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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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.

Approximately half an hour ago, Kickstarter United won their election for union representation. I’m doing something I never do an posting this in an incomplete form, so I can get the word out but also go and think about the broader implications. Update to come.

Okay, update time. Things that have occurred to me since the news broke:

• This is a foot in the door; Kickstarter’s a small company¹, but one with an outsized brain share in the public mind, largely because Kickstarter (uniquely) has a direct relationship with people that much of tech doesn’t.

  With the big internet companies — Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google — you end using their services because they’re unavoidable, not because you want to. Other tech behemoths — your Microsofts, Oracles, etc — are at a remove, with your usage of them typically intermediated by somebody else that gets your ire when things don’t work². Tech companies related to the gig economy have lots of act-alikes (if Uber’s too creepy for your liking this week, there’s always Lyft — and your opinion on them will probably reverse in another week), and/or they only offer a service that already exists in the real world, but may be marginally more convenient.

  But Kickstarter is a tech company that people deal with an intermittent, voluntary basis; when you can afford something that looks cool, you go for it, and they’ve got a reputation for at least trying to get the most obvious scammers out, whereas their competitors either let in bullshit unbuildable projects³, or allow for less-than-goal funding, which practically invites cash grab scams. People use their discretionary income for Kickstarter, and have a relationship unlike any other tech company.

  So over the next year or so, as Kickstarter and the Kickstarter United reps hammer out their new relationship and find new ways of moving foward, as tech workers across the country start to see how their labor and interactions with the money end of things can interact in new ways, where will this spread? How many new startups that hit a certain size will have to factor in this is how large we think we can get without a union forming as part of their due diligence with venture capital?

  Nor will this necessarily stop with what we think of as pure tech workers. Once the coders behind — let’s say GrubHub as an example — unionize, how long before their very put-upon gig workers get the idea? How long before games companies can no longer persist in their cruel march of years-long crunch followed by mass layoffs when their two nearest analogues — tech companies like Kickstarter, and artistic endeavours like unionized animation shops — show that there’s another way?

  How long before the FAANG Five can’t come down on employees who object to their involvement in undermining democracy, caving to totalitarian regimes, enabling ICE, selling garbage facial recognition to the Pentagon/law enforcement, undermining efforts against climate change, and other things that offend the most basic ethical framework?

  And how long after the high-income coder population is even partially unionized before people making a hell of a lot less money start wondering why they don’t get to have a union? I truly believe that this could be the turning point that starts the overall levels of union membership in the country towards the first upswing since the ’50s.

• On the flip side of all those rosy futures, PR and law firms that specialize in union busting are celebrating today; they just got to up their rates because a bunch more employers are calling them in a panic.
• Creators can breathe a sigh of relief. A lot of them were fully prepared to walk away from Kickstarter as a platform, and some were holding off on starting projects, waiting to see how this went. That last probably wasn’t necessary (see the next item), but I’m sure it was noticed. Given the failure of Drip 2.0 to launch, there really isn’t an alternative to Kickstarter.
• Everybody that announced you were boycotting Kickstarter (despite the fact that the union organizers specifically asked that you not do so unless they deemed it necessary to bring management to the table), you’ll be coming back now, right? I’d hate to think any of that was performative outrage.

Spam of the day:

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As I am neither an evil obsessive, nor a potentially murderous, controlling partner with a restraining order on him, I have no use for your stalker wares. Kindly go away, dispose of all your inventory in a large fire, then sit in the corner and think about what you’ve done.

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¹ Fewer than 90 employees took part in the vote.

² What up, Tech Support?

³ At least in our universal of physical laws. I swear, it’s only a matter of time before somebody on Indiegogo promises an inertialess drive or overunity power generator.

Today is the lamest holiday on the Usian calendar, Presidents Day (New Jersey), and Washington’s Birthday (federal). I had work today, but the banks are closed, the mail isn’t delivered, and also I am still super tired from the weekend¹. So not a lot of webcomics sleuthing going on around here, but I bet with the footnotes I can stretch this past 300 words. Betcha.

Spam of the day:

The coronavirus has reached US shores with 6 confirmed cases in the United States. While there is no known cure for this virus right now You could also consider using this… destroying free radicals as if putting an ‘off’ switch to diseases. Debilitating diseases such as diabetes, chronic pain, and even cancer isn’t something you have to ‘put up’ with.

1, see footnote #2 below. 2, fuck all the way off into the sun, and when you get there fuck off some more.

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¹ Not from anything fun, either. It was EMS duty weekend, a 24 hour shift that served to illustrate that people always have their cardiac arrests at 3:00am and their strokes at 5:45am², instead of 3:00pm and 5:45pm, respectively. Not a lotta Saturday night sleep for Gary is what I’m saying, and while last night was ordinary, I am still yawning and occasionally slow on the uptake today.

² I should clarify that these were not the same patient. Also, one of them answered the routine question, Any overseas travel in the last three weeks? with My daughter and mother-in-law returned from Chengdu on January 15th, which is the closest I’ve come so far to COVID-19.

That being said, take the approximately 70,000 cases reported so far in China, and divide by a population of approximately 1.43 billion, and you’ve got odds that are somewhere between three white balls + the Powerball and four white balls, and ain’t too many of you reading this that have hit that partial jackpot, I’m guessing.

Here in the US, the odds are even longer: 15 confirmed cases out of 330 million people, you are as likely to get five white balls (but no Powerball) twice, meaning two separate million dollar jackpots. Stop being crappy to the people that live and work in your local Chinatown, please.

I’ll leave it to the boss herself:

It turns out that sometimes if you and @ppcrotty, @WhitLeopard, @RoxieReads, and @jhautsethi work very hard, people bring you cake. Who knew?!

That from Gina Gagliano, head of Random House Graphic, at the party thrown to celebrate the first releases from the imprint, and a debut year that will see twelve graphic novels for kids released¹. She and her stalwart staff² — senior editor Whitney Leopard, designer Patrick Crotty, and publicist/marketer Nicole Valdez — talked about the books out now (and coming soon) that they really want you to know about. And since I accepted a piece of their cake, I feel like I should hold up my end of the bargain.

• Gagliano’s choice for favorite upcoming book is Witchlight by Jessi Zbarsky, which she described as a girl with swords meets a girl that does magic, they have adventures and fall in love and in the middle there’s food which is just … I’m in. Look for it on 14 April.
• Leopard wants you to read The Runaway Princess (out for the past three week) by Johan Troïowski, because it’s got an interactive element in each chapter, as the reader is asked to do or achieve something, and also Stepping Stones (due 5 May), the first kids book by Lucy Knisley, who is the best.
• Crotty, coming from a background of indie comics, particularly wants you to read Bug Boys (released three days ago) by Laura Knetzger, noting how many of the great comics we’re getting these days wouldn’t exist without the indie creators doing 8 to 12 page minis, never anticipating they’ll be collected in a print volume. The Bug Boys are for kids but have a Charlie Brownesque philosophical side, and Knetzger keeps cranking out the minis, so it won’t be long before the second collection arrives.
• Valdez allowed that there was some disagreement over who would get to talk about Bug Boys, but was enthused to talk instead about Aster And The Accidental Magic (coming in two and a half weeks) by Thom Pico and Karensac. This girl is me is the message she wanted to convey, an idea that underlies RHG’s mission — to put a graphic novel in the hands of every kid in America³.

They’re on their way. Gagliano talked about how she started in the industry fifteen years ago, how comics were regarded with suspicion but now schools and libraries are their biggest champions. There’s a lot of hands out there that still haven’t gotten comics, and lot of minds that still have to develop that higher level of reading, and she and her team are going to do their level best to fix that.

And yes, publishing is a very Manhattan-centric business, but the crowd was overflowing the aisles at Books Of Wonder, and not just because of the cake. There were younger folk there, mid-20s a lot of them, ready to answer that call and pitch their ideas and end up on some of those shelves. Here’s to finding out what makes it there in the coming years.

Spam of the day:

Your regular glasses can get lost, break or your prescription can change over time, resulting in expensive trips to the optometrist!

I’ve been wearing glasses since I was 19, and in the 30+ years since, I have lost exactly one pair (sunglasses, on my way home from Tom Spurgeon’s memorial), broken none, and yes, my prescription has changed because my eyeballs have changed. This is the definition of a straw man you’re propping up here.

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¹ Out of a total twenty four for Random House Children’s Books. No pressure, just got to make up half the output for one of the most storied publishing imprints in history in your first year, that’s all.

² Random House associate publisher Judith Haut, while not part of Gagliano’s staff, is the one that decided that there needed to be a RHG and found the right person for the job.

³ Quoting Gagliano, and echoing their tagline, A graphic novel on every bookshelf. Whoever that kid is, wherever that shelf is, Leopard told us back in July, they will have at least one title that makes that kid say This is the book I was waiting for.

What? No, not EmCity, although we will be talking about that presently.

Today I’ve got my eye on the SF Comics Fest, via the good folks at the Cartoon Art Museum. For those of you that haven’t seen it in past years, SF Comics Fest is an association of comics-related events (like Will Eisner Week) taking place in and around the Bay Area, in a sort of mutual non-aggression pact. This year’s events will run from 29 February¹ through 8 March and will include:

• 29 Feb: San Francisco Youth Justice Comic Con A free event for youth blending activism with comics, anime and pop culture. The event will feature zine-making, a drawing jam, a cosplay parade, exhibitor booths, and workshops facilitated by local artists and activists.
• 1-7 Mar: Will Eisner Week Read a graphic novel, encourage others to do so. Yeah, I know, for most of us this is better known as “every week”, but now’s your chance to get evangelical about it.
• 7 Feb: Eisner Edition Saturday Cartooning for Kids There’s monthly Saturday afternoon cartooning workshops (underwritten by the NCS Foundation) that run from 1:00pm to 2:30pm at the Cartoon Art Museum, and March’s will focus on the legacy of Eisner. You can get more information on the full Spring 2020 series here.
• 8 Mar: 35th Anniversary Spirit of Mini Comics Challenge It’s the 35th anniversary of CAM, and they’re marking the occasion by seeking to make 35 minicomics in one day. Demonstrations, creative coaching and materials provided at the event, which is free and open to the public.
• 8 Mar: 25th Anniversary of MUTTS Patrick McDonnell will be talking about his work and signing afterwards; in keeping with the theme of MUTTS, representatives of Muttville senior dog rescue will be there to talk about adopting older dogs. Muttville outreach from 5:30pm to 6:30pm, and McDonnell from 6:30pm to 8:00pm. CAM members free with RSVP, others US$10 and up, with book purchase and membership options, head over to Guestlist for all means of attendance.

There’s plenty of other events happening around the Bay Area, which you can catch up with here; if you want to host your own event, you can sign up here, which means the list of SFCF events will only grow from here on out. Anybody on the left coast in two-three weeks should keep an eye out for what’s going on while you’re there.

Spam of the day:

Request Pending… Cancel Your Subscription…

Hmmm, every “button” in your email leads to the same place, and you don’t actually tell me what I’m allegedly unsubscribing from that requires my information to be sent to Brazil. Next time, just tell me it’s LinkedIn. I’d do anything to get those bastards to leave me alone.

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¹ Also the 13th birthday of my evil twin, Howard Tayler. At last, he is a man!

Hey, y’all. Got some time-sensitive info for you, and some advance-planning info for you. Let’s do this.

• Time Sensitive! Iron Circus Comics has a sale going on. In honor of Horny Werewolf Day tomorrow, there’s discounts to be had on all of their funtime sexytime offerings.

  Until the famous gettin’ it on holiday is done, you get 30% on books, softcover and hard¹ PDFs, special editions, and even the already-discounted scratch-and-dent copies of The Art of Kaneoya Sachiko, The Complete Curvy, Crossplay, Iris and Angel, TJ and Amal (including the prequel and side story), Letters for Lucardo, all the various Smut Peddlers, and Yes, Roya. Get ’em while the gettin’s good.

• Advance Planning! Ngozi Ukazu just a few updates away from the big finish of Check, Please!, and getting ready to release the second half of the story in print form through :01 Books. Check Please: Sticks And Scones drops on 7 April, and to mark the occasion, Ukazu’s going on book tour.

  Her travel kicks off on the 4th, with launch day in her hometown of Austin, before heading on to DC, Brooklyn, Long Island, suburban Boston, and Chicago over the next ten days. Now’s the time to prepare yourself to attend an event if you can, but also to say goodbye to the best bros² you could ever wish for.

Spam of the day:

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Even if Noom wasn’t the stupidest brand name of the century, I’d still tell you to get the fuck out of here with your diet program bullshit.

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¹ Hurr, hurr.

² I have so much headcanon about what Ransom and Holster will get up to. They are basically going to have to live next door to each other for the rest of their lives or they’ll be too sad. Also, Shitty will be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court some day.

From Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin:

I have a lot of memories in relation to Claire Bretécher’s work; I first knew her through Aggripine, the teenager whose adventures she created during the 80s, 90s, and 00s. Then, I later discovered her earlier works: Cellulite, Les Frustrés, but also some lesser-known ones. Her work was so groundbreaking in every way: the style, the themes, the language, but also everything that does not appear on the page (more on that in a minute) that I still can’t believe Angoulême never awarded her the Grand Prix. It’s a disgrace.

But I’m going to leave a proper overview of her work to people more competent than I am; rather, we at Fleen will focus here on how she has preceded French webcartoonists in their quest for independence.

Bretécher had traditionally worked with publishers, many of them in fact, in the 60s; but in the 70s for Les Frustrés she was working with Le Nouvel Obs, a weekly magazine publisher. And once enough pages had run there, she sought to have them collected. While some publishers showed interest, they also offered her conditions that she was not happy with, so she said Screw it. (not an exact quote)

She went ahead and took a loan, hired a printer, sought bookshops, etc: she self-published Les Frustrés. The 70s were a time of upheaval in Euro comics, but the contemporary initiatives¹ to break free of traditional publishers aimed at creating editorial structures pooling the publication of multiple creators; Bretécher, by herself, showed that it was possible to go at it alone, and remain independent: she kept self-publishing for the remainder of her career.

She never published on the web (she did feature the sociological impact of the Internet in the later Aggripine books, lest you think she ignored it), but nevertheless she has directly or indirectly inspired the current crop of French-language webcartoonists who are self-publishing today, the same way she did so many years ago.

For those interested in furthering their knowledge of Bretécher, a large portion of her body of work has been translated in English, with Les Frustrés being easiest to find; however, in some cases you might have to hit the second-hand market.

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¹ The Hara-Kiri crew had founded Charlie Mensuel to publish Al Capp, Charles Shultz, and a few others; Moebius, Dionnet, and Druillet founded Métal Hurlant (Heavy Metal); Gotlib had founded Fluide Glacial so grown-up comics (his and other’s) could see the light of day; Bretécher herself had been part of such an initiative, with Mandryka and Gotlib, called l’Echo des Savanes, before they ran out of money, etc.

This is going to be somewhat brief, as we at Fleen (and by that I mean Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin) are working up another posting in response to the breaking news.

Until then, I hope that you saw what would have been yesterday’s most important story but for other (and much happier) breaking news — the Creators For Creators Grant applications are open:

HEYYY! The Creators for Creators grant is open for 2020! We give $30k to an unpublished creator or duo to support the creation of their debut work. It’s funded entirely by comics creators. Check out our submissions page creatorsforcreators.org/submissions-2/ and follow @Creators4C for updates!

That from Kelly Sue DeConnick, all around amazing comics writer and one of the original — let’s say signatories — that established the C4C grant back in Aught-Sixteen. Since then there have been three recipients¹; the fourth will receive:

[US]$30,000 to a single cartoonist or writer/artist duo in order to support the creation of a new and original work of a length between sixty-four and one hundred pages over the course of a single year.

In addition to the monetary support, the recipient of the grant will have access to mentorship from the experienced creators involved with Creators for Creators. Mentorship will cover almost every aspect of the comic-creating experience. The goal is to give the recipient a firm foundation in the creative, business, legal, and financial areas of the comics business.

The recipient has total control over how and where they choose to publish their work once it is completed, whether they choose to submit it to a creator-owned publisher or release it themselves in any format. Iron Circus Comics and Image Comics have both pledged to support the recipient by publishing their work, if the recipient so chooses. No matter their choice, the recipient retains all rights to their work.

Applicants (18 years and older) must not have had solo work published by a third party (anthologies and self-publishing are okay), and the work submitted for the grant (which must be 64-100 pages when complete) must not have been submitted for publication in the past year and must be original. The full guidelines, application [PDF], and release agreement [PDF] are at the C4C site; send them with your supporting materials to submissions2020 over at the creatorsforcreators site, which a dot-org. Applications must be received by 11 May 2020, and the recipient(s) will be announced in June.

Spam of the day:

Clear View–Drive Safe, No Matter What the Conditions

Dude, you had a lot better chance of getting my money when you had the rapping dude on 80s daytime TV hawking BluBlockers™.

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¹ Who mostly are not originally American/Canadian; there’s huge world of comics built out of experiences from outside North America, and we’re all luckier for getting to see them.

So I was going to be writing today about the official announcement, last week, that Queen Of The Sea (one of my very favorite books of last year) would be getting a sequel. Dylan Meconis had said as much, back in July when I last saw her, but the announcement made it officially official:

So some exciting news! There will be a sequel to Queen of the Sea!! There is exclusive sneak peek art and a lovely interview by @FuseEight right here.

Prince Of The City will pick up where Queen Of The Sea left off, but not for two and a half years, boo. Pages composed of watercolors take a hell of a long time to make, and Meconis has other projects in the meantime, like the History Smashers series (words by Kate Messner), which releases starting this July.

Like I said, I was going to be talking about all that today, but Meconis got upstaged a bit more than an hour ago, by an announcement of a new, ongoing project that she’ll be involved in:

I don’t want to brag or anything, but I turned my latest project in three days early.

My wife joked that I wouldn’t post about having a kid until we brought the baby home and I laughed because I’m not THAT paranoid but then it just kind of snuck up on me, and by that I mean “went into labor pre-dawn the day after turning in two huge sets of files” which is VERY me

Bringing a child into the world under the best of circumstances is an act of supreme optimism. Given the challenges we face now (and the women involved), I choose to see this birth as a declaration: the world had damn well better get its shit together and be a place worthy of this little one growing up, or it will be subjected kicking and screaming to ruthlessly logical — Vulcanesque, one might say — behavioral modification, until it does. Either way, we get a better world out of the deal.

Congratulations to Meconis, wife Katie Lane¹ (of Work Made For Hire), and to this perfect child, blessed with the two most amazing moms anybody could ever ask for. Associate Child Oversight Specialist President Teddy Roosevelt is reportedly preparing to help shepherd the new member of the family until they’re ready to apply to Starfleet Academy, or take up a career in nonsparkly vampiric piracy, whichever they choose.

Spam of the day:
Spammers don’t get to share the day with the new one. Bless.

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¹ Light-ning Law-yer!!