But a week in which The Nib finds its existence is in upheaval-slash-transition is anything but rational. That being said, better late than never with the news: Gene Yang’s next book has a release date. We’ve known about the title (Dragon Hoops) and the elevator pitch (the story of the basketball team from the high school where Yang used to teach in Oakland) for years — he shared them when we spoke back in Aught-Sixteen.

But now we get the full launch announcement, in Entertainment Weekly¹ no less, with quotes from Yang and a set of preview pages. Yang’s art has lost no steps in the years that he’s let others do the drawing (Sonny Liew on The Shadow Hero, Mike Holmes on the Secret Coders series, Gurihiru on the Avatar: The Last Airbender series, various artists on Superman and New Super-Man), and the story …

The story’s different. It’s not just the story of the basketball team at the Oakland high school where he used to teach, their history, and their run for a state championship. It’s a story about his relationship to comics and creativity, to teaching, and to sports. It’s treading into Raina Telgemeier territory and that is terrific news. Yang put a lot of himself into the stories in American Born Chinese but this time he’s literally on the page, captions talking to the reader about what’s going through his mind as he acts out his life on the page.

It’s particularly an interesting tack to take, making Dragon Hoops not just about the team, but also his struggles to find a story — then finding a story just across campus in the gym — while simultaneously admitting that he’s never been a sports guy and actively shies away from the culture of captial-S Sports. I think it’s not coincidence that Yang breaking out of his comfort zone would have coincided with his term as the fifth National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, where his efforts were summarized in his Reading Without Walls Challenge:

• Read a book about a character who doesn’t look or live like you.
• Read a book in a format you don’t typically read — graphic novels, poetry, audiobooks, plays.
• Read a book about a new subject you don’t know much about.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see this theme in Dragon Hoops; we’ll all find out together on 17 March 2020, when 448 pages (!) of comics wisdom drops from :01 Books.

Spam of the day:

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Blah, blah, click the link, set up your account, blah. Ordinarily, I’d chalk this up to a clumsy attempt to get me to go to a virus-ridden hellsite, but it appears to be a legit business. Looks like one of the other Garies Tyrrell has forgotten again that my email is not their email. Hope they get their reservation honored.

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¹ Remember when a new graphic novel announcement would trickle out with maybe a small mention in Publishers Weekly or at The Beat? Now it’s the Los Angeles Review Of Books, or EW, or Premiere, or some other mainstream culture publication, if it’s not Washington Post or New York Times. Don’t ever tel me that comics as a medium is dying.

I got the news in an email from Matt Bors on Friday evening:

After three and a half years, First Look Media has decided to no longer fund The Nib at the end of July and me and my team will be let go as part of a broader shift at the company.

Well, shit.

I have mentioned The Nib more than a few times since it launched, because it is unique (and I’m using that word precisely). They publish editorial comics and nonfiction comics and reportage comics, but a wide variety of creators (some of whom, disclaimer, are personal friends), most of which I love and a few of which I actively despise¹.

You know what? Good on The Nib for not catering to me 100%, for making me confront what I consider to be lazy or obvious cartooning in service to crappy or self-indulgent worldviews. Matt Bors and his editorial team have done amazingly good work, and more importantly they pay cartoonists.

And, hell, he’s been through this before, when Medium decided to drop them; at the time, Bors ran a Kickstart and printed a book and found a new home at First Look. Since he got there, he’s ramped up the quality, ramped up the breadth of cartoonists and reporting, and took a few shots at Glenn Greenwald, Michael Tracey, and other faux-left provocateurs. They launched a magazine which is very, very good, and a subscription program in concert. They were bringing in eyeballs and doing damn good work. But First Look Media is pivoting to video (a thoroughly discredited idea) and jettisoning The Nib in the process.

But this time is different. Bors isn’t looking for the next billionaire-whim media startup to settle in at and get cut from:

This will be a major setback but I will be devoting all my time to continuing this publication with contributions from all the editors and cartoonists who have made this publication what it is.

To assure you about where the print magazine is at: the fourth issue of the magazine is at the printers now and will be shipped in early July. The fifth issue, the Animals issue, is in the works and I will be printing it independently.

To be honest, this was a shock. When I got the letter, I thought it was going to be the notice that with the fourth issue of The Nib magazine going to print, it was time to pony up and subscribe to see the fifth and subsequent issues. Seems like I’m not the only one that was determined to help The Nib survive; in a post today at Medium (irony!), Bors tells us:

I founded this publication almost six years ago to highlight political and non-fiction comics in a media environment that doesn’t support them. So I’m not ready for the funeral yet and I’m sorry if it sounded like one. I just needed a minute.

As news of all this broke we had our single biggest day of membership signups. Hundreds of new supporters pledged — on a Friday night no less. I feel emboldened by that.

I refuse to walk away from this project or let it die after the successes of our last year. There are are too many of you who have expressed support and written to say how important it is to you. There is too much going on in the world that demands biting political cartoons and non-fiction comics. [emphasis mine]

The surge in memberships is continuing, and it looks like Bors just might be able to carry off his own pivot — The Nib wasn’t established enough to go to a full-bore subscription site when Medium dropped them, but the word is out now. Hell, non-comics-specific publications like The AV Club are covering the story, and not as part of comics coverage … it’s a general news story.

As for the cartoonists of The Nib, even with the upheaval that’s going to be dropping in the near future, they’re still cranking out relevant, informative, timely cartoons — here are just two from today. You’ll see work of this length every once in a while from The New Yorker or maybe Vanity Fair, but you’ll see multiple instances each week at The Nib.

I’m a subscriber by virtue of the Kickstart, and I’ll be continuing that sufficient to keep getting the magazine in print. I mean, hell, I pay US$15/month to the service that backups up my opinion-like screeds, I may as well do at least as much to support the dozens of cartoonists from around the world that do such good work. If you value the same, join me.

Spam of the day:

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Okay, A) You can’t just type in the phrase This message is from a trusted sender in the body of your email and expect me to take it seriously, and 2) If you’re trying to get me interested in your porn-based phishing attempt, maybe don’t take stylistic cues from T-Rex???

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¹ And it’s not like he ever commissioned Ramirez or Garrison.

This review is late; I’ve been delayed in a getting a copy of Island Book by Evan Dahm, but now that I’ve got it and read it, my mind is full of ideas. This review is also early; I really should give this another week or so and let all those ideas coalesce into something more definite, but I don’t want to wait. I want to tell you about this remarkable story and why you should want to read it. And, appropriate for a book that takes place largely on and adjacent to the ocean, Mild spoilers ahoy.

Island Book draws from all of Dahm’s previous work. Although it’s not a story of his Overside setting, it could be part of Overside — the characters are not human, they feature fully-realized cultures with distinct hallmarks, and the eyes express intentions in a clear way. Everything has a backstory, which is largely unrevealed.

We know only as much of the history of Tarrus or the War-Men as the characters in-story see fit to remark upon; what they would take as ordinary and everyday (say, the significance of a mantle the main character wears, then discards as she embarks on adventure) isn’t explained any more than you or I would start the morning with a declaration of And now I will commute to my job in my automobile, which is powered by an internal-combustion engine and around the operation of which some of the most powerful trade forces in the world have organized themselves, as we all know!

And though parts of Island Book go back half a decade or so, I’m not sure he could have completed it until after his edition of Moby-Dick. The boats and winds and the nature of being on the ocean aren’t the sharply-defined realism of Melville’s novel, but they are a simplification of them, a cartoony version that draws the same essential truth in broad strokes. It’s just as a caricature artist must have a formal grounding in anatomy and the rules of realistic representation to know where and when to ignore those rules and keep things simple, but plausible.

But the clearest relation to Dahm’s earlier work would be his edition of The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz. Sola, our POV character, is swept away to color-coded lands of distinct people, who are mostly aware of each other but don’t really interact. She eventually returns to an Uncle figure (her parents, like Dorothy’s are dead) having learned some about the world and found an appreciation of home. The travels from place to place, where something happens, then something happens, then something happens, sometimes at a fast pace and sometimes slow, but always pushing the story to the next beat with a clear focus on what the story needs.

Like the first Oz book, this first Island Book volume (if the 1 on the spine means anything) serves to introduce us to the world of oceans and the Monster that all seem to know and seek out for different reasons — to conquer, to find inspiration, for pure knowledge — and then place the players back in their starting locales until it’s time for the next adventure. In case you never read the dozen-and-a-half books that L Frank Baum wrote set in Oz, they all start with Dorothy getting swept back into the Fairy Lands from Kansas¹ and getting a subset of the band back together again, until whatever new challenge presenting itself was overcome.

And like the Oz books, there’s a fabulous foundation in this first book, for as many journeys as Sola chooses to make, with whichever friends (some she hasn’t made yet) suit a given story. The Monster may have its secrets revealed or not. New islands may be discovered, or not. Sola’s people may decide she’s no longer cursed and evil² or not. I suspect the future adventures will be more about journey than destination, and that they’ll be just as charming as this first one. I’m looking forward to watching Sola grow into the woman that she’ll be, and the mark that she’ll leave on this world of ever-shifting waves.

Island Book, by Evan Dahm, is published by :01 Books and available wherever books are sold. 288 pages, full color, ages 8 and up. Fleen thanks Dahm for sharing those first two dozen pages all those years ago, and for delivering on their promise in a big way.

Spam of the day:

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Wait, isn’t this that padlock that had screws on the outside of the casing that let you disassemble the lock in about twelve seconds, making it the perfect tangible representation of security theater? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, no.

_______________
¹ Or wherever; in one, she was on an ocean voyage with Uncle Henry to Australia when swept overboard. Eventually, she just moved with Uncle Henry, and Aunt Em, and Toto, and a Kansas friend or two to the Emerald City to save Baum the trouble of dreaming up another variation on Chapter One to get her back to Oz.

² Did I mention that? They’re totally jerks to a preteen-equivalent girl for something she had no control over.

Travel must happen, vengeance must be planned, I’m swamped. We’ll be back tomorrow.

I mean, when KC Green first drew Question Hound on fire in his house, that was a seminal moment in internet rough laugh-chuckles, right? It’s always been there, part of the background of online culture since small times, right?

Nope. 2013. By the time the political conventions came around and The Nib paid Green to respond when the Republican Party tried to jump on the meme-wagon, it just felt like those two panels had been around forever. And that, per New York Magazine in their profile of Green and his efforts to keep some control over his creation, was the proverbial final straw.

We don’t often know where memes come from. We don’t often remember that an actual human had the thought, and the skill to commit it to a medium that we can partake in. Sometimes that ignorance means that somebody else grabs the joke and makes a killing and gets all I made this about it. Hell, what with Disney’s approach to intellectual property — cough, cough, Jungle Taitei — it’s practically expected.

But Green’s got a legion of fans that call out when people use his stuff. He’s got takedown letters for Zazzle and Etsy and wherever bootlegs show up. He’s got a merch company that will help him turn the tables on thieves by making the stuff that they think they can sell and selling it himself after he gets their stuff taken down for infringement. And heck, having a big enormo Kickstart don’t hurt for establishing the legitimacy of your control of what you made.

It’s a never-ending process, but Green’s more associated with This Is Fine than Kate Beaton is with I Had Fun Once And It Was Awful, or Matt Furie was with Pepe (at least, until he starting suing MAGA CHUDs and winning). Heck, he still has his association with Dick Butt, though he’s decidedly more cool about that.

Anyway, take ten minutes and read the story. It’s the story of a man who finds essential, funny truths, and has the tenacity of the cockroach when others try to claim his insight for their own profit. It’s a good one. Then go take a gander at today’s BACK, it’s full of sincerity.

Spam of the day:

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Hey. Question for you. Why are women so damn good at comics? I mean, why are there literally so many more women whose work I am excited to follow than dudes? Is it because dudes held the entire industry to themselves for so long, only letting in other dudes that looked and thought and wrote like them, resulting in staleness and homogeneity? And women, long excluded, had to up their game and be so much better than dudes who could get published just for showing up?

• Case in point #1: Dylan Meconis. She has a wicked edge to her stories, one that treads the line of humor and messing with you for being a chump, whether she’s exploring the French Revolution (via vampires), the Age Of Reason (via werewolves), or comic/SF convention culture/cliche (via the apocalypse).

  And today, her latest graphic novel hits the stores:

  This book is full of:

  • cool nuns
  • 16th century infographics
  • recycled folklore
  • embroidery trash talk
  • questionable chess strategy
  • shameless pandering to the lutist community
  • identity crises
  • dubiously symbolic flora
  • mysterious pinnipeds
  • loud young redheaded women

  There is also:

  • one (1) nun who’s kind of a jerk
  • one (1) hot lad who probably knows how to do Sword Stuff
  • one (1) fake saint and her relic, which is in point of fact a dried fish head

  Not to mention your standard royal exiles the inconvenient alternate claimant to the throne that would be the lead talking point in most elevator pitches. We’ve seen that before, but embroidery trash talk? Yes, please. There is more raw creativity in that description than in most ten-year runs of dude-centric comics.

  Additionally, I can state unreservedly that it’s gorgeous, having been present to see some of the pages painted in late April 2018. Queen Of The Sea is part of Candlewick’s expansion beyond children’s books and YA prose into the graphic novel space, and they are not screwing around. Grab a copy as soon as you can and join me in reading it.

• Case in point #2: Shing Yin Khor, who wrangles watercolors, powertools, and emotions with equal facility. Their memoir of traveling the historic Route 66 releases on 6 August, retelling a road trip with their dog Bug in search of their passions in life (including, but not limited to, giant muffler man statues, roadside dinosaur statues, and what it means to be American). They’re working on her next book, a graphic novel about the Chinese contributions to the American west, particularly in and around lumberjackery. And they just got announced as one of the featured guests for SPX this year:
  

  #SPX2019 SPECIAL GUEST: Ignatz winner Shing Yin Khor @sawdustbear, a Malaysian-American cartoonist and installation artist exploring the intersections of race, gender and immigration. Their forthcoming graphic novel, “The American Dream? A Journey on Route 66” is out in August.

  #SPX2019 SPECIAL GUEST: Cartoonist Rosemary Valero-O’Connell @hirosemaryhello who’s opening eyes with her latest, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me w/ writer, @marikotamaki. Past works includes Lumberjanes. Her illustrations work has been shown in galleries internationally.

  #SPX2019 SPECIAL GUEST: @marinaomi is the award-winning cartoonist of 4 graphic memoirs and the Life on Earth YA graphic novel trilogy as well as founder and admin of the Cartoonists of Color, Queer Cartoonists, and (soon) Disabled Cartoonists databases. http://MariNaomi.com

  #SPX2019 SPECIAL GUEST: Ignatz Award winner for Promising New Talent, @biancaxunise! Her body of work focuses primarily on the daily struggles of identifying as a young black feminist weirdo in modern society and has been featured in The Washington Post, The Nib, BBC and more.

  Checking out the Special Guests page at SPX, there’s a dozen names so far, more than half of whom are women — Emily Carroll is there, Eleanor Davis, and Raina Telgemeier. The dudes there are interesting, too — Eddie Campbell and Jaime Hernandez are essential in any conversation about comics, Box Brown does astonishingly detailed documentary comics, Ed Piskor and Kevin Huizenga are amazingly accomplished — but the women are the ones whose next work I’m dying to see.

• Case in point #3: Abby Howard does comics that hit that Kate Beatonesque sweet spot. Just detailed enough to get across the story point or emotion she’s shooting for, just esoteric enough in topic that nobody else is doing the same thing, and absolutely hilarious when funny is what she’s shooting for. Her long-running autobioish Junior Scientist Power Hour may not always be true to life — I’m not convinced her cat Spoons really went on a hero’s journey that took place in a magical realm entirely contained in Howard’s ass — and it may have been fallow while Howard was working on her utterly charming Earth Before Us trilogy, but it’s always been great reading.

  And now, it is coming to an end. She’ll keep up the journal comics on her Patreon, and the previously-uncollected JSPH strips are getting the print treatment, courtesy her new Kickstarter campaign. If you didn’t pick up her first JSPH collection, you can get it along with the new one at an advantageous price!

  It’s been a while since we busted out the Fleen Funding Factor, Mark II, but the math projects that JSPH2 will finish in the range of US$39K-58.5K (on a goal of US$30,000), with stretch goals ranging up to US$65K. She’s at 41% of goal since launching yesterday and 28 days left to go, but I need anybody with an interest to pledge so that this one completes, because if it doesn’t I might not get the original art I pledged for, and that would be a tragedy.

Spam of the day:

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I was going to do a Seuss-rhyme her to express my ire, but man that’s one hard style to emulate. Guess I’ll have to content myself with Fuck you, scamming scum.

It’s time for the SDCC planning to begin in earnest, with the release of the exhibitor list and the floor map. There’s some changes of note, some of which can be determined at a glance by clicking through the picture (the one above takes you to the magnifiable PDF, the one below merely to s more legible, larger PNG):

Did you see it? It might take you a moment. DC Comics isn’t in the center section with the other publishers. They are waaaaay down at the southern end of the hall¹ next to Warner Bros. This should alleviate some of the center-section crowding and aisle clogging, while simultaneously answering the question How many people will travel an extra 30 aisles to stand in an enormous crowd for sneak peaks at whatever “Crisis” DC has dreamed up next?

Also, What happens when that crowd can’t overflow into the areas of surrounding aisles, but is instead constrained by a structural wall right over there? Also also, How badly will the small vendors at the 4500-5000 end of the hall hate DC by the time Thursday is over? Answers on a postcard.

Except For DC, It’s Mostly The Same
The Webcomics, Small Press, and Independent Press Pavilions remain reasonably accessible from the “B” lobby. Let’s break ’em down.

As in previous years: centered roughly on booth #1332, you’ll find a majority of the webcomickers who will be at the show within about a 1.5 aisle radius; some are slightly outside the orange area, but not too far. Those that return are all in the same spots, barring any changes to the map and listings.

Notes:

• No news yet on which TopatoCo creators will be along; we’ll update once we know.
• Hachette (1116), Harper Collins (1029), and Simon & Schuster (1128) remain in Publisher’s Row; :01 Books (2800) and Macmillan Children’s Publishing (2802) continue to colonize the corner with the bend, where their lines will not obstruct main aisles.
• 1232 and 1235 remain, as last year, assigned to Flex Comics (muscle bros hang out there) and Pulsar Entertainment LLC (whose home page prominently features the words MONETIZE YOUR BRAND!), respectively. Inertia, I guess.
• Dumbrella this year will only be Andy Bell because Rich Stevens has decided it’s more important to support his wife in making modern life less stressful pffft, whatever. Another exhibitor will be sharing the space, but the name is not announced yet.
• Penguin/Random House will be taking a chunk of space (1514, 1515, 1623) close by; this is where Gina Gagliano’s new Random House Graphic enterprise will most likely be found.
• Jim Zub will be back for the first time in three years. Citizens are urged to remain vigilant, but calm.

Small Press Folks Are Awesome Folks
Right by the Webcomics section is Small Press. Here you should find:

From the Small Press section, you’re close by:

Notes:

• Gallery Nucleus is closer in than previous years, and will feature arty types when they aren’t hanging out at Mondo down in booth 435. Keep an eye out for your Scotts C, your Beckys and/or Franks, and alumni of the various Flight anthologies. Oh, and they’re listed in the guide as Nucleus.
• No confirmation yet on which webcomickers will be at the BOOM! booth when, but I’d expect a pretty strong rotation.
• For all the drama around the acquisition/merger with Oni, Lion Forge will be over at 5543, which is along the front wall, by entrance C (tucked between Diamond and the wall).

Now head back toward the “B” Lobby into the Independent Press area and you’ll find Terry Moore at Booth 2109, which is split (in accordance with tradition) with Jeff Smith (who remains the best).

Scholastic (that means the Graphix imprint, and that means Raina, Amulet, BONE and other megasuperstars) is in 2115.

Going back to that larger map of the northern half of the exhibit hall. Wedged in between the Marvel and IDW megabooths you’ll find Keenspot in Booth 2635.

The Far End Is Actually Kinda Different
There’s still some neat stuff if you keep wandering past the video games, Star Wars, Legos, and suchlike.

Give yourself time to make the trek, what with DC bringing more folks than usual to the high-numbered end, and you’ll find both Udon Entertainment (4529), and The Hero Initiative (5003). Katie Cook will be at table HH-17, but she’s one of the holdout folks in Artists Alley — it’s mostly comic book types these days. Jim Zub might be found at Udon at some point, or hanging with his Skullkickers partner, Edwin Ironpinky Huang (EE-06).

Know what’s not down this way for the first time in forever? Copic. Their longtime distributor stateside, Imagination International, reportedly lost their license this year, and Copic no longer appears on their list of marker brands. Maybe content yourself with a visit to the Moleskine booth, way back towards the Webcomics Zone (1621)?

Offsite
Every year for the past half-decade the amount of stuff you can see outside of the exhibit hall has grown; I’m guessing we’re only a year or so away from complete parity. If you know of anything especially good, let us know and we’ll add it here. Otherwise, just wander the city and see what you got.

Spam of the day:

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and

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Identical layout to these spams, but different products (diet; drones) and different fake unsubscribe addresses. Sneaky, but not sneaky enough.

_______________
¹ Also the end of the hall closer to Mexico and the CBP immigration station that is illegally preventing asylum-seekers from presenting themselves at a port of entry as the law and international treaties require them to do. Just saying, if anybody should happen to have a misadventure with some earth-moving equipment over some CBP/ICE vehicles, pretty sure it gets you a straight ticket to the heaven of your choice.

Hey, lookit that, the exhibitor lists and floor map for SDCC are up. I will do my usual trawl and guide to what’s up on the show floor on a day that I am not trying to make it across Atlanta to the airport. Y’all be good until then.

Spam of the day:
Oh, glob, so much spam. So many pre-SDCC announcements and all-caps EMBARGOED UNTIL declarations and no way to opt out of shit that has nothing to do with me. Pray for Mojo.

It’s dark days, my friends — literally in my case as work has me in Atlanta¹, where it’s been very rainy and thunderstormy — but even in these circumstances it’s possible to find little bits of hopefulness.

In this case, news today from Noelle Stevenson (creator of one of the greatest webcomics of memory, which appears to be lost at the moment² because some health and beauty spammers appear to have appropriated Stevenson’s site at gingerhaze.com [don’t click], but thankfully the Wayback Machine is forever) that she’ll have a new book out soon:

Big news! HarperCollins is publishing 8 years worth of journal comics as a collected comics memoir! Check out this exclusive cover reveal and interview! [flame emoji]

You’ll find the interview at io9:

The Fire Never Goes Out is a collection of seven or eight years of Stevenson’s personal comics, which come together in a memoir about her life. Some of the comics were previously published on her Tumblr page, but others are stories and comics she’s never shared before. It’s an interesting and unique look into Stevenson’s life, as she was living it, making it less of a retrospective and more of a journey through someone else’s journey.

Sold. I love the retrospectives that read like the experience of somebody’s life at playback speeds (cf: Lucy Knisley graphic novels). We can expect it in early January, about a year before the scheduled release of the film version of Nimona. Stevenson’s one of our best, most emotionally honest storytellers, and to see her tell the story of herself is going to be a delight. Follow her on Twitter, hopefully her domain comes back under her control soon, and the third season of She-Ra drops in early August. Gotta space out those little bits of light, remind yourself that there’s always another one just around the corner.

Spam of the day:

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Muscles are not boss fights that must be overcome by grinding or microtransactions. Get up every once in a while, stretch, touch your toes a couple times, and stop making it sound like a damn ‘cheevo.

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¹ But I got to have dinner with Andy Runton last night, so that’s all right.

² I mean, it wasn’t all online any longer because the book’s been out forever now, but the first three chapters were there.

I hope that everybody is girded and oiled, you gotta be careful not to hurt yourself. For those of you not familiar with WSD, it’s Jeffrey Rowland’s favorite holiday and it features sauntering, obvs, and must be observed no matter how busy you may be.

And on this World Sauntering Day (or more accurately, Sauntereve), we saw a miracle: lo, the word came from the firmaments that something joyous was upon us:

WE’RE LIVE. Back “Shattered Spear” now on Kickstarter to bring @claystorks’ incredible comic to print at ICC, for the FIRST AND LAST TIME.

And the print edition of Shattered Spear is FUNDED! Thank you, everyone! This KS will continue to run for a full 30 days, to give @claystorks’ readers as much time as possible to back. But don’t miss out! This book will NOT BE AVAILABLE after this KS!

We are LESS THAN $200 AWAY from Shattered Spear’s ONE AND ONLY stretch goal of a sweet cover enhancement!

And that’s IT. “Shattered Spear” is now not just funded, but has hit its one and only stretch goal of a cover enhancement. The book is not only happening, it’s gonna be PRETTY. You have 29 DAYS LEFT to get you hands on this book! Don’t let it get away!

What’s the big deal, Gary? An Iron Circus book funded in five and a half hours, we see that all the time. Ah, but it’s not just a fast-funding Iron Circus book, for a couple of reasons:

• This is the launch of a new imprint, Circus Maximus¹, the purpose of which is to showcase short, unique comics.
• Specifically, things that have not been in print before, and will not be in print again. These are one-shots.
• They have low price points, low goals, short duration runs, and short fulfillment windows. I’d bet you a dollar that the files have already been specced out with Spike’s printer of choice, quotes for both fancy- and non-fancy cover choices received, and as soon as the campaign closes the go order will be given.

So instead of a traditional book publisher-type deal (some years of rights to the work, options to renew, new printings in future as warranted), Circus Maximus is closer to a magazine structure (right of first publication only, unlikely to reprint, narrow timeframe to obtain fromthe publisher and afterwards only on a secondary market). Think of the entire CM project as a very particular, occasionally-updated literary magazine where every issue has a different theme/editor — a mutant child of Granta, Utne Reader, and The Nib — and you won’t be far off the mark. Otava Heikkilä may do a printing of Shattered Spear in the future (indeed, this run may be proof of concept more than anything else), but it won’t be from Iron Circus.

I’ve said it before — sleep on the things that Spike is inventing/experimenting with at your peril. And sleep on this Kickstart only if you’re comfortable maybe never having a physical copy of what’s likely a terrific story.

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Wow, I have been Subscribe on All porn websites? That … seems like it would take a lot of time.

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¹ No word yet if Iron Circus semibenevolent dictator for life C Spike Trotman will retroactively declare the smut offerings part of an imprint called Circus Penis, but come one, it’s sitting right there!