New book to come, books for the past year getting recognition. It’s a book kind of day.

• While I may be slightly wondering what I’ve got to do to launch big announcements, instead of it going to CBR and Comics Alliance (or to niche, non-comics outlets like Entertainment Weekly and the LA Times), I understand it’s a matter of reach. I mean, well-known webcomicker that I’ve covered extensively gets to launch a new book with a major publisher of graphic novels, you want to get the eyeballs on that. I’m not jealous, I’m not mad¹, I’m just happy I can talk about something I first saw a loooong time ago.

  Evan Dahm has a new book on the way from :01 Books, with the announcement by Oliver Sava at The AV Club. Island Book (for that is its name) is not part of the existing Overside stories, and it’s not an illustrated edition of a classic American story². It’s a standalone story, about a young girl (in the Dahmian sense, which is to say that the people of this story are not remotely human) named Sola who is ostracized by her island-living, seafaring people because when she was little, a monster on a rampage didn’t kill her.

  It seemed to like her.

  And now her fisher-folk think that she’s responsible.

  It may be that you don’t get quite that much from the preview that :01 provided, but here’s where I have a secret to share — I’ve seen the first 25 or so pages of Island Book; it didn’t have a title then, and Dahm wasn’t sure if he was going to develop the story to full length, and in the long run from first idea to publication (it’s not due until winter of 2019³) it will inevitably change. Heck, what I saw amounts to not even the opening scene to establish the need for Sola to head out on adventures on the great wide ocean.

  But what I saw was full of Dahm’s trademark ability to make us care about characters from the get-go, to fill in just enough detail that it’s clear that more (much more!) will be revealed, and to reassure us that the journey will be worth it. Island Story will likely be 250 – 300 pages, meaning it’s a relatively short tale for Dahm. The most exciting thing is that over the next three years he’ll only get better as a writer and artist, and the book will be all the more compelling for it.

• And if you want more to read for the next three years, can I recommend you check out NPR’s annual recommendations (specifically, the comics and graphic novels section)? You’ll find webcomics and webcomickers like Kate Leth (on Hellcat), Kate Beaton (King Baby), Jason Shiga (Demon), Lisa Hanawalt (Hot Dog Taste Test), and the ubiquitous Raina Telgemeier (Ghosts).

Spam of the day:

F?nd the Best Walk-In Bathtub Deals near your city

I didn’t realize that walk-in bathtub deals were so common that there would be a price disparity. Learn something new every day.

______________
¹ I am glad that Ryan Estrada gives me his exclusives. Thanks, Ryan!

² Speaking of which, get on that Moby-Dick Kickstarter already. It’s five days from conclusion and hasn’t hit goal yet.

³ Which means you’ve got time to read Rice Boy and Order Of Tales, and I’ll give a 50/50 shot that Vattu is concluded by then.

We’re kinda all over the place today.

• It is a truth universally acknowledged that Anthony “Nedroid” Clark is a better person that you, or I, or anybody else; he sees what is going on in this sinful world and he shares that vision with clarity and (at his harshest) gentle poking. So when his Tumblr comic on How To Cut A Pizza from some years back was apparently lifted wholesale by somebody working for Little Caesar’s, he asked (very politely, I thought) for an explanation:
  

  Hey @littlecaesars, what’s the deal with ripping off my comic? http://nedroidcomics.tumblr.com/post/38264802929/how-to-cut-a-pizza https://www.facebook.com/littlecaesarsMEX/videos/1808149352787638/

  (Had it been me, there would have been egregious use of swear words and a request for corporate counsel’s contact info.)

  That was close to 20 hours ago; a little later, I attempted to get a comment from Little Caesar’s through the same Twitter account¹, to no avail. I see that since then, they have spent quite a bit of time with people who have complaints about not getting their orders for upwards of half an hour, but no comment on Clark’s concerns. I sent another tweet a bit more than an hour ago, and have similarly received no response.

  You know where this is going.

  Little Caesar’s does have a feedback form for customers with general concerns; I’m not a customer (I don’t think I’ve bought a pizza from them in more than 20 years²), but I suspect some of you may be. If you’ve bought anything from them in the recent past (I leave that to your determination), maybe use the form to send a polite inquiry (include links) as to their clearly unlicensed use of Mr Clark’s cartoon, with an encouragement that they reach out to him and find a mutually satisfactory path forward. Do it for the children.

• How about something cheerier? Ryan Estrada’s Big Data (written and produced by Estrada, starring Estrada and a whole damn bunch of other people³) is the sort of guy that can’t stop giving. Comics. Guest comics. Podcasts. Video. The guy is addicted to making stuff and then giving it to you for free (sometimes a while after people who have paid for it get it, but it pretty much always shows up for free). And he’s continuing that tradition with an extra Big Data tale, Zer0 Kn1ghts Before Christmas (aka The Big Data Christmas Special).

  And if that’s not enough of a present, I noticed for the first time at the bottom of the episodes page for Big Data (in the minisodes section, or Little Data) something that wasn’t there the last time I browsed by:

  Here’s a selection of minisodes to listen to until season 2, Bigger Data premieres!

  I think that’s what they call a stealth launch; considering that Big Data concluded on The End Of The Internet As We Know It, I’m intrigued as to how he can bring everything back from the brink. I’m hoping it’s just Oh hey guys, should I throw the switch on the backup? and then everything works again. Alas, As a matter of cosmic history, it has always been easier to destroy than to create and I suspect there will be a few more twists and turns; all the better for us, but unfortunate for his characters. Keep an ear out for Bigger Data and we can all find out together.

Spam of the day:

Open Enrollment is Here! Change Your Plan Before It’s Too Late!

Wait, sealflaslight.com has open enrollment? Who’da thunk it?

______________
¹ For the record, their website’s Contact Us/For the media page is a series of PR stories and no actual contact info.

² Ah, heck, I’m not fooling anybody. Feedback sent.

³ Asked by me how the heck he got the likes of Jemaine Clement, Paul F Tompkins, Felicia Day, and Cecil Baldwin to be in his audio play, Estrada responded, I asked, and I paid them.

So this is probably a first — a podcast review at a webcomics site; but given that the podcast in question is by the webcomickiest of all webcomickers (the inimitable Ryan Estrada), I figure it probably works. Also, I should note that Estrada sent me downloads for all nine episodes (not to mention minisodes, and the reading of the related Machine of Death story, Shiv Sena Riot) so I’ve heard ahead of the three episodes now available for free listening.

Radio drama is something we in the US don’t have a lot of experience with¹, and the first thing you have to worry about is whether or not the voices and characters are different enough to follow easily. Estrada’s come up with a story conceit that lets him take a sprawling cast (more than 70 voice actors) across nine episodes and break them into manageable, discrete units that are pretty easy to follow. Apart from an overly-long, overly-narrated chase scene (which is not the easiest thing to depict in audio only) in episode one², the story zips along nicely.

The conceit is that a virus used by MRAs to spy on women has infected the phones of both teams of thieves and their targets. This works better than you might suspect, since everybody’s got a phone on them all the time, after all. The thieves are after the fabled Seven Keys To The Internet³, but that’s just another conceit for Estrada to tell a series of other stories about things he wants to talk about — criminal gangs in the digital age, Korean gaming police, secret hard drives in photocopiers, the history of magic, the history of abusive patents, venture capital and the tech bubble, put-upon phone center workers (a recurring theme, as this would be Manisha, star of Shiv Sena Riot and Estrada’s earlier Broken Telephone), relay phones for the deaf, and the prominence of Eastern Texas in patent trolling all come under his scrutiny … and as the end credits note each time, these are all real things.

The result is a series of I told you that story so I could tell you this story connections, with each story different in place, tone, subject matter, and (in large part) cast. So far, the best balance of all the competing areas of focus has been episode three, Motivation, featuring a lovely series of musical interludes derived from the verse of 19th Century spiritualist scammers and a lead performance (by Chris Tharp) that equally channeled Jeff Garlin and Penn Jillette.

The only thing that I’d ask for is that the show page link to cast credits on a per-episode basis instead of one big list. It’s a bit confusing trying to tie roles to particular interludes this way. Oh, and Jemaine Clement insists, in the opening titles, on pronouncing Data as dah-tuh instead of the proper day-tah. As another Data once pointed out, One is my name. The other is not. Get it together, Clement! Or, since Estrada’s the director and should know better, get it together, Estrada!

But these are minor quibbles. Big Data is a bunch of different stories on a bunch of weird-but-true side effects of modern life, and a fun journey through What Matters To Ryan. Give ‘er a listen, if only for the creative insults lobbed at Kickstarter supporters at the end of each episode.

Spam of the day:

MOVING SUCKS! LET US HELP YOU.

Got that right, which is why I’m never moving again. Pretty good pitch, though.

______________
¹ Not for lack of enthusiastic trying, sometimes. Waaaay back in college, I was part of a radio show that tried to put together a single, two hour SF radio drama in conjunction with the return of Comet Halley. It’s a creative endeavour that is very hard not to suck at.

² By episode four, a similar fight scene (also tough to do in audio only) was much briefer, reflecting either tighter scripting, tighter editing, or both. Much appreciated, either way.

³ It’s actually twelve, and full disclosure: one of my friends is actually a keyholder and she would find it hilarious to think that somebody might try to steal her key. She’d also kick their ass.

I was going to call this one Booksday, but it’s not just books dropping today. Ready for the list?

• Leave Me Alone!; words and pictures by Vera Brosgol, from Roaring Brook Press
• King Baby; words and pictures by Kate Beaton, from Scholatic
• Mervin The Sloth Is About To Do The Best Thing In The World; words by Collen AF Venable, pictures by Ruth Chan, from Harper Collins
• The Creepy Case Files Of Margo Maloo (review here); words and pictures by Drew Weing, from :01 Books
• Ghosts (review here); words and line art by Raina Telgemeier, colors by Braden Lamb, from Scholastic

But it’s not just dead tree releases that you should be paying attention to; for those of you that like to listen to things, I have a pair of podcasts of note:

• Big Data episode one from Ryan Estrada, et al, drops today, with the start of a story about a plot to steal the internet. What I find most interesting about Big Data is actually the presence of a seemingly minor character: Manisha, as played by Sasha Roopen. Indian call center representative Manisha was the star of Estrada’s This Is How You Die story, Shiv Sena Riot, then she was the center (or at least the moral center) of Estrada’s Broken Telephone, and now she’s here. She’s the constant of the Estradaverse, definitively linking the various stories into one continuity. Neat.
• Can I Pet Your Dog? episode 60, from Maximum Fun also drops today, with special guests Jeph Jacques and his enormous floof of a dog, Shelby (star of webcomics and the floor of Jeph’s house). Every Great Pyrenees I’ve ever met has been a damn cool dog, and Jacques tells you more about Shelby here, but if you want to know about a dog, you don’t read about it — you listen to that dog’s person/people tell stories about the good boy/girl in question. Even if you’re a cat person, you should give Can I Pet Your Dog? a listen because dogs rule.

Spams of the day:

fantastic franchise opportunity

and

your bankruptcy options

I think it’s probably significant that both of these are coming from the same address.

Okay, one of them’s really a pre-announcement of when a hiatus will wrap, but let’s go with it.

• Ryan Estrada has, for the past forever, been hard at work on Big Data. He announced the project on this page back in April, he started a Kickstarter a few days later to determine how much to release, and he’s been heads-down ever since putting the polish on.

  And now we have a premiere date. The internet radio play about the Caper of the Century and the Keys to the Internet will start releasing on Tuesday, 13 September (the same days as a few other things; it’s going to be a great day for those of us of certain sensibilities); Kickstarter backers will get all nine episodes at once, the rest of us will have to persevere through cliffhangers and plot twists.

• Meanwhile, David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc and semi-pro Mr Bean impersonator) reached today the end of his webcomic recaps of Old School Trek episodes, Planet of Hats. Or, more properly, reached it again; he finished up the recaps of Star Trek’s run with Turnabout Intruder (ick) back in January. Then he did the end-of-season recap¹ a week later, and gave us a final splash page at the end of the month.

  Then two months later he started all over again with the mid-70s animated series, the 22 episodes of which are what actually finished today. In case you aren’t old enough to have watch the animated Star Trek on Saturday mornings when you were a kid, it was pretty dire, but on average no worse than the third season of the live action show¹.

  And much like a Peter Jackson trilogy, Morgan-Mar had at least one more ending in store for us: although it will be the new year before it happens, he will be tackling the six movies that feature the original Star Trek cast, so we can look forward to the highs of Wrath of Khan and the lows of the execrable The Final Frontier, so that’s all right.

  As of this writing, it appears that Generations is being classified as a nu-Trek film, but who knows? Drop enough in his Patreon on the condition that he recap Darmok or Yesterday’s Enterprise or The Inner Light and I’d bet he’d come around. Even better, give him enough that he’s obligated to make it through all of TNG and DS9 — I’d love to read his take on In The Pale Moonlight or Far Beyond The Stars or even just highlights of Bashir’s bromances with O’Brien and Garak³.

  The thing is, point your RSS readers — it’s still a thing! — at the feed address and see you all on 4 January 2017. You can spend the time until then reading his first Irregular Webcomic print collection, which is being received by backers as we speak.

Spam of the day:

WE’LL PACK AND MOVE YOUR STUFF FOR YOU!

The hell you will. I’m never moving again.

_______________
¹ Hey, if you’re going to borrow a strip’s format from Shaenon Garrity, you include the season recap pages, because they are insane and great.

² Or most of the first season and a half of Next Generation (basically, everything pre-Borg) for that matter. It remains an indisputable fact that only DS9 hit the ground running and stayed there.

³ Shippers, start your engines.

Warning: we’re talking about the seamy underbelly of creativity today — finding the money to make things while simultaneously not starving to death in the gutter.

• It looks like we’re getting Big Data after all! Well, okay, Ryan Estrada’s radioplay/podcast about the heist to steal the Keys To The Whole Internet was done, completed, finito, and when has that guy ever made a thing and not shared it? Regardless of the state of his crowdfunding campaign he was always going to release it, it was just a matter if he was going to so much as break even after a year and a half’s effort and thousands of dollars of upfront costs. That means we’re going to get stretch goals now, which … let’s just have Estrada tell us himself:
  

  Big Data is funded! I posted “stretch goals” that… let’s be honest here… are just stuff I’m doing no matter what. http://tinyurl.com/stretchability

  Free comics! More fancy voice talents! Estrada’s going to do more audio drama! The only question is are you going to toss him a couple bucks now, or after Big Data blows up into the next Serial?

• Know who else doesn’t make things contingent on crowdfunding, he just goes out there and makes stuff and then engages in commerce to invite you to buy it? Howard Tayler, that’s who. Today marks the preorder availability of Schlock Mercenary book 12, including the chance to have a dapper man sketch in your copy of the book, with delivery expected in mere weeks.

  See, the drawback — to the extent that there is one — of crowdfunding is that you don’t have the money to produce the thing until the check clears, so even if the thing is already made and you’ve got handshakes with the manufacturer, you can’t sign the contract and say Go until they get paid, then you get on their schedule, then you wait … and that’s best case. Me, I’m guessing that Tayler¹ did a bunch of math, figured out what a print run should look like for immediate orders plus reasonable stock for the future, and that the presses are already whirring.

  That’s why you’ll get your book in July, which means it’s got to get here, and get sketched in, and sent out in five to nine weeks². That’s as close to instant gratification as you’re going to get in webcomics.

• Speaking of instant gratification — sometimes how fast you get something is entirely up to the fans. Readers of this page will recall the high regard I have for Al’Rashad: City of Myths, as written by [comics commentator, Toronto politics observer, and lawyer] Christopher Bird and illustrated by Davinder Brar (illustration freelancer and teacher).

  It’s a damn good story, it’s nearly 300 pages long (serialized over about four years), and it’s just the first part of a trilogy. Thing is, lawyerin’ and teachin’ don’t leave a lot of time to make comics on the webcomics grind, particularly if it means (as it would for Brar) giving up freelance jobs to have the time to draw a comic that isn’t paying anything for years (if ever)⁴.

  Enter the Patreon to fund the production of Ra-Boka: Kingdom of the Bound (that would be the title of the second story). And, crucially, the funding goals start off modest, but as they increase they radically increase the pace of production. We’ve all seen Patreons that set goals of one extra comic a week or at least ten comics a month, but Bird & Brar³ start from a low target of $125 (I’m not sure if that’s US dollars, as Patreon is an American company, or Canadian, as Bird & Brar are strong and free), providing one page a month, to $2500 (three pages a week, 12 – 13 per month).

  It’s a hell of a range, and given that Ra-Boka is also projected to run nearly 300 pages, which means the story could take not quite 24 years to tell … or a year and a half. This is very much a case where a couple hundred people with a couple bucks each could make the difference between seeing a story on a schedule that would make even George RR Martin blanch (much less the third part of the trilogy) and seeing it unfold at warp speed before the last season of Game of Thrones hits.

  Time to dig in for that couple of bucks, kids — the first story was damn good (supra), you could see both Brar and Bird progressing in their craft during its run, so I expect the second (and third!) to be even better.

Spam of the day:

We are pleased to inform you of the released results of the Microsoft Iberica S.L Sweepstakes Promotion in conjunction with foundations for the promotion of software products organized for Software users.

This Program was held in Barcelona- Spain; Wherein your email address emerged as one of the online Winning emails in the 1st category and therefore attracted a cash award of EUR344,000.00 and a Mac laptop/iPhone.

Microsoft ran a sweepstakes and is giving out an iPhone? BALEETED.

_______________
¹ By which I mean Howard’s wife Sandra, the logistics/business wrangler of TaylerCorp, and the one that makes sure that Art Boy gets all his stuff made and sent where it needs to go.

² Cue Dolley, Jane, and Lily. Dabney can eat it.

³ Together, they fight crime.

⁴ But Gary, I hear you cry, couldn’t Bird just pay Brar out of pocket like he must have for Al’Rashad, or like Estrada’s always doing? Yes, I suppose, but 1) Shut up, nobody is obligated to go into debt to entertain you for free; Estrada is unusually generous, but that does not create a binding precedent; 2) Bird’s got a wedding coming up and I doubt his fiancee is willing to serve guests pigs in blankets instead of a meal in order to make a comic for free reading on the internet; and 3) Seriously, if that’s the way you think, re-examine your priorities in life.

Okay, so there’s a Family Emergency brewing, one that may necessitate my absence from El Blog for several days on little to no notice. This is to let you know that if I go silent for a bit, it was because of that and not anything you did, so don’t feel bad. It also means that while waiting for the proverbial shoe to fall, a lot of things are happening in Life, and my blogging time is limited. I thank you in advance for your understanding.

Today we are going to mention (briefly) a trio of Kickstarts.

• Firstly, Ryan Estrada’s Big Data (cf: here) had gone up in an attempt to recoup Estrada’s expenses from making the audioplay (which will be released as a nine-part podcast, or all in one go if you back it). Now thing about this for a moment — Estrada’s already paid everybody associated with making Big Data, which means he’s taking a risk by putting up the campaign; if he doesn’t hit his goal of US$7500 (which will merely bring him back to a net loss of zero dollars), he gets nothing.

  The podcast is still done and paid for. It will release to the world whether he gets paid or not, and whether you pay him or not. The chief benefit of backing is you’ll get all nine hours in one go instead of listening week-to-week trying to solve the mystery like a chump. Okay, yeah, there are little bonuses where it can me implied that the whole mess of Big Data is your fault, but mostly it’s getting to listen early.

  And not cost Estrada a chunk o’ change. He could have put up a ten dollar goal and kept everything, even if it didn’t meet his outlay; instead, he’s putting a monumental amount of faith into the we like creative people community, willing to bet multiple thousands that you’ll come through. Make with the donating.

• Secondly, Shaenon Garrity, Funk Queen of the East Bay and Yea, Even Unto The Far Antipodes, launched the Kickstart for the sixth (full color, this time) volume of Skin Horse. This one is gonna go by the numbers — launch one day, 150% funded the next, 39 days to go, you’ll get your stuff when she said because she is a goddamn professional and acts like one.
• Thirdly, Irregular Webcomic. What the crap, man? Guy does a highly-loved comic for-friggin’-ever, finally get the ability to do a book, and with two and a half days left to do is just under 80% funded? This would be a damn good time for that end-of-campaign uptick to happen. If this falls short, the chance of ever getting other Irregular Webcomics volumes decreases by a nontrivial amount. Clutch time, people.

Spam of the day:

Reply to claim your FREE PANERA BREAD COUPONS worth

Let me stop you right there. Of all the corporate chain “food” that I won’t eat, I most won’t eat the utter garbage at Panera because their “bread” is a travesty. Fake, painted to look like it’s got color and crust, softer and blander than Wonder Bread; I’d literally rather eat the “bread” sticks from Olive frickin’ Garden. It’s in the name of your damn restaurant, it’s got to be not totally sucky and yet it is! Nooooo thank you.

I had decided on the title and theme of today’s post last night, and as I sat down today to pound the text into shape the news broke that Prince has died. I’m going to remember him primarily for two things: I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man, which is about as perfect a song as ever was, and his underrated ability to have fun at his own expense. I’m also telling the next two guys I talk about to goddamn take care of themselves, please.

• Jim Zub is a guy who has spent the past decade or so making his way into the comics industry, and the thing about him that strikes me even more than the quality and breadth of his writing — which are both off the charts — is the fact that he’s always given more than he’s gotten. He is selfless and tireless in sharing his skills and wisdom, doing his level best to make it easier for the next generation of creators to find their way … an action that only makes his life harder, both for the effort it costs him now, and the competitors he’ll have to face down for jobs in the future.

  So imagine how much he’d be willing to share with people that are specifically paying him.

  Zub has, at long last, launched a Patreon but it’s kind of on the down-low right now, because there’s no other reason for it to have a paltry 35 backers and US$183 per month support level. The big thing you get for backing the Zubster? Full comic scripts and pitch documents, or as I like to call them, How To Be Zub 101. And considering that Zub is universally liked and respected, that’s a pretty good thing to be.

• So Ryan Estrada sent me a link last night (my time; it would have been daylight in Korea, where he lives) and casually said I could have the exclusive. If you’ve been following his Twitterfeed for the past months, you know that he’s been heads-down on his latest project, an audio play with top-flight talent the names of which he promised would blow our minds. And you know what? He’s not lying.

  Big Data is the story of what happens if the keyholders who keep the internet working got attacked and subverted by a conspiracy of ne’er-do-wells who maybe aren’t all that organized or competent. It posits a world where the internet is dying, and the person who’s determined to get to the bottom of it decides to do so in the form of a podcast, tracing the story of What The Hell Happened, in a weird cross of Serial and whatever Alex Jones is blathering about now. It looks hilarious, and we’ll all get to see what the deal is (duration, full cast, etc) on Monday, when the Kickstarter launches.

  Oh, not the Kickstarter to make Big Data — it’s already been made, the talent’s been paid, it’s in the can and ready to go. And that talent includes people you just might have heard of like Paul F Tompkins, Cecil Baldwin, Kevin Allison, Jermaine Clement, and De Anne Dubin, with a theme by The Doubleclicks. When I asked Estrada how the hell he got these people (and more!) to participate¹, he gave a completely logical answer: I asked nicely, and paid them!

  Here’s the trailer; check the main site on 25 April to see the Kickstart details and learn how we can all get front-row seats to the informational apocalypse. Like all the best apocalypses, the important people will be there.

Spam of the day:

Compare Car Donation Options Today

and

Compare Cancer Treatment Options Today

That’s a pair of damn near identical-looking emails you guys have sent me. Maybe don’t send them within 12 seconds of each other next time and I won’t notice.

_______________
¹ Fun fact: about the time I was wondering how the hell Estrada got his cast, he was wondering how the hell I have a friend who’s actually an ICANN keyholder. She’s done the key-signing ceremony and tells me after a while it gets really boring, and since you’re in one hell of a Faraday cage, you can’t use your phone or post selfies or anything.

Weirdest thing? She’s not an internet hacker from small times — she’s an English major that wound up doing logistics and disaster recovery planning, which utilize her natural aptitudes for organization and yelling at people until they do things correctly². She’s a lot of fun at parties.

² Since the or else in her yelling promises grave physical harm and lasting emotional damage, she is a woman after may own system administrator’s heart. Look, I’m not saying that she once caused a troublemaker to get cavity searched, but I am saying that the belief that she would do such a thing if you pushed her has helped her compliance-with-procedure rates enormously.

For those with lesser tolerances for the spooky stuff, things become less scarifying as you read down.

• Kris Straub is, as I write this, somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, headed towards Melbourne and the about-to-occur PAX iteration therein. He’s also just left behind what I an assume is the leading edge of entirely deserved praise for the best contribution to the spirit of the spooky season I’ve seen this year, in the form of a few wobbly images, a couple dozen lines of text, and some deeply unsettling ambient sounds.

  The overnight crew at Channel 58 is not having a good night; something odd is going on, it may well be affecting the entire world and we see only the most local interpretation of events that may be beyond rational comprehension. The … the changes happen in front of us, as two entirely distinct interpretations of what it means to be safe and whole compete for the attention of a vanishingly small audience; those who are asleep are either safe or beyond help, and none of us knows which.

  Straub’s a master of showing no more than is absolutely necessary to get across his message, and this particular nightmare says/shows far less than it could, to terrific — I use that word in its most precise sense — effect. The questions that flood us over the course of a few minutes are more frightening than anything we could have been told/shown; Straub’s made our own imaginations an active co-conspirator in the scares.

  Local58.info — both address and, presumably, title — is the most disturbing thing I’ve seen in the past three years not drawn by Emily Carroll, and a perfect tonal match for her work. It’s exactly what this Halloween season — what every Halloween season — needs to achieve maximum creepitude. Bravo.

• For those not yet sufficiently creeped out, may I point you towards a new project? Adam Tierney (words) and Matthieu Cousin (pictures) have a Kickstarter up for a clever book that you can share with young ‘uns that enjoy the spine-shiver of a good, safe scare. Specifically, they’re putting together an A-to-Z book of 26 one-page illustrations and 26 one-page stories dealing with 26 phobias.

  Afraid of Everything calls to mind an old Peanuts punchline , and you can get a good feel for just how wide-ranging those fears can be by checking out a free 10 page/5 fear preview. The phobic panopticon has cleared a bit more than 50% in its first five days, and is well on track to clear its (exceedingly modest) US$6000 goal in the four weeks remaining. Check ‘er out.

• Ryan Estrada’s Broken Telephone has been mentioned on this page previously, and as the six-interwoven-stories-with-eighteen-creative-teams epic approaches the 2/3s point of its yearlong run, it’s been catching more attention. Today, for instance, it’s the lead comic in The AV Club’s weekly comic roundup, in the company of the likes of the latest :01 Books entry and Usagi freakin’ Yojimbo. If you haven’t been reading Broken Telephone, you should be, and now it’s not just me that’s telling you that.

Spam of the day:

Hey! New message, please read.
El software de antivirus Avast ha analizado este correo electrónico en busca de virus.

Oh! Well, if you tell me that an antivirus program has scanned your spam email and the link you’re sending is http://[redacted].com/safe, then of course it must be fine for me to click through!

• Holy cats! Raina Telgemeier has somehow slipped, as the latest iteration of the New York Times Best Seller List includes only three of her books, in the relatively modest #4, 5, and 6 slots (although we’re also a mere four weeks away from Sisters being on the list for 52 consecutive weeks, so there’s that). Not to worry; although the first Baby-Sitters Club color reissue has slipped off the list (after dropping to #10 last week, its 11th on the list), the second BSC color reissue released the day before yesterday.

  You can see where I’m going with this.

  There’s a lag time on the NYTBSL, but I’ma guess we’re shortly going to see The Truth About Stacey join Smile, Drama, and Sisters, and very possibly see the return of Kristy’s Great Idea. Can we do five Telgemeier books simultaneously? With the remaining two BSC color reissues due in October and January, could we see an actual majority of the ten slots owned by books about tween girls? No bets, my friends.

• Holey Cats! Now this is how you meet promised Kickstarter fulfillment goals:
  

  When we launched our Kickstarter back in January, we hoped to sell 500 copies of our game. With that in mind, we wrote the following on our Kickstarter page: “Estimated delivery: July 2015”

  We wound up selling more than 500 copies. We sold 460,000 copies.

  …

  I know we promised we’d deliver in July. But that’s a lot of things we had to do. So, the new expected delivery date is …

  Still July!

  Yep, kittens that ‘splode start their rolling shipping today; it would be impossible to ship to ship every one of the 220,000-odd (some very odd) backers in 122 different countries on the same day, despite the fact that the EK crüe have sent massive quantities of games to various countries around the world to ship domestically, rather than from the US (which would involve customs, and international shipping, and headaches and delays and missing packages galore). Heck, they had to partner with six companies for production and fulfillment, including seeing the Cards Against Humanity folks set up an entire company — Blackbox — just to handle the shipping and notifications.

  Those specific details — 122 countries, six companies, Blackbox — all come from the shipping-commencement announcement along with other facts about the game; my favorite fact-cluster is that printing the 26.8 million cards required 2356 gallons¹ of paint, producing a gross tonnage of 104,000 pounds² requiring 17 rail-car sized shipping containers to hold them all. You can find at least one member ExKit team at GenCon, with copies of the game, just in case you didn’t back the campaign and/or can’t wait until sometime next week. And if you need a primer on how to play, they released a video starring the voice of Dr Krieger, because listening to Lucky Yates talk about stuff exploding won’t cause nightmares at all.

• Depending on what topics he decides to cover, there may or may not be cats (holy or otherwise) involved! Ryan Estrada is feelin’ creative again, and we all know what that means: a burst of comics to bury ourselves in. This time, he’s decided to do fake pitches for licensed comics based on existing concepts, and Dylan Meconis has already tossed the first suggestion out: an animated version of Murder She Wrote. But Estrada being Estrada, he’s already got a half-dozen in the pipeline, and posted his unlicensed adaptation of Bringing Out The Dead. Keep your eye on Unlicensed By Ryan Estrada for more insanity in the coming … forever, possibly.

Spam of the day:

All are hands-free, water-proof, rechargeable, and 100% medical grade silicone. There are specific nipple toys which are created to improve nipple stimulation.

Hey, Erika and Matt? I think this one is for you.

______________
¹ Just shy of 9000 liters, or 0.007230289 acre-feet.

² About 47,200 kilos, or 1 adult humpback whale.