Hey, want to do some mass science? David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc)’s new sci-comm projects (cf: yesterday) is looking to see if we, in the modern age, can figure the size of the Earth and distance to the sun using the same methodology as Eratosthenes (that is to say, a stick, a piece of string, and math), but perhaps with more accuracy:

[prep steps omitted]
On the equinox date, at the exact time of your local solar noon: If it’s sunny, place your stick vertically on your flat area. Do this as accurately as you can — use a spirit level or inclinometer if you can. If you don’t have one, let the stick dangle from the top, with the bottom just barely touching the ground. With the stick vertical, measure the length of its shadow cast by the sun, again as accurately as you can manage. Using a friend to help you will make things easier.

Once you have the shadow length, you’re ready to report your data! I need to know: (1) Where you were — city, state, country — enough that I don’t get it wrong. (2) The length of your vertical stick. (3) The length of the shadow you measured. Send these three bits of data to me by email [dmm at dangermouse.net], by the end of March.

As luck would have it, I already have a stick from a couple of years ago when Radiolab crowdsourced ground temperature data¹ to predict when the 17 year cicadas would come up. I also live in a somewhat perplexing microclimate where massive meteorological events will suddenly split in half, go around town, then rejoin on the far side.

The other part of this situation is that everything in the sky that is interesting — lunar eclipses, solar eclipses, astronomical conjunctions and convergences — invariably happens behind a thick bank of clouds. But I’ll give it a try as best I can, and I invite you to do the same. Five minutes of looking stuff up on the internet, two minutes of holding a stick and making a measurement, one minute to send an email. It’s for science.

Spam of the day:

Get 5,000 visitors to your website for $54.95

You want to pay me to put up with the sort of visitors who would sell their clicks? Sure, I’ll accept them for a half-hundo.

_______________
¹ A stick with a temperature sensor, attached to an Arduino and a string of LEDs, no less. For Morgan-Mar’s deal, you just need a stick.

I almost titled this Some People Really Piss Me Off, but didn’t want any confusion re: the first person mentioned.

• As mentioned previously, David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc) has recently been dejobbed, and he’s decided to throw himself into cartooning instead of seeking out new gainful employment immediately.

  Welcome to the ranks of full-time pixel-stained wretches, Dr Morgan-Mar! A few of the other webcomics PhDs will no doubt tell you that webcartooning is exactly as remunerative and professionally fulfilling as other physics/engineering careers! And, hey, being in Australia — a country with a proper approach towards healthcare¹ — you have at least some safety net to explore your comicking options rather than scheduling an imminent demise in the gutter.

  And since Morgan-Mar has jumped headlong into funemployment this week, he’s already dug into his famed collection fountain firehose of ideas and unleashed the first new implementation:

  As part of my new Jobless-let’s-make-more-stuff state, I’m launching a new science blog site: 100 Proofs that the Earth is a Globe.

  This is an idea I’ve long had for a book. But I don’t have a publisher in my pocket, so I’m launching this site to generate some buzz. As stated in the site’s About page: This is not primarily an attempt to debunk Flat Earth theory. It’s just a way of organising a bunch of surprisingly diverse science essays with a common theme. The challenge I’ve set myself is to see if I can come up with 100 different scientific observations or experiments that we can do that show the Earth is much more likely to be spherical than flat.

  Can I do it? Let’s see!

  Speaking purely as someone who finds sincere Flat Earthers annoying and conspiracy-minded², I approve. Got soak up some science, and maybe check out Morgan-Mar’s previous webcomics endeavours for which you can exchange money.

• Folks that piss me off more than Flat Earthers or even Moon-Landing Deniers: content leeches. I got a press release (names redacted, don’t want to give these folks any exposure, ironically) promoting a loot box focused on manga with an announcement: A contest! The winner get their manga included in our crate!

  That was it. No details, just a link to a Google Form for submissions to this (quoting here) rare opportunity. I emailed asking about judging (criteria and who’d be judging), deadlines, rights, and so forth. On the plus side, they weren’t asking for any rights. On the minus side, the reply stated, and I quote:

  Hey Gary, there aren’t any actual rules. They just need to submit content and we’ll decide who gets featured. The winner gets their manga printed and distributed for free to the 5k+ [name] subscribers plus the newsletter subscribers. Deadline doesn’t exist as this is an ongoing thing. The owner wants to support manga creators for as long as possible. The creator maintains 100% ownership rights. [name] is purely acting as a distributor and promoter.

  To which I pointed out that distributors and promoters are people that you pay to get your product into sales channels, so what was this going to cost. Quoting again:

  No cost here at all and no hidden agenda. [name] will feature their content for free. He gets content for his subscribers and the creators get free exposure.

  There we go — exposure. I imagine that you can imagine what my voice is doing with that word. I replied:

  Yeah, I don’t promote “for exposure”. Artists and writers get paid for what they create. If they want to give it away, fine. But for somebody to say “if your stuff is good enough I’ll let you give it to me so I can sell it and keep the money”?

  No.

  I’d have thought that would have ended it, but PR guy said that I could call him (but not now, because he’s traveling) and he would try to convince me. Couldn’t come up with a factual counter as to why I was misinterpreting the contest with no rules where the prize is you get to let somebody else make a profit off your work by exposing it to subscribers who, even if they like you work, wouldn’t necessarily be able to get it from you any cheaper than they already got it from the guy making the money.

  Loot boxes are for stuff you’ve already made, maybe it’s underselling or not worth keeping in print/storage, and you sell to a repackager at a discount to get out from under it. It’s not where you create something new to supply somebody else with content they can sell. Don’t fall for this. And sweet suffering fuck, don’t enter contests without rules. No rules means they’re explicitly saying there’s no way for you to win.

Spam of the day:
That would be the thing from the content leech.

_______________
¹ Which is to say, an acknowledgement that losing a job should not immediately condemn one to a never seeing the doctor again, and just as well since everything in your country wants to kill you.

² But I can tolerate them if they aren’t also anti-vaxxers. In a just world, Jenny McCarthy would not be on my TV, she’d be in the dock at The Hague. Fuck every one of those lazy childkillers.

There’s something universal about Kiss Number 8 (words by Colleen AF Venable, pictures by Ellen T Crenshaw), and it’s not necessarily the part you think it is. There’s a lot of the usual growing up narrative, wondering if the person we like feels the same way, or even like-likes in return. There’s the awkwardness of trying to navigate the teens years. There’s more than one LGBTQ identity to be learned, understood, and accepted (which is terrificly well done; for so long, so many didn’t get to seem themselves in fiction, and YA is leading the way in letting those people be seen).

But there’s one bit at the core that I think is the most important part of the story, and it’s been occupying a lot of my brainspace ever since :01 Books were kind enough to send a review copy some weeks back.

(This is where I usually warn against spoilers, but that warning is a little less stringent than usual this time; as sometimes happens depending on the publishing schedule, my review copy is an advance, uncorrected proof. It’s late for wholesale changes to the book, but dialogue or narration or details could be different in the final version that drops next Tuesday, so I’m going to be focusing on big themes, rather than specific bits of plot and character.)

Mads loves a couple of things in life — her dad (especially Sundays at the minor league ballpark after church and kicking his ass at videogames), instant messaging her friends, and … yeah. Lot of uncertainty in your middle teen years. Personal relationships befuddle her, she and her mom don’t see eye to eye, she’s not sure about how, when, or if she wants to romantically pair off (at least in the way that her family, school, neighbors, and church all seem to expect), and then there’s her friends. Because the heart of this story is interacting with friends, but also the phenomenon of the Bad Friend.

Everybody’s had a bad friend, one that’s a jerk until called on it, then you get cast out and don’t even have a bad friend any more. If you’ve got a lot of other friends, that’s survivable (although that friend group may well split). If you don’t have a lot, or they decide that they don’t want to be on the bad side of the bad friend — yikes. The very isolating nature of teendom just got more isolating.

Perhaps even more devastatingly, pretty much everybody has, at one time or another, been the bad friend; the best outcome there is you don’t ever realize it until long after that friendship fades away because then you don’t feel like crap about it in real time. The worst part is realizing you’ve been a jerk, and there’s no way to make things right, and it’s all your fault. If you aren’t the type to be a deliberately bad friend, you spend the next forever cringing at the memory. Mads will suffer a bad friend, but also be a bad friend; she’ll be done wrong by her family’s hard-hearted choices, and also give them legitimate reasons to be angry with her in turn. Nobody’s all good, and nobody’s all bad (except … yeah, there’s some pretty terrible people here).

In Kiss Number 8¹, there’s a lot of bad friends, and a lot of realization on the part of the major characters of their flaws and screwups, past and present. The good ones eventually move beyond them; the less good … well. You know the person that peaked in high school, and they’ll never be as happy, or well liked, or respected ever again? Sometimes it’s later than high school, but there are people that stagnate, never becoming better, their lives defined not by their now-fading-in-the-distance accomplishments, but by their cruelties. Sometimes they’re like that because they’re deeply insecure, like nervous dogs that exhibit fear aggression. Sometimes they’re so damn certain of how right and perfected they are, and how insufficient everybody else is in comparison.

They never say (or at least, never do more than insincerely mouth the words) I was wrong or I screwed up or I hurt you. But when you have the opportunity — the ability to say those things — you have the potential to find forgiveness, growth, acceptance, new loves (of all the classic types, not just romantic love). You can find peers that accept who you are and who you are becoming. On the far side of the fear and hatred there’s a happiness you can carve out for yourself and your loved ones.

Kiss Number 8 is an exploration of the kind of person who has the ability to self-reflect and say Hoo boy, I was an asshole sometimes _____ years ago, I really hope I’m a better person now and mean it, versus the kind of person who simply can’t.

When you can, you not only have the ability to improve yourself, you have the ability to see (and sometimes, gently and lovingly prod) progression in others. Family of birth and family of choice (or at least, parts of each) can grow and flourish, even it if doesn’t look like it now. Old hurts and grudges can heal. Lives can fulfill their promise. And nothing will ever taste as good as a minor league ballpark hot dog on a Sunday afternoon in the company of your nearest and dearest.

That journey by Venable and Crenshaw is heartfelt, hopeful (without over-promising how easy growing up is, for even the luckiest of us) and achingly real. Kiss Number 8 is for everybody that’s growing into who they will be, and everybody who’s realized that continuing to grow is the most important thing we can do. You’ll find it at bookstores everywhere starting 12 March.

Spam of the day:

Check out the video for the issuance of their prize in the amount of – 2288 Eur

I’m not sure that’s a dash. I think the prize is actually negative 2288 Euro.

_______________
¹ So named because Mads has kept track of her kisses, and they’ve been nothing to swoon over so far. There will be more down the line — some friendly, some meaningless, some low-key regretful, some tragic, some Why, Mads, why? and some to leave her sockless.

Okay, so you know that the National Cartoonists Society has a big to-do every year, right? Different city every year, give out the Reubens, very fancy, I went to it once. It’s also pretty insular, by cartoonists and for cartoonists, no real public component to keep people excited about cartooning, either as consumers or the next generation of creators.

Which is why the NCS is doing a damn near 180 turn and going full Euro-style festival this year: NCSFest will be held in Huntington Beach, California, 17-19 May, and the vast majority of it will be a) in public, and b) free. This is not going to be a fill-the-convention-center type event, it’s going to be on the beach, on the pier, in the Arts Center, occupying a significant portion of common space.

Now we all know that first year events are rough, but NCSFest is getting advice from show partners Lakes International Comic Art Festival in the UK, and LyonBD Festival in France. Their consultation must have been great — did you see the guest list they have lined up for this one? Keep in mind that all of the newspaper creators, they aren’t used to the idea of tabling and meeting the public and sales and such, and they’re going to be able to learn from the comic book and webcomics folk, who are all over this in droves. If you’re in SoCal the weekend after TCAF, you’ll be able to see a frankly astonishing array (I’m going to link to the NCSFest bios instead of websites, because it will feature their appearances).

On the legit superstars list, you’ve got Boulet, Jaime Hernandez, Pénélope Bagieu, Sergio Aragonés, and Lewis Trondheim. From the world of museums, you’ve got Andrew Farago (of the Cartoon Art Museum, and Joe Wos (is it a coincidence without him as a driving force, Pittsburgh’s ToonSeum has closed shop?). Speaking of Pittsburgh, you’ve got Rob Rogers, who was a staff editorial cartoonist that was fired by a Trumpalo publisher for being too tough on Cheeto Mussolini and Shaenon Garrity, who is Yinzer by upbringing¹.

The Nib regulars Ann Telnaes and Gemma Correll will be side by side with indie/webcomickers Carolyn Belefski, Lucas Turnbloom, Brad Guigar (who noted that he is listed as a podcaster rather than cartoonist … be sure to ask him when you see him!), and Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett. Newspaper editor Tea Fougner will represent along with the likes of Patrick McDonnell², Lalo Alcaraz, and a bunch of others whose work makes regular appearances over at The Comics Curmudgeon³.

And that’s before you get to Mary Fleener. Everybody doing off the wall, let’s push the boundaries of weirdness and see how they stretch comics for the past couple of decades owes a debt to Mary Fleener. They’re putting her out in public where she can freak out the tourists and I love it.

Note that some events (seminars, workshops, meet-and-greets) are ticketed, and are predominantly being held in conference rooms at the Hyatt Regency. Details are available on the Tickets page.

Spam of the day:

Request: even if you are not interested in this property please click on the link and click on the “Go to the platform,” I’ll be very blogodaren is my bread

Don’t ask, don’t ask, no possible good will come of asking.

_______________
¹ Today, she brings her sensibilities of Pittsburgh-area linguistic tradition and upbringing to her new roles as Funk Queen Of The Bay Area And Surrounding Environs, Tiki Ambassadrix At Large, and Nexus Of All Webcomics Realities (West Coast division).

² Who lives one town over; sometimes I bump into him on Main Street, and we chose our vet based on his recommendation.

³ Including Jerry van Amergongen, who wrote a gag strip when I was in high school that I still recall with perfect clarity.

Snow delayed the start of work, and a cafeteria design change made me suspect that the people behind it hate when anybody eats lunch. Talk to you tomorrow.

Once upon a time, there was a guy who made the webcomic Casey And Andy. Then that wrapped up and he tackled a second webcomic, Cheshire Crossing, in big occasional chunks. It was the story of what happened to Dorothy (from Kansas and Oz), Alice (from the English countryside and Wonderland), and Wendy (from London and Neverland), which is a thing that has been tackled by other famed comics writers, but this version had way less underage DP gangbangs.

Then one day he stopped updating. This was about the time he was writing a book that got made into a movie starring Matt Damon, so that turned out okay for him, but some people were wondering if he’d ever get back to his incomplete story.

Wonder no more:

COVER REVEAL! @andyweirauthor’s new graphic novel Cheshire Crossing (illustrated by me!) will be on sale July 9, and available for preorder now: https://bit.ly/2GOsrig

That from Sarah Andersen, who’s made quite a name for herself in comics of late¹, and although her usual style is a simple B&W scribbly line, she’s capable of much more detailed and less cartoony work. So since 2017, she and the guy (okay, okay, Andy Weir) have been redoing Cheshire Crossing in Andersen’s art (let’s be honest, Weir’s art is best described as functional; compare the original to the rework), and now it’s time to print.

The advantage of being Andy Weir and a BFD with a best seller that gets made (very quickly, I’d add) into a Hollywood blockbuster is that you have an agent, and editors, and publisher and you needn’t go the Kickstarter route when Penguin Random House has your back. Given the lead times in publishing, I’d guess PRH has had this contract since before Weir and Andersen started working together, and that there are likely talks in an advanced state about other forms of media to be made, perhaps awaiting only the July publication date (and the negotiations of myriad rights in the US and abroad)

Still. A big-five publisher doesn’t go stomping on properties that could evoke the ire of the likes of Disney, MGM, and the Great Ormond Hospital; even given the nature of public domain, they could make trouble if they wanted. I’m guessing all Is and Ts are both dotted and crossed, and a phalanx of lawyers have crossed and dotted a few other letters for good measure.

Oh, and one more thing — 120 pages for the book? Weir did four issues averaging 24 pages; there’s a good chunk of story we haven’t seen and that’s been waiting for a decade to be revealed. Just sayin’.

Spam of the day:

My name is Aly and I would like to know if you would have any interest to have your website here at fleen.com promoted as a resource on our blog

In accordance with the policy suggested by David Malki !, it will cost you fifty bucks to pitch me on your service.

_______________
¹ Her entire career has been in the time since Cheshire Crossing stopped updating, in fact.

Heya. Let’s bring you up to speed on some things mentioned recently.

• TCAF! We mentioned the first tranche of Very Special Guests two weeks ago, and we mentioned the International Guests a bit more than one week ago, which means it’s time to talk about the latest additions to the guest roster, the Young Adult Guests¹.

  Joining others (maybe you?) at the Toronto Reference Library on Saturday and Sunday, 11 and 12 May, will be Flavia Biondi (best known for Generations, Kevin Panetta and Savanna Ganucheau (Bloom), Renee Nault (the new graphic adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale), Ryan North (you know who he is), Sarah Winifred Searle (the forthcoming graphic novel, The Greatest Thing, due out next year), Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell (Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me, my review copy of which will hopefully be here soon), Colleen AF Venable² and Ellen T Crenshaw (Kiss Number 8, which is wonderful, review to appear here soon), and Tillie Walden (On A Sunbeam).

  Oh, yes, and how about a few superstars over the Kids Guests? You got yer Raina (her guide to making comics, Share Your Smile, will be out in April), Kazu Kibuishi and Jason Caffoe (I think this is their first joint appearance since Amulet Book 8: Supernova came out). Additions to the Exhibitor ranks since last we spoke include the 5 Worlds team and Shan Murphy; there’s probably others, and I will notice them on the next read-through, or the one after that.

• CAM! A few days back, we mentioned a bunch of stuff happening at the Cartoon Art Musuem over the next month or so; among those items was an exhibition dedicate to the art of A Fire Story by Brian Fies. Fies will be on book tour when the exhibition opens, so it makes sense that he won’t be ther for the usual launch-of-exhibit reception. Or rather, it would make sense, but why give up a good reception? Fies will be there a bit later in the month:

  The Cartoon Art Museum is proud to present an evening with cartoonist Brian Fies on Saturday, March 30, 2019 from 7:00-8:30pm as he discusses his new graphic novel A Fire Story: A Graphic Memoir, depicting the artist’s firsthand account of the 2017 Northern California wildfires. A book signing will follow Fies’s discussion. Advance tickets for the Saturday, March 30 event are available through Guestlist: Fire Story Tickets

  That’s from the email that CAM sent me; the event doesn’t appear to be on their webpage yet. US$10 for the public, free for CAM members.

• Zub! Okay, not an update, but you should know. Jim Zub, his wife Stacy King, and Andrew Wheeler (all of whom will absolutely shark you in a game of We Didn’t Playtest This At All, especially in the presence of presents³) announced that they were given the opportunity of a geek’s lifetime — to create a series of books for younger players of tabletop RPGs to introduce them to the ideas of roleplaying and constructing a seat-of-your-pants story together. Specifically, books for the most hallowed of tabletop RPGs, Dungeons & Dragons. Spill it, Zub:
  

  As experienced DMs/players, it’s easy to forget how intimidating tabletop RPGs can be for people who haven’t played before. These guides lay out the major concepts (class, race, equipment, creatures) in a way anyone can understand and encourage them to create their own stories. Readers can use the material in these books to brainstorm a character and imagine their role in an adventuring party. Get them excited about the possibilities, and then bring them to the gaming table to show them how those initial ideas can really flourish with a roll of the dice.

  The two guides in the D&D Young Adventurer’s Guides, Monsters & Creatures and Warriors & Weapons, release on 16 July, which I believe is the day before Preview Night at SDCC, and just long enough before Gen Con to get out into the public and thoroughly read before heading to Indy. Congrats to King, Wheeler, and Zub for the nerd experience of a lifetime.

Spam of the day:

Upgrade Your Next Flight Browse Private Jet Offers

Do I look like the Secretary of the Interior? Fuck out of here with your private jet offers.

_______________
¹ That would be guests of interest to YA and younger readers, not guest who are themselves young adults. I mean, some of them are pretty young for adult humans, but that’s not why they’re in the category.

² I just now realized that her two middle initials, instead of being pronounced aff as I have always done in my internal monologue, could instead be pronounced A-F, because she is in fact Colleen As Fuck.

³ On opposite coasts of North America, DanteLuke Landherr-Shepherd and Ferocious Jon Sung just shuddered and don’t know why.

By now you’ve seen the news that Facebook (no link) has decided that the way to get in on Patreon’s corner of the market is to not do things better, but to do them decidedly worse. Like charge you up to 30% after fees bad and give your stuff away for free at their discretion bad. Oh, yeah, and we own your stuff even if you leave the service bad. That’s bad.

Despite their pronouncement that they’re going to have a “Patreon-killer”, Facebook isn’t going to have anything of the sort; absolutely everybody that’s talked about this thing that isn’t employed by Facebook is screaming about how it’s terrible, and they’re right. All that’s going to happen is that people already on Patreon are going to have a moment of reflection that things could be much worse¹.

The real shot at a Patreon-killer will be whatever the Andys come up with for Drip 2.0 for the simple reason that their offering will be from a public benefit corporation instead of a regular ol’ VC-funded corporation (Patreon) or the most rapacious, grasping, no-value-providing bag of identity thieves in history (Facebook), and so will not have a motivation of bleeding creators for all their worth. Going to call Facebook’s plans dead in the water.

Speaking of Drip 2.0 and public benefit corporations, Drip as it is presently constructed is part of Kickstarter, which is a public benefit corporation. Let’s talk about some recent Kickstarts and get the taste of that Facebook thing out of our mouths.

• It scares me a little how long I’ve been following the work of Matt Boyd and Ian McConville — Mac Hall wrapped more than a dozen years ago, and that was after six years of updates; Three Panel Soul picked up immediately thereafter and has been plowing along ever since, through art style changes, moves, job shifts, a marriage, a kid, and one all-time bit of viral genius². There’ve even been two print collections, and now there will be a third:
  

  For our third volume, we thought it would be good to have three times the number of comics as the first two volumes, up to a total of 300. It really fits the theme. It’s going to be our biggest volume yet, covering the comics published online from late October 2011 to February 2018.

  Dog philosophy, folks. It’s going to be in there. You’ve got 28 days to get in on the campaign, including a rather sweet three-book bundle.

• Know who knows how to use Kickstarter? C Spike Trotman, what with the seven figures raised over 20-odd projects and zero failures. Of late, she’s been bringing some work to the store without waiting for Kickstarts, especially as PDFs, but sometimes you decide to pick new directions because there’s a demand. Enter: How Do You Smoke A Weed?, which will be seeing print shortly:
  

  Twenty-six states in the U.S., Washington, D.C., and the entire nation of Canada have decriminalized or legalized marijuana use, and more are joining the policy shift every year! Dispensaries are popping up everywhere, and experienced users are openly rejoicing—but where does that leave the marijuana newbie, discouraged by years of “Just Say No” disinformation, but curious about what they’ve missed?

  This being an Iron Circus joint, funding started yesterday and reached goal the same day; there’s one simple stretch goal for a better cover. Massive overfunding will just mean more copies sold and more profit to ICC and creators Lin Visel and Joseph Bergin III (collectively, Owlin, and FYI that link contains mostly smut). There’s a fast turnaround on this one, less than two weeks total funding time, but the book will be in the store forever. Some of the sweet extras likely won’t be, so if you’re interested, act now.

• But Gary, I hear you cry, I don’t want to read! If that’s true, you maybe ought to find a different website, because we’re all about the words here, Sparky. But if you’re looking for something less booklike to back on the Kickers, Matt Inman and Elan Lee have come up with their latest mayhem-adjacent tabletop game, Throw Throw Burrito.

  Look, it’s Lee & Inman, there’s gonna be cute and funny cards, weird props, and a ruleset that emphasizes fun over all else. And this time, it’s got fake burritos that you chuck at other people. At an upper tier, it’s got giant fake burritos you chuck at other people and safety goggles. And, it being Lee & Inman, they are using Kickstarter pretty much as market research, and it’s going to be delivered on time. I’d bet they already have production contracts and specs agreed upon, have placed a preliminary run for each thing getting made, and will wait for the funding campaign to finish in 29 days solely so they can with confidence Yes, 50,000 more units of Item A, 100,000 of Item B, send those in the second container load.

  Oh, and stretch goals are (as is the Lee/Inman tradition) participatory, and shipping to the US (minus Puerto Rico & overseas territories) is free; the rest of the world will run you US$8 to US$60, depending on where you live and the size of the package you order. Some of them are ridiculously huge.

Spam of the day:

Easy Trick to Reactivate Dead Batteries

Jumper cables? It’s jumper cables, isn’t it?

_______________
¹ Tellingly, not because of anything Patreon’s done to provide that relief.

² Which itself is going on five years old, holy crap.

The real power in Lucy Knisley’s books is somewhat contradictory.

They always make me feel slightly uncomfortable. I won’t call what she does oversharing because she’s less saying Here’s what I did today and more simply living her life in front of us, a page at a time, in a way that it turns out we were there all along, an omniscient third person observer. Whether it’s her life’s triumphs or tragedies, she lives it on the page, I observe, and — sometimes, just a bit — it feels like I’m intruding.

It’s not the case; in fact, it’s pretty much the complete opposite. The emotional charge of her stories is such that to watch that life with her and not be able to offer congratulations or consolation at whatever time in the past is on rewind? It aches. She grabs you by the brain and uploads those feelings straight into your amygdala because instead of intruding, she’s insisting on you experiencing it all along with her. That’s the deal you accept when you crack open the cover — Be ready to commit, her stories tell us, because you won’t be able to casually follow along. The good, the bad, you’re in for all of it.

And in Kid Gloves (out today from :01 Books, thanks to Morgan and everybody there for the review copy) there is plenty of it you’re going to be in for all of. I’m going to try to go light on the spoilers, but they’re there. The biggest spoiler of all is right on the first page — a photo of the child that Knisley refers to as Pal, followed immediately by the scene-setting: Four weeks ago, I had a baby. I want you to keep that fact in mind, because there are going to be times in the next 250 or so pages that you doubt everything about the scene — baby and mom both healthy and well is what we expect from a birth story, but it wasn’t always clear that was going to happen.

Because everything happened to Knisley and her husband, John — a previously unremarkable malformation of the uterus, painful and emotionally devastating miscarriages, friends and family having their own children at times of mourning, cruel and thoughtless interactions with those that should have been supportive, and an OB/GYN that I want to punch in his smug, dismissive face.

They say you forget all the pain of having a kid, a friend once told me when her first was about two months old, otherwise every child would be an only child. She followed up with, Not me! I took notes! He’s never touching me again!¹ There’s more pain than just that of birth here, and Knisley took her own notes — recreating every challenge, laying bare maybe the most fundamental truth about having kids: that it’s an act of profound optimism, looking at the state of the world, at the state of yourselves, to decide I’m going to have a child. Each setback, Lucy and John had to look at the risks and decide, Yes. We’re still doing this. These notes aren’t to talk themselves out of future attempts by reminding themselves of the pain — it’s to communicate to us the totality of the experience.

And that word — communicate — is the central thesis of Kid Gloves. The failures of communication that Knisley chronicles are the source of most of the difficulties in the story. Failure to communicate accurate information about reproductive health and mechanisms². Failure to communicate the fact that one in four pregnancies will end in miscarriage. Failure to communicate women’s stories. Failure to communicate about loss. Failure to communicate with your patient to understand their needs, or even the current state of their health³.

As a culture and society, failure to communicate honestly about all aspects of pregnancy and childbirth instead of wrapping it up in a neat bow and selling the experience on the cover of a glossy magazine in the supermarket checkout aisle.

The same de-romanticization that Knisley brought to travel, food, and marriage is in full force in Kid Gloves. Her stock in trade isn’t stories from her life, it isn’t the fancier and more official-sounding autobiography or memoir, it’s honesty. Honestly, parts of getting pregnant (not to mention avoiding getting pregnant, and everything else that goes along with sex, pleasure, and agency) suck. Parts are awesome. Childbirth? Same deal. Having a newborn? Absolutely the same.

Pal’s going on three years old now, and I’m sure future books will bring the same unvarnished look at raising up a child to be a decent person. Read this book — read all of Knisley’s books — because you want, more than anything, to feel that honest, lived-in truth. It won’t always be easy, but it will always be rewarding.

Spam of the day:

The Drone Is Available At a Discount Price

I ain’t clicking that assuredly malware-infested link, but I am desperately hoping that this is actually talking about bee-type drones. I would absolutely enjoy being on a spam mailing list intended for apiarists.

_______________
¹ They have three kids now.

² Knisley notes that as a Planned Parenthood-trained peer educator in high school, she learned a great deal about dental dams, but not so much about how pregnancy works.

³ I am an EMT that regards pregnancy/childbirth emergencies as nightmare scenarios because there is so little that I can do and so much that can go so very wrong. In more than a dozen years of practice, I haven’t had any patient more than about six weeks pregnant and I am thoroughly relieved by that fact. If I never have a childbirth call, I will be perfectly happy. What I am saying is, I am not a person who you necessarily want to deal with your well-being vis-à-vis pregnancy.

And even I recognize the signs of pre-eclampsia, you stupid, smug dismissive OB/GYN. If we ever meet I will fucking drag your ass into the morgue where they take the women who die in childbirth from seizures and say this happened because you were too godsdamn arrogant to do your job.

Okay, let’s get one thing out of the way. I am a Jersey guy. I wasn’t born there¹ and I bounced around a bit before finding my place in the world at the tender age of three or so. I’ve been away to be educated, and there’s loads of stupid that infests the state, but it’s my place in the world; I’m pretty sure I couldn’t live elsewhere on a longterm basis.

But heck if the Cartoon Art Museum doesn’t make a strong case for the Bay Area sometimes. They’ve always got good stuff cooking.

• Want to brush up on your cartooning skills? Mark Badger will be teaching his Just Draw workshop in four Thursday evening installments at CAM in March; they’re intended for those with a bit of experience under the belts, so let’s say 16 and up. Tuition for the workshop is US$200 (US$175 for members), with RSVPs and payments taken at Guestlist.

  Each session starts at 7:00pm and runs until 9:00pm, on 7, 14, 21, and 28 March, at CAM (781 Beach Street, San Francisco). If you’re not sure about committing to the entire class, Badger’s offering a free preview on 27 February (that’s the day after tomorrow) at Mission: Comics & Art (2250 Mission Street, San Francisco) from 6:00pm to 6:40pm. Either way, bring your sketchbook and favorite drawing implements.

• From 1 March (that would be Friday) until 1 July, CAM’s Emerging Artist showcase will feature a selection of art from Maia Kobabe’s first book-length work, Gender Queer, due in May from Lion Forge. You might remember Kobabe’s contributions to The Nib, or from anthology contributions ranging from The Secret Loves Of Geeks, to FTL, Y’all³. If not, you’ve got the rest of the week to get caught up.
• Two weeks later, Brian Fies will see work from A Fire Story go on exhibition, recounting Fies’s experience with the 2017 Northern California wildfire season, in which Fies and his wife lost everything that didn’t fit into their car. The original webcomic is now a full graphic novel, and if you can’t make it to the CAM exhibition (which runs 15 March to 15 July), you can catch Fies on book tour, which will traverse the West Coast (including stops at the Charles Schulz Museum, which had its own close call with wildfire, and San Deigo Comic Con). A Fire Story releases next Tuesday, 5 March.

Spam of the day:

We overstocked and we want these new design Solar Chargers GONE! We have 223 of our crazy popular “Anytime Charge” Power Packs in stock and today we’re giving them away for free!

The thing in the picture has no discernible solar panels. Pass.

_______________
¹ I was born in the southernmost (emotionally, if not geographically) of the southern states, the birthplace of American Sedition², South Carolina.

² Hat tip to the inestimable Charlie Pierce for that one.

³ The Senior Project, which is one of the stronger stories in the book, and I think tied with Evan Dahm’s Wayhome for strongest art.