The Chris Hastings interview may be found here.

This is apparently the season for webcomics hosts to sudden deny access. After Ryan North‘s forced exodus last week (for being too awesome, as I recall), we find this morning that Girl Genius has exceeded its bandwidth allotment and been pulled from the interwebs. Now, lest you think this is a mere technical glitch or accidental oversight, here’s what we get from the Studio Foglio LJ:

girlgeniusonline.com is down, probably until the end of the month. Kaja is working to fix it, but things are progressing slowly.

WHAT’S HAPPENED:
We’ve exceeded our monthly allowance of bandwidth. Unfortunately, our service provider doesn’t offer any more, we were already buying as much as we could. We’ve found another provider that we like, and are working on the switch. It may take a while. (emphasis mine)

The host in question, by-the-bye, is Network Solutions, whom you may have heard of since they’re one of the oldest, largest, and most important vendors of network capacity. Hey, Network Solutions? These webcomic things are kind of big these days, and getting bigger; you could be making money off this situation, but instead you’re driving away a high-traffic site. Business logic: QUESTIONABLE?

Fortunately, those looking for their GG fix can head over the Girl Genius LiveJournal, where apparently things like “load balancing” and “network capacity” are not foreign concepts. Damn good thing, too, ’cause today’s installment features a pissed-off Jägermonster, violence (but I repeat myself), and very good coffee. You might say it’s genius.

There are loads of MoCCA recaps out there (go look at the funny mustache picture on that last post) to read and see. I thought I might take a slightly different tack with this week’s column. It’s less about the hi-jinx and more about what gets people through the door. When I got on the train in New Haven on Saturday morning, I wondered how long it would take before I saw someone else heading to MoCCA. Not very long after, a guy got on the train a wearing a Diesel Sweeties t-shirt, and at the Prince Street subway stop I saw a kid in a Books Rule t-shirt.

I’d never been to MoCCA before, and I actually found it kind of overwhelming; it was hot and crowded and loud, and, of course, great fun. Admittedly, I walked in a little rattled, discovering the person just ahead of me in the entry queue, who I’d not seen in years, was the last boy to break my heart (the beer I was handed somewhat shortly after lessened this weirdness substantially). I managed to navigate my way upstairs to the 7th floor to the Trees and Hills table before finding a map to the place.

Spread out over three rooms of varying sizes, plus another room seven floors above the main floor, MoCCA felt kind of like SPX but larger and more chaotic somehow. Maybe it was because everything seemed kind of on top of everything else (literally and figuratively, I guess, with this year’s addition of the 7th floor tabling space), or because the tables were close together or the lighting low. But the traffic on the main floor didn’t seem to slow at any point when I wandered through. However, it had a similar vibe to SPX; there were still folks walking about who didn’t have tables but wanted to trade minicomic print versions of their webcomics, and there were loads more people in attendance than listed in the program, what with all the folks sharing tables. And, of course, there were just folks looking to trade, including Suzanne Shaver who did this cool comic called The Cat Nap, and Kenan Rubenstein’s TICK, which is this amazing high-production values comic done up to evoke the feel of a calendar.
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MoCCA artifact: Hope Larson‘s sketchbook, hopelessly (ha, ha) defiled by evil internet cartoonists, now making the internet rounds.

The online version of Wizard once more seeks to drag its readership into awareness of webcomics; starting tomorrow, Brian Warmoth will be doing biweekly interviews with webcomics creators. First up, Chris Hastings, to be followed by Chris Baldwin on 13 July. I’m informed that two or three more interviews are actually completed at this time, and just waiting for scheduling; check ’em out and let Wizard know that you enjoy them.

There really must be something special in Owen Dunne‘s work, because no matter how long he goes on hiatus, I just want to come back for more. Case in point, citing burnout and a desire to build up a large buffer of strips, Dunne announced yesterday that he’s taking the summer to recharge his creative batteries, finish some projects, and come back in September ready to knock our socks off. I’ll be there on the internet, waiting … waiting.

From the newsbag:

• Erik Bouchard tells us that Eyeskream recently launched a new website, including a third anniversary contest.
• Meghan Murphy would like you to know that Kawaii Not hit 100 posts and 2 years this month.
• Kathy Peterson wanted my opinion on her comic, Kidnapped By Gnomes, so here ’tis: clean design, easy to navigate, readable even though the lead character is a Libertarian and I haven’t met a Libertarian yet that I didn’t think wasn’t really just a Republican that didn’t want to pay taxes. The strip is sorta political in nature, and does not feature video games, furries, TV shows, L33T speak, anime, obscure Sci-Fi, or underage Japanese girls in their panties. In other words, it’s significantly different from 98.353% of all webcomics in existence and Peterson gets a high-five just for that.

Seems like it’s open season for new webcomics blogs. On the one hand, you’ve got Useful Lies, which going by the profile is written by a gent named Dalion Barinon in Spain. Overall tone: enthusiastic, voluble, somewhat lacking in depth. I don’t want to rag on somebody who’s just getting started, but if you’re going to write about webcomics (or any kind of comics, for that matter), you really want to minimize sentences that include:

Ah, well, we at Fleen have certainly written worse ourselves. Welcome to the game, Dalion.

Secondly, there’s Your Webcomic Is Bad and You Should Feel Bad, which (Zoidbergian references aside) is credited to John Solomon, a pseudonym. It’s — well, it lives up to its name. Solomon hates your webcomic and will tell you in detail why, although his savage critiques are miles from, say, Josh Lesnick’s desire to analyze, praise & damn in equal measure, and make everybody’s art better. The rhetoric is pretty over-the-top, and reading YWISAYSFB reminds me of my halcyon days reading Ed Anger. Seriously, if your first blogpost includes the line:

This is because anyone who likes Dominic Deegan is a fucking moron. (emphasis original)

then I figure your tongue has to be pretty far in-cheek (and what the hey — he’s driving up David Willis’s hits and books sales so that’s all good). In any event, everybody say hello to Dr Zoid Solomonberg!

In other news, I shamefully neglected to list Tyler Page along with the other creators I met at MoCCA, and have been enjoying the hell out my copy of Nothing Better, volume 1. My minireview of this book: Terry Moore + flashing back to college (sometimes painfully so) = you should give Tyler Page money and read it yourself. Speaking of books, looks like Karen Ellis will be dropping one sooner rather than later. My minireview of this development: Awesome.

So the lads of Wizard’s website were at MoCCA, although I missed spending any time with them which is too bad; the online version of the magazine continues to kick the ass of the dead-tree version. They have some cool panel coverage and pics for you to enjoy. Speaking of people I missed at MoCCA, Randall Munroe is rumored to have made an appearance, and the Comics Curmudgeon, and I’m not even sure who else I may have missed.

But I did run into The Twin Towers of Webcomics, ninjas with varying degrees of stealthiness, the official webcomics sweetheart, the tiredest man in webcomics and a vendress of fine cephalopods, the most exclamatory man in webcomics, a supremely talented man with a jigsaw, and the results of beer + Sharpie + bird tattoo [NSFW?]. Items were purchased, fun was had, beer was consumed. And that, in case you were wondering, is what MoCCA is all about. Or Christmas, I forget which.

Editor’s note: In case you were wondering, the photos are of: Ryan North, Jeph Jacques, a somewhat hidden Kent Archer & glaringly obvious Chris Hastings, Liz Greenfield, Jon Rosenberg & Meredith Gran, David Malki !, Chris Yates, his woodwork, and Jeff Rowland‘s addition to Jeph Jacques’s arm.

Photos of webcomickers from the big show coming tomorrow. In the meantime, two items relating to creators who have webcomics on hold for the moment.

Up first, Space Coyote, creator of the on-hiatus Saturnalia, drew a picture a while back, tranforming the familiar into a new idiom. Job offers resulted, culminating in a story in Simpsons Comics #131, a small epic entitled Too Crazy, Juvenile Prankster: BARTOMU!. I am not ashamed to admit that I LOLed. (story first seen on ¡Journalista!, although I saw that TV scene on DeviantArt a while back).

And straight outta Magical Brooklyn: Ian Jones-Quartey popped by MoCCA on Saturday to let us all know about a new project: nockFORCE. Check out the funny at nockFORCE.com, or at IJ-Q’s LJ, and somebody please remind this guy of the First Law of RPG World (now scheduled to return in October 2057 … good going, Kayoden Usoden “The Chaos Seeker”!)

As for nockForce itself, the writing has the same loopy quality as the much–beloved Bandwidth Theater shorts, and the animation feels loose & spontaneous without falling into the trap of aping Ren & Stimpy house style (I like John K. as much as the next guy, but too many young animtors can’t remember a time before him, and much of what gets produced these days comes across as Kricfalusi Lite™).

It’s quiet in webcomics today, approaching “dead” as all and sundry gear up for this weekend’s MoCCA festival o’ fun. Of note today:

• Cat & Girl predates the turn of the century, and wants to give you a STICKER because it is AWESOME but you have to get your request postmarked TODAY.
• It’s good to see that Bernie Hou‘s The Burgg back from its IMDB link-induced sluggishness.
• He lives, I tell you! LIIIIIVVVVVES!

That’s it. Be sure to say howdy if you see me at MoCCA.

It’s been mentioned already, of course, but my short list of what to see at MoCCA is a little different from some of the ones Gary listed out earlier. The whole thing feels a little like The Small Press Expo, which I haven’t been to in (many) years but enjoyed greatly when I was there. Of course again, part of the fun with that was cramming four minicomics artists into one small shared table to cut way, way down on costs; I’m certain some of that will happen this weekend as well; I hear Matthew Reidsma‘s going to be there. Anyway, there’s a really interesting article about last year’s MoCCA, which got me thinking….

I’m excited to see Liz Baillie’s work, which I started reading primarily through a review I’d written for Xerography Debt . I’ve never seen the Dumbrella fellas in full convention swing, so I’m looking forward to that for certain. I like Pat Lewis‘s work, and Cathy Leamy’s.

But I want to hear what other people are interested in seeing! What are your recommendations for a first-time attendee?

In the list of webcomics creators to be found this weekend at MoCCA, we at Fleen inexplicably omitted Meredith Gran. We apologize for the oversight, and encourage all in the Greater New York City metroplex to come to MoCCA and buy something from Ms Gran.

In other news, Zach Weiner wants to know: why do my traffic numbers stagnate in the summer? Couple of theories I’ve seen bandied about:

• Depending on how many of your readers are students, leaving free high-speed at school and going home where you have to compete for computer time may have an effect
• Everybody’s outside while the weather is nice

Any other thoughts as to whys and wherefores of the summer slump?

Also:

• Sometimes a simple gag is the best (link here after the archive locks).
• Karen Elllis draws a kickass Wonder Woman.
• Onezumi.com: 350 strips and counting.
• Okay, I’m intrigued:
  

  I just launched my webcomic, Sensational George. It is a loosely-connected series featuring ambitious staplers, unemployed bears, angry jellyfish and zombies working as interns.

  Throw in some squid, and you got yourself a deal.