On his income taxes on the line where it says to enter your occupation, I hope that Jeffrey Rowland puts down internet merchandise mogul.

• Speaking of moguls of all sorts, you know what they need to keep their air of dapper superciliousness? A Monocle. Know where you can get a supply of monocles? From Zach Weinersmith. As I write this, the campaign to bring single-use monocles to the world is fivehours old and less than US$100 from its goal. If you think that it’s a joke, well, that’s where you’re right, but if you think it’s a scam or fake, allow me to share proof with you that these exist. Thank you to Weinersmith et. al.¹ for gifting me with this indispensible bit of dapperment; I await only an occasion when I must exhibit extreme surprise to deploy it for its intended purpose.
• Speaking of Kickstarters, I would like to mention that my very favorite webcomic for reading in book-length chunks — Gastrophobia — has launched its latest campaign for its latest book-lenth chunk (which is to say, a book). Gastrophobia volume 3: Best At Winning, Worst At Love has been fundraising over the weekend and currently sits at an inexplicably paltry 75 backers, although they have pushed creator David McGuire up to some 40% of goal. The strip is great fun, McGuire knows how to both build a damn good story and fulfill merch on a timely basis, and there’s nothing that should be keeping you from dropping the dough to pick up this book. Make with the clicky, already.
• Never bet against Ryan Estrada. Whether it’s setting out to provide guest strips for every webcomic, teach the world to read Korean and Russian in fifteen minutes, or wrangle eighteen different creators to tell one story from six different viewpoints based on an experience from his time running an Indian call center, Estrada takes on seemingly impossible tasks with aplomb.

  The aplombed tasque du jour is the one about the call center, as he’s launched Broken Telephone launched today as his newest serialized webcomic at Broken-Telephone.com, and it launched with what I believe is the largest initial buffer on record. Namely, the full year-long story is queued and ready to go on a daily basis. Estrada was kind enough to send me a review copy, which I have only just begun to read; what I have seen, however, is really good and plays to the strengths of his various artists, so be sure to check it out.

• It appears that the results of the SPX table lottery have gone out, and while there’s no list of who got in yet, there’s a lot of mention on the Twitters and such from people that didn’t. It’ll be interesting to compare the list of last year’s exhibitors (archived here) against the final list of who made it in. It looks like SPX has become a victim of its own success, with a desire to bring in new talent and meet demand for tables — but when your process is designed in such a way that it finds a way to not include such rarely seen on these shores talent as John Allison, it’s time to look at how well you’re balancing your priorities.

Spam of the day:

A friend of mine got off dialysis (stage 5 CKD) and healed his kidney.

You’re lying or fooling yourself. Go hang out with your flouride-decrying, homeopathy-loving, anti-vaxx friends, and keep your crackpottery out of here before I get some on my shoes.

________________
¹ Which group, regrettably, includes the nefarious James Ashby, aka History’s Greatest Monster. And he gets the girl to “accompany him to the opera” in the promotional film! Boo, hiss!

Two items today, one long and one short.

• Know what I really like about webcomickers?

  When presented with the opportunity to seek out creative partners for a new project, they pay. Consider the vast amounts of money doled out by your Spikes, or Erikas Moen, who are in the habit of retroactively paying artists bonuses, or your Ryans North, who regard increasing income primarily as a reason to hire more artists. Consider the vitriol among webcomickers inspired by the quotes that Ryan Estrada mines for the @forexposure_txt twitterfeed.

  So it gives me great pleasure to point out another project announcement, one that pays money (probably). Welcome to the world of research grants with your guide, Dante Shepherd:

  This is what I want to do. I want to make science comics. And I want to pay artists to make them.

  I’m currently applying for a grant to help these visual students learn. While the overall grant isn’t for a ton of money in comparison to the usual research grants, it would be enough to pay artists for at least 60 pages of work. These 60 pages would be spread across several disciplines — certainly Chemical Engineering, with it being my background, but also Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Biology, and more — and would ideally be a springboard for us to be able to continue adding to the comic education in future years as well.

  And as part of this grant, we would also involve Art and Design students to further their education, too. It’d be as expansive as we can make it for the funds provided to us.

  This is where I’m opening it up to you and any other artists out there for involvement. We need to show that we have actual professional artists interested and willing to participate in the grant. The work would be collaborative to some extent — the engineering researchers, the art and design researchers, and artists all working together to develop optimal scripts and layouts for learning — and you would be paid for your work based on the pages you produce.

  I know that sounds a little convoluted, so let me summarize: the money doesn’t exist yet, and in order to get the money, artists are needed to say that they would be interested in doing the work. If the money doesn’t come through (and writing grants is not a guarantee of success²), then you don’t do the work. It’s more than a little chasing-your-own-tail, what with needing people willing to do the work, not knowing if they’ll actually be called upon to do it, but without that first step nothing will happen.

  So if you’re interested, if you think you could help teach complex STEM principles in comics form, if you’re willing to to show your past work to help convince the grant committee, drop an email to danteshepherd who has taken out a Google email account.

• In other news, we’ve previously mentioned that the annual MoCCA Fest will be shifting venues to Center 548, and it appears that the new locale is just a mite too small to accommodate panels. Not to fear, as the Society of Illustrators (parent organization to MoCCA) have obtained two dedicated rooms at the nearby (and gorgeous) High Line Hotel, a brief walk of perhaps four minutes. Also, you know what you get with hotels that you don’t get other places? Lobby bars. Just sayin’.

Spam of the day:

prepared dishes that you would come to expect from an iron chef, because it wasn’t. It just wasn’t. Wasn’t worth

Iron Chefs are always worth it.

________________
¹ Larry Gonick has taught more people about more different things using cartoons than anybody else I can think of. As previously noted, pretty much everything I know about the history of China is due to his comics.

I became an electrical engineer specializing in communication systems and information theory at least in part because I had a copy of the 1983 edition of The Cartoon Guide to Computer Science (since retitled) back in high school and learned about Turing, Shannon, and other giants of the field. Hell, I stole his AND and OR truth tables on the statements P: The pig has spots and Q: The pig is glad when I was teaching computer logic early in my career. The lesson was worth it just for the PorQ? joke.

² Although the relatively low cost of paying some artists to produce comics compared to — let’s say, building a multi million dollar materials-research lab — help the odds. If you’ve got ten grand left over in your funding and here are fourteen unmet grants looking for multiple millions and one over there looking for eight grand, that becomes a no-brainer.

Sometimes things pop into your head out of nowhere; for example, last night I suddenly and inexplicably found myself wondering, How’s that Iron Man thing going? Time, flies, arrow, banana, etc.

• For those youngsters out there, The Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge is one of the enduring traditions of webcomics; launched nearly a full year before this here blog, it sought to answer the question How long can a webcomic creator go without missing a regular update? Those looking for bragging rights ponied up an entrance fee of US$20, and last creator standing gets the pot, minus contributions to the CBLDF and the HERO Initiative (originally the ACTOR Comic Fund). 56 creators entered (including such longrunners as Jennie Breeden, Chris Cosby, and Scott Kurtz, as well as superstars like Natasha Allegri).

  Three (maybe four; there was a question about 18 months back about a possible disqualification that doesn’t seem to have been resolved) competitors — including Brad Guigar, who doesn’t even look like his official competitor portrait anymore¹ — remain in the running, more than five hundred weeks and 2500 updates² after the start of the competition. I’d ordinarily suggest maybe the remaining three (four?) Iron Men declare a mutual satisfaction and walk away splitting the money, but anybody that’s managed a minimum of five updates a week with no skips for almost ten years (mark your calendars for the week of 9 February, it’s gonna be awesome) isn’t going to take split the pot like gentlemen as an option.

• Never part of the TDGIMC (as near as I can tell), Ryan Estrada nevertheless has reason to contemplate the passage of years today, as it’s his birthday. I note that his latest creative endeavour — Poorcraft: Wish You Were Here — has passed the two-thirds funding mark over on Kickstarter. Maybe we get there by the start of next week, Spike reveals some of the (as yet secret) stretch goals? Yeah, it’s a little shameless, launching a Kickstart the same week two of the principals have birthdays, thus making it easier to prey on your emotions. That’s life in webcomics, and neither Estrada nor Spike are above using every trick at their disposal to make a project succeed. May as well give ’em the five bucks, they’ll wear you down eventually anyway³.

Spam of the day:

Following that, the President and Prime Minister joined the First Lady and Vice President in a St Patrick’s Day Reception at the White House for the one year anniversary of vintage shop Byronesque

I must be tired — I read that as the vintage shop Bronyesque and then I shuddered.

_______________

¹ Brad, update your competitor’s bio picture, please. You’re so much more handsome than you were. Then again, a Google Image Search for “similar pictures” lists a portrait of Jack Kirby as the first match so maybe just keep it? Then again, when you search for “Brad Guigar on GIS, you don’t see that Kirbyesque bit, but you do see pictures like this, to which I can only say Yowza.

² For reference, I wrote about the competitors reaching 200 weeks and 1000 updates in 2008.

³ All hail our new international leaders.

When I think of the spirit of raw entrepreneurship in comics — that do whatever it takes to make it scrappiness — I think of two people who take very nearly opposite approaches. Today, we’ll be talking about Spike¹; she’s the master of logistics, wrangling ever-growing numbers of creators onto her anthologies, setting deadlines, making arrangements for projects sometimes a year or more in advance, and doing it all for the absolute minimum cost and maximum return spread as widely as possible². She knows how to do things in a frugal fashion, and having sufficiently shared that advice with the world, she’s now giving it away for free, so she’s a damn philanthropist as well.

Did I mention that today is Spike’s birthday? And that in celebration, she’s giving all of us a present? Yesterday she launched her latest Kickstarter, for the sequel to Poorcraft, dedicated to the notion of traveling on the cheap. Poorcraft: Wish You Were Here, years in the making, is once again illustrated by Diana Nock, and written by perhaps the most intrepid wanderer that comics has ever known, Ryan Estrada³. He’s been everywhere, man. In other words, she’s chosen the two best people to work on this project, and it deserves your support.

As of this writing, we’re at just about 24 hours since launch, and close enough to 40% of the US$15,000 goal as makes no difference. More importantly, the nearly 400 backers are overwhelmingly pledging at the low reward levels (US$500 tier [cover cameo]: 1; US$250 tier [interior cameo]: 1; US$150 tier [special thanks]: 0; US$25 tier [retailers only, five hard copies]: 1; US$18 and under tiers [various combos of hard and soft copies, possibly including the first Poorcraft]: 369), so while this will not be a record-setting pledge total, it’s going to be a project with mass support (or it won’t be a project at all). Go wish Spike a happy birthday, and snag yourself a copy of Poorcraft: Wish You Were Here.

Spam of the day:

This will be enough time that it will take to become free of debt all you need to do is visit the online site with the money lender you happen to be thinking about looking for a loan.

NO. Want to know why I’m saying NO? Spike’s gotcha covered, Sparky … start here and read forward to learn about the lowlifes that would prey on you. Then go back to page one and read the whole thing. As a reward, you can read the first thirty pages of Wish You Were Here, which Spike is posting one page a day during the Kickstarter campaign.

Note that you’ll have to mess around in the archive to find things; on the main Poorcraft site, pages are numbered backwards from the most-recently-added, so page 1 of WYWH is at http://poorcraft.com/page/2 today, but it’ll be at http://poorcraft.com/page/3 tomorrow. You’re smart, you’ll figure it out.

_______________
¹ For reference, the other is Rich Stevens; the guy comes up with an idea on Monday, puts it up for sale on Tuesday, takes it back down on Wednesday, and is dropping the packages in the mail on Thursday. Offhand whimsies become major sellers, sudden sales and clearances keep things fresh, and he approaches merchandise like it was guerilla warfare.

² Want to quantify it? Taking the published bonus schedules from the anthologies and multiplying by the number of contributors, you get US$17,550 for Smut Peddler 2012, US$7800 for Sleep of Reason, and US$40,000 for Smut Peddler 2014 for a total of more than US$65,000 over the past two years that she could have kept (she’d already paid her contributors) but instead spread around.

³ It is perhaps worth noting here that I first met Ryan the night before he walked out of San Diego Comic Con and across the border into Mexico, to start a commune dedicated to cartooning. That was more than seven years ago and he’s never stopped moving for very long since (although getting married seems to have rooted him to one spot for the past couple of years; then again, it’s in South Korea, a country that features a language that I don’t believe he knew how to speak before showing up).

Hey, remember back at the start of September, when Sisters and Amulet 6 made the New York Times Bestseller List for paperback graphic novels? Good times, a whole nine weeks ago, and Raina Telgemeier and Kazu Kibuishi have been on a near-neverending book tour since.

Let’s consider what’s happened in the weeks since on the NYTBL. By the second week on the list, Sisters and Amulet 6 vaulted to the #1 and #2 slots, where they’ve pretty much sat ever since¹. Smile has been on the list basically forever, and as of the fourth week, it started rising up as people who heard about the new Telgemeier book decided to check out the older one they’d missed. By Week Five, Sisters, Amulet 6, and Smile were #1, 2, and 3, respectively.

By Week Six, the top four books were Sisters, Smile, Amulet 6, and Drama (Telegemeier’s last book, not related to the other two, with more than a year on the list previously). And in the latest New York Times Bestseller List, the tenth since Telgemeier & Kibuishi started their march to dominance, Kibuishi’s first Amulet book gets added in, as readers that have missed the Amulet train have decided to go back to the start and run the series². As Ryan Estrada put it:

Dang, literally half the NY Times GN best seller list is Kazu and Raina.

It won’t end there; there are four more Amulet books, and I’m confident in the belief that at least two of Kibuishi’s back catalog will join book six at any given time, meaning that Telgemeier and Kibuishi will form a majority of this list by themselves. None of which should surprise anybody, given that by all accounts (such as this one by graphic novel superstar Gene Luen Yang), Telgemeier and Kibuishi are rock stars to kids (a significant number of whom are recovering reluctant readers):

The signing was freaking amazing. I’ve never been to a comics signing like it, not even with the Image Comics founders when they were at the height of their fame in the 90’s. Raina did a joint event with the inimitable Kazu Kibuishi, and the entire store was packed with parents and kids holding stacks of Smile and Drama and Sisters and Amulet.

The crowd was so big that the store had to give out little tickets to tell you what signing group you were in. Group #1 got to see Raina and Kazu first, then Group #2, and so on. We were Group #7. Twenty minutes in, I said to my daughter, “I know Raina and her husband Dave. We see each other at least a couple times a year at different book events. We can get her to sign it later, at Comic-Con or something.”

My daughter looked me straight in the eye and pointed to her ragged copy of Sisters. “Daddy, we came to get this book signed.”

And that is why I don’t despair every time somebody moans that kids don’t want to read; put the right book in front of them and they will read holes through the pages. On the off chance you know anybody that would sniff that what Telgemeier and Kibuishi do isn’t “real books”, just wait to see what those kids do if either of them decides to do a mostly-prose-occasional-pictures type of book (like, say, Ursula Vernon, or what’s being done by Zach Weinersmith or Evan Dahm).

Kids want books that they can find themselves in, and that’s what these creators are supplying. The only way that this tide breaks is if Raina or Kazu succumbs to Book Tour Madness. Should you happen across them, feel free to offer quality ice cream and/or booze, and a nice quiet room with a soaking tub for their signing hands.

Spam of the day:

Typically I really don’t master post on information sites, but I would like to declare that this kind of write-up quite forced my family to perform thus! The crafting style have been surprised my family.

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¹ That is to say, Sisters has stayed #1 for the past nine weeks, and Amulet 6 has typically hoved in the #2 or 3 slot, but has dropped as low as #6.

² When the first Amulet released nearly seven years ago, it flew a bit under the radar — possibly due to being released right after Christmas — and never charted. This is the NYTBL debut for The Stonekeeper. Kibuishi started their march to dominance, Kibuishi

Because honestly, if you’re writing about [web]comics and can’t find a way to fit Brad Guigar in there somewhere, you aren’t trying very hard.

• Chris Yates was at SPX and yet I didn’t mention him yesterday — oversight, or planned thing? In all honesty, a little of both, but mostly I wanted to run that photo up there on a day when nothing else would detract from it. Like all of Yates’s work, this Aku Baffler! is a gorgeous, precise piece of work, and I wanted to share it with you.

  You can catch up with Mr Yates as his peregrinations take him up the east coast towards Queens, and the World Maker Faire therein this weekend. People that Make¹ stuff always dig Yates, so if you want a shot at some of his best work, you’ll have to make² your way to the bedroom borough and check out the scrollsaw work.

• Speaking of Aku, Jim Zub not only continues work on Samurai Jack and a zillion other comics, he was also in Maryland this past weekend, although over on the coastal part. He and Chart Polski were in Annapolis brimping their way through an in-store signing of their latest work; it would have been nice to see them in Bethesda, but they were on a whirlwind fast-turnaround schedule.

  Nevertheless, in that time, Mr Zub found the time to put me on the distribution list for a preview of his forthcoming official Dungeons & Dragons tie-in comic, Legends of Baldur’s Gate, which I loved and will be buying when it releases next month. It’s got that trademark Zub flair for mixing the right amount of humo[u]r and ridiculousness with solid fantasy, but the real thing that caught me was the essay at the back of the issue which I will now quote from:

  Jim Zub the storyteller exists because of Dungeons & Dragons, the game.

  Right from the start, I could tell this wasn’t like any other game I’d ever played before. No cards, no board, no limits. No matter how young or small I was in real life I could create a character just as capable as the adults I was playing with. The Dungeon Master asked us what we were doing and my decisions, along with nerve-wracking rolls of the dice, had as much value as anyone else’s at the table.

  If I did something memorable, the group would laugh and I got to feel like one of the grown-ups. Unexpected banter, battle cries, one-liners — I wanted to entertain everyone and make sure my character left an impression.

  As the years went by, I grew up and roleplaying games grew with me. I moved behind the DM screen and started building grand adventures for my friends to quest through. Drama, plot, dialogue, pacing — all those core creative skills were honed by sitting around the gaming table using my imagination.

  Getting the chance to tell a Dungeons & Dragons story as part of the game’s 40th anniversary, carving out a new chapter in the fabled city of Baldur’s Gate … it’s wonderful, ridiculous, and surreal all at the same time. Somewhere inside of me there’s an 8-year old Li’l Zub screaming with joy as he runs around the house pretending he’s kicking skeletons in the face.

  When issue #1 releases, take the time to read the entire thing; it’s as loving a paean to the twin values of imagination and play as ever I can recall. Also, I now want to see an Adventures of Li’l Zub backup strip in this book. Bonus points if we can get Chris Eliopoulos or Skottie Young to draw it.

• Also not at SPX, because he was busy leading a Shakespeare Festival? Ryan Estrada. But that’s okay, he’s made up for it by teaching us to read another foreign language as part of his Gimme Five project. This time, he’s teamed up with Peter Starr Northrop so that we can all Learn To Read Russian In 15 Minutes and you know what? It works. I may not have any idea what the words mean, but I can now read Спокойной ночй, Gracie³ without too much difficulty. Okay, my accent needs work, but it’s a start.

Spam of the day:
Still nothing good. I am not necessarily upset by this turn of events.

________________
¹ … people … are the luckiest people in the worrrrrllllld.

Sorry.

² So to speak.

³ This gag courtesy of Brad Guigar’s failure to get a reaction from his students today despite dropping some classic laugh-chuckles on them. Kids these days., which I loved and will be buying when it releases next month.

Much of [web]comics is on the move today, heading to sunny Pismo Beach and all the clams you can eat Bethesda, Maryland and SPX. Me, I’ll be driving down for the day tomorrow, waaay too early, so if you see me on the floor and I don’t recognize you, my apologies.

Meanwhile, on the far side of the globe, Ryan Estrada reports that tomorrow morning (which may be about now, given time zones) that he will be (already is?) the MC of the inaugural Busan International Shakespeare Festival, with twelve teams of performers from around the world. It’s all thanks to a group of expats in Busan that love Shakespeare, and who may be the same group of crazies (or at least significantly overlap with them) that put on the live-action Choose Your Own Hamlet as part of Ryan North’s Krazyass Kickstarter.

So what I’m saying is, wherever you are in the world, there is entertainment to be had this weekend so get on that.

Spam of the day:

That is a good tip especially tto those new to the blogosphere.
Brief but very accurte info… Appreciate your sharing this one.

I’m not sure, but I think the first line and second line each form a haiku. I guess it depends on how many syllables are in accurte [sic].

There’s a million of ’em running around out there, and I’m up to my ass in alligators with one right now. Let’s look at what people are doing, shall we?

• Re: Ryan Estrada’s Very Big Week; he released an image of what the entire Broken Telephone story (coordinated among some 20 creators, on multiple continents, to produce one large narrative) looks like. It looks like this and if you don’t mind the teeny-weeny eyestrain-o-vision¹ you can read the entire thing. Or just wait ten minutes, and knowing Estrada he’ll probably make it free.
• Re: that mysterious image that the comics press couldn’t be arsed to research; told ya — Capture Creatures comic series, which BOOM! Studios has announced (as is their tradition) via Comics Alliance. I’d get mad about CA always getting the webcomic-related stories if it weren’t for the fact that they will get the story in front of far more eyeballs than I ever possibly could, and I want webcomickers to get those big audiences. Anyway, I still have two of the 151 Capture Creatures on my wall, so there.
• Re: ongoing reactions to the suicide of Robin Williams earlier this week; the quality and educational value of the writings and comics about depression that have come about has been jawdropping. Today I particularly want to call out two personal essays about what it’s like to feel your brain out of whack and feeling unable to jolt yourself out of that situation; one is in words by Helen Rosner², the other in words and pictures by Erika Moen³.

  I was particularly struck in both reads about how depression messes with your perception of what the default state of existence should be — you shouldn’t feel like you’re in a fog, you shouldn’t feel like continuing to exist is just a meh thing. That, and the plain fact that Moen and Rosner both experienced time off of antidepressants — if you’re on them, please do not ever go off them without consulting closely and regularly with a doctor. Please. Read both pieces at Medium now, if you haven’t already.

• How about a light note to go out on? Despite the fact that one half of Unshelved’s creative duo is on the road for the next year, there’s still creative stuff going on in the center of Librarianland. Feel like setting a song to video?
  

  It was extremely well received, with a lot of folks saying some very kind things indeed. Now we want to turn it into a music video featuring you.

  There’s like five steps to undertake, the results of which will be a crowdsourced music video, a verse or two here, a verse or two there from various contributors. Could be a complete masterpiece and/or trainwreck, and I’m actually hard pressed to decide which would be more fun for all concerned. Either one is good, as long as we’re all laughing together.

Spam of the day:

Few women know about the tiny, ever-busy microorganisms that inhabit our digestive system, how vital they are to our wellness, and what can be done to help them flourish.

Please don’t let this be an advert for gray-market transpoosions.

_____________
¹ Registered trademark, one of the Akbar & Jeff Hut-based businesses, can’t remember which.

² Until recently, the digital editor for Saveur magazine, and thus responsible for both the Recipe Comix series and much of Lucy Knisley’s overseas food comics reportage.

³ Force of nature and sportin’ arms that could bust a man down on into his component pieces.

The first notice came on Monday morning, and except for the expected news some seven hours later, details were thin. Had the Straubchild entered the world already, a world not ready for something so good, so pure? Signs pointed to yes, and while confirmation has not been made public, neither have the many, many expressions of congratulations been dismissed. It now being Wednesday, it seems safe to assume that Kris and Marlo have welcomed their first young’un into their lives, and may soon (give it a week or so) stop bursting into spontaneous, happy tears.

Welcome, little one. I wasn’t kidding when I said that you were too good for this weary, broken world; we’ll try to make it better by the time you’d notice. Try to give your parents the occasional full night’s sleep, and be sure to provide your dad with lots of creative juice. It’s a weird, wonderful thing, life, and welcome to it.

Webcomickers not making their way towards Indianapolis for Gen Con¹ (a partial list of which may be found in yesterday’s post) may be instead making their ways to other shows happening in the immediate future.

• LonCon, in London, Merrie Olde Blighty, is the site of this year’s World Science Fiction Convention and the Hugo Awards therein; Professor & Professoressa Foglio, Ursula Vernon, and a whole mess o’ writers will be there. Webcomic nominees for Best Graphic Story² include Los Foglios for Girl Genius volume 13 and Randall Munroe for Time.

  Howard Tayler is, for the first time ever, not nominated in the category, as no Schlock Mercenary story finished in the window of eligibility. Next year for sure! He is however, nominated along with the rest of the Writing Excuses crew (Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Jordan Sanderson) in the category of Best Related Work, which they just so happened to win last year.

• Those not headed to Indianapolis (possibly the epitome of middle America) or London (perhaps the defining city of England) may well be headed to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia (maybe the Canadianest province of them all) for the Dartmouth Comic Arts Festival on Sunday. DCAF, in the tradition of other [Canadian city name]CAFs like TCAF and VanCAF, is an all-ages, free-to-attend celebration, and has a good slate of webcomics talent. In addition to Nova Scotia native Faith Erin Hicks, look for Meredith Gran, Mike Holmes³, Jeph Jacques, Gisèle Lagacé, Kate Leth, and more.

  Known Nova Scotian Kate Beaton won’t be there (she was home not long ago, and made comics about it as she is wont to do, with the visit’s coda here and one last laugh here) so perhaps to make up for it she dropped some prime laughs on us today. If you’re on your way to NS, read those Kate Beaton family comics on the way — they are basically the best.

• Those not headed anywhere, Ryan Estrada has your back. The first of his (curiously under-subscribed) Patreon-supported Gimme Five! comics is up now, where he will teach you how to count in Korean up to a billion. If you have need of numbers beyond a billion (or numbers which are not non-negative integers), maybe he’ll cover that in the next comic.

Spam of the day:

free coupons applebees

Is that you, Zdarsky?

_______________
¹ So called because it originated in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin about the time I was born. It bounced around Wisconsin for a while and eventually settled in Indy.

² Where, I should note, webcomics compete against all other form of comics in the same category.

³ Not to be confused with the other Canadian Mike Holmes, the house builder on TV. I’m sure the comics Mike Holmes is plenty handy, and maybe the TV guy can draw, but they actually are two totally different dudes.

this is why no matter how bad I feel, I get up in the morning. you never know when the #weinermobile will show up. — Rich Stevens

The news that Robin Williams died yesterday — a suspected suicide — has stirred up a great deal of shock and sadness in the social media that I follow. I think he was likely a formative comedic influence (maybe the formative comedic influence) for a lot of cartoonists¹, and the further detail that he had been struggling with severe depression² likewise hit hard.

So many of the creators I follow — so many of my friends — have their own struggles with depression and other mental illness; as recently as five years ago I wouldn’t have realized it because it wasn’t talked about. We, as a society, have made strides in destigmatizing mental illness. I’m grateful that there are medications that help to rebalance whichever bits of brain chemistry get out of whack; I’ll be more grateful when it’s easier for everybody to get them, and to navigate the period of time it takes to get the right mix of brain drugs.

I’m grateful for every one of my friends that speaks up and says Here’s why today was a hard day; here’s what helps me have better days. And I am particularly grateful to whoever put together two words to get the most important idea across: depression lies.

If you’ve heard those lies, heard the falsehoods that nobody cares, that nobody would miss you, that you lack value, look around at everybody that’s been where you are while making things that you love. I haven’t had those lies directed at me but if I should in the future, remind me that they are full of shit until I can believe it again; we can only be there for each other.

And besides, listen to the lies and maybe you’ll miss out on your own chance to see the Wienermobile; it scientifically proven that you can’t help but have a better day when you see the Wienermobile³. Now I’m going to hit you with short items until we’re all feeling a little better.

• What Passes For Journalism These Days, I Swear The utter lack of effort in this story makes me shake my head. Okay, maybe you don’t recognize the Capture Creatures but you couldn’t take ten seconds to ask around? Or take two minutes to browse covers at the Boom! site until you find some that look like the same style and wonder who this Becky Dreistadt is and then you’ve cracked the code.
• Ryantastic and Estradariffic Ryan Estrada has answered my question from yesterday about what happens if one of his Patreon backers stops backing with respect to licensed works:
  

  @fleenguy Folks can continue to publish what they already published while a supporter, and if there’s a grey area- I’m happy if they are.

  Also, we now know why he’s willing to go to all the effort of researching and comicking Gimme Five! answers: penance.

• Late Notice, Sorry A healthy chunk of webcomics will be at GenCon starting the day after tomorrow; Jennie Breeden’s done a floor map for you, so I just need to note that the PvP/Table Titans crews will be at booth 2435, Jim Zub and Howard Tayler at booth 1437, and Blind Ferret’s (booth 541) guests will include David Malki !, Alina Pete, Randy Milholland, James Hicks, and Sam Logan.
• Even Later Notice, Sorrier Tonight at Modern Myths Comics in Northampton, MA is Ladies Night with Jess Fink and Kate Leth, presented by TopatoCo. I don’t want to promise anything, but Northampton is just one hampton over from Easthampton, where the Wienermobile was just an hour ago. It is not impossible you might see it if you go to Ladies Night at 7:00pm.

Spam of the day:

can vinegar kill mold

It is not widely known, but my superpower (my other superpower that is; my main superpower is moustachery) is that I can clean almost anything. I have gotten ground-in chocolate out of a white fabric couch and an olive oil spill out of a suede jacket. And when life calls on The Stainmaster, the two tools closest to hand are baking soda and vinegar. So I feel qualified to say that while vinegar is a tremendous asset in cleaning, its lethality vis-á-vis mold varies with the species involved. To kill mold, I’d recommend bleach.

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¹ And given the longevity of his career, it doesn’t matter how old said cartoonists are.

² Along with long-standing addictions.

³ True story: one of my sisters was up for a job driving the Wienermobile right out of college but didn’t get it. It’s a damn shame, because I’ve always thought she’s exactly the sort of person you’d want driving the Wienermobile.

Wienermobile.

Wienermobile.

Wienermobile.