Whatever you may think of Scott Kurtz from his online presence (and there’s a spectrum that runs pretty far from extreme to extreme), know this: I’ve made my living by speaking at the front of a room for longer than I care to admit, and Kurtz is a natural in front of people. Hand him a mic and you can just sit back to enjoy the ride; add in his love of comicss, and he is a terrific choice for any kind of MC gig. Raise your hand if you just got a mental image of Kurtz totally blinged out and giving his best gangster face.

• Not moustachery, but close enough: the noble beard. Be sure to read the whole thing for maximum understanding of how we hirsuite types have been persecuted throughout history.
• Speaking of reading the whole thing, Valerie d’Orazio is supremely well versed in comics (particularly business issues), writes beautifully and passionately, and is currently the president of Friends of Lulu. So it’s a little disheartening to see her get the idea of corporate + webcomics so very wrong.

  There’s a decent, polite back-and-forth going on in the comments thread and pretty much all of the points that need to be made have been, but I’ll add in one thought here: If her merging of Big Media and webcomics does occur in whatever future timeframe, it won’t be because Big Media bought out webcomics — it’ll be the other way around.

• I honestly have no idea what the central thesis of this email (reproduced as received) is:
  

  We’ve had a lot of free help for the development of our webcomic from the kindness of strangers, which is amazing since we honestly have no idea how to use the internet in any technical sense. We really wanted to do Tuna Carpaccio P.I. promotions and other fun stuff that you see on ton of other sites, but between full-time jobs and putting the comic together, the process of learning the full ins-and-outs of programming seems ridiculously daunting. I guess this seems more like a sad confession than “insight” but we really just wanted to do the webcomic part… too bad there aren’t people out there willing to be the 3rd party only: programming for the sake of programming. That said, you can definitely appreciate webcomickers that are one-person shows.

  … but it got me to check out the linked site on a whim. In that respect, I suppose it’s a success, because I found a bizarrely compelling mystery story there that somehow reminds me of the bastard child of Don Martin and Kris Straub, but not in any way I can articulate. Weird, huh?

• Missed in the Con Fever/Recovery/General Laziness of the past week (with apologies all ’round): an almost silent (and rare non-irritating use of a nearly infinite canvas) Valentine’s Day strip from Eros, Inc. (which happened to be strip #100). Even more missed, another #100, this one from Boxcar Astronaut (but since both strips are now only onto strips #101, I didn’t miss either one too badly, did I?).
• Most beautiful thing I’ve seen in about forever: Tiny Kitten Teeth, by Becky Dreistadt and Frank Gibson, whom you may remember from the long-wrapped (and sorely missed) Combustible Orange. Frank and Becky have since decamped to New Zealand (which is on its face awesome) and have been working TKT since the last week of January and managed seven updates — an amazing feat when you realize it’s painted in gouache on watercolor paper and is frickin’ gorgeous. (obligatory disclaimer: I have just learned that Dreistadt is also known as “my niece Colleen’s buddy Becky from college”, which just goes to prove it’s a small damn world).