I wrote this yesterday, and a bit more besides:

There is a moment when I open a Tillie Walden book when I pause, knowing that there’s a very high chance that what I’m about to read will take up residence in my brain for an extended period of time until I am changed by the experience.

I pause not because I am reluctant, but because I’ll never again have that moment of anticipation when I have an entire new Tillie Walden story to look forward to.

For those of you who wish no spoilers, even those of the most oblique nature, take that as the review and get to a bookstore. Settle in in the place and conditions that you like to read best, and take your time. If you want a bit more, read on.

Are You Listening? is an extended two-character conversation set against an untrustworthy landscape and in that way it is like I Love This Part.

It is also about figuring out what it means to be a gay woman in Texas and in that way it is like Spinning.

It is also also about what happens when family turns toxic and has a cat and in that way it is like The End Of Summer.

It is furthermore also a story with science fiction elements that act as backdrop¹ without being an explicitly SF story and in that way it is like On A Sunbeam.

It is penultimately also an exploration of the selves we build and in that way it is like A City Inside.

It is finally also like none of those stories.

Are You Listening? is for a time ordinary, and for a time slightly odd around the edges, before becoming for a time full on hallucinatory — presaged by a pencil that refuses to continue on a map — possibly a break from reality and possibly exactly what it seems. If it were purely presented in words, it would be a classic of magical realism, probably in Spanish. If it were purely presented in visuals, it would be an endlessly transmuting Escher dream².

It is, on its own terms, the culmination of several lifetimes worth of skill at panel and story composition that have somehow been crammed into less than seven years. It is the logical endpoint of thousands of pages of masterwork level comics creation that could serve as the capstone of a half-century long career. Given how Tillie Walden threw herself into skating to the exclusion of all else for ten years or so before shifting to comics, it might well be the capstone of her comics career if she decides it’s time to shift again. It would be a tragedy to have no more comics from Walden, except for the fact that whichever next artistic endeavour she threw herself into would surely be as assured and captivating as this one. As she discovers herself, she just becomes more powerful.

It is the story of Bea and Lou, two women driving through West Texas (as in the geographic direction) searching for West, Texas (as in the specific city, which has had some hard times of late) through an endless landscape that doesn’t want to cooperate. It is the Room Of Requirement from Hogwarts³ writ large, a place becoming aware in response to the people that occupy it. It starts with reference to a diner that might not be there, or how there have been a lot of lakes coming through lately. And when you bring hurt and confusion with you, well:

West Texas is the perfect blend of giant and tiny. The land, the sky … it’s got its own mind. Its own heart.

When something horrible happens, or something amazing … really, anything big, it makes you feel like mountains could shatter, or the sky could disappear … you know what I’m talking about?

Well, most places, mountains stay put. Sky stays in one piece. Kind of cruel, really.

But here, everything is listening.

Are You Listening? is a question that Lou asks Bea in a moment of desperate grasping for safety; it’s a question that hangs over both of them and their respective hurts and losses. It’s a paraphrase of what they ask themselves, and the ghosts and memories they carry with them, and it’s implicit in the manner of the wise woman of West, Texas who Knows Things as she tells Bea some of what’s going on … and what will go on in the future. It’s the question that the book asks the reader, and the reader in turn asks of themself.

Or maybe that’s just me, but then I knew that I was going to be changed, just as I knew that the spine would naturally fall open to certain passages that I re-read and let the story’s alternate patience and frenzy wash over me. This is the book that will fall into the hands of a reader who’s not ready for it, and it will haunt them and their life will be the better for it. It pulls up emotions and banished trauma, it offers hurt and healing, and leaves us with the inescapable conclusion that all we have is we.

Your experience will be different; some of you will likely hate this book and you won’t be wrong. It’s a reflection our personal landscapes, which are no more stable than memory because we are each distinct and always changing. But if you want a book to challenge you — not just what you think about comics, or narrative, but what you think about you — then you will love it as I do, and we won’t be wrong.

Are You Listening? by Tillie Walden is available in bookstores from today. It is appropriate for readers that are willing to confront the fact that life is hell of messy, no matter how much we seem to have it together.

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¹ Although it didn’t make it into my recap, Walden talked about not setting out to do an SF story in On A Sunbeam at her spotlight session in Juneau this past April. It was much like her earlier assertion that she didn’t set out to write YA stories beyond the fact that she herself was a young adult.

Speaking of that session, there are process pages at the back that look suspiciously like thumbnails and draft pages in pencil, which is a departure from Walden’s straight-to-ink working style.

² Or possibly a vision of Inception filtered through Speed Racer. I am utterly serious.

³ Which phenomenon I believe Walden invented independently. Bear in mind that she spent every single waking moment from the age of 6 to at least 18 in perpetual crunch mode without the usual popular culture influences. She probably hasn’t read your favorite book or seen your favorite movie, but I can assure you she has excellent taste in musicals.

There’s a bunch — and I mean a metric bunch — of graphic novels in the midst of dropping, and that means it’s time to tell you what I think of them. We start out today with two from the fine folks at :01 Books, who were kind enough to send a pretty big selection of just-released and about-to-release titles over to the Fleenplex. They’re very different, but I think there’s a common thread between them that I’d like to explore, so strap in and as usual, there be spoilers in these waters.

At first glance, Stargazing (words and art by Jen Wang, colors by the incomparable Lark Pien) and Mighty Jack And Zita The Spacegirl (words and pictures by Ben Hatke, colors by Alex Campbell and Hilary Sycamore) couldn’t be more different.

Aside from the fact that they’re both written for kids 8-12 years old, Stargazing is a mostly quiet exploration of culture and friendship between elementary age girls in a Chinese-American neighborhood in California, and Jack/Zita is part rip-roaring modernist fairy tale, part space opera, with the fate of Earth in the balance. One’s a standalone inspired by real life, the other is the culmination of one trilogy and the coda to/crossover with a second trilogy.

And yet there’s this bit in both about making friends, about how your current friends react to your new friends, about realizing that you can fall short in being the friend that’s needed. There’s this bit in both about how especially girls of a certain age — from pre-teen to not-quite teen — can react to each other, a behavior that can only be described the the word meanness. There’s this bit in both about how rash decisions and thinking with your fists can make for larger problems (even if one only leads to in-school counseling and the other leads to maybe giants killing everybody you love).

Which is to say, the trappings of the story are probably less important than how they speak to their characters.

Stargazing is a welcome return to form for Jen Wang; I famously — and, given the near-universal acclaim and awards bestowed, almost singly — thought her last graphic novel suffered serious structural story problems¹. The heart and friction of how people become (and stop being, and resume being) friends was there, but the broader message failed. Stargazing, like her superlative Koko Be Good, focuses on the people at the heart of the story, and the struggles that they face are very much personal.

Christine and she’s-our-neighbor-and-your-age-you-should-be-friends-okay-Dad-fine Moon approach life in different ways — Buddhist vs Christian, vegetarian vs not, free spirited vs family expectations of excellence — to the extent that Christine wonders how much Moon actually belongs to the same tradition. Moon’s confident and funny and (in an assessment that borders on extremely sad self-awareness for a 10-12 year old like Christine) possibly not Asian.

They adapt to each other and become friends, but there’s something weird under the surface that Christine can’t put her finger on: a certainty that she’s not of this planet, and a volatility that can lead Moon to act with her fists seemingly without warning.

Which, it turns out, has a knowable, physical cause. This might have been a too-pat resolution to the story, except for the fact that it’s based on Wang’s own experiences. If the story wraps up in a happily-ever-after finish that’s a little unsatisfying, I think it’s only because the reveal and resolution take place too quickly. There’s nothing wrong with the first 160 pages of Stargazing, but the conclusion needs the space to breathe a little².

Overall, Stargazing reminds me of This One Summer (which, if you don’t know how good that book is, it is necessary reading for anybody that cares about what comics can be), and I can only think of how much more Wang could have done with the page count afforded to that book. Yeah, yeah, 8-12 year old readers vs 12-18, but I think the younger kids can handle the page count.

Mighty Jack And Zita The Spacegirl is more about the former (not to mention Lilly, occasional Goblin King, who doesn’t get title billing) than the latter, which feels appropriate. Zita’s been through her journey from untested to rookie to expert-level saver of worlds and inspirer of people. Lilly’s gotten used to being King of the goblins (maybe a little too much as her carelessness gives the giants their opening to threaten Earth from the places beyond), but Jack’s still trying to figure things out.

Sometimes he’s cautious and ends up regretting it. Sometimes he’s decisive and ends up regretting it. Sometimes he doubts he’s up to the task, but all those regrets are really stem from no more than being new to the Jack business. Recall that Jack isn’t just a name, but a title: The Jack is a protector of Earth, clever and brave. When he has the information needed to make the next decision, act on the next situation, the regrets don’t manifest. Give him as long at the Jack business as Zita’s had at the Spacegirl business and he’ll be masterful.

Heck, he’s already got the big picture thing covered. When the giants finally break through to Earth (in Jack’s backyard, no less!), he stands armed with nothing but a sword-sized key. With him are one Goblin King and a double handful of waist-high goblins, one dragon (who will only promise to take Jack’s sister to safety), a pony-sized mouse, a few assorted aliens³ and robots, a former (unarmed and somewhat hapless) Man In Black, a pair of lovable space rogues, and his Mom, all prepared to get squished⁴.

The giant king promises that his murderous band will provide the impetus for humanity united into an Age Of Heroes, just fight us. Jack’s answer is clever, and brave, and wise:

Nope. We’re not divided. We’re standing here. Now. Together. And we won’t let you bring violence and pain to this world in the hope that some good will come of it.

All we can do is what’s best in the moment before us. So we’re sending you home, here and now. You may have come to invade our planet.

But you picked the wrong backyard.

That wisdom comes at a cost — the Jack must stand on guard, and that means staying in the same small town, which will be mundane and boring unless dangers arise again. It means saying goodbye to friends who get to go on adventures in space. It means growing up.

But if there’s one thing that Hatke (juggler, acrobat firebreather, archer, I think tightrope walker, and a bunch of other things) has demonstrated in his own life, growing up doesn’t mean the end of adventures, it just means different ones most of the time. Jack’s already got clever and brave down, and he’ll continue to grow wise. The world may not have an Age Of Heroes, but it sure has one hell of a Jack.

Stargazing releases from :01 Books tomorrow, 10 September, and joins Mighty Jack And Zita The Spacegirl in being available wherever books are sold.

Spam of the day:

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¹ Her previous, In Real Life, I thought was a faithful adaptation of a story that wasn’t great, but that’s on Cory Doctorow, not Wang.

² I had similar feelings about Pashmina by Nidhi Chanani, which I loved, but which also felt rushed in the back quarter. Both books deserved a higher page count.

³ The most formidable of which has already said Strong-Strong proud … fall with friends.

⁴ Until the Spacegirl shows up with more robots, one of which is the size of a small moon, in low orbit, and has a firing solution, at which time the squishing becomes unlikely. Just work with me here.

This being the occasion of Matt Bors noting that The Nib has, despite some prominent hiccups, been part of our media landscape for six years, publishing more than 4000 comics, and paying cartoonists more than US$1.5 million¹.

I’m going to quote from an email that Bors sent to me — I’ve been on the mailing list since backing the Kickstarter for the print version — because too many of you may not have seen it. Bors says the recent funding drive raised US$15,000 — presumably, only counting the initial charge against those credit cards, and a similar amount will continue each month — that means maybe a few thousand people got it, plus however many were previously signed up.

Not good enough. If you read comics anywhere you need to know what Bors and his co-conspirators are up to. You also need to give them money, but let’s start with a little basic info:

I’m re-establishing the regular lineup as much as possible. That means Tom Tomorrow, Jen Sorensen, and Matt Lubchansky in there as often as possible, along with Joey Alison Sayers, Gemma Correll, Kasia Babis and all the others who contributed short satire on a regular basis².

I’ve always wanted The Nib to build up younger political cartoonists as well as publish the top ones so the regular lineup will include work from recent Locher Award winner Chelsea Saunders, last year’s Locher award winner Charis JB, and Niccolo Pizarro.

For longer non-fiction work, I am currently publishing comics that were finished before leaving First Look and will begin commissioning more of that type of work soon. These kind of comics are more time-intensive and expensive, so there will be less of them than when we had an editing staff of four, but it’s still a crucial element of the publication to me.

The Animals issue of the magazine is in the works — Drugs is after that and I’ve even got cover art for the issue after that — but I’ve started thinking about other print projects The Nib could take on. So there’s a big book collection on the horizon: an anthology of our best queer comics. We have such a breadth of queer history, non-fiction, and satire comics that it seemed an obvious fit for a nice themed collection of some of the work we put out over the last few years. Expect to hear more about that next month.

Oh, and we’ll be launching an online bookstore soon! And doing more merch. And surely other things.

With Bors being the sole editorial and publishing decision-maker, I imagine that a number of projects that were pending or actively back-burnered by competing interests will now make progress based solely on budget. He’s not promising anything, but I’d imagine that getting Lubchansky, Eleri Harris, Andy Warner, and Sarah Mirk back on editorial staff would be a priority (if memory serves, it was about a year before Harris was added as Deputy Editor and at least another year before Lubchansky became Associate Editor, so it could be a while).

What Bors isn’t doing is standing still. In the face of losing nearly all of his funding, he is moving forward and making plans to start new projects under The Nib’s banner. He is exhibiting the tenacity of the cockroach, a phrase which was once used to describe the interview style of contributors to The AV Club, and a description which they took as a mission statement (even using it as the title of their first print collection), and which brings us back to the top. All that remains is to remind you to support The Nib and to have a good weekend.

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¹ Some of which must have involved some serious logistics. I could name at least two dozen countries of origin for contributors to The Nib, including possibly countries with economic systems not easily accessible to a USAian like Bors. For example, would a Danish citizen who leads tours in Iran be subject to sanctions on economic relationships? I don’t know, but I’ll bet Bors has had to find out.

² Me, I’m hoping for a lot more Pia Guerra because damn she takes no prisoners.

And I assure you, it’s for entirely selfish reasons.

You see, the last regular issue of Giant Days released yesterday. The series built on the three minicomics that followed Tackleford goth queen Esther de Groot to university, and told the stories of Esther, Susan Ptolemy, and Daisy Wooten as they became the best of friends. And university in the UK lasts a typical three years instead of the four you get here in the States, so that’s potentially one more year of story time (or maybe 18 issues) of Giant Days that could have been and won’t be.

The again, if Allison were American, the delightful weirdness that was born in Tackleford more than twenty years ago across multiple series would never have been what it was. Americans can be weird, but we don’t have the sense of absurd whimsy — and I use that phrase solely in a complimentary sense — that undergirds British humo[u]r. Sure, we might have gotten Allisonian stories about Mike Bloomberg (the man has an uncanny sense about what the man meant as New York City mayor), but there would have been no McGraw, no Ed Gemmell¹, no stories about vengeful European exes or occasional visits from Shelley or Lottie or Big Lindsey.

It is worth mentioning that Giant Days was a team effort from the beginning, and that Allison’s creative partners made his delightful dialogue and benign chaos sing. Pencillers Lissa Treiman and Max Sarin understand the necessity of exaggerated motion and super-malleable faces when dealing with Allison’s characters, maybe even better than he does himself. Liz Fleming’s inks added weight and energy, Whitney Cogar’s colors made everything lively, and Jim Campbell did the most important thing a letterer can do — he made his work completely invisible, except for when it needed to grab your attention.

The tale, as they say, grew in the telling, from a planned six-issue limited series to ongoing; I’m not sure that there’s anything else I get now with a higher issue count than Giant Days². Allison could have kept it going another 54 issues or more, if he’d felt the desire to; the passage of time was fluid enough that each academic year could have been stretched almost infinitely.

But the charm of the story was knowing that it’s a prequel (Esther left for uni at the very end of Scary Go Round, and Bad Machinery started three years later³ in story time — about the time Esther was finishing school. We watched those child mystery solvers grow from about 11 years old to about 16 or 17. In real-world terms, Esther, Daisy, and Susan have been apart for a half-decade, maybe more. There were hints in Bad Machinery (and the various Bobbins resumptions) about things that must have happened to Esther, we knew where we were heading. It’s easy to get disinvested in a prequel and it’s even easier to get lazy about the story, knowing how it has to end.

But that never happened. Giant Days was a story that got stronger as it went along; literally each issue was better than the one before, each bit of life — small moments and big catastrophes, as Allison described it — thrown at the characters ringing truer, each hard-won bit of growth making us feel for them more than the one before. It’s a hell of a thing to do a comic for five years or so without a bad stretch; it’s considerably harder to continually improve as you go along.

We aren’t quite done with the ladies; around Halloween there will be a double-sized finale issue that catches up with them a year after graduation. I imagine that if Allison ever gets the itch to revisit them, he can find a story to tell in the same fashion, and I will always be there for it. I watched Susan and Daisy and Esther navigate the transition to early adulthood, and I will be thrilled if I get the chance to revisit them as they continue to change and grow, like a comics version of the Up film series.

Or maybe we’ll soon see the last we’ll ever see of them. Like any beloved friends, I’ll treasure the time I got to spend with them and always be glad of more when the stars align. In any event, there will be more stories from Allison and his collaborators, and more new characters to come to love. But nothing he does in the future will diminish the very real accomplishment that has been Giant Days, nor will I ever stop putting these issues into the hands of people that haven’t read them. Thank you, John Allison, Lissa Treiman, Max Sarin, Liz Fleming, Whitney Cogar, and Jim Campbell. You done good.

Spam of the day:
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¹ Who, I can’t believe I’m finally realizing after all these issues, was always referred to by Esther & Co by his full name, never just Ed. He’s like Charlie Brown, if Charlie Brown finally got with the little red-haired girl and she was also a giant Australian muscle-babe who loves and appreciates him for who he is. Well done, you two.

² That’s a bit of a dodge, as both The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl and Usagi Yojimbo restarted from issue #1 since Giant Days started.

³ And holy crap, ten years ago in the real world.

As near as I can tell, I first started wondering when Screamy Orange Grandpa¹ would take his trade war into territory that harmed webcomics back in June of last year. As luck would have it, George weighed in with his advice:

I am encouraging people to just factor in an extra 25% as a trump tax in case stuff gets fucked. This I’d recommend regardless of where you’re manufacturing. Since he’s hitting Canada the plants people use in Montreal often could be hit, and also US plants that are part of global multinationals could wind up having trickle down cost increases.

Hope you listened to him back then, because the get fucked stage of the tariffs-by-tweet tantrum is coming to webcomics:

[transcribed from screenshot] The Office of the US Trade Representative has announced that as of September 1, 2019, books printed in China or Hong Kong will be subject to a 10% tariff.

What this means:

• Book product from China (which has always been zero rated) will now carry a 10% import duty.
• The amount assessed is based on the declared value of the import plus freight.
• The stated value must be verifiable — for instance, if the shipment is coming directly from a printer then the declare value must be equal to the print cost plus transport fees.
• These shipments are likely to be highly scrutinized by customs officials, and fines will be steep for any mis-declaration.

I think we can add a bullet point to the list Donald Trump is an idiot, a petulant child, and surrounded by sycophants that tell him he’s big and strong and smart and other verifiable untruths, or he wouldn’t be pulling this shit and claiming that China is paying the US money.

For the immediate term — near as I can tell — even if you put in your order and everything was complete before Sunday, if it arrived this week or later you’ll have to pony up. If you ran a campaign figuring that this fuckery wouldn’t happen, you’re going to have to come up with a check or your books won’t clear customs impound. If you haven’t started your print order (or your print project yet), you’ll have to decide to eat that 10%, pass it along to your customers, or some combo of the two.

Those of you running projects that haven’t yet started, I’d say that George’s 25% safety cushion should now be on top of the 10% we know will be charged, because you never know when Screamy Orange Grandpa will have an unsatisfying morning on the solid-gold toilet and declare in no more than 280 characters (and including several correctly-spelled words) that all tariffs on books are now 387% just because he hates books that much.

And, just in case you didn’t see it last week, you don’t even have to be involved with current-and-future China printing to get screwed. Case in point:

If you have done work with @KrakenPrint AND have inventory at their warehouse, contact the warehouse IMMEDIATELY!
The warehouse has put a lien on all #krakenprint inventory due to nonpayment. Contact info in link:
https://m.facebook.com/stor…
#comics #indiecomics

The creditor, TWE, has put up a list of titles that are known to be in the warehouse over at Facebook; it’s not your fault, but if you don’t claim your stuff (and pay off part of Kraken’s debt), your books will be auctioned off. We should probably mention that it’s not TWE’s fault either, so please don’t yell at them.

Do your favorite creator a solid and read what’s at those two links, and if you recognize any of the titles, give them a heads-up that they need to contact TWE so as not to lose out. Also, if you know where any of the principals of Kraken are, there’s probably more than a few folks that would very much like to talk to them for reasons.

Spam of the day:

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¹ Thanks to KB Spangler for that perfect descriptor.

That is to say, it’s Tuesday, and Randall Munroe updated xkcd today. Not only that, but it’s an interactive strip, where you click and things happen — I think of these strips as toys — all of which is not because it’s the End Times, but because Munroe’s How To releases today, and said toy is an illustration of an approximation from the book.

Namely, and approximation of how far you can throw things. The astute reader will recognize that depending on the value of you and things, the answer is going to vary widely. To deal with this uncertainty, you (actual, physical you, not throwing you) get to decide on the thrower (George Washington, a squirrel, Carly Rae Jepsen, etc) and the thrown object (a microwave oven, a car, Thor’s hammer, etc). You (actual, physical you) also have to option to include you (throwing you) in the simulation, provided you fill in some basic physical parameters.

Because Munroe is Munroe, the results are shown in both meters, and some other, more useless unit of measure (ranging from attoparsecs to furlongs, depending on the object thrown and distance involved). I agree with some of Munroe’s assessments (eg: I could not throw George Washington, or a car) and vehemently disagree with others (only Thor, God Of Thunder can throw Thor’s hammer¹). It’ll keep even the most easily bored person occupied for a good half hour-forty five minutes as they mess with all the permutations. I shudder to think how many people will create similar toys based on other points of discussion in the book. And by shudder, I of course mean look forward to with great anticipation,

Spam of the day:

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¹ Anybody with a lick of sense knows that while Chris Hemsworth probably cannot throw Thor’s hammer, Carly Rae Jepsen² is surely worthy. Also, if the squirrel is an associate of Squirrel Girl, the worthiness is surely self-evident. Also, why is Thor able to chuck me (actual, physical me) a full 28 meters further than a microwave oven and nearly twice the distance of a basketball? Because I assure you, when I get flung in that manner, I will be flailing and increasing air resistance like a muthascratcher.

² Carly Rae Jepsen is modeled such that her throwing ability is somewhere between Extremely High and Champion Athlete.

After all, Todaybor Day is Labor Day. But then I saw the news on the Twitters — Zainab Akhtar launched her final ShortBox project of 2019 and it’s a collaboration with Rosemary Valero-O’Connell. Specifically, it’s a 235mm x 168mm (approximately 9.25″ x 6.6″, or a hair under ISO B5 paper size) volume collecting three stories, two of which are brand new, and one of which is the superlative What Is Left.

What Is Left was produced as a mini in 2017-18 (I got my copy at MoCCA 2018) and is very out of print. It’s a tale of memory and loss and identity and premised on a story conceit that is startlingly original. Because it’s Valero-O’Connell, I don’t mind buying it again (in a larger size) to get the two new stories, which are described as:

Don’t Go Without Me (also the collection title): Two lovers sneak out for a night out on the town — a town where spirits and the supernatural exist as a realm within and alongside our world, with humans crossing over frequently. The lovers get separated, and must barter with stories in exchange for clues as to where the other may be. But, unknown to them, each time they gain a morsel of information, they lose something, too….

Con Temor, Con Ternura [With Fear, With Tenderness]: For years, the residents of a small, ocean-side town have been living in the shadow of the sleeping giant who is prophesised to one day wake up and lay their world to waste. As the foreseen date of their impending doom draws near, the town decides to put on a festival on that very same night, to celebrate their lives and face whatever fate awaits them together.

I am all in. The Kickstart campaign has a relatively large goal — £29,000, or about US$35,300 — to fund a significantly large print run, one that will sustain stocks for the next couple of years. Akhtar believes (as do I) that Valero-O’Connell is about to become a top-tier creator, and as more people discover her work they’ll want to have books to sell¹. Thus, there will be 10,000 copies of Don’t Go Without Me printed (I can’t recall another indie title with such a large run), which will start shipping in November. This November. The month after next. This is less a pledge and more a pre-order of a gift to yourself this coming holiday season.

The rewards are simple — get a PDF and/or a print copy, or a retailer’s bundle. Three people can pledge £1000 for a lifetime subscription to ShortBox. Stretch goals make the book prettier, or produce small, additional items (a sticker, a process zine) for those who are getting print copies. That’s it. The campaign runs until 2 October, by which time the print job will likely we well in hand in order to meet the delivery date. The only way this could be better is if it were available now so I could take my copy to SPX and have Valero-O’Connell sign it. Some future show, then.

Don’t sleep on this. There’s a big, ambitious goal that benefits not only those of us pledging now, but literally the next couple thousand people that discover how good comics can be. So much of what’s gone into ShortBox collections (or, for that matter, so much of what indie creators self-publish) is only available for a brief period, so it’s a welcome change to see works that are being made for the long haul.

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¹ After a book or two of her own, these earlier, shorter works will be what people are scrounging for, like me ordering copies of Tilie Walden’s pre-Spinning books earlier this year. Speaking of which, Walden’s Are You Listening? releases a week from tomorrow; I trust that you are now anticipating it as anxiously as I am.

… and I-95, aka The Devil’s Own Intestinal Tract, sits between me and home. Let’s get this done.

For those of you on the far side of the continent from I-95, there’s a few things you should be aware of. Friend Of Fleen Since Small Times Eben Burgoon has sent details of upcoming comicsy events in the Sacramento–Arden-Arcade–Yuba City, CA–NV Combined Statistical Area that are coming up, and heck if that’s not the kind of thing we look forward to on these pre-holiday/I-95 Fridays.

First up, the Crocker Art Museum will be hosting ArtMix|CrockerCon on Thursday, 12 September from 6:00pm to 9:30pm. An like-named exhibition of student & community comics work is presently running, and will stay up until 22 September. US$10 for Crocker members (with some membership levels free), US$20 for nonmembers.

And for those of you looking to learn, or at least to dump your kids somewhere for a few hours that won’t get Child Protective Services on your case, Burgoon will be teaching an after school workshop at the Verge Center For The Arts starting next Wednesday, 4 September. Tuition is US$105 for the public, US$95 for Verge members (which includes CrockerCon admission), and the class is intended for kids 10 – 15 years old. Class runs from 5:00pm to 7:30pm on 4, 18, and 25 September, and 2 October, and I’ma say that registration in advance is strongly recommended.

Check out Burgoon’s current Burgooning at @Burgooneytunes on The Grams, and I’ll see you next week if I ever get home.

Spam of the day:

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I’m not sure what people who send messacies consider sexy. Little scared to ask, actually.

As I assume you know, the latest graphic novel by Faith Erin Hicks released two days ago. Having knocked down three volumes of the Nameless City series in three years, it’s perhaps unsurprising that she left off writing duties this time; her editor at :01 Books (the inestimably excellent Callista Brill) paired her up with acclaimed YA author Rainbow Rowell and the result is Pumpkinheads (which features colors by Sarah Stern.

This is not a review; I’d almost say a review is not necessary, because the best possible review this book could ever have has already been rendered superfluous by a blurb on the back cover. Mariko Tamaki describes Pumpkinheads as the story of the night before the rest of your life and damn if that isn’t perfect. You know exactly the tone this story is going for, and what it’s going to accomplish. You either love this story in all its variations¹ or you already know that it’s not For You; personally, this story is very For Me and I loved it.

I’m here not-reviewing Pumpkinheads because I need to share one part of the story, a recurring gag that Rowell wrote and Hicks illustrated that absolutely killed me. It concerns one of the two main characters, Josiah, and the long-simmering crush he has on the girl who works in the fudge shoppe, whose name he doesn’t even know. Best friend Deja has determined that Josiah will be speaking to Fudge Girl, come hell or high water.

But every time — every time! — Deja mentions her, she drops a different nickname: Superfudge; Vanilla Fudge; Elmer Fudge; Cornelius Fudge. Each time the panel is drawn such that there’s no pause, Deja’s not fishing for a reaction, but there’s this sly I am so fucking with you vibe that she extends towards Josiah. Each nickname it ramps up a little.

I lost it, laughing out loud in public, when Deja called her Vanessa Fudgens.

There’s just no coming back from that, and I may be projecting, but I think from that point in the story Josiah was drawn just a little bit broken. The slight irritation he showed at the nicknames, the resistance he had to Deja’s command of the night before the rest of their lives became increasingly tokenized. Sometimes, you’re presented with an offhand, almost tossed-off gag so perfect, you know it’ll stay with you for life. Josiah turned that corner, the night continued, and there’s a rest of their lives story that we’ll have to imagine.

It’s a small part of the story, and it may hold significance for almost nobody else like it does for me, but I found it a perfect little grace note in a book full of grace notes, a story that could shift from heartfelt (or even heartbreak) to Road Runner cartoon with the flip of the page. Rowell, Hicks, and Stern knocked it out of the park, and Tamaki provided the ideal context so you know where to drop this particular tale in your own mental map of stories. Pick it up if the sort of thing you like, don’t if it’s not. But whether you read it or not, you won’t find anything this week funnier than Vanessa Fudgens.

Spam of the day:

I don’t want to ruin your day, but I have a few pictures of your employees, I don’t think they are doing a good job.

Oh no, the employees I don’t have are not doing a good job and it’s ruining my day! What are they supposed to be doing in these few pictures? Is it watching porn? I be they’re watching porn.

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¹ And it is nearly infinitely variable, ranging from Before Sunrise to Superbad.

Hey. How you doing? Me? Oh, nothing, just a Wednesday. You know how it is. Webcomics stuff, some of it pretty random.

• Speaking of random, you’d be hard pressed to find something moreso than a rough caricature of Stan Lee Sharpied onto an egg, with voice supplied by Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett, so let me point you to that lil’ gem right away. It appears roughly 10 seconds into this video, which is in support of LArDK’s latest book Kickstart, Anatomy Of Authors. After you finish muttering Oh, that ain’t right to yourself, take a look at the campaign itself.

  One may, if one so desires, recall the heady days of 2017 and LArDK’s previous Anatomy collection — animals, that time — presented as a faux-1920s reference text, with drawings of various critters from around the world, and commentary on their physical condition supplied by a not particularly astute naturalist¹. The book is very pretty, the contents very funny, and since wrapping up the series of illustrations, LArDK’s been giving the same treatment to prominent authors from throughout history. Case in point: Jules Verne from a few days ago.

  Chances are your favorite author is there (unless they’re still alive; I think that all the authors illustrated have been deceased, and thus safely beyond the chance of being offended at the loving jibes), and if the (as yet, unannounced) stretch goals are anything like Animals, you’ll end up seeing extras like ribbon bookmarks, fancy endpapers, UV cover treatments, and protective wrapping as free bonuses.

  As of this writing, the campaign’s a hair over US$13,000 of the US$20,000 goal; I’d include the FFF mk2 treatment, but LArDK’s in the habit of announcing his Kickstarts on the down-low to his Patreon supporters 12+ hours before they go public, so the numbers on the first 24 hours aren’t suited to the math. It’s gonna fund, it’s gonna hit the stretch goals, it’s going to show up in December as promised (barring the trade war with China getting even stupider than it is now). If you like laugh-chuckles of a literary bent, get in while the gettin’s good.

• Y’know who else does good books? Everybody associated with Iron Circus Comics. I got an email from Iron Circus Supreme Dictatrix For Life And Don’t You Forget It C Spike Trotman that had a list of the accolades piled on various Iron Circus titles, and they included little things like Stonewall Book Honor, starred reviews in Kirkus, Booklist, School Library Journal, and/or Publishers Weekly, Lambda Literary Award nomination and/or winner, Prism Award nomination and/or winner, YALSA Great Graphic Novel For Teens, and so forth. Good stuff. But the gist of the email wasn’t to brag about the books², but to describe a solution to a problem that people have been having.

  I’ve mostly bought my IC books either direct from the creator/the Iron Circus table at a show, because hey — direct support and usually a sketch, too. But when shows are far distant and I’ve tried to give the business to my local comic shop, I wait forever and ultimately get told it’s out of stock and unavailable. This is because comic shops deal with the Diamond monopoly, and Diamond are terrible in every respect. The book isn’t out of stock, Diamond just can’t be arsed to handle less than a few zillion copies of any given book when they’re dealing with book trade’s own monopoly, Ingram. The solution is to go around them. From Spike for your friendly local comic shop:

  To get access to our award-winning, critically acclaimed titles, we encourage you to register an account with Consortium—the division of Ingram in charge of our account—and order directly. You can also order through iPage, if you already have an Ingram account.

  To get started with Ingram, and the ability to order the complete line of award-winning, critically-acclaimed (and fully-returnable!) Iron Circus titles, head over here and register! It’s easy, we promise. And it’ll get you access to even more comics by other publishers, like Uncivilized Books, Alternative Comics, and more!

  That’s how I know that Spike’s more interested in stickin’ it to Diamond than selling books³ — she’s pointing out that the same channel can be used for other publishers, with whom she is nominally in competition. But Alternative or Uncivilized will never take money out of Spike’s pockets (or each other’s, for that matter) to the degree that never making who knows how many sales because Diamond is determined to suck will cost them. Pass it along, and maybe someday Diamond will actually shape up and ha ha ha ha, I almost finished that sentence. Not a chance Diamond ever gets their shit together.

Spam of the day:

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Asshole, I am an electrical engineer that studied communications systems at the undergraduate and graduate level. I worship at a shrine in the shape of Shannon’s Figure 1. Noise is the enemy. Noise is always the enemy.

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¹ But, presumably, said naturalist was at least a gentleman of the requisite background and breeding, and therefore must needs be paid attention, despite any dearth of actual factuals.

² Welllll, mostly. Spike’s always bragging about her backlist, and with justification.

³ Welllll, mostly. Spike’s always selling books. Gotta respect the hustle.