The Bookstore at Joshua Tree National Park

Okay, so this "bookstore" is actually just one wall in the park's gift shop/ticket center, but it did provide me with one priceless bit of information: In a small, print-on-demand book titled simply, Scorpions, I learned that there are no poisonous scorpions in the continental United States. This did wonders for my paranoia, allowing me to relax and enjoy my day in the desert. (It was only five hours later, when I returned to the gift shop/ticket center to take this photo, that I saw the book shelved beside it -- Mountain Lions. Needless to say, my paranoia returned.)

Vacationing Blogger Presents:Recycled Post #4

Note: While I'm away, I'll be re-running some of our more popular posts from the past few years. Today's is a tongue in cheek deadly serious editorial about tourists. This was originally written for the 4th of July, but it seems totally apt for Memorial Day Weekend, too.

It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year
(cue: gunshot sound fx)
Originally posted on 7/2/7

It's the 4th of July weekend, and the tourists have arrived on Cape Cod en masse. Actually, it's the first of two 4th of July weekends, as this year America's birthday falls on a Wednesday, granting it a party that stretches out over an entire week, like Mardi Gras and/or the major holidays in the life of a child with divorced parents.

The pictures of the cars stuck in traffic coming over the Bourne Bridge are horrific no matter how you look at them. In light of current events, it brings to mind the cars abandoned on the highways of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. If you prefer to look at it through Hollywood's viewfinder, the sight resembles a George Romero film where the zombies had all learned to drive and are now heading to the Cape to eat the tanned flesh of the Kennedy kids. If you're a local, you simply swallow your vomit and try to look away.

I imagine the Wampanoags, the original inhabitants of the area, must have felt a similar feeling of woe when the Mayflower first came over the horizon. No longer were they autonomous humans with lives of their own, but complimentary, make-shift tourist bureaus, living solely to give detailed directions to their easily distracted, ADD-afflicted interlopers. I'm sure that the pilgrims had a lot of children who needed to go to the bathroom/have a glass of water/wanted to sit and read books for free with no intention of purchasing them, too. And they were guests, dammit, so why shouldn't they be allowed to? Is it documented anywhere whether the first words out of John Smith's poorly cared for mouth were "Do you have public restrooms?" or "Where's a cheap restaurant where I can get 5 star seafood?" Cuz I've got $5 riding on the first one and I'd really like to collect.

For a small business owner, the tourist season is (seppuku on) a double edged sword. Sure, the money is flowing (well, it was...pre-recession), but so is the unasked for criticism from folks who will most likely never return. Oh, you like espresso and think we should add a coffee shop to our bookstore? That is what you said, right? Because I could barely understand you as you stuffed your face with the complimentary coffee and cookies we laid out for *ahem* paying customers. You say your daughter self-published a novel about a girl who dreams of becoming a writer? Well, gosh darn it, why are we wasting our time planning Harry Potter events when we could be stocking up on print-on-demand books that there is absolutely no demand for? While I agree that having Alice Sebold, Michael Chabon and the cast from Grey's Anatomy in to do a group signing would be nice, I'm afraid that that has already happened. Last week. Sorry.

Another headache is the ludicrous expectations that many of these folks wash ashore with. In what bookstore, save one on the Harvard campus, would you be able to walk in and purchase a specific volume of untranslated 1970's Swedish psychology texts? And yet there are people walking in with requests as ridiculous as this every hour on the hour. You try to let them down easily, (a free cookie is a good way to start), but they will often take offense, as if you purposefully didn't have the book in stock just to make the writing of their thesis paper that much more of a challenge. What's worse is that they then tell you, "I'll try Borders," and then ask you for directions! I offer to tell them how to get to the Massachusetts border and leave it at that.

As strange as it sounds, I am actually able to take some small solace in the fact that the tourist season is still only beginning. Cuz come late July, all of the stuff that threatens to drive each and every one of us locals insane inevitably starts to seem less annoying and more a part of everyday life. The memories of traffic-free side roads fade away, as does the urge to treat crosswalks like checkered flags at the Indy 500. You actually begin to smile at customers -- are they still called customers if they're not buying anything? --when they yell at you and your staff for not allowing pets to roam the aisles unattended, as you know that the experience will provide fertile fodder for countless columns while bookstore blogging in the slower months. I don't have the proper psychology book handy (I think it's one from the 1970's), but I believe they call this Stockholm Syndrome.

Hmn...Stockhlom. Now there's a place I'd like to visit someday.

(The second photo is actually of Falmouth, England, but I thought it apt considering the secession celebrations currently taking place.)

Related: For a longer, funnier critique of local tourism, check out Marcia Monbleau's wonderful The Inevitable Guest: A Survival Guide to Being Company & Having Company on Cape Cod.

Los Feliz' Best Bookstore: Skylight Books

Located in the heart of Los Feliz, CA, Skylight Books is the indie bookstore all other indie bookstores oughta look to for innovative inspiration. The layout is slightly off-center yet easy to navigate. The staff is helpful, but not intrusive. Endcap displays feature quirky themes and unexpected pairings. Author appearances are staged in such a way that they feel like exciting events rather than stuffy sales pitches. Most importantly, Skylight is stocked to the ceiling beams with books -- great books -- the sort of selection that can only be curated by a staff of rabid readers.
The only reason I can think of to hate them? Jealousy. In this crappy financial climate, they're doing so well that they recently opened a second store (next door) featuring a mouth-watering array of comics, art books and magazines.

To visit their blog, click here.

Vacationing Blogger Presents:Recycled Post #3

Note: While I'm away, I'll be re-running some of our more popular posts from the past few years. Today's is a classic, caustic editorial about Banned Books Week. This one got us a lot of online attention when it first ran. Well, for a day, anyway.

We Sell 'Banned Books'
(but only after the ban is over)
(and only if it's politically correct to do so)
Originally posted 10/2/7

Banned Book Week is the book industry's annual celebration of their own self-satisfaction and self-importance. Bookstores everywhere (including us) hang signs in their windows and around their stores boasting that THEY. SELL. BANNED. BOOKS. They get a write up in the local paper, place little white cards around their store, blog about it, and for what? To make themselves feel progressive and important. But of all the books that they are so 'bravely' selling, how many have been considered 'dangerous' in the past ten years? How many have been banned in a marginally enlightened society in the past twenty years? None. Ooh...you sell Uncle Tom's Cabin and Huck Finn. How cutting edge! That really sticks it to The Man. Are you serious? I bet you Bill O'Reilly wouldn't even say anything bad about freakin' Huck Finn. But how many copies of the Anarchist's Cookbook does your store have on hand? Or Mein Kampf? Or the Tin Tin in the Congo book featuring offensive racial caricatures that Little, Brown recently decided against publishing? There are import editions available from a variety of distributors. If you're truly against censorship -- and not just the antiquated/outdated examples of censorship -- shouldn't you be carrying such a book? I'm not suggesting that bookstores start a 'Hate' section, but if you want to crow about your unadulterated selections, you'd better not be playing the behind-the-scenes censor with your own stock. To do so is hypocritical. Free speech is the right of everyone. Providing unencumbered access to the literary works created under the auspices of free speech (all of 'em -- not just the ones we agree with or approve of) is our business. Bookstores shouldn't have to rally around themselves once a year to proclaim that they hate censorship and the banning of books. Such a concept should be an integral part of every book store, library and reading room. It should go without saying, really.

Related:
Best Damn Creative Writing Blog's Top 10 Books Americans Want Banned

Vacationing Blogger Presents:Recycled Post #1

Note: While I'm away, I'll be re-running some of our more popular posts from the past few years. Today's is a tongue-in-cheek editorial about writing in one's books. This one garnered a surprising amount of hate mail when it was run on The Hipster Book Club's Facebook page. Here's hoping it still rakes in the click-throughs.

Marginal Graffiti
Originally posted on 8/28/7

Are you the sort of reader who jots notes in the margins of the books that you're reading? Do you underline passages that hit a raw nerve, or witty one liners that you plan to wow your co-workers with at the next office party? Have you ever written something totally unrelated -- say, a phone number or grocery list -- in a book, simply to avoid getting up from the comfortable position you're sitting in?
If so, stand tall. You've nothing to be ashamed of.
Unlike those folks who only open their books partway so as to avoid creasing the binding, you're actually enjoying your reading experience. Hell, you've taken it to the next level, making it an interactive activity. What's more, you've proven yourself to be such an avid reader that while loving and respecting literature, you've also made it into a natural extension of yourself. Think of it this way: you write stuff down on the back of your hand all of the time, don't you? The fact that you're able to draw quick police sketches of shady individuals on the inside cover of your airport read only proves that you are books and books are you.
So to hell with the haters who scoff at scuffed bindings and your corner-of-the-page flip book adaptations. They've never experienced the joy of picking up an old paperback, only to find the pin number to a long lost checking account with fourteen dollars plus interest accrued. Nor have they ever tasted their own vomit after opening up an old book of poetry and seeing their freshman year knockoffs iambic pentametered in the blank spaces.
Sure, you'll never be able to sell (or even give away) your unwanted books for fear of the cringe-worthy secrets that you wrote in the margins seeing the light of day, but honestly, is there really such a thing as an unwanted book? When I look around my dusty old mansion, piled from floor to ceiling with books that might benefit needy schoolchildren, I remind myself that once a book has been vandalized...er, personalized, it's a part of me. As such, the inevitable donation and/or disposal of my ballpoint battered books will be handled under the same stipulation with which I have agreed to donate my organs.
Only after I'm dead.


(For my preferred crematorium and a map to the spot where I'd like my ashes scattered, see the margin of page 152 of my copy of Exquisite Corpse: Surrealism and the Black Dahlia Murder.)

Boston's Best Comic Book Shop: Comicopia

The first bookstore I visited on my vacation was Boston's own Comicopia. In fact, I was so desperate to go there that I paid an extra $15 cab fare just so's I could pop in on the way to the airport. No hyperbole: There is no store in MA with a better selection of trade paperbacks and/or graphic novels. Superhero, indie, arty -- you name it, they've got it. Sure, the staff talks on the phone while they ring you up, but with a well-organized, well-stocked shop like this, etiquette is unimportant.

(As my camera was packed safely away, the photo used here was swiped from Boston.com. For a few more shots of the shop, click here.)

Inkwell Michelle's 30 Second Book Review

The Last Dickens
by Matthew Pearl
Pearl plunges the reader into the world of 1870, skillfully blending historical fact and literary fiction into a riveting tale about Charles Dickens’ unfinished last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
Drawing on original letters and newspapers, Pearl recounts the extraordinary celebrity of Dickens during his speaking tour of America, at a time when hundreds would line up overnight, enduring freezing temperatures in the hopes of obtaining tickets to his sold out shows.
The mystery begins when the seedy underworld of the opium trade washes ashore in Boston Harbor with tragic results. Daniel Sands, a young apprentice for publisher Fields, Osgood, & Co., is killed while on an errand to pick up the coveted manuscript of Dickens’ last serial installment of Drood.
Daniel’s mentor, James Osgood (of the aforementioned Fields, Osgood, & Co.) is disbelieving of the police’s insinuation that Daniel was involved with opium. In an effort to unravel the mystery, Osgood and Daniel’s sister Rebecca set sail for London to investigate the recently deceased Dickens’ papers. They hope the answers to Daniel’s death might lie in the missing ending to Drood.
Intelligent and fun, The Last Dickens is chock full of insights into the history of publishing, the politics of opium, and the trials and triumphs of literary genius.
Pearl has garnered acclaim for his previous books, The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow. His well-researched literary mysteries are thoroughly enjoyable, and particularly appealing to avid readers. They are literally literary. His titles say it all.

Road Trip!

I'll be on vacation for the next nine days. In the interim, I'll be posting pictures of random bookstores I encounter in my travels*, as well as re-running some of our more popular posts from the past three years. Regular updates will resume 5/27.

*So if you see a disheveled ne'er-do-well taking pictures of your shop, please don't call it in as a terrorist threat. It's just me, stealing your bookstore's best ideas.

Amazon Supplier Splits, Chaos Ensues

From The Daily Mail UK:

The treasure hunters stand knee-deep in Danielle Steels, Len Deightons and Jeffrey Archers, hoping to find more exotic literary fare.

This is the scene at a huge book warehouse whose contents are being given away after they were abandoned.

Strewn across the floor are thousands of volumes. Many are a little dog-eared or have yellowing pages. But since they are free, who's complaining?

Bibliophiles have travelled from far and wide to the old Bookbarn site on an industrial estate in Brislington, Bristol.

Yesterday, Porsches and BMWs were parked alongside vans outside as the scavengers carried out their finds in crates and on trolleys.

In an endearing display of how the British love the offer of something for nothing, someone had even come with a small trailer on the back of his car. Others were seen stacking books in prams.

To finish this article, click here.

(Thanks to Novel of Life for the heads-up!)

Booksellers Pick Their Favorite Book Books

Is it any surprise that booksellers are obsessed with books? Using Twitter, my bookselling friends and I rapid-fired off this list of our favorite books about books. Thanks to @readandbreathe, @RichRennicks, and @bookavore for the great suggestions!

Essential Reading - Books About Books

• If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
• Reading in Bed by Steven Gilbar
• Library at Night by Alberto Manguel
  
• The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
  
• Women Who Read Are Dangerous by Stefan Bollmann and Karen Joy Fowler
  
• A Reading Life by Alberto Manguel
• Living with Books by Alan Powers
• On the Bookshelf by Henry Petroski
• 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
• People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
• The Dante Club (and others) by Matthew Pearl
• The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
• On Reading by André Kertész
• Possession by A.S. Byatt
• Ex Libris by Ann Fadiman
• A Gentle Madness by Nicholas A. Basbanes
• Sixpence House by Paul Collins
• Patience and Fortitude by Nicholas A. Basbanes
• A Book of Books by Abelardo Morell and Nicholson Baker
• The King's English by Betsy Burton
• So Many Books by Gabriel Zaid
• Booked to Die by John Dunning
• Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
• The Company They Kept by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
• Time Was Soft There by Jeremy Mercer
• The Whole Five Feet by Christopher Beha
• Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón and Lucia Graves

Posted by: Inkwell Michelle

Hollywood Fellates Your Favorite Authors

Oprah Winfrey called James Frey to apologize for tearing him a new hole to hide his heroin in. Even better, the apology came just in time for the paperback release of Frey's most recent novel, Bright Shiny Morning. Kismet!


The trailer for the film version of Cormac McCarthy's The Road has hit the internet. Although the trailer hints at a dumbed down/hyped-up translation, an early review swears by the film's faithfulness, calling it "a brilliantly directed adaptation of a beloved novel, a delicate and anachronistically loving look at the immodest and brutish end of us all." (Which means he likes it. A lot.)


The leads have been cast in Tran Anh Hung's adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. Via TokyoGraph: Kenichi Matsuyama (Death Note) has been chosen to play the lead as the college student Toru Watanabe, while Rinko Kikuchi (Babel) plays his emotionally troubled lover Naoko. The story’s heroine, a lively young woman named Midori, will be played by ViVi fashion model Kiko Mizuhara in her very first acting role.


From Jeff Wells' review of Bright Star: Jane Campion's Bright Star...is about the subdued and conflicted passions that governed the brief love affair between poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and seamstress Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish) from 1818 until Keat's death, at age 25 from tuberculosis, in 1821. It's been done quite perfectly...But it struck me nonetheless as too slow and restricted and, well, just too damnably refined. Wait, so they cut out Keats' famous car chase through the streets of San Francisco? Bummer, dude.

Book News, In Brief

A sequel to Catcher in the Rye is about to be published in Europe, and (surprise, surprise) it wasn't written by J.D. Salinger.


A Michigan man just inherited a comic book collection from his father valued at over $100,000. (Editor's dream-destroying note to recent comics 'investors': These books dated back to the 1940's and did not include any Barack Obama guest appearances. You = FAIL.)


An unpublished memoir by William H. McMasters -- publicist for famous fraudster Charles Ponzi -- was recently found among a private collection of "books, manuscripts and pamphlets about financial sharpies, charlatans, and their schemes to defraud." Who wants to bet it's a fake?


Have you ever seen that Sarah Silverman bit where she talks about sending cowel neck sweaters to kids in Africa, and how they sent her a letter thanking her and telling her that the sweaters were delicious? From The Portland Tribune: "Beaverton couple sends truckloads of books to countries in need." Mmm...books.


A group of New England scientists is traveling to this year's Calaveras County Fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee. Although they're all fans of Mark Twain, their reason for attending is strictly business: They're trying to figure out why Southern frogs jump farther than their Northeastern kin.


Kuz I kan't make it a week without at least one Kindle news item: Amazon has unveiled a program which pays bloggers for Kindle subscriptions to their posts. For taking the time to write, reference, fact-check, and come up with lame, Klu Klux Klan-inspired spelling gags, the blogger receives anywhere from 3-6 cents per monthly subscription. Amazon, unsurprisingly, makes a whole helluva lot more.


The 'Mmm...books' photo comes courtesy of Bookavore. To follow her Twitter feed, click here.

Where The Wild Things Are Has A Blog(and a top 10 list of its own!)

The blog describes itself thusly:

In October 2009 Spike Jonze’s feature film rendition of Maurice Sendak’s classic story Where The Wild Things Are will hit movie theaters worldwide.

The film represents years of work from hundreds of different artists, writers, photographers, musicians, actors, and creators of all degrees.

This place has been established to help shed some light on many of the small influences that have converged to make this massive project a reality.

Go, look!

Related: WTWTA links

10 Top 10s

Owen Davies' Top 10 Grimoires

John Reader's Top 10 Potato Books

Reading Copy Book Blog's Top 10 Egg Books

Stephen Smith's Top 10 Subterranean Books

Bookfinder's Top 10 Books About Bookselling

Resume Bear's Top 10 Career & Job Search Books

MereComments' Top 10 Bad Books Everybody Read

Brian McGilloway's Top 10 Modern Irish Crime Novels

Michael Krepon's Top 10 Books on Nuclear Weapons & Arms Control

Best Damn Creative Writing Blog's Top 10 Books Americans Want Banned

Go, Look: Vroman's Quotes Inkwell

Bookstore blogs plugging other bookstore blogs is eerily incestuous, but it's also essential. Cuz if we aren't pimping each other's posts, then no one is. Anyway, here's Vroman's blog piece on e-book piracy, complete with Inkwell Michelle quotes. Go, read!

Crap-tastic Covers from Upcoming Comics

All New Savage She Hulk #2
Who's the target audience for a female superhero? You'd think the answer would be 'females,' but looking at this cover art...apparently not. Unless the females they're aiming for are gay chicks. But even then, they'd have to be gay chicks who are into poorly drawn green chicks, and that's gotta be a pretty niche crowd.

Youngblood #10
It's like a bad, 80's toy commercial: "Barack Obama, the President of Peace -- now with laser firing hand cannon!" Oh, and is just me, or is that the laziest likeness of Obama ever? The face looks nothing like our Commander in Chief's. Artist Rob Liefeld literally put a big-eared Black guy in a dress shirt and called it a day. (But I'll grant Liefeld this: He did give the Prez a pretty impressive package.)
















Pride & Prejudice #2
As if releasing a comic book based on Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice wasn't risky enough, the publishers were apparently trying to trim down their potential audience even further with this cover. I mean, they were never going to convince Savage She Hulk fans to buy this book, but when they tried to sell an English romance/period piece as a modern-day Matthew McConaughey rom-com, they pushed away the self-described intellectuals and comics-curious Anglophiles, too.

If'n Oof
I'm including If'n Oof as an example of good crap-tastic. Featuring writer/artist Brian Chippendale's surreal blend of childlike cartooning and Parkinson's page layout, this is the sort of over the top mess that makes even the most jaded reader at least a little bit curious as to what's inside. Think about it. You look at the covers to the other three books, and you can pretty much guess what's going to happen. (Okay, so maybe not in the Obama book.) But with this cover, you don't know if you're getting hipster comics, a kindergartner's magnum opus, or both. Another key element on display here: The artist's enthusiasm. You don't see that in the other three, do you?
To pre-order If'n Oof, click here.

Book News, In Brief

Sarah Palin has signed a deal to write her memoirs with publisher HarpyCollins...er, HarperControversy...I mean, HarperCollins.


Chuck Palahniuk did an interview with TIME Magazine. In it, he describes the story behind, the politics of, and the fractured dialect in his new book, Pygmy.


The London Free Press recently ran an interesting piece about their city's used booksellers. Not the normal, everyday, used bookstore booksellers, but the city's traveling used booksellers.


The Guardian UK has cast its monocle on the curious world of literary mapmakers. They're the imagination-fueled cartographers who draw up detailed diagrams of their favorite fictional territories (and perhaps the only folks producing fan-fic that will ever have a chance of being published).


Publishers Weekly posted a long list of ways in which the publishing industry is being transformed by the recession. Among the many vertical wrist-slitters are slipping hardcover sales, library budget cuts, and the decline of brick & mortar stores' share of the market. Among the slightly less depressing, horizontal wrist-slitters are the phasing out of print catalogues, a de-emphasis on in-person sales conferences, and reduced travel and attendance at trade shows.

More News Re: The Death of Newspapers

Knight Digital Media has posted piece on how a 1995 court case kept the newspaper industry from competing online.
An excerpt:

Perhaps the (relative) old-timers among us will remember Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy. That 1995 case pitted a New York securities firm against the Prodigy online service. The plaintiffs argued that an anonymous poster on a Prodigy discussion forum defamed the firm and its president by claiming that they committed fraud during the IPO of another company.

Ultimately, a court held that because Prodigy had hired "board leaders" to monitor the forum, that made Prodigy the "publisher" of the information, and, thus, responsible for it. The court noted a distinction with a previous, similar case involving CompuServe: In that case, CompuServe did not hire anyone to monitor its forum, so it was simply a conduit, not responsible for what people posted. The lesson the newspaper industry took from the case? Forums and comments are okay... only if newspaper staff do not edit, or even read, them.

Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy lasted just one year as precedent...but risk-averse newsroom and website managers weren't persuaded. They continued to insist that their papers could be held liable for any defamatory statements made by readers on their website if newspaper staffers engaged in or managed those discussions.

To find out how this paranoid lapse in litigious judgment played out, click here.

(All praise be to Journalista! for the link.)

Comic Book News, In Brief

It's a fact: Neil Gaiman's name garners site hits. That's why we're leading today's CBN with an interview the eternally trenchcoated author did with World Famous Comics wherein he brushes aside his leonine mane of 80's alt-rocker hair and reassesses his work on The Sandman.


Dozens of artists contributed drawings of X-Men's Kitty Pryde for a fundraiser benefiting the Hemophilia Treatment Center at OHSU. To check them all out without any commitment, click here, cheapskate. To check them all out with intention to bid, click here, friend.


The Comics reporter just put up a great interview with Darwyn Cooke and Ed Brubaker. It covers crime fiction/comics in general, and Cooke’s upcoming adaptations of Richard Stark’s Parker series in particular. Click here to read the interview. Click here to read the first 19 pages of the comic.


Unthinkable writer Mark Sable was detained by the TSA for 30 minutes after a random airport search turned up a copy of his comic's most recent script. Seems Sable's book deals with a government think tank assigned to thinking up possible terrorist scenarios, and this made the guards nervous. To read Sable's Twittering of the event, click here.

Tuesday's Tips for Flailing Writers

The Ready Steady Blog asks, When Choosing Words, Should We Eschew the Arcane? (Or, to put it simpler: Big words -- yes or no?)


An ugly cover, a minimally challenging message, and a one-note enemy. According to Vicki Kunkel, these are three of The 8 Primal Factors that Create Blockbuster Success.


This link is going to be a buzz-kill for everyone who'd hoped that writing would soon replace their 'real' jobs. The Creative Penn presents 5 Reasons Having a Day Job Helps Your Writing.


If there's one thing that every online writing site tells you, it's that authors oughta be blogging. But why? And about what? At last month's New York Round Table Writers' Conference, a panel of pros debated these questions, and Media Bistro took notes.


You've just received the first 500 copies of your print on demand autobiography, and you can't wait to start sending them out to family, friends, book reviewers and old high school sweethearts you're still trying to impress. Then you realize how much the postage is going to cost, and you instantly have the plot for your suicidal sequel. Ah, but fear not! WebComics.com has compiled 5 Tips to Get Your Ship Together.