Less expected: Grantland , the bloggy aspect of ESPN ’s online empire, did an interview with Brown in advance of the comic’s release. This may be the harbinger of the fabled Jock-Nerd Convergence , as was foretold in the beforetimes by the Truthsayer .

Pretty damn nervy, actually: after grabbing snippets of comics to run on their site (many of which are licensed as Creative Commons NonCommercial), they then offered the creators the exciting opportunity to quote specific sections of the article to promote themselves, for a modest fee. Think I’m exaggerating? Here’s an excerpt from an email sent to one of the creators, in response to the simple question, Are you trying to get me to give you money?

Hi, Thanks for your reply. [other employee] reached out to you because your [comic] was featured in our PCMag.com Best Web Comics story. Licensing is not free but to my knowledge you have not used any of our content commercially so no, this is not an attempt to collect money. Many companies like to leverage recognition like this to promote their products/services/apps/games/etc. I am here to let you know we can facilitate any needs you have to use this recognition. Here are examples of how others have used their recognition from PCMag.com to promote their brands…[link removed] If you wish to use our trademarks or quotes to promote [comic] I’m here to help. Use of those trademarks and/or quotes requires licensing which is fee based. Regards, [name omitted because I’m a nice guy]

Licensing Manager

Ziff Davis Inc.

So to sum: Ziff Davis Inc. makes money by driving clicks via a listicle, then graciously allows the people whose work it is referencing to specifically quote the story title¹, but if they want to actually quote the article, or maybe show a screenshot that might incorporate a ZD logo, they have to pay for the privilege to display it for one year which will in turn promote the magazine that gets the license fee. To quote the creator’s reply to this “generous” offer:

I can’t decide if Kafka or Orwell wrote this!

Me neither.