Tag: publishing

Preludicrous

Had I known TB was going to gratuitously shill for his next collection of strips in today’s strip, I wouldn’t have plugged his Amazon pre-order page yesterday. Click the link above to the previous day’s post if you want to see it, I’m not linking it again.

So… Durwood first floated this whole “Prelude” idea to Les over a year-and-a-half ago. Les allegedly began working on it shortly thereafter, with his publisher delaying release of The Last Leaf until he could finish it so that they could be released together.  In fact, just last week Darin explicitly tells Les he wants to see what he has written so that he can start on the “illos” for the book.

But in today’s strip, Les is just NOW given the idea for the Prequel/Prelude book that he claimed to have started in mid-2015, a book it was definitely implied he was procrastinating on just LAST WEEK?!

I… I mean… Just… Just move on to the next story arc, please.

The Last Leaf, by the way, is going to be an actual thing. That means that, combined with Prelude and the already-published The Other Shoe, this trilogy of books that Durwood has proposed is going to be a real (expensive) thing too.

And to think I said I wasn’t gonna plug TB’s books today…

There's Moore Where That Came From

Tom Batiuk: If you could see my drawing board now. I’ve got a project that’s going to come up starting the end of the year and it’s really cool…Cory is in Afghanistan and [Holly’s] looking to complete his comic book collection…So she’s going to complete his collection of Starbuck Jones comics…I have seven covers that I’ve had guys create for me and it’s such a kick.

Tom Batiuk Talks ‘Funky Winkerbean’, comicbookresources.com, Mar 19, 2013

Too bad Batiuk didn’t bring in a pro to create a cover for Les’ first book: it looks more like the cover of a book report by a fourth-grader.

Fail Well

Q. Why has Harry Dinkle never been circumcised?
A. Because there’s just no end to that prick!

Me
Yesterday
Those of us here in the real world can freely express our joy over the fact that the Dinkles appear to be exiting the convention at last…

Yeah, I was wrong, we’re still at the convention. For once, Batiuk leaves exposition aside, trusting the reader to know that we are at Harry’s book signing (we don’t see a lobby card that says “‘I NEVER PROMISED YOU A ROSE PARADE’ AUTHOR HARRY DINKLE TODAY 1 PM”).

The first young person we’ve seen in two weeks meekly approaches the wise Dinkle (and hey, Harry gets no long line of adoring fans?). She expresses to Harry her desire to teach, and in the next breath reveals her crushing self-doubt. Harry parries by telling her to “err on the side of confidence”, which Sally Student clearly lacks. Finally, with a wag of his pen, Harry advises her that while she probably will fail, to make sure that she fails for the right reasons.

Every Day I Write the Book

Today we learn that Harry’s not just in town to “compare notes” (HA!) with his fellow music educators…in addition to being a retired band director, Harry’s also a member of that most esteemed class of humankind: Author and Signer of Books! Get ready for the sight of adoring music teachers queuing up for their personally autographed copies of Vol. II (!) of  Dinkle’s autobiography. And what does Harry have in common with Les Moore, Westview’s other A&SOB? Why, both have published books with the same titles as those by Tom Batiuk!

My Snark Will Go On

Not to sound too dire, because I don’t know how this will turn out…

This week King Features Syndicate finally wised up, and went to some kind of dynamic coding scheme that generates a crazy, non-human-decipherable link to the FW strips; replacing the old format in which a human could easily edit the date string to view past, present, and next weeks’ strips.

The old format allowed me to preview each week’s story arc, and write and schedule each days’ posts in advance, scheduling them to go live each day (ok, the night before each day; maybe that was asking for trouble).

I don’t think this affects the availability of  FW strips already on the web. However, it’s likely that the daily strips will now “go live” only at midnight or even later every day. I’m going to have to post “on the fly”, and that’s not going to be easy, what with having to be at my real job every morning.

In order that the snark may still have a home, I will continue to schedule a “placeholder” post each day. You all collectively create the bulk of the content here anyway (as well as the funniest). I’ll add my own daily observations as time permits. On the bright side, my newspaper carrier delivers my Sunday funnies with my Saturday Bergen Record, so even though I won’t be able to link to the strip, I can lay eyes on it first.

So this kinda sucks, but SoSF is still my favorite place on the web, and hopefully one of your favorites as well.

Thanks as always, and stay Funky!

TFH