One of my favorite things to do is to match up readers with folks whose work might otherwise go unnoticed. I mean, sure, I loves me some Charles Christopher out of all proportion, but not all comics worth my attention (and yours!) come from Karl Kerschl¹. Let’s take a look at a couple of them.

• Payton Francis does comics out of the Twin Cities; a big part of her work is fantasy, and the other big part of it is featuring as many adorable LGBT+ characters as possible. Help Wanted is a modern story, and Wola (Francis does art; words by EC Ibes) has plenty of modern signifiers (industrial shipping, folding aluminum chairs) but simultaneously a mythic set of trappings; they’ve both got a bunch of heart.

  Oh, and Wola is presently Kickstarting its first print collection, which has already surpassed goal and thus is a sure thing at this point. Come for the enticing art, stay for the friendshipping, as the first five chapters — more than 200 pages — get printed in full color for only US$25². And, once you read the book, you can pick up with Chapter Six, which started at the beginning of June. As of this writing the campaign runs for another 69 hours (nice), so hop on over and give it a look while you’ve got the chance.

• I’m pretty sure that’s the first time we’ve mentioned Francis on this page — an oversight, surely, especially given her very assured and very varied character designs — but we’ve mentioned Eben Burgoon a buncha times. Although the wrapping up of Eben07 forever ago robbed this page of one of its favorite running gags, Burgoon has done bunches of stuff since then. Most recently, Tiny Wizards — 10cm tall magic dudes working in a remote truck stop’s food service. It’s been around for a couple of years and Kickstarted a collection, which is now available for all.

  Tiny Wizards #1 — Lord Of The Onion Rings is going to run you US$14, consists of 64 pages of full-page painting, and is very likely the first book ever to be mentioned on this page with a suggested age rating of — quoting here — 10 and under. Indulge your inner child and give it a look.

Spam of the day:

RE: TRACKING NUMBER N° CS476903738

You think your DHL tracking number click here bullshit should featuring a bunch of my non-existent Disney+ subscription is suspended click here bullshit graphics? I think y’all might be a bit confused.

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¹ To whom I profusely apologize, as I just realized that I have missed — by more than six months — the 10th anniversary of the greatest single comic strip in history: Squirrel-Chew.

² The amount of comics and the print quality you get for an extremely reasonably price is one of my favorite things about the current Golden Age of comics we’re living in.

It’s a good news, bad news — or more precisely, bad but narrowly escaped much worse news — kind of day. Let’s start with the good news first.

• The Abominable Charles Christopher Book 3 Kickstart is up, funded in less than an hour, and at the six hour mark is running more than 250%. It’s beautiful, it’s happening, and if there’s not a hardcover at the moment, if things go very well on the campaign¹, Karl Kerschl just might be able to swing it.

  Speaking for myself, I’d upgrade my sketch edition support tier (featuring three softcovers, original art in the latest) to a hardcover sketch edition to match my vol 1 and vol 2 in a heartbeat². We’ll look at predicted funding finish levels in the next day or so, but in the meantime, congratulations to Kerschl, it’s well-deserved; and congratulations to all of us who get to have such beautiful work on our shelves.

• Okay, bad but coulda been much worse news: mere hours after taking an Eisner nomination for Banned Book Club, Ryan Estrada mentioned he was losing his day job and try to make a go of this cartooning thing as his sole form of income. Today, he gave us the details and it is not pretty.

  I’m going to quote this pretty much in its entirety because there is a lesson for everybody in the story:

  I have to leave my library gig because they asked everyone to sign a new contract that says
  -they can demand we stay after work to make new teaching materials for them
  -we have to use the images they demand (and I know they have little regard for copyright)

  Okay, that first point is bad, because fuck you, pay me, that’s why. The second point is worse, as it opens up Estrada and his colleagues to liability. It gets worse:

  -They’d have eternal, exclusive ownership of anything we make and can use it in any way we want
  -We’d accept unlimited and eternal legal and financial responsibility for damages caused by any copyright infringement in the things they demand we make them to use however they please

  I believe that third item should read any way they want, not we want, but the real horrorshow is the fourth. Under no circumstances should anybody, ever, accept legal responsibility for work that you are directed to produce by your employer. But maybe they just don’t realize what a bad ask this is?

  As it turns out, nope:

  I obviously could not sign that, so my employment will end.

  It was two little lines in an otherwise boring and ordinary contract, and after asking questions I learned it was not hypothetical and they intended to make use of it.

  Read your contracts carefully, kids.

  So like, they could say “stay until 9 and make us a powerpoint about Frozen” and then use it in the curriculum at dozens of for-profit schools across the country for years, then when Disney sues make me pay all the damages and legal fees.

  I had to explain to them today that we can’t even make materials using the images in our textbooks, by reverse image searching and finding out how their subsidiary paid for them on shutterstock.

  Too many fellow teachers signed without realizing how ruinous it could be. [emphasis mine]

  So yeah, being without a job is bad, but not reading the contract, not realizing the importance of those two lines, signing and ending up on the hook down the line? Disaster. And anybody what asks you to sign that contract and doesn’t take out those lines when you point out how you can be held responsible for illegal acts ordered by your superiors?

  Run as far and as fast as you can.

  Normally, this is where I’d put links to the store of the creator in question, but if you look up and down Estrada’s site, almost everything is marked Read It Free!, which is not going to help him come October. So here are books that Estrada has sufficient financial interest in³ that buying a copy of them might actually benefit him directly: Banned Book Club; Student Ambassador; Poorcraft: Wish You Were Here.

  He doesn’t have a way to directly send him money, so maybe just post a lot on social media about how much you like his work (pictures of purchases would be helpful), give his agents something to work with.

  And whatever else you do, read your contracts carefully, kids, and also thank Estrada for sharing this object lesson that you might not end up in the coulda been much worse category yourself.

Spam of the day:

Many have the misconception of Buddhism being a religion. Buddhism is really more of a way of life whch can wired our brains positively and see changes in a different light.

Not according to Zach Weinersmith, it’s not.

_______________
¹ Which they appear to be doing at the moment.

² My hardcovers of book 1 and book 2 featuring drawings of a panicky chipmunk and Moon Bear, respectively. Book 3? LUGA. Book 4? So many choices — deranged great horned owl and grandowlet? Andy the bumblebee? The domestic drama with the songbirds, the roleplaying critters, some of Sissi Skunk’s minions hawking Squirrel Chew? So. many. choices.

³ That is, he’s not one of many contributors in an anthology.

It’s comics awards season again, and as yet unanswered questions regarding their security and disclosure obligations aside, there’s quite a lot to be excited about with respect to the Eisner nominations this year. The list is simply rife with current, former, and adjacent-to webcomics folks. Let’s dig in:

• Best Single Issue is, to my mind, one of the big ones; it reflects a distillation of all the various crafts of comics into a relatively compact, standalone unit, and says that this is one of the best of the year. Ben Passmore, whose work is on the norms-challenging end of the spectrum, is nominated for Sports Is Hell
• Best Continuing Series has two different Chip Zdarsky titles up for consideration: Daredevil, and Stillwater, the latter of which is a co-creation with Ramón Pérez. Yes, I do believe Kukuburi will return one day. I should also note that Stan Sakai is nominated for Usagi Yojimbo, which remains the epitome of a single creator’s vision across the decades and epitomizes the spirit of webcomics if not the distribution medium. It’s also one of those titles — like Octopus Pie, Giant Days, or The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl to name three — that just gets better every single issue (or story arc) and if you don’t read it you damn well should.
• Best Publication For Early Readers (Up To Age 8) I wanted to note that RH Graphic, who launched under the worst possible circumstances last year, have garnered their first nomination for Donut Feed the Squirrels by Mika Song. They’ve got another a bit further down, and to see that level of quality right out of the gate? Honestly, I think it’s entirely in character for the team that Gina Gagliano put together. Welcome to the critical recognition tier, RH Graphic!
• Best Publication For Kids (Ages 9-12) I really enjoyed Go With The Flow (Lily Williams and Karen Schneemann) and Snapdragon (Kat Leyh) — both from :01 Books, who are a perennial powerhouse in this category — but must also note how very, very much I loved Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru’s Superman Smashes The Klan and damn if I wouldn’t be delighted if a book about an immigrant punching literal klansmen and Nazis in their stupid klansmen and Nazi faces didn’t take this one.

  Particularly in this time of Asian Americans being attacked to satisfy the petty hatreds of the small and vindictive. Put this book in the hands of every kid and adult that loves comics because gods damn Yang just gets Superman, and Gurihiru draws Lois Lane better than she’s ever been drawn before.

• Best Publication For Teens (Ages 13-17) I thought that the second Check, Please! collection (the invaluable Ngozi Ukazu) maybe didn’t have to be set in an age-specific category and probably should be in one of the best book categories, but you know what? They’re kind of chaotic in their requirements, and designating this a teens title means more people will put a story of acceptance in the hands of young folk, so that’s all right.

  It’s going to be a tough decision for the voters, though, because Gene Yang is nominated again for Dragon Hoops, and it’s a spectacularly good book. Plus you have Displacement by Kiku Hughes and A Map To The Sun by Sloane Leong … all of which are from :01 Books. When you have four of the six nominees in a category, you’re doing something right.

• Best Reality Based Work features Dragon Hoops again, and as the jury noted that there were a large number of memoirs in publication last year, they added a new category to contain them. Dragon Hoops could have gone there, but it was a genre-stretching work that played with the nature of comics and (auto-)biography, so probably just as well that they didn’t.

  But you know who did get nominated in the inaugural year of Best Graphic Memoir? Kim Hyun Sook, Ryan Estrada, and Ko Hyung-Ju for Banned Book Club, which I believe is the first nomination of completely original work for Iron Circus. It’s almost like Spike Trotman’s got a good eye for great stories.

• Best Adaptation From Another Medium Yang takes his second nomination for Superman Smashes The Klan, as the story was originally told as a radio serial back in the 1940s. He’s joined by Ryan North and Albert Monteys for their adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five which I still haven’t read because Diamond is still not filling new orders, even as it gets foreign language releases around the globe. Get it together, Diamond!
• Best Writer includes another nod for Zdarsky for his work on Stillwater, as well as Matt Fraction for both the conclusion of Sex Criminals and Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen (which was wonderfully weird and funny).
• Best Writer/Artist Remember that I said RH Graphic had another nomination this year? Trung Le Nguyen is here (for The Magic Fish ) alongside such prominent names as Junji Ito, Pascal Jousselin, Craig Thompson, Adrian Tomine, and Gene Luen Yang for Dragon Hoops. That’s five nominations for two books if I’ve got my sums right, which seems as dominant a performance as I can ever recall for one person at the Eisners in one year.
• Best Cover Artist has a second nod for Ramón Pérez for Stillwater, which is nice.
• Best Academic/Scholarly Work threw me a surprise, as it would be hard to find a book more in tune with the sensibilities of this page than Webcomics by Sean Kleefeld. Sean’s a really smart guy, and if I can ever get my hands on a copy — the academic titles don’t get anywhere near as wide a print run as the entertainment titles — I suspect I’m going to love it. We’ve been way overdue for a good scholarly look at webcomics, particularly since the first one was a) too early, and b) less scholarly and more anecdotal.
• Best Digital Comic and Best Webcomic remain, as always, mysterious to me. It is worth noting that half of the nominations in the former are from Europe Comics and list translators in the credits; looking beyond North America is an encouraging trend and I hope it continues. In the latter, I’ll note that four of the six nominations are at aggregator sites (Webtoon Factory, Tapas, Webtoon) or Instagram.

  So I wanted to call out Alec Longstreth’s Isle Of Elsi and Steve Conley’s The Middle Age for maintaining the webcomics tradition of having your own damn website, if it’s just a domain that redirects elsewhere, because … well, lots of reasons. Mostly so that the work stands on its own rather than because an eyeballs-maximizing site chooses to elevate it, but also so that if things go wrong you can get your work the hell away from a bad partner and keep it running in a way you control. To me, that’s the central ethos of webomics.

Now then, after last year’s (still insufficiently explained) voting fiasco, there’s a new, two-step process: prospective voters¹ apply for ballot access at https://form.jotform.com/211246268258054; those approved will receive an invitation to fill out their ballot by 30 June. Results will be announced online in conjunction with Comic-Con@Home 2021.

I do not have at this time reason to either trust or distrust the process, so my recommendation last year that voting was not secure does not hold for this year, but I suppose we’ll all find out together if they manage to screw the pooch again.

Spam of the day:

In fact, this oil is the reason Croatian women look 20 years younger than they actually are: And today, you can discover how to remove 18 years of wrinkles without spending a fortune.

That is … oddly specific. Are Croatian women generally so reputed?

_______________
¹ Defined as comics professionals: creators, publishers, retailers, and educator/academics or librarians focusing on comics.

In conjunction with this page’s longstanding contention that almost anything can be a webcomic¹ today we are not talking about words + pictures in the traditional sense, but about stories that lead to amusement and joy in this month of both Pride and re-emergence, in the multimedia sense. Which is to say, The Doubleclicks are throwing a concert.

Pride time, baby, and this time we’re prouder than ever!

Hi would you like to see a bunch of amazing LGBTQ+ people sing songs and have fun in one big show?

Great news, we are producing such a show on June 12. ROARING RAINBOW is a dream come true, a joyful day of queer pride, and a benefit show for excellent organizations who do valuable work for trans youth, all produced and hosted by the Doubleclicks. Please help us support trans kids at this big powerful giant show!

We have gathered the Internet’s favorite queer icons in one place for this banefit concert of epic proportions. Join the Doubleclicks, Rebecca Sugar (creator of Steven Universe), Sydnee McElroy, Rileigh and Teylor Smirl (Still Buffering), Crys Matthews, and SO MANY MORE for a joyful online concert to benefit trans youth.

Check out tickets, extremely cute hats, and so many fun things right now! [emphases original]

That via an email from Laser Malena-Webber, the non-cello half of the sibling duo that wears feelings and nerdery on their sleeves and reminds us that it is okay to be/have those things. Laser and (Doubleclicks cello half) Aubrey Turner are together in the same place at the same time for the first time since the Before Times, and godsdammit, if they’re gonna be this happy they’re gonna make sure you have the opportunity as well.

So starting at 5:00pm EDT this Saturday, 12 June, at your computer or other internet-enabled device, you’ll get to join in with a bunch of rad folks in support of Trans Families and the National Center For Transgender Equality. All are welcome². My guess is that if you’re reading this page, you’re already a fan of at least a couple of the folks on the bill.

Tickets start at US$5.00 for the concert, US$20 for the concert + aftershow + prize package raffle, and go up to US$100 for sponsorship credit, swag, better chances in the raffle, and the satisfaction of making good things happen for other people. Good things like upping the contributions to the beneficiaries, and also subsidizing some zero-cost tickets (by request) to folks that unfortunately find even five bucks a burden. For those unable to attend, there’s some pretty sweet merch on the RR page as well, just scroll down past the tickets.

Okay, thunderstorm’s about to roll in and the power is flickering a little, so let’s wrap it up here. Whether you make it to the show or not, try to spend Saturday afternoon/evening/morning/whenever it might be wherever you might be being a little extra joyful on behalf of those who surely could use some joy in their lives. And in the words of Laser, Rarrr.

Spam of the day:

fleen.com is King but social proof is Queen, and the lady rules the house!

…

…

What.

That’s too nonsensical, spammers. What else you got for me today?

Padre, a real life Angel Whisperer, has been communicating with Angels since he was just a child.

Unless Padre has been communicating with Old Testament Final Fantasy Boss Monster-type angels, not interested. And if he has been, my condolences to Angel for being a gibbering wreck.

_______________
¹ To quote me, Homestar*Runner is a webcomic.

² I don’t want to speak for Aubrey, Laser, et. al., but I’m gonna take a guess that if any terves want to pony up the ticket price and mind their manners and not be complete dickbags about other people being trans in the world, you’ll get to enjoy the show as well.

I also am gonna take a guess that people inclined to tervishness find fun and joy experienced by and in supoprt of trans and gender non-conforming folks to be like kryptonite³ and so they won’t be around.

³ Or possibly like Oz witches find buckets of water. Choose your preferred metaphor, they’re all equivalent.

I apparently forgot to hit “Publish” on yesterday’s post. It was a brief item, and mildly time-sensitive so you know what? We’re just binning it and moving on. Proper post up later today.

Did you see this today? Because I saw this today:

I love and miss Zodiac Starforce

I’m really proud of the work that Paulina and I put into this book

It’s too bad someone sued us for a million dollars saying we stole their idea and it cost us tens of thousands in legal fees and basically destroyed our will to make more

[three broken heart emoji]

Zodiac Starforce was a Dark Horse series launched in 2015 by writer Kevin Panetta and artist Paulina Ganuchau. I never read it, but it was on my internal Check it out if the opportunity arises list; I’m not of an age that grew up with magical girls and so it wasn’t top of my priorities. Then one day it went away without explanation, despite being (from what I could tell), reasonably successful and well thought-of.

And now we know — a litigant (who is easily Googleable) without a lawyer — which is usually a sign that the legal arguments will be lacking in coherence and understanding of what the law actually is — sued on the basis that apparently anything that features zodiac-themed warriors belongs to him? For reference, he later sued Toei, on the basis that the English title of their Saint Seiya anime series, Knights Of The Zodiac, infringed somehow.

For reference, I first saw Saint Seiya in a hotel conference room on a nth-generation VHS copy around 1989, and even then it was known as Knights Of The Zodiac in English. But no matter! Mr Lawsuit decided that based on a book that ranks around 7.8 million on Amazon from 2003, he owns the entire concept.

Looking up his name, I find a pattern of repeated lawsuits that don’t make factual claims and misapply the law (various Zodiac-themed media; an apartment complex; a medical group), get thrown out for being deficient after a couple of years, then he sues the United States government because … they should have been constituted for the past 230 years in a form that allowed him to win in court? Maybe? There’s even an introductory sentence that reads, and I quote:

Pro se Plaintiff [redacted] has brought yet another action related to his purported intellectual property rights with respect to something entitled “Zodiac Knights 2000” or “Knights of the Zodiac.” [emphasis original]

¹

… from which I’ve removed the name because for all I know this loonball constantly vanity searches and would decide I’m somehow violating his claimed copyright, trademark, moral rights, or whatever and I don’t need the aggravation.

And the thing is, I’m not sure what would prevent this. The whole Indie Eleven bullshit saga might have been precluded with a federal SLAPP statute, but this nonsense that Ganuchau and Panetta found themselves on the receiving end of? Nothing but a finding from a court that the plaintiff is a vexatious and abusive litigant will work. Well, that and a finding that he’s gotta pony up a bond for potential costs before accepting suit filings, since by my readings (and IANAL) of the court docs seems to indicate that he pleads poverty and can’t pay defendants for the costs of fighting his bullshit.

In the meantime, Panetta and Ganuchau have other work they’ve pursued and which you can purchase. If you love good comics and hate irrational bullies, might want to look at them.

Spam of the day:

INSTANT ATTENTION REQUIRED IN REGARDS TO YOUR DOMAIN fleen.com YOUR DOMAIN fleen.com WILL BE TERMINATED WITHIN 12 HOURS We have not received your payment for the renewal of your domain fleen.com

Does … does this actually work? Like people don’t get automated renewal notices 30 days in advance and know that they paid their registration fees and click on your link in Gabon?

_______________
¹ I’m going to guess that you never want to see that sentence aimed at you by a federal judge, along with The Compliant, which is largely incomprehensible, and Plaintiff has filed no fewer than eleven different lawsuits in federal courts alone over the past seven years in relation to these claims. As Judge Julie Carnes in the Northern District of Georgia concluded in 2008: she “will not allow plaintiffs to waste any more of defendant’s or this Court’s time or resources.”

Those quotes, by the way, are from 2012. The dismissal of the suit against Panetta, Ganuchau, and Dark Horse was five years later, and he appealed, six months or so later. I don’t have docket access to see when that might have been resolved, but as Panetta speaks in the past tense, I’m guessing it was, like so many prior suits, dismissed with prejudice.

Hey, y’all. How ya doing? Good? Good. It’s a drizzly day and there’s a very lazy hound somewhat noisily snoring and it’s giving everything here a more than slightly soporific character. Let us converse for some little while and then have a nap.

• Yesterday, I pointed out a pair of comics-centric events that are taking very different approaches to the (hopefully, persisting) post-pandemic reality. From Massachusetts, an outdoor, spaced-out event; from Long Island, an indoors event that doesn’t so much as mention health protections and shows lots of photos of crowded-together folks.

  Given that New York City formed the centerpoint of the pandemic in this country through its devastating first wave, you’d have thought that a place just the other side of JFK would be more mindful but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

  So how would something larger than Mini-MICE go about an event in the latter half of 2021 while taking due care? Glad you asked, Sparky. Let’s take a look at what CXC has on deck for October:

  CXC 2021 will feature a mix of online & in person events! Our Vendor Exhibitor Expo will be held virtually over Discord, but some festival events will be in person at partner venues in Columbus, OH. Details: https://cartooncrossroadscolumbus.org/?cat=8

  (& check out the poster art by Gabby Metzler!)

  Drilling down into the show website gives us some details:

  CXC 2021 will mark a return to some in-person events following a show that was all online in 2020. Some events will be online only, and several of the in-person events also will be broadcast online. CXC will follow the city of Columbus’s health guidelines and the recommendations of its programming sponsors when determining any necessary precautions.

  We will have more information in the coming months about which events will be in person and how to attend, and how to view online events. Follow us on social media (Twitter, Facebook and Instagram) or check our website (cartooncrossroadscolumbus.org) for the latest.

  Good start — acknowledge the fact that things will change in the coming months, set out a model that likely can be made good on even if progress towards reopening stalls, indicate where more information can be obtained. Furthermore:

  One online event will be the CXC Expo, a part of CXC in which creators sell their work to the public. Similar to last year, the CXC Expo will be held online through CXC’s website and Discord Server. We are eager to return to an in-person Expo in 2022.

  “It’s a challenge to plan in our ever changing health and safety environment. We appreciate the flexibility of our guests, presenting partners, donors and audience as we balance our desire for in-person events with proper protocols,” said Jerzy Drozd, CXC’s interim executive director. [emphasis original]

  Further acknowledgement of reality, a nice outreach to everybody with a stake, and a clear assumption of responsibility right from the top¹.

  Additionally, CXC announced its first tranche of guests (Chris Samnee, Victoria Jamieson, Lewis Trondheim, Shary Flenniken) and a new award named for Spurgeon:

  This year’s festival also will mark the debut of the Tom Spurgeon Award, named after CXC’s founding executive director, which will be awarded to someone who is not primarily a cartoonist and whose support of cartoonists and cartoon art enhanced the field in a lasting and measurable way.

  … The award, suggested by Tom’s family, will be a way to honor an individual who has made substantial contributions to the field but is not primarily a cartoonist.

  “The breadth and depth of Tom’s experiences as a journalist, comics historian, and reporter make him the ideal model for an award celebrating the contributions of non-cartoonists to the field,” said Lucy Shelton Caswell, founding curator of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at Ohio State University and a co-founder of CXC. [emphasis original]

• Speaking of people that enhance the field in lasting ways, readers may recall that we at Fleen are deeply interested in the production work that goes into comics, particularly of the editorial variety. So it was with particular interest that we noted a rather unique manuscript being newly offered:
  

  MAKE YOUR COMICS leaner/meaner/faster/cleaner!
  FILTH & GRAMMAR: The Comic Book Editor’s Secret Handbook.
  Click thru to sign up for more info [various emoji]
  https://kickstarter.com/projects/sxbond/filth-and-grammar

  Better believe I signed up for notification. Bond is a legend in editing circles, and everybody that edits comics (or wants to edit them, or wants to edit them better) should be grabbing a copy while they can. So should everybody that writes about comics, and — somewhat counterintuitively — everybody that makes comics.

  Making comics and editing comics are completely different skills, but understanding what the editor is doing and why they do it? That can only lead a creator to make better comics. If nothing else, it’ll hopefully convince creators that editing your own stuff lies somewhere between impractical and impossible². I suspect that in very short order, Filth & Grammar will belong on every shelf right next to Understanding Comics.

Spam of the day:

Elon Musk’s SpaceX will launch the “DOGE-1 Mission to the Moon” in the first quarter of 2022, with the company accepting the meme-inspired cryptocurrency as payment. Doge has gone up 1161% since early April this year. If you want to be part of this history moment, you can buy Doge coin at Binance here (biggest crypto exchange in the world).

For reference, this was sent five hours after Elon Musk announced that Tesla was getting out of the crypto space.

Elon Musk intends to distribute 25,000 bitcoins. Today I sent 3 Bitcoins to Tesla and received 6 Bitcoins back !!! Bitcoins are returned doubled. The company’s website keeps statistics in real time, who sent and received how many bitcoins in double the amount.
… and this one was sent the day after. Scammers apparently think that crypto enthusiasts are very, very stupid; given that they believe in magic math based on nothing that can be used to purchase upwards of seven different legal goods and/or services at the costs of crippling computer supply chains and hastening the end of human viability on the planet, I am forced in this circumstance to conclude that the scammers are correct.

_______________
¹ Speaking of which, let’s acknowledge the stellar job that Jerzy Drozd did stepping into the suddenly-empty shoes of the dearly missed Tom Spurgeon, and managing the sudden shift to a pandemic-restricted form from practically day one on the job. If CXC doesn’t keep him on in a permanent capacity, every comics event in the world should be competing to obtain his services.

² Says the guy who self-edits … but when I’ve been asked to write particularly important stuff for others, damn right I’ve sought the opinion of editors I trust. The feedback I received on one occasion caused me to completely discard what I had previously considered to be 95% of the way to final and start over in a radically different direction. It made for a radically better piece, for reasons that made sense when I was done but which I couldn’t see at the beginning because — say it with me — you can’t edit your own stuff.

Actual events, in public, with people, although let us note that some are being more responsible than others.

You have on the one hand, a community event held in the great state of West Virginia, featuring artists and artisans of all sorts at the Shenandoah Planing Mill in Charles Town on Saturday, 12 June. Among the studio tour artists will be webcomics own Danielle Corsetto, who was the one that first tipped me to the fun. I should note that this is not a comics-specific, comics-centric, or even comics-featuring event; it’s pretty much Corsetto that will be repping the words + pictures crowd, but come on! Iron forging! Log sawing! Leashed friendly dogs welcome! If you’re in the vicinity, it’ll be a hoot, possibly a hoot and a half.

But if you’re looking for something that’s comics-featuring, comics-centric, even comics-specific, look no further than Mini-MICE; from the folks that bring you the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo (normally held mid-Octoberish at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA¹) will be going outdoors in the Central Square neighborhood of Cambridge on the last weekend of August (that would be the 28the and 29th) with 30 comics folks given tables each of the two days; to maximize those able to exhibit, it will be a different cohort on each of the two days.

Applications are open for Massachusetts residents until 28 June, who should be prepared to share new comics work, from 2020 to the present, and have comics be at least half of what you present on the table. The tables, due to distancing policies² will be 3 feet, under a 10 foot canopy, and are being subsidized by the Central Square Business Improvement District.

Restrictions that are presently in place³ mean that there won’t be any programming or live events, but what the heck — it’s gonna be free to attend, so head on over and check out new comics from local creators. Even if MICE is able to come back next year, it would be great to see Mini-MICE recur, and for other festival-type events to adopt a similar, open-air type approach in addition to their traditional presentations.

Contrast, if you would, with the announcement I got in the mail from a Long Island traditional comics show set for Hofstra University’s sports and event center the first weekend of August (that would be the 7th and 8th). As of this writing, there’s no acknowledgement of possible restrictions, nothing about distancing or mask requirements, zilch. I get that there’s uncertainty about what public events would look like in 2 months time, but every photo features large crowds in close proximity … it’s like the pandemic never happened, and I’d submit that’s the wrong message to send.

If this didn’t convince me that the organizers don’t have public health at the front of their minds, the fact that the one announced guest at this time is Dean Cain — who spent some of last summer mocking the idea of having to wear a mask on a plane — would lead me in that direction.

600,000 Americans are dead of COVID, and the deaths are still occurring; around the world, where vaccinations are nowhere near as widespread, things are getting distinctly worse. This pandemic won’t be over until things are safe for everybody, including those who’ve spent the past forever denying reality. To plan for an event is understandable. To make no attempt to change how things are done to a form that will at least acknowledge life was different in the summer of 2019 is just insulting.

Spam of the day:

Your bank account received a payment of $ 346000. Take your money urgently Your card has received a payment of $ 245000. Take your money

This from “michaelwof”, who’s been using a series of French and Belgian email accounts to try to convince me that FREE!! MONEY!!1! is coming my way if I just click on his links. Yeah, no.

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¹ Home to more colleges and universities than you can shake a stick at, despite what Ian said in Spinal Tap.

² Which, let’s face, are likely to change.

³ Ibid.

Whoo, those until-two-am EMS calls really put a crimp in the next day. It’s late, so this will be brief, as we share news of a couple of enticing product [pre]-announcements.

• First up Raina Telgemeier is a ways from her next book; turns out that pandemics completely disrupt publishing schedules, which are complex webs of editors, publicity, planning, printing logistics, and supply chains that run from China across the Pacific. Probably isn’t too great for the brain space of the folks that need to put together the books that will be appearing next year and the year after that, either. And then there’s the fact that Raina’s published five monster hits from 2010-2019 and if we want to see the next five, she’s due a breather.

  But even if there’s not a story coming the immediate future¹, there’s still Raina news to keep your eyes on, starting today:

  I’m so excited for tomorrow’s release of ‘Raina’s Day,’ my new 450-piece jigsaw puzzle collaboration with Clarkson Potter! Be sure to check out my website for some sneak-peek photos and ordering information! https://goraina.com/merchandise-puzzle

  That’s a puzzle of cartoon Raina surrounded by all the thoughts that define her, packaged up in a box that looks for all the world like cartoon Raina’s sketchbook or diary. I dunno about you, but I’ve got multiple [grand-] nieces and nephews that are going to go incandescent when they see it.

• It was not two weeks ago when we at Fleen looked at the latest webcomic offering from Karl Kerschl and noted that The Abominable Charles Christopher’s third volume had been a-borning for longer than anybody would want, but that the wait would be worth it. It would be madness to claim that Kerschl took my plaintive observation as the motivation to quickly throw together a full boo design and get a Kickstart set up — those tasks take forever — but what the heck? He announced it:
  

  Abominable Book 3 is finally coming! Check out the @Kickstarter landing page to get notified when it goes live!!!
  https://kickstarter.com/projects/karlkerschl/the-abominable-charles-christopher-book-3

  31 May was a very good day for product announcements, yo.

  We don’t know what form book 3 is going to take, or what timeframe to expect it in, but soon enough we’ll have the campaign launch and get those answers. All I know is I’ve got to make room on my bookshelf for a new hardcover² in the near-ish term. Charles Christopher! A malevolent lion! A shouty and ineffectual Gilgamesh! RPG-fan forest critters, awkward owlets, a cockroach shrink, Vivol the bear, Luga the honest wolf, and Sissi Skunk’s shenanigans! Stick it in my brain.

• Oh, and a followup to Friday: US$580,099, thirty grand above the McDonald’s Ratio, and a full fifty grand above the previous record holder. Dang.

Spam of the day:

We have a special limited offer for you to send unlimited emails. We allow non-permission based emails and you won’t ever get blocked.

You are offering me the opportunity to annoy other people as much as you’re trying to annoy me? And yet you wound up in my spam filters, where I could have easily ignored you forever. You’re not very good at this.

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¹ Which is not to say there haven’t been any stories with her hands in. The death-themed anthology from Iron Circus, You Died, includes a Raina-illustrated story about beloved father, a collection of ashes, and a trip to a theme park that is absolutely not Disney for a surreptitious scattering. It’s heartwarming and hilarious, and Raina makes the most of writer Casey Gilly’s script.

² And, eventually, a fourth book, but we’ll cross that bridge etc.

I speak, naturally of Ngozi Ukazu, who is about to wrap up the Kickstart for the fourth Check, Please! collection, which has cleared the half-million damn dollar mark and which is going up each time I refresh. It’ll wrap about five and a half hours from now (as I write this) and has picked up (again, as I write this) more than US$40,000 today alone, which makes this the third-best day of the fundraising period.

At the launch of the campaign I noted that the traditional predictors (the FFF mk2, the McDonald Ratio) would likely be skewed, what with the atypically high per-backer average contribution (which has actually gone up), the stealth launch, the huge pent-up demand for the last item in a hot property, etc. I warned that the estimates would likely be high, but you know what? They’re not that far off.

Okay, the FFF mk2 having a +/- 5% tolerance leads to some excessively large ranges on high-value projects like this (a full US$300K range), and the lower bound of US$600K was always a stretch¹, but the McDonald Ratio predicted US$550K and it wouldn’t surprise me if we hit it at this point.

In the time it’s taken me to write the last three paragraphs, the total has gone up three grand, and Check, Please! Year Four has surpassed Ava’s Demon: Reborn and has become the most-funded webcomics project in Kickstarter history². The five Check, Please! projects will have between them raised at least US$1.45 million, and there’s still five and a half hours to go. Not bad for a comic about gay hockey bros with big feelings and also pie³.

(‘Nother fifteen hundo in the time it took to write and do the math in that last ‘graf, bee tee dubs.)

Anyways, I’m not waiting around until after 10:00pm EDT to see what the end total is, but I give it a 50/50 chance that today’s total becomes the second highest of the campaign, and and 80/20 chance it clears US$550K in total, thus validating Kel McDonald’s math. I’m sure I’ll mention it sometime next week, but remember: Monday is a holiday in the States, so probably no post. Enjoy your weekend, enjoy the holiday if you’re in a position to celebrate it, and the next time somebody suggests a seemingly-ludicrous story hook, we should all just say, Let’s give it a year and see.

Spam of the day:

Are you and your mate a good match? Find out with a Romantic Compatibility Report, your best resource for a romantic comparison.

Screw your astrology bullshit. We’ve been married for 28 years and I don’t give a damn what your made up report says.

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¹ The backer count and pledge total going up on day two really disturbs things … I’m thinking of looking at an average of the projections for days 1 and 3 in those cases, which would have given us US$637K +/- US$128K, or US$509K to US$765K in this case, which would be on the low end, but within range. Gonna keep adjusting this thing until it accounts for all the strange outliers as well as the typical cases.

² Plus the number three slot for Check, Please! Year Two.

³ Seriously, if you’d suggested to anybody back around 2012 or so that premise would catch fire, people would have suggested back that while gay bros and pie were pretty popular, hockey’s crippling unpopularity in the US would render it the whole thing moot. You can never tell what’s going to grab attention, except for the fact that it’s a damn good comic, and damn good comics will find their audience.