Got a room in the San Diego Hotel Rodeo — yay, me. You are all totally invited to crash with me except for the part where you’re not. And New England Webcomics Weekend is getting actual print press today. Does this make it (dare I say it?) notable?

Onward. The North Carolina Web Comics Coffee Clatch get a fair amount of press here at Fleen because so many of their members do so many cool things. When they get together, they do even cooler things, like the themed anthologies. Yes, anthologies, plural, because their second effort is now up at Lulu, this time on the theme of fortune cookies.

This one features stories graphical and prose by NCWCCC members, cover blurbs by the likes of XX-man and Mr T, and a forward by a hack webcomics pseudo-journalist. Look for the official launch this weekend at the local library of Clatchers mckenzee and Jamie Robertson. Pick it up — apart from a wasted page and a half at the front, it looks really good.

… seeing as how I’ll be driving up to NEWW and all. But I’ll be droppin’ updates on you from the party fun times this weekend, so I imagine you’ll deal just fine. Since we’ve got a little bit of a breather before the chaotic awesomeness (chaosomeness?) hits, let’s catch up on the ol’ mail bag, shall we?

• You all know Evan Dahm, right? Yay high, does Rice-Boy? Almost 500 pages of really dense narrative on duty, friendship, destiny, betrayal, the Campbellian hero’s journey and such, which wrapped up about a year ago? Thing is, Dahm hasn’t been idle in the meantime — he’s piled up nearly 250 pages of his follow-on project, Order of Tales, set in the same world. And he writes so that we may tell the world:
  

  I’m now in the ballpark of the three-year anniversary for my comics from the world called Overside, with Rice Boy finished and Order of Tales finally clearing the exposition phase, [and] a nice new book on the way. I hope I’m edging towards doing this professionally, and in the meantime I’m just drawing comics all the time.

  That book would be the first Order of Tales book, which is available for pre-order with free sketch included for a few more days. This is one of those webcomics that’s tremendously well-served by the leisurely pace of a book.

• Hey, did you know that Kevin Moore, of Sheldon the Pig/Wanderlost fame, also does political comics? The idiocies of modern life are found by Moore to be In Contempt, and he’s also going to print now-ish:
  

  I have published a new collection of In Contempt strips through Lulu.com, called Hope, Change and All That Crap. The book collects strips from August 2007 through January 2009, [and] features an introduction by Ted Rall and a forward by Chris Baldwin.

  Rall’s been … unconvinced is probably the best word … about the viability of cartoons on the internet (and if we take him from the most generous POV possible, he’s particularly focused on editorial cartoons), so it will be interesting to see if a web implementation of editorial cartooning produces any heat. The usual difficulty in selling collections of any editorial cartoons probably applies — these panels are meant to be topical and up-to-the-minute, and the news cycles that spawned them are now past. But if this succeeds even modestly? Very interesting implications there.

If this were not so awesome, I might feel slightly put upon that I have to talk about Kate Beaton again for like the third day in a row. Awww, who am I kidding? I ♥ Kate Beaton, and soon I will have to ♥ Kate Beaton, published author:

I’ve been working on a book! You guys only asked for one a million times or so. Good news, it will go to the printers soon, and my guess is that we can expect it around May. Hooray! If I am wrong, Jeffrey‘s gonna give me the stink eye for making promises!

Now I want a t-shirt like her younger self wears that says BOAT! only mine will say BOOK!

• New England Webcomics Weekend kicks off this weekend, and the schedule of events is up. Holy crap, you guys — screenings of MC Frontalot tour documentary film Nerdcore Rising! Charity auction! Panels! Webcomics Weekly live on stage! Gallery show! BOOZE!! [PDF]
• A little bit down the road from New England Webcomics Weekend (about 4800 km and two weeks), Emerald City Comicon kicks offin Seattle, and if you fail to meet any webcomickers at NEWW, good chance you’ll see them in the Pacific Northwest.

  Alice Bentley (friend to webcomics everywhere, erstwhile Studio Foglio minion-at-large, and current grad student) has compiled a pert-near comprehensive list of webcomickers expected to make their way to the City by the Sound. Tell ’em I said hi.

• Finally, J Baird of the Create a Comic Project reports some media appearances:
  

  Jami Lee Rosa of Carmine Magazine recently did an interview with me about the project. You can find it here.

  April’s issue of the Grand News Community Newspaper (published in New Haven, but no website, sadly) will feature a picture and “extended caption” about the 3rd annual Comic Making Tournament.

  Baird and the CCP do some good work — check out the interview, and if anybody in New Haven can grab/scan a copy of the magazine for the rest of us, that’d be cool.

I met Box Brown at SPX a couple years ago, just as Bellen was making a splash, but haven’t run into him (in person) since. I’m hoping to remedy that in the near future, but in the meantime, I can listen to him, as he’s been recorded for all & sundy to listen to as Air America’s first Unemployee of the Week at Break Room Live. Whatever your politics, you can’t beat listening to a webcomicker talk about comics, porn, and not going into the office.

In related news, Brown informs us that he’s been told that Diamond will not hold Xeric winners to their new order minimums, so you should be able to actually purchase Love Is A Peculiar Type of Thing in your friendly local comics shop this spring. Hooray!

• It’s gonna be a busy, happy time in the Carly Monardo/Chris Hastings household in a couple weeks. Hastings has that big-ass show with Onstad and North on April 11th, and Monardo is going to be part of a group show at MyPlasticHeart in Manhattan, with the opening reception the night before. Contacted by Fleen to determine if she’s working in the toy medium, Monardo replied:
  

  I will be doing a digital illustration fine art print MASTERPIECE (I hope).

  We at Fleen are leaning towards “masterpiece”. The show is themed around the signs of the Chinese Zodiac, and Ms Monardo will be holding forth on The Rat. Look for awesome photos in the coming weeks.

• Charity updates: Team Webcomics at Kiva has now lent nearly $20,000 damn US dollars, and I just got notice that the first repayment on one of my loans has come in. If you’re not part of the Team, I can now vouch that (at least in my experience) Kiva works as it claims to, which is pretty damn neat. And Kate Beaton reports that while eBay ganked her charity auction, she still managed to sell her piece for $450 for the Maritime Museum of British Columbia. Well done, Ms Beaton!
• Oh, and speaking of well done Ms Beaton, should we mention that she’s a nominee for Best Emerging Talent in the prestigious Doug Wright Award for Canadian cartooning? Why, yes, I believe that we should. Doubly well done, Ms Beaton (and many thanks to Sebastien Brodeur-Girard for the link to the CBC story).

I’m not sure what’s the biggest change for Hastings Kilgore — the lack of stress, the lack of insanity, the lack of blind bigotry. Whatever it is, I’m glad for him. I feel like I shouldn’t be, that it’s a betrayal of my cold, cynical view of humanity (or monsterity, if you prefer), but dagnabbit — I’m enjoying the Disney ending (plus poop).

Nice job, Paul Southworth. Now, let’s get this sumbitch printed up in color, shall we? That will allay my anxiousness as I await your next project (SasqWatch! SasqWatch! Please let it be SasqWatch!). And on that heartwarming note (literally — Paul’s got an actual heart warming on the stove right now) we’ll wrap this one up and wish everybody a good weekend. See (some of? many of? most of?) you next week at Eastworks.

Holy crap, Kate Beaton original for sale to benefit a good cause!

I used to work at the Maritime Museum of British Columbia when I lived in Victoria. Like most museums, it is pretty underfunded and relies on the kindness of many volunteers and a dedicated staff to keep it running. I was always impressed by the hard work and generosity of everyone involved, and having worked in several museums I know it is the same story country wide. This is getting into the leanest part of the year for museums, before the summer traffic and after the winter doldrums. So, hopefully, I thought perhaps this could help.

Sexy Mermaids, y’all. As of this writing (with nearly six full days to go on the eBay auction), the only Kate Beaton drawing ever to be placed up for sale is going for US$450. Hey Kate please remember that I called dibs on E For Effort if it ever goes up for sale I totally did. As a side note, please direct your browsers to Beaton’s new site (with archive links!) at Hark! A Vagrant (harkavagrant.com).

In other news:

• NEWW shirts at the Octostore (no relation to the Octomom, I promise). Oh man, it will be so embarrasing if somebody else shows up at the Webcomics Weekend wearing the blue one the same day I do. Then again, what are the odds?
• Speaking of NEWW: check the evidence at Jeph Jacques Twitpic collection. It looks like a revival film festival at the arthouse theater!
• Speaking of art, new gallery show in the depths of Brooklyn, starring Ryan North, Chris Onstad, and Chris Hastings. Guys there is no part of that sentence that is not awesome. Titans of Small-Town will be presented by ROFLCon and Barbarian Group on Saturday, April 11 in the very hip Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Details forthcoming, but for now we are be promised that the show will feature limited edition prints, original art, and a Q&A session with the artist dudes themselves.
• Can webcomics and big-time publishers last in partnership? Joey Manley has some thoughts.

So I just happened to be looking at our WordPress stats and fell into a reverie of almost Proustian depths. Long ago, in December 2005, an ambitious young webcomics blog launched and gosh darnit! the writers were gonna make their dreams come true. Somewhere, in response, crickets chirped. It’s possible that a dog licked itself as well. Today, that plucky lil’ blog regularly hits daily readership numbers in the four figures, making it more an exercise in talking to itself than anything else. But heck, isn’t that most blogging?

Fleen now has 1353 posts below this one, the result of the efforts of nine different people. So why the introspection? Because we, as a species, are attracted to Big Round Numbers, and I’m about to hit one of them. This is my 999th post at Fleen; tomorrow will be #1000.

I started this gig with the understanding that I’d post at least once a day, Monday to Friday, but have thus far radically exceeded that. Of course, some of those posts are fillers, and there was that vacation where I ran some reruns, and entries in the new writers contest three years back were run under my byline, but what the heck — it’s still a Big Round Number and I’m enjoying it for the moment.

So upon reaching the Not-Really-But-Let’s-Pretend milestone tomorrow, I pledge to remain the bitter, haggard wordbeast that I have been transformed into, and to continue to provide you with the finest in semi-abusive opinion-mongering that a hack webcomics pseudo-journalist can produce (leavened with occasional actual facts, advocacy, and batshit insanity thrown in for variety).

Speaking of which, did everybody see Ugly Hill today? I’m torn between hoping those crazy kids make it work, and waiting for the inevitable shoe to drop in the form of unbridled chaos and vein-popping madness. Only two more strips to go, and then we find out what new project Paul Southworth has under wraps.

10 March 2009

Human Resources Department,
Webcomics Readers Amalgamated
The Internet

For some time, Joey Comeau wrote bizarre cover letters to potential employers, posting them for all to enjoy under the heading Overqualified. This collection has now become the centerpiece of a novel told through job-application letters. Said novel is now available for your purchase and enjoyment.

Stand up for our country!,

Gary Tyrrell
Editor, Fleen.com
Penthouse Suite,
The Fleenplex

PS: There is a new video lecture from Howard Tayler on the topics of talent, hard work, practice, and artistic success. Naturally, “luck” also comprises a major part of success, with handy object lesson in the form of audio engineers that completely bork the audiotrack of the lecture. It is a considerable lecture, split into four parts, and worthy of your consideration.

PPS: I am left with a question for your most kind consideration: Does anything mark you as a bigger jerk than wearing a monocle? Savannah & Georgia is a Southern gothic murder/mystery story in webcomic form (by Eliza Frye, creator of The Lady’s Murder and other comics) that has only just started, and I already hated the character of Grey from the moment he appeared on page 1. Subsequent appearances have not softened my opinion (and I must say, I dislike him more than just the monocle can explain), and I want bad things to happen to him.

PPPS: Allow me to close with one last thought, which I hope you will find worthwhile. Joseph Hewitt has lately informed me that Journey to Mt Moriah is celebrating three years of updates with a contest. All entries received in the month of March will be posted (along with links to the entrant’s own website, if desired), and three winners will be awarded an original watercolor illustration.

So — yeah. Gonna be huge. Let’s knock down a few things and call it a day.

• On Saturday night in the Greater New York Mediasphere, Channel 13 broadcast Sita Sings the Blues, an ambitious piece of a feature-length animated movie made primarily by one person that’s stuck in it’s own version of copyright limbo. So why am I mentioning this on a webcomics blog? Because of the last bit of the end credits, which look like this, and because of the movie’s homepage, which reads (in its entirety) like this:
  

  Dear Audience,

  I hereby give Sita Sings the Blues to you. Like all culture, it belongs to you already, but I am making it explicit with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. Please distribute, copy, share, archive, and show Sita Sings the Blues. From the shared culture it came, and back into the shared culture it goes.

  You don’t need my permission to copy, share, publish, archive, show, sell, broadcast, or remix Sita Sings the Blues. Conventional wisdom urges me to demand payment for every use of the film, but then how would people without money get to see it? How widely would the film be disseminated if it were limited by permission and fees? Control offers a false sense of security. The only real security I have is trusting you, trusting culture, and trusting freedom.

  That said, my colleagues and I will enforce the Share Alike License. You are not free to copy-restrict (“copyright”) or attach “Digital Rights Management” (DRM) to Sita Sings the Blues or its derivative works.

  Some of the songs in Sita Sings the Blues are not free, and may never be; copyright law requires you to obey their respective licenses. This is not by my choice; please see our restrictions page for more.

  There is the question of how I’ll get money from all this. My personal experience confirms audiences are generous and want to support artists. Surely there’s a way for this to happen without centrally controlling every transaction. The old business model of coercion and extortion is failing. New models are emerging, and I’m happy to be part of that. But we’re still making this up as we go along. You are free to make money with the free content of Sita Sings the Blues, and you are free to share money with me. People have been making money in Free Software for years; it’s time for Free Culture to follow. I look forward to your innovations.

  If you have questions, please ask each other. If you have ideas, please implement them — you don’t need my permission or anyone else’s (except for the copyright-restricted songs, of course). If you see abuses, please address them, but don’t get bogged down in arcane details of copyright law. The copyright system wants you to think in terms of asking permission; I want you to think in terms of freedom. We’ve set up this Wiki to get things started. Feel free to improve it!

  I’ve got to get back to my life now, and make some new art. Thanks for your support! This film wouldn’t exist without you.

  Love,

  –Nina Paley
  28 February, 2009 [block emphasis mine]

  Sounds … familiar. Ladies and gentlemen, if you haven’t seen Sita yet, you can catch a variety of download sites, or 13 is streaming it; you’re in for a treat. And after you’ve watched it, go thank creator Nina Paley, ’cause she’s one of us.

• In other news, in case you hadn’t picked up on the drink recipes at Lore Brand Comics, today‘s establishes Lore Sjöberg as a drinker of the highest quality. You just don’t see the Dark ‘n’ Stormy very often, but damn it’s tasty.
• Finally, Chris Crosby has his hands in so many different aspects of webcoimcs, he can’t help but trip over an anniversary just by going to the fridge to get himself a tasty beverage. Today, Sore Thumbs heads off to kindergarten, ’cause it’s five years old. At the risk of sounding redundant, Fleen congratulates Crosby, and illustrator co-creator Owen Gieni.

Pre-reg for New England Webcomics Weekend is now closed.

Organizers are accepting waitlist requests, and are going to do their best to accommodate as many people as possible. If you have made travel plans and didn’t get registered, Meredith Gran is requesting you contact her at the email address provided on the registration page.

This is growing unexpectedly huge, and so very quickly. Webcomics are clearly a force to be reckoned with.