Okay, who’s up for something absolutely friggin’ beautiful today? The first Abominable Charles Christopher book is up for pre-order, leading to a few thoughts in no particular order:

• Dang, that’s pretty
• Via Kerschl’s twitter, a peek at the gatefold from the back of the book
• Rassa-frassin’ exchange rate parity — I remember when pricing in Canadian dollars meant a significantly smaller number in ‘Merican bucks
• Along those lines, PayPal apparently believes that today’s exchange rate is approximately 2.5% less favorable than it actually is; if you feel like trying to time your purchase to daily fluctuations (or would rather let your credit card company take the skim instead of PayPal), there’s an option that allows we Staties to charge the purchase in Canadian

In other news …

• Robert Tracy is a busy dude. Over at Webcomics Community, there’s what might be the first attempt to determine from an actual survey whether or not shaking hands at a con is a vector for disease. Given the lack of reported outbreaks from PAX East (thanks to the semi-official no-handshake policy) despite an outbreak of poop disease, and given some anecdotal reports that some who attended last weekend’s MoCCA Art Fest (which had no such prohibition) are feeling under-the-weather heading into this weekend’s C2E2, the answer can’t come soon enough.

  Then on top of that, Tracy posted a big-damn-interview with Chris Crosby yesterday — lot of stuff there, worth reading through to understand one of the long runners of webcomics.

• Another guy doing a lot of good for the community? Frumph (or Philip M. Hofer if you’re his mom). Spontaneous tributes to his skills flow like water, and he’s just done a rebuild of Shortpacked! that shows exactly how powerful the WordPress/ComicPress combo is. What made me really want to point out his work, though, is my recent experience loading that very feature-rich Shortpacked homepage on my phone — fast, clean, acting pretty much like on my desktop. I just figured it was time for a little Frumph-love (most places, you gotta pay extra for the Frumph-love).
• Recognition achieved: Todd Allen has been inducted into the Mystery Writers of America for his webcomic, Division and Rush:
  

  Oh, don’t be so shocked. It’s not like I’m the first. Tim Broderick’s not just a member, he’s VP of the Mid-West chapter and he’s best known for his Odd Jobs webcomic. You can even get the collected print edition of Odd Jobs at the Chicago Public Library. (I did.) I also somehow doubt that Dick Tracy, Ms. Tree or Road to Perdition were held against Max Allan Collins, even if Collins was already an accomplished novelist prior to his comics work.

  Moral of the story: times are changing and definitions of professional credentials are changing. The Mystery Writers of America accept that professional writing is professional writing, be it prose, a movie/television script or a comic strip. And it’s an affirming thing to be recognized by your higher profile peers and be told “yes, you’re a professional just like us.”

• Finally, and only peripherally related to webcomics, this from the mailbag … JG Brin attempts the impossible:
  

  [A]bout a week or so ago, you linked to David Morgan-Mar’s post where he gave his views on the board game Monopoly. Well, I’ve waited for nigh on a half-fortnight for someone in the webcomics world to provide a rebuttal, but to no avail. I fear the responsibility has landed on me. While I don’t feel worthy, I’ve nevertheless taken a shot at it, in the hopes of defending the virtue of my favorite board game.

From my reading, Brin likes those aspects of Monopoly that most (right-thinking) people loathe about the “game”, but let it never be said that we at Fleen won’t give full time to contrary views. Monopoly-haters, meet your principled opposition.