Few people I know still have an RSS reader, ever since Google did us all dirty and essentially killed the entire idea of RSS; as such, I keep an oldschool bookmark list of comics that I open daily. Things that don’t update on particular days, or perhaps are on hiatus, they get opened up along with the more active sites; the cost of doing so is negligible. And sometimes, that pays off. Achewood has from 25 December 2016 been without a change. Oh, sure, occasionally a note in the header of the page if Onstad had new merch drops, but no new strips. Until last Friday. A new look and feel to the p ..read more

Slowly, slowly I am finding myself drawn back into [web]comics, the discourse around them, and the having of Opinions. A’course, it’s pretty easy to find the will to write when Matt Bors drops you a line. Readers of this page will know that we at Fleen hold The Nib — edited by Bors, with assistance from Eleri Harris and Mattie Lubchansky — in high regard. It’s a deeply thoughtful, skillfully-curated collection of the best editorial, nonfiction, and journalistic comics from around the world, and they pay. For some time now, longer pieces from The Nib that were up for reruns have been redirecti ..read more

Just kidding, I can’t say nous vivons because it’s not really nous that live — this is all down to Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeupin, who is featured here today. It’s been too long, so let’s all be glad that the drought is over. __________ For the first time since 2020, in Angoulême the FIBD is taking place at the expected time of the year; this marks the end of COVID-related Angoulême controversies¹, which means we can focus again on the non-COVID-related controversies. Now, many of these happen at or around Angoulême because it is so big that it can hardly avoid being involve ..read more

For reasons that are explicated if you just scroll down the page a bit. While the major upheavals of my life last year have largely settled, blogging is like a muscle that requires exercise and habit, and I don’t know that I’ll ever get back into that habit on a regular basis. That being said, tomorrow marks the start of Year 18 at Fleen, and even if I don’t write anything new and substantive, the archives will always be up as long as there’s an internet to host them. Year 17 might have been a bust, but the first 15.5 years were pretty chock full of writing, some of which I’m very proud of. Th ..read more

I’ve long said that my favorite of Kate Beaton’s work is her next, because she keeps getting better; none of her works have been easily surpassed, but when the stars go cold and the final account of capital-A Art is taken, I think DUCKS: Two Years In The Oil Sands will stand at the peak not just of Beaton’s work, but of autobiography, of comics, and of explorations of what turns people into their worst selves. It is in all things a masterwork, as I knew it would be since those five very tall strips were posted back in 2014. There are spoilers ahead, so if you want to go in cold maybe stop rea ..read more

We remembered Ivy yesterday. It seems wrong to treat her memorial as something to report on, recounting who was there and what they said; we laughed and cried in equal measure, and that if there is any means to continue awareness past the death of our physical form, she felt a lot of love. I will say this — for the past month, I have tried to express to people that didn’t know her (surprisingly, they do exist) what Ivy was like; I wrote that she didn’t wait to be an old woman to wear purple, but of late I’ve been saying that she approached life with a joy and love for everybody normally only s ..read more

I have wondered what it would take to bring me back to this site. I’m so out of the loop with comics, I have no plans to attend any of the shows this year with the pandemic being treated with denial, and I am still not certain if I’ll ever get back into the daily habit. But some things demand our attention and words are all I have to offer. I woke up to the news: Ivy Ratafia McLeod 1960–2022 You loved us and told us so. We loved you and told you so. Every day. We love you. We miss you. We wish it wasn’t so. Ivy died in a car crash on Thursday, April 28. She was 61. We were married 34 years. T ..read more

I am quoting this spam in its entirety: wet farts vs dry farts….the smelly truth From: Death Of Farts Do you or a loved one fart more than you’d like? I know some people act like farting is funny, but they cause serious problems for many of us… especially me. It got so bad that decades before the coronavirus I was forced to “socially distance” and isolate myself because I couldn’t get my gas under control. Then I met a doctor who showed me this 1 thing to do differently after pooping that fixed my farts that same day… getting rid of them for good! My life will never be the same and I will nev ..read more

But Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin is still running down the news, at least. Give us heed to what he has to say. __________ I’m writing this because the FIBD at Angoulême was set to be taking place right now. But it isn’t. It isn’t because the French government announced on December 27th that entertainment gatherings (sport events, cultural ones, etc.) attendance would be capped to 2000 if indoors, or 5000 if outdoors, which wouldn’t have allowed the festival to take place with any semblance of normalcy. Worse, by making such an announcement merely one month before it was ..read more

Hi. Been a while. As 15 December is the agreed-upon date for the launch of this blog, and that means yesterday marked the end of the sixteenth year of Fleen, I figured I should mention here at the start of Year Seventeen about why it’s been so damn sparse around here. I mean, pandemic. That’s been the case forever. But there’s been more unique challenges in … let’s say the back half of 2021. In rough order, I found out a relative was stealing from my mother (who has dementia and who I don’t particularly get on with but you still don’t want to see anybody exploited, at least if you aren’t a mon ..read more