing current ones.

  It’s accompanied by a screenshot of the email, and I’d encourage you to go look at it.

  I’ve been pretty consistent in my opinion of Patreon every since they started their back-and-forth dance with ToS changes, depublishing naughty content, shifting payment rules to favor large creators, opinions that were absolutely cemented last year when they started engaging in the naked pursuit of pumped-up quarterly numbers.

  Patreon has now officially ceased to even pretend it cares about its user base; it’s trying to pump revenue because the VC money backing them is doing what VC money always does: demanding a fuck-all huge payout in return for their earlier funding, without giving a single shit if that leaves the company with a viable service. None of this is to make you, the creator more money. None of it.

  Unfortunately, my thoughts about Patreon being Uberlike are looking more and more true — they can’t make money in a sustainable way, so they’ll squeeze the people that create value (that’s everybody with a Patreon) to make the money guys happy. And since the attempt at making a Patreon killer didn’t pan out because The Andys were unwilling to create an unsustainable platform that would screw over their users, there’s not much that can be done except to find other revenue streams and not put your eggs in the Patreon basket.

  Because they not only don’t care about you, they never did, and it’s embarrassing how much they’re trying to pretend otherwise.

Spam of the day:

Karl Budd wrote:
Hi, Could you direct me to the person that handles your online marketing?

Hi Karl, that would be nobody. Does that work for you? Works great for me.

That’s my dog, Thyla¹ Squirrelbane², who is normally very mellow after her breakfast, but who this morning was yipping and stomping her feet at me, demanding attention now now now now before sulking off to the couch. I couldn’t figure out why she was so cranky about needing pets and scruffles and skritches when normally breakfast is followed by a hearty 3-4 hour nap, a brief stretch, and then another 3-4 hours snoozin’.

This makes it easy to work from home (lot of remote class teaches), but today she was low key demanding and vocal all through lecture, and bouncy up in my face Hi hi hi look at me look at me LOOK AT ME every break I got — which is when I normally write these posts, which is why we’re late today.

Thing is, according to her registry papers — there’s an extensive paper trail on retired racing greyhounds, from a 55-point physical description to verification of her ear tats — today, 24 February, is her birthday. I’d forgotten until halfway through the day, but somehow she knows and needs to have it explained why she is not being spoiled rotten³ on her Very Special Day. None of this has anything to do with webcomics, but we can always use a dog story to keep the day lighthearted, right?

• Speaking of something that will lighten your heart, Magnolia Porter Siddell is having a good day, one of a string of good days for the past 10-11 months since she and Tom Siddell got hitched⁴. Specifically, she announced today that she and Maddi Gonzalez will be publishing an original graphic novel, Tiffany’s Griffon, with :01 Books. The deets:
  

  The book, set for 2022, is, the publisher said, “about a girl whose favorite fantasy book series comes to life, leading her to lie about her identity in order to steal the destiny of the Chosen One from a popular girl in her grade.”

  So teenage girl social hierarchy story à la Mean Girls, mixed with a Chosen One fantasy? That sounds brilliant, and I am entirely here for it. Congrats to Gonzalez and Porter Siddell, who will have the good fortune to be working with :01’s Kiara Valdez (who’s been doing good work in her time with the imprint, despite being tragically young.

• And since we’re here, Zach Weinersmith announced the next BAH!Fest dates in comic form today. Houston will be 7:00pm at Rice University (where Kelly Weinersmith — who will be hosting — does her teaching) on 8 March, and London will be at 7:00pm at Imperial College (where my wife did a semester abroad way back when) on 21 March. Those links will take you to ticket-purchasing options (the London show is being held adjacent to the Ig Nobel Prize recap tour), with a sliding scale for student/nonstudents/etc.

Not kidding — Thyla just harrumphed her way into the room and is giving me the stinkeye. I have to pay attention to her before she expires from lovelornness like a Dickensian character with consumption.

Spam of the day:

UecJtsjWFzRB wrote: zCAwIfEnrRqJNd

I affirm most solemnly, that is the actual text of a spam I got and not my dog pounding her nose on the keyboard to encourage pets. At least, it was this time.

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¹ Name courtesy of Yuko Ota, who was the first to comment (when we posted pictures of her from the greyhound adoption event where we got her) that she looks like a thylacine. She’s got these stripes down her tail that really do look that way.

² One so far, snagged in midair as it leapt from branch to branch. Coupla close calls with bunnies, too.

³ Or, to be fair, rottener.

⁴ I’ve never met anybody so overjoyed at the thought and reality of being married as Mags, except maybe Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett, who happens to be celebrating his 19th wedding anniversary today with his adorable wife, Gloria Calderon Kellett. Dave and Glo are awesome, and we at Fleen wish them all the happiness on their Very Special Day.

Because we can all use some positives in our lives these day, yeah?

• Something I neglected to mention yesterday in our discussion of the forthcoming movie musical adaptation of The Prince And The Dressmaker: Kristen and Bobby Lopez do not, at this stage of their careers, embark on poorly-planned or speculative ventures. There will be some money behind this production, and presumably Jen Wang is getting a chunk of it and that is an absolutely correct outcome.
• TCAF has started to announce their featured guests for this year’s show (9-10 May, mostly at the Toronto Reference Library), and they sent around an email to make sure we knew about their first announced guest from Japan. Kamome Shirahama is the creator of Witch Hat Atelier, one of the best manga to get an English translation is I’m not sure how long. It’s one that you can give to anybody, of any age, and it will appeal — there’s adventure, world-building, deep character development, a bit of danger, and a hell of a lot of heart.

  Oh, and it’s gorgeous. Every line is where it needs to be, every face is unique, every posture, every drape of clothing, every magical effect, all perfectly controlled — hardly surprising given the story is about magic brought about by precision in drawing. Those with an aversion to manga may be convinced to give WHA a try based on Shirahama’s extensive collection of DC and Marvel covers, for titles ranging from Squirrel Girl to Wonder Woman.

  Shirahama’s schedule is still being kept quiet, but is expected to include a live-drawing session, feature interview, autograph sessions, the debut of Witch Hat Atelier’s sixth English volume, and a month-long gallery showing of her work at The Japan Foundation Toronto. While TCAF remains free, tickets will be required for some of Shirahama’s events. All sounds good to me.

Spam of the day:

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I’ll be honest, I’m of at least two minds about this:

“Our next movie musical project is with Marc Platt and it is a musical version of a graphic novel called The Prince And The Dressmaker.”

The team is working with Pulitzer Prize finalist Amy Herzog (4000 Miles) to adapt the graphic novel by Jen Wang.

That from Kristen and Bobby Lopez, who you may know from a catchy tunes that they’ve penned. My thought processes run roughly in the following directions:

• Curiously, I haven’t seen anywhere if this will be animated or live action. Not important, just something I noticed. Moving on.
• When paired with the right material, Jen Wang is one of the finest graphic novelists working today. Koko Be Good remains one of my all-time favorites, and last year’s Stargazing deserved all of the near-universal acclaim it’s received.

  But, like any graphic novelist, masterful visual representation can only do so much when paired to a meh story (like her adaptation of Cory Doctorow’s In Real Life), and cannot make up for a story with severe structural problems.

• I am on the record (and pretty much alone) in saying that The Prince And The Dressmaker is in the latter category¹. As a fairytale, it’s at the extreme Walt end of the spectrum that runs from Cautionary Tale to Disney Fluff, treating those who most need to comfort of the story to an implausibly optimistic promise of how awesome life is.
• Then again, the Lopezes have worked on projects that have a bit more growl and earned heart to them; the protagonist of Coco has to struggle harder against a worse outcome than Prince Sebastian ever did², and the big I Want song in Frozen — the biggest every kid knows it song of the decade — went to the antagonist. These are not folks that keep too-neat resolutions in their creative toolbox.

  And that’s before you consider that Bobby Lopez was also a co-creator of Avenue Q and The Book Of Mormon, two musicals that and know how to balance optimism with the crappy end of life. If the Lopezes come up with even one moment with half the emotional wallop as There’s A Fine, Fine Line, the adaptation could resolve one of my biggest problems with the graphic novel³.

So as I said up top, cautiously optimistic; if anybody can produce an adaptation that makes me re-evaluate my stance, it’s the Lopezes.

Spam of the day:

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Godsdammit, I am not old enough for Medicare. Buy better lists of marks for your bullshit, spammers!

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¹ Although, too be fair, the absolute critical flaw has been corrected, so you don’t have to wrestle with crimes against humanity being adjacent to a story about gender expression and acceptance. Respect to Wang, editor Calista Brill, and everybody at :01 Books for recognizing and owning the mistake and fixing it in subsequent printings.

² In comparing the travails that I’m-not-a-princess Moana or Miguel compared to those of Sebastian, I am reminded of the old Simpsons gag, Marge, I’m asking for white-hot rage and you’re giving me a hissy fit.

³ The other I’m less hopeful about — I didn’t have room to address this in the original review and only hinted at it in the alt-text of the header image, but the book was mis-titled. Given the relative number of pages each gets the respective character journeys, it should have been called The Dressmaker And The Prince. Alas, the Playbill story describes the book as:

Set in Paris, the story follows Prince Sebastian, whose parents are scouring the country for a bride for their son. But Sebastian leads a secret life. By night, he dons spectacular dresses and goes out as Lady Crystallia, a Parisian fashion icon. His best friend, dressmaker Frances, is the only one who knows the truth, and she doesn’t want the credit for her creations to be secret anymore.

Frances should be the center of the story, but the title reduces her to afterthought, and I fear the focus will go entirely to Sebastian. Frances struggles, achieves, loses, and re-estabishes herself based on her skill and determination. Sebastian is indulged, privileged, briefly inconvenienced, and returned to his rightful place of high-born status. His is a character journey on a glass-smooth autobahn with a traffic bump at the end.

Hey, how you doing? I’m a little slow on the uptake today. Remember how I got no sleep across the weekend and didn’t really post on Monday as a result? Turns out sleep is important! Once again I’m short hours of sleep from last night’s regular EMS duty night because (and I swear this is true) I had to haul my ass out at 3:15am to deal with a patient who was experiencing visual and auditory hallucinations because he hadn’t slept in three days. I’d totally nope out on you again, but I can’t do that twice in one week, so let’s do this quick and then I’m takin’ a nap.

• TCAF announced that volunteer signup for this year’s show (9-10 May, at the Toronto Reference Library¹ and other locations around Toronto) is now open. As well, they are looking for a new Volunteer Coordinator, an October-May gig of varying intensity; if you have strong people organizing skills, familiarity with conventions (especially TCAF), excellent communication skills, the ability to wrangle crowds, and open time across half the year, read the description and maybe apply.
• The Fourth Annual Prism Award nominations are now open, recognizing the best in queer comics (that is, queer subject matter and/or queer creators). The three nominees in each category will be announced at the Queer Comics Expo (16-17 May in San Francisco, presented in conjunction with the Cartoon Art Museum), with the winners announced at SDCC (23-26 July).

  Categories include Best Short Form Comic, Best Webcomic, Best Comic From A Small To Midsize Press, Best Comic From A Mainstream Publisher, and Best Comic Anthology; descriptions, requirements, and submission form may be found here, with a deadline of 18 March.

Okay, that’s it for now. See you tomorrow.

Spam of the day:

Bye Bye Barks incorporates an ultrasound system that prevents your dog’s woofing.

My dog is a greyhound and thus very quiet. She has these little snuffly sighs, and occasionally lets a yawn turn into a classic greyhound rooooo, and you are monsters for suggesting I should punish her with your sonic assault devices for being herself.

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¹ Although they aren’t happy about it, it’s too late to change venues for 2020 to someplace that doesn’t host open TERFery. If TCAF 2021 is held in a different main venue, it’ll be a momentous change, but very likely a necessary one.