Thanks for subscribing to my regular update list. My big news for this issue is that How Comics Are Made received a nomination last month for the Best Comics-Related Book category of the Eisner Awards. These comic-industry awards are a high honor in the field; my competition is severe, but it’s such a privilege to be nominated for my first work on comics history. The awards ceremony is in July, when winners are announced.

The nominated edition is the 2025 bookstore version, published by Andrews McMeel, and available worldwide. You can find copies in your local bookstore or at online stores. If you’d like a signed and inscribed edition, I’m selling those directly.

I have so many others things hopping, I’ll keep it to a summary!

• A single panel: We’re nearing the end of the That One Matt Bors Comic, my first time putting together a book I didn’t write while wearing my publishing hat. It’s a deep dive into memes and discourse told through the medium of one Matt Bors panel. We are so close to the goal, but not there yet—one week to go!

  

• As flong as you’re here: I continue to revise the articles that comprise my upcoming book, Flong Time, No See, in preparation for handing off to the editor in a few weeks. It’s due out in September. You can pre-order a copy via Late Pledges at Kickstarter.

  

• Deep dives: My work on Flong Time keeps leading me to new stories that won’t fit there, letting me tell them in the form of a researched essay each month via the premium version of this list. You can upgrade to get future newsletters and the full archives. The latest post traces my discovery of a “flat” typesetting system deploying briefly in 1919, decades before phototypesetting. Support from the premium list let me purchase a 1919 issue of a magazine that used this rare method!

  

• Ahoy, ahoy! I released Mister Plimsoll, my first Mac app. It’s a menu bar app that you configure to monitor how full your drives are. If a volume’s storage fills above a percentage, you can get an alert as any or all of a floating dialog box, a macOS notification, an email, a Pushover alert, or a connection to Stripe, Zapier, or any standard service via web hook. The app is free and available for direct download or you can get it from the Mac App Store. (Tips are welcome.)

  

• Even more: I’m beta testing a Mac app I call Why Won’t You Sleep, which lets you diagnose why your Mac won’t sleep or restart. It’s a troubleshooting tool that helps decode obscure information from command-line tools. I also made public an Apple specifications site I built for myself, which lets you find which Apple devices include which hardware elements and support which operating system features. You may know I run a book price comparison site, isbn.nu, which is now 27 years old! I’ve made a lot of improvements in it this year for producing faster and better results, including offering matches at ABEbooks and Alibris for titles that don’t appear in my extensive database.

Is this too many things? Maybe! Some of these are side projects that have been tooling along for several months; others are prospective, like the Matt Bors book, and which I’ll be commissioning material for as an anthology. I’m enjoying my work on the Flong Time revision, particularly in image research, where I’ve found many engravings and photos I hadn’t previously come across.

But, regardless, whew! Back to the word mines with me, and thanks, as always, for your ongoing interest and support.

—Glenn