Want to know about a miracle of modern medicine? Megatokyo¹ creator Fred Gallagher has been under treatment for the past several months for a fairly serious heart arrhythmia, the sort that makes the one and only ticker you’ve got work far harder than it should, to push far less blood than it should, and which has the effect of making your life shorter than it should be. The good news is that the right sorts of arrhythmias can be treated by burning out the portions of the heart that are screwing up with lasers². The even better news is that Gallagher got lasered³ last week and is already feeling better.

Speaking as somebody with a mild cardiac arrhythmia of my own (not one that causes damage, but which freaks people out who take my pulse, and which could kill me if somebody ever tried to fix it with drugs), I appreciate Gallagher’s reaction to waking up and finding that his heartbeat just doesn’t feel the same way it has his whole life — it’s the sort of thing that tends to make an impression. Anybody that doesn’t think that, I can change your mind. Hell, I can change your heartbeat right now.

Put your hand on your heart. Take a minute and really get a feel for that ba-dump, ba-dump that’s been there your whole life. Take a deep breath in and savor it. When you’re ready, read the next sentence.

Some day, your heartbeat is going to stop.

Okay, okay, calm down, it ain’t happening today (probably). But that thudding you felt, maybe a skipped beat or two? That’s what Gallagher’s lived with his entire life, until last week. It’s a heartbeat designed to deal with an immediate stressor, like a lion that wants to eat you; it’s not supposed to stay that way for decades at a time. It’ll be months — maybe a year — of medication that’s designed to make his heart relax, take a break, get its strength back before he can be said to be back to normal … but it’s something that can happen. Congratulations to Fred Gallagher, and here’s hoping that you find yourself feeling as good as you were supposed to all this time, except that your stupid heart had to be all stupid and stubborn and stupid again.

• Did we mention that Boulet is doing diary comics of his time in America, without the customary years-long wait to translate from French to English. They’re really awesome.
• As has been established many, many times in the past, I loves me some Digger, and nothing will ever get me to give up the collection of trade reprints on my shelf. Or so I thought:
  

  The downside (and the reason we haven’t done it already) is that hardcover omnibuseseses require a big chunk of cash up front—we’re talking a big print job here, on the order of the Bone omnibus edition, and that does not run cheap…. So, in a couple of weeks, we’ll be Kickstartering!

  Dammit! Now I gotta find room on my shelf, grumble grumble, friggin’ creators giving me what I didn’t know I wanted all along. News on the Kickstarter as soon as it launches.

• This page has been remiss in not mentioning Ian Jones-Quartey (once of RPG World, presently of many things including the voice of Wallow), but he’s fixed that right the hell up. Yesterday, two separate cartoons that he’s involved in — Lakewood Plaza Turbo and Rebecca Sugar’s Steven Universe (on which he’s the Creative Director) — hit the webs. The Cartoon Network site that hosts ‘em is presently down, but you can see the Steven Universe pilot on YouTube until CN gets their act together.

  I’ve been lucky enough to know Ian since his days at SVA, and ever since his thesis film I’ve been amazed at not just how good an animator he is, but how well he can tell a story in animation. The really great animators aren’t necessarily the ones with the best drafting skills, they’re the ones that can lay out all the pieces and parts, assemble the right talent, get the visuals and sound and voices to meld together into something greater than the sum of its parts.

  The fact that Mr J-Q collaborates so often with Ms Sugar (who may be one of the best two or three animators in the country right now) just magnifies the talents that each of them bring to the table. Keep an eye on everything they touch — it’s going to be gold.

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¹ Which I should have stopped reading long ago because I really can’t follow the story without archive binges of hundreds of strips, but I still drop by every other month or so.

² Actually, there are several different ways of implementing ablative therapy and I don’t know that lasers were used in this case, but it’s the future and lasers are cool. Not that it’s not already cool enough that doctors can thread miniature instrument packages into your heart from blood vessels in your legs without killing you — that’s pretty damn cool, actually.

³ Admit it, you want to be able to say that you’ve been lasered and survived.

Having picked up a copy at my local comic shop over the weekend, I was going to tell you what I thought of We Can Fix It today, but then I made the mistake of reading The AV Club and saw that Noel Murray said everything I wanted to, only better:

A clever, poignant twist on the autobio comics format, Jess Fink’s We Can Fix It!: A Time Travel Memoir (Top Shelf) ponders what would happen if the author went back in time to warn her younger selves not to make so many dumb mistakes, whether it be trusting the wrong boy, taking the wrong drug, or acting rudely toward her mother. [...] The result is a book in which Fink treats her own life as a series of loosely connected vignettes, open to different interpretations depending on who she’s become by the time she looks back at them. This isn’t just an effective way to handle autobiography, it’s one with a touching take on the interconnectedness of people’s best and worst moments.

That’s much better than what I was able to come up, which isn’t really a surprise given that Murray is a nationally-regarded culture critic and all. In any event, I’m more than happy to point you towards words that may convince you to read We Can Fix It, as I think it’s something everybody should do. It’s smart and funny and sweet and wise and full of joy and hurt and sexy, sexy time-travel jumpsuits. Give it to the person in your life that needs to be reassured that none of us has all the answers, but that’s okay.

• Hail to our new overlords protectors, I meant protectors. Wes Citti and Tony Wilson, previously best known for making some amazing soup, have decided to branch out into technology and are Kickstarting the entire process. I must say, their campaign to build an orbital death ray is going to throw off my Kickstarter models, what with having backer tiers up to the US$100,000,000,000 level and a total goal that could be expressed as approximately 4% of US GDP.

  Going by the Fleen Fudge Factor for Kickstart predictions¹, Wes and Tony are on track for reaching their second stretch goal. On the other hand, I expect the usual delays in delivering on the promised rewards, so don’t hold your breath that the world will be destroyed until at least six months after the predicted doomsday.

• Readers of this page should be well familiar with Zahra’s Paradise from :01 Books, which launched back in 2010 and saw print eighteen months later; for those who are new around here, it’s the work of semi-anonymous political exiles commenting on life in Iran since the discredited elections of 2009. When the state has taken your child and you’ve finally retrieved his body, what more is there to fight for?

  The thing about elections, even in places where only the vestiges of democracy exist, is that they come around again. Zahra may not be a real person (although her experiences mirror those of far, far too many people in Iran), but that hasn’t stopped her from taking a stand in this election cycle. Vote4Zahra chronicles the story since “the end” as Zahra declares herself a candidate for President and speaks truth to the clerics that hold power in a country made up predominantly of youth eager to engage with the world. Here’s hoping her message makes its way to where it can encourage those who need encouragement.

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¹ Look at the Kicktraq prediction afer two days of funding, and at the trend prediction; most projects will hit somewhere between 1/3 and 1/6 of the prediction.

Dare we hope? And just in time for FunkyWatch May?

• I already knew I was going to tell you today about the launch of the Skin Horse Book 4 Kickstarter once I saw some late-night tweets on Friday about it going live over the weekend; as I believe this page has established, I likes me some Skin Horse. What I didn’t expect was to find myself quoted in the Kickstarter video. I gotta confess, even having been asked to provide quotes, blurbs, forwards, and the like a fair number of times, it’s a little thrill every time I see that somebody might actually care for my opinion-mongerings. Although, ahem.

  I shouldn’t get snarky, not when Jeffrey Wells and Shaenon Garrity¹ entertain me so wonderfully for free six days a week, when they offer up original art as a supporter reward², and when backers get the opportunity to attend a freakin’ TIKI PARTY at the tiki shack that Ms Garrity has had built in her backyard for the express purpose of gettin’ messed up on fruity drinks in mugs with faces on them. I’m pretty sure that no other webcomicker has ever allowed a prize of Come get drunk at my house which means you will know where I live, meaning that Ms Garrity is either slightly foolhardy, trusts absolutely in her fanbase, or has mysterious Funk Queen powers that protect her from all harm. I’m betting on that third one.

• Merch alert for those going to Phoenix Comicon this weekend: Andrew Hussie’s legion of devoted fans³ are about to discover the majesty that is the Chris Yates handmade puzzle line as a collection of GOD TIER BAFFLER!s is placed on sale and promptly sells out ten minutes later. If you make it past the Homestucks to the rest of the TopatoCo table, tell ‘em I said hi.
• Speaking of TopatoCo, KC Green won’t be there, presumably because he’s busy scripting new Regular Show comics in the wake of the success of issue #1. Let’s put this in perspective: the highest-selling comic of April 2013 had something like 132,000 copies sold, and that was Batman. Green has put a new comic, aimed at kids, at fully half the sales of the marquee book of the most-recognized character in the country. That never happens. Everybody feel good for KC, or Mr Green if you’re nasty.

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¹ Funk Queen of Everything That Will Survive When All East Of The San Andreas Drops Into The Atlantic.

² Now at the entirely more-appropriate US$100 backer level; previous efforts by Ms Garrity have criminally undervalued her originals.

³ Or Elite Shock Troops of the Forthcoming Purification, take your pick.

Are you ready for the weekend? I am. Let’s do some quick clean-up on the news and get outta here.

• They say LA is an unforgiving town, built around the entertainment industry, not kind to those who aren’t Botoxed, rich, and connected. So how to explain LA Weekly naming Jorge Cham to its annual list of the most interesting people in LA¹, a list which includes the likes of models, porn stars, fashion designers, athletes and actors? Oh, maybe because it also features the likes of George Takei and Bobak Ferdowsi, so there’s room in there for the geek-friendly. Cham’s journey from robots to cartoons to generalized high-ed boosting is a feel-good story, one which just might get him a table in the hot restaurants and clubs for a week or two.
• Speaking of LA, a quick fact on the upcoming Capture Creatures show at Gallery Nucleus; Frank Gibson has shared with us that if you’re lucky enough to snag one of the151 different paintings that Becky Dreistadt will have on display, it’ll set you back a thematically-appropriate US$151. For a five-by-seven (inches) original, that’s a damn bargain.
• If you have anything to do with writing about [web]comics, you should have an ironclad rule: When Dave Roman sends you announcement about a project he’s involved with, pay attention to that. In this case, Roman has teamed up with his Kids Comics Revolution podcasting partner (Jerzy Drozd, and not the one that makes bass guitars), his former partner in the heyday of the now-shuttered Nickelodeon magazine (Chris Duffy, and not the baseball player or the other baseball player)², and the Ann Arbor District Library to honor the best of all-ages comics for 2012:
  

  From now through June 23rd, 2013, kids vote online at http://www.kidscomicsrevolution.com or by filling out the paper ballot at the Toronto Comics Art Festival or the Kids Read Comics celebration. Voting will be filmed and posted online. Results will be announced June 23rd at a special ceremony during the Kids Read Comics celebration at the Ann Arbor District Library.

  Categories include four variations on Favorite Graphic Novel, two variations on Favorite Comic Book Series, Favorite Cartoonist/Author, and four categories not likely to make it to the Eisners: Cutest Character, Best Hair in Comics, Grossest Thing in Comics, and Special Award for Excellence in Drawing Delicious-Looking Food (I must admit I’m particularly interested in the results of those). Oh, yes, and there’s also Favorite Webcomic category, with nods given to:

  • Cucumber Quest by Gigi D.G.
  • Nemu*Nemu by Aurdra Furuichi and Scott Yoshinaga
  • Nedroid Picture Diary by Anthony Clark
  • Ellie on the Planet X by James Anderson
  • My Sister, the Freak by Dani Jones

  Strong slate, and similarly well thought out throughout the other categories. Well done, Messers Duffy, Drozd, Roman, and everybody at AADL, and here’s hoping that we see the Second Annual KCR! Awards become even bigger and more prestigious.

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¹ Which is not to say that we at Fleen think that Cham couldn’t succeed on LA’s traditional terms. Little nip here, a tuck there, he could headline a Bravo series about Real Engineers of Pasadena.

² While Chris Duffy doesn’t strike me as too uncommon a name, I would have been really surprised by the fact that there are two guys out there named Jerzy Drozd were it not for some other, equally-improbable repeats that I’m aware of.

One of these days I’ma have to add a category for Kickstarter around these parts, ’cause I sure talk about it a lot.

• If webcomics didn’t exist, something tells me that Phil Foglio, beloved uncle figure of independent comics, would have had to create them. He and creative collaborator/life partner/fellow mad scientist Kaja Foglio have been prominent converts from dead-tree publishing (after a decades-long career, mind you) to producing their flagship work, Girl Genius from the finest quality of pixels and collecting for print afterwards.

  This is not a new endeavour! Story development started twenty damn years ago, and at this point Girl Genius has existed as a web-then-print comic for going on twice as long as it was print-only. Eleven volumes totalling nearly 1500 pages are already in print, and by my reading of the story (every Mon-Wed-Fri, with binges every time a new volume comes out) we might be approaching the midpoint of the overall story¹.

  In all that time, Professor and Professoressa Foglio have entirely self-financed and published their work, but when Kickstarter exists and makes for such a handy pre-order and financing platform, they’d be silly not to take advantage of it. Actually, “silly” is probably pretty high up on any list of adjectives applied to P&P F, but when the choice is Use Kickstarter to avoid fronting some fifty grand to print a book and Nah, let’s be silly and pay the equivalent of a college education ourselves, again, I think silly is overrated.

  Thus Girl Genius Volume 12, nearly 200 pages of full-color comics, is getting the crowdfund treatment, with the additional benefit that exceeding the US$55,000 goal means older volumes can be revived from the out-of-print doldrums, and the Foglio children get to eat more than once a day for the rest of the year. Win-win! Since the campaign went live yesterday, it’s on the cusp of US$34,000 (or 61%) funded, with a relatively brief 17 days to go.

  That’s right, the Foglios allotted themselves less than three weeks to raise their funds, which I’m guessing may have the effect of damping the usual wild swings in successful Kickstarts. Most of them have a huge first two or three days, drop to a low, sustained funding rate, and pick up in the last week. With such a short turnaround, I think GGV12 may not have the time to see the dropoff, and may well have a more uniform intake rate.

  In any event, I think it may well perform closer to the 3 side of the Fleen Fudge Factor² as applied to Kicktraq predictions. If you’re still on the fence about pre-ordering, consider that back volumes run US$23 + shipping, whereas a softcover of GGV12 will be yours for US$30, and it’ll be between 25% and 50% larger than those older books. BARGAIN OF THE YEAR, people.

• I held off as late as I could before posting yesterday, and so missed by mere hours some details on the Capture Creatures books that I wanted to share with you. See, the book wasn’t so much delayed as it was waiting to be part of a package deal, as the Benign Kingdom founders are back in the art book game — only this time instead of a common book, they’re producing a themed set of books. From Becky & Frank, the aforementioned Capture Creatures collection. From Yuko Ota and Evan Dahm, the eagerly-awaited Exquisite Beast collection. And from KC Green, a second volume of his Midnight Surprise artblog.

  Each book is available individually in softcover or deluxe hardcover and in three-book combos³ and in a break from past B9K offerings, stretch goals aren’t being used to make the books better. The deluxe books are full-bore awesome and available right from the start without any wondering if goal would be exceeded enough to get the better paper, the embossing, or any of the other enhancements.

  I’m also interested to see how this campaign does compared to the first B9 collection (which featured the same creators) — what if, hypothetically, you were a huge KC Green fan but didn’t like the others? Would Green’s work comprising a quarter of the book’s content be enough to get your support? With the Midnight Monsters collection, that Green uberfan can back a Green-only book, but also contribute towards the making of the other two books. How this campaign goes may well help determine the production decisions of future B9 efforts.

• The third webcomics Kickstart to launch yesterday was Rob Balder’s latest Erfworld project, which serves the dual purpose of getting something to the strip’s fans this year (neither the illustrated nor the mostly-text storylines that are alternating at Erfworld presently is finished, making it difficult to put a collection together) while simultaneously providing a breaking-in period for a new Erfworld artist.

  David Hahn will be taking over for Xin Ye, and E is for Erfworld will give him time to get his style on-model. Balder did a soft launch of the fundraiser to past project backers and saw the totals exceed 200% of goal in less than a day; I think that Hahn’s going to be getting a lot of practice in pretty soon.

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¹ By the time it’s done, Girl Genius will probably be about about as long as the standard-bearer for impossibly-long indy comics, Cerebus the Aardvark, with 100% less batshit insanity on the part of the creators.

² Namely, look at the Kicktraq prediction afer two days of funding, and at the trend prediction; most projects will hit somewhere between 1/3 and 1/6 of the prediction, which in GGv12′s case means somewhere between 95% and 190% of goal. Since it’s a stone certainty that the Foglios will make goal, I’m going to predict GGv12 is closer to 190%, meaning the majority of stretch goals will be met, and the majority of back volumes get restocked.

³ I didn’t notice any two-book combos but come on — who’s going to want to exclude one of these three books?

There’s some really neat stuff for you today, kids. Let’s jump into it.

• More details on the Capture Creatures gallery show in June, which we teased two weeks back. First off, you may have noticed that said Creatures are appearing on the website at a furious pace, Becky Dreistadt having finished all 151 paintings some time ago; today’s installment is #121, meaning only 30 to go, meaning 17 creatures will still be unposted when the show/book pre-launch hits on 1 June:
  

  LA’s Gallery Nucleus will host the early book release and gallery show on June 1st at 7:00pm: all 151 creature paintings will be on display and available for purchase, along with a yet-to-be-announced resin ?gure, prints, and larger mystery pieces. Opening night features both Becky and Frank signing, as well as complementary drinks, snacks and secret musical guests; the show itself runs through June 23rd.

  That’s from a press release, so no link, but party details are at the Gallery Nucleus site. Unfortunately, the show was scheduled for a time when it was anticipated the book would be done but some delays hit and it’s not done. However, given the track record that Becky Dreistadt and Frank Gibson have on their books, not to mention the fact that it’s coming from the quality factory of Benign Kingdom¹, I’m not terribly concerned about anything other than the fact that I don’t already have the book in my hands right now.

  Also, Becky and Frank need to get one of their gallery shows to launch in New York already so I have a chance at purchasing paintings before they’re snapped up by other people; on the off chance that your favorite Creature isn’t snapped up by somebody else, chances are you can purchase it from Dreistadt’s artist page at Gallery Nucleus.

  In the meantime, Gibson was kind enough to share with Fleen readers an as-yet unseen Creature, Bechder, who may be spied at the top of the page. He’s all badgery, so I’m guessing he’s an Earth type, but with that smoke/steam coming from his mouth there might also be some Fire in his makeup. Am I doing this right? I never got into Pokémon so I’m new to all this lingo.

• Speaking of B9, it’s well known that lurking just behind the scenes is a tactical genius named George Rohac. As it happens, George² and I happened to be talking about ten days back under social circumstances; nothing formal, no notes taken, and we were having some excellent drinks, which is why I didn’t share with you the news he shared with me that night.

  However, Heidi Mac is all over the story today so you probably ought to know that George has left Oni Press (where he got a passel of webcomickers to do projects) for What Pumpkin Studios, aka Homestuck Intergalatic Headquarters. Just in case you were wondering how Andrew Hussie could conquer the internet even more than he already had, there’s your answer. Between WP and B9 and all the side advice that he hands out, George is practically synonymous with webcomic-related Kickstarts, with an estimated 30+ campaigns under his belt and (by my rough accounting) somewhere north of US$4.0 million in total funds raised.

• Two pieces of merch to point you towards, one real and one hypothetical. Firstly, let me point you towards the LympheDIVAs, which markets specialty clothing for survivors of breast cancer — a side effect of treatment can lead to swelling and chronic inflammation in the arms. There’s no treatment for lymphedema, but compression sleeves can help control the condition and help prevent it from progressing.

  Like a lot of medical clothing, compression sleeves tended to be uncomfortable and ugly, and there’s no reason to put up with that nonsense. Comfortable, fashionable sleeves and gauntlets are what LympheDIVAs set out to make, and the designs are visually stunning.

  They’ve just launched a new product family designs by mad pixelmancer R Stevens, with the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network³ getting a portion of each sale of 8-Bit Owl, Pixel Hearts, Pixel Skulls, and Red Robot. It’s not easy to make a stretchy garment retain a blocky, pixel look when it can be pulled in various directions, but it appears that Stevens and LympheDIVAs have done so (not that I should have doubted — my Red Robot socks look great, even on my weirdly asymmetric feet). Here’s where I’d send you all to a store and tell you to buy, but I sincerely hope that you never need to.

  On the theoretical end of things, I think that Hurricane Erika simply must — must — make the smiley-face panties shown halfway down the latest entry⁴ at Oh Joy, Sex Toy [probably NSFW]. For those not willing to click the link, here’s a clip of the relevant panel [almost certainly SFW]. Just get the little Yay! speech balloon on the front and your sexytimes will get 37% sexier.

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¹ Unofficial motto: Makers of fine qualities since 2011.

² While the Fleen Manual of Style dictates that on second and subsequent references, individuals should be predominantly referred to by their family names, there are exceptions to every rule and George is one of them. It just doesn’t work to call him Rohac, or Mr Rohac, or even Éogeorge of the Riders of Rohac. He’s just George.

³ Pancreatic may be the most miserable, evil bastard in the cancer family, if I may be allowed a moment of unwarranted anthopomorphization. It has poor treatment options, fast progression, aggressive metastasizive tendencies, and it kills in amounts that even Red Robot #C-63 would find excessive. It’s not particularly linked to lymphedema, but if Stevens wants to take a chunk out of pancreatic cancer, I say more power to him; I hope he gives it a good curbstomping.

⁴ So to speak.

Readers of this page may recall that we at Fleen (which readers of this page will surely know is just a fancy-pants way of referring to me as there ain’t really anybody else ’round these parts) have participated in a peripheral way with the National Cartoonists Society’s annual division awards re: webcomics, and may also recall that the NCS gives out said awards during Memorial Day weekend (which I was privileged to attend last year).

What you might not recall is that this year, the NCS is doing something really neat in conjunction with Reubens Weekend that is pretty awesome. Given that said weekend is taking place in Pittsburgh, it’s a no-brainer that the NCS would team up with the home-town comics heavyweight, The Toonseum. More specifically, The Toonseum (in conjunction with San Francisco’s Cartoon Art Museum, also a favorite of this page) will be having an exhibition of original artwork by Reuben winners, nearly 70 years worth:

This is the first time in the organization’s history that original art from these legendary artists has been assembled in one exhibition. Rare works seldom seen by the public from artists such as Gary Larson of Far Side, Charles M. Schulz of Peanuts, and many more will be displayed.

The exhibit is part of a celebration of comic and cartoon arts as the National Cartoonists Society brings their annual conference to Pittsburgh for the first time.

A special VIP fundraising opening reception will take place on Thursday, May 23rd as part of a weekend-long celebration of the comic and cartoon arts. Information on the VIP event tickets can be found at http://comicvip.eventbrite.com/.VIP tickets also include reserved seating for panel discussions on Sunday, May 26th, a signed limited edition print, meet and greet, and much more!

For everybody else, The Toonseum will be turning its corner of Pittsburgh into a street party on the 900 block of Liberty Avenue on Sunday, 26 May, from noon to 5:00pm. Street fun is free, and the usual five dollar admission price gets you into The Toonseum for the exhibit (and signings with many, many artists), and twenty bucks will get you into panel discussions at the Bricolage Theater.

If you live anywhere near Pittsburgh, I cannot urge you strongly enough to try to take in this show. What the heck, it’s a long weekend, you can skip one afternoon of cookouts for a once-in-a-lifetime event like this. Sadly, I’ve got EMT duty that weekend (everybody’s got to do their turn on holidays), so you’ll have to tell me how it was.

I swear by all that I hold dear, some day I will make it to Chris Butcher’s little slice of early-May comics-related heaven. In the meantime, just look for the reports of anybody that was there and once again it appears to have been a success beyond the usual superlatives. There aren’t many situations where I take pronouncements like Best show ever at face value, but in the case of TCAF I can’t ignore the overwhelming consensus. Welcome home everybody that was in the Tee-Oh for the weekend, now get back to entertaining me for free.

• It’s never been the most reliable of updaters, Instant Classic, even going so far as to run an update with the helpful annotation Believe it or not, I have the next 4 or 5 comics drawn. Exciting times! and then not supplying the next strip for just about exactly a year. But irregular updates have never dissuaded me, and even those that are likely never coming back will cause me to peek in from time to time, just to make sure, if they’re good enough.

  And that’s the thing about Instant Classic — however much Brian Carroll may find life (or filmmaking) interrupting him, he’s always going to come back to the comic, because he’s still got story to share. Yesterday marked the first decade of telling that story, in fits, starts, always returning until it’s done. Here’s to as many stories as he has to tell, and however long they take to share.

• Readers of this page may be familiar with one MC Frontalot, official rapper of webcomics and all-around nerdcore badass. When he decided to make his latest official video, the question was what form it should take. Given that he’s commissioned half of webcomics to do art for his various albums, it was probably a no brainer to call upon the drawin’, comickin’, and animatin’ wonders, Carly Monardo (various art for Dr McNinja, coincidentally written and drawn by her husband) and Lauren Monardo Gramprey (BrainFood Comics, Perhapanauts, and coincidentally Carly’s twin sister).

  Said video went live last night, and you may now enjoy I’ll Form The Head [AV] (from 2011′s Solved) in all of its mid-’80s evoking glory. Seriously, if this doesn’t make you want to slip on some feetie pajamas and curl up in front of the TV with a big bowl of cereal, then I guess you weren’t born around 1978. Neither was I, but don’t judge me.

But first, a quick correction; yesterday we at Fleen implied that all-around creator-owned comics superstar¹ Jim Zub got his gig writing a two-part digital-first Batman story as a consequence of not burning bridges when he got cut (publicly and foolishly) as the writer on Birds of Prey before an issue had even been completed. Mr Zub informs us that in fact the Batman gig predated the BoP fiasco²; however, the lesson remains: be classy and professional at all times as it’s better for your career. Whenever faced with a dilemma about how to proceed, ask yourself What would Zub do? and then do that³.

• TCAF! The Toronto Comics Arts Festival kicks off this weekend at the Toronto Reference Library and other nearby venues (programming also takes place in the Toronto Marriott and the Pilot Tavern, each mere steps from the TRL), and it is totally free to attend. So many webcomickers and natural allies are going to be there that it’s probably easier to list out who isn’t there this weekend; there are sixty-six book debuting, and panels out the wazoo. Here’s just what caught my eye:

  Saturday, 9:30-10:15, TRL Novella Room; Toon Books Storytime Celebration Featuring Frank Viva, Frank Cammusso, Francoise Mouly
  Cartoon Books needs to find a way to hire Frank Gibson so they can have just one more Frankish name on this panel.

  Saturday, 1:30–2:30pm, Marriott Forest Hills Ballroom; Moebius, Past and Future
  If you can’t find Aaron Diaz⁴ on Saturday afternoon, it’s because he’ll be in the first row of this panel.

  Saturday, 10:00-11:00, Pilot Tavern; Crowdfunding Comics
  This has the potential to be the first Kickstarter-themed panel that isn’t attended primarily by a bunch of haven’t-created-anything-yet-give-me-money types. If not, panelists like Spike and Holly Rowland will put ‘em straight. If they can’t be put straight, 10:00am is not too early for a grizzled comics pro to start drinking and oh look, we’re already in a bar, so watch if, all you h-c-a-y-g-m-m types.

  Saturday, 1:30–2:30pm, Pilot Tavern; Machine of Death Pictionary!
  Always a big draw (ha, ha; oh god I’m sorry); I look forward to seeing the video of this one.

  Sunday, 1:30–2:30pm, TRL Learning Centre 1; Spotlight: Lisa Hanawalt
  Did Tom Spurgeon manage to sneak his killer robots across the border? Signs point to yes.

  Sunday, 11:00-12:00, Pilot Tavern; Is Comics Blogging Over?
  Uh oh; comics bloggers and booze.

  Hmmm, that’s six down and sixty more to go. That’s right, there are as many panels as there are debut books. COINCIDENCE??⁵

• On the off chance that you can’t be in Toronto, but do feel the need to be north of 49 (as they say), Vera Brosgol and friends will be making the trek north to Juneau, Alaska this weekend for puppet-related events, this being the second event in the past month sponsored by Alaska Robotics to bring webcomickers to Juneauans rather than make Juneauans travel far distances to catch up with webcomickers. A grand plan, says I, and I hope to see more creators pulled north by the siren call of whales, glaciers, and the scent of sitka spruce. It is seriously beautiful up there, guys, and if AKR were to invite you, I’d jump on the offer if I were you.
• Finally, a treat for everybody that didn’t take advantage of Ryan Estrada’s Whole Story Winter 2013; you may recall that I reviewed KC Green’s contribution to the choose-your-price comics bundle, The Dog’s Sins, and found it terrific. Speaking with Green last month at MoCCA, he mentioned that he was thinking of putting The Dog’s Sins online in conjunction with a milestone update at Gunshow (aka hugs own, hugs now, ugh snow, uh gowns, and others). That milestone comes today, update #700, and you should go read it now because it’s wonderful, maybe Green’s best work ever (much as I love The Anime Club). Go. Read.

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¹ And, if there’s any justice in the world, soon-to-be plain old superstar, period. Zub’s check with way too many zeros, his just reward for all the things he’s created, should have been in the mail five minutes ago, world.

² My wording, not his; he’s too classy to hold grudges but I have a low and suspicious nature and am not classy in the least.

³ Except if your answer is Write and publish a few dozen issues of Skullkickers, because that ain’t yours to do, Sparky.

⁴ Tolkien and dinosaur scholar par excellence.

⁵ And for a double dose of COINCIDENCE??, Kevin McDonald was in a comedy troupe with Scott Thompson, who will be hosting the Doug Wright Awards in conjunction with TCAF. Once again, COINCIDENCE??

So I’ve been away for a bit, as mentioned last week. For those who were wondering, being married for twenty years and then getting to throw a party for your friends is sort of awesome. But I’m back now, and it seems not a moment too soon, as things are beginning to pile up around here.

• I’d planned on coming back to bloggening today, and even if I hadn’t I would have had to after seeing a blip in my twitterstream last night, the first in 18 months or so from Allie Brosh who is sublimely wonderful and had fallen entirely out of public view. It happens, and in her case, Ms Brosh has shared why it happened and done so in a way that’s honest and brave and makes me want to punch capital-D Depression right in the neck.

  I don’t know if her words+pictures today have helped more people with depression or without — being able to recognize when somebody you know is suffering and being able to help is not a skill that’s widely taught just yet, but damn if this comic isn’t a tremendous first stride. Read it, think about it, go be a shriveled piece of corn for somebody that needs it.

• Also dropping today is the latest Jim Zub project; while he was famously jerked around by DC Comics earlier this year, he was also classy as hell about the whole thing. I’m going to ascribe his newest news to that classy-as-hellness, because I’m not certain that anybody at DC has two functioning neurons to rub together, but they probably recognize kind behavior¹. In any event, Mr Zub is responsible for the writerly portion of a two-part Batman story in a digital-first anthology series, with Part One appearing on devices today and part two next Thursday, 16 May. My only quibble with Zub’s entirely understandable enthusiasm is when he says:
  

  My first published superhero story and first published DC Comics work, Legends of the Dark Knight #49, has been released on digital and mobile platforms and it’s only 99 cents!

  That’s because every time Zub shares his wisdom on making comics and making it in comics (start here, look to the sidebar that says “Tutorials” and don’t stop so long as there are still links to follow), he is himself a goddamn superhero to everybody that loves comics, and don’t you forget it, Zub.

Various new things were introduced while I was gone:

• Comic Chameleon, long awaited, has seen its official launch, meaning that you can download it to your iDevice now and start reading webcomics for free, and with the cooperation of their creators. Well done Bernie Hou and the entire Comic Chameleon team; once I get my Android version you’ll escalate all the way to “Attaboy” status.
• Dante Shepherd, this blog’s favorite Chemical Engineer², has launched a new undertaking and it’s not the second comic (provisionally dubbed PhD Unknown) that’s been hinted at for a few months now. That’s cool, we at Fleen would rather wait until it was done cooking to Shepherd (and art collaborator Joan Cooke)’s standards.

  No, what Shepherd announced was a new initiative to promote interest in and understanding of STEM topics by K-12 educators, who will presumably share their knowledge and enthusiasm with the various rugrats budding scholars who will form the technological basis of future generations. If you happen to know anybody that teaches K-12, do everybody a favor and point ‘em towards Science The World so we can start building a smarter tomorrow.

• Kickstarts have also been underway, with campaigns set for the second volume of The Bear (including a webcomicky presentation of Volume 1 at MyBear.net, as promised recently), the second volume of Dumbing of Age, the first volume of Lady Sabre and the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether, and the revival of the Penny Arcade Downloadable Content podcast.
• That last one has been getting a bunch of (to my mind, ill-informed) pushback, on the grounds that podcasts don’t cost anything and therefore it’s a big scam. Au contraire, mon frère, podcasts do cost something; they cost time, which if Mike Krahulik, Jerry Holkins, and others at Penny Arcade Industries take, they won’t be spending on other things that will generate money.

  Could Jerry and Mike do the podcast without impacting their lavish, Russian mafia-like lifestyles? Probably, but they aren’t just supporting themselves — their efforts are what make payroll for more than a dozen people, and with that kind of responsibility comes Robert Khoo’s responsibility to say, We have to find a way to make it pay. Me, I’m just interested to see if they set the all-time record for highest percentage funding in Kickstarter history, which as of this writing is at an astonishing 570,000% of goal. Okay, granted, that was a ten dollar goal, but let’s not lose sight of the distractingly-large number.

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¹ Much in the way that my dog will be your very best friend if you offer her a treat, but shies away from small children that haven’t learned how to pet gently.

² In keeping with tribal custom, all specific engineering disciplines are capitalized here at Fleen, in acknowledgment of the skills, knowledge, and hard work of those who practice our peculiar intersection of design, intuition, math, science, the right-hand rule³, and blowin’ shit up. Respect.

³ AKA, The engineering gang sign.