But we’re supposed to be about news and webcomics, and a giant bolus of webcomics news hit yesterday in the form of John Campbell’s presumably last Kickstarter update. It’s painful and horrifying to read.

I’ve liked Pictures for Sad Children a lot, but I don’t know John Campbell; I’m pretty sure we briefly met once¹, and we have people in common. Or perhaps we’ve had people in common; reading between the lines on Twitter yesterday, along with conducting a book-burning Campbell has apparently cut ties with just about everybody.

The rambling, makes-sense-if-you-wrote-it … I’m going to call it a manifesto … that Campbell dropped yesterday puts a lot of past behavior into stark relief: the claim to have been faking depression, the systematic removal of comics from the web, a needless shitfight on Tumblr, and a book about a hallucinogen that may or may not be autobiographical.

Like I said, I don’t know Campbell; those that do² have said online that Campbell doesn’t acknowledge inconsistent or worrying behavior, and refuses both contact and assistance. Campbell did some brilliant comics; it’s likely that will not happen any longer, and for reasons that are almost certainly outside Campbell’s control. I’m going choose to remember Campbell not for this turn of events, but for PFSC and the moments of insight and uplift it provided.

And there is nothing else that can be done in this situation but to bear witness, to recognize that this is something that happened, and to hope like hell that this story eventually has a non-tragic outcome.

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¹ As near as I can recall, our interactions were limited to an email exchange around the time of the Mexico Comics Commune of Aught-Seven, and it’s possible Ryan Estrada introduced me when we talked that night before he walked across the border. Honestly, I can’t remember.

² No names; this being the internet, somebody is going to berate them simultaneously for what they did and did not do vis-à-vis Campbell, and they don’t need the grief.

Although there are multiple people in that bonfire video; I can only hope that one of them recognizes that in front of them is somebody that needs help immediately and tries to arrange it. I don’t typically hold people that would burn books for the hell of it to be capable of such rational analysis, but I’m willing to make an exception here if it means Campbell finds safety and care.

Noted by the inimitable (and very sexy) R Stevens on Twitter: Team USA skier Ted Ligety competes with Red Robot #C-63 (created by Sam Brown, but perhaps most closely associated with Stevens) on his helmet. While it makes perfect sense that Ligety would want to CRUSH his competition, I think that there may be another reason — Red Robot physically resembles the gates that he must slalom through.

Clearly the gates are themselves designed to CRUSH all in their vicinity, and Red Robot’s presence acts as a sort of guarantee of safe passage. Although Ligety didn’t medal in the super combined¹, I’d say coming through the runs without being CRUSHed is a pretty good consolation.

• Looking forward: Dean Trippe will be doing the first of undoubtedly many con panels on his astonishingly good Something Terrible at Emerald City Comic Con next month. Specifically, it will be in Hall D, 4:40pm, Friday 28 March, and it will be moderated by Kate Leth. Programming and floor map haven’t been released for ECCC yet, so there could be some changes still; let’s hope that Hall D, wherever it is, is nice and large.
• Looking at numbers: Almost nobody² shares more data about how he’s doing in comics more often than Jim Zub (perhaps Ryan Estrada); really, the only difference is in detail, as Zub tends to scrub numbers but keep trends visible, and Estrada shares actual dollars and cents. Thus it is in his latest share, this time about submitting to comiXology and how the money breaks down from doing so.

  The big conclusion I took away from Estrada’s tale of submitting (and getting rejected more than accepted) to comiXology? Apple is the big winner, taking more than 25% of the proceeds while not being responsible for either the act of creation nor the curatorial/editorial efforts. Good for Apple — I hear they could use a few bucks. Sarcasm aside, there’s money to be made in the infrastructure end of content industries; the only question is if economies of scale will permit anybody to ever take crumbs away from Apple’s table.

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¹ One part KILL ALL HU-MANS, one part kitty care.

² One should note that nobody in comics comes close to Dorothy Gambrell when it comes to detailed data sharing, but she didn’t have a data dump today.

Oh my stars and garters, The Boy! Neil threw me a bit there, what with identifying Eustace Boyce as 25, but then Bad Machinery has been running more than four years now, and that was three years after the end of Scary Go Round¹, and I guess you leave school around age 18 in Britain, so yeah, 25. Looks like since breaking up with Esther, he’s moved well onto the Susan end of life. Still, good to see him again.

• It’s been a while since we at Fleen have mention Matt Lubchansky, which is Our Bad, because he keeps doing good comics. For just about exactly one year (the first strip dates from a year ago yesterday), The New Amsterdam Mystery Company by Lubchansky and Jaya Saxena has been bringing the mystery, and yesterday the first NAMC collection, The Curse of the Dying Dutchman (which coincides with the first NAMC story arc) went up for pre-order. You’ve got two slim weeks to get in on a story that’s part supernatural mystery, part love letter to New York.
• Hat tip to Ryan Estrada (or at least, the twitterfeed of The Whole Story): Jerzy Drozd² of Comics Are Great!³ is now offering a course in comic-making; okay, lots of people do that, even people that make (and promote the art of) comics as much as Drozd. What distinguishes this one (and makes sense, being linked by The Whole Story, the name your price publisher) is that Drozd’s course is being offered on Gumroad, pay what you want:
  

  In this four-part series we’ll explore how to build a comics story from the ground up! There’s a lot to consider when making a comic: developing a dynamic cast of characters, defining your world, devising visually exciting pages, and more. And what about figuring out your options for getting your work to your audience? This series of interactive presentations will provide you with some context and options in navigating those waters.

  Name your price for seven hours of comics instruction! You’ll be able to download the DRM-Free videos or stream them from Gumroad.

  So that’s seven videos, seven hours, for free? Well, yes, but only if you’re a chump. There’s a lot of knowledge and work there, so if you decide to download, don’t leave the price set to zero, ‘kay?

• I expected to wake up this morning to a bigger than usual backlog on Twitter, what with the last episode of The Best Show, but I didn’t expect to see a new Penny Arcade/PAX controversy. Here’s the short version: Indie Statik broke (and Kotaku confirmed) the story of a new offering at future PAXes: a diversity lounge. There’s been a lot of back and forth about segregation and I’ve seen the word ghetto used more than once; I think that a lot of the reactions have come from people that read the Indie Statik and Kotaku stories, and more of the reactions have come from people that read the first reactions.

  I also think that a lot of people aren’t discussing things so much as they’re projecting assumptions on on each other. We’ve got one set of primary source material here, the document describing the lunge in question, the originals of which may be seen at Indie Statik (image 1, image 2). I think that everybody that’s got an opinion on the matter might want to follow those links, because they might not say what you think they say.

  Most importantly, a lot of people I’ve seen have been describing the lounge as a designated safe space and getting angry that all of PAX isn’t likewise. Thing is, my reading of the document doesn’t indicate that’s what’s planned at all. I do see indications that it’s a place that people can come and learn, and that part of what can be taught is how to establish safe spaces.

  My reading of the description is Hey, want to learn about people who aren’t like you but play games anyway? Willing to pry yourself away from demos for half an hour, maybe? Go here. Implicit in that is a subtext: Everybody that’s always complained that you get jumped on for being oppressive and wondering what you’re doing wrong and why won’t anybody teach you? This is what you’ve been asking for, so avail yourself or shut up.

  What I didn’t see anywhere in the description is All minorities go here so the rest of us don’t have to think about you, which is a pretty close paraphrase of one of the criticisms I read earlier today. But you know what? It hasn’t happened yet, and whether or not it’s well-executed will be determined months from now; whatever aspects of it aren’t done well at PAX East, will they be done better at Prime and Aus? Will the PA principals be involved in curating the content, or will they be delegating that to somebody else? How credible will the content slate be? Crucially, will Mike and Jerry be spending some learning time in there?

  What we’ve got at the moment is a two-page outline, vague enough that it could have come out of a corporate mission-statement generating workshop. It’s not a blueprint, it’s the brainstorm that will build the structure that will eventually be used to define the blueprint. Maybe nobody avails themselves of it and it fails spectacularly. Maybe it succeeds to the extent that the hub and lounge grow and assume more floor space at each subsequent show. Maybe it’s an expression of Mike & Jerry’s parental concern that their kids come up in the hobby they love, but without absorbing the worst parts of the culture that surrounds it⁴.

  Penny Arcade is too big to do anything quietly — or subtly, for that matter; they’ve got a load of momentum to shed before they can chart a new course. It will take years to work past some of their mistakes (if in fact they ever completely do) and to be known for more than their worst behavior. Maybe — just maybe — this is where it changes.

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¹ We’ve actually seen The Boy within the pages of Giant Days, if memory serves, but that’s from the early days of university and thus seven years ago in story time.

² Improbably enough, there are two Jerzy Drozds out there, the other being a bass luthier of some repute. Odd, but no odder than there being two Gary Tyrrells, I suppose.

³ Word.

⁴ Mike and Jerry have not always been wise in picking which fights to have or how to have them. I suspect that like all conscientious parents, they want their kids to be wiser, smarter, kinder, better people than they themselves have been. Or maybe I’m projecting because my parents and grandparents taught me to be better than the prejudices that they learned and didn’t always grow out of.

To quote The Spurge, who tweeted last evening:

emily carroll emily carroll emily carroll

Spurge’s tweet led to a Tumblr that led to Zainab Akhtar’s blog that’s got images and info — a full preview, honestly — of Emily Carroll’s first print collection.

Due in July 2014 in a 200+ page hardcover, Through The Woods looks to be exactly what anybody that’s read Carroll’s comics will want — fairy- and folk-tale influenced, deeply unsettling stories, including a reconfigured-for-print version of her breakout story, His Face All Red. Akhtar asserts that this is one of the books that most comics fans are looking forward to and I’m gonna go out on a limb and agree; at least for me, this may be my most-anticipated book since, jeeze, I dunno? Anya’s Ghost? Boxers & Saints? Darkness? Just head over to Akhtar’s site and drink in the beauty.

Okay, one other story that matters: you’re coming up on your last chances to get in on a pair of webcomics Kickstarts.

• You’ve got 10 hours to get in on Sophie Goldstein and Jenn Jordan’s Darwin Carmichael Is Going To Hell campaign (which, sitting at about 180% of goal, is definitely going to be made, but you won’t get your copy any quicker than on the KS). DCIGTH is charming, comforting, and a complete story, so this is it — your chance to support Jordan and Goldstein for the free comics they supplied you.
• And since I last wrote about it a week ago, the Broken Telephone campaign has seen a resurgence, sitting at about 91% with three days to do. Kicktraq has the latest iteration of Ryan Estrada’s The Whole Story series finishing at 104% of goal (which is loads better than the heartbreaking 96% it was predicting last week), but nothing counts until it crosses that 100% threshold. There’s an armful of creators who stand to get paid with actual, real money, but only if a little less that US$2200 of more pledges show up. Time’s running out, don’t let this one stumble.

Hey. How are you? Good, good. There are some things coming up that you might want to keep an eye on.

• T minus 10 days That’s when the latest iteration of The Whole Story finishes up its Kickstarter campaign, and truth be told, it looks like it might be a squeaker. The last release of The Whole Story handily cleared its goal, but this one is presently predicted to hit around 95% of goal, and that is just heartbreaking for a couple of reasons:
  1. Ryan Estrada is trying something really audacious here, where the main reward is an e-comic sent to you every two weeks, and the stories are interlinked. The hero of the first installment of Broken Telephone (for that is its name) has a villain to defeat, but that villain doesn’t know that he’s the villain — he’s the hero of his own story, which will be the second installment. Each antagonist gets a turn in the spotlight, through an 18 part epic by 19 creators.
  2. Those that go above the bare minimum of one stinking dollar will get more comics, including a 24 page bonus story at the US$18 level, 160 pages of various stories¹ added to your fortnightly subscription at the US$24 level, and a mind-boggling 850 pages from various creators² delivered this month before the Broken Telephone subscription even starts. That would be nearly 1050 pages plus the BT subscription (18 chapters, each 12 – 24 pages, call it 300 or so as a round number), or a whopping 3.3 cents per page.
  3. All the money goes to the artists. Estrada, maybe more than anybody, understands that working for exposure is a vile, filthy lie, so aside from postage costs for some top-tier backers getting originals and such, everything raised goes to pay the people who are drawing the comics. Go take a look at the list of names that Estrada’s posted — I’ll wager that there’s at least one person there whose work you enjoy. That person gets paid if The Whole Story makes goal.

  Do it for the children.

• T minus 15 days The Beguiling’s annual comics-funtimes party will be on Wednesday, 18 December, starting at 7:30pm, mere steps from the famed comic shop at Pauper’s Pub where there will be plentiful adult beverages and webcomics superstars. Kate Beaton! Joey Comeau! Ryan North! The launch of Midas Flesh! And I don’t want to make it sound too enticing, but we have been promised both Surprise Mystery Guests and shenanigans. There will be signings of all their various booklike creations, and a Secret Santa gift exchange.

  Also do this for the children.

• T minus about 90 days, dang Hat tip to Kean Soo who pointed me to an amazing new webcomic, Maralinga 1956, which launched a story of post-apocalyptic survival and monsters about a week ago. Good news: there’s ten pages of very good story there. Bad news: the creators will be updating with ten-page chapters on a quarterly basis, meaning that:
  

  Maralinga will be a 200ish page graphic novel posted in quarterly 10 page installments, so should be wrapping up in around, ulp, 2018.

  I’m annoyed because I want more of this story yesterday, but waiting for few-and-far-between updates in longform stories is nothing new. No RSS, but there is a form to sign up for email notification when Maralinga updates in, I’m guessing late February/early March.

  You’ll have to do this for the children, since children have no concept of in three months.

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¹ Including one of Estrada’s true-life adventures, The Bear From The Bear And The Beach From The Beach, wherein Estrada gets close to the movies and nearly dies a lot.

² Including more true-life adventures in Estradavision and Dean Trippe’s Something Terrible, which is going to appear on a lot of best-of lists this year and awards ballots next year.

If you don’t know what license fees I’m talking about, see yesterday’s post where we learn that boilerplate approaches to convincing somebody that your endorsement is really, really essential went wrong. Now, hold on to your (metaphorical, physical, doesn’t matter) hat, because it’s about to go extraordinarily, amazingly wrong.

Yesterday we introduced the idea that Ziff Davis (no link for them!) wanted webcomickers to pay a license fee for the privilege of quoting a listicle about their own comics. The creator who shared that email back-and-forth didn’t get around to asking what that license fee might be but another one did, and gave me permission to share the number if I kept his name¹ out of it. Ready? Here it comes:

Apart from the quote “PCMAG Best Webcomics” you can use the following quotes from the feature:

“[removed for anonymity]”

“[removed for anonymity]”

The fees vary depending on if you want to use the logo and quotes on just your website or on all digital media platforms (social media, emails, etc.) The fees are about $1,000 for a feature like this but I am willing to work with you on figuring out a fee that works for you. [bold added for emphasis]

So that’s a cool thousand dollars for the privilege of using a logo and two pull-quotes for a year. Now you know why defender of the realistic sense of artistic worth Ryan Estrada got all incredulous yesterday. I can scarcely believe it myself.

Let’s end on an up note before the weekend, yeah? By the time you do something official and public twice, it becomes a tradition, which means that The Toonseum is well into beloved, longstanding tradition territory, as they’re releasing their fourth edition of Illustration Ale in conjunction with East End Brewing. Two things of note:

• The launch party for Illustration Ale 2013 is at 7:00pm on 5 December, and as is traditional will feature six labels from six Pittsburgh artists.
• This launch is coming months later than expected, as East End Brewing takes some pride in their craft.

By that I mean that the beer was due in August, and the brewmasters made a tough call:

My apologies for the late notice on this, but based on what we’re seeing with the bottles of Illustration Ale we’ve been sampling here, we will not be doing a release at the Toonseum for bottles of this beer as we had planned this Saturday August 3rd.

We had hoped the bottles would come around (which is why this notice is so late in the game), but they just aren’t up to snuff, so we need to make the call to POSTPONE this release, until we can get a re-brew into the tank and subsequently into new bottles.

It’s one thing to have 1,500 bottles of unsaleable hand-bottled beer on our hands, but it’s another to… well, yeah. In all honesty, this is about the only thing we’re thinking about today. But you can’t sell GOOD BEER every day if you aren’t willing to make the decision to pour some not-so-good beer down the drain. It doesn’t make it any easier though.

Well done, East End Brewing, and well done The Toonseum — you’ve chosen your partners well, and I expect to hear that this year’s vintage is spectacular.

_______________
¹ Side note — of the 25 webcomics on the list there are a total of 33 creators if I counted all the creative teams correctly; 7 of them were women, which is less than I would have expected. Where on earth were Dylan Meconis, Erika Moen, Dorothy Gambrell, Yuko Ota, and Magnolia Porter, just for starters? Okay, Hurricane Erika gets left out because of the sexytimes, fine.

Still, that 21% representation blew away the gender imbalance I noted in their list of best digital comics (that is, regular print comics also available via comiXology and the like). Over there it was ten comics, 14 creators, and the incredibly skilled Fiona Staples the sole lady for a whopping 7% representation. I’m starting to get why so many ridiculously talented comics–making ladies are in the original graphic novel end of the industry, where they seem to be more welcome.

So many Things!

• New Thing! ComfyCon is go!
• New Thing! Kel McDonald’s previously-mentioned African folktales anthology is now on Kickstarter! Kel! Cube! Becky! Faith! A dozen stories that you haven’t seen a thousand times before!
• New Thing! Frank “The Voice Of Wallace The Fish” Gibson will be one of the writers of the new Bee & PuppyCat comics alongside B&P creator Natasha Allegri and the always-awesome Madeleine Flores!
• Thing Wrapping Up! The Bee & PuppyCat series Kickstarter has just wrapped with more than US$870K, meaning nine episodes of cosmic ennui!
• New Thing! Ryan Estrada’s latest comics collection, Broken Telephone, is now live! That is to say, you can now subscribe to all-new digital comics, from nearly 20 artists, arriving every other week for up to a year. To be precise, Estrada’s using the Kickstarter campaign as a funding backbone for his usual Pay What You Want model, with certain funding tiers getting you more and more and more comics, from so many creators, all of whom were paid for their efforts. Rockin’. Go get it.

Another day, another reason to pay attention to Ryan Estrada, or (as the case may be), two reasons. Firstly, Estrada drops some wisdom on what will get you hired for comics gigs, based on his past history of not only hustling for work, but also from his history of hiring people for his various projects. Secondly, one of those projects, which Estrada has been teasing, is nearing fruition and he was kind enough to share some details with us. Broken Telephone is a story which Estrada has been working on for years, and which will require the services of (at present) 18 webcomickers.

The Kickstarter to launch it will be dropping in the immediate future, but in the meantime Estrada’s given us the skinny on everybody participating: Rachel Dukes, Carolyn Nowak, Brittney Sabo, Kelly Bastow, Irena Freitas, Will Kirkby, Amy T. Falcone, E.A. Denich, Chad Thomas, KC Green, Maya Kern, Amanda LaFreinas, Dan Ciurczak and JR Robinson, Justin Peterson, Tauhid Bondia, Elias Ericson, and Matt Cummings (plus Estrada himself, of course). Oh, and since Estrada’s not a jerk, you know that those collaborators are people that he’s hired, for money, which just reinforces the other aspect of how to get hired for comics gigs: it doesn’t count as hiring if you don’t get money.

• In other news, I was simultaneously thrilled and disappointed to see the announcement that Longshot Saves The Marvel Universe hits tomorrow. Thrilled because it’s going to be hilarious; annoyed because (at the time of this writing) it appears to be announced multiple places that should know better without a writer credit. Well, the writer is Christopher Hastings, as should be obvious to anybody that looks at the bottom of that cover image.
• This morning, I saw a good lesson in double-checking everything, and an even better lesson in treating your readers right. Firstly, Kris Straub: updated the world on the progress of the Broodhollow books. They look great, but there’s a problem:
  

  I opened the package and was knocked over by how beautiful both the softcover and hardcover books are. I felt along the lovely clothbound spine of the hardcover edition… and I realized the manufacturer forgot the red ribbon bookmark.

  Somehow that spec got left off the final quote from a previous one, and after conferring with them, I found out the books were approaching the end of their manufacture process. No chance to correct this.

  So that’s lesson #1: no matter how good your relationship with a vendor, you need to double-check every order, every spec sheet, every everything. But, there’s good news to offset the bad, not least because Straub is — far from his namesake — a stand-up guy:

  Here’s the good news — I also was not charged for the missing ribbons, so I have decided to take that savings — and some of my own money — and have nice dust jackets made for all the hardcovers. You guys at hardcover levels dug deep for the Kickstarter and you have earned my affection and gratitude, so I wanted to make up for the ribbon oversight. [boldface original]

  The bold isn’t the important part; the aside just before the bold is. Straub could have looked for a solution that didn’t cost him out of pocket (I’m wagering that he could have substituted printed bookmarks and satisfied his backers for less than dustcovers), but he wanted to more than make things up to his readers. Straub’s incredible comics makes me read Broodhollow, but knowing that he won’t ever short his readers is what will make me upgrade my book order next time¹. Culturally, webcomics is far more likely to take Straub’s approach here, and each example of doing right by your readers just reinforces that culture.

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¹ Despite the fact that now book one and future books won’t match on my bookshelf. Dammit!

The spam filter is getting far less of a workout ever since I set topics more than 30 days old to be locked; if perchance you come across an old post that you really want to comment on, drop me a line¹ and I’ll see what I can do.

In one of those perfect storm confluences of independent forces², a bunch of projects launched today:

• If you’re a Maki Naro Kickstarter backer, you now have access to Sufficiently Remarkable; everybody else will get to see the deal in four weeks.
• If you’re a Brad Guigar Kickstarter backer, you now have access to the first of his Webcomics Movers And Shakers interview podcasts, this one with Webcomics Impressario At Large George Rohac; everybody else will get access to the recording at some point in the future.
• No backer requirements this time; sometime today the long-awaited, Strip Search-wining Camp Weedonwantcha by the irrepressible Katie Rice will go live. Hooray!
• Adding yet another a tip to the proverbial iceberg, Ryan Estrada announced that in addition to all the comics he does, all the comics done by others that he publishes, all the work in exposing the lie that is the promise of exposure in lieu of payment, the adventure videos, live stagings of Choose Your Own Hamlet, and just generally living in a foreign land (whose non-Roman script he’s taught a squajillion people how to read), he is now the non-union Korean equivalent of Ira Glass:
  

  Super exciting news! I’m now the host of People & Places, a short weekly radio show on Busan eFM!

  I knew all that podcasting experience would amount to something! I pitched and developed it myself, and the goal is to make it the Busan, South Korea equivalent of This American Life, filled with stories that make the audience laugh, cry, think or swear. My first episode airs wednesday morning, during drive time!

  You know, in his copious free time.

• If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that Estrada had a time machine and had gone back in time after having thoroughly internalized John Allison’s just-released contribution at 10 Rules for Drawing Comics, especially #5:
  

  Allow yourself to be bored. There are a million ways to distract yourself today. Turn your phone off when you go out, give yourself time to let your mind wander. That’s when a lot of the best work gets done. Computer games aren’t productive. Checking Twitter/email/Tumblr every three minutes to see if anything has happened isn’t productive. It’s counter-productive. You’re wasting your limited lifespan.

  Not the “being bored” part (I don’t think Estrada is biologically capable of it), but the sense of doing lots of different things, so that creativity doesn’t get clogged up. While we’re on the topic, you should take a few minutes and read all the other entries at 10 Rules, especially considering there’s only ten entries so far.

• Finally, not sure how I missed it last week, but the episode of Bullseye that features the very funny and fascinating Nick Offerman also has a really nice discussion with Brandon Bird about The Day He Became An Artist (Bird starts at about the 42 minute mark ).

  Bird’s out visiting Sears stores at the moment or I’m sure he’d have more to say about it; probably the least surprising aspect of this whole bit is that Bird and Bullseye host Jesse Thorn know each other from college. Creative, interesting people just seem to eventually overlap, circles of friends merging with ever-broader circles of friends, to the point that it would be weird if two people from completely different communities didn’t know each other.

  Anyway, it’s a really good listen, and you will likely enjoy it.

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¹ That would be at gary who maintains a point of contact at this here website, which exists in the dot-com TLD.

² And you do not need to remind me that a year ago, we were staring down the barrel of Superstorm Sandy, which took some time to return from. I got off far luckier than many (and everybody’s circumstances were unique), but I’m still taking a moment on the eve to send good thoughts to those that are still rebuilding their homes, businesses, and lives.

Well! That was fun! Let’s mention all the things that I wanted to talk about yesterday, yes?

• Because of the interruption, I’m behind on pointing out Spike’s amazing near-24 hour comic on making it in comics (think of it as a very narrowly-scoped version of Poorcraft, only instead of being about life in general, it’s about being a comics artist in particular) and the Kickstarter for Natasha Allegri’s Bee and Puppycat to be made into a series. Both of these things are awesome, and I have practically nothing to add to what was already said (except, perhaps, to note that the US$10,000 limited reward for the Bee & Puppycat Kickstarter was snagged up sometime in the first hour and forty-five minutes).
• Heck I’m even behind on congratulating Gene Luen Yang for Boxers & Saints moving up from the Long List to finalist at the National Book Awards in the category of Young People’s Literature. I noted after the long list announcement that I’d been unable to find any other graphic novels that have been nominated in the history of the NBAs; with this latest (and supremely well-deserved) nod, Yang is certainly the first to repeat for graphic novel recognition. Heck, even getting nominated more than once is rare — Kathi Appelt is nominated this year alongside Yang and was also in 2008, and Rita Williams-Garcia was nominated back-to-back in 2009 and 2010. That’s some pretty rarified company that Yang finds himself in.

Now that I’m caught up, let me get ahead of the curve on two other items I found interesting:

• Lauren Zukauskas does the great Rachael & Penny and opened up orders for a very limited run of her first print collection, which is now unfortunately sold out. However! She is taking pre-orders on a new print run so you can still get in on that. R&P is terrific stuff, so give this one a good look, ‘kay?
• And the always-valuable Jim Zub took the time to share numbers once again (see earlier data here) on how Skullkickers (a critically-lauded, modest-selling indy comic) has finally earned out and become net profitable. It took 23 issues and more than two years, and it’s a very small slice of profit, but it’s profit. If you’re trying to make money on your own in comics, read everything Zub has to say about Skullkickers — it’s the perfect complement to Spike’s comics-lifestyle travelogue.
• Lastly, some good news in a world that seems bound and determined to exploit the crap out of independent creators; from Ryan Estrada (who else?):
  

  If you need a happy ending: I’ll be sending well paying job offers out soon to some artists I found by editing @forexposure_txt

  Suck on that, wannabe exploiters; creators worth working with get paid, with money.