Is it just me, or is every improvement accompanied by a disappointment? Let’s get the bad news out of the way and move onto the good after.

• As was linked in a tweet yesterday, from the good folks at TopatoCo:
  

  With regret, we must announce that TopatoCon 2 is canceled. Due to unforeseen circumstances, we are unable to present the convention we hoped for, and we have decided that the best choice is to cancel the event completely.

  We do not make this decision lightly, and rest assured that we are as disappointed as you are. Thank you for your interest in TopatoCon.

  Well, dammit. I was really looking forward to my trip up to *hampton in October, to see the many quality folks who’d be exhibiting, to get into more liquor-based mischief. TopatoCo is a small company — pretty much the epitome of the small business that fuels the economy and which politics fetishizes — as is the Eastworks venue, and the slightest bit of bad luck could make things prohibitively complex and/or expensive for them to carry on with their plans.

  I know for a fact that this would have been a hell of a hard decision, particularly this far into the planning process; we at Fleen thank everybody at TopatoCo and TopatoCon for their considerable work, and if you think a little thing like canceling the show is enough to keep me from driving north that weekend, you’ve got another think coming. I’ll be there, and I’m ready to buy meals/booze for the best damn people in webcomics.

• It’s pretty much a given that new means of communicating will live or die by how easy it is to get porn on them¹. But in the modern world, moral squeamishness on the part of payment processors² and various funding platforms, along with legitimate economic concerns, makes the business of adult content difficult to realize at time. You can produce tasteful, non-harmful, quality erotica material and have no way to distribute it (and no way to get paid even if you can distribute it). Which is why the announcement (as first noted via the always tied-in and porn-savvy Brad Guigar) from Patreon yesterday is pretty damn important:
  

  Patreon’s announcement — in an e-mail to creators — that it will once again be able to offer its users to use Paypal to pledge to NSFW creators is a huge victory for the crowdfunding service. Patreon had to remove Paypal functionality for creators who were offering NSFW content after Paypal threatened to stop all payments to Patreon.
  …
  [A]dult websites face annual fees of upwards of about $500 — as well as higher processing fees — from credit-card processors. They’re considered high-risk merchants. And when Paypal found out there was NSFW content on Patreon, they made the move to classify the crowdfunding service as “high risk.”

  From Patreon:

  After many long discussions we were able to convince PayPal, or more specifically their subsidiary Braintree, that Adult Content creators on Patreon are not a serious risk. Our content policy, and the nature of subscription payments, means that Adult Content creators on Patreon are less risky than most creators making adult content. We also have a very diverse mix of content types, so even if our Adult Content creators are higher risk than other types of creators, Patreon as a whole is less risky.

  We are very happy about this victory, but the payment industry does not provide much transparency around payments for adult content. As a company we are not happy with this lack of transparency since it impacts the livelihoods of Adult Content creators. We will continue to work towards more certainty around these issues, but for now we feel that the benefit of allowing PayPal payments for Adult Content creators outweighs any hypothetical risk that it may change in the future.”

  And those risks are so, so malleable. Don’t tell me that something like TJ and Amal doesn’t get more scrutiny for involving two dudes than something that doesn’t existentially offend would-be child-protectors³ to the same degree.

  For everybody that’s out there trying to make something as literary as Chester 5000 or Smut Peddler, as educational as Oh Joy, Sex Toy, or just something that’s super hot, this is great news. For everybody that wants to read those things and support the creators, it’s even better.

Spam of the day:

Finish Your MBA In Under 2 Years. 100% Online & Accredited. Get Info.?

Assuming that I wanted to spend between one and two years becoming a computer and utter douchebag, why on earth would I click on a link that purports to be on behalf of a company in Chicago, but which offers me the opportunity to unsubscribe by contacting either an address in Samoa or a completely different address in Mississauga, Ontario? Make up your mind, identity thieves.

_______________
¹ Trust me on this, I spent most of a year looking at the evolution of large, distributed, networked systems, and this was the inescapable conclusion. Someday I will dig out and complete my master’s thesis on this topic, when I have no other demands on my time.

² No doubt enhanced by the heavy hand of various political officials. Everybody see how the Republican platform decided yesterday declared porn to be a national health crisis to be stamped out at all costs?

³ Also in that platform? A defense of anti-gay conversion therapy, for fuck’s sake.

Yes, yes, I know — no proof that John Allison meant me in particular with today’s strip, but you know what? Gary is an endangered name, practically to the point where my fellow Garies and I deserve protection under CITES; statistically, there aren’t that many other dudes named Gary it could refer to, so please remember to check in at passport control when entering the Garyverse.

• The Benign Kingdom 2016 art book Kickstarter campaign has picked up some steam, but with 45 hours to go (as of this writing), it’s still a little down-to-the-wire for my tastes. Kicktraq has a projected funding rate of 99% (again, as of this writing), which would be a heartbreaking thing to happen. The book is by the sam amazing group that’s put so much other pretty art out into the world, with four spectacular contributors so please, let’s not let it fail? If this one doesn’t fund, you and me are gonna have some words, peoples.
• On colorblindness, coloring comics, and the benefits of having a colorist by Lost Angeles resident Dave Kellett; pretty much every webcomicker I follow is well skilled in all aspects of their job, but when they hire particularly skilled individuals as colorists, the work has always benefited. Best of luck to the new LArDK/Beth Morrell partnership.
• Followup: I said that a big signifier of the future of the Internet Creators Guild would be if a Sohmer or Khoo joined up and now Sohmer has; look for representatives of disciplines outside of vlogging on the governing body almost immediately.
• David Malki ! is, by popular accounts traveling the world, celebrating his tenth wedding anniversary¹, but things are running apace back at Wondermark Industries. Following the lead of other webcomickers (such as the aforementioned LArDK, Jon Rosenberg², Malki ! has announced that starting today classic Wondermark strips will be running at GoComics three days a week, where they will no doubt befuddle people who occasionally find Mary Worth to be spending too much time on controversial topics. Seriously, I can’t wait to see the GoComics comment section when MOOOOOON, the Sea Lion, the Piranhamoose, and Gax show up in their daily feeds.

Spam of the day:

Je suis a la recherche d’un rendement pour nos patrimoines immobilier soit une villa J’ai entendu parlé de défiscalisation donc, je viens vers vous pour essayer de comprendre la marché de toulouse J’ai bien prit toutes les informations, je voudrai tout simplement avoir des avis des gens qui en profitez déjà. merci de votre aidee et de donner des informations sur calcul taux de rentabilité immobilier

Pierre, I think this one’s for you.

_______________
¹ Newcombe engines, whalebone hoopskirt stays, saltpeter, and/or chimney urchins are the traditional gifts one exchanges at this time.

² Obligatory disclaimer: he hosts Fleen, is the one responsible for me blogging in the first place, and having recently cheated death, is apparently indestructible in the face of all enemies, external and internal.

For the three of you that hadn’t heard, Robert Khoo¹ resigned from the presidency of Penny Arcade yesterday; from other reports, it appears to be effective 15 July. I seem to recall that he’s part of the trustee structure for Child’s Play, and that he holds at 10% ownership stake in Penny Arcade Industries; no word yet on whether those have changed. Fleen contacted Khoo for and interview which he politely declined.

It has been some time since I sat in a Vegas buffet after the Reuben Awards and asked Robert what he was going to do when all the challenges of Penny Arcade were solved and he was just grinding in repetition — tropical beach with fruity drinks? High speed motorsports? A line of vanity soups?

I don’t know, he said. Probably catch up with all the games I don’t have time to play now. My suspicion is that we will learn what he’s up to next exactly when he feels like letting us know; that guy always knows how to play three moves ahead of the rest of us. If I had to make a guess, I’d say he’s got plans to run a venture capital-style business serving the games industry as a whole … either that, or secret volcano lair and demands made of the Security Council.

In other news:

• We at Fleen are big fans of Vera Brosgol, since the old Return To Sender days [NB: only access that site via Wayback Machine, not directly], through Anya’s Ghost, one of our favorite books ever. She’s just had her next three books announced (scroll down, and it is me or does Publishers Weekly use subheads that sound eerily like Hollywood press?) through :01 Books and their sister imprint, Roaring Brook Press.

  Roaring Brook will be up first, with Leave Me Alone!, a picture book about a grandmother’s search for a little quiet, due out on 13 September; a second picture book will follow (presently untitled and no release date). :01 gets their shot with Be Prepared, a middle-grade graphic novel about summer camp, based on Brosgol’s own experiences; again, no release date as yet. I’m going to go out on a limb and pre-announce that these will be terrific.

• Speaking of :01 sister imprints: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux will be publishing Compass South, the eagerly-awaited next graphic novel from Hope Larson (words) and Rebecca Mock (pictures) in about, oh, two weeks. The invaluable Oliver Sava at The AV Club has a six-page preview and brief overview today. Go look at it, it’s very pretty and I’m already hooked on the story.

Spam of the day:

Asian Women Online — Am I Your Dream Love?

That’s refreshingly straightforward for spam, but still ain’t clicking.

_______________
¹ Robert is.

Attention (on projects past, present, and future) is being paid to webcomickers, and that it all meet and proper.

• We’ve mentioned the ongoing series of geographically-themed fairy tale anthologies from Kel McDonald, Cautionary Fables and Fairy Tales, on more than one occasion. Volume three’s been out for a while now, and it’s gathering notice. Caitlin Rosenberg over at The AV Club does her usual thorough analysis and found parts of the Asia edition of CF&FT a mixed bag — while she finds the stories visually appealing, she finds their overall quality variable, and the book as a whole lacking in cohesion beyond “Asia”.

  I’d argue that what she’s describing is one of the defining characteristics of anthologies, which she acknowledges in noting the individual stories are good, but don’t seem to work together. I’ve read the two prior CF&FT editions, and never found that awkwardness to be an issue, but I also approach anthologies as a book that I revisit time and again, consuming small chunks in isolation rather than reading through. I’ll pick it up at some point in the future, if only to read a new Monkey King story from Gene Luen Yang and to find creators I wasn’t familiar with before.

  And when you’re done reading Rosenberg’s review, check out Tim O’Neil’s take on the last few months of Achewood; O’Neil’s a critic I find myself disagreeing with more than agreeing, but he holds forth on the weirdness and melancholy of Achewood to a masturbatory degree that I not only appreciate, but find as obsessive as my own writings on the topic. I don’t want to get all article on you, but Achewood is definitely something you should be paying attention to.

• In my hold box at my local comic shop today: issue #2 of Goldie Vance by the inimitable Hope Larson (words) and Brittney Williams (pictures). Issue #1 did a great job of capturing a moment in the early Space Age, finding a niche where a whole host of non-white people could represent all strata of society, and wrapped the whole thing up in a Nancy Drewesque mystery motif.

  Comes now the news (which I first noticed from Johanna Draper Carlson) that GV is no longer a four-issue miniseries but an ongoing title. Based on that first issue (and presumably, those making the decisions have seen the full four issues), this was a no-brainer of a decision. It’s a terrific book.

  It’s been mentioned more than once that GV publisher BOOM! is crappy with the page rates, so one can only hope (no pun intended) that by tapping one of the best known and successful creators of her generation, Larson had the leverage to explain that she does not value things like building your career and great exposure. If BOOM! is able to maintain profits on Goldie Vance, they’ll have no excuse to plead poverty in underpaying so many other of their writers and artists.

• First it was Christopher Hastings, tapped for one-shots and minis before landing Gwenpool, then Ryan North, tasked to make Squirrel Girl the surprise breakout hit of the past year. It appears that Marvel’s learned that if you need a more light-hearted — one might even say comical — comic book in a world of capes that are overly serious, you tap a longtime webcomicker.

  Latest proof: a tie-in book (due in August) to the latest no-really-this-will-change-everything line-wide crossover will feature the writing of one John Allison, whose work is the diametric opposite of grimdark.

  Judging from the description, it appears that Allison will be contributing a story about the Marvel Universe’s most blusteringly beleaguered newspaperman¹, which ought to allow for plenty of room for a story that flirts with humo[u]r². So well done, Mr Allison, and damn you for making me buy a damn line-wide event tie-in book … that’s how they get you.

• Rosemary Valero-O’Connell has shared a bit more of her next book³ — the centerspread this time. Do yourself a favor, set aside a buck or two each month, so that you’ll be ready to purchase the moment it releases. Given the polish it’s got with at least a year and a half to go until release, I’m willing to say entirely on faith that it’s going to be great.

Spam of the day:

Poster & Release Date Announced: #TravelBoobs

It claims to be a forthcoming YouTube series, but I’m not clicking on anything in this email to find out.

_______________
¹ Want to stop feeling like the entire world is arrayed against you, Jameson? Maybe don’t wear a friggin’ Hitler moustache.

² Dare I say, whimsy?

³ Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me, words by Mariko Tamaki, coming from :01 Books in 2018 (whimper).

This day in Great Outdoor Fight history: No strip; after the booze and pizza and crazy bread, Beef and Ray make the long trip home from Wasco to 62 Achewood Court. After getting zero (Beef) or a minor fraction of 8.504 lbs (Ray) of solids across three days in the Acres, I imagine Our Heroes gorged themselves heartily. I would guess that decision was pretty contributory to Beef’s ultimate reflection on what The Fight meant¹.

Things are happening today, my friends. Things!

• Firstly, and I expect that you all know this by now but I would be remiss, but Homestuck updated for the first time since July last night. Woo!
• Secondly, the much-anticipated Kickstart for Irregular Webcomic’s first print collection hit in the early-morning hours (if you’re in the Western hemisphere, at least). Some twelve hours later it’s just shy of 19% of the way to goal, with 29 and a half days to go. One notable thing to point out is that although IW creator David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc and semi-pro Mr Bean impersonator) is Australian, the book is being handled by the folks at Make That Thing in *hampton, MA, USA, which leads to the ironically awful situation that Morgan-Mar needs to charge some $31 (Australian) to ship books to his fans across town.

  This is such a terrible thing that he’s actually set the shipping costs for “rest of the world” (basically everyplace that isn’t US/Canada) to AU$28, meaning he’s going to take a loss of AU$3 (about US$2.25) for each order back to his own country. To make up for this, he’s introduced a special backer tier for US/Canada fans only (about 80% of his readership) that adds one slim Aussie Fun Buck to the regular price of the book reward:

  THE BOOK+POSTAGE GOODWILL (US/Canada only): A copy of the print collection book + a PDF digital copy. The extra dollar is your goodwill to help offset postage costs for non-North American buyers.

  I’m pleased to note that as of this writing, 22 US/Canada backers have opted to kick in the extra Australian dollar (about 75 cents, US; 1 buck, Canada) to help subsidize purchasers elsewhere. Nicely done, all.

• Thirdly, today is the launch day for the first two of First Second’s new line of educational graphic novels, namely Science Comics: Dinsoaurs, Fossils and Feathers and Science Comics: Coral Reefs, Cities of the Ocean. When I got my review copies in the mail a while back (the usual voluminous thanks to Gina Gagliano at :01 Books), the attached info sheet said they would be releasing in April, but that was subsequently moved up and caught me by surprise.

  Thus I’ve not read Coral Reefs to the degree that would allow a proper review, but I can talk about it generally. It’s by Maris Wicks, and it’s about marine biology (which happens to be her day job and all) and it’s got the same effortlessly informative style as her previous Primates and the recent Human Body Theater. It’s great.

  But of course I’ve read Dinosaurs more thoroughly. It’s about dinosaurs, people, and I firmly adhere to Charlie It’s always a good day for dinosaur news! Pierce’s dictum regarding the terrible lizards: Dinosaurs existed then to make us happy today.

  It’s by MK Reed and Joe Flood, who previously collaborated on :01’s The Cute Girl Network (which was about dating in Brooklyn among the underemployed and undermotivated — it’s a hoot and a half). It’s pitched directly at kids just starting their serious independent learning about dinosaurs (say, 10 years old), and as such there were a few things that may need to be explained to the younger reader to avoid confusion.

  1. Nonlinearity; kids may not be aware of the device that says Oh hey, that thing we told you before? Not so much in telling a story. There are end notes (without indications in the text that notes exist, which actually simplifies things — they can go back and re-read the sections that get elaborated on) and a recurring motif that works well after you notice it: every once in a while there’s a page that talks about what was known at a particular point in time from the POV of that point in time². It’s really neat, but kids may need some coaching to put themselves not just in somebody else’s brain, but at a different point in history to appreciate what’s being presented.
  2. Editing oversights; at one point, the classic explanation of the two divisions of dinosaurs by hip type — the “bird hipped” ornithischians and the “lizard hipped” saurischians — is illustrated in classic fashion by pointing out the pubis bone pointing backwards (ornithischians) or downwards (saurischians). To make it clearer, a sample pelvis is shown, with the pubis in yellow for the saurischia and green for the ornithischia.

     Then, on the next page, the bones are drawn in place on a variety of dinosaurs with the colors reversed. The ornithischians suddenly get a yellow pubis and the saurischians green, which caused me to stop reading to figure out why I was confused. There’s also a bit of text late in the book that’s supposed to say that dinosaurs lived 250 – 65 million years ago, but actually says 25,065 million years ago. Whoops.

  3. Art trumping facts; The very first page of the book contains the caption For 165 million years, dinosaurs walked the Earth, with herds of ceratopsians, hadrosaurs, some non-specific sauropods, and a couple of large carnosaurs out looking for snacks. Overhead, some pterosaurs float lazily. So far, so good.

     The next two pages are the splash pages, with captions that read And flew. And swam., with a very active scene of aerial and aquatic beasties. There’s pterosaurs, archelons, plesiosaurs, icthyosaurs, mosasaurs, none of which are dinosaurs, argh (look ’em up).

     Yes, this is me being pedantic, and yes, they walk back and let the reader known that long dead + reptile-looking does not always equal dinosaur, and yes, the overall theme of the book is about how we have spent a few hundred years learning what dinosaurs were by replacing earlier conceptions with newer ideas.

     But if you’re going to be working in an educational context, you can’t make this big a mischaracterization in the opening pages because the kids will eat you alive for this kind of mistake³.

  All of which just means you’ll have to explain literary devices and editing and artistic choices to the kids that read this book. They’ll get it, kids are smart. Use it as a way to bring up the fact that we’re constantly learning and correcting ourselves, such as when we all had to learn that there were no Brontosaurs, only Apatosaurs. Except for this note on the last story page of the book:

  A lengthy reexamination of the different species of Apatosaurus lead researchers to conclude that there were enough differences to make Brontosaurus its own genus again, weeks before this book was due at the printer.

  Fact: Brontosaurus is now MK and Joe’s least favorite dinosaur.

  None of which is any reason not to run out and get this book immediately. It gives props to a series of early dinoscholars who have traditionally been overlooked (especially women), rightly notes that Richard Own was a complete dick to everybody, and handles the frankly hilarious topic of dinopoops with exactly the dignity and gravity they deserve.

  Plus feathers everywhere. Cool.

Spam of the day:

Science Proves Biblical-Cure – Atheists Stunned

This particular atheist will be stunned when the Bible gets the value of pi more accurate than three. No wonder Solomon had to import architects from Tyre to build his palace.

_______________
¹ I ain’t pooped in five days. Excuse a man.

² I’ll have to quote some to make it clear:

In the year 1800 …
The Earth is 6006 years old.
Dinosaurs are known as monsters.
They lived a few thousand years ago.
They disappeared because of Noah’s flood.
There are no examples of dinosaurs living at this time.
We are certain about all of this.

In the year 1854 …
The Earth is 400,000 years old.
Dinosaurs are known as extinct reptiles.
They lived a hundreds of thousands years ago.
They disappeared for unknown reasons.
There are no examples of dinosaurs living today.
We are certain about all of this.

In the year 1920 …
The Earth is as much as 400 million years old.
Dinosaurs are known as extinct reptiles.
They lived 3 million years ago.
They disappeared because they lost the survival of the fittest.
There are no examples of dinosaurs living today.
We are certain about all this.

³ I still remember standing in the dinosaur halls of the Royal Ontario Museum close to 25 years ago when a small girl came tearing around the corner and stopped dead to look at a model looming over us. She was maybe six years old, absolutely adorable, and her mother asked What’s that one, honey? Is it a plant eater?

She shot back with all the conviction in the world Mom, it’s a Parasaurolophus. She was right, and her pronunciation was dead on. If today she’s reading Dinosuars to her six year old, she’s going to stop on pages 2 and 3 and have the same argh moment I did.

This day in Great Outdoor Fight history: Ray shows surprising ingenuity in a moment of crisis, takes action, and surprises the hell out of Beef (who until now has been the master planner and anticipator of every possible outcome). We are all surprised.

We have mentioned on this page, some few times, that The Nib will be returning from the dead and taking up residence in the First Look Media family (home of The Intercept, amongst other sites). Nib generalissimo Matt Bors has managed to re-obtain the services of Eleri Harris Matt Lubchansky to help on the editorial side, and they’d like to get your pitches even if you aren’t named Matt:

We’re looking to publish the absolute best journalism, political satire and non-fiction comics, ones that grapple with the big issues of the day and the ones that haven’t been given enough attention?—?subjects that could benefit from coverage in comics form and touch on politics and culture in interesting ways.

Take a look back at the sort of work that The Nib published before its hiatus, and you’ll have an idea of what they’re looking for now: meticulous reporting that evokes righteous outrage; voices speaking on topics normally whispered because tradition and etiquette have demanded it; facts that you never learned in school; history as it’s happening; debunking of myths that kill.

And, because Matt, Eleri, and Matt were too polite to say in that post: they pay. Get opinionated, get irritated, don’t forget to be funny. And because Bors, Harris, and Lubchansky¹ are serious about having a wide variety of points of view, they’ll no doubt be including work from people that drive you (or at least me) up the wall and make you wonder Couldn’t they have written that check to somebody not worthless?

Good.

Because as much as creators like _______ and _________² piss me the hell off, I’m glad to see them on The Nib and hate-read them. It keeps me sharp to pick apart crappy arguments. It challenges me to make my own beliefs more logically coherent and truer to reality. And, as a friend of mine pointed out years ago when Pat Fucking Buchanan was running for president, it’s better to have your opponents in plain sight where you can keep an eye on them³ instead of letting them fester in the dark, unminded and up to who knows what.

Did I mention that they pay? Because they pay. Read the entire call so you know what they’re looking for and don’t waste their time, then contact them with pitches at thenib, which may be found at firstlook, a damn fine .organization.

Also, let me recommend that Matt Inman to do something in the vein of his Trump Armband for The Nib, because damn.

Spam of the day:

Lost in a tangle of bodies, two bad things happened to Arizona in the Pac 12 semifinals

I don’t know what any of that means, but it sounds hot.

_______________
¹ Not a law firm, but maybe it should be.

² No names, I’m trying to stay positive here, but assume that I hate whoever you hate and we’ll be besties.

³ Which is why I am — and you’ll never hear me use these words in any other context — grateful for Donald Trump’s current run for the White House. Because he is dragging out into the light a lot of people I should be keeping an eye on, most of whom work for him. And because if we want to have a better world, we need to keep an eye on those who would fracture it for their own short-term self-interest.

This day in Great Outdoor Fight history: Two cats have taken their time going to the snack tent to retrieve some brandy of the gets-the-job-done variety. We’ll pick up with them when they get back.

I think that what I like best about the small-to-medium sized comics shows is the fact that they actually feature comics. So it’s with that in mind that I brin gyou news from three such festival-type shows that you’ll be paying attention to in the coming weeks and months, and one prize that draws from the same creator cohort.

• First up, MoCCA Fest has announced its slate of programming for the 2-3 April show in Manhattan; as was the case last year, panels and programs will be offsite, but included in the cost of your US$5 ticket. Highlights include a Sonny Liew Spotlight (12:30pm on Saturday), Cece Bell on El Deafo (2:00pm Saturday), Making Comics for Younger Readers (with Noelle Stevenson and others; 12:30pm on Sunday), and a Rebecca Sugar Q+A (2:00pm on Sunday). Best of all? The meeting rooms are actually named Helvetica and Garamond.
• Nextly, TCAF has announced four more featured guests, who you’ll find the weekend of 14-15 May. If it seems like three is a small number, consider:
  • They were specifically invited to appeal to kids
  • There were already Kids Guests announced like Kate Beaton and Faith Erin Hicks
  • This brings the total of confirmed guests to more than two dozen
  • They are superstars Alex A (Super Agent Jon Le Bon), Kazu Kibuishi (Amulet), Dana Simpson (Phoebe And Her Unicorn), and Raina Telgemeier (the entire damn comics industry; Sunday only)
• The second half of the SPX exhibitor list — the part decided by lottery — is starting to fill in, as news is being shared around the Twittersphere about who got in and who didn’t. The list will be fluid for some time, with table payments not due for another month, and then backfills taking place between now and the weekend of 17–18 September. Please note that the Exhibitors link at the SPX site is still showing the 2015 lineup, but expect that to change in the next couple of weeks.
• The Center for Cartoon Studies and Slate have announced the shortlists for their annual Cartoonist Studio Prizes. As in past years, there are ten nominees from the world of print comics, and ten from webcomics. As in past years, there are single-shot stories and ongoing series — length, genre, topic, style, audience age, and all the other qualifiers that usual divide nominees into many categories have no place here, only the strength of the work. As in past years, one nominee from each list will be recognized (announcement due on 6 April), and get both bragging rights and — uniquely for comics prizes — a thousand damn dollars.

  Pretty much everything that I saw on the lists that I recognized I nodded Yeah, that makes sense, and I don’t see any particularly weak or surprising nominations. It’s worth noting that D&Q and Fantagraphics dominate the print category, and that three of the webcomics nominees were commissioned by Matt Bors for The Nib before it shuttered its doors halfway through the year, or for its short-lived followup, The Response; I’ve no doubt that if Bors had a full 12 months in 2015 to play with, we’d see more on the list.

Spam of the day:

Check out the profiles of over 30,000 Russian babes. Make these Russian girls fall for your charm.

Okay, nothing special there, we’ve seen this particular flavor of spam before. What propels it into the realm of genius is the name of the alleged sender, Olga. Olga Contrabasist. That is sheer goddamn poetry.

Heck, I’m in a good mood, let’s do another one!

Signs of a Fatal Heart-Attack

I’ma go out on a limb here — 10 year veteran EMT and all, you pick these things up — and say the most distinguishing sign of a heart attack that is not merely damaging but fatal, would be the part where you’re dead.

This is going to be brief, because it stands alone nicely. Mark V dropped me an email over the weekend to make sure I saw a blogpost from Darrin Bell of Candorville¹ on the topic of working for exposure. Let us remind ourselves momentarily of the Stevens Rule: People die of exposure², and then enjoy Bell’s decision to tell the Huffington Post to go pound sand:

I’ve been “Huffed” too. Five years ago, I noticed they’d written an article transcribing a Candorville strip. They repeated it word for word, and described the action. I wrote to the author and asked why they didn’t just pay to run the cartoon itself, or at the very least link to the cartoon on my website (not that that would’ve been a good substitute for payment, but at least it wouldn’t have been a kick in the slap in the face). I sent them the contact info for my syndicate. Instead of licensing it, they simply –- immediately –- deleted the article.

But lots of people find themselves in that position, sadly; what made Bell’s post worthwhile was the story of how he learned to never work for free, because of an object lesson he received from his godmother at the age of thirteen. I’m not going to copy it here — follow the link above and read the entire thing, it’s not long — but I wanted you to see it because it can never be said too often: your creative work has value. Honestly, we ought to make that lesson a little more compact, but for some reason those that don’t value your work get pissy when you tell them Fuck you, pay me.

Gotta clean out the spam filters, they’re piling up. Time for the Spam of the day lightning round!

Hey, Missed e-mails phenomenally

Liar.

©GOOGLE E-MAIL LOTTERY PROMOTION INETRNATIONAL LOTTERY SECTION (E) SPAIN 2015. Attn: Winner

Enormous liar.

Chat with 20000 Russian and Ukrainian Beauties

While your stock photos are enticing, I don’t believe you.

55+ And Looking For An Apartment in Your Area? Click here!

I am not a senior citizen.

Your Account Has Been Limited PayPal ID PP-658-119-347

I don’t have a PayPal account.

Browse Profiles of Local Jewish Singles at JDate

I’m married. Also not Jewish, unless selling my soul to Rosenberg includes a retroactive transitive bar mitzvah.

_______________
¹ Those of you who’ve seen STRIPPED know that he gets a lot of screen time, because he’s got a lot of smart, interesting things to say. The hivemind made up of Fred Schroeder and Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett chose well in making him one of the central voices in the film.

² And its corollary: when the work has already been run by somebody that assumed you’d be fine with exposure, the proper response is I don’t care that you took it down, you ran it already and that costs money; my invoice is on its way.

Must be the incipient Halloween, when the dead walk, but we’ve got some revivals to mention today.

Let us note that a new A Softer World may be found today, on the topic of Halloween. Second, the Cartoon Art Museum (which, as we noted recently, is not so much gone as couch-surfing until it finds its own place again) announced that it will be at a new Disney fan event, Mouse-Con, on 15 November in Concord, CA.

But the big news is twofold.

Firstly, the long-hiatused Achewood sees a return of sorts today. Specifically, the Achewood in-character blogs, which have been on hiatus more than two years¹, see a new post from Peter “Nice Pete” Cropes². It is a meditation on life, death, the passage of time, Meyer lemon curd, and gluten-free pastry. It is the best thing that you could possibly read today, unless you scrolled down through Nice Pete’s archives to rediscover his thoughts on the topic of Rachael Ray.

And secondly, that Homestar Runner’s annual Halloween cartoon is out and — as usual — the costumes are excellent as well as being deep cuts. I’d say my favorite is probably Homestar himself as [spoiler — see below the cut], The Cheat as [spoiler], or The Poopsmith as [spoiler].

Happy Halloween (early), don’t forget to turn your clocks back this weekend (USA only) and remember to change the batteries in your smoke detectors. See you all on Monday.

Spam of the day:

Dear Sir/Ma, September 2015 Invoice is yet to be paid and we are sending you a reminder. Attached is September Invoice #7446-483 kindly review and have this settled.

That’s odd, I don’t remember doing business with an anonymous company in Lithuania. Let me just click on this completely innocuous document link so I can clear this up!

_______________
¹ Last strip update: 7 April 2014. Last blog updates: Emeril, 12 May 2006; Lil’ Nephew and Lyle, 4 May 2008; Molly, 29 July 2008; Ray, 12 December 2008; Cornelius Bear, 4 April 2009; Pat, 6 April 2009; Téodor, 16 July 2012; Roast Beef, 25 October 2013.

² Nice Pete last updated on 6 October 2013.

(more…)

Where to start, where to start?

• How about with the elephant¹ in the Bethsda Marriott hotel ballroom, where it was noticed that the famed bricks that represent the Ignatz Awards all went to women. Before any arrested man-children start bawling their delicious, delicious tears that this is everything wrong with feminazis ruing comics and making things nobody wants to read, they would do well to remember:
  1. The Ignatzen are voted on by everybody attending SPX, which attracts a sizable and diverse crowd.
  2. The nominees range from low-circulation minicomics to critically- popularly-acclaimed works that have large print runs and are obtainable in any bookstore in the country.
  3. Nothing about this prevents you from continuing to read your masturbatory power fantasies, so quit acting like this is a zero-sum game².

  Looking back at the nominations, for instance, I failed to notice that of the five of the nominees in the Outstanding Online Comic, none identify explicitly as male³. A quick scan of the other categories show that women made up pretty much 50% of all the nominations (40% here, 60% there, some teams and group efforts make attempts at calculation necessarily inexact; I’ll note that Promising New Talent was 80% ladies).

  Still, there’s a long way to go from a hell of a gender-balanced slate of nominees to it’s Ladies Night in Comictown, and the simplest explanation is that this year, the work that spoke most to the audience happened to be made by women in each case. So congratulations to Emily Carroll, Eleanor Davis, Sophie Goldstein (×2), Jillian Tamaki, Sophia Foster-Dimino (×3), and Lilli Carré.

• It’s pretty much inarguable that one of the most important tools in the business plan of a web/indy-comics creator (or creator of any sort) is crowdfunding, and that the dominant platform in that space is Kickstarter. So it’s pretty damn encouraging to see that the people that run Kickstarter are in no hurry to run up the valuation, float an IPO, cash out with a dumptruck full of money, and watch from the sidelines as the need to make tech-bubble levels of profit screws over the user base.

  In fact, they’ve just made that worst-case outcome pretty much impossible, and they’ve got the legal structure to enforce it:

  Kickstarter Inc is no more. We’re now Kickstarter PBC — a Public Benefit Corporation. We’re thrilled to share this news, and we’d love to take a minute to tell you exactly what it means.

  Until recently, the idea of a for-profit company pursuing social good at the expense of shareholder value had no clear protection under U.S. corporate law, and certainly no mandate. Companies that believe there are more important goals than maximizing shareholder value have been at odds with the expectation that for-profit companies must exist ultimately for profit above all.

  Benefit Corporations are different. Benefit Corporations are for-profit companies that are obligated to consider the impact of their decisions on society, not only shareholders. Radically, positive impact on society becomes part of a Benefit Corporation’s legally defined goals. [empahsis mine]

  That’s from an email that you probably received if you’ve ever dealt with Kickstarter, or you could read the story at the New York Times if you prefer. If you want to see how Kickstarter is interpreting their positive social impact, you can read their PBC charter here.

  Interestingly, the Kickstarter board is going extra-strong on the public benefit and transparency. The PBC structure requires them to report every other year on how they meet their charter’s goals, but they’ve also defined themselves as a B Corporation; that’s a voluntary designation that requires annual reports on their social goals, as well as some fairly rigorous environmental standards. What it all amounts to is that the people in charge of Kickstarter not only recognize what made it a success, they want to preserve it rather than abandoning it to unchecked capitalist exploitation. Good for them, and good for all of us.

• And for those of you that like geeky things and leave the house occasionally, Jorge Cham has some news for you:
  

  It’s #ThePHDMovie2 premiere week! Pass it on! >20 screenings this week including @CERN @DukeU and more: http://phdcomics.com/movie/#screenings

  Doesn’t look like any of those screenings will be at TopatoCon, but given that it appears that Cham will be conducting a Q&A and signing at CERN in that time frame, I suppose we can forgive him. Just one request for everybody working the LHC, though: if you want to show off for Jorge, please don’t do so by pressing the Big Red Button that says Generate Black Hole, Suck Earth In. Thanks.

Spam of the day:

Hello pecker 8-) i need s3x right now i’m not picky!!

“[N]ot picky”? Are … are you negging me? Am I getting the same approach that MRA dipshits think works on women?

______________
¹ Fun fact: elephant society is matriarchal in nature; the females that have lived the breadth of life’s experiences are what holds the culture together. I’m sure this has absolutely nothing to do with anything we’re talking about today.

² One might address a parallel thought towards those that are bitching about Viola Davis’s speech at the Emmys last last night.

³ One, Ariel Ries of Witchy, uses the pronoun they; the others describe themselves in bios using explicitly female pronouns or depict themselves in their comics as women.